HUMW-011 Critical Reading and Writing

Staff

The primary goal of this course is to offer intensive instruction and practice in reading and writing to develop critical thinking. Each section focuses attention on a single problem or topic in textual or cultural studies. The course will be conducted as a seminar, with regular student participation and a concentration on student writing.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

Course syllabi
The following syllabi may help you learn more about this course (login required):

Spring '08: Fox P (file download)

Fall '07: Nanney L (description)

Fall '07: Sitterson J (file download)

Fall '07: O'Brien G (file download)

Additional syllabi may be available in prior academic years.

HUMW-011-01 Germanic Christian Hero

Faculty:

Murphy, G. Ronald

This course is aimed at the cultural transformation of the hero/protagonist over the course of time. The interactions and poetic syntheses of the Germanic and the Christian imagination of the human person will be examined from their origins to the nineteenth century in reading the following works: the Heliand, (the Dark Ages); Parzival (the time of the Crusades); In Praise of Folly (the Humanist Renaissance); Faust I (the Classical Period); and Mother Courage (the Twentieth Century). This course does not count toward the major, but it does satisfy the humanities requirement.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-02 Virtuous Hero: Medieval Poetry

No faculty information available

This course will examine Old English, Old High German, and Middle High German representative poetic texts featuring the performance of heroic deeds and the development of individual virtues within a framework of values which the Germanic warrior strives to achieve on his way to becoming a true Christian knight.
Students will read texts in New High German and/or English translations. Each text will be studied in its appropriate historical and cultural context with a focus on what essential traits are shared by all selections and to what extent language- and culture-specific trends of development can be identified.

The interpretation of the texts in a seminar-style classroom setting will familiarize students with numerous aspects of a bygone world which holds an abundance of features still relevant, interesting, and even fascinating for modern man.

Students will become acquainted with the early Germanic literary tradition and gain an insight into how the literary dimension in each of the three selected language areas is interrelated with pertinent socio-cultural and historical facts.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-03 Apocalypse and Revolution

Faculty:

Morris, Marcia

COURSE CONTENT AND PHILOSOPHY
This is a course centered on artistic texts – understood as both written and visual – and how we interpret them vis-à-vis their cultural contexts. The texts in question are complex and can be interpreted in many ways. What any given reader has to say about a particular text depends entirely on what questions s/he asks her/himself. Accordingly, there are many ways of reading or viewing and many legitimate interpretations. While I will offer my own interpretations of each text, you can and even MUST question my views and present your own interpretations. Disagreement with me will in no way reflect negatively on your grade; to the contrary, the more you develop your own critical skills, the higher will be my assessment of your work. Most particularly, I do NOT want to hear my own views of the texts repeated back to me in your papers. The works you will be writing about are sufficiently complex that we will not be able to touch on all their aspects. Their complexity also dictates that one and the same episode is usually susceptible to multiple interpretations. There are, therefore, many opportunities for you to express an original viewpoint.

REQUIRED READING
Novels (available in Georgetown’s Bookstore):
F. Dostoevsky, Demons
A. Bely, Petersburg
B. Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago
Scripture (find on your own):
The New Testament Apocalypse of St. John (Book of Revelation)
REQUIRED VIEWING
Films (to be shown by schedule, outside class hours)
Burnt by the Sun
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors
m

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-06 Critical Reading and Writing

Faculty:

Debelius, Margaret

Spring 2008

COLLOQUIUM

Nice Work

This section is organized as a writing-intensive workshop, which makes it possible for students to have their work read and discussed by several audiences, including a team of instructors, small groups of classmates, and tutors who meet regularly with students in the class. Our theme for the semester is “Nice Work,” which we’ll explore by reading several pieces of fiction and nonfiction about the concept of work (both academic and professional). Through frequent in-class writings, drafts, exchanges and essays, we’ll come to some understanding about what constitutes nice written work in a variety of contexts.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-07 Critical Reading and Writing

Faculty:

Fox, Pamela

Spring 2008

COLLOQUIUM

Through thoughtful reading, intensive writing, and lively discussion, we will explore one particular debate that galvanized higher education in the 1990s and impacts most schooling in America today: multiculturalism or, often now the preferred term, diversity.
This course examines a variety of contemporary cultural texts (mostly novels and film), together with essays and reports from the “P.C. Wars,” in order to understand and genuinely problematize the issues at stake, as well as to analyze the shifting terminology of the debate itself.

