Since at least the 1950s, Latin America has endured multiple CIA-backed military interventions that often paved the way for the rise of authoritarian regimes across the region. These state-sponsored terrorist regimes forcibly disappeared, tortured, and imprisoned tens of thousands of Latin Americans. In the aftermath of dictatorship, societies were left deeply traumatized and confronted with enduring legacies of impunity, silence, and collective amnesia.
Culture in general—and cinema in particular—has become one of the most powerful vehicles through which Latin American artists have confronted these histories of violence. Film has played a crucial role in representing the horrors of dictatorship while simultaneously forging a visual language capable of supporting collective mourning, historical memory, and struggles for truth and justice.
In this class, we will watch and analyze films that engage directly with these themes, including Machuca (Chile), Garage Olimpo (Argentina), La Llorona (Guatemala), Innocent Voices (El Salvador), and Rojo Amanecer (Red Dawn, Mexico). Each film will be accompanied by historical and theoretical readings that situate the works within their political, social, and cultural contexts.

LTAM 110 The Americas

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.

LTCS 119

This course examines the intersection of sex, sexuality, and popular culture by looking at the history of popular representations of queer sexuality and their relation to political movements for gay and lesbian rights and theories of corporeality, the mind-body relation, and the use of the body as a cultural text. We will use the specific examples of sport, popular media, and the HIV/AIDS crisis as we scan the past 100 years of Queer cultures and subcultures.

This course presents a survey of the most important movements and developments in modern and contemporary Chinese poetry. We begin by studying Chinese New Poetry, which emerged during the Literary Revolution (1917-1922) that was a key component of the May Fourth Movement. We then trace the modernist masters of the 20th century, seeking to delineate what precisely “modernism” means, and how Chinese poets engendered unique forms of Chinese poetic modernism. Throughout, we will consider these themes and important questions: Why is poetry in particular so fundamentally important to Chinese literature, culture, and history? How do modern and contemporary poets remain connected and indebted to classical Chinese poetics and thought, even while they are also strongly influenced by Western texts and ideas? What role does poetry play in the 20th century, a time that was marked by the arrival of modernity, revolution, as well as the experience of trauma on a large scale? Can we hear the voices of women poets, and how are they distinct from their male peers? And finally, how does the art of poetry intersect with calligraphy, visual art, photography, film, and other forms of media in oftentimes remarkable and revealing ways?

LTEA 100B Asia

Open to both literature and non–literature majors, this course allows students to explore AI-assisted scholarly writing in their assignments. The course focuses on representations of women and gender in modern Chinese literature during the first half of the twentieth century. Through works by authors such as He-Yin Zhen, Lu Xun, Mu Shiying, Shen Congwen, Ding Ling, Xiao Hong, Zhang Ailing, and Zhao Shuli, alongside critical and theoretical readings, students will examine shifting gender roles, feminist thought, and the ways literature engages with social and political change. Through close reading, discussion, and analytical writing, students will critically explore how literature both reflects and challenges dominant gender ideologies within China’s evolving historical and cultural contexts.

LTEA 110B Asia

In this course we will watch Chinese-language films from Greater China covering a wide range of historical periods and subjects. The films screened in this class will be studied as reflections of their respective social realities as well as the filmmakers’ comments on and interventions of such realities. In addition, we will study these films within the general cinematic tradition and analyze them as examples of an art form with its own unique language. We will familiarize ourselves with cinematic concepts, techniques and film theories, and try to use them to “read” those Chinese films like an expert. The goal of this course is therefore threefold: to equip students with basic knowledge of the rich body of Chinese cinema, to learn about Chinese history and culture as reflected through these films, and to analyze Chinese cinema as an aesthetic form and a social practice.

