Reading Literature: Fantastic This course seeks to develop skills for the close reading of literature through discussion of and writing about selected poems, plays, and short stories. A basic vocabulary of literary terms and an introductory palette of critical methods will also be covered, and the course's ultimate goal will be to enable students to attain the skills and tools vital to further course work in the major.

Indigenous and Settler Colonial Fictions The term “settler colonialism” has gained currency recently as a way of describing the unjust displacement of indigenous peoples, the theft of their lands and resources, and the negation of native epistemologies, cultures, and histories. This course foregrounds indigenous literary voices that challenge and present alternatives to settler colonial narratives. Students will adopt a comparative approach that identifies continuities and disparities between Native American/First Nations, Mexican, Pacific Islander, South African, Palestinian, Maori, and Hawaiian depictions of indigeneity. Authors will include Haunani-Kay Trask, Leslie Marmon Silko, Oscar Zeta Acosta, Craig Santos Perez, Joy Harjo, Maxine Hong Kingston, Rigoberta Menchu, Keri Hulme, Joe Sacco, and J.M Coetzee.

Global English in the New Media Environment Far from spelling the end of literature, the rise of new technologies of communication has continually energized Anglophone literary production. Reading literature through the lens of media theory (Stuart Hall, Friedrich Kittler, Gilles Deleuze, Rey Chow) , students in this course will explore how the global circulation of information, media, and images has transformed the literary imagination. While we will sample canonical modernist engagements with earlier transformations in print and visual culture, our main goal will be to bridge the gap between media studies and Anglophone postcolonial literature throughout the world. Readings will be selected from Benyamin, Jasmine Days; Chimamanda Ngozie Adihchie, Americanah; NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names; Karen Tei Yamashita, Through the Arc of the Rainforest; Zadie Smith, Swing Time; David Mitchell, Ghostwritten; and the poems of Jean Binta Breeze and Linton Kwesi Johnson.

Multi-Ethnic British Literatures "My name is Karim Amir," announces the protagonist of a Hanif Kureishi novel, "and I am an Englishman born and bred, almost." In this course we will investigate the complex subject of ethnic and national identity in the writing of British authors of Asian, African, and Caribbean descent. We will trace the shifting meanings of "black" and "British" as we move from 1950s migrant fictions to more recent reckonings with British multiculturalism. Topics to be considered will include diaspora and the work of memory; race and religion after 9/11; the representation of urban space; and the experience of asylum-seekers and refugees.

Afro-Asian Encounters Scholars have recently uncovered a rich history of black and Asian solidarity against racism. Yet the Los Angeles uprisings of 1992 provided a painful reminder of the antagonisms between black and Asian diasporic groups. This course will explore how Asian American and African American identities have historically been constructed in relation to one another. We will foreground key sites in the making and undermining of Afro-Asian intimacies, from the racial formation of coolie laborers to the cross-racial imagination of Kung-Fu and Hip Hop. Authors will include Richard Wright, Chang-Rae Lee, Vijay Prashad, Frank Chin, Das Racist, Mira Nair, and W.E.B. Dubois.

Refugee Stories “Stories are just things we fabricate,” says a character in Viet Nguyen’s The Refugees. “We search for them in a world besides our own, then leave them here to be found, garments shed by ghosts.” In this course students will find stories by and about a paradigmatic modern figure: the displaced refugee seeking asylum in unfamiliar lands. Highlighting literary and visual representations, we will also draw from history, sociology, anthropology, environmental studies, and feminist critique. Beginning with the Syrian refugee crisis, we will circle back to the Vietnam War and the lingering questions it poses to today’s social justice movement.

Black Aesthetics in the Wake of Slavery One of the most powerful ways in which contemporary Black writers and visual artists have examined the afterlives of slavery has been to question the authority of official documents such as ships’ ledgers, legal manuscripts, newspaper photographs, and auction catalogues. While showing how dominant archives negate black personhood, cultural producers such as Saidiya Hartman, M. NourbeSe Philip, Dionne Brand, Arthur Jafa, Christina Sharpe, and Kara Walker have explored the possibilities of alternative archival sources such as music, dance, personal correspondences, oral histories, tattoos, diary entries, and cleaning manuals. Students will explore how such sources (and their exciting aesthetic and scholarly treatment) disrupt the racial violence perpetuated by dominant archives.

Human Rights and World Literature In this course we will explore the idiom of human rights in law, literature, and political culture. We will place literary representations of human rights violations (genocide, torture, detention and forced labor, environmental devastation, police violence) in dialogue with official human rights treaties and declarations in order to historicize and critique the assumptions of human rights discourse. Who qualifies as a “human” deserving of humanitarian intervention? How do human rights rehearse a colonial dynamic based on racial and geo-political privilege? To answer these questions we will turn to some of the most controversial voices in global fiction and poetry.

The Modern Moment This course will explore the development of the modernist novel – and modernism in general-- in the first half of the 20th century. We will examine issues of formal experimentation, new conceptions of character, and an ever-dawning consciousness of the catastrophic as seen in personal, cultural, and political venues.  Readings will include Conrad, Joyce, Forster, Kafka, Woolf, Lawrence, Mansfield, Waugh, and others.

Kazuo Ishiguro Winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature, Kazuo Ishiguro is among the most influential and celebrated of contemporary writers. In novels like Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go, Ishiguro gives shape to today’s most pressing questions: about work and workers, the difficulties of intimacy and caring, the political consequences of historical perspective, and the ethical dilemmas facing scientists and educators. Moving between Europe and Asia, his novels also address the complex negotiation of cultural difference in a globalized world. We will explore his major works in great depth, supplementing our literary investigation with materials from other disciplines. (Diversity)

Twentieth-Century English Novel This course will explore the development of the novel in this century, with a primary focus on writers of the modernist period and later attention to more contemporary works. We will examine questions of formal experimentation, the development of character, uses of the narrator, and the problem of history, both personal and political, in a novelistic context. Readings will include novels by Conrad, Joyce, Forster, Woolf, and others.

Benjamin Graves

Reviews and ratings for Benjamin Graves at Middlebury College.Benjamin Graves teaches Reading Literature, Indigenous/SettlerColonial Lit, Global English and New Media and more.  Explore top rated instructors and find the best for you.Is Benjamin Graves good ? Find out on MiddCourses.

I enjoyed this course. Ben Graves is a very kind and chill professor, so class never felt intimidating. Discussions can fall on the boring side, as sometimes the readings weren't captivating or Prof. Graves struggled with asking us the right questions to spark a conversation. I really enjoyed 2 out of the 5 books we read--the other 3 were just okay/not great. But that only really matters if you are really into English Lit. Prof. Graves had us do "writing days," which were short essay-style exercises written in class. He released the prompts the morning of class and they were open note/book, so he was just looking to see if we did the readings and did not use AI. These were really easy ways to do well in the class, I wouldn't be intimidated by them. While class isn't the most thrilling, I really enjoyed the content and think Graves is a nice guy.

Ben Graves is one of the kindest and most passionate professors I have had at Middlebury. He is a great teacher who cares a lot about his students, the work he teaches, and humanity in general. I wish I could take more classes with him before I graduate.

Professor Graves is such a lovely person. His classroom environment is very comfortable despite it being one of the largest English classes I've taken. Major assignments were two in-class writing days, which were not stressful and graded very fairly. The books were also very interesting and I genuinely enjoyed reading them. I would recommend taking a class with Professor Graves if you need the distribution requirement! This class was very low stress and enjoyable. 