English (ENGL)

An exploration of significant questions and concepts, beliefs and creative visions, theories and discoveries in English for first-year students. Although topics vary, the courses also seek to improve students' communication skills beyond the written word.

An exploration of a specific topic in English. A grade of C- or better fulfills the COLL 150 requirement. Although topics vary, the courses emphasize academic writing skills, reading and analysis of texts, and discussion. Sample topics might include the Roaring Twenties in Literature and Film; Tolkien and His Circle; Material Girls; Haunted Houses; Shakespeare and Jealousy.

An interdisciplinary course focused on the study of literature and other texts that also views these texts within their cultural or social worlds and/or relates them to the study of the natural world. Topics will vary and may include Utopia in America; Animal Dreams; Constructions of Crime. Whatever the topic, the course considers the relationship between English and the other disciplines of the liberal arts, as well as their practices and methodologies.

This course introduces students to the principal biblical narratives, their historical contexts, and the ways they have been interpreted by Western authors. Readings from the King James version of the Bible will include the major books of the Old and New Testaments. Lectures will examine the literary qualities of the biblical texts and the artistic traditions associated with them.

A survey of British literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. The course covers narrative, dramatic, and lyric poetry, including works by Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton.

A survey of British literature from 1675-1900. The course includes Augustan satire, Romantic and Victorian poetry, and the Victorian novel.

A general introduction to Shakespeare’s major poetry and plays. Students will read eight to ten plays, chosen to reflect the major periods in Shakespeare’s dramatic development, and some poetry, especially the sonnets. (It is suggested that students have previously taken English 203 or another 200-level course, or have AP credit for 210.)

An introduction to American literature through an analysis of major continuing themes, such as the meaning of freedom; literature and the environment; urban-rural dichotomies.

An introduction to important critical approaches to literature such as traditional (historical/biographical, moral/ philosophical), formalist, psychological, archetypal and feminist. (Appropriate for students intending to major in English or having AP credit for English 210.)

An introduction to a topic in literature, or in literature and another discipline, designed for non-majors.

An introduction to the study of relations between works of literature and other media. Topics may include adaptation and revision; books made into films and vice versa; literature and music or the visual arts; or storytelling in newer media including graphic novels, videogames, and electronic literature.

Workshop format emphasizes the basics of writing fiction and poetry. Class meets for one two-hour session per week. No previous writing experience is required. Open to academic freshmen and academic sophomores with priority given to academic freshmen.

An introduction to the major works of one or more celebrated, influential writers.  Subjects may include Jane Austen, Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, or Toni Morrison.  (Courses that satisfy the Single Author requirement for the English major appear at the 400 level.)

A study of a single major work whose depth and complexity reward a semester-long immersion. Subjects may include Melville’s Moby-Dick, Dickens’s David Copperfield, George Eliot’s Middlemarch, Joyce’s Ulysses, T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, Ellison’s Invisible Man, Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, or Wallace’s Infinite Jest.

An introduction to popular literature and “genre fiction.” Topics may include detective stories, Arthurian romance, Gothic and supernatural fiction, children’s fantasy literature, Westerns, science fiction/speculative fiction, or pulp fiction.

An exploration of aspects of the English language used currently. Topics may include African American English and linguistic discrimination; “standard” and “nonstandard” English(es) in American, British, and global, colonial, and imperial contexts, and their implications for culture, society, and policy; slang, jargon, new words, and new usages; obscenity and hate speech. Courses may include community-based research. Courses do not presume any previous coursework in linguistics.

This course is an introductory survey of literature from the continent of Africa. We will read selected texts (fiction, drama, and poetry) produced by African authors in the modern age, particularly from the 20th century till date. Texts to be studied are written in English or translated into English from other languages. The course will examine how the texts have attempted to capture a wide range of themes across the continent from pre-colonial era to the present. Of particular concern will be the attitude of the selected texts to various issues (colonialism, ethnicity, race, religion, culture conflict, politics, gender, class, modernity, and neo-colonialism etc.) and how the issues tend to overlap or differ at various historical moments in the texts under investigation. Theoretical and critical writings will be read alongside literary texts.

In this course students develop the skills necessary for college-level literary analysis. Students will practice close reading and critical writing informed by various interpretive models. Course readings will include four to six primary literary texts selected from different historical periods, genres, traditions, and perspectives.

This course introduces students to the principal biblical narratives, their historical contexts, and the ways they have been interpreted by Western authors. Readings from the King James version of the Bible will include the major books of the Old and New Testaments. Lectures will examine the literary qualities of the biblical texts and the artistic traditions associated with them.

This course surveys epics and romances from Ancient Greece, Classical Rome, and Medieval France, Germany, and Italy. Readings (in translation) may include Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey; Virgil’s Aeneid; selected Arthurian romances by Chrétien de Troyes; Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival; and Dante’s Inferno. Readings may also include English works in the epic and romance traditions.

An introductory study of the Old English language, including grammar, phonology, and vocabulary, through the translation and analysis of prose and poetry; collateral readings in early medieval English history and culture.

An intensive study of the text in Old English; reading of the poem’s classical, Christian, and Norse analogues, and of selected literary criticism across the history of the poem's study.

A study of selected works from the Arthurian literary tradition. Major emphasis is upon authors from the medieval period (e.g., Geoffrey of Monmouth, Chrétien de Troyes and Malory), but some attention is also given to Arthurian literature in the 19th and 20th centuries.

In-depth study of a topic in Old English literature in the original language; supplementary readings in historical and cultural contexts and literary intertexts as well as literary criticism. Prerequisite: completion of ENGL-314 or instructor approval. If there is no duplication of topic, may be repeated for credit.

A survey of selected major works and other representative examples of Old and Middle English literature, exclusive of Chaucer. The course explores the development of typical medieval attitudes and themes in a variety of literary forms and genres.

A survey of British literature between 1509, the accession of King Henry VIII, and 1625, the death of King James I. Includes poetry, drama, and prose. Major figures studied may include Thomas More, Queen Elizabeth I, Walter Raleigh, Philip Sidney, Mary Sidney, Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, Francis Bacon, and William Shakespeare (especially his poetry).

A survey of British literature between 1603, the death of Queen Elizabeth I, and 1713, the end of the War of the Spanish Succession that marked Great Britain’s emergence as a world power. Includes poetry, drama, satire, and philosophical writing. Major figures studied may include John Donne, Ben Jonson, Thomas Hobbes, Margaret Cavendish, John Milton, Andrew Marvell, the Earl of Rochester, Aphra Behn, John Locke, and John Dryden.

This course studies the remarkable flourishing of drama in Elizabethan and Jacobean England, periods characterized by their dramatic inventiveness and innovation. We will study early modern interventions into the development of the Classical genres of tragedy and comedy as well as the development of new dramatic genres, including the history play, the revenge tragedy, the dramatic epic, the masque, and the comedy of humors. Works studied may include plays by Dekker, Kyd, Marlowe, Marston, Cary, Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton, Webster, and Ford.

A survey including poetry, fiction and drama. Some attention to arts related to literature. Emphasis on comedy and satire. Major figures studied include the Earl of Rochester, Dryden, Swift, Pope, Gay, and Fielding.

A survey of British literature between 1688, the Glorious Revolution, and 1789, the outbreak of the French Revolution. Includes satire, poetry, drama, narrative fiction, essays, and philosophical writing. Major figures studied may include Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, Samuel Johnson, Thomas Gray, David Hume, Adam Smith, Frances Burney, and Olaudah Equiano.

This course studies the emergence of the novel as a literary form and a cultural force in the early modern, Enlightenment, and Romantic periods. The course draws upon authors from the British Isles, the Americas, and the European continent, and considers modes of prose fiction ranging from amatory to picaresque and sentimental to satirical. Major figures studied may include Miguel de Cervantes, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Frances Burney, Jane Austen, Walter Scott, and James Fenimore Cooper.

A survey of British literature between 1776, the outbreak of the American Revolution, and 1832, the year of the first British Reform Bill. Includes poetry, narrative fiction, and nonfiction prose. Major figures studied may include William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, Robert Burns, Jane Austen, and Felicia Hemans.

A survey of major writers during the reign of Victoria. Emphasis is on social and intellectual issues as expressed primarily by leading poets and essayists from Carlyle to Hardy.

Novels by Charlotte and Emily Bronte, Dickens, Trollope, Gaskell, Eliot and Hardy are studied as primary examples of the nature and development of the English novel during the Victorian period.

A study of selected novels written mostly by authors who are not Anglo-American. Focus of readings will vary from year to year (e.g., history of the genre; 19th-century Europe; postcolonialism).

This course considers how the literature of the British Isles reacted to the dramatic events of the first half of the twentieth century, including two world wars, the loss of empire (and partial independence for Ireland), struggles over extending the franchise (especially for women), the rise of mass communications. We will consider how a consciously new modernist literature responded to these developments and how older literary forms were modified for a changing world.

Reading, analysis, and discussion of British, Irish, and American fiction writers from the end of the Victorian era through the 1950s. The class will explore the development of modernist fiction writing in the first half of the twentieth century as well as the ways that modernist form and thematic preoccupations affected other styles of writing in the twentieth century.

Development of modern British, Irish, and American poetry from transitional poets Hopkins and Hardy through the first generation modernist poets and the Harlem Renaissance.

Development of British, Irish, and American poetry published before and after World War II. Special focus on the way aesthetic and ideological movements at the beginning of the 20th century influenced such poets as W.H. Auden, Theodore Roethke, Dylan Thomas, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, Gwendolyn Brooks, Philip Larkin, and Allen Ginsberg.

Development of British, Irish, and American poetry published during and after the 1960s. Special focus on the way socio-political events during the 1960s influenced the work of such poets as Sylvia Plath, James Wright, Seamus Heaney, Mary Oliver, Sharon Olds, Louise Glück, Lucille Clifton, Yusef Komunyakaa, Rita Dove, Cathy Song, and Sherman Alexie.

International survey of European and American drama from Ibsen to Beckett, Baraka, and Pinter (among others), from the advent of theatrical naturalism in the 1870s to the post-WWII experiments classed under the Absurd and new forms of political drama in the 1960s.

Survey of modern and contemporary drama that examines textual and performative representations of Being. Students read plays by Sartre, Genet, Ionesco, Beckett, Weiss, Baraka, Soyinka, Shange, Churchill, and Kushner, in conjunction with critical readings on artistic and philosophical movements.

This course studies the cultural productions of settler, indigenous, and enslaved Americans in response to European contact and colonization, imperial expansion, and early national independence. The course considers historical accounts and reportage, philosophical and theological polemics, legends, essays, poetry, drama, and fiction. Major figures studied may include John Smith, Anne Bradstreet, Jonathan Edwards, Benjamin Franklin, Phillis Wheatley Peters, Washington Irving, and Black Hawk.

Literatures of American Nationalism and the Crisis of Slavery examines the ways in which U.S. authors from different backgrounds, genders, ethnicities, and points of view created and debated an “American" identity in the decades leading up to the Civil War. We will be putting these authors in conversation with each other as they seek, in ways conventional and radical, to narratively construct a nation they could be proud to—or in some cases, allowed to—live in. This course satisfies the Constructions of Race requirement for the English major.

A survey of American literature from the end of the Civil War to the First World War, tracking the many transformations and debates in American literary culture. Writers may include Charles Chesnutt, Theodore Dreiser, Pauline Hopkins, Henry James, Zitkala-Sa, Mark Twain, and Edith Wharton.

A study of modern American writing from the early teens, through and beyond the two world wars. Literary and social movements covered may include Imagism, the “Lost Generation” writers, the Harlem Renaissance, 1930s Proletarian literature, and the counter-cultures of the 1950s and 60s.

Survey of Black American literature and thought from the colonial period through the era of Booker T. Washington, focusing on the ways in which developing African American literature met the challenges posed successively by slavery, abolition, and emancipation.

Readings in African American literature from the 1940s to 2000. Issues addressed may include the Civil Rights Movement, black feminism, pan-Africanism, and postcolonialism. Writers may include Richard Wright, Ann Petry, James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, Audre Lorde, and Toni Morrison (Cross listed with AFST 366.)

This course will focus on literary experiments of the latter half of the twentieth century, particularly as they respond to the moral, cultural, and philosophical impasses of “late capitalism,” the Cold War, the nuclear age, and identity politics. We will consider why writers may have turned to self-reflexive, hyper-ironic, and fragmented narrative modes in response to the so-called “end of history.” Representative authors might include William Burroughs, Thomas Pynchon, Kathy Acker, Ishmael Reed, Julio Cortázar, Italo Calvino, Angela Carter, Don Delillo, and Haruki Murakami.

Advanced study of a specific topic in American literature.

The main focus of this course is on living authors and current literary practices. Topics may include particular genres of writing (contemporary fiction, poetry, drama) or cut across genres to address particular thematic concerns (such as posthumanist literature, Afrofuturism, or writing addressing new modes of global interconnection). If there is no duplication of topic, this course may be repeated once for credit.

In-depth study of a specific topic from within or across the traditional historical periods of British or American literature. If there is no duplication of topic, may be repeated for credit. 400-level: Thematic and theoretical courses in literature; single-author courses, senior research seminars, independent studies, and honors classes

In-depth study of a specific topic within or across the medieval, Renaissance, and early modern periods of English and world literature. If there is no duplication of topic, may be repeated for credit.

In-depth study of a specific topic within or across the 18th-century, Romantic, and Victorian periods of British and world literature. If there is no duplication of topic, may be repeated for credit.

In-depth study of a specific topic within or across the early to 19th century periods of American and world literature. If there is no duplication of topic, may be repeated for credit.

In-depth study of a specific topic within or across the modern and contemporary periods of American, British and world literature. If there is no duplication of topic, may be repeated for credit.

Topics in theory, exploring questions of aesthetics, the history of the study of literature, literature’s function as representation, its relationship to the world and to other disciplines. Topics vary but may include contemporary literary theory, psychoanalysis, and postmodernism.

A study of the major attempts to identify and define the nature of literature, our responses to it and its relation to life and to the other arts. The emphasis is on modern and contemporary literary theory, but with some concern for the historical tradition.

Exploration of the intersections among written, visual, and/ or performing arts. Topics vary from semester to semester but may include Shakespeare and Film, art and literature of the Harlem Renaissance, and race, representation, and arts in the U.S. South.

Study of fiction, non-fiction, and/or poetry by selected women writers. Topics vary from semester to semester but may include British women writers, medieval women writers, contemporary women writers.

This course examines the fiction and non-fiction of writers such Gwendolyn Brooks, Toni Morrison, Adrienne Kennedy, Alice Walker, Lorraine Hansbury, June Jordon, Maya Angelou, and Octavia Butler. Attention to black feminist/ womanist and vernacular theoretical issues through selected critical readings.

Courses that address literary and/or theoretical treatments of gender and sexuality. Topics vary from semester to semester and may include issues such as sexual identity, queer theory, feminist criticism, masculinity studies and literature and the formation of sexual identity.

A study of the homosexual tradition and the formation of sexual identity in 19th-20th-century British and American literature. Authors read include Oscar Wilde, E. M. Forster, Willa Cather, Thomas Mann, Christopher Isherwood, Sigmund Freud and Michel Foucault.

Women have had emotional, romantic, erotic, sexual feelings for other women for centuries - probably for millennia. This course will focus mostly on literary expressions and explorations of lesbian feelings, habits, and lives; but we will also be reading some medical, legal and other kinds of cultural texts. Throughout this course, our assumption will be that sexual identities cannot be understood separately from racial and ethnic identities, and we will explore the ways in which sexuality and race intersect in literary constructions of lesbian experience.

Study of literature focusing on changing cultural definitions of race, ethnic identity, and the shaping of (and rationale for) national literatures. Topics will vary but may include comparative and cross-cultural studies.

In-depth study of a single author or auteur. Topics vary from semester to semester but may include Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, William Faulkner, Oscar Wilde, Orson Welles.

In this course we will study the career of Jane Austen (1775-1817), one of the world’s greatest novelists. Proceeding chronologically, we’ll concentrate on Austen’s six major novels, but we’ll also read some of her letters, juvenilia and unfinished pieces of fiction. The main goal of the course is to enhance students’ appreciation and understanding of Austen’s development through close reading of her works. In class discussions and in both formal and informal writing assignments, students will analyze the relationships between on the one hand, the language, structure and form of the novels and on the other hand, themes such as family dynamics, courtship, education, politeness, and psychological growth. We’ll also pay attention to various contexts that illuminate Austen’s stylistic and thematic choices and strategies, approaching Austen’s works in terms of biography, British history, and the development of the genre of the novel, as well as recent scholarly criticism. In addition, we’ll extend the pleasures and intellectual rewards of studying Austen by discussing various screen adaptations of her novels.

In this course, students study selections from Geoffrey Chaucer’s works (among them The Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Criseyde, The Book of the Duchess, and shorter lyrics) in order to appreciate his literary artistry and gain a better understanding of the Middle Ages.

An in-depth study of Shakespeare’s plays, with individual topic to be set by the instructor. Topics may be organized around genre (e.g. Shakespeare’s Tragedies, Comedies, Histories or Problem Plays) or theme (e.g. Shakespeare and Race, Shakespeare’s Women, Shakespeare’s Rome, Shakespeare’s Language). If there is no duplication of topic, course may be repeated once for credit.

Study of colonialism and post-colonialism in literature and cultural contexts ranging from the early modern period to the contemporary moment. Topics vary but may include literary representations of nationalism, transnationalism, diaspora, displacement, identity politics, and political activism in metropole and colony. If there is no duplication of topic, may be repeated for credit.

John Milton’s career spanned a highly tumultuous period of English history that includes the Civil Wars, the period of the Commonwealth, and the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660. A poet and a polemicist, Milton was actively engaged in the many social, political and theological debates that shaped this period of English history. In this course we will study Milton’s major poetic and prose works, with emphasis given to the epic Paradise Lost and its various political, theological and literary contexts.

Exploration of a topic in literature, language, or in the relations between English and other disciplines. If there is no duplication of topic, may be repeated for credit.

Study in depth of a specialized literary topic. Students write and present research papers for critical discussion. Prerequisite: ENGL 250 or instructor permission. If there is no duplication of topic, may be repeated for credit.

A tutorial on a topic agreed upon by the student and instructor and approved in advance by the departmental Undergraduate Program Committee. Normally open only to majors who have completed at least 18 credits towards the major.

Collaborative labs focused on ongoing primary research topics in various literary subjects, often in book history topics and often with digital humanities elements. May be repeated for credit. No more than 6 credits of ENGL 481 may be counted toward the 36 credits required for the English Major; no more than 3 credits of ENGL 481 may be counted toward the 21 credits required for the English Minor. Enrollment by permission of instructor.

A one-credit course that involves individuated work with the director of English Honors and that includes weekly assignments oriented to the generation of a workable thesis topic under the direction of a thesis advisor; the refining the project’s parameters; familiarity with existing research on topics relating to the thesis; identification of appropriate methodologies and/or theories relevant to the project; and the creation of a project bibliography, all culminating in a thesis proposal to be reviewed by the English Honors committee. Restricted to juniors admitted by the departmental Honors Committee.

Honors study in English comprises (a) supervised reading in the field of the student’s major interest; (b) presentation two weeks before the last day of classes of the student’s graduating semester of an Honors essay or a creative writing project upon a topic approved by the departmental Honors Committee; and (c) oral examination in the field of the students major interest. Students who have not completed ENGL 494 may be admitted only under exceptional circumstances. Creative Writing Honors students may substitute for ENGL 494 either three 300- and/or 400-level Creative Writing courses, or two 300- and/or 400-level Creative Writing courses and a Creative Writing Independent Study (the project of the Independent Study must be different from the proposed Honors project). These three courses must be completed by the end of the junior year. Students not taking ENGL 494 need to take ENGL 475 by the end of the senior year. Creative Writing Honors involves the completion of a sustained project in creative writing.

Honors study in English comprises (a) supervised reading in the field of the student’s major interest; (b) presentation two weeks before the last day of classes of the student’s graduating semester of an Honors essay or a creative writing project upon a topic approved by the departmental Honors Committee; and (c) oral examination in the field of the students major interest. Students who have not completed ENGL 494 may be admitted only under exceptional circumstances. Creative Writing Honors students may substitute for ENGL 494 either three 300- and/or 400-level Creative Writing courses, or two 300- and/or 400-level Creative Writing courses and a Creative Writing Independent Study (the project of the Independent Study must be different from the proposed Honors project). These three courses must be completed by the end of the junior year. Students not taking ENGL 494 need to take ENGL 475 by the end of the senior year. Creative Writing Honors involves the completion of a sustained project in creative writing.

Must be approved in advance on a case-by-case basis by the departmental Undergraduate Program Committee and the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Studies. Normally open only to majors who have completed at least 18 credits towards the major.