The Pleasures of Reading

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HNR 340 – The Pleasures of Reading

MySlice Info:

Class #: 12185
Section: M001
Credits: 3

Instructor:
Kuusisto, Stephen

Counts toward:
HNR Hum

Course Time(s):
MW 02:15pm-03:35pm

Location:
Class times and locations often change. Please verify your class schedule in MySlice.

Course Description:

Anthony Trollope once remarked that “book love… is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for His creatures.” In this course we’ll explore the pleasures of reading. What is aesthetic pleasure? What really makes language beautiful? Why do certain poems capture us? Why does well drawn realism in short stories create a lasting impression? What about the pleasures of genre? What do we mean by the term “pleasure reading?” Do thrillers, murder mysteries, and science fiction matter to the life of the mind? How does reading help us in times of trouble? Why does comedy writing successfully convey ideas that would be unacceptable in most newspapers?

Ursula leGuin, Ernest Hemingway, Flannery O’Connor, Tess Gerritsen (Rizzoli & Isles), Kurt Vonnegut Jr., William Shakespeare, Pablo Neruda, James Baldwin, Walt Whitman, and you—for our class writing assignments will consist of our own imitations, our goal, pleasure in words.