Spring2015ENGelectives
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ENGLISH ELECTIVES BARUCH COLLEGE SPRING 2015 Survey of English Literature I English 3010 TTH 05:50PM-07:05PM Prof. L. Kolb Survey of English Literature I English 3010 MW 02:30PM-03:45PM Survey of English Literature II English 3015 TTH 11:10AM-12:25PM Prof. G. Hentzi Survey of American Literature I English 3020 MW 05:50PM-07:05PM Prof. D. Mengay Survey of American Literature II English 3025 TTH 04:10PM-5:25PM Prof. J. DiSalvo Ethnic Literature English 3032 MW 12:50PM-2:05PM Prof. E. Chou African American Literature I English 3034 MW 04:10PM-05:25PM Prof. T. Allan English Voice from Afar: Post Colonial English 3036 TTH 11:10AM-12:25PM Prof. P. Hitchcock Survey of Caribbean Literature in English English 3038 TTH 11:10AM-12:25PM Prof. K. Frank Literature for Young Adults English 3045 MW 09:30AM-10:45AM The 1980’s in Film and Literature English 3270 MW 11:10AM-12:25PM Prof. M. McGlynn The Craft of Poetry: Form and Revision English 3645 TTH 05:50PM-07:05PM Prof. G. Schulman Advanced Essay Writing English 3680 MW 2:30PM-3:45PM Women in Literature English 3720 MW 02:30PM-03:45PM Prof. E. Kauvar The Structure and History of English English 3750 MW 12:50PM-02:05PM Prof. G. Dalgish Contemporary Drama: The New Theatre English 3780 MW 7:50AM-09:05AM Prof. H. Brent Topics in literature English 3950 The Production of Culture In Contemporary Society English 3950 TTH 09:30AM-10:45AM Prof. T. Aubry Oscar Wilde and His Contexts English 3950 TTH 02:30PM-03:45PM Prof. S. O’Toole Jane Austen English 3950 TTH 05:50PM-7:05PM Gothic Mysteries English 3950 MW 4:10PM-5:25PM Prof. C. Jordan Techniques in Poetry English 4010 MW 07:45PM-9:00PM Prof. E. Shipley The Globalization of English English 4015 TTH 05:50PM-7:05PM Prof. E. Block Medieval Literature English 4110 MW 11:10AM-12:25PM Chaucer English 4120 MW 05:50PM-7:05PM Shakespeare English 4140 TTH 02:30PM-3:45PM Prof. A. Deutermann The Nineteenth- Century Novel English 4320 TTH 02:30PM-03:45PM Prof. N. Yousef Currents in the Modern Novel English 4440 MW 09:30AM-10:45AM Prof. M. Eatough Main Currents of Literary Expression In Contemporary America: Protest in American Culture and History English 4500 MW 11:10AM-12:25PM Prof. M. Staub The American Novel English 4510 TTH 09:30AM-10:45AM Prof. L. Silberman Literature Prof. A. Curseen Prof. C. Mead Prof. S. Hershinow Prof. C. Christoforatou Prof. W. McClellan Prof. R. Rodriguez ENGLISH ELECTIVES BARUCH COLLEGE SPRING 2015 Survey of English and Literature I English 3010 Prof. L. Silberman Mon/Wed 2:30PM3:45PM 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 epylliona – – 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 I English 3010 Prof. L. Kolb Tues/Thur 5:50PM7:05PM This course surveys the development of major literary genres in English, including lyric, epic, and drama. Beginning with a selection of Old English riddles and poems from the Exeter Book, the course will move through Beowulf; Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales; plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries; lyric poems by Sidney, Donne, and Herbert; and Milton’s great English epic, Paradise Lost. Our goals in the class are twofold: to become spectacular close-readers of poetry (and, by extension, other types of writing) and to track the development of forms and themes across English literary history, from its beginnings to the late seventeenth century. Written work will consist of two papers, a midterm, and a final exam. Survey of English Literature II English 3015 Prof. G. Hentzi Tues/Thur 11:10am12:425PM This course offers an overview of more than three centuries of English, Irish, and Commonwealth literature in the major genres of fiction an non-fiction prose, poetry, and drama. Beginning with the Restoration we will read characteristic works from all the major historical period Survey of American Literature I English 3020 Prof. D. Mengay Mon/Wed 5:507:05PM This course will focus on three narratives that surface in earlyAmerican writing through the middle of the nineteenth century. The first has to do with land, who owns it and by what authority a person feels entitled to claim it. The issue becomes a contested one as Euro-Americans insist increasingly the land belongs to them. The second is the rise of secular discourse and the discussion of basic human rights. We will follow the shift from Puritan views to those of John Locke and other English philosophers, whose ideas influenced American writers in the mid- and late-eighteenth century. Related to this theme is the third narrative, race, which becomes a dominant subtext in American literature prior to the Civil War. Works will will include: Bradford’s Pilgrim Plantation; Rowlandson’s Narrative of a Captivity; Franklin’s Autobiography; Irving’s “Rip van