These data were not obtained from SIS in real time and may be slightly out of date. MouseOver the enrollment to see Last Update Time
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| African-American and African Studies |
 AAS 2500 | Topics Course in Africana Studies |
| |
| | Black Latin America through Film & Performance |
| 12773 | 002 | SEM (3 Units) | Open  | 12 / 16 | Kache Claytor | TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm | New Cabell Hall 056 |
| | This course offers an introduction to the histories, cultures, and political struggles of Black communities in Latin America through the multimedia lenses of film, performance, and music. From cinema and television series to dance and ritual, we will examine how Black Latin Americans have used artistic expression to affirm identity, resist oppression, and reimagine collective futures. The course explores not only how Black people across borders, languages, as well as temporal and spatial markers have used movement, sound, art, and creativity to make meaning and challenge dominant discourses. Through a critical examination of contemporary case studies, we will analyze how Afro-descendants use the performance arts to construct identity, celebrate culture, resist oppressive systems, and envision future possibilities. Using an interdisciplinary lens, students will engage with themes of environmental justice, Reproductive Justice, colorism, hair journeys, ancestrality, collectivity, resistance, colonialism, and sovereignty. This course is designed for students interested in performance, activism, environmentalism, Blackness and Indigeneity, Black feminisms, Black queer studies, Latin American politics, and Black consciousness throughout the global African diaspora. Through a mix of films, readings, music, dance, and discussions, students will gain a nuanced understanding of Black Latin America across diverse contexts. No prior experience in film, music, or performance studies is required. |
| AAS 2657 | Routes, Writing, Reggae |
| |
| 20235 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 20 / 20 (20 / 20) | Njelle Hamilton | MoWe 3:30pm - 4:45pm | New Cabell Hall 395 |
| | When most people think of reggae music, they think of lazing out on a Caribbean beach with a spliff and nodding to the music of Bob Marley. But what is the actual history of the music of which Marley is the most visible ambassador? How did the music of a small Caribbean island become a worldwide phenomenon, with the song “One Love” and the album EXODUS named among the top songs and albums of the 20th century? In this course we will trace the history of reggae music and listen closely to Marley’s entire discography to understand the literary devices, musical structures, and social contexts of reggae songs. You will learn to analyze songs, poetry, and film and craft album reviews and creative critiques to problematic songs (‘diss’ tracks). You will also engage controversial issues such as misogyny and homophobia in reggae; religion and spirituality (and yes, marijuana) in reggae; reggae’s critique of racial injustice; cultural appropriation; and the connections between reggae, dancehall, hip-hop, and reggaetón. |
| AAS 3500 | Intermediate Seminar in African-American & African Studies |
| |
| | The US in the Caribbean |
| 13230 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 2 / 16 | Shelby Sinclair | We 2:00pm - 4:30pm | New Cabell Hall 115 |
| | Discover how ideas about race and gender shaped the culture of US empire in the Caribbean. Using music, literature, film, newspapers, poetry, visual art, and more, we investigate a series of hidden “gender wars” to uncover how the tropics became a testing site for U.S. domination. This course exposes students to histories of Afro-Caribbean cultural production, politics, resistance practices, performance.
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| American Studies |
| AMST 3500 | Topics in American Studies |
| |
| | Jim Crow America |
| 20065 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 12 / 15 (12 / 15) | Marlon Ross+1 | TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm | New Cabell Hall 042 |
| | Martin Luther King, Jr. famously called Sunday morning “the most segregated hour in the nation,” referring to church services. How, and to what extent, has racial separation changed since the height of the Jim Crow era, the 1890s through the 1950s? Despite some notable progress such as the military, why has Jim Crow persisted in various ways in so many areas of American life? This course examines how the Jim Crow regime was established in New England during the 1830s, how it was influenced by the institution of slavery, was nationalized after the Civil War, and how it has been perpetuated into the present, despite the passage of 1960s Civil Rights legislation. What have been the changing modes of maintaining Jim Crow, particularly in law (including law enforcement), education, housing, planning, public health, and mass media (newspapers, film, radio, and social media); and what strategies have been used to fight Jim Crow segregation, discrimination, disenfranchisement, and economic exclusion. Taking a place-specific approach to understanding the material practices and consequences of the Jim Crow regime, we’ll examine in depth the overlapping dimensions of everyday life where Jim Crow has been especially prominent, including: 1) personal and collective mobility; 2) the struggle over public education; 3) planning and access to public facilities; 4) housing and employment; and 5) the justice (or injustice) system. Course materials from various disciplines will include maps, planning documents, films, radio, and readings from literature, sociology, urban planning, history, political science, and journalism. Focus will be placed on Charlottesville, Richmond, and Washington, D.C. as case studies, as well as a comparison with South Africa’s apartheid system. Requirements include a midterm, final, a critical essay, and a term team project |
| AMST 3559 | New Course in American Studies |
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| | MENASA American Comics |
| 20215 | 002 | Lecture (3 Units) | Closed | 15 / 15 (15 / 15) | Adrienne Resha | Tu 5:00pm - 7:30pm | New Cabell Hall 338 |
| | This course offers a survey of Middle Eastern, North African, and South Asian American comic books, graphic novels, and graphic memoirs. Reading fiction and nonfiction comics, paired with academic and critical writing and other media, we will think critically about what it means for creators of different diasporas and differently marginalized identities to produce art for readers in the United States. |
| Anthropology |
| ANTH 3679 | Curating Culture: Collection, Preservation, and Display as Cultural Forms |
| |
| 13583 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open  | 16 / 18 | Lise Dobrin | We 2:00pm - 4:30pm | Pavilion VIII 108 |
| | Click on 13583 to the left to see more info on this iteration of the course. |
| | In this iteration of the course we will be joined by French anthropologist and artist Nicolas Garnier, who is currently on sabbatical from his position as Pacific curator at the Musée du quai Branly in Paris. Since 2023 Garnier has been working in Papua New Guinea on the ground (literally) with people in two village communities and with inmates in a regional prison. With art supplies that Garnier provides, they have been producing new genres of work that have land, history, and healing as themes. The works are not traditional, but nor are they for tourists. With Garnier’s support they are making art to reinvigorate the places they inhabit while reaching for wider audiences, seeking to draw positive attention to their perspectives. During Garnier’s residency we will engage in intensive dialogue with professors and curators at the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection who share the goal of supporting artmaking in the Indigenous Pacific. The course culmination will be to mount an exhibition of the villagers’ stunning artworks in UVA’s Brooks Hall. |
| ANTH 5468 | Language Socialization |
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| 20591 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 5 / 15 | Lise Dobrin | Mo 6:00pm - 8:30pm | New Cabell Hall 407 |
| | Click on 20591 to the left for course description. |
| | There is more involved in learning a language than acquiring knowledge of vocabulary and structural features; one also becomes an appropriate and skillful user of language as one is socialized, through communicative encounters with others, into becoming a competent member of a speech community. This course explores the topic of language socialization to reveal how language use at every level—from sound patterns to lexical choices to conversational routines—can contribute to learners’ understandings of what speech is and how it functions. At the same time, communicative encounters shape learners’ understandings of who they are and how they should act or feel, thereby serving as a locus for the transmission of culture. Readings will be drawn from diverse settings and regions of the world. Special attention will be given to language shift and other situations of social change and cultural disjuncture, as well as to the socialization of adults into new communities of practice. Course work will involve reading with care, helping guide class discussion, contributing to a supportive group atmosphere, and writing a paper on an individual topic chosen in consultation with the instructor. |
| History of Art and Architecture |
| ARAH 9565 | Seminar in Art Theory, Comparative & Other Topics |
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| | Autobiography in Academic Research & Writing |
| 19153 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 1 / 12 | Christa Robbins | We 3:30pm - 6:00pm | Fayerweather Hall 215 |
| | In this cross-disciplinary graduate seminar we will discuss autobiography, personal narrative, and self-reference as methodologies in academic research and writing. Generally shunned as unscholarly and characterized as anathema to historical research, self-representation in academic writing is increasingly recognized as a legitimate approach. We will discuss the ethical, historical, and political imperative to name the self in scholarly writing as we read through examples of autobiography, personal narrative, auto-ethnography, and self-reference in multiple disciplines, including history, literary studies, and aesthetic theory. Authors we will discuss include Roland Barthes, Saidiya Hartman, Rosalind Krauss, Anne Carson, and Ashon Crawley, among several others. Students will be encouraged to think about self-reference in their own scholarship and in relation to their own research interests. |
| Architecture |
| ARCH 5420 | Computer Animation & Storytelling |
| |
| | Computer Animation & Storytelling. |
| Website 17727 | 001 | WKS (3 Units) | Permission | 19 / 21 | Earl Mark | TuTh 9:30am - 10:45am | Campbell Hall 105 |
| | DESCRIPTION: Arch 5420 is a 3-credit workshop/seminar that explores moviemaking through 3D computer animation. Five independent short animations constitute the work of the term culminating in a one to five minute final project. An interdisciplinary group of students admitted to the seminar bring perspectives from across the university and design. The seminar is informed by screenings of student exercises and of other movies. Discussion of perceptual phenomenon provides a cognitive framework for the development and critique of this work. In addition to a physical computer classroom, the course will have fulltime access to high performance virtual computers and rendering. Movie projects may range in subject, including abstract or realistic studies such as short narrative character animation, scientific simulation, a physical simulation of architecture or landscape architecture, or related to computer music or synchronized captured sound.
ENROLLMENT: The class is open 2nd year and above undergraduate and all graduate students from any field. It may count as an Architecture Elective or an Architecture Visualization Elective. It also can be used in as Integrative Elective in Computer Science (by request of the CS department) and as a Practice of Media Approved Course in Media Studies. Please contact Earl Mark, ejmark@virginia.edu, with any questions.
APPROACH: Storytelling, whether by means of character animation or more complex scene description, may be related to simulated real or imagined environments. For any subject or scale, built structures and landscapes may be experienced according to our own changing eye point of view, the physics simulation of natural and mechanical phenomenon, the transformation of light and objects, as well as the exploration of fluids and particles under force fields. In addition, objects found in architecture and nature reveal patterns of forms, textures, structures and spaces when animated over over varied rates of time. Movement can also be explored in three dimensional living or human forms that transform or present a point of view.
TECHNOLOGY: The principal software Maya is widely used in 3D computer animation, movie production,visualization and design. Other products will be introduced for special effects, simulation, composite video, sound, motion capture, and image or video processing. An in-depth exploration of NURBS and Polygon 3D modeling and will be the basis for representing built and natural environments, sculpting characters and creating complex geometrical forms. Simulation of gravity and light energy add to the modeling of wind, water, fluids, particles, rainfall, snow, fabric, springs, particles, hinges and other physical phenomena. Motion capture data and a body suit (if Covid is no longer of concern) has been used to study human movement. All the required technology, including Maya, is free to download under educational licensing for academic use as will be described in the class. We also take advantage of new Virtual Workstations for high performance computing and that are accessible remotely from any current personal Windows or Mac OS computer. Through the virtual computer system we will have access to V-Ray Global Illumination and Academy Award Winning simulation software.
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| History of Art |
| ARTH 3591 | Art History Colloquium |
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| | Andy Warhol's Media |
| 12224 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Wait List (11 / 199) | 15 / 15 | David Getsy | TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm | Fayerweather Hall 206 |
| | Arguably the most influential American artist of the last century, Andy Warhol was obsessed with media. This colloquium will track Warhol’s career and impact through an examination of his varying use of different artistic media (from printmaking to television) and his appropriation of images and themes from mass and popular media (from advertising to Hollywood). In turn, we will examine the larger cultural themes that Warhol slyly mediated through his work, such as capitalism, queer cultures, gender, ecology, authorship, and technology. |
| | Art, Death, and Ritual: Mysteries of Ancient China |
| 13479 | 002 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 13 / 15 | Dorothy Wong | TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm | Fayerweather Hall 215 |
| | Through the close study of well-documented archaeological sites of ancient China, which reveal ritual practices as well as astonishing grave goods that include spectacular jades and bronzes, this course explores the Chinese notions of afterlife, ancestor worship, state ritual, and immortality cults. This course fulfils the second writing requirement. |
| ARTH 4591 | Undergraduate Seminar in the History of Art |
| |
| | History of Electronic/Digital Art, 1960-2000 |
| 12393 | 002 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 6 / 15 | Rolando Vargas | We 2:00pm - 4:30pm | Fayerweather Hall 208 |
| | we explore the evolution of media art, tracing its roots from the 1960s to the 2000s. We will examine the terminology, historical context, and critical debates surrounding electronic art, and analyze how, as media converges, electronic media transformed into digital media, reshaping artistic practices and the media art landscape. Through foundational texts of media art, students will investigate the relationship between contemporary art and new media, addressing key questions about the genre, its boundaries, and its significance. |
| Biology |
| BIOL 3559 | New Course in Biology |
| |
| | Transitioning to UVA Biology |
| 19261 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Permission | 1 / 20 | Amanda Gibson | Fr 12:00pm - 12:50pm | Contact Department |
| | Amanda Gibson | MoWe 1:00pm - 1:50pm | Chemistry Bldg 306 |
| | This seminar-style course is designed for new community college transfer students to get to know UVA Biology’s faculty, research, and resources. During this course, you will become integrated into the department by engaging with the exceptional breadth of original research across the department. Each week, you will read and collaboratively analyze a recent publication related to research in a UVA Biology lab. Some weeks, we will visit the authors’ lab to see the work in action. You will also attend weekly departmental seminar where faculty from UVA and other institutions share their latest scientific findings. Through these activities, you will improve your research skills by practicing reading literature, interpreting data and critiquing evidence. As a student in this course, you will also achieve success in the Biology major by orienting yourself to existing resources across Grounds and making connections with peers. During class time, we will network with advising deans, mentors, pre-health advisors, and the Career Center to gain insights on navigating the Biology major and pursuing a career in the life sciences. |
| Biomedical Engineering |
| BME 4550 | Special Topics in Biomedical Engineering |
| |
| | Mechanobiology |
| 15674 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 21 / 40 | Brian Helmke | MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Biomed Engr & Med Sci 1041 |
| | Why are tumors detectable as stiff lumps? Why do fatty plaques in arteries only occur at certain locations? How does cell sensing of mechanical forces determine what kind of cell it becomes? These questions involve relationships between physical forces and biological mechanisms at the tissue, cell, and molecular length scales. In mechanobiology, we aim to understand how forces cause biological signaling in health and disease. This semester, you will explore examples in biomedical engineering research and in your own lives. We will work together to analyze key papers in the field and to practice explaining how mechanobiology impacts our lives and careers. |
| Computer Science |
| CS 4501 | Special Topics in Computer Science |
| |
| | Autonomous Vehicles: Perception,Planning & Control |
| | F1Tenth Autonomous Racing |
| Website 15439 | 002 | Lecture (3 Units) | Wait List (13 / 199) | 48 / 48 | Madhur Behl | TuTh 9:30am - 10:45am | Rice Hall 120 |
| | Students work in teams to build, drive, and race 1/10th scale autonomous racecars, while learning about the principles of perception, planning, and control for autonomous vehicles. The course culminates in a F1/10 ‘battle of algorithms’ race amongst the teams. |
| Dance |
| DANC 3640 | Screendance |
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| 11831 | 001 | STO (3 Units) | Open | 1 / 10 | Kim Mata | TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm | Drama Education Bldg B010 |
| | You do not need to be a dancer to be successful in this class! Students in this course have come from dance, drama, media studies, studio art and a number of other areas. |
| | Interested in exploring moving bodies (human and non-) through the medium of video? Curious about what it means to engage in embodied camera work and to approach editing as a form of choreography/composition?
