Please check the English Department website for up-to-date information on course offerings
https://english.dartmouth.edu/
SECTION I: NON-MAJOR COURSE
7. First-Year Seminars in English
Consult special listings
8. Readings in English and American Literature
11S: 11 12S: Arrange
Readings in English and American literature. The course is intended principally for students who are not majoring in English. It does not carry major credit. Writing requirements will be limited to tests and brief exercises. To be offered periodically, but with varying subject matter.
In 11S at 11 (section 1), Journalism: Literature and Practice. This course will explore the role of print journalism in shaping the modern American literary, cultural and political landscape—from Nellie Bly’s late 19th century undercover exposure to Seymour Hersh’s coverage of the Iraq War. Students will also participate in an intensive weekly workshop on reporting and writing, with a short unit on radio commentary. This course does not carry English major credit. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Jetter.
9. Composition: Theory and Practice (Identical to, and described under, Writing 9)
Not offered in 2010-2011, may be offered in 2011-2012
This course does not carry English major credit. Dist: ART. Gocsik.
SECTION II: MAJOR COURSES
12. Introduction to Literary Study
10F: 2 11W: 12 11S: 10
Designed for prospective majors in English and for students interested in a general literature course, English 12 offers an introduction to the critical historical and creative study of literature. Each of the sections provides a survey of literature from different historical periods and an overview of the aims, assumptions and methodologies of reading, critical analysis and creative practice. The course counts for credit in the major. Dist: LIT. No course group or CA tag designation.
Introduction to Literary Study—Methods
11S: 10
This section focuses on the interpretive methods, critical modes and creative practices of English Literature as a disciplinary study. Texts will be drawn from at least two genres and historical periods as well as the history of criticism and theory. Writing for the class will include both critical and creative practices. Will.
Introduction to Literary Study—Poetry
11W: 12
This section addresses poetic language and form. It offers practice in reading poems and skills in interpreting and producing densely figured language. Each section will focus on poetry of three (not necessarily consecutive) centuries, with some contextualization for every period. Reading will include some of the large body of critical work that helps foster analytic and writing skills. Writing for the class will include both critical and creative practices. Travis.
Introduction to Literary Study—Narrative
Not offered in 2010-2011, may be offered in 2011-2012
This section introduces narrative literature—works that tell stories often, but not always, in prose. Students will become familiar with close reading practices, critical strategies of analysis, and the formal problems of creating narrative. In addition to discussing individual texts, broader areas of inquiry may include the history of the novel, the evolution of narrative genres, and the changing politics of identify and representation. Writing for the class will include both critical and creative practices.
Introduction to Literary Study—Drama
10F: 2
This section focuses on drama’s double existence as a record of collective, collaborative performance before a live audience and as a text available for reading apart from performance. Potential areas of inquiry include changing forms of dramatic imitation and representation, performance and publication history, staging and reading conventions, and the broad question of how drama complicates the very category of the literary. Writing for the class will include both critical and creative practices. Edmondson.
14. Introduction to Criticism
Not offered in 2010-2011, may be offered in 2011-2012
A historical and formal introduction to literary criticism as a discipline, with primary emphasis on English and American critics from the late 19th century through the present. Beginning with Matthew Arnold and Oscar Wilde as dynastic founders, we will examine the work and influence of, among others, T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, William Empson, F.R. Leavis, Cleanth Brooks, Northrop Frye, Paul de Man, Harold Bloom, Stanley Fish, Barbara Johnson, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Edward Said, and Judith Butler. An intellectual history in itself, the story of modern criticism is also a story of changing terms, concepts, and critical practices, many of which continue to shape our ways of understanding literary and other texts. Complementing English 15 (Introduction to Theory) this course is strongly recommended for majors. Dist: LIT. Course Group IV. CA tag Literary Theory and Criticism. Crewe.
15. Introduction to Literary Theory
10F: 12 11W: 10
The course will introduce students to some of the leading texts, concepts, and practices of what has come to be known as theoretical criticism. Topics to be considered may include some of the following: structuralism, deconstruction, psychoanalysis, feminism, new historicism, post-colonialism, post-modernism, queer theory, and cultural studies. Attention will also be given to historical and institutional contexts of this criticism. Intended to provide a basic, historically informed, knowledge of theoretical terms and practices, this course should enable students to read contemporary criticism with understanding and attempt theoretically informed criticism themselves. Dist: LIT. Course Group IV. CA tag Literary Theory and Criticism. Boggs, Edmondson, McKee, Travis, Will.
16. Old and New Media
10F: 10A 11F: Arrange
A survey of the historical, formal, and theoretical issues that arise from the materiality and technology of communication, representation, and textuality. The course will address topics in and between different media, which may include oral, scribal, print, and digital media. Readings and materials will be drawn from appropriate theorists, historians, and practitioners, and students may be asked not only to analyze old and new media, but also create with them. Dist: LIT. Course Group IV. CA tags Cultural Studies and Popular Culture, Literary Theory and Criticism. Evens, Halasz.
17. Introduction to New Media
11S: 10A 12S: Arrange
This course introduces the basic ideas, questions, and objects of new media studies, offering accounts of the history, philosophy, and aesthetics of new media, the operation of digital technologies, and the cultural repercussions of new media. A primary emphasis on academic texts will be supplemented by fiction, films, music, journalism, computer games, and digital artworks. Class proceeds by group discussion, debate, student presentations, and peer critique. Typical readings include Alan Turing, Friedrich Kittler, Ray Kurzweil, and Henry Jenkins, plus films such as Blade Runner and eXistenZ. Dist: ART. Course Group III. CA tags Cultural Studies and Popular Culture, Literary Theory and Criticism. Evens.
18. A History of the English Language (Identical to Linguistics 18)
Not offered in 2010-2011, may be offered in 2011-2012
The development of English as a spoken and written language as a member of the Indo-European language-family, from Old English (Beowulf), Middle English (Chaucer), and Early Modern English (Shakespeare), to contemporary American English. Emphasis will be given to the linguistic and cultural reasons for ‘language change,’ to the literary possibilities of the language, and to the political significance of class and race. Open to all classes. Dist: SOC. Course Group IV. CA tags Cultural Studies and Popular Culture, Literary Theory and Criticism, National Traditions and Countertraditions. Otter, Pulju.
19. Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian Epic and Saga
Not offered in 2010-2011, may be offered in 2011-2012
An introduction both to Old English literature and to Old Norse sagas. In the first half of the course we concentrate on reading, translating and setting into cultural context selected Anglo-Saxon poems, most notably ‘The Wanderer,’ ‘The Dream of the Rood,’ and ‘Beowulf.’ In the second half of the course we read a variety of Old Norse sagas, including ‘Egil’s Saga,’ ‘The Saga of the People of Laxardal,’ and two shorter sagas recounting contacts with North America. In addition to papers and reports, we’ll discuss the new film ‘Beowulf,’ and each student will write a mini-version of a Norse saga. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group I. CA tags National Traditions and Countertraditions, Genre-narrative. Otter, Travis.
20. Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales
10F: 11 11F: Arrange
An introduction to Chaucer, concentrating on ten of the Canterbury Tales, and studying him as a social critic and literary artist. Special attention will be paid to Chaucer’s language, the sounds of Middle English, and the implications of verse written for the ear. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group I. CA tags Genre-poetry, Genders and Sexualities. Edmondson, Otter, Travis.
21. Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde and Other Poems
11W: 10 12W: Arrange
A study of Chaucer’s major works other than the Canterbury Tales, focusing on some of the early dream visions (Book of the Duchess, House of Fame) and Troilus and Criseyde, which many consider to be the greatest love epic in the English language. Some attention will be given to the French and Italian context of these works (in translation). No familiarity with Middle English is required. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group I, CA tags Genre-poetry, Genre-narrative. Edmondson, Otter, Travis.
22. Medieval English Literature
11S: 10 12S: Arrange
An introduction to the literature of the “Middle English” period (ca. 1100- ca. 1500), concentrating on the emergence of English as a literary language in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries and on some of the great masterworks of the late fourteenth century. Readings will include early texts on King Arthur, the Lais of Marie de France, the satirical poem The Owl and the Nightingale, the romance Sir Orfeo, Pearl, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the Book of Margery Kempe, and The York Cycle. Most readings in modern English translation, with some explorations into the original language. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group I. CA tags Cultural Studies and Popular Culture, National Traditions and Countertraditions. Edmondson, Otter, Travis.
23. The English Renaissance
Not offered in 2010-2011, may be offered in 2011-2012
English verse and prose of the sixteenth century: a study of Wyatt, Gascoigne, Nashe, Marlowe, Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, and others in the cultural context of Tudor England. The course will investigate issues of classical and European influence, publication, and courtly patronage, especially under the auspices of a female ruler (Elizabeth I). Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group I. CA tags Genders and Sexualities, Genre-poetry. Crewe, Halasz.
24. Shakespeare I
10F: 10 11X, 11F: Arrange
A study of about ten plays spanning Shakespeare’s career, including comedies, histories, tragedies, and romances. Attention will be paid to Shakespeare’s language; to his dramatic practices and theatrical milieu; and to the social, political, and philosophical issues raised by the action of the plays. Videotapes will supplement the reading. Exercises in close reading and interpretative papers. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group I. CA tag Genre-drama. Boose, Crewe, Gamboa, Halasz, Luxon.
26. English Drama to 1642
11W: 10A 12W: Arrange
A study of commercial theater in London from about 1570 until the closing of the theaters in 1642. Anonymous and collaborative plays will be read as well as those by such playwrights as Kyd, Marlowe, Dekker, Jonson, Webster, and Ford. The course will focus on the economic, social, political, intellectual, and theatrical conditions in which the plays were originally produced, on their continuing performance, and on their status as literary texts. Research into the performance history of a play or participation in a scene production is required. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group I. CA tags Genre-drama, Genders and Sexualities. Boose, Halasz.
27. The Seventeenth Century
11S: 10A 12S: Arrange
English poetry and prose from 1603 to 1660. Primary focus on major lyric tradition including poems by John Donne, Ben Jonson, Mary Wroth, George Herbert, Andrew Marvell, Richard Crashaw, Henry Vaughan, and John Milton. Secondary focus on significant prose works of intellectual history (Francis Bacon, Robert Burton) and political contro-versy (debates about gender and/or political order). Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group I. CA tag Genre-poetry. Crewe, Luxon.
28. Milton
11S: 10 12S: Arrange
A study of most of Milton’s poetry and of important selections from his prose against the background of political and religious crises in seventeenth-century England. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group I. CA tags Genre-poetry, Genders and Sexualities. Luxon.
29. English Literature 1660-1714, Including Drama
Not offered in 2010-2011, may be offered in 2011-2012
A survey of English literary culture in the reigns of the later Stuart monarchs. Poetry by Dryden, Marvell, Rochester, Butler, Oldham and Pope; biographical writing by Aubrey, Halifax, Lucy Hutchinson, and Margaret Cavendish; the diaries of Pepys and Evelyn; spiritual autobiography and religious fiction by Bunyan; prose satires and analytical prose of Swift and Halifax. Within the survey there will be two areas of special attention: the theatre and the literary response to public events. We will read three plays by such authors as Dryden, Wycherley, Congreve, Lee, Behn, Shadwell, Otway and Farquahar, and study the writing in response to such events as the Great Plague and Fire of 1666, the Popish Plot, and the Exclusion Crisis. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group II. CA tag Genre-drama.
30. Age of Satire
Not offered in 2010-2011, may be offered in 2011-2012
Visit the great age of British Satire. In a time when literacy was rapidly expanding, party politics was emerging and women’s rights were being advocated in print for the first time, satire ruled the literary scene. This course will explore the plays, poems, and novels of satirists from the libertine Earl of Rochester to the great satirist, Alexander Pope, not omitting the works of Aphra Behn, the first woman dramatist, and Mary Astell’s sardonic comments on the role of women in marriage. May include: the comedies of Wycherey and Congreve, Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift, and the novels of Daniel Defoe. There will be an opportunity to study the techniques of satire and its role in social and personal criticism. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group II, CA tag National Traditions and Countertraditions.
31. Reason and Revolution
Not offered in 2010-2011, may be offered in 2011-2012
Was there a British Enlightenment? In the age of the American and French Revolutions Britain seemed to hold steady. But in the literature of the period there are many social and literary struggles which took their tolls in the madness and suicide of writers such as Smart and Chatterton, the difficulties of attaining creative freedom, and the emergence of new literary forms such as the Gothic. This course will trace the fortunes of writers such as Samuel Johnson, James Boswell, Oliver Goldsmith, and Edmund Burke as they grapple with the anxieties of their time. We will also consider how women thinkers and novelists such as Charlotte Lennox and Mary Wollstonecraft forge new roles for themselves and we may include studies of the novel of political paranoia as exemplified by Caleb Williams, and by Wollstonecraft’s father, William Godwin. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group II, CA tags National Traditions and Countertraditions, Genre-narrative
32. The Rise of the Novel
10F: 10 11F: Arrange
A study of the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century English novel, from Daniel Defoe to Jane Austen. The course will look at the major sub-genres of the period, including criminal biography, scandalous memoirs, epistolary fiction and the Gothic novel. It will also explore the relationship between narrative fiction and the changing cultural landscape of a period defined by commercial uncertainty, imperial expansion, and the threat of revolution. Finally, and most importantly, the course will ask why the novel became so central to modern conceptions of subjectivity, sexuality, social cohesion and transgression. Readings may include work by Daniel Defoe, John Cleland, Jonathan Swift, Henry Fielding, Samuel Richardson, Laurence Sterne, Fanny Burney, Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Lewis, Charlotte Dacre, Maria Edgeworth, and Jane Austen. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group II. CA tags National Traditions and Countertraditions, Genre-narrative. McCann.
34. Romantic Literature: Writing and English Society, 1780-1832
Not offered in 2010-2011, may be offered in 2011-2012
This course offers a critical introduction to the literature produced in Britain at the time of the Industrial Revolution, the French Revolution, and the Napoleonic wars. There will be a strong emphasis throughout the course on the specific ways in which historical forces and social changes shape and are at times shaped by the formal features of literary texts. The question of whether romantic writing represents an active engagement with or an escapist idealization of the important historical developments in this period will be a continuous focus. Readings include works by Blake, Wordsworth, Helen Maria Williams, Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft, Robert Southey, Coleridge, Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, Keats, and Clare. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group II. CA tag National Traditions and Countertraditions. McCann, Will.
