Chair, Professor Patrick Brancaccio

Professors Douglas Archibald, Brancaccio, Charles Bassett, John Sweney, Susan Kenney, Peter Harris, Ira Sadoff, W. Arnold Yasinski, Phyllis Mannocchi, Jean Sanborn, and Patricia Onion; Visiting Professors Wesley McNair and Richard Flanagan; Associate Professors Robert Gillespie, Natalie Harris, Linda Tatelbaum, Cedric Bryant, James Boylan, Laurie Osborne, David Suchoff, Debra Spark, and Michael Burke; Assistant Professors Elizabeth Sagaser, Anindyo Roy, Elisa Narin van Court, Katherine Stubbs, and Ted Underwood; Adjunct Assistant Professor David Mills; Visiting Assistant Professors Andrew Dephtereos, Mark Hazard, and James Barrett

The English Department offers literature courses in all periods, genres, and major authors, as well as seminars in particular topics and in broad literary and historical issues. The major in English builds upon the close reading and detailed analysis of literary texts; the investigation of the central political, cultural, and ideological issues occasioned by those texts, particularly issues of race, gender, and class; and the consideration of various critical approaches, methods of inquiry, and strategies of interpretation. There is a creative writing program in both fiction and poetry at the introductory, intermediate, and advanced levels. The department also offers special-topic courses and supervises about 50 independent study projects and 15 honors theses each year. English is one of the most useful majors for those who want to attend professional schools of law, medicine, and business, as well as for those seeking jobs in commerce, industry, and government. Some majors become teachers; some become writers; some go into journalism, library science, or publishing. Students interested in teaching, private and public, are urged to read the "Education" section of the catalogue and to contact a member of the Education Program.

Requirements for the Major in Literature Written in English
English 172, 271; four 200- or 300-level courses; two 400-level studies in special subjects; two additional courses, which may be chosen from advanced courses in English or American literature, creative writing, or literature in other languages or in translation; one additional 300- or 400-level English course; one senior seminar (English 493). At least three of these courses must be courses in which the major focus is upon literature written in English before 1800 and at least three upon literature written in English after 1800. English 172 is a pre- or co-requisite for English majors taking 300- and 400-level courses. All choices of advanced courses should be carefully planned with the major advisor who must approve them. English 151, 179, 214, 278, 279, and 474 do not count toward the major.

The point scale for retention of the major applies to all English courses that may be used to fulfill major requirements. No requirement for the major may be taken satisfactory/unsatisfactory.

Honors in English
Students who meet the prerequisite, define a project, and secure the support of a tutor may elect to take English 483, 484, the Honors Thesis, and, upon successful completion, graduate "With Honors in English."

Students planning to continue the study of English in graduate school should confer with their advisors to be sure that they have planned a substantial and adequate curriculum. They should be proficient in at least one foreign language. Most universities require two languages, and some require a classical language as well. Work in classical or foreign literature, history, philosophy, art, music, and some of the social sciences reinforces preparation in the major and enhances one's chances for success in graduate study.

Requirements for the Concentration in Creative Writing
In addition to the requirements for the literature major, concentrators in creative writing must take (1) a sequence of three workshops in one of the two genres offered (fiction—English 278, 378, 478, or poetry—279, 379, 479) and (2) the completion of a fourth requirement. This fourth requirement may be met in one of the following ways: a repetition of the advanced workshop (English 478 or 479); a workshop in another genre (English 278 for poets, English 279 for fiction writers); other courses in writing, including Creative Nonfiction (English 380) and Environmental Writing (English 398); or an independent study (English 491, 492) or honors projects (English 483, 484). The sequence can be completed beginning either in the sophomore or junior year, but because of limited enrollments in the workshops, serious, committed students should elect the concentration as soon as possible, as early as the spring of their first year. First priority for admission to English 278 and 279, the introductory courses in fiction and poetry writing, is given to sophomores. Owing to enrollment pressures, students who do not register for English 278 as sophomores may run the risk of being unable to elect the concentration. Admission to upperclass workshops is by manuscript submission only.

Attention is called to the creative writing minor, open to all majors, under a separate heading in this catalogue.

The department also encourages interdepartmental and interdisciplinary studies and supports the programs in American studies, African-American studies, women's studies, and theater and dance.

