Course Listings

Bread Loaf / Vermont

Teaching, Writing, and Acting for Change Curriculum

M. Robinson, curriculum coordinator

The Teaching, Writing, and Acting for Change Curriculum centers on theories and practices for working across differences. Part of the Kathryn Wasserman Davis Collaborative in Conflict Transformation, it prepares students to cultivate understanding and positive change in their classrooms and communities. Change Fellows must take a Change course during their fellowship year; they and other Change students are eligible to apply for Change Action Grants to support any change-oriented projects they undertake during the academic year. 

7107 Teaching Literacies across Difference
D. Wandera/T, Th 1:45–4:45

In our globalizing world, classrooms and communities continue to be increasingly diverse. How might educators be sufficiently prepared to support learners from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds to thrive in school and beyond? Various forms of diversity in contemporary classrooms can provide opportunities to teach and learn across and within differences. Informed by the audacity of bell hooks’ notion of “teaching to transgress,” this course takes a multiliteracies perspective. The course will explore the social context and aims of literacy teaching and learning within intersections of cultures, families, and heritage; it will also look at language processes and development. Participants will deepen their culturally responsive and social justice pedagogy and practices by scrutinizing instruction, intervention, assessment, and classroom-level approaches. The course will employ interactive activities and reflective discussion to animate pedagogical opportunities and creative solutions as participants strive to meet the needs of all learners. (This course may be used to satisfy a Group 1 requirement.) 

In addition to a class presentation, students will participate in critical evaluations of case studies, undertake a culturally responsive reading of literacy materials typically found in ELA classrooms, and produce a culminating multimodal self-designed artifact that showcases application and continued learning of course principles.

Texts: bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (Routledge); Carla Shalaby, Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at School (The New Press); Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown, New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change (CreateSpace); William Howe and Penelope Lisi, Becoming a Multicultural Educator: Developing Awareness, Gaining Skills, and Taking Action, 3rd ed. (Sage Publications); Durthy A. Washington, Culturally Responsive Reading: Teaching Literature for Social Justice (Teachers College Press). Additional readings and short films will be provided during the session.

7115 Documentary Filmmaking
J. Sanchez/ T, Th 8:30–11:30

This course explores how to make documentaries using minimal filmmaking equipment. Students will read about and discuss documentary design, storyboarding, staging, production, and post-production techniques and will engage with short documentaries as models. We will also spend time experimenting and producing documentaries on students’ personal cell phones (and potentially other cameras or equipment brought to class). Overall, students will learn techniques they can use in their own classes and will gain a strong understanding of documentary design. No previous filmmaking experience is needed for this course. We will have multiple trips off campus for film production. (This course may be used to satisfy a Group 1 requirement.)

Students should come to class the first day having read the first chapter from Shut Up and Shoot, watched A Swim Lesson, and played around with filming on their cellphones and editing on an editing platform (Adobe Premiere, iMovie, Davinci Resolve, or something else). You do not need to be proficient in editing. Just have fun! 

Texts (edition required): Anthony Q. Artis, The Shut Up and Shoot Documentary Guide: A Down & Dirty DV Production, 2nd ed. (Routledge). 

Excerpts and films: Available in Canvas before the session.

7117 PhotoVoice as Rhetorical Practice
M. Robinson/M, W 1:45–4:45

This course explores PhotoVoice as a rhetorical and participatory visual methodology, situated within the field of rhetoric and composition. Students will investigate how images, narratives, and public exhibitions function as rhetorical artifacts, shaping perceptions and actions. Through readings, workshops, and the creation of a campus-based PhotoVoice project, students will develop both a theoretical understanding of and practical skills for designing visual projects that combine storytelling, analysis, and advocacy. Ultimately, we will explore how methodology in general, and this methodology in particular, can be a tool for social justice and change. (This course may be used to satisfy a Group 1 requirement.)

The culminating experience for this course will be a trip to a gallery exhibit. Students will be provided with an article to be read before the first class. The first class will also be a camera workshop and training.

Texts (all are required editions): Amanda Latz, Photovoice Research in Education and Beyond: A Practical Guide from Theory to Exhibition, 1st ed. (Routledge); Rebecca G. Harper and Julia Lopez-Robertson, Photovoice: Using Words and Images in Qualitative Research, 1st ed. (Myers Education Press).

7807 Using Theater in the Classroom
A. Brazil/M, W 8:30–11:30

Theatrical practices can offer students the opportunity to viscerally enter, deeply comprehend, and own a text—and provide a screen-free way to build classroom community. This course will offer students tools to use performance in their own classrooms, to get students up and exploring, engaging physically to create tangible textual connections. Working collaboratively, we’ll also increase competency around consent-based practices and center radical empathy for self and community as a core practice. (This course may be used to satisfy a Group 6 requirement.)

Though performance is central to the course, no previous acting experience is required. We will create and perform on each class day. Some rehearsal time outside of class is necessary. The cumulative written project for this course is a detailed and specific unit plan for implementing this work in our own classrooms, or a proposed equivalent. Students should read Wootton and Landay’s book Engage prior to arrival.

Text (required edition): Eileen Landay and Kurt Wootton, Engage: Creative Strategies for Teaching and Learning (Hope Street Press).

Group 1: Writing, Pedagogy, and Literacy

7000 Mapping Memory: Poetry, Place, and the Environment
J. O’Neil/T, Th 8:30–11:30

Place is about geography—but also memory and imagination. It shapes and is shaped by the people who inhabit it, influencing individual spirits and collective struggles. In the 21st century, poetry has increasingly turned its focus to place, especially in light of the pressing realities of climate change. As we study the craft of poetry, we will explore the intersections of environment, history, and culture in ecopoetic works from the Northeast, Cascadia, the U.S. South, and beyond. We will examine how poets grapple with the ways places hold memory, forge identities, and confront ecological crises. By delving into historical and contemporary contexts and by experimenting with a variety of poetic forms, we will consider how poetry reflects the dynamic relationship between human and nonhuman worlds. Students should bring the course anthology to the first class.

Text (required edition): Attached to the Living World: A New Ecopoetry Anthology, eds. Ann Fisher-Wirth and Laura-Gray Street, 1st ed. (Trinity University Press).

7003 Poetry Workshop: The Poetry of Peace
R. Forman/ M, W 1:45–4:45

In this workshop, we will explore global poetry of peace while incorporating tai chi, qi gong, and communal principles to bring a focused energy of flow to one’s writing life. Each session starts with centering and energetic exercises, engages writing and critique, and ends with a clearer understanding of writing technique. Together, we will focus on energetic flow and what this can bring to the page, the discussion of moving texts/published poems, and critique of student work.

Students will regularly engage in exercises designed to generate new writing, and everyone will submit a final portfolio of revised work at the end of the session. To prepare in advance, start with Ordinary Genius.

Texts: Kim Addonizio, Ordinary Genius: A Guide for the Poet Within (W. W. Norton & Company); Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux, The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry, 1st ed. (W. W. Norton & Company); Stephen Mitchell, Tao Te Ching: A New English Version (HarperCollins); various authors, The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry, ed. Stephen Mitchell (HarperCollins). Additional readings will be provided during the session.

Not open to students who have previously enrolled in an ENGL 7000 course with Ruth Forman.

