Bread Loaf 100+: Summer 2021 Tutorials

Amanda Gorman: “The Hill We Climb”

Contemporary Playwriting

Eco-Poetry

Poetry Writing

Creative Practice

Ethics in Education

Memoir

Journalism Bootcamp

Writing across Difference

Jacobean Plays and Plagues

Disability in Young Adult Literature

Contemporary Black Metatheater

Gay Romance Genre Fiction

Encountering Theodore Dreiser

Harriett Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Stephen Sondheim

Anne Carson

Chekhov

Solo Performance

Andrey Bely, Petersburg (1922)

Homer, Odyssey

Tutorial in Critical Writing

Group 1: Writing, Pedagogy, and Literacy

1-unit tutorials

7010 Tutorial in Critical Writing

An opportunity for students to gain practice in strategies for launching and sustaining a successful critical inquiry. Areas of focus will include: developing a personal voice, setting research questions, framing an argument, integrating readings and research into the exposition, and building powerful sentences, paragraphs, and transitions.

Sections: L. Engle / J. Fyler / M. Robinson

Group 1: Writing, Pedagogy, and Literacy

2-unit tutorials

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Amanda Gorman, “The Hill We Climb” / B. Brueggemann

The inauguration of a U.S. president has always been an important rhetorical event for America. On January 20, Amanda Gorman electrified the world with her passionate delivery of her poem “The Hill We Climb.” In this AWT, we’ll explore the rhetorical, aesthetic, and performative aspects of that moment. Discussions and projects will aim to lead us to a broader, deeper understanding of the power of rhetoric (and rhetorical poetry).

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Personal Narratives / B. Brueggemann

How to write about The Self with clarity, humor, grace, measure, audience attentiveness, rhetorical finesse, snazzy language, and such (and how to teach your students to do this too). We will consider and work with essays/excerpts, blogposts, podcasts, video, graphic narratives, @ teaching; @ your life; @ important others in your life.

Texts: Bill Roorbach, Writing Life Stories; Riva Lehrer, Golem Girl: A Memoir. Plus one other memoir or collection of your choosing. Happy to do pre-session consultation on memoirs you might choose (based on your own goals, styles, topics).

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Playwriting / D. Clubb

A study of playwriting forms and techniques.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Eco-Poetry / D. Denisoff

Through a variety of readings, discussions, in-class exercises, and group and individual workshop sessions, students will interact with the world around them, develop strategies for catalyzing their writing process, and recognize elements of the landscape that are often forgotten or disregarded. Students’ interests—whether political, eco-spiritual, formal, or other—will shape the tutorial. Each student will submit a final portfolio of revised work at the end of the session.

Texts: Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, ed. Camille T. Dungy (U. of Georgia, 2009); Tommy Pico, Nature Poem (Tin House, 2017); Gary Snyder, Turtle Island (New Direction, 1975); plus others to be shared electronically.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Poetry Writing / R. Forman

Readings will be selected in consultation with students.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Multigenre Writing / D. Huddle

The text that will define our tutorial is George Saunders, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class in Writing, Reading, and Life. We will also look at poems, essays, and stories as they become relevant to our discussions and your writing. My hope is that students will present work in at least two of the three genres we will read and discuss. As Saunders says in his introduction, “At this level, good writing is assumed; the goal is to … acquire the technical means to become joyfully and defiantly [our]selves.”

Text: George Saunders, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life (Random House).

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Poetry/Nonfiction Writing / G. Lewis

This tutorial will use Animals, Monsters and Beasts as a way into creative writing about being a creature. Texts will be tailored to suit students’ individual requirements, but may include Les Murray, Translations from the Natural World; Helen Macdonald, H Is for Hawk; and Farid ud Din Attar, Persian Conference of the Birds. Consideration will also be given to how poetry and nonfiction may be used together in one work.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Contemporary Playwriting / S. MacLean

Through group and one-on-one sessions, we will explore four contemporary plays of varying structures and voices. While studying these plays, students will work toward writing a one-act play or a scene/monologue, each with a critical or pedagogical component.

