Literature 

151 Introduction to Literature (1)
An introduction to strategies for the close reading of texts and for the development of informed written analysis.  Readings are drawn from a variety of genres. Staff.

211 Latina/o Literature (1)
A survey of contemporary poetry and prose by Chicana/o, Cuban-American, Dominican-American, and Puerto Rican-American authors. Discussion topics include the construction of a “Latina/o” identity and questions of immigration, the homeland, gender and class, as well as the role of language and storytelling within acculturation. Mesa.

234 African American Literature (1)
A survey of African-American literature from the eighteenth century until the present day. Authors typically include Phyllis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, Nella Larsen, James Baldwin, and Toni Morrison. Lockyer, Roberts.

238 Terrorists and Treehuggers (1)
An interdisciplinary study of the past, present, and future of environmental radicalism.  Typical authors include Rachel Carson, Edward Abbey, Paul Watson, and Wangari Maathai.  Christensen.

243 Women and Literature (1)
A study of the portrayal of women by British and American authors selected to represent a variety of attitudes, historical perspectives and artistic techniques. Jordan, Lamouria, Lockyer, Roberts.

248 Children's Literature (1)
A study of children’s literature. Texts include picture books as well as chapter books from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Course focuses on literary analysis rather than pedagogy. Offered in alternate years. Roberts

253 British Literature I (1)
A survey of representative works of English literature from Beowulf to Paradise Lost.  Authors typically include Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Sidney, Donne, Wroth, Philips, and Milton. MacInnes.

255 British Literature II (1)
A survey of representative works of English literature form the eighteenth to the late nineteenth century.  Authors typically include Dryden, Swift, Montagu, Pope, Johnson, Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Austen, Tennyson, Hopkins, and Wilde.  (English 253 is not a prerequisite.) Jordan, Lamouria.

257 American Literature I (1)
A survey of American literature from the early seventeenth century to the beginning of the Civil War. Authors typically include John Smith, John Winthrop, Mary Rowlandson, Anne Bradstreet, Benjamin Franklin, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Walt Whitman. Lockyer, Roberts.

258 American Literature II (1)
A survey of American literature from the Civil War to the beginning of the twenty-first century. Authors typically include Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Charlotte Gilmore Perkins, Henry James, Wallace Stevens, William Faulkner, Langston Hughes, Flannery O’Connor, and Toni Morrison. (English 257 is not a prerequisite.) Collar, Lockyer, Roberts.

261 Greek and Roman Literature (1)
A survey of classical writers in translation, including Homer, the tragic dramatists, Virgil and others. Discussion topics include the cultural contexts of ancient literature (Greek religion, the Athenian polis, Roman imperialism, etc.) and the role of "the classics" in constructions of a western European "tradition." MacInnes.

285 Gay and Lesbian Literature (1)
Examines lesbian and gay literature written in Great Britain and America from the Renaissance through the twentieth century, including works by Shakespeare, Byron, Whitman, Melville, Dickinson, Wilde, Cather, Woolf, Baldwin and Lorde. Considers such questions as: What makes a text "gay"? How does the cultural oppression of homosexuals shape the literary texts they produce? Do these works form any sort of literary tradition and, if so, how do they build on and influence each other? What is their place in the larger literary canon? Jordan.

330 British Fiction Before 1850 (1)
The development of the novel in England from the beginnings to the time of Dickens. Offered in alternate years. Jordan.

331 British Fiction After 1850 (1)
Prerequisite: Sophomore standing or higher or permission of instructor.

A study of the British novel from the time of Dickens to the present.  Offered in alternate years.  Lamouria.

337 Victorian Sexualities (1)
Prerequisite: Sophomore standing or higher or permission of instructor.

An exploration of how Victorians wrote and thought about sexuality and gender.  Authors typically include Tennyson, Rossetti, Carroll, Collins, Stevenson, Wilde, and Gissing.  Discussions address such topics as Victorian marriage, “fallen women,” imperial desire, sexual violence, and homosexuality.  Offered in alternate years.  Lamouria.

