English 122A: Seeing Texts and Writing Contexts: Nuclear Family Meltdown!
Jeff Solomon
The formative experience of family shapes most human endeavor, yet people are likely to
disagree about what a “proper” family is. The traditional nuclear family—married parents,
working dad and stay-at-home mom, with a handful of kids in a single-family home, all happy,
fulfilled, and linked by love and loyalty—is surprisingly uncommon even among those who view
it as ideal. Furthermore, the nuclear family is neither a historically nor a geographically
universal model. In this seminar, we will scrutinize the fissures between the fantasy and the
reality of the nuclear family, and the explosions that may result when they meet. We will read
a variety of texts closely and analytically as a means for creating insightful arguments, and we
will work hard to present these arguments in clear and sophisticated prose. Historical and
psychological critiques of the nuclear family will provide context for fiction, film, and graphic
novels—and these works of art will in turn provide context for the historical and psychological
critiques. Our task will be to ground arguments about broad cultural themes in specific
examples.
English 122B: I Contain Multitudes: Autobiography from Franklin to Facebook
Suzanne Warren
For Americans, sharing their life stories appears to be an irresistible impulse. Whether tweeting
the day’s events or updating Facebook statuses, Americans want to tell us what’s going on in
their lives. The urge to tell one’s life story has a long and illustrious history in American
literature. Benjamin Franklin wrote one of the first American autobiographies, a life story and at
the same time a blueprint for Franklin’s vision of a new kind of person—an American. In this
course, we will read American autobiographies from Franklin to Facebook, addressing a set of
linked questions: What is autobiography? Why have Americans chosen to write it? How have its
rhetorical functions in American life altered over time? What does it mean to be an American,
and how are American autobiographies shapers of and shaped by this notion? The varied
conclusions we reach will help us achieve a clearer understanding of both the uses of literature
and the complexities of American identity. Course authors may include Cabeza de Vaca, Mary
Rowlandson, Benjamin Franklin, Frederick Douglass, James Weldon Johnson, Mary Antin, Art
Spiegelman, Danzy Senna, and Mary Karr, as well as television shows and social media.
English 124: See What I Mean?: War in Words and Images
Daniel Cook
This seminar examines how we perceive, and make arguments about, war. It has been said that
war is hell; war is chaos; war is nightmare. But if so, how can we find the right words and
images to express its reality? How have artists like Picasso, or writers such as Robert Graves,
Dave Grossman and Kayla Williams, given the experience a meaningful shape? The course will
begin with representations of war, but go on to engage the ethical, political and psychological
dimensions of state-authorized violence, since how we perceive war is intimately connected to
the arguments we make about it. What constitutes a “just war” (or is this term just a revolting
oxymoron)? Would it be morally permissible to torture the hypothetical “ticking-bomb”
terrorist? —or perhaps to imprison him indefinitely at Guantánamo Bay? Should it bother us
that American national identity, as exemplified in our National Anthem, is so rooted in the
iconography of battle? As students engage with a number of classical statements about war,
they will be invited to fashion representations and arguments of their own. Course reading will
include material as diverse as The Aeneid, Goodbye to All That and the Stanford Prison
Experiment, as well as films like Triumph of the Will and Hero.
English 126B: Arguing through Literature: Death Becomes Her: Female Mortality in American
Literature
Tiffany Aldrich MacBain
When we read literature, we encounter arguments—sometimes explicit, more often implicit—
for all literature explores conflicts and controversies, advances theories, and functions as a
persuasive form of discourse. In turn, literature invites us to argue with it, (usually) less in the
spirit of contention than in the interest of conversation, of understanding what we read and
responding in thoughtful, deliberate ways. This semester, our thematic preoccupation as we
“argue with literature” will be female mortality. Think about movies or television shows you’ve
seen in the last ten years. Can you recall any in which the death of a principal female character
seemed vexing? Did it seem a matter of course to you that she would die—the only
conceivable action? Did her death provide a point of climax? a launching-off point? Did you
interrogate her death or ask why she had to die, not only within the trajectory of the plot but
also within larger contexts? This course examines the phenomenon of the dead and dying
female, not exhaustively but through the study of American literary texts written over the span
of more than one hundred years. These works present different histories, cultural contexts,
and stylistic features yet remain thematically linked. Of equal or greater importance to the
study of theme and form in this class, students will write and revise essays and present oral
arguments that advance and support critical claims about texts
English 129: Seminar in Writing & Rhetoric: Encountering the Other/Writing the Self
Ann Putnam
Our readings represent divergent points of view, alternative texts that insist upon oppositional
readings. Written from the perspective of the “other,” these texts oppose traditional texts in
creative, compelling ways, becoming countertexts, as it were, that question long-held
assumptions.
