Courses

Courses

Spring 2006 Courses

  • Visit Bearings to search for courses by title, instructor, department, and more.
  • Login to Blackboard. Instructional materials are available on a course-by-course basis.
020. Femmes Fatales, Lady Killers, and Other Dangerous Women
Aviva Briefel T 2:30 - 3:55, TH 2:30 - 3:55
This course explores a popular cinematic figure: the dangerous--and sometimes deadly--woman. By analyzing a range of films from Classical Hollywood cinema to the present day, we will explore the various forms that this female character assumes: the femme fatale, the tragic mulatto, the jealous or vindictive woman, the murderous lesbian, the revenge seeker, etc. In addition to examining the various permutations of the dangerous female, we will examine why she has attained such a prevalent place on the silver screen. What is so seductive about the deadly woman? This class will also introduce students to film criticism. Films may include Basic Instinct, Carrie, Double Indemnity, Fatal Attraction, Gilda, Kill Bill, Mildred Pierce, Sunset Boulevard, Thelma and Louise, and Vertigo.
LAB
Aviva Briefel M 7:00 - 10:00
This course explores a popular cinematic figure: the dangerous--and sometimes deadly--woman. By analyzing a range of films from Classical Hollywood cinema to the present day, we will explore the various forms that this female character assumes: the femme fatale, the tragic mulatto, the jealous or vindictive woman, the murderous lesbian, the revenge seeker, etc. In addition to examining the various permutations of the dangerous female, we will examine why she has attained such a prevalent place on the silver screen. What is so seductive about the deadly woman? This class will also introduce students to film criticism. Films may include Basic Instinct, Carrie, Double Indemnity, Fatal Attraction, Gilda, Kill Bill, Mildred Pierce, Sunset Boulevard, Thelma and Louise, and Vertigo.
021. Lesbian Personae
Peter Coviello T 10:00 - 11:25, TH 10:00 - 11:25
A study of the varied representations of same-sex desire between women across a range of 20th-century novels and films. We will be concerned with questions of the visibility, and invisibility, of lesbian life; of the contours of lesbian childhood and adolescence; of the forms of difference between and among lesbians; and of the tensions, as well as the affinities, that mark relations between queer women and queer men. Authors may include Nella Larsen, Willa Cather, Carson McCullers, Ann Bannon, and others. Counts for the Gay and Lesbian Studies program.
022. Stoic Heroes and Disenchanted Knights
Mary Edsall M 2:30 - 3:55, W 2:30 - 3:55
An inquiry into the construction of heroic and chivalric masculinities in literature from Virgil to Chaucer, with a strong focus on the historical and social contexts that help make these pre-modern texts intelligible. Attention given to sex/gender systems, to the ideological power of myth, legend, and romance, and to the afterlife of ideals of heroism and chivalry. Texts may include: Virgil's Aeneid, Beowulf, The Song of Roland, Chrétien de Troyes' The Knight of the Lion, Chaucer's Knight's Tale, and selections from the nineteenth-century "chivalric revival."
023. Contemporary Literature
Celeste Goodridge T 1:00 - 2:25, TH 1:00 - 2:25
Readings of fiction, prose essays, travel writing, and memoir from the last decades of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. The course will conclude with a best-seller. Fiction by Deborah Eisenberg, Jane McCafferty, Alice Munro and Jim Harrison. Other authors may include Ian Frazier, Bruce Chatwin, Emily Hiestand, Mark Doty, Nathaniel Philbrick and Tracy Kidder.
024. Scotlands Galore
Marilyn Reizbaum M 11:30 - 12:55, W 11:30 - 12:55
An examination of Scotland’s myriad and often obscured contributions to the arts through an exploration of literature, film, and the visual arts, in an out of Scotland. Looks, for example, at the Scottish role in British arts and Scottish roles more generally in such works as Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped, Minelli’s Brigadoon, Powell’s The Edge of the World, Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting, Ramsay’s Ratchatcher, Ken Loach’s Carla’s Song and Ae Fond Kiss, Walter Scott’s Ivanoe, Liz Lochhead’s Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off, Scottish television, and Scots on American television.
025. Dangerous Defilements
Julia Major T 11:30 - 12:55, TH 11:30 - 12:55
What does hormone-injected meat have to do with commercial television networks linking America and Japan? How could a group of women in Iran reading Nabokov and Austen be violating moral boundaries? Why does a Vietnam vet who happens to be a mixed-blood Native American need to trace his family roots? Can forbidden selves be successfully forged out of wildly different ethnic backgrounds? This class questions historical definitions of purity and individual acts of transgression in settings ranging from contemporary fiction to Renaissance drama. Texts may include Ruth Ozeki, My Year of Meats; Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran; Louis Owens, The Sharpest Sight; Salman Rushdie, East-West Stories; Richard Hildreth, The White Slave; and William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus.
