English

General Information

In Carleton’s English department, we are passionate about the study of literature and the teaching of writing. We offer a major in English as well as a minor in creative writing. The diverse backgrounds and specialties of English department faculty are reflected in the variety of our literature courses and creative writing workshops. Our courses examine a range of genres, historical eras, literary and cultural traditions, and critical approaches. 

The skills in reading, interpretation, writing, creativity, and communication taught in the English department are essential to all fields of study, whether artistic, humanistic, or scientific. These skills also transfer readily to a broad range of careers.

Requirements for the English Major

Seventy-two credits in English, including the following:

1. Foundations: One designated 100-level course that develops skills of literary analysis and introduces the concept of genre 

  • ENGL 100 Drama, Film, and Society
  • ENGL 100 Literary Revision: Authority, Art, and Rebellion
  • ENGL 100 Imagining a Self
  • ENGL 100 Novel, Nation, Self
  • ENGL 100 How We Read: The History and Science of Reading
  • ENGL 100 Reading, Interpreting, Writing
  • ENGL 100 Inventing the Past
  • ENGL 112 Introduction to the Novel
  • ENGL 114 Introduction to Medieval Narrative (not offered in 2023-24)
  • ENGL 115 The Art of Storytelling
  • ENGL 116 The Art of Drama: Passion, Politics, and Culture (not offered in 2023-24)
  • ENGL 117 African American Literature (not offered in 2023-24)
  • ENGL 118 Introduction to Poetry
  • ENGL 119 Introduction to U.S. Latino/a Literature (not offered in 2023-24)
  • ENGL 120 American Short Stories (not offered in 2023-24)
  • ENGL 137 Terrorism and the Novel (not offered in 2023-24)
  • ENGL 144 Shakespeare I
  • ENGL 187 Murder (not offered in 2023-24)

2. Historical Eras: 36 credits in literature courses numbered 200-394 (excluding 220 and 295) which must include:

  • Group I: 12 credits in literature before 1660
    • ENGL 202 The Bible as Literature (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 203 Other Worlds of Medieval English Literature (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 205 “Passing Strange”: Shakespeare’s Othello and its Modern Afterlives
    • ENGL 206 William Shakespeare: The Henriad
    • ENGL 207 Princes. Poets. Power
    • ENGL 208 The Faerie Queene
    • ENGL 209 Much Ado About Nothing: A Project Course (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 210 From Chaucer to Milton: Early English Literature
    • ENGL 213 Christopher Marlowe (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 214 Revenge Tragedy (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 216 Milton (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 219 Global Shakespeare (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 244 Shakespeare I
    • ENGL 310 Shakespeare II (not offered in 2023-24)
  • Group II: 12 credits in literature between 1660 and 1900
    • ENGL 212 Nineteenth-Century American Literature (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 217 A Novel Education
    • ENGL 218 The Gothic Spirit
    • ENGL 221 "Moby-Dick" & Race: Whiteness and the Whale (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 222 The Art of Jane Austen
    • ENGL 223 American Transcendentalism (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 225 'Public Offenders': Pre-Raphaelites and Bloomsbury Group (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 229 The Rise of the Novel
    • ENGL 239 Democracy: Politics, Race, & Sex in Nineteenth Century American Novels (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 319 The Rise of the Novel
    • ENGL 323 Romanticism and Reform
    • ENGL 327 Victorian Novel
    • ENGL 328 Victorian Poetry (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 338 Dickinson, Moore, Bishop (not offered in 2023-24)
  • Group III: 12 credits in literature after 1900 
    • AMST 269 Woodstock Nation (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 215 Modern American Literature (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 227 Imagining the Borderlands (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 230 Studies in African American Literature: From the 1950s to the Present
    • ENGL 233 Writing and Social Justice (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 234 Literature of the American South (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 235 Asian American Literature
    • ENGL 236 American Nature Writing
    • ENGL 238 African Literature in English
    • ENGL 241 Latinx Voices in the Age of Trump (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 245 Bollywood Nation (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 246 Film, Literature, and Culture in Mumbai and Seoul Program: Beyond Bollywood
    • ENGL 247 The American West (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 248 Visions of California (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 249 Modern Irish Literature: Poetry, Prose, and Politics
    • ENGL 250 Indian Fiction 1880-1980 (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 251 Contemporary Indian Fiction
    • ENGL 252 Caribbean Fiction (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 255 The Poetics of Disability
    • ENGL 258 Playwrights of Color: Taking the Stage (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 272 Film, Literature, and Culture in Mumbai and Seoul Program: Representing Mumbai
    • ENGL 274 Ireland Program: Irish Literary Pasts and Presents
    • ENGL 288 California Program: The Literature of California (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 329 The City in American Literature (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 332 Faulkner, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald
    • ENGL 350 The Postcolonial Novel: Forms and Contexts (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 352 Toni Morrison: Novelist
    • ENGL 353 The Writings of Virginia Woolf
    • ENGL 359 World Literature in the Twenty-First Century (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 362 Narrative Theory (not offered in 2023-24)
    • THEA 242 Modern American Drama
    • THEA 255 August Wilson: History and the Blues (not offered in 2023-24)

3. English 295: Critical Methods

4. English 395: Advanced Seminar

5. English 400: Senior Integrative Exercise (A senior may choose one of the following):

  • Colloquium Option: A group option in which participants discuss, analyze and write about a thematically coherent list of literary works.
  • Research Essay Option: An extended essay on a topic of the student's own devising. Open only to students who have completed their Advanced Seminar by the end of fall term senior year.
  • Creative Writing Option: Creation of a work of literary art. Open only to students who have completed at least two creative writing courses (one of which must be at the 300 level) by the end of fall term senior year.
  • Project Option: Creation of an individual or group multidisciplinary project.

Of the 72 credits required to complete the major:

1. at least 6 credits must be taken in each of the following traditions:

  • T1: Literature of Ireland and Britain
    • ENGL 112 Introduction to the Novel
    • ENGL 114 Introduction to Medieval Narrative (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 116 The Art of Drama: Passion, Politics, and Culture (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 135 Imperial Adventures (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 144 Shakespeare I
    • ENGL 202 The Bible as Literature (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 203 Other Worlds of Medieval English Literature (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 205 “Passing Strange”: Shakespeare’s Othello and its Modern Afterlives
    • ENGL 206 William Shakespeare: The Henriad
    • ENGL 207 Princes. Poets. Power
    • ENGL 208 The Faerie Queene
    • ENGL 209 Much Ado About Nothing: A Project Course (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 210 From Chaucer to Milton: Early English Literature
    • ENGL 213 Christopher Marlowe (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 214 Revenge Tragedy (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 216 Milton (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 217 A Novel Education
    • ENGL 218 The Gothic Spirit
    • ENGL 219 Global Shakespeare (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 222 The Art of Jane Austen
    • ENGL 225 'Public Offenders': Pre-Raphaelites and Bloomsbury Group (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 229 The Rise of the Novel
    • ENGL 244 Shakespeare I
    • ENGL 249 Modern Irish Literature: Poetry, Prose, and Politics
    • ENGL 274 Ireland Program: Irish Literary Pasts and Presents
    • ENGL 279 Living London Program: Urban Field Studies
    • ENGL 310 Shakespeare II (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 319 The Rise of the Novel
    • ENGL 323 Romanticism and Reform
    • ENGL 327 Victorian Novel
    • ENGL 328 Victorian Poetry (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 353 The Writings of Virginia Woolf
  • T2: Literature of North America
    • AFST 325 Slavery in the Africana Imagination
    • AMST 269 Woodstock Nation (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 117 African American Literature (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 120 American Short Stories (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 212 Nineteenth-Century American Literature (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 215 Modern American Literature (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 221 "Moby-Dick" & Race: Whiteness and the Whale (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 223 American Transcendentalism (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 227 Imagining the Borderlands (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 230 Studies in African American Literature: From the 1950s to the Present
    • ENGL 233 Writing and Social Justice (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 234 Literature of the American South (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 235 Asian American Literature
    • ENGL 236 American Nature Writing
    • ENGL 239 Democracy: Politics, Race, & Sex in Nineteenth Century American Novels (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 241 Latinx Voices in the Age of Trump (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 247 The American West (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 248 Visions of California (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 255 The Poetics of Disability
    • ENGL 258 Playwrights of Color: Taking the Stage (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 288 California Program: The Literature of California (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 329 The City in American Literature (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 332 Faulkner, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald
    • ENGL 338 Dickinson, Moore, Bishop (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 352 Toni Morrison: Novelist
    • THEA 255 August Wilson: History and the Blues (not offered in 2023-24)
  • T3: Global Anglophone Literatures
    • ENGL 238 African Literature in English
    • ENGL 245 Bollywood Nation (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 246 Film, Literature, and Culture in Mumbai and Seoul Program: Beyond Bollywood
    • ENGL 250 Indian Fiction 1880-1980 (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 251 Contemporary Indian Fiction
    • ENGL 252 Caribbean Fiction (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 272 Film, Literature, and Culture in Mumbai and Seoul Program: Representing Mumbai
    • ENGL 350 The Postcolonial Novel: Forms and Contexts (not offered in 2023-24)
    • ENGL 359 World Literature in the Twenty-First Century (not offered in 2023-24)

