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| African-American and African Studies |
 AAS 1559 | New Course in African and African American Studies |
| |
| | Introductory Malagasy Language II |
| | Introductory Malagasy II |
| 19112 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 3 / 5 | Instructor:Noé Rajerison+1 | MoWe 3:05pm - 4:35pm |  Web-Based Course |
| | This is a web-based course taught by an Instructor from Duke university. |
| | Prerequisite: Introductory Malagasy I
Tonga soa! Let's dive deeper into the vibrant Malagasy language and culture as we take your skills to the next level! In this course, you'll expand your vocabulary, master key verb forms, and build confidence in speaking. Using authentic materials like blog excerpts, vlogs, and short videos, we'll bring the language to life and develop meaningful conversations about everyday topics. Whether it's exploring daily life or unique Malagasy cultures, you'll be ready to speak more fluently and naturally. Come join us and continue your Malagasy language journey! |
| AAS 2500 | Topics Course in Africana Studies |
| |
| | Black Life, Power, and the Archive |
| 13083 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed  | 15 / 15 | Shelby Sinclair | TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm | New Cabell Hall 044 |
| | How are archives built and maintained? How can we use historical archives to tell stories about Black life? Students will investigate the politics of knowledge production, power in the archive, and the limitations of various source materials through close reading, conversations with archivists, and hands-on archive exploration. This course develops students' research competencies and general understanding of primary materials, special collections, and critical digital methods through a final assignment on a pre-1999 topic of their choice. |
| | Race, Class & Gender |
| 13059 | 002 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 14 / 16 | Liana Richardson | MoWe 5:00pm - 6:15pm | New Cabell Hall 287 |
| | While many people in the United States embrace the rhetoric of equality, “the American Dream”, and “the land of opportunity,” why do social inequalities by race, class, and gender continue to be such a persistent feature of our society? The overall goal of this course is to examine the social, political, and economic forces that create, reinforce, and sometimes exacerbate these inequalities, shaping differences in lived experiences and outcomes. First, we will discuss the social construction of race, class, and gender, and their intersections. Then, we will examine policies and practices within the labor market, housing, education, health care, and criminal justice systems that reflect and reinforce the social constructions and perpetuate race, class, and gender inequalities in health, economic, and social well-being. We will conclude by considering potential strategies for disrupting these linkages, as well as the social justice politics associated with them. Documentaries, as well as pop culture media (e.g., music lyrics and videos, social media posts, and movies), will be used throughout the course to illustrate key concepts and realities. |
| AAS 3500 | Intermediate Seminar in African-American & African Studies |
| |
| | Race, Gender & Environmental Justice-Latin America |
| 19102 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 15 / 16 (15 / 16) | Kache Claytor | MoWe 3:30pm - 4:45pm | New Cabell Hall 064 |
| | This course offers an introduction to the concepts and perspectives in environmental justice movements by exploring the intersections of Black feminist activism in Latin America. This course explores the ways that Black women across borders, languages, as well as temporal and spatial markers have responded to injustices that have not only accelerated environmental degradation, but also disproportionately impacted their communities and shaped their experiences. Through a critical examination of case studies, we will analyze how Afro-descendant women have led movements to protect their communities, land, and natural resources. Using an interdisciplinary lens, students will engage with ideas of environmental justice, climate justice, Reproductive Justice, extractivism, colonialism, and sovereignty. This course is designed for students interested in activism, environmentalism, Blackness and Indigeneity, Black feminisms, Latin American politics, and Black consciousness throughout Latin America. Through a mix of readings, films, podcasts, discussions, and community engagement, students will gain a nuanced understanding of the role of Black women in shaping environmental and social justice across diverse contexts. |
| | Rethinking Race and Gender |
| 13432 | 002 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 6 / 20 | Nasrin Olla | TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm | John W. Warner Hall 110 |
| | In our everyday life, we navigate gendered and racialized realities. In some significant sense, to qualify as a “human,” one must be assigned a gender and race. But what is race? What is gender? How do these concepts come into being across cultures and spaces? In this course, we will approach these big questions by exploring a range of novels, poetry, criticism, and films from the Caribbean, India, the United States, and Africa. Authors will include Gayatri Spivak, Toni Morrison, Judith Butler, Jack Halberstam, Bell Hooks, Saidiya Hartman, and others. This course aims to develop a theoretical language through which the way race and gender emerge in institutional and informal structures is explored. Through a close reading of a range of texts, we will attempt to think across feminist, queer, and world literatures to develop a set of intersectional terms and concepts.
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| | Afro-Brazilian History |
| | Thought, Memory, Body, and Space |
| 19103 | 004 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 1 / 16 | Guilherme Lemos | TuTh 5:00pm - 6:15pm | New Cabell Hall 287 |
| | Throughout history, Black communities in Brazil have navigated structures of exclusion and resistance, crafting paths toward sovereignty in thought, memory, body, and space. Central to this navigation is the concept of the quilombo, reimagined by Beatriz Nascimento not just as a historical refuge but as an ongoing attitude of survival and collective resistance. But what does it mean to embody quilombo today? How do ideas of Black sovereignty unfold across different geographies and historical moments?
This course engages these questions by examining key Afro-Brazilian texts and intellectual traditions in conversation with broader anti-colonial thought from the Global South. With a focus on Nascimento’s writings, we will explore the intersections of race, land, memory, and performance, while drawing connections to thinkers such as Abdias Nascimento, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Frantz Fanon, Oyèrónkẹ Oyěwùmí, Milton Santos, Christen A. Smith, and Malcom Ferdinand. Through these dialogues, the course aims to develop a theoretical framework that highlights Afro-Brazilian strategies of resilience and contributes to critical race studies. |
| | Africulture: The African Roots of US Agriculture |
| 13968 | 007 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 20 / 25 (20 / 25) | Michael Carter Jr.+1 | Tu 2:00pm - 4:30pm | New Cabell Hall 303 |
| | 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 faced by today's Black farmers in the US food system and across a wide range of environmental and agricultural arenas. |
| | Race & Medicine in Post-19th Century America |
| 13972 | 008 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 16 / 16 | Liana Richardson | We 2:00pm - 4:30pm | New Cabell Hall 207 |
| | When it comes to race, what do the NFL, Facebook, and the IRS have in common with our health care system? How are cops and doctors similar to each other and to college fraternities? And how did the Civil Rights movement influence health care as we know it today? In this course, we will examine the medical practices involved in the social construction of racial difference and in the persistence of racial inequalities in health during the last 60 years. Drawing from relevant scholarship in sociology, anthropology, and history, we will discuss the origins and consequences of medical racism in contemporary medical research and practice, including the continued role of medicine in racial meaning-making. Case studies about the contemporary (mis)use of race in clinical encounters and in diagnostic and treatment protocols will provide illustrative examples. We will also consider the racialization of various health issues, focusing especially on the sociopolitical contexts in which it occurs and how contrasting schemas of medicalization and criminalization drive the differential labeling and treatment of racial groups as either victims (sick) or villains (bad). In addition to exposing the contradictions between these phenomena and the ethical principles of beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice in medicine, we will conclude by discussing their implications for health equity. |
| AAS 3559 | New Course in African and African American Studies |
| |
| | Africa's Youth: Cultural & Political Perspectives |
| Website 19106 | 002 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 6 / 16 | Salma Mutwafy | TuTh 9:30am - 10:45am | New Cabell Hall 364 |
| | Africa’s population is – by far - the youngest in the world. In all other world regions, the median age is more than 30 years. In Africa, the median age is 19 years. The youthfulness of Africa’s population has important implications for further population growth as well as social and political outcomes. In this course, we will examine Africa’s population dynamics and the cultural and political questions they raise. Central to this examination, will be a critical and humanistic sensitivity required in the study of population dynamics. We will draw on academic literature from anthropology, demography, and sociology, as well as popular sources, to understand the determinants and implications of population youthfulness. The course focuses on the following topics: work, politics, popular culture, and migration.
This course is suitable for students interested in contemporary Africa, global affairs, population, public policy, politics, and culture. |
| | Haiti and the US |
| | Race, Rumor, and Culture |
| 20594 | 004 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 7 / 25 | Shelby Sinclair | TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm | New Cabell Hall 315 |
| | This class will fulfill the second writing requirement. |
| | Let's unpack Haiti's lore. From zombies and vodou to the sensational headlines animating recent presidential debates, we uncover why Haiti has played a central role in U.S. popular culture for centuries. This course presents the cultural history of Haiti and its relationship to Western powers, most especially the United States and France. We examine the political and cultural foundations of Haiti's globally impactful revolution to overthrow slavery and French colonialism as well as the early twentieth century U.S. occupation and its consequences. |
| | Reparations&History of the Black Radical Tradition |
| | Reparations, Abolition, and the History of the Black Radical Tradition |
| Website 20076 | 005 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 6 / 16 | Guy Emerson Mount | Mo 2:00pm - 4:30pm | New Cabell Hall 068 |
| | Beginning with ancient indigenous forms of restorative justice and proceeding briskly into more recent attempts at enacting a transformative justice, this course aims to take a transnational and comparative approach to exploring the history of reparations and abolition from an interdisciplinary perspective. It is an attempt to reimagine the conceptual boundaries of reparations and abolition by situating them firmly within the much broader framework of the Black Radical Tradition. From environmental justice movements, to prison riots, to prefigurative community building efforts this course will be effectively 'queering the archive' in order to reveal reparations and abolition as both historically constituted ideas as well as subversive quotidian practices. While we will take a transnational approach to this project, the ultimate aim of this course (as reflected in its second half) is a greater understanding of the possibilities of reparations and abolition specifically as they relate to slavery, Jim Crow, and post-1968 discrimination against people of African descent in the United States. |
| AAS 3830 | Being Human: Race, Technology, and the Arts |
| |
| 19101 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 16 / 16 (22 / 24) | Njelle Hamilton | MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Dell 2 102 |
| | What makes us human? How did science and technology play a part in racism and the dehumanization of blackness? And how have artists of color re-appropriated science, technology, and science fiction to subvert and resist dehumanization? This course is an introduction to Afrofuturism, exploring the intersections of race and alienness, race and technology, and race and modernity through global futuristic representations of blackness in TV, film, music, art, and literature. In this discussion-based seminar, we will trace “like race” tropes in sci-fi, including aliens, monsters, enslavement, and invisibility. We will think about the various ways that black artists/writers/creators displace or “dimension-shift” the African Diaspora experience to grapple with contemporary and historical issues, and employ science/technology/sci-fi to invent places and conditions where blackness can thrive. Assignments will include literary essays and creative work (short films, artwork, mashups, web-content etc) that reimagine and interrogate representations of race and science/technology in contemporary media. (No artistic talent or experience required) |
| AAS 4501 | Advanced Research Seminar in History & AAS |
| |
| | Engaging Local Histories: River View Farm |
| | NOTE: This class does not actually meet from 2:00 - 5:30 p.m. (see below)! |
| 13431 | 001 | SEM (4 Units) | Open | 7 / 10 | Lisa Shutt | Th 2:00pm - 5:30pm | Pavilion V 110 |
| | 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. |
| | 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.
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| American Studies |
| AMST 3559 | New Course in American Studies |
| |
| | Placed and Displaced in America |
| 20503 | 002 | Lecture (3 Units) | Closed | 20 / 20 (20 / 20) | Lisa Goff | TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm | New Cabell Hall 115 |
| | No waitlist but spaces often open up. Email me if you'd like to join the class: lg6t@virginia.edu. |
| | The history of America is a history of place-making and displacement. Iconic American sites such as Monticello, Walden Pond, and our network of national parks have inspired generations of Americans. But displacement is just as much a part of our national identity—as the stories of Indigenous dispossession, housing discrimination, Japanese internment, redlining, gentrification, and homelessness attest. In this class we’ll critique the “iconic” American places, the ones we brag about, and study the displacement that has characterized our nation since the colonial era—the stories that were long buried, and are still coming to light. We’ll also pay special attention to the placemaking efforts of displaced or marginalized groups—such as Black Americans during the Great Migrations, lgbtq+ communities, immigrants, and survivors of natural disasters such as the Dust Bowl and Hurricane Katrina—who continue to redefine American identity through place-making. To do this we will analyze fiction, journalism, and film, as well as paintings, photographs and other elements of visual culture. We may also spend some time looking at archival sources at Special Collections and in online databases. By the end of the semester, you’ll know how to interpret space and place for insights into race, ethnicity, gender, class, and generation in America. |
| AMST 4500 | Fourth-Year Seminar in American Studies |
| |
| | James Baldwin |
| 20950 | 002 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 5 / 18 (5 / 18) | Marlon Ross | TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm | New Cabell Hall 594 |
| | This course focuses on the tumultuous life and diverse works of James Baldwin, whose intellectual influence is still palpable in today’s discussions on race, sexuality, social activism, national belonging, and exile. We’ll study major works from each of the genres that Baldwin engaged, including the novel, short story, drama, poetry, journalism, and the essay. Among the works to be examined are the novels Go Tell It on the Mountain, Giovanni’s Room, and Just Above My Head; plays The Amen Corner and Blues for Mr. Charlie; selected short stories from Going to Meet the Man; essays from Notes of a Native Son, The Fire Next Time, and No Name in the Street; and the children’s book Little Man Little Man. In addition to Baldwin’s works, we’ll explore him as a “spokesman” of the Civil Rights movement, and how his high visibility as a public intellectual whose appearances on the new medium of television helped to shape his “celebrity” status. We’ll also address a some of Baldwin’s most crucial intellectual dialogues, including with Richard Wright, William Faulkner, Norman Mailer, Lorraine Hansberry, William F. Buckley, Eldridge Cleaver, Amiri Baraka, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Toni Morrison, and Tarell Alvin McCraney. We’ll also study films important to Baldwin’s legacy, including Raoul Peck’s documentary I Am Not Your Negro and Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk. Assignments include: several short response essays, two critical essays, one team-led class discussion, and a term research paper. |
| | Reading the Black College Campus |
| | Reading the Black College Campus |
| 20951 | 003 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 0 / 18 (0 / 18) | K. Ian Grandison | Tu 5:00pm - 7:30pm | New Cabell Hall 111 |
| | How does the monumentality of the signature buildings on the campuses of land-grant colleges and universities in America resist the slight “Cow School” to belittle the official mission of these institutions? Does the ubiquitous ivy that cloaks their campuses reinforce our perception of the exclusivity of Ivy League colleges and universities? How does the discourse that posits the UVA Lawn as a seminal architectural legacy of a United States founding father help to distinguish the Lawn’s residents from passers-by, who must admire it from a respectful distance? “Reading the Black College Campus” is a student-centered, sensing/interpreting/communicating course that is generally concerned with the ways in which built environments are entangled with the negotiation of power in society. In particular, we explore this goal by focusing on how the campuses of HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) were shaped by (and shaped) the struggle to democratize education in the United States especially during the Jim Crow Period. Rather than the still dominant approach in architectural and landscape architectural criticism to emphasize art-historical interpretations, we foreground interpretations that engage built environments, such as college campuses, as arenas of cultural conflict and negotiation. As such, we are less interested in engaging the campus of Tuskegee University in Alabama as representing the genius of David Williston (Tuskegee’s black landscape architect at the turn of the last century) than in such questions as why the institution’s industrial facilities were placed at the main entrances to its campus during that period. With this interrogation as a model, students are encouraged to engage our own campus more critically. Beyond its significance as an outdoor museum of neo-classical buildings, for example, we consider the Lawn as a multi-layered record of the sometimes delicate and sometimes robust negotiation among the individuals and groups connected with it for position and privilege in the social hierarchy. In short we begin to engage built environments as important sources for cultural critique. Through discussion of readings and field trips (including one to the campus of a Virginia HBCU), lectures and workshops, and student-group presentations, we explore ideas, concepts and methods to read built environments by synthesizing knowledge gained from sensing them, studying them through maps and diagrams and primary and secondary written and oral accounts. Readings include Anderson’s Black Education in the South. There is a required field trip to downtown Charlottesville, on Tuesday, March 25, from 4:45 to 8:30 p.m.
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| AMST 5500 | Graduate Topics in American Studies |
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| | Material Culture: Theories and Methods |
| 14457 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Permission | 12 / 18 (12 / 18) | Lisa Goff | Th 5:00pm - 7:30pm | New Cabell Hall 111 |
| | Email me if you'd like to join the class: lg6t@virginia.edu |
| | “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, but also folklorist Henry Glassie; archaeologist James Deetz; anthropologist Elizabeth Chin, and political theorist Jane Bennett. 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. |
| AMST 5559 | New Course in American Studies |
| |
| | Latinx Literature and the Americas |
| 19314 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open  | 7 / 15 (7 / 15) | Carmen Lamas | Mo 3:30pm - 6:00pm | Lower West Oval Room 102 |
| | n this course we will read works that situate the Latinx experience in an Americas context. We will read across such genres as the memoir, speculative fiction, romance, YA, graphic novels, historical fiction and poetry. Issues such as border crossing, immigration, and deportation will serve to approach and query Latinidad in/from its many historical, geographic, generic, aesthetic, and political manifestations. We will locate these works in the wider debates regarding engaged literature, language use, translation, and the interdisciplinary nature of Latinx and Latin American literary studies. No prior experience reading Latinx literature is necessary. Final Projects will be based on the student's professional needs and goals. |
| Anthropology |
| ANTH 2541 | Topics in Linguistics |
| |
| | French Creole Language Structures |
| 20497 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 24 / 30 | Nathan Wendte | TuTh 9:30am - 10:45am | Clinical Department Wing 2677 |
| | In this course, we will be looking at a subset of creole languages—those whose vocabularies derive primarily from French—and examining their similarities and differences in terms of phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon. In doing so, we will also touch on the unique historical circumstances that gave rise to each of these French creoles and what their use is like today. There will be a special emphasis on Louisiana Creole. You will also get a taste of some of the controversies that surround the study of creole languages. This course will give you a broad overview of French creole-speaking societies and enable you to describe language structures common to French creoles. Familiarity with French, though not required, will be useful. |
| ANTH 5590 | Topics in Social and Cultural Anthropology |
| |
| | A Social Theory of the Corporate Form |
| | A Social Theory of the Corporate Form |
| 19647 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Permission | 5 / 15 | Ira Bashkow | Tu 4:00pm - 6:30pm | Brooks Hall 103 |
| | What do Apple, Shell, and Walmart have in common with UVa? All are corporations. But most theories start and end with the business corporation, treating it as a legal entity formed for commerce, with social activity unimportant. But what if we turn this around and instead see corporation-making as a cultural form of social activity, used for diverse purposes? People made corporations in this sense as early as 8,000 years ago. We explore it by studies of archaeology, history, religion, economics, law, kinship, and culture. |
| | Topics in Social and Cultural Anthropology: Visual |
| 21056 | 002 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 5 / 15 | Erin Moriarty | Fr 9:00am - 11:30am | Brooks Hall 312 |
| | This course explores the intersection of anthropology and visual media, examining how photographs, films, art, and digital technologies are used to represent and study human cultures. Students will engage with core concepts of visual anthropology, including visual ethnography, representation, and the ethics of visual storytelling. The course offers a comprehensive view of how visual methods are applied in both academic and real-world contexts. Through case studies, film screenings, and expert guest lectures, students will explore the historical and contemporary uses of visual media in anthropology and related fields.
Hands-on activities, off-site visits, and team-based projects will provide students with practical experience in visual anthropology methods. These include a mini visual ethnographic investigation on social media practices, visits to museums, expert guest lectures, and in-class movie screenings with discussion. By the end of the course, students will develop both a critical understanding of visual anthropology and the practical skills to conduct their own visual research, preparing them for future applications of visual media in academic, professional, and social contexts.
