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Writing Program

• University Writing Requirements
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University Writing Seminars (UWS)

Fall 2008
Spring 2009

*Click on the course title to view description

Fall 2008

• See the Brandeis University Bulletin for undergraduate writing requirements
• Further information and frequently asked questions regarding the writing program, including composition, can be found here.

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Fall 2008

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UWS 1a: The Experience of Beauty
MWR 9-10
Adam Rutledge
Office: Rabb

How do we distinguish “good” art from “bad” art?  Why do we consider some paintings to be masterpieces and others to be kitsch?  Are there universal and timeless principles by which to judge a work of literature, or are these judgments always culturally determined?  To explore these questions, this course will pair theoretical texts by authors such as Kant, Kierkegaard, and Eagleton with concrete examples of historical and contemporary works of art, including paintings by Raphael, poetry by W.B. Yeats, and contemporary artwork from Brandeis’s Rose Art Museum.  Students will write three papers relating the theories of art they encounter in the course to artwork they discuss in class or discover on their own, using analytical and research techniques applicable to all disciplines.


UWS 2a: Histories of the Future
MWR 9-10
Kyle Wiggins
Office: Rabb

What can we learn from imagining the future? How does conjuring future worlds change our understanding of the present? What value do visions of tomorrow have once they come true or darken into failure? This course will ponder these questions while examining the layered histories of looking forward. We will probe how and why the urgent anxieties of various cultures become locked within dreams of the future. From the rubble of old and new prognostications we will excavate the philosophies (Enlightenment, Singularity), movements (millennialism, high modernism, speculative/fabulist/skeptical literature), and politics (techno-social progressivism, utopian, dystopian) of futurism. Texts will be selected from the collapsible tiers of popular culture, and include film, fiction, advertisements, music, philosophy, and (some) theory. While searching for missing flying cars and jet packs, students will hone analytic, writing, and research skills essential for success at the university.


UWS 3a: The New Woman in Literature, Media, and Society
MWR 9-10
Amy Easton-Flake
Office: Rabb

How do images of the suffragette, the flapper, Rosie the Riveter, or June Cleaver affect society today?  This course will focus on representations of women in literature, media, and society during the first half of the Twentieth Century.  We begin by looking at the “new woman” at the turn-of-the-century and women’s struggle for the vote, and we end by exploring the implications of these images for women and society.  Using depictions of and arguments about the “new woman” found in canonical literature, film, political tracts, and advertisements, we will learn to look analytically at these texts to understand and break down each author’s argument.  The essay assignments for this course are designed to teach you the skills necessary for your success at Brandeis.  You will learn to engage critically with texts, organize and develop your thoughts, and integrate outside sources to better express your arguments.  Peer reviews, individual conferences, class discussion, and revisions will help you refine the style, grammatical form, organization, and overall quality of your analytical writing.


UWS 4a: Style and Content: The Art of the Essay
MWR 9-10
Dominic Green
Office:

What makes good writing good, and great writing great? Does style (how you say it) affect content (what you say)?  Students have to write endless essays. This course teaches the secrets of fast, successful writing. Its reading list contains no complex theoretical literature, only short essays by great writers: Montaigne, Orwell, Didion, Swift, Steiner, Ozick, Tolstoy. We’ll read them closely, work out the tricks and techniques that make good writing  great, and then incorporate our findings into your writing. Many of these essays will pop up elsewhere on your reading lists too, so reading them now will save time later. But studying them as a writer will help your writing and speaking at Brandeis and beyond, because successful people are articulate people. You'll write three essays: a short analysis of an essayist’s technique; a short comparative reading between two essays; and then your own essay, on any topic of your choice.


UWS 5a: Scenes of American Travel
MWR 9-10
Nick Van Kley
Office:

For at least 150 years, Americans have been imagining themselves and their nation by leaving home. Confronting unfamiliar terrain has proven, paradoxically, a productive way to explore American identity and culture. Travel, it seems, has been more than mere leisure. Beginning with Mark Twain and finishing with Sarah Vowell, this course will examine some of the conventions of American travel writing. What motivates the project of travel? What is the relationship between the traveler and the interrogated culture? How does the traveler use cultural difference to construct an account of her or himself? These are a few of the questions we will explore as we consider the relationship between nation, self, and the other in this genre. Students will be encouraged to develop a critical attitude toward this popular form of expression by developing skills for cogent textual analysis and argumentation. Ultimately, this course will help students cultivate the necessary faculties for writing successful academic essays, faculties which will serve the students throughout their careers at Brandeis.


UWS 6a: Music and Noise
MWR 9-10
Jeremy Spindler
Office:

What is music?  To some it is Bach, Ellington, or the Beatles, while to others it may be the raw and simple sounds of nature.  There are some people who consider music to be everything from silence, to the sounds of a construction site, to the squeaking of a rubber duck.  Yet still to others, music can only exist within certain constraints or places such as a concert hall or through a stereo.  During the twentieth-century, several artists such as John Cage, Milton Babbitt, and Sonic Youth have caused people to think deeper about what music really is, spawning a deeper meaning for the phrase "one person's music is another person's noise".  These artists, among others have caused a heated debate between musicians and non-musicians, both inside and outside of academia, about what can and cannot be considered music.

Through critical reading, writing, and peer-review, we will take a look at artists whose work is considered "music" by some but "noise" by most and search for what might have led them to their 'unusual' aesthetics.  The goal of this course will be to elevate your personal writing skills, learn to develop an argument, and become a more effective communicator with the written word.  No prior study of music is required.


UWS 7a: Authority and Authenticity in Ethnography, Journalism, and Documentary
T, R 3-4
Laura John
Office:

Anthropologists routinely struggle to represent their subjects objectively.  Many acknowledge this as an unattainable goal, yet ethnography (defined as both the methodology of anthropological research and its product) remains a key way anthropologists describe and analyze their subjects while the documentary (which could be considered a kind of pop ethnography) maintains an aura of authenticity.

In order to delve deeper into the ever-present but often overlooked themes of authority, objectivity, and authorship in ethnography and documentary, this course will foster the development of incisive analysis and sophisticated academic writing.  Structured assignments, class discussions, peer group workshops, and conferences will direct us as we explore different writing tasks and consider an array of ethnographic texts - some traditional, some not – and documentary styles.  Readings include Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild and Werner Herzog’s film Grizzly Man as well as selections from more classic ethnographies.


