Global Arc

An introduction to English literary history. Centered on four great writers--Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, and Pope. Two lectures, one 50-minute preceptorial.

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

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.

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.

An exploration of the ideas, issues, and aesthetic values that mark the development of science fiction from the 18th century to the present, with particular attention to the ways specific texts confront the philosophical questions underlying scientific inquiry and invention, travel in time and space, the creation of life, robots and robotics. The ways in which this genre reframes the basic question of what it means to be human will be the foundation of our analysis of contemporary short stories and representative novels.

This course studies the entanglement between ideas of personhood and the history of ideas about beauty. How does beauty make and unmake persons -socially, legally and culturally- at the intersection of race, gender and aesthetics? Let us move beyond the good versus bad binary that dominates discussions of beauty to focus instead on how beauty in literature and culture have contributed to the conceptualization of modern, western personhood and its inverse (the inhuman, the inanimate, the object). We will trace beauty and its disruptions in the arenas of literature, visual culture, global capitalism, politics, law, science and technology.

This new interdisciplinary 200 level course offers a broad introduction to the study of Irish literature, history and culture. Students will gain a grounding in: Irish storytelling since the early Christian period, including through music and song; the history of the conquest of Ireland and Irish independence movements; the role of the Irish language in culture; the famine and its social and political aftermath; the history of religious difference; the relationship between Britain and Ireland; the work of major literary figures such as Swift, Joyce, Yeats, Beckett and Heaney; contemporary Ireland and the Irish economy.

This course is an introduction to Indigenous Literature. The underlying conviction of the course is that the study of Indigenous literatures offers an occasion to reflect on, critique, and contest settler colonialism, or the dispossession of land and waters and the attempt to eliminate Indigenous people. Readings primarily consist of American Indian and Aboriginal Canadian authors, yet we also place these authors in the context of the global phenomenon of indigeneity and settler colonialism. The syllabus encourages us to wonder how Indigenous authors across time and space are in conversation, or can be put into conversation, with each other.

Emphasis upon the preparation and delivery of expository and persuasive speeches before audiences composed of the speaker's fellow students. Consultations with the instructor, readings in textbooks, and written analyses of speeches supplement frequent practice in speaking. One 90-minute lecture, two classes.