Current Semester Courses
Spring 2013
ENGL 10500-01, 02 Introduction to American Literature: America – a Model Community HU LA 3a
3 credits
INSTRUCTOR: Derek Adams, Muller 304
ENROLLMENT: 20 per section
PREREQUISITES: None
Course Description: John Winthrop, one of the “founders” of America, declares in a famous sermon delivered to a Puritan congregation traveling to the eastern shores of the New World, “for we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us.” His declaration intends the creation a spiritual community modeled after the heavenly city alluded to in the book of Matthew, and that serves as a model for all other communities across the known world. Almost four centuries later, after significant transformations in American geography, technology, politics, culture, religion, socioeconomics, and philosophy this notion of America as a model community persists. Yet, Winthrop’s idea of American community varies widely from our own. This course uses American literature from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries to investigate trends and changes in the constitution of America as a model community. We will explore this concept in the work of Mary Rowlandson, Hector St. De Crevecouer, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Frederick Douglass, Rebecca Harding Davis, Sherwood Anderson, Richard Wright, Alice Walker, and Junot Diaz. Our principle objective in this course will be to broaden our own understanding of America through its literature while cultivating the skills to critically examine and write about literary texts.
Course Format/Style: The course will combine lectures, small group work, and class discussions as our primary means of engaging the literature.
Course Requirements: Three short essays, an in-class presentation, a final examination, close-reading exercises, discussion questions, and regular attendance and active participation in class discussions are required.
ENGL 10700-02, Introduction to Literature: Seduction, Temptation, and Blood-Sucking: Vampires in Literature LA, HU 3a
3 credits
INSTRUCTOR: Julie Fromer, Muller 320
ENROLLMENT: 20 per section
PREREQUISITES: none
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Buffy Summers, Bella Swan, and Sookie Stackhouse share an affinity for vampires, and in this class we’ll explore some of their desires and fears. Why do vampires hold such sway in American culture today, and where did these blood-sucking characters come from? Why are vampires portrayed with such mesmeric charisma, such powers of seduction, such ability to tempt the most chaste? What’s at stake, for characters like Bella and Sooki, in giving into the temptation? Vampires first appeared in English literature in the early nineteenth century, but the themes of seduction, temptation, and the risk of giving in, help to define the codes of chivalry in much earlier texts from the Medieval period. We’ll begin by exploring these themes in translations of poems originally written in middle English and French, and then we’ll move to some of the earliest characterizations of vampirism in Romantic poems. From there, we’ll move on to the lurid, detailed Victorian stories and novels of vampires, culminating in Dracula, which was written at the very end of the nineteenth century. Grounded in this vampire literary history, we’ll then turn to early 21st-century renditions of the vampire, including Twilight and Dead Until Dark (the first book of the series upon which the HBO television show TrueBlood is based).
ENGL 10900-01, 02 Introduction to Drama HU LA 3a
3 credits
INSTRUCTOR: Paul Hansom, Muller 321
ENROLLMENT: 20 per section
PREREQUISITES: None
STUDENTS: Open to all students
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This class provides a general introduction to modern European and American drama, exploring some of the key themes and stylistic developments of the form. We will examine works by playwrights such as Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekov, Shaw, O’Neill, Brecht, Weiss, and Mamet, among others.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Limited lecture. The class is designed around focused discussions of the primary works.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS AND GRADING: Response papers, formal essays, presentations, final exam.
ENGL 11000-01, 02, Introduction to Fiction HU LA 3a
3 credits
INSTRUCTOR: Jean Sutherland, Muller 320, Ext. 4-1935, jsutherl@ithaca.edu
ENROLLMENT: 20 per section
PREREQUISITES: None
OBJECTIVES: We will explore two varieties of fiction: romance (which depicts heroic adventures or supernatural experiences) and realism (which attempts to “hold a mirror” to the world). We’ll investigate works that clearly fit into these traditions and others which deliberately blur the line between “reality” and “fantasy.” Readings will include fairy tales, Hawthorne’s short stories, Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Hemingway’s The Nick Adams Stories, O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, and Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.
STUDENTS: Open to all
FORMAT AND STYLE: Mostly discussion
REQUIREMENTS: Short weekly in-class writings, 2-3 essays, a midterm, and a final examination
GRADING: Based on class attendance, participation, and the above requirements.
ENGL 11200-01, Introduction to the Short Story LA, HU 3a
3 credits
INSTRUCTOR: David Kramer, Muller 322
Enrollment: 20 per section
Prerequisites: None
Course Description: We will read a broad range of generally American (North and South) short stories and historical accounts, seeking to discover what kinds and degrees of truth and pleasure, if any, are particular to fiction and history. Reading Hawthorne, James, Melville, Borges, Cortázar, Garcia Marquez, Silko, Erdrich, Jackson, Paley, and O’Connor, as well as many lesser-known moderns and contemporaries, we will strive to attain some sense of how Americans represent ourselves to ourselves in all our strange and wonderful diversity.
