English 6 — 99
Please Note: Class times are subject to change. Before you register, consult course lists posted in the English Department.
(Pre-requisite: English 1 and 2)
ENG 6A Creative Writing: Fiction J+ Alonso
A course open to all interested students who want practice and instruction in a workshop situation.
ENG 6B Creative Writing: Fiction K+ MW Downing
In this workshop, you will work as a writer and reader of new fiction. All participants write original short stories, which they read aloud in class, discuss with their colleagues, and revise during the semester. In addition, they address specific challenges of tone, style, structure, and point of view by writing brief experimental fictions (50 to 250 words), which illustrate how writers invent dramatically different solutions to a single problem. There are two fundamental requirements: Be present. Be productive. At the semester's end, writers select their best work and compile a portfolio to represent their progress and accomplishments.
ENG 6C Creative Writing: Fiction 8 Hershman
ENG 6D Creative Writing: Fiction 11 Hershman
A fiction workshop focusing on the power to be found in concision, where the writer's skill at editing–selecting and shaping key details–serves to strengthen a work. During the first four weeks we will have frequent in-class writing exercises; in addition, students will study published works and write interlinked short scenes to highlight issues of craft, with an emphasis on plotting, creation of voice, and character development. The balance of the term is devoted to the workshop-discussion format. Students will write and present to the class two complete short stories, as well as a rewrite of the more challenging of these two works.
ENG 6E Creative Writing: Fiction J+ Hurka
ENG 6F Creative Writing: Fiction M+ Hurka
This course is designed to help you develop the essential elements of creative prose: voice, description, and empathy. Particular emphasis will be placed on precision of language, and how the voice of a story must work in tandem with conscience.
You'll also have a look at fiction, poetry, and essays written by masters. We will investigate the current publishing world, so that if you want to send out your work at the end of the semester, you can do so. Finally, I would like you to read your work in progress on class days that we will schedule together, and to comment carefully and thoughtfully on the work of your classmates when they do the same.
ENG 6G Creative Writing: Fiction 1 Johnston, S.
ENG 6H Creative Writing: Fiction 6 Johnston, S.
English 6G and 6H are beginning courses in fiction writing. We will spend several weeks reading and discussing published and unpublished stories and essays in order to understand how writers' choices create and inform their work, and to develop critical discernment. Beginning in week four or five, the class will be a writing workshop—meaning that you will discuss each other's stories in class. We will also read some theory, do writing exercises in and out of class, and, to the extent that it's necessary, brush up on grammar, punctuation, and spelling. (The fun part.) Warning: the course will require a significant amount of focused time. You'll be doing reading and writing assignments every week. Your grade will be based on your fiction writing (two to three drafts of one short story, to be completed and handed in at the end of the semester) - 50%, exercises and other written work - 25%, and on class participation - 25%.
ENG 6I Creative Writing: Fiction H+ TR Levinson
This course is for students who want to write good stories. One way to develop that ability is to write a lot, so work includes several short pieces, a longer, fully-realized story, some revisions and lots of talk. The class operates primarily as a workshop, in which we discuss each other's work and the elements and sum of accomplished fiction. Students also work on developing their ideas about good writing by reading published stories and what writers have to say about their work.
ENG 6J Creative Writing: Fiction K+ MW Blake Simons
This class is an introduction to writing fiction. We will write stories and exercises; read stories, some poems, and some non-fiction by established writers; and talk about the basic elements of the short story, especially character, voice, dialogue, action, and conflict. In Mystery and Manners, Flannery O'Connor writes, "In most good stories it is the character's personality that creates the action of the story." That is what interests me most, both as a writer and as a reader. Students will be encouraged to use the stuff of their lives – the world and the people they know – to make stories.
ENG 6K Creative Writing: Fiction G+ Strong
My section of English 6 will provide deadlines, a forum for reading aloud and constructively criticizing student work, and the expectation that you will learn to create life on the page in a language natural to you. Genre writing will be discouraged. You will tell stories as only you can tell them. There will be no exercises or outside reading; the work must come from you. Regular attendance and spirited participation are valued highly – as is the ability to keep attacking the problems and challenges that present themselves.
