The College Catalogue

First-Year Seminars in English Composition and Literature

These courses are open to first-year students. The main purpose of the first-year seminars (no matter what the topic or reading list) is to give first-year students extensive practice in reading and writing analytically. Each seminar is normally limited to sixteen students and includes discussion, outside reading, frequent papers, and individual conferences on writing problems. For a full description of first-year seminars, see the First-Year Seminar section.

10 {1034} c. Lesbian Personae. Spring 2013. Peter Coviello. (Same as Gay and Lesbian Studies 20 {1034} and Gender and Women’s Studies 23 {1034}.)

13 {1016} c. Hawthorne. Fall 2012. William Watterson.

16 {1027} c. Fan Fictions and Cult Classics. Fall 2012. Megan Cook.

20 {1035} c. African American Children’s Literature. Fall 2012. Elizabeth Muther. (Same as Africana Studies 20 {1035}.)

26 {1026} c. Fictions of Freedom. Fall 2012. Tess Chakkalakal. (Same as Africana Studies 16 {1026}.)

27 {1024} c. Love and Trouble: Black Women Writers. Fall 2012. Guy Mark Foster. (Same as Africana Studies 27 {1024}.)

28 {1044} c. Queer Gardens. Fall 2012. Terri Nickel. (Same as Gay and Lesbian Studies 28 {1044}.)

29 {1043} c. Fact and Fiction. Fall 2012. Brock Clarke.

Introductory Courses in Literature

104–110 {1104–1110}. Primarily intended for first- and second-year students, and for juniors and seniors with no prior experience in college literature courses. (Specific content and focus of each course will vary with the instructor.)

104 {1104} c. From Page to Screen: Film Adaptation and Narrative. Spring 2013. Aviva Briefel.

Explores the topic of “adaptation,” specifically, the ways in which cinematic texts transform literary narratives into visual forms. Begins with the premise that every adaptation is an interpretation, a rewriting/rethinking of an original text that offers an analysis of that text. Central to class discussions is close attention to the differences and similarities in the ways in which written and visual texts approach narratives, the means through which each medium constructs and positions its audience, and the types of critical discourses that emerge around literature and film. May include works by Philip K. Dick, Charles Dickens, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, David Lean, Anita Loos, Vladimir Nabokov, and Ridley Scott.

105 {1105} c. Introduction to Poetry. Fall 2012. Marilyn Reizbaum.

An examination of how to read a poem and how the poem is made. Includes the study of poetic form(s) and cultural and aesthetic contexts. Focuses on the modern poem in English and English translation from diverse poetic traditions, considering in particular the challenges to generic boundaries provided by the twentieth century.

[106 {1106} c. Introduction to Drama. (Same as Theater 106 {1806}.)]

107 {1107} c. Introduction to African American Literary Fiction. Spring 2013. Tess Chakkalakal.

Introduces students to the literary and historical aspects of the black novel as it developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in the United States. Begins with a consideration of the novels of Charles Chesnutt, Sutton Griggs, and Pauline Hopkins, then examines the ways in which novelists of the Harlem Renaissance—James Weldon Johnson, Nella Larsen, and W. E. B. Du Bois—played with both the form and function of the novel during this era. Then considers how novels by Richard Wright, Chester Himes, and Ralph Ellison challenged and reformed the black novel’s historical scope and aesthetic aims. (Same as Africana Studies 107 {1107}).

110 {1110} c. English Literature and Social Power. Spring 2013. David Collings.

Considers how works of literature encode or resist modes of social power, articulate styles of cultural entitlement, revise norms of behavior from the perspective of leisured domesticity, create satisfying narrative solutions to urban conflict, and absorb the difficulties of social life into the workings of individual consciousness. Examines the relationship between ideology and literary form, placing both in the context of transformations in English culture from the early seventeenth through the early twentieth centuries. Discusses writings by Jonson, Defoe, Pope, Wordsworth, Austen, Dickens, and Woolf alongside critical and interpretive essays.

114 {1114} c. Introduction to Narrative. Fall 2012. Peter Coviello.

The novel, it has been said, is of all literary forms the great “container.” Examines the ways narrative accommodates variety and plentitude: how it makes room for multiple idioms, styles, and points of view; how it allows different voices to speak in colloquy; how it transforms unjoined fragments into stories. Authors may include James, Freud, Toomer, Woolf, Faulkner, Nabokov, and Pynchon.

