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.

In this course, we'll read the poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks, from her early work to her last poems. We'll also look at some of her prose and other writings, particularly her novella Maud Martha. Our hope is to use the oeuvre of Brooks as a lens with which to view the literature, history, and politics of the twentieth century, particularly in the English-speaking world. We'll touch on the work of Brooks’s contemporaries, writers and thinkers like Langston Hughes, Elizabeth Bishop, W.E.B. DuBois, Robert Hayden, and W.H. Auden, and we'll understand the poetry in terms of form, lyric, political violence, spiritual philosophy, Chicago, the United States, the natural world, childhood, music, cultural production, artistic ambition, and more, all as made manifest in Brooks’s work. Requirements include two four-page essays and one six-page essay, as well as regular attendance and participation in discussion.

Book List:

Blacks, by Gwendolyn Brooks. Third World Press.

Maud Martha, by Gwendolyn Brooks. Third World Press.

Repeat Rules

Course is not repeatable for credit.

Requirements class fulfills