2022-2023 English and Creative Writing Courses
A full list of courses that the English department offers can be found here and a full list of Creative Writing classes can be found here. All classes are in-person unless otherwise specified.
Fall Courses
English 201 - Introduction to Narrative
British Jewish ExperienceLaura Leibman - Tue/Thurs 10:30-11:50 a.m.
One-unit semester course. Expelled in 1290, Jews officially returned to England in 1656, and then only because their entrance was interpreted by the Puritan government as a harbinger of the Messiah’s own return. Despite this promise, it would take nearly 200 more years for British Jews to achieve full rights as citizens. The British Jewish Experience covers Jews’ presence as both authors and figures in British literature between 1840 and the present, during which Jews grappled with belonging and negotiated their contribution to English society. This course serves as an introduction to narrative and covers a range of genres such as fiction, diaries, autobiography, biography, television, and drama. Authors include Grace Aguilar, Benjamin Disraeli, Lady Montefiore, George Eliot, Amy Levy, Israel Zangwill, Daniel Abse, Andrea Levy, Charlotte Mendelsohn, and Naomi Alderman. Conference.
English 205 - Introduction to Fiction
Tolkien and LewisMichael Faletra - Mon/Wed/Fri 11:00-11:50 a.m.
One-unit semester course. The imaginative writings of the Oxford scholars J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis constitute some of the most widely read, most beloved, and most pervasively influential fiction of the twentieth century. The two friends shared drafts of their work and presided together over a group of like-minded writers and thinkers. Across all their varied writings—and especially in their construction of fictive worlds—Tolkien and Lewis both thought of themselves as effecting a resistance to the prevailing literary and cultural pieties of modernity. And yet the two men were also temperamentally quite different and often aesthetically in deep tension with one another. In this course, we will compare the ways Lewis and Tolkien deploy genre, character, diction, narrative voice, imagery, and other literary techniques in the construction of their various fantastic worlds. We will consider too, the ways in which both writers articulated their commitment to a Christian worldview (and their opposition to “the machine”) and how they both came to understand the power and purpose of mythology. We will also have occasion to think through together how Tolkien and Lewis reproduced certain problematic aspects of the racism and sexism of their culture and how these might affect our evaluation of their works. To all these ends, we will read a generous selection from their most important writings, including J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings (in its entirety), and Smith of Wootton Major, his essay “On Fairy Stories,” and excerpts from his Silmarillion; as well as C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters, his science-fiction novels Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra, two volumes of his Chronicles of Narnia, and his late, possibly brilliant novel Till We Have Faces. We will preface our analysis of their fictions by reading important works that influenced them by George MacDonald and William Morris. Conference.
English 212 - British Poetry
Early Modern Woman
Lucía Martinez Valdivia - Tues/Thurs 12:00-1:20pm or Tues/Thurs 1:40-3:00 p.m.
One-unit semester course. Queen Elizabeth I was both an exception and an ideal in early modern England: a woman, ruling a patriarchal nation, about whom countless poems were written. She was also a poet in her own right, serving as both literary subject and object, and the same was true of women at all levels of society. This course introduces students to the range of poetry written by and about women in early modern England. In particular, it examines the ways in which sixteenth- and seventeenth-century poets represented the relationship of English womanhood to the world that produced and surrounded it, at home and abroad. What can we learn from both idealized and realistic portrayals of early modern women? To what extent do changes in literature reflect shifts in English history and culture, including the intersections of religion, politics, science, and class and gender relations? In considering these questions, students will develop a formal analytical vocabulary and skills central to the reading and studying of poetry. This course applies toward the pre-1700 requirement. Conference.
English 261 - Introduction to Film
Film Noir
Maureen Harkin - Tues/Thurs 1:40-3:00 p.m. or Tues/Thurs 3:10-4:30 p.m., Screenings: Tues 6:10-9:00 p.m.
