In this class we will take a close and multi-faceted look at books written primarily for children, a category of literature that remains rather under-examined, despite its popularity, persistence, and influence.  We will read examples of stories for children written in a number of different times (from the 18th to the 21st centuries) and places (Europe, Britain, North America), and our readings will make use of many different kinds of literary analysis:  historical contextualization, analyses that draw on particular literary theories, psychoanalytical approaches, and close readings.  We wil

What makes American history, and why would we want to—need to—remake it? This course explores literary and visual materials produced in the post-Civil Rights U.S. by artists and writers who ponder this question and approach history like a raw material that demands to be refashioned and constantly problematized. What versions of American history have they remade, and what new versions and visions of history do they produce in the process? How has re-making history been used to gain a critical understanding of silences and omissions in the United States’ story?

What is a hero? What are the origins of the hero as a cultural and literary construct? Originating in myth, folktale and religious cult-worship, the hero archetype has had an astonishing history stretching from ancient times to the Marvel and DC superheroes of today. Endowed with superhuman or exceptional traits, the hero originated as a bridge between the divine and the human. His life’s journey combines a quest for self-discovery with the fulfillment of a higher cause, from the cosmic workings of destiny to the realization of social justice.

For this course, we will examine texts in a range of styles and genres that deal with representations of the family and that challenge normative expectations of what a family might be. What role does society play in shaping family structures? How might literature expand our notion of kinship? How do literary forms create space to consider the kinds of loss that families experience? How might we reconsider transgression, and even taboo, through the lens of fiction? At what point do family secrets go too far?

What does it mean to be human? What differentiates humans from non-human animals? As long as homo sapiens have told stories, we have told them about, through, and with animals. This course serves as an introduction to the emerging fields of animal studies and posthumanist theory. We will explore questions raised by literary animals from multiple perspectives, including from the point of view of (fictional) animals themselves. The texts we read will encourage us to reexamine our anthropocentric assumptions and to push back against narratives of human exceptionalism.

In this course we will examine the development of the “dream vision” across a considerable span of literary history — from ancient Rome to medieval Europe to Victorian England and into the twentieth century — and consider what unites and divides various representations of dreams.  Some purposes underlying dream visions may appear remarkably stable (articulations of desire, encounters with the unknown, etc.), while others may shift considerably; for example, we might compare and contrast the allegorical dream model of the Middle Ages and Lewis Carroll’s more nonsensical dreamscapes.  Because

This is a class about womxn. This is a class about between. This is a class about what happens between womxn. This is a class about what happens between languages between womxn. This is a class about the problems with the language used to represent womxn. This is a class about what happens between womxn and the page. This is a class about what happens between womxn and the social stage. This is a class about between: between texts; between affects; between tongues; between bodies; between womxn. And this class will be taught by two of them.

This course centers on three science fiction novels that take seriously the possibility of revolution. Reading novels by Ann Leckie, Ursula K.

In this course, we will read and analyze a wide range of literature that can be called “unfaithful” in a double sense. The texts on our reading list contain stories about romantic infidelity, but also narratives that are untrustworthy because their narrators are unreliable – whether maliciously deceptive, intentionally enigmatic, unaware/un-self-aware, or simply incapable of translating their subject matter into words. What is the connection between depicting someone’s unfaithfulness, and depicting something unfaithfully? How do we recognize unfaithful narratives?