What — if anything — comes after this life? Different human cultures have offered many different answers to this question. In this course, we will explore some important and influential heavens, hells, purgatories, and wheels of reincarnation. We will relish the extraordinary aesthetic detail of the afterlife, explore its historical origins and evolutions, consider its ethical and metaphysical importance. And we will gaze, through the prism of what comes next, at the deepest concerns, fears, and hopes of the present day. Our readings will cover a wide range of cultural contexts and religious traditions. Texts may include The Egyptian Book of the Dead, The Bhagavad Gita, The Popol Vuh, and Dante’s Inferno.

Location

Lattimore Room 210 (MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

"Maximum "English" introduces you to the full range of English here at UR. Is it literature you want today, or creative writing? film? theater? journalism? debate?  So you'll learn the fundamentals of reading and viewing from the department's own creative writers, its literary and film critics and historians, and its theater directors. You'll enlarge the experience of reading literature and criticism by listening to writers read their own original work and then discussing it with them. You'll experience plays not only as written scripts but as living theatrical events by attending performances and talking to actors, directors, and designers about what they do to bring a play to the stage. You'll encounter works in different media, from the live human voice to printed books, from the stage to film and multimedia digital texts. Maximum English is particularly suitable for first-year students, though all others are welcome.  

Location

Meliora Room 218 (TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

This course introduces students to Rochester, NY, through the eyes of the humanities. We discuss the city’s museum exhibits and public murals, parks and cemeteries, memorial monuments and statues, photographs and speeches, drama and prose fiction, and protests and social movements from the 19th through the 21st centuries as depicted film and print. The protest and social movement unit of the course considers, in addition to contemporary protests and social movements, anti-slavery and women's rights movements in the 19th C, labor strikes in the first half of the 20th C, and protests for racial justice and the organization of FIGHT in the 1960s. We become familiar with models in the humanities for reading, viewing, and analyzing these objects, spaces, and events, and we practice our interpretative skills in class discussion and in journals. Students have the option of completing either three short writing assignments or a longer research project submitted in three stages. Students also learn about digital resources for presenting their work (Omeka, StoryMaps, Wordpress) and, if they find these resources useful, have the option of incorporating them into their writing assignments or research projects. No restrictions—all undergraduate students welcome. Fulfills the Humanities/English Cluster in Media, Culture and Communication, and the “additional survey or approach course” in the British and American Literature track of the English major. Fulfills the University Diversity Requirement.

Location

Morey Room 501 (MW 10:25AM - 11:40AM)

This course addresses the Big Questions: Love, Death, War, Sex, Law, and more besides. We’ll come to our readings through myth and history, art and philosophy, and a series of broad conceptual frameworks. Above all, however, this is a course in literary appreciation and influence: we will read extensively in Homer and Virgil, in dialogues by Plato, in a broad selection of Greek tragedy (and one comedy!), in a generous selection from Hebrew and Christian scriptures. Our aim will be to encounter these as challenging, imaginative, absorbing, and enduring attempts to confront, articulate, and share the possibilities of life. We will try to do justice to these texts in their own distinctive terms, but we will strive as well to see why readers before us have prized them so highly for thousands of years, and how we are to make sense of them in the 21st century. The readings are astonishingly rich and rewarding, and we will do our best to live up to them within the limits of a semester's work. First years welcome! 

Location

Lechase Room 161 (MW 11:50AM - 1:05PM)

The first thousand years of English literary history is a story of invasions, linguistic changes, cultural translations, and technological advances. It is also a period that saw major revolts, a violent change in the dominant religion, theatrical traditions still admired today, a Civil War (ending with the beheading of the king), and the establishment of English-speaking colonies around the world. In this course we will race through these centuries, exploring the literary implications of these historical events as bards, poets, dramatists, nuns, and mystics produce one of the most fascinating bodies of literature in any language. We will read several of the most important and enduring monuments of early English literature: Beowulf, some of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, poems by Donne and Herbert, and portions of Milton’s epic Paradise Lost, as well as some lesser-known works. Active and involved reading and discussion will be critical; the course is open to all. 

Location

Harkness Room 210 (TR 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

As an introduction to the art of film, this course will present the concepts of film form, film aesthetics, and film style, while remaining attentive to the various ways in which cinema also involves an interaction with audiences and larger social structures.

Location

Morey Room 321 (TR 11:05AM - 12:20PM)

This is an introductory workshop designed for students interested in exploring the art of fiction writing. Students will write original short pieces, and work-in-progress will be discussed in class. We’ll read a wide variety of modern and contemporary authors as we explore elements of the genre. No background in creative writing is necessary.

Location

Morey Room 501 (W 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

This class is a writing workshop, where students share their own fiction and participate in group critique. We will read and discuss stories from the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries by writers of many backgrounds and dispositions, including James Joyce, Isak Dinesen, Edward P. Jones, Ha Jin, Joy Williams, W. G. Sebald, Gabriel García Márquez, Laura (Riding) Jackson, Chinua Achebe, and Franz Kafka. Students will have the chance to experiment with different styles and structures as they learn about literary invention. We'll consider techniques for shaping fictional characters, the management of point of view, the possibilities of narrative design, the role of setting and description, and the process of revision.

Location

Lechase Room 104 (T 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

This class is a writing workshop, where students share their own fiction and participate in group critique. We will read and discuss stories from the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries by writers of many backgrounds and dispositions, including James Joyce, Isak Dinesen, Edward P. Jones, Ha Jin, Joy Williams, W. G. Sebald, Gabriel García Márquez, Laura (Riding) Jackson, Chinua Achebe, and Franz Kafka. Students will have the chance to experiment with different styles and structures as they learn about literary invention. We'll consider techniques for shaping fictional characters, the management of point of view, the possibilities of narrative design, the role of setting and description, and the process of revision.

Location

Meliora Room 224 (R 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

An introductory course in the art of writing poetry. In addition to reading and writing poems, students will learn about various essential elements of craft such as image, metaphor, line, syntax, rhyme, and meter. The course will be conducted in a workshop format. To apply, email the instructor 3-5 poems or a small prose piece (fiction or creative nonfiction).

Location

Lechase Room 161 (M 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

Not unlike the essay or laboratory experiment, a play is a tool that allows the curious mind to develop, test, and rethink ideas, and to grapple with significant issues (both public and private) in live, three-dimensional space. Playwriting introduces the beginning writer interested in exploring the discipline of live performance (and the seasoned writer wishing to develop his/her craft) to the exciting world of writing for the stage. Each semester, students in this course get the chance to study with a different, award-winning guest playwright. In so doing, they get to experience instruction and guidance under the tutelage of some of the most exciting voices working professionally in the American theatre.

