Department of Literature and Writing Courses

Tuesdays and Thursdays, 5:00 PM - 6:20 PM
Farooz Rather

An introduction to the art of creative nonfiction and writing from life, in which the class holds an ongoing discussion that seeks to understand this exciting but hard-to-define genre. There will be weekly writing prompts that build on each other as students write from their own experience about a wide variety of subjects: family, work, and childhood, to name a few. There will be weekly grammar and style quizzes to sharpen your skills as a writer.

The majority of time in class will be spent critiquing each other's work, and there will also be weekly readings from several authors — Ernest Hemingway, Joan Didion, James Baldwin, Jesmyn Ward, Colm Toibin, and W.G. Sebald — that support the week's prompt.

Accepted as one of the writing courses required for the Writing major; can count as an elective for the Literature major, the Writing major, or the minor in Literature & Writing; fills the ALA All College KCA requirement.

Tuesdays and Thursdays, 11:00 AM -12:20 PM
Farooz Rather

This course will Introduce the discipline of writing short-form fiction. Students will read classic and contemporary literature and discuss each others' drafts in a supportive workshop setting.

Accepted as one of the writing courses required for the Writing major; can count as an elective for the Literature major, the Writing major, or the minor in Literature & Writing; fills the ALA All College KCA requirement.

Mondays and Wednesdays, 5:00 PM - 6:20 PM
TBA

This course is an introduction to Greek and Roman mythology that includes Hesiod's Theogony, the Homeric Hymns, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, Plato's Apology, and Ovid's Metamorphoses. We will be exploring various themes, such as the relation between religion and literature, the political contexts that inform and shape much of this literature, and the role of pain in relation to self knowledge and identity as epitomized by the Delphic Oracle's directive to “Know Thyself.”

Fills the Historical Contexts requirement for the department's Literature or Writing major; can count as an elective for the Literature major, the Writing major, or the minor in Literature & Writing; fills the ALA All College KCA requirement.

Tuesdays and Thursdays, 9:30 AM - 10:50 AM
Patrick Sylvain

This course introduces you to literature about gender and power within the Caribbean context. The novels and essays included in this course provide critical and intersectional perspectives that press us to connect present day realities to nineteenth-century themes of enslavement, indentureship, migration, and labor linked to plantations. Additionally, letters and photographs will be accessed in this course to assist us in thinking about the claims of the past and help us realize the power of archival material.

This course will help us to think deeply about the intrinsic connection between economic power and gender dynamics in the contemporary Caribbean. As such, you will familiarize yourself with debates about feminine writing, the place of non-heteronormative desire in “global- south” and “global-north” feminisms, and the place of race in gendered identities where power wears the mantle of anticolonial nationalism.

Cross-listed with Women and Gender Studies. Fills the Global and Cultural Contexts requirement for the department's Literature or Writing major; can count as an elective for the Literature major, the Writing major, or the minor in Literature & Writing; fills the ALA All College KCA requirement.

Mondays, 11:00 AM - 1:50 PM
Renée Bergland

Are you interested in reading short stories, plays, novels, and poems? Want to spend a semester discovering new ways of engaging with graphic novels, visual works, and films?

This course offers an opportunity to read a wide variety of literary forms and to discover how approaches to imaginative writing can be applied in surprising new contexts. For example, how can you use the close- reading approaches you apply to a short story to think about bias on screen? Or how can reading a poem help you to understand the author's reliability when you're reading an op-ed or listening to a song?

The course will include robust in-class discussion, informal and formal writing assignments, and contributions to collaborative class notes. We'll read a wide variety of authors and study multiple genres and mediums including recent short stories, novels, graphic novels, films and essays, as well as historical poems and plays.

Whether you want to take a fiction course before you graduate or you're potentially interested in an English major, this course is designed as an entryway to literary study.

A required course for all Writing majors, all Literature majors and all Literature & Writing minors; a prerequisite to all 300-level courses; fills the ALA All College KCA requirement.

Mondays, 2:00 PM - 4:50 PM
Renée Bergland

Students examine a wide range of theoretical essays and books, most by poets and creative writers whose theories of literary art develop out of their own practice.

Focused on an array of influential writings by philosophers, critics, and creative writers on the art, theory, and practice of writing, the course will consider how their ideas have shaped many of our fundamental conceptions of what creative writing is and how it works. The objective of the course is to provide students with a working knowledge of the central theoretical and practical issues in creative writing and an understanding of how diverse writers have attempted to define and set standards for their art.

A required course for all Writing majors (prerequisites: current or prior enrollment in 105, 107, 109 or 199); can count as an elective for the Literature major or the minor in Literature & Writing; fills the ALA All College KCA requirement.

Mondays and Wednesdays, 6:30 PM - 7:50 PM
Renée Bergland

So you want to do something to help save the planet. Awesome. But how? This integrative learning seminar will help you to build the research and writing skills you will need to express your own environmentalist vision.

Faced with planetary extinction, we must pay attention to the nonhuman world as well as the human world. We need science. We need policy. We need ethics. We need art.

In this course, we will explore the perspectives of poets, philosophers, activists and scientists. We will sharpen our own rhetorical skills in informal conversations, formal presentations, and – most importantly – in writing.

Assignments will include creative non-fiction, Op-Eds, reviews, and essays stacked with scientific data.

Counts as the Integrated Learning course that is required of all students by PLAN. Accepted as one of the writing courses required for the Writing major; can count as an elective for the Literature major, the Writing major, or the minor in Literature & Writing; fills the ALA All College KCA requirement.

