200

Prerequisite: Completion of English composition core or permission of instructor
This course will explore a variety of ethical issues and moral dilemmas that arise in the fictional works of James Joyce (1882-1941) and Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923). Hailing from Ireland and New Zealand, respectively, Joyce and Mansfield present to readers a surprising and challenging array of quandaries, problems, puzzles, paradoxes, debates, and predicaments, both at the level of character and content, as well as with respect to form and aesthetics. Joyce’s Dubliners, published in 1914, and Mansfield’s The Garden Party, and Other Stories, published in 1922, delve into matters of class and gender bias, religious doubt, political turmoil, economic uncertainty, family secrets, workplace tensions, death, oppression, betrayal, addiction, censorship, friendship, obligation, empathy, responsibility, absence, evil, loss, love, loyalty, and representation. Our course will read the stories of Joyce and Mansfield not merely as a means of understanding the ethical issues and moral dilemmas that impacted the lives of literary characters and their living contemporaries over a hundred years ago, but also as a means of challenging ourselves to think about how we might respond today to such matters in our own lives and contexts.

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: 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 are of the core with a grade of C- or above. In this course, we’ll explore the history, themes, and styles of Young Adult Literature as well as its place in American classrooms and pop culture. We will also work to develop a critical, reflective understanding of what makes YA lit unique (or not), worthy of reading and teaching (or not), and why it appeals (or not) to teens and adults.

Prerequisite: English Composition Core or permission of instructor
This course introduces students to the cultural diversity of the global Middle Ages by focusing on tales of travel and exploration. Some of these journeys navigate real-world landscapes and others traverse imaginary terrain. What all of these journey stories share is an interest in encountering the unknown and unfamiliar (barbarians, foreigners, monsters, prodigies, heretics, etc.) as well as a realization of travel's potential for self-discovery—or self-alienation.

Prerequisite: English Composition Core or permission of instructor
This course explores the ways that Shakespeare and his plays fit into the broader world. In the first half of the course, we’ll read and watch Shakespeare alongside the diverse voices of the “global renaissance,” including India, the New World, and the Middle East, focusing on how real-life cultural encounters made their way onto the early modern English stage. In the second half of the course, we’ll shift our thinking to the many ways Shakespeare remains part of global culture today, considering issues of colonialism and cultural appropriation as we learn how and why Shakespeare’s plays are read, taught, and performed around the world.

Prerequisite: English Composition Core or permission of instructor
How do we ethically engage with past cultures that don’t match the values of our own society? Should we separate the art from the artist when a creator is known to be racist, misogynist, homophobic, or just a downright terrible human being? What should we do with canonical works that reflect the prejudices and/or beliefs of their society—and why do those texts continue to have staying power while other, equally “great” works are ignored? The answer can’t just be to jettison it all, nor can we simply remake the past in our own image. So how do we confront the past in a respectful, responsible way?

Prerequisite: Completion of English Composition Core or permission of instructor

This course will explore a set of contemporary novels drawn from around the world. Our texts will raise questions about identities, relationships, memories, communities, movements, and spaces. In addition to reflecting on representations of individuals and collectivities, our course will explore the impress of the past in our shared present. The class will emphasize the ethical and political necessity of thinking carefully, critically, and globally about peoples, places, and cultures. We will make consistent efforts to contextualize and historicize, not only the production of the texts themselves but the fictional worlds depicted in their pages. In aesthetic terms, our contact with experiments in fictional form will provide opportunities to wrestle with the complicated entanglement of manner and matter in the dynamic and diverse field of contemporary global fiction.

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: ENGL 100 or ENGL 101 or 3 credits from ENGL 110-139
A study of who had power in Medieval England, and how those on top stayed that way. This course will explore the ways in which medieval literature reflects the nature of power in medieval society, and also how literature itself was used to reinforce or to challenge the authority of the nobility and the Church.  (H1, CT)

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: English Composition core or permission of instructor
How do stories shape our sense of good and evil? Especially today, when fewer and fewer people adhere to the principles of a specific faith, many of us work through questions of ethics and morality as we read books, watch movies and shows, and play video games. Are cultural commodities reliable sources for helping us to understand such weighty questions, or does a good plot tend to oversimplify complex ideas? In this class, we’ll explore plays, novels, movies, and more that tackle these weighty concepts and discover the role that stores play in understanding what’s right and what’s wrong—both for ourselves and for our society.

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 requirement of the core with a grade of C- or above. The course considers modern novelists who challenge their readers with moral problems. Their narratives include questions about the conscience, the soul, doubt, faith, good, evil, and even the existence of God. (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)

Prerequisite: English Composition or permission of instructor
This course will explore the representation of disability in literature from diverse cultural, historical, and literary perspectives. Through an examination of various literary works, including fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry, students will analyze the portrayal of disability, examine its societal implications, and interrogate how disability intersects with other identity markers, such as race, gender, and sexuality. By engaging with critical theories and primary texts, students will develop a nuanced understanding of disability narratives and their significance in shaping literary discourse and cultural perceptions.

Prerequisite: English Composition core or permission of instructor
How do stories shape our sense of good and evil? Especially today, when fewer and fewer people adhere to the principles of a specific faith, many of us work through questions of ethics and morality as we read books, watch movies and shows, and play video games. Are cultural commodities reliable sources for helping us to understand such weighty questions, or does a good plot tend to oversimplify complex ideas? In this class, we’ll explore plays, novels, movies, and more that tackle these weighty concepts and discover the role that stores play in understanding what’s right and what’s wrong—both for ourselves and for our society.

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.