LIT 3024 Summer 2024 - Smith

We’re often encouraged to identify what delights us in literature: a sympathetic character, a cozy setting, a powerful theme, a clever writing style, etc. While this course by no means excludes delight, you are encouraged in LIT 3024 to really consider what agitates you as a reader.

Agitation, as we’ll conceive of it in this course, does not only mean that which makes us mad—though anger is one of the many possibilities of agitation. We’ll also use agitation to mean: that which excites us; that which gets under our skin; that which obsesses us; that which makes us uncomfortable; and that which moves us to act or think differently. All of these are possible responses to “agitating” literature that we’ll seek to locate in ourselves as embodied readers, by which I mean readers who come to stories with a particular social, political, geographical, and cultural position. We’ll also investigate agitation as a cultural response in the context of the story’s historical moment and its afterlives. All of these considerations will help us think through the question: why am I agitated, and how can that agitation be productive in my understanding of and participation in cultural discourses?

To do this work, we’ll develop the tools of literary analysis—close reading, reflection, historical contextualization, and synthesis—through our reading of an eclectic body of American short stories. We’ll also engage in class discussions, presentations, and thoughtful writing—both creative and critical.

This course meets the distribution requirement for Genre Courses.