Spring 2023 English Dept. Courses

Linked course titles have extended descriptions. Syllabi provided where available.

Course	Title	Day	Time	Instructor	Room	Syllabus	Description
ENG 105	Intro to Creative Writing	MWF	9:30-10:25 AM	Grzecki, Matt			This course will introduce students to three types of creative writing: poetry, fiction, and nonfiction (including mixed genres). The course will focus on inspiration (why write a poem or a story or an essay?) as well as the techniques of evocative, compelling writing across all literary genres (e.g., point of view, concrete detail, lyricism, image, voice, tone, structure, dialogue, and characterization). Students will examine work by authors from various traditions and produce creative work in each genre. ENG 105 prepares students for upper-level creative writing courses in fiction and poetry.
ENG 107	Living Writers	W	3:45-6:30 PM	Harwell, Sarah			This class gives students the rare opportunity to hear contemporary writers read and discuss their work. The class is centered on six readings and question-and-answer sessions. Students will be responsible for careful readings of the writers’ work. Critical writing and detailed class discussions are required to prepare for the question-and-answer sessions with the visiting writers. Visiting Writers for the spring include Katie Kitamura, Brandon Hobson, Andrea Cohen, among others.
ENG 113	British Lit to 1789	MW	3:45-5:05 PM	Shaw, Morgan			This course will introduce you to British literature from the earliest Anglo-Saxon epics to the satire of the eighteenth century. We will read and analyze an array of literary works, attending to the transformation of English culture and identity over this vast 1000-year period. We will engage our course readings critically by situating them within their historical, political, and socio-cultural contexts. Given the nature of this course, we will also think critically about what it means to study the “beginning” of British literature and its various “truth(s).” Guided by these and other inquiries, you will develop your reading, analytic, and writing skills as we chart a contiguous course through the British literary canon.
ENG 118	American Lit Since 1865	MW	12:45-2:05 PM	Edmunds, Susan			This course offers a survey of U.S. literature written in the last century and a half. Class discussion will combine close readings of selected literary texts with a focus on how texts engage the dynamic relationship between sociohistorical change and the emergence of new literary forms. Recurring topics of discussion include: war; immigration; racial justice and injustice; U.S. consumerism and the growing production of waste; identity politics, and climate change.
ENG 119 M001	Topics in U.S. Literature - Hip Hop and the Politics and Poetics of Race	MW	12:45-2:05 PM	Tiongson, Antonio			This course provides a rigorous historical and theoretical understanding of the relationship between hip hop culture and race. It examines the ways in which hip hop illuminates the workings of race and how race has profoundly shaped the emergence and trajectory of hip hop. Considered the most dynamic youth expressive form to have emerged in the latter half of the 20th century, hip hop has interfaced and intersected with racially formative moments in U.S. history, including the drug and culture wars of the 1980s, the election of Barack Obama in 2008, and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. In examining the relationship between hip hop and race, we will engage with a wide range of texts such as literature, film, poetry, music, and visual art. We will approach these texts as constitutive of a hip-hop archive but also an archive of race, both of which are inextricably linked and mutually constitutive.
ENG 119 M002	Topics in U.S. Literature - American Monster Movies	MW	2:15-3:35 PM	Scheibel, Will			From supernatural beings to extraterrestrials, from devil worshippers to demonic children, from serial killers to killer animals, and from zombies to viral organisms, monsters are recurring figures in American cinema that change their shape throughout film history. This course will explore the different forms that monstrosity has taken in the horror genre, not only in what we now consider traditional monster movies, such as the Gothic classic Dracula (1931), but also in psychological horror and “body horror” films, science-fiction creature features, slasher/splatter films, and self-reflexive horror-comedies. We will consider when and how these monsters emerged onscreen, what they reveal about cultural fears and trends, and why they remain popular with moviegoers as they mutate across sequels, remakes, and imitations. To borrow the “friendly warning” in the famous prologue of Frankenstein (1931), I would be remiss if I did not add the following about this course, given the content: “I think it will thrill you. It may shock you. It might even horrify you. So, if any of you feel you do not care to subject your nerves to such a strain, now’s your chance to…well, we’ve warned you.”
ENG 122	Introduction to the Novel	TTh	9:30-10:50 AM	Olley, Maddie			This class explores the novel and its form by looking at some representative novels in terms of formal, historical, and national varieties. Some of the questions we will work on are: Why are novels so popular? What are the narrative conventions of the novel? How do they affect the ways in which we perceive and imagine the world? How do the authors engage with these conventions, play with them and also challenge them? How can we understand the novelistic form in relation to the history of modernity? How do different sociopolitical perspectives and contexts change the literary form? Practicing close reading and critical analysis, students will develop skills to examine formal elements of the novel in relation to the conceptual frames of race, gender, class and nation. Possible authors/texts include Jane Austen, William Wells Brown’s Clotel, or, The President’s Daughter, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, and Octavia Butler’s Kindred. This course fulfills writing-intensive requirement of the Liberal Arts Core. The purpose of writing-intensive courses is to familiarize students with the thought processes, structures, and styles associated with writing in the liberal arts.
ENG 125	Science Fiction	MWF	11:40-12:35 PM	Kidd, Katherine			The origins and definition of Science Fiction or speculative fiction are debated by fans and scholars all over the world. Likewise, scholars continue to debate the value of the genre as Literature with a capital L. In this course, we will take the genre and its capacities for uniquely powerful social commentary seriously as we explore possible beginnings, movements, subgenres and shifts within Science Fiction short stories and novels, as well as some television and film. We will look primarily at U.S. American and British texts, but we will expand beyond the West somewhat. This course features opportunities for creative work, as well as critical reading and writing.
ENG 140	Reading the Enviroment	MW	5:15-6:35 PM	Adams, Jeffrey			As humanity faces a catastrophic climate crisis, what is the utility of reading novels, watching films, and studying critical theory? Can the study of literary and cultural texts help us confront the ever-changing realities of the environment we live in? What is our ethical duty to both human and nonhuman beings of the past, present, and future? And what even is an “environment”? Addressing these questions, and many more, this course will teach students how to “read” the environments both within and beyond themselves. This class’s emphasis will be on the development of critical frameworks attuned to both present and historical ecological realities. Students can then use these frameworks to navigate scientific, political, and other cultural discourses they find themselves engaging in during their daily lives. In short, this class will privilege reading as an interpretative practice (not just the consumption of information!) that can help students understand both the environment and its representations.
