Course Catalog

Course Catalog for ENGLISH

ENGL 101

The Practice of Literature

This course looks at the most fundamental, but also the most difficult, questions about literature: what is literature, exactly? How does literature help us understand the wider world, and what life-long skills does the reading of literature help us develop? Although these questions animate every English course, we all -- professors, students -- answer those questions differently. In this course multiple members of the English Department faculty will visit class and discuss how they approach questions about literature and interpretation. Expect disagreements, and be prepared, in a highly collaborative environment, to express your own strong views. Each year, our readings will be organized around a common theme, which each faculty participant will address. For English majors, this course satisfies the critical reflection requirement. (HUM)

1.00 units, Lecture

ENGL 104

This American Experiment, Part 1

The America we know today has always been an experiment, defined by conflicts over land, debates about communal purpose and meaning, and the struggles of people born here and who dreaded or dreamed of coming here. This course emphasizes literary texts that have shaped-and contested-narratives of what America is and who it's for. From Indigenous stories and colonists' journals to the revolutionary texts of the new United States, from the writings of Transcendentalists and anti-slavery activists to the literature of the civil war and an abandoned Reconstruction, the works in this survey challenge students to reckon with the American present by reading and writing about its literary roots. (This course is first in a two-part sequence; students may take one part or both.) (HUM)

1.00 units, Lecture

ENGL 105

This American Experiment, Part 2

In the United States, literary works have played crucial roles in public controversies and fueled social change. Wielding the written word and the printing press, among other media cultural producers have protested injustice and galvanized reform movements that continue to inform American voices today. Students in this course will explore how literature has responded to-and still refracts for us-the most consequential experiences of American generations past and present: Indian removal, the Civil War, and racial segregation; urbanization, mass immigration, and labor conflict; suffrage; Civil Rights, feminism, globalization, environmental devastation, and Black Lives Matter. (This course is a continuation of ENGL 104, but students are welcome to enroll without taking ENGL 104.) (HUM)

1.00 units, Lecture

ENGL 106

Who Are Your People? Writing community in the 21st Century

This course explores the intersection between writing and community building. Students will read fiction, nonfiction, and poetry by writers like June Jordan, Toni Morrison, Edwidge Danticat, and others to explore nuanced literary representations of community, (un) belonging, and collectivity. Students will be expected to write in their chosen genre to explore questions like: Who are your people? What are a writer's responsibilities to collective struggle? What forms, techniques, and research practices can lend a writer adequate tools to write about communities? This is a generative creative writing course, and class meetings will take the form of writing exercises, workshop, group activities, and presentations. (ART)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 110

Inventing English Literature

Fifteen hundred years ago, there was no such thing as English literature. The few examples of writing we have from that period are in a language that hardly anyone understands today. And yet, by the time of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, England had developed one of the great world literatures. How did this happen? Starting with early masterpieces like Beowulf (in translation), we will trace the emergence of "English literature," as we now know it. In addition to major figures like Chaucer, Milton, and Shakespeare, we'll consider authors who fill out the historical picture. (HUM)

1.00 units, Lecture

ENGL 111

Literature in the Age of Revolutions

Over the last three hundred years, the modern world has undergone a series of cataclysmic transformations: the rise of empires, the French revolution, the industrial revolution, the struggles of colonized peoples, and of women, for equality and dignity, the disaster of two World Wars. English literature has been centrally involved in these earth-shattering events: literature is a chronicle of change, and can itself be revolutionary, instigating major change all on its own. In this course, which begins with the rise of modern England, and then looks at major authors of the Romantic, Victorian, Modern and contemporary periods, we will consider what makes English a central world literature. (HUM)

1.00 units, Lecture

ENGL 116

"Blackness" Unveiled: Early Voices

This course surveys African American literature in a variety of genres from the 18th to the early 20th centuries. Through the study of texts by Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Wilson, Harriet Jacobs, William Wells Brown, Julia Collins, William and Ellen Craft, Charles Chesnutt, Paul Dunbar, Ida Wells, W.E.B. Du Bois, and others, we will explore how these writers represented and influenced the history of people of African descent in the U.S., from slavery and abolition to early struggles for civil rights; how their work has intervened in racial formation and imagined the black diaspora; how literary innovations have engaged with continuing political questions of nation, gender, sexuality, and class. For English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of a survey. (HUM)

1.00 units, Lecture

ENGL 117

Black Diasporic Literature in the US, Part 2

This course surveys African American literature in multiple genres from the 20th-century to the present. We will examine texts by both canonical and emergent writers, such as James Weldon Johnson, Angelina Weld Grimke, Jean Toomer, Nella Larsen, Langston Hughes, Zora Hurston, Ralph Ellison, Ann Petry, James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, Amiri Baraka, Octavia Butler, Rita Dove, August Wilson, Alice Walker, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, and others. Our discussions/strategies for reading will be informed by relevant social, historical, and political contexts. In addition to discussing issues of race, nation formation, diasporic identities, class, gender, and sexuality, we will identify/trace recurring ideas/themes, as well as develop a theoretical language to facilitate thoughtful engagement with these works. For English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of a survey. (HUM)

1.00 units, Lecture

ENGL 160

Introduction to Literary Studies

Why study literature? A practical reason: we live in a world of words and this course helps you master that world. But more importantly, literature immerses you in vast new worlds that become more meaningful as you become a better reader. Literature grapples with the fundamental problems of humanity; good, evil, pain, pleasure, love, death. We will read across centuries of English literature, in all genres, to see how great authors have addressed these problems. Through a sustained and rigorous attention to your own writing and interpretive skills, the course will leave you better prepared to explore and contribute to the written world. This course offers skills required for the English major, but welcomes anyone who wishes to become a better writer, reader, and thinker. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 170

Introduction to Creative Writing

An introduction to imaginative writing, concentrating on the mastery of language and creative expression in more than one genre. Discussion of work by students and established writers. This is a required course for creative writing concentrators. One requirement of this class is attendance at a minimum of two readings offered on campus by visiting writers. (ART)
This course is not open to seniors.

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 209

Prison Literature

This course examines texts, both fictional and non-fictional, written about and often in prison. While the course covers a variety of genres and historical periods, the common thread linking all the texts is that their authors were or are incarcerated. Through the works of canonical and non-canonical writers such as Thoreau, Wilde, King, Mandela, Davis, Horton, and currently incarcerated women and men, we will explore how the experience of imprisonment influences individuals, and their family, community, and society and raises questions about freedom, transgression, and human rights. This course will have a community learning component and will introduce students to some of the writers whose works we will be studying. For English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of a 200-level elective. (HUM)

1.00 units, Lecture

ENGL 221

Drama in English, Renaissance to Contemporary

This course surveys major figures and movements in English-language drama, from the Renaissance and Enlightenment to the experiments of twentieth century American playwrights and dramatists of the post-colonial Anglophone world. Focus on how playwrights develop new dramatic forms, techniques, and genres in response to changing social circumstances, as well as considering theories of drama and performance that illuminate the complex, interdependent relationship between stage and society. Authors may include William Shakespeare, Aphra Behn, Oscar Wilde, Eugene O'Neill, Edward Albee, Caryl Churchill, and Derek Walcott. (HUM)

1.00 units, Lecture

ENGL 222

Victorian Short Fiction

The Victorian period is known for its three-decker novels, but the later 19th century was a golden age for short fiction. We will examine the evolution of the short story and the novella, assessing the impact of technological advances in the printing industry, the rise of the cheap periodical, and burgeoning literacy levels. We will also look at the rapid growth of new popular genres, such as science fiction, detective fiction, adventure stories, ghost & horror stories, and feminist “New Woman” fiction. Writers to be studied include Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens, Eliza Riddell, Sheridan Le Fanu, Thomas Hardy, Mona Caird, “George Egerton,” and H.G. Wells. For English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of a 200-level elective. (HUM)

1.00 units, Lecture

ENGL 231

The Rom Com

On the page and on the screen, the genre of the Rom-Com is today seen as fluffy and feminine, a realm of pure escape. This course takes the Rom-Com more seriously, as a genre that reflects and critiques the conventions that govern gender, sexuality, and marriage. We will examine two pivotal periods in the development of the genre: the turn of the 17th century, focusing on William Shakespeare, and the turn of the 19th century, focusing on Jane Austen. Each author's works will be paired with film adaptations that, in reimagining their source material, challenge audiences to rethink the connections between gender, desire, race, class, and social convention. (HUM)

1.00 units, Lecture

ENGL 238

Race and Speculative Fiction

Science fiction and fantasy are powerful ways of imagining the world, both as it should or could be and as a cautionary example of what it might become. From Afrofuturism to Indigenous Futurism, contemporary writers of color are using the fantastic to challenge oppressive structures and imagine different ways of being in the world. In this course we will examine the work of African American writers such as Octavia Butler, Asian American writers such as Ted Chiang, and Indigenous writers such as Cherie Dimaline, Louise Erdrich, and Stephen Graham Jones, who use this genre both to explore alternative histories and also to offer a redemptive vision of a future in which alternative ways of being in the world have the potential to save us all. (HUM)

1.00 units, Lecture

ENGL 239

Words Between Wars: Americans in Paris 1920-1939

Our focus in this class is on the explosion of form and content that marked literature by Americans living or sojourning in Paris during the Jazz Age and into the Depression. Influenced by Modernism and by Paris-centered explorations in other arts, the writers who came to Paris produced works that set the course of American literature for the remainder of the 20th century. Our reading list includes Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Janet Flanner, Langston Hughes, Henry Miller, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, Anais Nin, Ezra Pound, and EE Cummings. Films, music, and visual arts will connect these texts to other important cultural figures of the time and place. (HUM)

