Lower-Level Courses -- Summer Writing Program, Literature Seminars for New Students, Writing Seminars, Introductory English Courses

Upper-Level Courses, Senior Seminars, Integrative Exercise

Lower-Level Courses

099. Summer Writing Program

Emphasizing a writing process approach, the Summer Writing Program helps high school juniors and seniors learn to compose academic papers that are similar to those they will write in college. Students read both contemporary and traditional literature from classic texts by writers such as Plato and Shakespeare to a variety of modern short stories, essays, and poems by authors such as August Wilson, Margaret Atwood, James Baldwin, Alice Walker, and Adrienne Rich. This literature then becomes the focus of their papers. Students write every day, and although occasional creative writing exercises are included, the main emphasis of the course will be on expository prose. Cannot be used for the Writing Requirement. 6 credits, S/CR/NC, ND.

Summer -- D. Appleman

100. Literature Seminar

A writing seminar designed to teach college students to be successful readers and writers. Each section includes a variety of readings chosen to teach the skills of essay writing, editing, and revision. Because of the focus on critical reading and writing, the course also serves as an excellent foundation for the English major.

• 100-1. "His dark materials": Milton, Shelley, Pullman
  We will read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials as responses to and radical revisions of Milton's Paradise Lost. 6 credits, S/CR/NC, AL.
  Fall - C. Walker
• 100-2. 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, S/CR/NC, AL.
  Fall -- J. Leiman
• 100-3. 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, S/CR/NC, AL.
  Fall — A. Chakladar
• 100-4. Reading, Interpreting, and Writing
  We will read, interpret, and write about short stories, poems, and plays from The Norton Introduction to Literature. We will, for example, read short stories by Atwood, Baldwin, Bambara, Chekhov, Gordimer, Garcia Marquez, Hawthorne, Joyce, and Poe; poems by Brooks, Barrett Browning, Coleridge, Dickinson, Lorde, Pound, and Rich; and plays by Sophocles, Wilde, Tennessee Williams, and August Wilson. 6, S/CR/NC, AL.
  Fall -- K. Owusu
• 100-5. Puritans in Love: Pleasure and Pressure in New England
  Disparaged at home as Protestants of “the hotter sort,” the New England Calvinists had hearts less controlled than we may expect. With emphasis on the skills of writing effective analytical essays, this course will trace how conflicts between “high” and “lower” forms of love, high ideals and grinding realities, shaped Puritan poetry and narratives of settlement, captivity, witchcraft, and racial conflict. Readings will be drawn from Bradstreet, Taylor, Mather, Rowlandson, Hawthorne, and Dickinson. 6 credits, S/CR/NC, AL.
  Fall – P. Balaam

Writing Seminar I: The following sections will be offered in 2009-2010.

A course in expository and persuasive writing. May be repeated once for additional credit. 6 credits, S/CR/NC, ND, WR.
Fall, Winter, and Spring - Carleton English Faculty

• ENGL 109-01. -- C. Rutz
  Writing makes thinking visible. In this course, we will use individual research projects as well as readings to develop skills in reflection, reporting, oral presentation, and persuasion. Close collaboration with librarians will help students establish a research environment for this course and, one hopes, for future courses as well. Students should expect to write often, participate in peer review, and become critical readers of their own work. 6 credits, ND, WR.
  Fall and Winter -- C. Rutz
• ENGL 109-02. -- E. McKinsey
  Focusing on rhetorical choices and writing strategies, we will seek to read critically and write persuasively about contemporary issues of "globalization." We will use recent journalism and scholarly articles, as well as our own experiences, as a springboard for discussion of issues of distinctive cultures, consumerism, national sovereignty, sustainability and ethics in the face of increasing economic interdependence and instant communication in our "globalized" world. Students will write and revise several major essays and give a final class presentation. 6 credits, ND.
  Fall -- McKinsey
• ENGL 109-03. -- T. Raylor
  The principles and practice of persuasive argument, with classic and contemporary readings, and regular writing assignments. 6 credits, ND.
  Fall—T. Raylor
• ENGL 109-04. -- N. Cho
  Exploring the theme of "Writing Place," this course introduces students to the fundamental organizational and argumentative skills they need to write effectively at Carleton. We will read and discuss essays about place, and engage the theme of place through a variety of writing assignments. The course aims to teach students to read critically and carefully; to consider audience, purpose, and context in the construction of a rhetorical strategy; to state an arguable thesis and develop it into a persuasive argument; and to develop effective writing habits. Drafting, revising, and peer writing workshops will be emphasized.6 credits, ND, WR.
  Fall - N. Cho
• ENGL 109-5. -- M. L. Schier
  This course will help students develop and refine skills in argumentation, rhetoric and writing through reading, writing practice, peer critique and personal consultation with the instructor. Class readings will be varied and will include both fiction and nonfiction.
  Fall - M.L. Schier
• ENGL 109-00 -- C. Rutz
  Writing makes thinking visible. In this course, we will use individual research projects as well as readings to develop skills in reflection, reporting, oral presentation, and persuasion. Close collaboration with librarians will help students establish a research environment for this course and, one hopes, for future courses as well. Students should expect to write often, participate in peer review, and become critical readers of their own work. 6 credits, ND, WR.
  Winter -- C. Rutz
• ENGL 109-00. P. Balaam