36. Victorian Literature and Culture, 1837-1859
11W: 10 12W: Arrange
This course examines early Victorian poetry, prose and fiction in the context of cultural practices and social institutions of the time. We will locate cultural concerns among, for example, those of capitalism, political reform, scientific knowledge, nation and empire. And we will consider revisions of space, time, gender, sexuality, class, and public and private life that characterized formations of British identity during this period. Texts may include work by Charles Dickens, Thomas Carlyle, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Charlotte Bronte, John Ruskin, and Charles Darwin. We will also read selections from recent criticism of Victorian culture. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group II. CA tags Cultural Studies and Popular Culture, National Traditions and Countertraditions. McCann, McKee, Gerzina.
37. Victorian Literature and Culture, 1860-1901
Not offered in 2010-2011, may be offered in 2011-2012
This course examines later nineteenth-century British poetry, prose and fiction in the con-text of cultural practices and social institutions of the time. We will locate cultural concerns among, for example, those of capitalism, political reform, scientific knowledge, nation and empire. And we will consider revisions of space, time, gender, sexuality, class, and public and private life that characterized formations of British identity during this period. Texts may include work by George Eliot, Matthew Arnold, Christina Rossetti, Algernon Swinburne, Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling. We will also read selections from recent criticism of Victorian culture. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group II. CA tags Cultural Studies and Popular Culture, National Traditions and Countertraditions. Gerzina, McCann, McKee.
38. The Nineteenth-Century English Novel
11W: 12 12W: Arrange
A study of the nineteenth-century novel focusing on the Victorian novel’s representation of public and private categories of experience. Readings may include Shelley’s Frankenstein, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, Dickens’ Bleak House, George Eliot’s Middlemarch, Mrs. Henry Wood’s East Lynne and Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group II. CA tags Genre-narrative, National Traditions and Countertraditions. Gerzina, McKee.
39. Early American Literatures: Conquest, Captivity, Cannibalism
10F: 12 11F: Arrange
The “invention” of America changed the world forever and precipitated the beginning of the modern era. This course explores that invention, covering the period of about 1500 to 1800 and surveying a wide range of cultural attitudes towards the imagination, exploration, and settlement of the Americas: Native American, Spanish, French, and English. Our reading, including oral tales, letters, diaries, captivity narratives, poetry, personal narratives, political tracts, and secondary criticism, will focus on the themes of conquest, captivity, cannibalism in the shaping of a particularly “American” identity. We will use historical sources and early books and manuscripts to illuminate attitudes towards power, identity, race, gender, and nature prevailing in the multicultural landscape of the early Americas that shaped the emerging literature and culture of British North America. We will also look at recent cinematic representations of this early period in our examination of the shifting and contentious meaning of “America.” Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group I. CA tags Multicultural and Colonial/Postcolonial Studies, National Traditions and Countertraditions. Chaney, Schweitzer.
40. American Poetry
Not offered in 2010-2011, may be offered in 2011-2012
A survey of American poetry from the colonial period to the early decades of the twentieth century. Readings may include works by Bradstreet, Taylor, Wheatley, Emerson, Poe, Whitman, Dickinson, Melville and Dunbar. We may also study Native American poetry and schools like the Fireside Poets, 19th-century women poets, and precursors of early Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance. We will look at lyric, meditative, religious, comic and political poetry, the long poem and the epic. Some themes we might trace include the transatlantic character of American poetry, its “newness,” its engagement with religion and self-definition, with nature, and with gender and race. Emphasizing close readings as well as historical and cultural contexts, this course examines the complexities of an American poetic vision and serves as an introduction to reading poetry and to American literature. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group II. CA tags Genre-poetry, National Traditions and Countertraditions. Schweitzer.
41. American Prose
11W: 2 12W: Arrange
Readings of nonfiction narratives by such American writers as Franklin, Emerson, Tho-reau, Henry Adams, Gertrude Stein, Hemingway, and Jack Kerouac. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group II. CA tags Genre-narrative, National Traditions and Countertraditions. Boggs, Chaney.
42. American Fiction to 1900
11W: 12 12W: Arrange
A survey of the first century of U.S. fiction, this course focuses on historical contexts as well as social and material conditions of the production of narrative as cultural myth. The course is designed to provide an overview of the literary history of the United States novel from the National Period to the threshold of the Modern (1845-1900). To do justice to the range of works under discussion, the lectures will call attention to the heterogeneous cultural contexts out of which these works have emerged as well as the formal and structural components of the different works under discussion. In keeping with this intention, the lectures include the so-called classic texts in American literature The Last of the Mohicans, Moby Dick, The Scarlet Letter, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, but also the newly canonized Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Life in the Iron Mills, Hope Leslie in the hope that the configuration of these works will result in an understanding of the remarkable complexity of United States literary culture. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group II. CA tags National Traditions and Countertraditions, Cultural Studies and Popular Culture. Boggs, Pease.
43. Early Black American Literature (Identical to African and African American Studies 34)
10F: 12 11F: Arrange
A study of the foundations of Black American literature and thought, from the colonial period through the era of Booker T. Washington. The course will concentrate on the way in which developing Afro-American literature met the challenges posed successively by slavery, abolition, emancipation, and the struggle to determine directions for the twentieth century. Selections will include: Wheatley, Life and Works; Brown, Clotel; Douglass, Narrative; Washington, Up from Slavery; DuBois, Souls of Black Folk; Dunbar, Sport of the Gods; Chestnut, House Behind the Cedars; Harriet Wilson, Our Nig; Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man; and poems by F. W. Harper, Paul L. Dunbar and Ann Spencer. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group II. CA tags National Traditions and Countertraditions, Cultural Studies and Popular Culture, Genre-narrative. Chaney, Favor.
44. Asian American Literature and Culture
Not offered in 2010-2011, may be offered in 2011-2012
This course examines narratives of migration to, from, and between the Americas by groups from East, South, and Southeast Asia. We will analyze novels, short fiction, poetry, and films by twentieth-century artists (i.e. Joy Kogawa, Theresa Cha, Shani Mootoo, Jhumpa Lahiri, Bienvenido Santos, Wayne Wang) against the historical backdrop of imperialism in Asia and the Americas; periods of exclusion and internment; and social movements that coalesce around intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, and citizenship. Dist: LIT; WCult: CI. CA tags National Traditions and Countertraditions, Multicultural and Colonial Postcolonial Studies, Cultural Studies and Popular Culture. Bahng.
45. Native American Literature (Identical to Native American Studies 35)
11S: 11 12S: Arrange
Published Native American writing has always incorporated a cross-cultural perspective that mediates among traditions. The novels, short stories, and essays that constitute the Native American contribution to the American literary tradition reveal the literary potential of diverse aesthetic traditions. This course will study representative authors with particular emphasis on contemporary writers. Open to all classes. Dist: LIT; WCult: NW. Course Group III. CA tags National Traditions and Countertraditions, Multicultural and Colonial/ Postcolonial Studies. Palmer, Runnels.
