Spring 2009 English Course Offerings

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PLEASE NOTE THAT COURSE AVAILABILITY AND TIMES CHANGE FREQUENTLY. CHECK BACK OFTEN FOR UPDATES.

Eng 100-01: Gothic Literature,W. Pritchard
Gothic literature is the literature of the dark side. It is preoccupied, in the words of one scholar, with “supernatural and natural forces, imaginative excesses and delusions, religious and human evil, social transgression, mental disintegration and spiritual corruption.” The features (or clichés) of Gothic literature are familiar to us, but they remain surprisingly effective: haunted castles, graveyards, ruins, enclosed spaces, ghosts, vampires, doppelgangers, corpses, skeletons, etc. The author of the first gothic novel effectively summarized the genre when he described his narrative as one in which terror was the story’s “principal engine, prevent[ing] the story from ever languishing.”

This course will provide a selective introduction to Gothic literature, presenting a range of terror-driven works (novels, stories and films) from the 18th through 20th centuries. A tentative list of those texts:

   Novels: The Monk, Wuthering Heights, Dracula, The Haunting of Hill
   House, Beloved
   Novellas: The Castle of Otranto, Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, The Turn of
   the Screw, The Picture of Dorian Gray
   Stories: by Poe, Hawthorne, Faulkner, O’Connor
   Films: Rebecca, Rosemary’s Baby, Blue Velvet

Hours: MWF 11:30-12:30pm. Prerequisite: None.

Eng 100-02: Topics in Literature: Contemporary American Experimental Writing, J. Harp
If Wallace Stevens' adage that "all poetry is experimental poetry" can be
generalized to all literary genres, we might nevertheless observe that some
forms of experimentation are more overt than others.  This course will explore
these more overt forms of experimentation among contemporary writers of both
prose and poetry.  Authors will include William Gass, John Barth, John Ashbery,
Jorie Graham, Lyn Hejinian, and Jonathan Safran Foer.
Hours: TTh 9:40-11:10am. Prerequisite: None.

Eng 105: Art of the Novel, L. Asher
A study of major works in English, American, and European fiction, from the 17th century to the present. Goals include increasing awareness of the particular kinds of knowledge and perception that the novel makes available; considering the variety of ways in which novels braid moral and aesthetic concerns; understanding how novels respond both to everyday human experience and to previous literary history; and heightening appreciation for the range of pleasures that the novel can afford. Writers may include Cervantes, Sterne, Austen, Flaubert, Kafka, Woolf, Nabokov, Kundera, Pynchon.
Hours: MWF 9:10-10:10. Prerequisite: None.

Eng 201: Introduction to Poetry/Poetry Writing, M. Szybist
Significant modern British and American figures and more recent poets. May include Owen, Auden, Kavanagh, Williams, Stevens, Moore, Bishop, Roethke, Plath, Levertov.
Hours: M 3:00-4:30pm/TH 3:30-5:00pm. Prerequisite: None.

Eng 206-01: Major Periods and Issues in English Literature, R. Zimring
Introduction to ways of reading and writing about literature; historical development of English literature. Romantic period to middle of 20th century.
Hours: MWF 10:20-11:20am0. Prerequisite: English 205.

Eng 206-02: Major Periods and Issues in English Literature, P. Toutonghi
Introduction to ways of reading and writing about literature; historical development of English literature. Romantic period to middle of 20th century.
Hours: MWF 12:40-1:40pm. Prerequisite: English 205.

Eng 206-03: Major Periods and Issues in English Literature, Rachel Cole
Introduction to ways of reading and writing about literature; historical development of English literature. Romantic period to middle of 20th century.
Hours: TTH 1:50-3:20pm. Prerequisite: English 205.

Eng 208: Prose Writing- Creative Non-Fiction, S. Kirschner
Writing in the genre known variously as the personal essay or narrative, memoir, autobiography, to introduce students to traditional and contemporary voices in this genre. Daily writing and weekly reading of exemplars such as Seneca, Plutarch, Montaigne, Hazlitt, Woolf, Soyinka, Baldwin, Walker, Hampl, Dillard, Selzer, Lopez. Hours: MW 4:30-6:00. Prerequisite: Sophomore standing.

