PMA 1160 - FWS:Wonderlands and Other Worlds

Spring. 3 credits. Letter grades only.

First-Year Writing Seminar.

J. Cole.

Fantastic places often cut into reality with a “subtle knife” or fold it via tesseract. Transported to timeless noplaces masquerading as whimsical flights of fancy, like Neverland or Oz, we enter a wardrobe into dark, melancholy, even eerie imaginary lands. We journey alongside children touched by trauma, and together we navigate the most treacherous adventures: recovery and maturity. Through different writing assignments we will cross these thin borderlands into Lyra’s Oxford, Martin’s Fillory, Percy’s Camp Half-Blood, Bastian’s Fantasia, Eve’s Bayou, or Miranda’s Hanging Rock, and using critical strategies, explore them. With an emphasis on cinema and television adaptations (which are themselves familiar worlds transformed), and with particular foci on diverse identities, we will practice critical strategies to closely analyze and articulate in writing evidence-based arguments.