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The curriculum of the Department of English is intended to aid students in developing methods for critical interpretation, to acquaint students with representative works in important periods of English, American, and Anglophone literature, and to introduce students to the main literary genres. The department has changed its major and curriculum significantly for 2003-2004. Students should read the following carefully and consult with their advisors about how these changes may affect them. Further information about the department, faculty and courses is available at the department's home page on the web: www.oberlin.edu/english. Advanced Placement. Students will receive three hours of Oberlin College credit for a score of 5 on the Advanced Placement Examination in English Literature/Composition or English Language/Composition, and will be eligible for entry into introductory (200 level) courses in English. First-Year Seminars. These small, Writing Intensive classes are for first-year students only, and do not count as part of the English major. They will focus on the essential skills of reading, analysis, writing, and discussion. The successful completion of any first-year seminar will count as prerequisite for introductory work in English, as will a Writing Intensive course in any other department, or certification of writing proficiency in any Writing Certification course in the Humanities division. Courses for Non-Majors. Lecture courses at the 100 level are intended primarily for non-majors and do not count for Writing Certification. Students hoping to do further work in English or literary study in general should normally begin work with a First-Year Seminar and proceed directly to 200-level courses. Gateway and 200-Level Courses. 200-level courses in English are the normal introduction to advanced work in the department. All English courses above the 100 level are Writing Certification courses. 200-level courses cover a more or less substantial body of texts, provide instruction in the conventions of genre, period, and region as appropriate, and give significant attention to fundamental issues and approaches in critical reading and writing. Beginning in 2003-04, the department designates certain of its 200-level courses as Gateway courses, in which students will gain particularized knowledge of methodologies important to the discipline of English. The individual focus of each Gateway course is indicated more fully in the course descriptions below. English majors will be expected to take two Gateway courses, and should consult with their advisors about making appropriate choices of the Gateway courses. Qualified non-majors are welcome in Gateway courses, as well. Normally, students not wishing to major in English but intending to go on to further work at the advanced level should take at least two 200-level courses, including one Gateway. Students who have taken three 200-level English courses before 2003-04 should take 300-level courses. Students who have taken one or two 200-level courses before 2003-04 should take a Gateway course as soon as possible, and then move on to the 300 level. 300-Level Courses. Advanced courses at the 300 level are primarily intended for English majors who have completed two Gateway courses and for other students who have completed at least two courses at the 200 level, including one Gateway course. These courses are smaller in size to facilitate more intensive study than the 200-level courses. Senior Tutorials. As of 2003-04, special topics courses and seminars previously offered at the 400 level are discontinued; some of the material formerly taught in these courses may be found in 300-level courses. In their place, the department now offers Senior Tutorials, which are restricted to English majors. Major. The English major is designed to meet the needs of students with various goals, including those who desire training in English in preparation for graduate study in the field; those seeking a foundation for postgraduate work or study in fields related to English (e.g., education, communications, editing and publishing, law, theater); and those who want a humanistic base in reading, thinking, and writing for a liberal arts education. Students interested in going on for graduate work in English should be aware that their candidacy will be strengthened by the following: readiness to define a likely direction or area of ongoing scholarly interest; evidence of the ability to conduct successful independent research and extended critical writing; reading knowledge of at least one foreign language; and a more ample distribution of historical period courses than that minimally required by the major. Students should consult with their advisors about the decision to go on for graduate work in English. Students who have declared the English major before 2003, under the old rules, have the choice to finish under the old rules or to change to the new. It will be assumed that such students are finishing under the old rules unless the student's advisor notifies the chair of a change. Students should consult with their advisor to determine