Through a wide range of course offerings the Department of English seeks to develop each student's capacity for reading — the intense, concerned involvement with textual expression. All courses are intended to foster critical reading, writing, and thinking, in which "criticism" is at once passionate appreciation, historical understanding, and the perpetual re-thinking of values. More specifically, the English major prepares students for careers such as teaching, publishing, and writing, for graduate study in literature, and for graduate programs leading to the study or practice of medicine or law. Though the department embodies a variety of teaching styles and interests, the faculty all believe in the art of patient, engaged reading as both knowledge and pleasure.

Departmental offerings are intended to be taken in sequence. Courses at the 100 level are open to all students. Courses at the 200 level are open to students who have completed one 100-level course and are more difficult in terms of both the amount of material covered and the level of inquiry; they also address questions of theory and methodology in more self-conscious ways. Seminars at the 300 level are generally for juniors and seniors who have completed several English courses (the latter requirement may be waived at the discretion of the instructor for certain interdisciplinary majors).

Major Requirements. Majors must complete eleven courses of which a minimum of seven must be taken from the Bates faculty. Students may receive no more than two credits for junior semester abroad courses, and, normally, no more than two credits for junior year abroad courses. Under special circumstances, and upon written petition to the English department, junior year abroad students may receive credit for three courses. In accordance with College policy, two course credits are granted for Advanced Placement scores of four or five, but these credits count only toward overall graduation requirements, not toward the eleven-course major requirement.

The eleven courses required for the major must include one or two courses at the 100 level and nine or ten courses at the 200 level or above. Upper-level courses must include: a) three courses on literature before 1800; b) one course emphasizing critical thinking; c) two junior–senior seminars; and d) a senior thesis (English 457), which may be undertaken independently or as part of a junior–senior seminar (457A with a thesis written through 395A, for example). Although writing a thesis through a seminar may fufill both a seminar requirement and the thesis requirement, it counts as a single course credit. Students may count one course in a foreign literature (with primary focus on literature rather than on language instruction) and/or one course in creative writing toward the major.

English majors may elect a program in creative writing. This program is intended to complement and enhance the English major, and to add structure and a sense of purpose to those students already committed to creative writing. Students who wish to write a creative thesis must undertake this program.

Requirements for the focus on creative writing include:

Two introductory courses in the writing of prose (291), poetry (292), or drama (Theater 240).

One advanced course in the writing of prose or poetry (391 or 392).

Three related courses in the English department or in the literature of a foreign language.

A one- or two-semester thesis (nonhonors) in which the student writes and revises a portfolio of creative work.

With departmental approval, students may write a two-semester honors thesis in the senior year. Majors who wish to present themselves as potential honors candidates are encouraged to register for at least one junior–senior seminar in their junior year. Majors who elect to participate in a junior year abroad program and who also want to present themselves as honors candidates must submit evidence of broadly comparable coursework or independent study pursued elsewhere; such persons are encouraged to consult with the department before their departure or early in their year abroad. At the end of their junior year, prospective honors candidates must submit a two-page proposal and a one-page bibliography; those wishing to write a two-semester creative thesis must submit a one-page description of a project and a substantial writing sample. Both are due at the department chair's office on the first Friday after Short Term begins.

Students planning to do graduate work should seek out advice early on concerning their undergraduate program, the range of graduate school experience, and vocational options. Graduate programs frequently require reading proficiency in up to three foreign languages, so it is strongly recommended that prospective graduate students achieve at least a two-year proficiency in a classical (Latin, Greek) or modern language.

Pass/Fail Grading Option. Pass/fail grading may be elected for courses applied toward the major except for: English 395, 457, and 458.

General Education. No English Short Term unit may serve as an option for the fifth humanities course.

Courses

121B. Introduction to Narrative Poetry. Reading a broad variety of poetry, students engage in a series of questions about the difference between poems that tell stories in a conventional sense and those that do not. Poets include Wordsworth, Rossetti, Frost, and Rich, among others. The colloquium seeks to foster an understanding of the pleasure and power of poetry through thinking and writing about poetry, reading poetry aloud, and writing poetry. Enrollment limited to 25 per section. A. Thompson.

121E. Introduction to Poetry. An introduction to reading poetry, through the close reading of British and American poems from the Renaissance to the present day. Topics include: authorial intention, literary "meaning," cultural context, the diversity of traditional forms, and contemporary lyric genres. The course is based on the discussion of one or two poems each class day. Enrollment limited to 25 per section. A. Thompson.

121G. Asian American Women Writers. This course examines fictional, autobiographical, and critical writings by Asian American women including Sui Sin Far, Gish Jen, Maxine Hong Kingston, Trinh Minh-ha, Bharati Mukherjee, Tahira Naqvi, Cathy Song, Marianne Villanueva, and Hisaye Yamamoto from a sociohistorical perspective. Students explore their issues, especially with concerns of personal and cultural identity, as both Asian and American, as females, as minorities, as (often) postcolonial subjects. The course highlights the varied immigration and social histories of women from different Asian countries, often homogenized as "Oriental" in mainstream American cultural representations. This course is the same as Women's Studies 121G. Enrollment limited to 25 per section. L. Shankar.