Fiction will include novels by Toni Morrison, Louise Erdrich, Joy Kogawa, and Zimbabwean writer Tsitsi Dangarembga and a short story by Junot Diaz; films are still to be decided upon, but will at least include Mira Nair’s MISSISSIPPI MASALA or more recent THE NAMESAKE. Students will also be asked to investigate diversity’s presence and uses on-line, as in the website “DiversityInc.com,” as well as at GU itself. Writing assignments will take a variety of forms, including critical analysis and personal reflection, but all will involve painstaking revision.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-08 Critical Reading and Writing

Faculty:

Ortiz, Ricardo

Spring 2008

COLLOQUIUM


Imagining América invites students to examine and interrogate for themselves (as well as together) seminal moments in the vexed history of the signifier, América, (and by extension, American(@)) in many of its most salient, strategic, and potent, deployments: geographical, political, historical, cultural, ideological, fantastic and even erotic. Beginning with some initial European conceptualizations (the “Indies”; the “New” World; the “Western” Hemisphere) of any and all spaces now claimed as (and by) América, the course moves quickly to 19th and 20th Century texts representing the “América(s)” debate as intra-hemispheric, primarily if not exclusively organized around the mismatched, incommensurate “poles” termed “Latin” and “North” América. English 011 is a reading-, thinking-, talking- and writing-intensive course; it requires significant commitment, concentration and effort from students, on every level of activity.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-09 Critical Reading and Writing

Faculty:

Tilden, Norma

Spring 2008

COLLOQUIUM

This course explores the reading and writing of nonfiction prose. The readings provide questions, prompts, and models for the writing--all in a workshop setting, which means that the full and ready participation of each student is required. Thematically, the course is structured around a relationship which challenges us as both readers and writers; poet Margaret Atwood has stated it plainly: “A word after a word / after a word is power.” Students will explore this equation as it subtly–and sometimes insidiously–operates in texts of many kinds: essays, journalistic features, poems, fictional and nonfictional narratives. At the same time, we will look for evidence of growing power in the writing done by the class. Through frequent papers and revisions, in-class workshops, and individual conferences, we’ll work together to shape unruly words and elusive insights into clear, persuasive prose. Not to mislead you: this approach has less to do with politics than grammar, but without the basic power of “a word after a word,” you are unlikely to achieve any other kind.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-10 Critical Reading and Writing

Faculty:

Fink, Jennifer

Spring 2008

This intensive writing class will examine the social, historical, aesthetic, literary, political, erotic, and narrative dimensions of urban space. As we investigate the peculiar problems, pressures, and pleasures of writing about the city, we will experiment with a wide variety of approaches to writing about our own particular urban space: contemporary Washington, D.C. We will also read closely a variety of texts that 'write the city,' and examine their narrative approaches and strategies. Expect to write rigorously, imaginatively, and weekly as we explore the metaphorical and physical space of Washington.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-11 Critical Reading and Writing

Faculty:

Fox, Pamela

Spring 2008

Through thoughtful reading, intensive writing, and lively discussion, we will explore one particular debate that galvanized higher education in the 1990s and impacts most schooling in America today: multiculturalism or, often now the preferred term, diversity.
This course examines a variety of contemporary cultural texts (mostly novels and film), together with essays and reports from the “P.C. Wars,” in order to understand and genuinely problematize the issues at stake, as well as to analyze the shifting terminology of the debate itself.