ENG 6L Creative Writing: Fiction 6 Weesner
This course is an introduction to fiction writing. Throughout the semester our mission will be to demystify the essential elements of this art. Often we will come together as a workshop, where we will help a writer to see the range of possibility in his or her story. Other activities will include weekly readings from an anthology of contemporary fiction—to take apart, to study as potential models—and exercises that will allow for the practice of various fictional techniques. Of the two longer stories you write, one will be substantively revised. In a larger sense you will have the opportunity to locate both your creative voice and the stories you need to tell. By delving into the craft of fiction writing, we will uncover a measure of the mystery and art of literature.
ENG 6N Creative Writing: Journalism K+ MW Miller,N.
ENG 6O Creative Writing: Journalism E+ MW Miller,N.
This course is an introduction to the nuts-and-bolts of print journalism. We'll focus on researching and writing news stories, features, profiles, opinion pieces, and reviews. The aim of the course will be to develop reporting and interviewing skills, master journalistic principles and forms, and encourage clear thinking and clear writing. Students will cover stories both on- and off-campus. They will read their work in class, with class members taking on the roles of editors. We'll also take a close look at the local and national press and examine how they cover various stories.
ENG 6P Creative Writing: Poetry 11 Gibson
A workshop in writing poetry is a place to experiment. We will try on various accomplishments in the poetic tradition – metrics, rhyme schemes, free verse, stanza breaks, shapes, tone, even content, etc. In this class, you will sometimes attempt to imitate, and find it oddly liberating. You may throw out these experiments once accomplished, and try something entirely different. You may embrace old forms as your own. Sometimes, the very poems you've shied away from are the ones waiting to teach you! The class is a workshop with some assigned exercises.
ENG 6Q Creative Writing: Poetry F+ TF Goldsmith
This workshop-based class is designed for the beginning writer of poetry-whether fanatic or simply fan. The course will be comprised of two components—production of poetry and discussion of poetry. In production we will focus on the use of techniques such as imitation, dialogue, and concept exploration. In discussion we will learn to navigate and use workshop feedback to refine individual poems. The first tasks will take up the bulk of our class time, but the discussion of the culture of poetry is essential to our ability to produce quality work. We will move from a consideration of classical forms and examples to an examination of the most contemporary experimental work. Somewhere along the way, participants will find their unique voices and concerns, and ample opportunity to articulate them.
ENG 6R Creative Writing: Poetry 12 Richards
This course is designed to explore and expand your imagination. For this purpose, we will study some of the methods for writing and reading poems. Since one of the most effective methods is for writers to struggle and celebrate together, we will approach this workshop as an occasion for establishing such a community. We will develop a vocabulary of terms that will be useful, not only in discussing the poets we read, but also for assessing the needs and aspirations in our own work. We will study various moments in the poetic tradition, as well as some of the more exciting experiments in contemporary poetry. In addition to poets I admire, I'll share with you essays designed to demystify the relationship between your mind and the page.
ENG 6S Creative Writing: Poetry F+ TR Rivard
ENG 6T Creative Writing: Poetry 12 Rivard
My main goal in this course is to introduce you to some of the techniques of poetry writing. To do this, I'll share with you some poets whose work I admire, and help you develop a vocabulary of appreciation for the work of others, as well as some tools for criticizing your own work. Writing poems is a creative process, often mysterious, of discovery through language. Most of the time, you sit down not knowing what you're going to say, and then you say it. There are no rigid or absolute rules, but there are some common notions of craft that help. I'll be talking about metaphor and simile, tone, image, strategy and structure, point of view, etc. The class is run in workshop format, with assigned exercises.
ENG 6U Creative Writing: Poetry E+ MW Sneff
An immersion-course in the language of incantation. No particular background in poetry or poetry writing is required, but members of the class are expected to share a commitment to an exploration of the powers of the written and uttered word. I expect that at times this exploration may take us right off the page as we seek to widen the range of our poetic voices and sonic expressiveness, drawing from the models of -- to name just a few -- spells, chants, and lullabies, as well as from sonnets, villanelles, triolets, etc. This course is run as a workshop; subject matter of your poems will be up to you, but there will be weekly assignments to facilitate development of the ear, alertness to the poetic tradition, and a deep and inventive awareness of poetic structure.