Location

Todd Union Room 202F (M 12:30PM - 3:15PM)

A laboratory course on the fundamentals of gathering, assessing, and writing news. The course emphasizes accuracy and  presentation, and explores a variety of story structures, from hard news to features and columns.

Location

Bausch & Lomb Room 269 (M 6:15PM - 8:55PM)

The study and practice of longer, more complicated newspaper, magazine and electronic media stories, such as investigations and profiles. Emphasis will be on the consideration of the various techniques of non-fiction writing, and on the writing and production of feature length journalism in electronic and digital media.

Location

Bausch & Lomb Room 269 (R 6:15PM - 8:55PM)

Basic public speaking is the focus. Emphasis is placed on researching speeches, using appropriate language and delivery, and listening critically to oral presentations. ENG 134 contains two quizzes, a final exam, and four speeches to be given by the student. The speeches include a tribute, persuasive, explanatory, and problem-solving address. Material also features video and inaugural addresses of past U.S. presidents. The course utilizes instructor Curt Smith’s experience as a former White House presidential speechwriter and as a Smithsonian Institution series host. Applicable English Cluster: Media, Culture, and Communication [H1ENG016]

Location

Lechase Room 141 (TR 9:40AM - 10:55AM)

The purpose of this course is to give students an appreciation for and knowledge of critical thinking and reasoned decision-making through argumentation. Students will research both sides of a topic, write argument briefs, and participate in formal and informal debates. Students will also be exposed to the major paradigms used in judging debates. Applicable English Cluster: Media, Culture, and Communication [H1ENG016]

Location

Lechase Room 160 (R 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

The purpose of this course is to give students an appreciation for and knowledge of critical thinking and reasoned decision-making through argumentation. Students will research both sides of a topic, write argument briefs, and participate in formal and informal debates. Students will also be exposed to the major paradigms used in judging debates. Applicable English Cluster: Media, Culture, and Communication [H1ENG016]

Location

Lechase Room 181 (T 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

1st 7 Mondays of the semester (8/30 - 10/25). Space and how it is conceived and explored is fundamental to the telling of stories on stage and elsewhere. This introductory course aims at giving students skills to create, translate and communicate a visual design/environment for performance. The class will focus on design fundamentals, materials, research and visual storytelling through class discussion, script analysis and practical work. Students will read a play, devise a concept for that play, research possible environments, and begin to produce drawings and other visual ideas for their design. Student's work will be presented and discussed in each class.

Location

Todd Union Room 112 (M 10:25AM - 1:05PM)

The basic aesthetic and technical elements of video production. Emphasis on the creative use and understanding of the video medium while learning to use the video camera, video editing processes, and the fundamental procedures of planning video projects. Video techniques will be studied through screenings, group discussions, readings, practice sessions and presentations of original video projects.

In regards to instructor permission, please contact Jason Middleton at jason.middleton@rochester.edu.

Location

Sage Arts Center Room 101 (TR 4:50PM - 7:30PM)

This course will examine texts written by Jewish, Muslim, and Christian mystics in different historical and geographic locales. We will begin by developing an understanding of mysticism within each Abrahamic religion before focusing on the mystical expressions of practitioners in testimonies and poetry. One of the main questions that we will explore will be the nature of the relationship between the mystic, their purported experience, and their textual report (i.e. the memoir). The role of gender in mysticism will be foregrounded, whether via texts written by women, by men “thinking with” women, or men that imagine themselves as “feminine.”

Location

Wegmans Room 1005 (MW 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

This course allows students to move progressively toward a stronger understanding of long form improvisation acting theory and skills related to listening, supporting others, heightening, and taking risks. By the end of this course students will be able to work within a cast to create full length, fully improvised plays that incorporate spontaneous monologues and scenes with recurring characters and themes. Performers will develop skills that enable them to write, direct, edit, and act in pieces that are made up on the spot using a single audience suggestion. Particular focus will be paid to scene work and narrative improvisation.

Location

Todd Union Room 107 (R 3:25PM - 6:05PM)

The creation of a contemporary theatrical production uses skills and talents across a wide range of disciplines: from carpentry to rigging, from painting to computer drafting, from electrical to audiovisual engineering for the stage. This introductory course will explore the theories, methods, and safe practice of set construction (including using power tools), rigging, stage lighting, drafting, sound, and scene painting. Students will work on actual productions staged by the Theatre Program during required labs that will be scheduled with the instructor.

Location

Todd Union Room 202F (MW 9:00AM - 10:15AM)

Lighting and sound provide theatre productions with critical, complex and nuanced effects that tell stories as eloquently as words. This course exposes students to the mechanics and aesthetics of lighting and sound design for the theatre. Students gain a thorough understanding of lighting and sound equipment, procedures, safety, and how these fascinating elements contribute to creating and enriching the theatrical event. Students work actively with these technologies on productions, getting valuable practical experience. There is a required lab component that will be scheduled with the instructor.

Location

Todd Union Room 202F (TR 11:05AM - 12:20PM)

This course serves as an introduction to, and exploration of the acting process for the stage, developing the fundamental skills students need to approach a text from a performers standpoint and to create character. The course takes as its basic premise that the actors instrument is the selfwith all of the physical, psychological, intellectual, social, moral and spiritual implications of that term. Students will be encouraged in both the expression and the expansion of the self and of the imagination. The class will also help the student develop an overall appreciation for the role of the theatre in todays society. Fall class: in conjunction with a weekly scheduled lab.

Location

Todd Union Room 107 (T 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

This course serves as an introduction to, and exploration of the acting process for the stage, developing the fundamental skills students need to approach a text from a performers standpoint and to create character. The course takes as its basic premise that the actors instrument is the selfwith all of the physical, psychological, intellectual, social, moral and spiritual implications of that term. Students will be encouraged in both the expression and the expansion of the self and of the imagination. The class will also help the student develop an overall appreciation for the role of the theatre in todays society. Fall class: in conjunction with a weekly scheduled lab.

Location

Todd Union Room 107 (W 4:50PM - 6:05PM)

Ninety three percent of communication is nonverbal. In today's ever increasingly technological world soft skills? are more valuable than ever. It is not just important what we say, but how we say it. In Movement for Stage using Alexander Technique, Bartenieff Fundamental, View Points, Laban and many other exercises and explorations students will gain an awareness of their own habits and physical tensions, learn alignment and relaxation techniques, let go of inhibitions and then learn to make physical choices to create diverse and inventive characters. Students will learn to read the body language of others and tools to use in their own lives to physically adjust and respond and relate to new situations in new ways.

