Descriptions of Most Recently Taught Courses
WRIT 100: Basic Writing and Reading
In this foundational course, students achieve fluency in writing by working on three elements: identifying their audience, organizing ideas into cogent, well-developed paragraphs, and addressing sentence-level errors for clarity and succinctness. As the twenty-first century turns writing into a ubiquitous task, students transfer these skills, all at once or one at a time, to their different writings—undoubtedly to their academic assignments but also to their online travel blogs, Facebook posts, online reviews, and general online commentaries. Students draw from personal experience to develop their essays. In addition to our readings, everyday objects function as inspirational tools for writing. Receiving and providing feedback is an integral part of the course, which helps students understand writing as a process.
WRIT 110: Basic Writing and Reading for International Students
Basic Writing and Reading prepares international students for the demands of academic writing. We read articles and write essays that help students improve their overall language skills. Special emphasis is placed on vocabulary building and on self-editing syntactic and grammatical constructions. Receiving and providing feedback is an integral part of the course, which helps students understand writing as a process.
FCWR 111: Foundations of College Composition for International Students
For international students, succeeding at a U.S. university means becoming comfortable with the English language at a higher academic level. Academic reading and writing are therefore critical to pursuing a degree in any subject from an English-speaking university. In this foundational course, students gain the skills necessary to collaborate with their native English peers, so that their intelligence and acuteness find the level of language complexity they deserve. Students become better readers by learning to break down the components of high-level texts. They become better writers by improving their grammar and vocabulary, by learning the mechanics of essay organization and paragraph structure, and by exercising argumentative skills.
FCWR 161: Foundations of Research Writing for International Students
FCWR 161 combines writing about literature with the research paper. It exposes students to traditional forms of literature through the reading of short stories, plays, and poetry. Students become familiar with literary terminology, which assists them in discussing works of art. The readings chosen for the course offer students new ways of thinking about quintessential topics, such as gender roles, racial perspectives, human relations, and the human condition. A considerable part of the course is devoted to planning, organizing, and analyzing literary essays. Students work on structuring their well-conceived ideas in coherent and developed paragraphs. They practice critical-thinking skills by learning to untangle complex quotations and to integrate sources when supporting their arguments. Alongside reading and writing about literature, students write a research paper on a topic of their choice. Through this assignment, students learn to ask effective research questions. Additionally, they develop an understanding of the research process, including how to select, evaluate, and synthesize sources.
ICLT 304: Children’s Literature
Whether or not students were avid literature readers as children, they were surely exposed to some of the most beloved stories that have persisted through time. This course is designed to return them to those iconic stories, while also exposing them to children’s narratives that they may have missed. While we revisit perennial themes integral to the field of children’s literature—remembering the fantastic, the imaginary, and the nonsensical worlds of children’s fiction—we wear our analytical glasses to enhance our critical and creative skills. From classic children’s texts such as Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland,to modern books such as Neil Gaiman’s Coraline, we survey how children’s fiction has changed over time. We also engage in discussions that pertain to the field of children’s literature at large: What is considered children’s literature and what remains outside its purview? What defines a children’s text and who decides what children read? The course includes a visit to The Morgan Library.
ICLT 311: What Was Modernism?
The primary goal of this course is to expose students to the culture of modernism. Poetry, the art of the short story and the novel, as well as visual and cinematic art, help students navigate modernism’s trends and become familiar with its views about the subject’s relationship with society, culture, and the self.
ICLT: 327: Literature of Initiation
Literature of Initiation explores the theme of initiation in a variety of literary works. We study the basic patterns of rites of passage in cultures around the world and examine their impact in the past and present. Historical, anthropological, sociological, and psychological works are used to give context to these works. In addition to looking at initiation as a social phenomenon, or how the subject is initiated into a social environment, we investigate initiation as a textual practice. From this perspective, we examine the role of the reader as he/she is initiated into the fictional universe.
ICLT 333: Postmodern Fiction
This course on postmodernism examines late twentieth-century fiction that interrogates literary and societal conventions. We use narrative theory to explore how postmodern texts subvert notions of narrative structure, toy with ideas of character development, and resist interpretation. Students read self-reflexive texts by Margaret Atwood, Paul Auster, Julio Cortázar, Italo Calvino, and Marjane Satrapi. Discussions revolve around questions of personal identity, national identity and ideology, the narration of history, and the intersection between language and reality. The course includes a visit to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, where we draw connections between fiction and plastic art.
ICLT 300: Graph Memoirs: Telling One’s Life Story
The course examines some of the most acclaimed graphic novels in the twentieth and twenty-first century fiction. Students will learn how graphic novels work, that is, how readers synthesize visual and textual cues to decode meaning. Students will also explore the question of storytelling in sequential art form: how stories are crafted and what choices the artist makes in order to tell his/her story. This last question is particularly essential for graphic memoirs, which fuse reality with fiction. Through primary texts, such as Maus, One Hundred Demons, and Persepolis, students discuss central themes about the act of representation, the representation of history, and the construction of one’s identity through storytelling.