Literature

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Term
Time & Day Offered
Level
Credits
Course Duration

The River in Literature — LIT2507.01

Fall 2016
Instructor: Akiko Busch
Credits: 4
The river may be the geographic feature of the earth that speaks to us most deeply.  It divides and it connects; it is what takes us to things and away from things.  And it comes naturally to us to find some metaphor for human experience in the strength or flow or velocity of a river, to find the familiar in the sight of two rivers peaceably merging, or to imagine a
Literature

The River, The Forest, The Glacier: Classics of American Environmental Literature — LIT4139.02

Fall 2019
Instructor: Akiko Busch
Credits: 2
How to take measure of place is a question that has long resonated in the American imagination, and this course considers both the geography and the voices that provide the foundation for current environmental writing. The Exploration of the Colorado River and its Canyons by John Wesley Powell, The Maine Woods by H. D. Thoreau, and Travels in Alaska by John Muir offer occasion
Environment Literature

The Romantic Poets — LIT2249.01

Fall 2014
Instructor: mark wunderlich
Days & Time: TBA
Credits: 4
Toward the end of the 18th century, writers, thinkers and artists began to react against the rationalism of the Enlightenment, the coming Industrial Revolution and the political claustrophobia of Europe, and they set out on a new path. The result was the Romantic movement, and it gave us some of the most enduring poetic works. In this course, we will look at both the German and
Environment Literature

The Romantic Poets — LIT2249.01

Fall 2021
Instructor: Michael Dumanis
Credits: 4
This course provides an immersion into the work of a group of late 18th century and early 19th century British poets and thinkers who reacted against the rationalism of Enlightenment thought, the tumultuous politics of the day, and the birth of the Industrial Revolution by valorizing imagination over reason, mystery over certainty, nature over artifice, and the sensuous over
Literature

The Russian Modernist Poets — LIT4175.01

Spring 2022
Instructor: Michael Dumanis
Credits: 2
The period between the 1890s and 1920s was known as the Silver Age of Russian poetry, a time of invention and innovation against the backdrop of revolution, war, societal upheaval, and the eventual formation of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union's repressive authoritarian regime sought to stamp out artistic experimentation and personal expression that wasn't in service to the
Literature

The Scriptorium: Critical Theories — LIT2227.01

Fall 2015
Instructor: Camille Guthrie
Days & Time: TBA
Credits: 4
Our scriptorium, a “place for writing,” will function as a class for beginning writers and for those students who want to improve their essay skills. We will read to write and write to read, following the originator of the form, Montaigne. Much of our time will be occupied with writing probatively, as essai means “trial” or “attempt.” This class will read model examples of
Literature

The Scriptorium: Critical Theories — LIT2227.01

Fall 2014
Instructor: camille guthrie
Days & Time: TBA
Credits: 4
Our scriptorium, a place for writing, will function as a class for beginning writers and for those students who want to improve their essay skills. We will read to write and write to read, following the originator of the form, Montaigne. Much of our time will be occupied with writing probatively, as "essai" means trial or attempt. This class will study model examples of theory
Literature

The Scriptorium: Ekphrasis — LIT2225.01

Spring 2014
Instructor: Camille Guthrie
Credits: 4
Defined as a “place for writing,” our scriptorium will function as a class to explore the many manifestations of ekphrasis, which can be simply defined as an artistic description of a work of art, a rhetorical device in which one medium of art responds to another. In this writing-intensive course, we will study examples of ekphrasis—from the Classical era to Postmodernism—and
Literature

The Scriptorium: The Body and Society — LIT2399.01

Spring 2016
Instructor: Camille Guthrie
Credits: 4
Our scriptorium, a “place for writing,” will function as a class for beginning writers and for those students who want to improve their essay skills. We will read to write and write to read, following the originator of the form, Montaigne. Much of our time will be occupied with writing probatively, as essai means “trial” or “attempt.” This class will explore anthropologist Mary
Literature

The Scriptorium: The Body and Society — LIT2399.01

Spring 2017
Instructor: Camille Guthrie
Credits: 4
Our scriptorium, a “place for writing,” will function as a class for beginning writers and for those students who want to improve their essay skills. We will read to write and write to read. Much of our time will be occupied with writing probatively, as essai means “trial” or “attempt.” This class will explore anthropologist Mary Douglas’s idea: “Just as it is true that
Literature

The Scriptorium: Visual Culture — LIT2252.01

Fall 2016
Instructor: Camille Guthrie
Credits: 4
How do we organize and understand our perceptions of the world? How do we look at objects? At paintings and photographs, advertisements and films? What do we see, and not see, when we visit a new place, or when we encounter an animal? And, importantly, how do we perceive and comprehend each other? This scriptorium, a “place for writing,” will function as a class for beginning
Literature

The Scriptorium: Visual Culture — Section 2 - LIT2252.02

Spring 2015
Instructor: Camille Guthrie
Credits: 4
How do we organize and understand our perceptions of the world? How do we look at objects? At paintings and photographs, advertisements and films? What do we see, and not see, when we visit a new place, or when we encounter an animal? And, importantly, how do we perceive and comprehend each other? This scriptorium, a “place for writing,” will function as a class for beginning
Literature