Eng 279: Classical Backgrounds, K. Gross
A study of epic, drama, pastoral and lyric from the Greek and Latin classics. Writers
may include Homer, Hesiod, Sappho, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Virgil, Horace, and Ovid.
Hours: TTH 9:40-11:10am. Prerequisite: None.

Eng 310: Middle English Literature, K. Gross
Introduction to the major genres of English literature from the 13th through the 15th centuries. Political, social, historical and religious contexts that affected the emergence of English as a literary language and that shaped the lyric, drama, narrative poetry and prose writing of the period. Readings, all in Middle English, may include Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, William Langland's Piers Plowman, Julian of Norwich's Revelations, The Book of Margery Kempe, Sir Orfeo, St. Erkenwalkd, Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde and shorter poems, as well as selected plays, romances, lyrics, sermons, and tracts.Hours:
TTH 1:50-3:20pm. Prerequisite: Junior standing or consent of the instructor.

Eng 311: Literature of the English Renaissance, L. Asher
Developments in poetry, fiction, and drama during the Elizabethan period and the 17th centurey.  Genres such as the sonnet and sonnet sequences, the pastoral, heroic and Ovidian verse, satire; examples from non-Shakespearean dramatists, comedy, tragedy.  May include Browne, Donne, Herbert, Jonson, Marlowe, Marvell, Milton, Raleigh, Sidney, Spenser, Surrey, Wyatt.
Hours: MWF 11:30-12:30pm. Prerequisities: Junior standing or consent of the instructor.

Eng 313: Restoration/18th Century Literature, W. Pritchard
An introduction to British literature written between 1660 and 1800 (that is, between John Milton and Jane Austen).  Covers the full range of the period's genres, except for the novel, and includes many of the period's major authors (John Bunyan, John Dryden, Aphra Behn, William Congreve, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, John Gay, ,Thomas Gray and Samuel Johnson).  Topics include the tension between Puritanism and libertinism, the relation of eighteenth-century aughors to their classical forebears, the contrast between country and city and the growth of England's empire.
Hours: MWF 10:20-11:20am. Prerequisite: Junior Standing or consent of the instructor.

Eng 316: 20th Century British Literature - Early, R. Zimring
Major British and Irish writers of the first part of this century whose responses to such major events as World War I shape the conventions of 20th-century British literature, in particular modernism.  Conrad, Yeats, Woolf, Joyce, Lawrence, Forster, Eliot, Auden, Rhys, Ford.
Hours: TTH 11:30-1:00pm. Prerequisite: Junior standing or consent of the instructor.

Eng 322: Post Civil War American Literature, M. Mirabile
American literature as it reflects cultural and historical events such as reconstruction, industrialization, western expansion, and the women's rights movement.  Aesthetic issues such as the rise of realism and naturalism.  Cather, Chesnutt, Chopin, Crane, Douglass, Dreiser, DuBois, James, Jewett, Melville, Norris, Twain, Wharton.
Hours: MWF 12:40-1:40pm. Prerequisite: Junior standing or consent of the instructor.

Eng 332: Shakespeare: Later Works, L. Asher
Critical reading of plays representative of the development of Shakespeare's comedies, tragedies, romances. Usually covers six or seven plays and selected poetry from 1604 to 1611, typically including Measure for Measure, King Lear, Macbeth, Coriolanus, Antony and Cleopatra, The Winter's Tale, The Tempest.
Hours: MWF 1:50-2:50. Prerequisite: Junior standing or consent of the instructor.

Eng 333-1: Major Figures: Melville, Rachel Cole
Detailed examination of writers introduced in other courses.  Figures have included Austen, blake, The Brontes, Ellison, Woolf.
Hours: TTH 9:40-11:10. Prerequisite: Junior standing or consent of instructor.

Eng 401-01: Advanced Poetry Writing, M. Szybist
An opportunity for experienced student writers to develop their skills as poets and work on a sustained project. This is a workshop class in which we'll spend at least half our time discussing student writing; emphasis on revision. Work will include the examination of literary models.
Hours: MW 11:30-1:00pm. Prerequisite: English 301.

Eng 402: Advanced Fiction Writing, P. Toutonghi
Students will complete a long project, i.e., a collection of short stories, a novella or the beginning of a novel, or some combination thereof. Workshop format plus additional reading as needed.
Hours: TTh 11:30-1:00pm. Prerequisite: English 300.