Class Schedules

From slinky silks to latex and leather, textiles are key ways that humans design and display our identities. This hands-on course is a deep-dive into how writing, film, and identity-creation intersect with the history of fashion. We will focus on how clothing and textiles have been used to both express and subvert gender expectations, encountering figures like Anne Lister (“the first modern lesbian”), Eleanor Rykener (the earliest documented trans woman in England), and Susan Stryker (contemporary trans theorist and activist). Additionally, we will work with visual media, from RuPaul’s DragRace to Gentleman Jack. Come ready to play with fabric and historical fashion, no prior experience required! In this class, we will learn the basics of sewing, giving us tangible insight into the long history of clothing and “women’s work”. Students will develop a multimodal portfolio, including written work, design sketches, andwearable garments.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

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 canexpect on a day-to-day basis. But, beyond this relatively simple pattern, what I hope willhappen this term is that you’ll lose yourself to the daring act of creating literature. I hope you’lluse your growing knowledge of writing technique and literary history to say something fearlessand 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, itdirectly engages with life and even tries to change it. We look to stories, poems, and essays togive 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

How do some stories compel us to find out what happens next? Why do certain poems cause us to feel as if “the tops of our heads have been taken off,” as Dickinson once described? In this course, students will explore the specifics of what makes a piece of writing engaging, convincing, and intentional, and hone their unique voice by writing their own stories and poems. They’ll be asked to read work by a diverse list of published authors writing in a variety of genres and forms; to reimagine, repurpose, or subvert some elements of craft that appeal to them through a series of creative exercises and assignments; to try out different approaches to the page; and to engage in workshops of peer writing in a supportive environment that we’ll cultivate together as a class community.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

How do some stories compel us to find out what happens next? Why do certain poems cause us to feel as if “the tops of our heads have been taken off,” as Dickinson once described? In this course, students will explore the specifics of what makes a piece of writing engaging, convincing, and intentional, and hone their unique voice by writing their own stories and poems. They’ll be asked to read work by a diverse list of published authors writing in a variety of genres and forms; to reimagine, repurpose, or subvert some elements of craft that appeal to them through a series of creative exercises and assignments; to try out different approaches to the page; and to engage in workshops of peer writing in a supportive environment that we’ll cultivate together as a class community.

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 ordigging into the depths of a character, writing requires risk. In this course, we will create andexplore 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

J.R.R. Tolkien had a “secret vice”: creating imaginary languages based on medieval languages. In fact, he based Elvish on Welsh, the indigenous, ancient language that predates the arrival of English in Britain. Come study the tales and language of medieval Wales, where the modern fantasy genre was born. Encounter mystical sorcerer-bards, sarcastic goddesses, and ancient creatures of the forest. Learn the fundamentals of the musical Welsh language and become enchanted by the strange and poignant stories of ancient Britain. By the end of the course, we will see why Tolkien believed Welsh to be one of the most beautiful languages in the world.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

Reading Plays guides students in close readings of dramatic literature, in particular of plays that are typically left out of the traditional theatrical canon. This edition of Reading Plays will focus on texts from the classic and contemporary Black Theatre canon. Students will learn about the socio-historical context of each play, and in-class exercises will introduce them to the foundation of script analysis: they will examine the play’s given circumstances, dialogue, dramatic action, characters, and style. We will read one play a week to deepen our understanding of Black American theatre. Students will write weekly; and work on a final paper that will undergo revisions after they receive notes from the instructor. Examples of Playwrights that could be featured in the class are Douglas Turner Ward, George C. Wolfe, Katori Hall, Pearl Cleage, Ifa Bayeza, Stacey Rose, and Alice Childress.

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

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

Videogames dominate entertainment culture. But like all popular forms of entertainment, they are often looked down upon as aesthetically superficial, intellectually uncomplicated, and somehow bad for you. They are "just pop culture." Like Shakespeare was in his time. Like the novel was when it was invented. And like film and television shows were when they were invented. This course takes seriously the deep intellectual and aesthetic value of videogames and of videogame making. Videogames are expanding the possibilities and the borders of storytelling and narrative design. They are pushing the limits of coding wizardry. They have also become one of the most creative popular-cultural sites for experimenting with and understanding other minds and identities. In this class, students will work in interdisciplinary teams to bring world-building narrative techniques to an immersive visual setting while exploring technical challenges involved in programming and game development through hands-on projects. Fulfills the Creative Writing Electives requirement in the English Major. Prerequisite(s): None if taken as the English cross-list.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