Courses in Composition

60 {1060} c. English Composition. Fall 2012. Belinda Kong. Spring 2013. Celeste Goodridge and Terri Nickel.

Practice in developing the skills needed to write and revise college-level expository essays. Explores the close relationship between critical reading and writing. Assignment sequences and different modes of analysis and response enable students to write fully developed expository essays. Does not count toward the major or minor in English.

Introductory Courses in Creative Writing

125 {1225} c. Creative Writing: Poetry I. Fall 2012. Anthony Walton.

Intensive study of the writing of poetry through the workshop method. Students expected to write in free verse and in form, and to read deeply from an assigned list of poets.

Prerequisite: Permission of the instructor.

128 {1228} c. Introductory Fiction Workshop. Fall 2012 and Spring 2013. Brock Clarke.

Begins with an examination of some technical aspects of fiction writing. In particular, considers those that we tend to take for granted as readers and need to understand better as writers, e.g., point of view, characterization, dialogue, foreshadowing, scene, and summary. Students read and discuss published stories, and work through a series of exercises to write their own stories. Workshop discussion is an integral part.

Advanced Courses in Creative Writing

213 {2854} c. Telling Environmental Stories. Fall 2012. Anthony Walton.

Intended for students with a demonstrated interest in environmental studies, as an introduction to several modes of storytelling, which communicate ideas, historical narratives, personal experiences, and scientific and social issues in this increasingly important area of study and concern. Explores various techniques, challenges, and pleasures of storytelling, and examines some of the demands and responsibilities involved in the conveyance of different types of information with clarity and accuracy in nonfiction narrative. Engages student writing through the workshop method, and includes study of several texts, including The Control of Nature, Cadillac Desert, Living Downstream, and Field Notes from a Catastrophe. (Same as Environmental Studies 216 {2420}).

Prerequisite: Permission of the instructor.

216 {2852} c. Creative Writing: Poetry II. Fall 2013. The Department.

Builds upon the method of studying and crafting poetry encountered in English 125. Students exposed to advanced methods of writing and interpretation, including the in-depth study of one particular poet’s oeuvre and evolution. Students encouraged to develop a more comprehensive view of their own individual poetic practices. Each week students responsible for evaluating the assigned reading and for writing poems. Preference given to students who have successfully completed English 125.

Prerequisite: Permission of the instructor.

217 {2853} c. Advanced Fiction Workshop. Spring 2013. Brock Clarke.

Presumes a familiarity with the mechanics of fiction and, ideally, previous experience in a fiction workshop. Uses published stories and stories by students to explore questions of voice and tone, structure and plot, how to deepen one’s characters, and how to make stories resonate at a higher level. Students write several stories during the semester and revise at least one. Workshop discussion and critiques are an integral part.

Prerequisite: Permission of the instructor.

Intermediate Courses in English and American Literature

These seminars are open to both majors and non-majors—and are normally limited to sixteen students. They provide opportunities for students to focus intensively on critical reading and writing skills and to learn advanced research methods. Each seminar explores a unique topic while introducing students to literary theory and other critical paradigms and tools of literary studies.

208 {2002} c. Victorian Urban Narratives. Fall 2012. Aviva Briefel.

Seminar. An exploration of London as space and character in Victorian literary narratives. Considers such topics as the intersections between identity and urban setting; the relationship between genre and literary space; and the overlaps in mappings of cities and narrative. Consideration of literary and cultural theory and criticism is central. Authors may include Conrad, Dickens, Dixon, Doyle, Gissing, Marsh, and Wilde. (Same as Gay and Lesbian Studies 202 {2002} and Gender and Women’s Studies 202 {2202}.)

Prerequisite: One first-year seminar or 100-level course in English.

219 {2003} c. Trolls, Frogs, and Princesses: Fairy Tales and Retellings. Spring 2013. Elizabeth Muther.

Seminar. Explores the resiliency of fairy tales across cultural boundaries and historical time. Traces the genealogical origins of the classic tales, as well as their metamorphoses in historical and contemporary variants, fractured tales, and adaptations in literature and film. Engages a spectrum of related texts in literary and cultural theory and criticism.

Prerequisite: One first-year seminar or 100-level course in English.

227 {2004} c. White Negroes. Spring 2013. Guy Mark Foster.

