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2022-2023 Westminster College Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]
Course Descriptions
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Education |
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EDU 451 - Teaching in Secondary School Semester Hours: 4
This course prepares candidates seeking secondary education certification. Candidates will develop competencies in the formulation of instructional objectives, organization and evaluation of learning experiences, preparation of lesson plans, use and preparation of instructional materials, use of educational media, the development of techniques for whole-class, small group, and individual instruction, including strategies for inclusion, videotaped experiences in microteaching, methods of teaching applied to academic areas, the role of the teacher, the development of a philosophy of education, the study of the role of the professional organizations, and the ethics of the teaching profession. This course is part of the Secondary Education Teaching and Learning Laboratory. Pre-requisites: Approved all PDE Basic Skills Assessment tests and Teacher Candidacy. A practicum in a Local Education Agency is required. Personal transportation is required. PDE Stage 3: Pre-Student Teaching/Practicum: 100 hours. Graded S/U. Fall-only course.
Prerequisite: Approved all PDE Basic Skills Assessment tests and Teacher Candidacy.
When Offered: Fall Only
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EDU 452 - Student Teaching Secondary Semester Hours: 12
Student teaching is the capstone of the professional secondary education certification program. The course provides teacher candidates the opportunity to apply knowledge and skills from core education coursework, focusing on differentiated instructional practices, multiple learning environments, professional collaboration, school policies and procedures, and reflective practice. Experience includes directed activities in Local Education Agencies and on-campus seminars. Personal transportation is required. EDU 452 requires a student teaching fee in addition to the regular Westminster tuition and fees. Pre-requisites: Approved all Basic Skills Assessment tests and secondary certification teacher candidacy courses. PDE Stage 4 - Student Teaching: 16 weeks or 640 hours.
Prerequisite: Completion of all certification courses.
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EDU 499 - Experimental Course Semester Hours: 1-4
Experimental course.
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EDU 562 - PreK-8 Field Experience Semester Hours: 2
This course is an off-campus experience in PreK-8 school settings intended to provide the student with opportunities to participate with teachers and children in classrooms. For Early Childhood PreK-4/Special Education PreK-12 majors. Personal transportation is required. Graded S/U. PDE Stage 2 - Exploration: 40 hours.
Prerequisite: Must have completed at least one semester and one education course at Westminster College and have a GPA of at least 2.800.
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EDU 572 - Secondary Field Experience Semester Hours: 2
An off-campus experience in secondary schools with opportunities to participate with teachers and adolescents in grades 7-12. For secondary education minors. Prerequisites for first field experience: completed at least one semester and one education course at Westminster College and have at least a 2.8 GPA. Graded S/U. Personal transportation is required. PDE Stage 2 - Exploration: 40 hours.
Prerequisite: Prerequisites for first field experience: completed at least one semester and one education course at Westminster College and have at least a 2.8 GPA.
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EDU 590 - Field Experience/Internship Semester Hours: 1-4
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EDU 600 - Student Teaching Seminar Semester Hours: 2
The student teaching seminar is a required course that is concurrent with the student teaching semester. Its purpose is to provide opportunities for the student teacher to process the experiences that are occurring in the classroom and to strengthen professional growth. Students will assemble a senior teaching-candidate portfolio. Broad topic areas for seminars include design of instructional material, behavioral management, assessment, and professional tools for exploring the job market. Emphasis is placed on guiding students from theory to the world of the professional, practicing educator.
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EDU 610 - Advanced Topics Semester Hours: 1-4
This course serves to strengthen the understanding of family function and dynamics while critically examining issues relating to family systems, education agencies, and community organizations for education specialists in the Child and Family Studies major. Students are required to participate in weekly seminars and a chosen 140-hour field experience during the semester. Related assignments are aligned to the field experience, including an internship project which will be developed and conducted during the internship under the supervision of the on-site and college supervisors. Personal transportation is required.
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EDU 620 - Independent Study Semester Hours: 1-4
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EDU 660 - Honors Research Semester Hours: 1-4
Prerequisite: Honors status and departmental approval.
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EDU 670 - Honors Research Semester Hours: 1-4
Prerequisite: Honors status and departmental approval.
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EDU 680 - Honors Research Semester Hours: 1-4
Prerequisite: Honors status and departmental approval.
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EDU 690 - Honors Research Semester Hours: 1-4
Prerequisite: Honors status and departmental approval.
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English |
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ENG 101 - Autobiography/Biography Semester Hours: 4
What’s the difference between memoir and autobiography, between memoir and fiction? Why should we care? If Oprah doesn’t know, who does? In this course, these and other concerns will guide us through the reading of several kinds of personal life stories, as presented in at least six books, from Elie Wiesel’s Night to Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Through class participation and analytical essays, emphasis will be placed on careful reading and interpretation. We’ll read one woman’s love story–with Africa–and another ornery little girl’s fight with cancer (and she wins). The class will operate as if it were a book club with students leading some of the discussions; projects, presentations, creative and analytical written responses to the work we’ll read constitute graded work
Intellectual Perspective: HC
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ENG 102 - Children’s Literature Semester Hours: 4
The course is a survey of classic and contemporary children’s works from fairy tales to The Hunger Games. Students will analyze a variety of different children’s forms such as fables, poems, fairy tales, picture books, films, and novels with themes such as individuality, friendship, good versus evil, survival, bravery, death, acceptance, and the demands of society. Critical approaches such as historical, psychological, feminist, and Marxist theories may be discussed and applied to texts. The course will include an emphasis on cultural, racial, and social diversity.
Intellectual Perspective: HC
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ENG 104 - War Literature Semester Hours: 4
“War is all Hell.” So said the great Union Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman. Indeed, warfare, humankind’s oldest pastime, depicts the human animal in its worst light. War also, paradoxically, presents the human being with opportunities to perform amazing acts of bravery and heroism. This semester we will focus on the literature and film of the American Civil War. We will read such classics as The Red Badge of Courage and the modern novels The Killer Angels and Cold Mountain. We will also watch excerpts from Ken Burns’ series The Civil War and several feature films, including Glory, Gettysburg, and Gone With the Wind.
Intellectual Perspective: HC
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ENG 105 - Who Am I? Semester Hours: 4
Sometimes we tell our own stories because we want to figure out what our lives might mean; we want to know who we are. In this course, we’ll read memoirs and novels concerned with the problem of identity and its representation. Students will also write creatively about their own lives. Graded work will include short papers, quizzes, participation, and an essay exam. Tobias Wolff’s This Boy’s Life, Tara Westover’s Educated, and J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye are among the works we will be reading.
Cross-Listed: ART 211
Intellectual Perspective: HC
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ENG 108 - American Playwrights Semester Hours: 4
This entry-level course introduces students to significant, often groundbreaking dramas by the most acclaimed American playwrights of the twentieth century: Eugene O’Neill, Philip Barry, Lillian Hellman, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, John Guare, Sam Shepard, David Mamet, August Wilson, Paula Vogel, Tony Kushner and Lynn Nottage among others.
Intellectual Perspective: HC
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ENG 109 - The Sporting Spirit Semester Hours: 4
This course examines the literary and cinematic interpretations of sports and sporting themes. Primarily, we will study the impact of sports on modern society and look at issues of morality, ethics, and economics. We will also look at the way sports can be viewed as “metaphor for life.” We will read and view several examples of major American sports (baseball, boxing, basketball) and also take a brief view of the history of sports in America. Among the major works to be studied are Bull Durham, The Old Man and the Sea, A River Runs Through It, and Field of Dreams. We will also use Ken Burns’ series Baseball.