ENG 142	Narratives of Culture	TTh	2:00-3:20 PM	Moody, Patricia			Each section of ETS 142 takes up a number of several major issues of concern to contemporary literary and cultural studies. These issues include authorship, language, reading, subjectivity, ideology, space/time, history, and difference. As we explore each area, you will be introduced to the issues at stake and then examine those issues as they arise in a wide range of cultural texts. You will also be invited to explore these issues in cultural texts you locate outside the class which you will bring in to share in discussion or in your formal papers. Think of this course as a writing-intensive reading and interpretation workshop: The issues and texts can be challenging when encountered for the first time, and the language in some of the readings may be difficult. But through this course, offered in a workshop approach, you will gain skill at critical reading and effective academic writing.
ENG 145	Reading Popular Culture	MWF	2:15-3:35 PM	Bartolovich, Crystal			This class examines mass cultural forms such as advertising and movies as well as everyday practices (shopping, reading the news, or using social media), to try to understand how we learn to make sense of a globalizing world and live a particular culture—or cultures—in the U.S. today. To this end, we will explore the pleasures of becoming thoughtful readers of a variety of cultural texts. We will ask why characters such as Sherlock Holmes keep enticing readers and viewers in new forms, and how Kendrick Lamar’s lyrics engage fans. We will read Spiegelman’s Maus alongside comics and explore the significance of “popular” tv shows, such as Survivor and The Sopranos. We will consider why some movies are “blockbusters” and explore the various appeals of sci-fi and horror, while taking account of their relation to our own identity formation: how do you become “yourself” in a particular culture? As the course progresses, you should become a more sophisticated, creative and engaged reader of the many different cultural forms that help make the world meaningful to ourselves and others. This course satisfies the Critical Reflection requirement of the A&S Core.
ENG 151	Interpretation of Poetry	MW	2:15-3:35 PM	Smith, Bruce			The course will consist of discussions of poems from the various traditions of poetry: from anonymous ballads to spoken word poetry. I’m interested in what makes the poem memorable and moving, how it is a vehicle for the intellect and the emotions, how it’s “the act of establishing communication between the mind and the heart”. I’m interested too in what ways the poem provokes and challenges us, what gives the poem its power to seduce and trouble and soothe, what gives it its music and voice as distinct from speech. Students will be asked to write 6 two-page papers in which they examine closely a single poem by a poet from the text. Students may opt to write more papers (up to 8) and receive extra consideration for them. In addition, students will be asked to choose a poet and present the work of the poet in a 4 to 5-page paper. Emphasis in discussions is on style and substance, music and image. Multiple ways of reading poems will help the students expand the range of poetic possibilities.
ENG 153	Interpretation of Fiction	MWF	2:15-3:10 PM	Mackie, Erin			Cultures tell many of their most profound truths in their fictions. We will look at the truths of fictions across a range of narrative forms, from the faery tale to the short novel. As we read, we will develop an awareness of the elements of fiction: theme, narrative and plot, setting, character, point-of-view, style, and tone. We will pay attention not only to the story told but also to who is telling it and to whom, its narrator and its audience. And always, we will think about the values, or truths, promoted by the fiction and the ends it seeks to achieve in its telling.
ENG 154	Interpretaion of Film	MW	5:15-6:35 PM	Ozyenginer, Arda			This course provides a comprehensive introduction to the interpretation of film. Regarded as the quintessential medium of the last century, cinema has profoundly shaped the ways in which we see the world and understand our place within it. Focusing principally on classical and contemporary English-language cinema, we will investigate precisely how meaning is produced in cinema. The course integrates a close attention to the specific aesthetic and rhetorical aspects of film with a wide-ranging exploration of the social and cultural contexts that shape how we make sense of and take pleasure in films. We shall also devote attention to the question of history: How may one interpret a film in relation to its historical context? Film history incorporates not only the films that have been produced over the past one hundred years, but also an understanding of how the practice of moviegoing has transformed over time. No prior film experience is required. The course fulfills the writing intensive requirement of the Liberal Arts Core in the College of Arts and Sciences. It also counts towards the Film & Screen Studies track in the English and Textual Studies major.
ENG 155	Interpretaion of Nonfiction	MW	12:45-2:05 PM	Brunt, Chris			This course introduces students to techniques and approaches to interpreting and analyzing literary nonfiction. We will develop close reading skills while learning to recognize the formal aspects of literary writing, namely plot, character, setting, point of view, imagery, and intertextuality, while exploring genres such as memoir, longform journalism, and the lyric essay.
ENG 164	Children's Literature	TTh	11:00-12:20 PM	Kidd, Katherine			This course surveys a history of children’s literature – primarily European and American, but with some global reach. Children’s literature through time charts the evolving cultural attitudes about children and childhood, as well as adulthood and parenting. Likewise, as educational material, literature for children reflects ideas about what constitutes a citizen of a nation, a family member, and a good person, more generally. Because texts for children are what we generally engage with during the times when our brains are most rapidly developing, we are influenced profoundly by these texts. Relatedly, Children’s Literature is the most likely to be contested or banned. We’ll read and view a variety of genres and mediums, from nursery rhymes and fairy tales to graphic novel, film, and television. Readings will include works by Hans Christian Anderson, Lewis Carroll, Judy Blume, and Beverley Cleary, along with works in the Sesame Street and Disney universes, and many more.
ENG 171	World Cinema	MWF	12:45-1:40 PM	Hallas, Roger			Cinema has often been called a universal language and it is certainly made all over the globe. But world cinema has a richness and complexity that defies a single model, despite the cultural dominance and economic power of Hollywood cinema. This course examines how the international history of film has been shaped by the larger historical dynamics of modernity, colonialism, postmodernism and globalization. We will explore the diverse pleasures, politics and aesthetics of cinema from around the world, including German Expressionism, post-revolutionary Soviet cinema, Chinese melodrama, French New Wave, Bollywood, postcolonial African cinema, Japanese anime, Iranian neorealism, contemporary indigenous cinema and transnational blockbusters. We will trace how aesthetics, technologies and economies of cinema have mutually influenced filmmaking traditions in diverse regions of the world. Moreover, we will investigate how cinema contributes to our understandings of the world, our places within it, and our relations to other parts of it. In sum, we will discover how world cinema is always both local and global. This course fulfills the writing intensive, Critical Reflections, and IDEA requirements of the A&S Liberal Arts Core. It also counts towards the Film & Screen Studies track in the English and Textual Studies major.
