English majors are required to take one of three 100-level writing courses: 116w, 117w or 118w. These courses also satisfy the 100-level writing course requirement for the AXLE curriculum. The range of topics for 118w Introduction to Literary and Cultural Analysis vary widely, unlike those of 116w and 117w. 118w course descriptions are provided below.
ENGL 118w-01 . Introduction to Literary and Cultural Analysis
Topic: Medicine & Literature
McBay, M.
MWF 8:10-9:00
The course has three main foci, each explored through literature: Writing, cultural analysis and medicine (including the notion of ‘medical culture’.) “Literature” is construed to mean any published literary quality writing, including fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, and drama. Thus, writings from both famous authors and medical professionals are taken under consideration for their literary and cultural significance. Medicine, through these genres, is explored from the perspective of human meaning, ethical relationships, health and power, and literary intrigue.
Students are introduced to Cultural Analysis and learn its specific uses as a form of literary criticism. Cultural analysis is also explored as a meta-theory through which medical culture may be viewed in comparison and contrast to other professional and cultural groups.
Finally, writing about literature is viewed as a specific writing methodology. Creativity in textual interpretation is encouraged and framed within the evidence of the text under study, as well as within the larger body of available literary criticism regarding specific authors and texts undertaken. Cultural criticism is brought to bear in each writing assignment, in a variety of ways.
ENGL 118w-02 . Introduction to Literary and Cultural Analysis
Topic: The Examined Life
Moore, R.
MWF 10:10-11:00
Toward the end of his life, Socrates proclaimed, “the unexamined life is not worth living.” Taking this as our point of departure, we will examine what it means to live an examined life. Many of our authors endured tyranny or physical torment, and their experiences led them to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, the eternal from the impermanent. We will examine the ways that adversity can enlighten individuals to various truths about human nature, and we will investigate the strategies by which these individuals learned to lead noble, ethical lives in spite of their difficult situations. Our texts ask hard questions: How can we lead ethical lives? Are we makers of our destiny or victims of fate? What is the relationship between body and soul? What are our responsibilities to others? What does it mean to be “wise”? Readings include Plato, Apology and selections from Phaedo; Boethius, selections from The Consolation of Philosophy; Montaigne, selections from Essays; Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning; Hesse, Siddhartha; Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners; The Dhammapada; Voltaire, Candide; and Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran.
ENGL 118w-03 . Introduction to Literary and Cultural Analysis
Topic: TBA
Kinard, A.
MWF 10:10-11:00
ENGL 118w-04 . Introduction to Literary and Cultural Analysis
Topic: TBA
Hearn, A.
MWF 12:10-1:00
ENGL 118w-05 . Introduction to Literary and Cultural Analysis
Topic: Medicine & Literature
McBay, M.
MWF 2:10-3:00
The course has three main foci, each explored through literature: Writing, cultural analysis and medicine (including the notion of ‘medical culture’.) “Literature” is construed to mean any published literary quality writing, including fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, and drama. Thus, writings from both famous authors and medical professionals are taken under consideration for their literary and cultural significance. Medicine, through these genres, is explored from the perspective of human meaning, ethical relationships, health and power, and literary intrigue.
Students are introduced to Cultural Analysis and learn its specific uses as a form of literary criticism. Cultural analysis is also explored as a meta-theory through which medical culture may be viewed in comparison and contrast to other professional and cultural groups.
Finally, writing about literature is viewed as a specific writing methodology. Creativity in textual interpretation is encouraged and framed within the evidence of the text under study, as well as within the larger body of available literary criticism regarding specific authors and texts undertaken. Cultural criticism is brought to bear in each writing assignment, in a variety of ways.
ENGL 118w-06 . Introduction to Literary and Cultural Analysis
Topic: Medicine & Literature
McBay, M.
