Bachelor [Writing] From Wellesley College

This course introduces students to a level of interpretative sophistication and techniques of analysis essential not just in literary study but in all courses that demand advanced engagement with language. Sections explore the principal literary genres, including a selection of poems, a play, and prose narrative. Required of English majors and minors, "Critical Interpretation" fosters intellectual community among its students by teaching some texts common to all sections and keying them to campus events such as performances of the year?s play by London actors, film screenings, lunchtime lectures by English faculty, and other occasions for discussion and collaboration.

How are stories put together? How do they create the sense that they are told from a distinct perspective? How do they create anticipation and retrospection? How do we distinguish the telling from the tale? This course offers an introduction to narrative theory, or theories that explain the devices and structures that stories use in order to make meaning. We will read excerpts from major works of narrative theory (Bal, Genette, Barthes), and we will explore how their concepts yield a better understanding and appreciation of short stories (as well as novels). Authors may include Balzac, Joyce, Conrad, and Faulkner.

Writing is central to academic life at Wellesley and will continue to play an important role in most students? lives after they graduate, whether they choose majors in the sciences, the social sciences, or the humanities. The starting point for writing at Wellesley is the First-Year Writing requirement. All students are required to fulfill the First-Year Writing requirement by taking an introductory course in expository writing in either the fall or spring semester of their first year at Wellesley. Courses fulfilling this requirement, numbered WRIT 100 to WRIT 198, make up the majority of the course offerings in the Writing Program. These courses are taught by faculty from many departments as well as by a team of writing professionals; all First-Year Writing faculty view writing as an important part of their own professional lives and are committed to helping Wellesley students learn to use writing as a powerful tool of thought and expression, a way to gain entrance to public discourse.

All First-Year Writing courses have the primary goal of helping students establish a useful writing process, from developing ideas through revision. All sections provide instruction in analysis and interpretation, in argument and the use of evidence, in the development of voice, and in the conventions of academic writing, including writing from sources. Students may choose to take a standard First-Year Writing course (meeting two periods a week and addressing a small, well-defined topic related to the instructor?s expertise), or to study writing as part of an introductory course in another department. (These "combined courses" have departmental course numbers in their titles, for example WRIT 105 - ENG 120, and include the courses numbered between WRIT 105 and WRIT 115 except WRIT 106; all carry one unit of credit, fulfill distribution and/or major requirements, and meet for at least three periods each week.)