Idea Transcript
Bates: English
Courses CM/EN 103. Introduction to Classical and Medieval Studies. This course introduces students to major topics, methods, and modes of inquiry in classical and medieval studies. By examining the transmission and reception of selected textual and material cultures of antiquity in the Middle Ages, students develop an understanding of the critical approaches that define the field. Specific topics and texts vary, but include such themes as "Images of the City" (Troy, Rome, Jerusalem, London) and "Lovers and Warriors" (Achilles, Caesar, Christ, Edward III), and are drawn from a mixed sampling of ancient poetry in translation (Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Lucan) and medieval texts either in translation (Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio) or in manageable Middle English (Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate). Historical and archaeological evidence is studied in conjunction with literary works to emphasize current research methods in an interdisciplinary context, with ample opportunity for questioning the categories of periodicity and genre that give rise to the definitions of "classical" and "medieval" studies. (Medieval.) (Pre-1800.) [W1] Normally offered every year. S. Federico. Concentrations
CM/EN 104. Introduction to Medieval English Literature. This course offers an introductory survey of the literature produced in England between 800-1485, from Anglo-Saxon poetry through the advent of print. Major texts include pre-Conquest poetry and prose (such as Beowulf and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle), early Middle English romance, post-Conquest lyric and narrative verse (including Chaucer), the fourteenth-century alliterative revival, Arthurian romance, drama, chronicles, and personal letters. Designed for nonmajors and prospective majors, the entry-level course provides a foundation in critical thinking about literary history. Enrollment limited to 39. (Medieval.) (Pre-1800.) S. Federico. Concentrations
ENG 105. Narrating 9/11 in Literature and Film. This course examines historical memory of the violence, trauma, and public grief that defines "9/11" in the American cultural imagination by looking at works of literature, film, and art that attempt to narrate these events and/or their aftermath. In addition to asking what kind of "post-9/11 American culture" these varied representations project, students also consider the complex ways in which national belonging and racialized exclusions intersect in the public cultures of mourning and memorialization that frame historical memory of September 11, 2001. Enrollment limited to 49. E. Osucha. Concentrations
ENG 113. Theory of Narrative. The novelist E. M. Forster distinguished between "the king died and then the queen died," which is a story, and "the king died, and then the queen died of grief," which is a plot. How does the causal meaning of "then" explain narrative? Narratology provides a theory of reading that crosses literary criticism, neuroscience, and philosophy of law. This course, in examining causality, agency, event, and temporality, pursues recent questions that ask what role narratives play in understanding self, consciousness, and cognition and emotion. Special attention is given to three case studies: the short stories of D. H. Lawrence, the narrative and lyric poems of Philip Larkin, and the "The Decalogues" of Krzysztof Kieslowski. Enrollment limited to 49. (Post-1800.) S. Freedman. Concentrations
AA/EN 114. Introduction to African American Literature I: 1600–1910. This introductory course traces the development of a distinct African American literary tradition from the Atlantic Slave Trade to 1910. Students examine music, oratory, letters, poems, essays, slave narratives, autobiographies, fiction, and plays by Americans of African descent. The essential questions that shape this course include: What is the role of African American literature in the cultural identity and collective struggle of black people, and what should that role be? What themes, tropes, and forms connect these texts, authors, and movements into a coherent living tradition? Enrollment limited to 49. (Race, Ethnicity, or Diasporic Literature.) T. Pickens. Concentrations
AA/EN 115. Introduction to African American Literature II: 1910–Present. This introductory course traces the development of a distinct African American literary tradition from 1910 to the present. Students examine music, oratory, letters, poems, essays, slave narratives, autobiographies, fiction, and plays by Americans of African descent. The essential questions that shape this course include: What is the role of African American literature in the cultural identity and collective struggle of black people, and what should that role be? What themes, tropes, and forms connect these texts, authors, and movements into a coherent living tradition? This course is a continuation of African American Literature I, which considers literary production before 1910. Recommended background: AA/EN 114. Enrollment limited to 49. (Race, Ethnicity, or Diasporic Literature.) (Post-1800.) T. Pickens. Concentrations
ENG 117. Art of the Novella. The novella was once described by Stephen King as an "anarchy-ridden literary banana republic." This course examines the long-beleaguered novella, a story that murkily exists between 10,000 and 50,000 words. Despite being overshadowed by its overly heralded compatriots, the short story and the novel, the novella has been, and continues to be, explored by writers across cultures. This course broadly explores the aims and unique aesthetic seduction of works of this strange length; readings may include novellas by Voltaire, Stevenson, Melville, Mann, Joyce, Conrad, Woolf, Hemingway, Wright, Tolstoy, Jewett, Zola, Cervantes, Cortázar, McCullers, Kafka, Wells, and Kosinski. Enrollment limited to 49. J. Anthony, S. Dillon. Concentrations
ENG 121. Colloquia in Literature. Colloquia introduce students to the study of literature from a variety of perspectives, with a focus on such objects as author, genre, and literary period. These courses not only delve into their particular subject matter, they also allow a preliminary discussion of critical vocabulary and methods that will carry over into more advanced courses. Discussion and frequent writing assignments characterize each section. Prospective majors are urged to take at least one colloquium. Enrollment limited to 25 per section. Concentrations
CM/EN 121A. Monsters, Magicians, and Medievalism. Medieval literature is famous for its monsters and magicians: from the dragon of Beowulf to the fairies of romance and the Merlin of the Arthur story, supernatural beings play a significant role in the plot and purpose of narratives from the Middle Ages. Likewise, in modern stories about the Middle Ages (especially Tolkien's), magicians and monsters figure prominently. This course explores the multiple meanings and effects related to this population of supernatural beings; students consider how and why such creatures appear in the texts and how they help to define the genre of medievalism. They read a number of medieval texts (in modern English translation) and a sampling of modern texts about the Middle Ages. Enrollment limited to 25 per section. (Pre-1800.) [W1] S. Federico. Concentrations
