| Survey of English Literature I English 3010 Prof. R. Hinds Tues/Thu 5:50-7:05PM | This course surveys British literature from the earliest examples of the Middle Ages through the 16th and 17th centuries. It will consider selected works from this broadperiod in the context of the political, scientific, and religious changes that Britain experiences over the course of those centuries. It will also study some of themajor contributions made by English dramatists— Shakespeare as well as other figures—to this tradition. Students will have the opportunity to explore shifting definitions of race, gender, sexuality, and national identity. We will also examine literary developments And transformations in genre, from Beowulf through chivalric romance to Milton’s grand epic Paradise Lost, which shapes and influences much of subsequent literature in English. |
| Survey of English Literature II English 3015 Prof. G. Hentzi Tue/Thu 10:45-12:00PM | This course offers an overview of more than three centuries of English, Irish, and Commonwealth literature in the major genres of fiction and non-fiction prose, poetry, and drama. Beginning with the Restoration, we will read characteristic works from all the major historical periods down to the present day, including the eighteenth century, the Romantic and Victorian eras, the Modern period, the second half of the twentieth century, and the first decades of the twenty-first. Authors to be studied include John Dryden, William Congreve, Alexander Pope, Edward Gibbon, Jane Austen, William Wordsworth, John Keats, John Ruskin, Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning, Oscar Wilde, Joseph Conrad, D. H. Lawrence, George Orwell, Philip Larkin, V. S. Naipaul, Derek Walcott, and Zadie Smith. |
| Survey of American Literature I English 3020 Prof. R. Rodriguez Mon/Wed 10:45-12:00PM | What if we consider the idea of America’s greatness (often symbolized by the image of the “city upon a hill”) from the perspective of the citizens of the city underground: the colonized, scapegoats, outlaws, slaves, women, immigrants, the poor, etc.? How might such a shift in viewpoint impact our understanding of the nation’s founding concepts and ideals: utopia, community, citizenship, equality, fellowship, democracy, liberty, and other life pursuits? In addition to the survey’s focus on representative texts and genres, our course will tap American literature’s utopian vein and engage in a critical and imaginative assessment of writers invested in thinking about workable alternatives to the status quo. Among the writers considered will be Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, Michel de Montaigne, William Bradford, Thomas Morton, Anne Hutchinson, Salem’s witch hunters and their victims, Mary Rowlandson, Phillis Wheatley, Olaudah Equiano, William Apess, Edgar Allan Poe, David Walker, Herman Melville, Frederick Douglass, John Rollin Ridge (“Yellow Bird”), Walt Whitman, and Hannah Crafts. |
| American Literature II 1865 to Present English 3025 Prof. E. Richardson Wed 6:05-9:00PM Online-Synchronous | In this class, we will explore a swath of classic and unconventional American literature and culture from 1865 to the present, focusing on protest, civil rights, and social change. We will interpret texts by close reading formal literary strategies related to the narrative plot, character formation, imagery, rhetoric, and tone. We will also analyze material attending to the expression meaning of freedom and citizenship, labor and class, government regulations, afterlives of slavery, settler colonialism, and LGBTQ rights. These topics pose a series of intriguing questions in this course: How does the individual protagonist tell a larger story of America and society? How might collaborative writing substantiate and detail our conception of democracy? To what extent are the aesthetics (or artistry) of literature shaped or determined by a protest? What’s the difference between art and protest? And above all else, when there is tension, conflict, cultural shifts, reactionary responses, revolution, and resolutions achieved and unrealized America, what can literature do? Throughout the course, we will engage with these questions and more as we explore the power of literature to shape our understanding of the world around us. Authors include Upton Sinclair, W.E.B Du Bois, Charlotte Gilman Perkins, Georgia Douglas, Claude McKay, Allen Ginsberg, James Baldwin, John Okada, Rachel Carson, Joy Harjo, and Raquel Salas Rivera |
| Literatures of Global South English 3030 TBA Mon/Wed 4:10-5:25PM | This course surveys developments in the history and aesthetics of literature from the region known as the Global South. Students will examine how the termGlobal South came to identify a diverse collection of twentieth- and twenty-first century literature from across Africa, Asia, and Central and South America. Thecourse’s comparative orientation will focus on the social, cultural, and economic issues addressed by these literatures, including (but not limited to) the effects of the international division of labor and of capitalist extraction, the uneven consequences of climate change, and the creation of transnational political solidarities (e.g., Bandung and BRICS). |
| Survey of Caribbean Literature In English English 3038 Prof. R. Salois Tues/Thu 2:30-3:45PM | This course charts the development of Caribbean literature in English from the 19th century to the present and emphasizes its formal and thematic aspects. Special attention is given to the influence of Caribbean Geography and Caribbean history on its literature. Themes include anti-imperialism and nationalism, globalization, migration and exile, the treatment of race, the treatment of women and carnivalesque subversions. |
