INSTRUCTOR: Craig Stensrud
Words to Change the World
This course poses some fundamental questions about reading and writing literature: Why read? Why write? Why study literature? Does literature offer us a way to make sense of—or even change—the world? Students will tackle these questions by discussing literary texts and completing assignments that introduce university research and writing practices.
Rather than looking at reading and writing as unchanging acts, we will think about them as practices that are shaped by and help to shape different cultural, political, and artistic moments across history. We will consider how authors have thought their work could fight social evils like slavery, racism, sexism, capitalist exploitation, and environmental destruction. Different authors at different times have held contrasting views of literature’s role in the world – from those who insist that reading and writing are essential for political liberation to those who lament literature’s powerlessness in the face of life’s absurdity. Course texts include Frederick Douglass’s anti-slavery novella The Heroic Slave, Samuel Beckett’s “tragicomedy” Waiting for Godot, and a selection of contemporary and classic poetry and short stories.