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.

This course will explore representations in literature of ordinary lives, everyday happenings, and unremarkable things. We will focus on writers that give us a glimpse into the world not as we imagine it but as it is, writers that throw into relief what usually receives our inattention. We will concern ourselves with works that cast light on what we are every day, the unextraordinary things that surround us, and the mundane matters with which we occupy ourselves. Rather than investigate murders, betrayals, thrills, crimes, explosions, or catastrophes, we will explore the importance of the completely unremarkable. Underneath the invisibility of the ordinary, we will learn to uncover tremendous moral weight, political charge, conceptual insight, and personal significance. Our texts, among others, will include poetry (William Wordsworth, William Carlos Williams, Gwendolyn Brooks, Elizabeth Bishop, Claudia Rankine), fiction (Jane Austen, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Toni Morrison), drama (Henrik Ibsen, Samuel Beckett), and film (Kelly Reichardt, Chloé Zhao) in addition to excurses into other media and traditions (philosophy, painting, photography) that will aid us in grasping the historical and conceptual dimensions of our interest in the ordinary.

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