7005 Fiction Writing
R. Makkai/ M, W 8:30–11:30

This course will focus on the craft of fiction through examination of student work, analysis of exemplary published works of fiction, and completion of exercises spotlighting such aspects of craft as characterization, plot, narrative voice, dialogue, and description. Students will share works in progress, provide constructive criticism to fellow writers, generate new work in response to exercises and prompts, and complete reading assignments provided by the instructor. Class sessions will also include workshops led by guest writers, giving students exposure to multiple approaches to fiction writing. In addition to regular reading assignments and short exercises, each student will complete two full short stories and revise one of them. Part seminar and part workshop, this class is appropriate for students with all levels of experience.

Text: Bret Anthony Johnston, Naming the World: And Other Exercises for the Creative Writer (Random House).

7006 Marking Time: Writing about the Green Mountains and Vicinity
R. Sullivan/T, Th 8:30–11:30

Do we write the world or does the world write us? This class will explore creative writing through a consideration of place. We will study different modes of experimental writing, studying poetry and prose and other genres, but focus on the calendar and the diary, each as a method of examining the landscape as it relates to time—and as a way of examining the idea of nature itself. Readings will include Walden, Virgil’s Georgics, Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, Dawnland Voices: An Anthology of Indigenous Writing from New England, and My Emily Dickinson by Susan Howe, in addition to numerous handouts. We will consider connections between the visual arts and writing, looking for example at the work of Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson as well as John Cage.

Requirements include numerous short writing assignments (precise number to be determined in class, depending on subject matter and form). We hope to have at least one out-of-class film screening. No field trips are planned, but they can’t be ruled out. Please read Walden and the Georgics before the first class and bring a drawing pad and pen or pencil for sketching. Drawing experience is absolutely not required in any way—i.e., inexperience is welcomed.

Texts (all are required editions): Henry David Thoreau, Walden and Other Writings, latest ed. (Modern Library); Virgil, Georgics, trans. Janet Lembke, latest ed. (Yale); Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, ed. Camille T. Dungy (U. of Georgia); Susan Howe, My Emily Dickinson, latest ed. (New Directions); Dawnland Voices: An Anthology of Indigenous Writing from New England, latest Siobhan Senier ed. (University of Nebraska; fully accessible via Middlebury Library); numerous handouts and library holds.

7107 Teaching Literacies across Difference
D. Wandera/T, Th 1:45–4:45
See description in Change offerings.

7115 Documentary Filmmaking
J. Sanchez/T, Th 8:30–11:30
See description in Change offerings.

7117 PhotoVoice as Rhetorical Practice
M. Robinson/M, W 1:45–4:45
See description in Change offerings.

7150 Short Form Writing: Teaching and Beyond
S. Swope/M, W 8:30–11:30

A teacher’s life is profound, often absurd, and filled with remarkable stories that rarely get written down. In this workshop, we’ll mine that world as we experiment with short-form nonfiction and fiction, fully accepting that inspiration may lead us to stories not about teaching at all. New pieces will be workshopped every session, so you’ll generate a ton of material and be encouraged to take risks. Because your pieces will be short—really short—our focus will be on clarity and economy. We’ll bring a fierce editorial eye to each draft, cheerfully challenging every sentence, phrase, and word to see if it’s truly needed to tell the tightest story possible. 

A new 500-word piece will be required for each class. Please come to the first class having read Sticks by George Saunders (which is widely available online for free) and the introduction to Lane Greene’s Writing with Style, which will be our touchstone for the summer.

Text: Lane Greene, Writing with Style: The Economist Guide (The Economist Books).

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

7207 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight/Troilus and Criseyde
J. Fyler/M, W 8:30–11:30

This course focuses on two great poems from late 14th-century England, one by an anonymous author, the “Gawain poet” (aka “Pearl poet”); the other by Geoffrey Chaucer. We’ll read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight mainly in translation, given the difficulty of its original dialect, and Troilus and Criseyde in Middle English, because Chaucer’s London dialect is the direct ancestor of modern English and not hard to understand. The two poets were apparently unaware of each other’s work, or even existence, though their poems are connected by their common interest in the supposed descent of Britain from Aeneas, himself a survivor of the fall of Troy. Both these works are great fun to read, and among the greatest narrative poems in English literature. We will read them closely, exploring each by itself as well as in relation to each other.

Two 8-to-12-page papers will be required.

Texts (all are required editions): Chretien de Troyes, Yvain: The Knight of the Lion, Burton Raffel ed. (Yale); Sir Thomas Malory, The Morte Darthur, ed. Derek Brewer (Northwestern); Malcolm Andrew, Complete Works of the Pearl Poet, ed. Casey Finch (University of California Press); Laura Howes, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. Marie Borroff (Norton); Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, ed. Richard Green (Ingram); Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde, ed. Stephen Barney (Norton).

7240 Shakespeare & Co.
L. Engle/T, Th 8:30–11:30

This course focuses on the flowering of public theater in London from 1585 to 1625. We will read selected plays by Shakespeare alongside similar plays by other major playwrights such as Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, and John Webster, with attention both to the main genres and the peculiar institutions of Elizabethan and Jacobean theater. Topics in order: revenge (Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy; Shakespeare, Hamlet; Middleton, The Revenger’s Tragedy); kingship (Marlowe, Tamburlaine 1 and Edward II; Shakespeare, Macbeth); love and service (Shakespeare, Othello; Middleton and William Rowley, The Changeling; Webster, The Duchess of Malfi); magic and theatricality (Marlowe, Doctor Faustus; Jonson, The Alchemist; Shakespeare, The Tempest). Please arrive ready to discuss The Spanish Tragedy, Hamlet, and The Revenger’s Tragedy.

Students will write a shorter and a longer paper, contribute a twice-weekly note or question on the reading, lead one class discussion, and participate in an acting exercise in which they will memorize a part in a scene section under my direction. Rehearsing scenes involves meeting outside class hours, and I also meet regularly with students outside class to discuss their writing. 

Texts (required editions noted with an asterisk): D. Bevington, L. Engle, K. Maus, and E. Rasmussen, English Renaissance Drama: A Norton Anthology, 1st ed. (Norton)*; Shakespeare, Four Tragedies, ed. D. Bevington and D. S. Kastan 2005 (Bantam, 2005); Shakespeare, The Late Romances, ed. D. Bevington and D. S. Kastan 2008 (Bantam, 2008).

7230 Epic Fantasy, Historical Romance: The Faerie Queene
H. Laird/T, Th 1:45–4:45

Join me in reading the early modern epic poem (my own favorite) about the knight Britomart (aka Queen Elizabeth), and several other warriors—most famously the Redcrosse knight—interwoven with Prince Arthur’s quest on behalf of Gloriana (aka Queen Elizabeth). Immersion in Edmund Spenser’s verse orchestrates this poem’s metamorphic atmospheres, as it moves through journeys as deep in feeling as in the characters’ thoughts. Yet intersectional critique will also be invited. Occasionally, we will dip into other poems by Spenser, available either online or on reserve. You will be invited to juxtapose The Faerie Queene with a later text of your choice (in consultation with the instructor), not necessarily the one required for the class, A Maid in Armor Bright: The Faerie Queene Retold: Book One (2025). (See some suggestions below for, respectively, a New Woman novel, a historical fiction, a Sidhe fantasy, an alt-history novel, or a YA fantasy.) The seminar paper will read The Faerie Queene through the generic lens(es) of your choosing (not only those of the course title and suggested options, but also the adventure tale, canto[s], allegory, pilgrimage, game campaign, etc.—see, e.g., Legends of Avallen—Against the Faerie Queene campaign book).

