ENROLL

Sun Yung Shin

Horror is a speculative genre of literature with ancient roots in storytelling. Contemporary horror finds source material in centuries-old religious narratives, medieval folklore, historical events, contemporary urban legends, and real-life crimes and violence. Horror has always been full of metaphors for society’s deepest fears and anxieties; studying and writing horror can yield limitless insight and inspiration for imagining different futures. How do writers use atmosphere, characterization, symbols, allusions, suspense, etc. to hold our attention and produce “horror” toward some larger thematic end? In this course, students will read, analyze, discuss, and write about various literary fictional texts that could fall under the rubric of “horror” and practice creative writing in this capacious and rebellious genre. Authors may include Lesley Arimah, Neil Gaiman, Shirley Jackson, Han Kang, and Victor LaValle. 

Kofi Owusu

Peter J Balaam

An exploration of drama approached as literature and in performance. New digital resources enable us to take world-class productions from the National Theatre and elsewhere as our texts. Drawing examples both globally and across time, we will consider plays and recent productions in their historical and cultural contexts. Students will develop critical vocabularies, debate interpretations, and hone their interpretive and rhetorical skills in writing reviews and essays.

Arnab Chakladar

Indiana Jones has a pedigree. In this class we will encounter some of his ancestors in stories, novels and comic books from the early decades of the twentieth century. The wilds of Afghanistan, the African forest, a prehistoric world in Patagonia, the opium dens of mysterious exotic London--these will be but some of our stops as we examine the structure and ideology and lasting legacy of the imperial adventure tale. Authors we will read include Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Rudyard Kipling and H. Rider Haggard.

Sun Yung Shin

Social justice is fairness as it manifests in society, but who gets to determine what fairness looks, sounds, feels like? The self-described Black Canadian poet Dionne Brand says that she doesn’t write toward justice because that doesn’t exist, but that she writes against tyranny. If we use that framework, how does that change our own writing and our own notions of justice in our or any time? What is the role of literary writing, especially fiction, the essay, and poetry in the collective and individual quest to understand and build conditions that could yield increased potential for social justice? In this course, students will read, analyze, discuss, and write about various texts that might be considered to be against myriad tyrannies, if not necessarily toward social justice. Authors may include Octavia Butler, Phillip Metres, Toni Morrison, Myung Mi Kim, and M. NourbeSe Philipe.

Kofi Owusu

Arnab Chakladar