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2021-2022 Catalogue [ARCHIVED CATALOG]
Courses
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English |
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ENGL 16012 - Writing Our Worlds: Baldin & Beyond Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
WRITING OUR WORLDS: JAMES BALDWIN AND BEYOND This course aims to give us an opportunity to explore and to shape our own individual experiences of this (increasingly) strange reality, both through our own writing and through reading the works of a fellow writer facing a similar task. The great James Baldwin (1924-1987) wrote his worlds with incisive elegance and ethical urgency; his diagnosis of America’s pandemic of racism and other forms of injustice remains distressingly accurate today. Let’s follow his lead. Notes of a Native Son; Nobody Knows My Name; The Fire Next Time; No Name in the Street; The Devil Finds Work; The Cross of Redemption; Begin Again (Eddie Glaude, Jr.). [AH, W]
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ENGL 16100 - Introduction to Fiction and Poetry, Writing Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
INTRODUCTION TO FICTION AND POETRY WRITING This course is an introduction to writing in a variety of fictional forms, especially short stories and poems. Participants analyze and discuss both published writing and their own writing. Priority given to English majors. Annually. [AH]
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ENGL 19900 - Editing a Literary Magazine Course Credit: 0.25
Maximum Credit: 0
EDITING A LITERARY MAGAZINE By serving as editorial assistants for The Dodge, a nationally distributed magazine of eco-fiction and literature in translation, students will explore the process of editing a professional literary magazine. Students will read submissions, assist with the maintenance and design of the magazine’s website, create social media content for the journal, and help to proofread and publish accepted works. Students will also be required to do research in the history of the American literary journal as well to examine other literary magazines. Annually. [AH]
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ENGL 20000 - Investigations in Literary Theory and, Research Methods–Engl Majors Only Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
(EDUC, ENVS)
INVESTIGATIONS IN LITERARY THEORY AND RESEARCH METHODS This course is a writing course designed specifically for English majors. The course examines reading, writing, and conducting research as interrelated processes enabling one to investigate literary texts and other cultural work. Students 1) become familiar with several literary theories and understand what it means to ground literary investigation in a set of theoretical principles; 2) engage with ongoing scholarly conversations and become familiar with research methods; and 3) develop their own voices within the conventions of writing in the discipline. Priority given to sophomore majors. Juniors, non-majors, and second-semester first-year students with permission of course instructor. Prerequisite(s): ENGL-120xx Annually. [AH, W]
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ENGL 21002 - Black Women Writers Course Credit: 1
(AFST, CMLT, WGSS)
BLACK WOMEN WRITERS This course examines the writings of black women from 1746 to the present. Focusing on the major texts in the canon of African American women’s writing, the course considers the distinct cultural possibilities that enabled various forms of literary production throughout black women’s history in America. [AH]
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ENGL 21004 - Empire Boys (pre 1900) Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
(CMLT, WGSS)
EMPIRE BOYS This course interrogates gender models in 19th century literature and popular culture, with specific though not exclusive focus on masculinity. British models of “manliness” proliferated over the course of the 19th century as a result of industrialization, the growth of the mass media, and the rise of Empire; new models included “muscular Christianity,” the Sahib, the dandy, and the flaneur. Asking whether imperial models of masculinity continue to inflect gender roles today, we will explore a range of genres, including adventure and sensation novels, poetry and drama, popular culture, and literary and gender theory. [Before 1900] [AH]
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ENGL 21009 - Post Colonial Literature & Film Course Credit: 1
(CMLT, FILM)
POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE AND FILM This course examines questions of identity (with particular emphasis on gender, race, and nation) in colonial and postcolonial novels, poems, and film. While acknowledging the problematic nature of the term “postcolonial,” we will examine paired colonial and postcolonial texts to understand the codes of race, gender, and nation constructed during the imperial era, and echoed, critiqued, and/or subverted in the postcolonial era. Our textual interpretations will be informed by postcolonial and gender theory. [AH, C]
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ENGL 21014 - Religion in Black Film & Literature Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
(CMLT, GMDS)
RELIGION IN BLACK FILM AND LITERATURE This course analyzes the complicated role of religion, particularly Christianity, in black communities during slavery, the Great Migration, the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, and the Post Civil Rights Era. The course considers ways in which religion is shown to empower and/or oppress black people; ways in which the politics of class, gender, and sexuality inflect black religious practices; and strategies by which transcendent, spiritual experiences are represented. Films may include Spencer Williams’ The Blood of Jesus; Stan Lathan’s Go Tell it on the Mountain; Spike Lee’s Four Little Girls; Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust; and T.D. Jakes’ Woman Thou Art Loosed. Texts by Alice Walker, Melba P. Beals, Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, and Ernest Gaines, as well as some visual art, are also considered. [AH, R]
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ENGL 21018 - Sex & Gender in Restoration & 18 Century Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
(CMLT, WGSS)
SEX AND GENDER IN RESTORATION AND 18TH CENTURY LITERATURE A man feigns impotence to cuckold unsuspecting husbands; a male and female couple compete for sexual favors from a male servant; a reformed prostitute recounts experiences with male and female partners. How should we interpret these literary episodes, since Foucault and others have dated the concept of sexual orientation to the 19th century? Posing such questions, this course aims to improve understandings of both the eighteenth century and modernity. Featured authors include Wycherley, Rochester, Behn, Pope, Swift, Montagu, Cleland, and Wollstonecraft. Featured scholars include Foucault, Rubin, Sedgwick, Butler, and Nussbaum. [Before 1800] [AH]
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ENGL 21022 - Global Anglophone Literature After 1900 Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
(CMLT)
GLOBAL ANGLOPHONE LITERATURE AFTER 1900 This course explores the rise of English as a so-called “global language” during and after the height of British colonialism and American imperialism. As writers from Africa, South Asia, the Caribbean, Ireland, and Australia embrace a language associated with colonialism and oppression, they have asked: what happens when a language is put to work to colonize? To resist? To claim belonging? Engaging multi-genre writing from across the Global South, this course interrogates the relationship between migration, voice, and power in twentieth and twenty-first century literature in English. Writers include Louise Bennett, NoViolet Bulawayo, Amitav Ghosh, Jamaica Kincaid, and Ken Saro-Wiwa. [AH, GE]
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ENGL 21025 - Shakespeare to Wilde (pre-1900) Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
(CMLT, WGSS)
QUEER LITERATURE FROM SHAKESPEARE TO WILDE This course surveys literature from approximately 1600-1900 with emphasis on analyzing representations of same-sex friendships, romances, and sexual relationships and on understanding how they were imagined differently than they would later be in the 20th and 21st centuries. Featured texts may include sonnets by Richard Barnfield and William Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, poems by Katherine Philips and Aphra Behn, erotic fiction by Eliza Haywood, Charlotte Brontë’s Villette, and Oscar Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray. [Before 1900] [AH]
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ENGL 21026 - Lit, Cul & Environment Crisis Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
(CMLT, ENVS)
LITERATURE, CULTURE, AND ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS We live in a world threatened by global warming and mass extinction across the entire web of life. This course, as an introduction to the environmental humanities, will consider a number of ways the arts and humanities might help us understand and respond to this planetary emergency. While the focus of the course will be on what we might think of as “scientific” phenomena, our materials will range across various disciplines, forms, and genres, from novels and poetry to recent popular journalism, documentary films, and scholarly essays in literary and environmental studies. Topics will include: global warming and ocean acidification, animal ethics and mass extinction, and the role of the humanities in theorizing our planetary future under conditions of ecological emergency. [AH]
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ENGL 21029 - Asian-American Literature Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
(CMLT)
ASIAN AMERICAN LITERATURE Within the context of European and American expansionism, a scholar writes, “Asians did not go to America; Americans went to Asia.” Asian diasporic literatures in the United States thus reflect ethnic resistance against legal, economic, social, and cultural practices of white nationalism and imperialism. Reading 19th-21st century texts by East, South, Southeast and West Asians in America, students will explore the perspectives of immigrants, second generation Americans, transnational adoptees, survivors of war, and activists. [AH]
