Courses

ENGL-100/0, An Introduction
ENGL-100 provides an introduction to the study of language and literature at Andover. In this junior course, which cultivates the same skills and effects pursued throughout the English curriculum, students begin to understand the rich relationships among reading, thinking, and writing. ENGL-100 assents to Helen Vendler's notion that every good writer was a good reader first. Accordingly, ENGL-100 students work to develop their ability to read closely, actively, and imaginatively. They study not only what a text means but also how it produces meaning. They seek to make connections as they read - perhaps at first only connections between themselves and the text, but eventually connections within the text and between the texts as well. All the while, however, ENGL-100 students revel in the beauty, humor, and wisdom of the literature. Over the three trimesters, ENGL-100 students read literature of various genres and periods. Every class reads Homer's Odyssey and at least one play by William Shakespeare. For the rest of the syllabus, teachers turn to a great many authors. Among those whose work is most regularly selected are Ernest Hemingway, Toni Morrison, J.D. Salinger, John Steinbeck, and August Wilson. ENGL-100 students practice several types of writing, primarily in response to what they read. They write at times in narrative, expressive, and creative modes, but their efforts focus more and more on critical analysis. They learn to conceive of writing as a craft to be practiced and as a process to be followed. Through frequent assignments, both formal and informal, ENGL-100 students come to value writing as a means of making sense of what they read and think. Attending carefully to their writing at the levels of the sentence, paragraph, and full essay, they learn to appreciate the power of the written critical argument. Although their work is substantially assessed throughout the year, ENGL-100 students do not receive grades during the fall trimester. At the end of the term, their report cards will indicate Pass or Failure. Lively, purposeful class discussions reinforce the lessons of reading and writing and often leave students with especially fond memories of their ENGL-100 experience. The course prepares our youngest students well for the further challenges of their education at Andover.

ENGL-200/0, Writing to Read, Reading to Write
Fall term - During the fall term of ENGL-200, classes focus on the process of writing. Students write often, virtually every day. Students will be exposed to a variety of rhetorical modes, such as narration, description comparison/contrast, cause/effect, definition, example/analogy, classification, and argument. By the end of the term, students should be able to organize, develop, and write cogent essays in four or five of these modes. Extensive revision will be encouraged, typically with peer reading. Teachers may use poems and stories from R.S. Gwynn's Literature: A Pocket Anthology not as critical texts but as inspirational ones that will serve to generate a writing exercise. They may also choose to use a collection of essays by a particular writer and/or the online Andover Reader. Additionally, the fall term works consciously on vocabulary development (usually drawing material from the essays) and grammar, using a text such as The Everyday Writer, The English Competence Handbook, or The Grammar of Alistair Barnstable. Grammar and sentence structure study will deal with the usage problems observable in the class, especially addressing such topics as run-ons and fragments, agreement of subject-verb and pronoun-antecedent, accurate modification, correct pronoun case, and punctuation. Winter term - In the winter term, students continue to work on the sentence and the paragraph, but the texts are anthologies of poetry and short fiction, and the subject matter is literature. While the course introduces literary terms and strategies for understanding poetry and fiction, the literature serves mainly as an opportunity to work on writing skills, reinforcing the lessons of the fall term and introducing argument and persuasion as patterns of thought that can guide the writer logically through a discussion about a poem or short story. Spring term - In the spring, each teacher chooses one or two works, including a novel, with which the class will spend the term working. Students continue to write in the modes introduced in the fall term and focus on organizing the essay and on incorporating research into it. Attention is given to anti-plagiarism training in which the responsible use of sources, particularly the Internet, is addressed.

ENGL-300/4, The Story of Literature
All literature tells one story, the story of people's experiences, their dreams, their desires, their acts, their mistakes. ENGL-300 focuses on different genres of literature: tragedy and romance in the fall term and comedy and satire in the winter term. Inspired artists around the world and throughout time have created tragedies, comedies, satires, and romances, and in ENGL-300 students will explore these genres by reading short stories, poems, novels, and plays representing diverse historical periods, locations, and identities. In their writing, students will practice formal literary analysis in order to gain a greater appreciation for the artistic construction of a text and its cultural resonance.

ENGL-301/4, The Seasons of Literature for New Uppers
For new Uppers, ENGL-301 conforms in spirit and essence to ENGL-300, but with more intensive attention to expository writing.

ENGL-310, Shakespeare
No writer has influenced the literature of the English-speaking world so much as William Shakespeare. He was both of his age and for all time. ENGL-310 employs the perceptual and writing skills learned in the prior two terms and presents new, more complex problems and perspectives. Films and student performances of Shakespeare's plays complement the study of the plays as literary texts. A common text shared among all sections is Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.

ENGL-400/1, American Studies for International Students
Primarily for, but not limited to, one-year students from abroad who are not yet ready for ENGL-520, this course provides intensive training in reading, literary fundamentals, and expository writing. The focus of this course is on American culture, values, and traditions as reflected in literature and other media. One or two terms of this course will provide students with the reading and writing skills required for success in other Senior electives. (Dr. Vidal)

ENGL-400/2, American Studies for International Students
Primarily for, but not limited to, one-year students from abroad who are not yet ready for ENGL-520, this course provides intensive training in reading, literary fundamentals, and expository writing. The focus of this course is on American culture, values, and traditions as reflected in literature and other media. One or two terms of this course will provide students with the reading and writing skills required for success in other Senior electives. (Dr. Vidal)

ENGL-500AA/1, Strangers in a Strange Land
This course for one-year students explores how strangers adapt to new places and new modes of being. Does one reinvent oneself, conquer the new, or seamlessly assimilate? Works to be considered might include Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Shakespeare's The Tempest, Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana, and poetry by Yosef Komunyakaa, Elizabeth Bishop, and Carolyn Forche. In both terms, the emphasis will be on close reading and textual analysis. (Ms. Curci)

ENGL-500AA/2, Strangers in a Strange Land
This course for one-year students explores how strangers adapt to new places and new modes of being. Does one reinvent oneself, conquer the new, or seamlessly assimilate? Works to be considered might include Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Shakespeare's The Tempest, Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana, and poetry by Yosef Komunyakaa, Elizabeth Bishop, and Carolyn Forche. In both terms, the emphasis will be on close reading and textual analysis. (Ms. Curci)

ENGL-501AA/2, Non-Fiction Writing
Contemporary nonfiction author Terry Tempest Williams once said, I write to discover. I write to uncover. In this course, we will consider the ways that creative nonfiction bridges the gaps between discovering and uncovering, between looking forward and looking back, between imagination and fact, and between invention and memory. Winter term -- Students will develop their talents in the art of essay writing by working in a number of rhetorical modes, including the personal essay, the analytical essay, the lyric essay, and the profile. Readings will include selected models from an anthology of contemporary works, such as The Eloquent Essay or Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: I & Eye. This workshop-centered course is open to all writers seeking to improve their craft and interested in the boundaries and possibilities that creative nonfiction, as a quickly growing genre, continues to explore. (Ms. McQuade)

