RESOURCESWhat is academic misconduct? How do I avoid it? (PLAGIARISM)ENG 2012 RVC 1221, Approaches to LiteratureThe Posthuman: Animal, Vegetable, MineralProfessor: Dr. Amy Kahrmann Huseby Please reach out to me!Email: [email protected] Office Hours: ZOOM by appointmentPlease contact me through my FIU email only, not Canvas Inbox.I will answer all emails to my FIU email within 24 hours, Monday through Friday.1Table of ContentsCourse Description 1-3Course Theme 2-3Texts you should buy 3-4How we will evaluate your progress 4-5What you’ll achieve in this course 5How you can succeed in this course 6-8Frequently asked questions 7-8Late work 7-8Adding class late 8Assignments 9Submitting work 9Syllabus changes 9What is academic misconduct? 9What other resources are available? 9-11Calendar of readings and due dates 12-17Welcome to ENL 2012, Approaches to Lit!This course provides a starting point for working with theoretical texts, being aware ofconversations in literary criticism, and participating in scholarly conversations aboutthe texts you read. In this course, you will learn strategies and skills for critical and original thinking about a variety of texts, communicating through writing and speaking, and assessing the value of diverse critical approaches to literature and other texts. As you develop these abilities, they will serve you throughout college and your lifetime.TRIGGER WARNING: The reading in this course includes depictions and language ofsexual assault, racism, child pornography, and other forms of violence. If this sort of imagery and language bothers, offends, or triggers you, this may not be the right course for you.Course DescriptionEnglish 2012 is an introduction to literary analysis that begins to prepare you for the demands of critically writing about and reading literature in the university. This course also helps you prepare for writing beyond the classroom and in a variety of contexts. To accomplish these goals, this course places attention on understanding different approaches to literary analysis, applying literary analysis methods to diverse media and cultural contexts, and developing argumentative writing skills.Finally, English 2012 emphasizes critical thinking, which rests on a process of careful and engaged reading of texts in a variety of forms, identifying textual evidence (direct quotations) that support the claims you make about literature, and using writing as conversation and discussion to explore, express, and argue about ideas as well as their place in the larger world. What’s the theme of this course? The Posthuman (or ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MINERAL)According to historian Michel Foucault, “man” was invented at the turn of the nineteenth century. This course will explore the cultural, artistic, and political dimensions of this seemingly outrageous claim about humanity and what it means to be human as it pertains to the study of literature. Of particular interest to this exploration will be the relations literature describes, and in describing often shapes, between humans and non-humans, humans and nature, and, of course, humans and “other” humans. How are humans socially constructed? How do we account for our humanity and that of others? How does literature help us understand ourselves and our “others”? Can it show us how to reinvent ourselves? Readings will include works of literature written over the last two centuries that celebrate, qualify, critique and otherwise trouble the nature of what we call "humanity.” This course develops skills of critical reading and writing that are essential to majors and non-majors alike.2Reading and writing are both acts of inquiry and communication. With that in mind, this course offers you:- opportunities to identify, develop, and express concepts; - to engage in conversations with the ideas of others; - to critique and construct arguments through original writing projects about the texts we read. Writing is also a process, and since this course fulfills part of your composition requirements, we will emphasize drafting, revising, and editing as critical practices in developing thoughtful arguments and effective communication.Together, we will consider questions including:- Is there only one way to read a text? - What are the tools, lenses, or methods that might be useful for producing original insights into and debatable claims about a text? - Why might we want to interpret literature at all? - What interpretive tools or methods are more or less effective for thinking through the projects of individual texts? - What is required for careful or “close” reading, and are their other methods, such as “distant” reading which also have value for our interpretive practices? - How do you use different genres or discourse conventions to make your writing work? - How can you contribute to critical conversations about texts as cultural objects?To pursue this line of inquiry, we will focus on four novels, each of which takes up the question of whatit means to be human, to interact with other species, and to exist. We will also engage with the work oftheorists of literature such as Rob Nixon, N. Katherine Hayles, and Cary Wolf, who investigate humanity’s impact on environment in the Anthropocene and explore definitions of posthumanism. In practicing these critical skills, we will read nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature that makes humanity’s connection to and distinctions from animals, environment, and objects a central literary project. Together, we will ask such questions as: what defines humanity? How are other species different from and related to humans? What is the relationship between humans and the environment?And how does inhuman intelligence, such as that of androids, trouble our understanding of what it means to be human? We will interrogate not only how these authors attempted to think about humanity through the forms of their texts, and what it means to live in a posthuman age, but whether those forms encourage us to emphasize one critical approach over another. What texts should you buy?BE AWARE: If possible, please purchase these exact editions of the texts. New and used copies are available for less than $30 total for this course. If you do not purchase or have scanned versions of these editions, your page numbers will not match and, in fact, the text itself might be different from what we are reading
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