20801221Literature and Popular Culture
Course Information
Description
Students analyze, interpret, and discuss literature and popular culture as artifacts that reflect, amplify, and confront societies’ constructions of race, gender, class, sexuality, religion, otherness, and belonging. Students read primary texts and critical works that offer genre definitions, provide historical context, establish a relation between content and the culture that produced it. Assignments include: discussion board postings, reading quizzes, and formal essays.
Total Credits
0
Course Competencies
  1. Respond independently and critically to issues of aesthetic representation of contemporary cultural issues
    Assessment Strategies
    Written Product and/or Project
    Criteria
    Identify socio-cultural contexts of texts studied
    Interpret the significance of the socio-cultural contexts of texts studied
    Identify historical contexts of texts studied
    Interpret the significance of the historical contexts of texts studied
    Identify literary contexts of texts studied
    Interpret the significance of the literary contexts of texts studied

  2. Analyze the major cultural and historical, political contexts that have shaped and are shaped by the genre under consideration
    Assessment Strategies
    Written Product and/or Project
    Criteria
    Identify the conditions of the receptive and productive contexts of works in this genre
    Assess the authors' places in the relevant textual tradition

  3. Analyze authorial relationship with different audiences
    Assessment Strategies
    Written Product and/or Project
    Criteria
    Analyze the relationship between genre literature and society
    Assess popular and critical reception and production of texts

  4. Analyze cultural and social issues involved in genre canon formation
    Assessment Strategies
    Written Product and/or Project
    Criteria
    Explore the genre canon and its traditions
    Identify relevant cultural issues involved in canon formation
    Identify relevant social issues involved in canon formation

  5. Analyze fundamental elements of literature, such as plot, character, setting, point of view, theme, and tone
    Assessment Strategies
    Written Product and/or Project
    Criteria
    Define elements of literature
    Identify elements of literature within literary texts
    Recognize how elements of literature contribute to the broader significance and structure of literary works

  6. Apply interpretive strategies to understand layers of meaning and literary work such as figurative language subtext and ambiguity
    Assessment Strategies
    Written Product and/or Project
    Criteria
    Apply interpretive strategies such as figurative language, subtext, and ambiguity to the text
    Recognize explicit and implicit meanings within a literary text
    Analyze relationships between layers of meaning in literary texts

  7. Assess how authors use literary techniques such as diction syntax or narrative structure
    Assessment Strategies
    Written Product and/or Project
    Criteria
    Describe stylistic, rhetorical, and narrative techniques adopted by authors
    Recognize the effects that literary techniques have on audience, content, and message
    Assess authorial intention and its limitations for understanding the effectiveness of a literary work

  8. Develop arguments about literary text supported by specific textual evidence
    Assessment Strategies
    Written Product and/or Project
    Criteria
    Use quotes and details from the text in support of claims
    Synthesize opinions, questions, and responses that arise from readings of literary texts
    Develop evidence-based descriptions of the assumptions and implications within works of literature

  9. Perform close readings of literary text paying attention to stylistics devices such as language structure imagery symbolism
    Assessment Strategies
    Written Product and/or Project
    Criteria
    Apply literary concepts such as symbolism, perspective, and thematic structure to the analysis of literary texts
    Support diverse interpretations using textual evidence
    Construct meaning and significance from the literary text
    Develop analyses that recognize interplay between content and style
    Relate the product of close textual analysis to the text as a whole