1.00 units, Lecture

ENGL 246

Horror in Film & Fiction: The Uncanny Art of Contemporary Terror

The horror genre is having a terrible renaissance. With filmmakers like James Wan and Jordan Peele, film studios like Blumhouse and A24, international streaming sensations like Squid Games, and fiction writers like Carmen Maria Machado and Stephen Graham Jones, horror has moved into the mainstream as a litmus test for dangerous emotions and energies. This course will consider horror in our contemporary moment through questions of its production history, its unsettling politics, its brutal aesthetics, and its enduring power as a form of cultural storytelling. Exemplary topics will include the neo-uncanny of psychological terror (The Babadook & Hereditary), the compelling dread of the historical imagination (The Witch & Candyman), and the fresh energies of sociological critique (Get Out & Barbarian). (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 252

Young Adult Literature

According to Philip Pullman, “There are some themes, some subjects, too large for adult fiction; they can only be dealt with adequately in a children’s book.” What themes and subjects might these be? What are the implications of this argument? We will read children’s and young adult literature from the 19th-century to the present day, discussing, as we go, its origins, evolutions, and continuities. (HUM)

1.00 units, Lecture

ENGL 253

American Conscience

Conscience can be the inner voice of an individual; it can also be the shared voice of a society's commitment to certain norms--sometimes the same norms an individual feels driven by conscience to defy. Questions of conscience therefore involve central issues of literary study: How does individual expression interact with cultural context? How is content (what is moral?) mediated and modulated by the form of its representation (what is "my conscience" telling me?). This course explores key episodes in US history when authors and activists--from Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry David Thoreau to Ida B. Wells and Martin Luther King--have mobilized the written word to awaken readers' consciences or reshape a collective conscience. (HUM)

1.00 units, Lecture

ENGL 263

Writing as Social Justice

This creative nonfiction course considers social justice issues, including those tied to the Black Lives Matter Movement and the global pandemic. Through reading, writing, and discussions, we will ask: How can we courageously speak to the moment or reframe the past? How do we confront contemporary and historical injustices through acts of the imagination? What methods help us transform political and social matters into compelling and intimate stories? Can practicing writers embrace joy in the service of justice and healing? You will pursue your most pressing concerns and experiment with forms of writing from the personal essay to the open letter. The final assignment is a public-facing project that may involve teaching anthologies, public events, websites, manifestos, and podcasts. (ART)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 265

Introduction to Film Studies

This course provides a general introduction to the study of film and focuses on the key terms and concepts used to describe and analyze the film experience. As we put this set of tools and methods in place, we will also explore different modes of film production (fictional narrative, documentary, experimental) and some of the critical issues and debates that have shaped the discipline of film studies (genre, auteurism, film aesthetics, ideology). (HUM)

1.00 units, Lecture

ENGL 273

Performing Blackness: Staging Race in Black Drama & Performance

This course examines both historical and contemporary African American performance/drama. What does it mean to perform "blackness"? How do these performances overlap with other aspects of identity, such as nation, gender, and class? The course will consider early enactments of race in minstrel shows to later theatrical representations that engage with important cultural moments, such as slavery, Emancipation, Harlem Renaissance, Civil rights, feminism, and AIDS. In addition to our focus dramatic texts, by authors such as Hansberry, Wilson, Parks, Baldwin, and Deavere-Smith, we will also consider how these works intersect with other performative sites, such as the visual representations of Kara Walker, the dance performances of Bill T. Jones and the filmic depictions of Julia Dash and Spike Lee. (HUM)

1.00 units, Lecture

ENGL 277

The Art of Horror: Fear in Film and Literature

Horror remains an immensely popular and profitable genre. From the pulp thrills of Stephen King to the literary intensity of Carmen Miranda Manchado, from the gory pleasures of The Night of the Living Dead to the anxious social critiques of Get Out, horror provides an embodied experience, provoking feelings of dread, disgust, uncertainty, and unease. This class examines how artists have sought to produce those feelings through recognizable conventions and sophisticated innovations. Exemplary topics will include the monstrous feminine (Carrie & Rosemary's Baby), the neogothic (Yoko Ogawa & Helen Oyeyemi), and modern hauntings (The Shining & The Conjuring). Students will write creatively and analytically within the history of the genre and its techniques. (HUM)

1.00 units, Lecture

ENGL 278

Gender Stereotypes and Their Subversion in Medieval Literature and Culture

When we think of the Middle Ages, we often think of damsels in distress, knights in shining armor, and-through these concepts-entrenched and inflexible gender roles. The course will address the common gender stereotypes of medieval romance by looking closely at the ways medieval authors themselves sought to subvert them. We will consider texts written by academically-trained women, texts by men who express their desire to be Christ's beloved, accounts of a gender-queer sex worker, and of knights and saints whose gender identities defy categorization. Rather than seeking to "apply" modern gender theory to medieval texts, this course seeks to read the two side-by-side, to understand how medieval texts challenge our modern understanding of gender, even as modern theory enriches our reading of medieval texts. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 279

Lockdown and Escape Stories

What does it feel like to be shuttered up for days or months or years? How do characters find a mental release from monotony and fear? This course explores literary representations of the experience of confinement--whether on an island, in a cellar, or in a castle--and the ways individuals escape, successfully or not. The course will enable students to explain, analyze and judge literary texts, and to express their own responses in polished and persuasive prose. Students will write analyses of the texts, and may also choose to write personal narratives, poems or songs about their experiences of COVID-19 "sheltering at home." (HUM)

1.00 units, Lecture

ENGL 280

The Marvelous Middle Ages

Readers of medieval literature (alongside its characters) often find themselves in fabulous but disorienting settings-from fairy "otherworlds" to the Kingdom of Heaven-where they encounter supernatural beings, unexplainable events, dazzling objects, magic, and the miraculous: in short, medieval texts challenge readers to take "the marvelous" seriously. This course will explore the concept of "the marvelous" in medieval literature, not only what it is, but what it does, what we as readers are invited to do when confronted with the logically or textually unexplainable. Considering such subjects as gender, sexuality, and race alongside accounts of fairies, mystical visions, and otherworlds, we will explore how the marvelous can provide the catalyst necessary for reimagining new possibilities in the "real" world. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 282

Contemporary Native American Literature

Indigenous writers have used fiction, autobiography, and poetry to explore what it means to be a Native person today, whether that is in an urban context or on a reservation. From poetry to historical fiction to dystopian futurist science fiction, Native writers celebrate the resistance and survival that has shaped their lives and communities despite a history of colonization. In this course we will examine a selection of works by Native American writers from across the United States and Canada, using these works to gain insight into the ongoing cultural experience of Native people. (HUM)

1.00 units, Lecture

ENGL 285

Creative Writing in the Community

In this community engagement writing course, you will have the opportunity to explore the cultural scene in Hartford and write about your experiences. Through experimentation and practice, you will grow in trusting your artistic instinct, cultivating your personal voice, and exercising agency. Ultimately, you will push the boundaries of creative nonfiction to tell real-life stories in authentic and unexpected ways. As a supportive writing community, you will give and receive feedback on ongoing work and delve into the ethical considerations that come into play when writing from real-life experience. We will partner with a Hartford organization to explore the city's cultural life, and the work will culminate in a final project. You will complete 10 hours of direct service outside of class. (ART)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 287

Spirituality and Poetry: a Reading and Writing Course

This course will revolve around two questions: What is " spirituality"? How does poetry speak of this experience? As part of our exploration of these questions, we will read poets both ancient and modern, from the Sufi mystics to Basho and Rilke; from Native Americans, to Emily Dickinson, to contemporary Americans like Jericho Brown. Equally important, we will write daily, creating a practice immersed in vivid language and personal experience, the sources of all powerful poems. (ARTW)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 288

World Cinema

This course provides an introduction to the study of world cinema, with a focus on cinematic cultures other than those of the USA or Europe. We will begin by considering some of the theoretical questions involved in intercultural spectatorship and introducing/reviewing critical categories we can use to discuss the films. We will then proceed through a series of units based around specific cinematic cultures, focusing on movement, genres and auteurs and on the historical, cultural, and geopolitical issues that the films illuminate. For English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of a 200-level elective. This course can be counted toward fulfillment of requirements for the film studies minor. (GLB2)

1.00 units, Lecture

ENGL 289

New York Literature

What is "New York Literature"? On the one hand, this question is easy to answer: for nearly 400 years, the City has been home to both famous and aspiring writers, and has been the subject of uncountable novels, poems, and plays. At the same time, because NYC is so complex and diverse - economically, socially, ethnically - it's tough to pinpoint some essential quality of New York-ness that unites all of this writing. That won't stop us from trying! In this course, we will (selectively) take in the vast sweep of New York literature from its days as a small Dutch colony to its present state as a metropolis of 8 million people. Our semester will conclude with a field trip to the Big Apple. (HUM)

1.00 units, Lecture

ENGL 291

Bollywood and Beyond: An Introduction to Popular Indian Cinema

The course provides an introduction to Indian cinema, with a focus on popular Hindi-language cinema from World War II to the present. For over 50 years Bollywood has dominated India's domestic market and made a huge impact in markets and cultures around the world: China and other Asian countries, the former Soviet Union, Africa, the Middle East, Greece, and the diasporic audiences of the Caribbean, the United Kingdom and North America. Understanding the global popularity of Bollywood cinema requires a journey through the films into Indian aesthetics, culture, society and history, a journey that will provide you with a unique set of perspectives on the contemporary world. The course has a mandatory weekly evening screening. For English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of a 200-level elective This course fulfills a film history elective requirement of the Film Studies major. (GLB1)