Cross-Listed: FS 109
Intellectual Perspective: HC
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ENG 110 - Holocaust Literature Semester Hours: 4
ENG 101 -ENG 199 Studies in English, American, world or comparative literature, or in specific literary genres and themes. Individual sections experiment with different approaches and topics. The times and a brief description of each course is provided each semester. These courses are designed primarily for non-English majors. More than one ENG 101 -ENG 199 may be taken for credit, as long as each course is different. Meets Humanity and Culture Intellectual Perspective requirement (HC).
Intellectual Perspective: HC
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ENG 111 - Women Writers Semester Hours: 4
What defines women’s writing? And how do cultural factors of gender, race, class, spirituality, and sexuality affect the representation and reception of women’s lives? In this course, we will seek answers to these and other provocative questions by exploring a broad, yet representative sampling of literature written by diverse women spanning the eighteenth- through the 21st centuries. We will pay particular attention to the ways that cultural context informs literary representations of women’s roles as mothers, daughters, partners, domestics, intellectuals, and revolutionaries; and we will explore how writers’ concerns about these roles generate experiments with literary conventions. Our overarching goal will be to study how the contents and forms of these texts work together to enrich our understanding of women’s experience in particular historical moments, including the present.
Intellectual Perspective: HC
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ENG 112 - Adaptation of Literature and Film Semester Hours: 4
Some of Hollywood’s greatest successes are adaptations of a short story, a novel or a play. Screenwriters also adapt material from true life stories, historical events and figures. This course focuses on how lines are blurred between fact and fiction, how lengthy novels are cut to maintain the author’s intent without ruining the dramatic voice of the film’s director-what goes, what stays and what changes.
Intellectual Perspective: HC
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ENG 113 - Introduction to Shakespeare Semester Hours: 4
An introductory course, designed primarily for non-English majors, in the drama and stagecraft of the undisputed Titan of English Literature, William Shakespeare. Students will analyze and discuss Shakespeare’s achievement in poetic and theatrical presentations of popular stories for the Elizabethan stage. The syllabus will draw from five to six plays, ranging from comedy to history play to tragedy to romance, and lessons will incorporate screenings of notable film, stage, and TV productions, in their entirety or choice selections.
Intellectual Perspective: HC
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ENG 114 - The Study of the Short Story Semester Hours: 4
An introductory course, designed primarily for non-English majors, in the drama and stagecraft of the undisputed Titan of English Literature, William Shakespeare. Students will analyze and discuss Shakespeare’s achievement in poetic and theatrical presentations of popular stories for the Elizabethan stage. The syllabus will draw from five to six plays, ranging from comedy to history play to tragedy to romance, and lessons will incorporate screenings of notable film, stage, and TV productions, in their entirety or choice selections.
Intellectual Perspective: HC
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ENG 116 - It’s Monstrous Semester Hours: 4
An introductory course, designed primarily for non-English majors, in the drama and stagecraft of the undisputed Titan of English Literature, William Shakespeare. Students will analyze and discuss Shakespeare’s achievement in poetic and theatrical presentations of popular stories for the Elizabethan stage. The syllabus will draw from five to six plays, ranging from comedy to history play to tragedy to romance, and lessons will incorporate screenings of notable film, stage, and TV productions, in their entirety or choice selections.
Cross-Listed: FS 116
Intellectual Perspective: HC
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ENG 119 - Arthurian Legend Semester Hours: 2
This course will explore the history behind the legend and study some Arthurian literature of Britain. Students will participate in class activities, write two papers, and present a final project. The on-campus course (2 cr.) will be followed by a three-week tour in May to Arthurian sites in England, Scotland, and Wales (2 cr.). On-campus study will prepare students to get the most from their visits to the various places related to the King Arthur legend in the UK.
Intellectual Perspective: HC
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ENG 120 - Law Literature and Film Semester Hours: 4
ENG 101 -ENG 199 Studies in English, American, world or comparative literature, or in specific literary genres and themes. Individual sections experiment with different approaches and topics. The times and a brief description of each course is provided each semester. These courses are designed primarily for non-English majors. More than one ENG 101 -ENG 199 may be taken for credit, as long as each course is different. Meets Humanity and Culture Intellectual Perspective requirement (HC).
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ENG 122 - The Study of Poetry Semester Hours: 4
ENG 101 -ENG 199 Studies in English, American, world or comparative literature, or in specific literary genres and themes. Individual sections experiment with different approaches and topics. The times and a brief description of each course is provided each semester. These courses are designed primarily for non-English majors. More than one ENG 101 -ENG 199 may be taken for credit, as long as each course is different. Meets Humanity and Culture Intellectual Perspective requirement (HC).
Intellectual Perspective: HC
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ENG 123 - Queer Literature Semester Hours: 4
ENG 101 -ENG 199 Studies in English, American, world or comparative literature, or in specific literary genres and themes. Individual sections experiment with different approaches and topics. The times and a brief description of each course is provided each semester. These courses are designed primarily for non-English majors. More than one ENG 101 -ENG 199 may be taken for credit, as long as each course is different. Meets Humanity and Culture Intellectual Perspective requirement (HC).
Cross-Listed: FS 140
Intellectual Perspective: HC
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ENG 124 - African American Drama and Film Semester Hours: 4
This class explores African-American culture, from the days of slavery to the present, through reading, discussing, and analyzing plays written by important African-American playwrights and also by examining the issues those texts and the African-American experience raise. In our discussions and various assignments, what it means to be “Black” in America will be investigated by examining the characters these writers have created, by learning about the playwrights’ lives, and also by exploring the historical climate at the time these texts were created.
Cross-Listed: THE 213 , FS 124
Intellectual Perspective: HC
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ENG 127 - British and Irish Drama Semester Hours: 4
A fascinating introduction into great theater plays for the British and Irish stage of the last 150 years, from the era of Victorian melodrama to the radical, sexy, and provocative drama of today. We shall acquaint ourselves with the landmark playwrights who have influenced the way we dramatize stories on stage, in film, and on television. They include Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, J. M. Synge, Noel Coward, John Osborne, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Caryl Churchill, Joe Orton, Marina Carr, Enda Walsh, and Martin McDonagh. Class meetings will include video selections of productions and suggested film versions to sample.
Cross-Listed: THE 214
Intellectual Perspective: HC
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ENG 128 - Freud, Fantasy, and Interpretation Semester Hours: 4
In this course we will examine Freud’s major psychoanalytic theories, first through his own writings, and then in the works of later theorists and students of culture who have applied Freud’s ideas to a stunning array of cultural phenomena, from Nazi fascism to fairy tales and contemporary cinema. We will discuss the relevance and application of psychoanalytic ideas to literary and film study, with a particular focus on the social and psychological constructions of masculinity and femininity and the impact of gender and sexual orientation on the production of cultural artifacts and, indeed, on culture itself. This course will particularly focus on the case study, which will not only include Freud’s own case studies, such as the “Wolf Man” and “Dora,” but also modern literary and film texts that were influenced by Freud’s work, such as Hitchcock’s Marnie and those that were contemporary with Freud and can be read as “case studies,” such as Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw.
