Class Schedules

This introductory English course covers lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and Two Spirit literature in America. We will examine how American culture and politics have shaped and been shaped by LGBTQ2S+ writing and art. We will look at historical texts that helped to create queer and trans identities in America and appreciate intersections of race, ethnicity, and class as we move into current work. And we'll explore what it means to queer a text, a life and a culture. Requirements include written responses to reading, two 5-7 page essays and a final project with a live presentation. Authors we’ll read include: Charles Brockden Brown, Jewelle Gomez, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Qwo-Li Driskill, Gloria Anzaldúa, Allison Bechdel, Charlie Jane Anders, Malinda Lo, Kai Cheng Thom, Tommy Pico, and Junauda Petrus.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This introductory English course covers lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and Two Spirit literature in America. We will examine how American culture and politics have shaped and been shaped by LGBTQ2S+ writing and art. We will look at historical texts that helped to create queer and trans identities in America and appreciate intersections of race, ethnicity, and class as we move into current work. And we'll explore what it means to queer a text, a life and a culture. Requirements include written responses to reading, two 5-7 page essays and a final project with a live presentation. Authors we’ll read include: Charles Brockden Brown, Jewelle Gomez, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Qwo-Li Driskill, Gloria Anzaldúa, Allison Bechdel, Charlie Jane Anders, Malinda Lo, Kai Cheng Thom, Tommy Pico, and Junauda Petrus.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

An introduction to the study of an African American literary tradition. The focus or themes of the course, as well as authors and texts, will vary by semester and instructor, but all sections will emphasize the tradition's major genres, such as slave narratives and slam poetry, and its major movements, such as the Harlem Renaissance and Afrofuturism. The course will also provide instruction in the methods of literary analysis, including reading closely and writing text-based argument. Consult the detailed course description in the English department or on the registrar's web page for the content of individual sections.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

In this course, we will study a variety of poetic techniques and themes, all while writing our own poems which we will discuss via workshop. As living, breathing humans in 2021 America, understanding how contemporary American poets use language and form will be imperative to you finding “your own voice” as poets. To accomplish this, we will be reading four collections of poetry published in the last few years by some of our country’s leading poets. With the help of craft and thematic readings via Moodle, we will write in- and out-of-class poetry exercises throughout the semester, finding ways to surprise both ourselves (as Robert Frost said, “No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader”), as well as conjure inspiration from both within and out (as Ocean Vuong wrote, "and remember,/ loneliness is still time spent/ with the world"). We will see how form can dictate content, but also how content can dictate form, remembering Robert Creeley’s dictum: “content is never more than an extension of form and form is never more than an extension of content.” There are not too many places in this world where people get excited to discuss poetry—I consider us very privileged to be able to do so in this class. Let’s not take this privilege for granted; use it as an excuse to seek out wildness, to sound unlike what you think a poet “should” sound like, to allow each of your poems to teach you something you didn’t know before, and to carve out a sustaining space for your inner life to thrive, at present and in the future. Using nothing but our words on the page, let’s achieve the effect Dickinson describes above.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

In this course, we will study a variety of poetic techniques and themes, all while writing our own poems which we will discuss via workshop. As living, breathing humans in 2021 America, understanding how contemporary American poets use language and form will be imperative to you finding “your own voice” as poets. To accomplish this, we will be reading four collections of poetry published in the last few years by some of our country’s leading poets. With the help of craft and thematic readings via Moodle, we will write in- and out-of-class poetry exercises throughout the semester, finding ways to surprise both ourselves (as Robert Frost said, “No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader”), as well as conjure inspiration from both within and out (as Ocean Vuong wrote, "and remember,/ loneliness is still time spent/ with the world"). We will see how form can dictate content, but also how content can dictate form, remembering Robert Creeley’s dictum: “content is never more than an extension of form and form is never more than an extension of content.” There are not too many places in this world where people get excited to discuss poetry—I consider us very privileged to be able to do so in this class. Let’s not take this privilege for granted; use it as an excuse to seek out wildness, to sound unlike what you think a poet “should” sound like, to allow each of your poems to teach you something you didn’t know before, and to carve out a sustaining space for your inner life to thrive, at present and in the future. Using nothing but our words on the page, let’s achieve the effect Dickinson describes above.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

