Courses

Courses

Fall 2006

010. The Victorian Fantastic
Aviva Briefel T 2:30 - 3:55, TH 2:30 - 3:55
Explores non-realist modes of Victorian narrative, including melodrama, science fiction, children’s literature, and the gothic. We will examine the ways in which literary texts re-imagine contemporary social issues and anxieties through their telling of fantastic stories. We will pay special attention to what kinds of dreams (and nightmares) these narratives generate about gender, sexuality, and race. Authors may include Barrie, Carroll, Dickens, Doyle, Le Fanu, Stevenson, Wells, and Wilde.
011. Dallying with the Impossible
David Collings M 2:30 - 3:55, W 2:30 - 3:55
Explores poetry, primarily in the Romantic tradition, that dallies with impossible satisfactions, whether in the form of fatal quest, lyrical transport, aesthetic seduction, beautiful horror, or physical transfiguration. Authors may include Coleridge, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Christina Rossetti, Tennyson, Browning, Whitman, Yeats, and Crane.
012. Becoming Modern
Ann Kibbie T 8:30 - 9:55, TH 8:30 - 9:55
An examination of early modernity from 1500-1800. Topics include modern doubt and skepticism, the quest for certainty, the rise of science, the emergence of individuality and its impact on ethics, politics, and religion, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the beginnings of Romanticism. Authors may include Montaigne, Shakespeare, Descartes, Bacon, Milton, Hobbes, Locke, Defoe, Rousseau, and Mary Shelley
013. Literature and Metamorphosis
Aaron Kitch T 1:00 - 2:25, TH 1:00 - 2:25
Stories of physical and spiritual transformation have fascinated authors for centuries, from Ovid to Shakespeare to Virginia Woolf to Salman Rushdie. This class examines such stories starting with The Metamorphoses, which links tales of death, sexual desire, and divine identity through interconnecting narratives of transmutation. We will explore questions of physical vs. psychological change, narrative vs. characterological alteration, and the translation of myths across genres, cultures, and historical periods. Texts include Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis, Rilke’s Orpheus poems, Woolf’sOrlando, Rusdie’s Satanic Verses, and two films: Marcel Camus’ Black Orpheus and David Cronenberg’s The Fly.
014. Reincarnations of the Monkey
Belinda Kong T 10:00 - 11:25, TH 10:00 - 11:25
The legendary Monkey, or Sun Wukong of sixteenth-century Wu Ch’eng-en’s Journey to the West, is a contradictory figure that embodies fierce independence of spirit and rebellious mischief as much as tamed energy and loyal service. Explores contemporary refigurings of Monkey in diasporic contexts (primarily in the United States, but also in Britain, Canada, and Australia) and in multiple genres (novel, essay, film, music). What are the literary, cultural, and philosophical traditions that animate Monkey, and how are the values he represents transformed in the diaspora? For what audiences is he reincarnated, and to what purpose? Authors include Wu Ch'eng-en (in translation), Timothy Mo, Maxine Hong Kingston, Frank Chin, Patricia Chao, Binh Duy Ta, Wayson Choy, and Gerald Vizenor. Philosophical texts may include the writings of Laozi, Zhuangzi, and Thich Nhat Hanh.
015. International Children's Literature
Elizabeth Muther T 1:00 - 2:25, TH 1:00 - 2:25
Explores imaginative writing for children in U.S. and South African contexts. Strong emphasis on history and national identity as reframed in children's literature since the Civil Rights era and the end of apartheid. Considers the uses of oral sources--riddles, folktales, legends, proverbs, magical lore; the politics and economics of children's book publishing; and literacy and access to texts in mother tongue languages. Students will experiment with elements of imaginative writing for children and will read and discuss poetry and stories with children of various ages.