121H. The Brontës. Reading a selection of fiction and poetry by the three Brontë sisters, as well as critical essays about them, students consider questions of authorial intention, and discuss the relation between literature and history in the Victorian period. Particular attention is paid to the Brontës' representations of gender and class, and to the interrelations between these social categories. Enrollment limited to 25 per section. L. Nayder.

121I. Reading "Race" and Ethnicity in American Literature. Race, ethnicity, and gender as analytical categories provide the critical lens to read a range of literary texts, including short stories, novels, and autobiographies by such writers as Melville, Twain, Hemingway, Larsen, Morrison, Cisneros, Mukherjee, and Kingston. Enrollment limited to 25 per section. W. Wagner.

121K. Frankenstein's Creatures. Focusing on the monstrous figures of nineteenth-century fiction, this course explores their cultural meaning for Victorians as well as ourselves, examining their ongoing fascination and purpose — their relation to changing conceptions of the marginal and other and to social norms and their violation. Students consider the tie between the monstrous or "unnatural" and the threat of class revolt, sexual "deviance," and imperial rise and fall. Readings include Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dracula, and The War of the Worlds, as well as contemporary revisions of these works in novels and films. Enrollment limited to 25. L. Nayder.

121L. Modern Short Stories. A study of the short story and novella as characteristic twentieth-century genres, with a brief introduction to works in the previous century. The course focuses on both "classic" and contemporary texts by writers selected from among Thomas Hardy, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, W. Somerset Maugham, James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, Doris Lessing, David Lodge, Bernard Malamud, and David Leavitt. Students also have the opportunity to experiment with writing a short story. Enrollment limited to 25. L. Shankar.

121N. Introduction to the Harlem Renaissance. This course introduces students to the Harlem Renaissance, a flowering of literary and artistic production by African Americans from approximately 1919 to 1934. The course not only examines texts in a variety of genres (poetry, fiction, drama, essay) written by the major authors of the period, including W.E.B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Angelina Weld Grimke, Jessie Fauset, and Zora Neale Hurston, but it also situates these texts in the historical and cultural contexts of the period, exploring the influence of art, music (the blues), Africa, religion, social class, the theater, and sexuality. Enrollment is limited to 25. W. Wagner.

121P. The Love Lyric and Society. Poetry has been used to express love throughout the ages. But is love a form of ideology? Could love poems sustain traditional power relations? This course examines love sonnets written in the age of Shakespeare from two points of view: the celebration of individualistic expression and aesthetic brilliance central to formalism, and the analysis of lyric and society important to historical approaches. Writers include William Shakespeare, Mary Wroth, Louise Labé, John Donne, and Thomas Wyatt. Enrollment limited to 25. C. Malcolmson.

121T. Apprenticeship and Creative Mastery. This course examines the early and late works of four American artists. Students examine how the achieved artistry of their mature work evolved out of the "coming of age" struggles reflected in their early work. They read the poetry of Robert Frost, the fiction of Edith Wharton and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and they view the early and late films of director John Huston. Enrollment limited to 25. L. Turlish.

121U. American Regionalism. In the period between the Civil War and WWI, a diverse group of writers tried to give voice to the particular and sometimes peculiar qualities of regional life in the United States. This course explores the experimentation in literary technique that characterizes those attempts, and the cultural politics that shaped them. Reading narratives ranging from the California desert, to the war-torn South, to the coastal islands of Maine, students consider the mythic, realist, social and nationalist significances of "place" in literary texts. Emphasis is placed on politics of race and gender as these shape both the production and reception of regionalist literature. Readings include short and long fiction by Mark Twain, Sarah Orne Jewett, Charles W. Chesnutt, Sui Sin Far, Mary Austin, Willa Cather, Sherwood Anderson, Hamlin Garland, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Zora Neale Hurston, and William Faulkner. Enrollment limited to 25. K. Adams.

121V. Reading Arthurian Literature. Students examine literature about King Arthur from the twelfth through the twentieth century, seeing how authors adapted the stories and literary forms to address changing audiences. Works may include works by Chretien de Troyes, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Mark Twain and Sir Thomas Malory. Enrollment is limited to 25. K. Hodges.
 

152. American Writers since 1900. A study of ten to twelve American texts selected from the works of such writers as Dickinson, Twain, Gilman, Chesnutt, James, Adams, Dreiser, Hughes, Frost, Stein, Hemingway, Larsen, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Pound, Eliot, Crane, Cullen, Wright, Stevens, Williams, Baldwin, Plath, Albee, Brooks, Walker, Ellison, Pynchon, and Morrison. Enrollment limited to 40 per section. C. Taylor, L. Turlish.