ENG 175	World Literature--1000 C.E. to the Present	TTh	2:00-3:20 PM	Teres, Harvey			This course will introduce you to some of the most valued and enduring examples of world literature since 1000 C.E. Texts will include the African epic Sundiata; Dante’s Inferno, Cervantes’ Don Quixote; Shakespeare’s Othello; Voltaire’s Candide; Wu Cheng’en’s Chinese classic novel Journey to the West; Basho’s Japanese haiku poetry; the Vietnamese classic The Tale of Kieu by Nguyen Du; poetry by from India by Ghalib and Tagore; fiction by Chekhov, Lu Xun, and Borges; T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land; Anna Akhmatova’s poetry; and Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman. The objective of the course is to enhance your global cultural literacy by familiarizing you with some of the most influential books and cultures from around the world. This will prepare you to become an informed global citizen and at the same time provide essential background for understanding English and American literature and culture. Classes will alternate between lectures and discussions. You will have the option of either producing shorter response papers or traditional midterm and final interpretive essays.
ENG 181 M001	Class and Literary Texts	MW	3:45-5:05 PM	Santiago, Samuel			Discussions of economic class often end with the identification of issues rather than an understanding of class's construction or sociopolitical function, let alone the presentation of possible solutions. In this course, we will study literary texts and media that not only exemplify class struggle, but illustrate how classes and their divisions form systemically and over time. The subject of class establishes common ground between divergent genres, such as historic nonfiction and science fiction, demonstrating the important relationship of recorded histories and imagined futures upon the present in which we read and study. This course treats seemingly simple phrases such as "work" or "economy" with heightened scrutiny as a means of forming a critical literacy of class issues, providing pragmatic and politically actionable knowledge. We will ground ourselves within an understanding of class in the U.S., but also branch out to international and global class narratives, paying special attention to how matters of class intersect with other aspects of identity, such as race, nationality, sexual orientation and identification, age, and more. Likewise, we will investigate the relationship between class and various forms of media (for example, comparing text and films' representational abilities), keeping in mind matters of accessibility and exclusion, analyzing literary texts not only for their representation of class, but their embodiment of class through the economic and industrial production of art.
ENG 181 M002	Class and Literary Texts	MW	12:45-2:05 PM	Conrey, Sean			From William Blake’s descriptions of living conditions in early industrialized England, James Agee’s stories of tenant farmers during the Depression, to Ursula LeGuin’s’s speculative fiction focused on labor exploitation, questions of social class have long been a focus of novelists’, poets’ and essayists’ work. Parallel to the ways that writers affect and engage social class, critical readers can engage with the concepts of social class as they read. Concerned with the social divisions of privilege, wealth, power and status, class, like race and gender, is a social construction that is imposed on, and performed by, all of us as a way of stratifying and defining who we are. Though the restraints of social class readily subject us to the power of others, these restraints may also, when well understood, provide a springboard for advocacy and direct social action. This course provides an introduction to these concepts and exposes students to key texts in literature, film and other media as a way of fostering critical engagement and developing richer social responsibility through textual interpretation.
ENG 182 M001	Race and Literary Texts	TTh	3:30-4:50 PM	Charles, Caroline			In The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B Du Bois claims that Black Americans are gifted with a “second sight,” calling on a visual metaphor to describe Black subjectivity. Not only Du Bois, but a number of Black intellectuals such as Frantz Fanon, James Baldwin, and bell hooks have taken up seeing, looking, viewing, and (in)visibility as central concerns in Black life. This course will explore how “the visual” has shaped meanings of blackness through a range of texts such as novels, short stories, poems, graphic novels, films, and television shows. We will question: What is blackness? How is blackness shaped by intersections of gender, sexuality, and class? What does blackness do and how has visuality shaped its varied meanings? Our course objective will be to complicate both what it means to see and to be “seen.” Potential authors include Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, and Kyle Baker. Potential films and television include shows such as Black-ish and I am Not Your Negro. This course fulfills the writing intensive requirement of the Liberal Arts Core. The purpose of the writing-intensive course is to familiarize students with the thought processes, structures, and styles associated with writing in the liberal arts.
ENG 182 M002	Race and Literary Texts	MW	5:15-6:35 PM	Gleesing, Elizabeth			What is race? How does race shape our identities? How do different content creators understand, reveal, and contest race in their written and visual works? These are some of the questions we will work through in this course on race, representation, and textual analysis. As a class, we will analyze a variety of texts from short stories and novels to graphic novels, films, and new media works in order to think through the socio-cultural implications of racial formation in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Potential topics we will explore include, the politics of representation in media, feelings of belonging and social alienation, cross-cultural identification, and surveillance of marginalized communities. This course fulfills the writing intensive requirement of the Liberal Arts Core, so come prepared to write shorter and longer analyses of different course texts throughout the semester.
ENG 184	Introduction to Latino Literature	MW	3:45-5:05 PM	Torres-Saillant, Silvio			Introduces students to the art of literature as practiced by American authors of Hispanic descent. The course covers the rapport of race and ethnicity with creative writing in the United States, a nation with a long history of inter-group conflict based on ancestral difference. We cover the US Hispanic literary heritage and overall print culture produced in North America by Spanish settlers and their offspring since the 1513 arrival of Spanish ships on the Florida coast, nearly a century before the 1607 arrival of English settlers at Jamestown, through the contemporary period. We sample the writings of settlers from Spain and their Creole New Spain descendants and the writings of authors of Latin American ancestry in the territory now known as the United States. We read their writings with a focus on their artistic quest as well as on their social relevance in the public sphere insofar as they obstruct or purvey visions of inclusion, equality, and justice. We will read poetry, drama, fiction, essays, and memoirs, while seeking to account for several of the countries to which Latina/os trace their roots, including Mexico, Puerto Rico, Ecuador, Cuba, Spain, and the Dominican Republic.
ENG 192 M001	Gender & Literary Texts	MW	3:45-5:05 PM	Caskie, Dylan			What is gender? What does it mean to say that gender is a social construct? How are representations of gender in literary texts related to our daily lived experiences? This course aims to answer these questions among others by analyzing textual representations of gender in their historical and cultural contexts. We will examine a range of texts including novels, essays, short stories, films, games, and virtual reality to understand how gender is constructed, reproduced, and interrogated through textual representation. This multimedia structure will give us perspective on how gender is recited and refracted in new media formats and how such representations surface in different genres through time. We will also study how gender intersects with and is partially constituted by other social formations like race, class, sexuality, nation, religion, and disability. On our intellectual journey through this course, we will study topics like reproductive rights, intersectional feminism, invisible labor, and gender in the nonhuman. This course fulfills the writing intensive requirement of the Liberal Arts Core. The purpose of writing-intensive courses is to familiarize students with the thought processes, structures, and styles associated with writing in the liberal arts.
