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Srikanth Reddy is the author of Underworld Lit (Wave, 2020), Voyager―named one of the best books of poetry in 2011 by The New Yorker, The Believer, and NPR―and Facts for Visitors, which won the 2005 Asian American Literary Award. He has written on poetry for The New York Times and The New Republic, and his book of literary criticism, Changing Subjects: Digressions in Modern American Poetry, was published by Oxford University Press in 2012. The NEA, the Creative Capital Foundation, and the Guggenheim Foundation have awarded him grants and fellowships, and in Fall 2015, he delivered the Bagley Wright Lectures in Poetry. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the doctoral program in English at Harvard University, he is currently an Associate Professor of English at the University of Chicago.

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IV.

HUM 101. Introduction to the Underworld. [Cross-listed with Divinity and Comp Lit]. In this course, students will be ferried across the river of sorrow, subsist on a diet of clay, weigh their hearts against a feather on the infernal balance, and ascend a viewing pagoda in order to gaze upon their homelands until emptied of all emotion. Texts will include the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the Mayan Book of the Dead, the Ethiopian Book of the Dead, and Muriel Rukeyser's Book of the Dead. The goals of the seminar are to introduce students to the posthumous disciplinary practices of various cultures, and to help them develop the communication skills that are crucial for success in today's global marketplace. 

All readings in English. Requirements include the death of the student, an oral report, and a final paper.

XI.

Please limit your responses to the space-time provided below. Your answers will be evaluated for honesty, cleanliness, devotion, humility, compassion, and spelling. No talking. Ten minutes.

1. Enumerate the principal mountain ranges of the late Bronze Age Cimmerian realm of the dead.

2. Identify He Who Consumes the Excrement from His Hindquarters.

3. Briefly trace the development of data storage systems from the underworld ledger to cloud computing.

4. What is the function of repetition in disciplining the dead?

5. What is the function of repetition in disciplining the dead?

XIII.

Upon reading the scroll, affairs from long ago began to infiltrate Chen's memory, albeit in a disordered and cloudy fashion. He thanked his old retainer. A passing dragonfly landed on his sleeve.

"Your presence has been requested at the Lower District Court," the motorized airport staircase informed him. "Would you prefer to travel on foot, or by some other means?"

"Whoever heard of a legendary warlord trudging through the mud?" protested the cadaverous valet, already beginning to fade around the edges. Ascending the scuffed metal steps, Chen reluctantly bid his former factotum farewell.

After a journey of many leagues, the staircase arrived at a red river moving slowly through jungle. Two boys swam against the current, their heads dipping in and out of view. Chen noted how their blowguns helped them to stay afloat. He could see shimmering clouds of butterflies suspended above the leafy canopy on the far shore.

Up to this point in his travels, Chen had marveled at his expeditious conveyance, which traversed mountains and deserts alike without any action on his part. But now he protested in vain as the rattling contraption sped into the river's shallows. Chen waved to the boys midstream, calling for assistance. Out of earshot, they waved back. The staircase pushed on through the deepening flow.

As the waters rose around him, Chen's soaked robes grew impossibly heavy, dragging the former assistant magistrate down, down, into the crimson flux. The last thing he remembered was his mouth filling with blood, which he sensed, somehow, wasn't his own.