Space and how it is conceived and explored is fundamental to the telling of stories—onstage 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.

BUILDING: TODD | ROOM: 107

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. Please contact David Hansen at dhansen9@esm.rochester.edu

BUILDING: MOREY | ROOM: 403

Costumes addresses both conceptual and practical aspects of the creation of costumes for live performance. Students will acquire an understanding of the history and theory of costume design, with emphasis placed on the creative association of costumes and image; the process of developing a well-crafted, professional design from script to technical rehearsal to performance; and hands-on experience with tools and techniques used to build a costume design and execute it on stage.

BUILDING: TODD | ROOM: 107

PREREQUISITES: ENG 154 or ENG 155

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.

BUILDING: TODD | ROOM: 202F

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.

BUILDING: TODD | ROOM: 107

PREREQUISITES: PERMISSION BY AUDITION & ENG174/175 OR ENG292/293/294/295

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.

BUILDING: RRLIB | ROOM: PLUTZ

PREREQUISITES: Permission of instructor is required. Students are to submit 3-5 typed poems, preferably before the first class.

No description

BUILDING: MOREY | ROOM: 403

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.

BUILDING: TODD | ROOM: 202F

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.

BUILDING: TODD | ROOM: 202F

PREREQUISITES: by arrangement w/instructor

This course on tragedy has three parts. The first concentrates on ancient Greek tragedy (Aeschylus, Sophocles). The second considers the revival of tragedy in early modern England both as a prestigious neoclassical form and as a vehicle for domestic themes traditionally associated with comedy (Marlowe, Shakespeare, Dryden). The third takes up the disappearance--or transformation--of tragedy in more recent times (Beckett, Lorca). In addition to primary texts, we will examine a number of important theories of tragedy (Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, Nietzsche, Weil, Benjamin, Arendt). Our readings will be guided by such questions as: what might the story of this genre tell us about the longer history of representation? And how does tragedy illuminate basic problems such as the appeal of violence and vengeance, the role of religion in society, and the difficulty of finding an ethics that works for all people?

BUILDING: | ROOM:

We live in a time when migrations seem to dominate world news. People escaping collapsing societies, searching for better lives. This course will chart the hopes, fears, and aspirations of those who leave- from African perspectives. We'll read a range of fiction and poetry from across the continent, from canonical writers like Chinua Achebe and Tayeb Salih to some of the acclaimed new voices of our century. We'll study literature that imagines new life in the metropolises of Johannesburg and Lagos, as well as more far flung cities like Detroit, London, and Barcelona. We'll ask what distinguishes diaspora from exile, how a former life can follow a person to new places. We'll read about perilous Mediterranean crossings, LGBTQ persecution, undocumented life in America, and children dreaming of distant lands. Our study of migrant literatures will even take us to other worlds, reading Nnedi Okorafor's interstellar science fiction as a speculative extension of the more historically based works

BUILDING: LCHAS | ROOM: 103

We will re-enter the lives and desires of late medieval women and men, reading both popular and artful stories that then and now hold the imagination of living readers. We will pursue ghosts and revenants who bridge the world of spirit and flesh, reanimated corpses and souls rescued from damnation, the lives of saints and those now in purgatory or hell, charting intense medieval responses to living, loving, and dying. Works will include the out-of-body experience of Pearl, fantasies of earthly OtherWorlds and global diversity in Mandeville’s Travels and other exotic narratives, and personal revelations by Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe, the first women writers in English. Using digital sources, we will immerse ourselves in the physical books and images of manuscript and early print cultures. Our purpose is to enrich our sense of the present by gaining a sure grasp of this earlier English language and art. Students will offer presentations, write short responses / analyses, and a longer final paper.

BUILDING: | ROOM:

In recent years, we have seen a virtual explosion of writing by women, with women’s novels constituting some of the most widely read and critically admired work being produced today. The global reach of both its authors and audiences has made contemporary women’s writing a truly international phenomenon. We will examine what makes this work especially innovative: its experimentation with new voices and narrative forms and its blurring of genre boundaries. We will look at the dialogue it has established with the past, where it often finds its inspiration, self-consciously appropriating earlier literary texts or rewriting history. We will also consider what special challenges this work poses for its readers. Looking at works originating in a wide range of geographic locations, this course, will explore the diverse shapes of contemporary women's imagination and attempt to account for the compelling interest of this new body of fiction.

BUILDING: | ROOM:

What is a witch? Culturally, most people associate the term with pointed hats, black cats, and broomsticks. Historically, it refers to a threat to the social order, an enemy of the state, a confederate with the devil. Many scholars see the figure as a figment invented to attack those (usually women) perceived as defying community norms or infringing on official turf. Complicating these accounts, witch identity has been subsequently claimed by those who see in the term forgotten histories of female power, and better attitudes toward nature, gender, mind, and being. Through readings in drama, fiction, criticism, and history, this course introduces and explores this complex of perspectives on the figure of the witch. We will spend the bulk of the course in the early modern period (focusing in particular on the witch-hunting crazes of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries). But we will also read ancient and current writing on this subject. Authors will include Euripides, Shakespeare, Condé, and many others.

BUILDING: | ROOM:

This course will explore a tradition of stories about questing, stories (often fantastic) about persons in pursuit of lost, hidden, or unknown objects or places, and about the trials such questers undergo. We’ll think about changing shapes of questing in such stories, their dream-like landscapes and often monstrous inhabitants. We’ll consider what quest romances tell us about the nature of human desire, will, and memory, about our relation to the world, nature, and history. Such stories often explore the impulses of story-telling itself. Readings will include Homer’s Odyssey, Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, as well as poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley, Robert Browning, William Butler Yeats, and Wallace Stevens. Satisfies either the pre-1800 or post-1800 requirement for the English Major. Not open to Freshmen.