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ENGL 21030 - Class, Gender, Criminality 18th Cent Lit Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
(CMLT)
CLASS, GENDER, CRIMINALITY IN 18TH CENTURY LITERATURE In this course, we will survey British literature of the eighteenth century by examining themes of class, criminality, and gender in novels, poetry, and memoir. The eighteenth century loved narratives of crime: stories of hangings and “transportations” (being sent against one’s will to a colony abroad), seduction and repentance. These texts also demonstrate a profound uncertainty about the shifting landscape of class and privilege, often linked to concerns about appropriate behavior for women in newly public spaces. Could a maid marry her employer and become a respectable woman? Should a penniless poet who claimed to be a nobleman’s bastard son be forgiven for killing a man, on the basis of his talent? We will discuss the historical contexts of these texts and examine how they grapple, both in content in form, with questions of how to define virtue and morality and how to punish crime. [Before 1800] [AH]
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ENGL 21031 - Queering Caribbean Literature Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
(CMLT, WGSS)
QUEERING CARIBBEAN LITERATURE This class explores the intersection between queer theory and Caribbean literary studies. Though colonial legacies still inform Caribbean gender and sexual norms, how might literature excavate stories about queerness hidden in plain sight? We will read Caribbean short stories, novels, memoirs, and scholarship to discuss how Caribbean writers reclaim non-normative behaviors and identities that contest Euro-American histories and definitions of race, gender, and sexuality. [AH]
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ENGL 21032 - Afrofuturism Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
(CMLT)
AFROFUTURISM Afrofuturism–a literary formation where Black writers, visual artists, and musicians shape the future by melding art and technology–has reached a watershed moment in American culture. With increasing attention paid to the work of Octavia Butler, the emergence of futuristic musical stylings from Janelle Monae and Saul Williams, and the cinematic adaptation of Marvel’s Black Panther, the form has expanded the boundaries of how we understand Black culture, challenging traditional science fiction to include a wider range of voices. In this course, we will focus on the broader aesthetic tradition of the genre, tracing a trajectory from the nineteenth century to the present across visual art, music, and literature. We will pay particular attention to the formation’s subversive formal features, the lessons its radical politics hold for our own time, and its fluid approach to gender and sexuality. [AH]
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ENGL 21033 - Postcolonial Poetics Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
POSTCOLONIAL POETICS This class considers poetic production as a political act of world-making. Together, we will consider: what can poetry do? What about the form gives it so much meaning? Through the course, students will come to see how poets use the forms and allusivity of poetry to launch critiques of social ills. By reading deeply in one or two poets each week, this course will both introduce students to methods both for reading poetry and for reading anti-colonially. Writers examined may include Agha Shahid Ali, Okot p’Bitek, Rupi Kaur, M. NourbeSe Philip, Derek Walcott, and W. B. Yeats. To highlight the connections between the poets we read, students will collaborate on group-based “Storymap” that expands on the concerns that connect the writers we will study in Africa, the Caribbean, and Oceania. [AH]
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ENGL 21034 - Religion in Black Film and Literature Course Credit: 1
RELIGION IN BLACK FILM AND LITERATURE This course analyzes the complicated role of religion, particularly Christianity, in black communities during slavery, the Great Migration, the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, and the Post Civil Rights Era. The course considers ways in which religion is shown to empower and/or oppress black people; ways in which the politics of class, gender, and sexuality inflect black religious practices; and strategies by which transcendent, spiritual experiences are represented. Films may include Spencer Williams’ The Blood of Jesus; Stan Lathan’s Go Tell it on the Mountain; Spike Lee’s Four Little Girls; Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust; and T.D. Jakes’ Woman Thou Art Loosed. Texts by Alice Walker, Melba P. Beals, Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, and Ernest Gaines, as well as some visual art, are also considered. [AH]
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ENGL 21035 - Constructing Black Lives in Film and Lit Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
(AFST, CMLT, GMDS)
CONSTRUCTING BLACK LIVES IN FILM AND LITERATURE In this summer course, we will analyze 19th, 20th and 21st century classic, documentary, and biographical films, autobiographies, and memoirs to investigate the different ways in which African-American men’s and women’s life narratives are constructed. In particular, we will consider the impact of historical events and processes upon identities, the ways identities are performed, and the mutually constitutive relationship among race, class, gender, and sexuality. Some class time will also be spent critiquing visual art in terms of identity construction. This broad course topic allows us to engage in interdisciplinary scholarship (involving, Africana studies, literature, history, music, film, and visual art). The technique that unites these fields is close reading/explication. Since strong analysis of varied texts depends upon your ability to give complex, evidence-based interpretations of them, together we will learn and practice (1) skillfully close reading/explicating; (2) arguing our points aloud via “live” debate; and (3) writing our thoughts clearly. [AH]
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ENGL 22001 - Shakespeare (Before 1800) Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
(CMLT)
SHAKESPEARE [Before 1800] This class considers the following questions: How did Shakespeare’s plays come out of the literary, cultural, and political ideas and controversies of his time? How did his plays change and develop over his twenty-year period of writing? How did the major genres he wrote in-Comedy, History, Tragedy, and Romance-reflect his explorations of issues in gender, race and aesthetics? [Before 1800] [AH]
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ENGL 22011 - James Baldwin & Toni Morrison Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
(AFST, CMLT, WGSS)
JAMES BALDWIN AND TONI MORRISON James Baldwin and Toni Morrison are certainly two of the most significant authors of the 20th century. This course allows an intense study of their major works, including novels, theatre, short stories, essays, and literary critics’ responses to them all. We’ll explore answers to questions such as the following: What constitutes African American community, as well as larger U.S. and global communities? How are race, class, gender, and sexuality intersecting in our selected texts? In what ways are Baldwin and Morrison using jazz and the blues, critiquing whiteness, and otherwise unraveling societal politics? How are Baldwin and Morrison speaking to or against one another? Texts may include Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time; If Beale Street Could Talk; Just Above My Head; Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone; or, Giovanni’s Room, among others, and, Morrison’s Love; Beloved; Playing in the Dark; Tar Baby; or, Song of Solomon, among others. Interviews and documentary films will be analyzed, and some visual art may be considered. [AH]
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ENGL 22013 - Chaucer Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
(CMLT)
CHAUCER While we will focus primarily on The Canterbury Tales, we will also examine a number of cultural documents from the period. Our purpose will be to reconstruct a portrait of the poet and his milieu that will enable us to come to terms with the work which has more or less constituted Chaucer’s legacy. In evaluating this legacy we will consider whether (in the absence of an “authorized” text) we can talk in terms of a single text of The Canterbury Tales, or whether we should see the extant versions of the work as a multitude of texts which responded to various socio-historical and textual pressures even as they shaped the culture which produced them. [Before 1800] [AH]
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ENGL 22015 - Shakespeare: War and Memory Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
SHAKESPEARE: WAR AND MEMORY “Can this cockpit hold the vasty fields of France?” We’ll examine how Shakespeare’s plays answer this question (from the Prologue of Henry V) of how to represent wars–historical, legendary, and fictional–in the theaters of his time and our own. We’ll consider both the staging and the remembering of wars across a variety of Shakespearean genres, including English and Roman histories such as Henry V and Antony and Cleopatra; the national and personal tragedies of Hamlet, Macbeth, and Othello; comedies with contemporary settings like All’s Well that Ends Well; and Cymbeline, a romance that combines and reinvents many of the above categories. (And selected Sonnets.) Throughout the course we’ll use techniques of close reading, analytical writing, and creative interpretation to investigate the following questions, and others that arise: How do leaders present war to their friends and their subjects, and how do those audiences respond and remember? How and why do current fighters recall past conflicts? How does war appear in different genres, and how does it transform characters of various ethnic, gendered, and racialized identities? How does Shakespeare glorify, condemn, or aestheticize war? Does it matter that Shakespeare’s England was experiencing a time of relative peace compared to its immediate past and future? By way of our thematic focus, the course provides an introduction to Shakespeare and his world. [Before 1800] [AH]
