This course will teach you the basic tools and concepts of narrative theory, a branch of literary theory that focuses on stories and story-telling. Using short stories as our primary examples, we will consider how analyzing narratives can provide deeper insight into questions of social justice and injustice, including racial, class, and gender difference as well as global distributions of inequality.

Why does art matter? Because images, sculptures and buildings shape our ways of understanding our world and ourselves. Learning how to look closely and analyze what you see, therefore, is fundamental to a liberal arts education. Within a global frame, this course provides an introduction to art and its histories through a series of case studies, from Egypt's Queen Nefertiti to Jean-Michel Basquiat's raw street art. Meeting three times weekly, each section will draw on the case studies to explore concepts of gender and race, nature and landscape, culture and power, repatriation, and other issues. Assignments focus on developing analytical and expressive writing skills and will engage with the rich resources of Wellesley College and of Boston's art museums. The course fulfills both the Writing requirement and the ARTH 100 requirement for art history, architecture, and studio majors.

Wellesley's mission is to educate those "who will make a difference in the world." In this course, we will study some of Wellesley's change-makers and learn about the College's role in shaping American higher education, promoting student wellness, advancing gender equality, influencing global politics, and improving public health. We will also examine the world that is Wellesley, with special emphasis on its historic buildings and unique landscape. Students will gain a deep understanding of Wellesley's story and their place in it, and they will practice making a difference in the world through their own writing.

We will read a range of twentieth-century plays that depict various scientific disciplines, discoveries, controversies, and characters. We will explore how scientific themes and ideas shape the structure and performances of these plays and also what these plays tell us about the connections-and misperceptions-between the humanities and sciences. Through plays such as Michael Frayn's Copenhagen, Tom Stoppard's Arcadia, David Auburn's Proof, and David Feldshuh's Miss Evers' Boys, we will consider, for example, the intersections of science and politics, ethical responsibility, scientific racism, the gendering of scientific fields and practices, the myth of the lone scientist, and the overlaps between scientific and artistic creation. This course will likely offer the opportunity to attend a local performance of a play.

Behind every name there is a story. In this course, we will explore those stories, learning the history and meaning of the labels that we affix to people, places, and things. We will pay particular attention to the power, responsibility, and consequences that come with naming and re-naming. We will examine recent controversies on college campuses involving the names of buildings, monuments, mascots, local flora, and landmarks. We will also study how the producers of all kinds of things–from poems to consumer products–use metaphor and neologism to refresh our understanding of the familiar, introduce us to the unfamiliar, and name the unnameable. In addition, we will explore how names and name changes can frame political discourse, sway opinion, influence behavior, and alter history.

When fiction blurs or crosses the line between our "real" world and "other worlds," the reader (as well as the narrator or main character) has entered the realm of "weird fiction," a genre that (broadly interpreted) contains "horror," "fairy tale," "science fiction," and "magical realism." We will read, write about, and write some of our own "weird" short stories by twentieth-century and twenty-first writers from all over the world.

Fascinating cultural practices are found not only in far-off places but are also embedded in the stories of our everyday lives. From our families and friends to taxi drivers and grocery clerks, everyone's personal history has something to teach us. Written accounts of culture (called ethnographies) are created from these narratives of how people live their lives. What extraordinary stories of culture are hidden in local, everyday places? What does it mean to write someone else's story? Or our own? What can we learn about culture by translating oral histories into words? With the understanding that some of the most interesting stories about human culture are told in our own backyards, we will approach writing through ethnographic storytelling, using our life experiences as our subject.

In this course, we will examine the role that work plays in contemporary life and investigate how the value and experience of working get shaped by modern capitalism. We’ll start by reflecting on the character of the 21st century “gig” economy: Does working now mean something fundamentally different than it did for previous generations? Are we really working harder for less reward, as some argue? Is the recommendation to “pursue your passion” good advice? Next, we’ll examine theoretical perspectives on work, looking at how capitalism shapes the relationship between people and their work, how it structures our relationship to time and leisure, and how it codes certain forms of work as gendered labor. Last, we’ll take up questions about workers’ rights, worker power, and the extent to which we have a responsibility, as a society, to ensure stable and fulfilling work for all. This course asks students to think about the problem of work in both personal and structural terms, considering how it features in their own lives and how it reflects the larger social structures within which our lives play out.