ENGL-501AA/3, Non-Fiction Writing
Contemporary nonfiction author Terry Tempest Williams once said, I write to discover. I write to uncover. In this course, we will consider the ways that creative nonfiction bridges the gaps between discovering and uncovering, between looking forward and looking back, between imagination and fact, and between invention and memory. Spring term --In the spring term our focus will shift to the art of memoir writing. Students will read several memoirs and write short autobiographical exercises in preparation for developing an extended piece about their own experience. Spring texts may include Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius; Karr, The Liars' Club; Nguyen, Stealing Buddha's Dinner; or Wolff, This Boy's Life. This workshop-centered course is open to all writers seeking to improve their craft and interested in the boundaries and possibilities that creative nonfiction, as a quickly growing genre, continues to explore. (Ms. McQuade)

ENGL-501AB, Writing Through Universe of Discourse
This is a course for students interested in experimenting with many different genres of writing. Throughout the term, students create a portfolio of writing that includes essays, poetry, short fiction, literary criticism, autobiography, and letters. The course is designed to serve all kinds of students, but particularly those who would like to gain confidence in their writing skills. Once a week, students are invited (not required) to join a Community Service writing workshop with Lawrence, Mass., elementary school students. Readings include texts from a variety of cultures. Authors include Malcolm X, Martin Espada, Julia Alvarez, William Shakespeare, Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson, Piri Thomas, Raymond Carver, Franz Kafka, Leo Tolstoi, Stephen Biko, Louise Erdrich, Nikki Giovanni, Sandra Cisneros, Don DeLillo, William Blake, Amy Tan, Sherman Alexie, Rita Dove, James Baldwin, Maxine Hong Kingston, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Anthony Morales, Bruce Smith, and Maya Angelou. (Mr. Bernieri)

ENGL-505AA, Creative Writing: Poetry
This course is for students committed to reading and writing poetry. Students will be asked to write about poetry in addition to composing their own poetry. Although students are not expected to submit portfolios or samples of their work to qualify for this class, they must be serious about writing poetry. Previous experience helps, but it is not necessary. (Mr. Lychack)

ENGL-505AB, Creative Writing: Fiction
This course is for students committed to reading and writing short fiction. Students will be asked to write about short fiction in addition to composing their own short fiction. Although students are not expected to submit portfolios or samples of their work to qualify for this class, they must be serious about writing fiction. Previous experience helps, but it is not necessary. (Mr. Lychack)

ENGL-506AA/3, Fresh Fiction: Advanced Writing Workshop in Contemporary Storytelling
This course is open to students who have completed a creative writing course successfully or who have an abiding enthusiasm for composing fiction. Inspired by the freshest voices in fiction and screen writing today, this workshop allows writers to explore the artistic and thematic frontiers of contemporary storytelling. Over the course of the term students will work to create their own collections of stories or a novella. Gutsy stories, original characters, and vigorous editing/rewriting are our aims. Companion readings from writers like Zadie Smith, Chang Rae Lee, Sandra Cisneros, Khaled Hosseini, Nathan Singer, Bobbie Ann Mason, the Coen Brothers, and Jim Jamusch will offer inspiration. (Mr. Peffer)

ENGL-507AA/1, Playwriting
Each student is expected to write at least one one-act play in addition to certain exercises in monologue, dialogue, and scene-setting. The class reads aloud from students' works in progress, while studying the formal elements in plays by important playwrights and reading selected literary criticism foccused on drama. Note that Play Writing is an English department offering and does not fulfill the Theatre and Dance requirement. (Mr. Heelan)

ENGL-510AA/1, Gothic Literature: Living in the Tomb
The course traces trends in Gothic forms, from its origins of the damp and dark castles of Europe to the aridity of the contemporary American landscape. Students will identify gothic conventions and themes such as the haunted house, family dynamics, apparitions, entrapment, secrecy, and the sublime. We will read novels, short stories, and poetry spanning roughly 200 years in order to explore questions about the supernatural, the psychology of horror and terror, the significance of fantasy and fear, the desire for moral closure, and the roles of gender, race, class, and sexuality. Probable selections include The Castle of Otranto, by Horace Walpole; Faustus, by Christopher Marlowe; Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier; Dracula, by Bram Stoker; The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James; stories by Poe, Faulkner, Gaskell, Irving, Hawthorne, Gilman, Jackson, Cheever, DeLillo, Carver, and Oates; and poetry of Christina Rossetti, Thomas Gray, William Cowper, Louise Gluck, and Sylvia Plath. Possible films include Affliction, The Royal Tenenbaums, A Simple Plan, Psycho, and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. (Mr. Tortorella)

ENGL-510AB/2, Politics, Subversion and the Heroic Tradition in Children's Literature
This course considers the role of the imagination in communicating and effecting cultural change. Students will be asked to apply a variety of critical theory for interpretation and discussion of the literature. Themes this course will explore include alternative realities, the nature of dreams, the function of the subconscious, and the use of allegory. Probable selections include The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll; Haroun and the Sea of Stories, by Salman Rushdie; The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame; The Jungle Book, by Rudyard Kipling; The Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum; The Pied Piper of Hamelin, by Robert Browning; The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett; A Child's Garden of Verses, by Robert Louis Stevenson; The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and The Last Battle, by C.S. Lewis; and Grimm's Fairy Tales, Mother Goose, writings of Carlos Castaneda, and essays by Bettelheim and Zipes. Possible films include The Red Balloon and The Point. (Mr. Tortorella)

ENGL-511AA/3, Cinema Symbiosis
As the historian Daniel J. Boorstin points out, with the addition of sound in the late 1920s, film became what the composer Richard Wagner had sought: the Gesamtkunstwerk, the total work of art. Utilizing aspects of architecture, literature, music, painting, photography, and theater, film became the most popular form of art in the world and the dominant form of the 20th century. This intensive course introduces students to the study of film, helps them develop the skills necessary to read and analyze film, and provides them with a survey of some of the major movements and genres in film history. Students screen films by Charles Chaplin, Carl Dreyer, Sergei Eisenstein, John Ford, Jean-Luc Godard, Fritz Lang, Jean Renoir, Roberto Rossellini, and Martin Scorsese, among others. In addition, students read critical essays on each film and study several literary works-perhaps ones by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Bibhutibhushan, Bandopadhyay, Russell Banks, Anthony Burgess, Arthur C. Clarke, Dashiell Hammett, James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov, or Flannery O'Connor-that have been adapted to the screen. Students must be able to screen films two evenings each week and should expect to devote approximately 12 hours each week to the course, including class time. (Mr. Fox)

ENGL-511AB/2, Media Studies Looking Glass
What does it mean to be fully literate in the information age? Working from the premise that all messages are constructed, we will examine the forces (explicit and hidden) that determine those constructions, as well as the ways in which our daily and multiple interactions with various media determine our sense of self, identity, truth, and desire. Students will read a range of media studies theory and then put those theories into practice by examining the language, images, narratives, and truth we encounter in traditional or alternative news sources, advertising, television, politics, sports, and other cultural institutions. This is a writing-intensive course, and students will be expected to write several pages every week. The winter term will focus on the production and consumption of media, asking questions about the interests that own, produce, control, and sell the news, the blurry line between news and entertainment, the conventions of advertising, the rise of media conglomerates in the 1990s, and the emergence of convergence culture in the last decade. The spring term will focus on questions of narrative, character, and identity as they shape and are shaped by conventions and transgressions of gender; by the literary modes of tragedy, comedy, and romance; by fads and trends; by technology and history; by heroism and nostalgia. (Ms. Tousignant)

