CCOG for ENG 105 Winter 2025


Course Number:
ENG 105
Course Title:
Introduction to Drama (ENG105=ENG105Z)
Credit Hours:
4
Lecture Hours:
40
Lecture/Lab Hours:
0
Lab Hours:
0

Course Description

Provides opportunities for the appreciation of drama, one of the most ancient art forms, including deeper awareness of craft and insight into how reading plays can lead to self-enrichment. Covers a variety of types of drama, from diverse perspectives and eras, develops skills in discussion, literary analysis, and critical thinking. Examines the study of plays, exposing us to texts with the power to shock, inspire, enlighten, and delight; the study of drama can be an empowering and transformative journey toward keener engagement with the world, local community, and your intended path. This course is part of Oregon Common Course Numbering. ENG 105 and ENG 105Z are equivalent. Prerequisites: (RD 115 and WR 115) or IRW 115 or equivalent placement. Audit available.

Intended Outcomes for the course

Upon successful completion of the course students should be able to:

  1. Articulate how culture and context shape literary texts and how literature contributes to understandings of ourselves and the world.
  2. Identify how literary devices and various formal elements contribute meaning to a text.
  3. Build interpretations based on relevant evidence.
  4. Read a diverse selection of dramatic texts.

Integrative Learning

Students completing an associate degree at Portland Community College will be able to reflect on one’s work or competencies to make connections between course content and lived experience.

General education philosophy statement

English and Writing courses align with the PCC General Education philosophy by providing an appreciation of writing and literature from global and personal perspectives. Students in English courses engage the imagination, critical inquiry and self‐reflection, and in the process of doing so, cultivate a more complex understanding of their own culture(s), linguistic/communication practices, and perspectives in relation to others. Because the literary arts lie at the heart of most human cultures, they are essential for understanding each other and navigating our differences. In literature classes, students explore significant texts from diverse cultures and periods in history. Students look closely at texts from a range of genres, articulating the way elements of writing, content, form, and style are interrelated, and considering how values and interpretations have changed over time and through different theoretical lenses. Students engage texts through critical analysis and creative response, learning to use evidence to support their interpretations and to navigate critical conversations. Students explore literature both as an art form designed to provoke thought and challenge social norms, and as an expression of human experience. Writing and Literature courses foster a stronger sense of engagement with history, culture, and society. Writing and Literature students develop an awareness of themselves as readers and writers in a global world, and an enlarged understanding of the relationships between language, identity, ideas, scholarship, communication, and transformation.

Outcome Assessment Strategies

Acknowledge the possibility of multiple interpretations of a text; Articulate various possible interpretations of a text; Recognize that not all interpretations of a text are equally valid.  Assessment tools may include responses to study questions; evaluation of small and full-group discussion; in-class and out-of-class writing exams and essays; and reviews of plays. Performance of scenes from plays may also be included as an assessment task. 

Course Content (Themes, Concepts, Issues and Skills)

Themes, Concepts, and Issues:

  • tragedy
  • comedy
  • romance
  • satire
  • allegory
  • morality play
  • revenge tragedy
  • tragicomedy
  • comedy of manners
  • commedia dell'arte
  • myth
  • Aristotle's definition of tragedy
  • Tragic Hero
  • Classical Drama
  • Elizabethan/ Renaissance Drama
  • Restoration Drama
  • Realism
  • Modernism
  • Theater of the Absurd
  • postmodernism
  • monologue
  • dialogue
  • soliloquy
  • staging
  • stage directions
  • setting
  • scenes
  • acts
  • plot
  • climax
  • characters
  • protagonist
  • antagonist
  • antihero
  • theme
  • chorus
  • odes
  • prologue
  • epilogue
  • strophe/ antistrophe
  • choragos
  • blank verse
  • free verse
  • iambic pentameter
  • couplet
  • prose verse
  • irony
  • symbolism
  • images
  • conceits
  • diction
  • tone
  • intertexuality
  • structuralism/ post-structuralism
  • feminist criticism
  • Marxist criticism
  • new criticism/ formalism
  • psychoanalytic theory and criticism


Competencies and Skills:

  • analysis
  • writing about drama
  • understanding drama through various contexts, such as social, historical, artistic convention, intertextual, playwright's vision
  • critical interpretation of dramatic performance on video or live theater
  • critical reading of reviews
  • speaking and listening reflectively
  • small-group collaboration