1.00 units, Lecture

ENGL 298

Fairy Tales

For centuries, fairy tales have brought comfort, connection, and solace. At once magical and escapist, they offer avenues for self-reflection and practical lessons in managing life's challenges. This course examines both fairy tales and the scholarship devoted to understanding the genre. We will read tales written hundreds of years ago, from all over the world, together with contemporary rewritings, revisions, and repurposings in film, fiction, and poetry. We will read scholarly works that, using a range of critical methodologies, seek to identify what fairy tales offer and how they are structured. And we will work to produce both analytical essays and a creative intervention in the tradition: students will have the opportunity, at the end of the course, to write their own fairy tale. (HUM)

1.00 units, Lecture

ENGL 301

Theories of Literary Interpretation

How and why do we read literature? Does it, should it and can it propel social change, personal growth, or individual expression? In this course, we will read the theories of writers and thinkers from Aristotle to Henry Gates Jr., from Classical to Queer theory, and apply their ideas to literary works by Austen, Shakespeare, Conrad, Equiano and others. Along the way, students will develop their personal theories of literary interpretation. For English majors, this satisfies the requirement of a course emphasizing critical reflection. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 302

Adaptation

What does it mean to reinterpret, and/or reimagine, the published work of another writer? Why do certain stories remain in constant circulation, even as they are altered according to cultural, genre-specific, or artistic pressures? In this course we will consider what happens to works of literature during the process of adaptation. We will read stories across their various iterations, tracing the development of each story's "meaning," and spend time analyzing the process by which a work migrates from the page to other mediums as well, including film, music, dance, and television. Along the way we will ask questions about intention, context, inspiration, craft-level constraints, and effect. Finally, we will undertake adaptations of our own. (ART)
Prerequisite: C- or better in ENGL 270, ENGL 170 or permission of instructor.

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 304

Cinephilia and Philosophy

This course offers a free-ranging exploration through a series of philosophical texts and films designed to challenge us and provoke creative thought, open-ended discussion, and poetic critical writing. The course will be conducted as an advanced seminar; some prior background in either philosophy or film studies is recommended, and a serious commitment to the common cinephilosophical endeavor is required. For English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of a course emphasizing critical reflection. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 305

Evolution of the Western Film

The course examines how the Western genre emerged from global popular culture at the end of the 19th century to become one of the most powerful and complex forms for expressing the experience of Modernity. After careful consideration of the political and philosophical implications of the Western, we will track the development of the genre as it responds to the ideological contradictions and cultural tensions of 20th-century American history, focusing on broad trends within the mainstream, the contributions of individual directors, and the global dissemination of generic elements. For English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of a course emphasizing literature written after 1900. Evening meeting time is for screenings only. This course is research intensive. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 307

Early American Women's Literature

Although early American literature often revolves around "Founding Fathers," in this course we will examine the writing of women. Writing poetry, journals, novels, travel diaries and letters, colonial women had a lot to say about their world and were extraordinarily creative in finding ways to say it-even when the society they lived in suggested it was "improper" for them to write. Along with elite white women, Native Americans, free African Americans, slaves, and indentured servants all wrote as well. As we explore this writing, we will think about what the texts these women produced tell us about the early American experience-how people thought of their place in the world, and what role women imagined for themselves in this newly developing society. This is a research-intensive seminar. For English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of a course emphasizing literature written between 1700-1900. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 309

Speculative Fiction: Re-writing the Human

Speculative fiction has long explored what it means to be human and what it means to be other: aliens, monsters, cyborgs, etc. In this hybrid course, we consider how visionary writers have used the genre to interrogate the human/other binary, not only metaphorizing the ways race, gender, class, sexuality, neurodiversity, etc. delineate these categories but re-imagining the boundaries of those definitions. From Ishiguro to Delaney to Braidotti, the course combines a creative writing practice around speculative short fiction with a theory reading practice around the post/human. It also follows a few consistent questions towards enhancing our craft. How do we code the human/other in our fictional worlds? How do we imagine new possibilities for the post/human? Readings will be primarily Anglophone with a global span. (ART)
Prerequisite: C- or better in English 270 or English 170

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 310

Postcolonial Literature and Theory

This course provides an introduction to Anglophone literatures produced after decolonization. We will read foundational essays of postcolonial theory alongside several novels in order to consider how these literatures represent issues of identity, nationalism, globalization, and race. The seminar will address the effects of literary form on these fraught representations, as well as the implications of approaching literature through the lens of "postcolonialism," as opposed to globalization studies, World Literature, transnationalism, or the study of the Global South. Readings will include essays by Homi Bhabha, Franz Fanon, Mary Louise Pratt, Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak; and novels from the African diaspora and South Asia. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 314

William Faulkner and American Modernism

In this course, we will read some of William Faulkner's major works (taking his 1936 novel "Absalom, Absalom!" as a centerpiece) in conjunction with literary texts by other modernist writers such as Nella Larsen, Gertrude Stein, Jean Toomer, and William Carlos Williams. We will study how modernism's intellectual and aesthetic currents—its iconoclasm, experimentation, and reckoning with the contingencies of knowledge and representation—melded with the historical context of the early 20th-century U.S. How did these writers depict the dark legacies of civil war and slavery? How did their literary innovations recast the enduring problem of segregation and make sense of a rapidly changing society? Beneath these particular inquiries will run an abiding consideration of the value of literary art in turbulent times. For English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of a course emphasizing literature after 1900. (HUM)
Prerequisite: C- or better in English 260 or ENGL 160.

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 316

Freedom & Confinement: Narratives of Captivity in Early America

Even as America defines itself as "the land of the free," narratives of confinement have a prominent place in our national literature. In this class we will begin to explore this conundrum, focusing our attention on early American texts in which confinement operates as a structuring principle. We will explore ideas of imprisonment and captivity from colonial America through the nineteenth century, looking at such texts as criminal narratives compiled by ministers and others, captivity narratives, slave narratives, prison writing, and early American novels, among other texts. Along the way we will touch on issues of race and gender as well as institutions of confinement including slavery, prisons and even schools in early America, using appropriate theoretical models to frame our conversations. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 318

Literacy and Literature

Literature is produced and consumed by literate people. Nothing could be more obvious. But how do the different ways writers and readers become literate influence the ways they write and read? How have writers depicted the process of acquiring literacy and imagined its importance? In this course, we will examine the nature of literacy and the roles texts play in the development of literacy. With a focus on the United States from the 18th century to the 20th, we will study schoolbooks, texts for young readers, and representations of literacy in literary works ranging from slave narratives to novels to films. We also will study theories of literacy from philosophical, cognitive, and educational perspectives. For English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of a course emphasizing literature written between 1700-1900. This course is research intensive. (HUM)

1.00 units, Lecture

ENGL 319

Climate Fiction: Planetary Lines & Wor(l)ds

What does climate fiction as an emerging genre of World Literature reveal about the Anthropocene? The growing debates around environmental crises have an aesthetic counterpart-whether these be realist representations of climate refugees in the Global South, eco-fiction works on dystopic survival, or visual renderings of a dissolving and privatizing landscape. Course materials cover multi-genre depictions from North America, Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Oceania of a human-impacted ecology; and course work encourages students to collaborate across linguistic and disciplinary interests. The question of "world" as universal and "planet" as material are thus considered, with an emphasis on lines of difference (gender, race, class, indigeneity, etc.) generating worlds in World and material predicaments (desertification, flooding, allocation of waste, etc.) re-mapping the planet. (GLB2)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 320

Contemporary Americans

This course will focus on important individual collections of contemporary or near-contemporary American poetry. Rather than scanning a selected or collected volume for highlights, we'll look at poems in their original context, considering the single volume as a unified project (a concept increasingly important to contemporary poets) rather than simply a gathering of miscellaneous pieces. Working at a rate of roughly one poet/collection per week, we'll consider classics such as Louise Glück's The Wild Iris, C.K. Williams's Tar, Philip Levine's What Work Is, Yusef Komunyakaa's Magic City, and Jorie Graham's Erosion. We will also consider at least one very recently published collection and one first or near-to-first book. These readings will be supplemented by some theory on the state of contemporary poetry from both poets and critics. For English majors, this course would fulfill the requirement of a course emphasizing poetry and/or a course emphasizing literature written after 1900. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 321

Curiosity and Literature

This course will examine the way curiosity transformed literature and culture in the age of inquiry, when Peeping Tom was invented, modern science was institutionalized, and the detective novel was born. We will read texts that explore both approved and unapproved kinds, such as witchcraft, voyeurism, and the exhibition of monsters. Texts will include drama, journalism, poetry, satire, and novels by Behn, Defoe, Johnson, and others. For English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of a course emphasizing literature written from 1700-1900. It is a "research-intensive seminar." Not open to first-year students. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 322

What Is Romanticism?

The Romantic era accounts for little over forty years of British literary history (roughly 1789-1832). Yet in spite of its short duration, it has had an out-sized effect on conceptions of what makes good and important literature. This course explores the distinctive genres, contentious relationships, and political obsessions of the Romantic period. From newly self-interrogating poetry to the rise of the Gothic novel, from the fight to end slavery to battles over the place of women and the poor, Romantic-era writers fanned the flames of change. We will explore what parts of their aesthetic and political legacy we want to embrace, and what parts we want to remember but rebuff. Authors include Jane Austen, Olaudah Equiano, Mary Prince, Mary Shelley, and William Wordsworth, among others. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 323

Cinematic Modernism

The 30-year period from 1950-1980 is often regarded as the golden age of European cinema and World Cinema. Launched by the post-war epiphanies of Italian Neorealism, a new cinematic language, modernism, was forged by movements of young radicals and older directors eager to transcend their past achievements. Embraced by an expanding audience of cinephiles (self-educated film-lovers), modernist cinema became one of the most dynamic and significant phenomena of 20th century culture. This course offers an introduction to this essential area of film history and will situate key directors and movements within the exciting political and cultural contexts of the times. (HUM)
Prerequisite: C- or better in English 265 or Film 265.