UWS 8a: Music in a World of Words: Popular Music and its Criticism Since 1967
T, R 3-4
Christian Gentry
Office:

Did you ever read a review about your favorite band or artist and think the critic got it all wrong? How would it be to examine music in a way where you could come up with your own compelling criticism? This course will examine popular music criticism since the birth of Rolling Stone Magazine to the current age of blogs and webzines (Pitchfork Media, Dusted, Impose Magazine, etc.). This class isn’t just about popular music; it is about how popular music is criticized, what is used for criticism, and why certain styles of criticism are more or less effective than others. 

Some possible questions that will be thought over in this class are: In what ways has popular music criticism provided thorough and understandable analyses of the music in question? In what ways has such criticism failed?  How does academic writing address popular music? What biases exist in these critical media and how do they affect audience reception? By examining these questions through several writing assignments and essays, including a research paper, the student will walk away from the class with an overall confidence in writing and a specific aptitude for thinking, analyzing and formalizing his or her own criticism about popular music. In addition to academic journals and periodicals/webzines, the following texts may be included: Liptstick Traces by Greil Marcus, Babylon is Burning by Clinton Heylin, Our Band Could Be Your Life by Michael Azzerad, and Confusion is Next: The Sonic Youth Story by Alec Foege.


UWS 9a: Latin-American Music and the Construction of Identity
T, R 3-4
Robert Pearson
Office:

Music plays a central role in the construction of Latin-American identity on many levels. At the local level, music unites and directs groups toward a common goal, be it social, political, or religious.  On the national level, musical styles help to define the identities of certain Latin-American nations: Mexico's mariachi, Argentina's tango, Brazil's samba, for example.  On the broadest level, music helps to define what the world perceives as Latin-America, and how Latin-Americans perceive themselves.

This course will examine a variety of Latin-American music, always with the intention of uncovering how this music constructs the identities of those who produce it, consume it, and claim it as their own.  How do Shakira's music videos portray Latin crossover pop?  How does the concept of machismo figure into Latin music?   Through readings, listening, discussion and three essays, you will engage with these and other similar questions.  You will learn to think and write analytically and creatively about music and identity, and will develop writing skills that will prepare you for a successful future as a writer at Brandeis. This class does not require any prior knowledge of music or foreign languages.


UWS 10a: Popular Music and Identity
T, R 3-4
Joseph Morgan
Office:

We’ve all been asked the old question: “Imagine yourself a castaway on a deserted island and you can only bring one artist’s music; what do you bring?” Whether you answer Brahms, The Beatles, or Biggie Smalls, your response is an expression of your identity, a statement that is more about you than it is about the artist you choose. Through lectures and three writing projects, this course will explore the ways in which popular music expresses the identity of both audience and performer.  In the first project, you will conduct a close reading of a song’s lyrical and musical content in order to reveal an artist’s construction of his/her own identity. In the second project, you will view an artist’s audience through the lens of a particular framework of identity in order to ascertain the relationship between that artist’s intention and his/her audience’s reception. Finally, drawing on the ideas learned during the first two projects, the final project will consider the role of genre in the relationship between artist and audience. All writing will be subject to revision, and the final projects will be presented in a professional manner to the class at the end of the term.


UWS 11a: Staging Madness
T, R 3-4
Cory Nelson
Office:

Why are playwrights so fascinated with scenes of madness and with different forms of extreme psychic experience?  What is the inherent theatricality of madness, as well as the madness of theatricality?   From Medea to Hamlet to Blanche Dubois, the madman and madwoman have been recurrent dramatic archetypes, figures that both critique social conventions and complicate the notion of a stable, unified self.  In this writing seminar, we will examine theatrical representations of insanity, focusing on major works by modern dramatists.  The texts we examine will include Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire, Peter Shaffer's Equus, and David Auburn's Proof or Tony Kushner's Angels in America.  We will discuss the manner in which madness is linked to creativity, sexuality, and the desire for transcendence.   Guiding our exploration will be excerpts from critical theory.  We will also write about everything that we read, developing three polished essays as we work through the elements of academic writing.  By the end of the semester, each student will have produced a close reading essay, a "lens" essay - which uses one text to interpret another - and a research paper.


UWS 12a: Transgressing Categories: Gendery, Sexuality and the Body
T, R 3-4
Alison Better
Office: Rabb

One way we understand the world is through the creation and maintenance of identity categories.  These categories aid in our reading of the worlds we inhabit and the people we encounter.  In this course, we will examine ways in which categories of gender and sexuality have been created, maintained and challenged in society.  We will attempt to understand moments where the boundaries between male and female and homosexual and heterosexual have the potential to become blurred or flexible.  Using examples from popular culture to begin our analyses, we will use writing to further our understanding of the structure and utility of gender and sexuality categories in today’s society.

The course is organized in three major units which will serve as a basis for learning the tools to succeed at college writing.  By applying theoretical texts from Butler, Halberstam, hooks, and Fausto-Sterling to cases from popular culture we will examine meanings of gender and sexuality categories through a variety of writing assignments.  Small class size and student conferences will allow for multiple forms of communication and dialogue to flourish. This course provides students the opportunity to grow--both as a scholar and a writer.


UWS 13a: Transgressing Categories: Gendery, Sexuality and the Body
T, R 4-5
Alison Better
Office:

One way we understand the world is through the creation and maintenance of identity categories.  These categories aid in our reading of the worlds we inhabit and the people we encounter.  In this course, we will examine ways in which categories of gender and sexuality have been created, maintained and challenged in society.  We will attempt to understand moments where the boundaries between male and female and homosexual and heterosexual have the potential to become blurred or flexible.  Using examples from popular culture to begin our analyses, we will use writing to further our understanding of the structure and utility of gender and sexuality categories in today’s society.

The course is organized in three major units which will serve as a basis for learning the tools to succeed at college writing.  By applying theoretical texts from Butler, Halberstam, hooks, and Fausto-Sterling to cases from popular culture we will examine meanings of gender and sexuality categories through a variety of writing assignments.  Small class size and student conferences will allow for multiple forms of communication and dialogue to flourish. This course provides students the opportunity to grow--both as a scholar and a writer.


UWS 14a: Writing the Rhythm: Caribbean Music and Contemporary Writing
T, R 4-5
Njelle Hamilton
Office:

“a new way/ of understanding sound”
— Kwame Dawes, “Some Tentative Definitions III”

Caribbean musicians have perfected the art of storytelling in the popular music forms of reggae, salsa and calypso. Today, however, the magic of Marley, the Mighty Sparrow and Celia Cruz is no longer limited to the sound system, but echoes from the pages of Caribbean novels, stories and poems.

In this course we will develop the analytical and argumentative skills of sophisticated academic writing as we read contemporary Caribbean writers’ attempt to “ride/write the rhythm” of the Caribbean.  We will examine the lyrics and rhythms of reggae, calypso and salsa alongside their literary counterparts, including Kwame Dawes, Sam Selvon and Victor Hernandez Cruz; we will probe the intersection between oral and literary storytelling and interrogate the ability of the written word to capture and describe music and sound.

