Literature

This course explores the themes of gender identity and sexual orientation, as portrayed in literary texts. How are gender and sexuality imagined and represented? How do they shape the individual and their relationship to society and social expectations? In what ways is human experience defined by gender and sexuality? Since the topic of gender and sexuality is so vast, this course will seek to provide a “sampling” of many different experiences of gender and sexuality. This “sampling” will take us across time and across space. Likely texts for this course will be poems by Emily Dickinson, A Safe Girl to Love by Casey Plett, Thick: And Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom, Women without Men by Shahrnush Parsipur, Maurice by E.M. Forster and Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

This course explores the themes of gender identity and sexual orientation, as portrayed in literary texts. How are gender and sexuality imagined and represented? How do they shape the individual and their relationship to society and social expectations? In what ways is human experience defined by gender and sexuality? Since the topic of gender and sexuality is so vast, this course will seek to provide a “sampling” of many different experiences of gender and sexuality. This “sampling” will take us across time and across space. Likely texts for this course will be poems by Emily Dickinson, A Safe Girl to Love by Casey Plett, Thick: And Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom, Women without Men by Shahrnush Parsipur, Maurice by E.M. Forster and Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

In “A Vindication of the Rights of Women,” Mary Wollstonecraft declares, “I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves.” In this course, we will read essays and novels by women who, through their writing, explored questions of power, autonomy, freedom, and self-definition. Texts may include: Florence Nightingale’s Cassandra, Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, and Toni Morrison’s Sula.

Cervantes' Don Quixote has been considered by generations of scholars and lay readers one of the best books of all time, and one of the funniest and most tragic books ever written. It is a hilarious and thought provoking story of a foolishly idealistic old man who has read too many adventure stories about knights in shining armor and thinks he's in one of them. Deemed by many the first modern novel, Cervantes' work has been an inspiration for just about every story written since. Don Quixote's many adventures of the mind will take us most of the semester to read, but we might also interlace our reading of this great work with selections from shorter works inspired by or in conversation with it. 

If the child is the father of the man, as William Wordsworth said, there is then something particularly poignant and meaningful about the transition from childhood to adulthood. This course will examine various aspects of that transition in different cultures. The young, emerging heroes we will encounter, as different as they are, all share a certain, ageless, somewhat ineffable, usually difficult, but always unique approach to life that reminds us what it means to be human. Texts may include: James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, Herman Hesse’s Demian, Eudora Welty’s One Writer’s Beginnings, J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain, Mila Goldberg’s Bee Season, Italo Calvino’s The Baron in the Trees, J. Nozipo Maraire’s Zenzele: A Letter for my Daughter, and Naguib Mahfouz’s Palace of Desire.  

Join the mortal throng of poets, lovers, mystics, adventurers, and regular folk like you and me, who for the past seven hundred years have been fascinated by the man who, for the sake of his beloved Beatrice, traveled to hell and back again. Dante’s epic journey through hell, purgatory, and heaven was meant to outshine all epic journeys, encompass all of history, summarize all philosophy, surpass all theology, and explore all of human nature. First and foremost, however, it is one rollicking read, full of the most memorable characters, touching on the most timeless questions of love, life, loss, and society's ills. We will not only go through the whole Comedy, emphasizing the Inferno of course, but we will also become more closely acquainted with a plethora of people who had an effect on Dante, and on whom Dante had an effect, such as Homer, Virgil, Ovid, St. Paul, Aristotle, St. Augustine, Joyce, Eliot, and more. Although the reading is heavy and the ideas heady, this course is a hell of a good time! 

Sometimes the idea of love, romance, falling in love and falling out of love seems frivolous, unimportant and not worthy of our study. However, since our earliest pieces of literature, music and expression, has there been a subject more revisited? This class will explore the subject that has captured so many artists across human history, love. We will read works that will examine the complex and messy ways love shows up in our lives, the exuberance of falling in love, the pain of heartbreak and everything in between. Some possible texts for the course will be All About Love by bell hooks, The End of the Affair by Graham Greene, The Idiot by Elif Batuman, Persuasion by Jane Austen, and of course plenty of poetry, including the work of Pablo Neruda, E.E. Cummings, Alex Dimitrov and Rumi to name a few.