One-unit semester course. This course will focus on film noir in American cinema in the 1940s and 1950s, examining its plotlines and narrative methods as well as its distinctive visual style. Students will be introduced to the language of film analysis and trace the genre’s sources in “hard-boiled” detective fiction, German expressionism, and the cultural climate of the United States in the decades in which the films were produced. Questions about visual framing, narrative structure, and genre will inform readings and discussions, as will the films’ representations of tensions in postwar social roles. The course will conclude with a consideration of one or two more recent examples of “neo-noir.” Required readings on film and narrative theory; directors will include Billy Wilder, Orson Welles, Jacques Tourneur, Fritz Lang, Howard Hawks, and Michael Curtiz. Conference-screenings.
The Western
Johnathan Sanders - Tues/Thurs 4:40-6:00 p.m., Screenings: Weds 6:10-9:00 p.m.
One-unit semester course. Film studies scholar Robert Ray once wrote that “many of Classic Hollywood’s genre movies, like many of the most important American novels, were thinly camouflaged westerns.” This course seeks to investigate that claim by examining film form, genre, and history through the lens of the cinematic Western, with all of the idealism and ugliness the subject entails. While the beginning of the course will focus primarily on the Western as imagined in classical Hollywood, our analysis will eventually track the genre’s development into the modern day. We will watch and analyze films by directors including John Ford, John Huston, George Stevens, Sergio Leone, Richard Altman, Katherine Bigelow, Mario van Peebles, Ang Lee, and Quentin Tarantino. In addition to illuminating the concept of genre study and the history of US film, this course will view the Western as a barometer of both of American social anxieties and ideologies as the genre (and the nation) continually reinvents itself over time. Conference-screenings.
English 301 - Junior Seminar in English Literary History
Sarah Wagner-McCoy - Tues/Thurs 9:00-10:20 a.m.
One-unit semester course. This course offers a study of the methods and a sample of the materials of English and American literary history. Offered in two or three sections each year with different emphases, this course engages the in-depth study of one work and its precursors, influences, and effects, or may study a range of works attending to intertextual transformations and generic change. The course will also include substantial reading in literary theory, and students will develop their own critical history, together with an annotated bibliography of the work of a major author. This course is primarily for English majors, for whom the junior seminar is usually required no later than the end of the junior year. Prerequisite: junior standing and two 200-level English courses. Conference. May not be repeated for credit.
English 333 - Studies in Fiction
James Joyce
Jay Dickson - Tues/Thurs 10:30-11:50 a.m.
One-unit semester course. In 2022, the hundredth-anniversary year of the publication of Ulysses, critics and scholars have repeatedly hailed James Joyce as the most influential and important fiction writer of the twentieth century, noting that he effectively rewrote the configurations and capabilities of the short story, novel, and epic. Over the track of his career, Joyce’s fiction progressed from its roots in literary naturalism to more complex modernist forms, exhibiting his uncanny ability to master and also invent different rhetorical discourses. This course tracks the full range of this development, from his earliest fictions in Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man all the way through brief selections from his last and most difficult work, Finnegans Wake; we will focus particular attention on the entirety of Ulysses. We will pay attention as well to critical, biographical, and historical contexts for Joyce’s work. Conference.
English 356 - Studies in African American Literature
Douglass/Delany
Pancho Savery - Mon/Wed/Fri 10:00-10:50 p.m.
One-unit semester course. Most people are aware of the seemingly opposed positions of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X during the 1960s about what course African Americans should take to achieve full freedom. This debate, however, goes back to the nineteenth century, with Frederick Douglass and Martin Delany taking opposing positions. Delany, despite having been admitted to Harvard Medical School in 1850 and kicked out after a month because white students protested, and having served as a major in the Civil War, believed, long before Marcus Garvey, that African Americans had no future in the United States and started a movement to emigrate to Africa. Douglass, in opposition, believed the only future was in the United States. We will read fiction and speeches by both men, including Delany’s novel Blake; or the Huts of America (1862), written in response to Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which he believed portrayed slaves as too passive. Prerequisite: two English courses at the 200 level or above, or consent of the instructor. This course applies toward the pre-1900 requirement. Conference. Cross-listed as Comparative Race and Ethnicity Studies 336.
