English 11--King James Version of the Bible II, at the 10 hour, Professor Wykes
A study of the preeminent English translation of the Christian scriptures (New Testament), with special emphasis on their revision of the Hebrew Bible, on their relationship to English literature, and on the history of their interpretation. Dist: LIT; Class of 2007 and earlier: WCult: EU. Class of 2008 and later: WCult: W. Concentration area tag: Genre-narrative.
English 14--Introduction to Criticism, at the 2 hour, Professor Crewe
A historical and formal introduction to literary criticism as a 20th-century discipline, with primary emphasis on English and American contributors. Leading critical figures and critical approaches will be considered; some important critical terms will be reviewed; and students will be given practice in close reading and textual interpretation. Selections from the work of some or all of the following may be included: T.S. Eliot, I.A. Richards, Cleanth Brooks, Kenneth Burke, William Wimsatt, Northrop Frye, Wayne Booth, Paul de Man, Stanley Fish, Harold Bloom, Barbara Johnson, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Henry Louis Gates. Complementing English Department courses in particular literary periods, topics, and authors, this course is strongly recommended for majors. Dist: LIT. Course Group IV.
English 24--Shakespeare I, at the 10 hour, Professor Crewe
A study of about ten plays spanning Shakespeare’s career, including comedies, histories, tragedies, and romances. Attention will be paid to Shakespeare’s language; to his dramatic practices and theatrical milieu; and to the social, political, and philosophical issues raised by the action of the plays. Videotapes will supplement the reading. Exercises in close reading and interpretative papers. Prerequisite: English 2/3, English 5 or English 5 exemption status. Dist: LIT; Class of 2007 and earlier: WCult: EU. Class of 2008 and later: WCult: W. Course Group I, CA tag Genre-drama.
English 30--Age of Satire, at the 12 hour, Professor Wykes
Visit the great age of British Satire. In a time when literacy was rapidly expanding, party politics was emerging and women's rights were being advocated in print for the first time, satire ruled the literary scene. This course will explore the plays, poems, and novels of satirists from the libertine Earl of Rochester to the great satirist, Alexander Pope, not omitting the works of Aphra Behn, the first woman dramatist, and Mary Astell's sardonic comments on the role of women in marriage. May include: the comedies of Wycherey and Congreve, Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift, and the novels of Daniel Defoe. There will be an opportunity to study the techniques of satire and its role in social and personal criticism. Dist: LIT. Class of 2007 and earlier: WCult: EU. Class of 2008 and later: WCult: W. Course Group II, CA tag National Traditions and Countertraditions.
English 48--Contemporary American Fiction, at the 10 hour, Professor Favor
Contemporary American fiction introduces the reader to the unexpected. Instead of conventionally structured stories, stereotypical heroes, traditional value systems, and familiar uses of language, the reader finds new and diverse narrative forms. Such writers as Toni Morrison, Thomas Pynchon, Maxine Hong Kingston, Leslie Silko, Norman Mailer, Don DeLillo, and Ralph Ellison, among others, have produced a body of important, innovative fiction expressive of a modern American literary sensibility. The course requires intensive class reading of this fiction and varied critical writing on postmodernism. Dist: LIT; WCult: NA. Course Group III. CA tags Genre-narrative, National Traditions and Countertraditions.
English 53--Twentieth Century British Fiction: 1900 to World War I, at the 11 hour, Professor Silver
A study of major authors, texts, and literary movements, with an emphasis on literary modernism and its cultural contexts. We will read works by Conrad, Forster, Joyce, Woolf, Lawrence, Rhys, and Beckett, as well as writers such as Kipling, Ford, West, Waugh, Bowen, and Lowry. Dist: LIT; WCult: EU for the class of 2007 and earlier. WCult: W for the Class of 2008 and later. Course Group III. Concentration area tags: Genre-narrative, National Traditions and Countertraditions, Cultural Studies and Popular Culture.
English 62.1--The Poetry and Rhetoric of Love, from Petrarch to Nerve.com, at the 12 hour, Professor Zeiger (crosslisted with WGST 53)
What we call "love poetry" has generally been a way of expressing much more than the emotional and erotic fascination of one person with another. Often it seems to bypass the love-object altogether, and more eagerly examines power relations or poetic achievement. Beginning with early examples, and moving on to contemporary and modern poems, our course will place love poems by men and women in the context of an ongoing poetic tradition, recent feminist criticism and theory, and talk about love and sex in recent popular culture. This last will include: excerpts from recent books about dating and seduction, film, contemporary song lyrics, dating websites, and Blitzmail. Dist: LIT; Class of 2007 and earlier: WCult:EU. Class of 2008 and later: WCult: W, pending faculty approval. Course Group III. Concentration area tags Genre-poetry, Genders and Sexualities.
English 62.2--Queer Poetries, at the 10A hour, Professor Zeiger (crosslisted with WGST 20)
This course will explore the poetics and politics of queerness in the work of modern and contemporary American poets; we will consider not only explicit dissidence, but also the politics of forms and modes ordinarily seen as "only" aesthetic. Among the readings will be work by HD, Ginsberg, O'Hara, Ashbery, Bishop, Rich, Swenson, Rukeyser, Gunn, Lorde, Broumas, Doty, Hacker, Harjo, Hemphill, Koestenbaum, Mootoo, and Chin, as well as a selection of brief theoretical texts in queer theory. Open to all students. Dist. LIT. Class of 2008 and later: WCult: CI, pending faculty approval. Course Group III. Concentration area tags Genre-poetry, Genders and Sexualities.
English 80, Creative Writing, hour TBA, Professor Lenhart
This course offers a workshop in fiction and poetry. Seminar-sized classes meet twice a week and include individual conferences. Open to sophomores, juniors, and seniors, and to first-year students who have completed Writing 5 (or have exemption status). Students who wish to enroll in 80 must submit their applications to the administrative assistant in the English Office by the last day of the term preceding the term for which they wish to enroll. Students do not submit work for entry into the course. A brief application form is available in the English Office or can be downloaded from the English Department website. Dist: ART.
English 82, Creative Writing-Fiction, Tu/Th 7-8:50pm, Professor Hebert
Continued work in the writing of fiction, focusing on short stories, although students may experiment with the novel. The class proceeds by means of group workshops on student writing, individual conferences with the instructor, and analysis of short stories by contemporary writers. Constant revision is required Dist: ART.
