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Toni Morrison
English
Toni Morrison
Throughout her decorated career, Toni Morrison celebrated the African American experience as a central and essential component of American history. At the time of her passing in 2019, she was recognized as one of the most important writers of the 20th...
Viet Thanh Nguyen
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Viet Thanh Nguyen
Viet Thanh Nguyen argues that “all wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory.” In a war smothered in lies, silence and misinformation, how does the writer of that war, misnamed the “Vietnam...
Salman Rushdie
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Salman Rushdie
Rushdie, the multiple-award-winning author of Midnight’s Children, The Satanic Verses and Haroun and the Sea of Stories, was twice named the “winner of all winners” on the 25th and 40th anniversaries of the Booker Prize. His novels are...
Creative Writing: Multi-Genre
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Creative Writing: Multi-Genre
“Multi-genre” is more than just a catch-all for all genres. As Tom Romano suggests in his multi-genre instruction book Fearless Writing, a multi-genre project comprises a carefully choreographed range of genres and subgenres, each constituent...
Graphic Narrative Literary Comics
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Graphic Narrative Literary Comics
In this course, we will explore the literary phenomenon of the graphic novel and other graphic genres that blend visual storytelling and the written word. What happens to narrative when it unfolds in a hybrid form that joins image to text? What can this...
The Jewish Literary Imagination
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The Jewish Literary Imagination
Primo Levi’s short story, “Quaestio de Centauris,” describes a centaur living in exile from others like him in the human world. In her discussion of this story for a series in the New Yorker, Jhumpa Lahiri describes Levi’s time in...
Fictions of Finance
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Fictions of Finance
What do we value? The pursuit of profit, surges in wealth and the suspect principles of the financier have intrigued authors since the 19th century. How do language, narrative style, structure and literary production transform with shifts in the marketplace?...
Gothic Literature and Horror
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Gothic Literature and Horror
Haunted houses. Vampires. Ghosts. Monsters and the monstrous. Things that scare us and make us question reality are the most notable aspects of Gothic literature and horror. This course will trace the development of Gothic literature from its earliest...
The Harlem Renaissance
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The Harlem Renaissance
Harlem, New York. 1920s. A constellation of African American writers, artists, performers and thinkers are changing American and world culture, pollinating African American art and literature. Between WWI and the Great Depression, Harlem was distinctly in...
Theater of War
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Theater of War
Representation matters. Representation on the page and on the stage – paired with power — have material consequences. This course examines representations of race and religion in the context of war and empire in classical, early modern and...