100- and 200-level |
300-399 |
400-499 |
A complete up to date listing of English Department course descriptions can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.lsa.umich.edu/english/.
For all English classes, registered students must be present at each of the first two meetings to claim their places. Any student who does not meet this requirement may be dropped from the course. NOTE: If you must miss a class due to religious observances, contact the instructor or leave a message for the instructor with the department (764-6330).
Take me to the Fall Time Schedule
Primarily for Juniors and Seniors
305. Introduction to
Modern English. Recommended for students preparing
to teach English. (3). (HU).
Though a requirement for students seeking certification as secondary
school English teachers, English 305 appeals to a broader audience
interested in the structure of English and its varieties. Topics
to be discussed include: gender-based differences in American
English and regional and social dialects in the United States, including African-American English, Appalachian English, Hispanic
English, and Native American English; English as a rule-governed
language, shaped by its history, and the history of ideas about
good (and "bad" English). English 305 is designed for
native-speakers of English (with no prior study of the language
or of linguistics) who are curious about the language community
of which they are a part. A midterm and final examination allow
students to demonstrate the ability to make well-founded generalizations
based on the material studied. Short papers invite explorations
of domains of language. Cost:2
(Bailey)
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Times, Location, and Availability
310. Discourse and Society.
English 124 or 125. (3). (Excl).
Section 001 – The Henry Ford High School Project. This course
teaches students to use their creative skills and social commitments
to facilitate the powerful expressiveness of high school youth.
It is rooted in respect for the youths' abilities and voices, in excitement about an educational process that promotes creativity, and in imaginative collaboration with the school faculty and administration.
Working two to three hours a week at Henry Ford and Cooley High
Schools in Detroit, Adrian and Maxey Boys Training Schools, Vista
Maria, and Boysville, students assist youth in creating their
own video tapes, plays, photographs, music, etc. In two
hour class meetings we discuss background reading, analyze and develop our work with the youth, and teach each other hands-on
methods. A further hour is devoted to meetings between each site
team and the instructor. No exams. Admission to the class is by
permission of instructor. Check 3275 AH for specially posted hours
for interviews for this course. Cost:3
(Alexander)
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Times, Location, and Availability
313. Topics in Literary
Studies. (4). (HU). May be repeated for a total of
eight credits.
Section 001 – Fantasy. This course explores the nature and uses of fantastic narratives from the beginning of the nineteenth
century to the present, drawing texts from such widely different
fields as fairy tales, science fiction, and the so-called New
Novel. No special background in literature is required. The course
requires attendance at two lectures and one discussion section
per week. The written work for the course will revolve around
a series of short papers and two medium-length papers. There will
be no exams. Texts include: Household Stories of The Brothers
Grimm; Tales of E.T.A. Hoffmann; The Portable Poe; The Alice
books, Lewis Carroll; The Island of Dr. Moreau and Best
Science Fiction Stories, H.G. Wells; The Complete Stories,
Franz Kafka; Orlando, Virginia Woolf; The Erasers,
Alain Robbe-Grillet; The Tolkien Reader; The Phantom Tollbooth,
Norton Juster; Cosmicomics, Italo Calvino; The Dead
Father, Donald Barthelme; Woman on The Edge of Time,
Marge Piercy. Cost:2
(Rabkin)
Section 006 – The Beat Generation. I saw the best minds
of my generation destroyed by/madness, starving hysterical naked,/dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn/looking for an angry
fix . . . That's how Allen Ginsberg described his Beat Generation.
The innovations of the 1950s Beat writers were paralleled by Action
Painters and Bebop jazz musicians. We will explore these three
outsider art worlds, listen to recorded jazz, poetry, and fiction, and look at documentary photographs of the major players – while
reading On the Road, Howl, Naked Lunch, etc., and viewing
slides of Abstract Expressionist paintings. Students are encouraged
to attend a live jazz performance. This course incorporates multimedia
video and audio presentations. Designed to appeal both to non-concentrators
and to students who think they might dig being English majors.
This course satisfies the American Literature requirement for
English concentrators. (Tillinghast)
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Times, Location, and Availability
315/WS 315. Women and Literature. (3). (HU). May be repeated for a total
of six credits.