The thematic content of the course becomes also its structural framework as we examine the
pros and cons of a variety of opinions in a variety of works, and construct both written and oral
arguments about them. The implicit if not explicit framework of the course will be the
construction of persuasive arguments on both sides, arguments that examine moral, ethical
and intellectual dilemmas, issues that shoot to the core of human existence. As both writers
and speakers, we will construct persuasive arguments that either contradict or defend given
assumptions about culture, history, identity, and the natural world. For example: American
Primitive calls into question the anthropomorphism implicit in our “readings” of nature; The
English Patient, the absolute borders of geography, history, and identity; bel canto: what
makes us who we are when all known reference points have vanished? when the other (the
enemy) becomes ourselves.
English 132: First-Year Seminar in Writing & Rhetoric: Writing and the Environmental
Imagination
William Kupinse
If ecology is the relationship of living organisms to their surroundings, how might we describe
the ecology of writer, text, and audience? How does an implicit sense of environment—
whether “natural,” humanly constructed, or some combination of the two—inform all written
and verbal arguments? This class will explore how and why writers have argued for particular
understandings of the concepts of ecology and environment. Drawing on essays, short fiction,
poetry, and film, and devoting significant attention to ecological texts of the Pacific Northwest,
we will further examine the social, political, and cultural issues at stake in these contested
definitions. Among the questions this class will consider: Is it still possible to speak of the
concept of nature as separate from human activity? Do the more familiar critical issues of race,
gender, and colonial legacy mediate representations of ecology and environment?
English 139: Gender, Literacy, and International Development
Julie Christoph
We all know the saying, “If you give a man a fish, he will eat for a day. If you teach a man to fish,
he will eat for a lifetime.” What if the “man” being taught is a woman? What if the “fishing”
being learned is a form of literacy (whether alphabetic literacy, health literacy, or economic
literacy)? What forms of literacy should be learned, and who should make that choice? How
do rising literacy rates affect gender roles, religious traditions, health expectations, and
resource usage?
In this Scholarly and Creative Inquiry seminar, students will engage in discussions of varied
reading materials including a novel, policy documents, theory about the effects and nature of
literacy, and ethnographic studies of men and women engaged in literacy learning around the
world. Students will write and revise extensively in this course, developing the ability to define
and pursue research questions of interest to them and of relevance to larger academic
conversations.
English 202: Introduction to Creative Writing: Short Fiction
Beverly Conner
You will learn what goes into the making of short fiction, giving consideration to the process of
your own creativity as well as to the techniques of theme, narrative, dialogue, description,
characterization, point of view, symbol and metaphor, revision, etc. We will aim high, hoping
to create literary art (not genre fiction) as we tell our tales, finding meaning for ourselves as
well as offering it to our readers. Because writers of fiction read fiction (a lot!), you may find
that your enthusiasm for reading stories is fueled by your development as a writer. An
increased sophistication in reading imaginative literature and in developing creativity in diverse
areas of life can be valuable aspects of this course for you.
English 202: Introduction to Fiction Writing
Ann Putnam
You will have many opportunities to participate in panels, small group workshops, large group
workshops, as well as in-class writing sessions. So regular attendance is critical to your success
in this class. Each day when you come to class you will know exactly what to expect, but you
will also be surprised. So you'll need to be here every day--ready to do things you've never
done before, remember things you've never remembered before, ready to write about things
you didn't know you knew. All you need is a brave and willing heart. You will write two 5-6
page stories, one Short Story and one Deep Revision, in addition to keeping a writer’s log and
reading lots of short stories.