MWF 3:10-4:00
The course has three main foci, each explored through literature: Writing, cultural analysis and medicine (including the notion of ‘medical culture’.) “Literature” is construed to mean any published literary quality writing, including fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, and drama. Thus, writings from both famous authors and medical professionals are taken under consideration for their literary and cultural significance. Medicine, through these genres, is explored from the perspective of human meaning, ethical relationships, health and power, and literary intrigue.
Students are introduced to Cultural Analysis and learn its specific uses as a form of literary criticism. Cultural analysis is also explored as a meta-theory through which medical culture may be viewed in comparison and contrast to other professional and cultural groups.
Finally, writing about literature is viewed as a specific writing methodology. Creativity in textual interpretation is encouraged and framed within the evidence of the text under study, as well as within the larger body of available literary criticism regarding specific authors and texts undertaken. Cultural criticism is brought to bear in each writing assignment, in a variety of ways.
ENGL 118w-07. Introduction to Literary and Cultural Analysis
Topic: Faulkner and Southern Culture
Spillers, H.
TR 9:35-10:50
This course will be devoted to the close reading of four Faulkner novels
and one long short story, beginning with As I Lay Dying and proceeding to
Light In August, The Sound and the Fury, "The Bear," and Absalom, Absalom!
One of the major premises of the course is that Faulkner's fiction, in
problematizing the questions of race, gender, and culture, is as relevant
to today's readers, if not more so, as it was to his own era of literary
and artistic production. A deep reading of Faulkner's novels would suggest
that the author's attitude toward the controversial categories named above
is anything but a simple pro and con. These works are especially apt to
the contemporary period of critical reading in their deconstructive
tendencies, their elaborate linguistic sensitivity, and in all the ways
that they demonstrate the uses of the dialectical method, from certain
syntactic effects (in parts of As I Lay Dying, for instance), to the
rigorous revisionary strategies of narrative that the writer pursues in
The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom! Among American modernists,
Faulkner comes over to our time as the quintessential writer of the new;
that he achieved this distinction on southern ground reenforces the role
of the South as a leading figure of literary modernism.
ENGL 118w-08. Introduction to Literary and Cultural Analysis
Topic: Literature and Jazz
Orange, T.
TR 11:00-12:15
As with any other art form, jazz is inextricably linked to its unique sociocultural conditions; specifically, jazz emerge as a product of African-American former slaves living in the United States following the Civil War. As such, jazz and the literature involved with its offer us a unique opportunity to explore the relationship between the arts and society. Through close reading and listening, discussions, frequent short position papers, we will consider questions such as the following: How does art express the sociocultural conditions of the people who create it, particularly the people of an oppressed racial minority? What was "the Jazz Age?" How is one art form represented by or translated into another? What are the relationships between subcultural and mass cultural art forms, and how do their social dynamics play out? We will supplement our reading of literary texts -- by writers such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Jack Kerouac, Leroi Jones/Amiri Baraka, Toni Morrison and Jayne Cortez -- with brief in-class listenings from the full history of jazz musics as well as screenings from the Ken Burns PBS documentary. No prior knowledge of jazz is assumed or required.
ENGL 118w-09. Introduction to Literary and Cultural Analysis
Topic: New Zealand Literature
Orr, B.
TR 11:00-12:15
ENGL 118w-10. Introduction to Literary and Cultural Analysis
Topic: Six Crises, Six Stories
Tichi, C.
TR 1:10-2:25
ENGL 118w-11. Introduction to Literary and Cultural Analysis
Topic: Women’s Autobiographical Writings
Dicker, R.
TR 2:35-3:50
In this course, we'll read the life stories of a diverse group of women. By examining texts written by people from multiple class, age, race, and cultural backgrounds we will seek to map out the changing parameters of American women's lives, looking at the relationship between individual and collective experiences. At the same time, we will explore the different ways of representing these worlds, paying attention to various models of storytelling and their effects. As we read these texts, we'll consider a range of questions, including:
What kind of historical and literary document is an autobiography? Does the genre of autobiography provide access to women's authentic experience? What is the relationship between remembering and creating in autobiographical writing? What choices must be made when making a life into a narrative? How do women tell the stories of their lives? What does gender have to do with selfhood and authorship? How do experiences of race and class affect the way women tell their stories? What prompts someone to write an autobiography in the first place? Why do we read autobiography? What are we trying to understand about another's peron's life?