English 362 - Studies in Early Modern Literature
John Donne
Lucía Martínez Valdivia - Weds 1:10-4:00pm
One-unit semester course. Obsessed with death, love, piety, loss, science, and the power of the written word, John Donne lived and worked on very private and public levels throughout his career. This course will consider the writer who noted that “no man is an island” and pondered “for whom the bell tolls,” reading the prose works in which these words first appeared together with his poetry and letters. We will also consider adaptations of Donne’s poetry and concerns by other writers in other genres in the seventeenth century; modern engagements with his work; and critical receptions from his death to the present. This course will assume familiarity with prosodic analysis. Prerequisite: two English courses at the 200 level or above (English 211, 212, or 213 strongly recommended), or consent of the instructor. This course applies toward the pre-1700 requirement. Conference.
Gender, Sex, and Sexuality in Early Modern Drama
Simone Waller - Mon/Weds 1:10-2:30 p.m.
One-unit semester course. This course explores early modern drama’s engagement with intersecting questions of gender, sex, and sexuality in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. Readings will include an introduction to influential criticism in the history of sexuality and literary criticism employing feminist and queer approaches to the plays. Authors will include Elizabeth Cary, Margaret Cavendish, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, Mary Sidney, and Ben Jonson. Prerequisite: two English courses at the 200 level or above. This course applies toward the pre-1700 requirement. Conference.
Creative Writing 201 - Introduction to Creative Writing
The Short Story
Pete Rock - Tues/Thurs 1:10-2:30 p.m.
One-unit semester course. In this course students will write short stories, and read the work of their classmates as well as that of published authors. Close attention will be paid to the narrative strategies used by writers such as Alice Munro, Jamaica Kincaid, Lydia Davis, George Saunders, and Yasunari Kawabata to help the students in writing their own fiction. We will consider these various strategies when reading and responding to the work of peers. Class sessions will be used for discussion of assigned readings and work in progress. Enrollment limited to 15. Prerequisites: a writing sample of three to five pages, at least sophomore standing, and consent of the instructor. Conference.
Creative Writing 224 - Poetry Studio I
Rearranging the MirrorsJae Yeun Choi - Tues/Thurs 10:30-11:50 a.m.
One-unit semester course. In Cole Swensen’s poem “The Painter Rearranges the Mirrors,” she writes “you open a little door. the door could be anywhere.” This line will serve as our governing precept to create entry points for approaching and writing poems. We will examine the poem as portal, as all-access pass of our own making with any other door left ajar ours to enter at will. In practical terms, this translates to weekly writing exercises and in-depth class discussion while reading a wide range of published works to develop critical skills and creative strategies beneficial to a sustainable writing practice. Emphasis will be placed on encouraging and reviewing student work within a workshop format. Enrollment limited to 15. Prerequisite: a writing sample of three to five pages of poems and consent of instructor. Conference.
Creative Writing 321 - Special Topics Studio
The Real and the FantasticPete Rock -Tues/Thurs 10:30-11:50 a.m.
One-unit semester course. This workshop is designed for students with considerable experience in writing short fiction. Readings and discussion will focus on storytelling that relies upon a “realistic” depiction of our world, combined with narratives that contain events and situations that are exaggerated, surreal, speculative, and/or out of the “ordinary.” How are such stories similar, and how are they different? Students will read published stories by writers such as Munro, Gaitskill, Hemingway, Cheever, Dybek, McPherson, Poe, Bradbury, Borges, Cortázar, Henry James, Octavia Butler, Kelly Link, Shirley Jackson, Haruki Murakami, and Angela Carter, as well as fairy tales, folktales, and other texts. Special emphasis will be given to individual voices, critically responding to others’ work, and the revision of one’s own stories. Class sessions will be used for discussion of assigned readings and work in progress. Enrollment limited to 15. Prerequisites: a writing sample of three to five pages, one 200-level creative writing course, at least sophomore standing, and/or consent of the instructor. May be repeated for credit. Conference.
