Spring 2009 Undergraduate Courses

Course Request Period for Spring 2009 semester begins November 3 and ends November 14.

Special Notes:
Instructors, sections, and topics for 100-level writing courses are subject to change after Course Request Period, depending on enrollments.

Admittance to Honors sections and 200-level Creative Writing workshops are subject to instructor approval. See individual course listings for specific instructions.

Spring 2009 Courses meeting Ethnic/Nonwestern Literature major & minor requirements	Spring 2009 Courses meeting Pre-1800 Literature major & minor requirements
EAS 219	208A-01
EAS 226	209B-01
JS 235W-01	210-01
263-01	214A-01
272-01	221-01
278-01 HN	251-01
283-01	272-03
288-02	282-01

Spring 2009 dual-listed courses that may be counted toward the major:

EAS 219-01. Premodern Chinese Novels
satisfies ethnic/nonwestern literature requirement for major

Lam, Ling Hon

TR 110-225

A survey of 16th-18th century Chinese novels (including military, martial arts, libertine, and romantic stories). We will see how they negotiate between history and fiction, orality and literacy, private and public, and examine how these negotiations affect the representation of sex and gender, the demarcation of domestic and social space, and the construction of individual subjects with emotional interiority. TV and film adaptations of these novels will also be sampled in class.

EAS 226-01. Martial Arts Literature and Film

satisfies ethnic/nonwestern literature requirement for major
Lam, Ling Hon

TR 400-515

R 530-800 (screenings)

This course covers martial arts fiction from antiquity to twentieth century and Chinese action film since the late 1960s. We will focus on such issues as construction of femininity and masculinity, politics of camp and queerness, representations of body and technology, history of film techniques and styles, and tensions between national identity and transnational cinema.

JS 235W-01. Hebrew Literature in Translation

satisfies ethnic/nonwestern literature requirement for major

Schachter, A.

MWF 110-200

A survey of the major developments in Hebrew literature from the 1890s to the present day, looking at the origins and development of Hebrew literature from the environs of Eastern Europe in the nineteenth century to post-modern Israeli literature written at the end of the twentieth century.

JS 253W-01. Witnesses Who Were Not There: Literature of the Children of Holocaust Survivors

Meyer, A.

TR 810-925

From the late 1970s the children of survivors began to discuss the effect of the Holocaust on their lives. Memoirs and fiction illuminate the rationales and motivations behind their diverse reactions. At the end of the course we will also briefly consider the situation of the children of Holocaust perpetrators.

HIST 287A-01. History, Trauma and Memory

Igarashi, Y.

M 110-340

Explores the relationships between personal experiences and history. Emphasis on historical writing, literature, and film from the 20th and 21st century.

Spring 2009 English Courses:

ENGL 100. Composition

For students who need to improve their writing. Emphasis on writing skills, with some analysis of modern nonfiction writing.

02. TR 1100-1215 Kersh, S.

This course is designed to help you improve your reading, writing, and critical thinking skills, with a primary emphasis on prose composition non-fiction. Throughout the semester, you will produce four essays as well as weekly writing assignments. We will read a variety of non-fiction work including, but not limited to: political speeches, magazine and newspaper articles, music/movie reviews and personal essays.

03. MWF 210-300 Hagood, A.

ENGL 102W. Literature and Analytical Thinking

Close reading and writing in a variety of genres drawn from several periods. Productive dialogue, persuasive argument, and effective prose style.

01. MWF 810-900 Champ, N.

02. MWF 810-900 Birdsong, D.

03. MWF 910-1000 Packard, B.

In this class we will engage a selection of poetry, drama, and long and short fiction through the common theme of the secrets people keep and the choices they make to maintain them. These readings will include: Runaway, by Alice Munro, Run, by Ann Patchett, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, by William Shakespeare, and The Duchess of Malfi, by John Webster. The course is discussion-based and aims to increase writing comfort and capability through reading and writing about literature. Among the questions and concerns we will encounter are the following: When are secrets worth keeping?When is a revelation truth telling, and when is it betrayal? Can you ever run away from a secret in your past? Can running away from a restrictive life really allow you to let your secret self out into the light of day?Our work will proceed with a view to provide you with the tools necessary for writing thoughtful and articulate college-level papers in this and future courses in all subjects.

04. MWF 910-1000 McColl, K.

05. MWF 910-1000 Duques, M.

06. MWF 1010-1100 Chuang, A.

07. MWF 1010-1100 Wanninger, J.

08. MWF 1010-1100 Haynes, J.

09. MWF 1110-1200 Meadows, E.

10. MWF 1110-1200 TBA

11. TR 810-925 Baca, B.

12. TR 810-925 Nesler, M.

13. TR 935-1050 Bellonby, D.

14. TR 935-1050 Spinka, E.

15. TR 935-1050 Minarich, M.

16. TR 1100-1215 Hoffer, L.
This course will focus on literary examples of impersonation in terms of questions re: identity, class, gender, race, etc. There will be 3 formal papers, each of which will be revised (no exams). Texts: Twelfth Night, The Importance of Being Earnest, The New Magdalen, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man, various poems, and two writing handbooks.

17. TR 1100-1215 Eatough, M.

18. TR 1100-1215 Covington, E.

"Cultural Representations of Organized Violence "

Organized violence is a concept that is very difficult to define, yet we know it when we are confronted with it. In this course, we will investigate the concept of organized violence through several media: literature (drama, novel, graphic novel, poetry), film, and sport. Drawing on these sources, we will grapple in discussion and in writing with some of the cultural questions regarding organized violence.

ENGL 104W-01. Prose Fiction

Reisman, N.

