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.

What should we make of a poem that proposes to instruct its readers on the proper methods for manufacturing cider? Or on how to care for one’s sheep or cultivate sugarcane on a colonial plantation? Are such poems simply agricultural almanacs in verse? Or might poems about laboring, intermixing, and experimentation—what we might call the art of cultivation—be much more ambitious as well as more contentious than they initially appear? Beginning with Virgil’s Georgics, a classical poem that announces itself as a song specifically about agriculture and rural occupations, this course will explore how later writers adapted the georgic mode to address particularly modern concerns, including agrarian reform, colonization, industrialization and global trade. In addition to instruction on “the care of sheep, [and] the labors of the loom”, this R1B course will provide you with the opportunity to cultivate your own reading and writing skills through class discussion, writing exercises, workshops and writing seminars. You’ll be asked not only to write about the poems we read and discuss in class, but more importantly, to approach your own writing as something worth tending to.

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