Literature

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Term
Time & Day Offered
Level
Credits
Course Duration

"Beastly and Beautiful": Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita — LIT2520.01

Spring 2022
Instructor: Jenny Boully
Credits: 4
(Important Notice: This course focuses on the novel Lolita, which can be disturbing to some readers. Our class discussions will not be able to circumvent the narrative of an older man exploiting a child. Please be aware of this difficult material before registering for the course.) In Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita (1955), Humbert Humbert writes, “I am trying to describe these
Literature

"the splendor of truth": James Joyce and the Tedium of Sublimity — LIT4590.01

Fall 2024
Instructor: Jenny Boully
Credits: 4
When asked to define "claritas," our (shall we dare say?) hero Stephen Dedalus in Jame Joyce's A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man responds thus: "The connotation of the word, Stephen said, is rather vague. Aquinas uses a term which seems to be inexact. It baffled me for a long time. It would lead you to believe that he had in mind symbolism or idealism, the supreme
Literature

20th Century Afrocaribbean Writers — LIT2537.01) (day/time updated as of 10/9/2023

Spring 2024
Instructor: An Duplan
Credits: 4
To date, the Afrocaribbean world has produced some of the most essential poetry, fiction, and scholarship of the Americas. Poets like the Barbadian Kamau Brathwaite also double as social scientists, as Brathwaite’s Development of Creole Society in Jamaica illuminates a picture of the linguistic development of Jamaica under British colonial rule. Similarly, Glissant’s idea of
Black Studies Literature Society Culture and Thought

A Collective Portrait of America: Literary Memoir Since the Civil War — LIT2282.01

Spring 2023
Instructor: Michael Dumanis
Credits: 4
“Everyone must bear his own universe," wrote Henry Adams in his seminal autobiography, "and most persons are moderately interested in learning how their neighbors have managed to carry theirs.” In this course we will interest ourselves in the universes of American writers from Adams' time to the present, using autobiography, memoir, and personal essay as our entry points. From
Literature

Adaptation — DRA2249.01

Spring 2016
Instructor: Sherry Kramer
Credits: 4
Adaptation: A writer is a reader moved to imitation. Appropriation, repurpose, pastiche, hybrid, sampling, remix, in conversation, mash up. Everyone knows that when you steal, steal from the best. When we write we may borrow the structure of a sonata, the plot from a story, the tang and tone of a novel, and characters from our own lives. Is everything we write adaptation? We
Drama Literature

Adler, Didion, and Sontag: Personal Politics — LIT2378.01

Fall 2018
Instructor: Kathleen Alcott
Credits: 4
Striking out from the male-dominated world of New Journalism in the 1960s and 70s came Renata Adler, Joan Didion, and Susan Sontag, women whose reportage, fiction, and criticism defined the zeitgeist. Borrowing from traditions in one form to influence others, each used a uniquely female lens to explore ideas about American imperialism, protest politics, Washington corruption,
Literature

Advanced Dramaturgy — DRA4190.01

Fall 2023
Instructor: Maya Cantu
Credits: 4
The dramaturg serves as a powerful medium in the theatre. They bridge the past and the present, the creative team and the audience, while providing critical generosity and historical and literary insight. Focusing upon the practical application of dramaturgy, this course will offer students a credited platform for dramaturgical work oriented toward production. Three groups
Drama Literature

Advanced Screenwriting — LIT4533.01

Spring 2021
Instructor: Manuel Gonzales
Credits: 2
Focused on feature film screenplays and designed for students with prior experience writing a screenplay, the Advanced Screenwriting course will look deeper into how scene composition and story structure are used to create vivid and compelling narratives for a feature length film, and the further development of well-rendered characters and other tools to improve a writer's
Literature

Advanced Screenwriting — LIT4533.01

Spring 2022
Instructor: Manuel Gonzales
Credits: 2
Focused on feature film screenplays and designed for students with prior experience writing a screenplay, the Advanced Screenwriting course will look deeper into how scene composition and story structure are used to create vivid and compelling narratives for a feature length film, and the further development of well-rendered characters and other tools to improve a writer’s
Literature

Advanced Translation Workshop — LIT4596.01

Spring 2025
Instructor: Carly Rudzinski
Credits: 4
This intensive advanced translation workshop focuses on student work. Meant for those who have taken Ethical Translation and learned the nuts of translation there – though students who have otherwise translated may apply for special permission to join, including those taking The Global Enlightenment fall 2024 – here we dig into your longer translation projects. Reading each
Literature

Afro-Futurism and Black Horror — LIT4289.01

Fall 2017
Instructor: Phillip Williams
Credits: 4
In this class we will read stories, novels, and essays that interrogate the execution and historicity of Black horror and and the Afro-future, using Black horror as the foundation for deeper intellectual and aesthetic delving into Afro-futuristic texts. We will engage with the question: How does Black horror reflect and shatter historical notions of horrific acts against Black
Literature

American Captivity — LIT4610.01

Spring 2026
Instructor: Ben Anastas
Days & Time: MO 3:40pm-5:30pm
Credits: 2

The captivity narrative is a uniquely American literary form, a distinct, adventure-driven offshoot of the Puritan spiritual autobiography--with affinities to the slave narrative--that has more in common with today's reality-based media programming that you might think. We'll spend the term looking closely at the captivity narratives that form the canon, beginning with the

