ENGL S114 Course Descriptions

On Being (Un)Reasonable - Craig Eklund

Human beings have long been defined as rational animals. But is it really reason that defines us? One might look at wars, carbon footprints, and Tide Pod eating challenges for evidence to the contrary. It hardly stops there, however. Irrationality plagues our political convictions, motivates our economic behavior, and dominates our psychic lives. In this course, we will examine models of human reason that try to explain such failures of rational thinking. We’ll investigate the role of irrationality in behavioral economics and modern political culture. We’ll read one of literature’s great arguments for willful irrationality and look at surrealist art designed to defy reason and aesthetics. We will explore the ancient Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna’s efforts to push logic to its limits and discover enlightenment on the other side and we will engage Zen koans in all their seeming absurdity. This course seeks out the reason for human beings being so unreasonable and tries to decipher the logic of the illogical.

Craig Eklund is a Lecturer in the English Department. He received his PhD in Comparative Literature from Yale.  He specializes in French and English language Modernism and wrote his dissertation on the imagination in the writings of Marcel Proust, James Joyce, and Samuel Beckett.  He has been teaching writing classes at Yale and Quinnipiac Universities for several years now.

BAMN: What is a Social Movement? - Tim Kreiner

By any means necessary is a slogan with a history. In the US, it is usually associated with Malcolm X. But Malcolm borrowed the phrase from Frantz Fanon, who made the slogan popular among militants in the struggles for liberation from colonialism. And although the revolutionary mood that slogan gathered owes much to the Cold War and liberation movements in the global South, that mood passed through revolts against masters of every kind in much of the global North. This class explores the history of collective action in the postwar US in order to ask what is a social movement? Are the burning of the 3rd Precinct in Minneapolis, #NODAPL riots, #MeToo no-platforming, and risings against police violence part of the antiracist, feminist, anticapitalist, and climate justice movements born in the 1960s? Or do they suggest that something new is afoot in the twenty-first century? What about Trump-ism and the Capitol riot? Who struggles for freedom from what, why and how, in short? And why do we divide the manifold dynamics of those struggles into discrete “movements”? Readings will be drawn from the writings of militants as well as scholars, and span movement histories, critical theory, and contemporary inquiries into ongoing social struggles.

Tim Kreiner is the Course Coordinator for ENGL 115 and a Lecturer in Directed Studies and the English Department at Yale. He is finishing a book of literary history titled Contentious Poetics: Social Movements and American Poetry in the Postwar World and teaches courses on political theory, global social movements, 20/21 c. American literature, and the relationship between cultural production and social contest.

Against Empire: Postcolonial and World-Systems Theory - Chris McGowan

This course will introduce students to some of the central debates and questions in postcolonial studies and world-systems theory, such as: What motivates and sustains empire? How has imperialism developed historically and what are the distinctive features of imperialism in the present? How have people subjected to colonialism resisted it, and how have they thought about and described that resistance? What role do cultural and educational institutions—or, students, teachers, artists, and writers—play in ongoing decolonization struggles? We read critical works by Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Immanuel Wallerstein, Hazel Carby, Olúfẹmi O. Táíwò, and Alberto Toscano, and discuss several poems, films, and short stories.

Chris McGowan is a Lecturer in English at Yale University. He is currently working on an academic book called "Inherited Worlds: The British Modernist Novel and the Sabotage and Salvage of Genre," which studies the relation between British modernism, novelistic genre, and the history of the family under capitalism. At Yale, he teaches courses on literature, creative nonfiction, and first-year writing. He is a founding member of the Left Literary Studies Working Group.

Creative Obsessions - Carol Morse

What is the nature of creativity? Is there such a thing as “creative genius,” or are most creative endeavors achieved through hard work and practice? Can it be taught? From childhood crushes to white whales, artists, scientists, and writers have transformed ordinary obsessions into expressions of beauty and wonder.  But as much as we praise the imagination and the work it produces, it can have a darker side; creative types are sometimes linked to mental instability, substance abuse, and self-delusion. This class will allow you to explore and write about the many varieties of creativity. We’ll read scholarly work from different academic disciplines, such as STEM fields, education, and the humanities. What is the relationship between creativity and obsession? Creativity and addiction? Are we motivated by external validation or an inward drive to manage, or even escape, reality? Readings will include work by or about such artists as Gloria Anzaldua, Richard Deming, and Maurice Sendak, and we'll explore a film about the creative process (Greta Gerwig's Little Women).

Carol Tell Morse is a lecturer in the English Department and a Residential College Writing Tutor. She has taught a variety of writing classes--from children's literature to poetry--but her favorite class is 1014. Prior to coming to Yale, she taught at the University of Michigan, and she received her PhD in Irish poetry from University College, Dublin.

