Writing about Literature: The Modern City (online)

English 2100 provides instruction in the fundamentals of writing about literature, introducing students to the basics of literary research, interpretation and criticism. A central goal of the course is to familiarize students with a variety of critical and theoretical approaches that are used in the study of literature, as well as with appropriate resources for conducting literary research. We will also take a look forward at career opportunities for English majors.

The theme of this section is the modern city, with a specific focus on London from the end of the 18thcentury to the present, as it grew to the largest city in the world, a powerhouse of the industrial revolution, and the center of a vast empire, with a look at other major cities of the turn of the century such as Dublin and New York. Many of these texts represent similar features, such as crowded streets, sublime overviews of the city, urban poverty, the confining nature of urban work, the risks and opportunities faced by urban women, and, especially in the twentieth century, the exhilarating diversity of people and ways of living in a modern city. We will examine our texts through a variety of critical methods to practice analysis and see what different results each approach yields. We will also practice the fundamentals of research, and at the end of the course, every student will have the opportunity pursue an independent research project.