Fiction will include novels by Toni Morrison, Louise Erdrich, Joy Kogawa, and Zimbabwean writer Tsitsi Dangarembga and a short story by Junot Diaz; films are still to be decided upon, but will at least include Mira Nair’s MISSISSIPPI MASALA or more recent THE NAMESAKE. Students will also be asked to investigate diversity’s presence and uses on-line, as in the website “DiversityInc.com,” as well as at GU itself. Writing assignments will take a variety of forms, including critical analysis and personal reflection, but all will involve painstaking revision.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-12 Critical Reading and Writing

Faculty:

Fuisz, Lisbeth

Spring 2008

Banned and Challenged Books

In 2005-6, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted were removed from curricula in various U.S. school districts for, respectively, sexual explicitness and “strong language.” These represent only a small portion of books whose inclusion in U.S. academic settings and public libraries has been challenged in recent years. What is at stake in these arguments over appropriate reading materials for students? What identities for students are being deemed legitimate or illegitimate? What versions of the learning process are being endorsed by those who challenge these books and by those who champion them? We will consider these questions as we read and write about banned and challenged books. Texts include: Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird; Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale; Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye; Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted; Mavis Jukes’ The Guy Book: An Owner’s Manual for Teens; Esther Drill, Heather McDonald, and Rebecca Odes’ Deal With It! A Whole New Approach to Your Body, Brain, and Life as a gURL. Assignments in this course will center on the writing process (prewriting, drafting, responding, editing, and publication) in order to develop critical thinking skills that can be used in a variety of disciplines. Ultimately, banned and challenged books offer a way to think through our beliefs about the purposes of education in a democracy.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-13 Critical Reading and Writing

Faculty:

Boylan, Rebecca

Spring 2008

From Shutter to Screen to Sculpture to Script: How War’s Art Frames the Spectator

This course begins with Susan Sontag’s, Regarding the Pain of Others, in which she raises intelligent questions about how art’s portrayal of war conscripts its audience. What do we know about war from a particular source and how do we know it? If understanding war, in general or specifically, necessitates discovering its own set of truths and ethics, how does art provoke us to work toward this discovery? Does art ever obscure such discovery? How do different works of art expand notions of how individual morality finds a place within a national war? What are the ethics involved in looking at a person photographed as dying or dead? What aesthetic agendas do we subscribe to when imagining war in the abstract and how are these triggered by looking at a picture of a particular moment in war? In dissecting these questions and seeking others, we will study the work of a variety of war’s photographers (Brady, Capa, Fenton, Adams et al), war films such as Saving Private Ryan, local monuments such as The Vietnam Wall and the Iwo Jima sculpture, artists such as Goya and Picasso, and read a medley of literature portraying different wars focused through different viewpoints in poetry and novel. Our mission will be to find the questions to ask of the artist, the art, and ourselves consuming these images and impressions. Student essays will try out lucid, imaginative, thoughtfully developed and logically articulated responses to questions they take risks to uncover. For example, what are our responsibilities as spectators? How do these “pictures” affirm and challenge our own individual, national, and international role within/toward a war? How can we, or should we, separate the ghostly spectre from the concrete reality? Art from journalistic reporting? The just tragedy from the mad monster? War’s momentary immediacy from its enduring effects? How do we articulate questions that allow us to probe political and spiritual polemics uncovered in artist’s impressions of war? Readings will include excerpts from Homer and Virgil, selected WWI poetry, Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Brooks’s March, Bowen’s The Heat of the Day, Greene’s The Quiet American, Mailer’s The Armies of the Night, and Eggers’ What is the What. Films that we will “read” in entirety include The Wind that Shakes the Barley, Pan’s Labyrinth, In the Valley of Elah, and The Lives of Others.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-14 Critical Reading and Writing

Faculty:

Boylan, Rebecca

Spring 2008

From Shutter to Screen to Sculpture to Script: How War’s Art Frames the Spectator