46. Twentieth-Century American Fiction: 1900 to World War II
11W: 11 12W: Arrange
A study of major American fiction in the first half of the twentieth century. Works by Dreiser, Stein, Fitzgerald, Cather, Larsen and Faulkner, and a changing list of others. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group III. CA tags Genre-narrative, National Traditions and Countertraditions. Will.
47. American Drama
11S: 12 12S: Arrange
A study of major American playwrights of the 19th and 20th centuries including S. Glaspell, O’Neill, Hellman, Wilder, Hansberry, Guare, Williams, Wilson, Mamet, Miller, Albee, Shepard, Wasserstein. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group III. CA tags National Traditions and Countertraditions, Genre-drama. Colbert, Pease.
48. Contemporary American Fiction
Not offered in 2010-2011, may be offered in 2011-2012
Contemporary American fiction introduces the reader to the unexpected. Instead of conventionally structured stories, stereotypical heroes, traditional value systems, and familiar uses of language, the reader finds new and diverse narrative forms. Such writers as Toni Morrison, Thomas Pynchon, Maxine Hong Kingston, Leslie Silk, Norman Mailer, Don DeLillo, and Ralph Ellison, among others, have produced a body of important, innovative fiction expressive of a modern American literary sensibility. The course requires intensive class reading of this fiction and varied critical writing on postmodernism. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group III. CA tags Genre-narrative, National Traditions and Countertraditions. Favor, Bahng.
49. Modern Black American Literature (Identical to African and African American Studies 35)
Not offered in 2010-2011, may be offered in 2011-2012
A study of African American literature from the Harlem Renaissance to the present, this course will focus on emerging and diverging traditions of writing by African Americans. We shall also investigate the changing forms and contexts of ‘racial representation’ in the United States. Works may include those by Hurston, Hughes, Wright, Ellison, Morrison, Schuyler, West, Murray, Gates, and Parks. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group III. CA tags National Traditions and Countertraditions, Cultural Studies and Popular Culture. Favor, Vásquez.
50. American and British Poetry Since 1914
11W: 2A 12W: Arrange
A survey of modern American and British poetry since the First World War, with particular emphasis on the aesthetics, philosophy and politics of modernism. The course covers such canonical and non-canonical poets as Yeats, Pound, HD, Lawrence, Eliot, Stevens, Frost, Williams, Crane, Moore, Millay, Auden, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Beats. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group III. CA tags Genre-poetry, National Traditions and Countertraditions. Zeiger, Vásquez.
53. Twentieth-Century British Fiction: 1900 to World War II
Not offered in 2010-2011, may be offered in 2011-2012
A study of major authors, texts, and literary movements, with an emphasis on literary modernism and its cultural contexts. We will read works by Conrad, Forster, Joyce, Woolf, West, Lawrence, Rhys, and Beckett, as well as critical essays. We will explore this literature in the context of the art, dance, and film of the period. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group III. Concentration area tags: Genre-narrative, National Traditions and Countertraditions, Cultural Studies and Popular Culture. Silver.
54. Modern British Drama
Not offered in 2010-2011, may be offered in 2011-2012
Major British plays since the 1890s. The course begins with the comedy of manners as represented by Oscar Wilde and Noel Coward. It then considers innovations in and rebellions against standard theatrical fare: the socialist crusading of Bernard Shaw; the angry young men (John Osborne) and working-class women (Sheath Delaney) of the 1950s; the minimalists (Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter) and the university wits (Tom Stoppard); the dark comedians of the modern family (Alan Ayckbourn) and the politically inflected playwrights of the age of Prime Minister Thatcher (Caryl Churchill, Timberlake Wertenbaker, David Hare). The course deals both with the evolution of dramatic forms and the unusually close way in which modern British theatre has served as a mirror for British life from the heyday of the Empire to the present Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group III. CA tags Genre-drama, National Traditions and Countertraditions.
55. Twentieth-Century British Fiction: World War II to the Present
11S: 11 12S: Arrange
A study of the multiple currents within British fiction in a period characterized by major literary, cultural, and social transitions in Britain, including the emergence of a “post”(-war, -empire, -modern) sensibility. Writers may include Amis, Sillitoe, Greene, Golding, Burgess, Lessing, Wilson, Carter, Swift, Atkinson, MacLaverty, Ishiguro, Barker, Barnes, McKean, and Smith. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group III. CA tags Genre-narrative, National Traditions and Countertraditions. Giri.
58. Introduction to Postcolonial Literature (Identical to African and African American Studies 65)
Not offered in 2010-2011, may be offered in 2011-2012
An introduction to the themes and foundational texts of postcolonial literature in English. We will read and discuss novels by writers from former British colonies in Africa, South Asia, the Caribbean, and the postcolonial diaspora, with attention to the particularities of their diverse cultures and colonial histories. Our study of the literary texts will incorporate critical and theoretical essays, oral presentations, and brief background lectures. Authors may include Chinua Achebe, Nugget wa Thing’s, V.S. Naipaul, Merle Hodge, Anita Desai, Bessie Head, Nadine Gorier, Paule Marshall, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Selman Rushdie, Earl Lovelace, Arundhati Roy. Serves as prerequisite for FSP in Trinidad. Dist: LIT or INT; WCult: NW. Course Group III. CA tags Genre-narrative, Multicultural and Colonial/Postcolonial Studies. Giri.
59. Critical Issues in Postcolonial Studies
Not offered in 2010-2011, may be offered in 2011-2012
This course introduces students to writers and intellectuals whose work has played a formative role in the emergence and consolidation of postcolonial theory and postcolonial studies. Topics of discussion include orientalism, colonial discourse, decolonization, the idea and practice of “writing back,” national narratives, cosmopolitanism, créolité, globalization, subalternity, diaspora identity and cultural hybridity. The work of the following authors and critics may be considered: Jawaharlal Nehru, Mahatma Gandhi, SunYat-Sen, Kwame Nkrumah, Leopold Senghor, Aimé Césaire, CLR James, Homi Bhabha, Frantz Fanon, Gayatri Spivak, Edward Said, Arundhati Roy, Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Salman Rushdie. In examining their work, we will draw on Anglophone, Francophone and vernacular sources while tracing postcolonialism’s relation to post-Second World War intellectual movements, particularly third-world nationalism, poststructuralism and feminism. Dist: LIT or INT; WCult: NW. Course Group IV. CA tags Multicultural/Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, National Traditions and Countertraditions, Literary Theory and Criticism. Giri.
SECTION III: SPECIAL TOPICS COURSES
60-67 Special Topics in English and American Literature
These courses are offered periodically with varying content: one or more individual writers, a genre, a period, or an approach to literature not otherwise provided in the English curriculum. Requirements will include papers and, at the discretion of the instructor, examinations. Enrollment is limited to 30. Courses numbered 65-67 require prior work in the period (normally a course in the corresponding course group) or permission of the instructor. Dist: LIT; WCult: Varies.
