Next Semester Courses
ENGL 11300-01, 02 INTRODUCTION TO POETRY HU LA 3a
3 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: Kevin Murphy, Muller 332, Ext. 4-3551
ENROLLMENT: 20
OBJECTIVES: The objective of this course is to familiarize the student with both traditional and contemporary forms of poetry. To do so, we will study poetry both chronologically (from Shakespeare to the present) and formally (the sonnet, the ode, the dramatic monologue, etc.). This survey from the 16th through the early 20th century will take place during the first half of the semester, and during the second half we will focus on American poetry written since 1950.
FORMAT AND STYLE: Some lecture, mostly discussion.
REQUIREMENTS: 3 short critical essays (4-5 pages), a mid-term, and a final examination.
GRADING: Grading based on attendance, participation in class discussion, examinations, and papers.
ENGL 11300-03, 04 Introduction to Poetry LA 3a HU
3 credits
INSTRUCTOR: James Swafford, Muller 330
ENROLLMENT: 20
PREREQUISITES: None
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course is designed to help the student develop skills in reading, analyzing, and writing about poetry. We will read a wide range of English and American poetry, both traditional and contemporary, sometimes comparing poems of a similar "kind" (narrative poems, sonnets, dramatic monologues), sometimes studying poems in the context of an author's other work or of a common theme. One major unit will focus on the life and work of English Romantic poet William Wordsworth (1770-1850).
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Mostly discussion.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS & GRADING: Written work will consist of three essays, a number of short written exercises/quizzes, an hour exam, and a final exam. Grading will be based on attendance, written work, and the quality of class participation.
ENGL 11300-05 Introduction to Poetry LA 3a HU
3 credits
INSTRUCTOR: Michael Stuprich, Muller 316A
ENROLLMENT: 20
PREREQUISITES: None
COURSE DESCRIPTION: A very traditional “intro to poetry” course, with a broad overview of Anglo-American poetry from the sixteenth through the early twenty-first centuries. We’ll look at many of the “great” poems in the English language, and spend 7-8 classes focusing on the poetry of John Keats and Elizabeth Bishop.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Almost entirely discussion.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS & GRADING: Active class participation and steady attendance are mandatory. We’ll do weekly close-reading exercises and brief response papers, and there will be a final paper in the 4-5 page range.
ENGL 19401-01, 02 Identity: The Search for the Self in Short Stories, credits 3
INSTRUCTOR: Jean Sutherland, Muller 320, ext. 4-1935, jsutherl@ithaca.edu
ENROLLMENT: 20 PREREQUISITES: None STUDENTS: Open to all students. COURSE DESCRIPTION: What creates our sense of who we are? How does a work of fiction reveal the complex web of influences that shape one’s identity and how one views the world? What roles do family, peers, age, class, education, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation play in influencing the way one thinks and acts, and how can an author suggest all of that in the space of a short story? What can a literary work reveal about our understanding of ourselves and of our world? In studying these works of short fiction, we will also consider some secondary material such as the authors’ comments about their work and scholarly commentary about them in order to enrich our understanding of why these stories are short but not slight.
The goal of the course is to make you a more active and critical reader. This is NOT a class in fiction writing
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: This class relies largely on discussion. You will be expected to do much of the talking.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS & GRADING: Text: The Short Story and Its Writer, 8th edition Ann Charters, ed. Two essays; daily quizzes or writing exercises; essay mid-term and final exam.
Grading is based on the requirements, with emphasis placed upon class participation.
ENGL 19402-01,02: Oh Cruel World! The Literary Character in Crisis LA 3a HU
3 credits
INSTRUCTOR: Paul Hansom, Muller 321
ENROLLMENT: 20 per section
PREREQUISITES: None
COURSE DESCRIPTION: What is a crisis? We can trace the word itself back to the Greeks (Krisis), where it was directly connected to a medical condition, when it was used to describe that specific, definable moment where a turning point was reached in a disease. The patient may become sicker, or that same patient might actually tilt toward recovery. Thus, to examine the very idea of crisis is to focus directly on that experience of turning, that border/boundary between wellness and disease, the threshold of change that marks stability and/or instability.
