(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. But what did the landscape of women’s writing look like before women were allowed these liberties, and what effects did their social conditions have on their writing? This course focuses on the work of early female-identifying writers, from the medieval to the Romantic period–many of whom are still overlooked today.

(Offered as RUSS 225 and ENGL 315) This course looks at the fiction and career of Vladimir Nabokov, a trilingual fiction writer of genius and a sophisticated self-promoter.

(Offered as ENGL 308 and LLAS 308) In this course, we will read and discuss recent works of Latinx literature across genres – novel, poetry, memoir, essay, and YA – in engagement with the live debates surrounding language, race, migration, and global capitalism that shape our definitions of Latinx identity and culture (and of literature itself). We will also experiment with different ways of responding to these literary texts in written forms ranging from creative writing to book review to research prospectus.

An upper-level workshop for students interested in exploring larger projects in poetry or in hybrid forms. We will study chapbooks, long poems, sequences, docupoetics and other work that expands our understanding of the genre. Students will design a chapbook-length (20-25 page) project to write and revise over the course of the semester.  Readings may include Terrance Hayes, C.D. Wright, Banu Kapil, Theresa Cha, Alice Notely, M.

It’s possible to imagine people who have not yet suffered, who have not yet had a peculiarly intense and sustained experience of physical or psychic pain. Those imaginary people are, however, vulnerable to future suffering. Even more importantly, they live in a world in which many others suffer, so many that a refusal to attend to suffering amounts to a refusal of a meaningfully relational existence.

(Offered as ENGL 284 and FAMS 216) What do we mean when we talk about “the media”? Coming to Terms: Media will parse this question, approaching the media not as a shadowy monolith but as a complex and changing environment comprised of varied technologies, formats, practices, devices, and platforms (e.g.: photography, gramophone records, online dating, smartphones, Netflix). The course will introduce key terms and critical approaches for the study of modern media in their specificity in an era of digital mediation.

(Offered as ENGL 280 and FAMS 210) An introduction to cinema studies through consideration of key critical terms, together with a selection of films from different cultural contexts for illustration and discussion. Special emphasis placed on prominent genres, movements, and tendencies within contemporary film culture, and the concepts that animate critical debates on contemporary cinema. The keywords for discussion may include, among others: montage, realism, ideology, the gaze, streaming, digitization, truth, and access.

In this course you will read letters and write letters. We will explore the letter as a complex instrument of self-expression and communication with others, as literary artefact, as carrier of affect, intention and ideas, and as a record of individual and communal growth.  Letter writing will be experienced as a performance that deploys persona, tone, voice, purpose, persuasion, and will focus on the tension between transparency and decorum. Your discoveries and the development of your thoughts will be circulated as letters written among a small circle of correspondence.  

(Offered as ENGL 260 and FAMS 334) The word “podcast” was coined in 2004 as a portmanteau of “broadcast” and “iPod.” As the name implies, podcasts were born when an old mode of audio transmission (radio broadcast) met a new technology (portable mp3 players like Apple’s iPod, or rather RSS feeds adapted to handle audio files). But even back then, “podcasts” were more than just time-delayed radio programs you could carry around in your pocket.

The most basic definition of poetry may be that it is memorable speech. What makes a poem, as distinct from prose, memorable? The accepted answer is that poetry in English is written in lines, lines of particular lengths, that become memorable by virtue of their rhythm and sounds as well as the poet’s choice of words and the thoughts, feelings, and images those words evoke.