2020-21 Academic Catalog

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

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, gender, power, and class during this period?  How does the seduction plot address and provoke concerns about novel-reading itself during a time when the genre was considered both an instrument of education and an agent of moral corruption?  Authors include: Eliza Haywood, Samuel Richardson, Susanna Rowson, and Bram Stoker. Prerequisite: English 295 and one 300 level English course

We will examine the impact of Donne and his followers on T. S. Eliot and the founding documents of modernism (especially The Waste Land); assess Eliot's role in canonizing the metaphysical poets; and try to account for the literary and philosophical qualities which led Eliot to champion their work. Prerequisite: English 295 and one 300 level English course