These data were not obtained from SIS in real time and may be slightly out of date. MouseOver the enrollment to see Last Update Time
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| African-American and African Studies |
 AAS 2500 | Topics Course in Africana Studies |
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| | African Refugees, Cultures & Stories |
| Spring 2024 12870 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed  | 18 / 18 | Anne Rotich | MoWeFr 1:00pm - 1:50pm | Clemons Library 320 |
| | In this course we will examine compelling narratives of African migrants& refugees, exploring their experiences of migration, displacement, resilience, and the complex socio-political contexts in which they find themselves. Through an interdisciplinary, experiential approach, students will gain a deep understanding of the challenges faced by African migrants and refugees, the reasons behind their forced migration, and the ways in which they navigate their new lives in different host countries. |
| | Black Girlhood in the Media |
| Spring 2024 12834 | 002 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 30 / 30 | Ashleigh Wade | We 2:00pm - 4:30pm | New Cabell Hall 489 |
| | How do movies, viral videos, and memes impact the material lives of Black girls? This course offers an introduction to the emergent and growing field of Black Girlhood Studies, especially in relation to media representation and engagement. The course will cover foundational texts about Black girlhood alongside a range of media – newspapers, magazines, film, and Internet/social media content – to explore the ways in which Black girlhood has been constructed and portrayed through these platforms. We will use these explorations as a way of 1) understanding the tenets of Black girlhood studies and 2) identifying what is at stake in documenting and representing Black girls’ experiences. As part of the course, you will have an opportunity to create their own media/text (YouTube video, website/blog, essay collection, chapbook, etc.) about Black girlhood. |
| | The History & Present of Black Family Life |
| Spring 2024 19726 | 005 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 12 / 18 | Eshe Sherley | We 5:00pm - 7:30pm | Bryan Hall 310 |
| | Family is where many of our stories begin. Whether our families are biological, chosen, or made from the alchemy of play cousins and family friends, many of us developed our understanding of self and our relationships to others through the discourse and practice of “family.” Family is also a powerful social and political discourse that has organized African American history and life since slavery. At the same time, Black people have forged their own practices and meanings of family and kinship.
This course encourages students to ask: what defines a family? And how do norms and structures of race, sexuality, class, and gender shape definitions of family? In order to answer these questions together, we will explore everything from the writings of WEB Dubois, to episodes of The Cosby Show, to debates between Black luminaries (from Amiri Baraka to Audre Lorde) about the meaning of family and its implications for how gender and sexuality shape Black social life. However, family is not just a matter of Black intellectual history, it also molds each of our lives. In that spirit, this class will not only teach students how to analyze discourses of Black family life but will also offer the opportunity to learn how to use family photographs, oral histories, and historical documents to tell our own family histories.
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| AAS 3157 | Caribbean Perspectives |
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| Spring 2024 19727 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 13 / 18 | FATIMA SIWAJU | Tu 3:30pm - 6:00pm | New Cabell Hall 411 |
| | The Caribbean has often been stereotyped as a tropical paradise replete with breathtaking beaches and smiling, languid locals. This exoticizing perspective no doubt flattens the complex histories and contemporary realities of Caribbean societies. This course therefore explores the rich intellectual, political, and cultural currents that have emanated from the Caribbean. Drawing upon the influential work of Caribbean thinkers, artists, and activists, this course foregrounds the Caribbean as a critical contributor to ways of thinking and being in the world.
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| AAS 3300 | Social Science Perspectives on African American and African Studies |
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| Spring 2024 12314 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 13 / 16 | Sabrina Pendergrass | TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm | New Cabell Hall 068 |
| | How would a survey study of Black students’ college aspirations differ from an in-depth interview study of the aspirations? How do psychological and sociological perspectives compare in what they tell us about people’s racial attitudes? How might one conduct an ethnographic study of Black families’ housing experiences? What are people’s economic experiences of our criminal justice system? We will address these and other questions in AAS 3300. In this course, you will learn about research methods and substantive debates across the social sciences that contribute to Africana Studies. You will learn about methods such as in-depth interviews, ethnographies, surveys, content analyses, focus groups, and more. You also will learn about ethical debates regarding past and present use of such methods in a variety of social science fields. Through this course, you will learn how social science research can enrich efforts to understand issues such as education, housing, or incarceration as they relate to the African diaspora.
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| AAS 3500 | Intermediate Seminar in African-American & African Studies |
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| | Race & Medicine in Post-19th Century America |
| Spring 2024 12833 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 20 / 16 | Liana Richardson | TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm | New Cabell Hall 303 |
| | In this course, we will examine the medical practices involved in the social construction of racial difference and the persistence of racial health inequities during the last 60 years. Drawing from relevant scholarship in sociology, anthropology, medicine, and law, we will discuss the origins, manifestations, and consequences of racism in medical research and practice, including but not limited to the continued role of medicine in racial meaning-making. We will also consider why the medicalization of social issues -- from violence to drug use -- is so often a racialized process, focusing especially on how contrasting schemas of medicalization and criminalization result in the differential labeling and treatment of racial groups as either victims or villains. Together, these topics will help us understand how and why an institution that claims to hold itself accountable to the principles of beneficence and non-maleficence can simultaneously be involved in perpetuating and sometimes exacerbating health and social inequities. We will conclude the course by considering potential strategies for advancing health equity in light of this reality. |
| | Africulture: The African Roots of US Agriculture |
| Spring 2024 18944 | 004 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 15 / 25 (15 / 25) | Lisa Shutt+1 | Tu 2:00pm - 4:30pm | New Cabell Hall 383 |
| | Led by a practicing farmer-activist, Michael Carter, Jr. of Carter Farms in nearby Orange County, Virginia, we will examine how principles, practices, plants and people of African descent have shaped US agriculture, and thus, the lives of all Americans. By examining a wide range of history, laws, attitudes, cultures and traditions, we will see how many US staple commodities and practices have their roots in Africa and observe cultural similarities between indigenous cultures around the world. While evaluating realities of today’s Black farmers and the innovations they devise to survive in a system stacked against them, we will look for solutions to an array of challenges in environmental and agricultural sciences faced by today’s Black farmers. |
| | The Politics of Protest in Afro-Latin America |
| Spring 2024 18945 | 005 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 6 / 18 | Joao Batista Nascimento Gregoire | TuTh 9:30am - 10:45am | New Cabell Hall 315 |
| | In this course we will explore the patterns of resistance adopted by people of African descent in Latin America. Beginning with the Haitian Revolution, students will explore various modes of Afro-Latin American mobilization that range from political and social demonstrations to more popular forms of expression such as music, literature, and dance. By drawing on a broad interpretation of politics, this course explores the multifaceted intersections of race with Latin American states and societies. |
| | Black Freedom Struggle & Antifascism |
| | Readings in the Black Antifascist Tradition |
| Spring 2024 18946 | 006 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 15 / 18 | Anna Duensing | MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm | New Cabell Hall 411 |
| | The global rise in authoritarian, rightwing populist, and seemingly openly fascistic movements and regimes around the world has generated widespread debate about fascism and antifascism--what they are and the prospects for both in the contemporary world. In this course, we will explore the expansive and oft-neglected history and legacies of Black and Afro-diasporic responses to fascisms past and present, focusing on political thought, organizing, and grassroots protest in the United States from the 1930s through the 1970s. Through a combination of lectures, discussions, and other creative exercises and assignments, students can expect an introduction to some of the major Pan-African, anti-colonial, anti-racist, and anti-capitalist figures, movements, and moments that make up the Black Antifascist Tradition. If you have questions about the course, please contact the instructor Anna Duensing at afd2em@virginia.edu. |
| | Take Your Word: Black Autobiography |
| Spring 2024 18947 | 007 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 6 / 22 | Alexandria Smith | TuTh 9:30am - 10:45am | New Cabell Hall 303 |
| | Autobiography is an ambivalently privileged genre within the history of African American identity formation. Under what circumstances have African Americans written and published autobiographical narratives? How have these authors imagined and engaged their audiences? How do these texts inform our historical and contemporary understandings of what it means to be Black, African American, and American? Autobiographical narratives by Black women representing distinct time periods, backgrounds, political positions, life circumstances, and geographic regions will anchor our discussions. Through the semester, our task will be exploring what it means to take African American women “at their word” in order to differently understand the United States of America. This course will be interesting to those invested in using literature as a vehicle for understanding history and politics, and those interested in how theories of race, gender, and identity emerge from lived experiences. |
| | African Americans and Africa: Links in History |
| Spring 2024 18948 | 008 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 3 / 16 | Nemata Blyden | Tu 2:00pm - 4:30pm | New Cabell Hall 064 |
| | This course will examine links between African-Americans and the African continent. The connection between blacks in the Americas and their original homeland has been ongoing, both in real and imagined ways. Throughout the semester we will examine and discuss various themes and issues that relate to African-Americans and Africa. These will include African influences on African-American life and culture, slavery and the cultures of the enslaved, emigration and back to Africa movements, African-Americans in Liberia and Sierra Leone, Black Nationalism, Black missionary movements, African-American perspectives and perceptions of Africa, and African-American contributions to African history.
Emphasis will be placed on how African-Americans have historically viewed and engaged with Africa, both as their place of origin and as a prospective “homeland.” We will explore the kinds of controversy and debate Africa has raised in African-American consciousness, and on the dilemma many African-Americans historically faced in their relationship to the continent. How African-Americans have written about Africa will be an important theme as we look at primary documents. The course will attempt to take issues up to the present, by looking at how African-Americans respond to Africa and African issues today.
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| AAS 4501 | Advanced Research Seminar in History & AAS |
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| | Engaging Local Histories: River View Farm |
| Spring 2024 13410 | 001 | SEM (4 Units) | Open | 4 / 10 | Lisa Shutt | Th 2:00pm - 5:45pm | New Cabell Hall 064 |
| | NOTE: THIS CLASS DOES NOT ACTUALLY MEET FROM 2:00 - 5:45 p.m.! Because we have a number of speakers or short trips over the course of the semester, class will fall WITHIN these times, but will almost always only meet for 2.5 hours per week. |
| | NOTE: THIS CLASS DOES NOT ACTUALLY MEET FROM 2:00 - 5:45 p.m.! Because we have a number of speakers or short trips over the course of the semester, class will fall WITHIN these times, but will almost always only meet for 2.5 hours per week.
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This course aims to encourage students to situate and shed light on various aspects of Black history and culture in Albemarle County and the surrounding regions through the lens and example of River View Farm and those who established it, lived there, farmed there, and led local and regional communities in a number of capacities.
Who were these local leaders? They included a formerly enslaved man, Mr. Hugh Carr (approximately 1843-1914) who was a farm manager on the nearby Woodlands plantation and was able to earn and accumulate enough money to purchase the 58-acre tract that formed the beginnings of River View Farm in 1870. He continued to add to his holding and became an elder in the primarily Black Hydraulic Mills / Union Ridge communities. One of his daughters with his second wife, Ms. Texie Mae Hawkins, was Ms. Mary Louise Carr Greer (1884-1973). She was an incredibly influential educator – a principal of the Albemarle Training School, and a local behind-the-scenes Civil Rights leader. Ms. Greer’s husband, Mr. Conly Greer (1883-1956), was Albemarle County’s first African American Extension Agent. He build a “sanitary demonstration barn” as a teaching tool and rode from one corner of the county to the next on horseback for days at a time to teach Black farmers the newest farming methods supported by the (segregated) Extension Service. Inspired by Mr. Greer, these farmers then taught these cutting edge agricultural skills to their neighbors.
Students will learn how to conduct historical and/or ethnographic research including research of archival materials, material culture, and the landscape/built environment. Each student will embark on a semester-long examination of a topic related to River View Farm, the individuals who lived there, and the larger communities of which they were a part. Instruction will include the examination of primary materials in Special Collections at the University of Virginia in addition to secondary readings that provide context about post-emancipation lives of formerly enslaved men and women, the Black Extension Service and Land Grant University system, Black 4-H youth programs, women’s “Demonstration Clubs,” the history of African American education in the region between 1840-1973, Black agricultural history, African American communities such as Hydraulic Mills and Union Ridge, African American foodways, the importance and format of kitchen gardens, garden clubs, museum studies, the historicization and preservation of local Black histories in the 21st century, and many more potential topics.
An important part of the mission of the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American & African Studies is public outreach. We would like to see our students actively support and engage with communities outside the space and influence of the university.
Some classes will be held on the site of River View Farm (now known as Ivy Creek Natural Area) and there will be some trips during class time. Transportation will be arranged or provided. |
| AAS 4570 | Advanced Research Seminar in African-American & African Studies |
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| | Black Feminist Theory |
| Spring 2024 13409 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 14 / 16 | Alexandria Smith | TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm | New Cabell Hall 068 |
| | In 2024 Black feminism is seemingly everywhere, yet this presence does not necessarily translate to widespread knowledge of or meaningful engagement with the framework. This course pursues what I understand to be Black feminism’s existential questions: What is Black feminism? What and who are Black women? Who are Black feminism’s proper subjects or objects? What are the challenges to Black feminism? What kinds of imagination and creativity are fostered from within a Black feminist framework? To engage these questions, we will explore theoretical, literary, visual, and sonic art from the 1960s to the present day, focusing primarily on the United States while incorporating other diasporic contexts. Students need not have prior experience studying Black feminism, yet should be prepared for reading- and writing-intensive engagement with its ideas. This class is intended to provide a substantial orientation to Black feminist scholarship and to prepare students for further engagement with Black feminist concepts and principles in academic, social, and cultural settings. |
| American Studies |
| AMST 3710 | Mapping Black Landscapes |
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| Syllabus 20350 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed  | 16 / 0 (16 / 0) | Lisa Goff | Tu 3:30pm - 6:00pm | New Cabell Hall 027 |
| | EMAIL PROFESSOR IF YOU WANT TO JOIN THE CLASS--SPOTS OFTEN OPEN UP. Syllabus link is for Spring 2023 class; Spring 2024 will be similar but not identical. This class is taught simultaneously at the 3000 and 5000 levels. There are different requirements/standards for undergrads and grads, but you will attend class together. |
| | Students in this class will learn to use digital mapping and digital narratives as tools of reparative history. (No prior digital experience necessary! We will teach you everything you need to know.) The class will partner with community organizations documenting Black history in central Virginia. Students will do research in historical archives and public records; interview community members; and participate in field work (e.g. geolocating gravesites, photographing historic sites, etc.). Readings will provide an overview of the history of Reconstruction; address ethical aspects of doing community history and oral history in particular; and explore public history approaches to the history of slavery and Reconstruction, with a special emphasis on overlooked or marginalized histories. |
| AMST 5500 | Graduate Topics in American Studies |
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| | Material Culture: Theories and Methods |
| Spring 2024 20201 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 14 / 0 (14 / 0) | Lisa Goff | Mo 3:30pm - 6:00pm | Kerchof Hall 317 |
| | “Material culture” is the stuff of everyday life: landscapes and street corners, skyscrapers and log cabins, umbrellas and dining room tables and Picassos and Fitbits. Every thing in our lives, those we choose and those that are thrust upon us, conveys meaning—many meanings, in fact, from the intentions of the creator to the reception (and sometimes the subversion) of the consumer. Interpreting objects, buildings, and places provides insight into the values and beliefs of societies and cultures past and present. In this course we will study theories of material culture, many of which now intersect with literary criticism, from a variety of scholarly disciplines including anthropology, historical archaeology, art history, geography, environmental humanities, American Studies, and literary studies. And we will apply those theories to texts and artifacts of all kinds, from novels and short stories to movies, photographs, historic sites, visual art and culture, fashion and clothing, landscapes, and more. We will read theorists familiar to students of literature, such as thing theorist Bill Brown, cultural theorist Walter Benjamin, and philosopher Bruno Latour, but also folklorist Henry Glassie; archaeologist James Deetz; anthropologists such as Elizabeth Chin and Daniel Miller; and political theorist Jane Bennet. The class will prepare you to interpret things in ways that illuminate texts, and to read texts in ways that reveal and cultivate the meanings of things.
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| AMST 5710 | Mapping Black Landscapes |
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| Syllabus 20351 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 16 / 0 (16 / 0) | Lisa Goff | Tu 3:30pm - 6:00pm | New Cabell Hall 027 |
| | EMAIL PROFESSOR IF YOU WANT TO JOIN THE CLASS--SPOTS OFTEN OPEN UP. Syllabus link is for Spring 2023 class; Spring 2024 will be similar but not identical. This class is taught simultaneously at the 3000 and 5000 levels. There are different requirements/standards for undergrads and grads, but you will attend class together. |
| | Students will hone their digital mapping and digital narrative skills and learn how to use them as tools of reparative history. (No prior digital experience necessary! We will teach you everything you need to know.) The class will partner with community organizations documenting Black history. Students will do research in historical archives and public records; interview community members; and participate in field work (e.g. geolocating gravesites, photographing historic sites, etc.). Readings will provide an overview of the history of Reconstruction; address ethical aspects of doing community history and oral history in particular; and explore public history approaches to the history of slavery and Reconstruction, with a special emphasis on overlooked or marginalized histories. In addition, students will do a focused set of readings by members of the Black Geographers movement, which emphasizes Black epistemologies of place-making. |
| Anthropology |
| ANTH 2559 | New Course in Anthropology |
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| | Community Sci: Participation Environmental Justice |
| Spring 2024 19168 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 16 / 25 | Kath Weston | TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm | New Cabell Hall 368 |
| | Community Science (CS) -- also known as Citizen Science, People's Science, and Street Science -- encourages people without extensive formal scientific training to contribute to scientific knowledge by participating in scientific research. This course examines several types of CS projects, with a focus on their sociocultural aspects: crowdsourced (help the scientist), co-created (act as a scientist), grassroots (projects initiated from the ground up, based on community needs), and fugitive science (science conducted "on the run"). Other topics include bridging the amateur/expert divide, CS as an outgrowth of social justice movements, Indigenous science, citizen archaeology, bioart and other CS artistic collaborations, sociocultural aspects of scientific knowledge production, and why CS sometimes fosters inequality even when it appears to give everyone a more equal say regarding science's social impacts. Practicums offer students opportunities to learn about various community science projects by participating in them. |
| ANTH 4591 | Majors Seminar |
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| | Anthropology and Anarchy |
| Spring 2024 11179 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 10 / 18 | Mark Sicoli | TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm | Pavilion VIII 102 |
| | Anarchy, as organizing society through horizontal relations of free association, has a European history contemporary with Anthropology’s and has Indigenous histories in many places where people decided together to organize society against the state and hierarchy. Readings survey anthropological writings on anarchy and engage question of how non-European anarchies of Black and Indigenous authors and activists critique anthropological methods. |
| Architecture |
| ARCH 5500 | Special Topics in Architecture |
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| | Art of the Moving Creature 1 |
| | The Art of the Moving Creature |
| Spring 2024 14454 | 002 | Lecture (3 Units) | Permission | 20 / 20 (20 / 20) | Melissa Goldman+1 | TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm | Drama Education Bldg 115C |
| | Instructor Permission Only- please email goldman@virginia.edu with a description of why you want to be in the class and some photos of things you have made, which can be wide ranging! |
| | Combining tools, spaces, and skills of Arts Grounds, this course explores the design and construction of large moving creatures that culminates in a public performance on Grounds. Students will gain hands-on experience with materials, craft, and prototyping structure and skin, and learn lessons from professional designers, artists, and Hollywood creature makers. This is a collaborative course, diving into storytelling and movement to bring each student’s vision to life |
| | Rapid Shelter Displaced People |
| Website 20384 | 003 | Lecture (3 Units) | Permission | 16 / 16 (18 / 18) | Earl Mark | TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm | Campbell Hall 220C |
| | Rapid Shelter Displaced People is an independent projects and interdisciplinary seminar. It is open to graduate and undergraduate students from any discipline by petition on SIS. The interdisciplinary makeup of the class is intended to promote a wider range of project types and perspectives. Through interdicisipinary thinking the goal is to reframe the provisioning of rapidly deployed refugee housing, commonly used spaces and facilities with the longer term health, security, agency, well being, and active involvement of the displaced community in mind. The seminar ths spring is linked to a Center Research grant from the UVA Center for Global Inquiry with collaborating partners in Athens, Greece. We will meet in person in Campball Hall 220C.
There has never been greater urgency for shelter. The UNHCR estimates that there were more than 110 million forciby displaced people in the world as of the mid-2023 million . This number is roughly 41.5 million more than when the seminar began in 2018 which even then was the highest number recorded in history
The seminar is divided into three overlapping phases:
I. January - Februrary, 2024: The seminar begins with general weekly discussions, in-class exercises and guest speakers in order to arrive at a larger view of the state of current thinking and practice. Seminar participants establish an initial area of focus for the semester, review background literature and gain perspective from the diverse group guest speakers.
II. Februrary - March, 2024: The seminar transitions to more independent work, expands upon some areas of background research, explores links between varied case studies that emerge during the semester, and sets the goals for individual efforts. A workshop with expert collaborators from Greece is tentaively planned during this period.