Winkle”; Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans; Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter; Melville’s Melville’s Moby Dick; Brent’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; and Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. Survey of American Literature II English 3025 Prof. J. DiSalvo Tue/Thu 4:10PM5:45 PM down to the present day, including the eighteenth century, the Romantic and Victorian eras, the Modern period, and the second half of the twentieth century. Authors to be studied include John Dryden, William Congreve, Alexander Pope, Edward Gibbon, Jane Austen, William Wordsworth, John Keats, John Ruskin, Alfred Tennyson, Oscar Wilde, Joseph Conrad, William Butler Yeats, D. H. Lawrence, George Orwell, Philip Larkin, V. S. Naipaul, Derek Walcott, Ian McEwan, and Zadie Smith. This course surveys American Literature from the Civil War to the present. We will examine how the literature of this period reflects and responds to major historical and social developments, including industrialism, urbanism, war, economic depression, as well as nationality and ethnic identity, bureaucratization, technological innovation, and class, race and gender oppression. We will read novels, short stories, poetry, drama and prose, view drama and history on film and 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, Hughes, Steinbeck, Faulkner, Miller, Stevens, Baldwin, O’Connor, Heller, Plath, Piercy and Morrison. Ethnic Literature English 3032 Prof. E. Chou Mon/Wed 12:50PM2:05PM This course is a survey of the contribution of Asian-American writers to American literature. It will begin with the 1930s to gain a historical perspective but will focus on writers who are currently publishing. Some will be first-time authors; others will be publishing their fourth or fifth work. The reading will include memoirs, novels, and short stories by authors such as Toshio Mori, Gish Jen, Patti Kim, Ha Jin, Sigrid Nunez, Susan Choi, and Kirin Desai. (The last three authors have Baruch connections.) One or two films will be included. Through literary analyses, we will discuss issues such as ethnic identity, acculturation, response to racism, and the relations among the various Asian groups. African American Literature I English 3034 Prof. T. Allan Mon/Wed 4:10PM5:25PM While this course offers an overview of African American literature produced over three centuries, we will focus attention on some of the critical stages of its development, from the poetry, fiction, and slave narratives of the 18th and 19th centuries to the glorious age of the Harlem Renaissance, the hard-hitting realism of Richard Wright, and the feminist revolution of our time. We will read and discuss the works of both well-known and lesser known writers, including Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larsen, Richard Wright, Ann Petry, Amiri Baraka, Paule Marshall, and Toni Morrison. We will discuss historical, social, and cultural contexts to provide a fuller understanding of the writing; compare writers on the basis of gender and ideology; and above all define the distinguishing characteristics of each writer’s creative art. Join us for a stimulating intellectual experience! English Voices from Afar: Post-Colonial Literature English 3036 Prof. P. Hitchcock Tue/Thu 11:1012:25PM 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. Survey of Caribbean Literature in English English 3038 Prof. K. Frank Tue/Thu 11:1012:25PM Day-O or Burn! Who is Caribbean? What is essentially Caribbean? How and why do answers to such questions matter? Ads on subway cars and elsewhere remind us that for many people the Caribbean exists merely as a “creole,” escapist paradise, there to accommodate any and all tourist fantasies: “No problem mon!” Yet, paradoxically, as the dominance and influence of dancehall music indicates, the Caribbean is also seen as a territory offering certain “authentic” experiences, so much so that Ellie Goulding could rule the UK charts (and run up the charts elsewhere) by “appropriating” dancehall. In this survey course, we will examine this paradox and try to separate Caribbean romance (myth/idealization) from Caribbean realism, with a consistent focus on authenticity, along with issues of alienation, agency, and creolization. Speaking of creolization, “Let’s get together, and feel all right?