English 15, Introduction to Literary Theory, at the 10 hour with Professor Edmondson
The course will introduce students to some of the leading texts, concepts, and practices of what has come to be known as theoretical criticism. Topics to be considered may include some of the following: structuralism, deconstruction, psychoanalysis, feminism, new historicism, post-colonialism, post-modernism, queer theory, and cultural studies. Attention will also be given to historical and institutional contexts of this criticism. Intended to provide a basic, historically informed, knowledge of theoretical terms and practices, this course should enable students to read contemporary criticism with understanding and attempt theoretically informed criticism themselves. Dist: LIT. Course Group IV.
English 17, Introduction to New Media, at the 2A hour with Professor Evens
This course introduces the basic ideas, questions, and objects of new media studies, offering accounts of the history, philosophy, and aesthetics of new media, the operation of digital technologies, and the cultural repercussions of new media. A primary emphasis on academic texts will be supplemented by fiction, films, music, journalism, computer games, and digital artworks. Class proceeds by group discussion, debate, student presentations, and peer critique. Typical readings include Alan Turing, Friedrich Kittler, Ray Kurzweil, and Henry Jenkins, plus films such as Blade Runner and eXistenZ.. Dist: ART. Course Group III. CA tags Cultural Studies and Popular Culture, Literary Theory and Criticism.
English 19, Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian Epic and Saga, at the 11 hour with Professor Travis
An introduction both to Old English literature and to Old Norse sagas. In the first half of the course we concentrate on reading, translating and setting into cultural context selected Anglo-Saxon poems, most notably 'The Wanderer,' 'The Dream of the Rood,' and 'Beowulf.' In the second half of the course we read a variety of Old Norse sagas, including 'Egil's Saga,' 'The Saga of the People of Laxardal,' and two shorter sagas recounting contacts with North America. In addition to papers and reports, we'll discuss the new film 'Beowulf,' and each student will write a mini-version of a Norse saga. Dist: LIT; WCult: W . Course Group I. CA tags National Traditions and Countertraditions, Genre-narrative.
English 32, The Rise of the Novel, at the 10 hour with Professor Garrison
A study of the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century English novel, from Daniel Defoe to Jane Austen. The course will look at the major sub-genres of the period, including criminal biography, scandalous memoirs, epistolary fiction and the Gothic novel. It will also explore the relationship between narrative fiction and the changing cultural landscape of a period defined by commercial uncertainty, imperial expansion, and the threat of revolution. Finally, and most importantly, the course will ask why the novel became so central to modern conceptions of subjectivity, sexuality, social cohesion and transgression. Readings may include work by Daniel Defoe, John Cleland, Jonathan Swift, Henry Fielding, Samuel Richardson, Laurence Sterne, Fanny Burney, Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Lewis, Charlotte Dacre, Maria Edgeworth, and Jane Austen. Dist: LIT, WCult. Course Group II. CA tag Genre-narrative, National Traditions and Countertraditions.
English 38, The Nineteenth Century English Novel, at the 11 hour with Professor McKee
A study of the nineteenth-century novel focusing on the Victorian novel’s representation of public and private categories of experience. Readings may include Austen’s Mansfield Park, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Shelley’s Frankenstein, Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, Dickens’s Bleak House, George Eliot’s Middlemarch, and Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group II. CA tag Genre-narrative, National Traditions and Countertraditions, Cultural Studies and Popular Culture.
English 44, Asian American Literature and Culture, at the 2A hour with Professor Bahng
This course examines narratives of migration to, from, and between the Americas by groups from East, South, and Southeast Asia. We will analyze novels, short fiction, poetry, and films by twentieth-century artists (i.e. Joy Kogawa, Theresa Cha, Shani Mootoo, Jhumpa Lahiri, Bienvenido Santos, Wayne Wang) against the historical backdrop of imperialism in Asia and the Americas; periods of exclusion and internment; and social movements that coalesce around intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, and citizenship. Dist: LIT; WCult: CI. Course Group III. CA tags National Traditions and Countertraditions, Multicultural and Colonial Postcolonial Studies, Cultural Studies and Popular Culture.
English 49, Modern Black American Literature, at the 10 hour with Professor Favor
A study of African American literature from the Harlem Renaissance to the present, this course will focus on emerging and diverging traditions of writing by African Americans. We shall also investigate the changing forms and contexts of ‘racial representation’ in the United States. Works may include those by Hurston, Hughes, Wright, Ellison, Morrison, Schuyler, West, Murray, Gates, Parks. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group III. CA tags National Traditions and Countertraditions, Cultural Studies and Popular Studies.