ENG 10A Writing Fiction: Intermediate 7 Cantor
Students will read their own fiction in a workshop setting. We will try to discern what the story is trying to do, where it succeeds, and (supposing it's not perfect) how to make it better—but on its own terms. We will consider any kind of work, in any prose genre. The course is open to students who have taken English 5 or 6 without permission of the instructor, or to students who haven't taken the preliminary course, with permission.
ENG 10B Writing Fiction: Intermediate K+ MW Strong
English 10B is designed for students who have had some experience in writing fiction. It will provide deadlines, a forum for reading aloud and constructively criticizing each other's work, and the expectation that you will learn to create life on the page in a language natural to you. Genre writing will be discouraged. Regular attendance and spirited participation will be valued. A sample of your fiction (it needn't be long or completed, but it should be something you're pleased with) should be submitted to Professor Strong's mailbox or East Rm. 314 at pre-registration. A final class list may not be available until the first day of classes. Consent of instructor is required.
ENG 11A Intermediate Journalism J+ Levinson
This course offers an unusual opportunity for students to sharpen their reporting and writing skills while learning the craft and business of good journalism. They will work independently, covering topics of their choosing, as they practice the nuts and bolts of journalism: getting the story, finding and using sources, investigating and analyzing events, reporting accurately and engagingly, working with editors, and getting published. The class will also meet with professional journalists to discuss ethical, legal and practical issues in the news media. Qualified students should be familiar with the basics of news writing.
ENG 11B Non-fiction Writing D+ Ullman
A course intended to improve students' writing while they are discovering and exploring various forms of non-fiction: journals, journalism, autobiography, biographical or historical essays, reviews, features, magazine writing. I urge students to develop their own subjects and approaches.
ENG 14 The Writing of Fiction 7 Lebowitz
More advanced than English 10A and 10B, English 14 is intended for those people who have already taken a creative writing course or who have written a fair amount of fiction on their own. Those wishing to enroll should submit a sample of their writing at pre-registration. Consent of the instructor is required. English 14 may be repeated for credit.
ENG 22 Forms of Poetry 5 Digges
This course offers a more advanced approach to writing than English 5, as students put a greater pressure on experience and therefore the language of poetry. A number of contemporary texts will serve us as we investigate the tensions created between form and content, content and context. Our primary text will be the student work as we discuss the issues raised in your poems and experiment with various approaches to the language. At least eight poems will be turned in at the end of the term. A few short papers will be assigned as well. Those wishing to enroll must submit a sample of their writing at pre-registration to Professor Digges' mailbox on the second floor in East Hall. English 22 may be repeated for credit.
ENG 36 Black World Literature F+ TR Sharpe
This course is an introduction to African literature and the cultures of Africa and its diaspora in the US, the Caribbean and Britain. We will explore a variety of African cultural forms--fiction, film, drama, poetry--and trace their transformation and transmission. The selection of films and texts is not meant to be exhaustive but aims to allow us to begin examining the political and cultural meanings of the "black" world. Texts may include: Things Fall Apart, Nervous Conditions, In the Castle of My Skin, Maru, Disgrace.
ENG 52 General View of English Literature E+ MW Genster
A survey of English literature from the beginning through the eighteenth century. Readings will include; selections from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Spenser's Faerie Queene, Milton's Paradise Lost, and Swift's Gulliver's Travels; poems by Wyatt, Sidney, Shakespeare, Donne, Herbert, Marvell and Pope; and plays by Marlowe (Dr. Faustus) and Webster (The Duchess of Malfi). Designed as an introduction to the English major, this course will be of interest to anyone who wishes to gain both a broad overview of earlier English literature and a good understanding of the basic techniques of literary analysis. Class participation is encouraged; three papers and a final exam are required.
