01-When asked why they don’t read novels or other forms of literature, many people will apologetically respond, “I never have enough time” or “I just don’t like it.”  A more exact reason is that many people—intelligent people—are not yet that good at it.  Everyone knows that writing well is a skill, but fewer people think the same about reading.  However, reading critically is a skill that can be sharpened with practice—and once this skill is developed, a person can understand and enjoy literature.  Sports, cooking and playing musical instruments are all more interesting and rewarding the better one is at them—and the same is true for reading and thinking about language. 

Our motto will be a remark made by the American poet Ezra Pound: “Literature is news that STAYS news”—and our goal will be to read a number of works in a variety of genres to learn how they are still “newsworthy.”  We don’t read old books because they are old—we read them because they are still new and still portraying the human condition so well.  Likely readings will include works by the poets Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost; short stories by John Cheever and Flannery O’Connor; and novels by Paul Auster, Thomas Berger, Cormac McCarthy and Muriel Spark. We will also read Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style.    If you have ever wanted to learn how to become a more perceptive reader—or why people become so excited about the written word—this course is for you.   Attendance, reading quizzes and short papers are course requirements. 

02-When we hear the word “Literature” most of us are conditioned to think of a particular kind of book, usually a novel or a poem that is long or difficult, that deals with timeless subjects and themes and which can “improve” the reader in some way. In other words, we tend to associate “Literature” with “high” culture, instead of “low” or “popular” culture. But who decides what gets to be called Literature? Why does yesterday’s popular writing become today’s Literature?  Can any creative work in the new media of the past century, including films, video games and the web, be called Literature? And how did the idea of Literature evolve in the first place?

In this course we will investigate these questions through a selection of works taken from marginal genres that in some way lie on the fringes of what we can call Literature, including Gothic novels, detective stories, graphic novels and science fiction. We will also explore what happens when a work of writing is translated to another medium, including theatrical, film and web-based adaptations of novels like Frankenstein and the new phenomenon of online publication. To help us understand the ideas presented in these novels, we will also read examples from the work of critics and philosophers who helped to define our concept of Literature itself. If you have ever wondered why certain kinds of texts get taught within our education system or if you have ever been suspicious of why our culture values certain kinds of writing or media, come join us for lively discussions and heated debates.