III. April - May, 2024: The seminar will focus on the final development of individual case studies and will emphasize personal feedback sessions or smaller group focus dicussions around shared themes. This final part of the seminar will be conducted both in-person and on-line. *
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| Arabic in Translation |
| ARTR 3450 | Global Masterpieces from the Classical Islamicate World |
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| | Global Masterpieces from the Premodern Islamicate World: A Comparative Approach |
| Spring 2024 18683 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 10 / 25 (10 / 25) | Nizar Hermes | Mo 3:30pm - 6:00pm | New Cabell Hall 395 |
| | For Second Writing Requirement, students need to use the SWR Docusign form on the College's website. |
| | This course explores the literary masterworks of some of the most celebrated authors of the classical Islamicate world (500-1500). It gives students the chance to intensely and comparatively engage notable global texts from “the medieval Islamic republic of letters,” to quote M. J. al-Musawi’s groundbreaking The Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters: Arabic Knowledge Construction (2015). Students will cultivate an appreciation for the development of the intellectual history of the “medieval” Middle East (including North Africa and al-Andalus) alongside their engagement with such masterpieces as Aesopica, Ars Amatoria, Confessiones, The Panchatantra, Tales of Genji, Tahkemoni, The Sundiata, The Decameron, The Canterbury Tales, Lazarillo de Tormes, Othello, Don Quixote, and Robison Crusoe. Drawing on both classical Arabic-Islamic and modern Western theories, we will further form comparative insights into the poetics and politics of the humanist topics encountered across our literary journeys into the rich corpus of Arabic-Islamic adab (belles-lettres). |
| ARTR 5450 | Global Masterpieces from the Classical Islamicate World: A Comparative Appr |
| |
| | Global Masterpieces from the Premodern Islamicate World: A Comparative Approach |
| Spring 2024 20941 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 10 / 25 (10 / 25) | Nizar Hermes | Mo 3:30pm - 6:00pm | New Cabell Hall 395 |
| | This course explores the literary masterworks of some of the most celebrated authors of the classical Islamicate world (500-1500). It gives students the chance to intensely and comparatively engage notable global texts from “the medieval Islamic republic of letters,” to quote M. J. al-Musawi’s groundbreaking The Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters: Arabic Knowledge Construction (2015). Students will cultivate an appreciation for the development of the intellectual history of the “medieval” Middle East (including North Africa and al-Andalus) alongside their engagement with such masterpieces as Aesopica, Ars Amatoria, Confessiones, The Panchatantra, Tales of Genji, Tahkemoni, The Sundiata, The Decameron, The Canterbury Tales, Lazarillo de Tormes, Othello, Don Quixote, and Robison Crusoe. Drawing on both classical Arabic-Islamic and modern Western theories, we will further form comparative insights into the poetics and politics of the humanist topics encountered across our literary journeys into the rich corpus of Arabic-Islamic adab (belles-lettres). |
| American Sign Language |
| ASL 4750 | Contemporary Deaf Studies |
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| Spring 2024 19882 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 23 / 25 | Christopher Krentz | MoWe 3:30pm - 4:45pm | New Cabell Hall 303 |
| | Examines such topics as American deaf history; ASL linguistics; deaf education; cultural versus pathological views of deaf people; controversies over efforts to eliminate sign language and cure deafness; ASL poetry and storytelling; deafness in mainstream literature, film, and drama; deafness and other minority identities; and the international deaf community.
No prior knowledge of Deaf culture or ASL is required for this course. Taught in a seminar-style environment.
Required for the Minor in ASL and Deaf Culture |
| Astronomy |
| ASTR 8500 | Current Astronomical Topics |
| |
| | Professional Development and Proposal Writing |
| Website 11553 | 001 | Lecture (1 Units) | Open | 13 / 24 | Robert O'Connell | Tu 3:30pm - 4:45pm | Astronomy Bldg 265 |
| | A topical seminar on professional development for
graduate students in astronomy to prepare them for research careers
in academia, government, and industry. Topics discussed include
navigating the post-PhD job market, writing proposals and
curriculum vitae, giving presentations, and ethics in research. |
| Biology |
| BIOL 4260 | Cellular Mechanisms |
| |
| | Drug Repurposing: An emerging strategy to target cancer hallmarks |
| Spring 2024 11334 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Permission | 48 / 48 | Mike Wormington | TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm | Chemistry Bldg 206 |
| | Corrected prerequisites: BIOL 3000 and any one of BIOL 3010, 3030, 3050, or any one of CHEM 4410, 4420, 4440. |
| BIOL 4585 | Selected Topics in Biology |
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| | Advances in Drug Discovery & Emerging Therapies |
| Spring 2024 20755 | 003 | SEM (2 Units) | Permission | 5 / 9 | Mike Wormington | TBA | TBA |
| | This is a discussion-intensive course based on: Fundamental science behind today's important medicines. Spector et al Science Translational Medicine 10: 25 April 2018.
https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/10/438/eaaq1787
Prerequisites: BIOL 3000 & 4260 |
| BIOL 4910 | Independent Research in the Life Sciences |
| |
| Spring 2024 11335 | 001 | IND (2 Units) | Open | 154 / 160 | Masashi Kawasaki | TBA | TBA |
| | Before registering for BIOL4910 on SIS, students must obtain verbal consent from a professor outside of the department of biology for mentorship in their laboratory. The potential mentor must hold a title of Professor, Associate Professor, or Assistant Professor in any departments or programs at UVA (Research Assistant Professors, Research Associates, and Graduate Students are excluded). Your research topic must be in the field of broadly defined biology (clinical studies are excluded). SIS registered students will receive a form on which they enter information about their mentors and their official approval for mentorship. |
| Classics |
| CLAS 2559 | New Course in Classics |
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| | Greek & Roman Science, Engineering, & Medicine |
| Spring 2024 18718 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 8 / 25 | John Dillery | MoWeFr 3:00pm - 3:50pm | New Cabell Hall 338 |
| | This class will examine ancient Greek and Roman views on science, medicine, mathematics, technology and engineering. Topics will include the formation of the universe, the nature of matter, zoology, dissection, disease, construction of large civil projects, the Pythagorean theorem, and ancient computers (the so-called Antikythera Mechanism). |
| Commerce |
| COMM 4560 | Topics in Management |
| |
| | Advanced Strategy and Implementation |
| Spring 2024 20258 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 23 / 40 | Jeremy Marcel | TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm | Robertson Hall 221 |
| | The enrollment requirements listed in SIS are inaccurate. This course is open to all 3rd year commerce students. |
| | This course provides students with the tools, frameworks and skills to implement successful strategies (e.g., allocate resources, measure performance, set goals, and manage risk). Students will explore common challenges that derail strategy and learn how to design systems and structures that support the organization’s objectives. The second half of the semester will feature seminars and guest speakers addressing advanced topics on Strategic Management. |
| COMM 4570 | Topics in Finance |
| |
| | Finance & Society |
| Spring 2024 20334 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 5 / 25 | William Wilhelm | TuTh 9:30am - 10:45am | Robertson Hall 260 |
| | Ignore the course description in SIS. It has nothing to do with the course content. Click on the purple number on the left to see a brief course description or email me at wjw9a@virginia.edu to request a tentative syllabus. Likewise, the enrollment requirements in SIS are inaccurate. The course is open to any undergraduate student who has completed introductory microeconomics. FIRST- AND SECOND-YEAR STUDENTS WILL REQUIRE INSTRUCTOR PERMISSION, WHICH I WILL PROVIDE. Bill Wilhelm |
| | Course Description: Financial markets play a central role in market economies, but they are complex, opaque, and prone to human error and misbehavior. The course addresses these social challenges by developing tools for economic, legal, and moral reasoning. The course is intended for a broad audience. Students who are not considering a career in finance will learn how to engage more effectively with public debate around financial markets. Students considering a career in finance will learn how to identify and more thoughtfully respond to conflicts and temptations endemic in financial markets. |
| | Finance & Society |
| Spring 2024 20335 | 002 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 15 / 25 | William Wilhelm | TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm | Robertson Hall 260 |
| | Ignore the course description in SIS. It has nothing to do with the course content. Click on the purple number on the left to see a brief course description or email me at wjw9a@virginia.edu to request a tentative syllabus. Likewise, the enrollment requirements in SIS are inaccurate. The course is open to any undergraduate student who has completed introductory microeconomics. FIRST- AND SECOND-YEAR STUDENTS WILL REQUIRE INSTRUCTOR PERMISSION, WHICH I WILL PROVIDE. Bill Wilhelm |
| | Course Description: Financial markets play a central role in market economies, but they are complex, opaque, and prone to human error and misbehavior. The course addresses these social challenges by developing tools for economic, legal, and moral reasoning. The course is intended for a broad audience. Students who are not considering a career in finance will learn how to engage more effectively with public debate around financial markets. Students considering a career in finance will learn how to identify and more thoughtfully respond to conflicts and temptations endemic in financial markets. |
| COMM 5559 | New Course in Commerce |
| |
| | Race in Commerce |
| Spring 2024 20260 | 001 | Lecture (1.5 Units) | Open | 10 / 25 | Steven Johnson+1 | Th 3:30pm - 4:45pm | Rouss Hall 410 |
| | Through reading, discussion, and reflection, we will examine systemic ways race impacts wealth accumulation, market dynamics, income inequality, and product accessibility. Learn about historic foundations of race, racialized consumer markets, disparities in economic opportunities, and ethical considerations in commercial contexts. Racial disparities perpetuated by systemic inequalities can often be extrapolated to other marginalized communities. |
| | Value, Ambition, and Gender in the Work Arena |
| Spring 2024 20261 | 002 | Lecture (1.5 Units) | Open | 13 / 25 | Adelaide King+1 | Tu 3:30pm - 4:45pm | Rouss Hall 410 |
| | The course is designed for pre-experience (undergraduate or graduate) students who are launching their business careers. By the end of this course, you will:
-Analyze how your personal history and assumptions about gender in the workplace have implications for your future choices.
-Critically evaluate several structural and psychological academic explanations for gender differentials in business careers.
-Gain practical skills and career agency in anticipating, recognizing, and navigating uncertain, challenging, or unsettling career decisions you may face via in-class exercises, cases, and access to the wisdom of experienced leaders. |
| Computer Science |
| CS 4501 | Special Topics in Computer Science |
| |
| | Cryptography |
| Website 19316 | 007 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 13 / 75 | Wei-Kai Lin | TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Thornton Hall E303 |
| | Cryptographic primitives are applied almost everywhere on the network, for instance, encryption and authentication. In this course, we will start from the theoretic foundations that built our belief in cryptography, and then we will visit some essential protocols as well as recent advances in cryptography. A major theme of this course is “provable security,” that is, to define the desired security and then to rigorously prove the security is achieved. Hence, students are expected to be familiar with algorithms and mathematical proofs.
Prerequisites:
[CS 3120 Discrete Mathematics and Theory 2] or equivalent course is necessary. Also, Probability (APMA 3100) is good-to-have. |
| CS 6501 | Special Topics in Computer Science |
| |
| | Computer Architecture: Hardware Accelerators |
| Website 16656 | 006 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 13 / 40 (18 / 50) | Kevin Skadron | TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Olsson Hall 011 |
| | This course will explore the design of a variety of hardware accelerators, including current commercial architectures such as GPUs, TPUs, and FPGAs, and research papers for potential new acceleration architectures, such as processing in memory, new machine-learning accelerators, and so on.
Prerequisites: students taking this course should have had a prior undergraduate course in computer architecture that covers at least pipelines and caches -- for UVA undergraduate students, this would be CS 3330 or ECE 4435 for students in the "old" curriculum, and CS 3130 for students in the "new" curriculum. |
| | Responsible AI: Privacy, Fairness, and Robustness |
| | Responsible AI: Privacy, Fairness, and Robustness Seminar |
| Website 19399 | 007 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 30 / 38 | Ferdinando Fioretto | MoWe 3:30pm - 4:45pm | Rice Hall 340 |
| | This seminar-style course delves into the ethical dimensions of Artificial Intelligence (AI), with a particular focus on the intersectionality of privacy, fairness, and robustness. The course is structured around reading, discussing, and critically analyzing seminal and state-of-the-art papers in the field. Participants will engage in intellectual discourse to understand the challenges, methodologies, and emerging trends related to responsible AI. The course is designed for graduate students with good ML, stats, and optimization background. |
| | Learning in Robotics |
| Website 19402 | 012 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 33 / 38 | Madhur Behl | TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm | Rice Hall 340 |
| | Ever attempted to decipher a robotics paper from renowned conferences like ICRA, IROS, or RSS, only to be deterred by complex math? This course is your solution. Designed to equip you for robotics research, we’ll delve deep into its mathematical core at a graduate level.
We will cover the mathematical foundations of robotics in this graduate-level course. We will rigorously explore the three pillars of robotics: perception, planning, and control. We’ll commence with theoretical discussions on state estimation methods, including the Kalman Filter, EKF, UKF, and Particle Filters, progress to mapping and visual odometry, and then navigate the intricacies of dynamic programming, control, and planning methods such as LQR and MDPs. Our journey will culminate in reinforcement learning models for robotics, like policy gradients and Q-learning, and specialized topics like foundation models for robotics. To ensure practical application, students will undertake programming assignments addressing real-world robotics challenges.
While primarily for graduate students, undergraduates may enroll with the instructor’s approval. |
| Drama |
| DRAM 1559 | New Course in Drama |
| |
| | Designing Spaces |
| | Special Topics: Designing Spaces |
| Spring 2024 19684 | 001 | STO (1 - 4 Units) | Open | 9 / 20 | Yi-Hsuan Ma | MoWe 3:30pm - 4:45pm | Drama Education Bldg 206 |
| | This course explores how to turn everyday spaces into stages. Discover how ordinary rooms, streets, parks, vehicles, and other spaces of daily life can be transformed by storytelling and creative performance! We will study different principles for designing spaces for immersive, site-specific, environmentally aware, and other kinds of performances. Students will have individual and group projects involving scripts, model-making, drawing, and collaging. Open to all students who are interested in storytelling in different spaces, no prior experience/knowledge is required. |
| DRAM 3210 | Scene Design I |
| |
| Spring 2024 19686 | 1 | STO (3 Units) | Permission | 3 / 12 | Yi-Hsuan Ma | MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Drama Education Bldg 206 |
| | This course introduces the development of scenic designs for live performances. Students will study the process of analyzing scripts, researching images and settings, creating designs, modeling, and drafting. Through lectures, demonstrations, and hands-on experience, students are prepared to design for a variety of theater performances. Open to all students including those who enrolled in this class before, we will work on different projects/scripts. |
| DRAM 3652 | Producing Theatre |
| |
| Spring 2024 19691 | 1 | Lecture (3 Units) | Permission | 9 / 15 | Holly McLeod | TuTh 9:30am - 10:45am | Drama Education Bldg 115B |
| | Participants will collaborate to produce a staged reading of the play Raphael's Islands by UVA Alum Alexandra Déglise on March 15, 2024 in the Ruth Caplin Theater. Course discussions and projects will cover theater organization, mission and legal structure. Opportunities for practical application of concepts and best practices in producing include, but are not limited to outreach/publicity, production management and artistic contributions such as casting, digital media development,sound and staging. |
| DRAM 4592 | Special Topics in Drama |
| |
| | Queer Performance |
| | Queer Performance |
| Spring 2024 19695 | 1 | SEM (3 Units) | Permission | 5 / 20 | Katelyn Wood | TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm | Drama Education Bldg 206 |
| | This seminar will examine queer performance and its many meanings in the contemporary United States. We will study a wide range of queer-identifying artists and artists with significant queer fan bases. By analyzing these artists' approaches to theater, performance art, music, digital media, and performance in everyday life, we'll ask: How is performance central to queer joy, community building, protest, and survival? How do queer performance practices intersect with race, class, health, age, and citizenship? We will also read foundational texts in queer studies and engage in various learning activities, such as writing prompts, group discussion, creative practice, and improvisation. |
| DRAM 4597 | Special Topics in Design |
| |
| | Art of the Moving Creature |
| | The Art of the Moving Creature |
| Spring 2024 19698 | 1 | Laboratory (3 Units) | Permission | 20 / 20 (20 / 20) | Melissa Goldman+1 | TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm | Drama Education Bldg 115C |
| | Instructor Permission Only- Please email goldman@virginia.edu with a description of why you want to be in the class and some photos of things you've made, which can be wide ranging. |
| | Combining tools, spaces, and skills of Arts Grounds, this course explores the design and construction of large moving creatures that culminates in a public performance on Grounds. Students will gain hands-on experience with materials, craft, and prototyping structure and skin, and learn lessons from professional designers, artists, and Hollywood creature makers. This is a collaborative course, diving into storytelling and movement to bring each student’s vision to life. |
| Data Science |
| DS 6559 | New Course in Data Science |
| |
| | ML in Systems & Network Security |
| Website 20181 | 003 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 3 / 15 | Wajih Ul Hassan | TuTh 8:00am - 9:15am | Dell 1 104 |
| | Dive into the complex intersection of machine learning and cybersecurity with this course, carefully designed for both computer science and data science students. The course kicks off with an in-depth understanding of machine learning fundamentals, cybersecurity, and deep learning principles. We will then explore how machine learning algorithms can be leveraged to address prevalent cybersecurity issues, such as malware detection, spam filtering, anomaly detection, incident response, and credit card fraud prevention. Additionally, we'll delve into complex areas such as adversarial and backdoor attacks on machine learning systems and discuss the security aspects of large language models like ChatGPT.
|
| Electrical and Computer Engineering |
| ECE 1501 | Special Topics in Electrical & Computer Engineering |
| |
| | Frontiers in Electrical & Computer Engineering |
| Syllabus 20581 | 001 | Lecture (1 Units) | Open | 17 / 30 | Xu Yi | Th 4:00pm - 4:50pm | Mechanical Engr Bldg 215 |
| | This course will feature weekly seminars by ECE guest speakers and student-led discussions on cutting-edge electrical and computer engineering research themes, including: IoT; artificial intelligence & machine learning; health & medical applications; modern devices (nanoelectronics, photonics, renewable energy); applications for astronomy; and emerging quantum technology. No prerequisite, no homework, and no exam. |
| | This course will feature weekly seminars by ECE guest speakers and student-led discussions on cutting-edge electrical and computer engineering research themes, including: IoT; artificial intelligence & machine learning; health & medical applications; modern devices (nanoelectronics, photonics, renewable energy); applications for astronomy; and emerging quantum technology. No prerequisite, no homework, and no exam. |
| ECE 4103 | Solid State Devices for Renewable Energy Conversion |
| |
| Spring 2024 16291 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 3 / 10 (17 / 25) | Mona Zebarjadi | MoWeFr 11:00am - 11:50am | Jesser Hall 171 |
| | This class has two distinct goals: The first goal is to provide a technical understanding of solid-state devices that are used for energy conversion and storage with emphasis on solar cells, thermoelectric (heat to electricity conversion), and batteries. The second goal is to appreciate the energy challenges that face humanity. We will try to achieve the latter goal in a series of student-led discussions. |
| | Imagine a world in which we produce all our energy needs without polluting the environment. Imagine a world in which we run our cars, our houses, and our factories without burning fossil fuels. It is not difficult to imagine such a world, right? It is because we have already developed many parts of technology! Today, we can install solar cells on our rooftops to go off the grid. We have electrical and fuel cell cars in the transportation section. We have geothermal, wind farms, and solar farms at large scales to run our factories. Our generation is witnessing a remarkable transition from coal, oil, and gas to clean and renewable energies.
This class discusses solid-state devices that are used for renewable energy applications. While we will provide a general overview of most new and interesting technologies via lectures, discussions, and research presentations, we will focus on the detailed technical aspects of a few devices namely: solar cells, thermionic devices, thermoelectric devices, solar thermal (CSPs) and batteries. |
| ECE 4501 | Special Topics in Electrical and Computer Engineering |
| |
| | Optical Quantum Electronics |
| Website 20588 | 004 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 5 / 10 (11 / 20) | Xu Yi | MoWe 9:30am - 10:45am | Thornton Hall D222 |
| | Quantum electronics, the study of light and matter interaction, has become the cornerstone in many areas of optical science and technology. The course will start with reviewing the principle of lasers followed by introducing the generalized nonlinear wave equations. This course will cover typical nonlinear effects and their applications in telecommunication, ultrafast laser, quantum computing/information, and chemical/bio spectroscopy. |
| | Quantum electronics, the study of light and matter interaction, has become the cornerstone in many areas of optical science and technology. The course will start with reviewing the principle of lasers followed by introducing the generalized nonlinear wave equations. This course will cover typical nonlinear effects and their applications in telecommunication, ultrafast laser, quantum computing/information, and chemical/bio spectroscopy. |
| ECE 4784 | Machine Learning for Wireless Communications |
| |
| | Machine Learning for Wireless Communications |
| Spring 2024 20555 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 3 / 20 (9 / 35) | Prof. Cong Shen | TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm | Thornton Hall D115 |
| | In Fall 2024, this course will be updated to emphasize on how machine learning helps the design of wireless communications. |
| ECE 6501 | Topics in Electrical and Computer Engineering |
| |
| | Optical Quantum Electronics |
| Website 20589 | 003 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 6 / 10 (11 / 20) | Xu Yi | MoWe 9:30am - 10:45am | Thornton Hall D222 |
| | Quantum electronics, the study of light and matter interaction, has become the cornerstone in many areas of optical science and technology. The course will start with reviewing the principle of lasers followed by introducing the generalized nonlinear wave equations. This course will cover typical nonlinear effects and their applications in telecommunication, ultrafast laser, quantum computing/information, and chemical/bio spectroscopy. |
| | Quantum electronics, the study of light and matter interaction, has become the cornerstone in many areas of optical science and technology. The course will start with reviewing the principle of lasers followed by introducing the generalized nonlinear wave equations. This course will cover typical nonlinear effects and their applications in telecommunication, ultrafast laser, quantum computing/information, and chemical/bio spectroscopy. |
| ECE 6784 | Machine Learning for Wireless Communications |
| |
| | Machine Learning for Wireless Communications |
| Spring 2024 20556 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 6 / 15 (9 / 35) | Cong Shen | TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm | Thornton Hall D115 |
| | In Fall 2024, this course will be updated to emphasize on how machine learning helps the design of wireless communications. |
| Creative Writing |
| ENCW 3310 | Intermediate Poetry Writing I |
| |
| | INTERMEDIATE POETRY WRITING WORKSHOP - for writers with experience in poetry or hybrid prose/poetry |
| Spring 2024 19773 | 001 | WKS (3 Units) | Permission | 11 / 12 | Debra Nystrom | Th 2:00pm - 4:30pm | Bryan Hall 233 |
| | Please see course description for Application Instructions |
| | INTERMEDIATE POETRY WRITING WORKSHOP
This creative writing workshop is for students with prior experience in writing and revising poetry, and it welcomes students working in the poetry/prose hybrid space as well. The class will involve discussion of student poems and of wide-ranging assigned reading, with particular attention to issues of craft. Students will be expected to write and revise six poems, to participate in class discussion and offer detailed commentary in response to other students’ work and assigned reading, to keep a poetry journal, to attend at least two poetry readings or craft talks, to participate in a group presentation on one of our assigned poets, and to turn in close-reading responses to three poems from reading material not discussed in class. When weather permits we will meet outdoors on grounds with English Dept. chairs; other meetings will be online.
INSTRUCTOR PERMISSION IS REQUIRED for enrollment in this class: please apply for instructor permission through SIS. APPLICATION REQUIREMENTS: a writing sample of 4-5 poems with a cover sheet including your name, year, email address, major, prior workshop experience and grade, and other workshops to which you are submitting. Submit your application IN A SINGLE DOCUMENT to Prof. Nystrom at dln8u@virginia.edu. Applications will be considered on a rolling basis once registration opens. For full consideration, email your application as soon as possible. The instructor will let all applicants know of their acceptance status before spring classes begin.
|
| | ENCW 3310. INTERMEDIATE POETRY WRITING (The Big Themes) |
| Spring 2024 19774 | 002 | WKS (3 Units) | Permission | 12 / 12 | Lisa Spaar | Mo 2:00pm - 4:30pm | Dawson's Row 1 |
| | This is a workshop for serious makers of poems. Admission is by instructor permission only. Students interested in the course should request permission to enroll through SIS and accompany their request with a brief note detailing prior writing experience/coursework/instructors and giving a good working e-mail address as well. Students should also indicate whether or not they are submitting to other workshops. In addition, applicants should send 5 pages of original poetry to Professor Lisa Russ Spaar at LRS9E@virginia.edu.
