LIT 2010 – Spring 2027 – Ezeano

This course introduces students to the makings of fiction. Its interest buries itself in the machines that make fiction. Through close readings across forms, periods, and traditions--from fairy tales and war narratives to digital and mockumentary fiction--we will explore the inner workings of stories while unknotting the hems of literary elements. Our close readings will be thematically tied to two of literature's oldest and most persistent forces: desire and violence. We will examine narrative techniques and their functions in structuring stories. In considering this, we will pay attention to stories' generation of dread, horror, repulsion, pleasure, fear, and other emotional experiences. Readings will draw from the Western literary canon alongside contemporary fiction, inviting students to see the ways writers across centuries and forms have adapted recurring narrative techniques to construct experiences for readers. Through close analysis and regular writing, students will develop the interpretive and argumentative skills central to literary studies. Our goal here really is to learn what a story means, the how, the subtle ways stories make their gestures.
This course fulfills the State-Mandated Writing (W) credit.