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 also learn about digital resources for presenting their work (Omeka, StoryMaps) and, if they find these resources useful, have the option of incorporating them into their writing assignments. 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. Listed as one of the College’s Diversity Courses.

Location

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

Homer, Virgil, and Ovid. Greek tragedy and comedy: Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes. The Hebrew Bible -- Abraham and Isaac, Moses and Pharaoh, Esther and Judith -- and Christianity's New Testament. The two great traditions studied in this introductory course -- classical and Biblical -- have been pondered by generations of writers and artists for thousands of years. A great deal of literary history is the story of intricately rewriting and adapting the core texts of these traditions; it has been said that the European philosophical tradition is a series of footnotes to Plato. While doing justice to any one of these authors or traditions in a single semester would be a challenge, the goal of this class is to read as much as possible of the classical and scriptural tradition in the short time we have, giving you a solid introduction to some of the key stories and ideas that have generated so much thought, conflict, and human creativity over the past two dozen centuries. First-years welcome! . 

Location

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

This course samples some of the most prominent and controversial English Literature from King Alfred’s educational reform of a broken, 9th-century Wessex to Mary Wollstonecraft's 18th-century demand for the education reform of women. England endured powerful socio-political and scientific earthquakes: invasion, linguistic change, revolt, regicide, religious war, technical innovation and colonization. Spanning Anglo-Saxon and later Medieval, Renaissance, Restoration and Enlightenment eras, it gives students not only a sense of the material, philosophical and cultural changes Britain underwent in its contact with other peoples inside and outside its island, but a wide choice for more concentrated study of specific English periods and writers: Beowulf, elegiac Old-English, Middle-English Romances and Breton Lais, satiric Chaucer, the Gawain Poet, Arthurian Malory, Shakespeare’s Lear, thundering Milton, sensuous Donne, spiritual Herbert, outraged Behn, parodic Pope, Swift’s Gulliver, revolutionary Payne. 

Location

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

Survey of American literature in English from its origins in colonial British America to the late-nineteenth-century U.S. We begin with the fascinating diversity of colonial writing (explorers' accounts, sermons, captivity narratives, religious poetry) and end with the first canonical works of “classic American literature” (prose narratives, novels, lyrics) in the second half of the nineteenth century. Alongside this process of literary development, British America is gradually becoming unified around a new national identity—yet, at the same time, constantly threatening to fracture under internal and external pressures. Our focus will be on the literary side of the story, but we’ll remain mindful of its relationships to that larger history. Authors will likely include John Winthrop, Mary Rowlandson, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, Phillis Wheatley, James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman.  

Location

Morey Room 502 (MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

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)

The objective of this course is to provide the necessary tools to enable critical reflection on the respective values and mutual relationships of comics, art and film. The first weeks will be spent acquiring the technical and historical context that will enable us to begin to recognize the breadth and depth of word/image narrative practices. After developing a core vocabulary for thinking about comics as a medium we will then look at how artists and directors have drawn on that vocabulary in a range of different contexts. Retaining a sense of the specificity of both comics and film as artistic mediums, we will closely consider topics ranging from cross-cultural translation, ontologies of otherness, and modes of mediated history. Course requirements include class participation, an autobiographical comic, weekly wordless posts, a vocabulary quiz and a final paper/project. 

Location

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

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

Rush Rhees Library Room 226 (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.

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)

This course introduces students to the mechanics, materials, and aesthetics of lighting for the theatre.  Students gain a thorough understanding of lighting equipment, procedures, safety, and how these fascinating elements contribute to creating theatrical storytelling.  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 112 (TR 9:40AM - 10:55AM)

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. This course will be taught by David Andreatta. If you have any questions please contact him at dandreat@ur.rochester.edu

Location

Morey Room 504 (M 4:50PM - 7:30PM)

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 103 (TR 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

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

Todd Union Room 202F (TR 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

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 (MW 4:50PM - 7:30PM)

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

Sloan Performing Arts Center Room B023 (MW 9:00AM - 10:15AM)

Ever wonder and admire how sound designers create awesome aural environments in live performance? This course investigates the tools, tricks, skills, and equipment of realizing sound design for the theater. You’ll learn how Sound Designers shape sound and music, and collaborate with other artists to achieve a specific creative vision. You’ll see and experience how sound systems are put together, getting hands-on time with different equipment and learning just what each piece does. We will build on the fundamentals of sound systems that can start as small as your computer and go as large as filling a 1,000 seat theater or larger. As you learn these trades and skills, you’ll then apply them in the Theatre Program's productions, working with peers and industry professionals to put on a full scale production. Whatever your experience level, you are welcome here. All you need is a passion for hearing the world around you, and the desire to bring your own creative world to life on whatever stage you find. There is a required lab component that will be scheduled with the instructor.

