Though the thematic emphasis in each section varies, all sections focus on expository and argumentative writing, with particular attention to analytical strategies, grammatical correctness and organizational methods. Students are required to submit a minimum of 16-20 pages of formal writing.
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Reading Literature
All sections focus on reading and analyzing literature, although the texts considered vary. Students are introduced to such concepts as point of view, plot, character, imagery, symbolism, rhyme scheme and dialogue. They may also be introduced to various interpretive approaches, such as feminist, formalist, historical, psychological or biographical. Written assignments provide practice in clarifying the understanding of literature. A list of texts and approaches emphasized in each section is published prior to each term.
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British and American Literature to 1798
A broad survey of English literature of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Authors studied might include Chaucer, Spenser, Donne, Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Swift, Johnson, Bradstreet, Taylor, Franklin and Edwards. Required essays test students' abilities to employ the standard concepts of literary analysis.
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British and American Literature since 1798
Survey of the last 200 years of British and American literature considered in its historical, cultural and aesthetic contexts. Authors studied might include Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Browning, Tennyson, Hawthorne, Melville, Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Dickinson, Dickens, T.S. Eliot, Frost, Faulkner, Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Required essays test students' abilities to employ the standard concepts of literary analysis.
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Business Communication
Course refines students' grammar, mechanics and style; develops analytical and collaborative skills; introduces the strategies, formats and organizational patterns of business letters, memos, employment communication and reports; teaches primary and secondary research methods, presentation of data with graphics, and documentation of data; and develops oral and nonverbal communication skills.
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American Novel from World War I to the Present
Survey of modern American fiction, involving the reading and discussion of eight to 12 novels. It begins with the post-World War I period, and includes the minority voices of blacks, Jews and women.
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Literature of the South
Focus on the major writers of the Southern Renaissance Faulkner, Welty, O'Connor, Penn Warren and Ransom. Earlier Southern writers may be studied as background, and works by contemporary Southern writers such as Percy and Walker are included.
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