Creative Writing 331 - Special Topics Studio
The Long Poem
Jae Yeun Choi - Mon/Wed 2:40-4:00 p.m.
One-unit semester course. The long-view focus of this advanced workshop is to provide an intensive critical forum for students to engage deeply with the practice of poetry with a specific focus on reading and writing long poem(s). We will work diligently to further the development of each poem/poet, exploring various strategies to generate and extend new work, and giving close consideration to the different modes of time expressed and experienced in poetry. This is primarily a workshop, but each participant will be responsible for presenting/explicating a long work in class discussion. Given the advanced nature of the course, students must have completed at least two course-long poetry workshops at Reed. Enrollment limited to 15. Prerequisites: Creative Writing 224, a writing sample of three to five poems, and consent of the instructor. Conference.
From Intent to Accident (Unfolding the Poem by Chance)
Jae Yeun Choi - Tues/Thurs 3:10-4:30 p.m.
One-unit semester course. The focus of this course is to provide an intensive, critical forum for students to engage with poems within a workshop format as a process-oriented activity and to test or tease out the relationship between chance and necessity (“Everything existing in the universe is the fruit of chance and necessity” —Democritus), between the subconscious and conscious mind. We will explore ways chance has been used and can be used as a motivating instrument, but with a steady eye on how it introduces possibilities for objectivity and care. Heavy emphasis will be placed on appreciating the draft as a means of sourcing resonance and primacing intuition. Our lively, collaborative investigation will include weekly exercises aimed squarely at stimulating and disrupting our current reading and writing strategies, group discussion exploring wider questions of freedom, mystery, and the utility of disorder. Be prepared for rigorous reading of a range of poetry and essays by poets, artists, and other dedicated thinkers-at-play. Enrollment limited to 15. Prerequisites: Creative Writing 224, sophomore standing, a writing sample of three to five poems, and consent of the instructor. Conference.
Spring Courses
English 201 - Introduction to Narrative
Medieval Women Writers
Michael Faletra - Mon/Wed/Fri 10:00-10:50 a.m.
One-unit semester course. Although the secular and religious cultures of medieval Europe were often flagrantly patriarchal, medieval women nonetheless produced a host of some of the richest and most interesting narratives of the period. In this course we will practice the basic tools of literary analysis by exploring writings such as the Carolingian noblewoman Dhuoda’s book of advice to her son; the closet dramas of the Saxon nun Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim; the enigmatic account of the canny and saintly Englishwoman Christina of Markyate; the impassioned love letters of Heloise of Argenteuil to her castrated husband; the mystical visions of the German abbess Hildegard of Bingen and of the English anchoress Julian of Norwich; the illustrated encyclopedia of Herrad of Landsberg; the erotic and often tragic Breton lais of Marie de France; the spiritual adventures and misadventures of Margery Kempe; and the protofeminist manifestos of Christine de Pisan. The course will begin with a review of the most relevant early Christian contexts for medieval women’s writing, including excerpts from the book of Genesis and the Psalms, the Gospel according to Luke, and the account of the martyrdom of Sts. Perpetua and Felicitas. We will also study aspects of the material culture these women and their colleagues used and produced: manuscript illumination, psalters, books of hours, textiles. This course fulfills the English department’s pre-1700 requirement. Conference.
English 205 - Introduction to Fiction
Decolonization and the Novel in Africa
Kritish Rajbhandari - Mon/Wed 2:40-4:00 p.m. OR Tues/Thurs 1:40-3:00 p.m.
