Time Schedule:
Donald L Anderson
ENGL 111
Seattle Campus
Study and practice of good writing; topics derived from reading and discussing stories, poems, essays, and plays.
Class description
Writing About Literature: Books Behaving Badly
In this section of English 111 we will be focusing on various ways of reading, thinking, and writing about literature. What does it mean for a writer to engage critically and analytically with literature? How does a writer enter into a larger theoretical conversation about literature? We will explore these questions through literary texts that don’t really behave like literature. In order to do this we might use the first day to discuss how literature is supposed to behave. This discussion will help us see when texts begin to deviate ever so subtlety from the common understanding of what literature is and what it does. Ultimately, this class hopes to unsettle common sense understandings of literature and challenge students to think, read, and write creatively, analytically, and critically about literature.
All the short stories chosen for this course somehow “misbehave.” They don’t really act like literature. Whether it is Ligotti’s uncanny use of third-person narration, or Lovecraft’s spiraling and self-deconstructive narrative (or anti-narrative?), or Jackson’s hypertext, or Kafka’s resistance to metaphor; all these short stories challenge and upset the relationship between reader, author, and text. Many people often read a story from beginning to end in search of the author’s meaning. In this class, however, we will be observing how certain stories resist such a reading process. After leaving this class you might find yourself reading more actively and find that all literature “misbehaves” in one way or another.
This “misbehavior” poses consequences for writing. In the same way that literature often upsets “common sense” and forces one to think differently, so should our writing about literature. Further, when literature “misbehaves” readers will likely have questions to ask and subsequently answers to theorize. In this class I will push you to read beyond the surface of the text. Your writing should seek to denaturalize common and simple readings of the world. The writing you will do in 111 should make your readers all “reimagine” the literature you are writing about and, perhaps, the world they inhabit. In this sense, whether you are writing a critical/analytical paper or a poem, you are always a creative writer. Finally, you will not be required to write about literature specifically. You may find that you are more interested in writing about a cultural artifact that may very well be illuminated by any number of the texts we are reading.
Our primary focus will be the short story. We will read "The Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka, and short stories by H.P. Lovecraft, Thomas Ligotti, Angela Carter, Shelley Jackson, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and see the film "Office Space" by Mike Judge. We will also read select criticism on the above texts. Many of these texts may still be on e-reserve should you wish to peruse them.
PLEASE NOTE: Some of the texts we read will contain scenes of explicit sexuality. This will require us to have frank discussions regarding issues such as: female sexuality, sexuality in general, queer sexuality, gender, masculinity, and feminism. I expect everyone to engage with these topics in a mature manner. If the discussion and reading of explicit sexual materials upset you please come see me so we can make alternate arrangements for you. I will discuss the cultural and literary significance of these topics when we arrive at them.
Student learning goals
General method of instruction
Recommended preparation
Class assignments and grading