English 203: Introduction to Creative Writing: Poetry
Hans Ostrom
This course provides an overview of poetic forms and techniques and extensive reading of
poetry by British, Canadian, and American writers. We will also spend time on ways of
identifying and inventing material for poetry, on offering productive criticism to each other’s
work, and on revising and editing poems. The course is intended for those who are relatively
new to poetry, but its structure and pacing assumes that students will be serious about the art
and craft of writing poetry and the discipline of reading and interpreting poems.
English 203: Introductory Creative Writing: Poetry
William Kupinse
“A line will take us hours, maybe,” writes W. B. Yeats on the craft of poetry. “Yet if it does not
seem a moment’s thought, / Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.” This creative
writing workshop will take seriously Yeats’ notion that the effect of spontaneity in poetry is
achieved only through fierce attention and substantial effort. By stitching and unstitching
multiple drafts of their poems, seminar participants will work to develop the critical skills that
will allow them to become more effective writers of poetry. Assignments in this course will
emphasize writing as a process and will include selected reading of canonical and contemporary
poems, weekly exercises, a critical essay, in-class discussions, and peer reviews. An on-campus
reading of student work will be held at the end of the term.
English 203: Introductory Creative Writing: Poetry
William Kupinse
“A line will take us hours, maybe,” writes W. B. Yeats on the craft of poetry. “Yet if it does not
seem a moment’s thought, / Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.” This creative
writing workshop will take seriously Yeats’ notion that the effect of spontaneity in poetry is
achieved only through fierce attention and substantial effort. By stitching and unstitching
multiple drafts of their poems, seminar participants will work to develop the critical skills that
will allow them to become more effective writers of poetry. Assignments in this course will
emphasize writing as a process and will include selected reading of canonical and contemporary
poems, weekly exercises, a critical essay, in-class discussions, and peer reviews. An on-campus
reading of student work will be held at the end of the term.
English 205: Autobiography/Biography: Writings from the River: The Self as Hero
Beverly Conner
This course will examine the genre critically and creatively, thinking how the self both creates
and is created by the text. We will explore connections and differences among autobiography,
biography, literary memoir, and personal essay. We will consider how and experience why
writing about the self so often entails an act of courage. In this last regard, we will give
thoughtful attention to a diverse genre that spans cultures, genders, classes, and ages. And in
exploring the myth of objectivity, we will also reflect on how imagination may play a part in
telling the greater truths. We will read On Writing by Stephen King, Full Moon at Noontide, A
Daughter’s Last Goodbye by Professor Ann Putnam, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, and
This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff, among several other books.
English 210: Introduction to English Studies
Alison Tracy Hale
From the boiler-plate: “This course serves as an introduction to the discipline of college-level
literary studies; as such it provides a broad basis for the study of literature through reading,
analyzing, and writing about a variety of texts. We will read a wide range of poetry, fiction,
drama, and possibly film from a variety of traditions and historical moments; through the
specific practice of ‘close reading,’ as well as through engagement with literary-critical
perspectives and an introduction to research tools and methods, students develop a critical
vocabulary and interpretive frameworks for further reading and writing about literature.” In
other words: in this class, you can expect to read a lot—including Shakespeare and other
writers you’ve heard about often, as well as some you’ve never heard of--and write a lot; we
will read poetry, prose, and drama from around the (English-speaking) world and write some
ourselves, try our hand at critical theory, explore the challenges and rewards of literary
research, and submerse ourselves in the sheer pleasures of English studies while also
developing your abilities in literary analysis and the persuasive written and oral conveyance
thereof. The course will be designed around a loose theme (e.g., “transformation,” or
“identity”), but the emphasis will be less on a specific body or tradition of literature than on
familiarizing you with the essential questions, skills, methods, and habits of mind that
characterize “English majors” of all stripes. Please note that English 210 is specifically designed
for those who plan to major in English; it does not fulfill a university core requirement and is
not intended as a general-interest course.
