This course is a small, faculty-led seminar on the practice and discipline of literary analysis. It is meant for all students who seek an introductory literature course and would like to improve their ability to read and write critically, including those who may wish to major in English. Focusing on the close study of a few works, rather than a survey of many, the seminar will help students develop college-level skills for interpreting literature, while gaining awareness of different strategies and approaches for making sense of literary language, genres, forms, and contexts. The seminar also will develop students’ ability to write about literature and to communicate meaningfully the stakes of their analysis to an audience.

How have Native American writers portrayed the challenges, disruptions, and delights of childhood and adolescence through dramatically changing worlds of the late-nineteenth century to the present? Through close reading and selected secondary sources, this course will consider early writers such as Zitkala-Ša and Luther Standing Bear recalling their childhoods at home and in assimilationist boarding schools; mid-century historical fiction by Ella Deloria and James Welch; and more recent works by Louise Erdrich, Deborah Magpie Earling, and Sterlin Harjo.

This class satisfies the Literatures in English Major Requirement

https://english.berkeley.edu/major-requirements

Repeat Rules

Course is not repeatable for credit.

Requirements class fulfills