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| Architecture |
| ARCH 5500 | Special Topics in Architecture |
| |
| | Dream, Play, Build Community |
| | Community-Engaged Design Workshop |
| 20107 | 006 | Lecture (1 Units) | Permission | 3 / 15 | Schaeffer Somers | Tu 6:00pm - 7:15pm | Campbell Hall 220C |
| | Students will design a community workshop series in partnership with community-based organizations promoting affordable housing and homeownership in under-served neighborhoods. The approach builds on and extends the work of the Dwelling Advanced Research Studio offered in the Fall 2024 semester. Students will learn and adapt the “Dream, Play, Build” approach to community-engaged design developed by James Rojas and John Kamp. Students will co-create and participate in a minimum of 1 and possibly 2 or more workshops with stakeholders. Workshop scheduling will be based on community input so participation may involve weekend or evening commitments. The scheduled class meeting time can be adjusted by a consensus of enrolled students. |
| History of Art |
| ARTH 2559 | New Course in History of Art |
| |
| | Art and Visual Culture of the Caribbean |
| 21153 | 300 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 7 / 50 | Tatiana Flores | MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Campbell Hall 160 |
| | In 1492, Columbus’ encounter with the Caribbean changed the course of history. Crucial to the development of today’s global economy, the region has nonetheless suffered disregard across many spheres. This course places the Caribbean on center stage, covering the time span of the pre-Conquest to the present. Critical issues addressed include the Caribbean as the site of first contact between Europe and the New World, the visual culture of colonialism, the slave trade and plantation culture, the region as a crucible of modernity, revolutions and revolutionary thought, Black cultural expressions, and the representation of local identities.
This interdisciplinary course considers a wide range of visual objects in dialogue with literature, film, performance, music, and intellectual history. The geographical areas addressed include island territories and the countries along the Caribbean basin and their diasporas. |
| Biology |
| BIOL 4260 | Cellular Mechanisms |
| |
| | Advances in Precision Drug Discovery & Repurposing |
| Website 11811 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Permission | 31 / 40 | Mike Wormington | TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm | Chemistry Bldg 206 |
| | Course Description
What are precision drugs? Aren't all drugs precise? Does "precision" equate to better efficacy? fewer side-effects? In simplest terms, a precision drug can be defined as" a drug that is most effective in a molecularly defined subset of patients and for which pretreatment molecular profiling is required for optimal patient selection." Precision drugs have been most exploited in oncology where a number of drugs have been developed that inhibit specific oncogene targets that drive specific cancers. Notable examples include Herceptin (HER2+ breast cancer), Gleevec (BCR-ABL chronic myelogenous leukemia), & Vemurafenib (BRAFV600E melanoma). Progress continues to made in precision oncology with the development of next gen drugs such as antibody drug conjugates, specific oncokinase inhibitors that bind covalently to their targets and novel pan-RAS inhibitors. However, significant advances have also been made in precision therapies that rescue or restore the activity of mutant genes that underlie diverse genetic diseases or chronic conditions such as cystic fibrosis (CFTR correctors & potentiators), hyperlipidemia (HMG CoA reductase inhibitors such as statins & bempedoic acid; PCSK9 blockers), lysosomal storage disorders (Galafold), and even drugs that target mutant mRNAs harboring nonsense mutations (Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy or Cystic Fibrosis Ataluren) or that alter pre-mRNA splicing to "skip" exons containing missense or nonsense mutations (Spinal Muscular Atrophy, Ridsiplam).
However, in many cases, the "low hanging fruit" of validated targets for many therapeutic indications, especially oncology, have largely been "harvested" and the identification and validation for new precision targets typically takes years and the success rate of new drug development, both precision and nonprecision is alarmingly low...typically less than 20%. Hence drug repurposing provides an increasingly viable alternative with a significantly shorter time frame and greater likelihood of success. Repurposing and repositioning are often used interchangeably, but repurposing most commonly refers to drugs successfully designed and approved to treat one disease & still do so, but are being tested to treat a different one. Their repurposed mechanism of action and target may or may not be the same as for their original therapeutic use. For example, the repurposing of statins (hyperlipidemia) and metformin (type II diabetes) to treat various cancers, or ozempic (type II diabetes) to promote weight loss and mitigate cardiovascular disease. Repositioning (also referred to as recycling) most commonly refers to drugs taht were initially designed & successfully used to treat one disease, but were shelved for any of several reasons after their initial approval (e.g., lack of efficacy, unanticipated side effects or commercial failure) For example, thalidomide that was initially used to treat morning sickness during pregnancy, but which caused severe birth defects, has been repurposed to treat various cancers.
Course Objectives
This course will use a case study approach to examine several paradigms of precision drug discovery and repurposing, as well as to investigate new examples of each under development. Assigned reading will come from current review articles and primary research papers. A major objective of this course will be to provide you with an opportunity, to learn how to critically read, interpret, and present in a collaborative, discussion-based format. Students will work in groups to critically read, interpret, and evaluate primary research papers in a historical context and to present their findings in both informal "whiteboard talks" and formal presentations.
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| Civil Engineering |
| CE 4500 | Special Topics in Civil Engineering |
| |
| | Artificial Intelligence for Engineers |
| Website 19612 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 3 / 25 (8 / 48) | Leo Liu | Mo 6:00pm - 9:00pm | Thornton Hall E304 |
| | This course aims to provide Artificial Intelligence (AI) knowledge for general engineering students so that they can easily understand and perform complementary AI research and innovations. Distinct from general AI or machine learning courses, this course will start with AI basic concepts, history, applications, and tools. Then, the most classic and popular machine learning techniques in supervised, unsupervised, and reinforcement learning will be introduced. Each topic consists of a lecture to explain theories and algorithms and a computer lab for coding, implementing, or/and applying typical methods. This course is designed by people out of computer science for students who are not majoring in computer science. |
| Classics |
| CLAS 2559 | New Course in Classics |
| |
| | Classical Jokes for Modern Folks: Aristophanes |
| 19279 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 24 / 25 | David Williams | TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm | Physics Bldg 218 |
| | The comedies of the Athenian playwright Aristophanes continue to entertain, perplex, enlighten, and offend readers some 2,400 years after their initial productions. Staged during one of the most dynamic and influential periods in western history––a period that encompassed the activity and execution of Socrates, the innovative tragedies of Euripides, and the paradigmatic clash between Athens and Sparta––his plays offer a unique perspective on these vibrant and turbulent times. In this course we will read Aristophanes (in English) as a comic playwright, as a historical source, and as an insightful thinker in his own right. We will engage in historically grounded readings of some of the greatest comic dramas ever produced in order to establish a foundation for approaching a number of topics that remain vital in our contemporary world. These will include the nature of democracy and demagoguery, the problem of intergenerational strife, the value of scientific research, the purpose and power of poetry, and the relationship between satire and politics. In short, we will consider how one great comedian’s hilarious and thoughtful jokes about the most important issues of his day might still speak to those of ours.
Students will come away from the course with:
• an awareness of the formal features, themes, and comic techniques of Aristophanic comedy
• an appreciation of the role of theater and the dramatic festivals in Athenian life
• knowledge of the major political and cultural events of the period of the Peloponnesian War (~431 – ~404 BCE)
• a nuanced understanding of the value of Aristophanic comedy as a historical source
• critical tools for analyzing and thinking about the cultural and political role of comedy in the contemporary world
Assessments may include: composing an original comic scene on the model of Aristophanes, writing a critical review of an Aristophanic play, analyzing the humor of a piece of modern comedy, and/or participating in student-led debates.
|
| Commerce |
| COMM 4560 | Topics in Management |
| |
| | Doing Business in China |
| | Navigating the cross-cultural challenges |
| 17661 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Wait List (4 / 199) | 25 / 25 | Mark Metcalf | Mo 3:30pm - 6:15pm | Robertson Hall 260 |
| | Non-Commerce 4th-year students may register with the instructor's permission. |
| | Doing Business in China (“DBi China”) is an introduction to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) cultural anthropological, sociological, and political features that contribute to the nation’s distinctive business practices. The goal of the course is for students to develop an awareness of and appreciation for the breadth of factors that influence Chinese business practices.
The course will explore the origins and significance of interpersonal factors such as relationships (guanxi), situational ethics, indirection, and “face” in business interactions and
negotiations. Such social norms have deep historical roots in China and have a profound impact on Chinese social relationships, but are frequently sources of frustration (or worse) for non-Chinese people doing business in the PRC. Understanding how and why such factors are employed in Chinese society will help to better identify and appropriately respond to them. We will also discuss historical Confucianism and Daoism, traditional philosophies that continue to influence Chinese society. Case studies will be used throughout the course to provide noteworthy examples of Chinese business practices.
For additional context, we will also discuss relevant PRC views regarding history, geography, governance, and global standing; perspectives that greatly influence both domestic and international policy and can impact the business environment. Particular attention will be given to the pervasive and growing influence of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on PRC society and China’s growing international activities (e.g., the Belt and Road Initiative [BRI]).
The course will be conducted as a seminar and students will be expected to actively participate in classroom discussions. Approximately 100 pages of reading will be assigned each week. Three 4-page (1000-word) papers that analyze various practical aspects (i.e., case studies) of business practices will be assigned. The final assignment will be a team project (class presentation & 3000-word-paper) that applies concepts discussed throughout the semester to analyze and respond to a business case that typifies the cross-cultural challenges of doing business in China. |
| Creole |
| CREO 1020 | Elementary Creole II |
| |
| 12897 | 001 | WKS (3 Units) | Open | 2 / 10 | Karen James | MoWeFr 10:15am - 11:15am | TBA |
| | Haitian Creole—kreyol ayisyen—is spoken by 10 to 11 million people worldwide, most of whom live in Haiti. Learn Haitian Creole and capture the heartbeat of the country via its beautiful and colorful proverbs.
The CREO (Haitian Creole) courses are taught online in Zoom by Professor Jacques Pierre (Duke University) through the UVA-Duke-Vanderbilt Partnership for Less Commonly Taught Languages.
UVA students enroll in CREO 1020 in SIS.
Questions about the Creole curriculum may be directed to Prof. Pierre at Duke (jacques.pierre@duke.edu), and other questions may be directed to Prof. Karen James (ksj7c@virginia.edu) in the French Department. |
| CREO 2020 | Intermediate Creole II |
| |
| 12701 | 001 | WKS (3 Units) | Open | 1 / 10 | Karen James | MoWeFr 12:00pm - 12:50pm | TBA |
| | Haitian Creole -kreyol ayisyen -is spoken by 10 to 11 million people worldwide, most of whom live in Haiti. Learn Haitian Creole and capture the heartbeat of the country via its beautiful and colorful proverbs.
The CREO (Haitian Creole) courses are taught by Professor Jacques Pierre (Duke University) through the UVA-Duke-Vanderbilt Partnership for Less Commonly Taught Languages.
UVA students enroll in CREO 2020 in SIS.
Questions about the Creole curriculum may be directed to Prof. Pierre at Duke (jacques.pierre@duke.edu), and other questions may be directed to Prof. Karen James (ksj7c@virginia.edu) in the French Department. |
| Computer Science |
| CS 2501 | Special Topics in Computer Science |
| |
| | Preparing for Undergraduate Research |
| | Preparing for Undergraduate Research |
| 21006 | 001 | Lecture (1 Units) | Permission | 32 / 50 | Briana Morrison | We 5:00pm - 5:50pm | Olsson Hall 011 |
| | This course is designed for first through third year CS students who have not participated in undergraduate research, but want to. This course will prepare you with the skills and knowledge to be a contributor to a research lab on day one. We will cover topics such as how to read a research paper, what is a literature review, what is a research question, what is a research proposal, experiments in CS, overview of research methods, hypothesis testing, peer review, and research ethics. |
| CS 4414 | Operating Systems |
| |
| | From Boot to DOOM |
| Website 14983 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Closed | 55 / 55 (74 / 75) | Felix Lin | TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm | Olsson Hall 011 |
| | A guided journey starting from bare-metal hardware to a fully functional OS capable of running multiple applications, including Mario and DOOM, on a multicore processor. |
| | This course is a "guided tour". In one semester, it takes students, who have basic knowledge of the computer software/hardware stack, on the journey of building a modern operating system.
Building an OS can be a tough process, and this course is designed to give students continuous rewards -- both intellectually and emotionally -- just as video games or theme parks do.
This course will start from bare-metal hardware ("boot") and incrementally build more features, enable more applications, and eventually run a full-fledged OS, which can run multiple applications ("DOOM") and on a multicore processor. |
| CS 4501 | Special Topics in Computer Science |
| |
| | Analyzing Online Behavior for Public Health |
| Website 20647 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Closed | 40 / 40 (64 / 80) | Henry Kautz | MoWe 3:30pm - 4:45pm | Mechanical Engr Bldg 341 |
| | People’s online behavior contains signals about their physical and mental health. This course will explore research on using data from users’ interactions with Twitter/X, Google Search, YouTube and other online platforms for tasks ranging from identifying people suffering from anxiety disorder to tracking down restaurants that are sources of food poisoning. We will also read papers on both sides of the ongoing |
| CS 6501 | Special Topics in Computer Science |
| |
| | CPU/GPU Memory Systems and Near-Data Processing |
| | Special Topics in Computer Architecture: CPU/GPU Memory Systems and Near-Data Processing |
| Website 16074 | 004 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 11 / 30 (12 / 38) | Kevin Skadron | TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Rice Hall 340 |
| | Prereq: CS 3130 or similar |
| | This course will explore the design and optimization of processor memory and storage system, and advanced topics such as emerging technologies and near-data processing. |
| | Analyzing Online Behavior for Public Health |
| Website 19572 | 007 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 24 / 40 (64 / 80) | Henry Kautz | MoWe 3:30pm - 4:45pm | Mechanical Engr Bldg 341 |
| | People’s online behavior contains signals about their physical and mental health. This course will explore research on using data from users’ interactions with Twitter/X, Google Search, YouTube and other online platforms for tasks ranging from identifying people suffering from anxiety disorder to tracking down restaurants that are sources of food poisoning. We will also read papers on both sides of the ongoing debate about whether social media should be restricted because of potential harm to children or adults. |
| | Machine Learning in Systems Security |
| | Machine Learning in Systems Security |
| 19573 | 008 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 16 / 38 | Wajih Ul Hassan | TuTh 5:00pm - 6:15pm | Rice Hall 340 |
| | The course kicks off with an in-depth understanding of machine learning fundamentals, systems security, and deep learning principles. We will then explore how machine learning algorithms can be leveraged to address prevalent systems security issues, such as malware analysis/detection, spam filtering, anomaly detection, incident response, and credit card fraud prevention. Additionally, we will 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.
|
| | Learning in Robotics |
| | Advanced mathematical principles for mastering Perception, Planning, and Control in Robotics. |
| Website 16264 | 012 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 17 / 38 | Madhur Behl | MoWe 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 3030 | Dramaturgy |
| |
| Website 19659 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 7 / 30 | Yunina Barbour-Payne | TuTh 9:30am - 10:45am | Drama Education Bldg 217 |
| | This course offers an immersive exploration into the art of dramaturgy through the lens of Black Feminist playmaking. The guiding question for this course is: What is the role of the dramaturge in the creative process, the impact of cultural heritage on storytelling, and strategies for fostering inclusive dialogue in the designer's room, the rehearsal room, and in the afterlife of performance? Students will engage deeply with a diverse array of storytelling in performance, examining the historical and cultural contexts that shape theater in a given era. Through close reading, critical analysis, and project-based learning, participants will develop the skills necessary to support playwrights and directors, focusing on the unique narratives and aesthetics of Black voices in theater. |
| DRAM 4592 | Special Topics in Drama |
| |
| | Queer Performance |
| | Queer Performance |
| 14298 | 001 | SEM (1 - 3 Units) | Permission | 1 / 20 | Katelyn Wood | TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm | Drama Education Bldg 217 |
| | 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 theatre, 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. |
| Electrical and Computer Engineering |
| ECE 3502 | Special Topics in Electrical and Computer Engineering |
| |
| | Third-Year Design Experience |
| | PCB Design |
| 19579 | 003 | Lecture (3 Units) | Closed | 30 / 30 | Adam Barnes | TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Mechanical Engr Bldg 339 |
| | Practical PCB layout and design. Students will design circuits for a motor driver and LCD display to interface with a microcontroller, layout the PCB for their designs, and test the manufactured PCBs. This class is meant to prepare students for their Capstone class.
Prerequisite: ECE2600, Pre/Co-requisite: ECE3430 |
| ECE 4502 | Special Topics in Electrical and Computer Engineering |
| |
| | Digital Control Techniques for Robotic Systems |
| 20845 | 004 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 9 / 10 (14 / 20) | Gang Tao | TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm | Mechanical Engineering 206 |
| | In this senior and graduate course of Topics in Electrical and Computer Engineering, students are provided the opportunities to have a comprehensive study of three main components of digital control systems: digital control system theory, control design and analysis methods, and digital control simulation techniques, through the combined learning of theory and algorithms and training with digital control system Matlab implementations. This course is designed to bring both control system theory and implementation techniques to students, with the help of DC motor and robot system examples.
This course covers the fundamental concepts and theorems of signal conversions, signal sampling and holding processes, z-transforms and applications, transfer functions and state-space models of digital control systems, system stability and controllability, and digital PID control and pole placement control; the basic techniques of modeling and analysis of DC motor and robot manipulator systems; and the main digital control system components and their functions and simulation using Matlab implementations.
|
| ECE 5502 | Special Topics in Electrical and Computer Engineering |
| |
| | Photovoltaics |
| Website 16334 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 3 / 10 (3 / 20) | Mool Gupta | TuTh 5:00pm - 6:15pm | Thornton Hall D115 |
| | Solar energy plays an important role in the growth of renewable energy, which will have an important impact on society in meeting its energy needs and improving environmental quality. This course provides an introduction to Photovoltaics and solar energy generation and gives an overview of the subject. The course will describe the operation of photovoltaic cells and efficiency improvements, industrial processes, solar thermal power generation, thin films, and nanomaterials for photovoltaics and future technologies. Undergraduate students are welcome. |
| ECE 6502 | Special Topics in Electrical and Computer Engineering |
| |
| | Digital Control Techniques for Robotic Systems |
| 20846 | 007 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 5 / 10 (14 / 20) | Gang Tao | TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm | Mechanical Engineering 206 |
| |
In this senior and graduate course of Topics in Electrical and Computer Engineering, students are provided the opportunities to have a comprehensive study of three main components of digital control systems: digital control system theory, control design and analysis methods, and digital control simulation techniques, through the combined learning of theory and algorithms and training with digital control system Matlab implementations. This course is designed to bring both control system theory and implementation techniques to students, with the help of DC motor and robot system examples.
This course covers the fundamental concepts and theorems of signal conversions, signal sampling and holding processes, z-transforms and applications, transfer functions and state-space models of digital control systems, system stability and controllability, and digital PID control and pole placement control; the basic techniques of modeling and analysis of DC motor and robot manipulator systems; and the main digital control system components and their functions and simulation using Matlab implementations.
