ENG 155a: Topics in Literature: Readings in Black Diaspora (Professor Forbes)
Black and Jewish Voices in Modern American literature is a course that will comparatively examine African American and Jewish interpretations of diaspora, crosscultural exchanges between Blacks and Jews in eras such as the Civil Rights Movement, and satiric treatments of the interaction between race, identity, and popular culture in America.  The course will emphasize how race and ethnicity continue to vary and influence access to American citizenship.  During the course we will read the works of authors such as Amiri Baraka/Leroi Jones, Alice Walker, James Baldwin, Jonathan Safran-Foer, and Lore Segal.  What can the varied experiences of Blacks and Jews tell us about internationalism and diaspora?  What can be understood by jointly studying written reactions to exile, the Holocaust, the Atlantic Slave Trade, and the subsequent creation of a distinctly Black or Jewish Atlantic?  How has history, geography, and social change instigated or led to tensions or cohesion between these two groups?  This course will inspire healthy discussion and analysis of intersections between race, shared-memory, social movements, and cultural identity in America.

ENG 155b: Topics in Literature:  When a Book Becomes a Movie (Professor Autman)
"The book was just SO much better than the movie." In the last century film has become a preeminent vehicle for telling stories. Filmmakers keep their eye out for the latest developments in publishing. In this class students will examine five books and their transition to film. Those works are: "Into The Wild," "The Color Purple," "Blade Runner," "Brokeback Mountain," and "To Kill a Mocking Bird."  What worked well? What didn't work? The intention is helping students intelligently assess and articulate the limitations and advantages of both forms.

ENG 155c: Topics in Literature: Inhabiting Dramatic Lit (Professor White)
This course will investigate a range of dramatic literature with the awareness that plays are meant to be taken off the page.  We will often work on our feet - with theatrical exercises, acting, directing, and theatrical space as tools for inquiry.  In addition to this experiential methodology, we will explore the material through more conventional means (reading assignments, class discussion, quizzes, exams, papers, and other written responses).

ENG 155d: Topics in Literature: Arabic Lit in Translation (Professor Nasr)
In this course we will study modern and contemporary works of Arabic literature in a variety of genres: the novel, novella, short story, and poetry. Basic principles of literary analysis will be covered at the beginning of the course, with special attention given to the development of the mentioned genres in their various Arab settings and in the context of particular literary movements. The bulk of the reading will be in the primary sources themselves (novels, novellas, short stories, and poems). Among the authors covered are the Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz, Abdulrahman Munif, Elias Khoury, Hanan al-Shaykh, Etel Adnan, Adonis, and Mahmoud Darwish. We will look at film adaptations of a number of Arabic novels. Knowledge of Arabic is not required, but issues of translation will often be presented and discussed.

ENG 155e: Topics in Literature:  In and of the Caribbean (Professor Sáma)
In & Of the Caribbean is concerned with the narrative constructions of the Caribbean by outsider (non-Caribbean) writers and artists, and with the way those narratives have come to shape our understanding of the Caribbean as an intriguing, exotic, mysterious, and dangerous place. We will pair the outsider writers and artists with insiders (writers and artists of/from the Caribbean who seek to decenter the outsider perspective, & thereby pull the Caribbean person from the peripheries, & better situate Caribbean writers and artists to speak (to give, one would say, agency to the “Other”)). Our readings and viewings will run across the genre board, from Victorianist Charlotte Brontë to detective fiction writers Agatha Christie & Ngaio Marsh, from the 007 series and Pirates of the Caribbean to psychoanalyst Frantz Fanon to singer/performer Bob Marley to contemporary writer Edwidge Danticat; each of these artists will help us to construct, reconstruct, and deconstruct the image of the Caribbean (landscape and person) in the “casual tourist” mind.

This is a W-course, so you will have weekly writing assignments which will be geared to help you critically note-take, formulate ideas/thesis/claims, and to push towards deep analysis. You will also have one longish and one long critical research essay.

Other topics courses:

ENG 302: Fiction Writing Topics: How Fiction Works (Professor Pizzolato)
This class will undertake a rigorous examination of narrative technique, using a holistic theory that begins with character at its center and grows to include narrative voice, detail, language, and plot.  What makes a story a story? What is style? What’s the relationship between realism and real-life? Readings and exercises will revolve around the historical development of modern narrative, using both plays and fictions (the novel begins in the theatre), from Shakespeare to Chekhov and Flaubert, to modern writers like Alice Munro and Denis Johnson. The class will be divided between an interactive seminar and a traditional workshop, where students will craft and critique their own works of fiction. This class features extensive readings as well as the creation of at least two full stories by students.

ENG 312: Poetry Writing Topics: Cross These Borders (Professor Sáma)
In alliance with the 2008 ArtsFest theme, Art & Borders, in ENG 312: Cross these borders, we will study the works of poets who push the boundaries, transcend borders, refuse/refute/reject/rescind borders. These are renegade poets, and/or poets of their (cultural, racial, geographic, gendered, sexualized, class) times, and/or poets of curiosity who, in one way or another, destabilize the neat borders of genre: be it poets who write shape poems, poets who infuse poems with music, poets who erase, poets who write with paintbrushes, poets who create new languages, poets who blend poetry with prose. We will frame the class around Cathy Park Hong’s tantalizing question: “Does language reflect the world? Or is it a distorting mirror that never gets reality straight?”