171. European Literature: European Tradition from Homer to Cervantes. A study of major texts of European literature, read in English, with attention to their importance as both works of art and documents of cultural history. Texts include works by Homer, the Greek tragedians, Plato, Sappho, Vergil, Dante, Rabelais, Montaigne, Cervantes, and others. Enrollment limited to 40 per section. S. Dillon.

200. Closely Watched Poems: Investigating the Authority of the Canon. Why do some poems and not others become canonized? Is canonization testimony to greatness or to the conventions of a particular group of readers (a moment in history of fixed cultural agreement)? Students closely examine English and American poems, analyzing metre, form, diction, poetic convention, historical context, gender, and the commonalities and differences of reading communities. Poems of all historical periods are represented, as theorizing about canon focuses scrutiny on some major poems of American and English literatures. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Open to first-year students. Enrollment limited to 30. S. Freedman.

206. Chaucer. Reading and interpretation of the greatest work of the fourteenth-century Middle-English poet, The Canterbury Tales. All works are read in Middle English. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. (pre-1800). A. Thompson.

209. Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Culture. Why study pre-1800 literature? This course seeks to engage students in reading a culture very different from, and yet significantly linked to, our own. The course is a study of intersections and development in late medieval and early Renaissance literature from the origins of romance and Christian chivalry to the emergence of secular politics, the Elizabethan theater, and the colonization of the Americas. Writers include Marie de France, Christine de Pizan, Chaucer, Petrarch, Machiavelli, Anne Askew, and Shakespeare. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. (pre-1800). Staff.

210. Medieval Drama. A study of the origins and development of medieval drama in its many and varied manifestations, from the simple liturgical plays that formed part of the tenth-century church service, to the elaborate performances of the great mystery cycles whose popularity with the public continued right up until the time of the Reformation when they were finally suppressed. Emphasis is on close reading of selected texts in Middle English as well as on the social civic, and religious functions served by medieval drama. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. (pre-1800). A. Thompson.

211. English Literary Renaissance (1509–1603). A study of the Elizabethan Age though developments in literature, particularly the sonnet (William Shakespeare, Louise Labé, Philip Sidney, Mary Wroth) and the romance epic, Spencer's Faerie Queene, studied in relation to medieval romances by Chretien de Troyes and Marie de France. Attention is given to developments in religion, politics, and society. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. (pre-1800). C. Malcolmson.

213–214. Shakespeare. A study of the major plays, with some emphasis on the biography of Shakespeare and the Elizabethan milieu. Students planning to take both English 213 and 214 are advised to take 213 first. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Enrollment limited to 40 per section. (pre-1800). C. Malcolmson, S. Freedman.

216. The Waste Land and After. This course examines the backgrounds, themes, and techniques of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land in terms of its influence upon subsequent American poetry and prose fiction. Primary readings include texts by Hart Crane, William Faulkner, John Berryman, and Bernard Malamud. Secondary readings and student presentations focus on background texts by such writers as Sir James Frazer, Jessie Weston, and Hermann Hesse. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Enrollment is limited to 30. L. Turlish.

217. Technologies of Reading. What difference does it make if a story is chanted by a bard, read aloud from a manuscript, printed in a book, or projected from a computer screen? Some people suggest that electronic media may have as big an effect on literature as the printing press. To explore such claims, this course investigates how major shifts in literary technology have affected ways of reading. Students start with the oral tradition, then move to manuscripts, printing, and computers. They consider with each technology what forms of community develop and how literature is distributed; and how technology may affect aesthetics and reader response. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Enrollment is limited to 30. K. Hodges.

221. Dickens and Victorian Culture. Reading Dickens' work as a novelist and journalist in the context of Victorian politics and culture, students consider his reputation as a social reformer and a disciplinarian as well as a literary genius, and focus on his varying representations of class conflict, criminality, and gender relations. Works include Sketches by Boz, Oliver Twist, Bleak House, Great Expectations, and Our Mutual Friend, in addition to critical and biographical studies. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Enrollment is limited to 40. L. Nayder.

222. Seventeenth-Century Literature. A study of significant writers of the seventeenth century. Writers may include William Shakespeare, John Donne, George Herbert, Aemilia Lanyer, John Milton, and Aphra Behn. Attention is given to the intellectual, political, and scientific revolutions of the age. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. (pre-1800). C. Malcolmson.

226. Milton's Paradise Lost. Milton's Christian epic, Paradise Lost (1668), which retells the story of man's fall from Paradise, is one of the most influential and interesting works in English literature. Students read this poem twice: once before midterm, with attention to internal form and structure, and then again afterwards, focusing on significant problems from the history of Milton criticism, and on the remarkable influence of Milton's poem in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Enrollment limited to 40. (pre-1800). S. Dillon.