LTEA 120A

LTEA 120A Asia

This course is a survey of literary works and other cultural productions such as films and essays, produced both within and outside the Korean peninsula, concerning the experience of migration, emigration and immigration of “ethnic Koreans” to various parts of the globe since the early 20th Century. We will attempt to situate these representations of Korean diaspora between the contexts of modern Korean history and the histories of the regions and nation-states to which ethnic Koreans migrated. We will also examine the more recent phenomenon of labor migration of Southeast and South Asians and “returning” diasporic ethnic Koreans into South Korea. Our readings will include diverse materials such as South Korean literary works on emigration to the United States, Korean American literature, literature by Korean residents of Japan, films by Korean Chinese directors, historical sources on global Korean diaspora and contemporary theorizations of South Korea’s recent transition into an increasingly multi-ethnic immigrant society.

LTEA 144 The Americas

LTEA 144 Asia

This period (1660 - 1832) is sometimes said to be the start of a lot of issues we face today: systemic racism, global capitalism, industrialization and climate change, to name a few. Typically, this era of literature is taught as the one that formulated the individualized narratorial “I” subject, reflecting and constructing the idea of the western liberal individual. Yet, the literature itself is complex and not streamlined in this understanding and construction of self. In this course, we will ask: how did this period conceive of or understand “the self”? How did it construct the self in relation to “the Other”? How did the British (or perhaps, English) individual understand themself in relation to the racialized “Other”? Were there any authors who challenge these narratives? How do these literary constructions connect to the sociopolitical and ideological climate of the time—and how do these questions relate to our present day?

Constructing American Identities:

Please contact instructor for course description.

This seminar will discuss ten short poems over ten weeks. As a group, we will discuss the pleasure of language, and of poetic language in particular, as we close-read ten outstanding poems from a range of periods and cultures in the English language. For this seminar, students should expect to read poems (and perhaps write some), make friends in a journey of intellectual discovery and pleasure, contribute to robust seminar discussion, and inculcate the life-skill of enjoying one of our most fundamental and human everyday tools, language.

What was it like to live the wake of the Black Death pandemic and the social, political and economic upheaval it caused? We will explore medieval life and thought through Chaucer’s masterpiece The Canterbury Tales paying close attention to its historical, cultural and literary contexts. Special consideration will also be paid to issues of gender and sexuality and how they inflect Chaucer’s poetics and politics, as well as to the role of Christianity in Chaucer’s works. We will also reflect on Chaucer’s influence in the present day, including the BBC’s 2003 adaptions of the tales, poems from Patience Agbabi’s Telling Tales, and the Refugee Tales project, www.refugeetales.org. This course fulfills the “a” requirement.

LTEN 107

1790-1830 is an era known for political upheaval and, at the same time, the genre of romance and the Gothic. This course will take a transhistorical approach to the time period, and will ask questions such as: What defines the Regency novel? How do the genre of romance and the political context of the Regency connect, if at all? What are the afterlives of the Regency novel? Why are we as a culture so transfixed by this period? We will read texts from the period as well as examine more contemporary filmic and literary reimaginings of the era, such as Bridgerton.

LTEN 140

This course will focus on the writing of Lucille Clifton. Clifton (1936-2010), major American poet of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Clifton published searching poems drawing on her own experiences as a Black woman in America, but also interrogating spiritual traditions, responding to the canonical Anglo-American literary tradition and the social and political history of Black people in the Americas. She wrote deeply personal poems confronting illness, mortality, and the both the physical and metaphysical precarity of existence. We'll engage in a comprehensive study of her poetry, her memoir, and her writing for children, examine her connections with other writers, and gain a foundation in the growing body of criticism engaging her work.

LTEN 176 The Americas

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LTEN 185 The Americas

A deadly plague has destroyed their way of life, their society, and their certainties. A group of 10 young men and women leave the city behind for a country villa to spend two weeks telling each other short stories and partying. In their stories they recreate what they fear is lost forever: love, sex, community, humor, and hope. Through their stories we learn about "real life" and relationships in XIV Century Italy (and beyond). This is a "one book course" students will take 2-3 sort quizzes and present a final project (both orally and in written form). Attendance and participation are essential.