There will be a seminar paper in stages due during the course. Prior to the first class, read enough to become relatively familiar with Spenser’s lingo, not worrying about absorbing all the notes; read some of it aloud.

Texts (all editions are required): Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, trans. A. C. Hamilton, et al., 2nd ed. (Longman); Liana Richmond, A Maid in Armor Bright: The Faerie Queene Retold: Book One (Agathos).

Recommended texts: Edmund Spenser, Edmund Spenser’s Poetry: A Norton Critical Edition, trans. Anne Lake Prescott and Andrew Hadfield, 4th ed. (Norton); Lady Florence Dixie, Gloriana; Or, the Revolution of 1900 (Zinc Read); Leah Toole, The Haunted Queen (Independent); Mercedes Lackey and Roberta Gellis, This Scepter’d Isle: The Doubled Edge, Book 1 (Baen); Harry Turtledove, Ruled Britannia (Roc Trade); Holly Black, Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale (Margaret K. McElderry Books).          

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

7312 History of Song
I. Newman/T, Th 8:30–11:30

In this course we will consider the entanglement of literature and song, with a particular focus on the boundaries between music and English literature, how they were patrolled, and how they have been used for ideological ends. Our classes will be divided between discussions of theorizations of the relationship between song and poetry, and discovering what we might learn from performing songs together. Most of our examples will come from 18th- and 19th-century Britain, but we will follow the songs wherever they take us.

Students will be given the choice between producing a portfolio of shorter pieces of writing or a longer seminar paper. We will visit the Helen Hartness Flanders Collection at the Middlebury College Library’s Special Collections at least once during class time. Repeat visits on your own time are encouraged. We will be discussing two movies: Sinners (2025) and The History of Sound (2025). Screenings will happen outside of class hours.

No previous musical knowledge is necessary, though the musically inclined are encouraged to bring instruments with them to campus, and everyone should come prepared to listen, learn, and sing together.

Texts: Short chapters, podcast episodes, songs, and the occasional movie will be shared in advance of the summer via the course Canvas website.

7360 Reading Dickens, Now
B. Black/T, Th 8:30–11:30

The writer John Irving once said that reading Dickens made him want to write novels. Together, we will focus on the craft of a working writer who was enormously successful in his own lifetime and who remains deeply affecting today. Dostoevsky, Kafka, and Freud all claimed to have been influenced by Dickens. In our course, we’ll be gaining a deep and intimate knowledge of a master of fiction writing who cared heartily about issues crucial to our own cultural moment: a just and caring social order, power and class, labor and precarity, the plight of neglected children, the tragedy of broken families, our obligation to one another (and the walls we build to divide us), the carceral state, human interdependence, and community. Our work begins with Dickens’s first published piece at the age of 21, and we will end with what he called his “favorite child,” David Copperfield.

Assignments will include a seminar presentation, a short essay, and a long final project. Closer to the start of classes, I will send students the first day’s assignment by email. 

Texts (all are required editions): Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, ed. Richard Kelly (Broadview Press); Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist (Penguin Classics); Charles Dickens, Hard Times (Penguin); Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (Oxford); Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, critical ed. (Norton).

7410 Haunted
B. Black/T, Th 1:45–4:45

Ghosts fascinate us as present absences; they seem always, potentially, there by our side. What do they reveal to us? When ghosts show up in a text, they are often a warning, a commission that some past wrong must be righted. Simply understood, this course is an exploration of ghost fiction; however, the “spectral” will come to deepen, and widen, as a heuristic for us. We will study works as varied as Morrison’s Beloved, Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, David Lowery’s A Ghost Story, Freud’s The Uncanny, and Maya Lin’s “What Is Missing?” As the past that insists on being present, ghosts will compel us to think about memory, history, nostalgia, space/place, and time. Is it possible that being haunted captures what it feels like to exist now—in the wake of so much, from climate degradation to pandemic to racial inequality in a nation haunted by the ghosts of slavery?

Assignments during the session will include a seminar presentation, a short essay, and a long final project. Closer to the start of classes, I will send students the first day’s assignment by email.

Texts (all are required editions): Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny (Penguin); Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, ed. Richard Kelly (Broadview); Toni Morrison, Beloved (Vintage).

7435 George Orwell: In His Time and Ours 
S. Goldman/T, Th 1:45–4:45

In his brief life (1903 to 1950), Orwell wrote and published over a million words. This course will focus on some of the most enduring of those words. We will read a selection of Orwell’s narrative essays, his memoirs Down and Out in Paris and London and The Road to Wigan Pier, and the novels Animal Farm and 1984.

This is a “no tech” class: no laptop use in the classroom. There will be one paper due during the session. Before the first class, please read the introduction and first three chapters of Christopher E. Hitchens’ Why Orwell Matters.

Texts (required editions noted with an asterisk): George Orwell, All Art Is Propaganda (Mariner Books Classics); George Orwell, 1984 (Signet); George Orwell, Animal Farm (Signet); George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (Mariner Books Classics); George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London (Wordsworth Editions Ltd); Rebecca Solnit, Orwell’s Roses (Penguin)*; Christopher E. Hitchens, Why Orwell Matters (Basic)*.

7716 Dante / Beckett
D. Clubb/M, W 1:45–4:45
See description in Group 5 offerings.

Group 4: American Literature

7582 Go West
T. Curtain/M, W 1:45–4:45

The American Western is too large a subject to cover in a single lifetime, let alone a single course. We will, however, sketch a map of the imaginary landscape that informs and inflects much of what Americans say they believe about themselves and their country. We will start with the emergence of the Western in the first years of the 20th century, then touch on essential guideposts along the way to the genre’s height of popularity in the years following the Second World War. We will document the vociferous struggles in publishing and Hollywood over these stories Americans told to themselves about themselves. We will end by listening to writers and creators who love the genre but insist that the Western needed to, needs to—and is the proper place to—make sense of our nation’s relationship to itself and its mythmaking. We will work with novels, short stories, movies, TV shows, songs, and other modes of storytelling as we attempt to understand the lay of the land, its obstacles, and its ultimate promises.

Students should read and watch as much of the material as possible before the first class. We will begin with the novels The Virginian, Riders of the Purple Sage, and The Ox-Bow Incident (1940), and the movie Stagecoach (1939).

Texts (any publisher/edition; all are available on the Internet Archive): Owen Wister, The Virginian (1902); Zane Grey, Riders of the Purple Sage (1912); Walter Van Tilburg Clark, The Ox-Bow Incident (1940); Thomas Savage, The Power of the Dog (1967); Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove (1985); Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian (1985); James Welch, Fools Crow (1987); Annie Proulx, Brokeback Mountain (1997); Dorothy M. Johnson, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1953); Dorothy M. Johnson, A Man Called Horse (1950).

Films (available to view via online streaming sources, Middlebury College Library, or the Internet Archive): John Ford, Stagecoach (1939); Howard Hawks, Red River (1948); George Stevens, Shane (1953); Fred Zinnemann, High Noon (1952); John Ford, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962); Sam Peckinpah, The Wild Bunch (1969); Clint Eastwood, Unforgiven (1992); Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain (2005).

