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2024-2025 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 offerings review the variable topic course listing below or use the course search to filter by variable topic type.
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 offerings review the variable topic course listing below or use the course search to filter by variable topic type.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Simpson, Abdelkarim -
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 ; with grade S, C, or better..
Instructor: Smith, Sanchez -
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 ; with grade S, C, or better.
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 ; with grade S, C, or better.
Instructor: 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 offerings review the variable topic course listing below or use the course search to filter by variable topic type.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors with grade S, C, or better; or for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 , with grade S, C, or better, or third-year standing.
Note: Plus-2 option available.
Instructor: Lavan, Smith -
ENG 215 - Reading and Writing Youth and Youth Culture 4 credits (Spring)
See EDU 215 .
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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 offerings review the variable topic course listing below or use the course search to filter by variable topic type.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors. with grade S, C, or better; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 , with grade S, C, or better, or third-year standing.
Note: Plus-2 option available.
Instructor: Abdelkarim, 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 offerings review the variable topic course listing below or use the course search to filter by variable topic type.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors, with grade S, C, or better; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 , with grade S, C, or better, 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 offerings review the variable topic course listing below or use the course search to filter by variable topic type.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors, with grade S, C, or better; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 , with grade S, C, or better, 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 offerings review the variable topic course listing below or use the course search to filter by variable topic type.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors, with grade S, C, or better; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 , with grade S, C, or better, 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, Harriot, Bradstreet, Rowlandson, Franklin, Wheatley, 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 offerings review the variable topic course listing below or use the course search to filter by variable topic type.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors, with grade S, C, or better; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 , with grade S, C, or better, 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 offerings review the variable topic course listing below or use the course search to filter by variable topic type.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors, with grade S, C, or better; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 , with grade S, C, or better, or third-year standing.
Note: Plus-2 option available.
Instructor: Andrews -
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 offerings review the variable topic course listing below or use the course search to filter by variable topic type.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors, with grade S, C, or better; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 , with grade S, C, or better or third-year standing.
Note: Plus-2 option available.
Instructor: Lavan -
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, with grade S, C, or better; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 , with grade S, C, or better, 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 offerings review the variable topic course listing below or use the course search to filter by variable topic type.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors, with grade S, C, or better; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 , with grade S, C, or better, or third-year standing.
Note: Plus-2 option available.
Instructor: Staff -
ENG 232 - Traditions of Ethnic American Literature 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 offerings review the variable topic course listing below or use the course search to filter by variable topic type.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 or third-year standing.
Instructor: Phan -
ENG 240 - Lighting the Page: Digital Methods in Literary Studies 4 credits (Fall or Spring)
How do you write an interactive short story? How do machines read and write? And how do humans and machines read and write together? Students in this course learn about electronic literature and digital literary studies, using digital tools to develop skills in creative and scholarly reading and writing. The class begins with electronic literature. After reading works of e-lit such as Szilak and Tsibouski’s Queerskins: A Novel and Ana María Uribe’s Tipoemas y Anipoemas, students use digital tools to create their own works. The class then takes up computer-aided textual analysis. This part of the class combines literary texts, critical readings in the digital humanities, and hands-on programming exercises. Students will also use digital tools to analyze and revise their own writing. Assignments will include individual and group projects using digital tools and methods. No technical skills are required, but willingness to gain them is fundamental to the course.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors, with grade, S, C, or better; for non-majors ENG 120 or ENG 121 , with grade, S, C, or better, or third-year standing.
Note: Not offered every year.
Instructor: Simpson -
ENG 273 - Transnational and Postcolonial Feminisms 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 offerings review the variable topic course listing below or use the course search to filter by variable topic type.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors, with grade, S, C, or better; for non-majors, ENG 120 , ENG 121 , GWS 111 , with grade, S, C, or better, 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, with grade, S, C, or better; for non-majors, ENG 120 , ENG 121 , GWS 111 , with grade, S, C, or better, 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 offerings review the variable topic course listing below or use the course search to filter by variable topic type.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors, with grade, S, C, or better; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 , with grade, S, C, or better, or third-year standing.
Note: Plus-2 option available.
Instructor: Andrews -
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 offerings review the variable topic course listing below or use the course search to filter by variable topic type.
Prerequisite: ENG 223 with grade, S, C, or better;
Note: Plus-2 option available. Not offered every year.