In this generative workshop for advanced poets, the aim of our collective project will be to generate poems that dare to embody, explore, provoke, illuminate, refute, and manifest “large” traditional poetic themes--Eros, Thanatos, Truth, Beauty, God, & Time--in fresh, original ways. In addition to writing about a poem a week, students will also be responsible for choosing a core poet to read closely throughout the semester. We will be incorporating these readings into our assignments, poems, and class discussion.
|
| ENCW 4350 | Advanced Nonfiction Writing |
| |
| | SENSORIA |
| Spring 2024 19775 | 001 | WKS (3 Units) | Permission | 12 / 12 | Jane Alison | We 9:30am - 12:00pm | Bryan Hall 233 |
| | ANYONE INTERESTED IN FINDING LANGUAGE FOR SENSATION AND WHAT'S SENSED IS ENCOURAGED TO APPLY! Please send a note and brief writing sample to jas2ad@virginia.edu. |
| | An advanced class for ambitious students who want to direct their senses toward the world around them and explore how minute, expansive, and complex their sensory perceptions can be. We’ll read theoretical texts about the (more than five!) senses and their intersections with language and examine how other writers have immersed themselves in capturing the sensory porosity that is the body and, via this, the world beyond; we’ll focus on texts that make interesting use of senses, more than simply deploying them to render a plausible physical world. You’ll cycle through studies of single subjects—a color or light effect, a smell, a tactile sensation, a sound, the passage of time, and so on—drawing upon close perception and your most associative mind to transform what you perceive into language. Working from these studies, you’ll develop a longer piece that will be a literary site of sensory exploration. Your projects might be several short essays, a series of linked fragments, a single extended work, an entirely new literary species . . . |
| ENCW 4550 | Topics in Literary Prose |
| |
| | Convention & Its Discontents |
| | CONVENTION & ITS DISCONTENTS |
| Spring 2024 19785 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Permission | 8 / 15 | Jane Alison | Mo 11:00am - 1:30pm | Bryan Hall 203 |
| | ANYONE INTERESTED IN EXPERIMENTS IN WRITING, IN INNOVATION, IN FINDING NEW FORMS, IS ENCOURAGED TO APPLY! Please send a note to jas2ad@virginia.edu. |
| | In this studio-seminar we’ll look both at writing that follows some narrative convention beautifully and explore other writing that punctures “traditional” envelopes and ignores the expectations and illusionism of, say, classic realist prose. A memoir of unlinked sentences; a novel in a box whose chapters you read in any order; an essay in verse; a novella in numbered lines . . . How can windows open in what we write, whether working closer to the truthful or the imaginative end of the spectrum, whether creating literature that’s more like music or more like a painting? When are experiments unreadable or soulless? In addition to weekly reading, you’ll write-play with regular exercises (both in class and at home) and produce a final critical-creative project.
|
| ENCW 4810 | Advanced Fiction Writing I |
| |
| | The Fantastic & the Strange |
| Spring 2024 19779 | 001 | WKS (3 Units) | Permission | 11 / 12 | Micheline Marcom | Fr 2:30pm - 5:00pm | Bryan Hall 233 |
| | Instructor permission required. Priority goes to APLP students, but other students may enroll, pending availability. Please email Micheline Marcom at mam5du@virginia.edu and via SIS to request permission. |
| | In this advanced fiction course, we will focus on works of literature which take up the strange, the fantastic, the magical, and the uncanny. Works will include Kafka, Borges, Calvino, Poe, Lewis Carroll, Gogol, and others. Students will write weekly creative and craft responses. |
| ENCW 4820 | Poetry Program Poetics |
| |
| | LYRICALLY, NARRATIVELY, YOURS |
| Spring 2024 13948 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Permission | 9 / 12 | Kiki Petrosino | We 2:00pm - 4:30pm | Bryan Hall 233 |
| | Instructor permission required. Priority goes to APPW students, but other students may enroll, pending availability. Please contact Kiki Petrosino via e-mail (cmp2k@virginia.edu) AND via SIS to request permission. |
| | In this seminar designed for students in the Area Program in Poetry Writing, we’ll compare the special attributes of "lyric" and "narrative" poetry, broadly (and vividly!) defined. We’ll read recent published works of poetry (+ a little prose) by poets whose work complicates and enriches our understanding of these seemingly disparate compositional modes. We’ll also explore our own relationships, as working poets, to these descriptors--how do lyric and narrative connect, overlap, or diverge in our writing?
This is a small, discussion-based seminar. At semester’s end, you’ll compose a Final Chapbook (8-10 poems + a 2-3 pp introduction) on a theme of your choice. A working draft of the final will be due at Midterm. Regular writing prompts and assignments will be posted to CANVAS. The final grade will calculate Attendance, Participation, Written Assignments, and the Final Chapbook. This course satisfies a requirement for the Area Program in Poetry Writing and may fulfill requirements for other programs, as per individual advising at the Department level.
|
| ENCW 4830 | Advanced Poetry Writing I |
| |
| Spring 2024 19780 | 001 | WKS (3 Units) | Permission | 12 / 12 | Rita Dove | Tu 2:00pm - 4:30pm | Bryan Hall 233 |
| | This workshop is for advanced undergraduate students with prior experience in writing and revising poetry. The class will involve discussion of student poems and of assigned reading, with particular attention to issues of craft. Students will be expected to write and revise six to eight poems, to participate in class discussion and offer detailed notes in response to other students’ work, to complete two assignments generated by writing prompts, to attend and provide a written response to one poetry reading (in person or virtual), to turn in close-reading reviews of two assigned poetry books, and to complete one “wild card” assignment.
“Instructor Permission is required for enrollment in this class: please apply for instructor permission through SIS. APPLICATION REQUIREMENTS: a writing sample of 4-5 poems with a cover sheet including your name, year, email address, major, prior workshop experience and grade, and other workshops to which you are submitting. Submit your application IN A SINGLE DOCUMENT to Prof. Dove at rfd4b@virginia.edu. Applications will be considered on a rolling basis once registration opens. For full consideration, email your application as soon as possible.
The instructor will let all applicants know of their acceptance status before spring classes begin.
|
| ENCW 4920 | Poetry Program Capstone |
| |
| Spring 2024 13758 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Permission | 6 / 15 | Brian Teare | Tu 6:00pm - 8:30pm | Bryan Hall 233 |
| | The Capstone offers APPW students time and pedagogical space to think beyond the realization of single poems toward the realization of a book-length poetry manuscript. With support from the APPW Director, a graduate student mentor, and most importantly from our APPW colleagues, each of us will gather together a draft collection of our poems for a semester of intensive collaborative editorial work that will encourage us to become more deeply aware of our poetic ambitions and evolving aesthetics. In conversation with editorial feedback, each of us will organize and revise our existing poems and write new work in order to fully realize what poet and critic Natasha Sajé calls the “dynamic design” of our first manuscripts. The course schedule will begin with weekly discussion of assigned readings, followed by collaborative editorial sessions of our Capstone Project drafts. This means that, for the first three quarters of the semester, we will meet as a group, but the latter quarter of the semester will largely consist of independent work and one-on-one meetings. After mid-term, each of us will be assigned a graduate student mentor who will offer the Capstone Project draft a close reading. After this, each of us will meet with the Director to discuss the feedback and devise a final revision strategy. The course will culminate in our Capstone Projects – revised, polished manuscripts of the poetry only we could write – which we will celebrate together at the APPW graduation reading. |
| ENCW 7310 | MFA Poetry Workshop |
| |
| Spring 2024 19781 | 001 | WKS (3 Units) | Permission | 10 / 10 | Rita Dove | Mo 2:00pm - 4:30pm | Bryan Hall 233 |
| | In this graduate-level workshop, designed for MFA poets in the first two years of the program, students will continue developing their own writing practices while exploring other compositional and critical techniques. We’ll devote most class sessions to reviewing peer-generated poetry, but we’ll also discuss published works by established writers and other aspects of the creative process. In addition, we will examine what it means to “manage” a writer’s life, with particular emphasis on writing routines as well as exploring ways to probe, massage and coax poems into revealing their secrets. Students should be prepared to participate energetically in group critique sessions in addition to polishing their own writing. All students will be required to complete one “wild card” assignment; first year MFA students will also assemble a portfolio of poetry at semester’s end. INSTRUCTOR PERMISSION REQUIRED. |
| English-Literature |
| ENGL 2500 | Introduction to Literary Studies |
| |
| | Introduction to Literary Studies |
| | Modern and Contemporary Irish Literature (and Film and TV) |
| Spring 2024 20270 | 003 | SEM (3 Units) | Permission | 14 / 18 | Victor Luftig | TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm | New Cabell Hall 068 |
| | We will read poems, plays, fiction, and essays in ways meant to introduce the study of literature at the college level: the focus will be on writing from Ireland, where literature has been unusually important in the formation of the nation, the transformation of the nation into a multi-racial one, and the development of a culture more supportive of women and LGBTQ+ citizens than in the past. We’ll begin with nineteenth century texts supporting or resisting efforts against colonial rule, then read texts by WB Yeats, James Joyce, and women writers associated with the new early twentieth century Irish state; read mid-century writers who documented the failure of that state; read writers such as Seamus Heaney and Eavan Boland who contended with violence in Northern Ireland and misogyny in the Republic of Ireland; and conclude with contemporary writers associated with immigrant and other communities. Our readings will be complemented by viewing movies and TV shows such as _The Crying Game_, _The Wind That Shakes the Barley_, and _Derry Girls_. We will ask throughout, What does literature do, and how? The course is meant to serve those who are interested in improving their reading and writing, for whatever reason; those who seek an introductory humanities course; those who may wish subsequently to major in English; and those who are interested in Ireland, colonialism, and/or immigration. We’ll discuss the works in class, and there will be three papers, two short exams, and a final. |
| | Introduction to Literary Studies |
| | At the Square Root of Literature |
| Spring 2024 20271 | 004 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 19 / 20 | Herbert Tucker | TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm | Shannon House 111 |
| |
Literary study that matters arises from close reading and, however wide the range of topics surveyed, never really outgrows it. This introduction to literary study will focus on works of poetry, fiction, and drama that foreground the act of reading, in its complex weave of decoding, construing, interpreting, and commenting on a text. As the semester unfolds, this focus will challenge us to reflect on what reading as such entails.
The course is primarily designed for new and prospective English majors; but anybody is welcome who has developed, and wants to deepen, habits of attention to language and the shapes it takes in written art. Not recommended for the student seeking only to satisfy the Second Writing Requirement, though the course will duly serve that purpose. Numerous short exercises, several mid-length papers, and an exam or two will buttress our chief classroom business: to collaborate with one another in figuring out what imagined readers are depicted figuring out, and how, and why.
|
| ENGL 2502 | Masterpieces of English Literature |
| |
| | Jane Austen Jumps the Shark |
| Spring 2024 19824 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 20 / 20 | Brad Pasanek | MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm | New Cabell Hall 191 |
| | This study of Jane Austen’s afterlife finds the Regency author on water-skis. An introduction to the major, the course aims at formal analyses of the novel form, queries the concept of fiction, and presents the rudiments of literary theory. The student must be prepared to consume unpardonable adaptations of adaptations of adaptations. Beware: common side effects may include Darcymania, zombification, fandom, and queer theory. To be sure, we will be reading Austen meticulously; our other authors closely, but more quickly and in greater bulk. Of prevailing concern will be contemporary reworkings of Austen: her screen adaptations, her commodification, and the many parodic uses to which her fictions have been put, online and off. Readings will likely include Austen’s juvenilia, at least three of the six major novels, Bridget Jones’s Diary, a YA novel about Teen Jane (approximately), an offering from Quirk Press, Lost in Austen, a squat volume of mass-marketed pulpy filth, and several amateur slash efforts. |
| | Locating Jane. Or, Putting Austen in her Place |
| Spring 2024 20268 | 002 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 18 / 20 | Alison Hurley | TuTh 9:30am - 10:45am | Brooks Hall 103 |
| | Jane Austen is everywhere – at movie theaters, on coffee mugs, in myriad sequels, parodies, and re-imaginings of her novels. How is it that an author whose works are so deeply embedded in her own time remains a contemporary phenomenon? How is it that novels depicting a remarkably thin slice of a defunct society enjoy such broad appeal? In this course we will try to answer these questions by “putting Austen in her place.” We will carefully situate Austen’s novels within a number of specific but overlapping interpretive terrains – literary, political, intellectual, and gendered. By deeply contextualizing Austen, I believe we will be in a better position to assess her significance in both her world and in our own. In order to perform this work we will need to develop the skills necessary for reading and writing effectively about texts. Specifically, we will aspire to read closely, write precisely, argue persuasively, ask good questions, employ strong evidence, and take interpretive risks.
Our readings will most likely include: Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Mansfield Park and Persuasion. Sorry, no P&P!
|
| ENGL 2506 | Studies in Poetry |
| |
| | Sounds and Poetries |
| Spring 2024 19834 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 17 / 20 | Henrietta Hadley | TuTh 8:00am - 9:15am | New Cabell Hall 111 |
| | In this class, we'll explore a range of poetry's sonic effects in a variety of historical eras, medieval to contemporary. We'll pose questions about how sound has been and can be thought about in poems (by critics and by poets, and as critics and poets ourselves). We'll read attempts by poets to write with, against, and towards music, and think about what those poems sound like. Students will write a series of critical and creative assignments, developing ways to describe what we hear, and to hear more closely as we read. This course satisfies the second writing requirement, and is appropriate for students new to reading poetry. |
| | Introduction to Poetry |
| Spring 2024 20276 | 003 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 18 / 18 | Mark Edmundson | TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm | New Cabell Hall 132 |
| | Introduction to Poetry (ENGL 2506) – This is a class for students who want a basic introduction to poetry. The instructor will emphasize poetry’s capacity to teach and to give pleasure. The class assumes no prior familiarity with poetry, just an eagerness to learn. Students will do some poetry writing: imitations, parodies, works of their own, and write some short interpretive essays. |
| | The Lyric Essay |
| Spring 2024 20277 | 004 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 20 / 20 | Jeddie Sophronius | MoWeFr 9:00am - 9:50am | New Cabell Hall 407 |
| | What happens when poetry meets prose? This course invites students to explore the intriguing world of the lyric essay. We will explore various forms, from the braided to hermit crab essays, which combine narrative and poetic elements. Students will learn how using this hybrid medium can serve as a means of processing, introspection, and self-expression. By studying the methods of writers from Claudia Rankine to Shane McCrae, students will learn how to infuse their prose with the vivid imagery, metaphors, and rhythm typically found in poetry. In addition to composing analytical essays to demonstrate their knowledge of close reading and literary terms, students will also learn how to craft their own lyric essays. |
| | Black Experimental Poetry |
| Spring 2024 20616 | 006 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 17 / 20 | Samantha Stephens | TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm | Kerchof Hall 317 |
| | This course maps a tradition of innovative poetry and poetics from writers across the African Diaspora. We will examine the rich practice of experimentation by Black writers in the twentieth and twenty-first century. In this class, students will explore how poets who are often marginalized disrupt the literal margins of the page - playing with color, sound, space, typeface - to respond to issues of colonialism and neocolonialism, race, identity, gender politics and the politics of literary form. We will read Black poets and practitioners from the Caribbean, U.S. and U.K. including M. NourbeSe Philip, Kamau Brathwaite, Claudia Rankine, Evie Shockley, Douglas Kearney, Bernardine Evaristo, and others. |
| ENGL 2508 | Studies in Fiction |
| |
| | Contemporary Fiction |
| Spring 2024 19796 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 17 / 20 | Christopher Krentz | MoWeFr 12:00pm - 12:50pm | Kerchof Hall 317 |
| | This course will provide an introduction to the contemporary American novel. We will read some celebrated fiction published since 1960, probably including Roth’s Goodbye Columbus; Morrison’s Sula; Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao; Bechdel's graphic novel Fun Home; Kingsolver's new Demon Copperhead, and Amna's recent debut American Fever. Focusing on whatever themes the novels raise, we’ll talk about narrative style, ethnicity and identity in America, and much more. Moreover, we’ll concentrate on developing analytical and writing skills, which should help students to succeed in other English and humanities classes.
This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement. |
| | Writing the Great House in English & Amer. Fiction |
| Spring 2024 19801 | 002 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 17 / 0 | Caroline Rody | TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm | Kerchof Hall 317 |
| | The great house of English literature is a house most everyone knows: pictured imposingly on the cover of English paperbacks, setting the magnificent scene from the summit of a green lawn in BBC and Hollywood frame shots, serving as stage for plots of romance and intrigue in countless novels. Though always a site of inequality--the affluent “upstairs” and the servants “downstairs"--and though recently treated with strong irony and critique, it is nevertheless embraced in English literary traditionas ours, indigenous, part of the landscape.
In American literature, not so. Founded on the dream of breaking away from the house of the Old World, U.S. literature tends to treat the very fact of a big, impressive house as in and of itself an affront, an edifice built on exploitation, not our house at all, but an outrage on the American landscape. From this beginning developed a literary history of suspect, spooky, even downright evil American houses, from the enslaving plantation house to the haunted house that is itself a murderer, as well as a contemporary sub-genre that treats the great American house as a morally reclaimable fixer-upper.
This course will take up fiction and film that demonstrate the literary topos of the great house in transformation, a figure for nations changing in time. We will study, at length or briefly, short fiction, novels and novel excerpts, and four films by (or adapting) some of the following authors: Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Frederick Douglass, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Jean Rhys, Shirley Jackson, Lore Segal, Octavia Butler, Toni Morrison, Ian McEwen, Louise Erdrich, Alison Bechdel, Gish Jen, Mat Johnson, Helen Oyeyemi, and Joe Talbot/Jimmie Fails. Requirements include active reading and participation, multiple short papers, one of which is a revision, frequent short Canvas posts, and a group leading of one class. |
| | Gender and the Gothic |
| Spring 2024 19814 | 005 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 20 / 20 | Cristina Griffin | TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm | Cocke Hall 101 |
| | In this class, we will read (and watch) stories that engage with the long tradition of the gothic: stories that are pleasurably thrilling, that structure themselves around suspense, secrecy, romance, intrigue, and even sometimes fear. We will begin the term by focusing on some of the eighteenth-century texts that established and popularized the gothic conventions that novelists, filmmakers, and television writers still use today. We will then turn to more contemporary reactions to the gothic, investigating how twentieth- and twenty-first-century forms respond to the gothic genre. Our focus as we make our way across the centuries will be on how these stories open up questions about gender. How do gothic texts represent women’s bodies? What is the relationship between gender and violence? How do gendered portrayals of the gothic change over time or embody different political and cultural crises? How do popular contemporary forms—the television show, dystopian fiction—reimagine the gothic?
UVA is the ideal place to study gothic literature, since it houses the world’s largest collection of gothic fiction. We will immerse ourselves in this vast treasure trove with an archival project in which you will become an expert on a gothic novel, and contribute your findings to a digital companion to the archive. No library or research experience necessary: we will be working from the ground up as you learn to give these important gothic texts new lives in the twenty-first century.
This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement. |
| | Science Fiction |
| Spring 2024 19837 | 007 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 17 / 20 | Charity Fowler | MoWeFr 10:00am - 10:50am | Bryan Hall 328 |
| | This survey of the science fiction genre is a seminar-style class that will start with examining its roots in 18th and 19th century “proto-science fiction.” We’ll then trace its development chronologically and thematically through the genre’s distinct temporal and cultural eras from the late-19th century to the present day. We’ll be reading a mix of novels and short stories and watching a few adaptations of these texts into movies and TV shows. Though we’ll touch on many themes and tropes, from space travel to AI, we’ll primarily focus on examining and writing about the social and cultural possibilities of the genre, along with the technological and scientific advancements it has inspired. |
| ENGL 2527 | Shakespeare |
| |
| | Shakespeare on Film |
| | Visualizing poetry and passion: cinematic adaptations and reinterpretations of 4 major plays. |
| Spring 2024 19820 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 17 / 0 | Clare Kinney | TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm | Bryan Hall 203 |
| | Click the blue number on the left for a full course description. |
| | This course will explore in detail four major works by Shakespeare across several genres and look at some of their cinematic adaptations. How does one translate a Shakespearean work from a highly verbal medium into a highly visual medium? How can the resources of film offer us new insights into the plays—and how do different film adaptations of the same play allow us to rethink the interpretive challenges and pleasures provoked by their original texts?
Tentative list of plays: A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Henry V; Macbeth; The Tempest.
Requirements: regular attendance and lively participation in discussion, three 5-6 page papers, occasional e-mail responses to our readings, and a final take-home examination.
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| ENGL 2559 | New Course in Introduction to English Literature |
| |
| | Intro to Environmental Thought and Practice |
| Spring 2024 19798 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Permission | 11 / 20 (60 / 60) | Stephen Cushman+2 | MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Monroe Hall 134 |
| | This course is required for majors in Environmental Thought and Practice. It does not satisfy the second writing requirement. For more information, please write Professor Paul Freedman, Director, at pf7h@virginia.edu. |
| ENGL 2599 | Special Topics |
| |
| | Medieval Romance Beyond King Arthur |
| Spring 2024 19835 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 20 / 20 | Austin Benson | MoWeFr 1:00pm - 1:50pm | John W. Warner Hall 110 |
| | The rightful King of Denmark is working as a scullery maid, and breathes fire in his sleep. Sir Orfeo’s wife has been kidnapped by the Fairy King, and the only way to win her back is to charm him with music on the harp. The King of Brittany has a new dog—or is it a werewolf?
When we think of medieval romance, we often think of King Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table, and the Quest for the Holy Grail. The stories encompassed by this genre, however, are much more wide-ranging, and much stranger. In this course, we will explore the wide and weird world of medieval romance beyond King Arthur. Our inquiry will begin with the genre’s origins, as we read the Lais of Marie de France and the Song of Roland. From there we will dive headfirst into the genre, exploring the romance as a means of engaging with a vast array of subjects. This includes everything from our relationship with the past (Octavian) to the ethics of political insurrection (Havelok the Dane) to the question of whether adultery is acceptable when it’s true love (Tristan).
Along the way, we will learn how to plan and execute a longer piece of writing, and how to read and understand Middle English.