When is a joke not just a joke? In this course, we will examine a survey of satirical writing, recognizing the genre’s rhetorical techniques and hallmarks as well as the political and social role that satire can play in the public sphere. We will begin with seminal works of historical satire and continue through to twentieth century satire (with a special emphasis on postcolonial satire), and end with exploration and discussion surrounding internet-age satire on Twitter, online publications such as The Onion, and viral clips of political comedy from political comedians. Throughout this course we will confront and discuss the ethical questions surrounding satire as well as the philosophy of humor. What makes a good joke, formally or morally? When does comedy help, and when does comedy harm? How do our inherent biases and structural injustices become revealed, subverted, or reinforced through humor? Additionally, no course on satire is complete without trying your hand in the genre—pick your targets wisely! Authors and comedians studied may include Aristophanes, Jane Austen, Dave Chappelle, Jamaica Kincaid, Hari Kondabolu, Percy Mtwa, Mbongeni Ngema, John Oliver, Salman Rushdie, Barney Simon, Jonathan Swift, Voltaire, Derek Walcott, and Oscar Wilde.

When is a joke not just a joke? In this course, we will examine a survey of satirical writing, recognizing the genre’s rhetorical techniques and hallmarks as well as the political and social role that satire can play in the public sphere. We will begin with seminal works of historical satire and continue through to twentieth century satire (with a special emphasis on postcolonial satire), and end with exploration and discussion surrounding internet-age satire on Twitter, online publications such as The Onion, and viral clips of political comedy from political comedians. Throughout this course we will confront and discuss the ethical questions surrounding satire as well as the philosophy of humor. What makes a good joke, formally or morally? When does comedy help, and when does comedy harm? How do our inherent biases and structural injustices become revealed, subverted, or reinforced through humor? Additionally, no course on satire is complete without trying your hand in the genre—pick your targets wisely! Authors and comedians studied may include Aristophanes, Jane Austen, Dave Chappelle, Jamaica Kincaid, Hari Kondabolu, Percy Mtwa, Mbongeni Ngema, John Oliver, Salman Rushdie, Barney Simon, Jonathan Swift, Voltaire, Derek Walcott, and Oscar Wilde.

This course will explore the written work of the Harlem Renaissance in the first quarter and then use themes of “new identity” and others explored during the Renaissance as jumping off points in the second quarter. This course will not only read works from the Harlem Renaissance, but discuss and question what makes a social, cultural and artistic movement in the first place. What role does the novel, poetry and the essay play in creating and sustaining a literary movement and how do form and content work in relationship with each other? The course will be exploring themes of class, colorism, the New Black Identity, education, visibility, audience, ideas of unity and dissenting views. In the second half of the semester we will take those themes and explore how writers in the latter half of the 20th century and into the first two decades of the 21st century have wrestled and interacted with those ideas. How have writers of color been involved with and evolved these conversations through writing, thinking and storytelling for the past 100 years? Likely authors for this course will include, W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Gwendolyn B. Bennett, James Edward McCall, Jessie Fauset, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, Alain Locke, James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Clint Smith, Tracy K. Smith and Eve Ewing.

In this course, we will study a sample of plays by Shakespeare, including one tragedy, one comedy, one history, and one of his later, generically mixed “problem plays.” We will examine these works both through the lens of Shakespeare’s life and theatre practices (Shakespeare “Then”) as well as recent theatrical and critical practices and adaptations (Shakespeare “Now”). Over the course we will develop close reading skills in interpreting these plays both as literature and in relation to cultural, historical, intellectual, and performative contexts. In addition, by examining various productions from around the globe, we will instigate an ongoing conversation about how the text, performance practices, and audiences collaborate to shape the meaning of Shakespeare and his work across time and nations.

