ENGL 4619 Dear Self, Dear World: The Art of the Letter

In this Capstone/English course, students will use the letter form as an opportunity to reflect on their own journeys as human beings, students and soon-to-be college graduates, as well as a chance to speak to ancestors, the university, the nation, the past, communities of strangers and the natural world. We will read letters from a range of published sources, along with commentary on the epistolary letter form. Weekly writing assignments will culminate in a portfolio of revised letters that sit in conversation with each other and provide a nuanced map of the students deepest concerns. We will engage with letters as potent material artifacts at the Burns Library, experiment with making mail art at the McMullen Museum, and consider how letters written by humans take on new significance in the age of AI. Texts may include work by Victoria Chang, Emily Dickinson, Rainer Maria Rilke, Ocean Vuong, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Virginia Evans, Miriam Toews, Sadia Shepard, and Ben Shattuck (who will visit campus in April), along with the anthologies Letters to Change the World and Letters to a Stranger: Essays to the Ones Who Haunt Us.