An introduction to literary study that helps students develop the skills necessary for college-level reading, writing, research and critical thinking. Through exposure to a variety of literary forms and genres, historical periods and critical approaches, students are taught how to read closely, argue effectively and develop a strong writing voice. The course is reading and writing intensive and organized around weekly assignments. There are no waivers for LAS-E101 except for transfer students who have taken an equivalent college course.

This section is designated for Sophomore, Junior, Senior, Graduate or Transfer Students.

Major Requirement | BFA

An introduction to literary study that helps students develop the skills necessary for college-level reading, writing, research and critical thinking. Through exposure to a variety of literary forms and genres, historical periods and critical approaches, students are taught how to read closely, argue effectively and develop a strong writing voice. The course is reading and writing intensive and organized around weekly assignments. There are no waivers for LAS-E101 except for transfer students who have taken an equivalent college course.

First-year Students are pre-registered for this course by the department.

Sophomore, Junior, Senior or Transfer Students register into the designated section(s).

Major Requirement | BFA

This course will investigate the era of freak shows and ethnographic displays in the parallel realms of science and show business in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. From World's Fair Exhibits, to the streets of London, to the displays in PT Barnum's Museum, to Buffalo Bill's Wild West Shows, human beings were placed on display for the purported amusement and instruction of the public. Through the artifacts of these exhibitions, we will examine the ways that human bodily display enacted ideas about race, ethnicity, gender and the body, and explore the extent to which these ideas still shadow our present moment.

Open to Sophomore, Junior, Senior or Graduate Students.

Elective

Photography and Literature are often seen as separate, yet kindred, disciplines, each working to depict, contest, alter, and reframe that which we think of as reality. This course will explore various ideas about the melding of photography and literature by looking at texts that work to create dialogue between the two mediums, as well as theoretical writings that offer ways of contemplating such fusions. We will study texts by writers/photographers such as: Walker Evans, James Agee, W.G. Sebald, Sigmund Freud, Roland Barthes, Teju Cole, John Berger, Sophie Calle, Paul Auster, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, and Lance Olsen. Students will write several short essays about the readings, as well as a longer project, which will combine photography and writing.

Offered as LAS-W508 and THAD-W508.

Elective

Photography and Literature are often seen as separate, yet kindred, disciplines, each working to depict, contest, alter, and reframe that which we think of as reality. This course will explore various ideas about the melding of photography and literature by looking at texts that work to create dialogue between the two mediums, as well as theoretical writings that offer ways of contemplating such fusions. We will study texts by writers/photographers such as: Walker Evans, James Agee, W.G. Sebald, Sigmund Freud, Roland Barthes, Teju Cole, John Berger, Sophie Calle, Paul Auster, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, and Lance Olsen. Students will write several short essays about the readings, as well as a longer project, which will combine photography and writing.

Offered as LAS-W508 and THAD-W508.

Elective

The essay form is broad and, at its core, investigative, as it seeks to examine and disrupt, twist and turn, move and shake. This course will be an exploration of nonfiction writing through some of the various forms that the essay takes. Students will be writing both critical analyses of the texts as well as writing their own nonfiction essays that use the readings as models. We will begin by reading several classic examples and move from there towards more contemporary forms. Some of the writers we will study may include: Hilton Als, James Baldwin, Jo Ann Beard, Eula Biss, Jenny Boully, Mary Cappello, Anne Carson, Ta-Nehisi Coates, William Gass, Maggie Nelson, Claudia Rankine, Rebecca Solnit, Susan Sontag, Virginia Woolf.

Open to Sophomore, Junior, Senior or Graduate Students.

Elective

This course will deal with graphic narrative in many of its forms: fiction, memoir, historical (auto)biography, journalistic investigation.  We will be reading graphic narratives that helped create the genre of Comics Studies, as well as more contemporary narratives that are re-imagining and re-shaping the possibilities within the genre.  We will also be reading scholarship that deepens our understanding of some of the ways these texts can be understood within a larger critical context.  Students will have the opportunity to frame their responses to the readings in both traditional and visual modes.  We will be reading such authors as:  Art Spiegelman, Alison Bechdel, Jean Yuen Yang, Marjane Satrapi, Joe Sacco, Lynda Barry, Ron Wimberly.

Open to Sophomore, Junior, Senior or Graduate Students.
Elective