The aim of the proseminar is to prepare you for participation in academic seminars and for the writing of seminar papers. You will be required to develop an extended, researched analysis of a literary work assigned in class. This course is designed to teach and rehearse specific skills, such as close reading and analysis of a literary text; defining purposes and terms; problematizing; planning, positioning yourself in an existing interpretive framework and finding your own perspective, addressing and negotiating critical views, developing a coherent critical thesis of your own, summarizing and abstracting; producing a bibliography, sifting evidence; revising purposes, contents, organization, language; editing, etc. The research paper you produce as a result of this course (about 10 pages, or 2000 words) will be your contribution to the ongoing conversation about the literary work. It is due at the end of the semester, but the first draft is submitted halfway through and then revised and expanded through discussions with the instructor and input from other students.

Text: a different primary text every semester.
A good English-English dictionary, such as the Webster’s, Oxford, Random House

Because this is an intensive writing course, please take into account that you will need to set aside between 6 and 8 hours per week for your reading, writing and library research in addition to the 4 hours of class time.