LTEU 104

LTEU 104 The Mediterranean

LTEU 104 Europe

First course in the intermediate sequence designed to be taken after LIFR1C/CX (If you choose to take LIFR1D/DX, you will still need to take LTFR 2A to continue in the French program). Short stories, comic strips and movies from various French-speaking countries are studied to strengthen oral and written language skills while developing reading competency and cultural literacy. A thorough review of grammar is included. Taught entirely in French.. May be applied towards a minor in French literature. The discussion class on Thursday is not required and is used for extra support or practice
Successful completion of LTFR 2A satisfies the language requirement in Revelle and in Eleanor Roosevelt colleges. Prerequisite: LIFR 1C/CX or equivalent or a score of 3 on the AP French language exam or a score of 4 or 5 on the Language Placement Exam.

Emphasizes the development of effective communication in writing and speaking. Includes a grammar review. A contemporary novel and films are studied to explore cultural and social issues in France today. Taught entirely in French. May be applied towards a minor in French literature or towards fulfilling the secondary literature requirement. Students who have completed 2C can register in upper-level courses. Prerequisite: LTFR 2B or equivalent or a score of 5 on the AP French language exam.

Please contact instructor for course description.

LTFR 115 French

LTFR 115 The Mediterranean

LTFR 115 Europe

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2C is the last sequence of the intermediate series. The class will continue to study grammar, vocabulary and other aspects of the German language. This course is conducted entirely in German and emphasizes the four language skills: speaking, listening, reading and writing. The class will focus on cultural readings of historical content as well as current events and will engage in discussions of films.

Our journey through Italian culture, food and language continues with more review of important grammar points, as well as conversation about the culture of gastronomy, travel, music and film. This course follows LTIT 2B, and completes the second year of the Italian language series. The course is strongly recommended for students who plan to go to Italy with EAP or other programs (but not only). LTIT 50 meets 3 days a week, there will be a couple of grammar quizzes, a couple of cultural quizzes, and a final project (both oral and written).

First Year Korean 1C (5 units) is the third part of the Beginning Korean. This course is designed to assist students to develop high-beginning level skills in the Korean language. These skills are speaking, listening, reading, and writing, as well as cultural understanding. LTKO 1C is designed for students who have already mastered LTKO 1B or who are already in the equivalent proficiency level. This course will focus on grammatical patterns such as sentence structures, some simple grammatical points, and some survival level use of Korean language. Additionally, speaking, reading, writing, and listening comprehension will all be emphasized, with special attention to oral speech. Upon completion of this course, students will become able to do the following in Korean:

Speaking: Students are able to converse with ease and confidence when dealing with the routine tasks and social situations. They are able to handle successfully uncomplicated tasks and social situations requiring an exchange of basic information. They can narrate and describe in all major time frames using connected discourse of paragraph length, but not all the time.

Listening: Students are able to understand, with ease and confidence, simple sentence-length speech in basic personal and social contexts. They can derive substantial meaning from some connected texts, although there often will be gaps in understanding due to a limited knowledge of the vocabulary and structure of the spoken language.

Reading: Students are able to understand fully and with ease short, non-complex texts that convey basic information and deal with personal and social topics to which they brings personal interest or knowledge. They are able to understand some connected texts featuring description and narration although there will be occasional gaps in understanding due to a limited knowledge of the vocabulary, structures, and writing conventions of the language.

Writing: Students are able to meet all practical writing needs of the basic level. They also can write compositions and simple summaries related to work and/or school experiences. They can narrate and describe in different time frames when writing about everyday events and situations.

Prerequisite: LTKO 1B or an equivalent level of proficiency in Korean language.

