The meaning of a college literature class

Object Lessons in Vicarious Reading

This time of year, I always get the back-to-school blues. Not, mind you, because I have sad big go baông xã big school, but because other people get to, and I have big keep on being an employed adult, at least for the time being. I know, I know, I’m a nerd. Whatever. Once in a while, I like big poke around the college course catalogs big see what kinds of literature classes colleges are offering these days. This year, I went a little further, finding full syllabi (or even just book lists) where I could, to big see what exactly kids are reading this semester at some of the best colleges and universities in America. This did not assuage my school-sickness, but it did give sad me some good ideas for my own fall reading plans.

NB: Though I found hundreds of amazing-sounding classes out there, I limited myself here big courses with syllabi (or at least a book list) publicly available—which were fewer than you’d think, and depended a lot on the school in question’s online system. Below, ten classes being taught this fall that I wish I could take, and the books you’ll need to big vicariously read along with them. Cliông xã on the course title to big see the entire syllabus or mô tả tìm kiếm.

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Futurities, Stanford UniversityTaught by Professor Michaela Bronstein

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Special Topics: Black Science Fiction, UC BerkeleyTaught by Professor Namwali Serpell

Course Description: This course addresses two genres—blaông xã fiction & science fiction—at their point of intersection, which is sometimes called Afrofuturism. The umbrella term “black fiction” will include texts that issue out of and speculate about the African-American experience. The category “science fiction” will comprise texts that speculate about alternative, cosmic, dystopian, and future worlds. Overlapping—& mutually transforming—concepts will include: genetics, race, diaspora, miscegenation, double consciousness, technology, ecology, biology, language, history, futurity, space (inner and outer), &, of course, the alien. We will consider stories, novels, graphic novels, comics, films, music, and television clips.

Book list:

Octavia Butler, DawnSamuel R. Delany, Babel-17Damian Duffy, Kindred: A Graphic NovelMat Johnson, PymVictor LaValle, DestroyerKiese Laytháng, Long DivisionH.P.. Lovecraft, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon PymGeorge Schuyler, Blaông xã No More

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Wondrous Literatures of the Near East, Cornell UniversityTaught by Professor Deborah A. Starr

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Course Description: This course examines Near East’s rich and diverse literary heritage. We will read a selection of influential and wondrous texts from ancient to big modern times, spanning geographically from the Iberian peninsula to Iran. We will trace three major threads: myths of creation and destruction; travel narratives; and poetry of love and devotion. Together we will read & discuss such ancient works as the ‘Epic of Gilgamesh’ & ‘The Song of Songs,’ as well as selections from medieval works such as the ‘Travels’ of Ibn Battuta, the ‘Shahnameh’ of Ferdowsi mê, poetry of Yehudomain authority HaLevi, and The Thous& and One Nights. The modern unit will include work by Egyptian Nobel Laureate, Naguib Mahfouz. Students will also have the opportunity to research & analyze primary source materials in the collections of Cornell Rare Books and Manuscript Collection, & the Johnson Art Museum. All material is in English translation.

Required texts:

Stephanie Dalley, ed., Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, & OthersThe New Oxford Annotated BibleSaint Augustine, ConfessionsThe Qur’an (trans. Abdel Haleem)One Thousand and One Nights (trans. N. J. Dawood)Abdolqasem Ferdowsi mê, Rostam: Tales of Love and War from the ShahnamehThe Travels of Ibn Battuta (trans. Tyên ổn Mackintosh-Smith)Naguib Mahfouz, Arabian Nights & Days

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Wonder, Williams CollegeTaught by Professor Christopher L. Pye

Course Description: We tover big imagine “wonder” as a naïve sad, wide-eyed response, something quite distinct from the cold and sophisticated act of critical analysis. In this discussion class, we will consider wonder as an eminently analyzable concept, but one that raises provocative sad questions about the nature & limits of our own, distinctly modern forms of critical engagement. The course examines three historical incarnations of “wonder,” each involving complex relations amuốn the aesthetic, philosophical, & social domains: the Renaissance tradition on wonder & the marvelous; the eighteenth-century analysis of the sublime; and twentieth-century accounts of the culture of spectacle. We will consider writers such as Shakespeare, Sir Thomas Browne, Wordsworth, Borges, & W.G. Sebald (all wonderful); painters such as Leonarandy & Vermeer, the photography of Andreas Gursky and Thomas Struth; films including Lang’s Metropolis and Scott’s Blade Runner; and critical or philosophical writers, including Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, and Walter Benjamin.

