Fall 2020 Class Schedule: Department of English

Fall 2020 Class Schedule

**Meeting days and times may be subject to change.**

Course	Title	Instructor	Day/Time
English 202	Introduction to Creative Writing	Hughes	WF 9:30-10:50
English 202 Introduction to Creative Writing Course Description: This course will introduce students to the major elements and tools of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction writing. Through exercises and projects, you’ll practice using these tools to produce original, exciting works of literary art. Along the way, you’ll sharpen your ability to track these elements both in published texts and in the work of your classmates, and further develop how you measure aesthetic value. You’ll be encouraged to see yourself as an active member of a community of artists, and to establish a regular discipline as a working writer. Writing and reading will be due in nearly every class, and peer workshop will play an important role in learning to see your work more objectively. Teaching Methods: Discussion. Evaluation Methods: Evaluation of a final portfolio. Texts include: A course reader.
English 202	Introduction to Creative Writing	Batra	WF 11-12:20
English 202 Introduction to Creative Writing Course Description: This course will introduce students to the major elements and tools of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction writing. Through exercises and projects, you’ll practice using these tools to produce original, exciting works of literary art. Along the way, you’ll sharpen your ability to track these elements both in published texts and in the work of your classmates, and further develop how you measure aesthetic value. You’ll be encouraged to see yourself as an active member of a community of artists, and to establish a regular discipline as a working writer. Writing and reading will be due in nearly every class, and peer workshop will play an important role in learning to see your work more objectively. Teaching Methods: Discussion. Evaluation Methods: Evaluation of a final portfolio. Texts include: A course reader.
English 206	Reading and Writing Poetry	Shanahan	MW 11:20-12:40
English 206 Reading and Writing Poetry [Prerequisite to English Major in Writing] Course Description: An introduction to the major forms of poetry in English from the dual perspective of the poet-critic. Creative work will be assigned in the form of poems and revisions; analytic writing will be assigned in the form of critiques of other class members’ poems. A scansion exercise will be given early on. All of these exercises, creative and expository, as well as the required readings from the anthology, are designed to help students increase their understanding of poetry rapidly and profoundly; the more wholehearted students’ participation, the more they will learn from the course. Prerequisites: No prerequisites. No P/N registration. Attendance of first class is mandatory. Freshmen are NOT permitted to enroll until winter quarter. Seniors require department permission. Prerequisite for the writing major and sequence-based minor. Literature Majors are also welcome. Teaching Method: Discussion; one-half to two-thirds of the classes will be devoted to discussion of readings and principles, the other classes to discussion of student poems. Evaluation Method: Evidence given in written work and class participation of students’ understanding of poetry; improvement will count for a great deal in estimating achievement. Texts include: An anthology, a critical guide, a 206 Reader prepared by the instructor, and the work of other students. Note: This course may also be counted toward the English Literature major.
English 206	Reading and Writing Poetry	Shanahan	MW 4:20-5:40
English 206 Reading and Writing Poetry [Prerequisite to English Major in Writing] Course Description: An introduction to the major forms of poetry in English from the dual perspective of the poet-critic. Creative work will be assigned in the form of poems and revisions; analytic writing will be assigned in the form of critiques of other class members’ poems. A scansion exercise will be given early on. All of these exercises, creative and expository, as well as the required readings from the anthology, are designed to help students increase their understanding of poetry rapidly and profoundly; the more wholehearted students’ participation, the more they will learn from the course. Prerequisites: No prerequisites. No P/N registration. Attendance of first class is mandatory. Freshmen are NOT permitted to enroll until winter quarter. Seniors require department permission. Prerequisite for the writing major and sequence-based minor. Literature Majors are also welcome. Teaching Method: Discussion; one-half to two-thirds of the classes will be devoted to discussion of readings and principles, the other classes to discussion of student poems. Evaluation Method: Evidence given in written work and class participation of students’ understanding of poetry; improvement will count for a great deal in estimating achievement. Texts include: An anthology, a critical guide, a 206 Reader prepared by the instructor, and the work of other students. Note: This course may also be counted toward the English Literature major.
English 206	Reading and Writing Poetry	Webster	TTh 9:40-11
English 206 Reading and Writing Poetry [Prerequisite to English Major in Writing] Course Description: An introduction to the major forms of poetry in English from the dual perspective of the poet-critic. Creative work will be assigned in the form of poems and revisions; analytic writing will be assigned in the form of critiques of other class members’ poems. A scansion exercise will be given early on. All of these exercises, creative and expository, as well as the required readings from the anthology, are designed to help students increase their understanding of poetry rapidly and profoundly; the more wholehearted students’ participation, the more they will learn from the course. Prerequisites: No prerequisites. No P/N registration. Attendance of first class is mandatory. Freshmen are NOT permitted to enroll until winter quarter. Seniors require department permission. Prerequisite for the writing major and sequence-based minor. Literature Majors are also welcome. Teaching Method: Discussion; one-half to two-thirds of the classes will be devoted to discussion of readings and principles, the other classes to discussion of student poems. Evaluation Method: Evidence given in written work and class participation of students’ understanding of poetry; improvement will count for a great deal in estimating achievement. Texts include: An anthology, a critical guide, a 206 Reader prepared by the instructor, and the work of other students. Note: This course may also be counted toward the English Literature major.
English 206	Reading and Writing Poetry	Marshall	TTh 4:20-5:40
English 206 Reading and Writing Poetry [Prerequisite to English Major in Writing] Course Description: An introduction to the major forms of poetry in English from the dual perspective of the poet-critic. Creative work will be assigned in the form of poems and revisions; analytic writing will be assigned in the form of critiques of other class members’ poems. A scansion exercise will be given early on. All of these exercises, creative and expository, as well as the required readings from the anthology, are designed to help students increase their understanding of poetry rapidly and profoundly; the more wholehearted students’ participation, the more they will learn from the course. Prerequisites: No prerequisites. No P/N registration. Attendance of first class is mandatory. Freshmen are NOT permitted to enroll until winter quarter. Seniors require department permission. Prerequisite for the writing major and sequence-based minor. Literature Majors are also welcome. Teaching Method: Discussion; one-half to two-thirds of the classes will be devoted to discussion of readings and principles, the other classes to discussion of student poems. Evaluation Method: Evidence given in written work and class participation of students’ understanding of poetry; improvement will count for a great deal in estimating achievement. Texts include: An anthology, a critical guide, a 206 Reader prepared by the instructor, and the work of other students. Note: This course may also be counted toward the English Literature major.