Some advanced study of control design and analysis techniques will be added for students in the graduate section in their assignments, to given them the opportunity to learn some higher level materials.
|
| Creative Writing |
| ENCW 3310 | Intermediate Poetry Writing I |
| |
| 14353 | 001 | WKS (3 Units) | Permission | 9 / 12 | Lisa Spaar | Tu 11:00am - 1:30pm | Bryan Hall 233 |
| | Intermediate Poetry Writing: Myths of Adolescence & the Literary Imagination
Our focus for this writing workshop will be the Crucible of Becoming: Myths of Adolescence & the Literary Imagination. Human development across cultures and time inevitably involves some version or experience of adolescence, a liminal and archetypal territory between childhood and adulthood characterized by exploration, growth, intense feeling, conflict, becoming, power play, transgression, anxiety, and pain. No wonder, then, that writers have been drawn to this difficult, complex period, plundering its emotional dynamics and mythologizing its extremities in novels, short fiction, poems, and plays. In this course, we will plumb notions of adolescence and explore irs versions of it in a variety of ways. The crucial question will not be “What is adolescence?” but rather, “How has adolescence been perceived, remembered, imagined?” As we attempt to articulate the significance of our own accountings of adolescence, we may hope to confront ways in which the young (ourselves) embody our most profound vulnerabilities and possibilities. As we explore this period in poetry, we will examine our own crucible of becoming, perhaps particularly as it relates to the adventure and journey of the University experience. Admission is by permission of the instructor. Please contact Professor Spaar at LRS9E@virginia.edu to indicate your interest in the workshop.
|
| | Revolutionary Poetics |
| 14354 | 002 | WKS (3 Units) | Permission | 12 / 12 | Brian Teare | MoWe 3:30pm - 4:45pm | New Cabell Hall 395 |
| | Instructor Permission is required for enrollment in this class: please request enrollment through SIS and email a writing sample of 4-5 poems with a cover sheet including your name, year, email address, major, prior workshop experience, and other workshops to which you are submitting. Submit your application IN A SINGLE DOCUMENT to Prof. Teare at bt5ps@virginia.edu. Applications will be considered on a rolling basis once registration opens. For full consideration, email your application as soon as possible. |
| | A revolutionary poetics involves two crucial gestures: turning away from, and turning toward. Poets engaged in individual and/or collective revolution tend to turn away from oppressive ideologies and dead forms and turn toward liberatory expression and living language. For such poets, liberatory forms are not prescribed but discovered, often shaped in response to historical context and personal identity and experience. But how does their work turn away from inherited harms and turn toward alternatives that acknowledge injustice without replicating it, fashioning instead new ways of relating to each other through poetic language and forms? This course will introduce us to contemporary poets whose revolutionary work addresses the collective and personal stakes of writing about climate crisis, religious trauma, war, migration, neurodiversity, gender transition, structural antiblackness, and addiction. The reading component of this course will include books by Oliver Baez Bendorf, H. G. Dierdorff, Rea Visiting Poet Airea D. Matthews, Sahar Muradi, and Adam Wolfond. The workshop component of this course will begin with short poems written in response to prompts derived from our reading. These prompts will be designed to help us think about the flexible, powerful relationship between cultural critique and poetic form, between revolution and the literal letter. The long workshop portion of the course will offer each of us the chance to expand upon those poems in longer manuscripts. Throughout the semester, in both critical discussions and workshops, we’ll discuss the conceptual, political, and poetic aspirations of the work we read, and explore the possibilities of coming together as poets during a time of global flux. |
| ENCW 3610 | Intermediate Fiction Writing |
| |
| 14357 | 002 | WKS (3 Units) | Permission | 0 / 12 | Micheline Marcom | We 4:00pm - 6:30pm | Bryan Hall 233 |
| | Instructor permission required. |
| | Please email me 3-4 pages of creative work + 1 paragraph about your interest in the class to mam5du@virginia.edu |
| ENCW 4550 | Topics in Literary Prose |
| |
| | Prose Between Fiction and ¿Non¿ |
| | Imagining • Remembering • Finding |
| 20680 | 002 | SEM (3 Units) | Permission | 14 / 12 | Jane Alison | We 2:00pm - 4:30pm | Dawson's Row 1 |
| | A seminar for reader-writers who want to explore narrative that blurs the so-called line between fiction and non: autofiction, historical fiction, creative nonfiction, memoir, speculative essay . . . We’ll read specimens of assorted types and lengths—from micro-essay to novel—and see how writers have drawn both energy and form from history, memory, other lives, other stories, facts themselves. Works might include Alvaro Enrigue’s You Dreamed of Empires, Anna Garreta’s Not One Day, Fleur Jaeggy’s These Possible Lives, Justin Torres’s We the Animals or Blackouts, Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, Annie Ernaux’s Simple Passion or Happening, Edna O’Brien’s Night, Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, Anne Carson’s The Glass Essay, as well as stories and essays by John Keene, Eliot Weinberger, Maria Gainza, and many others. In addition to weekly reading, you’ll play with regular exercises that let you draw upon history or memory or other found material, and you’ll produce a final critical-creative project.
Instructor permission required, but all eager readers are welcome to apply. If you’re NOT in the APLP, send me a note (jas2ad) saying what draws you to this class.
|
| ENCW 4810 | Advanced Fiction Writing I |
| |
| | WRITING FROM, TOWARD, INTO, AGAINST — |
| 20494 | 001 | WKS (3 Units) | Permission | 10 / 12 | Jane Alison | Fr 11:00am - 1:30pm | Dawson's Row 1 |
| | A class for imaginative and open-minded students who want to explore ways of crafting literary fiction that converses with—or against—other narratives, documents, images, ideas. This will be a largely generative workshop: each week I’ll give you an item with which to engage imaginatively. This entity could be a painting, a scientific discovery, a snip of found dialogue, a photograph of a place, an animal, a piece of furniture, a myth, someone else’s story . . . You’ll write short pieces each week that spring from or against these items, and you’ll gradually develop either a single long project from one of these pieces or create a collage of many: this will be up to you. Along the way, we will also read short and long narratives that likewise speak to or from other documents or texts or paintings or objects . . . Expect to read widely, write lots, and, I hope, find yourself writing about things you never knew intrigued you.
INSTRUCTOR PERMISSION REQUIRED. Unless you are in the APLP, please send me (at jas2ad) a note saying what appeals to you about this course, together with a brief (10-page) sample of your creative writing. BE SURE TO APPLY VIA SIS, TOO.
|
| ENCW 4820 | Poetry Program Poetics |
| |
| | ENCW 4820: Poetry Program Poetics |
| 13639 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Permission | 6 / 12 | Lisa Spaar | We 1:00pm - 3:30pm | Bryan Hall 233 |
| | APPW Poetics Seminar: The Contemporary American Lyric Sequence
This seminar for practicing writers will focus on the lyric sequence in American poetry written since 1980. We will begin by exploring pointed gatherings of poems by early American innovators of the lyric sequence—Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Melvin Tolson—but the focus of the course will be on contemporary American poets working in series, both within and across embodiment as a book, including series and sequences by Tom Andrews, Lucie Brock-Broido, Suzanne Buffam, Anne Carson, Lucille Clifton, Safiya Elhillo, Claudia Emerson, Shane McCrae, Harryette Mullen, Arthur Sze, Kevin Young, and others. As we read, we will examine ways in which these contemporary sequences are in conversation with poets working in other cultures, traditions, and lyric modes, both mainstream and experimental. What poems had to have been written in order for these late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century lyric sequences to exist? How has the gestalt of the fragment in modernism and post-modernism contributed to the evolution/devolution of the contemporary lyric sequence? What attracts poets to serial thinking? Is there a poetics of the lyrical sequence? What various formal ruses do poets working in series and sequences deploy and what might writers learn from them? We may have the pleasure of hearing from visitors and make forays into the Fralin Museum of Art and Special collections from time to time, as well. Course work will involve a creative project: the writing of a poetic sequence with accompanying poetics statement. Preference is given to students in the Area Programs in Poetry and Prose Writing, but others are most welcome to apply by contacting Professor Spaar at LRS9E@virginia.edu.
|
| ENCW 4830 | Advanced Poetry Writing I |
| |
| | Instructor permission required. |
| 14360 | 001 | WKS (3 Units) | Permission | 0 / 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 |
| |
| 13576 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Permission | 9 / 15 | Brian Teare | Mo 6:00pm - 8:30pm | New Cabell Hall 044 |
| | For graduating APPW students only. Please request enrollment through SIS. |
| | 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 |
| |
| 14361 | 001 | WKS (3 Units) | Open | 8 / 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; both first and second-year MFA students will assemble a portfolio of poetry at semester's end. |
| English-Literature |
| ENGL 1500 | Masterworks of Literature |
| |
| | Vikings: Myths and Sagas |
| 19922 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 22 / 60 | Stephen Hopkins | TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm | Gibson Hall 211 |
| | Fulfills the AIP req. |
| | This course introduces students to Old Norse mythology and cosmology, and their adaptation into later medieval prose sagas, such as Egil's Saga, Gunnlaug's Saga, and more. We will begin with Prose and Poetic Eddas, examining their mythic poems and learning essential historical and cultural contexts necessary to appreciate these bodies of myth and legend. We will then consider how the conversion to Christianity (in the summer of 999) changed Iceland’s literary landscape. Yet the heathen myths survived the advent of this new faith, and even thrived. In the back half of the course, we will focus on texts composed well within the Christian era to investigate the various ways in which medieval Icelanders reckoned with the heathen past of their ancestors while working out their own identity in verse and prose.
*This course fulfills the AIP requirement.* |
| ENGL 2500 | Introduction to Literary Studies |
| |
| | Introduction to Literary Studies |
| 19940 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (12 / 99) | 20 / 20 | Victor Luftig | TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm | New Cabell Hall 291 |
| | We will read poems, plays, fiction, and essays in ways meant to introduce the study of literature at the college level: we’ll focus on how these types of writing work, on what we get from reading them carefully, and on what good and harm they may do in the world. The texts will come from a wide range of times and places, including works by authors such as Sophocles, Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe, Virginia Woolf, TS Eliot, Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, Lorraine Hanbery, Jamaica Kincaid, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Li-Young Lee, and Chimamanda Adichie; we will also attend a readings and two plays, one on Grounds and the other at the American Shakespeare Center. The course is meant to serve those who are interested in improving their reading and writing, for whatever reason, who seek an introductory humanities course, and/or who may wish subsequently to major in English. We’ll discuss the works in class, and there will be in class-quizzes, three papers, and a final exam. |
| | Introduction to Literary Studies |
| | Equipment for Living |
| 19945 | 002 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (6 / 99) | 18 / 18 | Walter Jost | TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm | New Cabell Hall 068 |
| | One reads imaginative literature differently than one reads other written materials, raising, along the way, questions about language and interpretation, questions that might be raised elsewhere but often aren’t. To become better readers of fiction, and through fiction better readers of ourselves and others and the lives we lead, we will read closely and discuss thoughtfully a small number of plays and novels, and ask: Who says? Why? How? This course fulfills the Second Writing Requirement. |
| ENGL 2502 | Masterpieces of English Literature |
| |
| | Four Books, Four Centuries, Four Forms |
| | King Lear, Emma, The Waste Land, 2001: A Space Odyssey |
| 19915 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (15 / 99) | 20 / 20 | John O'Brien | MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm | The Rotunda Room 150 |
| | ENGL 2502: Masterpieces of English Literature MW 2:00-3:15, New Cabell Hall 115
Topic: Four Books, Four Centuries, Four Forms. In this course, we will read four different works produced between 1600 and 2000, each of which is in a radically different form: William Shakespeare’s play King Lear, Jane Austen’s novel Emma, T. S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land, and Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Each of these works is a masterpiece of its kind, an influence to many who followed it, and a work about which many critics have had things to say. They’re all incredibly pleasurable and rewarding as well. We’ll use these masterpieces to explore the kinds of ways that you can approach literary and filmic texts. The course will fulfill the second writing requirement and the AIP Disciplines requirement, and is also a prerequisite for the English major. |
| | Locating Jane. Or, Putting Austen in her Place |
| 19929 | 002 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (11 / 99) | 20 / 20 | Alison Hurley | TuTh 9:30am - 10:45am | Shannon House 119 |
| | 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 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.
We will be reading Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Mansfield Park and Persuasion.
This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.
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| | Monsters and Marvels in Medieval Literature |
| | Click the blue number to the left for a detailed course description. |
| 20886 | 003 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (7 / 99) | 20 / 20 | Viola Cozzio | TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm | Shannon House 119 |
| | In this course, we will see how medieval literature horrifies, thrills, and dazzles its readers from the medieval period to the present day. We'll read both poetry and prose (most in modern English translation, though we’ll try our hand at a few short passages in older forms of the English language) and find out how monsters and the sensations of fear and wonder helped medieval readers make sense of the world – and how they might do the same for us.
Tentative list of readings: Excerpts from Beowulf, Andreas, the Morte Darthur, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; shorter works like the head-chopping Old English Judith, Marie de France’s werewolf story Bisclavret, and Sir Orfeo’s adventures in the fairy kingdom.
Requirements for this course: regular attendance and participation in discussion, occasional discussion board posts, four 3-4 page papers, and a 4-5 page revision of one of these shorter papers. This course satisfies the second writing requirement. |
| ENGL 2506 | Studies in Poetry |
| |
| | Introduction to Poetry |
| | Reading Poems |
| 19908 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (8 / 99) | 20 / 20 | Henrietta Hadley | TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm | Nau Hall 241 |
| | In this class we'll be reading and talking about poems of many kinds. Reading a poem, we'll ask: What makes it tick? What makes it stop? How does it move us, or not? In addition to individual poems, we'll read books of contemporary poetry by Carl Phillips, Don Mee Choi, Terrance Hayes, Ilya Kaminsky, and Mary Ruefle. For a prose guide through the various terrain of English-language poems we'll have Don't Read Poetry by Stephanie Burt. Over the course of the semester, students will draft, revise, and present a "reader's manual" for a poet of their choice. This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement. |
| | Introduction to Poetry |
| 19947 | 002 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (13 / 99) | 18 / 18 | Taylor Schey | TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm | Dell 1 104 |
| | You’re likely practiced at comprehending the meaning of any text that you read. But how does language create meaning in the first place? How can a single word generate multiple, even conflicting, significations? How do various arrangements of sounds move us to tears, open new worlds, instigate actions, and give us pleasure? This course offers an introduction to poetry, the only form of literature that requires us to confront these questions head on. Through learning how to engage carefully with the subtleties and formal elements of poetic language (including meter, rhyme, figure, diction, sound, and syntax), you’ll hone your skills of close reading and critical thinking and learn how to use them beyond the classroom. Plus, through assignments both analytical and creative, you’ll become a stronger writer. Our readings will span from the early modern period to the present, covering an array of poetic styles, forms, and genres as well as a wide range of authors, from William Shakespeare and John Keats to M. NourbeSe Philip and Layli Long Soldier. All students are welcome, and no prior knowledge is expected. This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement. |
| | Hybrid Poetry |
| 19989 | 003 | SEM (3 Units) | Open, WL (1 / 99) | 19 / 20 | Jeddie Sophronius | MoWeFr 9:00am - 9:50am | Kerchof Hall 317 |
| | Hybrid Poetry
When an experience defies the confines of a single genre, it opens up a world of hybridity. In this course, we will examine hybrid poetry collections that blend verse, prose, drama, visual art, collage, and documentation to confront systemic oppression and the histories of war; poems whose forms challenge dominant narratives while also celebrating joy and kinship. From Tina Chang's Hybrida to Cynthia Dewi Oka's A Tinderbox in Three Acts, we will study the work of contemporary poets who employ cross-genre and interdisciplinary methods to transform their practices into acts of survival.
This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.
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| ENGL 2507 | Studies in Drama |
| |
| | Tragedy and Transgression |
| | Click blue number to the left for full course description. |
| 19931 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (9 / 99) | 18 / 18 | Clare Kinney | TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm | New Cabell Hall 056 |
| | Passion, murder, mayhem: stepping beyond all norms, moving into the terrible unknown. |
| | To transgress is literally to “step across”; at the core of tragic drama is somebody’s movement beyond and outside laws and cultural norms. This movement into the terrible unknown is what we’ll be focusing upon in this course—there’ll be passion, mayhem, and a very high body count. What new visions, what new experiences do tragic protagonists acquire as a result of going “beyond the pale”? What kind of language can claw significance from the extreme edge of suffering? What exactly is “tragic knowledge”? And why, for so many hundreds of years, have audiences (and actors!) been fascinated by the spectacle of other people’s agony? We’ll address all of these questions (and many more) as we read works spanning over two millennia.
Tentative Reading List: (all non-English works will be read in translation!): Sophocles, Oedipus the King and Antigone; Euripides, Medea; Shakespeare, Macbeth; Akira Kurosowa, Throne of Blood; Henrik Ibsen Hedda Gabler; Athol Fugard, The Island; Wole Soyinka, Death and the King’s Horseman; Martin McDonagh, The Pillowman; Caryl Churchill, A Number.
Requirements: Regular attendance and active participation in discussion; shorter and longer writing assignments together totaling 20 pages; a final exam.
This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.
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| ENGL 2508 | Studies in Fiction |
| |
| | The Historical Novel |
| 19912 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (6 / 99) | 18 / 18 | Debjani Ganguly | TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm | New Cabell Hall 064 |
| | ENGL 2508 Seminar course in Modern and Contemporary Literatures
THE HISTORICAL NOVEL
Instructor: Prof Debjani Ganguly
Tue-Thu: 2:00-3:15pm
Venue: New Cabell 064
Office Hours: Tue 12:00-1:00pm; Wed12:00-1:00pm, Bryan Hall 106
This course will explore the relationship between literature and history. Specifically, we will focus on the emergence of the historical novel in early nineteenth century Britain and trace its global evolution into the twenty-first century. Historical fiction and films have proliferated in recent years. Can any novel set against a recognizable historical backdrop be considered a historical novel? How factual and realistic do historical novels need to be, and how do they navigate the relationship between individual and collective destinies? What specific modes of characterization do such novels call for? How are ‘fact’ and ‘truth’ recalibrated in counter-factual historical novels?
The seminar will explore these questions by focusing on five novels that bring alive key revolutionary moments in modern history. They are Walter Scott’s Waverley (the Jacobite Revolution in Scotland in 1745), Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities (the French Revolution in 1789), Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies (the British Opium Trade with China between 1791 to 1858), Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America (the rise of fascism in the 1930s), and Chimamanda Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun (the Nigerian Civil War from 1967-70). We will also read excerpts from the works of literary theorists who have helped us understand the historical novel and its subgenres. Requirements: two take home essays and an oral presentation. This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement. |
| | Science Fiction |
| | Science fiction novels (mostly) |
| 19923 | 002 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (9 / 99) | 18 / 18 | Patricia Sullivan | TuTh 9:30am - 10:45am | Bryan Hall 203 |
| | Like to sink into a book that challenges the ways we think about ourselves by imagining other worlds, speculative futures, aliens, artificial intelligences, cyborgs, technology and society at its best and possible worst, and more? We will read several books or pieces of short fiction that are classified loosely as science fiction, though there may be some overlap with other genres such as speculative fiction or climate fiction.
We will also practice close reading strategies, reflect on acts of literary interpretation through brief references to critical essays, inquire into some of the functions and effects of fictional narratives, and practice constructing reflective, analytical, and argumentative essays. Generally, students can expect to write regular reading responses and exploratory pieces, participate in and lead seminar discussions, write three short essays, and take a brief final exam. The majority of our readings will be novels (entire books), with the occasional story, novella, or film. Texts might include (but are not limited to) the following: Parable of the Sower, Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, Bête, Arrival, The Left-Hand of Darkness, Frankenstein, or All Systems Red: The Murderbot Diaries.
This course fulfills the second writing (and writing-enhanced) requirement and the AIP requirement (artistic, interpretative, and philosophical inquiry). ENGL2508 also prepares students interested in the English major for upper-level coursework in literature, though all majors are welcome.
|
| | The Novel of Upbringing |
| 19994 | 004 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (4 / 99) | 20 / 20 | James Kinney | TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm | Shannon House 111 |
| | The Novel of Upbringing -- How does the fictional representation of upbringing reflect on the cultural uses of fiction in general as well as the actual work of becoming adult? Works to be studied: Jane Austen, Emma; Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre; Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; Charles Dickens, Great Expectations; Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn; Tom Perrotta, Joe College; Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Perfectly Fine. Class requirements: Lively participation including including 8 brief email responses, one short and one longer essay, and a final exam.