ENGL-511AB/3, Media Studies Looking Glass
What does it mean to be fully literate in the information age? Working from the premise that all messages are constructed, we will examine the forces (explicit and hidden) that determine those constructions, as well as the ways in which our daily and multiple interactions with various media determine our sense of self, identity, truth, and desire. Students will read a range of media studies theory and then put those theories into practice by examining the language, images, narratives, and truth we encounter in traditional or alternative news sources, advertising, television, politics, sports, and other cultural institutions. This is a writing-intensive course, and students will be expected to write several pages every week. The winter term will focus on the production and consumption of media, asking questions about the interests that own, produce, control, and sell the news, the blurry line between news and entertainment, the conventions of advertising, the rise of media conglomerates in the 1990s, and the emergence of convergence culture in the last decade. The spring term will focus on questions of narrative, character, and identity as they shape and are shaped by conventions and transgressions of gender; by the literary modes of tragedy, comedy, and romance; by fads and trends; by technology and history; by heroism and nostalgia. (Ms. Tousignant)

ENGL-512AA/1, Great Traditions in Literature: The Epic Poem
This course studies the development of the epic poem through Classical, Medieval, and Early Modern contexts. Texts: The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Aeneid, Metamorphoses, and Moby Dick (even years); Paradise Lost and The Inferno (odd years). (Mr. McGraw)

ENGL-512AA/2, Great Traditions in Literature: The Epic Poem
This course studies the development of the epic poem through Classical, Medieval, and Early Modern contexts. Texts: The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Aeneid, Metamorphoses, and Moby Dick (even years); Paradise Lost and The Inferno (odd years). (Mr. McGraw)

ENGL-512AA/3, Great Traditions in Literature: The Epic Poem
This course studies the development of the epic poem through Classical, Medieval, and Early Modern contexts. Texts: The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Aeneid, Metamorphoses, and Moby Dick (even years); Paradise Lost and The Inferno (odd years). (Mr. McGraw)

ENGL-513AA/1, The Short Novel: Risk & Romance
This course uses a mix of seminar classes, films, and regular, individual student-teacher conferences to examine experimental short novels from around the world. Students learn to draw conclusions about the artistic and social forces that gave rise to these novels. Each term draws comparisons among works by Vonnegut, Mann, Joyce, Walker, Puig, Rulfo, Enchi, Duras, Achebe, Hemingway, McCullers, Camus, Salinger, Garcia, and others. (Mr. Peffer)

ENGL-513AA/2, The Short Novel: Risk & Romance
This course uses a mix of seminar classes, films, and regular, individual student-teacher conferences to examine experimental short novels from around the world. Students learn to draw conclusions about the artistic and social forces that gave rise to these novels. Each term draws comparisons among works by Vonnegut, Mann, Joyce, Walker, Puig, Rulfo, Enchi, Duras, Achebe, Hemingway, McCullers, Camus, Salinger, Garcia, and others. (Mr. Peffer)

ENGL-514AA/1, Journalism
This course on print journalism recognizes the challenges all journalists face in their efforts to be fair and also accurate as they struggle to gather information and churn out lively copy under deadline pressure. The course is designed to teach essential journalistic judgment, basic skills for gathering and verifying news, and interviewing and writing techniques. Students will receive weekly assignments on deadline for news articles, feature stories, columns, and editorials, and all students will work as both reporters and editors as the course progresses. Weekly lectures will cover significant events in the history of journalism, First Amendment issues, and current events. Readings for the course are Journalism 101, by Nina Scott; the New York Times; the Boston Globe; and excepts from the News about the News, by Leondard Downie Jr. and Robert Kaiser; and The Elements of Journalism, by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstil. Films will include Absence of Malice, All the President's Men, The Year of Living Dangerously, and Welcome to Sarajevo. (Ms. Scott)

ENGL-516AA/3, Contemporary American Poetry
This course will introduce students to poets and movements that have shaped the direction and contours of American poetry since World War II. We start with a study of the Beat Movement, and then explore the so-called schools of poetry -Black Mountain, New York, Confessional, et al. The course finishes with an exposure to poetry that is happening right now, which includes bicultural and multicultural poets. Most class time will be spent deriving themes through discussions of poets, poems, poetic movements, criticism, and theory. Poets include Ginsberg, Corso, Kerouac, Dylan, Waldman, Bukowski, Creeley, Olson, Levertov, Ashbury, O'Hara, Lowell, Plath, Berryman, Bishop, Rich, Dove, Hass, Kinnell, Hogan, Nye, Springsteen, and Colvin. (Mr. Tortorella)

ENGL-517AA/1, Last Acts: Remember Me?
I got shot, Tupac Shakur declares at the opening of his posthumous film Resurrection, and the viewer asks, How did he know that was going to happen? This course begins with some basic questions: How will I be remembered? Can I influence that memory? This is a course that looks at literature and other cultural texts (film, photography, music) produced as a response to those questions, works that the instructor calls automortography: a genre that centers on acts of self-representation in the face of death and the mode of reading that such a genre produces. Automortography, then is not only how someone consciously or unconsciously anticipates and scripts one's death, but also how the audience reads works through the lens of that writer's death, thus touching on the larger question of how we memorialize others (i.e., in museums and memorials). In the course, we will explore a range of texts from Keats to Tupac so as to understand these figures, their predicaments and contexts, and why we need and how we use this mode of reading. In taking several diverse cases together, we might ask, Are they keeping it real or is this genre a ploy or performance? Potentially drawing on examples ranging across disciplines, literary figures to consider may include Sylvia Plath, Reinaldo Arenas, Raymond Carver, Charles Bukowski, Jane Kenyon, May Sarton, William Gaddis, Malcom X, and Mark Twain. (Dr. Kane)

ENGL-518AA/2, The Literature of Travel Writing
The British scholar Paul Fussell writes that successful travel writing mediates between two poles: the individual thing it describes, on the one hand, and the larger theme that it is 'about,' on the other. A travel book will make the reader aware of a lot of things - ships, planes, trains, donkeys, sore feet, hotels, bizarre customs and odd people, unfamiliar weather, curious architecture, and risky food. At the same time, a travel book will reach in the opposite direction and deal with these data so as to suggest that they are not wholly inert and discrete but are elements of a much larger meaning, a meaning metaphysical, political, psychological, artistic, or religious - but always, somehow, ethical. In the course, students will read excerpts from travel literature over time and write three travel essays of their own. Writers will include Herodotus, Pausanius, Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus, Lady Mary Wortley Montague, Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mark Twain, Freya Stark, D.H. Lawrence, Jack Kerouac, V.S. Naipaul, Paul Theroux, Margaret Atwood, Annie Dillard, and David Foster Wallace. (Ms. Scott)

