Learning Goals

Learning Goals for English Majors in General

By completion of their studies, students who major in English will:

1. sharpen reading and writing skills

2. gain new insights into human nature and cultural diversity

3. achieve increased flexibility in their own creative and critical approaches to life.

 

Those students considering graduate work, should be able to demonstrate

4. a familiarity with multiple literary genres, major literary figures, and a  range of English, American, and non-Western literature

5. strategies of interpretation, including and ability to use critical and theoretical terms, concepts, and methods in relation to a variety  of textual forms and other media

6. an ability to engage with the work of other critics and writers, using and citing such sources effectively

 

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Learning Goals specific to this course:

By the end of the semester, students will be able to:

1. Practice Disciplinary Approaches to Children’s Literature

  • Construct a specific and arguable claim about a piece of children’s literature.
  • Engage (visual and verbal) textual examples to support this claim.
  • Situate this claim in relation to either (or both) a piece of literary criticism or/and a relevant historical document.  (relevant meaning that there is a good reason to put the historical document or criticism in conversation with each other.  A good reason might be because they are discussing the exact same subject, or that they are both historical and geographical contemporaries, or that the author or some real life aspect of the text is related to that historical document and/or is the subject of the criticism.  There may be other situations that constitute relevance and good reasons.  In any event, students will understand that they will have to make a case for putting two texts in conversation with each other.)

2.Interrogate Social Significance of Children’s Literature

  • recognize children’s literature as a blurry, shifting, and historically constructed (i.e not naturally occurring) category
  • differentiate between social constructions of “childishness” and “the child”  and the lives and actions of living (or previously living) people we call children
  • Compare and contrasts narrative anxieties about childishness to narrative celebrations/romanticization of children and childhood.
  • Analyze the explicit and implicit assumptions embedded in children’s literature and constructions of the child, particularly the ways in which blackness, bondage, and/or histories of race, gender, and class inequities play a part in the formation of the narratives we tell ourselves about children and the potential functions of children’s literature.

3. Engage the Formal Significance of Children’s Literature

  • Discuss the interplay between the content of children’s literature and its variety of forms and mediums (i.e. not only its different literary genres but also its use of visuals, varying book mediums, cinema, and auditory technologies.)
  • Identify, examine, and explain the relationship between a text considered “for children” and some text marked as “for adults.”