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?

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 - 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.