Critical thinking. 
Forming claims and providing support. 
Engaging in reflective attention to literary form.
Expanding our social imaginations while looking at how a piece of literature actually works.

These are all attributes of writing a literary analysis essay, where we take a close look at why authors use specific ideas, word choices, and/or writing structures to convey their messages. 

This course is designed to teach students how to write a skilled literary analysis paper. Throughout this course, we will cover the basics of evaluating a literary work, looking at aspects such as setting, tone, characters and imagery. Students will specifically learn the details of a structurally sound essay, how to incorporate a thesis statement, and strategies for supporting text based analysis with strong evidence. We will also cover how to cite textual evidence using MLA format.

In order to successfully participate in this class, students will need to have recently read a novel of their choice, as well as have that novel with them throughout the duration of the course. While no formal prerequisites are required, this course will rely heavily on writing and analyzing literature. It would be helpful for students to be familiar with writing a thesis statement and with finding relevant evidence, but we will quickly review these concepts before we dive deep into the content.

This course is designed to be four segments long. During the first week's session, students will learn the basics of a literary analysis paper through a detailed look into a sample essay, as well as asked to think about and choose an evaluative focus for their own literary analysis essay. During the second week, we will take a deeper look into author choice, specifically looking at how to examine meaning and intentions, and connect specific elements within a piece of literature. The third week will consist of “putting it all together,” diving into integrating and synthesizing analysis into the introduction, body and conclusion of the essay.  This week will also have time allotted for individualized guidance and feedback between students and myself on the progress of their essays. Finally, the fourth session will be the time in which students will share their rough drafts with their classmates, leading to an opportunity for students to collaborate on how to make each other's essays stronger in terms of essay structure, writing style, spelling and grammar.

Throughout the course of this class, students will be expected to spend about an hour to two hours a week outside of class working on their essays. They will share their essays with me via Google Docs, where I will give individualized feedback and guidance for each student to improve his/her writing.

The idea behind this class is that students will gain an in depth understanding of literary analysis essays and how to write them so that they have the foundation to critically think and write about literature. All-in-all, this class will be highly interactive, with a lot of the work happening in the here-and-now of the class session.