What makes the South “the South”? This course is designed to introduce you to the literature, culture, and history of the American South as a diverse and complex region. As suggested by the title of the course, we will examine narratives of the South, either of it as a region in decline or changing to fit a changing world, and how these narratives have played out both historically and today.

Horror films are a wildly popular form of entertainment, however the representations of fear and terror that they traffic in can also teach us about the relations of power that structure our world. This course is designed to introduce you to critical bodies of thought by analyzing horror film as genre and medium. You will be exposed to feminist theory, psychoanalysis, black studies, semiotics, and film theory. The goal of this course is for you to emerge as more critical consumers.

Do you have a story to tell but don’t know how? Do you want to learn how stories build the world around us? Ethnography is the scientific practice of describing human experiences that helps us understand people, societies, and cultures. Ethnographic writing is a method anthropologists use to generate and share knowledge. Together we will meditate on the relationship between research and writing practices to produce stories that speak to the topics that we deeply value.

Empathy is the soul of effective communication. In this class, we will define empathy and how it relates to Health Communication and learn fundamental tools for interacting with patients and physicians and how to navigate challenging health-related conversations. We will also discuss and research the recent phenomena of medical misinformation and false data generated by social media.

“Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” -Dobzhansky
Evolution is the force that illuminates the amazing diversity of life on the planet today. Evolution has been extensively documented and supported by an entire field of research dedicated to uncovering its complexities. However, discourse among politicians, school boards, and the media portrays evolution as controversial and contentious. Even well-meaning media outlets perpetuate misconceptions about evolution. Why is Darwin’s famous theory so misunderstood?

What is the purpose of life? Who can claim to be wise? How can one ensure that they are remembered once they are gone? While questions of mortality, memory and meaning have risen to the forefront over the past two years, they were also prevalent in the civilizations of the ancient world. In this course, we will examine classic works of humanity’s search for permanence in the face of an impermanent world and learn how the ancients sought wisdom, hopefully finding some ourselves along the way.

She speaks in spells and incantations, cursing enemies and unlucky strangers alike. You might spot her stirring a cauldron in the shadows or riding a broomstick across the night sky. With pale white - or sometimes green - skin, she typically lives apart from society, either alone in the woods or among a coven of her own. Many know her by the name “witch.” Looking at popular media, this course will analyze how witches prompt a reevaluation of cultural norms through their very violation of them.

Have you ever wondered about how the events of the previous century shaped the perceptions of the people existing in the contemporary world?The innumerable layers of the human mind can be explored through the study of the past, in the present age, to comprehend the perplex relationship between time and the human mind. Re-live and re-visit history of the 20th century by reading the theories and movements that were born out of the wars, economic recessions, psychological and technological shifts.

How will we know when the end of the world has arrived? How do we know it hasn't already happened? And how might our racial or gender identities shape our relationship to it? In this course, we will unpack movies, short stories, and current events in order to disrupt popular notions of what an “apocalypse” looks like. We’ll also use our readings to discuss why apocalyptic predictions are so popular across time and space and theorize about what, if anything, we should do about the next one.

This course will explore the possibilities of what we can make, quite literally, from our own experience: what happens when our hand doesn’t stop moving, goes from writing to visual art, and back again? We will draw on a combination of creative nonfiction, poetry, and collage, and, working from personal experience and the world around us, make physical objects (chapbooks, hybrid essays, comics, etc.) that blend forms and themes and ask: what is “creative work”? In what ways can social media and technology contribute to the creative process, and how can they help us see alternative examples of the “book”? How can they hinder it? How can we look at the personal—our past and present experience, the ways we interact with the world, the ways we talk to ourselves and synthesize our surroundings—as a way to connect with individuals and the world at large?

Is comedy possible in the twenty-first century? Ours is an age of disappointment, plagued by unprecedented violence and crisis, and the familiar tools of satire (insult and shame chief among them) have all but lost their edge in the face of daily life. But does this necessarily mean that ours is a tragic age? This course will give us an opportunity to investigate the conditions that allow a tragic situation to become a comedic one.