MW 110-225

This English 104 section is designed with the interests of new and potential fiction writers in mind. We’ll focus on the inner workings of prose fiction, consider the possibilities and the boundaries of flash fiction, short stories, novellas and novels. Where is the common ground between fiction and poetry, fiction and drama, fiction and film? What techniques are shared, borrowed, adapted? Over the term we’ll read a broad range of contemporary work and consider the architecture of the work, how different writers adapt and invent form, as well as how they approach their subjects, employ language, and craft their stories. How do different writers represent time? Perception? We’ll consider the tensions within fiction, the ways different writers portray character, the integration of lyricism and storytelling, as well as ways the writers and their work relate to the larger culture(s). The written work for the seminar will include short and longer analytical discussions as well as some brief creative assignments.

FYS 115F-20. Freshman Seminar

Religion, Science and Literature: Apocalypse, Dystopia and Beyond

Fanning, J.

TR 1110-1215

The millennium’s end, disasters such as Hurricane Katrina, and the specter of global warming have precipitated what has been called the “doom boom.” This increased interest in stories about the end of the world and depictions of societies gone wrong has also been fed by technological advances and religious extremism. Will the Human Genome Project usher in a new eugenics? Can we avoid a nuclear 9/11?

For thousands of years, storytellers have been imagining the world’s complete destruction or transformation by forces beyond human control. In the 19^th and 20^th centuries, authors of speculative fiction turned their imaginations to communities corrupted or destroyed by unbridled scientific, religious or political ideologies. In this course, we will explore novels, short stories and films that present post-apocalyptic worlds and dystopias where the forces of nature and culture threaten to extinguish the human spirit. Readings span from Aldous Huxley’s 1932 novel Brave New World, to Cormac McCarthy’s 2006 Pulitzer-Prize-winning book The Road. Viewings include Andrew Niccol’s Gattaca and Fernando Meirelles’ Blindness.

ENGL 116W. Introduction to Poetry

Close study and criticism of poems. The nature of poetry, and the process of literary explication.

01. MWF 810-900 Staff

02. TR 110-225 Daniels, K.

03. MWF 1110-1200 Staff

04. MWF 1210-100 Staff

05. MWF 1210-100 Staff

06. MWF 210-300 Staff

07. MWF 310-400 Staff

08. MWF 310-400 Staff

09. MWF 410-500 Staff

10. TR 935-1050 Bachmann, B.

11. TR 935-1050 Plummer, J.

12. TR 1100-1215 Staff

ENGL-117W. Introduction to Literary Criticism

Selected critical approaches to literature.

01. MWF 210-300 Staff

02. MWF 310-400 Staff

03. TR 235-350 Fusco, K.

04. TR 400-515 Staff

Special Note: Topics for 118W sections are posted as instructors are assigned and descriptions are developed. Contact individual instructor for further detail.

ENGL 118W-01. Literary and Cultural Analysis

Dicker, R.

MWF 1010-1100

ENGL 118W-02. Literary and Cultural Analysis

Staff

MWF 810-900

ENGL 118W-03. Literary and Cultural Analysis

Enterline, L.

MWF 1010-1100

ENGL 118W-04. Literary and Cultural Analysis

Staff

MWF 1110-1200

ENGL 118W-05. Literary and Cultural Analysis

Staff

MWF 1210-100

ENGL 118W-06. Literary and Cultural Analysis

Staff

MWF 1210-100

ENGL 118W-07. Literary and Cultural Analysis

Topic: Imaginative Writing

Lopez, L.

MWF 110-200

With awareness of cultural and regional context, students will develop the habits and skills that contemporary imaginative writers use—the strategies that produce quality writing in any genre and that make it possible for students to focus, to shape and articulate a literary aesthetic, and to discover what they really want to say. Toward that end, students will compose work in various genres for peer evaluation, as well as generate written critique and analysis of professional contemporary writing and the cultural influences that shape it.

ENGL 118W-08. Literary and Cultural Analysis

Staff

MWF 210-300

ENGL 118W-09. Literary and Cultural Analysis

Staff

MWF 310-400

ENGL 118W-10. Literary and Cultural Analysis

Staff

MWF 410-500

ENGL 118W-11. Literary and Cultural Analysis

Staff

MWF 410-500

ENGL 118W-12. Literary and Cultural Analysis

Kisery, A.

TR 110-225
"Drama and Politics"
Drama is not only the most obviously communal of literary genres, but also one that has paid a persistent attention to the formation and government of the communities that produced and watched it, as well as to the political conflicts they engaged in. Over the course of the term, we are going to trace how plays written in classical Athens, Renaissance England, and in modern Europe and America addressed the questions of citizenship, of tyranny, of political rights, or democracy, rebellion and revolution, and think about how dramatic form changed under the changing pressures of its political environment. Our readings will probably include works by Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Shakespeare, Brecht, Churchill, Friel, Stoppard, and Kushner.

ENGL 118W-13. Literary and Cultural Analysis

Staff

TR 810-925

ENGL 118W-14. Literary and Cultural Analysis

Kasibhatla, J.

TR 1100-1215

“Contemporary British Literature”

What does it mean to be a post-imperial nation? In this course, we will study how contemporary British literature struggles both with Britain’s past as an empire and its present status as a secondary power in the shadow of the United States. We will explore how British literature has represented the crises that emerged in key moments of political and cultural change including: the rise of Thatcher, the demise of the welfare state, racial conflict and immigration policy. Readings may include texts by the following writers: Graham Greene, John Osborne, Muriel Spark, Anthony Burgess, Phillip Larkin, Martin Amis, Jeanette Winterson, Angela Carter, Doris Lessing, David Lodge, Salman Rushdie, Hanif Kureishi, Seamus Heaney, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Kazuo Ishiguro.

ENGL 118W-15. Literary and Cultural Analysis

Tichi, C.

TR 110-225

ENGL 118W-16. Literary and Cultural Analysis

Topic: “Caribbean Women Writers: Life, Literature, and Lyrics”

Nwankwo, I.