how the changes will affect them. English majors continuing under the old rules are encouraged to take the Senior Tutorial. Before declaring the major in English, students should consult with a member of the department as advisor. As well as filling out the Declaration of Major form in the Office of the Registrar, students will need to complete a one-page Plan for the Major. This is a statement, written by the student after discussion with the advisor, exploring the student's intentions and goals for the major. The form of the Plan for the Major is flexible, but should address the basic questions: Why do I want to major in English? What do I want to do in the major? The student and advisor should re-visit the Plan for the Major several times during the student's work in the department and revise it as appropriate. The Department offers two types of majors, regular and concentration majors, described in detail below. The regular major is primarily a course of study within the discipline of English; the concentration majors are interdisciplinary. Students may count toward the English major (at the 200 level) one college course (up to three credit hours) in non-English-language literature, whether read in the original or in translation. Such a course will not satisfy the distribution requirements for the major (see below). The regular major in English consists of at least 27 hours, including: • two Gateway courses, ï four courses at the 300 level, and ï the Senior Tutorial. Distribution requirements: In order to assure cultural breadth, English majors must take at least one course designated as American, one as British, and one as Diversity--a category that encompasses areas of traditionally under-represented cultures. Furthermore, English majors must take at least one course in the following historical periods: Pre-1700; 1700-1900; and 1900-Present. An individual course may satisfy several requirements. The Senior Tutorial does not satisfy distribution requirements. Designations for individual courses may be found on the department website. English majors are recommended to take at least one course in poetry and one in drama, as well as one course in a non-English language literature, whether read in the original or in translation. Concentration Majors. There are six concentration majors. Based in the discipline of English, these concentrations allow students to concentrate on particular aspects of literary study by bringing work in other disciplines to bear on their major in English--in particular, work in African-American Studies, American Literature and Culture, Creative Writing, Gender and Women's Studies, Modern Culture and Media, and Theater and Drama. All concentration majors consist of at least 21 hours in English and 15 hours outside of English. For all concentration majors, courses in English must include: • two Gateway courses, • three courses (four for the concentrations in American Literature and Culture, and Modern Culture and Media) at the 300 level, and ï the Senior Tutorial in English. Concentration majors must satisfy the same distribution requirements as for the regular major in English (see above). Specific requirements for concentration majors, in addition to the general requirements above: ï African American Studies: in English: three courses with strong focus on African American or Third World literature with a significant treatment of the literature of Africa and/or the African diaspora; outside English: 15 hours in African American/Third World Studies courses, including no more than one literature course. ï American Literature and Culture: in English: four courses in American literature and culture; outside English: 15 hours in courses dealing with American culture in History, Art History, African-American Studies, etc. ï Creative Writing: in English: three courses in 20th-century literature, including one in post-1945 literature; outside English: 15 hours in the Creative Writing Program, a minimum of 10 hours of which must be in the form of coursework offered for Creative Writing credit by Creative Writing Program Committee faculty. ï Gender and Women's Studies: in English: three courses with a strong feminist or Women's Studies component; outside English: 15 hours from courses listed in the catalog under Gender and Women's Studies; one of these courses must be Gender and Women's Studies 100; the rest may include up to three hours in courses listed as "Related Courses" in Gender and Women's Studies; the remainder must be from courses listed as "Program Courses" or "Cross-Listed Courses." ï Modern Culture and Media: in English: four courses dealing with issues in modern culture and media; outside English: 15 hours in courses dealing with modern culture and media. ï Theater and Drama: in English: three courses in dramatic literature, playwriting, or other drama or film topic; outside English: 15 hours (total) in at least two other areas (dramatic literature, theater, film) to be chosen from among courses such as these: courses in Theater and design/technical areas; film courses; other literature courses in translation or in the original language of which the substance is drama. In consultation