7507 Humbugs and Visionaries
B. Wolf/T, Th 1:45–4:45

This course examines American literature and visual culture in the years before the Civil War, focusing on the ways that writers and artists not only anticipated but helped construct the modern era. We look in particular at mythmakers, prophets, and self-promoters, from poets like Phillis Wheatley and Emily Dickinson, to painters like Thomas Cole and Hudson River School artists, to popular entertainers like P. T. Barnum. Topics include visuality and the invention of “whiteness”; landscape and empire; genre painting and hegemony; race and double-coding; domesticity and sentimentalism.

Students will write a “description paper” of a single work of art from the Middlebury College Museum of Art early in the course and then focus on creating an imaginary exhibition, including an introductory catalogue essay, as their final project. We will make one class trip to the Museum of Art. We will also have a film screening of Lone Star outside of class hours.

Texts (required editions noted with an asterisk): Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography, Books 1 and 2; Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature, 1836 ed.* (any publisher); Ralph Waldo Emerson, Experience (any publisher); Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 1845 ed.*(any publisher); Edgar Allan Poe, Berenice and William Wilson in Great Short Works of Edgar Allan Poe (HarperCollins); Herman Melville, Bartleby the Scrivener (any edition/publisher).

7591 William Faulkner: Major Novels
S. Donadio/M, W 1:45–4:45

Working together closely over the summer, we will read our way through a sequence of extraordinary narratives produced by this author in a phase of white-hot creative intensity over the course of a single decade (1929–1939)—a body of work that may be regarded as the greatest sustained achievement of American fiction in the 20th century. Participants in this critical endeavor should anticipate regular opportunities for related reading and independent research.

Writing assignments include a close reading of specific passages, an independent research presentation, and a final comparative essay. Prior to the first class, please read through the detailed Faulkner chronology in the first Library of America volume.

Texts (all are required editions): William Faulkner, Novels 1926–1929, deluxe ed. (Library of America); William Faulkner, Novels 1930–1935, ed. Joseph Blotner (Library of America); William Faulkner, Novels 1936–1940, ed. Joseph Blotner (Library of America).

7621 Latinx Literature
D. Baca/M, W 8:30–11:30

In this seminar we will analyze contemporary works by Latinx authors of Afro-Caribbean, Latin American, and Mexican origin. We will examine how our authors advance significant contributions to global literature and to the transnational reception of their cultures’ literary production. Latinx writing arises from intertwining Indigenous, Iberian, African, and American contexts shaped by colonial power and U.S. expansion. We will read both with and against dominant historical narratives of nations, subjectivities, and aesthetic configurations. This course will further investigate the relationship of late global capitalism to Latinx identity formation, multilingualism, wars of occupation, the political economies of migration, linguistic and racial profiling, and responses to demographobia. A seminar essay will be due at the end of the course.

Texts: Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (Aunt Lute Books); Eduardo Galeano, Children of the Days: A Calendar of Human History, ed. Mark Fried (Bold Type Books); various authors, Wild Tongues Can’t Be Tamed: 15 Voices from the Latinx Diaspora, ed. Saraciea Fennell (Flatiron Books); Julia Alvarez, In the Time of the Butterflies (Algonquin).

7665 The Novella: Reading Short Novels in the Age of Attention
K. Marshall/M, W 8:30–11:30

The novella is more popular than ever. You might find a table of short reads in an urban bookstore, notice a short novel on the year’s literary prize list, or see a slim volume tucked neatly in a bag or back pocket. But what is the appeal of the short novel today, and how does that depend on the form’s history? In this course we will read a range of contemporary novellas as well as key older texts alongside essays about reading and attention in the 21st century. In the process, we will ask what pleasures short novels provide, and how they compare to what we are able to think with longer fictions. (This course may be used to satisfy a Group 5 requirement.)

This course will include creative and critical assignments, and regular in-class writing. The reading load is fast-paced and extensive: students should read as much as possible ahead of time. All students should prepare the Johnson and Gladman texts for discussion on the first day of class.

Texts (required editions noted with an asterisk): Denis Johnson, Train Dreams (Picador Paper); Renee Gladman, To After That (TOAF) (Dorothy, a publishing project)*; Heinrich von Kleist, The Duel, ed. Annie Janusch (Melville House); Ottessa Moshfegh, McGlue (Penguin); Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (Oxford); Christina Rivera Garza, The Taiga Syndrome, eds. Suzanne Jill Levine and Aviva Kana (Dorothy, a publishing project); Nella Larsen, Quicksand (Modern Library Torchbearers); Justin Torres, We the Animals (Mariner Books); Nnedi Okorafor, Binti (Tordotcom); Olga Ravn, The Employees, ed. Martin Aitken (New Directions); Percival Everett, Erasure (Graywolf Press); David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas (Random House); Penelope Fitzgerald, Offshore (Mariner Books); Samantha Harvey, Orbital (Grove Press); Cesar Aira, An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter, ed. Chris Andrews (New Directions); Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These (Grove Press); Harriet Chessman, The Beauty of Ordinary Things (Atelier26 Books). 

7645 Curious Aesthetics: American Musical Theater
T. Wolff/T, Th 8:30–11:30

The musical possesses unique conventions of form and narrative. Focusing primarily on the American musical post-WWII, this course will look at the phenomenon of musical theater, analyzing musicals both as texts and as performances. We will use a variety of critical methods to address several related questions, including: How do musicals work on audiences? What kinds of cultural and political work do musicals do? What about the experience and form of musical theater, the friction or fusion of song, dance, and script, makes it enduringly popular and perhaps particularly American? (This course may be used to satisfy a Group 6 requirement.)

Students will be expected to complete short, informal responses (250–600 words) about the work we are discussing in the following class, as well as to produce one longer paper or project. Students should be prepared to screen movies of four musicals (available on Canvas before the session begins), and to attend two rehearsals and a performance of Assassins, which will be staged at Bread Loaf this summer. Before the first class, please read the criticism that will be listed on Canvas.

Texts (all are required editions): Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, The Threepenny Opera, ed. Desmond Vesey (Grove Press, 1994); Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, My Fair Lady (Penguin Books, 1975); Oscar Hammerstein II and Richard Rodgers, Oklahoma! (Concord Theatricals, 2021); Oscar Hammerstein II and Richard Rodgers, South Pacific (Applause, 2014); Arthur Laurents, Leonard Bernstein, and Stephen Sondheim, West Side Story (Laurel Leaf, 1965); Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Applause, 2000); Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman, Assassins (Theatre Communications Group, 1993); Jonathan Larson, Rent (Applause, 2008); Adam Guettel and Tina Landau, Floyd Collins (Williamson Music, 2001); Anaïs Mitchell, Hadestown (Concord Theatricals, 2021). All music and any additional texts will be available on Canvas.

Group 5: World Literature

7665 The Novella: Reading Short Novels in the Age of Attention
K. Marshall/M, W 8:30–11:30
See description in Group 4 offerings.

7716 Dante / Beckett
D. Clubb/M, W 1:45–4:45

A study of Purgatorio, the second book of Dante’s epic poem The Divine Comedy. At the end of the summer, we’ll take up three or four short plays by Samuel Beckett, looking for ways these astonishing works might further illuminate Dante’s poetic and dramatic achievement. This is a close-reading course. We’ll be using the Hollander translation of Dante’s text and will consult other translations as our work progresses. (This course may be used to satisfy a Group 3 requirement.)

