Spring, 2001
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Students interested in taking introductory-level courses in writing should also see the Rhetoric and Composition section of the catalog. Descriptions of writing-oriented courses and procedures to be followed in order to meet the college-wide writing requirements may be found there. These courses do not count towards an English major.
Colloquia will focus on critical writing and analysis through the study of texts. These colloquia are for first-year students only, and do not count for the English major, which begins with foundation courses at the 200 level. All colloquia are Writing Intensive courses. Students in their second year or beyond should begin work in the English Department at the 200 level.
What happens when theater comes down off the stage and into the world around us? This colloquium focuses on the ways that drama can engage audiences in immediate political contexts. The three components of the course--reading, written work, and active practice--will all draw upon Brazilian activist Augusto Boal's Theater of the Oppressed. We will be reading political plays by Bertolt Brecht and others, including more contemporary playwrights, as well as theoretical essays by Boal, Paulo Freire, Michel Foucault, bell hooks, and others. Writing will involve response papers, essays, and playwriting exercises (no prior experience expected). The course's "activist" component will consist of learning exercises from the Theater of the Oppressed and developing Forum Theater performances in conjunction with several local community groups, as well as on campus. Enrollment limit: 16 first-year students only.
This course will not be a survey of the history and development of U.S. ethnic literatures. Rather, we will concentrate on a few sample texts in order to discuss the methods of reading employed on U.S. ethnic literatures generally, and the ways in which those reading methods create the meanings of ethnic literature. We will be asking questions such as, what makes "authenticity" such an important concept in minority literatures, but not in majority literature? Why are minority authors so frequently read as representatives of their people, in a way that majority authors are not? Why is popularity, and the commercial success that it brings, so problematic for minority authors? Why is ethnic literature so frequently read through the lens of the social sciences, and what consequences does this habit of reading have on ethnic literature? Is it possible for a minority author to write something that will not be read as "autobiographical"? In which ways is literature as an academic field compatible with social activism, and in which ways is it not? The reading list will include works by Forrest Carter, Richard Rodriguez, Lois-Ann Yamanaka, Clifford Geertz, Margaret Mead, David Macauley, Ruth Behar, Sandra Cisneros, Sherman Alexie and others. Enrollment limit: 16 first-year students only.
The tensions between escape and escapism often map our contradictory feelings about the "real world." On the one hand, a literature of escape may use a fantastic get-away as a powerful critique of the terrors and inequities of reality; on the other hand, an escapist popular literature may avoid, perhaps even perpetuate, those real problems to slip away in "simplistic" fantasies. This class will use the trope of escape to explore how our approaches to storytelling negotiate between a critique of and collaboration with the way things are. Among the concepts we will address are: how a vision of Oz reflects our lives here in Kansas (and vice versa); how fantasies infuse our experience of place; how plot shapes and escapes from interpretive closure; what differences can we map between "literary" and "popular" works; how fictions reproduce and revise ideology; how an escape mythology enacts various American identities. We will also attend to how groups of readers (in specific social contexts or through an analysis of a specific genre) construct the practices and functions of reading, connecting critical literacy and identity in relation to comic books, the Oprah book club, romances; this final project will be individualized in subject and style -- possibilities include a more personalized final paper, some combination of analytical and creative approaches to the topic, and/or linked community service. Texts will include The Wizard of Oz, Geoff Ryman, Salman Rushdie, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Tim O’Brien, Brazil, Yi-Fu Tuan, Octavia Butler, Watchmen, and some popular works to be determined in class. Enrollment limit: 16 first-year students only.
These courses are designed to introduce students to the discipline of literary study in English through a substantial coverage of texts, instruction in the conventions of genre, period, and region as appropriate, and attention to fundamental issues and approaches in critical reading and writing.
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.
This course will be centered on issues of play and ritual in seven Shakespeare plays. We will study one history, two tragedies, and four comedies in order to explore the uses of play and ritual within plays that span Shakespeare's career and different genres. The plays we will study include Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado about Nothing, Twelfth Night, The Tempest, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra and Henry IV, 1. Using techniques of close reading, attention to performance choices in scenes put on by students, and by including literary criticism, folkloristic, and anthropological studies, we will examine how these plays depict and problematize the powers and limits of ritual and play. As we see how the plays embed within themselves ritual and play as forms of performance, we will see how this nesting creates a meta-dramatic discourse on the problems and limits of theatre and other kinds of social performance.
