Training in writing expository prose. Instruction in expository writing in conjunction with reading literature. Satisfies the first half of the Reading and Composition requirement.

What is the right course of action to take when everything seems to have gone wrong? To whom does one owe one’s primary allegiance – one’s family? The state? The gods? Oneself? Whose deaths does a society deem grievable? Put differently, whose lives are deemed valuable? Antigone, a play by the ancient Greek tragedian Sophocles, takes up these questions in one of Western culture’s first stories of civil disobedience. In this Reading & Composition class, we will begin with an extended close reading of Antigone, before shifting to philosophical accounts of the play (Aristotle, Hegel, Judith Butler) that explicate its themes of grievability, family, and resistance. We will then conclude with three contemporary adaptations of the play (Bryan Doerries’ Antigone in Ferguson, Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire, and Anne Carson’s Antigonick) that bring Antigone and her defiance to bear on the present day. As an R1A, this course also aims to develop students’ skills as writers and critical thinkers. You will learn how to construct arguments through strong thesis sentences, clear organizational structures, precise scholarly prose, and close readings. This course’s goal is to provide you with the skills necessary to thrive as a writer at UC Berkeley and beyond; as such it is a writing-intensive experience in which you will produce several analytical essays in addition to smaller writing exercises, each designed to develop a particular critical muscle.

Book List

Sophocles, Sophocles I: Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus (UChicago Press)
Anne Carson, Antigonick (New Directions Press)
Kamila Shamsie, Home Fire (Riverhead Books)
*Other readings and viewings will be made available on bCourses

Requisites

• Satisfaction of the Entry Level Writing Requirement

Repeat Rules

Course is not repeatable for credit.

Requirements class fulfills