How to Be a Writer - Alison Coleman

What does it mean to be a writer? Is the term reserved for novelists and journalists? Does it apply only to those who have published their work? Or is writing something more democratic, collaborative, available to all of us? In this seminar we will explore great writing across the disciplines, from art history to zoology and everywhere in between. We will consider the applications of effective writing that you will encounter in your coursework and in your life after Yale. We will push back on the idea that writing is a solitary pursuit, accomplished by huddling alone at one’s computer, instead working together to develop each individual’s voice, style, and proficiency. Your work in this seminar—both in and out of the classroom—will challenge you to test out different writing techniques and practices, identifying the strategies that work best for you. And by reading about the work habits of talented writers from the sciences, social sciences, and humanities, you will gain broader insight into how to be a writer yourself.

Alison Coleman is a Lecturer and university administrator who teaches multidisciplinary writing seminars on topics ranging from awe to food studies to unplugging; in 2023 she received the English department’s Fred Strebeigh and Linda Peterson Prize for Excellence in Teaching. Her pedagogy emphasizes deceleration and immersive inquiry, and her current research focuses on the habits of mind of artists, scholars, and other social contributors. A former journalist for The Miami Herald, she is a fellow of Ezra Stiles College.

On Order and Justice - Taylor Kang

Is there a natural order to the universe? The term order conjures images of an intrinsic plan or framework that might help us explain life’s setbacks, vagaries, or even offer forms of consolation. Though the concept can take on many forms, this course proposes to examine the ideal of “justice” as it relates to imagined forms of order – from the imposition of moral frameworks onto the natural world, to the rise of Darwinism (and Social Darwinism), to the redistributive arm of karma. In this course, we think about how various conceptions of “order” have historically governed how we understand forms of ethical, social, and political justice. In the process, we ask how the assumption of a real order to the universe can both facilitate and obstruct justice. How might order and justice be rethought?

Taylor Yoonji Kang (she/her) is a PhD student in Comparative Literature & Early Modern Studies, where she works on poetry, philosophy, and visual culture between the early modern period and the twentieth century. Before coming to Yale, she got her A.B. in Comparative Literature at Princeton University. Outside of academics, she enjoys running, reading, and making art.

Vampires Are So Back - Cirũ Wainaina

This course considers the vampire phenomenon that gripped teens for nearly a decade: Stephanie Meyer’s The Twilight Saga. We will re-examine the series and take seriously its cultural implications. We will treat Meyer’s work as a textual artifact and thereby a cumulative product of various young adult subcultures. In this course, students will learn to think critically and ask good questions. How do we place contemporary popular media within its cultural context? What is the utility in assigning value to certain cultural objects over others? How do we engage so-called “bad” art? What can trends in online fan discourse teach us about our current political moment? How might we begin to “read” the function of race, gender, and sexuality in the primary text and the fan culture that surrounds it? This course will engage a range of critical theory including literary criticism, feminist studies, queer studies, media studies, fan studies, and religious studies. Students will learn how to interact with peer-reviewed scholarly research, literature, and film.

Cirũ Wainaina is a 7th year PhD Candidate in English Languages and Literature at Yale. She considers questions of form and meter in poetry, but enjoys thinking critically about many kinds of media. She has taught undergraduates at Yale for several years. In addition, she is a Teaching Fellow for the Graduate Writing Lab and enjoys working with graduate students on their writing. In each context, Cirũ seeks to make writing fun and approachable, as well as clear, precise, and useful.

Cultures of Violence - Barbara Stuart

According to an August 2023 survey by the Pew Research Center, four-in-ten adults in this country live in a household with a gun, including 32% who personally own one. 72% of gun owners surveyed have purchased that gun for protection. But the Pew survey also shows that “six-in-ten U.S. adults say gun violence is a very big problem in the country today.” The survey reveals tensions in a culture where gun ownership is significant and legal and where citizens are concerned about the pervasiveness of gun violence. (Source: Pew Research Center: Key Facts About Americans and Guns)

This course seeks to look beyond the polarizing rhetoric over rights to gun ownership to explore how individuals and communities can work towards responding to and reducing gun violence. We will be looking at the cultural, social, political, and institutional structures that have contributed to the U.S.’s higher rates of gun violence as compared to peer countries and at a range of creative efforts to make U.S. communities safer through local, regional, and national endeavors. In doing so, we will be examining these key questions: Through what mechanisms can individuals and communities come together to reduce gun violence? How can a persistent problem like gun violence be addressed?

Barbara Stuart earned her PhD long ago and happily taught at Yale for 30 years. The focus of her doctoral work was the Victorian novel, and she often re-reads those novels with great pleasure, but at Yale she has taught documentary film, the contemporary essay, and two courses inspired by her own and her students’ interest in our food system: “The Real World of Food” and “Writing about Food.”