LIT 3024 Spring 2024

Storytelling is a daily practice when you consider all the ways text and literature have changed. We read and hear stories in the media, we watch them in films and on television, we tell them to our friends and hear new stories from them. We are always on the lookout for a good story, but what is it that makes a story good? And how do we learn to read and respond carefully and critically to stories that move us? In this course you will learn how to read and assess stories—primarily short literary works but also short films, short oral stories, and short novels—carefully and critically. You will also learn how to respond, in discussion and in your own thinking and writing, to the stories you read, hear and collect. This course will introduce you to a wide variety of different authors and types of stories and will supply you with the basic tools of literary analysis. These tools will help you answer questions about how stories are made, how they impact readers, what qualities make good stories, and how to distinguish between different types of stories. You will learn how stories can be unique and powerful reflections of places in the world or moments in history, you will learn how to compare stories written at different times or in different cultures, and you will discover how literature has often been a space where the voiceless have a voice. During your reading, you will become more aware of your own particular social, political, and cultural location, a process that will be aided by reflective and analytic writing. Your writing will help you become a more informed reader of stories, films, and other cultural productions, and ultimately an active participant in the discourses that surround us today.