Literature
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Crafting a Book Review — LIT4176.01
Writing a book review requires a complex set of skills from keen observation to close reading. In this course, we will survey the changing landscape of book reviews by reading book reviews from the 1960s to the present. What biases did reviewers from decades past hold? How does the reviewer’s subject position affect or not affect the way that they interpret the text? Is it
Crocheting the Classics: Elizabeth Gaskell's North South — LIT2530.01
The Great Exhibition of 1851 was meant to showcase the greatest inventions and industries of the Victorian age. Included among the various treasures from around the world, such as machinery, paintings, and gems, were samples of crochet, an art that became increasingly popular during the Victorian age. The idea of domestic handcrafts seemed to be counter to the industrial
Crocheting the Classics: Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford — LIT2512.01
The Great Exhibition of 1851 was meant to showcase the greatest inventions and industries of the Victorian age. Included among the various treasures from around the world, such as machinery, paintings, and gems, were samples of crochet, an art that became increasingly popular during the Victorian age. The idea of domestic handcrafts seemed to be counter to the industrial
Crocheting the Classics: The Daisy and the Chain and Phoebe Junior — LIT2546.01
The Great Exhibition of 1851 was meant to showcase the greatest inventions and industries of the Victorian age. Included among the various treasures from around the world, such as machinery, paintings, and gems, were samples of crochet, an art that became increasingly popular during the Victorian age. The idea of domestic handcrafts seemed to be counter to the industrial
Crossing Cultures: American Poetry Now — LIT2352.01
This two-credit course is intended as an immersive introduction to the multicultural and polyphonic contemporary poetry landscape, as well as a more general discussion on how to read, discuss, analyze, and write critically about poems. We will read the equivalent of a book a week by an emerging contemporary American poet. Writers to be discussed may include Ken Chen,
Cultural Identity in Modern Italian Novel (in English Translation) — ITA2115.01
How is Italy, and its cultures, reflected in its literature? How have Italian writers positioned themselves vis à vis the history of their country? How much of it all can we grasp in translation? These are some of the questions that will guide us in our exploration of Modern Italian fiction. We will read in English a few Italian masterpieces that went on to win
Cultural Legacies of Argentina's "Dirty War" — LIT4263.01
The "Gentleman's Coup" of 1976 ushered in years of terror, the forced disappearances of 30,000 citizens, and the establishment of hundreds of secret torture centers. We will study not only the repression itself, but literary, artistic, architectural, and cinematic works of the repressive 1970s and their complicated aftermath to this day. You will be expected to keep a reading
Dante's "Inferno" — LIT4271.01
"The Inferno" will be read in a large variety of highly creative English translations. Dante will be considered as a poet, a religious thinker, and an exiled public servant enraged at the bad governance of his native Florence. Students will be encouraged to debate Dante's poetic inventions, lyrical, rhetorical, and metaphysical, as well as his principal social
Deadly Writing – Reading Salman Rushdie — LIT4605.01
Born to a multilingual family and culture, with connections to both India and Pakistan, and educated at Cambridge in the UK, Rushdie was already a celebrated writer when an Iranian clerical fatwa against him in 1989 launched him to another level of fame (or infamy). Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini charged Rushdie with blasphemy in his novel, Satanic
Desire and Despair: Early 20th Cent. English — LIT4427.01
This new class focuses on tortured love in two early twentieth century English novels: Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, published in 1920, and EM Forster’s Maurice, penned in 1913-4.
