CWR 206 Creative Writing
Professor: Laura Neuman
Course Meetings: Summer Session II
Our class will meet online for synchronous meetings on Tuesdays (5:30-7:30 PM) and for shorter meetings (6-7:30 PM) on 3 Thursdays (see the schedule below). The rest of the work will be asynchronous time (writing, reading, and responding to peer work), or project work that you can schedule at your convenience (for instance, meeting with a small group of students for collaborative writing activities). I will open class a half hour early (at 5 on Tuesdays and 5:30 on Thursdays) for individual questions, and I’ll reserve the last 15 minutes of class for individual questions, in addition to offering office hours (TBA).
Our meeting pattern online will be: Tues June 11 (5:30-7:30 PM); Thurs June 13 (6-7:30 PM); Tues June 18 (5:30-7:30 PM); Thurs June 20 (6-7:30 PM); Tues June 25 (5:30-7:30 PM); Thurs June 27 (6-7:30 PM); Tues July 2 (5:30-7:30 PM); Tues July 9 (5:30-7:30 PM)
Students will write and revise their own fiction and poetry as well as discuss the writing of both published writers and their classmates. The course emphasizes the connection between thoughtful reading and literary writing. Required foundation course for Creative Writing minors and an elective in the English major.
LIT 270 Classical Greek Tragedy in Modern Greece- Faculty-led Study Abroad Opportunity
Professors: Lincoln Konkle and Glenn Steinberg
Meeting: Travel Dates May 18-June 5, 2024
Visit the Acropolis, the Areopagus, the Agora, the National Archeological Museum, the Kerameikos, Mycenae, Delphi, Olympia, Epidaurus, and Corinth. Visit some of the public spaces that defined civic life and values for the
ancient Athenians, learn about some of the civic issues that underlay the plays, and learn about symbolism of ancient Athenian art and architecture.
Visit the CEG Website for details: https://studyabroad.tcnj.edu/index.cfm?FuseAction=Programs.ViewProgramAngular&id=46430
LIT 316/WGS 376 Global Women Writers
Professor: Laura Neuman
Course Meetings: Summer Session III
Our class will meet online for synchronous meetings on Tuesdays (5:30-7:30 PM) and for shorter meetings (6-7:30 PM) on 2 Thursdays (see the schedule below). The rest of the work will be asynchronous time (writing, reading, and responding to peer work), or project work that you can schedule at your convenience (for instance, meeting with a small group of students to plan a presentation or discuss the week’s reading). I will open class a half hour early (at 5 on Tuesdays and 5:30 on Thursdays) for individual questions, and I’ll reserve the last 15 minutes of class for individual questions, in addition to offering office hours (TBA).
Our meeting pattern will be: Tuesday 7/16 (5:30-7:30 PM); Thursday 7/18 (6-7:30 PM); Tuesday 7/23 (5:30-7:30 PM); Thursday 7/25 (6-7:30 PM); Tuesday 7/30 (5:30-7:30 PM); Tuesday 8/6 (5:30-7:30 PM); Tuesday 8/13 (5:30-7:30 PM)
This course will explore various literatures from around the world, encouraging students to examine the politics of gender, culture, and nation as well as the intersections of those systems of power. In exploring everything from arranged marriages to women in war, Global Women Writers will provide students — especially those students who have spent much of their lives within the borders of the U.S. — with one of the most challenging and rewarding courses of their college career. Common themes include feminist politics, post- and neo-colonialisms, reproductive rights, translation, globalization, and activism.
LIT 317/WGS 317/ENGL 670 The Witch in Literature
Professor: Michele Tarter
Course Meetings: Summer Session I (Maymester)
Summer Session I: May 20-June 7, 2024
Synchronous online classes on Monday May 20, Tuesday May 28, and Thursday June 6 @ 10AM-1PM. (all other days are asynchronous learning)
This interdisciplinary course will study witches across many cultures and centuries. We will read fairy tales, short stories, plays, novels, YA children’s literature, legal treatises and court records–all with witches in them. Ultimately, we will analyze the literary cultures which have persisted in creating, recreating, and reviving this timeless, powerful, and equally feared character throughout the ages.
This course is open to ALL students of all majors and fulfills the following requirements: Core Curriculum Gender requirement; Religious Studies Minor elective; Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies elective; English elective. It is also open to Graduate students (enrolled as ENGL 670).
