This course will explore the literature and experience of walking. For most people, walking is an everyday task that doesn’t generate much consideration, but it might be the most distinctive of human acts and the subject of walking has fascinated writers, particularly since the Romantic era. Walking inspires connection to nature, to the joys of solitude (and company), and freedom of movement, but also raises questions of access and privilege: how does disability, race, and gender affect the experience of walking?

This course‘s readings will perambulate across time, nations, and literary genres, including poetry, fiction and non-fiction. Among the writers possibly included: Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, Charles Baudelaire, Bruce Chatwin, Cheryl Strayed, Teju Cole (and many others)

Required work will include a variety of short critical and creative writings and engagements with literary texts and writing about your own experience of walking (please note: This course will be accessible to disabled or nondisabled students for whom walking might be difficult or impossible).  The final project will be an essay of 7-10 pages which draws upon and revises earlier assignments in the term.

This course will use a contract grading scheme (for information about contract grading, please click here)