One-unit semester course. Taking root during late colonialism, the novel emerged as a prominent genre in the shaping of postcolonial societies in Africa. In the wake of decolonization, African writers turned to the novel, reinventing the genre to imagine new individual and collective identities and assess the legacies left behind by the colonial past. This course will examine various novelistic responses to the sociopolitical changes in different parts of Africa during the late twentieth and the twenty-first century. In what ways did the novel become a catalyst for cultural transformation in postcolonial Africa? How did the novel become the privileged genre of decolonization? Starting with the critiques of colonialism in the early decolonial period, we will explore topics including narratives of modernity and tradition, the failures of the nation-state, critique of patriarchy and gender, migration, displacement, neocolonial formations, and the promises and pitfalls of globalization. Readings may include novels by Tayeb Salih, Chinua Achebe, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Ama Ata Aidoo, Bessie Head, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Chimamanda Adichie, and Helon Habila. Theoretical readings may include writings of Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí, and Achille Mbembe, among others. Conference. CRES.
The Victorian Novel of the Family
Jay Dickson - Tues/Thurs 10:30-11:50 p.m.
One-unit semester course. During the Victorian period (1837–1901), the United Kingdom often turned to the idealized household as its model for social community, seeking in its nominal stability of roles (for husband and wife, parents and children, and employers and servants) organizing principles for the larger national culture. This paradigm turned out to be neither as stable nor as uniform as often proposed, however, and the exploration of family life by means of the novel—the most popular cultural form of the era—showed the fault lines in the model structure of the “happy home,” which echoed wider Victorian social problems regarding gender, class, sexuality, labor, inclusivity, and authority. This course looks at the Victorian novel through its characteristic focus on family life and its discontents, surveying works by famous practitioners who may include Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, and/or Thomas Hardy. We will end the semester by reading Virginia Woolf’s 1927 To the Lighthouse, a modernist look backwards at the Victorian family. There will be short critical readings, primarily about the contexts and functions of the novel as a literary genre. Conference.
English 242 - Introduction to Drama
Black British PlaywrightsPancho Savery - Mon/Wed/Fri 10:00-10:50 a.m.
One-unit semester course. What does it mean to be Black and British in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries? This course will attempt to answer this question by reading a selection of plays written by Black British playwrights between 1998 and 2018. The course will look at how experiments with form, subject matter, and genre explore the experiences of Black people in local, national, and international contexts. Conference. CRES.
Shakespeare on Screen
Simone Waller - Mon/Wed/Fri 11:00-11:50 a.m.
One-unit semester course. Although Shakespeare’s plays were written for live performance “in the flesh,” we increasingly engage with his works through screens—in recorded performances, films, television shows, digital archives, and even video games. In this course we will use concepts from the fields of media and performance studies to analyze the implications of these shifts from live performance to screen-based engagement. How does the medium in which we encounter an early modern play influence our understanding of its language? What opportunities for interpretation and creative adaptation are opened or foreclosed by the different media in which a play appears? Conference.
English 301 - Junior Seminor
Lucía Martínez Valdivia - Mon/Wed 1:10-2:30 p.m.
One-unit semester course. This course offers a study of the methods and a sample of the materials of English and American literary history. Offered in two or three sections each year with different emphases, this course engages the in-depth study of one work and its precursors, influences, and effects, or may study a range of works attending to intertextual transformations and generic change. The course will also include substantial reading in literary theory, and students will develop their own critical history, together with an annotated bibliography of the work of a major author. This course is primarily for English majors, for whom the junior seminar is usually required no later than the end of the junior year. Prerequisite: junior standing and two 200-level English courses. Conference. May not be repeated for credit.
English 303 - American Studies Seminar
Jews across the Americas
Laura Leibman - Tues/Thurs 10:30-11:50 a.m.