Location

Todd Union Room 107 (F 10:25AM - 1:05PM)

Last 7 Mondays of the semester 10/25 - 12/6/21 Design for Stage: Scenery introduces an opportunity for students interested in set design to explore how set designers interpret texts to create compelling spatial designs that help to house and tell theatrical stories. Students will acquire an understanding of how to evaluate texts for spatial and scenic clues; how to imagine scenic designs; and how to move design ideas from conception to realization. Students will be guided along the entire journey from research to realized design, coming to understand the steps and demands of the scenic designer’s art.

Location

Todd Union Room 112 (M 10:25AM - 1:05PM)

In todays theatre, the director is generally considered to be the key creative figure in how a theatre production is conceived, explored and presented. But the directors task is a difficult one, encompassing rigorous intellectual, theatrical and artistic knowledge and skills. This introductory directing techniques class for aspiring directors will explore the nature of the theatrical event, investigate conceptualization, visualization, text analysis, action and design as they pertain to the director's craft. In conjunction with a weekly scheduled lab.

Location

Todd Union Room 107 (F 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

In todays theatre, the director is generally considered to be the key creative figure in how a theatre production is conceived, explored and presented. But the directors task is a difficult one, encompassing rigorous intellectual, theatrical and artistic knowledge and skills. This introductory directing techniques class for aspiring directors will explore the nature of the theatrical event, investigate conceptualization, visualization, text analysis, action and design as they pertain to the director's craft. In conjunction with a weekly scheduled lab.

Location

Todd Union Room 107 (W 4:50PM - 6:05PM)

What is the relationship between theatre and protest? How, in a world that is chaotic and unjust, can we create work that foments social justice and galvanizes artists and audiences around a shared cause? In this course, we will study protest theatre movements both in the United States and around the world, and apply those tenets to creating work that speaks to our current sociopolitical moment and the challenges we collectively face.

Location

Todd Union Room 107 (M 4:50PM - 7:30PM)

This course allows students to comprehensively and actively understand the entire theatrical production process from the page to the stage. Students will study and gain insight into an actual text being produced in Todd Theatre & Sloan Performing Arts Center; work with the artist directing the production to understand and explore the creative and artistic process; and gain first-hand, practical experience working on the production in one of many labs associated with the production process (scenery, lighting, costume, sound, etc.). A unique class melding the theoretical and practical. There is a required lab component that will be scheduled with the instructor.

Location

Todd Union Room 202F (W 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

All languages change over time, often in predictable patterns. Where did today’s standard English come from, and how is our sense of that standard tied to assumptions about race, class, gender, and nationality? To find out, we will begin roughly 5,000 years ago, studying the common ancestor of languages as different as English, Hindi, and Polish: Proto-Indo-European. We will learn about the prehistoric roots of English, then turn to the earliest written evidence of it: “Anglo-Saxon” or “Old English,” ca. 600-1100.The language was transformed in the wake of the Norman Invasion of 1066, as English became lower in status than both Anglo-Norman French and Latin for a few centuries. Next, we will learn about the growth of English, and its changes, in the age of Chaucer (Middle English) and Shakespeare (Early Modern English). Finally, we will explore processes of standardization, hybridization, and diffusion in the complex effects of English’s spread across the globe over the course of the past 450 years.

Location

Lechase Room 104 (TR 11:05AM - 12:20PM)

The first of a sequence of two, the course approaches 'The Divine Comedy' both as a poetic masterpiece and as an encyclopedia of medieval culture. Through a close textual analysis of 'Inferno,' and the first half of 'Purgatorio,' students learn how to approach Dantes poetry as a vehicle for thought, an instrument of self-discovery, and a way to understand and affect the historical reality. They also gain a perspective on the Biblical, Christian, and Classical traditions as they intersect with the multiple levels of Dantes concern, ranging from literature to history, from politics to government, from philosophy to theology. A visual component, including illustrations of the 'Comedy' and multiple artworks pertinent to the narrative, complements the course. Class format includes lectures, discussion, and a weekly recitation session. Intensive class participation is encouraged. Dante I can be taken independently from Dante II. No prerequisites. Freshmen are welcome. Part of the Dante Humanities Cluster.

Location

Gavett Hall Room 310 (MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

This course will introduce you to the literature of medieval Wales and Ireland by giving you translations from some of the best scholars. The major emphasis will be on what the title suggests: goddesses, warriors, and shamans. We will examine the nature of the warrior cult as it emerges in Welsh and Irish romance and epic, and the relationship of men and women. Related to this theme is the figure of the "bard" (Welsh; in Irish: fili), the poet whose poetry was combative, magical and esoteric. We will compare heroic tales and romances in the Welsh Gododdin and Mabinogion, and look as well at the Druid and the Saint. To what extent do all three draw from or redefine the cult of the warrior? Where does the druid leave off and the Christian saint begin? What is the cult of the cauldron? The Severed Head? The Morrígan? The Sovereignty Figure? The Sheela na Gig? What are our fond myths about the Visionary Celt? The Celtic Twilight? Wiccan? Fairies?

Location

Morey Room 205 (MW 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

The course will explore the playwright’s myriad dramatic worlds, their dark designs and psychological games, their plays of character, their strange humor, their wild flights of language, their fascination with magic and madness. It will examine how the plays work through the shifting dynamics of love and hatred, of power, marriage, war, commerce, justice, and crime. We’ll consider how the plays dissect Shakespeare’s own theatrical practice, his fascination with disguise and performance, his ambivalence about both actors and audiences. Readings will including works from early to late, comedies, history plays, tragedies, and “romances.” This course fulfills the pre-1800 requirement for the English major. Applicable English clusters: Great Books, Great Authors; Plays, Playwrights, and Theater.

Location

Dewey Room 2110D (TR 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

This course examines American writers’ responses to intense social, economic, and technological upheavals, such as urbanization, colonization, industrialization, and social injustices, from 1850s through now. Topics to be covered include colonialism, eco-tourism, slavery, civil rights, trauma, technology, urbanization, and the rise of science, and students can expect to explore the questions such as the following: How do environmental issues relate to the politics of race? How do writers represent the ongoing trauma of losing indigenous land? How to communicate the invisible hazards of climate change and the chemical industry? How has the rise of rationality displaced spiritual visions of the natural world? How do we create a meaningful connection to home and the planet amidst so much injustice and technological upheaval? INSTRUCTOR PERMISSION REQUIRED. NOT OPEN TO SENIORS.