ENGL-519AA/1, 20th Century Drama
This course will be devoted to the major dramatists and theatrical movements of the 20th Century. Each term students will read plays from specific regions of the world in an attempt to locate the playwriting from that region within the world of dramatic literature, as well as come to grips with the issues with which the playwrights are dealing, and the cultures from which their work is erupting. Approaching the plays through historical, cultural and political contexts, students will analyze how the best playwrights pose and dramatize important questions of the time, while revolutionizing conventional dramatic practice through the developments in Naturalism, Realism and Symbolism (and various combinations of these). FALL Term ? European Drama. Playwrights studied may include: Ibsen, Chekhov, Stringberg, Brecht, Pinter, Stoppard, Pirandello, Beckett, Shaw. WINTER Term ? American Drama. Playwrights studied may include: O?Neill, Miller, Wilson, Albee, Norman, Wasserstein, Shepard, Kushner, Parks, Hwang, Mamet. SPRING Term ? World Drama. Playwrights studied may include: Fugard, Soyinka, Wolcott, Valdez, Garro, Wolff, Panikkar, Dattani, Xiaoli, Hirata. (Ms. Chase)

ENGL-519AA/2, 20th Century Drama
This course will be devoted to the major dramatists and theatrical movements of the 20th Century. Each term students will read plays from specific regions of the world in an attempt to locate the playwriting from that region within the world of dramatic literature, as well as come to grips with the issues with which the playwrights are dealing, and the cultures from which their work is erupting. Approaching the plays through historical, cultural and political contexts, students will analyze how the best playwrights pose and dramatize important questions of the time, while revolutionizing conventional dramatic practice through the developments in Naturalism, Realism and Symbolism (and various combinations of these). FALL Term ? European Drama. Playwrights studied may include: Ibsen, Chekhov, Stringberg, Brecht, Pinter, Stoppard, Pirandello, Beckett, Shaw. WINTER Term ? American Drama. Playwrights studied may include: O?Neill, Miller, Wilson, Albee, Norman, Wasserstein, Shepard, Kushner, Parks, Hwang, Mamet. SPRING Term ? World Drama. Playwrights studied may include: Fugard, Soyinka, Wolcott, Valdez, Garro, Wolff, Panikkar, Dattani, Xiaoli, Hirata. (Ms. Chase)

ENGL-519AA/3, 20th Century Drama
This course will be devoted to the major dramatists and theatrical movements of the 20th Century. Each term students will read plays from specific regions of the world in an attempt to locate the playwriting from that region within the world of dramatic literature, as well as come to grips with the issues with which the playwrights are dealing, and the cultures from which their work is erupting. Approaching the plays through historical, cultural and political contexts, students will analyze how the best playwrights pose and dramatize important questions of the time, while revolutionizing conventional dramatic practice through the developments in Naturalism, Realism and Symbolism (and various combinations of these). FALL Term ? European Drama. Playwrights studied may include: Ibsen, Chekhov, Stringberg, Brecht, Pinter, Stoppard, Pirandello, Beckett, Shaw. WINTER Term ? American Drama. Playwrights studied may include: O?Neill, Miller, Wilson, Albee, Norman, Wasserstein, Shepard, Kushner, Parks, Hwang, Mamet. SPRING Term ? World Drama. Playwrights studied may include: Fugard, Soyinka, Wolcott, Valdez, Garro, Wolff, Panikkar, Dattani, Xiaoli, Hirata. (Ms. Chase)

ENGL-520AA/2, Gender Roles in Contemporary World Fiction
Love, family, and passion have always been popular literary themes in a variety of cultures. However, there are different ways in which each culture approaches these subjects, especially as they relate to gender roles and the relationships between men and women (as well as men and men and women and women). In this course, we will go on a trip around the world, examining gender in a variety of contemporary cultural settings and comparing the fictional works that we will study to what we experience on a daily basis in American society. From traditional romantic obsession and rigid sex roles to challenges of these traditional roles and expectations, our texts will provide a variety of issues and perspectives to frame our discussions. Readings include: Machado de Assis, Dom Casmurro (Brazil); Rifaat, A Distant View of a Minaret (Egypt); Puig, Kiss of the Spider Woman (Argentina); Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions (Zimbabwe); Ensler, Necessary Targets (Bosnia). Films: The Crying Game, Thelma & Louise, The Adventures of Priscilla: Queen of the Desert, Strangers in Good Company, Angels in America, and excerpts from episodes of Sex and the City. (Dr. Vidal)

ENGL-520AB/1, Children in Literature: Growing Up in A Changing World
What does it mean to be a child? What defines a good or bad kid? Is there a certain age or type of behavior that separates children from adults? When and how do we grow up? Are our expectations for boys and girls different? Should they be? This course will explore how our conceptualization of childhood has changed over time by looking at a variety of sources: philosophical and psychological texts about children and representations of children in literature and film for adults, as well as some works aimed at young readers. We will focus on the emergence of self within contexts of family and community, exploring the processes of identity formation in both Western and non-Western narratives. We will pay particular attention to an analysis of gender roles and of education within these stories, pondering the ways in which different societies and their values become perpetuated through their fictional children. Readings include: Alcott, Little Women; Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; Barrie, Peter Pan; Yezierska, Bread Givers; Golding, Lord of the Flies; Amado, Captains of the Sands; and poetry by Blake, Wordsworth, and Dr. Seuss. Excerpts from: Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education; Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress; Rousseau, Emile; and a variety of fairy tales. Theory by Freud, Bettelheim, and Aries. Films: Central Station, Black Shack Alley, Finding Nemo. (Dr. Vidal)

ENGL-521AA, Being, Thinking, Doing
Through reading and discussing the expression of human values in selected works, students in this philosophy and literature course explore two broad questions: How do people live their lives? and How should people live their lives? Within this framework, students think reflectively about the beliefs they and their society have developed, and they look at the emergence of different epistemological, ethical, and political ideals and responses to life. Readings may include The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Ellison's Invisible Man, Percy's The Moviegoer, Shakespeare's King Lear, Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five; excerpts from Agee and Evans' Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem, Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers from Prison; and brief selections from Aristotle, Descartes, Epictetus, Kant, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Plato, Schopenhauer, and Spinoza. (Mr. Fox)

ENGL-521AA/1, Being, Thinking, Doing
Through reading and discussing the expression of human values in selected works, students in this philosophy and literature course explore two broad questions: How do people live their lives? and How should people live their lives? Within this framework, students think reflectively about the beliefs they and their society have developed, and they look at the emergence of different epistemological, ethical, and political ideals and responses to life. Readings may include The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Ellison's Invisible Man, Percy's The Moviegoer, Shakespeare's King Lear, Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five; excerpts from Agee and Evans' Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem, Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers from Prison; and brief selections from Aristotle, Descartes, Epictetus, Kant, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Plato, Schopenhauer, and Spinoza. (Mr. Fox)