Our process will include listening assignments, class discussions, peer group workshops, conferences and sequenced papers ranging from a close-reading of a reggae poem to writing a research paper on the cultural context of Nuyorican salsa. The process of writing about these intertwined forms and continued self-evaluation will enable you to develop the foundational skills of academic writing that will stand you in good stead throughout college and beyond.


UWS 15a: Minimalist Music
T, R 4-5
Peter Lane
Office:

The Minimalist movement has arguably been the most prevalent and controversial style of experimental music and art in the last century.  Why has this rebellious trend become so influential? How has Minimalism been the creative conduit for many politically driven composers? Through the analysis of Minimalist concert music, film music, and opera, as well as various texts on musical aesthetics, we will discover how this artistic philosophy has formed the identity of an entire generation of American musicians and artists.  Through continual writing, revision, group discussion, and student conferences, we will gain a better understanding of how the arts define culture, and develop the writing skills crucial for your academic and professional success.

This course is organized into three units with the main purpose of developing academic writing skills.  Subject matter for writing assignments will discuss the music and artistic statements of composers such as John Adams, Phillip Glass, Steve Reich, David Lang, Terry Riley, as well as other musicians, bands, artists, architects, and writers who have been influenced by the Minimalist movement.  Prior formal knowledge of music is not a requirement for this course.


UWS 16a: Authority and Authenticity in Ethnography, Journalism, and Documentary
T, R 4-5
Laura John
Office:

Anthropologists routinely struggle to represent their subjects objectively.  Many acknowledge this as an unattainable goal, yet ethnography (defined as both the methodology of anthropological research and its product) remains a key way anthropologists describe and analyze their subjects while the documentary (which could be considered a kind of pop ethnography) maintains an aura of authenticity.

In order to delve deeper into the ever-present but often overlooked themes of authority, objectivity, and authorship in ethnography and documentary, this course will foster the development of incisive analysis and sophisticated academic writing.  Structured assignments, class discussions, peer group workshops, and conferences will direct us as we explore different writing tasks and consider an array of ethnographic texts - some traditional, some not – and documentary styles.  Readings include Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild and Werner Herzog’s film Grizzly Man as well as selections from more classic ethnographies.


UWS 17a: Desiring Fiction
T, R 4-5
Bendta Schroeder
Office: Rabb

We all know the story:  girl meets boy, troubles interfere, troubles are overcome, girl gets boy.  But whether it's canonical texts like Pride and Prejudice or the latest popular "chick flick," we come back to the same story again and again.  The question is, if we all know how it's going to end, why do we keep reading and rereading (or watching and rewatching) these narratives?  In this course, we will engage with eighteenth to twenty-first century texts of different genres including Eliza Haywood's short story Fantomina, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, and at least one example of contemporary film or television, in order to investigate how readers participate in--and resist--forms of desire constructed by narrative structure and historical and social contexts.  The aim of this course is to learn how to translate personal investments, such as the pleasures of reading, into rigorous academic questions.  We will supplement our fictional texts with a range of historical and theoretical readings and experimentation with a variety of writing activities and assignments, including close reading, lens, and research-based essays.   Our goal will be to produce about twenty-five pages of polished writing, in which we expand and develop the analytical and technical skills essential for strong academic writing. 


UWS 18a: Popular Music and Identity
T, R 4-5
Joseph Morgan
Office:

We’ve all been asked the old question: “Imagine yourself a castaway on a deserted island and you can only bring one artist’s music; what do you bring?” Whether you answer Brahms, The Beatles, or Biggie Smalls, your response is an expression of your identity, a statement that is more about you than it is about the artist you choose. Through lectures and three writing projects, this course will explore the ways in which popular music expresses the identity of both audience and performer.  In the first project, you will conduct a close reading of a song’s lyrical and musical content in order to reveal an artist’s construction of his/her own identity. In the second project, you will view an artist’s audience through the lens of a particular framework of identity in order to ascertain the relationship between that artist’s intention and his/her audience’s reception. Finally, drawing on the ideas learned during the first two projects, the final project will consider the role of genre in the relationship between artist and audience. All writing will be subject to revision, and the final projects will be presented in a professional manner to the class at the end of the term.


UWS 19a: The Wonder Years: American Children in the 20th Century
MWR 1-2
Megan Hamilton
Office:

During the tumult that preceded the American Revolution, the thirteen colonies were apt to describe themselves collectively as a child throwing off overbearing “mother” England. It’s no surprise then that children have continued to figure prominently in American mythology, especially as figures of hope, innocence and possibility.  In this course, we will think about portrayals of children in the latter half of the twentieth century and ask ourselves whether the voices of those children—whether in fiction, comics, or an episode of a TV series—support or subvert those stereotypical portrayals.  Is childhood innocence possible any longer, or are children just small adults in overly cute clothing?  Has the seemingly limitless possibility for imagination and exploration in novels of the 19^th century fallen victim to the manicured grass of suburban backyards and parental paranoia? Are today’s children really just “Organization Kids,” on a path for success beginning with Baby Einstein? What kind of childhood do we idealize, and how does that compare to the lives children live now?

We will be looking at a variety of sources likely to include Jonathan Safar Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, essays by David Sedaris, short stories by Sandra Cisernos, ZZ Packer and Richard Yates, Charles Shultz’s comic strip “Peanuts,” and, indeed, an episode of The Wonder Years.  We will think about the practices involved in close and reflective reading and write a series of papers designed to encourage the articulation of individual arguments and analysis, culminating with a final research paper in which you can further explore your own questions about contemporary childhood. 


UWS 20a: Spaces of Conflict
MWR 1-2
Nathanael Robinson
Office:

As technology seems to close the gap between peoples, land, place, and environment have become essential to struggles over identity and ideology. Whether in the heart of Africa or on the US borders, space has become an implacable dimension of what divides us and what’s worth fighting for. Using novels, memoirs, photographs, and theory, this course will explore how notions of place and environment are constructed and politicized. New Mexico and Cologne will serve as case studies for understanding spaces of ethnicity, nationalism and war. Through a variety of assignments, students will develop their writing skills while becoming familiar with analytical and theoretical techniques. For the final project, students will write a research paper that will explore one of the many “environmental crises” that haunt places like the African Great Lakes, suburban Paris, and New Orleans.