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| | The Novel in US Literary History |
| | The Novel in U.S. Literary History |
| 19997 | 005 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (4 / 99) | 20 / 20 | Victoria Olwell | TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm | Kerchof Hall 317 |
| | In this course, you’ll investigate history of the novel in the U.S., examining genres and styles that emerged over the decades and centuries. I change the syllabus year to year, but in the past the course has included works by Hannah Webster Foster, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Stephen Crane, Nella Larsen, Ernest Hemingway, Toni Morrison, Don DeLillo, and Celeste Ng. The course will help you strengthen your writing by asking you to write a combination of informal and formal writing assignments. The informal writing assignments will give you a chance to work on your fluency as a writer while also expanding your ideas about the novels you’ll read. The formal assignments will guide you through the process of developing and revising polished essays. By completing this course, you’ll satisfy the Second Writing Requirement. Extra bonus: While the course is designed for students headed towards any major, it also serves as a prerequisite for the English major, for those who are interested. |
| | Writing the Great House in English & Amer. Fiction |
| | From Austen to Morrison: Great House Fiction |
| 20000 | 006 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (5 / 99) | 20 / 20 | Caroline Rody | TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Brooks Hall 103 |
| | ENGL 2508: 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 “upstairs” and the servants “downstairs”—and though recently treated with strong irony and critique, it is nevertheless embraced in English literary tradition 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 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 demonstrates the literary topos of the great house in transformation, a figure for nations changing in time. We will study and write about 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, E.M. Forster, 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. This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement.
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| ENGL 2560 | Contemporary Literature |
| |
| | Contemporary Global Literature |
| 20939 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (5 / 99) | 20 / 20 | Christopher Krentz | MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Cocke Hall 115 |
| | One could claim with some justification that the most inventive and important contemporary fiction in English comes from places other than Great Britain and the United States. In this class we will explore some of this Anglophone literature and consider whatever issues or concerns it raises, from the legacies of colonialism to ways that culture, race, class, gender, violence, and religion show up in diverse societies in the Global South. Syllabus is still under construction, but we will likely study Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (Nigeria), Narayan’s The Painter of Signs (India), Coetzee’s Life & Times of Michael K (South Africa), Rushdie’s story collection East, West (India and the United Kingdom), and Danticat’s stories in Krik? Krak! (Haiti). Moreover, we’ll concentrate on developing analytical and writing skills, which should help students succeed in other English and humanities classes.
This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement. |
| ENGL 2599 | Special Topics |
| |
| | Painting and Prose |
| 19927 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (2 / 99) | 18 / 18 | Cynthia Wall | MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Brooks Hall 103 |
| | Somebody once said, “Ut pictura poesis,” or, “Poetry is a speaking picture, painting a silent poetry.” But what does that mean, exactly, and how does it work? Humans have told stories about famous paintings, and painted famous stories, all in attempt to figure out ourselves and our world. This course explores the many ways that art has imagined literature, and literature art, from Ovid and the Bible, through Shakespeare and Milton, Pope and Hogarth, Blake and Keats, Rossetti and Tennyson, to the fin de siècle and Oscar Wilde. This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement. |
| | King Arthur in Time |
| 19930 | 002 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (1 / 99) | 20 / 20 | Courtney Watts | TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm | Kerchof Hall 317 |
| | King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table are a romanticized staple in nostalgic notions of the medieval past. But who is King Arthur, and where did his legend come from? This course will chart the history of King Arthur in literature, from his early Welsh origins through medieval chronicle and romance, modern poetry and novel, and contemporary film. Along the way, we will consider how the changing historical context and conventions of genre shape and transform the Arthurian mythos. Whenever they were written, texts about King Arthur are always set in the mythic past, shrouded by the mists of half-forgotten history. How does the past function in the world of literary imagination? And what are the political uses of the imagined past? As we read famous works of literature, whether from the twelfth century or the twentieth, we will explore not only medieval narrative but also narratives about the Middle Ages. As writers, we will step into the unfolding history of Arthurian narrative to speak back to these texts and the critics who read them. |
| | How to be Ethical? |
| 19996 | 005 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 18 / 20 | Nasrin Olla | TuTh 5:00pm - 6:15pm | Kerchof Hall 317 |
| | 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. |
| | The Literature of Alienation |
| 20026 | 006 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (0 / 99) | 20 / 20 | Shalmi Barman | MoWe 5:00pm - 6:15pm | New Cabell Hall 332 |
| | Why do we sometimes feel separated, cut off, or estranged from the world, other people, or our own selves? Are such feelings temporary aberrations or ‘normal’ symptoms of modern life? This intro-level course in literature will tackle these and other questions by reading works of fiction, prose, and poetry from the long nineteenth century that represent alienation as both subjective and objective — both something felt internally and an effect of one’s external circumstances. In this course, we will pay attention to how writers like Alfred Tennyson, Herman Melville, Charlotte Brontë, Christina Rossetti, Franz Kafka, James Joyce, and others used language and imagination to express conditions of alienation. We will examine how literary modes like myth, fantasy, gothicism and humor can animate alienated characters. And we will, through class discussion and writing assignments, think about the choices that open up to us when we identify and come to terms with alienation in our own lives.
Requirements: 1 short paper, 2 long papers, a final exam, class participation.
This course satisfies the English Major Prerequisite, the Second Writing Requirement, and the AIP Disciplines Requirement. |
| ENGL 3162 | Chaucer II |
| |
| | Chaucer's dream poems |
| 20847 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 17 / 25 | Elizabeth Fowler | TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm | Dell 2 101 |
| | Four wild, beautiful medieval poems about virtual sensory perception, love, grief, philosophy, feminism, art; no pre-req; checks pre-1700 req; click the blue course number for more info. |
| | Poetry can produce real bodily experiences—including laughter, tears, heat, taste, a sense of being intensely present—by means of marks on a blank page, even if they were made by someone who’s been dead for hundreds of years. How does it do that? With that question in mind, we’ll read four poems Geoffrey Chaucer wrote about his dreams together with some poems he had read and some short essays on art, dreams, sensory experience, and virtual reality. The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, The Parliament of Fowls, and The Legend of Good Women are surreal, sweet, funny, philosophical, emotionally intense, feminist, and visually overstimulated poems. Dreams seem to provide Chaucer with a way of thinking about “para-sensory,” virtual experience and its relation to grief, love, and the other passions (the word medieval writers used for “emotions”). We'll be interested in how specific forms of language (image, metaphor, verb tense, and so on) work to produce the cognitive, emotional, and sensory effects of virtual experience. We’ll go slowly, so you can learn to “close read” poetry, and so you’re OK if Chaucer’s Middle English is new to you. There are no pre-requisites except a joy in thinking and a love of language. We will meet outside, weather permitting. This fulfills the pre-17th c requirement. |
| ENGL 3260 | Milton |
| |
| | At the crossroads of antiquity and modernity |
| 19904 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 23 / 25 | Rebecca Rush | TuTh 9:30am - 10:45am | New Cabell Hall 485 |
| | Click blue numbers to the left for a full course description. |
| | In this course, we will investigate the political, religious, and poetic debates of seventeenth-century England by focusing on a poet who had a habit of inserting himself into the major controversies of his age. In addition to tracing Milton’s career as a poet from his earliest attempts at lyric poetry to his completion of his major works Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes, we will read selections from his prose, in which he advocated beheading the king, loosening divorce laws, and abandoning pre-publication censorship. We will debate about how to reconcile Milton’s radicalism with the more backward-looking aspects of his poetry and prose. (He consistently looked to ancient Greece and Rome as political and poetic models. He wrote in genres like the sonnet and the epic that were downright outmoded by the seventeenth century. And he often based his arguments for radical liberties on appeals to reason, truth, and temperance.) As we unravel the peculiar intellectual positions of a poet who stood at the crossroads of antiquity and modernity, we will also attend to what makes him distinctive as a poet, including his ear for the rhythms of verse and his dedication to producing lines that are thick with learned allusions, etymological puns, and interpretive ambiguities. No prior knowledge of Milton or the seventeenth century is required; the only prerequisite is a willingness to read slowly, attentively, and with a dictionary at hand.
This course satisfies the pre-1700 requirement for the English major.
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| ENGL 3300 | English Literature of the Restoration and Eighteenth Century |
| |
| 19917 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 12 / 18 | John O'Brien | MoWe 3:30pm - 4:45pm | Bryan Hall 330 |
| | In this course, we will read important works in English from what scholars sometimes call “the long eighteenth century,” a period that begins in the middle of the 1600s, since so many things of lasting importance happened then and lasts until at least 1800. We will read works from the British Isles, but also colonial America, which was, after all, a part of Great Britain until the end of the American Revolutionary War. This was an extraordinary period, one that witnessed, among many other things: a massive expansion of print media that resulted in the emergence of periodical literature and the novel; political revolutions in England, America, France, and Haiti; the intensification of the slave trade and the emergence of an international abolitionist movement. We will read works from authors such as Joseph Addison, Aphra Behn, Margaret Cavendish, Olaudah Equiano, Anne Finch, Samuel Johnson, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, and Phillis Wheatley.
This course will fulfill the English major requirement for a course in literature between 1700 and 1900, and non-majors are welcome as well. This is also a low-cost course, as our readings will all be found in a digital “anthology” of literature in English that I am collaborating on with students here and faculty at other universities. Requirements: two essays, reading quizzes, midterm and final examinations.
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| ENGL 3520 | Studies in Renaissance Literature |
| |
| | Realms of Gold: New Worlds and Otherworlds |
| 19995 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 4 / 25 | James Kinney | TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm | New Cabell Hall 027 |
| | In this course we'll explore the disruptive and generative frictions between everyday cultures in Early Modern Europe and the quite different life-models met with not only in old and new fantasy worlds but also in the newly encountered realities of Asia and what's now America. Authors to study include More, Montaigne, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Defoe. One short, one longer paper, 8 brief email responses, and a final exam. |
| ENGL 3540 | Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature |
| |
| | Dangerous Women |
| 19933 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Wait List (22 / 99) | 25 / 25 | Cristina Griffin | TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm | Dell 2 102 |
| | When the phrase “nasty woman” rose to the forefront of our cultural discourse a decade ago, the label rested on a long-standing conception that women can be dangerous just by being women. In this class, we will look at the particular formations of dangerous women that materialized in the nineteenth century, an era in which women simultaneously remained held down by the law and yet unbound by newly possible social roles. Across texts by Jane Austen, Mary Prince, Christina Rossetti, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, George Eliot, George Bernard Shaw, and Thomas Hardy, among others, we will consider what precisely made women dangerous as well as the other side of the coin: what put women in danger? What forms of female agency, sexuality, or sociability generate power and which engender fear? And what do we make of men’s roles: what does it look like to be a dangerous man or a man in danger? How do nineteenth-century notions of danger reify a gender binary and what are the ways in which this binary breaks down or becomes fluid? By reading texts across genres (some novels, short stories, poems, essays, and a play) we will immerse ourselves in the particular history of gender, fear, and power articulated by nineteenth-century writers while also avidly seeking out points of connection between these Victorian conceptions of dangerous women and those of our own twenty-first century.
This course satisfies the 1700–1900 requirement for the English major, and is also open to non-majors. Students in this course are forewarned that they will be in danger of reading dangerously fascinating texts, and will be expected to generate dangerously fascinating ideas in response. |
| | Global Nineteenth Century Fiction |
| 19943 | 002 | Lecture (3 Units) | Wait List (3 / 99) | 25 / 25 | Stephen Arata | MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm | New Cabell Hall 315 |
| | 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), George Sand 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. This course can be used to fulfill the 1700-1900 period requirement for the English major. |
| ENGL 3559 | New Course in English Literature |
| |
| | Placed and Displaced in America |
| 20027 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Closed | 20 / 20 (20 / 20) | Lisa Goff | TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm | New Cabell Hall 115 |
| | No waitlist but spaces often open up. Email me if you'd like to join the class: lg6t@virginia.edu. |
| | The history of America is a history of place-making and displacement. Iconic American sites such as Monticello, Walden Pond, and our network of national parks have inspired generations of Americans. But displacement is just as much a part of our national identity—as the stories of Indigenous dispossession, housing discrimination, Japanese internment, redlining, gentrification, and homelessness attest. In this class we’ll critique the “iconic” American places, the ones we brag about, and study the displacement that has characterized our nation since the colonial era—the stories that were long buried, and are still coming to light. We’ll also pay special attention to the placemaking efforts of displaced or marginalized groups—such as Black Americans during the Great Migrations, lgbtq+ communities, immigrants, and survivors of natural disasters such as the Dust Bowl and Hurricane Katrina—who continue to redefine American identity through place-making. To do this we will analyze fiction, journalism, and film, as well as paintings, photographs and other elements of visual culture. We may also spend some time looking at archival sources at Special Collections and in online databases. By the end of the semester, you’ll know how to interpret space and place for insights into race, ethnicity, gender, class, and generation in America. |
| | Diary Fiction |
| 21077 | 002 | Lecture (3 Units) | Closed | 15 / 18 (20 / 20) | Lorna Martens | TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm | Pavilion VIII 102 |
| | For description, click on schedule number to the left. |
| | Diary Fiction - Lorna Martens
Diaries are for intimate secrets? Yes--but not just! People have kept journals for many reasons. There are travel journals and sea logs, records of everyday life, testimonials to alarming events, gossipy accounts of social interactions, notebooks for capturing one's momentary aperçus and ideas, and so forth. Fiction writers, however, have invented many more uses for the diary form than these! The diary's strict yet elastic form (first-person periodic narration) has offered creative writers many intriguing possibilities beyond imitating the styles of real diaries. An ideal outlet for sincere self-expression, for intimate confessions, the fictive diary is also as if made to order for creating an unreliable narrator, one whose views are undercut by the plot. If a second voice is introduced alongside the diarist's monologue, this can destabilize the diarist's account, whereas, conversely, a diarist's truthful account can overthrow a second narrator's misguided opinions. Writing from day to day, a diarist is ignorant of what the future holds. Such blindness toward the future has inspired many writers to use the diary form for suspense stories (e.g., Dracula). In this course we will focus on the ways in which writers have imaginatively exploited the diary's formal features. We will also consider how diary fiction evolved from the late eighteenth century, when the first fictive diaries were written, to the present. We will read several masterpieces of diary fiction--novels--including Sartre's Nausea and Frisch's I'm Not Stiller, and otherwise stories from a brand-new anthology of short diary fiction. Students will have an opportunity to try their hand at writing a diary (easy!) and/or diary fiction.
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| ENGL 3560 | Studies in Modern and Contemporary Literature |
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| | A Survey of Significant Modern Poets |
| | MODERN POETRY |
| 19919 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Wait List (2 / 99) | 25 / 25 | Mark Edmundson | TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Bryan Hall 328 |
| | ENGL 3____ MODERN POETRY: The mid-twentieth century sees a surge in excellent poetry in the United States. Much of the best of it deals with the question of America. Who are we? Where are we as a nation? Have we gone radically wrong? If so, what can we do (if anything) to right ourselves? Robert Lowell will set the tone for the course, with his reflections on the national condition, culminating in his masterpiece, “For the Union Dead.” We’ll also read Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, Allen Ginsberg, Gwendolyn Brooks, Amy Clampitt, Robert Hayden, and the Jameses: Dickey, Wright, and Merrill. We’ll connect the poets’ vision of America to our current state and see what we might learn from them. There will be a mid-term quiz, a final quiz, and a paper at the end on the poet you care about most. |
| | Fiction in the Age of Modernism |
| 19944 | 002 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 23 / 25 | Stephen Arata | MoWe 3:30pm - 4:45pm | New Cabell Hall 315 |
| | The time period covered in this course is roughly 1890-1960: 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, Samuel Beckett, Haldor Laxness, 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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| | The Literature of Extinction |
| 19951 | 003 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 12 / 25 | Adrienne Ghaly | TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm | John W. Warner Hall 113 |
| | How do works of modern and contemporary literature respond to species extinction and help us understand the sixth mass extinction the planet may be entering? How has the diminishment of species and biodiversity been thought about and written about in poems, novels, and essays? Where and how do we find evidence of extinctionary pressures in literary texts?
From dodos to whales to insects and de-extinction technologies, this course explores biodiversity loss and species extinctions across genres, time periods, and ecosystems to ask how literature thinks about, records, and represents violence against nonhuman life. We’ll read texts that imagine extinction, grapple with knowledge and feelings around biodiversity decline and species revival, and we'll reframe literature not explicitly ‘about’ extinction as records of widespread impacts on nonhuman life. Assignments are two essays, some shorter pieces of writing, and engaged participation in discussion. |
| | Being Human: Race, Technology, and the Arts |
| | Global Afrofuturism |
| 19981 | 004 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 22 / 24 (22 / 24) | Njelle Hamilton | MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Dell 2 102 |
| | What makes us human? How did science and technology play a part in racism and the dehumanization of blackness? And how have artists of color re-appropriated science, technology, and science fiction to subvert and resist dehumanization? This course is an introduction to Afrofuturism, exploring the intersections of race and alienness, race and technology, and race and modernity through global futuristic representations of blackness in TV, film, music, art, and literature. In this discussion-based seminar, we will trace “like race” tropes in sci-fi, including aliens, monsters, enslavement, and invisibility. We will think about the various ways that black artists/writers/creators displace or “dimension-shift” the African Diaspora experience to grapple with contemporary and historical issues, and employ science/technology/sci-fi to invent places and conditions where blackness can thrive. Assignments will include literary essays and creative work (short films, artwork, mashups, web-content etc) that reimagine and interrogate representations of race and science/technology in contemporary media. (No artistic talent or experience required) |
| ENGL 3610 | Global Cultural Studies |
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| 19910 | 100 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 115 / 120 (115 / 120) | Michael Levenson | MoWe 12:00pm - 12:50pm | Minor Hall 125 |
| | Global Cultural Studies offers an interdisciplinary approach to our present-day world against the background of its recent past. Engaging a wide variety of media (film, popular song, avant-garde art, memoir, political philosophy, etc.), the course examines conditions and conflicts in China, India, North and South Africa, and the Middle East. Urgent social-cultural issues – such as the global plight of refugees, the place of Gandhi in present-day Indian politics, the campaign for international human rights, the resurgence of religious faith, the crisis of the environment, the rise of authoritarian nationalism, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza – will be nodal points of concern. At every stage we consider the making of the world since 1945, the pressing difficulties that now confront it, and the fragile state of hope.
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| ENGL 3840 | Contemporary Disability Theory |
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| 20840 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 12 / 28 (12 / 28) | Christopher Krentz | MoWeFr 12:00pm - 12:50pm | New Cabell Hall 389 |
| | Over the last several decades, thinking about people with physical, cognitive, and sensory differences has moved from a mostly pathological medical-based understanding to a more rights-based framework, although both models persist and overlap. In this course we will consider how conceptions of disability have (or have not) changed, considering such matters as how a disability is defined; disability in American history; autism and neurodivergence; deaf culture and medical interventions; disability and race, gender, class, and sexual orientation; and much more. The class will also consider how these theories relate to the depiction of disabled people in literature and film. Possible texts include Goffman’s Stigma; Wells’ “The Country of the Blind”; Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians; Desai’s Fasting, Feasting; Nussbaum’s Good Kings, Bad Kings; Novic’s True Biz; and the films Unrest and Crip Camp.
The class will feature a range of learning strategies, from whole-class discussion to smaller-group discussion to short lectures. Requirements will include two papers, quizzes, and active informed participation.
