This course has as its title a deceptively simple question: "What is literature?". That question invites discussion, both serious and playful, and it also invites more questions. What is "literature"? What do we "do" with it? Who gets to say what counts as "good" or "representative" literatures? Do plays count? What about music? All of the texts for this section of the course are Pulitzer-prize winners--which means texts "authored" by "American" citizens and "judged" to be especially "distinguished" (so many ideas that invite more questions!). And by the way, what power do literary prizes have, and how do they influence the ways people read? Given this course's status as a gateway to the English concentration, we'll attend especially to ways that literary critics "use" texts: the ways we think critically about what literature is, means, and does, for example, and the ways that we read closely, write about, and compare texts across genres, topics, periods, and cultures. Texts will be the novels A Thousand Acres (Jane Smiley), Middlesex (Jeffrey Eugenides), and The Known World (Edward P. Jones), the short story collection Interpreter of Maladies (Jhumpa Lahiri), the play and the film Angels in America (Tony Kushner), and the musical composition Blood on the Fields (Wynton Marsalis). Work for the course will include thoughtful reading, watching, and listening (given that we only have seven weeks, please be sure to leave yourself plenty of time to read, watch, and listen outside of class) and active participation in class discussions, and also will include quizzes and take-home mid-term and end-of-term exams.

I will not make any adjustments to the class roster (i.e., oversubscribe or drop students) until after the second class meeting. At that point, I will automatically drop any student who has not attended both of the first two classes. After the second class, if there are spaces available I will authorize students who have been attending class to register for the course until the course has again met its maximum capacity. Please do not request any exceptions to this policy.