ENG 121C. Frost, Stevens, Williams. Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, and William Carlos Williams constitute a solid American modernist grain in twentieth-century poetry. Thorough reading of their work lets us question their surprising affinities and differences: What did each poet take to be the place and function of poetry? Does the regional/parochial flavor in Frost's work enhance or limit its impact? To what extent are we justified in deeming Stevens a philosophical poet? Does Williams' materialist aesthetic limit the range of his work, or deepen its impact? What vision of life in America does each seem to offer? Students may consider the work of tutelary ancestors, competitors, and critics, but the focus is on comprehensive reading, writing, and discussion of these poets' poems, early and late. Enrollment limited to 25 per section. (Post-1800.) R. Farnsworth. Concentrations
Interdisciplinary Programs
CM/EN 121D. The Many Lives of King Arthur. King Arthur is called the "once and future king," but this malleable, mythic figure in some sense always lives in the present time. Approaching Arthur as an idea as much as a man, students analyze the ways in which the Arthur story has been adapted for different literary, social, and political purposes according to the needs and desires of its changing audience. They explore the features of the Arthurian legend which make it universally compelling, including feudal loyalty and kinship, women and marriage, questing and adventure, magic and monsters, violence and warfare, and consider the fierce debate over Arthur's historical and mythical origins. Enrollment limited to 25. (Medieval.) (Pre-1800.) S. Federico. Concentrations
ENG 121E. Introduction to Poetry. An introduction to reading poetry through the close reading of British and American poems from the Renaissance to the present day. Topics include authorial intention, literary "meaning," cultural context, the diversity of traditional forms, and contemporary lyric genres. The course is based on the discussion of one or two poems each class day. Enrollment limited to 25 per section. Offered with varying frequency. S. Dillon. Concentrations
EN/GS 121G. Asian American Women Writers. This course examines from a sociohistorical perspective fictional, autobiographical, and critical writings by Asian American women including Meena Alexander, Sui Sin Far, Gish Jen, Maxine Hong Kingston, Tahira Naqvi, Cathy Song, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Hisaye Yamamoto. Students explore their concerns with personal and cultural identity, as both Asian and American, as females, as minorities, and often as postcolonial subjects. The course highlights the varied immigration and social histories of women from different Asian countries, often homogenized as "Oriental" in mainstream American cultural representations. Not open to students who have received credit for EN/WS 121G. Enrollment limited to 25. (Race, Ethnicity, or Diasporic Literature.) (Post-1800.) L. Dhingra, T. Salter. Concentrations
ENG 121H. The Brontës. Reading a selection of fiction and poetry by the three Brontë sisters, as well as critical essays about them, students consider questions of authorial intention, and discuss the relation between literature and history in the Victorian period. Particular attention is paid to the Brontës' representations of gender and class, and to the interrelations between these social categories. Not open to students who have received credit for FYS 306. Enrollment limited to 25 per section. (Post-1800.) L. Nayder. Concentrations
Interdisciplinary Programs
ENG 121I. Poetry in the Twenty-First Century. A critical study of the variegated terrain of American poetry in the twenty-first century. Readings include mainstream and experimental poetic works, critical works, and commentary. Students use music, film, and visual art to reflect on unique themes and novel directions for poetry in this century. Written work includes short response papers and a longer essay. Students also produce a small sample of poems in order to better grasp questions concerning the craft of poetry. Enrollment limited to 25. Staff. Concentrations
ENG 121L. Modern Short Stories. A study of the short story and novella as characteristic twentieth-century genres, with a brief introduction to works in the nineteenth century. The course focuses on both "classic" and contemporary texts by writers selected from among Anton Chekhov, Thomas Hardy, James Joyce, Jamaica Kincaid, Jhumpa Lahiri, D. H. Lawrence, David Leavitt, W.S. Maugham, Katherine Mansfield, Susan Minot, Shani Mootoo, Susan Sontag, Guy Vanderhaeghe, and Virginia Woolf. Students experiment with writing a short story. Enrollment limited to 25 per section. (Post1800.) L. Dhingra. Concentrations
EN/ES 121O. The Creative Spirit: Self and Nature. What is the relationship among the spirit, the self, and nature? How does communion with nature help the creation and evolution of one’s sense of "self " and the soul’s journey? Is creativity connected with divinity? How have nineteenth-, twentieth-, and twenty-first-century writers, artists, and spiritual thinkers described their connection with the self and the natural world? In this course, students create original poetry, poetic prose, visual art, and/or music within the context of inward reflection, contemplation, mindfulness, and meditation. Authors studied may include Frost, Elizabeth Gilbert, Jack Kornfeld, Mary Oliver, Shelley, Snyder, Cathy Song, Tagore, Thoreau, Whitman, David Whyte, Woolf, Wordsworth, and Yeats. Enrollment limited to 25. L. Dhingra, J. Anthony. Concentrations
EN/ES 121Q. The Lives of Rivers. In this colloquium, students read broadly—from the magical waterways of classical antiquity to the American folk tradition that takes us "down by the riverside"—in order to better understand the human need to write about rivers. Students consider verse by Whitman, Walcott, and Spark alongside Twain's stories of Huckleberry Finn and the classic angling novella A River Runs Through It. From the local riparian zone on the banks of the Androscoggin, students follow contemporary currents of ecocritical inquiry, investigating moments when the landed human body is literally or figuratively swept away by a torrent of fresh water. Enrollment limited to 25. M. Wright. Concentrations
ENG 121W. Image and Sound: Reading and Writing Poems. This course introduces students to lyric poetry written in the last two centuries, and in varied cultural settings, from the "canonical" English and American classics to the contemporary, multicultural, and transnational. Poets studied may include Meena Alexander, Agha Shahid Ali, Emily Dickinson, T. S. Eliot, Allen Ginsberg, John Keats, Audre Lorde, Cathy Song, Rabindranath Tagore, Walt Whitman, William Wordsworth, and W. B. Yeats. The focus is on "close reading" with some attention to the poets' varied historical and sociocultural contexts. Students attend live poetry readings and write their own poems. Not open to students who have received credit for FYS 323. Enrollment limited to 25. L. Dhingra. Concentrations
ENG 121Y. Becoming America. In the United States, Thanksgiving and Independence Day are national holidays, but how did this country transform from theocracy to nascent democracy? This course examines intellectual forces shaping the idea of America from Puritanism to Transcendentalism. Students read philosopher-theologians Jonathan Edwards and Cotton Mather, poets Dickinson and Wheatley, writers Hawthorne and Emerson, and theorists of the era. How do we reconcile the Puritans' use of nature as providential barometer of their predestination, Edwards’ idea that the world will "shadow forth spiritual things" once we turn from our abject self, and Emerson’s concept of "nature as an appendix to the soul" where self-reliant individuals find unmediated divinity? Enrollment limited to 25 per section. R. Strong. Concentrations