Location

Todd Union Room 112 (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 (TR 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

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)

Students will be taught the skills to observe, describe, analyze, and critique lighting as it relates to performance. Students will gain an understanding of and an ability to use lighting elements to compose a stage picture; the collaborative skills necessary to flourish in a creative atmosphere; and an understanding of the theatrical lighting design process from script to light plot to technical rehearsal to performance.   Pre-requisites: ENGL 154 or 155. Offered second half of the semester.

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.

Theatre and Cultural Context (previously Intro to Theatre) is an introductory class allowing students to comprehensively and actively understand the entire theatrical production process from the page to the stage, while simultaneously exploring the cultural (and other contexts) in which artists, playwrights, directors and designers create the magic of theatre. Students discover theatre in an immersive way, studying and gaining insight into the actual texts of works being produced by the UR International Theatre Program.  In conjunction with professional artists who direct and design our productions, students explore the creative and artistic process and gain first-hand, practical knowledge working in one of many labs associated with the production (scenery, lighting, costume, sound, etc.). A unique course melding the theoretical and practical, with a deep dive into the (largely, though not exclusively) Western cultural literacy all rolled into one.  There is a required lab component that will be scheduled with the instructor.

Location

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

English is a banquet of words. Inflicted by invasions and adaptations it remained English. Brought to Britain by Germanic tribes in the 5th century, it was matured by violent and peaceful contact with other peoples and ideas. Few other languages are so accepting of neologism, so humongous in vocabulary, so malleable of construction. We’ll peruse texts from Old, Middle and Modern English and watch it grow from a Teutonic tongue to the powerful, ductile, and eclectic instrument it is today, spreading to other continents, colonizing and absorbing. We’ll peruse linguistic Angst and jouissance by King Alfred, Aelfric, Robert of Gloucester, Chaucer, Caxton, Mulcaster, Shakespeare, Swift, Johnson, Webster, Orwell and others who praise or blame our shifty English. We’ll grok urban dialects, vernaculars, slang, texting, gender. Is it “based on” or “based off of”? “lie” or “lay”? What’s the deal with register? Vernacular vs. high-falutin’ “academic” English? Are you down with this? Grads welcome!

Location

Bausch & Lomb Room 270 (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)

Writing down an account of the experience of God's presence can seem like an impossible task, and mystical authors often explore this fundamental paradox (using language that can both affirm and deny its own ability to discuss God). In medieval mystical literature one finds Jesus, both divine and human, sometimes both male and female, married to both the individual soul and the church; the explicit erotic poetry in the Hebrew Bible is often invoked to enrich accounts of this "mystical marriage." Devotional manuscript images, too, often vividly depict Jesus with female or nonbinary characteristics engaged in various courtly and romantic activities; medieval devotion to the side-wound is especially shocking to contemporary readers. To understand these phenomena, we will study key authors of the medieval mystical and contemplative tradition: theologians Pseudo-Dionysius and Hildegard von Bingen, condemned heretics Meister Eckhart and Marguerite Porete, popular devotional writer Henry Suso, the hermit Richard Rolle, and the English anchoress Julian of Norwich -- as well as fascinating anonymous guides to contemplation such as "The Cloud of Unknowing" and image cycles such as "Christ and the Loving Soul." We’ll end the semester by looking at the uses of mysticism in the 20th and 21st centuries, with particular attention to T.S. Eliot’s 1943 masterpiece, "Four Quartets." 

Location

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

We will try to do justice to the lives, experiences, and desires of late medieval women and men, reading narratives that then and now hold the imagination of living readers. We will engage accounts of ghosts and revenants who bridge the world of spirit and flesh, reanimated corpses and souls who speak to the living from purgatory or hell, all revealing intense medieval responses to daily life, bonds of love, and thoughts of death.   Works will include the out-of-body experience of Pearl, the amazing Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, fantasies of global and racial diversity in Mandeville’s Travels and other exotic narratives, and personal revelations by Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe, among the first women writers in English. Using digital resources, we will immerse ourselves in the physical books and images that medieval people treasured.  Our purpose is to enrich our sense of the present by gaining a sure grasp of this earlier, distinctive version of English as well as the dreads, longings, and joys felt by its speakers and writers.  Students will lead discussions, write short responses / analyses, and a longer final paper. 

