Anthology

ILS: Everyone’s A Critic
ENGL-192-01 CRN: 41146
TR 4:35-6:20pm HR 127
Brant Torres
Everyone’s a critic. In fact, to some extent, we’re all literary critics. We are always
trying to find meaning in language, understand unspoken connotations, “read
between the lines,” and find the best way to express our thoughts and emotions. In
any culture, language matters. It inundates our lives, and often it is all we have. It is
through language that we create connections, express our deepest feelings, form
communities, and hear voices from the past.
If language is so ubiquitous, then what do we make of literary uses of language? What
do we do with it? How do we understand it? What makes it beautiful or dull? And
how does it work?
This course will introduce you to the tools literary critics use to understand and find
meaning in a text. We will look at different literary forms: short fiction, the novel,
poetry, and drama. Over the course of the semester, we will read what many
consider the greatest works in Western literature, but we will also talk about perfume
advertisements and song lyrics. In each of our explorations of literary expression, we
will work together to give you a set of tools that will allow you to gain deeper insight
into the texts you read. You will learn different ways to closely attend to linguistic
nuance while also learning something about the historical and cultural environments
that shape language. If you love literature, and I hope you do, this course will give
you the tools to persuasively and intelligently articulate why.
Applies to Core, C1
ILS: All About Lit
ENGL-192-01 CRN: 41148
TR 2:40-4:25pm CO 413
Tracy Seeley
What is a poem? What's literary about literature? And what do literary scholars and
critics do? With these questions in mind, we will read poems, stories and plays,
talk about them, write about them, and grapple with your questions about them.
We will spend most of the semester engaged in close reading and analysis, honing
our skills in attention to literary language and form, and writing persuasively about
texts. So that you have the tools you need to do this, we’ll study the conventions
of literary genres (including the genre of a critical essay) and acquire the vocabulary
and strategies that scholars and critics share when doing their work.
Applies to Core, C1
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