English 210: Introduction to English Studies
Priti Joshi
This class serves as an introduction to the craft and study of literary and cultural texts and is
required for English majors and minors. We will read poetry (lyric, dramatic monologue, sonnet,
etc), prose (short stories and novels), drama (a Shakespeare play), and a graphic memoir. As we
read, you will familiarize yourselves with the conventions of each genre and examine the
relation between form and content. The texts we read swirl around the theme of "revision" or
"rewriting," and we will consider the ways in which writers and texts reexamine and
reformulate questions – formal, as well as thematic - from multiple perspectives. In this class
you will also learn and utilize the basic tools of literary study (the OED, the MLA Bibliography,
etc). Student writing will consist of analytic paper, creative texts, and an essay engaging cultural
issues.
English 221: British Literature Survey I
John Wesley
This course will survey the British literature written from the medieval to Renaissance periods,
starting with one vision, The Dream of the Rood, and ending with another, John Milton’s
Paradise Lost. You will be introduced to a number of different genres and forms, as well as to
many of the key terms and concepts that help us think critically about texts. Although the
stories are diverse, and range over some eight or nine centuries, our discussions throughout the
term will revolve around the thematic heading of “Faith, Reason, and the Imagination.” This is
perhaps an obvious rubric with which to talk about explicitly Christian poetry written by the
likes of Edmund Spenser, John Donne, and John Milton, though it’s worth remembering that all
of the texts on our syllabus were written for a predominantly Christian audience, even one as
pagan in setting as Beowulf. Reading literature in this way means we will pay close attention to
historical context, or how texts are mediated by the cultures from which they emerge. You do
not have to be familiar with the Bible or Christian theology to take this course. In situating our
texts historically, we will define key religious issues and terms if or when they arise, and
always with the aim that such context provides an important resource for critical
interpretation.
This course fulfills the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.
English 222: Survey of British Literature II: Restoration to Romanticism
George Erving
This course surveys British literature and literary culture from 1660 to the 1832, the period in
which Britain emerged as the world's first commercial and industrial superpower while it also
experienced an immense artistic transformation from the aesthetics of Neoclassicism to those
of Romanticism. Students examine the ideas and aesthetics of Restoration Comedy, Augustan
Satire, and Romantic lyrical poetry in relation to their political, philosophical, and literary
contexts.
This course fulfills the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.
English 225: American Literature II: 1865 to the Present
Tiffany Aldrich MacBain
By definition, a literary survey course takes a comprehensive view of the literature produced
within a nation or culture during a given period. In the broadest terms, this course presents
representative literary products of United States culture from the Civil War to the present.
More specifically, it interrogates the very notion of a representative tradition and suggests that
“American Literature” comprises a diverse set of texts, approaches, and concerns; the tradition
is actually plural. Despite their unique characteristics, “American” discourses are also
imbricated, and these points of overlap reveal themselves when we consider texts within sociohistorical contexts. To adapt a line from Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall, in this course we
will go behind our father’s saying rather than repeat it with self-satisfaction. We will
interrogate inherited ideals and notions of the American literary tradition and situate texts
culturally and historically to acquire an understanding of the steady development of a multivalent literary tradition and the diverse contributions that that tradition comprises.
English 226: Survey of Literature by Women
Ann Putnam
After setting up some initial terms and contexts, we will follow a chronology which traces the
development of the female literary tradition from the Medieval and Renaissance Periods up to
the present. We will place each work in its historical, cultural and literary context. Sometimes
we’ll read works which seem to speak to each other from across the expanse of decades or
even centuries, though chronology will be the main way we’ll organize our readings. Several of
the issues we’ll address include:
(1) What are the canonical issues which come from a study of women’s literature? what issues
emerge concerning the idea of the canon in general and the Norton Text in particular? Why has
it come under such criticism? Why is there no Norton Anthology of Literature by Men? What
works have been discovered or reclaimed? What happens to a developing literary tradition
when key works have been lost or devalued? For this we will examine both “The Awakening”
and “Life in the Iron Mills,” to name two. (2) Are there significant differences in women’s
literature which we can characterize? Is women’s literature different from literature by men in
some essential way? If so how? We will begin by looking at Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s
Own. (3) How have women been characterized through the ages in works written by men?