In this course, we will study a sample of plays by Shakespeare, including one tragedy, one comedy, one history, and one of his later, generically mixed “problem plays.” We will examine these works both through the lens of Shakespeare’s life and theatre practices (Shakespeare “Then”) as well as recent theatrical and critical practices and adaptations (Shakespeare “Now”). Over the course we will develop close reading skills in interpreting these plays both as literature and in relation to cultural, historical, intellectual, and performative contexts. In addition, by examining various productions from around the globe, we will instigate an ongoing conversation about how the text, performance practices, and audiences collaborate to shape the meaning of Shakespeare and his work across time and nations.

Beginning writers are often counseled, “Write what you know,” but some of the most beloved works of literature were written by authors whose identities differed radically from those of their protagonists. Through works written in a variety of places, periods, and genres, this course investigates the ways authors elicit empathy for characters whose perspectives and experiences they could only imagine. Through both analytical writing and creative writing assignments, reviewing fundamental components of persuasive essays and commentaries, students work to cultivate greater variety and precision in their own writing. In addition to extensive written work, students also respond orally to the texts in class discussions, recitations, and formal presentations. Starting with James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, students examine the interplay between author and character in texts including Shakespeare’s Othello, Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, Annie Proulx’s story “Brokeback Mountain” and its film adaptation, short stories by Haruki Murakami, and poetry by Gwendolyn Brooks. Students analyze narrative techniques to explore how authors introduce readers to characters as far-ranging as a closeted Wyoming cowboys, disaffected boys at a pool hall, a 17th-Century Venetian Moor, Roy Cohn, and a little green monster.

In this course, students will read and discuss texts by queer writers, beginning with postwar American literature and moving into the modern era. Students will explore topics such as representation and visibility, the building of queer identity and community, group and individual resistance, the queer response to the AIDS crisis, and intersectionality, among others. Representative authors may include Audre Lorde, James Baldwin, Leslie Feinberg, Danez Smith, Mark Doty, Gretchen Felker-Martin, Saeed Jones, Mary Oliver, Bryan Washington, and others.

To some extent, literature is always about travel -- an imaginative journey into an experience or consciousness different from one's own. This course, however, will feature narratives about literal geographical travel, as well as how we are both shaped and transformed by the experience of leaving familiar ground. A sense of place is crucial to a sense of self: as American poet Wendell Berry noted, "If you don’t know where you are, you don’t know who you are." Texts such as Ryszard Kapuscinski's "The Shadow of the Sun," Eric Weiner's "The Geography of Bliss," and Bill Bryson's "In a Sunburned Country" will form the basis of our explorations, which will also invite students to write creatively about their travels (near and far) and become better observers of their own environments. We will also examine familiar tropes in travel literature, including "stranger in a strange land," "homecoming," and "exile."

The tenth grade course in Literature of the Americas gives students an overview and understanding of some of the major themes and forms of literature from the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Students read literary works in a range of genres to explore themes including the individual in society, dreams and realities, the price of freedom, and the American story. In the process, as in the ninth grade course, the goal of the curriculum is to teach close, analytical reading of a text and its implications, and to guide students towards becoming critical thinkers and articulate writers and speakers. Students work on their own writing, both analytical and imaginative, and on gaining greater mastery of correct and effective grammar, syntax, and vocabulary. Authors studied may include: Mira Jacob, Cathy Park Hong, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tennessee Williams, Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Maya Angelou, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and others

Tom Wolfe once wrote, “One belongs to New York instantly. One belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years.” In this course, we will examine literature written by and about New Yorkers. What has attracted people to this city? How has it been represented in literature? And what does New York signify today? Texts may include Walt Whitman’s poetry, James Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, Nella Larsen’s Passing, E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime, Toni Morrison’s Jazz, Langston Hughes’ poetry, and Phillip Lopate’s Writing New York: A Literary Anthology.

This course will explore classic texts and their equally canonized modern interpretations. Readings of these texts will reveal the social mores of the societies that created them and the dramatic ways that society’s concerns have changed or stayed the same. This class will also explore how contemporary authors borrow and build on the craft stylings of their source text. It will also examine how the resulting work of art challenges or writes back to the original. Themes discussed may include decolonization and assimilation, patriarchies and feminist response, as well as the intersections of class and race. Texts may include The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka and Blackass by A. Igoni Barrett, Howard’s End by E.M. Forster and On Beauty by Zadie Smith, King Lear by William Shakespeare and A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley, or Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë and The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys.

