Late in his middle age, unmarried and childless, Walt Whitman was dismayed to hear that rumors were circulating about his sexuality. In response, he encouraged his friends to spread a counter-rumor: the reason he wasn’t interested in women was that he was still...
This course introduces students to the literature and cinema of contemporary Spain and Latin America. By becoming familiar with the historical, political, and cultural settings that shaped these texts and films, we will consider what, if anything, makes them uniquely...
In this course we will read novels that try to think about storytelling in terms of collective as opposed to individual striving. What do novels that try to veer away from creating or focusing on a singular hero have to suggest about possibilities for building...
During the first years of the HIV/AIDS crisis, in the eighties and early nineties, activists protested across major cities demanding government action, some of them still hooked up to IV drips and oxygen tanks; alongside them, writers, visual artists, and filmmakers...
For most North Americans, “Nature” is a place. And a system, a dynamic of interlocking systems in a space. And a “trace”: we need a historical sense in order address what is “natural” to us. Nature is a grounding material reality and a field of questioning. It is what...
