This course examines the way writers commit their own lives to the page and the many interesting hybrids that, falling somewhere in between fiction and non-fiction, writers have been experimenting with of late.  Why have these hybrid forms become so dominant in the literary world?  How do the assumptions and expectations we bring to fiction differ from those we bring to non-fiction?  Why are forms that play with the relation between these forms so popular right now?  What do they offer us, emotionally and intellectually?  And what can they illuminate about literatur

Readings of poets who have chosen to live in a culture other than their own, with an emphasis on T.S. Eliot in London, Elizabeth Bishop in Brazil, Thom Gunn in California, and Agha Shahid Ali in New England. Two class meetings per week.

Spring semester.  Writer-in-Residence Hall.

(Offered as ENGL 284 and FAMS 216)  Media are not just audiovisual texts but also technological infrastructures, economic enterprises, ideological apparatuses, and artistic practices.  This course provides an introduction to the analysis of modern media forms through a consideration of significant critical and analytical terms, together with a selection of media texts (ranging across print, photography, cinema, television, and digital media) for illustration and discussion.  The key terms for discussion will reflect the complexity of how we define “media.”  T

(Offered as ENGL 277 and FAMS 333)  In this course we will engage in a comprehensive approach to narrative video gaming–-play, interpretation, and design–-to explore how video gaming helps us to conceptualize the boundaries between our experiences of the world and our representations thereof.  We will ask how play and interactivity change how we think about the work of narrative.  What would it mean to think about video games alongside texts focused on similar subjects but in different media?

Children’s books are a site of first encounter, a doorway to literacy and literature.  This course will offer both a history of book production for child readers in England and the United States and an exploration of what these first books can teach us about the attractions, expectations, and responsibilities of reading.

Limited to 80 students.  Spring semester.  Professor K. Sánchez-Eppler.

An introduction to the study of the novel, through the exploration of a variety of critical terms (plot, character, point of view, tone, realism, identification, genre fiction, the book) and methodologies (structuralist, Marxist, feminist, psychoanalytic).  We will draw on a selection of novels in English to illustrate and complicate those terms; possible authors include Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, Wilkie Collins, Henry James, Kazuo Ishiguro, Thomas Pynchon, Toni Morrison, John Edgar Wideman, Emma Donoghue, David Foster Wallace, Monique Truong, Jennifer Egan.

[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 Grobe.  Spring semester: Professor Bosman.

The term “performance” can refer to any of the stylized doings that define our world.  This, of course, includes the traditional performing arts, but it also encompasses religious rituals, public ceremonies, political protests, sports events, social media use, etc.  “Performance” can even describe the regimented behaviors that structure our everyday lives, whether we’re aware of them or not.

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.  Preregistration is not allowed.  Please consult the Creative Writing Center website for information on admission to this course.  Fall semester:  Visiting Lecturer Stinson.  Spring semester:  Professor Frank.

(Offered as THDA 255, ENGL 223, and MUSI 255) This studio course is designed as an interactive laboratory for dancers, composers, actors, writers/poets, vocalists, and sound artists to work together to create meaningful interactions between sound, movement, and text.