“Free time is shackled to its opposite,” writes the critic Theodor Adorno. In a world full of incessant demands for productivity, our free time, he observed, never feels truly free. We’re always watching the clock, trying to get the most out of our workday and then using our down time to ready ourselves to work again. We may be managing our time, but we don’t really own it. This course asks: what does it mean to live your life ‘on the clock’, and what might it look like to get ‘off’ of it? What would make your time feel like it is genuinely your own? We’ll seek answers to these questions first by exploring the issue of time management, reading theories about how to do it as well as histories and critiques of the impulse to maximize your time. Next, we’ll take up political and theoretical perspectives on how capitalism shapes our relationship to time. We’ll discuss where we get the idea that time is money and something we can spend or save. We’ll also consider what it means that our time is something we can sell and that someone else can own, and we’ll ask what the stakes are of commodifying time that way. Last, we’ll examine the idea and practice of leisure and explore what it takes for free time to be truly free.

We are supposed to offer gifts without expecting anything in return; we are urged to give our best effort for the good of ourselves and others; we are born with, develop, and use our gifts in a range of contexts. But what, exactly, is a gift? In this course, we will explore perspectives on gifts in literature, religious texts, economic theories, and cultural criticism. We will consider questions such as: Why do we give things away? Are we morally obligated to use our resources or natural talents for the greater good? How do we decide who is worthy of a gift with no strings attached, and who must earn a subsidy or repay a benefactor? How does America’s reliance on philanthropy reinforce structural inequities? How do norms of generosity and reciprocity persist in a culture defined by contracts and debts? Can we imagine a society without money and based instead on a principle of giving?

In this course, we will examine Black feminist essays and speculative fiction as resources for thinking about the future of feminism and its impact on the broader culture. These texts are helping to shift paradigms of what is understood by the term “feminism”. They also contain critical information that students need not just to survive but thrive in the future. We will discuss how these works offer new ways to think about kinship, gender, reproductive rights, abolition, and representations of selfhood. In addition, they will provide a springboard for looking inward to our own lives and perspectives, as we explore how writing, reading, and action are influenced by the personal. Indeed, if the “personal is political,” as Audre Lorde aptly stated, then what we write from our own experience can shape and change our world.

This course will help students become more confident and proficient in the writing that they do at Wellesley and beyond. Students will design an individualized syllabus around a topic of interest to them and focus on the areas of writing in which they most want to improve. Building on what they learned in their 100-level WRIT course, students will become more adept at working with sources, developing their thinking, and communicating their ideas clearly and purposefully. There will be two class meetings per week. In one, all students will meet as a group with the professor, engaging in writing workshops and discussing some short common readings. In the second meeting, students will meet individually with a TA to discuss readings on their own topic and to work on their writing.

Why does art matter? Because images, sculptures and buildings shape our ways of understanding our world and ourselves. Learning how to look closely and analyze what you see, therefore, is fundamental to a liberal arts education. Within a global frame, this course provides an introduction to art and its histories through a series of case studies, from Egypt's Queen Nefertiti to Jean-Michel Basquiat's raw street art. Meeting three times weekly, each section will draw on the case studies to explore concepts of gender and race, nature and landscape, culture and power, repatriation, and other issues. Assignments focus on developing analytical and expressive writing skills and will engage with the rich resources of Wellesley College and of Boston's art museums. The course fulfills both the Writing requirement and the ARTH 100 requirement for art history, architecture, and studio majors.

We are living in an age of unprecedented access to information and have the means for immediate communication, thanks to advances in technology. Connecting to this virtual, ceaselessly changing world, however, often means turning away from the physical realm and prioritizing immediate reaction over thoughtful reflection. In this interdisciplinary course, we will investigate the boundless opportunities, and the real challenges, of living and writing in the age of distraction. How do we understand one another and ourselves as we toggle between the virtual and physical worlds? How do we create meaningful ideas and united communities? How does the reading and writing we do in the classroom inform what we read and write on social media, and vice versa? Students will consider these questions as they study literature, art, psychology, and technology, and as they explore both virtual spaces and physical ones, including the Wellesley campus and other area locales.

How have writers and artists in the U.S. used the power of words, images, and sound to promote social change? We will explore this question by examining an array of texts within their specific cultural contexts,  including abolitionist narratives, intersectional feminist theory, and contemporary art from the Davis Museum. Students will analyze the rhetorical strategies of these works of protest literature, assessing their influence on laws, social practices, and cultural values. Students will also practice protest as they write for the change they want to see in the world today.

This course will start with the premise that food is an essential ingredient in the making of selves, families, communities, regions, and nations. We will explore the ways that we celebrate food traditions, create new habits and tastes, and also respond to food problems (e.g. food scarcity and safety, climate change and land use, and the complex networks of food producers, servers, and consumers). Our readings will draw from a variety of different fields and perspectives, including literature, history, anthropology, and environmental studies, as well as various genres of food writing - the personal essay, the recipe, food blogs and podcasts, and scholarly essays on the intersections between food and culture.

