Current course offerings

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Course description

ENGL1800 Literary Classics: Texts and Traditions is the compulsory gateway or first-level course in the English Literature major and extended major. It will introduce students to the critical concepts and skills that are key to the practice of literary studies. Students will study texts from four distinct periods of literature, ranging from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries, to gain a foundational understanding of literary history and the characteristics of three major genres: drama, poetry, and prose fiction. The course's theme -- subjectivity -- not only links these periods together, but allows students to examine how specific cultural contexts inform the development of new genres and new ways of being. Students who successfully complete this course will gain a strong sense of literary history and genre; develop a solid methodological introduction for further literary studies; and be able to analyze and challenge universalizing narratives about individualism and the individual's place in the world.

Archived offerings