Reading & Composition

What does it mean to meet someone or something we can’t name?  How do we know the difference between self and other, between friend and foe, between the familiar and the foreign?  What distinguishes a novel experience from an everyday event?  And how do we talk about what we’ve seen?  This course will turn to a variety of literary genres and visual representations as we interrogate the notion of the encounter.  We’ll track down visits to and from alien worlds, examine confrontations in the domestic sphere and in the street, and look at meetings with animals and with ghosts.  Most importantly, we’ll work on developing the critical reading and analytical writing skills that will help us to articulate what happens in our own close encounters with texts of all kinds.

Required Texts:

China Miéville, Embassytown

Jamaica Kincaid, Lucy

Henrik Ibsen, A Doll’s House

Henry James, The Turn of the Screw

Films:

Todd Haynes, Far From Heaven

David Simon, The Wire

Werner Herzog, Grizzly Man

A course reader will include selections by Jorge Luis Borges, François Rabelais, Michel de Montaigne, Elizabeth Bishop, Edgar Allen Poe, Julio Cortázar, and John Berger, as well as varied resources on writing.