ENGLISH ELECTIVES
FALL 2016
BARUCH COLLEGE - ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
Survey of English
Literature I
English 3010
Prof. A. Silberman
Mon/Wed 12:50-2:05 PM
Find out what inspired Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. See how Satan first
became a glamorous anti-hero. In this course, we will be reading
representative works of English literature from Beowulf and Sir Gawain
and the Green Knight through selections from Milton’s Paradise Lost.
Other readings will include selections from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales—
the romantic, the bawdy, and the moral--one of the plays of Shakespeare, a
Renaissance epyllion—a short, erotic narrative--and selected Renaissance
love lyrics. There will be two short, critical essays, a midterm and a final
exam
Survey of English
Literature II
English 3015
Prof. M. Eatough
Tue/Thu 7:30-8:45 PM
This course provides a survey of English literature from the Romantic
period through the twentieth century. We will see how imaginative writers
from across more than 200 years responded to the major historical and
cultural developments of their time, including imperialism, industrialism,
democracy, urbanization, decolonization, and globalization. During the
semester, we will study the lyric poetry and revolutionary writings of the
Romantics (Wordsworth, Keats, Coleridge); early anti-slavery and feminist
texts (Equiano, Wollstonecraft); the twin rise of liberalism and “high
realism” during the Victorian period (Mill, Dickens, Elizabeth Barrett
Browning); fin-de-siecle aestheticism (Wilde); the modernists’ experiments
with literary form (Woolf, Eliot, Joyce, Beckett); and multicultural
literature from the post WWII period (Selvon, Rushdie, Churchill). In
addition to familiarizing ourselves with literary history, we will be
concerned throughout the course with significant and decisive issues that
have a bearing on both the social and cultural map of nineteenth- and
twentieth-century Britain and on our own position in history: the rise of the
modern “individual,” the consolidation of a global capitalist empire, class
conflict, immigration, changing sex and gender norms, and the growth of
modern consumerism.
Survey of American
Literature I
English 3020
Prof. J. Brenkman
Mon/Wed 7:30 –8:45 PM
The historical span of this course goes from the first colonists and
Puritanism through the American Revolution and the Founding Fathers up
to the Civil War. The literature to be studied is as varied as sermons and
captivity narratives, essays and novels, treatises and poems. The period we
will study saw the emergence of many of America’s defining myths and
themes : the city on the hill, the frontier, the wilderness, Manifest Destiny.
Such myths and themes are often taken as defining the United States as a
nation. American literature is often looked to as a way of establishing the
image of the Nation, in a search for a uniquely American self, an American
space, an American destiny. As we survey American literature, we will also
investigate the ways in which American literature has often gone against the
grain of American history and American identity. A major emphasis in the
course will be the major writers of the so-called American Renaissance of
the mid-19th century: Emerson, Hawthorne, Poe, Thoreau, Whitman,
Melville, and Dickinson, whose works will be read in relation to the 17thand 18th-century roots of American thought, politics, and religion.
Texts: David D. Hall (ed.), Puritans in the New World: A Critical
Anthology (Princeton University Press); Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet
Letter (Penguin); Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays: First and Second Series
(Library of America); Herman Melville, Billy Budd, Sailor (University of
Chicago Press); Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass and Other Writings
(Norton Critical); David Wooton (ed.), The Essential Federalist and AntiFederalist Papers (Hackett).
Survey of American
Literature II
English 3025
Prof. T. Aubry
Tue/Thu 2:30-3:45 PM
This course surveys American Literature from the Civil War to the present.
We will examine how the literature of this period reflects and respond to
major historical and social developments, including industrialism,
urbanism, war, economic depression, racial tension, bureaucratization, the
breakdown of traditional sex and gender norms, and technological
innovation. We will examine naturalist, realist, and modernist literary
techniques and the various artistic and political purposes they served.
Among the authors we will study will be Twain, DuBois, Gilman, Wharton,
Hughes, Hurston, Stevens, Faulkner, O’Connor, Plath, and Morrison.