There will be three to four short essays and a course journal due at the end of the semester. As background, please read Dante’s Inferno before the summer begins, if you can.

Texts (all are required editions): Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio, eds. Jean Hollander and Robert Hollander (Vintage, Anchor Books); Samuel Beckett, The Collected Shorter Plays (Grove Press).

Recommended texts: Dante Alighieri, The Inferno, eds. Jean Hollander and Robert Hollander (Anchor Books); Dante Alighieri, Paradiso, eds. Jean Hollander and Robert Hollander (Anchor Books).

7751 Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov
M. Katz/M, W 1:45–4:45

This course offers students an opportunity to read and study two masterpieces of Russian fiction and world literature. Tolstoy’s novel is the poignant story of two marriages, one of which is ultimately successful, the other of which ends tragically. It portrays a beautiful aristocrat’s tragic love affair with a dashing officer, set against a backdrop of Russian high society. This affair is compared with the marriage of a true Tolstoyan hero, Konstantin Levin. The novel explores themes of love, marriage, family, jealousy, and the search for meaning. Dostoevsky’s final novel centers on the problem of faith and the existence of evil as made manifest in the tale of the mysterious murder of a vicious, drunken, avaricious father and the complicated relationship of his three sons to the crime. It is a novel of parricide, suicide, and madness, culminating in a twisted, sensational trial. In addition to these two works, we will also make use of the authors’ notebooks, as well as excellent Russian television adaptations of both novels.

Two papers required, one on each of the two novels. Students should come to the first class prepared to discuss Part I of Anna Karenina. 

Texts (all are required editions): Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, trans. Rosamund Bartlett (Oxford University Press); Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Michael R. Katz (Liveright). 

7786 Women, Sex and Power: Manifestos, Memoirs, and Performances
C. Rosenthal/M, W 1:45–4:45

Why feminism and feminist theory now? Every day, we witness or read about the impact of what amounts to a war against women. Gender inequality, reproductive injustice, and sexual assaults are on the rise. We turn to the work of feminist activists—including theater artists—who raise questions, make us see the world with fresh eyes, and provide powerful ideas and imagery that propel us towards new pathways, connections, and answers. Our interdisciplinary inquiry will focus on the work of women in U.S. history and culture and women in European and non-Western cultures in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries as we investigate how race, class, gender, and sexuality intersect in multiple ways. (This course may be used to satisfy a Group 6 requirement.)

Students will submit brief “discussion” responses (300-650 words) in preparation for each class. The final assignment will be a creative piece in response to an interview conducted with a woman (age 50+) who has had a significant impact on your life. Before the first class, please read the excerpt (available on Canvas before the session) from Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex.

Texts: Susan Glaspell, “Trifles” from Political Stages: Plays that Shaped a Century; Megan Terry, Calm Down Mother; and Alice Childress, Wine in the Wilderness  (all three available on Canvas before the session); Ika Hugel-Marshall, Invisible Woman: Growing Up Black in Germany, trans. Elizabeth Gaffney (Peter Lang, 2008); Huda Shaarawi, Harem Years: The Memoirs of an Egyptian Feminist (Feminist Press, 1987); Fatima Mernissi, Dreams of Trespass (Basic Books); Heather Raffo, 9 Parts of Desire (available on Canvas); Sanaz Toossi, English, Acting ed. (Concord Theatricals). Additional readings will also be available on Canvas. 

Group 6: Theater Arts

7645 Curious Aesthetics: American Musical Theater
T. Wolff/ T, Th 8:30–11:30
See description in Group 4 offerings.

7786 Women, Sex and Power: Manifestos, Memoirs, and Performances
C. Rosenthal/M, W 1:45–4:45
See description in Group 5 offerings.

7807 Using Theater in the Classroom
A. Brazil/M, W 8:30–11:30
See description in Change offerings.

7811 Production and Dramaturgy
B. Steinfeld and S. Thorne/T, Th 1:45–4:45

Creating a living, breathing production from a script involves a group of collaborators wrestling with practical and imaginative questions about content and context, theatrical space, and much more. This course will provide students with a firsthand experience of this process by working alongside the Bread Loaf Acting Ensemble in the rehearsal and performance of Assassins by Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman. Students enrolled in the course will be guaranteed speaking roles or a commensurate creative role in the production.

Students are required to attend rehearsals at least three evenings a week; the class will also meet weekly to discuss and digest the process in real time. Students will keep a weekly journal and work on a small-scale project, applying what they learn about the process to another text of their own choosing. No acting experience is necessary. Students should be familiar with the libretto and the score before starting the session.

Texts (required edition): Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman, Assassins, revised ed. (Theater Communications Group).

Bread Loaf / Oxford 

Group 1: Writing, Pedagogy, and Literacy

7977 Creative Writing in Poetry and Nonfiction: The Poetry Detective
G. Lewis/M, T, W 10:45–12:45

The detective or mystery genre is a key trope in modern popular culture and is used widely as a means of personal and philosophical enquiry. This workshop will use the methods of police detection as a way of approaching poems both as a reader and writer. The fear of not understanding a poem—or of not being understood—can be a significant barrier to both novice and seasoned students, but an application of the principles of detection offers a useful way into complex works of art. (This course carries one unit of Group 1 credit and one unit of Group 5 credit.)

Each class will include writing exercises—with some as homework—designed to explore methods raised by the readings. The aim is to take a fresh and unintimidating look at unlocking the mysteries of your own and other writers’ texts. As writers, we will be following various leads in order to track down new poems. Ask the right questions, and you may get some unexpected answers!

All texts will be supplied in class.

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

7905 The Romance of Arthur
M. Rasmussen/M, W 10–12:30

Within the Western tradition, the legend of King Arthur and his knights is the most popular secular story ever told. References to Arthur go back to the sixth century, and creative artists keep the legend alive today. What has made this story endure? Together we will do a deep dive into the Arthurian tradition, concentrating especially on the 12th-century romance The Knight of the Cart, the 14th-century alliterative poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur, Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, and Bernard Malamud’s baseball novel, The Natural. We will also consider offshoots of the legend in the visual arts, opera, and such films as Excalibur (1981), Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1976), and The Green Knight (2021). (This course carries one unit of Group 2 and one unit of Group 5 credit.)

Students should read Chapters 1–3 in Lacy and Wilhelm’s anthology prior to the first class. A short analytical paper will be due midway through the term, and each student will complete a final project of their own design. 

July 17–18, there will be an optional overnight field trip to visit some spectacular Arthurian sites: Stonehenge in Wiltshire, Glastonbury in Somerset, and the ruins of Tintagel Castle in Cornwall, beetling over the rough Celtic Sea. The field trip comes with an activity fee of £100 and will be open to all students in the Oxford program. Although not required for this course, students in the course will be given priority for admission.

Texts (all are required editions): Norris J. Lacy and James J. Wilhelm, The Romance of Arthur, 3rd ed. (Routledge); Thomas Malory and Helen Cooper, Le Morte Darthur: The Winchester Manuscript, 1st ed. (Oxford University Press); Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King, 1st ed. (Penguin); Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, 1st ed. (Modern Library Classics); Bernard Malamud, The Natural, 1st ed. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux).

