First-Year Seminar: The Literary Life

3 units

This class approaches literature from many angles: the creative to the scholarly, the personal to the ethical, the edifying to the entertaining. At the heart of our study will be a survey of literary values such as invention, emotion, style, subversion, beauty, humor-those fundamental reasons readers come to literature in the first place. Through readings and discussion, we will consider the great variety of ways literature expresses these values, and will explore them ourselves via creative assignments. Along the way, we will learn about literary life today through discussions with nationally renowned writers who will visit the class, and through units on literary scholarship, book reviewing, and magazine and book publishing. In the midst of it all, you will write and workshop your own stories, poems, and non-fiction works. Course enrollment preference is given to first-year students.