Subjects Taught by Semester

Prereq: none
3-0-9 HASS-H, CI-HW

The short-story writer Alice Munro accepted the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature expressing her “hope  [that] this would make people see the short story as an important art, not just something you played around with until you got a novel.” In this class, we’ll take Munro at her word and read a variety of short stories by writers including Amy Tan, Raymond Carver, John Updike, Tim O’Brien, Jamaica Kincaid, Sandra Cisneros, and Alice Munro herself. Of course reading stories for the sheer pleasure of it is one thing; thinking about what they might mean is another; expressing those thoughts in writing is still another. In this class, we’ll be doing all three. The goal will be to increase enjoyment in reading and in understanding, as well as to feel more confident in the ability to express oneself effectively, efficiently, and gracefully.

Prereq: none
3-0-9 HASS-H, CI-H

In this course we will weather famous literary storms featured in major fictional works from the late 19th century to the present day. We will use this thematic lens to think critically about the basic building blocks of fiction, and the way that fictional storms blur lines between setting, plot, characterization, suspense, and narrative structure. Short stories and novels include Kate Chopin’s “The Storm,” Zora Neal Hurston’s Their Eyes were Watching God, Ernest Hemingway’s “After the Storm,” James Joyce’s “The Dead,” Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse, Ben Lerner’s 10:04, and Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones. Some of our storms will be based upon actual events, including Hurricanes Katrina, Sandy, and Irene; this will raise complex questions about the boundaries between fictional and historical events. We will also use this topic to think about how fiction engages science, and to trace the ways in which environmental catastrophes intersect with racial and socioeconomic disparities.

Prereq: none
3-0-9 HASS-H, CI-H

An introduction to poetry in English, chiefly by British and American poets. We will explore Renaissance, eighteenth-century, Romantic, and Modernist poetry in particular detail. Though the organization of the subject is chronological, our focus will be less on names and dates than on cultivating skills in careful reading and effective writing. Poets to be read may include Shakespeare, Sidney, Wordsworth, Keats, Dickinson, Frost, Eliot, and Elizabeth Bishop.

Prereq: none
3-0-9 HASS-H, CI-H

Spaces and places do not just exist out there, but are made through the ways that we interact with them. Space is shaped through a huge variety of things, including maps, borders, transportation, traditions, customs, architecture, and the environment. And of course, different people experience place in different ways. In addition to this already-existing range of experience, we also invent places through literature, film, and visual art: what is the relationship between the written city and the lived city?

We will address these topics through contemporary literature by writers from a variety of global locations. In particular, we will address the question of how power affects our relationship to place, asking what effects differences of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, and disability have on experiencing and writing about space?

We will primarily read novels, but also short stories, films, and theoretical texts to develop critical thinking, reading and writing skills. This class is a CI-H subject, which means that it will provide you with a foundation in writing and oral communication. CI-H subjects require that you plan, organise, draft, and revise a series of sequenced assignments based on course material. These subjects require at least 20 pages of writing, typically divided among three to five assignments.

Prereq: none
3-0-9 HASS-H, CI-HW

William Shakespeare didn’t go to college. If he could time-travel like Dr. Who, he would be stunned to find his words on a university syllabus. But he would not be surprised at the way we will be using those words in this class, because the study of rhetoric was essential to all education in his day. We too will focus on communication using words, with Shakespeare as a capacious model and inspiration for dialogue, self-presentation, and writing.

By writing “with” Shakespeare—creatively, critically, in groups, and in a variety of media—you will have ample opportunity to explore the elements and occasions that shape effective, meaningful communication. In addition to famous speeches and sonnets, we will analyze film versions and perform scenes from what is now a “problem play,” The Merchant of Venice. Other plays will include one each from Shakespeare’s major tragedies, histories, and comedies. In all these cases, we will examine the reasons for Shakespeare’s enduring power and performance around the globe. Nevertheless, our aim is less to appreciate Shakespeare as an end in itself than to draw on his remarkable drama (its vocabulary, variety, and verbal command) in order to help you improve your own writing, speaking, analytic thinking, use of resources, and understanding of media today.

