Sean Yeager

Each section of these first-year seminars approaches the study of literature through the exploration of a single theme in texts drawn from a variety of literary genres (such as tragedy, comedy, lyric poetry, epic, novel, short story, film and autobiography) and historical periods. Classes are small, offering intensive discussion and close attention to each student's writing. Students in each section are asked to work intensively on composition as part of a rigorous introduction to reading, thinking, speaking and writing about literary texts. During the semester, instructors assign frequent essays and may also require oral presentations, quizzes, examinations and research projects. This course is not open to juniors and seniors without permission of the department chair. Offered every year.

Each section of these first-year seminars approaches the study of literature through the exploration of a single theme in texts drawn from a variety of literary genres (such as tragedy, comedy, lyric poetry, epic, novel, short story, film and autobiography) and historical periods. Classes are small, offering intensive discussion and close attention to each student's writing. Students in each section are asked to work intensively on composition as part of a rigorous introduction to reading, thinking, speaking and writing about literary texts. During the semester, instructors will frequent essays and may also require oral presentations, quizzes, examinations and research projects. This course is not open to juniors and seniors without permission of the department chair. Offered every year.

Students in this course read widely in the interdisciplinary field of science and nature writing, and work to improve their own creative nonfiction craft. Science and nature writing is a large umbrella that accommodates diverse interests and topics, including cosmology, the climate crisis, medical humanities, metamathematics, non-human animal language, parasitic mushrooms, cybernetics — and even the scientific method itself. The list goes on. Outside reading will include essays and at least one book-length work by acknowledged masters of the form, in addition to independent research in science and the natural world. Writers are challenged to translate their research into creative nonfiction (which may include memoir, science writing, essays, graphic narrative, or other hybrid forms). This course depends on open-mindedness and willingness to change; qualities of fluidity and mutual respect guide our classroom discussions and writing workshops. This counts toward the creative writing emphasis and the creative practice requirement for the major. Prerequisite: permission of the instructor via application. Consult the department for information on the application process and dedlines.

Long ago, in answer to the question, "What is time?" St. Augustine wrote: "If no one asks me I know, but when someone does I do not." Time continues to be hard to define or explain. But where philosophy and physics fail, some say, narrative succeeds. Narrative engagement — as the creative record of history, the form of personal recollection or the way to trace the succession of moments in an ordinary day — may be the cultural form through which we truly understand the meaning of time. To test this theory, this course reads narrative fiction that experiments with the representation of time to see what such fiction has to say about time and how the problem of time determines the forms, styles and techniques of narrative fiction. Primary texts include novels and stories by Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoy, Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, Jorge Luis Borges and others. Secondary reading includes philosophical treatments of time, literary-critical accounts of the time-narrative relationship, and cultural histories of time's changing meanings. Prerequisite: ENGL 210-29 or junior standing.