All English Department courses are open to all students who meet the prerequisites. For information on requirements for an English major or minor, please see Hugh Egan, English Department, 306 Muller Faculty Center.
ENGL 10500-01,02 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LITERATURE HU LA 3a
3 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: David Kramer, Muller 322, ext. 4-1344
ENROLLMENT: 20 per section
OBJECTIVES: Study of literary modes, such as fiction, poetry, essays, and drama, in which American writers have expressed ideals of individual conduct and social relationships or have appraised and challenged the practices of society.
STUDENTS: Open to all students.
ENGL 10500-03,04 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LITERATURE HU 3a
3 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: Kirsten Wasson, Muller 305, Ext. 4-1255
ENROLLMENT: 25 per section
OBJECTIVES: This course considers certain American texts from the late nineteenth
century to the end of the twentieth, examining how a self is created and inscribed by cultural/ethnic/racial/familial narratives. How is a character's fate shaped by the story told of their inclusion/exclusion? For protection, or in defiance, characters here often wear masks, so we will be exploring how masks contribute to the construction of identity. From Samuel Clemens' ambivalent journey of freedom to Chang-Rae Lee's vivisection of self and disguise within a Korean immigrant family, these texts explore ways that the new world story is told. Writers include Henry James, James Weldon Johnson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Julia Alvarez.
STUDENTS: It is recommended that you not take this course if you think re-reading material is synonymous with skimming. It is likely one or two of our texts are ones you have encountered before, but you will be expected to bring college-level interpretive skills to your reading.
FORMAT AND STYLE: Mainly discussion.
REQUIREMENTS: Regular attendance, participation, and the completion of frequent 1-page response papers, a one-hour exam, 2 papers, and a final exam.
ENGL 107000-01,02 INTRODUCTION TO LITERATURE HU LA 3a
3 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: Anjali Nerlekar, Muller 323, Ext 4-7340
ENROLLMENT: 20 per section
OBJECTIVES: The course will be a survey of different kinds of literature and the varied genres in which it is to be found. From various cultures around the world, like the US, England, the Caribbean, India, and Africa, we will read poetry, short fiction, novels and a play. The purpose is to introduce the students to as wide a range of literature as possible and to demonstrate the diversity of writing that can be available to them. The goal of this course is to develop analytical skills in reading and writing about literature and to create a basic vocabulary of literary interpretation when doing so.
FORMAT AND STYLE: Discussions, films, student presentations.
REQUIREMENTS: Regular attendance, active participation, frequent reading responses, a presentation, two papers, quizzes, final.
ENGL 11000-01,02 INTRODUCTION TO FICTION HU LA 3a
3 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: Paul Hansom, Muller 322
ENROLLMENT: 20 per section
OBJECTIVES: Critical discussion of fiction, covering a broad range of forms and techniques. Emphasis is placed on class participation. Recommended for beginning English majors.
STUDENTS: Primarily intended for first and second year students, but open to everyone.
ENGL 11200-01,02 INTRODUCTION TO SHORT STORY 3a HU LA
3 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: TBA
ENROLLMENT: 20 per section
OBJECTIVES: Critical discussion of fiction, covering a broad range of forms and techniques, with an emphasis placed on class participation.
ENGL 11200-03,04 INTRODUCTION TO THE SHORT STORY HU LA 3a, h
3 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: Jean Sutherland, Muller 321, ext. 4-1942
ENROLLMENT: 20 per section
OBJECTIVES: This course is intended to give you the opportunity to read a wide variety of short fiction of varied themes and styles, from different cultures and historical periods. Our focus will be on how earlier works have influenced contemporary fiction. The goal of the course is to make you a more active and critical reader. This is NOT a class in fiction writing
STUDENTS: Open to all students.
FORMAT AND STYLE: This class relies largely on discussion. You will be expected to do much of the talking.
REQUIREMENTS: Text: The Short Story and Its Writer, compact 7th edition, Ann Charters, ed. Two essays; weekly quizzes or writing exercises; essay mid-term and final exam.
GRADING: Based on the above requirements, with emphasis placed upon class participation.