110. English Literature I

Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton and lyric poets of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Required of English majors. 6 credits, AL
Fall, Winter, Spring -- P. Hecker, T. Raylor, G. Shuffelton, and C. Walker

111. English Literature II

Neoclassic, Romantic, and Victorian literature. Required of English majors. 6 credits, AL
Fall, Winter, Spring -- A. Chakladar, J. Leiman, and J. McDonnell

112. Introduction to American Literature

American literature to 1914 with an emphasis on the periods of Romanticism and Realism. Required of English majors. 6 credits, AL
Fall, Winter, Spring -- P. Balaam, G. Hewett, E. McKinsey, and G. Smith

114. Introduction to Medieval Narrative

This class will focus on three 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 Chrétien de Troyes, and legends of St. Alexis and St. Margaret. We will consider how each mode influenced the other, as we encounter warriors and lovers who suffer like saints, and saints who triumph like warriors and lovers. Readings in translation or highly accessible modernizations. 6 credits, AL.
Winter -- G. Shuffelton

117. African American Literature

This course provides an overview of African American literature. We will pay particular attention to the tradition of African American literary expression and the individual talent that brings depth and diversity to that tradition. Authors to be read include Baldwin, Baraka, Brooks, Ed Bullins, Douglass, DuBois, Dunbar, Nikki Giovanni, Hayden, Hughes, Weldon Johnson, Locke, McKay, Morrison, Toomer, Wheatley,and Wilson. English Group IV. 6 credits, AL
Winter -- K. Owusu

118. Introduction to Poetry

We will look at the whole kingdom of poetry, exploring how poets use form, tone, sound, imagery, rhythm, and subject matter to create what Wallace Stevens called the “supreme fiction.” Examples will be drawn from around the world, from Sappho to spoken word. Participation in discussion is mandatory; essay assignments will ask you to provide close readings of particular works; a couple of assignments will focus on the writing of poems so as to give you a full understanding of this ancient and living art. 6 credits, AL
Winter -- A. Estill

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 20th 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, AL.
Not offered in 2009-10

120. Introduction to Literary Modernism

“On or about December 1910 human character changed,” Virginia Woolf once observed, and indeed, something did happen at the beginning of the 20^th-century that changed the course of literature forever. We will look at the great poets and novelists of modernism—Yeats, Joyce, Eliot, Faulkner among many others—and try to come to terms with the literary movement that helped shape the consciousness of the twentieth-century. 6 credits, AL.

Spring-- G. Smith

129. Introduction to British Comedy

“And those things do best please me / That befall preposterously.” A survey of comic plays, novels, short stories, films and television from Shakespeare, Austen, Lewis Carroll, Gilbert and Sullivan, Oscar Wilde, through P.G. Wodehouse and beyond

Winter -- C. Walker

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 abilities to think critically and write analytically about literature. Note: English majors or potential English majors should register for ENGL 244. 6 credits, AL.
Fall -- P. Hecker

200. Methods of Interpretation

This course is required of students majoring in English. It will deal with practical and theoretical issues in literary analysis and contemporary criticism. Any two of the following--ENGL 110, 111, and 112--are prerequisites. Not open to first year students. 6 credits, AL.
Winter and Spring -- A. Estill and S. Jaret McKinstry

