Spring 2014 Course Offerings

ENGL 1000 Dean's Seminar

1000.10 Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man 
Miller
MW 12:45-2:00 CRN 94356

1000.11 Imitations 
Shore
TR 11:10-12:25 CRN 95996

1000.12 The Assassination of Lincoln 
Mallon
MW 2:20-3:35 CRN 95461

In this seminar, students will examine the immediate historical context of Abraham Lincoln's murder, and use the assassination as a window through which to observe various aspects of 19th-century American culture. These will include theatrical taste, portrait photography, historical painting, and literary elegy. Visits to Ford's Theatre and other sites associated with Lincoln's murder will allow students to see the assassination as a part of local history. In addition, we will work at developing critical perspectives on the long-term effects of the assassination on American political psychology, including ideas about martyrdom and conspiracy. Students will write several short papers and sit for both midterm and final examinations.

1000 MV Shakespeare's Others 
Mehdizadeh
WF 1:00-2:15 CRN 94357

Opened in 1599 by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, the Globe Theatre was the famous playhouse where Shakespeare’s plays were performed. Its name reflects the various settings his characters traverse in his plays, more than half of which take theatergoers across geographical borders into the farthest reaches of the earth. Whether within the trading circles of the Merchant’s Venice, the garrisons of Othello’s Cyprus, or the magical realm of Prospero’s New World, Shakespeare’s characters find themselves within new boundaries and among new peoples. Despite the imagined journeys the characters and the audience take, however, it is unlikely that the playwright ever left his native England. His accounts of “the other” – of those who exist beyond familiar boundaries of race, gender, class, and physical ability – were largely based on classical literature, historical narratives, contemporaneous travelogues, and his own imagination. Though these figures of otherness are cast to the margins of society, their stories are complicated and compelling. The goal of this course will be to bring those bodies, places, objects, and ideas to the center of our discussions by engaging in a close reading of three of Shakespeare’s plays: The Merchant of Venice, Othello, and The Tempest. How do the works of Shakespeare contend with someone or something different from the self? How do these “othered” bodies and objects move within and beyond the boundaries of geographical and theatrical space? And how do these stories adapt over time?


ENGL 1210 Intro to Creative Writing

1210.10GarrattTR 12:45-2:00 CRN 93343
1210.11CloseTR 12:45-2:00 CRN 93344
1210.12SaalfeldTR 9:35-10:50 CRN 93345
1210.13PageWF 2:20-3:35 CRN 93346
1210.14HamburgerM 2:20-3:35 W 3:35-5:00 CRN 93347
1210.15LevineMW 4:45-6:00 CRN 93348
1210.16CarrilloTR 9:35-10:50 CRN 93349
1210.17PayneTR 11:10-12:25 CRN 93350
1210.18PollackMW 12:45-2:00 CRN 93351
1210.19TBATR 2:20-3:35 CRN 93504
1210.20Von EuwTR 9:35-10:50 CRN 93522
1210.21TrainerTR 8:00-9:15 CRN 97559
1210 MVMajanjaMW 11:30-12:45CRN 93352
1210 MV1MartinTR 1:00-2:15 CRN 93353

ENGL 1320W Literature of the Americas

1320W.10 
Kentoff
MW 2:20-3:35 CRN 96853


ENGL 1330W Myths of Britain

1330W.10 
Cohen
TR 12:45-2:00 CRN 96854

This course satisfies the WID requirement.

Much great English literature turns out not to be so English after all: the action of the epic Beowulf unfolds in Scandinavia; King Arthur was a Welsh king before he was an English one; Shakespeare's Tempest takes place on an island in the Mediterranean, but the play is also about the colonization of the New World. "Myths of Britain" looks at early English literature within a transnational frame. Students will enjoy literary works like Seamus Heaney's version of Beowulf; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; Marie de France's tales of adventure and transformation; and two Shakespeare plays. We will also read some lesser known texts that beautifully stress the turbulent multiculturalism of medieval England. Course is taught as a seminar and is writing intensive, stressing learning through close reading and revision.