ENGL 11300-01 INTRODUCTION TO POETRY HU LA 3a
3 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: Kim Huth, Muller 321, extension 4-5185
ENROLLMENT: 20
OBJECTIVES: This course will introduce students to the study of poetry and the tools and terminology used in analyzing a poem. Our texts will be drawn from diverse periods in literary history and will address some of the themes and questions that have attracted the mind of the poet across the centuries—love, nature, belief, and war, to name only a few. Our main goal will be to identify and investigate those elements of poetic language that distinguish it from other types of writing. We will complement knowledge of the technical aspects of poetry with an appreciation of how those technicalities affect the communication and expression of ideas.
STUDENTS: Open to all students. Required of English majors and minors. All those interested in poetry are welcome.
REQUIREMENTS: A series of short essays; midterm and final exams; active participation in class discussions.
FORMAT AND STYLE: Primarily discussion.
GRADING: A-F, based on effort and accomplishment in the above requirements.
ENGL 11300-02,03 INTRODUCTION TO POETRY HU LA 3a
3 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: Kevin Murphy, Muller 332, Ext. 4-3551
ENROLLMENT: 20 per section
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 1900.
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 11300-04,05 INTRODUCTION TO POETRY HU LA 3a
3 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: James Swafford, Muller 330, Ext. 4-3540
ENROLLMENT: 20 per section
OBJECTIVES: 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 John Keats.
STUDENTS: Open to all students; required of English majors and minors.
FORMAT AND STYLE: Mostly discussion.
REQUIREMENTS: Three essays, a number of short written exercises, a mid-term exam, and a final exam.
GRADING: Based on attendance, written work, and the quality of class participation.
ENGL 20100-01,02 APPROACHES TO LITERARY STUDY HU LA 3a
3 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: Laura Murphy, Muller 326, Ext. 4-7371
ENROLLMENT: 15 per section
PREREQUISITES: One course in English. Intended for English majors; open to non-majors on a space-available basis.
OBJECTIVES: This course will prepare majors for the demands of upper-level English courses by encouraging them to become more reflective and self-conscious readers, writers, and thinkers. Through readings of traditionally canonized texts as well as contemporary global literature and popular culture, students will gain facility with the common vocabulary of the field, the work of close reading, the historical development of literary studies, issues of canonicity, the conventions of literary-critical discourse, and the assumptions and interpretive implications of different theoretical and critical approaches to literature. Readings will be drawn from well-known primary and secondary texts.
FORMAT: Discussion with some lecture and group work
REQUIREMENTS: Assignments will include regular short essays, a midterm, and a final research paper.
GRADING: Based on quality of participation, attendance, and the above requirements.
ENGL 21500-01 DIY SCI FI HU LA 3a
3 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: Katharine Kittredge, Muller 317, Ext. 4- 1575
ENROLLMENT: 40
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 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: Short papers, longer paper or project, participation in class activities
ENGL 21900-01,02 SHAKESPEARE'S OTHER WORLDS HU LA 3a h
3 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: Kim Huth, Muller 321, Ext. 4-5185
ENROLLMENT: 20 per section
PREREQUISITES: One course in the humanities or social sciences, or sophomore standing. May be repeated once for credit provided there is no duplication of plays studied.
OBJECTIVES: Shakespeare was early modern England’s greatest playwright—but he never wrote plays about his own time and place. Yet his work was extremely relevant to his own period, and it still has something to say about our own. In this course, we will examine Shakespeare’s many “other worlds,” the other places and times he treats in his plays and poems. As we visit these other worlds, we will discover how Shakespeare uses different locations to create comparisons and encourage critique, both of the worlds of the plays and of the world outside the theater. During Shakespeare’s time, England’s world was expanding with new knowledge of distant places and strange peoples. How did this new knowledge of the world affect England’s self-image? What can Shakespeare’s works tell us about his world and ours? Ben Jonson famously said of Shakespeare, “He was not of an age, but for all time.” In this course, we will test that theory by asking how Shakespeare’s “other worlds” were relevant to his own age and what they have to show us about our own time.
We will read six of Shakespeare’s plays, including examples from all four major genres (comedy, tragedy, history, and romance), in addition to several sonnets and at least one longer poem. We will supplement these readings with additional materials that contextualize Shakespeare’s texts in the literary traditions of early modern England (such as the traditions of Petrarchism and pastoral) and engage with critical arguments about the plays and poems.
STUDENTS: Required of English majors and minors and some Theatre Arts majors. All those interested in drama or Renaissance literature are welcome.