ENGL 118w-12. Introduction to Literary and Cultural Analysis
Topic: Islands
Lamb, J.
TR 2:35-3:50
Islands are favourite places from which to launch a critique of society, and perhaps to establish an alternative to it. They are also places where social restraints are removed, for good or ill. So they come to Western imagination as both charming and dangerous, as places where human beings are improved, or where they degenerate. In the Enlightenment, thinkers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Lord Monboddo were interested in the effect of total isolation, and turned to the experiences of mariners who had been cast away on desert islands, such as Alexander Selkirk, the model for Robinson Crusoe. Rousseau thought the experience purifying, Monboddo thought it turned a human being into an animal. In Gulliver"s Travels, Gulliver lives on an island so long he wants to become a horse, the noblest creature in the world in his opinion. In The Island of Dr. Moreau such a metamorphosis provides the hint for a ghastly experiment. We shall look at some island stories, from The Tempest to Lord of the Flies, to see how islands function in the ennoblement or the disgrace of the human species.
ENGL 118w-13. Introduction to Literary and Cultural Analysis
Topic: Film, Media, & Culture: Interweaving Narratives of Fiction and History
Girgus, S.
TR 2:35-3:50
The course will consider how fiction and history interweave in various narrative forms including film, media and journalism, historical accounts. We will look at films from this perspective of the relationship of history and fiction. Along with reading and using print and visual media on current events, we also will read about three selected novels that interweave fiction and history. In addition, students will investigate and write "City Stories," little pieces about people and life in the broader community of Nashville.
ENGL 201-01. Advanced Nonfiction Writing
Dayan, C.
M 1:10-4:00
Limited enrollment. Admission to the workshop is by instructor's permission only. Students will be screened during the first week of class on the basis of writing samples. Registered students should contact the instructor before the first day of class.
This is an intensive course in creative nonfiction, both the reading and the practice of it. The core goal is to set a group of writers writing and talking about their work together. We shall be examining models of nonfiction, starting with the personal essay or family memoir, then moving to the essay, and, finally, to something reported and/or researched. The contexts, circumstances, or plots in the course turn on the relation between animals and humans, particularly the proximity of dogs and persons in considerations of the non-human or savage. Writers include: George Orwell, Thomas Mann, Vicki Hearne, J.M. Coetzee, Amy Hempel, Alice Kunizar, Jacques Derrida, Martha C. Nussbaum.
ENGL 204-01. Intermediate Fiction Workshop
Lopez, L.
M 3:10-6:00
Limited enrollment. Admission to the workshop is by instructor's permission only. Students will be screened during the first week of class on the basis of writing samples. Registered students should contact the instructor before the first day of class.
This section of creative writing focuses on analyzing and refining techniques of fiction writing as related to the short story. Fiction writing is a craft, as well as a discipline and a process. This course is designed to help students hone skills, such as, but not limited to developing effective characterization, using perspective judiciously and consistently, proportioning summary (exposition) appropriately to scene, developing imagery that resonates metaphorically, as well as selecting and applying significant detail to enhance scene, characterization, and tone. To better apprehend and build such techniques and others, students will write two original short stories, complete writing exercises, attend and respond to literary events, and examine published short stories to discuss structural and stylistic components that contribute to these stories’ overall success, in addition to reading text on craft on a weekly basis and critiquing work from peers
ENGL 206-01. Intermediate Poetry Workshop
Jarman, M.
