Liberal Arts

Literature of the Americas

Course No. LLC388.1  Credits: 3

This course will survey the concurrent but separate developments of the literary traditions of North and South America. Taking Columbus' arrival on Hispaniola as our point of anchor, we will work backward to the Pre-Columbian original narrative forms, and forward through the written records of the complex colonial contexts of the literary art in both Americas. We will also trace the divergent results of the influences of European literature, following in each case the developments of such directions as we can identify in the prose and poetry of the colonial and postcolonial periods of each America. Reading widely and also closely, we will consider how best to trace the parallel emergence of these national literatures, seeking in a juxtaposed study what common literary and extra-literary antecedents and shaping forces the texts in both traditions may reveal. We will also inquire into the nature of the distinctions that must be made between these traditions, and into the impact the differences between these literatures may have of the understanding of what we mean by the phrase "American literature." Fulfills Humanities/Cultural Studies distribution requirement. Creative Writing Concentration course.

LLC 101 - Writing and Inquiry I: Basic Composition and Contemporary Ideas

Course No. LLC101.2  Credits: 3
Faculty Joyce Kessler | Katherine Clark | Mark Bassett | Olatubosun Ogunsanwo

A composition-intensive course that emphasizes basic composition skills, while introducing basic research and documentation skills. Along with cultivating the concomitant skills in critical reading and thinking, this course also introduces an explicitly theoretical approach to contemporary culture. Twenty pages of student expository writing will be required. Offered fall. 3 credits.

Narrative Art & Mythic Patterns in African & African American Literature

Course No. LLC471.1  Credits: 3

This course will focus on the various artistic ways African and African-American imaginative writers create a narrative interlock of mythic and contemporary materials to formulate in postcolonial and postmodernist terms an essentialist condition of their people's experience, while a number of them explore the interface of classical and African myths for an informed global vision. Their works are largely structured with images and symbols endowed with dynamic moral and spiritual significance. They problematize the African thinking underlain by the inseparableness of the natural world and the supernatural realm, the human and the divine, the animate and the inanimate, just as this inseparableness also aesthetically underlies the relationship between the naturalistic and the abstract in both African visual art and Harlem Renaissance. There is in postcolonial African literature, and in many 'Third World' countries, a new narrative art-form which can be called 'animist realism.' It is critically regarded as contesting the dominant protocol of conventional (Western) realist narrative which is predicated on knowability and linearity. We will also look at how the interface between oral art (free text) and written art (fixed text) mediates between fiction and history in this new form of narrative realism. And there will be an ample number of videos for visual elucidation. Fulfills Humanities/Cultural Studies distribution requirement. Creative Writing Concentration course. 3 credits.

On the Same Page: Rhetoric, Design, & Writing in the Digital Age

Course No. LLC351X

This course will allow students to develop the skills and understanding necessary for literacy in our information-saturated times. Facilitated by growth in electRonic technologies, more and more types of written texts, in both print and online media, have fused with images and other graphics. Literature producers and consumers of these emerging hybrid texts will need awareness of and competence in the complex communicative strategies that they engage. While this course offers valuable knowledge to any developing artist, it is particularly suitable for students studying in the visual communications majors; i.e., Communication Design, Illustration, Biomedical Art, Film, Video and Photographic Arts, Digital Arts. Fulfills Humanities/Cultural Studies distribution requirement. Creative Writing Concentration course. 3 credits.

Poetry Writing

Course No. LLC211W.1  Credits: 3
Faculty Susan Grimm

This class will focus on the creation, revision, oral and visual presentation of poems. Because good writing requires deep reading, we'll also be reading and responding to poems from an anthology throughout the semester. Students will be required to keep a journal that responds to anthology poems in the form of imitation poems, commentary, letters to the poets, or illustrations. Class time will be spent doing writing and revision exercises, small-group work, discussing poems from the anthology, playing with various aspects of poetry, and workshopping poems written in class. The final project will entail creating a chapbook of poems written during the semester. Fulfills Humanities/Cultural Studies distribution requirement. Creative Writing Concentration course. 3 credits.

Science Fiction Writing Workshop

Course No. LLC210W.1  Credits: 3

The genre (or sub-genre) of science fiction may, on one level, be seen as a variety of Romanticism, as an extended collective response to features of modernity, specifically scientific discoveries and innovations, as well as elements of the Industrial and technological revolutions. Science fiction, in its astonishing number of permutations, has filled a vast canvas of imaginative possibility, discovering a range of responses and forms that range from the dystopian, pessimistic, even nihilistic, to the utopian. We hear and see, in the voices and imaginations of different science fiction writers and artists, warnings and celebrations, but at the bottom, questionings of what it means to be human and of what kinds of possibilities may lay before us. Science fiction is also a remarkably popular genre; it's vitally manifested in books, television shows, films, toys, games. In this class we will investigate some of the space(s), both literal and metaphorical, that science fiction (and popular ideas of science) offer to the imagination. The course's center, however, is the students' own writing and their own ideas, and will be conducted in workshop format, with relatively brief lectures by the instructor presenting relevant literary, historical, theoretical and biographical backgrounds and contexts. During the semester, students will present two to three original works-in-progress (either creative or critical) to the class, distributing photocopies of their work a week in advance to the members of the class and to the instructor. Fulfills Humanities/Cultural Studies distribution requirement. Creative Writing Concentration course. 3 credits.

Screenwriting

Course No. LLC318
Faculty Shelley Bloomfield

What is a spec script, a slugline, a smash cut? One script page averages how many minutes of onscreen film time? What’s the difference between a conventional short and medium short film? In this course we will discuss the elements of good cinematic storytelling, study short screenplays for the ways in which they combine storytelling and visual artistry, learn the conventions of formatting, and write two short films. Students are required either to storyboard or animate their short scripts.

Screenwriting

Course No. LLC318.1  Credits: 3
Faculty Shelley Bloomfield

What is a spec script, a slugline, a smash cut? What's the difference between montage and a series of shots, and why does the screenwriter need to know? One script page averages how many minutes of onscreen film time? In addition to the demands of just plain good storytelling, writing for film entails expressing everything about the story visually, which gives visual artists an advantage in adapting to the demands of the form. It is the screenwriter's job to put all of the sights, sounds and speeches on the page, while still leaving room for interpretation by the filmmakers. In this course we will discuss the elements of good storytelling, study the screenplays of Pulp Fiction and Chocolat, and write a short screenplay formatted to conform to industry standards. Fulfills Humanities/Cultural Studies distribution requirement. Creative Writing Concentration course. 3 credits.