FORMAT AND STYLE: Primarily discussion.
REQUIREMENTS: 2 short essays (2-3 pages); 1 long essay (7-8 pages); final exam; active participation in class discussions.
GRADING: A-F, Based on effort and accomplishment in the above requirements.
ENGL 21900-03,04 SHAKESPEARE'S TRAGEDIES HU LA 3a h
3 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: Dan Breen, 302 Muller
ENROLLMENT: 25 students per section
PREREQUISITES: One course in the humanities or social sciences, or sophomore standing.
OBJECTIVES: At the heart of the Classical depiction of the tragic protagonist is a mind in isolation, in conflict with cosmic forces. At odds with fate and at loggerheads with the gods, characters such as Oedipus and Ajax survey the decline in their fortunes, measure their suffering, and attempt to draw some meaningful conclusion about the nature of their role within a universe whose operations are fundamentally opaque. In the Renaissance, however, for the most part the gods disappear from tragedy, and the inscrutable workings of fate are replaced by human beings who suffer the consequences of their own mistakes and misunderstandings. In this course, we will approach tragedy from the point of view offered by character rather than by plot, and examine the ways in which Shakespeare’s tragic protagonists think themselves into shocking situations in which they become socially irredeemable. We will read a diverse selection of tragedies written across the full span of Shakespeare’s twenty-year career as a playwright, including Richard III; Richard II; Othello; Macbeth; King Lear; and Antony and Cleopatra.
FORMAT AND STYLE: Discussion, with some context-setting lectures.
REQUIREMENTS: Two 5-6 page essays, one short response paper, a midterm and a final, and class participation.
GRADING: See above. Because of the discussion-oriented format, class participation will be an essential part of students’ final grades.
ENGL 22100-01 SURVEY OF AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE HU LA 3a
3 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: Laura Murphy, Muller 326, Ext. 4-7371
ENROLLMENT: 25
PREREQUISITES: One course in the humanities or social sciences, or sophomore standing.
OBJECTIVES: This course will trace the course of African American literary writing since the late 18th century. We will explore the slave narrative tradition, the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Power movement, and postmodern African American novels of the 20th century. The course will focus on the way the African American writers have revised, reinterpreted, and reinvigorated the American literary canon. Because African Americans have been represented in American literature in negative ways and sometimes erased from the narrative of American life altogether, African American artists address the canon and traditions which precede them with caution and with particular political and rhetorical goals in mind. John Marrant, for instance, re-wrote the captivity and the conversion narrative in his slave narrative. Hannah Crafts revised the British Victorian novel to serve the needs of depicting slavery in America. Zora Neale Hurston wrote insider anthropology when she set out to write about her hometown in Florida. And Ishmael Reed combined the comedy, historical novel, slave narrative, and parlor drama in his Flight to Canada. How do authors reinterpret literary forms which have been utilized toward exclusionary ends without replicating their forbears’ erasure of the African American experience? How do African American authors revise our understanding of American literature by creating a dialogue between their work and the work of authors who came before them? How do African American authors reinvigorate the tradition precisely by undermining it? Writers to be studied will likely include Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, John Marrant, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, Charles Chesnutt, Jean Toomer, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, Amiri Baraka, Ishmael Reed, Toni Morrison, Lucille Clifton
FORMAT: Discussion with some lecture and group work.
REQUIREMENTS: Assignments will include two papers, a midterm, and a final research paper.
GRADING: Based on quality of participation, attendance, and the above requirements.
ENGL 23100-01 ANCIENT LITERATURE HU LA 3a h g
3 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: Michael Stuprich, Muller 316A, Ext. 4-1253
ENROLLMENT: 20
PREREQUISITES: One course in the humanities or social sciences or sophomore standing.
OBJECTIVES: To read a number of western literature’s great works—the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Oresteia, Medea, Antigone, and the Aeneid—within culturally and historically significant contexts.
STUDENTS: Open to all; required of English majors.
FORMAT AND STYLE: Mostly discussion
REQUIREMENTS: Mid-term and final exams, weekly quizzes, 4-5 short (1 page) writing assignments, 2 essays (5-7 pages in length). Steady class attendance is mandatory (there is a 4-cut limit) as is class participation.
GRADING: Based on the requirements listed above as well as on attendance and the quality of class participation.
