Department of English

Topic: Literature and Advanced Writing Pedagogy; From both a theoretical and practical perspective, we will examine purposes, challenges, and strategies for teaching literature and for integrating literature and writing instruction in the design of courses you hope to teach in the department (e.g., W170, L204) and expect to teach in future positions. Our aim is to strengthen your pedagogy repertoire, dossier for the job market, and ability to join the conversation about the place of literature in an ever-changing English studies. Graduate students from literature, rhetoric, creative writing, and literacy studies are welcome. Topics will include why we teach literature; what we mean now by close and contextual reading; asking new and better questions of texts; integrating fiction, non-fiction and visual texts in course design; evaluating students, literary analysis; and writing about literature pedagogy in teaching statements, presentations and articles. Readings will include work by Showalter, Guillory, Lentricchia and DuBois, McGann, Salvatori, Linkon, Rabinowitz, Wilder, and Brooke. Assignments include three response papers, a teaching statement, and a final project: either the design of a complete syllabus; design of a unit that enlarges the context for the study of a literary work; or a review of the literature (or draft of a conference paper) on a particular issue/challenge that emerges from our course reading, discussion, and work with students. Instructor: Christine Farris