Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Prerequisite: Placement into WR 121. Recommended: Completion of ENG 104, 105 or106.

Upon successful completion students should be able to:

1. Analyze working-class literature to recognize the differences among working-class experience in a variety of international contexts.

2. Recognize that literature is produced in a variety of historical, cultural, sociological and political contexts.

3. Identify differences in style and form in working-class literature that are determined by national and international class and/or caste considerations.

4. Use the tools of literary analysis—in respectful evaluations of international working-class literatures—during discussions with colleagues, peers, family members, and other groups and individuals.

5. Recognize the ways that the audience affects linguistic expectations—whether that audience be readers, instructors, peers, or individuals encountered during travel or in the workplace.

Class meeting time consists of lecture, group discussion, small group discussion, and groupor individual presentations. Meeting time may also include the following: writing;performing; viewing DVDs, online sources or videotapes; listening to performances, guestspeakers, or audio recordings.

Assessment tools will include a variety of the following:

• attendance requirements, e.g. students missing a week's worth of class may not expect an A; those missing two week's worth may not pass the course.

• informal responses to literary texts and lectures such as quizzes, study questions orjournals;

• participation in small-and full- group discussion;

• in-class and out-of-class writing;

• presentations or performances by individuals and groups;

• short and long essay examinations;

• close reading exercises using support/evidence;

• portfolios of creative writing or visual art forms;

• dance, theatrical or spoken-word performances;

• academic essays that evaluate various interpretations of a text and their relative validity

• Both instructor and peer evaluation may be incorporated into the assessment process.

The course will introduce and foster understanding of: the numerous ways that class is defined in a variety of cultures, the differences between class identity in relatively static confines and uncertain/fluid models of culture, ways and reasons that working-class literature has traditionally been marginalized stereotypes and generalizations of international members of working class and the response of working-class literature to such generalizations the ways that working-class literature identifies intersections class with race,gender, ethnicity, citizenship, educational status, and sexual orientation the necessity, when considering working-class literature, to expand traditional notions of literary genres (poetry, fiction, drama) to include forms such as letters,memoirs, oral history, songs, speeches, leaflets, rhetorical considerations, especially with regards to socio-historical context,intended audience and political purpose of working-class texts, the relationships between creativity and productivity, especially within the context of power and ownership, themes of power and powerlessness, the significance of linguistic styles in representing power relationships, the limitation of reading texts in English to evaluate international working-class culture.