ENG 130. Writers of Maine. H. L. Menken (1880-1956) once wrote, "Maine is dead, intellectually, as Abyssinia. Nothing is ever heard from it." Mencken's quote marginalizes Maine as a quiet, separate, anti-intellectual state, yet again and again, over the past two centuries, Maine writers have debunked this idea. This course introduces students to the characteristics of Maine's literary heritage, examining the ways in which certain literatures have shaped our understanding of the state's history and culture. What is a "Mainer," and what is a Maine writer? Students engage in close readings of works by Jewett, Longfellow, Moore, Roberts, Millay, Robinson, Chute, Strout, and others. Enrollment limited to 25. J. Anthony. Concentrations
ENG 142. Early American Literature. A survey of significant works and voices from the diverse traditions that contributed to the creation of a U.S. national literature, including the oral storytelling traditions of the indigenous peoples of North America. The course of reading extends from fifteenth- and sixteenth-century European accounts of "New World" exploration through the turn of the nineteenth century and the emergence of a distinctive tradition of the American novel and its genres. Authors include Bradford, Morton, Bradstreet, Rowlandson, Tyler, Franklin, Jefferson, Wheatley, Equianah, de Crèvecoeur, Occum, Brockden Brown, Foster, and Rowson. Enrollment limited to 25. (Pre-1800.) E. Osucha. Concentrations
ENG 143. Nineteenth-Century American Literature. A critical study of American literary history from the early national period through the Gilded Age. Students examine a wide range of texts, giving attention to the historical phenomena and events that shaped them and to the aesthetic and political traditions that dominated literary production in that century. Authors may include Melville, Poe, Hawthorne, Emerson, Fuller, Dickinson, Douglass, Howells, Davis, Fuller, Cooper, Child, Gilman, Jacobs, Jewett, Chesnutt, Wharton, and Chopin. Enrollment limited to 25. (Post-1800.) E. Osucha. Concentrations
Interdisciplinary Programs
ENG 152. American Writers since 1900. A study of ten to twelve American texts selected from the works of such writers as Dickinson, Twain, Gilman, Chesnutt, James, Adams, Dreiser, Hughes, Frost, Stein, Hemingway, Larsen, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Pound, Eliot, Crane, Cullen, Wright, Stevens, Williams, Baldwin, Plath, Albee, Brooks, Walker, Ellison, Pynchon, and Morrison. Enrollment limited to 25 per section. (Post-1800.) Normally offered every year. S. Dillon, E. Osucha. Concentrations
Interdisciplinary Programs
ENG 202. The Global English Renaissance. A survey course on the transnational and transatlantic contexts informing sixteenth-century English literature. Students are introduced to critical approaches and terms in early modern literary and cultural studies. They explore the impact on literature of religious controversy, ethnicity, colonial encounters, and literary form. Selections from Spanish, French, Italian, and ancient Roman colonial sources complement primary readings of More, Kyd, Spenser, Marlowe, Sidney, Raleigh, Bacon, and Donne. Recommended background: one English course. Open to first-year students. Enrollment limited to 29. (Race, Ethnicity, or Diasporic Literature.) (Pre-1800.) J. Villagrana. Concentrations
CM/EN 206. Chaucer. Reading and interpretation of Chaucer's major works, including The Canterbury Tales. All works are read in Middle English. Open to firstyear students. Enrollment limited to 25. (Medieval.) (Pre-1800.) [W2] Normally offered every year. S. Federico. Concentrations
AV/EN 208. Asian American Graphic Narrative. This course the evolution of Asian American graphic narrative. Students consider the narrative in a visual format, discussing how works created by Asian Americans combat decades of stereotypes propagated in comic books, especially as evil-genius Fu Manchu figures. They read graphic novels, graphic memoir, and selected issues of several comics series. Topics include race, identity, family history, military history, gender performance, and sexuality. Students discuss writing practice, style, genre, research, and multimodal composition. They also workshop writing and discuss effective revision critiques and applying feedback in the revision process. New course beginning Winter 2018. Enrollment limited to 25. (Race, Ethnicity, or Diasporic Literature.) (Post-1800.) [W2] One-time offering. T. Salter. Concentrations
ENG 213. Shakespeare I. A study of the major plays, with some emphasis on the biography of Shakespeare and the Elizabethan milieu. ENG 213 is offered in the fall. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Not open to students who have received credit for ENG 215. Enrollment limited to 25 per section. (Pre-1800.) Normally offered every year. S. Freedman. Concentrations
ENG 214. Shakespeare II. A study of the major plays, with some emphasis on the biography of Shakespeare and the Elizabethan milieu. ENG 214 is offered in the winter. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Enrollment limited to 25 per section. (Pre-1800.) Normally offered every year. S. Freedman. Concentrations
ENG 220. Dickens Revised. Focusing on several works that span Dickens's career, students place Dickens in his Victorian context and consider how and why his fiction has been adapted and reworked in the twentieth century. Students discuss film and musical adaptations as well as fictional reworkings, and examine changes in Dickens's reputation and the evolving cultural meaning of his stories. Novels, films, and musicals include Oliver!, Jack Maggs, The D. Case, and The Mystery of Edwin Drood: The Solve-It-Yourself Broadway Musical. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Open to first-year students. Enrollment limited to 25. (Post-1800.) L. Nayder. Concentrations
Interdisciplinary Programs
ENG 222. Seventeenth-Century Literature. A study of significant writers of the seventeenth century. Writers may include William Shakespeare, John Donne, George Herbert, Aemilia Lanyer, John Milton, and Aphra Behn. Attention is given to the intellectual, political, and scientific revolutions of the age. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Enrollment limited to 25. (Pre-1800.) M. Wright. Concentrations
AA/EN 223. Survey of Literatures of the Caribbean. This course examines the literatures of the African diaspora in the Caribbean and the Caribbean diaspora in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. Some texts are drawn from Anglophone authors such as Lamming, Anthony, Walcott, Brodber, Danticat, Lovelace, Brathwaite, NourBese (Philip), Hopkinson, and Denis Williams; others, from Francophone and Hispanophone writers, including Guillen, Carpentier, Condé, Chamoiseau, Depestre, Ferré, Santos-Febres, and Morejón. The course places each work in its historical, political, and anthropological contexts. Students are introduced to a number of critical theories and methodologies with which to analyze the works, including poststructural, Marxist, Pan-African, postcolonial, and feminist. Recommended background: one 100-level English course or the introduction to African American studies. (Race, Ethnicity, or Diasporic Literature.) S. Houchins. Concentrations