Prereq: none
3-3-6 HASS-A, CI-H

This course is an introductory survey of classic films. Emphasis falls equally on cultural and on artistic matters: on films as anthropological and historical artifacts that articulate the values and assumptions of particular societies and eras and on films as works of art.  The course aims to sharpen students’ analytic skills, to give them a sense of the history and cultural significance of movies, and to improve their writing.

Format: Two lectures (Tuesdays 3:30-5 and 7-7:30) and one recitation section each week (Thursdays 3-4 or 4-5 pm).  A screening of the required film(s) will follow the Tuesday evening lecture.

Writing requirements: The course satisfies the criteria for communication intensive subjects in the humanities, arts, and social sciences. Students are required to write a short (1-2 page) exercise in close reading of a scene or scenes from the silent shorts shown in the first weeks and two essays, totaling a minimum of 20 double-spaced typed pages, devoted to films studied during the term.

Exams: Three open-book take-home exams – the rough equivalent of problem sets – during the semester and a three-hour final during the exam period.

Prereq: none
3-0-9 HASS-H, CI-H

In this course, we will study fantasy narratives that invite readers to immerse themselves in enchanted alternative realms or magical worlds enmeshed within the realm of everyday life. Revisiting familiar environs such as Never Land, Narnia, Middle-Earth, and Hogwarts and concluding with a trip through more contemporary and diverse fantasylands, we will investigate how authors employ the tools of fiction to craft such convincing alternative worlds. Are these fantasies an escapist solution to the problem of modern disenchantment, or can we tell some more complicated story about their emergence and function? Since creative writers are themselves astute critics of fantasy, we will take inspiration from Ursula K. Le Guin, Lev Grossman, and other writers for whom criticism itself constitutes a creative act.

Prereq: none
3-0-9 HASS-H, CI-H

Geoffrey Chaucer, Selected ‘Canterbury Tale,’

William Shakespeare, ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’

Jonathan Swift, ‘Gulliver’s Travels’,’A Modest Proposal’,

Jane Austen, ‘Pride and Prejudice’,

Lewis Carroll, ‘Alice in Wonderland’

Oscar Wilde, ‘The Importance of Being Earnest.’

Robert Browning, “’My Last Duchess’ and other poems,

Henry James, ‘Daisy Miller’

Mark Twain, “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’

Anton Chekhov, ‘The Cherry Orchard’

Samuel Beckett, ‘Waiting for Godot’

films, videos, performance:

‘I Love Lucy’

‘My Beautiful Laundrette’

‘Modern Times’

‘East is East’

Monty Python skits

‘Get Out’

and Gilbert and Sullivan production

Prereq: none
2-0-4 Can be repeated for credit

Although the term implies spontaneity, haste, improvisation, and ephemerality, the sketch has endured and flourished for centuries.  Sketches appear in many forms (artistic, literary, dramatic) and with different aims (moral, biographical, journalistic, comic). This class samples American sketch artists and work ranging from the romantic musings of Washington Irving and Nathaniel Hawthorne, to satiric essays of Fanny Fern, Mark Twain, Dorothy Parker, Alice Childress, Nora Ephron, and David Sedaris, as well, according to the interests of the class, as televisual sketches by a wide range of comics.

Prereq: none
2-0-4 Can be repeated for credit; second half of term

How have digital media changed the way authors write? How has the internet affected literary texts and the ways they conceive of memory, information, identity, space, and time? This class tests that question by examining authors whose careers span the digital age (roughly from the early 1980s to the current moment). We will explore early and later works by Philip Roth (Goodbye, Columbus and The Human Stain) and Toni Morrison (Sula, God Help the Child). Then we will look at authors who foreground digital media and devices: Chimimanda Ngoza Adichie (Americanah) and/or Mohsin Hamid (Exit West).  Besides giving us an opportunity to compare books by a range of contemporary authors, this experiment will draw attention to such topics as reading habits, fans and audiences, the economics of publishing, and the migrations of narrative across different cultural spaces and media forms.

Prereq: none
3-0-9 HASS-H

The course that North America is on in the present moment can make imagining a liveable future seem like an impossible task: an increasing gap between rich and poor, continued warfare, and the looming disaster of environmental collapse. One response to this by writers has been to represent an apocalyptic future, often including zombies, climate catastrophes, and biological pandemics.