ENGL 23200-01,02 MEDIEVAL LITERATURE HU LA 3a h
3 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: Michael Twomey, Muller 329, Ext. 4-3564
ENROLLMENT: 20 per section
PREREQUISITE: One course in the humanities or social sciences or sophomore standing.
OBJECTIVES: This semester’s special focus is the medieval dialectic by which fiction and history combine seamlessly in medieval literature. First, in fictions that are also historical, Beowulf and Egil’s Saga probe the culture of violence that defined male cohorts in early medieval society. Next, by following the template of traditional literature found also in fairy tales, the lais of Marie de France and the romance Silence challenge the institutions, gender roles, and sexual morals of the early Middle Ages. This challenge continues in the adulterous affair of Lancelot and Guinevere that dominates The Death of Arthur. Then, Dante’s Inferno, an imaginary journey through Hell in pursuit of justice on earth, freely mingles biography, contemporary politics, Biblical history, and classical myth. Dante’s ideas on divine justice are rebutted by the anonymous English author of Pearl and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, both about journeys to the Other World—one religious, one secular. And finally, Dante’s blend of myth and history describing cosmic justice yields to domestic realism and satire in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.
STUDENTS: Fulfills the historical-period requirement for English majors; open to all interested students who meet the prerequisite.
FORMAT AND STYLE: Lecture/discussion.
REQUIREMENTS: Regular attendance and participation, two essays, several short response pieces, midterm and final exams.
GRADING: A-F, based on requirements above.
ENGL 27100-01 RENAISSANCE LITERATURE HU LA 3a h
3 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: Kim Huth, Muller 321, ext. 4-5185
ENROLLMENT: 20
PREREQUISITES: One course in the humanities or social sciences, or sophomore standing.
OBJECTIVES: The Renaissance was a period of expansion and innovation—geographically, intellectually, and spiritually. And each new discovery required individuals to reconsider their views of the world and their places within it. This course will explore the ways Renaissance writers negotiated the complex issues of personal identity and social life in their texts. What purposes did writing serve in the definition of identity? How do individuals react to changes in their fundamental beliefs about the world? How do Renaissance discoveries about the world lead to rediscoveries of one’s self? As we explore the many methods of self-identification and self-determination utilized by writers during this period, we will consider a range of authors and genres, including comedy, tragedy, lyric poetry, devotional and political writing, and the major epics of Spenser and Milton.
FORMAT AND STYLE: Primarily discussion.
REQUIREMENTS: Two 5-7 page essays, two short response papers, final exam, and active class participation.
ENGL 27200-01 THE ENLIGHTENMENT (1660-1770) HU LA
3 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: Michael Stuprich, Muller 316A, Ext. 4-1253
ENROLLMENT: 20
PREREQUISITE: One course in the humanities or social sciences or sophomore standing
OBJECTIVES: We'll read a number of works by English authors from the period which extends from the Restoration (1660) to the early years of the 19th century. Our syllabus will include Dryden’s “Mac Flecknoe,” Swift's Gulliver's Travels, several Restoration comedies, Pope's Rape of the Lock, Burney's Evelina, and Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Our approach to these works will be broadly contextual: we'll read each work closely and carefully, but we won't be fooled into thinking that close reading is an adequate substitute for informed reading. Thus, we'll insist on examining the culture within which these works were produced. We'll ask questions about sex and gender, about the rise of the middle-class, about the formation of a group of ideologies we might call modern and their effects on women, on the family, and on literature.
STUDENTS: Required of English majors, but open to all with a genuine interest in the subject matter. (Non-majors are welcome, but should consider the heavy reading and writing load.)
FORMAT AND STYLE: Discussion, with occasional background lectures.
REQUIREMENTS: Three essays, a midterm and a final, a research "project" culminating in a class presentation. Steady attendance and active class participation are mandatory.
GRADING: Based on participation and above requirements.
ENGL 27500-01 CARIBBEAN LITERATURE HU LA 3a
3 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: Anjali Nerlekar, Muller 323, Ext 4-7340
ENROLLMENT: 20
PREREQUISITES: One course in the humanities or social sciences, or sophomore standing.