CM/EN 225. Imagining Troy: Medieval Tales of the City. This course examines the popular motif of ancient Troy in late medieval literature, from 1100 to 1500, in Western Europe. Topics include the representations of epic heroism and treachery, the problematics of "pagan" sensuality, and the political and social uses of Troy as a foundation for aristocratic identity and nascent ideas of nationality in the late Middle Ages. Competing narratives of Troy are studied alongside their classical and medieval sources, primarily in English, French, Welsh, Irish, and Scottish texts; Italian and German versions are also studied for comparative purposes. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level course in classical and medieval studies or English. Enrollment limited to 29. (Medieval.) (Pre-1800.) S. Federico. Concentrations
ENG 226. Milton's Paradise Lost. Milton's Christian epic, Paradise Lost (1668), which retells the story of man's fall from Paradise, is one of the most influential and interesting works in English literature. Students read this poem twice: once before midterm, with attention to internal form and structure, and then again afterwards, focusing on significant problems from the history of Milton criticism and on the remarkable influence of Milton's poem in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level course in English. Enrollment limited to 25. (Pre-1800.) S. Dillon. Concentrations
ENG 227. Surreal Fictions. The word "surrealism" often evokes Dali's melting clocks or perhaps Magritte's headless man, images culled from, or speaking to, a dream. This course examines the history and aesthetic of the surreal in various fictions. Surreal stories and novels do not defy realism, rather they employ the rules of realism as a means to go beyond, into the dream. What are the unlikely effects of surreal fictions? How do surreal fictions manage the essential components of storytelling, such as character, allusion, metaphor, and verisimilitude? What sorts of truths can be unearthed through stories that challenge or defy reason? Authors may include Breton, Barthelme, Carroll, Ellison, Budnitz, Millhauser, Morrison, Antrim, Murakami, Calvino, and Crevel. Prerequisites(s): one 100-level English course. Enrollment limited to 25. (Post-1800.) J. Anthony. Concentrations
ENG 231. Women Writers of the 1950s. This course examines the fiction, poetry, and drama of female writers writing and/or publishing in the 1950s, including O'Connor, Welty, Plath, Moore, Bishop, Jackson, McCullers, Hansberry, Brooks, and Porter. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Enrollment limited to 25. (Post-1800.) J. Anthony. Concentrations
ENG 232. Eighteenth-Century Literature. A study of Restoration and eighteenth-century British authors, including Dryden, Congreve, Swift, Pope, Fielding, and Johnson. Attention is given to parallel developments in Continental literature and to continuity with Renaissance humanism. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. (Critical thinking.) (Pre-1800.) S. Freedman. Concentrations
ENG 236. Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot. Each of these major nineteenth-century novelists published their novels under a man's name. Charlotte Brontë called herself "Currer Bell," while "George Eliot" was the pen name for Mary Anne Evans. In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf wrote that "it was the relic of the sense of chastity that dictated anonymity to women even so late as the nineteenth century." How do these women writers work through the gendered conventions of narrative and society? How do female characters in these works make a name for themselves? Students read five novels, including Brontë's Jane Eyre and Eliot's Middlemarch. Prererequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Enrollment limited to 29. S. Dillon. Concentrations
ENG 238. Jane Austen: Then and Now. Students read Austen's six major works, investigate their relation to nineteenth-century history and culture, and consider the Austen revival in film adaptations and fictional continuations of her novels. The course highlights the various and conflicting ways in which critics represent Austen, and the cultural needs her stories now seem to fulfill. Readings include Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Enrollment limited to 25. (Post1800.) L. Nayder. Concentrations
Interdisciplinary Programs
ENG 241. Fiction in the United States. Critical readings of a diverse selection of novels and shorter fictions, ranging from works by earlier writers such as Hawthorne, Howells, James, Wharton, Jewett, and Chesnutt, to more recent writing from James Baldwin, Don DeLillo, Toni Morrison, Donald Barthelme, Sherman Alexie, and David Foster Wallace, among others. In addition to major directions in the history of American fiction, more recent developments concerning postmodernism, multi-ethnic literature, and emergent forms—graphic novels and electronic texts—are considered. Class discussions and writing assignments also address critical terms and methods. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Enrollment limited to 25 per section. (Post-1800.) E. Osucha. Concentrations
Interdisciplinary Programs
ENG 243. Romantic Literature (1790–1840). The theoretical foundations of English and European Romanticism, including its philosophical, critical, and social backgrounds. The course concentrates on Rousseau, Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, and Keats. Attention is also given to Lamb, Hazlitt, De Quincey, Swedenborg, and other prose figures and critics of the period. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Enrollment limited to 25 per section. R. Farnsworth, S. Dillon, S. Freedman. Concentrations
Interdisciplinary Programs
AC/EN 247. Contemporary Arab American Literature. This course studies Arab American literature from 1990 until the present. Students examine novels, short fiction, memoirs, or poetry in an effort to understand the major concerns of contemporary Arab American authors. Students are expected to engage theoretical material and literary criticism to supplement their understanding of the literature. In addition to a discussion of formal literary concerns, this course is animated by the way authors spotlight gender, sexual orientation, politics, and history. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level course in English. Enrollment limited to 25. (Race, Ethnicity, or Diasporic Literature.) (Post-1800.) T. Pickens. Concentrations
AA/EN 253. The African American Novel. An examination of the African American novel from its beginnings in the mid-1800s to the present. Issues addressed include a consideration of folk influences on the genre, its roots in the slave narrative tradition, its relation to Euro-American texts and culture, and the "difference" that gender as well as race makes in determining narrative form. Readings include narratives selected from among the works of such writers as Douglass, Jacobs, Wilson, Delany, Hopkins, Harper, Chesnutt, Johnson, Toomer, Larsen, Hurston, Wright, Petry, Ellison, Baldwin, Walker, Morrison, Marshall, and Reed. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Open to first-year students. Enrollment limited to 25. (Race, Ethnicity, or Diasporic Literature.) (Post-1800.) Staff. Concentrations
ENG 254. Modern British Literature since 1900. An introduction to the birth of modern British literature and its roots, with attention to its social and cultural history, its philosophical and cultural foundations, and some emphasis on its relationship to the previous century. Texts are selected from the works of writers such as Forster, Lawrence, Joyce, Woolf, Mansfield, Eliot, Yeats, Orwell, Rushdie, and Lessing. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Open to first-year students. Enrollment limited to 25. (Post-1800.) L. Dhingra, L. Nayder. Concentrations
