This course teaches students methods for analyzing, interpreting and writing about literature, including schools of thought such as psychoanalytic, new historicist, and race, class and gender perspectives. Students demonstrate proficiency in interpretation and critique, employing terms, tools and concepts of the literary critic, and identifying assumptions informing analyses of poetry, drama, fiction, film, etc. The course looks at critical history, reviews foundations from the 19th and 20th Centuries, and surveys the critical approaches important today. Students enrich their skills as scholastic writers by applying learned methodologies to close readings of literary texts.