2020 Literature Summer Courses

LIT 81C

Session 1

Examines novels by Toni Morrison, including The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, Sula, and Jazz, as sites of discontent and transformation, while also considering literary techniques such as form, voice, metaphor, and narrative structure. Includes discussion of Morrison’s ideas about the intersection of race and sexuality, blackness as a shifting signifier, the role of the artist in society, and uses of literature for re-imagining the relationships between history, culture, and individuality. (General Education Codes: ER)

Proposed Instructor - Connor Bassett

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LIT 102

Session 1

Promotes the understanding of translation and its role in redefining meanings across epochs and cultures, in establishing common norms, and in advancing mutual intelligibility; but also providing encounters with absolute alterity. Actual translations are used as case studies. (General Education Code(s): TA.)

Prerequisite(s): one year of college-level, non-English language study or the equivalent reading ability in a non-English language.

Proposed Instructor - Camilo Gomez-Rivas

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LIT 111D

Session 2

Study of representative works by William Shakespeare. Course topic changes; please see the Class Search for the current topic. Critical approach designations: Canons, Media. Distribution requirements: Poetry, Pre-1750.(General Education Code(s): TA.) 

Proposed Instructor - Sean Keilen

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LIT 114E

Session 1

One Way Ticket to Hell… and Back: Exploring Dante’s Inferno

Focuses on the Inferno, the first cantica of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. Examines different uses of metamorphosis in Dante’s representation of Hell, including the relationship between the ancient idea of human metamorphosis and Dante’s representation of the Christian contrappasso (retribution), and the medieval concept of imago Dei (in God’s likeness). Critical approach designations: Canons, Power and Subjectivities. Distribution requirements: Poetry, Pre-1750. (General Education Code(s): TA)

Proposed Instructor - Filippo Gianferrari

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LIT 116G

Session 2

Through an examination of monsters in literature, course explores anxieties, fears, and ideals of Victorian society, paying close attention to issues of gender, sexuality, class, race, empire, scientific, and technology. Critical approach designations: Canons, Histories. (General Education Code(s): TA)

Proposed Instructor - Tara Thomas

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LIT 135H

Session 2

Course explores expressions of African futurism in a range of creative media--novels, short stories, and films--and analyzes them in conversation with theoretical texts. Recognizes African cultural producers and theorists as central to conversations about anti-colonialism, revolution, futurity, and the nonhuman and beyond human. Critical approach designations: Geographies, Power and Subjectivities. Distribution requirement: Global. (General Education Code(s):ER)

Proposed Instructor - Kelsey McFaul

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LIT 155L

Session 1

Examines development and central themes of vampire film from the silent era to the present. Critical approach designations: Genres, Media. (General Education Code(s): IM.)

Proposed Instructor - H. Marshall Leicester, Jr.

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LIT 160Q

Session 1

This course explores the concept of gender in queer theory through the lens of contemporary trans studies. Drawing on critical theory, popular culture, and poetry, while combining critical and creative practices, this class examines the stakes of "genderqueer/non-binary" and "trans" as categories and embodied realities in the present historical moment -- both within and beyond the parameters of identity and academic life.

This course will be taught synchronously, but the instructor is willing to discuss possibilities for asynchronous instruction with students for whom there are scheduling conflicts.  (General Education Code(s): TA)

Proposed Instructor - Joshua Jones

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LIT 179C

Special Session - June 22 - July 3

This course asks students to experiment and play in some radical ways to create and encounter poetry through a distinct set of performance practices: improvisation and spoken word, movement, sound, and visual practices as a way to encounter, create, and animate their own writing. (General Education Code(s): PR-C)

All students - restrictions lifted in summer.

Proposed Instructor - Ronaldo V. Wilson

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