ENG 192 M002	Gender & Literary Texts	TTh	12:30-1:50 PM	Klaver, Coran			What is gender? What does it mean to say that gender is a social construction? How does gender intersect with other social formations like race, class, sexuality, and (dis)ability? How do gender and texts work to represent and create bodies? This course will explore textual representations of gender and sexuality and their cultural, historical, and social implications. Through an examination of novels, short stories, films, and other media forms, we will address these questions and think about the ways that literary texts construct, rewrite, and interrogate gender as a social category. We will think about how literary texts represent and challenge ideological and social structures like heteronormativity, marriage, feminism, racism, citizenship, and patriarchy.
ENG 193	Intro to Asian American Literture	MW	2:15-3:35 PM	Green, Sue-jin			What does it mean to be “Asian American”? Who and what decides, and how have conceptions and understandings of "Asian America" shifted over time? How have Asian American writers, artists, and scholars explored these questions through their work, and what can we learn about U.S. imperialism and colonialism, immigration, labor, citizenship, and the diversity of Asian American identity formation by engaging with them? We will explore these questions through various texts such as novels, short stories, poetry, and films by Asian American authors of various backgrounds. Our exploration will be informed by key historical and political events, such as changes in immigration and citizenship legislature and wars, as well as social movements such as the Civil Rights Movement and Stop AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) Hate. This context will better our understanding and analysis of the authors’ engagement with these topics.
ENG 215	Introductory Poetry Workshop	M	9:30-12:15 PM	Stuart, Kimberly Dawn			In this workshop, we will explore the craft of writing poetry through study and discussion of contemporary poets and their varying techniques. Each week, we will read and discuss work by other writers as well as produce and workshop the form, process, and subject of our own poetry. Through this study, we will hopefully gain a better understanding of the voice and talent within our own work.
ENG 216	Intro Literature Nonfiction Workshop	M	9:30-12:15 PM	Phipps,Joseph Tucker			This course will introduce students to the non-fiction workshop. Students will practice writing, reading, and critiquing various genres within non-fiction writing, such as the personal essay and memoir, the experiential essay, and some new or nuanced forms that may arise. In class, we will discuss student work as well as published work. Students will learn to use fictional devices such as setting, point of view, character, dialogue, plot construction, and metaphor to craft factually accurate essays about real observed or experienced events. Participation and attendance are mandatory.
ENG 217 M001	Introductory Fiction Workshop	M	9:30-12:15 PM	Griggs,Hadley Elizabeth			This class will introduce students to the fiction workshop. Participants in the workshop will learn the elements of story, how to read closely, and how to critique one another's stories. You will also learn how to revise your own work. We will discuss student work in addition to published work from established writers. We will do in-class writing exercises, and each student will write two stories. Participation and attendance are mandatory.
ENG 217 M002	Introductory Fiction Workshop	W	9:30-12:15 PM	Hernandez-Sias, Angelo			This class will introduce students to the fiction workshop. Participants in the workshop will learn the elements of story, how to read closely, and how to critique one another's stories. You will also learn how to revise your own work. We will discuss student work in addition to published work from established writers. We will do in-class writing exercises, and each student will write two stories. Participation and attendance are mandatory.
ENG 217 M003	Introductory Fiction Workshop	T	3:30-6:20 PM	Spiotta,Dana			This class will introduce students to the fiction workshop. Participants in the workshop will learn the elements of story, how to read closely, and how to critique one another's stories. You will also learn how to revise your own work. We will discuss student work in addition to published work from established writers. We will do in-class writing exercises, and each student will write two stories. Participation and attendance are mandatory.
ENG 230	Ethnic Literary Traditions - Jewish humor and satire	TTh	2:00-3:20 PM	Frieden, Ken			We will begin by studying Freud’s theories of humor (published in 1905 but still relevant). Turning to Yiddish and American humor, we will analyze literary works, concluding with an Israeli novel. American films and stand-up comedy will be the secondary focus. Before every Tuesday class students will post a short analysis of the assigned text. To prepare for every Thursday class starting in Week 3, students will write and be ready to perform original humorous material. We will work toward a campus performance or a streamed performance on Zoom. In order to understand and practice the stand-up comedy genre, we will read Stephen Rosenfield’s Mastering Stand-up.
ENG 242 M001	Reading and Interpretation	TTh	2:00-3:20 PM	Beam, Dorri			Introduces students to the discipline of English and Textual Studies, stressing not what we read but how we read it. We will learn how meanings are created through acts of critical reading as well as demonstrate the consequences of pursuing one way of reading over another. This course is designed to enhance your ability to read and interpret contextually as well as closely, to help you to articulate your understanding effectively and to draw connections through reading and writing. Through close, deep, and thoughtful reading of literary and non-literary texts as well as essays by critics and theorists, we will explore the ways readers produce meaning. These meanings are produced both from the perspective of each reader’s unique experiences, and through various critical and theoretical approaches. Each section of ETS 242 takes up issues of central concern within contemporary literary and cultural studies. These include representation, language, reading, authorship, subjectivity, ideology, culture, history, and difference.
ENG 242 M005	Reading and Interpretation	MW	12:45-2:05 PM	Roylance, Patricia			Introduces students to the discipline of English and Textual Studies, stressing not what is read but how we read it—and the difference that makes. Its goal, in other words, is not only to show how meanings are created through acts of critical reading but also to demonstrate the consequences of pursuing one mode or method of reading over another. This course is designed to enhance your ability to read and interpret contextually as well as closely, to help you to articulate your understanding effectively and to draw connections through reading and writing. Through close, deep and thoughtful reading of literary and non-literary texts as well as essays by critics and theorists, we will explore the ways texts mean and the ways readers produce meaning. Each section of ENG 242 takes up issues of central concern within contemporary literary and cultural studies. These include representation; author/ity, textuality, and reading; subjectivity; and culture and history.
ENG 300	Topics in Reading and Writing Comedy	TTh	12:30-1:50 PM	Grzecki, Matt			In this course, we will study comedic writing and the role comedic stories play in our cultural conversations, with special attention to the ways they mediate deeply contested issues. By examining theories of comedy and humor as well as some representative comedic works in literature, film, and TV, we will explore how we as creative writers can use comedy in our own work. This is a generative class, and it will include fiction and nonfiction prompts.
