Sample English Seminars

Deadliest Catches (2 sections) Jeff Peterson

Like the sea itself, the literature of seafaring brims with adventure, salt, sublimity, and peril. This course surveys its history, from the Anglo-Saxon “Seafarer” to such classics as Coleridge’s “Rime of theAncient Mariner” and Conrad’s Typhoon, to Jack London’s The Sea-Wolf and Benchley’s iconic summer blockbuster, Jaws. The centerpiece for the course is that greatest of all fish stories and literature’sdeadliest catch, Melville’s epic, Moby-Dick. We’ll consider the transformative experience of life at sea, as recounted by the sea-changed voyager who suffers its isolation and character-testing ordeals; the shipas dramatic crucible for conflict among men bound together in a rigid hierarchical structure; and the ocean and its shores as setting

for complex encounters between humankind and nature, predator and prey, civilization and savagery. Readings will include selected sea songs and chanteys (which we’ll sing), as well as essays, stories,and poems.

The Literature of the English Renaissance (3sections) Richard Cushman

What we call the Renaissance came late to England, yet it brought with it a burst of creative energy which still amazes us today. This was a time for questioning old certainties and constructing new ones, atime of enormous advances in our understanding of the earth and the heavens, but also a moment of renewed and intense interest in the self. British Renaissance literature, drawing energy from therediscovered writings of Greece and Rome, expresses all this and more in a language—like that of our time—which surges with life and change. Beginning with Thomas More’s Utopia and extending perhapsto Milton’s Paradise Lost (selections), our readings will center in three tragedies by William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet, King Lear and Antony and Cleopatra) which will reveal themselves within thecontexts of their own time. The

course will include as well a generous portion of Renaissance music and lyric poetry and a look at the art and literary theory of the period.

Creative Writing: Poetry (1 section, seniors only) Nancy Steele

This is a writing workshop culminating in your producing a portfolio of your own poetry. While no prior poetry writing experience is necessary, this seminar is not for the faint of heart. Be forewarned: yourjournal will become an extra appendage! You will be expected to write nightly and “publish” a poem each week. During class time we will do limbering up writing exercises, talk about craft and aesthetics, anddiscuss and critique one another’s poems. Your enthusiastic and supportive participation in workshopping the pieces of your peers is a must and will constitute part of your final grade. We will read poetry aswriters of poetry and not as critics, using the work of professional writers to instruct us. Weekly writing assignments are designed to give you opportunities to experiment with different poetic styles, devices,voices. You will be free to be creative and playful, but you must also meet deadlines, as professional writers do. In addition to writing poems each week, you will choose a poet’s work to appreciate, analyze,emulate, and present to the class. We will also, as per tradition, hold a reading for the school in late May. Texts will include a course reader and

an anthology of contemporary poetry such as The Best American Poetry: 2013.

Telling Stories: The Art of Fiction Writing (2 sections) Julie Anderson

“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”

This famous first line from Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude immediately pulls the reader in, simultaneously creating suspense and establishing character. How do you come up withgreat first lines? How do you keep the reader reading? How do you make your characters come alive on the page? We’ll explore all these questions (and much more) in this course on creative writing. Inspecific, we’ll study the fundamental elements of fiction—characterization, plot, setting, dialogue, pacing—and do exercises designed to develop your skills in these areas. We’ll also read stories and novelexcerpts from famous writers, analyzing their fiction for technique, learning how writers create the effects they do. Finally—and most importantly—you'll craft stories of your own design. This course above allis dedicated to creativity and to learning about literature from a whole new perspective: that of the writer.