Course Description

From the Course Catalog:

This second part of the required introductory sequence for English majors and minors gives students guided opportunities to acquire effective methods of writing literary analyses informed by current critical theory, including African-3American critical strategies and intellectual discourses. Through both primary and secondary sources, the students will engage with the concepts of language and literature developed by the following schools of thought: New Criticism/Formalism; Structuralism; Deconstruction/Postmodernism; Psychoanalysis; Feminism; Marxism; New Historicism/Cultural Criticism; African-American Criticism; and Postcolonial Criticism. Students will apply these theories to works of poetry, short fiction, and drama in oral discussion and written assignments of varying lengths.
Prerequisite: Completion of ENGL 104: Sophomore Seminar I with a grade of C or higher

Course Goals

1. Provide students with multiple approaches to analyzing a text based in major theories from literary criticism
2. Encourage students to interact and share ideas with each other and the instructor, fostering an intellectual community
3. Connect those conversations within the course to historical and current debates and discussions within the discipline
4. Prepare students to write and speak with clarity as well as knowledge about the field of literary studies, so that they may master the skills expected of English majors and minors
5. Introduce students to and building on their existing digital literacy skills, which are becoming a more prevalent part of both the field of literary studies as well the everyday life

Learning Objectives

Having successfully completed the readings and assignments of this course, students should be able to:

1. Demonstrate oral and written mastery of major literary theories by articulating key concepts within those theories
2. Identify and discuss the questions raised by those theories, as well as the historical and cultural contexts that produced them
3. Put into practice Objectives 1-2 by critically analyzing texts through the lens of the literary theories studied
4. Build on the reading, writing, and analytical skills learnt in Sophomore Seminar II
5. Develop research and information literacy skills using library resources to find and evaluate scholarship related to the course topics as well as the discipline as a whole
6. Integrate visual and digital materials into their writing in order to produce multimedia presentations using basic Markdown, HTML, and other front-end web tools.

1. Notes!