LIBA 101 A & ENGL 101 A Strangers in the Family Spring 2023
Instructor: Carol B. Wilson Telephone: 864.597.4577 (O); 864. 430.0438 (C)
E-Mail: wilsoncb@wofford.edu Office: Main 323
Office Hours: MWF 8.30—10:30 AM; By appointment is best since these office hours may conflict with class time. Email to set a time that works for you..
Credit Hours: 03 Location: Main 322 Meeting Times: TR 8 AM – 9.30 AM
Course Description:
Cross-listed as ENGL 101, Wofford's LIBA 101 course is designed to engage students in small-group seminars in humanistic inquiry, with special attention given to value questions and issues and to critical thinking and writing skills. The course includes substantial reading and group discussion, considerable work on English composition skills, and the writing of short essays and other papers.
Class Description
Family. The word names insiders—people like us or people we claim, even if we don’t like them very much or don’t know them at all. It also identifies outsiders—some strangers, some not--those who are not in our circle of biological or legal kinship. Students in this class will read about family relationships in novels, short stories, and plays written between 1955 and the present: works such as Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller and The Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor. In class discussion and papers, we will think about ways that “family” connects and separates, includes and distinguishes, and claims and defamiliarizes. We’ll wonder a bit: about how people identify family, about how strangers can exist within and outside family lines, and about how people may find themselves strangers to themselves or others, inside or outside family relationships. In all those complications, we will explore our own definitions, mindsets, and values as we consider otherness within family relationships.
- Teacher: Carol Wilson