OBJECTIVES: The Caribbean seems familiar enough to most people, even if they have not traveled to any place in the Caribbean. This knowledge of the Caribbean, however, is usually based on images and information that is available in popular culture that shows the culture of the Caribbean as singular and monolithic in all aspects. These images also sell the idea of the Caribbean as a tourist’s paradise and a place that is marked mainly by sunny beaches and smiling “natives.” In this course, we will look at the internal diversity of the Caribbean in terms of ethnicities, languages and histories as it is reflected in the literature of the region.
TEXTS: Authors will include some or all of the following: Walcott, Naipaul, Dabydeen, Shani Mootoo, Kincaid, Selvon, Brathwaite, Bennett.
STUDENTS: Open to all interested students who fulfill prerequisites.
FORMAT AND STYLE: Discussions, films, student presentations.
REQUIREMENTS: Regular attendance, active participation, reading responses, a presentation, two papers, mid-term, final.
ENGL 31100-01 DRAMATIC LITERATURE I HU LA 3a h
3 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: David Kramer, Muller 322, ext. 4-1344
ENROLLMENT: 20
PREREQUISITE: Any three courses in English, History of the Theater, or Introduction to the Theater.
OBJECTIVES: 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 who meet the prerequisites; required of some Theater Arts majors.
FORMAT AND STYLE: Class is highly conversational.
TEXTS: Sophocles, Oedipus; Euripides, The Bacchae; Plautus, The Menechmi; Shakespeare, Comedy of Errors; Jonson, The Alchemist; Corneille, The Comical Illusion; The Liar; Calderon, La Vida es Sueno; Moliere, School for Wives; Learned Ladies; Behn, The Rover.
REQUIREMENTS: 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 31200-01,02 “THE PAST IS THE PRESENT”: INESCAPABLE YESTERDAYS AND THE MODERN DRAMA II HU LA 3a g
3 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: Claire Gleitman, Muller 303 Muller, Ext. 4-3893
ENROLLMENT: 20 per section
PREREQUISITES: Any three courses in English, history of the theatre, or introduction to the theatre.
OBJECTIVES: The title for this course is taken from Eugene O’Neill’s play, Long Day’s Journey into Night, in which one of his characters famously proclaims: “The past is the present. It’s the future, too.” A semester spent reading a century’s worth of modern (1879-present) plays is likely to convince you that many other late 19th and 20th century dramatists agree. In this course, we will read a variety of plays written by American, British, Irish, German, Norwegian and Nigerian authors, with an eye to examining each author’s exploration of the insistent power of the past to insert and assert itself in the present. Some of our authors will focus upon the ways in which the past can hold us captive, ensnaring us in stagnant longing and regret, while others will focus on the difficulties we confront when we attempt to look backwards at the past and examine it with accuracy; still others will offer dramatic portraits of the past in order to appeal to the present to take heed of its messages. All of our plays, arguably, are concerned with how one goes about unburdening oneself of the dead weight of the past and inhabiting the present, without becoming utterly soulless—a traitor to one’s family, one’s country, or oneself—in the process.
We will begin the semester by reading two plays by Henrik Ibsen, as he is not only generally credited with “fathering” the modern drama but he wrote his plays roughly at the dawning of the Freudian age, when it became common for the first time to think about human psychology specifically and essentially in terms of the past’s impact upon us. From there, we will read a great variety of playwrights, considering not only their treatment of our course theme, but the dramatic conventions and staging practices that they inherited, reinvented, and put to use in their plays.
TEXTS: Playwrights and plays will include some or all of the following: A Doll House and Hedda Gabler (Ibsen); The Cherry Orchard (Chekhov); Mother Courage and Her Children (Brecht); Happy Days (Beckett); Death and the King’s Horseman (Soyinka); A Streetcar Named Desire (Williams); Long Day’s Journey into Night (O’Neill); Top Girls (Churchill); Dancing at Lughnasa (Friel); Fires in the Mirror (Anna Deavere Smith); Arcadia (Stoppard).
STUDENTS: All students who meet the prerequisites and who are willing to engage in lively discussion are welcome. Required of some theatre majors. The course fulfills the 20th-/21st Century requirement in the English department.
FORMAT AND STYLE: Discussion.
REQUIREMENTS: Two formal essays; weekly informal response pieces; occasional quizzes; comprehensive final exam; regular class participation.
GRADED: Based on participation, regular attendance, and above requirements.
