Course: ENGL 140, Studies in Literary Genre

Course: ENGL 140, Studies in Literary Genre

1.  Name of proposer: Sandra Grayson

2.  Email address:

3.  Department of proposer: English

4.  Department housing the course: English

5.  Department chair: Carol Beran (Fall 2012), Sandra Grayson (Spring 2013)

6.  Course acronym, number and title: ENGL 140, Studies in Literary Genre

7.  Semesters in which course will be offered: Varies by year

8.  How often is course taught? Annually

9.  Course prerequisites: none

10.  Unit value of course: 1

11.  Proper audience: Sophomores, Juniors, Seniors

12.  Learning Goal: Artistic Understanding – Artistic Analysis only

Teaching:

1a. Explore works of art:

In this course, students read literary texts chosen from a particular literary genre. The focus of the course varies depending on the genre the instructor chooses to explore in depth. For example, in a version of the course focused on detective fiction, texts studied will include Poe’s classic tales, Sherlock Holmes stories, and more contemporary works by writers such as Raymond Chandler, Sara Paretsky and Tony Hillerman. In a version of the course focused on Gothic Fiction, readings may include Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. In a version of the course focused on Science Fiction, readings might include the novels and short stories of such writers as H. G. Wells, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Philip K. Dick.

1b. Analyze/interpret form and meaning:

The course analyzes texts with attention to their formal features, such as point of view, plot, character, and imagery. With every text studied, the mode of telling is linked to the story told. For example, in a version of the course focused on Detective Fiction, students trace the historical evolution of that form, examining its language and conventions. The course explores how works within the genre resist or reinvent the conventional rules and forms. So, for example, if Poe established and defined the cerebral detective story, how does Arthur Conan Doyle both employ and modify that form, adding action and adventure? How do later writers, including writers of color and women writers, adapt the form to their own purposes?

1c. Apply discipline-based vocabulary:

In order to examine the literary features of texts with any precision, students must employ a discipline-based vocabulary. For example, they must be able to distinguish between first- and third-person point of view, and to discuss writers’ use of such elements of literature as irony, figurative language, and imagery. In addition, in a course on literary genre, students must become familiar with the conventions that define that genre. For example, in Gothic Fiction, students discuss such standard features of the form as the hero-villain, the use of multiple narrators to destabilize meaning, and the use of imagery to establish atmosphere.

1d. Explore the artistic piece’s significance within appropriate contexts:

The large context within which texts are studied in this course is the literary genre to which they belong; readings provide students with multiple treatments of the component parts of that genre. If the course is Nature Writing, students focus on observation-based writing and the journal form. If the course is Science Fiction, students attend to the ways in which writers respond to their predecessors, and the way in which they have employed generic devices and scenarios, as well as to the concerns of the historical moment in which they are writing: it is often said that science fiction writers write about the future, overtly, while at the same time writing out of their present, covertly.

Learning: how coursework will be used to measure student learning of the outcomes:

1a. Look at or read works of art: The course is conducted as a discussion, and held to 22 students for that purpose. During each class meeting, students are expected to demonstrate in discussion that they have read carefully, noting relevant details of the text under study. In addition, students are expected to submit daily or weekly informal writing assignments (response papers, blogs, journal exercises, and/or in-class writing) that comment on specific features of the texts under study. For example, they may be asked to select a passage and comment on its role in the larger text; or they may be asked to note conventions of the genre in the day’s reading.

1b. Analyze and interpret form and meaning: Considerations of form and meaning together are essential to literary analysis. English 140 requires a minimum of two formal essays, in which students analyze meaning as it is conveyed through form. For example, students in Science Fiction might be expected to examine the treatment of an alternative system of sexuality and gender in Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, but that examination would have to take into account her complex manipulation of the form of the novel: her deliberate discontinuities between chapters with different first-person narrators, chapters that present fictive anthropological reports, collections of folktales, and so forth, all without any apparent regard for the normal chronological sequence of a novel-length story.

1c. Apply discipline-based vocabulary: This is assessed in informal writing, the two formal essays, and a final exam.

1d. Explore the artistic piece’s significance within appropriate contexts: The final exam or essay will require students to demonstrate an understanding of the context – that is, the literary genre – under study. They might be asked to develop, based on the course reading, their own definition of Gothic Fiction; to discuss the historical development of Detective Fiction; to analyze how nature writers advocate for responsible stewardship of the natural world; or, in Science Fiction, to try to understand from the point of the view of the present how past writers have tried to envision the near future (our present) and the medium and far future.