Taught in English; there is 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 some of their oral presentations in German.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.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Against the swirling backdrop of political discourses about women in the Islamic world, this course will engage with feminist and postcolonial debates through literary works by Muslim women writers. The course will begin with an exploration of key debates about women's agency and freedom, the Islamic headscarf, and Qur'anic hermeneutics. With this in mind, we will turn to the fine details of literature and poetry by Muslim women. How do these authors constitute their worlds? How are gendered subjectivities constructed? And how do the gender politics of literary texts relate to the broader political and historical contexts from which they emerge? Themes will include an introduction to Muslim poetesses and Arabic poetic genres, the rise of the novel in the Arabic speaking world, and Muslim women's literary production outside of the Middle East: from Senegal to South Asia, and beyond.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course is an introduction to the study of literature and human rights. We will seek to better understand the contemporary norms and practices of human rights by examining its deep historical contexts, and by considering the philosophical and religious debates that continue to shape human rights theory and practice. We will also examine theories of trauma and torture, personal accounts of human rights and humanitarian fieldwork, representational ethics, and studies of human rights in film and media. We will scrutinize relevant literary texts as works of art, as case studies in human rights, and as models for understanding how words can change the world, whether in the form of human rights reports and newspaper accounts or of poems and novels. We will seek to better understand how spectators of suffering develop (or fail to develop) empathy for distant persons or for persons considered alien by also examining how they can so palpably feel for the dreams, desires, and dignity of fictional persons. In The Defense of Poesy Sir Philip Sidney describes the tyrant, Alexander Pheraeus, "from whose eyes a tragedy well-made and represented drew abundance of tears; who without all pity had murdered infinite numbers, and some of his own blood, so as he that was not ashamed to make matters for tragedies, yet could not resist the sweet violence of a tragedy." What is the line that separates those who are merely moved from those who are moved to act? When does the story become real enough to change you? Our list of authors will span the range of intellectual and ethical endeavor, from ancient Greek plays and philosophy to contemporary US literature.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Lately, I’ve been taking life-inspiration from toddlers–their ease of expression, their wildmovements, their tantrums, their bright joy. There is a freedom we lose as we age and gainshame. We teach ourselves to be contained, “successful,” agreeable. In this class, we’ll askourselves and each other: What might shift if we open to play? If we approach the page withcuriosity rather than fear? If we abandon the pressure to make something “good”? Our goals will be to experiment and get messy, to build a creative practice rooted in love and delight. We’ll write poems, of course, but how we get there will be through collage, clay, wandering, studying creatures, watching films, and so much more.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

In this course we will study fiction writing through the process of reading and writing flashfiction, fairy tales, a diverse array of short stories, and some novel openings. We will study arange of published work, discussing elements of craft like: voice, point of view, narrative time,plot, description as emotion, and the unreliable narrator. Everyone will write a series of storiesand exercises to put up for workshop. I will lecture each week on an element of craft, but thereare no hard and fast rules here. The principles of writing are, at best, valuable hints accruedfrom centuries of literature, and, at worst, limits to a writer’s developing sensibility. Ideally, bythe end of the semester, you will have a firm understanding of the basic tenets of fiction writingand an equally strong understanding of how you might completely dismantle them to seek new ground.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

In this course, students engage in a series of playwriting exercises and read a wide variety of plays. They will read new and contemporary plays that employ different storytelling techniques (i.e., structure, character arcs, staging elements, etc.), embrace the unlimited possibilities of theatricality, and exemplify why we write for the stage. Students will develop a "playwriting toolkit" as they explore their artistic interests following the conventions of time-bound pieces: the 1-minute, 5-minute, 10-minute, and ultimately one-act form. In-class exercises and prompts, and small-group workshopping and reading will challenge each writer's individual development. A mid-term and final play reading series of one-acts will allow students to hear their work in a supportive public setting. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite(s): Coursework in Theater and Dance, or in creative writing is recommended.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

Word for word, Emily Dickinson is the most powerful writer in the history of the English language. She is the King of All Media, the feature star in movies, television, radio, lawsuits and criminal investigations, novels, AI language models, cookbooks, museums, a video game, and just about every other possible platform of public fascination. Barring Shakespeare, no other English or American poet has been the focus of such fervid public devotion. What’s behind this cult of Dickinson? In our class you will find out. You will study Dickinson’s poems, which are teasingly fun, hair-raisingly creepy, romantically uplifting, existentially wrenching, philosophically staggering, and aesthetically gorgeous. You will also study Dickinson herself. Transformed into a mythical figure since her death in 1886, she has been used as a symbol to embody a range of bitterly conflicting cultural fantasies. To understand the history of Emily Dickinson is to understand some of the most painful—and liberating—ideological revolutions in modern US history. This course fulfills the 19th-c. American literature requirement for the English major.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Centuries before the advent of industrialized travel, the Silk Roads network connected creators and consumers in lands as distant as Iceland, West Africa, and China. Medieval travelers recorded their experiences and encounters and left their legacies imprinted in archaeological records. This course invites students to read along the Silk Roads, tracing cross-cultural encounters made possible by these remarkable networks. We will read first-hand accounts of Arab travelers in medieval Russia, Mali, Somalia, and Indonesia. Moving into the Christian world, we’ll read texts like Marco Polo’s praise-filled account of the Mongolian Kublai Khan, who ruled lands from Iran to Korea. Finally, we will read LarissaLai’s queer historic-fantasy novel When Fox is a Thousand, confronting contemporary questions about identity, diaspora, and our own histories. Fulfills the English major Medieval period requirement. Fulfills the English major Writers of Color requirement.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

