This year, Common Ground Teaching Fellows have the option of three exciting seminars. You will be asked to rank your seminar in order of preference. Please note that while every effort will be made to place you in your first or second choice seminar, space constraints mean we cannot guarantee you your preferred options. 

________________________________________________________________________

The Haunts of Ghosts
Seminar Leader: Dr. Marina Trninic

The past is never dead. It’s not even past.

• William Faulkner

Does the presence of ghosts and other supernatural nightmares, whether in fiction or film, mean we can dismiss those works as low-brow horror, as mere titillating entertainment? Absolutely not. In this seminar we will explore the ways supernatural conceits open up thought, rather than foreclose it. We will ask how ghosts in literature and film allow for deeper moral, psychological and sociological understanding than strict realism alone. What do the ghosts that haunt us have to teach us about pasts, individual or collective, that we (try to) repress? How do the nightmares represent our cultural anxieties? What do hauntings tell us about our relationships to reality? 

Texts include:
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “Young Goodman Brown”

Hong Kingston, Maxine. The Woman Warrior (exerpted)

Kent, Jennifer (director). The Babadook (2014)

Morrison, Toni. Beloved (excerpted)

Peele, Jordan (director). Get Out (2017).

Porter, Max. Grief is the Thing With Feathers. 

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet (excerpted)

________________________________________________________________________

The Absolute Worst: Literary Characters We Love to Hate
Seminar Leader: Dr. Hayan Charara

Murderous, self-obsessed, backstabbing, sadistic, and maybe outright evil—some people even a mother cannot love. But we love to read about them and see them act out their bad selves. For better or worse, literature is full of such people and their stories. In this seminar, we will read four texts that focus on terrible people we love to hate. Villainous as they may be, they are also sometimes heroic, funny, tender, and ultimately very much human. Why do we hate and love these people? What makes them so compelling? Are they mirrors that reflect our own lives; our wishes, desires, and fears? These are some of the questions we will ask. 

Please note: a few of this seminar’s texts contain graphic, violent content that may be disturbing to some readers. While they will be discussed with thoughtfulness and care, you may still want to decide whether the content is right for you. 

Texts
Euripides. Medea  

Easton Ellis, Brett. American Psycho 

Dermansky, Marcy. Bad Marie 

Shriver, Lionel. We Need to Talk About Kevin

 _______________________________________________________________________ 

The 90s Called and Want Their Jeans Back: Change and Stasis Between Generations
Seminar Leader: Dr. Max Rayneard

The belief that tomorrow is a different place from today is certainly a unique hallmark of our species.

• Douglas Coupland

We might convince ourselves that our students keep us young, but the longer our teaching careers, the vaster the generational gap between ourselves and our charges. They’re growing up in a world so different to the ones in which we have our foundations. Or are they? This seminar asks what changes and what stays the same between generations. What can literature and film teach us about the wisdoms and follies passed on by those who come before. What is embraced? What is improved? What is discarded? The Greatest Generation will be represented by Gwendolyn Brooks’ delicate and devastating treatment of African American service men returning from WWII in her debut poetry collection, A Street in Bronzeville. Joan Didion’s influential New Journalism account of 1960s counterculture in Slouching Towards Bethlehem will speak to the coming of age of the Baby Boomer Generation (born circa 1946-1964). Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing and John Hughes’ The Breakfast Club were very different cinematic touchstones for Generation X (born circa 1964-1980). The protagonist of Halle Butler’s The New Me struggles with the futility of working towards once ordinary, now unattainable goals, echoing the experience of many Millennials (born circa 1980-1995). Generation Z (born circa 1995-2012) will be represented by Adam Silvera’s 2017 YA novel, They Both Die in the End (which has an enthusiastic TikTok fan group), about two teenage boys trying to live their last day alive as fully as they can.

Texts
Brooks, Gwendolyn. Selected Poems (2006)

Butler, Halle. The New Me (2019)

Didion, Joan. Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968)

Hughes, John (director). The Breakfast Club (1985)

Lee, Spike (director). Do the Right Thing (1989)

Silvera, Adam. They Both Die in the End (2017)