Human Values in Literature
Prerequisites: UCLR 100, UCLR 100C, UCLR 100E, UCLR 100M, or equivalent; please check requirements for declared majors/minors for exceptions.
This variable topics course focuses on a perennial psychological or philosophical problem facing the individual as exemplified in literary works, e.g., the passage from innocence to experience, the problem of death, and the idea of liberty.
Outcomes: Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of the ability of literature to express the deepest and most abiding concerns of human beings, and how literary works come to be.
Prerequisites: UCLR 100, UCLR 100C, UCLR 100E, UCLR 100M, or equivalent; please check requirements for declared majors/minors for exceptions.
This variable topics course focuses on a perennial psychological or philosophical problem facing the individual as exemplified in literary works, e.g., the passage from innocence to experience, the problem of death, and the idea of liberty.
Outcomes: Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of the ability of literature to express the deepest and most abiding concerns of human beings, and how literary works come to be.
Pre-requisites: UCWR 110, C- or higher
Tier 2 Literary Knowledge
This is a writing intensive class. A grade of C- or better in UCWR 110 is required to enroll.
In Their Own Voices: American Life Writing
This is a course that uses autobiographical texts as sources for studying the relationship between individual, cultural and national identity in the United States. The readings (nearly all full-length autobiographies, memoirs, and autobiographic novels) help us examine the ways in which writers use autobiographical forms to examine the individual self, interpret experience, articulate their identities, and negotiate their place within American society. In addition to studying autobiographies as cultural documents, the course examines them as literary texts ¿ self-consciously crafted stories with plots, characters, imagery, symbolism, metaphor, simile and point of view. The goal of class discussions and assignments is to encourage students develop their own critical understandings of autobiography, America, and identity, and to reflect generally on the role personal stories play in our individual lives and the quest for truth in American culture. Writing assignments will include both analytical and creative work.
Texts may include some the following classic and contemporary works: The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Henry David Thoreau, Walden, Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted, Alison Bechdel, Fun Home, Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Ayad Akhtar, Homeland Elegies, Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House, and Margo Jefferson, Negroland.
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