Writing fiction comes from deep engagement with language, with ideas, with images and with the world. This four-week workshop provides writers with tools. In this workshop, students will encounter intensive reading, challenging writing assignments and regular feedback from colleagues and from the workshop leader. This workshop will provide opportunities for each writer to extend a sense of what fiction can do — and provide an environment where innovation is nurtured.

Writing poetry comes from deep engagement with language, with ideas, with images and with the world. This four-week workshop provides writers with tools. In this workshop, you will encounter intensive reading, challenging writing assignments and regular feedback from colleagues and from the workshop leader. This workshop will provide opportunities for you to extend a sense of what poetry can do — and provide an environment where innovation is nurtured.

Experimental Writing is an invitation for you to challenge what they have been taught about writing. The course asks: How radical can we get? & What about audience--is experimental writing by definition hostile to readers, or can we experiment toward greater inclusiveness? Perhaps counter-intuitively, Experimental Writing promotes the thoughtful consideration of all writing techniques--radical and conventional.

In the midst of climate change and environmental destruction, rising totalitarianism and deadly racism, heightened economic precarity and increased wealth inequality, why might we choose to read poetry? Does poetry make any difference? Who is poetry for? This discussion-based course will think about the ways experimental language might invite us to read differently and think anew about ourselves, each other, and the world.

This course will introduce you to the various styles and traditions of writing. We will explore new media (such as online publishing) and traditional publishing formats while also preparing students for the college writing workshop experience. Those interested in fiction, essays, screenwriting, or hybrid writing practices will gain access to some of the most cutting-edge writing techniques of the moment. The conclusion of the course will be a publication in the author's chosen medium.

Creative nonfiction considers what nonfiction means--especially in light of the complication that what is true might be entirely subjective. By reading examples *as writers*, we identify what the genre can do; we’ll explore several varieties of creative nonfiction—lyric, history, film, music & memoir. All the while, we'll write--bending rules & taking risks. That’s the license “creative” gives. Nonfiction is a ground but needn't be any more limiting than its counterpart, fiction.

We are surrounded by stories—they're like air—yet writing compelling stories requires work, craft, technique, and a hearty dose of bravery. The objectives of this course are to give you the toolkit they need to write effective and moving fictions, to be more nuanced thinkers, and to be more creatively fearless.

Why do employers refuse to hire young women who don't meet their language or image standards for women? Why are young people from urban backgrounds told to speak differently if they want to succeed in college? Why are some people so against the use of they/them pronouns? This course will address these questions by exploring how language is used to sustain systematic inequality and how language can be a tool for challenging this inequality.

America has been described as a melting pot and a nation of immigrants, but what does it mean to be an “American” and to claim an “American” identity? This course will introduce students to the study of personal and group identity in U.S. literature and culture. Crossing multiple genres, historical periods, and cultural forms (fiction, film, TV), we will examine a diverse range of texts by African American, Asian American, Chicano/Latino, Jewish American, and Native American writers. We will ask how these writers have come to understand the United States, and how they have used literary and cultural expression to represent their own experiences and the experiences of their communities in the U.S.

There’s a reason medicine is referred to as an art. While science is undoubtedly integral to the field of medicine, equally important are more qualitative abilities in observation, interpretation, navigating ambiguity and emotional complexity, and facing the unknown. The course will explore how such skills are essential to good doctoring and can make medical practitioners better at diagnosing, communicating with patients, and collaborating with a medical team.

Why are cultures so fascinated with monsters? What makes a monster? Is it their strange-looking body, or the unfamiliar world they represent? Monsters often represent our worst fears. But rarely do we examine those fears and ask what our anxiety about monsters tells us about our society and ourselves. In this course, we make sense of the monstrous in popular culture by seeing how “the monster” acts as social index for anxieties over the new, the unknown, the threatening, and the unimaginable.

What’s love got to do with it? This course examines how the courtship plot, from meet-cute to marriage, shapes cultural understandings not only of romance, but also of gender, race, class, sexuality, and genre. In this course, you will engage critically with novels from the nineteenth century to the present, alongside films and TV shows. The course seeks to enable you to become better readers, critics, and writers.

Flash fiction is a story boiled down to its essence, one that hinges on a single word, a phrase, or a fragment. In this class, we will learn by doing. We will read the work of a variety of modern authors, learning from those who have come before us. This is a class for exploring and pushing language; it is for those who want to hone, sharpen their work, and say more by saying less.