| Latino/a Literature in the U.S. English 3059 Prof. L. Santana Mon/Wed 12:50-2:05PM | This course examines significant works of literature written in English by Latinos and Latinas in the U.S. It concentrates on novels, short stories, and essays from the late 19th century to the present. Special attention is given to issues of cultural identity, social class, race, and gender, as well as bilingualism and code-switching. While focusing on the diversity of the Latino, a literary expression, this course also explores the sociopolitical contexts in which the works emerged and the commonalities and differences of the experiences of the Latin American diasporas in the U.S. (Students will receive credit for CMP 3059, ENG 3059, or LTS 3059. These courses may substitute for each other with the F-replacement option. |
| Creative Journalism English 3600 TBA Wed 2:30-5:25PM | What must a journalist do to move beyond the bare bones of the news? How does the journalist, trained to gather facts and evidence, achieve a personal style that is both honest and imaginative? The class explores how creative journalists combine the techniques of the novelist with those of the journalist. In addition to writing exercises and stories, students will examine the works of such creative journalists as Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Norman Mailer, Joseph Mitchell, V. S. Naipaul, Gay Talese, John A. Williams, and Tom Wolfe. |
| Elements of Poetry English 3640 TBA Mon/Wed 2:30 – 3:45PM | This is a course in using and mastering language and the art of metaphor. Students find their own poetic voices by perceiving worldly objects and then transforming those perceptions into poetic images that reflect their own deepest emotions. While studying and memorizing poems by a wide spectrum of writers, including Shakespeare, W.H. Auden, Langston Hughes, Allen Ginsberg, and Gwendolyn Brooks, they write and critique their own. Regular conferences. |
| Advanced Essay Writing English 3680 Prof. C. Mead Mon/Wed 2:30 – 3:45PM | The goal of this course is to expand the writer’s sense of style by increasing sensitivity to tools such as metaphor, humor, irony, and voice. Through assigned readings and class discussions, individual and small group conferenceswith the professor, and revision, students will experiment with distinctive stylistic options. Using a variety of sentence types and patterns to improve how their writing flows, students will explore creative paragraphing and sectioning to achieve different effects; learn to use grammatical and mechanical devices to control rhythm and meaning; study how the sounds of words and their associations can enhance vividness; and gain appreciation for the processes of revision and its opportunities. Students will develop a sense of their unique style and a repertoire of tools to drawfrom in a variety of writing occasions. |
| Introduction to Linguistics English 3700 Prof. N. Lee Tue/Thu 5:50 – 7:05PM | ENG/COM 3700: Introduction to Linguistics: The Study of Language This course is an introductory survey of the field of linguistics — the scientific study of language. What is the nature of human language? Is speaking an instinctual or learned behavior? In this course, we will discover how human language is a complex but law-governed mental system, capable of open-ended linguistic creativity — and imbued with social power and meaning. We will not only examine varieties of English, but will also investigate the diverse range of languages spoken and signed around the world, as we look at the following questions: What do a language’s speakers know about the language’s word structure (morphology), sentence structure (syntax), sentence meaning (semantics and pragmatics), and pronunciation (phonetics and phonology)? How do children acquire this knowledge, and why do they acquire it so much more quickly and easily than adults do (language acquisition)? How is language processed in the brain (neurolinguistics)? How does linguistic variation interact with class, race, gender, and other socially meaningful categories (sociolinguistics)? And how do dialects and languages change over time (historical linguistics)? This course also explores applications to the (bilingual or foreign-language) classroom, speech pathology, communication sciences and disorders, technology and computer science, literary analysis, translation studies, psychology, sociology, and other disciplinary interests. |
| Modern Drama English 3770 Prof. S. Vella Mon/Wed 12:50 – 2:05PM | This course examines dramatic texts that emerged around the world from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries. Plays from a wide range of languages, cultures, and geographical locations—including selections from Europe, the Americas, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia—will be considered in conversation with changes in production economics, staging technology, and acting technique. This period witnessed an unprecedented mobility for theatre artists and styles, facilitated by touring, film and photography, and wider availability of translations. This mobility, however, took place in a situation of uneven power dynamics facilitated by global colonialism and capitalism. We will therefore encounter these plays and artists in their socio-political contexts and will emphasize consideration of the ethical stakes of cross-cultural influence. |
