Courses in Literature ENG 204 Women Writers Examines themes, techniques, goals, and historical contexts of women’s literary production. LIT, WS, WI ENG 213 American Literature I The intellectual and cultural milieu of the American “New World” as revealed in the prose and poetry—including that of Native Americans and African-Americans—produced between the early 1600s and the mid-1800s and culminating in a distinctive American literature. HWC, LIT, WI ENG 214 American Literature II The development of American literature from the later nineteenth century through the modern and contemporary periods. Emphasizes the intellectual, social, and aesthetic concerns that have shaped American fiction, poetry, and drama. HWC, LIT, WI ENG 215 Major Writings of the European Tradition I Students will read authors whose works have strongly influenced Western culture: e.g., Sappho, Homer, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, Dante, Boccaccio, and Voltaire. Discussion topics include the history of ideas, the construction/critique of a canonical tradition, and the self in society. FWC, LIT, WI ENG 216 Major Writings of the European Tradition II Students will read authors whose works have strongly influenced modernity: e.g., Wollstonecraft, Austen, Flaubert, Dostoyevsky, Kafka, Woolf, and Freud. Discussion topics include the romanticism-realism conflict, the critique of patriarchy, and the emergence of the unconscious. HWC, LIT, WI ENG 224 Literature for Adolescents Survey of current literature written for students of junior and senior high school age. Critical reading of classic works, with emphasis on those which are frequently included in secondary school curricula. Selected works of criticism. LIT ENG 230 Film Analysis and History Students will analyze film using the elements of mise en scène. Technical discussions of film production and reception are supported by in-class screening of movies by such directors as Keaton, Welles, Hawks, Ford, Hitchcock, De Sica, Kazan, Lee, and Scott. Discussion topics include film history, genres, and criticism. ART, WI ENG 232 Modern Drama Students will study drama and modernity using a history-of-ideas approach. Works by Ibsen, Shaw, Chekhov, Pirandello, Hellman, Glaspell, Williams, O’Neill, Brecht, Beckett, and Breuer will illustrate developments in dramatic history from nineteenth-century realism to the Theater of the Absurd and postmodernism. Technical discussions will focus on genre and stagecraft. ART, LIT, WI ENG 234 The English Novel The genre examined through critical reading of novels from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including works by Austen, Dickens, Stevenson, Ford, Conrad, and Woolf. HWC LIT, WI ENG 236 British Literature 1200-1700 An intense examination of the literature and especially the changes in the forms of national literature of Britain from 1200 to 1700. Authors read may include the Gawain-poet, William Langland, Julian of Norwich, Christopher Marlowe, Mary Wroth, John Donne, and Ben Jonson. FWC, LIT, WI ENG 270/370/570 Topics in Literary Studies and Writing In-depth study of a limited body of literature unified by author, theme, or historical period. Emphasis on the relationship of literature to social and cultural history. LIT, WI (For titles and descriptions of courses periodically offered under this rubric, please check the end of this section.) ENG 270/370/570 Topics: Advanced Genre Study Writing-intensive study of classical, modern, and postmodern literary genres. Emphasis on the development of genres, new approaches in genre criticism, and the historical bases of literary production and reception. The individual genres studied will vary over time but may include poetry, drama, melodrama, autobiography, gothic fiction, and popular literature, as well as the representation of such literatures in film. LIT, WI (For titles and descriptions of courses periodically offered under this rubric, please check the end of this section.) ENG 270/370/570 Topics: Major Authors Intensive, historical study of a major author or writer. Representative authors might include Chaucer, Milton, Burns, Austen, Dickens, Darwin, Freud, James, Cather, Joyce, Woolf and Morrison. LIT, WI (For titles and descriptions of courses periodically offered under this rubric, please check the end of this section.) ENG 290: Shakespeare’s Tragedies and Romances Critical reading of representative tragedies, romances, and genres, including a thorough introduction to Shakespeare and his sonnets. LIT, WI ENG 317 American Literature Since 1945 New directions in poetry, drama, fiction and literary innovations in the context of international