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Samuel Beckett
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Samuel Beckett
Nobel Prize-winning Irish author Samuel Beckett once said, “Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.” And yet his words have proven central – necessary even – to the way many have come to experience and...
Looking for Zora
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Looking for Zora
In this course, we will examine the life and work of Zora Neale Hurston, “A Genius of the South.” While she is best known for the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, she published more than 50 short stories, essays and plays. She was also an...
Kazuo Ishiguro
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Kazuo Ishiguro
Topically, the fiction of Japanese-born British Nobel Laureate Kazuo Ishiguro is elusive, whether he is evoking the complexity and trauma of post-war Japan, improvising with Arthurian legend or flirting with dystopian science fiction. He’s a...
Cormac McCarthy
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Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthy once wrote, “If it doesn’t concern life and death, it’s not interesting.” Not surprisingly, his novels abandon the domestic in favor of the epic. They explore the inevitability of conflict, the nature of evil and our...
Moby Dick
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Moby Dick
Journey with Ishmael as he sails on a Nantucket whaling ship under the command of the despotic Captain Ahab on his mad hunt for the great white whale. Subversive, queer, philosophical, political and groundbreakingly experimental, Herman Melville’s great...
Toni Morrison
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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...