Instructor: Abdelkarim, 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 offerings review the variable topic course listing below or use the course search to filter by variable topic type.
Prerequisite: ENG 121 with grade, S, C, or better. ENG 223 and ENG 224 , with grade, S, C, or better, strongly recommended.
Note: Plus-2 option available. Not offered every year.
Instructor: Abdelkarim -
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 offerings review the variable topic course listing below or use the course search to filter by variable topic type.
Prerequisite: ENG 223 or ENG 273 , with grade S, C, or better.
Note: Plus-2 option available. Not offered every year.
Instructor: Staff -
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 offerings review the variable topic course listing below or use the course search to filter by variable topic type.
Prerequisite: ENG 223 or ENG 273 , with grade S, C, or better.
Note: Plus-2 option available. Not offered every year.
Instructor: Staff -
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 offerings review the variable topic course listing below or use the course search to filter by variable topic type.
Prerequisite: ENG 223 , ENG 224 , ENG 225 , ENG 227 , or ENG 228 , with grade S, C, or better.
Note: Not offered every year.
Instructor: 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 offerings review the variable topic course listing below or use the course search to filter by variable topic type.
Prerequisite: ENG 227 , ENG 228 , ENG 229 , ENG 231 , ENG 232 , or ENG 273 , with grade S, C, or better.
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 offerings review the variable topic course listing below or use the course search to filter by variable topic type.
Prerequisite: ENG 227 , ENG 228 , ENG 229 , ENG 231 , ENG 232 , or ENG 273 , with grade S, C, or better.
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 offerings review the variable topic course listing below or use the course search to filter by variable topic type.
Prerequisite: ENG 223 , ENG 224 , ENG 225 , ENG 227 , or ENG 228 , with grade S, C, or better.
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 offerings review the variable topic course listing below or use the course search to filter by variable topic type.
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 offerings review the variable topic course listing below or use the course search to filter by variable topic type.
Prerequisite: ENG 225 , ENG 227 , ENG 228 , ENG 229 , ENG 231 , ENG 232 , or ENG 273 , with grade S, C, or better.
Note: Plus-2 option available.
Instructor: Lavan -
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 offerings review the variable topic course listing below or use the course search to filter by variable topic type.
Prerequisite: ENG 227 , ENG 228 , ENG 229 , ENG 231 , ENG 232 , or ENG 273 , with grade S, C, or better.
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 offerings review the variable topic course listing below or use the course search to filter by variable topic type.
Prerequisite: ENG 227 , ENG 228 , ENG 229 , ENG 231 , ENG 232 , or ENG 273 , with grade S, C, or better.
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 offerings review the variable topic course listing below or use the course search to filter by variable topic type.
Prerequisite: ENG 223 , ENG 224 , ENG 225 , ENG 227 , or ENG 228 , with grade S, C, or better.
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 offerings review the variable topic course listing below or use the course search to filter by variable topic type.
Prerequisite: ENG 223 , ENG 224 , ENG 225 , ENG 226 , or ENG 273 , with grade S, C, or better.
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 offerings review the variable topic course listing below or use the course search to filter by variable topic type.
Prerequisite: ENG 223 , ENG 224 , ENG 225 , ENG 226 , or ENG 273 , with grade S, C, or better.
Note: Plus-2 option available. Not offered every year.
Instructor: Staff -
ENG 346 - Studies in Modern Prose 4 credits (Fall)
Intensive study of important modern fiction. For current offerings review the variable topic course listing below or use the course search to filter by variable topic type.
Prerequisite: ENG 224 , ENG 225 , ENG 226 , ENG 227 , ENG 228 , ENG 229 , ENG 231 , ENG 232 , or ENG 273 , with grade S, C, or better.
Note: Plus-2 option available. Not offered every year.
Instructor: Simpson, Smith -
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 offerings review the variable topic course listing below or use the course search to filter by variable topic type.
Prerequisite: ENG 223 with grade S, C, or better.
Note: Plus-2 option available. Not offered every year.
Instructor: Abdelkarim, 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 offerings review the variable topic course listing below or use the course search to filter by variable topic type.
Prerequisite: ENG 224 , ENG 225 , ENG 226 , or ENG 229 . with grade S, C, or better.
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 with grade S, C, or better.