BUILDING: | ROOM:

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.

BUILDING: RRLIB | ROOM: G121A

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

This course explores the beginnings of the horror and detective genres in the 19th century. Particular attention is devoted to the narrative structure, tropes, and psychological content of the strange tales by Poe and Hoffmann. Theories of horror are also addressed to include discussions by lessing, Todorov, Huet, and Kristeva.

BUILDING: GRGEN | ROOM: 110

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, Bertolt Brecht, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Edward Albee, David Mamet, Caryl Churchill, August Wilson, Sam Shepard, Paula Vogel, Suzan-Lori Parks, Yasmina Reza.

BUILDING: MEL | ROOM: 206

This course studies how our eating practices are shaped by industrial, political, and ecological processes. To understand the politics, economics, and history of what appears on our plates, we cover topics such as biotechnology, food-preservation, chemicals and fertilizers, fast food, processed food, genetically modified organisms, obesity, superbugs, and the organic, local, vegetarian, slow-food, and food justice movements—primarily from the perspective of artistic, literary, and cultural texts.

BUILDING: LCHAS | ROOM: 143

This course immerses students in the most challenging, influential, and engaging writings from the earlier periods of English literature. Our aim will be to enjoy and understand these writings in themselves, and then to see their relation to each other and to their larger historical context. Students should leave the course with some real affection for particular writings, and some assured sense of the contours and highlights of cultural history. Our emphasis will be on the careful appreciation of language and texture in representative texts and authors (including Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Donne, Jonson, Milton, Dryden, Swift, Pope and their contemporaries). Class will proceed by lecture and discussion.

BUILDING: MOREY | ROOM: 501

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.

BUILDING: MEL | ROOM: 219

Drawing on linguistics and rhetorical grammar (e.g., Vande Kopple, Hyland), this course investigates the sentence—especially its rich potential for creating the writer’s meanings, personas, and voices. Through studying the form and function of the sentence, students will develop the ability to see meaningful patterns and variations within and across texts. Assignments will regularly involve analyzing works chosen by students and experimenting with sentences. Students will also have the chance to use AntConc, a simple corpus analysis tool that aids analysis. Through a final project, students will investigate some aspect of the sentence in a medium and context of their choice or address an interesting theoretical question about the sentence. This course is ideal for those interested in writing, editing, or writing education, as well as those curious about how humans use language to do things in the world. Background in linguistics or grammar is not necessary. Open to undergraduates and graduate students.

BUILDING: | ROOM:

Our purpose in this course is to engage and enjoy the world’s most challenging and memorable writings from Antiquity through the Renaissance. Our authors and texts include Hesiod, Sappho, Ovid, Catullus, Apuleius, Augustine, Heloise and Abelard, Marie de France, Boccaccio, Petrarch, Christine de Pisan, Machiavelli, Marguerite de Navarre, Montaigne, and Miguel de Cervantes. We will begin with a cluster of creation myths, and read a range of Near Eastern and Persian texts, including Gilgamesh, Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, excerpts from the Qur’an, and The Thousand and One Nights, as well as lyric poetry from some dozen or more language traditions. Throughout we will pay special attention to travel and global encounters across space and time among the rich cultural legacies we survey. Students should leave the course with some real affection for particular writings, and some assured sense of the variety and vitality of literature before modernity. There will be no overlap with readings covered in English 112.

BUILDING: | ROOM:

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.

BUILDING: MOREY | ROOM: 504

PREREQUISITES: FMS 132 - Intro to Art of Film OR FMS 131 - Intro to Media Studies

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.

BUILDING: | ROOM:

Are we experiencing the end of the world? Popular culture and the media cycle broadcast endless news of developments suggesting the end of human civilization: infertility crises, weather disasters, GMO monsters, class warfare, mass extinction, and infectious diseases, even zombies. This course investigates representations of environmental apocalypse and the new geological era of the Anthropocene in order to understand the cultural politics and history of anxiety about end-times and the meaning of nature, planet, and ecology in our lives. We will read fiction by Cormac McCarthy​, Octavia Butler, and Indra Sinha; screen the films Mad Max: Fury Road, 28 Days Later, World War Z, and Snowpiercer; examine Arcade Fire’s album The Suburbs; and study indigenous survivance poetry and recent environmental theory. The course includes a daylong workshop at the Skä•noñh Great Law of Peace Center in Syracuse, NY.

BUILDING: LCHAS | ROOM: 161

The class explores the full range of Shakespeare's theater, including examples of history plays, comedy, tragedy, and romance. We approach the plays from many angles, looking at their stark and extravagant language, their invention of complex, conflicted human characters, their analyses of the worlds of politics and war, their self-conscious theatricality, as well as their ways that they join together play and seriousness, the tragic and the comic. 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. This course fulfills the pre-1800 requirement for the English major. Applicable English Clusters: Great Books, Great Authors; Plays, Playwrights, and Theater.

BUILDING: MOREY | ROOM: 303

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 Dante’s 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 Dante’s 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.

BUILDING: GAVET | ROOM: 310

Pier Paolo Pasolini is one of Italy’s major 20th-century artists and intellectuals. He worked as a poet, novelist, filmmaker, playwright and essayist, creating scandal with his radical critique of Italy’s modernization and rising consumer culture in the 1960s. As a director, he made some of the most challenging and controversial works in film history. This course gives students a solid understanding of his films by examining how each work addresses Italy’s transformation from a premodern agrarian and artisanal culture, to a modern capitalist one. Films include: Accattone, Mamma Roma, The Hawks and the Sparrows, Theorem, The Decameron and Salò. To provide students with a foundation in Pasolini’s thought and in film analysis, discussions will focus on both thematic and formal issues, such as Marxist politics, Catholicism, sexuality, homoeroticism, violence and his pastiche style. Assignments include: readings, screenings, papers and a final essay. Readings and screenings will be in English.