60. Open Topic
11W: 10, 10A, 12, 2, 2A 11S: 10A
In 11W at 10 (section 1), Native American Oral Traditional Literature (Identical to, and described under, Native American Studies 34). Dist: LIT; WCult: NW. No Course Group designation. CA tags National Traditions and Countertraditions, Multicultural and Colonial/Postcolonial Studies. Palmer.
In 11W at 12 (section 2), History of the Book (Identical to Comparative Literature 40). This course examines the book as a material and cultural object. We’ll consider various practical and theoretical models for understanding the book form and investigating the materials, technologies, institutions, and practices of its production, dissemination, and reception. We’ll focus primarily on the printed book in Western Europe and North America, but we’ll also spend time talking about the emergence of the codex (book), medieval manuscript books, twentieth and twenty-first century artist’s books and the challenges posed by digitality to the book form. The readings for the course will be balanced by frequent use of exemplars drawn from Rauner Library and practical experience in the Book Arts workshop setting type. Dist: LIT, WCult: W. Course Group IV. CA tags Literary Criticism and Theory, Cultural Studies and Popular Culture. Halasz.
In 11W at 2A (section 3), Evidence of Things Not Seen: Advanced Creative Nonfiction. Through close readings of creative nonfiction, we’ll investigate craft—character, voice, structure, and sequence—as well as parable, myth, and allusion, the intangible “facts” at the heart of the genre. We’ll conduct our inquiry through excursions into faith, doubt, and the territory in between. Our goal is to learn how to inhabit the ideas and experience of “belief,” broadly defined, an essential step in writing nonfiction stories that transcend their journalistic foundations. Dist: ART. CA tags Creative Writing, Cultural Studies and Popular Culture. Sharlet.
In 11W at 2 (section 4), The Poetics of Literary Practice. Designed for students interested in the intersections of literary study, theory, and the practice of creative writing, this course explores how modern and contemporary poets have thought about their own art. How do underlying theories about language, art, culture, and history inform a poet’s literary practice? Students will develop their own creative and critical writing practices, participate in workshop critique, compose responses to the selected readings, and complete an essay that explores their own poetics. Dist: ART. No Course Group designation. CA tags Creative Writing, Literary Theory and Criticism. Finch.
In 11W at 10A (section 5), Some Elements of Drama. Traversing ten plays and a range of critical responses to theater and performance, the course entertains questions concerning the purpose of theater, the fascination and anxiety it occasions, and the complex dynamics among players, playgoers and playtexts, exploring what drama does for—and to—audiences. A playlist including Sophocles and Shakespeare, but also Beckett, Pirandello, Pinter and Churchill, challenges and expands upon issues raised by theorists from Plato’s time to the present. Dist: ART. No course group designation. CA tags Genre-theater, Literary Theory and Criticism. Gamboa.
In 11S at 10A (section 6), Writers at Work. This course will explore how cultural stories shape the identities of writers and inform their work. We will read writers on their writing process, looking at how their contexts inform and shape their stories. We will read and discuss such writers as: Toni Morrison, J.D. Salinger, T. Olsen, W. Faulkner, and T.T. Williams. The overarching goal of the course will be to help students to develop a concrete writing process, gaining voice and self-consciousness within their own cultural stories. Students will be encouraged to write not only about other writers’ writing process but about their own. Dist: ART. No Course Group designation. CA tag Creative Writing. Crumbine.
In 11S at 10A (section 7), The Poem in Context. A noted American writer allegedly boasted, “I don’t read books; I write them.” This course is for another kind of writer, the kind who ponders questions such as: what happens in a poem? why do some move us so intensely that we learn them by heart? how do they change the way we think? As we write and read 20th century poems, we will reflect on the assumptions that shape them and will examine their historical and social contexts. As we write and read theory and criticism, we will try to make the practical and theoretical aspects of the art cohere. Dist: ART. CA tag Creative Writing. Lenhart.
62. Gender/Literature/Culture
11S: 12
In 11S at 12 (section 1), Animals and Women in Western Literature: Nags, Bitches, and Shrews (Identical to Women’s and Gender Studies 60). We will examine the literary and philosophical traditions that associate women with animals, and interrogate women’s complex response to those associations. Why are women and animals so often excluded from subjectivity and from ethical consideration, and how have women responded to their identification with animals? Readings may include: Ovid, Shakespeare, Mary Shelley, Virginia Woolf, Ursula Le Guin, J.M. Coetzee, the Bible, Aristotle, Descartes, and a range of contemporary theorists, such as ecofeminist Carol Adams. Dist: LIT..WCult: CI. CA tags Genders and Sexualities, Cultural Studies and Popular Culture. Boggs.
63. Topics in Theory and Criticism
11W: 10A 11S: 2
In 11W at 10A (section 1), Digital Game Studies. This course explores digital gaming. Reading academic and popular texts, we will situate digital gaming in relation to new media, visual, and literary studies. Class discussion will focus on problems in digital game studies: Where do the histories of technology and gaming meet? How do games change players and shape culture? This class will also study particular games, and, in addition to writing essays, students will invent individual and group projects in the game domain. Dist: TAS. Course Group IV. CA tag Literary Theory and Criticism. Evens.
In 11S at 2 (section 2), National Allegory: Readings in Postcolonial Literature and Culture (Identical to Comparative Literature 49). This course explores current theories of nationalism and postnationalism and how these theories could be productively utilized in making sense of literary texts from the postcolonial world. Authors include Lu Xun from China; Raja Rao from India; Sembene Ousmane from Senegal; Ngugi wa Thiong’o from Kenya; and Chinua Achebe from Nigeria. Cultural theorists whose work will be discussed include Ernest Renan, Benedict Anderson, Homi Bhabha, Partha Chatterjee, Franz Fanon, and Frederic Jameson, among others. Dist: LIT; WCult: NW. Course Group IV, CA tags National Traditions and Countertraditions, Genre-narrative, Multicultural and Colonial and Postcolonial Studies. Giri.
65. Literature Before the Mid-Seventeenth Century
11W: 10, 2A
In 11W at 2A (section 1), Shakespeare as an Acting Script (Identical to Theater 10). Patrick Stewart once said that even a small part in Shakespeare is hugely rewarding for an actor because, in Shakespeare, even the lowliest messenger has been given a ‘personality’ that lies right there in the language, waiting for the actor to give it life. This course will examine each of two plays as an actor’s script. The class should be attractive both to students who just enjoy drama and to those specifically interested in performing, directing, or writing plays. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group I, CA tag Genre-drama. Boose.
In 11W at 10 (section 2), 1611. We’ll read what someone attentive to the literary and socio-political networks of England in 1611 might have read or seen performed, including plays and poems by Shakespeare, Jonson, Donne, and Middleton, prose pamphlets, civic and courtly entertainments, contemporary letters and manuscript treatises. We’ll focus primarily on work published or circulated between 1609 and 1612. Discussion, short papers and oral presentations, term paper. Dist: LIT; WCult: W, pending faculty approval. Course Group I. CA tags National Traditions and Countertraditions, Cultural Studies and Popular Culture. Halasz.