Note: Plus-2 option available.
Instructor: Sanchez, Smith -
ENG 386 - Writing Seminar: Poetry 4 credits (Fall or Spring)
Advanced workshop for students with a strong background in verse writing.
Prerequisite: ENG 206 with grade S, C, or better.
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 offerings review the variable topic course listing below or use the course search to filter by variable topic type.
Prerequisite: ENG 205 , ENG 206 , or ENG 207 , with grade S, C, or better..
Instructor: 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 offerings review the variable topic course listing below or use the course search to filter by variable topic type.
Prerequisite: Any 200-level English course with grade S, C, or better.
Instructor: Andrews, Kapila
Special Topics-Spring
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ENG 395-01 - Advanced Special Topic: The History and Future of the Book 4 credits (Spring)
In this course, you will learn many ways of looking at a book as a material object. Often, you will sit down with your classmates to examine a printed text you haven’t seen before, and you will work together to understand it. How was it printed and distributed? Who made it, for what audience? What impact did they want it to have? We will undertake that kind of hands-on investigation of American and British texts of many kinds: medieval manuscripts, early newspapers and almanacs, hand-pressed art books, cheap paperbacks, activist underground newspapers, and self-published digital works. In every case, we learn about the people who produced the texts—scribes and early booksellers, Black and feminist activist communities in the 1970s, contemporary digital publishers—and learn about the technological and social tools that connect texts to readers. In addition to scholarly readings and essay assignments, the course will involve creative assignments that encourage students to create their own texts with a range of print and digital technologies.
Prerequisite: Any 200-level English course with a grade of S, C, or better or third-year standing for a declared Digital Studies concentrator.
Note: Plus-2 Option Available.
Instructor: Simpson
Variable Topics - Fall
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ENG 120-01 - Literary Analysis 4 credits (Fall)
“Dots, Dashes, and (Other) Asides: Meaning Otherwise.” Welcome to English 120. In this course, works of poetry and prose by Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Joseph Conrad, Gwendolyn Brooks, Nella Larsen, and Herman Melville will be gleaned for the ethical and aesthetic lessons that semantic content and narrative form can offer. Engagement with aspects of formalism, reader response, psychoanalytic and cultural criticism will enable us to appreciate the ways in which a particular interpretive framework opens us to possibilities even as it forecloses others. In addition, we will focus very close attention on specific moments in each text when the writer uses ellipses, em dashes, or parentheticals to say something more, or less, than the occasion may require. In doing so, the writer reaches out to us. So, rather than leap over these moments to a foregone conclusion, we will, with Emily Dickinson, view them instead as invitations to “dwell in possibility.” There has been much handwringing recently as to whether our culture needs, or wants, literature. As Gwendolyn Brooks admonishes: “First fight. Then fiddle.” This course is dedicated to two interrelated propositions: that literature exists; and it needs us to fight and fiddle.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Andrews -
ENG 120-02 & 03 - Literary Analysis 4 credits (Fall)
The course will examine literature that embodies traditionally formal as well as experimental strategies in poetry, fiction, and film. We will discuss the ways authors craft their works, and we will develop strategies for analyzing those choices in academic papers. After studying a wide range poetry, fiction, and film, we will close the semester with an extended exploration of three fictional cities built from series of linked stories: the Dublin of James Joyce’s Dubliners, the Washington, D.C. of Edward P. Jones’s Lost in the City, and the London of Steve McQueen’s Small Axe. Graded assignments will include frequent short writing assignments and longer papers, leading to a final portfolio.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Simpson -
ENG 120-04 - Literary Analysis 4 credits (Fall)
“Magnitude and Form.” A literary work in its entirety may consist of a few words or fill a multi-volume book. To gain skill in close reading and survey a range of critical perspectives used to interpret literature, we will start small and gradually into texts of greater and greater length. Our readings will include poetry in traditional and experimental forms, short stories including flash fiction, Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” and two modern novels.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Smith -
ENG 121-01 - Introduction to Shakespeare 4 credits (Fall)
This course introduces students to the works of William Shakespeare and to the discipline of literary studies which those works have shaped. We will read Shakespeare’s lyric and narrative poetry as well as plays, aiming to develop habits of close reading and interpretation. Students will investigate the contexts that shaped Shakespeare’s works, trace their legacies of performance and adaptation, and weigh interpretive approaches. Together, we will contend with how centuries of audiences have approached the question “Why Shakespeare?” and consider some hypotheses of our own.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Eklund -
