Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

An Introduction to the study of literature within the wider cultural field, with a focus on contemporary issues across genres and media. Students with credit for ENGL 105W may not take this course for further credit. Writing/Breadth-Humanities.

COURSE DETAILS:

Literature and Culture: What the Ghosts Saw

To what extent does culture matter in a novel? How does literature serve to represent and communicate culture, both within a cultural group and beyond? This course explores a series of literary works whose representations of culture overlap in various ways, at the levels of folklore (folk culture), subculture, and dominant culture, focusing on the way that members of various subcultures find their voices as they negotiate the gap between their culture and the socio-economically dominant culture.

The short stories, novellas, and novels come from a variety of different places and cover issues of cultural difference across gender, race, social class, age, language, and access to power. In this class, we will look at the way that each group constructs its own web of meaning through interlaced metaphors and specific cultural constructs such as the supernatural. 

The focus on culture allows a thorough exploration of the kinds of diverse voices that make up contemporary fiction and the different issues they can raise.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

This is a writing-designated course. There are two short papers. Each student will give feedback to and receive feedback from other students on the papers, as well as receiving feedback from the instructor; the papers will be resubmitted after revision. By the end of the course, you should be comfortable writing fluently in formal standard Canadian English, including the conventions of punctuation and grammar used in the formal language. Other writing skills include citation, organization, structure, argument, and clear communication. The focus is on how to write effectively about literature, but the skills being built are crucial to success in every field.

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING: