WAL: Genre and the Hybrid

Knowledge-Values Courses: Writing About Literature

This course uses critical reading as a foundation for developing critical thinking and writing skills paying particular attention to genre. Beginning with a brief survey of the traditional genres of short stories, poetry, and the novel, the course then considers nontraditional cross-genre texts that have emerged in the postmodern literary world. These hybrid texts challenge the way students read, encourage a deeper appreciation of non-traditional writing, provide tools for analyzing a broad range of literary texts, and raise the following question: Why do some contemporary writers gravitate toward hybridity in genre, and how might their choices reflect other changes in our postmodern society?

This course replaces ENGL T125