ENG 304	Reading and Writing Poetry	TTh	9:30-10:50 AM	Harwell, Sarah			T. S. Eliot said that minor poets borrow while great poets steal. From classical antiquity to the present, poets have always learned their trade by imitating other poets. They have pursued their individual talent by absorbing, assimilating, and in some cases subverting the lessons of the traditions they inherit. In this class, we will read and imitate poems from canonical poets--possible poets include Elizabeth Bishop, Gwendolyn Brooks, Terrance Hayes, and Seamus Heaney. We’ll examine each poet closely, sympathetically, and predatorily. That is, we will read like aspiring writers, looking for what we can steal. We will deepen our understanding of a variety of poetic devices, such as diction, image, music, and metaphor. We will attend to each poet’s stylistic and formal idiosyncrasies, as well as his or her techniques and habits. You will be required to display an understanding of these issues by producing creative and analytical responses to the poets studied.
ENG 311	Literary Periods before 1900 - People, Places, Nature: The Literary Environments of Late 19th-century American Fiction	TTh	11:00-12:20 PM	Beam, Dorri			This course looks at the outpouring of fiction in the U.S. dedicated to particular places and environments in the years between the Civil War and the turn into the twentieth century. In this period of rapid expansion and industrialization, a period of migration, immigration, and displacements of peoples living in and coming to the U.S., a good deal of fiction hunkered down in specific locales. Those left behind or displaced by these forces were frequently cast as “backward” or “queer” anti-moderns, soon to be obsolete. This literature both trades in and critically occupies that story as it creates the world of such characters, evoking the particularities of place, imaginatively entwining natural and social ecologies, and considering the forces that shaped its inhabitants. From rural New England, to abandoned plantations and Southern swamps, to the wilds of gold rush California: literary environments were invested with questions about the interrelation of place and time; nature, animals, and people; and social and national identities.
ENG 315 M001	Ethnic Literatures & Cultures - European and American Jewish literature	TTh	11:00-12:20 PM	Frieden, Ken			We begin by reading Arthur Schnitzler’s play Professor Bernhardi, which shows the fragile position of Jews in Vienna around 1900. After analyzing the representation of anti-Semitism in that play, we will turn to works by Franz Kafka and Stefan Zweig. Rendered in stark detail, especially pertinent to the current war in Ukraine, are the scenes in Isaac Babel’s Red Cavalry. Primo Levi’s stories provide a post-Holocaust perspective. These European precedents serve as background to discussions of fiction by American-Jewish writers. Works by Abe Cahan, Anzia Yezierska, Henry Roth, I. B. Singer, Bernard Malamud, Grace Paley, and Philip Roth, and Irena Klepfisz refer to issues including assimilation, displacements from Europe and Yiddish, and contemporary American-Jewish life. The Norton Anthology of American Jewish Literature provides a wide selection of short fiction and poetry. Stories and poems by M. L. Halpern, Fradl Shtok, Chaim Grade, and Jacob Glatstein show psychological and theological repercussions of war and the Nazi genocide. We will also watch clips from pertinent films such as His People, The Jazz Singer, The Imported Bridegroom, Hester Street, and Brainwashed (The Royal Game). Students will write innumerable short posts, due before every class session, and participate in a group project.
ENG 315 M002	The Holocaust in American Literature	TTh	12:30-1:50 PM	Teres, Harvey			This course will explore the moral, religious, and artistic challenges faced by American writers who have represented the Holocaust and its aftermath in fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. Students will begin by reading a historical account of the Holocaust, followed by efforts to link the Holocaust to trauma studies, slavery, and other examples of genocide. We will spend the rest of the semester reading literary representations of the Holocaust and its aftermath. Texts will include W. E. B. Du Bois’ “The Negro and the Warsaw Ghetto,” Philip Roth’s “Eli, the Fanatic” and The Ghost Writer; Bernard Malamud’s “The Last Mohican” and “Lady of the Lake”; Jerzy Kosinski’s The Painted Bird, Cynthia Ozick’s “The Pagan Rabbi,” “The Shawl,” and “Rosa”; Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated; Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem; Art Spiegelman’s Maus I and Maus II; Michael Chabon’s The Final Solution; Nathan Englander’s “The Tumblers”; and selected poetry by Jacob Glatstein, Charles Reznikoff, W.D. Snodgrass, Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, Anne Sexton, Anthony Hecht, Elie Wiesel, Sherman Alexie, and others.
ENG 321	Author's Before 1900 - Chaucer	TTh	3:30-4:50 PM	Moody, Patricia			The fourteenth century is a vital period, marked by some of the major crises of Western history. It also produced Chaucer, traditionally regarded as “the father of English poetry,” one of the pillars of what has long been recognized as “the English literary tradition”; it also produced other notable writers. Chaucer’s unfinished masterpiece The CanterburyTales has been a monument worthy of both appreciation and scrutiny for almost 600 years. This course will take the cultural icon of Geoffrey Chaucer along with his most famous work as its central subject. We will examine the age and culture that produced a ‘Chaucer’ and The Canterbury Tales in their cultural contexts, including the language they were written in, as well as the subsequent construction and reception of that same iconic ‘Chaucer.’
ENG 330	Theorizing Meaning & Interpretation - the Monstrous	TTh	2:00-3:20 PM	Bartolovich, Crystal			“You are a monster!”: we’ve all heard this claim many times on tv and the movies as well as everyday life, often when a mask seems to fall away and a previously trusted person becomes strange. Such an outburst references a long tradition of monstrosity evoked in a wide range of cultural forms with a strong affective charge, from myths and fairy tales to novels and films. For much of the class we will read or watch the “classic” monster narratives (i.e. “Hansel and Gretel,” The Tempest, Forbidden Planet, Dracula, Frankenstein, Godzilla, The Gilda Stories, Aliens, X-Files) on which current horror, sci-fi and related genres build. We will also learn some concepts that will help us think through how monsters “work,” such as “the Other,” “the uncanny,” “the cyborg,” “ugly feelings,” and “the monstrous cute.” Fortified with this conceptual and historical knowledge, we will then consider the deployment of the “monstrous” in more recent texts, such as “The Silence” in Dr. Who, Boots Riley’s film Sorry to Bother You and Jeff VanderMeer’s novel Annihilation.
