300

Prerequisite: ENGL 219. May not be taken on an audit basis. 

This workshop course is designed to help the student understand the principles of dramatic writing through lectures, workshops, and staged readings of student work. Students will learn about dramatic structure, character, dialogue, and various approaches to theatricality. Suitable for all levels of experience.

Prerequisite: Junior standing and completion of the Literary Analysis requirement or ENGL 210, ENGL 222, or ENGL 223 or permission of the instructor. This course is an introduction to the dramatic works of Shakespeare. Although some attention is devoted to the historical moment in which he produced his plays, the primary focus is on Shakespeare’s language and theater. Filmed versions of the plays will be used to supplement textual analysis. (WS)

Prerequisite: Junior standing and completion of the Literary Analysis requirement or ENGL 210, ENGL 222, or ENGL 223 or permission of the instructor. A study of the selected works of the medieval poet who helped start the tradition of writing poetry and prose in English. The class will focus primarily on The Canterbury Tales; it will also introduce students to Middle English, so that the poetry may be appreciated in Chaucer’s own language. Special attention will be given to the history and culture of England during Chaucer’s lifetime. (WS)

Prerequisite: ENGL 219. This workshop-based course follows ENGL 219 and involves a concentrated study of the art of creative nonfiction. Students will gain an awareness and appreciation of the elements of creative nonfiction, and in particular, the personal essay. During the workshop portion of the course, students will write and present original essays and comment on the essays of other members, both orally and in writing.

Prerequisites: ENGL 219.  This workshop-based course is a follow-up to English 219, the introductory creative writing course. In 326, students will study particular techniques for fiction (point of view, narrative voice, dialogue, character). Short writing and reading assignments will help students continue honing their craft. Each student will have four workshops, as well as at least two individual conferences with the instructor.

Prerequisites: English 219.  This workshop-based course is a follow-up to English 219, the introductory creative writing course. In 327, students will study particular techniques for poetry (image, diction, form, line length, and line breaks). Weekly writing and reading assignments will help students continue honing their craft. Each student will have four workshops, as well as at least two individual conferences with the instructor.

Prerequisite: Permission of the department. May be repeated once. The assistantship offers students the opportunity to refine their editing and leadership skills as they work with students in the Academic Services Center. Under the supervision of the Academic Services staff, assistants serve as teaching and tutorial aides to students seeking to improve their basic writing skills.

Prerequisites: Junior standing and completion of the Literary Analysis requirement or ENGL 210, ENGL 222 or ENGL 223; or permission of the instructor. May be repeated with different writers. A study of one or more significant writers or a distinct school of writers.

Prerequisites: Junior standing and completion of the Literary Analysis requirement or ENGL 311, ENGL 222 or ENGL 223; or permission of the instructor. An in-depth study of two prominent twentieth-century American poets, Elizabeth Bishop and Sylvia Plath. In addition to a close examination of Bishop's and Plath's poems, short stories, novels, letters, and journals, the course will use recent criticism and biographical sources to help illuminate the works in question. (WS)

Prerequisite: Junior standing and completion of the Literary Analysis requirement or ENGL 311, ENGL 222, or ENGL 223 or permission of the instructor. A close analysis of the art of Jane Austen, emphasizing the resources of her language and her powers of social perception. Reading will include Austen's six completed novels: Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion. (WS)

Prerequisite: Junior standing and completion of the Literary Analysis requirement or ENGL 311, ENGL 222, or ENGL 223 or permission of the instructor. An analysis of the lives, art, and ideas of E. M. Forster and Virginia Woolf. Texts may include Forster's A Room with a View, Howard's End, and A Passage to India, and Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and The Waves. (WS)

Prerequisite: Junior standing and completion of the Literary Analysis requirement or ENGL 311, ENGL 222, or ENGL 223 or permission of the instructor. A study of three of America's most influential contemporary Native American writers. The class will explore these authors' historic and cultural contexts to some degree. Readings may include Silko's Ceremony and Storyteller, Erdrich's Antelope Wife and Plague of Doves, and Alexie's Indian Killer and Flight. (CT, WS)

Prerequisite: Junior standing and completion of the Literary Analysis requirement or ENGL 311, ENGL 222, or ENGL 223 or permission of the instructor. This course is an in-depth study of the two most important poets of nineteenth-century America, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. In addition to a close examination of Whitman's antebellum poetry and Civil War work and Dickinson's manuscript fascicles and letters, the course will use recent criticism and biographical sources to help illuminate the works in question. (WS)

Prerequisites: Junior standing and completion of the Literary Analysis requirement, or ENGL 311, ENGL 222, or ENGL 223, or permission of the instructor. Students engage in an intense analysis of the work of Dante Alighieri. Our primary focus is Dante’s epic allegory, the Divine Comedy, but we will also study the Vita Nuova and passages from Dante’s other works to provide a context for his masterpiece. Two writers who significantly influenced Dante (Virgil and Augustine) will also be considered. (WS)

Prerequisites: Junior or senior standing and completion of the Literary Analysis requirement or ENGL 311, ENGL 222, or ENGL 223. A study of utopian thought from Plato's Republic through contemporary science fiction. Texts may include St. Augustine's City of God, The Rule of St. Benedict, Campanella's City of the Sun, More's Utopia, Bellamy's Looking Backward, Gilman's Herland, Huxley's Brave New World, as well as films such as Gattaca and Minority Report. The course will also include a study of experimental utopian communities. (CT)

Prerequisite: Junior standing and completion of the Literary Analysis requirement or ENGL 311, ENGL 222, or ENGL 223 or permission of the instructor. As they move between two worlds—the infinite possibilities of spirit and the nightmarish limits of the physical—writers, artists and philosophers of the Renaissance offer images of what it means to be human. Those imaginings anticipate many modern assumptions and dilemmas. Readings may include Boccaccio, Erasmus, Rabelais, More, Montaigne, and Shakespeare. (H1, CT)

Prerequisite: Junior standing and completion of the Literary Analysis requirement or ENGL 311, ENGL 222, or ENGL 223 or permission of the instructor. A study of modern English literature and of the social and intellectual contexts that shaped that literature. The class will focus on works that reflect and continue to affect Western culture and its sense of the modern. Texts will include selections from poetry, fiction and non-fiction by authors such as James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden and Virginia Woolf. (H2,CT)

Prerequisite: Junior standing and completion of the Literary Analysis requirement or ENGL 311, ENGL 222, or ENGL 223 or permission of the instructor. How does the American landscape function in our imagination, our policies, our lives? This reading-intensive course covers a wide range of environmental works: political, scientific, philosophical, autobiographical. Authors include Thoreau, Emerson, Aldo Leopold, Leslie Marmon Silko, Annie Dillard, Gary Snyder, Jack London, and William Faulkner. (H2, CT)

Prerequisites: 6 credits in literature at or above the 200-level and permission of the instructor. Independent work in English, American or world literature. Conferences.

An upper-level special topics course offered at the discretion of the department. The content and methods vary with the interest of students and faculty members

Prerequisites: 21 credits in English and permission of the department chair. Supervised off-campus learning in an organization or institution approved by the department for an entire semester or an equivalent summer term. Grading is on a satisfactory/unsatisfactory basis