In this course, which will be offered in both in-person and online formats (be sure to register for the one that you prefer!), we will explore the balance between self-expression and effective communication essential to writing the powerful personal narratives that are at the core of successful college admissions essays. Together, we will practice strategies for understanding ourselves as developing young scholars–and learn to translate that self-understanding into compelling admissions essays.

This course focuses on one of the three core areas covered in Brown's popular course series for undergraduates: self-presentation and writing letters of application. You will draft, workshop, and revise their own original personal essays, while also reading and analyzing published essays in class discussions. This is a discussion-based class in which you will be expected to share your work and provide feedback to peers.

This course focuses on one of the three core areas covered in Brown's popular course for undergraduates, "Critical Reading and Writing I: The Academic Essay:” self-presentation and writing letters of application (Presenting Yourself In Words); analysis within university-level writing (Writing About Media); and utilizing argumentation and evidence in a college research paper (Composing the Academic Essay). Taking all three courses effectively exposes you to the full range of writing taught in "Critical Reading and Writing: The Academic Essay." These courses have been designed in such a way that you may take a single one, or any two, or all three of these Seminars, and may take them in any order that suits your schedule.

This course focuses on one of the three core areas covered in Brown's popular course for undergraduates, "Critical Reading and Writing I: The Academic Essay:” self-presentation and writing letters of application (Presenting Yourself In Words); analysis within university-level writing (Writing About Media); and utilizing argumentation and evidence in a college research paper (Composing the Academic Essay). Taking all three courses effectively exposes students to the full range of writing taught in "Critical Reading and Writing: The Academic Essay." These courses have been designed in such a way that students may take a single one, or any two, or all three of these Seminars, and may take them in any order that suits their schedule.

In this class, we will write. A lot. We will write every day. And by doing so, we will develop as storytellers. We will look at work from the early days of the genre to work written last week. We will look at these stories not only out of a love for sci-fi but also out of an interest in language. We will see how the great stories were crafted and use that knowledge to inform our own work. This is a class for those of you who love language, who love stories, and who love asking, "what if?"

What is our relationship to the past, and why is it sometimes fraught with longing and with fear? "The past is never dead. It's not even past," William Faulkner wrote, and this class explores how longing for the past has occurred in Western literature and thought. From the classical era to the modern day, this course covers literature, movies, and psychology of how we think about nostalgia, and how the past continues to haunt the present.

How did Native Americans adapt to the violence of colonization? What role have enslaved peoples, marginalized groups, and women played in the history of US wars? In this course, students will explore how US wars have shaped American society and how social forces have impacted the nation’s wars. Throughout, we will remain sensitive to how the disfranchised and marginalized survived the war—and sometimes, in these moments of existential crisis, pressed for greater freedom and equality.

Everyone has a story to tell and, increasingly, the modes of production and distribution to share their story with a wide audience. But how best to tell it effectively and ethically? In three weeks, students will harness their passion for digital communication to build technical skills in production and post-production as they are exposed to a wide range of non-fiction narrative approaches. Learning will culminate in an original work of non-fiction narrative in a time-based medium.

With this class, an Emmy Award-winning journalist will provide you with the tools to ask and answer critical questions. Our objective is to provide a framework for defining accuracy in the media, for distinguishing between truthful and (ahem) less than truthful reporting. Democracy depends on both public trust and media truthfulness. With this class, you will be able to better assess the cultural and political impact we have seen when misinformation forges extremist views and actions.

From Beyoncé’s sold-out shows headlining festivals like Coachella to Lizzo’s promotion of body positivity, women are taking up greater space in the music industry now than ever before, using their music as a public testimony of their life experiences. In this course, you will trace the music of various artists as it relates to the evolution of women’s rights, gender politics, and empowerment through performances, social media, and video analyses.

“Jesus was the son of God because He said He was, and the son of God would not lie.” “Hitler believed that seizing the property of enemies of the state would be a good policy, so it must be misguided.” What, if anything, is wrong with these arguments? This course will offer an interactive, hands-on approach to analyzing and evaluating arguments. What makes good arguments good and bad arguments bad? We will try to improve at thinking critically about the world and constructing our own arguments.