COURSE OFFERINGS

111f    Composing in English    For students for whom English is a second language. Intensive practice in composing in English with considerable attention to the requirements of the academic essay. Work on syntax and grammar only as needed. Nongraded. Three credit hours.    SANBORN

112fs    Expository Writing Workshop    For any student who wants extra work in writing. Taken in conjunction with English 115 or with a writing-emphasis course in another department at any level. Meets as individual tutorial in the Writers' Center. Nongraded. One credit hour.    CANNON, SANBORN, SANBORN

115fs    English Composition    Frequent practice in expository writing to foster clarity of organization and expression in the development of ideas. The assigned reading will vary from section to section, but all sections will discuss student writing. Required for first-year students. Students with an Advanced Placement score of 4 or 5 are exempted. Four credit hours.    FACULTY

115Jj    English Composition    Frequent practice in expository writing to foster clarity of organization and expression in the development of ideas. The assigned reading will vary from section to section, but all sections will discuss student writing. Required for first-year students. Students with an Advanced Placement score of 4 or 5 are exempted. Three credit hours.    BURKE, FLANAGAN, MILLS

126f    Environmental Literature    Literature that addresses environment and place and the relations between the human and non-human, both directly (in nonfiction and natural history) and indirectly (in works of poetry or prose). The historical context for the shifts in literary attitudes toward environment. Texts from British Romantics, American Transcendentalists, natural historians, and modern poetry and prose include such authors as William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Thoreau, Muir, Mary Austin, Hemingway, Faulkner, Cather, Aldo Leopold, Donald Culross Peattie, Robinson Jeffers, Gary Snyder, Mary Oliver, Edward Abbey, Annie Dillard, and Barry Lopez. Fulfills the College's composition requirement (English 115). Part of Integrated Studies Program; requires concurrent enrollment in Government 126 and Philosophy 126. Four credit hours.    BURKE

128s    Screenwriting    An introduction to the craft of writing for film: the basic form, art, and mechanics of screenplays. Several scripts will be read, and weekly films will be discussed and analyzed. Students' scripts will be presented and reviewed in workshop. Also listed under "Integrated Studies"; requires concurrent enrollment in Philosophy 128. Four credit hours.  A.    BOYLAN

[151]    Reading and Writing about Literature    Topics, texts, and genres will vary from section to section, but all sections will emphasize close reading, detailed analysis of imaginative literature from different times and cultures, and careful critical writing. Prerequisite: English 115 or exemption. Four credit hours.  L.    

172fs    Literary Studies    "What is literature?" or "When is it literature?" A focus on the students' encounter with the text, the words on the page. Examples of poetry, prose, and drama written in English, from different times and cultures; and work toward developing a basic critical vocabulary for understanding and discussing these different forms of literature. Frequent practice in careful critical writing. Required for English majors; should be taken during the first year. Does not satisfy the College area requirement in literature. Prerequisite: English 115 or exemption. Four credit hours.    FACULTY

177f    Writing Sociology of Gender    An introduction to fiction, poetry, and drama as both literary art and creative craft, focusing on the common themes of romantic love and sexuality. Emphasis on close reading and careful critical writing. Fulfills the College's composition requirement (English 115). Part of Integrated Studies Program; requires concurrent enrollment in Sociology 177. Four credit hours.    SANBORN

179f    Literature and Imagination    An introduction to creative writing and close reading. A variety of works in many different forms will be examined--poems, novels, screenplays, drama, and short stories. Issues of craft will be addressed by writing original poetry and fiction. In fall of 2000, the class reading will generally focus on issues of love, gender, imagination, and identity. Four credit hours.  L.    BOYLAN

214s    Tutoring Writing    Discussion of readings on the process of writing and methods of tutoring. Theory combined with practice in peer review of student papers, mock tutorials, and actual supervised tutorials. Students completing the course may apply for work-study positions in the Writers' Center. Nongraded. Prerequisite: Sign up with the instructor in the Writers' Center. Two credit hours.    SANBORN

224f    Theater History I    Listed as Theater and Dance 224 (q.v.). Four credit hours.    SEWELL

226s    Theater History II    Listed as Theater and Dance 226 (q.v.). Four credit hours.    SEWELL