TR 235-350

This course will introduce students to the writings and life experiences of women from this region to our south, this region that has been for so long so profoundly affected by and connected to the U.S. By analyzing a range of materials, from novels to song lyrics to interviews (conducted by you), to scholarly writings we will work together to gain a deeper understanding of the recurring issues and concerns that seem to underpin writers’ decisions about content and form, and that, by extension, have an impact on the lives of Caribbean women whether or not they are writers. Course requirements include regular response papers/close readings, multimedia or print research projects (midterm and final), and class presentation.

ENGL 118W-17. Literary and Cultural Analysis

Staff

TR 400-515

ENGL 118W-18. Literary and Cultural Analysis

Staff

TR 400-515

ENGL 120W-01. Intermediate Composition

Staff
MWF 310-400

ENGL 120W-02. Intermediate Composition

Morrell, J.

TR 810-925

ENGL 122-01. Beginning Fiction Workshop

TR 400-515

Earley, T.

ENGL 122-02. Beginning Fiction Workshop

W 910-1200

Randall, A.

ENGL 123-01. Beginning Poetry Workshop

Sarnowski, M.

W 310-600

This course will focus on developing an awareness to various elements of the craft of writing poetry, and to locate the unique voice in each student. Students will read contemporary poets, write their own poems, and interact in a workshop setting. Students will have assigned reading material and be expected to actively participate in open discussions and workshops. Submitted work includes poems, close readings, and a final portfolio.

ENGL 123-02. Beginning Poetry Workshop

Bachmann, B.

TR 110-225

In this introductory poetry writing workshop, you will both write and read poetry. While the primary texts will be poems written by members of the workshop, you will also be introduced to the work of contemporary poets as well as to criticism on various elements of the craft of poetry, including line, sound, rhythm, perspective, metaphor, imitation and revision. In addition to submitting original poetry to the workshop and critiquing other participants’ work, you will be expected to complete creative assignments and keep a writer’s notebook. Assessment will be based on participation, completion of the assignments and notebook, and submission of a final portfolio.

ENGL 200-01. Intermediate Nonfiction Writing

Solomon, S.

M 310-600

Due to limited enrollment, students will be screened during first week of class on the basis of writing samples. Registered students must contact the instructor before the first day of class.

Other People’s Lives: Memoir and Biography

Students in this course will read selected portraits of other people—portraits drawn from memory and personal experience (memoirs, profiles, interviews) and from documents, both historical and contemporary—and then they will try to write their own. This is a nonfiction workshop, so the emphasis will be on writing vividly and offering feedback to classmates about writing. The class will read memoirs and excerpts of biographies (mostly about writers and other artists); obituaries (which in Britain are often wonderfully evocative and opinionated sketches of the man or woman who has died) and interviews, possibly letters and journal entries. We will look at how other people come alive on the page—the details of character and action that give the reader a sense of other people’s lives, their idiosyncrasies, their virtues and limitations, what they do and how they do it.

ENGL 201-01. Advanced Nonfiction Writing

Guralnick, P.

W 310-600

Limited enrollment. Admission to the workshop is by instructor permission, with re-enrollment by students who have previously taken the course subject to the same proviso. Interested students should register and contact the English Department about submitting a brief writing sample on an assigned topic before the December break.

This is a workshop on Creative Nonfiction, which revolves around the writing of the participants, with additional readings in work by such writers as Gay Talese, Gary Smith, Jack Kerouac, Louis Menand, Wil Haygood, and Alice Munro. It will focus on issues of characterization, narrative technique, selectivity of detail, and angle of perception, with special emphasis on the profile -- in other words, how to make a real-life story come alive in the same way that fictional narrative can. This is a workshop in which we are all interdependent on each other's efforts. Three major pieces of 2500-3000 words will be required, along with the possibility of some brief additional exercises. Every student in the course will critique each of the other students' papers in writing, and the class will consist primarily of constructive discussion of the work. Class participation is the second most important element of the class (after the writing itself), so attendance is of the highest importance. Most of all, the workshop is a kind of shared enterprise in which a mutual enthusiasm for writing (irrespective of the level of achievement) should make it engaging -- and fun -- for all. The only prerequisite is a commitment to effort and honest self-expression.

ENGL 205-01. Advanced Fiction Workshop

Reisman, N.

T 310-600

In late December or early January, I’ll contact interested students regarding submission of a brief writing sample (please submit by the first day of the spring term).

This course is designed to help experienced writers refine both their own aesthetics and their understanding of fiction's possibilities. We'll focus on literary fiction, primarily but not exclusively on short forms (we’ll also discuss approaches to novel writing), and examine how published writers and workshop member define ‘story’. The heart of the course is the workshop, the development of your original fiction, and your exploration of new territory in form and subject. Our readings will be drawn from international contemporary authors and essayists, and we’ll look closely at the way time, space, and perception can operate in fiction. The workshop will focus primarily on realist modes (extending to surrealism and magical realism), and we’ll also consider how work in other art forms might illuminate or inform our visions of fiction writing. Previous experience with creative writing required; fiction workshop experience highly recommended. Admission to the workshop is by instructor permission.

ENGL 205-02. Advanced Fiction Workshop

Earley, T.

W 1210-300

ENGL 207-01. Advanced Poetry Workshop

Daniels, K.

M 210-500

ENGL 208A-01. Representative British Writers, beginnings to 1660

Moore, R.

MWF 1010-1100

satisfies pre-1800 literature requirement for major

This course will serve as an introduction to some of the major works of English literature from the Anglo-Saxon period to the Restoration. Our major readings will include Beowulf, selections from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the Book of Margery Kempe, and a Shakespeare play. We will also read selections from the poetry of Sidney, Spenser, Marlowe, Donne, Herbert, Marvell, and Milton. Works will be read in light of contemporary cultural, philosophical, and religious contexts. Assignments will include two papers, occasional tests, and a final exam.

ENGL 208B-01. Representative British Writers, 1660-present

Gottfried, R.

