Literature

Gothic Vision: Specters of Subversion, Medieval to Now — AH4108.01

Spring 2017

Instructor: Vanessa Lyon

Credits: 4

The Gothic is a worldview equally at home in nostalgia and strangeness. It thirsts for arcane, even perverse, knowledge and is frequently motivated by a fearful fascination with the foreign. In Gothic novels (the first of which appeared in London in 1764) psychic ‘interiority’ is revealed in dark spaces tainted by unthinkable crimes or haunted by spirits. But if seeing is

Visual Arts Literature

Greek Historians as Literature — LIT4187.01

Spring 2014

Instructor: Dan Hofstadter

Credits: 4

Precisely where the accounts of the major Greek historians stand in relation to fact is a matter of massive, ongoing scholarly inquiry. However that may be, the works of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Plutarch have always been regarded as brilliant contributions to literary art, albeit in different ways. Herodotus is a raconteur, venturing into the realm of folktale, fantasy, and

Literature

Hans Christian Andersen — LIT2285.01

Spring 2018

Instructor: Brooke Allen

Credits: 2

Hans Christian Andersen (1805-75) is one of the most famous names in world literature, but the Hollywoodization of his most famous stories--not to mention of his own biography--have obscured, for many, the delicate, painful artistry of his incomparable tales. In this class we will read a wide selection of Andersen's stories, including classics like "The Emperor's New Clothes,"

Literature

Hans Christian Andersen — LIT2285.01

Spring 2014

Instructor: Brooke Allen

Credits: 2

Literature

Haunted by Unnameable Doom — LIT2576.01

Fall 2025

Instructor: Manuel Gonzales

Days & Time: WE 2:10pm-5:50pm

Credits: 4

Halfway through John Milton's epic poem, Paradise Lost, he admits to the reader in his call to the Muses that he has "fallen on evil days" and into unwelcome solitude, caught "[i]n darkness, with dangers compassed round." Milton wrote Paradise Lost under epically gnarly circumstances -- jailed and fined for backing the failed removal and execution of the King, going blind,

Literature

Hearing Voices: a Master Class in Literary Journalism — LIT4395.01

Spring 2024

Instructor: Carly Rudzinski

Credits: 4

Voice, in writing, goes beyond style and tone to something like identity; at best, a writer’s voice is a direct conduit to their exact nature—their mind, their individuality, their blind spots, their soul. In this course, we’ll learn to hear voices more clearly. We’ll analyze what animates the work of writers like Patricia Lockwood, Ellen Willis, Greg Tate, John Jeremiah

Literature

Henrik Ibsen — LIT4531.01

Spring 2021

Instructor: Maya Cantu

Credits: 4

This remote and synchronous course will explore Henrik Ibsen’s influence and innovations as an architect of modern drama. The Norwegian playwright restlessly experimented with theatrical genre while relentlessly pursuing themes of personal freedom. From early works such as Brand to his final play When We Dead Awaken, Ibsen’s plays urge the individual’s imperative toward moral

Literature

Historical Fictions/Fictional Histories — LIT4165.01

Fall 2021

Instructor: Marguerite Feitlowitz

Credits: 4

In this advanced seminar, we will consider the demands and complexities of working with history in fiction. When, where, why, and how do facts abet and/or intrude on the creation of plot, character, place, framing, rhythm, and other details of style in novels and stories? How do questions of representation, selection and emphasis, vocabulary and tone, pacing and texture, affect

Literature

Historical Fictions/Fictional Histories — LIT4165.01

Spring 2018

Instructor: Marguerite Feitlowitz

Credits: 4

In this Writing Intensive Seminar, we will consider the demands and complexities of working with history in fiction. When, where, why, and how do facts abet and/or intrude on the creation of plot, character, place, framing, rhythm, and other details of style in novels and stories? How do questions of representation—selection and emphasis, vocabulary and tone, pacing and texture

Literature

History of Theater II: Modern Drama — DRA2154.01

Fall 2015

Instructor: Kathleen Dimmick

Days & Time: TBA

Credits: 4

This course examines the history and aesthetics of the theater, including the development of staging, production, and acting methods and styles. In the fall of 2015 we will read representative plays from the modern canon, beginning with the experiments in Naturalism in the nineteenth century through twentieth century modernism to the contemporary drama of today. Along with the

Drama Literature

Honors Seminar "The Invention of the Nineteenth Century": Readings in Balzac — LIT4329.01

Fall 2015

Instructor: Marguerite Feitlowitz

Days & Time: TBA

Credits: 4

Oscar Wilde liked to say that Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) invented the 19th century. The Human Comedy (La Comédie Humaine) comprises approximately 3,000 characters in a total of 92 novels, sketches, stories, and philosophical tales. For the first time in the history of the novel, characters recur—a star of one book may reappear as a minor figure in the intricate social

Literature

Honors Seminar on Twain — LIT4527.01

Spring 2014

Instructor: Rebecca Godwin

Credits: 4

According to Sam Clemens himself, “The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.” In this course, we’ll read several “good books”—along with stories, essays, and letters—penned by one of the most prolific and complex of American writers. One of the funniest, too, so expect to have a good time, in the midst of a rigorous reading and

Literature

Honors Seminar: Theory and Practice of Dramaturgy — CANCELLED

Fall 2015

Instructor: Kathleen Dimmick

Days & Time: TBA

Credits: 4

In this course weʹll look at the history and practice of dramaturgy and introduce some tools and methods of that practice, including text analysis, editing, and adaptation. Along with assignments on individual texts, students will observe rehearsals in DRA4376 Directing II and prepare rehearsal notes. The studentʹs major work for the term will be the preparation of a Protocol,