ENGL 11200-02 Introduction to Short Story LA 3a HU
3 credits
INSTRUCTOR: Hugh Egan 306 Muller
ENROLLMENT: 20 per section
PREREQUISITES: Open to everyone
COURSE DESCRIPTION: In this course we will read a wide range of short stories, gathered loosely around the themes of childhood, adolescence, adult relationships, and death. In the course of our reading and discussion, we will become familiar with formal elements of the short story form, including point of view, plot, tone, and dialogue. We will read a combination of “classic” and contemporary stories.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Guided discussion
COURSE REQUIREMENTS AND GRADING: Two short essays, two longer essays, a mid-term, a final, and active class participation.
ENGL 11200-03, 04 Introduction to Short Story HU LA 3a
3 credits
INTRUCTOR: Paul Hansom, Muller 321
ENROLLMENT: 20 per section
PREREQUISITES: None
STUDENTS: Open to all students
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This class provides a general introduction to the short story genre, examining works by a variety of Anglo, European, American and world authors.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Limited lecture. This class is designed around focused discussions of the primary works.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS AND GRADING: Response papers, formal essays, presentations, final exam.
ENGL 11300-01, 02 Introduction to Poetry LA 3a HU
3 credits
INSTRUCTOR: Kevin Murphy, Muller 332
ENROLLMENT: 20 per section
PREREQUISITES: Open to all students
COURSE DESCRIPTION: One objective of this course is to familiarize the student with both traditional and contemporary forms of poetry. To do so, we will study poetry chronologically (from Shakespeare to the present) and formally (the sonnet, the ode, the dramatic monologue, etc.). The chronological survey from the 16th through the 19th century will take place during the first half of the semester, and during the second half we will focus on American poetry written in the 20th and 21st century, especially poetry written since 1950. A second, and perhaps more important, objective of this course is to instill in the student the desire and the confidence to read poetry and the ability to write about it critically and persuasively, and therefore participation in class discussion is crucial.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Discussion/lecture
COURSE REQUIREMENTS & GRADING: based on class participation, a five-page essay, an eight-page essay, a midterm exam, and a final exam.
ENGL 11300-04, Introduction to Poetry
3 credits
INSTRUCTOR: Michael Stuprich, Muller 316A
ENROLLMENT: 20
PREREQUISITES: None
COURSE DESCRIPTION: We’ll follow a pretty traditional course here, covering a broad range of poetical forms and techniques, with a focus, mid-way through the semester, on the poetry of John Keats and Elizabeth Bishop.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Almost entirely class discussion.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS & GRADING: Steady, active class participation; a number of short writing assignments; a mid-term exam; a final essay in the 5-6 page range.
ENGL 20003-01, Honors Seminar: Science in Poetry LA 3a HU
3 credits
INSTRUCTOR: James Swafford, Muller 330, ext. 4-3540
ENROLLMENT: 20
PREREQUISITES: Participation in the Ithaca College Honors Program
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This seminar will take its cue and its challenge from a provocative claim made by C. P. Snow in 1959: that modern society has split into the two cultures of the sciences and the arts/humanities. We’ll consider this ongoing “two cultures” debate, glance at the long history of relations—sometimes friendly and collaborative, sometimes downright hostile—between science and poetry, and study closely a generous number of poems (mostly modern ones) that are informed by science and mathematics. Two of our featured poets will be Czech immunologist Miroslav Holub and Nobel-prize-winning chemist Roald Hoffmann of Cornell University. The latter part of the term will be devoted to team projects in which we search out additional math- and science-connected poetry, analyze and evaluate the poems, and construct our own annotated anthology.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Mostly discussion, some workshop sessions.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS & GRADING: Two critical essays, one essay of self-reflection, assorted written exercises and response pieces during the course of the term, the anthology project, and a final exam. Grading is based on the above as well as on attendance and active participation in class discussion.
ENGL 20006-01, Honors Intermediate Seminar: Self and Self-Love In Literature and Culture HU LA 3a h
3 credits
INSTRUCTOR: Dan Breen, 302 Muller, ext. 4-1014
ENROLLMENT: 20
PREREQUISITES: Open only to students in the Ithaca College Honors Program
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course aims to use literary and analytical texts from a wide range of genres and historical periods in order to examine the phenomenon of self-love and its influences on our understandings of self, culture, and society. More specifically, we will investigate the development of the cultural category commonly called “the individual” by exploring the relationship between this development and self-love, and we will draw upon the resources provided by literature, literary criticism, philosophy, religion, and the history of the subject. Our hypothesis is that the contemporary elevation of “the individual” is generated by a reverence for psychological autonomy, and the work we do in the course will attempt to evaluate the full scope of this reverence. We will begin with a selection of Classical and early modern texts, move on to the Romantics, and conclude with a discussion of twentieth and twenty-first-century literature.
