In this course we will write and read about silence across several disciplines, including literature, art, music, politics, social history, religion, and the environment. We consider silence not as an absence (of sound) but as a presence, a choice, a strategy and will look at it as a tool of rhetoric, aesthetics, and criticism. The course necessarily takes an interdisciplinary approach, encompassing literary analysis, reflective writing, and practical applications of silence. This course will encourage students to appreciate silence's nuanced role in communication, its capacity to enhance free speech, and its importance in fostering respect and civility. Students will be encouraged to practice silence in and out of class. Each week will include an experience of silence and writing. Team-taught by Professor Nancy Berg and Senior Writer in Residence Kathleen Finneran, faculty members in comparative literature and creative writing, respectively, this course combines theory and practice, the scholarly and the creative. Course texts serve to model ways to write about silence and as inspiration for writing assignments. Suitable for First-Year students. This course counts towards the Creative Writing concentration in the English Department.
Course Attributes: EN H; AS HUM; FA HUM; AR HUM
