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This workshop teaches the tools to appreciate literary works and learn from accomplished writers from around the world. Students learn to interpret fiction, recognize underlying themes, decipher writing techniques, and analyze the human content of each story. Through readings, writing exercises, and class discussions, we examine works by such diverse...

Shakespeare’s The Tempest: Race, Ecology, and Literature Since its initial performance, The Tempest has become one of Shakespeare’s most widely read, widely performed, and widely critiqued plays. Named for the storm conjured by Prospero in its opening scene, The Tempest depicts wizardry, shipwreck, conspiracy, and slavery—all...

Reading the Qur’an: Law, Ethics, and Modernity “Read!” This is the very first word, the first injunction of the Qur’an. Although if one were to “read” (iqra) the Qur’an, as one reads any other book, you’d discover that the word appears, perhaps puzzlingly, in the 96th surah or “chapter” of the “book.” Traditionally understood...

Greek myth stands at the origin of “Western” thought about the nature of the cosmos, the divine, the heroic, and the human. The myths, so familiar to the modern reader yet so uncanny, present a cosmological order that answers to the deepest questions of human experience: What is the origin of everything—of the universe, the gods, and humans?...

Flannery O’Connor: Literature, Violence, and the American Gothic Over the course of her brief but prolific career, Flannery O’Connor carved out a sui generis place in American letters. An heir to the flowering of Southern literature after Faulkner in its most gothic form, O’Connor also took conscious aim at liberal intellectuals in...

Bringing a novel to life is a lengthy process of commitment. Students will learn the process of planning, moving the narrative forward, developing memorable characters, describing scenes, introducing elements of conflict and tension, and the techniques of novel writing. They will hone their writing style and perfect their literary voice, through rewriting,...

In this ten-week course, students read novels and learn to see and analyze the techniques, structure, and rhythm of long-form literary works, an essential skill in crafting compelling fiction of their own. This in-depth Reading Fiction class is for writers as well as avid readers. Through readings and class discussions, we examine works by such celebrated...

This online workshop in Arabic teaches the tools to appreciate literary works and learn from accomplished writers from around the world. Students learn to interpret fiction, recognize underlying themes, decipher writing techniques, and analyze the human content of each story. Through readings, writing exercises, and class discussions, we examine...

The Black Jacobins: Liberation, Political Theory, and the Haitian Revolution The Haitian Revolution marked not only the liberation of Haiti from French colonial rule, but also, in Cedric Robinson’s words, “the first slave society to achieve the permanent destruction of the slave system.” As with the Paris Commune later in the 19th century and...