Location

Morey Room 524 (MW 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

This course is not a history of the book. It does not follow the epic parade of culture from alphabet to quill, printing press to keyboard. The story we tell here is in the elegiac mode: how cultures failed and their artifacts disappeared, how fabled texts and records were lost and forgotten, and how, with effort and ingenuity, a paltry few were clawed back from oblivion. From Europe to the Middle East, Asia to Latin America, an unsung group of scholars, adventurers, scientists, and rogues trekked across deserts and over mountains, plundered tombs and monasteries, rummaged between the legs of mummies, entered hidden caves and bricked up rooms, deciphered lost languages, and developed new technologies all so as to recover for the world a group of texts that would change the history of the past. That is if anyone actually bothered to read them. Here is the history of the hidden canon, great yet little-known books drawn from far-flung collections: Monte Cassino, Verona, Herculaneum, the Fayum, Dura Europos, Ras Sharma, St. Catherine's Monastery in the Sinai, the Cairo Genizah, the Qumran caves, Khotan, Dun Huang, Chichen Itza, and Guatemala City. Its cast of characters includes the famous, the flamboyant, and the obscure: Petrarch, Poggio, Flinders Petrie, Grenville and Hunt, Solomon Schechter, Marcus Aurelius Stein, Zelia Nutall, Brasseur, Alexander von Humboldt, Konstantin Tischendorf, the Smith sisters. Because the territory this course covers is large, the format will be lecture and exam. In a companion course, Reading the Hidden Canon, students will consult excerpts from the most important documents and pieces of literature these scholars recovered, many still largely unknown.

Location

Lechase Room 181 (TR 9:40AM - 10:55AM)

This course examines the literature and culture of the Victorian period. The Victorian period was not only an era of rapid modernization, imperialist expansion, and scientific advance, it also bore witness to class tensions, urban poverty, religious doubt, and political upheaval. This turbulent era also saw the rise of numerous great literary figures (e.g. Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, Oscar Wilde, and Walter Pater). In this course we will explore many of these well-known Victorian poets, novelists, and essayists, examining how the intellectual preoccupations and aesthetic strategies of these writers responded to their historical and cultural moment. Fulfills the post-1800 requirement. No prerequisites.

Location

Lechase Room 121 (TR 11:05AM - 12:20PM)

We will focus on American literature, especially fiction, from 1865 to 1914. We will also consider some philosophical, polemical, and popular texts from the period. Definitions of realism and claims writers made for the relationship of literary art to the world around them, the potentialities of fiction to represent and to influence society and politics, and the influence and implications of nationalism and imperialism will be of particular interest.

Location

Harkness Room 210 (MW 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

The explosion of black culture during the early Twentieth Century known as the “Harlem” or (more broadly) “New Negro” Renaissance included the emergence of some of the most important works of the African American literary tradition. This course will provide a survey of the literature and culture that reflect the spirit of that era. In addition, the course will consider recent African-American fiction in order to ascertain what the Harlem Renaissance has meant for subsequent writers and artists. Special attention will be paid to the following topics: migration, jazz, the Blues, literary modernism, theories of black identity, and difference within black America. Readings include works by Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Jean Toomer, George Schuyler, Toni Morrison, Samuel R. Delany, and more. Requirements include class participation, six 1-page reading responses, and two 6-8-page formal writing assignments.

Location

Morey Room 501 (MW 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

How do cyborgs, superheroes, and ghosts change our understanding of what it means to be human? How do interstellar travel, dystopian climate change, and revisionist ancient histories reframe the way we think of African diasporic histories of trauma, survival, desired freedom, and collective belonging? Studying science fiction, fantasy, and horror from across Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, and North America, this course will focus on how 20th and 21st century artists have reimagined black life after slavery and empire. We’ll study a range of artistic forms, including fiction, film, visual art, and music, by artists like Octavia Butler, Wanuri Kahiu, Nalo Hopkinson, Jordan Peele, and Wangechi Mutu. We’ll look at how artists of color contort the world we know, and how they use the speculative mode to pose deeply philosophical and historical questions.

Location

Hylan Building Room 203 (TR 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

A study and exploration of the major movements of twentieth-century drama—naturalism, expressionism, surrealism, epic theater, absurdism. Possible author list: Anton Chekhov, Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Edward Albee, David Henry Hwang, Caryl Churchill, August Wilson, Sam Shepard, Suzan-Lori Parks, Ayad Akhtar, Tony Kushner, Lynn Nottage. 

Location

Lechase Room 163 (MW 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

This course will look at how artists and intellectuals from across the African continent have used the internet to shape culture, society, and art forms in the 21st century. We’ll study a wide range of material, from viral blogs, pop culture e-zines, and hypertext fiction, to music, video art, and digital exhibits in fashion and cultural heritage. We’ll also study the ways young people have used social media in recent years to galvanize movements for social change, like #EndSars in Nigeria and #RhodesMustFall in South Africa. How do Teju Cole’s tweeted short stories, or the Nest Collective’s crime thriller Facebook videos, engage global audiences? How do these and other works shape conversations on topics as disparate as migration, police brutality, Afrofuturism, style, and the space of LGBTQ life? Together we’ll examine how African artists and thinkers have taken to the internet to critically engage our contemporary world, cultivate new aesthetic forms, and create new forms of community and belonging.

Location

Morey Room 501 (TR 9:40AM - 10:55AM)

With its unprecedented death toll and new technologies of destruction, WWI shattered illusions and exploded the fabric of society as people then knew it. Despite subsequent world conflicts and traumatic occurrences, the Great War has remained for the British a haunting presence, becoming, in poet Ted Hughes’s words, the “number one national ghost.” As we move past the 100th anniversary of the war, we will trace the history of this national obsession in the searing poetry of the trenches, the combatant’s memoirs that exposed the war’s horror and futility, and the modernist fiction that registered the war’s impact in new ways of seeing. We will also explore returns to the war in late 20th/early 21st c. film, theater, television, and popular fiction. For as War Horse and Downton Abbey have dramatically demonstrated, the memory of the war continues to fascinate, sustaining old myths and feeding new ones. This course will attempt to explain why the Great War has had such a remarkable hold on the modern imagination.