Fairy tales are not just for children: viewed critically, they can be seen as repositories of rich psychological and cultural wisdom. In The Uses of Enchantment, Bruno Bettelheim remarked that “The child intuitively comprehends that although these stories are unreal, they are not untrue.” In addition to the powerful and at times terrifying tales of the Brothers Grimm, this course we will examine rich and profound narratives such as the Slavic legend of Baba Yaga, the loathsome but wise crone; the Scandinavian myth of Tatterhood, with its beautiful and ugly twins; and “La Loba” and “The Handless Maiden,” works chronicled by mestizo-Latina cantadora Clarissa Pinkola Estes in her Women Who Run with the Wolves. Along the way, we will also delve into several examples of indigenous folklore, with a particular focus on animal tales from Kenya, Tanzania, and South Africa as well as Trickster tales of the Native American tradition. This cross-cultural offering will combine genre studies, anthropology, and creative writing to uncover the mythic patterns uniting disparate communities across time.

In this course, we will investigate major trends in modern drama in the west from the late nineteenth century to today, examining plays from canonical authors as well as authors historically excluded due to race and/or gender. We will investigate the following questions: how did theater-makers respond to increasingly tumultuous historical contexts? What connections can be made between artistic and scientific innovation? What role does theater play in the development of new world orders? How do these plays continue to inform theatrical and literary practices decades later through revivals and new adaptations? Authors may include: George L. Aiken, Samuel Beckett, Bertolt Brecht, Anton Chekhov, Caryl Churchill, Larissa FastHorse, Susan Glaspell, Angelina Weld Grimké, Lorraine Hansberry, Henrik Ibsen, Suzan-Lori Parks, Jackie Sibbiles Drury, August Strindberg, Sophie Treadwell, and George C. Wolfe.

In this course, we will investigate major trends in modern drama in the west from the late nineteenth century to today, examining plays from canonical authors as well as authors historically excluded due to race and/or gender. We will investigate the following questions: how did theater-makers respond to increasingly tumultuous historical contexts? What connections can be made between artistic and scientific innovation? What role does theater play in the development of new world orders? How do these plays continue to inform theatrical and literary practices decades later through revivals and new adaptations? Authors may include: George L. Aiken, Samuel Beckett, Bertolt Brecht, Anton Chekhov, Caryl Churchill, Larissa FastHorse, Susan Glaspell, Angelina Weld Grimké, Lorraine Hansberry, Henrik Ibsen, Suzan-Lori Parks, Jackie Sibbiles Drury, August Strindberg, Sophie Treadwell, and George C. Wolfe.

Students admitted to the Senior Seminar in Literature will have the opportunity to take a comparative approach to literature that emphasizes the practice of independent inquiry. Each student will commit to an area of interest and select the literary texts (and secondary sources) they will read to complete a major thesis paper of approximately 25 pages by the end of the first semester. Material in related fields, such as history, science, philosophy, religion, the arts, and languages may also inform their work. Through instruction, discussion, peer review, research, and literary analysis, students will wrestle with critical topics and themes, exploring the many perspectives from which literature may be read, understood, and appreciated. In the second semester, senior seminar students take a literature elective course of their choice, while attending a weekly colloquium on Lab Day, in which they revise and refine their papers and prepare for a public presentation of their work in May. Students interested in this opportunity must submit an application, including a statement of purpose and project proposal, in the spring of their junior year. Each student’s application will be reviewed by the department, with admission to the program determined on the basis of a student’s application, their proven ability to carry out independent work and meet deadlines, and their past performance in literature courses. Enrollment is by permission of the department.

Short stories are often seen as a poor or distant relative of the novel. Writers and readers often talk about the short story in comparison to the novel. But what is a short story? When did it come about? How can we see it as having its own distinct form? In this course, students will read a myriad of short stories and study their structures to understand the architecture of this form. Students will write their own short stories and write about short stories studied in this course. Writers may include: Amy Hempel, ZZ Packer, Jhumpa Lahiri, Zadie Smith, Miranda July, J.D. Salinger, Amy Tan and Lydia Davis.

