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The Department offers courses in English Composition in close cooperation with the Expository Writing Program. These courses do not count towards an English major.
A course for first- or second-year students desiring instruction in college writing. Emphasis is on writing itself (i.e., invention, arrangement, style, drafting, and revising) rather than literature or topical issues. Some sections are taught tutorially, and some combine group work with individual conferences. Recommended for students who have passed ExWr 100 or who have an SAT I-V score above 580 (or an SAT-V score above 500). Notes: CR/NE grading. Identical to EXWR 101. Enrollment Limit: 15.
This course serves as an introduction to academic discourse&emdash;the ways of reading, writing and thinking valued in colleges and universities. We will focus our discussion of academic life around the idea of history. History is an academic discipline, of course, and we will discuss the "problem" of how to represent and understand the past through writing. In addition to being a way of writing about the past, history is present in our writing, as every writer is directly or indirectly influenced by others. Thus we will also discuss the relations between a writer and the past, including the past represented by other books, traditions and conventions of writing. We will read histories in essays from the textbook Ways of Reading and in the Oberlin Archives, and we will "see" history by viewing films and visiting the Allen Memorial Art Museum. The central histories in the course, though, we be the ones we make ourselves through a series of personal, archival, collaborative and experimental writing projects.
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.
In this interdisciplinary course we'll explore the theory and practice of metaphorical expression, primarily in poetry and fiction but also in modern art, surrealism, film, New Testament parables, Eastern mysticism, medicine, and American politics. Texts by Shakespeare, Donne, Dickinson, Eliot, Fitzgerald, Marquez, Nietzsche, Sontag etc. Enrollment Limit: 16.
This introduction to college-level reading, writing, and analysis will investigate various genres of the life story. What makes an individual life worth writing about? Are life stories unique or generic? In what ways are life stories conveyed in verse different from those conveyed in prose? What distinguishes biography from autobiography, and why does it matter? Enrollment Limit: 16.
This course will analyze the pedagogies through which (British) Colonialism (re)made colonial subject and subjectivities. It will simultaneously examine the responses, oppositional and otherwise, these called forth. It will focus especially on the scenes of instruction in a variety of anglophone texts from the so-called third world, but also on a couple of canonical texts of empire. Some of these texts include: Ama Ata Aidoo's No Sweetness Here, Salman Rushdie's Shame, Frantz Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks, Earl Lovelace's Wine of Astonishment, Tsi Tsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions and Tayeb Salib's Season of Migration to the North. Enrollment Limit: 16.
This course will examine what it means to be a man, a woman, or something else entirely, through a series of readings (both theoretical and literary) and films. The lab section for the course is to allow us time to watch films outside of class&endash;&endash;we will NOT meet weekly during the lab time, more like every two or three weeks. We will be addressing questions such as: what is the relationship between sex and gender? What is the relationship between gender and sexuality? How does one know what (if any) gender one belongs to? How many genders are there? Is gender a role (that one plays) or an identity (that one is)? Can one change gender (or sex)? This course open to first-year students only, and is meant to be an introduction to these topics. The class will involve a significant amount of written work (both individually and in groups). Enrollment Limit: 16.
In this course we will explore the narrative mode of memoir as both a representation of self and culture. Part of how we will do this will be through text selection: all the books on this reading list are or have been bestsellers and/or have been recognized as having some outstanding merit. Through readings, writings, class discussion and group presentations we will explore several different kinds of memoirs, noting the way their authors make use of popular fictional forms such as detective ficiton, the adventure story and the bildungsroman (the novel of initiation). Throughout the semester, we will ask ourselves how we make sense of our readings. For instance, how do we categorize our reading experiences and how does such categorization inform the reading process. When we read a "memoir," for instance, what kinds or rights and limitations does this active participation in this genre grant a text? Using the autobiographical moment to engage these and other issues, this course will focus on works by James Ellroy, Kevin McBride, Mary Karr, Susanna Kaysen, Patty Hearst, Eva Hoffman and Jon Krakauer. Other questions we will consider are: How are these stories emblems of the time, place and persons they describe? How do they reflect the circumstances of their publication? What makes these stories suitable for publication? What bearing does being a "New York Times Bestseller" have on how we interpret its value? Are they designed to be "bestsellers"? What about other aspects of the author's life and context? How do they contribute to the book's appeal? Enrollment Limit: 16.
In this class we'll be studying the interactions of two kinds of art -- poetry and visual art -- in periods that happen to be rich in their representation of landscape. We'll divide our semester about equally into considerations of our three traditions: the Chinese (Tang Dynasty poetry and its subsequent influence on Chinese landscape painting); the outburst of creativity associated with the Romantic movement, especially in England; and contemporary American activities associated with place and the representation of nature through landscape as demonstrated in certain poets and in the work of photographers, painters, and environmental artists. The class will be run along the lines of a seminar, with students sharing responsibilities of researching and reporting to the group on various topics. Written work will include formal papers as well as exercises aimed at increasing awareness of artistic practice, i.e. attempts at landscape poems and visual representations in photographs and drawings. No previous expertise at any of these activities will be presumed, though it will be welcomed. Enrollment Limit: 16.
Both 176-01 and 176-02 have been cancelled.
This course focuses on various uses of one literary genre thought to be especially rule-bound--the detective story--in the hands of white and black male Americans. We will look at select samples of classic, hard-boiled, and African-American short stories and novels, drawing out shifts in values and world view, sensibility, style, setting, the figure of the detective, and entertainment value/social critique, among other things. Readings probably will be Poe's "The Murders in the rue Morgue" and "The Purloined Letter," (possibly, though not American) Doyle's "Silver Blaze," Harte's "the Stolen Cigar Case," Hammett's Red Harvest, Chandler's The Big Sleep (and film, if time), Fisher's The Conjure Man Dies, Himes' Blind Man With a Pistol, Reed's Mumbo Jumbo, and (possibly) Moseley's Devil in a Blue Dress (and film, if time). Classes will be structured by discussion of readings and weekly workshops on student writing; students will be responsible for writing three 1000-word essays and keeping a reading journal they are willing to discuss with peers as well as turn in to the instructor. Enrollment Limit: 16.
In this course we will discuss how we characterize the many meanings of the term "alien." Whether it be as a monster from a science fiction movie, or an immigrant to America, or a new college student, our ideas about the strange and the foreign are also a reflection of our own self identity. How does our understanding and idea of what is alien affect our own identity as an individual, community, and nation? We will address these questions as we study a variety of literary and cultural works that span from Edgar Allan Poe to Joy Kogawa's Obasan to Art Spiegelman's Maus. Students will be expected to participate in class discussion, write essays and short assignments, and take a final exam. Enrollment Limit: 16.
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 survey writings by women from the twelfth through the early fifteenth centuries. Despite lower literacy rates among women than among men, there were many influential women writers during the Middle Ages; and in this class we will read writings in a number of different forms including mystical vision, letter, narrative poetry, lyric poetry, and political treatise. Along the way, we will also look at the religion, art, politics, history, and music of the Middle Ages in order to understand the contributions these women writers made to their cultures. This course focuses primarily on western Europe, but will also look briefly at women writers in other medieval cultures. This course is open to students without prior background in medieval literature and society, and all texts will be read in translation. Prerequisites: see headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 35.
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, how notions of gender, sexuality, color, and race can be analogously constructed as performative acts, and 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 prep paper of 2 pages for each play studied, a midterm paper of 6-8 pages, and a final project-- either a paper of 10-12 pages or a final scene group (a combination of scenes). Prerequisites: see headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 35.
This course will focus on just one of Shakespeare's plays, certainly the most famous -- Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. The purpose is to get to know the play from a number of angles, and in doing so, to get to know about the processes of interpreting a complex text.
The play, like any text, comes alive only in interpretation, so we will be studying the relationship between the script (the written version of the play) and a number of interpretations from the centuries of its existence: critical essays; performances of the play as reported in words, illustrated in paintings and engravings, or recorded on film or video; adaptations of the play like Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead; even offshoots as far out as Jack Benny's comic masterpiece, To Be or not To Be. The relationship between the text of Hamlet usually found in today's editions, and other texts such as the "bad quarto" will be part of the way in which we explore the premise that this text's meaning cannot be reduced to any single version.
Students will be involved in class discussion, considerable writing, and creative work such as scene performances and other responses to the play. Prerequisite: see headnote above. Enrollment limit: 35.
This course will study several of the nondramatic poets of the period from 1580 to 1660 excluding Milton, with special focus on Sir Philip Sidney, William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, John Donne, George Herbert, Henry Vaughan, and Andrew Marvell. We will look at the poems as expressions of the distinctive poetic visions of the seven writers, but also as part of the ongoing dialectic of religious, social, and political forces in their age, and we will especially focus on love, both secular and sacred, as a consuming and much-contested topic. Poems from this period have often been examples for New Critical readings that understand the poem as a self-contained artifact, but later readings by New Historicists, feminists, and others have offered a very different view of them.
Each student will be asked to keep a reading journal to be turned in twice during the semester and to write two analytical papers of about 7-10 pages each. The texts will be the two Norton Editions, Ben Jonson and the Cavalier Poets and George Herbert and the Seventeenth-Century Religious Poets as well as individual volumes for Sidney, Shakespeare, and Donne. Prerequisites: see headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 35.
This course has been cancelled.
In this course we'll use poetry-writing to sharpen your critical insight and a close analytical reading of collections by Yeats, Plath, and Merwin to develop and extend your own poetic skills. Additional readings on poetic theory and the creative process. Written work will be two critical essays and a portfolio of poems. (No previous poetry-writing experience necessary.) Prerequisites: see headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 35.
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, Denis Johnson, Sandra Cisneros. Expect occasional critical readings, frequent short writing assignments, a presentation, and three critical essays of varying length. Prerequisites: see headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 35.
Tension and change marked the nation's racial and ethnic composition, class formations, gender arrangements, and international status and character in the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth. Not surprisingly U. S. literary culture was not merely heterogeneous, but addressed or reflected on these issues from diverse and often conflicting perspectives. Moreover, as the nation expanded its borders to the West and the Southwest, writers who belonged to groups and races formerly independent of the U.S. represented themselves and the U.S. in very different terms that did many of the nation's most prominent writers--even writers critical of U.S. imperialism such as Mark Twai n. We'll look closely at selected writing from this era in the contexts of its creation, thinking about how it reflected and in many cases sought to affect the nation in which it emerged or into which its authors were being submerged. Reading will include narratives, and essays by Charles Chesnutt and Pauline Hopkins, William Dean Howells, Herman Melville, Sarah Orne Jewett and Mark Twain, .Zitkala Sa and Sarah Winnemuccca, Maria Ruiz de Burton, and several others. Prerequisites: see headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 35.
The American novel came of age during the period 1875-1929. We will study works published between these years in order to glean a sense of the emerging standards of the genre. In the process, we will also consider ways in which the forms of narration that originated with these novels mirror and/or distort the national scene. To what extent, we will ask ourselves, can we examine the forms that appear in these novels as comments on the historical context out of which they emerge? How do technological advances, for instance, impact not only the stories that are told but also the way that they are told? Can we treat these texts as history or as historical? What's the difference? Course readings will be drawn from canonical authors that have defined the "tradition" including Sherwood Anderson, Henry James, Mark Twain, and Edith Wharton, as well as those who have fallen outside of that "tradition," such as Abraham Cahan, Willa Cather, James Weldon Johnson, Nella Larsen and Gertrude Stein. Prerequisites: see headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 35.
A survey of black American literature from its inception in the 18th century to the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920's. Phillis Wheatley, Jupiter Hammon, David Walker, Maria Stewart, and others up to DuBois and Anna Julia Cooper, including related slave songs, sermons, spirituals, blues, slave narratives and other folk expressions. Preference for declared majors and department credit students. Identical to AAST 141. 10 places consent of instructor. Enrollment limit: 35.
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. Prerequisites: see headnote above. Identical to CMPL 265. Enrollment Limit: 35.
This course will study English and Continental drama from the Greeks to the present with the aim of promoting analysis and appreciation of the major forms of drama within the context of the time and place in which a particular play was written and performed, as well as its relevance for us today. Although this course should by no means be confused with a theatre history course, we will be covering the plays in chronological order so that we may explore the influence on the texts of the culture and theatrical conventions of the time and thereby facilitate an understanding of the common elements of all dramatic works, as well as those elements which vary and have changed from one age to another. We will be reading works of Sophocles, the medieval dramatists, Shakespeare, the Restoration, Chekhov, Beckett, Churchill, and others.
Classes will be conducted mainly through discussion supplemented by lectures. Written work will include three papers: two 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. Prerequisites: see headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 35.
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.
Studying just five of Shakespeare's tragedies -- Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra -- will allow us to spend two to three weeks on each play. We'll have time to explore each text, to historicize its circumstances of composition and performance, and to trace its history of performance and interpetation. The class will often proceed by reading aloud and discussing the texts in question, scene by scene, with regular attention to a variety of issues and commentaries. Students will be expected to keep a journal of their readings and reactions, to write a short paper on each of the five plays, and to develop a final project which may include performance as well as analysis. Prerequisites: see headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 25.
In this course I hope to explore how domestic violence forms a central dramatic element in a variety of plays during the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods. We will study seven plays, including two Shakespeare plays. The works will be: Taming of the Shrew, A Women Killed with Kindness, Arden of Feversham,The Changeling, The Duchess of Malfi, Othello, and Tis Pity She's a Whore. Additional readings will include social and family history, literary criticism, contemporary theory regarding violence and performance.
The goal of the course will be to understand more about relationships between contemporary social and family history and the artificial reality of the stage plays. We will study connections between representations, stylizations, and performances of violence and a culture of violence, inquiring into the pleasures of theatrical violence, whether tragic or comic. Issues will include how to conceptualize and define violence, violence in the home and state, and relationships between violence and other dynamics s of family power struggles.
Assignments will include weekly short prep papers addressing issues raised in the readings; the performance of a scene from one of the plays; a scene journal of 8-10 pages; a midterm essay of 8 pages; a final paper of 10 pages or a final scene. Prerequisites: see headnote above. Identical to WOST 307. Enrollment Limit: 25.
Contemporary innovations in the nature, capacity and distribution of technology have presented opportunities and challenges to our culture. Often, these changes are seen as promising either a starry futuristic dream (of interactivity, globalization and progress) or a dystopian nightmare (of regulation, surveillance and privatization). This course seeks to move beyond such polarized judgments by looking closely at selected works by writers, theorists and other artists who exploit, exemplify or examine important dimensions of technology. In order to begin to address the question of technology's impact on individual and social experience, we will look at formal and thematic representations of technology in various cultural objects--film, literature, visual art, electronic resources. Along with these readings, we will read critical and theoretical works on technology and its relation to aesthetic and social experience. Frequent short writing assignments, a presentation, a medium-length and longer critical essay will be required. Prerequisites: see headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 25.
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. Prerequisites: see headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 25.
Through a variety of recent theoretical formulations about historiography, nationalism, and gender, this course will examine several narratives of nation from the so-called Third World. Addressing both "official" and "alternative" nationalisms, "dominant" and "subaltern" historiographies, and the fundamental significance of gender to narratives of nation, this course will also focus on the rhetorical strategies through which certain views of nationalism, gender, and history acquire persuasive force. Prerequisites: see headnote above. Identical to CMPL 361. Idential to WOST 356. Enrollment Limit: 25.
This course concerns twentieth-century African-American fictional treatments of several historical and mythical "texts." It is structured in two units--the first on the scene of American slavery and the second on exploration of some uses of biblical and African myth--and will focus on, among other things, the ways in which the selected authors invite readers to access and broaden their historical sense and revise notions of heroism, community, freedom, and the sacred as they throw into relief the values, perceptions, and behaviors they want the audience to acknowledge. We will probably read Bontemps' Black Thunder, Butler's Kindred, Gaines' The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittmen, Bradley's The Chaneysville Incident, Chesnutt's The Conjure Woman and Other Tales, Hurston's Moses, Man of the Mountain, Morrison's Song of Solomon, and Wideman's Damballah. Secondary readings may be drawn from among works by Houston Baker, Walter Benjamin, Northrup Frye, Melville Herskovits, Zora Neale Hurston, Jahnheinz Jahn, Georg Lukacs, Albert Raboteau, John Roberts, Wole Soyinka, Sterling Stuckey, and Robert Farris Thompson. Classes will include both informal lecture and student-led discussion. Evaluation will be based on class participation and two medium-length (seven to eight-page) papers. Prerequisites: see headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 25.
This is a two-part course that studies the changing (and persisting) attitudes toward the wilderness reflected in literary texts from various times and places. The first half is devoted to the European tradition, from the Mesopotamian epic Gilgamesh, through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, to the nature poetry of the Romantic movement. The second half explores the American tradition that includes such writers as Thoreau, Faulkner, John Muir, Theodore Roethke, Annie Dillard, and Gary Snyder.
This class will combine some lecture with discussion. Since it is interdisplinary in nature, students should be aware that it moves around from familiar practices of literary analysis to philosphical issues and to questions of personal belief. I welcome English majors, Environmental Studies majors, and creative writers. Students will normally write one analytical paper and one of a more creative nature, e.g. a personal essay, 8-10 pages each. Prerequisites: see headnote above. Identical to ENVS 378. 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 two 8-10 page papers; students will also be expected to participate regularly in discussions. Prerequisites: 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 6-8 poems (due in the Program Office by Friday, January 15, 1999). Prerequisites: CRWR 201 (formerly 101). Consent: Consent of instructor required. Enrollment Limit: 12. Identical to CRWR 310.
This course meets twice weekly as a workshop, to discuss student work and essays by modern and contemporary writers. Students will have the opportunity to write on a variety of topics (e.g., travel, film, politics, popular culture), and to explore a range of rhetorical approaches with particular emphasis on the ways in which the personal essay uses the techniques of fiction. Admission based on a completed application form and writing sample (due in Program office by Friday, January 15, 1999). Consent: Consent of instructor required. Enrollment Limit: 12. Identical to CRWR 340.
The writing of fiction. Admission based on a completed application form and a writing sample at least 12 pages of fiction, made up of at least 2 separate pieces (due in Program office by Friday, January 15, 1999). Prerequisites: CRWR 201 (formerly 101). Consent: Consent of instructor required. Enrollment Limit: 12. Identical to CRWR 320.
A course for peer tutors who will be working for the Expository Writing Program. Students will tutor at the writing desk in the library or will be assistants for one of the writing-intensive courses offered in various disciplines. Juniors and seniors who write well are encouraged to apply (King 139), regardless of major. Consent: Consent of instructor required. Enrollment Limit: 12. Identical to EXWR 481.
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 2 courses at the 300 level.
What authorizes literary representation to stand in for social reality and moral truth? Beginning with the eighteenth-century "cult of feeling," this course will investigate the theoretical and cultural assumptions that have enabled, and continue to enable, literature to function as political activism. Enrollment Limit: 15.
The course will examine two kinds of issues. First, we will look at ways in which Shakespeare's plays express philosophical concerns, taking as particular examples topics from the classical and later traditions of stoicism, skepticism, and cynicism. We will consider such issues has how Shakespeare's plays participate in the social and political discourses of their own historical period. Second, we will consider ethical and epistemological issues of interpreting the plays. What does it mean to classify Shakespeare as a dead white European male? In what senses can a play make an assertion? What constraints do and should operate on the interpretation of a play? Do plays have determinable cognitive, ethical, and political effects? What responsibilities are there for a reader, performer, critic?
The first part of the seminar will explore these topics, drawing on The Taming of the Shrew, As You Like It, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, and Timon of Athens. In the second part students will pursue individual topics of their choice, reporting on them to the class and then writing a paper of about 15-20 pages, of which a first draft will be due May 3 and a final draft by the end of Reading Period.
The text will be any recent annotated complete Shakespeare. It would be desirable to have read the five Shakespeare plays above by the first class. Priority will be given first to senior English majors and then to junior majors. Some previous knowledge of Shakespeare or philosophy, especially having taken a course or more in either area, will be an advantage for admission.
Consent: Consent of instructor required. Students wishing to enroll should fill out an application form available on the instructor's door (Rice 106) by Friday, November 6, 1998. Names of selected students will be posted there Monday, November 9. Enrollment limit: 15.
Edith Wharton and Willa Cather are two of the most prominent women writers of the early twentieth century in the American canon. This seminar will explore the tensions between these two writers--one whose reputation was built on her fictional representations of New York drawing rooms and the other who is best known for her lyrical depiction of the Nebraska divide. Works will include The Age of Innocence, Custom of the Country, The Mother's Recompence and Hudson River Bracketed by Wharton and Cather's O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, My Anotnia and A Lost Lady. Identical to WOST 422. Consent: Consent of instructor required. Applications may be picked up outside Ms. Rohrbach's office (Rice 12) and are due Friday, November 6, 1998. 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: 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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