Analysis of problems of form, elements of genre, style and development of themes of stories and poems, written by class members and in class texts. Lecture, discussion, 5 poems, 2 stories, 2 essays. (Gen. Ed. AL)

An introduction to digital culture, visual images, audio content, archives, and new media. Critical approaches include a focus on formal analysis, historical perspective, reception and audience, and cultural theory.

In this class, we will study video games, postmodern cultural theory, and (tangentially) comic books as we ask questions about the persistence of dystopian narratives in print and digital visual culture. For example, what do dystopian narratives in comics, video games, and new media productions have in common? What makes "dark," "moody," and outright apocalyptic narratives like The Walking Dead, Half-Life 2, Left 4 Dead, Sweet Tooth and the web series Down Twisted popular in this current historical moment?

Poetry of Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and Byron read in detail. Political, religious, and psychological frames of critical reference brought to bear in order to define the consciousness of English romanticism and its contribution to modern poetry.

A seminar in writing poetry for students who demonstrate familiarity with the basics of imagery, rhythm, and form. Students write regularly, read and criticize one another's writing, read in contemporary poetry.

This course explores the definition and evolution of a national literary tradition in the United States from the Civil War to the present. We will examine a variety of issues arising from the historical and cultural contexts of the 19th and 20th centuries, the formal study of literature, and the competing constructions of American identity. Students will consider canonical texts, as well as those less frequently recognized as central to the American literary tradition, in an effort to foster original insights i9nto the definition, content, and the shape of ?literature? in the United States.

In this course we will read narratives of individual and collective cultural transformations from the colonial and early republican periods in American literature. We will trace throughout these narratives various figurations of "American" subjectivity, such as the captive and the redeemed; the slave, the servant, and the freeman; the alien and the citizen; the foreign and the native. Through such textual figures, we will explore as well the cultural production of a broader narrative of the ?imagined community? of the nation.

Primarily for nonmajors. Introduction to the interdisciplinary study of American culture, with a wide historical scope and attention to diverse cultural experiences in the U.S. Readings in fiction, prose, and poetry, supplemented by painting, photography, film, and material culture. (Gen.Ed. AL, DU)