Section 001 – Women, Captivity, and Quests. Whether they
lived in London or on the Michigan frontier, women writers responded
powerfully to the experiences of migration, slavery, captivity, tourism, and exploration. These experiences were particularly
acute in the decades between the American Revolution and the Civil
War. In crafting a literary response dislocation and relocation, women grappled with issues of voice, performance, nationalism, race, sexuality, economic insecurity, and access to publication.
This course will focus on the novels, poems, and letters of British
and American women writers, including Mary Wollstonecraft, Phillis
Wheatley, the Brontës, Margaret Fuller, Catharine Sedgwick, Harriet Jacobs, Felicia Hemans, and others. The course will emphasize
student research skills and opportunities. Requirements include
attendance, some written homework assignments and research exercises, a couple of on-campus field trips, two papers, and periodic quizzes.
This course satisfies the New Traditions and American Literature
requirements for English concentrators. (Ellison)
Section 002 – African American Women Writers in the Twentieth Century. The explosion of African American women's literature that began in the early 1970s came as a surprise to many. Yet the ground for this contemporary work had been prepared by a tradition of Black women's literary productions extending back into the eighteenth century. This course will examine fiction, poetry, and drama by twentieth-century Black women writers, with particular attention to the influence of nineteenth-century writers upon more recent works. Through our close readings, we will trace thematic and stylistic continuities and discontinuities between the texts under study, and we will consider the socio-economic and political factors that established the parameters of African American women's creative expression, including the legacies of slavery, stereotypes of Black women, sexual violence, and the civil-rights and feminist movements. Critical essays will accompany our readings of primary texts. We will also view two contemporary films written and directed by African American women. There will be one short paper, one longer research paper, and a final exam. This course satisfies the New Traditions and American Literature requirements for English concentrators. Cost:2 (Keizer)
Section 004 – Feminism, Consumerism, and Modernity.
The period between 1895 and 1945 witnessed a revolution in the
display and marketing of manufactured goods in American culture
just as, for many women, it offered the possibility of a revolution
in female roles. New electrically lit shopping centers, mirrored
showcases, interior color schemes, and more aggressive advertising
strategies worked together to create new desires for primarily
female consumers. At the same time, with the passage of the suffrage
amendment, the increasing availability of birth control, educational, and employment opportunities, many women were gaining a measure
of personal freedom. This course will explore the literary and cultural development of American modernism, feminism, and consumerism
from 1894-95, which marked the emergence of the "new woman"
into popular discourse, to 1945, which marked the end of World
War II. We'll focus on the following questions: What are we to
make of the contradictory images associated with the female consumer?
How does a consideration of the socio-economic instability of the period (e.g., currency panic of 1907, rise of the
I.W.W., Crash of '29) complicate our understanding of the consumption
process? What is at stake in different definitions of modernism/modernity?
How did these writers reflect and exploit the cultural anxieties
of the period as they developed their new literary forms? While
we will read a few male authors (Eliot, Faulkner, Locke, and Williams), most of the authors we will read will be female, including: Wharton, Cather, Larsen, Olsen, Stein, H.D., and Hurston. Course requirements
will include a midterm, quizzes, presentation, abstract, final
research project and occasional short writing assignments. This
course fulfills the New Traditions and American Literature requirements
for English concentrators. (Patterson)
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Times, Location, and Availability
