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).
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Primarily for Juniors and Seniors
315/WS 315. Women and Literature. (3). (HU). May be repeated for a total of six credits.
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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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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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 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)
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371. Studies in Literature, 1600-1830. (4). (Excl). May be repeated for credit with department permission.
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)
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384/CAAS 384/Amer. Cult. 406. Topics in Caribbean Literature. (3). (Excl). May be repeated for a total of six credits with department permission.
100- and 200-level | 300-399 | 400-499 |