2025-2026 Pierce College Catalog 
    
    Jul 04, 2025  
2025-2026 Pierce College Catalog
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ENGL& 111 Introduction to Literature (5 credits)



Distribution Area Fulfilled Humanities; General Transfer Elective
Formerly ENGL 200 - CCN

Course Description
Explores historical and contemporary literary works and techniques through analyses of selected fiction, drama, and poetry emphasizing diversity in content and expression through form.

Course Content
Introduction to different types of literary genres (eg. poetry, fiction, drama, and essay) Formal elements of literary genre (e.g. poetry, short fiction, drama, novel, memoir, etc.) Textual analysis Critical approaches to the study of literature Historical, literary, and social-political contexts of literature and its reception Ethical research skills for literary study Rhetorical reception Reading and writing and their relationship to identity and performativity

Student Outcomes
 

  1. Examine how writers use literary form and structure for a variety of rhetorical purposes. 
  2. Compare works of literature and their historical, socio-political, and critical contexts. 
  3. Apply various literary critical approaches to literature.
  4. Use ethical research skills to support textual interpretations of literature.
  5. Analyze literary texts, related criticism, and their contexts in order to develop argument-based written projects.
  6. Reflect on how readers’ and writers’ identities and performances shape divergent rhetorical understandings of literature.


Degree Outcomes
Humanities: Graduates acquire critical skills to interpret, analyze, and evaluate forms of human expression, which can include creation and performance as an expression of human experience.

Intercultural Engagement: Graduates demonstrate self-efficacy in intercultural engagement to advance equity, diversity, and inclusion through reflections and expressions of cultural humility, empathy, and social and civic engagement and action. Further, graduates examine how identities/positionalities such as races, social classes, genders, sexual orientations, disabilities, and cultures impact perceptions, actions, and the distribution of power and privilege in communities, systems, and institutions.

Critical, Creative and Reflective Thinking: Graduates will evaluate, analyze, synthesize, and generate ideas; construct informed, meaningful, and justifiable conclusions; and process feelings, beliefs, biases, strengths, and weaknesses as they relate to their thinking, decisions, and creations.

Information Literacy: Graduates will be critical users, creators, and disseminators of information by examining how information is created, valued, and influenced by power and privilege.

Lecture Contact Hours 50
Lab Contact Hours 0
Clinical Contact Hours 0
Total Contact Hours 50

Potential Methods
A. Formal writings: essays, essay exams, research reports, reading responses B. Projects: group presentations, individual presentations, multimedia productions C. Informal writings: journals, in-class responses, brainstorming, freewriting, paraphrase and summary D. Group discussions and classroom activities E. Exams and quizzes: short answer, matching, multiple choice



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