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2018-2019 Academic Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]
English Courses
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English
English
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ENG 120 - Literary Analysis 4 credits (Fall and Spring)
An introduction to the methods and pleasures of literary analysis focusing on skills needed to practice close reading and explication of texts and emphasizing the rich complexities of literary language. Although individual sections vary in genres considered, all prepare students for further work in poetry and prose. For current course content please see the variable topic course listing below or search the online live schedule of courses.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Staff -
ENG 121 - Introduction to Shakespeare 4 credits (Fall or Spring)
A close study of representative plays from each period of Shakespeare’s career, including comedies, histories, tragedies, and romances. For current course content please see the variable topic course listing below or search the online live schedule of courses.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Simpson -
ENG 204 - The Craft of Argument 4 credits (Spring)
Advanced course in argumentative or analytical writing with particular attention to style.
Prerequisite: Second-year standing.
Note: Not offered every year.
Instructor: Arner -
ENG 205 - The Craft of Fiction 4 credits (Fall and Spring)
Instruction in the techniques and process of fiction writing, with emphasis on the short story. Readings may include published short stories and essays on the art of fiction. Students may also be asked to write in forms related to fiction (journal, autobiography, prose poem).
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 .
Instructor: Smith, Bakopoulos -
ENG 206 - The Craft of Poetry 4 credits (Fall and Spring)
Instruction in the techniques and process of verse writing. Readings may include published poems and essays on the art of poetry.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 .
Instructor: Phan, Savarese -
ENG 207 - Craft of Creative Nonfiction 4 credits (Spring)
In this course, we will acquaint ourselves with the genre of creative nonfiction, sampling a range of the myriad possibilities it presents: the personal essay, the political essay, nature writing, memoir, travel writing, literary journalism, biographical profile. We will read exemplary models and try our hands at each.
Prerequisite: ENG 205 or ENG 206
Instructor: Bakopoulos, Savarese -
ENG 210 - Studies in Genre 4 credits (Fall or Spring)
Intensive study of a particular genre. May include the study of lyric, epic, or narrative poetry; or novel, graphic novel, short story or drama. For current course content please see the variable topic course listing below or search the online live schedule of courses.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors; or for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 or third-year standing.
Note: Plus-2 option available.
Instructor: Staff -
ENG 215 - Reading and Writing Youth and Youth Cultures 4 credits (Spring)
See EDU 215 .
Note: Plus-2 option available.
Instructor: Jones -
ENG 223 - The Tradition of English Literature I 4 credits (Fall or Spring)
Study of English literature from Old English to the early 17th century; may include such works as Beowulf, Canterbury Tales, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Faerie Queene, and Paradise Lost. For current course content please see the variable topic course listing below or search the online live schedule of courses.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 or third-year standing.
Note: Plus-2 option available.
Instructor: Arner -
ENG 224 - The Tradition of English Literature II 4 credits (Fall or Spring)
Study of English literature from the Restoration through the Victorians; may include such authors as Behn, Defoe, Swift, Wordsworth, Shelley, Austen, George Eliot, and Dickens. For current course content please see the variable topic course listing below or search the online live schedule of courses.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 , or third-year standing.
Note: Plus-2 option available.
Instructor: Simpson -
ENG 225 - Introduction to Postcolonial Literatures 4 credits (Fall)
An introduction to postcolonial literatures and theory from the Caribbean, Africa, South Asia, and the Pacific. For current course content please see the variable topic course listing below or search the online live schedule of courses.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 or third-year standing.
Note: Plus-2 option available.
Instructor: Kapila -
ENG 226 - The Tradition of English Literature III 4 credits (Fall or Spring)
Study of English literature of the 20th century; may include such authors as Joyce, Woolf, Beckett, Orwell, Eliot, Winterson, Kureishi, and Walcott. For current course content please see the variable topic course listing below or search the online live schedule of courses.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 or third-year standing.
Instructor: Kapila, Simpson -
ENG 227 - American Literary Traditions I 4 credits (Fall or Spring)
Study of American literature from Columbus to 1830; may include such authors as Columbus, Ralegh, Bradstreet, Rowlandson, Franklin, Rowson, Irving, Bryant, and Cooper. Features works from a variety of genres, including Native American myths, travel and promotional narratives, journals, poetry, fiction, nonfiction prose, and maps. For current course content please see the variable topic course listing below or search the online live schedule of courses.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 or third-year standing.
Note: Plus-2 option available.
Instructor: Andrews -
ENG 228 - American Literary Traditions II 4 credits (Fall or Spring)
Study of American literature from 1830 to 1893; may include such authors as Emerson, Melville, Whitman, Dickinson, Twain, James, Chopin, Chesnutt, and Zitkala-Sa. Features works from a variety of genres including fiction, poetry, nonfiction prose, and drama. For current course content please see the variable topic course listing below or search the online live schedule of courses.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 or third-year standing.
Note: Plus-2 option available.
Instructor: Andrews, Benjamin -
ENG 229 - The Tradition of African American Literature 4 credits (Fall)
The emergence and growth of African American literature from slavery to the present. For current course content please see the variable topic course listing below or search the online live schedule of courses.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 or third-year standing.