English 207	Reading and Writing Fiction	Bouldrey	TTh 11:20-12:40
English 207 Reading and Writing Fiction [Prerequisite to English Major in Writing] Course Description: A reading and writing course in short fiction. Students will read widely in traditional as well as experimental short stories, seeing how writers of different culture and temperament use conventions such as plot, character, and techniques of voice and distance to shape their art. Students will also receive intensive practice in the craft of the short story, writing at least one story, along with revisions, short exercises, and a critical study of at least one work of fiction, concentrating on technique. Teaching Method: Discussion of readings and principles; workshop of student drafts. Evaluation Method: Evidence given in written work and class participation of students’ growing understanding of fiction; improvement will count for a great deal in estimating achievement. Texts include: Selected short stories, essays on craft, and the work of the other students. Prerequisites: English 206. No P/N registration. Attendance of first class is mandatory. Course especially recommended for prospective Writing Majors. Literature Majors also welcome.
English 208	Reading and Writing Creative Nonfiction	Mun	TTh 2:40-4
English 208 Reading and Writing Creative Nonfiction [Prerequisite to English Major in Writing] Course Description: An introduction to some of the many possible voices, styles, and structures of the creative essay. Students will read from the full aesthetic breadth of the essay, including memoir, meditation, lyric essay, and literary journalism. Discussions will address how the essay creates an artistic space distinct from the worlds of poetry and fiction, and how truth and fact function within creative nonfiction. Students will be asked to analyze the readings closely, and to write six short essays based on imitations of the style, structure, syntax, and narrative devices found in the readings. Students can also expect to do some brief writing exercises and at least one revision. Prerequisites: English 206. No P/N registration. Attendance of first class is mandatory. Course especially recommended for prospective Writing Majors. Literature Majors also welcome. Teaching Method: Discussion; one-half to two-thirds of the classes will be devoted to discussion of readings and principles, the other classes to discussion of student work.
English 210-1	English Literary Traditions, Part 1	Evans	TTh 11:20-12:40 plus discussion section
English 210-1 English Literary Traditions, Part 1 Course Description: This course is an introduction to the early English literary canon, extending from the late medieval period through the eighteenth century. We will spend significant time thinking critically about who is and who is not included in this "canon," and what values are enshrined in it--including the particular ideologies of race, gender, and empire these texts record and perpetuate. When and how does the canon include the voices of women, persons of color, and colonized subjects? What are the differences between such voices as written by white men and the writings penned by these subjects themselves? Authors will include Geoffrey Chaucer, Marie de France, Margery Kempe, Thomas More, Thomas Hariot, Leo Africanus, John Donne, John Milton, Aphra Behn, Jonathan Swift, Eliza Haywood, Oludah Equiano, and Samuel Johnson. Teaching Method: Two lectures and a discussion section every week. Evaluation Method: Assignments include a midterm and final exam and a midterm and final paper. Robust participation is required. Course Materials (Required): Norton Anthology of English Literature (Volumes A, B, C) ISBN-13: 978-0393603125. Class Notes: English 210-1 is an English Literature major and minor requirement; it is also designed for non-majors and counts as an Area VI WCAS distribution requirement.
English 213	Introduction to Fiction	Johnson	MW 10:20-11:10 plus discussion section
English 213 Introduction to Fiction Course Description: What is fiction? What is fiction for? What is the relationship between fictional worlds and the real one? These are the questions that we will explore in this class. Reading both essential works of fiction and important theories of fiction, we will seek to understand the construction and purpose of these other literary worlds, as well as the social and political importance of reading this world otherwise. Teaching Method(s): lecture with required TA-led discussion section. Evaluation Method(s): Short essays, midterm exam, final exam, quizzes and participation. Texts include: Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (Broadview, 2010) ISBN 9781551119359 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein (Broadview, 2012) ISBN 9781554811038 Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of Four (Broadview, 2010) ISBN 9781551118376 Ahmad Saadawi, Frankenstein in Baghdad (Penguin, 2018) ISBN 978-0143128793 These specific editions are required. All are available in e-book formats.
English 273	Introduction to 20th Century American Literature (ICSP)	Mann	MW 11:30-12:20 plus discussion section
English 273 Introduction to 20th Century American Literature (ICSP) Course Description: In the introduction to his important work The Souls of Black Folk, W. E. B. Du Bois declared predicted that the problem of the “color line” would characterize the 20^th century. In this course, we will examine an archive of key works of American literature to assess Du Bois’ portent. How and in what ways have racial divides structured American life and American letters? How do people of color—black descendants of enslavement, indigenous people dispossessed of their ancestral homes, and immigrants from the global south newly arrived—describe their experiences in relationship to American-ness? How has American-ness been imagined by white authors invested in preserving or disrupting this conflation of the two categories? Drawing on works by a range of authors including Langston Hughes, William Faulkner, Carlos Bulosan, Lorraine Hansberry, Gloria Anzaldua, Louise Erdrich, and others, students in this will endeavor to understand how the residue of these conflicting and conflicted understandings have characterized contemporary understandings of and relationships to American identity. Teaching Method: Two Lectures per week and one discussion session. Evaluation Method: Reading quizzes, one paper, in-class midterm, take-home final. Texts Include: Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun (9780679755319) Tony Kushner, Angels in America) (9781559363846) Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys (978-0385537070) Course reader available on Canvas
English 300	Seminar in Reading & Interpretation: Ideas of Justice	Schwartz	MW 4:20-5:40
English 300 Seminar in Reading & Interpretation: Ideas of Justice Course Description: This course will introduce you to literary studies with a focus on ideas of justice. Library works will include the classical tradition, the biblical tradition, and Shakespeare who inherited both and reworked them in the early modern period. The trial of Socrates, the trial of Jesus, biblical prophecy, tragedy in Shakespeare, and modern works by Melville, Kafka, and the play, “Inherit the Wind” will be included. Reading closely, we will heed how literature offers elaborations and complications of theories of justice, as they shape the public and intimate lives of people. We will also put literature in dialogue with strands of political thought, showing how literature both reflects and shapes ideas of justice. Teaching method: Seminar Notes: English 300 is an English Literature major and minor requirement. First class mandatory. No P/N registration. This course does NOT fulfill the WCAS Area VI distribution requirement. This course may not be repeated for major or minor credit.
