English R1B

Reading and Composition: Storytelling and the Problem of History

Other Readings and Media

"Dangarembga, T. Nervous Conditions

DeLillo, D. White Noise

Erdrich, L. Tracks

Pynchon, T. The Crying of Lot 49

Speigelman, A. Maus I: A Survivor's Tale and Maus II: Here My Troubles Began

Troyka, Lynn Q. Quick Access Reference for Writers



Recommended:

Cambridge International Dictionary of English

Williams, Joseph M. Style Toward Clarity and Grace "

Description

"This course is designed to prepare you to compose college level essays that are superior in form and content. Our focus will be on acquiring strategies that enable you to develop your intuitions about what you read into viable, complex theses. We will work, among other things, on recognizing the difference between an opinion about a text and analysis of it, as well as on generating the kinds of questions that lead to analytic theses. We will also work to make sophisticated use of research in our writing.



Our readings center on storytelling and the problem of history. We will be examining the different narrative strategies postcolonial and postmodernist authors use to approach telling life stories and situating lives within the matrix of history. In addition, we will pursue the questions you bring to bear on our texts. "