Close readings of literary and filmic texts that interrogate widespread beliefs in the fixity of racial categories and the broad assumptions these beliefs often engender. Investigates “whiteness” and “blackness” as unstable and fractured ideological constructs. These are constructs that, while socially and historically produced, are no less “real” in their tangible effects, whether internal or external. Includes works by Charles Chesnutt, Nella Larsen, Norman Mailer, Jack Kerouac, John Howard Griffin, Andrea Lee, Sandra Bernhard, and Warren Beatty. (Same as Africana Studies 254 {2654} and Gender and Women’s Studies 257 {2257}.)

Prerequisite: One first-year seminar or 100-level course in English or Africana Studies.

265 {2001} c. Sex and the Word: Psychoanalysis and Literature. Fall 2012. Peter Coviello.

Seminar. In its founding, psychoanalysis—Freud’s ambivalently “scientific” framework for explicating desire—was an art of interpretation. Examines the things sex, literature, and interpretation might have to say to one another; particularly close attention paid to how psychoanalytic reading has developed as a vocabulary for describing the enlivening errancies of literary artifacts. Writers likely to include Freud, James, Cather, Larsen, Baldwin, Roth, and others. (Same as Gay and Lesbian Studies 200 {2010}.)

Prerequisite: One first-year seminar or 100-level course in English.

Advanced Courses in English and American Literature

201 {2100} c. Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales. Every other year. Fall 2012. Megan Cook.

Learn Middle English and enjoy and analyze a wide selection of the stories told on Chaucer’s great literary road trip. Includes a focus on medieval history, material culture, literary backgrounds, social codes, and social conflicts. Attention given to trends in Chaucer studies.

Prerequisite: One first-year seminar or 100-level course in English.

Note: This course fulfills the pre-1800 literature requirement for English majors.

202 {2106} c. Chaucer: Epic and Romance. Spring 2013. Megan Cook.

Explores the writings of fourteenth-century poet Geoffrey Chaucer, excluding The Canterbury Tales. Focuses on Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer’s epic tale of doomed love in the shadow of the Trojan War, and on his strange and often enigmatic dream visions. In between, considers his work across a wide variety of genres, including scientific writing, philosophy, and courtly lyric. Uses secondary sources to develop an understanding of Chaucer as a late medieval author, and analyzes the power of medieval vernacular literature to shock, instruct, and transform its audience. Neither prior experience with Middle English nor English 201 (Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales) is required.

Prerequisite: One first-year seminar or 100-level course in English.

Note: This course fulfills the pre-1800 literature requirement for English majors.

209 {2653} c. Interracial Narratives. Fall 2012. Guy Mark Foster.

Examines the stories that Americans have told about intimate relationships that cross the color line in twentieth- and twenty-first-century imaginative and theoretical texts. Considers how these stories have differed according to whether the participants are heterosexual or homosexual, men or women, Black, White, Asian, Latino, or indigenous. Explores the impact historically changing notions of race, gender, sexuality, and U.S. citizenship have had on the production of these stories. Texts will include literature, film, Internet dating sites, and contemporary debates around mixed-race identity and the United States census. (Same as Africana Studies 205 {2653}, Gay and Lesbian Studies 265 {2653}, and Gender and Women’s Studies 283 {2283}.)

Prerequisite: One first-year seminar or 100-level course in English.

210 {2150} c. Shakespeare’s Comedies and Romances. Every other year. Spring 2014. William Watterson.

Examines A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, As You Like It, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest in light of Renaissance genre theory. (Same as Theater 210 {2810}.)

Prerequisite: One first-year seminar or 100-level course in English.

Note: This course fulfills the pre-1800 literature requirement for English majors.

211 {2151} c. Shakespeare’s Tragedies and Roman Plays. Fall 2012. William Watterson.

Examines Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus in light of recent critical thought. Special attention is given to psychoanalysis, new historicism, and genre theory. (Same as Theater 211 {2811}.)

Prerequisite: One first-year seminar or 100-level course in English.

Note: This course fulfills the pre-1800 literature requirement for English majors.

212 {2152} c. Shakespeare’s History Plays. Every other year. Fall 2013. William Watterson.

Explores the relationship of Richard III, 2 Henry VI, and the second tetralogy (Richard II, the two parts of Henry IV and Henry V) to the genre of English chronicle play that flourished in the 1580s and 1590s. Readings in primary sources (More, Hall, and Holinshed) are supplemented by readings of critics (Tillyard, Kelly, Siegel, Greenblatt, Goldberg, etc.) concerned with locating Shakespeare’s own orientation toward questions of history and historical meaning. Regular screenings of BBC productions. (Same as Theater 212 {2812}.)