The Scriptorium: Visual Culture — Section 1 - LIT2252.01

Spring 2015
Instructor: Camille Guthrie
Credits: 4
How do we organize and understand our perceptions of the world? How do we look at objects? At paintings and photographs, advertisements and films? What do we see, and not see, when we visit a new place, or when we encounter an animal? And, importantly, how do we perceive and comprehend each other? This scriptorium, a “place for writing,” will function as a class for beginning
Literature

The Scriptorium: Writing About Place — LIT2503.01

Fall 2016
Instructor: Camille Guthrie
Credits: 4
This scriptorium, a “place for writing,” will function as a class for bilingual or multilingual writers interested in improving their essay-writing skills. We will read to write and write to read, following the originator of the form, Montaigne. Much of our time will be occupied with writing and revising—essai means “trial” or “attempt”—as we work to create new habits and
Literature

The Self, the Soul, and St. Augustine — LIT2339.01

Spring 2020
Instructor: Benjamin Anastas
Credits: 2
We live in an age of rampant confession, so it can be difficult to conceive of a world without it. Augustine’s Confessions—which the Bishop of Hippo dictated to a team of scribes between 397 and 400 C.E.—is one of those rare literary works that marks a very clear before and after. In this two-credit course we’ll spend the term reading the whole of the Confessions slowly and
Literature

The Slow Burn — LIT4171.01

Spring 2023
Instructor: Manuel Gonzales
Credits: 2
Some novels are slow, let's not beat around the bush. Some novels are languorous, moving at a narrative- and sentence-level pace that forces you to slow down how quickly you move your eyes across the page, how carefully you attest to the language, the meandering, lengthy, lingering sentences, the sonorous and lulling structure of long and digressive paragraphs. Trying to read
Literature

The Thousand and One Nights and the Roots of Fabulism — LIT2565.01

Fall 2024
Instructor: Carly Rudzinski
Credits: 4
Our primary text for this class will be Yasmine Seale’s The Annotated Arabian Nights, which we will open in the spirit of pleasure and curiosity. Seale’s annotated edition makes de- orientalizing gestures while also mapping many of the instances in which this corpus of stories has inspired other works of art and literature. ’Alf Laylah wa-Laylah, known in English as the
Literature

The Victorian Novel — LIT4320.01

Spring 2018
Instructor: Brooke Allen
Credits: 4
In this class we will cover almost the entire Victorian period in England, starting with Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist, published in the year of Queen Victoria's accession (1837), and finishing with Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). Between these two, we will read major novels by George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans), Thomas Hardy, and Anthony Trollope. The class will
Literature

The Victorian Novel — LIT4320.01

Fall 2015
Instructor: Brooke Allen
Days & Time: TBA
Credits: 4
Many have thought the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901) the great age of the English novel.  We will begin with Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist, published  in the first year of the Victorian Era, a novel full of the social concerns that obsessed Dickens and his contemporaries. We will move on to Middlemarch by George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), a powerful
Literature

The Whiteness of the Whale: Moby-Dick and Melville's America — LIT2401.02

Fall 2018
Instructor: Benjamin Anastas
Credits: 2
The poet Charles Olson, in his groundbreaking lyric study of Melville Call me Ishmael (1947), argues that Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (1851) is a truer and more essentially American literary document than Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass (1855) because "it is all of America, all of her space, the malice, the root." We'll spend seven weeks reading Melville's account of Ahab's
Literature

The Whiteness of the Whale: Moby-Dick and Melville's America — LIT2401.01

Spring 2022
Instructor: Benjamin Anastas
Credits: 4
Poet Charles Olson, in his groundbreaking work of lyric criticism Call Me Ishmael (1947), argues that Melville’s classic novel Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (1851) is a truer and more essential literary document than Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (1855) because “it is all of America, all of her space, the malice, the root.” A work of prophetic imagination that is almost endlessly
Literature

This is Not a Novel: Experimental American Fiction — LIT2211.01

Spring 2014
Instructor: Michael Dumanis
Credits: 4
In this course, we will examine the attempts of various American writers to come up with alternatives to the conventions of realist narrative fiction that have dominated American literary history. We will read writers from the last half-century that have employed with modernist and postmodern techniques as metafiction, resistance of closure, authorial intrusion, collage,
Literature

Through Syntax to Style: A Grammar of Writing — LIT2169.02

Spring 2016
Instructor: John Gould
Credits: 2
“Syntax” is the aspect of grammar concerned with the relationships of words in a language, with how they fit together to create meaning. By exploring various English syntactical structures, we will discover a variety of ways to combine the same words to say slightly different things. The course will rely heavily on the linguistic work of Noam Chomsky. We will write a number of
Literature

Through Syntax to Style: A Grammar of Writing — LIT2169.01

Fall 2015
Instructor: John Gould
Days & Time: TBA
Credits: 2
“Syntax” is the aspect of grammar concerned with the relationships of words in a language, with how they fit together to create meaning. By exploring various English syntactical structures, we will discover a variety of ways to combine the same words to say slightly different things. The course will rely heavily on the linguistic work of Noam Chomsky. We will write a number of
Literature

Through Syntax to Style: A Grammar of Writing — LIT2169.02

Spring 2015
Instructor: John Gould
Credits: 2
"Syntax" is the aspect of grammar concerned with the relationships of words in a language, with how they fit together to create meaning. By exploring various English syntactical structures, we will discover a variety of ways to combine the same words to say slightly different things. The course will rely heavily on the linguistic work of Noam Chomsky. We will write a number of
Literature