English 300	Seminar in Reading & Interpretation: Southern Food, Music, and Literature	Černe	MW 1-2:20
English 300 Seminar in Reading & Interpretation: Southern Food, Music, and Literature Course Description: “The South got something to say,” André 3000 declared at the 1995 Source Awards in New York City when OutKast won the best new rap group category, changing the course of hip hop. From Beyoncé to Lynyrd Skynyrd, soul food to new south cuisine, Flannery O’Connor to Natasha Trethewey, this course looks at the ways cultural production from the second half of the twentieth century to today has sought both to cling to a nostalgic sense of Southernness and to challenge that notion, imagining the region anew and (re)claiming it in the process. The course engages culturally diverse, multi-media and multi-genre texts about the U.S. South. We will read poems, short stories, Kiese Laymon’s novel Long Division (2013), recipes, blog posts, and music videos through the theoretical lenses of sociology, black feminism, ecocriticism, and food studies, exploring different methodological approaches to the study of literature and popular culture. Teaching Methods: Seminar discussion, collaborative group work. Evaluation Methods: Participation, two short papers, one-time in-class presentation on the day’s readings, paper proposal oriented around a chosen theoretical framework. Texts include: Flannery O’Connor, “Everything That Rises Must Converge” (1965); Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor, Vibration Cooking or, the Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl (1970), excerpts; Natasha Trethewey, selected poems from Native Guard (2006); Kiese Laymon, Long Division (2013); Beyoncé, Lemonade (2016). Texts will be available at: Norris Bookstore and on Canvas. Instructor Bio: Sara Černe’s research and teaching interests focus on environmental studies and American literature, especially African American and Native American literature and the literature of the U.S. South. At Northwestern, she has designed and taught courses on 20^th- and 21^st-century American literature and culture. Her classes combine literary studies with cultural analysis, engaging diverse voices and interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks. Sara is a former Franke Fellow at the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities and a researcher for a Humanities Without Walls project on Indigenous art and activism in the Mississippi River Valley. Her current book project explores race and the environment in post-Twain literature along the Mississippi, tracing how the river’s environmental status and industrial uses manifest in its literatures, which grapple with the area’s sedimented histories of dispossession and extraction.
English 300	Seminar in Reading & Interpretation: Sex and the Gothic Girl	Chaskin	TTh 1-2:20
English 300 Seminar in Reading & Interpretation: Sex and the Gothic Girl Course Description: The gothic has been a consistently popular genre, one that often seems to express cultural anxieties that otherwise simmer beneath the surface of realist literature. From Horace Walpole’s genre-defining tale, The Castle of Otranto (1764) to Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) to Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca (1938), gothic literature has grappled with sexual mores, gender expression, and sexual violence. This course will explore the central preoccupation with sex and gender that informs and drives gothic literature from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. What can the gothic tropes of a given historical moment tell us about that culture? How do we approach the seemingly infinite retelling of certain gothic stories, like twentieth-century film adaptations of Frankenstein and Dracula? How does the gothic reiterate or undermine the way that women are depicted in popular narratives? In addition to a core set of texts, we will consider literary criticism and theory that takes on the gothic from multiple perspectives, including psychoanalysis, disability studies, queer theory, trans studies, and narratology. Teaching Method: Discussion, peer review, workshops Evaluation Method: Participation; several short writing exercises (1 page) building to one final paper (8-10 pages) Texts Include: Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto (1764); Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818); Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897); Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca (1938). Texts Will Be Available At: Novels will be available at Beck’s Bookstore. Supplementary readings and theory will be posted on Canvas.
English 307	Advanced Creative Writing: What Happens Next? Structure, Plot, and Suspense in Short Fiction	Kokernot	TTh 1-2:20
English 307 Advanced Creative Writing: What Happens Next? Structure, Plot, and Suspense in Short Fiction Course Description: You can write a beautiful sentence, bust out of the gate with an enticing premise, and clairvoyantly reveal your character’s rich interior life to say something profound about the human condition---but at some point your story loses momentum and fizzles out. Answering the simple question of “What happens next?” is a powerful impulse that drives us as readers, and it should likewise, drive us as writers. Learn to grow your brilliant ideas into tense, invigorating stories. Put your beautiful sentences to work in the service of plot and character. And dive deep into a character during moments of conflict. Students will explore structure, plot, and suspense through a variety of interdisciplinary, playful writing exercises that employ visual media and also other texts, encouraging spontaneity while adhering to constraints of form. Be prepared to write at least one full-length story with a clear beginning, middle, and end. Textbooks Will Include: Thrill Me by Benjamin Piercy. PDFs of short stories and excerpts from longer texts available on Canvas.
English 308	Advanced Nonfiction Writing: The Radio Essay	Bresland	MW 1-2:20
English 308 Advanced Nonfiction Writing: The Radio Essay Course Description: Writers today can write as they always have, but they needn’t stop there. They can also produce. They can make. In the past ten years we have seen the maturation of the radiophonic arts in the form of podcasting—a profusion of voices and aesthetics that has broken out into the mainstream. Podcasting has filled the void left by the deadening of broadcast radio that began in the 1970s, and will likely soon surpass it (if it already hasn’t) in variety, accessibility and beauty. Students will be invited to write and produce multiple radio essays, mini-docs, stories and poems, layering the spoken word with evocative sonic textures and music. We will place equal emphasis on literary quality, vocal performance and the application of audio production techniques. We’ll will take cues from the best of contemporary radio practice by listening into the rich and varied soundscapes of About Race (Reni Eddo-Lodge), Love + Radio (Nick van der Kolk), Crybabies (Susan Orlean, Sarah Thyre), Atlas 1984 (DJ Tron) as well as broadcast mainstays such as This American Life, and we’ll move backward in time as we sample the densely layered soundscapes of Laurie Anderson, Glenn Gould, Joe Frank, Ken Nordine, Delia Derbyshire and many others.
