Fall 2005
| First-Year Seminars |
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.
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. Students in their second year or beyond should begin work in the English Department at the 200 level.
Through intensive study of poetic language -- language, that is, at its most concentrated, deliberate, and artful -- we will seek to become more critically aware of language in general. How do words matter? How do they shape our sensory, emotional, and social experience? Readings will include lyric poems, some critical essays, and a few novels, including Gardner's Grendel, Kingston's The Woman Warrior, and Maclean's A River Runs Through It. Enrollment Limit: 14 first-year students only.
This seminar will address the fascinating complexity of metaphorical language -- how metaphors are used by writers and how they are interpreted by readers. We explore metaphors in poetry and fiction as well as in films, religion, medicine, politics, and art. We will be asking questions such as: How do metaphors inform and direct our thoughts and imaginations? How have metaphors changed over the centuries? Is metaphor an appealing ornament to plain speech, or is it inherent in language itself? Enrollment Limit: 14 first-year students only.
A study of the poetry, autobiographical prose, and several of the plays of William Butler Yeats in the context of his late Victorian and Modernist contemporaries. The influence of writers such as Oscar Wilde, T.S. Eliot and Pound on Yeats' poetic practice and theory will be assessed. In Yeats' work we will focus on the poetry collections "Responsibilities," "The Wild Swans at Coole," "The Tower," "The Winding Stair and other Poems," and "Last Poems," and plays such as Cathleen ni Houlihan, The Words Upon the Window-Pane, The Death of Cuchulain and Purgatory. Enrollment limit: 14 first-year students only.
Beyond offering different sorts of content and engagement for their audiences, various artistic forms and techniques can be understood to provide alternative models for individuals and groups to filter and process experience in general. This course will look at multiple artistic forms (e.g., painting, photography, film, literature), in light of their own technical developments and contrasts with each other across time, in order to develop a greater sense of the many ways medium matters. Enrollment limit: 14 first-year students only.
In Western cultures, identity often tends to be defined in binary terms: an individual is either black or white, male or female, straight or gay, and so on. This seminar will seek to explore the nature of identity by focusing on texts in which categories of identity -- specifically those of race, gender, and sexuality -- are represented as fluid and ambiguous rather than as fixed and polarized. Examples might include Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, Michael Chabon's The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Jackie Kay's Trumpet, Nella Larsen's Passing, James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room, Amy Bloom's A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You, and Carol Anshaw's Aquamarine, and such films as Boys Don't Cry, The Crying Game, and Kissing Jessica Stein. We will explore the significance of such categories as "biracial," "bisexual," and "transgendered" for the ways in which we understand broader notions of sexuality, race, and gender, and also for the implicit challenges they may pose to notions of identity as inborn and unchanging. Enrollment limit: 14 first-year students only.
Is seeing believing? Can you always believe your eyes? Why do hoaxes and frauds work? We'll take up questions like these by exploring the literal and metaphoric perspectives we bring to narratives and other creative work and how such work projects or plays with perspective and "truth." Our inquiry will be pursued through writing and the give-and-take of discussion as we examine prose narratives by O’Connor, Morrison, Kay, Fitzgerald and others, essays on identity and hoax, the graphic narrative Maus, The Wizard of Oz in its print and film forms, Orson Well's F for Fake, and selected works of visual art. Enrollment Limit: 14 first-year students only.
If death is not upon us now, thinks Hamlet, then it will come later, and if not later, then now. Being ready is what really counts, but what does that mean? Is there an ars moriendi, an art to dying well? Should our understanding of death shape the way we choose to live? To address these questions, we will begin by thinking through ideas and expressions of death from a variety of cultures, arts, and historical periods. Works of fiction, poetry, philosophy, music, social science, and visual art will provide perspectives and models for comparative inquiries into (among other things) the valuing of death: why are some deaths considered noble, beautiful, purposeful, or meaningful, while others are shameful, ugly, purposeless, or senseless? We will then test and work through our thoughts by engaging with community partners in Oberlin. Expanding our experience through contact with others, we will reimagine our own lives and deaths. Enrollment limit: 14 first-year students only.
Weaving together various depictions of the “City of Angels,” and drawing from an array of sources, this course will explore how differing images of Los Angeles reveal critical and unresolved questions about America’s ever-evolving demographic and ever-shifting cultural and social geography. Authors may include James Ellroy, John Fante, Anna Deavere Smith, Joan Didion, Sandra Tsing Loh, and Walter Mosley; possible films include Chinatown, Better Luck Tomorrow, Boyz in the Hood, and L.A. Confidential. Enrollment limit: 14 first-year students only.
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.
An exploration of Yeats's poetic forms through readings and discussions with Department faculty. The course is in preparation for the residency of Prof. Helen Vendler (Harvard University) who will give four public lectures and meet with students. No prerequisites. Grading CR/NE or P/NP as appropriate. Twice-weekly discussions Oct. 31-Nov. 23; public lectures Nov. 14, 15, 17 (7:30pm), and Nov. 18 (4:30pm). Enrollment Limit: 25.
