MW 9:30 - 11:00 CI-HW
Instructor: Kate Delaney

This class offers low enrollment with a strong emphasis on class discussion, frequent writing and revision, in-class student reports, and writing workshops. Readings focus on the theme of crossing borders: travel writing as well as literature of exile, expatriation, and immigration. We will study short and long fiction, nonfiction, drama, poetry, and the graphic novel. We will also consider film treatments of some of these works to investigate the effects of performance in another medium upon the narrative. Students will learn to discuss and write about literary techniques as well as the works’ cultural and historical context. In exploring how different authors treat similar themes, we will investigate questions of voice and form. Authors studied will include Bruce Chatwin, Susan Orlean, Marjane Satrapi, Jhumpa Lahiri, Ernest Hemingway, Milcha Sanchez-Scott, Redmond O’Hanlon, and David Bezmozgis.

 

[Foundations of Western Culture]
MW 9:30 - 11:00 Hass-D2/CI-H
Instructor: Arthur Bahr

As we read broadly across the vast chronological period that is “Homer to Dante,” we will pair ancient and medieval texts with similar themes as a way of posing questions like: what images, themes, and philosophical questions recur through the period; are there distinctly “classical” or “medieval” ways of depicting or addressing them; and what do terms like “Antiquity” or “the Middle Ages” even mean? (What are the Middle Ages in the “middle” of, for example?) Our texts will include adventure tales of travel and self-discovery (Homer’s Odyssey and Dante’s Commedia); courtroom dramas of vengeance and reconciliation (Aeschylus’s Oresteia and the Icelandic Njáls Saga); short poems of love and transformation (Ovid’s Metamorphoses and the Lais of Marie de France); and epics of nation-construction and empire (Virgil’s Aeneid and the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf).

 

TR 9:30 - 11:00 Hass-D1/CI-H
Section 1: Sarah Brouillette

We will read, interpret and discuss important and moving novels and short stories, acquiring the skills that will make the experience much more meaningful and fun. Our approach will be wide-ranging, covering everything from a narrative’s literary techniques to its social and political contexts. We have three main objectives: 1. Learning a set of key terms and close reading techniques for discussing fiction. 2. Thinking about and questioning the value of the reading experience and the meaning of cultural knowledge. 3. Turning you into improved and passionate readers and writers.

 

TR 1:00 - 2:30 Hass-D1/CI-H
Section 2: Alisa Braithwaite

This course is designed to sharpen your skills as a critical reader. As we explore both short stories and novels focusing on the theme of “the importance of place in literature,” we will learn about the various elements that shape the way we read texts – structure, character development, narrative voice, novelistic experimentation, historical and political contexts and reader response. Authors will include Junot Díaz, Jhumpa Lahiri, James Joyce, Jamaica Kincaid, Toni Morrison, Arundhati Roy, and Ana Castillo.

 

TR 11:00 - 12:30 Hass-D1/CI-H
Section 1: John Hildebidle

We will explore the canon of Anglo-American poetry from Shakespeare to the present. Our focus will be on how to read poems attentively, interpretively, and enjoyably; our written and oral exercises will have the same emphasis. We will consider some turning points -- Romanticism and Modernism in particular -- but the class does not intend to be historical or chronological, opting instead for a thematic approach. Come prepared to attend class, read and reread poems, and contribute to class discussion.

 

MW 9:30 - 11:00 Hass-D1/CI-H
Section 2: Mary Fuller

A chronological survey of lyric poetry in the English language by major writers, running from Beowulf to the end of the twentieth century. Readings might include Shakespeare, Donne, Wroth, Herbert, Milton, Marvell, Pope, Wordsworth, Keats, Whitman, Dickinson, Yeats, Frost, Bishop, Stevens, Eliot, Auden, as well as others more recent (Walcott, Gluck, Heaney). There will be some attention to longer poems but mostly we will be reading (and hearing) short works. Roughly the last two weeks of the semester will be devoted to works selected and presented by members of the class. Be ready for frequent reading aloud and two extensive group presentations.

