ENGL 195 - Introduction to Literature

3 Credit: (3 lecture, 0 lab, 0 clinical) 3 Contact Hours: [Reading Level 3 ]

This course introduces students to text-based, reader-based and context-based interpretive strategies for the study of poetry, fiction, and drama. Through lecture, discussion, writing, and project work, students learn the characteristics the various genres of literature and the foundations of analysis.
OFFERED: spring and summer semesters

Course Goals/ Objectives/ Competencies:
Goal 1: Students will develop the ability to analyze literary texts.

Students will demonstrate comprehension of literary texts.
Students will explain generic characteristics of poetry, fiction, and drama.
Students will comprehend and apply the technical vocabulary of literary interpretation.
Students will identify and use a variety of interpretive strategies for reading literature, including text-based (formalist, psychoanalytic), reader-based (reader response), and context-based interpretations (feminist, political-economic, cultural, historical).

Goal 2: Students will develop the ability to write academic literary analysis.

Students will read and analyze secondary literary texts.
Students will integrate insights from secondary texts with their own analysis of primary texts.
Students will use MLA documentation techniques.

Goal 3: Students will synthesize their understanding of primary and secondary literary texts through small and large group discussions.

Goal 4: Students will explore connections between works of literature and the universal human experience.