This course will not pursue a New Age view of ritual and play, nor a Jungian approach, nor are we going to approach ritual and play in grandiose universal terms. We will instead look at historical and cultural contexts of the scripts and their specific uses of performative acts in relation to the worlds within these play and its own questions about transforming meaning and responsibility. We will be asking: what events count as actions and what can be discounted as "just acts?" What human acts can be given license through interpreting them as play or rituals? How and when we hold ourselves accountable for the consequences of our deeds? How do historicizing these scripts change our contemporary notions about the uses of play and ritual? How might the scripts be reinterpreted by contemporary directors or students to say something today? The re-interpretability of actions by seeing them as play or ritual will provide an opening into examining other ways that we reinterpret and construct meaning, into how notions of gender, sexuality, color, and race can be analogously constructed as performative acts, or how these scripts themselves can be played with, just as we play with other social scripts we have inherited.
For each play, students will read three to four essays of criticism and theory, and each student will be asked to perform in one scene over the semester. Following their scene performances, students will write a scene journal of 8-10 pages about the process and choices made. Every student will be asked to complete one short paper of 5 pages for each play studied, and a final project -- either a paper of 10-12 pages or a final scene group (a combination of scenes). D, EL. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment limit: 30.
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. P, WL. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment limit: 30.
Victorian Britain witnessed an explosion of technological "progress" which writers and politicians aligned with both social evolution and dystopic decline. This course will explore how the Machine functioned within the cultural imaginary. Using a broad range of texts that feature steam, railways, electricity, telephones and the telegraph, we will examine how conceptions of mechanization intersected with constructions of British and colonial subjects, and ask how languages of machinery, speed and systematization reconceptualized the nation, empire and body. F, WL. Prerequisite: any Writing Intensive course. Enrollment Limit: 30.
The working assumption of this course is that attentive reading and writing of poetry will inform, guide, and strengthen each other over the semester. To that end we'll read selections from such modern poets as Yeats and Williams, and such contemporary poets as Bishop, Plath, Simic, Ashbery, Merwin, Dove, Rich, and Kinnell. You will write two 5-6 page analytical essays on the poetry and collect a poetry portfolio at the rate of one poem per week. (No previous experience writing poetry is necessary for the course.) The poems will be discussed in a workshop format each Friday. (We'll divide the class into two groups.) To guide the poetry writing we'll use a book by Steve Kowit, In the Palm of Your Hand: The Poet's Portable Workshop. The poetry reading will be from The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry, edited by J.D. McClatchy. I'll also invite 2-3 Oberlin faculty poets to share their insights with us. P. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment limit: 30.
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. F, WL. Identical to CMPL 231. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment limit: 30.
Course requirements will likely include three essays, peer review of essay drafts, a group oral presentation and participation in an electronic discussion group. F, AL. Prerequisite: any Writing Intensive course. Enrollment Limit: 30.
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," "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. F, WL. Identical to CMPL 265 and WOST 265. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment limit: 30.
It would be an exaggeration to say that contemporary American film would disappear without crime as a subject, but not much of one. Throughout the history of American movies, crime has played a central role as subject, theme, and metaphor. The criminal is one of the common archetypes of American stories and the meaning of crime an American pre-occupation, often suffused with romanticism and nostalgia as well as fear and anger. In this course I want to explore how crime and criminals become metaphors for a wide variety of ethical, social, and epistemological issues as well as subjects on their own. The number of movies we could look at is vast; I've chosen ones that I think are particularly interesting and important and tried to keep the list relatively contemporary. If your favorite crime drama isn't on the list, you can still write one of the longer essays on a movie we don't discuss in class. We'll also pay attention to the issue what it means to be a critical writer and develop an understanding of the issues and concerns that are central to critical inquiry not only into film but literature.
Movies will probably include Rear Window, Bonnie and Clyde, Chinatown, The Godfather, The Long Goodbye, House of Games, Body Heat, One False Move, Fargo, Dirty Harry, and Silence of the Lambs, though this list might change between now and February. (No Tarantino, don't bother to ask.)
