by Ana Fonseca
In advance of registration, here’s the inside scoop from professors on what we can expect from their courses next semester:
Professor Crawford on English 309- Writing Workshop: Fiction
What are some the writing skills students can expect to learn in this course?
Students can expect to explore short story elements such as character, conflict, voice, setting, and action.
What’s one of your favorite things about this course?
I love watching students hone their writing voices as their confidence increases over the course of the semester.
What’s something you hope students will get from this course?
I hope students will use their personal interests to craft engaging fiction, and develop a lifelong love of short stories.
Anything else you’d like students to know about this course?
Being part of a workshop community of fiction writers is an invaluable experience.
Fr, Pat on English 311- Advanced Writing
What are some the writing skills students can expect to learn in this course?
I hope my students learn how to write daring, fearless sentences; I hope my students learn how to go to surprising places in their thinking and demonstrate that on the page. I hope my students can more fully appreciate the role of the imagination in writing—not as an exercise in “making things up”—but as a way to shape and form a work in creative, thoughtful, and astonishing ways, much as a sculptor works with clay.
What’s one of your favorite things about this course?
I love the interactions I have with students as we explore their writing together. I love how my students throw themselves into the workshop experience and how rewarding the revision process becomes for them.
What’s something you hope students will get from this course?
Beyond my hope that my students will see that they have grown as writers, I hope they come away with the realization that writing can be a wild, gratifying experience of being human.
Anything else you’d like students to know about this course?
As much writing as we do in the class, we do a fair amount of reading as well, not just our essays, but the work of remarkable essayists.
Professor McDonald on English 311- Advanced Writing
What are some the writing skills students can expect to learn in this course?
Students will leave 311 with a better understanding of their own writing processes. They will learn to engage an audience, and write from their own unique perspectives. Also, they will see the value revision has on improving the quality of a piece of writing.
What’s one of your favorite things about this course?
I love getting students to break the rules–it’s so contrary to their previous classroom writing experiences. Students have great stories. If they are brave enough to write honestly, some of the essays are really startling and entertaining. I really like it when a student receives a reaction from class when reading aloud. It is also gratifying to see students think of themselves as writers. I enjoy writing along with students in class and sharing my writing.
What’s something you hope students will get from this course?
I want students to realize that there is no writing “gene.” Sure, some students have better skills than others, but writing is essentially thinking; it’s mental fitness. It takes effort. It takes time. It takes acuity. You don’t just sit down and have something magical fly out of your keyboard. Well, sometimes you do, but that’s rare. I want to de-mystify the act of writing
Anything else you’d like students to know about this course?
You have to share your work frequently. Students get to choose essay topics/approaches based upon broad prompts. Please no zombie essays.
Dr. Hersh on English 320- Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Literature
What are some of the major authors/works that you will be teaching?
Most of our readings will come from a very well-known medieval author named Anonymous. Authorship played a different role in the Middle Ages than it does now, so a lot of texts lack a known author. That said, we will read Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Beowulf, and many others to get a sense of the literature produced during this period.
What are some of the major themes and ideas that you will be tracking?
I frame the entire course around the theme of difference. The Middle Ages, with its sometimes radical difference from our own, forces us to realize that many of the ideas that we take for granted, or which we believe are the natural way of thinking about things, are not so natural after all. So, for example, the Middle Ages believed that instead of two genders there was just one gender—the masculine gender—and that women were just inverted versions of males. Exploring ideas like this make us rethink our own modern beliefs and ideas. We will also see how the literature of this period contains ideas, hopes, fears, and humor that resonate even in the twenty-first century.
What’s one of your favorite things about this course?
Academic disciplines as we know them did not exist in the Middle Ages. This class reflects the academic reality of the Middle Ages by employing an interdisciplinary approach to the study of literature. I love that this course begs us to analyze literature alongside art, theology, history, political science, and music (yes, listening to Eminem can shed light on Beowulf!).
What’s something you hope students will get from this course?
