Post Secondary Teaching and Learning - PSTL

Description:  REQUIRED TEXT Paul Lauter, ed. The Heath Anthology of American Literature Volumes C, D & E 5th ed. COURSE DESCRIPTION Welcome to Literatures of the U.S. In PSTL 1365W, you will read short stories, memoir, creative nonfiction, and poetry by a wide range writers in the nearly 150 years since the end of the civil war. The overarching goal of this course is to understand how U.S. literatures do what all literature does?use language in creative ways to communicate a writer?s sense of what it means to be human and to experience conflicts arising out of human imperfection. These writers portray challenges, conflicts, triumphs, ideas and illusions experienced by the diverse peoples of the United States, often crafting their works to address injustices and to create social change. While we will consider and discuss the striking array of diversity in terms of the tone, power, mood, subject, and voice across this selection of literature, we will focus on the common formal elements that are the tools of any writer: including word choice, imagery, narrative perspective, and form. This will enable us to study how writers, while using a shared set of tools, can create a range of effects and responses depending on how they manipulate those tools. Through class discussions, informal writing and analytical essays you will explore?and I hope you will experience--the powerful role literature can play in expanding our understanding of each other as human beings doing the best we can.

Class Time: 20% Lecture, 5% Film/Video, 40% Discussion, 20% Small Group Activities, 10% Student Presentation, 5% Demonstration.

Work Load: 30-50 pages reading per week, 12-15 pages writing per term, 3 exams, 3 papers, 1 presentations, 10 quizzes. The 10-12 pages of writing indicates the number of pages for final, revised papers. Drafts and in-class quick-writes add more writing, but it is less formal.

Grade: 30% mid exam, 60% reports/papers, 6% quizzes, 4% in-class presentation.

Exam Format: What is listed here as Mid Exam is actually three exams, given about Week 5, Week 10, and Week 15. Exams 1 & 2 will have two sections: 1) a matching section completed in class to test your knowledge of the stories and historical contexts; and 2) a ta

Instructor:  Hodne,Barbara Downs (Educ Distinguished Tchg Awd) | Instructor Photo | Syllabus