T 3:10-6:00
This class is a workshop in which we study the craft of poetry writing. As such, this semester we will concentrate on traditional elements of poetry--meter, rhyme, and form. In other words, this will be a class in verse as much as poetry. Each week, using our texts, we will discuss an aspect of what is called prosody: metrical feet, rhyme schemes, stanzas, and forms like the sonnet, the villanelle, and the sestina. You will discover there is a wide latitude within the limitations of form, which is not surprising considering that most poetry in English is formal verse rather than free verse, the latter being a relatively young and largely American innovation. But we will talk about free verse, too, and if you are oppressed by the mere notion of writing in rhyme and meter, you will have the opportunity to write one poem without such restraints. Admission is by consent of instructor. Please submit three samples of your work, i.e. three poems, once you register for the class.
ENGL 208a-01. Representative British Writers
"Death, Desire and Devotion in Early British Literature"
Garrett, J.
MWF 12:10-1:00
This course provides an introduction to British Literature from the Anglo-Saxon period through the seventeenth century. Each text selected for this course addresses at least one of the three major themes identified in the course title- issues which writers in most cultures have drawn upon as their raw material for literary expression and social commentary. While we could perhaps describe these as universal matters, themes of "the human condition," it will be more important to perceive each text as shaped by specific historical and cultural circumstances. The basic themes may be universal, but the literary responses they inspire can be quite varied. Authors and texts will likely include Beowulf, Chaucer, Kempe, Everyman, Spenser, Sidney, Wroth, Donne, Lanyer, and Milton. Discussion journals, two papers, and two exams.
ENGL 209a-01. Shakespeare
Marcus, L.
MWF 9:10-10:00
This course will consider the first half of Shakespeare’s career as a dramatist, concentrating on early tragedies, history plays, and comedies. Major emphasis will be placed on Shakespeare in performance, through frequent video and DVD clips of important scenes. Plays to be included will probably be Titus Andronicus, Richard III, Comedy of Errors, Love’s Labors Lost, Romeo and Juliet, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Henry IV, Parts 1-2, Richard II, Much Ado about Nothing, and As You Like It.
ENGL 210-01. Shakespeare: Representative Selections
HONORS
Schwarz, K.
TR 4:00-5:15
A 3.25 cumulative GPA, 3.5 Major GPA, and Approval Required. Final enrollment determined by English Department at the end of the course request period. In this course, we will consider the strategies through which Shakespearean drama represents both categories of identity and elements that challenge the logic of those categories. Our readings will take up complicated and often contradictory processes of self- and other-definition: the construction of subjectivity in relation to gender, sexuality, and erotic attachment; the representation of political authority and political conflict; the crises produced through mistake, transformation, and disguise; and the tensions surrounding ethnicity, religion, and race. Discussions will draw on historical, performative, and critical contexts, considering both the initial conditions of theatrical and textual production and the ways in which these plays have been read, staged, and rewritten across time.
Course requirements include a presentation and related short paper, a longer, research-based paper, and regular class participation.
ENGL 210w-01. Shakespeare: Representative Selections
"Language, History, Performance"
Garrett, J.
MWF 3:10–4:00
The interpretation and appreciation of Shakespeare's plays have evolved significantly during the past thirty years, reflecting developments in the study of literature more broadly. Close attention to the poetic details of his work remains crucial, and the language of his plays will remain at the heart of our interpretative endeavors in this class. We will also examine how literary scholars have redefined the ways in which we treat the historical context of Shakespeare's work, primarily by setting the plays among other historical materials as part of a broader cultural dialogue, rather than regarding history as mere background or source material. And as much as studying the texts of these plays will challenge and stimulate us, they were, after all, intended to be enjoyed in the theater and not just on the page. Questions of performance, specifically an understanding of performances as interpretations of the plays, will provide the third critical component of this course. The past couple decades have witnessed a period of renewed interest in these plays among filmmakers as suitable for mass consumption - which is only fitting since Shakespeare's plays were originally intended for popular appreciation. Since filmmakers employ a distinctive set of strategies to convey meaning, students will study some basic vocabulary of visual analysis from film theory. Texts will likely include Hamlet, Henry IV, Part 1, Twelfth Night, Henry V, Othello, King Lear and The Tempest.