An appreciation for the diversity of the Middle Ages. People often assume that this was a period populated by just peasants, kings, and plagues. The Middle Ages actually produced literature that is just as complicated, funny, sad, and beautiful as texts written today.
Anything else you’d like students to know about this course?
There will not be a field trip to Medieval Times.
Fr. Pat on English 343- Studies in Nonfiction
What are some of the major authors/works that you will be teaching?
We will be reading works from: Frank Conroy, Alison Bechdel, Lytton Strachey, Susan Orlean, Tracy Kidder, Ted Conover and Marion Winik. We will also read essays from some of the greats: Woolf, Baldwin, Didion, Kincaid, etc., as well as up-and-coming essayists.
What are some of the major themes and ideas that you will be tracking?
We will be exploring many of the forms of literary nonfiction, paying particular attention to memoir, profile-writing, literary journalism, biography, and the personal essay, all the while seeing how literary nonfiction utilizes the tools of fiction (plot, character, setting, conflict, etc.) to shape true stories.
What’s one of your favorite things about this course?
It’s always a bit of a thrill to see how my students come to see that in the world of literature, literary nonfiction is enjoying a kind of renaissance. I also rather enjoy the ongoing conversation of the course, the one that circles time and again around a huge question: what does it mean to tell a true story?
What’s something you hope students will get from this course?
I hope my students will walk away with a careful, discerning eye when it comes to reading any work of nonfiction: a newspaper article, a blog post, a Tweet, a political profile, an expose, etc. I hope my students will be able to marvel at the sheer artistry at work in a piece of literary nonfiction.
Anything else you’d like students to know about this course?
This course is, as they say, in my wheelhouse! I always look forward to teaching this class because it gets my creative juices flowing. It makes me want to write stuff that will make me stop in my tracks. And I hope my students catch that bug!
Dr. Brassard on English 347- British Literature since 1945
What are some of the major authors/works that you will be teaching?
So many great authors and texts to choose from! It’s very difficult to narrow it down, but for this version of the course I’ve selected Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners, Levy’s Small Island, Kureishi’s The Black Album, Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Smith’s NW, and a couple more to be determined.
What are some of the major themes and ideas that you will be tracking?
The focus of the class will be “Britain’s Others,” or “The Empire Writes Back” (Rushdie’s phrase), because England became increasingly multi-cultural after the Second World War, and especially with the influx of immigrants from former colonies in the fifties and sixties. Class, gender, race, and sexuality will be major concepts developed throughout the texts and the course.
What’s one of your favorite things about this course?
I’m an unabashed Anglophile, and I’m fascinated by the way recent history finds its way into the literature. The ‘tagline’ I came up with for the course is: “What happens when a country wins a war but loses an empire?” The best British authors (many more could be included) all grapple with the social and cultural after-effects of war and empire on the English psyche.
What’s something you hope students will get from this course?
I hope students will discover different ways of thinking about Britain and British literary culture beyond the assumptions and clichés we all carry within us (tea, rain, Harry Potter, you name it).
Anything else you’d like students to know about this course?
Assignments for the class will include a movie report: there are many wonderful films about postwar British culture that perfectly complement the literary texts we will be studying.
Dr. McDaneld on English 357- American Literature 1945-Present
What are some of the major authors/works that you will be teaching?
We’ll be working with major texts by Sylvia Plath (The Bell Jar), Toni Morrison (Beloved), and Joan Didion (The Year of Magical Thinking). There will also be lots of short stories, a bit of poetry, and some non-fiction selections like Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique and speeches by Dr. Martin Luther King.
What are some of the major themes and ideas that you will be tracking?
We’ll be thinking lots about what it means to try to survey this time period (notice that the “Post-45 to Present” designation keeps getting longer and longer!) And, as in all of my courses, we’ll be focusing on gender and race as important categories of analysis for literary study.
What’s one of your favorite things about this course?