Mind you, this is a creative writing course, so you’ll be asked, in your writing, to push your own borders/boundaries, to collaborate, innovate, experiment with the reverberations of 2008. We will each work towards a solid collection of poetry, and by semester’s end, you’ll each have your own book, constructed by you (in collabo with others). (Note, then, there will be a small “utility” fee for materials. A blank book will run you approximately $5 including shipping, & you’ll need paints, glue, brushes, etc., depending on how you choose to go about your collabo.)

ENG 322: Creative Non-Fiction Topics: Nature Writing (Professor Schwipps)
Creative nonfiction, like fiction or poetry, is a type of creative writing.  As such, it uses the tools of the creative writer: figurative language (similes, metaphors), dialogue, flashbacks, scenes, frames – in short, tools that increase the dramatic effect of a piece of writing.  Various types of creative nonfiction exist: personal essays, articles, travel accounts, profiles, memoirs and narrative histories.  The lines surrounding this genre are not clear, and arguments do occur regarding the true definition of creative nonfiction.  For this class, we will limit this discussion, as it can be tedious and sometimes pointless.  Instead, we will focus on the reading and writing of creative nonfiction, and by the end of the semester, new definitions will emerge.

Not every Introduction to Creative Writing course covers creative nonfiction, so we will read quite a bit to gain a sense of the genre and its possibilities.  Class discussions over the reading material should provide insight into your own writing options.  But, as a writing course, much of our class time will be spent workshopping the written work of your peers.  We will utilize the workshop for two of the five projects.

Writing in any genre will often require you to capture and present the natural world.  For example, a character in a novel caught out in a rainstorm is experiencing nature, and the writing must make that natural event believable to the reader.  Writing a poem about a dog requires a poet who has some sense of what a dog is like.  In this class, you will write essays, profiles, travel pieces and articles about the natural world.  We can interpret “nature” loosely – after all, there are no clear boundaries between civilization and nature.   

ENG 343: Creative Writing II: Topics in Dramatic Literature:  Creating the Short Film Script (Professor White)
In this class, students will study, analyze, write, and create short films.  Utilizing readings of short screenplays, screenings of short films, and other texts, students will work to write and revise several short screenplays of their own.  In addition, students will learn enough production basics to bring one of their screenplays to fruition as a short film.  Previous experience in filmmaking helpful, but not required.

ENG 391: Authors: Advanced Topics: Toni Morrison (Professor Geis)
Nobel prize winner Toni Morrison is one of the most influential American authors of the post-World War II era, and it is highly satisfying to be able to take a course in which one can study all of her novels to date.  Her work addresses many components of African-American experience; the unique strategies of her narrative style are challenging and rewarding; and she takes on issues of history, race, sexuality, feminism, religion, violence, and politics that continue to resonate for readers.  We will read all eight of Morrison’s novels in chronological order: The Bluest Eye (1970), Sula (1974), Song of Solomon (1977), Tar Baby (1981), Beloved (1987), Jazz (1992), Paradise (1998), and Love (2003)—and if possible, we may take a look at A Mercy, which is due to be released in November 2008.  Students who take this course should be willing to keep up with a demanding reading load and to engage actively in class discussion and writing.  Since this is an “S” course, students should also plan on participating in a variety of oral presentation activities.

ENG 392a: Genre: Advanced Topics: The Early Novel (Professor Alvarez)
What's novel about the novel? And why, of all times, does this modern genre originate in the 18th-century? We will closely analyze the historical emergence of the novel to better understand what it does, how it does it, and maybe even why it does it. Our historical analysis will focus on how this form negotiates the epistemological, ethical, and political problems of the Enlightenment. Theoretically informed close readings of our texts will guide us through an analysis of individualism, the invention of the public sphere, gender roles and the space of domesticity, contentions over class and status, the ethics of reading, the meaning of love, and much, much more. Authors will include Aphra Behn, Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, Jane Austen, and others. Expect to read a lot.

ENG 392b: Genre: Advanced Topics: The Great Novel (Professor Csicsery-Ronay)
The Great Novel: This course is devoted to the intensive study of the great social novel of 19th century Europe. The genre was long considered the most ambitious and exemplary literary genre of the period, yet because of their length, such novels are rarely studied in the classroom. We will read four works, two each by Charles Dickens and Lev Tolstoy, including Our Mutual Friend and War and Peace. We will submit each to intensive, careful reading, with special attention to their historical contexts, their artistic architecture, and their philosophical implications.

ENG 394: History & Lit: Advanced Topics: New England Heterodoxy (Professor Brown)
We credit the Puritans with some of our highest political and cultural ideals: commonwealth, the Mayflower Compact, and the belief that America is a shining “city upon a hill.” We also condemn them for some of our most notorious atrocities and superstitions: Indian massacres, the relentless persecution of religious dissenters, and the Salem Witch Trials. Who were these people, and how have they shaped American thought? This course examines early New England, from the settlement of the Plymouth colony (1620) to the beginning of the Great Awakening (1730), as a crucible of volatile ideological difference. We will consider familiar Puritan voices such as William Bradford, Anne Bradstreet, and Cotton Mather; dissenters such as Thomas Morton, Roger Williams, and Anne Hutchinson; as well as popular expressions of religious and poetic sensibility, such as the Bay Psalm Book, the New England Primer, and gravestone symbols and epitaphs. We will conclude with more recent writers who cast a backward glance at the Puritans, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Arthur Miller, and Maryse Condé. While these writers have often dismissed their subjects as dour or fanatical, we find in the Puritans’ literary remnants a people who believed themselves engaged in struggles of cosmic importance, who were intimate with death, and who lived, consequently, with a peculiar sense of precariousness and tenacity. This course fulfills the pre-1830 requirement for Literature majors and minors.