ENGL 211w-01. Representative American Writers
Meyer, A.
MWF 9:10-10:00
A historical survey of the main currents in American literature from the pre-colonial period to the present. Students will be exposed to the traditional canon as well as to texts by those who have previously been excluded from that canon, such as female and minority writers. Particular attention will be paid to the idea of "America" and the still-vexing question of who is, and what it means to be, an "American." Class will be conducted in a discussion format; graded work will consist of a series of short response papers, two five-page papers, and two tests.
ENGL 220-01. Chaucer
Plummer, J.
MWF 11:10-12:00
We will read a selection of the Canterbury Tales, and Troilus and Criseyde, contextualizing them against the backdrop of both learned and popular literary, artistic, and religious practices of the late middle ages. Instruction will include some background lectures, class discussion, student presentations, library work, and the use of on-line Internet resources. Graded work will include a few quizzes, class participation, a class presentation, two exams, and a paper.
ENGL 232a-01. The Twentieth Century Novel
Spillers, H.
TR 1:10-2:25
This course is devoted to a study of the modern American novel, beginning
with selected fiction and criticism from the works of Henry James, Edith
Wharton, Willa Cather, and representative instances from the " schools "
of naturalism and modernism and the Harlem Renaissance, especially "Cane"
by Jean Toomer; the course ends in the early post-WWII era with a focus on
the fiction and criticism of Ralph Ellison.
ENGL 233-01. The Modern British Novel
Wollaeger, M.
TR 9:35-10:50
A survey of major British fiction over the first half (and perhaps beyond) of the twentieth century, with particular attention to the emergence of modernism and its ultimate rejection (it was exported to the U.S.). Authors will include Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, Ford Madox Ford, D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, E. M. Forster, Aldous Huxley, and others I have not settled on yet. Depending on the size of the class, the format will mix mini-lectures (on contextual materials and relevant theory), discussions, and group work. Two essays, regular online posts, readings, quizzes, and a final.
ENGL 254a-01. The Romantic Period
Porter, D.
TR 9:35-10:50
For Enlightenment thinkers, travel was a powerful metaphor for the acquisition of knowledge, and no British gentleman's education was complete without a European tour with stops in Paris, Rome, and Milan. But with Europe in revolutionary turmoil and Britain engaged in a perpetual war with France, in the early 19th century the essential tour became a practical impossibility. New forms of travel, both physical and imaginative, appeared to fill the void: the picturesque tourist and the solitary wanderer are iconic figures on the Romantic literary landscape. This seminar will draw out the central place travel holds as a practice and metaphor in Romantic literature. Through novels by William Godwin and Mary Shelley, poems by Coleridge, Wordsworth, Charlotte Smith, and Byron, and prose by William Hazlitt, Thomas Dequincy, and Mary Wollstonecraft, we will explore practical questions—how, where, and why romantic authors traveled, and what literary forms they used to record their experiences—alongside less concrete issues raised in and by travel writing: Where does fact become fiction? Why does travel foster introspection? How do authors use travel to imagine themselves and to understand others? Our readings will range from the prototypical travel narratives to texts that imaginatively extend the geographical and temporal boundaries of early nineteenth-century Britain.
ENGL 263-01. African American Literature
Salvant, S.
TR 1:10-2:25
A survey of selected literary texts (slave narratives, novels, poetry, essays) written by African Americans in the nineteenth century. While charting formal and thematic continuities, we will also discuss the diverse strategies of representing the African American experience during this period. Major topics of discussion will include literacy, rhetorical strategies of moral suasion and political argument, representations of "race mixture," dynamics of genre and gender, spirituality, and the development of literary tradition.
ENGL 264-01. Modern Irish Literature
Gottfried, R.