| Holocaust Literature English 3810 Prof. S. Valente Tues 4:10 – 5:25PM Hybrid Asynchronous | The Holocaust, the destruction of European Jewry, is often termed an unspeakable,unimaginable, and unrepresentable event. Through a selection of eyewitnesstestimony, novels, stories, poetry, and art, this course examines how such workscontribute to our understanding of history and literature and bear on some of themajor arguments and themes around Holocaust fiction and literature including theethics of representation; historical investigation vs personal accounts; differentnarrative forms; different generational accounts; responses to Holocaust narratives;and Holocaust denial. Authors may include, but are not limited to: Tadeusz Borowski;Paul Celan; Eva Hoffman; Imre Kertesz; Primo Levi; Art Spiegelman; and DanielMendelsohn. (Students may receive credit for ENG 3810, HIS 3810, or JWS 3810.These courses may substitute for each other in the F-grade replacement policy.) |
| Topics in Film: Latinx Film English 3940 Prof. J. Caroccio Maldonado Mon/Wed 9:05 – 10:20AM Online Synchronous | This course provides an opportunity to study important filmmakers, genres, national cinemas, and themes not found or only touched on in other film courses. Representative subjects include the films of Ingmar Bergman, Asian cinema, Eastern European film before and after the fall of Communism, the animated film, the image of the city, and the samurai film and the western. This format allows for an intensive examination of such topics, which may vary from semester. Students may enroll in this course more than once if the topic is different. |
| Topics in Literature: Literature and Photography English 3950 Prof. C. Grandy Tue/Thu 10:45-12:00PM | Photography is a versatile medium: an artform, a tool for government and police surveillance, a memory aid, and, more recently, a means of digital communication. This course explores how literature and photography have impacted each other, from the time leading up to the arrival of photographic technology in 1839 to the present. We will read literary works of poetry, non-fiction, memoir, documentary, and fiction alongside analog and digital photographs. How was photography originally greeted by artists and social theorists? How have writers employed photography metaphorically or literally? What collaborative projects have emerged using the formal capacities of both mediums? Writers we will read include Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglass, Muriel Rukeyser, Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag, Deborah Willis, Anne Carson, and Robin Coste Lewis; photographers will include Henry Fox Talbot, Eadweard Muybridge, Walker Evans, Diane Arbus, Zoe Leonard, Andreas Gursky, Carrie Mae Weems, and Jeff Wall. Some topics and themes we will explore include identification and racial profiling, memory and loss, voyeurism, documentary ethics, and photography as fiction. |
| Sociolinguistics: Language Variation & Social Identity English 3960 Prof. N. Lee Tue/Thu 2:30PM-3:45PM | Language varies — across situations, across individuals, and over time — both reflecting and constructing our social order. This course introduces variationist sociolinguistics, which seeks to describe and explain the linguistic and social factors that underlie that variation. We’ll survey the patterning of speech variation by region, social class, age, ethnicity and racialized identity, gender, sexuality, and other identities we construct (as nerds or frat stars, jocks or burnouts, urbanites or rural types). We’ll also explore how linguistic variation relates to language change and history. You will get hands-on with quantitative methods that will help us characterize the relationship between language and society, as you collect and analyze real life language data on particular cases of variation. |
| The Globalization of English English 4015 Prof. B. Schreiber Mon/Wed 2:30 – 3:45PM | This course investigates the state of English in the world today—how the English language aids globalization, and how globalization changes English as it becomes central across speech communities. After studying the historical andgeopolitical bases for the rise of English as a global language, the course explores the implications of decolonization, diaspora communities, and digital technology fordiversifying the structure, norms, and usage of the English language. Students will discuss the controversial history, changing attitudes, new competencies, and competing ideologies associated with English both globally and locally.Students will receive credit for ENG 4015, COM 4015, or SOC 4015. These courses may not substitute for each other in the F-grade replacement policy. |
| Medieval Literature English 4110 Prof. C. Christoforatou Mon/Wed 10:45AM-12:00PM | IMAGES OF THE SELF AND OF THE WORLD IN MEDIEVAL LIT. Medieval readers had a keen interest in the nature of the world, places both near and far, and were avid consumers of tales of distant places and people. Their literature was at the heart of the creation of western visions of natural and human diversity, taking on the themes of travel, exploration, alienation, exile, faith, and spirituality. In its depth and breath, the literature they produced continues to inspire discussion on philosophical, anthropological, and cosmological matters. This course seeks to foster an understanding of the enduring human values that unite the different cultures and literary traditions we will study. We will read literature in English and in translation that spans three