Prerequisite: One first-year seminar or 100-level course in English.

Note: This course fulfills the pre-1800 literature requirement for English majors.

214 {2850} c - VPA. Playwriting. Fall 2013. The Department.

A writing workshop for contemporary performance that includes introductory exercises in writing dialogue, scenes, and solo performance texts, then moves to the writing (and rewriting) of a short play. Students read plays and performance scripts, considering how writers use image, action, speech, and silence; how they structure plays and performance pieces; and how they approach character and plot. (Same as Theater 260 {2401}.)

Prerequisite: One 100-level course in theater or dance or permission of the instructor.

229 {2290} c. Milton. Every other year. Fall 2013. Ann Kibbie.

A critical study of Milton’s major works in poetry and prose, with special emphasis on Paradise Lost.

Prerequisite: One first-year seminar or 100-level course in English.

Note: This course fulfills the pre-1800 literature requirement for English majors.

230 {2300} c. Theater and Theatricality in the Restoration and the Eighteenth Century. Every other year. Fall 2013. Ann Kibbie.

An overview of the development of the theater from the reopening of the playhouses in 1660 to the end of the eighteenth century, with special emphasis on the emergence of new dramatic modes such as Restoration comedy, heroic tragedy, “she-tragedy,” sentimental comedy, and opera. Other topics include the legacy of Puritan anxieties about theatricality; the introduction of actresses on the professional stage; adaptations of Shakespeare on the Restoration and eighteenth-century stage; other sites of public performance, such as the masquerade and the scaffold; and the representation of theatricality in the eighteenth-century novel. (Same as Theater 230 {2830}.)

Prerequisite: One first-year seminar or 100-level course in English.

Note: This course fulfills the pre-1800 literature requirement for English majors.

232 {2302} c. Women and the Eighteenth-Century Novel. Every other year. Spring 2014. Ann Kibbie.

Explores how women are represented in eighteenth-century fiction and the impact of women readers and women writers on the development of the novel. Authors include Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, Frances Burney, and Jane Austen. (Same as Gender and Women’s Studies 239 {2240}.)

Prerequisite: One first-year seminar or 100-level course in English or gender and women’s studies.

Note: This course fulfills the pre-1800 literature requirement for English majors.

233 {2703} c - ESD. Transatlantic Crossings. Fall 2012. Terri Nickel.

Traces the circulation of narratives at the height of Britain’s colonial power in the Americas. Situates such literary commerce alongside the larger exchange of people and goods and focuses on the fluctuating nature of national, racial, and sexual identities in the circum-Atlantic world. Explores how literary texts attempted, and often failed, to sustain “Englishness” in the face of separation, revolution, or insurrection. Of special interest are figures who move across the Atlantic divide and exploit the possibility of multiple roles—sailors, pirates, freed or escaped slaves, female soldiers. Texts may include General History of the Pirates; The Woman of Colour; Moll Flanders; The History of Emily Montague; Obi, or the History of Three-Fingered Jack; The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano; the Journals of Janet Schaw; The History of Mary Prince; The Female American. (Same as Africana Studies 234 {2703} and Gender and Women’s Studies 232 {2232}.)

Prerequisite: One first-year seminar or 100-level course in English.

Note: This course fulfills the pre-1800 literature requirement for English majors.

234 {2303} c. Loves of the Plants: Botany and Desire in the Eighteenth Century. Spring 2013. Terri Nickel.

Invasive foreigners, licentious women, polygamous tribes, hermaphrodites—these were some of the personae eighteenth-century men and women imagined in their encounters with plants. Explores how the introduction of new flora collected through global exploration and Linnaeus’s invention of sexual taxonomy reshaped eighteenth-century aesthetic practices, including poetry, fiction, art, and garden design. Traces how writers of the era mapped cultural ideas about nationality, sex, and gender onto the natural world. Authors may include Marvell, Addison, Pope, Cowper, Colman, Garrick, Erasmus Darwin, Shenstone, Delany, Hannah More, Sarah Scott, Walpole, and Austen. (Same as Environmental Studies 239 {2439} and Gay and Lesbian Studies 240 {2400}.)

Prerequisite: One first-year seminar or 100-level course in English.

Note: This course fulfills the pre-1800 literature requirement for English majors.