ENG 121-02 - Introduction to Shakespeare 4 credits (Fall)
This course introduces students to the worlds of Shakespeare. Students will sample the Bard’s poetic array (his sonnets, narrative poems, and plays); his local and international outlooks (from early modern England to the imagined wider world); his social and political commentaries; and his artistic legacies, especially in theatre and film. Together, we will develop skills in close reading, critical and creative writing, and literary historiography.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Abdelkarim -
ENG 210-01 - Studies in Genre 4 credits (Fall)
“American Gothic.” In this course, we will analyze the tenets of Gothic literature and how they evolve/are informed by American cultures. Questions we will consider include: How does Gothic literature help create and cement an American consciousness? How can we parse the sub-genres of American gothic: African American gothic, Southern gothic, etc? Gothic literature reveals our deepest fears and anxieties through cultural subtext. It examines what Toni Morrison names as, “the unspeakable things.” Therefore, this course explores the ghosts haunting American literature and culture through the short stories and novels of Edgar Allan Poe, Charlotte Perkins Gillman, Shirley Jackson, Charles Chesnutt, WEB DuBois and Octavia Butler as well as podcasts (Welcome to Nightvale), and TV shows (Kindred, American Horror Story, The Fall of the House of Usher, Interview with the Vampire).
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 ; with grade S, C, or better for majors, for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 with grade S, C, or better, or third-year standing.
Instructor: Lavan -
ENG 225-01 - Introduction to Postcolonial Literatures 4 credits Fall
“The Empire Writes Back: Introduction to Postcolonial Studies.” Writers from countries and cultures colonized by Britain engaged with and reimagined canonical English literary texts. This critical relation to the canon inaugurated a new literary sensibility that explores concepts such as ‘writing back,’ ‘multiple englishes,’ ‘home,’ and ‘migration. This Anglophone fiction describes not only a literary and cultural tradition but also the possibilities of postcolonial futures. We will read literary works from Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and the UK such as Chinua Achebe’s classic Things Fall Apart, Aime Cesaire’s A Tempest, Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names, Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy, Salman Rushdie’s, East, West, The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh and Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors, with grade S, C, or better; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 ; with grade S, C, or better, or third-year standing.
Instructor: Kapila -
ENG 231-01 - American Literary Traditions III 4 credits Fall
“Slow Violence, Slow Hope: Environmental Literatures from Silent Spring to Standing Rock.” This course surveys environmental literature in the United States from the 20th and 21st centuries, with special focus on environmental health and social justice. Reading a wide array of literary forms, we will consider how writers and activists can help us apprehend imaginatively what the scholar Rob Nixon calls “slow violence”-a concept describing the gradual, delayed, almost invisible nature of much environmental damage. We will also search for imaginative works that tell untold stories of quiet, slow, but positive environmental change, hopeful narratives as alternatives to stories of decline. We will read different kinds of witnessing to help us think creatively and act courageously, including key works by Rachel Carson, Barry Lopez, Rebecca Solnit, Octavia E. Butler, Omar El Akkad, Andreas Malm, and Layli Long Soldier. In addition to studying ecocritical approaches to literature, there will be opportunities to create literary journalism and personal essays, and field trips to local natural areas to put nature writing into practice.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors, with grade S, C, or better; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 , with grade S, C, or better, or third-year standing.
Instructor: Phan -
ENG 303-01 - Chaucer 4 credits (Fall)
This upper-level English course takes up the Canterbury Tales by the “father” of English literature, Geoffrey Chaucer (d.1400). In reading Chaucer’s timeless tales, we’ll sample an array of medieval genres and familiarize ourselves with the culture and politics of late medieval England. On the one hand, we’ll treat Chaucer’s pilgrims’ stories to close readings to appreciate their narrative and poetic techniques in their own right; on the other hand, we’ll situate the work within the context of the greater medieval world by touching on the author’s literary contemporaries and predecessors. In brief, we’ll examine medieval social, aesthetic, and intellectual traditions and legacies through the lens of Chaucer’s celebrated Tales. Above all, we’ll enjoy a semester’s worth of scrumptious stories!
Prerequisite: ENG 223 with grade S, C, or better.