317. Literature and Culture. (3). (HU). May be repeated for credit with department permission.
Section 001 – Violence in Literature. The goal of this course
is to encourage you to write thoughtful literary analyses, and in so doing, to train your minds to think more critically about the rhetorical strategies in any texts, including your own. The
readings will focus particularly on what is often central to a
literary work: a violent crime. We shall consider some theories that account for this proclivity, and apply them in practical
ways to our writing. Readings will cover Cain's fratricide, Oedipus'
patricide, Hamlet's regicide, Browning's uxoricide and a variety
of other texts that center on murder. The course will also help
you to incorporate research into your writings by becoming familiar
with the library, and with MLA style. Since this course fulfills the ECB writing requirements, there will be a weekly one-page
paper, quizzes on readings if necessary. Four 5-10 page papers, and a final group presentation. (Swabey)
Section 003 – High Culture/Low Culture. Complaints about American cultural decline have been often articulated as worries over commercialization and "feminization." Here, we will ask why and how the division between "high" and "low" gets coded in gendered terms; and how anxieties about the commercialization of culture reveal hidden concerns about democratization. We will read texts that represent mass culture as threatening the elite and masculine space of high culture and those that breach the boundaries between the high and low. Throughout, we'll think about changing relations between art and society, and what is at stake in the persistent desire to separate the serious from the popular, the high from the low. Texts by Nathanael West, Nabokov, Stephen King, Jessica Hagedorn, Don DeLillo; readings on topics such as the recent NEA controversies, the "dumbing down" of America, debates over the pleasures and dangers of romance fiction. Several writing projects, two formal papers, take-home final. This course satisfies the American Literature requirement. (S. Robinson)
Section 004 – Women, Autobiography, and the Medical Body. In this course we will be looking at
a variety of representations of the medical body – from the contorted
body of the hysteric woman and the "diseased" body of the prostitute in the 19th-Century to the surgically transformed
body of the "plasticized" woman and the pumped-up, hyperhealthy
body of the female bodybuilder in the late 20th-Century. As we
do so we'll be exploring how it is that medical technologies and discourses constitute the normative and abnormative female body
and subject. That is, we'll be looking at how these technologies
and discourses re/produce a life narrative for particular women.
Then we'll take up self-representational practices through which
women reproduce, negotiate, and resist these technologies and discourses. We'll be looking at writers such as Suzanna Kaysen (Girl Interrupted), Audre Lorde (The Cancer Journals),
Nancy Mairs (Remembering the Bone House), and Kate Bornstein (Gender Outlaw); artists such as Frida Kahlo and Hannah
Wilkie; photographers such as Jo Spence; and performance artists
such as Orian, who, over a series of operations, is having parts
of her body reconstructed according to particular cultural norms
of beauty. Requirements will include a class presentation; response
papers; and a longer critical essay. This course satisfies the
New Traditions requirement for English concentrators. (S. Smith)
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Times, Location, and Availability
319. Literature and Social
Change. (3). (HU). May be repeated for credit with
department permission.
Section 001 – U.S. Writers on the Left from the 1930s to the 1960s.
In the early 1930s, a new generation of radical writers set out
to revolutionize the U.S. literary landscape by directly confronting the issues of racism, class oppression, sexism, war, and exploitation
in their fiction, poetry, drama, reportage and criticism. In works
such as Jews Without Money, Uncle Tom's Children, and The Girl, authors such as the ghetto-born Jewish-American
Michael Gold and the Mississippi-born African-American Richard
Wright, and early socialist-feminist Meridel Le Sueur, expanded the boundaries of content and form of art in ways that left an
indelible mark on our culture and national consciousness. Already-established
writers responded to major political events of the 1930s, exemplified
by Ernest Hemingway's treatment of the Spanish Civil War in his
novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. This course, aimed specifically
at students wishing to study culture in historical context, meets the American Literature and New Traditions requirements for English
concentrators. There will be two papers and two exams. (Wald)
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Times, Location, and Availability
323. Creative Writing.
English 223, junior standing, and written permission
of instructor. (3). (CE). May be repeated for a total of six credits.
Sections 002, 003, and 004 – Fiction. Students are expected
to maintain journals throughout the term, to comment thoughtfully
and intelligently on one another's work and on short stories selected
from the text, and to come up with approximately fifty pages of
reasonably polished fiction. Attendance at the readings sponsored
by the English Department is also encouraged. Cost:1
(O'Dowd)
Sections 006 and 008 – Poetry. This course is designed to help aspiring poets to develop their own voices. It will introduce them to new ways of seeing and shaping into poetry the everyday wonders which influence our lives. It will also suggest new ways of using literary and local language as part of the poetic craft. (Goodison)
Section 007. In this workshop we will focus on writing fiction, studying short stories selected from an anthology titled You've Got to Read This, and critiquing one another's works with thoughtfulness and intelligence. Evaluation will be based on workshop participation, written critiques, and a final fiction portfolio of approximately fifty pages. Cost:1 (Marshall)
Section 008. See Section 006. (Goodison)
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325. Essay Writing: The
Art of Exposition. (4). (Excl).