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ENGL 23002 - Survey of African-American Literature Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
(AFST, CMLT)
SURVEY OF AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE This course is a historical study of the development and change of black themes and consciousness as manifested in poetry, fiction, autobiography, and essays, and of their correspondence with the literature produced by other ethnic groups in America. [AH]
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ENGL 23007 - 19th Century British Literature Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
(CMLT)
THE WAY WE LIVE NOW: NINETEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH LITERATURE With its anxieties about shifting views of gender, race, and class and its failing imperial adventures, British culture of the nineteenth century uncannily resembles Anglo-American culture of the twenty-first. The nineteenth century ushered in an age of transformation; people struggled to absorb astonishing scientific and technological change, terrifying though exhilarating social experiments, and rapid globalization. This course will focus on four of the central transitions of the nineteenth century - industrialization, escalating class conflicts, shifting views of gender, and the growth of Empire - and explore some of the major authors of the period, including Dorothy and William Wordsworth, John Keats, Emily Brontë, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Wilkie Collins, George Eliot, and Joseph Conrad. [Before 1900] [AH]
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ENGL 23012 - Poetry Since World War II Course Credit: 1
(CMLT)
POETRY SINCE WORLD WAR II During his acceptance speech for the 1970 National Book Award for Poetry, Robert Lowell characterized the state of American poetry as involving a schism between “the raw and the cooked,” a division between poets (and readers of poetry) who expected new poetry to follow the fixed forms of the past, and those who thought this new poetry should be “free.” A major focus of this course on American, British and other English-speaking poetries in the years after World War II will be to consider this tension, looking at the early fractures between the New Critics and the Beats, the rise of “organic verse” in the 1960s, the Neo-formalist poetry of the 1980s, and the rise of rap-connected poetry in the 1990s. We will also explore how these spats within poetry might reflect wider cultural dynamics, be they ones influenced by the Cold War, by mass media, or by changing perspectives on what constitutes artistic tradition and authority. We will also explore the boundaries of the genre, looking at prose-poetry, spoken word poetry, song and rap lyrics as well as the presence of poetry in advertising and film. [AH]
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ENGL 23029 - American Literature to 1865 Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
(CMLT)
AMERICAN LITERATURE TO 1865 This course surveys American literature through the Civil War. Readings span a range of genres and cover the major movements that shaped U.S. literary history: the culture of colonial settlers, Puritan and evangelical religiosity, Enlightenment epistemology, the Haitian and American revolutions, nationalism, reformist literature, the rise of the black public intellectual, and Transcendentalism. [Before 1900] [AH]
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ENGL 23040 - Global? Book? History? Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
Global? Book? History? What is a book? The answer might seem obvious at first, but it starts to get more complicated when we observe that the same word can refer to a rectangular prism made of paper, the words printed on that paper, the same words translated into pixels on a screen (or lines of code making up the file thus displayed), or the idea of the work in the mind of the author or reader. In this course we’ll explore the material and technological histories of information sharing by examining just what “book” can mean across times and cultures. We’ll look (virtually) at cuneiform tablets, papyrus scrolls, palm leaf sutras, wax and stone tablets, and illuminated manuscripts. We’ll trace the origins of printing technologies in ancient China and medieval Korea-and their continual use to the present day-before examining the “revolutionary” effects of those technologies in Renaissance Europe and beyond. Along the way, we’ll try to interrogate our terms of study as we grapple with the Eurocentric history of “book history,” the ongoing digital revolution in book technologies and the pressing questions it raises (pun intended?), and the alternative perspectives available when we decenter Western narratives. [AH]
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ENGL 23041 - Modernist Literatures Course Credit: 1
(CMLT)
MODERNIST LITERATURES This course addresses the history of prose fiction and poetry roughly at the point at which the novel and poetics start to become a self-conscious and problematic literary form. We begin with an overview of the literary philosophies with which and against which modernist writers worked (Romanticism, Social Realism, Naturalism) and then proceed to more radical and complex formal experiments of great “high modernists,” such as Joyce, Woolf, Elliot, Pound, Stein, Stevens, Hemingway, Toomer, Hesse, and others. We consider the question of what is now called “postmodernism,” particularly through reading excerpts from Joyce’s Ulysses, and in important recent theorizing about problems of narrative and representation. Throughout, the course pays close attention to the social and political meanings of both experimental narrative techniques and theories of fiction, exploring the multi- and transnational aspects of this movement alongside other modernist endeavors such as painting, drama, and photography. [AH]
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ENGL 23042 - British Literature to 1800 Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
(CMLT)
BRITISH LITERATURE TO 1800 The course introduces students to British literature from its beginnings (“Caedmon’s Hymn,” Beowulf) to the late eighteenth century. Proceeding chronologically, units of the course will cover the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the 17th century (sometimes overlooked in English literary history and periodization), and the Enlightenment. Students can expect to leave the class with deeper understandings of each period’s characteristic styles and genres and of historical contexts shaping literary production, such as the rise of colonialism and the English Civil War. Providing a foundation for further reading, this course is ideal for both majors and non-majors who wish to learn more about the early periods of British literary history and their enduring influence on global literatures. [Before 1800] [AH]
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ENGL 23043 - Noir Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
(CMLT, FILM, GMDS)
NOIR “Experience has taught me never to trust a policeman. Just when you think one’s all right, he turns legit.” This comment, from the film Asphalt Jungle, encapsulates the cynicism and moral decay inherent in the sub-genre called film noir. Viewing films from the 1940s and 50s such as Double Indemnity, The Blue Dahlia, Out of the Past, and Leave Her to Heaven, we’ll explore the dark worlds of cinematic noir. We’ll interrogate the origins of the stylish sub-genre, and we’ll investigate how and why classic noir was adapted by Hollywood to produce films like Chinatown, Blade Runner, Blood Simple and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. [AH]
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ENGL 23044 - The Novel & Its Secrets Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
(CMLT)
THE NOVEL & ITS SECRETS. The novel abounds with secrets. Blackmail plots, illicit love affairs, and stolen inheritances. In this course we will peek into the guilty heart of the nineteenth century, learn about the formation of the modern concept of privacy, and discuss how suspense, misdirection and revelation shape the unfolding of narrative. We will read detective stories, ghost stories, and spy novels, but we will also examine how even the realist novel collects, encodes, and circulates information–novels like Austen’s Mansfield Park, Dickens’s Great Expectations; and Charlotte Brontë’s Villette. [Before 1900] [AH]
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ENGL 23048 - Global Media Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
GLOBAL MEDIA This course examines the role film, television, and digital media play in our globalized culture. We will think of “global media” in three ways: texts that move across national borders, audiences for these texts, and industries that produce these texts. Our goals are to interrogate the origins of global media and the influence technologies like the internet have had, and to develop frameworks for analyzing and understanding this media. [AH]
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ENGL 23049 - Procedurals Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
(CMLT)
PROCEDURALS American and British popular culture is saturated with procedurals: stories that focus on the process of solving a criminal case, usually though not always a murder, and revealing its secrets. These procedurals may appear in serial form, as did many early “mystery novels,” but our idea of the “murder mystery” is deeply linked to the novel form. In this course, we will discuss the history and development of the procedural, including both police procedurals and stories featuring independent investigators. We will read many variations on this form from its 19th-century antecedents to contemporary novels, and will also address adaptations (The Killing, Gracepoint, etc.), cultural appropriation, and creative responses to popular procedurals (paintings of Law & Order characters, novellas that foreground the strangeness of the subgenre). We will aim to investigate, ourselves, what makes this form so popular and what cultural purposes its continual variations suit. [AH]
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ENGL 23050 - Intro to African Lit: Imagining Africa Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
(AFST)