ENGL 1410W Intro to English Literature

1410W.10
Russell
TR 12:45-2:00 CRN 92732

1410W.11
Francis
TR 11:10-12:25 CRN 94049


ENGL 1411W Intro to English Literature

1411W.10CarterTR 12:45-2:00 CRN 92733
1411W.11TBAMW 2:20-3:35 CRN 94050
1411W.12BristerMW 9:35-10:50 CRN 94151
1411W MVRavyTR 11:30-12:45 CRN 94152

ENGL 1510W Intro to American Literature

1510W.10 
Gil’Adi
MW 2:20-3:35 CRN 92593


ENGL 1511W Intro to American Literature

1511W.10ClarkeMW 12:45-2:00 CRN 92735
1511W.11MorelandTR 2:20-3:35 CRN 93577
1511W.12PittmanTR 9:35-10:50 CRN 9577

ENGL 1611 Intro to Black American Literature

1611.10 
James
TR 4:45-6:00 CRN 96855


ENGL 1711W Intro Postcolonial Literature & Film

1711W.10 
Goswami
TR 11:10-12:25 CRN 92736


ENGL 1840W Comedy

1840W.10
Carter
TR 9:35-10:50 CRN 92734


ENGL 2240 Play Analysis

2240.80 
Stokes
TR 12:45-2:00 CRN 92091


ENGL 2250 Dramatic Writing

2250.80
Calarco
M 3:40-6:10 CRN 93359

2250.81 
Calarco
W 3:30-6:00 CRN 95463


ENGL 2460 Fiction Writing

2460.10MoskowitzTR 9:35-10:50 CRN 93354
2460.11CloseTR 2:20-3:35 CRN 93355
2460.12BayardMW 12:45-2:00 CRN 93356

ENGL 2470 Poetry Writing

2470.10 
Chang
TR 12:45-2:00 CRN 93357

2470.11 
Brown
TR 4:45-6:00 CRN 93358


ENGL 2560 Intermediate Fiction Writing

2560.10
Carrillo
TR 11:10-12:25 CRN 93360


ENGL 2570 Intermediate Poetry Writing

2570.10 
McAleavey
TR 9:35-10:50 CRN 93417


ENGL 2800W Critical Methods

2800W.10
DeWisperlare
MW 3:45-5:00 CRN 94825

This survey course introduces students to argumentative writings that are commonly grouped under the hybrid heading “literary theory and cultural criticism.” On one level, this is a course in the history of ideas. One can even say that it is a course in the history of one very persistent and knotty philosophical problem: what, if any, is the nature of the relationship between “representation” and “reality?” Put another way, what if any amount of “truth” can be located in the artistic, linguistic, and especially literary representations that we make of individuals, communities, or the world? Some more specific versions of this question include: does language bear any relationship to the reality it purports to describe? Is there some “engine” or “spirit” (cf. Marx and Hegel) at the heart of culture that generates art independent of any one artist’s intentions? Do cultural representations of specific groups of people have a mooring in reality, or do that create the reality they purport to describe? Is the very idea of objective reality a misleading fantasy? We will discuss these and other questions in this class, and students will gain familiarity with trenchant answers as proposed by thinkers from Plato to the Postmodernists.

On another level, this is a course in specific methods that are often deployed in advanced literary and cultural criticism. Students will gain fluency in the terminology and conceptual frameworks associated with idealism, materialism, Marxist criticism, psychoanalytic criticism, structuralism, post-structuralism, post-colonialism, new historicism as well as critical race, sex, gender, and disability studies. By mastering the basic contours of these diverse ways of interpreting artistic and cultural phenomena, students will be equipped to pursue more advanced courses in literature, philosophy, history, cultural studies, and even political theory. In terms of literature in particular, we will also talk at length about advanced conceptions of form, genre, language, and aesthetics.

This course asks that students engage with readings that are short but frequently quite difficult, both linguistically and conceptually. In addition to the texts on criticism, we will also be reading two works of fiction on which students will demo their new critical knowledge. This is a WID course, and so students will also do a fair amount of argumentative writing and revision. Take heart, by supporting each other and working as a group, you will find that the reading and writing are manageable and that there are great intellectual payoffs.

2800W.11
Lopez
TR 11:10-12:25 CRN 95800


ENGL 3250 Intermediate Dramatic Writing

3250.80
Griffith
M 3:30-6:00 CRN 93362


ENGL 3370 Advanced Poetry Writing

3370.10 
Shore
TR 12:45-2:00 CRN 97053


ENGL 3380 Creative Writing Workshop

3380.10 Creative Nonfiction
McCloskey
TR 2:20-3:35 CRN 96131


ENGL 3390 Special Topics: Creative Writing

3390.10 
Jones
MW 2:20-3:35 CRN 93856

3390.80 Advanced Screenwriting
Stern
W 3:30-6:00 CRN 94842


ENGL 3420 Medieval Literature

3420.10
Cohen
TR 9:35-10:50 CRN 95465

This course surveys some works by medieval authors, from classics like Beowulf and the Song of Roland to little-known texts like Gerald of Wales's musings on what it means to be a child of mixed race. Topics include cultural conflict; the mutability of human identities; the function of monsters; the power of heroism; chivalry and violence; the emergence of a united England and the myths that sustained the nation; the Crusades and the representation of Jews and Muslims; women and writing; the trauma of conquest; myths of Arthur. The course examines rich and enjoyable texts within their historical contexts, often as a means of challenging some contemporary assumptions about the Middle Ages.