with the department chairperson, majors may devise other concentrations to meet their particular interests. Because concentration majors require more advance planning than the standard English major, they may not be declared after the end of the student's junior year. Students who choose a concentration major have no automatic entitlement to courses outside the English Department required for that major. Minor. An English minor consists of at least 15 hours in the English Department including at least: ï one Gateway course and ï two courses at the 300 level. Distribution requirements: at least one course in Diversity and at least one course in either Pre-1700 or 1700-1900. Honors. Honors in English begins with work in the Senior Tutorial, which students interested in being considered for the Honors Program must take in the semester before their final semester at Oberlin. As well as being enrolled in the Senior Tutorial by the time they apply for honors, students are advised to have completed the majority of their major requirements, including distribution requirements and any specific requirements for a concentration major, and to have done significant work at the advanced level. Students are admitted to the Honors program based on their grade-point average and coursework in the major, their work in the Senior Tutorial, the recommendations of faculty, and personal interviews as needed. Students in the Honors program will work closely with a faculty member in their final semester on a research project, leading to a 35-page essay or creative writing project and an oral examination on that project. Successful work in the Honors program will render a student eligible for consideration for honors at graduation, but it does not guarantee such honors. London Program. One semester each year, an English Department faculty member serves as co-director of the Danenberg Oberlin-in-London Program, thereby facilitating applications for English majors interested in that semester's program. For further information see the section of the catalog entitled "London Program." Transfer of Credit. No more than 14 hours of transfer credit in English literature may be applied to the Oberlin English major. (Note: "English Literature" generally excludes basic composition, introductory creative writing, and more than one course in literature not written in English.) To have transfer credit approval toward the major and/or toward meeting prerequisites for upper-level courses, students should consult the faculty member in charge of Transfer of Credit (inquire at the department office), preferably with syllabi in hand. Winter Term. Winter Term projects sponsored by English faculty will be offered according to the interests and availability of staff. Students also are encouraged to propose group projects which, with an approved sponsor, they will direct. Composition Courses Students interested in taking introductory-level courses in expository writing should see the Rhetoric and Composition section of this catalog. Descriptions of writing-oriented courses and procedures to be followed in order to meet the college-wide writing requirements may be found there.
The English Department offers a number of seminars designed especially for first-year students. First-year seminars do not count toward the English major, which begins with classes at the 200 level. FYSP 127. The Last Romantics 3 hours 3HU, WRi First Semester. For description, please see "First-Year Seminar Program" in this catalog. Enrollment Limit: 14. Mr. Olmsted FYSP 134. Crossing Borders: The Mysteries of Identity 3 hours 3HU, WRi Second Semester. For description, please see "First-Year Seminar Program" in this catalog. Enrollment Limit: 14. Mr. Walker FYSP 136. Ways of Seeing, Ways of Knowing 3 hours 3HU, WRi Second Semester. For description, please see "First-Year Seminar Program" in this catalog. Enrollment Limit: 14. Ms. Zagarell FYSP 157. The Sense of Time and Place 3 hours 3HU, WRi First Semester. For description, please see "First-Year Seminar Program" in this catalog. Enrollment Limit: 14. Mr. Day FYSP 170. Fabulous Histories/Factual Fictions: How Literature and History Inform Each Other 3 hours 3HU, WRi First Semester. For description, please see "First-Year Seminar Program" in this catalog. Enrollment Limit: 14. Ms. Needham FYSP 171. Media and Meaning 3 hours 3HU, WRi First Semester. For description, please see "First-Year Seminar Program" in this catalog. Enrollment Limit: 14. Mr. Pingree FYSP 183. From Page to Stage 3 hours 3HU, WRi First Semester. For description, please see "First-Year Seminar Program" in this catalog. Enrollment Limit: 14. Ms. Gorfain FYSP 184. Shakespeare and History 3 hours 3HU, WRi First Semester. For description, please see "First-Year Seminar Program" in this catalog. Enrollment Limit: 14. Mr. Pierce FYSP 185. Representing the American Scene: The Ante-bellum Period 3 hours 3HU, WRi Second Semester. For description, please see "First-Year Seminar Program" in this catalog. Enrollment Limit: 14. Ms. Johns
