course texts
All required readings are available to you at no cost via the The Course Text for Writing About Literature English 130 at Queens College.
The text consists of the following.
- Academic Writing Strategies and Practices, which are short documents that are packed with important information that will help you develop as an academic writer.
- Literary Analysis Strategies and Practices, which will assist you with developing your analysis of literary texts that we closely read.
- Research and Engaging Sources, which will assist you with conducting credible research and citing sources ethically.
- Literary Texts, including poetry, fiction, and drama, which we will closely read and analyze. A list of literary texts we will read follows and is listed by the essay.
- Readings on Writing, which will help you to think about what your writing is “doing” and with how and why to apply academic writing strategies and practices.
essay 1: critical analysis of a poem
- *“Poetry Is Not a Luxury” (1985) by Audre Lorde
- Selection of Poems
essay 2: lens analysis of a short story
- “The Starfruit Tree” (2015) by Ashwak Fardoush
- “The Women’s Movement in Bangladesh: A Short History and Current Debates” (2017) by Sohela Nazneen
essay 3: researched argument
- Heart of Darkness (1899) by Joseph Conrad
- “The danger of a single story” (2013) by Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche (video)
- *“An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’” (2016) by Chinua Achebe
- *“Discourse and Power” (1992) by Stuart Hall
- “How to Write About Africa” (2005) by Binyavanga Wainaina
readings on writing
The readings on writing will help you to think about what writing is “doing” and with how and why to apply academic reading and writing strategies and practices.
- “How to Read Like a Writer” by Mark Bunn
- *Selections from The Craft of Research (TCOR on the Course Calendar) by Wayne C. Booth, et al.
*During our first week of class, we’ll work on accessing these texts together, which are available via the Queens College Library Database.
writing guides
In addition to the literary texts and readings on writing, you will also read writing guides that provide you with Academic Writing and Literary Analysis Strategies and Practices. These guides were created by academic writing instructors at CUNY Queens College and instructors outside of our college. They are tools to help you compose academic arguments and participate in the many conversations that exist in our intellectual communities at QC and beyond.
They are short texts, but they are packed with important information that will help you develop as an academic writer. You are required to read writing guides for every class.
Academic Writing Strategies and Practices
- 8 Strategies for Engaging Secondary Sources
- Argumentation
- Citing Supporting / Secondary Sources
- Developing and Structuring Argument
- Developing Strong Claims
- Developing Strong Thesis Statements
- Effective Paragraphing
- Gordon Harvey’s “Elements of the Academic Essay”
- Elements of the Annotated Bibliography
- Functions of Sources
- Identifying Intellectual or Interpretive Problems
- Lens Analysis
- Logical Fallacies
- Revision: Re-Seeing Your Writing
- Rhetorical Situation and Appeals
- Section Titles and Signposting
- Strong Research Questions
Literary Analysis Strategies and Practices
- Analyzing with Literary and Key Terms
- Closely Reading Poetry and Prose
- Critical Frameworks for Literary Analysis
- Framing and Introducing Literary Evidence
- Literary and Figurative Devices
- Literary Layers of Discourse
- Literary Theory
- Posing Questions of Literature
- Summarizing a Literary Text
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