Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Writing about Stories

I started taking a couple of units through Coursera over the Summer. My favourite unit is Fantasy and Science Fiction:The Human Mind, Our Modern World by Professor Eric Rabkin from the University of Michigan. One of the things I wanted to work on with these units is my written argument skills, as they're the area that needs further honing to get me through the PhD candidacy process.

So what I love about this unit is how grueling it is – there are ten set texts, and each week requires a 270-320 word essay on the week's text. The turn around time and brevity of each essay really has been forcing me to develop and articulate my arguments with great efficiency.

Over the next couple of months I'll be posting my short essays on the following texts here:
  1. Grimm — Children's and Household Tales (Lucy Crane translation with Walter Crane illustrations)
  2. Carroll — Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass
  3. Stoker — Dracula
  4. Shelley — Frankenstein
  5. Hawthorne & Poe — Stories and Poems
  6. Wells — The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Invisible Man, "The Country of the Blind," "The Star"
  7. Burroughs & Gilman — A Princess of Mars & Herland
  8. Bradbury — The Martian Chronicles
  9. LeGuin — The Left Hand of Darkness
  10. Doctorow — Little Brother

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