This course begins with Susan Sontag’s, Regarding the Pain of Others, in which she raises intelligent questions about how art’s portrayal of war conscripts its audience. What do we know about war from a particular source and how do we know it? If understanding war, in general or specifically, necessitates discovering its own set of truths and ethics, how does art provoke us to work toward this discovery? Does art ever obscure such discovery? How do different works of art expand notions of how individual morality finds a place within a national war? What are the ethics involved in looking at a person photographed as dying or dead? What aesthetic agendas do we subscribe to when imagining war in the abstract and how are these triggered by looking at a picture of a particular moment in war? In dissecting these questions and seeking others, we will study the work of a variety of war’s photographers (Brady, Capa, Fenton, Adams et al), war films such as Saving Private Ryan, local monuments such as The Vietnam Wall and the Iwo Jima sculpture, artists such as Goya and Picasso, and read a medley of literature portraying different wars focused through different viewpoints in poetry and novel. Our mission will be to find the questions to ask of the artist, the art, and ourselves consuming these images and impressions. Student essays will try out lucid, imaginative, thoughtfully developed and logically articulated responses to questions they take risks to uncover. For example, what are our responsibilities as spectators? How do these “pictures” affirm and challenge our own individual, national, and international role within/toward a war? How can we, or should we, separate the ghostly spectre from the concrete reality? Art from journalistic reporting? The just tragedy from the mad monster? War’s momentary immediacy from its enduring effects? How do we articulate questions that allow us to probe political and spiritual polemics uncovered in artist’s impressions of war? Readings will include excerpts from Homer and Virgil, selected WWI poetry, Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Brooks’s March, Bowen’s The Heat of the Day, Greene’s The Quiet American, Mailer’s The Armies of the Night, and Eggers’ What is the What. Films that we will “read” in entirety include The Wind that Shakes the Barley, Pan’s Labyrinth, In the Valley of Elah, and The Lives of Others.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-15 Critical Reading and Writing

Faculty:

Fuisz, Lisbeth

Spring 2008

Banned and Challenged Books

In 2005-6, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted were removed from curricula in various U.S. school districts for, respectively, sexual explicitness and “strong language.” These represent only a small portion of books whose inclusion in U.S. academic settings and public libraries has been challenged in recent years. What is at stake in these arguments over appropriate reading materials for students? What identities for students are being deemed legitimate or illegitimate? What versions of the learning process are being endorsed by those who challenge these books and by those who champion them? We will consider these questions as we read and write about banned and challenged books. Texts include: Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird; Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale; Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye; Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted; Mavis Jukes’ The Guy Book: An Owner’s Manual for Teens; Esther Drill, Heather McDonald, and Rebecca Odes’ Deal With It! A Whole New Approach to Your Body, Brain, and Life as a gURL. Assignments in this course will center on the writing process (prewriting, drafting, responding, editing, and publication) in order to develop critical thinking skills that can be used in a variety of disciplines. Ultimately, banned and challenged books offer a way to think through our beliefs about the purposes of education in a democracy.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-16 Critical Reading and Writing

Faculty:

Gorman, Ellen

Spring 2008

Literary Theory and Interpretation:
The Politics of Art

In this course we will examine literary theory as a construct and the ways in which it has developed in the fields of English Literature and Cultural Studies in order to understand how meaning is produced. As we interrogate certain key terms such as ideology, culture, value, rhetoric and canon, we will read works interpreted and critiqued as political, expressly articulated to address social issues. Literary, theoretical and cinematic texts for the course include works by D.H. Lawrence, Pablo Neruda, Terry Eagleton, Anthony Burgess, Doris Lessing, Jack Kerouac, Chuck Palahniuk and Ken Loach, among others.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-17 Critical Reading and Writing

Faculty:

Gorman, Ellen

Spring 2008

Literary Theory and Interpretation:
The Politics of Art

In this course we will examine literary theory as a construct and the ways in which it has developed in the fields of English Literature and Cultural Studies in order to understand how meaning is produced. As we interrogate certain key terms such as ideology, culture, value, rhetoric and canon, we will read works interpreted and critiqued as political, expressly articulated to address social issues. Literary, theoretical and cinematic texts for the course include works by D.H. Lawrence, Pablo Neruda, Terry Eagleton, Anthony Burgess, Doris Lessing, Jack Kerouac, Chuck Palahniuk and Ken Loach, among others.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-18 Critical Reading and Writing