Note: Plus-2 option available.
Instructor: Benjamin -
ENG 230 - English Historical Linguistics 4 credits (Spring)
Study of the history of the English language through examination of phonological, grammatical, and semantic changes in the language from Old English to Middle English to Modern English with attention to “external” history.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 or third-year standing.
Note: Plus-2 option available. Not offered every year.
Instructor: Arner -
ENG 231 - American Literary Traditions III 4 credits (Fall or Spring)
Study of American literature from 1893 to today; may include such authors as Crane, Eliot, Faulkner, Hurston, Plath, DeLillo, and Morrison. For current course content please see the variable topic course listing below or search the online live schedule of courses.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 or third-year standing.
Note: Plus-2 option available.
Instructor: Staff -
ENG 232 - Ethnic American Literatures 4 credits (Fall or Spring)
Study of the major traditions of American ethnic literatures. Features works from a variety of genres including fiction, poetry, nonfiction prose, and drama. For current course content please see the variable topic course listing below or search the online live schedule of courses.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors; for non-majors, ENG 120 orENG 121 or third-year standing.
Instructor: Phan -
ENG 273 - Feminism and Difference 4 credits (Fall or Spring)
Study of critical debates in global, transnational and Postcolonial feminisms. This introductory course will include literary, historical, and theoretical texts which study the progress of feminism in the global south in conjunction with but also often in opposition to the Euro-American world. For current course content please see the variable topic course listing below or search the online live schedule of courses.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors; for non-majors, ENG 120 , ENG 121 , GWS 111 or third-year standing.
Note: Plus-2 option available. Not offered every year.
Instructor: Kapila -
ENG 274 - Sex, Gender, and Critical Theory 4 credits (Fall or Spring)
Study of the critical debates in the construction of gender and sexuality, and how these debates have shaped, and been shaped by contemporary feminist and queer theory. This course will familiarize students with a range of critical theories that have transformed the study of sexuality and gender in recent decades-psychoanalysis, structuralism, post-structuralism, deconstruction and postmodernism. We will read key figures in theories of sex and gender, including Judith Butler, Michel Foucault, and Gayle Rubin.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors; for non-majors, ENG 120 , ENG 121 , GWS 111 or third-year standing.
Note: Plus-2 option available.
Instructor: Staff -
ENG 290 - Introduction to Literary Theory 4 credits (Fall or Spring)
Survey of Critical debates in history of literary theory and criticism from Plato to Butler. For purposes of practical application, readings may also include selected fiction, poetry, and drama. For current course content please see the variable topic course listing below or search the online live schedule of courses.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 or third-year standing.
Note: Plus-2 option available.
Instructor: Staff -
ENG 303 - Chaucer 4 credits (Spring)
Study of Chaucer’s poetry in Middle English. Option of doing some reading in Latin, Italian, or French. For current course content please see the variable topic course listing below or search the online live schedule of courses.
Prerequisite: ENG 223 .
Note: Plus-2 option available. Not offered every year.
Instructor: Arner -
ENG 310 - Studies in Shakespeare 4 credits (Fall)
An intensive study of three or four plays from various approaches, such as sources, imagery, and critical and theatrical traditions. For current course content please see the variable topic course listing below or search the online live schedule of courses.
Prerequisite: ENG 121 . ENG 223 and ENG 224 strongly recommended.
Note: Plus-2 option available. Not offered every year.
Instructor: Lee -
ENG 314 - Milton 4 credits (Fall)
Intensive study of Milton’s poetry and selected prose with emphasis on Paradise Lost, on Milton’s place in the epic tradition, and on Milton’s reputation in English poetry. For current course content please see the variable topic course listing below or search the online live schedule of courses.
Prerequisite: ENG 223 or ENG 273 .
Note: Plus-2 option available. Not offered every year.
Instructor: Lee -
ENG 316 - Studies in English Renaissance Literature 4 credits (Spring)
An intensive study of a group of related authors, a mode, or a genre from the period 1500–1600. For current course content please see the variable topic course listing below or search the online live schedule of courses.
Prerequisite: ENG 223 or ENG 273 .
Note: Plus-2 option available. Not offered every year.
Instructor: Lee -
ENG 323 - Studies in English Literature: 1660–1798 4 credits (Spring)
Intensive study of Restoration and 18th-century literature with a focus on specific themes and genres. For current course content please see the variable topic course listing below or search the online live schedule of courses.
Prerequisite: ENG 223 , ENG 224 , ENG 225 , ENG 227 , or ENG 228 .
Note: Not offered every year.
Instructor: Lobban-Viravong, Simpson -
ENG 325 - Studies in Ethnic American Literatures 4 credits (Fall or Spring)
Intensive study of important authors, movements, or trends in American ethnic literatures. For current course content please see the variable topic course listing below or search the online live schedule of courses.
Prerequisite: ENG 227 , ENG 228 , ENG 229 , ENG 231 , ENG 232 , or ENG 273 .
Note: Plus-2 option available.