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.
Focused study of five plays representing history, comedy, tragedy, and romance: Henry IV,1, Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, Macbeth, The Tempest. Contemporary critical methods and theories will be studied in connection with each play, including feminist, folkloristic/anthropological, new historicist, performance, and race criticism. Performance issues and student scenes (assuming no training) also included. Monday lectures with lecture/discussions on Wednesday and Friday. British, Pre-1700. D, EL. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment limit: 30.
Including 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. British, Pre-1700. D, EL. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment limit: 30.
This course is cancelled.
Selected works of the late-seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. British, 1700-1900. F, EL.
An introduction to British and American lyric poetry, with attention to the complex relation between innovation and tradition, music and discord, pattern and disruption, as well as public discourse and intimate awareness. Specific emphasis on the challenges and opportunities that lyric poems present to writers of critical prose. Readings from Hardy, Yeats, Frost, Stevens, Eliot, Hughes, Moore, Lowell, Plath, Ashbery, Heaney, Graham, Komunyakaa. Post-1900. P, WL. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment limit: 30.
A comparative study of poetry, fiction, and drama by three major 20th-century writers who all grew up in Ireland but were separated by their religions, social classes, and world-views. Major issues will be the tensions between literature and politics, innovation and tradition, elite arts and popular culture, and nationalism and internationalism. Working on poems, stories, and plays, students will develop fundamental techniques of close reading informed by the historical context of revolutionary Ireland. Diversity, Post-1900. WL. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment limit: 30.
This course will tackle works from early British colonial enterprises in the 17th century to the years just after the American Revolution. By critically reading diaries, sermons, etchings, legal transcripts, and novels, we will explore how race and gender not only complicated but engendered discourses on national identity, commerce and class, democracy, land and nation.American, Diversity, Pre-1700 OR 1700-1900 (not both). AL. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment limit: 30.
This course is cancelled.
Cancelled.
This course addresses two borders: the boundaries of Asian American representation, and the shifting parameters of the Asian American canon. Readings may include Maxine Hong Kingston, Frank Chin, Joy Kogawa, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, David Henry Hwang, Chang-rae Lee, Jessica Hagedorn, as well as canonical Asian American criticism, and theory addressing how stereotypes, history, and cultural and personal memories collide in the contentious relationships between gender, sexuality, and national/diasporic identity. American, Diversity, Post-1900. F, AL. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment limit: 30.
Through theoretical essays and novels, we will examine the problems of definition and evaluation that attend our interpretation of works from the "Third World." We will consider 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 enactments of resistance against dominant ideologies is effective. Identical to CMPL 265. Diversity, Post-1900. F, WL. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment limit: 30.
What kinds of theoretical models are valid for grounding literary comparisons across history, place, language, nation, culture, genre, and medium? Texts from several literary traditions will be used to answer that question and explore topics in theory, translation, East-West comparison, and literature and the other arts. Identical to CMPL 200. Diversity. WL. Prerequisites: An introductory literature course in any language. Note: For Comparative Literature majors this course must be taken by the junior year. Enrollment limit: 25.
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.
Our focus will be on The Canterbury Tales in its historical, cultural, and literary contexts. Requirements include memorization, exams, and essays. British, Pre-1700. F, EL. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment limit: 25.
An advanced course in selected British writers of the eighteenth-century, dealing with issues of the rise of the genre of the novel and its relationship to national identity and culture. Possible authors to be studied include Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, and Jane Austen. British, 1700-1900. F, EL. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment limit: 25.
A survey of British fiction written in the first half of the nineteenth 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. British, 1700-1900. F, WL. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment limit: 25.
Cancelled.
The development of poetry from 1880 to 1918. Consideration of poetry’s contribution to shifting accounts of history, identity, religion, and love. Inquiry into poetry’s nature not only as an art form, but as a form of thought (intended to change our beliefs about the world) and a form of work (intended to change the world itself). Readings from Walt Whitman through Marianne Moore. Post-1900. P, WL. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment limit: 25.
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. American, 1700-1900. F, AL. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment limit: 25.
This course explores the history, cultural contexts, and critical challenges of melodramatic narrative cinema. We'll study the genre's origins, the rise and fall of its prestige, its identification as a "feminine" form, its adaptation to different historical and cultural contexts, and its contemporary challenges to cultural analysis. American, Post-1900. F, AL. Identical to CINE 368. Prerequisite: ENGL 173/CINE 101 and a Cinema Studies Cinematic Traditions course (preferred), or see headnote above. Enrollment limit: 25.
