Writing 102 Topics - Now available!

WRIT 102.1 Tova Messer - Fairy Tale and Fantasy: A Re-Examination

What about fairy tales and fantasy are  so powerful that they have endured and inspired so many reincarnations?  Reading a sampling of fairy tales and young adult fantasy novels, we will re-examine this genre from an adult perspective. Themes for consideration include good versus evil, exile versus redemption, violence and fear, the Judeo-Christian tradition, love, magic, sacrifice, and salvation.  Readings will include works by C.S. Lewis, Madeline L’Engle, the Brothers Grimm, and Hans Christian Andersen, author of the fairy tale upon which the Disney movie Frozen was based.  In the process, we will build on the skills acquired in Writing 101 and continue to practice critical reading, analyzing, and writing skills.  Finally, the course is designed to acquaint students with research and documentation techniques, culminating in a final research paper.

 

WRIT 102.2, 102.4 Jennifer Brown - Fairytales and Monsters

This class will look at representations of villains and monsters from early versions (Beowulf in the early Middle Ages) through to modern representations. In addition to reading fairy and folk tales that span over 500 years, we will also read some “monster theory” and discuss what makes a character a monster or a villain. Final projects in the past have yielded papers on Disney princesses, zombie films, female trickster characters in contemporary literature, and how villains are constructed in video games.

 

WRIT 102.3 Adam Cohen - Comics and Graphic Novels

In this course, we will sample a few ways in which comics and graphic novels represent society and subjectivity. We will discuss how they reinterpret narrative tropes and mythologies, satirize aspects of our society, and re-envision history and politics. Possible readings will include Art Spiegelman’s Maus, Alan Moore’s Watchmen, Warren Ellis’s Transmetropolitan, Bill Willingham’s Fables, Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, and David Mazzucchelli’s Asterios Polyp. We will practice critical reading and writing skills in order to develop our own arguments about the central themes and formal aspects of these works. The final research paper will give students the opportunity to explore their own topics and outside readings, as well as to scaffold their ideas from previous assignments throughout the semester.

 

WRIT 102.5 Elizabeth Gold -Speculative Fiction

We all love to imagine worst case scenarios: what would happen if New York was overtaken by a pandemic, if global warming caused a world-wide water shortage, if our genetic engineering ran amuck and produced super-animals such as feral pigs with human brains Speculative fiction is a genre that works with these horrifying – and sometimes hilarious – “what if?” scenarios. In this course, we will begin with Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood’s classic religious dystopia, and continue with Dave Eggers’ recent imagining of all-powerful social media in The Circle. As the semester continues, we’ll research and write about speculative fiction, as well as study how and why this genre preys so well on our fears and fires up our imaginations.

 

WRIT 102.6 Deanna Twain - An Exploration of Doubt

Religion, science, philosophy, law, love, and the tooth fairy. Doubt is everywhere. In this section of WRIT 102, we will explore doubt.  What is it? Have you experienced it? Is it a good thing? A bad thing? What is the opposite of doubt? What is certainty? Is lack of doubt denial? Students will read essays and fiction by William Faulkner, Joan Didion, Truman Capote, and William Shakespeare, view films, and write on this topic while exploring this fascinating and relevant subject as it relates to ourselves and to humanity.

 

WRIT 102.7, 102.9 Emily Morgan

The Demanding “I”: The Role of the Author in Works of Nonfiction

In this course, we will consider and explore the role of the author in works of nonfiction. When one is writing to expose an injustice, describe an event, or provide information on a particular historical or contemporary reality, how important is the author’s personality and relationship to the subject? When is it appropriate for an author to acknowledge his or her own biases, and when should the author attempt to suppress such bias? Is objectivity even possible? By reading a variety of authors who approach the question from different angles, you will develop your own ideas about the role of personality and “objectivity” in nonfiction writing.

 

WRIT 102.8, 102.12  Matthew Bissell – Novel and Film

In this course, we’ll be looking at the concept of horror and how it is represented in novels and their film adaptations. We’ll start with traditional ideas of horror in Dracula by Bram Stoker and The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, and examine how both texts use the horror genre to get at social concerns, especially the role of women in their respective time periods. We’ll then examine how The Trial by Franz Kafka and No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy ask us to reconsider what horror means - moving it beyond the confines of monsters and haunted houses and into the real world.

 

WRIT 102.10 Deborah Kelly -  History, Perception, and Blind Spots

During this semester, we will be exploring the idea of objectivity and questioning whether any text can ever be truly objective.  One of the academic fields where this question is most important is in the field of history.  Why do we write the story of our history?  Is it only to document the past or is it also to rewrite or to justify it?  What is the relationship between our history and our culture?  Using our writer’s eye, we will look at the blind spots and perceptions that prevent us from looking past the dominant mainstream recounting of historical events.  The final research paper will give students an opportunity to build on assignments, readings, and class discussions and explore a historical event of their choice. 