Instructor: Phan -
ENG 326 - Studies in American Poetry I 4 credits (Fall)
Intensive study of important poets, movements, or trends in 19th-century American poetry. For current course content please see the variable topic course listing below or search the online live schedule of courses.
Prerequisite: ENG 227 , ENG 228 , ENG 229 , ENG 231 , ENG 232 , or ENG 273 .
Note: Not offered every year.
Instructor: Andrews, Savarese -
ENG 327 - The Romantics 4 credits (Fall)
Study of major figures in English literature from 1798 to 1830, with attention to Romantic theories of poetry. For current course content please see the variable topic course listing below or search the online live schedule of courses.
Prerequisite: ENG 223 ,ENG 224 , ENG 225 , ENG 227 , or ENG 228 .
Note: Plus-2 option available. Not offered every year.
Instructor: Simpson -
ENG 328 - Studies in American Poetry II 4 credits (Fall)
Intensive study of important poets, movements, or trends in 20th-century American poetry. For current course content please see the variable topic course listing below or search the online live schedule of courses.
Prerequisite: ENG 227 , ENG 228 , ENG 229 , ENG 231 , ENG 232 , or ENG 273 .
Note: Not offered every year.
Instructor: Andrews, Savarese -
ENG 329 - Studies in African American Literature 4 credits
Intensive study of an African American literary genre, movement, author, or a group of related authors. For current course content please see the variable topic course listing below or search the online live schedule of courses.
Prerequisite: ENG 225 , ENG 227 , ENG 228 , ENG 229 , ENG 231 , ENG 232 , or ENG 273 .
Note: Plus-2 option available.
Instructor: Benjamin -
ENG 330 - Studies in American Prose I 4 credits (Fall)
Intensive study of important writers, movements, or trends in 19th-century American prose. For current course content please see the variable topic course listing below or search the online live schedule of courses.
Prerequisite: ENG 227 , ENG 228 , ENG 229 , ENG 231 , ENG 232 , or ENG 273 .
Note: Not offered every year.
Instructor: Andrews, Savarese -
ENG 331 - Studies in American Prose II 4 credits (Spring)
Intensive study of important writers, movements, or trends in 20th-century American prose. For current course content please see the variable topic course listing below or search the online live schedule of courses.
Prerequisite: ENG 227 , ENG 228 , ENG 229 , ENG 231 , ENG 232 , or ENG 273 .
Note: Plus-2 option available. Not offered every year.
Instructor: Staff -
ENG 332 - The Victorians 4 credits (Fall)
Study of major British writers from 1830 to 1900, with emphasis on distinctive approaches to common artistic, intellectual, and social problems. For current course content please see the variable topic course listing below or search the online live schedule of courses.below.
Prerequisite: ENG 223 , ENG 224 , ENG 225 , ENG 227 , or ENG 228 .
Note: Plus-2 option available. Not offered every year.
Instructor: Jacobson, Simpson -
ENG 337 - The British Novel I 4 credits (Spring)
Historical development of the British novel, formal evolution, methods of publication, and the relation of novels to their cultures. Through the early Dickens (e.g., Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Sterne, Jane Austen, Thackeray). For current course content please see the variable topic course listing below or search the online live schedule of courses.
Prerequisite: ENG 223 , ENG 224 , ENG 225 , ENG 226 , or ENG 273 .
Note: Plus-2 option available. Not offered every year.
Instructor: Staff -
ENG 338 - The British Novel II 4 credits (Spring)
Historical development of the British novel, formal evolution, methods of publication, and the relation of novels to their cultures. From Dickens to the present (e.g., George Eliot, Hardy, Conrad, Lawrence, Forster, Virginia Woolf). For current course content please see the variable topic course listing below or search the online live schedule of courses.
Prerequisite: ENG 223 , ENG 224 , ENG 225 , ENG 226 , or ENG 273 .
Note: Plus-2 option available. Not offered every year.
Instructor: Staff -
ENG 345 - Studies in Modern Poetry 4 credits (Fall)
Intensive study of important modern poets. For current course content please see the variable topic course listing below or search the online live schedule of courses.
Prerequisite: ENG 224 , ENG 225 , ENG 226 , ENG 227 , ENG 228 , ENG 229 , ENG 231 , ENG 232 , or ENG 273 .
Note: Plus-2 option available. Not offered every year.
Instructor: Savarese -
ENG 346 - Studies in Modern Prose 4 credits (Fall)
Intensive study of important modern fiction. For current course content please see the variable topic course listing below or search the online live schedule of courses.
Prerequisite: ENG 224 , ENG 225 , ENG 226 , ENG 227 , ENG 228 , ENG 229 , ENG 231 , ENG 232 , or ENG 273 .
Note: Plus-2 option available. Not offered every year.
Instructor: Simpson -
ENG 349 - Medieval Literature 4 credits (Fall)
Cross-listed as: GLS 349 . Study of medieval European literary forms (lyric, epic, romance, allegory, and dream vision) through analysis of major works such as Beowulf, Chretien de Troyes’ poems, Marie de France’s Lais, The Romance of the Rose, The Divine Comedy, The Decameron, Piers Plowman, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Book of the City of Ladies, and Malory’s prose. Option of doing some reading in Latin, Italian, or French. For current course content please see the variable topic course listing below or search the online live schedule of courses.
