This first-year writing course features literature from a variety of periods and genres whose authors, narrators, or characters have an argument to make. Through a close and critical analysis of the style, rhetoric, and structure of both fictional and non-fictional works, students will learn how to construct engaging, nuanced, sophisticated, and convincing arguments. Students will work closely with each other and with the instructor to develop and refine their skills in composition within the supportive community of the classroom. In addition to several small-group peer editing sessions, each student will have the opportunity to have one essay workshopped in a full-class setting.

Reading will likely include the following: Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal (1729), Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw (1898), Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own (1929), and Toni Morrison’s “Recitatif”.