English 335	Milton (Pre-1830)	Schwartz	MW 2:40-4
English 335 Milton (Pre-1830) Course Description: We will study John Milton’s poetry and prose in context, with sustained attention to the complexities of his art, the crisis of his times, the subtlety of his thought, and the extent of his influence. Milton’s defenses of political, personal, and religious liberty, his self-presentation, and his grappling with key ethical questions involving free will, gender definitions, crime, authority, rebellion and redemption will be among the many concerns that arise as we explore his work in the context of the raging political and theological controversies of his time. Teaching Method: Class discussion and lecture. Evaluation Method: Papers, class presentation, class participation. Texts Include: Paradise Lost by John Milton.
English 338	Studies in Renaissance Literature: Brave New Worlds, 1500-1700 (Pre-1830)	West	TTh 9:40-11
English 338 Studies in Renaissance Literature: Brave New Worlds, 1500-1700 (Pre-1830) Course Description: More than once, early modern England had to learn how that their world was bigger than they had known—adding after 1492 the Americas, and after Galileo, new worlds in the heavens. Often these realms were understood to be new worlds beside the more familiar one, part of it and yet somehow apart from it as well. As their worlds widened and multiplied, early modern English writers and thinkers learned to invent new worlds of their own, fairy realms, enchanted forests, kingdoms of darkness, dreamlike polities, imagined worlds through which they could offer critique of their own, or propose and explore what seemed impossible in it. Despite usually being avowed as fictions, these speculative worlds claimed value, seriousness, and even kinds of truth through the extravagance of their fantasies, while also asserting their pleasurableness and recreativity. In this class we will explore some of these worlds of imagination and how and why early modern writers crafted them. Teaching Method(s): Largely discussion. Evaluation Method(s): Papers; other research-based projects; imaginative work; group work. Texts include: Cavendish, The Blazing World (I am looking for a good edition of this) More, Utopia, in Three Early Modern Utopias, ed. Bruce (Oxford World Classics) ISBN 978-0199537990 Peele, The Old Wives Tale, New Mermaids edition, optional e-book, ISBN 9781408144626 (there’s also a free online edition that I’ll use) Shakespeare, The Tempest, ed. Orgel (Oxford World Classics) $11 ISBN 9780199535903 Spenser, The Faerie Queene, ed. Roche (Penguin) $17-22 ISBN 978-0140422078 Texts will be available at: Beck’s.
English 344	Eighteenth Century Fiction: Jane Austen and the Culture Wars (Pre-1830)	Soni	MW 9:40-11
English 344 Eighteenth Century Fiction: Jane Austen and the Culture Wars (Pre-1830) Course Description: The enduring appeal of Jane Austen’s novels is due in part to the fact that the historical and cultural debates in which she intervened are very much the same ones that confront us today: tradition v innovation, parental authority v filial obligation, customary social bonds v contractual relations, emotion v reason, the role of women in society, the value of the arts. This class will consider Jane Austen’s development as a writer, in the context of the “culture wars” in Britain in the 1790s, in the wake of the French Revolution. Is Austen a radical or conservative novelist? Does she defend the values of a dying aristocracy, or champion a new middle class sensibility? How does she respond to the jarring changes affecting her society? Does she assert the privileges of the governing classes or urge the rights of silenced groups (especially young women)? Does she offer a traditional or progressive view of marriage? Should children make their own choices in marriage or defer to parental authority? How do her novels cultivate good judgment? Do the arts have a progressive role in transforming society or a conservative one in maintaining traditional values? These are some of the questions we will examine as we read a range of her novels. Our goal will be to understand the experimental and fluid nature of Austen’s thought, as well as the way in which she transformed the history of the novel. Texts include: Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman (Oxford World Classics) Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Penguin) Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey (Oxford World Classics) Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (Norton Critical Edition) Jane Austen, Mansfield Park (Oxford World Classics) Jane Austen, Persuasion (Oxford World Classics)
English 366	Studies in African American Literature: Black Feminist Worldmaking (Post 1830/ICSP)	Mann	MW 1-2:20
English 366 Studies in African American Literature: Black Feminist Worldmaking (Post 1830/ICSP) Course Description: What might the world like if it were made in the image of black feminist visionaries? How and why should we invite those imagined futures into our political and social realities? In this course, students will survey a range of writing in Black feminist and queer-of-color theory, paying special attention to the world-making potential of radical thinking. Students will read foundational texts including those by Kimberlé Crenshaw, Cathy J. Cohen, and Angela Y. Davis, alongside more recent contributions from scholars including Jennifer C. Nash, Jasbir Puar, and Simone Browne to understand the shape and contour of contemporary black feminist world-making. Additionally, students will examine the veil between literature and theory and consider the ways in which these two genres of writing bleed into and reinforce one another. This course is reading intensive with weekly writing assignments and a large summative writing assignment. Teaching Method: Two seminar meetings per week Evaluation: Reading response essays, Class presentation, final paper/project Texts Include: Angela Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete? Toni Morrison, Sula Tressie McMillan-Cottom, THICK Jennifer Nash, Black Feminism Reimagined Ntozake Shange, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf Note: This course is combined with AFAM 380-X-XX.