continents and a period of well over 600 years. The readings will allow us to examine the nature of the medieval cosmos and the role of the individual in it. They include selections from medieval fictional travelogues such as Mandeville’s Book of Travels, Pseudo-Callisthenes’ Alexander Romance, a Medieval Greek travel-narrative, a selection of romances produced by female authors, and the only surviving spiritual autobiography by a medieval laywoman, Margery Kempe. Several satires will also be included, which collectively will offer insight into medieval individual’s relationship to faith, society, nature, and the foreign. To the extent that the class is interested in the material culture of the Middle Ages, we will access digitized archives and museum collections of illuminated manuscripts, relics, tapestries, mosaics, and ivories that will allow us to study the cultural influences that allowed medieval civilizations to evolve. |
| Chaucer English 4120 Prof. H. Ramdass Mon/Wed 5:50-7:05PM | This course is devoted to an intensive study of the Canterbury Tales, a work that founds the English literary tradition. Written at the end of the fourteenth century, Geoffrey Chaucer’s composition is a fascinating medley of stories that range from the serious and pious, to the unabashedly earthy and outrageously funny.The tales are told by a cast of memorable pilgrims that include a dashing knight, a drunken miller, a bookish young scholar, a monk, a conniving pardoner, a self-indulgent nun, and a bold and enterprising Wife. Students are introduced to a range of genres—from epic, satire, allegory and romance to fable, elegy, dream-vision, autobiography, and travel narrative. In piecing together Chaucer’s portraitof late medieval society, readers will discover how the Poet reflects and distorts social and political realities, rendering a colorful portrait of late medieval life that appears strangely familiar six hundred years later. |
| Shakespeare English 4140 Prof. L. Silberman Mon/Wed 10:45-12:00PM | This course offers an in-depth survey of the work of William Shakespeare, plausiblyregarded as one of the greatest writers in the English language. Students will examine a range of Shakespeare’s works, from early plays heavily influenced by classical models through his great comedies and tragedies to his late romances. The course will consider these works in the context of political, religious, and cultural issues of Shakespeare’s time and in light of particular thematic concerns recurring in Shakespeare’s work. We will analyze the plays both as dramatic works intended to be performed and as literary productions that reward careful close reading. |
| Romanticism English 4300 Prof. C. Jordan Mon/Wed 4:10-5:25PM | This course will examine the nuances of Romanticism. In addition to exploring the Romantic obsession with ecstasy and the voluptuous surrender to beauty and imagination so evident in the Romantic writers, we will examine the darker, more sinister side of Romantic literature. The Satanic Hero and Fatal Woman motifs will be looked at from different perspectives and works dealing with sexual and psychological vampirism will be examined. The semester’s reading will cover a variety of literary forms by Romantic writers, as well as by Victorian writers influenced by Romantic ideology and themes. Readings will include Emily Bronte’s novel of ferocious obsessive desire—Wuthering Heights, and Thomas Hardy’s anti-Romantic novel about a woman whose beauty and innocence proved to be the cause of her lethal seduction—Tess of the D’Urbervilles. The novel’s spectacular ending takes place amidst the pagan monuments of Stonehenge. We will luxuriate in the exquisite poetry of John Keats where bewitching enchantresses, magical bedchambers, and landscapes of desire, lure the reader into a world of tantalizing beauty, and be drawn into the forbidden, opium influenced dreamscapes of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. We will read two exciting women poets, Mary Robinson and Anna Letitia Barbauld. These women, as well as being accomplished poets at a time when women did not have the vote and could not enter the university, led more adventurous and daring lives than their male counterparts. These are just a few of the interesting writers we will be discussing next semester. |
| Victorian Literature English 4310 Prof. K. Frank Tues/Thu 5:50-7:05PM | “The Pursuit of Happiness?” In business, utilitarianism implies an obligation to operate so as to maximize happiness and minimize suffering, which seems to coincide with romanticism in business, wherein business practices are not only about profit, but are also about facilitating human experiences and relations. What does Victorian poetry and prose suggest about how these ideals inform challenging issues of those times, such as industrialization and urbanization, social im/mobility, immigration and the expansion of empire, and how might these texts help us better understand and address similar issues in our own time? We will examine these matters in works by authors such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Thomas Carlyle, Joseph Conrad, Charles Darwin, Rudyard Kipling, George Eliot, Christina Rossetti, and Alfred Tennyson, among others. |