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 324

Locating a Black LGBTQ Literary Tradition

This course is a study of a Black LGBTQ Literary tradition in the United States and in the African Diaspora. Course readings will primarily focus on the 20th century, starting with the Harlem Renaissance and ending at the turn of the century, though some contemporary writers may be included. Texts of study will include works by Nella Larsen, Wallace Thurman, James Baldwin, Essex Hemphill, June Jordan, Jamaica Kincaid, Johan Mijail, and others. Students will study style, form, and narrative and poetic technique to explore how Queer Black writers challenge heteronormative norms of their time, directly or subversively. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 329

Civil War Literature

In this course, we will learn about the literary culture of the Civil War era (by reading Louisa May Alcott, Rebecca Harding Davis, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman, among others) and also consider broader questions about how we read, value, and remember literary works. What makes a text "Civil War literature"? Must it have been written during the U.S. Civil War, or about events of that war, or by a person who participated in the war? And do we understand literature differently when we organize it around a historical event rather than forms, genres, or authors? We will engage with the most recent scholarship on the subject and converse (in person or via Skype) with some of the nation's leading experts on Civil War literature. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 330

Sex, Violence and Substance Abuse: Mexico by Non-Mexicans

Some of the greatest and most lasting depictions of México in fiction, non-fiction, cinema and photography have been produced by non-Mexicans. Rather than exposing any lack of significant Mexican creators in all these genres, such works reflect the strong pull, the attraction and at times repulsion, exerted by this complicated country and culture on outsiders. We will choose readings from such twentieth and twenty-first century works such as John Reed's Insurgent México, Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano, DH Lawrence's The Plumed Serpent, Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory, the short-stories of Katherine Anne Porter and Paul Bowles, the novels of B. Traven, Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, the poetic meditations on Pre-Colombian México by recent French Nobel Prize winner Le Clézio, the contemporary México novels of the Chilean Roberto Bolaño, and, in Ana Castillo’s fiction, a U.S. Chicana's return to México, as well as other contemporary writings. Movies will be chosen from among A Touch of Evil, The Treasure of Sierra Madre, The Wild Bunch, Bring me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, The Night of the Iguana, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, and Sín Nombre. The emphasis will be on the prose, novels especially, with three or four movies, and a class devoted to photography. We study the works themselves, their relation to their own literary-cultural traditions, their depiction of México, and the multiple issues raised by their status as works created by "foreigners." Supplemental readings, some by Mexicans. For English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of a course emphasizing literature written after 1900. (HUM)

1.00 units, Lecture

ENGL 331

Literature of Native New England

Before it was New England, this was Native space. From the Wampanoags to the Mohegans, Narragansetts and Pequots, diverse Algonquian communities imbued their physical space with their own histories, traditions, and literatures. With the arrival of English settlers, Native Americans became active participants in a world deeply invested in writing and written traditions, and they marked their presence through English colonial written forms while maintaining a longstanding commitment to their own communities and lifeways. In this course we will explore the great variety of writing by and about Native Americans in this region: we will look at the long tradition of Native American literary presence in New England, from English language texts to other forms of cultural expression. The course is research intensive. Note: For English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of a course emphasizing literature written between 1700-1900. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 332

Toni Morrison's BELOVED: Past, Present, Future

This seminar interrogates the text and contexts of Toni Morrison's powerful and challenging novel, Beloved, bringing historical, theoretical, and cultural analysis to bear on a single work of fiction. We will consider how Morrison crafted a story about the horrors of slavery, as well as the value of excavating stories deemed unspeakable or illegible. This course surveys critical responses to Morrison's work and considers how contemporary theories of racial formation and embodied blackness inform the novel. We will also address the novel's representation of themes that speak to Black racial formations not only in the wake of slavery, but also in the context of contemporary topics such as migration, trauma and healing, neurodiversity, radical self-love, and Afro-environmentalism. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 333

The Art of Telling True Stories

In this writing workshop, students grow in trusting their artistic instinct, cultivating their personal voice, and exercising agency. Through experimentation and practice, they explore how to push the boundaries of creative nonfiction to tell real-life stories in authentic and unexpected ways. To broaden their notion of the genre and catalog approaches, they read the work of writers who approach storytelling as a source of power and who also innovate traditional literary forms and engage with issues of sexuality, race, class, gender, colonialism, and physical ability. As a supportive writing community, students give and receive feedback on ongoing creative work and delve into the ethical considerations that come into play when writing from real-life experience. (ART)
Prerequisite: C- or better in ENGL 270, ENGL 170 or permission of instructor.

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 334

Advanced Creative Writing: Fiction

Students will write and rewrite fiction. The class is run as a workshop, and discussions are devoted to analysis of student work and that of professional writers. For English creative writing concentrators, this course satisfies the requirement of a 300-level workshop. One requirement of this class is attendance at a minimum of two readings offered on campus by visiting writers. (ART)
Prerequisite: C- or better in ENGL 270, ENGL 170 or permission of instructor.

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 335

Narrative Journalism

This workshop explores the form of writing that combines the craft of fiction writing with the skills and practices of the journalist. We will read some of the foremost 20th-century and contemporary practitioners of this form of writing (V.S. Naipaul, Joseph Mitchell, Joan Didion, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Ryszard Kapuscinski, Rory Stewart, Alma Guillermoprieto, Susan Orlean, Jon Lee Anderson, etc., and selections from some of their important precursors: Stephen Crane, Jose Marti) and discuss, often, the form's complex relation to literary fiction, the tensions and difference between journalism and imaginative works, and so on. The workshop will begin with practical writing assignments: first paragraphs, setting, character, how to develop meaning, short pieces, etc., with the final goal being to produce a New Yorker magazine-like (in length and craft) piece using some aspect of the city of Hartford. NOTE: For English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of a 300-level workshop. One requirement of this class is attendance at a minimum of two readings offered on campus by visiting writers. (ART)
Prerequisite: C- or better in ENGL 270, ENGL 170 or permission of instructor.

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 336

Advanced Creative Writing: Poetry

Students will do in-class exercises, and write and revise their own poems. The class is run as a workshop, and discussions are devoted to analysis of student work and that of professional writers. One requirement of this class is attendance at a minimum of two readings offered on campus by visiting writers. This course satisfies the requirement of a 300-level workshop for creative writing concentrators. (ART)
Prerequisite: C- or better in ENGL 270 or ENGL 170 or permission of instructor.

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 338

Beyond Nature Worship: New Theories of Environmentalism

This course contextualizes the environmental movement in post-World War II America. Together we will consider how gender, race, sexuality, class, and disability affect human relationships to natural and built environments, and how those relationships are represented. The course centers on a small roster of environmental thinkers, including Ursula Heise, Rob Nixon, Stacy Alaimo, and Elizabeth DeLoughrey, whom we will read closely, repeatedly, and in conjunction with several contemporary novels. In the spirit of Lawrence Buell's assertion that "environmental crisis involves a crisis of the imagination," the course is invested in discourses of both science and the humanities, and students with no previous college-level experience in English are welcome. (HUMW)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 339

Special Topics in Film: The Evolution of the Western Film

The course examines how the Western genre emerged from global popular culture at the end of the 19th century to become one of the most powerful and complex forms for expressing the experience of Modernity. After a careful consideration of the political and philosophical implications of the Western, we will track the development of the genre as it responds to the ideological contradictions and cultural tensions of 20th-century American history, focusing on broad trends within the mainstream, the contributions of individual directors, and the global dissemination of generic elements. (HUM)

1.00 units, Lecture

ENGL 340

American Adaptations: Contemporary Writers take on Early America

This course will look at the ways American writers from the nineteenth century to the present have mythologized an early American moment, looking to the past to critique or celebrate American identity through fiction and poetry. We will focus on texts concerned with early America, from works like Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter to twentieth-century texts like I, Tituba by Maryse Conde and A Mercy by Toni Morrison. By focusing on the historical and literary context for such works, including pivotal moments like the Salem witch trials, King Philip's War, and the American Revolution and writers like Mary Rowlandson and Phillis Wheatley, we will frame our discussion of the ways the past usefully informs current conversations around race, identity, and belonging. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 341

American Literary Modernism and the Great War

This course will consider the impact of the Great War on American literary modernism. Grappling with apocalyptic devastation in Europe, massive shifts in global politics, and dramatic changes in technology, the Lost Generation responded with enduring and enigmatic works, haunted by wounds both psychic and spiritual. We will consider canonical writings by Ernest Hemingway and e.e. cummings, lesser-known works by Jessie Redmon Fauset and Edith Wharton, and first person accounts by combatants such as Thomas Boyd. As our focus will be on introducing the aesthetics of modernism through the context of the war itself, we will study maps, songs, photographs, newspapers, and other historical materials alongside traditional literary objects. Assignments will include a creative research project, weekly responses, and short essays. For English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of a course emphasizing literature written after 1900. It is research intensive. This course fulfills archival approaches. (HUM)

1.00 units, Lecture

ENGL 343

Women and Empire

This course examines women’s involvement in British imperialism in the 19th and 20th centuries. What part did ideologies of femininity play in pro-imperialist discourse? In what ways did women writers attempt to "feminize" the imperialist project? What was the relationship between the emerging feminist movement and imperialism at the turn of the 20th century? How have women writers in both centuries resisted imperialist axiomatics? How do women authors from once-colonized countries write about the past? How are post-colonial women represented by contemporary writers? Authors to be studied include Charlotte Brontë, Flora Annie Steel, Rudyard Kipling, Jean Rhys, Jamaica Kincaid, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Alexander McCall Smith. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 345

Chaucer

A study of The Canterbury Tales and related writings in the context of late medieval conceptions of society, God, love, and marriage. For English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of a course emphasizing literature written before 1700. This course is research intensive. (HUM)
Prerequisite: C- or better in English 260 or ENGL 160.