BUILDING: B&L | ROOM: 315

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.

BUILDING: TODD | ROOM: 107

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.

BUILDING: MOREY | ROOM: 403

The literary tradition is full of erring readers, from Cervantes' deluded Don Quixote, to Goethe's melancholic Young Werther, to the obsessed narrator of James' Aspern Papers. What does it mean to read the "wrong" way? Has this implied something different at different points in history? Does errant reading involve an overestimation — or underestimation — of fiction's relationship to the real world? An excessively worshipful — or excessively dismissive — stance toward a text's author? Our syllabus will encompass novels, poetry, drama, and short stories; authors will include Cervantes, Pope, Swift, Lennox, Austen, Goethe, Sheridan, James, Nabokov, and Roth, among others. Select works of theory and criticism will also figure into our discussions.

BUILDING: MOREY | ROOM: 303

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]

BUILDING: LCHAS | ROOM: 160

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 performer’s standpoint and to create character. The course takes as its basic premise that the actor’s instrument is the self—with 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 today’s society.

BUILDING: TODD | ROOM: 107

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.

BUILDING: MOREY | ROOM: 303

Intro to history, technology, cultural significance of motion pictures of the "pre-sound" era, screenings of 35mm prints accompanied by live music in the Dryden Theatre. Special attention to major pioneers, Dickson, Porter, Lumière, Méliès, and Griffith, including a variety of internationally produced films selected from the world-famous archival film collection of the George Eastman House. Same as FMS 247

BUILDING: GEM | ROOM: CURT

Autobiography is the foundational genre in the tradition of African-American literature. It is also the genre that both illustrates and represents the process of the construction of identity. Autobiography is not only writing about a life authored by oneself, but also the life of the self made manifest in the form of writing. This course surveys the tradition of autobiographical writings by African Americans, from slave narratives to recent bestsellers, in order to promote an understanding of autobiography as a narrative form shaped by its historical context and the purposes of the author. In addition, the course provides students with insights into various topics in African-American culture and history. Readings include texts by Frederick Douglass, Olaudah Equiano, Zora Neale Hurston, Harriet Jacobs, Audre Lorde, Barack Obama, Booker T. Washington, Richard Wright, Malcolm X, and more. Requirements include two formal writing assignments, bi-weekly reading responses, and participation in class discussion.

BUILDING: | ROOM:

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.

BUILDING: HYLAN | ROOM: 306

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]

BUILDING: LCHAS | ROOM: 103

Chaucer’s reputation as “Father” of English sometimes obscures his claims to other superlatives: funniest (lol) and wittiest, most book-learned, most outrageous, most intellectually curious, most experimental. His alter ego, Geffrey, occupies the heart of many of his fictions, and this entirely likeable, intensely intimate, but totally elusive persona creates enormous pleasure and provocation. His portrayal of sexual relations and identities have unsettled and enriched the expectations of all readers. We will explore and enjoy his greatest poetry, including the Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde, arguably the best long poem ever written in English. The course aims to create an indelible impression of Chaucer’s writing, and a broad appreciation of medieval culture. We will read and recite Chaucer’s distinctive words and sounds, memorable in themselves and in opening new vistas on the language we now speak. Writing includes a series of response papers, as well as a longer final paper and take-home final.

BUILDING: MOREY | ROOM: 502

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.

BUILDING: MOREY | ROOM: 321

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.

BUILDING: TODD | ROOM: 202F

In this course students will investigate the following questions: What is argument? What is evidence? To answer these questions, students will also think deeply about how context does or does not shape our understanding of these concepts. For instance, what do arguments in STEM fields have in common with those in the humanities? Do different fields such as philosophy, psychology, and biology share evidence and argumentative strategies? Is the meaning of evidence static across these fields? We will begin by investigating different models of argument from philosophy and argumentation theory, and then students will use these broad models to investigate and analyze argument in academic contexts of their choice. We will also explore how these theoretical accounts of argument apply to popular contexts such as advertising, public deliberation, and journalism. Students will explore these issues through reflective writing, several short papers and a research project of their own design.

BUILDING: LCHAS | ROOM: 122

This course will focus on modern Polish literature and culture and look at cultural heritage that is often considered local, ‘minor’ and inaccessible from the outside. We will explore Polish cinema (Wojciech Jerzy Has, Andrzej Wajda, Krzysztof Kieślowski, etc.) and literature (Conrad, Schulz, Nałkowska, Borowski, Iwaszkiewicz, Miłosz, Gombrowicz, Szymborska, Zagajewski, Tokarczuk, Lem, Kapuściński, etc.), identifying local perspectives as well as global ambitions of Polish authors and artists, looking not only for national dimensions of Polish culture, but checking how it fits into the global cultural marketplace and world literature.

BUILDING: | ROOM:

This course introduces students to some of the major British novelists during the nineteenth century such as Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy. The course will situate these novelists within the aesthetic and historical concerns of the period and cover an array of topics (e.g. the rise of the novel, the marriage plot as a narrative device, capitalism, gender, sexuality, race, and empire).

BUILDING: DEWEY | ROOM: 4162

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.

BUILDING: | ROOM:

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!

