Reading & Composition

Our fascination with flight has led to literary representations of heroic feats and tragic transformations. In this course, we will look at humans levitating, devising prosthetic machines, and turning into birds in a wide range of canonical and popular texts. We will consider how these characters are lauded and condemned by other characters as well as the language used to bestow these evaluative claims. We will look at how flight is used as a plot device and how it shifts narrative perspective.

How are these texts put together such that some flying characters promise freedom from tyranny while others promote the spread of empire? How do metaphors of flight work to create a lyric subject, balancing the competing claims of revolution as well as social isolation and critical distance? We will practice forming concise, evidence-based arguments to interpret textual and visual media. Through a wide variety of written assignments and revisions we will work on clarifying what we are observing and thinking and how we are communicating those ideas.

Readings include Corneille’s Medea, Kei Miller’s Augustown, Marie NDiaye’s Three Strong Women, as well as a selection of poems, short stories, and works of visual art.