Undergraduate Course Descriptions

Autumn | Winter | Spring | Graduate Course Descriptions

AUTUMN 2001
(click for course descriptions)

10100 Critical Perspectives (section 1); staff
10100 Critical Perspectives (section 2); von Hallberg, Robert
10200 Problems in Gender Studies 1; Michaels, Stuart
10300 Problems in Gender Studies 2; Miller, Mark
10800 Introduction to Film; Stewart, Jacqueline
11600 Writing Arts Reviews; Sartin, Hank
13200/33200 Writing Poetry; Volkman, Karen
13600 Playwriting; Allen, Claudia
13800 History and Theory of Drama - 1; Bevington, David; Rudall, Nick
14000 Reading Cultures; Goldsby, Jacqueline
14300/34300 Advanced Poetry Writing; Volkman, Karen
14700/34700 Creative Writing: Fiction; Obejas, Achy
16000 Media Aesthetics; multiple sections & instructors
16400 On Hurt: Shakespeare and the Tradition of Revenge; Mazzio, Carla
17900 Utopias From Thomas More to the Restoration (1516-1660s); Cannon, Zachary
20101 LONDON PROGRAM - London Narrative Poets; Murrin, Michael
20102 LONDON PROGRAM - Victorian London in Lit & Art; Helsinger, Elizabeth
20103 LONDON PROGRAM - London in the age of the American Revolution; Slauter, Eric
20104 LONDON PROGRAM - London Women's Social History; Atkinson, Diane
20500 The British Novel in the Romantic Period; Strang Hillary
23800 Pope's Essay on Man and Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion; Rosenheim, Ned
24800 Gender and South African Writing; Driver, Dorothy 26800 The Age of Realism and Naturalism; Goldsby, Jacqueline
25500 Tough Broads; Nelson, Debbie
26200 The Making of Race, The Making of Fiction; Santamarina, Xiomara
27100 African American Literature on Film; Stewart, Jacqueline
27200 New England Literary Cultures; Knight, Janice
28800 Contemporary Poetry and its Critical Context; Regan, Matthias
29300 48700 History of International Cinema I - Silent Era; Tsivian, Yuri
29700 Reading Course
29800 Senior Seminar 1: Realism and the Unsayable; Berlant, Lauren

For a description of the numbering guidelines for the following courses, consult the course catalog on page 15.

Boldface letters in parentheses refer to courses that fulfill the following program requirements: (A) Period; (B) Pre-1700; (C) 1700 to 1900; (D) Poetry; (E) Fiction; (F) Drama/Film; (G) American; (H) British.

10100. Critical Perspectives. TTH 9:00-10:20. Required of English concentrators; ENGL 10100 is ideally taken by English concentrators in their third year and not later than autumn quarter of their fourth year. This course develops practical skills in close reading, historical contextualization, and the use of discipline-specific research tools and resources, and encourages conscious reflection on critical presuppositions and practices. The course prepares students to enter into the discussions that occur in more advanced undergraduate courses. R. von Hallberg.

10200-10300. Problems in Gender Studies (=ENGL 10200-10300, GNDR 10100-10200, HUMA 22800-22900, SOSC 28200-28300). PQ: Second-year standing or higher. Completion of the general education requirement in social sciences or humanities, or the equivalent. May be taken in sequence or individually. This two-quarter interdisciplinary sequence is designed as an introduction to theories and critical practices in the study of feminism, gender, and sexuality. Both classic texts and recent conceptualizations of these contested fields are examined. Problems and cases from a variety of cultures and historical periods are considered, and the course pursues their differing implications in local, national, and global contexts. Both quarters also engage questions of aesthetics and representation, asking how stereotypes, generic conventions, and other modes of circulated fantasy have contributed to constraining and emancipating people through their gender or sexuality.

10200. TTH 3:00-4:20. This course addresses the production of particularly gendered norms and practices. Using a variety of historical and theoretical materials, it addresses how sexual difference operates in the contexts of nation, race, and class formation, for example, and/or work, the family, migration, imperialism, and postcolonial relations. S. Michaels.