Interdisciplinary Programs
AA/EN 255. Black Poetry. How does the African American poetic tradition specifically contribute to the literary canon of African American literature and larger conceptions of American and global literature? This course is both an introduction to black poetics and a deep exploration. The course considers so-called basic questions (e.g., What are black poetics?) and more sophisticated questions (e.g., How do black poetics transform the literary and cultural landscape?). Students read a variety of authors who maneuver between intra- and inter-racial politics, including such canonical authors as Langston Hughes and Nikki Giovanni, and less well-known authors such as Jayne Cortez and LL Cool J. Prerequisite(s): One 100-level English course. Not open to students who have received credit for AA/EN s23. Open to first-year students. Normally offered every year. T. Pickens. Concentrations
AA/EN 259. Contemporary African American Literature. This course introduces students to contemporary African American literature. They explore literature written after 1975, considering a range of patterns and literary techniques as well as consistent themes and motifs. Students read a mix of canonical and less well-known authors. This course requires a nuanced, complicated discussion about what encompasses the contemporary African American literary tradition. Prerequisites(s): one 100-level English course. Recommended background: course work in American cultural studies, African American studies, or English. Not open to students who have received credit for INDS s37. Enrollment limited to 25. (Race, Ethnicity, or Diasporic Literature.) (Post-1800.) Normally offered every year. T. Pickens. Concentrations
ENG 260. Passages to and from India. This course introduces fiction, poetry, and films by writers who are of South Asian descent, Indian American immigrants, or who have considered the Indian subcontinent their home. Topics include British influence on South Asia, the Partition of India, national and diasporic identity formation, women's social roles, the impact of Western education and the English language, and the emergence of a new generation of postcolonial and immigrant literary artists. Writers are selected from among Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, Anita Desai, Satyajit Ray, Rabindranath Tagore, Jhumpa Lahiri, U. R. Anantha Murthy, and E. M. Forster. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Open to firstyear students. Enrollment limited to 25. (Race, Ethnicity, or Diasporic Literature.) (Post-1800.) L. Dhingra. Concentrations
ENG 263. Literature, Medicine, Empathy. Focusing on a range of novels published from the nineteenth century to the present day, and on scholarship in the developing field of empathy studies, students consider the relationships among literature, medicine, and empathy. Students examine representations of medical practice and practitioners and of relations between physicians and patients. They explore claims that literature has the power to develop empathy and should be central to medical education. Authors include George Eliot, Bram Stoker, Abraham Verghese, and Ian McEwan. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Enrollment limited to 25. (Post-1800.) L. Nayder. Concentrations
ENG 264. Modern Irish Poetry. A study of the development and transformation of Anglo-Irish poetry in the twentieth century, especially as it responds to the political, social, and gender forces at work in Ireland's recent history. Beginning with brief but concentrated study of key poems by W. B. Yeats, Patrick Kavanagh, and Louis MacNeice, the course then examines work by inheritors of these major figures' legacies, including Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon, Eavan Boland, Nuala ni Dhomnhaill, Paul Muldoon, Ciaran Carson, and Medbh McGuckian. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Not open to students who have received credit for ENG 110. Enrollment limited to 25. (Race, Ethnicity, or Diasporic Literature.) (Post-1800.) [W2] R. Farnsworth. Concentrations
Interdisciplinary Programs
AA/EN 265. The Writings of Toni Morrison. This course surveys the writing of Nobel laureate Toni Morrison. Texts are selected from her novels, essays, children's literature, and drama and also include criticism written about her work by other scholars. Recommended background: one 100-level English course or the introduction to African American studies. (Race, Ethnicity, or Diasporic Literature.) (Post-1800.) S. Houchins. Concentrations
AA/EN 267. Narrating Slavery. This course examines selected autobiographical writings of ex-slaves; biographical accounts of the lives of former slaves written by abolitionists, relatives, or friends; the oral histories of ex-slaves collected in the early to mid-twentieth century; and the fiction, poems, and dramas about slaves and slavery (neo-slave narratives) of the last hundred years. Students consider these works as interventions in the discourses of freedom—religious, political, legal, and psychological—and as examples of a genre foundational to many literary works by descendants of Africans in diaspora. The course surveys early works written by slaves themselves, such as broadsides and books by Jupiter Hammond, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Jacobs; dictated biographies such as those by Esteban Montejo, Nat Turner, Mary Prince, and Sor Teresa Chicaba; and fictional works inspired by the narratives, such as works by Toni Morrison, Gayl Jones, Charles Johnson, Michelle Cliff, and Sherley Ann Williams. Recommended background: AAS 100 or one 100-level English course. Course reinstated beginning Winter 2018. Enrollment limited to 29. (Race, Ethnicity, or Diasporic Literature.) S. Houchins. Concentrations
AA/EN 268. Survey of Literatures of Africa. This course explores folklore, myths, and literary texts of the African continent. These include works written by Anglophone authors such as Achebe, Soyinka, Ngugi, Vera, Njau, Aidoo, Nwapa, Head, Cole, Mda, Abani, Okorafor, and Atta; those drawn from oral traditions of indigenous languages transcribed into English, such as The Mwindo Epic and The Sundiata; and those written by Lusophone and Francophone authors including Bâ, Senghor, Liking, Neto, Mahfouz, Ben Jelloun, and Kafunkeno. The course contextualizes each work historically, politically, and anthropologically. Students are introduced to a number of critical theories and methodologies with which to analyze the works, such as poststructural, Marxist, Pan-African, postcolonial, and feminist. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. S. Houchins. Concentrations
AA/EN 269. Narrating Slavery. This course examines selected autobiographical writings of ex-slaves; biographical accounts of the lives of former slaves written by abolitionists, relatives, or friends; the oral histories of ex-slaves collected in the early to mid-twentieth century; and the fiction, poems, and dramas about slaves and slavery (neo-slave narratives) of the last hundred years. Students consider these works as interventions in the discourses of freedom—religious, political, legal, and psychological—and as examples of a genre foundational to many literary works by descendants of Africans in diaspora. The course surveys early works written by slaves themselves, such as broadsides and books by Jupiter Hammond, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Jacobs; dictated biographies such as those by Esteban Montejo, Nat Turner, Mary Prince, and Sor Teresa Chicaba; and fictional works inspired by the narratives, such as works by Toni Morrison, Gayl Jones, Charles Johnson, Michelle Cliff, and Sherley Ann Williams. Recommended background: one 100-level English course or AAS 100. Not open to students who have received credit for AA/EN 267. Open to first-year students. Enrollment limited to 29. (Race, Ethnicity, or Diasporic Literature.) S. Houchins. Concentrations