Mondays and Wednesdays, 6:30-7:50
Alister Inglis

This course explores the history, literature and society of the Tang (618-907) and Song (960-1279) dynasties, both critical periods for Chinese cultural development. It was during this time that China was transformed from a medieval, aristocratically- governed society to one which many historians characterize as early-modern. Science, the arts and commerce flourished, while agricultural innovations enabled the opening of China's fertile south to rapid population expansion. In this seminar, the study of history informs and fosters an understanding of literature, and literature – mainly in the form of poetry and short stories – illustrate historical texts, events and social change.

Counts as the Integrated Learning course that is required of all students by PLAN. Fills the Global and Cultural Contexts requirement for the department's Literature or Writing major; can count as an elective for the Literature major, the Writing major, or the minor in Literature & Writing. Counts toward coursework in the Department of Asian Studies. Fills the ALA All College KCA requirement.

Fridays, 11:00 AM - 1:50 PM
Suzanne Leonard

The “invented self” is a concept related to the mythology of America, a place where the possibilities for self-invention and betterment are touted as endless. Yet, race, class, gender, sexuality, age, ability, and socioeconomic status are inextricably linked to one's position in the nation, and even if one “counts” as a citizen. Relatedly, Americans are often faced with competing narratives regarding the perils and possibilities that accompany the act of inventing a self.

The explorations we will conduct in this class are literary, philosophical, and historical, and we will use our investigation into the invented self as a means of charting significant currents in 20th and 21st century U.S. fiction. Come join us to learn how authors — past and present — craft the “American Dream.”

This Research Methods course fulfills the Research requirement for Literature majors; can count as an elective or Historical Contexts course for Writing majors or for Literature majors who have taken another Research Methods course; can count as an elective for the minor in Literature & Writing; fills the ALA All College KCA requirement.

Tuesdays and Thursdays, 12:30 PM -1:50 PM.
Farooz Rather

Resist! Writers, filmmakers, activists, and thinkers have engaged in significant acts of political resistance across the 20th and 21st centuries, but those in positions of authority rarely recognize the superpowers of literary production. Let's change that. In this course, we'll ask how fiction, cinema, poetry, memoir, and song work to oppose tyranny and to create a more just world. We'll put literature into action by making politically relevant zines, pamphlets, playlists, and videos informed by significant theoretical writings from the modern age. Authors and makers will include Angela Davis, members of Pussy Riot, Nawal el Saadawi, Steve Biko, Pablo Larraín, Agha Shahid Ali, Miron Białoszewski, James Baldwin, Lorna Goodison, Frantz Fanon, Mahatma Gandhi, Hannah Arendt, and Taika Waititi.

Fills the Historical Contexts requirement for the department's Literature or Writing major; can count as an elective for the Literature major, Writing major or Literature & Writing minor; fills the ALA All College KCA requirement.

Wednesdays, 11:00 AM - 1:50 PM
Pamela Bromberg

In LTWR 243 we will study both the history and development of the English novel and the novel as an emerging literary form. Another central issue in the course will be the representations of women in novels written both by male and female authors. We will explore how popular women novelists in the early 18th-century, including Aphra Behn and Eliza Haywood, developed narrative techniques, paving the way for the next generation. Fanny Burney, standing on their shoulders, brought the form of the novel to a new level, establishing the foundations for the art of Jane Austen. Sarah Scott's 1762 novel Millenium Hall presents a female utopia and provides a fascinating window into early British feminism. There will be a unit on the development of the Gothic novel, beginning with Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, and continuing with Austen's parody of the gothic bestseller in Northanger Abbey. Austen's last novel Mansfield Park, reaches new depths with its complex, multilayered political, social, and literary contexts and worlds. In our final novel, Great Expectations, Charles Dickens brings together all of the semester's thematic strands. The course will also focus on the elements of fiction and developing a critical vocabulary for talking about the novel. We will look at the development of narrative modes, characterization, dramatic elements, and at the archetypal plots of comedy, tragedy, and romance.

Fills the Historical Contexts requirement for the department's Literature or Writing major; can count as an elective for the Literature major, Writing major or Literature & Writing minor; fills the ALA All College KCA requirement.

Thursdays, 6:00 PM - 8:50 PM
Sheldon George

This course studies most of the novels and critical essays of Toni Morrison. It views them as involved in direct or thematic conversation with other canonical works by British and American authors and scholars who attempt to produce definitions of blackness, whiteness and abstract concepts like American identity. We will read Morrison along side of short pieces by other canonical authors like Melville, Hemingway and Twain. Throughout, we will investigate ways that Morrison's literature and prose provide some of the most important critical evaluations of the racial history that continually haunts both the cannon and our social sphere.

Prerequisite: LTWR-199 or Junior standing. Fills the Global and Cultural Contexts requirement for the department's Literature or Writing major; can count as an elective for the Literature major, the Writing major, or the minor in Literature & Writing; fills the ALA All College KCA requirement.

TBA
Valerie Geary

In this course you will consider how the skills and knowledge you've learned at Simmons are directly applicable to your career goals while receiving academic credit and building your resumé.

Humanities 370 is a career preparation course that provides the academic learning component of credit-bearing internships and teaches the professional skills, behaviors, and career competencies necessary for a successful pre- professional internship experience and future career development. This course will help you think about your post-Simmons life and support you in articulating exactly what skills and knowledge you have, from both your classes and your internship, to offer to prospective employers.

Fills the capstone requirement for all Ifill students except majors and minors in Arts Administration or Communication.