Literary Studies

The castle on the hill. The ghostly cellar. The witch’s kitchen. In this course, we aim to (re)discover joy and confidence in reading; develop a marketable, personalized set of critical reading skills; enhance our reading comprehension and analysis skills; and practice applying these skills beyond this class. To achieve these learning goals, we’ll explore representations of dangerous food and drink across a wide variety of literary genres: fantasy, magical realism, gothic, and horror. As a discussion-based course that centers student voices, perspectives, and creativity, we will discover together how writers use forbidden food to probe our deepest cultural beliefs regarding indulgence, restraint, and gender, sexuality, and dis/ability.

Traditionally, British literature survey courses study the “canon”—a collection of literary “greatest hits” historically composed by white male writers. This course instead tracks the political, social, and creative legacy of British women who wrote about women. We’ll read writers who occupy a range of intersectional identities—trans, cis, queer, straight, racialized, disabled—and whose pioneering works collectively probe the following questions: What does it mean to be a woman? What choices, desires, spaces, life paths, and bodies ought to made be available to those who identify as women? Who gets to decide? In addition to exploring these questions through reading, discussing, and writing about our course texts, for our final class project we will compile a digital anthology through archival research into marginalized voices, especially in relation to gender, sexuality, disability, and race.

It began with a man in blue tights and a red cape lifting a car above his head in June 1938, on the cover of Action Comics #1. In the 80 years or so since then, superheroes have saved the world over and over again and generated billions of dollars in profits for huge entertainment conglomerates, even as their forms have wildly morphed and the faces behind the masks have become more diverse. This course will examine the history of superheroes, as we think about why these characters are so popular and resonant and how they and their worlds have changed over time.

Don’t have enough drama in your life? The queens of Medieval and Renaissance literature and history had more than enough to go around! We’ll read a variety of works featuring queens, ranging from the tales of Marie de France to Mary Sidney’s The Tragedy of Antonie to Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. Along the way, we’ll investigate what it meant to be a queen then—a position of agency but also subject to the king—and how it’s still relevant today—what is the legacy of empire?!

In this course we’ll explore the world of independent comics and alternative publishers and discover how comics and graphic novels have become a celebrated art form. We’ll read stories about Holocaust survivors, Latina rockers, monster hunters in the Harlem Renaissance, and people like you and me, struggling to figure out their identities and their values.