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Weekly Syllabus
1
What We Talk About When We Talk About Reading
We have been reading since kindergarten, and listening to stories since we were in our cradles. So, why do we need this programme now? How different could reading a book be from reading an Instagram post? Is reading solely a textual activity?
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In this introductory session, we will answer these questions with some fascinating stories and, in the process, understand the fundamentals of what we call “Critical Reading”.
Readings: The Readings for this week include three classic short stories by Anton Chekhov, O. Henry and Guy De Maupassant.
2
Elementary, my dear Watson
In the second session, we play the Sherlocks of reading – deducing the unsaid from the said. We will introduce various genres, theories, schools of thought, ideas, and ideologies that shape literature.
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We will also explore a range of internal and external tools for reading, and use them to complete in-class assignments.
Readings: The Readings for this week include short stories by James Thurber, Edgar Allan Poe, Ursula K. Le Guin and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
3
Here is Everywhere
In our third session, we will explore the most overexploited yet underappreciated form of literature, setting it free from the five walls that have long imprisoned it.
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We will also discuss why we must continue writing love letters in the age of Insta texts, and how the practice fosters a rare, coveted trait found only among the best readers – a quality that is hard to learn, and even harder to preserve.
Readings: The Readings for this week include essays by Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, Annie Dillard and David Foster Wallace.
4
Zhuangzi and the Butterfly
In this session, we will confront a topic that is timeless yet more contemporary now than ever – identity. What does that word even mean? What is its value in literature? How does reading negotiate between identity and anonymity? In the age of TikTok and Gemini, what does literature have to offer to the eternal search for identity? Where does translation figure within this puzzle?
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Readings: The Readings for this week include short stories by John Updike, Yiyun Li, A. Muthulingam and Alice Walker.5
O Captain! My Captain!
In our final session, we will confront that four-letter ghost that haunts us in schools and SATs alike – Poem. But we will find new ways to look at it without giving a (different four-letter word) about rhyme, rhythm, and iambic whatever-meters. We’ll discuss the simple joys of reading poetry, the relevance of poetry to our times, and why some of the lyricists and Insta poets we follow may not actually be poets.
Details
In this introductory session, we will answer these questions with some fascinating stories and, in the process, understand the fundamentals of what we call “Critical Reading”.
Readings: The Readings for this week include a range of poems from Lord Byron to Frank O’Hara.