INTRODUCTION TO AFRICAN LITERATURE Often heralded as the ‘first African novel,’ Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart offers a vision of precolonial Nigeria that projects new possibilities for Nigerian history. But Achebe’s was just the latest in a long history of African writers reimagining social formations. In this class, we will examine how African writers since 1900 have mobilized literature to political ends. Students will explore the representations of Africa through digital mapping projects that engage the relationship between literary texts and geopolitical inequality. Writers studied include Chinua Achebe, Lauren Beukes, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Nuruddin Farah, Yaa Gyasi, and Wole Soyinka. . [AH, GE]
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ENGL 23051 - The English Restoration Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
The English Restoration After two decades of religious and political upheaval in Britain, the restoration of the English monarchy in 1660 inaugurated an extraordinary era of literature. Some writers celebrated Charles II’s accession to the throne, while others mourned the failure of Oliver Cromwell’s republican government. Some embraced the libertine culture of the royal court; others lamented the apparent decline in national morality. No matter their convictions, however, Restoration writers were preoccupied with sex, gender, and power, and they expressed those preoccupations in vivid, forceful, and often satirical verse and prose. The Restoration was also a period of scientific and technological advancement, and the founding of the Royal Society established England as a center of experimental learning. This course will consider not only the plays, poems, and prose works of the Restoration period (c. 1660-1700), but also the historical context of that literature. Authors will include Aphra Behn, George Etherege, Thomas Hobbes, Andrew Marvell, and John Milton, among others. [Before 1800] [AH]
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ENGL 23052 - Making/Unmaking Britain Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
MAKING/UNMAKING BRITAIN: ENGLISH LITERATURE TO 1800 As a political idea, “Britain” has never coincided with the geographical entity bearing the same name. Instead, it has excluded many of the island’s inhabitants while including some beyond its shores. This course studies how early literature helps to construct and question notions of Britishness. Special attention is paid to Roman, Anglo-Saxon, and Norman conquests; conflicts among England, Wales, and Scotland; colonization of Ireland and, later, farther countries; subordination of groups like women, Jews, Africans, and indigenous peoples; and exclusion of non-humans from ethical consideration. Readings commence with Beowulf (instated as the national epic in the late eighteenth century) and conclude with Phillis Wheatley (the first African to publish English poems). Other featured authors include Marie de France, Spenser, Shakespeare, Katherine Philips, Aphra Behn, and Alexander Pope. [Before 1800]
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ENGL 24003 - The Odyssey of James Joyce’s Ulysses Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
(CMLT)
THE ODYSSEY OF JAMES JOYCE’S ULYSSES This course explores the formation of James Joyce’s Ulysses, focusing on Joyce’s composing process, identifying and analyzing historical, cultural, social, literary, and personal contexts that he used in his artistic decision-making processes. Students will read the entirety of Ulysses as well as related secondary and primary sources and excerpts from Finnegans Wake. [AH]
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ENGL 24017 - The American Film Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
(CMLT, FILM)
THE AMERICAN FILM The course samples the range of American film history from the silent film to the rise of Hollywood to postmodern and independent filmmaking. The course introduces basic strategies for the interpretation of visual style, narrative, and ideological coding in the cinema and is organized around the study of such genres and concepts as comedy, the musical, the western, the hard-boiled detective, film noir, the auteur, and the reflexive film. [AH]
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ENGL 24018 - Fidelity and Betrayal Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
(CMLT, FILM, GMDS, WGSS)
FIDELITY AND BETRAYAL - NINETEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH NOVEL ON FILM In this course, we will investigate both 19th century fictions and their contemporary film adaptations, debating the cultural work performed by both genres: what purposes did these novels serve for their first readers, what drives our own culture’s obsession with an imagined Victorian past, and how do discourses of nostalgia and of fidelity to the “original” shape adaptations of canonical novels? Readings will include 5-6 novels by authors like Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Lewis Carroll, William Thackeray and Bram Stoker, as well as literary and film theory; students should also be prepared to attend 8-10 evening screenings.[Before 1900] [AH]
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ENGL 24019 - Medieval Literature Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
(CMLT)
MEDIEVAL LITERATURE: THE PLACE OF THE PREMODERN This course reads the imaginative literature of the later Middle Ages. In addition to experiencing the pleasures of such genres as romance, dream vision, and drama, students explore how these genres shaped medieval ideas of time and place. The course considers how the “middle age” came to be, what it was, and how it relates to modernity. Texts and films to be studied may include Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, William Langland’s Piers Plowman, Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose (film and novel), Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the Lais of Marie de France, The Second Shepherd’s Play, A Knight’s Tale, and Braveheart. [Before 1800] [AH]
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ENGL 24027 - Mimic Forms in 18th Century Literature Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
(CMLT)
MIMIC FORMS: IMITATIVE LITERATURE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY In the eighteenth century, it was common for writers to compose literature by imitating or mocking the forms of other works, including ancient as well as recent models. For instance, Pope’s Rape of the Lock adapts conventions of epic poetry; Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels poses as an authentic travelogue; and Fielding’s Shamela parodies Richardson’s epistolary novel Pamela. Are such mimic works inauthentic, derivative, or otherwise inferior to their originals, or might it be possible to understand mimicry as an innovative mode of literary production? In addition to exploring such questions in class discussions and analytical essays, you will also deepen your understanding of imitative literature by composing your own creative piece mimicking the form of another work. [Before 1800] [AH]
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ENGL 24035 - Green Shade: Poems in Place Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
Green Shade: Poems in Place Where we’re going: back in time; out into the garden; down into the library. In this class we will examine three ways of “making gardens” in the medieval and early modern periods - and the tools, insights, and warnings they may offer us today. We’ll read some resonant texts from the history of English literature’s green thoughts in green shades. How do writers create gardens and landscapes in our minds? How do books create them on the page? Are either of these kinds of imagined spaces anything like the real thing? How do past conceptions of green space, familiar or strange, shape ours today? What might attending to the specificities ot text, materiality, time, and place offer for ongoing local or global environmental conversations? [Before 1800] [AH]
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ENGL 24036 - Revenge and Its Tragedies Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
Revenge and Its Tragedies Early modern England was obsessed with vengeance. Between the 1580s and the outbreak of civil war in 1642, the lurid and bloody genre of revenge tragedy dominated the English stage. The subject of revenge was thrilling in its own right, but it also allowed playwrights to explore such themes as politics, sexuality, religion, psychology, and the nature of knowledge. The character of the revenger-solitary, brooding, cynical, preoccupied with the wrongs of the past-captured the popular imagination, spurring dramatists to create more and more imitations. In this course, we will read a selection of revenge tragedies, including The Duchess of Malfi, Hamlet, ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, The Revenger’s Tragedy, and Titus Andronicus. Other topics will include the theological and philosophical underpinnings of revenge in early modern England; the role of humor in literary depictions of violence; and modern cinematic adaptations of the revenge plot. [Before 1800] [AH]
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ENGL 24037 - Is a Picture Worth a Thousand Words? Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
Introduction to Image-Text Studies This course explores the inherent uncertainty in any attempt to assert a clear distinction between visual and verbal representation. Through a study of seminal figures in image-text studies-such as Horace, Aristotle, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Clement Greenberg, Jacques Derrida, and W.J.T. Mitchell-we will examine the persistently shifting yet productive interrelationship between text and image. We will apply such theoretical engagements not only to contemporary poets concerned with visuality, but also to contemporary visual artists concerned with textuality: Tom Phillips, Susan Howe, Douglas Kearney, Augusto de Campos, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Bruce Nauman, Lawrence Weiner, Christopher Wool, Guerrilla Girls, and others. [AH]
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ENGL 25011 - The Legend of Arthur Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
