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Required for American Studies majors. In this seminar we trace diverse and changing interpretations of American identity by exploring autobiographical, literary, and/or visual texts from the 18th through the 20th century in conversation with sociological, political, and historical accounts. *Fulfills Writing In the Major Requirement for American Studies Majors*

Was the Old English poem Beowulf intended to be read or heard? Was it primarily a literary text to be fastidiously poured over by theologically minded monks or was it a rousing tale for bards to declaim at courtly feasts, inflaming the passions of noble warriors swigging mead and chewing meat? Nobody knows. And yet this question lay at the heart of scholarly study of the poem for most of the 20th century because a definitive answer could dramatically change how we understand the poem. This course takes for granted the most important consensus to precipitate from these 20th century studies and debates: that the literary artifact which survives today can be nothing other than what it is¿that is, a poem written in a manuscript dating from about the year 1000 AD¿but also that this written poem was undoubtedly composed using formal techniques that must have originally been the tools of spontaneous oral versification. This existential hybridity will lead us into discussions of the poem¿s other various dualities which are inextricable from the question of its composition. Is the poem essentially Christian with pagan elements or essentially secular with Christian elements? Does it have a heroic or anti-heroic moral? Are its many frame narratives essential to the exposition of its themes or secondary to a consideration of the basic plot? In the pursuit of answers to these questions and more we will immerse ourselves in Beowulf by reading it in the original Old English, performing the poem in oral recitation, and studying the manuscript via online facsimile.nPrerequisite: Introduction to Old English Language and Literature. Taken together with its prerequisite, this course satisfies the undergraduate foreign language requirement.

How different disciplines approach topics and issues central to the study of ethnic and race relations in the U.S. and elsewhere. Lectures by senior faculty affiliated with CSRE. Discussions led by CSRE teaching fellows. Includes an optional Haas Center for Public Service certified Community Engaged Learning section. In accordance with Stanford virtual learning policies implemented for the Spring Quarter, all community engagement activities for this section will be conducted virtually. Please sign up for section 2 #33285 with Kendra, A. if you are interested in participating in virtual community engagement.

Since its invention in the early 19th century, photography has found countless documentary and artistic applications. As an art form, it is not only a medium of its own, but one which has entered into fascinating dialogue with other media, from film to dance. Perhaps nowhere has photography been put to such intriguing multimedia use as in fiction. Since the early 20thcentury, authors as diverse as Virginia Woolf, German novelist W.G. Sebald, and the contemporary Sri-Lankan-Canadian writer Michael Ondaatje, have deployed photographs throughout their texts. In this course, we will look at this literary tradition, exploring the way that text and image enter into a complex dance, at times enhancing narrative, at times troubling it. What can we make of these strange and wonderful hybrids? What place do images have in traditional narratives? What are the ethics of such work in an age in which the technological distinction between truth and fiction is becoming ever more blurred? As we read (and look), we will find ourselves not only drawn into the narratives themselves, but sent beyond them, into questions of history, gender, trauma, and memory.

This course will train students in applied methods for computationally analyzing texts for humanities research. The skills students will gain will include basic programming for textual analysis, applied statistical evaluation of results and the ability to present these results within a formal research paper or presentation. Students in the course will also learn the prerequisite steps of such an analysis including corpus selection and cleaning, metadata collection, and selecting and creating an appropriate visualization for the results.

This seminar offers a foundation in the interdisciplinary and dynamic field of queer theory, from its poststructuralist underpinnings to its contemporary debates. We will consider the historical and intellectual forces that led to the codification of queer theory as a distinct field and elaborate on the frameworks that queer thinkers have offered for articulating sex, gender, and embodiment, together with the pleasures and disciplines associated therewith. The class will situate academic interventions in LGBTQIA+ history and will consider contemporary applications of theory in pop culture, health, science, education, and politics. How do queer theorists do and undo identity, knowledge, and power? What do theorists mean by the word queer? What do queers mean by the word theory? As we read and unpack the citational heavy-hitters, including Wittig, Foucault, Sedgwick, Butler, Cohen, Muñoz, Berlant, and Stryker, students will develop a theoretical framework for producing their own queer cultural critique.

The internet age has coincided with the rise of new and reinvented modes of nonfiction writing by women online. The feminist first-person essay (what simply goes by ¿personal essay¿ in the business) has transformed internet writing formally, politically, and economically. The explosion in popularity and shareability of this nonfiction subgenre has generated a host of new media and catapulted a new coterie of women writers into prominence. Which authors have exerted the most influence upon this new subgenre, how does the emergence of the first-person essay by women signify a mainstreaming of feminist dialectic, and how has this emergence been received by both a popular readership and the media establishment?nThis course will investigate how the growth of the feminist first-person essay has promoted new publications and modes of publication. It will trace the genesis of the online personal essay genre from public journals like LiveJournal, Blogspot, and Tumblr, via its codification in online publications like The Toast, The Rumpus, Gawker, Jezebel, Guernica, The Hairpin, The Awl, and xoJane, to its eventual breakthrough into established newspapers, magazines, and traditionally published memoirs and essay collections. The course will include visits (or virtual drop-ins) from some central figures in this story, be they essayists, critics or editors.nWe will investigate questions like: What is the first person¿s effect, and affect, in interspersing an author¿s personal experience, and what feminist potential does it contain? How does the myth of journalistic ¿objectivity¿ conflict with the presentation of the first person, and how has this objectivity myth descended from patriarchal tropes of legitimation? What do the terms ¿confessional¿ and ¿silence-breaking¿ connote? How has social media simultaneously empowered these new modes of public feminist dialogue and also exposed feminist public intellectuals to alarming levels of harassment and abuse? How successfully has the personal essay subgenre acted in de-centering hegemonic identity structures including whiteness, class privilege, and heterosexuality? What role has the feminist first-person essay played in the emergence of heavily digitized political movements including Black Lives Matter and #MeToo?nWhat is ¿trauma porn¿, and how does it interface with the capitalistic structures of the first person essay economy; what problems arise when capitalism and confessionalism intersect?

The course will examine LGBT autobiographical writing from roughly 1900 to the present. The focus will be on how Gay and Lesbian writers have adapted to longstanding cultural disapproval and the stigmatizing, often bitter constraints of the "Closet." We will also examine what happens to the memoir form when social taboos against homosexuality (and/or transgenderism) come to be relaxed or overturned--as has been the case in many western societies in the new millennium.

Intermediate course in the craft and art of fiction writing. Students read a diverse range of short stories and novel excerpts, complete writing exercises, and submit a short and longer story to be workshopped and revised. Prerequisite: 90 or 91. NOTE: First priority to undergrads. Students must attend the first class meeting to retain their roster spot.