 

WRIT 102.11  Susan Shapiro Barash - Gender Around the World

This semester we will look at how gender is approached globally and the effects of gender interpretation on various cultures and societies. By building on the writing and critical thinking skills established in Writing 101, students will further develop the process and learn how to conduct academic research. We will not only interpret the concepts of others, but explore our own thoughts and writings about gender. To this end, we will read and analyze an array of essays and texts in order to evaluate views of gender throughout the world.

 

WRIT 102.13 Jacob Seliger Rereading Romance

In Love and Death in the American Novel, literary critic Leslie Fielder writers that “our literature is incapable of dealing with adult sexuality and is pathologically obsessed with death.” In The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex,biologist Charles Darwin writes that “With mankind […] many causes interfere with the action of sexual selection.” In Sugar in my Bowl, writer Erica Jong speculates that we are “so fascinated” with romance “probably […] because such intense feelings are involved.” This class emphasizes writing and close reading in the context of rereading romance and asks: What does romance mean? Where and how do various  writers apply it? How does it appear in  fiction and nonfiction What might its purpose or purposes be? Why does so much narrative art focus on romance, romantic entanglement, and its consequences?

 

WRIT 102.14 Richard Scheiwe - The Time of Flesh

The theme of our course concerns the exploration and analysis of literature that allows us to clarify how perception works, primarily with a focus on the body and flesh—the sense of touch. We hope to come to a better understanding of the body’s prevalence over the mind: “Every practice is a mode of thought, already in the act. To dance: a thinking in movement. To paint: a thinking through color. To perceive in the everyday: a thinking of the world’s varied ways of affording itself” (Manning 2014). Considering the world is becoming more of an environment in which our senses are constantly distracted from our self-attention, we will explore how becoming more “mindful” helps nullify the de-sensitizing of social media, consumerism, pop culture, et al., by studying both sides of our reality: technological innovation via the “attention economy,” and the human body.

 

WRIT 102.15 Patrick McCarthy – Society through Film   

Writ 102: Society through Film is designed to acquaint students with academic research and documentation techniques, and improve their writing and analytical skills. We will practice and hone these skills on the subject of American society throughout the twentieth century and its representation and reflection in contemporary popular film. Readings will include essays on cinema by Pauline Kael and William Goldman, as well as reviews, both historical and contemporary, and histories of the Hollywood film industry. By watching and analyzing film clips and texts, we will explore the complex cause-and-effect relationship between movies, the artists who make them, and the society at large that watches, enjoys, and influences them.

 

WRIT 102.16 Erin Spampinato – New Worlds and Faraway Places

Can representations of other worlds influence our thinking about our own? This course explores utopian and dystopian literature, examining the emotions, critiques, and questions that motivate this genre.  Do narratives of alternative worlds reflect optimism or pessimism about the future? Do they attempt to show us what we are, or what we are not? By studying a few important examples of the genre from different periods, we will seek to understand not only the broader thematic continuities in utopian literature but also the historical conditions which give rise to certain narratives of alternate worlds. The primary goal of this class is to build on the skills you acquired in Writing 101 by learning how to propose, formulate, develop, and present original academic projects.  You will learn the art of independent research and develop and write a thesis driven research paper.  We will use the theme of utopia, then, to provide us with the platform upon which we can practice these skills. 

 

WRIT 102.17, 102.18 John Hodgkins – Crime Stories

The Simple Art of Adaptation: Crime Stories on Page and Screen

Our focus for this semester will be American crime stories, and the various ways they have been adapted over the years from the printed page to the silver screen.  What do these stories have to teach us, we will ask, about our country, our history (or histories), and ourselves?  And what does the adaptive process reveal to us about the respective strengths and limitations of literature and cinema?  By the end of the course, students should be able to read, write, and think critically about the assigned fiction, films, and theoretical essays, moving beyond reductive notions about the “fidelity” or “faithfulness” of an adaptation to its source, and into a deeper exploration of the tense yet symbiotic relationship between literary narrative and cinematic language.

 

WRIT 102.19, 102.20 Mark Bresnan – Work and Play

In this course, we will read, write, and think about the roles of work and play in American culture. In particular, we will analyze activities such as sports, music, dance, and art, in which both work and play are vital. We will read essays and fiction by David Foster Wallace, Joan Didion, Jon Krakauer, and others, in addition to the independent reading each student will do as part of their final research project and paper.

Published: November 03, 2014