One-unit semester course. This course examines the diversity of the American Jewish experiences in South America, North America, and the Caribbean. Moving from the early colonial era to the present, we will examine Jewish life through a variety of literary genres ranging from poetry to fiction to graphic novels. This course offers an introduction to the methods of American studies and digital humanities, and focuses on how to read literature in the context of primary historical sources and material culture. Prerequisites: at least two 200-level English classes or Introduction to Judaism (Religion 151) OR any other course in Jewish literature or history. This course applies toward the pre-1900 requirement. Conference. Cross-listed as Comparative Race and Ethnicity Studies 333 and Religion 259. CRES.
English 333 - Studies in Fiction
Postbellum, Pre-Harlem: The Literature of Reconstruction
Sarah Wagner-McCoy - Tues/Thurs 9:00-10:20 a.m.
One-unit semester course. Born too late for the slave narrative and too early for the Harlem Renaissance—“Post-Bellum–Pre-Harlem,” as he puts it—Charles W. Chesnutt missed two major African American literary movements. Chesnutt’s life (1858–1932) spanned crucial moments in American history—the Civil War, Reconstruction, the rise of post-Reconstruction violence, the establishment of schools for Black children led by Black teachers, the emergence of the convict labor system, and the beginnings of the civil rights movement. This course examines Chesnutt’s fiction as the core of the literature of Reconstruction and its aftermath, from the pernicious myths of the plantation school to the protest fiction of the NAACP’s magazine, The Crisis. Methodologically, we will draw on recent work in African American archival recovery and periodical culture, examining the cultural politics of publication history. Genres will include realism, regionalism, and sentimentalism; the slave narrative and the social problem novel; journalism, legal writing, and essays. Prerequisite: Humanities 110 and two 200-level English courses or consent of the instructor. This course applies toward the pre-1900 requirement. Conference. CRES.
English 352 - Studies in Medieval Literature
Dante’s Divine Comedy
Michael Faletra - Mon/Wed/Fri 11:00-11:50 a.m.
One-unit semester course. In this course we will study Dante Alighieri’s fourteenth-century masterpiece The Divine Comedy, seeking to understand this ambitious poem both on its own merits and as an index of the major literary, artistic, and intellectual currents of European culture during the High Middle Ages. The Divine Comedy as a whole narrates Dante’s fictional journey through the afterlife, where he witnesses the eternal torments of the damned souls in hell, the patient endurance of the restless Christian spirits in purgatory, and the ineffable delights of the blessed in paradise. As we follow Dante-pilgrim on his journey, we will look specifically at the poetic and narrative strategies that Dante-poet employs in thinking through the changing relationships between language and truth in the separate canticles of the poem, thinking about how an infernal poetics, for example, differs from a paradisiacal one. In light of ongoing debates in Dante studies, we will also focus on the extent to which Dante’s poem enjoins readers to a process of conversion and on the ways in which Dante establishes his own poetic and moral authority as a counterweight to the corruptions of the fourteenth-century church. Readings will be from the English translation by Robert and Jean Hollander, with the Italian text of Dante’s poem on the facing page. Prerequisite: two English courses at the 200 level or above, or consent of the instructor. This course applies toward the pre-1700 requirement. Conference.
English 366 - Studies in Poetry
Phenomenology of Early Modern Lyric
Lucía Martínez Valdiva - Tues/Thurs 12:00-1:20 p.m.
