CARLETON COLLEGE ENGLISH SEMINAR IN LONDON - Spring 2008

There will be an information meeting on Thursday April 5, 2007, at 7 pm, in Laird 211.

PROGRAM DATES
The dates will correspond approximately with the spring term dates at Carleton, 2008.

DIRECTOR: Professor Gregory Blake Smith
Gregory Blake Smith is a novelist on the Carleton faculty who teaches courses in 20^th-century literature and creative writing. His own novels make a strong use of place, New England in The Devil in the Dooryard and The Divine Comedy of John Venner, and Las Vegas in The Madonna of Las Vegas.

PREREQUISITES
The seminar is open to students in any major at Carleton. Prior to the start of the program, all participants are expected to have completed English 110 or 111.

OVERVIEW
Literature, theater, and the arts flourish in London. The city has a rich literary and cultural past and present and is arguably the pre-eminent world city for theater. The goal of the London program is to provide Carleton students an immersion experience in this rich milieu; to see and discuss a wide variety of the best performances on offer; and to make use of local museums and other sites to enrich their understanding of English literature and culture.

COURSE OF STUDY: 16 CREDITS

ENGLISH 290-17: INDEPENDENT PROJECT (4 credits, S/CR/NC)
In consultation with the director, students will design an independent project growing out of their experiences on the program. They will meet in workshop groups and present their projects—perhaps a photo-essay, or a group of poems—at the end of the term. Once back at Carleton we’ll web-publish an anthology of the group’s work.
Instructor: Gregory Blake Smith

ENGLISH 380-07: LONDON THEATER (6 CREDITS)
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.
Instructors: Gregory Blake Smith and Jane Edwardes (Theater Editor of Time Out.)

ENGLISH 381-07: NOVELS OF PLACE (6 CREDITS)
This course will study six or seven novels especially rich in their use of English settings. We will examine the novels foremost as works of art, but will give special attention to the role of setting, investigating in what ways their authors employ the physical, cultural, and social worlds in which they place their characters. The course will include field trips to locations significant to the books (e.g. the London law courts where, at just the right moment of twilight, one may still see Miss Flite scurrying about in the Victorian shadows), and students will be encouraged to think about the ways in which place can help carry a novel’s thematic freight. Books for the course are likely to include Austen’s Persuasion (set in Bath and Lyme Regis), Dickens’s Bleak House (London), and Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman (Lyme Regis). Instructor: Gregory Blake Smith

HOUSING
Students will stay in double, triple or quadruple rooms at Pickwick Hall, 7 Bedford Place, London WCIB 5JE, conveniently located in central London (the Bloomsbury district), near the British Museum and within walking distance of a number of London theaters. Students will have breakfast at the hotel and eat lunch and dinner on their own with an allowance provided by the program. The hotel includes a common kitchen, a lounge with high-speed Internet access and two computers, and laundry facilities.

CLASS SCHEDULE
Classes will meet Monday through Thursday mornings in a seminar room at the Swedenborg Society, a short walk from Pickwick Hall. Field trips to London sites and museums will occupy some afternoons as well. London theater performances will be scheduled for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and/or Thursday evenings. Students are expected to attend all classes and all scheduled group trips and theater outings.

EXCURSIONS
Group excursions will likely include trips to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-on-Avon, to Bath, to Lyme Regis, and to the Staffordshire Potteries (setting for Bennett’s Anna of the Five Towns), as well as to London museums, historic houses, and other sites of literary interest. There will be a one-week mid-term break that will permit time for individual travel. Students may, of course, travel on their own before or after the program and during weekends when group travel is not planned.

EXPENSES
The fee will be the same as the regular college fee—that is, one third of Carleton’s comprehensive fee for 2007-08. Room and board, all theater and museum tickets, group travel while in England, and many incidental expenses are included. Students are responsible for books, personal expenses, and their own transportation to and from London, as well as personal travel in England.

APPLICATONS

There will be two rounds of application. The majority of participants will be selected from those who apply by April 20, 2007; the remaining places will be filled early in fall term 2007. Application forms are available from the Office of Off-Campus Studies, Leighton 119.

There will be an information meeting on Thursday April 5, 2007, at 7 pm, in Laird 211.

If you have immediate questions about courses, please email Gregory Smith, gsmith@carleton.edu. Other questions may be addressed to the Office of Off-Campus Studies.

Photo Album - London Program - Spring 2006