016. The Nuclear Plot
Marilyn Reizbaum M 11:30 - 12:55, W 11:30 - 12:55
An examination of the nuclear age in literature and film, documents and documentary. Works will include John Hersey's Hiroshima, Frayn's Copenhagen, "The Atomic Cafe," "Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb," "Them," "Fail Safe." Excerpts from Einstein, Kahn,Arendt, Lifton.
017. Seven American Poets
Anthony Walton M 11:30 - 12:55, W 11:30 - 12:55
A seminar on a group of American Poets representative of a certain strain in the tradition, loosely called "transcendental." Strong emphasis on prosody, close reading "excavation" of multiple meanings and sources in poems, and the poet's negotiation of the implicit tension between technique and subject matter. Poets include Emerson, Dickinson, Frost, Stevens, Berryman, Plath, Ammons, and Charles Wright.
018. Hawthorne
William Watterson T 2:30 - 3:55, TH 2:30 - 3:55
Readings include selected short stories, Fanshawe, The Scarlet Letter, The Blithedale Romance, The House of the Seven Gables, The Marble Faun, and James Mellow’s Nathaniel Hawthorne in His Times.
019. Unlikely "Couples"
Mark Foster T 10:00 - 11:25, TH 10:00 - 11:25
According to French theorist Luce Irigaray, "the couple is the basic social unit." If this is true, how then has the "couple," broadly speaking, been used in literary and cultural texts either to shore up this "social unity" or to critique its normative assumptions regarding the linkages between embodiment and various forms of "desire"? What narrative strategies have cultural producers used to challenge and rewrite those assumptions? Possible authors' texts inlude Edward Ball's /Peninsula of Lies/, Peter Lefcourt's /The Dreyfus Affair/, Lydia Davis's /The End of the Story/, Monica Jay's /Geraldine/, Joyce Carol Oates's /Rape, A Love Story/, Darin Strauss's /Chang and Eng/, Ian McEwan's /Enduring Love/, Caroline Knapp's /Drinking/, and the films /A Love Story/, /Thelma and Louise, Brokeback Mountain/, and /Bob and Rose/, among others.
060. English Composition
Hilary Thompson T 10:00 - 11:25, TH 10:00 - 11:25
Practice in analytic and critical writing, with special attention to drafting and revision of student essays. Assignment sequences allow students to engage a variety of modes and topics that build toward the developed expository essay. Practice in grammar as well. Does not count toward the major or minor in English.
061. Creative Writing: Poetry I
Anthony Walton M 6:30 - 9:25
Intensive study of the writing of poetry through the workshop method. Students are expected to write in free verse, in form, and to read deeply from an assigned list of poets.
104. Queer Matters: Narrative & Film
Celeste Goodridge T 10:00 - 11:25, TH 10:00 - 11:25
This course explores narrative and film adaptation, with an emphasis on gay and lesbian authors and themes. Issues to be addressed include adaptation, identification and political consequences of representation. Authors may include Lillian Hellman, Carson McCullers, Michael Cunningham, Patricia Highsmith, Nella Larsen, James Baldwin, Truman Capote and Annie Proulx. Film screenings, which are required, will be Monday or Tuesday evening.
107. Introduction to Literary Methods: Image and Text
Elizabeth Muther W 2:30 - 3:55, F 2:30 - 3:55
Considers words and pictures as they stand as often unruly but equal partners in the production of meaning. Explores hybrid works of image and text: illuminated manuscripts to cyber-constructs; picture books for children and adults; comics in mass and "zine" formats; and graphic narratives and novels. Of special interest will be the historical development of these forms and the simultaneity of visual and textual doublings—in practical and theoretical terms.
212. Shakespeare’s History Plays
William Watterson T 8:30 - 9:55, TH 8:30 - 9:55
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.