/!” Literature for Young Adults English 3045 Prof. A. Curseen Mon/Wed 9:30AM10:45AM When S.E. Hinton wrote The Outsiders in 1965, she was 16 years old. The novel was a ground breaking portrayal of youth culture. By the mid-1960s, even as young people rebelled against conformity and protested war, racism, sexism, and other inequalities, mainstream America largely saw childhood as a protected and natural state of innocence. When Hinton’s novel depicted gangs, violence, ruthless social expectations, and real difficulties in coming of age, she left an indelible impression on American readers and the publishing industry. The publishing industry however did not subsequently invest in the potential of young writers (despite the fact that Hinton’s age was seen as essential to the perspective the novel provides); rather the publishing industry recognized that themes of violence and teenage struggle were particularly popular (read marketable) with young and older readers alike. Consequently today what we call “young adult literature” (or YA literature) has little to do with the age or perspective of the actual writer. Instead, driven largely by market demands to reproduce a sensational (indeed blockbuster ready) product, YA literature names an adult intent to reach an audience that is other than itself. It announces a culture’s desire to educate, entertain, but most of all to imagine and define the (not adult) other. In this course, we will return to The Outsiders and literature that can be called “young adult” literature not because it targets young adult readers but because it is working from within an experience of youth. For comparative reasons, we will engage a range of texts considered as for young adults, but we will give most of our critical attention to texts written by young authors. We will examine how these texts negotiate the concepts: young and adult. possibilities of being near—yet still outside and on the margins of—that designation. Paying particular attention to the idea of the monstrous teenager and the normal adult, we will ask: What exactly is adult? How do ideas of adult and youth get pitted against each other? And what is the relationship between adult and ideas of blackness, femininity, queerness, and other qualities that have often been associated with childishness? Ultimately we will try to understand how young adult literature both helps clarify the limits of the category adult and the possibilities of being near—yet still outside and on the margins of—that designation. The 1980’s in Film And Literature English 3270 Prof. M. McGlynn Mon/Wed 11:10AM12:25PM Elements of Poetry English 3645 G. Schulman Tue/Thu 5:50-7:05PM This course will examine British and Irish fiction and films composed both during the Thatcher years and about this time. Beginning with the so-called ‘dirty realism’ of Ken Loach alongside the heritage Merchant-Ivory films, we will compare visions of Britain that focus on class and those that ignore it or treat it as an antiquated concept. Our investigation will include such novels as The Commitments and Trainspotting and such films as My Beautiful Laundrette, The Full Monty, and Billy Elliott. We will discuss the relationship of Irish culture to British culture via The Crying Game and explore the reconstruction of Britain’s past via Room With a View and Chariots of Fire. We will conclude with recent looks back to the early eighties in films like This is England and novels like Black Swan Green and GB84. Throughout, we will think about how the working class body is viewed, when and how emotion is displayed, what role the heritage industry plays in defining ‘the working class,’ and how popular culture, especially music, shapes and is shaped by artistic movements. Although this is the second of two poetry courses offered here, you may enroll in it without having had the other. Prof. Here you will be learning about form in poetry--from the line to the stanza and beyond. You will be writing in freer forms and in set forms such as sonnets, villanelles, haiku. You will be learning how major poets, from William Shakespeare to Elizabeth Bishop, and from Robert Frost to Gwendolyn Brooks, write in such a way as to convey their thoughts and loves and passions. 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 be practicing revision, which is at the heart of writing poetry. You will be sharing your poems with the class in a workshop, and soon you will be sharing your feelings in ways you never thought possible. You will be learning to use language in ways that will convey your wishes, fears, and dreams. Your instructor, Grace Schulman, Distinguished Professor at Baruch, is a poet whose latest book of poems is The Broken String and whose latest prose collection is First Loves and Other Adventures. Advanced Essay Writing English 3680 Prof. C. Mead Mon/Wed 2:30PM3:45PM The primary aim of this intensive writing course will be to expand the horizons and challenge the assumptions that we have about non-fiction writing through our reading and writing. Students will be encouraged to experiment with form and to widen the repertoire of the subject of their writing. To those ends, we will study and produce creative nonfiction (sometimes known as literary nonfiction).This will include but not be limited to literary journalism; multi-genre writing (essays that incorporate techniques