BUILDING: MEL | ROOM: 205

In this course students will investigate the following questions: What is argument? What is evidence? To answer these questions, students will also think deeply about how context does or does not shape our understanding of these concepts. For instance, what do arguments in STEM fields have in common with those in the humanities? Do different fields such as philosophy, psychology, and biology share evidence and argumentative strategies? Is the meaning of evidence static across these fields? We will begin by investigating different models of argument from philosophy and argumentation theory, and then students will use these broad models to investigate and analyze argument in academic contexts of their choice. We will also explore how these theoretical accounts of argument apply to popular contexts such as advertising, public deliberation, and journalism. Students will explore these issues through reflective writing, several short papers and a research project of their own design.

BUILDING: HYLAN | ROOM: 203

"English" is a little word for lots of things. Is it literature you want today, or creative writing? film? theater? journalism? debate? Maximum "English" introduces you to all these areas and to our unique resources for studying and enjoying them—the full range of English here at UR. 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 will launch you into real English—newly expanded.

BUILDING: LCHAS | ROOM: 160

Eve let the Devil through the door, and her punishment was terrible pain in childbirth: for the vagina is a crossroad between the external and the internal. This course examines medieval and later texts where the feminine and the monstrous intersect: the female body is porous, secretive, associated with the abject, the messy, the sinful, the incomplete, and all the more horrifying when it’s not constrained socially and politically—a mindset that persists even now. We'll look at the “monstrous feminine” in the evil mother, the temptress, the hag, the witch, the fairy and the shapeshifter in Eve, Medea and Melusine; the vetula, the “loathly lady”; Sheela na Gig, Malleus Maleficarum, De Secretis mulierum, “Duessa” and “Error” in Spenser’s Faerie Queene, “Sin” in Milton’s Paradise Lost, films and social media about monstrous mothers, and articles from Cohen, Kristeva, Miller, Urban and Creed.

BUILDING: LCHAS | ROOM: 103

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.

BUILDING: LATT | ROOM: 401

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.

BUILDING: | ROOM:

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.

BUILDING: | ROOM:

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.

BUILDING: LCHAS | ROOM: 104

Reporting and Writing the News introduces the student to journalistic writing and reporting. Through a variety of classroom exercises and through out-of-class reporting, students learn to prepare accurate and balanced news stories. Assignments progress from single-source interviewing to news profiles, speech-and-meeting coverage, and feature stories. Additional experience is gained through rewriting assignments, as directed by editing comment. Attention is also paid to First Amendment issues such as libel, as well as to the challenges and opportunities presented by new media. Applicable English Cluster: Language, Media, and Communication [H1ENG016]

BUILDING: MEL | ROOM: 221

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]

BUILDING: LCHAS | ROOM: 161

Reporting and Writing the News introduces the student to journalistic writing and reporting. Through a variety of classroom exercises and through out-of-class reporting, students learn to prepare accurate and balanced news stories. Assignments progress from single-source interviewing to news profiles, speech-and-meeting coverage, and feature stories. Additional experience is gained through rewriting assignments, as directed by editing comment. Attention is also paid to First Amendment issues such as libel, as well as to the challenges and opportunities presented by new media. Applicable English Cluster: Language, Media, and Communication [H1ENG016]

BUILDING: GRGEN | ROOM: 109

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, attendance at screenings, weekly wordless posts, a vocabulary quiz and a final paper/project.

BUILDING: HYLAN | ROOM: 102

This course introduces the basic aesthetic and technical elements of video production. Emphasis is 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. Strategies for the use of video as an art-making tool will be explored. Works by artists and directors critically exploring media of film and video will be viewed and discussed. Video techniques will be studied through screenings, group discussions, readings, practice sessions and presentations of original video projects made during the course. Sophomores and Juniors with officially declared FMS and SA majors juniors are given priority registration; followed by sophomores and juniors with officially declared FMS and SA minors. Studio arts supplies fee: $50. To be added to the rolling waiting list, please contact Juliet Carello at juliet.carello@rochester.edu

BUILDING: SAGE | ROOM: BLDG

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 and instructor permission is required. To apply, email the instructor 3-5 poems or a small prose piece (fiction or creative nonfiction).

BUILDING: MOREY | ROOM: 403

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.

BUILDING: RETT | ROOM: 305

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; 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.

BUILDING: TODD | ROOM: 202F

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.

BUILDING: RRLIB | ROOM: PLUTZ

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 performer’s standpoint and to create character. The course takes as its basic premise that the actor’s instrument is the self—with 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 today’s society. Fall class: in conjunction with a weekly scheduled lab.

BUILDING: TODD | ROOM: 107

In today’s theatre, the director is generally considered to be the key creative figure in how a theatre production is conceived, explored and presented. But the director’s 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.

BUILDING: TODD | ROOM: 107

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.

BUILDING: MOREY | ROOM: 403

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. Please contact David Hansen at dhansen9@esm.rochester.edu

BUILDING: MOREY | ROOM: 403

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]

BUILDING: LCHAS | ROOM: 182

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 paid to the format known as Harold. Originally conceived by Del Close in the 1960’s with the Compass Players in San Francisco and later developed at the Improv Olympic in Chicago with Charna Halpern, the Harold is widely considered the cornerstone of modern improv comedy.

BUILDING: TODD | ROOM: 107

In today’s theatre, the director is generally considered to be the key creative figure in how a theatre production is conceived, explored and presented. But the director’s 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.

BUILDING: TODD | ROOM: 107

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.

BUILDING: TODD | ROOM: 202F

This 4-credit intersession course will be conducted in London, UK, from December 26, 2018–January 6, 2019. 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

BUILDING: | ROOM:

PREREQUISITES: Instructor's permission is required. The fee for the course is $2550.

