Summer 2018
Summer 2018 MLAS Course Roster
MLAS 6100: Imaginative Writing in Four GenresSection/Topic 58MLAS 6500: Understanding Natural Disasters Section/Topic 02
MLAS 6100: History and Biography Section/Topic 59
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Summer 2018
MLAS 6100: Imaginative Writing in Four Genres
Instructor: Prof. Lorraine López
Section/Topic 58
Location: 205 Buttrick Hall
Days and Time: Thurs., 6pm-9pm
Dates: Classes start Thursday, 6/7/2018 and classes end Thursday, 8/9/2018
In this introductory writing workshop, members will acquire and develop the techniques, skills, and habits that contemporary imaginative writers use—strategies that make it possible for emerging writers to discover what they want to express in addition to the means to shape and articulate a literary aesthetic. No previous experience is required. Short spontaneous exercises and longer assignments combine to motivate and refine writing. Spurred by generative prompts, workshop members will compose, revise, and edit creative writing in four genres: poetry, creative nonfiction, fiction, and drama, as well as examine literary works by professional authors and critique writing-in-progress by peers.
This workshop encourages members to consider all writing they produce as work-in-progress. Members will complete portfolios at the end of the semester, but portfolio evaluation hinges on how well the work has been developed through revision and editing. In the process of sharing and critiquing writing, we will discuss what makes a strong narrative, poem, or dramatic scene, and consider these questions: What is creative writing as an academic discipline and as a way of life? Where do our own stories and poems, and our own writing goals, fit in? What value does creative writing have personally, socially, and politically?
Gertrude Conaway Professor of English at Vanderbilt University, Lorraine M. López is the author of six books of fiction and editor/coeditor of three essay collections. Her first book Soy la Avon Lady and Other Stories won the inaugural Miguel Marmól Prize. Her next publication Call Me Henri was awarded the Paterson Prize for YA Literature. López’s short story collection, Homicide Survivors Picnic and Other Stories was a Finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Prize in Fiction in 2010 and winner of the Texas League of Writers Award for Fiction. An Angle of Vision: Women Writers on Their Poor or Working-Class Roots (2009) is her first edited collection. Subsequent publications include three novels: The Gifted Gabaldón Sisters, The Realm of Hungry Spirits, and The Darling and two coedited collections: The Other Latin@: Writing against a Singular Identity and Rituals of Movement in the Writing of Judith Ortiz Cofer.
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MLAS 6500: Understanding Natural Disasters
Instructor: Prof. Garrett Tate
Section/Topic 02
Location: 5722 Stevenson Center
Days and Time: Mon., 6pm-9pm
Dates: Classes start Monday, 6/18/2018 and classes end Monday, 8/6/2018
Natural disasters seem to dominate the headlines every day, appearing to strike at random and leaving devastating impacts of damage and loss of life. These events and the geologic cycles of which they are part constantly re-shape the world around us, simultaneously contributing to both a habitable and hazardous environment. This course will examine a wide variety of natural disasters, ranging from earthquakes and volcanoes to floods and hurricanes. We will study the causes of each in detail and the settings where they typically occur, as well as preventative measures and predictive capabilities. We will also study important links to human society, including the profound historical impacts of several major events and the human influences on disaster frequency in the present and future. The class format will include readings, discussions, practical exercises, papers, and a group field trip to study local geology in the Nashville area.
Dr. Tate is a Senior Lecturer and Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. His research focuses on plate tectonics and the development of mountain belts, with a heavy component of geologic fieldwork involving mapping the faults and folds that are tied to mountain deformation. His fieldwork locations have spanned from eastern Tennessee across the globe to Timor-Leste and Indonesia. Prior to joining the faculty at Vanderbilt, Dr. Tate worked as a structural geologist at the Chevron Energy Technology Company and earned his Ph.D. at Princeton University.
MLAS 6100: History and Biography
Instructor: Prof. Brandon Byrd
Section/Topic 59
Location: 200 Benson Hall
Days and Time: Wed., 6pm-9pm
Dates: Classes start Wednesday, 6/6/2018 and classes end Wednesday, 8/8/2018
Biography sometimes gets a bad rap from historians. They often see it as a genre limited by its focus on a single, presumably exceptional individual and its origins in the belles-lettres tradition. Biography, PhD trained scholars presume, is mostly written by non-academic historians who, in their rush to celebrate their subject, gloss over critical historical complexities and contexts.
While taking these critiques seriously, this course operates from the opposing assumption that biography, one of the oldest forms of history, remains a genre worthy of our consideration and pursuit. We will begin our inquiry into biography as history with theoretical grounding in its past and present practice, methodologies, critiques, limitations and possibilities. Our subsequent readings will feature recent and foundational academic biographies of men and women from a variety of cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds across all periods of U.S. history.
Ultimately, this course centers on one question: why read, write, and study biography? Our readings will allow us to answer this question and, in doing so, come to a better understanding of U.S. history as a subject and discipline.
Brandon R. Byrd is an Assistant Professor of History at Vanderbilt University and an intellectual historian of the 19th and 20th century United States with specializations in African American History and the African Diaspora. He is currently completing his first book, The Black Republic: African Americans, Haiti, and the Rise of Radical Black Internationalism (forthcoming, University of Pennsylvania Press). Beyond that book, he has published articles and chapters in numerous outlets including Slavery and Abolition, Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International, The Journal of Haitian Studies, and Radical Teacher: A Socialist, Feminist, and Anti-Racist Journal on the Theory and Practice of Teaching. He is also an editor of the Black Lives and Liberation series published by Vanderbilt University Press, vice president of the African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS), and a writer for Black Perspectives the online publication of the AAIHS.