Location

Hylan Building Room 102 (MW 11:50AM - 1:05PM)

Over the past hundred years, various schools of literary theory have asked fundamental questions about (and offered provisional hypotheses on) the nature of signification, of interpretation, of beauty, and of truth. Not just methods for reading, these approaches challenge us to rethink the relationship between representation and reality, language and power, intention and meaning. Our syllabus will cover all of the major branches of contemporary literary theory, including New Criticism, Formalism, Structuralism, Psychoanalysis, Deconstruction, Marxism, New Historicism, Gender Studies, and Postcolonial Theory. Each class period will begin with a brief introduction by the professor, followed by collective close-readings and seminar-style discussion; additionally, students will engage with the material via periodic in-class exams and a final paper. 

Location

Lechase Room 141 (TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

Alexander of Macedon has been judged (after Jesus Christ) the single most written about figure in world history for the last 2500 years. We will read the judgments of ancient and modern historians, the foundational Greek Romance, and substantive, coordinated portions of its pre-modern re-tellings in Egyptian, Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, Ethiopic, Mongolian, Armenian, French, and English. We will focus on A’s encounters in what is now Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India, and how both Easterners and Westerners understood these interactions. We will read modern fictionalizations (often focused on A’s sexuality) by Renault, Mann, and Kazantzakis; we will look (askance) at Oliver Stone’s 2004 blockbuster, Japanese manga & animé series, and a 1941 “Bollywood” style film in which India finally turn back A. The course will continuously engage issues of globalization and cosmopolitanism, conquest and. imperialism, race and colonization, cultural exchange and the contact zone, and Great Man theories of history. 

Fulfills the Diversity Requirement.

Location

Morey Room 504 (MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

An isolated country parsonage. A half mad father. A profligate brother addicted to drugs. Three uniquely gifted sisters who burned their hearts and brains out on the moors, but not before leaving us some of the most passionate and revolutionary literature of the 19th c. This is the stuff of the Brontë legend. This course will explore the continuing appeal of the Brontës and the peculiar fascination that they have exercised on the literary imagination. Looking intensively at some of the best-loved novels of all time, we will explore the roots and reaches of the Brontë myth. We will also consider the Brontës’ legacy in in some of the many adaptations (and continuations) of their work in print and on the screen. And we will look at our seemingly insatiable appetite for new tellings of the Brontës’ life stories. The course, then, will consider not the only the Brontës’ literary productions, but also our culture’s production and reproduction of “the Brontës” over the years. 

Location

Meliora Room 205 (MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

This course entails a close reading of the novel in English translation, coupled with a focus on the ways in which both the novel and/or protagonist have been adapted, adopted, interpreted or incorporated by various critical and popular traditions both inside and outside of Spain from the time of its original publication in 1605 through the 21st century. We will examine several filmic adaptations, illustrations and paintings as well, with an eye toward critically examining the problematic employment of Don Quixote as an icon of Pan-Hispanic culture. However, we will continually return to the novel as our anchor throughout the course, while assessing the constantly changing ways in which contemporary readers and scholars approach the text. Course is taught in English. *Students taking the course for Spanish credit will do the bulk of the work in Spanish. Pre-requisites: SPAN 200, if taken as SPAN 215. No pre-req for CLTR, ENGL, or LTST co-locations.

Location

Lechase Room 121 (MW 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

A survey of the writer's Russian and American works and his contribution to world literature. Reading his most renowned novels, we will acquire an understanding of Nabokov's style, philosophy and ethical principles. Our discussions will address his ideas of life and death, space and time, regularity and chance, as well as such issues as otherness, individual freedom, and independent thinking. We will also analyze Nabokov's artistic discourse as we attempt to assess his legacy: was he a trickster as some critics describe him, or a deep thinker and brilliant stylist, as others argue? As an American college professor, whose lectures have been published, how did the author himself think literature should be taught? Readings include King, Queen, Knave, The Defense, Camera Obscura, Invitation to a Beheading, The Gift, Lolita, Pnin and Speak Memory. In English.

Location

Lattimore Room 413 (TR 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

Poetry is by nature a kind of “memorable speech,” but there are also poems in which memory itself becomes an explicit theme or question. In this class we’ll be looking at poems that explore memory’s urgency and uncertainty, its power to both preserve and distort, to be both sustenance and poison. How do poems keep memory alive, both collective and personal memory? How do they keep watch over the dead—as in the ancient genre of elegy? How can they probe our earliest, sometimes lost recollections of childhood, its play and innocence and pain, its often hidden wounds? How much does poetic memory collude with fantasy, dream, forgetting, oblivion, and silence? How can poetry test the work of memory? Readings will include poems by William Shakespeare, William Wordsworth, John Keats, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Thomas Hardy, Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, W. S. Merwin, and Natasha Trethewey. This course fulfills the post-1800 requirement for the English major. Applicable English clusters: Poetry and Poetics

Location

Morey Room 205 (TR 11:05AM - 12:20PM)

Despite being misunderstood as the most infantile of genres, comic books have recently proven themselves capable of astonishing artistic achievements and of infiltrating both Hollywood and academia. This course has three parts: 1) a formal analysis of the art of comics, a combination of text and image used to tell a story; 2) a cultural history of comic books, from their modern origins during the Great Depression to the 21st Century; and 3) close readings of important primary works in the field, including Howard Cruse’s Stuck Rubber Baby, Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, Alan Moore & David Gibbons’ Watchmen, Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, Sonny Liew’s The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye, and more. Course requirements include class participation, bi-weekly 1-page reading responses, a mid-term examination, and a final paper.

Location

Morey Room 504 (MW 10:25AM - 11:40AM)

Recently, women have collectively mobilized to announce and describe their anger to the public. We ask how to locate anger in social relations as well as in individuals. We try to distinguish between the behaviors emerging from men’s and women’s anger. We read Mercy and other works by Andrea Dworkin, graphic stories by Phoebe Gloeckner and Isabel Greenberg, the off-genre What Purpose Did I Serve in Your Life by Marie Calloway, The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh, Vox by Christina Dalcher, autobiographical/documentary films by Michelle Citron, Su Friedrich, and Cheryl Dunye, the TV series “The Handmaid’s Tale, and political writings such as Good and Mad by Rebecca Traister, Eloquent Rage: a Black Feminist Discovers her Superpower by Brittney Cooper, and Rage Becomes Her by Soraya Chemaly. Weekly essays, final essay, no exams.

