Utopias and dystopias, comedies and tragedies, even scientific and historical analysis share a common reliance on a uniting ideological narrative to create community. Why are stories about “who we are” so compelling and necessary? How does myth function in these stories, for what purpose? While we might not answer or even try to distill all of the manifold “whys” in this class, we will try to understand how stories work and what shared narratives they (and we) rely on. 

While more advanced English courses introduce students to literature as an academic discipline, in this introductory course we take a step back to ask why it is that we create and consume narratives in the first place. What work do stories do for us in the realms of education, history, politics, and religion? What are the stakes in ongoing national debates centered around narrative descriptions of particular places and events? Rather than a specific genre, in this class we will ask why we rely on stories, and how we create them mutually. You will not only study other's stories, but have a chance to create or analyze your own.