ENGL-521AB/2, When I Paint My Masterpiece: Milton and Michelangelo
Within the European tradition, both the Italian artist, Michelangelo Buonarroti, and the English poet, John Milton, responded to all that preceded them and influenced all that followed them. By comparing the lives and works of these men, students in this art and literature course explore various questions of theology and aesthetics, such as: Can humans understand the ways of God? How can God know Adam and Eve will fall while at the same time give them the freedom to do so? How is Christ both divine and human? What are the limitations and benefits of expression through poetry versus painting? In interpreting a work of art, to what extent is the creator's intention or biography relevant? What is the role of influence in artistic creation? Is originality possible? Why are these artists canonical, and what are the consequences of deeming them so? Students study Milton's Paradise Lost and Michelangelo's complete works. Supplemental readings may include selections from Achebe's Hopes and Impediments, Augustine's The City of God, Bloom's The Anxiety of Influence, Steinberg's The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and Modern Oblivion, and Walker's Medusa's Mirrors: Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, and the Metamorphosis of the Female Self, among others. No previous study of art history presumed. (Mr. Fox)

ENGL-522AA/1, Great Themes From America: Land, Conflict and War, Family
This course is a study of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction in which men and women struggle for identity and self-realization in a world of change and cultural upheaval. The readings for each term, drawn from a variety of cultures, will be organized on central motifs (fall: The Land; winter: Conflict and War; spring: Family) and students will trace connections between the nature of ideas and the forms of expression. Texts may include: Thoreau, Walden; Faulkner, The Bear; Cather, O Pioneers!; MacLeod, Island; Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms; O'Brien, Going After Cacciato; McCarthy, Blood Meridian; Faulkner, The Unvanquished; Kennedy, Very Old Bones; and Morrison, Jazz. (Mr. Stableford)

ENGL-522AA/2, Great Themes From America: Land, Conflict and War, Family
This course is a study of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction in which men and women struggle for identity and self-realization in a world of change and cultural upheaval. The readings for each term, drawn from a variety of cultures, will be organized on central motifs (fall: The Land; winter: Conflict and War; spring: Family) and students will trace connections between the nature of ideas and the forms of expression. Texts may include: Thoreau, Walden; Faulkner, The Bear; Cather, O Pioneers!; MacLeod, Island; Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms; O'Brien, Going After Cacciato; McCarthy, Blood Meridian; Faulkner, The Unvanquished; Kennedy, Very Old Bones; and Morrison, Jazz. (Mr. Stableford)

ENGL-522AA/3, Great Themes From America: Land, Conflict and War, Family
This course is a study of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction in which men and women struggle for identity and self-realization in a world of change and cultural upheaval. The readings for each term, drawn from a variety of cultures, will be organized on central motifs (fall: The Land; winter: Conflict and War; spring: Family) and students will trace connections between the nature of ideas and the forms of expression. Texts may include: Thoreau, Walden; Faulkner, The Bear; Cather, O Pioneers!; MacLeod, Island; Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms; O'Brien, Going After Cacciato; McCarthy, Blood Meridian; Faulkner, The Unvanquished; Kennedy, Very Old Bones; and Morrison, Jazz. (Mr. Stableford)

ENGL-523AA/2, Modern American Literature - Rosebud: The Restless Search for an American Identity
Many of our enduring American works of literature and film, such as The Great Gatsby, The Catcher in the Rye, and Citizen Kane, center on the search for self. Through discussions on class, race, and gender, this course will present a series of American portraits while examining our changing society. Students will write personal narratives, as well as critical essays. Possible texts: Continental Drift, Banks; The Awakening, Chopin; Fences, Wilson; Six Degrees of Separation, Guare. Possible films: Citizen Kane; Far From Heaven; Tully; Transamerica; Hustle & Flow. (Mr. Bardo)

ENGL-523AB/1, Welcome to the Apocalypse
Confronted with the complexity of the world's problems, one easily can feel like Wile E. Coyote, well beyond the cliff's edge, staring at the abyss below. Presented as a senior seminar this course will explore critical issues facing us, such as refugees and immigration, wealth and resource disparities, terrorism and individual rights. Central to our collective endeavor will be examining through fiction and weekly films the interconnections between various conflicting forces, as well as the search for solutions. The term will culminate with class projects devoted to addressing local and global issues. Readings include Waiting for the Barbarians, GraceLand, Saturday Snow, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families, Imagining Argentina, Death and the Maiden. Films include The Constant Gardener, Dirty Pretty Things, Tstosi, Osama, Darwin's Nightmare, Elephant, Do the Right Thing, Hotel Rwanda. (Mr. Bardo)

ENGL-524AA/1, Rememories: Trauma and Survival in Twentieth-Century Literature
In her novel Beloved, Toni Morrison coins the term rememory to describe a type of memory that won't stay buried -- ghosts of experience that resurface across years, decades, even centuries, memories of trauma that continue to haunt literature to this day. This course will examine how narratives of cultural trauma and survival have been represented (and re-presented) in 20th- and 21st-century literature. In our investigation of literature about war, terrorism, and other cultural traumas, we will encounter authors writing from a variety of historical moments nad perspectives. We will look closely at how trauma literature both delineates and breaks down divisions between individual, societal, and generational trauma experience. And we will engage with the course texts by writing in a number of modes, both critical and creative. Thematic focuses will include the problematics of truth and testimony; the dismantling of traditional narrative structures and genres; individual vs. collective memory; societal regeneration; and the ways trauma literature engages with issues of race, class, gender, and national identity. In addition to selected poems and theoretical articles, possible texts include Morrison, Beloved or Sula; Foer, Everything is Illuminated or Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close; Cunningham, The Hours; Speigelman, Maus; West, The Return of the Soldier; O'Brien, The Things They Carried or In the Lake of the woods; and Momaday, The Way to Rainy Mountain. (Ms. McQuade)

ENGL-525AA/1, Feasts and Fools: Revelers and Puritans In Literature and Life
This course examines what Jean Toomer called the good-time spirit and its opposite, as manifest in major literature, including drama and film. Along with critical writing on literature, the students occupy themselves with parties and festivities in their lives, as well as in other cultures. Personal essays may lead to anthropological, architectural, performative, and semiological research projects, creative writing, and reports. Texts have included Mrs. Dalloway, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Love in the Time of Cholera, Vile Bodies, Like Water for Chocolate, The Custom of the Country, A Year in Provence, House of Sand and Fog, selected short stories, and poetry. Films include Babette's Feast, Much Ado About Nothing, and Table Manners. (Dr. Wilkin)

ENGL-525AA/2, Feasts and Fools: Revelers and Puritans In Literature and Life
This course examines what Jean Toomer called the good-time spirit and its opposite, as manifest in major literature, including drama and film. Along with critical writing on literature, the students occupy themselves with parties and festivities in their lives, as well as in other cultures. Personal essays may lead to anthropological, architectural, performative, and semiological research projects, creative writing, and reports. Texts have included Mrs. Dalloway, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Love in the Time of Cholera, Vile Bodies, Like Water for Chocolate, The Custom of the Country, A Year in Provence, House of Sand and Fog, selected short stories, and poetry. Films include Babette's Feast, Much Ado About Nothing, and Table Manners. (Dr. Wilkin)

