ENG 2012 RVC 1221 Approaches to Literature The Posthuman Animal Vegetable Mineral Professor Dr Amy Kahrmann Huseby Email ahuseby fiu edu Office Hours ZOOM by appointment Please reach out to me Please 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 Table of Contents Welcome to ENL 2012 Approaches to Lit 1 3 Course Description 2 3 Course Theme Texts you should buy 3 4 How we will evaluate your progress 4 5 What you ll achieve in this course 5 How you can succeed in this course 6 8 7 8 Frequently asked questions 7 8 Late work 8 Adding class late 9 Assignments 9 Submitting work 9 Syllabus changes What is academic misconduct 9 What other resources are available 9 11 Calendar of readings and due dates 12 17 This course provides a starting point for working with theoretical texts being aware of conversations in literary criticism and participating in scholarly conversations about the 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 of sexual 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 1 Course Description English 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 Reading 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 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 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 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 2 To pursue this line of inquiry we will focus on four novels each of which takes up the question of what it means to be human to interact with other species and to exist We will also engage with the work of theorists 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 in class The Island of Doctor Moreau By H G Wells Patrick Parrinder editor Introduction by Margaret Atwood Penguin Classics 2005 ISBN 9780141441023 How the Dead Dream By Lydia Millett Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2009 ISBN 9780156035460 3 Orxy Crake By Margaret Atwood Knopf Doubleday 2004 ISBN