In the past fifty years, science fiction has emerged as the primary cultural form for thinking about human extinction: climate catastrophe and natural disasters, plagues that empty continents, and species suicide through war. But science fiction has also emerged as the primary cultural form for imagining a near boundless future through technological progress: artificial superintelligence, cybernetic enhancement of the human, and the possibility of utopian political order. Facing such disorienting and unfathomable changes, science fiction seeks to understand what it means to be a human and to live a meaningful life. Why are we here? What are we to become? How will the promises of technology, or the lethal threats of scarcity, change what it means to be a thinking, feeling human? In this course we will examine works of science fiction as complex aesthetic achievements, as philosophical inquiries into the nature of being and time, and as theoretical examinations of the nature of human cognition. We will engage in intensive readings of contemporary texts, including works by Ted Chiang, Philip K. Dick, Margaret Atwood, Octavia Butler, Kazuo Ishiguro, and others. Counts toward the Cognitive Science Concentration.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Societal understandings of mental health have shifted significantly over time. From early representations and misrepresentations, to increased inclusivity and discussions around neurodiversity, literary protagonists reflect many of these changing social constructs. This course will look at novels from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries and explore the following topics: how have class, gender, and race shaped literary portrayals of mental health? What misconceptions have lingered over time? What kind of relationships do writers represent between the individual and modern society, and how do communities and support systems within the texts shape and alter their narrative trajectories? Possible course texts include Robert Louis Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, and Mira T. Lee’s Everything Here is Beautiful.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course serves as an introduction to law and literature. How does literature shape law and vice versa? How does literature help us to better understand the human desire for revenge, retribution, confession, witnessing, judgment, remorse, and forgiveness? Readings come from a variety of literary traditions and periods: fairy tales, early modern drama, essays, short stories, film, and literary and legal theory. This course counts as a foundation course for the English major and a course for the Legal Studies Concentration.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This workshop-based course focuses on the development of skills for writing poetry, short fiction, and/or creative nonfiction through a close study of the techniques involved in these forms, analysis of model literary works, and frequent writing exercises that will be workshopped. This course must be completed at Macalester as a PREREQUISITE for the further study of creative writing at Macalester.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

This workshop-based course focuses on the development of skills for writing poetry, short fiction, and/or creative nonfiction through a close study of the techniques involved in these forms, analysis of model literary works, and frequent writing exercises that will be workshopped. This course must be completed at Macalester as a PREREQUISITE for the further study of creative writing at Macalester.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

This workshop-based course focuses on the development of skills for writing poetry, short fiction, and/or creative nonfiction through a close study of the techniques involved in these forms, analysis of model literary works, and frequent writing exercises that will be workshopped. This course must be completed at Macalester as a PREREQUISITE for the further study of creative writing at Macalester.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

This workshop-based course focuses on the development of skills for writing poetry, short fiction, and/or creative nonfiction through a close study of the techniques involved in these forms, analysis of model literary works, and frequent writing exercises that will be workshopped. This course must be completed at Macalester as a PREREQUISITE for the further study of creative writing at Macalester.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

In this course we will dive right into the study of creative writing by reading and writing poetry, flash fiction, short stories, and personal essays. We will study how published authors craft their pieces, how they convey sensation and emotion, and how they artfully tell a story. Along the way, you’ll try your hand at each literary form we study. This is the basic template you can expect on a day-to-day basis. But, beyond this relatively simple pattern, what I hope will happen this term is that you’ll lose yourself to the daring act of creating literature. I hope you’ll disappear into what John Gardener calls the “vivid and continuous dream.” I hope you’ll use your growing knowledge of writing technique and literary history to say something fearless and artful about the world around you. And I hope you will see that what you write matters. Great creative writing aspires to more than just a pleasant diversion from life. At its best, it directly engages with life and even tries to change it. We look to stories, poems, and essays to give us an experience in language that we’ve never had before, to deepen our knowledge of the world, and to allow us into the hearts and minds of others. I hope this semester will be a window into that experience for you.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

This workshop-based course focuses on the development of skills for writing poetry, short fiction, and/or creative nonfiction through a close study of the techniques involved in these forms, analysis of model literary works, and frequent writing exercises that will be workshopped. This course must be completed at Macalester as a PREREQUISITE for the further study of creative writing at Macalester.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

Writing can be a terrifying, vulnerable act. Whether we’re investigating our own lives or digging into the depths of a character, writing well requires risk. In this course, we will create and explore through poetry, fiction, and personal essays. We will learn to get lost, to ask the hardest questions. The first half of the semester will focus on generative experiments. We’ll play with different ways of approaching the page and the writing process. We might write one line a day or try to write an entire story in an hour. The second half of the semester, we’ll learn to revise and offer feedback. Editing and redrafting can lead to unexpected awakenings. Often in revising work, we also revise how we see ourselves and our world. We will begin workshopping with the aim of pushing each other to ask deeper questions and to honor and strengthen the heart of a piece. You will leave this class with a stack of drafts and hopefully a better sense of yourself as a person and as a writer.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

In this Intro to Creative Writing course, my goal is to equip you with as many versatile tools and techniques as I can, so that as you pursue your own projects as writers in the future, you have what you need to breathe some life into your vision. Each week will focus on a particular topic or technical component of a piece of writing (voice, setting, plot, etc.), building gradually to a more traditional workshop. While we’ll focus primarily on fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, we’ll also bring in playwriting, film, and visual art to tease out new ideas and approaches. If you don’t think of yourself primarily as a writer, no worries! This is a great class for nurturing your creative side in other disciplines. Whatever your background or interests, by the end of this, you’ll have a portfolio of polished pieces you can be proud of.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