338 Eighteenth-Century Culture Shocks (1)
An examination of the categories of race, class and gender in 18th-century Britain and its colonies, emphasizing writing by people of color, working-class writers and women. Included are literary works by well-known writers (Behn, Defoe, Swift, Austen, etc.) and by less canonical ones. Extra-literary works are also considered (travel narratives, economic tracts, conduct books, etc.). Offered in alternate years. Jordan.

339 The British Romantics (1)
Studies in early nineteenth century writers, including Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats and others. Offered in alternate years. Jordan.

340 The Twentieth Century in "English" Literature (1)
A study of British writers of the first half of the twentieth century, including works by Joyce, Lawrence, Woolf, Beckett and others. Offered in alternate years. Collar.

341 Contemporary Literature (1)
A study of British and American writers whose major work has been done since 1945. Collar.

342 Modern Poetry (1)
A study of the major modern poets: Eliot, Yeats, Frost, Stevens and others. Offered in alternate years. Collar.

344 Age of Elizabeth (1)
An exploration of Elizabethan literature in its literary and cultural context. We will examine the ways in which writers deployed poetry, prose, and drama in the service of political ambition, literary aspiration, and religious sentiment, as well as erotic desire. Our broad goal is to use these literary expressions to discuss the ways that subjectivity in the Renaissance rested uneasily on distinctions between self assertion and narcissism, soul and body, health and disease. We will also be paying particular attention to ways in which poetic expression contributes to the gendering of subjectivity. Offered in alternate years. MacInnes.

345 Redeeming Eve: Renaissance Women's Writing (1)
An introduction to Renaissance women’s studies and to literature written by English women in the early modern period (1500-1700). The readings combine literature and non-fiction of the period with modern critical works on women in the Renaissance. We will examine the ways in which authorship was defined in the period and the ways such definitions either excluded or restricted female authors. Among other things, we will discover why early modern texts written by women are often claimed to be non-existent or are difficult to find. We will also be paying particular attention to larger issues of Renaissance studies such as the status and role of women, the gendering of subjectivity, and the relationship between gender and sexuality. Offered in alternate years. MacInnes.

346 Voices of Liberty: Milton and the Seventeenth Century. (1)
England in the seventeenth century was a country torn apart by deep divisions, political, social, and religious. From this turmoil, from civil war and political revolution, arose a host of new ideas and new ways of seeing the world. Voices of Liberty explores the poetry and prose of this period, with special emphasis on John Milton and Paradise Lost. Discussions will range from cavalier love poetry to grand topics such as good and evil, free will and divine Providence. MacInnes.

347 The Age of Satire (1)
Integrates the study of eighteenth-century British literature and history by examining such topics as capitalism, gender and social class in both literary and non-literary works. Pope, Swift, Mary Wortley Montagu, Finch and other figures are considered, as well as conduct books and pertinent historians on such topics as crime, capital punishment and marriage. Jordan.

350 The American Novel (1)
Prerequisite: Sophomore standing or higher or permission of instructor.

An examination of the novel as both a traditional and experimental genre in American letters. Texts include Herman Melville's Moby Dick and William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! and between five and seven additional novels selected to provide students with varied opportunities to do advanced work in American literary studies. Lockyer, Roberts.

351 Four American Poets (1)
Prerequisite: Sophomore standing or higher or permission of instructor.

A study of four twentieth- or twenty first-century American poets and advanced work in critical approaches to writing about poetry.  Recent poets include Robert Frost, Muriel Rukeyser, Natasha Tretheway, Wallace Stevens, and William Carlos Williams.  Focus is on whole collections. Lockyer.

352 Literature of the American Civil War (1)
Prerequisite: Sophomore standing or higher or permission of instructor.

An examination of the literature of the American Civil War, broadly conceived. Texts include fiction and poetry, political documents and slave narratives. Discussions address the relationship between history and literature, print culture, and the human experience of war, among other things. Roberts.

