ENROLL

Jessica L Leiman

Held for new first year students

Timothy Raylor

Rhetoric's all around us: in political manifestos and legal pleadings; in professions of love and advertisements for dog food. We use it whenever we urge someone to believe what we say or do what we want. But how well do we understand the foundations and protocols of this art that teaches us "to see the available means of persuasion?" In this class we'll study the origins and theory of rhetoric (via Aristotle), examine exemplary instances (from Pericles to Trump), and consider the charges (via Plato) that it's all lies and trickery, while learning how to compose persuasive academic papers and presentations.

Held for new first year students

Arnab Chakladar

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.

Held for new first year students

Constance Walker

“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.

Jessica L Leiman

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.

Constance Walker

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