Intellectual Perspective: HC
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ENG 130 - Native American Literature and Film Semester Hours: 4
ENG 101-199 Studies in English, American, world or comparative literature, or in specific literary genres and themes. Individual sections experiment with different approaches and topics. The times and a brief description of each course is provided each semester. These courses are designed primarily for non-English majors. More than one ENG 101-199 may be taken for credit, as long as each course is different. Meets Humanity and Culture Intellectual Perspective requirement (HC).
Intellectual Perspective: HC
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ENG 131 - Nature Writing Semester Hours: 4
ENG 101 -ENG 199 Studies in English, American, world or comparative literature, or in specific literary genres and themes. Individual sections experiment with different approaches and topics. The times and a brief description of each course is provided each semester. These courses are designed primarily for non-English majors. More than one ENG 101 -ENG 199 may be taken for credit, as long as each course is different. Meets Humanity and Culture Intellectual Perspective requirement (HC).
Intellectual Perspective: HC
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ENG 133 - 20th Century Literature Semester Hours: 4
Young Adult Literature has often been subsumed by Children’s Literature. Its history and development, however, are important enough to merit individual treatment. We’ll trace the history and development of YA by reading and watching old and new texts, looking for similarities and differences. Long a controversial genre, a recent New York Times poll places Young Adult books on the list of most often banned books in the United States. We’ll read to discover why these books cause such “conversation.” Are they sensational? How are they suited for young adult readers? How do they present young adults? We will also test the notion presented in a more recent column, also in the NYT, that books for adolescents “take the approach that maturity can be attained only through a severe testing of soul and self, featuring some kind of shocking ‘rite of passage.’” We’ll consider the ways that literary scholars present “evidence” about those rebellious teen years and about the teen search for identity. We’ll practice methods of research and analysis, and, most importantly, we’ll examine the ways these works of literature provide a mirror of culture.
Intellectual Perspective: HC
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ENG 136 - Classic Greek Literature and Film Semester Hours: 4
Think the guests on Jerry Springer’s show are weird? Wait until you get a load of the characters in ancient Greek literature! In this course, we’ll study several Greek tragedies, a comedy or two, and some poetry (in modern translations). In these texts, we’ll meet “upstanding” literary figures like Oedipus, who married his mother (without knowing it, of course) and killed his father; Clytemnestra, who murdered her husband Agamemnon after he had sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia so that he could fight the Trojan War; Orestes, their son, who killed Clytemnestra and her lover to avenge his father’s murder; Medea, who chopped up her brother and later killed her children to get back at her unfaithful husband; and Lysistrata, who led the Athenian women to revolt against the men by denying them … . You’ll have to finish the course to discover just what she denied them!
Cross-Listed: FS 136
Intellectual Perspective: HC
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ENG 138 - 19th Century Literature Semester Hours: 4
In addition, we’ll examine how Greek literature used the Trojan War and its aftermath to comment on the nature of war for an audience contemplating or involved in its own wars. We will also situate these important texts of classic Greek literature within their historical and social contexts and define their significance in society today.
Intellectual Perspective: HC
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ENG 142 - Fantasy, Fairytales and Folklore Semester Hours: 4
This course will examine the ways in which popular and classical literature spanning the thirteenth through the twenty-first centuries underscores the importance of fantasy, fairy tales, and folklore to Western culture. Course texts range in genre from fiction and nonfiction to poetry, drama, and film and include works by authors such as The Pearl Poet, Shakespeare, the Brothers Grimm, Dickens, Tolkien, and Rowling. Though significant time will be devoted to discussing issues of audience, the main goal of the course will be to explore how these texts use the fantasy realm to comment on very “real” social, political, and spiritual issues.
Intellectual Perspective: HC
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ENG 144 - Contemporary Literature Semester Hours: 4
In Contemporary Literature, students will read a sample of fiction and literary non-fiction, short stories and poetry. This work will be recent–written in the past 30 years and most of it within the past decade. Some authors will be familiar, if not renowned; others will be relatively unknown. Class discussion and assignments will address issues of popularity (what kind of features draw readers who read for enjoyment?) and of craft (what are these writers trying to accomplish, and how well do they do it?).
Intellectual Perspective: HC
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ENG 147 - Disability in Literature and Film Semester Hours: 4
Our course will investigate how literary and film texts have portrayed people with disabilities in ways that have shaped our understanding of what is “normal” and “abnormal” in human beings. Drawing on a selective sampling of fiction, poetry, drama, memoir, and films, the class will acquaint themselves with a range of writers and characters who cope with physical / mental impairment or developmental challenges and must forge positive perspectives on their resiliency, social identity, and self-realization. The fictional lives of characters we encounter in childhood-Quasimodo, Mad-Eye Moody, Percy Jackson, and all those sea captains (Hook, Ahab, Long John Silver!)-have imprinted themselves on our minds as indelibly as the historical figures Richard III, John Merrick, and Helen Keller. Literary and cinematic representations of disability often do a disservice to those afflicted by perpetuating false assumptions about their personhood, mythologizing their powers, or reducing them to objects of condescension or pity. In conjunction with the SED companion course “Foundations of Special Education,” we shall use London’s civic institutions and cultural offerings to determine what constitutes ethical representations of disability in art and entertainment.
Cross-Listed: FS 147
Intellectual Perspective: HC
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ENG 148 - Sexuality in Film Semester Hours: 4
ENG 101 -ENG 199 Studies in English, American, world or comparative literature, or in specific literary genres and themes. Individual sections experiment with different approaches and topics. The times and a brief description of each course is provided each semester. These courses are designed primarily for non-English majors. More than one ENG 101 -ENG 199 may be taken for credit, as long as each course is different. Meets Humanity and Culture Intellectual Perspective requirement (HC).
Cross-Listed: FS 148
Intellectual Perspective: HC
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ENG 149 - Rebels and Deviants Semester Hours: 4
This course, designed primarily for non-English majors, will focus on the eternally popular idea of the rebel and of acts of resistance as represented in Western art, literature and philosophy. The syllabus will assign a range of short and long fiction, plays, films and essays from various national traditions that depict diverse examples of the human being who cannot live by received notions of self, gender roles, and social obligations. Students will consider various dimensions of rebellion in childhood and adulthood, in the realms of politics, law and family, and in matters of spiritual and existential crisis, as emerge from class discussion and readings. Essential course questions include: When is the rebel a hero? When a fool? Are the consequences of represented rebellion triumphant or disastrous? Can rebellion be comic? What kind of impact has the canon of rebellion art had on human history? Readings will be by Brecht, Camus, Chesterton, Haare, Heller, Ibsen, Melville, Morrison, Paine, and Stevenson.
Intellectual Perspective: HC
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ENG 153 - Italy in Literature and Film Semester Hours: 2
ENG 101 -ENG 199 Studies in English, American, world or comparative literature, or in specific literary genres and themes. Individual sections experiment with different approaches and topics. The times and a brief description of each course is provided each semester. These courses are designed primarily for non-English majors. More than one ENG 101 -ENG 199 may be taken for credit, as long as each course is different. Meets Humanity and Culture Intellectual Perspective requirement (HC).