After every party comes the conversations about the party. Who did you talk to? Who did you avoid? What were you wearing? What did you eat and drink? How did you feel before the party, and how do you feel after? Parties are snapshots of a social moment, reflections on the broader culture as well as microcosms of subculture (punks, writers, the frisbee team), and they are the perfect stage for a story. In this class, we will read novels and short stories that prominently feature parties, and will examine how these parties are used to develop plot, character, political and social worldbuilding, and more. Texts may include novels such as Mrs. Dalloway, White Teeth, and Normal People and we’ll read short stories by writers like Kirsten Valdez Quade, Mariana Enriquez, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. And yes, you will be required to attend at least one party. Prerequisite(s): ENGL 150 taken at Macalester.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

In many ways, we are living in a golden age of fantasy fiction. Not only is the notoriously white, Western Europe-centric genre growing rapidly more diverse than ever before, but it’s also being incorporated into the mainstream literary conversation in unprecedented ways. It’s truly a magical time to be reading and writing fantasy! In this class, we’ll situate the modern concept of fantasy fiction in a historical and cultural context, and we’ll explore and practice on a craft level all the things that make fantasy unique: magic systems, worldbuilding, supernatural creatures, etc. We’ll look at sub-genres including epic fantasy, slipstream, and fairy tale retellings, and read authors such as NK Jemisin, JRR Tolkien, and Tasha Suri. We’ll also welcome several established fantasy writers into the classroom to learn from them, and we may even play a little D&D… so come prepared to take fun seriously! Prerequisite(s): ENGL 150 taken at Macalester.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

This collaboratively taught course examines the literature and arts of two empires in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: Ming China, an ancient empire sitting at the apogee of its influence yet soon to be crushed by rebellion and invasion, and Tudor-Stuart England, a nascent empire clamoring to assert its dominance as a global superpower through mercantile capitalism, racialized enslavement, and cultural supremacy. Using a literary and comparativist approach, we analyze the function of literature in the winning and losing of empire. We focus, in particular, on the literary writer’s role in shaping the public understanding of law and justice, race and ethnicity, barbarity and civility. We will read courtly literature written for the Chinese and English literati as well as popular texts (plays, songs, poems) aimed at popular audiences. We will visit the Minneapolis Institute of Art and the Bell Museum to study Chinese and English material objects (including houseware, furniture, and maps), and practice holding conversation with scholars specializing in early modern China and England. No knowledge of Chinese (let alone classical Chinese) is needed. This course counts for the English Major period requirement (Renaissance).

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Welcome to the naughty 90s—the 1590s. Plague ravages the cities, inflation is high, and poor harvests have depopulated villages. The news of disease, precarity, and political instability keeps the Privy Councilors awake at night, but it fires the imagination of London’s professional playwrights. To tell of England as it was and England as it could be, William Shakespeare writes four interconnected history plays: Richard II, Henry IV, Parts 1 & 2 (featuring the beloved trickster, Sir John Falstaff), and Henry V. These plays—the “second tetralogy”—foreground timeless questions such as the addictiveness of absolute power, the conditional nature of citizenship, and the power of a good story to bind people to nation-building. In Spring 2024, for the first time in 30 years, the Guthrie Theater (in Minneapolis) will be staging all four plays as a cycle, making it possible for us to study the plays as texts and to see them in live performance. This course counts for the English major period requirement (Renaissance) and for the GE requirement Humanities. No prerequisites.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Music is a ubiquitous part of our daily lives. Your Uber driver wants to know if you’d like to listen to it. It’s playing while you bag up avocados, try on pants, eat a burger. It’s playing while you stretch in the seventh inning or wait in the waiting room. There’s a whole segment of it just for elevators. But sometimes a song cuts through this opaque din. Touches our hearts, soundtracks our lives, makes us want to scream wildly in a room with 20,000 strangers. So what makes a song stand apart? Well, a bit of magic, for sure. But Harlan Howard wasn’t wrong when he said the recipe for any great song is “three chords and the truth”. Strip a song down to its essential elements and you have lyrics, melody, and structure. In this class, we’ll be focusing on these pillars: how to tell a great story (from the personal to the universal), how to write a melody that sticks, and how form can shape the listener’s experience. We’ll examine the modus operandi of prolific songwriters, explore the tricks of the trade for getting started and finishing strong, and work collaboratively to write an album’s worth of hits! To take this class, basic knowledge of a musical instrument, such as guitar or piano, is preferred, but not required. You must simply be able to compose and sing melodies. You will be required to share your compositions with the class, either live or via basic audio recording. Counts as a creative writing elective.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

