English R1A

Description

In this course we will move through and across the history of poetry, focusing on poems and poetry through a set of open categories: Character, Identity, Form, Community and Sound. These open categories will be the lenses through which we interpret a broad swath of poetry in English.  Beginning in the 21^st century with the work of poets as distinct as Claudia Rankine, Will Harris and Bhanu Kapil, we will move back and forth in time. From the 21^st to the 16^th century, we’ll end in the Early Modern period with the sonnets of Thomas Wyatt.  This course will teach analytical writing, doing so through a broad variety of in-class and independent writing assignments. We will write three papers as we train our rhetorical skills and develop our ability to make complex arguments in discussion and on paper.