Intellectual Perspective: HC
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ENG 154 - Landscape and Literature Semester Hours: 4
English 154 examines the way writers have responded to the world-in this case specifically landscape. In poetry, fiction, and literary nonfiction, how does setting affect the story or content? “Ecology” is defined by Dictionary.com as “the branch of biology dealing with the relations and interactions between organisms and their environment, including other organisms.” In literature, we examine the same relations and interactions with different tools, perhaps, but with the same goal: to understand more about ourselves and our world. I would add that English 154 will include discussions of how we shape our world and how we are shaped by it.
Intellectual Perspective: HC
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ENG 157 - Science Fiction Semester Hours: 4
Warp speed. Wormholes. Time travel. Transporters. Androids. Aliens. Space cowboys and Saurian brandy. This is the stuff of science fiction, of future worlds and alternate universes. Syd Mead’s definition focuses our study since science fiction stories should lie within the realm of scientific possibility. (Think Captain Kirk’s communicator and then look down at your cell phone.) In this course, we’ll boldly explore what critics call the “literature of ideas,” the genre that bridges the arts and sciences, and we’ll discuss how writers have used science fiction as a vehicle for social criticism and a commentary on the human condition. We’ll be reading some of the finest science fiction ever written and watching some great film adaptations.
Intellectual Perspective: HC
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ENG 158 - Reading the Film Text Semester Hours: 4
ENG 101 -ENG 199 Studies in English, American, world or comparative literature, or in specific literary genres and themes. Individual sections experiment with different approaches and topics. The times and a brief description of each course is provided each semester. These courses are designed primarily for non-English majors. More than one ENG 101 -ENG 199 may be taken for credit, as long as each course is different. Meets Humanity and Culture Intellectual Perspective requirement (HC).
Intellectual Perspective: HC
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ENG 159 - History of the Film Text Semester Hours: 4
ENG 101 -ENG 199 Studies in English, American, world or comparative literature, or in specific literary genres and themes. Individual sections experiment with different approaches and topics. The times and a brief description of each course is provided each semester. These courses are designed primarily for non-English majors. More than one ENG 101 -ENG 199 may be taken for credit, as long as each course is different. Meets Humanity and Culture Intellectual Perspective requirement (HC).
Intellectual Perspective: HC
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ENG 160 - Magical Realism Semester Hours: 4
ENG 101 -ENG 199 Studies in English, American, world or comparative literature, or in specific literary genres and themes. Individual sections experiment with different approaches and topics. The times and a brief description of each course is provided each semester. These courses are designed primarily for non-English majors. More than one ENG 101 -ENG 199 may be taken for credit, as long as each course is different. Meets Humanity and Culture Intellectual Perspective requirement (HC).
Intellectual Perspective: HC
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ENG 161 - Family and Literature Semester Hours: 4
ENG 101 -ENG 199 Studies in English, American, world or comparative literature, or in specific literary genres and themes. Individual sections experiment with different approaches and topics. The times and a brief description of each course is provided each semester. These courses are designed primarily for non-English majors. More than one ENG 101 -ENG 199 may be taken for credit, as long as each course is different. Meets Humanity and Culture Intellectual Perspective requirement (HC).
Intellectual Perspective: HC
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ENG 162 - The Novel Semester Hours: 4
ENG 101 -ENG 199 Studies in English, American, world or comparative literature, or in specific literary genres and themes. Individual sections experiment with different approaches and topics. The times and a brief description of each course is provided each semester. These courses are designed primarily for non-English majors. More than one ENG 101 -ENG 199 may be taken for credit, as long as each course is different. Meets Humanity and Culture Intellectual Perspective requirement (HC).
Intellectual Perspective: HC
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ENG 190 - Analyzing and Interpreting Literature Semester Hours: 4
ENG 101 -ENG 199 Studies in English, American, world or comparative literature, or in specific literary genres and themes. Individual sections experiment with different approaches and topics. The times and a brief description of each course is provided each semester. These courses are designed primarily for non-English majors. More than one ENG 101 -ENG 199 may be taken for credit, as long as each course is different. Meets Humanity and Culture Intellectual Perspective requirement (HC).
Intellectual Perspective: HC
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ENG 198 - 20th Century British Fiction Semester Hours: 4
ENG 101 -ENG 199 Studies in English, American, world or comparative literature, or in specific literary genres and themes. Individual sections experiment with different approaches and topics. The times and a brief description of each course is provided each semester. These courses are designed primarily for non-English majors. More than one ENG 101 -ENG 199 may be taken for credit, as long as each course is different. Meets Humanity and Culture Intellectual Perspective requirement (HC).
Intellectual Perspective: HC
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ENG 199 - Experimental Course Semester Hours: 1-4
Experimental course.
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ENG 201 - Grammar Semester Hours: 4
A study of contemporary approaches to grammatical terminology and analysis, designed primarily for prospective elementary and secondary teachers.
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ENG 220 - Teaching Literature and Grammar Semester Hours: 4
A course in teaching secondary literature and grammar for senior English majors/secondary education minors. Students wishing to teach at the secondary school level will survey required course texts and develop strategies for teaching literature, grammar, and writing. In the process, students will share research into secondary sources in these areas. They will also design group projects and present them to their peers. This course allows future secondary English teachers to combine their experience studying texts, grammar and writing as English majors with their assignments in education courses, preparing them more completely for classroom experience.
Prerequisite: Declared English major/secondary education minor and senior standing.
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ENG 240 - Introduction to Literary Studies Semester Hours: 4
This course is designed to immerse entering English majors and minors in the materials, methods, and current issues of the discipline. Engaging in close analysis of literary texts, students complete a variety of written and oral assignments. Required of all English majors and minors. Meets Humanity and Culture Intellectual Perspective requirement (HC).
Intellectual Perspective: HC
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ENG 250 - Writing About Literature Semester Hours: 4
This course improves students’ ability to write clear, engaging, and analytical prose about a variety of literary texts. Focusing on argument and the successful integration of secondary sources into analytical essays about literature, students will have the opportunity to complete several writing assignments. Required of all English majors and minors. Meets Humanity and Cultural Intellectual Perspective requirement (HC).
Intellectual Perspective: HC
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ENG 299 - Experimental Course Semester Hours: 1-4
Experimental course.
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ENG 350 - Critical Approaches and Major Authors Semester Hours: 4
In this course, students will gain an understanding of literary criticism by studying different approaches to evaluating literature. These approaches include structuralism, feminism, Marxism, post-structuralism, psychological criticism, and cultural criticism. These approaches will be applied to the work of one or more major authors.
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ENG 399 - Experimental Course Semester Hours: 1-4
Experimental course.
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ENG 401 - Drama Criticism Semester Hours: 4
This seminar is designed to acquaint advanced literature students with the essential critical texts and theoretical ideas pertaining to Western dramatic art. Students will familiarize themselves with the major arguments on the nature and purpose of theater, as formulated by critics ranging from the Ancient Greeks to those of the modern era: most notably, Plato, Aristotle, Horace, Evanthius, Donatus, Castelvetro, Molière, Ibsen, Chekhov, Pirandello, and Brecht. Students will apply these critical ideas to representative Western masterpieces, such as Oedipus, The Girl from Andros, Othello, Tartuffe, A Doll House, The Cherry Orchard, Six Characters in Search of an Author, Mother Courage and her Children. The instructor will strive to make film versions and excerpts of some of these plays available in and out of class. Being a seminar, the course will require students to present their findings in class on a regular basis and help lead the class discussion.