English 60.4, Native American Oral Tradition Literatures, at the 10 hour with Professor Palmer
Native American oral literatures constitute a little-known but rich and complex dimension of the American literary heritage. This course will examine the range of oral genres in several tribes. Since scholars from around the world are studying oral literatures as sources of information about the nature of human creativity, the course will involve examining major theoretical approaches to oral texts. Dist: LIT; WCult: NW. No Course Group designation. CA tag Multicultural and Colonial/Postcolonial Studies, National Traditions and Countertraditions.
English 62.1, The Poetry and Rhetoric of Love, from Petrarch to Nerve.com, at the 11 hour with Professor Zeiger
What we call "love poetry" has generally been a way of expressing much more than the emotional and erotic fascination of one person with another. Often it seems to bypass the love-object altogether, and more eagerly examines power relations or poetic achievement. Beginning with early examples, and moving on to contemporary and modern poems, our course will place love poems by men and women in the context of an ongoing poetic tradition, recent feminist criticism and theory, and talk about love and sex in recent popular culture. This last will include: excerpts from recent books about dating and seduction, film, contemporary song lyrics, dating websites, and Blitzmail. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group III. CA tags Genre-poetry, Genders and Sexualities.
English 63.1, Digital Game Studies, at the 10A hour with Professor Evens
This course explores digital gaming. Reading academic and popular texts, we will situate digital gaming in relation to new media, visual, and literary studies. Class discussion will focus on outstanding problems in digital game studies: Where do the histories of technology and gaming meet? How do games change players and how do games shape culture? What about designers and programmers? In what ways are digital games playful and what aspects of them are expressive? What is the future of gaming? Of course this class will also study particular games, and, in addition to writing academic essays, students will invent individual and group projects in the game domain. Dist: TAS. Course Group IV. CA tag Literary Theory and Criticism.
English 65.2, Shakespeare in the Theater, at the 2A hour with Professor Gamboa (crosslisted with THEA 10)
The course will cover one play in alarming detail, leading to a modest but strenuously rehearsed production. Students will learn about Shakespeare’s theater, the conventions he inherited and refined, his writing and his use of actors through extensive bookwork and as part of a collective approximating his company’s theatrical practices. One paper on an aspect of the play or its production will complement participation in roles both onstage and off. No acting experience is required. Dist: LIT; WCult: W, pending faculty approval. Course Group I. CA tag Genre-drama.
English 65.3, Hamlet and Macbeth: Text and Film, at the 2A hour with Professor Boose
The best we can surmise about Shakespeare's own theory of drama comes from Hamlet's advice to the players, when he defines the "purpose of playing" as being "to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; . . .and show . . . the very age and body of the time his form and pressure." Drawing upon the kind of renaissance that has been going on for the past 15 years in Shakespearean film, especially in the tragedies, and using the streaming technology now available for film access, this seminar will focus on both the text and the films now available for Hamlet and Macbeth. One of the questions we will explore is how the late twentieth/early twenty-first century has made use of these two tragedies to mirror back the form and pressures of its own time. Dist: LIT; WCult: W, pending faculty approval. Course Group I, CA tags Genre-drama.
English 66.1, Gothic Fiction, at the 11 hour with Professor McCann
The so-called Gothic revival at the end of the eighteenth century dramatically changed the ways in which Europeans read and wrote fiction. While the supernatural orientation of the Gothic has often been read as a resistance to the culture of the Enlightenment, it is just as clear that Gothic writing from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries became an important forum for innovative thinking about sexuality, psychology and the nature of political power. This course will examine some of the radical political and aesthetic possibilities inherent in the Gothic genre as it was conceived in this period. Readings may include work by Horace Walpole, William Godwin, Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Lewis, Charles Maturin, and Mary Shelley. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group II. CA tags Genre-Narrative, National Traditions and Countertraditions.
English 67.3, Indian Killers: Murder and Mystery in Native Literature and Film, at the 10A hour with Professor Benson (xlisted with NAS 32)
This course explores the abundance of crime fiction and murder mysteries created by Native American artists in recent decades. For some, the genre provides an imaginative space for avenging the offenses of colonization. For others, it offers a democratized landscape where all are equal, where American law is malleable, and where intelligence and subversion triumph. While most critics applaud these decolonizing efforts, we will examine their darker implications as well: do these narratives do real cultural work, or do they simply cash in on a thrill-seeking, stereotype-infested, pop-cultural industry? Do such works reveal that colonial violence will beget only more-and bloodier-violence? And in the end, who are its true victims? Dist: LIT; WCult: CI. Course Group III, CA tags National Traditions and Countertraditions, Multicultural and Colonial/Postcolonial Studies, Cultural Studies and Popular Culture
English 70.1, Gender and Power in Shakespeare: From Page to Stage, at the 10A hour with Professor Boose
The course will begin by defining the varieties of power inscribed in Shakespeare’s plays, and proceed to explore the following questions. Is language gender-inflicted? Do men and women speak "different" languages? How do power and gender affect each other? How do women negotiate power among themselves? How do men? How is power exerted and controlled in sexual relationships? How do unspoken social definitions exert their power over the politics of gender? Possible works studied will be drawn from The Rape of Lucrece, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Taming of the Shrew, The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, All’s Well That Ends Well, Othello, Macbeth, Troilus and Cressida, Coriolanus, Antony and Cleopatra, and The Winter’s Tale. Prerequisite: English 24 or permission of the instructor. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group I. CA tags Genre-drama, Genders and Sexualities.