238. Jane Austen: Then and Now. Students read Austen's six major works, investigate their relation to nineteenth-century history and culture, and consider the current Austen revival in film adaptations and fictional continuations of her novels. The course highlights the various and conflicting ways in which critics represent Austen, and the cultural needs her stories now seem to fulfill. Readings include Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Enrollment limited to 40. L. Nayder.

241. American Fiction. Critical readings of representative works by American writers such as Hawthorne, Twain, Howells, James, Crane, Norris, Chopin, Hurston, Dreiser, Dos Passos, Le Sueur, Fitzgerald, Stein, Faulkner, Cather, Steinbeck, Wright, Warren, Baldwin, and Welty. Discussions of individual novels examine their form within the context of the major directions of American fiction. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Enrollment limited to 40 per section. Staff.

243. Romantic Literature (1790–1840). The theoretical foundations of English and European Romanticism, including its philosophical, critical, and social backgrounds. Concentration on Rousseau, Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, and Keats. Attention also to Lamb, Hazlitt, De Quincey, Swedenborg, and other prose figures and critics of the period. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Enrollment limited to 40 per section. R. Farnsworth, S. Dillon.

245. Studies in Victorian Literature (1830–1900). Selected topics in the period, organized by author, genre, and historical connections. Special attention is given to philosophical backgrounds and the critical language of the day. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Enrollment limited to 40 per section. S. Dillon.

250. The African American Novel. An examination of the African American novel from its beginnings in the mid-1800s to the present. Issues addressed include a consideration of folk influences on the genre, its roots in the slave narrative tradition, its relation to Euro-American texts and culture, and the "difference" that gender as well as race makes in determining narrative form. Readings include narratives selected from among the works of such writers as Douglass, Jacobs, Wilson, Delany, Hopkins, Harper, Chesnutt, Johnson, Toomer, Larsen, Hurston, Wright, Petry, Ellison, Baldwin, Walker, Morrison, Marshall, Reed, and others. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Enrollment limited to 40. K. Adams.

254. Modern British Literature (1900 Onward). An introduction to the birth of modern British literature and its roots, with attention to its social and cultural history, its philosophical and cultural foundations and some emphasis on its relationship to the previous century. Texts are selected from the works of writers such as Forster, Lawrence, Joyce, Woolf, Mansfield, Eliot, Yeats, Orwell, Rushdie, and Lessing. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Open to first-year students. Enrollment limited to 40. L. Shankar.

260. Literature of South Asia. This course introduces fiction, poetry, and films by writers who are of South Asian descent, or who have considered the Indian Subcontinent their home. Topics include British influence on South Asia, the partition of India, national identity formation, women's social roles, the impact of Western education and the English language, and the emergence of a new generation of postcolonial literary artists. Writers are selected from among Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, Anita Desai, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Satyatjit Ray, Rabindranath Tagore, Sarojini Naidu, Kamala Das, Kamala Markandaya, Mahasweta Debi, U.R. Anantha Murthy, Amitav Ghosh, Ved Mehta, and Ismat Chugtai. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Open to first-year students. Enrollment limited to 30. L. Shankar.

264. Modern Irish Poetry. A study of the development and transformation of Anglo-Irish poetry in the twentieth century, especially as it responds to the political, social, and gender forces at work in Ireland's recent history. Beginning with brief but concentrated study of poems by W.B. Yeats and Patrick Kavanagh, the course then examines the work of inheritors of these major figures' legacies, including Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon, Thomas Kinsella, Eavan Boland, Eamon Grennan, Paul Muldoon, and Medbh McGuckian. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Enrollment limited to 30. R. Farnsworth.

275. English Novel I. A study of the English novel from its origins to the early nineteenth century. Readings include selections from Homer's Iliad, and novels by Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Radcliffe, Austen, and Scott. Among the issues addressed by this course are the relation of the novel to the epic, and the social and political orientation of this new genre. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Enrollment limited to 40. (pre-1800). L. Nayder.

276. English Novel II. A study of the English novel from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth. Readings include novels by Collins, Eliot, Stoker, Ford, Forster, and Woolf, as well as theoretical works by M.M. Bakhtin, D.A. Miller, and Lennard Davis. Special attention is given to the revisionary nature of the novel and its relation to social change and the status quo. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Enrollment limited to 40. L. Nayder.

291. Prose Writing. A course for students who wish practice and guidance in the writing of prose. The course may alternate between fiction and nonfiction; fiction is the focus for 2000–2001. Admission by writing sample. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Enrollment limited to 15. Written permission of the instructor is required. K. Adams, C. Taylor.

292. Poetry Writing. A course for students who wish practice and guidance in the writing of poetry. Admission by writing sample. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Enrollment limited to 15. Written permission of the instructor is required. S. Dillon.

294. Storytelling. This course introduces cross-cultural forms, contexts, and strategies of storytelling in the process of analyzing the role of stories in everyday life. Primary readings include a range of stories characteristic of diverse traditions. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Recommended background: introductory courses in literature, anthropology, or the sociology of knowledge. Open to first-year students. Enrollment limited to 20 per section. C. Taylor.