A Survey of African
American Literature
English 3034
Prof. A. Curseen
Tue/Thu 2:30-3:45 PM
After Beyonce hijacked the 2016 Super Bowl by dropping the video for her new
release “Formation,”#formation has been lovingly adopted in the blog and twitter
sphere, particularly within black social media, to describe not just Bey or the video,
but broader expressions of of black love and unity. Certainly the video encourages
this association; its call to “get in formation” is inextricable from its celebration of
Bey’s black heritage (with lyrics about her Creole and Negro ancestry and her
daughter’s afro set to an anthem-esque flow against a visual homage to black hair
styles, New Orleans culture, and black dance). However the idea of “formation” is
both a curious and yet not new rallying point for black America. On the one hand,
in response to a racist history where black people have long been degraded as
deformed or unformed (i.e. as perpetual children, as cultureless, as incapable of
organized resistance, and self-governance), black leaders have, for over two
hundred years, urged black communities to “get in formation.” On the other hand,
seeing the limitations of American forms (of citizen, representation, and
personhood), black artists and activists have often found radical interventions and
generative alternatives to racist and oppressive status quos by being
unapologetically deformed and out-of-form. Indeed in one of his many seminal
contribution to the study of African American literature, scholar Houston Baker
described the black authors of the Harlem Renaissance as negotiating the
overlapping and conflicting efficacies between African American art that invested
in the "mastery of form" and African American art that invested in the
"deformation of mastery."
This class will approach the black literary tradition as an ongoing
exploration of what it could mean to “get in formation.” We will regard
the imperative to "get in formation" as both a matter of getting in (or
aligned) with traditional form and a matter of getting inside of and
messing with the idea of a discrete and normative form, which is to say, an
act of imagining alternative formations. Our exploration necessitates an
attention to the way literary content and formal elements i at times inform
and at times undermine each other. We will examine both illustrations of
formation inside the text (i.e. depictions of raising children, building
houses, community organizing, etc.) and the author’s use of and
resistances to literary forms (i.e. generic conventions, grammatical rules,
and classical [Western] notions of aesthetic harmony). In both these lines
of inquiries we will pay particularly close attention to the disturbingly
formless and out-of-form. When we look at depictions of formation, we
will also consider the efficacy of the unformed (what of Frederick
Douglas’s modes of resistance before he learns to read?). And when we
look at literary forms, we will not only pay attention to explicit avantgarde experimentations in form but also to the generativity of failed forms
(i.e. bad writing and unsophisticated novels).
As we address major themes in African American literature (i.e. movement
vs. constraint, authenticity, voice, vernacular forms, memory, national
belonging, intersectionality, and alternative black social life), we will do so
with an awareness that "formation" refers both to strategic alignment and
to a not-yet-formed becoming. As such a question running throughout our
discussions will be, "How can we read literature not only for what shows
up strategically and fully formed but also for what is not fully there--what
though hard-to-see is nevertheless palpable, moving, and always putting
pressure on the way we imagine the world and ourselves?"
Readings for this course may include but are not limited to: The
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Our Nig, The Souls of Black
Folk, Quicksand & Passing, Invisible Man, Sula, The Known World and
selected poems by Phyllis Wheatley, Alice Dunbar, Countee Cullen,
Langston Hughes, Sterling Brown, June Jordan, Amiri Baraka, Fred
Moten, and M. NourbeSe Philip.
English Voices from Afar:
Post-Colonial Literature
English 3036
Prof. P. Hitchcock
Tue/Thu 10:45-12:00 PM
This course examines literary works written in English in regions other that
Great Britain and the United States, namely Africa, Australia, South Asia,
Canada, and the Caribbean Islands. The focus is on different genres
produced in the post-colonial period including works by such writers as
Nuruddin Farah, Nadine Gordimer, Chris Abani, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o,
Timothy Mo, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Jean Rhys, and Paule Marshall.
Topics in Politics and
Literature
English 3201
Prof. J. DiSalvo
Tue/Thu 4:10-5:25 PM
The poet Shelley made the extravagant claim that poets are “the
unacknowledged legislators of the world,” that is, that literature had a
powerful influence on politics. This will be an interdisciplinary class using
20th-21st Century fiction, memoirs, poetry, drama, political lyrics and films
to explore literature and social protest. Non-fiction essays will provide
political analyses and historical contexts. Those will be used to illuminate
the literature, but literary themes will also lead to political & sociological
discussions. We will begin with the original myth of the American Dream
and American exceptionalism as celebrated by writers like Walt Whitman.
