Course details

Name: ENGL - 206

Title: WORLD LITERATURE: COMING OF AGE THEME

Section: 01

Semester: Spring - 2017

Credits: 3

Description:
World Literature: Coming of Age & “Literary Thinking”
Jacob Suskewicz

According to the great Spanish writer Javier Marias:

There is a tradition within the novel form, almost forgotten now, which embodies what I call literary thinking or literary thought. It’s a way of thinking which takes place only in literature—the things you never think of or hit upon unless you are writing fiction.

This course seeks to understand, utilize, and expand upon Marias’s conceptual definition of literary thinking through a combination writing workshop / literature seminar (close-reading and seminar discussion of examples of the form, and workshopping student writing). Students will learn how to use literary thinking as a narrative craft element in and of itself, in exploring the way contemporary writers the world over expand and contract their own world of story to achieve specific goals of storytelling, as well as larger “essayistic” forays into worldview issues from socio-political to cultural concerns. We’ll study Marias’s concept of literary thinking—reflection, digression, deliberation, argument, speculation, meditation, reminiscence, and so forth—to build upon the hypothesis of the class: “literary thinking” as an extension of writing as a technology for thinking new thoughts, for creating new knowledge, with a specific focus on literature in translation on the theme “Coming of Age” (both for writer and reader).

Reading List:
A Heart So White, Javier Marias
The Savage Detectives, Roberto Bolano
By Night in Chile, Roberto Bolano
My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante
My Struggle: Book 1, Karl Ove Knausgaard
Citizen, Claudia Rankine


Bio:
Jacob Suskewicz holds an MFA degree (Fiction, 2009) from The New School, and has been teaching Creative Writing at Rutgers University since 2010, as well as having served as Director (and founder) of the Rutgers Doctorate in Social Work (DSW) Writing Program, an interdisciplinary doctoral curriculum that he helped build. He has served in the administration of the Rutgers Writing Program, Plangere Writing Center, and as a faculty member of the Rutgers School of Social Work, where his research interests included narrative case studies and narrative theory, with a focus on developing a pedagogy for teaching writing to clinicians using a traditional writing workshop approach, combined with digital literacy and multimedia composition. Mr. Suskewicz is at work on his debut novel, Set a Fire Burning, the first chapter of which was selected by Benjamin Percy as the winner of The New School’s Graduate Writing Program Chapbook Contest, and was published by The New School Chapbook Series.

Meets Gen Ed 2002 - Humanities, World Literature or General Humanities.

Books--

The Savage Detectives, Roberto Bolano
ISBN: 978-0-312-42748-1

By Night in Chile, Roberto Bolano
ISBN: 978-0-8112-1547-3

My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante
ISBN: 978-1-60945078-6

My Struggle: Book 1, Karl Ove Knausgaard
ISBN: 978-0374534141

A Heart So White, Javier Marias
ISBN: 978-0307950765

Citizen, Claudia Rankine
ISBN: 978-1-55597-690-3

Last updated on 2016-10-15 By Nielsen Wendy (nielsenw)

Schedule: Tuesday,Thursday From 8:30 am To 9:45 am

Graduation requirements:

• Any Literature (1e)
• Genre Study (Fiction)
• ()
• Post-1900 (1d)
• International Issues (3a)
• World Literature (TE 6a)

Teaching Faculty: Staff English Dept. (staff)

Is course canceled: No