This class will broadly focus on the concept of literary crisis, where a character is plunged into that peculiar moment of change and potential disaster. As part of our inquiry, we will examine specific crisis conditions and circumstances (moments of transition, epiphany, insight, horror, breakdown, action, death, ageing, temptation, etc), and the ways in which literary characters face these challenges in terms of their own identity, spirituality, sexuality, politics, and morality. To help deepen our investigation, we will be exploring a wide selection of literary forms, ranging from the Classical Greek drama to the modern play, the Anglo-American short story, the novella, and the contemporary novel itself.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Discussion/lecture.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS & GRADING: active class participation, response papers, analytical essays, final exam.
ENGL 19403-01, 02 Madness in Modern Literature
3 credits
INSTRUCTOR: Jennifer Spitzer
ENROLLMENT: 20 per section
PREREQUISITES: None
COURSE DESCRIPTION: From Freud’s Dora to Woolf’s Septimus Smith to Ellison’s Invisible Man, twentieth-century literature is dominated by representations of madness. These figures may be mad but they are also capable social commentators, poised by virtue of their distance from centers of power and privilege to call attention to conditions of “powerful powerlessness,” to use the phrase of a noted scholar. As marginal or non-normative, these figures are situated to reflect and respond to issues of patriarchy, racial terror and discrimination, homophobia, war, and capitalism. Indeed, their madness offers complex responses to overwhelming social, economic and cultural forces. In this course, madness will provide a prism through which to understand a nexus of intellectual and political concerns of the twentieth century. Some specific questions we will address: What is madness and what work does it perform in these texts? How does it alter the quality of our attention to important psychic and social phenomena? Can madness be read as a subversive discourse that has the potential to challenge or overturn dominant discourses? And how does madness provide an impetus for artistic experimentation? We will read works by Henry James, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Virginia Woolf, Sigmund Freud, Ralph Ellison, Pat Barker and Ken Kesey.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Discussion/with the occasional lecture.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS & GRADING: active class participation, close-reading exercises, mid-term paper, final paper
English 19404-01, 02 American Masks LA 3a HU
3 credits
INSTRUCTOR: Kirsten Wasson, Muller 328
ENROLLMENT: 20 PER SECTION
PREREQUISITES: none
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course examines 19th, 20th, and 21st –century literature by writers who explore American identity. Race, class, and gender contribute to the way in which a character’s self is interpreted by others, so these will be frequent topics of discussion. The writers considered here suggest that identity is a “performance,” and that being an American involves the wearing of various masks. Texts may include Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Johnson’s Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Gish Jen’s Who’s Irish?
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Discussion with occasional lectures.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS & GRADING: Several (1-page) response papers, two (5-page) essays, a mid-term, and a final exam. Participation is 10-15% of your grade, so silence is ill advised. Attendance policy.
ENGL 19405-01, 02: Prizing the Postcolonial: Novels of the Booker Prize
3 Credits
INSTRUCTOR: Chris Holmes, Muller 318
ENROLLMENT: 20 per section
PREREQUISITES: None
Course Description: The Man Booker Prize, the most prestigious literary prize in Britain, is awarded each year to a novel in English, written by a British citizen or member of the Commonwealth. This broad geographic reach allows British literature to imagine itself as a literary-colonial power on par with the scope of cultural domination that the British Empire enjoyed in the 19th century. This poses a problem for the very idea of national canons of literature: namely, in an age increasingly defined by transnational movement, habitation, and citizenry, who is a British writer? This class begins with the assumption that to study the Booker is to study the history of decolonization and how the flux in relationship from Empire to Commonwealth to post-colony resonates in the form of the novels, and in the standards of prizing that form. In this class we will approach the novels as both literary moments in and of themselves, and as well, as part of a new chapter of postcolonial literary history.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Discussion with occasional lectures.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS & GRADING: Response papers, two (4-6 page) essays, a mid-term, and consistent and thoughtful contributions in class.
ENGL 19407-01, 02 'Tis Folly to be Wise: Fools, Madmen, Saints
3 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: David Kramer, Muller 322
Enrollment: 20 per section
Prerequisites: None.
