Global Arc

An investigation of issues outside the scope of traditional surveys of American literature. Topics may include: definitions of "America," literature of the South, contemporary poetry, New Historicism, America on film, the Harlem Renaissance, the Vietnam War, the sentimental novel, colonial encounters, literature of the Americas, fictions of empire. Two lectures, one preceptorial.

An introduction to the cross-cultural study of American literatures, with special attention to the multiple points of connection, conflict, dialogue, and exchange that characterize American writings. Texts may be drawn from a broad range of periods, regions, and cultures. One lecture, two classes.

American literature from the early colonial period to the Civil War.

An exploration of the emergence and development of the American short story from the early nationalist period through romanticism and realism to naturalism and an emerging modernism. Students will be introduced to the major themes and techniques of the writers who shaped the short story in the United States into a versatile and powerful literary form. The course also explores the aesthetic and historical values that mark the development of this genre over the course of the 19th century.

This course introduces students to the range of the essay form as it has developed from the early modern period to our own. The class will be organized, for the most part, chronologically, beginning with the likes of Bacon and Hobbes, and ending with some contemporary examples of and reflections on the form. It will consider how writers as various as Sidney, Hume, Johnson, Emerson, Woolf, C.L.R. James, and Stephen Jay Gould have defined and revised The Essay. Two lectures, one 50-minute preceptorial.

Authors and theorists of contemporary fiction have turned to various modes of fictionality, speculation, and the counterfactual to address and encounter gaps in the historical record, even if not to fully recover experiences lost to time. "Historical Fiction / Fictional History" will introduce students to literary and critical methods by toggling between "historical" and "fictional" texts, and ask them to experiment creatively with their own narrative voices. This course includes a mandatory field trip on 2/26 to see "Hamilton" in New York.

To know a poem well is to make it your own and to learn something about how poems are made. In this class you will learn many great poems well. You will learn about the techniques and history of this art form as we consider significant changes in the history of lyric, dramatic, and narrative poems and think about poets' uses of voice, diction, image, trope, form, occasion, sequence, and closure. We will be reading poems together and writing about them, making poems and imitations of our own, and learning poems by heart.

The making and interpretation of fictions are among our everyday activities, whether or not we realize it; however, we don't always consider what "fiction" is, or what it means. This course will introduce students to the diverse and specific forms storytelling and invention take in literature, with emphasis on the novel and film. We will interrogate the act of creating fictions, and the impact a fictional world can make on a reader. Along the way, we will continually consider two deceptively simple questions: what does fiction do to us? What can fiction do for us?

Is the underworld a world unto itself, or does it only acquire meaning in relation to the world above? Or is it the other way around -- that our world acquires its deepest, most difficult meanings, in relation to the abyss? The underworlds we'll encounter--some cast in the epic tradition; others, modern underworlds of slavery, criminality, racism, prison, or concentration camp--are all recognizably versions of the world above. We'll explore the writing of underworlds as a revisionary, as well as visionary enterprise, sounding the depths for critiques (and satires) of power, authority, divinity, racism, misogyny, or simply everyday life.

This course draws on the talent and the practice of the distinguished writers who work at Princeton.