ENG 340	Theorizing Forms and Genres - Film Noir/Noir Cultures	MW	3:45-5:05 PM	Scheibel, Will			“Film noir” is a French term meaning “dark films” and traditionally defined as a particular subset of mysteries, crime dramas, or suspense-thrillers produced in Hollywood during the 1940s and 1950s. However, this course suggests that to learn the history of film noir, we need to study it at the intersections of different cultural expressions and determining factors. Our investigation will therefore span genres, styles, and time periods in U.S. narrative cinema, considering questions about film noir beyond its status as a mere category. To begin, we will analyze cinematic elements of mise-en-scène—costumes, lighting, sets, and locations—to understand the relationship between the Classical Hollywood style and what came to be called “film noir.” We will then move outside of film to contextualize noir styles in crime fiction, painting, photography, and popular music. This course will also trace the continuities and discontinuities between film noir and “neo-noir,” the noir revival after the classic era that reached its zenith in the 1980s and 1990s. Finally, we will turn to the legacy of film noir in comic aesthetics and animation, television series, and video games to recognize its diverse uses and meanings over time and across visual media.
ENG 352 M001	Race Nation & Empire	MW	3:45-5:05 PM	Kumavie, Delali			What are cities? How are the conditions of black lives shaped by these urban structures? Cities across the world have been at the center of Black literary imaginaries. Indeed, Black literature in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have been shaped by the complexities of the ever-expanding urban landscape. In the United States, mass migrations such as the great migration saw Black people escape the violence of Jim Crow in the South for cities such as Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. Across the world, the legacies of the transatlantic slave trade, colonialism and empire created and reconstituted cities like Accra, Lagos, Nairobi, Paris, and London. In this class, we will consider the intersection of blackness and cityscapes, or what we will call “Black cities,” through reading key literary and cultural texts. At a time when Black people, across the world, are faced with state-sanctioned forms of dying, death, and destitution, this class is invested in excavating how urban development and expansion have facilitated these forms of violence. This class aims to increase literary and cultural literacy by asking how urban centers condition black literature. How does the “metropole” foment intellectual and creative expression? How might we understand the manifold potential for success and despair that black people must navigate in the city? We will contend with these questions and more and by so doing contend with Blackness in its varying permutations and figurations
ENG 352 M002	Race Nation & Empire - Contemporary British Film	TTh	2:00-3:20 PM	Hallas, Roger			Despite the popular representation of Britain as a royalty-obsessed, class-ridden and anachronistic nation, British cinema of the past four decades offers an aesthetically rich and ideologically complex engagement with the profound changes that have transformed the country from Thatcherism to Brexit (i.e., the radical reorganization of its economy and social policy, the postcolonial reckoning with its imperial history, the divisive debate over its relationship to Europe and the devolution of power to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland). A small national film industry struggling against Hollywood’s global hegemony, contemporary British cinema has managed to carve out a distinctive profile in the global film market, which includes a heritage cinema that uses costume drama and literary adaptation to explore postcolonial nostalgia for empire; a searing realist cinema that interrogates the persistence of class struggle; and a formally innovative Black British film movement that probes the intersection of race, gender and sexuality. In sum, the organizing question that guides us through the course will be: how do specific film practices sustain, challenge or reconfigure conceptions of nation identity?
ENG 400	Selected Topics - Mysteries of London	TTh	3:30-4:50 PM	Goode, Michael			This course counts towards the IDEA requirement of the A&S Liberal Arts Core and the Film & Screen Studies track in the English and Textual Studies major.
ENG 401	Advanced Writing Workshop: Poetry	M	3:45-6:30 PM	Haxton, Brooks			A poem is a private, personal moment of expression and, at the same, an effort to reach the imagination of a stranger. The purpose of this course is to find the sources of emotion in the writer’s psyche and to develop the artistic skill to make these wellsprings of experience accessible to readers. Students use imagination and intelligence to help each other accomplish a difficult task. Writers in this workshop write one new poem each week, some in response to assignments. They will revise four of these new poems into carefully considered form. Requirements include reading, written analysis of poems, and memorization. The course is open to anyone who has taken the sophomore workshop. Juniors and seniors who have not had a workshop may submit a portfolio of ten pages of original poetry to be considered for admission.
ENG 402	Advanced Writing Workshop: Literary Nonfiction	W	9:30-12:15 PM	Brunt, Chris			This class will develop and expand upon the skills introduced in ENG 216. The primary focus will be on how to write better, more effective, more technically sophisticated personal and lyric essays and/or memoir excerpts. The secondary focus will be on how to constructively critique others' work in these same forms. In class, we will continue the exploration of creative nonfiction forms, and practice reading like writers. Assignments will include a memoir chapter and book outline, a personal or lyric essay, and a final portfolio of revised work.
ENG 403	Advanced Writing Workshop: Fiction	M	9:30-12:15 PM	Benz, Chanelle			In this course, students will work to develop a substantial body of their own fiction. We will discuss technique, dissect work by a range of published writers, and read essays on craft. Together, we will examine the art of fiction in a generous and challenging environment. Students will investigate fiction’s possibilities, develop an understanding of their style and aesthetics, and deepen their creative process by exploring form, narrative tension, point of view, character development, voice, and other aspects of the mechanics of story writing.
ENG 406	Advanced Critical Writing in ET - Literature and Censorship	MWF	11:40-12:35 PM	Forster, Chris			This advanced critical writing class investigates the question of literature and censorship. In this course you will study the history of literary censorship in relationship to a small number of key texts, and then research and write a long essay (10-15 pages) on a particular work of literature, considering its history, its context, and the conditions of its censorship. This course offers an opportunity to consider how, and why, works of literature have been censored? At the center of the class will be the reading of key novels that have been censored, declared obscene, or otherwise suppressed, with a focus on literature from the twentieth-century until the present. We will turn to the debates that surround these novels in essays, newspaper reports, and court trials, in order to investigate the relationship between literature and obscenity. How does the value of “art” contrast with that of obscenity or pornography? How do gender, race, and sexuality influence which works are suppressed? How do the history of literature and the history of obscenity law intersect, and then diverge, in the course of the twentieth century?
ENG 412 M001	Race, Forms, & Genres	TTh	12:30-1:50 PM	Torres-Saillant, Silvio			Explores the ways in which writers have relied on different literary forms and genres to promote, challenge, or simply reflect racial views of human history and social relations. It invites students to consider whether a pattern may be found in the choice of genre or form by authors depending on where they stand on the issue of race as a mediator of social relations. Are writers more likely to rely on poetry, drama, novels, short fiction, memoirs, other types of testimonial literature or life-writing, essays, graphic novels, or certain kinds of illustrated storytelling, including children’s books depending on whether they themselves are advocates, mere observers, or opponents of racial exclusion? Students will read a fair sampling of texts that are suitable for exploring this question from the 18th century to the modern period.
