This semester, we will harness the time travellng powers of the literary arts as we consider the role of Chronos across genres. We will revisit the past with historical fictions by Jane Allison (Villa E) and Ben Shattuck (The History of Sound) as well as Jenny Xie’s poetic exploration of the Cultural Revolution in The Rupture Tense. We will address the troubled relation of past and present in Teju Cole’s essay collection Black Paper and Jami Nakamura Lin’s speculative memoir The Night Parade. And we will anticipate the future with Brenda Peynado’s science fiction novella Time’s Agent and Christian Bök’s futuristic poetics as represented in My Works, Ye Mighty. We will also look at shorter pieces or excerpts by Rachel Aviv, Jericho Brown, Alice Munro, Proust, Diane Seuss, Brandon Som, and Tony Tulathimutte. Each workshop participant will write a 1-2 page micro piece on the theme of the course, produce a five-page experiment of their own design, and workshop two full-length manuscripts in the genre of their choice. There is no expectation that manuscripts should directly address the course’s theme, though our workshop discussions will inevitably touch on the representation of time in any given piece.