LIT/AAS 338/HGS 270: African Literature: Human Rights and Justice in African Literature
Professor: Mindi McMann
Summer Session I: Asynchronous Course
This course explores how African texts have dealt with the thorny task of defining terms like “human,” “rights,” and “justice,” and how these texts help to articulate the ways in which specific communities deal with crises and their aftermaths. We will be situating narratives from Nigerian, Rwandan, and South African traditions, among others within the 20th-century concept of human rights, discourses of postcolonial thought, and globalization. Throughout the course, we will be considering questions such as: How do these narratives de-center or align with European discourses of human rights? What effect does being a postcolonial state have on how human rights, violence, and agency are narrated? What role do literature, film, and political essays play in resisting crises such as apartheid, civil war, and genocide?
LIT 388 Contemporary Literature
Professor: Andrew Erkkila
Course Meetings: Summer Session III
The lecture portion of this class will be a combination of active online synchronous meetings, and asynchronous activities. Students will engage in online discussions twice a week. Synchronous meetings: 11am-1:45pm July 15,16,18, 22, 25, 29,30 and August 1, 5, 8, 12,15.
Why are so many “hip” and best-selling literary novels treated as a kind of self-improvement or self-help stand-in? From how-to “guides” about getting filthy rich to zombie survival manifestos, this course will examine contemporary literature’s obsession with “living your best life” even as its characters face the apocalypse.
LIT 499 Seminar in Research and Theory: Dystopian Literature
Professor: Jean Graham
Course Meetings: This is an 8 week course that meets during Summer Session I and II (May 20-July 11)
Department Consent Required for Enrollment. If interested, please email Dr. Steele at steele@tcnj.edu on why this course is a good fit for your schedule.
This course will meet in the blended learning format. Monday & Tuesday meetings will be online and Thursday meetings in person 2-3:20pm.
This seminar focuses on dystopian literature, especially those dystopian novels frequently taught at the secondary level. As dystopian literature critiques society, this focus will enable us to concentrate on gender and other cultural approaches to literature.
** This is an 8 week course spanning over the Maymester Session I and Session II
Graduate Level Courses:
ENGL 670-01 Studies in Literature: C.S. Lewis
Professor: Steele
Course Meetings: Summer Session II
Monday, Tuesday, Thursday Online Synchronous 5-7:30pm
C. S. Lewis occupies the popular imagination as a writer of children’s fiction, particularly The Chronicles of Narnia. Lewis, however, thought of himself as a poet and as a Christian apologist. In this course, students will read Lewis’s scholarship that explores notions of the “literary experience” as well as particular literary forms, especially allegory, and read the majority of the Chronicles of Narnia, as well as two of Lewis’s works for adults. The seminar will focus on the contrasts between these two modes of writing and explore the ways in which Lewis’s work from the 1950s sets a template for other literature written for children later in the 20th and 21st century.
ENGL 670-02 Studies in Literature: Contemporary African American Life Writing
Professor: Abdur-Rahman
Course Meetings: Summer Session III
Mondays, 5:00-7:45 PM: Asynchronous – time to work on reading, writing. Tuesdays, 5:00-7:45 PM: Synchronous (online meeting), Thursdays, 5:00-7:45 PM (online meeting). No in-person meetings on campus.
This five week graduate course will focus on African American life writing from the 1990s to the present. Central to the course will be analysis of the myriad strategies and rhetorical techniques that writers use to construct a narrative of their lives. We will also read theoretical works within the field of autobiography studies to consider the approaches and terms that literary scholars use to read autobiographical writing. Books to be considered include Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming (2014), Jesymn Ward’s Men We Reaped (2013) and James Spooner’s The High Desert: Black. Punk. Nowhere (2022).
ENGL 670-03 Studies in Literature: The Witch in Literature
Professor: Tarter
Course Meetings: Summer Session I: May 20-June 7, 2024
Synchronous online classes on Monday May 20, Tuesday May 28, and Thursday June 6 @ 10AM-1PM. (all other days are asynchronous learning)
This interdisciplinary course will study witches across many cultures and centuries. We will read fairy tales, short stories, plays, novels, YA children’s literature, legal treatises and court records–all with witches in them. Ultimately, we will analyze the literary cultures which have persisted in creating, recreating, and reviving this timeless, powerful, and equally feared character throughout the ages.