Requirements: Two critical essays of about 1500 words, 4 shorter, 750 word assignments. Students will be expected to form a small discussion group outside of class. While there will be weekly showings of each movie, they will also be on reserve; you should plan to see each movie twice. AL, F. Prerequisites: see headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 35.
Shakespeare lived in a world that was rapidly changing its contours through exploration, conquest, and trade as well as other contacts, and his Early Modern London audience represented the parts of their world to themselves by all sorts of maps, some of which are reflected in the places created by his plays. By a combination of lecture, discussion, and dramatic workshop the class will look at ten Shakespeare plays as they locate human beings in their dramatic worlds: The Merry Wives of Windsor, Henry the Fourth Part One and Part Two, King Lear, Macbeth, Twelfth Night , Measure for Measure, Antony and Cleopatra, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and The Tempest. Course requirements include two analytical papers (5-7 pp.), participation in a brief scene to be acted in front of the class with a written account of the planning for the scene, a one-page comment on each play, and participation in class. The Sunday evening before each play there will be a showing of a videotape production; attendance is optional but recommended as often as possible.
The text is William Shakespeare, The Complete Works of Shakespeare ed. David Bevington, Updated 4th ed. D, EL. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment limit: 30.
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: These courses are open to students who have completed at least 3 courses at the new 200-level, or (for students who have taken courses prior to 1998) at least 3 courses in English at the 150 level or above, or by consent of the instructor.
A survey of novels of Victorian England read with attention to aesthetic, sociohistorical, and literary critical concerns. Some emphasis will be given to the trace effects in fiction of changing gender roles in Victorian society, and also of a rapidly-expanding, broad-based print culture. Authors represented include Emily Bronte, Dickens, George Eliot, R. L. Stevenson, Gissing, and Hardy. Class will usually operate with one lecture and two discussion periods each week. Written assignments will consist of two 7-8 page papers, a write-up on a library assignment working with Victorian periodicals, and occasional one-page warm-ups for discussion. There is (eek) a final exam for this course. F, WL. Prerequisite: Three 200-level courses (see headnote above). Enrollment limit: 25.
This course will examine British self-definition under and after Thatcher. We will study British cultural products and practices of the 1980s and 90s, with an eye to the changing role of literature and media in the formation of a "national" culture. Issues such as Irish Nationalism, London "race riots" and the rise of Queer Nation will be read through the work of artists including Isaac Julien, Carol Ann Duffy, Derek Jarman, Angela Carter and Hanif Kureishi. F, WL. Prerequisite: Three 200-level courses. Enrollment Limit: 25.
This course will study the development of drama from World War II to the present. D, WL. Prerequisite: Three 200-level courses (see headnote above). Enrollment limit: 25.
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. P, AL. Prerequisite: Three 200-level courses (see headnote above). Enrollment limit: 25.
Selected topics in Asian-American literature, from the World War II era to the 1990s, focusing on the political, historical, and theoretical dimensions of this nascent literary movement. Special emphasis will be given to the unique character of Asian-American literary study in contrast to other fields of Asian-American studies. F, AL. Prerequisite: Three 200-level courses (see headnote above). Enrollment limit: 25.
As one critic put it, who is relieved by the idea of comic relief? Many analyses of comedy write the whole genre off as escapist release or subordinate it to serious discourse, letting the object of the joke off the hook. In this class, we'll thumb our noses and toss pies at such sobriety, instead trying to gauge what effects comic transgression (of the aesthetic, the bodily, the "normal," the proper, the dominant, the literary, the scholarly) may produce on its own terms. What kinds of critical thinking, artistic form, and social action are possible within a comic mode of discourse? In addition, we'll examine the intersections of comic structures and functions with today's top-selling brand of period and style, the postmodern. Texts will include: literary works by Katherine Dunn, Jonathan Lethem, Thomas Pynchon, A.M. Homes, Maxine Hong Kingston, Paul Beatty, Vladimir Nabokov, Amiri Baraka, Stephen Wright or Joyce Carol Oates, David Sedaris, Robert Coover, Sherman Alexie; films by Billy Wilder, Martin Scorsese, Neil LaBute, Wes Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson, Spike Lee, the brothers Marx, Todd Solondz, George Romero; the odd work of visual or performance art; assorted critical approaches (e.g., Freud, Bakhtin, Barreca), several pranks, recent political campaigns, the occasional pratfall. F, AL. Prerequisite: Three 200-level courses. Enrollment limit: 25.