Texts: Jackie Sibblies Drury, Fairview; Danai Gurira, Eclipsed; Annie Baker, John; Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Fleabag.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Creative Practice / C. Maravich

See description in Group 6 offerings.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Anti-racist Teaching / C. Medina

This tutorial will examine some of the theory and practices of anti-racist teaching, assessment, and scholarship highlighting institutional policy and standards that have a negative impact on students of color. Topics will include critical race theory, the curricular movement for #disruptTexts, and contract grading. Students will be encouraged to analyze their institutional contexts and propose workshops or curricular or institutional policies that include anti-racist recommendations.

Texts: Asao Inoue, Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies (available at https://wac.colostate.edu/books/inoue/ecologies.pdf); Lorena Germán, The Anti-Racist Teacher: Reading Instruction Workbook; Aja Y. Martinez, Counterstory: The Rhetoric and Writing of Critical Race Theory.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Fiction Writing / P. Powell

This tutorial is designed to help you realize your goals as a writer, reader, and critical thinker. As we write and examine prose pieces, we will strengthen voice, deepen into the fundamentals of craft, explore those places in our bodies where our stories live, and discover the fine art of listening. Writers at all levels welcome. 

Text: Janet Burroway, Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft (any edition).

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Literature and Survival / J. Row

In this tutorial we’ll be discussing narratives of personal, spiritual, and cultural survival in the aftermath of an apocalyptic event. Grounded in Frank Kermode’s concept of apocalypse as an essential element of narrative self-understanding in Western culture, we’ll also be thinking about non-Western and non-apocalyptic or differently apocalyptic conceptions of the future. (This tutorial carries one unit of Group 1 credit and one unit of Group 5 credit.)

Texts: Ling Ma, Severance; Denis Johnson, Fiskadoro; Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower; Frank Kermode, The Sense of an Ending. Films: Benh Zeitlin, Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012); Alfonso Cuarón, Children of Men (2006).

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Ethics in Education / J. Sabin

Guided by student interests, the tutorial will focus on a range of ethical issues in education: classroom; curricula; administration; and policy.

Texts: Online cases and other materials from the Harvard School of Education’s Justice in Schools program.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Memoir / C. Savageau

Students will practice the art of telling stories to the page and will begin to develop their storytelling voices. They will learn how to generate and organize story ideas, retrieve memories, find thematic threads, and use sensory language and narrative strategies. Students will write in response to exercises and prompts, share work, and do peer editing. Readings will provide examples of strong voices, the possibilities of form, the struggle for meaning.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Poetry Writing / C. Savageau

Working from Galway Kinnell’s idea of poetry expressing a “tenderness towards existence,” we will focus on organic form that arises from content, the connection of words to breath and body, and the basic tools of the poet (image, sound, and metaphor). Students will write poetry in response to exercises and prompts, share work, and provide constructive criticism to fellow writers. Texts will be provided during the session.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Journalism Bootcamp / R. Schachter

This tutorial combines advanced journalistic instruction (no experience required) and extensive practice with your creative inclinations. Develop professional reporting skills while working closely with professionals in the field. Write news and feature stories for publication, learn photojournalism, and create your own audio podcast on the web. Along the way, you’ll take your writing skills to a brave new level.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: History for Children / M. Stepto

Given the events of the last year, our thoughts turn to the children. What do they know of their history? Can history be presented to them in ways that promote compassion and understanding, foster peaceful change, and protect their futures? Can the knowledge of different histories lead to unity rather than division? We’ll come at these questions by focusing on four of the picture books of Jacqueline Woodson, as well as her verse novel Brown Girl Dreaming, winner of the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. (This tutorial carries one unit of Group 1 credit and one unit of Group 4 credit.)

Texts: Jacqueline Woodson, The Other Side, Coming on Home Soon, Each Kindness, and This Is the Rope. Read also Brown Girl Dreaming.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Writing across Difference / D. Wandera

This tutorial grapples with the question of writing in a world that is increasingly characterized by transnational lives, cross-cultural contact, and cross-border connections. Given the intersections between language and culture, writing can be conceptualized as a boundary-crossing activity. We shall venture within and across boundaries through our writing as we examine understandings of self and other.

Text: M. Agar, Language Shock: Understanding the Culture of Communication (HarperCollins, 1994).

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Life-Writing / A. Swan

In this tutorial we will explore the art and craft of life-writing, both biographical and autobiographical, through our own writing and a critical reading of a few key texts. (This tutorial carries one unit of Group 1 credit and one unit of Group 4 credit.)