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ENG 402 - Narrative Theory Semester Hours: 4
If we are not all born storytellers, we are at least all born into a world of story telling. Nurtured on narrative, we often respond less critically to this mode than to any other. This course will examine characteristics of narrative and explore the relationship between the texts and the cultural, social and political context in which they were produced
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ENG 403 - Cultural Criticism Semester Hours: 4
Cultural Criticism is slippery, hard to define, maybe because it takes in a lot of territory: Cultural Studies, Cultural Poetics, Cultural Materialism, and New Historicism. Some of these terms are even used interchangeably. (We’ll sort through that.) But, in general, when we practice cultural criticism, we think of a text as culture in action. As Charles Bressler puts it, we “blur the distinction between an artistic production and any other kind of social production and event” (217). In other words, literary texts are grounded in and inextricable from the social, political, and economic discourses of their time. Cultural critics don’t separate the text from the culture in which it was created because they believe that all texts both reflect and influence society. Society affects art, and art affects society. Therefore, as cultural critics, we’ll examine how this complex web of interrelationships, including the author, helps determine a text’s meaning and reveal the interrelatedness of all human activities. As a class, we’ll read essays by cultural critics as diverse as Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Roland Barthes, Simone de Beauvoir, Raymond Williams, Michel Foucault, Stuart Hall, Janice Radway, Edward Said, Catherine Gallagher, and William Greenblatt. As cultural critics, we will read several literary texts together, considering how these texts were formed by looking at the historical, social, political, and economic moments surrounding their production. We’ll also examine several different kinds of texts using our frame of cultural criticism-texts like toys, paintings, films. In short, by using this critical approach, we begin to see that no work of art is autonomous.
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ENG 404 - Film Criticism Semester Hours: 4
This course teaches the basic concepts and critical approaches involved in interpreting film. Some of the approaches include humanism, auteurism, genre, social science, historicism, semiology, structuralism, Marxism, and feminism. Integrating these critical approaches with the language systems of film, students will increase their own appreciation of motion pictures, intelligently discuss these texts with others, better understand what filmmakers are saying as well as how they are saying it, and analyze how film texts both influence and reflect the culture in which they are made.
Cross-Listed: FS 404
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ENG 405 - Feminism Semester Hours: 4
Feminism changed everything-relationships between men and women, how women presented and represented themselves, family life, politics, the Academy, the world. It changed how we read texts and how we write them. This is a course about transformation and change-about a movement that changed the world and all of our lives. We will look at feminism as a political movement, as well as a critical approach to reading and understanding literature. We will also look at how women and men, in literary and film texts, reflect, explore and challenge the received gender roles of their society throughout the twentieth century. We will read some of the classic texts of feminism, such as Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, as well as a number of critical essays that approach the subject from different perspectives. We will also read novels, short stories and poetry by such writers as Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, Angela Carter, Toni Morrison and Elizabeth Bishop.
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ENG 406 - Poetics Semester Hours: 4
ENG 401 -ENG 499 - These seminars study literary texts from several critical and theoretical stances. The courses help students develop strategies for assessing the ways that meaning becomes evident in texts, in readers, and in writers. In addition to reading and interpreting texts within contexts, the 400s seminars regard works through or in the light of perspectives offered by critical theories. Not only do students in these seminars complete a higher degree of creative and critical thinking, but they also participate more fully in leading the courses. The inquiry into theory, and when appropriate, its application, stresses independent assessment, peer evaluation, and assertion of ethical choices as they pertain to meaning and contexts.
Prerequisite: successful completion of ENG 240 , ENG 250 , and one ENG 300.
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ENG 407 - Autobiography/Biography Semester Hours: 4
What is the driving force behind our culture’s current obsession with memoirs? And how do modern technologies such as blogging, texting, and “facebook-ing” represent new, complicated forms of self-narration? In this service-learning course, we will seek answers to these and other questions through both traditional and experiential learning: in the classroom, we will explore how autobiographical and (to a lesser extent) biographical texts blur boundaries among categories of fiction and fact, private and public, personal and political. Texts will represent a wide range of life writing subgenres, including travel and captivity narratives, confessional autobiographies, memoirs, diaries, letters, poems, and novels. Authors may include (but are not limited to) William Wordsworth, Mark Twain, Harriet Jacobs, Jack London, Virginia Woolf, Jack Kerouac, Sandra Cisneros, Helen Fielding, and Diana Abu-Jaber. While reading these texts, students will explore technological dimensions of autobiography by forging e-mail partnerships with high school students, exchanging letters periodically throughout the semester as a means of participating in an ongoing literacy project. Through this combination of course readings and e-mail partnerships, we will explore how the authenticity of autobiography affects writer/reader relationships & enhances reading and writing practices.
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ENG 408 - Reader Response Semester Hours: 4
Our course will explore how textual strategies work on the minds of readers and how, in turn, readers bring a part of themselves to bear on textual interpretation. We will talk with each other and with readers outside of our classroom as we study concepts of emotion, perception, and memory in texts and in readers’ responses to them. Texts will span genres and will likely include Dickens’s Oliver Twist (novel + musical clips), James’s The Turn of the Screw (novella), Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense (film), Bechdel’s Fun Home (graphic novel + musical clips), and Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric (poetry).
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ENG 409 - Textual Criticism Semester Hours: 4
ENG 401 -ENG 499 - These seminars study literary texts from several critical and theoretical stances. The courses help students develop strategies for assessing the ways that meaning becomes evident in texts, in readers, and in writers. In addition to reading and interpreting texts within contexts, the 400s seminars regard works through or in the light of perspectives offered by critical theories. Not only do students in these seminars complete a higher degree of creative and critical thinking, but they also participate more fully in leading the courses. The inquiry into theory, and when appropriate, its application, stresses independent assessment, peer evaluation, and assertion of ethical choices as they pertain to meaning and contexts.
Prerequisite: successful completion of ENG 240 , ENG 250 , and one ENG 300.
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ENG 410 - Art and The Artist Semester Hours: 4
The focus of “Art and the Artist” is on the most basic-and paradoxically the most complicated- question one can ask of a text: What is the meaning of art? The critical perspective of this question is called aesthetics, a branch of philosophical and critical analysis dealing with the intrinsic question and definition of beauty and the relationship between beauty and other values, such as truth. Essential to this study is the notion that the work of art is the supreme value among human products precisely because it is self-sufficient, and has no use or moral aim outside its own being (Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms, 2-3). The course will examine several literary texts, including works by Oscar Wilde, Stephen King, Robertson Davies, and an assortment of poems by English and American authors. In addition, we will study films, such as Amadeus, The Agony and the Ecstasy, and Bright Star, which focus on art and the artistic process.
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ENG 411 - Ecocriticism Semester Hours: 4
This course will be devoted to developing a critical vocabulary and a range of methodologies for thinking, writing, and talking about the relationship between literature and the environment. We’ll work through such issues as the cultural construction of nature and/or landscape; the poetics and politics of nature writing; the idea of wilderness; land as a readable text; land as economic and spiritual resource; environmentalist politics; intersections between environmentalism and other political or theoretical movements or schools (such as feminism); “green” pedagogy; gender and nature; connections between land and community (or land and race, land and ethnicity); construction of space; definitions of terms such as “nature,” “environment,” “ecology,” “wilderness,” “landscape,” and “ecocriticism”; and the phenomenon that Yi Fu Tuan called “topophilia,” or love of place.