English 368	Studies in 20th Century Literature: Lesbian Representation in Popular Culture (Post 1830/ICSP)	Chaskin	TTh 4:20-5:40
English 368 Studies in 20th Century Literature: Lesbian Representation in Popular Culture (Post 1830/ICSP) Course Description: This class will examine lesbian representation in film and television over the last four decades. “Representation” is a tricky word in politics and media: queer communities, communities of color, and disabled communities (and those categories overlap in important ways) have pushed for more representation in film, television, the music industry, and publishing. Lesbian women have long complained of the community’s invisibility. At the same time, minoritized communities must grapple with the fact that simple representation can be a mixed bag. If the primary goal is visibility, is all representation good representation? Are lesbian villains, or lesbians who are narratively punished, still politically useful? Does the inclusion of a lesbian character (or lesbian characters) “count” if no one involved in the production of the object was themselves a lesbian? This course will explore these questions and more, discussing theoretical readings from cultural studies alongside our primary films, television, music, and print media. We will consider the difficult and derogatory tropes that are part and parcel of lesbian representation in the media, but we will engage most intensively with narratives that have attempted to expand the narrative potential of queer female life and to affirm lesbian identities—with complex results. Teaching Methods: Discussion, collaborative course building, in-class viewing of cultural objects. Evaluation Methods: Participation, pop culture journal, reflections, final paper (5-7 pages). Texts Include: Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt (1956); Rita Mae Brown, Rubyfruit Jungle (1973); Alison Bechdel, Dykes to Watch Out For (1987-2008). Films: Personal Best (1982); But I’m a Cheerleader (1999); Pariah (2011); Carol (2015). TV: episodes from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003), The L Word (2004-2009), Orange is the New Black (2013- ). Students will be asked to keep up with lesbian and queer women’s online magazines, including Autostraddle, Curve, Qwear, or others, based on student interest. Texts Will Be Available At: Novels will be at Beck’s Bookstore; all other media will be available on Canvas. Instructor Bio:
English 371	American Novel: Major Authors: James Baldwin (Post 1830/ICSP)	Bey	TTh 1-2:20
English 371 American Novel: Major Authors: James Baldwin (Post 1830/ICSP) Course Description: This course will introduce students to the writings of James Baldwin. Born in 1924, Baldwin wrote all throughout the mid-20^th century during the height of the Civil Rights Era. His writing spanned genres (essays, novels, poems) as well as decades (from the 1940s up to his death in 1987). Through writing and language, Baldwin did profound work toward justice. On Toni Morrison’s account, “No one possessed or inhabited language for me the way” Baldwin did; he gave us “a language to dwell in.” This course will thus be a study and meditation with and within Baldwin’s language. We will ask what Baldwin’s language gifts us as we navigate race and racism, gender and sexism, history, and intimacy? We will read his most notable nonfiction essays, including selections from Notes of a Native Son and The Evidence of Things Not Seen; his longform essayistic sermon The Fire Next Time; his short stories, namely “Sonny’s Blues” and “Going to Meet the Man”; and his novel If Beale Street Could Talk. Teaching Method(s): Discussion Evaluation Method(s): Class attendance and participation required; two close reading analyses; one final research paper Texts include: James Baldwin: Collected Essays: ISBN – 978-1883011529 If Beale Street Could Talk: ISBN – 978-0307275936 The Evidence of Things Not Seen: ISBN – 978-0805039399 Note: This course is co-listed with AFAM 360.
English 371	American Novel: Defining America (Post 1830)	Savage	TTh 2:40-4
English 371 American Novel: Defining America (Post 1830) Course Description: In this class, we will examine the related ideas of the Great American Novel and “the American Dream” to explore the ongoing construction of American identity, values, and literature. We will operate from two basic points: America can be understood as a text, constantly being rewritten, revised, and contested; and American identity is relational, situated in culture, history, and the body. The questions we will examine include: In a racially and ethnically diverse (even divided) nation, what constitutes American identity, the quality of "Americanness"? Who, if anyone, speaks for all Americans? What sort of literary voice best expresses American realities and ideals? How does the dynamic of culture and counter-culture, dominant and marginal, get worked out aesthetically and ideologically? Teaching Method: Lecture, discussion. Evaluation Method: Brief written responses to each novel and several options for papers. Texts include: Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; Chopin, The Awakening; Algren, The Man With the Golden Arm; Kerouac, On the Road; Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; Morrison, Song of Solomon.
English 378	Studies in American Literature: American City: Chicago & Im/Migration in 20th-C. Literature (Post 1830/ICSP)	Černe	MW 4:20-5:40
English 378 Studies in American Literature: American City: Chicago & Im/Migration in 20th-C. Literature (Post 1830/ICSP) Course Description: In the span of a hundred years, Chicago grew from a town of a few thousand people to a quintessentially American metropolis—all thanks to waves of migrants from the South and immigrants from all over the world who have made the city their own. From the Mexican Revolution to the Great Migration to more recent trends, this class examines the different patterns of im/migration to Chicago in the long 20^th century and the literatures they have produced. Among other things, we will read excerpts from Upton Sinclair’s 1906 protest novel about Lithuanian workers in the meat packing industry (The Jungle); Gwendolyn Brooks’ 1945 poems about the lives of African Americans on the segregated South Side (A Street in Bronzeville); Sandra Cisneros’ 1984 bildungsroman about growing up in a Chicano and Puerto Rican neighborhood (House on Mango Street); Susan Power’s 2002 stories about Native Americans in the urban space of Chicago (Roofwalker); and Aleksandar Hemon’s 2008 novel about two Eastern European immigrants living in the city a century apart (The Lazarus Project). In addition to teaching literary and cultural analysis, this class will invite you to engage with Chicago by visiting its museums and neighborhoods and thinking about the relationship between past and present, as well as between physical and textual space. Teaching Methods: Seminar discussion, collaborative group work. Evaluation Methods: Participation, two short papers, one-time in-class presentation on the day’s readings, collaborative story-map and in-class presentation. Texts include: Gwendolyn Brooks, selected poems from A Street in Bronzeville (1945); Sandra Cisneros, House on Mango Street (1984); Susan Power, “Watermelon Seeds” & “Chicago Waters” from Roofwalker (2002); Aleksandar Hemon, The Lazarus Project (2008); Eve L. Ewing, selected poems from 1919 (2019). Texts will be available at: Norris Bookstore and on Canvas.
English 381	Studies in Literature & Medicine: Literature and Medicine from Mary Shelley to Will Self (Post 1830)	Lane	MW 11:20-12:40
English 381 Studies in Literature & Medicine: Literature and Medicine from Mary Shelley to Will Self (Post 1830) Course Description: For millennia, literature has helped to represent and define the experience of illness. It has also given voice to suffering and dramatized the diagnoses and treatments associated with conditions that are, in turn, inseparable from their cultural history. From Victorian notions of “moral insanity” to contemporary focus on personalized care, this course examines two centuries of writing on the tangled relationships between illness and narrative, norm and pathology, and diagnosis and treatment. It revisits the rise of the asylum and of the medical case study; the rhetoric of addiction and the demand for so-called rest cures; the testament of patients, including as patient power; the rise of biomedicine and psychopharmacology; and the transformation of ordinary conditions into treatable disorders. Designed for students wanting to pursue a career in the health professions, the course is also for those drawn to science and literature, the history of medicine, medical ethics, the politics of diagnosis, and the way literature shapes our understanding of health and illness. Teaching Methods: Seminar-style discussion, focusing intensively on passages and background arguments, including with clips and slides. Evaluation Methods: Weekly discussion posts on Canvas, final essay, and in-class participation. Primary Texts (in order of use): Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (ISBN 0141439475); Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (ISBN 0140439013); George Eliot, The Lifted Veil (ISBN 0199555052); Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (ISBN 9780486266886); Charlotte Perkins Gilmore, The Yellow Wallpaper (ISBN 1625009909); Anton Chekhov, “Ward No. Six” (ISBN 1592642020); Ken Kesey, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (ISBN 0451163966); Audre Lorde, The Cancer Journals (ISBN 0143135201); Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors (ISBN 0312420137); Tony Hope and Michael Dunn, Medical Ethics: A Very Short Introduction (ISBN 0198815603). Please follow the editions assigned (new and used available at the Norris Center Bookstore and online vendors); comparable pagination will greatly facilitate discussion. A course-pack including additional assigned material will be available from Quartet Digital, 825 Clark Street.