Texts: James Atlas, The Shadow in the Garden: A Biographer’s Tale; Richard Holmes, Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer; Tracy Smith, Ordinary Light. Also excerpts from Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan, Francis Bacon: Revelations.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Short-Form Writing / S. Swope

This tutorial will focus on short-form writing for children and adults. Students who want to pursue illustrated texts are welcome. We’ll look at short work by Hemingway, Tartt, and Tolstoy, and at picture book texts by Bang, Snicket, Steig, et al.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Creative Nonfiction Writing / R. Sullivan

With an emphasis on landscape studies and place.

Texts: Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, ed. Camille T. Dungy (U. of Georgia); When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Song Came Through, ed. Joy Harjo (Norton).

Group 2: British Literature: Beginnings through the 17th Century

2-unit tutorials

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Shakespeare and Race / D. Britton

Do Shakespeare’s plays have anything to teach us about the historical development and current manifestations of race and racism? We will explore these issues by focusing on A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Merchant of Venice (and perhaps one or two other plays, should members of the tutorial desire). We will also engage with literary criticism, critical race theory, and current media debates about whether it is time to cancel Shakespeare.

Texts: William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Jacobean Plays and Plague / M. Cadden

We’ll begin with a look at three pamphlets written by playwrights addressing a major outbreak of the bubonic plague in London in 1603–1604, when the theaters were closed and the country was transitioning from the reign of Elizabeth I to the reign of James I. We’ll then take a deep dive into the only play of the English Renaissance to be set in plague-time London, Ben Jonson’s oft-revived classic comedy The Alchemist. How might a pandemic shape not only what you write about but also the way you write about it?

Texts: Thomas Dekker, The Wonderful Year (1603); Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton, News from Gravesend: Sent to Nobody (1603) and The Meeting of Gallants at an Ordinary; or, The Walks in Paul’s (1604); Ben Jonson, The Alchemist (1610).

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Shakespeare and Medicine / M. Floyd-Wilson

An examination of healers and early modern medical discourse in three of Shakespeare’s plays.

Texts: William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, All’s Well That Ends Well, Macbeth.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: De-Colonizing Shakespeare / A. Joubin

In the era of #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo, how do we engage with classical texts that are traditionally associated with colonial and patriarchal practices? This tutorial will equip you with pedagogical strategies and critical tools to de-colonize Shakespeare’s plays. Each student will choose a play for case study. Taking an intersectional approach, we will examine theories of race, gender, sexuality, and disability that are most relevant to our contemporary cultural life. (This tutorial carries one unit of Group 2 credit and one unit of Group 6 credit.)

Texts: Internet Shakespeare Editions (text choice determined individually with each student), available on https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/plays.html.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Beowulf / F. Leneghan

This tutorial will focus on the most important poem in Old English, and one of the masterpieces of medieval literature. We will study Beowulf from a range of perspectives, considering style, structure, context, manuscript, and reception.

Text: Roy Liuzza, Beowulf: Second Edition, Facing-Page Translation (Broadview, 2013).

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Antony and Cleopatra / S. Sherman

As a play to be read, watched, and heard (and re-read, -watched, and -heard), Antony and Cleopatra is a wonder: a late play that absorbs everything Shakespeare had accomplished, while somehow making it all wholly new. As an inspiration for later playwrights, filmmakers, and showrunners, the play’s a geyser, spouting innumerable recreations and reimaginings in shows across four centuries. As a text worth writing about, the play’s a cornucopia: taking up, boldly and idiosyncratically, questions that preoccupy us now (of gender, race, power, nation, empire, war, and class), and triggering questions that you’d never thought of. We’ll try to take in as much of this infinite variety as we can, and to produce essays that do full, lively, and lucid justice to some small part of it. (This tutorial carries one unit of Group 2 credit and one unit of Group 3 credit.)

Texts: William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, ed. John Wilders (Arden Shakespeare Third Series, 1995); William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, ed. S. P. Cerasano (Norton Critical Edition, 2012); John Dryden, All for Love, ed. N. J. Andrew (New Mermaids/Bloomsbury Press, 2004); Eric Hayot, The Elements of Academic Style: Writing for the Humanities (Columbia University Press, 2014).

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: John Milton, Paradise Lost / J. Shoulson

This tutorial focuses on Milton’s 12-book epic and invites students to identify a topic or research question that grows out of our conversations and involves further exploration through intensive close reading and the use of other primary or secondary literature.

