A first course in the critical reading of selected English-language poets, which gives students exposure to significant poets, poetic styles, and literary and cultural contexts for poetry from across the tradition. Attention will be given to prosody and poetic forms, and to different ways of reading poems.
Limited to 35 students. Fall semester: Professor Emeritus Sofield. Spring semester: Professor Nelson.
[Before 1800] Readings in the comedies, histories, and tragedies, with attention to their poetic language, dramatic structure, and power in performance. Texts and topics will vary by instructor.
Limited to 50 students. Fall semester. Professor Pritchard.
This introductory course explores a variety of approaches to digital storytelling, from branching narratives, to hypertext media and video games, to more recent developments in machine-generated poetry and also embodied and location-based narrative. A hands-on class, it will link conventional understandings of narrative form and content to contemporary conversations about interface and computation, and ask students to think about materiality and textuality by experimenting with digital composition.
Fall semester. Professors Frank and Parham.
A first course in writing fiction. Emphasis will be on experimentation as well as on developing skill and craft. Workshop (discussion) format.
Admission with consent of the instructor. Limited to 15 students. Fall semester: Writer-in-Residence Lee and Visiting Writer Myint.
A first course in writing fiction. Emphasis will be on experimentation as well as on developing skill and craft. Workshop (discussion) format.
Admission with consent of the instructor. Limited to 15 students. Fall semester: Writer-in-Residence Lee and Visiting Writer Myint.
(Offered as THDA 270 and ENGL 222) (Offered as THDA 270 and ENGL 222.) This course explores key aspects of writing for the theater in a workshop style, from a transcultural perspective. Through writing exercises, analysis of scenes, feedback sessions, and the rewriting of materials produced, participants will experience the creative process and start developing their own voice. At the end, there will be a showcase of works. In the fall of 2019, in collaboration with the University of Basra, this unique playwriting workshop will also include moments of exchange with student peers in Iraq.
A first workshop in the writing of poetry. Class members will read and discuss each others’ work and will study the elements of prosody: the line, stanza forms, meter, free verse, and more. Open to anyone interested in writing poetry and learning about the rudiments of craft. Writing exercises weekly.
Admission with consent of the instructor. Limited to 12 students. Fall semester. Visiting Lecturer Kapur.
(Offered as ENGL 180 and FAMS 110) A first course in reading films and writing about them. A varied selection of films for study and criticism, partly to illustrate the main elements of film language and partly to pose challenging texts for reading and writing. Frequent short papers. Two class meetings and one screening per week.
Limited to 25 students. In the Fall semester, 12 seats reserved for first-year students. Open to first-year and sophomore students. Fall semester. Professor Hastie. Spring semester: Professor Guilford.
The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the fundamentals of argumentation theory and research, in order to give extensive practice in analyzing and producing arguments. The readings and discussions will familiarize students with various theorists whose concepts and ideas are frequently studied and applied by scholars in the field. The course is also intended as an informed introduction to rhetorical theory (including feminist rhetoric[s] and African American rhetoric) in the twentieth century.
With a focus on the skills of close reading and analytical writing, we will look at the ways in which writers imagine illness, how they try to make meaning out of illness, and how they use illness to explore other aspects of experience. This is not a course on the history of illness or the social construction of disease. We will discuss not only what writers say about illness but also how they say it: with what language and in what form they speak the experience of bodily and mental suffering.