Course Description: By representing the struggle of madmen and fools to understand society’s rules and customs--often incorrectly, often comically—authors manipulate and destabilize our preconceptions of what is sane, “normal,” and good; in the world of story (and perhaps other worlds) goodness may be mad, madness good, and folly universal. The works in this course, some tragic, some funny, some both, will examine the inter-relatedness of madness and heroism, and how these categorical blurrings and anxieties refer back to the origins and ends of storytelling itself.
Format and Style: Class is highly conversational.
ENGL 19408-01 The Power of Injustice & the Injustice of Power LA 3a HU
3 Credits
INSTRUCTOR: Derek Adams, Muller 304
ENROLLMENT: 20
PREREQUISITES: none
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Many individuals continue to feel as though they live at the margins of society, despite the “melting pot” rhetoric of inclusivity and acceptance that dominates narratives of American identity. While we commonly consider purposeful exclusion an act of injustice on the part of the powerful, we are often unaware of the way that subtle, hidden forms of power render particular groups and individuals powerless. American literature is one of the most widely utilized platforms for articulating the specific issues that arise in response to these forms of power. This course will use an array of American literary texts to explore the complexities of the life experiences of those who are forced by the powerful to live at the margins. We will examine texts from both white and black, and male and female authors that deal with traditionally marginalized groups. At the same time, we will consider the possible powerlessness of individual members of traditionally privileged groups.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Discussion with the occasional lecture
COURSE REQUIREMENTS: Students will closely examine course materials, put together an in-class presentation, actively engage in class discussions, craft three short textual analysis essays, and complete a final exam.
ENGL-20004-01 Honors Intermediate Seminar: American Breakdown
3 credits
INSTRUCTOR: Hugh Egan 306 Muller
ENROLLMENT: 20 per section
PREREQUISITES: Limited to members of the Ithaca College Honors Program
COURSE DESCRIPTION: In this honors seminar we will investigate some of America’s literature of madness and psychological instability, beginning with a Puritan sermon and proceeding more or less chronologically through the 20th century. American literature is often viewed in terms of its self-reliant and “sane” male narrators and characters (including Benjamin Franklin and the founding fathers, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and others), but there is another, equally powerful and counterbalancing literary strain that records narratives of breakdown, psychosis, and suicidal descent. These two literary traditions are not mutually exclusive, and indeed might best be seen as weirdly co-dependent. A number of discrete themes will emerge in the course of our reading, including: the importance of the Puritan tradition to America’s volatile self-image; how “madness” in America is inflected in terms of race and gender; how the process of going mad is recorded in language; and how psychological interpretations of literature unearth buried assumptions about self and nation.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Guided discussion.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS & GRADING: active class participation, three short essays, and a final project.
ENGL 20100-01 Approaches to Literary Study LA 3a HU
3 credits
INSTRUCTOR: Hugh Egan 306 Muller
ENROLLMENT: 15 per section
PREREQUISITES: One course in English
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course is designed to encourage English majors and minors early in their careers to become more reflective, self-conscious readers, writers, and thinkers, and thus better prepared for the upper-level English curriculum. Students will grapple with the issues and concerns that occupy literary critics when they think about literature, including the biases and assumptions that guide them. Focusing on a handful of well-known texts spanning a variety of literary genres, we will practice the skills of close reading and critical application—that is, we will attempt, first, to inhabit these works as worlds unto themselves, and second, to place them in appropriate critical conversations. The course will thus involve both formal analysis and scholarly commentary.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Guided discussion.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS & GRADING: active class participation, three 5-page essays, and a final research project.
English 21100-01 Jewish American Writers
3 credits
INSTRUCTOR: Kirsten Wasson , Muller 328
ENROLLMENT: 20 per section
PREREQUISITES: One course in the humanities or social sciences or sophomore standing.