Faculty:

Tietz, Edward

Space, Place and Position

Why is the question, “Where are you from?” one of the first questions we ask when we meet someone? Why is place so defining to how we present ourselves and to who we are? And if place is so crucial to how we understand and explain ourselves, what bearing does place have on a similar concept, that of space, a concept that has a similar but less specific hold on our identities and the stories we tell about ourselves and others?

We will explore various notions about place and space in trying to answer these questions. We will concentrate, in class discussions and written assignments, on how place and space are represented and theorized in writing, film, television and architecture and try to see how such representations and theories affect how we think about place and space generally. We will also try to understand how concepts of place and space affect how we understand our own positions of inclusion, exclusion and belonging in society and culture, how they affect who we are and how we act, how places and spaces can empower us and overpower us, in towns, cities and elsewhere. We will also investigate how place and space relate to time, since it is often through concepts of place and space that we remember a past, act on a present and imagine a future.

The course material, as well as the concepts we will discuss and develop in class, will be the basis for four writing assignments. In connection with these assignments, we will discuss thesis development, paper organization, research and documentation. There will also be a final.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-19 Critical Reading and Writing

Faculty:

Tietz, Edward

Space, Place and Position

Why is the question, “Where are you from?” one of the first questions we ask when we meet someone? Why is place so defining to how we present ourselves and to who we are? And if place is so crucial to how we understand and explain ourselves, what bearing does place have on a similar concept, that of space, a concept that has a similar but less specific hold on our identities and the stories we tell about ourselves and others?

We will explore various notions about place and space in trying to answer these questions. We will concentrate, in class discussions and written assignments, on how place and space are represented and theorized in writing, film, television and architecture and try to see how such representations and theories affect how we think about place and space generally. We will also try to understand how concepts of place and space affect how we understand our own positions of inclusion, exclusion and belonging in society and culture, how they affect who we are and how we act, how places and spaces can empower us and overpower us, in towns, cities and elsewhere. We will also investigate how place and space relate to time, since it is often through concepts of place and space that we remember a past, act on a present and imagine a future.

The course material, as well as the concepts we will discuss and develop in class, will be the basis for four writing assignments. In connection with these assignments, we will discuss thesis development, paper organization, research and documentation. There will also be a final.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-2 Germanic Christian Hero

Faculty:

Murphy, G. Ronald

This course is aimed at the cultural transformation of the hero/protagonist over the course of time. The interactions and poetic syntheses of the Germanic and the Christian imagination of the human person will be examined from their origins to the nineteenth century in reading the following works: the Heliand, (the Dark Ages); Parzival (the time of the Crusades); In Praise of Folly (the Humanist Renaissance); Faust I (the Classical Period); and Mother Courage (the Twentieth Century). This course does not count toward the major, but it does satisfy the humanities requirement.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-20 Critical Reading and Writing

Fuisz, Lisbeth

Banned Books

In 2005-6, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eyes, Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted, and J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince were removed from curricula in various U.S. school districts, for, respectively, sexual explicitness, “strong language,” and inappropriate content. These represent only a small portion of books whose inclusion in U.S. academic settings and public libraries has been challenged in recent years. What is at stake in these arguments over appropriate reading materials for students? What identities for students are being deemed illegitimate? What versions of the learning process are being endorsed by those who challenge these books and by those who champion them? In this course, we will read a selection of books that have been banned, restricted, or challenged recently, including (but not limited to) Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Kelly Huegel’s GLBTQ: The Survival Guide for Queer and Questioning Teens, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbir
d, Carolyn Mackler’s The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things, and Lisa Westberg Peters’ Our Family Tree: An Evolution Story. These banned books offer a way to think through our beliefs about the purposes of education in a democracy.