ENG 275. English Novel. A study of the English novel from its origins to the early nineteenth century. Readings include selections from Homer's Iliad, and novels by Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Radcliffe, Austen, and Scott. Among the issues addressed by this course are the relation of the novel to the epic, and the social and political orientation of this new genre. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Enrollment limited to 25. (Pre-1800.) L. Nayder. Concentrations
ENG 291. Fiction Writing. A course for students who wish to have practice and guidance in the writing of prose. Admission by writing sample. Prerequisite(s): one 100level English course. Enrollment limited to 15. Instructor permission is required. Normally offered every year. Staff. Concentrations
ENG 292. Poetry Writing. A course for students who wish to have practice and guidance in the writing of poetry. Admission by writing sample. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Enrollment limited to 15. Instructor permission is required. Normally offered every year. S. Dillon. Concentrations
ENG 295. Critical Theory. Major literary critics are read, and major literary works are studied in the light of these critics. Critical approaches discussed may include neoclassical, Romantic, psychoanalytical, formalist, generic, archetypal, structuralist, and deconstructionist. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Enrollment limited to 25. (Critical thinking.) Normally offered every year. S. Freedman, T. Pickens. Concentrations
ENG 296. Methods and Modes of Literary Study. This course introduces students to major trends, methodologies, and modes of inquiry in the field of literary study. Students identify and discuss the continuing significance of the formation of the Western canon (including counter responses to that formation), identify and demonstrate knowledge of the meaning of different literary genres, perform close readings of a given text, appreciate poetic form and experimentation, critically analyze a given text with reference to its historical significance, deploy theoretical concepts in relation to a given text, identify appropriate theoretical or digital methodologies to apply in different textual circumstances, and conduct research in the field. Enrollment limited to 25. S. Federico. Concentrations
CM/EN 344. Chaucer and His Context. This seminar encourages students already familiar with Chaucer's Canterbury Tales to further explore his other major poetic works in the context of his late fourteenth-century London milieu. Texts include a selection of dream visions, historical romances, and philosophical treatises ("Troilus and Criseyde," "Book of the Duchess," "Parliament of Fowls," and others). Chaucer's literary contemporaries, including John Gower, William Langland, and the "Gawain"-Poet, are studied along with their poetic forms and historical contexts. All texts read in Middle English. Prerequisite(s): CM/EN 206. Enrollment limited to 15. (Medieval.) (Pre-1800.) [W2] S. Federico. Concentrations
ENG 360. Independent Study. Students, in consultation with a faculty advisor, individually design and plan a course of study or research not offered in the curriculum. Course work includes a reflective component, evaluation, and completion of an agreed-upon product. Sponsorship by a faculty member in the program/department, a course prospectus, and permission of the chair are required. Students may register for no more than one independent study per semester. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Normally offered every semester. Staff. Concentrations
ENG 365. Special Topics. Offered occasionally by a faculty member in subjects of special interest. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Staff. Concentrations
ENG 391. Advanced Fiction Writing. Prerequisite(s): English 291. Enrollment limited to 12. Instructor permission is required. Normally offered every year. J. Anthony. Concentrations
ENG 392. Advanced Poetry Writing. Prerequisite(s): English 292. Enrollment limited to 12. Instructor permission is required. Normally offered every year. R. Farnsworth, E. Osucha. Concentrations
ENG 395. Junior-Senior Seminars. Seminars provide an opportunity for concentrated work in a restricted subject area. Two such seminars are required for the English major. Students are encouraged to see the seminar as preparation for independent work on a senior thesis. They may also choose to use the seminar itself as a means of fulfilling the senior thesis requirement. Sections are limited to 15. Instructor permission is required. Concentrations
ENG 395A. Apocalypse Then and Now. This seminar examines early modern apocalyptic literature and thought, the origins of biblical apocalypticism, and the ideological implications of apocalypticism on race, politics, and ecology from the early modern period to our present moment. Students examine primary sources centered on moments of historical crisis, critical theory on politics and race, and historical-theological criticism. Course readings taken from Spenser, Donne, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Kyd, and Milton are studied alongside contemporary films such as Mad Max: Fury Road and Fences. New course beginning Winter 2018. Enrollment limited to 15. Instructor permission is required. (Pre-1800.) [W2] Normally offered every year. J. Villagrana. Concentrations
AC/EN 395B. Privacy, Intimacy, and Identity. This seminar explores American concepts of "self" in historical and cultural context, focusing on distinct yet overlapping discourses of privacy, intimacy, and identity, as these are shaped by evolving understandings of race, sexuality, gender, class, and nation. Beginning with a critical investigation of how the nation's Puritan settlers articulated, practiced, and regulated "the self" and concluding with a consideration of how self and identity are presented via social media on platforms such as Facebook, students consider scholarship in American literary and cultural history, critical theory, and primary literary and legal texts. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course or one American cultural studies course. Recommended background: GSS 100. Enrollment limited to 15. Instructor permission is required. (Critical thinking.) [W2] E. Osucha. Concentrations
ENG 395D. Victorian Crime Fiction. The seminar examines the detective fiction written by British Victorians, the historical context in which this literature was produced, and its ideological implications. Students consider the connection between gender and criminality, and the relation of detection to class unrest and empire building. Readings include works by Charles Dickens, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Wilkie Collins, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Grant Allen. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Enrollment limited to 15. Instructor permission is required. (Critical thinking.) [W2] L. Nayder. Concentrations
Interdisciplinary Programs
