1 - 10 of 126 results for: ENGLISH

For undergraduates in English, the DLCL, and East Asian literatures interested in the novel and the events sponsored by the Center for the Study of the Novel (CSN) and to prepare them to attend CSN events with some understanding of the material presented. Each CSN event¿the New Book Events, the Ian Watt Lecture on the History and/or Theory of the Novel, and the Center's annual conference¿will either be preceded or followed by a colloquium, led by a member of the graduate student staff. In these colloquia, students will engage with the material under discussion, usually written by the speaker(s) on whose work the events are based. Participation at 75% of events and colloquia is mandatory for course credit. Precirculated readings will be made available for all colloquia preceding an event, and often for those held after the event, to enable students to develop a familiarity with issues pertaining to the theoretical and historical study of the novel.

Primary focus on giving students a skill set to tap into their own creativity. Opportunities for students to explore their creative strengths, develop a vocabulary with which to discuss their own creativity, and experiment with the craft and adventure of their own writing. Students will come out of the course strengthened in their ability to identify and pursue their own creative interests.nn

"Of the many definitions of a story, the simplest may be this: it is a piece of writing that makes the reader want to find out what happens next. Good writers, it is often said, have the ability to make you keep on reading them whether you want to or not¿the milk boils over, the subway stop is missed." - Bill Buford, former fiction editor of The New YorkernThis course will introduce students to an assortment of short stories by past and contemporary masters, from Ernest Hemingway to ZZ Packer. We will explore the basic elements of fiction writing, including story structure, point of view, dialogue, and exposition, always keeping in mind the overarching goal of trying to get the reader to turn the page in anticipation. Some summer reading and participation in an online blog will prepare us for discussions we'll have together when the class begins. The course will indeed be "intensive," as we will write a complete draft of a short story in the first week and then distribute these stories for feedback sessions in the second week. Along the way, we'll write additional short exercises to stimulate our imaginations and to practice elements of craft. Field trips will include visits to some of the vibrant literary hotspots in San Francisco as well as a conversation with Stephen Elliott, editor of The Rumpus and a writer and member of the Writer's Grotto collective.

Recently, The New York Times and the National Geographic have hailed the "new face of America" as young, global, and hybrid. The NY Times gave this demographic a name: Generation E.A. (Ethnically Ambiguous). Our course examines the political and aesthetic implications of Generation E.A., and the hot new vogue for all things mixed. Galvanized by the 2000 census with its "mark one or more" (MOOM) racial option, dozens of organizations, websites, affinity and advocacy groups, modeling and casting agencies, television pilots, magazines, and journals--all focused on multi-racial/multi-cultural experiences--have emerged in the last few years. We will analyze representations of mixed race and multiculturalism in law, literature, history, art, performance, film, comedy, and popular culture. These cultural and legal events are changing the way we talk and think about race. nImportantly, our seminar also broadens this discussion beyond race, exploring how crossings of the color-line so often intersect with other aspects of experience related to gender, religion, culture, or class.nField trips, films, communal lunches, and interactive assignments help us explore the current controversies over mixed-race identification and, more generally, the expressive and political possibilities for representing complex identities. Requirements include three two- to three-page analytical writing assignments, a presentation that can include an optional artistic or media component, and a final group-designed project. nIf you are a citizen of the 21st century, this class is for and about you. Sophomore College Course: Application required, due noon, April 7, 2015. Apply at http://soco.stanford.edu.

(English majors and others taking 5 units, register for ENGLISH 123 or AMSTUD 150). A survey of early American writings, including sermons, poetry, captivity and slave narratives, essays, autobiography, and fiction, from the colonial era to the eve of the Civil War.

(English majors and others taking 5 units, register for 142D.) Why do so many contemporary writers create fictions that contend with the past by rewriting, revising, or otherwise 'talking back' to their literary forebears? Is everything intertextual or are post-WW II experiments in intertextuality characteristic of historical, cultural, and geopolitical changes particular to the twentieth century? How does intertextuality inform narrative voice, constructions of authorship, character portrayal, political and aesthetic interpretation, and contemporary claims to - or critiques of - fame and canonization? Students will be encouraged to make comparative connections with the contemporary media scene, while comparing EM Forster and Zadie Smith; Virginia Woolf and Michael Cunningham; George Orwell and Margaret Atwood; Charotte Bronte and Jean Rhys; Oscar Wilde and Tom Stoppard.

(English majors and others taking 5 units should register for 144B). How do contemporary British novelists represent the dramatic changes in culture, class, landscape, economy, gender, race, and national identity that followed the allied victory in the Second World War (1939-1945) when Britain is said to have `won the war but lost the empire'? Focusing on writers born in the aftermath of the war, and the successive generation, this course asks what political, cultural, and literary concerns shape historical consciousness in novels by Zadie Smith, Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro, Jeanette Winterson, Hanif Kureishi, Julian Barnes Flaubert's, and Ali Smith.

Stanford has the most successful student-athlete program in the country (maybe ever) and athletics are an enormously important aspect of Stanford¿s student culture. This course looks in depth at sports in American culture. Through film, essays, fiction, poetry and other media, we will explore an array of topics including representations of the athlete, violence, beauty, the mass media, ethics, college sports, race and gender.

Poetry and painting have often been called the "sister arts". Why? Sometimes a poem or a painting stands out to us, asking that we stay with it, that we remember it, although we cannot exactly say why. Poems have a way of making pictures in the mind, and paintings turn "rhymes" amid the people, places, and things they portray. Each is a concentrated world, inviting an exhilarating closeness of response: why does this line come first? Why does the artist include that detail? Who knows but that as we write and talk about these poems and pictures we will be doing what John Keats said a painter does: that is, arriving at a "trembling delicate and snail-horn perception of Beauty." Each week explore the kinship between a different pair of painter and poet and also focuses on a particular problem or method of interpretation. Some of the artist/poet combinations we will consider: Shakespeare and Caravaggio; Jorie Graham and (the photographer) Henri Cartier-Bresson; Alexander Pope and Thomas Gainsborough; William Wordsworth and Caspar David Friedrich; Christina Rossetti and Mary Cassatt; Walt Whitman and Thomas Eakins; Thomas Hardy and Edward Hopper.