THE LEGEND OF ARTHUR He is the once and future king. English royalty claimed descent through him. British Prime Minsters were said to be reincarnations of him. He is one of the Nine Worthies. Camelot (his court) became a watchword for chivalric nobility. His knights even found the Holy Grail. But he was also begotten through rape, cuckolded by his best friend and tricked into incest by his half sister. Clearly he is more than an exemplar of British sovereignty. Who is this Arthur? Where does he come from? Why does he remain one of the great touchstones of Western culture? We will begin with the origins of Arthur in the sixth century and explore how the legend developed in sources such as Nennius’ Historia Brittonum, Welsh annals and Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae. We will pay particular attention to the transformation of the legend into literature in the high/late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Along the way we will examine how Arthur was appropriated by national movements and cultural groups even as his historicity was called into question. Finally we will interrogate more contemporary appearances of Arthur in film and other media with an eye towards establishing who and what a twenty-first century Arthur would/should look like. (Before 1800) [AH]
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ENGL 25012 - Reading for Writers: Poetry & Performanc Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
Reading for Writers: Poetry & Performance This course will introduce students to the craft of performance poetry through careful and strategic engagement with the form’s long history. From chançons to rap battles, epic poetry to modernist experimentations, we will evaluate how poets use language to craft a relationship to their audience, enlivened in performances such as those we will observe during the semester. Along the way, students will have the opportunity to practice their own poetry performance through reinterpretations of others’ work, performances of their own work, and a final project which blends creative production and critical analysis. [AH]
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ENGL 26100 - Advanced Fiction Writing Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
ADVANCED WRITING IN FICTIONAL FORMS Analysis, discussion, and practice of writing in one or more fictional forms, such as short stories, poems, or plays. Courses explore the aims and conventions of the specified written discourse and emphasize participants’ writing. May be repeated for credit as offerings vary. Prerequisite(s): ENGL-16100; Or permission of instructor [AH]
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ENGL 26102 - Advanced Writing in Fictional Forms Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
ADVANCED FICTION WRITING: THE STORY CYCLE This course focuses on studying collections of linked short stories. Participants analyze several complete story cycles and discuss the techniques authors use to connect the stories in each collection in order to create cohesive book-length narratives. The emphasis during the first half of the semester is on studying published story collections. The class then shifts into writing and workshopping during the second half of the semester. As a class, students write and revise one complete story cycle, with each student contributing one story to the collection. Prerequisite(s): ENGL-16100; Or permission of instructor [AH]
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ENGL 26103 - Advanced Poetry Writing Course Credit: 1
ADVANCED POETRY WRITING This course looks at a number of different contemporary poets and approaches to poetry, including writing in various fixed as well as open forms. Students explore (and experiment with in their own poetry) a number of traditional and contemporary techniques as well as consider prose-poetry, spoken word poetry, and other artistic threads prominent in the contemporary poetry landscape. Along with the reading of published works of poetry, students explore aspects of craft and style in their own writing as well as provide constructive feedback for their fellow writers in weekly workshops. Prerequisite(s): ENGL-16100; Or permission of instructor [AH]
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ENGL 26107 - Advanced Writing in Fictional Forms Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
ADVANCED WRITING IN FICTIONAL FORMS: SHORT FORMS In this workshop students will do advanced work in the short story form. In addition to considering aspects of style, voice, thematic development, and craft-based elements, students will also be encouraged to experiment, and try a range of narrative strategies. Four widely recognized and influential contemporary short story collections–Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies, Junot Diaz’s Drown, Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son and Mary Gaitskill’s Bad Behavior–will provide reference points for discussing literary craft, as well as inspiration for writing exercises and longer story assignments. Prerequisite(s): ENGL-16100; Or permission of instructor [AH]
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ENGL 26108 - Adv Fictional Wrtg: the New Short Story Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
ADVANCED FICTION WRITING: THE NEW SHORT STORY The landscape of contemporary fiction is vital, and constantly changing. This course will focus exclusively on short fiction published within the last few years (two of the course texts will be released in early 2017), discussing in detail the specific ways in which these works impact and enlarge literary form, and influence our perception of ourselves and our socio-cultural moment. Students will be encouraged to participate in the evolution of the form by applying these narrative techniques and strategies to their own short fiction, which will then be discussed in formal workshops. Course texts may include What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours-Helen Oyoyemi, Vertical Motion-Can Xue, A Manual for Cleaning Women-Lucia Berlin, Homesick for Another World-Ottessa Moshfegh, Counternarratives-John Keene, Wait Til You See Me Dance-Deb Olin Unferth Prerequisite(s): ENGL-16100; Or permission of instructor [AH]
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ENGL 26109 - Advanced Writing: Poetry & Prose-Poetry Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
ADVANCED WRITING: POETRY & PROSE-POETRY Prerequisite(s): ENGL-16100; Or permission of instructor [AH]
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ENGL 26110 - Advanced Short Story Writing Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
ENGL 26111. ADVANCED SHORT STORY WRITING Prerequisite(s): ENGL-16100; Or permission of instructor [AH]
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ENGL 26111 - Adv Memoir & Creative Non-Fiction Wrtg Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
(ENVS)
ADVANCED MEMOIR & CREATIVE NON-FICTION: NATURE & ENVIRONMENTAL WRITING This class will explore what can be found in creative writing when we lose ourselves in the wilderness of imagination and nature. Students will read stories that track beasts, chase myths, and challenge the limits of survival in search of answers, while journeying into the wild with their own creative work. This class will also consider the role and responsibility of nature writing in the midst of environmental decline and climate change. Students will share writing in a workshop setting, with the goal of generating several new pieces during the semester. Prerequisite(s): ENGL-16100; Or permission of instructor [AH]
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ENGL 26112 - Advanced Poetry Writing: Looking Outward Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
ADVANCED POETRY WRITING: LOOKING OUTWARD In this advanced poetry workshop, students will read and write poems that reckon with the larger world through poetic investigations of historical and contemporary concerns and events. Students will abandon the inward gaze by incorporating research, facts, documents, politics, and history into their poems. During the semester, students will read several exemplary poetry collections and create original work with writing prompts and exercises. Students will workshop original poems and provide constructive criticism, with the goal of generating several new pieces during the semester. Course texts include “The Art of Daring” by Carl Phillips, “Holey Moley Carry Me” by Erika Meitner, “Wade in the Water” by Tracy K. Smith, “Whereas” by Layli LongSoldier, “Sycamore” by Kathy Fagan, and poems by C.D. Wright, Camille Dungy, Phil Metres, and Claudia Rankine. Prerequisite(s): ENGL-16100; Or permission of instructor [AH]
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ENGL 26113 - Writing the Novella Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
WRITING THE NOVELLA In this creative writing course students will work on building and completing their own original novella-length works, while studying numerous examples of the contemporary novella to see what makes it tick. Special attention will be given to novellas that use unconventional approaches to content and structure, including cross-genre and hybrid works that are lyrical, formally experimental, or incorporate graphics. Authors studied will include Anne Carson, Justin Torres, Ottessa Moshfegh, Michael Ondaatje, Sandra Cisneros, Max Porter, Claudia Rankine, and Italo Calvino. Prerequisite(s): ENGL-16100 [AH]
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ENGL 26114 - Advanced Writing in Experimental, Fictional Forms Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
Advanced Writing in Experimental Fictional Forms This course will critically engage with exemplary fiction by both and international writers, with a particular interest in expermiental forms. These works will be supplemented with graphical novels, photographs, and paintings, to help enlarge our understanding of what constitutes a story. In addition, these readings will potentially inspire multimedia possiblilties in our own writing, as the second half of the course will be dedicated to workshopping students’ works of fiction. Prerequisite(s): ENGL-16100 or permission of instructor [AH]
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ENGL 26115 - Advanced Writing in the Book Form Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