ENG 395E. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road: 1970s U.S. Culture. What does it look like when an age dedicated to hope and change turns to darkness and horror? Hard for many of us to imagine, but that is what happened when the 1960s became the 1970s. Students explore a range of cultural artifacts from novels and magazines to films and music. Writers and film directors may include Alice Walker, Philip K. Dick, Patti Smith, Hunter Thompson, Charles Burnett, and Martin Scorsese. Prerequisite(s): one English course. Enrollment limited to 15. Instructor permission is required. (Post-1800.) S. Dillon. Concentrations
ENG 395F. Five American Women Poets. Concentrated study of five major American poets, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Bishop, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sylvia Plath, and Adrienne Rich, whose various poetic achievements illuminate particular dilemmas facing female poets—issues of subject matter, visibility, literary tradition, and ideology. Corollary readings may be drawn from the work of both peers and inheritors, such as Marianne Moore, H. D., Edna St. Vincent Millay, Denise Levertov, Lucille Clifton, Rita Dove, Louise Gluck, Jorie Graham, and Marie Howe. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Enrollment limited to 15. Instructor permission is required. [W2] R. Farnsworth. Concentrations
Interdisciplinary Programs
ENG 395I. Literary Imagination and Neuroscience. This course investigates two separate disciplines, inquiring how they speak and think about literary imagination, and asks students to consider what interdisciplinary overlap might exist between the two. The course frames imagination and the Lockean language about mind that accompanies it in the writings of Addison, Burke, Johnson, and Young. It then queries whether romantic writing (Schlegel, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats) advances radically different ideas than these earlier efforts. Finally it jumps to our contemporary moment and ponders how terms of explanation may once again have changed. The course asks whether or not the neurobiological picture of imagination — the crossneural nature of cerebral processes, cognitive historicism, and imaging techniques — is at a great distance from what the eighteenth century once thought. Enrollment limited to 15. Instructor permission is required. (Critical thinking.) [W2] S. Freedman. Concentrations
ENG 395J. The Lyric Answer. This seminar focuses on lyric poems that respond to other poems, to works of visual art, or to public occasions. We tend to think of the lyric poem as essentially private and inward, as a speech act or composition peculiarly personal and dreamily symbolic, or arising just from the catalyzing frictions of language itself. In this course, students consider a wide array of poems responsive to specific (that is, objectively verifiable) events, objects, and places in order to observe and relate their various formal, figurative, and expressive behaviors. Enrollment limited to 15. Instructor permission is required. (Post-1800.) [W2] R. Farnsworth. Concentrations
ENG 395K. The Arctic Sublime. Now the focus of grave concerns over climate change, the Arctic generated a different set of anxieties in the nineteenth century. Perceived as strange and terrifying, and deadly to those who tried to chart and conquer it, the region was a source of the sublime; its inhuman greatness both inspired and appalled. Drawing on various genres, students examine the "Arctic sublime," considering its artistic and ideological purposes for Romantics and Victorians. Works include Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and Poe's Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym as well as works of visual art and selections from nineteenth-century theorists of the sublime. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Enrollment limited to 15. Instructor permission is required. (Critical thinking.) (Post-1800.) [W2] L. Nayder. Concentrations
ENG 395M. Colossuses: Joyce's Ulysses and Wallace's Infinite Jest. The seminar pairs two books, one modern, one written in the postmodern period, both joined by the colossal magnitude of their undertaking, their first readers’ failure to comprehend their work, and the patent ambition of both novelists. James Joyce’s Ulysses, a masterpiece of modernism, was thought unreadable in 1922 at the time of its publication; David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, "the first novel of the Internet," is often read as a postmodern novel of an imposing, perplexing 1,000 pages. The seminar closely compares the two works concerning their historical contexts, their use of history, digression, Hamlet, vulgarity, and stream-of-consciousness. Enrollment limited to 15. Instructor permission is required. (Critical thinking.) [W2] S. Freedman. Concentrations
ENG 395N. Literature/Cinema. An overview of the multiple relationships between literature and cinema. Numerous films are adapted from novels, borrowing their stories, and the process of adaptation can be studied. But novels also adapt themselves to cinema's extraordinary powers of seeing and editing. Many films align themselves with poems more than novels ("lyric films"), while numerous poems take films for their subjects. Students read texts by authors such as Russell Banks, Adrienne Rich, and Don DeLillo, while watching films by directors such as Stan Brakhage, Jean-Luc Godard, and Claire Denis. Prerequisite(s) one 100-level English course. Enrollment limited to 15. Instructor permission is required. S. Dillon. Concentrations
ENG 395O. Poetry and Place. Premised on William Carlos Williams's definition of culture as the relation of a place to the lives lived within it, this course begins with a brief exploration of Western conceptions of the pastoral, then focuses on nineteenth- and twentieth-century visions of nature's relation to the poetic imagination, where nature is understood to include ideas of wilderness, cultivated landscape, and even urban space. Psychological, political, philosophical, and prophetic preoccupations come to startling focus in poetries specifically responsive to the earth and locale. Students consider poets from several traditions, such as Virgil, Horace, Marvell, Bashô, Wordsworth, Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson, Hardy, Frost, E. Thomas, W. C. Williams, Jeffers, Kavanagh, Bishop, Snyder, Heaney, Momaday, Ammons, Berry, Walcott, Oliver, and Haines. Enrollment limited to 15. Instructor permission is required. [W2] R. Farnsworth. Concentrations
EN/GS 395P. Worldly Women as Artists: Transnational Women Writers. This course explores the question of what (or who) qualifies a woman to be regarded as an artist. Students also create an "artist portfolio" in the medium of their choice (visual arts, music, performance, photography, writing, etc.). In her novel, To the Lighthouse (1927), Virginia Woolf resisted the prevailing sentiment that "women can't paint, women can't write." How do twentieth- and twenty-first-century women writers represent female artists? How have transnational female painters and writers described their own creative journeys either visually or in writing? How are the female artists’ personae, themes, and challenges different from male perspectives on art? This seminar examines the fiction, paintings, poetry, and memoirs by Woolf, Dickinson, Kate Chopin, Christina Rossetti, Georgia O’Keeffe, Mary Cassatt, Frida Kahlo, Mary Oliver, Cathy Song, Gogi Saroj Pal, Siona Benjamin, Shani Mootoo, and others. Not open to students who have received credit for EN/WS 395P. Enrollment limited to 15. Instructor permission is required. (Critical thinking.) [W2] L. Dhingra. Concentrations