ENG 412 M002	Race, Forms, & Genres	MW	12:45-2:05 PM	Madarieta, Ethan			In Latine/x speculative fictions the past, present, and future collide creating new ways of remembering, knowing, and imagining. In this way the speculative becomes a way to defamiliarize dominant historical narratives and to practice other ways of knowing and being in the world. Latinx speculative fictions open up ways for us to rethink the intersections of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, technology, politics, and the nation, and to imagine pasts, presents, and futures where these structures and categories might (or might not) change. To do so this course explores Latine/x speculative fictions alongside Indigenous and Afrofuturisms within the context of an ongoing colonialism, its impacts on Latin American and U.S. politics and migration, and questions on the intersections of Latinidad, Blackness, and Indigeneity. In this course, we will engage with critical scholarly works as well as SciFi, Fantasy, Horror, Cyber and Solar Punk short stories, novels, poetry, and film. We will look not only at narrative content and its relation to the world(s) we live in, but also interrogate this connection through video and/or textual essays informed by close textual examination and interpretation. This will involve consideration of the medias’ forms and structures, and the discourses in which they are embedded.
ENG 421	Produc. And Recep. Before 1900 - Shakespeare’s Natural Worlds	MW	12:45-2:05 PM	Shirilan, Stephanie			Global virus epidemics, drought, flood, deforestation, toxic water and air, food-insecurity: these are but a few of the effects of climate-change brought on or accelerated by human agents, and Shakespeare has much to say about them. His plays witness and reflect on a period of radical transformation of deep-set ideas and the social and cultural institutions (gender, church, city, state, family, market, etc.) that housed them. Reading a selection of Shakespeare’s plays and poetry, we will explore ways that meditations on the natural world shape his reflections on these social and political transformations, and vice versa. Our investigations will be guided by attention to the relationship between form and matter in Shakespeare’s work and in the early modern period. To that end, our reading of the plays will emphasize dramatic technique and foreground aspects of theatrical performance, which we will consider through experiments in staging and performance wherever possible. Together, we will learn to read, observe, and listen for the ways that live, embodied, multisensory theatrical experience shapes our capacity to observe and imagine the dynamism of Shakespeare’s natural worlds. This course will address the interests of students in the sciences and theater/literary studies alike. No prior Shakespeare experience required. Pre-1900 Class.
ENG 440	Game Histories & Culture	TTh	2:00-3:20 PM	Hanson, Chris			This course will explore the cultural and historical trajectories of games both within the United States and larger global contexts. While our focus will primarily be digital games, we will also explore analog games and trace their shared histories and associated game cultures. As we examine different eras and key moments within the emergence of games as a cultural form, we will look at particular representative games and texts to critically analyze their significance. In our consideration of cultural and historical contexts, we will also map the role of social, economic, and political factors in the creation of particular games, genres, and platforms. The course will study “canonical” games such as Super Mario Bros., Sid Meier’s Civilization, and Grand Theft Auto, as well as influential lesser-known and independent titles such as Rogue and Colossal Cave Adventure. In addition to a variety of games, we will also study relevant screen-based media texts which explicitly or implicitly engage with the key aspects of the histories and cultures of games.
ENG 495	Thesis Workshop	Th	TBA	Shirilan, Stephanie			This course is a continuation of ENG 494. It is intended to serve as a forum for small-group mentoring and directed research toward producing an ENG Distinction Essay/Honors Thesis. The workshop will largely involve presenting drafts of your thesis and engaging in collegial peer critique. Since this is a two-credit course, we will not meet every week, but you are expected to be working on your thesis consistently, even during weeks in which there is no formal meeting or assignment due. There is no textbook, but you will frequently be asked to read drafts and assignments for fellow workshop members, so please budget sufficient time to do this well.
ENG 615	Open Poetry Workshop	T	12:30-3:15 PM	Kennedy, Chris			The workshop is open to all graduate students interested in writing poems (students not matriculated in the MFA Program need my permission to register, and MFA students have priority). Depending on class size, students will submit a poem every week or once every two weeks. Close readings and critiques of student work will be the focus of the course, though I will occasionally bring in poems by other poets.
ENG 617	Open fiction Workship	TH	12:30-3:20 PM	Dee, Jonathan			This workshop will focus on fiction writing and the useful critique thereof. We will read and discuss two or three student-written stories/novel excerpts each week. Open to all students in the MFA program, regardless of discipline, and (with instructor permission) to other members of the university community.
ENG 630 M001	Graduate Proseminar - Early America	T	3:30-6:15 PM	Roylance, Patricia			Designed as an introduction to U.S. literary and cultural studies, this seminar will survey American language and writing from the sixteenth to the late eighteenth centuries and will provide a foundation for more advanced study of this period. No prior knowledge of the period is required. Course presentations will focus on pedagogy: approaches to teaching early American literature, with an eye to thinking about how to teach survey classes in general. For the final project, you will work on primary material from the course or closely related to it, but you will have conceptual and methodological freedom in choosing an approach. “Early America” will be treated as a problematic rather than as a settled category. We will question the homogeneity and push the literal boundaries of “America”: what regional, racial, religious, and linguistic subcultures exist within the space of America? what transatlantic and hemispheric contexts illuminate early American literary production? We will engage with Native American oral literature and record-keeping, writings from New Spain, New France, New Netherland, and the British colonies, as well as European writings about the “New World.” We will also be considering the history of slavery and black activism, engaging with related writing from the colonial period as well as the New York Times Magazine 1619 Project. The course will culminate with an examination of the rhetoric of the U.S. Revolutionary War and early national period, which attempted to present as unified and univocal a colonial period that had been anything but.
ENG 630 M004	Graduate Proseminar - Game Studies	TH	9:30-12:15 PM	Hanson, Chris			Just as digital games have grown profoundly more complex in the last fifty years, theoretical and critical approaches to digital games have proliferated and diversified, moving well past early debates between narratology and ludology. Of course, the study of games predates the digital age, and in this course we will engage with the foundational texts which serve as precursors to the contemporary critical approaches which we will also explore. We will trace the historical development of game studies as a discipline, while also examining both traditional and digital games as case studies for our critical consideration. In addition to ergodic texts, we will also study screen-based media texts which explicitly or implicitly engage with the concepts of game studies. Attendance at weekly screenings is a required component of this course.
ENG 650 M003	Forms - Teaching Writing in the Community	M	3:45-6:30 PM	Smith, Bruce			Writers in the Community engages students in the pleasure and power of reading and writing using the resources of MFA students at Syracuse University. Writers in the Community revolutionizes the way reading and writing are taught, appealing to the imagination and awakening students to their own experience as the basis for adventures in language. Writers in the community breaks down barriers between the university and the community, benefiting both in a vital cultural exchange. Prof. Smith and MFA students revive a long-running MFA seminar originally designed to connect MFA students to primary and secondary school students in different SCSD schools. Collaboration with professional writers in designing writing curriculum provides valuable hands-on professional development for teachers. Everyone has a story to tell. Everyone has a song to sing. We provide the skills, attention, the resources of MFA students and the opportunity.