238 {2352} c. Natural Supernaturalism. Fall 2012. David Collings.

Examines the Romantic attempt to blend aspects of the transcendental—such as the sublime, immortality, and divinity—with ordinary life, the forms of nature, and the resources of human consciousness. Discusses theories of the sublime, poetry of the English landscape, mountaintop experiences, tales of transfiguration, lyrics of loss, and encounters with otherworldly figures. Explores the difficulties of representing the transcendental in secular poetry and the consequences of natural supernaturalism for our own understanding of nature. Focuses on the poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge, alongside writing by Burke, Kant, and Shelley. (Same as Environmental Studies 238 {2438}.)

Prerequisite: One first-year seminar or 100-level course in English or environmental studies.

244 {2404} c. Victorian Crime. Fall 2012. Aviva Briefel.

Investigates literary representations of criminality in Victorian England. Of central concern is the construction of social deviancy and criminal types; images of disciplinary figures, structures, and institutions; and the relationship between generic categories (the detective story, the Gothic tale, the sensation novel) and the period’s preoccupation with transgressive behavior and crime. Authors may include Braddon, Collins, Dickens, Doyle, Stevenson, and Wells. (Same as Gay and Lesbian Studies 244 {2404} and Gender and Women’s Studies 244 {2244}.)

Prerequisite: One first-year seminar or 100-level course in English or gender and women’s studies, or Gay and Lesbian Studies 201.

245 {2451} c. Modernism/Modernity. Every other year. Fall 2013. Marilyn Reizbaum.

Examines the cruxes of the “modern,” and the term’s shift into a conceptual category rather than a temporal designation. Although not confined to a particular national or generic rubric, takes British works as a focus. Organized by movements or critical formations of the modern, i.e., modernisms, psychoanalysis, postmodernism, cultural critique. Readings of critical literature in conjunction with primary texts. Authors/directors/works may include T. S. Eliot, Joyce’s Dubliners, Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers, Sontag’s On Photography, W. G. Sebald’s The Natural History of Destruction, Ian McEwen’s Enduring Love, Stevie Smith, Kureishi’s My Son the Fanatic, and Coetzee’s Disgrace. (Same as Gay and Lesbian Studies 245 {2451} and Gender and Women’s Studies 247 {2247}.)

Prerequisite: One first-year seminar or 100-level course in English, gay and lesbian studies, or gender and women’s studies.

246 {2452} c. Modern Drama and Performance. Spring 2013. Marilyn Reizbaum.

Examines dramatic trends of the modern period, beginning with a triumvirate of modern dramatists—Henrik Ibsen, Bertolt Brecht, and Samuel Beckett—and draws lines from their work in drama of ideas, epic theatre, and absurdism to developments in the dramatic arts through the modern period into the twenty-first century. Includes plays by Lorraine Hansberry, Caryl Churchill, and Martin McDonagh. Readings staged. (Same as Gender and Women’s Studies 262 {2262} and Theater 246 {2846}.)

Prerequisite: One first-year seminar or 100-level course in English or gender and women’s studies.

248 {2454} c. The Modern Novel. Every other year. Spring 2014. Marilyn Reizbaum.

A study of the modern impulse in the novel genre in English. Considers origins of the modern novel and developments such as modernism, postmodernism, realism, formalism, impressionism, the rise of short fiction. Focuses on individual or groups of authors and takes into account theories of the novel, narrative theory, critical contexts. Topics shift and may include Philip Roth, Henry Roth, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Rebecca West, Dorothy Richardson, Lorrie Moore, Ford Madox Ford, J. M. Coetzee, W. G. Sebald, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Banville, Ian Watt, Peter Brook, and Franco Moretti.

Prerequisite: One first-year seminar or 100-level course in English.

251 {2501} c. The American Renaissance. Spring 2013. Peter Coviello.

Considers the extraordinary quickening of American writing in the years before the Civil War. Of central concern are the different visions of “America” these texts propose. Authors may include Emerson, Poe, Douglass, Hawthorne, Jacobs, Melville, Stowe, Dickinson, and Whitman.

Prerequisite: One first-year seminar or 100-level course in English.

Note: This course fulfills the literature of the Americas requirement for English majors.

252 {2503} c. Empire of Feeling. Every other year. Fall 2014. Peter Coviello.

