English
Spring in Love
English
Spring in Love
Literary lovers, it seems, break the rules, exploring the boundaries set by family, society, religion or law. What can we learn from their defiance? Why does such love so often end in disaster? Is love socially constructed or universal? We will explore these...
Poetry and Song
English
Poetry and Song
An exploration into the deep and longstanding relationship of poetry and song, this course asks (among other things) how the presence of music alters and enhances our experience of poetry; what qualities make song lyrics “poetic”; and how...
Science Fiction and Fantasy
English
Science Fiction and Fantasy
Whether it is Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings or H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds, science fiction and fantasy can not only delight our imagination but also help us understand our real, present world more thoroughly. Students in this course will...
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
English
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
English
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
English
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
English
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
English
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
English
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?...