English 385	Topics in Combined Studies: The Cinema of Always-On Computing (Post 1830)	Hodge	TTh 11:20-12:40
English 385 Topics in Combined Studies: The Cinema of Always-On Computing (Post 1830) Course Description: In the 21^st century, visual culture moved from the big screen to the small screen. The rise of smartphones, social media, and ubiquitous wireless networks ushered in a new way of life lived on the basis of constant connectivity. This apparent transformation in the media landscape has not only witnessed the emergence of new devices (the iPhone) and aesthetics (#oddlysatisfying), it has also shifted the role of older visual forms. This course considers the place of cinema in the age of always-on computing, and cinema’s role in documenting, representing, and expressing the technological tumult of the historical present. It analyzes the ways new technologies have affected the thematic preoccupations of filmmakers and also formal innovations and experimentations reflective of the experience of always-on computing. The course will proceed by pairing one or two movies per week with readings drawn from critical theory and cinema and digital media studies. These combinations will aim to open up discussion of the films themselves as well as broader topics such as networked personalization, Big Data, fake news, self-care, gamification, gender, and much else. Movies to be studied may include The Matrix, The Social Network, Her, Personal Shopper, Unfriended: Dark Web, Cam, Citizenfour, Eighth Grade, Summer Wars, Spider-Man: Far From Home, My Best Thing, and supercuts by Jennifer Proctor. Teaching Method: discussion, short lecture. Evaluation Method: participation, analytical essays. Textbooks: Course Reader. Note: This course is combined with HUM 325.
English 385	Topics in Combined Studies: Learning to Walk: Experiments in Exteriority (Post 1830/TTC)	Feinsod	MW 2:40-4
English 385 Topics in Combined Studies: Learning to Walk: Experiments in Exteriority (Post 1830/TTC) Course Description: While enduring the spring 2020 stay-at-home orders, a simple walk outdoors on the public way emerged for many who were able as a rare form of freedom or escape in a world suddenly bereft of common interior spaces. This course investigates the literature and phenomena of ambulation: its history, its great poets, its social and cultural meanings, and some practices that organize mobile attention to exterior space. Our readings will range from Thoreau’s praise of “sauntering” to the French avant-garde’s collective practice of the urban “drift” in small cadres of two or three, from urbanist Jane Jacobs’s descriptions of the city’s “sidewalk ballet” to Sunaura Taylor’s meditations on the meaning of the walk for the differently-abled, and from Welsh writer Iain Sinclair’s “psychogeographical” rambles around the margins of London to Jamaican writer Garnette Cadogan’s searing account of walking while Black. Just as importantly, we’ll adopt these writers’ practices of attention in our own appreciation of local exteriors, gaining immersive knowledge of the landscapes and built environments on Northwestern’s campus; the situation of Evanston and Chicagoland; or, alternatively, whatever remote diaspora in which we find ourselves in fall 2020. This course is “rain or shine” as well as “hybrid”: for those on campus, we’ll uphold good public health practices by holding a combination of zoom courses to discuss readings but also several class sessions outdoors and on the move. Students taking the course remotely will be able to virtually join the outdoor sessions via zoom. If we must go entirely remote due to unforeseen outbreaks, some of our focus on local Northwestern and Evanston will be rerouted to sharing virtual walks with one another wherever we end up. Readings may include one or two novels such as Teju Cole’s Open City; essays by Friedrich Engels, Henry David Thoreau, Guy Debord, Jane Jacobs, Iain Sinclair, Rebecca Solnit, and Garnette Cadogan; poems by Charles Baudelaire, Harryette Mullen, Frank O’Hara and Arun Kolatkar; conceptual art by Francis Alÿs, Erica van Horne, and Helen Mirra; a film by Agnès Varda; and various archival documents on Northwestern campus history such as architectural master plans. *All readings will be made available in digital formats. Required: good walking shoes, a raincoat, cellular access to join group zoom calls when we are outdoors ... and maybe a selfie stick?!
English 386	Studies in Literature and Film: American Fantasy (Post 1830)	Andrews	Meets asynchronously
English 386 Studies in Literature and Film: American Fantasy (Post 1830) Course Description: Throughout the twentieth century, American filmmaking has contributed to multiple forms of fantasy. Film is often associated with sexual and social desire, as it shapes audience fantasies about beauty, glamour, and the good life. Major Hollywood productions have also influenced the fantasy genre, depicting magical events and imaginary settings with the help of cinematic special effects. This course will explore the multiple meanings and implications of fantasy in relation to American film. What kinds of ideals do fantastic productions shape for viewers? What questions and lessons about the nation and national identity do films with magical and surreal elements raise? What can they teach us about audiences’ personal and political desires? Drawing on scholarship from literary, media, and cultural studies, we will consider these questions in relation to a range of American cultural constructs, including “the American dream,” the nuclear family, democracy, and national security. Teaching Methods: short lectures, discussion, collaborative group work. Evaluation Methods: participation, group presentation, four response papers (2-3 pages each), final paper (6-7 pages). Texts Include: The Wizard of Oz (1939), The Stepford Wives (1975), Star Wars (1977), The Princess Bride (1987), Inglorious Basterds (2009), Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012), and The Witch (2015). Texts Will Be Available At: All films and readings will be posted to the course Canvas site.