To the average reader, the field of publishing can seem somewhat opaque. How does a novel go from scribbled notes to finished paperback? What goes into editing, printing, and marketing a short story collection? This course will aim to shed light on this exciting field through a combination of readings, talks with local publishing professionals, in-class discussion, and hands-on work. We will learn about publishing by tracing the literary work from the hands of the author, through the processes of acquisition, editing, production, marketing, and distribution, and into the hands of the reader. Additional topics will include recent trends in technology, magazine and book editing, and the roles of the literary agent, the independent publisher, and the book reviewer. We will take advantage of the extraordinary publishing resources in the Twin Cities through guest speakers and field trips. Assignments will include writing brief book reviews, presenting publisher profiles, editing projects, and writing a final paper on publishing issues. This course is designed for readers who want to know how the magazine or book they’re holding got into their hands, for writers who want to know what happens when they send their works to publishers, and for those interested in publishing as a future career.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Our common vocabulary of love presents it as a force that strikes and knocks down its victims. It comes like a fever and it disables cognition. Lovers "fall," they are "smitten," "head over heels," "crazy" for each other. Love is both mania and obsession, both a euphoria that alters one's view of the world as a whole and an exclusion of the whole world, a radical narrowing of our normally capacious imaginative and perceptual faculties down to the simplest and smallest of human frames: a face, or the sound of a voice. For American authors of the 18th and 19th century, love and madness were twinned sites of altered consciousness that represented the radical "others" of Enlightenment reason, psychic parallels to and extensions of the wilds of the New World and the uncontrollable crowds and freedoms of the new democracy. This course will examine love and madness from multiple perspectives, including the Enlightenment and counter-Enlightenment, gender and sexuality, the American Gothic, violence, and sin.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course will trace the development of an African American literary and cultural tradition from the turn of the century to the present, from writers such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Pauline Hopkins to Walter Mosley and Toni Morrison. It will examine the ways that modern and contemporary African American writers and artists have explored political, social, racial, and aesthetic issues in a variety of genres-including autobiographies, poetry, novels, blues songs, photographs, short stories, plays essays, film, visual art, and literary and cultural criticism. Among the many topics the course will consider are: the Harlem Renaissance, the Great Migration, the Black Arts Movement, and the current flourishing of African American arts and letters and cinema.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

The long poem defies convention. It lingers in the space between genres. Whether a crown of sonnets or a mythical epic, long poems have deep, historical roots. But contemporary poets are taking this ancient tradition and transforming it. In this course, we’ll focus primarily on living writers who’ve tackled the long poem. We’ll read work by poets such as Natalie Diaz, Ross Gay, and Paisley Rekdal. We’ll analyze how their poems maintain momentum across multiple pages or even a whole book. And then, of course, we’ll write our own. The goal will be to create one long poem that’s developed slowly, through sustained time and attention. Alongside this piece, we’ll create shorter works throughout the semester that engage with the long poem's themes, questions, and formal concerns. Prerequisite(s): ENGL 150 taken at Macalester.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

How do you write so that your subject becomes at once startlingly new and deeply recognizable? This course will focus on the core writing tasks of making the familiar strange and the strange familiar. Through close reading, writing and discussion we will explore this question at the level of the sentence, the passage, and the story. We will also ask: familiar/strange to whom? and work to make explicit the expectations readers bring to different works. By honing our sense of audience, we will deepen our ability to connect as writers. Potential readings include: Arundhati Roy, Toni Morrison, Justin Torres, Dorothy Tse, Samanta Schweblin, Octavia Butler. Prerequisite(s): ENGL 150 taken at Macalester.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

When we watch movies and TV shows, it’s hard sometimes to remember how these works are actually born. Before the actors say a word, or the post-production team adds that perfect shade of pink to the sunset, a film or television show lives solely on the page. It lives as a piece of writing created in the mind of a storyteller. No matter what happens later, it always begins as a reading experience. In this course, we will concentrate on every aspect of that initial and vital stage of creating visual stories. We will study produced scripts to see how they master visual storytelling, pitch perfect dialogue, and satisfying structure. While there is no paint-by-numbers formula for a perfect screenplay or teleplay, there is a constantly evolving form full of principles the greatest writers have relied on since the birth of these mediums. Throughout the semester we will study this form in depth then we will workshop your developing scripts with an eye toward making them ideal stories for the screen, both large and small. Prerequisite(s): ENGL 150 taken at Macalester.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

This course is designed to explore the art and craft of dramatic writing. Students will complete weekly reading assignments and exercises that will culminate in the writing of a one-act play. Students will engage in a rigorous development process which will include in-class feedback sessions and script revision. The ultimate goal over the course semester is for each student to develop a consistent, challenging and rewarding individual creative writing practice.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

This course is designed to explore the art and craft of dramatic writing. Students will complete weekly reading assignments and exercises that will culminate in the writing of a one-act play. Students will engage in a rigorous development process which will include in-class feedback sessions and script revision. The ultimate goal over the course semester is for each student to develop a consistent, challenging and rewarding individual creative writing practice.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

Every work of fiction contains multiple experiences of time. You can spend an hour reading a story in which three hundred years pass – or a year reading a book that takes place within a single hour. Fiction has the marvelous ability to propel a reader backwards and forwards and sideways in time, and in this class we’ll examine the tools that let us, as writers, enact that propulsion. We will look at fiction that adheres to linear time as well as fiction that meets time-challenges head on (such as time-travel narratives and stories with multiple timelines), and we’ll learn how to manage our readers’ time – how to get someone whipping through your pages, and how to get them to slow down and savor the moment. Required texts will likely include “This is How You Lose the Time War” by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, “Cassandra at the Wedding” by Dorothy Baker, and stories by authors such as Mariana Enriquez, Charlie Jane Anders, and Lucia Berlin. This course will count as a creative writing elective. Prerequisite: ENGL 150.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