220. Arts of Oral Presentation - Sections 01 and 02

Instruction and practice in being a speaker and an audience in formal and informal settings. 3 credits, S/CR/NC, ND.
Winter and Spring, First 5 weeks (01) and Second 5 weeks (02) -- M. Kowalewski and T. Raylor

227. Borderlands: Places and People

The borderlands provides a powerful metaphoric vehicle for discussing contemporary cultural expression. We will engage this metaphor through a broad chronological and generic range of American literary and visual texts. Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands / La Frontera and John Sayles’s Lone Star will initiate our discussion through their reflections on the U.S.-Mexico border and its production of border identities. We will then address additional narratives that defy racial, gender, sexual, ethnic, cultural, or religious classification. Finally, we will consider the ways in which individual hybrid, mestizo, or border identities are related to particular understandings of the nature of place and community. Group IV. 6 credits, AL.
Not offered in 2009-10.

230. African American Autobiography

The African American slave narrative chronicles remarkable transformations: how a (wo)man was made a slave and how a slave was made a (wo)man. The ex-slave’s affirmation of selfhood found expression in first-person narratives that launched a literary tradition. We will place this emerging tradition in its historical context, discuss its defining characteristics, and trace its development in twentieth-century African American autobiography. Our definition of “the literary” will not be divorced from relevant cultural codes and historical context. We will read classic slave narratives by Equiano, Douglass, and Jacobs; and twentieth-century autobiography by Washington, Hurston, Wright, Malcolm X, Angelou, Brooks, and Njeri. Group IV. 6 credits, AL, RAD.
Not offered in 2009-10.

234. Literature of the American South

We will focus on masterpieces of the “Southern Renaissance” of the early and mid-twentieth century, and place them into 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, AL.
Not offered in 2009-10.

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. Group IV. 6 credits, AL, RAD.
Not offered in 2009-10.

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, Mary Austin, Jeffers, Abbey, Snyder, and Terry Tempest Williams. Students will write a creative Natural History essay as part of the course requirements. 6 credits, AL.
Fall -- M. Kowalewski

237. American Indian Literature

Cross-listed with AMST 238 and ENTS 237. Study and discussion of Native American literature from its graphic and oral roots to contemporary memoir, fiction and poetry. Twentieth-century authorrs read will include Charles Eastman, James Welch, N. Scott Momaday, Louise Erdrich, Joy Harjo, Susan Power, LeAnne Howe, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Sherman Alexie. Topics to be discussed will include the importance of place, religious beliefs, nature and the "supernatural" diverse representations of historical events, communal life, and individual and tribal identity. The course will also critique the depiction of Native Americans by Euro-Americans in popular media. Group IV, 6 credits, AL, RAD.
Not offered in 2009-10.

238. African Literature in English

We will read and discuss classic texts of African literary expression drawn from English-speaking Africa. Authors to be read include Chinua Achebe, Ama Ata Aidoo, Ayi Kwei Armah, Buchi Emecheta, Bessie Head, Ben Okri, Ngugiwa Thiong'o, and Wole Soyinka. 6 credits, AL, RAD.
Not offered in 2009-10.

239. American Best-Sellers

A “book’s popularity is itself a kind of criticism, complex evidence that the best-seller in question expressed the hopes and fears of people who found them nowhere else so forcibly put.” In this course—a literary, historical, and cultural exploration of best-selling 19^th century American fiction—we will seek to understand not only which books became popular, but why they did, how their formal qualities and particular engagements moved contemporary readers to buy and read them so avidly. Page-turners, barn-burners, and tear-jerkers, nine of them, by Rowson, Cooper, Stowe, Alger, Burroughs, Zane Grey, Wharton. English Group III, 6 credits, AL.
Not offered in 2009-10.

240. Transatlantic Romanticism

Heroes and demons, revolutionaries and explorers, the Sublime and the Abyss, and of course Nature, will be among the subjects of this interdisciplinary, multi-genre course on the international cultural, intellectual, and political movement that became known as Romanticism, a movement whose reverberations continue to be felt strongly today. Among the works and authors to be studied: Frankenstein and The Last of the Mohicans; Wordsworth and Whitman; The Sorrows of Young Werther and Confessions of an English Opium Eater; Poe and Coleridge; the Brothers Grimm and Hawthorne; Beethoven and Chopin; the Hudson River School and Turner; Goya and Verdi; Rousseau and Thoreau. English Group III, 6 credits, AL.
Not offered in 2009-10.

