| FYS I: How to Read a Poem |
Liberal Arts |
1001 (028) |
Fall 2026 |
|
Description
FYS I prepares students for advanced study in the Liberal Arts by attending to the foundational skills of college-level writing and interpretation, such as close reading, critical analysis, academic argumentation, essay structure, and style. This first-year seminar focuses our attention on poetry. While it's common for students to find poems baffling or even alienating, we will practice the kinds of reading skills and receptive states of mind that open poetry up to understanding and enjoyment. By reading, discussing, and writing about a small number of short poems every week (drawn from a variety of poets, periods, and places) we will see how reading poetry well does not require elite or occult knowledge but patience, interest, attention, and curiosity. Students will practice reading slowly and closely and writing about poetry in a way that reproduces that slowness and closeness in their own prose. Students should expect to write 15 to 20 pages of formal, revisable writing.
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Class Number
1483
Credits
3
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| FYS II: How to Read a Poem |
Liberal Arts |
1005 (029) |
Spring 2026 |
|
Description
FYS II builds upon the foundational writing skills students began learning in FYS I, with the introduction of more rigorous argumentation and research. This first-year seminar focuses our attention on poetry. While it's common for students to find poems baffling or even alienating, we will practice the kinds of reading skills and receptive states of mind that open poetry up to understanding and enjoyment. By reading, discussing, and writing about a small number of short poems every week-drawn from a variety of poets, periods, and places-we will see how reading poetry well does not require elite or occult knowledge but patience, interest, attention, and curiosity. Students will practice reading slowly and closely and writing about poetry in a way that reproduces that slowness and closeness in their own prose. Students should expect to write 20 to 25 pages of formal, revisable writing-including a research essay-in addition to homework exercises and in-class writing.
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Class Number
1344
Credits
3
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| Top: Marxism, Art, and Culture |
Visual and Critical Studies |
3001 (004) |
Spring 2026 |
|
Description
Marxism isn't just about the 'real world' critique of capitalism and the potential rise of communism. Many thinkers and critics who have written in the wake of Karl Marx have tried to articulate what it means (and why it's important) to read like a Marxist, to understand literature, art, and all the rest of human culture as a historical expression of the human condition under capital. This course serves as an introduction to Marxism and Marxist aesthetics, literary criticism, and cultural critique. We will begin by reading Marx and Engels, and then spend most of the semester considering core concepts as they develop over the subsequent century and a half of Marxist art, literary, and cultural criticism. We will ask questions like: what is the relationship between narrative representation, socio-political life, and its underlying economic forces? Do artworks produce autonomous worlds and meanings or are they entirely shaped by capitalism and class society? How do artifacts like novels, poems, theatrical texts, films, or visual artworks theorize history and society? What do the rise of specific forms, genres, and popular cultural practices tell us about social history? To what extent is it useful to read like/as a Marxist (and are there limitations in doing so)?
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Class Number
1809
Credits
3
|
| Masterworks: Pride and Prejudice |
Liberal Arts |
3110 (001) |
Summer 2026 |
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Description
Jane Austen¿s Pride and Prejudice is enduringly popular, constantly adapted, critically celebrated, and occasionally detested. It is also a keystone in the history of the novel. Austen¿s novel is a landmark attempt to grapple with, and solve, the fundamental problems that underlie novelistic fiction and representation¿from the difficulty of self-reflection and of knowing other minds, to the problem of representing the modern self; from the emergence of character to the co-existence of critique and sentimental attachment to social practices and prejudices, including class, status, and gender. In this intensive, three-week course, we will read and discuss the novel very closely. Questions we will ask together include: How does Pride and Prejudice reflect and respond to the wider world in which Austen lived¿its norms, politics, economics, gender dynamics, class hierarchies, and aesthetic values? How does the marriage plot present the relation between freedom and responsibility? And what can Austen¿s masterpiece teach us about living and writing meaningfully in times of profound inequality and absurdity?
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Class Number
1301
Credits
3
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| Shakespeare |
Liberal Arts |
3122 (001) |
Fall 2026 |
|
Description
This course is both a broad introduction to Shakespeare and an opportunity to delve deeply into some of his most enchanting, disturbing, maddening, and comical works. Students should expect a good amount of reading (as well as a good amount of learning how to navigate the challenging aspects of his language and style). We will likely read at least one play from the following major genres (paying the most attention to the last): history, comedy, romance, and tragedy. We will also consider performances and adaptations and spend time on a broad selection of Shakespeare's sonnets. Students will engage in multiple formats of peer discussion, take turns presenting material, and complete regular writing assignments in response to the reading.
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Class Number
1667
Credits
3
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| LH: Global Modernism |
Liberal Arts |
3190 (001) |
Spring 2026 |
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Description
Mastering a body of literature in the context of its specific historical, sociological, and ideological period is emphasized. The period and works vary.
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Class Number
1484
Credits
3
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| LH:Marxism, Art, and Culture |
Liberal Arts |
3190 (004) |
Spring 2026 |
|
Description
Marxism isn't just about the 'real world' critique of capitalism and the potential rise of communism. Many thinkers and critics who have written in the wake of Karl Marx have tried to articulate what it means (and why it's important) to read like a Marxist, to understand literature, art, and all the rest of human culture as a historical expression of the human condition under capital. This course serves as an introduction to Marxism and Marxist aesthetics, literary criticism, and cultural critique. We will begin by reading Marx and Engels, and then spend most of the semester considering core concepts as they develop over the subsequent century and a half of Marxist art, literary, and cultural criticism. We will ask questions like: what is the relationship between narrative representation, socio-political life, and its underlying economic forces? Do artworks produce autonomous worlds and meanings or are they entirely shaped by capitalism and class society? How do artifacts like novels, poems, theatrical texts, films, or visual artworks theorize history and society? What do the rise of specific forms, genres, and popular cultural practices tell us about social history? To what extent is it useful to read like/as a Marxist (and are there limitations in doing so)?
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Class Number
2487
Credits
3
|