COURSE DESCRIPTION: In this course we read fiction and non-fiction of 20th and 21st-century writers who are both Jewish and North American, beginning with work concerned with immigration from Eastern Europe. Then we address works that explore post-holocaust life in the United States. Mid-century writers such as Malamud, Singer, Paley, Roth and Bellow are included in our readings, and we conclude the class with authors whose work has come to the fore in the last three decades: Steve Stern, Cynthia Ozick, Art Spiegelman, Johnathan Safron Foer, Nicole Krauss and Allegra Goodman. Themes include assimilation, spirituality, representation of historical events, cultural, and religious identities.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Discussion/lecture.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS: Short response papers, a mid-term, two 5-page essays, and a final exam.
ENGL 21400-01, 02 Survey of Science Fiction LA 3a HU
3 credits
INSTRUCTOR: Paul Hansom, Muller 321
ENROLLMENT: 20 per section
PREREQUISITES: One course in the humanities or social sciences, or sophomore standing.
COURSE DESCRIPTION: The single, defining reality of the world today is change, and that change is exactly what Sci-Fi is all about. Sci-Fi is the new realism of a technological society, it is a literature of transformations, of visions, of terrors, and possibilities. J.G. Ballard described Sci-Fi as the main literary tradition of the Twentieth Century, perhaps the most vital and responsive form to date. He’s not far wrong. This class digs into the historical roots of Sci-Fi, whisking us back to H.G. Wells, up through the golden age of American pulp writing (roughly 1930-60), into the New Wave, the postmodern, and beyond. From steam-heroes to cyberpunks, this class will explore key Sci-Fi icons (cities, spaceships, wastelands, robots, monsters, etc), in a landscape dominated by environmental, technological, humanistic, and futuristic questions. We’ll be reading awesome stories, staggering novels, and astonishing ourselves with cinematic imagery.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Discussion/lecture.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS & GRADING: active class participation, response papers, analytical essays, final exam.
ENGL 21800-01, 02: Modern American Drama LA 3a HU
INSTRUCTOR: Claire Gleitman, Muller 303
ENROLLMENT: 20 per section
PREREQUISITES: One course in the humanities or social sciences, or sophomore standing.
COURSE DESCRIPTION: If American dramatists are to be trusted, dysfunctionality and the American family go hand in hand. Indeed, the deteriorating family has been a thematic obsession for American playwrights almost since the birth of American drama as a distinct body of writing. In this course, we will begin close to the middle of the last century, with Tennessee Williams’ landmark 1944 play The Glass Menagerie. From there, we will cover roughly 70 years of American playwriting, concluding with Amy Herzog’s 2012 play, 4000 Miles. All of the plays that we will read together focus upon familial relationships. In most, though not all of them, these families are suffering from a corrosive misery, one that seems to pass like a contagion from generation to generation as the sadness, self-loathing and (often) alcoholism of the parents is visited upon the children—unless they find a way, however compromised, to escape. Our interest will be to examine these portraits of familial distress in the context of the portraits of America that each one offers. What is the relationship between the family drama and the larger cultural drama that our authors are staging? Plays will include: The Glass Menagerie, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, Long Day’s Journey into Night, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, How I Learned to Drive, Topdog/Underdog, The Brother/Sister Plays, 4000 Miles.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Discussion.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS & GRADING: Short reaction papers, three longer essays, class participation, final exam.
ENGL 21900-03, 04 SHAKESPEARE HU LA 3a h
TOPIC: SHAKESPEARE’S COMEDIES
3 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: Daniel Breen, 302 Muller
ENROLLMENT: 20 students per section
PREREQUISITES: One course in the humanities or social sciences, or sophomore standing.
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Students and readers of Shakespeare have for centuries admired his ability to create impressively realistic and vital characters; to express, in Samuel Johnson’s words, “human sentiments in human language.” Typically this “humanity” tends to be discussed within the contexts generated by the protagonists in Shakespeare’s tragedies, who seem so relatable to modern readers because of the ways in which they present compelling glimpses of the inner workings of their psychologies and insist that the audience understand them as individual human beings. This course offers a different perspective on Shakespeare’s “humanity” by using the comedies to explore the more social aspects of his characters’ experiences. While tragedy is concerned to illustrate how human beings draw upon their own emotional, spiritual, and intellectual resources in response to crisis, comedy is much more attuned to the question of how different social groups identify and solve problems collectively. We will read a diverse selection of comedies written across the full span of Shakespeare’s twenty-year career as a playwright, including A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Much Ado About Nothing; As You Like It; The Merchant of Venice; Measure for Measure; and one tragedy, Romeo and Juliet. Among the questions the course will address are the following: what space for the individual voice does the essentially social framework of Elizabethan comedy allow? Is comedy a conservative or a radical genre? How does comedy force a compromise between punishment and forgiveness?