ENG 61 Short Fiction 0 Freedman Bellow
Chekhov, a novelist we'll read, tells us, "Odd, I have now a mania for shortness. Whatever I read – my own or other people's works – it all seems to me not short enough." Cast aside your weighty tomes and heed this call to brevity. In this course we'll choose the slimmest works of such writers as Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Flaubert, Kafka, Faulkner, Messud, Welty, Bellow, Roth, Spark and Amis.
ENG 64 American Fiction 1950 - present H+ TR Johnson, R.
American Fiction from 1950 to the Present: This study of diverse novels written after 1950 will focus on the emergence of the postmodern in U.S. arts and culture, with emphasis on formal developments, aesthetic consequences, and social implications. We will read a wide range of texts from a variety of American perspectives to explore the decline of canonical exclusivity and the rise of multicultural pluralism in American fiction. Our study will note the hybridization of forms and the appropriation of non-literary discourses to fashion fictive texts. It will consider as well the decentering of the traditional subject and the configuration of numerous and diverse subjectivities newly empowered in literary discourse and through social change in this period–the period which engendered and has become our present moment. Reading the texts against each other and in their moment of composition and publication, we will piece together an understanding of what it means to be "American" in the postmodern era. The course will ask you to think about whether, as it is already said, we are in the post-postmodern moment, and, if so, what that could mean in terms of trends and preferences in forms and styles of contemporary American literature.
Our readings will include authors such as Jack Kerouac, John Okada, Grace Metalious, Joan Didion, Hunter S. Thompson, Chuang Hua, Norman Mailer, Cynthia Ozick, Louise Erdrich, Andrew Holleran, Ishmael Reed, Douglas Coupland, Edwige Danticat, Jonathan Franzen.
ENG 68 Shakespeare L+ TBA
A close study of nine or ten plays. Reading will probably include the following: Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Taming of the Shrew, Twelfth Night, Othello, King Lear, Anthony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, and The Winter's Tale.
ENG 92A Contemporary Fiction G+ Genster
We will read a variety of very recent novels-- and perhaps some memoirs and a graphic novel in an attempt to figure out some connections between what's on our pages and what's on our minds. Discussion will attend closely to verbal construction and formal choices. Authors whose works may be studied include Alice Munro, Norman Rush, Salman Rushdie, Michael Ondaatje, Penelope Fitzgerald, Toni Morrison, Tobias Wolff, Nadine Gordimer, and John Updike.
ENG 92B Horror Stories M+ Litvak
What makes horror fiction and horror films horrifying? In this course, we will consider certain anxieties about gender, sexuality, class, and race, looking at how these anxieties produce a series of "horror effects." We will apply the insights of psychoanalysis and gender theory to such literary works as Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, E.T.A. Hoffmann's "The Sandman," J. Sheridan LeFanu's "Carmilla," Henry James's The Turn of the Screw, and Stephen King's Carrie, and to such films as Brian De Palma's Carrie, Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, John Carpenter's Halloween, Wes Craven's Scream, and Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream.
ENG 92C Contemporary African American Literature E+ MW Rodríguez
This course will take as its subject matter African-American literature produced since 1970. We will read a range of genres, including works of fiction, autobiography, drama, as well as critical and theoretical texts. Authors shall include Adrienne Kennedy, August Wilson, Michael Harper, Rita Dove, Patricia Williams, among others.
ENG 92D Conrad/Forster/Woolf G+ Rosenthal
In this class we will read works by three authors whose work has come to represent some of the exemplary moments within and problems of British literary modernism. Reading novels, stories and essays by each author, we will address the various meanings, marks and contestations of the modern. Because each author has a distinct and internally complex style, we will try to build our questions from the texts themselves, working towards a consideration of how style works, what it is, and how we understand its distinguishing marks. At the same time, we will follow crucial threads that run throughout the works: contested constructions of masculinity and femininity; the framing of power, authority and the possibilities for social change; the place of art, the artist and the artist-hero/heroine within modernity; representations of belonging and alienation, home and exile, metropolitan and colonial space. Students will write weekly response papers and two essays.