FYS I: How to Read a Poem |
Liberal Arts |
1001 (022) |
Fall 2025 |
Description
FYS I prepares students for advanced study in the Liberal Arts by attending to the foundational skills of college-level writing and interpretation, such as close reading, critical analysis, academic argumentation, essay structure, and style. This first-year seminar focuses our attention on poetry. While it's common for students to find poems baffling or even alienating, we will practice the kinds of reading skills and receptive states of mind that open poetry up to understanding and enjoyment. By reading, discussing, and writing about a small number of short poems every week (drawn from a variety of poets, periods, and places) we will see how reading poetry well does not require elite or occult knowledge but patience, interest, attention, and curiosity. Students will practice reading slowly and closely and writing about poetry in a way that reproduces that slowness and closeness in their own prose. Students should expect to write 15 to 20 pages of formal, revisable writing.
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Class Number
1361
Credits
3
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FYS II: Hollywoodland |
Liberal Arts |
1005 (029) |
Spring 2025 |
Description
FYS II are theme-based writing courses designed for first-year students, with an emphasis on further developing the foundational writing skills students learned in FYS I. Students will continue to hone the intellectual skills of reading critically, and writing responsively, which forms the basis of each student's career at the School. While faculty have autonomy in determining course theme, the theme is an accessory to the writing; the balance in these classes is weighed toward explicit writing instruction and workshopping of student writing, not content. This course provides guided experience in writing college-level essays of various kinds, which may include critical, analytical and argumentative essays, and must include the research paper. It is a policy of the department that at least one essay be a research paper which may involve searching for sources in a library or online, learning to make citations, and preparing an annotated bibliography. A significant amount of time is devoted to the craft of writing, and more sophisticated methods of argumentation and use of evidence and developing independent claims and ideas are explored. Students should expect to write 20-25 pages of formal, revisable writing across the course of the semester. A significant amount of time may be devoted to re-writing essays, so as to develop first drafts into final versions. In-class writing, short homework exercises, and workshopping of student work may be included. Individual meetings to discuss each student's papers should be expected.
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Class Number
1339
Credits
3
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SAIC Scholars Studio Symposia |
Liberal Arts |
2198 (001) |
Fall 2025 |
Description
This studio symposium joins an exploration of narrative theory (narratology) with workshops where students write and make their own narrative art across different forms and media. Narratology is concerned with big questions about storytelling: What are the fundamental concepts of narrative? How do narratives work, and how do we process and understand them? What are the key differences between alternative narrative forms? How do differences in media, genre, and cultural traditions inform how stories are constructed and understood? How have narrative forms changed over time, up to our digital present? Why do we share a common drive to tell stories in and with our making? We will read foundational theoretical texts (from Aristotle to twentieth-century and contemporary authors) and discuss them in relation to mythic, literary, cinematic, graphic, serial, and visual art narratives. Students will bring new ideas to the studio, where they will develop and complete narrative works individually and collectively.
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Class Number
1536
Credits
3
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SAIC Scholars Studio Symposia |
Undergraduate Studies |
2198 (001) |
Fall 2025 |
Description
This studio symposium joins an exploration of narrative theory (narratology) with workshops where students write and make their own narrative art across different forms and media. Narratology is concerned with big questions about storytelling: What are the fundamental concepts of narrative? How do narratives work, and how do we process and understand them? What are the key differences between alternative narrative forms? How do differences in media, genre, and cultural traditions inform how stories are constructed and understood? How have narrative forms changed over time, up to our digital present? Why do we share a common drive to tell stories in and with our making? We will read foundational theoretical texts (from Aristotle to twentieth-century and contemporary authors) and discuss them in relation to mythic, literary, cinematic, graphic, serial, and visual art narratives. Students will bring new ideas to the studio, where they will develop and complete narrative works individually and collectively.
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Class Number
1827
Credits
3
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Top: Marxism, Art, and Culture |
Visual and Critical Studies |
3001 (004) |
Spring 2025 |
Description
Marxism isn't just about the 'real world' critique of capitalism and the potential rise of communism. Many thinkers and critics who have written in the wake of Karl Marx have tried to articulate what it means (and why it's important) to read like a Marxist, to understand literature, art, and all the rest of human culture as a historical expression of the human condition under capital. This course serves as an introduction to Marxism and Marxist aesthetics, literary criticism, and cultural critique. We will begin by reading Marx and Engels, and then spend most of the semester considering core concepts as they develop over the subsequent century and a half of Marxist art, literary, and cultural criticism. We will ask questions like: what is the relationship between narrative representation, socio-political life, and its underlying economic forces? Do artworks produce autonomous worlds and meanings or are they entirely shaped by capitalism and class society? How do artifacts like novels, poems, theatrical texts, films, or visual artworks theorize history and society? What do the rise of specific forms, genres, and popular cultural practices tell us about social history? To what extent is it useful to read like/as a Marxist (and are there limitations in doing so)?
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Class Number
1774
Credits
3
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Shakespeare |
Liberal Arts |
3122 (001) |
Fall 2025 |
Description
This course is both a broad introduction to Shakespeare and an opportunity to delve deeply into some of his most enchanting, disturbing, maddening, and comical works. Students should expect a good amount of reading (as well as a good amount of learning how to navigate the challenging aspects of his language and style). We will likely read at least one play from the following major genres (paying the most attention to the last): history, comedy, romance, and tragedy. We will also consider performances and adaptations and spend time on a broad selection of Shakespeare's sonnets. Students will engage in multiple formats of peer discussion, take turns presenting material, and complete regular writing assignments in response to the reading.
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Class Number
1547
Credits
3
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Literature In Historical Contexts |
Liberal Arts |
3190 (003) |
Spring 2025 |
Description
Mastering a body of literature in the context of its specific historical, sociological, and ideological period is emphasized. The period and works vary.
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Class Number
2377
Credits
3
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