10300. MW 3:00-4:20. This course focuses on histories and theories of sexuality: gay, lesbian, heterosexual, and otherwise. This exploration involves looking at a range of materials from anthropology to the law, and from practices of sex to practices of science. M. Miller.

10800. Introduction to Film I (=ARTH 19000, CMST 10100, COVA 25400, ENGL 10800, GSHU 20000). TTH 1:30-2:50 Scr: M 3:30-6:30, C 307; W 7-10, C 307. This course introduces basic concepts of film analysis, which are discussed through examples from different national cinemas, genres, and directorial oeuvres. Along with questions of film technique and style, we consider the notion of the cinema as an institution that comprises an industrial system of production, social and aesthetic norms and codes, and particular modes of reception. Films discussed include works by Hitchcock, Porter, Griffith, Eisenstein, Lang, Renoir, Sternberg, and Welles. J. Stewart. (F)

11600 Writing Arts Reviews. TTH 9:00-10:20. This class was formerly titled "Writing Criticism". One good way to understand how something works is to do it yourself. One good way to understand how criticism works is to write criticism yourself. This is a pragmatic course in writing (and understanding) criticism of the arts for the popular press. We will examine samples of journalistic criticism drawn from a wide range of publications, both Ò high browÓ ( e.g. The New Yorker) and more popular ( e.g. Entertainment weekly). Students will criticize the critics, first by discussing the goals and strategies of the different kinds of criticism they read and then by writing assignments that imitate, explore, challenge, and improvise on those strategies. Students will write every week, focusing on specific aspects of making critical assessments of the arts ( painting, theater , film, music, performance art, etc.) and writing those assessments in a style suited to publication in newspapers, magazines, and other popular venues. Each week, we will use one class session to discuss the students' own work. Sartin, Hank.

13200/33200. Writing Poetry. TTH 10:30-11:20. PQ: Consent of instructor; submit writing sample to G-B 309 by September 1, 2001 (Autumn), November 15, 2001 (Winter), January 31, 2002 (Spring). This course is designed to give poets at all levels a workshop atmosphere in which to present poems for group discussion and criticism. Assignments are offered to emphasize various elements of poetry: rhythm and meter, imagery, person, tone and diction, form, theme, and mood. However, students may present work of their own choice if they prefer. Emphasis is placed on the fact that writing can and should be a matter for hard work and improvement. Though the course focuses on student work, poems by contemporary American poets (as well as works from English and foreign literature) are brought in as time allows. Topics for continuing discussion include clarity, economy, revision, translation, imitation, publication, prevailing styles, fixed forms, and the cultivation of a writer's life and career. Staff. Autumn, Winter, Spring. (D)

13600. Playwriting (=ENGL 13600, GSHU 26600). TH 3:00- 5:50. PQ: Consent of instructor; consult Tiffany Trent (702-9021) for more information. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts. This course introduces the basic principles and techniques of playwriting through creative exercises, discussion, and the viewing of contemporary theater. Structural components of plot, character, and setting are covered as students develop their dramatic voices through exercises in observation, memory, emotion, imagination, and improvisation. C. Allen. (F)

13800/31000. History and Theory of Drama I (=ANST 21200, CLAS 31200, CMLT 20500/30500, ENGL 13800/31000, GSHU 24200/34200). TTH 12:00-1:20 Fri Disc:1@12:30-1:20, 1@1:30-2:20. May be taken in sequence with GSHU 24300/34300 or individually. This course is a survey of major trends and theatrical accomplishments in Western drama from the ancient Greeks through the Renaissance: Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, medieval religious drama, Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Jonson, along with some consideration of dramatic theory by Aristotle, Horace, Sir Philip Sidney, and Dryden. The goal is not to develop acting skill but, rather, to discover what is at work in the scene, and to write up that process in a somewhat informal report. Students have the option of writing essays or putting on short scenes in cooperation with other members of the class. End-of-week workshops, in which individual scenes are read aloud dramatically and discussed, are optional but highly recommended. D. Bevington, D. N. Rudall. (B, F, H)