Requirements:

  • class attendance and participation (every class you miss affects your grade; missing more than two classes means that you have failed the course)
  • weekly reading quizzes
  • 3 short writing assignments
  • 12 page analytical paper
  • final examination

ENGL 3441 Shakespeare

3441.10 Shakespeare Made Strange
Thompson
TR 11:10-12:25 CRN 90852

This class will explore three of Shakespeare’s most famous plays along with four of his least read and performed works in order to think about how we encounter “Shakespeare” and how the man, the myth, and the collected body of work might still be strange. Thus, we will explore the history of editing Shakespeare, the history of Shakespearean canon formation, and early 21st century performance trends. In addition, we will think about Shakespeare’s canon in relation to the disparate experiences of reading, seeing, and performing his dramatic works.

3441.11
Wood
MW 12:45-2:00 CRN 93363


ENGL 3450 Topics in Shakespeare Studies

3450.10 Shakespearean England 
Huang
T 6:10-8:40 CRN 96856

This course introduces students to the multicultural world Shakespeare lived in and portrayed in his comedies, tragedies, and history plays. In particular, the course examines the themes of mercantile and diplomatic exploration, exile, and social mobility. There is a faculty-led 10-day study trip to Stratford-upon-Avon and London during the spring break, which is subsidized for Dean's Scholars in Shakespeare, but all students are welcome. Contact Professor Huang ([email protected]) for details.


ENGL 3460 Milton

3460.10
Wood
WF 9:35-10:50 CRN 95466


ENGL 3481W The Eighteenth Century

3481W.10The Self in the Public Sphere
Seavey
MW 3:45-5:00 CRN 92889

As an age of political and intellectual revolutions begins to break out, writers in the Eighteenth Century move to identify the self’s tenuous position in relation to society in essays, fiction, drama, and poetry. It is a story extending beyond Britain to France and the new United States. Narratives of social complication, self-discovery, cultural variation, and class consciousness appear to herald the coming of a newly modern world. Writers consist of Defoe, Sheridan, Fielding, Voltaire, Johnson, Laclos, and Foster.


ENGL 3490W Early American Literature & Culture

3490W.10
Seavey
MW 2:20-3:35 CRN 94360

A brave new world separated by the ocean from other regions, early America posed considerable interpretive challenges for writers between the early seventeenth century and 1800. It might serve as a refuge for Puritans and other adventurers. The indigenous inhabitants of this multicultural gumbo of a place greeted those who arrived with a mixture of diplomatic caution, acceptance, and hostility. The physical world of the new world offered a level of variety and novelty unfamiliar to European settlers. Eventually the advent of political independence for part of British America required adaptation into new social practices which would bpth derive from and depart from English practice. Writers treated include Shakespeare, Montaigne, Hakluyt, Las Casas, Bradford, Winthrop, Sewall, Saffin, Pain, Franklin, Crevecoeur, Wheatley, Bartram, and Jefferson.


ENGL 3510 Children's Literature

3510.10
Goswami
TR 12:45-2:00 CRN 96857

The primary objective of this course is to become familiar with the kinds of literature available for children and young adults. We will focus on nineteenth- and early twentieth century classics central to the development of children’s literature as well as more contemporary works. We will read representative works by Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, Rudyard Kipling, Beatrix Potter, J.K. Rowling, Lois Lowry, Maurice Sendak, Louis Sachar, and others.


ENGL 3530 The Romantic Movement

3530.10
DeWispelare
MW 2:20-3:35 CRN 95467

Among other things, the Romantic period in British Literature (roughly 1775-1832) featured a booming publishing industry, an increasingly literate population, dramatic urbanization, robust colonial expansion, sustained warfare, and evolving definitions of the English nation and British empire. Our survey of texts will take a global view and try to cover examples of anglophone literature as it was produced under these social conditions and in all of Great Britain’s constituent parts: Ireland, Wales, Scotland, India, the Caribbean, as well as provincial and metropolitan England. We will notice that writers of this period pioneered literary developments that, when put into historical context, feel decidedly contemporary to a reader in 2012. Indeed, the course’s implicit argument is that not only does the contemporary world help us understand the Romantic period, the Romantic period helps us understand the globalized present.

