Essential Questions
- What is literature? What is its role in our personal lives and our culture?
- What is criticism? What is its role and function?
- What should we consider when we write critically and analytically about literature?
Assessments
Dialoging with the text
In class essay
Thurs 9/1
Introduction & Syllabus Overview
Collection of summer writing journals
Website, Google Classroom, and Remind
- Setting up Remind (required either by text or email)
- By text message, text 81010 and message @3da8b
- By email, send an email to
HW: Read over and sign syllabus and Oscar Wilde’s “The Critic as Artist”
Fri 9/2
Drop
Tues 9/6
Overview of the course
What does it mean to dialogue with a text?
Dialoging with Wilde and rules of how to act as a critic
HW: Applying the rules to reading of Katherine Mansfield’s “The Garden Party”
Wed 9/7
Counselors
Thurs 9/8
Discussing “The Garden Party”
In-class essay rubric
HW: Re-reading and adding to your annotations of “The Garden Party” paying attention to language, structure, and details
Fri 9/9
In-class response
HW: Reading and annotating “Borges”
Mon 9/12
Discussing Borges
- What are the main ideas of each lecture?
- What questions do you have? (Write two)
- What impact does this have for you as a critic of literature?
- How are Borges and Wilde in dialogue?
HW: Jame Joyce’s “The Dead” in Dubliners
Tues 9/13
Working with Joyce
HW: Writing the response on classroom
Wed 9/14
Further discussing Mansfield and Joyce
- What new discoveries did you make about “The Dead” as you wrote your reading response last night?
- What connections do you see thematically and stylistically between Joyce and Mansfield?
Overview of first portfolio and next two days
Choosing Mansfield or Joyce second piece
Thurs 9/15
Drop
Fri 9/16
Discussing pieces in small groups
- Themes
- Symbols
- Motifs
- Structure
- Language
- Modernist style
HW: Work on portfolio responses
Mon 9/17
In-class work day
HW: Submit response
Arri Weeks 