The primary goal of this section is to help you learn to write clear, compelling, and sophisticated prose and to construct well-crafted academic arguments about literary texts. In short, this course is designed to help you to learn to write well at the college level, regardless of your field of study. After all, as we will talk about from day one, good writing is good writing.

In this class, we’ll be closely examining texts written from a variety of perspectives including first-, second-, and third-person narratives. We will explore the various ways that perspectives manifest themselves in literature, what power they convey and what meaning they create. We will be reading a variety of short stories; the collection Self-Help by Lorrie Moore; and the novels The Virgin Suicides, Then We Came to the End, and Bright Lights, Big City.