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: notes on place, literature, history, and method :

So You Wanna Prepare for a Literature Seminar

A few questions to consider in the week leading up to a seminar, to guide your engagement with the assigned material, and improve your well-being, scholastically speaking.

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{Before reading}

About the author

  • When/where did the author live and work? (decades; country, city)
  • Who were some of the author’s associates? (literary, artistic, political, philosophical, etc.)
  • What literary or artistic movements did the author participate in? Or inaugurate? Or respond to?
  • What forms did the author typically write in?

About the text

  • When/where was the text published? (year, city)
  • Where did the text appear in the course of the writers career? (first? last?)
  • What is the text’s apparent form and/or genre?

{During reading}

  • How do the paratexts frame the reading? Consider title page, epigraphs, preface, editor’s introduction.

  • Where and how does the text depart from its apparent genre? Identify specific passages that demonstrate these departures.

  • Highlight 3-5 passages that seem formally or thematically important. Think of these as passages you would want to read aloud in seminar.

  • Note recurring images, words, or syntactic patterns. Have we encountered those images/words/patterns in previous texts?

  • Highlight any passages that genuinely puzzle you. Consider asking about these during class.

{After reading}

  • Where does this text fit in the narrative of the course, up to this point?

    • What lines of thought does the text continue? (Identity exemplary passages to share in class.)

    • What new lines of thought does the text introduce or engage with? (Identify exemplary passages to share in class.)

    • What is the strongest case for this text’s inclusion on the syllabus? What would be a case for excluding this text from the syllabus?

  • What is the relation between the primary text and any assigned secondary readings (theory, history, scholarship)? Does the primary text exemplify the points made in the secondary texts, or diverge?