UWS 21a: Fantasy and Literature
MWR 1-2
Rachel Kapelle
Office:

Formulaic, predictable, escapist:  all charges leveled against contemporary fantasy literature. These charges have led to the genre’s marginalization by the academy and by critics in general. In recent years, however, fantasy has received more attention from academics and is increasingly prominent in American pop culture as well, thanks to Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings. In this course we will consider elements of the genre and investigate works which alter typical formulas. Finally, we will look at films which challenged the stereotype fantasy movie = bad acting, bad script, and corny special effects.

Our conversations will serve as raw material for the main focus of this UWS:  writing in a college environment. Most courses at Brandeis require writing in some form. This seminar prepares you for your future classes by discussing standards of academic writing, the formulation of effective arguments, and methods of research. You will complete a sequence of assignments which includes three kinds of papers you will encounter throughout your college career. Knowing how to present complex positions and use resources to support them are key abilities no matter which major a student chooses; this seminar helps you to develop these skills.


UWS 22a: Grotesque Bodies
MWR 1-2
Tina Van Kley
Office:

Henry David Thoreau declared, “I stand in awe of my body,” expressing a sense of the body as a source of delight, wonder, and even artistic inspiration.  Conversely, the body can also be a source of embarrassment, dismay, and disgust.  Both the pleasure and the disgust the body can evoke are brought together in the concept of the “grotesque body,” which will be the theme of this writing seminar.  Mikhail Bakhtin claimed that exaggeration, hyperbolism, and excessiveness are “fundamental attributes of the grotesque style,” and that, as a mode of representation, the grotesque comments on and critiques social realities.  In this class we will read, discuss, and write about the “grotesque body” as it is represented across a variety of cultural texts, including poetry, short stories, and television, in order to ask what critical functions those representations serve.  What can the spectacle of a “grotesque body” convey that an ordinary one can’t?  For what reasons and on what occasions is the grotesque appropriate?  Is the grotesque ever “appropriate”? We will consider the function of the “grotesque body” with respect to issues of gender, race, and class, drawing examples from the past, as well as frowm our own historical moment, as we work together to write three major essays, each developing skills that will be crucial throughout your college careers.


UWS 23a: Spaces of Conflict
MWR 12-1
Nathanael Robinson
Office:

As technology seems to close the gap between peoples, land, place, and environment have become essential to struggles over identity and ideology. Whether in the heart of Africa or on the US borders, space has become an implacable dimension of what divides us and what’s worth fighting for. Using novels, memoirs, photographs, and theory, this course will explore how notions of place and environment are constructed and politicized. New Mexico and Cologne will serve as case studies for understanding spaces of ethnicity, nationalism and war. Through a variety of assignments, students will develop their writing skills while becoming familiar with analytical and theoretical techniques. For the final project, students will write a research paper that will explore one of the many “environmental crises” that haunt places like the African Great Lakes, suburban Paris, and New Orleans.

UWS 24a: What is Tragedy?
MWR 12-1
Martin Moraw
Office:

In our culture, we frequently use the term “tragic” in everyday language, either to describe immediate personal experiences or historical and political events, or to define a body of literary texts. At the same time, however, it is extremely difficult for us to explain precisely what we mean by the term “tragedy.” In this University Writing Seminar, we will trace the long history of this uncertainty. Perhaps to a greater extent than any other literary form, tragedy has provoked vastly different or even utterly incompatible responses to questions about its aesthetic value, philosophical meaning, and political and ideological implications.

We will read tragedies from different historical periods and cultures (authors will include Sophocles and Shakespeare, as well as an example from contemporary film or television) and we will consider a wide range of theoretical approaches to the tragic form (ranging from Aristotle to Hegel, Nietzsche and other modern thinkers). In addition to that, we will interrogate the ways in which current news reports frame disastrous events as “tragedies.” The aim of this seminar is to arrive at a better understanding of the reasons for the enormous cultural influence and surprising longevity of this aesthetic form. Over the course of the semester, students will complete a sequence of assignments and exercises designed to help them acquire the skills needed to navigate the challenges of academic writing successfully.


UWS 25a: The Monster and Me
MWR 12-1
Lisa Rourke
Office:

Whether it’s Frankenstein’s Monster, Dr. Jekyll’s counterpart, Mr. Hyde, or Philip Pullman’s villainous Mrs. Coulter, we are often both fascinated and repelled by monstrous beings, leading us to wonder how different we really are from such dysfunctional creatures.  Does each of us, in fact, harbor a subconscious monster?  Do we have agency over our actions and ourselves?  Focusing on monstrous figures depicted in literature, we will consider the various ways we construct and deconstruct identity.  To frame our thinking we will actively participate in the "nature versus nurture" debate by engaging with critical thinkers from the fields of philosophy and psychology.

This course will also foster the development of incisive analysis and sophisticated academic writing as a way to explore questions of identity and its constitution. Structured assignments, class discussions, peer group workshops, and conferences will direct us as we explore different writing tasks and consider an array of texts including Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and The Golden Compass.  We will experiment with a variety of writing activities and assignments including close reading, lens, and a research-based essay.  In addition, we will supplement our fictional texts with a range of theoretical readings by thinkers including John Locke, B.F. Skinner and Sigmund Freud.  Our goal will be to produce about twenty-five pages of strong academic writing in which we expand and develop our analytical and technical skills.

---

Spring 2009

---

Spring 2009
*Click on the course title to view description

• See the Brandeis University Bulletin for undergraduate writing requirements
• Further information and frequently asked questions regarding the writing program, including composition, can be found here.

---

Spring 2009

---

UWS 1b: Style and Content: The Art of the Essay
MWR 9-10
Dominic Green
Office:

What makes good writing good, and great writing great? Does style (how you say it) affect content (what you say)?  Students have to write endless essays. This course teaches the secrets of fast, successful writing. Its reading list contains no complex theoretical literature, only short essays by great writers: Montaigne, Orwell, Didion, Swift, Steiner, Ozick, Tolstoy. We’ll read them closely, work out the tricks and techniques that make good writing great, and then incorporate our findings into your writing. Many of these essays will pop up elsewhere on your reading lists too, so reading them now will save time later. But studying them as a writer will help your writing and speaking at Brandeis and beyond, because successful people are articulate people. You'll write three essays: a short analysis of an essayist’s technique; a short comparative reading between two essays; and then your own essay, on any topic of your choice.


UWS 2b: Violence and Communication
MWR 9-10
Brian Chalk
Office:

What signifying power do we attribute to violence? Do authors incorporate acts of violence into their works to signal a breakdown in communication or a form of communication? This course will investigate these and other questions by analyzing landmark texts such as William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince, and Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver. During the semester, students will write three different kinds of academic essays based on these readings with the goal of developing the abilties to construct coherent, lucidly expressed papers and thus prepare for successful writing careers at Brandeis and beyond. Students who enroll in this class should be prepared to redefine their conceptions of good writing and effective argumentation and to take seriously their responsibility to participate in class discussion.