Requirements: Active participation, a very short paper (3 pages), an annotated bibliography (3 pages), a prospectus (3 pages), and a final paper (10-12 pages). |
| | Self Portrayal in Poetry and Visual Art |
| | ENGL 2599 Self-Portraiture in Visual Art & Poetry |
| Spring 2024 20267 | 006 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 15 / 15 | Lisa Spaar | Tu 11:00am - 1:30pm | Bryan Hall 233 |
| | We live in an age of easy and ubiquitous self-portrayal. Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Facebook, Skype, YouTube, Zoom, and other digital and cellular “galleries” allow a protean array of venues in which to post, curate, manipulate, and efface visual images and verbal profiles of “the self” with what seems like a faster than real-time alacrity. This proliferation of self-portraiture is so rampant that it’s possible for viewers and readers to become inured to its magic, craft, and power. Since antiquity, literary and visual artists have depicted themselves in their productions, a fascination that has continued unabated into the twenty-first century, spurred by advances in photography, imaging, digitalization, communication, information systems, and the widespread availability of the Internet. In this course we will look at the “selfie” from antiquity to the present, in poetry (from Sappho to Charles Wright and Kendrik Lamar) and visual art (from early cave paintings and Egyptian art through Rembrandt, Dűrer, Vigée-Lebrun, Kahlo, Van Gogh, Picasso, Abbassy, Sherman, Basquiat, Morimura, and others). We will visit the Fralin Museum of Art, make forays into the Studio Art department, be visited by poets, artists and others, and in general explore what we can learn from our human fascination with self-portrayal and our compulsion to turn it into art. THIS COURSE FULFILLS THE SECOND WRITING REQUIREMENT. |
| | How to be Ethical? |
| Spring 2024 20275 | 007 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 20 / 20 | Nasrin Olla | MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Brooks Hall 103 |
| | How do novels, poetry, and philosophical texts teach us to relate ethically toward the stranger, the foreigner, or the other? How do we understand different cultures and peoples without reducing them to our already established frames of reference? How do we imagine otherness? This course approaches these big questions by exploring representations of the stranger and the foreigner in African and African diasporic literature. We will look at texts by Édouard Glissant and Frantz Fanon alongside reflections on the relation between ‘ethics and aesthetics’ by Immanuel Kant, Michel Foucault, and others. |
| ENGL 3002 | History of Literatures in English II |
| |
| Spring 2024 13703 | 100 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 188 / 240 | Andrew Stauffer | MoWe 12:00pm - 12:50pm | John W. Warner Hall 209 |
| | John Keats, Mary Shelley, Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, T. S. Eliot, Sylvia Plath, Toni Morrison, and Ocean Vuong: these are some of the authors that we will be reading and studying together in this survey of literature in English from around 1750 to the present moment. Along the way, we will trace the emergence of English as a global language and literature in our post-colonial world. Literary movements to be covered include Romanticism, Victorianism, Modernism, and Post-Modernism. This course is part of the two-semester sequence of the history of literature in English (along with ENGL 3001) that is required of English majors, but is open to anyone interested in exploring some of the most significant works of literature of the last two-plus centuries. You do not need to have taken ENGL 3001 first; the courses can be completed in any order that works best for you. |
| ENGL 3273 | Shakespeare: Tragedies and Romances |
| |
| Spring 2024 13736 | 100 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 87 / 90 | John Parker | MoWe 11:00am - 11:50am | Monroe Hall 130 |
| | Shakespeare arrived in London and started work as an actor and playwright sometime in his late twenties, around the year 1590. Over the next decade he transformed himself into one of the city's most celebrated dramatists, primarily by writing history plays and comedies. This course will concentrate on the tragedies and late comedies that he wrote, for the most part, in the following decade. We will read Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, The Tempest, and A Winter's Tale. There will be two papers (around 6pp. each), a midterm, and a final. This course fulfills the English department's pre-1700 requirement and can be used, on request, to fulfill the college's second writing requirement. |
| ENGL 3500 | Studies in English Literature |
| |
| | Literary Games |
| | Co-Taught with Jason Bennett |
| Spring 2024 19825 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Permission | 25 / 30 | Brad Pasanek | MoWe 3:30pm - 4:45pm | John W. Warner Hall 113 |
| | This is a course in “extra-literary” criticism in which English majors and other students are tasked with investigating the ways in which video games are available for literary interpretation. We will read games studies and literary theory, play games, and--take note!--learn to build them. Students will be introduced to the Godot game engine and framework. (No prior experience with programming required.) Our main effort is to check and test literary theory in "defamiliarized" ludic contexts, designing sprites and worlds and complicating traditional intuitions about narrative, characters, and fiction by means of game experiences.
Course enrollment currently set to "Instructor Permission" so that we can build a balanced group of English majors and CS students (double majors are especially welcome). Contact Brad Pasanek and Jason Bennett with any questions! |
| | Pursuing Happiness |
| Spring 2024 20430 | 002 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 5 / 18 (5 / 18) | Lorna Martens | TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm | Pavilion VIII 108 |
| | For description, click on schedule number to the left. |
| | Fictions of happiness pursued--and found! Through the ages, people have sought happiness and formulated conceptions of what happiness means. Happiness could be something we once had--then lost--but might find again; something we might achieve by acting wisely or performing meritorious deeds; something possible through escape; alternatively, something available in the here and now; bound up with love or recognition from others; or a byproduct of creativity, independent of others. This course is not a self-help course. Don’t take it expecting to find the key to happiness. This is a literature course. We’ll read fiction, poetry, theory. But we will read some cheerful and uplifting (or at least moderately cheerful or uplifting) literature, to raise our spirits as the pandemic, with luck, recedes. Texts by Hesiod, Ovid, Chrétien, Rousseau, Schiller, Novalis, Wordsworth, Emerson, Valéry, Hunt, Rilke, Hilton, Stevens, Cavafy, Thurber, Giono, Nabokov, I. Grekova. Some theory of happiness and one or two films. Lots of discussion, two short presentations, two short formal essays, and a final exam are envisaged. |
| ENGL 3510 | Studies in Medieval Literature |
| |
| | Thomas Malory's King Arthur |
| Spring 2024 20269 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Permission | 30 / 30 | Elizabeth Fowler | TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm | Bryan Hall 328 |
| | Click blue numbers to the left for a full description. |
| | Yes, that Arthur! In this class, we explore Le Morte Darthur, the famous compendium of stories about King Arthur's round table, Lancelot’s vulnerable heroism, Guenevere’s diplomacy and passion, Tristram’s cluelessness, and the sorcery of Merlin, Lady Nynyve, and Morgan le Fay. It's the most influential early prose fiction in English, one that still produces imitations, sequels, and prequels in every medium known to art. Writing a century after Chaucer and a century before Shakespeare, Thomas Malory is spellbinding and curiously dry, full of terse, flat statements of shocking, magical, moving acts. We'll puzzle over what makes it tick: narrative patterns, imagery, style, characters. We’ll meet outside in camp chairs under a tree by Dawson’s Row whenever feasible. We’ll have quizzes and some flash writing sprees and two short (~2000 word) creative projects or (your choice) literary essays (creative writers, artists, and game developers: bring your skills!). Fulfills the major req for pre-1700, counts for the med/ren concentration and for Medieval Studies. Warning: may result in a compulsion to create. |
| ENGL 3520 | Studies in Renaissance Literature |
| |
| | Love and Power in Renaissance Literature |
| | Read Spenser, Marlowe, Donne, Shakespeare, Jonson, and Milton. |
| Spring 2024 19816 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 25 / 30 | Rebecca Rush | TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm | Bryan Hall 328 |
| | Click blue numbers to the left for a full description. |
| | Beginning with the love poems of Queen Elizabeth I, this course will reflect on Renaissance images of longing. The authors we will read begin with the premise that the solitary self is plagued by what Donne calls the “defects of loneliness” — by a sense of individual imperfection and a thirst for another. In the plays and poems we will read, this overwhelming desire catalyzes heroic quests (a young noblewoman donning armor and setting off to find a knight she saw in a mirror, a young man swimming across the Hellespont). It also spurs futile chases and moral errors (knights running after a counterfeit woman made by a witch, Adam following Eve in eating the apple). Reading with the utmost attention to the subtleties of language, we will meditate on the varied ways these authors strive to produce images, metaphors, and stories that exemplify the fundamental nature of desire, that do justice to its extraordinary power over the heart, and that reckon with its relation to political and social obligations. Readings include selections from Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Marlowe’s Hero and Leander, Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, Middleton and Rowley’s The Changeling, Milton’s Paradise Lost, and lyric poems by Wyatt, Donne, Wroth, Philips, Jonson, and Milton.
This course fulfills the pre-1700 requirement for the English major and counts toward the Medieval and Renaissance Concentration in English.
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| ENGL 3540 | Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature |
| |
| | Global Nineteenth Century Fiction |
| Spring 2024 19812 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 29 / 30 | Stephen Arata | MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm | John W. Warner Hall 110 |
| | ENGL 3540: Global Nineteenth-Century Fiction
MW 2:00-3:15
Stephen Arata
In this course we will read novels and short stories (all superb examples of narrative art) drawn from a range of cultures and countries. The overarching goal is to engage with these works not from the perspective of their separate national traditions but with an awareness of the novel as a transnational literary form, bound up in networks of authors and readers stretching around the globe. Likely candidates for the syllabus include Jane Austen, George Eliot, and Vernon Lee (England), Germaine de Staël and Honoré de Balzac (France), Mikhail Lermentov (Russia), Multatuli (Denmark), Benito Pérez Galdós (Spain), Machado de Assiz (Brazil), Bankim Chandra Chatterjee (India), and Mary Prince (Bermuda). Course requirements will include two 5-6 page essays, a final exam, and a handful of shorter writing assignments. All the readings will be in English.
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| | Great Poems, Romantic & Victorian |
| Spring 2024 20272 | 003 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 15 / 30 | Herbert Tucker | TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm | Bryan Hall 235 |
| | Paulo maiora canamus: Virgil’s Latin exhortation to “sing of greater things” has resounded for millennia in the minds of English poets striving to outgo their forerunners and, more intimately, to outdo themselves. During the past four centuries this ambition has shaped versions of the greater lyric, transforming such elder genres as elegy and ode, epistle and soliloquy into major statements of the human prospect as encountered by their generation. Our course will center on greater lyrics from the tumultuous 19th century, Romantic and Victorian, in a sequence framed at either end by neoclassical and modernist exemplars starting with John Milton and ending with Elizabeth Bishop. The course will more than satisfy the English Department’s 1700-1900 requirement.
Appreciating major poetry takes time and focus. So we’ll read and re-read the comparatively few works on the syllabus – typically just one or two poems per class – with patient attention. To this end, students will practice metrical scansion, reading aloud, reciting from memory, teaming up for exercises in editorial scholarship, among other ways of interacting bodily as well as intellectually with the art on the page. All this for the sake of an imaginative encounter that will ground the essays students write, and induct them by semester’s end into their own majority as articulate readers of great poems.
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| ENGL 3560 | Studies in Modern and Contemporary Literature |
| |
| | Fiction in the Age of Modernism |
| Spring 2024 19813 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Closed | 32 / 0 | Stephen Arata | MoWe 3:30pm - 4:45pm | John W. Warner Hall 110 |
| | The time period covered in this course is roughly 1890-1950: the age of Modernism in the literatures of Europe and the Americas. We will read novels and short stories from across a range of cultures and countries that explore the question of what makes a work of fiction not just “Modern” but “Modernist.” Likely authors include Virginia Woolf, Djuna Barnes, James Joyce, Jean Toomer, Jean Rhys, Jean Giomo, Henry Green, Gertrude Stein, Franz Kafka, Fernando Pessoa, Mário de Andrade, Knut Hamsen, Vladimir Nabokov, and Nella Larson. Course requirements will include two 5-6 page essays, a final exam, and a handful of shorter writing assignments. All the readings will be in English.
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| | US Modernisms in Word and Image |
| Spring 2024 20376 | 002 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 13 / 18 | Joshua Miller | TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm | Dell 1 104 |
| | How does one write something that’s never been thought? Why would an author write in mixed or invented languages? How do visual images respond to written narratives (and vice-versa)? We'll discuss a broad range of novels, short fiction, film, photography, and graphic arts composed between 1898 and 1945 and the historical, political, and cultural trends that they were responding to and participating in. This was an extraordinary and tumultuous period of demographic change, artistic invention, economic instability, racialized violence, and political contestation that witnessed mass immigration, migration, and emigration. In paying particular attention to trends of demographic displacement and change within and across national borders, we’ll consider the heady experiments in language and narrative that took place during the first half of the twentieth century. The historical events of this period—framed by the wars of 1898 and World War II—will provide context for the novels we read.
Some of the broad questions that we’ll track throughout the term include the following. How do these authors define the “modern”? What, for that matter, is a “novel” in 20th-century U.S. literature? How did these authors participate (and resist) the process of defining who counted as an “American”? What role did expatriates and immigrants play in the “new” United States of the twentieth century? How did modernists narrate the past? How did trends in technology (mass production, cinema, transportation), science (relativity), and politics influence novelists’ roles within U.S. modernity? How did these authors reconcile the modernist imperative to “make it new” with the violent histories of the U.S. and the Americas? What were the new languages of modernity? Requirements will include discussion posts, two essays, and two exams.
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| ENGL 3570 | Studies in American Literature |
| |
| | Jim Crow America |
| | Jim Crow America |
| Spring 2024 20274 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 11 / 30 (11 / 30) | K. Ian Grandison+1 | TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm | John W. Warner Hall 110 |
| | Why has Jim Crow persisted? This course examines how the Jim Crow regime was established in New England during the early republic, how it was nationalized after the Civil War, and how it has been perpetuated into the present, despite the passage of 1960s Civil Rights legislation. What have been the changing modes of maintaining Jim Crow particularly in law (including law enforcement), education, planning, public health, and mass media (newspapers, film, radio, and social media); and what strategies have African Americans used to fight Jim Crow segregation, discrimination, disenfranchisement, and economic exclusion. Taking a place-specific approach to understanding the material practices and consequences of the Jim Crow regime, we’ll examine in depth the overlapping dimensions of everyday life where Jim Crow has been especially prominent, including: 1) personal and collective mobility; 2) the struggle over public education; 3) planning and access to public facilities; 4) housing and employment; and 5) the justice (or injustice) system. Course materials from various disciplines will include maps, planning documents, films, radio, and readings from literature, sociology, urban planning, history, political science, and journalism. Focus will be placed on Charlottesville, Richmond, and Washington, D.C. as case studies. The course culminates in a required field trip to Charlottesville downtown and the Jefferson School Heritage Center scheduled for Saturday, March 30.
|
| | Jim Crow America |
| | Jim Crow America Field Trip special section |
| Spring 2024 20619 | 110 | SPS (0 Units) | Open | 11 / 30 (11 / 30) | K. Ian Grandison+1 | 03/30 Sa 11:00am - 3:00pm | Contact Department |
| | SPECIAL SECTION: Jefferson School and Downtown Charlottesville Field Trip -- Saturday, March 30 from 11:00am to 3:00pm ET
As crucial to the pedagogy of the course, there will be a required field trip to the Jefferson School Heritage Center in its setting of downtown Charlottesville. This is the site of Charlottesville’s historical Black elementary and high school during Constitutional Jim Crow. This will be held on from 11:00pm to 3:00pm ET on Saturday 30 March. |
| ENGL 3665 | Modern Poetry: Rilke, Valéry, and Stevens |
| |
| Spring 2024 20431 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 5 / 18 (5 / 18) | Lorna Martens | TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Pavilion VIII 108 |
| | For description, click on schedule number to the left |
| | Studies in the poetry and prose of these three modernist poets, with emphasis on their theories of artistic creation. The original as well as a translation will be made available for Rilke's and Valéry's poetry; their prose works will be read in English translation. |
| ENGL 4500 | Seminar in English Literature |
| |
| | Seven Ages, Seven Questions |
| Spring 2024 19845 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 20 / 18 | Mark Edmundson | TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm | Shannon House 109 |
| | Seven Ages, Seven Questions, or How to Live, What to Do (ENGL 4500)
This course emerges from Jacques’s famous speech in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, on the seven ages of human life. We will use that speech to generate questions about how to live and what to do. We’ll consider childhood and education; erotic love; religion; warfare and courage in war; politics and the freedom of the individual; philosophical wisdom; and old age. There will be readings to send us on our way: Freud. Wordsworth, Marx, Beauvoir, Weil, Schopenhauer, and others. The idea will be to let them help us generate our own thoughts. This course is not for the faint of heart or the dogma prone: the classroom is a free speech zone. Probably short writing assignments and a long one to finish the course.
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| ENGL 4515 | Seminar in Medieval and Renaissance Studies |
| |
| | Green Thought |
| Spring 2024 19843 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Permission | 9 / 18 | Elizabeth Fowler | TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm | Brooks Hall 103 |
| | Seminar on poetry and landscape: click blue numbers to the left for a full description. Architecture and ETP students welcome to join the poetry crowd! |
| | This course is an experiment in bringing together a green environmentalist impulse with medieval and renaissance English poetry about built space: gardens, meadows, wells, and houses. We’ll dig into the history and politics of actual gardens, meadows, and buildings, too. With the help of medieval lyricists, the Wakefield Master, Spenser, Lanyer, Milton, Marvell, and others, we will cultivate Marvell's "green thought in a green shade." Some questions: what is “place” in fiction? How do we get there and move around in it? What is its relation to “place” in landscape architecture? How does the literary history of “pastoral” interact with the history of land use? How does poetry intervene in environmental longing and despair? We will meet outside under the Scholar’s Tree by Dawson’s Row, whenever feasible, in camp chairs. A series of short assignments and revisions will culminate in a seminar essay on a poem or a historical landscape and its environmental engagements. N.B.: this course satisfies both the English major requirements for a pre-17th c. course and a seminar; it can satisfy the 2nd writing requirement (arrange with the professor); it welcomes architecture and ETP students; it fits the Med/Ren concentration in English as well as counting for Medieval Studies; open to all interested students—email fowler@virginia.edu with any questions. |
| ENGL 4520 | Seminar in Renaissance Literature |
| |
| | Reinventing Hamlet |
| Spring 2024 19821 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Permission | 14 / 15 | Clare Kinney | TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm | New Cabell Hall 044 |
| | Click on the blue course number to the left to see a full description of this course. |
| | Hamlet is the most celebrated Shakespearean play; it is also perhaps the most mysterious and elusive. It has a huge afterlife in both elite and popular culture; it has been reinterpreted, appropriated and adapted by commentators and creative artists to serve very different agendas at various historical moments. In this seminar we will first (re)read the play very carefully before exploring the resonance of its reshaping in a variety of media. We’ll look at dramatic reinventions (e.g. Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead); novelistic reinventions (e.g. John Updike’s Gertrude and Claudius), cinematic reinventions (e.g. the Hamlet movies of Almereyda and Olivier and Branagh); we’ll also pay attention to global Hamlet and to the critical reception of the play. Why does this particular play provoke so many creative reinventions? And what do its more subversive rewritings suggest about the cultural forces underlying the apparently unceasing need to revisit and/or “correct” and/or supplement Shakespeare’s project?
Course requirements: regular attendance and lively participation in discussion, an oral presentation, one short and one long paper, a portfolio of e-mail responses.
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| ENGL 4560 | Seminar in Modern and Contemporary Literature |
| |
| | Contemporary Women's Texts |
| Spring 2024 19791 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 14 / 0 | Susan Fraiman | TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm | Bryan Hall 330 |
| | This course takes up recent Anglophone works by women across multiple genres and referencing a range of cultural contexts. Primary texts include visual as well as literary forms. A selection of secondary materials will help to gloss their formal, thematic, and ideological characteristics while giving students a taste of contemporary theory in such areas as gender, queer, and postcolonial studies. Possible works (still to be determined) include fiction by Gish Jen, Jhumpa Lahiri, Alice Munro, and Chimamanda Adichie; a graphic narrative by Roz Chast; a play by Annie Baker; experimental, multi-genre works by Claudia Rankine, Saidiya Hartman, or Maggie Nelson; a neo-Western film by Kelly Reichardt; images by South African photographer Zanele Muholi. Among our likely concerns will be the juxtaposition of verbal and visual elements in a single text; depictions of queer, raced, immigrant, and transnational subjectivities; narratives that make “truth claims” and how such claims affect the reader; representations of growing up, aging, migration, maternity, violence, marriage, creativity, diverse sexualities, and work; ties and tensions among women across boundaries of place, generation, class, and race. One project of the course will be to explore its own premise that “women’s texts” is a useful and meaningful category. Two papers and a final exam. This course is intended for 3rd- and 4th-year English majors or other advanced students with a background in literary/cultural/gender studies. |
| | Global Speculative Fiction |
| | Global Speculative Fiction |
| Website 19809 | 003 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 12 / 18 | Debjani Ganguly | TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm | Cocke Hall 115 |
| | The course will explore the emergence of speculative fiction as a global literary form in our contemporary age. Broadly encompassing the genres of fantasy, science fiction, horror and alternative history, speculative fiction is any kind of fiction that creates a narrative world which may or may not resemble the world we live in. This kind of fiction embodies alternative ideas of reality including magic, space or time travel, alternative realities, or alternative histories. In recent years, there has been a proliferation of speculative fiction from Africa, Latin America, and the Asia Pacific that figure alternative futures for peoples oppressed by centuries-long colonialism and extractive capitalism. The rapid proliferation of digital technology and the accelerating effects of anthropogenic climate change have given a new edge to this body of fiction. We will study the emergence of counter-factual utopian and dystopian narratives, Afrofuturism and animism, the specter of fossil futures, and apocalyptic fiction on environmental collapse through a range of exciting works. The goal of this course is to understand the rise of speculative fiction as a literary form and a mode of world-making that captures cataclysmic shifts in human and non-human worlds that can no longer be comprehended by social, political, and moral frameworks of our recent past and present.
