Spring 2024 Special Topic: Unsettling, Absurd, In Yer Face, Shocking & New

This course offers you an overview of the best writing for the modern and contemporary stage. After surveying some of the key figures who revolutionized theater in the early twentieth century, we'll sample such contemporary genres as absurdist drama, psychological gothic, “in yer face” theater, work by African-American, Latinx, queer and immigrant writers, documentary theater, and plays that incorporate new media. We'll be asking how theater addressed changes in its status and social function in the eras of film, television and the internet, how plays engage with identity politics both on and off the stage, and how and why contemporary theater has taken up controversial dramatic techniques like sex, shock, violence and audience participation. Interspersed in our conversations will also be snippets from key theorists of modern theater, so we can address the philosophies behind the plays. Where they are available, we'll also look at video and filmed performances to see how practitioners have realized and adapted these works. 

This course satisfies the Genres or Theory requirement for general ENGLISH majors. 

This course satisfies a Post-1800 Literature requirement for ENGL: LITERATURE, ENGL: TBD, ENGL/JOURNALISM majors. 

This course counts as an Upper Level Literature requirement for ENGL TEACHING majors.

This course may be taken for Capstone credit by general ENGLISH majors following requirement guidelines in place prior to Fall 2023. Fill out a Capstone Declaration form (available in the main English office,  Ham Smith 230F) if you wish to declare it as Capstone. 

Spring 2024 Special Topic: American Photographs & American Narratives

“A picture is worth a thousand words.”  If so, how deceptively it works upon our hearts, our minds, and our imaginations! 

How has the camera shaped the way we see ourselves, and the world around us?  What kinds of ethical and aesthetic concerns are involved in recording "reality?"  How do photographs tell stories, and with what consequences?  In what ways do photographers borrow literary or political or scientific images, and how do writers and scholars in other fields borrow photographic techniques?  How have photographers--sometimes self-consciously and sometimes unwittingly--affected how we think about national identity? What does something “American” look like, anyway?

This seminar will explore these questions by looking at both pictures and stories.  We’ll concentrate on the late nineteenth century, when photography was a relatively new technology, to the mid-twentieth century, before new communications technologies changed the way still images were received.  We’ll look at a wide range of images through the lenses of, for example, fiction, documentary, photographic theory, photojournalism, catalogues, exhibits, and local archives; we’ll pair photographers and writers; and we’ll spend time in the present, looking backwards at old archives.  I anticipate that some of you will also look forward to how these questions inform our understanding of emerging technologies--at the end of the class, you’ll have an opportunity to explore these larger questions in a research topic of your choice.

Possibilities:

• Susan Sontag, On Photography
• John Berger and Jean Mohr, Another Way of Telling
• Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country of the Pointed Firs (with Emma Duncan Sewall)
• Yoshiko Uchida, Desert Exile (with Ansel Adams)
• James Agee and Walker Evans, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
• Langston Hughes and Roy DeCarava, The Sweet Flypaper of Life 
• Leslie Marmon Silko, Storyteller
• Lucy Lippard, Partial Recall

This course satisfies the DH "Digital Humanities" requirement for ENGL:TBD majors. 

This course satisfies a Post-1800 Literature requirement for ENGL:TBD, ENGL/JOURNALISM majors. 

This course may count as an Upper Level English elective for ENGL TEACHING majors. 

This course satisfies the general ENGLISH CAPSTONE for students following major requirement guidelines in place Fall 2023 and beyond. 

This course satisfies the ENGLISH LITERATURE Capstone requirement. 

This course may be taken for Capstone credit by general ENGLISH majors following requirement guidelines in place prior to Fall 2023. Fill out a Capstone Declaration form (available in the main English office,  Ham Smith 230F) if you wish to declare it as Capstone. 

Spring 2024 Special Topic: Teaching Media & Information Literacy

A 2022 Pew Research Center study shows that “97% of teens say they use the internet daily,” and almost half report being online “almost constantly.”  While these statistics offer a glimpse of social media use in particular, they nevertheless provide a starting point for thinking about the media and information landscape students encounter on a daily basis. 

In this class, we will consider how to navigate a world of information and media, developing approaches to media and information literacy as well as strategies for their teaching.  Members of the class will read, discuss, and produce work in varied formats, thinking about how to foster responsible consumers and creators of media and information. 

This course satisfies the Capstone requirement for ENGLISH TEACHING majors. 

In Spring 2024 this course will satisfy a DH "Digital Humanities" requirement for ENGL:TBD majors. 

This course may be taken for Capstone credit by general ENGLISH majors following requirement guidelines in place prior to Fall 2023, pending Instructor approval. Fill out a Capstone Declaration form (available in the main English office,  Ham Smith 230F) if you wish to declare it as Capstone.