UWS 3b: Music and Noise
MWR 9-10
Jeremy Spindler
Office:

What is music?  To some it is Bach, Ellington, or the Beatles, while to others it may be the raw and simple sounds of nature.  There are some people who consider music to be everything from silence, to the sounds of a construction site, to the squeaking of a rubber duck.  Yet still to others, music can only exist within certain constraints or places such as a concert hall or through a stereo.  During the twentieth-century, several artists such as John Cage, Milton Babbitt, and Sonic Youth have caused people to think deeper about what music really is, spawning a deeper meaning for the phrase "one person's music is another person's noise".  These artists, among others have caused a heated debate between musicians and non-musicians, both inside and outside of academia, about what can and cannot be considered music.

Through critical reading, writing, and peer-review, we will take a look at artists whose work is considered "music" by some but "noise" by most and search for what might have led them to their 'unusual' aesthetics.  The goal of this course will be to elevate your personal writing skills, learn to develop an argument, and become a more effective communicator with the written word.  No prior study of music is required


UWS 4b: Scenes of American Travel
MWR 9-10
Nick Van Kley
Office:

For at least 150 years, Americans have been imagining themselves and their nation by leaving home. Confronting unfamiliar terrain has proven, paradoxically, a productive way to explore American identity and culture. Travel, it seems, has been more than mere leisure. Beginning with Mark Twain and finishing with Sarah Vowell, this course will examine some of the conventions of American travel writing. What motivates the project of travel? What is the relationship between the traveler and the interrogated culture? How does the traveler use cultural difference to construct an account of her or himself? These are a few of the questions we will explore as we consider the relationship between nation, self, and the other in this genre. Students will be encouraged to develop a critical attitude toward this popular form of expression by developing skills for cogent textual analysis and argumentation. Ultimately, this course will help students cultivate the necessary faculties for writing successful academic essays, faculties which will serve the students throughout their careers at Brandeis.


UWS 5b: Histories of the Future
MWR 9-10
Kyle Wiggins
Office:

What can we learn from imagining the future? How does conjuring future worlds change our understanding of the present? What value do visions of tomorrow have once they come true or darken into failure? This course will ponder these questions while examining the layered histories of looking forward. We will probe how and why the urgent anxieties of various cultures become locked within dreams of the future. From the rubble of old and new prognostications we will excavate the philosophies (Enlightenment, Singularity), movements (millennialism, high modernism, speculative/fabulist/skeptical literature), and politics (techno-social progressivism, utopian, dystopian) of futurism. Texts will be selected from the collapsible tiers of popular culture, and include film, fiction, advertisements, music, philosophy, and (some) theory. While searching for missing flying cars and jet packs, students will hone analytic, writing, and research skills essential for success at the university.


UWS 6b: The Experience of Beauty
MWR 9-10
Adam Rutledge
Office:

How do we distinguish “good” art from “bad” art?  Why do we consider some paintings to be masterpieces and others to be kitsch?  Are there universal and timeless principles by which to judge a work of literature, or are these judgments always culturally determined?  To explore these questions, this course will pair theoretical texts by authors such as Kant, Kierkegaard, and Eagleton with concrete examples of historical and contemporary works of art, including paintings by Raphael, poetry by W.B. Yeats, and contemporary artwork from Brandeis’s Rose Art Museum.  Students will write three papers relating the theories of art they encounter in the course to artwork they discuss in class or discover on their own, using analytical and research techniques applicable to all disciplines.


UWS 7b: Succeeding on Paper and in Person: A Writing Seminar on Non-Verbal Communication and First Impressions
T, R 3-4
Amanda Hemmesch
Office:

It's not always what you say, but sometimes how you say it, that matters. By studying nonverbal communication, first impressions, and impression management strategies, we can gain a richer understanding of how seemingly small details like posture and clothing can profoundly affect your first day of class, a job interview, or a first date. Psychological theory and research, such as Goffman's dramaturgical model and McArthur and Baron's ecological theory of social perception, will guide our investigation of what our nonverbal communication says about us, as well as how context influences impressions of what is being presented in social interaction. Not only will you develop college-level writing skills through a series of in-class exercises, discussions, and three extensively revised papers, but you will also be able to apply what we discuss about nonverbal communication to a variety of social situations in your own daily lives.


UWS 8b: All What Jazz?
T, R 3-4
Sarah Provost
Office:

From Dixieland in the 1910s to fusion in the 1970s, jazz has been simultaneously adored and despised. This course will examine jazz and some of the controversies that have surrounded it from its beginnings.  Is one jazz style more legitimate than another? Can one race claim jazz performance? How does one define jazz? Class materials, including reviews by Philip Larkin, recordings by Count Basie and Charlie Parker, as well as Ken Burns's documentary, Jazz, will help us formulate persuasive arguments based on our opinions. This course is designed to give you critical thinking and analytic writing skills that will serve you throughout your college career. Papers will consist of close readings of music and reviews, an analysis of issues pertaining to race, and a research paper on a jazz style of your own choosing.


UWS 9b: Latin American Music and the Construction of Identity
T, R 3-4
Robert Pearson
Office:

Music plays a central role in the construction of Latin-American identity on many levels. At the local level, music unites and directs groups toward a common goal, be it social, political, or religious.  On the national level, musical styles help to define the identities of certain Latin-American nations: Mexico's mariachi, Argentina's tango, Brazil's samba, for example.  On the broadest level, music helps to define what the world perceives as Latin-America, and how Latin-Americans perceive themselves.

This course will examine a variety of Latin-American music, always with the intention of uncovering how this music constructs the identities of those who produce it, consume it, and claim it as their own.  How do Shakira's music videos portray Latin crossover pop?  How does the concept of machismo figure into Latin music?   Through readings, listening, discussion and three essays, you will engage with these and other similar questions.  You will learn to think and write analytically and creatively about music and identity, and will develop writing skills that will prepare you for a successful future as a writer at Brandeis. This class does not require any prior knowledge of music or foreign languages.


UWS 10b: Popular Music and Identity
T, R 3-4
Joseph Morgan
Office:

We’ve all been asked the old question: “Imagine yourself about to be castaway on a deserted island and you can bring only one artist’s music, what do you bring?” Whether you answer “Brahms,” “The Beatles,” or “Biggie Smalls,” your response is an expression of your identity, a statement that is more about you than it is about the artist you choose. Through lectures and three writing projects, this course will explore the ways in which popular music expresses the identity of both audience and performer.  In the first project, you will conduct a close reading of a song’s lyrical and musical content in order to reveal an artist’s construction of his/her own identity. In the second project, you will view an artist’s audience through the lens of a particular framework of identity in order to ascertain the relationship between that artist’s intention and his/her audience’s reception. Finally, drawing on the ideas learned from the first two projects, the final project will consider the role of genre in this relationship between artist and audience. All writing will be subject to revision, and the final projects will be presented in a professional manner to the class at the end of the term.


