This course teaches the skills that enable us to read literature with understanding and pleasure. By studying examples from a variety of periods and places, students learn how poetry, prose fiction and drama work, how to interpret them and how to make use of interpretations by others. English 199 seeks to produce perceptive readers well equipped to take on complex texts. This gateway course for prospective English majors is not recommended for students simply seeking a writing intensive course. Readings in different sections vary, but all involve active discussion and frequent writing.

Students learn to use literary techniques to write factual, engaging narratives that read like fiction. Based on research, interviews and personal experience, creative nonfiction encompasses a wide range of genres, including memoir, travel writing, nature writing, science writing, food writing and biography. Prerequisites: one WI course. Enrollment in each section limited to 16. Course may be repeated once on a different topic. : Sight, sound, touch, smell, taste: Everything we know reaches us through our senses.

Students learn to use literary techniques to write factual, engaging narratives that read like fiction. Based on research, interviews and personal experience, creative nonfiction encompasses a wide range of genres, including memoir, travel writing, nature writing, science writing, food writing and biography. Prerequisites: one WI course. Enrollment in each section limited to 16. Course may be repeated once on a different topic. : In the 20th century, as literacy rates rose, images disappeared from literature. Pictures were relegated to children’s books; only words were fit for adults.

This coursefamiliarizes students with key aspects of structure and form in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. We focus in turn on such elements of creative writing as imagery, diction, figurative language, character, setting, and plot. Students draft, workshop, and revise three pieces of writing over the course of the semester, one each in the genres of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Enrollment limited to 12.

Students hone their writing skills (defined broadly to include critical thinking, research and documentation, argument development and mastery of written English) as they enhance their understanding of an issue of current import and consequence. They read and write in a variety of genres (ranging from experience narratives to academic essays) and supplement their required reading with excursions to scholarly and cultural venues at Smith. Prerequisite: One WI course or permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15: Michael Pollan writes in Omnivore’s Dilemma that the U.S.

This course offers the opportunity to read contemporary poetry and meet the poets who write it. The course consists of class meetings alternating with public poetry readings by visiting poets. On five selected Tuesdays, the course also includes Tuesday Q&As with the poets, which meet from 4–5 p.m. Students with class, lab or required work conflicts are excused from Q&As. Graded Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory only. Course may be repeated.

In a series of seven lectures, writers—creative nonfiction authors, playwrights, novelists, screenwriters, documentarians and short story writers—provide an overview of the practice of creating narratives from specific disciplinary perspectives. Editors, publishers, agents and producers reflect on the publication and production process. Speakers discuss researching, revising, publishing and producing texts and read from their work to provide examples. They also explore questions of style, voice and genre. S/U only.

Marxist feminism as a theory and a politics imagines alternate, liberatory futures and critiques present social orders. Beginning with a simple insight: capitalism relies on the class politics of unpaid, reproductive “women’s work,” Marxist feminists in the 19th century sought to imagine new social connections, sexualities, and desire to overthrow patriarchy, slavery, feudalism and colonialism. Today, queer of color &decolonial feminist theory, alongside abolition, environmental, and reproduction justice movements rejuvenate this tradition of Marxist feminism.

This course will analyze the history, prevalence, and current manifestations of the white supremacist movement by examining ideological components, tactics and strategies, and its relationship to mainstream politics. We will also research and discuss the relationship between white supremacy and white privilege, and explore how to build a human rights movement to counter the white supremacist movement in the U.S. Students will develop analytical writing and research skills, while engaging in multiple cultural perspectives.

This course is an interdisciplinary exploration of reproductive health, rights and justice in the United States, examining history, activism, law, policy, and public discourses related to reproduction. A central framework for analysis is how gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, disability and nationality intersect to shape people’s experiences of reproductive oppression and their resistance strategies. Topics include eugenics and the birth control movement; the reproductive rights and justice movements; U.S.