This course is designed for English majors and minors, as well any students interested in and attracted to literature and reading. Our concern will be to develop the intellectual foundations to move past our base, instinctive reactions to literature to deeper modes of reading, interpretation, and written analysis/argument. Our goal will be to develop the skills of slow-motion, skeptical reading: to savor the crafting of literary form and to explore how literary rhetoric engages our intellect and emotions; to read not simply for superficial content, but to engage and question the multi-faceted operation of literary texts. In terms of foundational writing skills for the English major, we will work on the development of compelling written literary arguments by breaking the writing process down into various phases. We will work with the basics of argumentation: developing a strong, coherent thesis, drafting, the logic of argument, revision, proper citation and effective use of primary and secondary sources, and more. prereq: [English major or minor or approved BIS or IDIM program with English area]

This course is designed for English majors and minors, as well any students interested in and attracted to literature and reading. Our concern will be to develop the intellectual foundations to move past our base, instinctive reactions to literature to deeper modes of reading, interpretation, and written analysis/argument. Our goal will be to develop the skills of slow-motion, skeptical reading: to savor the crafting of literary form and to explore how literary rhetoric engages our intellect and emotions; to read not simply for superficial content, but to engage and question the multi-faceted operation of literary texts. In terms of foundational writing skills for the English major, we will work on the development of compelling written literary arguments by breaking the writing process down into various phases. We will work with the basics of argumentation: developing a strong, coherent thesis, drafting, the logic of argument, revision, proper citation and effective use of primary and secondary sources, and more. prereq: Honors, [English major or minor or approved BIS or IDIM program with English area]

For over four hundred years, William Shakespeare has remained the most quoted poet and the most regularly produced playwright in the world. From Nelson Mandela to Toni Morrison, from South African playwright Welcome Msomi to Kuwaiti playwright Sulayman Al-Bassam, Shakespeare's works have continued to influence and inspire authors and audiences everywhere. This course examines representative works of Shakespeare from a variety of critical perspectives, as cultural artifacts of their day, but also as texts that have had a long and enduring vitality. This is a required course for English majors and minors, but it should also interest any student who wants to understand why and how Shakespeare continues to be one of the most important literary figures in the English language. English majors/minors must take this course A-F only grading basis.

Plays from all of Shakespeare's periods, including at least A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, the history plays, King Lear, Macbeth, The Tempest, Twelfth Night, Antony and Cleopatra, Othello, and The Winter's Tale. prereq: Honors or instr consent

This course will provide a historical survey of British literature from the Middle Ages to the end of the eighteenth century. Our focus will be on tracing the interactions between literature and wider British culture as well as on tracing the development of literary form during this period. You should leave this course being able to identify major literary trends and authors and link them to corresponding formal techniques and innovations. You should also have a sense of the major historical and political events, rulers, and social conditions in Britain at this time. Additionally, because this is a writing intensive course, you will leave this class familiar with the process of writing a research paper with a literary focus, which includes finding and successfully incorporating contemporary scholarly research about your topic into your paper, crafting an original argument, utilizing textual evidence, and evaluating existing scholarship.

This course will survey some of the major literary figures, aesthetic movements, and thematic concerns of US literature from the Civil War to the present. Our investigation will identify common traits in the literature that causes it to fit within three very broad literary historical categories: realism, modernism, and postmodernism. We will explore what makes literature created by the people of the United States distinctly "American" during a period that extends from the Civil War and the outlawing of slavery to women's suffrage, workers' movements, the Great Depression, the First and Second World Wars, and the civil rights movement. In addition to reading and analyzing the literature itself in terms of style, form, genre, and language, we will study it in historical context: the complex interplay between the political, the social, the cultural, and the literary in the United States. This approach rests upon the notion that literature is not created in a vacuum; it is influenced by and influences the world in which it is created.

In this wide-ranging survey of British and post-colonial literature from the late eighteenth century to the present, we will explore representative literary texts and genres from British Romanticism, the Victorian period, Modernism, and the postwar era. Besides analyzing the language, aesthetic features, and technical construction of these literary artifacts, we will examine our readings as reflections of and reactions to social upheavals like the Industrial Revolution, challenges to the traditional role of women, scientific discoveries that sparked religious doubt, and the First World War. Additionally, because this is a writing intensive course, you will familiarize yourself with the process of writing a research paper with a literary focus, which includes finding and successfully incorporating contemporary scholarly research about your topic into your paper, crafting an original argument, utilizing textual evidence, and evaluating existing scholarship.