UWS 11b: The New Woman in Literature, Media and Society
T, R 3-4
Amy Easton-Flake
Office:

How do images of the suffragette, the flapper, Rosie the Riveter, or June Cleaver affect society today?  This course will focus on representations of women in literature, media, and society during the first half of the Twentieth Century.  We begin by looking at the “new woman” at the turn-of-the-century and women’s struggle for the vote, and we end by exploring the implications of these images for women and society.  Using depictions of and arguments about the “new woman” found in canonical literature, film, political tracts, and advertisements, we will learn to look analytically at these texts to understand and break down each author’s argument.  The essay assignments for this course are designed to teach you the skills necessary for your success at Brandeis.  You will learn to engage critically with texts, organize and develop your thoughts, and integrate outside sources to better express your arguments.  Peer reviews, individual conferences, class discussion, and revisions will help you refine the style, grammatical form, organization, and overall quality of your analytical writing.


UWS 12b: Jerusalem in Memories
T, R 3-4
Yeliz Baloglu
Office:

In this course we will read, discuss and write about Jerusalem. Through the streets of this "Holy City" we will search for change, harmony, and conflict. We will use the memoirs of travelers and of city dwellers to find our way along this historical journey. Our main goal will be to learn how to put our own thoughts into words in a sophisticated way. Through weekly exercises, discussions of reading materials and three writing assignments, this seminar will introduce you to the forms and conventions of academic writing. The texts that we will read and discuss during the semester serve to parallel the religious and ethnic diversity of Jerusalem. We will read passages from the memoirs, diaries, biographies and letters of intellectuals, political activists, bureaucrats, artists, and ordinary men and women whose lives and dreams were attached to Jerusalem. Theodor Herzl, David Ben Gurion,  Edward Keith-Roach, Felicia Langer, David Azrieli, Wasif Jawrariyah, Raphael Patai, Walter Laqueur, John Melkon Rose are only a few of many historical figures who will help us observe how a single city on Earth turns into several different names, colors, traditions, ideas, and identities. Reading and analyzing different perspectives from different time periods on Jerusalem will teach us (1) how to analyze the influence of historical (temporal and spatial) context on ideas and identities and (2) how to mold an original outlook on the complexities of human life and experience by developing our own perspectives.


UWS 13b: Minimalist Music
T, R 4-5
Peter Lane
Office:

The Minimalist movement has arguably been the most prevalent and controversial style of experimental music and art in the last century.  Why has this rebellious trend become so influential? How has Minimalism been the creative conduit for many politically driven composers? Through the analysis of Minimalist concert music, film music, and opera, as well as various texts on musical aesthetics, we will discover how this artistic philosophy has formed the identity of an entire generation of American musicians and artists.  Through continual writing, revision, group discussion, and student conferences, we will gain a better understanding of how the arts define culture, and develop the writing skills crucial for your academic and professional success.

This course is organized into three units with the main purpose of developing academic writing skills.  Subject matter for writing assignments will discuss the music and artistic statements of composers such as John Adams, Phillip Glass, Steve Reich, David Lang, Terry Riley, as well as other musicians, bands, artists, architects, and writers who have been influenced by the Minimalist movement.  Prior formal knowledge of music is not a requirement for this course.


UWS 14b: Defining Satire
T, R 4-5
Steven Plunkett
Office:

There are those who say that we are living in a golden age of satire.  A survey of the local paper or the evening news certainly seems to reveal a world that is rife with satiric possibility, and if the widespread popularity of entertainment fare like The Daily Show is any indication, it seems as though audiences are hungry for it.  These commentators point to the multiplicity of satiric forms that have emerged with the new century and the ease with which they find new targets and audiences.  However, others claim that modern public discourse has become too arch and ironized for the satirist’s tools to have any real effect, and that productions like The Daily Show and The Onion are themselves symptoms of this trend.  They claim that satire’s classic mission of moral correction has in fact fallen away, replaced by petty partisanism or total misanthropy.  How did we ever reach this peculiar historical moment?  How do contemporary forms like The Colbert Report really compare to the classic models of Pope and Swift?   How do we go about defining a mode of expression that has adapted itself to nearly every available form, from the classical epic to the news broadcast, and that has attracted the talents of writers as different from one another as Dorothy Parker, George Saunders, Ambrose Bierce, and Langston Hughes?

This course offers the opportunity to investigate the mode of expression we call satire through a variety of readings in multiple media that stretch from satire’s modern reinvention in the early Eighteenth Century to the present day.  Students will also encounter a number of different theories of satire that attempt to define the genre in various ways. The rhetoric of satire and the never-ending quest to define it offers engaged scholars a good opportunity to sharpen and apply their own skills of argumentation and analysis, and that is precisely what students in this course will do as they read closely, apply theories of satire, and engage in original research over the course of three substantial essay assignments.  The semester culminates in the opportunity for students to produce a well-researched satire of their own.  Students should leave the course with an understanding of the nature and conventions of academic writing and prepared to begin their scholastic careers at Brandeis.


UWS 15b: Desiring Fiction
T, R 4-5
Bendta Schroeder
Office:

We all know the story:  girl meets boy, troubles interfere, troubles are overcome, girl gets boy.  But whether it's canonical texts like Pride and Prejudice or the latest popular "chick flick," we come back to the same story again and again.  The question is, if we all know how it's going to end, why do we keep reading and rereading (or watching and rewatching) these narratives?  In this course, we will engage with eighteenth to twenty-first century texts of different genres including Eliza Haywood's short story Fantomina, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, and at least one example of contemporary film or television, in order to investigate how readers participate in--and resist--forms of desire constructed by narrative structure and historical and social contexts.  The aim of this course is to learn how to translate personal investments, such as the pleasures of reading, into rigorous academic questions.  We will supplement our fictional texts with a range of historical and theoretical readings and experimentation with a variety of writing activities and assignments, including close reading, lens, and research-based essays.   Our goal will be to produce about twenty-five pages of polished writing, in which we expand and develop the analytical and technical skills essential for strong academic writing. 