This reading and writing intensive course will expose students to some of the most alluring late twentieth and early twenty-first century authors from around the world and will look at how ordinary lives are lived amidst the tragedy and turmoil of modern times. This spring semester course follows nicely from the fall semester course titled Delusion and Dissolution in Modern World Fiction, but the two can be taken separately. Likely texts: Tayeb Salih, “The Wedding of Zein” & two other stories (Soudan) Bohumil Hrabal, Too Loud a Solitude (Czech Republic) Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The Thing Around Your Neck (selections) Naguib Mahfouz's The Day the Leader Was Killed (Egypt) Isabel Allende's The Stories of Eva Luna (Chile) (selections) Yiyun Li's A Thousand Years of Good Prayers (China) (selections) Yuri Herrera, Signs Preceding the End of the World (Mexico)

This course examines literary utopias -- imagined communities that seek to create some version of a 'perfect world' -- and their nightmare opposites, dystopias, which depict a society or world in ruin. Texts may include Thomas More’s sixteenth century work Utopia, George Orwell’s 1984, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and Ursula LeGuin’s The Dispossessed. We will also consider utopian and dystopian film narratives in popular movies like Brazil, The Matrix, Pleasantville, Children of Men, and The Hunger Games. The course will conclude with a research paper on real-life utopian experiments -- some of which succeeded, many of which went dreadfully wrong -- as a way of examining why the utopian impulse continues to fascinate us as a species, and why in pursuing this impulse, we seem to keep making the same mistakes over and over.

The ninth grade World Literature course provides students with exposure to and knowledge of classic texts from around the world, as well as the background and skills needed to engage thoughtfully, joyfully, and fruitfully with these seminal works. Students consider three overarching themes during the year: heroes and societal values, who we become in the face of suffering and death, and how we manage and mangle the vicissitudes of love and loss. In the process, the goal of the curriculum is to teach close, analytical reading, and to guide students towards becoming critical thinkers and compelling writers and speakers. Students are taught the basics of good, effective writing, both analytical and creative, and on gaining mastery of correct and effective grammar, syntax, and vocabulary. Texts may include (in whole or in part) Gassire’s Lute, Sunjata, Beowulf, the Ramayana, Monkey King: A Journey to the West, The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Book of Job, Gilgamesh, The Burial at Thebes, Othello, Macbeth, Twelfth Night, Things Fall Apart, The Canterbury Tales, Layli and Majnun, and a selection of poetry.

In this course, we will explore the ways writers seek inspiration from figures and events from the “real world” in order to create their own literary worlds that serve an artistic purpose. We will start with texts that may include Tim O’Brien’s semi-autobiographical Vietnam story collection, The Things They Carried; Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir, Fun Home; Paula Vogel’s play Indecent, based on the controversy-plagued production of a Yiddish play in Europe and the US; and poems by Wendy Rose, Elizabeth Alexander, and Carol Ann Duffy. The second half of the course will explore Toni Morrison’s “historical magical realist” novel, Beloved. By investigating the “true stories” depicted in these works, we will discover the larger commentaries they deliver about what it means when we say something is “true.”

In this course we will wallow in words, inspect images, and discover new devices as we read poems from ancient to modern times, across the globe, and in its various forms. We will gain a greater understanding of technique as we encounter a fascinating variety of poetry, including but not limited to ancient Chinese poetry, love poetry since ancient times, poems about poetry, religious poetry, romantic poetry, modernist poetry, fixed form poetry, poems about childhood and fathers, and/or poems about whatever you want and/or by your favorites poets. We will also do a little poetry writing of our own. If you like language and the play of words and images, this is the course for you.

Psychoanalytic criticism is based on the premise that the unconscious self – its desires, anxieties, neuroses, conflicts, and traumas – is a “text” to be read just like any other literary text.  Through the analysis of dreams, myths, fairy tales, and works of fiction, we come to recognize that these are all subconscious expressions of the psyche’s desire for wholeness.  Hence, to study literature through this lens is to study the innermost recesses of the subconscious mind – both of the author and of her literary characters, as well as of ourselves.

