LIT 4673: Unruly Ghosts: Modern Irish Literature & Culture

4 advanced liberal arts credits

Ireland is haunted by its history as a colony and by the traumatic experiences of famine, emigration, and language loss. Yet at her 1990 inauguration President Mary Robinson spoke not of postcolonial ghosts but of "a new Ireland, open, tolerant, inclusive [....] a new pluralist Ireland…," reflective of optimistic post-independence conditions. The mid-1990s to the late 2000s were a period of rapid economic growth-the 'Celtic Tiger,' the 'Boom,' the 'Economic Miracle'-transforming Ireland into one of the wealthiest countries in Europe and spurring seismic social and cultural change. That accelerated, unchecked economic growth has now expressed itself in early 21st century discontents and reckonings. In cultural specters, so to speak. The critical questions raised by Irish Studies are not confined to Irishness and Irish identity; they are ethical, global questions. Our class will study how modern Irish fiction, drama, and film tackle some of the most pressing issues of our time. Our topics will include late capitalist volatility; economic precarity; institutional abuses; immigration, displacement and belonging; language dispossession; and climate crisis.

Prerequisites: Any combination of 2 ILA (HSS, LTA, CSP, LVA, CVA)

LTA2069 Utopia and Dystopia: Literary and Cultural Expressions
4 Intermediate Liberal Arts CreditsThis course will examine the difference between ideas of absolute societal perfection and absolute societal imperfection as expressed in literary and cultural texts. Topics of study through such texts will include the ways we govern, the ways we create order, the ways we progress, and the ways we treat others. Over the course of the semester, students will be confronted with a number of questions. What are the elements of a utopia or dystopia? If one is complete perfection and the other complete imperfection - both by definition unattainable - then why are the concepts even worth talking about, and why have they persisted throughout history and across cultures? And maybe most interestingly, is there much of a real difference between the two? We will read works by Jose Saramago, Cormac McCarthy, Kazuo Ishiguro, Ursula LeGuin, and Margaret Atwood.

Prerequisites: (FCI1000 or AHS1000) and (WRT1001or RHT1000)

LTA2016 Violence: Theories of Cruelty, Evil, and the Inhuman
4 Intermediate Liberal Arts CreditsThis course will investigate the idea of violence across an extensive spectrum of authors, texts, films, and literary-philosophical perspectives from the East and the West. We seek not merely to engage in a conventional critique but to exceed the boundaries of our embedded understanding by also contemplating this concept's fascinating potential as a form of literary imagination and intellectual expression. Topics will therefore include cruelty, vulnerability, power, betrayal, destruction, vengeance, anger, terror, defacement, pain, disaster, and inhumanity. From the poetics of torture to the damaged writings of war, from theoretical works on catastrophe to cinematic and artistic pieces on the nature of evil, the intent is to explore the many narratives that have emerged across the global horizon in the face of an often violent experience of the modern world.

Prerequisites: (FCI1000 or AHS1000) and (WRT1001or RHT1000)

HUM4606 What Does it Mean to Live a Good Life?

4 Advanced Liberal Arts Credits

This advanced liberal arts elective investigates what it might mean to live a 'good life', and how these interpretations might contribute to your own discoveries and thinking as you head out into the 'real world' beyond Babson. Rather than a philosophy or psychology or self-help course (although all of this is intertwined), this course is based around how writers and filmmakers and other creative thinkers have tried to explore this enduring focus of human inquiry. Through a wide range of literature, film, podcasts, and other media, we will examine differing efforts to perceive and live out a 'good life.' How can we define and measure happiness, and whether that should even be our ultimate goal? How important are extrinsic rewards like achievement and money compared to more internal ones like relationships and human connection? How do we avoid being overwhelmed by the news of the world and instead to create stories that matter and move us to positive action? Where can we find value in odysseys and unexpected detours? What is the meaning of work and its relationship to play? How can we better approach mortality and loss? And how can we grasp the simultaneous individuality and immensity of the human condition in ways that strive to make ourselves and the world better? Together, we will wrangle with these and other ongoing life questions.

Prerequisites: Any combination of 2 ILA (HSS, LTA, CSP, LVA, CVA)

WRT1001 Writing Across Contexts
4 Foundation Liberal Arts Credits

This course introduces students to key concepts in meaning-making and helps them develop rhetorically sophisticated approaches to reading, writing, and composing across contexts. Students refine and reflect on their own composing practices and processes past, present, and future as they read, analyze, and create texts for a wide variety of audiences, purposes, and media forms. At the end of the term and with the vocabulary developed in the course, each student articulates in an essay their own working theory of and approach to writing that they can mobilize and adapt for future academic and professional contexts.

ENG4620 Writing Creative Non-Fiction
4 Advanced Liberal Arts CreditsIn this class, you will have the chance to write about moments in your life, and passionate interests, you wish to deeply explore. You will "read like a writer" to learn the elements and forms of creative nonfiction, including memoir, contemplative, nature, and travel essays. We will read creative nonfiction by such writers as Virginia Woolf, Zadie Smith, and David Foster Wallace, and consider both what the writers say and how they say it. You will write your own personal essays, developing your facility with such elements as conflict, persona, and character development, and, by sharing your work with peers, you will gain a critical understanding of your own writing. You will find, like creative nonfiction writer Dinty Moore, that "the happy by-product" of exploring, expressing the previously unspoken, "is that one has a richer life."

Prerequisites: Any combination of 2 ILA (HSS, LTA, CSP, LVA, CVA)

ENG4605 Writing Fiction
4 Advanced Liberal Arts CreditsShort-story writer Flannery O'Connor believes that there is _a certain grain of stupidity that the writer of fiction can hardly do without, and this is the quality of having to stare, of not getting the point at once._ This class develops and nurtures close attention to the art and craft of making short stories. We will read excellent practitioners of the short story form in order to understand the elements of fiction: character, dialogue, place/setting, plot, and so on, and we will look for pleasure in our reading. Throughout the semester you will write short stories of varying length, aiming for authority over language, characterization, plot, and more. Your fiction will be received and read by your peers and professor. You will be a willing, open and active participant, prepared to discuss the work of others, and to reflect on responses to your own work. Short-story writer Tobias Wolff suggests that "in the short-story form you sense… that perfection is attainable. That's an amazing invitation to have: here, at last, is something I can control."

Prerequisites: Any combination of 2 ILA (HSS, LTA, CSP, LVA, CVA)

ENG4604 Writing Poetry
4 Advanced Liberal Arts CreditsA poet is a maker, an architect of words, spaces, and ideas and seeks expression through the use of various poetic techniques. This course challenges students to make original poetry through the study of contemporary American poetry and poetics. In addition to exploring the creative process through the crafting of poems, students read the poetry and essays of a wide variety of modern poets, work collaboratively to respond to peers' poems, attend poetry readings, and pursue independent study in an area of their own choice.

Prerequisites: Any combination of 2 ILA (HSS, LTA, CSP, LVA, CVA)