What can science fiction reveal about the enduring questions of political theory? This course will engage philosophical texts and sci-fi classics side by side to find out. Key figures and concepts in political theory will be introduced, and will inform our engagements with the works of fiction. Bridging these two realms also invites questions about the relationship between art and politics. How can narrative help us see the socio-political world more clearly, and what are its limitations here?

Where do you spend most of your waking hours nowadays? Online, of course! Glued to smartphone screens, staying safe in zoom classrooms, or relaxing in online gaming communities – a lot of our lives have become digital. Such a revolutionary change is not without consequences, least of all on how we get involved politically. From #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo to the Alt-Right and QAnon: This course explores digital media's role in transforming politics.

Global environmental and political migrations are one of the most pressing Human Rights issues of our times. In this course, we will learn to think as human rights lawyers, as well as philosophers, to study specific cases of such migrations all around the world. We will think about the rights of refugees, the international responses to these crises, and develop arguments from the perspective of defendants of Human Rights organizations. We will do this through the study of real-world cases.

What does it mean to know yourself? Why can love be so painful? What is the source of someone's belief in God? How does history repeat itself? Why do our dreams haunt us? What is an Oedipus complex, and do you have one? Sigmund Freud devoted his life to answering these questions. In this course, we will dive deep into the theories of psychoanalysis to explore how Freud’s work shapes our modern understanding in theory and practice.

Racism can play a critical role in health outcomes for marginalized groups. Racism can not only be associated with physiological processes in the body, but can also impact health at the societal level. During this course, we will look at how racism has affected health in the past and how it continues to affect health from a multi-perspective approach.

Acting is about doing! Explore your unique potential. You will develop valuable acting, collaboration, and communication skills. This is a useful, challenging, and fun exploration of the art of acting. In class, students work on scenes, applying new techniques. There will be multiple presentations of scene work, the final one open to the public. Develop physical, vocal, emotional, and intellectual skills. CREATE a supportive collaborative space. Have fun exploring!

From TikTok to the New York City Ballet, anarchist art collectives to the sculptures on Brown’s campus, the American cultural sector encompasses a complex array of creative practices. How money, power, technology and the state are deployed through- or in the service of- culture is the subject of this class. With emphasis on emerging technologies and business practices, “Culture War Bootcamp” will arm you with the tools necessary to produce work in the contemporary cultural economy.

Communicating effectively is an essential professional and personal skill. This course will help you achieve greater confidence and expertise as a communicator while further developing your unique voice and style.

This course is designed for anyone who wishes to improve their public speaking skills in a supportive and open environment. We will be learning to speak in front of an audience and to be persuasive using various modalities, including reading a manuscript, educational talks, interviews, and impromptu speeches.

Want to make amazing presentations and influence people? Learn the tips, tricks, tactics, and tools of giving effective public presentations. This course will introduce you to fundamental methods of public speaking and designing effective graphic presentations.

Successful communication asks us to actively listen and honestly share. But speaking in front of others - whether addressing a large audience or talking with one person across the table - can make us feel vulnerable. Fear of judgement, misconceptions, projections can close us off. Through a progression of exercises and presentations, you'll practice skills to overcome these barriers, to verbally communicate with openness and genuineness.

Humans not only communicate through stories, we build our lives around them. We inherit stories, invent them through both necessity and imagination; we justify wars based on stories, we create borders based on stories, we make stories out of love and family and fear and longing and joy. The ability to focus on a story, to follow a line of curiosity, or inquiry, has powerful implications for discovery and for how we shape the future of our world. Constructing a rigorous creative practice is one of the most exciting and important things we can do. This course will provide a workshop setting in which those who are interested in storytelling, in writing, in play (playwriting, play-making), in the big ideas that shape our lives, will focus on the development of a single performance text.

Q: What did the fool say to the trickster? A: Have you seen the shapeshifter? Foolery, trickery, and shapeshifting are embedded in queer interactions with the world. In this class, we explore the subtle, intentional, and effective ways that queer & trans people use these as active strategies, both to resist dominant hegemonies, and to find and form community in the margins.