Then we will look at works dealing with: empire and war, immigration,
race, gender, and economic inequality and struggles to create social justice,
including the Civil Rights, anti-war, and labor movements. We will also
look at visions of social transformation and dreams of an alternative society
created by the literary imagination. Some of the following works may be
included: Mark Twain, memoirs by Civil Rights activist, Ann Moody and
Vietnam war vet, William Ehrhart; fiction which may include Upton
Sinclair, Jack London, Luis Rodriguez, Music of the Mill, Gladkov,
Cement, and Marge Piercy, Woman at the Edge of Time, Leslie Marmon
Silko, Ceremony, and selections from Ann Rand, some poets might be
Pablo Neruda, Muriel Rukeyser, Carolyn Forche, Amiri Baraka, the Last
Poets, Langston Hughes, Marge Piercy, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Bly and
Spoken Word, as well as drama by Bertold Brecht, and films.
Fiction Writing Workshop
English/JRN 3610, 3610H
Prof. M. Truong (H. W-I-R)
Wed 2:05 – 5:00 PM
Elements of Poetry:
Presenting Subject Matter
English 3640
Prof. G. Schulman
Tue/Thu 5:50-7:05 PM
You don’t have to be a secret poet to enroll in The Elements of Poetry
(although secret poets are welcome, too). If you love good books, if you
enjoy reading Shakespeare or Chaucer or Dickinson, if you have ever been
moved or disturbed or frightened by the sounds of the language, if you have
wanted to write but can’t get started, this course is all yours.
You will learn to present emotion in images, which will unlock your
innermost feelings. You will be writing in basic forms, such as the riddle, as
well as in freer forms. You will be writing about poetry, and learning how
major poets, from Shakespeare to Elizabeth Bishop to Langston Hughes,
convey their thoughts and loves and passions.
Best of all, you will be sharing your poems with the class in a workshop,
and learning to use language in ways that will convey your wishes, fears,
and dreams.
Your professor is Grace Schulman, whose latest book of poems is The
Without a Claim (Mariner Books, Houghton Mifflin), and whose new book
of essays is First Loves and Other Adventures (U of Michigan). She was
Poetry Editor of The Nation (1972-2006) and Director of the Poetry Center,
92nd Street Y (1974-84).
If you have passed English 2150 or 2800/2850, you are eligible to enroll
in this course.
Introduction to Linguistics
English 3700
Prof. G. Dalgish
Mon/Wed 12:50-2:05 PM
 What is the difference between sentences like: Madonna is EAGER to
please and Madonna is EASY to please?
 How do you say "Cock-a-doodle-do" in Russian? In Greek? In French?
Why are these different?
 Is there such a thing as a primitive language or dialect? What is a social
dialect?
 How does Black (African-American) English differ from so-called
Standard American English?
 Where do new words and slang expressions come from, and why aren't
they in the dictionary?
 Can computers understand language?
 What are some differences between women's and men's speech?
 What makes language in advertising so deceptive?
 How is it that children learn language effortlessly, without formal
education or structure? What does this say about humans in general and
their capacity for language?
If these questions interest you, so might ENG 3700, The Study of
Language. In the course of examining these and similar questions, ENG
3700 investigates the nature and structure of Language, the ability we
possess that is one of the few areas still uniquely human and beyond
computer understanding. Students interested in culture, anthropology,
society, psychology, philosophy, religion, foreign languages, advertising,
marketing, computer science and English will have much to learn from and
much to contribute to a course like this. English majors should know that
many graduate programs require Linguistics courses, and there are still
opportunities in the field of Teaching English to Speakers of Other
Languages (TESOL).
