Mar 29, 2024  
2016-2017 Academic Catalog 
    
2016-2017 Academic Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

ENG 316-01 - Studies in English Renaissance Literature

4 credits (Spring)
Early Modern Transnational Encounters. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, England’s national borders rapidly expanded as England had increasing contact with the European continent, the East, Africa, the Caribbean, and the Americas. By drawing attention to each of these geographic areas, this course will examine England’s colonial ambitions and its fascination and degradation of racial “others.” We will also discuss the vocabularies of race used to justify colonial ideologies about blackness, barbarism, and religious difference. Students will read a variety of literary texts and archival materials—including travel narratives, scientific treatises on color, and royal proclamations—in addition to recent scholarship on early modern transnationalisms and race. We will consider how literary texts, such as Fletcher’s The Island Princess and Edward Lord Herbert’s black beauty poems, depict racialized bodies and dramatize England’s increasing obsession with defining whiteness. Throughout the semester, students will work on a substantive research project: a 15-page paper and a 10-minute talk, presented at our class conference.

Prerequisite: ENG 223  or ENG 273 .
Instructor: Biggie