1.00 units, Lecture

ENGL 346

Dream Vision and Romance

A study of two major medieval genres as they are developed in the works of Chaucer, Langland, the Gawain-poet, and Malory. The course will explore the structural and stylistic as well as the political, social, and psychological issues raised by these genres and the individual authors' treatments of them. For English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of a course emphasizing literature written before 1700. This course is research intensive. (HUM)
Prerequisite: C- or better in English 260 or ENGL 160.

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 347

Writing Women of the Renaissance

Anne Boleyn. Queen Elizabeth. Mary Queen of Scots. Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke. Penelope Rich. Lucy Russell, Countess of Bedford. These Renaissance women were important leaders, writers, patrons of the arts. There also exists a rich and long tradition of representing them in history, literature, and film. What does this sustained fascination reveal about the continual process of historical revision, and ultimately about our own cultural preoccupations? This course will examine a range of texts: biographies, early modern texts by and about these figures, and more contemporary representations (in popular histories, plays, and films) of their lives and times. For English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of a course emphasizing literature written before 1700. It is a research-intensive seminar. (HUM)
Prerequisite: C- or better in English 260 or ENGL 160.

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 348

Women Writers of the Middle Ages

This course will study works in a variety of genres, from the lyric and the romance to the autobiography and the moral treatise, written by medieval women in England, Europe, and Asia. In addition to analyzing the texts themselves, we will be examining them within their social, historical, and political contexts as we discuss such issues as medieval women's literacy, education, and relationships to the male-authored literary traditions of their cultures. Through the term, we will be trying to determine the degree to which we can construct a recognizable woman's literary tradition for this period. For English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of a course emphasizing literature written before 1700. This course is research intensive. (HUM)
Prerequisite: C- or better in English 260 or ENGL 160.

1.00 units, Lecture

ENGL 350

Earthly Delights: Pleasure in Medieval Literature and Culture

The Middle Ages is often regarded as a period that was skeptical of worldly pleasure, repressing it at all costs. This course challenges this preconception by considering how pleasure was written about and theorized by medieval people, not just projecting pleasure onto an eternal life to come but sought in everyday experiences on earth, here and now. We will read works by Chaucer and other great literary works alongside travel narratives, accounts of the Golden Age and the Earthly Paradise. Each of these narratives insist on the reality of pleasure, whether discovered far in the east or in one's most secret fantasies. We will collectively consider a historical genealogy of pleasures, and how modern theories of pleasure-including queer theory-fit into these medieval discourses. (HUM)
Prerequisite: C- or better in English 260 or ENGL 160.

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 352

Shakespeare

Through close study of a variety of Shakespeare’s works and analysis of selected performances on video, this course addresses definitions of the Shakespearean and examines the constitution of Shakespearean theater. The course pays particular attention to the coherence of Shakespearean dramas around vivid patterns of imagery, to the psychology and arts of Elizabethan and Jacobean characterization, to representations of Elizabethan social and political hierarchies, and to British Renaissance poetic will synthesizing Classical, Medieval, and Celtic source materials. For English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of a course emphasizing literature written before 1700 This course is research intensive. (HUM)
Prerequisite: C- or better in English 260 or ENGL 160.

1.00 units, Lecture

ENGL 354

The Novel and the Real World

This seminar explores the development of the realistic novel in short, eighteenth-century fictions about the quest to discover identity. Readings include Gothic novels with supernatural effects, semi-fictional and entirely fictional travel tales, novels about sex-workers, servants and libertines, and realistic sketches of city life by essayists and cultural critics. Through these works, we will trace the development of a genre which centers on the experience of the individual in a world bristling with dangers and adventures and peopled by rogues, fools, heroes and scoundrels as each individual forges a unique self. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 355

Narratives of Disability in U.S. Literature and Culture

This course introduces students to the ways in which disability has been used to represent both "normalcy" and extraordinariness in literature. We will consider how "tales told by idiots," as framed in Shakespeare's Hamlet, often supply the unique and insightful perspective that mainstream characters cannot see, hear, or experience because of their own limitations. We will look at how the notion of disability has been aligned with other aspects of identity, such as Charles Chesnutt's representation of race as a disability in his turn of the century literature or of slaves using performances of disability to escape from the horrid institution during the 19th-century. We will read a variety of genres, fiction, memoir, and some literary criticism to come to a clearer understanding of the ways in which the meaning of disability and its representation in a variety of texts echoes a broader set of beliefs and practices in the U.S. For English majors this course satisfies the requirement of a course emphasizing literature written after 1900. This course is research-intensive. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 357

17th Century Poetry

Our focus will be upon the shorter poems of several English writers – Donne, Jonson, Lanyer, Wroth, Herbert, Pulter, Marvell, and Milton, to name a few. Close formal analysis of selected poems and their literary models will be coupled with careful study of the cultural and historical contexts in which these poets wrote. We will consider, among other things, how in the seventeenth century civil war displaced some priorities and sharpened others; how both prayer and poetry led to powerful introspection and writing of the self; how women poets made an English literary tradition their own. We will also consider the critical reception of these poets and how that history illuminates key facets of an English literary tradition. This course is research intensive. (HUM)
Prerequisite: C- or better in English 260 or ENGL 160.

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 358

Victorian Literature and Social Crisis

The nineteenth century was a period of rapid social change. The industrial revolution fundamentally transformed how people lived and worked. To some it was an age of possibility, when social mobility was possible at last. To millions it was a period of suffering, when much was promised, but delivered to just a few. This course examines socially-engaged literatures. Some writers look to the past for solace; others hope for a better future. Some see the home as a site of comfort; others see it as a prison. Some celebrate the individual, while others argue that community forms the bedrock of a fairer world. As we gain a firm foothold in these conversations, we will debate the part literature can play in times of intense upheaval. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 360

Walden

Henry David Thoreau is popularly regarded as a pioneer of social distancing, but his work speaks to contemporary life in other ways, too. He followed his conscience into conflict with federal law. He studied the natural world so fastidiously that scientists use his journals to document global warming. He made flawed but uncommonly earnest efforts to understand North America's indigenous history. This course takes WALDEN as the starting point for an intellectual exploration ranging from Thoreau's medieval Japanese precursor Kamo No Chomei to debates still raging about him today. Students will get to follow-or carve out for themselves-one of many paths of inquiry Thoreau's work inspires, including Ecology & Climate, Ethics & Political Resistance, Transcendentalism & Eastern Philosophy, or Indigeneity & Deep History. (HUMW)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 364

Reason and Feeling: Revolutions in Literature and Society c.1660-1820

Where did the novel come from, and why did it appear? Why did self-discovery and rebellion become key topics in literature? What happens to literature when society pits feeling against reason, and new classes of people-women, middle-class writers, laborers and enslaved people-start writing and reading? In this course, we will examine the way the British poets, playwrights, journalists and fiction writers from the Restoration (1660) to the Regency (1820) re-made outdated literary forms into fresh genres to express new perceptions of identity, sexuality, society, justice, feeling, art and nature, and how a literature of revolution arose. We will also conduct original research in the database ECCO and at the Watkinson Library. (HUM)
Prerequisite: C- or better in English 260 or ENGL 160.

1.00 units, Lecture

ENGL 366

Jane Austen: A Culture in Crisis

Jane Austen is unique in the pantheon of British writers: her novels remain among the most studied and the most beloved by both popular and academic readers across the globe. Why? How does she bridge these very different audiences? In this course, we will answer these questions by reading her complete opus, plus critical and biographical studies of her life and fiction. Students will explore her unique style, her blend of romance and cultural criticism, of feminism and conventionality, and the divergent (sometimes vehement) interpretations of her ideas, beliefs and aims through class discussion and research. This course satisfies the requirement of a Research Seminar and an upper-level course covering literature from 1700-1900 for the English major. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 368

Literature of Trauma & Resilience

In this course we explore a literature that responds to the traumatic events that we experience collectively and individually, from the nightmare worlds of the great plagues, contemporary and past; to the mass cruelties of war, slavery, the violence, repression and terror of “power” (wars, genocides, femicides, "disappearances"); and to the experience of devastating personal loss that so many experience in their lives. This is both a heroic and an intimate literature, that answers at times overwhelming horror with our seemingly most humble yet enduring tool, words; sometimes of pain and grief, shared with others; also, variously, of resistance, memory, refuge, resilience and imaginative transformation. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 370

Topics in Renaissance Literature

This course will introduce students to English poetry, drama, and prose written between 1500 and 1700. Covering the time period from the flowering of the Renaissance through the English Civil Wars, the syllabus will be organized around the investigation of key topics and issues shaping the study of this formative period: How did canonical and non-canonical writers think about the relationship of thought and action, past and present, writing and reality? How did early modern preconceptions about race, class, and gender shape the way writers of this period thought not only about desire, sexuality, beauty, but also about religion and politics? What role did rapid development of new media technologies play (and continue to play) in the development of new genres, audiences, and ideas? (HUM)
Prerequisite: C- or better in English 260 or ENGL 160 or permission of instructor.