2. at least 24 credits must be in courses numbered 300-395

3. up to 6 credits may be in literature other than English in the original or translation 

  • ARBC 144 Arabic Literature at War (not offered in 2023-24)
  • ARBC 185 The Creation of Classical Arabic Literature
  • ARBC 315 Readings in Premodern Arabic Anthologies (not offered in 2023-24)
  • CHIN 245 Chinese Vision of the Past in Translation
  • CHIN 251 Heroes, Heroines, Exceptional Lives in Chinese Biographical Histories (not offered in 2023-24)
  • CHIN 355 Contemporary Chinese Short Stories (not offered in 2023-24)
  • CHIN 364 Chinese Classic Tales and Modern Adaptation
  • CLAS 112 The Epic in Classical Antiquity: Texts, Contexts, and Intertexts (not offered in 2023-24)
  • CLAS 116 Greek Drama in Performance
  • CLAS 124 Roman Archaeology and Art
  • CLAS 132 Fantasy and Science Fiction Then and Now
  • ENGL 202 The Bible as Literature (not offered in 2023-24)
  • FREN 243 Food in French Fiction
  • FREN 244 Contemporary France and Humor
  • FREN 245 Francophone Literature of Africa and the Caribbean (not offered in 2023-24)
  • FREN 259 French and Francophone Studies in Paris Program: Hybrid Paris
  • FREN 359 French and Francophone Studies in Paris Program: Hybrid Paris
  • FREN 360 The Algerian War of Liberation and Its Representations
  • GERM 247 Mirror, Mirror: Reflecting on Fairy Tales and Folklore
  • GRK 204 Intermediate Greek Prose and Poetry
  • GRK 230 Homer: The Odyssey
  • GRK 240 Xenophon's Oeconomicus (not offered in 2023-24)
  • JAPN 345 Advanced Reading in Modern Japanese Literature: The Short Story (not offered in 2023-24)
  • LATN 204 Intermediate Latin Prose and Poetry
  • RELG 162 Jesus, the Bible, and Christian Beginnings
  • RUSS 244 The Rise of the Russian Novel
  • RUSS 266 The Brothers Karamazov (not offered in 2023-24)
  • RUSS 267 War and Peace (not offered in 2023-24)
  • RUSS 351 Chekhov (not offered in 2023-24)
  • SPAN 242 Introduction to Latin American Literature (not offered in 2023-24)
  • SPAN 262 Myth and History in Central American Literature (not offered in 2023-24)
  • SPAN 330 The Invention of the Modern Novel: Cervantes' Don Quijote (not offered in 2023-24)
  • SPAN 366 Jorge Luis Borges: Less a Man Than a Vast and Complex Literature (not offered in 2023-24)

4. up to 12 credits may be in creative writing

Double-majors considering completing the integrative exercise during the junior year will need written approval from the departmental chair.

Workshops in Writing

The Department of English offers workshop courses in the writing of fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction. Students are encouraged to submit their work to college publications such as The Second Laird Miscellany, the Clap, and The Manuscript.

Writers on the Carleton faculty include poets Gregory Hewett and Susan Jaret McKinstry and novelist Gregory Blake Smith. The department invites writers (most recently Jane Hamilton, Kao Kalia Yang, Aisha Sabatini Sloan and Sun Yung Shin) to teach workshops in creative writing. In addition, the department brings writers to campus for readings and lectures. Recent visitors have included Teju Cole, Edwidge Danticat, David Henry Hwang, Sarah Vap, Jaswinder Bolina and Jesmyn Ward.

Requirements for the English Creative Writing Minor

The English Creative Writing Minor is intended for students who wish to gain experience in creative writing by taking a series of writing workshops accompanied by the study of literature relevant to their writing interests. Students must complete 36 total credits as described below.

  • 18 credits of creative writing workshops, chosen from college-wide offerings in prose fiction, poetry, playwriting, screenwriting, television writing, and/or creative nonfiction; including at least one course in the English Department and one course at the 300 level: 
  • 18 credits of literature courses drawn from offerings in the Department of English, in courses numbered over 100. Must include at least one course at the 300 level.

English majors who wish to also minor in Creative Writing may do so, but they may not count more than 18 credits of their major toward the 36 total credits for the minor.

 

 