14000. Reading Cultures. MW 3:00-4:20. Provided from the Core. Collecting. This quarter focuses on the way both objects and stories are selected and rearranged to produce cultural identities. We examine exhibition practices of the past and present, including the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition and the University's own Oriental Institute. We read Ovid's Metamorphoses, The Arabian Nights, and collections of African-American folk tales. We conclude by considering modernist modes of fragmentation and reconstellation in Cubism, T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, and Orson Welles's Citizen Kane. Goldsby, Jacqueline

14300/34300. Advanced Poetry Writing. TH 1:30-2:50. PQ: Consent of instructor; submit three to five sample poems to G-B 309 by September 1, 2001 (Autumn), November 15, 2001 (Winter), January 31, 2002 (Spring). (E)

14700/34700. Creative Writing: Fiction. TH 6:00-8:50. PQ: Consent of instructor; submit a short story to G-B 309 by September 1, 2001. Students are expected to rewrite, revise, and reevaluate their original work from week to week based on our readings, discussions, and analysis. Lectures are based on issues that arise from student work. There are occasional exercises outside the students' own writing. The workshop meets weekly. A. Obejas. (E)

16000. Media Aesthetics. MW 1:30-2:50. Cormack, Bradin; TTH 9:00-10:20. Brown, Bill; TTH 1:30-2:50. Lastra, James; TTH 10:30-11:50. Rothfield, Larry; TTH 10:30-11:50. Provided from the core. All experience of the arts involves a medium, and this course draws particular attention to that involvement. We construe "aesthetics" rather broadly: as a study in sensory perception, as a study in value, as a study in the stylistic and formal properties of artistic products. We understand "medium," too, along a spectrum of meanings that range (in Aristotle's terms) from the "material cause" of art (stone for sculpture, sounds for music, words for poetry) to the "instrumental cause" (the apparatus of writing or printing, film, the broadcast media, the internet). The vehicle of communication conditions aesthetic experience-mediates between producers and receivers--and thus our larger questions will include some of the following: Can artistic media be distinguished in a rigorous and systematic way from non-artistic media? What, for instance, is the relation between artistic and non-artistic use of photography? What is the relation between the media and human sensations and perceptions? Do we learn new ways of seeing and hearing from inventions like drawing, painting, photography, the phonograph, cinema, and video? What happens to objects when we adapt or "translate" them into other media: written narratives into film narratives or architecture into photography? We will be asking questions aimed at fostering sensitivity to, and analysis of, the sensory, cognitive, and emotional shaping of the aesthetic experience, and how that shape is shaped by the medium in which it occurs. Each quarter of the three-quarter sequence will array a mix of objects and media for examination but will also carry a particular thematic emphasis. The autumn quarter will focus on seeing, especially on the problems that arise when objects and texts seem to offer themselves as "reflections" or "imitations" of the world (e.g., Velˆzquez's Las Meninas, Plato's allegory of the cave, Aristotle's Poetics, Hitchock's Vertigo, Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray, Cindy Sherman's photographs). The winter quarter will focus on hearing, with particular emphasis on how sounds are "composed" for effect in various ways--in this quarter we will attend to issues of musical form, to the prosodic analysis of poetry, to representations of composed sound in fiction and cinema, to philosophical discussions of hearing, and to the analyses of sound composition in such writers as diverse as Poe and Adorno. The spring quarter will focus on reading and the questions routinely associated with the aesthetic object considered as a "text" to be "interpreted" (e.g., Plato's Phaedrus, Genesis, Hamlet, Welles's Citizen Kane, Woolf's To the Lighthouse). Mazzio, Carla.

16400. On Hurt: Shakespeare and the Tradition of Revenge. TTH 1:30-2:50 F 1@9:00-10:20 C 303 1@12:30-1:50 C 207. This course explores tropes and dramas of revenge in the late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England. We consider revenge as a form of performance and repetition, as a mode of historical representation, and as a genre preoccupied with questions of agency, justice, social, and national forms of government, and the possibility of articulating-and-inflicting various forms of hurt. We compare revenges by Shakespeare (e.g., Titus Andronicus and Hamlet) with other contemporary revenge dramas (e.g., The Spanish Tragedy, The Revenger's Tragedy, and The Duchess of Malfi) and consider the relationships between theatre, revenge, and vocabularies of vulnerability available to Renaissance writers and dramatists. C. Mazzio. (B, F, H)

