The Art of Literature
This intermediate writing seminar explores and imagines the world of literature—and the imagination as it finds creative expression in language. As we engage with the texts throughout this course, we will continually ask ourselves, “Why do we call some writing ‘literature’? What makes us label something ‘art’?”
We will interact with fiction, poetry, and drama, in addition to compiling a “working vocabulary” for the course by concentrating on literary devices with respect to our assigned texts. Through discussion and writing assignments, we will develop a more sophisticated understanding of the works we encounter along the way.
About the Intermediate Seminar Program
Intermediate Seminars offer students with 30 or more credits the opportunity to work on essential university capabilities in small-sized courses that are often thematic or problem-oriented and interdisciplinary in nature. Designed in part to help students prepare for the Writing Proficiency Requirement, Intermediate Seminars put special emphasis on critical reading, thinking, and writing. They focus on other essential capabilities as appropriate to the course and might therefore include attention to library research and information technology, collaborative learning, oral presentation, and academic self-assessment. Students who practiced reading, writing, and critical thinking in a First Year Seminar at UMass Boston will practice them at a more advanced level in the Intermediate Seminar.
Assigned Primary Texts:
- Selected short stories and poetic works from 20th-century American literature
- George Orwell, 1984
- August Wilson, Fences
- Langston Hughes, selections of poems and essays
- Paul Laurence Dunbar, selections of poems
Alexander Lowe McAdams 