Women in Literature
English 3720
Prof. S. Eversley
Tue/Thu 2:30-3:45 PM
For almost all of history, the very notion of women writers has been a
contradiction. Their effacement in history—an effacement that denies
women as thinkers, as artists, as politically and socially engaged—requires
that, even now, we pay must attention to women writers. Women’s writing
is a radical act, one that questions historical authority and inspires new
ways of thinking. In this course, we will explore the political and social
engagements of women writing, and take seriously their radical acts of
thinking—and art-making—in public. We will read novels, poems, and
essays by women such as Virginia Woolf, Zora Neale Hurston, Gertrude
Stein, Djuna Barnes, Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldua, Bessie Head, and
Allison Bechdel. We will have fun, think hard, and write about the ethical
and aesthetic issues that emerge from our readings.
Literature and Psychology
English 3730H
Prof. M. Staub
Mon/Wed 12:50-2:05 PM
This course will focus on the psychology of literature, both classic and
contemporary. We will read novels, plays, and short stories (as well as
watch the occasional film) about dysfunctional families, alienated
individuals, scapegoated persons, and sociopaths. We will discuss works
that explore the psychic consequences of racial prejudice and bigotry. We
will look at texts that examine how our biases cause us to see only what we
choose to see. And we will read about hallucinations and madness. We will
analyze stories about the psychic damages resulting from unequal gender
relations, and we will look at how therapies (including talk, conversion,
group, aversive) have been represented (and parodied) in literature. We will
discuss the widespread impact of pharmaceuticals on selfhood. We will
look at the problems of propaganda, torture, rumor, and mass hysteria. And
we will discuss love, faith, and attraction (both normative and forbidden).
Texts (in whole or in excerpted form) may include: Baldwin, Go Tell It on
the Mountain; Burgess, A Clockwork Orange; Chesler, Women and
Madness; Highsmith, “Not One of Us”; Jackson, “The Lottery”; James, The
Varieties of Religious Experience; Kramer, Listening to Prozac; Larsen,
Passing; Mann, Mrs. Packard; O’Neill, Desire Under the Elms; Palahniuk,
Fight Club; Poe, “The Tell-Tale Heart”; Welch, Winter in the Blood; and
Welles, “War of the Worlds.”
(NOTE: This course is cross-listed as PSY 3730H).
Masters of Modern Drama
English 3770
Prof. H. Brent
Mon/Wed 10:45-12:00 PM
This course examines the revolutionary plays of Ibsen, Strindberg,
Chekhov, and Shaw and their achievements in destroying old forms and
creating twentieth-century drama. It considers the social, political, and
psychological ideas advanced by these thinkers and shows how they shaped
the thinking and made possible the achievements of other important modern
playwrights such as Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams,
Lillian Hellman, and J.P. Sartre. The emphasis throughout is on analysis of
representative plays.
Topics in Film: Ireland on
Screen
English 3940
Prof. M. McGlynn
Mon/Wed 10:45-12:00 PM
This course will take as its subject the history of portrayals of Ireland and
the Irish onscreen. We’ll begin with films that established a myth of
romantic nationalism, like Man of Aran and The Quiet Man. We will look
at both rural and urban films, including The Field and The Commitments,
examining the depiction of the Northern Irish “Troubles” through films
such as The Crying Game, Resurrection Man, and In the Name of the
Father, and concluding with “post-national” films like Once and Goldfish
Memory. Throughout, we will think about the relationship between class
and national identity, what role the heritage industry plays in defining
‘Ireland,’ how film articulates the relationship of Ireland to the UK and the
US (Brooklyn), and how globalization has shaped the Irish film industry.
Topics in Literature:
Fiction Without Borders
English 3950
Prof. A. El-Annan
Mon/Wed 9:05-10:20 AM
In the near future, the majority of the earth’s inhabitants may live in
cities. Modern global cities are urban nodes of commerce, metropolitan
dream worlds where crime and violence co-exist with entertainment and
leisure industries, and where global networks of migration create new
centers of diversity and diaspora. In this course we will explore the ways in
which migration is changing the contours of global cities, investigating
contemporary urban themes via a series of case studies, including Los
Angeles, New York, Beirut, Cairo, Dubai, La Paz and Miami.