Texts: John Milton, Paradise Lost, ed. Gordon Tesky (Norton Critical Ed., Second Ed.). Students may substitute other editions.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Poetry across Media / B. Smith

Beginning with poetry on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and other social media sites, this tutorial will consider poems designed for pre-digital media (books, manuscripts, oral delivery) and the ways those poems have been redesigned for other media (visual arts, music, dance). We’ll also discuss relationships between media (intermediality) and the challenges poetry offers in these in-between states. (This tutorial carries one unit of Group 2 credit and one unit of Group 3 credit.)

Texts: We’ll use a number of online resources, with poets, poems, media, and genres on our agenda determined by the interests of tutorial members.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Hamlet in the Classroom / S. Thorne

See description in Group 6 offerings.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Shakespeare and Cervantes / S. Wofford

We will pair Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night with a reading of “The Captive’s Tale” from Don Quixote, opening the door to projects on Shakespeare, Cervantes, Mediterranean romance, staging, and race and ethnicity, among other topics. One more Mediterranean play by Shakespeare or Cervantes may be added, depending on student interests. (This tutorial carries one unit of Group 2 credit and one unit of Group 5 credit.)

Texts: William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night; Miguel de Cervantes, “The Captive’s Tale” from Don Quixote.

Group 3: British Literature: 18th Century to the Present

2-unit tutorials

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: George Orwell / S. Goldman

In his brief life (1903 to 1950), Orwell wrote and published over a million words. We will focus on some of the most enduring of those words. We will read a selection of Orwells “narrative essays” (which can be found in “Facing Unpleasant Facts”), the novels Animal Farm and 1984, and one of the great books of war reportage, Homage to Catalonia.

Texts: George Orwell, “Facing Unpleasant Facts,” Animal Farm, 1984, Homage to Catalonia.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse / J. Green Lewis

This tutorial uses shared close study of To the Lighthouse as a prism for written projects on Virginia Woolf. Possible topics: personhood; objects; the visual arts; World War I; time’s passage. No knowledge necessary of Woolf, but please have a copy of Hermione Lee’s biography of Woolf on hand.

Texts: Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (Harvest); Hermione Lee, Virginia Woolf.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Zadie Smith, White Teeth / L. Hartley

To say that Zadie Smith’s White Teeth is a London novel is a simple description of a work that raises issues about multiculturalism, historical memory, national identity, family, and genetic engineering. As such, this tutorial offers the opportunity to study some of the most important and vexed issues in contemporary British literature and culture.

Text: Zadie Smith, White Teeth (Vintage).

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Teaching Pride and Prejudice / C. Johnson

The biggest challenge for teachers of Pride and Prejudice is to oblige student readers to slow down – to notice, to ponder, and to savor the complexities that animate this novel, from the first sentence on. Starting with several of Austen’s “juvenile” “novels” – e.g., Jack and Alice and The Beautiful Cassandra – we will explore the dynamite of Austen’s style, and then turn to her most beloved novel with strategies to teach ourselves and others the life-long art of reading Jane Austen. 

Texts: Any good edition of P&P will do (e.g., Norton, Oxford, Longman). Other material will be provided.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: James Joyce, Ulysses / J. Johnson

This tutorial will be devoted to reading, discussing, and writing about Ulysses. 

Text: James Joyce, Ulysses, ed. Hans Walter Gabler et al. (Vintage).

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Jane Austen, Mansfield Park / I. Newman

Jane Austen’s novel Mansfield Park will provide a grounding text for conversation on interrelated concerns in the literature of early 19th-century Britain, including the relationship between the novel and the theater, aesthetics and the landscape, slavery and empire, and the importance of style. Our reading of Austen will be supplemented by a few critical articles (provided). These (which may include scholarship by Penny Gay, D. A. Miller, and Edward Said) will be determined by student interest.

Text: Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, ed. James Kinsley and Jane Stabler (Oxford, 2003).

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: George Eliot, Middlemarch / J. Nunokawa

We will study Eliot’s great novel for what it can teach us about how to write well, and why we should.

Text: George Eliot, Middlemarch.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: 20th-Century Diaries / D. Russell

Thinking about literature and creativity in ordinary life, we’ll explore the diaries of essayist and psychoanalyst Marion Milner, a contemporary of Woolf and Auden, and one of the inventors of what came to be called art therapy. We will also look at brief essays by writers (like Joan Didion) on diary keeping and some psychoanalysts (like D. W. Winnicott) on creative experience.