Location

Morey Room 303 (MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

This class explores the full range of Shakespeare's theater, including examples of comedies, history plays, tragedies, and “romances.” We approach the plays from many angles, looking at their stark and extravagant language; their invention of complex conflicted human characters; their self-conscious references to contemporary stage practices; and their meditations on death, love, politics, power, and revenge. We learn about the literary and theatrical conventions that would have been second nature to Shakespeare and his audience 400 years ago, and consider how Renaissance stage practices might help us to better understand his plays and better appreciate why Renaissance audiences found them so compelling. When possible we consult video of recent staged productions. This course is appropriate for all students, from those in their first semester at the university to senior English majors. It fulfills the pre-1800 requirement for the English major and two English Clusters (Great Books, Great Authors; Plays, Playwrights, and Theater).

Location

Hylan Building Room 305 (MW 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

In this course we will slowly, closely, intensely, and meditatively study novels by Toni Morrison, Jamaica Kincaid, Linda Hogan, and Leslie Marmon Silko. And we will also learn how to narrate and write our own environmental stories. 

Location

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

The nineteenth-century novel is usually associated with Victorian values: happy marriage; wholesome homes; moral propriety; properly channeled emotions and ambitions. Many of the most popular novels, however, paint a very different picture: with madwomen locked in attics and asylums; monsters, real and imagined, lurking behind the façade of propriety; genteel homes harboring opium addicts; fallen women walking the streets; and sexual transgression and degeneracy popping up everywhere. Indeed, for novels centrally structured around marriage and society, madness and monstrosity appear with alarming regularity. The intertwining of these tropes suggests some of the cultural anxieties unleashed by the new body of women writers and women readers. We will begin with Frankenstein and end with Dracula, two novels from opposite ends of the century. We will also consider such classic marriage plot novels as Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre and some popular sensation fiction of the 1860s.  

Location

Morey Room 205 (MW 11:50AM - 1:05PM)

This course will provide an opportunity to sample an exciting body of contemporary literature, some written by authors already widely acclaimed when they received the Nobel Prize and some by writers suddenly catapulted into fame and international recognition. A central focus of the course will be the literature itself, but we will also look at some of the controversies the prize has generated – including the recent sex scandal that led to the prize’s temporary suspension. We will consider how receipt of the prize changed writers' lives and literary reputations, and we will track the announcement of a new prize-winner in October 2022. In the U.S., where less than 5% of the literature published each year is literature in translation, Nobel prize-winning literature is often the only modern literature Americans read in translation. This raises the question of translation and the role of the Nobel Prize in creating and promoting an international literature. We will also consider the special challenges this literature poses for its readers in speaking to both local and global audiences. Some of the readings for the class will be chosen by the students.

Location

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

The course will explore the ancient and still powerful idea of metamorphosis, the fantastic transformation of human beings into animals, plants, and objects, also the changing of one kind of human being into another. Starting with the Roman poet Ovid’s great gathering and re-telling of ancient myths and legends, called simply Metamorphoses, we’ll also be looking at Dante’s Inferno, the medieval Irish poem “Sweeney Astray,” Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a range of Western and non-Western fairy tales, Lewis Carroll’s Alice books, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, as well as poetry by William Blake, Ted Hughes, Elizabeth Bishop, and Ann Carson, among others. The changes explored in these literary texts can be both natural and magical, real and illusory. The changes work on both bodies and souls. The process of metamorphosis is shown as by turns playful and violent, limiting and liberating, punitive and perverse. It can seem both a kind of death and an opening to new life, a discovery of hidden powers. The literature of metamorphosis points to the volatile, always shifting nature of human life, identity, and language. These stories also tell us what we find monstrous, they evoke the strange, often grotesque masks through which we view both ourselves and others. Can serve for either the pre- or post-1800 requirement. No pre-requisites

Location

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

We’ll be looking at how poets place themselves in the natural world, at how poets imagine or re-envision the world of elemental things and creatures, the weather, the seasons, the cycles of growth and decay, hidden processes of creation and destruction—what poets make of a tree, a snake or butterfly, a singing bird, a mountain, a shoreline, a sunset, a storm. Poets can see nature as a divine artifact, also as a home for human love and need. The natural landscape can be both garden and wilderness, both sacred and profane, both commonplace and haunted, a place of solitude and of stranger company, a forest of symbols, even a living creature in its own right. It can also be the realm of something profoundly alien, secretive, inhuman. Nature can indeed sometimes look supernatural to poets. Especially in the wake of nineteenth-century Romantic poetry, nature starts to be seen as a kind of gift, a source of power and renewal, a space of play. It’s also seen more and more clearly as something that human beings can exploit, and even ruin (at our own cost). Poetry more and more reveals nature as a subject of history, and as something that remembers history. It’s something that we change, and that changes us. It may ask us to imagine it better, more fully. Readings will include the work of Shakespeare, William Wordsworth, John Clare, Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Robert Frost, Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, A. R. Ammons, May Swenson, Derek Walcott. W. S. Merwin, and Louise Glück. Satisfies the post-1800 requirement for English majors