 

TR 11:00 - 12:30 Hass-D1/CI-H
Instructor: Sandy Alexandre

This course surveys the texts and contexts that have shaped American literature. From Walt Whitman's proud assertion of an American selfhood in "Song of Myself" (1855) to Junot Diaz's complex consideration of national identity in The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007), we will explore multiple versions of American identity as they have developed through time, across different regions both inside and outside the US, and through in the major literary genres of prose narrative, poetry, and drama. Readings will include: Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, James’ “Daisy Miller,” O’Connor’s A Good Man is Hard to Find, Silko’s Ceremony, Hemingway’s In Our Time, Williams’ A Street Car Named Desire, Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, and poems by Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, and Sylvia Plath.

 

TR 3:30 - 5:00 Hass-D1/CI-H
Section 1: Peter Donaldson

This section will focus on close reading of the Shakespeare text and its adaptation and performance on film. Roughly the first half of the term will be devoted to close analysis of specific scenes and passages in the text, while the second half will be spent in equally close analysis of film in relation to text. Plays will include Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Henry IV, pt. 1, Macbeth, King Lear and The Tempest.

 

MW 3:30 - 5:00 Hass-D1/CI-H
Section 2: Howard Eiland

The class will study eight Shakespeare plays, including examples of tragedy, comedy, history play, and romance. Emphasis is on close reading of the text – there is much reading aloud in class -- as well as on the historical situation of the plays. We will also be considering theatrical and cinematic realizations, especially insofar as these shed light on Shakespeare’s characters and imagery.

 

Lecture: T 1:00 - 2:30
Screenings: T 7:00-10:00pm
Recitations: R 1:00 - 2:00 or 2:00 - 3:00
Hass-D3/CI-H
Instructor: Marty Marks

This subject will examine a series of about fifteen classic films with emphasis on their cultural and artistic significance. Primary focus will be on American cinema with secondary attention paid to works drawn from other great national traditions (e.g. those of France, Italy, and Japan). Format: one 90-minute lecture, one evening screening period with introductory remarks (two to three hours total) and one discussion hour per week. Lectures will place assigned films in context by tracing the historical evolution of the medium and by providing background on each film's production and style. Sections will give close attention to segments of assigned films with emphasis on class discussion.

 

TR 3:00 - 4:30 Hass-D3/CI-H
Instructors: Diana Henderson, Janet Sonenberg

The primary theme of the class is to explore how England in the mid-seventeenth century became “a world turned upside down” by the new ideas and upheavals in religion, politics, and philosophy, ideas that would shape our modern world. Paying special attention to the “theatricality” of the new models and perspectives afforded by scientific experimentation, the class will read plays by Shakespeare, Tate, Brecht, Ford, Churchill, and Kushner, and a range of primary and secondary texts from a wide range of disciplines. Students will also compose and perform in scenes based on that material. Meets with 21M.616.

MWF 3:00 - 4:00 Hass-D2/CI-H
Instructors: Jackson, Kibel, Raman

“The Art of the Probable” addresses the history of scientific ideas -- in particular, the emergence and development of mathematical probability. But it is neither meant to be a history of the exact sciences per se nor an annex to, say, the Course 6 curriculum in probability and statistics. Rather, our objective is to focus on the formal, thematic, and rhetorical features that imaginative literature shares with texts in the history of probability. These shared issues include (but are not limited to): the attempt to quantify or otherwise explain the presence of chance, risk, and contingency in everyday life; the deduction of causes for phenomena that are knowable only in their effects; and, above all, the question of what it means to think and act rationally in an uncertain world.

We seek to broaden students’ appreciation for and understanding of how literature interacts with – both reflecting upon and contributing to – the scientific understanding of the world. We are just as centrally committed to encouraging students to regard imaginative literature as a unique contribution to knowledge in its own right, and to see literary works of art as objects that demand and richly repay close critical analysis. It is our hope that the course will serve students well if they elect to pursue further work in Literature (or in any other discipline in SHASS), and also enrich or complement their understanding of probability and statistics in other scientific and engineering subjects they may take.