Does not give concentration credit. Practice in writing narration, exposition, argument and persuasion, the critical essay, and the research paper. Related readings. Class discussion of papers. Individual conferences. Students enroll in specific seminars. Limited enrollment.

MET EN201 -- Section Descriptions for Fall 2018

Section B1 (Barents) -- "Boston Zeal, Insanity, and Lawlessness"
Boston has captivated the imagination of locals and outsiders alike for centuries, not only as The Hub or The Athens of America but also as "Suck City" and the town with "dirty water." In this seminar, we will look at Boston as subject and setting of a number of very different short works in order to understand the social, political, historical, and artistic forces that have shaped this American city and to figure out whether its often negative portrayal is deserved. We will debate, discuss, and question how such influences shape a culture or define a city, examining nonfiction from Michael Patrick MacDonald, Nick Flynn, and Susanna Kaysen; fiction by Dennis Lehane, Sylvia Plath, and Henry James; and poetry by Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop. We'll also view film excerpts from Good Will Hunting, The Departed, Spotlight, Gone Baby Gone, and The Town.

Section C1 (Grabianowski) -- "Imagining the Landscape, Imagining Technology"
Can humans muster the imagination and the ethical grit necessary to create a sustainable and livable future where freedom, equality and human rights are respected? How can scientific insight, technological advancement and the humanities find common ground in creating such a world? Could revisiting the powers of imagination provide some answers? Could insights derived from thousands of years of living in a natural landscape help humans to better understand the opportunities and limitations of our current technological landscape? In this section of English 201, we will consider what the long history of the imagination can teach us about how human insight into the awe-inspiring wonders of nature has contributed to our understanding of the hidden capacities of the human mind as much as it has unlocked the secrets of nature. We will first take a look at the deep currents of imagination going back to the ancient philosophers like Heraclitus. We will then, over the course of the semester, consider how 19th- and 20th-century writers like Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Wordsworth, S.T. Coleridge, E.M. Forster, Albert Einstein, Aldo Leopold, David Bohm and Gary Snyder have addressed the practical and ethical issues that arise out of the intersection of nature, technology, and society. We will explore topics like imaginative engineering, the difference between imaginative insight and imaginative reason, ecological consciousness, cyborgs, sustainable business models, monoculture and permaculture, genetics, ecological economics, big data, wild writing, social media, fake news, genetics and topics of particular interest to students. We will discuss how contemporary scientists, poets, technology industry leaders, and writers like Arnold Pacey, Herman Daly, Sherry Turkle and David Kelly seek to re-discover the imaginative capacities that will allow us to grapple with the rapid transformation of our technological existence.

Section D1 (Jackson) -- "The Sixties"
This course examines the 1960s, a tumultuous decade of political, social, and cultural change in the United States, through a range of readings that include poems, song lyrics, manifestos, autobiographies, speeches, essays, stories, and the "non- fiction novel." The major movements of the era (anti-war, civil rights, feminist, environmental, sexual liberation, and expanded consciousness) constituted a wide-ranging revolution. Literary critic Fredric Jameson characterizes the period with "the widely shared feeling that in the 60s, for a time, everything was possible: that this period, in other words, was a moment of a universal liberation, a global unbinding of energies." Some of the key players and events were in and around Boston (Martin Luther King, Jr. living in Myles Standish Hall, Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton meeting Robert Lowell at the other end of Bay State Road, Huston Smith expanding consciousness in Marsh Chapel, Malcolm X growing up in Roxbury). We will read these writers as well as others including Rosa Parks, Betty Friedan, Bob Dylan, and Rachel Carson. We will write about what these writers meant in their time and about the reverberations and reactions that continue to affect how we live today.