ENGL 670-01 Studies in Literature: C.S. Lewis
Professor: Steele
Course Meetings: Summer Session II
Monday, Tuesday, Thursday Online Synchronous 5-7:30pm
C. S. Lewis occupies the popular imagination as a writer of children’s fiction, particularly The Chronicles of Narnia. Lewis, however, thought of himself as a poet and as a Christian apologist. In this course, students will read Lewis’s scholarship that explores notions of the “literary experience” as well as particular literary forms, especially allegory, and read the majority of the Chronicles of Narnia, as well as two of Lewis’s works for adults. The seminar will focus on the contrasts between these two modes of writing and explore the ways in which Lewis’s work from the 1950s sets a template for other literature written for children later in the 20th and 21st century.
ENGL 670-02 Studies in Literature: Contemporary African American Life Writing
Professor: Abdur-Rahman
Course Meetings: Summer Session III
Mondays, 5:00-7:45 PM: Asynchronous – time to work on reading, writing. Tuesdays, 5:00-7:45 PM: Synchronous (online meeting), Thursdays, 5:00-7:45 PM (online meeting). No in-person meetings on campus.
This five week graduate course will focus on African American life writing from the 1990s to the present. Central to the course will be analysis of the myriad strategies and rhetorical techniques that writers use to construct a narrative of their lives. We will also read theoretical works within the field of autobiography studies to consider the approaches and terms that literary scholars use to read autobiographical writing. Books to be considered include Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming (2014), Jesymn Ward’s Men We Reaped (2013) and James Spooner’s The High Desert: Black. Punk. Nowhere (2022).
ENGL 670-03 Studies in Literature: The Witch in Literature
Professor: Tarter
Course Meetings: Summer Session I: May 20-June 7, 2024
Synchronous online classes on Monday May 20, Tuesday May 28, and Thursday June 6 @ 10AM-1PM. (all other days are asynchronous learning)
This interdisciplinary course will study witches across many cultures and centuries. We will read fairy tales, short stories, plays, novels, YA children’s literature, legal treatises and court records–all with witches in them. Ultimately, we will analyze the literary cultures which have persisted in creating, recreating, and reviving this timeless, powerful, and equally feared character throughout the ages.