Many of the literary and philosophical figures we will examine over the course of the semester demonstrate a tendency toward self-destruction that seems to be generated in large part by their intense self-reliance. As we explore this connection, we will want to think further about some of the broader themes that shape and contain treatments of “the individual,” such as for example the oppositional relationship between self-love and community and the eerily strong connection between narcissism, an extreme form of self-love, and death. Ultimately our goal is to arrive at a fuller understanding of representations of the self in popular and “intellectual” discourse, and of the social and cultural phenomena that influence these representations.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Discussion, with some context-setting lectures.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS & GRADING: Four two-page response papers, a five-to-seven-page midterm paper, and a fifteen-page research paper due at the end of the course. Because of the discussion-oriented format, class participation will also be an important part of students’ final grades. Grading will be A-F based on the above requirements.
ENGL 20011 Intermediate Honors Seminar:Wilderness in the Western Mind HU LA 3ah
3 credits
INSTRUCTOR: Michael Twomey, Muller 329, Ext. 4-3564
ENROLLMENT: 20
PREREQUISITES: Open only to students in the Ithaca College Honors Program
COURSE DESCRIPTION: When Europeans first encountered the North American wilderness, they encountered old-growth forests, which they cut; wild game, which they hunted; and indigenous peoples, whom they feared as devil-worshiping savages. Notions about wilderness as a dangerous, alien space to be subdued and exploited, notions that the first colonists brought with them, are the rich, provocative, and exciting subject-matter of this course. The readings will include classic works of environmental and postcolonial criticism, literature that reflected and shaped Western thinking about the meaning and value of wilderness, and historical studies of the European and American landscapes before the Age of Discovery. Because we will be looking at North America, the focus will be primarily on the culture of medieval and early modern England, including also the Biblical and classical ideologies that it inherited from the ancient world. Besides students interested in literature and history, the course seeks to attract two other constituencies. Because the issue of recapturing wilderness drives debate about the US National Parks, the course welcomes students in the "Partners in the Parks" program; and because the course involves historical study of the environment, it welcomes students in the sciences and in Environmental Studies.
From a reading of literature, literary criticism, and histories of landscape, students will develop an understanding of the cultural influences that shaped the reaction of North American settlers to the wilderness they found here when they arrived (Historical Perspective); and from reading and analyzing a variety of literary texts from ancient through early modern, students will practice and improve their skills in original research, essay-writing, and oral presentation (3a, Human Expression, Language).
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Some lecture, lots of discussion, visiting lecturers, field trip if possible.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS & GRADING: Regular attendance and participation, several short essays, student research projects, in-class presentations; A-F grading.
ENGL 20012-01, Honors Intermediate Seminar: The Novel and the Terrorist Imaginary HU LA 3a h
3 credits
INSTRUCTOR: Chris Holmes, Muller 318, ext. 4-3190
ENROLLMENT: 20
PREREQUISITES: Open only to students in the Ithaca College Honors Program
If our current historical moment can be said to be a global one, then the figure of the terrorist is its most problematic manifestation. National conflicts over religion, territory, colonialism, and language are increasingly characterized by a struggle for the right to define what and who is a terrorist. Those definitions too often accompany the rationalization of violence and disenfranchisement. How we come to understand this powerful term has radical implications for international and domestic relations. We begin with the understanding that the novel, as the dominant literary form of the 20th-21st centuries, has a role to play in characterizing this historical phenomenon, particularly as a form directly concerned with the imagination of the lives of others.
This course will historicize literary responses to the sociological, political, and philosophical figure of the terrorist, beginning with Conrad's The Secret Agent, and expanding out from the Western tradition to novels from South Africa, Pakistan, Trinidad, Hong Kong, and the Middle East. Students will read secondary historical and political documents as a way of problematizing and complicating contemporary conceptions of the terrorist. Writers may include: Conrad, Delillo, Breytenbach, Wicomb, Aslam, Hamid, Hanif, Mo, Mitchell, and Naipaul.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Lecture and discussion
COURSE REQUIREMENTS & GRADING: active class participation, close-reading exercises, formal essays, midterm exam.
ENGL 20100-01, 02 Approaches To Literary Study (Critical Theory) HU LA 3a
3 credits
INSTRUCTOR: Chris Holmes
ENROLLMENT: 15 per section
PREREQUISITES: One course in English. This course is designed primarily for second semester first-years and sophomores who are working towards an English major, though others are welcome. Required for all English majors.
