In this course, you will use literature to deepen your understanding of the rich, complex, and varied engagement between human beings and the places they inhabit and imagine. You will also examine how places, with their history, traditions, myths, customs, tensions, social structures, and physical form interact with people’s lives. Specific sections will focus on a particular city, neighborhood, or region, or on a topic such as City and Country, Women and the Black Diaspora, Utopia, the Literature of the Sea, Elizabethan London, the American West, Colonies, Imaginary Places, Homelessness, or Outer Space. Readings may include fiction, drama, poetry, life writing, and nonfiction.

This course is a Writing Intensive (W) course and it fulfills one Writing Intensive requirement. W classes include a significant portion of time devoted to writing instruction. This may include things such as revision workshops, discussions of rhetorical s trategies, or reflective writing about writing assignments.

English 162/162W is a general education course that satisfies the Literature requirement (LIT) for the College Option under the CUNY General Education structure called Pathways.

Course Topic:

What is a place? Philosophically, politically, physically, virtually, emotionally, psychologically, and/or spiritually?

In this course we will focus on how each of us defines place within the context of the world, our communities, our life histories and journeys, and–of course–literature. Our guiding question will be: What is a place for us? How do we make a place ours? What place(s) do we belong to?

We will be reading poems, essays, short stories, excerpts of fiction and nonfiction books, articles, blogs, and, possibly, social media posts.