228s    Theater History III    Listed as Theater and Dance 228 (q.v.). Four credit hours.    WING

255f    Studies in American Literary History    The relationships among the historical American contexts in which literary works were produced, examining them as imaginative artifacts, tracing their impact on the social and cultural elements of the America of their time, and seeking their significance for readers in later and different worlds. Preference to American studies majors. 255: Puritans to the Civil War. 256: Civil War to the Present. Formerly listed as English 355, 356. Four credit hours.  L.    STUBBS

256s    Studies in American Literary History    Civil War to the Present. The relationships among the historical American contexts in which literary works were produced, examining them as imaginative artifacts, tracing their impact on the social and cultural elements of the America of their time, and seeking their significance for readers in later and different worlds. Preference to American studies majors. Formerly listed as English 356. Four credit hours.  L.    BRYANT

265f    Studies in British Literary History, Beowulf to Milton    An examination of major British literary traditions by tracing the dialogues and debates on the issues of literary representation and influence, poetic traditions and counter-traditions, and aesthetics. An attempt to situate these debates within their specific cultural contexts and to examine their role in defining the parameters of literary culture through reading representative texts from the period. For students who wish to acquire a more comprehensive view of the continuum of British literature. Counts as a pre-1800 course for English majors in 2000-01. Formerly listed as English 365. Four credit hours.  L.    MANNOCCHI

266s    Studies in British Literary History, 1600 to 1900    Selected works of British literature studied with an emphasis on the changing definition of "literature" itself. Suitable for both majors and non-majors. Readings may include lyric poems by John Donne, Defoe's Roxana, Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Sterne's Sentimental Journey, ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Eliot's Adam Bede, and critical essays by Matthew Arnold. English 265 is not a prerequisite. Counts as a pre-1800 course for English majors in 2000-01. Formerly listed as English 366. Four credit hours.  L.    UNDERWOOD

271fs    Critical Theory    The study of selected texts, through close reading and detailed analysis, and the consideration of various critical approaches, methods of inquiry, and strategies of interpretation. English majors should take this course in the sophomore year. Prerequisite: English 172. Four credit hours.  L.    FACULTY

278fs    Creative Writing: Fiction    Introduction to the writing of fiction, with emphasis on student manuscripts. Prerequisite: English 115. Four credit hours.  A.    FACULTY

279fs    Creative Writing: Poetry    Introduction to the writing of poetry, with emphasis on student manuscripts. Prerequisite: English 115. Four credit hours.  A.    P. HARRIS, MCNAIR

311f    Middle Ages: Medieval Narratives and Cultural Authority    The ways in which late medieval narratives create, recreate, and resist the various forms of cultural authority in 14th-century England. Both canonical and noncanonical materials, including romance, sermon literature, chronicles, hagiography, poetic narratives, drama, and the historical, social, and material contexts in which these works were written and transmitted. Readings include Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower, William Langland, the Pearl poet, Margery Kempe, John Hoccleve, John of Trevisa, and Bromyard; critical skills honed with readings in the historical/cultural/critical traditions of Lee Patterson, Carolyn Dinshaw, Seth Lerer, Paul Strohm, Miri Reuben, and David Aers. Four credit hours.  L.    NARIN VAN COURT

313f    Renaissance Poetry    The nature, power, and history of poetry; the forms and uses--social, political, religious, personal--of lyric and narrative poetry written in English during the 16th century, especially during the poetically glorious 1580s and 1590s. Analyzing the poems' constructions of voice and their representations of love, desire, mortality, selfhood, faith, and national identity. The period's poetic theory, important defenses of poetry, and the debate about rhyme. Readings in Petrarch, Wyatt, Mary Sidney, Philip Sidney, Marlowe, Spenser, Raleigh, Daniel, Campion, Shakespeare, Donne, and others. Counts as a pre-1800 course for English majors in 2000-01. Four credit hours.  L.    SAGASER

[314]    17th-Century Poetry    Close reading of both canonical poems (mostly by men) and less canonical poems (mostly by women) written during England's volatile, fascinating 17th century. A comparison of these texts, charting representations of gender, developments in poetic style, the interrelations of secular and sacred poetic traditions, and the intersections of personal and political concerns. Readings include lyric, narrative, and dramatic poetry by Shakespeare, Donne, Jonson, Wroth, Lanyer, Herbert, Herrick, Marvell, Milton, Philips, and Behn. Four credit hours.  L.    

