This class serves as an introduction to the study of English. Throughout the course of the semester students will be introduced to a host of literary criticism ranging from Plato and Aristotle, Nietzsche and Althusser, to Henry Gates and Toni Morrison. The theoretical section of this class will ideally provide students with the background concerning the ethics, the nature, the ontology, and the purpose of writing literature. In this class we will investigate literary relationships by attempting to chart a trajectory in regards to how literature moves and advances itself. To that end, we will be primarily concerned with what we can call “literary debts” and “revisions.” So we ask, for example: how does the great Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe ultimately revise Joseph Conrad? How did writers of “Third World” mobilize Shakespeare to revolutionary ends? Were modernist writers such as Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein inspired by Black dialectic language and writing?
Possible Texts
Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye
Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness
Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart
Sophocles. The Three Theban Plays: Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus
Shakespeare, William. The Tempest
Ryan, Shawna. Green Island: A Novel
Student Learning Outcomes and Course Goals
- Provide students with the ability to read, engage and interpret novels, plays, poetry, visual culture, and other expressive mediums.
- Provide students with the ability to write clearly and construct original arguments about a particular text, both in visual and written form.
- Provide students with the ability to communicate effectively about expressive mediums.