Two-part examination of the treatment of history and myth in African-American fiction, beginning with historical fiction and moving to mythical works. We will apply genre and historical theory and criticism as well as studies of African and African-American culture heroes, revisionist literary modes, and world views to works by such authors as Chesnutt, Bontemps, Hurston, Butler, Morrison, Bradley, and others. F, AL. Prerequisite: Three 200-level courses (see headnote above). Enrollment limit: 25.
By considering early American literature in various genres--poetry; spiritual and secular autobiographies; narratives of captivity; religious, political, and philosophical tracts; nature writing; fiction; travel writing--this course will examine the different ways in which writers imagined this country and their place in it throughout the period before, during, and after the establishment of a new nation. F, AL. Prerequisite: Three 200-level courses (see headnote above). Enrollment limit: 25.
At the beginning of this era, British critic Sydney Smith sneered "Who reads an American book?" Even Americans read many more British books than American ones. By the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, though, Americans were avid writers and readers of American books--and the American magazines and newspapers in which writers like Hawthorne, Melville, and Stowe and many others appeared. We'll read representative literature of the era, focusing on questions about the emergence of an American literature and an American culture, thinking about how factors crucial to the coalescing sense of "America" played into this emergence: the developing literary market-place, the spread of literacy, the concepts of genre, of gender, of race and of region which were consolidating. We'll read works long celebrated -- Moby-Dick, "Self-Reliance," and Song of Myself, -- and more recently acclaimed ones, such as The Narrative of The Life of Frederick Douglass and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, and some whose current status is still uncertain, like The Morgesons.
We'll also look a few pieces that have only recently been taken into critical account at all -- Sigourney's "The Father," Apes's "An Indian's Looking-Glass for White Men." Class participants will also be encouraged to enrich their understanding of the antebellum literary scene by looking at magazines like Putnams and Harpers.
Lectures, discussions, student-led discussion, some work in Oberlin's terrific collection of magazines of the antebellum era--these will be our main formats. Reading will include, in addition to the works mentioned above, short stories by Poe, The Scarlet Letter, additional essays by Emerson, Harding Davis's "Life in the Iron Mills," prose by Thoreau, poetry by Dickinson. F, AL. Prerequisite: Three 200-level courses (see headnote above). Enrollment limit: 25.
Bodylore engages us in the study of how meanings, uses, and treatments of the body are constructed through traditional, vernacular, popular systems of belief, custom, and verbal behaviors -- sayings, proverbs, riddles, folk narratives, jokes, games. This course is a folklore course, where the material we study will not be literature, but traditional lore. Examples would be: such folk metaphors that name body parts to understand abstract ideas; superstitions and customs; traditional forms of body decoration and alteration (tattoos, body piercing, scarification), beliefs and customs surrounding sexuality, birth, reproduction; rituals of initiation and death. These are just a few examples.
Although we may draw on some folk tales and myths, most of the readings will be anthropological and folkloristic secondary studies of particular sets of practices. Students' own research can engage in field work projects collecting living body folklore (stories about first-time menstruation customs; hair or clothing customs; body piercing lore; tattoo lore; henna painting; birth or abortion personal experience stories; children's games involving body parts or imagery; etc.) from real people. Student's own projects, which will be central to the course, will be important ways to apply and extend the theories, methods, and objects of study in the course. For these projects, students can research library materials based on studies of other cultures; students could concentrate on one or more literary works that embody body folklore; or a group might analyze a corpus of myths or folk tales -- from anywhere in the world -- with important images, symbols, motifs that illuminate bodylore.
Some time at the start of the course will be devoted to introducing students to the basic notions of what folklore is and how folklorists study folk groups and folk genres. The first major unit for the course will examine various theories about the body, from folkloristics, anthropology, philosophy, and religion. These theories consider how the body is theorized as a constructed site not just to express and perform cultural systems of gender, sexuality, status, rank, class, ethnicity, race, and other ways of making identity, but also through which to constitute social and cultural differences that matter.
We'll then have three or four further units. The first will center on body metaphors and sayings; the second, on bodylore in life cycle rituals and customs (customs and beliefs surrounding birth, initiation, marriage, menopause and aging; death); the third, on body decorations and coverings (tattoos, piercing, henna painting, hair customs); and the fourth, on body movement and expression (postures, dance, gestures). One short paper (4-5 pages) will be required for each unit, and the last three weeks will be spent with group projects.
