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Course Criteria
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In this course we’ll take a look at flash fiction and how to write it. Flash fiction is a catch-all for narrative in miniature – instead of a novel, or even a short story, how can you convey a sense of character, narrative arc and emotional resonance in 250 words? 100 words? 50 words? Flash fiction distills a story to its essence. Less will be more as we explore the strategic deployment of key bits of information that will give the reader a sense of what’s going on and why. The focus will be on writing our own fiction and work-shopping it, but we’ll also read a range of people who have learned how to do what we’re trying to achieve: from fiction writers like Jenny Boully and Danielle Dutton to prose poets like Bob Hass, Killarney Clary and Karen Volkman. There will be many ways to approach the project of writing micro-fiction. We’ll look at what it means for something to be called a story, what different kinds of stories there are, and how they can be approached from a narrow angle while still giving an image of the whole. This class will offer an exercise in concision which is useful to all types of writing. Open to all levels.
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The goal of this two-week course is to introduce students to the practice of college-level critical reading and writing. This class works under the assumption that there is not a single, easy meaning to any piece of literature. Thus, instead of trying to find that one “correct” interpretation, we will be reading closely and actively. Students will learn the skills necessary to form their own convincing, thoughtful meanings. We will then work on transforming these “readings” into well-evidenced, argumentative essays. Through this process, students will gain the tools and experience necessary to write about literature in contexts like the AP literature test, the college admissions essay, and college-level literature classes. Toward this end, we will be reading stories that seem to have an obvious hero and an obvious villain, including Dracula, Frankenstein, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and “Murders in the Rue Morgue.” But is the distinction between hero and villain really as clear as we might think? We will read closely to question what distinguishes the good guy from the bad, the monster from the beauty. How do these texts construct good and evil? How might a text use devices like character development, sentiment, and tone to blur the line between hero and villain? How can we read beyond the surface of the text to complicate any easy answer? In other words, how can we use these texts as exercises in critical and active reading? The practice of critical reading will allow us to conceptualize and produce essays that are both interesting and convincing. We will develop practices for brainstorming topics and framing textual approaches in order to create essays with manageable and inventive arguments. We will also look at various techniques for choosing and employing appropriate evidence that will support our larger arguments. Finally, we will learn to critique our own writing by practicing revision tactics that move beyond the superficial. Texts for this class may include both short stories and selections from novels. Short story selections may include: “Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Vampyre,” The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and various Fairy Tales. Selections from novels may be taken from The Time Machine, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dracula, and Frankenstein. Contemporary television and films may also be used to consider other types of “reading.”
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Ever wondered where our obsession with the individual originates? This class will take you back to the time period that is often considered the cradle of the individual: the Renaissance. The “discovery” of the self led playwrights to experiment with their characters’ identities in an attempt to come to grips with the period’s social fluidity: they had women dress up as men, men as donkeys, and servants as kings. This three-week class will introduce students to some of the most important European comedies of the period. We will explore the construction of identity (both real and deceptive, as characters take on fake identities in order to dupe one another) in two Shakespeare plays and a selection of Italian, French, and Spanish Renaissance comedies. Extending the study of Renaissance drama beyond the borders of England will broaden the students’ perspective and enrich their high school studies of Shakespearian drama. In our textual analyses, we will trace cross-cultural patterns in the construction of the self. We will explore common themes and recurring elements, as well as regional differences. To conclude the course, we will read Italian Nobel Prize winning author Luigi Pirandello’s Henry IV, an exquisite twentieth century comedy that represents the climax of identity-shifting and madness. In our study of this play, we will see how the concepts and ideas we have studied throughout the course carry over into modern theater. This jump in time will shed light on some of the lasting contributions of Renaissance drama to the history of theater.
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In this survey course, we will be reading work by modern Japanese authors as early as Mori Ogai and Ryunosuke Akutagawa, to more contemporary writers such as Haruki Murakami and Banana Yoshimoto. We will discuss the influence of Western culture on Japan beginning in the Meiji period (1868-1912), as well as the influences of modernism and postmodernism on Japanese writers. Students will be put into groups, which will do presentations on assigned readings, and everyone will write a short essay on an author of his or her choice.
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Africa is presented negatively in the news as a continent of wars, famine, and disease when in fact its abundant cultural production continues to showcase the strength of human character. The richness of African fiction and film is increasingly recognized by world-renowned institutions, such as the Nobel Foundation, and by those who simply value the varied modes of artistic expression. Nobel laureates, Wole Soyinka, Nadine Gordimer, and John Coetzee are among those who have sparked well-justified growing interest in African fiction. This course will allow students to go beyond everyday perceptions of Africa and explore the complexity and richness of this highly heterogeneous continent through English, French and Portuguese-speaking literature and film. Students will examine African fiction both in English and in translation to understand better the process of forging post-colonial identities. This introductory course will expose students to the complex issues surrounding the themes of race, violence, and war, focusing on elements of gender, nationality and transculturalism as addressed in both fiction and film. No previous familiarity with contemporary African literatures will be assumed.
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Could you write a story without using the letter “e” (the most common letter in many languages, including English)? What would happen if you replaced every noun in a text with the one located 7 entries after it in a dictionary? What about a story or poem that contains only one vowel in each word? A poem in which each line is a single word, and each successive word is one letter longer?
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Separate fact from fiction about dialects! This course explores the different ways Americans speak, using a range of resources: linguistic research, literature, documentary film, movies, the internet, and the experiences and observations of everyone in the class. We begin with 18th- and 19th- century commentary on the emerging differences between American and British speech, and19th-century literary representations of U.S. dialects. For the bulk of the course, we explore speech varieties in the United States today. Students watch and discuss a documentary on modern American social and regional dialects; each student will give a presentation on his or her home dialect, based on research and personal observation.
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Have you ever found yourself not quite sure whether you need a comma in the sentence you’re writing? Proper grammar is essential for writing confidently and effectively. This course is designed to enhance students’ knowledge of the nuts and bolts of the English language—how to put together correct sentences and punctuate them with finesse. Each lesson will focus on a particular trouble spot in English grammar, such as pronouns or commas. Throughout the course, students will craft several short compositions, which will serve as springboards for improving grammar in their own written work. Students will also develop their verbal communication skills by presenting elements of syntax to the class. Assessments will require students to identify and correct grammatical errors in texts provided to them.
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Sports, organized and individual, impact life and promote social, emotional and intellectual growth. For these reasons, Sport is an important topic in literature and the subject of this introduction to academic coursework in English. We will use sport as the focal point in our investigation of various genre: short story, essay, novel, poetry and media. Students will discuss the literature, develop critical reading skills and evaluate effectiveness of sport as a metaphor in the works selected. We will examine ongoing debates about what literature is and what social role it plays as we examine those same debates about sport, athletes and teams in contemporary society.
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From the nineteenth-century work of Charles Baudelaire’s The Painter of Modern Life to the contemporary post-Trainspotting world, literature has always endured a fascination with the effects of drug and alcohol use on individuals and within specific cultures. This course examines the relationship between fiction and various states of “addiction” and “intoxication,” especially the ways literature re-defines what we understand these words to mean. Using a range of texts from philosophical essays written during the nineteenth century, to canonical novels of British modernism, to postmodern science fiction, we will study how writers have dealt with the problems posed by these conditions. Paying particular attention to the varieties of “addictive” and “intoxicating” experiences, we will also ask how, why, and to what end historical events and cultural contexts change the nature of these categories that so many texts imagine.
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