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ENG 8250.001 Shakespeare
Dr. Lauren Shohet
Mon., 7:30 – 9:30
In this course, we'll focus on
questions that help us think about Shakespearean drama both in Renaissance
contexts and in our own culture. We’ll pay close attention to issues of
language, politics, gender, social order, religion, and the places of theater
and literature in society. We will study around ten plays (comedy, tragedy,
history, romance; early and late). We also will consider some primary texts that
respond to these plays, or to which these plays respond, both from the
Renaissance (Fletcher’s The Tamer Tamed, Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy)
and from our own time (probably Almereyda’s Hamlet and Blake Nelson’s
O). Critical and historical readings will survey the range of approaches
that constitute contemporary professional discussion of Shakespeare.
Lively class discussion;
frequent one-page response papers; one short paper (3 pp) that may include a
book review, historical research, or interpretive reading; and a longer final
paper (15 pp) aim to engage students in substantial and acute readings of the
plays, developing their own rigorous -- if provisional -- positions on some
fundamental theoretical and critical controversies, and exploring ways to
situate their own interpretations of given Shakespearean texts in professional
discourse.
ENG 8520.001 Nineteenth-Century British Fiction
Dr. Deborah Thomas
Thurs., 5:20-7:20
Confronting
the Other, Escaping the Past: The British novel of the nineteenth century has been called “one
of the glories of English literature,” and this course will examine notable
works of the period. Fictions to be read are William Thackeray’s The History
of Samuel Titmarsh and the Great Hoggarty Diamond, Charlotte Brontë’s
Villette, a short ghost story by J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Charles Dickens’s
Great Expectations, Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,
and Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Attention will be given to
the historical, social, and literary contexts out of which these works arose, as
well as to recent critical (e.g., feminist, new historicist, and cultural)
approaches to these books. Topics to be discussed will include such subjects as
fantasy versus reality, the family and domestic relations in nineteenth-century
literature and culture, the burden of the past, concepts of childhood, and the
nature of the self. Requirements include a 5 page paper (to be rewritten upon
return and resubmitted for a second grade), a serialized journal consisting of
one-page responses to the readings each week, an oral report, a term paper
(10-12 pages), and lively class participation.
ENG 8640.001 Topics: Modern British Literature
Dr. Megan Quigley
Mon., 5:20-7:20
Modernism and Its Manifestos:
What were
writers at the beginning of the 20th century so angry about? To answer this
question, this course will examine both the literary works and the manifestos of
writers such as Eliot, Pound, Woolf, and Lawrence. We will aim to discover what
literary, social and philosophical traditions these writers wished to blast away
and also to determine how and if the literary works incorporate their authors’
ideals to "Make it New!"
Dr. Megan
Quigley is joining the English Department this fall. She has a Ph.D. in English
from Yale University, as well as an M.Phil. from Oxford University, and has been
teaching at Wesleyan University. She has a number of publications in the field
of Modernism.ENG: 8640.002 Topics: Modern British Literature
Dr. Lucy McDiarmid
Tues., 5:20 -7:20
Modern Irish Drama:
Students will read selected Irish plays from 1902 through 1985. Works by W.B.
Yeats, Augusta Gregory, John Millington Synge, Bernard Shaw, Sean O Casey, Brian
Friel, and Tom Murphy will be studied in the context of Irish history, Irish
cultural politics, post-colonial theory, and feminism. We'll look at the place
of drama in the emerging movement for Irish independence (1902 - 1916) and
consider the connections between the Easter Rising of 1916 and the Abbey
Theatre. The trope of the gendered nation will form a significant part of our
study, as we follow the idea of a tutelary deity from the seductive, militant
Kathleen ni Houlian (Gregory and Yeats) to the fierce, senile, and remorseful
Mommo (Tom Murphy). Other issues to be considered include the trope of Ireland
as a house, the borders between public and private Irish spaces, the linguistic
politics of the Irish language, theatrical politics and controversies, and the
continuing intertextual conversation among Irish plays. Required work: oral
report, several one-page papers, final 4,500-word paper.
ENG: 9530.001 Topics: Nineteenth-Century American
Literature
Edmund Goode
Wed., 7:30 -9:30
More than Life and Liberty: the Pursuit of Happiness in Early America
"The
pursuit of happiness" is famously set forth in the Declaration of Independence
as an inalienable right. But what does it really mean? After the American
Revolution, writers and thinkers asked the same question, grappling with the
possibilities--and lurking dangers--of that extraordinary assertion. Why the
pursuit of happiness and not religious truth? Or property and wealth? And what
kind of happiness is available to the poor, the disenfranchised, the enslaved?