ENGL-525AA/3, Feasts and Fools: Revelers and Puritans In Literature and Life
This course examines what Jean Toomer called the good-time spirit and its opposite, as manifest in major literature, including drama and film. Along with critical writing on literature, the students occupy themselves with parties and festivities in their lives, as well as in other cultures. Personal essays may lead to anthropological, architectural, performative, and semiological research projects, creative writing, and reports. Texts have included Mrs. Dalloway, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Love in the Time of Cholera, Vile Bodies, Like Water for Chocolate, The Custom of the Country, A Year in Provence, House of Sand and Fog, selected short stories, and poetry. Films include Babette's Feast, Much Ado About Nothing, and Table Manners. (Dr. Wilkin)

ENGL-526AA/1, Literature of Resistance, Resilience, and Triumph: Narratives of the Natives
This course will use texts and films from a variety of cultures underrepresented in the American curriculum. Included will be material from the following groups: South Africans, Chinese, Native Americans, and Latin Americans. Each selected novel/film will tell a story of others' cultural experiences from the perspective of the natives of that culture. Each term the course will include an exploration and understanding of the values, cultural norms, and traditions of other cultural groups to bear witness to these groups, as well as to dispel some myths about the said cultures. The course also will study the countless ways in which humans dominate other humans, and how the oppressed organize themselves in resistance and use their voices through literature and film to share their stories. Course participants will engage in literary and visual experiences of other worlds. Class discussions and frequent writing assignments will abound, and students will be encouraged to develop their own voices as they study the power of language in these narratives and undertake a topic of interest to research. There will be student-led seminars and end-of-term projects or papers, which will give students an opportunity to explore in depth a topic of their choice, culminating in class presentations. The chosen readings are as follows: Fall Term --Mother to Mother by Sindiwe Magona; Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See; Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich; In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez; and the film Long Night's Journey into Day, a documentary that takes us into post-apartheid's South Africa. (Mrs. Maqubela)

ENGL-526AA/2, Literature of Resistance, Resilience, and Triumph: Narratives of the Natives
This course will use texts and films from a variety of cultures underrepresented in the American curriculum. Included will be material from the following groups: South Africans, Chinese, Native Americans, and Latin Americans. Each selected novel/film will tell a story of others' cultural experiences from the perspective of the natives of that culture. Each term the course will include an exploration and understanding of the values, cultural norms, and traditions of other cultural groups to bear witness to these groups, as well as to dispel some myths about the said cultures. The course also will study the countless ways in which humans dominate other humans, and how the oppressed organize themselves in resistance and use their voices through literature and film to share their stories. Course participants will engage in literary and visual experiences of other worlds. Class discussions and frequent writing assignments will abound, and students will be encouraged to develop their own voices as they study the power of language in these narratives and undertake a topic of interest to research. There will be student-led seminars and end-of-term projects or papers, which will give students an opportunity to explore in depth a topic of their choice, culminating in class presentations. The chosen readings are as follows: Winter Term -Lucky Child by Luong Ung; Indian Killer by Sherman Alexie; So Long a Letter by Mariama Ba; and the film, El Norte, the story of a Guatemalan brother and sister who flee persecution at home and journey north with a dream of finding a new home in the United States. (Mrs. Maqubela)

ENGL-526AA/3, Literature of Resistance, Resilience, and Triumph: Narratives of the Natives
This course will use texts and films from a variety of cultures underrepresented in the American curriculum. Included will be material from the following groups: South Africans, Chinese, Native Americans, and Latin Americans. Each selected novel/film will tell a story of others' cultural experiences from the perspective of the natives of that culture. Each term the course will include an exploration and understanding of the values, cultural norms, and traditions of other cultural groups to bear witness to these groups, as well as to dispel some myths about the said cultures. The course also will study the countless ways in which humans dominate other humans, and how the oppressed organize themselves in resistance and use their voices through literature and film to share their stories. Course participants will engage in literary and visual experiences of other worlds. Class discussions and frequent writing assignments will abound, and students will be encouraged to develop their own voices as they study the power of language in these narratives and undertake a topic of interest to research. There will be student-led seminars and end-of-term projects or papers, which will give students an opportunity to explore in depth a topic of their choice, culminating in class presentations. The chosen readings are as follows: Spring Term -- Falling Leaves: The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter by Adeline Yen Mah; A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah; and Tracks by Louise Erdrich. (Mrs. Maqubela)

ENGL-527AA/2, The Novel After Modernism
In the middle of the 20th century, writers began to move past both the period and the styles that we still call modern. What does it mean for a novel to be past modern? Postmodern? Past postmodern? Can a contemporary novel still be a modern novel? In this course we will study the recent progress of the novel genre. We will read aggressively, studying four or five novels whose authors may include Russell Banks, J.M. Coetzee, Robert Coover, Don DeLillo, Joan Didion, Ralph Ellison, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Cormac McCarthy, Toni Morrison, Vladimir Nabokov, Joyce Carol Oates, Thomas Pynchon, Philip Roth, Jose Saramago, and Zadie Smith. (Mr. Domina)

ENGL-527AA/3, The Novel After Modernism
In the middle of the 20th century, writers began to move past both the period and the styles that we still call modern. What does it mean for a novel to be past modern? Postmodern? Past postmodern? Can a contemporary novel still be a modern novel? In this course we will study the recent progress of the novel genre. We will read aggressively, studying four or five novels whose authors may include Russell Banks, J.M. Coetzee, Robert Coover, Don DeLillo, Joan Didion, Ralph Ellison, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Cormac McCarthy, Toni Morrison, Vladimir Nabokov, Joyce Carol Oates, Thomas Pynchon, Philip Roth, Jose Saramago, and Zadie Smith. (Mr. Domina)

ENGL-528AA/2, Toubling Literature: Contesting Authority In and Through Literature
What do Keanu Reeves and Osama bin Laden have in common? They both play the part of postmodern prophets, the former in The Matrix, and the latter on the news. They both reflect a widespread dissatisfaction with the same technologies and virtual realities that helped produce them. Such figures use the media even as they see the media as symbolizing the demise of their fundamental beliefs. The idea of this course comes from the troubling of traditions in recent literary works (by the likes of Sebald, Calvino, Pynchon, etc.) and the resurgence of fundamentalisms in the United States and around the globe. An example: In 1989, Ayatollah Khomeni, the leader of Iran, issued a fatwa (a death sentence) for the Indo-British writer Salman Rushdie because he felt Rushdie's novel, Satanic Verses, was heretical. While we may or may not use this novel, the situation epitomizes the relationship of modes of writing that seek to trouble accepted truths and a mode of reading that characterizes fundamentalism. Rather than being strictly bound by period or locale, the course will explore the relationship of these subversive or troubling and fundamentalist modes. By looking at the intersections and relation of these works, we can gain a greater appreciation for the source of some of today's conflicts in the United States and around the globe. The course will ask the question: Are we to or how can we read a text literally? In addition we will address wider questions of meaning, authority, and context. What makes something sacred or canonical and who gets to decide, and what does it mean to trouble the sacred? Texts will be drawn from a variety of contexts. (Dr. Kane)

ENGL-530AB/3, Brazilian Cultural Studies
Four class periods. See also HIST-SS578. One of the largest countries in the world and with a diverse population, geography, and economic base, Brazil is poised to become one of the giants of 21st-century global development. This course will look into important moments in the political, economic, literary, and artistic histories of the country in the 19th and 20th centuries, attempting to understand how Brazil came to be what it is today and what it could become in the future. We will pay specific attention to the nation's formative years after independence from Portugal in 1822, the coffee boom of the early 20th century, the Vargas and Kubitschek regimes, the military dictatorship of the 1960s and 1970s, and the new democratic period of recent years. These historical moments will be studied through the lens of the literature, film, art, and music being produced at the time. Of special interest will be the work of Machado de Assis, Gilberto Freyre, Clarice Lispector, Jorge Amado, the participants in the 1922 Week of Modern Art movement, and the protest songs and films depicting life under the military regime. A student in this course is eligible for credit in either English or history. A student who wishes to receive English credit should sign up for ENGL-530AB/3; a student who wishes to receive history credit should sign up for HIST-SS578. (Dr. Vidal)

ENGL-535AA/2, James Joyce
Five class periods. The first term is devoted to Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist; the second term to Ulysses. The purposes of the course are to develop the skill to read important and difficult works without the aid of study guides or other secondary material, and to follow the development of Joyce as an artist. Although the course may be taken in either term, the student gains a better sense of Joyce's genius by enrolling for two terms. (Mr. O'Connor)

ENGL-535AA/3, James Joyce
Five class periods. The first term is devoted to Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist; the second term to Ulysses. The purposes of the course are to develop the skill to read important and difficult works without the aid of study guides or other secondary material, and to follow the development of Joyce as an artist. Although the course may be taken in either term, the student gains a better sense of Joyce's genius by enrolling for two terms. (Mr. O'Connor)

ENGL-536AA/3, The Play's the Thing: Advanced Shakespeare
While most of us meet Shakespeare in a book, his true home is on the stage. The course will cover three plays in depth, and close reading and textual analysis will be our primary focus. Emphasis will also be placed on learning to direct, stage, and speak Shakespeare trippingly on the tongue, so that we can appreciate and learn from the Bard the way he intended. (Ms. Curci)

ENGL-537AA/1, Writers in Depth
This course will be devoted to one British novelist each term. Each writer is both a representative of a particular time and an innovator who significantly influenced the history of the novel. Fall Term -- Jane Austen. Once taken at her word that her work was very limited, Austen was one of the vital links between the 18th- and 19th-century novelists. As a class, we will read Northanger Abbey, Emma, and Persuasion. Students who have not read Pride and Prejudice will do so, while those who have will read Sense and Sensibility. We will also watch Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility, as well as selections from adaptations of other Austen novels. (Ms. Fulton)

ENGL-537AA/2, Writers in Depth
This course will be devoted to one British novelist each term. Each writer is both a representative of a particular time and an innovator who significantly influenced the history of the novel. Winter Term: This term we will read Bleak House, which many consider Charles Dickens's masterpiece, an extraordinary blend of comedy, gothic mystery, and social protest, told through an intersecting double narrative. We also will read poetry by Blake and others, as well as study paintings and photographs from the time. (Ms. Fulton)

ENGL-537AA/3, Writers in Depth
This course will be devoted to one British novelist each term. Each writer is both a representative of a particular time and an innovator who significantly influenced the history of the novel. Spring Term: This term will be devoted to Virginia Woolf, who, if she had written no fiction, would still be known for her brilliant essays. We will read her two greatest novels, Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse; several of her short stories and essays; and selections from her autobiographical writings. To put Woolf's work in context, we will view some of the work of the Post-Impressionist painters; read from the war poets (the First World War is central to her novels); and compare her style with that of her fellow Modernist novelists Joyce and Faulkner. (Ms. Fulton)

ENGL-538AA/3, Edith Wharton
One of America's most gifted literary figures, 20th century that we encounter with a shock of recognition today. Her characters are the rich of New York City society, and in prose both biting and elegant, she describes their smug love of their money or uneasy love of it, as well as their desperate attempts to multiply it on Wall Street or cling to what's left of it or marry into it or survive without it. Her fiction reverberates with both satire and deep psychological insight. We will read her novel The House of Mirth and the short story collections Roman Fever and Other Stories and The New York Stories, and we will watch the films The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth (Ms. Scott)

ENGL-540AB/3, Atomic America: Service Learning
Atomic America in the spring term is a service-learning course. The first half of the term looks at an atomized America since the 1980s: niche marketing, gated communities, personal technologies, etc. During the latter half of the term, the class will confront this social atomization directly by engaging in service-learning opportunities. In small groups, participants will read about and work with populations that reflect an atomized America?recently these groups have worked with people with AIDS, the elderly, immigrants, and prisoners. Students then write a final paper that reflects on the literature and their experiences serving and being served by these people. (Dr. Kane)

ENGL-541AA/1, Yeats and the Irish Tradition
Since the establishment of Ireland's independence in 1921, the unique contribution of this nation's literature and culture has gained increasing international recognition. W.B. Yeats, the first of four Irish Nobel laureates and one of the dominant poets of the 20th century, played a key role in the revival of Irish culture. The course will focus not only on Yeats' poetry and drama, but on the great artists who preceded and followed him. Poetry, fiction, and drama, as well as art, music, and film, will be considered as part of this course, including some of the following. Poetry: Selected Poems, W.B. Yeats; Opened Ground, Seamus Heaney; The Water Horse, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill. Fiction: The Year of the French, Thomas Flanagan; Reading in the Dark, Seamus Deane; Castle Rackrent, Maria Edgeworth. Drama: Selected Plays, W.B. Yeats; The Playboy of the Western World and Riders to the Sea, J.M. Synge; Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett; Translations, Brian Friel. Film: Michael Collins (director, Neil Jordan), The Field (director, Jim Sheridan), Cal (director, Pat O'Connor). (Mr. O'Connor)

ENGL-542AA/1, An Introductory Survey of African- American Literature
This seminar course offers an overview of African-American literature through reading and writing assignments, discussions, student-led seminars, and visiting lecturers on art, music, and history. Trips to museums and jazz or blues club performances enhance the students' appreciation of cultural contexts. The fall term focuses on the early writings, on the literature of slavery and freedom, and on the literature of Reconstruction. In the winter, students read the literature of the Harlem Renaissance and African-American expressions of realism, naturalism, and modernism. In the spring, the Black Arts Movement and African- American literatures, including film and drama, since the 1970s are the foci of the course. (Ms. Hawthorne)

ENGL-542AA/2, An Introductory Survey of African- American Literature
This seminar course offers an overview of African-American literature through reading and writing assignments, discussions, student-led seminars, and visiting lecturers on art, music, and history. Trips to museums and jazz or blues club performances enhance the students' appreciation of cultural contexts. The fall term focuses on the early writings, on the literature of slavery and freedom, and on the literature of Reconstruction. In the winter, students read the literature of the Harlem Renaissance and African-American expressions of realism, naturalism, and modernism. In the spring, the Black Arts Movement and African- American literatures, including film and drama, since the 1970s are the foci of the course. (Ms. Hawthorne)