MWF 910-1000

No writer writes in a vacuum. Moved not only by the surrounding events of the time and place, a writer is changed as well by previous authors and works. This course will examine the major periods of English literature from the Restoration to the Modern era in their cultural features and will study the major poets in engagement with their literary predecessors. The course provides an exposure to the famous works of the English tradition for the general student and provides a broad background for those students considering more specialized advanced studies.

ENGL 209B-01. Shakespeare

Kisery, A.

TR 935-1050
satisfies pre-1800 literature requirement for major
This course offers a survey of the second half of Shakespeare's dramatic career, from Hamlet to The Tempest, from the experimental work called "problem plays" through some of the great tragedies to the sometimes baffling miracles of the late plays. We will pay attention to questions of staging and publication, as well as to the families, friendships and political agendas that inhabit the drama. Plays discussed will probably also include Troilus and Cressida, Measure for Measure, King Lear, MacBeth, Coriolanus, The Winter's Tale, and Cymbeline.

ENGL 211W-01. Representative American Writers

Cervantes, G.

MWF 910-1000

American Literature: The Short Story

A hybrid genre, the short story combines narrative techniques with poetic compression. Taking this form as its lens, this course will introduce students to authors and movements in the literary history of the United States. Focused on writing, this course will also teach students to develop argumentative essays that link literary devices (metaphor, focalization, and narrative time) to historical contexts (nation-building, magazine publishing, immigration). Authors will include, among others, Washington Irving, Herman Melville, Edith Wharton, Langston Hughes, Dorothy Parker, Sherman Alexie, and Junot Diaz. Course Requirements: three short papers, careful reading, and lively participation.

ENGL 211W-02. Representative American Writers

Cervantes, G.

MWF 110-200

American Literature: The Short Story

ENGL 214A-01. Literature and Intellectual History

Garcia, H.

TR 1100-1215

“Race, Religion, and Empire in the Wide Eighteenth Century”

satisfies pre-1800 literature requirement for major

The period often designated as “the Long Eighteenth Century” is also an age of imperial expansion, mobility, and exchange on a wider, global scale. In this advanced course, we will focus on the early empire in India and the transatlantic slave trade as a context for understanding British Romantic literature, focusing on the ways in which these two spheres of exchange call into question certain eurocentric views of the transatlantic world. Between 1770 and 1820, British traders, administrators, travelers, missionaries, painters, and writers experienced and represented the early, unstable, and uncertain formation of an empire in the “East” and the “West,” sometimes in the service of an imperial agenda, sometimes in their sympathetic attempts to understand alien people and religions, and sometimes in the complex convergence of these two perspectives. In turn, Indian and African writers such as Sake Dean Mahomed and Olaudah Equiano themselves entered into and described scenes of intercultural exchange and conflict, questioning western forms of knowledge and power in the process. In order to understand the various transformations produced by imperial encounters between races, bodies, languages, natures, economies, and religions, we will read a broad range of canonical and noncanonical poetry, prose, and drama as well as abolitionist and proslavery writings, narratives of exploration, the publications of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, and paintings of Indian landscapes. In addition to the authors mentioned above, we will read works by Anna Letitia Barbauld, Edmund Burke, Sydney Owenson, Percy B. Shelley, and others. Our studies will focus on primary texts, although occasionally they may be complemented with critical works on race, orientalism, and colonialism.

Each student will write a short essay (pp. 5-6), which will be expanded and revised into a research paper (pp. 11-12). There will be a midterm and a comprehensive final exam. Occasionally, you will be required to write one-page response papers. Attendance and participation are absolutely mandatory.

ENGL 221-01. Medieval Literature

Plummer, J.

TR 110-225

satisfies pre-1800 literature requirement for major
This course introduces the student to the chief literary forms and cultural issues of the late 13^th through the 15^th centuries in England. We will read romances, lyrics, and allegory, exploring the alterity and modernity of medieval culture, what we have in common with the period and how we differ from it. No previous experience with medieval studies is required or expected. Graded work includes a midterm and final exam, a paper of 8-10 pages, and an in-class presentation.

ENGL 231-01 Nineteenth Century English Novel

Farina, J.

MW 1110-1225

This class will read six nineteenth-century English novels: Mary Barton (Elizabeth Gaskell), Vanity Fair (W. M. Thackeray), Bleak House (Charles Dickens), Villette (Charlotte Brontë), The Mill on the Floss (George Eliot), and She (H. Rider Haggard). We will pay attention to the convergence of stylistic conventions and historical concerns, including urbanization and colonization, the police and detection, sexual repression and expression, evolution and religious skepticism, and the tricky relationships between ideas of individuality and society. No doubt we will also share our shameless emotional investments in various characters and consider, too, how the forms of these novels compare to specific modern serial narratives on television, like Lost and Sex in the City. You will write 1-2 page weekly response papers and one 7-10 page formal essay.

ENGL 232A-01 Twentieth Century American Novel

Bell, V.

MW 110-225

Tracking a recurring theme in modern American fiction we will read and discuss at least eight and probably all of the following novels, more or less in this order: Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; Edith Wharton, House of Mirth; F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby; Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms; William Faulkner, Light in August; Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man; Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita; Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon; Philip Roth, American Pastoral. One half-hour in-class discussion-question essay each time a novel comes up plus two four-or-five-page out-of-class papers (one due right after spring break and one at the end of the term) will be the basis for most of the grade plus a final exam weighing in at about 20%. No structured events like team reports, etc., involved, just smart in-class discussion and exchange of ideas.

ENGL 233-01. The Modern British Novel

Wollaeger, M.

TR 935-1050

In this course we will study fiction by major British novelists, paying particular attention to transformations of novelistic form and the ways in which novels engage with their historical moment. These novels are often quite challenging. For reasons we will discuss, many modern novelists (and poets) cultivated difficulty both at the level of story (many are narrated in a less than straightforward manner) and style. At the same time, however much novelists wanted to revise fictional form, the expected pleasures of novel-reading remain: complex characterization and the creation of a fictional world. Novelists will likely include Arnold Bennett, Virginia Woolf, Joseph Conrad, Rebecca West, James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, Elizabeth Bowen, E. M. Forster, Ian McEwan. Requirements will include regular reading quizzes, two short essays, and a final exam.