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| ENGL 4500 | Seminar in English Literature |
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| | The Frankenstein Circle |
| 19926 | 002 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 13 / 18 | Cynthia Wall | MoWe 3:30pm - 4:45pm | Brooks Hall 103 |
| | “I passed the summer of 1816 in the environs of Geneva. The season was cold and rainy, and in the evenings we crowded around a blazing wood fire, and occasionally amused ourselves with some German stories of ghosts. The tales excited in us a playful desire of imitation. Two other friends and myself agreed to write each a story, founded on some supernatural occurrence. The following tale is the only one which has been completed.” So Mary Shelley reminisced about the famous weekend at the Villa Diodati (when she was still Mary Godwin). The two friends were the poets Lord Byron and her lover Percy Shelley. The tale was Frankenstein. (For the record, one Dr Polidori was there as well, and he did finish his tale, “The Vampyre”; it’s on the syllabus.) With Frankenstein as our central text, we will also read works by Percy, Byron, Polidori, and William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft (Mary’s parents), excerpts from Mary’s journals, and selections from Mary & Percy’s mammoth reading lists for 1814-1818 (John Milton, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Maria Edgeworth, M. G. Lewis, Sir Humphry Davy, Captain James Cook). This course satisfies the 1700-1900 requirement for the English major. |
| ENGL 4520 | Seminar in Renaissance Literature |
| |
| | Renaissance and Reformation |
| | Read Petrarch, Machiavelli, Luther, Erasmus, Wyatt, Sidney, Spenser, Marlowe, and Shakespeare |
| 19905 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (1 / 99) | 18 / 18 | Rebecca Rush | TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm | New Cabell Hall 383 |
| | Click blue numbers to the left for a full course description |
| | This course pursues the ramifications of the Reformation and the Renaissance in the poetry, prose, and drama of sixteenth-century England. We will read selections from seminal continental works by Petrarch, Machiavelli, Luther, Erasmus, and Calvin. We will then think about how English writers—including Thomas More, Thomas Wyatt, Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, and Richard Hooker—responded to these authors’ efforts to renovate understandings of politics, piety, and human nature. As we read each work with the utmost care, we will encounter questions such as how free is the will? Are faith and reason reconcilable? Is beauty an obstacle or a spur to higher things? What is the source of corruption (in the church, in the state, and in the individual) and can it be remedied? Is there a difference between a tyrant and a prince? What is the best way to read—does good reading require learning ancient languages or seeking out the original manuscripts? What are the limits of human knowledge, and is it possible to know too much? Readings will include selections from Luther and Erasmus’s debate on free will, Machiavelli’s Prince, Calvin’s Institutes, More’s Utopia, Wyatt’s lyrics and satires, Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella and Defense of Poesy, Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus, and Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1. No prior knowledge of early modern literature or religion is required; the only prerequisite is a willingness to read slowly, attentively, and with a dictionary at hand.
This course satisfies the pre-1700 requirement for the English major.
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| ENGL 4560 | Seminar in Modern and Contemporary Literature |
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| | Contemporary Women's Texts |
| 19928 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (2 / 99) | 15 / 15 | Susan Fraiman | TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm | Dawson's Row 1 |
| | 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 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. |
| | American Novels, American Controversies |
| | ENGL 4560: American Novels, American Controversies |
| 19998 | 002 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (1 / 99) | 18 / 18 | Victoria Olwell | TuTh 9:30am - 10:45am | Brooks Hall 103 |
| | When novels are published, they enter the public sphere, joining in the whole buzzing cacophony of contemporary culture. Often, novels step into ongoing public discussions about things that are not novels – political issues, contemporary developments in the social world, ideas about history, social inequality, scientific advances, and the like. Novels do this in a wide variety of ways, but, always, they operate through the specific formal characteristics of the novel (plot, character, narrative, the premise of fiction, etc.) and carry with them the distinctive history of the novel as a genre. In this course, we’ll consider contemporary U.S. novels that explicitly take up current issues in the public sphere. We’ll read these novels on their own terms, but also in the context of two other genres: contemporary non-fiction on the same issues and literary criticism on the form and history of the novel. We’ll ask, what are the distinctive ways in which novels add to public discussion? By the way, I chose novels that meet two requirements. First, they have received a great deal of critical attention and acclaim, meaning that we can consider them to be novels with a hearty public presence. Second, I select only novels I find aesthetically compelling and intellectually enchanting, because one way that novels engage the public is by grabbing readers’ interest. Coursework includes 2 short and a final paper of around 10 pages. |
| ENGL 4561 | Seminar in Modern Literature and Culture |
| |
| | Poetry in a Global Age |
| | no prerequisite; no instructor permission needed |
| 19949 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 10 / 18 | Jahan Ramazani | MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Bryan Hall 328 |
| | A seminar about world poetry in English. We read the vibrant anglophone poetries of India, Africa, the Caribbean, the Pacific Islands, Ireland, Black and Asian Britain, and Indigenous and diasporic America. They bring new worlds, new idioms, and new literary possibilities into English. Issues to be discussed include the historical memory of colonization and enslavement; global challenges such as war and the climate crisis; transformations of world-traveling poetic forms and modernist strategies. 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. |
| | The Queer Novel |
| | A survey of modern queer literature. |
| 19992 | 002 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 11 / 18 | Mrinalini Chakravorty | TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm | New Cabell Hall 036 |
| | What is “queer” about the novel? This course will grapple with this question by examining the rich legacy of non-normative sexual expressions and orientations in the literary arts.
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| ENGL 4570 | Seminar in American Literature since 1900 |
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| | James Baldwin |
| 19978 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 5 / 18 (5 / 18) | Marlon Ross | TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm | New Cabell Hall 594 |
| | This course focuses on the tumultuous life and diverse works of James Baldwin, whose intellectual influence is still palpable in today’s discussions on race, sexuality, social activism, national belonging, and exile. We’ll study major works from each of the genres that Baldwin engaged, including the novel, short story, drama, poetry, journalism, and the essay. Among the works to be examined are the novels Go Tell It on the Mountain, Giovanni’s Room, and Just Above My Head; plays The Amen Corner and Blues for Mr. Charlie; selected short stories from Going to Meet the Man; essays from Notes of a Native Son, The Fire Next Time, and No Name in the Street; and the children’s book Little Man Little Man. In addition to Baldwin’s works, we’ll explore him as a “spokesman” of the Civil Rights movement, and how his high visibility as a public intellectual whose appearances on the new medium of television helped to shape his “celebrity” status. We’ll also address a some of Baldwin’s most crucial intellectual dialogues, including with Richard Wright, William Faulkner, Norman Mailer, Lorraine Hansberry, William F. Buckley, Eldridge Cleaver, Amiri Baraka, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Toni Morrison, and Tarell Alvin McCraney. We’ll also study films important to Baldwin’s legacy, including Raoul Peck’s documentary I Am Not Your Negro and Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk. Assignments include: several short response essays, two critical essays, one team-led class discussion, and a term research paper. |
| | Caribbean Latinx Literature |
| 19984 | 002 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 6 / 18 (6 / 18) | Carmen Lamas | We 3:30pm - 6:00pm | Shannon House 119 |
| | In this course we will explore novels, memoirs, short stories and poems by Latinx writers from Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba. While these writers’ genealogies emerge from these island countries, we will analyze how their lives in New York, New Jersey, Boston and Miami impact how they narrate the Latinx experience as situated between the US and their home countries in the Caribbean. All readings, discussions and assignments are in English. |
| | Reading the Black College Campus |
| 20977 | 200 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 0 / 18 (0 / 18) | K. Ian Grandison | Tu 5:00pm - 7:30pm | New Cabell Hall 111 |
| | How does the monumentality of the signature buildings on the campuses of land-grant colleges and universities in America resist the slight “Cow School” to belittle the official mission of these institutions? Does the ubiquitous ivy that cloaks their campuses reinforce our perception of the exclusivity of Ivy League colleges and universities? How does the discourse that posits the UVA Lawn as a seminal architectural legacy of a United States founding father help to distinguish the Lawn’s residents from passers-by, who must admire it from a respectful distance? “Reading the Black College Campus” is a student-centered, sensing/interpreting/communicating course that is generally concerned with the ways in which built environments are entangled with the negotiation of power in society. In particular, we explore this goal by focusing on how the campuses of HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) were shaped by (and shaped) the struggle to democratize education in the United States especially during the Jim Crow Period. Rather than the still dominant approach in architectural and landscape architectural criticism to emphasize art-historical interpretations, we foreground interpretations that engage built environments, such as college campuses, as arenas of cultural conflict and negotiation. As such, we are less interested in engaging the campus of Tuskegee University in Alabama as representing the genius of David Williston (Tuskegee’s black landscape architect at the turn of the last century) than in such questions as why the institution’s industrial facilities were placed at the main entrances to its campus during that period. With this interrogation as a model, students are encouraged to engage our own campus more critically. Beyond its significance as an outdoor museum of neo-classical buildings, for example, we consider the Lawn as a multi-layered record of the sometimes delicate and sometimes robust negotiation among the individuals and groups connected with it for position and privilege in the social hierarchy. In short we begin to engage built environments as important sources for cultural critique. Through discussion of readings and field trips (including one to the campus of a Virginia HBCU), lectures and workshops, and student-group presentations, we explore ideas, concepts and methods to read built environments by synthesizing knowledge gained from sensing them, studying them through maps and diagrams and primary and secondary written and oral accounts. Readings include Anderson’s Black Education in the South. There is a required field trip to downtown Charlottesville scheduled for Tuesday, 25 Marcy, from 4:45 to 8:30 p.m. |
| ENGL 4590 | Seminar in Literary Genres |
| |
| | Writing the Great House in English & Amer Fiction |
| | From Austen to Morrison: Great House Fiction |
| 20001 | 002 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (0 / 99) | 18 / 18 | Caroline Rody | TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm | New Cabell Hall 485 |
| | 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 “upstairs” and the servants “downstairs”—and though treated 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, 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 demonstrates the literary topos of the great house in transformation, a figure for nations changing in time. We will study and write about 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, E.M. Forster, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Jean Rhys, Shirley Jackson, Lore Segal, Octavia Butler, Toni Morrison, Ian McEwen, Louise Erdrich, Alison Bechdel, Gish Jen, Maria Semple, 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. This course meets the second writing requirement.
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| ENGL 4902 | The Bible Part 2: The New Testament |
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| 19999 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (3 / 99) | 15 / 15 | John Parker | MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm | New Cabell Hall 056 |
| | The stories, rhythms, and rhetoric of the Bible have been imprinting readers and writers of English since the seventh century. Moving through much of the New Testament, from the Gospels 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 New Testament; 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 is needed or assumed. It can be taken before or after the Bible Part 2: The Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, taught by Professor Stephen Cushman. |
| ENGL 5060 | The Sonnet Revised and Revisited |
| |
| | Click blue number to the left for full course description. |
| 19932 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (0 / 99) | 16 / 16 | Clare Kinney | TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm | Bryan Hall 203 |
| | Sonnets: their delights, their transformative practices, and their multifarious agendas, from the 16th century to yesterday. |
| | “A chamber of sudden change”; “a meeting place of image and voice”; “a game with mortal stakes”; “the collision of music, desire and argument”: these are some of the ways that poets and critics have described the sonnet. Starting with the Petrarchan experiments of Renaissance Europe and extending our reach through the Romantics and the modernists to Seamus Heaney, Carol Ann Duffy, Kiki Petrosino, Terrance Hayes, and others, we will consider the persistence and the many metamorphoses of the form. Sonnet writers construct a “a moment’s monument” for religious, political, philosophical and meta-poetical purposes as well as to anatomize desire, and when they present sonnets in sequence they make lyric do something of the work of narrative. Every time a sonnet is written, its author becomes part of a very long literary conversation and may make that intervention the occasion to set thought and feeling in a new dialogue, to reconsider “the contradictory impulses of being in the world,” to talk back to tradition, to make the dead speak again, to re-make and re-break the rules of form. Exploring the history, poetics (and the race and gender politics) of this tenacious short form, we will consider the craftiness of craft and the particular power of “bound language.” In addition to addressing a wide selection of sonnets written from the 16th century to yesterday, we will also read critical writings on the sonnet by a variety of scholars and poets.
Requirements: lively participation in discussion; a series of discussion board responses to readings, one 6-7 page paper; a presentation on a contemporary sonnet of your own choice; a substantial final project (critical or hybrid creative-critical).
This course can satisfy the pre-1700 requirement for PhD, MA and undergraduate students: contact instructor for more information.
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| ENGL 5190 | The Bible |
| |
| | The Bible |
| 20999 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open, WL (3 / 99) | 14 / 15 | 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 5500 | Special Topics in English Literature |
| |
| | Milton and Whitman |
| 21000 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 9 / 15 | Mark Edmundson | TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm | Bryan Hall 310 |
| | ENGL 5___ MILTON AND WHITMAN: We’ll read with care and imagination what are perhaps the two greatest long poems in English, John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” and Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” Both are works of palpable genius, but of very different kinds. Milton’s poem is committed to hierarchy, order and degree. In his cosmos, justified subordination and command are the highest ideals. (Though he is constantly challenging them.) His world at its best is firmly, yet flexibly ordered. He is a brilliant exemplar of true conservatism. Whitman is much different. “Unscrew the locks from the doors / Unscrew the doors themselves from their jams,” Walt chants. Whitman wants to dissolve all needless boundaries in the interest of perfect democratic equality. He wants to undo the barriers between old and young, rich and poor, women and men. And he does so, at least imaginatively, in “Song of Myself.” We’ll read the poems for what they are in themselves. But we’ll also consider them as brilliant exemplars of the progressive mind and its conservative counterpart. Students may be surprised as to where their allegiances lie. With any luck, we’ll all find ourselves, in the words of Wallace Stevens, “more truly and more strange.” A mid-term paper, a final essay, and some short writing assignments.
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| ENGL 5510 | Seminar in Medieval Literature |
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| | Old Norse Language and Literature |
| 20824 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (7 / 99) | 15 / 15 | Stephen Hopkins | TuTh 9:30am - 10:45am | Dawson's Row 1 |
| | Learn to read and translate sagas and eddic myths! Enjoy exploits of gods and Vikings! Open to grads and undergrads! |
| | This course provides an introduction to the language and literature of medieval Iceland (also called Old Norse or Old Icelandic, roughly 800-1400 CE), and the goal is to arrive at a sound reading knowledge of the Old Norse language. Drawing upon Byock’s textbook, Viking Language, the first half of the semester focuses on internalizing the basics of Old Norse grammar and vocabulary. While acquiring these rudimentary linguistic skills, we will practice translating bits of prose and poetry (The Prose Edda, Egils Saga, et al.) as supplied in the textbook. After midterms, we will translate The Tale of Thorsteinn Staff-Struck. The course will also include secondary readings to orient us towards Old Norse genres, contexts, and critical/theoretical approaches prevalent in the field today, with an emphasis on the history of the conversion and the importation of writing technologies (i.e., basic paleography). |
| ENGL 5530 | Seminar in Eighteenth-Century Literature |
| |
| | The Literature of British Abolition, 1750-1810 |
| 14603 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 10 / 15 | Michael Suarez | Tu 3:30pm - 6:00pm | Lower West Oval Room 102 |
| | 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.
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| ENGL 5559 | New Course in English Literature |
| |
| | Latinx Literature and the Americas |
| 19985 | 004 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 7 / 15 (7 / 15) | Carmen Lamas | Mo 3:30pm - 6:00pm | Lower West Oval Room 102 |
| | In this course we will read works that situate the Latinx experience in an Americas context. We will read across such genres as the memoir, speculative fiction, romance, YA, graphic novels, historical fiction and poetry. Issues such as border crossing, immigration, and deportation will serve to approach and query Latinidad in/from its many historical, geographic, generic, aesthetic, and political manifestations. We will locate these works in the wider debates regarding engaged literature, language use, translation, and the interdisciplinary nature of Latinx and Latin American literary studies. No prior experience reading Latinx literature is necessary. Final Projects will be based on the student's professional needs and goals. |
| ENGL 5580 | Seminar in Critical Theory |
| |
| | Material Culture: Theories and Methods |
| 14511 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Permission | 12 / 18 (12 / 18) | Lisa Goff | Th 5:00pm - 7:30pm | New Cabell Hall 111 |
| | Email me if you'd like to join the class: lg6t@virginia.edu |
| | “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, but also folklorist Henry Glassie; archaeologist James Deetz; anthropologist Elizabeth Chin, and political theorist Jane Bennett. 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. |
| | Intro to Textual Criticism and Scholarly Editing |
| 14614 | 002 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 9 / 15 | David Vander Meulen | Fr 9:30am - 12:00pm | Bryan Hall 233 |
| | ENGL 5580-02
David Vander Meulen
F 09:30AM-12:00PM (Bryan 233)
This course in textual criticism deals with some of the fundamental problems of literary study:
● If a work exists in multiple forms and with different wording, what constitutes "the text"?
● How are such judgments made and standards determined?
● How are verbal works as intellectual abstractions affected by the physical forms in which they are transmitted?
● If one is faced with the prospect of editing a work, how does one go about it?
● How does one choose an edition for use in the classroom?
● What difference does this all make?
The course will deal with such concerns and will include:
● A short survey of analytical bibliography and the solution of practical problems as they apply to literary texts.
● Study of the transmission of texts in different periods.
● Consideration of theories and techniques of editing literary and non-literary texts of different genres, and of both published and unpublished materials.
The course will build to the preparation of a scholarly edition by each student. The class on books as physical objects, ENGL 5810, provides helpful background but is not a prerequisite.
*This course satisfies the Graduate English requirement for the history of criticism or literary theory.*
|
| | Interpretation in Literature, Law, and Religion |
| 20819 | 003 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 4 / 15 | Walter Jost | TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm | New Cabell Hall 068 |
| | Ours is an age of communication, and one of its hallmarks is the “conflict of interpretations” among schools of criticism, theory, and cultural study. This course requires no specialized background in these matters, for in fact we all know how to talk, read, interpret, and argue. The question is, how well? with how much control and discipline? how do we develop our abilities? The philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer once wrote that “Where, indeed, but to rhetoric should the theoretical examination of interpretation turn? Rhetoric from oldest tradition has been the only advocate of a claim to truth that defends the probable, the eikos (versimile), and that which is convincing to the ordinary reason, against the claim of science to accept as true only what can be demonstrated and tested.” Together we will develop a basic understanding of the arts of discourse called “hermeneutics” and “rhetoric,” through close reading and discussions of selected scholarly texts (chiefly essays and book chapters), testing our learning against literary, legal, and religious works (e.g., G. K. Chesterton’s allegorical The Man Who Was Thursday, Italo Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveler, cases in common law, and Biblical parables, among others). |
| ENGL 8005 | Intro to the Environmental Humanities |
| |
| 14545 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 7 / 15 (7 / 15) | Adrienne Ghaly | TuTh 9:30am - 10:45am | Bryan Hall 233 |
| | How do the arts and the humanities contribute to conversations about the environment and the fate of our planet? How are they responding to the environmental challenges of the Anthropocene, the geological age in which humans (some more than others) shape Earth systems?
This course introduces the questions, methods, and arguments that organize work in the environmental humanities (EH). The seminar’s primary objective to is to advance graduate student capacities to use skills, knowledges, tools, and archives of the humanities to advance pluralist, integrated understandings of environmental issues. In support of that purpose, the seminar develops critical reflection on conceptual, theoretical and methodological questions in EH about disciplinarity, collaboration, innovation, and public engagement. The course materials draw from literary and cultural studies, philosophy, history, anthropology, and religion. This graduate seminar is open to MA and PhD students from any discipline, including the sciences and social sciences.
