English 18, History of the English Language, at the 11 hour with Professor Pulju (crosslisted with LING 18)
The development of English as a spoken and written language as a member of the Indo-European language-family, from Old English (Beowulf), Middle English (Chaucer), and Early Modern English (Shakespeare), to contemporary American English. Emphasis will be given to the linguistic and cultural reasons for ‘language change,’ to the literary possibilities of the language, and to the political significance of class and race. Open to all classes. Dist: SOC. Course Group IV. CA tags: Cultural Studies and Popular Culture, National Traditions and Countertraditions, Literary Theory and Criticism.
English 24, Shakespeare I, at the 2A hour with Professor Gamboa
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; WCult: W. Course Group I, CA tag Genre-Drama.
English 37, Victorian Literature and Culture: 1860-1901, at the 11 hour with Professor Gerzina
This course examines later nineteenth-century British poetry, prose and fiction in the context of cultural practices and social institutions of the time. We will locate cultural concerns among, for example, those of capitalism, political reform, scientific knowledge, nation and empire. And we will consider revisions of space, time, gender, sexuality, class, and public and private life that characterized formations of British identity during this period. Texts may include work by George Eliot, Matthew Arnold, Christina Rossetti, Algernon Swinburne, Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling. We will also read selections from recent criticism of Victorian culture. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group II, CA tags Cultural Studies and Popular Culture, National Traditions and Countertraditions.
English 43, Early Black American Literature, at the 10A hour with Professor Chaney (crosslisted with AAAS 34)
A study of the foundations of Black American literature and thought, from the colonial period through the era of Booker T. Washington. The course will concentrate on the way in which developing Afro-American literature met the challenges posed successively by slavery, abolition, emancipation, and the struggle to determine directions for the twentieth century. Selections will include: Wheatley, Life and Works; Brown, Clotel; Douglass, Narrative; Washington, Up from Slavery; DuBois, Souls of Black Folk; Dunbar, Sport of the Gods; Chestnut, House Behind the Cedars; Harriet Wilson, Our Nig; Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man; and poems by F. W. Harper, Paul L. Dunbar and Ann Spencer. Dist: LIT. WCult: W. Course Group II. CA tags National Traditions and Countertraditions, Cultural Studies and Popular Culture, Genre-narrative.
English 50, American and British Poetry Since 1914, at the 10A hour with Professor Vasquez
A survey of modern American and British poetry since the First World War, with particular emphasis on the aesthetics, philosophy and politics of modernism. The course covers such canonical and non-canonical poets as Yeats, Pound, HD, Lawrence, Eliot, Stevens, Frost, Williams, Crane, Moore, Millay, Auden, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Beats. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group III. CA tags Genre-poetry, National Traditions and Countertraditions.
English 53, 20th Century British Fiction: 1900 to World War II, at the 10 hour with Professor Gerzina
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, West, Lawrence, Rhys, and Beckett, as well as critical essays. We will explore this literature in the context of the art, dance, and film of the period. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Course Group III. Concentration area tags: Genre-narrative, National Traditions and Countertraditions, Cultural Studies and Popular Culture.
English 60.3, How to Read a Poem, at the 10A hour with Professor Gamboa
This course will focus on the artistry of great poems--from the 16th Century to the present--attempting to understand the mechanics behind the pleasure they make available to readers and the reasons why the culture has valued such frivolous things so highly. The objective is not to convince anyone to like poems so much as to gain insights into why humanity can't live without them. Our discussions will touch on the nature of art itself--what characteristics poems share in common with other things human beings find beautiful, and we'll study some writing that attempts to explain the construction of beauty and how the instabilities of language enliven our experience of it. Among others, we'll read poems by Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, Marvell, Pope, Blake, Byron, Frost, Dickinson, Hardy, Yeats, Auden, Bishop, Eliot, Stevens and Dr. Seuss. Dist: LIT, WCult: W, pending faculty approval. CA tag Genre-poetry, National Traditions and Countertraditions.
English 67.1, Caribbean Literature, at the 2A hour with Professor Vasquez (crosslisted with AAAS 80 and LALACS 66)
This course will examine the work of a variety of Caribbean writers from former British colonies. We will look at several issues that reappear throughout the work of these authors. These concerns include (but are not limited to) notions of exile, the importance of language and music, the articulation of identity in varying post-colonial states, and representatioxns of gender, race and ethnicity. The class will also analyze the socio-political events in particular nations and the ways in which these events influence writing in the archipelago. Furthermore, the course will explore shared cultural practices. For example, we will examine the ways in which a strong tradition of music as protest influences the production of particular poetic forms in Trinidad and Jamaica. The class will move from early twentieth century writers like Claude McKay to the important contributions of later writers such as Kamau Brathwaite, Jamaica Kincaid, George Lamming, V.S. Naipaul, Sam Selvon, Olive Senior and Derek Walcott. We will examine the more recent innovations in form, as musical elements are introduced by writers such as Mikey Smith and Kwame Dawes. Each week's readings will be supplemented with seminal critical writings including excerpts from the text The Empire Writes Back. Dist: LIT: WCutl: CI. Course Group III. CA tags Multicultural and Colonial/Postcolonial Studies, Cultural Studies and Popular Culture.
English 80.1, Creative Writing, arrange with Professor Hebert
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. English 80 is the prerequisite to all other Creative Writing courses. Dist: ART.
English 80.2, Creative Writing, arrange with Professor Hebert
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. English 80 is the prerequisite to all other Creative Writing courses. Dist: ART.
