READING FOR WRITERS: FICTION: DYSTOPIAN FICTION. This course explores diverse works of literature broadly construed as “dystopian.” Focusing mainly on novels, short stories, and movies, students will become acquainted with some of the early classics of the genre as well as a variety of contemporary texts across a broad spectrum of sub-genres, such as cyber-punk, historical, and/or existential dystopias, to name a few. In so doing, students will analyze the aesthetic, rhetorical, and ideological tropes at work in dystopian narratives, identify common plot structures, metaphors, symbols, and themes, and investigate what, if anything, constitutes such disparate works of fiction as a genre. Students will be required to write response papers, make oral presentations, and produce either a 10-page critical essay or a creative work, subject to the instructor’s approval.

READING FOR WRITERS FICTION: CRIME STORIES: This course examines crime stories, true and fictional. Storytelling has long focused on criminals and criminal acts. In this seminar students will read and respond critically as well as creatively to narratives featuring criminal protagonists. The psychological, social, and material characterization of criminals and, more broadly, of transgressive behavior will raise several questions: What is the criminal type? What draws writers to such figures? How do we come to understand social and moral norms? What is a crime?

READING FOR WRITERS FICTION: THE GLOBAL NOVEL: This course looks at contemporary novels that respond to a sense of interconnectedness between different places and time periods. All are global in taking place in more than one geographical location; all play with form, genre, and style; most have close relationships with other cultural forms such as cinema, visual arts, and poetry; and many raise questions about authorship, history, and politics. The authors studied in the course will include David Mitchell, Rachel Kushner, and Roberto Bolaño, and will include critical work by theorists and critics as well as reviews, interviews, essays, and profiles that provide a context for the works being read. Students will be required to lead discussions, write response papers, take short tests, and produce, as a final requirement, a 10-12 page literary essay, scholarly paper, or creative project.

RFW FICTION: UTOPIA, DYSTOPIA, HETEROTOPIA. This course offers Writing students an interdisciplinary approach to the outstanding authors and works of utopian, dystopian, and heterotopian literature—such as Thomas More, el Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Aldous Huxley, Octavia Butler, and N.K. Jemisin—in conjunction with the works of twentieth century social, cultural, and political thinkers whose ideas the fictional texts both inform and engage, such as W.E.B DuBois, Michel Foucault, Fredric Jameson, Donna Haraway, and Kodwo Eshun, among others. Students will develop a nuanced understanding of certain forms of fiction as responding to political, social, and cultural debates, as well as the ways in which those same debates incorporate and respond to literary and aesthetic production. *Note: Students who have taken Prof. Fuerst’s RFW Dystopian Fiction will not be eligible to take this course.

RFW FICTION: THE INDIAN NOVEL: The postcolonial nations of South Asia -- India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal -- together make up one of the most unequal, populous, and climatically vulnerable places in the world, a region where the promise of decolonization has given way to neoliberalism and authoritarianism. This course explores how the novel in India and its neighboring nations grapples with such transformations and how the realism and magic realism dominant in the region have taken a recent turn towards the weird, the occult, and the speculative. The writers studied in this course will include Fatima Bhutto, Amitav Ghosh, Mohammad Hanif, and Shehan Karunatilaka.

RFW: FICTION - BREAKING UP: LOVE STORIES Some of the most famous and relatable scenes in all literary fiction revolve around romantic relationships. In this class, we will see what is so provocative and compelling about a thrown glass, a text left on read, a clandestine kiss in an hourly motel. Analyzing the craft techniques in these stories will teach students the building blocks as fiction while also learning about the various modes and methods of romantic love and ending such a mystery on the page.