Discussions center on students' poems. Selected readings are assigned to focus on technical problems of craftsmanship and style (Credit, full course).

Discussions center on students' fiction. Selected readings are assigned to focus on technical problems of craftsmanship and style (Credit, full course).

Discussions center on students' nonfiction. Selected readings are assigned to focus on technical problems of craftsmanship and style (Credit, full course).

This course considers some of the great questions about the nature and value of literature addressed by literary theorists from Plato to the present, engaging such critical approaches as the New Criticism, reader response theory, Marxist criticism, feminist criticism, psychoanalytic criticism, structuralism, deconstruction, new historicism, and cultural studies. The course has two aims: first, to help us become more aware of what we do, and why we do it, when we study literature; and, second, to help us write better literary criticism ourselves, as we apply a range of methods to the works we study (Credit, full course).

Through close analysis of the poems of various modern and contemporary masters, we will consider the implications of verse as an imitation of voice, and consider how the poet’s voice is shaped by choices made in terms of imagery, themes, form and technique (Credit, full course).

How does fiction "work"? This course attempts to answer that question with close study of stories, novellas, and novels with a special emphasis on issues of form and technique (Credit, full course; genre course, counts as literary criticism).

Through the close study of nonfiction writing including essays, researched work, and memoir, this course examines the way nonfiction writing works with a special emphasis on form and technique (Credit, full course).