English Courses

ENGL 100 Drama, Film, and Society With an emphasis on critical reading, writing, and the fundamentals of college-level research, this course will develop students' knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of the relationship between drama and film and the social and cultural contexts of which they are (or were) a part and product. The course explores the various ways in which these plays and movies (which might include anything and everything from Spike Lee to Tony Kushner to Christopher Marlowe) generate meaning, with particular attention to the social, historical, and political realities that contribute to that meaning. An important component of this course will be attending live performances in the Twin Cities. These required events may be during the week and/or the weekend. 6 credits; AI, WR1; Fall; Pierre Hecker
ENGL 100 How We Read: The History and Science of Reading Humans have been reading for 5,000 years, a period too short to be explained in evolutionary terms but long enough for the purposes and social values of reading to have changed considerably. This class begins with an examination of the cognitive process of reading and then considers what reading has meant to readers at different times. We'll examine the motivations and reading practices of medieval monks, Renaissance diplomats, enslaved Americans, and midwestern housewives. We'll reflect on what happens when we read a difficult poem, and we'll read Napoleon's favorite novel as example of how reading can be enchanting, inspiring, and dangerously self-destructive. We'll consider our own histories as readers and examine reading at the present moment, including the way reading on screens may (or may not) be changing our habits. 6 credits; AI, WR1; Fall; George G Shuffelton
ENGL 100 Imagining a Self This course examines how first-person narrators present, define, defend, and construct the self. We will read an assortment of autobiographical and fictional works, focusing on the critical issues that the first-person speaker "I" raises. In particular, we will consider the risks and rewards of narrative self-exposure, the relationship between autobiography and the novel, and the apparent intimacy between first-person narrators and their readers. Authors will include James Boswell, Charlotte Bronte, Harriet Jacobs, Sylvia Plath, and Dave Eggers. 6 credits; AI, WR1; Fall; Jessica L Leiman
ENGL 100 Inventing the Past How and why does literature imagine and create versions of the past? In this seminar, we will explore intersections of fiction and history in a variety of texts, in a novel that envisions a vivid physical and emotional world for Shakespeare’s family (Hamnet), in a “biography” that sends its protagonist time-travelling through several centuries and genders (Orlando), and in a work of alternative history that imagines a computerized Victorian era run by Babbage’s Analytical Engine (The Difference Engine), among others. 6 credits; AI, WR1; Fall; Constance Walker
ENGL 100 Literary Revision: Authority, Art, and Rebellion The poet Adrienne Rich describes revision as "the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction." This course examines how literature confronts and reinvents the traditions it inherits. Through a diverse selection of fiction, poetry, and drama, we will examine how writers rework literary conventions, "rewrite" previous literary works, and critique societal myths. From Charles Chesnutt to Charles Johnson, from Henrik Ibsen to Rebecca Gilman, from Charlotte Bronte to Jean Rhys, from Maupassant and Chekhov to contemporary reinventions, we will explore literary revision from different perspectives and periods. 6 credits; AI, WR1; Fall; Nancy J Cho
ENGL 100 Novel, Nation, Self With an emphasis on critical reading and writing in an academic context, this course will examine how contemporary writers from a range of global locations approach the question of the writing of the self and of the nation. Reading novels from both familiar and unfamiliar cultural contexts we will examine closely our practices of reading, and the cultural expectations and assumptions that underlie them. 6 credits; AI, WR1; Fall; Arnab Chakladar
ENGL 100 Reading, Interpreting, Writing The texts we will read and the themes to be discussed include: the quest for home and belonging in Angelou's All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes; transitions in Obama's Dreams from My Father; difficult and essential conversations in Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me; trauma and healing in Gyasi's Transcendent Kingdom. Our related focus on expository writing will be complemented by a final writing assignment that offers you the option to craft either a Letter to Your Younger Self on transitions, or an Autobiographical Fragment in which you trace your search for belonging. 6 credits; AI, WR1; Fall; Kofi Owusu
ENGL 109 The Craft of Academic Writing This course is designed to demystify the practice of academic writing and to introduce students to the skills they’ll need to write effectively in a variety of academic disciplines and contexts. Students will learn how to respond to other authors’ claims, frame clear arguments of their own, structure essays to develop a clear logical flow, integrate outside sources into their writing, and improve their writing through revision. All sections will include a variety of readings, multiple writing assignments, and substantial feedback from the course instructor. 6 credits; NE, WR2; Winter, Spring; George G Shuffelton, George Cusack
ENGL 112 Introduction to the Novel This course explores the history and form of the British novel, tracing its development from a strange, sensational experiment in the eighteenth century to a dominant literary genre today. Among the questions that we will consider: What is a novel? What makes it such a popular form of entertainment? How does the novel participate in ongoing conversations about family, sex, class, race, and nation? How did a genre once considered a source of moral corruption become a legitimate literary form? Authors include: Daniel Defoe, Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Bram Stoker, Virginia Woolf, and Jackie Kay. 6 credits; LA, WR2; Winter; Jessica L Leiman
ENGL 114 Introduction to Medieval Narrative This class will focus on three of the most popular and closely connected modes of narrative enjoyed by medieval audiences: the epic, the romance, and the saint's life. Readings, drawn primarily from the English and French traditions, will include Beowulf, The Song of Roland, the Arthurian romances of Chretien de Troyes, and legends of St. Alexis and St. Margaret. We will consider how each narrative mode influenced the other, as we encounter warriors and lovers who suffer like saints, and saints who triumph like warriors and lovers. Readings will be in translation or highly accessible modernizations. 6 credits; LA, WR2; Not offered 2023-24
ENGL 115 The Art of Storytelling Jorge Luis Borges is quoted as saying that "unlike the novel, a short story may be, for all purposes, essential." This course focuses attention primarily on the short story as an enduring form. We will read short stories drawn from different literary traditions and from various parts of the world. Stories to be read include those by Aksenov, Atwood, Beckett, Borges, Camus, Cheever, Cisneros, Farah, Fuentes, Gordimer, Ishiguro, Kundera, Mahfouz, Marquez, Moravia, Nabokov, Narayan, Pritchett, Rushdie, Trevor, Welty, and Xue. 6 credits; LA, WR2; Spring; Kofi Owusu
ENGL 116 The Art of Drama: Passion, Politics, and Culture An exploration of drama approached as literature and in performance. New digital resources enable us to take world-class productions from the National Theatre and elsewhere as our texts. Drawing examples both globally and across time, we will consider plays and recent productions in their historical and cultural contexts. Students will develop critical vocabularies, debate interpretations, and hone their interpretive and rhetorical skills in writing reviews and essays. 6 credits; LA, WR2; Not offered 2023-24
ENGL 117 African American Literature This course pays particular attention to the tradition of African American literary expression and the individual talent that brings depth and diversity to that tradition. The course's broader aims will be complemented by an introduction to the concept of genre and by the cultivation of the relevant skills of literary analysis. Authors to be read include Baraka, Ed Bullins, Countee Cullen, Douglass, Ellison, Nikki Giovanni, Hughes, Weldon Johnson, Larsen, and Wheatley. 6 credits; LA, WR2, IDS; Not offered 2023-24
ENGL 118 Introduction to Poetry “Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought”—Audre Lorde. In this course we will explore how poets use form, tone, sound, imagery, rhythm, and subject matter to create works of astonishing imagination, beauty, and power. In discussions, Moodle posts, and essay assignments we’ll analyze individual works by poets from Sappho to Amanda Gorman (and beyond); there will also be daily recitations of poems, since the musicality is so intrinsic to the meaning. 6 credits; LA, WR2; Fall, Winter, Spring; Timothy Raylor, Constance Walker
ENGL 119 Introduction to U.S. Latino/a Literature We will begin by examining the forefathers and mothers of Latino/a literature: the nineteenth century texts of exile, struggles for Latin American independence, and southwestern resistance and accommodation. The early twentieth century offers new genres: immigrant novels and popular poetry that reveal the nascent Latino identities rooted in (or formed in opposition to) U.S. ethics and ideals. Finally we will read a sampling of the many excellent contemporary authors who are transforming the face of American literature. 6 credits; LA, WR2, IDS; Not offered 2023-24
ENGL 120 American Short Stories An exploration of the remarkable variety and evolution of the American short story from its emergence in the early nineteenth century to the present. Authors read will range from Washington Irving to Octavia Butler and Jhumpa Lahiri. We will examine how formal aspects such as narration, dialogue, style and character all help shape this genre over time. While our central focus will be on literary artistry, we will also consider examples of pulp fiction, graphic short stories, flash fiction and some cinematic adaptations of stories. 6 credits; LA, WR2; Not offered 2023-24
