Welcome to a semester that I hope exceeds any you have had thus far. As we move through the semester, use this website as a way to keep abreast of what is expected of you in each class. For my ENG 102 students, this is an opportunity for you to enter the academic discussion through research that adds validity and authority to your voice. For my HUM 202 students, this is an opportunity to find your voice in the context of the voices that echo across the world. For both my ENG 102 and my HUM 202 students, this semester offers you the chance to explore yourselves against the backdrop of others, those who have walked before you, alongside you, and those who will follow in the footsteps along the path you have created.
As we go through this year, I want you to think about your own lives. Who are you? Who do you wish to be? How can the literature we read reshape and redefine the lives that have been given to us or that we have chosen for ourselves? What can we learn both through this literary experience and this human experience we have with one another? Quite a few lofty questions, huh? :) But maybe not...if we listen closely and pay attention to the drops of wisdom left on old and browning pages of what we call literature, I assure you there are many of the answers to the questions we seek. We have the choice to either go it alone or allow the ancestors who have walked before us to guide our steps. Each option has value in the lives we live. I challenge you, as we move through this semester, to be engaged, be on point, and be a part of the dialogue. For literature is about us and by us...and without us, there are blank pages and empty volumes of the catalog of life.
"Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become."
- C.S. Lewis
As we go through this year, I want you to think about your own lives. Who are you? Who do you wish to be? How can the literature we read reshape and redefine the lives that have been given to us or that we have chosen for ourselves? What can we learn both through this literary experience and this human experience we have with one another? Quite a few lofty questions, huh? :) But maybe not...if we listen closely and pay attention to the drops of wisdom left on old and browning pages of what we call literature, I assure you there are many of the answers to the questions we seek. We have the choice to either go it alone or allow the ancestors who have walked before us to guide our steps. Each option has value in the lives we live. I challenge you, as we move through this semester, to be engaged, be on point, and be a part of the dialogue. For literature is about us and by us...and without us, there are blank pages and empty volumes of the catalog of life.
"Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become."
- C.S. Lewis