In this project-based course we will dive into the world of making dance films by investigating the interrelationship between moving/dancing bodies, cinematography, and video editing. By the end of the semester, you will have produced multiple short screendances, possess a greater understanding of embodied camera work, and value the choreographic nature of editing.
You do not need to identify as a dancer to be successful in this class!
For More information email instructor Kim Brooks Mata: kbmata@virginia.edu.
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| Drama |
| DRAM 3652 | Producing Theatre |
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| Syllabus 19469 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 9 / 25 | Holly McLeod | TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm | Drama Education Bldg 115B |
| | Course Description on SIS is outdated-from Spring 2024. Lou's List description is correct. |
| | What does it mean to “produce theater”? Is a theater producer an artist, a business leader, a visionary, or all the above? Participants will collaborate to produce a piece of contemporary theater with hands-on application of artistic, leadership and collaborative practices. Course discussions and projects will cover theater organization, mission, and legal structure, as well as collaborative creation, artistry, and design. Opportunities for practical application of concepts and best practices in producing include, but are not limited to outreach/publicity, production management. Opportunities for artistic contributions include directing, performing, design, casting, digital media development, theater technology and staging. |
| DRAM 3654 | Stage Management and Production |
| |
| 20664 | 1 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 4 / 20 | Holly McLeod | TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Drama Education Bldg 115C |
| | A new course in Drama offering practical application of stage management and backstage production, from design collaboration through performance for events of all kinds. Class will include discussions, projects and site visits. Elevate your understanding of applied theater principles. Develop professional skills in project management, with possible future placement in paid work in drama productions. No experience necessary. |
| DRAM 4592 | Special Topics in Drama |
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| | Theatre Adaptation: Creating Stories for the Stage |
| 20538 | 001 | SEM (1 - 3 Units) | Open | 3 / 15 | Yunina Barbour-Payne | TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Drama Education Bldg 206 |
| | The art of play adaptation—transforming a story or book into a stage production—is an invaluable skill for aspiring theater makers, writers, and directors. This class is designed to delve into the intricacies of adapting short stories and books for the stage, exploring the unique challenges and creative possibilities that come with transitioning text to performance. |
| Electrical and Computer Engineering |
| ECE 3502 | Special Topics in Electrical and Computer Engineering |
| |
| | Third-Year Design Experience |
| | FPGA Digital Design |
| 20137 | 002 | Lecture (3 Units) | Permission | 19 / 20 | Todd Delong | MoWeFr 10:00am - 10:50am | Rice Hall 240 |
| | The course will use a commercial FPGA board that costs $70. You are required to purchase your own board before the first class meeting. The board can be purchased at https://nandland.com/the-go-board/ |
| | This course is an introduction to the use of Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) to implement digital hardware designs using a Hardware Description Language (HDL). The course consists of a series of hand’s-on projects to promote experiential learning to achieve course learning objectives. For each project, students are provided with requirements, which define what is required to solve the problem. Students then develop a specification, which specifies how the requirements are satisfied by the solution implementation, with an emphasis on verification using simulation-based and experimental evidence. Prerequisite ECE2330 (Digital Logic Design) |
| ECE 4230 | Optical and Quantum Electronics |
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| Website 20380 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 4 / 10 (5 / 20) | Xu Yi | MoWe 12:30pm - 1:45pm | Rice Hall 011 |
| | You can take this class and the fields ECE 3209 at the same time. If the system doesn't allow you to do so, send me an email and we can override it. |
| | Quantum electronics, the study of light and matter interaction, has become the cornerstone in many areas of optical science and technology. The course will start with reviewing the principle of lasers followed by introducing the generalized nonlinear wave equations. This course will cover typical nonlinear effects and their applications in telecommunication, ultrafast laser, quantum computing/information, and chemical/bio spectroscopy. |
| Creative Writing |
| ENCW 3310 | Intermediate Poetry Writing I |
| |
| | Serious Play |
| 13914 | 001 | WKS (3 Units) | Permission | 15 / 12 | Kiki Petrosino | MoWe 11:00am - 12:15pm | Bryan Hall 233 |
| | In this intermediate poetry workshop, we’ll connect with playfulness as an approach to composition and revision, and as a key concept for expanding our toolbox of techniques. We’ll read published works of poetry by writers for whom formal experimentation is key. We’ll also think about & explore the physical space of Grounds as a site for reading, writing, and sharing poems. Students in this course will engage in a regular writing practice and will take seriously the processes of composition, critique, and revision. We’ll spend a significant portion of the semester “workshopping” student poems, but we also will devote time to discussing assigned reading and to performing independent & in-class writing challenges. These activities, plus attendance, participation, and a final portfolio, will inform the grading policy.
Instructor Permission is required for enrollment in this class: please request enrollment through SIS and email a writing sample of 4-5 poems with a cover sheet including your name, year, email address, major, prior workshop experience, and other workshops to which you are submitting. Submit your application IN A SINGLE DOCUMENT to Prof. Petrosino (cmp2k@virginia.edu). Applications will be considered on a rolling basis once registration opens. For full consideration, email your application as soon as possible.
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| | ENCW 3310. INTERMEDIATE POETRY WRITING (The Poetics of Childhood) |
| 13918 | 002 | WKS (3 Units) | Permission | 5 / 12 | Lisa Spaar | Tu 11:00am - 1:30pm | Dawson's Row 1 |
| | Intermediate Poetry Writing: The Poetics of Childhood |
| | Unlike other conditions of being human—being a parent, a lover, male or female or trans, cis-gendered or non-binary, Black, Latinx, Caucasian ,or Asian, a hip hop artist, a painter, a nuclear physicist, a lily of the field—being a child is a universal experience. Not all of us will have our own children, but each of us has been a child. As Mark Twain wrote, “We haven’t all had the good fortune to be ladies, we haven’t all been generals, or poets, or statesmen, but when the toast comes down to the babies, we all stand on common ground.” What Naomi Nye calls the “flag of childhood” connects human beings across time, space, and culture. In this advanced poetry writing workshop, we will explore in original poems some of the ways in which children’s relationships to the world – to objects, to language, to experience – are akin to the poet’s: mythic, metaphorical, fragmented, primal. What can the experience of childhood tell us about our adult selves? How does it relate to and what can it reveal about poetry itself?
Permission of instructor is required and students will be granted permission on a rolling basis. Please request permission in SIS and send five poems in one document to Professor Lisa Russ Spaar (LRS9E@virginia.edu) for consideration.
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| ENCW 3350 | Intermediate Nonfiction Writing |
| |
| 13924 | 001 | WKS (3 Units) | Permission | 13 / 12 | Kevin Moffett | Tu 11:00am - 1:30pm | Bryan Hall 233 |
| | This is a course in personal narratives. You'll read from a wide swath of nonfiction forms — memoir, literary journalism, oral histories, meditations, screeds, etc. — and use your reading as a springboard for your writing. “Notice what you notice," Allen Ginsberg said. "Catch yourself thinking." We'll use this as a point of reference as you write about yourself and others, reflecting more deeply on what's familiar to you, while exploring knowledge, expertise, and vernaculars currently unknown to you, all in the service of sketching out your own inimitable story.
Admission by Instructor Permission. Please send a prose sample and a brief statement of interest to sem9zn@virginia.edu. Writing sample not required for students in the area programs. |
| ENCW 3500 | Topics in Creative Writing |
| |
| | Small Press Publishing |
| 14134 | 001 | WKS (3 Units) | Permission | 13 / 25 | Brian Teare | MoWe 6:30pm - 7:45pm | New Cabell Hall 232 |
| | Small press publishing is one of the major forms of literary labor undertaken by writers of all genres; it’s also one of the main means by which contemporary writers form community. As this course will show, a small press publisher has to possess and hone the skills that all writers need: as an editor, they have to be an excellent close reader; as a curator of a list of authors, they need to be an acute critic of their chosen genre; and as a bookmaker and/or typesetter, they have to pay attention to the details of book production. Through in-class tutorials in bookmaking, we’ll acquire some of the pragmatic skills of small press publishing. Through research into four small presses, selected readings from their lists, presentations on the aesthetics and politics of their editorial practices, and prompts for discussion of the day’s readings, we’ll hone our curatorial acumen and gain a sense of the role small presses play in literary community. Through secondary readings we’ll gain a sense of the history and politics of the small press and the handmade object. Through writing and workshopping our own chapbook-length manuscripts and designs, we’ll practice our writerly and editorial skills. And finally, through collaborative publishing ventures that solidify the literary community we’ve created over the semester, we’ll bring our own chapbooks to life! Please note: previous workshop experience in one ENCW course of any genre is required for enrollment. |
| ENCW 3610 | Intermediate Fiction Writing |
| |
| | Portraiture (of human beings, concepts, animals, inanimate objects, etc). |
| 13922 | 001 | WKS (3 Units) | Permission | 0 / 12 | Jesse Ball | We 2:00pm - 4:30pm | Dawson's Row 1 |
| | For Interested Parties:
Please submit two brief descriptions. Twenty-four words each, exactly.
One should be of your foot.
One should be of a person you no longer know. |
| |
In this class we will make many portraits of things. There will be exercises which you will fulfill to the letter.
We will look at examples of exquisite and careful description, and then you will be sent out into the world to do as well as has been done.
To write is largely useless if you cannot clearly describe a thing that isn't present. We shall learn to clearly and cleanly describe the objects of our attention, or we will perish while doing so.
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| 20413 | 002 | WKS (3 Units) | Permission | 12 / 12 | Kevin Moffett | TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm | Bryan Hall 203 |
| | *This class will be taught by a new professor, Corinna Vallianatos* |
| | Admission by Instructor Permission. Please send a prose sample and a brief statement of interest to sem9zn@virginia.edu. Writing sample not required for students in the area programs. |
| ENCW 4550 | Topics in Literary Prose |
| |
| | Weird Books |
| | The Strange, the Obscene, the Banned, and the Incomprehensible in Literature |
| 13920 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Permission | 14 / 12 | Micheline Marcom | We 3:00pm - 5:30pm | New Cabell Hall 036 |
| | In this class we’ll read an array of works of literature that have been, at different times, derided, banned, ignored, censored, and misunderstood—sometimes for their subject matter, sometimes for the style in which they are written—often for both. Plan to read a lot of strange and wonderful books, to write weekly creative responses, and to wrangle inside that beautiful dense wood we call literature. Some writers we may read: Boccaccio, William Faulkner, Henry Miller, William Burroughs, Tadeusz Borowski, Bohumil Hrabal, JG Ballard, Angela Carter, Nabokov, Gertrude Stein, Lautreamont, and De Sade.
Instructor permission required, but all eager readers are welcome to apply. If you’re NOT in the APLP, send me a note (mam5du) saying what draws you to this class. |
| ENCW 4810 | Advanced Fiction Writing I |
| |
| | Transformations |
| 20414 | 001 | WKS (3 Units) | Permission | 11 / 12 | Kevin Moffett | TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Bryan Hall 233 |
| | *This class will be taught by a new professor, Corinna Vallianatos* |
| | In this advanced fiction writing workshop, we’ll consider stories of transformation: physical, temporal, and mental. Students will read widely—stories by Jamaica Kincaid, Shirley Jackson, Edward P. Jones, Joy Williams, Lorrie Moore, Denis Johnson, Tatyana Tolstaya, and Julio Cortázar, among others—and write short creative responses. Students will also write two stories for workshop, and substantively revise one of them.
Admission by Instructor Permission. Please send a prose sample and a brief statement of interest to sem9zn@virginia.edu. Writing sample not required for students in the area programs. |
| ENCW 4820 | Poetry Program Poetics |
| |
| | Cutting Up: Collage, Play, Poetry, & Resistance |
| 13917 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Permission | 9 / 12 | Brian Teare | Mo 2:00pm - 4:30pm | Bryan Hall 203 |
| | This seminar will present a capsule survey of Surrealist collage and its revolutionary inheritors. We’ll begin with modernist poets André Breton, Alice Paalen Rahon, Aimé Césaire, and César Moro, before moving on to three mid-century American poets associated with the New York School – Leroi Jones (later known as Amiri Baraka), John Ashbery, and Barbara Guest – and then three contemporary poets – Douglas Kearney, Oli Hazzard, and Kathleen Fraser – whose work repurposes Surrealism’s dual legacy of revolt and artificial paradise for feminist, anticolonial, and aesthetic ends. Alongside the poetry of these ten poets, we’ll study manifestos, interviews, and statements of poetics in order to better understand the theories of making practiced by collage-based poets. Intertwined with this survey of the poetry and poetics of collage will be an experiential learning portion of the course, which will allow us to explore collage techniques literally – through poetics exercises with scissors and glue stick. Together we’ll explore the many iterations of collage over the past century, from Surrealist salvos to anticolonial visions to Camp cut-ups to feminist interventions, while slowly each of us will begin to develop and articulate our own personal version of collage poetics. The course will be capped off with a final portfolio containing a reflective poetics statement and a manuscript of collage-based creative work. |
| ENCW 4830 | Advanced Poetry Writing I |
| |
| | ENCW 4830: Advanced Poetry Writing (The Big Themes) |
| 13916 | 001 | WKS (3 Units) | Permission | 3 / 12 | Lisa Spaar | We 12:30pm - 3:00pm | Bryan Hall 233 |
| | In this workshop for advanced poets, the aim of our collective project will be to generate poems that dare to embody, explore, provoke, illuminate, refute, and manifest “large” traditional poetic themes—Eros, Thanatos, Truth, Beauty, God, & Time¬—in fresh, original ways. In addition to writing about a poem a week, students will also be responsible for choosing a trio of “core poets” to read closely throughout the semester: one poet born before 1920, one poet born after 1965, and a poet on the faculty of the University of Virginia. We will be incorporating these readings into our assignments, poems, and class discussion.
Permission of instructor is required and students will be granted permission on a rolling basis. Please request permission in SIS and send five poems in one document to Professor Lisa Russ Spaar (LRS9E@virginia.edu) for consideration.