Second Year Korean 2C (5 units) is the third part of the Intermediate Korean. Students in this course are assumed to have previous knowledge of Korean, which was taught during the Korean 1A, 1B, 1C, 2A and 2B courses. Students in this course will learn high-intermediate level of standard modern Korean in listening, speaking, reading, and writing, as well as expand their cultural understanding. After the completion of this course, students are expected to acquire and use more vocabularies, expressions, and sentence structures and to have a good command of Korean in various conversational situations. Students are also expected to write short essays using the vocabularies, expressions, and sentence structures introduced. Upon completion of this course, students will be able to do the following in Korean:

Speaking: Students can perform all intermediate-level tasks with linguistic ease, confidence, and competence. They are consistently able to explain in detail and narrate fully and accurately in all time frame. In addition, they may provide a structured argument to support their opinions, and they may construct hypotheses. They may demonstrate a well-developed ability to compensate for an imperfect grasp of some forms or for limitations in vocabulary by the confident use of communicative strategies.
Listening: Students are able to understand, with ease and confidence, conventional narrative and descriptive texts of any length as well as complex factual material such as summaries or reports. They are able to follow some of the essential points of more complex or argumentative speech in areas of special interest or knowledge.
Reading: Students are able to understand, fully and with ease, conventional narrative and descriptive texts of any length as well as more complex factual material. They are able to follow some of the essential points of argumentative texts in areas of special interest or knowledge. In addition, they are able to understand parts of texts that deal with unfamiliar topics or situations.
Writing: Students are able to write about a variety of topics with significant precision and detail. They can handle informal and formal correspondence according to appropriate conventions. They can write summaries and reports of a factual nature. They can also write extensively about topics relating to particular interests and special areas of competence.

Prerequisite: LTKO 2B or an equivalent level of proficiency in Korean language.

Advanced Korean: Third Year III  -Third Year Korean 130P (4 units) is the third part of the advanced Korean. Students in this course are assumed to have previous knowledge of Korean, which was taught in the Korean 2A, 2B, 2C, 130F and 130W courses. Students in this course will learn high-advanced level skills in the areas of listening, speaking, reading, and writing in Korean, as well as expand their cultural understanding. Upon completion of this course, students are expected to acquire and use more vocabularies, expressions and sentence structures and to have a good command of Korean in formal situations. Students are expected to read and understand daily newspapers and daily news broadcasts. Upon completion of this course, students will be able to do the following in Korean:

Speaking: Students are able to communicate with accuracy and fluency in order to participate fully and effectively in conversations on a variety of topics in formal and informal settings from both concrete and abstract perspectives. They discuss their interests and special fields of competence, explain complex matters in detail, and provide lengthy and coherent narrations, all with ease, fluency, and accuracy. They present their opinions on a number of issues of interest to them, and provide structured arguments to support these opinions.
Listening: Students are able to understand speech in a standard dialect on a wide range of familiar and less familiar topics. They can follow linguistically complex extended discourse. Comprehension is no longer limited to the listener's familiarity with subject matter, but also comes from a command of the language that is supported by a broad vocabulary, an understanding of more complex structures and linguistic experience within the target culture. Students can understand not only what is said, but sometimes what is left unsaid.
Reading: Students are able to understand texts from many genres dealing with a wide range of subjects, both familiar and unfamiliar. Comprehension is no longer limited to the reader's familiarity with subject matter, but also comes from a command of the language that is supported by a broad vocabulary, an understanding of complex structures and knowledge of the target culture. Students at this level can draw inferences from textual and extralinguistic clues.
Writing: Students are able to produce most kinds of formal and informal correspondence, in-depth summaries, reports, and research papers. They demonstrate the ability to explain complex matters, and to present and support opinions by developing cogent arguments and hypotheses. They demonstrate a high degree of control of grammar and syntax, of general vocabulary, of spelling or symbol production, of cohesive devices, and of punctuation.

Prerequisite: LTKO 2C or an equivalent level of proficiency in Korean language.