Final projects could either pursue in more depth some area of bodylore that has been studied more briefly or investigate a topic (say, something like gendered bodies in folk dance or folklore concerning disabilities) that may not have been touched on at all. The last week of classes (possibly using reading period) will be used for group presentations of final projects, which could be panel discussions of papers, performances, or presentations of folklore collections. These final projects will need to have some kind of written accompaniment, the type and length to be negotiated appropriately to the topic and its goals.
The course pedagogy will center on student-led discussions of readings with some lecturing by professor. Prerequisite: Three 200-level courses (see headnote above). Enrollment limit: 25.
This course will predominately focus on novels and movies, but we will also pay attention to photography, painting, and music. The course has three thematic centers.
1) The Great Depression devasted American society in the years 1929-1941. How did writers & artists react to this nationwide sense of collapse? We'll consider how retrospection and nostalgia define a sense of the immediate and distant past for the 1930's and how the portrayal of contemporary events attempts to define the moment. We'll examine both overtly political writers such as Mike Gold, Clifford Odets, John Dos Passos and Woody Guthrie as well writers who deal with political issues more indirectly, such as F. Scoot Fitzgerald, Raymond Chandler, Zora Neal Hurston, William Faulkner, and Nathaniel West.
2) The problem of Realism. Since the late nineteenth century America novelists had pursued realism as their goal , both artistically and thematically. But by the 1930's realism had become both the dominant style and for many writers an exhausted mode. We'll consider how they worked out their relation to the traditions of realism and alternatives such as experimentalism and the return to myth.
3) The 1930's mark the moment in which movies replace novels as the defining mode of narrative. How did the movies both as a narrative form and a social phenomenon affect the ways in which novelists worked? We will watch a number of movies over the semester to explore the interaction between film and print.
We'll read F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night, John Dos Passos' The Big Money, Willa Cather's Obscure Destinies, William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom, Zora Neale Hurston's Moses, Man of Mountains, Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, and Nathaniel West's The Day of the Locust, and essays and stories by these and other writers. We watch the movies 42nd St , The Grapes of Wrath, Babes in Arms, My Man Godfrey, Gone with the Wind, Sullivan's Travels, and Citizen Kane. Requirements: four to six short writing assignments, a long essay, either a research or a critical essay, done in drafts, small discussion groups meeting outside of class. F, AL. Prerequisite: Three 200-level courses (see headnote above). Enrollment limit: 25.
A close reading of selected works by one of the great masters of modern fiction. After beginning with several of the stories and selections from the autobiography (Speak, Memory), we will read about eight novels in chronological order: probably Despair (1932), Invitation to a Beheading (1935), The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (1941), Bend Sinister (1947), Lolita (1955), Pnin (1957), Pale Fire (1962), and Transparent Things (1972). Students should be prepared to share the author's (and the instructor's) interest in style, narrative structure, parody, and wordplay as they unite in an art that, in Nabokov's words, merges "the passion of the scientist and the precision of the artist." Nabokov is a demanding author; you should expect this course to be challenging, though I hope it will be exhilarating as well. I would also urge you not to take this course concurrently with another course in the novel.
The class will be conducted through a combination of informal lectures and discussions. Written work will consist of six 2-page response papers and a final 10-12 page paper; students will also be expected to participate regularly in discussions. F, WL. Prerequisite: Three 200-level courses (see headnote above). Enrollment limit: 25.
Identical to CRWR 310.
Identical to CRWR 340.
Identical to CRWR 320.
This practicum/seminar combines work teaching and tutoring writing with an introduction to composition theory and pedagogy. All students enrolled in the course will work a minimum of six hours per week as tutors at the writing desk in Mudd or will assist writing tutors for a writing intensive course. While "learning by doing", students will also learn by reading about and discussing the field of rhetoric and composition, including process theories, cultural studies, critical pedagogy, feminism, discourse communities, technology and writing, basic writing, english as a second language instruction and the history of composition.