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| ENCW 7310 | MFA Poetry Workshop |
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| 13868 | 001 | WKS (3 Units) | Open | 2 / 10 | Sumita Chakraborty | Mo 2:00pm - 4:30pm | Dawson's Row 1 |
| | In lieu of a traditional course description, I’d like to tell you a brief story. My first published poem is a poem I consider very unsuccessful. I’ve revised it for years post- (and pre-!) publication; it’s never quite right. It is no longer a poem that I try to “perfect.” Instead, it’s become a room in which I go to think and experiment. When I find myself itching to open it again, that means that I want to try out something I do not yet understand or yet know how to do. Very often, particularly as we take steps to professionalize in a discipline or an art, our lives become pitched toward the dream of success: to perfect the poem; to perfect the thesis; to perfect the manuscript; to “perfect,” most insidiously of them all, ourselves. We won’t be able to undo this entirely: after all, this is a poetry workshop in an MFA program, which means that we’re gathering together in an academic context to work on our craft. But through our conversations, readings, and exercises, this workshop will foreground how to embrace the magic of the mistake—the pratfall, the banana peel under the heel, the wrong turn, the swing and a miss—as a cherished companion in your regular writing practice rather than shying away from it as something to be shunned or renounced. Your primary responsibilities will be to write poems, share them with one another, and give each other feedback. |
| English-Literature |
| ENGL 2500 | Introduction to Literary Studies |
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| | Introduction to Literary Studies |
| 19677 | 010 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (12 / 99) | 8 / 8 | John O'Brien | MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Bryan Hall 334 |
| | We will read great works of literature and also work on the skills that need to read, describe, critique, and write well about literary texts. But we will also be pursuing the question of what constitutes literature in the first place. We will read texts in a variety of forms (poetry, fiction, drama, essay), and also read what a number of critical thinkers have had to say. Our readings will include works by authors such as William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf, Italo Calvino, and Terrance Hayes. Some short in-class exercises; three written assignments, final examination. All students are welcome to join. This course fulfills the second writing requirement, the prerequisite or the English major, and the AIP disciplines requirement. |
| | Introduction to Literary Studies |
| 19688 | 011 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (9 / 99) | 10 / 10 | Victor Luftig | TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm | Shannon House 111 |
| | We will read poems, plays, fiction, and essays in ways meant to introduce the study of literature at the college level: we’ll focus on how these types of writing work, on what we get from reading them carefully, and on what good and harm they may do in the world. The texts will come from a wide range of times and places, including works by authors such as Sophocles, Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Jamaica Kincaid, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Li-Young Lee, and Chimamanda Adichie; we will also attend a reading and two plays, one on Grounds and the other at the American Shakespeare Center. The course is meant to serve those who are interested in improving their reading and writing, for whatever reason, who seek an introductory humanities course, and/or who may wish subsequently to major in English. We’ll discuss the works in class, and there will be in class-quizzes, three papers, and a final exam. This course satisfies the English major prerequisite, the second writing requirement, and the AIP disciplines requirement. |
| ENGL 2506 | Studies in Poetry |
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| | Contemporary Poetry |
| 19651 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (7 / 99) | 8 / 8 | Jahan Ramazani | MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Bryan Hall 235 |
| | In this seminar, we will examine an array of postwar idioms, forms, and movements. While devoting much of our attention to some of the most influential American poetry from the second half of the twentieth century, we will also bring ourselves up to date by examining poems published in recent years by poets of diverse backgrounds. To hone our attention to poetics, we will focus on several specific genres, forms, or kinds of poetry, including sonnets, elegies, persona poems, and poems about the visual arts. The seminar will emphasize the development of skills of close reading, critical thinking, and imaginative, knowledgeable writing about poetry. |
| ENGL 2560 | Contemporary Literature |
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| | American Literature in the Twenty-First Century |
| 20180 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (10 / 99) | 8 / 8 | John Modica | TuTh 5:00pm - 6:15pm | Bryan Hall 330 |
| | In the face of unprecedented global emergencies, what is the role of literature? Why should we read and write literature now? What is American Literature today? |
| | The twenty-first century is a time of unprecedented global emergencies. Ecological devastation on a world-historical scale. Rampant, unchecked wealth inequality. War, genocide, mass disabling, and forced displacement. Anti-democratic forces on the rise—and, in the face of all these problems and more, growing feelings of hopelessness, disenchantment, alienation, and fear.
What, in all of this, is the role of literature? Why should we bother to read and write literature now? How have contemporary writers, in writing about the problems of the twenty-first century, redefined our understanding of these problems, and literature’s place in confronting them? How can we use literature to set a new, better direction for the world?
This course offers a unique introduction to the study of literature and culture through an examination of twenty-first century American literature. In the first part of the course, students and the instructor will work together to devise a reading schedule that reflects the interests, questions, and backgrounds of the students in the class. We will then embark on a journey through an exciting and diverse set of contemporary writings with the goal of defining for ourselves the possible meanings of “American literature” as an active and ongoing project. In doing so, we will develop skills and knowledge that can enable us to use literature as a tool for enriching, reflecting on, and transforming our everyday lives.
This course satisfies the English major and minor prerequisite, the second writing requirement, and the AIP disciplines requirement. No background in literary studies is expected or necessary. |
| ENGL 2592 | Women in Literature |
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| | Women of Letters: Eighteenth-Century Women Writers |
| 19669 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (9 / 99) | 8 / 8 | Alison Hurley | TuTh 9:30am - 10:45am | Cocke Hall 101 |
| | In eighteenth-century England young women were taught that their most desirable attribute was modesty and that their destiny lay in marriage. Such an education discouraged women from competing with men in the crowded, unruly, and potentially lucrative public sphere of commercial publishing. Or so one might think. In fact, women authors flourished at this time. By the early 1800s, some men even feared they had come to dominate popular literature. How did this come to be? One of the most effective vehicles by which women infiltrated the world of print was via the humble form of the letter. Letters could express all sorts of things, be addressed to diverse audiences, and be sent from myriad locations. But while letters proved themselves an adaptable form, they were also, at least theoretically, a private one. It was the letter’s association with privacy – with the merely personal – that allowed women to disguise their epistolary compositions as modest, slight, and unthreatening. The letter was the perfect secret weapon for making women’s voices heard.
In this class we will explore how British women living in the 1700’s wrote letters to do many different things: address injustice, report on fashionable society, titillate, mock, protest, and, sometimes, just tell a friend she was loved. Our readings will include private correspondence, verse epistles, epistolary novels, foreign correspondence, letters to the editor, and more.
This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.
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| ENGL 2599 | Special Topics |
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| | Gothic Forms |
| 19649 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (6 / 99) | 10 / 10 | Cynthia Wall | MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Kerchof Hall 317 |
| | Gothic literature burst onto the scene in the eighteenth century with ruined castles, ethereal music, brooding villains and fainting heroines, all performing as metaphors of our deepest fears. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the gothic continued as a genre of cultural anxiety. This seminar will survey gothic literature through both history and genre: from the classic novels, such as Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764), Matthew Lewis’s The Monk (1797), Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey (1818), Robert Louis Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde (1886), and Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House (1959); through the poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Robert Browning, and Christina Rossetti; the plays of Matthew Lewis and Richard Brinsley Peake; and the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, W. W. Jacobs, Richard Matheson, and Stephen King. And we will ask ourselves: What are we afraid of? Active participation, weekly short commentaries, writing workshops, three short papers (5-7pp), a final exam, and a final exercise. |
| | Beauty and Monstrosity |
| 19657 | 002 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (5 / 99) | 8 / 8 | Jon D'Errico | MoWeFr 1:00pm - 1:50pm | New Cabell Hall 044 |
| | Beauty and Monstrosity (ENGL 2599 section 02)
In this class we will read a selection of texts exploring the roots of contemporary attitudes toward beauty and monstrosity. The readings range from the mid-14th century to the present, and the genres include poetry, short fiction, drama, and novels. Although we will, in passing, consider some literary theory, our focus in this class will be on your close analysis of the texts, via class discussions and your written assignments.
We will explore in broad terms some of the major literary traditions that contribute to modern understandings of beauty and monstrosity. We will especially attend to two overlapping and evolving themes: imagining the relationship between nature and human nature, and imagining the boundaries between the natural and the unnatural.
Along the way, we'll provide guided practice in managing key elements of argument and style.
This course satisfies the English major prerequisite, the second writing requirement, and the AIP disciplines requirement. |
| | The Literature of Everyday Life |
| 19672 | 004 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (2 / 99) | 8 / 8 | Taylor Schey | TuTh 5:00pm - 6:15pm | New Cabell Hall 207 |
| | What could be more monotonous than ordinary, everyday life? And yet, since at least the late eighteenth century, the realm of the quotidian has been an extraordinary source of interest and inspiration for many different writers, some of whom have followed William Wordsworth in “awakening the mind’s attention from the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us,” others of whom have been more drawn to what Joan Didion describes as “the peril, unspeakable peril, of the everyday.” This course will explore how everyday life has been mined and imagined in literary writing, from Jane Austen, W. H. Auden, and Elizabeth Bishop to Ross Gay, Christina Sharpe, and Monica Huerta. As we learn to attend to language as students of literature, we’ll hone our skills of close reading and apply them to our own everyday milieus. Plus, through working on a variety of both analytical and creative assignments, we’ll become stronger writers. Readings will include some poems, a handful of essays, a couple of autotheoretical texts, a novel, and at least one film.
This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement. |
| | Monuments and the Aesthetics of Power |
| 19675 | 005 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (4 / 99) | 8 / 8 | K. Ian Grandison | TuTh 5:00pm - 6:15pm | Kerchof Hall 317 |
| | We generally understand monuments as commemorating people and events that are regarded as significant to shaping public knowledge, sense of identity, and social cohesion. We consider the processes by which monuments are proposed, promoted, funded, planned, designed, and erected as politically neutral and communal in their spirit. They are regarded as objects of beauty or even majesty--promoted as “works of art,” a notion that reinforces the perception that they unite and uplift individuals, communities, nations, and even empires. And yet the rupture associated with Confederate monuments that long had pride of place in landscapes North and South betrays the instability of the common perception of monuments as salutary and caused many to view them as apparatuses of ongoing warfare. We consider the role of monuments and memorials, whether public or private, in shaping collective ways of knowing, feeling, acting, and interacting as citizens in relation to state authority. To unearth this politics, we will explore the physical and historical contexts of monuments as well as their aesthetic qualities that are located on campus, in Charlottesville, and beyond--from ancient times to the present, from the Age of Exploration to colonial imperialism to modern nation-building. A few examples include: the Elmina Castle, built in the 1480s, which eventually became a "point of no return" for kidnapped captives in the trans-Atlantic Slave Trade; Cleopatra's Needle, moved from Alexandria, Egypt to London's Victoria Embankment in 1878; the 1921 Stonewall Jackson Confederate Monument that once stood in Charlottesville's Court Square Park; and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, 1982, and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, 2011, on the U.S. National Mall. Is Carlos Simon’s 2022 “Requiem for the Enslaved” (which was commissioned by Georgetown University to reckon with the role of slavery in its development) a monument? We will explore how monuments are used to shape local and national landscapes to affect social hierarchies, imperialist ambitions, and struggles for liberation. There will be a midterm and final exam, each including identification items and a critical essay, and a final team research project.
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| | Routes, Writing, Reggae |
| 19680 | 006 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 10 / 10 (20 / 20) | Njelle Hamilton | MoWe 3:30pm - 4:45pm | New Cabell Hall 395 |
| | When most people think of reggae music, they think of lazing out on a Caribbean beach with a spliff and nodding to the music of Bob Marley. But what is the actual history of the music of which Marley is the most visible ambassador? How did the music of a small Caribbean island become a worldwide phenomenon, with the song “One Love” and the album EXODUS named among the top songs and albums of the 20th century? In this course we will trace the history of reggae music and listen closely to Marley’s entire discography to understand the literary devices, musical structures, and social contexts of reggae songs. You will learn to analyze songs, poetry, and film and craft album reviews and creative critiques to problematic songs (‘diss’ tracks). You will also engage controversial issues such as misogyny and homophobia in reggae; religion and spirituality (and yes, marijuana) in reggae; reggae’s critique of racial injustice; cultural appropriation; and the connections between reggae, dancehall, hip-hop, and reggaetón. |
| | Literatures of the Nonhuman |
| 19684 | 007 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (11 / 99) | 8 / 8 | Adrienne Ghaly | TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Bryan Hall 334 |
| | This course explores the nonhuman world in all its richness from Kafka to AI. It is organized around three major themes: objects, nonhuman animals, and alien 'others'. How do modern and contemporary texts envision the nonhuman across different scales, from the strangeness of the nearest everyday objects like a pebble, to what it’s like to be a fox, to 'deep time' planetary processes, to using Artificial Intelligence to reflect on cultural expectations and values?
Our focus will be on developing strategies of close reading and introducing the basics of literary critical analysis through shorter forms in poetry and prose that examine the nonhuman across a range of genres from the early twentieth century to the present. Several critical works and the questions they raise will guide our investigations of the capacious category of the nonhuman and the ideas it animates. Throughout we'll ask, what are the stories we tell about the nonhuman world? This course assumes no prior knowledge and satisfies the second writing requirement.
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| ENGL 3001 | History of Literatures in English I |
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| | 1st-years, 2nd-years, and non-majors welcome! |
| 10123 | 100 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open, WL (2 / 199) | 128 / 210 | Rebecca Rush | MoWe 12:00pm - 12:50pm | John W. Warner Hall 209 |
| | An introduction to the greatest hits of literature before 1800. Read Beowulf, Chaucer, Wyatt, Spenser, Sidney, Donne, Milton, Pope, and Gray. |
| | The aim of this course is to introduce you to the rich and strange body of English literature written before 1800 and to the rigorous but rewarding art of close, attentive reading. We begin our adventure with the Old English epic Beowulf, the tale of a Geatish warrior who sets out over the waves for a Danish mead hall, determined to perform a courageous deed or end his days trying. Along the way, we will meet a series of seekers, including Chaucer’s humorous pilgrims, Spenser’s wandering knights, Shakespeare’s bantering lovers, and Milton’s liberty-loving devil. Though we will be moving through nearly a millennium of English literature, we will take the time to linger over the distinctive language of each book and the distinctive image each author sketches of human habits and longings. Readings will include selections from Beowulf, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Shakespeare’s Sonnets and Much Ado about Nothing, Milton’s “Lycidas” and Paradise Lost, and shorter poems by Wyatt, Sidney, Donne, Jonson, Pope, Cowper, and Gray, among others.
This course is a prerequisite for the English major, but it assumes no prior knowledge of English literature. If you plan to major in economics or biology or computer science but want to enjoy some great literature along the way, please sign up. The only prerequisite is a willingness to read slowly, attentively, and with a dictionary at hand.