This is an upper-level composition course for students interested
in improving their writing, with particular attention paid to the development of individual style expressed in the details of
voice, tone, nuance, and rhythm. All classes will proceed on the
assumption that these basic principles inform good writing: that
writing is thinking; that writing well requires attention to issues
of audience; that revision is a necessary part of the writing
process; and that all writing reflects the writer's view of the
world. Class discussion will include a consideration of student
writing. To focus discussion and to provide subject matter for
writing assignments, readings by professional writers will be
assigned in most sections. Writing assignments will vary according
to instructor, but the general requirement is 40 pages of prose
(300 words to a page). Course descriptions for individual sections
not listed below can be found on the department's Web page or
in 3020 Angell Hall.
Section 001 – Writing About Education. This section will explore questions of "becoming," how people evolve into who they are and the role that education and language play in that process. To do so, we will be doing a lot of reading and writing on the topics of composition and of education in its broadest sense. Using materials from classical and contemporary writers and thinkers, we will consider how people learn, how they become who they are. We will also be looking at some films and considering other media which also instruct and construct us. Texts may include Richard Rodriguez's Hunge of Memory, Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and the film, Educating Rita. Writing assignments will include twenty-five pages of formal, polished prose which has been revised several times, ten two-page critiques, informal weekly writing. (Kowalski)
Section 002 – The Mask. This writing class will be responding to some of the strategies enacted by effective writers. I hope we will come to see "the mask" as less manipulative and negative a feature in our lives and our writing and more as a creative and artful agency of freedom. But whatever the outcome, we want to make the analysis of the concept of the mask an enlightening journey. Each student will be responding to that journey by writing exploratory essays; the nature of the subject of those essays will be determined by the student. We will begin the term – and set the stage for our discussions of the mask – by reading Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Minister's Black Veil," a parable in which a good parson comes out of his house one morning wearing a veil over his face. The townspeople respond by whispering to each other: "He has changed himself into something awful, only by hiding his face." The question of created persona and identity will be the center for our discussions. (Back)
Sections 003 and 004. The goal of this course is to provide opportunities for students to learn to write with increased insight, power, and assurance. Given that goal, I've tried to create a course: (1) that gives students much writing practice (though not always as formal papers); (2) that allows students to work independently on topics of their own choosing; (3) that offers examples and inspiration from some of the finest prose stylists; and (4) that keeps the whole class sharing ideas and helping each other with writing throughout the term. Readings, discussion, in-class writings, and workshopping of one another's papers will be the primary focus in the classroom. Attendance and participation are essential, given the collaborative nature of the work. (Livesay)
Section 005 – First Person, Singular. In this composition course, we will follow paths that writers take from what is personal to them what they care about and know to ideas that will matter to others. This course will operate from several premises: that lodged in a first-person perspective is the potential for the freshness supplied by what is singular to us; that good writers inevitably walk the path from personal to public whether their subject is history and culture or the obviously more personal subjects of ethics or identity; that writing improves when the connection between what is personal and what is public is noted and studied. We will use as our texts fiction and memoirs (by Kafka, O'Brien, Atwood, Didion, and others) that allow us to see connections between what people think, who they are, and what they say. Requirements: four 6-8 page essays, weekly responses to texts, responses to each other's writing, class participation, and regular attendance. (Wolk)
Section 006 – My Life/Our World: The Arc Of Narration In Essay Writing. "Why you're only a sort of thing in his dream. . . . If that there King was to wake you'd go out – BANG - just like a candle!" says Tweedledum to Alice in Through The Looking Glass. Our work in this writing seminar will be to explore the dynamics of the imaginative process; we want to learn how the blurring of distinctions between imagination and reality, between MY life and OUR worlds evokes a creative process in us that allows for superb analytical writing. Although our writing may begin with our own experience, we want to find ways in which we can create a rhetorical "I" who tells our tale with a convincing voice and a significant argument. Throughout the term we will be reading and responding to both professional and non-professional (our own) writing. Writers studied will include Irving, Allende, Morrison, and Atwood. (Back)
