CCOG for ENG 260 Spring 2024
- Course Number:
- ENG 260
- Course Title:
- Introduction to Women Writers
- Credit Hours:
- 4
- Lecture Hours:
- 40
- Lecture/Lab Hours:
- 0
- Lab Hours:
- 0
Course Description
Intended Outcomes for the course
Upon completion of the course students should be able to:
- Analyze the role of gender in shaping texts as a product of particular cultures and historical moments, especially unfamiliar ones.
- Assess women’s writing as a significant influence in the construction of individual and cultural experiences within specific historical contexts.
- Explain elements of form, grammar, dialect, and various language devices as a means by which texts create meaning.
- Develop interpretations that explain the text as a complex fabric or document through the critique of cultural norms thereby creating a richer experience of texts.
Integrative Learning
Students completing an associate degree at Portland Community College will be able to reflect on one’s work or competencies to make connections between course content and lived experience.
General education philosophy statement
English and Writing courses align with the PCC General Education philosophy by providing an appreciation of writing and literature from global and personal perspectives. Students in English courses engage the imagination, critical inquiry and self‐reflection, and in the process of doing so, cultivate a more complex understanding of their own culture(s), linguistic/communication practices, and perspectives in relation to others. Because the literary arts lie at the heart of most human cultures, they are essential for understanding each other and navigating our differences. In literature classes, students explore significant texts from diverse cultures and periods in history. Students look closely at texts from a range of genres, articulating the way elements of writing, content, form, and style are interrelated, and considering how values and interpretations have changed over time and through different theoretical lenses. Students engage texts through critical analysis and creative response, learning to use evidence to support their interpretations and to navigate critical conversations. Students explore literature both as an art form designed to provoke thought and challenge social norms, and as an expression of human experience. Writing and Literature courses foster a stronger sense of engagement with history, culture, and society. Writing and Literature students develop an awareness of themselves as readers and writers in a global world, and an enlarged understanding of the relationships between language, identity, ideas, scholarship, communication, and transformation.
Course Activities and Design
Appreciation
- Articulate ways in which the text focuses on attitudes about and experiences of gender.
- Engage, through the text, unfamiliar and diverse cultures, experiences and points of view.
- Appreciate an apparently simple text as a complex fabric or document.
Context
- Recognize the role of gender in shaping the text as a product of a particular culture and historical moment.
- Understand the text within the context of a literary tradition or convention.
- Acknowledge the possibility of multiple interpretations of a text.
- Recognize the text’s relationship to different art forms.
Form/Structure
- Recognize the variety of stylistic choices that authors make to work within given forms or to challenge their conventions. This may include decisions about theme, image, character, plot, setting, voice, point of view, and figurative language.
- Use knowledge of form as a tool to analyze the text, as well as to demonstrate how form influences meaning.
Analysis
- Evaluate various interpretations of a text--with special emphasis on feminist theory--through reading, writing, and speaking, and through individual and group responses.
- Through close reading of the text, discover and analyze the support for a particular interpretation.
- Write clear, focused, coherent essays about literature for an academic audience, using standard English conventions of grammar and style
Outcome Assessment Strategies
Assessment tools may include informal responses to study questions; evaluation of small-and full-group discussion; in-class and out-of-class writing; formal essays, as well as informal responses to study questions and other types of informal writing; presentations by individuals and groups; short and long essay exams; close reading exercises using evidence; writing exercises which include evaluation of various interpretations of a text and their relative validity. Both instructor and peer evaluation may be incorporated in the assessment process.
Course Content (Themes, Concepts, Issues and Skills)
Competencies and Skills
- Blending autobiographical and academic discourse
- Analysis and synthesis
- Understanding literature through such contexts as gender roles and their expectations; society; politics; artistic conventions; and multiple interpretations of an author.
- Writing about literature
- Close readings
- Critical reading, employing reviews and critical essays
- Speaking and listening reflectively
- Small group collaboration
- Information literacy