“Nothing in the world is permanent,” said playwright W. Somerset Maugham, “and we’re foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we’re more foolish not to take delight while we have it.” The aim of this course, therefore, is to grab a semester’s worth of delight via an eclectic array of British and American novels, stories, plays, and essays that take delight as seriously as “high literature” takes suffering. We’ll begin with a few foundational texts before skipping off toward the hijinks of romantic comedy, screwball comedy, observational humor, cozy mysteries, satire, and farce, many of which were penned in decidedly non-delightful circumstances, and by occasionally non-delightful people. As our delight grows, we’ll ask a wide range of questions about genre, form, voice, reception, representation, the politics of taste, and the nature of protest art, paying particular attention to...well, to everything, since attention is delight’s skeleton key. “Look at a child!” cried Dostoyevsky in The Idiot. “Look at the grass, how it grows! Look at the eyes that gaze at you and love you!” Coursework will include reading responses, two short essays, a presentation and a final project. Creative writers (or those so inclined) will have the opportunity to write creatively for certain assignments. Non-majors are invited, so long as they’re easily delighted.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

If you’ve read a novel, story, or essay by Zadie Smith or Ali Smith, chances are you’re already hooked! And if not, you’re definitely in for a treat. Zadie Smith was born in England to a Jamaican mother and British father and writes about technology, education and the Ivory Tower, and the complicated ways gender, sexuality, race, and socioeconomic class intertwine in our lives. Scottish writer Ali Smith was a Virginia Woolf scholar before she turned to creative writing. Her books explore queer identity, human rights and the refugee crisis, chronic illness, and the capacity for visual art to connect people across time and space. Both of these writers invite readers into the difficult spaces of life, challenging us to read with compassion while also thinking about how to make the world a better place—in their work, the personal is always political. As a class, we will read a selection of novels, short stories, and essays by The Smiths and discuss these texts through a series of creative and scholarly prompts.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Nineteenth-century novels are so often associated with the “marriage plot,” as narratives that trace a heroine’s development toward romance. This course will look at texts that purposely decenter the marriage plot and its traditional associations, questioning the emotional and physical cost in its aftermath and/or absence. We will consider fundamental questions such as, how does this decentering unsettle social norms and disrupt conventional pathways for narrative development? Possible course texts include Elizabeth Gaskell’s Ruth, Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, George Gissing’s The Odd Women, sections from Emily Westmeath’s memoir, and selections of poetry from writers like Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

How do we unravel the relationships between body, state, family, and time? How does the state live within us, within our homes? Is there such a thing as an embodied poetics or a liberatory one? In this course, we’ll read poetry collections that confront these impossible questions. We will analyze the work of writers such as Layli Long Soldier, Solmaz Sharif, and Claudia Rankine. We’ll mirror their innovations in form and come up with our own new possibilities. By the end of the semester, each student will have generated a small collection of poems. We will workshop these poems and learn from one another’s work. We will discover together what poetry can open, what impact it can have. Prerequisite: ENGL 150.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

This course explores representations of disability and ability in late medieval and early modern England (c. 1500-1700). How was bodymind normativity, ability, and disability defined in the Renaissance? Why did writers turn to literature to explore illness and disability? And where might we discover evidence of disability gain or disability pride in the early modern archive? We’ll be reading a variety of genres: medical literature, herbals (self-help remedy books written for lay people), law books, joke books, ballads, poetry, and drama. We will also study recent scholarship in disability theory and early modern disability studies. No prior knowledge of the topic or of Renaissance literature is expected. Prerequisite: a 100-level or 200-level English course.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

What makes a good story? Your answer to that question may depend on where you’re from, or when you were born, or the stories your grandmother heard when she was growing up. In this creative writing workshop course, we will explore narrative structures across a variety of time periods and cultures. Topics may include Aristotelian tragedy, Freytag’s Pyramid, Edgar Allen Poe’s single effect theory, the Hero’s Journey, Kishōtenketsu or the four-act structure of Chinese fairy tales, the nested narratives of The Arabian Nights, non-linear approaches in Latin American fiction, and the place-driven emphasis of stories from Central Africa. Throughout, our goal as a class will be to expand our understanding of how stories can be told. By the end of the semester, every student will have written multiple drafts of two original works of short fiction. Prerequisite: ENGL 150.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

In How to Make Art at the End of the World: A Manifesto for Research-Creation, Natalie Loveless champions feminist methods of creativity and experimentation as a way of approaching research “that is committed, cathected, and sustaining.” Research-creation is "[a]n approach to research that combines creative and academic research practices, and supports the development of knowledge and innovation through artistic expression, scholarly investigation, and experimentation. The creation process is situated within the research activity and produces critically informed work in a variety of media (art forms)." [From the SSHRC website.] As a literary scholar, what does it mean to do interdisciplinary research? What is humane about the humanities? How might a research-creation framework help you become a better custodian of our planet? Or help solve social problems like bigotry, xenophobia, or racism? How does writing across media expand your sense of how academic writing communicates with an audience? Is your academic research intersectional, and why might that be important? Our capstone course will begin with an overview of research-creation as both a research method and as a model for social justice or activism. Students will develop their capstone research paper in consultation with their peers and the professor. The topic is up to you—but you should expect to produce a final project rooted in both creative praxis and traditional research, which will be presented in an academic paper that exists alongside an additional form of creative expression (artwork, photojournalism, podcast, web archive, artist’s book, comic, etc).