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| ENGL 3161 | Chaucer I |
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| 19653 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Wait List (0 / 99) | 25 / 25 | Elizabeth Fowler | TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm | Bryan Hall 328 |
| | *Canterbury Tales* by the wild pops of English--ingenious, comic, feminist. Own your tongue (& the pre-1700 req)! |
| | We’ll read The Canterbury Tales and perhaps some shorter works looking for the author that the Scots poet Gavin Douglas praised as “evir all womanis frend.” One governing question will be how, for Geoffrey Chaucer and for us, do sexual politics guide political philosophy? This is a course in Middle English, in reading poetry, in considering how fiction shapes political thought, and in thinking alongside someone who lived before modernity and can shake our sense of the world to its roots while telling brilliant stories. We’ll meet under the Scholar’s Tree by Dawson’s Row in camp chairs unless weather prohibits it: bring your sunscreen and hats. Write to Prof Fowler fowler@virginia.edu with questions. |
| ENGL 3300 | English Literature of the Restoration and Eighteenth Century |
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| 19678 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 9 / 25 | John O'Brien | MoWe 3:30pm - 4:45pm | Lower West Oval Room 102 |
| | Social media existed long before Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a lot of literature could be defined as social media, works initially intended to circulate within defined groups, or produced to constitute community. In this course, we will survey the literature of the period from 1650 to 1800 with an eye towards the way that writers used their works to build communities large and small. Authors will include Anne Bradstreet, Samuel Pepys, Katherine Philips, Joseph Addison, Alexander Pope, Samuel Richardson, James Boswell, Olaudah Equiano, Benjamin Franklin, Susanna Rowson. Our reading will also give us the opportunity to think about digital social media in our own time and its effects on culture and community. Students will write two papers (one short, one longer), take a midterm and final exam, and also collaborate on a digital project where we will edit works to contribute to an open-access digital anthology, a project that stands itself as a form of social media. |
| ENGL 3434 | The American Renaissance |
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| 19679 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 20 / 25 | Christopher Krentz | MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm | John W. Warner Hall 113 |
| | In this class we’ll consider the extraordinary growth and flowering of American literature during the early and mid-nineteenth century. How did these authors express America in all its complexity? We’ll read work by such great writers as Emerson, Douglass, Hawthorne, Poe, Melville, Whitman, and Dickinson and explore whatever topics their writing presents. Requirements will include active thoughtful participation, quizzes, a shorter and a longer paper, and a final exam. |
| ENGL 3540 | Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature |
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| | Romanticism |
| 19673 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 18 / 25 | Taylor Schey | TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm | The Rotunda Room 150 |
| | A time of revolution and reaction, the Romantic era (1784-1832) saw an explosion of literature that both witnessed and shaped new ideas about art, nature, politics, society, and the self, many of which are still with us today. This course explores some of the best works of this briefest and most momentous period in British literary history. We’ll defamiliarize ourselves with the strange lyrical ballads of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, listen carefully to the odes and apostrophes of Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats, tarry with the darkly comic turns of Charlotte Smith’s sonnets and Lord Byron’s long poems, and examine the constitution—and the afterlife—of Mary Shelley’s “hideous progeny,” *Frankenstein*. Of particular interest to us will be how Romantic literature not only registers different historical events and developments (e.g. the French, Haitian, and Industrial Revolutions; the emergence of abolitionist and feminist discourses; the Napoleonic Wars and the Peterloo Massacre) but offers its own form of knowledge and prompts a unique, portable way of thinking about the world. Assignments will include a midterm exam, a creative project, and a final paper.
This course satisfies the 1700-1900 literature requirement for the English major. |
| ENGL 3545 | Studies in American Literature before 1900 |
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| | U.S Literature and Social Justice |
| 19682 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 24 / 25 | Victoria Olwell | TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm | Bryan Hall 235 |
| | Exploring U.S. literature from the antebellum period through the Progressive Era, this course asks, what strategies did literary authors use to influence public debates about social, economic, and political justice? Beneath this question lie two more: What underlying conceptions of justice did U.S. literature advance, and how might we assess them? Literature during the era we’ll consider spanned the full political spectrum, but our focus will be primarily on literature invested in the extension of rights, equality, and protections to dispossessed people, as well as in the amelioration of politically induced suffering. We’ll examine literary protests against slavery, Jim Crow law, Chinese exclusion, urban poverty, women’s status, and the conditions of industrial labor. Course requirements include several short papers, class participation, and a final exam. |
| ENGL 3560 | Studies in Modern and Contemporary Literature |
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| | Jewish-American Literature |
| | Between Laughter and Trembling |
| Website 19643 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 10 / 30 | Caroline Rody | TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Dell 2 100 |
| | ENGL 3560-1 Jewish American Literature: Between Laughter and Trembling
Caroline Rody
TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm
In this course we will explore a literature positioned between tradition and modern invention, between the spiritual and the mundane, and—as Saul Bellow once put it—between laughter and trembling, in the emotionally rich territory where Jewish people have lived a spirited, talkative, politically engaged, book-obsessed modernity in the face of violence and destruction. We will read mainly Jewish American texts but also some by Jewish writers from other countries, taking up short stories, essays, poems, jokes, Broadway song lyrics, and a few complete novels, as well as short videos clips and a film, surveying a diverse array of modern Jewish literary and popular cultural production. About the first third of the course examines mid-twentieth century Jewish American writers, some from the immigrant New York milieu like Isaac Bashevis Singer, and then heirs to Yiddish culture with bold American aspirations, such as, Alfred Kazin, Grace Paley, Delmore Schwartz, Chaim Potok, Bernard Malamud, Elie Wiesel, Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick, and Lore Segal. For the rest of the term we will read fiction from the booming field of contemporary Jewish fiction, including authors such as Art Spiegelman, Allegra Goodman, Nathan Englander, Jonathan Safran Foer, Nicole Krauss, Michael Chabon, and David Bezmozgis.
The course will focus on the ways writers shape and reshape a new literature with roots in a formidable textual, cultural, and religious tradition. We will observe an evolving relationship to traditional and sacred Jewish texts, to Yiddish and the culture of Yiddishkeit; to humor as a social practice and imaginative force; to memory and inheritance as burdens or as creative touchstones. We will also consider changing conceptions of Jewish identity, of American identity, and of gender roles; the transformations wrought by assimilation and social mobility; socialist, feminist and other political commitments and visions; forms of engagement with history including the Holocaust, the founding of Israel and its ongoing conflicts; and life in multiethnic America. Requirements: reading, active class participation, co-leading of a class discussion, multiple short reading responses, a short paper, and a longer paper with a creative, Talmud-inspired option: a “scroll” of interlaced interpretations. This course may be used to satisfy the second writing requirement.
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| | US Modernisms in Word and Image |
| | U.S. Modernisms in Words & Images |
| 19665 | 002 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 19 / 25 | Joshua Miller | TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm | New Cabell Hall 395 |
| | How does one write something that’s never been thought? Why would an author write in mixed or invented languages? How do visual images respond to written narratives (and vice-versa)? We will discuss a broad range of novels, short fiction, film, photography, and graphic arts composed between 1898 and 1945 and the historical, political, and cultural trends that they were responding to and participating in. This was an extraordinary and tumultuous period of demographic change, artistic invention, economic instability, racialized violence, and political contestation that witnessed mass immigration, migration, and emigration. In paying particular attention to trends of demographic displacement and change within and across national borders, we’ll consider the heady experiments in language and narrative that took place during the first half of the twentieth century. The historical events of this period—framed by the wars of 1898 and World War II—will provide context for the novels we read.
Some of the broad questions that we’ll track throughout the term include the following. How do these authors define the “modern”? What, for that matter, is a “novel” in twentieth-century U.S. literature? How did these authors participate (and resist) the process of defining who counted as an “American”? What role did expatriates and immigrants play in the “new” United States of the twentieth century? How did modernists narrate the past? How did trends in technology (mass production, cinema, transportation), science (relativity), and politics influence novelists’ roles within U.S. modernity? How did these authors reconcile the modernist imperative to “make it new” with the histories of the U.S. and the Americas? What were the new languages of modernity? |
| | The Literature of Extinction |
| 19685 | 003 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 6 / 25 | Adrienne Ghaly | TuTh 9:30am - 10:45am | Gilmer Hall 245 |
| | Whales, beetles, thylacines! How has the diminishment of species and biodiversity loss been thought about and written about in poems, novels, and essays? How do works of modern and contemporary literature respond to and help us understand the sixth mass extinction the planet may be entering? Where and how do we find evidence of extinctionary pressures in texts that are not explicitly 'about' human impacts on nonhuman life?
This course explores biodiversity loss and species extinctions from megafauna to insects and across genres, time periods, and ecosystems to ask how literature thinks about, represents, and can be an unwitting record of the radical diminishment of nonhuman life. We’ll read texts that imagine extinction, grapple with knowledge and feelings around biodiversity decline and species revival, and we'll reframe literature not explicitly ‘about’ extinction as records of widespread impacts on nonhuman life. Finally, we'll explore ways of thinking that could help address the biodiversity crisis meaningfully. Assignments are two essays, some shorter pieces of writing, and engaged participation in discussion.
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| | Kafka and His Doubles |
| 20293 | 004 | Lecture (3 Units) | Closed | 18 / 18 (18 / 18) | Lorna Martens | TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm | Pavilion VIII 108 |
| | For description, click on schedule number to the left. |
| | Kafka and His Doubles
The course will introduce the enigmatic work of Franz Kafka: stories including "The Judgment," "The Metamorphosis," "A Country Doctor," "A Report to an Academy," "A Hunger Artist," "The Burrow," and "Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk"; one of his three unpublished novels (The Trial); the Letter to His Father; and some short parables. But we will also look at Kafka's "doubles": the literary tradition he works with and the way in which he, in turn, forms literary tradition. Thus: Kafka: Cervantes, Kafka: Bible, Kafka: Aesop, Kafka: Dostoevsky, Kafka: Melville; Kafka: O'Connor, Kafka: Singer; Kafka: Calvino, Kafka: Borges. Readings will center on four principal themes: conflicts with others and the self (and Kafka's psychological vision); the double; the play with paradox and infinity; and artists and animals. A seminar limited to 20 participants. Requirements include a short midterm paper (5-7 pages) and a longer final paper (10-12 pages). |
| ENGL 3570 | Studies in American Literature |
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| | American Civil Wars |
| 19642 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 38 / 40 (38 / 40) | Caroline Janney+1 | MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Clinical Department Wing 2677 |
| | No moment in United States history has received more recent scrutiny than the American Civil War. Nearly half the respondents to a 2022 poll believe another such war “at least somewhat likely” to break out in the next decade. Comparing the events of 1861-1865 to the divisive politics of the 2020s has become commonplace. Against this fraught backdrop, our course will focus on the conflicting voices and perspectives behind the coming, fighting, and aftermath of war. Among those we may read are Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Kate Stone, Phoebe Yates Pember, James Henry Gooding, Ulysses S. Grant, Louisa May Alcott, Mary Chesnut, Susie King Taylor, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Robert Gould Shaw, Mathew Brady, and Alexander Gardner. While wartime figures will absorb much of our attention, we will also turn to later representations, such as a new graphic novel of Stephen Crane’s Red Badge of Courage, a short story by Eudora Welty, a movie or two, and recent AI animations of famous Civil War photographs. Finally, we will sample recent discussions of prospects for another civil war, with examples drawn from mainstream journalism, online alternatives, and creative media. Assignments will include short papers and at least one exam. Professors Caroline Janney (History) and Stephen Cushman (English) will teach this course together. |
| | Jim Crow America |
| 19674 | 100 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 12 / 15 (12 / 15) | Marlon Ross+1 | TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm | New Cabell Hall 042 |
| | Martin Luther King, Jr. famously called Sunday morning “the most segregated hour in the nation,” referring to church services. How, and to what extent, has racial separation changed since the height of the Jim Crow era, the 1890s through the 1950s? Despite some notable progress such as the military, why has Jim Crow persisted in various ways in so many areas of American life? This course examines how the Jim Crow regime was established in New England during the 1830s, how it was influenced by the institution of slavery, was nationalized after the Civil War, and how it has been perpetuated into the present, despite the passage of 1960s Civil Rights legislation. What have been the changing modes of maintaining Jim Crow, particularly in law (including law enforcement), education, housing, planning, public health, and mass media (newspapers, film, radio, and social media); and what strategies have been used to fight Jim Crow segregation, discrimination, disenfranchisement, and economic exclusion. Taking a place-specific approach to understanding the material practices and consequences of the Jim Crow regime, we’ll examine in depth the overlapping dimensions of everyday life where Jim Crow has been especially prominent, including: 1) personal and collective mobility; 2) the struggle over public education; 3) planning and access to public facilities; 4) housing and employment; and 5) the justice (or injustice) system. Course materials from various disciplines will include maps, planning documents, films, radio, and readings from literature, sociology, urban planning, history, political science, and journalism. Focus will be placed on Charlottesville, Richmond, and Washington, D.C. as case studies, as well as a comparison with South Africa’s apartheid system. Requirements include a midterm, final, a critical essay, and a term team project |
| ENGL 3572 | Studies in African-American Literature and Culture |
| |
| | Multimedia Harlem Renaissance |
| 20049 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 11 / 25 (11 / 25) | Marlon Ross | TuTh 9:30am - 10:45am | Astronomy Bldg 265 |
| | Why has the impact of the Harlem Renaissance persisted for a hundred years? This course explores that question from a multimedia perspective in literature, journalism, painting, sculpture, theater, dance, music, photography, film, audio recording, and politics. We’ll study the geopolitics not only of Harlem as a “Mecca of the New Negro” but also cultural centers like Washington, D.C., Richmond, Virginia, and Chicago. Many of the debates of the time are still with us in different ways today. What are the most effective forms and venues for the promotion and production of African American arts and culture? How do African American migrations – both within the U.S. and between America and abroad – contribute to the idea of a cultural renaissance? Then and now, there is a debate about to what extent art should cater to propaganda. During the Renaissance, as now, artists debated elite versus vernacular approaches to artistic production. The prominence of women and queer artists at the center of the Renaissance is another connection with today’s cultural and social movements. Other matters to be examined include the Great Black Mass Migration, the national Negro newspaper, the birth of gospel music, Negro Wall Streets and pioneer towns, race rioting and lynching, urban sociology, trade unionism, the Garveyite Black Pride movement, Negro bohemianism, blackface minstrelsy, and interracial romance and sex. In addition to examining artistic forms like the anthology, the manifesto, the literary periodical, the sonnet, the blues lyric, the stage musical, the problem play, the art mural, and the sketch, we’ll ask how Renaissance advocates exploited modern technologies like print publication, photography, film, audio recording, and radio to promote Negro culture as cosmopolitan and avant-garde. Among those studied are writers Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson, W.E.B. Du Bois, Nella Larsen; composers Duke Ellington, Thomas Dorsey, Harry Burleigh; artists Aaron Douglas and Augusta Savage; photographers James VanDerZee and Addison Scurlock; dramatists Angelina Grimké and Willis Richardson; actors Bert Williams and Paul Robeson; singers Billie Holiday, Bessie Smith, Roland Hayes; dancer-choreographers Katherine Dunham, Josephine Baker, the Nicholas Brothers; filmmaker Oscar Micheaux, and many others. |
| ENGL 3660 | Modern Poetry |
| |
| 19671 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Wait List (1 / 99) | 25 / 25 | Mark Edmundson | TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Bryan Hall 235 |
| | Modern Poetry I; This course will introduce students to some of the best poets of the Anglo-American 20th century. We’ll spend a good deal of time on Robert Frost. A brilliant artist in himself, he’s perfect for teaching people how to read poetry. After Frost, we’ll have many fine poets to choose from: Elizabeth Bishop, T.S, Eliot, Langston Hughes, Wallace Stevens, Gwendolyn Brooks, and more. Two quizzes and a final paper. |
| ENGL 3690 | Memory Speaks |
| |
| 20294 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 18 / 18 (18 / 18) | Lorna Martens | TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm | New Cabell Hall 291 |
| | For description, click on schedule number to the left. |
| | Memory Speaks
Memory is a crucial human faculty. Our ability to remember our own past is one of the things that make us human. Memory has long been thought to ground identity: without memory, one has no sense of self. Memory has been seen as fundamental to psychic health, and even as a remedy in times of trouble, as well as essential to our ability to imagine the future. Remembering has its delights. Certainly the idea of losing one’s memory, through shock or illness for example, is terrifying to contemplate. Yet having too many memories of the wrong kind is believed to endanger our equilibrium. Maddeningly, given its power to make us healthy or sick, memory often lies beyond our conscious control. It operates according to its own laws, giving us what we want only sometimes. Undeniably useful, it has also been seen as deceptive. It is demonstrably suggestible. It is not surprising, therefore, that memory is a subject of vital importance in the humanities, sciences, and social sciences alike.
