New York University
The Novel Today Fall 2025 LITR1-CE 9270 Wednesday: 1:00 PM- 2:40 PM; Thursday 10:00- 11:40 PM; Thursday: 1:00 PM- 2:40 PM Margaret Boe Birns
Discuss major new work by today’s top writers, including emerging novelists, award-winners, and established favorites, all of whom are central to today's cultural conversation. We will investigate a variety of inventive narrative strategies, explore the psychology of numerous fascinating characters, and examine important topics within a context of changing times, changing lives and a changing world. Together we will explore a rich boy, a poor girl and a strange Chinese/American scientific experiment; two small time hooligans and a kidnapping in one of the wild houses of rural Ireland; a community in crisis in Red River Valley, North Dakota; the dark legacy of World War 11 as it manifests in the tensions between two women living in the same house in the Dutch countryside; a young Libyan man’s resistance to both the dictator Muammar Qaddafi and to the demands of the age itself; a struggling London comedian blindsided by a bad breakup in Paris; a woman who leaves urban life for a life of seclusion and contemplation in New South Wales; a debt ridden striver, tennis lessons, and a wealthy gated community in Massachusetts ; a murder mystery woven into the mysteries of love, loss and the roads not taken in the little town of Crosby Maine; a teenager in tumult on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Readings: Rachel Khong, Real Americans; Louise Erdrich, The Mighty Red; Colin Barrett, Wild Houses; Hisham Matar, My Friends; Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything; Teddy Wayne, The Winner; Charlotte Wood, Stone Yard Devotional; Yael Van Der Wouden, The Safekeep; Dolly Alderton, Good Material; Adam Ross, Playworld. Students should read Elizabeth Strout, Tell me Everything for the first class.
THE NEW SCHOOL
The American Short Story in the 21st Century
The short story is about a moment of truth, rearranging our perceptions, and bringing new insights. Although the short story is associated with brevity, there is an overflow of revelation, illumination, or feeling. In this class we will examine the way in which the sensibility of the American writer has found in the short story a highly congenial medium This course will examine a new wave of short stories singled out for their importance for 21st century America. Both contemporary and timeless, these stories represent the variety and power of American short fiction, its range of voices and styles, and gives us a look into America’s soul. Readings include stories by Said Sayrafiezadeh, George Saunders, Wells Tower, Lydia Davis, Anthony Doerr,David Foster Wallace, Deborah Eisenberg, Joy Williams, Kelly Link, Mary Gaitskill, Joe Wenderoth, Charles Yu, Lucy Corin,
Fantasy and Wonder: Anderson, Carroll, Wilde, and Rossetti
This course will examine the work of four extraordinary and original authors whose enchanting stories teach all ages much about life, the imagination, and the mysteries of the human heart. Deploying a double articulation that reached both child and adult, these authors wrote fantasies that, like dreams, take us beyond the conventional idiom of ordinary reality into worlds of wonder which allow us to explore deep-rooted wishes, needs and fears. We will examine how each of our highly sensitive authors confounded the categories that license sexual normality, valued the eccentric and the singular over the conventional and the standardized, and encouraged the development of a social conscience either through satire or social criticism. Each author deployed fantasy in a revolutionary way as a correction of an overly puritanical, utilitarian Victorian mentality that tended to be deeply suspicious of the imagination; and, because all magic tales depend on the experience of miraculous transformations, their stories are also vehicles for spiritual exploration. We will read a selection of tales by the innovative Hans Christian Andersen; Lewis Carroll's brilliant Alice in Wonderland; Oscar Wilde’s strange and beautiful fairy tales, and Christina Rossetti’s narrative of forbidden fruit and female desire, Goblin Market.
This class will be asynchronous (no scheduled meeting times); however it is expected that students follow the weekly schedule of work and activities listed in the syllabus and in Canvas.
The Novel Today Fall 2025 LITR1-CE 9270 Wednesday: 1:00 PM- 2:40 PM; Thursday 10:00- 11:40 PM; Thursday: 1:00 PM- 2:40 PM Margaret Boe Birns
Discuss major new work by today’s top writers, including emerging novelists, award-winners, and established favorites, all of whom are central to today's cultural conversation. We will investigate a variety of inventive narrative strategies, explore the psychology of numerous fascinating characters, and examine important topics within a context of changing times, changing lives and a changing world. Together we will explore a rich boy, a poor girl and a strange Chinese/American scientific experiment; two small time hooligans and a kidnapping in one of the wild houses of rural Ireland; a community in crisis in Red River Valley, North Dakota; the dark legacy of World War 11 as it manifests in the tensions between two women living in the same house in the Dutch countryside; a young Libyan man’s resistance to both the dictator Muammar Qaddafi and to the demands of the age itself; a struggling London comedian blindsided by a bad breakup in Paris; a woman who leaves urban life for a life of seclusion and contemplation in New South Wales; a debt ridden striver, tennis lessons, and a wealthy gated community in Massachusetts ; a murder mystery woven into the mysteries of love, loss and the roads not taken in the little town of Crosby Maine; a teenager in tumult on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Readings: Rachel Khong, Real Americans; Louise Erdrich, The Mighty Red; Colin Barrett, Wild Houses; Hisham Matar, My Friends; Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything; Teddy Wayne, The Winner; Charlotte Wood, Stone Yard Devotional; Yael Van Der Wouden, The Safekeep; Dolly Alderton, Good Material; Adam Ross, Playworld. Students should read Elizabeth Strout, Tell me Everything for the first class.
THE NEW SCHOOL
The American Short Story in the 21st Century
The short story is about a moment of truth, rearranging our perceptions, and bringing new insights. Although the short story is associated with brevity, there is an overflow of revelation, illumination, or feeling. In this class we will examine the way in which the sensibility of the American writer has found in the short story a highly congenial medium This course will examine a new wave of short stories singled out for their importance for 21st century America. Both contemporary and timeless, these stories represent the variety and power of American short fiction, its range of voices and styles, and gives us a look into America’s soul. Readings include stories by Said Sayrafiezadeh, George Saunders, Wells Tower, Lydia Davis, Anthony Doerr,David Foster Wallace, Deborah Eisenberg, Joy Williams, Kelly Link, Mary Gaitskill, Joe Wenderoth, Charles Yu, Lucy Corin,
Fantasy and Wonder: Anderson, Carroll, Wilde, and Rossetti
This course will examine the work of four extraordinary and original authors whose enchanting stories teach all ages much about life, the imagination, and the mysteries of the human heart. Deploying a double articulation that reached both child and adult, these authors wrote fantasies that, like dreams, take us beyond the conventional idiom of ordinary reality into worlds of wonder which allow us to explore deep-rooted wishes, needs and fears. We will examine how each of our highly sensitive authors confounded the categories that license sexual normality, valued the eccentric and the singular over the conventional and the standardized, and encouraged the development of a social conscience either through satire or social criticism. Each author deployed fantasy in a revolutionary way as a correction of an overly puritanical, utilitarian Victorian mentality that tended to be deeply suspicious of the imagination; and, because all magic tales depend on the experience of miraculous transformations, their stories are also vehicles for spiritual exploration. We will read a selection of tales by the innovative Hans Christian Andersen; Lewis Carroll's brilliant Alice in Wonderland; Oscar Wilde’s strange and beautiful fairy tales, and Christina Rossetti’s narrative of forbidden fruit and female desire, Goblin Market.
This class will be asynchronous (no scheduled meeting times); however it is expected that students follow the weekly schedule of work and activities listed in the syllabus and in Canvas.