Location

Morey Room 205 (TR 9:40AM - 10:55AM)

The album — defined as the artful sequencing of song — constitutes one of the most powerful and meaningful vehicles of musical and literary expression of recent times. In this class, we will take the album seriously as a literary object as we consider many topics: poetry and song; musical narrative; music and memory; world-building in music; music and politics; music and technology. Genres will include lieder, jazz, blues, country, folk, rock and roll, soul, funk, and rap. Artists covered will include Billie Holiday, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, David Bowie, Prince, Beyoncé, Outkast, and many others. Alongside musical examples we will read criticism and scholarship modeling a literary approach to the album.

Location

Lechase Room 103 (MW 11:50AM - 1:05PM)

This course surveys the history of cinema from its emergence in the mid-1890s to the transition to sound in the late 1920s. We will examine the cinema as a set of aesthetic, social, technological, national, cultural and industrial practices as they were exercised and developed during this 30-year span. We will explore the diverse forms cinema took and functions it performed during this period by looking closely at a range of films and writings about films and film culture. We will also examine contexts within which these films were produced and experienced as well as theorizations of cinema that emerged concurrently with them. The course thus introduces students to the study of film history as well as a key national and international trends in making and thinking about cinema as it rose to prominence as a vital component of the art and culture of the twentieth century. Previous coursework in film is recommended, though not required; please contact the professor if this will be your first experience studying film in an academic setting.

Location

Hylan Building Room 202 (TR 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

This course will explore developments in world cinema—industrial, social, and political—from 1959 to 1989. It will explore film aesthetics, technologies, and circulation questions, considering questions like the following: What’s new about the French New Wave? What do we mean by Third Cinema? How do different national cinemas influence each other? In what ways have various national cinemas responded critically to Hollywood’s commercial dominance and to its conventions? How do popular and “art” cinemas speak to each other. How does cinema respond to the pressures and provocations of other media at the inception of the digital age? Weekly screenings and film journals required. FMS 132, “Introduction to the Art of Film,” typically a prerequisite.

Location

Morey Room 504 (MW 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

A focused study of Godzilla on film, beginning with the 1954 film that inspired and helped define the Japanese kaiju eiga genre. The larger context of the course is a critical investigation of genre film, specifically the science fiction/horror/creature-feature film, and a careful consideration of the culture of war (World War II through 21st century). We begin with a sampling of seminal non-Japanese titles that provided the foundation for the Godzilla film paradigm, then focus on a close textual study of select Godzilla films that help us understand the historical and social contexts for Godzilla’s erratic trajectory since 1954. Recent DVD releases with both dubbed and original Japanese language versions enable us to dissect the culturally generated permutations of kaiju eiga. No prerequisites, no audits.

Location

Meliora Room 209 (TR 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

For many, the mental image of American artistic production from the Depression Era is far more akin to the barren black & white Kansas homestead than the sparkling technicolor of Oz. This was hardly the case. In fact, the 1930s was a decade of diverse artistic experiments in the United States—a veritable laboratory for debating art’s forms and social aims that would come to redefine American culture itself. This course introduces a range of those experiments, focusing on the network between film and the other visual arts. Topics include federally sponsored New Deal programs, the social realisms of African-American and immigrant artists, the rise of photo-journalism and emergence of “documentary” across mediums, the aesthetic diplomacy of World’s Fairs and films such as Capra’s American Madness, Lang’s Fury, and Ford’s Grapes of Wrath. Throughout the course we will be asking in what ways did these experiments represent propositions about the direction and shape of modern art and culture in America.

Location

Hylan Building Room 201 (TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

This course runs in combination with an internship at Open Letter Books and focuses on explaining the basics of the business of literary publishing: editing, marketing, promoting, fundraising, ebooks, the future of bookselling, etc. Literature in translation is emphasized in this class, and all the topics covered tie in with the various projects interns work on for Open Letter Books.

Location

Meliora Room 219 (MW 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

This course contests its title. There is language and literature/film that records how language has failed as a means of (human) species adaptation toward conflict resolution in domestic and international contexts. This course, following the observations of Virginia Woolf in Three Guineas (1939), tries to document the language/literary connections between domestic violence and war making. In domestic situations, violence is protected by traditions of privacy and male governance of households; in public situations, there has been an inertia throughout recorded history in enacting the ideal announced in Isaiah: "[nations] shall not learn war any more." In our own society genres of popular and elite culture teach the necessity and glory of war through literature, film, toys, sports, and ideals of heroic behavior. Our normal ways of speaking still presuppose violence and war as a "last resort" in solving domestic and international antagonisms

Location

Morey Room 504 (TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

Advanced Acting aims to provide students who have substantial or significant performance experience an opportunity to explore, in depth, advanced acting techniques, while further developing interpretive and imaginative skills. The class aims to build creativity and the ability to inhabit a broad diversity of characters and performance styles.

Location

Todd Union Room 107 (M 10:25AM - 1:05PM)

Using Acting Techniques to help train Behavioral Health Professions -

Diagnosing and talking to patients effectively, safely, and with empathy is a key skill for doctors and all behavioral health care providers. “Standardized Patients” (SPs) are carefully trained actors who realistically and accurately present as a patient with psychiatric symptoms in devised, structured encounters. Using skills including improvisation, and character analysis and development, in conjunction with medical insights into psychiatric behaviors and conditions, students will not only develop unusual, sustainable, and highly valued skillsets, but actively work to give feedback to trainees while putting their own performance objectives and learning into real world practice. A collaboration with the Department of Psychiatry’s Laboratory for Behavioral Health Skills, Performing as Patients is a rare and unique opportunity to build important, marketable, real-world skills with creative, targeted and valuable theatrical techniques. Auditions/interviews are required.        

Instructors:Shawnda Urie, MA & Wendi Cross, PhD

Location

Todd Union Room 107 (W 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

This workshop is for advanced fiction writers who have completed ENG 121 or have permission from the instructor. The course emphasizes the development of each student's individual style and imagination, as well as the practical and technical concerns of a fiction writer's craft. Readings will be drawn from a wide variety of modern and contemporary writers. Students will be expected to write three original short stories as well as to revise extensively in order to explore the full range of the story's potential. Applicable English Cluster: Creative Writing.

Location

Lechase Room 163 (M 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

The Advanced Creative Writing Tutorial is for advanced fiction writers who have completed ENG 121 or have permission from the instructor. The course emphasizes the development of each student's individual style and imagination, as well as the practical and technical concerns of a fiction writer's craft. Readings will be drawn from a wide variety of modern and contemporary writers. The Advanced Tutorial gives undergraduates the chance to work on their literary and creative interests to further the development of their original writing. Group meetings will be supplemented by faculty-directed, student-centered tutorial meetings. Students will design individualized creative projects specific to their interests.

