"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

(Offered as THDA 272 and ENGL 323) This course is an exploration of writing for performance using interdisciplinary and experimental approaches. By exposing students to contemporary manifestations of performance across cultures – including those by Rodrigo Garcia, Rimini Protokoll, Romeo Castelluci, Robert Lepage, Carolina Vivas, and Gebing Tian – this course will lead to a new understanding of the art and practice of writing for the theater.

(Offered as EUST 303, ENGL 320 and RUSS 310) Acts of translation underwrite many kinds of cultural production, often invisibly. Writers of the Harlem Renaissance, for instance, engaged with black internationalism through bilingualism and translation, as Brent Edwards has reminded us. In this course we will study literary translation as a creative practice involved in the making of subjects and cultures. We will read key statements about translation by theorists and translators, such as Walter Benjamin, Roman Jakobson, Lawrence Venuti, Peter Cole and Gayatri Spivak.

(Offered as ENGL 280 and FAMS 210) An introduction to cinema studies through consideration of key critical terms, together with a selection of various films (classic and contemporary, foreign and American, popular and avant-garde) for illustration and discussion. The terms for discussion may include, among others: modernity, montage, realism, visual pleasure, ethnography, choreography, streaming, and consumption. Two class meetings and one screening per week.

Limited to 35 students. Spring semester. Professor Guilford.

(Offered as ENGL 251 and FAMS 251) How – or when – do we know if a film is a documentary? How does this knowledge, unreliable as it may be, shift our attitude toward the film, the people in it, and the world that it depicts? Documentary, perhaps most famously defined by the Scottish filmmaker John Grierson as “the creative representation of reality,” is as old as cinema itself, and to this day, debates rage on regarding the definition of documentary, and what, if anything, makes documentary films distinct from their fictional counterparts.

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 nonhuman presences. Students will read five novels, representing a range of types and styles, and write two ten-page papers.

Preference given to sophomores. Limited to 35 students. Spring semester. Professor Sanborn.

A first course in the critical reading of selected English-language poets, which gives students exposure to significant poets, poetic styles, and literary and cultural contexts for poetry from across the tradition. Attention will be given to prosody and poetic forms, and to different ways of reading poems.

Limited to 35 students. Spring semester. Professor Worsley.

How to handle overenrollment: In the case of over-enrollment, instructor will seek to balance the class in terms of majors, class year, gender, and background.

(Offered as AMST 361, BLST 361, and ENGL 276) Through a close reading of texts by African American authors, we will critically examine literary form and technique alongside the representation of race, gender, sexuality, and class. Coupled with our explication of poems, short stories, novels, and literary criticism, we will explore the stakes of adaptation in visual culture. Students will analyze the film and television adaptations of twentieth-century fiction. Authors will include Toni Morrison, Lorraine Hansberry, Alice Walker, and Gloria Naylor.

Theater can boil things down to their essence, subjecting ideas and social issues to what one critic has called “great reckonings in little rooms." This course introduces you to the craft of play-reading by focusing your attention on exactly these sorts of “great reckonings.” Centered on the work of BIPOC, femme, and queer playwrights, this course features plays that tackle big issues but require few actors (three, two, one, or even none!) to produce.

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 semester: Writer-in-Residence Lee and Professor Myiint. Spring semester: Lecturer D. Sweeney.

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