Primary Texts
Namwalli Serpell, The Old Drift
Nnedi Okorafor Lagoon
Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being
Omar Elakkad, American War
Kim Stanley Robinson, Ministry For The Future
|
| | The Literature of Now: 21st-Century US Fiction |
| Spring 2024 20294 | 004 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 15 / 18 | Joshua Miller | TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm | Bryan Hall 203 |
| | Is it possible to write literary criticism about the fiction of our current moment? What does a cultural history of the present look like? How do we interpret the significance of current fiction? When did the literary 21st century begin? Which events and trends have informed the creative work published in the past two decades? How have changing media and technologies spurred new narrative forms? Have changing visual and digital artforms influenced the languages of contemporary literature? In an effort to develop a few rigorous, if provisional, answers to these many broad questions, this seminar will begin with questions of media/platform, reading methods, and cultural value (which novels will future historians will consider “important” or representative of our time?) and then generate interpretations of a wide range of genres in early 21st century prose fiction, including short (micro or flash) fiction, experimental and mixed-media novels, speculative fiction, graphic narratives, and digital fiction, among others. Requirements will include discussion posts, two essays, and two exams. |
| ENGL 4561 | Seminar in Modern Literature and Culture |
| |
| | Poetry in a Global Age |
| Spring 2024 19792 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 12 / 18 (12 / 18) | Jahan Ramazani | MoWe 3:30pm - 4:45pm | New Cabell Hall 209 |
| | Click on the blue course number to the left to see a full description of this course. |
| | In this seminar, we explore world poetry in English. To understand the global dimensions of modern and contemporary poetry, we closely read the vibrant anglophone poetries of India, Africa, the Caribbean, the Pacific Islands, Ireland, Black and Asian Britain, and Indigenous and diasporic America, which bring new worlds, new idioms, and new literary possibilities into English. Postcolonial writers enrich poetry in English by hybridizing local traditions with the poetic techniques of the global North. Issues to be discussed include the historical memory of colonization and enslavement, global challenges such as war and the climate crisis, and transformations of world-traveling poetic forms and strategies. Forged in response to an increasingly globalized world, the innovations of transnational modernist writers provide crucial tools that the poets of the global South repurpose. Featured writers include postcolonial poets such as Derek Walcott, Seamus Heaney, Lorna Goodison, NourbeSe Philip, A. K. Ramanujan, Okot p’Bitek, Christopher Okigbo, and Daljit Nagra, and modernists like T. S. Eliot, W. B. Yeats, and Claude McKay. A highpoint of the semester will be the “Poetry and Climate Change” symposium on Friday, March 29, which will enable us to interact with a handful of the poets and scholars on the syllabus, including Jorie Graham and Craig Santos Perez. Requirements include active participation; co-leading of discussion; and two substantial papers involving research and close reading. |
| ENGL 4580 | Seminar in Literary Criticism |
| |
| | The Realist Novel in Our Age of Crisis |
| | The Realist Novel in Our Age of Crisis |
| Spring 2024 19811 | 002 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 6 / 18 | Adrienne Ghaly | Tu 2:00pm - 4:30pm | Wilson Hall 244 |
| | How are contemporary realist novels responding to urgent crises now? This course explores hybrid forms of realism grappling with global warming, humanitarian crisis, and the resurgence of the extreme right. Focusing on Imbolo Mbue's How Beautiful We Were, Mohsin Hamid's Exit West, Jenny Offill's Weather, and Paul Lynch's Prophet Song, we’ll consider the ability of realism’s fundamental components – character, the scale of literary worlds, mood and atmosphere, multiple voices and perspectives, and more – to address climate change, large-scale migration, and the re-emergence of authoritarianism. And we'll weigh them against how critics and theorists have assessed the novel’s enduring cultural power and its ability – or failure – to meet new challenges. Above all, we’ll ask: What can the realist novel do now? Reading responses, engaged participation, a shorter paper and a longer paper. |
| ENGL 4590 | Seminar in Literary Genres |
| |
| | Writing the Great House in English & Amer Fiction |
| | From Austen to Morrison: Great House Fiction |
| Spring 2024 19803 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 10 / 18 | Caroline Rody | TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Bryan Hall 330 |
| | Please click number at left for description. |
| | ENGL 4590: From Austen to Morrison: Great House Fiction
The great house of English literature is a house most everyone knows: pictured imposingly on the cover of English paperbacks, setting the magnificent scene from the summit of a green lawn in BBC and Hollywood frame shots, serving as stage for plots of romance and intrigue in countless novels. Though always a site of inequality—the affluent living “upstairs” and the servants “downstairs”—and though portrayed recently with strong irony and critique, it is nevertheless embraced by English literary culture as ours, indigenous, part of the landscape.
In American literature, not so. Founded on the dream of breaking away from the house of the Old World, U.S. literature tends to treat the very fact of a big, impressive house as in and of itself an affront, an edifice built on exploitation, not our house at all, but an outrage on the American landscape. From this beginning developed a long literary history of suspect, spookily Gothic, even downright evil American houses, from the enslaving plantation house to the haunted house that is itself a murderer, as well as a contemporary sub-genre that treats the great American house as a morally reclaimable fixer-upper.
This course will take up fiction and film that demonstrates the literary topos of the great house in transformation, a figure for nations evolving over time. We will study, some at length and some briefly, short fiction, novels and novel excerpts, and four films by (or adapting) many of the following authors: Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Frederick Douglass, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Jean Rhys, Shirley Jackson, Toni Morrison, Ian McEwen, Louise Erdrich, Alison Bechdel, Gish Jen, Mat Johnson, Helen Oyeyemi, and Joe Talbot/Jimmie Fails. Requirements include active reading and participation, 20 pages of writing divided into two papers, frequent short Canvas posts, and a group leading of one class.
|
| ENGL 5530 | Seminar in Eighteenth-Century Literature |
| |
| | The Literature of British Abolition, 1750-1810 |
| Spring 2024 20617 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 7 / 15 | Michael Suarez | Tu 3:30pm - 6:00pm | New Cabell Hall 415 |
| | How did Great Britain come to abolish the slave trade in 1807 and what roles did literature play in enlightening readers to the barbarities of this human traffic? Reading works such as Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko, Quobna Ottobah Cugoano’s Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery, Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative, and a variety of poems, both canonical and from relatively unknown voices, we will attempt to immerse ourselves in the literature of British abolition. Juxtaposing such writings with visual materials (viz., the slave ship Brooks), abolitionist political pamphlets, and letters in the C18 public press will give greater depth to our discussions. Finally, we will read Caryl Phillips’ novel Cambridge and reflect on how a literature of abolition might function in our own time.
This course satisfies the 1700-1900 requirement.
|
| ENGL 5559 | New Course in English Literature |
| |
| | The Ode |
| | Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter. |
| Spring 2024 19817 | 002 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 18 / 19 | Rebecca Rush | TuTh 9:30am - 10:45am | Bryan Hall 235 |
| | Read Pindar, Horace, Spenser, Marvell, Gray, Wordsworth, Keats, Byron, Auden, et al.
Click blue numbers to the left for a full description |
| | The ode has long been a place for poets to test their own mettle and the meaning of greatness. Starting with Pindar and Horace, this course will explore how generations of poets reinterpreted the ode and its traditional celebration of athletic beauty and valor. We will look closely at poems that praise (or blame) particular people such as Cleopatra, Brutus, Cromwell, Napoleon, and Freud; call upon abstractions such as wit, solitude, and liberty; and address such non-human listeners as nightingales, Greek urns, and western winds. We will ask how each ode reckons with the idea of heroism and the purpose of praise. How do they imagine and depict greatness, fame, knowledge, beauty, good fortune, and strength? Do they see these as consistent with goodness, justice, and delicacy? How do poets ironize and critique—both their objects of praise and bygone views of greatness? When and why do odes shift to meditating rather than praising, and do these meditative odes still respond to the heroic tradition? What do odes have to say about the distinctive tools and aims of poetry and about poetry’s role in immortalizing? We will approach the thought of each ode with seriousness and its language with rigor, but we will also enjoy the unique sonic pleasures of poets like Keats, Spenser, Cowley, Wordsworth, Marvell, Gray, Byron, and Auden.
This course fulfills the pre-1700 requirement for the English major and counts toward the Medieval and Renaissance Concentration in English.
|
| ENGL 5580 | Seminar in Critical Theory |
| |
| | Material Culture: Theories and Methods |
| Spring 2024 20375 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 14 / 0 (14 / 0) | Lisa Goff | Mo 3:30pm - 6:00pm | Kerchof Hall 317 |
| | “Material culture” is the stuff of everyday life: landscapes and street corners, skyscrapers and log cabins, umbrellas and dining room tables and Picassos and Fitbits. Every thing in our lives, those we choose and those that are thrust upon us, conveys meaning—many meanings, in fact, from the intentions of the creator to the reception (and sometimes the subversion) of the consumer. Interpreting objects, buildings, and places provides insight into the values and beliefs of societies and cultures past and present. In this course we will study theories of material culture, many of which now intersect with literary criticism, from a variety of scholarly disciplines including anthropology, historical archaeology, art history, geography, environmental humanities, American Studies, and literary studies. And we will apply those theories to texts and artifacts of all kinds, from novels and short stories to movies, photographs, historic sites, visual art and culture, fashion and clothing, landscapes, and more. We will read theorists familiar to students of literature, such as thing theorist Bill Brown, cultural theorist Walter Benjamin, and philosopher Bruno Latour, but also folklorist Henry Glassie; archaeologist James Deetz; anthropologists such as Elizabeth Chin and Daniel Miller; and political theorist Jane Bennet. The class will prepare you to interpret things in ways that illuminate texts, and to read texts in ways that reveal and cultivate the meanings of things. |
| ENGL 5830 | Introduction to World Religions, World Literatures |
| |
| | THE BIBLE |
| Spring 2024 19797 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 11 / 0 | Stephen Cushman | We 10:00am - 12:30pm | Dawson's Row 1 |
| | The stories, rhythms, and rhetoric of the Bible have been imprinting readers and writers of English since the seventh century. Moving through selections from the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, from Genesis to Revelation, this course focuses on deepening biblical literacy and sharpening awareness of biblical connections to whatever members of the class are reading in other contexts. Along the way we will discuss English translations of the Bible; the process of canonization; textual history; and the long trail of interpretive approaches, ancient to contemporary. Our text will be the New Oxford Annotated Bible, 5th ed. All are welcome. No previous knowledge of the Bible needed or assumed. |
| ENGL 5831 | Proseminar in World Religions, World Literature |
| |
| Spring 2024 20279 | 001 | SEM (1 Units) | Permission | 4 / 15 | Elizabeth Fowler | Fr 10:00am - 10:50am | Kerchof Hall 317 |
| | 1 credit, pass/fail forum open to grads from all depts who bring religious studies & lit together; undergrads seek permission fowler@virginia.edu. Click blue numbers to the left for a full description. |
| | The Proseminar in World Religions, World Literatures is a one-credit, pass/fail forum that welcomes all graduate students whose work brings together literature in any language with study of any religion, and it is open to interested undergraduates by permission of the instructor. It supports the concentration called WRWL that is offered within both the English MA and the Religious Studies MA, a concentration students may join as part of the terminal degree but also, if doctoral candidates, fulfill en route to the PhD. We meet most weeks of the semester for a single hour, under the Scholar’s Tree by Dawson’s Row, weather permitting, though it will be possible to zoom in if desired. We read short texts together, perform thought experiments, write manifesti, invite guests we admire from the UVA faculty to be interviewed on their own work, mull over the challenges we face, and brainstorm about how we can best support one another’s work. Please email fowler@virginia.edu with questions. |
| ENGL 8500 | Studies in English Literature |
| |
| | The Anglophone World Novel |
| | The Anglophone World Novel: Theory and Criticism |
| Website 20478 | 002 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 3 / 15 | Debjani Ganguly | We 3:30pm - 6:00pm | Bryan Hall 235 |
| | The course will explore theories of the anglophone world novel from the 1980s to the present. We will study the changing shape of the novel in the era of globalization, digital transformation, platform publishing, war on terror, ethnic and civil wars, and accelerating environmental crises. We will read novels by Ian McEwan, Don DeLillo, Ruth Ozeki, Chimamanda Adichie, and Amitav Ghosh among others. The course will feature theories and histories of this contemporary novel form in the scholarly works of Cheah, Ganguly, Jagoda, Nixon, McGurl, and Walkowitz.
Proposed Novels
Ian McEwan’s Saturday
Don DeLillo’s Falling Man
Chimamanda Adichie’s Americana
Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being
Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide |
| ENGL 8560 | Studies in Modern and Contemporary Literature |
| |
| | Poetry in a Global Age |
| Spring 2024 19793 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 15 / 14 | Jahan Ramazani | MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Kerchof Hall 317 |
| | Click on the blue course number to the left to see a full description of this course. |
| | How does poetry articulate and respond to the globalizing processes that accelerate in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries? In this seminar, we consider modern and contemporary poetry in English in relation to transnational, global, world literary, and postcolonial theory and history. Issues to be explored include the historical memory of colonization and enslavement, global challenges such as war and the climate crisis, and transformations of world-traveling poetic forms and strategies. We closely read the vibrant anglophone poetries of India, Africa, the Caribbean, the Pacific Islands, Ireland, Black and Asian Britain, and diasporic and Indigenous America, which bring new worlds, new idioms, and new literary possibilities into English. Postcolonial writers enrich poetry in English by hybridizing local traditions with the poetic inheritances of the global North. Forged in response to an increasingly globalized world, the innovations of transnational modernist writers provide crucial tools that the poets of the global South repurpose. Featured writers include postcolonial poets such as Derek Walcott, Seamus Heaney, Lorna Goodison, NourbeSe Philip, A. K. Ramanujan, Okot p’Bitek, Christopher Okigbo, and Daljit Nagra, and modernists like T. S. Eliot, W. B. Yeats, and Claude McKay. Requirements include active participation; co-leading of discussion; and two conference-length papers (8-10 pages). |
| ENGL 8580 | Studies in Critical Theory |
| |
| | Fictionality: History, Theory, and Practice |
| Spring 2024 19804 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 15 / 15 | Bruce Holsinger | Tu 3:00pm - 5:30pm | Dawson's Row 1 |
| | Fictionality is a distinctive quality of literary writing that has come under intense critical scrutiny in recent decades—though often with little regard for how contemporary authors practice the hands-on making of fiction. How, why, and with what leaps of intuition does a novelist begin to make things up, to fictionalize the world? What does this process have in common with the fictional strategies of past writers—the narrative poets of the Middle Ages, the experimental novelists of the eighteenth century? This seminar will study the history and theory of fictionality with close attention to the imaginative craft of fiction. We will consider a range of approaches to the fictional impulse across a variety of literary writings: contemporary autofiction and literary suspense, narrative poetry from the Middle Ages, the eighteenth-century novel, and others. We’ll also consider theoretical and practical writings on fiction and fictionality by Catherine Gallagher, Wayne C. Booth, Monika Fludernik, Brandon Taylor, Ursula K. Le Guin, Julie Orlemanski, Stephen King, and others. The seminar will include class visits from several contemporary novelists and critics who will help us think together about the relation between the creative and the critical. Participants will also have their own opportunities to fictionalize, to assay the cognitive and creative processes entailed in the remaking of the world through fictional narrative. Students may use the seminar to satisfy the pre-1700 requirement and/or the history of criticism/literary theory requirement. |
| ENGL 8596 | Form and Theory of Poetry |
| |
| | Embodied Ecologies: Ecofeminist Poetry & Poetics |
| Spring 2024 19783 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Permission | 17 / 18 | Brian Teare | We 2:00pm - 4:30pm | Shannon House 109 |
| | “How can we listen across species,” asks Alexis Pauline Gumbs in Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals, “across extinction, across harm?” And how can the practice of poetry extend the senses, aid us in listening and speaking to, touching, and moving in ethical relation to the imperiled world? Much contemporary ecofeminist poetry focuses of course on fostering ethical relations to the more-than-human, and it often does so by situating these relationships in the Anthropocene, a geological epoch sometimes reframed by ecocritics as the Plantationocene or the Colonialocene. Ecofeminist poetics often makes visible how chattel slavery, imperialism, industrialization, settler colonialism, and militarization take advantage of and thrive off of the intrinsic interconnectedness between species, ecosystems, humans, and human systems. Thus this interdisciplinary course will begin with brief introductions to ecofeminist theory, ecopoetics, and Black and indigenous environmental theories before moving on to books of contemporary ecofeminist poetry, which we’ll read alongside short selections from the ecocritical discourses that inform the work. Lichen, birds, wolves, trees, oysters, and insects will accompany us through the semester as we too attempt to listen across species, “to see what happens,” writes Gumbs, when we “rethink and re-feel” our own “relations, possibilities, and practices” in conversation with the more-than-human world. Assignments will range from the creative to the critical, with an emphasis on process-led ecofeminist research, culminating in a final project. |
| ENGL 8598 | Form and Theory of Fiction |
| |
| | Knowledge and the Imagination |
| | Knowledge and the Imagination: Literature, the Supernatural, the Real |
| Spring 2024 19784 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Permission | 11 / 15 | Micheline Marcom | Th 4:00pm - 6:30pm | Dawson's Row 1 |
| | "The imaginative world is the only real world after all." --Wallace Stevens
This course will be an investigation through readings of literature into the imagination and its relationship to knowledge and to reality. We will read a wide array of books from Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to Jung's Red Book, The 1001 Nights, Pessoa's Book of Disquiet, Stevens' Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction, Rilke's Malte Laurids Brigge, Lorca's Duende, as well as essays on the imagination by the likes of Baudelaire, Coleridge, Ted Hughes, and sufi scholar, Henri Corbin. There will be creative responses, consummate notetaking, and a final project. |
| ENGL 9580 | Advanced Studies in Critical Theory |
| |
| | Aesthetics and Politics |
| Spring 2024 19800 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 12 / 14 | Rita Felski | Mo 6:30pm - 9:00pm | Bryan Hall 310 |
| | How have art and politics been connected or opposed over the last two centuries? We'll approach this question via a survey of such key concepts as realism, modernism, the avant-garde, kitsch, camp, postmodernism, and the sublime. Other topics to be discussed include the museum, the role of race and gender in aesthetics, the sociology of literature and art, and the recent surge of interest in aesthetic experience.The approach is primarily theoretical, although combined with numerous examples from literature and painting, and to a lesser extent from film and music. |
| Writing and Rhetoric |
| ENWR 1506 | Writing & Critical Inquiry Stretch II |
| |
| | Writing about Identities |
| Spring 2024 10109 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 11 / 12 | Kate Kostelnik | TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm | New Cabell Hall 066 |
| | In this class, we will complete collaborative inquires. The first inquiry will be into race and identity. In March, you and your group will investigate issues of race locally. While all the work you do in all your classes are inquiries into disciplines and subjects, the research and revision that goes into writing projects (or course papers) are usually non-collaborative. In other words, you choose a topic, analyze texts, reflect, and then write. Collaborative inquiry is different in that you and your peers choose the same topic and sources. While you will write your own projects, you will research and discuss sources collaboratively. You will not just work reflectively, but reflexively. This project is based off of Donna Qualley’s Turns of Thought, from which we will read excerpts. |
| | Writing about Culture/Society |
| | The Art of the Remix: Music, Memes, Media, and More |
| Spring 2024 10112 | 004 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 11 / 12 | Patricia Sullivan | TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Bryan Hall 203 |
| | The remix makes something new out of something old. Sometimes an artist remixes his or her own work. Other times an artist uses samples of older work or other people’s work to creatively or critically build new art, new ideas, new messages. This semester we’ll be looking at where we get our inspiration and ideas from, how we might remix those materials in order to generate new ideas, expressions, and aesthetic experiences for ourselves and others. Along the way, we’ll think about originality, creativity, copyright and intellectual property, sampling and quoting, collage, recycling and repurposing, adaptation, intertextuality, and more. Sometimes we’ll look at music or memes. Other times we’ll look at movie clips or textual examples. We’ll read about remixes, we’ll analyze remixes, and we’ll make remixes of our own. And of course, we’ll work on developing our writing abilities along the way. What if we think of writing as a kind of remix?
|
| | Writing about Identities |
| Spring 2024 11995 | 006 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 12 / 12 | Kate Kostelnik | TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm | New Cabell Hall 066 |
| | In this class, we will complete collaborative inquires. The first inquiry will be into race and identity. In March, you and your group will investigate issues of race locally. While all the work you do in all your classes are inquiries into disciplines and subjects, the research and revision that goes into writing projects (or course papers) are usually non-collaborative. In other words, you choose a topic, analyze texts, reflect, and then write. Collaborative inquiry is different in that you and your peers choose the same topic and sources. While you will write your own projects, you will research and discuss sources collaboratively. You will not just work reflectively, but reflexively. This project is based off of Donna Qualley’s Turns of Thought, from which we will read excerpts. |
| | Writing about Culture/Society |
| | “The Art of the Remix: Music, Memes, Media, and More” |
| Spring 2024 12660 | 008 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 11 / 12 | Patricia Sullivan | TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm | Bryan Hall 203 |
| | The remix makes something new out of something old. Sometimes an artist remixes his or her own work. Other times an artist uses samples of older work or other people’s work to creatively or critically build new art, new ideas, new messages. This semester we’ll be looking at where we get our inspiration and ideas from, how we might remix those materials in order to generate new ideas, expressions, and aesthetic experiences for ourselves and others. Along the way, we’ll think about originality, creativity, copyright and intellectual property, sampling and quoting, collage, recycling and repurposing, adaptation, intertextuality, and more. Sometimes we’ll look at music or memes. Other times we’ll look at movie clips or textual examples. We’ll read about remixes, we’ll analyze remixes, and we’ll make remixes of our own. And of course, we’ll work on developing our writing abilities along the way. What if we think of writing as a kind of remix?
|
| | Writing about Culture/Society |
| | Writing about Sports |
| Spring 2024 13321 | 009 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 11 / 12 | Rhiannon Goad | MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Bryan Hall 310 |
| | With early homo-sapiens sketching wrestling matches on cave walls, people have written about sports for millennia. Today, writers weave sports into the fabric of our everyday lives. This course continues the prehistoric tradition of writing about sports with contemporary-minded stunt journalism and blogging projects. In doing so, students explore how athletics serves to negotiate personal identity and test the limits of what it means to be human. |
| ENWR 1510 | Writing and Critical Inquiry |
| |
| | Writing about the Arts |
| | On Difficulty |
| Spring 2024 11001 | 003 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 18 / 18 | Hodges Adams | TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm | New Cabell Hall 036 |
| | How do we react to art and writing that we find difficult to understand? What is the role of difficulty in a novel, a painting, or a book of poetry? This class emphasizes close reading and close attention to the particulars of a text, and which particulars of its construction can lead the reader to understanding. Students should expect to read across a variety of genres and forms, both fictional and non-fictional. Students themselves will focus on their own process as writers, what difficulties they face, and how we clearly and effectively communicate our ideas in the modern environment—or how we don't. |
| | Writing about Digital Media |
| | Art Imitates Life: Writing About Video Games |
| Spring 2024 11587 | 004 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 18 / 18 | Caroline Ford | MoWeFr 12:00pm - 12:50pm | Bryan Hall 334 |
| | Video games are a beloved source of entertainment that offer both an escape from reality and an opportunity to pursue a myriad of storylines. In addition to providing rich and unique interactive experiences, they can also have a profound emotional impact, whether joyous, light-hearted, bittersweet, distressing, or even outright maddening. Many would even consider video games an art form, but how far can we push the intersection between video games and academic value?
