What are myths and why do we tell them? What powers do myths have? We will tackle these questions by looking at the enduring and fascinating myths from ancient Greece and Rome. In addition to studying how they shaped ancient societies, we will also look at their modern influence and reflect upon the power that myths still hold in our contemporary world. Taught in English.

Examination of key works by writers of the African Diaspora. Relationship among black people across multiple geographic spaces; Africa, the Caribbean, the United States, Europe, Latin America, and Asia. Specific historical, cultural, and literary contexts; themes such as gender, sexuality, migration, slavery, freedom, and equality. Readings may include literary texts (fiction, poetry, drama), music and film. All readings in English, but drawn from multiple languages of the black diaspora, including English, Spanish, French and Portuguese.

Comparative study of literature through selected literary works from several non-Western cultures, viewed cross-culturally in light of particular social, political, and economic perspectives.

Comparative study of selected works by women writers of several countries, exploring points of intersection and divergence in women's literary representations.

Comparative study of several North, South, and Central American cultures with a focus on the specificities, similarities, and divergences of their literary and cultural texts.

How and why do the Middle Ages resonate with us now? Explore a wide range of narratives, poems, artworks, and songs from ancient, medieval, and Renaissance cultures. Study popular culture, manuscript and print technologies, and the relationship between the sacred and the profane over a millenium. Learn about modern and contemporary medievalist revivals that might include authors such as J.R.R. Tolkien and N.K. Jemisin, television series such as Game of Thrones, and more.

Explore American literary traditions in a variety of poetic and narrative forms and in diverse historical contexts, ranging from colonization to the Civil Rights Movement and beyond. Genres examined in this course might include lyric poems, travel narratives, gothic short fiction, slave narratives, and science fiction. Emphasis on developing skills of literary interpretation and critical writing, while attending to the place of race, class, gender, and sexuality in American literary culture. Authors may include Phillis Wheatley, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Frederick Douglass, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Baldwin, and Toni Morrison, among others.

An exploration of the stories black authors tell about themselves, their communities, and the nation as informed by time and place, gender, sexuality, and class. African American perspective themes such as art, childhood, sexuality, marriage, alienation and mortality, as well as representations of slavery, Reconstruction, racial violence and the Nadir, legalized racism and segregation, black patriotism and black ex-patriots, the optimism of integration, and the prospects of a post-racial America.

Examines the poetry, prose, and theater of Latinx communities in the United States from their origins in the Spanish colonization of North America to their ongoing development in the 21st century. Considers how authors use literary form to gain insight into human experience, including mortality, religious belief, gender and sexuality, war and peace, family, language use, scientific inquiry, cultural tradition, ecology, and labor. Also studies how Latinx literary traditions have shaped and been shaped by broader currents in American literature, as well as what connections exist between Latinx literature and social and artistic developments in other parts of the world, particularly Latin America and the Caribbean. Authors may include Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, Eulalia Perez, Juan Nepomuceno Seguin, Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton, Jose Marti, Arthur A. Schomburg, Jesus Colon, Julia de Burgos, Cesar Chavez, Ariel Dorfman, Gloria Anzaldua, Junot Diaz, and Cristina Garcia.

An exploration of arguably the most complex, profound, and ubiquitous expression of human experience. Study through close reading of significant forms and conventions of Western poetic tradition. Poetry's roots in oral and folk traditions and connections to popular song forms.

Exploration of drama through a consideration of plot, narrative flow, analytical flow, staging, performance, manuscript and printing history, text and textual change over time, and interpretation. Plays will be approached as public attempts to understand what it means to be alive.

Explores literary and cultural expressions by women and their receptions within a range of historical periods and genres. Topics such as what does a woman need in order to write, what role does gender play in the production, consumption, and interpretation of texts, and to what extent do women comprise a distinct literary subculture. Interpretation of texts will be guided by feminist and gender theory, ways of reading that have emerged as important to literary studies over the last four decades.

Consider the relationship between fiction and science. How does science as we know it depend on certain fictions or narratives? How do we come to know science through the fictions we encounter? How do literary works represent the ethics of science and technology? What role does science play in the oppression of peoples? What alternative, more liberatory ways of using science are possible?

Origins of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), with attention to literary formations, archaeology, and social-political settings. Explorations of major questions, including who wrote the Bible, and when; relationships of the biblical tradition to the mythology and religious structures of ancient Israel's near eastern neighbors; and dynamics of politics, religious leadership, and law.

A study of literary and cultural expressions of queer and trans identities, positionalities, and analytics through an exploration of literature, art, and media. We will examine historical and political power relations by considering the intersections of sexuality and gender with race, class, nation, and disability. Topics include the social construction and regulation of sexuality and gender, performance and performativity, intersectionality, and the relationship between aesthetic forms and queer/ trans subjectivity. Our interpretations will be informed by queer and trans theories.

Isaac Azimov once said of science fiction that it is the genre that "deals with the reaction of human beings to changes in science and technology." With this definition in mind, we will embark on a critical exploration of sci-fi film and other media, using it as a lens for analyzing society's deepest fears and most furtive hopes. Our investigation will center on the liminal space between hegemonic culture and its prescribed excesses. These liminal spaces--between self and other, disability and enhancement, cultural hybridization, and gender crossing--shift in response to real-world sociopolitical tensions. We will consider feminist and anti-racist media scholars' concerns over representation, authorship and ideology alongside questions of technological change. Students will use analytical and creative assignments to explore not only how the scientific imaginary serves as fertile ground for feminist, disability, and anti-racist critique, but also provides a locus for alternative futures.

What is the thread weaving through an animated visualization of economic data in a popular newspaper, an indie text-based videogame, a saucy twitter bot spitting out haikus, and an interactive digital essay? Storytelling--using whatever is at hand to communicate with audiences in evocative and connected ways. Combining technical and textual analysis with their own experiments in digital composition, students will learn to use new media techniques for the interpretation, creation, and dissemination of both critical and imaginative writing. From branching narratives to hypertext media and video games, to more recent developments in machine-generated poetry, XR, and embodied and location-based narrative, the methods and materials in this introductory course link creative expression and analysis of texts to contemporary conversations about social difference, representation, interface, and computation.

An analysis of the works and ideas of 20th and 21st century Francophone writers (Africa, the Caribbeans, France). Taught in English.

Introduction to cultural and textual analysis of selected readings from various genres in French literature. Taught in French.

Introduction to cultural and textual analysis of selected readings from various genres in French literature. Taught in French.

Introduction to the university, the different fields of the arts and humanities, and the history of how the university and the humanities have evolved across the world from ancient times to the present. Primary emphasis on reading and discussion of literary artifacts to assess the meaning and social status of the arts and humanities in the past and their personal and social value for the future.

Origins of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), with attention to literary formations, archaeology, and social-political settings. Explorations of major questions, including who wrote the Bible, and when; relationships of the biblical tradition to the mythology and religious structures of ancient Israel's near eastern neighbors; and dynamics of politics, religious leadership, and law.

A study of literary and cultural expressions of queer and trans identities, positionalities, and analytics through an exploration of literature, art, and media. We will examine historical and political power relations by considering the intersections of sexuality and gender with race, class, nation, and disability. Topics include the social construction and regulation of sexuality and gender, performance and performativity, intersectionality, and the relationship between aesthetic forms and queer/ trans subjectivity. Our interpretations will be informed by queer and trans theories.

What are myths and why do we tell them? What powers do myths have? We will tackle these questions by looking at the enduring and fascinating myths from ancient Greece and Rome. In addition to studying how they shaped ancient societies, we will also look at their modern influence and reflect upon the power that myths still hold in our contemporary world. Taught in English.