As college in the US becomes increasingly expensive and competitive, it’s worth asking what role institutions of higher education play in our society. Do they promote equity and equality? Do they transform or preserve the status quo? Do we prioritize their value as a private or as a public good, that is, as something that benefits the individual, or as something that the public invests in for some broader social goal? Students will read and write about the work of political theorists and educators in order to consider what the political and social mission of the university should be. We will also investigate the business of higher education, examining what happens when a college’s financial considerations might conflict with its educational mission. Other topics we’ll explore include the public financing of college, student debt, practices of for-profit universities, and the size of college endowments.

Behind every name there is a story. In this course, we will explore those stories, learning the history and meaning of the labels that we affix to people, places, and things. We will pay particular attention to the power, responsibility, and consequences that come with naming and re-naming. We will examine recent controversies on college campuses involving the names of buildings, monuments, mascots, local flora, and landmarks. We will also study how the producers of all kinds of things–from poems to consumer products–use metaphor and neologism to refresh our understanding of the familiar, introduce us to the unfamiliar, and name the unnameable. In addition, we will explore how names and name changes can frame political discourse, sway opinion, influence behavior, and alter history.

In this course, we will examine Black feminist essays and speculative fiction as resources for thinking about the future of feminism and its impact on the broader culture. These texts are helping to shift paradigms of what is understood by the term “feminism”. They also contain critical information that students need not just to survive but thrive in the future. We will discuss how these works offer new ways to think about kinship, gender, reproductive rights, abolition, and representations of selfhood. In addition, they will provide a springboard for looking inward to our own lives and perspectives, as we explore how writing, reading, and action are influenced by the personal. Indeed, if the “personal is political,” as Audre Lorde aptly stated, then what we write from our own experience can shape and change our world.

What makes a world? And what makes a world beautiful, sustainable, inclusive, or just? At a time when humanity faces myriad global challenges, we can seek insight in writing that reimagines the world and helps us change it for the better. Reading the work of activists, philosophers, fiction writers, and political theorists, we will examine how past worlds shape those of the present and future. In particular, we will investigate the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion in these different visions of the world, asking questions such as: Who enjoys freedom, and when? What is a “human right,” and should those rights be the basis of social organization? In what ways has the nation-state been a force for emancipation, and in what ways a vehicle of empire? What would it look like to live in a world that was fully feminist in its design, or that was built on reparations for past injustices, or that prioritizes the health of the planet above all? What are the conditions necessary for individuals and societies to undergo transformation, improve, and thrive?

This course will help students become more confident and proficient in the writing that they do at Wellesley and beyond. Students will design an individualized syllabus around a topic of interest to them and focus on the areas of writing in which they most want to improve. Building on what they learned in their 100-level WRIT course, students will become more adept at working with sources, developing their thinking, and communicating their ideas clearly and purposefully. There will be two class meetings per week. In one, all students will meet as a group with the professor, engaging in writing workshops and discussing some short common readings. In the second meeting, students will meet individually with a TA to discuss readings on their own topic and to work on their writing.

Why does art matter? Because images, sculptures and buildings shape our ways of understanding our world and ourselves. Learning how to look closely and analyze what you see, therefore, is fundamental to a liberal arts education. Within a global frame, this course provides an introduction to art and its histories through a series of case studies, from Egypt's Queen Nefertiti to Jean-Michel Basquiat's raw street art. Meeting three times weekly, each section will draw on the case studies to explore concepts of gender and race, nature and landscape, culture and power, repatriation, and other issues. Assignments focus on developing analytical and expressive writing skills and will engage with the rich resources of Wellesley College and of Boston's art museums. The course fulfills both the Writing requirement and the ARTH 100 requirement for art history, architecture, and studio majors.

This studio art course centers on the interplay of word and image. While pursuing a range of studio projects in graphic media (drawing, book arts, and print), we will examine the role of text and visible language in the work of various contemporary artists. Our studio activities and discussions will explore fundamental visual concepts while cultivating an increased awareness of visual rhetoric and typographic design. Throughout the semester, considerable attention will be placed on developing more effective written commentary, critical thinking, and oral presentation skills relevant to visual investigation.

What do we rightfully own as individuals, and what do we owe to the common good? Who should pay for education, healthcare, childcare, and stewardship of the environment? As current debate about the accumulation and concentration of private wealth heats up, it seems more important than ever to try to answer these questions. In this course, we’ll start by studying the political implications of taxing private capital. Does raising income taxes punish ambitious people, or does it correct for systemic inequalities in capitalism? We’ll then study some foundational political and philosophical theories about how to distribute resources fairly within a capitalist system. We will also use these ideas to evaluate pressing questions in US policy regarding which goods and resources should be considered private and which should be publicly owned, funded, or managed.