In this section of ENWR 1510, we will extend beyond the scope of video game coding and mechanics into an exploration of the relationship between video games and writing. In our classes together, we will examine how our four central games come together through characterization, dialogue, world-building, and narrative. As we look specifically at story-based games, we will focus on a few key questions:
• How do video games evoke emotions, empathy, and attachment in their players?
• How do video games demonstrate different lived experiences, themes, and ideologies?
• What makes a story?
Through our reading, writing, viewing, and discussion, we will learn about the creative possibilities in our own writing through video game storytelling. We will work collaboratively to think through writing as a process, express thoughts with clarity, and develop writerly confidence. Unit topics will be paired with games, brief articles about said games, and various supplementary essays. No previous video game interest or experience is necessary. Games will be made available through the University and are observable through free online video walkthroughs. |
| | Writing about the Arts |
| | On Difficulty |
| Spring 2024 10491 | 006 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 18 / 18 | Hodges Adams | TuTh 5:00pm - 6:15pm | New Cabell Hall 115 |
| | How do we react to art and writing that we find difficult to understand? What is the role of difficulty in a novel, a painting, or a book of poetry? This class emphasizes close reading and close attention to the particulars of a text, and which particulars of its construction can lead the reader to understanding. Students should expect to read across a variety of genres and forms, both fictional and non-fictional. Students themselves will focus on their own process as writers, what difficulties they face, and how we clearly and effectively communicate our ideas in the modern environment—or how we don't. |
| | Writing about Culture/Society |
| | Queering the Narrative |
| Spring 2024 10502 | 018 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 18 / 18 | Reese Arbini | TuTh 5:00pm - 6:15pm | New Cabell Hall 187 |
| | What does it mean to “queer” something? No doubt you have encountered the word queer—perhaps as an adjective, as a slur, and as an identity. As a verb, though, queering embodies a linguistic history that has the potential to transform our conception of a text, and subsequently, all narratives from the literary to the ideological. Similar in many ways to its reclamation by some within the LGBTQIA+ community as an umbrella term for non-normative expressions of gender and sexuality, queering—shorthand for queer reading—troubles the hegemonic assumptions of many of our societal, and thus personal, narratives. In this course we will explore queering through writing, engaging with experimental—or otherwise non-normative—forms of expression as an actionable way to challenge and subvert. We will focus on the forms of essay and prose, the genres of horror and comedy, and the mediums of zines and music. We will also place a particular emphasis on writing as action, reflecting on what responsibility we as writers have in challenging—queering—the narratives in our lives. |
| | Writing about Identities |
| | The Personal is Political: Feminist Lifewriting |
| Spring 2024 11002 | 019 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 18 / 18 | John Modica | MoWe 5:00pm - 6:15pm | New Cabell Hall 027 |
| | How can we access the truth of our lives through writing? What does it mean to write a life without reliance on cliché, on type, on narratives and forms that deny the complexity, depth, and brilliance of who we are and want to be?
The goal of feminism is much more profound than the pursuit of legal and economic parity across gender difference. Feminism is not even one project. The word “feminism” describes a vast field of intersecting political, cultural, and philosophical movements, all of which roughly share a commitment to transforming society through attention to the role of gender in determining the possible shapes of our lives. In this class, our attention to gender politics will also accompany attention to different social positions that gender cannot be thought without: race, class, disability, ethnicity, sexuality, and nation. We will also encounter feminist analyses of a variety of key themes: family, childhood, illness, memory, tradition, and, of course, writing.
Taking the conceptually rich and broad fields of “feminism” and “life-writing” together, this course will help you hone the philosophies and techniques you bring to the practice of writing. We will consider how writers of various political and intellectual commitments have used different approaches to writing to render their lives or the lives of others, and to what ends. In doing so, we will consider what their writing can teach us about the kinds of writing we do in academia, at work, in public, and in private. The goal of this course is to prepare you for the writerly challenges you will face in college and beyond, while deepening your relationship to the written word, yourself, and your loved ones. My hope is that our explorations of the relationship between politics, identity, culture, and writing will transform us all both as writers and as people, and that we can have fun, contemplate big questions, and appreciate beautiful art while doing so. |
| | Writing about Culture/Society |
| | Writing About Love |
| Spring 2024 11367 | 033 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 18 / 18 | Allison Gish | TuTh 8:00am - 9:15am | New Cabell Hall 115 |
| | In A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments, Roland Barthes writes, “to try to write love is to confront the muck of language.” In this section of ENWR 1510, we will allow writing to serve as our grounds for exploration–a field of language to muck around in. Orbiting the concept of love, we will consider its theorization and account for the various shapes love can take–and the ways it informs our scholarship. This course will consider writing, like love, to be a process and practice of continual commitment. As such, it will entail practice-based attention to the writing process through consistent writing habits, contemplative practices, and the cultivation of a commonplace method. |
| | Writing about Culture/Society |
| | The Personal Essay |
| Spring 2024 11656 | 041 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 18 / 18 | Xiwen Wang | MoWe 8:00am - 9:15am | Bryan Hall 330 |
| | You might wonder why one would want to write more personal essays when one has gotten into college already. It is my claim that writing in this extraordinarily elastic genre can help shore up interesting and sophisticated queries and arguments, and better yet, ones that we are at least modestly invested in!
Note well, though, that for the scope of our investigation, we will lean away from memoir or autobiography, per se. Instead, we will read about Maine’s lobster festival, carpool lanes, the love of palm trees, and oranges (an entire book’s worth). As we become more mindful of our particular points of view (and of ways to exploit this subjectivity), we will turn the focus outside of ourselves, engaging with other voices. We will experiment with how the personal mode motivates writing that is extro- rather than introspective.
As readers and writers, we will split our attention between close, critical analysis of texts and exploration of our own writerly voice via, perhaps paradoxically, imitation of stylish writing. In addition to sharpening your skills in reading and analysis, this class will give you tools for generating drafts, (peer) revising, and polishing your writing. |
| | Writing about Culture/Society |
| | Poetics of Apocalypse |
| Spring 2024 13337 | 044 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 18 / 18 | Coby-Dillon English | MoWe 3:30pm - 4:45pm | New Cabell Hall 036 |
| | THE END IS NEAR! Or is it? And whose end, exactly? In this course, we will examine apocalypse and all its variations and consider works of poetics that speak to this phenomenon. We will begin with defining apocalypse, both big and small, defining poetics, and building a communal glossary of terms that will aid in our future analyses of apocalypse poetics. We will examine the nature of apocalypse, who or what is most susceptible to it, and our own roles in understanding the end times, considering such themes as climate catastrophe, colonialization, technology/automation, etc. Readings will include a mix of poetry as well as articles, podcasts, films, and art. Student writing will include reflections, personal narratives, short poetic analysis essays, and in-class knowledge sharing. Writing poetry will not be a requirement of this course, but students will have the option to do so. The course will culminate in a personal apocalypse project in which students consider the precarity of their own worlds. |
| | Writing about the Arts |
| Spring 2024 11661 | 047 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 18 / 18 | Cristina Griffin | TuTh 9:30am - 10:45am | New Cabell Hall 064 |
| | In this class, we will practice critical inquiry and hone our writing skills by engaging with one of the most familiar aesthetic forms of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: the television show. As we read, watch, discuss, and write about television together, our goal will be to approach this familiar form with a fresh perspective, not taking anything about television for granted. How do the formal elements of television shows—their genres, storytelling capacities, narrative features, and serial formats—build compelling worlds? How can we approach these tv worlds analytically while also valuing the emotional impact of television? How do television shows critique and generate culture? How do shows build arguments about experiences of race, gender, sexuality, and class? Over the course of the semester, we will read scripts that turned into episodes, read critical writing about television, and of course we will also watch a variety of tv episodes. But more than anything, we will write about television: we will build up our capacity to analyze television and then turn that inquiring perspective onto our own writing. If television shows build worlds out of words—and if those worlds can and do have a giant impact, for better or worse, on the world we live in—then we will take seriously how we can develop our own writing and re-approach our practices of world-building and meaning-making through our words. |
| | Writing about Culture/Society |
| | Writing though the Archive: Writing about Knowledge |
| Spring 2024 11845 | 053 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 18 / 18 | Lauren Parker | MoWeFr 10:00am - 10:50am | New Cabell Hall 111 |
| | What is an archive (and where is it)? Who decides what goes in, and what happens to that which is left out? Can the archive be held accountable for what it does (or does not) say? How does it relate to how we understand the past?
Thinking through these questions is the first step in the process of 'thinking archivally' about the world, personal experiences, and your writing writ large, and is ultimately a means of critically examining how the inextricable ties between power, memory, culture, history, knowledge impact our lives. Exploring ‘the archive’ in all its elusiveness and broadness will allow us to generate, together, a framework through which we can explore the process of writing as the production and exchange of knowledge throughout the ages.
This is a sampling of some of the issues we will examine together as part of this course, most of which will change depending on what interests the class as a whole:
• Digital archives, databases, copyright, and the law
• Internet archives and accessibility
• Popular culture and media preservation
• Personal archives / history and the past as our everyday experiences
• Buildings, memorials, and objects as archives and artifacts
• Knowledge as a commodity (for-profit knowledge, higher education, etc.)
• Art and writing as archives
• Archives and violence/trauma
This is a writing-focused class, but also one that is committed to providing opportunities to explore the University and its vast resources and opportunities. Previously, as part of this course we have taken trips to Special Collections, Clemons, the Fralin, Ruffin Hall Gallery, the Fralin’s off-grounds art storage facility site, and more. Moreover, there is a significant hands-on, creative component to the course. The three projects are each broad enough to allow you to explore what is meaningful to you: one critical essay on an ethical dilemma of your choosing, a shorter second creative project where you select or imagine an artifact of your choosing and write a short entry that contextualizes it, and a final creative project where you create your own archive or collection, whether it is personal, historical, or cultural. |
| ENWR 2510 | Advanced Writing Seminar |
| |
| | Writing about Culture & Society |
| | Writing about Medicine |
| Spring 2024 13403 | 005 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 16 / 16 | Rhiannon Goad | MoWe 5:00pm - 6:15pm | Bryan Hall 330 |
| | With false data and unsourced health guidance littering our social media feeds, we live in a dangerous era of medical misinformation. Developing practical skills to communicate accurate medical information could save someone's life. In this course, you will develop storytelling skills and sharpen your ability to identify misleading medical information. In a series of essays, you will practice writing about medicine for a public audience. |
| | Writing about Culture & Society |
| | Writing about Medicine |
| Spring 2024 13871 | 006 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 16 / 16 | Rhiannon Goad | MoWe 3:30pm - 4:45pm | Bryan Hall 330 |
| | With false data and unsourced health guidance littering our social media feeds, we live in a dangerous era of medical misinformation. Developing practical skills to communicate accurate medical information could save someone's life. In this course, you will develop storytelling skills and sharpen your ability to identify misleading medical information. In a series of essays, you will practice writing about medicine for a public audience. |
| ENWR 2520 | Special Topics in Writing |
| |
| | Writing the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers at UVA |
| Spring 2024 12089 | 004 | SEM (3 Units) | Permission | 16 / 16 | Kate Kostelnik | TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm | Bryan Hall 310 |
| | In this writing course we’ll contribute to conversations of race and history at UVA through self-designed writing projects. The first part of the course will be an inquiry into the history of enslaved laborers at UVA and how the writers of the Declaration of Independence framed our country—particularly in terms of equality, individual liberty, and the institution of slavery— (texts: Danielle Allen’s Our Declaration, Sullivan’s Commission on Slavery and the University, excerpts from Nelson and Harold’s Charlottesville 2017, and excerpts from Nelson and McInnis’s Educated in Tyranny). Next, we will look at how writers speak back to silences and suppressed narratives (texts: Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad, Petrosino’s White Blood, and Sharpe’s In the Wake). Throughout the course, we’ll look at current conversations about racial justice at UVA and beyond as well as community responses compiled by the Institute for Engagement and Negotiation[1] (IEN) in designing and executing the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers[2]. |
| | Writing and Games |
| Spring 2024 13938 | 007 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 16 / 16 | Kate Natishan | TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Bryan Hall 334 |
| | “We've been playing games since humanity had civilization - there is something primal about our desire and our ability to play games. It's so deep-seated that it can bypass latter-day cultural norms and biases.” - Jane McGonigal
Play is essential to our growth. Games teach us how to move, how to coordinate our hands and eyes, how to take turns, how to share, how to read people, how to problem solve, how to work as a team… Without games, there is no us.
Games play a central role in our social and private lives, whether we are spectators or players. They also have massive cultural impact, sometimes in ways we don’t expect. In this class, we will examine the role games play in our lives and our culture, and we will explore the ways in which others write about games while developing our skills to do the same.
**Meets second writing requirement.** |
| ENWR 2640 | Writing as Technology |
| |
| Spring 2024 19185 | 001 | WKS (3 Units) | Closed | 16 / 16 | Patricia Sullivan | TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm | Bryan Hall 330 |
| | Click left for description. |
| | This course explores historical, theoretical, and practical conceptions of writing as technology. We will study various writing systems, the relation of writing to speaking and visual media, and the development of writing technologies (manuscript, printing presses, typewriters, hypertext, text messaging, and artificial intelligence). Students will produce written academic and personal essays, but will also experiment with multimedia electronic texts, such as web sites, digital essays/stories, and AI generated texts. |
| ENWR 3500 | Topics in Advanced Writing & Rhetoric |
| |
| | Environmental Justice Writing |
| Spring 2024 13360 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 15 / 16 | Cory Shaman | TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Bryan Hall 310 |
| | Designed to offer students practice in engaged environmental writing, this course will focus on environmental justice (EJ) discourse articulated in political struggles in the US and internationally. While the class will be grounded in a study of historical forms of EJ theory, special attention will be given to advancing an understanding of the entangled claims and interests of humans and non-humans together as a method to enable students to develop more expansive conceptions of justice and produce just forms of writing.
Course materials will draw heavily on texts associated with historical and contemporary environmental justice efforts at the grassroots level, but also in academic, governmental, and commercial contexts. Case studies in local political struggles in Virginia may form a significant portion of the class. Materials will also cover theories of justice and include writing that is more broadly concerned with thinking through socio-environmental problems and solutions. Students will gain experience as readers of these texts and apply insights to a variety of writing tasks shaped by their specific interests within the framework of environmental justice.
|
| Enviromental Thought and Practice |
| ETP 3500 | Topics in Environmental Thought and Practice |
| |
| | Africulture: The African Roots of US Agriculture |
| Spring 2024 20539 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 15 / 25 (15 / 25) | Lisa Shutt+1 | Tu 2:00pm - 4:30pm | New Cabell Hall 383 |
| | Led by a practicing farmer-activist, Michael Carter, Jr. of Carter Farms in nearby Orange County, Virginia, we will examine how principles, practices, plants and people of African descent have shaped US agriculture, and thus, the lives of all Americans. By examining a wide range of history, laws, attitudes, cultures and traditions, we will see how many US staple commodities and practices have their roots in Africa and observe cultural similarities between indigenous cultures around the world. While evaluating realities of today’s Black farmers and the innovations they devise to survive in a system stacked against them, we will look for solutions to an array of challenges in environmental and agricultural sciences faced by today’s Black farmers. |
| French |
| FREN 3031 | Finding Your Voice in French |
| |
| Spring 2024 13307 | 003 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 11 / 15 | Spyridon Simotas | TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm | Nau Hall 242 |
| | In French the words *voix* (voice) and *voie* (way) are homonyms. Keep that in mind as you set out to find your voice in French, because as you become more fluent in the French language, you will discover new ways of experiencing the world and new pathways for personal and academic growth. This course will offer you the opportunity to explore and develop your voice in written and spoken French through the creation of a podcast. You will cultivate your own sense of style, tone, creativity, and expressiveness by drawing on a variety of cultural artifacts as inspiration for a series of writing and recording activities. Whether it means starting to feel more like yourself when you write and speak in French, or enjoying sounding wonderfully different from yourself, this course will encourage you to deepen your appreciation for the profound and transformative process of starting to think in French and to think of yourself as a Francophone person. |
| FREN 3032 | Text, Image, Culture |
| |
| Spring 2024 11397 | 002 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 14 / 15 | Amy Ogden | TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm | French House 100 |
| | Contemplative reading and writing |
| | This section will explore ways of using contemplative practices to
- become more observant of how French-speaking artists (authors, filmmakers, poets, etc.) communicate through diverse media;
- rebalance writing habits to transform anxieties into productive energy;
- discover the joys of reading in French and sharing one's enjoyment with others both orally and in writing. |
| FREN 3035 | Business French |
| |
| Spring 2024 19205 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 16 / 17 | Spyridon Simotas | TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm | Nau Hall 241 |
| | Imaginez l'entreprise dans laquelle vous aimeriez travailler. Et si cette entreprise était la vôtre? Dans ce cours, vous allez passer de l'imagination à l'action et vous allez travailler méthodiquement pour réaliser, étape par étape, la création de votre entreprise. Dans ce parcours vous allez vous inspirer de jeunes entrepreneurs du monde Francophone et de leurs projets innovants et surtout à impact social. Vous allez aussi former vos propres équipes de partenaires (parmi vos camarades), pour simuler les conditions réelles de création d'une entreprise. À la fin de la réalisation de vos projets vous aurez acquis des compétences professionnelles, culturelles et pratiques nécessaires pour réussir dans les affaires et dans la vie. |
| FREN 3050 | History and Civilization of France: Middle Ages to Revolution |
| |
| | History and Civilization of France: Middle Ages to Revolution |
| Spring 2024 19206 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Closed | 15 / 15 | Gary Ferguson | MoWe 3:30pm - 4:45pm | French House 100 |
| | You love France and are intrigued by its long and rich history? This course offers you the opportunity to explore your interests and deepen your knowledge of the major events, political figures, and the artistic, cultural, and intellectual movements, prior to the Revolution, that have shaped France as we know it and whose legacy is seen and felt to this day. Setting the stage with a survey of prehistoric and Roman Gaul, we will focus on the thousand-year period known as the Middle Ages, followed by the Renaissance, the Classical Age, and the Enlightenment. Subjects will be discussed in terms of both their original historical context and their evolving significance – often contested – to later and present generations. Films, visual images, and primary documents will supplement readings from secondary historical texts. Assignments will include group projects, in-class presentations, written papers, and quizzes. |
| FREN 3559 | New Course in French and Francophone Cultural Topics |
| |
| | Students' Choice: The Goncourt Book Club |
| Spring 2024 19493 | 001 | Lecture (1 Units) | Open | 15 / 18 | Ari Blatt | Th 9:30am - 10:20am | Pavilion VIII 102 |
| |
Discover what France is reading now, and make your mark on the literary scene, by discussing a selection of books nominated for one of France’s most prestigious literary awards, the Prix Goncourt. Then cast your vote for the French Embassy’s Choix Goncourt USA!
For the second year in a row, the French Department invites students to earn one credit as they participate in a weekly reading group focused on the newest nominated Goncourt Prize novels. The reading list consists of 4-6 books, short-listed by the French Embassy for this year’s Prix Goncourt. Because UVA has been designated a Center of Excellence by the Embassy (along with Duke, Princeton, Yale, Harvard, and NYU, among other schools), our students have been invited to participate in this opportunity to engage with contemporary French and Francophone literary creation and to make their voices heard as they cast a vote that will determine who wins this year’s Choix Goncourt USA.
After reading and discussing the books during our weekly meetings, and attending virtual meet-and-greet sessions with the authors, students will elect one or two representative to present the group’s top choice at a festive awards ceremony at the Villa Albertine in New York in April. The Department of French will fund travel and lodging for the student representatives' trip.
Details:
The reading experience is designed to allow students to lead discussion, establish criteria for evaluating the books, and designate a representative to attend the ceremony in New York.
Faculty facilitators: Professor Ari Blatt and special guests.
Reading and discussion in French.
One credit.
Counts toward the French major and minor.
Prerequisite: FREN 3032 or equivalent placement or proficiency. |
| FREN 3585 | Topics in Cultural Studies |
| |
| | France-Asia |
| Spring 2024 13316 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Closed | 12 / 18 (25 / 25) | Jennifer Tsien | MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm | New Cabell Hall 027 |
| | Japanese macarons, Kpop flashmobs in Lyon, Vietnamese crêpes, Louis Vuitton in Shanghai, Chinatown in Sénégal? nowadays, we see the influence of French culture in Asia as much as we see Asian culture become part of France and the Francophone world. In this course, we will begin by considering how much French exploration around the world began with the desire to acquire silks, porcelains, and tea from Asia. This contact inspired artistic styles from rococo to art nouveau. We will then study French attempts at colonizing Indochina and parts of China. In spite of the political hostilities that resulted from these military interventions, both parts of the world remained fascinated by each others' cultures. Finally, we will discuss how, in the present day, both Asia and the Francophone world influence each other commercially and culturally in an ambiguous power relation in which one side does not clearly dominate the other. Course materials will include novels, films, graphic novels, advertisements, and other media.
Students may take the course for 3585 credit or, with additional assignments, for 4585 credit. |
| | Suspense |
| Spring 2024 13303 | 002 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 15 / 18 | Cheryl Krueger | TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm | New Cabell Hall 207 |
| | An exploration of suspense stories in French, in a variety of text and film genres, with a focus on how narrative elements (pace, perspective, foreshadowing, plot structure, cliffhangers) and the manipulation of sound and images create expectation and tension. How does suspense work? Can a poem or a painting be suspenseful? How does solving the puzzles of detective stories, true crime podcasts, and historical mysteries relate to coping with uncertainty and ambiguity in real life? Readings and films in French. Assignments include short essays, in-class presentations, online postings, and a creative writing or multi-media presentation. The course does not build to a final project, but instead focuses on short assignments to prepare students to discuss and learn each week.