A study of the relations between sentiment and belonging across the American nineteenth century. Considers how a language of impassioned feeling promised to consolidate a nation often bitterly divided, and some of the problems with that promise. Centers on a reading of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Other authors may include Jefferson, Wheatley, Melville, Hawthorne, Wilson, and Du Bois. (Same as Africana Studies 277 {2503} and Gender and Women’s Studies 252 {2518}.)

Prerequisite: One first-year seminar or 100-level course in English, Africana studies, or gender and women’s studies.

Note: This course fulfills the literature of the Americas requirement for English majors.

253 {2540} c. Topics in Twentieth-Century American Literature. Spring 2013. Celeste Goodridge.

Authors may include Wharton, Cather, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Nella Larsen, and Faulkner. Considers how these authors both reflect and subvert the dominant ideologies of the period.

Prerequisite: One first-year seminar or 100-level course in English.

Note: This course fulfills the literature of the Americas requirement for English majors.

258 {2580} c - ESD. Reconstructing the Nation. Fall 2012. Tess Chakkalakal.

Introduces students to American literature written between 1865 and 1910. Exploring a period marked by the end of the Civil War, Reconstruction, the “New” South, and Jim Crow, students engage with these historical developments through a reading of a wide range of novels, short stories, poems, and plays that take up political tensions between the North and South as well as questions of regional, racial, and national identity. Works by George Washington Cable, Charles Chesnutt, Lydia Maria Child, Sarah Orne Jewett, Mark Twain, Sutton E. Griggs, Emily Dickinson, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Henry James, Theodore Dreiser, and Frank Norris constitute the “major” literary voices of the period, but also examines a number of “minor” works that are similarly, but perhaps more narrowly, concerned with questions of race and nation. (Same as Africana Studies 258 {2580}.)

Prerequisite: One first-year seminar or 100-level course in English or Africana studies.

Note: This course fulfills the literature of the Americas requirement for English majors.

260 {2650} c. (Re)Writing Black Masculinities. Spring 2013. Guy Mark Foster.

In 1845, Frederick Douglass told his white readers: “You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.” This simple statement effectively describes the enduring paradox of African American male identity: although black and white males share a genital sameness, until the nation elected its first African American president the former has inhabited a culturally subjugated gender identity in a society premised on both white supremacy and patriarchy. But Douglass’s statement also suggests that black maleness is a discursive construction, i.e., that it changes over time. If this is so, how does it change? What are the modes of its production and how have black men over time operated as agents in reshaping their won masculinities? Reading a range of literary and cultural texts, both past and present, students examine the myriad ramifications of, and creative response to, this ongoing challenge. (Same as Africana Studies 260 {2650} and Gender and Women’s Studies 260 {2260}.)

Prerequisite: One first-year seminar or 100-level course in English, Africana studies, or gender and women’s studies.

Note: This course fulfills the literature of the Americas requirement for English majors.

261 {2600} c. African American Poetry. Spring 2013. Elizabeth Muther.

African American poetry as counter-memory—from Wheatley to the present—with a focus on oral traditions, activist literary discourses, trauma and healing, and productive communities. Special emphasis on the past century: dialect and masking; the Harlem Renaissance; Brown, Brooks and Hayden at mid-century; the Black Arts Movement; black feminism; and contemporary voices. (Same as Africana Studies 261 {2600}.)

Prerequisite: One first-year seminar or 100-level course in English or Africana studies.

Note: This course fulfills the literature of the Americas requirement for English majors.

264 {2583} c. Literature of the Civil War Era. Spring 2013. Tess Chakkalakal.

Examines literature published in the United States between 1861 and 1865, with particular emphasis on the wartime writings of Louisa May Alcott, William Wells Brown, Frederick Douglass, William Gilmore Simms, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman. Students also consider writings of less well-known writers of the period found in popular magazines such as Harper’s Monthly, The Atlantic Monthly, The Southern Illustrated News, and Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. (Same as Africana Studies 283 {2583}.)

Prerequisite: One first-year seminar or 100-level course in English.

Note: This course fulfills the literature of the Americas requirement for English majors.

273 {2752} c - ESD, IP. Writing China from Afar. Fall 2012. Belinda Kong.