ADVANCED WRITING IN THE BOOK FORM This course will critically engage with exemplary fiction and poetry by both American and international writers with a focus on investigating how a book is conceptualized and constructed. Throughout the course, students will work through the early stages of planning and preparing a book-length creative work. By the end of the semester, students will produce a poetry chapbook, a novella, introductory chapters of a novel, or several stories in a collection. Students working on a creative writing I.S. project or any student interested in working on a longer project are encouraged to enroll in the course. Throughout the course we will be workshopping students’ creative work, both in small groups and with the entire class. Prequisite: ENGL 16100. Prerequisite(s): Take ENGL-16100 [AH]
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ENGL 27001 - The Politics of Language Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
THE POLITICS OF LANGUAGE How do grammar and language norms reflect social, racial and national identities? How and why are some forms of English privileged over others? How do speakers and writers use language to delineate social and political groups? This course will seek to answer these questions by examining the connections between language, power, identity and culture. [AH]
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ENGL 27003 - Writing Tutoring Methods Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
TUTORING METHODS This course introduces students to the theory and practice of one-to-one composition instruction. Students explore theories from psychology, sociology, and English studies. Students also learn about the history of peer instruction and its place in a composition program. [AH, W]
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ENGL 29901 - Serials and Social Justice/ Digital Age Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
(WGSS)
SERIALS AND SOCIAL JUSTICE IN THE DIGITAL AGE This team-taught writing seminar will begin by surveying serial storytelling techniques as well as the history of the form, beginning with Dickens’s nineteenth-century novels and moving through the wide range of media-art, comics, film, television, podcasts, twitter and so on-that have adopted and adapted the serial form. What functions do serials serve for consumers? For producers? How are plots configured to extend across time while meeting the (perceived) needs of diverse audiences? How does the genre, and the ways in which it is constructed, represent social diversity and engage with questions of social justice? Students will develop a critical vocabulary to assess the serial genre while analyzing the economic and cultural issues surrounding serial production and consumption. In the last half of the course, students will apply their learning by writing and producing a serial narrative of their own. [AH, C]
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ENGL 29902 - Networked Lives, Networked Bodies Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
ENGL/COMM-29902: NETWORKED LIVES, NETWORKED BODIES The course will provide a survey of theories of cultural and media studies from the mid-nineteenth century through the twenty-first, in tandem with a survey of the rise of the mass media. Focusing on the direct impact of media technologies on human ways of knowing, the course aims to help students-often typecast as “digital natives”-think critically about the technologies that surround us. Through humanistic training, students can learn to see media through fresh eyes, considering other possibilities for their own interactions with technology, as well as for the processes through which texts are composed and circulated and for technology’s role in shaping, and being shaped by, human cultures. [AH, C]
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ENGL 29903 - Literary Theory & Research Methods Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
LITERARY THEORY AND RESEARCH METHODS This course is a writing course designed specifically for English majors. The course examines reading, writing, and conducting research as interrelated processes enabling one to investigate literary texts and other cultural work. Students 1) become familiar with several literary theories and understand what it means to ground literary investigation in a set of theoretical principles; 2) engage with ongoing scholarly conversations and become familiar with research methods; and 3) develop their own voices within the conventions of writing in the discipline. Priority given to sophomore majors. Juniors, non-majors, and second-semester first-year students with permission of course instructor. [AH]
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ENGL 30010 - Post/Colonial Lit. & Film Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
(CMLT, FILM, GMDS, WGSS)
POST/COLONIAL LITERATURE AND FILM This special topics seminar examines questions of identity in colonial and postcolonial literature and film through a range of theoretical lenses, including postcolonial, gender, queer, and critical race studies and ecocriticism. We will read paired colonial/postcolonial texts, including two novels (Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing) and two films (Euzhan Palcy’s Sugar Cane Alley and Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight), and consider theoretical debates on representation, identity, and narrative form. In the second half of the course, each student will design and complete a critically informed essay of roughly 20 pages written from a clearly articulated theoretical perspective; this process prepares students for the Senior Independent Study in English, GMDS, and related disciplines. (AH) The course fulfills the requirement in the English and Global Media & Digital Studies majors for Junior Independent Study. Prerequisites: English 200 and at least two literature courses. Open to non-majors Prerequisite(s): ENGL-20000, and 2 literature courses; or permission of instructor. [AH]
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ENGL 30014 - Sem Lit/Cul St: Narrating Our Pasts Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
(CMLT)
SEMINAR IN LITERARY AND CULTURE STUDIES: NARRATING OUR PASTS The research seminar investigates narrative as a way of knowing by exploring twentieth- and twenty-first century fictional representations of the past in relation to the conventions of storytelling and assumptions about fiction and nonfiction. Focusing on novels that represent contested historical events, we examine how narrative both makes sense of our perceptions of the world and shapes those perceptions, including how experience and identities may become indistinguishable from story. Possible texts include William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!, Toni Morrison, Beloved, Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer, Tim O’Brien, In the Lake of the Woods, Philip Roth, The Plot Against America, and D. M. Thomas, The White Hotel, as well as readings in narrative theory. Prerequisite(s): ENGL-20000, and at least 2 Literature courses [AH]
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ENGL 30015 - Sem/Lit/Cul St: Early American Novel Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
(CMLT)
SEMINAR IN LITERARY AND CULTURE STUDIES: THE EARLY AMERICAN NOVEL Research seminar on the history of the novel in the United States from the nation’s founding to the Civil War. The course will examine the American novel within the contexts of the emergence of the genre in English across the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the social, economic, and geopolitical history of the United States. Authors may include Hannah Webster Foster, Charles Brockden Brown, Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, William Wells Brown, and Harriet Wilson. Secondary readings will include foundational scholarly texts in the history and theory of the novel, as well as recent work in the fields of literary and cultural studies. Prerequisite(s): ENGL-20000, and 2 Literature courses [AH]
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ENGL 30016 - Sem Lit & Cult Studies: Bad Romance Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
BAD ROMANCE Medieval romance has a terrible reputation. Critics have maligned the authors of chivalric romances as “hack writers” who narrated preposterous stories in galloping meter. Geoffrey Chaucer parodied these romances in his own Tale of Sir Thopas-a tale so awful that the Host insisted he stop because his “drasty ryming was nat worth a toord!” But romance was one of the most popular forms of literature in the later Middle Ages. One critic even named it the “pulp fiction” of its day. Why did people read romances? Are they really aesthetically challenged? What do they say about the world in which they were written? Can they tell us anything about our world? In our quest to answer these and other more theoretical questions, we will read purportedly bad romances like Sir Isumbras and Erle of Toulouse, weird romances like Sir Gowther (a knight who is half devil), horrifying romances like Richard Coer de Lyon (cannibalism) and so-called “good” romances as well, such as Sir Orfeo and Gawain and the Green Knight. Before 1800. Prerequisite(s): ENGL-20000, and two literature courses; or permission of instructor. [AH]
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ENGL 30017 - Writing a Warming World Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
WRITING A WARMING WORLD Climate change is settled science, but the narratives constructed around climate change could hardly be more unsettled or unsettling. The problem of inaction on climate change is in many ways a problem of narrative-an inability to agree upon a shared understanding of how humans affect the natural world-and even climate change activists often feel overwhelmed by narratives that describe its effects. Inspired by novelist Amitav Ghosh’s monograph The Great Derangement, we will ask: what stories are being told about our warming world, and why has literary fiction generally failed to tackle climate change? What can ecocriticism, queer theory, and other critical approaches enable us to see in the texts that do address potential climate catastrophe? Prerequisite(s): Take ENGL-20000 and 2 literature courses [AH]
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ENGL 30018 - Medieval Cinema Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
(GMDS)