This writing-intensive course will survey the Anglophone literature of what would become the United States from the arrival of English settlers to the Civil War. We will define "literature" broadly to not only include fiction and poetry but also the sermon, the letter, the essay, the autobiography, and other non-fictional forms. Course topics will include the Puritan theology that cast such a long shadow over the American cultural imagination; the fraught literary construction in the Revolutionary era of a national identity under the influence of such Enlightenment ideals as reason, civility, cosmopolitanism, and sympathy; the Gothic doubts about democracy that attended the literature of the early republic; the rise in the mid-nineteenth century of a radical intellectual and social movement in Transcendentalism; the antebellum ideological struggles over such political issues as slavery, industrialism, women's rights, and Native American rights; and the self-conscious cultivation of a national literary aesthetic in the Romantic prose and poetry of the period later critics would come (controversially) to call "the American Renaissance."

Comparative studies of oral traditions, modern literature from various tribal cultures.

Cultural, intellectual, and sociopolitical traditions of Mexican Americans as they are represented in creative literature. Genres/forms of creative cultural expression and their significance as representations of social, cultural, and political life in the United States. Novels, short stories, creative non-fiction, drama, essay, poetry, and hybrid forms of literature.

This course will provide a historical survey of British literature from the Middle Ages to the end of the eighteenth century. Our focus will be on tracing the interactions between literature and wider British culture as well as on tracing the development of literary form during this period. You should leave this course being able to identify major literary trends and authors and link them to corresponding formal techniques and innovations. You should also have a sense of the major historical and political events, rulers, and social conditions in Britain at this time. Additionally, because this is a writing intensive course, you will leave this class familiar with the process of writing a research paper with a literary focus, which includes finding and successfully incorporating contemporary scholarly research about your topic into your paper, crafting an original argument, utilizing textual evidence, and evaluating existing scholarship.

In this wide-ranging survey of British and post-colonial literature from the late eighteenth century to the present, we will explore representative literary texts and genres from British Romanticism, the Victorian period, Modernism, and the postwar era. Besides analyzing the language, aesthetic features, and technical construction of these literary artifacts, we will examine our readings as reflections of and reactions to social upheavals like the Industrial Revolution, challenges to the traditional role of women, scientific discoveries that sparked religious doubt, and the First World War. Additionally, because this is a writing intensive course, you will familiarize yourself with the process of writing a research paper with a literary focus, which includes finding and successfully incorporating contemporary scholarly research about your topic into your paper, crafting an original argument, utilizing textual evidence, and evaluating existing scholarship.

This writing-intensive course will survey the Anglophone literature of what would become the United States from the arrival of English settlers to the Civil War. We will define "literature" broadly to not only include fiction and poetry but also the sermon, the letter, the essay, the autobiography, and other non-fictional forms. Course topics will include the Puritan theology that cast such a long shadow over the American cultural imagination; the fraught literary construction in the Revolutionary era of a national identity under the influence of such Enlightenment ideals as reason, civility, cosmopolitanism, and sympathy; the Gothic doubts about democracy that attended the literature of the early republic; the rise in the mid-nineteenth century of a radical intellectual and social movement in Transcendentalism; the antebellum ideological struggles over such political issues as slavery, industrialism, women's rights, and Native American rights; and the self-conscious cultivation of a national literary aesthetic in the Romantic prose and poetry of the period later critics would come (controversially) to call "the American Renaissance."

This course will survey some of the major literary figures, aesthetic movements, and thematic concerns of US literature from the Civil War to the present. Our investigation will identify common traits in the literature that causes it to fit within three very broad literary historical categories: realism, modernism, and postmodernism. We will explore what makes literature created by the people of the United States distinctly "American" during a period that extends from the Civil War and the outlawing of slavery to women's suffrage, workers' movements, the Great Depression, the First and Second World Wars, and the civil rights movement. In addition to reading and analyzing the literature itself in terms of style, form, genre, and language, we will study it in historical context: the complex interplay between the political, the social, the cultural, and the literary in the United States. This approach rests upon the notion that literature is not created in a vacuum; it is influenced by and influences the world in which it is created.

For at least two and a half millennia, prophets, politicians, and poets have crafted terrifying accounts about the end of the world. This comparatist seminar examines the way different cultures have imagined a final apocalypse with particular attention to the political and social consequences of their visions. Students will read texts that focus on pandemic, extraterrestrial attack, nuclear holocaust, prophecy, cybernetic revolt, divine judgment, resource depletion, meteoric impact, or one of the many other ways in which humans write of their demise. They will use literary analysis to explore the many historical and contemporary wastelands they will encounter. They will write short papers and give in-class presentations on different kinds of apocalypse.

