Writing the Past

Catalog description

Writing the Past is a writing intensive course that focuses on critical, analytical, instructive, and creative writing about the world before 1800. Specific topics will vary, but the course will ask students to critically examine writings about the past (which may include but are not limited to old manuscripts or printed books, modern scholarship or journalism about the past, creative adaptations of the past, exhibitions or events focusing on the past) and learn to write about the past with a critical eye. This is not a history class or a class in archival research. Writing about the past can and very often does mean learning to look critically at how the past is represented in our world and to think critically about how we ourselves represent it. This class fulfills the second tier writing requirement and will require each student to write 5000 words (about 20 pages) of academic prose and to revise their writing after peer and instructor feedback. Course may be repeated two times for credit.