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.

BUILDING: | ROOM:

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

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

BUILDING: TODD | ROOM: UN

PREREQUISITES: By Audition/permission of instructor only

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

BUILDING: TODD | ROOM: UN

PREREQUISITES: BY AUDITION/PERMISSION OF INSTRUCTOR ONLY

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

BUILDING: TODD | ROOM: UN

PREREQUISITES: BY PERMISSION OF INSTRUCTOR ONLY

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.

BUILDING: | ROOM:

PREREQUISITES: BY PERMISSION OF INSTRUCTOR ONLY

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.

BUILDING: TODD | ROOM: UN

PREREQUISITES: BY ARRANGEMENT WITH INSTRUCTOR

No description

BUILDING: | ROOM:

No description

BUILDING: | ROOM:

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

BUILDING: | ROOM:

PREREQUISITES: BY ARRANGEMENT WITH INSTRUCTOR

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

BUILDING: | ROOM:

No description

BUILDING: | ROOM:

No description

BUILDING: | ROOM:

No description

BUILDING: | ROOM:

No description

BUILDING: | ROOM:

Our purpose in this course is to engage and enjoy the world’s most challenging and memorable writings from Antiquity through the Renaissance. Our authors and texts include Hesiod, Sappho, Ovid, Catullus, Apuleius, Augustine, Heloise and Abelard, Marie de France, Boccaccio, Petrarch, Christine de Pisan, Machiavelli, Marguerite de Navarre, Montaigne, and Miguel de Cervantes. We will begin with a cluster of creation myths, and read a range of Near Eastern and Persian texts, including Gilgamesh, Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, excerpts from the Qur’an, and The Thousand and One Nights, as well as lyric poetry from some dozen or more language traditions. Throughout we will pay special attention to travel and global encounters across space and time among the rich cultural legacies we survey. Students should leave the course with some real affection for particular writings, and some assured sense of the variety and vitality of literature before modernity. There will be no overlap with readings covered in English 112.

BUILDING: | ROOM:

We live in a time when migrations seem to dominate world news. People escaping collapsing societies, searching for better lives. This course will chart the hopes, fears, and aspirations of those who leave- from African perspectives. We'll read a range of fiction and poetry from across the continent, from canonical writers like Chinua Achebe and Tayeb Salih to some of the acclaimed new voices of our century. We'll study literature that imagines new life in the metropolises of Johannesburg and Lagos, as well as more far flung cities like Detroit, London, and Barcelona. We'll ask what distinguishes diaspora from exile, how a former life can follow a person to new places. We'll read about perilous Mediterranean crossings, LGBTQ persecution, undocumented life in America, and children dreaming of distant lands. Our study of migrant literatures will even take us to other worlds, reading Nnedi Okorafor's interstellar science fiction as a speculative extension of the more historically based works

BUILDING: LCHAS | ROOM: 103

"English" is a little word for lots of things. Is it literature you want today, or creative writing? film? theater? journalism? debate? Maximum "English" introduces you to all these areas and to our unique resources for studying and enjoying them—the full range of English here at UR. 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 will launch you into real English—newly expanded.

BUILDING: LCHAS | ROOM: 160

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!

BUILDING: MEL | ROOM: 205

This course immerses students in the most challenging, influential, and engaging writings from the earlier periods of English literature. Our aim will be to enjoy and understand these writings in themselves, and then to see their relation to each other and to their larger historical context. Students should leave the course with some real affection for particular writings, and some assured sense of the contours and highlights of cultural history. Our emphasis will be on the careful appreciation of language and texture in representative texts and authors (including Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Donne, Jonson, Milton, Dryden, Swift, Pope and their contemporaries). Class will proceed by lecture and discussion.

BUILDING: MOREY | ROOM: 501

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.

BUILDING: MOREY | ROOM: 321

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.

BUILDING: LCHAS | ROOM: 104

Chaucer’s reputation as “Father” of English sometimes obscures his claims to other superlatives: funniest (lol) and wittiest, most book-learned, most outrageous, most intellectually curious, most experimental. His alter ego, Geffrey, occupies the heart of many of his fictions, and this entirely likeable, intensely intimate, but totally elusive persona creates enormous pleasure and provocation. His portrayal of sexual relations and identities have unsettled and enriched the expectations of all readers. We will explore and enjoy his greatest poetry, including the Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde, arguably the best long poem ever written in English. The course aims to create an indelible impression of Chaucer’s writing, and a broad appreciation of medieval culture. We will read and recite Chaucer’s distinctive words and sounds, memorable in themselves and in opening new vistas on the language we now speak. Writing includes a series of response papers, as well as a longer final paper and take-home final.

BUILDING: MOREY | ROOM: 502

We will re-enter the lives and desires of late medieval women and men, reading both popular and artful stories that then and now hold the imagination of living readers. We will pursue ghosts and revenants who bridge the world of spirit and flesh, reanimated corpses and souls rescued from damnation, the lives of saints and those now in purgatory or hell, charting intense medieval responses to living, loving, and dying. Works will include the out-of-body experience of Pearl, fantasies of earthly OtherWorlds and global diversity in Mandeville’s Travels and other exotic narratives, and personal revelations by Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe, the first women writers in English. Using digital sources, we will immerse ourselves in the physical books and images of manuscript and early print cultures. Our purpose is to enrich our sense of the present by gaining a sure grasp of this earlier English language and art. Students will offer presentations, write short responses / analyses, and a longer final paper.

BUILDING: | ROOM:

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 Dante’s 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 Dante’s 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.