This course tackles the twin problems of modernity and migration
from social, historical, economic and theoretical perspectives. While the
nation state system of borders and passports is but a few centuries old,
human migration is as old as humanity itself. In this course we will examine
the problems, patterns and most importantly, imaginings of migration from
the perspective of city-scapes. Political movements, media reports, and
changing conceptions of race, ethnicity, and citizenship testify to the ways
international migration has challenged one of the basic elements of the
modern world: a rationalized system of nation-states, able to exercise
sovereign control over identities, economies, and territories. We will
analyze the political, spatial, and temporal dimensions of critical written or
visual representations of the displacement of peoples, the invention and
reinvention of subjects and subjectivities, and the politics of knowledge and
power. The syllabus does not move in a historically linear fashion, rather
we cross and re-cross issues of indigeneity and the colonial/imperial and
postcolonial condition.
This is not a course in urban studies, which is an entire academic
field and at most universities comprises a department or a “center” offering
multiple courses. My aim is to approach the phenomenon of world cities
from a perspective that is attuned to issues of migration, race and ethnicity.
So in that respect, I will both give a somewhat different selection of texts
and approach them differently than an urban study specialist would do. This
course teaches students how to think about these developments. In so
doing, it takes the perspective that migration shapes and is shaped by
economics, politics, policies, identities, cultures, and mentalities throughout
the globe. Thus, course materials span a variety of disciplines and examine
different types of sources, including traditional academic scholarship, books
and articles in history and the social sciences, first-person migration
narratives, contemporary literature, photography, and film.
Topics in Literature:
Theory of the Novel
English 3950
Prof. S. Hershinow
Mon/Wed 4:10-5:25 PM
The novel is the literature of real life: representing people as individuals
and the world as it truly is. The novel cannibalizes all other literary genres
(epic, romance, lyric, and tragedy), using those to its own purposes and
avoiding easy categorization. The novel, widely circulated and written in
common language, creates a community of its readers, with significant
political consequences. The novel, its characters always caught up in plot,
reveals to us that no matter what we intend to do, our actions will always
have unintended—even devastating—consequences.
These are just a few of the theories about the novel we’ll consider over the
course of this semester, as we consider the genre’s historical emergence and
development as well as the particular formal questions it raises (about
perspective, representation, and innovation). Reading a few novels together,
and drawing on our varied experiences of novels both classic and popular,
we’ll ask what novels are, how they work, and what they do.
Topics in Literature:
Holocaust Literature
English 3950
Prof. W. McClellan
Mon/Wed 5:50-7:05 PM
The Holocaust is regularly portrayed as “unrepresentable,”meaning it is a
trauma so vast in scale that it is unimaginable, unspeakable and
incomprehensible. In spite of this recognition, many interesting and
important attempts to depict the Holocaust have been made. This course
focuses on the efforts different writers have made to comprehend and
transmit the experiences of the Holocaust. We will read and analyze some
survivor testimonies, stories and poems with an eye towards discerning the
way these literary forms have been uniquely shaped by the writers’ attempts
to grasp and understand the Holocaust.
Topics in Literature:
Aestheticism and
Decadence
English 3950
Prof. S. O’Toole
Mon/Wed 2:30-3:45 PM
This course surveys the Aesthetic and Decadent movements in latenineteenth-century literature and culture. We will examine the work of
writers and artists who believed that the experience of art and beauty should
be considered the highest human value, as well as some of the important
philosophical arguments that support or challenge this notion. We will also
be concerned with the pervasive sense that this was a period of “decadence”
or cultural decline and the new artistic possibilities that this belief
paradoxically generated across multiple genres and media (essays, novels,
poetry, book arts, paintings, posters, opera, philosophical writing) in
anticipation of twentieth-century modernism. Authors to be studied include
Charles Baudelaire, Algernon Swinburne, Walter Pater, Vernon Lee, Oscar
Wilde, William Morris, and Alice Meynell.
Globalization of English
English 4015
Prof. E. Block
Tuesday 6:05-9:00 PM
Chaucer
English 4120
Prof. C. Christoforatou
Mon/Wed 10:45-12:00 PM
Today it seems that everyone speaks English—in print, on television, on the
internet. How did English become such a pervasive medium of
communication? How has the popularity of English affected those who
speak English and those who don’t or who are trying to? How does
English, or any language, create feelings of solidarity or division in its
speakers? This course analyzes the state of English in the world today, how
the English language has aided globalization and how globalization is
changing English. While this course focuses on English as a force in
globalization, we will also look at the role of Language in general as a force
for maintaining power, creating solidarity and division, and developing
both individual and national identity. As a capstone-level elective, the
course will explore global English through library and independent
research, oral presentation, electronic discussion, and collaborative inquiry.