The United States has defined itself as an exceptional “nation of immigrants” whose easy access to citizenship and democratic pluralism sets it apart from the rest of the world. But is this really true? How do the history of slavery, colonization, nativism, and the militarization of the border complicate this narrative of inclusion? How do migrants who are not European, white, and Christian tell different kinds of stories about their encounters with America? Students will analyze fiction, memoir, museum exhibits, policy briefs, and scholarly histories to understand how American immigration narratives have influenced public policy, social attitudes, and the meaning of “America” today.

We will read a diverse range of modern science fiction stories with an aim toward understanding how these texts represent, critique, and imagine alternatives to existing social, political, economic, and environmental conditions. Through stories by writers such as Ray Bradbury, Samuel Delany, Octavia Butler, Nnedi Okorafor, and Ted Chiang, we will explore how science fiction reimagines and challenges traditional ideas about ourselves, complicating easy distinctions between mind and body, human and machine, alien and native, self and other.

This course will examine how the rapid-fire pace of technology is changing the way we see ourselves, the way we present ourselves to the world, and our fundamental understanding of our relation to the world around us. Through the use of social media platforms like Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, Vine, Pinterest, Yik Yak, Tinder, Hinge, Instagram, and Tumblr, to name just a few, we are all constantly forming and reforming our identities, thereby changing the nature of human experience. By altering the course of our lives, we are reformulating the age-old questions: How do we discover who we are? How do we show the world who we are? We will read a series of books, traditional and untraditional, by discovered and undiscovered authors, to analyze the way this seismic shift is being documented and portrayed in fiction and non-fiction.

In this course, we will examine the role that work plays in contemporary life and investigate how the value and experience of working get shaped by modern capitalism. We’ll start by reflecting on the character of the 21st century “gig” economy: Does working now mean something fundamentally different than it did for previous generations? Are we really working harder for less reward, as some argue? Is the recommendation to “pursue your passion” good advice? Next, we’ll examine theoretical perspectives on work, looking at how capitalism shapes the relationship between people and their work, how it structures our relationship to time and leisure, and how it codes certain forms of work as gendered labor. Last, we’ll take up questions about workers’ rights, worker power, and the extent to which we have a responsibility, as a society, to ensure stable and fulfilling work for all. This course asks students to think about the problem of work in both personal and structural terms, considering how it features in their own lives and how it reflects the larger social structures within which our lives play out.

We are supposed to offer gifts without expecting anything in return; we are urged to give our best effort for the good of ourselves and others; we are born with, develop, and use our gifts in a range of contexts. But what, exactly, is a gift? In this course, we will explore perspectives on gifts in literature, religious texts, economic theories, and cultural criticism. We will consider questions such as: Why do we give things away? Are we morally obligated to use our resources or natural talents for the greater good? How do we decide who is worthy of a gift with no strings attached, and who must earn a subsidy or repay a benefactor? How does America’s reliance on philanthropy reinforce structural inequities? How do norms of generosity and reciprocity persist in a culture defined by contracts and debts? Can we imagine a society without money and based instead on a principle of giving?

Perhaps it seems improbable that the literature of the ancient Greeks and Romans would have much relevance to important social issues in our diverse society today. In recent years, however, many of these ancient materials have been adapted to help activists examine and advocate for modern causes. We will start by thinking about reception: How have ancient texts been received by later cultures and groups, and can a reception be “good” or “bad”? What is the difference between reception, adaptation, and appropriation? Then, focusing primarily on works by women and people of color, we will explore recent receptions of classical texts that address issues such as racial justice, feminism, and immigration. Among other works, we will consider Aristophanes’ Lysistrata alongside Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq, and Euripides’ Medea together with Luis Alfaro’s Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles. No knowledge of ancient Greece or Rome required.

In this course, we will examine Black feminist essays and speculative fiction as resources for thinking about the future of feminism and its impact on the broader culture. These texts are helping to shift paradigms of what is understood by the term “feminism”. They also contain critical information that students need not just to survive but thrive in the future. We will discuss how these works offer new ways to think about kinship, gender, reproductive rights, abolition, and representations of selfhood. In addition, they will provide a springboard for looking inward to our own lives and perspectives, as we explore how writing, reading, and action are influenced by the personal. Indeed, if the “personal is political,” as Audre Lorde aptly stated, then what we write from our own experience can shape and change our world.

This course will help students become more confident and proficient in the writing that they do at Wellesley and beyond. Students will design an individualized syllabus around a topic of interest to them and focused on the areas of writing in which they most want to improve. Building on what they learned in their 100-level WRIT course, students will become more adept at working with sources, developing their thinking, and communicating their ideas clearly and purposefully. There will be two class meetings per week. In one, all students will meet as a group with the professor, engaging in writing workshops and discussing some short common readings. In the second meeting, students will meet individually with a TA to discuss readings on their own topic and to work on their writing.