ENGL 31300-01 THE LYRIC: THE LYRE AND THE BOW
INSTRUCTOR: Kevin Murphy, Muller 332, Ext. 4-3551
ENROLLMENT: 20
PREREQUISITES: Three literature courses, or permission of instructor
OBJECTIVE: 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 strength lies in a tension of opposites, as in the lyre and the bow,” according to Heraclitus). Why does the sequential progression of the 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 iambic 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 such as the sonnet, the villanelle, and the ode, while the second half of the term will examine lyric poetry by genre such as dramatic monologue, elegy, and ekphrasis (verbal representations of visual representations).
STUDENTS: Open to all who meet the prerequisites.
REQUIREMENTS: There will be several short papers (3-5 pages) focused on the formal aspects of individual poems, joint presentations by two students on individual poems throughout the semester, and a longer research essay (10-12 pages) due at the end of the semester dealing with aspects of a genre as manifested in two poems of different eras.
ENGL 31900-01 GREAT AMERICAN WRITERS BEFORE 1890 HU LA 3a
3 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: Hugh Egan, Muller 306, Ext. 4-3563
ENROLLMENT: 20
PREREQUISITES: Nine credits of literature
OBJECTIVES: In his preface to Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman writes, “The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.” This semester we will examine how material reality and its linguistic representation become intertwined in 17th, 18th, and 19th century America, resulting in a literature that is at once spare and ornate, vernacular and genteel. Focusing largely upon the romantic writers of the “American Renaissance,” including Poe, Emerson, Thoreau, Douglass, Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman and Dickinson, the course will begin by looking at Puritan and Enlightenment eras, and conclude with Henry James’s The American.
FORMAT: Mostly discussion
REQUIREMENTS: Four essays and a final examination.
ENGL 32500-01 WHY ARTHUR LA HU 3a
3 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: Michael Twomey, Muller 329, Ext. 4-3564, twomey@ithaca.edu.
ENROLLMENT: 20
PREREQUISITE: 3 courses in literature (English 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 literary generations 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 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:
STUDENTS: Open to all interested 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 34100-01 THE NOVELS OF JANE AUSTEN HU LA
3 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: Michael Stuprich, Muller 316A, Ext. 41253.
ENROLLMENT: 20
PREREQUISITES: Nine hours of literature courses.
OBJECTIVES: As a way of becoming familiar with the many issues surrounding early women writers, we'll begin the semester with Fanny Burney's Evelina. Then we'll proceed to read the four novels which nearly everyone considers Austen's greatest works: Emma, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Persuasion. We'll try to read each novel within the fullest possible set of contexts, discussing social and biographical as well as artistic issues, and trying always to imagine what it was like to be a woman writer at a time when the words "woman" and "writer" were regarded by many people as representing mutually exclusive categories.
STUDENTS: Open to all who meet the prerequisites, but of special appeal to anyone interested in reading wonderful novels and discussing issues involving women, gender, and human sexuality.
FORMAT AND STYLE: Open discussion, with occasional background lectures; there will be an emphasis on "collaborative" learning: students will be assigned a number of class projects, ranging from "outside" readings to the particularly intense scrutiny of certain passages or characters in the novels.
GRADING: The semester grade will be based on one or two essays, a class project or two, a final, and the quality of class participation.
ENGL 35100-01,02 GIRLHOODS IN LITERATURE
3 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: Katharine Kittredge, Muller 317, Ext. 4-1575
ENROLLMENT: 20 per section
PREREQUISITES: Three courses in the humanities; sophomore standing.
OBJECTIVES: 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, Alice in Wonderland, Little Women, Eloise, Pippi Longstocking, Ramona, Harriet the Spy, and Speak.
STUDENTS: Open to all who meet prerequisites.
FORMAT AND STYLE: Discussion
REQUIREMENTS: Papers, journals, and projects.
GRADING: Based on written work, attendance, and the quality of class participation.
ENGL 35200-01 OSCAR WILDE HU LA
3 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: James Swafford
ENROLLMENT: 20
PREREQUISITES: Nine credits of literature courses
OBJECTIVES: Few literary figures have lived in the public spotlight as much as Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), who was quoted and caricatured in the media even as an Oxford undergraduate, whose poems, plays, fiction, essays, and witty aphorisms drew both raves and condemnations, and whose career crashed spectacularly in 1895 when he was convicted of “acts of gross indecency with another male person” and sent to prison. In this course we will read and analyze Wilde’s writings in a variety of genres, but we’ll also examine the relationship of Wilde and his/our culture from the 1870s to the present day—studying the Wilde constructed by photographers, news reporters, cartoonists, courts of law, playwrights, filmmakers, sculptors, and scholars of literature, as well as the Wilde that Wilde himself served up for public consumption.
