28607 - English Literature I (First Language) L

Academic Year 2014/2015

  • Docente: Samuel Porter Whitsitt
  • Credits: 6
  • SSD: L-LIN/10
  • Language: English
  • Teaching Mode: In-person learning (entirely or partially)
  • Campus: Forli
  • Corso: First cycle degree programme (L) in Intercultural and Linguistic Mediation (cod. 8059)

Learning outcomes

To know and understand the basic elements which characterize literature in the English language; to be able to identify them in specific literary texts, and to be able to develop independently, at a more advanced level, certain cultural and literary themes which can then be applied to other literary texts.

Course contents

This course is dedicated to the art of reading, or one could also call it the practice of critical reading, or “close reading” of a text -- and the "text" can be a literary work, an advertisement, a film, or an article from a newpaper -- or whatever thing that can be "read." The general idea is that in many if not all texts, and in particular in the literary text (or in a film), there is, in the text, or film itself, a lesson on how to read the text/film that is being read. We want to find, read and learn something from that lesson – which is a lesson that dramatizes our relationship with the text itself.

Readings/Bibliography

The texts we will use in class are short stories and plays, and we will also watch at least one film. We will read texts by the following authors: for short stories: Alice Munro, Alice Walker, Flannery O'Connor, and James Joyce. For plays: Tracy Letts and David Henry Hwang. For film: I haven't decided yet! I will put on the bulletin board a week before the beginning of classes, a final list of authors and texts (which you need to get from, in dispensa form, from Carta Carbone).

Teaching methods

frontal lectures / class discussion

Assessment methods

Final exam (written; one or more vocabulary tests.

Teaching tools

photocopies / dispensas / film

Links to further information

http://www.ssit.unibo.it/SSLMiT/Avvisi/2010/07/mozione_cdf.htm

Office hours

See the website of Samuel Porter Whitsitt