Literary Studies 101: Scholarly Approaches to North American Prose

This course offers the opportunity to intensively practice basic literary studies skills with the goal of preparing you for some of the future tasks of your academic career (e.g., conducting research, writing a term paper, giving a presentation, etc.). The class is designed for students in their first year of studies. However, students at a more advanced stage who would like to improve their  analytical as well as writing skills  are very welcome to join the course. Throughout the semester, we will discuss a range of tools that scholars have devised to analyze literary texts, from theoretical frameworks to close reading techniques. We will apply these different approaches in our analyses of two well-known works of North American fiction, the 1925 US-American classic The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and the 1985 dystopian masterpiece The Handmaid’s Tale by Canadian author Margaret Atwood. By the end of this course, you will be familiar with various strategies that will enable you to read, dissect, analyze, and critically respond to prose texts in general and the two assigned novels in particular.

Please purchase:

1. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby [ISBN-10 9176371212]
2. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale [ISBN-10 178487096X]