Prerequisite: ENG 223 .
Note: Plus-2 option available. Not offered every year.
Instructor: Arner -
ENG 360 - Seminar in Postcolonial Literature 4 credits (Spring)
An intensive study of important writers, movements, or theoretical concepts in postcolonial literature written in English. For current course content please see the variable topic course listing below or search the online live schedule of courses.
Prerequisite: ENG 224 , ENG 225 , ENG 226 , or ENG 229 .
Note: Plus-2 option available.
Instructor: Kapila -
ENG 385 - Writing Seminar: Fiction 4 credits (Fall or Spring)
Advanced workshop for students with a strong background in fiction writing.
Prerequisite: ENG 205 .
Note: Plus-2 option available.
Instructor: Smith, Bakopoulos -
ENG 386 - Writing Seminar: Poetry 4 credits (Fall or Spring)
Advanced workshop for students with a strong background in verse writing.
Prerequisite: ENG 206 .
Instructor: Phan, Savarese -
ENG 388 - Writing Seminar: Screenwriting/Television Writing/Variable Genre 4 credits (Fall or Spring)
This course examines creative writing with a focus on digital, emerging, and hybrid genres-namely writing for television and film. In some semesters, the course may focus on other emerging genres depending on the research interests of the instructor. Students will spend much of the semester discussing the craft and construction of existing texts and applying knowledge gained to the completion of significant creative project of their own. For current course content please see the variable topic course listing below or search the online live schedule of courses.
Prerequisite: ENG 205 , ENG 206 , or ENG 207 .
Instructor: Bakopoulos, Nutting, Savarese -
ENG 390 - Literary Theory 4 credits (Spring)
An intensive introduction to the major schools of critical and literary theory. Readings likely to include foundational texts in formalism, Marxism, feminism, psychoanalysis, historicism, poststructuralism, and postcolonialism. For current course content please see the variable topic course listing below or search the online live schedule of courses.
Prerequisite: Any 200-level English course.
Instructor: Andrews, Kapila
Special Topics-Fall
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ENG 295-01 - Special Topic: Creative Writing: Global Perspectives 2 credits (Fall)
A creative writing workshop offered in conjunction with the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program (IWP). This seminar-style course will be led by a writer/scholar of international distinction. Students will read and discuss eclectic texts representing a diverse range of global contemporary literature and write short creative works influenced by these readings and discussion.
Prerequisite: ENG 205 , ENG 206 , or ENG 207 .
Instructor: Ganieva
Special Topics-Spring
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ENG 195-01 - Introductory Special Topic: Baseball as Liberal Art: The Art of Fielding and the Craft of Reading 4 credits (Spring)
“Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game,” wrote Jacques Barzun in 1954. Many Americans do know the rules, at least enough to organize a game in a vacant lot on the spur of the moment. But what of the “realities” of the game itself? As late afternoon shadows lengthen on the national pastime, how much do we really know in regard to what has been considered fair and foul over the course of the game’s history? In order to explore some of the social realities of the game, we will focus on six baseball-themed novels.
Prerequisite: None.
Note: Students may not receive credit for both ENG-195-01 and ENG-120.
Instructor: Andrews -
ENG 295-01 - Special Topic: The Doctor as Writer 4 credits (Spring)
A medical humanities course, but with an emphasis on the doctor as writer. What can literature offer the pursuit of healing? The Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University remarks, “The care of the sick unfolds in stories. …Medicine practiced with narrative competence is a model for humane and effective medical practice.” We will explore the narrative competence of such doctor-writers as Richard Selzer, Oliver Sacks, Siddhartha Mukherjee, Damon Tweedy, and Qanta Amhed.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 , ENG 121 , or third-year standing.
Instructor: Savarese -
ENG 295-02 - Special Topic: The Grinnell Writer’s Workshop 2 credits (Spring)
An advanced fiction class modeled on the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. Students will write, workshop, and revise original works of fiction under the guidance of Lan Samantha Chang, director of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. The class includes critiques from the instructor and will end with a field trip to literary Iowa City.
Prerequisite: ENG 205 or ENG 206 .
Note: Dates: February 1 to March 15. 1/2 semester deadlines apply.