[315]    The Irish Renaissance    The major figures of the literary movement that took place in Ireland at the beginning of the century. Texts include Yeats's poetry and plays, Joyce's Ulysses, Synge's Playboy of the Western World, and O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock to illustrate the nature and scope of their achievements against the background of Anglo-Irish political turmoil and European cultural transformation. Four credit hours.  L.    

[316]    The Restoration    The prose, poetry, and drama of 1660-1700, with special emphasis on the works of John Dryden and John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. Four credit hours.  L.    

[317]    The 18th Century I    Selected works by writers of the first half of the century, such as Daniel Defoe, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Anne Finch, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and Henry Fielding. Four credit hours.  L.    

[318]    The 18th Century II    Selected works by writers of the second half of the century, such as James Boswell, Samuel Johnson, Hannah More, Tobias Smollett, Laurence Sterne, Jane Austen, Matthew Lewis, William Blake, Edmund Burke, and Anna Laetitia Barbauld. Four credit hours.  L.    

321s    The British Romantic Period    In the 1790s, the French overthrew their church and king, and many Britons expected a similar revolution to take place at home. As old political and religious certainties became unstable, writers sought to make the ideal of imagination take their place, and a newly ambitious project for literature emerged. The poetry and prose of the period from 1789 to 1833. Readings will include gothic drama by "Monk" Lewis, a novel by Jane Austen, and poems by William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, and John Keats. Four credit hours.  L.    UNDERWOOD

323s    Victorian Literature I    The idea of "culture" in the mid-Victorian period and the social pressures of class, religion, gender, and race that formed and transformed it. Readings include Victorian predecessors such as Walter Scott, novels by Charles Dickens, Emily Bronte, and George Eliot, prose by Thomas Carlyle, J.S. Mill, and Matthew Arnold, and poems by Alfred Tennyson and the Rossettis. Novels, essays, and poems considered as participants in Victorian debates that created "culture" as a political category and helped shape modern literary and cultural criticism. Four credit hours.  L.    SUCHOFF

[324]    Victorian Literature II    The conflict between the elite and an emerging mass culture in later-19th-century British society and culture; how issues raised by colonialism, commodity culture, and emergent socialist and feminist movements shaped that divide. Narrative texts that related the crisis in high-cultural Victorian values to questions of racial and ethnic "otherness," including works by Oscar Wilde, H.G. Wells, George Gissing, Bram Stoker, George Eliot, Rudyard Kipling, and William Morris. Four credit hours.  L.    

[325]    Modern British Fiction    The works of Hardy, Joyce, Woolf, Conrad, Forster, and Lawrence framed within the context of the aesthetic tenets and practices of what is called "literary modernism." To what extent does the literature embody the ideas of "spatialization," "dehumanization," and "introversion"? What continuities and paradoxes are implicit in the modernist notions of "subjectivity," "tradition," "time," "history," and "identity," and how can they be explained within the larger historical and social developments of the era--post-agrarian, industrial capitalism, colonialism, and European transculturalism? Readings include novels and critical essays by early modernists, post-war scholars who attempted to map the movement, and contemporary poststructural critics. Four credit hours.  L.    

[326]    Modern Irish Poetry    The origins, contexts, nature, and achievements of Irish poetry after Yeats. Poets selected from among Louis MacNiece, Austin Clarke, Patrick Kavanagh, Thomas Kinsella, John Montague, Eavan Boland, Medbh McGuckian, Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon, Michael Longley, Paul Muldoon, Tom Paulin, Eamon Grennan, Ciar'an Carson. Four credit hours.  L.    

333s    Modern American Drama, 1920-1970    American dramatic literature and theater history during the modern period, with emphasis on three American theater movements: the Group Theater in the 1930s, Broadway in the 1940s and '50s, and the Living Theater in the 1960s. Four credit hours.  L.    BRANCACCIO

336s    Early American Women Writers    Is there a "female literary tradition" in America? Moving from the colonial era to the early 20th century, the course explores many of the themes central to women's lives, while also investigating the literary genres traditionally associated with women's writing, exploring the insights of feminist historians, and assessing the recent critical reclamations of "female" genres such as domestic fiction and the sentimental. Prerequisite: English 172 for English majors. Four credit hours.  L, D.    STUBBS

[338]    The American Renaissance I: Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville    A close study of the works of these writers in the context of their times. Particular attention to such movements as anti-slavery and women's rights. Four credit hours.  L.    

