ENGL 100. 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

ENGL 109 Writing Seminar: 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, S/CR/NC, AL, Fall - N Cho

English 109, Writing Seminar: 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. 6 credits, S/CR/NC, AL, Fall - M.L. Schier

ENGL 120. Introduction to Literary Modernism: Selected poems and prose narratives written since 1910. Senior English Majors may take this course only with the concent of the instructor. 6 credits, AL, Spring - G. Smith

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, AL, RAD, Winter - A. Chakladar

ENGL 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, Fall - K. Harrison

ENGL 290 London Program: 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, ND, Spring - G. Shuffleton

ENGL 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. 6 credits, AL, Spring - T. Raylor

ENGL 335 Postcolonial Literature In Joseph Conrad's "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. 6 credits, AL, RAD, Fall - A. Chakladar

ENGL 337 Art & Argument in U.S. Literary 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. 6 credits, AL, Spring - P. Balaam

ENGL 381 Staging 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. 6 credits, AL,
Spring - G. Shuffelton

ENGL 395 Dissenting Americans, Literature, Authority, and Social Change: 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. 6 credits, AL, Winter - N. Cho

ENGL 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 Group IV. 6 credits, AL,
Spring—J. Leiman

ENGL 395. Toni Morrison, 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