Texts: Marion Milner, A Life of One’s Own (1934) and On Not Being Able to Paint (1950).

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Antony and Cleopatra / S. Sherman

See description in Group 2 offerings.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Poetry across Media / B. Smith

See description in Group 2 offerings.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Late Dickens / M. Turner

We will explore the work of Charles Dickens during his “late” period in the 1860s. We’ll anchor our thinking on his last completed novel, Our Mutual Friend, but supplement that reading with some short fiction and essays by Dickens.

Text: Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend (1865).

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Fables of Modernity / J. Wicke

This tutorial will concentrate on modern texts iconic for their lasting significance as fables of modernity: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Oscar Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Discussions and projects may consider how images of monsters and madness evolve from the collision of science, technology, and aspirations for human equality, from curations of selfhood, and from constructions of gender, imperialism, and queerness.

Texts: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray; and Bram Stoker, Dracula. All are available in multiple paperback editions, as well as in free Project Gutenberg e-pubs or pdfs.

Group 4: American Literature

2-unit tutorials

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: De-colonial Theory, Pedagogy, Praxis / D. Baca

Introduction to de-colonial methods for classroom application, learning outcomes, and curriculum design.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things / A. Brazil

See description in Group 6 offerings.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Disability in Young Adult Literature / B. Brueggemann

Potential things we’ll talk, think, write about: extra-textuals; performing “difference”; meta-fiction; writing as the hero of writing; un/conventional YA lit moves in these stories; parenting (and teaching) a child with an embodied difference; passing/outing/cloaking; stigma; disability as insight; overdetermined narratives; chiasmus (“crossing”).

Texts: Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time; Brian Selznick, Wonderstruck (graphic plus textual narrative); Cece Bell, El Deafo (graphic narrative).

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Contemporary Black Metatheater / M. Cadden

In 1963, Lionel Abel coined the term metatheater to discuss self-referential, anti-illusionist devices—introduced, he argued, by Renaissance playwrights—which had become ubiquitous in the theater of his day. “Very meta!” was soon used to describe almost every play ever written—with good reason. But some plays are more “meta” than others, and the methods and motives of their authors vary considerably. We’ll focus on contemporary African American playwrights who have found new and often controversial uses for a politically reconceived deployment of metatheatrics.

Texts: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, An Octoroon (2014) and its intertext, Dion Boucicault’s The Octoroon (1859); Aleshea Harris, What to Send Up When It Goes Down (2015); Jackie Sibblies Drury, Fairview (2018); Jeremy Harris, Slave Play (2018).

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorials: Gay Crime Fiction / T. Curtain

See description in Group 5 offerings.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorials: Gay Romance Genre Fiction / T. Curtain

See description in Group 5 offerings.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Encountering Theodore Dreiser / S. Donadio

As one biographer has declared, Dreiser “had an enormous influence on American literature during the first quarter of the [20th] century—and for a time he was American literature, the only writer worth talking about in the same breath with the European masters.” We will be focusing our attention on Dreiser’s two greatest novels, Sister Carrie (1900) and An American Tragedy (1925), situating these works in a cultural perspective and considering the access to lived experience that they provide. Students should anticipate conducting independent research on a variety of relevant topics, as well as timely completion of a substantial comparative project.

Texts: Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie (Norton Critical Edition); An American Tragedy (Signet).

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Faces (of Color) / D. Jones

This tutorial will use films like Bamboozled and other short texts to pursue writing or pedagogical projects that cohere around issues at the intersections of popular culture and racial authenticity, cultural appropriation, colorism, and impersonation.

Film: Spike Lee, Bamboozled (2000).

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin / D. Jones

This tutorial will use Uncle Tom’s Cabin to pursue writing or pedagogical projects that cohere around issues of slavery and freedom; archetypes, tropes, and topoi of American literature; race or gender loyalty and treason; and teaching canon and its problematics (e.g., racial epithets).

Text: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: N. K. Jemisin, How Long ’Til Black Future Month? / H. Laird

This tutorial will use Jemisin’s recent collection of short stories as a springboard for writing and research projects that involve narratives of contemporary issues, including social justice, especially in relation to gender, race, and poverty; contemporary fantasies of alternative worlds or refractions of our worlds; and dystopic imaginings of possible end times scenarios. “Contemporary” is construed here as post–World War II literatures in English in the Americas. 

