Reading in Slow Motion

Application Required

Will Count Towards SAS - English Major and Minor

In this course, we will focus our attention on Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth.

Why only one book? We learn how to read critically not by reading, but by re-reading. And yet, you could scan university syllabi the world over and you would find few courses where students are given the time necessary to reread a text that has already been covered. In this seminar, we will be learning about how we read by moving slowly through a text that is rich, challenging, and unsettling.

Why this book? Wharton is writing before women had the right to vote, before Roe v. Wade, before women could run for president. She will provide us with ways to reflect on the status of women in the US in the early twentieth century and the status of women in the US today.

What else will we read? We will build the rest of the reading list together as we move through Wharton’s novel, following her lead.

What will you do besides read? This is a course in essayistic thinking. As such, it is a course designed to cultivate curiosity and original, research-based writing. There will be daily, graded, in-class responses to the day’s reading; there will be brief formal submissions along the way, as we make our way through Wharton’s novel. And there will be a final, research-based paper that explores a question of the student’s choosing.

Who should take this course? Anyone who wants to be a better reader. Anyone who wants to learn how to write creatively about the real world. Anyone who wants to acquire the habits of the creative mind. STEM students, students in the social sciences, and students in the humanities all will find much of interest in Wharton’s work.

Please note: admission to this course is by permission only. Interested students should fill out the application form, which may be found here. Applications will be read in the order received. Admitted students will receive a special permission number.