Short and Sweet

Students looking for an intense course for full credit still have time to register for the two-week first session of summer school at Tulane University. Classes, including a creative writing course by English professor Peter Cooley, meet from May 10 through May 21.

Seventeen different courses are offered during the first summer session (A2 session), ranging from "Landscape Painting" to "Independent Women Filmmakers" to "Holocaust in Film and Literature," as well as topics in neuroanatomy and American foreign policy. The complete schedule is available here.

Cooley is teaching "Introduction to Creative Writing" (English 361), which will examine examples of three forms of writing — poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction — with each student producing a portfolio of original work.

"We'll do a lot of in-class writing, and it will be a great chance for someone who is put off by the idea of a semester-long commitment to get a quick immersion," Cooley says, "sort of like going away to a writer's colony or summer seminar except this time it can be done right here in New Orleans."

Michael Kuczynski, associate professor of English, is teaching "Hamlet, Then and Now" (English 301).

"This special topics course underscores the seemingly inexhaustible nature of Shakespeare's tragedy, which is one of his most difficult but, at the same time, most popular plays," Kuczynski says.

Classes during the first week, ("then"), will focus on the conflicting textual identities of Hamlet, including its strong "revenge play" component.

Kuczynski says the second week, ("now"), focuses "on post-Renaissance productions in the play, beginning with the 18th century, when Hamlet really took off as a 'star vehicle,' and will concentrate on two very different film adaptations: a modernized video Hamlet by Ethan Hawke and Kenneth Branagh's full scale, cinematic tour de force film of the play."