English 393-1	Theory and Practice of Poetry	Gibbons	MW 4:20-5:40
English 393-1 Theory and Practice of Poetry Course Description: This selective-enrollment, yearlong "Sequence" is designed to make students 64 Return to Calendar increasingly informed readers and self-sustaining apprentices of poetry. The Fall portion of the course begins with summer reading and intensive study in which poets learn to identify operative modes in poetry -- including description, rhetoric, story and song -- and begin connecting contemporary participants with root systems in the tradition. We support our studies with reading exercises and "imitation" assignments, in which students convert close reading into fodder for original writing. Students will write at least four papers and will write, workshop and revise four poems during the Fall term. They also will lead presentations on one chosen poet and one classmate during workshop. In the Winter term, students will continue to read and complete close reading assignments and will stretch their skills as they complete a week of "Daily Poems," thereby drawing on original energy and stamina to bring their work to the next level of accomplishment. Finally, in the Spring term, students will focus entirely on their own work, drafting, revising, workshopping and completing one long poem of at least 120 lines that combines autobiographical material with writing from research. Throughout the year, our close reading assignments hone skills in sensitive and critical thinking; our imitation poems challenge existing habits as they introduce new strategies; our Daily Poems exercise agility and confidence; and our workshops cultivate the openness and humility necessary to serious writing and lifelong learning. Through this intensive and nurturing Sequence, students become careful readers of each others -- work and complete a polished portfolio of original writing. Note: No P/N registration. Attendance at first class mandatory. Admission by application only.
English 394-1	Theory and Practice of Fiction	Abani	MW 4:20-5:40
English 394-1 Theory and Practice of Fiction Course Description: This course will allow you to explore how fiction works. We’ll be looking at, discussing, writing about, commenting on, and researching the elements of fiction, but mostly what we’ll be doing is writing buckets (you will be turning in a completed piece every other week during the Fall quarter), so we’ll be reading mostly to steal: we’ll figure out what works and we’ll use it for our own material. We’ll be engaged in the reading of a concise, funny book on the craft of fiction, and we’ll also be reading a wide and varied array of short stories. Again, though, this work is geared to do one simple thing: to find out what means and modes of expression you best respond to, and to figure out ways to approach this question: Given all the other potentially more awesome forms of entertainment out there, what is the role of sitting around scribbling things and reading other people’s scribblings? Why do it? Just so you know, what we’re doing in class closely replicates what all successful fiction writers do on a daily basis: reading the work of their peers and those of established and emerging authors with care, attention, and greed, and writing copious amounts to see what sticks. The more you do both of these activities, the better and more confident you’ll get. Teaching Method: Lectures, discussion, small- and large-peer workshops. Evaluation Method: This is a portfolio- and participation-based course. Grade based on timely delivery of all assigned work, with equal weight placed on your own stories and revisions and on your peer feedback. Texts Include: TBA Note: No P/N registration. Attendance at first class mandatory. Admission by application only.
English 395-1	Theory and Practice of Creative Nonfiction	Bresland	MW 4:20-5:40
English 395-1 Theory and Practice of Creative Nonfiction Course Description: An advanced year-long course in reading for writers, critical analysis of techniques of creative nonfiction, and intensive creative writing. Reading of primary works will concentrate on longer creative nonfiction works, and the creative project for the latter part of the sequence is a work of creative nonfiction of approximately 15,000 words. A guest non-fiction writer will visit in May as writer-in-residence. Teaching Method: Discussion. Evaluation Method: Based on creative and critical work; class presentations and participation. Texts Include: Varies each quarter. Texts will be available at Norris Center Bookstore and Quartet Copies. Note: No P/N registration. Attendance at first class mandatory. Admission by application only.
English 398-1	Honors Seminar	Soni	M 3-5:20
English 398-1 Honors Seminar Course Description: Part of a two-quarter sequence for seniors pursuing honors in the English Literature major, consisting of a seminar in the fall quarter and an independent study with an honors adviser in the winter quarter. Prerequisites: Seniors only. Permission of department required. Attendance at first class mandatory. No P/N registration.
English 403	Writers' Studies in Literature: How to Work	Gibbons	M 10a-1p
English 403 Writers' Studies in Literature: How to Work Course Description: This course for writers of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction focuses on the contexts and processes of creative writing. Our multi-genre readings are texts of many sorts that enact or think or imply something about how what we are writing develops out of our social, intellectual and artistic formation, intellectual curiosity, psychic processes, emotional investments, sense of language, and artistic goals. Readings will broaden our sense of how writers find and develop their materials, techniques, and artistic goals out of their sense of themselves and their context. In many of our readings we'll see how our the complexity of the individual's sense of social, historical, political and personal contexts may lead to a range of structures, stances, and processes of writing. We’ll draw examples, methods and stances from our readings to expand our ability to think about (and perhaps begin) new possible projects and new ways of working on present projects. Writing assignments will be unlike those you may have previously completed. (This is not a creative writing workshop.) Readings (many of these are brief) include Julia Álvarez, Gloria Anzaldúa, James Baldwin, Eavan Boland, Christopher Bollas, Julia de Burgos, Helene Cixous, Lucille Clifton, Víctor Hernández Cruz, Mahmoud Darwish, Robert Duncan, William Goyen, Kimiko Hahn, Amy Hempel, Danilo Kiš, Clarice Lispector, Nathaniel Mackey, Katherine Mansfield, Linda McCarriston, Leonard Michaels, Marga Minco, Toni Morrison, Lorine Neidecker, Grace Paley, Sterling Plumpp, Adrienne Rich, Yannis Ritsos, Ed Roberson, Richard Wright, Jenny Xie.