One-unit semester course. Early modern England was home to a flourishing of lyric poetry arguably unmatched before or since. Often used as a blanket term for short-form poetry, the essence of lyric lies in its vivid representation of a voice, whether as a script for the reader or a dramatic depiction of a scene, rendering the reader a spectator. But how is this voice on the page made “real” to readers? How do early modern poems situate readers with respect to the action or moment of a lyric poem? Literary and linguistic theory interested in semiotics, phenomenology, reader response, and material culture will frame our approach to answering these questions, testing the boundaries between spoken and silently read word and song to better understand the ways lyric was and can be read and used. Focusing in equal part on the major poets (Wyatt, Sidney, Shakespeare, Spenser, Donne, Milton) and less canonical figures like Anne Locke, Richard Barnfield, and Mary Wroth, we will consider the reader’s relationship to the speaker imagined in a poem—how readers are interpolated by texts rhetorically, grammatically, and materially, as audiences and as speakers. Students will develop a working knowledge of ancient and early modern rhetoric; modern theoretical texts will include Bergson, Saussure, Jakobson, Agamben, Austin, Barthes, de Certeau, de Man, Derrida, Wright, Culler, and Johnson, among others. This course will assume familiarity with prosodic analysis. Prerequisite: two English courses at the 200 level or above (English 211, 212, or 213 strongly recommended), or consent of the instructor. This course applies toward the pre-1700 requirement. Conference.
English 370 - Studies in Cultural Contacts
Modern Irish Literature
Maureen Harkin - Tues/Thurs 1:40-3:00 p.m.
One-unit semester course. Starting with the late nineteenth-century Celtic Revival and Irish Literary Renaissance and continuing up to the present, this course will explore the extraordinary achievement and impact of twentieth- and twenty-first-century Irish literature. A particular emphasis will be the complex relationship between literature and colonialism in Ireland. We will devote some time to the forces that led to the creation of two states, the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, a century ago in 1922, and to the Troubles of the late 1960s to the late 1990s in Northern Ireland; and to the literary response to both events. We will focus on questions about the relationship between politics and language; the roles of myth, folklore, and religion; how Irish nationalism interacts with the discourses of gender, class, and race; and the complicated relationships of Irish exiles like James Joyce and Samuel Beckett with their homeland. Authors will include W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, J.M Synge, James Joyce, Sean O’Casey, Samuel Beckett, Seamus Heaney, Eavan Boland, and Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill. Prerequisite: two English courses at the 200 level or above, or consent of the instructor. Conference. CRES.
English 381 - Film and New Media Studies
Agency and Identity in New Media Narratives
John Sanders - Tues/Thurs 4:40-6:00 p.m.
One-unit semester course. From hypertexts to video games to livestreams, the storytelling affordances of digital media have captivated creators for nearly half a century. While new media narratives have expressed the liberatory potentials of interactivity and connectivity in their works, they have also raised deep questions about human agency, responsibility, and identity within our increasingly technological world. How are users interpellated within constructs of race, gender, sexuality, and ability as they create an avatar or act within digital spaces? How does the ability to interface with creators or transform narrative outcomes alter one’s relationship to any given story? What are the ethical dilemmas inherent in taking control of virtual bodies, especially those that differ from one’s own? This course aims to allow students to explore these questions for themselves by analyzing a variety of new media texts and putting them in conversation with theories of technology and identity. Potential texts to be analyzed include literary hypertexts such as Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl, digital games such as the Fulbright Company’s Gone Home, and digital-native visual media such as Janelle Monáe’s Dirty Computer. Prerequisite: two English courses at the 200 level or above (preferably one in film and media studies), or consent of the instructor. Conference–screenings. SGS.
English 400 - Introduction to Literary Theory
Nathalia King - Tues/Thurs 3:10-4:30 p.m.
Full course for one semester. This course is a historical and analytical introduction to the major theoretical movements of the last 50 years in Western Europe and America. We will trace the philosophical origins and conceptual affiliations of the major developments in these movements. We will unpack the central concepts or master tropes of these theories to think about their function in literary criticism and learn how to use them purposefully. The course will cover structuralism and semiotics, poststructuralism and deconstruction, psychoanalytic theory, poststructuralist Marxist theory, Foucauldian theory and new historicism, postcolonial studies, and gender and feminist studies. The course will be taught as a seminar, with each student responsible for organizing the discussion of a reading or topic. It is designed for literature majors, but non–literature majors with adequate preparation may be admitted at the discretion of the instructors. Prerequisite: junior standing or at least two literature courses. Conference.
