(Offered as ENGL 462, FAMS 462, and ARHA 462.)  In recent years, curating has taken on an increasingly central role in the production of contemporary media cultures.  As the practice of selecting, organizing, and presenting cultural artifacts for public exhibition, curating often determines the sorts of media forms audiences have access to and the frameworks through which those media forms are interpreted.  Curating requires a facility with a wide variety of skills, from historical research to critical analysis, communication, administration, and creative thinking.  Yet

(Offered as ENGL 458 and AMST 358.)  [before 1800]  This course will delve deeply into the literature and history of “Turtle Island,” or North America.  The Quiché Maya Popol Vuh (Council Book), the Iroquois Great Law, and the Wabanaki creation cycle are rooted in longstanding, complex oral narratives of emergence and transformation, which were recorded by Native authors and scribes.  We will close read these epics (in English) as works of “ancient American” literature, as narratives of tribal history, and as living constitutions o

We don’t just think, speak, or write our ideas; we perform them, too.  Think TED Talks.  Think political movements.  Think 400-level seminars in English.

Like every other aspect of human culture, literature interacts with biology–with, in Elizabeth Grosz’s words, “a system of (physical, chemical, organic) differences that engenders historical, social, cultural, and sexual differences.”  The aim of this course is to make that fact as intellectually fruitful as possible.  What happens to our understanding of literature if we think of it as an expression of life?  What happens, that is, if we think of literature as one of the countless things that emerges from a non-personal, non-teleological process of ev

(Offered as ENGL 374, BLST 330 [US], and FAMS 358.)  In offering extended formal considerations of Spike Lee’s cinematic oeuvre–in particular his uses of light, sound, and color–this course is interested in how shifting through various modes of critical inquiry can enable or broaden different kinds of cultural, political, or historical engagement with a film.

(Offered as ENGL 339 and SWAG 339.)  [before 1800]   “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction,” Virginia Woolf famously said in 1929. What did the landscape of women’s writing look like before women were allowed such liberties, and what effects did their social conditions have on their writing? This course focuses on the work of early female writers, from the medieval to the Romantic period–many of whom are still overlooked today.

[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.

An advanced level fiction class. Students will undertake a longer project as well as doing exercises every week exploring technical problems.

Requisite: Completion of a previous course in creative writing. Limited enrollment. Please consult the Creative Writing Center website for information on admission to this course. Spring semester. Visiting Writer Gaige.

This course reads Chinese diasporic literatures along a transnational itinerary, analyzing literary fictions hailing from Southeast Asia, the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, and the Caribbean.  At each location, Chinese immigrants must confront a multiethnic society of layered colonial histories, and we ask how encounters with other indigenous, immigrant, or colonial peoples change their conceptions about being Chinese, their understanding of self and other, and the ways they narrate belonging and community.  We will have an emphasis on women authors, and the issues of gender in dia

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.