This course will focus on individual memory and in particular on autobiographical memory (our memories of our own lives). We will read autobiographies and works of fiction, written from the early twentieth century to the present, by Patrick Modiano, Marcel Proust, Rainer Maria Rilke, Mary McCarthy, Vladimir Nabokov, and Marguerite Duras. We will also study two films on the theme of memory: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Inside Out. Concurrently, we will read psychological, psychoanalytic, and neuroscientific work on memory. Some attention will be paid to the issues of false memory, external memory, and mediated memory, as well.
Two short papers, presentations, exam.
|
| ENGL 3922 | Deafness in Literature and Film |
| |
| 20412 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 20 / 25 (20 / 25) | Christopher Krentz | MoWeFr 12:00pm - 12:50pm | New Cabell Hall 395 |
| | What does deafness signify, especially in a western society that is centered upon speech? In this course we will study some of the contradictory and telling ways that deaf people have been depicted – and have depicted themselves -- over the last three centuries. Our approach will be contrapuntal. We will juxtapose canonical texts by authors such as Dickens and McCullers and mainstream films like Johnny Belinda and Coda with relatively unknown works by deaf writers such as Clerc and Bullard.
The class will feature a range of learning strategies, including brief lectures, whole-class discussion, smaller-group discussion, and probably occasional activities to keep us all fresh and engaged. You’ll get the most from the course if you come to class having completed the reading or viewing and ready to talk thoughtfully about it. Requirements will include shorter and longer papers, quizzes, and a final exam. |
| ENGL 4500 | Seminar in English Literature |
| |
| | Metamorphosing Myth |
| | Click blue number to the left for full course description. |
| 19664 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 11 / 18 | Clare Kinney | TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm | New Cabell Hall 068 |
| | Creative artists from 14th century England to 21st century America reshape the beguiling, challenging, and wildly influential material of classical epic and myth. This course satisfies the pre-1700 requirement for the English major. |
| | This seminar will explore the appropriation and transformation of some of the influential narratives of pagan antiquity: the myths that are kidnapped and remade as artists pursue their own aesthetic, cultural and political agendas. We will start by reading (in translation) Virgil’s great epic of empire, the Aeneid, as well as Ovid’s influential and bewitching tapestry of mythic narratives, the Metamorphoses. We’ll then move on to discuss the ways in which some medieval, Renaissance and contemporary authors metamorphose these powerful archetypes. Our post-classical readings will include works by Chaucer, Christine de Pizan, Christopher Marlowe, and Shakespeare, as well as Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses and Ursula K Le Guin’s Lavinia. With luck, we’ll also hear from some of our own creative writing faculty about the afterlives of myth within their own work.
Course requirements: regular attendance and energetic participation in discussion. A series of discussion board postings. A 6-7 page paper, an oral presentation, a longer term paper.
|
| | Seven Ages, Seven Questions |
| 19670 | 002 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (3 / 99) | 18 / 18 | Mark Edmundson | TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm | Shannon House 119 |
| | ENGL 4___Seven Ages / Seven Questions or How to Live, What to Do.
The course emerges from Jaques’s speech in Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” on the seven ages of human life. We’ll consider childhood and education, erotic love, religion, warfare and courage in war, politics, the quest for wisdom, and old age. Readings from, among others, Plato, Beauvoir, Freud, Wordsworth, Seven Ages Schopenhauer, and Marx. Regular writing assignments and a long essay at the end.
|
| | Faust |
| 20295 | 003 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 3 / 18 (3 / 18) | Jeffrey Grossman | MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm | New Cabell Hall 303 |
| | This course assumes no prior knowledge of the subject matter.
Students who have previously take my 3000-level course on "Faust" should consult with me about enrolling in this class. |
| | Goethe's Faust has been called an “atlas of European modernity” and “one of the most recent columns for that bridge of spirit spanning the swamping of world history.” The literary theorist Harold Bloom writes: “As a sexual nightmare of erotic fantasy, [Faust] ... has no rival, and one understands why the shocked Coleridge declined to translate the poem. It is certainly a work about what, if anything, will suffice, and Goethe finds myriad ways of showing us that sexuality by itself will not. Even more obsessively, Faust teaches that, without an active sexuality, absolutely nothing will suffice.”
Taking Goethe's Faust as its point of departure, this course will trace the Faust legend from its rise over 400 hundred years ago to the modern age. Retrospectively, we will explore precursors of Goethe's Faust in the form of the English Faust Book and Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, and Rousseau’s Reveries of a Solitary Walker, to which Goethe responded. We will then read Goethe's Faust, parts I and parts II (either in its entirety or in excerpts), in part as a response to Rousseau’s Although now a major work in the European canon, Goethe sought in his Faust to radically transform central tenants of the legend and to challenge many conventions of European culture, politics, and society. We will also study Byron's melancholy attempt in Manfred to respond to part I of Goethe’s Faust create a theater of the emotions that explores problems of power, sexuality, and guilt. And we will venture into the twentieth century, viewing first F.W. Murnau's avant-garde Faust film (1926) as a response to contemporary European/German society and technology, and Istvan Szabo’s film Mephisto (1981), which wrestled with Nazism in the land of Goethe's Faust.
|
| ENGL 4540 | Seminar in Nineteenth-Century Literature |
| |
| | Jane Austen in Her Time and Ours |
| 19639 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (8 / 99) | 18 / 18 | Susan Fraiman | TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm | New Cabell Hall 594 |
| | An intensive study of the work of Jane Austen. Take this course if you’re new to Austen or already a fan. Take it for Austen’s epigrammatic sentences and love stories, but also for her biting social commentary and (beneath the light, bright surface) her probing of the darker emotions. How do the novels treat such topics as family conflict, first impressions, sexual jealousy, women’s property rights, New World slavery, and the Napoleonic Wars? Why have Austen’s happy endings been accused of haste? In addition to exploring Austen’s formal strategies, thematic concerns, and engagement with the issues of her time, we will touch on her reception in subsequent eras, including a cinematic interpretation or two. Students read all six of the completed novels plus Sanditon, left unfinished at Austen’s death. Two papers and a final exam. This course satisfies the 1700-1900 requirement. |
| ENGL 4559 | New Course in English Literature |
| |
| | Reading Archives: Gaps, Margins, Erasures |
| 19667 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 10 / 18 | Sumita Chakraborty | We 2:00pm - 4:30pm | Bryan Hall 203 |
| | How do we tell stories that have been rendered impossible to tell? While no one is voiceless, institutions of power and privilege—including archives—often exclude or marginalize many voices, and philosophers, critics, literary artists, and other artists have long tackled the question of how to responsibly tell those elided stories. In this course, we will explore a range of such methodologies and practices. Our reading list will be comprised of theoretical and critical texts by Michel Foucault, Saidiya Hartman, and Ann Cvetkovich, among others, as well as literary artists like M. NourbeSe Philip, Don Mee Choi, Rick Barot, Solmaz Sharif, Robin Coste Lewis, Tyehimba Jess, Diana Khoi Nguyen, Nicole Sealey, and Victoria Chang. Major assignments will include reading presentations, a brief mid-term take-home written exam, and an imaginative final project that accords with students’ individual intellectual, artistic, and personal interests. The final projects will be developed in consultation with me and with archivists from Special Collections and the Rare Book School on a case-by-case basis; at several key points throughout the semester, we will meet in Special Collections or the Rare Book School to brainstorm and research your projects. |
| ENGL 4560 | Seminar in Modern and Contemporary Literature |
| |
| | Contemporary Poetry |
| 20496 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 15 / 15 (15 / 15) | Jahan Ramazani | MoWe 3:30pm - 4:45pm | New Cabell Hall 111 |
| | In this seminar, we will read and discuss some of the most influential poetry of the second half of the twentieth century and of the twenty-first century, mostly by American writers from various backgrounds. To hone our attention to poetics, we will focus on several specific genres and forms of poetry, including sonnets, elegies, persona poems, and poems about the visual arts. How do contemporary poets repurpose, transform, and revitalize poetic traditions? What is the value of poetry for writers of diverse ethnicities, races, nations, movements, social classes, and genders? What is distinctive about poetry as a means for addressing preoccupations such as the self, the environment, race, art, nationality, gender, sexuality, grief, violence, and historical memory? |
| ENGL 4901 | The Bible Part 1: Hebrew Bible / Old Testament |
| |
| 19641 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (9 / 99) | 15 / 15 | Stephen Cushman | MoWe 11:00am - 12:15pm | Dawson's Row 1 |
| | The stories, rhythms, and rhetoric of the Bible have been imprinting readers and writers of English since the seventh century. Moving through selections from the Hebrew Bible / Old Testament, from Genesis through the prophets, this course focuses on deepening biblical literacy and sharpening awareness of biblical connections to whatever members of the class are reading in other contexts. Along the way we will discuss English translations of the Bible; the process of canonization; textual history; and the long trail of interpretive approaches, ancient to contemporary. Our text will be the New Oxford Annotated Bible, 5th ed. All are welcome. No previous knowledge of the Bible needed or assumed.
PLEASE NOTE: Professor John Parker will teach a course focusing on the New Testament in spring 2026. Both courses will read the New Testament gospel of Mark, connecting the semesters, but you do not have to take the fall course as a prerequisite for the spring one. |
| ENGL 5100 | Introduction to Old English |
| |
| | Learn Old English! Translate medieval chronicles, riddles, and poems! Open to Undergrads and Grads! |
| 19645 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Wait List (4 / 99) | 20 / 20 | Stephen Hopkins | TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm | Brooks Hall 103 |
| | ***class fulfills the pre-1700 English major requirement*** |
| | In this course (open to undergraduate and graduate students) we will learn to read the Old English language (roughly 500-1100 CE). To arrive at a sound reading knowledge, we will spend the first half of the semester internalizing the basics of Old English grammar and vocabulary, and will practice translating short bits of prose and poetry, from prose works like Bede's history, and later poetry such as the Exeter Book riddles, The Battle of Maldon, The Dream of the Rood, and excerpts from Beowulf. Along the way, we will also study Old English genres, contexts, and critical/theoretical approaches prevalent in the field, with an emphasis on the history of the book and writing technologies. Course work includes weekly translations, midterm and final exams, and a brief research presentation (~10 min) on a topic chosen by each student. Successful completion of this course is required for admission to ENGL 5110 Beowulf and Its Monstrous Manuscript in the Spring. |
| ENGL 5500 | Special Topics in English Literature |
| |
| | Stories of Teaching |
| | In Memoir, Fiction, and Film |
| Website 19646 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 3 / 15 | James Seitz | MoWe 5:00pm - 6:15pm | New Cabell Hall 066 |
| | For graduate students and undergraduates with an interest in teaching. |
| | This course will examine a variety of ways in which teaching has been represented through narrative-—sometimes by teachers and sometimes by students-—in memoir, fiction, and film. We’ll work on sharpening both our resistance to the shortcomings of these narratives and our appreciation of their accomplishments. All narratives of teaching are inevitably partial: nobody can say it all, even when representing a single class, much less when describing what happened during the course of a semester or year. Yet writers do try to portray their experience as a teacher over long as well as brief periods of time, and we can learn from their struggle to do so convincingly. |
| | Interpretation in Literature, Law, and Religion |
| 20445 | 002 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 6 / 15 | Walter Jost | TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm | Bryan Hall 310 |
| | Ours is an age of communication, and one of its hallmarks is the “conflict of interpretations” among schools of criticism, theory, and cultural study. This course requires no specialized background in these matters, for in fact we all know how to talk, read, interpret, and argue. The question is, how well do we do this, with how much control and discipline? how do we develop our abilities? The philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer once wrote that “Where, indeed, but to rhetoric should the theoretical examination of interpretation turn? Rhetoric from oldest tradition has been the only advocate of a claim to truth that defends the probable, the eikos (versimile), and that which is convincing to the ordinary reason, against the claim of science to accept as true only what can be demonstrated and tested.” Together we will develop a basic but wide-ranging understanding of the arts of discourse called “hermeneutics” and “rhetoric,” through close reading and discussions of selected scholarly texts (chiefly essays and book chapters), testing our learning against literary, legal, and religious works.
These works will include:
Italo Calvino, If on a winter’s night a traveler, Harcourt Brace paperback, ISBN 978-0156439619
G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday
Rita Felski, The Limits of Critique, Chicago paperback, ISBN 978-0-226-29403-2
Charles B. Guignon, Heidegger and the Problem of Knowledge, Hackett paperback, ISBN: 9-780915-145621
Mark Wrathall, How to Read Heidegger, Norton paperback, ISBN: 978-0393328806
Aeschylus, Bacchae
|
| ENGL 5510 | Seminar in Medieval Literature |
| |
| | Arthurian Romances |
| 19654 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 13 / 15 | Elizabeth Fowler | TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm | Kerchof Hall 317 |
| | For graduate students as well as intrepid undergrads with some experience reading Middle English. |
| | We'll dive into what is probably the most viral fan-fiction canon ever: stories about Arthur, Guenevere, Lancelot, Gawain, Merlin, the Ladies of the Lake, and their friends and enemies and magical stage props. What makes this kind of narrative work? How do different authors transform it? The late medieval Morte Darthur by Thomas Malory will be at the core of our inquiry, and we'll include texts from Marie de France and Chaucer to contemporary film. We'll be looking to describe how (and why) the romance genre offers us experiences of philosophy, emotion, political thought, spirituality, and wit. This is a graduate course with room for undergraduates who have some coursework in Middle English. We will meet outside under the Scholar’s Tree by Dawson’s Row in camp chairs unless weather prohibits it. Contact Prof Fowler fowler@virginia.edu with questions. |
| ENGL 5560 | Seminar in Modern and Contemporary Literature |
| |
| | Contemporary Poetry |
| 19652 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 15 / 15 (15 / 15) | Jahan Ramazani | MoWe 3:30pm - 4:45pm | New Cabell Hall 111 |
| | In this seminar, we will read and discuss some of the most influential poetry of the second half of the twentieth century and of the twenty-first century, mostly by American writers from various backgrounds. To hone our attention to poetics, we will focus on several specific genres and forms of poetry, including sonnets, elegies, persona poems, and poems about the visual arts. How do contemporary poets repurpose, transform, and revitalize poetic traditions? What is the value of poetry for writers of diverse ethnicities, races, nations, movements, social classes, and genders? What is distinctive about poetry as a means for addressing preoccupations such as the self, the environment, race, art, nationality, gender, sexuality, grief, violence, and historical memory? |
| | James Joyce¿s Ulysses |
| 19676 | 002 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 8 / 15 | Victor Luftig | TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Shannon House 111 |
| | This course is designed for first-time readers of Ulysses and is meant to provide a pleasurable introduction to it. We’ll explore the novel’s difficulty and its usefulness, tracking both which of the many available resources for reading it are helpful and what kinds of applications might justify the effort Ulysses summons. Prior to the first class session, please read as much as you can of an annotated edition of Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. (The Viking edition with notes by Anderson, which you can easily find used, would be fine.) There will be two papers, one offering the class an account of a resource you’ve sampled and another asking you to think about what contemporary situation you think Ulysses might apply to most meaningfully. There will also be some in-class and/or take-home worksheets focused on contextual information and stylistic particulars. At the end of the course we’ll have a taste of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake to prepare you for future explorations of that book—which too is challenging, rewarding, and “lovesoftfun.” |
| ENGL 5900 | Literature Pedagogy Seminar |
| |
| 13842 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 5 / 15 | Cristina Griffin | TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm | Pavilion VIII 108 |
| | This seminar is about how and why teaching literature matters today. How do secondary school and college instructors teach literature in challenging times? How do teachers make tough decisions about what to teach and why? What responsibility do teachers have to promote inclusive excellence through the literature they teach and the methods they use? In this course, we will tackle these big questions together as we explore what it means to pursue a career in teaching literature to middle school, high school, or college students. Each week, we will weave together your existing knowledge of literature and your emerging knowledge of pedagogy. You will be introduced to theories of learning-focused, culturally relevant, and culturally responsive pedagogy, and you will put your newfound knowledge into practice as we work step by step through designing your own teaching philosophy and materials.
