ENG 111G 1C - Literary Memoirs/Cltrl Monumnts-Hnr

4 Credit(s)

This class is about memory: nostalgia in our own lives, cultural monuments to the past, and the work of remembering through writing, creating art, and performing rituals. The course has three main parts: Memoirs; Rituals and Reflection; and Communal Remembering. In the first section, we will think about what it means to connect to memories and how we write and create art as ways of making sense of our own past. While reading short and long, we will write short autobiographical pieces that will grow into a longer creative memoir project that can include written and other components. In the second section, we will experience rituals and ways of reflecting. In the final section of the course, we will think about how we commemorate the past through monuments and memorials, and students will work in groups to create a monument or memorial. This project allows students to bring abstract ideas into a concrete form using creative design that can include any kind of written, visual, digital, or other aspects. We will not only think about these questions directly, but also from a broader conceptual standpoint through critical readings about memoir-writing, nostalgia, and cultural memory among other topics.

Prerequisite(s): W tag or concurrent enrollment in W-tag course.