300-400 LEVEL COURSES - New Category: tn

Institution:

University of Massachusetts-Boston

Subject:

Description:

"As long as you're reading [Alice] Munro, you're failing to multi-task by absorbing civics lessons or historical data. Her subject is people. People people people." Jonathan Franzen's assessment of Alice Munro's subject matter is accurate. Munro, born in Ontario in 1931, devotes her short stories to the lives of ordinary Canadians who fall in and out of love, dream of escaping dreary farmland, ponder their next move in life, go off to college or a job, commit adultery, suddenly do something impulsive. Although her stories have been described as "pure" and "simple," Munro herself has said, "The complexity of things - the things within things - just seems to be endless. . . Nothing is easy, nothing is Born in London and raised as an American citizen, Jhumpa Lahiri is a gifted short story writer and novelist whose first collection won the Pulitzer Prize when she was thirty. Like Munro, Lahiri, 42, writes about ostensibly ordinary people. Most of her characters live in India or emigrate from India to the U.S., many of them settling in the Boston area, where Lahiri herself was educated. Your task will be to discern the similarities and differences in these two authors' subject matter, themes, narrative techniques, characterizations and prose styles, improving your own skill in analysis and writing as we progress. Since this course is not primarily lecture-based, there will be a strong emphasis on class discussions and group work, many in-class writings and quizzes, and three major papers, as well as a mid-term exam and a final exam.

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.umb.edu

Phone Number:

(617) 287-5000

Regional Accreditation:

New England Association of Schools and Colleges

Calendar System:

Semester

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