66. Literature from the Mid-Seventeenth Century to the End of the Nineteenth Century
11S: 2A
In 11S at 2A (section 1) The Brontës. Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bront�ë are perhaps the most mythologized and analyzed family of writers in Britain. Their childhood in Haworth, the intensity of their novels, the relationship with their father and brother—all have been fodder for literary and biographical analysis, and spawned an entire industry of memorabilia, imitation and criticism. In the seminar we will do close readings of four Brontë novels (Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Villette, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall), and critical articles, look at some of their juvenilia, and read Lucasta Miller’s The Brontë Myth. We’ll end with Maryse Conde’s Windward Heights and Jasper Fforde’s imaginative novel The Eyre Affair. We will also view 2-3 film adaptations of their novels. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group II. CA tag Genre-narrative. Gerzina.
67. Literature from the Start of the Twentieth Century to the Present
10F: 10A, 2A 11W: 11 11S: 11, 10A, 2A
In 10F at 10A (section 1), Contemporary American Poetry. This course concentrates on American poetry since 1960. We will consider the influence of the “schools” of poetry which evolved in the second half of the twentieth century, including the Beats, the New York poets, the Confessional poets, the Black Mountain School, the New Romantics, and the New Formalists. Our primary focus will be to examine a variety of poets through close readings of individual poems. Paying close attention to the crafting of the poem, we will discuss key aspects such as voice, tone, image, metaphor, and the nature of the line. Poets we will study include Ginsberg, Lowell, O’Hara, Bishop, Plath, Kunitz, Hayden, James Wright, Brooks, Levine, Levertov, and Rich. Creative Writing majors are encouraged to take this course. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group III. CA tag Genre-poetry. Mathis.
In 10F at 2A (section 8), Transforming Narrative (Identical to Women’s and Gender Studies 59.2). We define and transform ourselves through stories. In this community-based learning course, students will alternate studying narratives of prison, addiction, and recovery in the traditional classroom with travel to Valley Vista, a substance abuse rehabilitation center in Bradford, Vermont, where they will participate in a program for women patients whose goal is the creation and performance of an original production that will facilitate the patients’ voices. Written work for the course will combine critical analysis and self-reflection. Dist: LIT; WCult: CI. Course Group III, CA tags Genre-narrative, Cultural Studies and Popular Culture, Genders and Sexualities. Huntington, Hernandez.
In 11W at 11 (section 3), Indian Killers: Murder and Mystery in Native Literature and Film (Identical to, and described under, Native American Studies 32). Dist: LIT; WCult: CI. Course Group III, CA tags National Traditions and Countertraditions, Multicultural and Colonial/Postcolonial Studies, Cultural Studies and Popular Culture. Benson.
In 11S at 11 (section 4), Woolfenstein (Identical to WGST 53). In her well known passage from A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf stated that “we think back through our mothers if we are women”; twenty years later, Gertrude Stein would obliquely refer to herself as “the mother of us all.” These two women occupy a central place in European and American modernism, their work having influenced successive generations of writers. Using a series of thematic and theoretical frameworks, we will explore the intersections between the two, asking how they staged their resistances to traditional/patriarchal literary and cultural structures. Possible frameworks are gender and genre; queer texts and contexts; war, nation, and gender; class, ethnicity, and authority; iconization. Texts by Woolf might include Jacob’s Room, Mrs. Dalloway, Orlando, and Between the Acts; texts by Stein might include Ida, Three Lives, Everybody’s Autobiography, and Mrs. Reynolds. We will also be reading a selection of critical and/or feminist theory. Suggested background courses are English 15, Comparative Literature 72, WGST 16. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group III. Concentration area tags Genders and Sexualities, National Traditions and Countertraditions. Silver, Will.
In 11S at 10A (section 5), African Literatures: Masterpieces of Literature From Africa (Identical to African and African American Studies 51 and Comparative Literature 51. Described under Comparative Literature 51). Dist: LIT. CA tags Genders and Sexualities, National Traditions and Countertraditions, Multicultural and Colonial/Postcolonial Studies. Coly.
In 11S at 2A (section 9), Faulkner. In this course we will read five of Faulkner’s novels, The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Absalom, Absalom, Light in August, and The Hamlet. Our focus will be on Faulkner’s continuing attention to constructions of identity: especially Southern identities, racialized identities, and individual psyches. We will spend considerable time reading criticism, by such writers as Edouard Glissant and Vera Kutzinski. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group III. CA tag Genre-narrative. McKee.
In 11S at 10A (section 10), The Black Arts Movement. This course explores the literature, art, and criticism of the Black Arts Movement. The artistic corollary to the Black Power movement, the Black Arts Movement flourished in the 1960s and 1970s as artists/activists sought to put a revolutionary cultural politics into practice. The movement had far-reaching implications for the way we think about race, history, and the relationship between artistic production and political liberation. Readings include Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Larry Neal, and other. Dist: LIT; WCult: W, pending faculty approval. CA tags Popular Cultural and Cultural Studies, National Traditions and Countertraditions. Rabig.
SECTION IV: ADVANCED SEMINARS
Seminars are designed as small courses, limited to twelve students, primarily seniors; qualified juniors may enroll. These courses emphasize discussion, and allow the student to develop his or her thinking about a subject throughout the term. Though assignments vary according to the nature of the material being studied, seminars usually involve class presentations and a term paper. They fulfill the “Culminating Experience” requirement. Prerequisite: at least four completed major courses, of which one must be in the same course group as the seminar. Students who successfully complete a seminar may sometimes be allowed to follow it with a one-term Honors project (see the section on Honors, above). Dist: LIT; WCult: Varies.
70. Literature Before the Mid-Seventeenth Century
10F, 11W, 11S: 2A
In 10F at 2A (section 1), Shakespeare’s History Plays and the Making of England. England first emerges as a nation-state under the Tudor monarchs, and Shakespeare’s creation and dissemination of the myths of origin within his history plays was crucial in enabling people to imagine a shared “Englishness.” We will focus on the 8 plays that span the approximate 75 year Wars of the Roses, running from the deposition of Richard II to the fall of Richard III and the ascendancy of the first Tudor monarch, Henry VII. Dist: LIT; WCult: W, pending faculty approval. Course Group I. CA tags Genre-drama, National Traditions and Countertraditions. Boose.
In 11W at 2A (section 2), Medieval Animals. From bestiary collections to theological tracts, from scholastic debates between birds to trickster heroes such as Reynard the fox, medieval literature is full of meaningful animals. This course will examine the significance of a variety of medieval “animal” texts, ranging from The Book of Beasts and the Physiologus to Marie de France’s Fables and Chaucer’s The Nun’s Priest’s Tale. We will also consider recent theoretical studies of the “animal” in culture as well as corollary American critters such as Coyote and the Signifying Monkey. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group I. CA tags Genre-drama, Genders and Sexualities. Travis.
In 11S at 2A (section 3), Thomas Middleton: Dramatist. Middleton was one of the most prolific and brilliant dramatists of the seventeenth century, writing concurrently with Shakespeare and Jonson. A consummate professional, he wrote with equal distinction in tragedy (The Revenger’s Tragedy, The Changeling, Women Beware Women), comedy (A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, The Roaring Girl), satires and masques. Middleton’s career is fascinating study in the history and conditions of seventeenth century performance, solo and collaborative authorship, and dramatic styles. We will see that Shakespeare was by no means the only kid on the block. Dist: LIT; WCult: W., pending faculty approval. Course Group 1. CA tag Genre-drama. Crewe.