ENG 650 M004	Forms - Novel Structure	TH	3:30-6:15 PM	Spiotta, Dana			Randall Jarrell famously described the novel as “a prose narrative of some length that has something wrong with it.” With that as a starting point, we will engage with questions about what a novel is and how it works. We will read a number of novels and discuss how they work on both a macro and micro level while giving particular attention to the architecture of the novel. The novels will be chosen for interesting approaches to form and for representing a diversity of narrative strategies. We will discuss how to write a long-form fictional project and think about various approaches to structure, organizing principles/conceits, schemata, outlines, and revision.
ENG 650 M005	Forms - The Art and Craft of Poetry	T	3:30-6:20 PM	Haxton, Brooks			In verse and prose various rhythmic traditions including vernacular speech shape language. Poetic lines use rhythmic patterns to form clusters. We will analyze and practice some of these patterns. Logic including syntax is also essential to the rhythm of phrasing. Other focal techniques include image, diction, tone, point of view, and argument (narrative argument being an example). Weekly handouts will describe principals studied in the reading and writing assignments. The goal is to analyze what makes writing and reading effective. Assignments in this course are not necessarily time-consuming, but the techniques reward as much attention as you give them. Besides improving your writing, an important aim is to improve your access to essential patterns in reading. Prose writers as well as poets have found this course useful.
ENG 650 M006	Forms - Lost (& Found) in Translation	T	9:30-12:15 PM	Benz, Chanelle			In this class, we will read a wild range of books translated into English from Catalan, Danish, Indian, Russian, Haitian, Chilean, Japanese, and more. Together, we will explore how these texts can open up new possibilities, concepts, and perspectives in fiction. We will discuss the artful transformation from the original text to the translated and what the shape and shadings of the sentence can transmit about a writer’s style, form, and meaning.
ENG 730 M001	Graduate Seminar - Critical Ethnic Studies: Formations, Currents, and Antagonisms	T	3:30-6:15 PM	Tiongson, Antonio			This graduate seminar maps the emergence of critical ethnic studies as an intellectual formation and political project. We interrogate how the current conjuncture constitutes an important moment in the trajectory of ethnic studies, a moment marked by the turn to the term “critical” to designate the field’s shifting imperatives, occupations, and investments. The seminar scrutinizes the theoretical and political engagements that mark critical ethnic studies as well as currents animating the field. Specifically, we’ll examine how the field builds on and aims to generate conversations among different insurgent intellectual and political projects (e.g., women of color feminism, Indigenous feminisms, queer of color critique, Black radical traditions, Indigenous theorizing, settler colonial studies, critical border studies, disability/crip studies, transgender studies, and critical refugee studies). At the same time, we’ll delve into tensions and antagonisms that have come to mark the field revolving around a set of problematics including how to conceive of slavery and settler colonialism as mutually constitutive, how to account for relational dynamics among Indigenous, white settler, and non-Indigenous subjects of color, and how to conceive of solidarity in a way that does not conflate decolonization and anti-racism.
ENG 730 M002	Graduate Seminar	Th	9:30-12:15 PM	Callaghan, Dympna			Take three motherless girls and their demanding father who wants to know which of them loves him most. Only one of the girls answers truthfully; only one speaks truth to power and in so doing incurs her father’s wrath. Then take two motherless boys and their father: one the virtuous legitimate heir, and the other the aggrieved, bastard accident of a wild night’s sex with—it seems-- a prostitute. This is the stuff of one of the greatest literary works in the western canon, Shakespeare’s King Lear, which is the focus of this class. However, the play’s key elements have deep, global roots and together with the rest of the story of faithful servants, perfidious wretches, adultery, murder, and madness, these will be the subject of our collective exploration. We will address the play’s precursors in history, folklore, and fairytale, as well as its afterlife up through the present. We will read in meticulous detail the two, different surviving versions of Shakespeare’s play from the early 17th century with particular attention to the language of the play. Examining both King Lear’s sources and subsequent iterations in theatre performances, films, plays, poems, and novels, we will also consider the issue of genre. King Lear was categorized in its first publication as a history, and subsequently, in the Folio edition of the text, as a tragedy. However, the fairytale is also a key genre in connection with King Lear, and thus the play participates in an on-going cultural conversation about family dynamics and social ties, children and parents, grief, violence, age, and dementia. In addition, we will examine the historical and theatrical context of the play through, for example, James Shapiro’s bestseller, The Year of Lear, and the political context of truth-speaking or parrhesia, a figure familiar in Renaissance rhetoric explored by the philosopher, Michel Foucault in his discussion of the operations of power. The course will include, for example, examination of performances—both gender-normative and single-sex--from the London Globe, Soeul, Tokyo, and Singapore; Glenda Jackson and Phyllida Lloyd’s interpretation of Lear’s character; writings ranging from The Arabian Nights to Jane Smiley’s blockbuster, A Thousand Acres, and playwright Edward Bond’s 1971 rewriting of Shakespeare’s play, Lear. No prior experience of Shakespeare is required for this class, and final projects, whether creative or academic, will be tailored to suit the needs of the student. The course will be of particular interest to those working on poetry, drama, or prose in any period.
ENG 730 M004	Graduate Seminar	M	8:25-11:10 AM	Edmunds, Susan			In this course we will focus on US. fiction written in the last five or so years. Most class sessions will pair a a few short stories or a short novel with a critical reading, though the syllabus will also include a handful of longer novels read over two class sessions. In selecting texts, I am prioritizing stories that combine a traditional focus on intimacy and its vicissitudes with a more recent focus on the micro- and macro-dynamics of globalization. There will be a special emphasis on stories of immigration, of climate change and of imperiled democracy. Authors include: James Brinkley, Lydia Conklin, Jean Chen Ho, A. M. Homes, Tommy Orange, Brenda Peynado, Karen Russell, Anthony So, and Joy Williams.
ENG 799	M.F.A. Essay Seminar	F	9:30-12:15 PM	Kennedy, Chris			In this class, students will choose one writer and through a close reading of that writer’s work demonstrate a proficient understanding of some aspect (of your choosing) of the writer’s work. You will not use secondary sources. All second year MFA students are required to take this class.