Students work intensively in this course with the rich variety of literary works produced by Emily Brontë, Charlotte Brontë, Anne Brontë and their shadowy brother Branwell, examining also the remarkable mid-Victorian phenomenon of their household in a remote vicarage.  They were a family blighted beyond measure (all died young and in quick succession) and blessed beyond measure (two of the sisters are among England’s greatest novelists).  Their writings and artworks include explorations of the complexities of childhood, of illicit desire, of money and power,

This course traces the role of black prison writings in the development of American political and legal theory, interrogating theories of intellectualism, including Antonio Gramsci’s notion of traditional and organic intellectuals, and distinctions between categories of criminal and enemy.

Offered as PYX 301 and ENG 301. Conceived as the culmination of an undergraduate poet’s work, this course features a rigorous immersion in creative generation and revision. Student poets write a chapbook manuscript with thematic or stylistic cohesion (rather than disparate poems, as in prior workshop settings). For Poetry Concentrators, this course counts as the required Capstone; for English majors in the Creative Writing track, the course counts as an advanced workshop and may count toward the fulfillment of the "capstone experience" requirement.

In this class students closely read the novels of Jane Austen, focusing on her innovations in narrative form and style, while putting the novels in the context of early nineteenth-century British literature and culture. The discussions consider how Austen delineates the nuances of feeling, embodiment and attachment, her complex use of the marriage plot and her incisive and often ironic social commentary. At the forefront are issues of gender, power, politics, history, marriage, love and class, and a close and careful attention to narrative form, technique and style. Enrollment limited to 30.

This course helps more advanced fiction writers improve their skills in a supportive workshop context, which encourages experimentation and attention to craft. The course focuses on technique, close reading and the production of new work. Students submit manuscripts for discussion, receive feedback from peers and revise their work. They keep a process journal and practice mindfulness to cultivate powers of focus and observation. Students read Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose and short fiction by authors in different genres. Prerequisite: ENG 206 or equivalent.

This is a colloquium in creative nonfiction writing that takes science and the environment as its subject matter. Students research and write a series of magazine-style, general-audience articles about science, scientists and ordinary people affected by such concerns as disease or global warming. Along the way, students hone their interviewing and research skills and expressive capabilities while contending with issues of factual accuracy, creative license, authority responsibility and the basic tenets of longform nonfiction.

Romantic writers were obsessed with uncertainty, ignorance and the irrational, unthinking mind. Concerned with the unusual ideas that surface when one is sleeping or spaced out, absorbed or intoxicated, Romanticism embraced reason’s alternatives: forgetting, fragmentation, stupidity and spontaneous, uncontrollable emotion. From Wordsworth’s suggestion that children are wiser than adults, to Keats’s claim that great writers are capable of remaining uncertain without reaching for fact or reason, Romantic poets and novelists suggested that one has something to learn from not thinking.