I teach literature of both the 19th and 20th centuries, and what I love about the more contemporary stuff is how it helps to historicize the recent past, the past we think we know so well because it’s closer to us.
What’s something you hope students will get from this course?
The course is going to feature a lot of texts that students will have definitely heard of, but maybe won’t have read—so it’s always fun to see how your interpretations of a text or author match up (or don’t) with their cultural reputations. And of course I always hope that students will get practice in refining their writing and research skills. There will be a mix of assignments, from informal responses, to a close reading essay, to a final research project on a text of students’ choosing.
Anything else you’d like students to know about this course?
Take it! We’ll have fun.
Dr. Brassard on English 440- Telling/Retelling: Literary Adaptations and Transformations
What are some of the major authors/works that you will be teaching?
The reading list is short, because the books are mostly door-stoppers, so be prepared for an intense reading experience! The texts are arranged in pairs (classic and update): Austen’s Emma with the movie Clueless; Bronte’s Jane Eyre with Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, and Forster’s Howards End with Smith’s On Beauty.
What are some of the major themes and ideas that you will be tracking?
The question at the heart of this course is: What makes a classic both of its time and timeless? In other words, why are some classics ‘ripe’ for reinvention in a modern setting and still popular in their original and updated forms? We will explore not only the universality and canonical importance of the original texts but also what it means to update, adapt, re-imagine, and/or transform these texts for a contemporary audience. Expect an emphasis on feminism as a major critical lens, and issues of class, gender, and sexuality as central thematic concerns throughout the term.
What’s one of your favorite things about this course?
Students typically respond very well to the material, and are often surprised to like classics they had avoided in the past. I get to revisit my favorite classics through the fresh eyes of my students, who are sometimes more familiar with the contemporary updates than the original texts.
What’s something you hope students will get from this course?
I want students to explore issues of canonicity (why some authors and not others; who decides and how) and challenge received opinions about literary value, while also reading and writing smart papers about complex and compelling books.
Anything else you’d like students to know about this course?
Assignments for the class will include reports on film adaptations of certain texts, and also a Creative Reinterpretation project, which involves reimagining a text into a different medium, or literary genre, or writing style (usually a favorite among students).
Dr. Weiger on English 491- Posthumanism: Humans, Animals, and the End of Nature
What are some of the major authors/works that you will be teaching?
Our primary theoretical text will be Donna Haraway’s When Species Meet. That text will launch our investigation of an emerging field in the humanities: animal studies. Major primary texts will likely include Humanimal (by poet Bhanu Kapul), King: A Street Story (by art critic and novelist John Berger), and Oryx and Crake (by famed Canadian author Margaret Atwood). I’m also excited about the possibility of including On Such a Full Sea (by Chang-rae Lee).
What are some of the major themes and ideas that you will be tracking?
Our course will be split into two primary sections: one that investigates the question of what it is to be an animal, and another that investigates the question of what it is to be human. “Posthumanism” is a capacious category; I’m looking forward to stretching its boundaries with students to address questions including: Who — or what– counts as a subject in literature, philosophy, ethics, and aesthetics? What rights and responsibilities do subjects have? Can humans speak for nonhuman things? What do we mean when we call something an “object,” “thing,” or “animal” and how do those category-designations change our relationship to it?
What’s one of your favorite things about this course?
One of the pleasures of this course, for me, is the opportunity to move the questions that preoccupy my study of 19th-century literature into the 21st century. During the Romantic period, fascination with nonhuman forms of life (as well as nonliving things) swelled. Since then, recognition of species extinction, climate change, and the Anthropocene have turned the screw on that interest.
What’s something you hope students will get from this course?
I hope, most of all, that students will appreciate the extent to which literature can reconfigure humans’ relationship to the nonhuman.
Anything else you’d like students to know about this course?
This course will include film! In addition to our reading, we’ll be considering films including Sweetgrass (a documentary on sheepherders in Montana), Winged Migration (a film without words), Grizzly Man (by Werner Herzog), and Dreams (by Akira Kurosawa).