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We will read and discuss an array of hybrid-genre works or writing that combines and coalesces two or more genres: poetry, fiction, criticism, and/or memoir. Some books will also cross media incorporating painting, photography, and film. Reading works by Rosa Alcalá, Dao Strom, Douglas Kearney, Mary-Kim Arnold, Evie Shockley, Elizabeth Powell, Tan Lin, Bhanu Kapil, and others,

With the practice of journalism undergoing its most profound changes since the invention of the television, this course will steep students in the traditions of criticism, literary non-fiction, reporting and cultural journalism that thrived during the golden age of print and have persisted in the Internet era. We’ll work our way through literary criticism from Robert Boswell

With the practice of journalism undergoing its most profound changes since the invention of the television, this course will steep students in the traditions of criticism, literary non-fiction, reporting and cultural journalism that thrived during the golden age of print and have persisted in the Internet era. We’ll work our way through literary criticism from Robert Boswell to

This writing class will depart from the premise that other people and other lives are interesting, and that it is possible to write about them in fiction. We’ll consider some techniques for gathering knowledge about the world beyond the self, from audio recording to interviews to book research. (Our ability to conduct in-person interviews will likely be curtailed by the

Poetic form is as diverse as the poets who use them. Stretching from forms as old as the sonnet to as contemporary as the Twitter poem, poets utilize prosody to express specific concerns in shocking and beautiful ways. Every decision counts, and we will learn what those decisions are and the weight they carry for different poets. We will read extensively poems and craft essays

Students will read various poetry collections that deal with different forms of trauma: homophobia, lynching, war, sexual abuse, colonization, and the overall idea of how to define “violence.” There will be time to discuss prosodic interests of our poets as well as discuss how content and form work together to create a seamless work. We will then turn to our own work and

Some writers are born gradually over a body of work that allows them to develop a signature style and a series of concerns that will flower over time, while other writers are seemingly born complete–like Athena emerging whole from Zeus’s head–with their first novels. We will read a wide selection of remarkable first novels over the term (examples include Oranges Are Not the

Traditionally, the fiction writer’s task has been to chart the space between inner and outer lives, illustrating for the reader how one operates on the other. But in the cases of certain fictive persons and their realities, is total access always the best way forward? In this craft seminar on experimental characterization, we will explore works in which the author defines the

What is the novel and how is it constructed? This course will treat the novel, primarily, as an exercise in form, and take students on in-depth tour of the traditions as they have evolved: the epistolary novel, the picaresque, the bildungsroman, the sturdy ‘realist’ or ‘naturalist’ novel, meta-fiction in its many different guises. We’ll read from the novel’s beginnings in the

The essay is an intellectual and an artistic endeavor, and work in the form means work in thinking—about life, values, our own ideas and the ideas of others. Good personal essays entertain, inform and move us through the rendering of, and reflection over, our own life experiences. Essays and stories by artists such as Virginia Woolf, E. B. White, Daniel Orozco, Annie Dillard

This course aims to experiment with generative and alternative forms of reading that can be thought of as not only a methodology, but as a practice that supports us as we engage in research with, alongside and through study in dance and performance. We will ask ourselves what it means to read and “make sense” of texts and events today…together.  *For BFA students this

This course aims to experiment with generative and alternative forms of reading that can be thought of as not only a methodology, but as a practice that supports us as we engage in research with, alongside and through study in dance and performance. We will ask ourselves what it means to read and “make sense” of texts and events today…together. 

“I, at least, am not a Marxist” Karl Marx

Ethnography is one of the key genres of writing in the discipline of anthropology and is employed across the social sciences. Proponents celebrate this genre for the nuance with which it describes social phenomena – while skeptics accuse it of getting too bogged down in detail. This course will consider how anthropologists read ethnography

This course is an advanced exploration of theory and the history of anthropology by using the most basic of anthropological texts, the ethnography. By carefully analyzing a series of classic and more current ethnographies, students will look at the relationship between approaches, how ethnographic data is presented to the reader and how the shape of the text determines how the

This course is an advanced exploration of theory and the history of anthropology by using the most basic of anthropological texts, the ethnography. By carefully analyzing a series of classic and more current ethnographies, students will look at the relationship between approaches, how ethnographic data is presented to the reader and how the shape of the text determines how the

The repercussions of the refugee crisis in Syria and at our southern border have once again thrust the politics of migration and refuge into the public discussion. In this course we will investigate the literature of forced exile and resettlement in order to understand how our collective narratives about emigration are formed, and to ask what it means for a writer to

Marx's ideas remain an important source of political and social science thought. This class requires students to engage in a close and critical reading of a number of Marx's essays and to assess his work in the light of critical philosophical responses.

***Time Change*** Marx's ideas remain an important source of political and social science thought. This class requires students to engage in a close and critical reading of a number of Marx's essays and to assess his work in the light of critical philosophical responses. This course will be offered the first seven weeks of term.

Marx's ideas remain an important source of political and social science thought. This class requires students to engage in a close and critical reading of a number of Marx's essays and works. The aim of this short course is to acquire a firm understanding of Marx’s central concepts.

In what ways is reading poetry a fundamentally different practice from reading prose? What can we discover about a poem by examining its structure and the choices the poet made? In this introductory course we will carefully consider a range of different poems from different historical periods, as well as a number of contemporary works, as we try to ascertain what a poem is,

In what ways is reading poetry a fundamentally different practice from reading prose? What can we discover about a poem by examining its structure and the choices the poet made? In this introductory course we will trace the chronological development of poetry in English as we carefully consider a range of different poems from different historical periods, as well as

In this seminar, we join in consideration of our consciousness in the act of creation on and off the page, as a means and expression of revolution. We explore what a revolution in reading as writing and writing as reading means, in experience, for each of us; rather than relegating our understanding of consciousness to total mystery, the object of this class is to directly and

Should boys be robust and ruddy? Should girls be wan, lithe and prone to vapors? Unlike the Western scientific, biomedical constructions of the body, a cultural constructionist approach accepts the body, the self, and the person as culturally shaped, constrained, and invented. In this course, we will explore how social values and hierarchies are written in, on, and through the

This course will take a critical look at how news is reported in the media with a particular focus on stories dealing with conflicts. We will read articles from the news with, if you will, conflict resolution glasses on as we analyze the dynamics of different conflicts. We will also examine what gets reported, what does not get reported, and how stories are reported.