Section 007. "Essay" – from Old French assay - to weigh, examine or test. 1. The action or process of trying or testing (1598). 2. An attempt, endeavour (1598). 3. A first attempt in learning or practice (1734); a first draft (1793). 4. A short composition on any particular subject; orig. "an irregular, undigested piece", but now said of a finished treatise. Ah, so that's what an essay is! Well I liked that bit about "irregular" and "undigested"; that's where I'm at right now. Half my essays are off the cuff, the other half off the Internet. Maybe I should make the assay, digest Buddha and Bacon and see if I can add to Gardner's Multiple Intelligences. I suppose I could write about music too, or a favorite painting, or go for the treatise. Hmm. It's beginning to sound quite creative. You what?! "40 pages of polished prose?!" You must be joking! Unless...Course requirements: four essays of 4 pages (each counting for 10%); four essays of 6 pages (each counting for 15%); Individual choices for length of paper and corresponding percentage. Course book: A World of Ideas, Lee A.Jacobus (Bedford Books, 1998) (Broadbridge)
Section 008 – Rhetoric and Reasoning in Written and Visual
Communication. Social critic Raymond Williams reminds us that communication is not a static concept; discourse is a continuously
evolving and transformative integration of languages and signs
and symbols. We will be examining various forms of inquiry and argumentation and creativity, applying research and insight to the processes of discovery, analysis, and interpretation. We will
be asking ourselves questions as we work through issues of logic, perspective, and representation: How does writing reflect its
author and the society from which it is produced? How do media
influence the public imagination? How does a writer master form
and retain originality? Upon what assumptions do we base our criticism
of what we write or read? How can we account for opinions which
vary from our own and upon what evidence do we base our acceptance
or rejection of the positions of others? Can individuals collaborate
successfully? In what ways might writing inspire thoughtful reflection?
Several papers require argumentative inquiry while others are
dependent upon research and interpretation. Four papers of 5-6
pages and a final 10-15 page essay. Revision will be required, as will class requires discussion and some oral presentations.
(Morris) Section 009 – Your Post-Modern Essay: Parody, Plagiarism, or the Renewal of a Dying Tradition? In this advanced writing
course, with its explorative emphasis, we shall be reading, summarizing, and discussing philosophical essays personally presented by you
as the result of your own selection from the fifth edition of
Lee A. Jacobus' A World of Ideas: Essential Readings for College
Writers. Principally, our discussions will focus on the synthesis
of style and content rather than on content per se. In
addition, you will be expected to write and personally present
to the class several shorter essays of your own in close stylistic
imitation of the essays we have been studying – but dealing with
a topic or topics of your own choice – essays which must later
be combined, by you or by other members of the class with or without
you, to form a selection of original post-modernist collages.
On the basis of the final collective products of the class, we
shall be discussing the value of a deconstructive post-modernist
approach to a time-honored tradition. (Edmonds)
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Times, Location, and Availability
327/Theatre 327. Playwriting.
Engl. 227. (3). (Excl).
In this course, we will write the first act of a full length play, though ambitious students are encouraged to write a draft of a
whole play. We will start with an idea, grapple with it, fill
it out, focus it, create a theatrical world and develop a narrative throughline. Students will read from their plays in class and the work will be discussed. Writing games will be used to explore
character, relationship, action, and to help get through blind
spots and blocks. Other assignments will include reading plays, seeing plays, keeping a journal and meeting regularly with the
teacher. At the end of the term we will give staged readings of
our work for an audience of friends. (Hammond)
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Times, Location, and Availability
340. Reading and Writing
Poetry. (3). (Excl).
Section 001 – The Reading and Writing of Poetry of Witness.
In this course, we will take responsibility for our knowledge, for what we witness, those events, those moments, those situations, those images that demand our notice, that strike us in such a
way that we are motivated to respond. To help us feel compelled, we will read a variety of poems that do not shun their responsibility
to humanity, that comment fully on all manner of events, all seasons
of endeavor; poems that realize the poet is in the world and is
not a world separate from all that has happened, is happening, will happen. We will study these poems to notice the strategies
of commitment to the poem's subjects and then attempt similar
(and other) strategies in our own poems. We will move towards
heightened awareness of the world and ourselves in it so that
we will be more receptive to what is there and more likely, therefore, to be struck, to feel the resonance we will attempt to place in
our poems. The goals are to deepen our understanding of literary
poetry with a conscience, and to learn to distinguish private
poetry from public poetry so that we produce more essential, literary
poems. Enrollment in this class is by permission of instructor.