borrowed from other forms—e.g., poetry, diary, etc.; and essays that attempt to bring divergent discourses into the same space— e.g., scientific and poetic observation); and literary memoir. The work in this course will consist of assigned readings and class discussions, work shopping of student individual and small group conferences with the professor, and intensive drafting and revision. Women in Literature English 3720 Prof. E. Kauvar Mon/Wed 2:30PM3:45PM We will be reading works from earlier times the 18th century and before--by and about women. Reading will include a selection of the following: Sappho’s poetry and works by male poets Ovid and John Donne, who compete to imitate the famous woman poet; Laischivalric fantasies by the 12th-century Marie de France; selections from Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio and Heptameron of Marguerite de Navarre collections of ironic, comic and romantic tales; Psalm translations by Sir Philip Sidney and his sister Mary Sidney; Elizabeth Cary’s closet drama Mariam; Fair Queen of Jewry; Aphra Behn’s Oroonokoa prose romance about a enslaved African prince written by the first English woman to support herself as a writer and Thomas Southerne’s play Oroonoko based on Behn’s romance; country house poems by Aemilia Lanyer and Ben Jonson; bawdy comedies of the English Restoration by male and female playwrights such as William Wycherley, Aphra Behn and Mary Pix. Written work will consist of two short, critical papers, a midterm and a final. The Structure and History of English English 3750 Prof. Dalgish Mon/Wed 12:502:05PM What is misleading about advertising like "Campbell soup has one-third less salt"? How about "This car is engineered like no other car in the world"? What are characteristics of female speech that distinguish it from those typical of men's speech? How do we form new words in English, and where do they come from? How does a word get in the dictionary? Are the "p" sounds in the words "pot," "spot" and "sop" really the same? Why can we say "whiten," "blacken," "redden," but not "*bluen?" Why does "New Yorker" (=a person from New York) sound correct, while "*Denverer" (= a person from Denver) does not? How many verb tenses are there in English: 3, 12, more, fewer? Which should we say: "between you and I" or "between you and me"? How about: "She dated the man whom you ditched," or "She dated the man who you ditched"? Is there a rule in English not to end a sentence with a preposition? Or is that a rule up with which we should not put? English spelling seems different from Spanish, French, Italian, Russian, Swahili, etc. For instance, in those languages, "a" is almost always pronounced the same way. Yet in English "a" is pronounced differently in each of these words: lame, pad, father, tall, many, above. Why are those languages so regular and English irregular? English once borrowed thousands of words from French. Did English therefore become a Romance language? There are many different dialects in English, some describable in terms of geography, some in terms of social class, some in terms of gender. Which dialects are "better"? Why do we say, "That shelf is five feet tall," and not, "*That shelf is five feet short"? Which linguistic features help to make poetry effective? What does it mean when a person says "I know English"? If these questions, and their answers, interest you, consider taking this Linguistics course. Contemporary Drama: The New Theatre English 3780 Prof. H. Brent Mon/Wed 7:50AM9:05AM This course traces contemporary drama's remarkable history of experiments with new and powerful techniques of dramatizing and analyzing human behavior. The emphasis is on groundbreaking works from provocative contemporary playwrights such as Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett, Edward Albee, Eugene Ionesco, Bertolt Brecht, Tom Stoppard, Joe Orton, and Sam Shepard. Topics in Literature: The Production Of Culture in Contemporary Society English 3950 Prof. T. Aubry Tues/Thurs 9:30AM10:45AM In this course, we will investigate various spheres of cultural production, including the publishing, music, movie, and new media industries, in order to examine the social purposes they serve, the values they disseminate, and the political structures they either support or challenge. We will begin by trying to understand exactly what we mean by “culture” broadly speaking. Most of us imagine ourselves as coming from a particular culture; some of us view ourselves as cultured, but we’re not always clear on what exactly we mean by this term. What is culture? Do we know it when we see it? How? What distinguishes “high” culture, i.e. classical music, great works of literature, and art exhibitions, from “low” culture, i.e. pop music, Hollywood movies, and video games. Is one necessarily better than the other? Why