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 371

The U.S. Civil War and Its Afterimage

More than 150 years after Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant, the United States is plainly still engaged in some of that era’s conflicts. This course examines representations of the historical event known as the Civil War and the enduring controversies its memory provokes. By studying works by twenty-first century writers and artists, students in this course will consider how—and to what ends—the memory of the Civil War has been fashioned, revised, and invoked by Americans of our own time. In addition to reading an array of literary texts, students will develop individual research projects and examine other registers of public memory, including war memorials, historic sites, museum exhibits, and popular culture. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 372

Hollywood Film Directors

This course explores and celebrates the work of classic American film directors and constitutes an introduction to the critical methodology of the auteur theory. The directors to be examined are Samuel Fuller, Howard Hawks, and Alfred Hitchcock. After an introduction to various approaches to the auteur, we will use the work of Fuller, Hawks and Hitchcock to explore the history and creative potential of these approaches. Emphasis will be given to contemporary developments that integrate a focus on auteurs with the practices of experimental cinephilia and philosophy. For English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of a 200 level elective. Evening meeting time is for film viewing only. (HUM)

1.00 units, Lecture

ENGL 373

Irish Poetry Since Yeats

We’ll consider the blossoming of Irish poetry in English since the foundation of the Irish Free State. Given his centrality to both the state and the art form, we’ll begin by considering the work of W.B. Yeats. From Yeats, we’ll move up through the 20th century, looking at work by Patrick Kavanagh, Louis MacNeice, John Montague, Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley, Paul Durcan, Eamon Grennan, Eavan Boland, Paul Muldoon, Ciaran Carson, Vona Groarke, and Sinéad Morrissey. We’ll consider the poems through the lens of Irish independence and cultural identity, the Troubles, tensions over religion and class, the urban/rural divide, and the place of women within the tradition. We will also consider the poems as aesthetic objects, governed by different schools and traditions within the art form, Irish or otherwise. For English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of a course emphasizing literature after 1900 and a class that emphasizes poetry. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 374

Race and Realism: African American Literature Before the Harlem Renaissance

Coming of age in the ruins of Reconstruction, the encroachment of Jim Crow laws, and waves of great migration, African American writers of the early 20th century shaped American literature in powerful and often-forgotten ways. Their texts, published in the decades before the Harlem Renaissance, offer an opportunity to consider how people produce literature under the pressures of structural racism; how art might respond to the terrorism of state sanctioned violence; how genres might stretch to articulate the psychological complexities of social and self identities; and how writers appeal to audiences, construct communities, forge friendships, and speak truth to power, despite institutional ambivalence and resistance to their voices. Course readings will come from Charles Chesnutt, Pauline Hopkins, Alice Dunbar Nelson, WEB Du Bois and others. For English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of a course emphasizing literature written post-1900. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 376

The Queer Premodern

In The History of Sexuality, vol. 1, Michel Foucault insisted that sexual identity is a modern phenomenon, coming into existence at the end of the nineteenth century. Four years later, John Boswell provocatively described a flourishing "gay" subculture in twelfth-century Europe. Rather than disprove Boswell's fantastic claim, Foucault seriously considered it, and he began his history of sexuality anew to inquire what a "premodern" sexuality might entail. In this course, we will develop our own theory of "premodern queerness" by considering the acts and identities of premodern subjects in medieval literature, read alongside historical documents, theology, and queer theory. Rather than simply contrast a premodern sexuality to (post)modern queerness, we will consider the ways the past can inspire new horizons of possibility for queer expression. (HUM)
Prerequisite: C- or better in English 260 or ENGL 160.

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 378

Little Shop of Horrors: Plants in Literature and Film

This course engages with the plant world through novels, poetry, philosophy, comics, and film. This approach might strike us as esoteric, but it would not have seemed so in the nineteenth century. We will track major trends in the human understanding of plants, beginning in the Romantic era - when poets were eager to consider the line between the plant and animal kingdoms - and ending in the twentieth century - when popular culture was more likely to categorize plants as monstrous and 'other.' In rethinking the being and meaning of plants we will necessarily revisit the idea of 'the human' and 'the animal,' employing these categories while attending to borderline cases where their utility falters. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 379

Melville

Though a superstar during his early career, Herman Melville watched his reputation decline as his literary ambitions escalated. One review of his seventh novel bore the headline, "Herman Melville Crazy." Not until the 20th century did even his best-known work, Moby Dick, attract considerable attention, but it now stands at the center of the American literary pantheon. Melville's work merits intensive, semester-long study not only because he is a canonical author of diverse narratives—from maritime adventures to tortured romances to philosophical allegories—but also because his career and legacy themselves constitute a narrative of central concern to literary studies and American culture. Through reading and discussion of several of his major works, we will explore Melville's imagination, discover his work's historical context, and think critically about literary form. For English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of a course emphasizing literature written between 1700-1900. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 381

Early English Literature in the Watkinson

This course will invite you to locate and examine the artifacts, art objects, rare books, and digital archives found in Trinity's special collections, with a focus on early English literature that registers or inspires transhistorical or transcultural encounters. We will focus in the first half of the semester on materials (literary and theoretical) that will ground us in the study of early literature. In the second half of the semester we will focus on selected case studies that illuminate how objects found in Trinity's special collections can enhance our engagement with this literature. (HUM)
Prerequisite: C- or better in English 260 or ENGL 160.

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 382

Shakespeare's Other "Race Plays"

What are Shakespeare's other "race plays"? Why have there only been five go-to Shakespeare plays for discussions about race for so long? Using early modern critical race studies and Black feminism as guides, this course looks beyond the five "race plays"-Titus Andronicus, Othello, Merchant of Venice, Antony and Cleopatra, and The Tempest. Shakespeare plays such as Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing, and Hamlet, texts lacking central Black, African, or Jewish figures, also permit generative discussions about race-in particular, whiteness. In this course, we will examine some of Shakespeare's other race plays in search of new racial knowledge while we discuss such topics as gender, sexuality, social class, family and more. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 383

Modern British Fiction

This is a course in British fiction between 1890 and 1945. The prose (novels and stories) of this period is characterized by tremendous ambition, radical experimentation, the questioning of old conventions and the creation of new ones. Authors will include Wilde, Conrad, Ford, Forster, Joyce, Woolf, and Beckett. For English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of a course emphasizing literature written after 1900. It is research intensive. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 395

(Early) Modern Literature: Crossing the Color-Line

This is a course in Early modern English drama and African-American literature. The plays and prose pieces produced during these disparate literary periods share many thematic-and some conventional-points of contact that are often overlooked and consequently not fully explored. Both early modern English and African-American authors addressed several critical issues such as miscegenation, power (political, parental, social), class, sexuality, lineage, death, identity, passing, homosexuality/homosociality and race. These common preoccupations will enable our productive crossing of various boundaries, most notably, the historical boundary between the texts. Authors will likely include W. E. B. Du Bois, Suzan-Lori Parks, William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, James Baldwin, Nella Larsen and Harriet Jacobs. Format: discussion; mini-lectures; in-class presentations; and writing assignments. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 399

Independent Study

A limited number of individual tutorials in topics not currently offered by the department. Submission of the special registration form, available in the Registrar’s Office and the approval of the instructor and chairperson are required for enrollment.

0.50 units min / 1.00 units max, Independent Study

ENGL 401

Introduction to Literary Theory

This seminar is designed to provide a perspective on varied critical vocabularies, and to explore the development of literary theories and methods from classical to contemporary times. Emphasis will be placed on a broad examination of the history and traditions of literary theory, the ongoing questions and conflicts among theorists, and practical applications to the study of works in literature. Students will compose a substantial critical essay based on research and the development of their own perspective on understanding and evaluating a literary text. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 409

Food Writing in the English Renaissance

This course, through the study of English works written between 1500 and 1700, explores the relationship between literature and culinary practice. What role did food and food writing play in the shaping of early modern English culture? We will consider a range of topics: the impact of global trade and exploration upon Renaissance cuisine; literature's role in disseminating global knowledge and emergent conceptions of good taste; the ways in which older conceptions of communal consumption were revived or nostalgically recreated during a time of rapid social and political change. This course explores not only early modern literature's connection to larger cultural and culinary trends but also the way in which literary practices themselves were often figured as acts of digestion, distillation, gathering, or cultivation. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 412

Modern Poetry

“It appears that poets in our civilization, as it exists at present, must be difficult.” When T. S. Eliot wrote these lines in 1921, “difficulty” was self-evidently a term of praise: it signaled a willingness to grapple with the intellectual, esthetic, moral, and erotic complexities of modernity. Today, however, that same difficulty gives poetry of the early 20th century its somewhat scary reputation. Why read tough texts when so much else goes down easily? A premise of this course is that the excitement, the beauty, and the sheer greatness of modern poetry are inseparable from the challenges it poses to the reader. Between 1885 and World War II, Eliot, Yeats, Pound, Crane, Moore, Bishop, Williams, Stevens, Frost, and Auden made poetry possible for modern life. We read their work. (Note: English 412 and English 812 are the same course.) For English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of an advanced class in literature written after 1900. It also satisfies the requirement of a poetry course. This course is research intensive. (HUM)
Prerequisite: C- or better in English 260 or ENGL 160.

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 422

Milton

In this course, we will consider the works of John Milton, with attention to how his prose and poetry synthesizes long-standing intellectual and literary traditions and grapples with issues that still engage us today: the relation of men and women, the realities of loss and mortality, the concept of significant individual choice, and the power and limitations of language as the tool with which we forge an understanding of the world. For English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of a course emphasizing literature written before 1700. This course is research intensive. (HUM)
Prerequisite: C- or better in English 260 or ENGL 160 or permission of instructor.