COURSE DESCRIPTION: How and why do we read literature? How do we frame our interpretations of poems, novels, and short stories? Focusing on these foundational questions, this class introduces students to the diverse ways that critics and theorists interpret literary texts. It shows how the discipline of English has developed, and explores influential and emerging methods of literary analysis, from New Criticism to postcolonial theory, with an emphasis on the relationship between literature’s competing discourses of philosophy, history, politics, and science. In the process, it provides students with critical tools for examining literature and the world around them. A central goal of the class is to help students to become confident and sophisticated literary critics, and adept readers of interdisciplinary theoretical work. Readings include a significant survey of 20th century theory and criticism, and may include works by Borges, Coetzee, Moore, Mitchell, and others.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Lecture and discussion.
ENGL 21500-01 Contemporary Topics in Science Fiction: DIY Sci Fi HU LA 3a
3 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: Katharine Kittredge, Muller 317, Ext. 4- 1575
ENROLLMENT: 40
PREREQUISITES: One course in the humanities or social sciences, or sophomore standing.
OBJECTIVES: Feeling like an academic droid? Want more control over what you learn? This course breaks the rules and re-draws the boundaries. After 5 weeks of Science Fiction Orientation (Pulp Fiction to Cyberpunk), the class fractures into small groups which spend four weeks working intensely on a topic that interests them. Possible topics could be: Alien life forms, Anime, Apocalypse, Gender Bending, Queer Futures, Feminist Science Fiction, The Novels of Phillip K. Dick and their film versions, Utopias, Dystopias, Strange British Humor, and Futuristic Sport. Individuals write a paper or complete a creative project on their topic of study, and the group as a whole devises a way of teaching the rest of the class about their area of interest. The last five weeks will consist of student-led classes. The content of the course will depend entirely on the interests of its students.
FORMAT/STYLE: Lecture, discussion, small group, collaborative activities
GRADING: Daily short exercises in first weeks, longer paper or project, participation in class activities
ENGL 21800-01 Modern and Contemporary American Drama HU LA 3a
INSTRUCTOR: Paul Hansom, Muller 321
ENROLLMENT: 20 students
PREREQUISITES: One course in the humanities or social sciences, or sophomore standing.
COURSE DESCFRIPTION: This class is designed to provide you with an introduction to Twentieth Century American drama, and it takes a broad thematic approach to analyze some of the problems raised by the trials and tribulations of the last turbulent century. Because American drama is a dynamic and sensitive literary form, its very receptivity allows us to explore a series of fascinating cultural questions: what is the impact of modernity on the dramatic form? How are the subtle shadings of human – and American – psychology represented by these playwrights? How does this drama represent the broader forces of social, political, and human history? What does it teach us about life under American capitalism, about life in the family, and how do these texts grapple with the experience of the post-modern? Hopefully you’ll have some answers by the end of our sessions. Playwrights covered include O’Neill, Miller, Wilder, Williams, Hansberry, Albee, Shepard, Mamet, Parks, and Ruhl.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Discussion
COURSE REQUIREMENTS & GRADING: Short reaction papers, three longer essays, class participation, final exam
FULFILLS: 20/21st century requirement in English
ENGL 21900-01, 02, Shakespeare LA 3a HU
3 credits
INSTRUCTOR: Christopher Matusiak, Muller 326
ENROLLMENT: 20 per section
PREREQUISITES: One course in the humanities or social sciences, or sophomore standing
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Shakespeare’s plays and poems display an obsessive preoccupation with human love and desire. Again and again, the poet explores the ways in which we care for each other and the anxieties attendant on our affections, whether by dramatizing the comical infatuations of youth in As You Like It, tracing the complex lines of bisexual attraction in the Sonnets, or putting devastating pressure on the fragile bond between parent and child in King Lear. Sexual frankness remains one of the most controversial dimensions of Shakespeare’s writing; for centuries it has polarized critics into groups that either try to ignore it (as in the so-called “Bowdlerized” texts, stripped of all sexual allusions) or exaggerate it (as in the current fashion for “filthy Shakespeare”). A primary goal of our course will be to arrive at a more sophisticated position by situating the poet’s language, ideas, and artistic conventions in the uniquely sexualized historical moment that was the English Renaissance. Doing so will enable us to understand both what has changed since Shakespeare’s lifetime and what remains distinctly “Shakespearean” about our own twenty-first century attitudes to love and desire.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Discussion/lecture
COURSE REQUIREMENTS & GRADING: active class participation, close-reading exercises, formal essays, final exam.