Instructor: Abdelkarim -
ENG 326-01 - Studies in American Poetry I 4 credits (Fall)
“Affectionate Absorption: The Case of Whitman and Dickinson.” Walt Whitman concludes his preface to the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass with the proposition that “the proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it.” These days few would argue that Whitman and Dickinson have not been “affectionately absorbed” by American literary culture. Such was not always the case, however. During the period when Whitman and Dickinson were producing the bulk of their work, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was arguably the most dominant literary figure in America. What happened? This course will explore the question of cultural absorption and the extent to which the form and content of Whitman’s and Dickinson’s poetry helped effect a shift in literary value during the twentieth century (earlier for Whitman, later for Dickinson). Analysis of work by Whitman, Dickinson, Melville, Emerson, Longfellow, and Frances Harper will help situate us within their nineteenth century literary context, and these will be followed by more recent works that may include poems or critical essays June Jordan, Susan Howe, Martin Espada, Mark Doty, Heather McHugh, and Evie Shockley. During the second half of the semester, we will focus on three specific cases in which the impact of Whitman or Dickinson on 20th and 21st century literary concerns is especially acute: the inaugural issue of Poetry magazine (1912); the publication of Howl (1955); and the publication of the Facsimile Edition of Dickinson’s poems (1981). The course concludes with a series of discussions on the politics of methodology and classroom practice in relation to the poetics of identity. Grade to be determined by attendance and discussion, including through blackboard posts; two short papers; a group presentation; and a longer research-based final project.
Prerequisite: ENG 227 , ENG 228 , ENG 229 , ENG 231 , ENG 232 , or ENG 273 . with grade S, C, or better. The instructor will give serious consideration to students who have had ENG 206 , with grade S, C, or better.
Instructor: Andrews -
ENG 327-01 - The Romantics 4 credits (Fall)
“Frankenstein’s Family: The Godwins and The Shelleys.” Two generations of a single remarkable family helped create modern feminism, the literary gothic, the detective novel, anarchist philosophy, the post-apocalyptic novel, and science fiction. This class will examine those origin stories and their revolutionary context through the lives and work of Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Key texts will include Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman and Maria, Godwin’s Caleb Williams and Political Justice, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Mathilda, and Percy Bysshe Shelley’s The Cenci.
Prerequisite: ENG 223 , ENG 224 , ENG 225 , ENG 227 , or ENG 228 ; with grade S, C, or better.
Instructor: Simpson
Variable Topics- Spring
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ENG 120-01 - Literary Analysis 4 credits (Spring)
Reading the Body. Good writing is often described as vivid, visceral, sensual, and therefore rooted in the body. But what makes writing feel embodied? What makes literature feel lived-in and fleshed out on the page? This literary analysis class will examine the stylistic and narrative conventions of a variety of body-centric short stories and poems, from the realistic and lyrical to the satirical and the horrific. Readings will include classic and contemporary work by Mary Shelley, Jamaica Kincaid, Denis Johnson, Carmen Maria Machado, and Elizabeth Bishop on themes such as lust, death, motherhood, and body image, as well as selections of literary theory.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Dantas Lobato -
ENG 120-02 - Literary Analysis 4 credits (Spring)
“Travel Narratives.” In this course we will read travel writing by novelists, journalists, and explorers from different historical periods. Before the great upsurge in tourism in nineteenth-century Europe, travelers who ventured across the seas in search of trading opportunities or on journeys of exploration returned with tales of people and cultures different from their own. In the last hundred years or more, tourism has become one of the most important activities of the middle and upper classes. The purpose of the course is to study the formal features of different literary genres from the eighteenth century to the present. Readings for the course include the poetry of William Wordsworth, Alfred Tennyson, W.B. Yeats, and Derek Walcott, short stories by Flannery O’Connor and N. Scott Momaday, and fiction by Jonathan Swift, Joseph Conrad, Jamaica Kincaid and Teju Cole.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Kapila -
ENG 120-03 - Literary Analysis 4 credits (Spring)
“Vampires.” Why are we so fascinated with vampires? How have they become a metaphor for “things that go bump in the night?” Why are vampires in America often portrayed as objects of desire? What do vampires tell us about the relationship between fear and desire? In an effort to answer these questions, we will analyze vampire stories in literature, film, folklore, and popular culture, from Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Jewelle Gomez’s The Gilda Stories to the television adaptation of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire. We’ll also explore symbolic vampirism as shown through the television show What We Do In The Shadows. Throughout the course we will discuss the roles gender, sexuality, ethnicity, class, and power positionality plays in vampire folklore, literature and film.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Lavan -