354 Idea of Nature, Nature of Ideas (1)
Prerequisite: Sophomore standing or higher or permission of instructor.

An interdisciplinary exploration of the relationship between the imagination and the natural world in the works of key American writers. Draws on the creative and critical tools of multiple disciplines—including literary studies, creative writing and natural history.  Typical authors include H.D. Thoreau, Annie Dillard, James Galvin, Bernd Heinrich, and Mary Oliver.  Christensen

355 Chaucer (1)
A comprehensive study of the writings of Chaucer, including The Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Criseyde and selected minor works, as they reflect both the man and his times. Offered in alternate years. Staff.

360 The Problem of Race in American Literature (1)
Prerequisite: Sophomore standing or higher or permission of instructor

An examination of a number of continuing problems expressed in American poetry, fiction, drama, and essays by white and black writers from the nineteenth to the twenty first centuries. Writers include Larsen, Baldwin, Ellison, Beatty, Senna, O’Connor, and McCullers. Lockyer.

363 Literary Theory (1)
A study of key theoretical concepts (like "intention" and "discourse") and theoretical orientations (for example, new criticism, deconstruction, feminist criticism, and the new historicism). Assignments range from applying a theoretical approach to developing a response to a theoretical question. Collar.

374 Theater and Society in Early Modern England (1)
Examines the drama of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in its theatrical, social and political contexts. Offered in alternate years. Staff.

375 Shakespeare I (1)
A study of plays Shakespeare wrote before 1600, including at least two tragedies, five comedies and four chronicle plays. The plays are examined individually as particular theatrical experiences, with special attention given to conditions of production in Shakespeare's own theater. Other topics include the representation of gender, the history of critical response and the role of Shakespeare in constructions of literary culture. Staff.

376 Shakespeare II (1)
A study of Shakespeare's plays after 1600 with special attention to the major tragedies: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra. The plays are examined individually as particular theatrical experiences, but attention is also given to social and political contexts, the representation of gender, the history of critical response and the role of Shakespeare in constructions of literary culture (English 375 is not a prerequisite.) Staff.

401,402 English Seminar (1/2, 1)
Advanced study of selected writers, and/or literary genres.  Examples of recent seminars include Three Irish Poets, Fiction of Cormack McCarthy, and The American Renaissance. Staff.

411, 412 Directed Study (1/2, 1)
Prerequisites: Junior or senior standing and permission of instructor. 

(Permission of department required to be counted toward the major.)  Usually taken in preparation for the honors thesis. Staff.

English Colloquia

In addition to the listings above, the English Department offers a number of courses under a flexible program called "Colloquia.'' These courses are scheduled to enrich the curriculum and to meet the evolving needs and interests of students and teachers. Colloquia such as these are regularly scheduled:

246 Immigration in Literature (1)
The representation of immigration and immigrant life in North America, especially in texts written by people who are themselves immigrants or the children of immigrants. Topics considered include working class experience, the psychic upheaval caused by drastic relocation, the special tensions that arise between children and parents as life is made in a new world and the formation of ethnic/racial identity through contact with those already resident in North America. Collar.

289 Writing Our Own Lives: Poetry by Women of Color (1)
Examines contemporary U.S. poetry by African American, Native American, Asian American and Latina women. Includes established poets such as Rita Dove, Lucille Clifton and Sandra Cisneros, as well as the work of less well-known poets such as nila northsun, Lorna D. Cervantes and Cathy Song. Considers ways in which women from different racially marked backgrounds share common experiences but also ways in which they differ. Can poetry be said to be "raced" or "gendered"? Is this poetry different from that written by white poets? How does it fit into the literary canon? Does such new poetry demand a new critical approach? Mesa.

336 Dickens and London (1)
A study of Charles Dickens' treatment of the city in his journalism and fiction, with special attention to the following novels: Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Bleak House, Little Dorrit, Great Expectations, Our Mutual Friend. Lamouria.

349 Elizabethan Drama (1)
An exploration of the drama of Shakespeare's era and its theatrical, social and political contexts. Staff.