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. Grading will be A-F based on the above requirements. Because of the discussion-oriented format, class participation will be an essential part of students’ final grades.
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: After four hundred years, Shakespeare’s characters continue to resonate on the page, stage, and screen. His vibrant female characters in particular provoke lively controversy among scholars, and this course invites students to engage in a series of contentious interpretive debates over matters such as the violent courtship of Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew, malevolent witchcraft in Macbeth, and the sublime histrionics of Antony and Cleopatra’s eponymous queen. To better understand Shakespeare’s construction of female character in seven major plays, we will also venture beyond the playhouse to explore the social and political status of real sixteenth- and seventeenth-century women. Contradictions abound: pulpits and polemicists decried women as perpetrators of original sin, yet the English revered their female monarch, Elizabeth I, as a divinely appointed “Virgin Queen.” Poetry and plays idealized women as ennobling goddesses, even as actresses were barred from performing on London’s public stages. Where do Shakespeare’s representations of women (and, indeed, of men) fit into this world? How does he conceive the behaviors, desires, and ambitions of women in relation to such institutions as the family, the church, and the state? Are Shakespeare’s works essentially conservative or progressive? Answering these questions will inevitably involve reflecting upon ideas of womanhood that we celebrate or reject today, thereby bringing us closer to understanding why Shakespeare remains so deeply fascinating in the twenty-first century.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Discussion/lecture.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS & GRADING: active class participation, close-reading exercises, formal essay, final exam.
ENGL-23200 Medieval Literature
3 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: Michael Twomey, Muller 329, Ext. 4-3564, twomey@ithaca.edu.
ENROLLMENT: 20
PREREQUISITE: One course in the humanities or social sciences, or sophomore standing.
OBJECTIVES: 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, and tale.
In this course we’ll learn to recognize and appreciate forms and genres, literary conventions and strategies, themes, plots, and characters that make medieval literature medieval—and which modern writers continue to employ. We’ll learn, too, the cultural values at work in medieval literature, as well as the terms of cultural and literary discourse used by medieval people and by modern readers of medieval literature.
This semester has a special unit on medieval Celtic literature and its afterlife. Texts: The Irish epic, Cattle Raid of Cooley; selections from the Welsh Mabinogi; the Saga of Grettir the Strong, about a misfit outlaw; selected lais of love and fairy magic by the English author Marie de France; the gender-bending romance Silence; Dante’s Inferno; selections from the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer and from the Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio.
STUDENTS: Open to all students who meet the prerequisites.
FORMAT AND STYLE: Discussion, lecture.
REQUIREMENTS: Regular attendance and participation, short response pieces, two 5-page essays, midterm and final exams.
GRADING: A-F.
ENGL 27200-01 Literature of the Enlightenment LA 3a HU
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 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; steady class attendance; 6-7 short (2-3 page) papers; one major (7-8 page) essay; mid-term exam.
ENGL 28100-01 Romantic-Victorian Literature LA 3a HU
3 credits
INSTRUCTOR: James Swafford, Muller 330
ENROLLMENT: 20
PREREQUISITES: One course in the humanities or social sciences, or sophomore standing.
COURSE DESCRIPTION: William Blake publishes proverbs in the voice of the Devil; Lord Byron praises Prometheus, committer of a “Godlike crime”; John Keats writes a love-poem starring “a cruel man and impious” who invades a woman’s home, dream, and body. This course will focus on 19th-century English writers’ fascination with transgressors, whose violations of the bounds of law or custom allow us to explore the value and dangers of radical individualism and the benefits and evils of an ordered social world. Other writers we’ll study include Ludwig Tieck (our one non-English author), S. T. Coleridge (“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”), Mary Shelley (Frankenstein), Emily Brontë (Wuthering Heights), Thomas Hardy (Tess of the D’Urbervilles), and Oscar Wilde. English majors should note that this course is one of those included in the category “periods of literature before 1900.”