Situated between three continents and at the intersection of numerous ethnic and national cultures, the Mediterranean is like no other place on earth. A place of diverse languages, religions, economies, governments, and ways of daily life, it serves as a microcosm for the world itself imagined as an integrated global system. This course explores the history of the Mediterranean with particular emphasis on the literatures it has produced over the last three millennia. As the protagonists of these epic poems, religious texts, and novels travel from one shore to another, they experience the Mediterranean as a place of violence, cultural accommodation, hope, ethnic and linguistic bewilderment, and endless moral challenge. This course will place as much emphasis on the region's history as its cultural productions. With that in mind, reading may include David Abulafia's The Great Sea in addition to The Odyssey, The Aeneid, the biblical books of Joshua and Acts, Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata (an epic set during the first crusade), Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice and Antony and Cleopatra, Flaubert's Salammbo, Akli Tadjer's Les ANI du Tassali, A.b. Yehoshua's Mr. Mani, and Pamuk's The White Castle.

Medieval writers and readers were fascinated by stories about knights and about pilgrims. In this course, we study some of the best-known and most compelling narratives and poems from the Middle Ages. Although written hundreds of years ago, these literary works speak to us of the human desire to strive for meaning and excellence, to work toward shared ideas of community, and to explore worlds beyond the sometimes narrow confines of home. Knights and pilgrims appear as central figures in a wide range of literary works. Some of the texts are humorous, like Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in which pilgrims, from social classes ranging from knights to tradespeople, travel together and tell stories. Some are exciting and emotional, like Malory's retelling of stories about King Arthur and his knights. Others provide us with explorations of longing for change: in these works people search for new kinds of social and spiritual life such as Margery Kempe's autobiographical account of her experiences as a pilgrim to Rome and the Holy Land. Still others, such as Langland's Piers Plowman, which incorporates pilgrimage and chivalric quest, critique and explode static ideas about social problems such as poverty and hunger. Some draw our attention to the dangers and turmoil involved in love and relationships, such as Marie de France's courtly, aristocratic lays: Marie's knights and ladies take up the search for love and meaning. Some, finally, invite us to imagine ourselves in mysterious otherworlds, such as Mandeville's Travels and Sir Orfeo, both of which focus on travel and self knowledge. These exciting and challenging works continue to speak to us about the quest to pursue ideals and to change the world and ourselves.

Major/representative works written by Chaucer, including The Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Criseyde, and the dream visions. Historical, intellectual, and cultural background of the poems. Language, poetic theory, form.

This course examines the lives and stories of heroic figures in the Bible. We approach the Bible as a literary work and explore themes, characters, symbolism, and narrative techniques. Our text, the King James version of the Bible, is the most important translation in terms of American and English literary traditions. Our emphasis in the course is on the Biblical heroes who are represented as living their lives in this world (the world between heaven and hell).

Milton?s three great Restoration poems?Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes?are the focus of this course. We?ll approach them by tracing Milton?s growth as poet: first, by familiarizing ourselves with the religious and social ideas found in his writings down to the Poems of 1645; and second, by studying the political ideas Milton initially set forth in The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649). Concurrently with our study of these earlier works, you?ll be reading Paradise Lost, which you should complete by the end of the spring break. At that point, you?ll be in a position to interpret Milton?s three Restoration masterpieces in the light of his grand?and rebellious?aim of reforming England?s civil and religious community, an aim Milton boldly reaffirms in 1660 in defiance of the Restoration of monarchy.

This course will introduce you to some of the best literature of the Restoration and eighteenth century in England. Think of this course as a challenge: how can you, as someone who will spend most of your life in the 21st century, learn to appreciate and learn from literature written in far different times and places? A lot depends on your willingness to empathize with ways of thinking and being that are quite different from your own and your comfort with believing that other ages were just as complicated and as interesting as the one you live in. Typical authors include Dryden, Behn, Swift, Pope, Fielding, and Burney.