EN/GS 395R. Sex Work on Stage and Screen. This course examines stage and screen representations of sex work from two distinct cultural moments: early modern England and contemporary North America. Using concepts from Marxist, feminist, and queer theory, students investigate the cultural meanings of prostitution across time. Plays by Shakespeare, Middleton, Jonson, and Behn are paired with seventeenth-century polemics and fictional conversion narratives. The second phase of the course features films from 1990 onward, including Pretty Woman, The Girlfriend Experience, and Tangerine. Along with excerpts from novels and memoirs, supplemental readings from recent economic and sociological studies inform the study of these filmic representations of sex work. Recommended background: ENG 213 or 214. Enrollment limited to 15. Instructor permission is required. (Pre-1800.) [W2] One-time offering. M. Wright. Concentrations
AA/EN 395T. African American Literary Issues and Criticism. This seminar takes as its premise that black literature engages with and reflects parts of the world in which it is produced. In this course, students sort through the various conversations authors and critics have with each other. They read canonical authors and less well-known figures in an effort to tease out the nuance present in this body of work. Each text is paired with another in a form of dialogue. These exchanges are not set, so it is up to students to understand how the texts speak to each other. Literary criticism requires us to think through privilege, citizenship, capitalism, intraracial dynamics, gender and sexual dynamics, and political movements. The course theme may vary from year to year (e.g., disability, literature of the left, black queer studies). Enrollment limited to 15. Instructor permission is required. (Critical thinking.) (Race, Ethnicity, or Diasporic Literature.) [W2] T. Pickens. Concentrations
ENG 395U. Postmodern Novel. The seminar examines diverse efforts to define "postmodernism." Students read novels by Joyce, Pynchon, Wallace, Eco, and Rushdie. Contemporary reviews, secondary criticism, narrative theory, issues of socially constructed reality, and some problems in the philosophy of language mark out its concerns. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Enrollment limited to 15. Instructor permission is required. (Critical thinking.) (Post-1800.) [W2] S. Freedman. Concentrations
ENG 395X. Digital Dickens. Students in this course read several major works of Charles Dickens, draw on digital archives of his work, including autograph letters at the Free Library of Philadelphia and journalism from "Dickens Journals Online," and produce a digital project relating to Dickens and/or his fiction while also writing a research paper. Students consider what is gained—and lost—by approaching Dickens through digital means as they study and represents the Victorian novelist by means of electronic resources and digital platforms. New course beginning Winter 2018. Enrollment limited to 15. Instructor permission is required. (Post-1800.) [W2] L. Nayder. Concentrations
EN/GS 395Z. Arab-American Feminisms. This course develops students' ability to look at the intersection of gender, ethnicity, politics, and sexuality. Students read theoretical and literary material as a catalyst for discussions of fiction, focusing on the way Arab American feminists articulate their unique theoretical concerns. Students read such scholars as Mohja Kahf, Rabab Abdulhadi, Nadine Naber, and Randa Jarrar. Students consider the critical triumphs and limitations of creative and theoretical work in discussing these subjects. Recommended background: previous course work in American cultural studies or gender and sexuality studies. Not open to students who have received credit for EN/WS 395Z. Enrollment limited to 15. Instructor permission is required. (Race, Ethnicity, or Diasporic Literature.) [W2] T. Pickens. Concentrations
ENG 457. Senior Thesis. Students register for ENG 457 in the fall semester. Majors writing an honors thesis register for both ENG 457 and 458. [W3] Normally offered every year. Staff. Concentrations
ENG 458. Senior Thesis. Students register for ENG 458 in the winter semester. Majors writing an honors thesis register for both ENG 457 and 458. [W3] Normally offered every year. Staff. Concentrations
Short Term Courses
CM/EN s14. Medieval Re-enactment: The Battle of Maldon. This course offers the opportunity to explore the Middle Ages through creative re-enactment. An introduction to Anglo-Saxon literature is followed by a close reading of "The Battle of Maldon," a short poem commemorating the 991 battle between native Britons and an invading Viking army. Drawing on historical evidence, students create replica weapons and garb appropriate to both armies. The course concludes with a live re-enactment of the battle. Enrollment limited to 49. (Community-Engaged Learning.) S. Federico. Concentrations
AA/EN s23. Black Poetry. How does the African American poetic tradition specifically contribute to the literary canon of African American literature and larger conceptions of American and global literature? This course is both an introduction to black poetics and a deep exploration. The course considers so-called basic questions (e.g., What are black poetics?) and more sophisticated questions (e.g., How do black poetics transform the literary and cultural landscape?). Students read a variety of authors who maneuver between intra- and inter-racial politics, including such canonical authors as Langston Hughes and Nikki Giovanni, and less well-known authors such as Jayne Cortez and LL Cool J. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Not open to students who have received credit for AA/EN 255. Open to first-year students. Enrollment limited to 29. T. Pickens. Concentrations
ENG s27. Downton Abbey and the Politics of the Estate. Downton Abbey, the award winning public television series, is considered a highbrow soap opera. Yet it belongs to a long-standing tradition of English estate narratives. Students approach Downton Abbey in this cultural context, examining the episodes, their structure, plotlines, characters, and dilemmas in relation to antecedents provided by Jane Austen and Wilkie Collins and in recent depictions of the estate in fiction and film. Addressing the politics of the estate—and of the series—students discuss representations of nationalism and race, class relations and antipathies, the patrilineal, gender roles and inequities, and the use of history. Prerequisite(s): one English course. Not open to students who have received credit for ENG 251. Enrollment limited to 29. L. Nayder. Concentrations
ENG s43. Shakespeare in the Theater in London. A study of Shakespeare's plays in performance, intended to acquaint the student with problems that are created by actual stage production in the interpretation of the plays. Students see Shakespearean productions in various locations, including London and Stratford-on-Avon, England. Enrollment limited to 15. Instructor permission is required. Staff. Concentrations
ENG s50. Independent Study. Students, in consultation with a faculty advisor, individually design and plan a course of study or research not offered in the curriculum. Course work includes a reflective component, evaluation, and completion of an agreed-upon product. Sponsorship by a faculty member in the program/department, a course prospectus, and permission of the chair are required. Students may register for no more than one independent study during a Short Term. Normally offered every year. Staff. Concentrations
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