This seminar is not about these writers. Rather than the relative luxury of being able to imagine a future-world that is worse than ours, some writers – typically minority writers – argue that the world is already pretty apocalyptic in 2018. These writers choose to use the imaginative potential of science fiction and speculative fiction to rewrite our collective future. By tackling the social injustice of the present, these writers invite us to imagine our future differently.

Specifically, this intermediate literature class will focus on global science fiction from the last two decades, including short stories, novels, and films. Our texts will address topics such as: race, indigeneity, LGBTQIA+ and gender rights, mass incarceration and police violence, immigrant rights, and environmental devastation, and colonialism/settler colonialism.

Prereq: none
3-0-9 HASS-A

The course focuses on one methodology and includes two large-scale creative projects which students undertake individually.

NARRATIVE THEORY is the methodology. We study narratology (narrative theory) to gain a better understanding of the form and function of narratives in general, and to be able to discuss and work with the elements and aspects of interactive narrative particularly. Narrative theory is introduced throughout the first half of the course, during the FORKING PATHS unit, and is applied in the ELECTRONIC LITERATURE unit as well.

FORKING PATHS. We study non-linear print pieces of different sorts –not only the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure series but other juvenile fiction books of similarly unusual structure; parodies of Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books; literary works such as those by Saporta, Queneau, Mathews, Pavić, Coover, and others; and comics by Jason Shiga and others. Students write their own creative multisequential print piece.

ELECTRONIC LITERATURE. We focus on digital work that has narrative as an important component. Often, the “user” or “reader” is the one who gets to produce the narratives by interacting. A narrative electronic literature work can be a structured document that the interactor can traverse in many ways or a more complex computer program that simulates a world, accepts English input, and perhaps does other interesting things. This includes many computer and video games, including interactive fiction, along with classic and more recent hypertext fictions, visual novels, and many other examples of creative computing. The main project for the term is to create a work of electronic literature of some sort, which can be done by programming or for instance by creating a hypertextual work, which does not require programming.

Prereq: 21L.607 or permission of instructor
3-0-3; second half of term

Introductory Greek subject for students with some prior knowledge of basic grammar and vocabulary. Intended to refresh and enrich ability to read ancient and/or medieval literary and historical texts. May be taken independently of Greek I with permission of instructor. Greek I and Greek II may be combined by petition (after completion of both) to count as a single HASS Elective.

Prereq: none
2-0-4 HASS-H

Read Latin literature in the original language! This year, our text will be the poems—carmina—of the Roman poet Catullus, famous for his playful epigrams, his heartfelt love songs, and his rich mythological tales in hexameter.  21L.613 serves as a bridge for students with one semester or more of formal Latin training (Latin 1/2, high school Latin, or equivalent) between the study of Latin grammar and vocabulary and the reading of Latin authors. 21L.614 offers more of a challenge for advanced readers. They run simultaneously and each may be repeated once for credit.

Prereq: Two subjects in Literature
3-0-9 HASS-H, CI-M; Can be repeated for credit

This seminar will explore narratives of vengeance, from the horrific to the comic and the parodic, across a range of time periods and cultures. Our goal will be to study the mechanics, ethics, and aesthetics of payback. Alongside plays, books, and films, we will be reading critical and theoretical essays that will help sharpen our understanding of such stories and their enduring relevance.

Prereq: Two subjects in Literature
3-0-9 HASS-H, CI-M; Can be repeated for credit

After the medieval legends of King Arthur, and before modern fantasy novels and role-playing games, lies Spenser’s epic poem, The Faerie Queene. FQ — written by a contemporary of Shakespeare’s — weaves together quests, moral allegory, political argument, apocalyptic vision, gender play and comedy into a sequence of multi-layered stories loosely connected by the youthful Arthur’s search for the Faerie Queene. Each of its major characters seeks to complete a series of tasks and ordeals linked to one of the qualities a perfect man should have. At least, that’s the job the poet initially sets out to do ….

Each week, we will storyboard the action of the poem, visualizing the arcs of characters and narrative and mapping the spaces through which they progress. Alongside our reading in FQ, we will pay attention to its prehistory in medieval chivalric romance; its historical context, in an England struggling to found an empire and build a national identity; and its afterlives, in fantasy genres and modern allegory.

Work for the class will involve short written and oral research presentations; analytic writing; and a modest amount of creative work.