Search Results

Haunted by Unnameable Doom — LIT2576.01

Instructor: Manuel Gonzales
Days & Time: WE 2:10pm-5:50pm
Credits: 4

Halfway through John Milton's epic poem, Paradise Lost, he admits to the reader in his call to the Muses that he has "fallen on evil days" and into unwelcome solitude, caught "[i]n darkness, with dangers compassed round." Milton wrote Paradise Lost under epically gnarly circumstances -- jailed and fined for backing the failed removal and execution of the King, going blind, having lost his wife and son to illness.

Reading & Writing Poetry: Audacity, Excess, Extravagance — LIT4611.01

Instructor: Franny Choi
Days & Time: WE 2:10pm-5:50pm
Credits: 4

William Wordsworth said that “poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” Emily Dickinson said, “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” Allen Ginsberg said: “Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!”  This is a poetry workshop about subverting expectations, breaking patterns, being drama queens, and generally doing too much. How do we write poems that crack through the haze of decorum? How do we say it like it is, but without being plain or cliche?

Reading & Writing Fiction: Writing the Body — LIT4604.01

Instructor: Mariam Rahmani
Days & Time: WE 2:10pm-5:50pm
Credits: 4

This Reading & Writing Fiction course focuses on the novel, and in particular on reading and writing the body, with an emphasis on femininity. We will look at both the construction of and conspicuous erasure of the femme/feminine body. We will treat gender as a construct, discussing gender normativity, ciswomanhood, transness, and other related subjects and subjectivities.

Translating from Zero — LIT2573.01

Instructor: Mariam Rahmani
Days & Time: TU,FR 2:10pm-4:00pm
Credits: 4

Designed to help beginner translators with no experience build their own ethical translation practices—with attention to issues of race, gender, and queerness—this course offers an introduction to translation via a hands-on approach. What pronouns do you use when translating from a language that doesn’t have gendered pronouns? Do you translate slurs? We will tackle these questions, plus the basics, thinking about a work’s tone, audience, and sociohistorical context in order to bring it to life in English.

Early Christian and Sufi Mystics — LIT2579.01

Instructor: An Duplan
Days & Time: TU,FR 2:10pm-4:00pm
Credits: 4

Mystics––historically portrayed as passionate, dangerous, romantic, heretical, satanic––are a thorn in the side of organized religion. From the very beginnings of recorded human time, the presence and practice of mystics has been controversial. Sufi mystic al-Hallaj’s pronouncement that he was “the Truth” was received as blasphemy by the orthodoxy. His execution followed shortly after. Christian mystics of the 4th and 5th centuries were relegated to practicing outside the peripheries of the Roman Empire, in relative secrecy.