Creative Writing 201 - Introduction to Creative Writing
The Short Story
Pete Rock - Tues/Thurs 1:40-3:00 p.m.
One-unit semester course. In this course students will write short stories, and read the work of their classmates as well as that of published authors. Close attention will be paid to the narrative strategies used by writers such as Alice Munro, Jamaica Kincaid, Lydia Davis, George Saunders, and Yasunari Kawabata to help the students in writing their own fiction. We will consider these various strategies when reading and responding to the work of peers. Class sessions will be used for discussion of assigned readings and work in progress. Enrollment limited to 15. Prerequisites: a writing sample of three to five pages, at least sophomore standing, and consent of the instructor. Conference.
Creative Writing 207 - Introduction to Creative Nonfiction
The Lyric Essay
Pete Rock - Mon/Wed 3:10-4:30 p.m.
One-unit semester course. For many of us, our first impression of the lyric essay is that it’s basically autobiography, or maybe memoir. And this is often the case. But “personal” is also about a tone, a relationship with the reader, a sense of intimacy established, often, through the use of the first person. Which is to say that the lyric essay may look outward as much as it looks inward. In this workshop students will write personal essays that cover a range of genres (such as memoir, analytic meditation, and portrait) and discuss the work of writers such as Montaigne, Didion, and Baldwin, as well as more contemporary essayists. Students will also read and discuss the work of their peers. Class sessions will be used for discussion of assigned readings and work in progress. Enrollment limited to 15. Prerequisites: a prose writing sample of three to five pages, at least sophomore standing, and consent of the instructor. Conference.
Creative Writing 224 - Poetry Studio I
Rearranging the Mirrors
Jae Yeun Choi - Tues/Thurs 3:10-4:30 p.m.
One-unit semester course. In Cole Swensen’s poem “The Painter Rearranges the Mirrors,” she writes “you open a little door. the door could be anywhere.” This line will serve as our governing precept to create entry points for approaching and writing poems. We will examine the poem as portal, as all-access pass of our own making with any other door left ajar ours to enter at will. In practical terms, this translates to weekly writing exercises and in-depth class discussion while reading a wide range of published works to develop critical skills and creative strategies beneficial to a sustainable writing practice. Emphasis will be placed on encouraging and reviewing student work within a workshop format. Enrollment limited to 15. Prerequisite: a writing sample of three to five pages of poems and consent of instructor. Conference.
Creative Writing 321 - Special Topics Studio
Flash Nonfiction
Pete Rock - Tues/Thurs 10:30-11:50 a.m.
One-unit semester course. This workshop is designed for students with considerable experience in writing short prose. Students will read essays by authors such as Ross Gay, Lydia Davis, Sei Shōnagon, Sarah Manguso and Brian Blanchfield in order to learn to manage effects economically and to write with maximum efficiency and suggestion. Students will write one short piece of prose every or every other week; critically responding to others’ work, and the revision of one’s own stories, will also be emphasized. Class sessions will be used for discussion of assigned readings and work in progress. Enrollment limited to 15. Prerequisites: a writing sample of three to five pages, one 200-level creative writing course, at least sophomore standing, and consent of the instructor. Conference.
Creative Writing 331 - Special Topics Studio
The Long Poem
Jae Yeun Choi - Mon/Weds 2:40-4:00 p.m.
One-unit semester course. The long-view focus of this advanced workshop is to provide an intensive critical forum for students to engage deeply with the practice of poetry with a specific focus on reading and writing long poem(s). We will work diligently to further the development of each poem/poet, exploring various strategies to generate and extend new work, and giving close consideration to the different modes of time expressed and experienced in poetry. This is primarily a workshop, but each participant will be responsible for presenting/explicating a long work in class discussion. Given the advanced nature of the course, students must have completed at least two course-long poetry workshops at Reed. Enrollment limited to 15. Prerequisites: Creative Writing 224, a writing sample of three to five poems, and consent of the instructor. Conference.