This class is collaborative by design, with guest speakers from across UVA presenting over the course of the semester. It also fulfills one of the requirements for the graduate certificate in Environmental Humanities.
|
| ENGL 8262 | Spenser |
| |
| | Edmund Spenser in Faery Land |
| 19942 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (2 / 99) | 15 / 15 | Elizabeth Fowler | TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Dell 1 104 |
| | The extreme art of the settler-colonial frontier |
| | The extreme art of the settler-colonial frontier—-stringent, searching, terrifying, ambitious, violent, feminist, fantastic, surreal, comic—-Spenser's poetry and prose, almost all written in Ireland, has provoked much of the best work by early modernists over the last three decades. We'll attempt immersive reading, make forays into the work of the in-progress Oxford Spenser edition, and grapple with problems poetic, editorial, theoretical, ecological, aesthetic, moral, historical, and jurisprudential. Spenser is soaked in Malory, Chaucer, Vergil, Homer, Aristotle—-and English-language authors in all the ensuing centuries are soaked in him, from Shakespeare to Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin. Yet where else can you get a dominant female knight, an elusive queen of faerie, queer sex scenes of many variations, a dragon who vomits books, joyous rivers in hats getting married, the invention of the words “self” and “emotion,” cannibals singing Petrarchan blazons, and a sex-positive, anatomically correct Mound of Venus? (BTW, Milton says Spenser is a better teacher than Aquinas, and was he ever wrong?) Our goals will be to collaborate on a working sense of Spenser’s poetry and its bibliography, to get good at immersion in lots of material while keeping what’s important to you above the waterline, to become articulate about poetry and able to move around within it while developing interesting trains of thought, and to hone all those skills both in seminar conversation and in your prose. This course checks the pre-1700 requirement. |
| ENGL 8500 | Studies in English Literature |
| |
| | Oceanic Connections |
| 19914 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 2 / 15 | Debjani Ganguly | Tu 3:30pm - 6:00pm | Dell 1 104 |
| | ENGL 8500
Graduate Seminar in Global English Literature and Culture
Oceanic Connections: Black Atlantic and Indian Ocean Worlds
Instructor: Debjani Ganguly
Tuesdays: 3:30-6:00pm
Wilson Hall 142
Office Hours: Tues-Thu: 12.00-1.00pm or by appointment, Bryan 106
The course will explore the emergence of the ‘ocean’ as a powerful rubric in global and hemispheric literary studies. The fluidity of the ocean as against terrestrial borders gives new meaning to categories like empire, diaspora, postcolonial, slave, settler, and indentured labor.
Through novels, philosophical tracts, and theories of history, we will study the import of the transatlantic slave trade and its traumatic entanglement with global histories of modern maritime colonialism including those of Indian Ocean worlds. Specifically, we will trace connections across the Black Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds through the novels of Barry Unsworth, Fred D’Aguiar, and Amitav Ghosh, and the narrative non-fiction of Paul Gilroy. The course will include excerpts from the work of Edouard Glissant, the famous exponent of Caribbean Creolite, from an anthology of black narratives that emerged during the transatlantic slave trade, and from Ian Baucom’s philosophical history of the Zong massacre of 1781.
Primary Texts
Barry Unsworth, Sacred Hunger
Fred D’Aguiar, Feeding the Ghosts
Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies
Amitav Ghosh, River of Smoke
Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic
|
| | Black Women's Rhetorics |
| 19982 | 002 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 4 / 10 | Tamika Carey | Tu 2:00pm - 4:30pm | Pavilion V 110 |
| | This seminar introduces Black women’s rhetorical practices as a critical tradition. Through an interdisciplinary lens grounded in Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy Studies scholarship and informed by work in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and literary criticism, we will work to identify the techne, the praxis, and the implications of Black women’s choice to use written, visual, and aural strategies to shape and reshape themselves and their worlds. By necessity, we will consider questions such as: how do Black women define and name conditions of their subjectivity and the constraints to their public participation and livelihood? What is the connection between Black feminist thought and Black women’s literacies? Which genres, arguments, and strategies do they rely upon to address personal or sociopolitical concerns? What might Black feminist/womanist rhetorical criticism or pedagogy involve? And, what are their rhetorics of survival and pleasure? Ideally, this work will enable us to outline how Black women’s rhetorics operate as interpretive, interventionist, and instructional resources. Our readings will involve a combination of primary texts and critical writings. The scholars and public intellectuals we are likely to engage include: Jacqueline Jones Royster, Marcyliena Morgan, Elaine Richardson, Gwendolyn Pough, Carmen Kynard, Patricia Hill Collins, Brittney Cooper, Moya Bailey, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Jennifer Nash, and Adrienne Maree Brown. Assignments may include: a discussion leading and course presentation activity, short weekly writing assignments, and a seminar-length essay. |
| | Digital Humanities: Textual, Accessible, Teachable |
| | Textual, Accessible, Sustainable, Teachable, Experimental (TASTE): DH |
| 20980 | 003 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 1 / 15 | Alison Booth | TuTh 9:30am - 10:45am | Wilson Hall 244 |
| | Textual, Accessible, Sustainable, Teachable, Experimental: DH
This seminar, affectionately known as TASTE, disregards the usual course classifications of nation or period or genre, though we will work with texts originally written in English in the past two centuries. We will learn about textual studies of some novels by Jane Austen, short stories and poetry from different times and places, prose biographies in Collective Biographies of Women, and online life writing. While it fulfills an elective for the Certificate in Digital Humanities (DH), the course will strive to be accessible or teachable to anyone who likes to read or edit closely and who is curious to try new things. For anyone comfortable with digital humanities, it offers a perspective on how to teach or learn specific methods or new software. Sustainable, like accessible, has several meanings: in the environment as well as in DH (will it last?), and we will consider it also as an outcome or effect: some literature lasts in part because our taste tells us to reread it and help make it more accessible. Some aspect of the course will be familiar: interpreting the texts; gathering a bibliography; spreadsheets or Google documents; writing an essay. Collaboration on textual studies will perhaps be a new experience.
|
| ENGL 8540 | Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature |
| |
| | Race-Making and Romanticism |
| 19948 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 10 / 15 | Taylor Schey | Th 3:30pm - 6:00pm | New Cabell Hall 411 |
| | This course explores how British literature of the Romantic era (1780s – 1820s) registers and participates in processes of race-making that have shaped the modern world. Taking our cue from theoretical readings in Black studies, we’ll investigate how the racial order of chattel slavery was insidiously strengthened during the historical period in which its economic infrastructure began to be dismantled. While we’ll study some poems and novels that directly address the transatlantic slave trade and plantation slavery (e.g. abolitionist poetry; *The Woman of Colour*; *Mansfield Park*) and a couple that reflect the popularization of racial science (e.g. *Frankenstein*), we’ll be especially interested in interrogating how the development of seemingly unrelated political movements (e.g. white feminism; popular radicalism), literary conventions (e.g. the ballad revival; the aesthetics of the sublime, beautiful, and picturesque), and Romantic ideals (e.g. community, liberty, the power of poetry, the human) are connected to the broader consolidation of antiblackness and white-supremacist logics in the nineteenth century. This seminar satisfies the 1700-1900 requirement. It also introduces students to an influential tradition of theoretical work in Black studies.
Authors include Jane Austen, William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Hannah More, Mary Robinson, Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Robert Southey, Mary Wollstonecraft, and William Wordsworth; theorists include Rizvana Bradley, Frantz Fanon, Saidiya Hartman, bell hooks, Christina Sharpe, Hortense Spillers, Rei Terada, Alexander Weheliye, Frank Wilderson, and Sylvia Wynter.
|
| ENGL 8560 | Studies in Modern and Contemporary Literature |
| |
| | Poetry in a Global Age |
| 19950 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 5 / 14 | Jahan Ramazani | MoWe 3:30pm - 4:45pm | New Cabell Hall 038 |
| | 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. |
| ENGL 8596 | Form and Theory of Poetry |
| |
| | What is Lyric? |
| 19974 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Permission | 15 / 15 | Sumita Chakraborty | We 2:00pm - 4:30pm | Shannon House 109 |
| | Lyric poem, lyric voice, lyric speaker, lyric reading: these and other similar terms share one strange, variously theorized, and often-contested word at their core. This course will explore a range of theories of the lyric from Aristotle and Horace to more contemporary figures like Gloria Anzaldúa, Édouard Glissant, and the scholars who make up the recent turn to “New Lyric Studies.” We will also explore how poetic schools that critique the lyric—such as conceptual poetry and language poetry—define and contest it. MFA and PhD students are most welcome, as the assignments for this course will include both creative and critical options.
|
| ENGL 8598 | Form and Theory of Fiction |
| |
| | The Short Story |
| 19986 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Permission | 11 / 15 | Kevin Moffett | Tu 2:00pm - 4:30pm | New Cabell Hall 066 |
| | A foray into the short story as a discrete form, its constraints and possibilities. We’ll consider how story writers distill time and compress language to generate volatility and produce resonant echoes in a confined space. We’ll discuss Poe’s single effect and other apparent truisms and entertain, examine, revise, and perhaps debunk them. We’ll read minimalists, maximalists, and mediumalists, the formulaic and the formally inventive. Texts will be chosen with the aim of showing the plasticity and playfulness of the form: possibly Chekhov, Angela Carter, Barthelme, Shirley Jackson, Vladimir Sorokin, Edward P. Jones, Joy Williams. From week to week students will read and write briskly in a variety of modes, culminating in a story project in the second half of the semester. |
| Engineering |
| ENGR 4880 | Business and Technical Leadership in Engineering |
| |
| | The Halsey Course |
| 15446 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Closed | 28 / 28 (35 / 35) | Don Dunham | TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Rice Hall 032 |
| | Feel free to email Don Dunham about this class at djd4fu@virginia.edu or call at 832-291-6356. We have only 4 spaces left. |
| | This class is great for fourth year engineers getting ready to go out into the work world. The intent is to give you insight, tools, and practice on non-engineering topics that will help you excel in the work world. It is fun, full of Harvard Business Cases, TED talks, videos, group work and guest lecturers. Instructor is holding 4 hours of office hours and is happy to give advise about anything as mentorship is a key attribute for him. |
| Entrepreneurship |
| ENTP 1501 | Special Topics in Entrepreneurship Management |
| |
| | Money Matters |
| | An introduction to personal finance |
| 17684 | 005 | Lecture (0.5 Units) | Open | 21 / 100 | Roger Martin | Mo 2:30am - 2:50am |  Web-Based Course |
| | Class is entirely online and can be completed at your own pace. There is no class meeting time - it is completely asynchronous. |
| | What can you do to improve your financial well-being? What can you learn about your personal finances that will give you more control over your financial life now and in the future? This course will help you understand the financial choices you should be making now and in the future and how to set yourself up for a great start financially when you leave school. It will provide a basic introduction to income taxes, budgeting, insurance, savings goals and investments. All content is online and asynchronous, so you can complete the course at your pace. |
| Writing and Rhetoric |
| ENWR 1510 | Writing and Critical Inquiry |
| |
| | Writing about Culture/Society |
| | The Good Life |
| 11495 | 003 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 18 / 18 | John Modica | TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm | Bryan Hall 310 |
| | What does it mean to live a good life? As we build a life for ourselves, what are the fantasies, dreams, and desires—conscious and unconscious, culturally-endorsed and deviant—that shape our path? What happens when the life we want does not line up with the life we need: when the visions of “the good life” that are available to us actually betray our full complexity, our ideals, and/or the public good? What if, as people living in the twenty-first century, we are systematically unprepared to live good, meaningful lives? What kind of habits do we need to consciously develop to achieve the life we need, if not necessarily the life we want?
This first-year writing course is designed with your general education in mind. It will introduce evidence-based approaches to reading and writing that will make the challenges of college more approachable and personally rewarding. In doing so, it will help you develop sophisticated habits of mind that are necessary for living in a politically and emotionally complex world. Assignments include three major essays and short weekly writing assignments, in addition to readings, in-class discussions and writing activities, and individual conferences with the instructor.
|
| | Writing about Identities |
| | Gender in Speculative Fiction |
| 11016 | 017 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 14 / 18 | Spencer Grayson | MoWeFr 10:00am - 10:50am | Bryan Hall 310 |
| | What does it mean to inhabit a gendered body and experience? How are gendered bodies read by others, and how can we use language to articulate our lived experiences of gender? This course will explore how speculative fiction writers imagine diverse genders, embodiments, and expressions. We’ll read short stories, play digital games, and watch TV episodes, music videos, and video game cutscenes. Through these works, we’ll think about gender and writing as both objects—things that are created—and processes—the act of creation. In examining how these works use speculative fiction to construct and reimagine gender, you’ll consider how your own writing, from close readings to argumentative essays, can be transformed through rhetorical technique, organizational strategies, and peer revision. |
| | Writing about the Arts |
| | Cemetery Literature |
| 11837 | 027 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (5 / 6) | 18 / 18 | Hodges Adams | TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm | Kerchof Hall 317 |
| | What does good writing actually look like? How is it made? What tools and information do a good writer need? This class focuses on the process of writing, research, and revising. Students should expect to read across a variety of genres and forms, both fictional and non-fictional. Research will be considered as a component of both creative and academic writing. Student papers will be peer reviewed and revised multiple times during class. There will be class trips to Shannon Library, the Rotunda, the Memorial to the Enslaved Laborers, and the University of Virginia Cemetery. |
| | Writing about Culture/Society |
| | The Good Life |
| 12096 | 039 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 18 / 18 | John Modica | TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm | Bryan Hall 332 |
| | What does it mean to live a good life? As we build a life for ourselves, what are the fantasies, dreams, and desires—conscious and unconscious, culturally-endorsed and deviant—that shape our path? What happens when the life we want does not line up with the life we need: when the visions of “the good life” that are available to us actually betray our full complexity, our ideals, and/or the public good? What if, as people living in the twenty-first century, we are systematically unprepared to live good, meaningful lives? What kind of habits do we need to consciously develop to achieve the life we need, if not necessarily the life we want?
This first-year writing course is designed with your general education in mind. It will introduce evidence-based approaches to reading and writing that will make the challenges of college more approachable and personally rewarding. In doing so, it will help you develop sophisticated habits of mind that are necessary for living in a politically and emotionally complex world. Assignments include three major essays and short weekly writing assignments, in addition to readings, in-class discussions and writing activities, and individual conferences with the instructor.
|
| | Writing about the Arts |
| | (Re)Buildings |
| 12098 | 041 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 12 / 18 | Gabby Kiser | MoWe 8:00am - 9:15am | Bryan Hall 312 |
| | In this ENWR 1510 section, we will focus on representations of different types of buildings and unpack how people operate in and outside of those spaces. Consider houses, malls, and diners, for example; how do each of these settings affect our expectations of creative works that take place in them? Though we may already feel familiar with these places, we will reexamine them through new eyes and welcome myriad interpretations and connotations. While this is a writing course, literature, academic essays, television, video games, and podcasts will be valuable to our conversations. Through this range of mediums, we will navigate and practice writing about the varying affordances and limitations of different mediums and genres. |
| | Writing about the Arts |
| | Cemetery Literature |
| 12100 | 043 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 18 / 18 | Hodges Adams | TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Bryan Hall 312 |
| | What does good writing actually look like? How is it made? What tools and information do a good writer need? This class focuses on the process of writing, research, and revising. Students should expect to read across a variety of genres and forms, both fictional and non-fictional. Research will be considered as a component of both creative and academic writing. Student papers will be peer reviewed and revised multiple times during class. There will be class trips to Shannon Library, the Rotunda, the Memorial to the Enslaved Laborers, and the University of Virginia Cemetery. |
| | Writing about the Arts |
| | Writers on Writing |
| 12102 | 046 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 17 / 18 | Zoe Kempf-Harris | TuTh 5:00pm - 6:15pm | New Cabell Hall 036 |
| | When we read a poem, play, or novel, we are presented with a final, published edition. But what about the abundant process materials, documentary clues, and fragments that give us insight into the writing process? Examining authors’ diaries, letters, drafts, and margin notes, this course invites readings of finished literary writings alongside the documents and materials that precede, accompany, and follow their creation. Looking at works by Henry James, Virginia Woolf, Toni Morrison, Margaret Atwood, and Philip Pullman to name a few, we will reunite published texts with these ancillary materials and writings—and in doing so, we will learn more about the dedicated writing practices of our favorite authors as models for our own.
This writing course serves as an introduction to the academic paper techniques that will prove useful throughout one’s coursework at UVA, in English and across other disciplines. Discussions and course assignments will especially encourage the crafting of arguments through careful attention to authorial intent, process, and effect. |
| | Writing about the Arts |
| | Writing about Television |
| 12103 | 047 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 18 / 18 | Cristina Griffin | TuTh 9:30am - 10:45am | Bryan Hall 332 |
| | 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 last century: the television show. As we watch, read, 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 build compelling worlds? How can we analyze these tv worlds 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? Television shows use words to build fictional worlds that have a giant impact (for better or worse) on the world in which we live. In that spirit, 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 about Public Health |
| 13382 | 048 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (5 / 6) | 18 / 18 | Rhiannon Goad | MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Bryan Hall 310 |
| | 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. |
| | Writing about Culture/Society |
| | You and A.I. |
| 12258 | 054 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 18 / 18 | Piers Gelly | TuTh 9:30am - 10:45am | Bryan Hall 310 |
| | The title of this course is "You and A.I." This semester, we will practice college-level writing by attempting to answer a question that all of us should find urgent and provocative: in the age of generative artificial intelligence, do we need first-year writing courses like this one?
You have probably heard of generative A.I., either as a general term or by the names of the major generative A.I. platforms: OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Copilot, or Google’s Bard. These platforms are trained on astonishingly large collections of human-written text, which they have “read” and scanned to detect patterns. Based on those patterns, they can produce texts of many different genres when prompted to do so.
Let’s set aside (for now) the question of whether these generative A.I. models produce good writing. The point is that their writing is rapidly getting better. Soon, generative A.I. programs will be capable of producing college-level essays of sufficient quality to pass a course like this one. The question we urgently need to answer, then, is what college writing instruction should look like in the new world we’re about to enter—if we haven’t passed this turning point already. |
| | Writing about Culture/Society |
| | You and A.I. |
| 12480 | 058 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 18 / 18 | Piers Gelly | TuTh 8:00am - 9:15am | Bryan Hall 310 |
| | The title of this course is "You and A.I." This semester, we will practice college-level writing by attempting to answer a question that all of us should find urgent and provocative: in the age of generative artificial intelligence, do we need first-year writing courses like this one?
You have probably heard of generative A.I., either as a general term or by the names of the major generative A.I. platforms: OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Copilot, or Google’s Bard. These platforms are trained on astonishingly large collections of human-written text, which they have “read” and scanned to detect patterns. Based on those patterns, they can produce texts of many different genres when prompted to do so.
Let’s set aside (for now) the question of whether these generative A.I. models produce good writing. The point is that their writing is rapidly getting better. Soon, generative A.I. programs will be capable of producing college-level essays of sufficient quality to pass a course like this one. The question we urgently need to answer, then, is what college writing instruction should look like in the new world we’re about to enter—if we haven’t passed this turning point already. |
| ENWR 2510 | Advanced Writing Seminar |
| |
| | Writing about Culture & Society |
| | Queer Writing: Theory and Practice |
| 13428 | 003 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (5 / 6) | 16 / 16 | John Modica | TuTh 5:00pm - 6:15pm | Bryan Hall 310 |
| | An advanced introduction to college-level writing through queer theory, literature, and art |
| | Our lives are shaped by language that is not our own. We interpret our emotional, social, and political lives using identity categories, assumptions about human nature and culture, and moral and ethical paradigms that are the products of history. Language places a limit on our ability to understand ourselves, others, and the world in their full complexity. This presents some major problems. How are our lives impoverished by the lack of a language that can dignify our deepest wishes, dreams, and desires? What would it look like to articulate, in clear and precise terms, the ways we actually live? A language that enables a richer, fuller, more meaningful form of living: what would it look and feel like?
This course is an advanced alternative to the first writing requirement. It introduces evidence-based approaches to reading and writing that will enable success in college, but it does so through a method of instruction that is more demanding than traditional first-year writing courses. This section, specifically, focuses on queer theories and practices of writing. We will examine how generations of activists, scholars, and artists have used writing to expose the contradictions of our political systems and fundamentally transform how people live for the better. In doing so, you will practice transferrable critical and creative thinking skills while developing your identity as a politically-engaged intellectual. Writing assignments will be organized around developing a work of (critically) queer writing in any genre. Other assignments include reading discussions, short weekly writing assignments, in-class writing activities, and individual conferences with the instructor.
