RFW 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: ARUNDHATI ROY: This course will grapple with the work of the writer Arundhati Roy and the manner in which it moves between fiction and nonfiction, between writing and politics, and between the Global South and the North. She will be considered especially as a writer from the Third World, with her works used to open up questions between writing and capitalism, imperialism, and modernity. The readings will include Roy’s first novel, The God of Small Things, a selection of her wide-ranging nonfiction, as well as writers her work is in conversation with, including John Berger and Eduardo Galeano. Students will be required to make presentations, conduct research, carry out critical and creative writing exercises, and produce an essay, an academic paper, or a creative project as a final requirement.

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.