241. Language Thieves: Woman in American Poetry

An examination of how gendered identities affect the uses of poetry. Beginning with the modernists, we will look at the relationship their poetry builds to traditional gender identities. Next we will explore how feminism radically redefines poetry and its traditions. Finally we will turn to a few contemporary poets in order to question how poetry today responds to changes in women's and men's social roles. We will read a number of poets, including Gertrude Stein, Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Lyn Hejinian, Harryette Mullen, and Julia Alvarez. English Group IV, 6 credits, AL.
Not offered in 2009-10.

242. Contemporary Ethnic American Literature

This course will focus on significant works of Ethnic American literature from the 1980's to the present through the lens of transnationalism. While Ethnic American literature continues to explore conflicts of race, ethnicity, gender, and class within the U.S., it also invokes distinct histories and cultures of other parts of the world. This transnational setting is informed by specific aspects of U.S. history, such as the slave trade or U.S. imperialism, as well as the dual national/cultural affiliation that attends immigration. By studying the works of such writers as Charles Johnson, Teresa Hak-Kyung Cha, Julia Alvarez, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Edwidge Danticat, we will explore the intricate map of contemporary American literature, which extends far beyond the U.S. borders. English Group IV, 6 credits, AL.
Not offered in 2009-10.

243. Text and Film

Each text selected for this course will be paired with its filmic adaptation for a series of discussions focused on narrative structures, points of view, frames of reference, and textual (in)fidelity. We will read the following texts and watch their film versions: Wright’s Native Son, Malcolm X and Haley’s The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Naylor’s The Women of Brewster Place, Walker’s The Color Purple, McMillan’s Waiting to Exhale, and Mosley’s Devil in a Blue Dress. English Group IV, 6 credits, AL.
Spring --K. Owusu

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 abilities to think critically and write analytically about literature. Note: Those not majoring in English should register for ENGL 144. English Group I, 6 credits, AL.
Fall—P. Hecker

246. Women’s Texts in History 1600-1700

1700 This course offers a rare chance for students to work at the intersection of historical research and literary study. Combining the study of historical context with case studies of particular authors, we will explore the extraordinary range of writings produced by seventeenth-century English women in a time of social, political, and scientific revolution: writings that both reflected and influenced the upheavals of their era. Authors to be studied include Margaret Cavendish (her poetry and plays, along with her political and philosophical treatises) and Mary Astell (her “feminist” educational tracts). English Group II, 6 credits, AL.
Not offered in 2009-10.

249. Irish Literature

After a brief introduction to earlier literary texts, the course will concentrate on twentieth century fiction, poetry and drama by W. B. Yeats, James Joyce, J. M. Synge, Brian Friel, Frank O’Connor, Sean O’Faolain, Edna O’Brien, William Trevor, Patrick Kavanagh, Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill and many others. We will pay particular attention to the recurrent themes of national and cultural identity, the plight of women in a repressive society, the perspectives of children, the power of religion and the prevalence of violence. English Group IV. 6 credits, AL.
Not offered in 2009-10.

250. Modern Indian Fiction I

In this course we will follow the various paths that the novel in India has taken since the early 20th 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 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. English Group IV, 6 credits, RAD, AL.
Not offered in 2009-10.

251. Modern Indian Fiction II

Modern Indian Fiction II will focus on Indian fiction by writers who came to prominence after 1980. The period is inaugurated by the monumental publication of Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children in 1981, and part of the course objectives will be to track the explosion of Indian writing in English in the decades that follow. The course will also examine Indian fiction in translation from other languages in the same period and consider the question of the ways in which these traditions intersect, and whether it is possible to speak of Indian Literature as a singular category. English Group IV, 6 credits, RAD, AL.

Spring -- A. Chakladar

252. Caribbean Literature

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. English Group IV, 6 credits, AL, RAD.
Winter - A. Chakladar

259. Advanced Essay Writing

Designed for students who are relatively comfortable with their papers but who would like to attempt more challenging approaches, this course will concentrate on alternative essay-forms and encompass a wide variety of possibilities – from the ‘false thesis’ to dialogues and 'prismatic' composition. We will explore ways of holding a reader's attention, the rhythm and music of effective expository prose and writing for a general audience. Alert listening will be emphasized, as well as constructive criticism by the class-members of each other's drafts. The basis for assessment will be an 8-10 page paper on a topic of the student's choice. 3 credits, AL, 2nd five weeks.
Fall - K. Harrison

