Goals and Outcomes:
In this course we will explore texts that center on the topic of invisibility as it pertains to race, gender, age, size, and condition. Our inquiry will span a variety of genres: the novel, short fiction, memoir, and poetry. Some scholars have argued that that narratives of invisibility carry with them their own sense of aesthetics. In this class we will explore concepts such as dérive, negative space, and the palimpsest. We will try to determine whether literature of invisibility, in fact, has its own sense of aesthetics.
This course will also
- teach you how to become careful readers of literary texts
- teach you how to write confident arguments about texts
Thus, this course is both a close reading and an intensive writing course.
Course Objectives:
- Students will learn about various circumstances that render invisibility.
- Students will learn about some of the negative consequences of invisibility.
- Students will learn about some of the ways invisibility can be used to gain power.
- Students will learn about aesthetics of invisibility.
- Students will learn close reading techniques in order to become careful readers of literary texts.
- Students will learn to locate peer-reviewed sources.
- Students will learn to cite using MLA.
- Students will learn
how to structure an effective short analytic paper.
- Teacher: Alma Alvarez