UWS 16b: History and Identity
T, R 4-5
Gordon Ruesch
Office:

How much are we primarily the people whom we come from? How much of us is where we come from, its culture, geography, and its history? Can it really be that we are what we make ourselves? Or, are we unwittingly destined to reenact past patterns, historical nightmares our families survived but failed properly to comprehend? We'll see what literature and contemporary thought have to say on this matter; we'll also explore what we think by seeing what we say (write!). By inspecting excerpts from Isaiah Berlin's Hedgehog and the Fox, Leo Tolstoy's philosophy of history in War and Peace, evolutionary psychologist Stephen Pinker's The Blank Slate, and Richard E. Nisbett's The Geography of Thought, we'll assess claims about genetic inheritance of identity, divergent patterns of cognition produced by cultural "speciation," and about wholly accidental patterning of identity and history.  In E.L Doctorow's City of God we'll survey narrative visions interrogating how our identities unfold; then we'll try to decide the same ourselves: who we are and why?

Writing three papers of graduated complexity (occasional shorter writing exercises too), students will exercise critical analytic skills and rehearse a variety of academic writing forms.  As forensic readers and writers, can we be clear about the representations of identity in fiction? (Tall order! Good exercise!) Do the literary accounts of how identity evolves coincide with those from our theorists? (Perhaps. Which theory will writers find rings true?) Will this inquiry hold implications for how we see ourselves and who we become? (A certainty!)


UWS 17b: Popular Music and Identity
T, R 4-5
Joseph Morgan
Office:

We’ve all been asked the old question: “Imagine yourself about to be castaway on a deserted island and you can bring only one artist’s music, what do you bring?” Whether you answer “Brahms,” “The Beatles,” or “Biggie Smalls,” your response is an expression of your identity, a statement that is more about you than it is about the artist you choose. Through lectures and three writing projects, this course will explore the ways in which popular music expresses the identity of both audience and performer.  In the first project, you will conduct a close reading of a song’s lyrical and musical content in order to reveal an artist’s construction of his/her own identity. In the second project, you will view an artist’s audience through the lens of a particular framework of identity in order to ascertain the relationship between that artist’s intention and his/her audience’s reception. Finally, drawing on the ideas learned from the first two projects, the final project will consider the role of genre in this relationship between artist and audience. All writing will be subject to revision, and the final projects will be presented in a professional manner to the class at the end of the term.


UWS 18b: Music in a World of Words: Popular Music and its Criticism Since 1967
T, R 4-5
Christian Gentry
Office:

Did you ever read a review about your favorite band or artist and think the critic got it all wrong? How would it be to examine music in a way where you could come up with your own compelling criticism? This course will examine popular music criticism since the birth of Rolling Stone Magazine to the current age of blogs and webzines (Pitchfork Media, Dusted, Impose Magazine, etc.). This class isn’t just about popular music; it is about how popular music is criticized, what is used for criticism, and why certain styles of criticism are more or less effective than others. 

Some possible questions that will be thought over in this class are: In what ways has popular music criticism provided thorough and understandable analyses of the music in question? In what ways has such criticism failed?  How does academic writing address popular music? What biases exist in these critical media and how do they affect audience reception? By examining these questions through several writing assignments and essays, including a research paper, the student will walk away from the class with an overall confidence in writing and a specific aptitude for thinking, analyzing and formalizing his or her own criticism about popular music. In addition to academic journals and periodicals/webzines, the following texts may be included: Liptstick Traces by Greil Marcus, Babylon is Burning by Clinton Heylin, Our Band Could Be Your Life by Michael Azzerad, and Confusion is Next: The Sonic Youth Story by Alec Foege.


UWS 19b: Grotesque Bodies
MWR 1-2
Tina Van Kley
Office:

Henry David Thoreau declared, “I stand in awe of my body,” expressing a sense of the body as a source of delight, wonder, and even artistic inspiration.  Conversely, the body can also be a source of embarrassment, dismay, and disgust.  Both the pleasure and the disgust the body can evoke are brought together in the concept of the “grotesque body,” which will be the theme of this writing seminar.  Mikhail Bakhtin claimed that exaggeration, hyperbolism, and excessiveness are “fundamental attributes of the grotesque style,” and that, as a mode of representation, the grotesque comments on and critiques social realities.  In this class we will read, discuss, and write about the “grotesque body” as it is represented across a variety of cultural texts, including poetry, short stories, and television, in order to ask what critical functions those representations serve.  What can the spectacle of a “grotesque body” convey that an ordinary one can’t?  For what reasons and on what occasions is the grotesque appropriate?  Is the grotesque ever “appropriate”? We will consider the function of the “grotesque body” with respect to issues of gender, race, and class, drawing examples from the past, as well as frowm our own historical moment, as we work together to write three major essays, each developing skills that will be crucial throughout your college careers.


UWS 20b: The Monster and Me
MWR 1-2
Lisa Rourke
Office:

Whether it’s Frankenstein’s Monster, Dr. Jekyll’s counterpart, Mr. Hyde, or Philip Pullman’s villainous Mrs. Coulter, we are often both fascinated and repelled by monstrous beings, leading us to wonder how different we really are from such dysfunctional creatures.  Does each of us, in fact, harbor a subconscious monster?  Do we have agency over our actions and ourselves?  Focusing on monstrous figures depicted in literature, we will consider the various ways we construct and deconstruct identity.  To frame our thinking we will actively participate in the "nature versus nurture" debate by engaging with critical thinkers from the fields of philosophy and psychology.

This course will also foster the development of incisive analysis and sophisticated academic writing as a way to explore questions of identity and its constitution. Structured assignments, class discussions, peer group workshops, and conferences will direct us as we explore different writing tasks and consider an array of texts including Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and The Golden Compass.  We will experiment with a variety of writing activities and assignments including close reading, lens, and a research-based essay.  In addition, we will supplement our fictional texts with a range of theoretical readings by thinkers including John Locke, B.F. Skinner and Sigmund Freud.  Our goal will be to produce about twenty-five pages of strong academic writing in which we expand and develop our analytical and technical skills.


UWS 21b: Fantasy Literature
MWR 1-2
Rachel Kapelle
Office:

Formulaic, predictable, escapist:  all charges leveled against contemporary fantasy literature. These charges have led to the genre’s marginalization by the academy and by critics in general. In recent years, however, fantasy has received more attention from academics and is increasingly prominent in American pop culture as well, thanks to Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings. In this course we will consider definitions of the genre and investigate works which alter typical formulas. Finally, we will look at films which challenged the stereotype “fantasy movie = bad acting, bad script, and corny special effects.”

Our conversations will serve as raw material for the main focus of this UWS:  writing in a college environment. Most courses at Brandeis require writing in some form. This seminar prepares you for your future classes by discussing standards of academic writing, the formulation of effective arguments, and methods of research. You will complete a sequence of assignments which includes three kinds of papers you will encounter throughout your college career. Knowing how to present complex positions and use resources to support them are key abilities no matter which major a student chooses; this seminar helps you to develop these skills.