This course will bring together students who already have experience as classroom instructors, students who are in the process of teaching for the very first time, and students who have yet to step up to the front of a classroom in the role of teacher. We will build on this variety of experiences, learning together how to bring transformative pedagogies into our present and future classrooms.
|
| ENGL 8380 | Eighteenth-Century Prose Fiction |
| |
| 19650 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 1 / 12 | Cynthia Wall | MoWe 3:30pm - 4:45pm | Kerchof Hall 317 |
| | Other than that they are (mostly) long to very long prose fiction narratives, eighteenth-century
British novels have little in common, formally speaking. From the dreamlike (or nightmarish)
landscape that is Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, through Haywood’s shrewd amatory fiction, Defoe’s circling first-person narratives, the suffocating epistolarity of Richardson (that’s a compliment, btw), the self-reflexive irony of Fielding, the agonies of sensibility (not to mention punctuation) in Radcliffe, the psychological labyrinths of gothic, and the innovative interiorities of Austen, each new instance defines and patterns itself anew, and none bears much similarity to nineteenth-century descendants. We will look at a variety of historical and cultural contexts, such as emerging genres; changes in perceptions of space, time, things, narrative, typography; and literary criticism from the eighteenth century to the present. Participation, short analytical commentaries,* two 10-page papers, presentations, and a final take-home exercise. |
| ENGL 8596 | Form and Theory of Poetry |
| |
| | Memory & Document |
| 19648 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 5 / 15 | Kiki Petrosino | We 2:00pm - 4:30pm | Shannon House 119 |
| | In this graduate seminar, we’ll examine what it means to compose poetry responsive to real places, times, events, and experiences. We'll read several works of contemporary poetry that take a variety of approaches to the concepts of "memory" and "archive," broadly (and capaciously!) defined. Readings will include craft texts and critical inquiry on documentary poetics and other compositional modalities. Coursework, including group learning experiences (one self-guided), will give students the opportunity to produce a critical or creative project engaging themes inspired by the course material. Though this is a readings-based course, students should be prepared and willing to participate in writing exercises, to exchange works-in-progress, and to offer constructive critique. These activities, plus attendance, participation, & the final project, will inform the grading policy.
This course is designed for first- and second-year MFA students in Creative Writing. Graduate students from other departments and programs are welcome, pending availability and instructor permission. If you would like to enroll in this course, but are not in the MFA Program, please contact Prof. Petrosino via e-mail (cmp2k@virginia.edu) with a message detailing your interest.
|
| Engineering |
| ENGR 1501 | Special Topics |
| |
| | SURE: How to Perform Research |
| 20570 | 001 | Lecture (1 Units) | Open | 3 / 40 | Brian Helmke | Mo 5:00pm - 5:50pm | Olsson Hall 011 |
| | Welcome to SURE (Starting an Undergraduate Research Experience)! Are you an engineering undergraduate student who is interested in getting involved in undergraduate research, but you do not know where to begin? Well, this is the class for you! In this one-credit, Credit/No Credit class, you will learn what undergraduate research is, identify goals for your research experience, and seek out research opportunities while building a community within the engineering school. You will do this through speaker panels, lab tours, mock interviews, group activities, and more. Our goal in this class is to make undergraduate research more accessible for students from all backgrounds and experiences. We are excited to join you as you start your undergraduate research experience. |
| Writing and Rhetoric |
| ENWR 1510 | Writing and Critical Inquiry |
| |
| | Writing about the Arts |
| | Sci-fi and the Present |
| 11495 | 053 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 0 / 3 | Hodges Adams | TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm | Clemons Library 320 |
| | In the introduction to 'The Left Hand of Darkness,' Ursula K. Le Guin declares that “Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive.” What, then, can a work of science fiction tell us about the time in which it was written? Students in this course should expect to read and watch works of science fiction across a variety of genres and forms, including novels, short stories, essays, television episodes, and movies, and then generate critical written responses. This class focuses on reading, writing, researching, and revising carefully and with intention. Student papers will be peer reviewed and revised multiple times during class. There may be class trips to Shannon Library, the Special Collections Library, and elsewhere around Grounds. |
| ENWR 3500 | Topics in Advanced Writing & Rhetoric |
| |
| | Rhetoric of Crime |
| 19325 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 16 / 16 | Rhiannon Goad | MoWe 5:00pm - 6:15pm | Bryan Hall 310 |
| | In this course, students examine the enormously popular true crime genre through a rhetorical lens. They will critically examine creative nonfiction texts, podcasts, and documentary films in a series of short papers. To conclude the course, students will work together to produce a podcast examining how our culture engages the true crime genre. |
| ENWR 3740 | Black Women's Writing & Rhetoric |
| |
| 19327 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (4 / 10) | 16 / 16 | Tamika Carey | TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm | The Rotunda Room 152 |
| | This course explores how Black Women use writing, literacy, speaking, and performance rhetorically to build the worlds they want to live in and the lives they deserve. Specifically, the course will teach you how to understand: 1) rhetoric as techne, or an art, that members of this group use to take action towards their social and political needs; 2) rhetoric as a lens for analyzing and critiquing the choices and consequences of literature, communication, and discourse; and 3) rhetoric as a resource for developing voice, style, and flavor in writing. Projects are likely to include: a discussion-leading presentation, an analytical essay, and a final project. |
| French |
| FREN 3031 | Finding Your Voice in French |
| |
| | … Contemplatively |
| 10161 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 2 / 15 | Amy Ogden | MoWeFr 11:00am - 11:50am | New Cabell Hall 291 |
| | In this course, students explore and develop their own "voice" in written and spoken French. Through reading and viewing a variety of cultural artifacts in French, and completing a series of individual and collaborative creative projects, students will improve their skills in grammar, communication, self-expression and editing. Prerequisite: FREN 2020, 2320, or the equivalent, or appropriate AP, F-CAPE, or SAT score.
This section: Finding Your Voice in French Contemplatively – This section of 3031 will explore how contemplative practices can help increase our attentiveness to others and to ourselves, leading to greater confidence both in comprehension and in self-expression.
|
| FREN 3584 | Topics in French Cinema |
| |
| | Great French Films |
| | Great |
| 20607 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 17 / 18 | Ari Blatt | TuTh 9:30am - 10:45am | Nau Hall 141 |
| | Do you have a passion for cinema, or simply like watching films? Want to spend a semester learning about the rich history of world-renowned, award-winning movies from France? Then this is the class for you!
This course is designed to be an introductory survey to the rich history of movies from France, from the birth of the medium at the end of the nineteenth century, through the twists and turns of the twentieth century, and into the first quarter of the twenty first. Our focus will be films from metropolitan France that have made a significant mark on films and filmmakers from around the world. Several recent, award-winning films that we will watch near the end of the semester testify to just how vibrant contemporary French cinema continues to be.
Along with introducing students to some of the key artists, movements, and trends to have emerged over the last 130 years or so, this course also aims to do the following: to encourage you to better appreciate a national cinema that tends to distance itself from the usual Hollywood fare (though, as we’ll see, French cinema has informed, and is consistently informed by, the American tradition); to invite you to think deeply about works of art that might initially appear abstract, difficult, sometimes bothersome, or simply different; to nudge you to ask questions about films, and to take pleasure in analyzing them; to heighten your sensitivity to the visual and aural nuances, structural quirks, ideological positions, and esthetic choices that comprise a form of representation that has become altogether ubiquitous in our 21st-century lives; to learn something about modern and contemporary France through cinema; and to furnish you with some of the tools you will need to speak and write with conviction about motion pictures. Of course, while cinema can be very enlightening, and great films usually make for stimulating conversations, FREN 3584 is built around the simple idea that watching movies, even for a class, can and should be fun.
Films will be made available via streaming. No books to buy. Course taught IN FRENCH. And there will be no final exam (instead, students will work in teams on a filmmaking project, inspired by films on the syllabus).
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| FREN 3885 | Beasts and Beauties |
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| | (formerly 3585 Topics, Beasts and Beauties) |
| 20035 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Wait List (15 / 199) | 18 / 18 | Cheryl Krueger | TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm | New Cabell Hall 407 |
| | Werewolves, vampires, phantoms, and fairies: these are some of the creatures who inhabit the eerie space of French fiction from the Middle Ages to present. In fables, legends, fairy tales, short stories, novels, and film, outer beauty is associated sometimes with virtue, often with hidden monstrosity. We will study the presence of fascinating, sometimes menacing fictional creatures in relation to physical and moral beauty, animality, and evocations of good, evil, comfort, fear, kindness familiarity and the uncanny. Throughout the course we will examine how supernatural tropes bring to light tensions between the self and others, yet also suggest their possible harmonies. The course is designed to deepen our understanding of French literature and how we read it, and to explore how engagement with literature and the arts helps us fine-tune critical thinking skills as we try to better understand ourselves and the world around us. In addition to reading and film-viewing, the course features in-class presentations, discussion, and contributions to the course blog. Via a series of in-class writing workshops, students will be guided to complete the final creative writing project, their own supernatural short story in French.
Prerequisite FREN 3031 or equivalent
This course counts toward the French major and minor
This course fulfills the post-1800 requirement for the French major and minor |
| FREN 4682 | Baudelaire and Poetic Modernity |
| |
| 20033 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 15 / 18 | Claire Lyu | MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm | New Cabell Hall 291 |
| | Taking as our guide the works of the celebrated French poet Baudelaire, we will pursue one overarching question: How can we live in a poetic relationship with the world? For Baudelaire, poetry fulfilled an existential function: the search for lightness, lucidity, and freedom in response to the weight, dullness, and loss of will that plague life. We will read a selection of writings from Les Fleurs du mal, Les Paradis artificiels, Critiques d'art, and Les Petits poèmes en prose to understand how Baudelaire’s poetry opens to both beauty and pain, doubt and certainty, spleen and ideal through a careful shaping of form and content of language. We will proceed thoughtfully, that is, slowly and carefully, with analytic precision, paying particular attention to the craft of language and experimenting with various compositional practices ourselves. The course invites you to discover poetry as power, as a practice of life that honors and makes possible both thought and feeling.
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| FREN 4848 | The Good Life? |
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| 20328 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 7 / 15 | Amy Ogden | Mo 3:30pm - 6:00pm | French House 100 |
| | Newly revised course! Meets Pre-1800 Requirement |
| | Meets French Department Pre-1800 Requirement.
What is the good life, and what is a good life? How should a person balance ethical responsibilities with comforts and pleasures? Is sacrifice required for someone who wants to be good, and if so, how much and of what kind? How do social expectations help and harm efforts to do the right thing? We might think of saints as people who live perfectly good lives, but stories about them often grapple with all of these questions and don’t always provide clear answers, instead encouraging audiences to think deeply about their own lives in ways that go beyond any one religious or ethical system. Above all, such stories can lay bare both how difficult it is to solve moral dilemmas (even for saints) and how closely extreme virtue can resemble appalling vice. Looking at old and new stories of parent-child struggles, spectacular sinning and redemption, gender transformation, and daily moral predicaments, we will explore a variety of ways to understand what it means to live well.
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| FREN 4875 | Global Paris: The Complexity of Place |
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| 20330 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Wait List (4 / 199) | 18 / 18 | Janet Horne | TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm | New Cabell Hall 107 |
| | FREN 4875 Global Paris: The Complexity of Place: Global Paris
A global city, Paris is today so much more than the capital of France; it holds meaning the world over. A real city of grit and struggle, it is also symbolic of lofty and complex ideals. A crossroads for people from every imaginable background, Paris has always been a transnational city of immigrants, students, political exiles, formerly colonized peoples, artists, writers and people just trying to make a living. The principal theater of the French Revolution, it earned a reputation for insurrection and protest. The vibrant heart of artistic life and intellectual debate, Paris became the model of a19th-century city.
How did Paris achieve such iconic status on the world stage? What myths and historical moments have defined it? Why did James Baldwin or Ernest Hemingway go there and what did they find? What might you hope to find there? Together, we will explore maps, paintings and films that illustrate key features of the history, topography, architecture, and neighborhoods of Paris. We will discover the imagined city in art, literature and song. We will interrogate the “American dream” of Paris, Black Paris, its promises and mirages. By the end of this course, Paris will be a familiar place, and you will have a good understanding of how the traces of the past remain inscribed on the modern urban landscape. You will be able “to read” the city, unlock its codes, and hopefully find personal enrichment there, even from a distance. |
| FREN 7500 | Topics in Theory and Criticism |
| |
| | Literary Theory: Classic Thoughts, Modern Texts, C |
| 19275 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 6 / 10 | Claire Lyu | Mo 3:30pm - 6:00pm | Pavilion V 110 |
| | FREN 7500 -- Literary Theory: Classic Thoughts, Modern Texts, Contemporary Debates
This seminar is an introduction to a selection of important texts of the Western critical narrative and to the diverse objectives, revisions, and polemics that have marked its history from Plato's denunciation of poetry in classical antiquity to the reassessment of modes of critique and reading that is gaining momentum in the twenty-first century. We will examine the successive incarnations of what we now call “literature” (e.g., “poiesis,” “hermeneia,” “belles lettres,” “writing,” “text,” “discourse,” etc.) and how it has been approached. We will pay close attention to the philosophical traditions and ways of thinking that have shaped the evolution of the meta-discourse about literature so as to understand how they gave rise to the development of major theoretical movements of the modern and contemporary era: formalism/ (post)structuralism/ deconstruction, reader response theory, psychoanalysis, Marxism, feminism/ gender studies/ queer theory, eco-criticism/ animal studies. (Due to time constraints, we will not cover various strands of post-colonial theory in the Francophone context, given that several seminars in the department treat the subject.) |
| German |
| GERM 3559 | New Course in German |
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| | Tweets, TikToks, and German Texts |
| 19473 | 002 | Lecture (3 Units) | Wait List (0 / 199) | 12 / 12 | Chrisann Zuerner | MoWeFr 10:00am - 10:50am | New Cabell Hall 315 |
| | This course explores the intersection of contemporary German literature and social media, examining how the two inform one another through content, activism, and narrative strategies. Over the past five years, several German-langauge authors have incorporated paratextual references related to social media (i.e. tweets) into their works, blurring the lines between fiction and nonfiction by drawing on real-life events. Others have used social media as a platform for social advocacy, growing their followings, and later transforming their online discourses into literary narratives that further draw from their personal experiences.