No prior experience with gender and sexuality studies is necessary. |
| ENWR 2520 | Special Topics in Writing |
| |
| | Personal Writing: Experience and Expression |
| 20495 | 008 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 7 / 16 | James Seitz | TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm | Astronomy Bldg 265 |
| | This course involves students in various forms of writing that encourage rather than inhibit use of the first-person pronoun, drawing on evidence that the most powerful writing often makes use of an “I.” Essays, polemics, reviews, parodies, op-eds, and more—we’ll read and write a wide range of genres in which the writer’s life, observations, and viewpoints engage with the world around them. |
| | Writing and Games |
| | Writing and Games |
| 20810 | 010 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (0 / 10) | 15 / 15 | Kate Natishan | TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Dawson's Row 1 |
| | Fulfills Second Writing Requirement |
| | 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 a 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. As well as writing about games, students will have the opportunity to write for a game. |
| ENWR 3740 | Black Women's Writing & Rhetoric |
| |
| 19724 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 8 / 16 | Tamika Carey | TuTh 9:30am - 10:45am | New Cabell Hall 594 |
| | This course explores how Black Women use writing, literacy, speaking, and performance rhetorically to build the worlds they want to live in and the lives they deserve. Specifically, the course will teach you how to understand: 1) rhetoric as techne, or an art, that members of this group use to take action towards their social and political needs; 2) rhetoric as a lens for analyzing and critiquing the choices and consequences of literature, communication, and discourse; and 3) rhetoric as a resource for developing voice, style, and flavor in writing. Projects are likely to include: a discussion leading presentation; an analytical essay, and a final project. |
| Enviromental Thought and Practice |
| ETP 3500 | Topics in Environmental Thought and Practice |
| |
| | Africulture: The African Roots of US Agriculture |
| 14571 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 14 / 20 (20 / 25) | Michael Carter Jr.+1 | Tu 2:00pm - 4:30pm | New Cabell Hall 303 |
| | 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 faced by today's Black farmers in the US food system and across a wide range of environmental and agricultural arenas. |
| French |
| FREN 3031 | Finding Your Voice in French |
| |
| 11864 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 6 / 15 | Karen James | MoWeFr 12:00pm - 12:50pm | New Cabell Hall 407 |
| | This course offers you the opportunity to develop your own voice in written and spoken French while gaining confidence in your command of grammar for effective communication and your ability to revise and edit your own written work. Finding your voice doesn't happen overnight, though—not in the language(s) we have been speaking since we were children, and not in a foreign language. Beyond your progress this semester, the main goals of this course are to guide you on this life-long journey, to help you become aware of your own best practices for learning French, and to consider how acquiring advanced proficiency in French intersects with and contributes to other personal, academic, and professional interests and goals.
Engaging with diverse voices from France and the francophone world through short literary texts, documentary film clips, songs, social media sites, and other contemporary media, we will explore how language is used to express identity, narrate the past, communicate opinions about the world’s great challenges, and persuade others to take action. Building on insights from these sources, you will practice both creative and more formal genres of writing (a persuasive essay, for example) with the support of in-class collaborative workshops. Through an informal blog, you will share your individual interests and discoveries with your classmates and establish a regular habit of communicating your thoughts, opinions, and reflections in French. Integrated in all these activities, a semester-long grammar review will guide you to better understand how form and meaning work together in the process of expressing yourself in French. |
| 13372 | 003 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (3 / 199) | 15 / 15 | Cheryl Krueger | TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm | New Cabell Hall 291 |
| | Finding your voice in French as a writer or speaker doesn’t happen overnight. Not in the languages(s) we have been speaking since we were children, and not in a foreign language. The main goals of this course are to prepare you for more advanced French courses, to guide you on a life-long journey of self-expression, and to help you become aware of your own best practices for learning French. What are your strengths? How can you convey your ideas in French without translating your words directly from English or other languages you already know? How does improving your writing in French help you to better understand how you write in English? How does engagement with French influence your connections to other courses and to the world around you? Students in FREN 3031 practice both creative writing and more formal genres (such as a film review or a persuasive essay) during in-class writing workshops and individual assignments. Integrated in all activities, a semester-long grammar review guides students to better understand how form and meaning work together.
Students in this section of 3031 co-construct the syllabus based on their own interest by assigning and leading discussion of articles in French. They home listening skills with songs, podcasts, and other audio sources, and explore visual culture though via art works and advertising images. You will be encouraged to take reflective notes in class on your reactions to the materials and Ideas with which you interact.
|
| FREN 3032 | Text, Image, Culture |
| |
| 11866 | 002 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 8 / 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 3043 | The French-Speaking World III: Modernities |
| |
| | How the Old becomes New |
| 19663 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open, WL (2 / 199) | 17 / 18 | Claire Lyu | TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm | Nau Hall 142 |
| | In this course, we will reflect upon some of the key questions that arise when we engage in the process of literary, artistic, or intellectual creation. How do we make something new out of what is old? How do we nurture originality in the face of mounting societal pressures to conform? How can we learn from the past without becoming subservient to it? By examining the works of modern and contemporary writers, artists, and intellectuals who engage in explicit dialogue with the views and voices of their predecessors, we will explore different ways in which innovation stems from tradition. We will read the French writer Colette who, in writing a memoir of her parents, comes to discover how her identity is shaped by what she has inherited from each of them; the French-Chinese writer Cheng who, elected to the French Academy, writes in a French imbued with Chinese language and thought; the Belgian-Rwandan musician Stromae who rewrites and performs in the 21stcentury, the aria of Bizet’s 19th-century opera, which, in turn, was inspired by a short story published earlier by Mérimée; and the Belgian feminist philosopher Despret who revisits the thesis of human exceptionalism that undergirds Descartes’ philosophy of the 17thcentury by reapproaching it from multiple perspectives that respond to the ethical, political, and ecological exigencies of our own century. |
| FREN 3050 | History and Civilization of France: Middle Ages to Revolution |
| |
| 14037 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open, WL (6 / 199) | 14 / 15 | Gary Ferguson | TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm | French House 100 |
| | In this course you will 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 both in terms of their original historical context and their evolving significance, sometimes contested, to later and present generations. Films, visual images, and primary documents will supplement readings from secondary historical texts. Through reading, discussion, in-class presentations, and research papers, you will continue to improve your comprehension and oral and writing skills in French. |
| FREN 3559 | New Course in French and Francophone Cultural Topics |
| |
| | Cultivating Your Voice in French |
| 19771 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open, WL (1 / 199) | 14 / 15 | Amy Ogden | TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Bryan Hall 330 |
| | ... Through Theater |
| | Building on skills acquired in FREN 3031 (Finding Your Voice in French), this class helps students reflect on and become more confident in their oral use of French. Students will learn key principles of French phonetics, intonation, and rhythm, and practice applying this knowledge by reading aloud and performing plays in a supportive and comfortable atmosphere. Throughout, students will consider the role of the whole body in communication; explore the relationship between identity/character/mood and oral expression; and develop habits of noticing and assimilating new phrases.
Pre-requisites: FREN 3031 must be completed before this class; FREN 3032 must be completed before or during this class.
|
| FREN 4031 | Writing With Style and Precision |
| |
| 14038 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (1 / 199) | 15 / 15 | Gary Ferguson | TuTh 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 5560 | Topics in Nineteenth-Century Literature |
| |
| | Senses of Fiction |
| 14042 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 5 / 15 (5 / 15) | Cheryl Krueger | Tu 3:30pm - 6:00pm | New Cabell Hall 407 |
| | How has literary criticism engaged with the senses, and how does engagement with the senses lead us to reconsider the relationship between literature and material culture, science, affect, nature, and the environment? To answer these questions, we will focus primarily on olfaction, taking into account more broadly how we read fiction and the spectrum of senses.
Nineteenth-century France saw a surge of interest in smells and odor perception. Health reformers mapped the foul odors of Paris’s public spaces while individuals attended to the scent of their homes and their bodies. This heightened interest in eliminating, masking, and improving odors corresponded to an uneasy relationship between humans and their primitive past. Olfaction was generally considered a less refined, more animalistic sense. After all, as Freud pointed out, bipedal creatures rely on visual horizons, not scent trails, for safety. Quadrupeds sniff the ground; humans read poetry. Yet it is difficult to write about olfactory perception without turning to poetic devices such as metaphor and simile. To write about scent is to join a mode of communication unique to humans, with a sense considered by many to be an evolutionary throwback. Nonetheless, writers from Apollinaire to Zola have earned accolades and infamy for how vividly their words evoke smells.
In this course we will explore the stench of city streets, the fragrance of perfume, olfactory perception and language, and the often surprising scent references in nineteenth-century works by authors including Baudelaire, Desbordes-Valmore, Zola, Huysmans, and Rachilde. Reading related texts of the era (books of etiquette, hygiene manual, scientific treatises, the popular press), we will consider how fiction and extra-literary writing on olfaction met, permeated, and illuminated one another.
• Open to graduate students with reading knowledge of French (primary works are in French)
• Course conducted in French and English (depending on students’ backgrounds and the language of secondary readings)
• Written work in French for most French MA students, or English for students from other departments and French PhD students writing their theses in English
|
| FREN 5570 | Topics in Twentieth- and Twenty-First Century Literature |
| |
| | Contemporary Fiction |
| | 25 Years of French Literature of the Twenty-First Century, or French Fixxion Now! |
| 19713 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 1 / 10 (5 / 15) | Ari Blatt | Fr 9:30am - 12:00pm | French House 100 |
| | When I first taught an iteration of this course, in the early aughts, contemporary French literature seemed to be in crisis. In his incendiary rant La littérature sans estomac (2002), for example, Pierre Jourde lamented the lack of aesthetic standards in the production of contemporary French fiction, claiming instead that the market had been overrun by mediocrity. Similarly, Jean-Philippe Domecq created a stir when he attacked a certain cadre of literary critics who, he claimed, do nothing but elevate the vast array of livres de divertissement to the status of “high art.” Acclaimed (and highly provocative) author Richard Millet, in L’Enfer du roman: Réflexions sur la postlittérature (2010), issued a scathing critique of the contemporary novel, lashing out against its role in the degradation of the French language. And in one of the few articles on the state of the field to have ever appeared in the New York Times, Alan Riding pondered the curious state of “French” literature in 2006, a year in which not only were the winners of four of the country’s most esteemed literary prizes awarded to “foreign” authors (American Jonathan Littel, to cite one example, won both the Prix Goncourt and the Prix de l’Académie française for Les Bienveillantes), but one of the most popular novels of the year (in France as well as in the US) was actually written in the 1940s by a Russian-born émigré who would later disappear in the camps (Irène Nemirovsky, Suite française). All of which seemed to beg the question, as Riding asked: “Is French literature burning?”
Lately, however, after many years marked by the legacy of the retour au récit (Echenoz, Toussaint, Redonnet, Michon…), signs of a new kind of creative and even socially-conscious dynamism have emerged. From the roman d’enquête, “reparative” narratives informed by an ethics of healing and care, innovative “image-texts,” récits de filiation, and documentary-style exofictions to novels that exhibit a fascination for animots and a particularly Gallic iteration of eco-consciousness (I’m not sure whether to call it “nature writing” or not), the literary scene seems to have been enlivened by the inescapably present world in which authors—indeed, in which all of us—dwell. The recent crowning of Annie Ernaux as the latest Nobel Prize winner marks this moment—and seems to acknowledge this trend—in a significant and symbolic way. Rather than propose a definitive answer to Riding’s problematic and expressly provocative question, then, this survey of some of the most acclaimed and/or widely read prose works of the last 25 years (more or less) invites participants to ascertain the situation for themselves. Along with introducing a number of essential and readily available resources for scholars and enthusiasts of contemporary French literature, including the major journals, anthologies, radio programs, websites, and blogs, the course will also seek to provide opportunities to read and, more importantly, critique cutting-edge criticism on the works under consideration. Consider this part of the seminar a practicum on critical writing about contemporary French writing.
While we will read all primary texts (and some critical analyses) in French, the course will be taught in both French and English depending on the object of our analysis (and, of course, on our collective mood).
|
| German |
| GERM 2559 | New Course in German |
| |
| | Reading German Stories and Histories |
| | Reading German Stories and Histories |
| Website 20838 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 5 / 15 | Cora Schenberg | MoWeFr 10:00am - 10:50am | New Cabell Hall 115 |
| | In this course, students will practice and improve their language skills through reading a diversity of short German texts; we will also view and discuss films and short plays. Topics include poster exhibitions about the Weimar Republic and Germany from 1919-2019; texts will range from modern German literature to language history to everyday life during the Third Reich. These texts will be interspersed with regular grammar exercises and review. Requirements include regular attendance, tests, presentations, and essays. GERM 2559 can be taken for credit toward the German major or minor. Prerequisite: GERM 2020 or the equivalent.
|
| GERM 3510 | Topics in German Culture |
| |
| | German Cinema |
| 20577 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 8 / 30 | Paul Dobryden | TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm | New Cabell Hall 332 |
| | This survey course examines the history of German cinema from the Weimar Republic to the present. We will study films by directors such as Fritz Lang, Douglas Sirk, Helke Sander, and Fatih Akin, who are considered part of the canon of German cinema even as they interrogated the boundaries of the nation. In so doing, we will examine how film was itself an important vehicle for defining Germanness, for both domestic and international audiences. Studying German cinema alongside Germany’s complex history can will offer insight into how stories and images help construct, problematize, or contest definitions of national belonging. |
| German in Translation |
| GETR 3372 | German Jewish Culture and History |
| |
| 21156 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 4 / 30 | Julia Gutterman | Tu 3:30pm - 6:00pm | Gibson Hall 141 |
| | This course surveys German Jewish culture from 1750 to 1945 and beyond. Exploring a wide range of philosophical, theological, autobiographical, literary, poetic, and dramatic texts, we will reflect on the Jewish response to modernity in Central Europe and consider how this response also shaped modernity in the European imagination broadly. We will explore these vibrant and dynamic processes of change and self-definition and trace the emergence of new forms of Jewish experience, showing their unfolding in a series of lively and poignant dramas of tradition and transformation, division and integration, dreams and nightmares. The course seeks to grasp this world through the lenses of history and culture, and to examine the different ways in which these disciplines illuminate the past and provide potential insights into the present and future. Our readings will include texts by Moses Mendelssohn, Rahel Varhagen, Henriette Herz, Heinrich Heine, Karl Marx, Franz Kafka, Else Lasker-Schüler, Franz Rosenzweig, Sigmund Freud, as well as contemporary writers such as Katja Petrowskaja and Olga Grjasnowa.
This course is intended to acquaint students with the study of German (-speaking) Jewish history and culture and assumes no prior training in the subject. The course fulfills the Second Writing Requirement.
|
| GETR 3420 | German Intellectual History From Nietzsche to the Present |
| |
| | W.E.B. Du Bois and German Social Theory: Marx, Nietzsche, Freud and Weber |
| 19824 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 13 / 40 (13 / 40) | Michael Wellmon | MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm | New Cabell Hall 309 |
| | Looking back on his decades-long study of Black Americans in 1944, W.E.B. Du Bois observed that he had overestimated the power of reason and higher education to lead to political reform and human freedom. Although he had studied in Berlin and immersed himself in German philosophy and social theory, he had, he wrote, failed to grasp “how little human action is based on reason” and to appreciate “the economic foundations of human history.” In this class, we’ll try to understand what Du Bois saw in these German social theorists and thinkers like Freud and Marx but also in Nietzsche, Weber, and others around 1900. No knowledge of German or of philosophy required. All are welcome. |
| GETR 3559 | New Course in German in Translation |
| |
| | Diary Fiction |
| 19811 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Closed | 20 / 20 (20 / 20) | Lorna Martens | TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm | Pavilion VIII 102 |
| | For description, click on schedule number to the left |
| | Diaries are for intimate secrets? Yes--but not just! People have kept journals for many reasons. There are travel journals and sea logs, records of everyday life, testimonials to alarming events, gossipy accounts of social interactions, notebooks for capturing one's momentary aperçus and ideas, and so forth. Fiction writers, however, have invented many more uses for the diary form than these! The diary's strict yet elastic form (first-person periodic narration) has offered creative writers many intriguing possibilities beyond imitating the styles of real diaries. An ideal outlet for sincere self-expression, for intimate confessions, the fictive diary is also as if made to order for creating an unreliable narrator, one whose views are undercut by the plot. If a second voice is introduced alongside the diarist's monologue, this can destabilize the diarist's account, whereas, conversely, a diarist's truthful account can overthrow a second narrator's misguided opinions. Writing from day to day, a diarist is ignorant of what the future holds. Such blindness toward the future has inspired many writers to use the diary form for suspense stories (e.g., Dracula). In this course we will focus on the ways in which writers have imaginatively exploited the diary's formal features. We will also consider how diary fiction evolved from the late eighteenth century, when the first fictive diaries were written, to the present. We will read several masterpieces of diary fiction--novels--including Sartre's Nausea and Frisch's I'm Not Stiller, and otherwise stories from a brand-new anthology of short diary fiction. Students will have an opportunity to try their hand at writing a diary (easy!) and/or diary fiction. |
| | Marx, Capital, and Freedom: Translating Capital |
| 19815 | 002 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 6 / 40 | Michael Wellmon | MoWe 3:30pm - 4:45pm | New Cabell Hall 309 |
| | Open to everyone regardless of knowledge of German. Students interested in receiving GERM credit can enroll in a related independent study with Prof. Wellmon. |
| | Princeton University Press recently published the first new translation of Karl Marx’s Capital, Volume 1 in over fifty years. This course will consider, in particular, how the PUP translation deals with the mysteries Capital claims shape our world––social struggle, the power of things, money’s generative powers, the futility of some work, the possibility of changing the world––as well as some of the most pointed critiques of Capital. The course will be taught in English. Students interested in receiving GERM credit can enroll in a related independent study with Prof. Wellmon. |
| | Short Narrative Forms |
| 20250 | 003 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 0 / 20 | Benjamin Bennett | TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm | New Cabell Hall 211 |
| | Reading for the course will be one short narrative per week, either a story or tale (British, American) or a conte (French) or a Novelle (German), all of course in English translation. Lectures in the course will trace the development of these forms from membership in collections to modern aesthetic independence, with an emphasis on differences among the three traditions. Some readings in the second half of the course will be suggested and chosen by students. Main question: why short narrative forms in the first place? Henry James is perhaps typical in wishing to envelope his reader in the huge form of the novel, which after all is the main literary form in all Europe/America since the late eighteenth century. What is a reader supposed to do with shorter forms? |
| GETR 3780 | Memory Speaks |
| |
| 19812 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 17 / 20 | Lorna Martens | TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Pavilion VIII 102 |
| | For description, click on schedule number to the left |
| | Memory Speaks
Memory is a crucial human faculty. Our ability to remember our own past is one of the things that make us human. Memory has long been thought to ground identity: without memory, one has no sense of self. Memory has been seen as fundamental to psychic health, and even as a remedy in times of trouble, as well as essential to our ability to imagine the future. Remembering has its delights. Certainly the idea of losing one’s memory, through shock or illness for example, is terrifying to contemplate. Yet having too many memories of the wrong kind is believed to endanger our equilibrium. Maddeningly, given its power to make us healthy or sick, memory often lies beyond our conscious control. It operates according to its own laws, giving us what we want only sometimes. Undeniably useful, it has also been seen as deceptive. It is demonstrably suggestible. It is not surprising, therefore, that memory is a subject of vital importance in the humanities, sciences, and social sciences alike.
This course will focus on individual memory and in particular on autobiographical memory (our memories of our own lives). We will read autobiographies and works of fiction, written from the early twentieth century to the present, by Patrick Modiano, Marcel Proust, Rainer Maria Rilke, Mary McCarthy, Vladimir Nabokov, and Marguerite Duras. We will also study two films on the theme of memory: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Inside Out. Concurrently, we will read psychological, psychoanalytic, and neuroscientific work on memory. Some attention will be paid to the issues of false memory, external memory, and mediated memory, as well.