MWF 10:10-11:00
An examination of authors and issues of the Irish Literary Revival and beyond, in an attempt to discover the expression of an Irish identity through language; poetry (Yeats and Heaney); plays (Yeats, Gregory, Synge, O'Casey, Beckett); and prose (Joyce, Beckett). Seminar format. Mid-term, term paper (seven pages), and a final exam.
ENGL 268a-01. America on Film: Art and Ideology
Girgus, S.
MWF 2:10-3:00
The course studies American culture and character on film. It will consider film as a modern art form, a system of cultural production, and an expression of the diversity of the American experience. Beginning with a discussion of the structure and composition of film as an art form, the course also will consider the relationship of film to American studies, ethical philosophy, and culture. Thus, it will relate visual images and cinetext to cultural and philosophical contexts. We will examine how films treat basic American themes such as the individual and community; frontier and urban violence; race, ethnicity, and minorities; the representation and role of women; visual desire and sexual exploitation; the family and authority. We will study directors from the classic era of Hollywood, including Frank Capra, John Ford, Howard Hawks, and Elia Kazan as well as the work of current filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Spike Lee, and Clint Eastwood.
ENGL 272g-01. Movements in Literature:
Black Multiculturalism
Nwankwo, I.
TR 2:35-3:50
African-American, Latino, and Caribbean/West Indian—what do these terms really mean? Do they refer to culture, race, language, blood, or something else? Do the distinctions so often made between these categories even make sense? Why and how do these groups sometimes clash? Are Latinos like Sammy Sosa Black? Was the Notorious B.I.G. African American or West Indian, since his mother is Jamaican? How should we identify people like Shyne (from Belize, Central America) and Colin Powell (Jamaican parents)—as African-American, Latin American, or Caribbean?
By closely examining key works of African-American, Latino/Latin American, and (British) Caribbean literature, music, and film, we will gain insight into conflict and community building between native and immigrant people of African descent in the United States. We will explore cross-group stereotypes, tensions between individual figures, and instances of intermixture between the groups. As we read, hear, watch, and eventually discuss each work we will consider four key issues: 1) identity--how the writers, musicians, or filmmakers define themselves as individuals and their group as a whole, 2) identification—how these groups are identified by others defined as being outside of the group, 3) inter-group relations/representations--how they view other groups and present them in their works, and 4) genre and literary technique --what forms and strategies does the writer, musician, or filmmaker uses to organize and communicate what s/he wishes his/her audience to know about these groups. As we undertake these analyses we will implicitly question both the assumption that these are definitively distinct groups and the assumption that there is no distinction at all between them because the members of the groups share African roots.
The course is structured both to guide you though the development of your own intellectual/research agenda in this area, and to provide you with opportunities to try out and showcase the results of your efforts. Reading/Listening/Viewing List includes: Zora Neale Hurston, W.E.B. DuBois, Paule Marshall, Sean Paul, Veronica Chambers, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Edwidge Danticat Assignments to include: Periodic close readings; Presentation/Discussion Leading; Oral Histories/Interviews; Final Research Project/Paper
ENGL 273-01. Problems in Literature:
Islam in English Literature, from the Crusades to the War on Terror
Garcia, H.
TR 9:35-10:50
In the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the subsequent U.S.-led war in Afghanistan and Iraq, few issues are more urgent than the widely perceived “clash” between a “progressive” Western world and a “backward” Islamic world. This course offers students the opportunity to ask critical and historical questions about this so-called “clash of civilizations” in more detail, tracing the shifting terms in which the encounter between the Christian west and the Islamic east has been represented in English literature, from the rhetoric of the early medieval crusades to the present, post-9/11 era. This course will allow us to rethink our commonplace stereotypes about “Islam,” the “West,” and their politico-historical interrelationship. Covering a broad range of texts, genres, and styles, primary emphasis will be placed on the following topics: concepts of holy war; Islam on the early modern English stage; the seventeenth-century theological polemics surrounding the study of Islam and the first English translations of the Koran; Enlightenment fantasies/obsessions with “Mahometanism;” women’s place in Islam; the Romantic imagination and the East; the notorious Rushdie ‘affair’; and more recent versions of the West-East encounter both before and after the attacks of September 11th, 2001. Some of the authors to be discussed include Sir John Mandeville, Christopher Marlowe, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Lord Byron, T. E. Lawrence, Salman Rushdie, and Asra Q. Nomani.