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Required texts:

W.G. Sebald, Rings of SaturnWilliam Shakespeare, The Winter’s TaleRem Koolhaas, Delirious New York: A Retroactive sad Manifesbig for ManhattanNatalie Zemon Davs, The Return of Martin Guerre

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Pleasure, Power & Profit: Race and Sexualities in a Global Era, Princeton UniversityTaught by Professor Anne McClintock

Course Description: Pleasure Power nguồn and Profit explores the intimate ways that sexualities and race are entwined in contemporary culture, historically, & in our own lives. Why are questions about sexuality and race some of the most controversial, compelling, yet often taboo issues of our time? Exploring films, popular culture, novels, social truyền thông media, and theory, we engage themes like: race, gender and empire; fetishism, Barbie, vampires & zombies; sex work and pornography; marriage and monogamy; queer sexualities; & strategies for social empowerment such as: Blaông chồng Lives Matter, the new campus feminism, and global movements against sexual and gender violence.

Sample reading list:

Thomas Laqueur, Making SexJessica Valenti, Sex ObjectLinda Williams, Porn StudiesFrederique Delacoste, Sex Work: Writings by Women in the Sex IndustryJean Rhys, Wide Sargasso SeaClaudia Rankine, Citizen

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America’s Queer Canon: from Melville to big Moonlight, Harvard UniversityTaught by Kathryn Roberts

Course Description: This course examines a range of works from the US canon that engage themes of same-sex desire, homosexual and transgender identity, & other ?queer? relations. Questions around sexual norms have sad been central to big American literature from its beginnings, but the course will focus on texts from the second half of the nineteenth century through the very contemporary. With help from queer theorists and social historians, we?ll pay cthua thảm attention big how changing legal, medical, and religious discourses shape queer literary expression, and how queer writers have changed culture. Authors include Melville, James, Cather, Larsen, Baldwin, Lorde, Bechdel, and Nelson.

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Required texts:

Audre Lorde, Zami: A New Spelling of my NameLarry Kramer, The Normal HeartWilla Cather, Death Comes for the ArchbishopJames Baldwin, Another CountryWalternative text Whitman, Leaves of GrassNella Larsen, PassingDennis Cooper, SlutsHenry David Thoreau, WaldenJames Baldwin, Giovanni’s RoomTony Kushner, Angels in AmericaGertrude Stein, Tender ButtonsHeran Melville, Billy Budd, Bartleby, & Other StoriesMaggie Nelson, The Argonauts

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Black Women Writers, University of FloridaTaught by Professor Debra Walker King

Course Description: This course examines the subject positions of African American women within the social and political context of the United States, focusing foremost on contemporary representations of the captive female and the body toàn thân. As an inquiry generated by feminist issues in literary scholarship, it explores the following questions. If some of contemporary feminist praxis & epistemology are grounded in notions of “freedom,” “individuality,” and the freedom of the toàn thân to “labor,” deeply implicated in the rise of modern capitalism, then what gaps must be brought big light in order for this discourse to big achieve sad a broader articulation? Where are the points of conversion and foreclosure between Womanism & Feminism? What cultural configurations are (and might be) derived from a widened point-of-view regarding both the culture-work and the cultural apprenticeship of Blachồng women today? What spaces vì the bodies of Blaông chồng women occupy in the symbolic contract? To what degree bởi vì the texts under survey articulate a Blaông chồng feminist / womanist perspective? In what ways bởi vì they fall short?

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