Peter O'Leary

Walt Whitman?s influence on American poetry is as prodigious as it is constant. Even today, one-hundred and twenty-five years since his death, the force of his verse continues to be felt. In this course you will conduct a thorough investigation and reading of Whitman?s poetry, including and especially the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, and also his subsequent major poems, including ?Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,? ?Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking,? ?I Sing the Body Electric,? ?As I Ebb?d with the Ocean of Life,? and ?When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed.? You will also read Whitman?s major prose, including ?Specimen Days.? With Whitman in hand, you will explore part of his legacy by reading poetry by Hart Crane, Federigo Garcia Lorca, Pablo Neruda, Allen Ginsberg, and Ronald Johnson. Alongside, we will read essays by D.H. Lawrence, Robert Duncan, Harold Bloom, and C.K. Williams. And we will watch the film Howl.

Esotericism refers both to a field of knowledge hidden from common view and a moral reality suggesting secrecy, occultism, danger, conspiracy and vast quantities of arcane lore and revelation. This course introduces students to a basic theory of esotericism - hidden knowledge revealed to the enlightened or initiated ? while exploring historical instances of esotericism beginning with the Neo-platonists and Alexandrian magicians, and discussing movements such as Gnosticism, Hermeticism, Kabbalah, Rosicrucianism, the Freemasons, Renaissance Magic, Theosophy; fields such as astrology, alchemy, mysticism, witchcraft and music; and figures such as Hermes Trismegistus, Isaac Luria, Marcilio Ficino, and Carl Jung. Texts will include a general history, source texts, selected essays, and some films.

A monolith manifests in orbit around Jupiter, emitting a signal. A beacon? A winter-bound planet¿s denizens are androgynous with powerful predictive powers. An aberration? Space travel is enabled by the ingestion of enormous quantities of a geriatric spice a messianic figure suddenly learns to manipulate. A drug trip?! Among popular genres, science fiction is the riskiest conceptually and among the trickiest to master. Because of its relative narrative freedom, science fiction has been a place for some of the wildest, most outlandish, yet frequently astute speculation on the experience of religion that can be found in all modern literature. In this course, you¿ll read some novels (by William Gibson, Frank Herbert, and Ursula K. LeGuin), short stories, (by Ted Chiang, Arthur C. Clarke, and Raccoona Sheldon), and view some films (2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Wars, and Close Encounters), and study the work of some theorists of religion (Freud, Jung, Le¿vi-Strauss, and Eliade). Assignments vary, but they might include some or many of the following: weekly reading responses, quizzes, papers, and exams.

Christianity has been the dominant religious and cultural idiom of the West for the past 1700 years, defining the West?s history, politics, literature, and spirituality. Because of this supersaturation, much of Christianity?s texture and depth is taken for granted, misunderstood, or lost. In this course, we examine scripture, theology, mysticism, and art so as to recover some of Christianity?s hidden knowledge, especially from the complex vantage of the United States, the most successful and powerful Christian nation in the history of the world. In addition to readings from the New Testament, we read the work of scholars, historians, and artists including Bernard McGinn, Vladimir Lossky, Linda Woodhead, Marilynne Robinson, and Chester Brown. Assignments vary, but they might include some or many of the following: weekly reading responses, quizzes, papers, and exams.