ENGL 201: Ways of Reading

The English Major Gateway Seminars

The Ways of Reading seminar is the mandatory gateway course necessary for declaring the English major. Formerly known as The Study of Literature, ENGL201 is newly revised beginning in the 2011-2012 academic year. The Ways of Reading series introduces students to the characteristics thought of as literary and the methods for studying them. Each of the seminars has its own title, subject matter, and focus, exhibiting the wide range of critical approaches, cultural themes, and historical periods that English majors can look forward to exploring in the English curriculum.  Current seminars include "Literature and/as Performance," "Early Modern Literature and the History of Selfhood," "Contact Zones: Travel, Migration, and American Literature," "Literature about Literature," "Reading for the Genre: Form, History and Theory," and "The Work of Literature."

The guidelines for taking ENGL201 in preparation for the English major are:

• Must be taken in frosh or sophomore year for acceptance as an English major. Exceptions are made for junior transfer students majoring in English.

• Must receive a grade of B- or better; if a lower grade is received a student may petition the department for acceptance to the major.

• If taken Spring term of sophomore year, acceptance as an English major is provisional pending final grade.

• Only one of the ENGL201 series may be taken at a time and for credit.

• Each of the 201 classes enroll a maximum of 19 students with a majority of seats reserved for sophomores.

All Ways of Reading seminars have the same foundational objectives.  They develop strategies for careful and close reading, and techniques for the analysis of literary forms such as poetry and drama, as well as prose narratives, such as novels and stories.  Each seminar familiarizes students with some of the protocols of the literary-critical essay, examines the idea of literature as a social institution, and explores ways of connecting textual details and the world beyond the text.  Students should expect to write about seven or more graded essays during the semester and, although formal research papers are not assigned, some sections may work with archival materials available in Wesleyan's rare book collection. 

The "ways of reading" learned in the seminar are powerful tools for critically assessing discourses that expand far beyond the realm of literature.  So while students will become adept literary critics, they also will learn that to be a literary critic is to learn to read critically and carefully all the time: not only in poems, novels, and plays, but also in political speech and documents, popular culture, performance, news, advertising, laws, and in the discourses that structure everyday life.