Reading & Composition

Course Description

Have the sights, sounds, or smells expressed in a written passage seemed to affect your own eyes, ears, and nose? Has certain written material managed to make you feel hungry, queasy, or warm? How can words on paper succeed in rendering (or fail to render) the sensory perceptions of a reader? If there is a hierarchy of the senses in literature, what are the contributing factors? This course will consider texts that explore specific sensory perceptions and their various effects upon the imagination and social constructs. This engagement will heighten your expertise in articulating subtle differences and devising sophisticated arguments, ultimately benefitting our main project of conducting written analysis at a more nuanced level. 

Course Objectives

While these questions and proposed texts will furnish us with material for rich discussions, this class is chiefly geared to improve your writing. We will concentrate on both mechanics and style, learning how to read closely, formulate interesting arguments, gather evidence, investigate and incorporate outside research of theoretical and critical material, and organize claims into persuasive essays. Over the course of the semester you will produce approximately 32 pages of written work through a gradual process of drafting, editing, reviewing, and revising. The assignments will also include a research paper, satisfying the course requirement.