English 72.3, Toni Morrison, at the 2A hour with Professor Vasquez
This course is an intensive study of Toni Morrison's major fictional works. We will also read critical responses by and about the author. Required texts may include Sula, Song of Solomon, Beloved, Jazz, Paradise, Playing in the Dark, and critical contributions by writers such as Barbara Smith and Paul Gilroy. Some of the central issues we will examine include alternative constructions of female community and genealogy, and representations of race, class, nationhood and identity. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group III. CA tags National Traditions and Countertraditions, Genre-narrative.
English 72.4, James Joyce, at the 2 hour with Professor Huntington
This seminar will be devoted to the study of Joyce's Ulysses. After some discussion of Joyce's Portrait and Dubliners -- both of which students are urged to read before the course begins--we will focus on the text of Joyce's Ulysses, with an emphasis on close reading and an examination of Joyce's experiments in prose and his place in modern literature. Each student will be asked to write two papers. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group III, CA tags Genre-narrative, Multicultural and Colonial/Postcolonial Studies.
English 80.1, Creative Writing, at the 10A hour with Professor Finch
This course offers a workshop in fiction and poetry. Seminar-sized classes meet twice a week and include individual conferences. Open to sophomores, juniors, and seniors, and to first-year students who have completed Writing 5 (or have exemption status). Students who wish to enroll in 80 must submit their applications to the administrative assistant in the English Office by the last day of the term preceding the term for which they wish to enroll. Students do not submit work for entry into the course. A brief application form is available in the English Office. English 80 is the prerequisite to all other Creative Writing courses. Dist: ART.
English 80.2, Creative Writing, at the 2A hour with Professor Hebert
This course offers a workshop in fiction and poetry. Seminar-sized classes meet twice a week and include individual conferences. Open to sophomores, juniors, and seniors, and to first-year students who have completed Writing 5 (or have exemption status). Students who wish to enroll in 80 must submit their applications to the administrative assistant in the English Office by the last day of the term preceding the term for which they wish to enroll. Students do not submit work for entry into the course. A brief application form is available in the English Office. English 80 is the prerequisite to all other Creative Writing courses. Dist: ART.
English 81.1, Advanced Creative Writing-Poetry, at the 3A hour with Professor Huntington
Continued work in the writing of poetry, focusing on the development of craft, image, and voice, as well as the process of revision. The class proceeds by means of group workshops on student writing, individual conferences with the instructor, and analysis of poems by contemporary writers. Dist: ART.
English 82.1, Creative Writing-Fiction, at the 10A hour with Professor Tudish
Continued work in the writing of fiction, focusing on short stories, although students may experiment with the novel. The class proceeds by means of group workshops on student writing, individual conferences with the instructor, and analysis of short stories by contemporary writers. Constant revision is required
Prerequisite: English 80 and permission of the instructor. Please pick up the "How To Apply to English 81, 82 or 83" form from the English Department and answer all of the questions asked in a cover letter. Students should submit a five-eight page writing sample of their fiction to the administrative assistant of the English Department by the last day of classes of the term preceding the term in which they wish to enroll. Dist: ART.
English 83.1, Intermediate Creative Writing: Literary Nonfiction, at the 10A hour with Professor Sharlet
This course offers students an overview of the conventions, genres and techniques of narrative-nonfiction writing. The class proceeds by means of group workshops on student writing, individual conferences with the instructor, and analysis of classic works of literary nonfiction. Prerequisite: English 80 and permission of the instructor. Please pick up the form titled "How To Apply for English 81, 82 or 83" from the English Department and answer all of the questions asked in a cover letter. Students should submit a five-to-eight-page writing sample to the administrative assistant of the English Department by the last day of the term preceding the term in which they wish to enroll. Dist: ART. CA tag Creative Writing. No Course Group designation.
English 85.1, Advanced Workshop in Poetry & Prose Fiction, at the 2A hour with Professor Tudish
This course is offered in the senior year for English majors and minors concentrating in Creative Writing. Each student will undertake a manuscript of poems, fiction, or literary nonfiction. All students who wish to enroll must submit an 8 to 12 page writ-ing sample to the administrative assistant of the English Department by the last day of classes in the term preceding the term in which the course is to be taken. Please also read the “How to Apply to English 85” document, available on-line and from the English Department, and answer all of the questions asked in a cover letter. Prerequisite: English 80 and 81, 82, or 83.