Course Details

This course considers a range of writers who have taken on that challenge and, in a variety of ways, in different eras, have depicted life in Seattle. Reading assignments for this class include fiction, poetry, vignettes, essays, and popular song lyrics that explore the city, its history, its geography, and its diverse population.

One of the goals of this course is to ask how literary representations have shaped, conformed to, diverged from, and /or contested prevailing images of Seattle. In popular culture and commercial contexts Seattle is often associated with economic cycles of boom and bust; it has been cast as a town beset by provinciality, or as a singular locale that has evolved from pioneering outpost to radical hotbed to hi-tech hub. Often defined as a gateway to the great outdoors, Seattle has also been called a livable city and a city of neighborhoods. It has come to be known, too, as a hip city, celebrated for its coffee culture, grunge music, and cutting edge arts scene. The texts selected for this course illuminate, complicate, and enrich such understandings of the city. As Peter Donahue remarks in Reading Seattle: The City in Prose, literature may serve to “amplify, augment and add to” readers’ own experiences of Seattle, making the city more legible to them and guiding them to interpret it with new insight.

This course also notes that Seattle has emerged as one of America’s most literate cities. In Seattle, literary festivals, readings, bookstores, and special events abound. In order to encourage students to discover and experience some of that cultural vitality, there will be opportunities to work with community organizations that promote writing in and about Seattle. Students may choose to volunteer 2-3 hours a week, to reflect on their experiences in connection with issues raised in classroom discussion and reading assignments, and to include written reports of their activities in their Honors portfolios. Students who prefer may write a 7-8 page research paper or web-based project in lieu of service learning.

Students will compose several drafts of their essay assignments and they will receive peer review along with feedback from the instructor. Editing and revision are an integral part of the process of writing; students will rework their essays in order to refine their prose, articulate their views, and practice proofreading, citation and documentation of sources.