Required films (to be watched outside of class): John Boorman, Excalibur (1981); Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones, Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975); David Lowery, The Green Knight (2021).

7925 Shakespeare in Pre-Production
B. McEleney/M, T, Th 10–12

Any theatrical production of a play from a previous century exists simultaneously in two times—the period in which it was written, and the present. How does a director honor the literary, social, and historical context of a 400-year-old work while still making it “relevant” and accessible to contemporary audiences? In this course we will engage in the deep and comprehensive textual analysis that precedes a first rehearsal and couple it with the creative processes of personalization and conceptualization that result in a cohesive production. Students will choose a work from the Shakespeare canon and analyze its language, structure, plot, themes, and character arcs. They will use the Oxford library system to research production histories, and will imagine their own production, ultimately presenting their vision, including set, costume, lighting, and sound design choices, both orally to the class and in writing. No acting or directing experience is necessary. (This course carries one unit of Group 2 credit and one unit of Group 6 credit.)

Students will submit weekly writing (250–500 words) chronicling their ongoing process of exploration and preparation. In the final week students will present an oral presentation to the class, as well as a written description of their planned production (2,500 words), accompanied by visual renderings of set and costume design ideas. Prior to the first class, prepare a list of three Shakespeare plays you might be interested in working on. If possible, we will attend a production of a Shakespeare play in London or Oxford (a modest entrance fee may be required).

Texts: William Shakespeare, The Collected Works of William Shakespeare (any publisher).

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

7921 British Theater: Page to Stage
S. Berenson/M, T, Th 10–12:30; W full day (for performances and travel)

Using the resources of the British theater, this course will examine imagery in dramatic literature. We will attend performances in London and Stratford. In addition to weekly theater attendance and travel time, the class will include discussions, lectures, two writing projects, and collaborative on-your-feet assignments, which will require group preparation outside of regularly scheduled class hours. No previous acting experience is required. This is a class for students who love the theater and understand that the word “image” is the root of the word “imagination.” 

Theater performances have not been finalized but will include both classic and contemporary texts, with a particular focus on productions of the plays of Anton Chekhov being produced at British venues, including Ivanov with Chris Pine at the Bridge Theatre in London and The Cherry Orchard with Kenneth Branagh and Helen Hunt at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford. Enrolled students will be charged a supplemental fee of $850 to cover the costs of tickets and transportation. A questionnaire, a schedule of plays, and a reading list will be circulated in the spring. (This course carries one unit of Group 3 credit and one unit of Group 6 credit.)

No texts are required for this course. 

7941 Romantic Ireland
D. Dwan/T, Th 10:30–12:30

In a famous poem first published in a newspaper in 1913, W. B. Yeats declared “Romantic Ireland” to be dead and gone. However, the funerals for Romantic Ireland had been proceeding for well over a hundred years—every burial being an attempted resurrection—and would continue throughout the 20th century. Drawing on a range of major writers (Joyce, Synge, Bowen, Heaney, Boland), this course considers why Ireland was repeatedly configured and reconfigured as a “romantic” country. It examines the ambivalence about “modernity” that was expressed in the conceit, the kind of politics it conditioned—nationalism in particular—and the literary and cultural practices that both fed the myth and critiqued it. While we will be situating these texts within intricate historical and ideological contexts, we will also focus on what makes them aesthetically distinctive and challenging. 

The course is assessed through one final research paper (approx. 5,000 words). Students will build towards this with a 1,500-to-2,000-word formative essay and a 1,000-word final essay plan. By the time of our first meeting, you should definitely have read J. M. Synge’s Playboy of the Western World and W. B. Yeats’s collection, Responsibilities.

Texts: J. M. Synge, The Playboy of the Western World, 1st ed. (Methuen); W. B. Yeats, Poems, ed. Daniel Albright (Everyman); James Joyce, Dubliners, ed. Terence Brown (Penguin); Elizabeth Bowen, The Last September (Vintage); Seamus Heaney, Opened Ground: Collected Poems, 1966–1996 (Faber); Anna Burns, Milkman (Faber).

7944 On Middlemarch
D. Russell/M, W 2–5

In this seminar we will study together the work of one of the great novelists of the 19th century in Britain, George Eliot. Eliot, whose real name was Marianne Evans, wrote fiction that was able to distill and explore major ideas in philosophy, ethics, science, history, aesthetics, and politics. The central questions of her work include how people live meaningful and creative lives, and how people ought to treat one another. In examining these questions, we will focus in particular on Eliot’s masterpiece Middlemarch (1871–73), which manages to be both the story of ordinary life in a small town and an inquiry into some major historical and philosophical ideas (it’s also very funny).

Major requirements include a presentation, short paper, and final research paper. Read book 1 of Middlemarch, “Miss Brooke,” prior to the first class.

Texts (required edition): George Eliot, Middlemarch, eds. David Carroll and David Russell (OUP, Oxford World’s Classics Edition).

7971 Speed, Time, and Modernity since the 19th Century
M. Turner/M, W 10:30–12:30

In the contemporary world, we often feel that daily life moves at a dizzying pace. We hurtle forward into the future seemingly without time to slow down or to reflect. But this feeling of a culture of acceleration isn’t especially new. This course begins in the mid-19th century and tracks the speed of modern life by exploring intersections between literature, technology, and media. Organized in four sections—Movement, Network, Pause, and Rewind—and covering fiction, poetry, film, and visual culture, we think about how imagining acceleration and time has led to new artistic forms and suggested new political possibilities. From trains, planes, and automobiles to the telegraph and internet, we will think about how literature and art are shaped by, but also challenge, our understanding of technology and communication. We move freely between past and present in a deliberate attempt to destabilize neat ideas about periodization. In addition to the key works listed below, we’ll read shorter works by Charles Dickens, Amy Levy, H. G. Wells, Andy Warhol, and others. Expect a trip to London where we can take the pace of this great world city. (This course carries one unit of Group 3 credit and one unit of Group 4 credit.) 

Assessment will include a short writing assignment, a final research paper, and a research presentation. There will be a field trip to London and a couple of optional film screenings outside class hours.

Texts: Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (Penguin); J. G. Ballard, Crash, introduction by Zadie Smith (Picador); Henry James, Turn of the Screw and In the Cage (Modern Library); Tom McCarthy, C (Knopf); Mohsin Habib, Exit West (Riverhead); Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower (Grand Central); Caleb Femi, Poor (Penguin); Don DeLillo, Point Omega (Scribner).

7980 The Modern(ist) Novel
J. Johnson/T, Th 2–4

T. S. Eliot, reviewing Ulysses, hesitated to describe the book as a “novel”: “If it is not a novel, that is simply because the novel is a form which will no longer serve; it is because the novel, instead of being a form, was simply the expression of an age which had not sufficiently lost all form to feel the need of something stricter.” Victorian society, Eliot suggested, had itself a “form” and so could make use of that “loose baggy monster,” the novel. Modernity, being itself formless, needed something more. Taking issue with Eliot’s diagnosis of the novel’s unfitness for modern purpose, the premise of this course will be that in the hands of the Modernists the novel flourished. Ironically, the very unfitness of the Victorian novel for the expression of what Hardy’s Angel Clare called “the ache of modernism” stimulated the Modernists to experiment, adapt, innovate. The result is one of the richest periods in the history of narrative fiction.