ENGL 21900-03, 04 Shakespeare HU LA 3a h
3 credits
INSTRUCTOR: Dan Breen, 302 Muller
ENROLLMENT: 20 students per section
PREREQUISITES: One course in the humanities or social sciences, or sophomore standing
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Poets and playwrights in early modern London were constantly using their work to explore the world outside of England. Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe, and Ben Jonson set many of their plays in countries such as Spain, Portugal, the German states, and Italy, and combined popular assumptions about aspects of Continental culture with representations of English social formations, creating in the process a literary culture that was consistently preoccupied with the subjects of nationality, ethnicity, and religion. Shakespeare was himself deeply implicated in this literary culture, and his comedies, tragedies, and romances demonstrate a remarkable fascination with the European, African, and Middle Eastern countries that line the seacoast of the Mediterranean. In this course, we will examine six of Shakespeare’s plays beginning with the perspectives provided by the settings of each. How, for instance, does the setting of Antonio’s bond and Shylock’s trial shape our understanding of the strikingly unconventional Merchant of Venice? What is the nature of the relationship between ancient Rome and Egypt that Shakespeare constructs in Antony and Cleopatra? What kinds of dramatic advantages or disadvantages does a setting in the Mediterranean afford? So that we will be better able to address these questions, we will read a selection of late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century travel writing in order to get a fuller sense of the various perspectives on Mediterranean countries available to Shakespeare and his audiences, as well as a selection of Shakespeare’s sonnets.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Discussion, with some context-setting lectures
COURSE REQUIREMENTS & GRADING: Two 4-5-page essays, one short response paper, a midterm and a final, and class participation. Because of the discussion-oriented format, class participation will also be an essential part of students’ final grades. Grading will be A-F based on the above requirements.
Format and Style: Class is highly conversational.
Requirements: Text:The Short Story and Its Writer, 8th edition. Ann Charters, ed.Two five-page essays; reading quiz and reading response every class; essay mid-term and final.
Grading: Based on the above requirements, with emphasis placed upon class participation.
ENGL 22000-01 Black Women Writers: Writing as Resistance in the post-Civil Rights Era
3 credits
INSTRUCTOR: Derek Adams, Muller 304
ENROLLMENT: 20
PREREQUISITES: None
Course Description: The end of the global Civil Rights era of the 1960s led many to consider issues of race, gender, sexuality, and social class closed. Civil rights legislation enacted in the United States, they believed, served as an armistice between governing institutions and those groups who had been traditionally marginalized by discriminatory practices. For them, this “resolution” made it unnecessary to ever again re-litigate issues of identity and marginalization in the realm of public discourse. Black women across the African Diaspora immediately saw through the superficiality of this resolution, and in the years following the final moments of the era, used their writing to continue resisting the marginalization they experienced in their daily lives. This course focuses on the forms of resistance that these black women offer in their texts, paying careful attention to the types of power they are actively working against. Their written work invites us to consider how black women’s resistance to institutional authority redefines discourses of feminism and women’s liberation for a new generation of activists and scholars. We will also explore how the category of black womanhood transforms through the process of writing.
Course Format/Style: Classroom discussion with occasional lectures
Course Requirements: Five short, focused response papers, an engaging in-class presentation, an annotated bibliography, regular attendance and active participation in class discussions, and an open mind.
FULFILLS: World/Multicultural Literature Requirement in English
ENGL 23200-01 Medieval Literature HU LA 3a, h
3 credits
INSTRUCTOR: Michael Twomey, Muller 329, Ext. 4-3564
ENROLLMENT: 20
PREREQUISITES: One course in the humanities or social sciences, or sophomore standing
COURSE DESCRIPTION: The modern world was made in the Middle Ages. Systems of law, nation-states, international trade, monetary exchange, and university education; the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim religions as we know them today; the mass-production technology of printing, and even the eyeglasses that people need in order to read the fine print—all are medieval creations. This course examines medieval literature both as a reflection of the culture that made the modern world, and as the originator of modern literary forms. We will (re)discover genres and subjects that first became popular in the Middle Ages, and with which English and American writers have been working ever since: epic, saga, romance, tragedy, and tale. Major texts: Beowulf; Njal’s Saga; Chrétien de Troyes’ Lancelot; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; The Vulgate Cycle’s Death of King Arthur; Dante’s Inferno; Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Lecture/discussion
COURSE REQUIREMENTS & GRADING: Regular attendance and participation, two essays, several short response pieces, midterm and final exams; A-F grading
FULFILLS: Periods of Literature Requirement in English
ENGL 27200-01, Literature of the Enlightenment
3 credits
INSTRUCTOR: Michael Stuprich, Muller 316A
ENROLLMENT: 20
PREREQUISITES: One course in the humanities or social sciences, or sophomore standing
COURSE DESCRIPTION: We’ll read, study and discuss works written in England between 1660 and 1812. The syllabus will include The Country Wife, Gulliver’s Travels, The Rape of the Lock, and Pride and Prejudice. All works will be read within significant cultural, historical, political, and religious contexts. Freshmen and non-English majors are most strongly advised not to take this course.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: A little lecture, a lot of class discussion
COURSE REQUIREMENTS & GRADING: Steady, active class participation; 6-7 short (2-3 page) papers; one major (8-10 page) essay
FULFILLS: Periods of Literature Requirement in English
ENGL 31100-01, Dramatic Literature I LA 3a G HU
3 credits
INSTRUCTOR: David Kramer, Muller 322, ext. 4-1344
Enrollment: 20 per section
Prerequisites: Any three courses in English, history of the theater, or introduction to the theater
Course Description: The course will survey drama from its origins in ancient Greece through the seventeenth-century dramatic renaissance in Spain, France, and England. Emphasis will be laid on formal and thematic analysis, theatrical and intellectual history, and the problems inherent in producing the plays. Texts may include: Euripides, The Bacchae; Plautus, The Menechmi; Shakespeare, Comedy of Errors, Jonson, Volpone; Webster, Duchess of Malfi; Corneille, l’Illusion Comique, Calderón, La Vida es Sueño, Molière, School for Wives; Behn, The Rover; Beaumarchais, Marriage of Figaro, Gogol, Inspector General
Format and Style: Class is highly conversational.