Two short papers, presentations, midterm and final
|
| Global Studies-Global Studies |
| GSGS 3030 | Global Cultural Studies |
| |
| 20687 | 100 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 115 / 120 (115 / 120) | Michael Levenson | MoWe 12:00pm - 12:50pm | Minor Hall 125 |
| | Global Cultural Studies offers an interdisciplinary approach to our present-day world against the background of its recent past. Engaging a wide variety of media (film, popular song, avant-garde art, memoir, political philosophy, etc.), the course examines conditions and conflicts in China, India, North and South Africa, and the Middle East. Urgent social-cultural issues – such as the global plight of refugees, the place of Gandhi in present-day Indian politics, the campaign for international human rights, the resurgence of religious faith, the crisis of the environment, the rise of authoritarian nationalism, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza – will be nodal points of concern. At every stage we consider the making of the world since 1945, the pressing difficulties that now confront it, and the fragile state of hope.
|
| History-General History |
| HIST 9559 | New Course in General History |
| |
| | History of Science, Technology and Medicine |
| 19749 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Permission | 4 / 6 | David Singerman | We 11:00am - 1:30pm | Nau Hall 441 |
| | The first part of the course will introduce a range of the different methods and approaches to the histories of science, technology, and medicine, emphasizing how these fields have been influenced by other disciplines such as sociology and anthropology. After that, the particular interests of students who enroll will shape the content of the tutorial. |
| Leadership and Public Policy - Leadership |
| LPPL 2750 | Teambuilding and Facilitation |
| |
| 16642 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 7 / 30 | Matthew Busch | We 2:00pm - 4:30pm | Contact Department |
| | A majority of this class takes place outside at the University challenge course. An emphasis is placed on facilitation and teambuilding practice, allowing students to gain experience and insight from collective feedback. |
| | Effective facilitators are architects of engagement. Take part in practical facilitation, bridging theory, & real-world scenarios. Develop facilitation skills, clear communication, & strategies for effective group development. Emphasis is placed on facilitation practice, allowing students to gain experience & insight from collective feedback. |
| LPPL 4225 | Leadership and Practice |
| |
| 16556 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Wait List (13 / 199) | 27 / 27 | Timothy Davis | Mo 5:00pm - 7:30pm | Ridley Hall G006 |
| | LPPL 4225 is designed to foster three critical skillsets: 1) The expansion of your self-awareness to enhance your competence as a leader, 2) Learning ways to support and inspire the development of strengths in others, and 3) Combining these skills to improve the effectiveness of your student organizations at UVA by reflecting on the organizational and interpersonal dynamics of those groups. |
| Leadership and Public Policy - Policy |
| LPPP 2050 | Bridge to Batten |
| |
| | Enrollment is via application only - consult class website |
| Website 16594 | 001 | SEM (1 Units) | Permission | 28 / 25 | Anne Carter Mulligan+1 | Fr 12:30pm - 1:45pm | Rouss Hall 403 |
| | Bridge to Batten is a 1-credit CR/NC course for economically underrepresented students considering Batten's programs and/or a career in public policy. Course provides opportunities for academic, personal & professional exploration; increases knowledge of public service & policy worlds; & strengthens connections to peers & resource networks at the University to support student success. Instructor permission required via application. |
| LPPP 4991 | Capstone Seminar |
| |
| | Climate Change and Global Development Solutions |
| | Design and propose a project aimed at lessening the impacts of climate change on the most vulnerable |
| 20361 | 007 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 16 / 18 | Molly Lipscomb | Th 2:00pm - 4:30pm | Dell 2 101 |
| | Join me in employing the skills you have developed at Batten to design and propose a project aimed at lessening the impacts of climate change on those who are most vulnerable. We will be consultants to 4D Climate Solutions, a company in Lesotho improving irrigation systems to manage water insecurity issues related to farming. We will develop solutions to water and food insecurity in Afghanistan that take seriously the dignity of women and the related challenges under the Taliban. We will design interventions to decrease the human health and community impacts of flooding in West Africa. We will innovate on the structure of payment for environmental services programs to adapt them to the particular challenges of deforestation in Brazil. At the end of the semester, the most successful projects, depending on the interest of students, may be packaged as actual grant applications and submitted for consideration for competitive grants through the Center for Social Innovation. |
| LPPP 5540 | Applied Policy Clinics |
| |
| | Gun Violence Clinic |
| 16639 | 001 | WKS (2 Units) | Open | 8 / 15 | Michele Claibourn | Fr 12:30pm - 3:00pm | Pavilion VIII 103 |
| | Part of the University's Gun Violence Solutions Project, we'll work to support local communities and partners working to prevent and mitigate gun violence in the greater Charlottesville region. |
| | Gun violence has become endemic in the United States with over 40,000 people killed by guns every year. The origins and impacts of gun violence are complex and often conflated in a confusing narrative for residents and policy makers seeking to affect change. This three-year clinic will help synthesize national-level research, review interventions and implementation in other communities, and assess policies and practice with an equity lens to promote a shared understanding of problems and possibilities in our local community.
This spring’s focus will be researching interventions to different types of gun violence with a focus on how knowledge derived from research and experience in other communities or at the state or national level applies to our local context. We will develop a set of brief documents for each intervention; these will be part of a community resource hub to support broader engagement and local efforts to develop and adapt policy interventions. |
| LPPP 7559 | New Course in Public Policy and Leadership |
| |
| | Development Policy: Poverty Reduction |
| | Designing and evaluating effective aid policies |
| 20686 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 18 / 20 | Molly Lipscomb | TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm | Fayerweather Hall 206 |
| | Why are some countries poor and how can we increase growth? How do we guarantee basic government services for the poorest? We will cover the fundamental issues in development: capacity, demand, and influence. We will begin with an overview of key topics in poverty, inequality, and growth, and then focus on the microeconomic foundations for these issues; capacity problems from land and labor and credit markets; and demand issues such as human capital (health and education), environmental issues, urbanization and infrastructure development, and risk and insurance problems. Finally, we will investigate political influence issues including decentralization and corruption. A strong focus of the class will be in understanding how different theories of development effectiveness can be tested and harnessed to design well-functioning anti-poverty programs. Students will develop their skills in explaining their theory of change and empirical evidence in short, policy-focused memos. By the end of this class, students will have received an overview of the most important development problems, and the key tools used by development professionals in designing aid interventions. |
| Leadership and Public Policy - Substantive |
| LPPS 5720 | Public Interest Data: Ethics and Practice |
| |
| 16601 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (0 / 199) | 18 / 18 | Michele Claibourn | Th 3:30pm - 6:00pm | 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 equity 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 3510 | Topics in Media Research |
| |
| | Media & Power: Approaches from Political Economy |
| 12832 | 002 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (2 / 199) | 30 / 30 | Pallavi Rao | MoWe 3:30pm - 4:45pm | Wilson Hall 214 |
| | This is a course about studying the business of media through what is known as a "political economy" framework. Taking a macro-approach, we understand "The Media" as media industries composed of many firms and conglomerations handling diverse media operations with commercial imperatives and navigating larger national and international economic and political arrangements. Throughout, we will study how media organizations produce and transform their unique media products, how their management and leadership influence products and consumption patterns, how these organizations generate profit, how considerations of power such as gender, race, class, and sexuality, all operate through industry structures—such as ownership, profit models, advertising and public relations—and the ideologies, discourses and government policies that sustain these arrangements. |
| MDST 3559 | New Course in Media Studies |
| |
| | This Class is a Scam |
| 20137 | 004 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (3 / 99) | 30 / 30 | Lana Swartz | Tu 2:00pm - 4:30pm | Gibson Hall 242 |
| | This course examines digital economy through the lens of “scams.” Topics to be explored include: How scams exploit and shape online economies and cultures? What is the global political economy of scam? When economic norms and practices are changing so rapidly, what constitutes a scam and who has the power to decide? What impact will AI have on scams and scam prevention? |
| MDST 4559 | New Course in Media Studies |
| |
| | Writing about Technology for Public Audiences |
| 20646 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Permission | 2 / 20 | Lana Swartz | TuTh 9:30am - 10:45am | Nau Hall 141 |
| | This course requires instructor permission to enroll. Enrollment preference will be given to students who have experience or keen interest in technology and/or writing for public audiences. Please express this via SIS, not email. |
| | Writing about technology for public audiences is important but challenging. In this class, students will dissect published writing, workshop their own work, and hear from guest professional writers and editors. Enrollment preference will be given to students who have experience or keen interest in technology and/or writing for public audiences. Note: Students in Media Policy and Ethics will write about a topic relevant that concentration. This course requires instructor permission to enroll. |
| Middle Eastern & South Asian Languages & Cultures |
| MESA 2559 | New Course in Middle Eastern & South Asian Studies |
| |
| | Sadaqah and Seva: MESA Superheroes |
| | Sadaqah and Seva: Middle Eastern and South Asian Superheroes |
| 18898 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Closed | 20 / 20 | Adrienne Resha | MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm | New Cabell Hall 111 |
| | This course offers a semester-long study of Middle Eastern, North African, and South Asian representation and racialization in American popular culture via the superhero genre. Engaging with visual media (comics, television, film), creator talks and interviews, and academic writing, we will think critically about how people and ideas travel across borders. |
| Medieval Studies |
| MSP 3501 | Exploring the Middle Ages |
| |
| | Medieval Identities, Cultures, and Conflicts |
| 20014 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (0 / 199) | 25 / 25 | Deborah McGrady | TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm | Nau Hall 242 |
| | 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 3040 | Studies in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Music |
| |
| 20291 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Wait List (1 / 199) | 25 / 25 | Jade Conlee | TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm | Old Cabell Hall 113 |
| | Moving backward in time from the 2020s to 1900, we will listen together to pop music, jazz, classical and everything in between. Central questions for this course include: What can music teach us about race, colonialism, technology, and the environment in the 20th and 21st centuries? How did musicians respond to the major political events (American and global) of their eras? How does historical perspective change how we listen? An incomplete list of musicians we will study includes Charlie XCX, Beyoncé, Avril Lavigne, the Backstreet Boys, DJ Screw, Whitney Houston, NWA, Kenny G, Michael Jackson, Gerard Grisey, Alice Coltrane, Carlos Santana, Bob Marley, Pauline Oliveros, Harry Belafonte, John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Iannis Xenakis, Art Blakey, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Bessie Smith, Kurt Weil, Jean Sibelius, Eric Satie. |
| MUSI 3510 | Music and Community Engagement I |
| |
| | Sound Justice as Community Engagement |
| 13072 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 13 / 15 | Nomi Dave | TuTh 9:30am - 10:45am | Contact Department |
| | This class explores connections between sound, listening, and the law. How do legal proceedings play out in sound? What does the law hear – and what does it not? Course materials include court cases and transcripts, music, film, novels, and academic articles. The class has a civic engagement component that offers students opportunities to meet with lawyers, artists, and other community members in Charlottesville and beyond, to produce research and creative work. It also provides a space to respond to and engage current events. The class can be used to fulfill the music major requirements, but musical or other artistic experience is not necessary. |
| Urban and Environmental Planning |
| PLAN 5500 | Special Topics in Planning |
| |
| | Townscape Planning For Rural-Urban Partnerships |
| 20322 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 6 / 12 | Tyler Hinkle | Mo 6:00pm - 8:30pm | Campbell Hall 220C |
| | The concept of ruralism is evolving. We will examine the symbiosis between rural and urban spaces, focusing on the opportunities in rural communities, particularly in Appalachia. The interplay of geography, culture, and history will serve as lenses to understand and plan for aspects such as land use, policy, conservation, financing, and regional connections. We will examine practical and applied methods through case studies and analysis. |
| PLAN 5710 | Transportation and Environment |
| |
| 19547 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 14 / 15 | Caetano de Campos Lopes | We 6:00pm - 8:30pm | Campbell Hall 220C |
| | Learning Objectives:
• Become familiar with the environmental impacts of transportation systems, including local air pollution, GHG emissions, and life-cycle effects, and how to assess these through qualitative and quantitative methods.
• Gain an understanding of the normative and economic factors that influence transportation systems and their relationship to urban development, equity, and sustainability.
• Develop the ability to critically evaluate transportation projects, considering their broader implications on climate, public health, and social disparities.
• Engage with practical exercises and case studies to explore real-world challenges and solutions in sustainable and equitable transportation planning. |
| | Transportation systems are essential to modern life, but their environmental and social impacts raise serious concerns. This course investigates these impacts, focusing on local air pollutants, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and the life-cycle effects of different transportation options. Students will engage in hands-on exercises to assess and compare transportation projects, exploring how normative and economic factors shape transportation decisions and their connections to urban development and equity.
We will examine the environmental and social consequences of transportation choices, delving into the complex considerations of implementing sustainable, equitable transportation solutions. Through practical assessments and real-world case studies, the course aims to provide students with a comprehensive understanding of the environmental challenges posed by transportation systems and the tools to evaluate them. |
| Politics-Comparative Politics |
| PLCP 4500 | Special Topics in Comparative Politics |
| |
| | Nation-Building |
| 12127 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (6 / 199) | 20 / 15 | David Waldner | We 4:30pm - 7:00pm | New Cabell Hall 407 |
| | In this research seminar, we consider why American occupation-based, nation-building produced capitalist, liberal democracies in Germany and Japan, while in most other instances, including the post-civil war American South, the Philippines, the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, American nation-building fell far short of its goals. Readings include theories of nation-building and historical case studies. Following approximately 8-10 class sessions, students will write research papers (approximately 20-25 pages) in close consultation with the instructor. |
| Psychology |
| PSYC 4500 | Special Topics in Psychology |
| |
| | Raising Inclusive Children |
| 20379 | 004 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (9 / 199) | 25 / 25 | Zoe Robertson | TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm | Gilmer Hall Room 250 |
| | This course examines the development of prejudice in children, focusing on racial/ethnic, gender, and disability biases. Students will explore research on how prejudice forms, its effects on child development, and evidence-based strategies for reducing prejudice, with an emphasis on applying psychological theories to real-world child development scenarios. |
| Religion-Buddhism |
| RELB 4520 | Advanced Topics in Buddhism |
| |
| | Buddhism and Animal Studies |
| 19263 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 1 / 12 | Natasha Heller | We 2:00pm - 4:30pm | Bryan Hall 334 |
| | This seminar will look at the role that animals have played in Buddhist doctrine, literature and practice, bringing these materials into conversation with the growing field of animal studies. Click course number to left for more. |
| | This seminar will look at the role that animals have played in Buddhist doctrine, literature and practice, bringing these materials into conversation with the growing field of animal studies. Topics will include karmic retribution and rebirth as an animal, arguments for vegetarianism, animals within Buddhist monasteries, contemporary practices of releasing captive animals for merit, and Buddhist approaches to animal rights. |
| Religion-General Religion |
| RELG 3051 | Religion and Society |
| |
| | Religion and (Capitalism in American) Society |
| 20857 | 100 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 17 / 18 | Kevin Rose | MoWe 3:30pm - 4:45pm | New Cabell Hall 056 |
| | The Spring 2025 edition of RELG 3051 will focus on the relationship between religion and economics in American society. Topics include: the role of Christian thought in the rise of American capitalism; whether the 19th century market revolution made religion more limiting or more democratic; the application of religious freedom law to modern corporations like Hobby Lobby; and the role of religion in the rise of “woke capitalism.” We will also consider the long history of religious efforts to either reform or replace capitalism as the dominant economic system in America. |
| Spanish |
| SPAN 4700 | Spanish Culture and Civilization |
| |
| | Todo sobre Almodóvar |
| 12498 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Permission | 14 / 22 | Samuel Amago | TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm | New Cabell Hall 268 |
| | It has been said that it is impossible to understand contemporary Spain without looking at Pedro Almodóvar’s films. This class will test this hypothesis by studying the multifaceted identity politics of that country as seen through his movies shot between 1978 and today. Each week we will view and analyze a film in terms of how it reflects contemporary Spanish culture, art, history and politics. Critical and historical readings in Spanish and English will complement viewings and provide additional themes for class discussion. Prerequisite: SPAN 3010, 3300, and 3 credits of 3400-3430, or departmental placement. |
| Spanish in Translation |
| SPTR 3559 | New Course: Spanish in Translation |
| |
| | Race, Gender & Environmental Justice-Latin America |
| 20821 | 001 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 15 / 16 (15 / 16) | Kache Claytor | MoWe 3:30pm - 4:45pm | New Cabell Hall 064 |
| | This course offers an introduction to the concepts and perspectives in environmental justice movements by exploring the intersections of Black feminist activism in Latin America. This course explores the ways that Black women across borders, languages, as well as temporal and spatial markers have responded to injustices that have not only accelerated environmental degradation, but also disproportionately impacted their communities and shaped their experiences. Through a critical examination of case studies, we will analyze how Afro-descendant women have led movements to protect their communities, land, and natural resources. Using an interdisciplinary lens, students will engage with ideas of environmental justice, climate justice, Reproductive Justice, extractivism, colonialism, and sovereignty. This course is designed for students interested in activism, environmentalism, Blackness and Indigeneity, Black feminisms, Latin American politics, and Black consciousness throughout Latin America. Through a mix of readings, films, podcasts, discussions, and community engagement, students will gain a nuanced understanding of the role of Black women in shaping environmental and social justice across diverse contexts. |
| Swahili |
| SWAH 1020 | Introductory Swahili II |
| |
| 11931 | 002 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 9 / 16 | Anne Rotich | MoWeFr 11:00am - 11:50am | New Cabell Hall 064 |
| | Prerequisite: SWAH 1010
Hakuna Matata! Let's continue exploring the rich Swahili language and cultures. In this course you will expand your vocabulary, master grammar, and dive into more meaningful conversations. From talking about your work, studies, and interests to navigating social settings like markets and hospitals, you’ll be equipped to handle everyday interactions with ease. Get ready to speak Swahili with confidence and flair! |
| SWAH 2020 | Intermediate Swahili II |
| |
| | SWAH 2020 Intermediate Swahili |
| 12043 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 5 / 15 | Anne Rotich | MoWeFr 12:00pm - 12:50pm | New Cabell Hall 042 |
| | Prerequisite: SWAH 1020
Hujambo!Take your Swahili skills to the next level with this intermediate course! Through interactive conversations, real-world materials, and videos, you’ll refine your grammar, expand your vocabulary, and build confidence in real-life discussions. Whether it's daily life or current events, this course will help you increase your proficiency in Swahili while deepening your understanding of East African cultures. |
| Systems & Information Engineering |
| SYS 5581 | Selected Topics in Systems Engineering |
| |
| | Cyber Systems and Operations |
| 19891 | 003 | Lecture (3 Units) | Open | 7 / 30 | Andrew Schoka | MoWe 3:30pm - 4:45pm | Rice Hall 032 |
| | A case-based exploration of cybersecurity topics across a range of engineering and business disciplines through a systems lens. This course challenges students to think like an attacker through analysis of real-world cyber incidents, hacks, and breaches. Gain practical experience with frameworks and methodologies used to define cybersecurity strategies, build robust security programs, and defend against digital threats. Emphasis is placed on relating theory to practice via classroom discussion of case studies tied to real-world cyber incidents, attacks, and breaches. |
| Women and Gender Studies |
| WGS 4500 | Topics in Women, Gender & Sexuality |
| |
| | How To Do Drag |
| 11879 | 001 | SEM (3 Units) | Wait List (4 / 199) | 15 / 15 | Aaron Stone | Tu 2:00pm - 4:30pm | The Rotunda Room 150 |
| | This course examines drag performance as a cultural phenomenon with an emphasis on representation: how various forms of media "do" drag by shaping cultural narratives about it. We will analyze and compare representations of drag in film, television, novels, life writing, social media, and academic theory to consider how these diverse representational forms construct our ideas about what "doing drag" is and what it means. |
| | Voices from the Global South |
| 13581 | 002 | SEM (3 Units) | Open | 5 / 15 (5 / 15) | Daisy Guzman Nunez | We 2:00pm - 4:30pm | Pavilion VIII 108 |
| | This seminar will explore moments of possibility, belonging, and being in works of literature by Black and Indigenous Women from Latin America and the Caribbean. Through various methods and mediums, these writers raise the question: what exactly constitutes one’s sense of self and a sense of place? |
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