339f    The American Renaissance II    A close reading of the major works of Emerson, Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson with emphasis on the transcendentalists' search for heightened consciousness and the connections between poetic and scientific truth. Four credit hours.  L.    BRANCACCIO

[341]    American Realism and Naturalism    Three literary genres that dominated late 19th century American literature: realism, regionalism, and naturalism. How these categories developed in relation to specific social and economic conditions. Are these genres as clear-cut as they seem? Why did certain genres "get more respect" from the literary establishment? How did issues of race, gender, and class influence whether a given text was considered realist, naturalist, or regionalist? Four credit hours.  L.    

342s    American Indian Literature    The decades since the 1960s have seen a vigorous outpouring of literature from American Indian writers, many of whom merge oral tradition with Western literary forms to create a distinctively native voice. A study of contemporary writers Alexie, Erdrich, Ortiz, Red Eagle, Silko, Welch, Young Bear, and others whose work mediates between native and Western values and imaginative forms. Also emerging native dramatists such as William Yellow Robe, Drew Hayden Taylor, and Hanay Geiogomah. Four credit hours.  L, D.    ONION

343f    African-American Literature    Particular attention to the much-neglected contributions of African-American women writers such as Jessie Fauset, Nella Larson, and Zora Neale Hurston, leading to a critical understanding of the ways African-American writers in the 19th and 20th centuries have responded artistically to problems inherent in American democracy concerning race, identity, marginality, gender, and class. Interpretive methods that will inform readings by James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Chester Himes include formalism, historicism, feminist criticism, and myth criticism. Four credit hours.  L, D.    BRYANT

[345]    Modern American Fiction    Major works of American fiction since 1920--by Faulkner, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Bellow, O'Connor, Alice Walker, and others--will be analyzed, emphasizing the pattern of experience of the protagonist in conflict with the modern world. Four credit hours.  L.    

347s    Modern American Poetry    A close look at the poetry and theoretical constructs of Modernism, its esthetic, social and metaphysical stances as reflected in the poetry, the essays, and ideological statements of its partisans and opponents. Poets to be considered in literary, historical, and cultural context will be Robert Frost, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Langston Hughes, Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams. Four credit hours.  L.    P. HARRIS

[348]    Postcolonial Literatures    The English language presents one of the most interesting paradoxes of our times. Although it emerged as the dominant language of the British Empire, and has subsequently acquired the status of the global language of our times, it has also witnessed many transformations. Inflected by the influence of other languages and cultures of the colonies, what was once the master language of the empire has proliferated into many "Englishes." The phenomenon of literary hybridization and "creolization" in literature that has come out of former colonies of the British Empire in the Caribbean, Africa, and the Indian subcontinent. The histories that have shaped these emerging traditions, and the ways in which writers such as Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Salman Rushdie, Raja Rao, J.M. Coetzee, Derek Walcott, V.S. Naipaul, and Jamaica Kincaid have appropriated, challenged, or otherwise modified their inherited "colonial" literary traditions. Four credit hours.  L.    

349f    Modern Jewish Writing: From the Diaspora to the Modern Israeli Novel    How did the ancient, ritual language of a European minority, no longer a spoken tongue, arise to become one of the most vibrant and creative literatures of the postmodern world? In English translation, this course will introduce students to the literature of modern Israel, Zionist programs and their conflicts, and the roots of the modern Hebrew novel in the "diaspora," Yiddish-speaking world of Sholom Aleichem and the "shtetl." Classic Yiddish stories, a novel by Franz Kafka to measure the achievement of German-speaking Jews, and then the development of modern Hebrew and Israeli fiction proper in the work Nobel Prize-winner S.Y. Agnon, Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua, David Grossman, Aharon Appelfeld, and others. Students will gain an understanding of a marginal, minority culture that created a paradigmatically modern literature, but also come to appreciate Israeli fiction as a groundbreaking form of post-Holocaust, postmodern literary expression. Four credit hours.  L, D.    SUCHOFF

