(Offered as ENGL 352 and AMST 355) In this course, we will leave the classroom and get out on the land. The class begins in winter, a time when many people huddle indoors. We will instead go outside and read the winterland, beginning with a tracking workshop. Readings will include Robin Kimmerer’s influential essay, “The Language of Animacy,” which uses the lens of Indigenous languages to reconsider the boundaries of personhood. We will discuss how language shapes the ways in which we categorize other beings, such as animals and trees, as well as other humans.

How do stories move? What are the uses and limitations of the term “plot” in describing movement or development in narrative? What culturally-specific assumptions and expectations about storytelling are bound up with conventional notions of plot, and how can we, as writers and readers, unravel them? In this advanced fiction writing course, students will explore these questions and more through writing, reading, sharing, and thoughtfully critiquing fiction that challenges, resists, or forgoes linear or sequential narrative.

"It is normally supposed that something always gets lost in translation; I cling, obstinately, to the notion that something can also be gained."  Salman Rushdie

This hybrid critical-creative course explores contemporary Asian American and Pacific poetry and lyric. Through the writings of such poets as Chen Chen, Franny Choi, William Alfred Nu’utupu Giles, Kawika Guillermo, Huan He, R.

The premise of this course is that ecological thinking is now an essential foundation of literary studies.

(Offered as ENGL 281 and FAMS 211) While film is a medium that has only been around for about 125 years, film has both a longer history than we realize and an extremely dense and rapid development in its century-plus existence. This course is designed to introduce students to historical research methods that take into account film’s aspects as an aesthetic, technological, and industrial form. Through both a widening and a narrowing of lens, we will consider how changes in production, distribution, and exhibition have affected the cultural impacts and experiences of film.

An introduction to the genre of the novel and to the experiences that it affords. We will pay
attention to the development of characters, to the complications and resolutions of plots, and to
the ceaseless social framing of what it’s possible to express, but we will pay attention, as well, to
less foregrounded things, like rhythm, motion, emotional atmospheres, and the politics of
representation. What can novels say, and what can they do that is more or other than saying
things outright? Can novels reach for justice? Students will read five novels, representing a range

This course explores the unique challenges of experiencing performance through the page. While this course is not intended as a survey of dramatic literature or theater history, students will be introduced to a variety of drama from across the English-language tradition. The organizing theme of the course may change slightly from year to year, but the goal will always be to explore a wide array of theoretical and methodological approaches to drama. Of particular interest will be the relationship of play-reading to other reading practices.

This class is a place to be curious about Asian America: the good, the bad, and the ugly. It is a place where we’ll talk about the stereotypes, the surprises, the ways in which Asian Americans are invisible and hyper-visible, model and scapegoat, a lightning rod in the U.S. racial order, and—on college campuses like ours—the wedge by which Supreme Court recently ended affirmative action as we know it.

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. Fall and Spring semester. Section 01: Professor Frank. Section 02: Professor Myint.

How to handle overenrollment: The instructor will seek to achieve representative equity (majors, class years, gender, background, etc.).