Assignments in this course will center on the writing process (prewriting, drafting, responding, editing, and publication) in order to develop critical thinking skills that can be used in a variety of disciplines. In addition to analytical responses to the reading materials, students will complete a case study on one banned or challenged book. Students will also construct a persuasive essay, based on research, that argues for or against the banning of a book we have read in class.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-21 Critical Reading and Writing

Fuisz, Lisbeth

Banned Books

In 2005-6, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eyes, Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted, and J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince were removed from curricula in various U.S. school districts, for, respectively, sexual explicitness, “strong language,” and inappropriate content. These represent only a small portion of books whose inclusion in U.S. academic settings and public libraries has been challenged in recent years. What is at stake in these arguments over appropriate reading materials for students? What identities for students are being deemed illegitimate? What versions of the learning process are being endorsed by those who challenge these books and by those who champion them? In this course, we will read a selection of books that have been banned, restricted, or challenged recently, including (but not limited to) Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Kelly Huegel’s GLBTQ: The Survival Guide for Queer and Questioning Teens, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbir
d, Carolyn Mackler’s The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things, and Lisa Westberg Peters’ Our Family Tree: An Evolution Story. These banned books offer a way to think through our beliefs about the purposes of education in a democracy.

Assignments in this course will center on the writing process (prewriting, drafting, responding, editing, and publication) in order to develop critical thinking skills that can be used in a variety of disciplines. In addition to analytical responses to the reading materials, students will complete a case study on one banned or challenged book. Students will also construct a persuasive essay, based on research, that argues for or against the banning of a book we have read in class.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-22 Critical Reading and Writing

Corbin, Amy

Fall 2007

Trial Films

America is fascinated with the courtroom: we consume countless legal dramas on TV and in the movies, and our collective gaze was riveted by the televised O.J. Simpson trial, among others. This course will consider the adversarial structure of the American courtroom as it is adapted into narratives: what is it about two opposing sides arguing in front of a judge and jury that makes an engaging story? Secondly, we’ll discuss how fictional courtroom drama has been used to represent social issues in the U.S., predominantly African American civil rights, women’s liberation, and corporate power.

Our primary texts will be feature films and one novel. While we study arguments in the fictional courtroom, you’ll learn to develop your own analytical arguments through writing drafts and final versions of four essays, increasing in length as the semester progresses. Emphasis will be on crafting thesis-driven essays, writing as a critical thinking process, and thorough revision. Your active participation in the course is essential, as you’ll be responsible for contributing to class discussions and helping your classmates revise their essays.

Books: Snow Falling on Cedars and Writing Analytically
Films will be shown at required evening screenings.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-23 Critical Reading and Writing

Corbin, Amy

Fall 2007

Trial Films

America is fascinated with the courtroom: we consume countless legal dramas on TV and in the movies, and our collective gaze was riveted by the televised O.J. Simpson trial, among others. This course will consider the adversarial structure of the American courtroom as it is adapted into narratives: what is it about two opposing sides arguing in front of a judge and jury that makes an engaging story? Secondly, we’ll discuss how fictional courtroom drama has been used to represent social issues in the U.S., predominantly African American civil rights, women’s liberation, and corporate power.

Our primary texts will be feature films and one novel. While we study arguments in the fictional courtroom, you’ll learn to develop your own analytical arguments through writing drafts and final versions of four essays, increasing in length as the semester progresses. Emphasis will be on crafting thesis-driven essays, writing as a critical thinking process, and thorough revision. Your active participation in the course is essential, as you’ll be responsible for contributing to class discussions and helping your classmates revise their essays.

Books: Snow Falling on Cedars and Writing Analytically
Films will be shown at required evening screenings.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-24 Critical Reading and Writing

Hamilton, S.

