Welcome to Module 3 of our course!

In this Module, which runs from October 20-November 29, we’ll deepen our community of readers and writers and apply our emerging skills as academics to participate in, observe, and facilitate conversations around books that we’ve always wanted to have.

The main ways we’ll do this are:

• carefully reading and thoughtfully discussing the book you’ve chosen
• posing questions to your group members that help them deepen their reading experience
• analyzing various features of the book you’ve picked, like voice, structure, scene, exposition.
• recognizing where this writer places the book in the larger culture a “lineage” of narratives
• reflecting on, adhering to, and assessing the norms and roles for your work in book groups

There are a number of activities that will help us do this. Some of them are listed on the syllabus, some will emerge from class discussion and writing tasks.

All will hopefully help us think about the big goal: articulating your reaction to the book in a research-informed essay that might: a) respond to the group-reading experience b) consider questions of identity and lineage that we’ve been considering this semester or c) engage the question of what nonfiction writing can do for conversations about social issues and identity.