While the former was celebrated at the time—it won the 1921 Pulitzer—the latter was only published posthumously, in 1971,
Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" and Public Action — MOD2136.04
Since its publication in 1843, Charles Dickens' allegorical tale about a miserly businessman has never gone out of print. While the novella's holiday-themed story is widely known, a close reading of the original text reveals sharp criticism of industrial capitalism and its devastating impact on social welfare. In this module we will read A Christmas Carol aloud together and
Dickensian Binge — LIT4174.01
Let's start with this hot-take -- Charles Dickens was the Shonda Rhimes of Victorian-era serialized storytelling -- and see what happens when we go from there. With his serialized novels, beginning with The Pickwick Papers, published in monthly installments from March 1836 until November 1837, Dickens helped refashion the publishing world and storytelling itself. Dude could
Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” and Public Action — MOD2136.04
Since its publication in 1843, Charles Dickens’ allegorical tale about a miserly businessman has never gone out of print. While the novella’s holiday-themed story is widely known, a close reading of the original text reveals sharp criticism of industrial capitalism and its devastating impact on social welfare. In this module we will read A Christmas Carol aloud together and
Dickinson and Hopkins — LIT2542.01
This seminar will look in depth at the work of two idiosyncratic mid-to-late 19th-century devotional poets, the legendary American recluse Emily Dickinson and the tormented British Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins, both of whom reimagined the lyric poem and revolutionized poetic language, transforming the sound and texture of English verse through their original approaches
Digital Frost — LIT2260.01
How can we use digital tools to help share knowledge and scholarship about Robert Frost's time in the Stone House? In this course, we'll explore the relationship between technology, literature, and public history. We'll discuss ways to encourage engagement with Frost's legacy and time in Shaftsbury. Students will help design and produce a digital, self-guided tour, and assist
Documentary Poetics — LIT4576.01
Drawing from news articles, interviews, archival materials, and more, writers throughout the 20th and 21st Centuries have sought to document the world through poetry. As Phillip Metres writes, such poets often collage first-person narratives with found materials in order to “give voice to stories of people and movements that the mass media
Don Quixote: "The First and Most Completest Novel" — LIT2182.01
We will immerse ourselves in the first European novel, Cervantes’ 1605 tale of the wandering knight, his faithful Sancho Panza, and the cast of hundreds they meet along their way through La Mancha. We will read Edith Grossman’s new translation of Don Quixote, as well as biographical sources (such as Cervantes in Algiers, on the author’s years of captivity by the Barbary Pirates
Dostoevsky's Major Novels — LIT2332.01
In their encounters with the fiction of Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881), readers find themselves entering into a world that is vividly three-dimensional .Dostoevsky’s novels are abundant with sharply etched inner struggles of individuals and groups who are drawn from a wide range of human experience, striking a balance between keen psychological insight and attentive social
Dostoevsky’s Major Novels — LIT2332.01
In their encounters with Dostoevsky’s fiction, readers enter into a world that is rich with the inner struggles of a wide range of individual identities. In this course, we will read Memoirs from the House of the Dead, Crime and Punishment, and The Brothers Karamazov, three novels that represent different stages in the evolution of Dostoevsky’s portrayal of power, social
Double Portrait: Of a Lady and Her Novel — LIT2223.01
We will be examining Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady from several perspectives, starting with a close reading of the novel itself. As well, we’ll be reading Michael Gorra’s recently published Portrait of a Novel, which uniquely blends criticism, biography, historical context and earned authorial speculation as a guide to James’s life during the time he was writing his book
Dybbuks, Golems, Tradition Resistance: Isaaac Basheveis Singer, Cynthia Ozick, Grace Paley — LIT2071.01
In this course, we’ll read fictions by read three major Jewish writers of the last and present century: I.B. Singer (1902-1991), the first Yiddish writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature; Cynthia Ozick (1928- ) and Grace Paley (1922-2007). Old World shtetls and the streets of Warsaw; Broadway, the Bronx, and Greenwich Village are settings rife with dybbuks, ghosts, and
Early American Confessions — LIT2251.01
From the Puritans’ first unpromising glimpse aboard the Mayflower of this “hideous desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men,” America has inspired, even required, bold new feats of language and the imagination to capture it in literature. This course will explore the beginnings of the American literary tradition and its roots in Puritan 'confession,' from the
Early American Literature — LIT2197.01
From the Puritans' first unpromising glimpse aboard the Mayflower of this "hideous & desolate wilderness, full of wild beats and wild men," America has inspired, even required, bold new feats of language and the imagination to capture it in literature. This course will survey the beginnings of the American literary tradition, from the poetry of Anne Bradstreet and the