Literature has been an important part of the Twin Cities landscape since their founding. Luminaries from F. Scott Fitzgerald to Louise Erdrich have called the area home, and a vibrant ecosystem of writers, publishers, bookstores, performers, and arts organizations continues to shape this local legacy. In this project-based course, students will make their own contributions to the literary history of the place they live. We’ll spend the semester building an online literary journal together, with each student contributing a single piece. Contributions can be creative, analytical, or journalistic. What counts as “literary” will be broadly defined (and problematized). We’ll also explore options for incorporating digital components (video, audio, maps, games, etc.) into our pieces. Example contributions might include a video-poem about the Skyline Tower apartment building, an oral history of BIPOC bookstores in the Twin Cities, or a digital annotation of James Wright’s “The Minneapolis Poem.” Regular class visitors will talk to us about the Twin Cities literary community and serve as advisors for our pieces. A background in media production (web development, drawing, filmmaking, podcasting, etc.) is welcome but not at all necessary. Counts as a creative writing elective.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

This course examines the nineteenth-century British novel through questions of gender, race, and nationality—specifically considering what constitutes a “lady” by various cultural/historical standards and how the construction of ideal femininity worked with and against ideals of masculinity in the period. None of the books we will read suggest all women are (or can be) ladies; nor are all of the men who populate them monsters. Seeking nuance in these terms, the course asks: How were nineteenth-century gender norms complicated by class and race, and what is the space between the ideal and the monstrous? How is a monstrous woman constructed differently than a monstrous man? What makes monstrosity redeemable or irredeemable? What if the world's monstrosities are not humans but made by them? Obviously, we could not have a course like this without a vampire novel (Carmilla), but we will also read a range of genres that enableus to talk about labor rights, domestic ideals, love, inheritance politics, colonialmonstrosities, and even sci-fi feminist utopia (“Sultana's Dream”). We will tackle the problem of genre: what does it mean to have a course focused on “the novel,” when nonwhite writers in the period worked predominantly in every other genre but long-form fiction? And we will consider those voices by including other short forms (a short story, a novella, and some non-fiction). To simulate the Victorian reading experience, we will also consume one novel in small weekly installments all semester, following the sensational exploits of petite, blonde Lady Audley to the point where we ultimately discover her Secrets. Along the way, you'll get a taste of the Condition-of-England novel (Mary Barton), colonial fantasy (King Solomon's Mines), and fin-de-siecle aestheticism (The Picture of Dorian Gray) among other things, exploring fictions weird, monstrous, funny, and fearless. This course satisfies the 18th/19th c British literature requirement on the English major; prerequisite: one 100- or 200-level literature course.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

In this course we will explore writing by Asian American poets working from the late 19th century until the present day. In doing so, we will consider how these writers have used a wide range of poetic forms and strategies to bear witness to social upheaval, to reimagine erased histories, to reclaim various archives, to make space for transnational communities, and even to seek joy and hope. Through our critical and creative attention, we will trouble the "model minority” myth, interrogate what Cathy Park Hong calls the "vague purgatorial status” of Asian Americans in the American imagination, and question the ways American policies (domestically and abroad) have shaped Asian American identities and experiences, and, by extension, Asian American poetries. Readings might include books by Sally Wen Mao, Su Hwang, Agha Shahid Ali, Brandon Shimoda, and Solmaz Sharif. Coursework will include weekly reading responses, biweekly tutorial groups, creative poetic “adaptations,” and two short essays/presentations. This course counts toward the writers of color requirement for the English Major. Prerequisites: Students will preferably have takenENGL 105 - Asian American Literature, AMST 194 - Introduction to Asian American Studies,AMST 340 - The Asian American Experience, or any poetry-focused course in the English Department.