ENGL-542AA/3, An Introductory Survey of African- American Literature
This seminar course offers an overview of African-American literature through reading and writing assignments, discussions, student-led seminars, and visiting lecturers on art, music, and history. Trips to museums and jazz or blues club performances enhance the students' appreciation of cultural contexts. The fall term focuses on the early writings, on the literature of slavery and freedom, and on the literature of Reconstruction. In the winter, students read the literature of the Harlem Renaissance and African-American expressions of realism, naturalism, and modernism. In the spring, the Black Arts Movement and African- American literatures, including film and drama, since the 1970s are the foci of the course. (Ms. Hawthorne)

ENGL-543AA/3, Contemporary Caribbean Literature: Better Than Spring Break in Jamaica
Bearing a historical legacy of slavery and colonialism, the Caribbean today is viewed by many people as a tourist paradise, a place to relax and have fun in the sun. Nevertheless, the fact that, in recent years, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded twice to Caribbean authors (St. Lucian Derek Walcott and Trinidadian V.S. Naipaul) is an important indicator of the quality of the cultural production in this archipelago. In this course, we will examine Caribbean literature from various islands, investigating their significance as representatives of a common (?) Caribbean experience. Through our responses to different literary texts (novels, plays, poems, essays) as well as to film and music from the region, we will ponder the issue of identity (both individual and collective), trying to articulate what it means to be Caribbean nowadays. Writers include Aime Cesaire, Derek Walcott, Jacques Roumain, Jamaica Kincaid, Julia Alvarrez, Rosario Ferre, Esmeralda Santiago, Simone Schwarz-Bart, and V.S. Naipaul. Films: Sugar Cane Alley, Strawberry and Chocolate. The course includes a service-learning component with the Dominican and Haitian immigrant communities in Lawrence, Mass. (Dr. Vidal)

ENGL-543AB/3, Haunted by Shadows: Viewing African Independence Through Lens and Literature
This course will offer a brief survey of literature written about sub-Saharan Africa in the latter part of the 20th century. Struggling with a myriad of issues, native African authors, as well as observers like V.S. Naipaul, consider in their works the impact of colonialism, corruption, globalization, poverty, tribalism, and other forces on nations as they emerge from European domination. Class discussions will focus on how these authors craft their fiction as political and social narratives. Films such as Tsotsi, Darwin's Nightmare, and Hotel Rwanda will augment the texts, as will chapters from Martin Meredith's The Fate of Africa. Possible texts: Graceland, Albani; A Bend in the River, Naipaul; Master Harold...and the Boys, Fugard; Everything Good Will Come, Atta; The Madonna of Excelsior, Mda; July's People, Gordimer; Disgrace, Coetzee; Under African Skies: Modern African Stories, Larson. (Mr. Bardo)

ENGL-544AA/2, NOLA: The Past As Prologue
This is a project-driven, seminar-formatted, multidisciplinary course that meshes the diversity of students' interests with the diversity of NOLA's past and present and the complexity of its future. Discussion of shared and independent reading, seminar reports, the analyses of documentary videos, and presentations by visiting scholars focus the study of NOLA's cultural gumbo, its historical and annual ritual progression through conflict to celebration. A culminating service-learning project involving working and learning in NOLA may be included. Comparative analysis will be encouraged in discussions and an option for writing assignments. To form a context for their study of NOLA's culture and history, students will use selections from Through the Eye of Katrina: The Past as Prologue? (a special issue of The Journal of American History); American Tragedy: New Orleans Unde Water (a special issue of Callaloo); Sublette's The World that Made New Oleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square; and Blues for New Orleans: Mardi Gras and America's Creole Soul, ed. Abraham. After reading texts like Chopin's The Awakening, Faulkner's New Orleans Sketches and Mosquitoes, and Hurston's Mules and Men, students will use Literary New Orleans in the Modern World, ed. Kennedy, to direct their individual projects focused on New Orleans literature. (Mr. Sykes)

ENGL-545AA/1, Literature of the Civil War
Historian Shelby Foote said, Any understanding of this nation has to be based on an understanding of the Civil War. But how can one possibly understand the Civil War? Since the conflict began, countless Americans have tried to make sense of it - through letters, journals, memoirs, photographs, songs, poems, novels, films, and histories. In this course, we will attempt to reach some understanding of the Civil War and its legacy. Although our approach will necessarily be interdisciplinary, our principal focus will be the various literature of the war. The writers we study will most likely include, but not be limited to, Frederick Douglass, William Faulkner, Abraham Lincoln, Margaret Mitchell, Toni Morrison, Robert Penn Warren, Walt Whitman, and C. Vann Woodward. (Mr. Domina)

ENGL-546AA/1, Modernism Across the 20th Century
In the waning hours of the Belle Epoque, under the calamitous shadow of a devastating world war, the advent of the 1900s in Europe and America witnessed a profound change in the established social order. A breach of faith in the ability of traditional literary modes to represent the dissonance of modern life ensued. This course will examine stories of character in crisis: how does the modern hero struggle to find moral order and certainty in a world that no longer makes sense according to conventional structures of meaning? We will read Anglo-American masterpieces of high modernism, including The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot, To the Lighthouse by Viginia Woolf, and Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner. (Ms. Tousignant)

ENGL-547AA/1, Rhetorical Selves in English Renaissance Poetry
That Obscure Object of Desire: Sixteenth- Century English Poetry. The poets of the English Renaissance bring to their work a kind of critical self-consciousness rarely seen again until Modernism, a consciousness of poetry as artifice, and of the poet as artificer, and to no subject more so than love, the poetic and rhetorical occasion par excellence. In the fall term, we explore the intersection in 16th-century poetry of ideals of poetic and rhetorical mastery, social advancement, and love, focusing in particular on the 1580s and 1590s, the golden age of Elizabethan poetry. We will consider the development of English meter and accentual-syllabic verse, the models for English poetry provided by Antiquity and the Continent, by Petrarchism (and its discontents), and the use of genres like the sonnet sequence and epyllion, or miniature epic, genres which Georgia E. Brown describes as marginal, exploring metamorphoses, threshold states and points of coming inti being. Among the poets that we will read are Sir Philip Sidney, Christopher Marlowe, and William Shakespeare. (Mr. Bird)

ENGL-547AA/3, Rhetorical Selves in English Renaissance Poetry
Metaphysical Wit: Seventeeth-Century English Poetry. The erotic and religious poetry of John Donne forms the nucleus of the spring term, as we explore the works of the Metaphysical Poets. Among the topics we will consider are Donne and the Metaphysical Poets' formal and metrical innovations, their use of irony and paradox, catachresis and hyperbole, and the so-called Metaphysical conceit. The complex image (a book, a globe, the legs of a compass) with which the Metaphysical Poets draw startling analogies to the heightened experience of erotic or spiritual love, a process in which, as Dr. Johnson wrote, the most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together. (Mr. Bird.