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Want to write something long and substantial, but don't exactly know what it's going to be about yet? No problem. You're right where you should be. This workshop seminar will provide advanced creative writers with the opportunity to embark on a semester-long project in the genre of their choice: a poetry chapbook, a novella, a collection of essays or short stories, a screenplay, or perhaps some combination of forms. The class will culminate in a presentation and a finished manuscript project.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

An introduction to the study of an African American literary tradition. The focus or themes of the course, as well as authors and texts, will vary by semester and instructor, but all sections will emphasize the tradition's major genres, such as slave narratives and slam poetry, and its major movements, such as the Harlem Renaissance and Afrofuturism. The course will also provide instruction in the methods of literary analysis, including reading closely and writing text-based argument. Consult the detailed course description in the English department or on the registrar's web page for the content of individual sections.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Today, Shakespeare is venerated as the “Bard” and “wonder of the stage.” His peers were more divided. Early in his career, he was accused of plagiarism (“there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers,” fumed Robert Greene) and, after achieving star-status, he was said to be lazy in his editing (“I would he had blotted a thousand [lines],” mused Ben Jonson). How did the imagination and language of this upstart crow shock and delight audiences then—and why do his plays continue to offer entertainment, consolation, and debate today? In this course, we will study some of Shakespeare’s most enduring works, such as Twelfth Night, Richard II, Henry IV, Part 1, Macbeth, Othello, King Lear, and The Tempest. Coursework comprises discussion, essays, presentations, and performances (watching professional productions and performing scenes from the plays). This course counts as a foundation course requirement for the English major.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

The 2020 pandemic was marked by a global turn to the handmade, from learning the art of baking and DIY political yard signs to crocheting, embroidery, woodworking, painting, collage, and more. But this phenomenon has roots that go beyond our current moment, and writers have frequently tapped into the resources of craft in their novels, short fiction, poetry, and life-writing. In this course, we will study the ways subversive stitching and other activist craft practices have shaped the work of resistance in contemporary literature and theory. We will take a global and experimental approach to these questions, studying Southern and Indigenous quilting practices, the poetics of silk worms, legacies of Irish handiwork and global migration, and poetry inspired by Japanese kintsugi (in which broken pots are mended with gold), Botswana’s “careless seamstress,” and the legacies of race and art in Jamaican hybrid identity. Students will study these texts through hands-on research, experimenting with various craft forms along the way. No art or craft experience required; all curious makers and scholars are welcome!

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Societal understandings of mental health have shifted significantly over time. From early representations and misrepresentations, to increased inclusivity and discussions around neurodiversity, literary protagonists reflect many of these changing social constructs. This course will look at novels from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries and explore the following topics: how have class, gender, and race shaped literary portrayals of mental health? What misconceptions have lingered over time? What kind of relationships do writers represent between the individual and modern society, and how do communities and support systems within the texts shape and alter their narrative trajectories? Possible course texts include Robert Louis Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, and Mira T. Lee’s Everything Here is Beautiful.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This workshop-based course focuses on the development of skills for writing poetry, short fiction, and/or creative nonfiction through a close study of the techniques involved in these forms, analysis of model literary works, and frequent writing exercises that will be workshopped. This course must be completed at Macalester as a PREREQUISITE for the further study of creative writing at Macalester.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

Writing can be a terrifying, vulnerable act. Whether we’re investigating our own lives or digging into the depths of a character, writing well requires risk. In this course, we will create and explore through poetry, fiction, and personal essays. We will learn to get lost, to ask the hardest questions. The first half of the semester will focus on generative experiments. We’ll play with different ways of approaching the page and the writing process. We might write one line a day or try to write an entire story in an hour. The second half of the semester, we’ll learn to revise and offer feedback. Editing and redrafting can lead to unexpected awakenings. Often in revising work, we also revise how we see ourselves and our world. We will begin workshopping with the aim of pushing each other to ask deeper questions and to honor and strengthen the heart of a piece. You will leave this class with a stack of drafts and hopefully a better sense of yourself as a person and as a writer.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

This workshop-based course focuses on the development of skills for writing poetry, short fiction, and/or creative nonfiction through a close study of the techniques involved in these forms, analysis of model literary works, and frequent writing exercises that will be workshopped. This course must be completed at Macalester as a PREREQUISITE for the further study of creative writing at Macalester.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

This workshop-based course focuses on the development of skills for writing poetry, short fiction, and/or creative nonfiction through a close study of the techniques involved in these forms, analysis of model literary works, and frequent writing exercises that will be workshopped. This course must be completed at Macalester as a PREREQUISITE for the further study of creative writing at Macalester.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

This workshop-based course focuses on the development of skills for writing poetry, short fiction, and/or creative nonfiction through a close study of the techniques involved in these forms, analysis of model literary works, and frequent writing exercises that will be workshopped. This course must be completed at Macalester as a PREREQUISITE for the further study of creative writing at Macalester.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

This course is an introduction to the writing of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. We will use a variety of exercises, assignments, and readings to help students become comfortable as writers of short stories, personal essays, poetry, memoir, and literary journalism. We will workshop each other’s writing in a supportive, constructively critical manner.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