ENGL 135 Imperial Adventures Indiana Jones has a pedigree. In this class we will encounter some of his ancestors in stories, novels and comic books from the early decades of the twentieth century. The wilds of Afghanistan, the African forest, a prehistoric world in Patagonia, the opium dens of mysterious exotic London--these will be but some of our stops as we examine the structure and ideology and lasting legacy of the imperial adventure tale. Authors we will read include Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Rudyard Kipling and H. Rider Haggard. 6 credits; LA, WR2, IS; Not offered 2023-24
ENGL 137 Terrorism and the Novel Novels share some key attributes with acts of terrorism. Both focus our attention on questions of plot, responsibility, and effect. Both often ask us to question how a person's character or background influences unanticipated subsequent events. Like terrorists, many novelists hope their work will draw attention to forgotten causes and influence public opinion through a combination of shock and sympathy. This course will explore a few of the many novels dedicated to terrorism, whether from the perspective of perpetrators, victims, or authorities. The reading list will include examples from Britain, America, and South Asia. 6 credits; LA, WR2; Not offered 2023-24
ENGL 144 Shakespeare I A chronological survey of the whole of Shakespeare's career, covering all genres and periods, this course explores the nature of Shakespeare's genius and the scope of his art. Particular attention is paid to the relationship between literature and stagecraft ("page to stage"). By tackling the complexities of prosody, of textual transmission, and of Shakespeare's highly figurative and metaphorical language, the course will help you further develop your ability to think critically about literature. Note: Declared or prospective English majors should register for English 244. 6 credits; LA; Winter; Pierre Hecker
ENGL 160 Creative Writing You will work in several genres and forms, among them: traditional and experimental poetry, prose fiction, and creative nonfiction. In your writing you will explore the relationship between the self, the imagination, the word, and the world. In this practitioner’s guide to the creative writing process, we will examine writings from past and current authors, and your writings will be critiqued in a workshop setting and revised throughout the term. 6 credits; ARP, WR2; Fall, Winter; Gregory G Hewett, Susan Jaret McKinstry
ENGL 187 Murder From the ancient Greeks to the Bible to the modern serial killer novel, murder has always been a preeminent topic of intellectual and artistic investigation. Covering a range of genres, including fiction, nonfiction, drama, and film, this transhistorical survey will explore why homicide has been the subject of such fierce attention from so many great minds. Works may include: the Bible, Shakespeare, De Quincey, Poe, Thompson, Capote, Tey, McGinniss, Auster, French, Malcolm, Wilder, and Morris, as well as critical, legal, and other materials. Warning: not for the faint-hearted. (May not be retaken as ENGL 395.) 6 credits; LA, WR2; Not offered 2023-24
ENGL 202 The Bible as Literature We will approach the Bible not as an archaeological relic, nor as the Word of God, but "as a work of great literary force and authority [that has] shaped the minds and lives of intelligent men and women for two millennia and more." As one place to investigate such shaping, we will sample how the Bible (especially in the "Authorized" or King James version) has drawn British and American poets and prose writers to borrow and deploy its language and respond creatively to its narratives, images, and visions. 6 credits; LA, WR2; Not offered 2023-24
ENGL 203 Other Worlds of Medieval English Literature When medieval writers imagined worlds beyond their own, what did they see? This course will examine depictions of the afterlife, the East, and magical realms of the imagination. We will read romances, saints' lives, and a masterpiece of pseudo-travel literature that influenced both Shakespeare and Columbus, alongside contemporary theories of postcolonialism, gender and race. We will visit the lands of the dead and the undead, and compare gruesome punishments and heavenly rewards. We will encounter dog-headed men, Amazons, cannibals, armies devoured by hippopotami, and roasted geese that fly onto waiting dinner tables. Be prepared. Readings in Middle English and in modern translations. 6 credits; LA, WR2; Not offered 2023-24
ENGL 205 “Passing Strange”: Shakespeare’s Othello and its Modern Afterlives One of the most intimate and devastating plays in all dramatic literature has also continuously been at the center of societal debates around race, representation, and civil rights. Moving from Shakespeare’s Renaissance to important historical and civil rights figures like Ira Aldridge and Paul Robeson to reimaginings by contemporary artists, we will explore how Othello has served as a vehicle for social change. The class will be taught in conjunction with the campus visit of writer, actor, and anti-apartheid activist Bonisile John Kani, OIS, OBE, the first Black actor to play Othello in South Africa.  3 credits; LA, IS; Spring; Pierre Hecker
ENGL 206 William Shakespeare: The Henriad Shakespeare’s account of the Wars of the Roses combines history, tragedy, comedy, romance, and bildungsroman as it explores themes of power, identity, duty, family, love, and friendship on an epic scale. We will read and discuss Richard II, Henry IV parts 1 and 2, and Henry V, and attend the Guthrie Theater’s three-play repertory event. 3 credits; LA, IS; Spring; Pierre Hecker
ENGL 207 Princes. Poets. Power Can you serve power without sacrificing your principles or risking your life? We examine the classic explorations of the problem--Machiavelli's Prince, Castiglione's Courtier, and More's Utopia--and investigate the place of poets and poetry at court of Henry VIII, tracing the birth of the English sonnet, and the role of poetry in the rise and fall of Anne Boleyn. 3 credits; LA; Fall; Timothy Raylor
ENGL 208 The Faerie Queene Spenser's romance epic: an Arthurian quest-cycle, celebrating the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth I, and England's imperial destiny. Readers encounter knights, ladies, and lady-knights; enchanted groves and magic castles; dragons and sorcerers; and are put through a series of moral tests and hermeneutic challenges. 3 credits; LA; Fall; Timothy Raylor
ENGL 209 Much Ado About Nothing: A Project Course This interdisciplinary course, taught in conjunction with a full-scale Carleton Players production, will explore one of Shakespeare’s most celebrated and performed works, Much Ado About Nothing. We will investigate the play’s historical, social, and theatrical contexts as we try to understand not only the world that produced the play, but the world that came out of it. How should what we learn of the past inform a modern production? How can performance offer interpretive arguments about the play’s meanings? Mixing embodied and experiential learning, individual and group projects may include a combination of research, assistant directing, choreography, music direction, dramaturgy, design, exhibition curation, and work in Special Collections. 6 credits; IS, ARP; Not offered 2023-24
ENGL 210 From Chaucer to Milton: Early English Literature An introduction to some of the major genres, texts, and authors of medieval and Renaissance England. Readings may include works of Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, and the lyric poets of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 6 credits; LA, WR2; Spring; Pierre Hecker
ENGL 212 Nineteenth-Century American Literature A survey of the major forms and voices of nineteenth-century American literature during the Romantic and Realist periods, with attention to historical and intellectual contexts including ideas about race, class, gender, and the nature of democracy. Topics covered will include the literary writings of Transcendentalism, abolition, and the rise of literary "realism" after the Civil War as an artistic response to urbanization and industrialism. Writers to be read include Irving, Hawthorne, Melville, Emerson, Fuller, Jacobs, Douglass, Dickinson, Whitman, Twain, James, and Chopin. 6 credits; LA, WR2; Not offered 2023-24
ENGL 213 Christopher Marlowe Christopher Marlowe lived fast, died young, and left behind a beautiful body of work. The course will explore the major plays and poems, as well as the life, of this transgressive Elizabethan writer. 3 credits; LA, WR2, IS; Not offered 2023-24
ENGL 214 Revenge Tragedy Madness, murder, conspiracy, poison, incest, rape, ghosts, and lots of blood: the fashion for revenge tragedy in Elizabethan and Jacobean England led to the creation of some of the most brilliant, violent, funny, and deeply strange plays in the history of the language. Authors may include Cary, Chapman, Ford, Marston, Middleton, Kyd, Tourneur, and Webster. 3 credits; LA, WR2, IS; Not offered 2023-24
ENGL 215 Modern American Literature A survey of some of the central movements and texts in American literature, from World War I to the present. Topics covered will include modernism, the Harlem Renaissance, the Beat generation and postmodernism. 6 credits; LA, WR2; Not offered 2023-24
ENGL 216 Milton Radical, heretic, and revolutionary, John Milton wrote the most influential, and perhaps the greatest, poem in the English language. We will read the major poems (Lycidas, the sonnets, Paradise Lost, Samson Agonistes), a selection of the prose, and will attend to Milton's historical context, to the critical arguments over his work, and to his impact on literature and the other arts. 6 credits; LA, WR2; Not offered 2023-24
ENGL 217 A Novel Education Samuel Johnson declared novels to be “written chiefly to the young, the ignorant, and the idle, to whom they serve as lectures of conduct, and introductions into life.” This course explores what sort of education the novel offered its readers during a time when fiction was considered a source of valuable lessons and also an agent of corruption. We will read a selection of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century children’s literature, seduction fiction, and novels of manners, considering how these works engage with early educational theories, notions of male and female conduct, and concerns about the didactic and sensational possibilities of fiction. Authors include Samuel Richardson, Jane Austen, Maria Edgeworth, and Charles Dickens. 6 credits; LA, WR2; Fall; Jessica L Leiman