ENGL 246-01. Feminist Theory

Spillers, H.

TR 235-350

This course is devoted to the study of theory generated by women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, developed in the US academy over the last 20 years; we will read from a range of thinkers in cross-cultural and interdisciplinary context.

ENGL 251-01. Milton

Marcus, L.

MWF 1010-1100

satisfies pre-1800 literature requirement for major

John Milton has long been reputed the second greatest writer in English after Shakespeare, but he has almost always been more controversial than Shakespeare. In this course we will find out why. We will read all of “Classic” Milton: Comus, Lycidas, Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes and the minor poems. We will also dip into Milton’s prose, in which he advocated such daring and radical ideas (for his time) as freedom of the press, freedom of religion, and divorce for incompatible partners in marriage. Major emphasis will be placed on considering his writings in the context of the shifting political landscape before and during the English Civil War and its aftermath.

ENGL 254b-01. The Romantic Period

Garcia, H.

TR 235-350

In the Defense of Poetry, Percy Bysshe Shelley describes poets as “the institutors of laws, and the founders of civil society, and the inventors of the arts of life, and the teachers who draw into a certain propinquity with the beautiful and the true that apprehension of the agencies of the invisible world which is called religion.”

As a way of understanding the cultural and literary transformations that we now retrospectively call “Romanticism,” this intensive survey course examines P. B. Shelley’s view of “Poetry” in relationship to the romantic motif of “apocalypse” as a religious, biblical, and secular phenomenon that captivated the British imagination between 1789 and 1830. This course will be structured around the following questions: why does “the Poet” become a social and political icon by the Romantic period? Could a woman writer adopt Shelley’s concept of “the Poet” for herself? How does poetry possess supernatural insight into the past, present, and future? Why is “the end of history” theme a powerful obsession for British Romantics and how does it structure the way they think and write? In order to begin answering these questions, we will spend the first part of the semester studying sections of William Wordsworth’s The Prelude (in its various editions) within the context of the political controversy that was sparked by the 1789 revolution in France. In the second part of the course, we will analyze the mytho-poetic prophecies of William Blake, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, John Keats, and P. B. Shelley in order to consider the political and social impact of the French Revolution on the development of an apocalyptic poetics. The third section of this course will conclude with Mary Shelley’s novel, The Last Man (1826), a romantic spoof on apocalyptic poetics.

Heavy classroom participation is required; one-page responses meant to kick-start discussions will be assigned periodically. There will be a midterm and a comprehensive final exam. Students will write a 5-6 page term paper, which will be expanded and revised into a 10-11 page term paper by the end of the semester.

ENGL 258-01. Poetry Since WW II

Levy, E.

MW 235-350

“American Poetry 1945-1975: Politics, Sexuality and Form.” The task of the modern poet, Ezra Pound said, is to “make it new.” But is a poem’s newness—or oldness—a matter of form or of content? Can wild emotions be contained in strict forms, does free verse necessarily go hand-in-hand with free thinking? In this survey of the American poetry scene from the end of the Second World War to the end of the Vietnam War, we will focus on the often unexpected mixtures of poetic, public and personal radicalism and conservatism to be found in the works and lives of such poets as Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, Gwendolyn Brooks, Richard Wilbur, John Ashbery, Allen Ginsberg, James Merrill and Sylvia Plath.

ENGL 262W-01. Law and Literature

Fesmire, J.

TR 110-225

Literature and Law, examines the interrelations of law and literature from three perspectives:

1. Law in Literature: This section investigates the evolution of the legal system as reflected in Western Literature. Texts will include:

Antigone, Malory’s Morte D’Arthur, The Spanish Tragedy, The Merchant of Venice, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, Rashomon, The Bonfire of the Vanities.

2. Law as Literature: This section focuses on judicial opinions and statutes as forms of literature. We discuss the differences between the ways lawyers/judges and lay people read judicial opinions. We also examine the prose styles of various judges, such as Oliver Wendell Holmes, Learned Hand, and William O. Douglas to determine how style, rhetoric, and form of narrative shape the force of judicial opinions.

3. Critical legal theory: This section includes an introduction to feminist legal theory and critical race theory, with commentaries by James Boyd White, Richard Posner, Mary Ann Glendon, Patricia Williams, Katharine Bartlett, and Catherine MacKinnon.

ENGL 263-01. African American Literature

Baker, H.

TR 1100-1215

satisfies ethnic/nonwestern literature requirement for major

African American and Diaspora Narrative offers a course in development, experimental, expansive, and free flowing. Much of what we accomplish will depend upon the astuteness and energy of group participation as we construct a sui generis view of the creativity of men and women authors of African descent in the African Diaspora. We shall read across genres – autobiography, fiction, social science and social history, biography, and perhaps more. Readings will also range across chronologies from the nineteenth- to the twenty-first century. Authors will include at least the following: Frederick Douglass, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Edwidge Danticat, Carter G. Woodson, E. Franklin Frazier, Earl Lovelace, Opal Palmer Adisa, Gloria Naylor, John Wideman, Alice Walker, and others. We shall read in criticism, theory, and history. We shall use both documentary and feature film DVDs. There will be individual and collaborative class presentations. A guest lecturer or two will join us to enlarge our fields of knowledge.

ENGL 265-01. Film and Modernism

Girgus, S.

MWF 210-300
Note: Mandatory film screenings will be held Tuesdays 3:30-6:00 or Wednesdays 6:00-8:30 in BT 103

Film originated with the modernist movement and grew to maturity with the great modernists of art, literature, and philosophy. The course will study the structure, aesthetics, and cultural significance of film from the perspective and within the context of the major themes of modernism: the divided self, the break between language and realism, nihilism and the search for belief, narrative space and time in film, ideology and identity, politics and aesthetics, the body and film. Suggested texts will include classic studies of modernism and the modern tradition as well as recent theories of cinema and modernism. We will read these authors in the modern tradition in conjunction with studying the cinema of modernism as seen in the films of Antonioni, Allen, Bergman, De Sica, Godard, Truffaut, Bunuel, Ford, Eisenstein, Capra, among others. A considerable part of the course will include participation in the “Refacing High School” project.

