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Course Criteria
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4.00 Credits
This course will offer an introduction to his work through a wide-ranging survey of his major plays in all categories (history, comedy, tragedy, and romance) plus maybe some poetry. Texts and topics will vary. Every year. (4 credits)
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4.00 Credits
In the 20th century, the field of literary theory was entirely transformed, borrowing insights from other disciplines and influencing them in turn. Its interactions with politics, philosophy and pop culture have created new insights into cultural theory. This class will survey some of the most controversial schools of recent critical theory, including such topics as the New Criticism, Marxism, the Frankfurt School, psychoanalysis, feminism, structuralism, deconstruction, the new historicism, queer theory, critical race theory, and postcolonial theory. Alternate years. (4 credits)
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4.00 Credits
This course will consider film as an audiovisual art form, with attention to developments in cinema technology throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Course will likely focus on a particular genre (Western, War, Horror, Film Noir, Gangster, Documentary), national cinema (French, Italian, British, Irish), or auteur director (John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee). Close reading of films in conversation with film and cultural theory. Required weekly film screenings. Offered every year. (4 credits)
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4.00 Credits
From its earliest days, film has drawn on literature for subject matter and modes of narration. Adaptations of literary sources have formed a significant part of all movies made in the west. This course will study the problems of adapting literature to film, dealing with the representations of time and space in both forms, as well as the differences in developing character and structuring narratives. The course will consider a novel, short story or play each week along with its cinematic counterpart. Alternate years. (4 credits)
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4.00 Credits
In this course we will examine texts by, about, and for workers for social justice. Our method will be interdisciplinary. With an eye toward aesthetics, we will examine novels and plays that have at their center protagonists who have been called to realize a vision of the just society or, more desperately, to stand alone against seemingly inevitable assaults upon human dignity. We will at the same time examine philosophical and sociological accounts of political action, including works that evaluate the effectiveness of different individual and organizational strategies for social change. Central issues may include obedience and disobedience, economic justice, eco-activism, globalization, human rights, gender, race, and the question of personal vocation -that is, how do we bring together our ethical commitments and our working lives Central figures will range from Sophocles to Naomi Klein, Zola to James Baldwin. Students will be provided extensive opportunities for service and experiential learning in local organizations committed to social justice. Alternate years. (4 credits)
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4.00 Credits
The scandal surrounding Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 novel about the nymphet Lolita finally made him a hugely successful celebrity, allowing him to retire from teaching at Cornell University and move to Switzerland to devote himself to fiction, translation, criticism and lepidoptery. This was only one of the many metamorphoses Nabokov underwent while in exile, moving from Russia to the Crimea, Cambridge UK, Berlin, Paris, Cambridge MA, Ithaca, Hollywood, and finally Montreux. Members of the Russian nobility, the Nabokovs lost everything with the 1917 Revolution except for their immense cultural capital, which Nabokov transformed into a tremendously productive career as a writer, critic, translator and scholar in Russian, French, and English. This course examines both the Russian (in translation) and English novels. A merciful defier of national, linguistic, cultural and theoretical categories, Nabokov remains paradoxically elusive and monumental, a thrilling and exasperating genius. Spring semester. (4 credits)
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4.00 Credits
This course examines ways in which literary works have represented desire and sexuality. It looks at how constructions of sexuality have defined and classified persons; at how those definitions and classes change; and at how they affect and create literary forms and traditions. Contemporary gay and lesbian writing, and the developing field of queer theory, will always form part, but rarely all, of the course. Poets, novelists, playwrights, memoirists and filmmakers may include Shakespeare, Donne, Tennyson, Whitman, Dickinson, or Henry James; Wilde, Hall, Stein, Lawrence, or Woolf; Nabokov, Tennessee Williams, Frank O'Hara, Baldwin, or Philip Roth; Cukor, Hitchcock, Julien, Frears, or Kureishi; White, Rich, Kushner, Monette, Lorde, Allison, Cruse, Morris, Winterson, Hemphill, or Bidart. Alternate years. (4 credits)
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3.00 Credits
This course will focus in a variety of ways on the development of skills for writing poetry, building on the work done in English 120. Depending on the instructor, it may approach the creative process through, for example, writing from models (traditional and contemporary), formal exercises (using both traditional and contemporary forms), or working with the poetry sequence (or other methodology selected by the instructor: see department postings for details). It will involve extensive readings and discussion of poetry in addition to regular poetry writing assignments. The course may be conducted to some extent in workshop format; the emphasis will be on continuing to develop writing skills. Prerequisite: English 120 (Introduction to Creative Writing) taken at Macalester. Every year. (4 credits)
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3.00 Credits
This course will focus in a variety of ways on the development of skills for writing fiction, building on the work done in English 120. Depending on the instructor, it may approach the creative process through, for example, writing from models of the short story (both classic and contemporary), working with the technical components of fiction (e.g., plot, setting, structure, characterization), or developing linked stories or longer fictions (or other methodology selected by the instructor: see department postings for details). It will involve extensive readings and discussion of fiction in addition to regular fiction writing assignments. The course may be conducted to some extent in workshop format; the emphasis will be on continuing to develop writing skills. Prerequisite: English 120 (Introduction to Creative Writing) taken at Macalester. Every semester. (4 credits)
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3.00 Credits
This course will focus in a variety of ways on the development of skills for writing nonfiction, building on the work done in English 120. Depending on the instructor, it may approach the creative process through, for example, translating personal experience into autobiography or memoir, or developing the essay form, the opinion piece, the journalistic report or a variety of other forms. It will involve extensive readings and discussion of nonfiction in addition to regular nonfiction writing assignments. The course may be conducted to some extent in workshop format; the emphasis will be on continuing to develop writing skills. Prerequisite: English 120 (Introduction to Creative Writing) taken at Macalester. Every year. (4 credits)
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