Instructor: Staff -
ENG 395-01 - Advanced Special Topic: Piracy in Indian Ocean World 4 credits (Spring)
This course studies piracy as intimately related to colonial commerce, monarchial authority, and articulations of legitimate or unlawful trade. In the maritime world, South-East Asia maintained an informal economy of piracy that was a counterpoint to colonial trade in the 18th and 19th centuries in the Indian Ocean World. In that period piracy signified a challenge to untrammeled mercantilism and can also be seen to be a challenge to the rise of intellectual property. Describing Daniel Defoe’s understanding of piracy, Srinivas Aravamudan argues that Defoe’s was the first published use of the word ‘to pirate’ to mean appropriating the work or invention of another without authority. In an age, when appropriation of literary work was becoming an issue, piracy could be understood as describing intellectual property as much as it both challenged and was a parodic representation of mercantilism. This rich nexus of ideas of appropriation, theft, and interrogation of mercantile trade especially as deeply complicitous with colonialism is the lens through which we will read 18th and 19th century literature together with more recent fiction. Readings for the course may include Daniel Defoe’s Captain Singleton, Walter Scott’s, The Pirate, Lord Byron’s The Corsair, R. L. Stevenson’s, Treasure Island, Joseph Conrad, The Rover and The Malay Novels, (An Outcast of the Islands and Almayer’s Folly), and Amitav Ghosh’s, Sea of Poppies. We will also read A Captain’s Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALs, and Dangerous Days at Sea (2010) by Richard Phillips with Stephan Talty. The film based on this book, Captain Phillips, will also be part of our discussions. We will conclude with two contemporary books, Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and the novel, Autonomous by Annalee Newitz. N.B.: this course has been designed and scheduled to be team-taught with Prof. Andrews’s ENG 395. Since both classes will convene together for approximately ten class sessions, we recommend that you leave open whichever seminar slot is not taken by the course you enrolled in (if MW, reserve TTH, and vice-versa). We have also designed these courses to complement each other but to be different enough in content and approach so as to leave open the possibility of enrolling in both courses simultaneously.
Prerequisite: ENG 224 , ENG 225 , ENG 226 , or ENG 229 .
Note: Plus-2 available.
Instructor: Kapila
Variable Topics - Fall
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ENG 120-01 & 05 - Literary Analysis 4 credits (Fall)
In the Library of Fun Home. In his essay “Literature as Equipment for Living,” Kenneth Burke proposes that works of literature can help guide us through everyday life by providing readers with “strategies for dealing with situations.” In the spirit of Burke’s approach, we will explore the literary strategies and genres writers have adopted, invented, and deployed to confront personal, social, and political conflicts. The course readings are structured intertextually around Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home; that is, we will begin and end with Bechdel’s book, filling out the middle by reading many of the writers and works alluded to in the graphic memoir-including Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Camus’ The Stranger, Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, and Wilde’s The Important of Being Earnest -and by examining the critical issues and theories these writers invite us to engage.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Phan -
ENG 120-02 & 03 - Literary Analysis 4 credits (Fall)
This section will explore texts in which a main character or group of characters is dead from the beginning of the narration. Our primary texts will span a multitude of historical eras and literary forms, from drama to film, from the novel to poetry both contemporary and medieval. We will read how various theorists and critics have grappled with the ways in which death, loss, and nostalgia function in literature and in cultural life. Along the way, we will encounter questions of how art, religion, and social groups seek language for representing what no one has seen. Students will develop analytical skills through discussion and through writing their own critical essays.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Lorden -
ENG 120-04 - Literary Analysis 4 credits (Fall)
Global Modernism and its Legacies. What, exactly, is literature? What determines if it is good? How can we engage its richness with rigor and joy? Through our study of post-1900 prose, poetry, plays, radio programs, and film, this course will introduce you to techniques for literary analysis and master the tools needed to craft well-argued written critiques. In turn, we will work with supplemental materials such as book reviews, critical essays, interviews, newspapers, and digital sources to situate literary texts in their cultural, economic, and socio-historical context. Part of this exploration will involve a foray into the field of literary theory which examines how currents in political, social, and philosophical thought alter the way writers perceive their worlds and in turn affect the style of writing they use to represent it. We will consider work by E. M. Forster, Langston Hughes, Charlie Chaplin, Virginia Woolf, Sergei Eisenstein, Mulk Raj Anand, Una Marson, Wole Soyinka, Catherine Mansfield, Lu Xun, Bertolt Brecht, and Naguib Mahfouz.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Sutaria -
ENG 121-01 - Introduction to Shakespeare 4 credits (Fall)
This course will pay particular attention to how Shakespeare’s global imagination expands his plays and poems far beyond the space of London. Applying key terms and concepts for the study of literature, we will read representative works that help us see how his vision was informed by England’s sense of the larger world and how, in turn, his work has later been adapted in international communities. Together, we will build skills in close-reading and will consider questions of performance – both in Renaissance theater and in contemporary film.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Garrison -
ENG 224-01 - The Tradition of English Lit II 4 credits (Fall)
This course will offer a grounding in both major and representative British works of literature from the Restoration through the nineteenth century and may include works by Aphra Behn, Jonathan Swift, William Wordsworth, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Christina Rossetti, Bram Stoker, among others. We will discuss these texts in the context of the social changes occurring during this period, paying particular attention to gender and sexuality, the rise of the British Empire, the writers’ relationship to the natural world, and changes in literary style. There will be three points at which students will choose to take an exam or write a paper. Students must take at least one exam and write at least one paper during the course of the semester. There will also be regular written responses.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 or third-year standing.
