This writing intensive course develops the communication skills that are necessary for college-level work. The class is premised on the view that writing well means entering into conversation with others. To explore the social activity of writing, students select discussion topics that matter to them. The semester builds toward a final in-class debate that dramatizes the give-and-take of academic arguments. In preparation for this work, we spend several weeks studying essays by well-regarded writers and developing a shared vocabulary for analyzing the components of academic writing.

This course questions the association of literature with cultural refinement. Why, for instance, has literature historically been fascinated with the grotesque body? Conversely, why have writers wishing to represent their loftiest beliefs been drawn to poetry and other forms of literary refinement? By comparing high-minded sentiments with their lower-minded counterparts, we will explore the varied terrain of literary culture. The aim is to understand literature's complex stake in disputes about the formation of selfhood, gender, race, nation, politics, and most fundamentally, writing.

In this course we will consider a number of issues regarding the nature of our relationship to technology. Through examinations of African American speculative fiction, visual literature, "social" media, and music, we will examine broad questions about the impact of technology on culture and its intersections with race, class, gender, and sexuality. We will tease out questions such as: How does technology help us define ourselves? How has technology influenced our consideration of "human" and "humanity"?

The course explores the concept of the migration novel as articulated by Farah Jasmine Griffin. Griffin uses the term "migration narratives" to discuss texts that embody the African American experience of migration from the South to the North (and West). I expand upon the concept to examine texts that address the migration experience of the African Diaspora to and within the United States. In this course, we will develop definitions of terms such as "diaspora" and "home"; we will address language and culture, modernity and the urban landscape, labor, and gender and sexuality.

This workshop is intended for intermediate and advanced animation students who wish to pursue independent animation projects within a classroom environment. The weekly meetings will be structured around providing creative and critical support for the participants. All participants will be required to present their work to the group frequently during the semester, and these reviews may be complemented with readings, screenings, and other assignments where appropriate.

This course introduces students to the evolving artistry of the short story in the United States. Designed both for those interested in creative writing and in literary history and criticism, the course focuses on the short story as a synthesis of personal imagination, craft, culture and history. Covering a wide variety of short stories from the nineteenth century to the present, we'll discuss fiction by writers from diverse cultural traditions in relation to theme, social context, style, tone, characterization, dialogue, point of view, and evocation of time and place.

In this workshop, designed for third-semester students, we'll study and practice micro-fiction (aka "quick fiction")."Micro-fictions," like most stories and poems, require awareness of pacing, structure, detail, image, narrative perspective, and music. We'll consider the ways that pacing and sentence structure are instrumental in establishing voice. Students will have access to a course reader that includes the work of Kafka, Lydia Davis, Eduardo Galeano, Sandra Cisneros, Etgar Keret, and Spencer Holst, among others. We will also examine selections from longer stories.

This course explores why and how writers choose to tell stories through a child's eyes. If successful, their narratives inevitably evince more emotional appeal than if told through adult eyes. Yet the works - often about war, family break-up, mental or physical disability, murder, and abuse - are deadly serious. They are for adults. The child is often an innocent observer; the child is also the cunning survivor. In this space between guilelessness and guile lies his or her 'victory' for us, the grown-ups, as we find ourselves rooting for those who can be wronged but not outdone.

Workshop members should arrive willing to explore and to expand their interests through the long poem and/or the lyric essay. We will experiment with the "malleability, ingenuity, immediacy, [and] complexity" available in these forms. Workshop members will keep regular journals, research areas of interest, submit formal (typed) passages and self-contained segments of writing for peer review, and respond to peer and published works. In addition to a portfolio of work that includes a critical introduction, each workshop participant will complete one analytical paper and one formal presentation.

Through reading novels in a range of styles and from a range of places, we'll look at how fictional characters are shaped by history. What are the tools writers use to create their characters, and are these tools any different from those used to make characters that don't exist in a historical setting? Equally, how do we talk about character in historical fiction? Are we looking for a portrayal that in some way complements our understanding of a time and place, one that challenges it - or both, often at the same time? This course will also explore how to write "good" historical fiction.