Why have such concepts or images as the gaze, the mirror, silences, the blank page, a room of
one’s own, the monster, the madwoman in the attic become gathering metaphors we
encounter again and again in literature by women? (4) What has it been like through the ages
to be both a woman and an artist? What has it cost women to follow their creative urgings?
Why have they agonized over this? And why have they so often thought of their writing as
something monstrous, perverted, abnormal, something to be hidden and composed
anonymously and in private? What obstacles have women writers faced throughout history?
What forces work against them and what strategies do they often employ to make their voices
heard? How have women found the voice to write? What has changed? What has remained
the same? We will examine what Emily Dickinson meant when she said, “Tell all the Truth but
tell it slant” by looking at the strategies women writers have employed through the ages. We
will contrast the strategies of outright rebellion; disguises and masks; apology and deference;
and transposition.
Satisfies core and major requirements
English 307: Writing and Culture
Mita Mahato
In this course, students will grapple with the enigmatic term “culture” by examining how a
variety of writers, theorists, and artists express and articulate their perceptions when producing
or interacting with different cultural artifacts. Although our examination will include a number
of distinct texts, ranging from Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia to the dense theory of
Theodor Adorno, we will also become sensitive to the complex and nuanced overlap between
literature, journalism, critical theory, photography, film, and the places in which we find these
texts (bookstores, museums, the classroom, the Internet, etc.). In approaching culture through
these different mediators and media, our main objectives will be to explore the fraught
relationship between experience and expression and to consider the effects of integrating
particular discourses of culture into our own writing. Because this course requires us to
experience culture in a hands-on way, you will be required to attend a number of activities,
including a museum visit and film viewing, on your own time. While this course satisfies the
theory requirement for those students emphasizing in Writing, Rhetoric, and Culture, all majors
are welcome.
English 342: Genre: Fiction: Secrets of the Short Story
Jeff Solomon
This class will explore the formal qualities and aesthetic transformations of the short story in
the United States over the past century. We will read a wide range of short fiction, from the
respectably canonical to the relentlessly experimental, from the tiniest fable to the near-
novella. We will read as much for narrative technique as for content, as much from the
perspective of a craftsman who makes art as the perspective of a critic who analyzes it. In fact,
we will attempt to break down (or at least complicate) the distinction between writer and critic.
The class will therefore include exercises in both narrative theory and creative writing. Though
the class is not a fiction workshop, it will be helpful to those who do write stories. The class will
also be useful for those who want an overview of classic twentieth-century American short
fiction.
English 346: The History of Rhetorical Theory
Julie Christoph
“Rhetoric” is among the most slippery concepts in modern writing theory; during its long
history, the term has been used to name everything from specific stylistic devices to holistic
ways of understanding and making meaning. This course examines major concepts and
theorists within the rhetorical tradition, beginning with antiquity and ending with the present.
Issues central to the course include whether truth pre-exists discourse, whether selectively
choosing among available means of persuasion is ethical, whether the goal of rhetoric is
necessarily persuasion, and whether the mode of presentation in speech or writing alters the
meaning of rhetoric.
As a class, we will use theory to examine the rhetoric of our everyday lives and will explore the
implications of rhetorical theory for modern America—particularly through examining the
intersections between rhetorical theory and writing instruction, political and social activism,
and visual media. Along with two short papers and a longer researched paper, the course
requires in-class presentations and active participation.
English 351: Shakespeare
John Wesley
Ben Jonson wrote of his friend, Shakespeare, that he “was not of an age, but for all time,” a
sentiment whose prescience is confirmed by our continuing fascination with the bard and his
works. Yet, in the same poem, Jonson also insisted that Shakespeare was the “Soul of the age!”
In this course, we will read Shakespeare’s plays in light of his “age,” asking whether situating
these works in their Renaissance context can (somewhat paradoxically) help us understand
their extraordinary longevity. What is it about these stories that render them so amenable to
retelling in various cultures and periods? Indeed, so as not to lose sight of these plays as
performance texts, we will also consider the relationship between script and performance, as
well as supplement our readings with viewings of film versions. Our course studies seven plays
selected according to genre and chronology (one or two changes to the following may occur
prior to the start of classes): The Taming of the Shrew, Measure for Measure, 1 Henry IV,
Henry V, Antony and Cleopatra, King Lear, The Tempest.