295. Critical Theory. Major literary critics are read, and major literary works are studied in the light of these critics. Critical approaches discussed may include neoclassical, Romantic, psychoanalytical, formalist, generic, archetypal, structuralist, and deconstructionist. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Enrollment limited to 30. (critical thinking) S. Freedman.

360. Independent Study. Upperclass students, and occasionally others, who wish to engage in individual study, writing, or research projects should consult with a member of the department and the chair. Students are limited to one independent study per semester. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level course. Staff.

365. Special Topics. Offered occasionally by a faculty member in subjects of special interest. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Staff.

391. Advanced Prose Writing. Prerequisite(s): English 291. Enrollment limited to 12. Written permission of the instructor is required. K. Adams, R. Farnsworth.

392. Advanced Poetry Writing. Prerequisite(s): English 292. Enrollment limited to 12. Written permission of the instructor is required. S. Dillon, R. Farnsworth.

395. Junior–Senior Seminars. Seminars provide an opportunity for concentrated work in a restricted subject area. Two such seminars are required for the English major. Students are encouraged to see the seminar as preparation for independent work on a senior thesis. They may also choose to use the seminar itself as a means of fulfilling the senior thesis requirement. Sections are limited to 15. Written permission of the instructor is required.

395B. Dissenting Traditions in Twentieth-Century American Literature. This seminar examines literature by or about those who have felt themselves outside the mainstream of American culture. Focusing on issues concerning poverty, class, race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality, it places close reading in the context of cultural history and theory. Works include texts by such writers as Anaya, Baldwin, Erdrich, Hurston, Kingston, Naylor, Morrison, Pinzer, Roth, Silko, and Steinbeck. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Enrollment limited to 15. Written permission of the instructor is required. C. Taylor.

395C. Frost, Williams, and Stevens. As inheritors of Emersonian slants on poetics and imagination, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, and William Carlos Williams constitute a solid American grain of modernism in poetry. Thorough reading of their work reveals their surprising affinities and differences. How dark a vision of life (social and existential) does each seem to abide? What roles do wit, irony, verbal extravagance, and inherited poetic forms play in the work? What does each take to be the function of poetry in modern American life? The work of tutelary ancestors, competitors, and critics complements the substance of the course: comprehensive reading, writing, and discussion of these poetsÕ poems and theoretical prose. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Enrollment limited to 15. Written permission of the instructor is required. R. Farnsworth.

395D. Victorian Crime Fiction. The seminar examines the detective fiction written by British Victorians, the historical context in which this literature was produced, and its ideological implications. Students consider the connection between gender and criminality, and the relation of detection to class unrest and empire-building. Readings include works by Charles Dickens, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Wilkie Collins, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Grant Allen. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Enrollment limited to 15. Written permission of the instructor is required. L. Nayder.

395F. To Light: Five Twentieth-Century American Women Poets. Concentrated study of the poetry (and some prose) of five major American poets: Elizabeth Bishop, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, and Marianne Moore, whose various poetic stances and careers illuminate particular dilemmas facing female poets at mid-centuryÑissues of subject matter, visibility, literary tradition, and ideology. Probable corollary readings from the work of other poets, including Anne Sexton and Denise Levertov. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Enrollment limited to 15. Written permission of the instructor is required. R. Farnsworth.

395G. Postcolonial Literatures and Theory. A study of selected contemporary world literatures focused on postcolonial texts and the major critical, theoretical statements. The course interrogates the social and historical imperatives of European imperialism and its aftermath; neocolonialism; transnationalism; and educational, linguistic, and cultural hegemony, and the "(de)colonizing of the mind." The course focuses on works by Ama Ata Aidoo, Anita Desai, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Frantz Fanon, Albert Memmi, N'gugi wa Thiong'o, Salman Rushdie, Edward Said, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Sara Suleri Goodyear. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Enrollment limited to 15. Written permission of the instructor is required. (critical thinking) L. Shankar.

395J. The Gothic Tradition. This seminar traces the Gothic tradition from its European origins in the mid-eighteenth century to its current use by African American writers, and considers the subgenre from various critical perspectives. Particular emphasis is placed on the politics of the Gothic: on its relation to revolutionary movements, on its representations of intimacy and violence, and on the ways in which Gothic novelists both defend and subvert prevailing conceptions of sexual and racial difference. Writers studied include Horace Walpole, Matthew Lewis, Ann Radcliffe, Mary Shelley, Charlotte Bront‘, Wilkie Collins, Harriet Jacobs, and Gloria Naylor. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Enrollment limited to 15. Written permission of the instructor is required. L. Nayder.

395L. Feminist Literary Criticism. This seminar examines feminist literary theories and the implications and consequences of theoretical choices. It raises interrelated questions about forms of representation, the social construction of critical categories, cross-cultural differences among writers and readers, and the critical reception of women writers. Students explore the use of literary theory through work with diverse texts. This course is the same as Women's Studies 400B. Enrollment limited to 15. Written permission of the instructor is required. (critical thinking) L. Shankar, C. Malcolmson, C. Taylor.