LTKO 130P Korean

LTKO 130P Asia

Readings in Sino-Korean Characters  -Students in this course will learn advanced and superior-level Sino-Korean vocabulary and characters, skills in reading and understanding advanced Korean materials, and expand their understanding of Korean culture. Upon completion of this course, students are expected to have acquired an expanded vocabulary, knowledge of various expressions using Sino-Korean vocabulary and characters necessary for an advanced and superior level of proficiency in Korean. Sino-Korean characters are used differently from the same Chinese characters used in contemporary China in terms of pronunciation, meaning, and word formation.
Sino-Korean words represent over 70% of the Korean vocabulary at an advanced and superior level. Since most modern Korean is written phonetically in Hangul, however, the semantic connections between related words are not readily transparent to most learners without Chinese character instruction. This course can help students retain new Sino-Korean vocabulary over a short period of time.

Prerequisite: LTKO 2C or an equivalent level of proficiency in Korean language.

LTKO 135 Korean

LTKO 135 Asia

Please contact instructor for course description.

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Please contact instructor for course description.

LTRU 104A Russian

LTRU 104A Europe

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Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.

LTSP 100F Spanish

Series de Televisión y Justicia Social en Latinoamerica  -Las series de televisión se han transformado en la última década en el formato de ficción más consumido en el mundo. América Latina, a pesar de la brecha digital y del peso que todavía tiene la televisión en abierto, no es una excepción. No es exagerado decir que la ficción habita hoy primordialmente en las series y en su formato “folletinesco” que permite, entre otras cosas, desarrollar historias con mucho mayor detalle y mucho más espacio y tiempo.

En esta clase aprenderemos, en primer lugar, a analizar series de América Latina como una nueva forma de ficción visual que entronca con otras formas literarias como la novela de entregas o el folletín . Trataremos de entender tanto el lenguaje visual con que están construidas las series, como el sistema de producción televisiva y su inserción en un mercado global cada vez más caracterizado por lo que algunos críticos de televisión denominan “televisión compleja” o “televisión de algoritmo”. Estas nuevas formas de televisión se dan en el contexto de un “giro digital” que ha cambiado drásticamente nuestro acceso a la cultura en general y la televisión y el cine en particular, creando audiencias cada vez más específicas a través de plataformas como Netflix, Hulu y otras.

La pregunta central de esta clase es cómo estos nuevos formatos televisivos lidían con la cuestión de la justicia social en América Latina en general y en el Cono sur en particular, ¿Puede la televisión construir sentidos críticos que acompañen a los movimientos sociales en su búsqueda de justicia? América Latina es un continente que se caracteriza por la herencia colonial de la desigualdad, la violencia y la opresión de diferentes sectores de estas sociedades abigarradas.

LTSP 169 Spanish

Este curso aborda producciones culturales recientes que escenifican una memoria crítica transgeneracional con respecto al trauma histórico causado por las dictaduras militares en el Cono Sur, específicamente en Argentina y Chile. Se revisa una diversidad de modalidades expresivas: testimonios, crónicas, novelas, poesía, cine, performance y música, para explorar los trabajos de la memoria en su ejercicio de lucha por los sentidos vitales y la imaginación política en la postdictadura.

El curso está estructurado en tres módulos: 1) memorias transgeneracionales (¿posmemoria?): aproximaciones teóricas 2) corporalidades del duelo: imagen y performance en la postdictadura y 3) narrativas y poéticas de la transmisión melancólica.

Los métodos de evaluación combinan formas tradicionales con otras que exploran lenguajes creativos. 

LTSP 174 Spanish

Este curso tiene por objetivo caracterizar la plural articulación de los feminismos en América Latina desde 1990 en adelante, especialmente en la región andina, el Cono Sur y Brasil. Se analiza cómo en este ciclo se trama el deseo de una nueva politicidad despatriarcalizadora, anticapitalista, antirracista, anticolonial y disidente (queer) que pone en jaque la posibilidad de Estados coloniales neoliberales o “posneoliberales” con perspectiva de género.