Theories explored in this course will include Freud’s tripartite structure of the unconscious, as well as his “repetition compulsion”; Carl Jung’s investigation of the human “shadow” as well as of the “collective unconscious”; John Bowlby’s “attachment theory,” which traces adult behavior in relationships back to childhood emotions; and D.W. Winnicott’s “transitional objects,” which mediate a child’s growth from one stage of development to another.  To this end, we will be exploring psychologically rich texts such as Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye.

Students will discover their writing voices, expand their knowledge of contemporary fiction and poetry, read a variety of writers from different periods and backgrounds, learn to respond to that work as a writer rather than as a critic, and create a portfolio of their own creative work. The course will be split between craft classes and workshops. In craft classes, students will read and respond to work in a variety of genres. Reading mostly contemporary poets and fiction writers, and the more canonical writers who influenced them, students will plot the progressions and offshoots of writing over the last seventy-five years. In workshops, students will read and respond to each other’s work in a constructive and positive manner. Before each class, students will prepare a response to each fellow writer’s work, giving it to each writer after the piece has been ‘workshopped’ in the class.

Reading contemporary essays by American authors from Hanif Abdurraqib to Eula Biss, James Baldwin to David Foster Wallace, Edna Lewis to Joan Didion, students will analyze and critique texts while making connections between them to discover and discuss what makes them uniquely American. Students will also write and revise essays of their own throughout the semester, creating an artistic lineage and adding to the growing and diversifying canon of Cultural Criticism in the American Essay.

This reading and writing intensive course will expose students to some of the most iconic early twentieth century authors from around the world and will feature slightly lost or deluded characters adrift somewhere between past and present, romance and reality, power and puniness, not to mention the sublime and the ridiculous.

Likely Texts:

Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Machado de Assis, The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas (Brazil)

Lu Xun “Stories” (China)

Natsume Soseki, Sanshiro (Japan)

Ousmane Sembene, Xala (Senegal)

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, “No One Writes to the Colonel”

Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (England)

Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome (United States)

Unrestrained by the bounds of the physical world, speculative fiction offers many lenses that realistic fiction cannot. But, like realistic fiction, it can also grapple with new technologies, as in Frankenstein or Black Mirror, it can cast a mirror on society, as in Slaughterhouse Five or Lovecraft Country, and it can echo our own emotions and pasts, as in Beloved or The Shining. This agility and range make it a rich genre to dive into again and again. In this course, students will read several pieces of speculative fiction from a range of centuries and authors, and the class will culminate in a creative work of their own, in the form of a story, podcast, map, short film, song cycle, animation, etc . . . This course is opened to Grades 10, 11, & 12 Texts Beowulf --trans. Maria Headley Ring Shout -- P. Djeli Clark Slaughterhouse Five --Kurt Vonnegut The Lesson --Caldwell Turnbull Embassytown --China Mieville Folding Beijing --Hao Jingfang trans. Ken Liu Station Eleven --Emily St. John Mandel

Good criticism is a burden of love, and the job of a critic is not simply to judge and evaluate, but to expand the work and deepen the relationship between that work and its audience. Whether it be on Beethoven’s Ode to Joy or Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly, Rashomon or Black Panther, successful criticism positions its subject in its cultural and historical moment with an eye to its future relevance. Reading contemporary criticism and reviews of films, albums, and television shows by writers from Hanif Abdurraqib to Eve Ewing to Zadie Smith, students will also write multiple drafts multiple essays on a film, album, or TV show and will supplement these major essays with weekly responses to both art and criticism. 

Texts:

Why Black Panther is a Defining Moment for America --Carvell Wallace 

Windows on the Wall --Zadie Smith 

On Seatbelts & Sunsets --Hanif Abdurraqib 

Frank Ocean, Harper Lee, and the Reclusive Artist --Eve Ewing 

Two recent movies and two recent albums that will fluctuate from year to year

Multiple reviews and essays about each of these texts