Instructor: C. Jacobson -
ENG 227-01 - American Literary Traditions I 4 credits (Fall)
A City, a House, and the Overlook Hotel: American Gothic. The city is Philadelphia. The house has seven gables and a secret past. The hotel? Why, that’s our shining city on a hill. Here’s Jack, to show us around the grounds. Welcome to Eng. 227! In this course we foreground the impact that slavery and the settlement of the frontier has had on our national literary culture, with particular attention focused on what is called “American gothic.” Being mindful of the intersections of race, class, gender and sexuality, we will explore the personifications and demonizations-literary, legal and political-that haunt the clearings in which violence and slave labor were so often instrumental. In addition to focusing on novels by Charles Brockden Brown, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Stephen King, we will also read works by Anne Bradstreet, Mary Rowlandson, Harriet Jacobs, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Susan Fenimore Cooper, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Frederick Douglass, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. The course concludes with a viewing of Stanley Kubrick’s cinematic version of The Shining. Grades will be based on class discussion, collaborative presentations, several short responses and two medium-length papers.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 , or third-year standing.
Instructor: Andrews -
ENG 232-01 - Traditions of Ethnic American Literature 4 credits (Spring)
This survey course examines how contemporary ethnic American writing negotiates the contradictions, ambiguities and anxieties embedded in questions of national identity at the intersection of race and citizenship. We will examine works by Maxine Hong Kingston, Edwidge Danticat, Louise Erdrich, Anna Deavere Smith, Claudia Rankine, and Eduardo C. Corral, amongst others. Reading a wide selection of fiction, poetry, essays, and a graphic memoir within and against their specific cultural and historical contexts, we will explore how these works use literary form and language as a way to articulate alternative histories of the nation, national identity, and belonging, and to envision new democratic futures. As a survey, the objectives of this course are to give students an introduction to an array of literature engaged with issues of race and ethnicity in the U.S. and beyond; to help students develop a deeper understanding of the evolving issues involved in defining the American canon and in the national discourses on race and ethnicity; and to encourage the reading of literature with a fine critical understanding and aesthetic appreciation.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 or third-year standing.
Instructor: Phan -
ENG 310-01 - Studies in Shakespeare 4 credits (Fall)
Mapping the Absent in Shakespeare’s Plays. This course will intensively study four of Shakespeare’s plays: Antony and Cleopatra, As You Like It, Coriolanus, and A Winter’s Tale. In order to understand the resonances of these texts in Shakespeare’s time and in their afterlives, we will trace their sources, contemporaneous influences, and their adaptations in recent film and televison. Our particular focus will be on what is absent on the Renaissance stage and in later adaptations. In turn, mapping these unseen elements will help us better understand how Shakespeare meditates on an increasingly globalizing world. Students without the prerequisites may enroll in the class with the permission of the instructor.
Prerequisite: ENG 121 . ENG 223 and ENG 224 strongly recommended.
Instructor: Garrison -
ENG 332-01 - The Victorians 4 credits (Fall)
Going to Town: Urbanization and Victorian Literature. Massive and rapid migration to still-developing urban centers during the Victorian period led to decaying rural areas and catastrophically congested cities. Industrialization affected all facets of nineteenth-century life, and we’ll explore a number of them, focusing on class and gender dynamics during this period. We will read a variety of works of fiction and nonfiction including Charles Dickens’s Bleak House, Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South, and Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor. Students will submit two papers over the course of the semester, along with an annotated bibliography and regular short written responses.
Prerequisite: ENG 223 , ENG 224 , ENG 225 , ENG 227 , or ENG 228 .
Instructor: Jacobson -
ENG 360-01 - Seminar in Postcolonial Literature 4 credits (Fall)
The Ethics of Humanitarianism in the Aftermath of Empire. Critics reading literature through a postcolonial lens tend to examine how texts represent human rights violations caused by colonial domination or resistance and humanitarian efforts to stop these abuses of power. While some activists have successfully employed Human rights discourses when vying for the dignity and security of many formerly colonized communities, others, particularly those from the global South and indigenous communities, have critiqued this perspective, claiming it is rooted in Western Enlightenment notions of individualism. In this course, we will investigate how texts read through postcolonial frameworks illuminate the successes and failures of human rights discourses to help us generate more inclusive, ethical models that promote equity while honoring the socio-cultural, religious, or intellectual outlooks of diverse communities. We will begin by reading various Declarations of independence and political manifestos to provide a context for reading post 1900 literary, radio, filmic, and online texts about the aftermath of colonization. Our case studies will come from East Africa, Australia, India, Britain, Burma, Guatemala, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, Palestine, and the United States.
Prerequisite: ENG 224 , ENG 225 , ENG 226 , or ENG 229 .
Instructor: Sutaria -
ENG 390-01 - Literary Theory 4 credits (Fall)
Identity/Politics/Poetics: The Culture Wars and the Ends of Theory, 1966-1996. In this course, we will trace out the connections and disjunctions between a lecture delivered at Johns Hopkins in 1966, Native Americans’ attempts to regain tribal status in the 1970s and 80s, a Nazi-tinged scandal in 1988, the obscenity trial of 2 Live Crew in 1990, and a hoax perpetrated by a scientist in 1996. Each implicates in significant ways aspects of literary or cultural theory in the hotly contested contact zone of politics, identity, and poetics that came to be known as “the culture wars.” We will take a historicist approach to exploring the impact of post-structural theories on American culture and the academy in the 1980s and 90s. By way of discussing the particulars of these and other cases, and in order to better tease out the cultural issues that animate them, we will explore essays or excerpts by various critics and theorists including Houston Baker, Allan Bloom, Judith Butler, James Clifford, Kimberle Crenshaw, Paul de Man, Jacques Derrida, Stanley Fish, Henry Louis Gates Jr., David Hirsch, Steven Knapp and Walter Michaels, Catharine MacKinnon, and Alan Sokol. Grades will be based on class discussion, two collaborative presentations, a critical reading journal, and a short paper (6 pages) at mid-semester and a final research paper of approximately 15 pages.
