Training in writing expository prose. Further instruction in expository writing in conjunction with reading literature. Satisfies the second half of the Reading and Composition requirement.

What is class? Despite its recent resurgence as a topic of discussion, it’s hard to know whether anyone is on the same page. The term is thrown about, from news platforms to social media, without any real consensus. If billionaires worry about the return of “class war,” and news commentators mourn the death of the “middle class,” are they talking about the same thing? Can we assume that the representative figure of the “working class” is still a white factory employee (if it ever was)? And if we turn to the past—to ask instead “what was class?—can we find a stable definition, or do we run into further complication? Why does it even matter when we’re confronted with racial, sexual, and gendered discrimination? In this course, we will address these admittedly leading questions by attending to a number of paired literary and academic texts. Rather than attempting to address anything like a comprehensive history of class (a near impossibility), our readings will offer case histories in which, to paraphrase Stuart Hall, race, sexuality, and gender are the “modalities in which class is lived.” Students will encounter a number of poetic texts (by John Keene, Denise Riley, and Brandon Shimoda) alongside academic work in the fields of economic geography, social history, literary studies, and queer theory (most notably by Samuel Delany, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, and Carolyn Steedman). In all of these cases, we will come to understand class as neither an analytically abstract category, nor as the exclusive domain of the white, male worker, but instead through a number of peculiar or “marginal” figures: the gay man, the mother, the child, and the incarcerated subject. As a section of R1B, our focus will be on academic research. While working towards a substantial research paper as the final course assignment, students will examine and test out various genres of academic writing. Beyond very important basics, such as the proper use of bibliographic citation and the distinctions between sources, we will ask questions regarding authorial voice, citational politics, and archival limits. How, for example, do researchers become responsible for their arguments? What are the ethical obligations binding us to the “material” of research? These questions will be particularly acute as we deal with writing that addresses, amongst other topics, explicit sexual encounters, domestic abuse, and racialized violence. In these cases, students will be expected to approach the course material with an openness and lack of predetermined judgement.

Book List:

Samuel Delany, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue
John Keene, Punks: New and Selected Poems
Brandon Shimoda, The Desert
Carolyn Kay Steedman, Landscape for a Good Woman

Additional readings will be made available through bCourses.

Requisites

• Previously passed an R_A course with a letter grade of C- or better. Previously passed an articulated R_A course with a letter grade of C- or better. Score a 4 on the Advanced Placement Exam in English Literature and Composition. Score a 4 or 5 on the Advanced Placement Exam in English Language and Composition. Score of 5, 6, or 7 on the International Baccalaureate Higher Level Examination in English.

Repeat Rules

Course is not repeatable for credit.

Requirements class fulfills