This introductory course will focus on the basic elements of creative writing. Students will be asked to read and discuss published work by writers across a wide range of cultures, to support one another through peer workshops, and to write multiple drafts of short fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. Throughout the semester our focus will be on creating an artistic community that encourages everyone to discover and nurture their own individual creative voice, and then to express that voice with force and conviction.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

This workshop-based course focuses on the development of skills for writing poetry, short fiction, and/or creative nonfiction through a close study of the techniques involved in these forms, analysis of model literary works, and frequent writing exercises that will be workshopped. This course must be completed at Macalester as a PREREQUISITE for the further study of creative writing at Macalester.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

This workshop-based course focuses on the development of skills for writing poetry, short fiction, and/or creative nonfiction through a close study of the techniques involved in these forms, analysis of model literary works, and frequent writing exercises that will be workshopped. This course must be completed at Macalester as a PREREQUISITE for the further study of creative writing at Macalester.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

What is old, middle, and early modern English? How does the lyric formally (and thematically) differ from the epic and romance? When did drama acquire its characteristic structure? In addition to these formal questions, we will examine the historical events alluded to by the literature, such as the expansion of global trade and trans-Atlantic slavery and the reformation of religion and manners. Readings include Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century poetry, Principal Navigations, The Tempest, and Paradise Lost. Because this body of literature (the “canon”) has had a profound influence on modern fantasy and romance genres, we will reflect on the phenomenon of “medievalism” (the fetishization of medieval and early Renaissance aesthetics) and how it can, at times, feed a possessive investment in whiteness. This course counts for the medieval or Renaissance period requirement for the English major.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

The nineteenth century featured some of literature’s most famous “monsters.” These creatures both embodied and navigated rising tensions in the period, including shifts with industrialization, colonization, and scientific discovery. But what really makes these monsters so “monstrous?” What fears and anxieties do they encompass and displace? What kinds of gendered social norms and values do they challenge or negotiate? Possible course texts include a variety of poetry, short fiction, and novels like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

What does the internationally (mis)used word "kafkaesque" actually mean? This course approaches Kafka's work both as a case for literary analysis and as one that offers insights into modernism. In one way or another, Kafka sheds light on massive industrialization, bureaucratization, the commodification of art, the destabilization of patriarchy, and the development of technology and media, as well as on the question: what is literature itself. In addition to a selection of Kafka's fiction, we shall read Crumb and Mairowitz's graphic version of Kafka's life and work, allowing students to produce their own graphic group project. Taught in English, with an optional German component for those who want to have the course count toward their German-taught courses. In this case, students must do the reading and writing assignments and oral presentations in German.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

In the past fifty years, science fiction has emerged as the primary cultural form for thinking about human extinction: climate catastrophe, pandemics, hostile AI, nuclear war. But science fiction has also emerged as the primary cultural form for imagining a near boundless future for humans: cybernetic enhancements, colonies on Goldilocks planets, post-scarcity economies, digital consciousness. Facing such disorienting and sometimes unfathomable changes, science fiction seeks to understand what it means to be a human and to live a meaningful life. Why are we here? What are we to become? How will both the promises and threats of technology change what it means to be a thinking, feeling human? In this course we will examine works of science fiction as complex aesthetic achievements, as philosophical inquiries into the nature of being and time, and as theoretical examinations of the nature of human cognition. We will engage in intensive readings of contemporary texts, including works by Ted Chiang, Philip K. Dick, Margaret Atwood, Octavia Butler, Kazuo Ishiguro, and others. This class counts toward the Cognitive Science Concentration.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course combines study of the contemporary global novel with considerations of the environment—an approach known as ecocriticism in literary studies. While you’ll be introduced to ecocriticism and its intersecting theories of the environment, you will be encouraged to draw on your own interests and experiences with the natural world, in addition to trans-disciplinary approaches from natural history, biology, environmental studies, medicine, environmental psychology, and anthropology. In reading works by contemporary writers, our class will examine a range of responses to the politics of place and cross-cultural experiences of our changing planet. We will also examine how nature takes metaphorical shape in literature, working as a group to understand how fiction draws on the environment to express complex human emotions and interconnections with the non-human world.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

As the US tottered on the brink of its bloody Civil War, a small group of strange and visionary artists started a revolution. During the span of just five years, in one of history’s most astonishing creative convergences, the most elegant, profane, unhinged, heart-wrenching, and influential works of US literature were published. Emerson, Hawthorne, Stowe, Thoreau, Douglass, Melville, Dickinson, Whitman, and Jacobs – together these artists produced a canon of literature that revealed both the demons and angels of our histories and futures. They invented a spiritual movement of unprecedented optimism at the same time that they despaired over what they had become. Everything that was written in the US afterwards would have to come to terms with the brilliant and disturbing achievements of this cluster of outsiders, mystics, and heroes. In this course we will read the landmark texts of this era from literary, historical, and philosophical perspectives. --

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Where do our memories reside? Our collective memories, our shattered memories, our forgotten? How do we gather that which has been torn or forcefully buried? How do we hold memory or its absence in our language? This advanced poetry course will center on the movements of memory—how it haunts, fades, blurs, comforts, distorts; how it reaches for us, and how we reach back. We will read both prose (memoir and fiction) as well as poetry in order to write towards all that we can and cannot remember.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