17900. Early English Utopias: From Thomas More to the Restoration (1516-1660s). MW 3:00-4:20. The publication of Thomas More's Utopia is our starting point as we examine the development of this genre throughout England's turbulent seventeenth century. We look at Shakespeare's magical variation, Francis Bacon's scientific exploration, and Goodwin's lunar vision before turning to the radical political platforms of the English Civil War and the Interregnum (e.g., Milton, Winstanley, and Harrington) and the comic and experimental developments of the Restoration (e.g., Margaret Cavendish). We conclude by looking at Milton's Paradise Lost and considering the views of a final theorist on the question of a twentieth-century utopia: Disneyland. Z. Cannon. (B, F, H)

20101-20102-20103. London Program Courses.

20101. London Narrative Poets. M. Murrin. (B, D, H)

20102. Victorian London in Literature and Art. E. Helsinger. (A, C, D, E, H)

20103. London in the Age of the American Revolution. E. Slauter. (C, G)

20500. The British Novel in the Romantic Period. TTH 3:00-4:20. The late eighteenth and the early nineteenth century was a time of great innovation in the novel. We examine a variety of literary modes in the Romantic period: social/philosophical problem novels (i.e., Goodwin, Shelley, and Edgeworth), Gothic tales (i.e., Radcliffe and Shelley), novels of sentiment and sensibility (i.e., Radcliffe, Scott, and parodies of Austen), and the historical and realist novel (i.e., Edgeworth, Scott, and Austen). In addition, students read two texts with questionable fictional status: Hazlitt's Liber Amoris and De Quincey's Confessions, raising questions about the status of "the literary" in the period and what makes a novel a novel, as well as the relationships among character, feeling, sentiment, and subjectivity. We conclude by exploring Wuthering Heights and its connections to these earlier texts. H. Strang. (C, F, H)

23800. Pope's Essay on Man and Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (=ENGL 23800, FNDL 27100, GSHU 28300). TTH 10:30-11:50. Pope's Essay on Man is, among other things, a memorable repository of influential ideas (none original with Pope himself) about man's place in God's universe and the implications of this view for human conduct and belief. The doctrines thus represented by Pope, together with more orthodox modes of Christian thought, are examined, with deadly amiability, in Hume's posthumously published Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. The course proceeds in awareness of the remarkable literary qualities of both works: Pope's superb prosodic and linguistic achievement and Hume's brilliantly ironic exploitation of the dialogue form. E. Rosenheim. (C, D, H)

24800. Gender and South African Writing (=GNDR 24800). TTH 1:30-2:50. In this course we develop our understanding of South African writing. A major interest is in the changing social constructions of masculinities and femininities during the period from 1950 to 1990, and the effects of race/racism and class on conceptions of gender. Texts include stories by Can Themba, Gcina Mhlope, Miriam Tlali, and Zoe Wicomb; autobiographies by Noni Jabavu, Ellen Kuzwayo, and Emma Mashinini; and a novel by Nadine Gordimer. D. Driver. (E)

25500. Tough Broads (=ENGL 25500, GNDR 26000). PQ: ENGL 10200-10300. MW 1:30-2:50. This course is a reading of selected works by some of the postwar era's "exceptional women," as Adrienne Rich defined the term: Simone Weil, Hannah Arendt, Elizabeth Hardwick, Mary McCarthy, Susan Sontag, Joan Didion, and more. Great stylists and often brilliant thinkers, these writers, who mostly came of age before feminism and often had a difficult relationship to it, help us to pose some questions to feminism and so-called post-feminism alike: questions about isolation and community, intellectual authority, personal austerity, pain and suffering, autonomy, and self sacrifice. We very likely juxtapose their work with that of feminists such as Simone de Beauvoir, Adrienne Rich, and Audre Lorde. D. Nelson. (C)

26200 The Making of Race, The Making of Fiction. TTH 12:00-1:20. In this course we will read a variety of fictional texts that engage with historical and contemporary understandings of race in the US. Through a combination of fiction writers from 19th and 20th centuries, including Octavia Butler, Herman Melville, Toni Morrison and Mark Twain, we will explore how these texts say what they say about slavery, racial identity, history and literature. How have US writers shaped their diverse fictions in response to the debates on the meanings of race? And how have these meanings changed over time? Santamarina, Xiomara.