Se espera que lxs estudiantes adquieran una visión panorámica sobre la teoría crítica feminista, sus modalidades y políticas del texto en la región. Esto en el marco de un diálogo con las corpo-prácticas desplegadas en la calle, el video experimental, el cine, la fotografía, la literatura, y otras luchas feministas por el sentido en el campo de batalla de la cultura y la política.

LTSP 175 Spanish

El objetivo de este seminario es explorar el español tal como se habla en la comunidad y el significado social y cultural que se atribuye a las diferentes formas de hablar. A través de un análisis crítico, las discusiones de clase se centrarán en las experiencias de los/las/les estudiantes acerca de su propio uso del español.

This course offers an introduction some of the most important concepts and critical issues for literary and cultural studies today. The study of literary theory will lead us to explore exciting, foundational questions having to do with textual interpretation, cultural production, and the making of meaning. Students will learn about the most important concepts in contemporary literary theory and then apply these theories to the interpretation of literature and other cultural productions. We will ask not only “What do these texts mean?” but also “How do they mean?” Some of the other questions we will raise and discuss include the following: what is “literature”? What is the purpose and function of literary studies? How do we determine what a text means? Where does meaning reside—in the author, the reader, or the text? What is the relationship between literature and society? Between text and historical context? Our study of critical theory will help us to understand the ways in which literature and culture both respond to and shape the world around us.

Introductory undergraduate class studying representations of health, medicine, and the body across a historically and culturally diverse range of texts. Authors considered include John Milton, Virginia Woolf, Audre Lorde, Riva Lehrer, Maggie Nelson, Ada Limón. Especially suitable for pre-health-career students and humanists.

"LATINX NARRATIVES IN TIMES OF WAR:" This course covers post 9/11 narratives, literature, and visual culture regarding illegality and citizenship in times of war. What Latinx undocumented narratives and subjects are saying about destruction, exclusion, deportation, non-belonging, territorial conflict, and affective distress will be foundational to the course. We will engage with poetry, creative artistic practices, chronicles, as well as protest, movements, and dissent. Key ideas involve unpacking the rhetoric and act of "war" in friction and in relation with Latinx narratives.

In the late sixth century BCE, the Roman Republic was born from the violated body of a noblewoman. Some eight hundred years later, the potency of a new religion was proclaimed through the battered body of a provincial rebel and the defiant body of a Roman aristocrat who stepped into the arena to face the beasts. Between these moments, Ovid asked the gods to breathe with him as he produced thousands of lines about bodies undone and remade: girls into trees, girls into birds, girls into boys.
LTWL 19C will explore this trajectory in a dissection of the body as ancient Rome’s most contested territory. (Don’t worry – this exploration will be entirely literary and no literal bodies will be harmed in the process.) Exploring epic, satire, lyric, and martyrdom narrative, we will examine how Roman writers imagined flesh as a site of power, vulnerability, transformation, spectacle, and resistance. How does a state found itself upon a body? How does empire control bodies? How do poets reclaim them? How do martyrs sanctify them?
Reading authors such as Vergil, Lucan, Juvenal, Ovid, and Perpetua, we will trace the ideologies and anxieties inscribed on Roman bodies from the Republic to Empire. Expect close reading, questions without right (or even good) answers, and conversations that treat literature as the locus of diagnosable maladies and laboratory of potential remedies.
No prior coursework (including LTWL 19A-B) required.

Please contact instructor for course description.

LTWL 100

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This course looks at representations of vampires in folklore, literature and film from early appearances through to recent depictions like The Vampire Diaries and Sinners. Lectures will cover topics including the "historical vampires," Vlad Tepes and Elizabeth Bathory, the European vampire "epidemic" of the eighteenth century, medical explanations for early cases of vampirism, and folk traditions. We will also consider the vampire in relation to other famous legendary beings, especially the werewolf. We will explore why vampires are such popular figures, considering them as cultural symbols that have and still do allow writers an incredibly rich way to explore themes of death, immortality, power, racism, sexuality and addiction.