exactly? After exploring “culture” as a general concept, we will consider how specific forms of culture operate. During the semester, we will be focusing on culture from the perspective not only of its critics, but also of its producers. This course aims to help prepare students to enter various cultural fields, including journalism, publishing, music production, and web design—on the assumption that developing a critical attitude toward a particular field can only serve to improve one’s work within that field. Students will be invited to consider both how, practically speaking, they might contribute to a particular cultural sphere and why they might do so: what values, what social purposes, what broader ideals their work might serve. Topics in Literature: Jane Austen English 3950 Prof. S. Hershinow Tues/Thurs 5:507:05PM This course will examine Jane Austen’s role in the history of the novel and consider her enduring popularity. In novels like Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, Austen opened up new possibilities for the novel as a literary form. We will focus on close readings that highlight Austen’s literary experimentation (with, for example, free indirect style, the marriage plot, and psychological characterization) and social commentary (on issues such as the legal status of women, the transatlantic slave trade, and the French revolution). We will read each of Austen’s six published novels along with excerpts from contemporary literary and political texts, critical commentary, and popular adaptations. Students will be expected to complete short response papers, a presentation, and a final essay. Topics in Literature: Oscar Wilde and His Contexts English 3950 Prof. S. O’Toole Tues/Thurs 2:303:45PM Topics in Literature: Gothic Mysteries English 3950 Prof. C. Jordan Mon/Wed 4:10-5:25PM “The truth,” Oscar Wilde once quipped, “is rarely pure and never simple.” This witticism aptly describes both Wilde’s own life—he was a husband and father who was eventually imprisoned for “gross indecency with other male persons”—and his life’s work: essays, poems, plays, and fiction that have made him one of the most widely read and translated authors in the English language. In this course, we consider the life and literature of Oscar Wilde within the context of late-Victorian England, renowned as much for its scandalous challenges to the status quo as for its excessive concern for propriety. Wilde’s own challenges came in the form of such works as the comic masterpieces The Importance of Being Earnest and An Ideal Husband, his essay on literature “The Decay of Lying,” and his only novel, published to outrage and protest in 1890, The Picture of Dorian Gray. In addition to reading these works, we investigate the Aesthetic and Decadent movements in late-century arts and culture, the public scandal surrounding Wilde’s infamous court trials, and Wilde’s enduring legacy, including popular contemporary works such as Moisés Kaufman’s off-Broadway hit Gross Indecency, Neil Bartlett’s homage Who Was That Man?, and the acclaimed 1997 Hollywood film Wilde. Against a background of haunted castles, demonic predators, and victims who 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. 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. Readings will include Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea about fatal passion, sexual addiction, voodoo priestesses, and mad Creole heiresses on an exotic Caribbean island, Mary Shelley’s masterpiece of monstrous creation, Frankenstein, Bram Stoker’s novel of voluptuous terror, Dracula, Charlotte Bronte’s multi-layered erotically coded novel, Jane Eyre, and Nikolai Gogol’s stories of shape-changing goddesses set in the tantalizing beauty of Russia. Techniques in Poetry English 4010 Prof. E. Shipley Mon/Wed 7:45-9:00PM Building on poet Robert Creeley’s statement, “form is never more than an extension of content,” we will explore the recent trend in contemporary poetry towards the hybrid. While hybrid texts are nothing new (Chaucer’s The Book of the Duchess interweaves Ovid’s story of Ceyx and Alcyone from the epic poem The Metamorphoses; Dante’s La Vita Nuova combines prose and verse— prosimetrum—in a tale of courtly love), many contemporary poets are crossing genres to a degree that suggests an erasure of such categories altogether. This trend leads to questions such as: what are the subjects, circumstances, and desires that drive expansions of poetic form? What poetic techniques, whether meter and rhyme or appropriation and erasure, are used? What are their effects? Might we read such moves as fundamental to contemporary identity? Carole Maso asks, “Does form imply a value system? Is it a statement about perception?” The texts for this course span diverse embodiments of sexual, racial, national, class-based, and familial experience as they