Drama Literature

Honors Seminar: George Orwell — LIT4135.01

Fall 2013

Instructor: Brooke Allen

Days & Time: TBA

Credits: 4

Perhaps more than any other writer of his century, George Orwell (1903-1950) combined a penetrating political intelligence with significant literary gifts. In this class we will read most of Orwell's novels ('Burmese Days,' 'Keep the Aspidistra Flying,' 'Coming Up for Air,' 'Animal Farm,' '1984') and major non-fiction works ('Down and Out in Paris and London,' 'The Road to

Literature

Honors Seminar: Korean American Feminist Poetry — LIT4159.01

Fall 2018

Instructor: Anna Maria Hong

Credits: 4

Poetry by Korean American female and feminist writers has burgeoned in the 21st century with a new generation of poets contributing to life of American letters. Reading poets such as Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Myung Mi Kim, Monica Youn, Don Mee Choi, Arlene Kim, EJ Koh, Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello, Hannah Sanghee Park, and Franny Choi, we will discuss how each writer negotiates

Literature

Honors Seminar: Map to a Masterpiece — LIT4273.01

Fall 2014

Instructor: doug bauer

Days & Time: TBA

Credits: 4

We'll be reading some of the principal works that Henry James, as a young aspiring novelist, absorbed and analyzed in the process of actively forming his own aesthetic, culminating in his first great novel, The Portrait of a Lady. It's a highly various and idiosyncratic tracing and the reading list will reflect it, drawn from among Turgenev's A Sportsman's Sketches, Eliot's

Literature

Honors Seminar: Recent African American Poetry — LIT4118.01

Spring 2015

Instructor: Michael Dumanis

Credits: 4

This Honors Seminar will intensively explore the work of established and emerging African American poets of the past forty years. We will begin with a brief overview of African American poetry from the eighteenth century to the Black Arts Movement of the 1970s, then proceed to discuss a different poet each week. Along the way we will consider whether a distinctive "Black

Literature

Honors Seminar: The Man Without Qualities — LIT4283.01

Fall 2016

Instructor: Benjamin Anastas

Credits: 4

The Austrian writer Robert Musil (1880-1942) never lived to complete his multi-volume Modernist masterpiece The Man Without Qualities. Conceived of as an ironic epitaph to the culture of Mitteleuropa that slid blindly into the catastrophe of the First World War, the novel--and its author--became embroiled in the dark upheavals that would lead to another suicidal conflict

Literature

Honors Seminar: War and Peace — LIT4108.01

Spring 2017

Instructor: Annabel Davis-Goff

Credits: 4

War and Peace, Vanity Fair, and Shirley are novels that are set during the Napoleonic Wars. Charlotte Bronte’s novel is set in a Yorkshire deeply affected by the Peninsular wars, Tolstoy describes both Napoleon’s Russian campaign and the domestic and social life of a huge range of characters, and Thackeray’s greatest novel reaches its climax with the Battle of Waterloo.

Literature

Honors Seminar; Bowen and Pym — LIT4287.01

Spring 2018

Instructor: Annabel Davis-Goff

Credits: 4

Elizabeth Bowen and Barbara Pym provide a record of England life - social, political, and cultural - from the end of the First World War until the 1960s. Elizabeth Bowen was an Anglo-Irish novelist and short story writer. Her novels describe political tension, love, and war. She is admired for her description of landscape, her descriptions of London during the Blitz, her use of

Literature

Horror Fiction — LIT4325.01

Spring 2015

Instructor: Paul La Farge

Credits: 4

Pleasure is one part of the aesthetic experience of fiction; another part is terror. This course will be a survey of major works of horror fiction from the 19th century through the present. We’ll pay particular attention to the techniques of writing horror, and the uses to which fiction writers have put them, from psychological examination through social critique and beyond.

Literature

Horror Fiction and Film — LIT2333.01

Fall 2020

Instructor: Michael Dumanis

Credits: 4

Pleasure is one part of the aesthetic experience of fiction; another part is terror. This course will be a survey of major works of horror fiction (whether classified as such or otherwise) from the 19th century through the present, and of some important horror films from the 20th 21st centuries. The emphasis in this class will be on techniques for creating horror in fiction,

Literature

Horror Writing and the (Postcolonial) Afterlife — LIT2538.01

Fall 2023

Instructor: An Duplan

Credits: 4

It’s one thing to feel scared when we watch scary movies, and it’s another to feel that same fear as we read books. After all, in books, there’s no eerie music, nor the possibility of being jolted by a sudden jump scare. Yet still, horror writing abounds and writers throughout history have found ways of communicating dread, terror, paranoia, and anguish through the written word

Black Studies Visual Arts Literature Society Culture and Thought

How the "Boom" Went Bust — SPA4706.01

Fall 2018

Instructor: Jonathan Pitcher

Credits: 4

In 1961, Jorge Luis Borges shared the Formentor prize with Samuel Beckett, thus internationalizing Latin American culture and supposedly initiating the “Boom.” Whether the swagger of the ensuing decades marked the apex of the continent’s artistic production, or was simply the result of a single Spanish publishing house’s hype, feeding a neo-imperialist world’s expectations of

Literature Languages

How to Read a Story — LIT2179.01

Fall 2014

Instructor: doug bauer

Days & Time: TBA

Credits: 2

The challenge in this class will be to read and then to write critically about great literature with an appreciation of its aims and ambitions, and with earned opinions regarding the writers' intentions. (In this effort you'll be reading criticism of the works that will inform but not dictate your own carefully considered views.) All that while also retaining the immediate

Literature