Requirements: two seven-page essays; reading quiz and reading response every class; essay mid-term and final
Grading: Based on the above requirements, with emphasis placed upon class participation.
ENGL 31200-01, Dramatic Literature II: Modern and Contemporary World Drama LA 3a G HU
3 credits
INSTRUCTOR: Claire Gleitman, Muller 303
ENROLLMENT: 20
PREREQUISITES: Any three courses in English, history of the theater, or introduction to the theater
COURSE DESCRIPTION: It is commonplace to declare that drama does not exist without action. The very word drama derives from the Greek verb dran, meaning “to do,” and no less an expert than Aristotle defined tragedy as “an imitation of an action.” Yet one of the most famous stage directions in all of modern theatre is the following: “They do not move.” Indeed, a distinguishing characteristic of the modern drama is its increasing interest in characters who are incapable of taking any kind of meaningful action at all, who are powerless against seemingly implacable or inexplicable forces. With this in mind, we will examine a range of modern authors who hail from Norway, Russia, Germany, Ireland, Africa, the US and Britain. As we do so, we will center our attention on each author’s explicit or implied view of human will or agency. Our plays will feature revolutionaries, would-be but failed revolutionaries, and characters who cannot be bothered to revolt because there is, alas, “Nothing to be done.” As we evaluate these varying stances, we will ask ourselves: Are the characters we meet in our plays actors, or are they merely acted upon? If they do not move, should they? Can they? Readings will include: A Doll’s House, Hedda Gabler, The Cherry Orchard, Playboy of the Western World, Galileo, A Streetcar Named Desire, Death and the King’s Horseman, Top Girls, My Children! My Africa, and Rock ‘n Roll.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Discussion/lecture
COURSE REQUIREMENTS & GRADING: active class participation, regular informal responses to our texts, mid-term essay, final essay, final exam. Note: This course fulfills the 20th/21st century requirement in the English major.
FULFILLS: 20-21st Century Requirement in English
ENGL 31300-01 The Lyric: The Lyre and the Bow LA 3a HU
3 credits
INSTRUCTOR: Kevin Murphy, Muller 332
ENROLLMENT: 20 per section
PREREQUISITES: Nine credits in English or permission of the instructor
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course is for students who love poetry and want to explore its subtleties and strategies. The ongoing assumption of the course, to be tested with each poem we discuss, is that there is a dialectical tension between the poetic shape and the intellectual vision of every poem (“All harmony lies in a tension of opposites, as in the bow and the lyre,” according to Heraclitus). Why does the sequential progression of the Shakespearean sonnet with its concluding couplet lend itself so well to dramatic argumentation? And why would William Carlos Williams’s famous “The Red Wheelbarrow” be a completely different poem if it were written as two lines of traditional pentameter (which it scans as)? In this course we shall explore the lyric poem as practiced in England, Ireland, and America over the past 450 years. The first half of the semester will, among other things, review the metrical forms and stanzaic structures of traditional poetry starting with poems structured with three-line stanzas and move on to more complex forms such as the sonnet and the villanelle, while the second half of the term will examine genres of lyric poetry such as elegy and ekphrasis (verbal representations of visual representations). The poems we study in the final two weeks of the course will be determined by the class.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Discussion/lecture
COURSE REQUIREMENTS & GRADING: several short papers and a longer research essay; take-home midterm and final examinations.