Text: N. K. Jemisin, How Long ’Til Black Future Month? (Orbit). Unless you are already a Jemison fan, please skip the introduction to focus on reading the stories.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Adaptation / A. Rodgers

The Oxford English Dictionary lists as its primary definition for adaptation: “the bringing of two things together in order to effect a change in the nature of the objects.” Our tutorial will consider the complex relationship between a source and its retellings, including the ways such retellings permanently alter the source material and how each incarnation of a given narrative offers us insight into a particular historical and cultural moment. We will also consider the ways literary and visual representations differ in their communicative and affective mechanisms and challenge where we draw the line between “art” and “entertainment.”

Texts: Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, Watchmen (DC Comics,1986); Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Adaptation, 2nd ed. (Routledge, 2012).

Films: Spike Jonze, Adaptation (2002); Damon Lindelof, Watchmen (TV series, 2019).

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Masculinities in Contemporary American Film / A. Rodgers

Film critics Manohla Dargis and A. O. Scott contend that “movies may be male dominated, but images of men are surprisingly narrow.” This tutorial will explore constructs of postmodern American masculinity as they are disseminated through a few key contemporary films. We will consider what is at stake (culturally, ideologically, economically) in perpetuating certain cinematic archetypes. Of particular relevance to our investigation will be the ways in which film yokes masculinity to race and class, and how masculinity often becomes a signifier that can occlude other forms of identity.

Texts: Selections from Susan Bordo, R. W. Connell, Jack Halberstam, bell hooks, Michael Kimmel. Readings will be circulated to students prior to the session.

Films: Stanley Kubrick, Full Metal Jacket (1987); Jennie Livingston, Paris Is Burning (1990); David Fincher, Fight Club (1999); Barry Jenkins, Moonlight (2016).

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Stephen Sondheim / B. Steinfeld

See description in Group 6 offerings.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: History for Children / M. Stepto

See description in Group 1 offerings.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Toni Morrison, Beloved / R. Stepto

We will examine how Beloved is a literary and historical innovation that invites interdisciplinary attention. Students may bring into their explorations one additional Morrison novel.

Text: Toni Morrison, Beloved.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Life-Writing / A. Swan

See description in Group 1 offerings.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Emerson’s Nature and American Landscape Painting / B. Wolf

This tutorial will explore Emerson’s Nature in the context of landscape painters, with an eye also to environmental and ecological criticism.

Texts: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature, “Circles,” and “Experience”; Aaron Sachs, Arcadian America.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Anne Carson / M. Wood

This tutorial offers the chance of reading and discussing most, if not all, of the work of one of the most interesting living writers: a poet who keeps reinventing poetry, a translator who constantly rethinks the idea of translation. We will accompany this reading with ongoing experiments in writing, which could take many shapes and forms. (This tutorial carries one unit of Group 4 credit and one unit of Group 5 credit.)

Text: Anne Carson, Eros the Bittersweet (Princeton); An Oresteia (Farrar, Straus and Giroux); Autobiography of Red (Vintage); Economy of the Unlost (Princeton); Nox (New Directions); Antigonick (New Directions); Red Doc (Vintage); Norma Jeane Baker of Troy (New Directions).

Group 5: World Literature

2-unit tutorials

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Chekhov / D. Clubb

A study of the major plays of Chekhov: The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters, and The Cherry Orchard.

Text: Anton Chekhov, The Major Plays, trans. Ann Dunnigan (Signet Classics).

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorials: Gay Crime Fiction / T. Curtain

We will work through the conventions of hardboiled detective fiction, paying attention to the genre’s fixation on gay men; and we will exam how queer writers have taken up the challenges of gay sexuality within the confines of the crime novel. (This tutorial carries one unit of Group 4 credit and one unit of Group 5 credit.)

Texts: Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep (1939); “The Simple Art of Murder” (1950); Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955); Joseph Hansen, Fadeout (1970); Michael Nava, The Death of Friends (1996); Katherine V. Forrest, Apparition Alley (2010); Christopher Bollen, The Destroyers (2017). All of the books on this list are available for free or can be purchased inexpensively on Kindle. 

