230150 Academic Writing (S) (WiSe 2024/2025)

In this class, students will be given the opportunity to extend and consolidate their writing skills in literary studies through regular and intensive writing tasks. In a range of exercises, students will practise how to develop a research question in literary studies, how to turn this question into a clear and detailed thesis statement as a basis for a well-structured argument, and how to write a coherent, cohesive, stylistically appropriate paper.
The ultimate goal of this class is to help prepare students for writing their "long essay" in Basis2.3 and lay the foundation for writing literary and cultural studies papers.

Requirements for participation, required level

Please do not attend this class before you have done - or at least started - ‘Writing and Research’ and/or 'Argumentation and Critical Reading' in Basis1 and the lecture ‘Introduction to Literary Analysis and Interpretation’ in Basis2. I will assume that you know what an academic paragraph is, and the difference between a narrator and a speaker, and how metaphors work. You should also have understood the basics of the MLA style sheet.

Bibliography

Our set text for the whole of the semester is a novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day (1989). Ishiguro was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2017; The Remains of the Day won the Booker Prize in its year of publication. The novel was turned into a film starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson by Ismail Merchant and James Ivory in 1993; the film won several Academy Awards. The novel (and the film) are absolute classics. We will focus on the novel and approach it from a number of different analytical and interpretative angles.
You must own and read a PRINT copy of the novel, which you will be allowed to use in the two exams. No ebooks will be allowed in the exam, duh.