In addition to the tutoring requirement, students will be asked participate weekly in an electronic discussion group, complete a mid-term project that aims to improve our tutoring resources and complete a 10-12 page essay on any issue related to course readings and/or tutoring experience. Texts include Villanueva, Cross Talk in Comp Theory, Podis and Podis, Working with Student Writers: Essays on Tutoring and Teaching, and Rose, Lives on the Boundary: A Moving Account of the Struggles and Achievements of America's Educational Underclass.
This course is open to any junior or senior who writes well and receives consent from the instructor. Non-English majors are encouraged to apply. Tutors in their first semester will receive $7.00/hour if working in the writing lab or $600/semester if assisting a writing intensive course. To apply, please submit an application form and a writing sample to Ms. Trubek's office or via e-mail. Application forms are available in King 139. Writing samples should be any piece of academic writing you feel reflects your abilities. Admitted students will be notified by e-mail. Identical to EXWR 481. Enrollment limit: 12.
These courses are designed primarily for seniors and offer opportunities to do individual work based on focused reading of texts, criticism, literary history, or 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.
This course covers two Renaissance genres that were especially characteristic of the age and its innovations in artistic form. The first half covers sonnet cycles by Petrarch, Sidney, Spenser and Shakespeare; the second half covers revenge tragedies by Seneca, Kyd, Shakespeare, Marston, Middleton and Webster. EL. Consent of instructor required. Enrollment limit: 18.
A comparative study of the fiction (and some "non"-fiction) of two of the best known contemporary postcolonial writers from South Africa and Britain, J. M. Coetzee and Salman Rushdie. The texts we'll cover will most likely include: Dusklands, In the Heart of the Country, Waiting for the Barbarians, Life and Times of Michael K, Foe, Age of Iron, Disgrace, selections from Doubling the Point, White Writing, and Giving Offence (all by Coetzee) and Midnight's Children, Shame, The Satanic Verses, The Moor's Last Sigh, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, and selections from Imaginary Maps (all by Rushdie). Insofar as their fictions are densely intertextual, this course will also focus (selectively) on some of the canonical texts--like Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and Nehru's Discovery of India--they critically engage with. Furthermore, insofar as their fictions self-consciously engage with (indeed, are often seen as embodying) several salient postulates of postcolonial and poststructuralist theories, a significant ancillary focus of this course includes discussions in contemporary critical theory. F, WL. Consent of instructor required. Enrollment limit: 18.
This course will attempt to sketch, in broad strokes, how the "Indian woman" has been periodically "recast" to fulfil particular kinds of imperatives, prompted variously by colonialism, anti-colonial nationalism, post-Independence nation-building projects, feminism, and, most recently, the liberalization of economy in India. The readings will reveal how women have been instrumental to these projects, but how at various points they have also spoken out of their own convictions, needs, and desires. What are the historical contexts in which these constructions emerge and take on significance? (How) are they resisted? What are the implications for "real" women? The texts will include: Rabindranath Tagore's Home and the World, Partha Chatterjee's essay "The Nationalist Resolution of the Women's Question," selections from Women Writing in India, and other critical and cultural texts. WL. Consent of instructor required (see Ms. Needham). Enrollment limit: 15.
For Europeans,"The New World" gave impetus to concepts of racial superiority and imperial mission, and yet it has provided the space in which to imagine new possibilities of liberty and democracy. For Americans, Europe has been the home of "culture," refinement, and, paradoxically, even of the possibility of racial justice. Africa, since at least the seventeenth century, with the devastation wrought by slavery and imperialism, has been the key third point in the Transatlantic Triangle. We will concentrate on the 18th and 19th centuries; possible authors include Montaigne, Shakespeare, Mary Rowlandson, Rousseau, William Blake, Hegel, William Wells Brown, Lydia Maria Child, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, W.E.B. DuBois, and Tayeb Salih. F, EL. Consent of instructor required. Enrollment limit: 15.
The senior project is an opportunity to engage, on an individual basis under the supervision of a faculty member in the Department of English, in a semester-long research project. This project typically culminates in a 15-20 page essay and an oral presentation of that work at the end of the semester. This project opportunity is available to a limited number of senior English majors, by application only. The senior project differs from the Honors program in being limited to one semester; it does not qualify the student to become a candidate for Honors at graduation. Prerequisites: Admission to the senior project. Consent of instructor required.
Intensive work on student's honors project, culminating in either an honors paper or creative project. Consent of instructor required.
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