ELIT 1101
First-Year Seminar: The Literary Life
This class approaches literature from many angles: the creative to the scholarly, the personal to the ethical, the edifying to the entertaining. At the heart of our study will be a survey of literary values such as invention, emotion, style, subversion, beauty, humor-those fundamental reasons readers come to literature in the first place. Through readings and discussion, we will consider the great variety of ways literature expresses these values, and will explore them ourselves via creative assignments. Along the way, we will learn about literary life today through discussions with nationally renowned writers who will visit the class, and through units on literary scholarship, book reviewing, and magazine and book publishing. In the midst of it all, you will write and workshop your own stories, poems, and non-fiction works. Course enrollment preference is given to first-year students.
Instructors
Reviews
Took Publishing,wouldn't let me change the name Marty is great!I definitely agree with the other ratings that he can be intimidating at first, but it seems like he makes a real effort not to be.He is incredibly knowledgable about the publishing industry.He also really wants to make his students better writers and help them get access to resources.
12/19/2024
This class was so much fun. I didn't think I was interested in publishing, but Marty made the content so interesting. The readings could be long, but they were engaging and not too hard. He gives good feedback and isn't a super hard grader.
12/16/2024
Marty is totally awesome. He's a super engaging professor and the readings he chose for our class were super interesting and fun to read. If you complete the assignments, you'll do well on them. It can feel embarrassing to get a question wrong because he's very knowledgeable but you'll learn a lot. Definitely take a class with him!
12/5/2024
Even though he says, "Call me Marty!" you will be terrified of him at first. He tends to shoot down students when they are wrong, but participation is important. Once you prove yourself to him, the class becomes much easier, so try to do this with the first big assignment. Super experienced in publishing, which makes related classes great.
4/13/2023
Professor Austin is a caring teacher, but we received no feedback on our work for the class. It was nice to earn good grades for putting in the effort, but I was hoping for more substantial feedback on my work. We also didn't really discuss readings and often jumped around randomly doing things that weren't in the syllabus.
1/16/2022
His lectures are interesting and the assigned readings are too. I found him to be very intimidating--I was scared to ask and answer questions because I felt like I would be shot down if I was wrong. He's an amazing writer and knows what he's talking about, so if you want to take a class that he teaches, go for it.
1/16/2022
Ron is the best. i hadn't had a good writing teacher until i had him for college writing. he offered to help me outside of class and reached out to me multiple times asking how each paper was going. he really cares about his students and he's also not very strict with deadlines. overall, a chill guy with interesting things to say about each reading
3/20/2019