Course Description

The goal of this course is to develop the critical reading and argumentative skills necessary for writing college-level papers. Our topic for the semester will be “Figures of America.” We’ll be understanding “figures” here not in the sense of people who somehow embody America, but as a set of ways “America” has been or is understood figuratively.

As such, we’ll begin by addressing some philosophical and theoretical thought about figuration in general, exploring the way numerous thinkers conceive the relationship between representation and experience, especially as that relationship proceeds through figurative language. From there we’ll go on to explore texts from across the last century and a half or so, including a fair amount of poetry, a novel (Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49), a play (LeRoi Jones’ Dutchman), a book described as a “fictive symphony” (Jean Toomer’s Cane), some cultural and social theory, at least one film, and if we have the time and the inclination, a variety of American music from the last 100 years. Along the way we’ll be asking ourselves the following: how does each of these works figure America, explicitly or implicitly? How do they limit or expand our experience of what America is or what it can be? How do perspectives identified through their racial, geographical, gendered or class-based associations come to either assume the voice of America or challenge the dominance or unity of that voice?

As this is a 1B class, we’ll also spend a fair amount of time on writing and argumentation, working on various problems of interpretation, style, clarity, flow, interest, cohesion and analysis. You’ll be writing a number of shorter papers throughout the semester which will gear you up for a longer (8-10 page) research paper due at the end of the class. We will tackle our writing with gusto and verve; the result will be new regions of flair, refinement and persuasiveness.