LITR5133

Students will study selected literature of the past five centuries through the lens of a particular special topic, such as the African-American experience, or Life During Wartime, or Global Colonization, or the Women's Rights Movement, or Political Movements Left and Right, or any topic of special interest to the instructor and relevance to students. Reading from selected literary works, students will apply historical, literary, and rhetorical analyses to determine key elements of composition, argument, historical setting, sociological context, and cultural interpretation. Students will be expected to actively participate and contribute to class discussion. Typical critical approaches to literature include these: the formalist approach or "new criticism", the biographical approach, the psychoanalytic approach including the theories of Freud and Jung, the economic and social class approach, gender-focused criticism, the mythological perspective, the structuralism approach, the deconstructive approach, and the cultural studies perspective. A research paper will be required.