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

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

The research seminar fulfills the capstone experience requirement for English majors. The Senior Research Seminar offers students a culminating academic experience organized around the supervised independent study of a personally chosen topic. Students should have a working familiarity with the foundational knowledge in the sub-field(s) relevant to their chosen project, a mastery of close reading and research skills, and a willingness to engage actively in a rigorous workshop setting. The faculty sponsor and student participants will coach each other through the process of defining a significant literary research question, developing a thesis, designing an appropriate research program, writing a substantial independent research project, and publicly presenting research findings.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

In this capstone creative writing seminar, we will compose chapbook-length collections of poems, while reading a wide range of published poetry and essays on poetics, selected to deepen and expand our techne and sense of the lyric. How do we identify the obsessions and aesthetics inherent in our work and then complicate them over the span of a book? How might we cultivate poetic lineages in our writing that will contribute to our artistic growth? How do we theorize our poetics for ourselves? For an audience? Throughout the course, we will consider these questions and others while workshopping poems, discussing craft, and speaking with poets who have recently published books. Readings for the course might include work from Su Hwang, Natalie Diaz, Benjamin Garcia, Yanyi, Sally Wen Mao, and Carl Phillips. The course will culminate with each student producing a chapbook of poems and preparing a presentation about their work. Before Winter Break, students will begin a dialogue with the instructor about how their interests might be reflected in the course readings. Prerequisites: ENGL 150, plus one creative writing poetry crafts class at the 200- or 300-level.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

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, a journal, a creative project, and a 5-7 page essay. Authors we’ll read include: Charles Brockden Brown, Jewelle Gomez, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Qwo-Li Driskill, Gloria Anzaldúa, Allison Bechdel, Malinda Lo, Kai Cheng Thom, Tommy Pico, Mariko Tamaki, and Junauda Petrus.

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

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

In this introductory course, we will study African American literature from its origins to the present. We will study major genres and movements, including the Harlem Renaissance and Afrofuturism. We will learn to use the tools of literary analysis in order to read closely, critically, appreciatively—and collectively. Themes of prophesy (what Du Bois termed “second sight”), literary experimentation, and beauty will focus our study. Authors will include: David Walker, Harriet Jacobs, W. E. B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, Octavia Butler, Claudia Rankine, and Ross Gay. Requirements include: a presentation, brief written responses to the readings, one medium length essay and a revision of it, and a final project that will include a written component. This course fulfills either the foundation course in literature requirement or the literature by U.S. writers of color requirement for the English major.

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

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 contemporary moment, and writers have frequently tapped into the resources of craft in their novels, short fiction, poetry, and life-writing. In this first-year 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 writing and 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

In this course we will read some of the most popular novels ever written in the United States. They will be heart-wrenchingly beautiful, tear-jerkingly sad, philosophically bold, and seriously weird. We will discuss love, death, the meaning of life, cruelty, beauty, loneliness, artificial intelligence, and mystery.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

You know it when you see it: tweed blazers, a pile of leatherbound books read bydripping candlelight, Gothic architecture, boarding schools, crunchy leaves, and oldpaintings. Dark Academia is an internet subculture devoted to the material and visualculture of universities and student life. But it’s also an aesthetic shaped by literaryhistory and the socioeconomics of higher education. In this class, we will study thepolitics of aesthetics by way of Dark Academia—murder, magic, and various forms ofrogue bookishness included! Students will read novels by writers such as KazuoIshiguro, Zadie Smith, Donna Tartt, and Oscar Wilde (with some detours into film andtelevision) as we think critically about academia itself—as a lifestyle, as the pursuit ofknowledge, and as a neoliberal system.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

You know it when you see it: tweed blazers, a pile of leatherbound books read bydripping candlelight, Gothic architecture, boarding schools, crunchy leaves, and oldpaintings. Dark Academia is an internet subculture devoted to the material and visualculture of universities and student life. But it’s also an aesthetic shaped by literaryhistory and the socioeconomics of higher education. In this class, we will study thepolitics of aesthetics by way of Dark Academia—murder, magic, and various forms ofrogue bookishness included! Students will read novels by writers such as KazuoIshiguro, Zadie Smith, Donna Tartt, and Oscar Wilde (with some detours into film andtelevision) as we think critically about academia itself—as a lifestyle, as the pursuit ofknowledge, and as a neoliberal system.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

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 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 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

Ray Bradbury wrote “toward something honest, hidden under the trapdoor on the top of my skull.” Emily Dickinson described poetry as “feel[ing] physically as if the top of my head were taken off.” In this introductory creative writing course, we will explore different kinds of writing that might shake loose our brains and hone an orientation toward curiosity and wonder. When we read or write, we are both in and out of ourselves—where does a poem or story take us without physically moving us? Where else can our minds go? What inspires us, moves us, makes us daydream? Together, we will work to find our own personal answers to these questions by experimenting with form, content, and style. We will approach theblank page as a place of possibility and lean into our sense of bewilderment. As a group, we’ll open the door to open-endedness and see what (or who!) walks through. Throughout this cross-genre class, you will write several creative pieces. Classes will consist of readings, discussions, writing exercises, and responses to each other’s work. The class will culminate in a final portfolio of original creative work.