In British Romantic Literature and Culture, students read poetry and prose written during the Romantic Period (1780-1832). Romantic authors permanently changed the way literature treats numerous subjects: nature, the imagination, revolution, war and politics, the role of the poet, the depiction of common life and language, and the representation of personal experience, to name a few. This was a period of great stylistic innovation, as authors experimented with the use of symbolism and the adaptation of classical mythology and explored medieval/gothic images and themes. Possible authors to be studied in this course include Jane Austen, Anna Letitia Barbauld, William Blake, Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Felicia Hemans, John Keats, Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, Charlotte Smith, Mary Wollstonecraft, William Wordsworth.

Why is the twenty-first century so obsessed with the nineteenth? From steampunk to political rhetoric, from movies to sex, writers and artists look back to the Victorian era for inspiration and challenge. One reason might be that Britain was the first country to experience the full effects of industrialized capitalism, with the opportunities and misery that it created. It also developed one of the largest empires in history, an empire whose legacy continues to shape global politics in good and bad ways. For all these reasons, understanding the Victorians is key to understanding ourselves. Women writers like Charlotte Bronte and George Eliot have always been at the center of Victorian studies, so the history and politics of gender are vital to Victorian literature. Class likewise remains inescapable in Victorian fiction with its sharp sense of a world divided into haves and have nots; depictions of the catastrophic effects of the factory system on the urban poor pervade Victorian literature and challenge readers to ponder how, and if, reading might lead to political action. Race has increasingly reshaped understandings of the literature of the period; although Britain abolished slavery in 1833-34, the period saw both a heightening of racist rhetoric and representation and the growth of a market for works by writers of color from the colonies, including Mary Seacole, J. J. Thomas, and Toru Dutt. Digital tools have made the present moment an exciting one in which to study this literature because so much information is now available: Victorian writing has become hyperaccessible for those with access to computers. For this class, this accessibility means that students have the opportunity not just to learn exiting knowledge about the period but to discover new truths about it for themselves. This course aims to empower students to find their own paths to understanding and representing the Victorians as a way of revising how they see their present.

Famous and lesser-known poems from the Modernist era, the time of Frost, HD, Pound, Eliot and the Harlem Renaissance. The course attends to the intellectual and cultural background of the poets, poetic theory and form.

Novels, from early Republic, through Hawthorne, Melville, and Stowe, to writers at end of 19th century (e.g., Howells, Twain, James, Chopin, Crane). Development of a national literature. Tension between realism and romance. Changing role of women as writers and as fictional characters.

In this course, we will read and study novels of twentieth and twenty-first century American writers, from early 1900's realism through Modernists (e.g., Faulkner, Hemingway, Fitzgerald) to more contemporary writers (e.g., Baldwin, Ellison, Erdrich, Roth, Pynchon). We will explore each text in relation to literary, cultural, and historical developments and question the narrative and stylistic strategies specific to each work.

African American oral tradition, slave narrative, autobiography, poetry, essay, fiction, oratory, and drama, from colonial era through Harlem Renaissance.

African American oral tradition, autobiography, poetry, essay, fiction, oratory, drama. From after Harlem Renaissance to end of 20th century.

British novel during the century in which it became widely recognized as a major vehicle for cultural expression. Possible topics include the relation of novel to contemporary historical concerns: rise of British empire, developments in science, and changing roles for women; formal challenges of the novel; definition of realism.

Selected works by African American, Latinx, Native American, and Asian American playwrights. How racial/ethnic differences are integral to shaping different visions of American drama. History of minority/ethnic theaters, politics of casting, mainstreaming of the minority playwright. Students in this class will have the opportunity to participate in service-learning.

Why did the polite Danish homes of 1879 bar discussions of Henrik Ibsen?s A Doll?s House? How did Oscar Wilde surreptitiously signal his sexuality through a satire of Victorian seriousness in The Importance of Being Earnest? How do contemporary playwrights such as August Wilson or Lynn Nottage bring forgotten moments of African American history to light? This course shows how modern and contemporary theater presents original perspectives on human identities and relationships as well as encourages audiences to see the world in new ways. This course focuses on the close analysis and interpretation of plays written by dramatists from around the world from the late-nineteenth to the twenty-first century. The plays we will study are set in Europe, Great Britain, North America, Africa, and Asia, and we will examine each carefully in light of the unique historical and social contexts in which they were produced, their creation and uses of aesthetic form, and their impact on individuals and communities. Through the course, you will become familiar with such dramatic forms as the well-made play, modern satire, realism, expressionism, symbolism, epic theater, and absurdism. Each of these is interesting not only as a distinctive mode of artistic presentation, but also as it offers different perspectives on historical moments and present-day concerns about people and their communities. Theatrical works illustrate how the meanings ascribed to physical bodies are at the heart of social differences such as gender, sexuality, class, race, disability, and national identity. We will look at each play in its original cultural context as well as through the creative lens of more recent productions and assess how both historical and more recent reimagining changes the meaning of the work. We will also make use of the rich theatrical resources and cultural organizations available in communities such as the Twin Cities.