Fall 2007

Voyages of Self-Discovery: British and American Writers in Italy

Whether you have travelled to Italy or have never travelled farther than your armchair, this class is for students interested in the conjunction between writing and travel: the mental and creative vistas that open up when people confront something wonderful and new. We will examine how writers from the 19th-century to the present have used images of sight and revelation, of surprise and self-discovery, in their writings about Italy. We will investigate the roles of memory and desire in creating these Italian visions and vistas – and the differences between the actual country and the Italy of the imagination. This will be an interdisciplinary course and students will be encouraged to participate in their own voyage of self-discovery by reading texts, listening to music, and looking at paintings and sculpture from or inspired by Italy. Through close examination of writing set in Italy (poetry, essays, short stories, and novels), this class will teach students the critical reading skills needed for in-depth analysis and appreciation of writing in numerous forms. The class will also teach students how to become polished writers, able to express their ideas in an engaging, sophisticated manner.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-25 Critical Reading and Writing

Hamilton, S.

Fall 2007


Voyages of Self-Discovery: British and American Writers in Italy

Whether you have travelled to Italy or have never travelled farther than your armchair, this class is for students interested in the conjunction between writing and travel: the mental and creative vistas that open up when people confront something wonderful and new. We will examine how writers from the 19th-century to the present have used images of sight and revelation, of surprise and self-discovery, in their writings about Italy. We will investigate the roles of memory and desire in creating these Italian visions and vistas – and the differences between the actual country and the Italy of the imagination. This will be an interdisciplinary course and students will be encouraged to participate in their own voyage of self-discovery by reading texts, listening to music, and looking at paintings and sculpture from or inspired by Italy. Through close examination of writing set in Italy (poetry, essays, short stories, and novels), this class will teach students the critical reading skills needed for in-depth analysis and appreciation of writing in numerous forms. The class will also teach students how to become polished writers, able to express their ideas in an engaging, sophisticated manner.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-26 Critical Reading and Writing

Faculty:

Gorman, Ellen

Fall 2007

Literary Theory and Interpretation:
The Beat Generation and Its Influences

?Literary theory...has escaped from the academy and become part of popular culture,? according to Thomas McLaughlin. In this course we will examine literary theory as a construct and the ways in which it has developed in the fields of English Literature and Cultural Studies in order to understand the results of reading and thinking critically about what we have read, such as the production of meaning and construction of identity to name but two. As we interrogate certain key terms such as ideology, interpretation, culture, value, rhetoric and canon, our readings will include a number of texts written by Beat Generation writers and poets and some of the artists they cited as influences, such as Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Frank O?Hara, Gregory Corso, John Keats, Arthur Rimbaud, Herman Melville, Franz Kafka and Jean Cocteau.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-27 Critical Reading and Writing

Faculty:

Gorman, Ellen

Fall 2007

Literary Theory and Interpretation:
The Beat Generation and Its Influences

?Literary theory...has escaped from the academy and become part of popular culture,? according to Thomas McLaughlin. In this course we will examine literary theory as a construct and the ways in which it has developed in the fields of English Literature and Cultural Studies in order to understand the results of reading and thinking critically about what we have read, such as the production of meaning and construction of identity to name but two. As we interrogate certain key terms such as ideology, interpretation, culture, value, rhetoric and canon, our readings will include a number of texts written by Beat Generation writers and poets and some of the artists they cited as influences, such as Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Frank O?Hara, Gregory Corso, John Keats, Arthur Rimbaud, Herman Melville, Franz Kafka and Jean Cocteau.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-28 Critical Reading and Writing

Harlan, Elizabeth

Fall 2007

Stranger than Fiction

In both fiction and non-fiction writing, realism is often a central issue, but how important is it to our ultimate understanding and appreciation of a book? Do we read a nonfiction novel of crime, such as Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, the same way we would a completely fictional detective novel? Why did many eighteenth-century novelists insist on presenting their work as if it were real, in the form of diaries or collections of letters? Do readers at times attach too much validity to a fictional work? Can
a work of fiction be too realistic? Can a historical novel have a fantastical character that spans centuries and still be considered a historical novel? In the end, do any of these questions really affect how we enjoy or interpret a book?