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 first year 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 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

The first decades of the 20th century produced some of the most innovative works in literary history, permanently transforming how we see, hear, and otherwise perceive the world around us. More than any aesthetic movement before or since, modernists including Virginia Woolf, Ezra Pound, Franz Kafka, Rainer Maria Rilke, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Gertrude Stein, and Marcel Proust were keenly aware of both the limits of language and the inevitability of their transgression. They used words in ways that stretch sense to the point where it breaks, but with the aim of revealing a richer domain of finer-grained perception that is obscured by our everyday linguistic and intellectual habits. Over the course of the semester, we will read literary and theoretical accounts that both thematize and perform their own linguistic (in)capacities: to represent, to translate, to obscure, to estrange, to reveal. We will also examine some instances of modernist music, painting, and film. Our aim is to arrive at a nuanced understanding of how words work, contrasting linguistic phenomena with other forms of expressive media, and inquiring into the potential of language to articulate non-linguistic modes of experience. All readings in English. The course has no prerequisites and is open to first years.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

To many readers, the field of publishing seems opaque. How does a novel go from scribbled notes to finished paperback? What goes into editing, printing, and marketing a collection of stories or poems? This course will shed light on this rapidly evolving field through a combination of readings, in-class discussion, talks with local publishing professionals, and hands-on work. We will learn about publishing by producing our own anthology, tracing literary work from the hands of the author, through the processes of acquisition, editing, production, marketing and publicity, printing and finally into the hands of the reader. Additional topics will include trends in publishing technology, interior design and typesetting, 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 submitting your own writing, editing projects, presenting publisher profiles, and writing a final paper on publishing issues. This course is designed for readers who want to know how the 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. Note: This is not an introductory writing class. Though all are welcome, students who have completed their first-year writing requirement are more successful. In addition, students who have sufficient creative material (poems, stories, or essays) ready for inclusion in the anthology will find it more fulfilling.

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

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

What is “nature writing,” and how is our sense of the balm that nature can provide tied to legacies of the Victorian period? This class considers these questions through a combination of readings, field trips, and scholarly and creative explorations of your relationship to the natural world. Although “nature” is not only plants, the nineteenth-century British fascination with plants makes them an excellent organizing motif. From exploring the globe for exotic specimens to fill out London’s Kew Gardens to devising flower dictionaries to send encoded messages to their beloveds, Victorian engaged with plant life in myriad ways. Readings for the course will cover many genres, and may include poetry (John Clare, Gerard Manly Hopkins), children’s books (Beatrix Potter, Frances Hodgson Burnett), travel writing (Isabella Bird, Mary Kingsley), novels (Thomas Hardy, H. G. Wells), evolutionary science (Charles Darwin), and horticulture (John Louden, Gertrude Jekyll). We will considering these texts within key historical frames including extractive imperial practices, scientific systems of classification, the question of wild versus domesticated spaces/species, and gendered norms that shaped affective responses to nature. And we will put ourselves into nature—taking long walks together, visiting gardens and Como Conservatory, and observing, sketching, and writing about local natural environments. The class aims to offer some critiques of Victorian worldviews, imperial structures, and strategies, while still locating hope. How might the Victorians’ deep attention to the natural world inspire and sustain our own relationships to nature’s wonders and its fragilities? (This course satisfies the 18th/19th century British requirement on the English major. First-day attendance required.)

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

In this course, we will study African American literature from the end of the 18th century to the turn of the 20th century, from Phillis Wheatley to Frederick Douglass to Ida B. Wells. Themes of the course will include forging Black solidarity and writing as means of self-construction and resistance. We will also foreground early African American literature as art, as an at once aesthetic and political project, reading it closely and appreciatively. We will frame our semester’s work with sound studies, exploring how this literary tradition engages with oral culture and with the sonic. Requirements include: brief written responses to the readings, a presentation, a medium-length essay and a revision of it, and a final reflection. This course fulfills the English major requirement either of a course focused on literature by U.S. writers of color or a course on 19th-century American literature.