71. Literature from the Mid-Seventeenth Century to the End of the Nineteenth Century
10F: 11, 12
In 10F at 11 (section 1), American Naturalism: Machines, Money and Madness. Novels of American Naturalism by such authors as Theodor Dreiser and Frank Norris are marked by a tragic vision, more seedy than heroic. The sensational violence in these works suggests a deterministic universe populated by atavistic, avaricious actors poised for destruction. This class explores Naturalism’s key texts and contexts in works by Dreiser, Norris, Stephen Crane, Charles Chesnutt, Edith Wharton, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Ellen Glasgow, Jack London, John Steinbeck, and Richard Wright. Dist: LIT; WCult: W, pending faculty approval. Course Group III. CA tags National Traditions and Countertradtions, Genre-narrative. Chaney.
In 10F at 12 (section 2), Bohemia and the 19th Century Novel. By the 1890s, the figure of the Bohemian had become central to a cosmopolitan literary culture eager to assert its autonomy from the marketplace and a restrictive notion of Englishness. It also evoked a range of anxieties bound up with cultural decadence, racial degeneration, transgressive sexuality and the occult. This course will study a series of novels that foreground these issues, including major texts by Oscar Wilde, George Gissing, Marie Corelli, and Joseph Conrad. Dist: LIT; WCult: W, pending faculty approval. Course Group II. CA tags Genre-narrative, National Traditions and Countertraditions. McCann.
72. Literature from the Start of the Twentieth Century to the Present
11W: 2 11S: 10A, 2A
In 11W at 2 (section 3), James Joyce. This seminar will be devoted to the study of Joyce’s Ulysses. After some discussion of Joyce’s Portrait and Dubliners—both of which students are urged to read before the course begins—we will focus on the text of Joyce’s Ulysses, with an emphasis on close reading and an examination of Joyce’s experiments in prose and his place in modern literature. Each student will be asked to write two papers. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group III, CA tags Genre-narrative, Multicultural and Colonial/Postcolonial Studies. Huntington.
In 11S at 2A (section 1), Science, Fiction and Empire. This course investigates how scientific knowledge production contributes to powerful narratives we tell about the body, gender, race, and sexuality, for example. Students critically examine a number of science fiction novels, short stories, and films as well as a broader set of scientific fictions pulled from popular and institutional media. We also explore the historical relationships between science and imperialism, exploration and discovery, conquest and the mining of natural resources. Engaging with postcolonial, feminist, and queer theory, students also read in the field of science studies. Dist: LIT; WCult: CI, pending faculty approval. Course Group III. CA tags National Traditions and Countertraditons, Multicultural and Colonial/Postcolonial Studies, Cultural Studies and Popular Studies. Bahng.
In 11S at 10A (section 2), Toni Morrison This course is an intensive study of Toni Morrison’s major fictional works. We will also read critical responses by and about the author. Required texts may include Sula, Song of Solomon, Beloved, Jazz, Paradise, Playing in the Dark, and critical contributions by writers such as Barbara Smith and Paul Gilroy. Some of the central issues we will examine include alternative constructions of female community and genealogy, and representations of race, class, nationhood and identity. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group III. CA tags National Traditions and Countertraditions, Genre-narrative. Vásquez.
74. Open Topic
Not offered in 2009-2010, may be offered in 2010-2011
75. Seminar in Criticism and Theory
11S: 2A
In 11S at 2A (section 1), High Theory. This seminar for advanced students undertakes a close reading of difficult texts in philosophy and in literary and cultural theory. We will include secondary literature to help contextualize the primary texts under study, but the emphasis is on close reading to develop original and critical approaches to these challenging works. Class will be based largely around group discussion, with lectures and prepared student presentations to help stimulate conversation. Students can help to shape the syllabus by proposing texts they wish to work on together. Representative authors we might read in this class include Deleuze, Derrida, Badiou, Agamben, Heidegger, Virilio, Zizek, Lyotard, and others. Dist: LIT. Course Group IV. Evens.
SECTION V: CREATIVE WRITING
Introductory Creative Writing Course
80. Creative Writing
All terms: Arrange
This course offers a workshop in fiction and poetry. Seminar-sized classes meet twice a week plus individual conferences. Open to sophomores, juniors, and seniors, and to first-year students who have completed Writing 5 (or have exemption status).
Procedures for enrolling in English 80: To gain admission to English 80, students must fill out an application, available on-line or in the English Department office, and submit it to the English office no later than the last day of classes of the term preceding the one in which they wish to enroll. Deadline for equal consideration for admittance is the last day of classes in the term preceding the course. Late applications will be accepted, but held until the add/drop period and reviewed if vacancies occur. Please answer all questions on the application and make sure your name is legible. Be sure to indicate clearly on your application the sections(s) of 80 for which you are applying. If you do not indicate which sections work with your schedule, we will place you in whatever section is available. Students should then enroll in three other courses. If admitted to English 80, students can then drop one of the other courses. Changing sections after enrollment is highly discouraged and will not be possible except in extenuating circumstances. English 80 is the prerequisite to all other Creative Writing courses. It carries major or minor credit. Dist: ART. Hebert, Huntington, Mathis, Tudish, Lenhart, O’Malley, Finch, Sharlet.
Intermediate Creative Writing Courses
Students who wish to enroll in an intermediate Creative Writing Course must read the appropriate “How to Apply to English 81, 82 or 83” document, available on-line and in the English Department, and answer all the questions asked in a cover letter. They should also submit a five-eight page writing sample, as stated in each of the course descriptions below. Deadline for equal consideration for admittance is the last day of classes in the term preceding the course. Late applications will be accepted, but held until the add/drop period and reviewed if vacancies occur. Students should then register for three other courses, not including the Creative Writing course. Students accepted into Creative Writing 81, 82 and 83 will be notified before the first day of class. To secure their spot in the class, students must be present at the first meeting. At that time, students will be given a permission card and can then drop one of their other courses and enroll in the Creative Writing course. The intermediate courses in Creative Writing may each be taken a second time for credit.
81. Creative Writing: Poetry
11W, 12W: Arrange
Continued work in the writing of poetry, focusing on the development of craft, image, and voice, as well as the process of revision. The class proceeds by means of group work-shops on student writing, individual conferences with the instructor, and analysis of poems by contemporary writers.
Prerequisite: English 80 and permission of the instructor. Please read the “How To Apply To English 81, 82 or 83” document, available on-line and from the English Department, and answer all of the questions asked in a cover letter. Students should submit a five-eight page writing sample of their poetry to the administrative assistant of the English Department. Deadline for equal consideration for admittance is the last day of classes in the term preceding the course. Late applications will be accepted, but held until the add/drop period and reviewed if vacancies occur. Dist: ART. Huntington, Mathis.
82. Creative Writing: Fiction
10F, 11W, 11S, 11F, 12W, 12S: Arrange
Continued work in the writing of fiction, focusing on short stories, although students may experiment with the novel. The class proceeds by means of group workshops on student writing, individual conferences with the instructor, and analysis of short stories by contemporary writers. Constant revision is required.
