Writing & Literature Courses

This course will examine how American literature from the 1800s to the present has explored the racial divide between African Americans and white authority. We will achieve a broad historical and political perspective by reading a range of genres, including fiction, nonfiction, and poetry composed by black, white, and biracial authors, with the purpose of using the literary tradition as a lens through which we assess the contradictory nature of American democracy and the vulnerable position of African-Americans within it. Our discussion will address slavery, abolition, segregation and Jim Crow laws, police brutality, the white gaze, white privilege, white guilt, cultural appropriation, racial passing, faith as propaganda, and the commonplace assumptions and fears about race, law enforcement, and national identity that have helped perpetuate the constraints of institutional racism in the United States.

A study of literary works by outstanding, contemporary writers hailing from a variety of Mexican indigenous (Indian) ethnic groups: Nahuatl, Zapoteco, Yucatec Mayan, Mazateco, Trotzil, among others. The pre-Hispanic roots of this new literature will be examined, as will recurring themes and other ancient motifs which persist in today's writers. Short stories, poetry, and drama will be studied within their specific ethnic contexts, and also within a broader literary analytical framework. Recent English translations by Dr. Frischmann and his personal research experiences will make this course accessible to all MLA students.

This course examines three contemporary Mexican novels--The Old Gringo (1985), Like Water for Chocolate (1989), and Esperanza's Box of Saints (Santitos) (1999) and the film version of each book. We will discuss how the works treat crossing borders, and how society is presented differently in the two mediums--novel and film. Each work also studies the similarities and differences of the two countries (cultures) that seem destined to coexist, according to Alan Riding, as distant neighbors.""

Advanced Creative Nonfiction is a craft/workshop course. This class is intended for writers who have a committed interest in creative writing and are comfortable writing longer works of prose. This workshop will explore the range of narrative possibilities available under the umbrella term Creative nonfiction. We'll be looking at questions of structure and technique in a number of subgenres including the personal essay, literary journalism, travel writing, science writing and memoir. Workshop implies that the products of our minds as well as the writing process are our chief concerns - concerns that will encourage a persistent questioning of everyday assumptions about creative-non-fiction, meaning, structure, form, voice, one, etc. Student work will be discussed in both workshops and conferences. In class we will do thought and writing experiments, share work, and discuss problems and possibilities of the imagination and creative writing. At the semester's end students will turn in a portfolio with several polished pieces.

As an advanced course in fiction writing, students will be expected to produce two full-length short stories of about 35-50 pages in length, or roughly the equivalent from a longer work. Shorter, more focused exercises on setting, plot, characterization, and theme will also be required. Additionally, students will also be required to read and respond to assigned readings and to each other's fiction. Since the class will be run as a workshop, supportive and constructive response to student writing is essential. This is a content-varies course and may be repeated once for credit.

This is an advanced poetry workshop that focuses primarily on the students' own work. Special attention is paid to invention, point-of-view, voice, form, metaphor, and dramatic development. In addition, students will read and discuss historical and contemporary poetry. This a content-varies course and may be repeated once for credit.

Students who take this course will write three full-length pieces (8-12 pages each) of creative nonfiction based on incidents that have occurred in their lives. Students will read selected works of creative nonfiction and from three textbooks on writing (Ann Lamott's Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, Phillip Lopate's The Art of the Personal Essay, and Mary Catherine Bateson's Composing a Life.) The work of the course will revolve around writing the three pieces, reading and responding to fellow students' pieces online, and analyzing reading assignments from the textbooks.

This is a reading and writing intensive class; a willingness to work hard and think creatively and critically about writing is necessary. The class is concerned with the revision and arrangement of writing (Creative Non-Fiction, Fiction, or Poetry) into a final manuscript. The class emphasizes workshopping student writing with this concern in mind and includes the study of contemporary writing selections.

An examination of the roots of current American interest in Arthurian legend in Queen Victoria reign. Students will read important literary works, including Alfred Lord Tennyson's Idylls of the King, William Morris's Defense of Guinevere, and Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and explore the historical and political conditions surrounding the 19th-century medieval revival. The course concludes with a screening of Excalibur (1981) and discussion of its indebtedness to the Victorian era.