necessarily trouble traditional genres: Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red, a "novel in verse" about a young gay and winged red monster; Jillian Weise’s The Amputee’s Guide to Sex, a collection of poems that experiment by using both memoir and the history of sexuality and disability; Claudia Rankine’s Don’t Let Me Be Lonely, a poem/essay that explores issues ranging from race, terrorist attacks, depression, disease and media; its follow-up, Citizen, also a poem/essay that documents the accumulative impact of day-to-day racial aggression; and additional texts by authors as varied as Bhanu Kapil, Jenny Boully, Eula Biss, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Maggie Nelson, Mark Nowak, CD Wright, Paisley Rekdal, and others. Examining the artistic attributes of these texts, we will seek to understand how literature might be made. Through a deep analysis of such diverse and excellent models, students will amass the resources and practice the techniques necessary to produce their own creative work. The Globalization Of English English 4015 Prof. E. Block Tues/Thu 5:50-7:05PM 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 capstonelevel elective, the course will explore global English through library and independent research, oral presentation, electronic discussion, and collaborative inquiry. Medieval Literature English 4110 Prof. C. Christoforatou Mon/Wed 11:1012:25PM Chaucer English 4120 Prof. W. McClellan Mon/Wed 5:507:05PM Pilgrims, knights, merchants, slaves, and self-proclaimed saints have left us fascinating tales of their travels and travails across the globe in geographical treatises, crusader narratives, pilgrimage handbooks, and explorer’s logs. Their works offer unique insight into medieval people’s perception of the self and of the world, countering assumptions that the world was flat and static and its inhabitants unaware of the wider physical space that surrounded them. Medieval travelers had a keen interest in the nature of the world, places both near and far, and were avid consumers of tales of distant places and people. Their literature was at the heart of the creation of western visions of natural and human diversity. It addressed the themes of adventure, exile, wisdom, and spirituality, and continues to inspire discussion on philosophical, anthropological, and cosmological matters. Readings for the course will include pilgrimage narrative from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Mandeville’s Book of Travels, Pseudo-Callisthenes’ Alexander Romance, and da Pisa’s Travels of Marco Polo. Selected literature in translation from Greek and Latin sources will also allow us to examine the nature of the medieval cosmos in the context of classical, political, and philosophical thought. Chaucer’s masterpiece, a series of tales ranging from the serious and pious to the unabashedly earthy and outrageously funny, is one of the truly great works of English literature. The tales are told by a cast of characters, including a knight, a drunken miller, a pretentious lawyer, a superficial nun, a cynical fat merchant, a skinny scholar, a priest, a con artist pardoner and the infamous Wife of Bath, who leaves mostly dead and broken husbands in her wake. Written at the end of the fourteenth century, the tales are about knights, ladies, merchants, students, women, peasants and priests, even chickens and a fox, and, of course, lovers, both young and old, sad and true, happy and tragic. The stories recount the hopes and dreams, success and failure, and just dumb luck of the many characters who strive to fulfill their desire and those who help them … and those who would deny them. In our reading of selected tales we will focus on what the stories show about how desire impels the characters to act. We will also examine the difference sexual difference may or may not make on how men and women act on their desire. Finally, we will examine how these stories reveal the conflicting forces that both encourage and prevent individuals from overcoming the obstacles to their desire. Shakespeare English 4140 Prof. A. Deutermann Tues/Thur 2:30PM3:45PM During Shakespeare's lifetime, England experienced war, outbreaks of plague, terrorist attacks, unprecedented prosperity and the growth of conspicuous consumption, religious conflict, and-for the very first time-contact with the New World. These events vitally shaped Shakespeare's plays. Reading a selection of his comedies, histories, tragedies, and tragicomedies, we will consider these works within their historical and theatrical contexts. Who went to which playhouses, and why? What did the stages look like? What sort of sound effects did they use? We will also ask questions about Shakespeare's continued cultural relevance, focusing on the topics of globalization, sex and gender, and race. Readings will be