Lecturer(s)

dr. R.W.H. Glitz

Entry requirements 

Second and third year students of subjects other than literature who are participating in an Honours Programme. This course is taught at the level of second-year English literature students.

English literature students are excluded from this course.

Recommended prior knowledge:

Ability to write university-level academic English. At least some experience with reading literary texts for pleasure.

Learning Objectives

After successful completion of the course students are able to:

• close-read and analyze literary texts
• interpret selected passages from a literary text with reference to the text as a whole
• evaluate other reader’s interpretations of a given text (or passage)
• engage critically with other readers’ interpretive claims about a given text
• clearly express the results of the above activities both orally and in writing
• recognize the importance of cultural-historical context in the practice of interpretation

Content

‘Between the Lines’ is designed for students with no academic background but a keen interest in Anglophone literature. If your English is good and you enjoy reading, thinking, and creatively engaging with literature of any genre, this will be the right course for you. In every class, we will train some of the basic close-reading and argumentation techniques used in the field of literary studies. With their help, we will explore a small sample of the most celebrated works of literature from the English literary tradition. These will include Shakespeare’s early modern Hamlet, Virginia Woolf’s modernist classic To the Lighthouse, Angela Carter’s postmodernist tour-de-force Nights at the Circus, and a selection of celebrated poems and short stories ranging from the 18^th century to the present day.

Class contents

•  Lecture
•  Seminar
•  Selfstudy

Assessment:

• continuous blog post requirement (10% of the overall grade)
• in-class test on poetic terms, poetry analysis, and secondary reading (30% of the overall grade)
• final ‘close-reading’ essay (60% of the overall grade)

Min/max participants

max. 25

Schedule

Starts in September, see Datanose 

Registration:

Registration is possible for 2nd year (of higher) students participating in an Honours programme from  June 6, 2019 10.00 till  June 11, 2019 23.00 through the online registration form that will appear on Honoursmodules IIS.

Placement will be at random. If there are still spots open after the application deadline, students will still be able to register.

For questions: please contact Honours-iis@uva.nl