I also hope that you will increase your pleasure and understanding of our culture, defined as broadly as possible. This course is designed to strengthen students' abilities to analyze an array of cultural texts and to write coherently and thoughtfully about them. Students will explore all stages of the writing process, evaluate each other's work, and learn about the techniques and ethics of research, particularly the accurate citation and representation of sources. Works that explore an alien viewpoint frequently transform or invert our perception of things, especially things that we think we know or understand. The themes of these works should nicely complement the emphasis in this course on reevaluating our approaches to reading and writing.
Writing is a primal act.
At least it can be. Writing can represent the self and the world through unrestrained screams, hushed whispers, or carefully crafted statements. That s how a whole self can be held in lines on a page. In this class, we will look at a series of selves, in a series of pages, and we ll do some screaming, whispering, and crafting of our own. From our perspective high on this hill, we will survey the vast and ever changing panorama of popular cultures.