ENGL 218 The Gothic Spirit The eighteenth and early nineteenth century saw the rise of the Gothic, a genre populated by brooding hero-villains, vulnerable virgins, mad monks, ghosts, and monsters. In this course, we will examine the conventions and concerns of the Gothic, addressing its preoccupation with terror, transgression, sex, otherness, and the supernatural. As we situate this genre within its literary and historical context, we will consider its relationship to realism and Romanticism, and we will explore how it reflects the political and cultural anxieties of its age. Authors include Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Lewis, Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, and Emily Bronte. 6 credits; LA, WR2; Spring; Jessica L Leiman
ENGL 219 Global Shakespeare Shakespeare’s plays have been reimagined and repurposed all over the world, performed on seven continents, and translated into over 100 languages. The course explores how issues of globalization, nationalism, translation (both cultural and linguistic), and (de)colonization inform our understanding of these wonderfully varied adaptations and appropriations. We will examine the social, political, and aesthetic implications of a range of international stage, film, and literary versions as we consider how other cultures respond to the hegemonic original. No prior experience with Shakespeare is necessary. 3 credits; LA, WR2, IS; Not offered 2023-24
ENGL 220 Arts of Oral Presentation Instruction and practice in being a speaker and an audience in formal and informal settings. 3 credits; S/CR/NC; NE; Fall, Spring; George G Shuffelton
ENGL 221 "Moby-Dick" & Race: Whiteness and the Whale From its famous opening line to its apocalyptic close, Melville’s lofty and profane romance of the whaling-industry is gripped by the myths and marked by the traumas of race. Exploring its black-and-white thematics and racialized characters in nineteenth- as well as twenty-first-century social and political contexts, this course takes Melville’s stupendous book as an anatomy of "whiteness" as a racial construct in U.S. cultural history. 6 credits; LA, WR2, IDS; Not offered 2023-24
ENGL 222 The Art of Jane Austen All of Jane Austen's fiction will be read; the works she did not complete or choose to publish during her lifetime will be studied in an attempt to understand the art of her mature comic masterpieces, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion. 6 credits; LA, WR2; Winter; Susan Jaret McKinstry
ENGL 223 American Transcendentalism Attempts to discern the nineteenth-century Zeitgeist come down, Emerson says, to a "practical question of the conduct of life. How shall I live?" This interdisciplinary course will investigate the works of the American Transcendentalist movement in its restless discontent with the conventional, its eclectic search for better ways of thinking and living. We will engage major works of Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller, and Whitman alongside documents of the scientific, religious, and political changes that shaped their era and provoked their responses. 6 credits; LA, WR2; Not offered 2023-24
ENGL 225 'Public Offenders': Pre-Raphaelites and Bloomsbury Group Two exceptional groups of artists changed aesthetic and cultural history through their writings, art, politics, and lives. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood began in 1847 when art students united to create “direct and serious and heartfelt” work; the Bloomsbury group began with Cambridge friends sharing their insistence on aesthetic lives. Critics said the PRB “extolled fleshliness as the supreme end of poetic and pictorial art,” and the Bloomsbury Group “painted in circles, lived in squares and loved in triangles.” We will study Dante Rossetti, Holman Hunt, John Millais, William Morris, Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, Roger Fry, Vanessa and Clive Bell. 6 credits; LA, WR2, IS; Not offered 2023-24
ENGL 227 Imagining the Borderlands This course engages the borderlands as space (the geographic area that straddles nations) and idea (liminal spaces, identities, communities). We examine texts from writers like Anzaldúa, Butler, Cervantes, Dick, Eugenides, Haraway, and Muñoz first to understand how borders act to constrain our imagi(nation) and then to explore how and to what degree the borderlands offer hybrid identities, queer affects, and speculative world-building. We will engage the excess of the borderlands through a broad chronological and generic range of U.S. literary and visual texts. Come prepared to question what is "American," what is race, what is human. 6 credits; WR2, IDS, LA; Not offered 2023-24
ENGL 228 Banned. Censored. Reviled. What makes a work of art dangerous? While present-day attacks on books, libraries, and schools feel unprecedented, writers and artists have always had to fight efforts to suppress their work, often at great personal and societal cost. We will study literature, films, graphic novels, images, music, and other materials that have been challenged and attacked as offensive, taboo, or transgressive, and also explore strategies of resistance to censorship. 6 credits; LA, WR2, IDS; Fall; Pierre Hecker
ENGL 229 The Rise of the Novel This course traces the development of a sensational, morally dubious genre that emerged in the eighteenth-century: the novel. We will read some of the most entertaining, best-selling novels written during the first hundred years of the form, paying particular attention to the novel’s concern with courtship and marriage, writing and reading, the real and the fantastic. Among the questions we will ask: What is a novel? What distinguished the early novel from autobiography, history, travel narrative, and pornography? How did this genre come to be associated with women? How did early novelists respond to eighteenth-century debates about the dangers of reading fiction? Authors include Aphra Behn, Daniel Defoe, Eliza Haywood, Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, and Jane Austen. Offered at both the 200 and 300 levels; coursework will be adjusted accordingly. 6 credits; LA, WR2; Winter; Jessica L Leiman
ENGL 230 Studies in African American Literature: From the 1950s to the Present We will explore developments in African American literature since the 1950s with a focus on literary expression in the Civil Rights Era; on the Black Arts Movement; on the new wave of feminist/womanist writing; and on the experimental and futuristic fictions of the twenty-first century. Authors to be read include Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, Malcolm X, Audre Lorde, Amiri Baraka, Ishmael Reed, Alice Walker, August Wilson, Charles Johnson, Ntozake Shange, Gloria Naylor, Suzan-Lori Parks, Kevin Young, and Tracy Smith. 6 credits; LA, IDS; Winter; Kofi Owusu
ENGL 233 Writing and Social Justice Social justice is fairness as it manifests in society, but who gets to determine what fairness looks, sounds, feels like? The self-described Black Canadian poet Dionne Brand says that she doesn’t write toward justice because that doesn’t exist, but that she writes against tyranny. If we use that framework, how does that change our own writing and our own notions of justice in our or any time? What is the role of literary writing, especially fiction, the essay, and poetry in the collective and individual quest to understand and build conditions that could yield increased potential for social justice? In this course, students will read, analyze, discuss, and write about various texts that might be considered to be against myriad tyrannies, if not necessarily toward social justice. Authors may include Octavia Butler, Phillip Metres, Toni Morrison, Myung Mi Kim, and M. NourbeSe Philipe. 6 credits; ARP, WR2, IDS; Not offered 2023-24
ENGL 234 Literature of the American South Masterpieces of the "Southern Renaissance" of the early and mid-twentieth century, in the context of American regionalism and particularly the culture of the South, the legacy of slavery and race relations, social and gender roles, and the modernist movement in literature. Authors will include Allen Tate, Jean Toomer, William Faulkner, Robert Penn Warren, Zora Neale Hurston, Eudora Welty, Katherine Anne Porter, William Percy, and others. 6 credits; LA, WR2, IDS; Not offered 2023-24
ENGL 235 Asian American Literature This course is an introduction to major works and authors of fiction, drama, and poetry from about 1900 to the present. We will trace the development of Asian American literary traditions while exploring the rich diversity of recent voices in the field. Authors to be read include Carlos Bulosan, Sui Sin Far, Philip Kan Gotanda, Maxine Hong Kingston, Jhumpa Lahiri, Milton Murayama, Chang-rae Lee, Li-young Lee, and John Okada. 6 credits; LA, WR2, IDS; Winter; Nancy J Cho
ENGL 236 American Nature Writing A study of the environmental imagination in American literature. We will explore the relationship between literature and the natural sciences and examine questions of style, narrative, and representation in the light of larger social, ethical, and political concerns about the environment. Authors read will include Thoreau, Muir, Jeffers, Abbey, and Leopold. Students will write a creative Natural History essay as part of the course requirements. 6 credits; LA, WR2; Fall; Michael J Kowalewski
ENGL 238 African Literature in English This is a course on texts drawn from English-speaking Africa since the 1950's. Authors to be read include Chinua Achebe, Ama Ata Aidoo, Ayi Kwei Armah, Buchi Emecheta, Bessie Head, Benjamin Kwakye, and Wole Soyinka. 6 credits; LA, IS; Spring; Kofi Owusu
ENGL 239 Democracy: Politics, Race, & Sex in Nineteenth Century American Novels An important preoccupation of nineteenth century America was the nature of democracy and the proper balance of individualism and the social good. An experiment in government, democracy also raised new questions about gender, class, and race. Citizenship was contested; roles in the new, expanding nation were fluid; abolition and emancipation, the movement for women's rights, industrialization all caused ferment and anxiety. The course will explore the way these issues were imagined in fiction by such writers as Cooper, Hawthorne, Maria Sedgwick, Stowe, Tourgee, Henry Adams, Twain, Gilman, and Chesnutt. 6 credits; LA, WR2, IDS; Not offered 2023-24
