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.

RFW FICTION: CONTEMPORARY PUERTO RICAN WRITING This course will introduce students to the various forms, genres, and themes of diverse Puerto Rican writers from the early twentieth century to the present. Special attention will be paid to issues of coloniality, decoloniality, and diaspora, including numerous intersectional perspectives, and authors will include Julia de Burgos, Esmeralda Santiago, Piri Thomas, Edwardo Lalo, Roberto Lopez, Lyn Di Orio, Jennifer Maritza McCauley, and John Madera, among others.