Students should submit a writing sample by the first day of class.
(Moss)
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Times, Location, and Availability
English 350 & 351
This two-term sequence is designed to give students a principled sense of the range of literary works written in English; the first term will characteristically deal with works produced before the later seventeenth century – to the time of Milton, that is; the second term will begin at that point and proceed to the present. These courses will be open to English concentrators and to non-concentrators alike.
350. Literature in English
to 1660. (4). (Excl).
This course is the first of a two-term sequence designed to study the historical development of literature in English. Most of our
attention will be devoted to close analysis of a dazzling variety
of texts from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. We will work
to foreground the historical, social, cultural, and intellectual
issues to which these texts respond, and to interrogate our criteria
for designating a text as "major." Writers to be studied
include Chaucer, Marlowe, Spenser, Shakespeare, Donne, Herbert, and Milton. The course features three hours a week of lecture;
groups of twenty-five students will meet a fourth hour under the
leadership of doctoral students to discuss the material further
and to work on their writing for the course. There will be three
essays of approximately five pages each, a midterm and a final
examination. This course satisfies the Pre-1600 Literature requirement
for English concentrators. (Schoenfeldt)
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Times, Location, and Availability
367. Shakespeare's Principal
Plays. (4). (HU).
A study of Shakespeare's dramatic works, selected to represent
his exploration of major genres over the course of his career.
Although we will be reading the plays intensively as literary
works, we will also be considering social and political issues
in Elizabethan and Jacobean England in order to clarify the complex
engagement of Shakespeare's stage with cultural controversies
of his period. Our goal will be to appreciate Shakespeare and to examine the impact of his drama in its own day and its ramification
for ours. The plays likely to be studied: A Midsummer Night's
Dream; The Merchant of Venice; Measure for Measure; Hamlet; Othello;
King Lear; The Tempest. The text used will be The Riverside
Shakespeare, available at the Shaman Drum Bookshop. There
will be a midterm and a final exam, as well as three relatively
short essays. This course satisfies the Pre-1600 requirement for
English concentrators. Cost:2
(Skantze)
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English 370, 371, & 372
Each of these courses will range over the materials of the periods indicated below in one or more of a variety of ways. Some may be multi-generic surveys; some may focus on the development during the period of specific genres; some may be topical, others formal in their principle of organization. All sections will emphasize the development of student skill in writing essays analyzing the materials and evaluating the approaches in question.
370. Studies in Medieval
and Renaissance Literature. (4). (Excl). May be repeated
for credit with department permission.
Section 001 – Masterpieces of Medieval Literature. This course
will introduce you to some of the best medieval literature from
England and Western Europe. A tentative list of texts includes
Beowulf, the Middle English saint's life known as Juliana, the Arthurian Romances of Chrétien de Troyes, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the Old Norse Grettir's
Saga, a selection of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales,
and the Book of Margery Kempe. We will read, discuss, and write about these works from a wide variety of perspectives, but I will be paying special attention to the way in which they
construct ethical systems by means of literary conventions. Requirements
include a willingness to participate actively in class discussion, and three medium-length papers (6-8 pp.). This course satisfies the Pre-1600 requirement for English concentrators. (Tanke)
Section 003 – History of Early English Poetry. After a brief survey of English prose from the 14th to the 18th Century, we shall study the following forms from the same period: alliterative verse, rhymed couplets, various stanza forms, sonnets, and blank verse (narratives and plays). The emphasis will be on shifts of style through time, on trying to define and explain these shifts in terms of cultural forces and authorial talents. Poets will include Langland, Chaucer, Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, Swift, and Pope. Everyone will need to learn to read Middle English, to scan verse, and to gain familiarity with various terms for characterizing poetic style. Everyone will be asked to engage in detailed textual analysis as well as to write on broader issues. Required texts: The Norton Anthology of Literature, Vol. I, and a course pack. This course satisfies the Pre-1830 requirement for English concentrators. (M. Smith)
Section 004 – Writing Literary History. (Honors). Sometimes literary history is about Great Art by dead white men; sometimes it's about the deeds (mostly wars) of kings and popes; sometimes it's even about women. In this course, we will sample these and other stories about early English literature in order to appreciate the various contexts into which we can place texts - and to understand how context affects interpretation. We will also, of course, study some Great Art and some perhaps not so great. After we have finished reading many texts, we will visit Special Collections in Hatcher Library and there examine manuscripts and early print editions of familiar and a few unfamiliar works. Our class time will be spent in lectures, discussions, small group activities, individual and group reports – with an occasional foray into music and film. Required work: a group presentation on a particular literary history; an individual report on a manuscript or early print edition; three interpretive essays; and an essay evaluating several literary histories. This course satisfies the Pre-1600 requirement for English concentrators. (Tinkle)
