By the end of this course, you ought to have developed something like a method for “reading literature,” and had some good practice engaging literary works (and, by association, other kinds of texts) on a complex, thoughtful, critical level. Much of this practice will come through simply reading a variety of texts, much will come through generating articulate questions about literature and its place in contemporary life (both human and other), and much will come through working out responses (not necessarily answers) to those questions. We will be considering various texts from a rather wide span of two centuries, an ocean, and a continent. As a way to solidify our object in a course that could otherwise be completely amorphous, we’ll attempt to locate and read texts that are on the “strand,” a clever word (adapted from poet Susan Howe) that suggests s space between, neither wholly here nor there, this nor that. In other words, we’ll read texts whose literary interest emerges from the way they present problems (or values) of being “stranded,” whether between traditions, genres, forms, histories, etc.—a characteristic of the term “literature” itself. We’ll read such poets as Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Hopkins, Dickinson, Creely, Howe, and some others, a play by Edna St. Vincent Millay, and fiction by Leslie Marmon Silko, Ursula Le Guin, and others, as well as Jim Jarmusch’s film Dead Man.
Assignments will include group presentations and/or performance, an annotated bibliography, a few short responses, and a larger 6.5 to 8 page paper. The reading schedule will be demanding, but enjoyable, so active, continual participation is crucial

Texts:

• Leslie Marmon Silko. Ceremony.
• Emily Dickinson. The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Reading Edition.
• ed. R. W. Franklin. The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry.

photocopied course packet