This course fulfills the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.
English 360: Major Authors: Edith Wharton and Henry James
Tiffany Aldrich MacBain
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, authors Henry James and Edith Wharton
were regarded as America’s finest realists. Friends and rivals, James and Wharton produced a
voluminous amount of prose—novels, short stories, and critical essays—during their lengthy
careers. Each author was born into an American family of consequence and applied his or her
“native” knowledge to the craft of writing. In the main, Wharton’s and James’s narratives
concern themselves with men and women as social subjects, people whose identities are
wrapped up in, and frequently at odds with, society’s rules, distinctions, and whims. Often,
protagonists’ Americanness as much as their class, gender, ethnicity, or race bear the scrutiny
of these authors, whose considerable experience with Europe influenced their perceptions of
their homeland, for better and for worse. James and Wharton regarded themselves (and each
other) as master craftspeople and recognized the significance of their contribution to Englishlanguage letters. As students of ENGL360 familiarize themselves with major and minor works
of these authors, the students will identify and develop an understanding of Wharton’s and
James’s literary strategies and innovations within the contexts of the authors’ cultural, social,
and individual situations. Texts will likely include the following: The House of Mirth; The Age of
Innocence; Summer; The Portrait of a Lady; The Bostonians; The Golden Bowl; and a collection
of short stories and essays.
English 391: Studies in Lesbian & Gay Literature
Jeff Solomon
This class will explore the diverse experiences and identities of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, the
transgendered, and other queers through fiction by and about them written over the last
century, mostly but not exclusively in the United States. We will also consider biography;
cultural, psychological, and scientific theory; artifacts of popular culture; and visual narratives,
including comics and film. Topics to be considered are the relationship between homosexual
desire and queerness in a broader sense; GLBTQ children; the history of biological and
psychological understandings of sexual orientation; the concept of social construction as it
relates to sexual identity and desire; and the inherent conflict between homosexual identity
and queer theory. These will provide context for our reading of American authors such as
James Baldwin, Djuna Barnes, Alison Bechdel, Truman Capote, Michael Cunningham, Samuel
Delaney, Leslie Feinberg, David Leavitt, Carson McCullers, and Gertrude Stein.
This course fulfills the LCI requirement for the English major.
English 403: Advanced Creative Writing: Poetry
Hans Ostrom
The course is aimed at juniors and seniors who have been writing poems for a while and who
have completed English 203. We will spend time expanding the range of styles, forms, and
subjects in your poetry, and we will study formal prosody as well: how rhythm, meter, rhyme,
and structure have influenced poetry in English over the centuries. You will write and revise
many poems, read and interpret poems in an anthology, and participate productively in workgroups.
English 445: Twentieth-century British Literature: The Books of the Booker
William Kupinse
For forty years, the Man Booker prize has been awarded to the “finest” full-length novel written
by a citizen of the British Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland, and has bestowed honor,
recognition, and controversy upon the winning author. Modestly described by its
administrators as “the world’s most important literary award,” the “Booker,” as it’s commonly
known, inhabits that uneasy intersection of high art and mass cultural approbation. And while
the Booker judges would likely assert that the prize considers aesthetic matters only, a more
realistic assessment would suggest that issues of historical contingency inevitably inflect the
selection process. By studying a selection of winning novels and reading relevant literary
criticism and scholarship on the marketing of literary fiction, this course aims to uncover what
the Booker Prize reveals about changing notions of (post)colonial politics, economic structure,
gender roles, and sexuality—in short, of British national identity and Commonwealth
affiliation. Assignments include a class presentation, and midsemester and final essays. Novels
to be studied include A. S. Byatt’s Possession, Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, Roddy
Doyle’s Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, Pat Barker’s The Ghost Road, and Alan Hollinghurt’s The Line of
Beauty.