060. English Composition
Elizabeth Muther T 1:00 - 2:25, TH 1:00 - 2:25
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.
069. Fiction Workshop
Margot Livesey M 6:30 - 9:25
We will begin with an examination of some technical aspects of fiction writing. In particular, we'll consider those that we tend to take for granted as readers and need to understand better as writers: point of view, characterization, dialogue, structure, plot and voice. Students will then write their own stories, critique one another's work, and discuss strategies for revision. Admission based on writing samples.
105. Introduction to Poetry
David Collings M 2:30 - 3:55, W 2:30 - 3:55
Explores varied topics in the Anglo-Irish-American poetic tradition, including aesthetic, political, and social questions. Strong emphasis on prosody, close reading, and the use of multi-media to “place” a poem or poet; “excavations” of multiple meaning and sources in poems; and examinations of poetic approaches toward negotiating the implicit tension between technique and subject matter.
106. Introduction to Drama
William Watterson T 2:30 - 3:55, TH 2:30 - 3:55
Beginning with a close reading of Aristotle’s Poetics, introduces students to dramatic structure through the history of plot-making. Plays by Sophocles, Shakespeare, Molière, Sheridan, Ibsen, Chekhov, O’Neill, Beckett, and Brecht are also examined in light of the evolution of traditional dramatic genres (tragedy and comedy), innovative modes (“Photogenic Realism,” “Epic Theater,” “Theater of the Absurd,” etc.), and the emergence of psychological approaches to character. In addition to writing critical papers about plays, students have the option to write dialogue and/or dramatic scenes and to present them as live theater in class.
204. Tolkien’s Middle Ages
Mary Edsall M 11:30 - 12:55, W 11:30 - 12:55
A study of the medieval philological, historical, and literary backgrounds of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Includes a focus on the early history of the English language, on Anglo-Saxon and Middle English language, literature, and culture, as well as on Tolkien’s essays, especially those on Beowulf and on Fairie. Attention given to major and minor works by Tolkien, as well as to Peter Jackson’s films. Note: It is presumed that students enrolling have a real familiarity with the text (as opposed to the film version) of Lord of the Rings. Medieval texts may include: Snorri Sturlusons’s Gylfaginning, The Battle of Maldon; Beowulf; Lanval; Sir Orfeo; and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.Prerequisite: One first-year seminar or 100-level course in the English Department.
211. Shakespeare’s Tragedies and Roman Plays
William Watterson T 8:30 - 9:55, TH 8:30 - 9:55
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.
221. Eloquence and Poetry: Lies or the Plain Truth?
Julia Major T 2:30 - 3:55, TH 2:30 - 3:55
How did the Renaissance revival of classical rhetoric, especially eloque nce, become associated with both true feeling and false representation? What happens to poetry in the search for truth following the Reformation? Investigates the turn from the humanist faith in rhetorical eloquence to the Protestant faith in plainness; culminates in the examination of how Milton complicates any simple distinction between eloquence and plainness, or deceit and truth. Readings may include Machiavelli, The Prince; Erasmus, In Praise of Folly; Sidney, Defense of Poetry; Marlowe, Doctor Faustus; Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book I; and Milton, Paradise Lost.Prerequisite: One first-year seminar or 100-level course in English.
243. Victorian Genders
Aviva Briefel T 11:30 - 12:55, TH 11:30 - 12:55
Investigates the literary and cultural construction of gender in Victorian England. Of central concern are fantasies of “ideal” femininity and masculinity, representations of unconventional gender roles and sexualities, and the dynamic relationship between literary genres and gender ideologies of the period. Authors may include Charlotte Bronte, Freud, Gissing, Hardy, Rider Haggard, Christina Rossetti, Ruskin, Schreiner, Tennyson, and Wilde.
250. Topics in the Eighteenth-Century Novel
Ann Kibbie M 10:30 - 11:25, W 10:30 - 11:25, F 10:30 - 11:25
An introduction to English prose fiction of the eighteenth century through the examination of a specific topic shared by a variety of canonical and non-canonical texts.
261. Modernism/Modernity
Marilyn Reizbaum M 2:30 - 3:55, W 2:30 - 3:55
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 White Writing.
267. Reading the Long Story
Margot Livesey T 6:30 - 9:25
The long story is one of our most beloved fictional forms. Together we'll explore it, and try to figure out what makes for a successful long story. I also want to use the texts to discuss the aesthetic ambitions of various writers, and how their prose embodies those ambitions. The course will involve the close reading of a number of stories and the writing of imitations and responses. Texts may include: Anton Chekhov's "In the Ravine," James Joyce's "The Dead," Katherine Mansfield's "Prelude," Randall Kenan's "Let the Dead Bury the Dead," Joan Silber's "The High Road."