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Mostly discussion.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS & GRADING: Grading will be based on two essays, a number of short written exercises/quizzes, attendance, active class participation, and a final exam.
31100-01 DRAMATIC LITERATURE I
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.
Students: Open to all students.
Format and Style: Class is highly conversational.
Requirements: Texts: 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; 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-32500-01 Studies in Medieval Literature: Why Arthur? HU 3a
3 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: Michael Twomey, Muller 329, Ext. 4-3564, twomey@ithaca.edu.
ENROLLMENT: 20
PREREQUISITE: 3 courses in literature (English and/or foreign language).
OBJECTIVES:
What draws us to the legend of Arthur? What meanings do we assign it? Using Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur as the base text, we will work backwards into the history of Arthurian legend and forwards into its modern incarnations, studying how and to what purposes succeeding generations of writers have imagined and re-imagined Arthur and the Round Table. Our texts will come from the earliest accounts just after the Anglo-Saxon conquest of Britain; from the medieval chronicles and romances that gave rise to popular legends such as the Holy Grail and to characters such as Merlin and Morgan le Fay; and from modern authors and filmmakers who used Arthurian fiction as a vehicle for historical nostalgia, religious propaganda, and, yes, even entertainment. Some questions I’d like to investigate are:
• Where, how, and why did the legend originate?
• What did the legend mean to the people of medieval Britain—first the Celtic Britons themselves, then to the English who supplanted them?
• What did the legend of Arthur mean to medieval people living on the Continent?
• How shall we understand Arthur’s incest with his half-sister, which produces a son who destroys him?
• How shall we understand the adultery of Lancelot and Guinevere?
• What is the Holy Grail, where did the legend of the grail come from, and how did it develop? How does is the Grail figures in modern culture (e.g., DaVinci Code)?
• How do modern Arthurian novels revise both Malory and 5th century British history, and what are their agendas?
STUDENTS: Open to all students who meet the prerequisites.
FORMAT AND STYLE: Discussion, lecture, student presentations; viewings of films.
REQUIREMENTS: Regular attendance and participation, in-class presentations, short essays, term paper.
GRADING: A-F.
ENGL 33100-01, Studies in the English Renaissance: The Erotic Renaissance LA HU
3 credits
INSTRUCTOR: Christopher Matusiak, Muller 326
ENROLLMENT: 20 per section
PREREQUISITES: ENGL-21900, ENGL-27100, or ENGL-37300
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Erotic desire is ubiquitous in English Renaissance literature. The powerful force human sexuality exerts on everyday life clearly fascinated sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writers, but as important was the period’s tendency to draw imaginative analogies between lovers and their beloveds, the subject and the sovereign, and the soul and God. Although ostensibly concerned with the satisfaction or frustration of sensual desire, Renaissance erotic writing was more fundamentally a vehicle that enabled writers to participate in debates about political power, social identity, and theological controversy. Units in this course will include the study of Petrarchan verse experiments by Sir Thomas Wyatt, Edmund Spenser and Lady Mary Wroth; amatory verse exchanges between Queen Elizabeth I, Sir Walter Ralegh and other courtier-poets; John Donne’s unique and brilliant songs and sonnets; a pair of grotesque Jacobean sex tragedies by John Webster and Thomas Middleton; and the satiric obscenities of the Earl of Rochester, Aphra Behn, and other Restoration libertines. As we indulge in the pleasure of reading these works, we will develop a detailed understanding of how erotic literary discourse functioned to convey the ambitions, insecurities, and hostilities stirred by major events of the era, including the rise of the Tudor dynasty, the Protestant Reformation, transatlantic exploration, and the English civil wars.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Discussion/lecture.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS & GRADING: active class participation, mid-term paper, final paper.
ENGL 35100-01 GIRLHOODS IN LITERATURE HU, Liberal arts
3 credits
INSTRUCTOR: Katharine Kittredge, Muller 317, Ext. 4-1575
ENROLLMENT: 20
PREREQUISITES: Three courses in the humanities; sophomore standing.
