Writing About Literature: Selfies in the Literary World (online)

When you take a selfie, do you go candid, or use filters, lighting, and angles to present your best face to the world? What tools and contexts do authors rely on to create “selfies” through their stories, poems, and essays?  Join me in this asynchronous online gateway course for the English major and you will learn to apply various critical lenses (such as postcolonial, feminist, and queer theory) to examine the fascinating lives of authors like Sandra Cisneros, Ocean Vuong, Stephen King, Laura Gao, and Elizabeth Gaskell as we delve into their revealing works and conduct research to understand their literary and cultural contexts.

Short readings will be provided on the course Canvas site; we'll also read the novella The Crooked Branch (available free online) by Gaskell and the graphic memoir Messy Roots by Gao. Assignments: discussion posts, research report, draft and peer review leading to final research paper.