351f    Contemporary American Poetry    A study of some of the major and emerging figures and poetic movements in American poetry, emphasizing close readings and cultural contexts of work written primarily after 1970. Poets include Elizabeth Bishop, Lucille Clifton, Allen Ginsburg, Sharon Olds, Adrienne Rich, and Richard Wilbur. Four credit hours.  L.    P. HARRIS

353s    The American Short Story    A study of the genre that many analysts consider the most consistently successful in American literature--the short story. Distinguished and popular writers of short narratives will make up the syllabus, from Washington Irving to Raymond Carver, with extended emphasis on such geniuses as Poe, Hawthorne, James, Hemingway, Wright, and O'Connor. Four credit hours.  L.    BASSETT

358s    Modern American and Italian Literature    During the 1920s and 1930s, Italian writers such as Elio Vittorini, Cesare Pavese, Ignazio Silone, Giorgio Bassani, and Beppe Fenoglio were intensely interested in American fiction and produced translations, critical essays and books, and anthologies of American literature. American writers such as Sherwood Anderson, Ernest Hemingway, and John Dos Passos discovered Italian literature. Their interactions will be explored through close readings and study of American and Italian (in translation) texts and viewing of classic Italian films. Four credit hours.  L.    BRANCACCIO

362f    Art and Oppression: Lesbian and Gay Literature and Modern Society    How does a minority respond artistically to societal oppression that ranges from silencing and invisibility to censorship and persecution? The literary response/resistance of lesbian and gay people and their process of literary self-definition, in the face of what Adrienne Rich has defined as society's "compulsory heterosexuality." A study of the lives and works of Oscar Wilde and Radclyffe Hall, discussion of selected writing by H.D., E.M. Forster, Willa Cather, Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, John Rechy, Rita Mae Brown, Audre Lorde, Monique Wittig, Edmund White, Gloria Anzuldua, Jeannette Winterson, and others. Images of the lesbian and gay experience in painting, photography, film, and television. Sexuality and the transformation of literary convention, the artistic vision of the "double minority," the expression of a radical lesbian and gay political voice, and the emergence into mainstream society of lesbian and gay culture. Four credit hours.  L, D.    MANNOCCHI

378fs    Intermediate Fiction Workshop    Practice in the writing of short stories, with major emphasis on student manuscripts. Admission is by manuscript submission only; consult instructor for deadlines and format for manuscript submission. Prerequisite: English 278. Four credit hours.    KENNEY, SPARK

379fs    Intermediate Poetry Workshop    Practice in the writing of poetry, with major emphasis on student manuscripts. Admission is by manuscript submission only; consult instructor for deadlines and format for manuscript submission. Prerequisite: English 279. Four credit hours.    P. HARRIS, MCNAIR

380s    Creative Nonfiction    Creative nonfiction includes renderings of personal experience, presentations of opinion and passion, profiles of people, and evocations of time and place. Based upon "fact," it uses elements of fiction. A writing workshop with weekly assignments designed to help students find their best material and their strongest voices. Also, reading and discussion of the work of published essayists. Prerequisite: English 115 (or exemption). Four credit hours.    N. HARRIS

397f    Paranoid Plots: From Gothic to Science Fiction    An investigation of the history of the pleasurable suspicion that the world is not what it seems. Texts taken from several different genres, including contemporary science fiction (The Matrix and short stories by Philip K. Dick), the story of detection (Raymond Chandler, Wilkie Collins), the gothic novel (Ann Radcliffe), and poetic encounter with the 19th-century city (Charles Baudelaire, William Wordsworth). Theoretical texts by Arendt and Foucault will be considered both as symptoms of and analyses of modern paranoia. Four credit hours.    UNDERWOOD

398As    Environmental Writing: Writing on Place    Practice in the forms of nonfiction that seek to evoke and represent place, and experiences of it. A writing workshop that begins with sample readings, followed by assignments, then consideration of student work. Counts as a creative writing "fourth requirement." Four credit hours.    BURKE