Location

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

With advances in digital technology, space exploration, and molecular biology—as well as converging social, health, and environmental crises—life in the 21st-century is increasingly Science Fiction-like. Moreover, mainstream contemporary literature increasingly draws from Science Fiction for formal innovations and thematic insights. This course focuses on the Science Fiction short story to introduce students to the history and diversity of this genre, from 19th-century European literary antecedents to early 20th -century pulp fiction, the Golden Age, the New Wave, cyberpunk, Afrofuturism, and beyond. The course also features works of cultural criticism that demonstrate how the genre has addressed a variety of topics. Assignments include periodic one-page Reading Responses, an in-class presentation, and a formal paper, as well as class attendance and participation.

Location

Frederick Douglass Room 404 (MW 11:50AM - 1:05PM)

This 4-credit intersession course will be conducted in London, UK, from December 26, 2022–January 7, 2023. Attending two plays per day with a seminar discussion each morning, students in this course are exposed to a full range of theatre experiences, from intimate theatre-in-the-round to monumental productions at the National Theatre, and from West End spectaculars to cutting-edge works mounted in post-industrial spaces. See the link on the English Department homepage to find the course's website, which describes the program in greater detail and contains syllabi from the past 25+ years. Need-based financial aid is available. The fee total is $2850 

This course provides a transnational survey of film history, examining the technical and formal aspects of the medium in its production and exhibition. As we explore the development of cinema during this period, we will address a number of aesthetic and technological issues. For example, how did the development of sound technology affect film form? How did it affect cross-cultural cinematic exchange? What is the significance of genre across various film traditions? What did the studio system contribute to Hollywood's success in the international market? How did immigrant and exiled film personnel shape the industries they joined? Weekly screenings and film journals required. 

Location

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

Italian Neorealist films of the 1940s and 1950s constituted Italian cinema’s greatest contribution to filmmaking worldwide and to the history of cinema. This course will provide students with solid understandings of Neorealist themes and style through the exploration of its three principal directors: Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica and Luchino Visconti. Discussion topics will range from the Nazi occupation of Italy and the Partisan Resistance, to southern Italy and postwar living conditions. Films include: Rome Open City, Paisan, Bicycle Thieves, Umberto D., The Earth Trembles and Bellissima. Assignments include: historical and critical readings, film screenings, short papers and a final essay. Readings will be in English and films will be shown with English subtitles.

Location

Hylan Building Room 201 (MW 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

This course examines the philosophical, aesthetic, and social issues that are central to classical film theory. It traces the historical development of film theory from 1900 to the 1950s. We will begin with on thinkers in the period of early cinema, including Germaine Dulac, Jean and Marie Epstein, and then we will examine the development of film theory in the work of later theorists, such as Jean Mitry, Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin, Andre Bazin and Christian Metz. Weekly screenings of historically contemporary films will allow us to examine the ongoing dialogue between the evolving medium and the developing theoretical discussion.

Location

Morey Room 504 (T 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

This course introduces students to the poetics of television. We will explore the ways that television tells stories, creates characters, and constructs worlds; the significance of genre, style, and form to those stories, characters, and worlds; and the relationship between television and the horizons of social, historical, and aesthetic experience that television opens as one of the most important culture industries of the last 100 years. Much of our class will be devoted to watching TV and discussing what we watch, especially scripted television such as sitcoms, soap operas, procedurals, “quality” television, web series, and so on. Students will also come to understand poetics, a method that goes back to Aristotle, as an approach useful to the study of any medium, especially when combined with methods enabled by digital technologies. 

Location

Lattimore Room 210 (TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

This class explores global trends in film history from 1989 to the present. In considering the contemporary period of cinema, we will look at the technical, social, and formal aspects of the medium. Of interest will be new digital technologies for production, post-production, and exhibition in both commercial and independent filmmaking (e.g., CGI, HD, Motion Capture, High Frame Rate), all of which are linked to a network culture that emerges after 1989. We will also focus on geopolitical developments and social upheavals such as the end of the Cold War, the events of September 11, 2001, economic and cultural globalization, and the post-2008 financial crisis as all these altered various national/regional cinemas and genres (e.g., the spy film, the horror movie, the comedy-drama, and action movies). We will screen the works of major figures in late twentieth century and early twenty-first century world cinema from the United States, Mexico, China, and Hong Kong to Palestine, Iran, India, and Senegal. 

