Introduction to Contemporary Literature
Prof. John Hay
Email: john.hay@unlv.edu
Course Description:
This course is designed to serve as an introduction to the English major. The primary goal of the
course is to make you familiar with the common characteristics of scholarly and critical writing. This
involves matters of citation, but it also extends to the structural and rhetorical aspects of essays. In order
to cover “writing about literature,” we will also need to address “talking about literature” and even (or
especially) “reading literature.” Therefore, this course will also serve as an introduction to the four major
literary genres: poetry, drama, prose fiction, and nonfiction prose. You will be expected to learn key terms
pertaining to each of these genres. Our reading will be (for the most part) restricted to texts published in
the last few years. No prior familiarity with these authors or texts is expected.
Requirements and Grading:
Four Short Papers:
Class Participation:
20% each, for a total of 80%
20%
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Introduction
How Do You Read a Poem? (Handout)
How Can You Tell if a Poem Is Bad? (Handout)
Sonnets (Handout)
Gregory Pardlo’s Digest (2014)
Pardlo’s Digest (cont’d)
How Do You Read a Play? (Handout); Paper #1 Due
What Choices Do Playwright’s Make? (Handout)
Tracy Letts’s Bug (2005)
Letts’s Bug (cont’d)
Watch Bug (2006; dir. William Friedkin) in Class
Basic Elements of Fiction; Paper #2 Due
How Do You Read a Short Story? (Handout)
George Saunders, “Home,” and Maureen McHugh, “Special Economics” [NAS]
Donald Antrim, “Another Manhattan,” and Zadie Smith, “Meet the President!”
What Is the Role of the Literary Critic? (Handout)
Wells Tower, “Raw Water,” and Rebecca Curtis, “The Toast”
Charles Yu, “Standard Loneliness Package”
Subgenres of Nonfiction Prose; Paper #3 Due
What Is an Essay? (Handout)
How Do You Write about Style? (Handout)
Leslie Jamison’s The Empathy Exams (2014)
Jamison’s The Empathy Exams (cont’d)
Workshop
Paper #4 Due
2
Required Reading:
Poetry
Gregory Pardlo, Digest (Four Way Books, 2014)
Ted Kooser, “After Years,” Delights & Shadows (Copper Canyon Press, 2004)
Donald Revell, “Zion,” Pennyweight Windows (Alice James Books, 2005)
John Updike, “Endpoint,” Endpoint and Other Poems (Knopf, 2009)
Brenda Shaughnessy, “Hide-and-Seek with God,” Our Andromeda (Copper Canyon Press, 2012)
Danez Smith, “& My Mother Notices Someone Else’s Blood on My Hands,” [Insert] Boy (YesYes
Books, 2014)
Kevin Young, “Ode to the Harlem Globetrotters,” New York Review of Books (December 4, 2014)
Andrew S. Nicholson, “My Garage Fills with an Ever-Increasing Number of Dandelions,” A Lamp
Brighter than Foxfire (University Press of Colorado, 2015)
Elizabeth Metzger, “For My Brother, in Bluegrass,” The New Yorker (July 6 & 13, 2015)
Bob Hicok, “I, hermit,” Green Mountains Review 28.2 (2015)
Karl Kirchwey, “Fiumicino, Morning,” New York Review of Books (July 9, 2015); rpt. in Stumbling
Blocks: Roman Poems (Northwestern University Press, 2017)
C. K. Williams, “Tears,” Selected Later Poems (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015)
Davis McCombs, “Dumpster Honey,” The New Yorker (August 3, 2015)
Juan Felipe Herrera, “Here and There,” Notes on the Assemblage (City Lights Books, 2015)
Mary Jo Bang, “Having Both the Present and Future in Mind,” The New Yorker (October 5, 2015); rpt. in
A Doll for Throwing (Graywolf Press, 2017)
Terrance Hayes, “Barberism,” How to Be Drawn (Penguin, 2015)