398Bs    Land and Language    Texts by environmental essayists, poets, fiction writers, and philosophers that put nature and people in a vigorous living relationship. What language is and does in the natural world, and what responsibility to the land our status as the talking species requires. Literature that "speaks nature," "speaks of nature," and "speaks for nature" as a key to how nature speaks for itself. Four credit hours.  L.    TATELBAUM

398Cs    Love and Loss in the English Lyric    The interdependence of love and loss, desire and death, in poetry. A comparison of love lyric and elegy (poetry of mourning) from the Renaissance to contemporary poetry. The role of gender in representing experiences of love and loss; analysis through poetic theory and 20th-century philosophies of language. Counts as a pre-1800 course for English majors in 2000-01. Four credit hours.    SAGASER

410f    Arthurian Literature    The Arthurian tradition from its origins in Celtic legendary materials to its development and perfection in Chretien de Troyes's complexly textured French Arthurian romances; the emergence of an English Arthurian tradition in the Middle Ages and the reinterpretations of the Arthurian myths produced in the Renaissance; the Arthuriana revival in the Victorian period and 20th-century versions and revisions of the Arthurian tradition. Four credit hours.  L.    HAZARD

411f    Shakespeare I: Comedies and Tragedies    Shakespeare's art and perspectives changed over a 10-year period as he returned in later plays, in more complex and darker ways, to themes he had explored in earlier ones. Plays to be studied for these changes will include Much Ado about Nothing, All's Well that Ends Well, The Merchant of Venice, Measure for Measure, Richard II, and Hamlet. Counts as a pre-1800 course for English majors in 2000-01. Four credit hours.  L.    HAZARD

412s    Shakespeare II: Imagination, Power, and Love    Plays in which Shakespeare made use of classical sources and settings, particularly the tragedies based on Plutarch, to explore themes of imagination, power, and love. Plays will include A Midsummer Night's Dream, Titus Andronicus, Julius Caesar, Coriolanus and Antony and Cleopatra. Counts as a pre-1800 course for English majors in 2000-01. Four credit hours.  L.    HAZARD

413As    Author Course: Fanny Burney, Jane Austen    How two significant female novelists responded to the opportunities for rethinking the social positions of women and the rising classes in the late 18th and early 19th century. How could women record and express desires for cultural enfranchisement without appearing like a gothic or revolutionary threat? Did women novelists like Burney and Austen help create the restrictive, middle-class ethos of the "Angel of the House" that would become a battleground of 19th-century culture? Burney and Austen responded to these and other political questions while creating a new a form of literary culture and transformed the British novel in the process, giving shape to the limits and opportunities of a middle-class culture still with us today. Counts as a pre-1800 course for English majors in 2000-01. Four credit hours.  L.    SUCHOFF

413Bs    Author Course: Geoffrey Chaucer    An introduction to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, reading closely in the poetry and investigating the historical, social, and material contexts in which Chaucer's work was written and transmitted. The poetry will be read as performed verse in its original Middle English form and will be approached through a variety of topical and critical issues grounded in the history of late-medieval literary life and practice. Counts as a pre-1800 course for English majors in 2000-01. Four credit hours.  L.    NARIN VAN COURT

[417]    Literary Criticism: 20th-Century Marxism and Popular Culture--The Frankfurt School    The theories of the German (and Jewish) cultural critics Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin, who revolutionized the study of literature and society from the 1930s forward by combining Marx, Freud, and a commitment to see both high art and popular culture as driven by the same social forces. Four credit hours.  L.    

[423]    The Holocaust: History, Literature, Film    The destruction of the European Jewry and the counter-responses of testimony, first-person narrative, fiction, and film produced by and about the victims during the war and afterward. A study of the motives of the perpetrators and bystanders and anti-semitism, with a focus on understanding attempts to find terms to represent the unrepresentable of collective and individual catastrophe and to find forms of continuity amidst destruction. Four credit hours.  L, D.    

[425]    Modern Women's Literature    Classics of modern women's literature written in English between the turn-of-the-century and the 1960s. Among works studied are short stories, novels, poetry, essays, a play, and an autobiography by women writers from England, the United States, Africa, India, and Australia. Excerpts from classics in feminist literary theory and psychobiography are included to establish a frame of reference for the readings, and analysis will incorporate differences of race, class, culture, and sexuality. Four credit hours.  L, D.    