ENGL 241 Latinx Voices in the Age of Trump The last few years have placed Latinx communities under siege and in the spotlight. The demands of the census and new policies around immigration mean that who counts as Latinx and why it matters has public visibility and meaning. Simultaneously, the last few years have seen an incredible growth of new literary voices and genres in the world of Latinx letters. From fictional and creative nonfiction accounts of detention camps, border crossings, and asylum court proceedings to lyrical wanderings in bilingualism to demands for greater attention to Afrolatinidad and the particular experiences of Black Latinxs--Latinx voices are rising. We will engage with current literary discussions in print, on twitter, and in literary journals as we chart the shifting, developing terrain of Latinx literatures. 6 credits; LA, WR2, IDS; Not offered 2023-24
ENGL 244 Shakespeare I A chronological survey of the whole of Shakespeare's career, covering all genres and periods, this course explores the nature of Shakespeare's genius and the scope of his art. Particular attention is paid to the relationship between literature and stagecraft ("page to stage"). By tackling the complexities of prosody, of textual transmission, and of Shakespeare's highly figurative and metaphorical language, the course will help you further develop your ability to think critically about literature. Note: non-majors should register for English 144. 6 credits; LA, WR2; Winter; Pierre Hecker
ENGL 245 Bollywood Nation This course will serve as an introduction to Bollywood or popular Hindi cinema from India. We will trace the history of this cinema and analyze its formal components. We will watch and discuss some of the most celebrated and popular films of the last 60 years with particular emphasis on urban thrillers and social dramas. 6 credits; LA, WR2, IS; Not offered 2023-24
ENGL 246 Film, Literature, and Culture in Mumbai and Seoul Program: Beyond Bollywood While the output of the popular Hindi film industry of Mumbai, also known as Bollywood, has global reach and renown, other genres of films produced in Mumbai are not as well-known or studied. In this course, students will encounter independent feature films, documentaries and short films that will expand their understanding of the larger world of Hindi cinema in particular, and Indian cinema more broadly. Prerequisite: Participation in the Film Literature and Culture in Mumbai and Seoul program. 3 credits; LA, IS; Winter; Arnab Chakladar
ENGL 247 The American West Wallace Stegner once described the West as "the geography of hope" in the American imagination. Despite various dystopian urban pressures, the region still conjures up images of wide vistas and sunburned optimism. We will explore this paradox by examining both popular mythic conceptions of the West (primarily in film) and more searching literary treatments of the same area. We will explore how writers such as Twain, Cather, Stegner and Cormac McCarthy have dealt with the geographical diversity and multi-ethnic history of the West. Weekly film showings will include The Searchers, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Unforgiven, and Lone Star. Extra Time Required, evening screenings. 6 credits; LA, WR2; Not offered 2023-24
ENGL 248 Visions of California An interdisciplinary exploration of the ways in which California has been imagined in literature, art, film and popular culture from pre-contact to the present. We will explore the state both as a place (or rather, a mosaic of places) and as a continuing metaphor--whether of promise or disintegration--for the rest of the country. Authors read will include Muir, Steinbeck, Chandler, West, and Didion. Weekly film showings will include Sunset Boulevard, Chinatown and Blade Runner. 6 credits; LA, WR2, IDS; Not offered 2023-24
ENGL 249 Modern Irish Literature: Poetry, Prose, and Politics What can and should be the role of literature in times of bitter political conflict? Caught in partisan strife, Irish writers have grappled personally and painfully with the question. We will read works by Joyce, Yeats, and Heaney, among others, and watch films (Bloody Sunday, Hunger) that confront the deep and ongoing divisions in Irish political life. 6 credits; LA, WR2; Winter; Constance Walker
ENGL 250 Indian Fiction 1880-1980 In this course we will follow the various paths that the novel in India has taken since the late nineteenth century. Reading both works composed in English and some in translation we will probe in particular the ways in which questions of language and national/cultural identity are constructed and critiqued in the Indian novel. We will read some of the most celebrated Indian writers of the last 100 odd years as well as some who are not as well-known as they should be. The course will also introduce you to some fundamental concepts in postcolonial studies. 6 credits; LA, WR2, IS; Not offered 2023-24
ENGL 251 Contemporary Indian Fiction Contemporary Indian writers, based either in India or abroad, have become significant figures in the global literary landscape. This can be traced to the publication of Salman Rushdie's second novel, Midnight's Children in 1981. We will begin with that novel and read some of the other notable works of fiction of the following decades. The class will provide both a thorough grounding in the contemporary Indian literary scene as well as an introduction to some concepts in post-colonial studies. 6 credits; LA, WR2, IS; Fall; Arnab Chakladar
ENGL 252 Caribbean Fiction This course will examine Anglophone fiction in the Caribbean from the late colonial period through our contemporary moment. We will examine major developments in form and language as well as the writing of identity, personal and (trans)national. We will read works by canonical writers such as V.S. Naipaul, George Lamming and Jamaica Kincaid, as well as by lesser known contemporary writers. 6 credits; LA, WR2, IS; Not offered 2023-24
ENGL 253 Food Writing: History, Culture, Practice We are living in perhaps the height of what might be called the "foodie era" in the U.S. The cooking and presentation of food dominates Instagram and is one of the key draws of YouTube and various television and streaming networks; shows about chefs and food culture are likewise very popular. Yet a now less glamorous form with a much longer history persists: food writing. In this course we will track some important genres of food writing over the last 100 years or so. We will examine how not just food but cultural discourses about food and the world it circulates in are consumed and produced. We will read recipes and reviews; blogs and extracts from cookbooks, memoirs and biographies; texts on food history and policy; academic and popular feature writing. Simultaneously we will also produce food writing of our own in a number of genres. 6 credits; ARP, WR2; Not offered 2023-24
ENGL 254 Fictional Worlds What makes the imaginary world created by a novel feel “real”? What aspects of narrative contribute to our sense of being immersed in a coherent and convincing universe? From the Victorians who addressed letters to Mr. Sherlock Holmes at 221B Baker Street, to fans of a Middle Earth that now encompasses multiple books and films, readers have always been drawn to narratives that create a place that seems capacious and vivid enough to enter. In this course, we will look at world-building from the eighteenth century through the present, comparing novels to other contemporary media in order to develop an understanding of the way in which the impulse towards “realism” has shaped narrative in a variety of different forms. Works to be studied include books and stories by Daniel Defoe, A. Conan Doyle, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Octavia Butler, as well as Villeneuve’s film of Dune. 3 credits; LA; Not offered 2023-24
ENGL 255 The Poetics of Disability Scholar Michael Davidson has suggested that “perhaps the closest link between poetry and disability lies in a conundrum within the genre itself: poetry makes language visible by making language strange." In this class we will read a wide range of poets who tackle ideas of normalcy and "ability" by centering disability consciousness and culture. We will engage with poetry's capacity as a genre to destabilize our assumptions and generate new imaginaries. Alongside contemporary U.S. poetry, we will study contemporary theory in the field of disability studies in order to better understand the critical conversations around the meaning, nature, and consequences of disability. 6 credits; LA, WR2, IDS; Spring; Adriana Estill
ENGL 258 Playwrights of Color: Taking the Stage This course examines work by U.S. playwrights of color from the 1950s to the present, focusing on questions of race, performance, and self-representation. We will consider opportunities and limitations of the commercial theater, Off-Off Broadway, ethnic theaters, and non-traditional performance spaces. Playwrights may include Alice Childress, Lorraine Hansberry, Amiri Baraka, Ntozake Shange, Luis Valdez, Cherrie Moraga, August Wilson, David Henry Hwang, Philip Gotanda, Maria Irene Fornes, Anna Deavere Smith, and Chay Yew. We will watch selected film adaptations and attend a live performance when possible. 6 credits; LA, WR2, IDS; Not offered 2023-24
ENGL 265 News Stories This journalism course explores the process of moving from event to news story. Students will study and write different forms of journalism (including news, reviews, features, interviews, investigative pieces, and images), critique one another’s writing, work in teams with community partners, and revise their pieces to produce a final portfolio of professional work. 6 credits; S/CR/NC; ARP, WR2; Spring; Susan Jaret McKinstry
ENGL 266 Research Writing This writing-rich course will address techniques for designing an extended research project and using that research to write in a variety of genres. Students will begin the term by designing an overall research topic in an area of their interests (not necessarily limited to literary studies or the humanities). Over the course of the term, students will research this topic independently while the class examines how different audiences and purposes determine the ways that writers use evidence, organize information, and convey their ideas. Writing assignments throughout the term will draw on students’ research and may include project proposals, literature reviews, blog posts, op-ed pieces, and posters. 6 credits; NE, WR2; Not offered 2023-24