Heavy classroom participation is required; one-page responses meant to kick-start discussions will be assigned periodically. There will be a midterm, a comprehensive final exam, and a short essay that will be expanded and revised into a 10-12 page term paper by the end of the semester.
ENGL 274-01. Major Figures in Literature:
Conrad and Woolf
HONORS
Wollaeger, M.
TR 1:10-2:25
A 3.25 cumulative GPA, 3.5 Major GPA, and Instructor approval required. Final enrollment determined by English Department at the end of the course request period. Intensive readings in the fiction, essays, and letters of two major British novelists, Joseph Conrad and Virginia Woolf. The pairing brings into a focus a number of issues: 1) the movement from Victorian to modernist fiction; 2) contrasts and overlaps in masculinist and feminist responses to modernity; 3) intertextual relations in fiction (Woolf was a close reader of Conrad, to whom she alludes in a variety of ways in her novels. Course requirements: three essays (probably five, eight, and twelve pages), online exchange, regular class participation; no final.
English 274-02. Major Figures in Literature:
Melville and the Other American Renaissance
HONORS
Dayan, C.
R 3:10-6:00
A 3.25 cumulative GPA, 3.5 Major GPA, and instructor approval required. Final enrollment determined by English Department at the end of the course request period.
An introduction to readings of Herman Melville within often ignored contexts: Calvinist predetermination, empirical philosophy, the common law, natural histories of slavery, and Caribbean fictions. We will also read three texts that generally have been ignored in courses on the American Renaissance or that remain out of print: Nathaniel Beverly Tucker, *George Balcombe*; Robert Bird, *Sheppard Lee,* and Richard Hildreth, *Archy Moore, The White Slave; or Memoirs of a Fugitive.* The course will attempt to make sense of the relation between legal practice and spiritual belief in the Americas, as well as studying the process by which words such as "race," "blood," "sacrifice," or "redemption" are specified and by which their precise meaning over time is determined. Finally, in accounting for Melville's reinvention of the genre called "gothic," we will examine a gothic tradition that has little to do with the supernatural, or with the supernatural as we normally understand it. Requirements: one formal class presentation, weekly one-page response papers, shared on list serve, and a final 12-page paper.
ENGL 277-01. Asian American Literature:
Memory, Desire, Perception: the Literature of Asian America
Chen, T.
MWF 11:10-12:00
ENGL 279-01. Ethnic American Literature:
Fantasy and Phantasies in Contemporary Ethnic American Literature
Chen, T.
MWF 2:10-3:00
ENGL 288-01. Special Topics in English and American Literature
Topic: America, the First Empire
Tichi, C.
TR 2:35-3:50
ENGL 288g-01. Special Topics in English and American Literature
Topic: Jewish American Literature
Schacter, A.
MW 11:10-12:25
This course is a survey of major developments in twentieth-century Jewish American literature. We will read works by a range of Jewish writers to investigate the response of Jewish literature to major events in both American and World history. How did American Jewish writers navigate such events as the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti, World War II and the Holocaust, the upheavals of the 1960s, and the Arab-Isareli conflict? We will also examine how Jewish writers have influenced and have been influenced by other literary movements in America and abroad. As we read and discuss these texts, we will also consider in what ways Jewish literature can be understood as a category of ethnic American literature. We will ask questions about immigration, ethnic and racial identity, language choice (some of our reading will be translations from Yiddish), and cultural stereotypes. Readings will include texts by the following writers: Isaac Bashevis Singer, Henry Roth, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Grace Paley, Jacob Glatshteyn, Irena Klepfisz, and Jonathan Safran Foer.
