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 pose a question many of us have likely asked ourselves or at any rate, grappled with— do opposites attract? Or, as the saying goes, do birds of a feather flock together? What is the curious interplay of sameness and difference that frames the dance of desire? And how do works of art help us think through this question? In this course, we will explore this quandary through various frames, starting with what we might call dispositional difference or sameness. We will then consider the implications of this knotty entanglement for the politics of queerness, as well as for the incessantly aestheticized phenomena of inter-racial, inter-class and inter-caste desires. This course will interrogate the often taken-for-granted assumption that desire triumphs over materially situated difference or else “fixes” the problems of systemic inequality. At once, we will consider the liberatory or transgressive potential of desire. In so doing, we will explore what emerges from the complex interactions between these frames, in art as in life. We will also spend a lot of time thinking through how artists, writers and film makers represent sameness and difference in the context of desire, and the kinds of aesthetic choices that shape, emerge from or else inhibit these representations. As an R1B, the goal of this class is to help us figure out what kinds of writers and critics we want to be. As we engage a wide range of cultural artefacts, we will take seriously the feelings they inspire in us and use this as a starting point for critical inquiry, interrogating our own identifications and distance from the life-worlds these works create. Along the way, we will also sample the various lenses through which thinkers have grappled with the complexity of desire— psychoanalysis, feminist theory, queer theory and Marxism, among others. We will attempt to enter the discourse around desire with an attunement to these existing and emerging conversations, but without surrendering our own critical instincts. This class will have two research papers, along with numerous smaller writing assignments, group-work and in-class presentations.

Book List:

Villette, Charlotte Bronte. Passing, Nella Larsen. Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie

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