Philip Levine, “Rain in Water,” The Last Shift (Knopf Doubleday, 2016)
John Koethe, “Covers Band in a Small Bar,” The Swimmer (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016)
Mary Oliver, “The World I Live In,” Felicity (Penguin, 2016)
Dana Gioia, “Progress Report,” 99 Poems: New & Selected (Graywolf Press, 2016)
W. S. Merwin, “Black Cherries,” Garden Time (Copper Canyon Press, 2016)
Martín Espada, “Of the Threads that Connect the Stars,” Vivas to Those Who Have Failed (Norton, 2016)
Jana Prikryl, “Pillow,” The After Party (Tim Duggan Books, 2016)
Eléna Rivera, “Aug. 12th with Wordsworth,” Scaffolding (Princeton University Press, 2016)
Morgan Parker, “We Are the House That Holds the Table at Which Yes We Will Happily Take a
Goddamn Seat,” The Nation (October 7, 2016)
Délana R. A. Dameron, “The Perch,” Weary Kingdom (University of South Carolina Press, 2017)
Tyehimba Jess, “Alabaster Hands,” Olio (Wave Books, 2017)
Tracy K. Smith, “Wade in the Water,” The New Yorker (June 5 & 12, 2017)
Rosanna Warren, “So Forth,” New York Review of Books (June 22, 2017)
Criticism
David Mikics on Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116, The Art of the Sonnet (Belknap–Harvard University Press,
2010)
Stephen Burt on Brenda Shaughnessy’s “Hide-and-Seek with God,” This Poem Is You: 60 Contemporary
Poems and How to Read Them (Belknap–Harvard University Press, 2016)
Dan Chiasson, “Vanities & Regrets,” rev. of Selected Later Poems and Falling Ill: Last Poems, by C. K.
Williams, New York Review of Books (June 8, 2017)
3
Drama
Tracy Letts, Bug (1996/2004)
Samuel D. Hunter, The Whale (2012)
Annie Baker, The Flick (2013)
Criticism
Hilton Als, “God Only Knows,” rev. of Everyman, by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, The New Yorker (March
6, 2017)
Hilton Als, “The Sick Room” [rev. of three plays], The New Yorker (July 10 & 17, 2017)
Prose Fiction
Ben Marcus, ed., New American Stories (Knopf Doubleday, 2015)
Donald Antrim, “Another Manhattan” (2008/2014)
Wells Tower, “Raw Water” (2010)
Robert Coover, “Going for a Beer” (2011)
Maureen McHugh, “Special Economics” (2011)
Claire Vaye Watkins, “The Diggings” (2012)
Charles Yu, “Standard Loneliness Package” (2012)
George Saunders, “Home” (2013)
Zadie Smith, “Meet the President!” (2013)
Rebecca Curtis, “The Toast” (2014)
Lydia Davis, “Men” (2014)
Joy Williams, “Marabou” (2004), The Visiting Privilege: New and Collected Stories (Knopf, 2015)
Thomas McGuane, “The Driver,” The New Yorker (September 28, 2015)
Criticism
Christine Smallwood, “Short Cuts” [rev. of three anthologies], Bookforum (Feb.–Mar. 2016)
James Wood, “Unwelcome Guests,” rev. of The Visiting Privilege and Ninety-Nine Stories of God, by Joy
Williams, The New Yorker (August 22, 2016)
Nonfiction Prose
Leslie Jamison, The Empathy Exams (Graywolf, 2014)
Elena Passarello, “Twinkle, Twinkle, Vogel Staar: On Mozart’s Feathered Collaborator,”
Virginia Quarterly Review (Summer 2016); rpt. in Animals Strike Curious Poses
(Sarabande Books, 2017)
Criticism
Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein, “Introduction: Entering the Conversation,” “They Say / I Say”: The
Moves that Matter in Academic Writing (Norton, 2006)
Stanley Fish, “Chapter 1: Why Sentences?” How to Write a Sentence (HarperCollins, 2011)
Olivia Laing, “Never Hurts to Ask,” rev. of The Empathy Exams, by Leslie Jamison, New York Times
(April 4, 2014)
Nathaniel Popkin, “We Tell Ourselves Stories,” rev. of The Empathy Exams, by Leslie Jamison, Kenyon
Review Online (Fall 2014)