Gen-Ed Literature Requirement

Dear Colleagues Across the Curriculum,

Literature

The Literature area requirement is designed to
introduce students to ways of understanding,
interpreting, and responding to primary works
of imaginative literature. The objective of the
requirement is to develop a student’s informed
literary and aesthetic judgment.

Infrastructure.

.......COMPLEX

.......SIMPLEX

.......COMPLEX

The difference between Liberal Art
and the liberal arts (or you represent
your way). I say it’s like the difference
between roots and branches, between
Fun-da-mentals on the one hand;
implications & explications on
the other..

“like, ” I said; not “is.”

Unfold. Unfold.

Courses that satisfy the Literature
area requirement should:

• Have primary works of
• literature as opposed to
• secondary scholarship
• and criticism, as their
• main subject matter.

Anne Sexton’s daughter writes of the
son of Sylvia Plath’s suicide today in
the New York Times—and of her own
mother’s suicide and of her own 3
attempts and of her son’s depression,
and this is at least a source of some
liberal arts— majors, minors, scholarly
publications, conferences, expertise &
contributions in the disciplines branching
out from whether one is staying alive or
not and reasons why either way.

• courses in which literary
• works supplement or
• complement a different
• main subject matter
• do not qualify.

Honey bees swarming around the hemlock.
Trees thrashing. Students write about
dreams in my American literature course.
Distracted? Or Listening?

• Require the writing of original
• formal literary criticism.

Obedience.

A crime against the common sense.
Writer’s Pluck. It’s not a rational
argument that changes anyone’s
mind set to originate a swell. A
joke. Jiggle. Juggle. Jeopardy.
Catch you off guard. Non
sequitur.

Not that anything’s wrong with
Common Sense. Or rationality.
They rule.
Beginnings. Middles. & Endings.
Consequences. Convinced of my
own Because & Affect: I am
convicted.

• Study primary works of literature
• from the perspectives of literary
• criticism and scholarship, as
• opposed to those of some other,
• such as history,
• social science, or
• theater production.

Today: final call for graduation paraphernalia.
Regalia.

liberalarts

I studied Hawthorne:
his houses and hidden
treasures. He himself,
however, excavated
ancestral bones.

Howard Cosell: expert
on Mohammad Ali—
pugilist.

I can talk about literature.
Howard knows boxing.



We could argue that that’s
the difference between the
liberalarts & Liberal Art,
right there.

xxxooo, Sam