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01/30 - 05/19 | ||||||
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+ asynchronous coursework |
Subject: English (UG) (ENGL)
CRN: 22497
Blended Online & In-Person | Lecture
St Paul: O'Shaughnessy Education Center 313
Online
Old Core Requirements Met:
UG Core Literature/Writing
2020 Core Requirements Met:
Integ/Humanities
Other Requirements Met:
Sustainability (SUST)
Writing Intensive
When a disaster happens, it can overwhelm our sense of reason and justice, test our capacity for empathy, and force into debate our assumptions regarding social order. Writing about disaster is an acrobatic act of reflection, mourning, coping, and investigation, but to what end? To establish blame? To preach or to rebuild character? To prepare better for the next disaster? Whatever the case, tales about disasters tend to blend strategies of personal narrative, myth, and history to bring the tragedies of titanic events back to the scale of human understanding. This course explores novels and films that depict various catastrophic “storms” in an effort to document, heal, warn, and find meaning in the apparently meaningless. Possible readings will include Daniel Defoe’s A JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR, Jesmyn Ward’s SALVAGE THE BONES; Paolo Bacigalupi’s THE WATER KNIFE Dimitry Elias Léger’s GOD LOVES HAITI; and Joshua Mehigan’s book of poetry, ACCEPTING THE DISASTER. Possible films will include CONTAGION (Soderbergh, 2011), BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD (Zeitlin, 2012), clips from THE DUST BOWL (Burns, 2012), and THE IMPOSSIBLE (Bayona, 2013). Students will write weekly short papers on guided topics, a final research essay, and also work in groups throughout the semester to develop a disaster prevention or survival guide. The writing load for this course is a minimum of 15 pages of formal revised writing. This course satisfies both a Writing Across the Curriculum Writing Intensive requirement and an Integrations in the Humanities requirement. Please note that ENGL 203 is non-repeatable; students wishing to take a second 200-level Texts in Conversation course will need to register for ENGL 201, 202, or 204. Prerequisite: ENGL 121 or 190.
4 Credits