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This page describes for students what is expected of them in Ramapo’s Literature courses.
The following objectives inform your professors as they design your courses. As you move through the Literature Major, we hope you will achieve the following goals.
Courses on the 200 level are more diverse and numerous than the 100-level offerings. Many 200-level courses are surveys of national literatures (i.e., Survey of British Literature I and II, Survey of American Literature I and II , Survey of African Literature ). Other courses are similarly broad in scope, while building on the basic concepts covered in Introduction to Literature . Other courses like, Readings in Poetry , Literature of the Middle Ages, American Short Story , and others tend toward broadly conceived surveys of genres, periods, or national traditions.
WRITING SKILLS
Compose longer essays incorporating quotations from literary works and some secondary sources.
Use parenthetical citation & Work Cited format when referring to several texts.
READING SKILLS
Develop a sense of the depth and range of literature, nationally and internationally in survey classes.
Move beyond personal response to consider other readings.
Familiarity with literary anthologies and an understanding of the elements of those works: glossary, index, introductory essays, timelines, etc.
OTHER SKILLS/ISSUES
An understanding of literary schools and eras.
Research skills, including familiarity with literary reference works (literary dictionaries, Gale encyclopedias, etc.).
The ability to identify and discuss a variety of literary schools and eras within one discussion.
Familiarity with how literature and issues of nationhood are related.
Students successfully completing this course should:
Methods of Literary Study ( LITR- 203 ) Methods of Literary Study looks at a broad selection of literary texts, produced across the world, across eras, and across genres. We will read these texts carefully, coming to some understanding of aesthetics, genres, and literary periods. More than an introduction to specific “canonical” literary texts, though, the course focuses not so much on what we read as how we read it. We will explore contemporary literary theory, challenge our ideas about just what literature is and what it is for, and why it has endured. The course also focuses on how to write about literature and perform literary research.
Students will:
WRITING SKILLS
Explain and quote from a work of literature as evidential support in verbal and written communication.
Learn to do research on literature, including using the databases available through the college library, and learn to incorporate that research into their own writing.
READING SKILLS
Understand the different purposes to reading literature, including for personal pleasure and development.
Learn the elements of at least three different genres of literature (short story/novel/poetry/essay/personal letter/the novel).
Learn to read closely and annotate literary texts.
OTHER SKILLS/ISSUES
Consider literature in several contexts, including aesthetic, cultural, historical, rhetorical.
Gain an understanding of various schools of contemporary literary theory and be able to apply some of these schools in writing.
Students successfully completing this course should:
300-level courses embark upon more specific subject matter than that covered by 200-level courses. In courses like Literary Theory and Criticism and Grammar: Theory and Pedagogy , and Existentialism students engage in the study of theoretical concepts 200-level classes may comment on but cannot investigate fully. In other courses, like Major Authors; Comic American Novel ; American Romanticism , and Victorian Secrets, students study individual authors in depth or explore very specific movements in greater detail than a 200-level class can afford.
WRITING SKILLS
Compose longer research essays incorporating quotations from literary works and a variety of secondary sources.
READING SKILLS
Focus in depth on one or more genres of literature.
Read one or more major author in some depth.
Develop a sense of the importance and limits of literary biography.
OTHER SKILLS/ISSUES
More sophisticated research skills, including the ability to access and comprehend journal articles, and books like The Chelsea House series.
Students successfully completing this course should:
As with the 100-level, the 400-level capstone offers only one course, but this course varies depending upon section and instructor. The 400-level capstone is designed to allow students to apply the lessons of the Literature Major to a specific, intriguing literary issue. Section offerings range widely (Postmodernism, International Modernism, The American Novel and the Environment, The Renegade in Literature, The Working Class in American Literature, and others). The course is marked as much by the raised expectations of the instructor as the greater specificity of most of the offerings.
LITR 414 is taught as a seminar , and students are expected to exhibit greater independence in their reading, writing, and research.
WRITING SKILLS
Develop complex, argumentative theses independently.
Synthesize materials from diverse sources, including several primary and secondary sources.
Draft annotated bibliographies.
Compose proposals for longer essays.
READING SKILLS
Independently read well below the surface of even complex literary works.
OTHER SKILLS/ISSUES
Develop leadership skills—begin and sustain class discussion.
The ability to identify and discuss a variety of literary schools and eras within one discussion.
The ability to analyze literature and its related cultural influences in an
interdisciplinary fashion.
Apply the various skills acquired in previous years at a semester-long intensive study of a very narrow literary topic.
Students successfully completing this course should:
NOTE: We are still developing learning goals for “Drama,” “Pre-1800,” and “Theory and Process of Language” categories, as well as some of the Teacher Education categories.
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