Texts and the City
- Summer 2016
Additional Details:
English 200B, “Texts and the City,” fulfills both VLPA and W requirements. This course is designed to introduce students to techniques and practices for reading and enjoying literature.
From participating in the staging of Japanese internment during WW II, to hosting the World’s Fair during the rising hostilities of the Cold War, to witnessing “the Battle of Seattle” at the end of the millennium, the evolution of Seattle as a global city will be traced in three recent, readable novels. In these novels, we will see how these distinct historical moments affected the development and interaction between different local communities and identities. As characters stake a place in a city undergoing the transformation from a regional backwater to what one character refers to as “a true cosmopolis,” they will discover that home is as much an idea as a place, a contested future to be imagined as much as a past to be reclaimed.
There will be class discussions, short analytical essays, group work, and the possibility of some field work.
Course texts:
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
Waxwings by Jonathan Raban
Truth Like the Sun by Jim Lynch