ENGL 269-01. Special Topics in Film

Girgus, S. / Conkwright, K.

T 110-400

“Nashville Documentary”

Students will make Nashville their laboratory and stage for studying and filming the life and people of the city. They will investigate and research specific problems and issues in the city and the people and groups involved with them. Designed for both beginning and advanced students, the course anticipates the filming and editing of documentaries that will be presented for the university and wider communities at the end of the semester.

Such issues as immigration, health care, women, families, education, among others, will be open for study and filming. In their work, students will be encouraged to imagine Nashville as the "City of Dreams " for the people who live and work there. The course is directly related to and supported by a grant called "Filming Nashville: Student Documentaries on People, Life, and Community" that is funded by the Vanderbilt Center for Nashville Studies. The course and project will include the participation of "com-mentors," mentors from the community to provide assistance and guidance, as well as documentary professionals to assist in the learning and practice of documentary filmmaking. Guest speakers will address this and other related classes.

ENGL 269-02. Special Topics in Film

Young, P.

MWF 1010-1100
Note: Mandatory screenings will be held every Sunday at 4:00-6:30 or Tuesday 8:30-11:00

“Hitchcock in England and America”
Well known as the "Master of Suspense" thanks to his television programs and persistently popular films like North by Northwest and Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock's early career as England's most acclaimed and innovative filmmaker is more obscure to American spectators. This course examines important Hitchcock films produced on both shores, with three main critical approaches to guide us:

1. Hitchcock as technician and innovator in film form, style, and narration;
2. Hitchcock as a director-artist - an auteur - whose thematic and aesthetic concerns unify his films; and
3. Hitchcock's films as a set of cultural documents - lenses through which we might understand both British and American history and culture in a new light.

Critical and theoretical texts on Hitchcock (including historical, ideological, and feminist interpretations of his work) will be read and discussed along with the films.

Students will be evaluated according to their ability to apply concepts and interpretative strategies from these readings to Hitchcock's work, to form productive writing and research questions about his films, and to approach films and readings with curiosity, energy, and creativity. Your professor is equally impressed by creative application of course readings and concepts and ideas that surprise and drive new thinking - especially when the written form of these ideas communicates logically, clearly, and with ample support from films! Emphasis will be placed on formal writing (there will be no final exam), film journals, and regularly engaged participation in discussion. NOTE: SENIOR FILM MAJORS TAKING THIS COURSE FOR SENIOR SEMINAR CREDIT WILL HAVE A DISTINCT SET OF ASSIGNMENTS.

ENGL 272-01. Movements in Literature
Nwankwo, I.

TR 1100-1215

satisfies ethnic/nonwestern literature requirement for major
"The Caribbean in the American Literary and Popular Imagination"

What comes to mind when you think of the Caribbean? What sorts of images of these countries/communities have you seen on TV, in advertisements, in feature films? How are they similar to or different from each other? Do there seem to be particular characteristics that are frequently associated with particular countries in the region (eg. Jamaica, Haiti, Cuba) and/or their people? In this course, we will explore the portrayal and presence of the Caribbean in U.S. American discourse—present and past, using literary critical and Cultural Studies techniques. We will delve into texts as varied as ads for “Caribbean” rum, novels by African American and white American writers, cinematic classics like Humphrey Bogart’s To Have and Have Not, and contemporary music videos such as Jay-Zs “Big Pimpin’” with the goal of better understanding what these images tell us about ourselves, about the complexities of what it means to be an American. We will then build on our analyses of the images as we to explore the nature of Americans’ material engagements with the region, specifically of Americans’ interactions with the region as tourists. Importantly, in this course students with be provided with the tools, guidance, and encouragement they need in order to create their own multimedia and/or print research projects on the topic, foregrounding their own perspectives, while also learning how to incorporate primary and secondary source material uncovered through research.

ENGL 272-02. Movements in Literature

Mikkelsen, A.

MWF 1210-100

“Poetry and Crisis in the Twentieth Century”

When we hear “poetry,” we usually think that we know what we are talking about—what a poem is, what we are supposed to learn from it, what function poetry has in our society. But the very idea of poetry, especially what we know as “lyric” poetry, has changed dramatically over the past 200 years in the United States. This course will address the changing function of lyric poetry since the mid-nineteenth century, focusing upon competing conceptions of poetry as essentially private or public forms of address, assumptions about the connections between speakers and poets, debates about the material “appropriate” or “proper” to poetry, and articulations of the links between poetry and politics. We will begin by examining the work of Emily Dickinson in the context of poetry popular in the mid-nineteenth century; then consider Whitman’s construction of a national poem; next trace the development of the high modernist lyric (and its counterpart in the New Criticism) in poets such as Stevens, Williams, and Moore; turn to Muriel Rukeyser’s poetry of the 1930s as an example of Popular Front poetics; study the convergence of aesthetic and political concerns in Harlem Renaissance poets such as Langston Hughes and Sterling Brown; and conclude with Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, and Gwendolyn Brooks in order to discuss the convergence of poetry with the mid-to-late century concerns of the Women’s Movement and the continuing struggle for racial equality. As a coda, we will look at Gertrude Stein and Language poet Lyn Hejinian’s avant-garde reformulations of lyric at the very beginning and end of the twentieth century respectively.

ENGL 272-03. Movements in Literature

Schwarz, K.