In particular, we will focus on an interesting and enduring tendency in anglophone literature of this time: as the “Empire of English” grew bigger and more complex, writers became increasingly interested in the distinguishing features of individual and community identity. In keeping with this, there emerged new textual strategies for conveying historical, ethnic, regional, national, and class authenticity even while the growth of empire produced some culturally homogenizing forces as well—national press organs, standardized language forms, regularized pedagogies, and modern state bureaucracy to name just a few. Literary tropes that resisted cultural homogeneity became very popular: “provincial” and “rustic” themes, widespread excitement for dialect and cultural localism, worried recognition of the individual’s isolation and alienation, and intense interest in unique and solitary inspiration from nature’s inimitable sublimity. Simulating heterogeneous authenticity gradually came to define authorship, and authors responded to market demands for authenticity by reinventing genres, literary norms, and evaluative criteria. This irrepressible drive for representing authenticity in language was so new and powerful that when Charles Dickens published his first novel in 1837, a definition of the author had developed which included the ability to reproduce in language realistic details of diverse subjects, spaces, and times.


ENGL 3541 Victorian Literature, 1865-1900

3541.10
Carter
MW 12:45-2:00 CRN 90662

This course on the period 1865-1910 tracks the development of modernism and the critique of “Victorianism” from deep in the Victorian period. We study not only major British writers—Swinburne, Pater, Oscar Wilde, and Thomas Hardy—but also powerful continental figures—Baudelaire, Nietzsche and Proust--whose achievements intersect with and complement those of their British counterparts. The death of God and the development of aestheticism are two themes among others that we trace. Representative texts: The Importance of Being Ernest, Swann's Way, Flowers of Evil, The Renaissance, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, The Gay Science, Flowers of Evil.


ENGL 3570 19th-Century Black Literature

3570.10
James
TR 2:20-3:35 CRN 95468

The upcoming two hundred-year anniversary of the Civil War has renewed debates about our nation’s complex relationship to the history of slavery. The recent success of three major films--Django Unchained, Lincoln and Twelve Years a Slave (based on Solomon Northrup’s 1853 slave narrative)--has given new urgency to enduring questions about the relationship of art to historical memory. Can a traumatic event like slavery ever be captured in literature, film or other art forms? What can art accomplish that history “proper” can not? Who has the “right” to depict that history? How do artists explain their need to take on this difficult subject? To think through these and other questions, we will read a variety of literature, including 19th century slave narratives, and 20th century neo-slave novels, such as Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Edward P. Jones’ The Known World. We will also examine selected filmic depictions, photography and visual art.


ENGL 3610 Modernism

3610.10 
Soltan
TR 3:45-5:00 CRN 96858

This discussion course will attempt to get at the radical cultural changes the words modern, modernism, and indeed post-modernism are trying to express. Our main text, Modernism: An Anthology (ed. Lawrence Rainey) will provide aesthetic as well as philosophical takes on modernity. This is a no-tech course - no laptops, no phones, nothing but you, the required text, and notepaper.


ENGL 3621 American Poetry

3621.10
Soltan

TR 9:35-10:50 CRN 96859

Our main text will be The Oxford Book of American Poetry (ed. David Lehman), and through reading many of the poems in this book, along with essays on poetry in general, and modern American poems in particular, we will attempt to get at the main themes and styles of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in this country. This is a discussion course; it is also a no-tech course (no laptops, no phones, nothing but the required text, notepaper, and you).


ENGL 3641W The American Novel

3641W.10
Moreland
TR 4:45-6:00 CRN 93364

In this course, we will focus on literary modernism in the context of the development and transformation of the American novel during the first decades of the twentieth century. A rejection of the values and experience of World War I, modernism was an artistic movement of extraordinary experimentation. Turning to the novels of the mid-century and subsequent decades, we will focus on the continuing literary experimentation that was a response in part to American social problems. We will then turn briefly to postmodernism, which called into question the philosophical realism associated with the novel since its 18th-century formation. Taking a psychobiographical and sociocultural approach, among others such as trauma theory, we will examine the ways in which various American writers shaped their novels, and the ways in which the novels—and indeed the writers—were "written" or encoded by American culture.


ENGL 3661 20th-Century Irish Literature, James Joyce and after

3661.10
Griffin
WF 12:45-2:00 CRN 92450

English 3661 includes James Joyce’s Dubliners, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and parts of Ulysses, and selections of other fiction writers such as George Moore, Samuel Beckett, Frank O’Connor, Liam O’Flaherty, Elizabeth Bowen, Flann O’Brien, Mary Lavin, Brian Friel, William Trevor, Deirdre Madden, Joseph O’Connor’s novel Star of the Sea, Molly McCloskey, and others. Our readings will include stories by Molly McCloskey, the Jenny McKean More writer in residence at GWU, who will come to our class to discuss her writings.


ENGL 3710W Contemporary Drama

3710W.80 
Griffith
MW 12:45-2:00 CRN 93855


ENGL 3730W Topics in Postcolonial Literature

3730W.80 Imagined Communities 
Daiya
W 12:45-3:15 CRN 94840

"Imagined Communities: Travel, Gender and Land in Postcolonial Literature and Film"

This course revolves around the representation of travel, land and gender in modern postcolonial literature and film. Exploring literary, film, anthropological, and essayistic representations of modern travel from diverse landscapes including India, Tibet, New Zealand, and South Africa, this course tracks the twentieth century cultural representation of environment, gender and human rights in a global context. Linking the experience of colonialism and globalization, we will ask: how do environmental issues and gender intersect in diverse cultural texts and landscapes about displacement? How do they shape travel and movement, engender displacement or get shaped by it? Starting with Ramachandra Guha’s Environmentalism: A Global History, this course examines fiction by Nadine Gordimer, Michelle Cliff, Arundhati Roy, V. S. Naipaul and others, and films like "Whale Rider" and "The Lost Forest" to examine questions about economic and political rights, urban and rural communities, family and belonging, sustainability, cultures and changing conceptions of human community.


ENGL 3810 Selected Topics in Literature

3810.10 The Caribbean Novel 
Lopez
TR 12:45-2:00 CRN 95752

The Caribbean presents seeming impossibilities: It’s a space of cultural, linguistic, and national differences whose very name tempts us into thinking of these as singular. This course explores how such Caribbean impossibilities are beautifully, challengingly transformed in a selection of novels from the 1920s to the present that are essential reading for any student of literature. Our attention will turn to how the novel’s particular purchase on time, space, story, and pleasure across realist and experimental terrains represents such Caribbean transformations. We will closely read, contextualize, and talk about moments in books by island and diasporic writers that sustain imaginative dialogues with plantation capitalism, colonialism, and slavery; nationalism, dictatorship, and uprising; vagabondage, cosmopolitanism, and race. Our writers, pivoting on island and diasporic Jamaican, Trinidadian, Haitian, Cuban, Antiguan, Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Barbadian identifications, invite us to think of the region as actually a meta-region, where the Caribbean is always both settled and in motion from Port of Spain to Brooklyn, Havana to London, and many other places besides. In English-language and English-translated books like Home to Harlem (1928), The Kingdom of This World (1949), Brown Girl, Brownstones (1959), The Dragon Can’t Dance (1979), Annie John (1985), and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007), we will reflect on how Caribbean fictions, long after the mythical and historical events of 1492, confront us with the violent, terrible origins of a modernity that, in original languages and their translations, requires narrating, critiquing, and redressing still. Course work will include two papers; in-class presentations; and an on-online, collaborative project working with digital materials. The course will satisfy the English major’s post-1900 literature requirement; minority or postcolonial literature requirement; or the general elective requirement.

3810.11 Jewish Literature Live
Moskowitz
TR 12:45-2:00 CRN 94383

Called "One of the Hottest Seats in Class" by Time Magazine, this unique course involves reading, discussing and responding to six works of contemporary Jewish American literature by established and emerging writers. After each book has been presented, the author comes to class to engage in dialogue with the students. Spring semester, 2014 includes works and appearances by Dara Horn, Helen Wecker, Joy Ladin, Anouk Markovitz and others.. Past visitors to class have included Nathan Englander, Tony Kushner, Art Spiegelman, Bruce Jay Friedman, Nicole Krauss, and Michael Chabon.

3810.12 Adolescence and Old Age 
Romines
MW 3:45-5:00 CRN 96860

Adolescence and Old Age in Twentieth-Century American Cultures

In the twentieth century, concepts of adolescence and old age (often inflected by gender) were invented and reinvented in American culture. In this class, we will explore how these concepts are reflected, and often juxtaposed, in American fiction and memoir. Our primary texts will include Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio; short fiction by Willa Cather, John Updike, and others; J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye; Richard Wright, Black Boy; Rudolfo Anaya, Bless Me, Ultima; Toni Morrison, Sula; Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street, Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses, and others. Supplementary texts will include related critical, theoretical, and historical readings. Assignments will include in-class reports, major paper, midterm and final exams.