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 425

Postmodernism in Film and Literature

“Postmodern” is the term used most often to describe the unique features of global culture (art, architecture, philosophy, cinema, literature) since the 1970s. And yet there is practically no agreement about what those features might be: is postmodernism ironic or serious, flat or deep, real or hyper-real, alive or defunct? In this course we will examine competing and often contradictory views of postmodernism, with the goal of developing a historical perspective on the contemporary world we live in now. Texts will be divided evenly between philosophy/theory (Lyotard, Baudrillard, Jameson, Fukuyama, Hutcheon), cinema (possible films: Bladerunner, Mulholland Drive, Pulp Fiction) and literature (possible authors: Borges, Pynchon, Barthelme, Murakami, Foster Wallace). The seminar will culminate with a field trip to New York City. English 425 and English 825 are the same course. For undergraduate English majors, this course satisfies the post-1900 distribution requirement. For literature and film concentrators, this course fulfills the requirement of an advanced course toward the major, and counts as a course in literature and film. This course fulfills the requirements toward the film studies major. NOTE: Monday evenings screenings only. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 429

American Short Fiction of the 19th Century

This course will mark the development of the American short story as a significant literary form throughout the 19th century. From canonical stalwarts like Washington Irving and Henry James to under-covered writers like Grace King and Alice Dunbar-Nelson, the short story became a space for aesthetic innovation and ideological expression. As both a publishing phenomenon in print culture and a crucial object of contemporary critical discourse, the short story can reveal much about the practices and powers of literary history. Our reading will introduce the methods of literary scholarship, including interpretive analysis; summarizing and contextualizing critical positions; identifying, locating, evaluating and citing scholarly resources; developing research within a critical conversation; composing persuasive arguments; and designing research plans for larger projects. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 433

Writing Women of the Renaissance

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 440

Autistic Blackness

How might autism and blackness be read alongside each other in a way that matters? By examining how the histories, lived experiences, and representations of autism and blackness intersect, it is possible to move beyond narrow understandings of both and create space for more diverse ways of being in our communities and in our world. What does it mean to recognize that autism is part of the neurodiversity of blackness historically and contemporaneously? What sort of creativity and meaning does the nonlabeled black autists presence add to our understanding blackness? We will examine this topic through an interdisciplinary lens that explores theoretical and historical perspectives of blackness, autism, and neurodiversity/neurodivergence, as well as primary sites of inquiry, including life writing, film, digital media, and performance/ (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 442

American Literary Modernism and the Great War

1.00 units, Lecture

ENGL 445

Black Women Writers in the 20th and 21st Centuries

Through readings in various genres (fiction, essays, drama, poetry, memoir, etc.), this course examines how black women's literary production is informed by the experiences, conditions, identities, and histories of women of African descent in the U.S., including some who were born or have lived outside of the U.S. Among the recurring themes/issues we will discuss are the impact of class, gender, race, sexuality, ability, and geographical location on black women's writings, artistic visions, the politics and dynamics of black women's roles in families, communities, the nation, and across the globe. Writers vary each semester but may include: Maya Angelou, Octavia Butler, Roxanne Gay, Lorraine Hansberry, bell hooks, Nella Larsen, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Z.Z. Packer, Suzan-Lori Parks, Ann Petry, Tracy K. Smith, and Alice Walker. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 446

Renaissance Medicine & Literature

The Renaissance was a period of profound scientific discovery, especially in the realm of medicine, illness, and human physiology. In this course, we explore how Renaissance thinking on the body impacted literature, and how literary works, in turn, shaped how people thought about the implications-physical, social, ethical, even spiritual-of scientific and medical discoveries. Topics include anatomy, approaches to birth and death, the borderline between medicine and magic, Renaissance conceptions of mental health, and responses to infectious disease. Students will encounter these topics in a wide range of genres. Texts will include plays by Shakespeare and others; the poetry of John Donne and Edmund Spenser; prose accounts of witchcraft, madness, and scientific inquiry. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 447

Fantasies of Indigeneity and Colonization in Medieval Britain

After the ancient city of Troy fell-so the story goes-Trojans arrived on the island of Albion, a paradise far in the westernmost reaches of their known world. After slaughtering the indigenous giants, the Trojans claimed the island, renamed it Britain, and thus established a New Troy. Troy captivated the medieval imagination, representing the highest realization of "civilization." Medieval poets, however, also brought attention to the supremacist violence of this civilizing process by focusing on the women, the giants, and others who met tragic ends as a result. We will consider medieval accounts of Troy-such as Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde and Troy's Arthurian afterlives-alongside postcolonial theory, Critical Race and Indigenous studies, queer and feminist theory, and ecocriticism to develop this critique. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 455

Shakespeare and Film

Shakespeare has long been celebrated for his 'universality': for being "not of an age, but for all time"; for inventing "the human." In this course, we will study selected films adapted from Shakespeare plays as a way to think about this idea of Shakespeare's universality. We will begin by considering what we mean when we say he is universal, and what is at stake in describing Shakespeare as universal. We will then study a handful of Shakespeare plays and their adaptations, some of which translate Shakespeare's plays to different times, places, and sometimes languages. Plays may be selected from Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado About Nothing, Romeo and Juliet, 1 Henry IV, Hamlet, King Lear, Cymbeline, and The Tempest. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 457

Tough Guys & Bad Girls: 20th Century American Crime Fiction

Crime fiction has been an amazingly resilient and pliable genre, a cultural barometer registering revisions to cultural fantasies about knowledge and power, sex and gender, race and ethnicity, violence and freedom. Its character types are interwoven into the fabric of popular culture, from the detective to the sociopath, the femme fatale to the street tough. This course will trace an alternative American history through the brutal, lurid, and stylish crime fiction of the 20th century. We will explore its pulp roots through Dashiell Hammett, its modernist peaks with Raymond Chandler, its post-war weirdness in Chester Himes and Patricia Highsmith, and its contemporary renaissance by George Pelecanos. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 458

Liberalism and Literature

This is a course that looks at literature and politics. Not simply the ways that literature can be read politically; rather, we will treat literature and politics as deeply interconnected ways of thinking. It's not uncommon for important political ideas to appear first in literary texts; by the same token, political thinkers commonly reach for creative ways to get their ideas across. As a focus, we will concentrate on one of the dominant - and most controversial - political traditions of the past 350 years: liberalism. Looking at both liberalism's strongest advocates and its bitterest enemies, we will read some key liberal thinkers (Locke, Mill, Rorty, etc.) and a bunch of great poems and novels. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 459

Orphans and Others: Family Identity in Early American Literature

From cross-dressing sailors and adventurers to castaways and runaways, early American literature is filled with narratives of reinvention—sometimes by choice, often by necessity. In this course we will look at the peril and promise of such reinvention as various figures reimagine their relation to a social order organized by family lineage and paternal descent. For some the Americas (at least theoretically) presented a world of new possibilities while for others this was a dangerous and isolating place. Our readings will include novels, autobiographical narratives, confessions, and other literary accounts. This seminar is research-intensive. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 461

World Cinema Auteurs

This advanced course offers an in-depth exploration of the work of major auteur-directors from the domain of World Cinema, cinema from countries other than the United States or Europe. Three or four auteurs grouped by country, region or culture (e.g. Japan, India, Iran, Brazil, West Africa, or the Three Chinas: PRC, Hong Kong, and Taiwan) will be examined in their aesthetic, cultural and geo-political dimensions using the cutting-edge new methodologies of comparative and experimental cinephilia. Note: This is an advanced undergraduate/graduate hybrid course - while not required, some prior experience with film analysis, film theory, or World Cinema is strongly recommended. For English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of a course emphasizing literature written after 1900. This course is research-intensive. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 463

Mark Twain and the Making of America

Mark Twain’s fiction often acted as a moral seismograph registering the intense shifts in American cultural, political, and economic life in the post-Civil War era. His memoirs became a kind of public narrative describing what it meant to be an American – for both a national and a world audience. This course will consider a large swath of his works, including Huckleberry Finn, Pudd’nhead Wilson, and Life on the Mississippi, against the backdrop of the social transformations of the late 19th century in the United States. We will also explore Twain’s aesthetic innovations and techniques in the context of literary history. The class will make a visit to the Mark Twain House in the second half of the session; assignments will include shorter writing opportunities as well as a self-directed and substantial seminar paper. (HUM)

1.00 units, Lecture

ENGL 466

Teaching Assistantship

Students may assist professors as teaching assistants, performing a variety of duties usually involving assisting students in conceiving or revising papers; reading and helping to evaluate papers, quizzes, and exams; and other duties as determined by the student and instructor. See instructor of specific course for more information. Submission of the special registration form, available online, and the approval of the instructor are required for enrollment. Guidelines are available in the College Bulletin. (0.5 - 1 course credit)

0.50 units min / 1.00 units max, Independent Study

ENGL 468

Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson

Nothing that precedes them in the American literary tradition quite prepares us for the poems of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. We will steep ourselves in the verse of these two literary iconoclasts. At the same time, we will trace the critical history of both, reading essays from the 19th century to the present which have made the complex works and lives of Whitman and Dickinson more legible. The final class period will be reserved for reading selections from 20th-century poets -- not all of them American -- who have openly professed a debt to Whitman's and Dickinson's experimental and often exhilarating poems. Note: English 468-06 and English 868-16 are the same course. For undergraduate English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of course emphasizing literature written between 1700-1900. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 473

Dickens/Chaplin

This course treats the work of Charles Dickens and Charles Chaplin from a critical perspective that recognizes their striking similarities. Charles Dickens was the most popular artist of the 19th century; the fictional world and characters he created made sense of modern life for millions around the world, and the adjective "Dickensian" testifies to how familiar his blend of comedy and melodrama has become. Charles Chaplin is remarkably analogous to Dickens; as the 20th century's most popular artist, his work addressed fundamental issues of contemporary social life, and also employed a blend of comedy and melodrama that merited its own adjective: "Chaplinesque". The course examines the evolution of these two major figures over the course of their careers. This is a research-intensive seminar. For literature and film concentrators, this course counts as a course in literature and film. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 479

Revolutionary Generations: American Literature 1740-1820

Hannah Arendt suggested that the United States failed to remember its revolutionary tradition because it failed to talk about it. This course will recover those memories by reading the texts that founded the American rebellion, the intense arguments made in the aftermath of independence, and the passionate creative works produced in the wake of revolution. We will look beyond the context of New England to consider the roles played by Africa and the Caribbean in the cultural imagination, and we will trace how social class, race, and gender inflected the constitution of American identities in a post-1776 world. For English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of a course emphasizing literature written between 1700-1900. This course is research-intensive. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 491

Senior Creative Writing Thesis, Part 1/Senior Colloquium

This course is designed to teach senior English majors concentrating in Creative Writing the techniques to successfully undertake a semester-long creative project in the genre of their choice. It is intended to help the students develop the habits-of-arts required to write such theses and to provide a forum for feedback during the early stages of composition. In this course we will address issues of drafting and revision, developing a booklist, the use of research in creative work, and, finally, establishing structural and thematic coherence in a novel excerpt, poetry collection, suite of stories, one-act play, and/or screenplay. This course is required of all senior English majors who are planning to write one-semester, creative writing theses. (ART)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 492

Fiction Workshop

Advanced seminar in the writing of fiction. Class discussions devoted primarily to the analysis of student fiction, with some attention to examples of contemporary short stories. One requirement of this class is attendance at a minimum of two readings offered on campus by visiting writers, and an advanced creative writing workshop. This course satisfies the requirement of a 400-level workshop for creative writing concentrators, and a senior project. (ART)
Prerequisite: C- or better in English 270 or English 170 and one of the following English 333, 334, 335, 336, 441, Theater and Dance 305, or Theater and Dance 393.

