Applications for the 2025 TSSL Course Development Grants have closed. Applications for 2026 applications will open in spring.
Fall 2026
From the Rainforest to the Himalayas: Sinophone Environmental Literature
Professor Mingwei Song (East Asian Languages and Cultures)
This new course introduces writings about nature and environment by contemporary Sinophone authors residing in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, and some multiethnic provinces of mainland China, such as Fujian, Yunnan, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, and Tibet. As opposed to the established field of Chinese Studies that takes for granted that China is a uniform, singular cultural and national entity, Sinophone Studies is an emergent discipline which stresses Sinitic-language cultures born of diasporic and multiethnic influences. It rewrites the relationship between the Middle Kingdom and the so-called borderlands and subverts the traditional humancentric paradigms by shifting the focus from human realm to animals, plants, environment, and the earth’s eco-system. Guiding students to read a variety of genres ranging from fiction to poetry to nonfiction, this course aims to inspire new approaches to eco-criticism by dismantling the conventional boundaries between nature and human society, and between China’s nationhood and its otherness as found in its tropical, oceanic, and mountainous margins and beyond.
Seas, souls and scepters: Iberian Literatures during the Age of Maritime Expansion
Professor Antonio J. Arraiza-Rivera (Spanish and Portuguese, Medieval and Renaissance Studies)
This course studies how the literature of sixteenth and seventeenth century Spain and Portugal engages with the sea. We will read travel and shipwreck narratives, short novels, lyric and epic poetry and see samples of visual culture in order to understand the artistic and historical importance of the sea at a time when both Iberian countries became global powers. We will address how travel narratives and prose fiction depict inhabitants from other continents, how poetry both celebrates and critiques navigation as a worthy endeavor, how maritime expeditions facilitate and problematize encounters with humans from different religions and social groups, and why exile and love poetry allude to sea-faring and swimming to express amorous feelings. Works by, among others, Cervantes, María de Zayas, and Luis de Camões, will therefore illustrate the long-term ethical, environmental, and artistic implications of traveling by sea as both a historical and cultural practice.
Sontag
Professor Octavio González (English and Creative Writing, Comparative Literary Studies)
Susan Sontag is the most famous of the New York Intellectuals. And, besides her essay on Camp, which garnered Sontag a TIME magazine feature at the ripe old age of 31, she is known for major critical interventions in the history of ideas: Against Interpretation (1966), On Photography (1977), Illness as Metaphor (1978), AIDS and Its Metaphors (1988), and Regarding the Pain of Others (2003). Her mature fiction includes the historical novel The Volcano Lover (1992) and The Way We Live Now (1991). The latter is an indelible story about the early AIDS crisis. Sontag’s intellectual breadth explores important themes such as the history of illness from antiquity to postmodernity, including cancer and HIV/AIDS; the nature of a postmodern social world governed by visual culture, by the empire of the image; and the representation of war and war crimes, such as torture (Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib), and other social calamities. Sontag is also known for her on-the-ground advocacy during the Siege of Sarajevo, where she directed a production of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot while bullets flew across the city. This seminar will focus on these varied texts and genres and areas of intellectual inquiry, while we explore the complex legacy of the most influential public intellectual and cultural critic of the late 20th c. As a TSSL Course, Sontag will culminate in public lectures presented by seminarians at the end of the semester.
Technologies of Text: The Book in the World
Professors Louise Marlow (Religious Studies, Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, South Asia Studies) and Ruth Rogers (Curator of Special Collections, Library and Technology Services, Art, Art History, Medieval and Renaissance Studies)
An interdisciplinary and cross-cultural exploration of the book, with a focus on technologies of writing and the reproduction of writing. The course takes a thematic approach, as a way to explore, through specific examples, the diverse ways in which societies and communities, in different periods and environments, have developed and transmitted cultures of writing, recording, reproducing, disseminating and reading texts. Among the themes that we shall explore in the course are cultures of writing, the materiality and aesthetics of the book, texts and paratexts, beginnings and endings of books, ornamentation, illumination, illustration or the lack of illustration, strategies developed to facilitate reading, the reproduction, dissemination and reception of books, the classification, storage and retrieval of books, and the circulation, suppression and censorship of books. Drawn from various cultural, religious and linguistic contexts, our examples will (or may) include texts written in Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Arabic, Persian, Ethiopian, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and modern European languages.
Spring 2026
Problem Shakespeare: WRIT 103
Professor Yu Jin Ko (English and Creative Writing, Medieval and Renaissance Studies)
Domestic and global political issues have led to a fracturing of public discourse, with polarization and demonization of the other becoming obstacles to robust and honest but respectful dialogue. This course will explore how we can learn to have difficult and charged conversations through studying some of Shakespeare’s most problematic plays. One guiding question will thus be: how might a literary script, as a fundamentally aesthetic object, uniquely enable us to reflect on and engage with difficult issues? The syllabus will include: The Merchant of Venice, a play that punishes its central figure, the Jew Shylock; Titus Andronicus, a gory rampage of violent mayhem that includes sexual violence and the opposition between Roman and Goth; and Othello, which tells the story of a black man’s murder of his white wife.
Fall 2025
Banned Books: JWST/CPLT 289
Professor Josh Lambert (Jewish Studies, Comparative Literary Studies)
Why do books get banned, and what are the effects of censorship? In this course, students will read legal, historical, and literary documents to explore the dynamics at play when governments and other institutions assert control over what can or can’t be published, with cases studies from France, England, the U.S., and Israel. Guest lectures from other Wellesley faculty will introduce other relevant cases. We will consider cases in which censorship seems wrong-headed and evil, and others in which some degree of control over publications might seem necessary or sympathetic. Students should be prepared to consider distressing and offensive texts, so as to be able to discuss why they might (or might not) need to be controlled. Banned books we’ll consider, in whole or in part, will include Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal, James Joyce’s Ulysses, Sholem Asch’s God of Vengeance, Eve Adams’ Lesbian Love, and Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer.
Healing Minds and Bodies through Music
Professor Gurminder Bhogal (Music)
Certain kinds of music and sound can help alleviate stress and anxiety, promote wellness, and facilitate healing. Although this power has long been understood across different cultures it is central to Afro-Diasporic and South Asian philosophy and spiritual practices in particular. In response, researchers working in the areas of music (psychology, cognition, medical ethnomusicology, and therapy), medicine (neuroscience and psychiatry) and health (yoga) have recently begun to interrogate this idea. This upper-level seminar draws on research across the fields of music, medicine, and wellness to examine how music and sound engage the brain, body, and consciousness in making humans feel more balanced and connected to one another and their environments. Students will read widely across disciplines and participate in learning that is experiential and discussion based. In conversation with leading experts of Afro-Diasporic and Indian music, medicine, neuroscience, mindfulness, and yoga, students will develop skills in meditation, critical reading, leading and developing discussion, and undertaking research/creative projects.
30 Poems: ENG 125
Professor Dan Chiasson (English and Creative Writing)
This course provides an introduction to poetry by focusing one at a time and in detail on thirty poems, from Sappho to Octavio Gonzalez. Each poem will be considered as a unique arrangement of words, images, and metaphors on the page; as a script for vocal performance; as a word game whose rules must be deduced; as an expression of the full range of private emotions, including joy, anguish, passion, remorse, and boredom; as a reflection of, and a contribution to, the historical and cultural frameworks of its time and place. Authors may include: William Shakespeare; Sir Walter Raleigh; George Herbert; Christopher Smart; John Keats; Marianne Moore; Elizabeth Bishop; Sylvia Plath; Lucille Clifton; Jenny Xie; Tarfiah Faizullah.