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Term
Time & Day Offered
Level
Credits
Course Duration

Reading and Writing Poetry: Lyric Persona — LIT4130.01

Fall 2019
Instructor: Anna Maria Hong
Credits: 4
Lyric poems express the thoughts, feelings, and perceptions of a single, first-person speaker, often aligned with the poet themselves. Persona poems or dramatic monologues invoke the mask of another figure—fictional character, animal, plant, object, or person—to convey idea, emotion, and voice. Reading a diverse array of poems by poets from different eras, nations, and
Literature

Reading and Writing Poetry: Poetics and Perception — LIT4356.01

Spring 2015
Instructor: Dan Chelotti
Credits: 4
In this intensive poetry writing workshop, we will study essays, poetic theories, and manifestos that argue for varying models of perception and approaches to perception on the page. We will begin with 19th century poets such as Dickinson and Wordsworth and as the semester progresses, we will read increasingly more contemporary work: poets to be read may include Lorine
Literature

Reading and Writing Poetry: Poet’s Proof—Existential, Ephemeral, Ethereal, Empirical, and Other Evidences — LIT4377.01

Spring 2022
Instructor: Jenny Boully
Credits: 4
In her 1983 essay, “A Poet’s Prose,” Susan Sontag set out to demarcate what exactly marks exemplary prose written by poets. Similarly, in this course, we will aim to demarcate “A Poet’s Proof;” that is, we will attempt to name and showcase the very many intangible evidences that a poet brings forth in making manifest in language those otherwise hazy, hidden, and invisible
Literature

Reading and Writing Poetry: Refusals and Mythic Transformations — LIT4532.01

Spring 2021
Instructor: Jenny Boully
Credits: 4
What happens when a poem no longer behaves, when an orderly book of verse begins to display signs of the disorderly? In this course, we will examine poetry books that begin well behaved only to enter into the realm of rebellion. The poet seems to have derailed from their tidiness, their perfected planned lines. The outcome is often explosive, both formally and linguistically,
Literature

Reading and Writing Poetry: the Art of Revision — LIT4239.01

Spring 2019
Instructor: Natalie Scenters-Zapico
Credits: 4
Kevin Young writes about the haunting qualities of revision in The Grey Album, “…I have been thinking about the idea of a shadow book—a book that we don’t have, but know of, a book that may haunt the very book we have in our hands.” Every writer must become enamored with the art of revision, and become familiar with the many shadows, or potential iterations, of any poem. In
Literature

Reading and Writing Poetry: The Poet's Toolkit — LIT4251.01

Fall 2013
Instructor: Monica Youn
Days & Time: TBA
Credits: 4
In this course, students will hone and sharpen their poetic craft through an extensive focus on the materials and techniques of their art form. Starting from the basic building block of the poem - the individual word or sound, students will engage in a series of exercises that are designed to deepen their appreciation of structure, craft, and form. We will devote special
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Reading and Writing Poetry: Word Choice and Linebreak — LIT4292.01

Fall 2023
Instructor: Michael Dumanis
Credits: 4
This workshop-based creative writing course starts with the premise that every time we put a word down on a page or break a line at a particular point, we are making a choice of genuine consequence. The process of writing a poem is ultimately a sequence of these seemingly small choices and the particular arrangement of words and lines in our poems is more responsible for how
Literature

Reading and Writing Poetry: Word Choice and Linebreak — LIT4276.01

Fall 2018
Instructor: Michael Dumanis
Credits: 4
This workshop-based poetry course starts with the premise that every time we put a word down on a page or break a line at a particular point, we are making a choice of genuine consequence. The process of writing a poem is ultimately a sequence of these seemingly small choices and the particular arrangement of words and lines in our poems is more responsible for how the poems
Literature

Reading and Writing Poetry: Word Choice and Linebreak — LIT4292.01

Fall 2020
Instructor: Michael Dumanis
Credits: 4
This workshop-based poetry course starts with the premise that every time we put a word down on a page or break a line at a particular point, we are making a choice of genuine consequence. The process of writing a poem is ultimately a sequence of these seemingly small choices and the particular arrangement of words and lines in our poems is more responsible for how the poems
Literature

Reading and Writing Short Stories — LIT4219.01

Fall 2014
Instructor: benjamin anastas
Days & Time: TBA
Credits: 4
This is a course for fiction writers on how to write a short story, a genre we'll define using the formula first proposed by Edgar Allan Poe: a work of fiction that can be read in one sitting. Students can expect to read about forty stories over the semester from a wide range of periods and traditions; write frequent exercises to begin the term; and produce two complete stories
Literature

Reading and Writing Short Stories — LIT4211.01

Spring 2014
Instructor: Rebecca Godwin
Credits: 4
We'll read some 40 stories in this class-mostly contemporary, although we will include a few glorious others-and look for what makes them, well, stories. That's part one. Part two is writing: first bits and pieces, scenes and dialogue and narrative explorations, and then a couple of polished stories to discuss in workshops and revise. Intensive engagement in reading, writing,
Literature

Reading and Writing Short Stories — LIT4219.01

Fall 2015
Instructor: Benjamin Anastas
Days & Time: TBA
Credits: 4
This is a course for fiction writers on how to write a short story, a genre we’ll define using the formula first proposed by Edgar Allan Poe: a work of fiction that can be read in one sitting. Students can expect to read about forty stories over the semester from a wide range of periods and traditions; write frequent exercises to begin the term; and produce two complete stories
Literature