In this buffet sampler of a creative writing course, students will explore 32,000 years of storytelling—from cave paintings to video games, with stops along the way to consider creation myths, epic poetry, religious texts, fairy tales, photo essays, short stories, television pilots, and more. By the end of the semester, students will have read across a wide range of cultures, created original work across a wide range of narrative forms, and participated in a mutually supportive community of artistic expression.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

“Everything has been figured out,” wrote Sartre, “except how to live.” How do we live, and what keeps us living? Michel Montaigne had one answer to these questions when he climbed the stairs of his castle turret five hundred years ago to compose what he called an essai . In French, essayer is “to attempt.” Not persuade, not win over, not opine or enchant. Attempt. We do not answer the question of how to live when we essay; we live the question. And the question brings us to life. Indeed, here are some questions we’ll live in class with the help of brilliant essayists who came before us. Do gifted athletes bring us closer to God? Is it possible to mind-meld with weasels? Can you get stoned at Disney World? Will men ever stop explaining things to Rebecca Solnit? The sky is beyond the limit in this most flexible and innovative literary form -- or beyond the sky, if you’re, say, writing about corporatized space travel. We’ll learn creative research skills and teach each other how to interview. The only limits here are your curiosity and time. As W.H. Auden puts it, “Great art is clear thinking about mixed feelings.” Come muddle through the world as it is, in all its heartbreak, grotesquerie, and glory. Come say the unsayable. Come write yourself down.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

This course is designed to explore the art and craft of dramatic writing. Students will complete weekly reading assignments and exercises that will culminate in the writing of a one-act play. Students will engage in a rigorous development process which will include in-class feedback sessions and script revision. The ultimate goal over the course semester is for each student to develop a consistent, challenging and rewarding individual creative writing practice.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

What do you look at every day, and never really see? The worn-out laces of your favorite shoes, the smudged screen of your computer, the landscape of your own palms? In this class we will engage in the practice of opening our writerly eyes and turning our visual experiences into words, as well as working with our auditory, gustatory, and overall sensory experiences. We’ll look into the history of “sketchbooks” and “sketches” in general, as well as creating and keeping our own sketchbooks throughout the semester, and we’ll examine how literary trends in physical description vary across time and place. We’ll also use the art of looking as an entrypoint into exploring a deeper form of artistic research, and if able we’ll visit museums and libraries together. We will also study how subjectivity and POV impact sensory verbal descriptions. No actual artistic knowledge or skill is required, but you should arrive with a spirit of inquiry and experimentation. Prerequisite: ENGL 150, Intro to Creative Writing.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

In a 2017 interview with Margaret Atwood, the renowned novelist Louise Erdrich (Turtle Mountain Chippewa) asserts that "women’s rights are just a watery paint on the walls of history. We must not forget." This course will investigate the extent to which that assertion holds true, especially in relation to Indigenous women, girls, two-spirit, trans, and non-binary people. We will explore the intersections, as well as disconnections, between white and POC feminisms and Indigenous feminisms through our readings of Indigenous literature across a variety of genres. The course will highlight critical differences of Indigenous feminisms from other feminisms, and why they are essential to the studies of decolonization and sovereignty.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

In this creative writing workshop course, students will write a young adult short story or the first few chapters or a novel or webcomic with a focus on character and voice. We’ll explore how to create stories within the constraints of YA settings, whether those are realist or speculative. We’ll look at how to employ plot twists to keep readers guessing by examining current young adult stories and novels—in both text and webcomic formats. Plus we’ll spend time rewriting and editing our stories, chapters and comic scripts with the goal of a polished work by the end of the class. We’ll read authors including Malinda Lo, Bethany C. Morrow, Darcie Little Badger, Daniel Jose Older, Nnedi Okorafor and Mariko Tamaki. We’ll work through parts of The Magic Words: Writing Great Books for Children and Young Adults. Prerequisite: ENGL 150, Introduction to Creative Writing.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

In this creative writing workshop course, students will write an original short story in prose and then re-vision that work into a visual medium, first as a comic book and then as a short film. No technical skills required! We’re trying new things here, experimenting with different media to discover the ways in which form affects content and vice-versa. Let this Andy Warhol quote be your guide: “Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” Prerequisite: ENGL 150, Introduction to Creative Writing.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

How can literature help readers find meaning and purpose in times of crisis? In this course, we will study well-crafted narratives serving as windows into the conditions that led to dissent, social strife, and a thirst for liberation in imperial Russia, culminating in the Bolshevik revolution. Under autocracy in Russia, literature was the only public forum for debates about the things that mattered most. In the lead-up to the revolution, Russian literature had a tangible effect on the world by building compassion and sparking indignation, inspiring questions about how things could be otherwise, and by driving readers to action. In the first half of the semester, we will read short stories by authors such as Gogol and Chekhov who left an indelible impression on world literature, and a selection from a novel that served as a bible for revolutionaries. In the second half, we will focus on Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov, a story of rebellion against fathers in every sense, written in response to the rise of revolutionary terrorism in Russia. We will conclude with a novella by Tolstoy, Hadji Murat, about the resistance that the Russian state met in its attempt to subjugate the peoples of the Caucasus. We will consider these texts as works of art and as sources of understanding and impact feeding into the Bolshevik Revolution. These narratives about people caught up in unjust systems of power raise questions about how one can and should act under oppressive circumstances. The characters we will encounter grapple with issues of agency and responsibility, as well as the crucial question of who gets to decide what is right and what is wrong in a secular world. As such, these stories bear witness not only to their times, but to ours as well. No previous knowledge of Russian literature or history is required. For our readings we will use English translations that preserve the pleasures of the original texts.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

