Courses
This page displays the schedule of Bryn Mawr courses for this academic year. It also displays descriptions of courses offered by the department during the last four academic years.
For information about courses offered by other Bryn Mawr departments and programs or about courses offered by Haverford and Swarthmore Colleges, please consult the Tri-College Course Guide.
For information about the Academic Calendar, including the dates of first and second quarter courses, please visit the College's master calendar
.Spring 2012
| COURSE | TITLE | SCHEDULE/ UNITS |
MEETING TYPE TIMES/DAYS | LOCATION | INSTRUCTOR(S) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ENGL B125-001 | Writing Workshop | Semester / 1 | LEC: 12:45 PM- 2:15 PM TTH | English House I | Ruben,M. |
| ENGL B125-002 | Writing Workshop | Semester / 1 | LEC: 12:45 PM- 2:15 PM TTH | English House III | Callaghan,J. |
| ENGL B125-003 | Writing Workshop | Semester / 1 | LEC: 12:45 PM- 2:15 PM TTH | English House II | Tidmarsh,K. |
| ENGL B125-004 | Writing Workshop | Semester / 1 | LEC: 2:15 PM- 3:45 PM TTH | Taylor Hall F | Ruben,M. |
| ENGL B125-005 | Writing Workshop | Semester / 1 | LEC: 2:15 PM- 3:45 PM TTH | Taylor Hall D | Todd,J. |
| ENGL B126-001 | Writing Workshop for Non-Native Speakers of English | Semester / 0.5 | LEC: 1:00 PM- 2:30 PM F | English House II | Murphey,E. |
| ENGL B193-001 | Critical Feminist Studies | Semester / 1 | LEC: 12:45 PM- 2:15 PM TTH | English House Lecture Hall | Dalke,A. |
| ENGL B202-001 | Understanding Poetry | Semester / 1 | Lecture: 9:45 AM-11:15 AM TTH | English House II | Hedley,J. |
| ENGL B205-001 | Introduction to Film | Semester / 1 | Lecture: 2:15 PM- 3:45 PM TTH | Thomas Hall 224 | Tratner,M. |
| Film: 7:00 PM- 9:30 PM M | Carpenter Library 25 | ||||
| ENGL B209-001 | Literary Kinds | Semester / 1 | Lecture: 9:45 AM-11:15 AM TTH | Dalton Hall 10 | Dalke,A. |
| ENGL B220-001 | Writing in Theory/Writing in Practice | Semester / 1 | Lecture: 11:15 AM-12:45 PM TTH | English House I | Hemmeter,G. |
| ENGL B233-001 | Spenser and Milton | Semester / 1 | Lecture: 10:00 AM-11:00 AM MWF | English House II | Briggs,P. |
| ENGL B237-001 | The Dictator Novel in the Americas | Semester / 1 | LEC: 1:00 PM- 2:30 PM MW | English House Lecture Hall | Harford Vargas,J. |
| ENGL B245-001 | Focus: "I remember Harlem" | Second Half / 0.5 | Lecture: 2:15 PM- 3:45 PM TTH | English House Lecture Hall | Beard,L. |
| ENGL B250-001 | Methods of Literary Study | Semester / 1 | LEC: 11:15 AM-12:45 PM TTH | English House II | Taylor,J. |
| ENGL B250-002 | Methods of Literary Study | Semester / 1 | Lecture: 10:00 AM-11:30 AM MW | English House I | Schneider,B. |
| ENGL B251-001 | Food for Thought: Gastronomic Literatures and Philosophies | Semester / 1 | LEC: 2:30 PM- 4:00 PM MW | English House Lecture Hall | Thomas,K. |
| ENGL B264-001 | Black Bards: Poetry in the Diaspora | Second Half / 0.5,1 | Lecture: 11:15 AM-12:45 PM TTH | English House Lecture Hall | Beard,L. |
| ENGL B270-001 | American Girl: Childhood in U.S. Literatures, 1690-1935: Childhood in US Literatures, 1690-1935 | Semester / 1 | Lecture: 2:30 PM- 4:00 PM MW | Taylor Hall F | Schneider,B. |
| ENGL B277-001 | Nabokov in Translation | Semester / 1 | Lecture: 11:15 AM-12:45 PM TTH | Taylor Hall F | Harte,T. |
| ENGL B299-001 | History of Narrative Cinema | Semester / 1 | Lecture: 9:45 AM-11:15 AM TTH | Carpenter Library 21 | King,H. |
| Film: Date/Time TBA | Carpenter Library 21 | ||||
| ENGL B311-001 | Renaissance Lyric | Semester / 1 | Lecture: 2:15 PM- 3:45 PM TTH | English House II | Hedley,J. |
| ENGL B324-001 | Topics in Shakespeare: Shakespeare on Film: Global Shakespeare | Semester / 1 | LEC: 7:00 PM-10:00 PM T | English House I | Rowe,K. |
| Film: 2:00 PM- 4:00 PM SU | Carpenter Library 25 | ||||
| ENGL B353-001 | Queer Diasporas: Empire, Desire, and the Politics of Placement | Semester / 1 | LEC: 1:00 PM- 2:30 PM MW | English House II | Schneider,S., Schneider,S. |
| Film: 7:00 PM-10:00 PM M | Carpenter Library 15 | ||||
| ENGL B377-001 | James Joyce | Semester / 1 | Lecture: 9:45 AM-11:15 AM TTH | Taylor Hall B | Tratner,M. |
| ENGL B390-001 | Medieval Race | Semester / 1 | LEC: 2:15 PM- 3:45 PM TTH | English House I | Taylor,J. |
| ENGL B399-001 | Senior Essay | Semester / 1 | Other: Date/Time TBA | Dept. staff, TBA | |
| ENGL B403-001 | Supervised Work | Semester / 1 | Dept. staff, TBA | ||
Fall 2012
(Class schedules for this semester will be posted at a later date.)
Spring 2013
(Class schedules for this semester will be posted at a later date.)
ENGL B125 Writing Workshop Spring 2012 This course offers students who have already taken an Emily Balch Seminar an opportunity to develop their skills as college writers. Through frequent practice, class discussion, and in-class collaborative activity, students will become familiar with all aspects of the writing process and will develop their ability to write for an academic audience. The class will address a number of writing issues: formulating questions; analyzing purpose; generating ideas; structuring and supporting arguments; marshalling evidence; using sources effectively; and developing a clear, flexible academic voice. Students will meet regularly with the course instructor, individually and in small groups, to discuss their work. (Tidmarsh,K., Todd,J., Ruben,M., Callaghan,J. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B126 Writing Workshop for Non-Native Speakers of English Fall 2011, Spring 2012 This course offers non-native speakers of English a chance to develop their skills as college writers. Through frequent practice, class discussion, and in-class collaborative activity, students will become familiar with the writing process and will learn to write for an academic audience. Student writers in the class will be guided through the steps of composing and revising college essays: formulating questions; analyzing purpose; generating ideas; structuring and supporting arguments; marshalling evidence; using sources effectively; and developing a clear, flexible academic voice. Writers will receive frequent feedback from peers and the instructor. (Murphey,E., Litsinger,B.) ENGL B193 Critical Feminist Studies Spring 2012 Combines the study of specific literary texts with larger questions about feminist forms of theorizing: three fictional texts will be supplemented by a wide range of essays. Students will review current scholarship, identify their own stake in the conversation, and define a critical question they want to pursue at length. (Dalke,A. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B201 Chaucer: Canterbury Tales Not offered 2011-12 Access to and skill in reading Middle English will be acquired through close study of the Tales. Exploration of Chaucer's narrative strategies and of a variety of critical approaches to the work will be the major undertakings of the semester. (Taylor,J. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B202 Understanding Poetry Spring 2012 This course is for students who wish to develop their skills in reading and writing critically about poetry. The course will provide grounding in the traditional skills of prosody (i.e., reading accentual, syllabic, and accentual-syllabic verse) as well as tactics for reading and understanding the breath-based or image-based prosody of free verse. Lyric, narrative, and dramatic poetry will be discussed and differentiated. We will be using close reading and oral performance to highlight the unique fusion of language, rhythm (sound), and image that makes poetry different from prose. (Hedley,J. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B204 Literatures of American Expansion Not offered 2011-12 This course will explore the relationship between U.S. narratives that understand national expansion as "manifest destiny" and narratives that understand the same phenomenon as imperial conquest. We will ask why the ingredients of such fictions--dangerous savages, empty landscapes, easy money, and lawless violence--often combine to make the master narrative of "America," and we will explore how and where that master narrative breaks down. Critical readings will engage discourses of nation, empire, violence, race, and sexuality. Texts will include novels, travel narratives, autobiographies, legal documents, and cultural ephemera. (Schneider,B. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B205 Introduction to Film Spring 2012 This course is intended to provide students with the tools of critical film analysis. Through readings of images and sounds, sections of films and entire narratives, students will cultivate the habits of critical viewing and establish a foundation for focused work in film studies. The course introduces formal and technical units of cinematic meaning and categories of genre and history that add up to the experiences and meanings we call cinema. Although much of the course material will focus on the Hollywood style of film, examples will be drawn from the history of cinema. Attendance at weekly screenings is mandatory. (Tratner,M. -- Division III: Humanities) Cross-listed as HART B205 ENGL B209 Literary Kinds Spring 2012 Beginning with a biological evolutionary model, we examine a range of explanations for how and why new genres evolve. Readings will consist of critical accounts of genre; three hybrid novel forms will serve as imaginative test cases for these concepts. Students will identify, compare, and write an exemplar of a genre that interests them. (Dalke,A. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B210 Renaissance Literature: Performances of Gender Not offered 2011-12 Readings chosen to highlight the construction and performance of gender identity during the period from 1550 to 1650 and the ways in which the gender anxieties of 16th- and 17th-century men and women differ from, yet speak to, our own. Texts will include plays, poems, prose fiction, diaries, and polemical writing of the period. (Hedley,J. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B219 Facing the Facts/Essaying the Subjective Not offered 2011-12 Nonfictional prose genres, which may well constitute the majority of all that has been written, are very seldom the focus of literature courses. This class will address that gap, by exploring the use-value of the category of non-fictional prose in organizing our experience of, and our thinking about, literature. Might our attending to such texts alter our sense of what literature is? (Dalke,A. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B220 Writing in Theory/Writing in Practice Spring 2012 This course is designed for students interested in tutoring college or high-school writers or teaching writing at the secondary-school level. Readings in current composition studies will pair texts that reflect writing theory with those that address practical strategies for working with academic writers. To put pedagogic theory into practice, the course will offer a praxis dimension. Students will spend a few hours a week working in local public school classrooms or writing centers. In-class collaborative work on writing assignments will allow students to develop writing skills and share their insights into the writing process with others. (Hemmeter,G. -- Division III: Humanities) Cross-listed as EDUC B219 ENGL B223 The Story of Evolution and the Evolution of Stories Not offered 2011-12 In this course we will experiment with two interrelated and reciprocal inquiries--whether the biological concept of evolution is a useful one in understanding the phenomena of literature (in particular, the generation of new stories), and whether literature contributes to a deeper understanding of evolution. We will begin with science texts that explain and explore evolution and turn to stories that (may) have grown out of one another, asking where they come from, why new ones emerge, and why some disappear. We will consider the parallels between diversity of stories and diversity of living organisms. Lecture three hours a week. (Dalke,A., Grobstein,P. -- Division II or Division III) Cross-listed as BIOL B223 ENGL B224 Fixing Identity: Not offered 2011-12 Acquiring self-knowledge is one of the marks of a transition to adulthood. It requires gaining understanding of oneself through a complicated coalescence of talent, heritage and opportunity. We study narratives that view young adult development through the frame of ethnicity. One may want to "fix" one's identity by repairing the differences; or to "fix" it by keeping some stability in a bewildering world. Ethnicity and its matrix of interactions is a force that forms personality. (Baumli,K. -- Division III: Humanities) Cross-listed as HART B224 ENGL B225 Shakespeare Not offered 2011-12 This introduction to Shakespeare's plays will explore the Bard's language, sources, print and stage history, and cultural geography. We'll think about form and performance, race and nationhood, authority and intimacy, gender and servitude, law and land. We'll read several plays and poems, watch film adaptations, and attend a stage performance. (Rowe,K. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B229 Movies and Mass Politics Not offered 2011-12 This course will trace in the history of movie forms a series of debates about the ways that nations can become mass societies, focusing mostly on the ways that Hollywood movies countered the appeals of Communism and Fascism. (Tratner,M. -- Division III: Humanities) Cross-listed as COML B229 ENGL B230 Topics in American Drama Not offered 2011-12 Considers American plays of the 20th century, reading major playwrights of the canon alongside other dramatists who were less often read and produced. Will also study later 20th century dramatists whose plays both develop and resist the complex foundation established by canonical American playwrights and how American drama reflects and responds to cultural and political shifts. Considers how modern American identity has been constructed through dramatic performance, considering both written and performed versions of these plays. (Hemmeter,G. -- Division III: Humanities) Cross-listed as ARTT B230 ENGL B231 Modernism in Anglo-American Poetry: After Us the Savage God Not offered 2011-12 This course will familiarize students with the broad outlines of that movement in all the arts known as Modernism, and in particular, with Modernism as it was evolved in Anglo-American poetry--both from its American sources (Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams) and from its European sources (T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein). The course prepares students for ENGL 232, American Poetry Since World War II; together, these courses are intended to provide an overview of American poetry in the 20th century. (Kirchwey,K. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B233 Spenser and Milton Spring 2012 The course is equally divided between Spenser's Faerie Queene and Milton's Paradise Lost, with additional short readings from each poet's other work. (Briggs,P. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B234 Postcolonial Literature in English Not offered 2011-12 This course will survey a broad range of novels and poems written while countries were breaking free of British colonial rule. Readings will also include cultural theorists interested in defining literary issues that arise from the postcolonial situation. (Tratner,M. -- Division III: Humanities) Cross-listed as COML B234 ENGL B235 Reading Popular Culture: Freaks Fall 2011 This course traces the iconic figure of the "freak" in American culture, from 19th c. sideshows to the present. Featuring literature and films that explore "extraordinary Others", we will flesh out the ways in which our current understandings of gender, sexuality, normalcy, and race are constituted through images of "abnormality." (Schneider,S. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B237 The Dictator Novel in the Americas Spring 2012 This course examines representations of dictatorship in Latin American and Latina/o novels. We will explore the relationship between narrative form and absolute power by analyzing the literary techniques writers use to contest authoritarianism. We will compare dictator novels from the United States, the Caribbean, Central America, and the Southern Cone. Prerequisite: only for students wishing to take the course for major/minor credit in SPAN is SPAN B200/B202. (Harford Vargas,J. -- Division III: Humanities) Cross-listed as COML B237 Cross-listed as SPAN B237 ENGL B238 The History of Cinema 1895 to 1945 Silent Film: From United States to Soviet Russia and Beyond Not offered 2011-12 This course will explore cinema from its earliest, most primitive beginnings up to the end of the silent era. While the course will focus on a variety of historical and theoretical aspects of cinema, the primary aim is to look at films analytically. Emphasis will be on the various artistic methods that went into the direction and production of a variety of celebrated silent films from around the world. These films will be considered in many contexts: artistic, historical, social, and even philosophical, so that students can develop a deeper understanding of silent cinema's rapid evolution. (Harte,T., Gorfinkel,E. -- Division III: Humanities) Cross-listed as COML B238 Cross-listed as HART B238 Cross-listed as RUSS B238 ENGL B239 Women and Cinema Not offered 2011-12 This course will examine the particular challenges that women filmmakers face, as well as the unique and innovative contributions they have made to film aesthetics and narrative form. The class will address central debates within feminism from the 1970s to the present, in particular, feminism's influence on women's independent film production and the question of female authorship. (Gorfinkel,E. -- Division III: Humanities) Cross-listed as HART B239 ENGL B240 Readings in English Literature 1660-1744Section 001 (Fall 2011): Wit and Witness Fall 2011 The rise of new literary genres and the contemporary efforts to find new definitions of heroism and wit, good taste and good manners, sin and salvation, individual identity and social responsibility, and the pressure exerted by changing social, intellectual and political contexts of literature. Readings from Defoe, Dryden, early feminist writers, Pope, Restoration dramatists and Swift. (Briggs,P. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B241 Modern Drama Not offered 2011-12 A survey of modern drama from the 19th century to the present, beginning with Georg Buchner and ending with living writers. We will explore the formation of modern sensibilities in playwriting through careful study of the evolution of dramatic form and the changing relationship between written text and performance. (Lord,M. -- Division III: Humanities) Cross-listed as ARTT B241 ENGL B242 Historical Introduction to English Poetry I Not offered 2011-12 This course traces the development of English poetry from 1360 to 1700, emphasizing forms, themes, and conventions that have become part of the continuing vocabulary of poetry, and exploring the strengths and limitations of different strategies of interpretation. Featured poets: Chaucer, Jonson, Shakespeare, Donne, and Milton. (Briggs,P. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B243 Historical Introduction to English Poetry II Not offered 2011-12 The development of English poetry from 1700 to the present. This course is a continuation of ENGL 242 but can be taken independently. Featured poets: Wordsworth, Browning, Christina Rossetti, Yeats, Heaney, Walcott. (Briggs,P. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B245 Focus: "I remember Harlem" Spring 2012 A transdisciplinary study of the famous Black metropolis as a historic, geo-political, and cultural center (from the Jazz Age to the Hip Hop revolution) this course acknowledges 400 years of history and analyzes the contemporary gentrification of Harlem. We interrogate closely the seismic changes in "Harlem" as a signifier. (Beard,L. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B248 Narratives of Migration / Narratives of Border Crossing Not offered 2011-12 The borderlands between the United States and Mexico produced a culture reflecting the best and the worst of both. One sees contradictions at a glance: architectural beauty conflicting with shantytowns; local literature, film and music juxtaposed with drug dealers; a tradition of hospitality contrasted with anti-immigration activism. This course examines narratives of the borderlands, discussing the heritage of area African American, Native American and Mexican/Chicano and Anglo. (Baumli,K. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B250 Methods of Literary Study Fall 2011, Spring 2012 We will explore the power of language in a variety of linguistic, historical, disciplinary, social, and cultural contexts, focusing on the power of the written word to provide a foundational basis for the critical and creative analysis of literary studies. This course will help to broaden our ideas of what texts and language accomplish socially, historically, and aesthetically. Students will thus refine their faculties of reading closely, writing incisively and passionately, asking productive questions, producing their own compelling interpretations, and listening to the insights offered by others. Limited to sophomores and juniors. (Schneider,B., Taylor,J., Thomas,K., Beard,L. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B251 Food for Thought: Gastronomic Literatures and Philosophies Spring 2012 Through the lens of "food and text," this course will trace the philosophy of food and the history of food writing. We will study how food has been written about and how food writing has responded to and played a role in cultural change. (Thomas,K. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B252 Graphic Novels Not offered 2011-12 The primary question driving this course is relatively simple: Are "graphic novels" simply stories with fun pictures? In an effort to reach some possible answers, the course will pair readings of graphic novels with a variety of critical texts, covering a range of interpretive methods. (Liu,W. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B253 Romanticism Not offered 2011-12 Through an emphasis on Romanticism's readers, this course will explore the Romantic movement in English literature, from its roots in Enlightenment thought and the Gothic to contemporary visions of Romanticism. By reading over the shoulders of writers such as Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, and Tom Stoppard, the course will explore fiction, prose, and especially poetry of the period 1745 to 1848. While these years mark revolutions and expansion in almost every cultural sphere in Europe, America, and the Caribbean--politics, the arts, literature, and science--writers looked inward to the thoughts and passions of individuals as they never had before. (Ricketts,R. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B254 American Literature 1750-1900
Section 001 (Spring 2011): Female Subjects Not offered 2011-12 This course explores the subject, subjection, and subjectivity of women and female sexualities in U.S. literatures between the signing of the Constitution and the ratification of the 19th Amendment. While the representation of women in fiction grew and the number of female authors soared, the culture found itself at pains to define the appropriate moments for female speech and silence, action and passivity. We will engage a variety of pre-suffrage literatures that place women at the nexus of national narratives of slavery and freedom, foreignness and domesticity, wealth and power, masculinity and citizenship, and sex and race "purity." (Schneider,B. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B256 Milton and Dissent Not offered 2011-12 John Milton's epic poem, Paradise Lost, was written during a period of cultural turmoil and innovation. This renaissance poem has helped shape the way later writers understand their profession, especially their obligation to foster dissent as a readerly practice. Exploring this legacy, readings interleave Paradise Lost and Milton's political writings with responses by later revolutionary writers, from Blake to Philip Pullman. (Rowe,K. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B257 Gender and Technology Not offered 2011-12 Explores the historical role technology has played in the production of gender; the historical role gender has played in the evolution of various technologies; how the co-construction of gender and technology has been represented in a range of on-line, filmic, fictional, and critical media; and what all of the above suggest for the technological engagement of everyone in today's world. (Dalke,A., McCormack,E. -- Division III: Humanities) Cross-listed as CMSC B257 ENGL B258 Finding Knowledge Between the Leaves: 19th-Century Literature of Education Not offered 2011-12 This class will examine innovative extra-institutional methods and spaces of learning. We will explore a genealogy of unconventional and progressive models of instruction found in imaginative literature, in personal letters, and in material culture. Our readings will range from novels by Catharine Maria Sedgwick and Louisa May Alcott to poetry and letters by Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson to personal narratives by Henry David Thoreau and Booker T. Washington. (Bruder,A. -- Division I or Division III) Cross-listed as EDUC B258 ENGL B259 Victorian Literature and Culture Not offered 2011-12 Examines a broad range of Victorian poetry, prose, and fiction in the context of the cultural practices, social institutions, and critical thought of the time. Of particular interest are the revisions of gender, sexuality, class, nation, race, empire, and public and private life that occurred during this period. (Thomas,K. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B262 Survey in African American Literature Fall 2011 Pairing canonical African American fiction with theoretical, popular, and filmic texts from the late-19th Century through to the present day, we will address the ways in which the Black body, as cultural text, has come to be both constructed and consumed within the nation's imagination and our modern visual regime. (Schneider,S. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B263 Toni Morrison and the Art of Narrative Conjure Not offered 2011-12 All of Morrison's primary imaginative texts, in publication order, as well as essays by Morrison, with a series of critical lenses that explore several vantages for reading a conjured narration. (Beard,L. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B264 Black Bards: Poetry in the Diaspora Spring 2012 An interrogation of poetric utterance in works of the African diaspora, primarily in English, this course addresses a multiplicity of genres, including epic, lyric, sonnet, rap, and mimetic jazz. The development of poetic theories at key moments such as the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement will be explored. Prerequisite: Any course in poetry or African/American literature. (Beard,L. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B268 Native Soil and American Literature:1492-1900 Fall 2011 This course will consider the literature of contact and conflict between English-speaking whites and Native Americans between the years 1492 and 1920. We will focus on how these cultures understood the meaning and uses of land, and the effects of these literatures of encounter upon American land and ecology and vice-versa. Texts will include works by Native, European- and African-American writers, and may include texts by Christopher Columbus, John Smith, William Bradford, Handsome Lake, Samson Occom, Lydia Maria Child, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, John Rollin Ridge, Mark Twain, Mourning Dove, Ella Deloria and Willa Cather. (Schneider,B. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B269 Vile Bodies in Medieval Literature Not offered 2011-12 The Middle Ages imagined the physical body as the site of moral triumph and failure and as the canvas to expose social ills. The course examines medical tracts, saint's lives, poetry, theological texts, and representations of the Passion. Discussion topics range from plague and mercantilism to the legal and religious depiction of torture. Texts by Boccaccio, Chaucer, Dante, and Kempe will be supplemented with contemporary readings on trauma theory and embodiment. (Taylor,J. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B270 American Girl: Childhood in U.S. Literatures, 1690-1935
Section 001 (Spring 2012): Childhood in US Literatures, 1690-1935 Spring 2012 This course will focus on the "American Girl" as a particularly contested model for the nascent American. Through examination of religious tracts, slave and captivity narratives, literatures for children and adult literatures about childhood, we will analyze U. S. investments in girlhood as a site for national self-fashioning. (Schneider,B. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B271 House of Wits Not offered 2011-12 An extended visit with one of America's most interesting and influential families: the unruly, expansive children of Henry James, Sr. The course will focus on the remarkable writings of the diarist Alice, who became a feminist icon; the great novelist Henry; and the groundbreaking psychologist and philosopher William. (Dalke,A. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B275 Food Revolutions: History, Politics, Culture Not offered 2011-12 This course traces an arc from the industrial revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries through to the present day food crisis. We will explore the cultural, political, philosophical, ethical and ecological histories of what and how we eat, and look towards sustainable, biodiverse and local agriculture. (Werlen,H., Thomas,K. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B277 Nabokov in Translation Spring 2012 A study of Vladimir Nabokov's writings in various genres, focusing on his fiction and autobiographical works. The continuity between Nabokov's Russian and English works is considered in the context of the Russian and Western literary traditions. All readings and lectures in English. (Harte,T. -- Division III: Humanities) Cross-listed as RUSS B277 ENGL B279 Introduction to African Literature Not offered 2011-12 Taking into account the oral, written, aural and visual forms of African "texts" over several thousand years, this course will explore literary production, translation and audience/critical reception. Representative works to be studied include oral traditions, the Sundiata Epic, Chinua Achebe's Anthills of the Savannah, Ayi Kwei Armah's Fragments, Mariama Bâ's Si Longe une Lettre, Tsitsi Danga-rembga's Nervous Conditions, Bessie Head's Maru, Sembène Ousmane's Xala, plays by Wole Soyinka and his Burden of History, The Muse of Forgiveness and Ngugi wa Thiong'o's A Grain of Wheat. We will address the "transliteration" of Christian and Muslim languages and theologies in these works. (Beard,L. -- Division III: Humanities) Cross-listed as COML B279 ENGL B280 Video Practices: From Analog to Digital Not offered 2011-12 This course explores the history and theory of video art from the late 1960's to the present. The units include: aesthetics; activisim; access; performance; and institutional critique. We will reflect on early video's "utopian moment" and its manifestation in the current new media revolution. Feminist, people of color and queer productions will constitute the majority of our corpus. Prerequisite: ENGL/HART B205 Intro to Film or consent of the instructor. (Nguyen,H. -- Division III: Humanities) Cross-listed as HART B280 ENGL B284 Women Poets: Giving Eurydice a Voice Not offered 2011-12 This course covers English and American woman poets of the 19th and 20th centuries whose gender was important for their self-understanding as poets, their choice of subject matter, and the audience they sought to gain for their work. Featured poets include Elizabeth Bishop, Gwendolyn Brooks, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Lucille Clifton, H.D., Emily Dickinson, Marianne Moore, Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, Christina Rossetti, Anne Sexton, and Gertrude Stein. (Hedley,J. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B288 The Novel Not offered 2011-12 This course will explore the multi-vocal origins of the novel in English and the ways in which its rapid development parallels changes in reading, vision, thought, and self-perception. The course will trace the novel's evolution from its 17th-century beginnings in romance, spiritual autobiography, and travel literature; through its emergence as a middle-class mode of expression in the 18th century; to its period of cultural dominance in the Victorian era; and to modernist and postmodern experimentation. In studying the novel's historical, cultural, and formal dimensions, the course will discuss the significance of realism, parody, characters, authorship, and the reader. (Solomon,A., Ricketts,R. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B290 Modernisms Not offered 2011-12 Between the two world wars--1918--1939--a revolution occurred in literature that is called "Modernism." While the phenomenon was worldwide, this course will focus on the major British writers of the period, novelists Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, E.M.Forster, and poets W.H.Auden, T.S.Eliot, and William Butler Yeats. Their work is experimental, demanding, and idiosyncratic. We will strive to define what they have in common, what historical, social, and scientific developments they are responding to, and why they wrote what they did. Kipling and Smith will help us contextualize their work as a response to what came before and a major influence on much more recent work. (Tidmarsh,K. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B292 The Play of Interpretation Not offered 2011-12 Designated theory course. A study of the methodologies and regimes of interpretation in the arts, humanistic sciences, and media and cultural studies, this course focuses on common problems of text, authorship, reader/spectator, and translation in their historical and formal contexts. Literary, oral, and visual texts from different cultural traditions and histories will be studied through interpretive approaches informed by modern critical theories. Readings in literature, philosophy, popular culture, and film will illustrate how theory enhances our understanding of the complexities of history, memory, identity, and the trials of modernity. (Seyhan,A. -- Division III: Humanities) Cross-listed as COML B293 Cross-listed as PHIL B293 ENGL B293 Critical Feminist Studies: An Introduction Not offered 2011-12 Combines the study of specific literary texts with larger questions about feminist forms of theorizing. A course reader will be supplemented with three fictional texts to be selected by the class. Students will review current scholarship, identify their own stake in the conversation and define a critical question they want to pursue at length. (Dalke,A. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B299 History of Narrative Cinema Spring 2012 This course surveys the history of narrative film from 1945 through the contemporary moment. We will analyze a series of styles and national cinemas in chronological order, including Italian Neorealism, the French New Wave, and other post-war movements and genres. Viewings of canonical films will be supplemented by more recent examples of global cinema. While historical in approach, this course emphasizes the theory and criticism of the sound film, and we will consider various methodological approaches to the aesthetic, socio-political, and psychological dimensions of cinema. (King,H. -- Division III: Humanities) Cross-listed as HART B299 ENGL B309 Native American Literature Not offered 2011-12 This course focuses on late-20th-century Native literatures that attempt to remember and redress earlier histories of dispersal and genocide. We will ask how various writers with different tribal affiliations engage in discourses of humor, memory, repetition, and cultural performance to refuse, rework, or lampoon inherited constructions of the "Indian" and "Indian" history and culture. We will read fiction, film, and contemporary critical approaches to Native literatures alongside much earlier texts, including oral histories, political speeches, law, and autobiography. Readings may include works by Sherman Alexie, Diane Glancy, Thomas King, N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Gerald Vizenor. (Schneider,B. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B311 Renaissance Lyric Spring 2012 For roughly half the semester we will focus on the sonnet, a form that was domesticated in England during the sixteenth century. The other half of the course will focus on the "metaphysical" poetry of John Donne, George Herbert, and Andrew Marvell. There will be a strong component of critical and theoretical reading to contextualize the poetry, model ways of reading it, and raise questions about its social, political and religious purposes. (Hedley,J. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B314 Troilus and Criseyde Not offered 2011-12 Examines Chaucer's magisterial Troilus and Criseyde, his epic romance of love, loss, and betrayal. We will supplement sustained analysis of the poem with primary readings on free will and courtly love as well as theoretical readings on gender and sexuality and translation. We will also read Boccaccio's Il Filostrato, Robert Henryson's Testament of Cresseid and Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida. (Taylor,J.) Cross-listed as COML B314 ENGL B315 Experimental Fictions, 1675 to 1800 Not offered 2011-12 This course will examine a deliberately eclectic set of readings, mostly in prose, in order to explore different dimensions--aesthetic, social, psychological, substantive--of 18th-century creativity. Readings will range from Bunyan and Defoe to Fielding and Sterne, from Aphra Behn to William Hogarth to Frances Burney. (Briggs,P. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B322 Love and Money Not offered 2011-12 This course focuses on literary works that explore the relationship between love and money. We will seek to understand the separate and intertwined histories of these two arenas of human behavior and will read, along with literary texts, essays by influential figures in the history of economics and sexuality. The course will begin with The Merchant of Venice, proceed through Pride and Prejudice to The Great Gatsby, and end with Hollywood movies. (Tratner,M. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B324 Topics in Shakespeare: Shakespeare on Film
Section 001 (Spring 2012): Global Shakespeare Spring 2012 Films and play texts vary from year to year. The course assumes significant prior experience of Shakespearean drama and/or Renaissance drama. (Rowe,K. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B333 Lesbian Immortal Fall 2011 Lesbian literature has repeatedly figured itself in alliance with tropes of immortality and eternity. Using recent queer theory on temporality, and 19th and 20th century primary texts, we will explore topics such as: fame and noteriety; feminism and mythology; epistemes, erotics and sexual seasonality; the death drive and the uncanny; fin de siecle manias for mummies and seances. (Thomas,K. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B334 Topics in Film Studies
Section 001 (Fall 2011): Picturing the Invisible Fall 2011 This is a topics course. Content varies.
Current topic description: In what ways do film, photography, and digital media shape the space of public appearance? Who and what can be represented, who and what remain on the fringes of the visible world? To what extent are political, social, and cultural recognition predicated on the capacity to appear in photographs, on film, on television, on the internet, and in classrooms and musuems? Starting from the premise that political potential and recognition are firmly tied to the ability to appear in lensed images, we will explore topics such as 1) how invisible and marginal subjects are to be pictured, 2) how existing repertoires of images affect who and what can appear, 3) how the censorship, circulation, and exhibition of images factor into public visibility. Films may include Standard Operating Procedure, A Fire in My Belly, and others; readings include texts by Hannah Arendt, Judith Butler, and others. (King,H. -- Division III: Humanities) Cross-listed as HART B334 ENGL B336 Topics in Film Not offered 2011-12 This course examines experimental film and video from the 1930's to present. It will concentrate on the use of found footage: the reworking of existing imagery in order to generate new aesthetic frameworks and cultural meanings. Key issues to be explored include copyright, piracy, archive, activism, affect, aesthetics, interactivity and fandom. (Nguyen,H. -- Division III: Humanities) Cross-listed as HART B336 ENGL B341 Cult Genres: Camp, Kitsch, and Trash Cinema Not offered 2011-12 (Gorfinkel,E. -- Division III: Humanities) Cross-listed as HART B341 ENGL B344 After Beloved: Black Women Writers in the 21st Century Not offered 2011-12 This course focuses on fiction, poetry and drama by Black women (African and Caribbean American) published since 2000. Attendant to the diversity of aesthetic and thematic approaches in this body of literature, we will explore exploding notions of racial identity and allegiance, as well as challenges to the boundaries of genre. Prerequisites: one African or African-American literature course at the 200-level or permission of the instructor. (Solomon,A. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B345 Topics in Narrative Theory
Section 001 (Fall 2011): Theory of the Ethnic Novel Fall 2011 Narrative theory through the lens of a specific genre, period or style of writing. Recent topics include Victorian Novels and Ethnic Novels.
Current topic description: This course traces the development of the U.S. ethnic novel. We will examine novels by Native Americans, Chicana/os, and African Americans, focusing on key formal innovations in their respective traditions. We will be using - and testing -- core concepts developed by narrative theorists to understand the genre of the novel. (Harford Vargas,J.) Cross-listed as COML B345 ENGL B346 Theories of Modernism Fall 2011 This course will investigate a wide range of works that have been labeled "modernist" in order to raise the question, "Was there one modernism or were there many disparate and competing ones?" (Tratner,M. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B353 Queer Diasporas: Empire, Desire, and the Politics of Placement Spring 2012 Looking at fiction and film from the U.S. and abroad through the lenses of sexuality studies and queer theory, we will explore the ways that both current and past configurations of sexual, racial, and cultural personhood have inflected, infringed upon, and opened up spaces of local/global citizenship and belonging. Prerequisites: An introductory course in film, or GNST B290, or ENGL B250. (Schneider,S. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B354 Virginia Woolf Not offered 2011-12 Virginia Woolf has been interpreted as a feminist, a modernist, a crazy person, a resident of Bloomsbury, a victim of child abuse, a snob, a socialist, and a creation of literary and popular history. We will try out all these approaches and examine the features of our contemporary world that influence the way Woolf, her work, and her era are perceived. We will also attempt to theorize about why we favor certain interpretations over others. (Tratner,M. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B355 Performance Studies Not offered 2011-12 Introduces students to the field of performance studies, a multidisciplinary species of cultural studies which theorizes human actions as performances that both construct "culture" and resist cultural norms. Explores performance and performativity in daily life as well as in the performing arts. (Ricketts,R. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B356 Endgames: Theater of Samuel Beckett Not offered 2011-12 An exploration of Beckett's theater work conducted through both reading and practical exercises in performance techniques. Points of special interest include the monologue form of the early novels and its translation into theater, Beckett's influences (particularly silent film) and collaborations, and the relationship between the texts of the major dramatic works and the development of both modern and postmodern performance techniques. (Lord,M. -- Division III: Humanities) Cross-listed as ARTT B356 ENGL B359 Dead Presidents Not offered 2011-12 Framed by the extravagant funerals of Presidents Washington and Lincoln, this course explores the cultural importance of the figure of the President and the Presidential body, and of the 19th-century preoccupations with death and mourning, in the U.S. cultural imaginary from the Revolutionary movement through the Civil War. (Schneider,B. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B360 Women and Law in the Middle Ages Not offered 2011-12 Studies the development of legal issues that affect women, such as marriage contracts, rape legislation, prostitution regulation, and sumptuary law, including the prosecution of witches in the 14th and 15th centuries in official documents and imaginative fictions that deploy such legislation in surprising ways. Asks how texts construct and interrogate discourses of gender, sexuality, criminality, and discipline. Broadly views the overlap between legal and literary modes of analysis. Examines differences between "fact" and "fiction" and explores blurred distinctions. (Taylor,J. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B362 African American Literature: Hypercanonical Codes Not offered 2011-12 Intensive study of six 18th-21st century hypercanonical African American written and visual texts (and critical responses) with specific attention to the tradition's long use of speaking in code and in multiple registers simultaneously. Focus on language as a tool of opacity as well as transparency, translation, transliteration, invention and resistance. Previous reading required. (Beard,L. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B364 Slum Fiction Not offered 2011-12 David Simon's acclaimed television show The Wire has repeatedly been related to the Victorian novel. This course links Victorian London and 20th-century Baltimore by studying: literary relations between Dickens and Poe; slum writing; the rise of the state institution; a genealogy of serial fiction from the nineteenth century novel to television drama. (Thomas,K. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B367 Asian American Film Video and New Media Not offered 2011-12 The course explores the role of pleasure in the production, reception, and performance of Asian American identities in film, video, and the internet, taking as its focus the sexual representation of Asian Americans in works produced by Asian American artists from 1915 to present. In several units of the course, we will study graphic sexual representations, including pornographic images and sex acts some may find objectionable. Students should be prepared to engage analytically with all class material. To maintain an atmosphere of mutual respect and solidarity among the participants in the class, no auditors will be allowed. (Nguyen,H. -- Division III: Humanities) Cross-listed as HART B367 ENGL B369 Women Poets: Gwendolyn Brooks, Adrienne Rich, Sylvia Plath Not offered 2011-12 In this seminar we will be playing three poets off against each other, all of whom came of age during the 1950s. We will plot each poet's career in relation to the public and personal crises that shaped it, giving particular attention to how each poet constructed "poethood" for herself. (Hedley,J. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B372 Composing a Self: American Women's Life Writing Not offered 2011-12 Beginning with Rowlandson's 1682 captivity narrative and concluding with Kingston's The Woman Warrior, we examine how American women have constructed themselves in print. Gender, ethnicity, spirituality and sexuality inform public narratives; while letters and diaries serve as a counterweight, revealing private selves and prompting exploration of authority, authorship, history, citizenship and identity. Course includes personal life-writing and archival research in the College's Special Collections. (Bruder,A. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B374 Experimental Poetry: Form and Experience Not offered 2011-12 This course will focus on the questions of poetic experiments and their worth: What is "experimental poetry," and why would anyone want to write it? The course will focus on the histories of American experimental form in conjunction with the material conditions of class, race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. We'll seek to understand contemporary theorizations of "form" itself, and develop a deeper understanding of the larger field of poetics and poetic theory. Students will be responsible for in-class presentations, two essays (one of which contains a significant research component), and a number of short, creative assignments. (Todd,J., Liu,W. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B377 James Joyce Spring 2012 Joyce's works lend themselves particularly well to critical disagreements: he has been called the most pessimistic nihilist and the greatest optimist; a misogynist and a radical feminist; a true Catholic and a great Jewish writer; the worst of elitists and a celebrator of the common man; a fascist and a socialist; the most boring writer and the writer providing the most intense, orgasmic pleasures. We will read one novel but that journey will be broken up with forays into Joyce's earlier works. (Tratner,M. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B385 Problems in Satire Not offered 2011-12 An exploration of the methodological and theoretical underpinnings of great satire in works by Blake, Dryden, Pope, Rabelais, Smiley, Swift, Wilde, and others. (Briggs,P. -- Division III: Humanities) ENGL B387 Allegory in Theory and Practice Not offered 2011-12 Allegory and allegories, from The Play of Everyman to The Crying of Lot 49. A working knowledge of several different theories of allegory is developed; Renaissance allegories include The Faerie Queene and Pilgrim's Progress, 19th- and 20th-century allegories include The Scarlet Letter and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. (Hedley,J. -- Division III: Humanities) Cross-listed as COML B387 ENGL B388 Contemporary African Fiction Not offered 2011-12 Noting that the official colonial independence of most African countries dates back only half a century, this course focuses on the fictive experiments of the most recent decade. A few highly controversial works from the 90's serve as an introduction to very recent work. Most works are in English. To experience depth as well as breadth, there is a small cluster of works from South Africa. With novels and tales from elsewhere on the huge African continent, we will get a glimpse of "living in the present" in history and letters. (Beard,L. -- Division III: Humanities) Cross-listed as COML B388 ENGL B390 Medieval Race Spring 2012 Examines how late medieval writers understood racial, cultural, and ethnic differences, exploring how "race" can be understood as multiple systems of power that link together cultural and religious identities, the body, and performance. Focuses on medieval vocabularies and depictions of racial and cultural difference, community-formation, and "foreignness." (Taylor,J.) ENGL B398 Senior Seminar Required preparation for ENGL 399 (Senior Essay). Through weekly seminar meetings and regular writing and research assignments, students will design a senior essay topic or topics of their choice, frame exciting and practical questions about it, and develop a writing plan for its execution. Students will leave the course with a departmentally approved senior essay prospectus, an annotated bibliography on their chosen area of inquiry, and 10 pages of writing towards their senior essay. Students must pass the course to enroll in ENGL 399. (Hemmeter,G., Schneider,B.) ENGL B399 Senior Essay Supervised independent writing project required of all English majors. Students must successfully complete ENGL 398 (Senior Conference) and have their Senior Essay prospectus approved by the department before they enroll in ENGL 399. (Tidmarsh,K., Hedley,J., Briggs,P., Dalke,A., Beard,L., Tratner,M., Rowe,K., Schneider,B., Thomas,K., Harford Vargas,J.) ENGL B403 Supervised Work Advanced students may pursue independent research projects. Permission of the instructor and major adviser is required. (Dalke,A., Rowe,K.) ENGL B425 Praxis III (Schneider,B.) ENGL B701 Supervised Work Not offered 2011-12
