FYS 24 The (SLAC) Campus Novel
In this course, students will be asked to think critically about the form and content of what is known as "the campus novel," or a work of fiction that takes place on, or is centered around, student life on a university or college campus. Specifically, students will join the ongoing conversations that focus on campus novels that are set in fictional — or perhaps fictionalized — small liberal arts college (SLAC) campuses. Authors may include, but are not limited to, Donna Tartt, Don Lee, Elisabeth Thomas and Mona Awad. By analyzing creative narratives of student lives at SLACs, alongside academic scholarship on higher education in the United States, this first year seminar will invite participants to think deeply about their own desires and demands from Occidental College, and from a liberal arts education writ large. Open only to first-year frosh.