TR 235-350

satisfies pre-1800 literature requirement for major

“Renaissance Revenge Tragedy”

In this course we will consider the preoccupation with revenge—what Francis Bacon calls “a kind of wild justice”—in Renaissance drama. We will discuss the structure of revenge not only within the limits of tragedy, but as it influences such other genres as comedy and romance, using the figure of the revenger to address a range of dramatic and historical issues. These issues will include the function of the body as an agent and a victim of violence, representations of sexuality and gender roles, the implications of revenge for the political state, and the connections between revenge and other kinds of physical, erotic, or social transgression. Our discussion will give particular attention to questions of violence, gender, and agency; the role of the victim as motive and as ghost; and the relationship between revenge and theatricality. Readings may include Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy; Marlowe, The Jew of Malta; Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus; Jonson, Volpone; Middleton/Tourneur, The Revenger's Tragedy; Heywood, A Woman Killed With Kindness; Webster, The Duchess of Malfi; Middleton, The Changeling; Ford, ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore. Requirements: participation, presentation, paper related to presentation, and final paper.

ENGL 272-04. Movements in Literature

Wollaeger, M.

TR 110-225

“Comparative Modernisms: Ireland, France, Japan”

Just what the title says: a comparative study of modernist literature from Ireland, France, and Japan. All texts will be read in translation, though those able to read in the original are of course encouraged to do so. An international movement, modernist literature developed at different times in different places. We will begin in France, typically thought to be the home of modernism’s earliest nineteenth-century antecedents: Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary in fiction, Charles Baudelaire’s Les fleurs du mal in poetry, both published in the annus mirabilis of 1857. (For a surprisingly “not-really-all-that-bad” overview of the modernism, consult Wikipedia.) Other French texts will include samples of Symbolist poetry (e.g., Stéphane Mallarmé) as well as Alfred Jarry’s notorious play Ubu Roi (1896). Our main Irish authors will be W. B. Yeats (not only his poetry but also one of his plays written in response to Japanese Noh drama) and James Joyce, whose Ulysses (1922) will absorb our energies during the middle of the semester. Our readings of Japanese Modanizumu, or modernism, will focus exclusively on examples of short fiction from 1913-1938. Our collective aim will be to arrive at a deeper understanding of modernism by examining how these three national strands of the international movement overlap, diverge, and build on one another. Two essays, regular response papers, an in-class presentation, and a take-home final.

ENGL 274-01 Major Figures in Literature

HONORS

Porter, D.

M 310-600

“Wordsworth and Coleridge”

A 3.25 cumulative GPA, 3.5 Major GPA, and Approval Required. Final enrollment determined by English Department at the end of the course request period.

In the summer of 1798, two young and relatively unknown poets began a collaborative volume of poems to finance their trip to Germany. From these inauspicious beginnings, Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge would become known as a seminal moment in the birth of Romantic literature. In this course, we will explore the twists and turns of this famous literary friendship. We'll read their major works of verse, setting Wordsworth's autobiographical Prelude, short lyrics, and political sonnets alongside Coleridge's gothic ballads, meditative conversation poems, and opium-induced reveries. To understand why their work was so contentious in its time, we'll also read their influential statements on literature, beginning with Wordsworth's Preface to Lyrical Ballads and ending with Coleridge's belated (and tortured) response in Biographia Literaria. Both authors were shaped by the concerns of the literary marketplace; to uncover the conditions from which their work arose, we'll develop a context through contemporary reviews, letters, and journal entries as well as works by their lesser known contemporaries Mary Robinson, Charlotte Smith, Anna Barbauld, Dorothy Wordsworth, and Robert Southey. Requirements include a presentation, informal reading responses, midterm essay, final research paper, and active participation in class discussions.

ENGL 278-01. Colonial and Post-Colonial Literature

HONORS

Kasibhatla, J.

TR 400-515

satisfies ethnic/nonwestern literature requirement for major

A 3.25 cumulative GPA, 3.5 Major GPA, and Approval Required. Final enrollment determined by English Department at the end of the course request period.

How do writers of fiction engage with the problems of politics and how do they understand the relation between literature and political activism? We will explore this question by reading a body of texts that represent the complex conditions of colonialism and its aftermath, known as “postcolonial literature.” Because conditions of colonialism vary greatly by region, we will combine our reading of literary texts with study of the historical background out of which the texts emerge. We will ask the following questions: in what ways does literature construct or critique notions of national identity? How do fictional texts represent history?

What is the relationship, if any, between the formal qualities of a text and its conception of politics or political struggle? What are the advantages or disadvantages of using an aesthetic medium to pose political questions? Readings may include works by: Rudyard Kipling, Joseph Conrad, George Orwell, Jean Rhys, V.S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, J.M. Coetzee, Bessie Head, Amos Tutuola, Buchi Emecheta, Michael Ondaatje, Nawal el Saadawi, Naguib Mahfouz.

ENGL 280-01. Workshop in English and History

Goddu, T. and Molineaux, C.

TR 110-225

“Abolishing Slavery”

This course covers the histories of abolition in Britain and the Americas.
It pays particular attention to how these movements to end the slave trade
and slavery adapted popular print and visual forms. We will also examine the legacy of this movement. Students will be required to do a final project in which they create a virtual exhibition about abolition.

ENGL 282-01. Bible in Literature

Gottfried, R.

MWF 1110-1200

satisfies pre-1800 literature requirement for major

An examination of ways in which the Bible and biblical imagery have functioned in literature and fine arts, in both "high culture" and popular culture, from Old English poems to modern poetry, drama, fiction, cartoons, and political rhetoric. Readings include influential biblical texts and a broad selection of literary texts drawn from all genres and periods of English literature.

ENGL 283-01. Jewish American Literature

Schachter, A.

