| Survey of English Literature I English 3010 Prof. R. Hinds Mon/Thu 5:30-8:00PM (Online) Tues 5:30-8:00PM (In-person) Hybrid Synchronous 7/15-8/15 | 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 broad period in the context of the political, scientific, and religious changes that Britain experienced over the course of those centuries. It will also study some of the major 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. M. McGlynn Tues 11:00-1:41PM Hybrid Asynchronous 6/10-7/11 | In making a survey of the last 300 years of British literature, this class will pay particular attention to the representations of work and leisure and how wealth and deprivation are depicted. Throughout the term, we will explore constructions of urban and rural, of rich and poor, of artist and worker, with special focus on enslaved and precarious labor, domestic workers, and snobbery. 2/3rds of the work for ENG 3015 will take place asynchronously; attendance for all five in-person class sessions is mandatory. |
| Survey of Caribbean Literature English 3038 Prof. K. Frank Mon/Tues/Thu 2:00-4:41PM Online Synchronous 6/10-7/11 | The Politics of Caribbean Romance. Skinny Fabulous’ soca song “Shameless” and Qyor’s reggae song “I’ll Be Waiting” are just two among many songs that send entirely different messages about relationships between Caribbean women and men. In this course, we will focus particularly on those relationships in Caribbean literature. What myths or fantasies about the Caribbean and Caribbeanness, constructed externally or internally, inform the dynamics of “romantic” or purely exploitative, sexual Caribbean relationships? Additionally, how do issues such as authenticity and creolization, among others, pertain to such liaisons? Involving African-Caribbean, Asian-Caribbean, and European-Caribbean experiences, we will explore these matters by reading pertinent texts, listening to and/or watching videos of some pertinent music, and we will likely watch one film. |
| Shakespeare English 4140 Prof C. Campbell Mon/Tues/Thu 11:00-12:53PM Hybrid Asynchronous 7/15-8/15 | This course offers an in-depth survey of the work of William Shakespeare, plausibly regarded 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. |
| Oscar Wilde English 4380 Prof. O’Toole Tues 2:00-4:30PM Hybrid Asynchronous 7/15-8/15 | Oscar Wilde in Five Acts “The truth,” Oscar Wilde once quipped, “is rarely pure and never simple.” This witticism aptly describes both Wilde’s own life—he was a husband and father who was eventually imprisoned for “gross indecency with other male persons”—and his life’s work: essays, poems, plays, and fiction that have made him one of the most widely read and translated authors in the English language. In this course, we consider the life and literature of Oscar Wilde within the context of late-Victorian England, renowned as much for its scandalous challenges to the status quo as for its excessive concern for propriety. Wilde’s own challenges came in the form of such works as the comic masterpiece The Importance of Being Earnest, his essay on literature “The Decay of Lying,” and his only novel, published to outrage and protest in 1890, The Picture of Dorian Gray. In addition to reading these works, we investigate the Aesthetic and Decadent movements in late-century arts and culture, the public scandal surrounding Wilde’s infamous court trials, and Wilde’s enduring legacy, including popular contemporary works such as Moisés Kaufman’s off-Broadway hit Gross Indecency and Virgil Marti’s immersive installation For Oscar Wilde. |
| Twentieth-Century British Lit. English 4420 Prof. M. Eatough Tues 2:00-4:30PM Online Synchronous 7/15-8/15 | A multi-genre examination of works of literary, cultural, and historical significance, this course will discuss such movements as high modernism, post-war realism, and postmodernism, as well as recent literary developments on the British Isles. Poetry, drama, short fiction, and novels will be included, as may films and nonfiction works. Their intellectual, ideological, and aesthetic contexts will be emphasized. Colonial and independence fiction from throughout the British Empire may be covered, as may Scottish, Irish, Welsh, and English texts. Authors to be studied might include Joyce, Yeats, Woolf, Eliot, Rushdie, Heaney, and Ishiguro. For students with two other upper-level (3000-level or above) English courses, this course may serve as the capstone for the Tier III requirement. |
| The Modern Short Story English 4450 Prof. R. Walker Tues 2:00-4:41PM Hybrid Asynchronous 6/10-7/11 | This course is about one of the newest genres in all of literary history, the short story. The short story, though influenced by much older literary genres, did not truly congeal into a discrete genre of its own until the nineteenth century. Its youth provides us the rare opportunity to develop a working sense of its global history within a course’s time—a feat that would be all but impossible with some of the short story’s older cousins, such as drama and poetry. While our focus will be on the history and the development of the short story, we will pay close attention to individual exemplars of the genre. The works of the short story’s virtuosos—Edgar Allan Poe, Kate Chopin, Charles Chesnutt, and Anton Chekhov among them—will be our guides, and these author’s exquisite fictions will furnish the occasions for close literary analysis. |