From Victorian periodicals to blockbuster movies and steampunk, Sherlock Holmes has remained current. Nineteenth-century detective literature was popular entertainment at the same time that it took on the anxieties and hopes of its historical moment, including those around capital, otherness, authority, and theories of knowledge. We will focus on Arthur Conan Doyle and the nineteenth century, with tangents to influences and afterlives.

This course will look at how the question Who am I? has formed works of literature. We will investigate how identity is formed or not formed by forces such as society, circumstance, and family. We'll examine body image, race, gender, class, personal voice, perception, and ancestry. Course material will be drawn from poetry, fiction, drama, memoir, and film, including Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior and Shakespeare's As You Like It, as well as shorter readings by Emily Dickinson, Adrienne Rich, Dorothy Allison, Alice Walker, Zora Neale Hurston, and Jamaica Kincaid.

The art and mechanics of persuading a polity to support either war or peace through oral argument. How speeches frame issues, mobilize public opinion, and persuade individuals to support or resist decisions to go to war. Students will be expected to deliver speeches, lead discussions, and critique their own and others' presentations.

We will explore cultural and political issues by reading current books, newspapers, and magazines. Frequent writing assignments.

This course examines topics within the physical, mental, psychological and social dimensions of wellness. Current research and trends in health and wellness are emphasized and students will be encouraged to apply this knowledge in practical ways for healthful living. While this course is not activity based, a few classes will involve physical activity to promote wellness.

The course explores comparative racial and ethnic politics in the U.S. during the twentieth century. We will analyze the creation and maintenance of structural inequalities through laws and policies targeted at persons of color in the areas of healthcare, transportation, immigration, labor, racial segregation, and education. Through readings, lectures and films, we will discuss critical histories of community struggle against social inequality, registering the central impact that race, class, gender, sexuality, and citizenship have had on efforts toward social justice.

This course examines literary representations of worlds and world-making. We will explore how major British authors interpret the idea of the world, as well as how they construct fictional worlds of complexity and beauty. We will consider how the notion ofworld is defined in relation to the cosmos, nature, human society,empire, and travel.

Maps are essential tools for understanding the world around us. But do our maps show us the world as it is, or do they allow us to choose the world we will see? Texts for the course may include poetry by Elizabeth Bishop, Thomas Hardy and others; short fiction by Borges, Faulkner and others, and visual art from the College Art Museum. This class may be especially suitable for students who do not identify as native speakers of English.

This course examines the various ways the multicultural family in contemporary American, British, European, and South African culture is imagined by writers and filmmakers. Issues to be explored include: generational conflict, the struggle to break away, and the claims of memory and nostalgia. Above all, the course seeks to explore the range of cultural forms in which these themes find expression.

A study of writing by and about physicians, patients, and the communities and cultures that shape their stories. Readings will be drawn from fiction, nonfiction, drama, and autobiography by Anatole Broyard, Willa Cather, Arthur Conan Doyle, Margaret Edson, Atul Gawande, Jhumpa Lahiri, Doris Lessing, Ian McEwan, and William Carlos Williams.