UWS 22b: Poverty and Philanthropy in American Fiction
MWR 1-2
Joseph Wensink
Office:

This course examines several key works of twentieth-century American fiction that attempt to understand poverty.  In particular, we will look at how literary representations of poverty relate to extra-literary institutional programs aimed at redressing economic inequality.  This comparison will enable us to unearth the implicit ideologies that inform literary and institutional understandings of poverty, and to develop the critical tools necessary to articulate and engage their philanthropic visions.  Readings will include novels, short stories, nonfiction, and essays; these texts will likely include authors such as William Dean Howells, Andrew Carnegie, Gertrude Stein, William Faulkner, James Agee and Walker Evans, John Steinbeck, Toni Morrison, Bill and Melinda Gates, William T. Vollmann, Muhammad Yunus, and Cormac McCarthy.


UWS 23b: Staging Madness
MWR 12-1
Cory Nelson
Office:

Why are playwrights so fascinated with scenes of madness and with different forms of extreme psychic experience?  What is the inherent theatricality of madness, as well as the madness of theatricality?   From Medea to Hamlet to Blanche Dubois, the madman and madwoman have been recurrent dramatic archetypes, figures that both critique social conventions and complicate the notion of a stable, unified self.  In this writing seminar, we will examine theatrical representations of insanity, focusing on major works by modern dramatists.  The texts we examine will include Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire, Peter Shaffer's Equus, and David Auburn's Proof or Tony Kushner's Angels in America.  We will discuss the manner in which madness is linked to creativity, sexuality, and the desire for transcendence.   Guiding our exploration will be excerpts from critical theory.  We will also write about everything that we read, developing three polished essays as we work through the elements of academic writing.  By the end of the semester, each student will have produced a close reading essay, a "lens" essay - which uses one text to interpret another - and a research paper.


UWS 24b: The Wonder Years: American Children in the 20th Century
MWR 12-1
Megan Hamilton
Office:

During the tumult that preceded the American Revolution, the thirteen colonies were apt to describe themselves collectively as a child throwing off overbearing “mother” England. It’s no surprise then that children have continued to figure prominently in American mythology, especially as figures of hope, innocence and possibility.  In this course, we will think about portrayals of children in the latter half of the twentieth century and ask ourselves whether the voices of those children—whether in fiction, comics, or an episode of a TV series—support or subvert those stereotypical portrayals.  Is childhood innocence possible any longer, or are children just small adults in overly cute clothing?  Has the seemingly limitless possibility for imagination and exploration in novels of the 19^th century fallen victim to the manicured grass of suburban backyards and parental paranoia? Are today’s children really just “Organization Kids,” on a path for success beginning with Baby Einstein? What kind of childhood do we idealize, and how does that compare to the lives children live now?

We will be looking at a variety of sources likely to include Jonathan Safar Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, essays by David Sedaris, short stories by Sandra Cisernos, ZZ Packer and Richard Yates, Charles Shultz’s comic strip “Peanuts,” and, indeed, an episode of The Wonder Years.  We will think about the practices involved in close and reflective reading and write a series of papers designed to encourage the articulation of individual arguments and analysis, culminating with a final research paper in which you can further explore your own questions about contemporary childhood.


UWS 25b: What is Tragedy?
MWR 12-1
Martin Moraw
Office:

In our culture, we frequently use the term “tragic” in everyday language, either to describe immediate personal experiences or historical and political events, or to define a body of literary texts. At the same time, however, it is extremely difficult for us to explain precisely what we mean by the term “tragedy.” In this University Writing Seminar, we will trace the long history of this uncertainty. Perhaps to a greater extent than any other literary form, tragedy has provoked vastly different or even utterly incompatible responses to questions about its aesthetic value, philosophical meaning, and political and ideological implications.

We will read tragedies from different historical periods and cultures (authors will include Sophocles and Shakespeare, as well as an example from contemporary film or television) and we will consider a wide range of theoretical approaches to the tragic form (ranging from Aristotle to Hegel, Nietzsche and other modern thinkers). In addition to that, we will interrogate the ways in which current news reports frame disastrous events as “tragedies.” The aim of this seminar is to arrive at a better understanding of the reasons for the enormous cultural influence and surprising longevity of this aesthetic form. Over the course of the semester, students will complete a sequence of assignments and exercises designed to help them acquire the skills needed to navigate the challenges of academic writing successfully.


UWS 26b: Music and Injustice
MWR 1-2
Reba Wissner
Office:

How closely related is music to social commentary? How and why are various social injustices expressed through music? Why is music so adept as a medium for expressing social commentary? What can music accomplish in terms of changing injustices? This course will explore these questions by examining relevant pieces from different genres and historical periods. This course is designed to prepare you to engage critically and creatively with difficult and unfamiliar texts in order to think critically and construct effective arguments. Through frequent writing assignments and revisions you will develop the necessary writing skills that will serve you in college and in your future careers.

This is a writing workshop. A writing course will show you, as few other courses can, that the learning process never stops; one doesn’t “arrive” at being a good writer, but rather continually becomes one.  This writing seminar asks you to be thoughtful and self-reflective about that process: to question and to evaluate your own work in each assignment and in the course as a whole. Part of assessing that progress will be developing your sense of what you already do well. In addition, the course will challenge you to figure out how you want to grow as a writer, both this semester and beyond.


UWS 27b: Writing the Rhythm: Caribbean Music and Contemporary Writing
T, R 4-5
Njelle Hamilton
Office:

“a new way/ of understanding sound”
— Kwame Dawes, “Some Tentative Definitions III”

Caribbean musicians have perfected the art of storytelling in the popular music forms of reggae, salsa and calypso. Today, however, the magic of Marley, the Mighty Sparrow and Celia Cruz is no longer limited to the sound system, but echoes from the pages of Caribbean novels, stories and poems.

In this course we will develop the analytical and argumentative skills of sophisticated academic writing as we read contemporary Caribbean writers’ attempt to “ride/write the rhythm” of the Caribbean.  We will examine the lyrics and rhythms of reggae, calypso and salsa alongside their literary counterparts, including Kwame Dawes, Sam Selvon and Victor Hernandez Cruz; we will probe the intersection between oral and literary storytelling and interrogate the ability of the written word to capture and describe music and sound.

Our process will include listening assignments, class discussions, peer group workshops, conferences and sequenced papers ranging from a close-reading of a reggae poem to writing a research paper on the cultural context of Nuyorican salsa. The process of writing about these intertwined forms and continued self-evaluation will enable you to develop the foundational skills of academic writing that will stand you in good stead throughout college and beyond.

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