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course will look at the emerging and changing image of girlhoods from the 18th to the 21st century as it is reflected primarily in the texts written for an audience of young girls—in children’s books, young adult literature, and some canonical literature with strong female characters. We will be looking at the texts to gain an understanding of the evolution of children’s literature and to consider the extent to which these iconic images of girlhood reflect the ways in which the roles of women changed over the three centuries. Possible texts might include: Goody Two Shoes, Little Women, Eloise, Pippi Longstocking, Ramona, Harriet the Spy, Speak, and Terrier (by Tamora Pierce).
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Discussion
COURSE REQUIREMENTS & GRADING: Papers, journals, and projects. Grading based on written work, attendance, and the quality of class participation.
ENGL 36500-01 Studies in the Novel: The Fiction of Ernest Hemingway
3 credits
INSTRUCTOR: Michael Stuprich, Muller 316A
ENROLLMENT: 20
PREREQUISITES: Nine (9) credits of literature or permission of instructor.
COURSE DESCRIPTION: In this course we will read, study, and discuss the fiction of Ernest Hemingway produced between the early 1920s and 1940. This will include many of his most famous short stories (including all the Nick Adams stories) as well as the novels The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and For Whom the Bell Tolls.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Almost entirely discussion.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS & GRADING: We’ll do a number of short (2-3 page) writing assignments and a major, end-of-term essay in the 8-10 page range. Along the way we’ll also break into groups and do a few class presentations. Steady attendance and participation will be mandatory
ENGL 37100-01 Studies in African American Literature LA 3a HU
3 Credits
INSTRUCTOR: Derek Adams, Muller 304
ENROLLMENT: 20
PREREQUISITES: 9 Credits in English
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course examines a body of literature that challenges the oversimplification of the black-becomes-white dimension of racial passing narratives. Literary works from Melville, Twain, Larsen, Schuyler, Griffin, Ovington, Everett, Packer, and Morrison reveal that racial passing is more multifaceted and complex than originally imagined. These stories paint a broader, more colorful portrait of the American landscape that encourages us to rethink the conventions and limitations of black/white racial identification. We will also consider the more subtle motivations behind passing. For instance, how do we account for the desire of white individuals to assume a black identity? Why do only a relatively small number of black and mixed-race individuals pass as white? Is it possible to engage in racial passing without moving between different racial groups? With these questions in mind, we will reassess what constitutes deception in acts of passing and who is being deceived. Lots of in-class discussion so come ready to talk!
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Discussion with the occasional lecture
COURSE REQUIREMENTS: Students will closely examine course materials, put together an in-class presentation, actively engage in class discussions, and craft a midterm essay and final essay.
ENGL 38000-01 Studies in World Literature: The Post Apartheid Novel HU 3a LA
3 Credits
INSTRUCTOR: Chris Homes, Muller 318
ENROLLMENT: 20
PREREQUISITES: 9 Credits in English
COURSE DESCRIPTION: “Apartheid,” the system by which the minority colonial government in South Africa ghettoized the majority population by racial/ethnic classification into separate homelands, was the dominant system of governance for half a century. With the end of Apartheid and the rise of democratic, Black African rule came great uncertainties about the future of the nation’s history, culture, and language. Literature has played a particularly important role in imagining what that future might hold, and our seminar will be considering some of the major literary works responsible for forging that vision. We will be reading novels and historical accounts written since 1994 that attempt with broad and narrow foci to encapsulate the struggle for a reconstituted nation and the potential for historical healing. Our goal will be to explore the broader theme of human rights in the age of decolonization by taking up issues of land ownership, interracial relationships, new kinship communities, and revolution vs reconciliation. In considering the social context of the novels, we will engage the formal choices and experiments with which the writers seek to reframe the dialogue of how to speak the post-Apartheid nation into existence.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Seminar Discussion
COURSE REQUIREMENTS & GRADING: Three Essays, a Midterm, and consistent written/discussion work on the course website and in the classroom.