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorials: Gay Romance Genre Fiction / T. Curtain

In little under a decade, there has been an explosion of high-quality, self-published queer romance fiction. We read some representative works to explore the whys and hows of queer romance fiction and try to answer such questions as “Why were almost 200 gay male hockey romance novels published last year?” (This tutorial carries one unit of Group 4 credit and one unit of Group 5 credit.)

Texts: Keira Andrews, Semper Fi: Historical Gay Romance (2014); Alexis Hall, Boyfriend Material (2020); Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth (2019); Ngozi Ukazu, Check, Please! (2013, free webcomic); Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue (2019).

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Solo Performance / J. Fried

See description in Group 6 offerings.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment (1866) / M. Katz

A study of what many regard as Dostoevsky’s masterpiece, preceded by a reading of his provocative and challenging Notes from Underground (1864).

Texts: Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground, trans. Michael Katz (Norton Critical Ed., Second Ed.), 2001; Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, trans. Michael Katz (Norton Critical Ed., 2019).

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Andrey Bely, Petersburg (1922) / M. Katz

A study of Bely’s masterpiece, set in Petersburg in 1905, in the context of the European symbolist movement of the early 20th century. Readings include selected essays and manifestos written by major poets of the period.

Text: Audrey Bely, Petersburg, trans. Robert Maguire and John Malmstad (Indiana, 2019).

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Marx and Marxisms / J. Lezra

Critical writing on any of Marx’s works or organizing concepts (“class,” “ideology,” “materialism,” “society,” “race,” “culture”), or on Marxist or post-Marxist approaches to contemporary social and/or aesthetic questions.

Texts: Marx, “The German Ideology”; Federici, Caliban and the Witch; Williams, Keywords; Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy (selections).

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Translation / J. Lezra

What is “cultural translation”? “Literary translation”? Is there a pedagogy of translation? Critical writing about any aspect of translation; and/or students’ works of translation, undertaken in the context of different philosophical approaches to translation.

Texts: Venuti, The Translation Studies Reader; Cassin et al., Dictionary of Untranslatables (sel.).

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Cervantes / J. Lezra

Writing on any of Cervantes’s works (Don Quixote, Galatea, Persiles, Exemplary Novels) his theater, or on his work’s uses and appropriations by other writers and in diverse media (Fielding, Lennox, Sterne, Flaubert, Austen, Mann, Acker, Gilliam, Kozintsev).

Texts: Selections from Cervantes, Don Quixote, and Exemplary Novels, and selections from his theater pieces.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Artificial Intelligences / K. Marshall

This tutorial will work on subjects related to technology and literature, with discussion about how questions related to artificial intelligence, machine learning, and automation are changing that conversation in our moment. We will read Nobel-winner Kazuo Ishiguro’s new novel, Klara and the Sun, and stories by two major science fiction writers, Ted Chiang and Nnedi Okorafor, to provide a background for our discussions. 

Texts: Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun; Ted Chiang, “The Lifecycle of Software Objects”; Nnedi Okorafor, “Spider the Artist.”

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Reading Space in African Literature / S. Robolin

This tutorial will take up foundational geographic thought and spatial theory that help open up literary meaning. While spatial theory has broad applicability, we will focus on two African texts whose geographic dimensions will have us meditate on matters of power, social identities (race, gender, culture), and material environment. Spatial theory may include essays by Henri Lefebvre, Neil Smith, Edward Soja, Katherine McKittrick, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Achille Mbembe, Sara Mills, David Sibley, etc. (provided). 

Text: Zoë Wicomb, Playing in the Light (available for online purchase), plus one more to be selected in consultation with students.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Literature and Survival / J. Row

See description in Group 1 offerings.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Post-colonial South Asian Writing in English / M. Sabin

We will explore examples of post-colonial and contemporary literature in English by writers with Indian and Pakistani origins to see how the stories and the authors themselves respond to the still unfolding challenges and opportunities of their societies.

Texts: V. S. Naipaul, An Area of Darkness; Kamila Shamsie, Home Fire; Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist and How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Literature of Contagion / J. Wicke

This tutorial looks at modern and contemporary works of literature that focus on pandemic, not only for their plot or setting, but also as metaphor or allegory. Among the questions we will explore: How can literature or art be seen as a “good” contagion? How does literature work to heal or cure?