BUILDING: GAVET | ROOM: 310

Eve let the Devil through the door, and her punishment was terrible pain in childbirth: for the vagina is a crossroad between the external and the internal. This course examines medieval and later texts where the feminine and the monstrous intersect: the female body is porous, secretive, associated with the abject, the messy, the sinful, the incomplete, and all the more horrifying when it’s not constrained socially and politically—a mindset that persists even now. We'll look at the “monstrous feminine” in the evil mother, the temptress, the hag, the witch, the fairy and the shapeshifter in Eve, Medea and Melusine; the vetula, the “loathly lady”; Sheela na Gig, Malleus Maleficarum, De Secretis mulierum, “Duessa” and “Error” in Spenser’s Faerie Queene, “Sin” in Milton’s Paradise Lost, films and social media about monstrous mothers, and articles from Cohen, Kristeva, Miller, Urban and Creed.

BUILDING: LCHAS | ROOM: 103

This course on tragedy has three parts. The first concentrates on ancient Greek tragedy (Aeschylus, Sophocles). The second considers the revival of tragedy in early modern England both as a prestigious neoclassical form and as a vehicle for domestic themes traditionally associated with comedy (Marlowe, Shakespeare, Dryden). The third takes up the disappearance--or transformation--of tragedy in more recent times (Beckett, Lorca). In addition to primary texts, we will examine a number of important theories of tragedy (Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, Nietzsche, Weil, Benjamin, Arendt). Our readings will be guided by such questions as: what might the story of this genre tell us about the longer history of representation? And how does tragedy illuminate basic problems such as the appeal of violence and vengeance, the role of religion in society, and the difficulty of finding an ethics that works for all people?

BUILDING: | ROOM:

The class explores the full range of Shakespeare's theater, including examples of history plays, comedy, tragedy, and romance. We approach the plays from many angles, looking at their stark and extravagant language, their invention of complex, conflicted human characters, their analyses of the worlds of politics and war, their self-conscious theatricality, as well as their ways that they join together play and seriousness, the tragic and the comic. 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. This course fulfills the pre-1800 requirement for the English major. Applicable English Clusters: Great Books, Great Authors; Plays, Playwrights, and Theater.

BUILDING: MOREY | ROOM: 303

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.

BUILDING: | ROOM:

This course introduces students to some of the major British novelists during the nineteenth century such as Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy. The course will situate these novelists within the aesthetic and historical concerns of the period and cover an array of topics (e.g. the rise of the novel, the marriage plot as a narrative device, capitalism, gender, sexuality, race, and empire).

BUILDING: DEWEY | ROOM: 4162

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.

BUILDING: | ROOM:

Autobiography is the foundational genre in the tradition of African-American literature. It is also the genre that both illustrates and represents the process of the construction of identity. Autobiography is not only writing about a life authored by oneself, but also the life of the self made manifest in the form of writing. This course surveys the tradition of autobiographical writings by African Americans, from slave narratives to recent bestsellers, in order to promote an understanding of autobiography as a narrative form shaped by its historical context and the purposes of the author. In addition, the course provides students with insights into various topics in African-American culture and history. Readings include texts by Frederick Douglass, Olaudah Equiano, Zora Neale Hurston, Harriet Jacobs, Audre Lorde, Barack Obama, Booker T. Washington, Richard Wright, Malcolm X, and more. Requirements include two formal writing assignments, bi-weekly reading responses, and participation in class discussion.

BUILDING: | ROOM:

This course explores the beginnings of the horror and detective genres in the 19th century. Particular attention is devoted to the narrative structure, tropes, and psychological content of the strange tales by Poe and Hoffmann. Theories of horror are also addressed to include discussions by lessing, Todorov, Huet, and Kristeva.

BUILDING: GRGEN | ROOM: 110

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, Bertolt Brecht, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Edward Albee, David Mamet, Caryl Churchill, August Wilson, Sam Shepard, Paula Vogel, Suzan-Lori Parks, Yasmina Reza.

BUILDING: MEL | ROOM: 206

This course will explore a tradition of stories about questing, stories (often fantastic) about persons in pursuit of lost, hidden, or unknown objects or places, and about the trials such questers undergo. We’ll think about changing shapes of questing in such stories, their dream-like landscapes and often monstrous inhabitants. We’ll consider what quest romances tell us about the nature of human desire, will, and memory, about our relation to the world, nature, and history. Such stories often explore the impulses of story-telling itself. Readings will include Homer’s Odyssey, Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, as well as poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley, Robert Browning, William Butler Yeats, and Wallace Stevens. Satisfies either the pre-1800 or post-1800 requirement for the English Major. Not open to Freshmen.

BUILDING: | ROOM:

In recent years, we have seen a virtual explosion of writing by women, with women’s novels constituting some of the most widely read and critically admired work being produced today. The global reach of both its authors and audiences has made contemporary women’s writing a truly international phenomenon. We will examine what makes this work especially innovative: its experimentation with new voices and narrative forms and its blurring of genre boundaries. We will look at the dialogue it has established with the past, where it often finds its inspiration, self-consciously appropriating earlier literary texts or rewriting history. We will also consider what special challenges this work poses for its readers. Looking at works originating in a wide range of geographic locations, this course, will explore the diverse shapes of contemporary women's imagination and attempt to account for the compelling interest of this new body of fiction.

BUILDING: | ROOM:

What is a witch? Culturally, most people associate the term with pointed hats, black cats, and broomsticks. Historically, it refers to a threat to the social order, an enemy of the state, a confederate with the devil. Many scholars see the figure as a figment invented to attack those (usually women) perceived as defying community norms or infringing on official turf. Complicating these accounts, witch identity has been subsequently claimed by those who see in the term forgotten histories of female power, and better attitudes toward nature, gender, mind, and being. Through readings in drama, fiction, criticism, and history, this course introduces and explores this complex of perspectives on the figure of the witch. We will spend the bulk of the course in the early modern period (focusing in particular on the witch-hunting crazes of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries). But we will also read ancient and current writing on this subject. Authors will include Euripides, Shakespeare, Condé, and many others.