supplemented with film and are likely to include 1Henry IV, Othello, Measure for Measure, and The Tempest, among other plays The NineteenthCentury Novel English 4320 Prof. N. Yousef Tue/Thu 2:30-3:45PM 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. Currents in the Modern Novel English 4440 Prof. M. E a t o u g h Mon/Wed 9:30AM10:45AM Modernism has been one of the most contentious movements in modern literary history. From the moment of its inception in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, modernism presented itself as an alternative to dominant literary conventions. For its admirers, the new experimental literatures that grew out of this challenge represented European culture’s highest achievements, its artistic legacy to the rest of the world. For its detractors, however, modernism was an elitist brand of literature that denigrated popular, working class, and non-Western literary traditions. For these critics, the sophisticated techniques and difficult prose common to modernist novels was a way of distancing these writings from the majority of the reading public, who were in turn treated as the “uncultured” masses. This course will examine several famous modernist novels and the public debates they sparked. We will begin by looking at the fiction, art, and criticism of the Bloomsbury Group, one of the most important artistic and intellectual salons in early 20th-century London. We will then turn to several competing forms of literary modernism from the same period, including impressionism and futurism. Finally, we will investigate modernism’s so-called “global” dimension by examining novels from Africa, India, and the Caribbean that engage with modernist stylistic practices. As we study each of these novels, we will also direct our attention to the ways in which modernist principles were first circulated in and through literary journals; to the critiques that post-World War II writers leveled against modernism; and to modernism’s recent recuperation in present-day fiction. Potential authors may include Joseph Conrad, D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Mulk Raj Anand, Jean Rhy, William Plomer, Wole Soyinka, and J. M. Coetzee. Protest in American English 4500 Prof. M. Staub Mon/Wed 11:10AM12:25PM What is the place of protest in American culture and history? When and how have Americans chosen to resist authority? This course will examine protest movements in U.S. history from the antebellum era to the present, with a strong emphasis on the last fifty years. We will explore protest across the political spectrum and analyze topics such as: abolitionist and anti-lynching campaigns; the Ku Klux Klan and anti-immigrant sentiments; African American militancy and Black Power; free speech and anti-war protests; feminism and gay liberation; prisoner rights advocacy; the religious right; and environmental activism. Since this is an interdisciplinary course, we will work to integrate an examination of historical, sociological, and cultural sources, including manifestos, fiction, drama, memoirs, journalism, and film. Works to be considered may include: Jessica Blank and Eric Jensen, The Exonerated; Rachel Carson, Silent Spring; Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique; D. W. Griffith, Birth of a Nation; Ron Kovic, Born on the Fourth of July; Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X; and Dave Eggers, The Circle. (Note: This course is also cross-listed as AAS 4900, ANT 4800, and HIS 4900.) The American Novel English 4510 Prof. R. Rodriguez Tue/Thu 9:30AM10:45AM The novel and excess. The novel of excess. The novel as excess. Excess is not a specific thing, e.g., the too-muchness Puritans identified, and semi-recoiled from, in Catholicism, and which later reformers would rebrand as specific vices and evils in their own moral crusades against drinking, prostitution, and slavery, or something like P. T. Barnum’s under-the-big-top style of showmanship, though both of these kinds of excess, moral and aesthetic, will figure in some of the novels we will study this semester. Excess often appears as a disturbing quality in something or someone else, seldom in or about us. As such, it conjures up ideas and judgments that the novel, an excessive thing in its own right, has helped give voice and shape. Whether in the form of “loose baggy monsters” (Henry James’s put-down for Victorian novels of the Uncle Tom’s Cabin variety) or slim, muscular volumes like Djuna Barnes’ Nightwood, the American novel is a good indicator of how we think and feel about a troubling proximity in need of articulation. Required Texts: Hannah Webster Foster, The Coquette; Maria Monk, Awful Disclosures; Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin; Hannah Crafts, The Bondswoman’s Narrative; Djuna Barnes, Nightwood; Mary Gaitskill, Two Girls, Fat and Thin.