26800/36800. The Age of Realism and Naturalism. MW 1:30-2:50. Literary histories tell us that realism and naturalism were aesthetic movements that redefined American fiction at the turn of the nineteenth century. Cultural histories of the era tell us that Americans fiercely debated what constituted the "real" and the "natural" as they coped with the revolutionary changes that turned their worlds upside down between the Civil War and World War I. This course moves between these two accounts to appreciate the varied styles and issues that characterized the literature of this moment. Authors include Rebecca Harding Davis, William Dean Howells, Theodore Dreiser, Stephen Crane, Kate Chopin, Sui Sin Far, Helen Hunt Jackson, Charles Chestnut, Mark Twain, and Henry James. J. Goldsby. (A, C, E, G)

27100. African-American Literature on Film (=AFAM 21100, CMST 27100). TTH 10:30-11:50 Scr: W 3:30-6:30 C 425, SA 1:00-4:00 C307. This course surveys a range of twentieth-century African-American literary works that have been adapted to the screen, exploring (1) the formal and stylistic relationships between literature and the cinema, and (2) our approaches to them as objects of intellectual inquiry. Titles we examine include novels and films by Oscar Micheaux; Richard Wright/Pierre Chenal/Jerrold Freedman (Native Son); Lorraine Hansberry/Daniel Petrie (A Raisin in the Sun); Chester Himes/Ossie Davis (Cotton Comes to Harlem); Alice Walker/Steven Spielberg (The Color Purple); Malcolm X and Alex Haley/Spike Lee (The Autobiography of Malcolm X); Walter Moseley/Carl Franklin (Devil in a Blue Dress); and Julie Dash's film and novel Daughters of the Dust. J. Stewart. (F, G)

27200. Nineteenth-Century New England Literary Cultures. TTH 10:30-11:20 F disc. 9:00-10:20 C 116 10:30-11:20 C 102. This course surveys a variety of New England writers of the first half of the nineteenth century. Attentive to the cultural context, we read texts by Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Dickinson, Stowe, Sedgewick, Fuller, and Melville. J. Knight. (A, C, E, G)

28800 Contemporary Poetry and its Critical Context. TU 5:00-8:00. This year-long course, taught in conjunction with the "Poems Present" reading and lecture series, will examine the relationship between poetry and criticism as it has developed over the last quarter century. Considerable attention will be given to the recent poetry and critical essays written by the series' participants, including Jeff Clark, Allen Grossman, Heather McHugh, Robert Pinsky, Pam Rehm, and others. Rather than view criticism as secondary to "autonomous" poetic creation, we will look at the ways in which critical writing (by poets and scholars) not only defiens but also influences contemporary poetry. We will look at how criticism helps to define "schools" of poetry and at the different ways poets use criticism. We will meet with several of the poets and participate in both public and private discussions about their craft. The first class will be on Oct. 2. Regan, Matthias.

29300/48700. History of International Cinema I: Silent Era (=ARTH 28500/38500, CMST 28500/48500, COVA 26500, ENGL 29300/48700, MAPH 33600). TTH 10:30-11:50 Scr: M 3:30-6:30, C 307; W 7:00-10:00, C 307. This is the first part of a two-quarter course. The two parts may be taken individually, but taking them in sequence is helpful. The aim of this course is to introduce students to what was singular about the art and craft of silent film. Its general outline is chronological; we also discuss main national schools and international trends of filmmaking. Y. Tsivian. (F)

29700 Reading Course. PQ: Consent of instructor and Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies. Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Course Form. May not be taken for a letter grade. The kind and amount of work to be done are determined by an instructor within the Department of English Language and Literature who has agreed to supervise the course. Staff. Autumn, Winter, Spring.

29801. Senior Seminar: Cather, Wharton, and Parker: Realism and the Unsayable. TTH 3:00-4:20. In this seminar we read three novels/collections each of Willa Cather, Edith Wharton, and Dorothy Parker. We think about the place of biography, cultural history, and genre in their works; and we look specifically at the relation between their commitments to realism and their constant return to that which realism fails. L. Berlant. (E, G)