Section 005 – Renaissance Epic. The epic was the great narrative form in which Renaissance European authors attempted to establish the nature of their own culture and, in the process, their own identity as artists. But the task was not only to create a work of art and to explore contemporary social and moral values: it was to establish two sorts of difference (a) that between their own culture and the cultures of the past, and (b) that between European culture and the cultures of peoples at the margins - to the South, the Africans, to the East, the Arabs. The works we will read are amongst the most splendid and challenging we possess. Readings will include: Petrarch, Africa; Ariosto, Orlando Furioso (Roland Gone Mad for Love); Vida, Christiad; Tasso, Jerusalem Liberated; Spenser, Faerie Queene; and Milton, Paradise Lost. There will be three essays of moderate length (4-6 pages), a midterm, and a final examination. This course satisfies the Pre-1600 Literature requirement for English concentrators. (Williams)
Section 006 – Magic, Religion, and the Supernatural in
Medieval and Renaissance Literature. Medieval and Renaissance
literature draws on a cultural context which assumes various supernatural
"givens." We will read some of the most interesting
works of this period against this cultural context. We will explore
a variety of genres and literary styles, and will also be reading
from an anthropological and historical perspective. Texts read
will include selections from The Canterbury Tales, Sir Gawain
and the Green Knight, Dr. Faustus, The Tempest, and Paradise
Lost. Requirements include active class participation, three
papers of six to eight pages, and various short assignments. This
course satisfies the Pre-1600 requirement for English concentrators.
(Aaron)
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Times, Location, and Availability
371. Studies in Literature, 1600-1830. (4). (Excl). May be repeated for credit
with department permission.
Section 001. A wide view of English life and literature of the period 1660-1800: an Age of Reason when many major authors
were mad, an Age of Enlightenment when the upper classes feared
servants learning to read, a period when England was turning from
agriculture to industry and which was also heavily involved in
colonization and exploration. Politically, philosophically, we
still live much of the time in 18th-century England, for ours
is the first government to try to apply formally the developing
European concepts of equality, freedom, and human rights. In any
time the arts are intimately connected: here the relationships
are so close that each illumines the other and eases understanding
of what otherwise seems obscure. Music and both still and moving
images will be provided with the aid of a computer program of
my invention. Frequent short writing, two longer essays, and a
final exam. The course satisfies the Pre-1830 requirement for
English concentrators. (Cloyd)
Section 002 – Augustan and Romantic Culture. The aim of this course is twofold: to sharpen students' interpretive skills in a variety of media and to introduce them to eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century British literature, visual arts, and history. We will begin by exploring the arts of the early eighteenth century. We will, for instance, discuss prosody and notions of social order in Pope's Essay on Man, and read Reynolds' aesthetic theory alongside his paintings. As the course proceeds we will trace the development of Romantic aesthetics, reading Wordsworth's "Preface" to Lyrical Ballads and Shelley's Frankenstein while studying Romantic poetry and painting. Requirements include papers, a group presentation, and a final. This course satisfies the Pre-1830 requirement for English concentrators. (Henderson)
Section 003 – Revolutionary Writing in Britain and the Americas. (Honors). This course explores writing about revolution and social reform from the 1770s to the 1850s in England and the United States, focusing on key moments of political upheaval: the American fight for independence, the British response to the French Revolution, and the rebellion against peonage in England and slavery in the Americas. This was a period when revolutionary ideas and movements challenged a variety of ancient social and political forms; it was also a time of radically new literary experimentation when writers attempted to burst old forms of social behavior by forging new forms of literature. We'll examine the intellectual and literary trends of this span of time in relation to innovative concepts of social, political, and economic organization. Writers we shall study include Thomas Paine, William Blake, Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, William Wordsworth, Olaudah Equiano, Phillis Wheatley, Mary Shelley, Elizabeth Gaskell, Martin Delany, and others. This course satisfies the Pre-1830 requirement for English concentrators. (Ross)
Section 004 – British Romantic Prose: "The Spirit
of the Age". Between 1789 and 1830, the market for fiction
expanded drastically while new periodicals offered diverse critical
and political opinions to the British public. Meanwhile, revolutions
in politics (France) and poetry (Britain) generated a wide range
of pamphlets and prefaces. This course surveys the major authors
and representative genres of British Romantic prose, with the
primary emphasis on non-fiction. We will be especially interested
in what more than one writer called the "Spirit of the Age": the conflicting ways in which these authors tried to define the
essence – national, cultural, spiritual – of their own historic
moment. Our wide-ranging readings will include such authors as
Jane Austen, Edmund Burke, S.T. Coleridge, Sir Walter Scott, Mary
Wollstonecraft, and William Wordsworth. Requirements include 3
papers of varying lengths, reading journal, and a final exam.