Prerequisite: English 80 and permission of the instructor. Please read the “How To Apply To English 81, 82 or 83” document, available on-line and from the English Department, and answer all of the questions asked in a cover letter. Students should submit a five-eight page writing sample of their fiction to the administrative assistant of the English Department. Deadline for equal consideration for admittance is the last day of classes in the term preceding the course. Late applications will be accepted, but held until the add/drop period and reviewed if vacancies occur. Dist: ART. Hebert, O’Malley, Tudish.
83. Creative Writing: Literary Nonfiction
11W, 12W: Arrange
This course offers students an overview of the conventions, genres and techniques of narrative-nonfiction writing. The class proceeds by means of group workshops on student writing, individual conferences with the instructor, and analysis of classic works of literary nonfiction. Prerequisite: English 80 and permission of the instructor. Please read the “How To Apply To English 81, 82 or 83” document, available on-line and from the English Department, and answer all of the questions asked in a cover letter. Students should submit a five-to-eight-page writing sample to the administrative assistant of the English Department by the last day of the term preceding the term in which they wish to enroll. Dist: ART. CA tag Creative Writing. No Course Group designation. Tudish, Sharlet.
Advanced Creative Writing Courses
85. Senior Workshop in Poetry, Prose Fiction and Nonfiction
10F, 11W, 11F, 12W: Arrange
This course is offered in the fall of senior year for English majors and minors concentrating in Creative Writing. Each student will undertake a manuscript of poems, fiction, or literary nonfiction. All students who wish to enroll must submit an 8 to 12 page writing sample to the administrative assistant of the English Department by May 15 of the spring term preceding their senior year. Please also read the “How to Apply to English 85” document, available on-line and from the English Department, and answer all of the questions asked in a cover letter. Prerequisite: English 80 and 81, 82, or 83.
97. Creative Writing Project
All terms: Arrange
A tutorial course to be designed by the student with the assistance of a member of the Creative Writing Faculty willing to supervise it. This course is intended for the purpose of producing a significant manuscript of fiction, nonfiction or poetry. It carries major credit only for English majors concentrating in Creative Writing. English majors concentrating in Creative Writing must request permission to take English 97 (one or two terms) during fall of senior year. Decisions regarding admission to English 97 will not be made before fall term of senior year. Prerequisite: Permission of the Director of Creative Writing.
98. Honors Course in Creative Writing
All terms: Arrange
To be arranged in fall term of senior year. Independent study under the direction of a faculty adviser. Honors majors will elect this course in each term in which they are pursuing Honors projects. For more information, see “English Honors Program,” above, and consult the “Guide to Honors” booklet available in the English Department.
Other Creative Writing Courses
The courses listed below, described elsewhere, carry the Concentration Area tag “Creative Writing” and may be used to fulfill the Creative Writing concentration area requirements as well as English major course requirements.
In 11W at 2, English 60.4, The Poetics of Literary Practice
In 11W at 2A, English 60.3, Evidence of Things Not Seen: Advanced Creative Nonfiction
In 11S at 10A, English 60.6, Writers at Work
In 11S at 10A, English 60.7, The Poem in Context
SECTION VI: FOREIGN STUDY COURSES
90. English Study Abroad I
10F: D.F.S.P. (Glasgow, Trinidad) 11F: D.F.S.P. (Glasgow, Dublin
Major credit for this course is awarded to students who satisfactorily complete a course of study elected as part of one of the Department’s three Foreign Study Programs (FSPs). On the Glasgow FSP, this will be a course of study in literature at the University of Glasgow. On the Trinidad FSP, this will be a course of study in literature at the University of the West Indies. On the Dublin FSP, this will be a course of study in the English Department at Trinity College Dublin (TCD). Of the three courses at TCD at least one must be in Irish literature. Students are also required to do an independent study project on some aspect of Irish literature or culture, culminating in a long essay; the grade for the independent study is factored into the grade for the Irish literature course.
Glasgow and Dublin Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Trinidad Dist: LIT; WCult: NW.
91. English Study Abroad II
10F: D.F.S.P. (Glasgow, Trinidad) 11F: D.F.S.P. (Glasgow, Dublin
Major credit for this course is awarded to students who satisfactorily complete a course of study elected as part of one of the Department’s three Foreign Study Programs (FSPs). On the Glasgow FSP, this will be a course of study in literature at the University of Glasgow. On the Trinidad FSP, this will be a course of study in literature at the University of the West Indies. On the Dublin FSP, this will be a course of study in the English Department at Trinity College Dublin (TCD). Of the three courses at TCD at least one must be in Irish literature. Students are also required to do an independent study project on some aspect of Irish literature or culture, culminating in a long essay; the grade for the independent study is factored into the grade for the Irish literature course.
Glasgow and Dublin Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Trinidad Dist: LIT; WCult: NW.
92. English Study Abroad III
10F: D.F.S.P. (Glasgow, Trinidad) 11F: D.F.S.P. (Glasgow, Dublin
One college credit (not major or minor credit) for this course is awarded to students who satisfactorily complete a course of study elected as part of one of the Department’s three Foreign Study Programs (FSPs). The purpose of English 92, when taken in Glasgow, is to enhance the experience of studying English and Scottish literature in a global, and more specifically British, context. The requirement may be fulfilled in one of three ways: by taking a course devoted to the study of European literature or the history of the English language; by taking a course in a field clearly relevant to the study of literature in English (e.g., history, art history, philosophy, media studies); by taking a course that immerses the student in some aspect of Scottish, British, or Celtic language, literature, culture or history. This course must be approved by the program director. On the Trinidad FSP, this will be a course of study in West Indian history and culture. On the Dublin FSP, this will be a course of study in the English Department at Trinity College Dublin (TCD). Of the three courses at TCD at least one must be in Irish literature. Students are also required to do an independent study project on some aspect of Irish literature or culture, culminating in a long essay; the grade for the independent study is factored into the grade for the Irish literature course.
Glasgow Dist: Varies; Trinidad Dist: INT or SOC; Dublin Dist: LIT.
Please note: An additional UWI course on Caribbean culture will explore topics that may include the history, anthropology, music and festivals of the Caribbean.
SECTION VII: INDEPENDENT STUDY AND HONORS
96. Reading Course
All terms: Arrange
A tutorial course to be designed by the student with the assistance of a member of the English Department willing to supervise it. This course is available, as an occasional privilege, to upperclassmen who have demonstrated their ability to do independent work. During the term prior to taking the course, applicants must consult the Department Vice Chair to make arrangements for approval of the project.
(Note: English 96 does not normally count towards the English major or minor, though in special circumstances the C.D.C. may approve occasional exceptions to that rule. Students seeking such an exception are asked to petition the C.D.C. before taking English 96. English 96 may not be used to satisfy course group requirements.)
98. Honors Course in Critical Studies
All terms: Arrange
Independent study under the direction of a faculty adviser. Honors majors will elect this course in each term in which they are pursuing Honors projects. For more information, see “English Honors Program,” above, and consult the “Guide to Honors” booklet available in the English Department.