Literature

American Others: Experimental American Literature — LIT4221.01

Spring 2019
Instructor: Manuel Gonzales
Credits: 4
The label, Experimental Fiction, has been applied and misapplied since Laurence Sterne's novel, Tristam Shandy, was first published in 1759. In this class, we will dissect and examine the label and the work often associated with that label, questioning what it means to be 'experimental' as an American writer of fiction. Over the semester we will tackle modernist and postmodern
Literature

Animal Tales: Fundamentals of Creative Writing — LIT2330.01

Spring 2019
Instructor: Anna Maria Hong
Credits: 4
What do writings about animals reveal about their lives and their interactions with human beings? How do human beings engage with mammals, sea creatures, reptiles, and birds as food, competitors, and companions? We will explore these questions as we read excellent writings focusing on the real and imagined lives of animals from ancient fables through 21st-century stories, poems
Environment Literature

Anne Carson — LIT4382.01

Spring 2024
Instructor: Carly Rudzinski
Credits: 4
This course is an in-depth study of Anne Carson, Canada’s most renowned living poet. In addition to writing poetry, Carson has written experimental essays, operas, screenplays, and translations. She has also lectured widely on ancient Greek and Latin texts. In examining the major works in Carson’s oeuvre, we will investigate how she transforms ancient texts to create vibrant
Literature

Art of the Sonnet: Conventions and Inventions — LIT4113.01

Spring 2020
Instructor: Michael Dumanis
Credits: 4
The sonnet, from the Italian sonnetto, or little song, has a long and rich history as a poetic form, described by contemporary poet Laynie Browne as ʺa controlled measure of sound and space within which one can do anything. An invitation.ʺ This course, a literature seminar with a significant creative component, will invite you to study the sonnet in‐depth, both as a traditional
Literature

Art of the Sonnet: Conventions and Inventions — LIT4113.01

Spring 2017
Instructor: Michael Dumanis
Credits: 4
The sonnet, from the Italian sonnetto, or little song, has a long and rich history as a poetic form, described by contemporary poet Laynie Browne as ʺa controlled measure of sound and space within which one can do anything. An invitation.ʺ This course, a literature seminar with a significant creative component, will invite you to study the sonnet in‐ depth, both as a
Literature

Aspects of the Novel — LIT4193.01

Fall 2014
Instructor: annabel davis-goff
Days & Time: TBA
Credits: 4
E.M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel (1927) is a delightful slim volume that is itself of the same high literary level as the novels that Forster describes. We will read some of Forster's own work, a selection of the books he writes about, and discuss his observations and theories. Students will write two papers.
Literature

Auden and Isherwood — LIT2498.01

Spring 2016
Instructor: Brooke Allen and Mark Wunderlich
Credits: 4
Poet W.H. Auden (1907-73) and novelist Christopher Isherwood (1904-86) were lifelong friends, literary collaborators, and occasional lovers. They met at school as small boys, saw each other frequently during their university years (Auden attended Oxford, Isherwood was at Cambridge), lived in Berlin during the rise of Nazism, and in 1939 emigrated together to America, where they
Literature

Bad Romance: Shakespeare's Poetry — LIT4380.01

Spring 2023
Instructor: Carly Rudzinski
Credits: 4
We will immerse ourselves in reading Shakespeare’s Sonnets and his Neoclassical poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. Shakespeare invented his own style of the sonnet, originally popularized by Petrarch in the 14th century. In the 154 sonnets published in 1609, Shakespeare dazzles us with his lexical, semantic, aural, syntactic, and
Literature

Bad Romance: Shakespeare's Poetry — LIT4380.01

Fall 2024
Instructor: Camille Guthrie
Credits: 4
We will immerse ourselves in reading Shakespeare’s Sonnets and his Neoclassical poem, Venus and Adonis. Shakespeare invented his own style of the sonnet, now called the English sonnet. The word sonnet comes from the Italian sonetto, which means “a little sound or song”; it was a poetic form originally popularized by Petrarch in the 14th century. In the 154 sonnets, first
Literature

Beat By Beat Script Interpretation: Pulitzer Version — DRA4192.01

Fall 2025
Instructor: Dina Janis
Days & Time: TU 2:10pm-5:50pm
Credits: 4

Students in this class will read a weekly selection of Pulitzer Prize winning plays and be required to analyze and explore these plays beat by beat in class discussion and weekly critical writing exercises. This is an in-depth script interpretation class in which theme, dramatic structure, arc, character development, tone, style and extensive study of the given playwrights

Drama Literature

Bennington Review: a Practicum in Literary Editing and Publishing — LIT4330.01

Fall 2015
Instructor: Michael Dumanis
Days & Time: TBA
Credits: 2
This two-credit course involves working on the conceptualization, editing, design, and production of  the first issue of Bennington's newly relaunched national print literary magazine, Bennington Review. Students will serve as Assistant Editors for the 2015-16 academic year, studying and practicing all aspects of magazine editing, production and design, as well as
Literature

Bennington Review: A Practicum in Literary Editing and Publishing - Poetry — LIT4330.01

Spring 2022
Instructor: Michael Dumanis
Credits: 2
This two-credit course involves working on selecting and editing the content of Bennington’s recently relaunched national print literary magazine, Bennington Review. Students will serve as Editorial Assistants for the magazine, studying and practicing all aspects of magazine editing. The course will also engage students in discussions of contemporary print and digital literary
Literature