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.

Till recently, the notion of a “Seattle literature” has received relatively little attention. Interest in it has been overshadowed by efforts to establish a canon of Pacific Northwest writing– -a body of work devoted largely to environmental themes and a focus on nature. Since the 1980s and 1990s, though, writing about Seattle has gained prominence, even as the city itself has gained a higher profile both nationally and internationally. No single school of writing prevails – there has been no Seattle movement per se — but multiple texts have been inspired by and respond to distinctively Seattle milieus, circumstances, and personalities.

How has the literary imagination perceived and portrayed Seattle? 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 has often been associated with economic cycles of boom and bust; it has been cast as a town beset by provinciality and boosterism, and 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.

In the past two decades, even as literature of Seattle has proliferated, Seattle has emerged as one of America’s most literate cities. Literary festivals, readings, bookstores, and special events abound. This course encourages students to discover and experience some of that cultural vitality. Students will have opportunities to work with community organizations
that promote writing in and about Seattle, so as to learn about contemporary literary voices and about museums, historical societies, and other agencies engaged with recounting stories of Seattle’s past. 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 in lieu of service learning. Another option is to prepare an exhibit on Seattle in literature for the UW Libraries. This is a C (Composition) course, which means that student 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.