ENGLISH 169D: Contemporary Asian American Stories (ASNAMST 169D)
This course will examine the aesthetics and politics of contemporary Asian American storytellers, with an emphasis on work produced within the past five years. We will investigate the pressures historically placed on Asian Americans to tell a certain kind of story e.g. the immigrant story in a realist mode and the ways writers have found to surprise, question, and innovate, moving beyond those boundaries to explore issues of race, sexuality, science, memory, citizenship, and belonging. Course materials will consist of novels, short stories, graphic narrative, and film, and may include work by Ocean Vuong, Mira Jacobs, Gish Jen, Charles Yu, and Adrian Tomine, as well as Lulu Wangs 2019 film The Farewell. This seminar will feature both analytical and creative components, and students will be encouraged to produce both kinds of responses to the material.
Last offered: Spring 2025
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
ENGLISH 170: Spatial Concepts in African Literature (AFRICAAM 122)
Using literature and film, this course will explore various spatial concepts in African literature from a variety of perspectives. The focus will be thematic rather than chronological, but an attempt will also be made to trace the ways in which the focus on spatial concepts allow us to understand these literatures differently. Concepts will include place, nature, cities, chronotopes, spatial traversal, and means of locomotion, among others. Writers to be looked at will include Chinua Achebe, Athol Fugard, Tayeb Salih, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Walter Moseley, Toni Morrison, and Jesmyn Ward, among others.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Quayson, A. (PI)
ENGLISH 172: Reading Games and Playing Literature: Intro to Literary Game Studies
A course in methods, essential questions, and theories for game studies within a literary-critical context. Course texts will include literature about games, literature that can be played as a game, games about literature, and games structured as narratives. Games will include collaborative games, computer games, and board/card games. All computer games will have options for a range of possible devices, including those in the library. Students with all skill levels in gaming are encouraged to enroll.
Last offered: Winter 2025
| Units: 3-5
ENGLISH 173: Medieval Dreams and Visions
What did you dream about last night? This course examines the medieval dream vision: poetic fictions that take place within the dreaming mind, set in impossible landscapes and populated by strange creatures. We will explore what the dream vision can teach us about the human mind, the nature of the imagination, and the relationship between fiction and lived experience. We will also consider whether this medieval genre anticipates the conventions of modern science fiction and fantasy.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Hinojosa, B. (PI)
ENGLISH 174: The Artist's Book in Theory and Practice
This course will introduce students to the artist's book, teaching them about the production of handmade books through visits to Special Collections and the Stanford Community Print Shop. During class time, students will discuss literary and theoretical texts, read artists' books housed in the Gunst Collection, and learn printing, binding, and papermaking techniques. By the end of the course, students will complete one substantial piece of analytical writing and one artistic book project of their own design.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
Instructors:
Bailey, C. (PI)
ENGLISH 175: Chaucer's Canterbury Tales
Embark on an engaging journey through medieval literature with Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales," along with the works of Marie de France and Boethius. This course offers a vibrant exploration of storytelling, featuring interactive discussions, multimedia resources, and creative projects. Discover the rich tapestry of medieval thought, culture, and philosophy through a diverse range of texts. Dive into the world of knights, love, betrayal, and philosophical quests, making connections to contemporary issues. Ideal for anyone interested in the roots of modern literature and storytelling and the fascinating world of medieval society.
Last offered: Winter 2024
| Units: 3-5
ENGLISH 176: The Meaning of Newness: Traditions of British Modernism
A century on, this course revisits Ezra Pound's imperative - "Make It New" - to inquire into how British modernists inherited, invigorated, and mythologized the new. Through works by Woolf, Joyce, Eliot, Mansfield, Orwell, and Auden, we trace British modernism's literary ancestry, moment, and legacy. Was its self-pronounced newness a fiction or a reality, a symbolic fracture or a historical recursion? What literary pasts had to be renamed or disavowed for the new to emerge? What new regimes and orders did modernism beget? Note: Students who took
ENGLISH 5NA should not enroll in this course due to significant overlap in content.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4
Instructors:
Liu, T. (PI)
ENGLISH 177: Contemporary Novel in U.S. Perspective (AMSTUD 177)
This course investigates a selection of novels from 2001 to the present, either authored in the United States or strongly and meaningfully received here by critics and gatekeepers. In the absence of a fixed academic canon or acknowledged tradition of exemplary works, this course includes evaluation as one of its central enterprises. Students help to make arguments for which works matter and why. Students consider topics including the demotion of the novel to a minor art form, competition from the image, transformations of celebrity culture (in literature and outside it), relevance or irrelevance of the digital age, aftermaths of the modernist and postmodernist project, eccentricity and marginality, race and gender politics in putatively post-feminist, post-racial,and post-political vantage, and problems of meaning in rich societies oriented to risk, probability, economization, health, consumption, comfort, and recognition or representation (rather than action or event). Novels and short stories may be supplemented by philosophical and sociological visions of the contemporary.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
Instructors:
Greif, M. (PI)
ENGLISH 177B: Contemporary American Short Stories (AMSTUD 177B)
An exploration of the power and diversity of the American short story ranging from the 1970s to the present day. By examining short stories historically, critically, and above all as art objects, students will learn how to read, interpret, critique, and enjoy short stories as social, political, and humanist documents. Students will learn techniques to craft their own short stories and their own critical essays in a course that combines creative practice and the art of critical appreciation.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
Instructors:
Jones, G. (PI)
;
Trahan, J. (PI)
ENGLISH 178: 19th-Century Popular Fiction: Austen, Dickens, Stoker
Do you like detective stories, romances, historical fiction, or Gothic tales? Although some of these genres predate the 1800s, famous examples of each of them had major commercial success in the nineteenth century. In this course, we'll begin with some Sherlock Holmes stories to discuss what a genre is, and then as we encounter a quintessential marriage plot in Austen's Pride and Prejudice, a story of love and death set during the French Revolution in Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, and the most famous vampire of all in Stoker's Dracula, we'll pick the concept of genre apart. Do texts ever fit neatly into a single genre? How are individual romances, historical novels, and Gothic stories constructed? How can genre show us what's unique about a given text, not just what's familiar? And why do different genres become popular at different historical moments? This course is for anyone interested in popular fiction who would like to explore its history. Fiction writers are especially encouraged to sign up; through critical and creative assignments, a major goal of the course is to explore the relevance of nineteenth-century novels and genre theory to your own reading and writing practices today.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Monaco, J. (PI)