The telling of a nation’s history is often the concern not only of historical writings but also literary ones. Examines contemporary diaspora literature on three shaping moments of twentieth-century China: the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), and the 1989 Tiananmen democracy movement and massacre. Focuses on authors born and raised in China but since dispersed into various Western locales, particularly the United States, England, and France. Critical issues include the role of the Chinese diaspora in the historiography of World War II, particularly the Nanjing Massacre; the functions and hazards of Chinese exilic literature, such as the genre of Cultural Revolution memoirs, in Western markets today; and more generally, the relationship between history, literature, and the cultural politics of diasporic representations of origin. Authors may include Shan Sa, Dai Sijie, Hong Ying, Yan Geling, Zheng Yi, Yiyun Li, Gao Xingjian, Ha Jin, Annie Wang, and Ma Jian. (Same as Asian Studies 212 {2050}.)

Prerequisite: One first-year seminar or 100-level course in English, or one course in Asian studies.

274 {2753} c - ESD, IP. Asian Diaspora Literature of World War II. Spring 2013. Belinda Kong.

Focuses on World War II as a global moment when modernity’s two sides, its dreams and nightmares, collided. Emphasis on contemporary Asian diaspora Anglophone fiction that probes the exclusions and failures of nation and empire—foundational categories of modernity—from both Western and Asian perspectives. On the one hand, World War II marks prominently the plurality of modernities in our world: as certain nations and imperial powers entered into their twilight years, others were just emerging. At the same time, World War II reveals how such grand projects of modernity as national consolidation, ethnic unification, and imperial expansion have led to consequences that include colonialism, internment camps, the atom bomb, sexual slavery, genocide, and the widespread displacement of peoples that inaugurates diasporas. Diaspora literature thus constitutes one significant focal point where modernity may be critically interrogated. (Same as Asian Studies 216 {2802}.)

Prerequisite: One first-year seminar or 100-level course in English, or one course in Asian studies.

278 {2801} c - VPA. Of Comics and Culture. Fall 2012. Elizabeth Muther.

An introduction to comics, graphic narratives, and “sequential art.” Explores elements of the history of the comics—especially in a United States cultural context—while examining the formal dimensions of this hybrid art. Considers the cultural functions of this work in theoretical terms, as well as the sociology of its reception. Examines comics as personal narrative, social criticism, political commentary, fantasy, and science fiction, among other modes. Special focus on the functions of humor, irony, pathos, and outrage, as deployed in historical and contemporary comic forms.

Prerequisite: One first-year seminar or 100-level course in English.

282 {2841} c. Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. Spring 2013. Marilyn Reizbaum.

Considers the development of literary theory in the twentieth century and explores a range of critical methodologies that enhance our understanding of literature and allow us to question some assumptions about literary authorship, textual production, and the reading experience. Without privileging any particular critical paradigm, engages modes of interpretation associated with Marxism, feminism, psychoanalysis, poststructuralism, and cultural studies. Representative literary works read, less to label them as responsive to one or another theoretical paradigm than to consider how they “speak theory” in their own right. Authors of such works include Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, James Joyce, Carol Ann Duffy, Woody Allen.

Prerequisite: One first-year seminar or 100-level course in English, Africana studies, or gender and women’s studies; or Gay and Lesbian Studies 201.

283 {2800} c - ESD. Writing Muslim Women’s Lives: Western Muslim Women’s Writing Post-9/11. Spring 2013. Samaa Abdurraqib.

Focuses on Muslim women in the West writing literature in a post-9/11 world. In particular, considers the connections between Western curiosity about Muslim women’s lives and the demand for publications by Western Muslim women. In more recent years, there has been a proliferation of memoirs and personal essays published by Muslim women—the numbers of these personal narratives have eclipsed the fictive narratives and poetry written by Muslim women in the West. Makes connections between the desire to “unveil” Muslim women’s lives and the demand for certain types of narratives written by Muslim women and looks at the different ways these demands open up and/or restrict the types of stories Muslim women can tell. Addresses themes of spirituality, religiosity, sexuality, love, and fiction vs. memoir. (Same as Gender and Women’s Studies 274 {2274}.)

285 {2701} c - ESD, IP. Global Fiction and “The Great Game.” Spring 2013. Hilary Thompson.

Examines recent Anglophone global fiction’s return to the “Great Game” metaphor—originally referring to Britain and Russia’s 1813–1907 imperial rivalry over central Asia—now revived in contemporary works that, playing off past genres of espionage and adventure, figure global politics as a competitive game and imagine its space as a playing field. Considers the effects of colonialism, globalization, and 9/11 on this literature as well as, conversely, this literature’s influence on our perceptions of global politics. Authors may include Rushdie, Ghosh, Norbu, Aslam, Khan, and Shamsie.