When and why did Modernism transmogrify into Postmodernism? This course examines current theories of these two amorphous "isms" and surveys the forking paths between them. We will read works and hybrids of literature and theory and consider such topics as: (de)constructions of gender; death of the author, (inter)textuality and the play of the signifier; surrealism and the hyperreal. Authors may include Barnes, Barthes, Foucault, Vattimo, Lyotard, Nancy, Derrida, Borges, Baudrillard. Diversity, Post-1900. F, WL. Identical to CMPL 374. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment limit: 25.
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. American, Post-1900. AL. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment limit: 25.
This class will explore questions of gender and sexuality in the context of Asian American literature. The key issues driving the course will be: how do Asian American writers imagine and represent gender and sexuality? What are the specific pressures faced by writers of Asian descent when representing gender and sexuality, and how do those pressures shape creative production? Authors may include Maxine Hong Kingston, Frank Chin, Hisaye Yamamoto, R. Zamora Linmark, and Kimiko Hahn. American, Diversity, Post-1900. F, AL. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment limit: 25.
This course will investigate how racial masquerades codify and yet destabilize social fantasies and identities in literature and film. Texts may include works by Toni Morrison and David Wong Louie, various yellowface, blackface films, animation, performance art, and theatrical performances, as well as criticism and theory that consider aesthetic and political implications of racial "passing," cultural appropriation, and the problematics of identity politics. American, Diversity, Post-1900. F, AL. Prerequisite: 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. American, Post-1900. F, WL/AL. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment limit: 25.
It seems perverse to examine Coetzee's and Rushdie's work through the prism of belief, given their deconstructive procedures, which systematically undermine if not belief altogether, then the source of belief as so ideologically determined as to be suspect. It seems even more perverse to read these two alongside Greene, who converted to Catholicism at a young age. Yet, this course will do precisely that -- examine belief by (re)marking on those utopian moments that while not transcending doubt are also not amenable to categorical deconstruction in their work. Diversity, Post-1900. F, WL. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment limit: 25.
The writing of poetry. Intensive discussion of student work, accompanied by assigned reading. Admission based on a completed application form and a writing sample of six to eight poems (due in the Creative Writing Program office by Friday, 6/11/04). Identical to CRWR 310. P. Prerequisite: CRWR 201. Consent of instructor required. Enrollment limit: 12.
The writing of short fiction. Admission based on a completed application form and a writing sample of at least 12 pages of fiction, made up of at least 2 separate pieces (due in the Creative Writing Program office by Friday, 6/11/04). Identical to CRWR 320. F. Prerequisite: CRWR 201. Consent of instructor required. Enrollment limit: 12.
A course in which students will tutor at the Writing Center or assist one of the writing-intensive courses offered in various disciplines while studying composition theory and pedagogy. In the process of helping to educate others, students work toward a fuller understanding of their own educational experiences, particularly in writing. Juniors or seniors who write well, regardless of major, are encouraged to apply. Identical to RHET 481. Note: Students enrolling in ENGL 399 or RHET 481 should also enroll in RHET 483, Tutoring Lab. Consent of instructor required. Enrollment Limit: 12.
SENIOR
TUTORIALS, SEMINARS, AND HONORS PROJECTS
Senior Tutorials and Senior Seminars are designed primarily for English
majors, and fulfill the 400-level requirement for the English major. Rising
senior English majors should apply for tutorials and seminars through a common
application available at the department office, not through individual instructors.
Some places in seminars may be available for other qualified students after
all English majors have been accommodated, by application to the department.
Prerequisite: Admission based on a completed application form (available at the department office).
For English majors in either semester of their final year only, involving close
work in a small group on an individual project, leading to a substantial paper.
Consent of instructor required.
About Senior Tutorial Fall 2005.
Application for Senior Tutorial Fall 2005.
The rich body of Arthurian fiction has been providing diverse and powerful myths of British identity since shortly after the Norman Conquest. We will study the legend's medieval developments in both British and Continental contexts, attending particularly to its evolving narratives of gender, rank, and nationality. We will also trace some of the myth’s post-medieval resurfacings in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Requirements include a long final paper. British, Pre-1700. F, EL. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Consent of instructor required. Enrollment limit: 12.
Studying four plays representing history, tragedy, comedy, and late romance, and featuring any plays performed locally, the seminar examines how current feminist criticism and theory considers the intersections of gender with histories of race and empire. Student scene presentations and critical papers serve as the basis for group and independent advanced work. Likely plays: Merchant of Venice, Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, The Tempest. British, Diversity, Pre-1700. D, EL. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Consent of instructor required. Enrollment limit: 12.
This course will explore the ways history and our relation to it is defined and represented in film, in short, how history is imagined. The emphasis will be primarily, but not exclusively, on American cinema. We will be equally concerned with what films do with history and what focusing on subject of history reveals about film as art. Identical to CINE 433. American, Post-1900. F, AL. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Consent of instructor required. Enrollment limit: 12.
Intensive year-long work on a topic developed in consultation with a member of the Department, culminating in a substantial paper and a defense of that paper. Prerequisite: Senior major standing and invitation of the Department. Consent of instructor required.
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