This course will address these questions of realism and how it functions in fiction and nonfiction, utilizing the theories of Georg Lukacs, Michael McKeon, Marthe Robert, Jose Ortega Y Gasset, among others. Possible readings include Capote, Virginia Woolf’s historical novel Orlando, Johann von Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, Daniel DefoeDefoe’s Moll Flanders, Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone, and George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss. Writing assignments will include short reviews of three of the books we discuss in class, in-class essays, and a longer critical paper comparing the theme of the course as it appears in two contrasting works.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-29 Critical Reading and Writing

Harlan, Elizabeth

Fall 2007

Fall 2007

Stranger than Fiction

In both fiction and non-fiction writing, realism is often a central issue, but how important is it to our ultimate understanding and appreciation of a book? Do we read a nonfiction novel of crime, such as Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, the same way we would a completely fictional detective novel? Why did many eighteenth-century novelists insist on presenting their work as if it were real, in the form of diaries or collections of letters? Do readers at times attach too much validity to a fictional work? Can
a work of fiction be too realistic? Can a historical novel have a fantastical character that spans centuries and still be considered a historical novel? In the end, do any of these questions really affect how we enjoy or interpret a book?

This course will address these questions of realism and how it functions in fiction and nonfiction, utilizing the theories of Georg Lukacs, Michael McKeon, Marthe Robert, Jose Ortega Y Gasset, among others. Possible readings include Capote, Virginia Woolf’s historical novel Orlando, Johann von Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, Daniel DefoeDefoe’s Moll Flanders, Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone, and George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss. Writing assignments will include short reviews of three of the books we discuss in class, in-class essays, and a longer critical paper comparing the theme of the course as it appears in two contrasting works.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-30 Critical Reading and Writing

Attie, Katherine

The Country and the City

How are country places and urban spaces imagined in literature? What sorts of stories unfold in each and why? How are characters shaped by their environment? How does setting constitute meaning in a poem, play, or novel? These are some of the questions we’ll consider as we travel within and between the literary locales of rural and urban life. In this course we will read various poems, Shakespeare’s pastoral comedy As You Like It, and Dreiser’s novel Sister Carrie. Written assignments will consist of four five-page papers, weekly reading quizzes, and peer evaluations as part of writing workshop.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-70 Critical Reading & Writing

Faculty:

Pedrick, Victoria

The primary goal of this course is to offer intensive instruction and practice in reading and writing to develop critical thinking. Each section focuses attention on a single problem or topic in textual or cultural studies. The course will be conducted as a seminar, with regular student participation and a concentration on student writing.

This course is for SFS-Qatar students only.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-88 The Russian Novel of Adultery

Faculty:

Grenier, Svetlana

Through a close reading of several narratives of (actual or potential) adultery, we will explore how the eternal quest for love and happiness plays out in the cultural space of 19th-century Russia. We will investigate the varied ways in which classic Russian authors and their readers (including our contemporaries, who grow up in Russia
reading these works) pose the many convoluted questions related to the
pursuit of love and happiness. How does one define happiness? What is a (or
the) good life? How is romantic passion related to happiness and personal
freedom? Finally, how do these authors perceive the role of society, gender,
national identity, and religion within this complex equation, and how do
those issues interact with the genre of the novel and the adultery plot?
In this section we will read Tolstoy’s great Anna Karenina (1877)
and its Russian precursors: Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin (1830), Herzen’s
Who Is to Blame? (1847), and Druzhinin’s Polinka Saks (1847). All readings are in English.
Students will write tree 5 page papers and a number of shorter assignments.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

Other academic years
There is information about this course number in other academic years:

• 2005-2006 Fall and Spring
• 2006-2007 Fall and Spring
• 2008-2009 Fall and Spring
• 2009-2010 Fall and Spring
• 2010-2011 Fall and Spring
• 2011-2012 Fall and Spring
• 2012-2013 Fall and Spring
• 2013-2014 Fall and Spring

More information
Look for this course in the schedule of classes.

The academic department web site for this program may provide other details about this course.