FORMAT AND STYLE: Discussion.
REQUIREMENTS: Regular attendance, full and prepared participation in discussion (silence in a class about Wilde is absurd and possibly criminal), two major essays, some informal written responses, and a final exam.
ENGL 36500-01 INVENTED WORLDS, MAGICAL HISTORIES: COMIC FIGURES OF THE FRAGMENTED SELF IN THE LATE TWENTIETH-CENTURY NOVEL HU LA
3 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: David Kramer, Muller 322, ext. 4-1344
ENROLLMENT: 20
PREREQUISITES: 9 credits of literature
OBJECTIVES: In the later twentieth-century novel, the realism of Tolstoy, Flaubert, and James no longer suffices to describe the forces of history or the complexities of the individual. Now characters wake up as giant cockroaches, refuse to age, unite telepathically to their birthday cohort–in short, the surreal and the magically real become necessary to describe individuals and the larger currents of their worlds. The course will examine the intersections of magic, history, and the fragmented self in the works of Borges, Grass, Bulgakov, Garcia Marquez, Kundera, DeLillo, Pynchon, Rushdie, and Roy.
FORMAT AND STYLE: Class is highly conversational.
TEXTS: Selected from among the following: Borges, Fictions; Grass, Tin Drum; Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita; Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Love in the Time of Cholera; Kundera, The Incredible Lightness of Being, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting; DeLillo, White Noise, Libra; Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow, The Crying of Lot 49; Rushdie, Midnight’s Children, Satanic Verses; and Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things.
REQUIREMENTS: Two five-page papers; reading quiz and written response each class; essay midterm and final exams; class participation.
GRADING: based on the above requirements, with emphasis placed upon class participation.
ENGL 43000-01 SHAKESPEARE AND THE LONDON STAGE, 1580-1620
3 CREDITS
INSTRUCTOR: Dan Breen, 302 Muller
ENROLLMENT: 10
PREREQUISITES: ENGL-21900, or permission of instructor
OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this seminar will be to read a selection of Shakespeare’s plays against the various cultural backgrounds—literary, social, political, and religious—that informed the makeup of the professional public theater, one of the most vigorous new social institutions of the sixteenth century. We will examine the ways in which Shakespeare and some of his contemporaries used the stage to intervene in various contemporary debates, as well as the attempts of Crown and the Corporation of the City of London to regulate the production and publication of plays. It is hoped that students will come away from this class with a fuller sense of the interrelationships that link different strands of cultural discourse, and an understanding of the relevance of dramatic art to all aspects of public life. Note that this class assumes some familiarity and comfort with Shakespeare; we will cover approximately one play per week, and so this is not recommended as an introduction to his work. Plays to be selected from the following: The Comedy of Errors; Titus Andronicus; Love’s Labor’s Lost; Richard III; 1 Henry IV; The Merchant of Venice; As You Like It; Othello; Macbeth; Coriolanus; Cymbeline; and The Tempest.
FORMAT AND STYLE: Discussion, with some context-setting lectures.
REQUIREMENTS: Several short response papers, a midterm essay, and a 15-page research paper due at the end of the course.
GRADING: See above. Because of the discussion-oriented format, class participation will be an essential part of students’ final grades.
ENGL 47000-01 CONTEMPORARY LITERARY HISTORICAL FICTION HU LA
INSTRUCTOR: Kirsten Wasson 328, ext. 4-1255
ENROLLMENT: 10
PREREQUISITES: Nine credits of literature
OBJECTIVES: Examine recent novels that are concerned with periods/events of American history
FORMAT AND STYLE: Discussion.
REQUIREMENTS: This course will examine novels written in the last few decades that address an epoch or event in American history (eg., slavery, 9/11.) We will examine the way that narrative highlights particular aspects of historical time, and we will observe the way in which recorded history is juxtaposed/connected to personal experience. Authors include, Jonathan Safron Foer, Toni Morrison, Junot Diaz, Charles Johnson, and Siri Hustevedt, among others. We will read a (long) novel every two weeks; this course carries a heavy reading load.