Imagining Catastrophe  -Our climate is changing. We are to blame. But instead of confronting the emergency, we seem intent on accelerating our demise. What does it mean to be human in an era of human-caused environmental calamity? How have poets, philosophers, and film-makers imagined our relation to the planet? In this course, we will consider selected works of literature, film, and theory about literature and the environment. Readings will include works by Byron, Kafka, and Thomas Mann, as well as leading critics in the environmental humanities. We will also watch and discuss Caroline Link’s Nowhere in Africa and Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man. The class will be divided into three parts. In the first, we’ll read about the Anthropocene and consider how writers imagine the future as catastrophe. The second will focus on humans and other animals in literature in theory. We’ll conclude with the topic of Indigeneity and the Anthropocene. We may all be on the same road to perdition, but the rich are to blame and the poor will die first.

Quentin Tarantino is widely recognized as a cinematic auteur, known for his distinct style, which includes fractured narratives, non-linear story structures, and graphic violence, often used for both shock and dark humor. His films are also celebrated for sharp dialogue, bold soundtracks, and striking visual trademarks. However, Tarantino’s films and personal conduct have sparked significant criticism, particularly for themes of racism, sexism, and misogynoir, as well as allegations of workplace abuse. This course delves into Tarantino’s cinematic voice while addressing these uncomfortable issues. We will examine the tension between enjoying his films and critically confronting their problematic elements, exploring how “fun” in film can be both “corrupt” and “serious.” The course will also address the challenges of reconciling critical discussions with the anarchy of laughter, encouraging reflection on how power structures influence harmful imagery. By engaging with both the pleasures and critiques of Tarantino’s work, students will explore the complex relationship between art, enjoyment, and social critique.

LTWL 183

As the world’s largest producer of films, Bollywood’s existence as a model combining song and dance sequences with a melodramatic plot structure, a model that could not be destroyed by the onslaught of affordable digital platforms and global content has become something of a legend. This course will tell you the story of how the Hindi film industry of the city of Bombay (now Mumbai) became “Bollywood”: a globally recognized and circulating brand of filmmaking from India, which is often posited by the international media as the only serious contender to Hollywood in terms of global popularity and influence. A particular corpus of Bollywood films emerged around the twenty first century, that signified a certain form of bigness, with their star lifestyles, bloated economies of scale, world market share, and opulent mise-en-scène. This kind of fecundity in a postcolonial country’s culture industry was unprecedented. The neoliberal restructuring of the Indian state and economy— intensified from 1991, followed by the Hindi cinema receiving official industry status from the state in 1998—resulted in Hindi film industry’s metamorphosis into Bollywood—a dramatically altered mediascape, armed with satellite television, dotcom boom, and multiplex theaters. In this course we will study this corpus of big Bollywood films. Each week we will acquaint ourselves with concepts and methods that will help us study Bollywood as the producer of a distinct aesthetic, a unique language of cinema. Weekly readings are curated as per a specific configuration related to the cultural and social status of cinema—as well as the political economy of filmmaking—and locate them in Bollywood’s own efforts to accrue symbolic capital, social respectability, and professional distinction.

LTWL 184

Please contact instructor for course description.

Creative non-fiction has emerged as a third genre alongside fiction and poetry in the field of creative writing. The only one defined negatively, as "not-fiction," meaning on the one hand that it is "not untrue,” it is also "creative," which suggests that there is more than one way to be "not untrue." This course will be an introduction to varied approaches to creatively communicating the “not untrue” through readings, generative writing exercises, and peer-critique in a writing workshop format.

This is a fiction workshop where we will explore ideas and techniques of fiction through generating original work and providing feedback to classmates. We will be learning from each other and published works. Students will be expected to offer oral and written feedback on their classmates’ work.