Focusing on works published since 2020, this course analyzes novels alongside various social media platfroms, considering their content, accessibility, audiences, and political impact related to issues of racism, sexism, and xenophobia in the German-speaking world. We will draw from theories related to the digital humanities, as well as para- and inter-textuality, to explore the ever-evolving interplay between literature and the digital world.
Readings will include: Identitti by Mithu Sanyal, Ein schönes Ausländer Kind by toxische Pommes, and Noch Wach by Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre.
Course readings and discussions will be conducted in German. |
| GERM 3610 | Lyric Poetry |
| |
| | From Minnesang to Mic Drop |
| 20620 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 2 / 10 | Julia Gutterman | Tu 3:30pm - 6:00pm | Pavilion V 109 |
| | What role does poetry play in our lives—and what can you do with a poem? In this course, we’ll explore how German poetry has shaped and responded to the world, from medieval love songs to contemporary voices tackling migration, memory, and resistance.
We’ll read poets like Walther von der Vogelweide, Goethe, Brecht, Lasker-Schüler, May Ayim, and more, diving into themes of love, nature, environment, animals, crisis, and personal experience. Along the way, you'll sharpen your reading and speaking skills through in-depth discussion and close reading—all in German.
This course is especially suited for students looking to expand their vocabulary, strengthen conversational fluency, and discover the power of poetry.
GERM 3000 is NOT a prerequisite!!
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| German in Translation |
| GETR 3360 | The Art of Dreaming |
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| 20619 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 6 / 18 | Julia Gutterman | MoWe 3:30pm - 4:45pm | New Cabell Hall 032 |
| | What do our dreams mean—if anything? Are they just brain static, or windows into our deepest selves?
In this course, we explore how dreams have fascinated thinkers for centuries. From Freud’s groundbreaking Interpretation of Dreams to dystopian fiction, political nightmares, surrealist films, and your own dream journal, we’ll examine how dreams shape and reflect human experience.
Texts include works by Descartes, Freud, Charlotte Beradt, Ursula Le Guin, and the anime film Paprika. Along the way, you’ll sharpen your skills in literary and cultural analysis, creative writing, and interdisciplinary thinking through vibrant discussions and hands-on activities.
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| GETR 3559 | New Course in German in Translation |
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| | Body Horror: From Kafka to Cronenberg and Beyond |
| 19474 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 8 / 30 | Paul Dobryden | TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm | New Cabell Hall 168 |
| | This course explores the terrifying and thrilling experience of being (in) a body through the film genre of “body horror.” Beginning with early influences (Kafka, German expressionism), we will examine ‘80s classics (The Thing, The Fly) and more recent examples (The Skin I Live In, The Substance). Readings in psychoanalysis, disability studies, and gender studies will help us grapple with the question of what makes bodies so fascinatingly scary. |
| | Illness and Disability in Fiction |
| 20699 | 003 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 0 / 18 | Julia Gutterman | MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm | New Cabell Hall 415 |
| | This course explores the dynamic relationships between illness, disability, and the literary imagination. We will engage with a wide range of shorter texts to ask: how do narratives convey the lived experiences of health, illness, and disability? What cultural understandings of the body and mind, of health, and of dis/ability do these texts reflect—or help to shape? And what ethical challenges arise in listening to, reading, or writing stories about illness and disability? This course is open to students of all levels and disciplines—whether in the medical and health fields, critical disability and literary studies, or simply with an interest in reading. Texts include works from English-speaking contexts and, in translation, from German and French traditions. Please email Prof. Gutterman (jg4mt@virginia.edu) with any questions!
No prior knowledge in literary analysis, critical disability studies, or medical humanities necessary. I encourage first-years to enroll!
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| | Refugees and the Holocaust |
| | Refugees and the Holocaust |
| 19485 | 005 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 2 / 22 | Jeffrey Grossman | Tu 3:30pm - 6:00pm | New Cabell Hall 368 |
| | This course assumes no prior knowledge of the subject matter. |
| | In our times, millions of people find themselves displaced as refugees, whether in flight from violent and oppressive regimes or forcibly expelled, in search of a safe haven, too often denied them or offered only conditionally. This course looks back to another time – spanning the period from 1933 and Hitler's rise to power, continuing up to World War II, through the Holocaust, and into the post-war period. The Nazi regime ruled first in Germany, soon thereafter in Austria, and eventually came to occupy most of Europe, extending even into North Africa. By the end of the war, several million people from across these regions, including the “bloodlands” of Eastern Europe, had become refugees for one reason or another. In this course, we will focus primarily on the victims of Nazi Germany and its collaborators, especially on those persecuted as Jews or because they opposed the Nazi regime (e.g. as artists and intellectuals, socialists, communists, on religious grounds, or as independent critics of various stripes).
We will explore the plight of these refugees, the conditions that led to their loss of home and homeland, of family and friends; their attempts to flee or their forced expulsion, and the ways such displacement affected them; their often faltering (and, too often, failing) efforts to find a safe haven; the conditions that hindered or enhanced those efforts, and the kinds of experiences they had once they did find a refuge, whether temporary or long-lasting, whether granted begrudgingly or willingly.
Although focusing primarily on this particular past history, we will seek in this course to develop together a set of tools, methods, and sample materials that, while allowing for differences (cultural, social, political, historical, etc.), can help us to better understand the plight and conditions of refugees past and present and, alas, for the foreseeable future.
As troubled as refugees' stories could be, they also often reveal the various insightful, creative, and even inspiring ways that many responded to and wrote about their experiences, their new encounters with unfamiliar worlds, and the new lives they embarked upon.
Materials for this course will be drawn from historical accounts, official documents, first person narratives, works of fiction and poetry, film (both documentary and narrative), and possibly others.
Students may find it worthwhile to watch in advance the three-part documentary, The U.S. and the Holocaust (2022; directed by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Bostein), which is available through the Virgo/the UVA Library’s online catalog—with each part lasting a little over two hours.
Requirements: One five-page paper (one on of two or three suggested topics); one five-page exploratory paper on a topic of the student’s choosing; a tentative bibliography on a research topic for a final paper; the final research paper itself (10 pp.), to be developed over the last few weeks of the semester; active class participation.
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| GETR 3710 | Kafka and His Doubles |
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| 19482 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 18 / 18 (18 / 18) | Lorna Martens | TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm | Pavilion VIII 108 |
| | For description, click on schedule number to the left. |
| | Kafka and His Doubles
The course will introduce the enigmatic work of Franz Kafka: stories including "The Judgment," "The Metamorphosis," "A Country Doctor," "A Report to an Academy," "A Hunger Artist," "The Burrow," and "Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk"; one of his three unpublished novels (The Trial); the Letter to His Father; and some short parables. But we will also look at Kafka's "doubles": the literary tradition he works with and the way in which he, in turn, forms literary tradition. Thus: Kafka: Cervantes, Kafka: Bible, Kafka: Aesop, Kafka: Dostoevsky, Kafka: Melville; Kafka: O'Connor, Kafka: Singer; Kafka: Calvino, Kafka: Borges. Readings will center on four principal themes: conflicts with others and the self (and Kafka's psychological vision); the double; the play with paradox and infinity; and artists and animals. A seminar limited to 20 participants. Requirements include a short midterm paper (5-7 pages) and a longer final paper (10-12 pages). |
| GETR 3780 | Memory Speaks |
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| 19481 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 18 / 18 (18 / 18) | Lorna Martens | TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm | New Cabell Hall 291 |
| | For description, click on schedule number to the left. |
| | Memory Speaks
Memory is a crucial human faculty. Our ability to remember our own past is one of the things that make us human. Memory has long been thought to ground identity: without memory, one has no sense of self. Memory has been seen as fundamental to psychic health, and even as a remedy in times of trouble, as well as essential to our ability to imagine the future. Remembering has its delights. Certainly the idea of losing one’s memory, through shock or illness for example, is terrifying to contemplate. Yet having too many memories of the wrong kind is believed to endanger our equilibrium. Maddeningly, given its power to make us healthy or sick, memory often lies beyond our conscious control. It operates according to its own laws, giving us what we want only sometimes. Undeniably useful, it has also been seen as deceptive. It is demonstrably suggestible. It is not surprising, therefore, that memory is a subject of vital importance in the humanities, sciences, and social sciences alike.
This course will focus on individual memory and in particular on autobiographical memory (our memories of our own lives). We will read autobiographies and works of fiction, written from the early twentieth century to the present, by Patrick Modiano, Marcel Proust, Rainer Maria Rilke, Mary McCarthy, Vladimir Nabokov, and Marguerite Duras. We will also study two films on the theme of memory: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Inside Out. Concurrently, we will read psychological, psychoanalytic, and neuroscientific work on memory. Some attention will be paid to the issues of false memory, external memory, and mediated memory, as well.
Two short papers, presentations, exam.
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| GETR 4559 | New Course in German in Translation |
| |
| | Faust |
| 20231 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 3 / 18 (3 / 18) | Jeffrey Grossman | MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm | New Cabell Hall 303 |
| | This course assumes no prior knowledge of the subject matter.
Students who have previously take my 3000-level course on "Faust" should consult with me about enrolling in this class. |
| | Goethe's Faust has been called an “atlas of European modernity” and “one of the most recent columns for that bridge of spirit spanning the swamping of world history.” The literary theorist Harold Bloom writes: “As a sexual nightmare of erotic fantasy, [Faust] ... has no rival, and one understands why the shocked Coleridge declined to translate the poem. It is certainly a work about what, if anything, will suffice, and Goethe finds myriad ways of showing us that sexuality by itself will not. Even more obsessively, Faust teaches that, without an active sexuality, absolutely nothing will suffice.”
Taking Goethe's Faust as its point of departure, this course will trace the Faust legend from its rise over 400 hundred years ago to the modern age. Retrospectively, we will explore precursors of Goethe's Faust in the form of the English Faust Book and Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, and Rousseau’s Reveries of a Solitary Walker, to which Goethe responded. We will then read Goethe's Faust, parts I and parts II (either in its entirety or in excerpts), in part as a response to Rousseau’s Although now a major work in the European canon, Goethe sought in his Faust to radically transform central tenants of the legend and to challenge many conventions of European culture, politics, and society. We will also study Byron's melancholy attempt in Manfred to respond to part I of Goethe’s Faust create a theater of the emotions that explores problems of power, sexuality, and guilt. And we will venture into the twentieth century, viewing first F.W. Murnau's avant-garde Faust film (1926) as a response to contemporary European/German society and technology, and Istvan Szabo’s film Mephisto (1981), which wrestled with Nazism in the land of Goethe's Faust.