MWF 1110-1200

satisfies ethnic/nonwestern literature requirement for major

This course is a survey of major developments in twentieth-century Jewish American literature. We will read works by a range of Jewish writers to investigate the response of Jewish literature to major events in both American and World history. How did American Jewish writers navigate such events as the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti, World War II and the Holocaust, the upheavals of the 1960s, and the Arab-Israeli conflict? We will also examine how Jewish writers have influenced and have been influenced by other literary movements in America and abroad. As we read and discuss these texts, we will also consider in what ways Jewish literature can be understood as a category of ethnic American literature. We will ask questions about immigration, ethnic and racial identity, language choice (some of our reading will be translations from Yiddish), and cultural stereotypes. Readings will include texts by the following writers: Isaac Bashevis Singer, Henry Roth, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Grace Paley, Jacob Glatshteyn, Irena Klepfisz, and Jonathan Safran Foer.

ENGL 287A-01. Special Topics in Journalistic Storytelling

*1 hr. credit

Applebome, P.

M (alternating) 900-1100

"The Literature of Fact - Telling American Stories"

How to tell the ground-level stories of America's splintered culture with a focus on regionalism, religion, race, ethnicity, place and the disparate social currents that define American life. The course is taught by a metropolitan page columnist for The New York Times who has also worked as the Times' Bureau Chief in Atlanta and Houston, as a reporter covering education and culture and as an editor during 9/11. He has covered civil rights in Selma, border wars in El Paso, the roadside dinosaur museum of Moscow, Texas, presidential campaigns, the aftermath of Katrina, and hundreds of grass-roots tales in the New York area.

There are two kinds of reporters: those who want to cover the stories everyone is covering and those who want to cover the ones no one is. This course focuses on the latter. It will examine the craft and importance of grass-roots national reporting from far-flung, less-than fashionable locales. Through students' reporting, reading and analysis of several films, we'll discuss how hard this is - how biases, blind spots, preconceptions and stereotypes color reporting, how often journalists get things wrong and how much work goes into getting things right. Readings include works by Gay Talese, Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote, Alex Kotlowitz and assorted writers for The New York Times and The New Yorker. Students will be expected to do reporting both on and off the Vanderbilt campus that will be discussed and analyzed in class. And we'll discuss the future of grass-roots story telling in the New Media age and whether this kind of reporting survives the transition from the current mainstream media model to whatever is evolving to augment or supplant it.

ENGL 288-01. Special Topics in English/American Literature

Hilles, R.

M 310-600

“Contemporary American Poetry”
The objective of this course is to provide an overview of the major trends, topics, and techniques of American poetry since World War II, as well as an introduction to theories and critical methodologies that have arisen to make sense of the bewildering variety of poetries written in this period. The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry will allow us to survey key poems by numerous authors, including Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, Allen Ginsberg, Adrienne Rich, and Frank O’Hara. We shall also study three full careers, those of W.S. Merwin, Sylvia Plath, and Claudia Emerson. In addition, we will examine recent volumes by younger poets: Craig Arnold, Bob Hicok, and Natasha Tretheway. A coursepack of essays, as well as two volumes of criticism, will round out the reading list. Each student will deliver an oral report, write two papers and take one final exam.

ENGL 288-02. Special Topics in English/American Literature

Spillers, H.

TR 1100-1215

satisfies ethnic/nonwestern literature requirement for major

“Black Women Writers”

This course is devoted to the reading of selective works by contemporary black women writers situated at various points in the African Diaspora – the United States, Canada, the Caribbean, and Europe; the course readings not only cross geographical boundaries and cultural traditions, but also generic ones to take in poetry, drama, and the essay in addition to prose fiction.

ENGL 288-03. Special Topics in English/American Literature

Randall, A.

W 410-700

“Country Music Lyric in American Culture”

Country music, is it, as I ask in the introduction to My Country Roots, a "hard music for a hard people, or a cliché music for a sentimental people? Do all country songs sound alike, or is country music as diverse as the nation that birthed it? Three chords and the truth, or reverb, synthesizers, and platitudes? Intricate psychological, social, and political observations, or rants about Mama, Prison, and Work? Racist or class-conscious or both?" Wildly chauvinistic or blatantly feminist?

English 288 is a chance to encounter the Country Song lyric while discovering ways that others have and do encounter the words in country songs. As I have stated elsewhere, but will re-state here, no genre of song lyric deals with a more diverse body of subject matter, provides a more mature perspective, or draws from a wider range of conflicting impulses than Country.

If you are ready to ramble off the Vanderbilt campus into the wilds of Music City, yet will long to return to our home in Buttrick (a bit nicer than, but closely related to, for reasons that will become clear, "a canvas covered cabin in a crowded labor camp”), if you can imagine yourself joyfully spending hours with friends and neighbors gathered, like families in the depression gathered round their kitchen radios, round listening to old and new songs blaring out of a piece of new-fangled technology, if the idea of exploring the territory of the country song lyric companioned by a working novelist who co-wrote a coupla three Country hits intrigues, English 288 is your course.

ENGL 288-04. Special Topics in English/American Literature

Farina, J.

MW 235-350

“Nineteenth Century Literature and Crime”
Serial murderers like Jack the Ripper emerged alongside and within serial fictions and other nineteenth-century genres, like the short story. We will read about Jack, Sweeney Todd, and other serial murderers, as well as pirates, pickpockets, identity thieves, thugs, sexual profligates, kidnappers, and mad scientists. Nineteenth-century English literature teems with criminals and, somewhat sinisterly, turns their crimes into great writing. We’ll consider this as we question crime, law, police, and generic innovations in nineteenth-century England. Texts will include some creepy poems here and there, but mostly prose: selections from the Newgate (Prison) Calendar; The String of Pearls; Oliver Twist (Charles Dickens); Lady Audley’s Secret (Mary E. Braddon); The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Robert L. Stevenson); journalism and short stories by Anthony Trollope, Wilkie Collins, and others. Two 5-6 page papers and one 5-10 minute presentation.

ENGL 289a/b. Independent Study

Staff

Various
Designed primarily for majors. Projects are arranged with individual professors and must be confirmed with the Director of Undergraduate Studies before 10th day of class. *Variable credit (1-3 hrs.)

ENGL 290b-01 Honors Thesis