We will consider these texts in the broader contexts of narrative theory, as well as antecedent and contemporary “developments” in psychology, philosophy, science, politics, and social and economic events and theories. During the course, three essays (two shorter, one research) will be required. Background theoretical and introductory essays will be posted on Canvas before the session.

Texts: Henry James, The Ambassadors, ed. Philip Horne (Penguin Classics); Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent (Penguin Classics); Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier (any publisher); James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Penguin Classics); Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse, 1st ed. (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich); Nella Larsen, Quicksand and Passing, (Anchor); Djuna Barnes, Nightwood (New Directions, 2006).

Group 4: American Literature

7971 Speed, Time, and Modernity since the 19th Century
M. Turner/M, W 10:30–12:30
See description in Group 3 offerings.

Group 5: World Literature

7905 The Romance of Arthur
M. Rasmussen/M, W 10–12:30
See description in Group 2 offerings.

7977 Creative Writing in Poetry and Nonfiction: The Poetry Detective
G. Lewis/M, T, W 10:45–12:45
See description in Group 1 offerings.

Group 6 Theater Arts

7921 British Theater: Page to Stage
S. Berenson/M, T, Th 10–12:30 and W full day (for performances and travel)
See description in Group 3 offerings.

7925 Shakespeare in Pre-Production
B. McEleney/M, T, Th 10–12
See description in Group 2 offerings. 

Bread Loaf / California

Summer Institute in Global Humanities

Each of the Institute courses counts for at least one unit of Group 5 credit. For group credits, see the descriptions below. All classes meet M–F 10 am–12 noon. Students are also required to attend all-school sessions three to four afternoons per week, and to present their course projects in a symposium on the final Saturday.

7476 Environmental Literature and the Global Imaginary
D. Denisoff

A human-centric outlook and assumptions regarding our species’ superiority have often been the driving forces behind efforts to understand and manage the natural world. Stewardship, sustainability, and even beauty are problematic concepts that have helped institutionalize human privilege. In this course, students will explore strategies and frameworks for studying and teaching literature, film, and scholarship from Britain and other places, including Canada, Iceland, Kumeyaay Nation, New Zealand, Nigeria, and Thailand. We will address the diverse politics—including those of race, species, gender, sexuality, and wealth—that inform and disrupt humans’ understanding of ourselves and the ecologies of which we are a part. Taking advantage of our breathtaking coastal location, non-required hiking and kayaking excursions and consideration of local eco-efforts will complement our studies. (This course carries one unit of Group 3 credit and one unit of Group 5 credit.)

Assignments include three reflection pieces, a workshop session, and a scholarly or creative project. Please read the novels and book of poetry before classes begin.

Texts:Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (Penguin); Patricia Grace, Potiki (U of Hawaii); Helen Habeli, Oil on Water (Norton); Tommy Pico, Nature Poem (Tin House Books).

Films (required and freely available on streaming sources):Bill Forsyth, Local Hero (1983); Adam Loften and Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee, Shifting Landscapes (2024).

7589 American Literature in a Global Context
M. Burnham

Traditional histories position American literature within a national narrative. This conventional story obscures the fact that American literature is and always has been global, from its very beginnings. In the colonial period, Virginia imagined itself in relation to Dutch and Portuguese colonies in Indonesia and India, while New England Puritans sustained connections to Nicaragua, Madagascar, and Malaysia. The first novel set in America borrowed from a global network of castaway stories that begin in the Islamic Middle East. Just after the American Revolution ended, a French navigator sailing around the world stopped in Monterey, California, and described in his journal the area’s Spanish and Indigenous inhabitants. Monterey’s most famous author, John Steinbeck, wrote about U.S. migrant workers in a moment of labor unrest that spanned the globe. This course provides students with strategies, tools, and frameworks to read, teach, and understand American literary texts in the context of the world. We will also take advantage of both digital and local archives to engage in the global possibilities of literary exploration. (This course carries one unit of Group 4 credit and one unit of Group 5 credit.)

Major requirements include one final independent project and one class-led discussion/presentation. There will be field trips to visit local archives such as the Monterey and Carmel Public Libraries and the National Steinbeck Center (the number of visits and destinations TBA). For the first class meeting, read the introduction to The Female American.

Texts (all are required editions): Unca Eliza Winkfield (pseudonym; anonymous), The Female American, 2nd ed. (Broadview Press); Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano, ed. Angelo Costanzo (Broadview Press); Lauren Groff, The Vaster Wilds (Penguin Random House); Jean François de la Pérouse, Life in a California Mission: Monterey in 1786, Malcolm Margolin intro (Heyday Books); John Steinbeck, The Harvest Gypsies: On the Road to the Grapes of Wrath, Charles Wollenberg intro (Heyday Books).

7647 California Science Fiction: Octavia Butler
M. Jerng

Octavia Butler grew up and lived in a north Pasadena, California neighborhood for most of her life. More importantly for us, she based many of the settings and geographies of her science fiction on California. A self-professed “news junkie,” she kept up a running news archive, most of which is from the Los Angeles Times, including news reporting and opinion pages on local and global issues such as taxation, affirmative action, fundamentalisms, prisons, apartheid, global warming, and nuclear war. This author-centered course foregrounds the ways in which Butler addresses California as a site that is on the leading edge of many global currents that she saw and that we are currently seeing. We will read her three major series (Parable; Patternmaster; Xenogenesis) as well as some of her short stories and delve as deeply and richly as we can into her powerful imagination. (This course carries one unit of Group 4 credit and one unit of Group 5 credit.)

Class assignments will be two response papers (each 1,250 words) and a final paper of 2,500 words, which could be an academic conference-length argument or a write-up of a curricular unit that teaches one or more of Butler’s novels. Students should finish both Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents for our first meeting. Because we are covering so much of Butler’s work, students should also read as much of the other two series (Seed to Harvest [Wild Seed, Mind of My Mind, Patternmaster] and Lilith’s Brood [Dawn, Adulthood Rites, Imago]) prior to the start of the session.

Texts: Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower (Grand Central Publishing, 2019); Octavia Butler, Parable of the Talents (Grand Central Publishing, 2019); Octavia Butler, Seed to Harvest (Grand Central Publishing, 2007); Octavia Butler, Lilith’s Brood (Grand Central Publishing, 2000).

7681 Moldy Minority Narratives: Critical Approaches to Abolition Medicine and Disability Justice
R. Lee

In this seminar, the primary focus will be on texts that ruminate over model minorities as integral to upholding and extending a meritocratic, multicultural story of the US or Canada. We will consider narratives and poetry in which Asian North American subjects cannot sustain “an idealized nondisabled state of being” and the degree to which this motivates a rejection of the “success frame” with its schooling in “industriousness” as the immigrant’s greatest virtue (Lee, Pedagogies of Woundedness). We will also consider what sort of positively contoured visions of non-ideal, disabled (intoxicated) care, pleasure, affect, and/or aesthetics these narratives offer. Secondary materials will include histories of both 1) disease screening and epidemic outbreak in relation to Asian and Pasifika communities and 2) China and India as sites of experimental medical labor, interrogating whether this offshore outsourcing constitutes a type of moldy or morbid minority labor. Concepts we will marshal in relation to our readings: abolition medicine, pathophobia, care-work (reproductive labor), debility/capacity, eco-social sickness, medical gaslighting, multi-species relations, phenomenology of illness, and stigmatized (chaotic) pathography. (This course carries one unit of Group 4 credit and one unit of Group 5 credit.)

