Required of students in Writing and Literature. Ways of Reading focuses on a particular canonical author or text(s), utilizing various critical perspectives and secondary sources to support a deeper understanding of the work. The course further develops and reinforces practical skills in close reading, historical contextualization, applied critical theory, and the use of discipline-specific research tools and resources, encouraging conscious reflection on critical presuppositions and practices. This course prepares students to enter the Critical Essay Workshop.Translation is a deep and creative mode of reading, and in this course we will use its practices and theories to study poems from around the world. We'll compare different translations of a poem, considering works such Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei and Via by Caroline Bergvall, as a method of close reading. We'll create new translations based on our discussions, and, with the aid of glossaries, students will translate from languages they have no prior knowledge of in order to consider each element of the work and get closer to what Rosmarie Waldrop calls, "the nucleus of creative energy that is at the beginning of a poem." Visiting translators, essays on translation theory, and in-class experiments will enhance our appreciation and understanding of world poetry in translation. This course is open to everyone interested in language and poetry whether or not you are proficient in a second language.

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