| Readings in Queer Literature, Media, and Theory English 4525 Prof. R. Walker Tues/Thu 2:30PM-3:45PM | What unites the many groups comprising the sprawling acronym LGBTQ? It is the fact that they all desire in ways out of keeping with prevailing norms governing gender, whether it be that they are attracted to people of the same sex or that their perception of their gender does not correspond with their sex (to name only a couple of the many possibilities). Ranging from the nineteenth century to the present, this course focuses on the rich literature that has put the experiences of this multifarious group front and center. In studying literature written about LGBTQ people—some of it written before any subgroup in this acronym even had a name—students will have the opportunity to weigh the costs and benefits of visibility and categorization for this diverse demographic (such as it is). To what extent do categories help or harm gender-nonconforming people? What are the costs and benefits of being “out” or “in,” and does the answer to this question hinge on other factors of a person’s identity? |
| Horror Film English 4745 Prof. M. Eatough Mon/Wed 12:50-2:05PM | Why do readers like scary stories? What do such stories do for us on an emotional and psychological level—and how do they help us to understand the world in which we live? In this class, we will examine some of the most highly regarded and controversial horror stories from the last hundred years, from early classics by H. P. Lovecraft and Shirley Jackson to more recent work in cosmic horror, body horror, psychological horror, and weird fiction. In doing so, we will ask what these texts tell us about the social anxieties of their day. How does horror fiction give tangible form to concerns about the shape and structure of modern society? Does horror fiction by definition reinforce fears about outsiders and the unknown, or can it also be used to call attention to the hidden violence lurking within familiar everyday life? Possible authors may include Stephen Graham Jones, Mariana Enríquez, Thomas Ligotti, Jeff Vandermeer, Octavia Butler, Kathe Koja, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Mónica Ojeda, Agustina Bazterrica, Stephen King, Brian Evenson, Michael Cisco, H. P. Lovecraft, and Shirley Jackson, as well as comics by Charles Burns and Junji Ito and films by Wes Craven, Jordan Peele, and George Romero. |
| Science Fiction English 4760 Prof. F. Cioffi Tues/Thu 10:45-12:00PM | Science fiction explores other worlds, usually ones that are nonexistent at present but are possible—maybe even probable—extensions of our own or of an author’s landscape into very different, often dangerous realms. In this course, we will explore what insights this genre can offer about our own world and society, about those of the author, or about the human psyche itself—insights that more realistic genres might avoid or overlook. We will read some relatively recent (post-WWII) science fiction novels, including works by American, Polish, Japanese, and Russian writers. One text will be a graphic novel (Burns) and one a film (Marker) There is quite a lot of reading in this capstone course, but it should be fun and (I hope) compelling and timely! All writing (3 papers/exams) will be done in class. Reading List [themes appear in brackets]: John Wyndham, The Midwich Cuckoos (1957) [Superhuman kids implanted in human mothers] Chris Marker, La Jetée (film) (1963) [Post-holocaust struggles of survivors] Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five (1969) [World War II, time travel, and aliens] Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, Roadside Picnic (1972) [Alien invasion] Stanisław Lem, The Futurological Congress (1974) [Chemical modification of consciousness] Octavia Butler, Kindred (1979) [Slavery, Civil War, time travel] Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) [Near future world totally subjugating women] Yoko Ogawa, The Memory Police (1994) [Alternate world/history] Charles Burns, Black Hole (2005) [Weird physical alterations caused by immorality] Ling Ma, Severance (2018) [Post-holocaust desolation] Gish Jen, The Resisters (2020) [Women’s baseball team in a near future] |
| Advanced Topics in Language: The Making of the New World English 4950 Prof. Yoon Mon/Wed 5:50-7:05PM | Every year, reports of lost biodiversity fill the news; animals are classified according to risk status; and popular entertainment increasingly offers dire visions of extinction events. Contemporary portrayals of extinction often dwell on the novelty of confronting it and the urgency of halting its progress. Yet extinction has been a consistent and defining phenomenon in the American hemisphere since its colonization, unfolding in various modalities: as an historical narrative, an affective haunt, an ecological danger, and a colonial practice. This course seeks to make sense of the importance of extinction as both a foundational narrative and a lived reality of the “New World.” We will examine how extinction in multiple forms accompanied the establishment of early colonial societies, and simultaneously chart an alternative history of the American democracy through literary records that bear witness to how settlers’ claims of possession meant dispossession for other humans, animals, and plants on large scales. When extinction is imposed by forces of colonization, racism, sexism, anthropocentrism, and war, what possibilities of evasion or survival are there? What forms of remembrance can be had for extinguished lives? How does the idea of extinction push us to rethink how we understand life itself? Readings will include texts by Mary Rowlandson, James Fenimore Cooper, William Apess, Herman Melville, and William Faulkner. Primary texts will be complemented by secondary literature drawn from Indigenous Studies, Black Studies, legal scholarship, and feminist theory. |