149. Reading Poems 3 hours 3HU Second Semester. A lecture course primarily for non-English majors interested in poems, which Marianne Moore wonderfully described as "imaginary gardens with real toads in them." We will concentrate on learning to read, appreciate and understand a variety of poems, both for themselves and in their historical and literary contexts. No papers as such, but various regular assignments and exams. Enrollment Limit: 50. Mr. Jones 173. Form, Style, and Meaning in Cinema 4 hours 4HU First Semester. This course considers the cinema as a particular media form and explores issues and methods in cinema studies. The class focuses on questions of film form and style (narrative, editing, sound, framing, mise-en-scène) and introduces students to concepts in film history and theory (industry, auteurism, spectatorship, the star system, ideology, genre). Students develop a basic critical vocabulary for examining the cinema as an art form, an industry, and a system of culturally meaningful representation. Identical to CINE 101. Enrollment Limit: 60. Mr. Pingree
Courses at the 200 level are designed to introduce students to the discipline of literary study in English through attention to fundamental issues and methods of interpretation in critical reading and writing, substantial coverage of texts, and instruction in the conventions of genre, period, and region as appropriate. Prerequisites: These courses are open to students who have completed any Writing Intensive course, or have gained Writing Certification in any course in the Humanities. They are also open to those who have achieved a 5 on the AP exam in English Language/Composition or English Literature/Composition, or a score of 710 or better on the SAT II Writing test. Other students may be admitted by consent of the instructor, with the understanding that students should be able to demonstrate the ability to handle writing, discussion, and analysis in ways typically taught in Writing Intensive classes. Introductory Gateway Courses Courses designated as Gateway will engage students in the discipline in a focused way, with particular theoretical and methodological attention to the processes of reading and writing about texts; further information about the particular focus of each individual Gateway course can be found in the course description on the department website. Two Gateway courses are required for the English major. 201. Chaucer 3 hours 3HU, WR First Semester. Study of Chaucer's work, including special attention to his last great work, The Canterbury Tales. All readings in Middle English. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 30. Staff 204. Contemporary Issues in Selected Shakespearean Drama 3 hours 3HU, WR Second Semester. Students will study five plays through a variety of critical methods and theories, including new historicism and cultural materialism, gender and feminist studies, performance and performativity, cultural studies, and post-colonial studies. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 30. Ms. Gorfain 207. Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Poetry 3 hours 3HU, WR Second Semester. Non-dramatic poetry from the period 1580-1660, with special attention to Sidney, Shakespeare, Donne, Herbert, and Marvell. The course will consider how these poems participate in discourses of love in the Early Modern period. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 30. Mr. Pierce 212. Restoration and 18th-Century Literature 3 hours 3HU, WR Second Semester. Representative British works of the late 17th and 18th centuries. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 30. Staff 220. Romantic Literature 3 hours 3HU, WR Second Semester. An interdisciplinary study of "romanticism" in England and Scotland between 1789 and 1832, treating works by poets, essay writers, novelists, painters and urban architects. Among works to be considered will be poems by Blake, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, and Byron, essays by Burke, De Quincey, Coleridge, and Hazlitt, and fiction by Mary Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft. Painters to be considered will include Girtin, Constable, Turner, and B. R. Haydon (some of whose letters and journals we will also read). We will investigate the Prince Regent's attempts, working with John Nash and others, to transform London into an imperial city. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 30. Mr. Olmsted 224. Approaches to Literature 4 hours 4HU, WR First Semester. This course aims to develop skills in practical criticism of literature, mostly fiction, in the context of attention to the interplay of aesthetic and social concerns in the writing and reading of literature. Likely texts: Bambara's Gorilla, My Love, Joyce's Dubliners, Austen's Emma, Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper, Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Shakespeare's Othello, and Silko's Ceremony. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 30. Ms. Linehan 240. W.B. Yeats and James Joyce 3 hours 3HU, WR First Semester. A comparative study of poetry and fiction by two major 20th-century writers who both grew up in Ireland but were separated by their religions, social classes, politics, and world-views. Major issues will be the tensions between literature and politics, modernist innovation and the tradition, elite arts and popular culture, and nationalism and internationalism. Working on both poems and stories, students will develop fundamental techniques of close reading informed by the intellectual, artistic, and political contexts of revolutionary Ireland. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 30. Mr. Hobbs 255. The Concept of Nature in Early American Writing 3 hours 3HU, WR First Semester. An exploration of the concept of Nature in early American literature, this course also offers students a thorough introduction to research skills and information technology. By connecting today's "information landscape" with the physical landscape as it is theorized, encountered, and represented in early American literature, students will investigate the ways in which representations of America then might inform our contemporary understandings of nature and nation. Texts will include sermons, promotional tracts, descriptions of the land and its inhabitants, captivity narratives, American Indian responses to European encounters, poetry, autobiography, philosophical and political treatises, and fiction. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 30. Mr. McMillin 256. The Making of American Literary Culture/The Making of America 4 hours in the 19th Century 4HU, WR Second Semester. Debates about the character of literature in "America" took shape around questions of slavery, social and political commitments mandated by faith, constructions of gender and of race, national expansion, increasing immigration, the stratification of literature into highbrow and lowbrow, the author, and the nature of "art." Writers to be studied include Poe, Emerson, Stowe, Melville, Hawthorne, Douglass, James, Chesnutt, Harper. We'll approach the reading in the contexts of its emergence while recognizing our positions as 21st-century readers. Emphasis will be given to reading historically and interpretively. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 30. Ms. Zagarell 260. Approaches to African American Humor and Irony 3 hours 3HU, WR, CD First Semester. This course centers around a concentrated group of works by African American humorists and explores various methods for interpreting their humor, satire, and comedy. We will read Hurston, Brown, Hughes, Childress, and Reed and sample functional, structural, and cultural theories that might be applied to their fiction, poetry, and drama. As an introduction to the English major, the course foregrounds critical attention to methodologies--some of which enter literary study from other disciplines--at the same time it examines the literary "play" of these writers' works on their own terms. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 30. Ms. Johns 264. Coming to America 4 hours 4HU, CD, WR First Semester. Through literature and films, this course will explore what it considers exemplary immigrant (Asian, Afro-Caribbean, European) experiences, examining diverse reactions to immigration to the U.S. It will consider the subject formation of immigrants as well as questions of identity--individual, group, national--that arise in the context of emigration and immigration, taking into account the cultural and historical differences shaping different immigrant groups. It will also consider legal and economic issues surrounding immigration to the U.S. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 30. Ms. Needham 265. Anglophone Literatures of the Third World 3 hours 3HU, CD, WR Second Semester. Through a variety of theoretical essays and novels, this course will examine the problems of definition, analysis, and evaluation that attend our interpretation of works from the "Third World." We will consider, for instance, whether or not: 1) "Third World" or "Post-colonial" are appropriate designations; 2) notions of "marginality," "difference," and "alterity," so often deployed to characterize these works, are useful interpretive tools; 3) the perception that these works are always already enactments of resistance against dominant ideologies and formations is effective. Identical to CMPL 265. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 30. Ms. Needham 272. American Cinema: The Possibilities of Art in the Entertainment Business 4 hours 4HU, WR Second Semester. This course will focus on how American cinema functions as an entertainment industry and the ways in which the demands of business and changes in technology have shaped it. At the same time, we will explore American movies as works of art produced in a tradition of strong genres and the star system, and efforts of filmmakers to use these for individualized expression. The course will focus particularly on two great eras of American cinema, 1939-1942 and 1966-73. Identical to CINE 272. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 30. Mr. Day 282. Shifting Scenes: Drama Survey 3 hours 3HU, WR, CD Second Semester. This course will study the development of drama from the ancient Greeks to the present with the aim of promoting understanding and analysis of dramatic texts. By studying the major forms of drama--tragedy, comedy, tragicomedy--within their historical and cultural contexts, we will explore the elements common to all dramatic works, as well as the way in which those elements vary and evolve from one time and place to another. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 30. Ms. Tufts Introductory Elective Courses 200-level electives differ from Gateway courses (see above) in taking a less focused approach to introducing the study of the discipline of English. 231. Don Juan: Transformations of a Legend 3 hours 3HU, WR First Semester. Tirso's trickster-seducer has had a long career in drama and other art forms. This course will explore how the legend has taken different shapes in different ages and cultures. The approach will be comparative and will involve lecturers from different departments and programs analyzing works from their own areas of expertise, along with discussion classes. We will look at such works as Tirso's original Spanish play, Molière's play, Mozart's opera Don Giovanni, Byron's Don Juan, Bernard Shaw's Man and Superman, and a number of modern versions of the Don Juan story including two films. The course will explore the various potentialities of a story in different artistic embodiments and different cultural-historical settings. In particular we will consider the story as a site for contested attitudes toward gender and sexuality. Course requirements will include a journal, two papers, and several small-group projects. Identical to CMPL 231. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 30. Mr. Pierce 239. History and Structure of the English Language 3 hours 3HU, WR Second Semester. The development of English from its Anglo-Saxon beginnings to the present, focusing on lexical, morphological, syntactic, and phonological change, with emphasis on the intersections between language, literature, and culture. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 30. Staff
Courses at the 300 level are designed to broaden students' experience of literature in English while also deepening the study of the discipline through focused reading of texts, criticism, literary history and theory. Prerequisites: Two 200-level courses, including at least one Gateway course; or three 200-level courses. 303. Shakespeare and Philosophy 3 hours 3HU, WR Second Semester. Including about eight Shakespeare plays, the course will examine two kinds of issues. First, we will look at ways in which the plays make use of philosophical concerns, in particular drawing on classical traditions of skepticism, cynicism, and stoicism. Second, we will consider ethical and epistemological issues in interpreting the plays. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 25. Mr. Pierce 304. Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare: Gender, Race, and Empire 3 hours 3HU, WR, CD Second Semester. Studying five plays representing history, tragedy, comedy, and late romance, and featuring any plays performed locally, the course examines how current feminist criticism considers the intersections of gender with histories of race and empire. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 25. Ms. Gorfain 315. Eighteenth-Century Fiction 4 hours 4HU, WR First Semester. The emergence of prose fiction in the 18th century, focusing on novelistic form, with attention to cultural and historical contexts. Authors may include Behn, Defoe, Haywood, Richardson, Fielding, Sterne, Goldsmith, Lewis, Austen. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 25. Staff 316. Early Victorian Fiction in Context 4 hours 4HU, WR First Semester. A survey of British fiction written in the first half of the 19th century, with special attention paid to historical and cultural context, serial publication and changing readerships, the emergence of a sophisticated aesthetic of fiction in critical periodicals, and the interplay between text and visual image in illustrated fiction. Selections of poetry and prose of thought from the 1830s and 1840s will also be read. Works will include fiction by Austen, Dickens, Thackeray, Gaskell, Emily Brontë, and Charlotte Brontë, and poetry by Tennyson and Browning. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 25. Mr. Olmsted 317. Late Victorian Fiction in Context 4 hours 4HU, WR Second Semester. Late Victorian novels such as George Eliot's Middlemarch. Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, George Gissing's The Odd Women, and Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure are considered in this course alongside selected poems and prose of the period as a basis for exploring the novel's responsiveness to late Victorian debate over such topics as feminism, aestheticism, and democratization. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 25. Ms. Linehan 331. Modern Poetry I 3 hours 3HU, WR First Semester. The development of modern poetry from 1880 to the end of World War I, including such poets as Yeats, Rilke, Mallarme, Stevens, Moore, and Wiliams. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 25. Staff 332. Modern Poetry II 3 hours 3HU, WR First Semester. Modern American and British poetry between the First and Second World Wars, including work by T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Dylan Thomas, W.H. Auden, Langston Hughes, and E.E.Cummings. Major issues will be the conflicts between: modernism and the tradition, internationalism and regionalism, classicism and romanticism, and free verse and closed poetic forms. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 25. Mr. Hobbs 333. Poetry Since 1945 3 hours 3HU, WR Second Semester. Contemporary American poetry, selected from such major postwar poets as Lowell, Bishop, and Jarrell; more recent poets such as Plath, Ashbery, Merwin, James Wright, and Rich; and such current figures as Simic, Harper, Charles Wright, C. D. Wright, McPherson, Tate, Komunyakaa, and Upton. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 25. Staff 349. Contemporary Drama: 1980-Present 3 hours 3HU, CD, WR Second Semester. This course will study the developments mainly in British and American drama during the last ten to fifteen years. Plays will be discussed from both a literary and theatrical point of view, with attention to their historical, cultural, and political context. Among the playwrights we will be reading, a tentative list might include Tony Kushner, David Henry Huang, Athol Fugard, Wole Soyinka, Maria Irene Fornes, Elaine Jackson, Emily Mann, Caryl Churchill, and Brian Friel. Classes will be conducted primarily through discussion supplemented by lectures. Written work will include two papers: one short (4-6 pages) and one long (8-10 pages). In addition, each student will be responsible for a performance in class of a scene from one of the plays we are reading. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 25. Ms. Tufts 358. The Irish Short Story 3 hours 3HU, WR Second Semester. An exploration of the most significant 20th-century Irish short story writers--James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Mary Lavin, Frank O'Connor, Edna O'Brien, Sean O'Faolain, John McGahern, William Trevor, Mary Dorcey, and Anne Enright. We'll examine the tensions between tradition and innovation, and the impact of religion and nationalism on the writers in the North and South. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 25. Mr. Hobbs 366. Nature and Transcendentalism 4 hours 4HU, WR Second Semester. An examination of the writings of the American Transcendentalists of the 19th century with special attention to Emerson, Thoreau, and the concept of nature. We will study some of the early contributors to this school of thought, as well as more recent expositors. Students should be prepared to tackle difficult texts that pose challenging philosophical, political, and interpretive questions. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 25. Mr. McMillin 371. The Scene of the Crime: Crime Stories in American Cinema 4 hours 4HU, WR Second Semester. This course focuses on crime stories from the point of view of the criminal and the policeman/detective in American Cinema, particularly during the last 40 years. Our concern is both how American movies represent crime and why this subject has become so important in American movies. Why has crime become a metaphor, an archetypal American story? We will also consider how crime movies have affected American Cinema in general. Identical to CINE 371. Prerequisites: See headnote above, or CINE 101 and Cinematic Traditions course. Enrollment Limit: 25. Mr. Day 372. Contemporary Literary Theory in American Culture 4 hours 4HU, WR First Semester. This course is about developments in literary theory in the context of the last thirty-five years of American intellectual and artistic culture. Our concern will be understanding literary theories in their historical and institutional contexts as well as considering their value as ways of thinking about literature and art. We'll pay particular attention to the impact of post-structuralism on American critics, the relation of literary criticism to cultural criticism, and various elaborations of the idea of post-modernity. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 25. Mr. Day 384. Slave Narrative and Novel 3 hours 3HU, CD, WR Second Semester. This course focuses on one of the first genres African American writers used to represent their perspectives--the slave narrative--and examines how it can serve as a foundation for narrative and authorship into the 20th century. We will consider the narratives' use of realism, rhetorical methods by which authors position themselves as witnesses to history and claim moral authority, the phenomena of memory and self-reflexivity, and relations among literacy, oral culture, and freedom. And we will examine how modern writers re-visit social and philosophical problems left in tension in the literature of slavery. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 25. Ms. Johns 386. Narrating the Nation: Historical and Literary Approaches to Nationalism 4 hours 2HU, 2SS, CD, WR Second Semester. This course offers an analysis of the narratives through which nationalisms acquire credibility and authority. This discussion-centered class will examine the nationalisms of Latin America, the Caribbean, and South Asia with particular reference to those of Argentina, Mexico, India, and Pakistan. Narrative theories as deployed in and by the disciplines of History and English literary studies provide the overarching critical methodologies for interdisciplinary analysis. Identical to HIST 367. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 25. Ms. Needham, Mr. Volk 390. Selected Authors: William Faulkner 4 hours 4HU, WR Second Semester. An intensive study of major works by William Faulkner (1897-1962). Readings include Soldier's Pay, Flags in the Dust, The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Light in August, and Absalom, Absalom! and a selection of poetry, short stories, essays, and speeches. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 25. Mr. Olmsted 391. Selected Authors: George Eliot and Virginia Woolf 4 hours 4HU, WR Second Semester. The course will use historical, stylistic, and feminist perspectives to explore the content and development of works by these two eminent British women writers. Texts to be read include: Eliot's The Mill on the Floss and Daniel Deronda and Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse (as well as at least one other work by Woolf). Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 25. Ms. Linehan 393. Selected Authors: James Joyce 4 hours 4HU, WR Second Semester. The development of Joyce's fiction from Dubliners to Finnegans Wake, emphasizing Ulysses, in the contexts of his biography and post-colonial Irish culture. Major issues will be the tensions between Joyce's nationalism and internationalism, Catholicism and secularism, modernism and traditionalism, fantasy and social realism. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 25. Mr. Hobbs 395. Poetry Workshop 3 hours 3HU, WR First and Second Semester. For description, please see "Creative Writing" in this catalog. Identical to CRWR 310. Consent of instructor required. Enrollment Limit: 12. 396. Non-Fiction Workshop 4 hours 4HU, WR Second Semester. For description, please see "Creative Writing" in this catalog. Identical to CRWR 340. Consent of instructor required. Enrollment Limit: 12. 397. Fiction Workshop 4 hours 4HU, WR First and Second Semester. For description, please see "Creative Writing" in this catalog. Identical to CRWR 320. Consent of instructor required. Enrollment Limit: 12. 398. Playwriting Workshop 4 hours 4HU, WR Second Semester. For description, please see "Creative Writing" in this catalog. Identical to CRWR 330. Consent of instructor required. Note: Admission based on a completed application form and a writing sample. Enrollment Limit: 12. Mr. Walker 399. Teaching and Tutoring Writing Across the Disciplines 3 hours 3HU, WRi First and Second Semester. For description, please see "Rhetoric and Composition" in this catalog. Identical to RHET 481. Consent of instructor required. Enrollment Limit: 12. Ms. Trubek, Mr. Podis Senior Tutorial, Honors, and Individual Projects These courses are designed primarily for seniors and offer opportunities to do individual work based on focused reading of texts, criticism, literary history, and theory, with the goal of engaging in extended research, writing, or performance projects. Courses at the 400 level are open by application only in the semester preceding the course. Students enrolling in 400-level courses should normally have completed at least two courses at the 300 level. 400. Senior Tutorial 4 hours 4HU, WR First and Second Semester. For English majors in either semester of their final year only, involving close work on an individual project, leading to a substantial paper. Required for all students who declare the English major from March 2003 on; recommended for previously-declared majors. Students planning to apply for Honors must take the tutorial in the semester before their final semester. Students are assigned to instructors on the basis of applications; application forms are available from the department secretary two to three weeks before registration. Consent of instructor required. Staff 450. Honors Project 4 hours 4HU, WR Second Semester. Intensive work on the student's honors project, culminating in either an honors paper or creative project. Students interested in applying for Honors at graduation this year must take the Senior Tutorial first, in the fall semester. In future years, the Honors Project will be offered in fall and spring semesters. Consent of instructor required. Staff 995. Private Reading 0.5 hour 0.5HU First and Second Semester. Consent of instructor required. London Semester One semester each year an English department faculty member teaches courses in the Danenberg Oberlin-in-London Program. For a fuller description of the London Program in general and next year's courses see the London Program section of this catalog. 900. The Danenberg Lectures on British Culture and Society 2 hours 2EX First Semester. For description, please see "London Program" in this catalog. Mr. Walker, Mr. Blecher 966. The London Stage 6 hours 6HU, WR First Semester. For description, please see "London Program" in this catalog. Mr. Walker 972. Modernism in England 6 hours 6HU, WR First Semester. For description, please see "London Program" in this catalog. Mr. Walker |
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