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ENG 412 - Shakespeare and Company Semester Hours: 4
This is a Studies in Context course that focuses on Shakespeare as both Elizabethan and as “modern.” For centuries, writers have been inspired by the Bard to create works which reflect Shakespearean themes and issues, and which sometimes even adapt actual plot lines and characters to a more contemporary setting. Filmmakers have also freely interpreted and adapted Shakespeare, producing a variety of films which create another way to understand the playwright’s style and substance. In the last few years, Kenneth Branagh has championed Shakespeare’s power and art with several film renditions of his plays (Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, and Hamlet). This course will study Shakespeare’s art in two ways. We will read several plays, and study them carefully for their structure and meaning. Then, we will view several film versions or adaptations of these works and compare the modern text with the original. The various writing assignments and projects will allow students a chance to react to the text studied and to create their own interpretations of Shakespeare.
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ENG 413 - American Landscape Semester Hours: 4
ENG 401 -ENG 499 - These seminars study literary texts from several critical and theoretical stances. The courses help students develop strategies for assessing the ways that meaning becomes evident in texts, in readers, and in writers. In addition to reading and interpreting texts within contexts, the 400s seminars regard works through or in the light of perspectives offered by critical theories. Not only do students in these seminars complete a higher degree of creative and critical thinking, but they also participate more fully in leading the courses. The inquiry into theory, and when appropriate, its application, stresses independent assessment, peer evaluation, and assertion of ethical choices as they pertain to meaning and contexts.
Prerequisite: successful completion of ENG 240 , ENG 250 , and one ENG 300.
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ENG 414 - Tragedy Semester Hours: 4
As we make small and large decisions, we face questions of identity, of limitation, and of sovereignty. Who am I? What confronts me? How much control do I have over my life? Because of the importance of these questions, I have chosen tragedy for the context of this course. I do not mean to imply that our situations are or will be tragic; rather, tragic literature explores these enigmatic questions with great profundity. Tragic literature deals thoroughly with the themes of power and empowerment. Tragic heroes and those who write in the tragic vein are in a position where they must confront themselves, where they must come to terms with the possibilities of who they are and who they can become. Like all of us, they are asked to declare themselves for at least one moment in their lives. In this course, we’ll read works by Shakespeare, Melville, Faulkner and others. We’ll also consider theory that considers the genre of tragedy. Students will write papers, create fiction, take exams, and give presentations.
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ENG 415 - John Irving Semester Hours: 4
John Irving is one of the foremost contemporary American novelists. His work is most notable for its serio-comic look at the human condition; his style can be characterized as episodic or scenic. His novels, several of which have indeed been adapted for films, often read like movie screenplays. His humor often skirts the boundaries of taste and decorum, but he never seems to fail to make his readers laugh-and also cry. This seminar will examine several of Irving’s novels, including The World According to Garp, A Prayer for Owen Meany, and The Hotel New Hampshire using a variety of critical approaches.
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ENG 416 - Gender in Literature Semester Hours: 4
ENG 401 -ENG 499 - These seminars study literary texts from several critical and theoretical stances. The courses help students develop strategies for assessing the ways that meaning becomes evident in texts, in readers, and in writers. In addition to reading and interpreting texts within contexts, the 400s seminars regard works through or in the light of perspectives offered by critical theories. Not only do students in these seminars complete a higher degree of creative and critical thinking, but they also participate more fully in leading the courses. The inquiry into theory, and when appropriate, its application, stresses independent assessment, peer evaluation, and assertion of ethical choices as they pertain to meaning and contexts.
Prerequisite: successful completion of ENG 240 , ENG 250 , and one ENG 300.
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ENG 417 - The Epic Semester Hours: 4
This course will trace the evolution of monster symbolism in classic and modern epics, in the forms of poetry and prose, as well as their film or TV adaptations. Students will analyze epics for their narrative techniques, historical and cultural significance, themes, and symbols through the lens of multiple critical theories. Course texts will include Homer’s The Odyssey, Beowulf, Haley’s Roots, a selection of epic excerpts, film adaptions of the epics studied, as well as scholarly critique of the epics. Students will be required to write a literary analysis paper, take quizzes on course content, perform an oral presentation, and create their own epic in the style of Haley’s Roots. In preparation for the writing of their own epic, students will practice their use of craft elements and refine their implementation of story structure through creative writing prompts. Students must demonstrate the ability to write and speak analytically, creatively, and coherently, in ways appropriate to the discipline, and they must display the ability to revise and improve their writing in both form and content.
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ENG 418 - Shakespeare: The History Plays Semester Hours: 4
A seminar focusing on the ten “history plays” by which Shakespeare established his name early in his career. Ranging from King John to King Henry VIII, this play series offers both a chronicle of English political events and wars (domestic and overseas) as well as a poetic interpretation of the evolving tragi-comic English national identity. Students must familiarize themselves with major figures and events in early modern British history (1200-1642) to serve as contrasting background to the literary representations of Shakespeare’s imagined national development.
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ENG 419 - Shakespeare: Tragedy Semester Hours: 4
This English major course examines Shakespeare’s four great tragedies: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth. The plays will be studied both in the context of Elizabethan England and in the context of the genre itself. Film versions of the plays will examine actual productions of the plays. Students will also read widely in Shakespeare criticism
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ENG 420 - The Victorians Semester Hours: 4
In the Victorian era-the mid to late 1800s-the sun never set on the British Empire. Evidently this abundance of daylight was good for writing, because the authors of this period are numerous, prolific, and enduring. The dominant literary form of the period is the novel, and we will choose texts from among those by Austen, Dickens, Eliot, and Hardy. Poets of the period are just as well-established within the literary canon and include Tennyson and the Brownings, Arnold and the Rossettis, and both Hopkins and Hardy. We will read a variety of their innovative and experimental verse. We will also trace the Victorian fascination with several issues-including the role of the artistic, the impact of science, the “woman question,” and the reach of empire-that continue to be significant in our era. In addition to readings and film, the course will include a study of painting, with emphasis on the Pre-Raphaelite movement.
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ENG 421 - American Fiction Since 1945 Semester Hours: 4
ENG 401 -ENG 499 - These seminars study literary texts from several critical and theoretical stances. The courses help students develop strategies for assessing the ways that meaning becomes evident in texts, in readers, and in writers. In addition to reading and interpreting texts within contexts, the 400s seminars regard works through or in the light of perspectives offered by critical theories. Not only do students in these seminars complete a higher degree of creative and critical thinking, but they also participate more fully in leading the courses. The inquiry into theory, and when appropriate, its application, stresses independent assessment, peer evaluation, and assertion of ethical choices as they pertain to meaning and contexts.
Prerequisite: successful completion of ENG 240 , ENG 250 , and one ENG 300.
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ENG 422 - Psychoanalysis, Gender, and Culture Semester Hours: 4
Freud’s theories have generated no little amount of controversy, but his ideas have changed our culture in profound ways and remain relevant today. Many terms we use in everyday language, for instance-the unconscious, sublimation, the ego, superego and id come from Freud. During the 2004 presidential campaign, for example, while giving his concession speech in Iowa, Howard Dean let out a scream that one commentator described as coming straight from the id (you can hear the scream on You Tube). Freud’s influence reaches well beyond language. As Michael Roth has recently noted, “Our notions of identity, memory, sexuality, and most generally, of meaning have been shaped in relation to-and often in opposition to-Freud’s work.” So strong was Freud’s impact on art and literature in the first half of the twentieth century both here and abroad that it is hardly possible to conceive of a discussion of many modern writers, such as D. H. Lawrence or Sylvia Plath, without some knowledge of Freud. In the early part of the twentieth century, writers and artists were reading and discussing Freud’s seminal text The Interpretation of Dreams in salons across Europe and America. The American poet Wallace Stevens read it for the first time in the 1910s when he was part of the intellectual and artistic circle of Walter Arensberg in New York. In this course we will examine Freud’s major psychoanalytic theories, first through his own writings, and then in the works of later theorists and students of culture who have applied Freud’s ideas to a stunning array of cultural phenomena, from Nazi fascism, to horror, to fairy tales and contemporary cinema. We will discuss the relevance and application of psychoanalytic ideas to literary and film study, with a particular focus on the social and psychological constructions of masculinity and femininity and the impact of gender and sexual orientation on the production of cultural artifacts and, indeed, on culture itself. In addition to such foundational Freud texts as The Interpretation of Dreams, we will also discuss Freud’s later application of psychoanalysis to society. This course will particularly focus on the case study, which will not only include Freud’s own case studies, such as the “Wolf Man” and “Dora,” but also modern literary and film texts that were influenced by Freud’s work and can be viewed as literary or film case studies. These might include H.D.’s Tribute to Freud, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night, D. H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers, Hitchcock’s Marnie, Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, and Nabokov’s Lolita.
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ENG 423 - Hemingway and Faulkner Semester Hours: 4
Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner are among the United States’ most celebrated writers. Nobel laureates and icons of the modernist era, these two writers may be most known for their easily recognizable and radically different styles that surface in everything they write. In many ways, however, they are kindred spirits in terms of theme and ambition. Consider their their Nobel Prize acceptance speeches. (Please note that Hemingway, because of illness, was not able to give his speech himself. It was delivered by the U.S. Ambassador to Sweden.) In the weeks that follow, we will consider the thematic and stylistic choices that led to these speeches by Hemingway and Faulkner.
Note: (Please note that Hemingway, because of illness, was not able to give his speech himself. It was delivered by the U.S. Ambassador to Sweden.)
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ENG 424 - Social Drama Semester Hours: 4
ENG 401 -ENG 499 - These seminars study literary texts from several critical and theoretical stances. The courses help students develop strategies for assessing the ways that meaning becomes evident in texts, in readers, and in writers. In addition to reading and interpreting texts within contexts, the 400s seminars regard works through or in the light of perspectives offered by critical theories. Not only do students in these seminars complete a higher degree of creative and critical thinking, but they also participate more fully in leading the courses. The inquiry into theory, and when appropriate, its application, stresses independent assessment, peer evaluation, and assertion of ethical choices as they pertain to meaning and contexts.
Prerequisite: successful completion of ENG 240 , ENG 250 , and one ENG 300.
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ENG 425 - Modern American Poets Semester Hours: 4
In the wake of modernism, U.S. poets have taken a wide variety of approaches to express themselves while navigating artistic, political, and social currents. Relying primarily on the poems found in The Norton Anthology of American Literature, we’ll consider works by our major poets since the end of World War II. Students will write papers and poems. In-class or take-homes exams are likely.
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ENG 426 - Medieval Literature Semester Hours: 4
In this course, we will look at several texts from the medieval period, including a selection of Anglo-Saxon poetry, writings about King Arthur, and other works by Chaucer and his contemporaries. This literature reflects a period that was at once pagan and Christian, violent and chivalric, realistic and romantic. We will study these texts within their historical and linguist context (including a look at Old English and Middle English). We will also look at some of the ways this material has evoked more contemporary imaginative responses.
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ENG 427 - Empire, Revised Semester Hours: 4
When colonies around the world gained their independence, their literatures began to express how their political, cultural and individual identities had been shaped by their experiences of colonization-by being part of the empire. Often, authors from postcolonial nations found their expression of these experiences by entering into a conversation with their literary ancestors. In other words, they wrote back … to Shakespeare, Defoe, Bronte, etc. Occasionally, these return letters have taken the form of new literary works that offered a revised, postcolonial version of an earlier story, and these are the works that we will consider. So, we’ll read Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Aimee Cesaire’s Caribbean version of the text. We’ll read Daniel DeFoe’s Robinson Crusoe and J.M. Coetzee’s Foe. We’ll take a look at Bronte’s Jane Eyre and Jean Rhys revision, The Wide Sargasso Sea. We’ll consider these texts in light of postcolonial criticism. Graded work is likely to include two shorter papers, one long paper, and a presentation.
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ENG 428 - Shakespeare Semester Hours: 4
In this seminar, upper-level English majors will deepen their familiarity with Shakespeare’s global achievement in dramatic genre (tragedy, comedy, history, romance), poetic composition, fleshed-out characterization, and theatrically effective stage presentation. Students will review the major figures and events in early modern British history to provide contexts for the works and then investigate the wide range of critical approaches to reading and deciphering the texts.
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ENG 429 - Tragic Visions Semester Hours: 4
As we make small and large decisions, we face questions of identity, of limitation, and of sovereignty. Who am I? What confronts me? What control do I have over my life? Tragic literature explores these questions with great profundity. It deals thoroughly with the themes of power and empowerment. Tragic heroes and those who write in the tragic vein are in a position where they must confront themselves, where they must come to terms with the possibilities of who they are and who they can become. Like all of us, they are asked to declare themselves for at least one moment in their lives.
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ENG 430 - Jane Austen Semester Hours: 4
The report of the accident had spread among the workmen and boatmen about the Cobb, and many were collected near them, to be useful if wanted, at any rate, to enjoy the sight of a dead young lady, nay, two dead young ladies, for it proved twice as fine as the first report.–Jane Austen, Persuasion Who said Jane Austen was a stuffy old maid with no sense of humor? Her novels are infused with her laser-sharp wit and dead-on portraits of human nature. Today, she’d be a favorite on Comedy Central. Take the passage above from her novel, Persuasion. A party of friends heads to Lyme, where Louisa Musgrove sustains a bad fall off the Cobb while trying to get Captain Wentworth to catch her. Austen’s description is dark comedy at its best-laugh-out-loud funny. As George Saintsbury put it, “In Miss Austen there is, though restrained and well-nuanced, an insatiable and ruthless delight in roasting and cutting up a fool.” We’ll spend our entire semester getting to know “Miss Austen” and her works. Make no mistake; she can be subtle and slippery, but I’m hoping you’ll come to appreciate her style, which Sir Walter Scott called that “exquisite touch, which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting, from the truth of the description and sentiment.” She was E. M. Forster’s favorite author. Virginia Woolf felt her influence. And Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita) wrote: “At first sight, Jane Austen’s manner and matter may seem to be old-fashioned, stilted, unreal. But this is a delusion to which the bad reader succumbs.” We’ll read Claire Tomalin’s biography of Austen, Austen’s novels, some of her surviving letters, and the major Austen critics. For context, we’ll study the period in which she lived and wrote and get to know a few of the other literary figures of her day. We may also take a look at one or two of the film adaptations of Austen’s novels.
