Contagion
I developed this course in 2012 at NYU Abu Dhabi and it’s still in my current rotation.
Most recently offered in Spring of 2025.
This course examines the intersections of contagious disorder, literary narrative, viral information, and imitative behavior in a range of cultures, settings, and forms, from ancient Greece to contemporary South Africa, China, and the United States; from the Black Death and influenza to HIV/AIDS and Covid19; from scapegoat rituals to the proliferation of zombies and vampires in global popular culture today; from historical accounts to novels to stage plays and film. The texts we read raise important questions: How do we respond to news that some among us are ill, and that the illness is, perhaps, contagious? Are the healthy ethically obliged to tend to the sick? What are the relationships between “communicable” disease and verbal communication such as medical information, misinformation and rumors, stories about the dying and the dead? How have the ways in which humans imagine illness reshaped experiences of community, kinship, cultural memory, and identity in different times and places? What can past and present pandemics still reveal about structural inequities in the evolution of global society?
Writing New York
I’ve team-taught this course with Cyrus R.K. Patell since 2003. (We took a hiatus from 2012-2021.) Most recently offered in Fall of 2024.
This course examines the evolution of New York City as a literary construct as well as the city’s emergence and continual reinvention as one of the country’s ? and the world’s ? premier sites of literary and cultural production. Beginning with Dutch settlement, moving through the earliest New York theaters in the eighteenth century, and continuing to the present, we will examine a range of drama, fiction, non-fiction, and poetry to reveal a variety of New York experiences. Students will also learn about the city’s cultural history; note the development of literary forms in American literature from the late eighteenth century to the present; understand how writing about New York contributed to American literary history as we commonly understand it today; think about the relationship between literature and other artistic forms and media; and explore the nature of interdisciplinary work in the humanities.
Past Courses
NYU graduate courses:
Unruly Tongues and Civic Bodies (2002)
Race, Reform, and Antebellum American Fiction (2003)
City/Theater/Public (2004)
The American Novel to 1855 (2005, 2009, 2010)
Seduction in the Age of Revolutions (2006, 2008)
The Black Atlantic and American Literature to 1855 (2009)
Microhistory and Literary Study: 19th-century New York (w/ Tom Augst, 2010)
Pedagogy Workshop (2011)
Professional Practices Workshop (2012)
Literature in the Age of Warhol (2011, 2012)
Introduction to Advanced Study of Literature (2023, 2024)
NYU and NYUAD undergraduate courses:
Junior Honors Seminar: New York Writing (2001)
American Romanticism (2001, 2002, 2003, 2005)
Topics in Early American Lit: Unruly Tongues and Civic Bodies (2002)
Topics in Dramatic Lit: Early American Theater and Popular Culture (2003)
Writing New York (w/ Cyrus Patell, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2023, 2024)
American Literature I: Beginnings to 1865 (2005, 2006, 2009, 2010)
Advanced Honors Seminar: The Port of New York (2006, 2007, 2011)
The City on Stage: Urban Performance in 19c New York (2008, 2024)
New York’s Downtown Scene, 1960-80 (2010, 2011, 2012)
Contagion (NYUAD Core 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2019, 2020, 2021) [course site]
Classic American Literature (NYUAD 2013)
Age of Warhol (NYUAD 2013, 2016, 2019 [J-Term]) [course site]
Humanities Capstone Workshop (NYUAD 2013-14)
Foundations of Lit I: Epic and Drama (NYUAD w/ Maurice Pomerantz, 2014)
Foundations of Lit II: Lyric Poetry and the Novel (NYUAD w/ Maurice Pomerantz, 2015)
Records (NYUAD 2014, 2015, 2016)
Problems and Methods in Literary Study (NYUAD 2018)
Contagion (NYU CAS Core 2023, 2025)
Introduction to the Study of Literature (2023)