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

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

As human beings, we give shape to our thoughts and emotions through language, and form is a particularly useful constraint when we do so through poetry. In this course, we will study form in poetry as projects of pattern making and breaking. We’ll consider both the histories and contemporary applications of poetic forms such as the sonnet, pantoum, ghazal, haibun, and others. One of the most exciting things about poetry in the twenty-first century is that living poets are working in invented forms as well as traditional ones that have reached us across cultures. Together, we’ll investigate the idea from Kierkegaard that “the more you limit yourself, the more fertile you become in invention.” Expect to read poems across time and technique, to write and rewrite, and to turn an eye to the world in search of forms known and yet-to-be. You might just be asked to invent one of your own! Prerequisite(s): ENGL 150 taken at Macalester.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

In this course, students engage in a series of playwriting exercises and read a wide variety of plays. They will read new and contemporary plays that employ different storytelling techniques (i.e., structure, character arcs, staging elements, etc.), embrace the unlimited possibilities of theatricality, and exemplify why we write for the stage. Students will develop a "playwriting toolkit" as they explore their artistic interests following the conventions of time-bound pieces: the 1-minute, 5-minute, 10-minute, and ultimately one-act form. In-class exercises and prompts, and small-group workshopping and reading will challenge each writer's individual development. A mid-term and final play reading series of one-acts will allow students to hear their work in a supportive public setting. May be repeated for credit.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

In this course, students engage in a series of playwriting exercises and read a wide variety of plays. They will read new and contemporary plays that employ different storytelling techniques (i.e., structure, character arcs, staging elements, etc.), embrace the unlimited possibilities of theatricality, and exemplify why we write for the stage. Students will develop a "playwriting toolkit" as they explore their artistic interests following the conventions of time-bound pieces: the 1-minute, 5-minute, 10-minute, and ultimately one-act form. In-class exercises and prompts, and small-group workshopping and reading will challenge each writer's individual development. A mid-term and final play reading series of one-acts will allow students to hear their work in a supportive public setting. May be repeated for credit.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

This creative nonfiction course will focus on the elements of long-form narrativejournalism, including both print and audio storytelling. Students will learn to write storiesthat are clear and compelling as well as factual and precise. They will study thedifferences between writing for the eye and the ear. Students will learn how toidentify strong story ideas, conduct interviews and structure a narrative for maximumimpact. They will also write frequently, edit each other, and receive detailed suggestionson their writing from the instructor. This course will be taught by audio journalists Annie Baxter and Curtis Gilbert. Annieand Curtis have several decades of combined experience reporting and editing atMinnesota Public Radio and American Public Media. Annie currently works as an editorat The Wall Street Journal’s flagship podcast, The Journal. Curtis, a Macalesteralumnus, is currently an editor at APM Reports, a national investigative reporting group.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

In her article “If Fiction Changes the World, It’s Going to Be YA,” journalist Emily Temple states that young adult books are primed to do work for the social good because of their timeliness, their willingness to take on big political issues, and their wide readership. In the last few decades, the young adult genre has been growing in scope and in ambition, and much of it is being written by exciting new authors, closer to the age of their protagonists. In this class we will study some new and foundational texts of the genre, discussing subjects like depiction of mental illness, the political implications of fantasy novels, and the “We Need Diverse Books” campaign. Meanwhile, you will be working on your own YA projects, learning for yourself what makes these books tick. This course serves as a creative writing elective in the English major.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Since the invention of film, audiences have been fascinated by fantastic depictions of the Middle Ages on screen. Audiences love escaping into mysterious worlds of adventure with kings, warriors, and princesses. But how much do these movies really have to do with the historical Middle Ages? Do they illuminate truths or manufacture lies? Was medieval Europe really as exciting, romantic, and dangerous as movies imagine? In this class, we will use actual primary materials to explore how the medium of film adapts, subverts, and appropriates elements of the medieval past. In the end, we will discover what our favorite “medieval” movies say not just about medieval societies, but about ourselves. Assignments include semi-weekly film screenings, primary source readings, and quizzes; pair presentations; monthly readings on theories of medievalism; and two essays plus a film script. This class fulfills the pre-1800 Medieval requirement for the English major.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Who are the writers you return to over and over? The songs you listen to on repeat, themovies you've seen a hundred times? This class is an in-depth, multi-genre study ofwhat it means to be artistically "influenced," and throughout the semester we willexamine our own influences as a way to understand and develop our own unique voicesas writers. We will also engage in imitation, both at the micro level of line and sentenceand the macro level of theme and feeling. We'll look at all the little fiddly bits that makeup a whole – syntax, word choice, stress pattern, sentence length – and all theintangibles, too; the emotions, the moods, the dream landscapes. We will reproduceand repurpose the work of others in order to make our own original works, studyingwriters like George Saunders, Ocean Vuong, Ross Gay, and Mary Oliver – as well asany writers you yourself bring to the table.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Doctor, occultist, magician. The great healers of the Renaissance fashionedthemselves not as surgeons (how barbarous), but magi. They sought to cure ailing patientsthrough a combination of drugs, bloodletting (with a knife or leeches), and magical remedies(amulets, casting, exorcism). What might it have been like to be a doctor or a patient in an ageof enchantment? What did “holistic” medicine look like during the Renaissance and after theReformation? How did literature shape cultural understanding of the doctor-patientrelationship, nursing as gendered labor, and disease as a blight or a curse? In addition toreading plays, poems, and short prose romances, we will examine the writings of notableRenaissance doctors and healers, chart the rise of royal and civic hospitals, and learn about the transmission of scientific and medical knowledge from the East to the West. Students will have the chance to conduct independent and original archival research and hone their writing skills in community. This course counts for the Renaissance period requirement for the English major and the Community and Global Health Concentration. No prerequisites, but familiarity with early modern English is an asset.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