‘U-topia’ means ‘a place (topos) that doesn’t exist’ and ‘Eu-topia’ means ‘a good place.’ So, a good place that doesn’t exist? How do people of various gender identities envision a better state yet-to-be (utopia) as well as a fear of catastrophe or nightmare (dystopia)? This course investigates how women's literary writing from different parts of the world (Bangladeshi, British, African-American, Canadian, to name a few) produce visions of the present and the future, of the real and the imagined, beliefs about masculinity and femininity, socialist and capitalist philosophies, modernity, the environment (ecotopia), and various technologies including cybergenetics. We will explore how these texts provide some wayá to think about our gendered, racialized, and classed roles, and how we can think about MeToo, Black Lives Matter, Charlottesville, and neoliberal nation-states, along with our own fantasies and realities of sociopolitical change. Texts by Thomas More, Frantz Fanon, Noam Chomsky, and Silvia Federici are included, along with literature by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, Zitkála-Ša, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Octavia Butler, Margaret Atwood, Marge Piercy, music by The Eagles and A Tribe Called Red, and samplings of popular culture. No prerequisites, though familiarity with feminist and queer vocabularies and approaches recommended.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course brings together discourses that have remained somewhat parallel and unrelated--Whiteness Studies and Postcolonial Studies. Before and during the pandemic, these intertwine in similar but also radically different ways. The course is based on the premise that “Whiteness,” as an academic/social framework, stems from and is intertwined with social and political identity-based movements (feminist, critical race, indigenous, etc.). This course explores where and how the notion of 'whiteness' converges and diverges from post-colonialism. The goals are to learn how “Whiteness” is a category to define identity and to analyze experiences in literature and in our lives, to understand what “Post/Colonialism” is as a historical experience for so many of us and as a field of study, to intersect the two and interpret literature and culture, and to move towards decolonial knowledge and praxis by reflecting on the ways in which we are positioned at the intersection of these histories. Literature by James Baldwin, Frantz Fanon, Gordimer, Zadie Smith; music by Pete Seeger and Macklemore, and films by Hector Babenco and James Cameron are included. No prerequisites, though familiarity with feminist and queer vocabularies and approaches recommended.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Modernism is both a historical period (1900-1945) and an aesthetic movement associated with experimental literary forms (surrealism, manifestos, stream-of-consciousness), cross-cultural collaborations, political and anti-war activism, and new perspectives on sexuality and gender. While often considered “difficult,” modernist texts challenge convention and create new worlds for marginalized voices. This class reads modernist texts (and some of their later adaptations) alongside queer theory, a field of inquiry that centers the study of LGBTQ+ identities and intersectional interpretations. Queer literary theory helps us read against the heteronormative grain, thinking in more inclusive, dynamic terms about sexuality as fluid and expressive and about queerness as a generative concept for not only personal identity but for a range of political and social relations.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Traces the development of theoretical accounts of culture, politics and identity in Africa, South Asia, the Caribbean and related lands since the 1947-1991 decolonizations. Readings include Fanon, Said, Walcott, Ngugi and many others, and extend to gender, literature, the U.S., and the post-Soviet sphere. The course bridges cultural representational, and political theory. Prerequisite(s): Prior internationalist and/or theoretical coursework strongly recommended.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course-a mixture of lecture, discussion, study of dramatic texts, writing exercises and in-class analysis of student writing-is intended to reinforce and build upon the skills developed in Playwriting. Topics will include dramatic structure, conflict, characterization, language/dialogue, as well as how to analyze your own work, give and receive feedback and techniques for rewriting. Students will engage in a rigorous development process which will culminate in the writing of a one act play. Prerequisite(s): THDA 242 or ENGL 150, or permission of instructor

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

Since the 1990s, fans have moved from the margins to the mainstream. Fans wield enormous power over the global media market. Early fandom scholarship emphasized the utopian values of fans, but recent work—based on the research and personal testimony of fans of color—reveal the phenomenon of harmful “colorblindness” in fandom. One thing is clear: a good deal of cultural knowledge is made outside of the academy in so-called “amateur” collaborative and communal spaces. What does this moment of “undisciplining”—the breaking down of disciplinary expertise and its attendant mystique—mean for literary studies? For the humanities? As you transition from being a student to a graduate, how do you see yourself applying the resources of literature to shape your relationship to communities in the years to come? Like other capstones, this one aims to create a space for both solo and communal reading, debate, and reflection. Students will design a research paper on a topic of their choosing. No prior knowledge of literary theory is assumed.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This seminar is for advanced creative writers who are ready for an ambitious semester-long project. The genre is up to you. It might be a novella, a chapbook of poems, a collection of stories or personal essays, or a feature screenplay. Throughout the semester, you will put up sections of your project for workshop, while evaluating the work of your peers. We will also read published works and craft essays to help guide our efforts along the way. After you register for the class, I will ask you to tell me a little about your project via email. Then I will assign texts tailored to your work and the work of others. The class will culminate in a presentation and a revised and finished project.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials