While people sometimes dismiss words as the opposite of action, this course emphasizes words as action. Words clarify, or they confuse; they comfort, or they provoke. At the same time, it isn’t just writers or speakers who do things with words: readers and listeners interpret, absorb, refute, or respond to them, acting as partners in the creation of meaning.
The course is built on a set of linguistic and literary theoretical frameworks, and like other first-year courses in the department it will expose students to a range of literary styles, voices, and genres. Students will be trained to pay attention to essential details and qualities of each work, and also to attend to how literature functions as terrain of control and struggle and medium of play and connection.
A central goal of the course is to inspire students to take their own use and interpretation of words seriously as action with a wide array of possible effects. Before it was a noun denoting a type of assignment, the word “essay” was a verb implying effort, exploration, experimentation. Understanding meaning as mobile can, I hope, motivate students to craft effective arguments. The final essay invites students to declare a particular imagined audience beyond the instructors, write accordingly, and explain their goals and choice of rhetorical strategies.
Additional information
Exclusion Maximum of 6.0 units of ENGL at the 100-level.