ENG 120-04 - Literary Analysis 4 credits (Spring)
“Magnitude and Form.” A literary work in its entirety may consist of a few words or fill a multi-volume book. To gain skill in close reading and survey a range of critical perspectives used to interpret literature, we’ll start very small and gradually move into texts of greater and greater length. Our readings will include poetry in traditional and experimental forms, short stories including flash fiction, Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” and two modern novels.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Smith -
ENG 121-01 - Introduction to Shakespeare 4 credits (Spring)
This course introduces students to the works of William Shakespeare and to the discipline of literary studies which those works have shaped. We will read Shakespeare’s lyric and narrative poetry as well as plays, aiming to develop habits of close reading and interpretation. Students will investigate the contexts that shaped Shakespeare’s works, trace their legacies of performance and adaptation, and weigh interpretive approaches. Together, we will contend with how centuries of audiences have approached the question “Why Shakespeare?” and consider some hypotheses of our own.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Eklund -
ENG 121-02 - Introduction to Shakespeare 4 credits (Spring)
This course introduces students to the worlds of Shakespeare. Students will sample the Bard’s poetic array (his sonnets, narrative poems, and plays); his local and international outlooks (from early modern England to the imagined wider world); his social and political commentaries; and his artistic legacies, especially in theatre and film. Together, we will develop skills in close reading, critical and creative writing, and literary historiography.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Abdelkarim -
ENG 210-01 - Studies in Genre 4 credits (Spring)
“Diaries and Journals.” Kept through the ages by a wide diversity of famous and ordinary people, this resilient form of writing resides somewhere between literary creation and primary historical source, between unspoken thought and public record, poised in the “now” between past and future. Is the diarist a disembodied self, or does the experience lived out in one’s body matter on the page? Has a conventional style of diary-writing developed and if so, what are its features? What makes a diary so different from a memoir? Do people keep diaries now for the same reasons as other diarists did in the past? With a focus on British and American traditions-including the tradition of African American diaries-we will study theories of the genre, examine formal conventions in published and unpublished diaries, and conduct a few experiments with diaries of our own.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors, for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 or third-year standing; with grade S, C, or better.
Instructor: Smith -
ENG 223-01 - The Tradition of English Literature I 4 credits (Spring)
In this discussion-heavy lecture, we sample the “greatest hits” of English literature, 700-1700, including the oldest English poems, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and sonnets galore, from Spenser’s to Donne’s to those of Lady Wroth. We’ll treat these timeless texts to close and distant readings to identify and articulate those features that have led to their rude survival across centuries, and to gauge their value in and relevance to our present world.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors, with grade of S, C, or better; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 , with grade S, C, or better, or third-year standing.
Instructor: Abdelkarim -
ENG 224-01 - The Traditions of English Literature II 4 credits (Spring)
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, and Oscar Wilder, 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. Students will write two papers, complete several short assignments, and offer regular written responses that will inform class discussions.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 ; with grades S, C, or better, or third-year standing.
Instructor: C. Jacobson -
ENG 227-01 - American Literary Traditions I 4 credits (Spring)
American Gothic: from a City on a Hill to the Sunken Place. In this course, we explore the personifications and demonizations that haunt America’s clearings, those spaces and places in which genocidal violence and slave labor were so often instrumental. Given that, it makes a great deal of sense to read early American literature for the “gothic effects” that arise when the hard facts of slavery, racism, misogyny, and paternalism merge with utopian fantasies of regeneration, renewal, and equal rights for all. With that in mind, in addition to focusing on novels by Charles Brockden Brown, Stephen King, Toni Morrison, Louise Erdrich, and Alison Bechdel, we will read poems, stories, and essays by various authors, including Mary Rowlandson, Edgar Allan Poe, Harriet Jacobs, and Emily Dickinson. Throughout the course, we will view films that complement course materials, including Robert Eggers’ exploration of one Puritan family’s encounter with the wilderness in The Witch (2015), Stanley Kubrick’s cinematic version of The Shining (1980), and Jordan Peele’s more recent exploration of racialized terror lurking within an ostensibly privileged exurban setting in Get Out (2017). No exams. Grades to be determined by attendance and participation, “blackboard” postings and comments, and three mid-length essays.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors, with grade S, C, or better; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 , with grade S, C, or better, or third-year standing.