In this course, we'll examine why "happiness" was such a revolutionary pursuit
for the founding fathers. We'll then explore how the early American pursuit of
happiness, as well as its shadowy underside of greed and dissatisfaction, came
to shape the development of American literature. We'll focus on key texts by
Frederick Douglass, Henry Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Emily
Dickinson, Alexis de Tocqueville, Rebecca Harding Davis, and Ralph Waldo
Emerson. Critical readings will cover scholarly debates about such topics as
American exceptionalism, the fate of experimental communities like Brook Farm,
and the so-called "market revolution" in the United States.
ENG: 9640.001 Topics: Modern American Literature
Dr. Jean Lutes
Tues., 7:30 -9:30
From
News to Novels: Literary Realism and the Rise of the New Journalism
The line
between fact and fiction has been crossed repeatedly by American writers. This
semester we will take a close look at some of the most fascinating of those
crossings. Some critics argue that the American novel’s strong affinity with
journalism is one of its most distinctive qualities and that the gritty
perspective forged in the newsrooms of the late nineteenth and early twentieth
century set the stage for the era’s greatest realist novels. Others insist that
the newspaper industry undermined American literary culture by “dumbing down”
complex stories in order to reach wider audiences. This course examines both
sides of this debate in order to explore how American literary culture was
transformed by the rise of the mass-market newspaper. Innovations in journalism
inspired new forms of expression, created new reading publics, and challenged
writers to invest the printed word with a newly vital sense of “the real.”
Likely texts include Stephen Crane’s The Monster, Ernest Hemingway’s
In Our Time, Katherine Anne Porter’s Collected Stories, James Agee’s
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead,
and Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood.ENG: 9640.002 Topics: Modern American Literature
Dr. Lisa Sewell
Wed., 5:20 -7:20
Contemporary American Women Poets: From Lyric to Language
Social
and economic upheaval during the 1960s and ‘70s resulted in distinct and
conflicting notions of what could and should be written about in a poem, leading
to radical discontinuities in the field of contemporary poetry and poetics.
Differences and disagreements range from the significance of the “I,” to the
reliability of language itself, to questions of form and cultural inheritance.
One result of this upheaval has been a remarkable increase in the numbers of
women writing, publishing and receiving recognition for their poetry. Writing in
a post-Romantic tradition, poets like Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich and Gwendolyn
Brooks paved the way for women poets to change the subject matter, style and
focus of poetry. Women began writing about their lives as women, presenting
their understanding of the world from a distinctly gendered point of view, and
exploring a form and voice through which to express their experience and
understanding. At the same time, the dissemination of continental theory in the
US fostered a politically motivated return to Modernist experimentation and led
to the language-based innovations of Language poetry. In this course we will
focus on the work of contemporary women poets who have developed their craft in
the advent of both the Women’s movement and Language poetry, exploring the
legacies of post-romantic confessional poetry and post-modern experimental
writing for 21st century women writers. We will
look at work that engages in the tradition initiated by so-called confessional
poets – writers who may apprehend the destabilized nature of the self but still
believe it is possible to express and communicate something about experience –
as well the work of poets who are dedicated to a more experimental mode and wish
to reproduce in language the instabilities of the self and the culture. We will
also explore questions about race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and think
through the necessity for a course that focuses on women’s writing in this
post-feminist world. Does gender still (if it ever did) make a difference? How
efficacious is experimental writing for writers whose voices have not
traditionally been heard? Has an alternative woman-centered tradition been
created? We will focus on the work of a wide range of women writers born after
1950, including Harryette Mullen, Julianna Spahr, Martha Ronk, Marilyn Chin,
Lucille Clifton, Anne Carson, Lisa Robertson, Leslie Scalapino and others. We
will also read a number of theoretical essays that provide a lens for thinking
about the ways women’s writing conforms to or resists traditional norms and
paradigms.Course
requirements will include short (1-2 pages) response papers to weekly reading
assignments, regular participation in class discussion, an in-class presentation
in collaboration with another student (20 minutes max) and a full-length seminar
paper (16-20 pages).
ENG 9800.001 Internship in the Teaching of English
Option for second-year graduate students to serve as intern for graduate
faculty member in upper-level undergraduate English course. Interns will attend
all class sessions, confer at least once with each student on written work, lead
two-three class sessions under supervision of faculty member, and complete a
final project that is either (1) a substantial critical essay concerning subject
matter of course or (2) a research project concerning trends and issues within
college-level pedagogy. Aim of program is to provide students with teaching and
classroom experience. Students may apply to serve as interns by consulting with
a faculty member who is teaching in area of interest, and, if the faculty member
is amenable, submitting a one-two page statement, outlining how this course
addresses their larger intellectual goals, and what they hope to accomplish as
an intern. (3 Cr)
ENG 8090.001 Thesis
ENG 8092.001 Field Exam
ENG 9031.001 Independent Study I
ENG 9080.001 Thesis Continuation
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