conflict, feminism, environmentalism, civil rights, and gay rights. CD, LIT, WI ENG 318/518 Chaucer Detailed analysis and study of The Canterbury Tales. Includes close, critical readings of the original Middle English text and examination of the social, political, and cultural climate in which Chaucer composed. FWC, LIT ENG 319 American Minority Writers Study of Asian-American, African-American, Chicano/a, and Native-American writers. Authors may include Momaday, Erdrich, Anaya, Kingston, Okada, Baldwin, and Hurston. CC, CD, LIT, WI ENG 335/535 Film Genres and Genders Historical study of Hollywood film genres and their relation to dichotomous gender. Emphasis on the genres of screwball comedy, maternal melodrama, and film noir. Representative directors may include Hawks, Sturgess, Rapper, Dmytryk, Ray, Hitchcock, and Aldrich. Prerequisite for the 500-level course: permission of instructor. ART, CC, WS, WI ENG 345/545 Shakespeare’s Histories and Comedies Critical reading of representative histories and comedies, including a strong theoretical approach to the texts. Prerequisite for the 500-level course: permission of instructor. HWC, LIT, WI ENG 380/580 Literary and Cultural Interpretation In-depth study of developments in the history of interpretation. Representative methods include hermeneutics, feminism, psychoanalysis, and semiotics. FT, HWC, LIT Courses periodically offered under the 270/370 rubric include: ENG 270/370 Topics: African-American literature Introduces the diversity and intertextuality of the African-American literary tradition. Includes major writers, periods, and genres. CD, LIT, WI ENG 270/370 Topics: Nineteenth-Century Women Writers Examines British and American women’s imprint on the novel, the short story, and the slave narrative. Studies of texts in relation to the social and intellectual milieu of the nineteenth century. LIT, WS, WI ENG 270/370 Topics: Arthurian Literature and Film Intensive study of the origins and development of the Arthurian myth in English and continental European literature through to the modern day. Authors read include Malory, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Gildas, the Gawain poet, White, Tennyson, Zimmer Bradley. FWC, LIT, WI ENG 270/370 Topics: Gay and Lesbian Literature A comprehensive look at the depictions of gay men and lesbians in the western literary tradition from the Middle Ages through the modern day, with an emphasis on how these depictions change over time. Authors read might include Marlowe, Barnfield, Lyly, Hall, Winterson, Brown. CD, LIT, WI ENG 270/370 Topics: Twentieth-Century American Poetry Twentieth-century poets clashed over questions of expressivity, performance, objectivity, and subject, leaving behind a spectacular variety of subjects, forms, and purposes for this genre. This course explores twentieth-century conflicts over the very nature of poetry and examines poems from different movements and traditions. LIT, WI ENG 270/370 Topics: Charles Dickens An in-depth examination of the works of this seminal British writer. LIT, WI ENG 270/370 Topics: Women Writers of the Middle Ages and Renaissance This course is designed to make students intimately familiar with women's writing from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance in both England and Continental Europe. By the end of this class, students should be able to understand what women were writing about in these eras, the conditions under which they wrote, why they wrote, and how their writing was received by the society as a whole. Represented authors include Marie de France, Anna Comnena, Margery Kempe, Julian of Norwich, Mary Astell, Mary Wroth, Aemilia Lanyer, and Elizabeth Cary. LIT, WS, WI ENG 370/570 Topics: Robert Burns A comprehensive look at the poetical works and influence of Scottish poet Robert Burns. Course includes intensive study of Burns' work plus critical discussion of his poetry. HWC, LIT, WI. ENG 370/570: Topics: Christopher Marlowe Intense study of the works of a seminal Renaissance playwright. Plays examined include Tamburlaine 1 and 2, Dr. Faustus, The Jew of Malta, and Edward II. Course also includes study of the author’s poetry (including Hero and Leander) and films based on Marlowe’s works and themes. HWC, LIT, WI ENG 370/570: Topics: Environmental (In)Justice in American Literature This course examines inequality in access to natural resources and the wealth they produce, exposure to toxins, and participation in environmental decision making as represented in literature by Native American, African-American, Latino, and Asian-American authors. CD, ES, LIT, WI NOTE: Most Topics courses generally rotate on a two-year basis.
