Spring 2025 will see an amazing array of Slow Reads! You can choose between seven terrific opportunities to engage powerful texts in a relaxed and thoughtful manner. This spring we’ll be working through materials from a wide variety of historical and conceptual contexts. Don’t miss out! Join the Slow Read Movement!!
ENGL 29400
Moby-Dick – Herman Melville
Hugh Egan
1 Credit
Wednesday, 3:00-3:50
In this class we will join Ahab, Ishmael and the crew of thePequodin their search for the elusive white whale. We will open the novel to a wide variety of interpretive possibilities—classic quest, American epic, capitalist critique, queer text, traumatic memory, and more.
ENGL 29400
“The Films of Terrence Malick”
Robert Sullivan
1 Credit
Wednesdays 4:00-5:00
This semester we will immerse in the films of one of the most enigmatic and challenging directors of our era, Terrence Malick. Malick’s films range from scripted narratives to more experimental approaches and engage viewers in profound aesthetic and philosophical questions. Each of his ten films to date, from Badlands to A Hidden Life, will be made available for viewing and each Wednesday we will convene to work through what we have encountered.
IISP 11501 (CRN 40001)
Still a Mystery: Conversations Across Disciplines About What We Don’t Know
Michael Trotti
1 Credit
Tuesdays 2:35-3:50
This course will ask students to think about all the amazing things we don’t know . . . by having them focus on where the frontiers of what knowing is. Professors from across campus will interact with us as we investigate what is known and not known about the body, about the universe, about the mind, about the past, and many other areas. Though not technically a Slow Read, this is another wonderful low credit, high impact class!
HIST 20001
Doppelganger, Naomi Klein
Johnathan Ablard
1 Credit
Wednesdays 1:00-2:10
Naomi Klein's "Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World" is a profound meditation on the ways the social media have warped politics, social interactions, and fostered polarization. After analyzing how we arrived at a place of heightened conflict and misunderstanding, Klein provides a trenchant analysis of ways to move forward.
RLST 11500
Zhuangzi
Eric Steinschneider
1 Credit
Day and day part: Mondays, 10–10:50AM
Immerse yourself in this profound, and profoundly entertaining, Daoist treasure! TheZhuangzi, a delightful collection of parables, anecdotes, and highly fanciful conversations, is a classic of Chinese religious literature and one of the most influential texts of all time. If you are interested in dreams, butterflies, good jokes, or the secret to a more carefree existence, then this course is for you!
RLST 11501
Cowboy Apocalypse,Rachel Wagner
Rachel Wagner
Tuesdays 3:00-3:50
1 Credit
This Slow Read gives students an opportunity to work with a book, written by the course’s instructor, which is to be published during the spring term! Wagner’s Cowboy Apocalypse charts the myth of the “good guy with a gun,” connecting America’s frontier beginnings with visions of the end of the world. In this critique, Rachel Wagner makes the case that this unfortunate phenomenon is best understood through the idea of the cowboy apocalypse. She shows that across much US media, from video games and blockbuster movies to novels and TV, a story arc has been created that provides a complete myth about the end of the world and the future after that. In these stories, the cowboy messiah is envisioned as a good guy with a gun. But he doesn't save the world. He just saveshisworld: he protects his family and others he deems worthy while embracing the chance to wipe the global slate clean and start fresh, with survivors testing their mettle on a new frontier.
WRTG 20700
Narrative in the Anthropocene – Erin James
Eleanor Henderson
2 Credits
Mondays, 6:50-8:30
What can narrative teach us about our current geological epoch? And what can our current geological epoch teach us about narrative? Can understanding the stories we tell about our planet help us tell different ones-and even help us save it? Explore these questions and more in a slow read of Erin James' revolutionary work of econarratology, Narrative and theAnthropocene (Ohio State University Press, 2022). Supplementary readings may include other works related to narrative theory and environmental justice, as well as climate fiction and speculative fiction. Any student interested in science, writing, literature, and/or our planet is welcome.