Course Name: ENG 38895 ST: Traveling and Writing
Description: Inspired by the environment—the landscape, art, culture, history, etc.—and by writers who have come before us, you may choose to write poetry, fiction, and/or nonfiction. As we try to absorb some portion of all we see and hear, we will employ Virginia Woolf’s practice of street haunting and consider Rainier Maria Rilke’s notion of inseeing. We will share poems or short vignettes, along with brief responses to readings, during classroom meetings, but half our time will be spent exploring. You will choose readings from a range of historical and contemporary poets and writers—from English-speaking travelers and expatriates like Mary and Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mina Loy, D. H. Lawrence, James Wright, Joseph Brodsky, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Rachel Cusk to Italians in translation like Boccaccio, Dante, Gaspara Stampa, Eugenio Montale, Cesar Pavese, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Italo Calvino, and Patrizia Cavalli. Each week we will focus on a set of topics: art, myth, and religion; landscape and the environment; history and politics; social justice and health care. Related site visits will include places like the churches of Santa Trinita and Santa Croce and the Murate Art District; the Cascine Park along the River Arno and the Archaeological Area and Etruscan routes in the hillside town of Fiesole; Casa Guidi (Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning’s home across from the Pitti Palace) and the National Archaeological Museum; the Hospital of the Innocents Museum and the English Cemetery. A longer work or a collection of polished poems or vignettes will be due at the end of the session.
Credit Hours: 3
Prerequisites: None