ENGL 31900-01 Great American Writers Before 1890 LA 3a HU
INSTRUCTOR: Hugh Egan 306 Muller
ENROLLMENT: 20 per section
PREREQUISITES: Nine credits of literature
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Throughout its relatively short recorded history, America has trumpeted itself as an exceptional experiment in nationhood—a democratic, self-reliant citizenry that serves as a model to the world. In this class we will interrogate some of the assumptions behind the idea of "American exceptionalism" and the myth of the "American dream." Beginning with accounts of European contact, we will follow the “new world” theme through the Puritan, Colonial, and Transcendental eras, through the Civil War to the brink of the 20th century. In one sense, the cultural trajectory of this course traces a familiar path—from a sense of early expectation and unlimited potential to the sobering realities of human pain and historical contingency. Throughout the term, we will examine how America's declarations of independence often reveal or conceal painful episodes of confinement— literal enslavement and also psychological imprisonment. To trace this theme, we will read a variety of American documents, including religious sermons, political treatises, philosophical essays, autobiographies, poems, short stories and, at the end of the term, a novel by Henry James.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Guided discussion
COURSE REQUIREMENTS AND GRADING: Three essays, a substantial take-home final, and active class participation
FULFILLS: Periods of Literature Requirement in English
32300-01 Biblical Interpretation in Judaism and Christianity LA HU
3 credits
INSTRUCTORS: Michael Twomey (English), 329 Muller, Ext. 4-3564; Rebecca Lesses (Jewish Studies), Muller 307, Ext. 4-3556
ENROLLMENT: 20
PREREQUISITES: 3 courses in the Humanities, one or more of which are in English, Jewish Studies, or Religion.
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course examines the theological and literary dimensions of reading the Bible in the Jewish and Christian traditions. In both religions, Biblical interpretation, or hermeneutics, is a special discipline that combines theology with techniques of literary exposition, or exegesis. The focus of the course will be the comparative study of Jewish and Christian readings of the Bible. The Hebrew Scriptures, which were formed out of the historical and religious experiences of the Israelites, became the religious and literary inheritance of two communities. Although it is often said that Jews and Christians share a common scripture, it is perhaps more accurate to say that the differing interpretations of a common scripture have defined the differences between the two communities. Thus, our comparative study will explore in the texts the evidence for conflict as well as those occasions when concurrence and even dialogue is possible. This semester the course will have a special emphasis on literal readings of scripture in the Jewish and Christian traditions and on how the Qur'an and later Muslim interpretation adopt and adapt earlier Jewish biblical traditions.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Team-taught; discussion, some lecturing, student presentations.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS AND GRADING: Short essays, research paper, midterm and final exams, in-class presentation, daily participation in discussion; A-F grading.
PLEASE NOTE: This course is cross-listed as Jewish Studies 340-34300-01.
ENGL 34100-01, The Novels of Jane Austen
3 credits
INSTRUCTOR: Michael Stuprich, Muller 316A
ENROLLMENT: 20
PREREQUISITES: 9 credits of literature
COURSE DESCRIPTION: During her all-too-brief life Jane Austen wrote six wonderful novels, two of which—Pride and Prejudice and Emma—can be counted among the greatest comic novels of English literature. We’ll read all six novels, along with the early novella Lady Susan, and we’ll also take a look at a number of critical/scholarly works which place Austen within significant cultural and historical contexts. Students who refer to Ms. Austen as “Jane” will be summarily dropped from the course.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Almost entirely class discussion
COURSE REQUIREMENTS & GRADING: Steady, active class participation; 6-8 short writing assignments; group work; an 8-10 page final essay.
ENGL 35200-01, Studies in 19th-Century English Literature: Oscar Wilde LA HU
3 credits
INSTRUCTOR: James Swafford, Muller 330, ext. 4-3540
ENROLLMENT: 20
PREREQUISITES: 9 credits of literature
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Everyone still reads the works of Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), or sees them staged or turned into films; yet Wilde famously said that he put only his talent into his works and his genius into his life, as if that life itself were his greatest work of art. So this course must examine not only Wilde’s literary achievement in a surprising number of genres – poems, plays, fiction, essays, autobiography – but also Wilde as a person and as a cultural figure. We will study the Wilde produced by photographers, news reporters, cartoonists, courts of law, playwrights, novelists, sculptors, and scholars, as well as the Wilde that Wilde himself served up for public consumption.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Mostly discussion.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS & GRADING: Two short critical essays, assorted written exercises and response pieces during the course of the term, a report on a critical/scholarly article, and one longer research essay. Grading is based on the above as well as on attendance and active participation in class discussion.
