This course is one of the required core courses of the English major. On this course, we will learn to apply different literary approaches to reading and writing various forms of literature and explore how this process can generate multiple meanings of literary texts. We will have the opportunity to: a) read and write about various genres of literature (fiction, poetry, drama, and non-fiction); b) learn about the various literary concepts and terms and their application in literary analysis. All the literature we shall read on this course will be centered on one theme – the human body. This literature will be drawn from a range of spatial, cultural, thematic and historical settings and a variety of literary genres. Bodies have mattered in the past and still matter in contemporary discourses about race, gender, sexuality, health, human rights, climate change, technology, war and conflict. The human body has been invented and depicted in literature as, among other things, a biological thing, a political arena for domination and control, a site of cultural production, a psychosexual construct, a material investment or encumbrance, a clothing for the soul, a scientific and technological matter. We will apply various literary approaches to the reading and writing about literature on the body to get insights into questions such as: how can we do literary analysis? what literary tools can we use to get meaning from literary texts? What is the relationship between literature and the body? Why do bodies matter in literary studies? How do different literary forms represent the body? How do various critical approaches to literature help us understand the portrayal of bodies and what they signify?