395N. Joyce's Ulysses. A study of James Joyce's novel as both a mimetic and self-reflexive fiction. Emphasis is given to the biographical and social contexts of the novel. Students consider the influence of such figures as Ibsen, Flaubert, and Krafft-Ebing on the novel. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Recommended background: English 254 or 264. Enrollment limited to 15. Written permission of the instructor is required. L. Turlish.

395P. Pre-1800 Women Writers. The seminar considers the conditions that obstructed and supported writing by British women from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century. Topics include changing accounts of gender difference, the possibility of a self-conscious female tradition, elite versus non-elite genres, and the emergence of the professional woman writer. Enrollment limited to 15. Written permission of the instructor is required. (pre-1800) C. Malcolmson.

395R. Ut Pictura Poesis. This course concerns the relation between poetry and the visual arts. How do temporal and spatial arts relate? What can theories of image and imagination reveal about this relation? After initial theoretical study, beginning with Aristotle and Horace, the course attends to poet-painters such as Blake and Rossetti, Romantic landscape poets and painters, Pre-Raphaelite explorations of narrative and symbol, and to poems of Keats, Browning, Tennyson, Baudelaire, Rilke, and Yeats, with attention to the painting and sculpture related to their work. Students also investigate modern developments in the work of Williams, Stevens, Moore, Bishop, Ashbery, Dobyns, and Boland, as well as recent poetic experiments in visual art and video poetry. Recommended background: at least two 200-level English courses, as well as art history courses. Enrollment limited to 15. Written permission of the instructor is required. R. Farnsworth.

395S. Asian American Women Writers, Filmmakers, and Critics. This seminar studies from a literary and a sociohistorical perspective the fiction, memoirs, and critical theories of Asian American women such as Meena Alexander, Rey Chow, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Ginu Kamani, Maxine Hong Kingston, Lisa Lowe, Patricia Linmark, Kim Rounyang, Cathy Song, and Hisaye Yamamoto. It explores their constructions of personal and national identity, as hybridized Asians and Americans, and as postcolonial diasporics making textual representations of real and "imaginary" homelands. Films by Trinh T. Minh-ha, Indu Krishnan, Deepa Mehta, Mira Nair, and Renee Tajima-Creef are also analyzed through critical lenses. This course is the same as Women's Studies 395S. Enrollment limited to 15. Written permission of the instructor is required. L. Shankar.

395T. Modernism and the Great War. The form and content of early twentieth-century literature was significantly influenced by the complex and decentering experience of World War I, an experience that Henry James termed "the plunge of civilization into blood and darkness." Fiction by Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, Willa Cather, Erich Maria Remarque, along with the poetry of Thomas Hardy, Wilfred Owen, and T.S. Eliot, introduces students to the literature that was made out of and in response to these chaotic times: writing by women as well as by men, by those who observed from the sidelines as well as those who experienced life in the trenches. More recently, novels by Sebastian Faulks and Pat Barker bear witness to the way in which memories of the "Great War" continue to haunt our imagination after nearly one hundred years. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Enrollment limited to 15. Written permission of the instructor is required. A. Thompson.

395U. Postmodern Novel. The seminar examines diverse efforts to define "postmodernism." Students read novels by Joyce, Pynchon, Wallace, Eco, and Rushdie. Contemporary reviews, secondary criticism, narrative theory, issues of socially constructed reality, and some problems in the philosophy of language mark out its concerns. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Enrollment limited to 15. Written permission of the instructor is required. S. Freedman.

395V. The Lives of Victorians. How are the lives of the Victorians represented by biographers (Victorian, modern, and postmodern)? Who seems worthy of representation, and why? Students in this seminar address these questions as they examine the methods and aims of biography as a literary and historical genre; consider its relation to ideas of individuality and heroism, to social norms, and to conceptions of nationality, gender, and class; and undertake their own biographical research. Readings include critical studies as well as biographical works from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Enrollment limited to 15. Written permission of the instructor is required. L. Nayder.

395W. Lyric Film. Ordinarily studies of film center on narrative and emphasize links to narrative forms such as the novel. This course centers on non-narrative film and emphasizes links to poetry. What is the relationship between poetry and film? How can we characterize and understand structure in works where plot is weak or absent? Students view films by poet-directors, films with interpolated poems, and films starring actual poets or archetypal poets. Discussion centers on one or two films each week, along with related poems and critical materials. Directors may include Theo Angelopolous, Stan Brakhage, Jean Cocteau, Maya Deren, Atom Egoyan, Derek Jarman, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Wim Wenders. Written permission of the instructor is required. Enrollment is limited to 15. S. Dillon.