English 446: Studies in 17th and 18th Century Literature: Masculinities in Early America
Alison Tracy Hale
This is a course about the construction and reconstruction of concepts of manhood in colonial,
early national, and antebellum America. We’ll consider the always-contradictory and alwayschanging notions of what it meant to “be a man” in psychological, political, social, economic,
personal, religious, sexual, racial, and familial terms, and explore some of the larger cultural
and historical transformations that put pressure on the concept and practices of “manhood” in
these eras. We’ll investigate different models espoused across the different eras, as well as
their origins and catalysts: from Cotton Mather’s devout Puritan father to John Smith’s ruthless
adventurer, from Benjamin Franklin’s Enlightenment exemplar to Jonathan Edwards’s
passionate man of faith, from Charles Brockden Brown’s early capitalist adventurers to
Washington Irving’s fearful pretenders, and from Melville’s “confidence men” to Whitman’s
intemperate sots and impassioned celebrants of masculine love. Course texts will almost
certainly include Franklin’s Autobiography, Melville’s The Confidence Man, Charles Brockden
Brown’s Arthur Mervyn, and Walt Whitman’s Franklin Evans; Or, The Inebriate. You will also
most likely be subjected to sermons and biographies by Mather and Edwards, as well as other
colonial figures; short stories by Irving, Hawthorne, and Poe; poetry by Whitman; essays by
Emerson and/or Thoreau; and you should not be surprised to find yourself confronted as well
by the work of Frederick Douglass, William Apess, James Fenimore Cooper, Royall Tyler, George
Lippard, Benjamin Rush, or Thomas Jefferson. In talking about men, we will of course need to
talk about women, and may very well also read works by women, about men, but the primary
focus of the course will be male authors talking about what it means to be a man.
This is a senior seminar course and will carry a heavy reading load; in addition, requirements
include a shorter (6-8 pages) and longer seminar essay (12-15 pages); at least one presentation
and discussion leadership of secondary/critical material, and frequent, substantial contributions
to class conversation.
Prerequisites: English 210; English 224 or 225 or permission of instructor. This course fulfills the
pre-1800 requirement for the English major. Y-chromosomes welcome, but not required.
English 471: Auteur Theory: Hitchcock (Special Topics in WRC)
Mita Mahato
At its advent during the 1950s, auteur theory (simply put, theory related to a director’s practice
of exhibiting a unified set of thematic and aesthetic concerns) was both revelatory and
controversial. This seminar will introduce students to auteurism through the “perfect”
representation of it: Alfred Hitchcock. Known for his idiosyncratic and innovative film
technique and narration, as well as his deeply collaborative efforts with producers, editors,
writers, actors, and composers, Hitchcock created visual texts that simultaneously fixed and
blurred the definition of “auteur.” His prolific career—which spanned silent and sound film,
British and Hollywood studios, pre- and postwar contexts, cinematic and televisual media—thus
provides an illuminating set of documents (film, television, scripts, storyboards, etc.) through
which to study auteur theory and the social contexts that complicate and challenge it. As a
means of interrogating auteurism, students in this course will study a selection of these
documents alongside leading auteur theory and criticism. Along with regular sessions, evening
film screenings are required.
English 478: Jane Eyre and Revision
Priti Joshi
Since it first appeared in 1847, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre has spawned considerable
controversy and, over the years, numerous “revisions” in which it has reappeared in a variety of
guises and disguises. Examining texts that draw on aspects of the “Jane Eyre plot” – upward
mobility, the governess, the madwoman, colonial “careers,” the marriage plot, etc – this course
is organized so you have the opportunity to do what students are rarely asked to do, but what
literary scholars are routinely engaged in: read the same text more than once in light of new
knowledge and ideas. We will begin by studying Brontë's Jane Eyre as a text that initiated a
discussion about women's disempowerment and status. By locating this novel in its complex
historical moment – a moment convulsed by rapid industrial changes, revolutionary ideas,
working-class demands, the abolition of the slave trade, slave uprisings in the British colonies,
new ideas of race, and an expanding empire – we will study the relation of Jane Eyre's nascent
feminism to other radical movements of its day and consider its appropriations as well as
displacements of these movements. Alongside the novel and this historical context, we will
also consider contemporary feminist responses to Jane Eyre (Adrienne Rich, Gilbert & Gubar,
Mary Poovey, Gayatri Spivak, Eve Sedgwick, etc). Next, we will read a variety of “rewritings” of
Jane Eyre – from the 19th c as well as the 20th; from Britain, the US, and elsewhere; from
colonial and postcolonial perspectives; from print and visual media – each of which highlights
something the original suppressed or neglected, thus offering us new approaches to
reinterpreting Brontë’s text and simultaneously examining novel takes on the status of women.
