AI, Writing, and Creativity: The imagination in the Digital Age In this course we will explore how AI systems—large language models—are transforming creative expression. Through collaborative inquiry, students will examine fundamental questions about imagination, authorship, and human creativity while developing rhetorical awareness. This course will ask students to understand AI not as a culturally neutral technology but as one shaped by — and reshaping — American institutions, values, and inequalities. We'll investigate AI as a socially relevant contemporary issue, considering questions of equity, agency, and community in digital writing spaces. Students will write for diverse audiences, engage with interdisciplinary perspectives on technology and creativity, and view their own linguistic and creative differences as assets. Ultimately, we'll use writing to deepen our thinking about what it means to create in an AI-influenced world.

Writing to Heal This writing-intensive course examines writing as a catalyst for healing after loss or grief. In a workshop focused on student writing, we will analyze fiction, drama, poetry, and creative nonfiction as a basis for discussions.  To this end, we will read creative non-fiction, memoir, and novels.  Assignments for this course will include formal analytical essays, creative work (published online), and oral presentations.

The Rhetorics of Death In this course we will examine a number of issues that arise once we begin to reflect on our mortality. Are we, in some sense, immortal? Would immortality be desirable? How should the knowledge that I am going to die affect the way I live my life? What is the place of grief? The goal of this course is to examine creative approaches to these questions in Literature and Philosophy. The purpose of this examination is to enable deep reflections on a meaningful life when understanding that there is an end to it. We will engage in discussions and share our writing as a means of understanding “the good life.” Student writing will emerge from discussions of course texts.

AI, Writing, and Creativity: The Imagination in the Digital Age In this course we will explore the relationship between artificial intelligence, human writing, and creativity. Students will examine how AI systems like large language models are transforming creative expression while considering fundamental questions about imagination, authorship, and the nature of human creativity in the digital age.

Writing and Experience: Exploring Self in Society The reading and online writing for this course will focus on what it means to construct a sense of self in relation to the larger social world of family and friends, education, media, work, and community. Readings will include nonfiction and fiction works by authors such as Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, Andre Dubus, Tim O'Brien, Flannery O'Connor, Amy Tan, Tobias Wolff, and Alice Walker. Students will explore the craft of storytelling and the multiple ways in which one can employ the tools of fiction in crafting creative nonfiction and fiction narratives for a new online magazine on American popular culture.  This magazine will have been created by students in Writing on Contemporary Issues.  Narratives about self and society will therefore lean towards aspects of American popular culture. 3 hrs sem.

The Rhetorics of Sports       In this course we will examine the relationship between media, sports, and the formulation of one’s identity. We will examine issues pertaining to gender identification, violence, and hero worship. Reading critical essays on the subject, studying media coverage of sporting events, and writing short analytical essays will enable us to determine key elements concerning how sports are contextualized in American culture. Student essays will form the basis of a more in-depth inquiry that each student will then present, using media, at the end of the course.

Writing and Power Power: who has it, who doesn’t, and what does it have to do with your writing? This course both instructs students in how to access power in academic contexts and to critique power structures. We’ll learn how power connects to literacy, and how it's shaped through rhetorical contexts. Students will explore their own power as writers and thinkers while engaging in meaningful personal, reflective and argumentative writing. The professor will work with each student extensively on their writing process and development, and we'll create a writing community. This course bears elective credit but does not fulfill the college writing requirement.

Writing On Contemporary Issues: Writing, Editing, and Publishing Online This course is an introduction to writing prose for a public audience.  Students will create both critical and personal essays that feature strong ideas and perspectives. The readings and writing will focus on American popular culture, broadly defined. Essays will critically engage elements of contemporary American popular culture via a vivid personal voice and presence. Readings will address current issues in popular culture – Gladwell, “Brain Candy,” Klosterman, “Campus Confidential,” for instance. ReMix: Reading in Contemporary Culture is the central text. The end result will be a new online magazine of writings on American popular culture

Media, Sports, & Identity       In this course we will examine the relationship between media, sports, and the formulation of one’s identity. We will examine issues pertaining to gender identification, violence, and hero worship. Reading critical essays on the subject, studying media coverage of sporting events, and writing short analytical essays will enable us to determine key elements concerning how sports are contextualized in American culture. Student essays will form the basis of a more in-depth inquiry that each student will then present, using media, at the end of the course.

Social Class and the Environment In this course we will explore the consequence of growth, technological development, and the evolution of ecological sacrifice zones.  Texts will serve as the theoretical framework for in-the-field investigations, classroom work, and real-world experience. The Struggle for Environmental Justice outlines resistance models; Shadow Cities provides lessons from the squatters movement;  Ben Hewitt's The Town that Food Saved describes economy of scale solutions, and David Owen's The Conundrum challenges environmentalism.  Texts will guide discussions, serve as lenses for in-the-field investigations, and the basis for writing. We will also travel to Hardwick and Putney, Vermont, to explore new economic-environmental models.

Hector Vila

Reviews and ratings for Hector Vila at Middlebury College.Hector Vila teaches AI, Writing, and Creativity, Writing To Heal, The Rhetorics of Death and more.  Explore top rated instructors and find the best for you.Is Hector Vila good ? Find out on MiddCourses.

Quite simply the best Prof at this college. Prof Vila assigned work and readings in a way that was meaningful and not overwhelming. He also was very intriguing in his lectures and is very easy going. I highly recommend.  

I took this course as a CW requirement and assumed that it would be a lot of analytical work relating to the readings, however it was not. We had three assignments that were focused on our own creative process and writing that applied techniques discussed within the readings. Readings were very manageable as he often only asked us to read short essays. Class oftentimes felt like a podcast, where Vila would interject a lot of his own experience which was a positive not a negative. 

As everyone knows, Hector is amazing. He really cares that we digest the material and get more out of the course than writing skills. He incorporates the use of AI to improve our writing which I thought was unique and helpful for the future. Would highly recommend any course with him.