ENGL 38200-01: Studies in Modern Literature: Sex, Gender and Modernism
3 Credits
INSTRUCTOR: Jennifer Spitzer
ENROLLMENT: 20
PREREQUISITIES: 9 Credits in English
COURSE DESCRIPTION: The period commonly referred to as modernism produced a body of formally adventurous texts that can be viewed as responses to the upheavals of modernity, including WWI, the expansion of empire, rapid industrialization, the emergence of psychoanalytic theories of the self and family, and changes in gender roles. In this course, we will think about literary modernism as a crucible of experiment within the realms of aesthetics, sexual practice and gender, paying particular attention to the ways in which conventional formulations of modernism have privileged male heterosexual experience at the expense of women and queer subjects. What happens if we take these “marginal” perspectives as central and think about how literary works reflect and respond to the gender politics of modernity? What happens if we turn our attention away from male “high modernism” and towards the writings of female and gay authors? Some of the subjects we will address will be modernism and the avant-garde, canonization, psychoanalysis, homosexuality, the marriage problem and the figure of the New Woman. Authors will include Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, Rebecca West, D.H. Lawrence, Christopher Isherwood and W.H. Auden.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Seminar Discussion
COURSE REQUIREMENTS & GRADING: active class participation, close-reading exercises, mid-term paper, final paper, class presentations
ENG46000-01 James Joyce’s Ulysses
3 credits
Instructor: Kevin Murphy, Muller 332, ext. 4-3551
Enrollment: 10
Objective: James Joyce’s Ulysses is arguably the most important novel written in the past century. The work is a radical departure from traditional forms and assumptions in literature, and, along with T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” which was also published in 1922, the novel establishes the foundation of literary modernism. As such, the novel’s experimental structure and stream-of-consciousness narration has had a profound impact on the fiction written throughout the twentieth century. Given the special difficulty attendant reading such a dense and experimental work, the primary purpose of this seminar is to provide and structure a close reading of the novel, one which will emphasize the integrity of the work and the multiple contexts (social, psychological, stylistical, and textual) within which and against which the novel was written. Given its experimental nature, the novel has also lent itself to a number of innovative theoretical approaches to the nature of literature itself which will also be considered in the course of the semester.
Students: Four courses of literature, or permission of the instructor
Format and style: There will be occasional background lectures, films, and audiotapes, but the seminar will proceed on the basis of student reports and presentations focused on the eighteen different episodes of the novel.
Requirements: Each student will be expected to give two oral presentations on aspects of the novel, one before and one after the midterm. In addition, there will be two papers due, a five-page essay at the midterm and a 10-12 page research essay due at the end of the semester.
ENGL 46500-01: Seminar in Drama: Beckett, Stoppard, Churchill HU LA
INSTRUCTOR: Claire Gleitman, Muller 303
ENROLLMENT: 10
PREREQUISITES: Either four literature courses, ENGL 31100, or ENGL 31200; permission of instructor.
COURSE DESCRIPTION: In this advanced seminar, we will engage in an intensive analysis of 3 major playwrights of the second half of the 20th century, considering how their stylistic and thematic preoccupations converge and part company. We will begin with Samuel Beckett, examining early and late works that together define what we now call Absurdist drama. We will move next to Tom Stoppard, who begins his career as a faithful Beckettian but whose plays become increasingly elaborate in form, historicized in content, and realistic in style. Caryl Churchill’s trajectory is the reverse: from highly elaborate history plays, she moves toward a radically pared down, fragmented style of dramaturgy that bears some of the hallmarks of Absurdism. Together these authors will provide us with a rich, though focused and selective, sense of modern and postmodern Irish and British drama. Plays will include some or all of the following: Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, Endgame, Happy Days, Krapp’s Last Tape, Play; Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Trifles, The Real Thing, Arcadia; Churchill’s Cloud 9, Top Girls, A Number, Blue Heart and Far Away.
COURSE FORMAT/STYLE: Discussion. Because this is an advanced seminar that meets just once a week, all students should expect to attend and engage actively in discussion at every class meeting.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS & GRADING: One presentation; one 6-8 pp. paper; one 12-15 pp. research paper; regular attendance and participation.