260. Introduction to Creative Writing

This course offers blocks of intensive training in poetry, prose fiction, and what has recently been termed “creative non-fiction.” The primary objective is to come to an understanding of the varying and at times overlapping capabilities of these three genres and to produce works in each. Discussion of each participant’s writing is the central mode of instruction. This will be supplemented by examples from published writers and some theoretical essays on the creative process. 6 credits, S/CR/NC, ND.
Fall and Winter-- G. Hewett

270. The Crafts of Writing: The Short Story

An introduction to the writing of the short story. Each student will write and have discussed in class three stories (from 1,500 to 4,000 words in length) and give constructive suggestions about the stories written by other members of the class. Students are expected to write brief critiques of each story written by their classmates. Prerequisite writing requirement. 6 credits, S/CR/NC, ND.
Fall and Winter -- G. Smith

271. The Crafts of Writing: Poetry

This course concerns itself with the development of poetic vision as much as craft. Through intensive writing and revision of poetry, supplemented by reading and discussion of contemporary poetry and poetics, each member of the group will form a body of work and a statement that stakes a poetic claim. The objective is to begin to discover how each of us fits or does not fit into the modern poetical tradition and the diverse contemporary poetry scene, so as to free us from solipsism and vague notions of the powers of poetry. 6 credits, S/CR/NC, ND.
Winter -- G. Hewett

272. Truth vs. Power: A Journey in Journalism

Journalism is in turmoil today. Bold experimentation is needed to meet such dramatic new challenges to journalism as the Internet, the decline of newspapers, multilingual readerships, and global crises requiring activism more than "objectivity.” The class will move between a theoretical focus -- exploring journalism's basic theories and often-contradictory methods, purposes and aims --and a practical focus inviting students to strive towards their highest journalistic ideals. Students will be challenged to blend journalism's indispensable norms of factual accuracy, fairness and quality writing with new technologies such as blogging, podcasting, videocasting, social networking and RSS feeds. A graded course, 6 credits, AL.
Fall -- D. McGill

275. The Crafts of Writing: The Essay, From Imitation to Invention

Practice in various styles and structures of expository and argumentation prose through imitation of models, ancient and modern, from Francis Bacon and Sir Thomas Browne through Twain and Orwell to Tom Wolfe and Molly Ivins. This course embodies the conviction that we learn to use language through imitation and fashion our own styles by response to the best we have read and heard. 6 credits, ND.
Not offered in 2009-10.

280. The Crafts of Writing: Creative Non-Fiction

Do you like it when true things happen? Would you like to take those true things and make them sound truer than true? Would you like to use words while doing that? In this course, students will write a rant, a reported essay, and also explore a creative non-fiction form of their choosing. Class time will be spent on live writing assignments, giving and receiving feedback, learning basic research techniques, and having discussions about things that seem trivial right up until the moment that their ultimate significance is revealed.
Spring -- D. Cass

291-17. London Program: Independent Project

Independent Project in consultation with the director, students will design an independent research project that will be conducted on-site in London. Nearly any aspect of London life, past or present, may make a suitable subject of study. Students will meet in workshop groups and present their projects at the end of term or after our return to Carleton.
4 credits, S/CR/NC, ND.
Spring - G. Shuffelton

Upper-Level Courses:

The following courses are not open to first-year students unless they have the written permission of the instructor, and most upper-level courses have as a prerequisite one course numbered 110-299.

300. Chaucer I: Canterbury Tales

A study of The Canterbury Tales in Middle English (no previous knowledge assumed), concentrating on the pilgrims as narrating subjects, and Chaucer's legendary status as the "Father" of English Literature. Engish Group I. 6 credits, AL.
Not offered in 2009-10.

301. The Courtly Chaucer

None of the 493 documents in the Chaucer Life Records mention his poetry; most describe his activities as a courtier and royal administrator. This course seeks to reconcile this courtly Chaucer with his writing prior to the Canterbury Tales. As we read his early dream visions, we will immerse ourselves in the courtly cultures Chaucer learned by reading French and Italian works in translation, and by examining the art and manners of the English court. The final weeks will be spent reading his finished masterpiece, Troilus and Criseyde, sometimes called "the first novel in English." English Group I, 6 credits, AL.
Not offered in 2009-10.