In this writing workshop, we will practice transmuting artistic experience into words. We will look at visual art, listen to music, and watch theatrical and dance performances, and in response, we’ll practice different modes of incorporating our reactions into creative and critical writing. We’ll read fiction, poetry, personal essays, criticism, reviews, memoirs, etc. and we’ll try our hands at each form, gaining a sense of what is involved in describing the color of a cello’s sound, the gestures of a dancing body, or the intangible emotions we feel when we stand in front of a painting. In a final project, students will choose an artistic form and a mode of response and develop a larger-scale piece of writing.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

In Shakespeare’s England, whipping, branding, mutilation (of the hand,nose, ears, or face), pillorying, hanging, burning, and beheading were common forms of legalpunishment. The rigors of early modern law may seem strange or “barbaric” to us, yet we mayrecognize the intentions behind the law: to restore order, keep the peace, and stabilize socialrelations. What can Shakespearean drama teach us about the human desire for justice,retribution, and forgiveness? To grasp what justice meant to the early moderns and, in turn,what it means to us today, we will study the representation of law and justice in plays byShakespeare and his contemporaries. We will read early modern and contemporary legal andpolitical theory, and attend shows or lectures related to the topics of this class. This coursesatisfies the Renaissance period requirement for the English major and counts as a course for the Legal Studies Concentration. Prerequisite: a 100- or 200-level English course or permission of the instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

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

In this class, we will explore how love resides at the very heart of the African American literary tradition by studying how African American writers of the 20th and 21st centuries have consistently expressed, theorized, and embraced love. Our readings will represent multiple kinds of romances and sexualities, yet all will center the love that both emerges from and helps to create Black collectivity, solidarity, and joy. Our readings will also reveal and challenge the oppressive forces that Black love and lovers so often must withstand. Authors will include: W. E. B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Audre Lorde, and Samuel Delany. In addition, we will read some scholarship related to the course topic and to our texts. Course requirements include: discussion questions on our readings, a presentation, a short essay, and a final project. This course fulfills the U.S. writers of color requirement for the English major. Prerequisite: One prior English course numbered in the 100s.

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

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This capstone course will give English majors in the Literature Path the opportunity to use a diverse set of advanced analytic methods to design and craft an independent research project on the broad topic of trans/formation, focusing on formative elements of identity like race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and species. The semester will be divided in three units that scaffold to the capstone project itself. First, students will engage deeply with primary and secondary materials from the Middle Ages that illuminate processes of medieval trans/formations. Together we will read stories of magical transformation (encountering a transgender knight in Roman de Silence, a trans-racial convert in King of Tars, and tranimalities in the Mabinogi) together with the work of critical theorists like Homi Bhabha, Glorida Anzaldúa, Susan Stryker, Mel Chen, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, and Donna Haraway. Students will develop analytical skill in historicist, postcolonial, feminist, trans*, and ecocritical approaches, and select the direction of their capstones through a research proposal. Second, students will begin independent research processes, developing their own approaches with annotated bibliographies. Finally, students will write and craft capstones, which may incorporate digital or multimodal material. Assignments will include weekly readings, a class presentation, a research proposal, an annotated bibliography, a written capstone project, and a department-wide presentation of the project. Students will be able to select any project of their choosing, providing the primary text/s engage with the theme of transformation or social/literary formation processes in some way. Projects are welcome to focus on modern or historical material.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

As a literary form, "the novella" is often defined by what it is not: too long to be a short story, too short to be a novel. In this capstone class, however, we will study the novella as a discrete form unto itself, perfectly suited to read in one or two immersive sittings and uniquely able to develop story and character with elegant concision. We will explore the history, architecture, possibilities and delights of fictional works that range from 10,000 to 40,000 words, reading novellas in genres including literary realism, horror, and fantasy, from authors such as Victor LaValle, Claire Keegan, and James Welch. Over the course of the semester students will write and workshop their own ~15,000 word novella, with emphasis on character, structure, and sentence-level craft.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials