Fall 2007
| Courses for Non-Majors |
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.
We all participate in dialogues almost every day of our lives, but how often do we stop and think about how this basic form of communication really works? And what happens when it doesn’t work? This seminar will be an interdisciplinary analysis of dialogues in drama, poetry, fiction, films, philosophy, religion, interviews, debates, and conversations -- including our own class discussions. Readings will include scenes by Sophocles, Shakespeare, Chekov, Beckett, and Pinter; selections from fiction by Austen, Dickens, Lawrence, Hemingway, and Roth; films by Howard Hawks and Woody Allen; philosophical and psychological theories by Bakhtin, Gadamer, Goffman, Tannen and Ricoeur. We'll consider such issues as initiating and concluding a dialogue, how turn-taking works, power relations among the participants, listening, the use of questions and answers, genre-based expectations, and the influence of interruptions, misunderstandings and hidden agendas. 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.
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.
Television shows, movies, newspapers, magazines, CDs, DVDs, websites--these all profoundly influence the ways we understand and experience the world. In this course we will explore how such media produce meaning. To do this, we will examine a variety of different media "texts" and learn to read them more self-consciously, expanding our sense of what they mean to include how and why they mean what they do. Enrollment limit: 14 first-year students only.
This course employs theories and methods for studying drama through examining relationships between verbal scripts and staged productions. By attending five to seven plays performed locally and in Cleveland, and by viewing video productions of related works, students will study nine to ten significant plays representing a variety of periods and styles, with attention to intersections of history, gender, race, and sexuality. Assignments will stress performing scenes, writing critical essays, and critiquing productions. Enrollment limit: 14 first-year students only.
The detective story appeared in the West in the mid-nineteenth century, at the same time that crime-solving became more organized and systematized. The definition of crime/The way that crime has been portrayed has shifted over the years, however, and detective fiction can help us track these changes. The detective story -- built on a deceptively simple formula -- is an ideal genre in which to explore beliefs about relationships between criminality and the social world. Since the late nineteenth century black writers have recognized this, and they have riffed or "signified" on the formula to question sources and the effects of different kinds of crimes, to draw readers into the social and moral worlds of African Americans, and to explore institutional barriers to living crime-free, fulfilling lives. This course begins with some theories about the genre and about signifying as ironic "repetition with a difference" and examines works by authors such as Pauline Hopkins, Rudolph Fisher, Chester Himes, Walter Mosley, Barbara Neely, and John Ridley. We will ask why so many black writers have turned to a genre considered mere entertainment, what they gain (or lose!) with it, the effects of changes to its conventions, and the notion that the history of a genre is very much a history of its readers or that "signifying" has as much to do with reading as with writing. 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.
An introduction to poetry in English, from Late Middle English to the present, giving particular attention to the ways in which lyric distinguishes itself from other genres, manifests both thought and feeling, relates to historical and cultural context, and rewards close, often excruciatingly close, reading. Students will be expected to demonstrate an intimate familiarity with the texts. Enrollment Limit: 50.
The text of the Bible studied in English translation, together with consideration of its historical setting, its cultural uses, its interpretive history, and some ways in which writers have drawn upon it in their own literary works. Enrollment Limit: 50.
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.
A study of several important works from the Middle Ages, including epic poems (such as the Icelandic saga and the Welsh Mabinogion), romances (such as those by Chretien de Troyes), lyric poetry, the Decameron (by Boccaccio), the Divine Comedy (by Dante), and In Praise of Folly (by Erasmus). The texts will be read in English translation. Some attention will be given to problems of interpretation and to questions of historical perspective, cultural and linguistic differences, and literary form. Nature of Text. Pre-1700. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment limit: 30.
This course will study Milton's English poetry in roughly chronological order, with some attention to his prose. The main emphasis will be on Milton's distinctive poetic vision, though there will be considerable attention to his literary, intellectual, and religious environment and to recent New Historical, feminist, and post-structural interpretations of his writing. Nature of Text. British, Pre-1700. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment limit: 30.
An exploration of Shakespeare's experiments with the idea of genre, considered in both thematic and formal terms. We will study seven plays in depth, concentrating on the so-called problem comedies and late romances, probably Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, The Merchant of Venice, Measure for Measure, All's Well That Ends Well, Cymbeline, and The Winter's Tale. Attention will be paid to the plays both as literature and as texts for performance. Nature of Text. British, Pre-1700. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 30.
This course explores the art and function of satire from the eighteenth century to the present. Students will be introduced to the complexities of the satiric mode by its most sublime and slippery practitioner, Jonathan Swift. Works will also include British and American satirists in a variety of media -- print, film, television, and cartoon. Students will have the opportunity to create their own satires. Nature of Interpretation. British OR American, 1700-1900. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 30.
This course introduces the nineteenth-century novel, with a special emphasis on how vehement emotions -- such as grief, rage, fear and wonder -- generate and organize these narratives. We will be looking at British novels of the “classic” period (arguably when the novel reached its peak as a form), in an attempt to generate a critical, formal, and theoretical reading of these texts and their affective structures. Through an intense study of these texts, we will attempt to discern a poetics of feeling underlying the Victorian novel. Nature of Text. British, 1700-1900. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 30.
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. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 30.
A comparative study of poetry, fiction, and drama by three major twentieth-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. Nature of Text. Diversity, Post-1900. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 30.
The literature of this era reflected and participated in debates about the nature of "America" and "Americans" in the decades after civil war. Moreover, the understanding of "literature" and the circumstances of its production, distribution, and reception were also in flux. Such issues will frame this course. Reading will include narratives and essays by Howells, James, Jewett, Freeman, Chesnutt, Hopkins, Twain, Garland, Dunbar, Nelson, Sui Sin Far, Zitkala Sa, others. Nature of Interpretation. American, Diversity, 1700-1900. 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. Nature of Interpretation. Diversity, Post-1900. 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. 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.
An opportunity to consider major currents and counter-currents in English poetry from 1630 to 1939. In addition to love, death, and the changing of the seasons, topics will include form, disorder, time, war, dream, intimacy, violence, reparation, alienation, reflection, the senses, and human and non-human life. Nature of Text. British, Pre-1700 OR 1700-1900 (not both). 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: Two 200-level courses, including at least one Gateway course; or three 200-level courses.
An intensive survey of the eighteenth-century British novel. We will take our critical bearings from Locke's famous description of the mind as "white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas." Experience thus makes us who we are -- a notion that bequeathed to the eighteenth century both an unprecedented freedom and danger. Accordingly, we will study the pleasures and perils of human experience in novels by, among others, Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Burney, and Austen. British, 1700-1900. 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 Dickens, Thackeray, Gaskell, Emily Brontë, and Charlotte Brontë, and poetry by Tennyson and Browning. British, 1700-1900. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment limit: 25.
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). Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment limit: 25.
The story goes that literature grew up in Chicago - the city that developed so rapidly in the 19th century - striving for "democratic" representation of new urban experiences and (multi-classed, immigrant, and racial) identities, culminating in a renaissance from 1900-1930. Did Chicago continue to encourage a specific strain of American modernism? We will address this question through readings in urban sociology and authors such as Dreiser, Algren, Wright, Attaway, Walker, and Brooks. American, Diversity, Post-1900. 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. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment limit: 25.
This course offers an analysis of the narratives through which nationalisms acquire credibility and authority. This discussion-centered class will examine the nationalisms of Latin America, the Caribbean, and South Asia with particular reference to those of Argentina, Mexico, India, and Pakistan. Narrative theories as deployed in and by the disciplines of History and English literary studies provide the overarching critical methodologies for interdisciplinary analysis. Identical to HIST 367. Diversity, Post-1900. Enrollment Limit: 25. Consent of instructor required.
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, June 8, 2007). Identical to CRWR 310. Prerequisite: CRWR 201. Consent of instructor required. Enrollment limit: 12.
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. Students will read work by modern and contemporary authors with an eye toward understanding the variety of modes which come under the current heading "creative nonfiction" (memoir, meditation, travel, cultural critique, etc.), and will be asked to employ a number of these methods and approaches in their own work. Admission based on a completed application and writing sample (due in Program office by Friday, June 8, 2007). Recommended preparation: CRWR 201. Identical to CRWR 340. 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 two separate pieces (due in the Creative Writing Program office by Friday, June 8, 2007). Identical to CRWR 320. Prerequisite: CRWR 201. Consent of instructor required. Enrollment limit: 12.
A workshop focused on discussion of student work and on selected examples from modern and contemporary drama, working toward a staged reading of an original one-act play. The course presupposes considerable knowledge of drama. Admission based on a completed application form and writing sample (due in Program office by Friday, June 8, 2007). Identical to CRWR 330. 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 401. Note: Students enrolling in ENGL 399 or RHET 401 should also enroll in RHET 402, 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.
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 2007-08 senior tutorials, seminars, and Honors.
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.
Request
2007-08 senior tutorial/seminar application form.
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
2007-08 Honors application form.
London
Semester
Frequently an English Department faculty member serves as co-director
of the Danenberg Oberlin-in-London Program, thereby facilitating applications
for English majors interested in that semester's program. For further information,
see the section of the catalog entitled "London Program."
Phase I - 9 weeks - Students take 8-12 credits
In his study of English culture, Ralph Waldo Emerson observed that "the views of nature held by any people determine all their institutions." Through a study of a variety of texts -- museums, maps, plays, parks, landscape paintings, films, gardens, prose, architecture -- we will consider the different ways in which nature is understood, ordered, and represented in London and surrounding areas. The way a culture looks at nature is organized by a variety of factors, including its geography, its history, its epistemology and ethos. This course will examine the interactions of nature, technology, and art in Britain. We will be asking such questions as: How do museums, gardens, scientific theories, poetry, paintings, etc. represent nature? How do these representations affect our knowledge of the world around us? The nature of the course is such that numerous discourses and sundry objects will come into contact with one another. Because of this, our work involves a certain intellectual flexibility and the ability to make connections between seemingly disparate elements. Throughout, we will consider the role played by the idea of "order" in British cultural approaches to "nature." Readings will include philosophical and historical works. Field trips include but are not limited to Kew Gardens, Hampsted Heath, Hampton Court, and a variety of museums (Tate, V&A). Consent of instructor required. Enrollment limit: 20.
This course serves as a companion to ENGL 940. We will read Ralph Waldo Emerson’s English Traits (1856), an account of his travels in the British Isles, to develop our own methods of writing about England from the perspective of American Scholars. Emerson's book raises important questions regarding the relations between nature and culture, as well as the relations between England and America. We will read English Traits carefully, discussing it in light of these relationships, considering its historical and intellectual contexts, and using its chapter-themes ("Land," "Race," "Wealth," "Religion," "Literature," etc.) to create our own 21st-Century book of "English Traits." Consent of instructor required. Enrollment limit: 20.
Phase II - 6 weeks - Students take 4 or 6 credits
This course will be a survey of British poetry and its relation to nature, as well as an introduction to a rapidly growing school of literary theory and criticism. A wide variety of poetry will be read and discussed. Critical works will include Jonathan Bate's The Song of the Earth and The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology, edited by Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm. Bate prefaces The Song of the Earth by stating that "This is a book about why poetry continues to matter as we enter a new millennium that will be ruled by technology. It is a book about Western man's alienation from nature. It is about the capacity of the writer to restore us to the earth which is our home." Our course will try to understand why literature might matter in the attempt to understand the world and our place in it. By returning to some of the poets of his study (particularly those of the Romantic period), we will consider Bate's claim for writing's ability to restore us to the earth, the kinds of reading necessary for such a restoration, and alternative ways of reading texts "ecologically." Field trips will include visits to the Lake District and Dartmoor. Consent of instructor required. Enrollment limit: 20.
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