Reading and composition course based on works of Celtic writers both in English and in translations from Celtic languages. In addition to training in textual analysis and descriptive and argumentative writing, the courses will discuss the notion of Celtic "voices": distinctive modes of cultural expression chosen by important authors from a Celtic milieu. Readings will be chosen from a variety of modern Irish, Welsh, highland Scots, and Breton writers. R1A satisfies the first half of the Reading and Composition requirement, and R1B satisfies the second half.

The primary focus of this course is the improvement of your writing. Since R1B is an intensive college writing course, issues of development and style are presented at an advanced level. Further, students are to receive attention to their writing through detailed comments on their essays and through discussion in class and during office hours. For this course we will be using Northern Irish poet Ciarán Carson’s book Belfast Confetti as a narrative scaffolding in order to engage with a range of literary and scholarly texts and authors, including the arch-flâneur Charles Baudelaire, 20th Century theorist and critic Walter Benjamin, and philosopher Michel Foucault. Carson’s book is especially concerned with the Northern Irish Troubles, a sectarian conflict which lasted from the late 1960s until the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. More recently the book has become newly relevant in the context of Brexit and its consequences in Northern Ireland as well as the rest of the UK. But Northern Ireland’s troubled past poses important questions outside its own immediate geography, providing as it does a case study through which to examine issues of Nationalism and National Identity, the Individual in Society, the intersection of Aesthetics and Politics, the role of Literature in times of War, Intertextuality and Political Engagement, etc. Although these issues are directly relevant to Northern Ireland and the texts with which we will be engaging this term, they also carry broader consequences and ramifications in terms of the world at large. Some of the more particular concerns of our readings include, but are by no means limited to: 1.) the rhetoric of sectarian conflict (i.e. “Us versus Them” and the dehumanization of the Other); 2.) “Irish” identity and the formation of self in the context of civil unrest and outright religious and political violence; 3.) aesthetics, the literary author, and political engagement; and 4.) the wider ramifications of our course texts to our own contemporary world. These concerns will inform our reading as well as our writing during the course of the semester, allowing students to develop analytical and interpretive skills while exploring the interconnectedness of reading and writing in scholarly inquiry. Prerequisites This course satisfies the second half or the “B” portion of the Reading and Composition requirement for the Bachelor’s Degree. Courses taken to fulfill this requirement must be taken for a letter grade. Required Texts: • Carson, Ciarán. Belfast Confetti. Winston-Salem: Wake Forest UP, 1989. ISBN 9780916390402 • Hacker, Diana, and Nancy Sommers. A Pocket Style Manual. Boston and New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s. 8th Edition (2017) ISBN: 9788925598406 9th Edition (2020) ISBN: 9781319169541 • Harris, Joseph. Rewriting: How to Do Things with Texts. 2nd Logan: Utah State UP, 2017. ISBN: 9781607326861 • All other required readings will be provided in PDF format in our shared course GoogleDrive.

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. 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