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| History-European History |
| HIEU 1501 | Introductory Seminar in Pre-1700 European History |
| |
| | Crafting Imperial Lives and Life Stories |
| 19205 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (10 / 199) | 18 / 18 | Jennifer Sessions | TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm | Nau Hall 142 |
| | How did women and men who lived within European colonial empires build their lives and how can we tell their stories? This course will explore the ways that imperial networks of exploration, conquest, and trade and colonial systems of race, law, and governance created and constrained the options available to individuals. We will examine the historical processes that shaped individuals’ life stories, the ways that these stories can be shared, through academic history, museums, films, comics, music, and more, and what we can learn from these stories about understanding and navigating complex systems of global power. Fulfills the Second Writing Requirement. |
| History-United States History |
| HIUS 3559 | New Course in United States History |
| |
| | American Civil Wars |
| 19180 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 21 / 36 (38 / 40) | Caroline Janney+1 | MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Clinical Department Wing 2677 |
| | No moment in United States history has received more recent scrutiny than the American Civil War. Nearly half the respondents to a 2022 poll believe another such war “at least somewhat likely” to break out in the next decade. Comparing the events of 1861-1865 to the divisive politics of the 2020s has become commonplace. Against this fraught backdrop, our course will focus on the conflicting voices and perspectives behind the coming, fighting, and aftermath of war. Among those we may read are Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Kate Stone, Phoebe Yates Pember, James Henry Gooding, Ulysses S. Grant, Louisa May Alcott, Mary Chesnut, Susie King Taylor, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Robert Gould Shaw, Mathew Brady, and Alexander Gardner. While wartime figures will absorb much of our attention, we will also turn to later representations, such as a new graphic novel of Stephen Crane’s Red Badge of Courage, a short story by Eudora Welty, a movie or two, and recent AI animations of famous Civil War photographs. Finally, we will sample recent discussions of prospects for another civil war, with examples drawn from mainstream journalism, online alternatives, and creative media. Assignments will include short papers and at least one exam. Professors Caroline Janney (History) and Stephen Cushman (English) will teach this course together. |
| Liberal Arts Seminar |
| LASE 2515 | A&S Skills Accelerator-Catalyst |
| |
| | The Writing Lab |
| 13379 | 004 | WKS (2 Units) | Open | 5 / 15 | Cristina Griffin | Tu 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Fayerweather Hall 215 |
| | The capacity to clearly communicate ideas in writing is a prerequisite for nearly any career. In this course, students will practice taking a concept from initial idea to final draft with a focus on professional writing. We will tackle some common professional communication modes together, and practice a variety of ways to make every student a stronger and more confident writer. The bulk of the writing in this course will be student-driven and student-designed, individualized to each student’s particular career goals and fields. Our classroom will function both as a simulation of on-the-job writing and as a safe space for writerly experimentation: students will craft career-based writing projects in order to practice future writing tasks, and our classroom will also function as an experiential lab space for writing, revising, experimenting, failing, and writing again. Students will work with MS Word, Copilot, and test out drafting software (such as Worst Draft). Students will leave this class as more confident and more adept writers, ready––and even excited––to incorporate writing into their future careers. |
| Latin |
| LATI 3010 | Plautus |
| |
| 19244 | 1 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 9 / 15 | Inger Neeltje Irene Kuin | MoWeFr 10:00am - 10:50am | New Cabell Hall 066 |
| | In this course we will study the works of Plautus as a key moment in the history both of Latin literature and of comedy as such. Our starting point will be a close reading (translation and analysis) of Plautus’ Menaechmi in Latin, and of three other Plautine plays in English translation. Through in-class reading of the Latin text and discussion of literary and cultural issues we will attempt to understand Plautus’ comedy. Attention will be given to Plautus’ language, poetic technique, and to the interpretation of his plays within their historical and generic context. We will examine Plautus’ use of his Greek models, as well as his stagecraft and the performance of the plays. Careful translation of the Latin will be stressed, including grammar review. |
| LATI 4559 | New Course in Latin |
| |
| | Apuleius on Magic, Religion, and Empire |
| | Satisfies the Second Writing and Cultures and Societies of the World Requirements |
| 19336 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 10 / 15 | Inger Neeltje Irene Kuin | MoWe 3:30pm - 4:45pm | Cocke Hall 101 |
| | The course satisfies the Second Writing and Cultures and Societies of the World Requirements. In this course we will read selections from Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, Florida, and Self-Defense on a Charge of Magic. We will relate these texts to the author’s social and cultural environment in Roman North Africa in the second century CE, and consider their place in the intellectual history of the Roman Empire. In particular we will explore the overlap between rhetoric, philosophy, storytelling, religion, and magic as different modes of inquiry. |
| Leadership and Public Policy - Evaluation and Analysis |
| LPPA 7220 | Advance Topics in Impact Evaluations |
| |
| 14474 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 15 / 20 | Daniel Player | TuTh 5:00pm - 6:15pm | Rouss Hall 403 |
| | Course investigates practical challenges policy researchers face conducting impact evaluations. Develop capacity to replicate prominent empirical research using experimental & quasi-experimental methods & present results in compelling, accessible formats.Course primarily uses Stata (although students are welcome to use R if they prefer). Course assumes prior grad-level instruction in experimental & quasi-experimental methods. A passing grade in LPPA 7160 (RMDA II) or instructor permission is required. |
| Leadership and Public Policy - Policy |
| LPPP 3559 | New Course in Public Policy and Leadership |
| |
| | Global Child & Youth Policy |
| 20332 | 003 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 9 / 20 | Lucy Bassett | Tu 3:30pm - 6:00pm | Shannon House 107 |
| | Many policies aim to help children. Are they working & which are critical? How could we design them with children’s need & perspectives in mind? In this course, we will discuss children’s needs around the world, existing policies to address them, & child participation processes. Policy areas will range from education to health to poverty alleviation. Students will analyze a specific policy & design their own. |
| | Strategic Decision-Making |
| 20455 | 004 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 13 / 50 | Alexander Bick | MoWe 5:00pm - 6:15pm | Chemistry Bldg 204 |
| | This is a course on decision-making in national security and foreign policy. How do leaders make choices? What factors weigh most heavily? Where do leaders err – and why? The course explores these questions in three parts. Part one focuses on conceptual models for understanding strategy and improving decision-making. Part two examines historical cases that are directly relevant to today’s most important international challenges, e.g., the outbreak of World War I, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Part three is an immersive simulation or exercise to test and strengthen your own skills as a decision-maker. |
| | Leadership in U.S. Diplomacy |
| 20518 | 005 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 14 / 30 | JANE ZIMMERMAN | TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm | New Cabell Hall 058 |
| | This course explores leadership in U.S. diplomacy through the memoirs, oral histories, correspondence, and first-person accounts of American diplomats. Historical accounts from Thomas Jefferson, Dean Acheson, Ralph Bunche, Dean Rusk, and others will be analyzed in greater hindsight, and compared and contrasted to accounts from contemporary leaders, such as William Burns, Prudence Bushnell, and Ron Capps. We will examine how U.S. diplomatic leaders have shaped policy and institutions, as well as the leadership and ethical challenges they have faced. The course will include material from the Foreign Affairs Oral History Program of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training (ADST), which has over 2,500 transcribed interviews. ADST will provide primary source material to examine foreign policy, and allow students to publish online summaries of oral histories. |
| | Trade-offs in Healthcare Policy |
| 20533 | 006 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 6 / 20 | Tim Layton | MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Shannon House 111 |
| | This course examines the economic forces and policy decisions that shape the U.S. healthcare system, focusing on inefficiencies, market failures, and the trade-offs inherent in efforts to improve population health and reduce costs. Topics include insurance design, provider payment, drug pricing and innovation, disparities in health outcomes and access, and healthcare consolidation. Through economic models, empirical studies, and real-world cases, students will explore questions like: What is the “right” amount of care? How should we ration healthcare? What are the consequences of different pricing and coverage decisions? |
| LPPP 5500 | Short Course Topics |
| |
| | Public Speaking Workshop 1 |
| | Part One: Confident Speaker Workshop |
| 14535 | 003 | SEM (1 Units) | Open | 11 / 20 | Denise Stewart | We 5:00pm - 7:30pm | New Cabell Hall 407 |
| | Unlock your potential and elevate your speaking skills in this highly interactive, skill-building course open to both undergraduate and graduate students across the University of Virginia. This course is broken down into four workshops:
Storytelling for Public Speaking: Learn to craft compelling narratives that captivate and engage your audience.
15 Fundamentals for Public Speaking: Master the essential techniques that make great speeches unforgettable.
Improv Workshop: Boost your confidence and creativity while thinking on your feet in real-time scenarios.
Big Speech Prep: Prepare for your next major presentation with tailored guidance and hands-on practice.
Part One is NOT a pre-requisite for Part Two, but many students enjoy taking both workshops (either back-to-back or in alternate semesters) |
| | Public Speaking Workshop 2 |
| | Part Two: Public Speaking for Leaders Workshop |
| 14540 | 004 | SEM (1 Units) | Open | 3 / 20 | Denise Stewart | We 5:00pm - 7:30pm | New Cabell Hall 407 |
| | At the end of this experiential workshop you will have practiced techniques to influence others with confidence, empathy, and clarity. You'll gain practical tools to establish credibility, navigate objections and anchor discussions in shared goals. Strengthen your leadership presence and build trust with key decision-makers! Public Speaking Workshop Part One is NOT a pre-requisite for taking this course (many students take both parts) |
| | Feminist Public Policy |
| | From Dolly Parton 9 to 5 to Beyonce Run the World to Chappell Roan Femininomenon |
| 20115 | 006 | SEM (1 Units) | Open | 13 / 18 | Lucy Bassett | Mo 7:00pm - 9:30pm | Pavilion VIII 103 |
| | Is the way we currently design and implement public policy in the US working for all genders? Can a feminist lens bring insights into how to better address the needs of women and other non-dominant groups in society? What would that feminist lens be? What questions should we ask, or angles should we explore?
In this course we will look at a variety of feminist theories, from liberal feminism to eco-feminism to intersectional feminism, consider how they could inform public policy decisions, and discuss what it would take to make such analysis more common and more valued. |
| LPPP 5559 | New Course in Public Policy and Leadership |
| |
| | Humanitarian Diplomacy |
| 20501 | 003 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 1 / 20 | JANE ZIMMERMAN | TuTh 5:00pm - 6:15pm | Fayerweather Hall 206 |
| | Humanitarian diplomacy aims to alleviate human suffering by upholding the principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality, and independence in developing policy and implementing international human rights law and the laws off armed conflict. Students will gain a comprehensive understanding of the principles, practices, and challenges of diplomacy in the context of humanitarian policy and action. |
| LPPP 7559 | New Course in Public Policy and Leadership |
| |
| | Nuclear Weapons & Proliferation |
| 19371 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 2 / 10 | Elana DeLozier | We 2:00pm - 4:30pm | Pavilion VIII 105 |
| | This course explores nuclear weapons, proliferation, and non-proliferation efforts through technical, historical, and policy lenses. Students will gain the foundational knowledge of nuclear science then delve into strategic nuclear doctrines, the global non-proliferation regime, and case studies on the AQ Khan network and Iran, among others. The course emphasizes how proliferation affects international security and equips students with the analytical tools and technical expertise they need to navigate modern nuclear policy challenges. |
| | Trade-offs in Healthcare Policy |
| 20534 | 003 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 1 / 30 | Tim Layton | MoWe 3:30pm - 4:45pm | John W. Warner Hall 113 |
| | This course examines the economic forces and policy decisions that shape the U.S. healthcare system, focusing on inefficiencies, market failures, and the trade-offs inherent in efforts to improve population health and reduce costs. Topics include insurance design, provider payment, drug pricing and innovation, disparities in health outcomes and access, and healthcare consolidation. Through economic models, empirical studies, and real-world cases, students will explore questions like: What is the “right” amount of care? How should we ration healthcare? What are the consequences of different pricing and coverage decisions? |
| Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering |
| MAE 4501 | Special Topics in Mechanical Engineering |
| |
| | Vehicle Composites and Manufacturing |
| 20525 | 004 | Lecture (3 Units) | Closed | 15 / 15 (16 / 30) | Xiaodong Li | Fr 1:30pm - 4:00pm | Mechanical Engr Bldg 213 |
| | The course covers polymer matrix composites, metal matrix composites, ceramic matrix composites, and basic requirements for vehicles; learns composite design, rule of mixtures, load transfer, multifunctionalities, lightweighting strategies, composite manufacturing processes and optimization, and composite recyclability and cost reduction. |
| MAE 6592 | Special Topics in Mechanical and Aerospace Science: Intermediate Level |
| |
| | Vehicle Composites and Manufacturing |
| 19739 | 006 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 1 / 15 (16 / 30) | Xiaodong Li | Fr 1:30pm - 4:00pm | Mechanical Engr Bldg 213 |
| | The course covers polymer matrix composites, metal matrix composites, ceramic matrix composites, and basic requirements for vehicles; learns composite design, rule of mixtures, load transfer, multifunctionalities, lightweighting strategies, composite manufacturing processes and optimization, and composite recyclability and cost reduction.
|
| Music |
| MUSI 2090 | Sound Studies: The Art and Experience of Listening |
| |
| 13792 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (6 / 199) | 20 / 20 | Noel Lobley | MoWe 9:30am - 10:45am | Wilson Hall 142 |
| | Please note: this course is an introduction to Sound Studies, there is no pre-requisite, and students from all backgrounds, levels and experiences are welcome to come and explore myriad ways to engage with sound. |
| | When we think about knowing the world through the senses, we are likely to think first of the visible world. But sound, hearing and listening are crucial too and often take precedence in many communities. Recently scholars in history, anthropology, geography, literary studies, acoustics, music, ecology, environmental science, and art have come together in the field of Sound Studies, reflecting on the role of sounds as forces that flow in and beyond human life. How do sound art, technology, and design create the world we inhabit and our everyday social and political experience? How can vibrations both heal and destroy? What does it mean to experience immersive and embodied sound? We will ponder these and other questions, moving between theoretical, experiential, and creative explorations.
|
| MUSI 3570 | Music Cultures |
| |
| | Curating Sound: Art, Ethnography, and Practice |
| 13800 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 8 / 20 | Noel Lobley | MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Wilson Hall 142 |
| | This project-based course works like an interactive workshop, critical and creative content will be explored in an open-pedagogical model where students apprentice as curators and eventually take an active role in curating the class itself. |
| | This practical and discovery-driven design course explores the intersections of curatorial practice, sound studies, ethnography, composition, sound art, and community arts practice, through a series of engagements linking archival collections, local and international artists and art and community spaces, and the method and philosophies of embodied and experiential deep listening. Drawing from both the histories and potential affordances of sound curation we engage with practical examples ranging from sub-Saharan Africa to Australia, from Europe to New York, and right back here to the Charlottesville and UVA communities, asking what it means to curate local sound within globalized arts circuits. We will explore multiple and diverse case studies where artists, curators, communities, industries and institutions have both collaborated and clashed, as we ask whether it is desirable or even possible to curate the elusive, invasive and ephemeral object, medium and experience of sound. Throughout the entire course we will be working closely with professional artists and curators.
Less a lecture format, and more of an interactive workshop, critical and creative content will be explored in an open-pedagogical model where students apprentice as curators and eventually take an active role in curating the class itself. Expect a mix of group project work, individual reflection and portfolio curation, and real-world collaborative work with professional partners. |
| Politics-International Relations |
| PLIR 4500 | Special Topics in International Relations |
| |
| | Nuclear Weapons in World Politics |
| 19541 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Permission | 15 / 15 | Todd Sechser | Tu 2:00pm - 4:30pm | New Cabell Hall 068 |
| | Have nuclear weapons changed the dynamics of international politics? If so, how? This course is devoted to exploring theoretical and policy debates in nuclear security, including: nuclear deterrence theory; U.S. nuclear strategy during the Cold War and today; nuclear weapons accidents; the dangers of inadvertent escalation; the dynamics of nuclear crises; and nuclear proliferation. |
| Religion-Christianity |
| RELC 5551 | Seminar in Early Christian Thought |
| |
| | After the New Testament: the Apostolic Fathers |
| | After the New Testament: The Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles |
| 19288 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 0 / 5 | Janet Spittler | Th 3:30pm - 6:00pm | Pavilion V 109 |
| | In this seminar, we will take a deep dive into the apocryphal acts of the apostles, a genre of literature that first appeared in the second century CE and continued to be produced throughout the Byzantine/Medieval period. No Greek or Latin knowledge required, but--if you have the skills--you are welcome to participate in an outside of class group that will read a selection of texts in the original languages. Interested undergraduates should email the instructor to talk about joining the course. |
| Swahili |
| SWAH 1010 | Introductory Swahili I |
| |
| 11330 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 5 / 15 | Anne Rotich | MoWeFr 11:00am - 11:50am | New Cabell Hall 368 |
| | No prerequisites:
This course is intended for students with no previous experience with Swahili. In this course you will be introduced to basic Swahili language skills in listening, speaking, reading and writing.Through songs and games, you learn about a variety of topics including how to greet others, introduce yourself, basic social conversations, and talk about a variety of topics of common interest. |
| SWAH 2010 | Intermediate Swahili I |
| |
| 11424 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 9 / 10 | Anne Rotich | MoWeFr 12:00pm - 12:50pm | New Cabell Hall 368 |
| | Prerequisite SWAH 1020 or applicable course credits.
This is an intermediate level course designed for students who have taken SWAH 1020 or prior Swahili language experience to further enhance grammatical skills, and an emphasis on speaking and writing through a reading of Swahili texts. Intermediate Swahili involves more conversations and reading of Swahili materials. |
| University Seminar |
| USEM 1570 | University Seminar |
| |
| | Falling From Infinity |
| 20025 | 002 | SEM (2 Units) | Open | 0 / 18 | Michael Palmer | Th 2:00pm - 3:50pm | Cocke Hall 101 |
| | This thing we call infinity fills our dreams and sparks our imaginations, yet it lies just beyond our reach, lurking in the shadows, evading our questions. Our curiosity compels us to ask: what is infinity? Whether it is something innumerable, something vast, or eternal, infinity shapes our philosophies and religions, influences our arts and literatures, and drives our mathematics and sciences. Blake sees infinity in a grain of sand; van Gogh glimpses it in starry nights; Cantor unlocks infinities within infinities; and Hawking finds it in the dark corners of our Universe. In this class, we will imagine the infinite and the infinitesimal by looking through the eyes of these and other great thinkers. |
| Women and Gender Studies |
| WGS 3305 | Issues in LGBTQ Studies |
| |
| 13247 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open, WL (1 / 199) | 3 / 30 | Aaron Stone | TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm | Bryan Hall 328 |
| | This course surveys key topics within LGBTQ+ Studies from historical, political, literary, and sociocultural perspectives. Likely areas of focus include: trans history and politics, identity categories (e.g., nonbinary, asexuality, bisexuality, two-spirit), polyamory, marriage, queerness and racialization, HIV and PrEP, queer migration, kink and BDSM, and fascism. |
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