395X. African American Literature. The seminar explores African American literary texts alongside critical essays about African American literature. In particular, it looks at the ways these texts define, examine, and interrogate the concept of race and its intersections with gender, social class, sexuality, nationalism, and imperialism. Readings include texts by Charles Chesnutt, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Toni Morrison, W.E.B. Du Bois, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., bell hooks, and Ralph Ellison. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Written permission of the instructor is required. Enrollment is limited to 15. W. Wagner.

Short Term Units

s13. The Fin de Siècle in American Literature. Henry Adams echoed Matthew Arnold's poem when he described America in the 1890s as "caught between two worlds, one dead, the other powerless to be born." This unit considers the American 1890s, especially in the light of our own fin de siècle. Themes include cultural exhaustion, apocalypticism, "decadence," and aestheticism. Authors include Henry Adams, Kate Chopin, and Stephen Crane. Open to first-year students. Enrollment limited to 15. L. Turlish.

s15. Lifestories. How do beliefs about the real and the imagined, the fictional and the nonfictional, shape life as a narrative? Students undertake experiments in writing a life and study a range of genres that others have used to preserve or order a life's experience. Both primary and secondary sources inform the comparative study of the narratives, strategies, and conventions of such cross-referential genres as autobiography, memoir, diary, letters, personal essay, and autobiographical fiction. Enrollment limited to 20. Written permission of the instructor is required. C. Taylor.

s17. Telling Stories About the Saints. The saints of the Christian church were not only central to the belief system of the European Middle Ages, they also provided an opportunity for rich and varied narrative and cultural constructions. The saints' legends found in the thirteenth century Middle English collection that is the focus of this unit sometimes reveal more about the hopes and fears of the people by and for whom they were composed, than about the saints themselves, but they are no less interesting for that reason. Literal translation of a chosen text, historical investigation, and creative rewriting all play a part in the process of acquainting students with the nature of narrative and the continuing hold upon our imagination of the saints and the stories that have been told about them. Recommended background: a willingness to work closely with the language of a rather difficult thirteenth century text is highly desirable. Open to first-year students. Enrollment is limited to 12. A. Thompson.

s19. Introduction to Film Analysis: Formalism and Beyond. The unit breaks into three: 1) an introduction to languages of cinematic description through the viewing and discussion of clips and films (Reading consists of theoretical essays in, for instance, formalism, narratology, deconstruction, and feminism); 2) an intensive reading of a single film, first in terms of its own structure and elements, then in light of various methodological contexts; 3) a substantial critical writing project. Directors studied may include Scorsese, Renoir, Hitchcock, Wells, and Stone. Enrollment limited to 15. S. Dillon, S. Freedman.

s20. NewsWatch. What criteria determine that some aspects of experience are regarded as newsworthy and others not? What conventions determine how to represent this news? What are the boundaries between journalism and other nonfictional narratives (history, essay, documentary, biography, for example)? What tensions exist between "all the news that's fit to print" (or see or hear) and commercial, consumer-based media? This unit considers how diverse media collect, represent, and comment on the "news," drawing on media and cultural studies, discourse analysis, and narrative theory to critically explore both dominant media representations in the United States and alternatives to it, especially in "foreign" presses and/or alternatively supported media. Enrollment limited to 25. C. Malcolmson, C. Taylor.

s22. Glenn Gould: Musician and Muse. A poetry-writing workshop that takes inspiration — both directly and indirectly — from the recordings, writings, and films of Glenn Gould (1932–1982), the Canadian pianist. No technical knowledge of music is required, although a willingness to listen to "classical" music (i.e., Bach, Weber, Sibelius) is necessary. Students may prepare for this unit by listening to Gould's rendition of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier ten times. Recommended background: English 121E. Enrollment limited to 12. S. Dillon.

s23. Beatniks and Mandarins: A Literary and Cultural History of the American Fifties. An examination of established and adversarial culture in the American 1950s. Readings are in the literature and social commentary of such representative figures as Lionel Trilling, Norman Mailer, and Jack Kerouac. Some attention is given to film noir as the definitive fifties cinematic style and to the phenomenon that wed the recitation of poetry to American jazz. Open to first-year students. Enrollment limited to 25. L. Turlish.

s24. The Once and Future Middle Ages. Working with historical source materials as well as with historical fiction, students create their own fictional representations of some aspect of the medieval world. Prerequisite(s): one of the following: English 201, 205, 206, 210, 395Q, History 102, Art 251, 252, Philosophy 270, or Religion 242. This unit is the same as Classical and Medieval Studies s24. Enrollment limited to 12. A. Thompson.

s25. Sociocultural Approaches to Children's Literature. This unit studies some of the "classics" in British and American literature written to educate and entertain children, including works by Hans Christian Andersen, Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, J.M. Barrie, Louisa May Alcott, R.L. Stevenson, A.A. Milne, E.B. White, Mildred Taylor, Robert McCloskey, Dr. Seuss, and Jean Fritz. By employing the tools of sociocultural and psychological analysis, students examine the formation of gendered, racial, cultural, and social class identities through childhood literary experiences. Some attention is given to film versions of children's stories. Open to first-year students. Enrollment limited to 15. L. Shankar.

