ENGL 485-01, Senior Seminar, Spring 1999

Abstract

This course will function as a true seminar: that is, its purpose will be to pose questions, and its method will be the active and critical reading and discussion of a variety of texts. In this case, the questions we ask will have to do with our presuppositions about literature, reading, and writing; and about the function and place of literature, the study of literature, and even the concept "literature" in our culture. The texts we look at will not for the most part be works of imaginative literature. In some cases they are not even clearly about an identifiable work of literature, though all are centrally important to the way discourse about literature is currently being conducted. They demand, and repay, careful reading and rereading; and so do I. Your presence, fully prepared and alert, is assumed; your active participation in the discussions is required.