Requirements include 1) a pedagogic presentation on or inspired by a subset of the week’s required readings; 2) weekly writing and/or art/performance inspired by readings to be discussed in class; 3) TikTok, short video, podcast, or zine, for possible incorporation in a Scalar project, that explains to high school students one of the required readings or a key concept and its significance for them (this should run no more than 3 minutes—aka audience is high school students); 4) a conference paper or an illness narrative of your own (max 4000 words) that integrates elements of your creative suitcase generated in prior weeks.

For the first meeting, read Mel Chen, “Brain Fog: The Race for Cripistemology” (2014); Havi Carel, “Phenomenology as a resource for patients” (2012), Chapter 5 (“Breathlessness”) in Phenomenology of Illness,and skim Chapter 1 (which overlaps with 2012 article); Jim Lee, Introduction to Pedagogies of Woundedness. All will be available on Canvas before the session.

Required texts: Y-Dang Troeung, Landbridge: Life in Fragments (Duke UP, 2024); Stephanie Foo, What My Bones Knew: a Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma, (Ballantine Books, 2022); Larissa Lai, Iron Goddess of Mercy (Arsenal Pulp Press).

Recommended text: Susan Abulhawa, Against the Loveless World (Washington Square Press).

Bread Loaf/Online

Critical Writing Tutorials (CWT)

Critical Writing Tutorials (CWTs) give you an opportunity, in a small group setting, to concentrate on your critical writing as you simultaneously explore a focused area of literary study. The CWT will address key areas of writing practice, including developing a research question and writing voice, framing your argument, revising your prose, and integrating historical, critical, and other scholarly materials into your essay. It will also guide you in the exploration of a select set of primary and secondary readings, opening an illuminating window on a text, author, or idea and providing the ground for your own independent research and writing. For further information, see https://www.middlebury.edu/school-english/locations/online-tutorials.

7010 A Critical Writing Tutorial: The Environmental Legacy of Emerson’s Nature
R. Johnson/M, W 6-8:30 PM EDT

In this course, we hone critical writing skills while exploring a foundational figure in American environmental and philosophical thought, Ralph Waldo Emerson. We will delve into Nature (1836) and other essays on natural history, selfhood, and spirituality—all of which Emerson understood as integral to understanding the human relation to nature. Along the way, we will consider the influence of Emerson’s ideas on American literary and environmental thought. Synchronous course meetings occur on Zoom, and participants are required to attend all meetings. (This tutorial carries one unit of Group 1 credit and one unit of Group 4 credit.) 

This course centers on analytical reading and engaged discussion toward honing writing. Class sessions consist of lively seminar-style discussions of readings, student-presented material, and each other’s written work. Following the philosophy that all writers can improve through feedback and instruction, we share strategies for critical writing, hold peer writing workshops, and revise based on instructor and peer feedback. Students give two informal presentations and write two shorter essays toward a final one of 10 to 15 pages. During the course, additional readings and media will be available on Canvas.

For the first class, please read and be prepared to discuss these sections of Emerson’s Nature: Introduction, I (Nature), II (Commodity), and III (Beauty) in The Portable Emerson.

Texts (required edition): Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Portable Emerson, ed. Jeffrey Cramer (Penguin, 2014).

7010 B Critical Writing Tutorial: “Rudely Stamped”: Disability in British Literature from Richard III forward
B. Brueggemann/TBD in consultation with enrolled students

We will begin with Shakespeare’s Richard III, move to important British poetry about disability and embodied difference (Wordsworth’s “The Idiot Boy” and “The Old Cumberland Beggar”; Wilfred Owen’s WWI poems; Alexander Pope and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s poetic, satirical exchanges centered on their embodied differences), and then end with Mark Haddon’s (now classic) YA novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. There will be a few critical readings as well. (This tutorial carries one unit of Group 1 credit and one unit of Group 3 credit.)

For the main course requirements students must complete one of the following options: three smaller works/responses; OR two mid-size works/responses; OR one major composition, research paper, or compilation. (Multimodal work is encouraged.) I’ll be in touch with you in late May–early June to gather some information about you and to outline specific preparation you’ll need to do before the session (no more than two hours will be needed); we will also complete a scheduling poll to set the class meeting time. 

Texts: William Shakespeare, Richard III (Gutenberg, open access); William Wordsworth, “The Idiot Boy” (1798); William Wordsworth, “The Old Cumberland Beggar”(1800). PDFs of Wordsworth’s works will be provided and are also widely available online.

7010 C Critical Writing Tutorial: Cultural Rhetoric
C. Medina/TBD in consultation with enrolled students

This course asks: How do we teach in relation to the rhetoric of the culture where we work? How does digital rhetoric mediate our interactions with issues of social justice? And how will we ask students to develop as critical thinkers as more creativity, design thinking, arguments, logic, and opinions are off-loaded onto AI? We will examine diverse cultural practices to help us better understand or think differently about our relationships with new media. The class will share multimedia and writing from diverse writers and media creators. We will be composing with online literacies to critique online literacies. (This tutorial carries two units of Group 1 credit.)

Assignments will include a narrative analysis of digital cultural rhetoric practices and a summative meme synthesis project. Come to the first meeting with your philosophy or policy for AI and writing assignments. 

Text: Cindy Tekobbe, Indigenous Voices in Digital Spaces (Utah State University Press).

7010 D Critical Writing Tutorial: Reimagining Horror Tropes—Vampires and Werewolves
C. Savageau/TBD in consultation with enrolled students

Horror, in general, has been a conservative genre, cultivating fear of the everyday, and demonization of the “other.” We’ll be looking at two iconic horror figures—the vampire and the werewolf—as reimagined by Octavia Butler in Fledgling and Stephen Graham Jones in Mongrels. Discussion will focus on how these reimaginings are used as tools to examine and explore poverty, colonialism, race, freedom, abuse, disability, genocide, diaspora, identity, and survivance. We will discuss the iconic form of the “monster,” how the author has reimagined it, and the forms and techniques used in the novels. Scientific and historical research will provide more context. We will also watch the films Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Get Out, and The Shape of Water. (This tutorial carries one unit of Group 1 credit and one unit of Group 5 credit.)

Students will lead two discussions based on short critical or critical/creative essays, and decide on a final project, produce a draft, research, and revise (12–15 pages). There will also be short in-class writing exercises, and students will have two individual conferences related to their work. The final essay will be shared with the class.

Texts: Octavia Butler, Fledgling (Grand Central Publishing, 2022); Stephen Graham Jones, Mongrels (William Morrow Paperbacks, 2017).

Films (accessible online or through Middlebury libraries): Francis Ford Coppola, Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992); Jordan Peele, Get Out (Universal Pictures, 2017); Guillermo del Toro, The Shape of Water (2017).

Directed Research and Writing (DRW) Projects

A closely mentored independent study, the online Directed Research and Writing (DRW) gives students the latitude to work from any location, the flexibility to set meeting times, the freedom to shape their own course of study, and the choice of earning one or two units of credit.  

Available to returning students and ideal for those in their final Bread Loaf summers, the DRW allows students a sustained opportunity to design and pursue a major critical, creative, or pedagogical project, under the direction of a faculty advisor.