This course fulfills the Pre-1830 requirement for English concentrators.
(Burstein)
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Times, Location, and Availability
372. Studies in Literature, 1830-Present. (4). (Excl). May be repeated for credit
with department permission.
Section 001 – What Was Modernism? This course will explore
Modernism – the style/movement that dominated the "high"
art of the first decades of this century. While we will read a
few poems (Eliot, Yeats) and glance briefly at some of the art
and music, the focus of the course will fall primarily on fiction.
Works to be read include Conrad's Heart of Darkness,
Mann's Death in Venice, Joyce's Portrait of the Artist,
Kafka's The Metamorphosis, Woolf's To the Lighthouse,
Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's
Lover, Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, and Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. Course grades will depend
on two essay exams, and frequent short, informal writing assignments.
Regular attendance is essential. Cost:2
(Beauchamp)
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Times, Location, and Availability
381/Amer. Cult. 324.
Asian American Literature. (3). (HU). May be repeated
for a total of six credits with department permission.
Section 001 – Asian American Literary History. This course
offers the study of Asian American literary history comprising
major works and authors of fiction, drama, and poetry from the
late-1800s to the mid-1980s. We shall examine how Asian American
literary traditions have developed, how they relate to other traditions
of American literature within historical, social, political, and cultural contexts, and how Asian American authors develop their themes (often of race, nationality, and identity) through literature.
Among authors to be read are Sui Sin Far, Carlos Bulosan, Jade
Snow Wong, John Okada, Louis Chu, Frank Chin, Hisaye Yamamoto, Milton Murayama, Maxine Hong Kingston, Cathy Song, Kim Ronyoung, Bharati Mukherjee. Two papers of 3-5 pp. each, a final paper of
7-10 pp., plus quizzes. This course satisfies the American Literature
and New Traditions requirements for English concentrators. Cost:4 (Sumida)
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Times, Location, and Availability
384/CAAS 384/Amer. Cult.
406. Topics in Caribbean Literature. (3). (Excl).
May be repeated for a total of six credits with department permission.
Section 001 – Colonial Encounters. From that fateful night
in 1492 when Columbus lost his way in the New World, the islands
of the Caribbean have provided a stage in which different cultures
have met and reshaped their identities and destinies. This course
is an examination of the images, texts, and ideologies which have
emerged out of these colonial encounters. From a selection of
readings ranging from Columbus' diaries and fictions on the 1790s
revolution in Haiti, to novels on nationalism and postcolonialism, we will examine how ideas about the Caribbean were central to
European notions of self and modernity. Using different media
- films, videos, and paintings – we shall see how the shaping
of slave society in the Caribbean was as much about African slaves
as it was about European and American ideals. The course will
conclude with an examination of narratives of Caribbean migration
to Europe and the United States. Course requirements: short writing
assignments and a final examination. This course satisfies the
New Traditions requirement for English concentrators. Cost:2
(Gikandi)
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Times, Location, and Availability
100- and 200-level |
300-399 |
400-499 |
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