Reading Literature: The Art of Cultural Appropriation

This course will be an introduction to literature in English from a variety of genres, eras, and perspectives, with a focus on how writers retell old tales and reshape cultural formations. The goal of the course is for students to gain fluency in formal, historical, ideological, and linguistic methods of literary inquiry by reading and discussing a sampling of plays, poems, stories, and novels. Doing so will sharpen our intellectual tools so we can become better readers, writers, and thinkers. Texts will include the Beowulf; Grendel, by John Gardner; The God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy; The Bloody Chamber, by Angela Carter; The Winter’s Tale, by William Shakespeare; Wit, by Margaret Edson; and an assortment of poems by various authors. 3 hrs. lect./disc.