What does it mean to be a "good" reader or a "good" writer in college? In each section of this course, students receive extensive guidance from their instructors in the discovery and practice of helpful methods for fully exploring and appreciating what they read as well as guidance in planning, drafting, and writing essays about what is read and discussed in class. Each section of the course focuses on a particular topic drawn from a range of fields (e.g., literature, history, film, music). Reading assignments are limited in order to allow ample time for discussion and for personal attention to student writing.

Full details for ENGL 1131 - FWS: Mastering College Reading and Writing

In "The Personal Essay," our topics are autobiographical in their origins; we write from personal experience, to think about it and to articulate it, in a style useful in all modes of college-admission and college-work. Our writing practice is both "creative" and "analytical." We discover how writers use drafting and revision as a process of thinking, and in weekly workshops we practice the kind of revision that can make us more independent as writers and more capable of giving helpful suggestions to friends who are also writers. The most important texts for the course are the essays of students enrolled in it; but we also read and discuss personal memoirs. This seminar offers students from diverse backgrounds a forum in which to move beyond accustomed boundaries, finding agency not only through use of the first-person voice but through increased confidence in their abilities as writers.

Full details for ENGL 1132 - FWS:The Personal Essay

From hieroglyphs to HTML, ancient poetry to audiotape, and Plato's cave to virtual reality, "Thinking Media" offers a multidisciplinary introduction to the most influential media formats of the last three millennia. Featuring an array of guests from across Cornell, including faculty from Communication, Comparative Literature, English, German Studies, Information Science, Music, and Performing & Media Arts, the course will present diverse perspectives on how to think with, against, and about media in relation to the public sphere and private life, archaeology and science fiction, ethics and aesthetics, identity and difference, labor and play, knowledge and power, expression and surveillance, and the generation and analysis of data.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS, CA-AS)

Full details for ENGL 2703 - Thinking Media