Teaching
Given an opportunity, I talk about literature and creative writing, about why I see literature and its creation as crucial to an increasingly global culture, even as analysts predict its decline. Popular literature. Academic literature. Classical literature. Hypertext literature. “Literature” is such a familiar word, an everyday part of the buzz and hum of the discipline of English, that it often goes unnoticed or taken for granted.
And yet, what is so important about literature? Or about continuing to write fiction, poetry, and essays? Why have I devoted my career to teaching, studying, and publishing both literature and creative writing? Put simply, I believe that words matter, that literature is powerful, that it can open minds and hearts—or close and harden them. American novelist Toni Morrison contends that if writing is “thinking and discovery and selection and order and meaning,” it is also “awe and reverence and mystery and magic.” I agree. And it is that everyday awe and magic that brings me back to the English classroom again and again.
Learn more about some of Jennifer Cognard-Black's classes
Books that Cook
The Literatures of Food
Introduction to Creative Writing
Poetry and Fiction
Sealed with a Kiss
Epistolary Literature
Summer Shakespeare Study Tour
in Stratford-Upon-Avon
The Victorians
in Photography, Text, and Film
Fiction Workshop
The Short Story
FirstYear Seminar
in Victorian Monsters & Modern Monstrosity
Woman Word
Anglo-American Women Write the Novel
Just Food
Food Writing for Social Justice
Other Courses
Firstyear Composition: Sites of Memory
Introduction to Literature: The Major Genres
Reading and Writing in the Major
Literature in History from 1700 to 1900
Victorian Literature and Culture
Victorian Adaptations
Twentieth-Century American Novel
British Literature from 1800
American Literature Before 1865
Introduction to Women Studies
Introduction to Gender Studies
Creative Nonfiction Workshop: Moments of Truth