Prerequisite: Any 200-level English course.
Instructor: Andrews
Variable Topics- Spring
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ENG 120-01 & 02 - Literary Analysis 4 credits (Spring)
Global Modernism and its Legacies. What, exactly, is literature? What determines if it is good? How can we engage its richness with rigor and joy? Through our study of post-1900 prose, poetry, plays, radio programs, and film, this course will introduce you to techniques for literary analysis and master the tools needed to craft well-argued written critiques. In turn, we will work with supplemental materials such as book reviews, critical essays, interviews, newspapers, and digital sources to situate literary texts in their cultural, economic, and socio-historical context. Part of this exploration will involve a foray into the field of literary theory which examines how currents in political, social, and philosophical thought alter the way writers perceive their worlds and in turn affect the style of writing they use to represent it. We will consider work by E. M. Forster, Langston Hughes, Charlie Chaplin, Virginia Woolf, Sergei Eisenstein, Mulk Raj Anand, Una Marson, Wole Soyinka, Catherine Mansfield, Lu Xun, Bertolt Brecht, and Naguib Mahfouz.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Sutaria -
ENG 120-03 - Literary Analysis 4 credits (Spring)
This section will explore texts in which a main character or group of characters is dead from the beginning of the narration. Our primary texts will span a multitude of historical eras and literary forms, from drama to film, from the novel to poetry both contemporary and medieval. We will read how various theorists and critics have grappled with the ways in which death, loss, and nostalgia function in literature and in cultural life. Along the way, we will encounter questions of how art, religion, and social groups seek language for representing what no one has seen. Students will develop analytical skills through discussion and through writing their own critical essays.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Lorden -
ENG 121-01 - Introduction to Shakespeare 4 credits (Spring)
As we closely read some of Shakespeare’s most intellectually challenging plays, our major focus will be on analyzing elements of stage performance, learning about acting and theatrical production both in Shakespeare’s time and today. In fact, we will see the plays that we study come to life on stage during the semester. Over Spring Break, we will engage in course-embedded travel to trace Shakespeare’s footsteps in the contemporary United States. First, we will travel to Washington, DC, to examine rare books at the Folger Shakespeare Library and to see two live plays there. We will then interact with actors and creators at the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, VA, where we will see plays at the Blackfriars Theater that replicates Shakespeare’s very own indoor theater as it had been in Renaissance London.
This course includes required travel over spring break. Students will be required to pay a $250 participation fee (most other required travel expenses will be covered). This fee will be added to the student tuition bill and is due by the first day of classes. If payment of this fee causes you financial concern , please contact Gretchen Zimmerman in the Financial Aid Office to discuss loan options to cover this additional cost for attendance.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Garrison -
ENG 210-01 - Studies in Genre 4 credits (Spring)
Saints and Superheroes. Superhuman heroes of different eras reflect and exaggerate the ideals of the worlds that produce them. Exploring the lives of these saints and superheroes, we will consider how sensational details shift, are censored, or are exaggerated for a given audience or by a given author, and how their fabulous adventures interact with genres such as romance, heroic literature, poetry, and history. Alternating between the distant and more recent past, we will discuss how the surprising adventures of supernatural figures reflect both otherwordly ideals and the worldly ideologies of the authorities and institutions who promoted them. We will read scholarship on both eras, questioning our assumptions of both past and present and what their impossible ideals may have to tell us about the lived history of their authors and audiences.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors; or for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 or third-year standing.
Instructor: Lorden -
ENG 223-01 - The Tradition of English Literature I 4 credits (Spring)
This course surveys works of English literature in conversation with the historical circumstances, social dynamics, and other texts that shape how traditions are written and understood. We will talk about how these texts came about, and what factors lead to their prominence and continuing influence upon those that come after them. With this in mind, we will read familiar works–Beowulf, Paradise Lost, selections from The Canterbury Tales–with texts written contemporaneously to complicate our ideas of what the tradition is and how it is formed.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 or third-year standing.
Instructor: Lorden -
ENG 225-01 - Introduction to Postcolonial Literature 4 credits (Spring)
Postcolonial Literature: Where Aesthetics Meets Politics. Literary critics have often employed the term postcolonial to describe the consequences of occupation during and after colonization. The rise and fall of the British Empire contributed significantly to cultural hybridity, migration, political tension, national sovereignty, and socio-economic inequity that shapes the world as we know it today. Through short lectures, extensive discussion, and intensive writing assignments, we will cover the key concepts and categories used in postcolonial theory to help us investigate the relationship between colonial experience and the content, form, and style of the literature written to understand and comment upon it. Our course will begin by examining texts such as Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Daniel Defeau’s Robinson Crusoe, as a spring board to talk about how modernist and contemporary literature emerged as a product of and response to colonization. We will draw from a range of literary genres, covering work by English, Irish, Caribbean, South Asian, African, Australian, Maori, and Middle Eastern writers.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors; for non-majors, ENG 120 , ENG 121 , or third-year standing.