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ENG 431 - The Brontes Semester Hours: 4
The past five years have been exciting ones for the Brontë sisters. In 2011, new film versions of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights premiered in theaters, and a new play, We Are Three Sisters, debuted in England. Since that time, mash-ups of Jane Eyre have flooded the market-including titles such as Jane Slayre (2010), The Madwoman Upstairs (2016), and Jane Steele (2016), to name just a few. Why this sudden surge of interest? What makes the Brontës so relevant to contemporary life? We’ll address these and other questions in this seminar as we delve into biographies, pore over letters, and read much of the fiction that this prolific family produced in mid-19th-c. England. We’ll approach the texts from a variety of critical perspectives and will also study multiple film adaptations.
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ENG 432 - Tudor Literature Semester Hours: 4
ENG 401 -ENG 499 - These seminars study literary texts from several critical and theoretical stances. The courses help students develop strategies for assessing the ways that meaning becomes evident in texts, in readers, and in writers. In addition to reading and interpreting texts within contexts, the 400s seminars regard works through or in the light of perspectives offered by critical theories. Not only do students in these seminars complete a higher degree of creative and critical thinking, but they also participate more fully in leading the courses. The inquiry into theory, and when appropriate, its application, stresses independent assessment, peer evaluation, and assertion of ethical choices as they pertain to meaning and contexts.
Prerequisite: successful completion of ENG 240 , ENG 250 , and one ENG 300.
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ENG 433 - Visiting with Writers Semester Hours: 4
Over the course of the term, several writers will be visiting our class to converse with us about their lives as readers and writers. These visitors will also be giving public readings of their work. Naturally, in advance of their visits, we will read some of these writers’ works, as well as the works of writers who may have influenced our visitors. To put our conversation into perspective, we will be reading Harold Bloom’s The Anxiety of Influence. Students working on or toward their capstone should find this course useful as they seek to understand the connection between their creative and critical endeavors. Among the writers who may be visiting our class are Michael Pearson (author of a soon to be released book of nonfiction titled Reading Life), Paula Closson Buck (author of a soon to be released novel), and Philip Terman (author of a soon to be released book of poetry titled Our Portion: New and Selected Poems). Of course, we will also draw upon the work and experience of our own faculty writers. Students can expect to write several creative pieces, a few short papers, and one long paper.
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ENG 434 - The Romantics Semester Hours: 4
As an artistic movement, romanticism is characterized by its emphasis on passion, feeling, intuition, imagination, nature, and the individual. Political rebellions of the late 18th century inspired writers, painters, and musicians. Their work demonstrates a similar optimistic belief in the individual and a quest to improve self and society. Indeed, artists emerged as leaders in this effort, with Percy Shelley calling them “the unacknowledged legislators of the World.” This course explores the Romantic Movement in British literature (with attention also given to painting and music) and the authors-including Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats-who inspired their American counterparts to transplant romanticism to the new land in the early to mid-1800s. Readings, discussion, and other assignments will increase our appreciation of artists who cultivate “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” “march to the beat of a different drummer,” “sound [their] barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world,” “feed on honey-dew,” and “drink the milk of Paradise.”
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ENG 435 - Women Writers Semester Hours: 4
ENG 401 -ENG 499 - These seminars study literary texts from several critical and theoretical stances. The courses help students develop strategies for assessing the ways that meaning becomes evident in texts, in readers, and in writers. In addition to reading and interpreting texts within contexts, the 400s seminars regard works through or in the light of perspectives offered by critical theories. Not only do students in these seminars complete a higher degree of creative and critical thinking, but they also participate more fully in leading the courses. The inquiry into theory, and when appropriate, its application, stresses independent assessment, peer evaluation, and assertion of ethical choices as they pertain to meaning and contexts.
Prerequisite: successful completion of ENG 240 , ENG 250 , and one ENG 300.
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ENG 436 - Children’s Literature Semester Hours: 4
Children’s Literature, once considered a stepchild of literary study, now receives attention because of its importance as a reflection of cultural attitudes towards childhood and children. We’ll examine changing attitudes as we read nineteenth- through twenty-first-century texts, and we’ll also look for themes and conventions that reappear. We will practice critical reading methods on illustrated books, early readers, poetry, fantasy, drama, non-fiction, and young adult fiction. To put our conversations into practice, we’ll coordinate with McGill Library in offering a weekly story hour for young children in the surrounding community.
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ENG 437 - Pan American Literature Semester Hours: 4
ENG 401 -ENG 499 - These seminars study literary texts from several critical and theoretical stances. The courses help students develop strategies for assessing the ways that meaning becomes evident in texts, in readers, and in writers. In addition to reading and interpreting texts within contexts, the 400s seminars regard works through or in the light of perspectives offered by critical theories. Not only do students in these seminars complete a higher degree of creative and critical thinking, but they also participate more fully in leading the courses. The inquiry into theory, and when appropriate, its application, stresses independent assessment, peer evaluation, and assertion of ethical choices as they pertain to meaning and contexts.
Prerequisite: successful completion of ENG 240 , ENG 250 , and one ENG 300.
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ENG 438 - Traditions Semester Hours: 4
This course examines some of the texts central to the history of English literature. The specific focus will be on literature that explores the religious concepts of sin, the devil, and salvation. Some readings and several student projects consider more contemporary views of these concepts and of the historical texts that present them. These selections and activities should help readers cope with the major challenge of most texts on the list: namely, the more remote style and vocabulary of these older works. Authors include Dante, Chaucer, Langland, Spenser, Milton, Bunyan, Blake, Browning, Graham Greene, C. S. Lewis, and Archibald MacLeish. Several films are also included.
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ENG 439 - Africian-American Literature Semester Hours: 4
ENG 401 -ENG 499 - These seminars study literary texts from several critical and theoretical stances. The courses help students develop strategies for assessing the ways that meaning becomes evident in texts, in readers, and in writers. In addition to reading and interpreting texts within contexts, the 400s seminars regard works through or in the light of perspectives offered by critical theories. Not only do students in these seminars complete a higher degree of creative and critical thinking, but they also participate more fully in leading the courses. The inquiry into theory, and when appropriate, its application, stresses independent assessment, peer evaluation, and assertion of ethical choices as they pertain to meaning and contexts.
Prerequisite: successful completion of ENG 240 , ENG 250 , and one ENG 300.
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ENG 440 - After Crusoe Semester Hours: 4
Americans are fascinated by survivor stories. So let’s look at their literary history. Daniel DeFoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe will serve as the central story in this course that considers the literary representation of castaways and survivors. Most importantly, we will look at the tendency of castaways to reconstitute their homeland’s social systems as they colonize “new” or “uncivilized” worlds. To understand this phenomenon, we will begin with Shakespeare’s castaway drama, The Tempest, which offers a seminal view of the struggle between the colonizer, Prospero, and the colonized, Caliban. Sometimes, the colonized write back. We will consider this act in at least one novel, including the South African novelist J.M. Coetzee’s novel Foe, a postcolonial revision of the Robinson Crusoe story. Finally, we will look at how the castaway or survivor story figures into modern and contemporary American culture through a consideration of films and “reality” TV.
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