ENGL 267 Studies in Description Why do we describe things? Why do writers put so much care into their descriptions of objects and inner states? What authority do they draw from precise descriptive language? What is an “exactly perceived” detail? How do phrases carry sensory information? This class explores the power of description in capturing perceptions and making pictures of the world more felt. To understand the range of technical strategies involved in description, we will read and imitate the acute sensory visions of Basho, Issa, Hopkins, Rilke, and a range of American poets. Each week the reading will be a springboard for written exercises. 6 credits; ARP, WR2; Spring; Joanna G Klink
ENGL 270 Short Story Workshop An introduction to the writing of the short story (prior familiarity with the genre of the short story is expected of class members). Each student will write and have discussed in class three stories (from 1,500 to 6,000 words in length) and give constructive suggestions, including written critiques, for revising the stories written by other members of the class. Attention will be paid to all the elements of fiction: characterization, point of view, conflict, setting, dialogue, etc. Prerequisite: One prior 6-credit English course. 6 credits; S/CR/NC; ARP, WR2; Fall, Winter; Gregory B Smith
ENGL 271 Poetry Workshop This workshop offers you ways of developing poetic craft, voice, and vision in a small-group setting. Your poetry and individual expression is the heart and soul of the course. Through intensive writing and revision of poems written in a variety of styles and forms, you will create a significant portfolio. Prerequisite: One prior 6 credit English course. 6 credits; ARP, WR2; Winter; Gregory G Hewett
ENGL 272 Film, Literature, and Culture in Mumbai and Seoul Program: Representing Mumbai In Mumbai we will read a range of poems, short stories, novels and non-fiction that take Mumbai/Bombay as their setting and discuss the ways in which the heterogeneous cosmopolitanisms of the city are both represented and re-articulated in writing on the city. While our focus will be on Mumbai/Bombay, the course will also function as an introduction to twentieth century and contemporary Indian writing. Prerequisite: Participation in OCS Mumbai/Seoul Program. 3 credits; LA, IS; Winter; Arnab Chakladar
ENGL 274 Ireland Program: Irish Literary Pasts and Presents In Dublin and Belfast we will read and discuss works by Irish writers from the early twentieth century on the Irish Literary Revival and the political and cultural currents leading up the Easter Rising and Irish independence; we will also read works by early twenty-first century Irish writers in conversation with those crucial moments in Irish political and cultural self-fashioning from a century ago. We will also meet with writers and attend readings, lectures, films, and plays. Prerequisite: Participation in OCS Ireland program. 6 credits; LA, IS, WR2; Summer; Arnab Chakladar
ENGL 275 Film, Literature, and Culture in Mumbai and Seoul Program: Writing Mumbai and Seoul Under supervision of the program director, students will work together in small groups to conceive and produce text and image based projects that will knit their experience of Mumbai and Seoul together. Students will draw on the breadth of guided program outings in both cities as well as on their own explorations to produce work that expresses their understanding of the cultural contexts of and connections between these two vibrant metropolises as well as their own experience of them. Prerequisite: Participation in OCS Mumbai/Seoul Program. 6 credits; ARP; Winter; Arnab Chakladar
ENGL 279 Living London Program: Urban Field Studies A combination of short, focused background readings, guided site visits, and individual exploration will give students tools for understanding the history of multicultural London. Starting with the city’s early history and moving to the present, students will gain an understanding of how the city has been defined and transformed over time, and of the complex cultural narratives that shape its standing as a global metropolis. There will be a few short written assignments and group presentations. 6 credits; S/CR/NC; LA; Spring; Gregory G Hewett
ENGL 281 Living London Program: Reading London, Writing London This is a creative writing course about writing and place, specifically London. Students will have the opportunity to write short stories, poetry, and non-academic essays (also referred to as creative nonfiction). We will be reading select examples in these genres by contemporary writers and poets based in the United Kingdom, some of whom will visit our class. The primary mode of instruction will be the workshop, which involves large and small-group critique and discussion. Prerequisite: Participation in OCS London Program. 6 credits; ARP, WR2, IS; Spring; Gregory G Hewett
ENGL 282 Living London Program: London Theater Students will attend productions (at least two per week) of classic and contemporary plays in a range of London venues both on and off the West End, and will do related reading. We will also travel to Stratford-upon-Avon for a three-day theater trip. Class discussions will focus on dramatic genres and themes, dramaturgy, acting styles, and design. Guest speakers may include actors, critics, and directors. Students will keep a theater journal and write several full reviews of plays. Prerequisite: Participation in OCS London program. 6 credits; LA, WR2, IS; Spring; Gregory G Hewett
ENGL 285 Textual Technologies from Parchment to Pixel As readers, we rarely consider the technologies, practices, and transactions that deliver us our texts. This course introduces students to the material study of writing, manuscripts, books, printing, and digital media. It attends to the processes of copying, revision, editing, and circulation; familiarizes students with the disciplines of descriptive bibliography, paleography, and textual criticism; and introduces the principles of editing, in both print and electronic media. It offers hands-on practice in most of these areas. 6 credits; HI, WR2; Not offered 2023-24
ENGL 288 California Program: The Literature of California An intensive study of writing and film that explores California both as a place (or rather, a mosaic of places) and as a continuing metaphor--whether of promise or disintegration--for the rest of the country. Authors read will include John Muir, Raymond Chandler, Nathanael West, Robinson Jeffers, John Steinbeck, Joan Didion and Octavia Butler. Films will include: Sunset Boulevard, Chinatown, Zoot Suit, Boys in the Hood and Lala Land.
 6 credits; LA, IDS; Not offered 2023-24
ENGL 292 Ireland Program: Irish Field Studies In consultation with the director, students will work individually or in assigned groups to design an independent research or creative project that demonstrates their knowledge of Ireland and which makes connections to sites and concerns from the first five weeks of the program. The projects should focus on Irish sites of cultural significance chosen by students: archaeological sites; important historical buildings or cultural spaces; murals or other public art; etc. The projects will be presented at the end of term on a class blog. Prerequisite: Participation in OCS Ireland program. 3 credits; NE; Summer; Arnab Chakladar
ENGL 295 Critical Methods Required of students majoring in English, this course explores practical and theoretical issues in literary analysis and contemporary criticism. Not open to first year students. Prerequisite: One English Foundations course and one prior 6 credit English course. 6 credits; LA, WR2; Fall, Winter; Peter J Balaam, Nancy J Cho
ENGL 310 Shakespeare II Continuing the work begun in Shakespeare I, this course delves deeper into the Shakespeare canon. More difficult and obscure plays are studied alongside some of the more famous ones. While focusing principally on the plays themselves as works of art, the course also explores their social, intellectual, and theatrical contexts, as well as the variety of critical response they have engendered. Prerequisite: One English Foundations course and English 144 or 244. 6 credits; LA, WR2; Not offered 2023-24
ENGL 319 The Rise of the Novel This course traces the development of a sensational, morally dubious genre that emerged in the eighteenth-century: the novel. We will read some of the most entertaining, best-selling novels written during the first hundred years of the form, paying particular attention to the novel’s concern with courtship and marriage, writing and reading, the real and the fantastic. Among the questions we will ask: What is a novel? What distinguished the early novel from autobiography, history, travel narrative, and pornography? How did this genre come to be associated with women? How did early novelists respond to eighteenth-century debates about the dangers of reading fiction? Authors include Aphra Behn, Daniel Defoe, Eliza Haywood, Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, and Jane Austen. Offered at both the 200 and 300 levels; coursework will be adjusted accordingly. Prerequisite: One English foundations course and one other six credit English course. 6 credits; LA, WR2; Winter; Jessica L Leiman
ENGL 323 Romanticism and Reform Mass protests, police brutality, reactionary politicians, imprisoned journalists, widespread unemployment, and disease were all features of the Romantic era in Britain as well as our own time. We will explore how its writers brilliantly advocate for empathy, liberty, and social justice in the midst of violence and upheaval. Readings will include works by Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Keats, Percy and Mary Shelley, and their contemporaries. Prerequisite: One English foundations course and one other 6 credit English course. 6 credits; LA, WR2; Fall; Constance Walker
ENGL 327 Victorian Novel Puzzled about nineteenth century novels, Henry James asks, 'But what do such large loose baggy monsters with their queer elements of the accidental and the arbitrary, artistically mean?'' (“Preface,” Tragic Muse). What, indeed? These novels have defined the form of "the novel" for nearly 200 years. Through close reading, historic context, and visual studies, we will examine the prose, design, publication, and illustrations of Victorian editions, and consider how we (re)define and interpret the nineteenth century novel now. Students will create a photographic portrait project. Authors include George Eliot, Charles Dickens, Emily Bronte, Charlotte Bronte, Mary Seacole, and Lewis Carroll. Prerequisite: One English foundations course and one additional 6 credit English course or instructor consent. 6 credits; LA, WR2; Spring; Susan Jaret McKinstry