ENGL 288g-02. Special Topics in English and American Literature
Topic: Contemporary American Indian Literature in the United States
Nelson, D.
TR 11:00 – 12:15
Who writes Indian literature after The Last of the Mohicans? What is Sherman Alexie’s (Spokane/Coeur d'Alene) beef with wannabes? Do Indians sing the blues? Why can’t Elizabeth Cook-Lynn (Crow Creek Sioux) read Wallace Stegner? Why does David Truer (Ojibwe) say Alexie writes like a wannabe? In this course, we’ll survey contemporary Native American writings alongside some key debates surrounding its history, written emergence, production and promotion in the United States. Though the course will focus on contemporary writers, some of our work will include a quick survey of American Indian literary history in the US. Therefore, the course will focus on writers like Silko, King, Erdrich, Welch, Harjo, Alexie and Truer, but will also include writings by Occom, Apes, Bonin/Zitkala Sa, Mourning Dove, and Momaday, along with some Native American oral traditions. Plan to read literature (novels, stories, poetry, songs), history, cultural theory and literary criticism. (Oh, and we’ll watch at least one movie.) Requirements include: preparing assigned readings, group reports, weekly think pieces and a 12-15 page research paper.
288g-03. Special Topics in English and American Literature
Topic: Black Women of the U.S., Latin America, and the Caribbean: Life, Literature, and Music
Nwankwo, I.
TR 11:00-12:15
Black women’s voices have been muffled by the powerfully repressive forces of slavery, sexism, and colonialism, among other forms of oppression. Despite these attempts to silence them, Black women workers, writers, and musicians have found ways to make their voices heard and their experiences acknowledged in the public sphere. In this course, we will systematically identify, compare, and contrast specific methods and genres used by Black women in the U.S., Latin America, and the Caribbean. In our analyses of Black women’s literary and theoretical texts, films, songs, and life narratives we will consider questions such as: 1) Is the highlighting of sexuality and/or the erotic an effective way to combat silencing? 2) How do writers and artists represent the impact of mothers and motherhood on voice or voicelessness? 3) Do literacy and formal education smooth or complicate the path to voice? 4) How does migration provide new opportunities and/or close off possible paths to voice? and 5) Have the strategies used by Black women changed over time, or are certain methods tried, true, and therefore constant? Reading/Viewing/Listening list includes: Gwendolyn Brooks, Bessie Smith, Edwidge Danticat, Li’l Kim, Jamaica Kincaid, Dancehall Queen, Mayra Santos Febres Assignments to include: Periodic close readings of literary texts, songs, and scholarly articles; collaborative research and presentation; Final Project/Paper
ENGL 288g-04. Special Topics in English and American Literature
Topic: Pacific Island Literature
Orr, B.
TR 2:35-3:50
ENGL 290a-01. Honors Colloquium
Schoenfield, M.
M 12:10 – 3:00
A 3.25 cumulative GPA, 3.5 Major GPA, and instructor approval required. Final enrollment determined by English Department at the end of the course request period. This is an intensive seminar for seniors seeking honors in the major and planning to write an honors thesis in Spring, 2006. Making use of a common reading and some short theoretical pieces, we will explore critical theories, methods, and questions that culminate in the designing of an argument and outline for the thesis. Through class discussion, short papers, small-group interactions, and library research, students will interrogate issues of literature and culture, of aesthetics, of poetics and form, of the interactions between literary, political, and other forms of representation, of the identity of the "author" and the "reader," of the tension between realism and reality, of gender, ethnicity, and other identity formations that influence the activities of literary production. From this array of investigations, and in conjunction with the literary background students have already amassed, students will select individualized projects and help their colleagues to formulate their projects. Creative Writing majors may design a project in fiction, poetry, or non-fiction as a thesis, and all students are encouraged to take an imaginative approach to their projects.
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