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Summer Session I: June 3 – July 1, 2024
300- Level Literature Course
Please note: 300-level classes assume some background and prior experience at the 200-level. Students should complete two 200 level courses before embarking on 300 level work. Generally, these classes require two shorter essays and one longer assignment or final paper involving research or reference to secondary materials.
ENGL 36410
Abolitionist Literature
Sec. 1LL Michael Druffel M TU W TH 11:30am – 2:05pm
Class number: 2139
(Note: the class meets online synchronously)
Building on a long tradition of transatlantic thought, contemporary abolitionists ask important social questions like: What would a society without prisons look like? What does it mean to defund the police? Can the United States’ criminal justice system be reformed? “Abolitionist Literature” works backwards to uncover the philosophical, literary, and cultural currents that birthed the abolitionist movement today. In exploring abolitionism’s literary history, we’ll better understand the successes and failures of different abolitionist strategies, how contemporary abolitionism developed, and what an abolitionist future might look like. We’ll begin by reading contemporary non-fiction writers including Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Angela Davis, moving backwards to examine abolition in twentieth-century fiction by examining writers such as John Edgar Wideman and Chester Himes, before finally exploring the nineteenth-century roots of abolitionism through writers such as Frederick Douglass, James Williams, David Walker, Harriet Jacobs, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. We’ll supplement these primary sources with short, contemporary readings from scholars including Cedric Robinson, Saidiya Hartman, Sylvia Wynter, and Katherine McKittrick. By the end of the course, we’ll have better understood how literature responded to and shaped abolition, how history influenced transatlantic writing, and the complicated relationship between capitalism and race. Class sessions will focus both on understanding course reading through discussion and ungraded, in-class written assignment and learning to make our own arguments about the literary history of abolition through writing.
Creative Writing Course
ENGL 22000
Introduction to Creative Writing
Sec. 1LL Kayle Nochomovitz M TU W TH 11:30am – 2:05pm
Class number: 1160
(Note: the class meets online synchronously)
Introductory Creative Writing will be an intensive exploration of writing between and beyond the spectrum of poetry and prose. Students will be introduced to contemporary texts and devices to inform their own developing writing practice, which will culminate in a hand bound book in print.
Summer Session II: July 8 – August 2, 2024
300- Level Literature Course
Please note: 300-level classes assume some background and prior experience at the 200-level. Students should complete two 200 level courses before embarking on 300 level work. Generally, these classes require two shorter essays and one longer assignment or final paper involving research or reference to secondary materials.
ENGL 37610
How to Watch Movies
Sec. 2LL Chester Kozlowski M TU W TH 11:30am – 2:05pm
Class number: 1883
(Note: the class meets online synchronously)
This course examines film-watching from a literary and technical perspective. What are the eras’ limitations? How are scenes constructed? What is the effect of lighting and music? How did film go from a “magic trick” to becoming a tentpole of popular culture. The course also delves into storytelling and compares some movies to the literature that inspired it. Films and excerpts include Charlie Chaplin’s silent comedies, Rebel without a Cause, The Godfather, Fight Club, Tår, and digital breakthroughs in special effects.
Creative Writing Course
ENGL 23000
Writing Workshop in Prose
Sec. 2AA Matthew Gahler M TU W TH 8:30am – 11:05am
Class number: 1156
In this course the varieties of prose writing, excluding fiction, will be practiced. The class is devoted to exploring such nonfictional forms as personal essay writing, reportage, memoir and biographical writing, sketches and opinion pieces. Throughout the semester students will read exemplary works from each area of nonfiction and will also spend considerable time practicing the genre through continuous exercises given by the instructor each week. Students will also learn to revise their works, respond to their peers’ writing, and work toward one to two major papers assigned for the semester.