Reading and Writing Short Stories: Narrative Shape-Shifting — LIT4003.01

Spring 2023
Instructor: Michael Dumanis
Credits: 4
The traditional short story often follows a traditional form. A story begins when some clear incident incites a causal chain of events. Over the course of these events, action and tension breathe life into the story until it reaches a climactic scene. When the balloon can get no fuller, it pops, deflates, or sails away (this is known as the denouement). In this class, we will
Literature

Reading and Writing Short Stories: the Technology of Heartbreak — LIT4255.01

Fall 2018
Instructor: Manuel Gonzales
Credits: 4
Reading both contemporary short fiction and work from the canon, we will discuss voice, structure, plot, and character to explore the mechanics of breaking a reader's heart. How do you write a compelling and heartbreaking story that isn't simply a manipulative one-note dirge? How do you jump start that alchemical process that transforms tiny black and white symbols on the page
Literature

Reading and Writing the City — LIT4253.01

Spring 2015
Instructor: Benjamin Anastas
Credits: 4
***Time Change*** Rilke and Walter Benjamin stalked Paris; Virginia Woolf and Charles Dickens walked London's streets at night; H.P. Lovecraft scoured the sewers underneath Providence; a whole universe of writers (Edith Wharton, Herman Melville, Joseph Mitchell) saw New York through unromantic eyes. In this course we'll read fiction and non-fiction about the city from across
Literature

Reading and Writing the City — LIT4253.01

Fall 2016
Instructor: Benjamin Anastas
Credits: 4
Rilke and Walter Benjamin stalked Paris; Virginia Woolf and Charles Dickens walked London’s streets at night; H.P. Lovecraft scoured the sewers underneath Providence; a whole universe of writers (Edith Wharton, Herman Melville, Joseph Mitchell) saw New York through unromantic eyes. In this course we’ll read fiction and non-fiction about the city from across the urban canon,
Literature

Reading and Writing the City — LIT4253.01

Fall 2018
Instructor: Benjamin Anastas
Credits: 4
In the beginning of the 20th century, when metropolitan life was being chronicled by some of the era’s greatest writers, artists, and thinkers for the depths of its miseries and high of its nervous splendors, only 10% of the world’s population lived in urban centers. Today, more than 75% of the world’s citizens live in cities. The city of our new century bears little
Literature

Reading and Writing the First Novel — LIT4282.01

Spring 2017
Instructor: Benjamin Anastas
Credits: 4
Some writers are born gradually over a body of early work that allows them to develop a signature style and a series of concerns that will flower over time, while other writers are seemingly born complete--like Athena emerging whole from Zeus's head--with their first novels. We will read a wide selection of remarkable first novels over the term (examples include The
Literature

Reading and Writing the Lyric Essay — LIT4166.01

Spring 2015
Instructor: Mark Wunderlich
Credits: 4
***Time Change*** The lyric essay is a term given to work that is both poetic and discursive and that defies clear categorization. In these hybrid forms, the essayist may begin breaking into lines of verse, or poet may engage in a lengthier argument too rangy for the confines of a syllable count. In this course we will read Whitman's Specimen Days, Dickinson's letters, short
Literature

Reading and Writing the Lyric Essay — LIT4166.01

Spring 2019
Instructor: Mark Wunderlich
Credits: 4
The lyric essay is a term given to work that is both poetic and discursive and that defies clear categorization. In these hybrid forms, the essayist may begin breaking into lines of verse, or poet may engage in a lengthier argument too rangy for the confines of a syllable count. In this course we will read Whitman’s Specimen Days, Dickinson’s letters, short essays by Virginia
Literature

Reading and Writing the Natural World — LIT4133.01

Spring 2016
Instructor:
Credits: 4
John Burroughs wrote that “Until science is mixed with emotion and appeals to the heart and imagination, it is like dead organic matter; and when it is so mixed and so transformed, it is literature.”  Using this directive, students would be asked to document their own observations of the natural world; field notes and almanac will serve as raw material from which to
Environment Literature

Reading and Writing the Poetry of Trauma and Violence — LIT4264.01

Fall 2016
Instructor: Michael Dumanis
Credits: 4
Students will read various poetry collections that deal with different forms of trauma: homophobia, lynching, war, sexual abuse, colonization, and the overall idea of how to define “violence.” There will be time to discuss prosodic interests of our poets as well as discuss how content and form work together to create a seamless work. We will then turn to our own work and
Literature

Reading and Writing the Short Story: The Body — LIT4005.01

Spring 2024
Instructor: Carly Rudzinski
Credits: 4
Good writing is often described as vivid, visceral, sensual, and therefore rooted in the body. But what makes writing feel embodied? What makes personal bodily experiences feel fleshed out on the page? And how can we use our body as a writing resource? This workshop-based creative writing class will examine the narrative techniques and stylistic choices of a variety of body
Literature

Reading and Writing Travel — LIT4265.01

Spring 2018
Instructor: Benjamin Anastas
Credits: 4
In her poem “Questions of Travel,” Elizabeth Bishop writes, Should we have stayed at home and thought of here? / Where should we be today? / Is it right to be watching strangers at play / In this strangest of theaters? This is the lament of every traveler, and the restlessness of these lines speaks directly to the literary practice we call ‘travel writing.’ We will examine the
Literature