200

Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or permission of the instructor. May not be taken on an audit basis. An introduction to various forms of creative writing, this is an intensive writers’ workshop requiring active participation from all members. Individual conferences in addition to class meetings. May not be audited.

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above.  A study of world literature in translation particularly relevant to our own cultural heritage. Readings are drawn from the antique, classical, medieval and early modern periods, and typically include Homer, Sophocles, Virgil, Dante, Ariosto and Cervantes. (H1,CT)

Prerequisite: ENGL 100. Selected readings from the medieval period to the beginning of cultural divergence between England and America. Readings from Beowulf, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, Swift, Defoe and others. (H1)

Prerequisite: ENGL 100

An introduction to the American imagination as expressed in fiction, poetry, essays, autobiography and nature writing. May include works by Bradstreet, Wheatley, Franklin, Hawthorne, Thoreau, Whitman and Dickinson. (H2)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. This course will examine the history, development, literary devices, and production values of a variety of theatre and drama, from Ancient Greece and Rome to the nineteenth century. Playwrights studied may include Sophocles, Aristophanes, liturgical dramatists, commedia performers, Shakespeare, Jonson, Chikamatsu, Molière, Sheridan, Tyler and Daly. (H1, G)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. This course will examine the history, development, literary devices, and production values of a variety of theatre and drama, from nineteenth century Realism to the present day. Playwrights studied may include Ibsen, Wilde, Chekhov, O’Neill, Miller, Williams, Albee, Beckett, Pinter, Shepard, Mamet, Wilson and Kushner.(H2, G)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. This course explores how "literature" overlaps with "popular culture." We will consider several stories that have captured imaginations across boundaries of time and genre and examine the conventions, expectations, and possibilities of different genres and media. (CT)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. May be repeated with a different topic. A study of a significant theme or subject in selected works of literature. May be repeated with different topic.

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. In this course, we will explore how "history" and "fiction" are defined, where they overlap, and where they (should) diverge. The focus will be on ancient Rome and late medieval/early modern England, as well as figures that have come to represent these societies in the modern imagination: Julius Caesar, King Richard III, and Queen Elizabeth I. (H1, CT)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. A study of major works of modern English literature with an emphasis on the social, psychological, and religious implications of the notion that modern life is a spiritual wasteland, a dead land calling out for rebirth. Texts may include works by Conrad, Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Joyce, Lawrence, Woolf, Forster, and Auden. (H2)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. Romantic motifs in English literature of the nineteenth century. Readings will include both novels and poems. Texts may be selected from works by Scott, Bronte, Blake, Byron, and Wordsworth. (H2)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. A study of major themes in Victorian literature with emphasis on the impact of the industrial and scientific revolutions on society, religion, and art. Texts may include novels by Dickens or Eliot, essays by Mill, Carlyle, and Arnold, and poems by Tennyson, Browning, and Arnold. (H2)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. This reading-intensive course explores how magic and mysticism were woven into the fabric of medieval society. We will consider the categories of magic, religion and science, and attempt to discover where they intersect and where they diverge. We will also look at how medieval articulations of magic survive and continue to influence the popular culture of today. (H1, CT)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. A study of the major authors and themes of the American Transcendental and Anti-Transcendental or Dark Romantic movements. Texts will include essays by Emerson and Thoreau, novels and short stories by Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe, and poems by Whitman and Dickinson. (H2)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. A study of ekphrastic writing, or literature on, about, or inspired by works of art. The course will be geared toward an interdisciplinary exploration of the relationship between literature and the visual arts. Texts will include a range of classical to contemporary works by authors such as Homer, Keats, Wilde, Woolf, Auden, and Ashbery. (H2,CT)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above.  We will study the ways in which early African-American literary traditions have been formed not only by slavery, but also by community, geography, politics, and literature itself. Works may include slave narratives of Olaudah Equiano, Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Keckley, and Harriet Jacobs, as well as 19th century fiction by Harriet Wilson, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Charles Chesnutt. (H2)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. This course explores the influences of blues, jazz, and spirituals; folklore; and socio-economic history on African American literature of the 20th and early 21st centuries. We’ll examine how survival and resistance become art forms in the work of authors like W.E. B. DuBois, James Weldon Johnson, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, and Toni Morrison. (H2)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. Through analysis and discussion of selected works of great literature, students will examine themes of vice and virtue. Topics may include the relation between individual and community, evil, ends and means, the good life, and moral conflict.(H2, CT)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. This course will focus on the legend of King Arthur, the mythical King of the Britons who (it is said) will return to help his people in their hour of need. From the earliest mentions of Arthur in the chronicles and myths of post-Roman Britain through the films, novels, and television of today, we will explore key points in the development of the Arthurian legend. (CT)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. May be repeated with a different topic. A study of a particular genre, such as the novel, the short story, poetry, drama or autobiography

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. Students will read, discuss, and write about a wide-ranging selection of short stories, studying authorial and historical technique, point of view, voice, structure, and subject matter. (H2,G)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. We consider plays written by contemporaries of Shakespeare and his heirs. We will study dramatic traditions (such as revenge tragedy and social comedy) and theatrical contexts in the light of Elizabethan and Jacobean culture. The playwrights include Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, and John Webster. (H1,G)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. An introduction to the development of the American novel from the late nineteenth century to the contemporary period. May include works by Herman Melville, Edith Wharton, James Weldon Johnson, Art Spiegelman, Louise Erdrich, Alison Bechdel, and Leslie Marmon Silko. (H2,G)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. We explore the major poetic traditions of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The sonnet, mythic/erotic narratives, religious lyric, and pastoral are among the many forms and conventions considered in the readings. The poets studied include Sidney, Shakespeare, Donne, Herbert, Herrick, and Marvell. (H1,G)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above.

A study of American poetry by women from the seventeenth century to the contemporary period, with particular emphasis on BIPOC women poets.

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. How do we add our own stories to the palimpsest of American identity? In this course, we will explore how national and personal histories of ethnicity in the United States are handed down, revised, and contradicted in both autobiography and fiction. Authors may include Julie Otsuka, Sherman Alexie, Jamaica Kincaid, Toni Morrison, Roxanne Gay, and others. (H2, G)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. A study of the forms and techniques of poetry, including both critical analysis and creative practice. We will read and analyze a variety of poetic forms, including sonnets, sestinas, ballads, villanelles, prose poems, and pantoums, by modern and contemporary poets. In addition to close readings of poems, students will write original poems in various forms. (G)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. A study of the richly various poetry produced in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century. The course will focus on modern American poets such as Robert Frost, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, and Elizabeth Bishop. (H2,G)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. We will explore the development of the romance as a literary genre. Included in our investigation are societal influences on the texts and literary influences on society: how did authors use the genre to depict and interrogate ideals of gendered behavior in love and war? And how do these ideals continue to influence our society today? (H1, CT, G)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. Explores British novels as sites of ongoing experimentation and development. Moves from the genre’s 18th century hybrid origins, to the romance and realist traditions of the 19th century, and into the modernist and postmodernist movements of the 20th and 21st centuries. Authors may include Swift, Sterne, Austen, Dickens, Hardy, Woolf, Ishiguro, and McEwan. (H2, G)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. A study of the richly varied tradition of African American poetry from the eighteenth century to the present. The course will focus on the work of poets from the Enlightenment and antebellum eras, the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, and the contemporary period. (G, H2)

Offered at the discretion of the department. An opportunity for groups of eight or more students to study topics suggested by their special interests and those of the faculty and not included in the regular offerings.