English 410	Introduction to Graduate Study	Evans	W 2-4:50
English 410 Introduction to Graduate Study Course Description: This course serves as an introduction to the theories, methods, and practices of advanced literary study. While trying to avoid isolating theoretical and methodological approaches into their discrete silos, we will traverse a wide variety of different ways of understanding and analyzing literary texts (including perceiving what texts count as "literary"). We will also work to identify the ways in which these approaches, at their best, build on one another to constitute, in their best moments, the richest parts of the field of literary criticism. Rather than a single final paper at the end of the course, you will write weekly response papers (posted publicly on Canvas), in which you experiment in analyzing a chosen text from your field in the style or tradition of the texts we have read for the week. Grades will be based on robust participation, weekly response papers, and one oral presentation on one of the week's assigned texts. The course will also include a series of weekly Friday discussion sections, at which invited faculty and staff from around the university will speak about various topics related to professional development (for example: academic publishing, cv construction, conference presentations, finding your archive). Attendance is required at these sessions, but no additional preparation will be required. Most readings to be posted on Canvas. Required texts: Eric Hayot, The Elements of Academic Style (ISBN-10: 9780231168014; ISBN-13: 978-0231168014) Leonard Cassuto, The Graduate School Mess: What Happened and How We Can Fix It (ISBN-10: 9780674728981; ISBN-13: 978-0674728981)
English 455	Studies in Victorian Literature: Hardy's Genders and Protomodernism	Lane	M 2-4:50
English 455 Studies in Victorian Literature: Hardy's Genders and Protomodernism Course Description: In his near-obsessive focus on Victorian sexual politics, Hardy helped to fashion a distinctly “modern” narrative while advocating for progressive reforms. We will study how his fiction challenged the limits of Victorian culture and its complex protocols about courtship, marriage, seduction, and divorce, voicing tensions that brought his novels to the brink of censorship. We will also pair those works with remarkable poems that make powerful claims about intimacy, repetition, infatuation, doubt, and belief. In this way, we will examine how Hardy’s fiction tried to educate late-Victorian readers in new and “protomodern” ways of thinking about themselves, their bodies and relationships, environment, shared history, and the world. Teaching Methods: Seminar-style discussion, focusing intensively on passages and background arguments, including with clips and slides. Evaluation Methods: Weekly posts on Canvas, one response paper, final essay, and in-class participation. Primary Texts (in order of use): Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd (ISBN 0141439653), The Mayor of Casterbridge (ISBN 0141439785), The Woodlanders (ISBN 0140435476), Tess of the d'Urbervilles (ISBN 0141439599), Jude the Obscure (ISBN 0140435387), and Selected Poems (ISBN 0140436995). Please follow the editions assigned (new and used available at the Norris Center Bookstore and online vendors); comparable pagination will greatly facilitate discussion.
English 461	Studies in Contemporary Literature: Hemispheric Literature and Politics	Feinsod	T 2-4:50
English 461 Studies in Contemporary Literature: Hemispheric Literature and Politics Course Description: The geopolitical relationships between the United States and Latin America have left profound marks on the literary histories of the hemisphere. After brief consideration of early twentieth-century geopolitical contexts (dollar diplomacy, assigned sovereignties, and the Good Neighbor policy), this course will focus primarily on the period after 1973: interventions in Chile and Argentina; 1980s inflammation of civil conflicts in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Panama; 1990s neoliberalization policies such as NAFTA; regimes of Caribbean disaster capitalism in the climate emergencies of the 21^st century; and the demise of the “pink tide” and the prospects for reemergence of an anti-imperial left in the U.S. This course explores these shared histories, especially through recent works of literary and cultural theory, poetry, memoir, poet’s prose, and literary magazines (made available digitally). The course has three goals: a broad introduction to hemispheric studies as a framework for both U.S. and Latin American cultural studies; a practicum in the construction of a comparative literary historical and political context; a survey of tendencies in U.S., Latino/a/x, and Latin American poetries since 1970. Authors and critics may include Cecilia Vicuña, Roberto Tejada, Raúl Zurita, Carolyn Forché, C.D. Wright, Roque Dalton, Margaret Randall, Ernesto Cardenal, Mark Nowak, Urayoán Noel, Claire Fox, Greg Grandin, Diana Taylor, Edgar Garcia, and others. Magazines will include El corno emplumado, Mandorla: New Writing from the Americas, and XCP: Cross-Cultural Poetics.
English 481	Studies in Literary Theory & Criticism: Introduction to Digital Humanities	Ladd	Th 2-4:50
English 481 Studies in Literary Theory & Criticism: Introduction to Digital Humanities Course Description: This seminar will introduce the digital humanities as a community of practice, a growing interdisciplinary field, and a set of approaches to research and teaching. Students in this course will explore a wide range of arguments and techniques, spanning such topics as critical code studies, technology in the classroom, digital editions, text and network analysis, machine learning, and data visualization. We will mix seminar discussion with hands-on activities designed to invite students to participate in DH's expanding community and to interrogate the methods, aims, and boundaries of digital scholarship in the twenty-first century. Teaching Method(s): seminar discussion, digital tool workshops. Evaluation Method(s): discussion lead, short written responses, seminar paper/project. Texts include: Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren Klein, Data Feminism (ISBN 9780262044004, but a review draft of the manuscript is available online for free: https://bookbook.pubpub.org/data-feminism) Safiya Umoja Noble, Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism (ISBN 1479837245) Roopika Risam, New Digital Worlds: Postcolonial Digital Humanities in Theory, Praxis, and Pedagogy (ISBN 9780810138858, 25% off from NU Press with code NUP19) Ted Underwood, Distant Horizons: Digital Evidence and Literary Change (ISBN 9780226612836 or ebook ISBN 9780226612973)
English 493	Elements of Craft	Abani	T 6p-8:50p
English 493 Elements of Craft Course Description: TBA
English 494	The Long Form	Webster	W 2-4:50
English 494 The Long Form Course Description: This course engages second-year students in beginning to research and plan a writing project that will lead to the MFA thesis (which will be completed by the end of their third year). Students will generate their own project plan, which will provide an individualized map for the term. They will first identify those pieces of creative work that they see as the potential seeds of their longer thesis. (This may be 3-15 pages of poetry, a suite of short essays or a single long essay, or a suite of stories or a novella.) With the help of the instructor and peer partners, students will learn to examine these pieces as an editor would, looking not only for revision opportunities, but for formal, contextual and thematic threads that may be further explored or extrapolated into a longer, cohesive original manuscript. They will then write up detailed and individualized project plans, including specific formal goals for the quarter, reading material, and intentions in terms of both research and drafting. As a class, we will hold each other accountable to these plans, and will engage in weekly research, drafting and revision exercises that will provide students with rough starts and finished works to add to their thesis. The quarter will result in this new writing, as well as an evolved end-of-quarter plan for their final work in the program. Teaching Method: Class discussion, peer-to-peer learning in small-group and partner meetings, individual meetings with instructor. Evaluation Method: Evaluation will be based on the end-of-quarter project plan, the amount and quality of writing, drafting, and assembling of research materials and artistic models during the quarter, and on engaged and constructive discussion during meetings both large and small. Texts include: TBD based on the individual projects. Texts will be available at: TBD.