This is a very general course description.
Students will be provided with a detailed syllabus (week by week) which includes: chapter we are focusing on; required readings; additional readings or suggested visual material, such as film adaptations, interviews with authors, documentaries, or news from the media. They will also be informed of particular academic events (lectures, readings by authors, conferences going on, etc).
It is very important that students join the class with an open-minded attitude, intellectual curiosity, an inquisitive mind, and a desire to learn from as well as enjoy the variety of literary texts included in the syllabus.
Literature is about life. A passion for reading is a passion for life, an interest in the way others live, face confussion and disorientation in their daily lives, travel light, or respond to existential problems. Literature is, apart from a creative artistic manifestation, an excuse to learn to read critically, and watch--from the priviledged view of the reader--how protagonists react to choices in life.
As with a good film, students would feel identify with the protagonists' events of their lives, and would reflect on their own paths chosen so far, and the many ones still to come. Because life is literature. |