ENGL 328 Victorian Poetry Living in an era of rapid progress and profound doubt, Victorian poets are prolific, challenging, inventive, and insistent that poetry address contemporary questions of social inequity, science, gender, nation, self, race, and knowledge itself. Readings will include works by Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning, Oscar Wilde, Matthew Arnold, Dante Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), Gerard Manley Hopkins, and others, as well as cultural images and documents. Prerequisite: One English foundations course and one other 6 credit English course. 6 credits; LA, WR2; Not offered 2023-24
ENGL 329 The City in American Literature How do American authors "write the city"? The city as both material reality and metaphor has fueled the imagination of diverse novelists, poets, and playwrights, through tales of fallen women and con men, immigrant dreams, and visions of apocalypse. After studying the realistic tradition of urban fiction at the turn of the twentieth century, we will turn to modern and contemporary re-imaginings of the city, with a focus on Chicago, New York and Los Angeles. Selected films, photographs, and historical sources will supplement our investigations of how writers face the challenge of representing urban worlds. Prerequisite: One English foundations course and one other 6 credit English course, or instructor permission. 6 credits; LA, WR2; Not offered 2023-24
ENGL 332 Faulkner, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald An intensive study of the novels and short fiction of William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. The course will focus on the ethos of experimentation and the "homemade" quality of these innovative stylists who shaped the course of American modernism. Works read will be primarily from the twenties and thirties and will include The Sound and the Fury, In Our Time, Light in August, The Great Gatsby, The Sun Also Rises, and Go Down, Moses. Prerequisite: One English foundations course and one additional 6 credit English course. 6 credits; LA, WR2; Spring; Michael J Kowalewski
ENGL 338 Dickinson, Moore, Bishop An intensive study of lyric invention and innovation in the work of Emily Dickinson, Marianne Moore, and Elizabeth Bishop. Starting with formalist readings and historicizing the poetic subjects they pursued in common (self and society, loss and knowledge, nature, gender, the senses, the body), we will explore their practice, reception, and influence in relation to changing Modernist poetics, 1860 to 1970, and to specifics of place: Amherst, Brooklyn, Nova Scotia, Key West, and Brazil. Prerequisite: One English foundations course and one additional 6 credit English course or instructor permission. 6 credits; LA; Not offered 2023-24
ENGL 350 The Postcolonial Novel: Forms and Contexts Authors from the colonies and ex-colonies of England have complicated our understandings of the locations, forms and indeed the language of the contemporary English novel. This course will examine these questions and the theoretical and interpretive frames in which these writers have often been placed, and probe their place in the global marketplace (and awards stage). We will read a number of major novelists of the postcolonial era from Africa, South Asia, the Caribbean and the diaspora as well as some of the central works of postcolonial literary criticism. Prerequisite: One English foundations course and one additional 6 credit English course. 6 credits; LA, WR2, IS; Not offered 2023-24
ENGL 352 Toni Morrison: Novelist Morrison exposes the limitations of the language of fiction, but refuses to be constrained by them. Her quirky, inimitable, and invariably memorable characters are fully committed to the protocols of the narratives that define them. She is fearless in her choice of subject matter and boundless in her thematic range. And the novelistic site becomes a stage for Morrison's virtuoso performances. It is to her well-crafted novels that we turn our attention in this course. Prerequisite: One English foundations course and one other 6 credit English course or instructor permission. 6 credits; LA, WR2, IDS; Fall; Kofi Owusu
ENGL 353 The Writings of Virginia Woolf Virginia Woolf is regarded as one of the chief modernist writers, as well as one of the twentieth-century's most important feminist thinkers. She revolutionized the novel and the concept of time in fiction, as well as ideas of gender and sexuality. She, along with other members of the Bloomsbury Group, was also a critic of World War I and the build-up to World War II. In this course we will read the majority of her novels, as well as selected essays, diary entries, and letters. Articles by literary critics will offer various contexts for our discussions. Some works included: Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando, and "A Room of One's Own." Prerequisite: One English foundations course and one other 6 credit English course or instructor consent. 6 credits; LA, WR2; Winter; Gregory G Hewett
ENGL 359 World Literature in the Twenty-First Century Our focus will be on contemporary writers who tend to localize the global and/or globalize the local in their decidedly textured fiction and nonfiction published since 2001. Selected writers include Zinzi Clemmons, Ta-Nehisi Coates, J.M. Coetzee, Junot Diaz, Esi Edugyan, Nuruddin Farah, Yaa Gyasi, Dinaw Mengestu, Chigozie Obioma, and Zadie Smith. Prerequisite: One English foundations course and one additional 6 credit English course or instructor permission. 6 credits; LA, WR2, IS; Not offered 2023-24
ENGL 362 Narrative Theory "Does the world really present itself to perception in the form of well-made stories?" asks Hayden White, metahistoriographer. To try to answer that question, we will read contemporary narrative theory by critics from several disciplines and apply their theories to literary texts, films, and cultural objects such as graphic novels, television shows, advertisements, and music videos. Prerequisite: One 6-credit English foundations course and one additional 6-credit English course or permission of the instructor. 6 credits; LA, WR2; Not offered 2023-24
ENGL 370 Advanced Fiction Workshop An advanced course in the writing of fiction. Students will write three to four short stories or novel chapters which will be read and critiqued by the class. Prerequisite: English 160, 161, 263, 265, 270, 271, 273, Cinema and Media Studies 271, 278, 279, Cross Cultural Studies 270 or Theater 246. 6 credits; S/CR/NC; ARP, WR2; Spring; Gregory B Smith
ENGL 371 Advanced Poetry Workshop In this workshop, students choose to write poems from a broad range of forms, from sonnets to spoken word, from ghazals to slam, from free-verse to blues. Over the ten weeks, each poet will write and revise their own collection of poems. Student work is the centerpiece of the course, but readings from a diverse selection of contemporary poets will be used to expand each student’s individual poetic range, and to explore the power of poetic language. For students with some experience in writing poetry, this workshop further develops your craft and poetic voice and vision. Prerequisite: English 160, 161, 263, 265, 270, 271, 273, Cinema and Media Studies 271, 278, 279, Cross Cultural Studies 270 or Theater 246. 6 credits; ARP, WR2; Spring; Joanna G Klink
ENGL 381 Living London Program: Reading London, Writing London This is a creative writing course about writing and place, specifically London. Students will have the opportunity to write short stories, poetry, and non-academic essays (also referred to as creative nonfiction). We will be reading select examples in these genres by contemporary writers and poets based in the United Kingdom, some of whom will visit our class. The primary mode of instruction will be the workshop, which involves large and small-group critique and discussion. Prerequisite: One English foundations course and one other 6 credit English course or permission of instructor. 6 credits; ARP, WR2, IS; Spring; Gregory G Hewett
ENGL 395 Murder From the ancient Greeks to the King James Bible to the modern serial killer novel, murder has always been a preeminent topic of intellectual and artistic investigation. Slaying our way across different genres and periods, we will explore why homicide has been the subject of such fierce attention from so many great minds. Prepare to drench yourselves in the blood of fiction and non-fiction works that may include: the Bible, Shakespeare, Poe, Thompson, Capote, Tey, McGinniss, Malcolm, Wilder, and Morris, as well as legal and other materials. Warning: not for the faint-hearted. Not open to students who took English 187, Murder. Prerequisite: English 295 and one 300-level English course. 6 credits; LA, WR2; Winter; Pierre Hecker
ENGL 395 Narrative Roland Barthes claims that "narrative is international, transhistorical, transcultural: it is simply there, like life itself." Yet metahistorian Hayden White wonders, "Does the world really present itself to perception in the form of well-made stories?" To study narrative is to confront art's distinctive interplay of fiction and nonfiction, invention and truth. We will read contemporary narrative theory by critics from several disciplines and apply their theories to textual and visual narratives such as literary texts, graphic novels, films, images, television shows, advertisements, and music videos. Students will collaborate on a digital storytelling project. Prerequisite: English 295 and one 300 level English course. 6 credits; LA, WR2; Fall; Susan Jaret McKinstry
ENGL 400 Integrative Exercise Senior English majors may fulfill the integrative exercise by completing one of the four options: the Colloquium Option (a group option in which participants discuss, analyze and write about a thematically coherent list of literary works); the Research Essay Option (an extended essay on a topic of the student's own devising); the Creative Option (creation of a work of literary art); or the Project Option (creation of an individual or group multidisciplinary project). The Research Essay Option is open to students who have completed a senior seminar in the major by the end of fall term senior year. The Creative Option is open only to students who have completed at least two creative writing courses (one of which must be at the 300 level) by the end of fall term senior year. 6 credits; S/NC; Winter, Spring; George G Shuffelton