Texts: Katherine Porter, Pale Horse, Pale Rider; Albert Camus, The Plague; Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera; Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven. All texts are available as paperbacks or Kindle books, and the Porter and Camus have free online Gutenberg editions.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Shakespeare and Cervantes / S. Wofford

See description in Group 2 offerings.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Anne Carson / M. Wood

See description in Group 4 offerings.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time / M. Wood

The plan will be to study closely these seven novels—or this novel in seven parts—reflecting on what we read and on our acts of reading, and working toward an extended piece of writing, creative or critical or both, that will in some way illuminate or prolong the experience of the summer.

Texts: Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, seven volumes, trans. C. K. Scott Moncrieff. Kindle version Kathartika, 2021. Many other editions are available.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Homer, Odyssey / F. Zeitlin

The Odyssey, with its complex hero, continues to shape our imagination and cultural concerns, whether for imitation, extension, revision, allegory, or even parody. We’ll explore this text’s social themes and values, narrative strategies, and poetic forms.

Text: Homer, The Odyssey, trans. Robert Fagles; assorted secondary (to be provided).

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Greek Tragedy and Its Legacy / F. Zeitlin

This tutorial will center on Greek tragedy, which flourished during the 5th c. BCE at Athens and continues to occupy the contemporary stage, looking at a selection of the 33 plays that survive of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Topics may include the genre’s confrontation with issues of gender; family, the individual, and society; political power and relations between gods and/or mortals; and the dramatic techniques of pity and fear, hamartia (error), hybris (pride), peripeteia (plot reversal), anagnorisis (recognition) and catharsis (purification).

Texts: To be chosen in conversation with professor before the start of the session.

Group 6: Theater Arts

2-unit tutorials

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things / A. Brazil

This tutorial will center the proposition of radical empathy that Strayed offers in this series of letters-to-the-reader and will pair the examination of radical empathy with the theatrical practice of active listening. How can these practices shift interior boundaries and create opportunities for tutorial participants to explore how we might think about radical empathy as classroom and/or personal practice? (This tutorial carries one unit of Group 4 credit and one unit of Group 6 credit.)

Text: Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things (2012, Vintage Publishing) and its adaptation for the stage by Nia Vardalos (2018, Samuel French).

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Solo Performance / J. Fried

Students will build a short (five-minute) monologue from core text(s) they select and read closely, with the aim of bringing that literature to life—using the actor’s creative process as a window into the text and the text as a window into creative process. Students will produce their solo performances before their peers at the end of the session. No theater experience required. (This tutorial carries one unit of Group 5 credit and one unit of Group 6 credit.)

Texts: To be chosen individually, in conversation with professor before the start of the session.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: De-Colonizing Shakespeare / A. Joubin

See description in Group 2 offerings.

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Creative Practice / C. Maravich

Students in this tutorial will explore their own creative capacities and learn theater arts practices. These will be used as an entry point for the development of a comprehensive unit that could be implemented in students’ own classrooms. We will support our work with select essays (provided) on education (Maxine Greene), creativity (Clarissa Pinkola Estés), and teaching artistry (Eric Booth). (This tutorial carries one unit of Group 1 credit and one unit of Group 6 credit.)

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Stephen Sondheim / B. Steinfeld

This tutorial will explore the work of Stephen Sondheim through a textual and musical analysis of his musicals and creative process. We will work from the librettos from Sondheim’s (and his co-writers’) most innovative and enduring shows (Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, Assassins); his own collections of lyrics, anecdotes, and values (Finishing the Hat; Look, I Made a Hat); and critical perspectives (among them Steve Swayne, How Sondheim Found his Sound, and Stacy Wolf, “Keeping Company with Sondheim’s Women”). Students will develop their own approaches to the written work, which may be collaborative in nature. (This tutorial carries one unit of Group 4 credit and one unit of Group 6 credit.)

7020 Advanced Writing Tutorial: Hamlet in the Classroom / S. Thorne

How and where do high school students see themselves in Shakespeare? Using the text of Hamlet as our base, this tutorial will explore—and catalyze writing projects on—how to create a dynamic experience in the high school classroom by demystifying and owning Shakespeare’s language, experimenting with different imaginative exercises, encouraging a bear hug embrace of poetry, and world building. (This tutorial carries one unit of Group 2 credit and one unit of Group 6 credit.)

Text: William Shakespeare, Hamlet.