429s    Passionate Expression: Love, Sex, and Sexuality in Western Literature    A study of the Western tradition in love literature focusing on representative masterworks both from "mainstream" culture and from counter-cultures through the ages; topics begin with the Bible, Greek drama, and medieval lyric and conclude with classic Hollywood versions of love stories and the fiction of contemporary liberation movements. Four credit hours.  L, D.    MANNOCCHI

457f    American Gothic Literature    Horror, especially gothic horror of the American variety, always masquerades as something else; it can usually be found "playing in the dark," in Toni Morrison's phrase, or beneath a monster-other mask. Surveying horror's effects--the narrative strategies that make horror fiction so horrifying--is a focus, but emphasis is on learning to use various "critical" tools, Jungian myth, psychoanalytical, feminist, and race criticism, to explore the deeper, semiotic relation of signs and signifying that codify the cultural meaning behind the monster masks--werewolves, shapeshifters, vampires, succubi, demons, and (extra)terrestial aliens--that conceal a humanity too terrifying to confront consciously. Four credit hours.  L.    BRYANT

474fs    Public Speaking    An intensive course in the practice of public speaking, with special attention given to current political and social issues and the development of an effective and persuasive platform personality. Attendance at campus debates and speech contests required. Four credit hours.    MILLS

478f    Advanced Fiction Workshop    Practice in the writing of short stories and longer fiction, with major emphasis on student manuscripts. May be repeated once for additional credit. Admission is by manuscript submission only; consult instructor for deadlines and format for manuscript submission. Prerequisite: English 378. Four credit hours.    BOYLAN

479s    Advanced Poetry Workshop    Practice in the writing of poetry, with major emphasis on student manuscripts. May be repeated once for additional credit. Admission is by manuscript submission only; consult instructor for deadlines and format for manuscript submission. Prerequisite: English 379. Four credit hours.    MCNAIR

483f, 484js    Honors Thesis    An independent, substantial project approved by the department. The student will work in close consultation with a faculty member. Students are responsible for selecting their faculty tutor and submitting their proposal by May of their junior year. Prerequisite: A 3.25 grade point average in the major and approval from a faculty tutor. Two to four credit hours.    FACULTY

491f, 492s    Independent Study    Individual projects exploring topics for which the student has demonstrated the interest and competence necessary for independent work. Prerequisite: Permission of a project advisor and the chair of the department. One to four credit hours.    FACULTY

493Af    Seminar: Reading in Early America    The material apparatuses of cultural production as revealed by examining the impact of "print culture" on early American literary history, social relations, and power formations. Works of early American fiction will be studied in the context of their publication histories and their critical and popular reception, focusing on the following topics: the early history of literacy and popular reading in the U.S.; the role of printers; democratization and the expansion of the literary marketplace; censorship and state power; race, gender, class, and reading practices. Four credit hours.  L.    STUBBS

493Bf    Seminar: George Eliot    An examination of the intersection of female authorship/19th-century England/and Christianity with the purpose of formulating some ideas concerning the psychologizing character of George Eliot's narratives and the particular redemptive ideology she makes available to both characters and readers. Four credit hours.  L.    NARIN VAN COURT

493Cs    Seminar: African American Autobiography    A genre study of African-American autobiography in the 19th and 20th centuries that explores slave narratives, essays, diaries, journals, and novels. Particular focus on the diverse and problematic narrative strategies African-Americans construct to navigate the difficult passage through slavery, institutional racism, sexism, and political disenfranchisement. Self-actualization, authority and authenticity, the sentimental formula, orality and literacy, and the social construction of identity are among the salient topics that inform this tradition and its discourse. Four credit hours.  L, D.    BRYANT

493Ds    Seminar: Marvelous Possessions--New Writing in English in the Indian Subcontinent    An introduction to the extraordinary range of post-independence and contemporary literature of the Indian subcontinent written in English. The objective is to forge a cross-cultural understanding of an increasingly hybrid, although resolutely cultural-specific, literature of an area that was politically unified during colonial rule. Questions of national and postcolonial identity by identifying the relationship of the writers to the English language, conventional (Western) literary style and genre, as well as the multiple (and polyglot) literary communities in the Indian subcontinent. Four credit hours.  L.    ROY