BUILDING: | ROOM:

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.

BUILDING: HYLAN | ROOM: 306

This 4-credit intersession course will be conducted in London, UK, from December 26, 2018–January 6, 2019. 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

BUILDING: | ROOM:

PREREQUISITES: Instructor's permission is required. The fee for the course is $2550.

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. Please contact David Hansen at dhansen9@esm.rochester.edu

BUILDING: MOREY | ROOM: 403

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. Please contact David Hansen at dhansen9@esm.rochester.edu

BUILDING: MOREY | ROOM: 403

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 and instructor permission is required. To apply, email the instructor 3-5 poems or a small prose piece (fiction or creative nonfiction).

BUILDING: MOREY | ROOM: 403

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.

BUILDING: TODD | ROOM: 202F

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.

BUILDING: RRLIB | ROOM: PLUTZ

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.

BUILDING: RRLIB | ROOM: PLUTZ

PREREQUISITES: Permission of instructor is required. Students are to submit 3-5 typed poems, preferably before the first class.

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.

BUILDING: MOREY | ROOM: 321

Intro to history, technology, cultural significance of motion pictures of the "pre-sound" era, screenings of 35mm prints accompanied by live music in the Dryden Theatre. Special attention to major pioneers, Dickson, Porter, Lumière, Méliès, and Griffith, including a variety of internationally produced films selected from the world-famous archival film collection of the George Eastman House. Same as FMS 247

BUILDING: GEM | ROOM: CURT

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.

BUILDING: | ROOM:

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.

BUILDING: MOREY | ROOM: 504

PREREQUISITES: FMS 132 - Intro to Art of Film OR FMS 131 - Intro to Media Studies

This course will focus on modern Polish literature and culture and look at cultural heritage that is often considered local, ‘minor’ and inaccessible from the outside. We will explore Polish cinema (Wojciech Jerzy Has, Andrzej Wajda, Krzysztof Kieślowski, etc.) and literature (Conrad, Schulz, Nałkowska, Borowski, Iwaszkiewicz, Miłosz, Gombrowicz, Szymborska, Zagajewski, Tokarczuk, Lem, Kapuściński, etc.), identifying local perspectives as well as global ambitions of Polish authors and artists, looking not only for national dimensions of Polish culture, but checking how it fits into the global cultural marketplace and world literature.

BUILDING: | ROOM:

Pier Paolo Pasolini is one of Italy’s major 20th-century artists and intellectuals. He worked as a poet, novelist, filmmaker, playwright and essayist, creating scandal with his radical critique of Italy’s modernization and rising consumer culture in the 1960s. As a director, he made some of the most challenging and controversial works in film history. This course gives students a solid understanding of his films by examining how each work addresses Italy’s transformation from a premodern agrarian and artisanal culture, to a modern capitalist one. Films include: Accattone, Mamma Roma, The Hawks and the Sparrows, Theorem, The Decameron and Salò. To provide students with a foundation in Pasolini’s thought and in film analysis, discussions will focus on both thematic and formal issues, such as Marxist politics, Catholicism, sexuality, homoeroticism, violence and his pastiche style. Assignments include: readings, screenings, papers and a final essay. Readings and screenings will be in English.

BUILDING: B&L | ROOM: 315

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.

BUILDING: MEL | ROOM: 219

Are we experiencing the end of the world? Popular culture and the media cycle broadcast endless news of developments suggesting the end of human civilization: infertility crises, weather disasters, GMO monsters, class warfare, mass extinction, and infectious diseases, even zombies. This course investigates representations of environmental apocalypse and the new geological era of the Anthropocene in order to understand the cultural politics and history of anxiety about end-times and the meaning of nature, planet, and ecology in our lives. We will read fiction by Cormac McCarthy​, Octavia Butler, and Indra Sinha; screen the films Mad Max: Fury Road, 28 Days Later, World War Z, and Snowpiercer; examine Arcade Fire’s album The Suburbs; and study indigenous survivance poetry and recent environmental theory. The course includes a daylong workshop at the Skä•noñh Great Law of Peace Center in Syracuse, NY.

BUILDING: LCHAS | ROOM: 161

This course studies how our eating practices are shaped by industrial, political, and ecological processes. To understand the politics, economics, and history of what appears on our plates, we cover topics such as biotechnology, food-preservation, chemicals and fertilizers, fast food, processed food, genetically modified organisms, obesity, superbugs, and the organic, local, vegetarian, slow-food, and food justice movements—primarily from the perspective of artistic, literary, and cultural texts.

BUILDING: LCHAS | ROOM: 143

Reporting and Writing the News introduces the student to journalistic writing and reporting. Through a variety of classroom exercises and through out-of-class reporting, students learn to prepare accurate and balanced news stories. Assignments progress from single-source interviewing to news profiles, speech-and-meeting coverage, and feature stories. Additional experience is gained through rewriting assignments, as directed by editing comment. Attention is also paid to First Amendment issues such as libel, as well as to the challenges and opportunities presented by new media. Applicable English Cluster: Language, Media, and Communication [H1ENG016]

BUILDING: GRGEN | ROOM: 109

Reporting and Writing the News introduces the student to journalistic writing and reporting. Through a variety of classroom exercises and through out-of-class reporting, students learn to prepare accurate and balanced news stories. Assignments progress from single-source interviewing to news profiles, speech-and-meeting coverage, and feature stories. Additional experience is gained through rewriting assignments, as directed by editing comment. Attention is also paid to First Amendment issues such as libel, as well as to the challenges and opportunities presented by new media. Applicable English Cluster: Language, Media, and Communication [H1ENG016]

BUILDING: MEL | ROOM: 221

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]

BUILDING: LCHAS | ROOM: 103

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]

BUILDING: LCHAS | ROOM: 182

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]

BUILDING: LCHAS | ROOM: 160

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.

