Expository writing based on analysis of selected masterpieces of ancient and modern literature. R1A satisfies the first half of the Reading and Composition requirement, and R1B satisfies the second half.

“I will sing you a song about nothing at all,” sings Regina Spektor in “Loveology,” a song that suggests an aesthetic experience in which not much, if anything, happens. One ambition of this course will be to make “sense” of this nothing. In doing so, we will attend to the double meaning of sense: signifying, at once, reason and sensory perception. To that end, we will make our way through various poems, novels, and films, all from different periods and traditions, that share an investment in the distance between perception and cognition. We will ask together whether literature needs to make, much less record, sense, and in what ways it can center instead sensory deprivation, wilful misdirection, or blissful illusion. How can texts break from traditional narrative arcs, and where does this break lead the reader? How do poems or stories in which there is no coherent “self” to speak of alter the expectation that literature recounts experience? How can writing make “nothing” perceptible and so push against its inherited role of explication? As we seek answers to these questions, we will consider who or what gets to determine the thin line between sense and nonsense, between what is sensible and insensible, in a variety of cultural contexts. Though our reading will be motivated by questions of confusion, uncertainty, and disquietude, our writing will be anything but! As a Reading and Composition course, the class’s primary goal will be to develop our writing skills. In part, class time will be dedicated to models of lucid writing: we will learn about strategies to construct a cogent argument and then put these skills into practice in our own writing projects, both in shorter pieces and longer papers. Taking clarity as a key principle of college writing, we will revise (and revise!) our drafts to distill the textual effects of class material into luminous papers. The assignments are designed to help you find your own style of argumentation and will include, most significantly, two papers of literary criticism, as well as weekly discussion posts. In the process you might just become an “incurable humanist.”

Enrolled students must attend the first two weeks of class. If a student must miss a class OR cannot access the class's bcourses site, they must communicate with the instructor, or they may be subject to an instructor drop.

Requisites

• UC Entry Level Writing Requirement or UC Analytical Writing Placement Exam. 1A or equivalent is prerequisite to 1B.

Repeat Rules

Course is not repeatable for credit.

Requirements class fulfills