Prerequisite FREN 3032
|
| FREN 4031 | Writing With Style and Precision |
| |
| Spring 2024 19207 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 15 / 15 | Gary Ferguson | MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm | French House 100 |
| | In this course you will review and extend your knowledge of French grammar and style, becoming more confident about how best to structure the French language and how to express yourself with clarity and concision. Regular short writing assignments will begin with the analysis of a model text. You will revise first drafts of compositions in response to feedback and through peer editing in order to produce a polished final version. Key aspects of grammar, such as tense use – especially the past tenses – the subjunctive, participles, and so on, will be studied systematically and in response to questions that arise through the collective writing process. |
| FREN 4123 | Medieval Love |
| |
| | ...and its Modern Uses |
| Spring 2024 19208 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 10 / 15 | Amy Ogden | TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm | French House 100 |
| | Affection for family members, deep and casual friendships, maybe even passionate romance—everyone exists within a network of loving relationships. We probably don’t often think about where our expectations for these relationships come from, and most people would be surprised that a lot of our ideas about love come from twelfth- and thirteenth-century France. Marrying for love? Soul mates? Top Ten Tips for Attracting a Mate? BFFs? Parental devotion? All have foundations in medieval French culture.
Reading surprisingly modern stories of adventure and thoughtful (and sometimes funny) essays about emotions—all in modern French translation—and listening to soulful songs of the past, as well as to their modern counterparts, we will explore medieval ideas about love that continue to shape our modern understandings and assumptions about emotions and relationships.
|
| FREN 4585 | Advanced Topics in Cultural Studies |
| |
| | Animals in a Posthuman World |
| | Human-Animal Relationship: Old and New Stories |
| Spring 2024 13305 | 002 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 11 / 18 | Claire Lyu | TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm | New Cabell Hall 107 |
| | "It matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with" (Donna Haraway)
What stories have we been telling about animals so far? In what way are stories of animals less about animals and more about humans and their superiority over animals? And what about now: how are stories changing—how must they change—as climate change and the pandemic demonstrate the deep entanglement, rather than distinction, between human and nonhuman species? We will explore these questions by following the innovative, eco-critical inquiries of contemporary French and Francophone thinkers, writers, and artists. We will learn 1) to ask new questions (for example, "What if animals wrote?" [Despret], "Whom and what do I touch when I touch my dog?" [Haraway]); 2) to reflect on intriguing statements (such as "If the horse becomes more beautiful in the course of his work, it is a sign that the training principles are correct" [Podhajsky, director of Spanish Riding School in Vienne and trainer of Lipizzaner horses]); and 3) to explore collectively how we can shift away from our anthropocentric worldview toward an ecological practice of sharing our fragile life with all species on the Earth.
We will watch numerous films and consider works in a wide range of fields (from anthropology, history, and religion to art and literature) and practices (from domestication, training, and farming to rescue and rehabilitation), including youtube videos/ podcasts on dog and horse training. |
| | France-Asia |
| Spring 2024 20565 | 003 | Lecture (3 Units) | Closed | 13 / 13 (25 / 25) | Jennifer Tsien | MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm | New Cabell Hall 027 |
| | Japanese macarons, Kpop flashmobs in Lyon, Vietnamese crêpes, Louis Vuitton in Shanghai, Chinatown in Sénégal? nowadays, we see the influence of French culture in Asia as much as we see Asian culture become part of France and the Francophone world. In this course, we will begin by considering how much French exploration around the world began with the desire to acquire silks, porcelains, and tea from Asia. This contact inspired artistic styles from rococo to art nouveau. We will then study French attempts at colonizing Indochina and parts of China. In spite of the political hostilities that resulted from these military interventions, both parts of the world remained fascinated by each others' cultures. Finally, we will discuss how, in the present day, both Asia and the Francophone world influence each other commercially and culturally in an ambiguous power relation in which one side does not clearly dominate the other. Course materials will include novels, films, graphic novels, advertisements, and other media.
Students may take the course for 3585 credit or, with additional assignments, for 4585 credit. |
| FREN 5510 | Topics in Medieval Literature |
| |
| | Premodern Voices of Rebellion |
| Spring 2024 19209 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 6 / 15 (6 / 15) | Deborah McGrady | We 3:30pm - 6:00pm | New Cabell Hall 115 |
| | The arts have always played a unique role in voicing dissent, challenging convention, and imagining new ways of being in the world. Late-medieval France proved an especially rich moment when writers used their voice to confront political leaders, to channel collective anger, to introduce new ways of thinking, and to call attention to injustices. Scholars consider the period, in fact, to have given rise to the first francophone "auteurs engagés." The seminar will address four intertwined topics that sparked intense late-medieval controversy: the trauma of war, the oppression of women, heresy and heroism, and the relevance of the chivalric ideal. Our corpus will include anti-war poetry, Christine de Pizan's defense of women, writings for and against Joan of Arc, and late-medieval romances that critically engage with crusading nostalgia. Our discovery of these premodern voices of rebellion will also serve to ask larger questions about the political potential of literature, the risks of creative dissent, and the responsibility of writers and intellectuals in shaping public discourse. The final third of the class will center on the research and writing process with the goal of helping each participant produce a first draft of original scholarship. |
| FREN 5560 | Topics in Nineteenth-Century Literature |
| |
| | Reading with Emma Bovary |
| Spring 2024 19211 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 9 / 15 (9 / 15) | Cheryl Krueger | Tu 3:30pm - 6:00pm | French House 100 |
| | During the 1857 obscenity trial against Flaubert and his publisher, prosecutor Ernest Pinard argued that the novel Madame Bovary would corrupt the hearts and minds of its readers, particularly young women and wives. Dangerous fiction is a dominant theme in the work itself. When Emma Bovary shows symptoms of “vaporous airs,” her husband and mother-in-law decide she must stop reading novels. This course focuses on reading habits in Madame Bovary, and on what they say about Flaubert’s aesthetic project, the social and medical discourses that Madame Bovary reflects and reinforces, and the education of women. What did Emma Bovary read, how did she read it? And how have critics in the 19th-21st centuries read her reading?
Inspired by the scholarly practice of close reading, and the cultural philosophy embraced by the Slow Movement, this course will build from the un-rushed reading of Madame Bovary, in conjunction with a selection of film adaptations, and transcripts from Flaubert’s obscenity trial. Social class, gender roles, psychology, medicine, hygiene, consumer culture, the environment, and aesthetic innovation are among the topics the novel will lead us to explore. Students will steer the selection of secondary readings and materials for the class based on questions raised by the novel and discussion, using recommended digital resources (Gallica, Project Gutenberg, the MLA Database) and UVA Library print collections. The syllabus will be developed by course participants and is unique to the group of students who co-construct it.
• Open to graduate students with reading knowledge of French
• Course conducted in French and English (depending on students’ background
• Written work in French (for most French MA and Ph.D. students), or English
• Most readings in French
• I will ask that everyone use the same edition of the primary text, Madame Bovary
|
| FREN 8510 | Seminar in Medieval Literature |
| |
| | Premodern Voices of Rebellion |
| Spring 2024 19210 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 6 / 15 (6 / 15) | Deborah McGrady | We 3:30pm - 6:00pm | New Cabell Hall 115 |
| | The arts have always played a unique role in voicing dissent, challenging convention, and imagining new ways of being in the world. Late-medieval France proved an especially rich moment when writers used their voice to confront political leaders, to channel collective anger, to introduce new ways of thinking, and to call attention to injustices. Scholars consider the period, in fact, to have given rise to the first francophone "auteurs engagés." The seminar will address four intertwined topics that sparked intense late-medieval controversy: the trauma of war, the oppression of women, heresy and heroism, and the relevance of the chivalric ideal. Our corpus will include anti-war poetry, Christine de Pizan's defense of women, writings for and against Joan of Arc, and late-medieval romances that critically engage with crusading nostalgia. Our discovery of these premodern voices of rebellion will also serve to ask larger questions about the political potential of literature, the risks of creative dissent, and the responsibility of writers and intellectuals in shaping public discourse. The final third of the class will center on the research and writing process with the goal of helping each participant produce a first draft of original scholarship. |
| FREN 8560 | Seminar in Nineteenth-Century Literature |
| |
| | Reading with Emma Bovary |
| Spring 2024 19212 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 9 / 15 (9 / 15) | Cheryl Krueger | Tu 3:30pm - 6:00pm | French House 100 |
| | During the 1857 obscenity trial against Flaubert and his publisher, prosecutor Ernest Pinard argued that the novel Madame Bovary would corrupt the hearts and minds of its readers, particularly young women and wives. Dangerous fiction is a dominant theme in the work itself. When Emma Bovary shows symptoms of “vaporous airs,” her husband and mother-in-law decide she must stop reading novels. This course focuses on reading habits in Madame Bovary, and on what they say about Flaubert’s aesthetic project, the social and medical discourses that Madame Bovary reflects and reinforces, and the education of women. What did Emma Bovary read, how did she read it? And how have critics in the 19th-21st centuries read her reading?
Inspired by the scholarly practice of close reading, and the cultural philosophy embraced by the Slow Movement, this course will build from the un-rushed reading of Madame Bovary, in conjunction with a selection of film adaptations, and transcripts from Flaubert’s obscenity trial. Social class, gender roles, psychology, medicine, hygiene, consumer culture, the environment, and aesthetic innovation are among the topics the novel will lead us to explore. Students will steer the selection of secondary readings and materials for the class based on questions raised by the novel and discussion, using recommended digital resources (Gallica, Project Gutenberg, the MLA Database) and UVA Library print collections. The syllabus will be developed by course participants and is unique to the group of students who co-construct it.
• Open to graduate students with reading knowledge of French
• Course conducted in French and English (depending on students’ background
• Written work in French (for most French MA and Ph.D. students), or English
• Most readings in French
• I will ask that everyone use the same edition of the primary text, Madame Bovary
|
| German in Translation |
| GETR 3730 | Modern Poetry: Rilke, Valéry and Stevens |
| |
| Spring 2024 19586 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 5 / 18 (5 / 18) | Lorna Martens | TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Pavilion VIII 108 |
| | For description, click on schedule number to the left |
| | Studies in the poetry and prose of these three modernist poets, with emphasis on their theories of artistic creation. The original as well as a translation will be made available for Rilke's and Valéry's poetry. Their prose works will be read in English translation. Requirements: Three 6-7-page papers (one on each poet); participation in seminar discussion, including oral presentations on poems; final exam. |
| GETR 3790 | Pursuing Happiness |
| |
| Spring 2024 19581 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 5 / 18 (5 / 18) | Lorna Martens | TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm | Pavilion VIII 108 |
| | For description, click on schedule number to the left |
| | Fictions of happiness pursued--and found! Through the ages, people have sought happiness and formulated conceptions of what happiness means. Happiness could be something we once had--then lost--but might find again; something we might achieve by acting wisely or performing meritorious deeds; something possible through escape; alternatively, something available in the here and now; bound up with love or recognition from others; or a byproduct of creativity, independent of others. This course is not a self-help course. Don’t take it expecting to find the key to happiness. This is a literature course. We’ll read fiction, poetry, theory. But we will read some cheerful and uplifting (or at least moderately cheerful or uplifting) literature, to raise our spirits as the pandemic, with luck, recedes. Texts by Hesiod, Ovid, Chrétien, Rousseau, Schiller, Novalis, Wordsworth, Emerson, Valéry, Hunt, Rilke, Hilton, Stevens, Cavafy, Thurber, Giono, Nabokov, I. Grekova. Some theory of happiness and one or two films. Lots of discussion, two short presentations, two short formal essays, and a final exam are envisaged. |
| Global Studies-Global Studies |
| GSGS 3559 | New Course in Global Studies |
| |
| | Understanding the 'New Silk Roads' |
| Spring 2024 19710 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 14 / 20 | Muhammad Tayyab Safdar | MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm | New Cabell Hall 187 |
| | In 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping, in speeches in Kazakhstan and Indonesia, highlighted invoked images of a prosperous and peaceful past linking different civilizations along ancient trade routes over the land and sea as part of the ‘Silk Road(s).’ Christened as the Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) or the New Silk Roads, the Chinese-led initiative with a focus on improving connectivity and infrastructure has garnered significant interest since its launch. Most recently, China hosted leaders from the global South for the Third Belt & Road Forum. While the West was missing, the Forum was attended by leaders from several countries in the global South, plus Russia. But what is the BRI? Is it a strategic tool deployed by China for global domination as it ensnares countries in positions of economic servitude using economic tools? Or is it a ploy to alter the existing ‘rules-based’ international order? Or does it offer an alternative route to prosperity for developing countries that have eagerly signed up for the BRI? These are some important questions we will address in the course. Through the course, we'll develop a better understanding of the New Silk Roads, the actors involved, their incentives and the implications for Global Security and development. |
| | Savage South: Culture, Migration, and Disruption |
| | Migration, colonialism, and the construction of the "backwards southerner" |
| Spring 2024 19711 | 002 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 19 / 20 | Levi Vonk | TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Gibson Hall 041 |
| | Have you ever wondered why people in "the South" - whether in the US South or the Global South - seem to be persistently stereotyped as backwards, undeveloped, and lazy?
In this course, we will examine how these supposedly "savage southerners" (as well as other scary people "south of the border") are constructed through class, race, gender, language, and national/regional identity. We will investigate why southerners are so frequently perceived as those who just "can't get it right" - whether that be within the project of American liberalism or global capitalism - especially in relation to the foil of the savage southerner: the allegedly "enlightened northerner."
We will especially pay attention to how histories of migration and colonialism have shaped this notion of "the South." We'll ask questions like: Who gets to count as "southern?" What happens if we think of the US South as both quasi-colony and quasi-colonizer? And how have migrations of southerners - from the Great Migration of black Americans to northern US cities, to the mass migrations of Central Americans and Mexicans to the US - disrupted certain "northern" narratives of civilization and socioeconomic progress?
|
| | Indigenous Technologies and Climate Change |
| Spring 2024 20016 | 003 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 19 / 20 (19 / 20) | Robin Garcia | TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm | The Rotunda Room 152 |
| | This course takes a central focus on native Hawaiian responses to climate change. It looks at Indigenous ecosystems, food and lifeways play in contemporary native Hawaiian cultural revitalization projects and responses to development. It also looks comparatively at Indigenous ecosystems among first people communities in California, South Dakota, and Virginia. While the central focus of the course is on Indigenous approaches to climate change, we will also consider how access to land, ancestral history, language, and federal recognition play a role in approaches to the climate change. |
| | Ecocinema in the Global South |
| Spring 2024 20177 | 004 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 10 / 15 (10 / 15) | Rolando Vargas | TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Fayerweather Hall 215 |
| | In this class, we will reflect on the production, research, and community engagement of ecocinema. We will study a selection of films produced in the last years to reflect and discuss climate change, environmental/man-made decisions, ecojustice, environmental racism, consumerism, and waste. The selection of the films will present cases happening in the Global South to study how decisions taken outside wealthier countries directly impact the Global exchange.
|
| History-African History |
| HIAF 4501 | Seminar in African History |
| |
| | Gender & Sexuality in African History |
| | Gender and Sexuality in African History |
| Spring 2024 13246 | 001 | SEM (4 Units) | Permission | 12 / 20 | Emily Burrill | Tu 3:30pm - 6:00pm | Gibson Hall 242 |
| | Covering a selecton of readings on the deep historical past to recent times, students will examine how gender and sexuality have shaped key historical developments, from African kingdoms and empires to postcolonial states, from colonial conquest to movements for independence, from indigenous healing practices to biomedicine, from slavery to the modern forms of work. It will also explore the history of different sexualities and gender identities on the continent. |
| History-European History |
| HIEU 1502 | Introductory Seminar in Post-1700 European History |
| |
| | The Berlin Wall: Spies and Lies in a Cold War City |
| Spring 2024 14066 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 15 / 15 | Kyrill Kunakhovich | Th 2:00pm - 4:30pm | Pavilion VIII 102 |
| | This course examines the rise, fall, and afterlives of the Berlin Wall, from the end of the Second World War to the present day. We will consider who built the Berlin Wall; how it divided a united city; and how ordinary people learned to live with the barrier in their midst. We will also explore the shadowy world of spies, lies, and border crossings that sprung up around the Wall, on the front lines of the Cold War. Finally, we examine who, or what, brought down the Berlin Wall in 1989, as well as the many ways in which it still lives on today. |
| History-South Asian History |
| HISA 3501 | Introductory History Workshop |
| |
| | Women and Wealth in South Asia 16th-20th Century |
| Spring 2024 20413 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Permission | 12 / 15 | Indrani Chatterjee | Th 4:00pm - 6:30pm | New Cabell Hall 107 |
| | This course attempts to understand debates between Indian feminists about the nature of dowry and the legislation intended to prohibit its practice in the late twentieth century. It first establishes the existence of women's wealth as an old concept as well as its practical traces in the early medieval landscape. The primary materials for this part of the course will include inscriptions, visual records, classical prescriptive texts. Then the course will move on to the colonial era of the eighteenth-early twentieth century and trace both court records, judgements and legislation. Finally it will move to twentieth-century feminist debates on the changed nature of property relations, marriages and dowry prohibition. |
| History-General History |
| HIST 3501 | Introductory History Workshop |
| |
| | Digital Map History |
| Spring 2024 20010 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Permission | 7 / 10 | S. Edelson | Th 3:30pm - 6:00pm | New Cabell Hall 415 |
| | This workshop introduces students to map history research as well as digital humanities methods using GIS software tools. The focus of our work will be examining maps in the Seymour I. Schwartz Collection of North American Maps, 1500-1800. Students research maps in the collection and produce interactive websites on the ArcGIS Storymaps platform that illustrate their findings. We will learn about history of cartography scholarship, work with original materials in Special Collections, and learn about visualization practices and methods. No prior experience with ArcGIS tools is expected or required. |
| Liberal Arts Seminar |
| LASE 2510 | Topics in the Liberal Arts |
| |
| | Music and Identity |
| Spring 2024 20380 | 002 | SEM (2 Units) | Closed | 20 / 20 | Justin Mueller | MoWe 10:00am - 10:50am | Brooks Hall 103 |
| | In this course, we will explore how music consciously or unconsciously shapes how we see ourselves and others, as well as how we relate to local and global listening communities. It is meant to encourage self-reflection, develop analytical reading strategies for difficult texts, foster conversation, and deepen your understanding of the role that the arts and humanities play in our lives. Over the course of the semester we will consider the rise of international music fandoms; video game music and nostalgia; studies of race, gender, and sexuality; connections between musical taste and class; and other topics besides. |
| Leadership and Public Policy - Policy |
| LPPP 4991 | Capstone Seminar |
| |
| | Police-Community Relations: Improving Interactions |
| Spring 2024 20189 | 006 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 15 / 18 | Kyle Dobson | Th 3:30pm - 6:00pm | Pavilion VIII 103 |
| | The relationships between communities and their police are in need of repair. Improving police-community relations is a complex initiative that requires a multifaceted approach. While encouraging open and respectful conversation of lived experiences, this class gives students skills in diagnosing cases and building policies that will improve a central aspect of any police-community relationship: interactions. |
| LPPP 7559 | New Course in Public Policy and Leadership |
| |
| | Police-Community Relations: Improving Interactions |
| Spring 2024 20412 | 003 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 7 / 18 | Kyle Dobson | Tu 5:00pm - 7:30pm | New Cabell Hall 068 |
| | The relationships between communities and their police are in need of repair. Improving police-community relations is a complex initiative that requires a multifaceted approach. While encouraging open and respectful conversation of lived experiences, this class gives students skills in diagnosing cases and building policies that will improve a central aspect of any police-community relationship: interactions. |
| Leadership and Public Policy - Substantive |
| LPPS 5720 | Public Interest Data: Ethics and Practice |
| |
| | Spring 2023 Class: https://pidep23.mclaibourn.org/ |
| Spring 2024 17017 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 18 / 18 | Michele Claibourn | Mo 12:30pm - 3:00pm | Pavilion VIII 103 |
| | This course is intended to provide students experience with data science within a framework of data ethics in service of equity-oriented public policy. |
| | Our primary goals are:
* Make progress on projects that advance social justice and policy understanding in collaboration with community partners and create work you can point to as part of your portfolio.
* Practice working with real data (that is, messy data resulting from policy administration) to answer pressing questions with attention to the moral and ethical implications of our work. This includes finding, cleaning, and understanding data; exploring, analyzing, modeling data; visualizing, contextualizing, and communicating data; with care and humility and respect for the affected partners and communities throughout.
* Develop experience in data workflows that support ethical data science, including processes for working collaboratively, openly, inclusively, and reproducibly.
|
| Media Studies |
| MDST 2305 | Podcasting, Radio and Sound Production |
| |
| Spring 2024 12076 | 001 | Laboratory (3 Units) | Permission | 12 / 12 | Elliot Majerczyk | We 5:00pm - 7:30pm | New Cabell Hall 268 |
| | Students will learn the practical components of podcast production including: audio recording and editing, sound mixing, script writing, interview techniques, and the final production of a podcast. In addition, students will critically analyze the components of radio/podcast features. The course includes a lecture component and lab time where the instructor will consult with students about their projects |
| MDST 3510 | Topics in Media Research |
| |
| | Media & Power: Approaches from Political Economy |
| Spring 2024 12509 | 002 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 30 / 30 | Pallavi Rao | MoWe 3:30pm - 4:45pm | Nau Hall 141 |
| | This course takes a critical approach towards media industries as situated within larger national and international power relations. From traditional news and entertainment media to digital outlets and social media, we will study how power operates through structures—including ownership, profit imperatives, advertising and public relations—and ideologies, discourses and government policies that sustain these arrangements. |
| Middle Eastern & South Asian Languages & Cultures |
| MESA 2300 | Crossing Borders: Middle East and South Asia |
| |
| Spring 2024 18689 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 59 / 60 | Richard Cohen | MoWe 3:30pm - 4:45pm | McLeod Hall 1003 |
| | Course will fulfill Second Writing Requirement with Professor's signature at the end of the semester. |
| | The main goal of this course is to question and problematize how we think historically about the Middle East and South Asia as a region. Essentially, it is about connected histories. It is about their relationship to the West (mainly Europe), Africa (especially East Africa), Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia) and East Asia (China) will come into play as well. These regions have profoundly influenced one another long before the western hemisphere discovered the “East.”