275. African American Fiction: Counterhistories
Elizabeth Muther W 2:30 - 3:55, F 2:30 - 3:55
Novels, short stories, and personal histories since 1850. Focuses on strategies of cultural survival as mapped in narrative form—with a special interest in framing structures and trickster storytellers, alternative temporalities, and double-voicing. Authors include Douglass, Brown, Jacobs, Chesnutt, Dunbar, Hurston, West, Wright, Morrison, Bambara, Meriwether, Gaines, Wideman, Walker, and Butler. Note: This course fulfills the Literature of the Americas requirement for English majors.
277. Topics in Nineteenth-Century American Literature
Peter Coviello T 1:00 - 2:25, TH 1:00 - 2:25
A study of the relations between sentiment and belonging across the American nineteenth century. Considers both 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, Harper, and Du Bois.
282. Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory
Celeste Goodridge T 10:00 - 11:25, TH 10:00 - 11:25
Applying theoretical approaches to the interpretation of literature, considers the theory and practice of deconstruction, feminist, psychoanalytic, Marxist, and queer theory. Readings in theory and criticism, as well as works by some of the following authors: Melville, Hawthorne, James, Morrison, Baldwin, and Faulkner.
286. Multiethnic American Literature: Narratives of Homecoming
Belinda Kong T 10:00 - 11:25, TH 10:00 - 11:25
We typically think of homecoming as an event that happens to someone who has left a native place, or else a place of former dwelling and belonging. We imagine it as an occasion for nostalgic fulfillment, for retrieving lost personal possessions and having familiar things displayed once again before our eyes. But what of homecomings undertaken by those who have never actually been to the place called “home”? And what of homecomings in which the place of former residence is no longer an emotional home but a place of alienation? Looks at some twentieth-century narratives of homecoming and examines how writers imagine their journeys and arrivals. Authors may include John Okada, Amy Tan, Nella Larsen, Ralph Ellison, Paule Marshall, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Mario Vargas Llosa.Prerequisite: One first-year seminar or 100-level course in the English Department.
289. The United States at War: Vietnam to Iraq
Dan Moos T 2:30 - 3:55, TH 2:30 - 3:55
The American involvement in Vietnam was a highly significant moment of political and cultural change in the 1960s and 1970s in America. Begins by studying American narratives of World War II as normative (though problematic) and then explores narratives of war from Vietnam to Iraq I and II, in order to see how they diverge in terms of political ideology, the rhetoric of mission, and personal experience. Works may include Ron Kovic, Born on the Fourth of July; Bobbie Ann Mason, In Country; Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried; and Anthony Swoford, Jarhead; and the films The Deerhunter, Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, and Three Kings. Prerequisite: One first-year seminar or 100-level course in English.
LAB
Dan Moos T 6:00 - 8:00
The American involvement in Vietnam was a highly significant moment of political and cultural change in the 1960s and 1970s in America. Begins by studying American narratives of World War II as normative (though problematic) and then explores narratives of war from Vietnam to Iraq I and II, in order to see how they diverge in terms of political ideology, the rhetoric of mission, and personal experience. Works may include Ron Kovic, Born on the Fourth of July; Bobbie Ann Mason, In Country; Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried; and Anthony Swoford, Jarhead; and the films The Deerhunter, Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, and Three Kings. Prerequisite: One first-year seminar or 100-level course in English.
315. Advanced Literary Study
David Collings M 11:30 - 12:55, W 11:30 - 12:55
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.
317. Asian Diaspora: War and Displacement
Belinda Kong T 1:00 - 2:25, TH 1:00 - 2:25
Most of us can trace our roots to a place other than the one of our current residence. This place may be generations or continents removed from us, but nonetheless we feel an attachment toward it. We call this place “origin,” and the phenomenon of being dispersed from origin is given the name “diaspora.” Considers fiction written in English by Asian-descended authors, exploring how diasporic writers negotiate the tensions between their land of descent and their place of dwelling. Focuses on forms of displacement as a consequence of war. Authors may include Salman Rushdie, Timothy Mo, Kazuo Ishiguro, Joy Kogawa, Chang-rae Lee, Ha Jin, Wendy Law-Yone, Lan Cao, Le Thi Diem Thuy, and Vyvyane Loh.
319. Law and Literature
Ann Kibbie M 1:00 - 2:25, W 1:00 - 2:25
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.

Previous Semesters Courses