Location

Lechase Room 163 (TR 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

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)

Investigate technical theater beyond the realms of ENG 170/171 (Technical Theater). Focus on skilled and specialized work related to the scenic design and technical production of the semester's Theatre Program productions. Working in small seminars and in one-on-one tutorials, the instructor will assist students in learning more about their chosen technical area, including advanced scenic and technical problem-solving. There is a required lab component that will be scheduled with the instructor.

Location

Sloan Performing Arts Center Room B023 (MW 10:25AM - 11:40AM)

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)

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

Rush Rhees Library Room 226 (W 10:25AM - 1:05PM)

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)

What makes David Sedaris funny? How about the likes of Tina Fey, Chris Rock, Jonathan Swift, Mindy Kaling, Mark Twain, Demetri Martin, Amy Schumer, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, and The Onion? In this course we’ll seek inspiration from some of the funniest people alive (and dead) while writing our own humor pieces. Students will have a chance to explore a variety of genres, from essays to memoirs to comic poems and songs; to share their work with the class; and to introduce each other to their favorite humorists. Please email the instructor a paragraph about why you'd like to take this course, and your writing experience so far (classes or extracurriculars). 

Location

Dewey Room 2110E (W 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

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 consider varied 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 to investigate the strategies and choices translators make and the implication of those choices for our developing sense of what kinds of texts translations are. Finally, students will undertake a translation project of their own. By the end of this class each student should have a working knowledge of both the theory and the craft of literary translation.

Location

Hylan Building Room 101 (W 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 main stage production.

For actors, assistant directors and select student staff working on a current mainstage production. By audition/arrangement with instructor.

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.

A 1 credit pass/fail performance lab course for students accepted into ENG 292, 293, 294, 295, 296 & 297 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

Bausch & Lomb Room 270 (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.

We’ll be looking at how poets place themselves in the natural world, at how poets imagine or re-envision the world of elemental things and creatures, the weather, the seasons, the cycles of growth and decay, hidden processes of creation and destruction—what poets make of a tree, a snake or butterfly, a singing bird, a mountain, a shoreline, a sunset, a storm. Poets can see nature as a divine artifact, also as a home for human love and need. The natural landscape can be both garden and wilderness, both sacred and profane, both commonplace and haunted, a place of solitude and of stranger company, a forest of symbols, even a living creature in its own right. It can also be the realm of something profoundly alien, secretive, inhuman. Nature can indeed sometimes look supernatural to poets. Especially in the wake of nineteenth-century Romantic poetry, nature starts to be seen as a kind of gift, a source of power and renewal, a space of play. It’s also seen more and more clearly as something that human beings can exploit, and even ruin (at our own cost). Poetry more and more reveals nature as a subject of history, and as something that remembers history. It’s something that we change, and that changes us. It may ask us to imagine it better, more fully. Readings will include the work of Shakespeare, William Wordsworth, John Clare, Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Robert Frost, Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, A. R. Ammons, May Swenson, Derek Walcott. W. S. Merwin, and Louise Glück. Satisfies the post-1800 requirement for English majors

Location

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

This seminar will focus on the fascinating but somewhat murky idea of “style” in literature. Often described as the how rather than the what of writing, the notion of style is an attempt describe how different artists can use the same basic materials (for example, the same lexicon, genre conventions, character types, or basic plot points) and yet put these common elements together in a unique way. This principle of style is easier to recognize than to define. We know when we are in the presence of a distinctive style (think of famous literary stylists like Ernest Hemingway or William Faulkner), but to define it clearly is a different matter. In this class, we will look at a broad range of literary examples (from the Renaissance to the twentieth century), as well as some works of criticism that have attempted to theorize style. This course fulfills the advanced seminar requirement for majors in English, but is open to students across the divisions. 

Location

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

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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.

What questions can we usefully ask literature and how do the questions we ask the literary text reflect on and change our sense of what literature is? In this seminar we will consider this question of questions under the rubric of three sorts of questioning that shape most studies of literature today: questioning beauty (aesthetics), questioning truth (philosophy), questioning representation (reality and/or history). We will read major works by those pursuing formalistic, philosophical, and historical approaches to literary study including approaches borrowing from prosody and narratology, phenomenology and pragmatism, historicist, decolonializing and ideological criticism, analyses of the realities and imaginaries of raced, gendered and sexual identity. We will consider as well a selection of works that have often borne the brunt of repeated questioning. 

Location

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

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