Literary/dramatic works by Asian American writers. Historical past of Asian America through perspective of writers such as Sui Sin Far and Carlos Bulosan. Contemporary artists such as Frank Chin, Maxine Hong Kingston, David Henry Hwang, and Han Ong. Political/historical background of Asian American artists, their aesthetic choices.

Contextual readings of 19th-/20th-century black novelists, including Chesnutt, Hurston, Wright, Baldwin, Petry, Morrison, and Reed.

This course is an introduction to contemporary literary criticism and theory. The goal is to provide you with a foundation in theory's terminologies, the different methodologies used in literary and cultural analysis, and a sense of the various schools of criticism that have developed in the postwar period. We will look at the ways that various texts perform as texts; they are not transparent or one dimensional, but rather open themselves to many different readings and styles of engagement.

Introduction to structure of English. Phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics. pragmatics. Language variation/usage.

Literacy and American Cultural Diversity combines academic study with experiential learning in order to collectively build more engaged, more complex understandings of literacy, educational institutions, counter-institutional literacy programs, the grassroots and nonprofit sectors, and the struggles of a multicultural civil society in a putative democracy. We will ground our inquiry in government studies, as well as sociological, historical, and educational writings. Standard literature, such as a memoir, a selection of poems, some short fiction, and a novel will further open up our twin themes of literacy and multiculturalism ? as will less ?official? literature, such as manifestos and the transcribed stories of immigrants, refugees, and other marginalized communities. We begin with the basic understanding of literacy as reading and writing, noting that, according to the National Survey of Adult Literacy, 46% of Americans scored in the lowest two levels of a five-tiered literacy test. What does this mean? Are such tests accurate or otherwise helpful? What about your basic literacy? As you read this syllabus, you?re making use of basic abilities that you?ve likely been practicing most of your life through formal schooling, daily routines, recreational pursuits, and work-related duties. But there?s more. On another level, you bring knowledge to your reading (some conscious, some unconscious), and the ideological field supplies you with assumptions about the role of literacy in your development, the role of a university course in your plans for your personal and professional life, and your position in a society that constantly raises the standards of literacy, basing success on your ability to keep up. Thus the very word ?literacy? calls into play many beliefs we have about our class system, our cultural life, economic and political structures, and educational institutions. Accordingly, our analysis will move beyond basic ?reading and writing? to wider concepts of literacy in our society, investigating issues that have much to do with our role as public citizens involved in shaping our individual and collective future. In tandem with our ?classroom? work, our service-learning work in the community (see Your Practicum as Literacy Workers, below) will enable us to develop more ?tangible? understandings of the ways that literacy, educational theories, practices, and the construction of knowledge and skills through educational policies provide a ?map? of the shifting socioeconomic, cultural, and political terrains of the U.S., the institutional inequities that result from these arrangements, as well as the justice work needed to transform those inequities.

How thinkers from classical to modern times posed/answered questions about language (how words mean), audience (to whom they mean), and the literary (how literary writing differs from other forms of writing). Works by Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Christine de Pizan, Dante, Sidney, Behn, Wordsworth, Shelley, and Woolf.

"I am learning Anglo-Saxon and it is a vastly superior thing to what we have now" (Gerard Manley Hopkins, letter to fellow poet Robert Bridges, 1882). This course is an introduction to the rich language and literature of Anglo-Saxon England (ca. 500-1100). "Old English," or as it is sometimes known, "Anglo-Saxon," is the earliest form of the English language; therefore, the primary course goal will be to acquire the ability to read Old English texts in the original. No previous experience with Old English or any other language is necessary or expected; undergraduates and graduate students from all departments are welcome. For graduate students in English, Old English I may count for the rhetoric/language/literacy distribution area. This course also fulfills the literary theory/linguistic requirement for the undergraduate English major. A knowledge of Old English will allow you to touch the most ancient literary sensibilities in the English tradition; these sensibilities are familiar and strange at the same time, as we sense our deep cultural connection to these texts across the centuries, yet also find that the past is a strange place indeed. The power of Old English literature has profoundly influenced authors such as Tennyson, Pound, Graves, Wilbur, Hopkins, Gunn, Auden, Seamus Heaney, C.S. Lewis, and of course, J.R.R. Tolkien.