Gothic Latin American Fiction

This course will focus on the emerging field of digital poetry and digital literature, that is, the intersection of artistic poiesis (making) with digital technology. As the scholar Chris Funkhouser states, “A poem is a digital poem if computer programming or process (software) are distinctively used in the composition, generation, or presentation of the text (or combination of texts).” In this course, we will consider this poesis/poetics as a constantly evolving process that is refracted and reflected through our changing writing technologies.

As this course is a "C" designated course, it also serves as both a literature and writing course. We will read and respond to various examples of digital literature as well as theories and critiques of this emergent form alongside digital literature’s logical (and, sometimes, illogical) antecedents and possible futures.

Finally, we will create and workshop digital poetic texts of our own. While no prior knowledge of programming or software is necessary to take this course, please bring a willingness to experiment and learn together.

SFFI and Social Imagination

Writing 30-Minute Television

Memoir Comics Craft and Analysis   -The definition of “story” could be oversimplified as “an interesting person gets into trouble,” (Bonnie Jo Campbell) and every personal narrative frames the author’s factual experience as a story. Because autobiographical comics’ interesting protagonists are authors and artists, these memoirs tend to depict their author-narrator-characters facing challenges in a world they perceive differently from others. These moments where the author discovers they may be different from others and has to face some of the worries and threats of being unusual are conventional elements of the artist’s coming-of-age narrative, the Künstlerroman.

In this course we will study and create the Künstlerroman and other memoir comics, beginning with short examples from the adult commix scene of the 1970s and moving through excerpts from critically and commercially successful memoir comics from the 80’s-2000’s, finally ending the course by analyzing three brilliant recently published autobiographical comics novels.
Course participants will create their own memoir comics, write and share analytical papers, and offer teaching presentations about form and content in collectively-read graphic memoirs.
This is a largely screen-free environment that will require participants to purchase some nondigital art supplies.

Course books include:
Autobiographical Comics by Andrew J. Kunka, The Talk by Darrin Bell, It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth by Zoe Thurgood, and Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir by Tessa Hulls and Excerpts from: Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary by Justin Green Drawn Together by Aline Kominsky-Crumb and R. Crumb Barefoot Gen: A Cartoon Story of Hiroshima by Keiji Nakazawa Maus by Art Spiegelman 100 Demons by Lynda Barry Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi Blankets by Craig Thompson Fun Home by Alison Bechdel and I Thought You Loved Me by MariNaomi

LTWR 114C

Both creative nonfiction and science aspire to the “truth,” some accurate modeling of the world around us (and within us). Both depend on careful observation and reality-testing, whether by experimentation or through an ideal of narrative verisimilitude. Yet both also require imagination for discovery. How can science power insightful narratives about the world? How can the craft of writing nonfiction illuminate and communicate the work of science? In this course students will be reading a wide variety of writing across all genres that addresses science in creative ways, and then take cues from those readings to develop their own pieces of writing about science. Science students with an interest in creative writing and creative writing students with an interest in science are equally encouraged to register. IMPORTANT NOTE: This is a creative writing course working with science as its inspiration and content. It is NOT a course designed to teach professional writing within scientific discourses.

This is a creative nonfiction workshop where we will explore ideas and techniques of creative nonfiction through generating original work and providing feedback to classmates. The readings will include a variety of texts, including travel writing, memoir, profiles, and craft essays. We will be learning from each other and published works. Students will be expected to offer oral and written feedback of their classmates’ work.

Hand Printed Broadsides & Books (Multiples)

This course is an exploration of narrative structures, including and extending beyond the traditional (Western) three-act and five-act structures.

Early Christianity: From the Apostolic Age to the Dawn of Islam. This course explores the development of Christianity from the late Apostolic era through the emergence of Islam in the seventh century. Course themes include the formation of Christian identity (and identities), the development of doctrine and practice, ecclesiastical structures, theological controversy and definition, monasticism, and Christianity’s changing relationships with other religious traditions and with the Roman state. By the end of the course, students will understand the principal historical, cultural, and theological forces that shaped Christianity from its earliest generations to the eve of the Islamic conquests.

Please contact instructor for course description.