Announcement of Classes: Summer 2019

R1A/1

Reading and Composition:
Global Bookworm: Am I a Cosmopolitan Yet?

TuWTh 9:30-12

This course investigates how books (and book selection) allow us to form individual conceptions of what is “global.” We will read texts that represent an array of perspectives on identity, national allegiance, and global travel, maintai...(read more)

R1A/2

Reading and Composition:
Monster Culture in Print and Film

TuWTh 1-3:30

The 19th century saw the publication of several landmark monster novels, birthing a genre that would achieve a similarly widespread popularity in the films of the 1980s and 1990s. This course will examine three monsters of Victorian literature&mdas...(read more)

R1A/3

Reading and Composition:
Mere Humanism

MTuTh 2-4

This course will evaluate the role that 'Humanism' has played across a transhistorical spectrum and a diverse generic range (we will read prose, drama, poetry across roughly five centuries). While the first half of the course will solidify ...(read more)

R1B/1

Reading and Composition:
Riddle Me This: Puzzles, Puns, and Palimpsests

TuWTh 1-3:30

"Have you guessed the riddle yet?" the Hatter said, turning to Alice again.

"No, I give it up," Alice replied. "What's the answer?"

"I haven't the slightest idea," said the Hatter....(read more)

R1B/2

Reading and Composition:
The Literature of Climate Change

TuWTh 9:30-12

This course explores literary, scientific, and postcolonial perspectives on ecological crisis on a global scale from early-19th-century ecological writing to contemporary climate fiction. Tracing the emergence of a planetary ecological consciousnes...(read more)

R1B/3

Reading and Composition:
Bodies in Motion: Refugee Experience and Contemporary Fiction

MTuTh 12-2

"But there were unspoken conditions to our acceptance, and that was the secret we were meant to glean on our own: we had to be grateful," writes Dina Nayeri of her family's experience seeking asylum in the United States in "The U...(read more)

111/1

Chaucer

TuWTh 9:30-12

In this course we will study The Canterbury Tales and its continuations, paying special attention to the topics of imitation, innovation, and literary influence. As we learn about the literary traditions Chaucer so deftly passes over and t...(read more)

117S/1

Shakespeare

TuWTh 5-7:30 PM

This class focuses on a selection of works from Shakespeare's entire career. We'll be reading a limited number of plays and some of the poetry. One of the main issues we'd like to focus on is the oscillation between "regular" ...(read more)

135AC/1

Literature of American Cultures:
American Hustle—Immigration, Ethnicity, and the American Dream

TuWTh 12-2

This course, which constitutes a survey of ethnic American literature, asks about the desires, imagination, and labor that go into the American dream. What is the relationship between immigration and dreams of upward mobility in America? &nbsp...(read more)

143A/1

Short Fiction

TuWTh 2-4:30

The Literary Magazine and the Short Story as Genre.  This course will be both a short fiction workshop and a craft class studying the literary short story as a genre. Rather than approach literary fiction as the norm from which genre fiction d...(read more)

143A/2

Short Fiction

MW 2-5

In this eight-week course, we will focus on two things: learning about contemporary publishing venues for short fiction—both traditional journals and online platforms—and workshopping the participants' fiction. Together, we will rea...(read more)

143B/1

Verse

TuWTh 10-12:30

This course is a poetry writing workshop. Students will submit new drafts of poems weekly, and we will read and discuss these together, supporting each other's growth as writers. We will also study contemporary examples focusing on poetry of th...(read more)

143N/1

Prose Nonfiction:
Food Writing

TuTh 2-5

This eight-week summer class centers on workshopping your own literary nonfiction, helping you draw on the distinctive forms and techniques of the personal essay, memoir, travel writing, cultural criticism, and journalistic reportage to speak to, o...(read more)

152/1

Women Writers:
Jane Austen

MTuTh 4-6

In this course we will read—closely and deeply—a handful of novels by Jane Austen, considering them in terms of their historical context, their stylistic sophistication and innovation, and their enduring popular appeal. Accord...(read more)

166AC/1

Special Topics in American Cultures:
Race and Ethnicity in Classical Hollywood Cinema

TuWTh 12-2:30

An introduction to critical thinking about race and ethnicity, focused on films produced in Hollywood between the 1920s and 1960s and independent cinema from the 1980s that responds to these classical precedents. Themes include law and violence, ki...(read more)

173/1

The Language and Literature of Films:
The Romantic Comedy

TuWTh 3-5:30

This class considers the capacious genre of the rom-com by examining a range of its concerns (gender & sexuality, feminism, race, romance, narrative closure). We will not only watch films (from classic Hollywood rom-com to more contemporary ite...(read more)

176/1

Literature and Popular Culture:
O, the horror! Horror Films and Horror Fiction

TuWTh 12:30-3

This course will examine the historical development of the horror genre in both film and literature. Horror is a notoriously comprehensive genre, borrowing from  numerous story-telling and literary traditions. In this class we will address the...(read more)