Note: Plus-2 option available.
Instructor: Andrews -
ENG 229-01 - The Tradition of African American Literature 4 credits (Spring)
“Slavery and its Afterlives.” In her book Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route (2007), Saidiya Hartman introduces the idea of slavery and its afterlives: If slavery persists as an issue in the political life of black America, it is not because of an antiquarian obsession with bygone days or the burden of a too-long memory, but because black lives are still imperiled and devalued by a racial calculus and a political arithmetic that were entrenched centuries ago. This is the afterlife of slavery–skewed life chances, limited access to health and education, premature death, incarceration, and impoverishment (6). It is these afterlives upon which we will focus in the course: The United States’ persistent clinging to inequality and the African American literary response. In African American literature, the contexts inform the texts. We’ll study this relationship throughout the course. In the wake of a burgeoning output of books, TV shows and films about slavery, we’ll ask why it seems that America is more obsessed with depictions of enslavement now than ever before. Along the way, we’ll analyze essays from Toni Morrison, Christina Sharpe and more in order to gain insight regarding genre, canon and culture that will carry us through the course. In all readings we will discuss the ways in which African/Negro/Black/African American writers use the written word as activism in the fight for full enfranchisement.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 or third-year standing; with grade S, C, or better.
Instructor: Lavan -
ENG 316-01 - Studies in English Renaissance Literature 4 credits (Spring)
Renaissance Literature and the Habits of Mind. How do we behave intelligently in the face of problems we don’t fully understand, let alone know how to solve? As pressing as this question is for us, the upheavals of the early modern period made it just as urgent for writers back then. Students in this seminar will consider how writers like Thomas More, Michel de Montaigne, José de Acosta, John Milton, and Margaret Cavendish represented strategies for thinking with the unthinkable-from using all the senses to gather and retain information, to imagining and creating new knowledge and worlds. We’ll hone our own habits of mind through creative exercises, interpretive collaborations, and research.
Prerequisite: ENG 223 or ENG 273 ; with grade S, C, or better.
Instructor: Eklund -
ENG 329-01 - Studies in African American Literature 4 credits (Spring)
“Miscegenation Nation.” Miscegenation is defined as “interbreeding among the races.” Anti-miscegenation laws have played an immeasurable role in policing race relations throughout most of our country’s history. And yet, over the last thirty years and particularly in the wake of Barack Obama’s presidency, there has been an increase in the depiction of interracial relationships in novels, film and television. However, despite the outward appearance of a happily multicultural America, we are living through a very contentious uprising of racial terror and historical knowledge suppression such as critical race theory and book bans, as well as ongoing voting disenfranchisement. By reading and discussing literary, scholarly, legal and visual texts we will explore the ways in which depictions of interracial dating and marriage between Black and white people have evolved from the turn of the 19th century to contemporary times.
Prerequisite: ENG 225 , ENG 227 , ENG 228 , ENG 229 , ENG 231 , ENG 232 , or ENG 273 ; with grade S, C, or better.
Instructor: Lavan -
ENG 360-01 - Seminar in Postcolonial Literature 4 credits (Spring)
The Sea is History: Postcolonial Seascapes and Ocean Worlds. In the poem of the same name, “The Sea is History,’ the Caribbean poet Derek Walcott concludes, “in the salt chuckle of rocks/with their sea pools, there was the sound/like a rumour without any echo/of History, really beginning,” announcing a new artistic, aesthetic, and political credo. In this course we will study postcolonial ocean worlds, seascapes, novels by the sea and of the sea, and explore how oceans connect continents differently than land. The histories of the Atlantic and the Indian oceans, for instance, reveal an alternative map of trade, migration, indenture, slavery, and continental connections. We will study theoretical essays and secondary material along with fiction by Joseph Conrad, Nuruddin Farah, Amitav Ghosh, Yvonne Owour, Monique Roffey, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Romesh Gunesekera and Lindsey Collen.
Prerequisite: ENG 224 , ENG 225 , ENG 226 , or ENG 229 ; with grade S, C, or better.
Instructor: Kapila
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