Medieval Cinema On or about December 28th, 1895 the motion picture era began. Less than two years later, the first medieval film (about Joan of Arc) was made. As many of the early filmmakers were French, perhaps a film about “the Maid of Orleans” was inevitable, but other films about the Middle Ages quickly followed. Some focused on martial and chivalric themes (e.g. The Hidden Fortress and Excalibur). Others (like The Seventh Seal) purported to show the abject Middle Ages in all its pathological barbarity. Still others appropriated the Middle Ages to create a pseudo-medieval feel (Conan the Barbarian, Army of Darkness). In this course, we’ll try to get a handle on why on filmmakers have been entranced (or perhaps even hypnotized) by the medieval period. Along the way we’ll explore how twentieth- and twenty-first century social and political ideologies informed medieval cinema even as modernity was haunted by the Middle Ages. Prerequisite(s): Take ENGL-20000 and 2 Literature Courses [AH]
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ENGL 30019 - Literature and the Media Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
Literature and the Media Technology and literature have historically been mobilized to circumscribe knowledge about marginalized communities. Eighteenth-century writers claimed indigenous people saw colonial technology as magic; today, we debate whether social media enhances or limits democracy in the Global South. This research seminar explores the influence of literary production and technological mediation on collective power. We will investigate orally-transmitted narratives such as the Malian epic Sundiata and Irish ballads; nineteenth century works exploring technology’s rising influence, such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and H. G. Wells’s War of the Worlds; and contemporary texts about our relationship to social media, such as Teju Cole’s Hafiz and Dave Eggers’s The Circle. Writings by postcolonial, race, gender, ecocritical, and media theorists such as Franz Fanon, Michel Foucault, Donna Haraway, N. Katherine Hayles, and Rob Nixon provide an analytic framework to reflect on the relationship between the human and the digital-and on our own lives as creative, digital subjects. Prerequisites: Take ENGL-20000 and 2 Literature Courses - Must be completed prior to taking this course. Prerequisite(s): Take ENGL-20000 and 2 Literature courses [AH]
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ENGL 30020 - Perspectives and Methods for I.S. Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
PERSPECTIVES AND METHODS OF INDEPENDENT STUDY This course is a seminar for junior majors designed to help students understand contemporary approaches to the study of language, texts and culture, and gain familiarity with pertinent bibliographies, periodicals, and other sources. The course emphasizes the choice and development of the students’ own critical stances through a writing project designed to help them clarify their own goals and assumptions. Prerequisite(s): ENGL-20000 and 2 200-level ENGL courses
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ENGL 40000 - Tutorial Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
TUTORIAL May be repeated.
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ENGL 41000 - English Internships Course Credit: 0.25
Maximum Credit: 1
INTERNSHIP A structured, usually off-campus experience, in which a student extends classroom knowledge to a work position within a community, business, or governmental organization. Student interns work and learn under the joint guidance of a host organization supervisor and a College of Wooster mentor. The student must arrange the internship in advance through the appropriate department or program. No more than six internships, and a maximum of four Wooster course credits, will count toward graduation. The form for registering for an internship and the Internship Learning Plan are available in the office of the Registrar. May be repeated.
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ENGL 43000 - Experience in the Discipline Course Credit: 0.25
Maximum Credit: 0
EXPERIENCE IN THE DISCIPLINE A structured learning activity in which students use their academic knowledge to engage in an experience that has real-world implications. Incorporates best practices in experiential learning. Typically includes an off-campus component. May be repeated. S/NC
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ENGL 45100 - Independent Study Thesis Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
INDEPENDENT STUDY THESIS This is the first semester of the Senior Independent Study project, in which each student engages in creative and independent research guided by a faculty mentor and which culminates in a thesis and an oral examination in the second semester. Recommended: ENGL-40100 or ENGL-300xx Annually.
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ENGL 45200 - Independent Study Thesis Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
INDEPENDENT STUDY THESIS This is the second semester of the Senior Independent Study project, which culminates in the thesis and an oral examination. Prerequisite(s): ENGL-45100 Annually.
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Environmental Studies |
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ENVS 11000 - Environment and Society Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
ENVIRONMENT AND SOCIETY To understand the complexity of humankind’s interaction with the environment requires grasping the basic social, cultural, economic, and political forces that condition our relationship with and impact on the natural world. This course provides an introduction to core principles and concepts in the interdisciplinary field of environmental studies. The goal of the course is to help you develop the critical thinking skills and theoretical background to analyze and evaluate complex evidence, arguments, and competing claims about the environment and society. Annually. [HSS, W]
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ENVS 12000 - Ecology and the Environment Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
ECOLOGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT To understand the complexity of humankind’s interaction with the environment requires an understanding of the natural world as seen through the eyes of science. This course is a content-based introduction to this particular space, where ecology, and environmental studies intersect. The goal is to understand basic processes of ecosystem dynamics, material cycling, and energy flows, through the lens of humanity’s relationship with the environment. Annually. [MNS]
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ENVS 16000 - Science of Environmental Issues Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
SCIENCE OF ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES This course provides an overview of key environmental issues facing our society today. Topics include climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution, as well as concerns about our food, water, soil, material and energy resources. Emphasis will be on an in-depth study of the environmental science (physical, chemical, and biological) informing us about the causes, connections, scope, scale, and impacts of these issues; as well as the feasibility of potential solutions. Annually. [MNS]
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ENVS 19000 - Readings in Environmental Studies Course Credit: 0.5
Maximum Credit: 1
READINGS IN ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES A “book club” format course that offers students an opportunity to read classic and current books of key importance to the environmental studies field and engage in deep, sustained conversation about them. Discussions are guided by the professor as well as assigned discussion leaders, and seek to unravel the scientific, sociocultural, and humanistic threads that comprise and underlie the books.
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ENVS 19900 - Readings in Environmental Studies Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
Readings in Environmental Studies
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ENVS 19903 - Intro to Environmental Humanities Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
INTRODUCTION TO ENVIRONMENTAL HUMANITIES What does it mean to know the land upon which we stand? How are the histories of our environments legible to us? How does deepening our knowledge of place allow for us to better understand our position in the ecosystem? How do environmental histories correspond to social, political and economic histories of this region? To begin answering these questions, we will read across the disciplines, explore our environs, and meet with local experts, in the process identifying some of the methods for research and writing that are available to us in the Environmental Humanities. [AH]
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ENVS 19904 - Experiments in Everyday Life Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
Experiments in Everyday Life We will begin with the assumption that ecological crises indicate that prevailing systems (economic, social, etc) destroy life on this planet. Rather than focus on that which is failing, we will experiment with projects that build the world in which we wish to live, beginning with an exploration of literary, artistic and philosophical forms of experimentation of other possible worlds. Contemporary experimental poetry and visual art will be a central focus. We will also explore hands-on responses to environmental concerns that might include: practical forms of self-sufficiency in late capitalism, energy alternatives, and experiments in alternative political and economic structures. [AH]
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ENVS 19905 - Readings in ENVS, 2nd Half Course Credit: 0.25
Maximum Credit: 0
READINGS IN ENVS This seven week course will provide students with a close reading of foundational texts related to sustainability and the environment. Designed to expose students to challenging and controversial ideas, the course will be structured around readings, regular meetings and discussion of readings, and writing assignments that ask students to critically reflect on important perspectives in conceptualizing our natural and built environment. Readings will consist of environmental fiction and non-fiction pieces, and may include work in the humanities, natural sciences, and/or social sciences.