Location

Hylan Building Room 306 (W 4:50PM - 7:30PM)

Poems, as William Carlos Williams once said, are machines made out of words, and in this advanced poetry workshop we will work on making the most gorgeous, gripping, and efficient machines possible. To that end, we will read both one another's poems and poems by established authors, in either case paying attention to the ways in which the authors harness aspects of their medium, the English language: syntax, diction, rhythm. The poems we write may take any shape, any form, but we will work towards understanding why a particular poem must take the shape it has; we will pay attention not so much to what the poems say as to how they say it. Requirements: weekly writing and reading assignments, revisions of assignments, devoted participation in class discussions, a final project.

Location

Meliora Room 218 (T 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

This course will explore the many ways in which cinema operates as a time machine.  Through close analysis of works by Agnès Varda, Chantal Akerman, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Jean-Luc Godard we will consider varieties of cinematic temporality in relation to questions of history and memory (collective and subjective).  Requirement of two previous film courses. Readings will include: Gilles Deleuze, Kaja Silverman, David Rodowick, Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin.

Location

Morey Room 205 (T 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

From smart planning to solid research to sparkling communication, this course nurtures skills crucial in almost any field. We’ll look at how successful feature writers bridge the gap between news and commentary, shedding light on people, places, and perplexing issues. We’ll study their methods and put them into practice as we write our own articles. Among the feature forms we’ll explore: profiles, trend pieces, investigations, science and travel stories, and color pieces. Among our topics: finding and developing ideas; digging for information; interviewing and quoting effectively and ethically; achieving the right structure and tone; fact checking; revising and pruning; and getting published. Applicable English Cluster: Media, Culture, and Communication. Please email Instructor a paragraph or two about why you would like to take the course. 

Location

Morey Room 403 (T 10:25AM - 1:45PM)

We will investigate broad models of argument and evidence from the interdisciplinary field of argumentation theory. Students will apply these models to specific academic and social contexts of their choice. Some questions we might ask are: Can argument or evidence be understood absent context? What do arguments in STEM fields have in common with those in the humanities? For instance, is there common ground in how we argue about English literature and how biologists argue about the natural world? How do audience and purpose in disciplines such as psychology, physics and philosophy shape what counts as an argument in their respective fields? Does political argument resemble academic argument? What strategies will enable experts to communicate more effectively with public audiences in fields such as public health and the environmental humanities? Students will write frequent reflections, develop several short papers, and the semester will culminate in the construction of a final project of the student’s own design (for example, a research paper, a website, a podcast…) that can focus on any aspect of academic, professional, or political argumentation.

Location

Dewey Room 4162 (TR 11:05AM - 12:20PM)

Prepares sophomores, juniors, and seniors enrolled in five-year programs, from the humanities, sciences, and the social sciences for work as writing fellows. Course design facilitates the development of a strong, intuitive writer and speaker in order to become a successful reader, listener and responder in peer-tutoring situations. Ample writing and rewriting experiences, practice in informal and formal speaking, and the critical reading of published essays and student work enhance students' ability to become conscious, flexible communicators. Before tutoring on their own, students observe writing fellows and writing center consultants conduct tutoring sessions. On completion of the course with a B or better, fellows should be prepared to accept their own hours as peer tutors.

YOU MUST REGISTER FOR A RECITATION WHEN REGISTERING FOR THE MAIN SECTION

Prerequisites: Interested students must apply. Minimum GPA of 3.0.

Location

Rush Rhees Library Room G121A (MW 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

Prepares sophomores, juniors, and seniors enrolled in five-year programs, from the humanities, sciences, and the social sciences for work as writing fellows. Course design facilitates the development of a strong, intuitive writer and speaker in order to become a successful reader, listener and responder in peer-tutoring situations. Ample writing and rewriting experiences, practice in informal and formal speaking, and the critical reading of published essays and student work enhance students' ability to become conscious, flexible communicators. Before tutoring on their own, students observe writing fellows and writing center consultants conduct tutoring sessions. On completion of the course with a B or better, fellows should be prepared to accept their own hours as peer tutors.

YOU MUST REGISTER FOR A RECITATION WHEN REGISTERING FOR THE MAIN SECTION

Prerequisites: Interested students must apply. Minimum GPA of 3.0.

Location

Rush Rhees Library Room G121A (F 12:00PM - 12:50PM)

Presidential Rhetoric, taught by former presidential speechwriter Curt Smith, helps students critically examine the public rhetoric and themes of the modern American presidency. ENG 286 devotes special attention to the office’s symbolic nature, focusing on how well twentieth-century presidents communicate via a variety of forms, including the press conference, political speech, inaugural address, and prime-time TV speech. Smith will draw on his experiences at the White House and at ESPN TV to link the world’s most powerful office and today’s dominant medium. Applicable English Cluster: Media, Culture, and Communication [H1ENG016]

Location

Lechase Room 161 (TR 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

This course will introduce students to the theoretical backgrounds, practical challenges, and creative activity of literary translation. We will survey appropriate theories of language and communication including semiotics, post-structuralism, pragmatics, discourse analysis, and cognitive linguistics. We will consider varied and conflicting descriptions by translators of what it is they believe they are doing and what they hope to accomplish by doing it; and we will study specific translations into English from a variety of sources in order to investigate the strategies and choices translators make and the implication of those choices for our developing sense of what kinds of texts translations actually are. Finally, students will, in consultation with the instructor or with another qualified faculty member, undertake exercises in translation of their own. By the end of this class each student should have a working knowledge of both the critical backgrounds and the artistic potentials of translation.

Location

Hylan Building Room 101 (T 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

This course encourages you to bring your unique talent and personality to the screen with confidence and freedom. We will cover technical terminology and physical adjustments required for working in front of the lens. The first half of the semester will focus on 'on camera' interviews, auditions and interview work. The second half will focus on 2-3 character 'on camera? scene work. Every taped session will be followed up by feedback and discussion.

Location

Rettner Hall Room 305 (W 12:30PM - 3:15PM)

For actors, assistant directors and select student staff working on a current mainstage production.

The stage manager is the critical organizational and management hub in the artistic process of theatrical production. Stage Managers are skilled project managers, and the skills learned in stage management are applicable to almost any management Stage Management (fall/spring) students will get an in-depth introduction to and immersion in stage managing a theatrical production. In addition, cover all areas of management skills, safety procedures, technical knowledge, and paperwork, students will be expected to serve as an assistant stage manager or production stage manager on one (or both) Theater Program productions in their registered semester.