308. English Renaissance Verse

A study of the remarkable range of verses written by men and women of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in response to their turbulent times. We will trace the development of different genres and will attend to some of the major debates in which this verse is engaged—debates over the nature and purpose of poetry, the relationship between man and woman, and that between humanity and God. Our emphasis will be on lyric poetry, including the love sonnets of the 1590’s, and the so-called “metaphysical” poetry of Donne, Herbert, and Marvell. English Group I. 6 credits, AL.
Not offered in 2009-10.

309. Renaissance Selves

What is a “self”? And where do our ideas of it come from? Some scholars have argued that modern notions of individuality, subjectivity, interiority, and of performative “self-fashioning” emerged during the Renaissance; others respond that this is not history, but myth. We’ll join the debate by reading the major scholarly contributions (including work by Burkhardt and Greenblatt); by studying (in translation) the texts around which the argument revolves—Castiglione’s Courtier, Machiavelli’s Prince, Montaigne’s Essays; and by examining exemplars of the literary genres most directly associated with the expression of selfhood: autobiography (Anne Clifford), essay (Bacon), and lyric poem (Sidney, Shakespeare). Prerequisite: one course numbered 110-175 or written permission of the instructor. English Group I, 6 credits, AL.
Spring - T. Raylor

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: Engl 144 or 244 or consent of the instructor. English Group I, 6 credits, AL.
Not offered in 2009-10.

313. Major Works of the English Renaissance: The Faerie Queene

A study of Spenser's romance epic. English Group II. 3, AL.
Fall -- T. Raylor

314. Major Works of the English Renaissance: Paradise Lost

An examination of Milton’s masterwork. English Group II. 3 credits, AL.
Fall -- T. Raylor

318. The Gothic Spirit

The eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries 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, as we address its preoccupation with terror, sex, madness, and the supernatural. We will locate this genre within its historical and literary context, considering its excesses in light of the political and cultural anxieties of the age, and exploring the relationship between Gothicism, sensibility, and Romanticism. Reading will include novels, verse, and drama by Walpole, Radcliffe, Austen, Lewis, Byron, and Mary Shelley. Group II. 6 credits, AL.
Not offered in 2009-10.

319. The Rise of the Novel

A study of the origin and development of the English novel throughout the long eighteenth century. We will situate the early novel within its historical and cultural context, paying particular attention to its concern with courtship and marriage, writing and reading, the real and the fantastic. We will also consider eighteenth-century debates about the social function of novels and the dangers of reading fiction. Authors will include Behn, Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Sterne, and Radcliffe. English Group II. 6 credits, AL.
Winter -- J. Leiman

322. 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 & Sensibility, Pride & Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion. English Group II. 6 credits, AL.
Spring -- C. Walker

323. English Romantic Poets

“It is impossible to read the compositions of the most celebrated writers of the present day without being startled with the electric life which burns within their words” — P. B. Shelley. Readings in Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats, and their contemporaries. English Group III. 6 credits, AL.
Fall -- C. Walker

327. The Victorian Novel

We will study selected British novels of the nineteenth century (Eliot’s Middlemarch, Dickens’ Bleak House, Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Du Maurier’s Trilby, C. Bronte’s Jane Eyre, and E. Bronte’s Wuthering Heights) as literary texts and cultural objects, examining the prose and also the bindings, pages, and illustrations of Victorian and contemporary editions.  Using Victorian serial publications as models, and in collaboration with studio art and art history students, students will design and create short illustrated serial editions of chapters that will be exhibited in spring term. Group III. 6, AL.
Winter -- S. Jaret McKinstry

328. Victorian Poetry

A study of Victorian poetry with particular emphasis on Pre-Raphaelite poetry and paintings. English Group III. 6 credits, AL.
Not offered in 2009-10.

ENGL 329. Inventing "America": The Litrature of the Colonial U.S.

A transcultural study of the literature produced in the 17^th- and 18^th-century expansion of European powers into North America, with emphasis on narratives of contact, the New England settlements, and literary responses to the Revolution and founding of the U.S. English Group II, 6 credits, AL.
Not offered in 2009-10.

330. Literature of 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, Castillo, and Cormac McCarthy have dealt with the geographical diversity and multi-ethnic history of the West. Films will include The Searchers, The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, and Unforgiven. English Group IV. 6 credits, AL.
Not offered in 2009-10.

331. American Transcendentalism

The roots and aims, friends and some enemies, of this 19^thcentury reform movement, with particular attention to its literary aspects and its legacy in U.S. literary history. Major works of Emerson, Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, some lesser known figures including Bronson, Alcott, Lydia Maria Child, Jones Very; demurrals from Poe and Hawthorne. We will test the value of the movement by examining its politics, especially its relation to slavery and abolitionism, and finish with a speculative inquiry into the popular Transcendentalism of our own material age. English Group III. 6 credits, AL.
Not offered in 2009-10.

332. Studies in American Literature: Faulkner, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald

Cross-listed with AMST 332. An intensive study of the novels and short fiction of William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. The course will focus on the experimentation ethos and "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. English Group IV. 6 credits, AL.
Spring -- M. Kowalewski

334. Postmodern American Fiction

We will get lost in the funhouse of postmodern fiction, in whose mirrored rooms we will encounter Maxwell’s Demon, a depressed Krazy Kat, and the icy imagination of the King of Zembla. (Time will be budgeted for side-excursions into pastiche, dreck, and indeterminacy.) Authors read will include Nabokov, Pynchon, Bartheleme, and Delillo. English Group IV. 6 credits, AL.
Not offered in 2000-10.

335. Postcolonial Literature

In Heart of Darkness Marlow notes, “The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only.” In this class we will explore both the ways in which this “idea” has been written about in European fictions about empire, and some responses to it from those on the receiving end. In particular, we will probe the ways in which the cultural identity of both the colonizer and the colonized are created, staged and written under colonialism and its aftermath. Writers we will read will include Kipling, Conrad, Forster, Achebe, Rushdie, Naipaul, Cliff, Kincaid, Rao, and Ngugi. We will also encounter some of the prominent theorists of postcolonial studies. English Group IV. 6 credits, AL.
Fall -- A. Chakladar

336. Romance to Novel: Poe, Hawthorne, James

Major works of these crucial U.S. writers in cultural contexts between 1830 and 1900. What did the 19^thcentury U.S. have to offer the ambitious, socially observant writer of fiction? What did U.S. audiences expect in a book? Attention to the gothic, Romanticism, psychological realism, and the emergence of the “international theme.” Several tales and some literary theory from each, with longer works including Arthur Gordon Pym, Blithedale Romance, House of Seven Gables, Portrait of a Lady, Wings of the Dove. English Group III. 6 credits, Al.
Not offered in 2009-10.

337. Art and Argument in U.S. Realism

From the 1870s to WWI, the realists produced novels they hoped would be aesthetically superior to that of the past as well as deeply responsive to the rapid social and moral changes of the era. Readings will be drawn from the fiction and theory of Twain, Howells, James, Crane, Jewett, Gilman, Wharton, Dreiser, Du Bois. English Group III, 6 credits, AL.
Spring - P. Balaam

339. Contemporary American Playwrights of Color

This course will examine a diverse selection of plays from the 1970s to the present with an attempt to understand how different theatrical venues frame our understanding of ethnic identity. Playwrights and performers to be studied include Ntozake, Shange, George C. Wolfe, Luis Valdez, David Henry Hwang, August Wilson, Philip Gotanda, Wakako Yamauchi, Maria Irene Fornes, Suzan-Lori Parks, and Ann Deavere Smith. There will be occasional video screenings and we will attend live theatrical performances when possible. English Group IV. 6 credits, AL, RAD.
Not offered in 2009-10.

341. Contemporary Poetry

Studies in poetry written in English since 1945. English Group IV. 6 credits, AL.
Not offered in 2009-10.

342. Contemporary Latino/a Poetry

In-depth examination of the major Latino/a poets from the 1960s to the present, including Julia Alvarez, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Sandra Cisneros, Sandra Maria Esteves, Carolina Hospital, Tato Laviera, Pedro Pietri, Alberto Rios, and Gary Soto. We will examine the particular historical moments that enabled their voices to emerge and situate their styles and themes within the broader contexts of American literature and Latino studies. English Group IV. 6 credits, AL.
Not offered in 2009-10.

362. Narrative Theory

“Does the world really present itself to perception in the form of well-made stories?” asks Hayden White (historiographer). To try to answer that question, we will read contemporary narrative theory and analyze various literary texts and films. This course fulfills the advanced/senior seminar requirement. Prerequisite: English 200, 6 credits, AL.
Not offered in 2009-10.