3810.80 Love & Power in Jewish Culture 
Ofengenden
TR 9:35-10:50 CRN 97399


ENGL 3810W Selected Topics in Literature

3810W.10 Recent American Poetry
David McAleavey
TR 11:10-12:25 CRN 95995

In this course we are going to wallow in the wonders of recent U.S. literary poetry.

We are going to read poets with names like Beckman, Bell, Chiasson, Davis, Donnelly, Ellis, Flynn, Greenberg, Harvey, Hayes, Jackson, Jarnot, Kaminsky, Kim, McDaniel, Powell, Prufer, Rekdal, Smith, Szporluk, Wunderlich, and Young.

We are going to consider the terrain of writing that has happened after Confessional Poetry, the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E School, the Black Arts Movement, the New York School, the Beat Movement, Black Mountain, Neoformalism, and other similar movements and moments in the history of later 20th-centuryAmerican poetry. After the discovery and incorporation of Surrealism, the prose poem, Zen koans and haiku, after Abstract Expressionism. Perhaps even after Postmodernism.

The U.S. is experiencing an unprecedented proliferation of literary poetry. This course aims to investigate that dazzling wealth of voices, topics, procedures, and ambitions by concentrating on younger poets (many born after 1970) whose work has been garnering attention in the past 10-20 years. We will consider poetry from a wide rainbow of authors, male and female, straight and not, minorities of many kinds. We will read some books by single authors, and also draw from poetry most easily available through anthologies and online resources.

We will not sink into bafflement, though we will encounter much that may give us pause. We will be looking forward, asking what this work suggests the next generation of poets ought to be reading and what guidance they can get from this recent context, as they try to compose their own new work.

Because I work primarily as a poet and identify myself primarily as a teacher of creative writing, I see this course in a practical sense as offering a leg up to students who themselves want to write poetry. Writing poetry, however, will not be part of this course, which is designated as a WID course and will therefore involve a semester-long effort to improve students’ research and essay-writing skills.


ENGL 3820W Major Authors: Toni Morrison and William Faulkner

3820W.10 Race, Memory, and Aesthetics 
Schreiber
TR 12:45-2:00 CRN 92894

"Race, Memory, and Aesthetics"

This course links authors Toni Morrison and William Faulkner through the ways in which their fictional and discursive practices reflect on each other. Specifically, we will examine how the texts of both authors reenact and resist racism and patriarchal structures; how they explore the ways in which memory and the past construct identity; and how they experiment with style. We will consider the ways in which the texts illuminate a continuum in American literature through discussions of socially constructed identity and issues of race, class, and gender. In addition, the class utilizes cultural studies and psychoanalytic critical approaches to the texts of these authors. Texts include: Light in August, The Sound and the Fury, Absalom, Absalom!, Song of Solomon, The Bluest Eye, Beloved, Playing in the Dark.

ENGL 3840 Gender and Literature

3840.10 Gender and Southern Texts
Romines
MW 12:45-2:00 CRN 94365

Many of the most persistent U.S. constructions of gender—the Southern belle, the mammy, the good old boy, the tragic mulatta, to name just a few—are rooted in the history and cultures of the South. In this class, we will read a selection of fiction produced by Southern writers in the twentieth century, plus a selection of critical and theoretical texts, to consider how ideas of region and gender are intertwined and have been powerful influences on U.S. cultures. The fiction will include books by Margaret Mitchell (Gone with the Wind), Jean Toomer (Cane), Eudora Welty (selected stories), Robert Penn Warren (All the King's Men), Ernest Gaines (A Lesson Before Dying), Dorothy Allison (Bastard Out of Carolina), Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God), William Faulkner (Absalom, Absalom) and several others. Requirements: two brief reports, a substantial final paper, midterm and final exams, regular participation in class discussions.


ENGL 4220 Creative Writing Senior Thesis

4220.10 
Page
TBA CRN 91581


ENGL 4250W Honors Thesis

4250W.10
Cook
TBA CRN 92563


ENGL 4360 Independent Study

4360.10
Wald
TBA CRN 90206


ENGL 4470 Internship

4470.10 
Seavey
TBA CRN 90596