s31. "Letters from Tasmania": Writing an Epistolary Novella. Students read an epistolary novel, and collectively write a novella of their own. They are presented with a specific historical context for their novella — the colonization of Tasmania by the British. They study historical source materials, and each assumes a different fictional "persona"; — the cast includes both Tasmanian and British correspondents. Each student is required to contribute at least ten letters to the novella, with a minimum of twenty-five pages. This unit enables students to put into practice concepts they have studied in literature courses, and encourages them to make connections among politics, history, and literature. Recommended background: at least one course in the study of fiction, British or American. Enrollment limited to 15. Written permission of the instructor is required. L. Nayder.

s33. Editing Medieval Manuscripts. The South English Legendary, a thirteenth-century collection of saints' lives, forms the basis for a unit that gives students hands-on practice in reading and editing medieval manuscripts. Since many of the narratives found in the legendary have never been printed, students experience the thrill (as well as the frustration) of working with texts that are otherwise inaccessible. Prerequisite(s): one of the following: English 201, 205, 206, or 210. Enrollment limited to 12. A. Thompson.

s35. Constructing Catherine Dickens. Combining literary and biographical study with archival research, this unit focuses on the neglected figure of Catherine Dickens, wife of the novelist, who was forced from her home in 1858 after twenty years of marriage and ten children. Reading conflicting accounts of Mrs. Dickens as well as her own unpublished letters and book (a cookbook), students examine her family life in the context of Victorian gender norms and marriage law, consider how and why she has been represented by critics and biographers, and construct their own portraits of her. Prerequisite(s): one English course. Open to first-year students. Enrollment limited to 15. L. Nayder.

s37. Representing Labor in Fiction and Film. This unit explores how workers in the twentieth-century United States have represented their own lives and struggles, and how writers and directors have transformed personal narratives into fiction and film of often epic sweep. Diverse storytellers contribute to what is remembered and forgotten as the story of labor becomes public history, from the slave system to the factories of the North, from the Dust Bowl's westward migration to migrant laborers moving across borders and sometimes back again. Works include Solomon Northrup's slave narrative and Gordon Parks, Sr.'s Half Slave, Half Free: Solomon Northrup's Legacy; Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and William Duke's The Killing Floor; John Steinbeck's and John Ford's Grapes of Wrath; Tomás Rivera's and Severo Pérez's . . . And the Earth Did Not Devour Him; Gregory Nava's El Norte; and Harriet Arnow's and Daniel Petrie's The Dollmaker. Prerequisite(s): one English course. Enrollment limited to 15. C. Taylor.

s38. Passing. This unit examines the practice of passing in literature and society. By its most reductive definition, passing is the practice of pretending to be someone one is not, such as a man pretending to be a woman, an African American pretending to be white, or a Jew pretending to be gentile. However, the phenomenon of passing challenges and politicizes ideas about the unchangeable nature of various identity categories race, gender, sexuality, and others). Texts include Passing, Nella Larsen; The Color of Water, James McBride; Boys Don't Cry, and Imitation of Life. Open to first-year students. Enrollment is limited to 20. W. Wagner.

s39. Dinosaurs in the Garden: Science in Literature. In numerous stories, scientists manage to outsmart themselves (usually in gory ways), proving that, while scientists do not understand physical laws as well as they think they do, a law of poetic justice does operate. This unit analyzes how some stories use science to explore social issues, relying on science in some areas and rebelling against it in others. Works include Frankenstein, some Nathaniel Hawthorne's short stories, Tom Stoppard's Arcadia, and Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park. K. Hodges.

s40. Re-Writing Race. In this unit, students consider strategies of self-representation by black writers, examining these alongside the various "official" theories of race that emerged in U.S. culture during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Approaching racial identity not as a biological fact, but as a set of ideas arising from overlapping political, scientific, and social contexts, students look at how black writers resisted, appropriated, and revised oppressive representations of "blackness" through works of fiction, poetry, and autobiography. Readings include Olaudah Equiano, Phillis Wheatley, Harriet Jacobs, William Wells Brown, and Charles Chesnutt, in addition to critical and historical studies. Prerequisite(s): one 100 level English course. K. Adams.

s43. Shakespeare in the Theater. A study of Shakespeare's plays in performance, intended to acquaint the student with problems in the interpretation of the plays that are created by actual stage production. Students see Shakespearean productions in various locations, including London and Stratford-on-Avon, England. Prerequisite: English 213 and 214. Usually offered in alternate years. Enrollment limited to 15. Written permission of the instructor is required. Staff.

s50. Individual Research. Registration in this unit is granted by the department only after the student has submitted a written proposal for a full-time research project to be completed during the Short Term and has secured the sponsorship of a member of the department to direct the study and evaluate results. Students are limited to one individual research unit. Staff.

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