365. British Comedy

A study of the elements of comedy--plot, character, dialogue, wit, and humor--in British comic plays, poems, novels, and films. Authors will include Shakespeare, Sheridan, Austen, Peacock, Wilde, and Stoppard. 6 credits, AL.
Not offered in 2009-10.

370. Advanced Crafts of Writing: The Short Story

An advanced course in the writing of fiction. Students are expected to write brief critiques of each story written by their classmates. Students must submit a story to the English Department Office prior to spring term registration. Final enrollment is based on the quality of the submitted work. May be repeated for credit. 6 credits, S/CR/NC, AL.
Spring -- G. Smith

371. Advanced Crafts of Writing: Poetry

For students with some experience in writing poetry. We will take a workshop approach that develops the individual poet’s craft and vision. Readings and exercises will be used to explore the poet’s individual range and expand ideas about what poetic language can do. The goal of this course is for each poet to create a sequence of eight poems unified by technique, subject matter, form, or sensibility as well as eight experimental poems. A group public reading will be scheduled. Students must submit three poems to the English Department Office prior to registration. Final enrollment is based on the quality of the submitted work. 6 credits, S/CR/NC, AL.
Spring -- Hewett

380-07. London Program: London Theater

The group will attend productions of classical and contemporary plays in London and Stratford-on-Avon (about two per week) and do related reading. Class discussions will focus on dramatic genres and themes, production and direction decisions, acting styles, and design. Guest speakers will include actors, critics, and directors. Students will keep a theater journal and develop several entries into full reviews of plays.
Spring -- G. Shuffelton

381-07. London Program: Shaping the Early Modern City, 1400-1650

Modern city life is often imagined as a kind of theater, with citizens highly conscious of seeing and being seen, and a freedom that allows newcomers to cast off old identities. This course will trace the roots of these ideas in the literature of late medieval and early modern England, considering examples of the city used as a theater and representations of the city in theater. Readings will include selections from the cycle plays put on by medieval craft guilds, the civic pageants celebrating royal triumphs, and the vibrant drama of Elizabethan and Jacobean London. English Group I, 6 credits, AL.
Spring—G. Shuffelton

384. Ireland Program: James Joyce's Ulysses and Dubliners

Senior Seminars:

One Senior or Advanced Seminar is required for a major in English. The seminar (ENGL 362 or ENGL 395) should be taken during the senior year or in the second or the third term of the junior year, after at least two 300-level English courses. If an English major takes two senior seminars, one of them may count for an English Department group if appropriate. The following senior seminars will be offered in 2009-2010:

395. Senior Seminar: Toni Morrison, Nobel Laureate

Nobel Laureate We will read Morrison's nonfiction collection, Playing in the Dark, and her fiction (The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Tar Baby, Beloved, Jazz, Paradise, and Love) and discuss the impact of this writer and critic on African American and American literature and letters. Will count as a Senior Seminar or Group IV. 6 credits, AL.
Fall -- K. Owusu

395. Dissenting Americans

This course examines the rich tradition of cultural critique that has helped to define American literature. What does it mean to write as a "dissenting American"? How are political debates shaped by genre and the writer's craft? Different historical moments will inform our readings of paired authors: Henry David Thoreau, Rebecca Harding Davis, Stephen Crane, Charles Chesnutt, John Okada, Ralph Ellison, Lorraine Hansberry, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Alice Childress, Audre Lord, Chay Yew, and Anna Deavere Smith. Students are expected to be careful readers of criticism as well as literature, and will do a major research paper. Will count as a Senior Seminar or Group IV, 6 credits, AL.
Winter – N. Cho

395. Seductive Fictions

Stories of virtue in distress and innocence ruined preoccupied English novelists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This course will focus on the English seduction novel, considering the following questions: What was the allure of the seduction plot? What does it reveal about sexual relations, femininity and masculinity, power, and class during this period? How does the seduction plot address and provoke concerns about novel-reading itself during a time when the novel was considered both an instrument of education and an agent of moral corruption? Authors may include: Eliza Haywood, Samuel Richardson, Choderlos de Laclos, Thomas Hardy, and Bram Stoker. Will count as a Senior Seminar or English Group II. 6 credits, AL.
Spring — Jessica Leiman

400. Integrative Exercise:

Senior English majors may fulfill the Integrative Exercise by completing one of 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. For the class