The second semester of Old English is devoted to a full translation and study of the great Anglo-Saxon epic "Beowulf." J.R.R. Tolkien wrote of the poem that "its maker was telling of things already old and weighted with regret, and he expended his art in making keen that touch upon the heart which sorrows have that are both poignant and remote." "Beowulf" is an exciting tale of strife and heroism; but it is also a subtle meditation upon the character of humanity as it struggles to understand the hazards of a harsh world, the inscrutability of fate, and the nature of history itself. "Beowulf" is not only important for a detailed understanding of Anglo-Saxon culture, but it is also a significant and moving poetic achievement in the context of world literature. We will read and translate the poem in the original Old English; thus ENGL 4612 (or a similar course resulting in a basic reading knowledge of Old English) is a prerequisite. "Beowulf" has been the object of intensive scholarly study; we will delve into the debates over the poem's date, genesis, manuscript and historical context and critical interpretation. Spending an entire semester studying one complex work can be an invaluable experience. Please contact the instructor for any questions concerning the prerequisite.

This course combines academic analysis and experiential learning to understand, in both theory and practice, different perspectives on the power of "protest" in civic life. We will read a selection from the vast genre of progressive protest literature (pamphlets, poems, polemics, lists of demands, teaching philosophies, organizing principles, cultural histories, newsletter articles, movement chronicles, and excerpts from novels and biographies) from four key social-justice movements: the American Indian Movement, the Black Power movement, the post-Great Recession struggle for economic power, and the battle for immigrant rights. We'll also learn about this experientially as we roll up our sleeves and get involved in local community-based education initiatives and local social-justice organizations through our service-learning. Students receive initial training from CLA Career Services, The Center for Community-Engaged Learning, the Minnesota Literacy Council, as well as orientations at community sites.

In this course, we'll examine four progressive social movements. After beginning with a foundational civil rights movement example, we will learn about the anti-racist feminism branch of the women's movement, often referred to as "third-wave feminism." We'll also study the Occupy movement that arose in response to the Great Recession (the financial crisis beginning in 2008). Then we'll take a look at two social movements that, while by no means underground, tend to fly below the radar: the prison abolition movement and the fight for public schools. While all of these social movements have different emphases, they also overlap quite a bit in their systemic analysis of society and their strategies for action. As activist, organizer, and trainer Rinku Sen observes, "the history of community organizing and social movements is replete with tactics learned in one movement being applied to another." As we study these social movements, community organizing will be of particular interest to us. How do the groups, collectives, nonprofits, and communities propelling these different social movements organize themselves, their leadership, their strategies, and their activities? How do they make decisions? What do meetings and planning processes look like? What do they do when they disagree? How do they recruit and mobilize? How do they communicate with and confront the general public, elected officials, and the more powerful elements of the ruling class? How do they talk about the work they're doing? How do they develop a vision of the world they'd like to live in while still inhabiting the present one, with all its flaws and injustices? We'll also examine the role of education in organizations working for social change. Whether through trainings, "political education," reading groups, or small group activities associated with popular education, many of the social-movement groups we'll study have developed educational strategies and curricula. Hands-On Learning through Community Education: As we study these social movements and their approaches to organizing and educating in the comfortable confines of our university classroom, we'll also learn about them experientially through our service-learning. That is, we'll work 2 hours per week at local education initiatives in K-12 schools, adult programs, and social-justice organizations in the non-profit and grassroots sectors, comprising a total of 24 hours by the end of the semester. This hands-on learning will strengthen our academic grasp of social movements, organizational dynamics, and teaching and community organizing by providing us with grounded perspectives. More broadly, we'll get a feel for what it's like to get involved as citizens, activists, teachers, and learners attempting to build cross-organizational coalitions. And we'll share what we learn with each other. Representatives from the Center for Community-Engaged Learning (the U's service-learning office) and various community organizations will attend our second class session to tell you about their respective sites and how you can get involved. For our third class session, you will rank the top three community sites you'd like to work at. You will then be "matched" with a community organization, and your community education work will begin as soon as this matching process is complete. (We try to honor students' first and second choices, while also making sure that you also have some fellow classmates at your site.) To help prepare you, at a time convenient for you, you will also attend a training session facilitated by the Minnesota Literacy Council (MLC) or the Center for Community-Engaged Learning-- details will be provided in class.