Prerequisite: One first-year seminar or 100-level course in English.

291–294 {2970–2973} c. Intermediate Independent Study in English. The Department.

299 {2999} c. Intermediate Collaborative Study in English. The Department.

300–350. Advanced Literary Study. Every year.

English 300-level courses are advanced seminars; students who take them are normally English majors. Their content and perspective varies—the emphasis may be thematic, historical, generic, biographical, etc. All require extensive reading in primary and collateral materials.

308 {3011}. African American Film. Fall 2012. Elizabeth Muther.

Explores a spectrum of films produced since 1950 that engage African American cultural experience. Topics may include black-white buddy movies, the L.A. Rebellion, blaxploitation, the hood genre, cult classics, comedy and cross-dressing, and romance dramas. Of special interest will be the politics of interpretation and control: writers, directors, producers, studios, actors, critics, and audiences. One-half credit. (Same as Africana Studies 308 {3011}.)

Note: This course does not fulfill a requirement for the major in English.

309 {3012} c. Cosmopolitanism and Creaturely Life. Fall 2012. Hilary Thompson.

An exploration of the ways contemporary planetary consciousness has influenced conceptions of the human and the animal, as well as their supposed difference. Examines, in light of modern and current world literature, new models for both the exemplary world citizen and human species identity. Investigates to what extent, and by what creative means, reconsiderations of humans’ impact on the planet and place in the world are recorded in narratives of other creatures and the perceptual possibilities of their worlds. Texts may include fiction by Kafka, Rilke, Borges, Woolf, Murakami, and Sinha, as well as the philosophies of Uexkull, Heidegger, Derrida, Latour, and Agamben.

Prerequisite: One 200-level course in English.

316 {3000} c. Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Spring 2013. William Watterson.

Close reading of Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets and the appended narrative poem “A Lover’s Complaint,” which accompanies them in the editio princeps of 1609. Required texts include the New Arden edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (1997) edited by Katherine Duncan-Jones, and Helen Vendler’s The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (1998). Critical issues examined include the dating of the sonnets, the order in which they appear, their rhetorical and architectural strategies, and their historical and autobiographical content. (Same as Gay and Lesbian Studies 316 {3000}.)

Prerequisite: One 200-level course in English or gay and lesbian studies, or permission of the instructor.

Note: This course fulfills the pre-1800 literature requirement for English majors.

318 {3018} c. Oscar Wilde. Spring 2013. Aviva Briefel.

An in-depth study of Wilde’s fiction, poetry, drama, and critical essays within the context of fin-de-siècle British culture. Topics include decadence, aestheticism, dandyism, queer performance, and the Wilde trials. Also examines Wilde’s position within current literary criticism. (Same as Gay and Lesbian Studies 318 {3018}.)

Prerequisite: One 200-level course in English or gay and lesbian studies, or permission of the instructor.

323 {3002} c. The Joyce Revolution. Fall 2012. Marilyn Reizbaum.

An examination of James Joyce’s signal contributions to modern writing and critical theories. Reading includes the major works (Dubliners, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses), essays by Joyce, and writings by others who testify to the Joyce mystique: e.g., Oliver St. John Gogarty, T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Jacques Derrida, Seamus Heaney, Maud Ellmann.

Prerequisite: One 200-level course in English or permission of the instructor.

346 {3017} c. Living Deliberately. Spring 2013. David Collings.

Explores a range of possibilities for taking up Thoreau’s challenge to “live deliberately,” for cultivating an ethics in a world without guarantees. Examines various projects for grasping the essential conditions of existence, overcoming ignorance and despair, assuming an infinite responsibility to others, and sustaining the human against impossible odds. Considers the place of such projects in relation to the negative ethics of crime or addiction, the dubious implications of ethical heroism, the intimate risks of political commitment, and the potential loss of a viable future in the era of climate change. Drawing on novels, memoirs, ecological writing, theories of sexual practice, and philosophical ethics, considers such authors as Thoreau, Forster, Genet, Gordimer, Sapphire, Anita Desai, Kidder, and McKibben, as well as Nietzsche, Levinas, Foucault, Derrida, Halperin, Zizek, and Soni.

Prerequisite: One 200-level course in English or permission of the instructor.

401–404 {4000–4003} c. Advanced Independent Study and Honors in English. The Department.

405 {4029} c. Advanced Collaborative Study in English. The Department.