Some of the texts we read will be parodies, some pastiches, some satires, and yet others
deviate considerably from the plot of the novel as they situate and re-envision it anew. In sum,
we will examine both Jane Eyre's continuing popularity as a trope for women's lives and
rebellion, as well as the various ways the novel and myth have been critiqued and transformed.
By the end of the semester, you will have a complex understanding of: (1) Brontë's novel; (2) a
number of literary responses it has evoked; and (3) Anglo-American feminist criticism.
In addition to Jane Eyre, our texts will be selected from the following books and films: M. E.
Braddon’s Lady Audley's Secret, George Gissing’s The Odd Women, A.C. Doyle’s Sherlock
Holmes stories, Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, May Sinclair’s The Three Sisters, Daphne
duMaurier’s Rebecca, E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India, Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea, Jamaica
Kincaid’s Lucy, Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Balasubramanyam’s In
Beautiful Disguises, Yvonne Vera’s Butterfly Burning, versions of Jane Eyre, and My Fair Lady,
Pretty Woman, I Walked With a Zombie.
Requirements: a creative rewriting of Jane Eyre, weekly Moodle postings, one shorter (7-8
page) paper, and one 15-page research paper.
This course fulfills the LCI requirement for the English major.
English 483: Celtic Literature in Translation
Michael Curley
Celtic Literature in Translation is a general introduction to the literature of the Celtic peoples,
particularly the Irish and the Welsh, from the seventh to the fourteenth century. Rather than
attempt to survey each literature separately, we shall study the major texts in Irish and Welsh
from a comparative point of view, looking at the assumptions they commonly share, and where
they differ about the function of literature, the role of the prose narrator and bard in an
aristocratic or monastic culture, the place of the ancient pagan mythology within a Christian
literary milieu, and the character of traditional Celtic heroes and heroines. We shall begin by
considering the current controversy over the use of the term “Celtic” and its relevance in
discussion about ethnicity. With this controversy in mind, we shall make an effort to
understand what might define the particular character of the works under consideration, and
what is specifically “Celtic” about them. We shall often look to English, European or modern
Irish and Welsh authors themselves for their treatment of kingship, honor, shame, love,
violence and death. Also, because Celtic literature sometimes appears to preserve an archaic
view of the structure of society, we shall draw on the disciplines of comparative mythology and
anthropology in order to inform our reading. As with the study of all early literatures, Celtic
offers a unique challenge to our modern critical assumptions, and helps us to broaden our
concept of what literature is.
This course fulfills the pre-1800 requirement for the English major. This course fulfills the LCI
requirement for the English major.
Connections 375: The Harlem Renaissance
Hans Ostrom
This course studies the literature, visual art, music, political debates, and intellectual nonfiction
produced by those involved in what is now called the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. We will
read poetry, short stories, several novels, and essays on our way to understanding what was at
stake in American society and particularly for African Americans during this remarkable era.
We will examine many different representations of Americans and African Americans, different
perspectives on race and racism, and fusions of politics, ideas about gender, and social
conditions, including economics and social class. The course will analyze such concepts as
double-consciousness, essentialism, race, ethnicity, exoticism, the Talented Tenth, and white
privilege. We will also study the remarkably original development of African American visual art
and such musical forms as the blues, ragtime, stride piano, boogie-woogie, and rhythm & blues.
Authors whose works we will read include W.E.B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston
Hughes, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, Jessie Redmon Fauset, Richard Bruce Nugent, Rudolph
Fisher, and Georgia Douglas Johnson. Students will write papers, take examinations, and make
group presentations, and they will be expected to keep up on the reading and participate
productively in class-discussions.