About

English 102

Instructor: Anna-Alexis Larsson

Available for Meetings on Google Meet ♣  ♣ Fridays 12:45-1:45 and By Appointment

I am available by email and will respond within 12 hours. 

See most recent post for the Google Meet codes. Google Meet is available for use as an app on your phone or in a web browser. 

♣ Blackboard alternative option available by request. ♣


Email me at alarsson@gradcenter.cuny.edu


An image of my dog in a Boy Scouts shirt and a gas station cowboy hat, taken in 2012. She loves to dress up.

An image of my dog in a Boy Scouts shirt and a gas station cowboy hat, taken in 2012. She loves to dress up.

Writing About Literature

Course Description from the College Catalog: This course extends and intensifies the work of Composition I, requiring students to write critically and analyticall about culturally-diverse works of literature. Students are introduced to poetry, drama, and fiction, employing close-reading techniques and other methodlogies of literary criticism. Students will utilize research methods and documentation procedures in writing assignments of varying academic formats, including a research essay that engages literary critics or commentators. Admission to the course requires completion of Composition I. 

 

 

Animals and Knowledge (an inquiry into Humanist perspectives)

Most of the reading we will do have to do with the ways in which poetry and narratives about animals reflect desires or anxieties having to do with “the fabled country of the West,” as Donna Haraway calls it. I am exploring these poems in my own research in reference to a philosophical discourse that is called “posthumanism.” Posthumanism refers to the study of cultural and historical discourse as it is shaped by criticism of Humanistic norms, especially given that those norms were often based in forms of exclusion from the human–such as the de-humanizing brutalisation of slaves–and ideas about subject/object or internal/external which have been troubled by developments in science and technology. We will read a handful of short poems that illustrate key literary elements. At the same time, each poem will illustrate, in some way, the way animals can reflect how humans see themselves at a particular moment in philosophical and socio-political history. We will read a short play about knowledge, The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, and consider the Faustian pact. In sum, we will draw from a glossary of ideas, including “discourse,” “Humanism,” “subject,” “de-colonialism,” and “embodiment,” to use as a lens for unpacking a short list of texts. 

 

Course Goals

  1. Reinforce the practice of writing as a process that involves pre-writing, drafting, editing, proofreading, critiquing, and reflection.
  2. Reinforce students’ skills at writing clearly and coherently in varied academic forms such as quizzes, analysis forms, journal entries, formal essays, and in-class responses, with an emphasis on writing as a critical thinking proces. Essays will vary in length between 600 and 2000 words, using Standard Written English (SWE).  
  3. Familiarize students with poetry, drama, and fiction, and introduce students to techniques of literary criticism including the close reading of literary texts. 
  4. Introduce students to methodologies of literary analysis, suh as biographical context, historical context, and critical theory.
  5. Reinforce critial reading and analytical skills by guiding students to identify an argument’s major assumptions and assertions and evaluate its supporting evidence and conclusions. 
  6. Reinforce students’ skills in creating well-reasoned arguments and communicating persuasively over a variety of contexts, purposes, audiences, and mediums.
  7. Reinforce students’ research skills including the use of appropriate technology and the ability to evaluate and synthesize primary and secondary sources, while employing the conventions of ethical attribution and citation and avoiding plagiarism. 
  8. Reinforce writing strategies to prepare students for in-class writing.