"The course emphasizes the analytical tool I call “cultural relativity,” i.e., our ability to comprehend another’s culture empathetically. A fundamental assumption of the course is that the contemporary global configuration of nation-states, as well as the configuration of academic disciplines in the university, disguise, even occlude deep historical connections that have resulted in the complex racial, cultural, linguistic, economic and religious hybridities that today constitute the two regions. Hence, the goal of this course is to recover and highlight those principle elements of culture, language, literature, religion, and most exceptionally trade, that constitute the shared experience of the two regions. " |
| Materials Science and Engineering |
| MSE 4592 | Special Topics in Materials Science |
| |
| | Solid State Devices Renewable Energy Conversion |
| Spring 2024 16292 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 7 / 10 (17 / 25) | Mona Zebarjadi | MoWeFr 11:00am - 11:50am | Jesser Hall 171 |
| | This class has two distinct goals: The first goal is to provide a technical understanding of solid-state devices that are used for energy conversion and storage with emphasis on solar cells, thermoelectric (heat to electricity conversion), and batteries. The second goal is to appreciate the energy challenges that face humanity. We will try to achieve the latter goal in a series of student-led discussions. |
| | Imagine a world in which we produce all our energy needs without polluting the environment. Imagine a world in which we run our cars, our houses, and our factories without burning fossil fuels. It is not difficult to imagine such a world, right? It is because we have already developed many parts of technology! Today, we can install solar cells on our rooftops to go off the grid. We have electrical and fuel cell cars in the transportation section. We have geothermal, wind farms, and solar farms at large scales to run our factories. Our generation is witnessing a remarkable transition from coal, oil, and gas to clean and renewable energies.
This class discusses solid-state devices that are used for renewable energy applications. While we will provide a general overview of most new and interesting technologies via lectures, discussions, and research presentations, we will focus on the detailed technical aspects of a few devices namely: solar cells, thermionic devices, thermoelectric devices, solar thermal (CSPs) and batteries. |
| Medieval Studies |
| MSP 3501 | Exploring the Middle Ages |
| |
| | Medieval Identities, Cultures, and Conflicts |
| Spring 2024 20582 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 18 / 20 | Deborah McGrady | TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm | Wilson Hall 244 |
| | This course will (re)introduce you to the Middles Ages by decentering the common Eurocentric approach and prioritizing instead cross-cultural encounters that profoundly marked over a thousand years of shared history. Four units are planned for the semester: (1) early Iberia as an international center of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian exchange; (2) crusading culture as portrayed in epic poetry, satire, the diary of a Byzantine princess and writings by Muslims living in occupied Jerusalem; (3) travel and discovery as recounted by the well-known Marco Polo as well as globetrotters from Africa and Asia; and (4) an early history of women, studied here through the Arabic epic tale of Princess Fatima, Warrior Woman, writings by the first professional female writer – Christine de Pizan (d. 1431), and the lives of female spiritual visionaries. Our discussions will be enhanced by visits from numerous UVA professors who will discuss their research in relation to our topics. Course assignments include response papers, collaborative class activities, and a final research project that may take the form of a traditional paper, a podcast, or a creative work. This course can satisfy the Second Writing Requirement; fulfills the Artistic, Interpretative, and Philosophical Inquiry; and is required for the Medieval Studies major. No previous knowledge of the Middle Ages is needed.
|
| Music |
| MUSI 2510 | Introduction to Music and Community Engagement |
| |
| | Music and Community Engagement: Gun Violence Remix |
| Website 20903 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Permission | 5 / 10 (20 / 20) | Bonnie Gordon+1 | TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm | Hunter Smith Band Building 101 |
| | In this community engagement class, we rely on our ears to explore the history and culture of gun violence and of the structural violence that reverberates in shots fired. We will tackle questions like: what are the cultural forces behind gun violence and where are the opportunities for change? What does the law hear and not hear? How do creative artists respond to gun violence? What tools do students need to understand existing data around gun violence and what stories does that data not tell? Students will address these questions in conjunction with the Sound Justice Lab. Course materials include archival material housed in special collections, contemporary poetry, music, legal documents, and academic articles. Students will work collectively on story telling projects using photo voice, audio storytelling and intentional playlists. The class has a civic engagement component that offers students opportunities to engage with lawyers, artists, and social justice practitioners in Charlottesville and beyond. The class aims to produce a remix - a creative reimagining of approaches to gun violence. The class can be used to fulfill the music major requirements, but musical or other artistic experience is not necessary. |
| MUSI 2559 | New Course in Music |
| |
| | Experiencing Hungarian Music and Cultural History |
| | Embedded Study Abroad Program |
| Website 19300 | 003 | Lecture (2 Units) | Permission | 12 / 15 (12 / 15) | Daniel Sender | Tu 6:00pm - 8:30pm | Old Cabell Hall S008 |
| | Interested students must first submit an application for this course through the International Studies Office (Deadline: November 1st). Only students admitted to the program through the ISO will be enrolled in this course. |
| | Rich with a vibrant culture that has been historically inaccessible and ignored by the West, Hungary will inspire our students and broaden their understanding of Central European art, music, and history. This course will feature an immersive Spring Break trip to Hungary (Budapest and Pécs) during Spring Break 2024. The class will meet for three 2.5 hour-long seminar sessions prior to the trip and one additional seminar meeting after the trip has taken place.
The pre-trip seminar sessions will provide context in three major areas: History, Art and Architecture, and Music. The seminars will rely on lecture-format overviews to confront such broad topics, but in each case, examples will be highlighted that will be visited and studied in detail once in the country. |
| | Vocal Performance Class |
| Spring 2024 20635 | 004 | Lecture (2 Units) | Open | 11 / 15 | Pamela Beasley+1 | Tu 3:30pm - 5:10pm | Old Cabell Hall 107 |
| | Vocal Performance requires a broad skillset. This course offers students a toolbox of practical techniques & methodologies including study of diction and language, physical expression, textual analysis, dramatic storytelling/acting, collaboration with a pianist, vocal health, and many other components of stagecraft that can be addressed well in group lessons. A baseline level of music-learning and -preparation ability, as well as some prior experience in any genre of vocal solo performance, is ideal. |
| | EcoSonics: Environmental Sound Art Composition |
| Spring 2024 19299 | 100 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 20 / 45 | Matthew Burtner | We 3:00pm - 4:40pm | Old Cabell Hall B012 |
| | From singing glaciers to coral reef rhythms, from infrasonic elephant vocalizations to ultrasonic moth hearing, EcoSonics explores the world of environmental sound and music from a creative perspective. This introductory course will focus on many amazing sounds of the natural world, and it will examine the role of environment in shaping musical thought, production, and culture. Whether made by the wind or by humans, our listening examples come from all over the world and from many genres and species. In addition to exploring key concepts of environment and sound, weekly studio sections and creative projects will provide opportunities to actively explore current environmental music production techniques. No previous music experience is required. Listening with open ears and mind is required! |
| MUSI 3010 | Studies in Early Modern Music (1500-1700) |
| |
| | Sonic Encounters/Listening to the Past |
| Spring 2024 19301 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 14 / 25 | Bonnie Gordon | TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm | Old Cabell Hall 113 |
| | When Christopher Columbus arrived in what is now Trinidad in 1498, he attempted to communicate with indigenous people using tambourines. He thought this would be enticing. It didn’t work. “On observing the music and dancing…they dropped their oars, and picked up their bows, and strung them. Each one seized his shield, and they began to shoot arrows at us.” This class uses sound to explore unexpected encounters in the premodern world. Course materials focus on a selection of exemplary pieces, listening to composition, improvisation, text-music relations, the representation of dramatic stories, the expression of religious ideas, and performance. This is a class about how to do history, how to listen, and how to imagine the sonic past.
The class takes a global perspective and explores the role of sound in the deep histories of white supremacy that form the bricks and mortar of music performance and scholarship in the United States. The chronological center is the 15th and 17th centuries, but we cover the ancient world and Middle Ages as well as the present. Course work will include reading, writing, listening, visits to special collections, and reflection.
The course is taught at the music major level. Majors and non-majors are welcome. There are no prerequisites, and knowledge of Western music notation is not required.
|
| MUSI 3350 | Deep Listening |
| |
| Spring 2024 12293 | 001 | SEM (1 Units) | Open | 25 / 27 | Fred Maus | TBA |  TBA |
| | Exploration of activities that involve listening & making sound, at the intersection of music-making & contemplative practices, drawing on the work of Pauline Oliveros, the Fluxus artists, & other artists & thinkers. Weekly reading assignments in relation to the experiential component; weekly email responses to readings & brief reflective papers.
The course is offered sometimes in person, sometimes in an asynchronous online format. In Spring 2024, the course will be taught as an asynchronous online course through Canvas. The Fall 2024 course will meet in person.
|
| MUSI 3510 | Music and Community Engagement I |
| |
| | Music and Sound: Gun Violence |
| | Music as Community Engagement: Gun Violence Remix |
| Website 12852 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Permission | 15 / 15 (20 / 20) | Bonnie Gordon+1 | TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm | Hunter Smith Band Building 101 |
| | In this community engagement class, we rely on our ears to explore the history and culture of gun violence and of the structural violence that reverberates in shots fired. We will tackle questions like: what are the cultural forces behind gun violence and where are the opportunities for change? What does the law hear and not hear? How do creative artists respond to gun violence? What tools do students need to understand existing data around gun violence and what stories does that data not tell? Students will address these questions in conjunction with the Sound Justice Lab. Course materials include archival material housed in special collections, contemporary poetry, music, legal documents, and academic articles. Students will work collectively on story telling projects using photo voice, audio storytelling and intentional playlists. The class has a civic engagement component that offers students opportunities to engage with lawyers, artists, and social justice practitioners in Charlottesville and beyond. The class aims to produce a remix - a creative reimagining of approaches to gun violence. The class can be used to fulfill the music major requirements, but musical or other artistic experience is not necessary. |
| MUSI 3559 | New Course in Music |
| |
| | Black Music Composing and Performance Ensamble 2 |
| Spring 2024 20448 | 002 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 4 / 45 | JoVia Armstrong+1 | We 7:00pm - 10:00pm | Hunter Smith Band Building 101 |
| | During the Fall semester of this course, students composed and produced original songs by recording their voices, beat machines, keyboard controllers, and acoustic and electric instruments. The Spring section of this course is a performance ensemble that will perform the songs written and produced by the students enrolled in the Fall semester’s class.
The ensemble focuses on live show production techniques and best practices for musicians and vocal artists. Students face the challenge of figuring out how to reproduce recorded songs on stage by experimenting with instrumentation, Djing, guitar pedals, their instruments, and other production resources available. They will also learn how to direct a band, create breaks, and arrange songs to entertain their audience and provide a compelling concert. Students enrolled in both courses will learn how songwriters get their music heard, from composition to concert performance.
This course is appropriate for experienced musicians, DJs, singers, and rappers. |
| MUSI 4610 | Sound Synthesis and Control |
| |
| | Sound Synthesis & Control: Designing New Musical Instruments |
| Spring 2024 13644 | 001 | WKS (3 Units) | Permission | 11 / 10 | Luke Dahl | MoWe 10:00am - 11:15am | Contact Department |
| | New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) is a field that explores new ways of performing music with technology. NIME is interdisciplinary, incorporating perspectives from music, sculpture, engineering, human-computer interaction (HCI), and design. In this class we will learn the basic skills needed to design and build new musical instruments. We will implement real-time digital sound synthesis algorithms using the PureData visual programming language, which will run on the Bela embedded audio system. And we will use various electronics sensors to measure user’s gestures as input data. The class is primarily project-based, and we will prototype a number of new musical instruments and interactions. Students are expected to have experience using computers for music-making, such as MUSI 3390 or MUSI 2350. Experience with PureData or Max is beneficial but not required.
Enrollment is by instructor permission. If you are interested please sign up on the list, and describe your background and/or interest. Feel free to email the instructor if you have any questions. |
| MUSI 7512 | Studies in Jazz Literature |
| |
| | Cores and Boundaries |
| | Core and Boundaries |
| Spring 2024 19309 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 2 / 10 | Scott DeVeaux | Mo 3:00pm - 5:30pm | Old Cabell Hall S008 |
| | The usual topic for a jazz course involves the music’s core. One can think of it as a pantheon of musicians running from Buddy Bolden and King Oliver to the present day, or as a musical language continuously evolving through various styles. It is an invitation to a musical world, grounded in the past and extending more than a century to the present.
But attempt to define “jazz” has meant setting boundaries: explaining what is jazz requires saying what is not jazz. These boundaries make the idea of the “jazz tradition” possible, but they are still boundaries. To choose a few of the most common: race (jazz is black, not white); gender (jazz is male, not female); commerce (jazz is a way of playing popular song, but is not itself popular song); groove (jazz swings, other music doesn’t); improvisation (jazz is free, not notated); politics (jazz is for freedom, not constrictive social structures); art (jazz is an art music, but is not “classical music”); nationality (jazz is American, not European or African or Asian). These boundaries have served to define the music, but only by through simplifications that are inherently problematic. This seminar will introduce students to the core of jazz, but it will do so by continually challenging the definitions that isolate jazz from issues of interest to the contemporary music scholar.
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| Urban and Environmental Planning |
| PLAN 5580 | Short Courses in Planning |
| |
| | Sustainable and Equitable Transportation I |
| Syllabus 19319 | 004 | WKS (1 Units) | Open | 10 / 15 | Caetano de Campos Lopes | Mo 1:00pm - 3:30pm | Campbell Hall 220B |
| | Course Learning Objectives
• The varied channels through which transportation impacts both our society and the environment, alongside universally acknowledged objectives for a transportation system that is sustainable and equitable.
• The interconnected relationship between transportation and equity, spanning accessibility, environmental justice, and social justice.
Guest Speakers
• Juandiego Wade, Mayor of Charlottesville, graduate from the MUEP at UVa, former transportation planner, former Charlottesville School Board member, and president of Virginia’s School Board Association.
• Gregg Winston, experienced healthcare executive and co-chair of the Move2Health Equity Coalition. |
| | Societies rely on transportation systems, yet their impacts—from local well-being to global climate—are increasingly alarming. Mainstream systems affect environmental justice, habitat, and urban structure. How can we address this, ensuring sustainability and equity?
Throughout this course, we'll thoroughly examine crucial topics, encompassing the impact of transportation on climate and air quality, the scrutiny of environmental and social disparities, and an exploration of environmental economics, game theory, and market failures. Our focus is on unraveling the intricate aspects of planning for sustainable and equitable transportation. The objective is to uncover resolutions that can revolutionize conventional practices, fostering better accessibility and advancing the cause of equity.
This course is part of a series of two courses where we tackle critical questions about transportation's role in society. Sustainable and Equitable Transportation II (PLAN 5580-005) shifts focus to both well-established and cutting-edge strategies. Our weekly sessions include discussions on readings and insights from regional sustainable transportation leaders. Guest speakers will offer real-world perspectives. While the course outline provides an overview, your interests will shape our discussions. |
| | Sustainable and Equitable Transportation II |
| Syllabus 19320 | 005 | WKS (1 Units) | Open | 8 / 15 | Caetano de Campos Lopes | Mo 1:00pm - 3:30pm | Campbell Hall 220B |
| | Course Learning Objectives:
• Explore innovative and proven strategies, encompassing plans, policies, and technologies, to effectively meet transportation needs. Emphasis on minimizing social and environmental adverse impacts while maximizing co-benefits such as health.
• Stay updated on the latest advancements in comprehending the intersectional dynamics of transportation, social justice, and environmental justice.
Guest Speakers
• Ben Chambers, Transportation Planning Manager for the City of Charlottesville, former transportation planner for consulting firms including Kimley-Horn and AECOM.
• A new second guest speaker is currently being arranged following the sudden retirement of the former speaker Ted J. Rieck, the former CEO of Jaunt, Inc. |
| | "Sustainable and Equitable Transportation II (PLAN 5580-005) delves into transformative solutions for cleaner transportation, highlighting the pivotal role of municipalities in transit, zoning, parking, and active mobility. As societies increasingly grapple with the environmental repercussions of transportation systems, this course addresses urgent issues spanning human well-being, the local environment, and the global climate. Beyond conventional concerns like tailpipe emissions, we explore the broader impact on environmental justice, nature proximity, habitat preservation, lifestyles, livability, and city structures.
This series navigates the complexities of achieving sustainability and equity in transportation. While Sustainable and Equitable Transportation I (PLAN 5580-004) offers a comprehensive overview, this sequel focuses on cutting-edge strategies to tackle the challenges. Weekly sessions involve dynamic discussions, guided readings, and insights from regional leaders, emphasizing tangible solutions for fostering cross-sector collaborations and addressing transportation pollution and burden. |
| Politics-American Politics |
| PLAP 3370 | Workshop in Contemporary American Electoral Politics |
| |
| Website 12285 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Permission | 20 / 20 | Kenneth Stroupe+1 | We 2:00pm - 4:30pm | New Cabell Hall 183 |
| | The purpose of this course is to provide students with a broad understanding of the fundamental principles of modern American politics and government through periodic seminars and firsthand experience with the projects, programs and research conducted by the University of Virginia Center for Politics (The Center). The Center is a nonpartisan, interdisciplinary unit of the University of Virginia, dedicated to increasing civic and political knowledge and participation. By combining seminars and topical reading/writing assignments with event participation and work experience, students will become more familiar with important fundamentals of state and national politics and how these inform and are applied within contemporary political practices. Due to limited space and high demand, enrollment requires completion of an application which the instructor uses to make enrollment decisions. Email instructor for application or follow link above and scroll down to PLAP 3370. |
| Politics-Political Theory |
| PLPT 3500 | Special Topics in Political Theory |
| |
| | The Politics of Work |
| Spring 2024 20382 | 002 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 27 / 30 | Colin Bird | TuTh 5:00pm - 6:15pm | Drama Education Bldg 217 |
| | Discusses historical and contemporary literature concerning: exploitation in the workplace; the distinction between work and leisure; appropriate remuneration for workplace contribution; whether there is a right to “meaningful work”; the “gig-economy” and the emergence of a “precariat”; the “dignity of labor”; trade-unionism; the implications of AI for the future of work; and the case for and against a “universal basic income”, and "job guarantees".
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| Psychology |
| PSYC 1020 | Hoos Connected |
| |
| Spring 2024 12666 | 001 | SEM (1 Units) | Closed | 124 / 124 | Alison Nagel | Mo 4:00pm - 5:15pm | Minor Hall 125 |
| | Hoos Connected brings together groups of students to get to know one another while discussing the key components of making meaningful connections. Led by two trained upper-class student facilitators, groups of 6-10 students in the same year at UVA engage in activities and discussions that delve into what brings us together, what can keep us apart, and how these things manifest at UVA. NOW OPEN TO STUDENTS IN ALL YEARS! |
| Spring 2024 12667 | 002 | SEM (1 Units) | Open | 82 / 170 | Alison Nagel | Mo 5:30pm - 6:45pm | Minor Hall 125 |
| | Hoos Connected brings together groups of students to get to know one another while discussing the key components of making meaningful connections. Led by two trained upper-class student facilitators, groups of 6-10 students in the same year at UVA engage in activities and discussions that delve into what brings us together, what can keep us apart, and how these things manifest at UVA. NOW OPEN TO STUDENTS IN ALL YEARS! |
| Spring 2024 13901 | 003 | SEM (1 Units) | Open | 98 / 170 | Alison Nagel | Tu 5:00pm - 6:15pm | Minor Hall 125 |
| | Hoos Connected brings together groups of students to get to know one another while discussing the key components of making meaningful connections. Led by two trained upper-class student facilitators, groups of 6-10 students in the same year at UVA engage in activities and discussions that delve into what brings us together, what can keep us apart, and how these things manifest at UVA. NOW OPEN TO STUDENTS IN ALL YEARS! |
| Religion-General Religion |
| RELG 5821 | Proseminar in World Religions, World Literatures |
| |
| Spring 2024 12140 | 001 | SEM (1 Units) | Permission | 0 / 40 | Elizabeth Fowler | Fr 10:00am - 10:50am |  Web-Based Course |
| | 1 credit, pass/fail forum open to grads from all depts who bring religious studies & lit together; undergrads seek permission fowler@virginia.edu. Click blue numbers to the left for a full description. |
| | The Proseminar in World Religions, World Literatures is a one-credit, pass/fail forum that welcomes all graduate students whose work brings together literature in any language with study of any religion, and it is open to interested undergraduates by permission of the instructor. It supports the concentration called WRWL that is offered within both the English MA and the Religious Studies MA, a concentration students may join as part of the terminal degree but also, if doctoral candidates, fulfill en route to the PhD. We meet most weeks of the semester for a single hour, under the Scholar’s Tree by Dawson’s Row, weather permitting, though it will be possible for folks to zoom in if desired. We read short texts together, perform thought experiments, write manifesti, invite guests we admire from the UVA faculty to be interviewed on their own work, mull over the challenges we face, and brainstorm about how we can best support one another’s work. Please email Prof Elizabeth Fowler (English co-director of WRWL) via fowler@virginia.edu with questions. |
| Spanish |
| SPAN 3015 | Language, Culture, and Composition for Heritage Learners of Spanish |
| |
| | Spanish for Bilingual Students |
| Spring 2024 13203 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Permission | 8 / 16 | Paula Sprague | TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Gibson Hall 241 |
| | Contact Prof. Paula Sprague for enrollment instructions [pas6ea@virginia.edu] |
| | SPAN 3015 is an intermediate Spanish language course for students who speak Spanish in informal settings and are first or second-generation Spanish speakers. Integral to the course are writing and speaking practice in a range of linguistic registers including personal narration, academic research, pod casts, professional formats, and oral presentations, all designed to build on students' existing language strengths. It can be taken in place of SPAN 3010 or SPAN 3020. |
| SPAN 7850 | Themes and Genres |
| |
| | All about Almodóvar |
| Spring 2024 18931 | 002 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 2 / 5 | Samuel Amago | We 3:30pm - 6:00pm | Office |
| | It has been said that it is impossible to understand Spain’s post-dictatorship era without taking Pedro Almodóvar into account. This seminar will test that hypothesis by studying the broad filmography of the country’s most important living auteur. Readings in film theory will complement close analyses of most of Almodóvar’s feature-length movies. Open to all MA and PhD students. Previous experience in film studies not required. |
| University Seminar |
| USEM 1570 | University Seminar |
| |
| | Falling From Infinity |
| Spring 2024 17395 | 002 | SEM (2 Units) | Open | 10 / 18 | Michael Palmer | Fr 2:00pm - 3:50pm | Gibson Hall 041 |
| | A relatively accurate syllabus for the course is found in the SIS listing. You can also email Michael Palmer (mpalmer@virginia.edu) for a copy. |
| | This thing we call infinity fills our dreams and sparks our imaginations, yet it lies just beyond our reach, lurking in the shadows, evading our questions. Our curiosity compels us to ask: what is infinity? Whether it is something innumerable, something vast, or eternal, infinity shapes our philosophies and religions, influences our arts and literatures, and drives our mathematics and sciences. Blake sees infinity in a grain of sand; van Gogh glimpses it in starry nights; Cantor unlocks infinities within infinities; and Hawking finds it in the dark corners of our Universe. In this class, we will imagine the infinite and the infinitesimal by looking through the eyes of these and other great thinkers. |
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