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 493

Creative Writing Senior Workshop (Multi-Genre)

This course will serve as a multi-genre senior workshop for English (Creative Writing) majors and for non-majors who wish to continue their study of creative writing at a more advanced level. Class discussions will be devoted to student work in fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, as well as the discussion of the work of established writers. In addition to producing work in their genre of choice and responding to the work of others, students will be required to attend events in the AK Smith Reading Series. (ART)
Prerequisite: C- or better in English 270 or English 170 and one of the following English 333, 334, 336, FILM/THDN 305

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 494

Poetry Workshop

Advanced seminar in the writing of poetry. Class discussions devoted primarily to the analysis of student work, with some attention to examples of contemporary poetry. One requirement of this class is attendance at a minimum of two readings offered on campus by visiting writers, and an advanced creative writing workshop. This course satisfies the requirement of a 400-level workshop for creative writing concentrators, and a senior project. (ART)
Prerequisite: C- or better in English 270 or English 170 and one of the following English 333, 334, 335, 336, 441, Theater and Dance 305, or Theater and Dance 393.

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 496

Senior Seminar: What You Should Have Read

This is your final year as an English major. There are books and authors, that, once upon a time, you thought every English major should have read. You still haven't. One of this seminar's purposes is to let you to do so. One of its other purposes is to ask and answer the question: Why? Why did you think that every English major should have read this book? Why hadn't you? Why has or hasn't the text met your great expectations? We will also be discussing related issues such as canonicity and canon changes, the structure of the English major, and the reasons why you chose it. The students will generate (and debate) the reading list and syllabus. The instructor will generate the requirements. (HUM)
This course is open to senior English majors only.

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 496

Wordsworth. Rewriting Wordsworth.

How does literature change over time? How do earlier writers exercise an influence, for good or ill, over their successors, and how do those later writers grapple with their most powerful forerunners? In this seminar, you will be invited to think in the abstract, theoretically, about these large questions, which have formed a subtext to your work in the major thus far. To focus our discussion, we will concentrate on Romantic and Modern poetry. In the first half, we will read through the major works of William Wordsworth, the most influential English language poet since (at the very least) Milton. Then, in the second half, we will look at how the greatest Modern poets, both British and American, struggled with Wordsworth's legacy – sometimes going so far as to rewrite specific Wordsworth poems, sometimes denying Wordsworth's importance altogether. Modernists will include Yeats, Frost, Eliot, Pound, Moore, Bishop, Stevens and Auden. In the final project, you will have the opportunity to apply our broader conclusions to your work in the major over the last four years. For English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of a senior project. For non-seniors, the course can be taken to fulfill the "critical reflection" requirement. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 496

Senior Seminar: High School English

You probably read The Great Gatsby in high school, and your parents probably did too. The most frequently taught books in US high schools form a remarkably consistent canon, creating an intergenerational cultural tradition out of texts that are beloved and loathed, treasured and forgotten. This seminar examines the canon of high school English from your perspective as seniors. What can we learn when we use the skills we've developed as English majors to reread the texts that were so meaningful (or meaningless) to us as high school students? Discussions will focus on canonicity, representation and diversity, and the role of English in secondary and college education; our methodology will combine textual analysis with archival research, interview, or observation. Students will generate the assigned texts. (HUM)
This course is open to senior English majors only.

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 496

Japanese Film and Literature: An Immersive Introduction

The course offers an immersive introduction to canonical works of Japanese cinema and literature and highlights the work of "the Three Japanese Giants" - Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi, and Yasujiro Ozu - the three classical Japanese auteurs who were discovered by global cinephiles in 1950s and remain extra-massive for any self-respecting lover of film today. The course also engages with a variety of post-classical Japanese films and involves close reading of important texts of Japanese literature. This course is research and writing intensive, and a significant proportion of the course grade depends on creative writing exercises that entail responsible and timely collaboration with your peers. The course has a mandatory weekly evening screening. This course is open to senior English majors only. (WEB)
This course is open to senior English majors only.

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 497

One-Semester Senior Thesis

Individual tutorial in writing of a one-semester senior thesis on a special topic in literature or criticism. Submission of the special registration form and the approval of the instructor and the chairperson are required.

1.00 units, Independent Study

ENGL 498

Senior Thesis Part 1/Senior Colloquium

This course is designed to teach senior English majors the techniques of research and analysis needed for writing a year-long essay on a subject of their choice. It is intended to help the students to write such year-long theses, and to encourage them to do so. It will deal with problems such as designing longer papers, focusing topics, developing and limiting bibliographies, working with manuscripts, using both library and Internet resources, and understanding the uses of theoretical paradigms. This course is required of all senior English majors who are planning to write two-semester, year-long theses. Please refer to the department's website for more information. Submission of the special registration form and the approval of the instructor and the chairperson are required. (2 course credits to be completed in two semesters.)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 499

Senior Thesis Part 2

Individual tutorial in the writing of a year-long thesis on a special topic in literature or criticism. Seniors writing year-long, two-credit theses are required to register for the second half of their thesis for the spring of their senior year. Submission of the special registration form and the approval of the instructor and chairperson are required for each semester of this year-long thesis. (2 course credits to be completed in two semesters.)

1.00 units, Independent Study

ENGL 801

Introduction to Literary Theory

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 806

Composition Pedagogy

Language and literacy have always served as lightning rods for social and political issues, as well as for conflicts of theory and practice in education. This course will explore the contemporary teaching of writing, with attention to the range of current pedagogies in US colleges. We will examine influences of 20th-century revival of rhetoric, process and post-process writing, cultural and feminist studies, cognitive theory, the digital revolution, and the implications of "the global turn" for 21st-century students and teachers of writing. (HUM)

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 809

Food Writing in the English Renaissance

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 812

Modern Poetry

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 822

What Is Romanticism?

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 822

Milton

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 825

Postmodernism in Film and Literature

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 829

American Short Fiction of the 19th Century

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 832

Toni Morrison's BELOVED: Past, Present, Future

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 833

Writing Women of the Renaissance

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 839

Special Topics in Film: The Evolution of the Western Film

The course examines how the Western genre emerged from global popular culture at the end of the 19th century to become one of the most powerful and complex forms for expressing the experience of Modernity. After a careful consideration of the political and philosophical implications of the Western, we will track the development of the genre as it responds to the ideological contradictions and cultural tensions of 20th-century American history, focusing on broad trends within the mainstream, the contributions of individual directors, and the global dissemination of generic elements. (HUM)

1.00 units, Lecture

ENGL 840

Autistic Blackness

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 842

American Literary Modernism and the Great War

1.00 units, Lecture

ENGL 845

Black Women Writers in the 20th and 21st Centuries

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 846

Renaissance Medicine & Literature

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 847

Fantasies of Indigeneity and Colonization in Medieval Britain

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 850

Earthly Delights: Pleasure in Medieval Literature and Culture

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 855

Shakespeare and Film

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 857

Tough Guys & Bad Girls: 20th Century American Crime Fiction

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 858

Liberalism and Literature

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 859

Orphans and Others: Family Identity in Early American Literature

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 861

World Cinema Auteurs

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 863

Mark Twain and the Making of America

1.00 units, Lecture

ENGL 868

Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 871

The U.S. Civil War and Its Afterimage

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 873

Dickens/Chaplin

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 874

Race and Realism: African American Literature Before the Harlem Renaissance

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 878

Little Shop of Horrors: Plants in Literature and Film

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 879

Revolutionary Generations: American Literature 1740-1820

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 882

Shakespeare's Other "Race Plays"

1.00 units, Seminar

ENGL 940

Independent Study

A limited number of tutorials are available for students wishing to pursue special topics not offered in the regular graduate program. Applications should be submitted to the department chairperson prior to registration. Written approval of the graduate adviser and department chairperson is required. Contact the Office of Graduate Studies for the special approval form.

1.00 units, Independent Study

ENGL 953

Research Project

The graduate director, the supervisor of the project, and the department chairperson must approve special research project topics. Conference hours are available by appointment. Contact the Office of Graduate Studies for the special approval form. One course credit.

1.00 units, Independent Study

ENGL 954

Thesis Part I

No Course Description Available.

1.00 units, Independent Study

ENGL 954

Thesis Part I

No Course Description Available.

1.00 units, Independent Study

ENGL 955

Thesis Part II

Continuation of English 954 (described in prior section).

1.00 units, Independent Study

ENGL 956

Thesis

No Course Description Available.

2.00 units, Independent Study