Knights, merchants, rogues, and selfproclaimed saints share fascinating stories
of their travels and travails in Geoffrey
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Written at
the end of the 14th century, Chaucer’s
masterpiece contains a series of stories,
ranging from the serious and pious to the
unabashedly earthy and outrageously
funny. The tales are told by a cast of
memorable pilgrims that includes a
dashing knight, a drunken miller, a bookish
young scholar, a conniving pardoner, a
self-indulgent monk, and the infamous
Wife of Bath, among others.
In piecing together Chaucer’s portrait of late medieval society, we will
discover how the poet illuminates and distorts social realities, rendering a
colorful portrait of life that is strangely familiar to the modern reader. Our
study of the pilgrims’ quests in their various manifestations—amorous,
heroic, religious, and political—will allow us to understand medieval
individual’s relationship to God, society, and the foreign. As a class, we
will also have an opportunity to appreciate the cultural influences that
allowed medieval civilizations to evolve through exploration and adaptation
in our weekly discussions and through the study of various artifacts—
illuminated manuscripts, relics, tapestries, mosaics, and ivories—in a visit
to The Cloisters or the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Shakespeare
English 4140
Prof. L. Kolb
Tue/Thu 5:50-7:05 PM
In this course, students will read widely in Shakespeare’s work,
encountering his history plays (Richard II, Henry IV), comedies (Twelfth
Night, As You Like It), tragedies (Hamlet, Othello), and romances (The
Tempest). Over the course of the semester, students will become expert
readers of Shakespeare: attentive to his plays’ verse lines; to their diction,
syntax, and innovative use of sound; and to the dramatist’s virtuosic
manipulation of figures of speech. Students will also develop a sense of
Shakespeare’s approach to political and philosophical problems, ranging
from the nature of kingship to the formation of the self in a slippery, everchanging social and economic world. In addition to careful close-reading of
dramatic works, the course will consider the conventions of the early
modern theater and investigate the links between dramatic text and
historical context.
The Nineteenth-Century
Novel
English 4320
Prof. N. Yousef
Tue/Thu 9:05-10:20 AM
Certain questions hold an endless fascination: Can something be both
frightening and attractive? Is passion beautiful or monstrous? What makes
us want another person? What keeps individuals together? What pulls
them apart? This course looks at the expression given to such questions in
the nineteenth-century novel. The novel is usually associated with realism,
with the attempt to represent the world as we know it. Some of the most
interesting novels are works in which authors experiment with making
worlds that look like those we live in while also presenting surprising and
illuminating deviations from what we take for granted as “real.” In this
course we will read some of the most astonishing and influential stories of
the nineteenth century in order to learn something about the imaginative
limits of things we think we all know: beauty, love, curiosity, ambition,
longing. This year, we will focus in particular on the topic of desire and its
manifestations in romantic, fantastic, and realistic novels of the period.
Possible readings might include: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Mary
Shelley’s Frankenstein, Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, Charles
Dickens’ Great Expectation, George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss, Thomas
Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian
Gray, E.M. Forster’s Passage to India
Modern Short Novel
English 4460
Prof. E. Chou
Tue/Thu 10:45-12:00 PM
Students in this course will read modern short novels from a number of
Asian countries, including works from India and Singapore (written in
English), China and Japan (works in translation), as well as other places. In
fewer than 200 pages each, our authors create convincing worlds of
characters, events, and atmosphere. Collectively, the authors ask questions
about the role that a person plays in society, the role that nations play in the
world, and even larger questions like the meaning of being human. The
class will analyze each novel both as a work of literary art and for what it
conveys about the culture that produced it and emerge, I hope, with new
respect for works of the imagination.