223. English Renaissance Drama
Aaron Kitch T 10:00 - 11:25, TH 10:00 - 11:25
Traces the explosion of popular drama in England between the construction of the first permanent London theater in 1576 and parliamentary closure of English theater in 1642. Pays special attention to the plots that audiences liked best—revenge, war, the accumulation of wealth, marriage, and adultery—and the monarchs, citizens, merchants, and clowns who enacted them on the stage. Explores how popular genres like revenge tragedy, domestic tragedy, and city comedy fulfilled political and cultural desires of the age. Also examines questions of staging and the professional rivalry between some of the most memorable playwrights in English drama, including Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Elizabeth Cary, and Thomas Middleton. Note: This course fulfills the pre-1800 literature requirement for English majors.
231. Topics in Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Poetry and Prose: Writing Lives
Ann Kibbie T 1:00 - 2:25, TH 1:00 - 2:25
Explores the representation of private life in the poetry and non-fiction prose of the period (including diaries, private journals, public and private letters, and biographical sketches), with an emphasis on the emergence of the modern author. Works include selections from the diary of Samuel Pepys, the autobiographical poetry of Alexander Pope, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s travel letters, Lord Chesterfield’s letters of advice to his illegitimate son, the autobiography of Olaudah Equiano, selections from Samuel Johnson’s Lives of the English Poets, and James Boswell’s London Journal.
240. English Romanticism I: Radical Sensibility
David Collings M 11:30 - 12:55, W 11:30 - 12:55
An examination of the rise of and reactions to the literature of radical sensibility in the wake of the French Revolution. Focuses upon such topics as radical individualism, middle-class feminism, and apocalyptic lyricism, as well as the defense of tradition, the challenge to the idea of progress, and the depiction of revolution as monstrosity. Authors may include Burke, Paine, Blake, Coleridge, Wollstonecraft, Hays, Godwin, Malthus, Wordworth, Percy Shelley, and Mary Shelley.
260. Playwriting
Gretchen Berg T 11:30 - 12:55, TH 11:30 - 12:55
A workshop in writing for contemporary theater. Includes introductory exercises in writing monologues, dialogue, and scenes, then moves to the writing and revising of a short play, a solo performance piece, or a staged adaptation of existing material. Students read plays and performance texts, considering how writers use speech, silence, and action; how they structure plays and performance pieces; and how they approach character and plot.
264. The Irish Story
Marilyn Reizbaum M 2:30 - 3:55, W 2:30 - 3:55
Examines recurrent and competing narratives of Irish history and literature. Will focus on post 1916 to the present, but will also consider earlier texts from the 18th and 19th centuries, using poetry, drama, novel and film. Includes such authors as Maria Edgeworth, Sheridan Le Fanu, Lady Morgan, Padraic Pearse, James Joyce, William Butler Yeats, Eavan Boland, Seamus Heaney, Sean O'Casey, Martin McDonagh (Pillowman) John Banville, films such The Quiet Man, The Crying Game, Michael Collins, Nora, The Informer.
270. Early American Literature
Peter Coviello T 10:00 - 11:25, TH 10:00 - 11:25
A study of the writing produced in colonial, revolutionary, and post-revolutionary America. Prominent concerns are the Puritan covenant, nationalism, democracy and consensus, revolutionary rupture, and the evolving social meanings of gender and of race. Readings may include Bradstreet, Edwards, Franklin, Wheatley, Brockden Brown, Irving, and Cooper.
