The Rhetorical Tradition 4 credits This course addresses the history of rhetoric in the European tradition from Greek antiquity to the present. Topics include the evolution of generic distinctions, theories of discourse, and communicative ethics. Literature of Black America H 4 credits Study of the development of Black American literature in relation to the changing political and social backgrounds. The goal is an understanding of how language works to achieve meaning. Critical principles of poetry discussed and defined.
Students practice ways of writing about poetry and write their own original poems.
Extensive work with the poetry of Dickinson, Frost, Eliot and Plath. Critical papers and original poems discussed and evaluated in writing workshop format. This course teaches students to originate questions about literature and to formulate strategies to answer those questions. In addition to reading a wide variety of authors, students will have practice with using various methods of literary analysis, among them, structuralist, feminist, postmodern and psychoanalytic. Our explorations will be done through reading, class discussions, brief oral presentations, written notebooks, and formal essays.