Instructor: Sutaria -
ENG 325-01 - Studies in Ethnic American Literature 4 credits (Spring)
Translation Matters: The Task of the Ethnic American Writer. In this seminar, we will explore the literary, linguistic, and cultural matters of translation in ethnic American literature and examine how and why translation matters for reconceptualizing the relationship between “the ethnic” and “the American.” Drawing on the insights of translation theory, from Walter Benjamin’s “The Task of the Translator” to recent critical interventions by Lawrence Venuti, Gayatri Spivak, and Emily Apter, we will consider questions concerning the complex interplay between language, culture, and identity. Authors will likely include: Jhumpa Lahiri, Maxine Hong Kingston, Richard Rodriguez, Gloria Anzuldua, Aleksandr Hemon, Leslie Marmon Silko,Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Eduardo C. Corral, amongst others. For the final project, students will have the option of writing a longer research paper on a specific matter of translation in ethnic American literature or producing their own translation of a literary work, accompanied by a critical introduction. Students will be encouraged to read, think, and write across disciplinary boundaries, drawing on their own foreign language knowledge, academic studies, and cultural backgrounds-in short, to translate in their own terms what it means to be American, ethnic and otherwise.
Prerequisite: ENG 227 , ENG 228 , ENG 229 , ENG 231 , ENG 232 , or ENG 273 .
Note: Plus-2 option available.
Instructor: Phan -
ENG 330-01 - Studies in American Prose I 4 credits (Spring)
Manifest Displacements: Piracy, Slavery and the Limits of Self Possession. In the 18th century, literary or maritime piracy was as common in the transatlantic commercial world as were barnacles on hulls shipwrecked along the Spanish Main. By 1820, Congress defined the slave trade itself as a form of piracy. Shift the word “pirate” to its synonym “freebooter,” and by the mid-19th century the seafaring pirate becomes the land-grabbing filibuster. Even more recent avatars of the pirate are the data hacker, the patent pirate, and, potentially, DNA data providers. These intersecting modes of piracy will enable us to look askance at American cultural production, the better to recognize the constitutive role that various forms of theft and their disciplinary correctives continue to play in the constitution of American selves. Course readings may include accounts of 18th century pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read; a “memoir” by Jean Lafitte; James Fenimore Cooper’s The Red Rover; Lord Byron’s The Corsair; Herman Melville’s “Benito Cereno”; R.L. Stevenson’s Treasure Island; Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; William Gibson’s Neuromancer; Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks; and Annalee Newitz’s Autonomous. We will conclude with a viewing of Paul Greenglass’s 2013 film, Captain Phillips. Grade to be determined by class discussion, collaborative group work, one mid-length paper and the equivalent of a 15-page final research project. N.B.: this course has been designed and scheduled to be team-taught with Prof. Kapila’s ENG 395. Since both classes will convene together for approximately ten class sessions, we recommend that you leave open whichever seminar slot is not taken by the course you enrolled in (if MW, reserve TTH, and vice-versa). We have also designed these courses to complement each other but to be different enough in content and approach so as to leave open the possibility of enrolling in both courses simultaneously.
Prerequisite: ENG 227 , ENG 228 , ENG 229 , ENG 231 , ENG 232 , or ENG 273 .
Instructor: Andrews -
ENG 331-01 - Studies in American Prose II 4 credits (Spring)
Neuroliterature. In a recent article in N+1, the critic Marco Roth describes the emergence of a new kind of literary work, the “neuronovel,” in which the protagonist sports an atypical brain. Whether Tourette syndrome or autism or Capgras syndrome or facial agnosia or paranoid schizophrenia, this difference, says Roth, offers the novelist an opportunity to reflect on the impact of scientific knowledge on the culture at large. Roth detects a shift from mind to brain in the province least likely to accede to a mechanistic understanding of human existence: namely fiction. In this course we will expand Roth’s term to include both memoir and poetry, and we will bring a disability studies perspective to the questions at hand. Possible literary texts include The Echo Maker; Motherless Brooklyn; The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime; Lowboy; Twitch and Shout; Songs of a Gorilla Nation; and How Can I Talk If My Lips Don’t Move?
Prerequisite: ENG 227 , ENG 228 , ENG 229 , ENG 231 , ENG 232 , or ENG 273 .
Note: Plus-2 option available.
Instructor: Savarese -
ENG 388-01 - Writing Seminar: Screenwriting 4 credits (Spring)
A seminar on the conception, writing, and production of low-budget, place-based independent films. Students will study acclaimed independent films while writing their own screenplays.
Prerequisite: ENG 205 , ENG 206 , or ENG 207 .
Instructor: Nutting
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