Overview
Reading literature is at once a familiar and deeply peculiar state of consciousness. In this course, we will take seriously the felt experience (or “phenomenology”) of reading. We will explore the reading event itself as our primary object of study, rather than the meaning or interpretation of literary works. Our approach will combine personal introspection with theory.
The course also asks historical and contemporary questions about reading as a practice. Reading literature has been around for a few thousand years, yet it is not a timeless or universal activity detached from history; it is a learned and ever-evolving practice. What does the future hold for readers?
Throughout the course, we will practice describing our own reading experience with precision, evaluating ethical claims about literature, and asking ourselves how and why reading matters and how it continues to matter in a world of accelerated media, artificial intelligence, and changing forms of attention. Literary reading may refine attention, sharpen feeling and empathy, and expose our unfortunate tendency to project ourselves onto others, but it may also sentimentalize, appropriate, or confirm what a reader already assumes.
Outline
MAIS 752 covers the following topics:
Unit 1: Entering Literary Worlds
Unit 2: Reading as Sustained Attention
Unit 3: Emotion and Embodiment
Unit 4: The Ethics of Reading
Unit 5: The Reading Life
Learning outcomes
By the end of the course, students should be able to
- analyze literary reading as a situated event of consciousness, embodiment, emotion, attention, and interpretation;
- apply theoretical frameworks to the description of specific literary reading experiences;
- evaluate claims about the ethical value and ethical risk of reading literature;
- compare how literary form, material media, technologies, cultural traditions, and institutional settings organize different practices of reading and rereading; and
- produce a sustained critical, pedagogical, or creative-critical project that connects close reading and rereading to broader questions about consciousness, mediation, ethics, and the reading life.
Evaluation
To receive credit for MAIS 752, students must participate in ongoing discussion activities, complete and submit all assignments, and achieve a minimum grade of C− (60 percent) for the entire course.
A student's final grade in the course will be based on the marks achieved for the following activities.
| Activity | Weight |
| Weekly Discussion Participation | 25% |
| Reflective Essay 1: Describing a Reading Experience | 15% |
| Reflective Essay 2: Reading, Ethics, and Otherness | 15% |
| Reflective Essay 3: Reading Across Media | 15% |
| Independent Reading Project | 30% |
| Total | 100% |
Materials
Digital course materials
Links to the following course materials will be made available in the course:
Le Guin, Ursula K. The Left Hand of Darkness. ACE, 1987.
Morrison, Toni. Beloved. 1987. Vintage Books, 2004.
Other Materials
All other materials are available online.