BUILDING: MOREY | ROOM: 403

In this course students will investigate the following questions: What is argument? What is evidence? To answer these questions, students will also think deeply about how context does or does not shape our understanding of these concepts. For instance, what do arguments in STEM fields have in common with those in the humanities? Do different fields such as philosophy, psychology, and biology share evidence and argumentative strategies? Is the meaning of evidence static across these fields? We will begin by investigating different models of argument from philosophy and argumentation theory, and then students will use these broad models to investigate and analyze argument in academic contexts of their choice. We will also explore how these theoretical accounts of argument apply to popular contexts such as advertising, public deliberation, and journalism. Students will explore these issues through reflective writing, several short papers and a research project of their own design.

BUILDING: LCHAS | ROOM: 122

In this course students will investigate the following questions: What is argument? What is evidence? To answer these questions, students will also think deeply about how context does or does not shape our understanding of these concepts. For instance, what do arguments in STEM fields have in common with those in the humanities? Do different fields such as philosophy, psychology, and biology share evidence and argumentative strategies? Is the meaning of evidence static across these fields? We will begin by investigating different models of argument from philosophy and argumentation theory, and then students will use these broad models to investigate and analyze argument in academic contexts of their choice. We will also explore how these theoretical accounts of argument apply to popular contexts such as advertising, public deliberation, and journalism. Students will explore these issues through reflective writing, several short papers and a research project of their own design.

BUILDING: HYLAN | ROOM: 203

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.

BUILDING: RRLIB | ROOM: G121A

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

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.

BUILDING: | ROOM:

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

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]

BUILDING: LCHAS | ROOM: 161

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.

BUILDING: MOREY | ROOM: 303

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.

BUILDING: TODD | ROOM: 202F

This course introduces the basic aesthetic and technical elements of video production. Emphasis is 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. Strategies for the use of video as an art-making tool will be explored. Works by artists and directors critically exploring media of film and video will be viewed and discussed. Video techniques will be studied through screenings, group discussions, readings, practice sessions and presentations of original video projects made during the course. Sophomores and Juniors with officially declared FMS and SA majors juniors are given priority registration; followed by sophomores and juniors with officially declared FMS and SA minors. Studio arts supplies fee: $50. To be added to the rolling waiting list, please contact Juliet Carello at juliet.carello@rochester.edu

BUILDING: SAGE | ROOM: BLDG

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.

BUILDING: TODD | ROOM: 202F

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.

BUILDING: TODD | ROOM: 202F

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 performer’s standpoint and to create character. The course takes as its basic premise that the actor’s instrument is the self—with 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 today’s society.

BUILDING: TODD | ROOM: 107

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 performer’s standpoint and to create character. The course takes as its basic premise that the actor’s instrument is the self—with 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 today’s society. Fall class: in conjunction with a weekly scheduled lab.

BUILDING: TODD | ROOM: 107

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.

BUILDING: TODD | ROOM: 107

In today’s theatre, the director is generally considered to be the key creative figure in how a theatre production is conceived, explored and presented. But the director’s 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.

BUILDING: TODD | ROOM: 107

In today’s theatre, the director is generally considered to be the key creative figure in how a theatre production is conceived, explored and presented. But the director’s 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.

BUILDING: TODD | ROOM: 107

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.

BUILDING: TODD | ROOM: 202F

PREREQUISITES: by arrangement w/instructor

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.

BUILDING: RETT | ROOM: 305

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

BUILDING: TODD | ROOM: UN

PREREQUISITES: By Audition/permission of instructor only

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

BUILDING: TODD | ROOM: UN

PREREQUISITES: BY AUDITION/PERMISSION OF INSTRUCTOR ONLY

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.

BUILDING: TODD | ROOM: 202F

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

BUILDING: TODD | ROOM: UN

PREREQUISITES: BY PERMISSION OF INSTRUCTOR ONLY

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.

BUILDING: | ROOM:

PREREQUISITES: BY PERMISSION OF INSTRUCTOR ONLY

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.

BUILDING: TODD | ROOM: UN

PREREQUISITES: BY ARRANGEMENT WITH INSTRUCTOR

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.

BUILDING: MOREY | ROOM: 403

No description

BUILDING: | ROOM:

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

BUILDING: | ROOM:

PREREQUISITES: BY ARRANGEMENT WITH INSTRUCTOR

No description

BUILDING: | ROOM:

No description

BUILDING: | ROOM:

The literary tradition is full of erring readers, from Cervantes' deluded Don Quixote, to Goethe's melancholic Young Werther, to the obsessed narrator of James' Aspern Papers. What does it mean to read the "wrong" way? Has this implied something different at different points in history? Does errant reading involve an overestimation — or underestimation — of fiction's relationship to the real world? An excessively worshipful — or excessively dismissive — stance toward a text's author? Our syllabus will encompass novels, poetry, drama, and short stories; authors will include Cervantes, Pope, Swift, Lennox, Austen, Goethe, Sheridan, James, Nabokov, and Roth, among others. Select works of theory and criticism will also figure into our discussions.

BUILDING: MOREY | ROOM: 303