Fall 2008

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.

FIRST-YEAR SEMINARS

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.

FYSP 111-01/-02 Words That Matter, 4 hours / 4HU, WRi

-01 (7997): MWF 10:00-10:50, J. Bryan
-02 (7998): MWF 11:00-11:50, J. Bryan
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?  What is literary language "for"?  Readings will be mainly in lyric poetry, but will also include some essays and novels. Enrollment limit: 14 first-year students only.

FYSP 128 (8002) Media and Memory, 4 hours / 4HU,WRi

TuTh 9:35-10:50, J. Pence
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.

FYSP 134-01 & -02 Crossing Borders: The Mysteries of Identity, 4 hours / 4HU,WRi

-01 (6591): MWF 11:00-11:50, D. Walker
-02 (8023): MWF 1:30-2:20, D. Walker
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.

FYSP 157-01 (8011) The Sense of Time and Place, 4 hours / 4HU, WRi

MWF 10:00-10:50 + Sun 1:00-4:00 pm, W.P. Day
We often treat time and place as background, focusing on characters and actions rather than their context. In this course we will read and view works that put time and place in the foreground to explore the relationship between our sense of self to time and place. We will also explore how artists characterize the relation between time and place. A second concern in this course is the nature of reading and viewing. Enrollment limit: 14 first-year students only.

FYSP 160-01/-02 Satire and the Uses of Laughter, 4 hours / 4HU, WRi

-01 (8052): TuTh 11:00-12:15, L. Baudot
-02 (8053): TuTh 3:00-4:15, L. Baudot
Why do we laugh?  Are some things just plain funny?  Does someone always have to be the butt of the joke?  Is laughter an effective means of inspiring self-awareness and bringing about change?  In this course we will explore various philosophies of laughter in order to think about its relationship to satire.  Our investigation of satire will focus on the question of how satire works both negatively, as a critique of social ills, and positively, to supply, however indirectly, solutions to the problems it delights in exposing.  We will work with novels, essays, philosophical writings, film, and television to explore these issues. Enrollment limit: 14 first-year students only.

INTRODUCTORY COURSES TO THE STUDY OF ENGLISH

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 ELECTIVE Courses

Courses in this category do not serve the "Gateway" function for the English major; they do, however, introduce students to literary or linguistic study, and prepare them for advanced work in English.

250-01 Writing America: Comparative Immigrant Narratives, 4 hours / 4HU, CD, WR

MWF 2:30-3:20, J. Pas
Who are you, where are you from, and how did you get here? This course compares 20th- and 21st-century stories of uprooting, passage, and arrival to America. Emphasis will be placed on the ways immigrants from around the world negotiate race, gender, sexuality, language, and cultural history as they construct images of themselves and the U.S. Attention will be given to illegal immigration, citizenship, and the criminalization of immigrants. Authors may include Leo Rosten, Gish Jen, Eva Hoffman, Bharati Mukherjee, and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. Identical to CMPL 250. Enrollment limit: 30.

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. Two Gateway courses are required for the English major.

204-01/-02 Issues in Shakespeare , 4 hours / 4HU,WR

-01 (8071): MWF 10:00-10:50, M. Booth
-02 (8072): MWF 1:30-2:20, M. Booth
Focused study of  Shakespeare plays with attention to contemporary critical methods and theories.  British, Pre-1700.  Enrollment limit: 30.

 

220-01 (7857) Romantic Literature, 4 hours / 4HU,WR

TuTh 1:30-2:45, J. Olmsted
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. Painters to be considered will include Girtin, Constable, Turner. We will investigate the Prince Regent's attempts, working with John Nash and others, to transform London into an imperial city. Nature of Text. British, 1700-1900. Enrollment limit: 30.

238-01 (7298) Contemporary American Fiction, 4 hours / 4HU, WR

TuTh 11:00-12:15, J. Pence
This course will focus on recently published American novels. We will attend to questions of style, authorship and interpretation against the backdrop of contemporary cultural and political history. Likely authors to include Dorothy Allison, Paul Auster, Don DeLillo, Louise Erdrich, Toni Morrison, E. L. Doctorow, Charles Johnson, Jayne Anne Phillips, Richard Powers, Sherman Alexie, Michael Chabon. Nature of Interpretation. American, Post-1900.  Enrollment limit: 30.

256-01 (7862) American Literary Culture in the 19th Century, 4 hours / 4HU,WR

TuTh 9:35-10:50, T. Jaudon
This course will explore the emergence of literary culture in American in the 19th century.  We'll examine the interaction of the American literary scene with its broader social and cultural context and its interaction with foreign literatures.  Writers we consider may include  Poe, Emerson, Stowe, Melville, Whitman, Dickinson, Hawthorne, Douglass, James, Twain, Jewett, Howells, Chopin, and Chesnutt. We'll approach the readings in the contexts of the emergence and development of American literary culture while recognizing our positions as 21st-century readers. Emphasis will be given to reading historically and interpretively. Nature of Interpretation. American, 1700-1900. Enrollment Limit: 30.

275-01 (6793)/CMPL 200-01 (4382) Introduction to Comparative Literature, 4 hours / 4HU, WR

MWF 10:00-10:50, P. O'Connor
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 (4382). Note: Comparative Literature majors should take this course by the junior year. Diversity. Enrollment limit: 25.

282-01/-02 Shifting Scenes: Drama Survey, 4 hours / 4HU,WR

-01 (8069): MWF 9:00-9:50, P. Mustamaki
-02 (8070): MWF 2:30-3:20, P. Mustamaki
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. Nature of Text. Diversity. 1700-1900 OR Post-1900 (not both). Enrollment limit: 30.

ADVANCED COURSES

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.

301-01 (7863) Chaucer, 4 hours / 4HU, WR

TuTh 3:00-4:15, J. Bryan
We will study Chaucer’s great narrative anthology, The Canterbury Tales, in Middle English.  No previous experience with the language is required.  Papers and exams.  British, Pre-1700.

323-01 (7447) Six Poets: 1855-1955, 4 hours / 4HU, WR

MWF 1:30-2:20, D. Harrison
An inquiry into the affinities and tensions between Romanticism, Late Romanticism, and Modernism. What constitutes the new? What is our relationship to tradition? Does art bind us to or divide us from the objects of our passion, love, and belief? Whitman, Yeats, Frost, Eliot, Moore, Stevens. American OR British (not both), 1700-1900 OR Post-1900 (not both). Enrollment limit: 25.

353-01 (7859) American Literature, 1825-65: "To write like an American," 4 hours / 4HU, WR

TuTh 1:30-2:45, T. Jaudon
Melville's phrase captures a major concern of American writers during the antebellum period: the creation of a distinctly American literature. Directly or indirectly, many writers of the era engaged with "writing like an American" -- Melville, Emerson, Whitman, Douglass, Jacobs among them -- while a few, notably Poe, repudiated the very idea. We'll read works by a variety of writers as we consider what "writing like an American" entailed during this formative era in American culture and history. American, 1700-1900. Enrollment limit: 25.

370-01 (7822) Itineraries of Postmodernism, 4 hours / 4HU, CD, WR

MWF 3:30-4:20, J. Deppman P. O'Connor
This course explores the roots of postmodernism in European literature and philosophy. Theorists include Derrida on poststructuralism, Nancy on myth, Barthes and Foucault on authorial agency, Vattimo on the transparent society, and Spivak on the subaltern. Literary texts have been chosen for their importance in the modernist-postmodernist trajectory, and their complex responsiveness, both formal and thematic, to defining issues of postmodernism. Authors may include Kafka, Duras, O'Brien, Bataille. Diversity, Post-1900. Identical to CMPL 370 (7821). Prerequisite: A literature course in any language. Enrollment limit: 25.

372-01 (3681) Contemporary Literary Theory: Post-Modernity and Imagination, 4 hours / 4HU, WR

MWF 11:00-11:50, W. P. Day
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. Identical to CMPL 372 (7823). American, Post-1900.Enrollment limit: 25.

378-01 (7864) Contemporary British and Irish Drama, 4 hours / 4HU, WR

TuTh 3:00-4:15, D. Walker
This course focuses on major playwrights of England and Ireland from post-World War II to the present. Authors may include Samuel Beckett, John Osborne, Edward Bond, Tom Stoppard, Harold Pinter, Caryl Churchill, Brian Friel, Alan Bennett, Martin McDonagh, Mark Ravenhill, and Sarah Kane. Students will be expected to attend productions and participate in scene performances. British, Post-1900. Enrollment limit: 25.

381-01 (7827) European Modernism and the World, 4 hours / 4HU, WR

MWF 1:30-2:20, J. Deppman This course is cancelled.
Between 1880 and 1930, Europe was convulsed by wars, technological advances, and social transformations of all kinds. Writers and artists responded by creating revolutionary new forms, techniques, and movements like Cubism, Futurism, Dadaism, and Surrealism. Strains of Modernism then carried philosophical, political, and aesthetic models across the 20th-century world. We will study why and how non-European authors received, rejected, and/or recombined central aspects of European Modernism. Identical to CMPL 381. (7826). Diversity, Post-1900.  Enrollment Limit: 25.

388-01 (7865) Selected Authors: Salman Rushdie, 4 hours / 4HU, CD, WR

TuTh 9:35-10:50, A. Needham
This course will focus on the fictional and non-fictional oeuvre of one of the most prominent Anglophone writers of our time -- Salman Rushdie. Class discussions will seek to contextualize (and be contextualized by) a host of theoretical/cultural concepts deriving from postcolonial studies -- like hybridity, mongrelization, migration, cosmopolitanism, national allegory -- with which Rushdie’s work is associated or seen as exemplifying in particularly accurate and cogent ways. The course will be reading-intensive and require significant student engagement. British, Diversity, Post-1900.  Enrollment Limit: 25.

390-01 (7860) Selected Authors: William Faulkner, 4 hours / 4HU, WR

TuTh 3:00-4:15, J. Olmsted
An intensive study of major works by William Faulkner (1897-1962). Readings include Flags in the Dust, The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Light in August, The Unvanquished and Absalom, Absalom!, and a selection of poetry, short stories, essays, and speeches. American, Post-1900. Enrollment limit: 25.

395-01 (1455) /CRWR 310 (1036) Poetry Workshop, 4 hours / 4HU, WR

Tu 7:00-10:00 pm, K. Ali
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. Identical to CRWR 310 (1036). Prerequisite: CRWR 201. Consent of instructor required. Enrollment limit: 12.

396-01 (7278) /CRWR 340 (7264) Nonfiction Workshop, 4 hours / 4HU, WR

W 7:00-10:00 pm, S. Watanabe
The writing of personal narratives which employ the techniques of both the traditional essay and fiction, with an emphasis on nonfiction as a literary art form.  Extensive reading in a variety of nonfiction genres. Admission based on a completed application and writing sample.  Recommended preparation: CRWR 201. Identical to CRWR 340 (7264). Consent of instructor required. Enrollment limit: 12.

397-01 (1456) /CRWR 320 (1037) Fiction Workshop, 4 hours / 4HU, WR

W 7:00-10:00 pm, C. Johnson
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 two separate pieces. Identical to CRWR 320 (1037). Prerequisite: CRWR 201. Consent of instructor required. Enrollment limit: 12.

399-01 (1458) /RHET 401 (7393) Teaching and Tutoring Writing Across the Disciplines, 3 hours / 3HU, WRi

TuTh 3:00-4:15, L. Podis
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. Enrollment Limit: 12. Prior journalism instruction (including RHET 106) is not necessary for this course. Juniors or seniors who write well, regardless of major, are encouraged to apply. Identical to RHET 401 (7393). Consent of instructor required. Note: Students enrolling in RHET 401 or ENGL 399 should also enroll in RHET 402, Tutoring Lab.

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.

Honors in English also fulfills the 400-level requirement for the English major; it is only open to students who have been admitted through the application process.

Prerequisite: Admission based on a completed application form (available at the department office). Letter of explanation for 2008-09 senior tutorials, seminars, and Honors.

400-01/-02 Senior Tutorial, 2-4 hours / 2-4HU, WR

-01 (6803): MWF 9:00-9:50, D. Harrison
-02 (5455): Tu 7:00-9:30 pm, A. Needham
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. Enrollment Limit: 9.
Request 2008-09 senior tutorial/seminar application form.

437-01 (7861) Seminar: Ars Poetica: Poetry, Art, Thought, 2-4 hours / 2-4HU, WR

TuTh 9:35-10:50, D. Harrison
What are poems for?  What good do they serve?  How do poets describe, explain, or justify their art?  These questions will guide us in a broad inquiry into poetry and its place among the other arts.  Readings will include poets, critics, and poet-critics: Horace, Shakespeare, Pope, Wordsworth, Dickinson, Stevens, Ashbery, Graham, Plato, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Kristeva, Vendler, Bloom, Grossman, Stewart. 1700-1900 OR Post-1900 (not both). Consent of instructor required.  Enrollment Limit: 12.
Request 2008-09 senior tutorial/seminar application form

450-01 (5808) Honors Project, 2-4 hours / 2-4HU, WR

TuTh 1:30-2:45, W.P. Day
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 acceptance by the Department. Consent of instructor required.
Request 2008-09 Honors application form.