Literary Skills Intensive

Undergraduate

Most literature courses put the spotlight on specific works of literature. This course instead turns the spotlight on the capabilities we can learn by reading literature. If you love the books on your literature courses, but would like a bit more clarity about what exactly you are meant to be learning from those books, then this is the course for you. In this course we tour and practice some of the key capabilities literary education seeks to cultivate. These include (among many others!) the ability to imagine the minds and lives of other people; the ability to feel (i.e. not just think ) deeply and precisely; the ability to reflect sophisticatedly on questions of value as distinct from questions of fact; the ability to use your practical life experience to help you hear the full implications of someone’s tone; the ability to listen so deeply to someone’s language that you hear almost everything they are trying to tell you, and maybe even a bit more. We enumerate these capabilities, find articulate ways to discuss them, and – most of all – we train them repeatedly via practical classroom exercises. On the way, we will have a lot of thoughtful fun. WR , HU TTh 9am-10:15am