The Main Currents of
Literary Expression in
Contemporary America
English 4500
Prof. F. Cioffi
Tue/Fr 12:50-2:05 PM
This course will look at what I think is the most exciting and interesting
U.S. literature being published today, namely what’s found in the literary
magazines. Conveniently, the best of these (or at least an excellent
selection) is collected in some annual anthologies, three of which will serve
as the texts for our class:
_The Best American Short Stories, 2016_
_The Best American Nonrequired Reading, 2016_
_The Pushcart Prize: The Best of the Small Presses, 2016_
The anthologies include fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction, as well as
some works that might be generically non-classifiable.
We also might read a novel or two, such as Jennifer Egan’s _A Visit from
the Goon Squad_, Rivka Galchen’s _Atmospheric Disturbances_, George
Saunders’s _The Brief Reign of Phil_, or Anne Carson’s novel in verse,
_Autobiography of Red_.
Grades will be based on two papers (one short, one long), two exams,
quizzes, and class participation.
Lesbian and Gay Themes
in Twentieth-Century
Literature
English 4525
Prof. D. Mengay
Mon/Wed 2:30-3:45 PM
This course looks at the developing consciousness of lesbian and gay
perspectives from the end of the nineteenth to the beginning of the twentyfirst centuries. It pursues a multiple focus, historical, cultural and literary,
since the metamorphosis of queer literature helped shape a whole new
category of social identity. We’ll survey this body of work within the
context of other struggles for self-definition, especially those related to
gender and race. Texts include Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Baldwin’s
Giovanni’s Room, Ginsberg’s “Howl,” Wittig’s The Lesbian Body, Puig’s
Kiss of the Spider Woman and Morrison’s Paradise.
Harlem Renaissance
English 4545
Prof. T. Allan
Mon/Wed 5:50-7:05 PM
This course will explore the first major intellectual and artistic movement in
African American history known as the Harlem Renaissance. It happened
at a time "when Harlem was in vogue," as one historian puts it; when "the
New Negro" burst onto the world stage and into the pages of numerous
books; when race pride was both an effective and controversial strategy for
achieving racial unity; and above all, when a generation of young men and
women created memorable works of art.
We will read, discuss, and write about a few of the best works written
during this era by well-known figures such as Zora Neale Hurston,
Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, and W.E.B DuBois, as
well as their less popular but equally talented peers, Nella Larsen, Jessie
Fauset, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Sterling Brown, and Jean Toomer. As
we read the texts, we will discuss the national and international contexts
that helped to stimulate and sustain the focus on this new body of writingfor example, the Great Migration, the First World War, the politics of
Marcus Garvey, and the influence of the Negritude movement happening in
the Caribbean, Africa, and France.
Join us for an intellectually exciting study of the rebirth of black letters
which took place in the early twentieth century. Film, guest lectures, and a
visit to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture will provide
added stimulus to learning.
Gothic Mysteries
English 4740
Prof. C. Jordan
Mon/Wed 4:10-5:25 PM
Against a background of haunted castles, demonic predators, and victims
who unconsciously collaborate in their own ruin, Gothic literature takes us
on a journey into the dark recesses of the human psyche that fascinated
Freud, and examines its insatiable appetite for danger and forbidden
pleasure. Through psychoanalytical and feminist lens, we will explore
Gothic stories by both men and women. We will see how Victorian
medical attitudes towards the body forced the female writer of the Gothic
novel to create erotically coded texts which psychologists are still
unraveling today. If you like exotic settings, you will revel in Jean Rhys’s
Caribbean Gothic novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, about fatal passion, voodoo
priestesses, sexual addiction, and mad Creole heiresses set in the lush
islands of Jamaica and Dominica. You will love Bram Stoker’s nineteenth
century masterpiece of voluptuous terror, Dracula, which changed the way
we view vampires forever. Stoker transformed the traditional emaciated
vampire into a tantalizingly dangerous predator who provides his victims
with a taste of ecstasy before luring them into the world of the damned.
Readings will include Mary Shelley’s masterpiece of monstrous creation,
Frankenstein, Charlotte Bronte’s multi-layered erotically coded novel, Jane
Eyre, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Psychological thriller, Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde, and Nikolai Gogol’s stories of shape-changing goddesses set in the
exquisite haunting landscape of Russia. The otherworldly beauty of these
goddesses functions as an irresistible drug for the vulnerable men they lure
into their glittering net.