ENGL 37300-01, Renaissance Drama: The Age of Marlowe LA HU
3 credits
INSTRUCTOR: Christopher Matusiak, Muller 326
ENROLLMENT: 20 per section
PREREQUISITES: ENGL-21900 or ENGL-27100
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Before he died violently and mysteriously in a tavern at the age of twenty-nine, Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) wrote a sequence of shockingly experimental plays which fundamentally altered the way his contemporaries – including Shakespeare – wrote for the London stage. This course invites students to explore the cultural impact of this “Marlovian revolution” by reading four of the playwright’s major tragedies – Tamburlaine Part 1, Doctor Faustus, The Jew of Malta, and Edward II – alongside selected plays bearing the stamp of their profound influence, including the anonymously authored Arden of Faversham, Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, Middleton and Rowley’s The Changeling, and Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore. Warning: there will be blood.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Discussion/lecture
COURSE REQUIREMENTS & GRADING: active class participation, mid-term paper, final paper
FULFILLS: Periods of Literature Requirement in English
ENGL 37700-01, 19th Century British Novel: The Art and Science of Detection LA HU
3 credits
INSTRUCTOR: Julie Fromer, Muller 320
ENROLLMENT: 20 per section
PREREQUISITES: 9 credits of English
COURSE DESCRIPTION: The detective novel was born in the midst of the Victorian period, arising from the confluence of professionalization, medicalization, and disciplinization that occurred over the course of the nineteenth century. How do stories of detecting—ferreting out details and constructing a narrative out of those details—reflect larger cultural questions of identity, character, class, gender, and race? We will explore questions of epistemology (how knowledge was constructed, determined, communicated, and policed) and culpability (how blame and responsibility were attributed, accepted, resisted, and negotiated). We will read Charles Dickens, Bleak House, Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone, Anthony Trollope, The Eustace Diamonds, and George Eliot, Middlemarch. We will augment our close readings of these novels with contemporary cultural writings and critical works on the Victorian period.
FULFILLS: Periods of Literature Requirement
ENGL 39000-01, Selected Topics: Sympathy for the Devil: Genesis to Rushdie LA HU
3 credits
INSTRUCTOR: David Kramer, Muller 322, ext. 4-1344
Enrollment: 20 per section
Prerequisites: Nine credits in English
Course Description: The Devil may be evil, but as writers represent him he is usually more compelling than his angelic counterparts, and better at eliciting an understanding of good (often by contraries). This survey, traversing passages from Genesis and Job, and works by Marlowe, Milton, Blake, Goethe, Hawthorne, Twain, C.S. Lewis, Bulgakov, Kundera, and Rushdie (as well as selected films), will seek some understanding of the uses and pleasures of the Devil as a character, and will attempt to draw some conclusions about our sympathy (which authors seem to count on) for his predicament, character, and elucidating moral project.
Format and Style: Class is highly conversational
Course Requirements and Grading: two 8-10 page essays; reading quiz and reading response each class; essay mid-term and final; emphasis placed upon class participation.
FULFILLS: 20-21st Century Requirement in English
ENGL 46500-01 Seminar in Drama: Modern and Contemporary Irish Drama LA HU
3 credits
INSTRUCTOR: Claire Gleitman, Muller 303
ENROLLMENT: 10
PREREQUISITES: Either four literature courses, ENGL 31100, or ENGL 31200
COURSE DESCRIPTION: In this advanced seminar, we will examine selected plays from the modern Irish repertoire, beginning with works staged at the fledgling Abbey Theatre in the early 20th century and concluding with works produced as recently as 2008. Ireland's drama has earned worldwide acclaim for its emotional texture, its political incisiveness and its stylistic variety. Yet even as the Irish drama has been embraced by an international audience, it remains preoccupied with issues that pertain directly to Ireland. In particular, our plays display a persistent interest in two topics: Irish history and Irish identity. Ireland's sometimes obsessive, always passionate absorption with its troubled past is well known. Further, the issue of what constitutes Irishness and, indeed, Ireland has been a vexed and controversial one on that island for hundreds of years. Hence, we will pay close attention to the status of the past (historical, mythical, personal) in Irish drama. We will also keep in mind the following as a guiding question: What is each author's implicit or explicit conception of Ireland or Irishness? Authors will include W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, J.M. Synge, Sean O’Casey, Samuel Beckett, Brian Friel, Frank McGuinness, Sebastian Barry, Martin McDonagh, Marina Carr, Enda Walsh.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Discussion
COURSE REQUIREMENTS & GRADING: Active and consistent participation will be expected from all seminar members. Additional requirements will include a presentation, weekly responses to plays and critical articles, a midterm essay, and a 20 pp. final research paper.
ENGL 48300 – 01 Advanced Studies in Feminist Science Fiction - 43060 -
3 credits
INSTRUCTOR: Katharine Kittredge, Muller 317, Ext. 4- 1575
ENROLLMENT: 10
PREREQUISITES: Junior standing and either ENGL 214 (Survey of Science Fiction) or ENGL 21500 (DIY SciFi)
OBJECTIVES: This class looks at images of the female figure in science fiction and fantasy over a wide variety of genres. Our goal is to gain an understanding of how these images have evolved in the late 20th-early 21st century, with a heavy emphasis on more recent texts. Students will run the Pippi to Ripley: The Female Figure in Fantasy and Science Fiction conference to be held at IC on the first weekend of May. Students will have the option of presenting at the conference.
After the second week, we will be reading and viewing texts chosen by the students in the class.