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ENVS 19906 - Introduction to Environmental Policy Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
(PSCI)
Introduction to Environmental Policy This seminar analyzes and conducts research on environmental politics, policy-making and environmental justice. It will introduce students to contemporary debates on common pool resources, resource management and exploitation, and the economic ideas of scarcity. The course draws primarily from a range of political economy and sociological studies. We also examine how environmental humanities inform political and cultural movements in environmental justice. A foundational understanding of political science is helpful but not required. Students will use these texts to analyze contemporary climate and environmental challenges, and critically examine international and domestic US policymaking in environmental justice.
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ENVS 19907 - Speculative Environmental Futures Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
Speculative Environmental Futures In this class, we will cultivate our abilities to imagine livable futures in light of the ecocidal and unjust present. How do we move from eco-anxiety and hopelessness to rigorous acts of collective imagination that lead to action? How do we begin, today, to build toward the worlds we wish to see in the future? Working to answer these questions, we will engage in exploratory exercises for individual and collective imagining as well as a rigorous study of speculative fiction and theory, historical and contemporary examples of prefigurative organizing, and regenerative design. Students should be prepared to read deeply across disciplines and perform speculative thought experiments that will culminate in both creative projects and concrete proposals for building resilient futures. [AH]
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ENVS 21000 - Rural Society & the Environment Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
Rural Society and the Environment Coverage of empirical research on the social patterns that characterize rural societies and their relationship to the environment. Themes covered include: rural identies; natural resource flows in the context of national and global political economies; the sociology of agriculture; race, class, and environmental justice in rural areas. [HSS]
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ENVS 22000 - Farm to Table: Understanding Food System Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
FROM FARM TO TABLE: UNDERSTANDING THE FOOD SYSTEM The purpose of this class is to come to a deeper understanding of the complex system of the production and consumption of food. We begin on the farm, discussing the history of American agriculture and the rise of modern industrial farming. Then we explore some of the alternatives that have been proposed to industrial farming, including organic farming and going local. Finally we turn our attention to food itself and tackle the most basic question of all: what should we eat? Offered three of every four years. [HSS]
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ENVS 22001 - From Farm to Table: Food Systems Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
FROM FARM TO TABLE: UNDERSTANDING THE FOOD SYSTEM The purpose of this class is to come to a deeper understanding of the complex system of the production and consumption of food. We begin on the farm, discussing the history of American agriculture and the rise of modern industrial farming. Then we explore some of the alternatives that have been proposed to industrial farming, including organic farming and going local. Finally we turn our attention to food itself and tackle the most basic question of all: what should we eat? Offered three of every four years. [HSS, W]
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ENVS 23000 - Sustainable Agriculture: Theory/Practice Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE: THEORY AND PRACTICE Agroecology is the “science of sustainable agriculture.” It serves as the scientific basis for devising more natural, less environmentally harmful farming practices that build soil fertility and plant resilience while maintaining adequate production levels. The goal of this course is to introduce students to a broad suite of sustainable agriculture principles and practices and to investigate the scientific basis for those practices. Students will learn agroecology techniques by actually practicing them in the campus Learning Garden. Students registering for the course are required to simultaneously register for ENVS 23000L: the associated lab. Prerequisite(s): ENVS-23000L Annually.
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ENVS 23000L - Sustainable Agriculture: Thry/Prac Lab Course Credit: 0.25
Maximum Credit: 0
SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE: THEORY & PRACTICE LAB Prerequisite(s): ENVS-23000 Annually.
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ENVS 24000 - Environmental Innovations Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
ENVIRONMENTAL INNOVATIONS This course will explore the concepts of entrepreneurship and innovation, specifically as problem-solving tools applied to the environmental challenges of the new century. We will use multiple case studies from around the world to explore the framing of both problems and solutions. The course focuses heavily on presentation skills, with students presenting to the class on at least four different occasions.
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ENVS 26000 - Sustainability Challenges Latin America Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
SUSTAINABILITY CHALLENGES IN LATIN AMERICAN Despite great socioeconomic progress throughout Latin America, inequality, threats to biodiversity, rising social tensions, and vulnerability to climate change remain persistent and widespread issues. In this course, we will focus on addressing the questions of what should be sustained in the region, and how do we do it? The course begins with an examination of the concept of sustainability itself, then moves to discussion of some of the ongoing social, economic, political, and ecological challenges in Latin America, and the principle actors, policies, and methodologies that have taken center stage in efforts towards sustainable development. Alternate Years. [MNS]
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ENVS 27000 - Science of Agroecology Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 1.25
THE SCIENCE OF AGROECOLOGY This interdisciplinary course will take an in-depth, science-based look at the ecology of food production in the context of emerging 21st century challenges such as global environmental change, depleting natural resource bases, and shifting patterns in global dietary demands. Examples will be drawn from local, regional, and global food systems, with particular focus on smallholder production and traditional knowledge. Classroom discussion will be complemented with hands-on field activities that will introduce students to the ecological foundations of agroecology. The course requires students to simultaneously register for the accompanying lab, ENVS 27000L. Prerequisite(s): ENVS-27000L Alternate Years. [MNS]
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ENVS 27000L - Science of Agroecology Lab Course Credit: 0
Maximum Credit: 0.25
SCIENCE OF AGROECOLOGY LAB Prerequisite(s): ENVS-27000
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ENVS 28000 - Agricultural Entomology Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
Agricultural Entomology Insects, and arthropods in general, are a vital component of any farm system, or agroecosystem. In this class, we will explore the relationships between humans and arthropods in agriculture and understand how we can manage these relationships in the pursuit of sustainable food production. We will understand the general bases of insect biology, morphology, and behavior, and critically assess the ecology of insects and arthropods in agroecosystems. We will also learn the theory and practices of pest management and integrate them into the environmentally sound management of crops and livestock. [MNS]
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ENVS 29900 - Topics in ENVS Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
Topics in ENVS
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ENVS 29901 - Cultural Studies in Energy Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
CULTURAL STUDIES IN ENERGY This course will consider the complex relationship between energy extraction and cultural production through a broad investigation of literature, music and visual art alongside historical and critical sources about energy. We will explore methods across the humanities for looking at the role that energy plays in culture, focusing on three areas: nuclear power in Japan, oil in Nigeria, and fossil fuels in and around Appalachia. We will conclude the course by researching and imagining energy alternatives. Students will be invited to respond both critically and creatively to the topics explored in the course. [AH]
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ENVS 29902 - Queer Ecologies Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0
QUEER ECOLOGIES In this course, the frame of queer ecology will serve as an invitation to ponder the multitudinous relations an organism might have to its environment. Our explorations will be largely informed by theoretical texts (including, but not limited to, those concerned with ecofeminism, environmental justice, queer theory, feminist materialism, ecosexuality and posthumanism) accompanied by outdoor exploration, literature (including Vi Ki Nao and Octavia Butler) and visual art (including The Institute for Queer Ecology, Zheng Bo and Rian Hammond). Students will be required to produce formal and informal writing, as well as at least one creative project in any medium.
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