A study of the language of Anglo-Saxon England (ca. 450–1066) and a reading of Old English poems, including The Wanderer and The Dream of the Rood. We also learn the 31-character Anglo-Frisian futhorc and read runic inscriptions on the Franks Casket and Ruthwell Cross.

A writer’s workshop that focuses on sharpening and expanding each student’s fiction writing skills, as well as broadening and deepening her understanding of the short story form. Exercises will concentrate on using real-world interviewing and reporting to feed one's fictional work. Students will analyze and discuss each other's stories, and examine the work of established writers. Writing sample and permission of the instructor are required. Sample or samples should total approximately 1000 words, of any genre, and are due by the last day of registration.

Discussion of poetry, short stories, short novels, essays and drama with particular emphasis on the ways in which one might teach them. Consideration of the uses of writing and the leading of discussion classes. For upper-level undergraduates and graduate students who have an interest in teaching. Enrollment limited to 15.

We study key texts in the diverse tradition of 20th- and 21st-century South Asian literature in English, from the early poet Sarojini Naidu to internationally acclaimed contemporary global and diasporic writers from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal. Topics include: the postcolonial fashioning of identities; Independence and Partition; women’s interventions in nationalist discourses; the crafting of new English idioms; choices of genre and form; the challenges of historiography, trauma, memory; diaspora and the (re)making of “home;” life post-9/11 Islamophobia.

The goal of this workshop is to help more advanced fiction-writing students become stronger writers in a supportive context that encourages experimentation, contemplation and attention to craft. The workshop will include all the traditional elements of a fiction writing workshop, focusing on writing skills and technique, close reading and the production of new work. In addition, the workshop will include instruction in mindfulness meditation to help students cultivate their powers of concentration, observation, imagination and creative expression on the page.

Taught by the Grace Hazard Conkling Poet in Residence, this advanced poetry workshop is for students who have developed a passionate relationship with poetry and who have substantial experience in writing poems. Texts are based on the poets who are reading at Smith during the semester, and students gain expertise in reading, writing and critiquing poems. Writing sample and permission of the instructor are required.

A writer’s workshop designed to explore the complexities and delights of creative nonfiction. Constant reading, writing and critiquing. Writing sample and permission of the instructor are required.: Women have historically exerted their voice and power through writing, even as the professional trades of journalism and publishing have historically been unwelcoming of their presence. This class examines reporting and writing by and about women, and engage students in the practice of writing about gender, feminism, and women’s lives.

A contextualized close reading of Geoffrey Chaucer’s ambitious and enduring literary project, The Canterbury Tales, with attention to language change, narrative technique, the representation of varied and distinctive medieval voices, and the poem as vivid introduction to life and thought in the later Middle Ages. Not open to first year-students.

Same as ENG 202. Texts include The Iliad; tragedies by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides; Plato’s Symposium; Virgil’s Aeneid; Dante’s Divine Comedy. Lecture and discussion. CLT 202/ENG 202, like CLT 203/ENG 203, is among the courses from which comparative literature majors choose two as the basis of the major. Students interested in comparative literature and/or the foundations of Western literature and wanting a writing-intensive course should take 202 or 203 or both.

Same as CLT 202. Texts include The Iliad; tragedies by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides; Plato’s Symposium; Virgil’s Aeneid; Dante’s Divine Comedy. Lecture and discussion.