ENG 1016 Introduction to American Literature
This course introduces students to reading carefully and writing persuasively about works of American literature. This is not a survey course but rather an intensive introduction to the art of close reading-primarily short fiction, plays, and poems from the 20th century. The reading and writing exercises for this course are organized around issues of form (point of view, tone, diction, narrative sequence) and theme (memory, youth, beauty, sexuality, racial and ethnic identity) and cover authors such as Poe, Whitman, Dickinson, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Frost, Hughes, Baldwin, Morrison, Roth, Diaz, and Lahiri. Rather than impart knowledge of specific periods of American literary history, this course aims to cultivate in students successful habits and effective practices in literary analysis through weekly writing exercises and several written essays.
LA