Time and again filmmakers turn to literature for inspiration; we have become accustomed to seeing favorite works of literature translated for the screen. This course will ask you to move past the initial reaction--Is the film better than the book, or vice versa?--to analyze the methods used in adaptation. How does each medium establish characters, develop mood and atmosphere, communicate emotions and thoughts? Furthermore, the course will examine how adaptations have been influenced by factors such as changing cultural attitudes and censorship.

The course will investigate the idea of a 'sense of place' by working toward a definition of the American Southwest. We will examine how authors evoke a distinctive sense of place by reading and discussing nonfiction books of travel (e.g., John Graves' Goodbye to a River or Richard Shelton's Going Back to Bisbee) and a range of fictional works representing several literary modes, ethnicity, and Southwestern perspectives.

This course is for students who have wanted to write a novel for a long time (or who have recently come up with an idea for a novel) and who want to stop dreaming about it and start writing. Students who take this course will compose three chapters (15-20 pages each) of a first novel and do a detailed outline of the remaining chapters. Students will read selected works about creative writing, particularly about novel writing, including Ann Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, John Rember’s MFA in a Box, and John Gardner’s On Becoming a Novelist.

This course focuses on the major developments in American poetry from 1945 to the present to address these central questions: How well does poetry address the needs, concerns, and anxieties of contemporary American culture? Have international crises, domestic political and cultural shifts, and the proliferation of electronic media rendered poetry obsolete, or does poetry still hold particular promise in terms of its ability to shore crumbling values or, better, to envision a new ethics, one more responsive to the complexity of our times?

Students will read literature and watch films about survival of both everyday crises and life-threatening situations. They will write three papers on topics related to survival of such ordinary crises as divorce or job loss, survival in the outdoors, and the prospects of long-term survival of the human species. Students will examine factors, including personality traits, which either impede or enhance a person's ability to survive a variety of circumstances that put his or her confidence, sanity, or soul in jeopardy.

Participants in this class will read, discuss, and then appraise how selected creative writers use the short fiction genre to probe as well as investigate issues of religious meaning and spiritual significance - what we might call models of the sacred. This course will emphasize the history, theology, and practices of various and global religious traditions. Particular attention will be paid to how women and men imagine myth, ritual, and sacred power in the context of personal and social concerns. Students will tackle topics such as the meaning and endurance of faith; the problem of evil and suffering; the search for identity and integrity; and, several other themes.

Study of the literary art of satire, including forms of satire, angles of satiric vision and examination of chief satirists' works and techniques.

Students who take this course will write three full-length pieces (8-12 pages each) of creative nonfiction based on incidents that have occurred in their lives. Students will read selected works of creative nonfiction and from three textbooks on writing (Ann Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life , Phillip Lopate’s The Art of the Personal Essay, and Mary Catherine Bateson’s Composing a Life ), and the work of the course will revolve around writing the three pieces, reading and responding to fellow students’ pieces online, and analyzing reading assignments from the textbooks.

In Reading and Writing Nature, a fully online course, students will explore new and classic works of nature writing in three sections: (1) Backyard Ecology—Describing My Part of the World , (2) Celebrating Nature—Or What’s Left of It, and (3) Intersections of the Wild and the Human: Protecting Nature from Ourselves. Students will sample works by Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Annie Dillard, Terry Tempest Williams, and many other authors, including George Monbiot, whose recent book, titled Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life, offers humans some hope for a sustainable life on the planet. In addition to the readings and minor writing assignments, students will write three descriptive and argumentative essays about nature.

Government cover-ups? Secret societies? Alien visitation? Although many scholars question the validity of conspiracy theories, we cannot deny that they have become a popular cultural phenomenon, as illustrated by the success of the many novels, movies, and television programs that focus upon them and the millions of websites dedicated to them. Therefore, as a result of this growing societal fascination with conspiracy theories, the class will delve into the mysterious world from which they emerge. In doing so, we will not only explore many theories but also attempt to separate the fact from the fiction. Thus, we will examine conspiracy theories from historical, cultural, and rhetorical perspectives, with an emphasis on analysis of the argumentative techniques used by both conspiracy theorists and alleged conspirators. The end result will be a better understanding of both how and why the theories continue to foster the attention of not only conspiracy theorists but also society at large.