273. Queer Race
Mark Foster T 2:30 - 3:55, TH 2:30 - 3:55
Contemporary critics have argued that late nineteenth/early twentieth century understandings of same-sex desiring identities acquired early visibility through self-conscious analogies to racial categorization, i.e. a homosexual is like a mixed-race person: s/he is half one thing and half another. Such beliefs continue to endure to the present day. One of its legacies is the belief that struggles against racial oppression and sexual oppression are mutually exclusive. Through close readings of both popular and lesser known lesbigay/transgendered narratives of the era, this course explores the cultural and theoretical implications of these beliefs, as well as the challenges they have sometimes presented to conceptualizing and implementing radical social change. Possible authors/texts: Radclyffe Hall, Gore Vidal, James Baldwin, Ann Bannon, Rita Mae Brown, Ann Allen Shockley, Patricia Nell Warren, Leslie Feinberg, James Earl Hardy, E. Lynn Harris, Audre Lorde, Take Me Out: A Play , M Butterfly, and Noah’s Arc
280. Nineteenth Century Women's Prose: The Black Diaspora
Dan Moos T 1:00 - 2:25, TH 1:00 - 2:25
This course will engage the writings of black women in the nineteenth century. We will read poetry, novels, essays, activist literature, slave narratives, and autobiographies to understand the complicated position of nineteenth-century black women with reference to patriarchy, racism, slavery, abolitionism, education, the African Diaspora, and national affiliation, with special attention paid to the scholarly tensions with the more celebrated tradition of nineteenth-century prose by African American men. The reading list includes Harriet Jacobs, Mary Ann Shadd, France E. W. Harper, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Pauline Hopkins, Hannah Crafts, Mary Prince, and others. Note: This course fulfills the literature of the Americas requirement for English majors.
284. Introduction to Asian-American Literature
Belinda Kong T 1:00 - 2:25, TH 1:00 - 2:25
An introduction not only to the writings of Asian America, but also to the historical development of Asian American literature as a field of discussion, study, and debate. Begins by focusing on a seminal moment in the formation of this field: the critical controversy sparked by the publication of Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior (1976). Then turns to more recent fiction and questions of how to re-conceive Asian American literature in light of these works. In addition to Kingston, authors may include Amy Tan, David Henry Hwang, Frank Chin, Gish Jen, Chang-rae Lee, and Jhumpa Lahiri, Susan Choi, Lan Cao, and Lê Thi Diem Thúy. (Same as English 284.) Prerequisite: One first-year seminar or 100-level course in the English Department, or one course in Asian Studies. Note: This course fulfills the literature of the Americas requirement for students majoring in English.
287. The Horror Film in Context
Aviva Briefel T 11:30 - 12:55, TH 11:30 - 12:55
Examines the genre of the horror film in a range of cultural, theoretical, and literary contexts. Considers the ways in which these films represent violence, fear, and paranoia; their creation of identity categories; their intersection with contemporary politics; and their participation in such major literary and cinematic genres as the gothic, parody, and family drama. Texts may include works by Craven, Cronenburg, De Palma, Freud, Hitchcock, Kristeva, Kubrick, Poe, Romero, and Shelley.
LAB
Aviva Briefel M 7:00 - 9:55
Examines the genre of the horror film in a range of cultural, theoretical, and literary contexts. Considers the ways in which these films represent violence, fear, and paranoia; their creation of identity categories; their intersection with contemporary politics; and their participation in such major literary and cinematic genres as the gothic, parody, and family drama. Texts may include works by Craven, Cronenburg, De Palma, Freud, Hitchcock, Kristeva, Kubrick, Poe, Romero, and Shelley.
333. Sex and Desire in American Poetry
Celeste Goodridge W 1:00 - 3:55
Examines the aesthetics of seduction, desire, voyeurism, disclosure, and disguise in a range of poetic projects. Authors may include Whitman, Dickinson, Williams, Stevens, Bishop, Merrill, Gluck, and Doty. This course satisfies the department’s requirement for courses in literature of the Americas.
338. Sex and the Word: Freud, Psychoanalysis, Literature
Peter Coviello T 1:00 - 3:55
An examination of one of the great theorists of intimacy and its vexations, and of the provision his works make – or might make – for the study of literature. Our aim in the course will not be to produce successfully “Freudian” readings of given texts, or to assign one or another of Freud’s categories of pathology to fictional characters. We will look instead to test what sort of purchase Freud’s varied investigations – of language and desire, of loss and transformation, and especially of the intricate relations of gender and sexuality to one another, and to the very experience of selfhood ­– might afford us in our encounter with the pleasures and problems of modern fiction. Authors will include Freud and many of his critics, as well as Henry James, Nella Larsen, Willa Cather, James Baldwin, and others.