Location

Todd Union Room 202F (F 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

A 1 credit pass/fail performance lab course for students accepted into ENG 292, 293, 294, 295 & 296 or for those involved as actors in mainstage Theatre Program productions.

This course studies the cultural, economic, and ecological flows of the industrial food system–from its origins in the slave economies of sugar plantations in the colonial era to current-day monocultures of corn, soy, and palm oil spanning the globe. Using the lens of the Plantation, we will connect contemporary social and environmental problems like climate change, racial injustice, and global inequality to the colonization of people, animals, plants, and the planet, to the turning of biodiverse cultures and ecosystems into cash-crop factories, animals into raw materials, and people into displaced workers. In the process, we will cover many well-known but little-understood topics, including biotech, chemical inputs, fast/processed food, and GMOs, as well as critical theories that illuminate the cultural frameworks that shape perceptions of food, including modernization, decolonization, animal rights, and neoliberalism. Films include Okja and Solvent Green. Readings include Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, Sidney Mintz's Sweetness and Power, Leah Penniman's Farming While Black, Timothy Pachirat's Every Twelve Seconds, and Necropolitics by Achille Mbembe. Includes visit to Farm Sanctuary in Watkins Glen. 

Not Open to Seniors.

Contact Leila Nadir for permission leila.nadir@rochester.edu

Location

Meliora Room 224 (MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

In Special Projects: Theatre students work in a particular area or on a particular project of their choosing or devising. Developed with and overseen by a Theatre Program faculty member and functioning like an Independent Study, Special Projects: Theatre allows students the opportunity of specializing in or investigate theatre in a tailored, focused, and self-directed way.

Alexander of Macedon has been judged (after Jesus Christ) the single most written about figure in world history for the last 2500 years. We will read the judgments of ancient and modern historians, the foundational Greek Romance, and substantive, coordinated portions of its pre-modern re-tellings in Egyptian, Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, Ethiopic, Mongolian, Armenian, French, and English. We will focus on A’s encounters in what is now Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India, and how both Easterners and Westerners understood these interactions. We will read modern fictionalizations (often focused on A’s sexuality) by Renault, Mann, and Kazantzakis; we will look (askance) at Oliver Stone’s 2004 blockbuster, Japanese manga & animé series, and a 1941 “Bollywood” style film in which India finally turn back A. The course will continuously engage issues of globalization and cosmopolitanism, conquest and. imperialism, race and colonization, cultural exchange and the contact zone, and Great Man theories of history. 

Fulfills the Diversity Requirement.

Location

Morey Room 504 (MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

Why do we think and talk about fictional characters as though they are real even when we know that they are not? It would seem easy to understand how a visual medium like film imitates aspects of our everyday life, but how do novels using nothing but words conjure an entire world in a reader’s mind that feel so real? This course explores these questions and others as it takes up the genre of the realist novel as it developed over the course of the nineteenth century. We will closely read and discuss some of the most exemplary practitioners of the realist novel within the British and Continental tradition, from Jane Austen and Honoré de Balzac to George Eliot.  The course will examine the aesthetics of realism and how realist fiction’s promise to show the reader what the world is like assumed a different form among varied novelists. Students will be exposed to theories of realism, past and present, and will also deepen their understanding of varied canonical novelists.   Open to English Majors in their Junior or Senior year only

Location

Lechase Room 163 (TR 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

For many, the mental image of American artistic production from the Depression Era is far more akin to the barren black & white Kansas homestead than the sparkling technicolor of Oz. This was hardly the case. In fact, the 1930s was a decade of diverse artistic experiments in the United States—a veritable laboratory for debating art’s forms and social aims that would come to redefine American culture itself. This course introduces a range of those experiments, focusing on the network between film and the other visual arts. Topics include federally sponsored New Deal programs, the social realisms of African-American and immigrant artists, the rise of photo-journalism and emergence of “documentary” across mediums, the aesthetic diplomacy of World’s Fairs and films such as Capra’s American Madness, Lang’s Fury, and Ford’s Grapes of Wrath. Throughout the course we will be asking in what ways did these experiments represent propositions about the direction and shape of modern art and culture in America.

Location

Hylan Building Room 201 (TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

A course of reading, research, and writing on topics not covered by the existing curriculum, developed between the student and a faculty advisor.

Registration for Independent Study courses needs to be completed thru the instructions for online independent study registration.

A course of reading, research, and writing on topics not covered by the existing curriculum, developed between the student and a faculty advisor.

Registration for Independent Study courses needs to be completed thru the instructions for online independent study registration.

Advanced Stage Management Practicum is designed for, and available only to students fulfilling the roll of a Production Stage Manager on a mainstage Theatre Program production.

Registration for Independent Study courses needs to be completed thru the instructions for online independent study registration.

Advanced Stage Management Practicum is designed for, and available only to students fulfilling the roll of a Production Stage Manager on a mainstage Theatre Program production.

Registration for Independent Study courses needs to be completed thru the instructions for online independent study registration.

Registration for Independent Study courses needs to be completed thru the instructions for online independent study registration.

Registration for Independent Study courses needs to be completed thru the instructions for online independent study registration.

In this seminar we discuss the literary qualities and social impulses that characterize utopian and dystopian writing. We focus on utopian and dystopian worlds imagined in British and American prose fiction from the sixteenth through the twenty-first century. We consider, among other topics, how this writing draws on journalism, naturalism, realism, romance, satire, science fiction, scientific and political treatises, and travel narratives. We read short stories and longer fiction (in entirety and in excerpt). Our authors include Thomas More, Francis Godwin, Francis Bacon, Margaret Cavendish, Jonathan Swift, Samuel Butler, Edward Bellamy, William Morris, Mary Shelley, William Dean Howells, H. G. Wells, E.M. Forster, Richard Wright, Ursula Le Guin, Octavia Butler, and Nnedi Okorafor. We also consider the structure and persuasiveness of a handful of works of literary criticism. The course emphasizes skills in interpretation, analysis, writing, and research that will be crucial as students eventually design and complete their honors theses. Course assignments are divided between those focused utopian and dystopian writing (with options to focus on works beyond those on our syllabus) and those that prepare students more directly for work on their honors theses the following semester. This course fulfills both the pre-1800 and the post-1800 requirement in the English major.  

Location

Morey Room 403 (MW 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

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