Topics in Literature Series

The English Department offers a series of special topic literature courses. These courses examine both traditional literary works and works intended to broaden and redefine the canon. Each topic reflects an important component of social formation and is concerned with issues and themes that arise in literary works from various cultures and periods. Instructors and topics change and students are urged to explore a variety of topics and courses.

261C Topics in Sexuality and Literature (3)
Past courses include: Queer Literature
262P CC Topics in Ethnicity and Literature (3)
Past courses include: American Immigrant Literature and Multicultural Literature.
263C P1 Topics in Literature and the Arts (3)
Past courses include: Images of Urban America and Modernism in the City. Cross-listed with ARTS 263C. (See Sample Syllabus)
264C P5 Topics in Literature and Politics (3)
Past courses include: Dangerous Words: Censorship and Literature.
268 "Did you see the movie?": Learning to Analyze Film (3)
This course will begin by defamiliarizing the apparent accessibility of film. It will acquaint students with the basic tenets of film studies, including the technical aspects of film production, visual communication theory, and theories of film 'authorship.' Then we'll study a wide variety of films, including early silent movies, canonical classics like Citizen Kane, and films from divergent genres and traditions, like The Draughtsman's Contract, Do the Right Thing, and Friday the Thirteenth. Student writing will focus on three areas: on how technique (form) creates content; on theories of visual pleasure; and on the politics of film ideology.

Literature Survey Courses

These courses provide a foundational background for the study of literature written in English by offering an overview of the main writers and texts in British and American literature and placing those individual writers and texts in a historical and literary context.

293 P1 Early English Literature (3)
This course covers English literature written between the 10th and 17th centuries. Students become familiar with earlier forms of the English language, the genres which characterized literature of this period, and the cultural contexts which valorized and continue to valorize certain authors, subjects, and narrative styles in the literature of that period. (See sample Uman Syllabus) (See sample VanderBilt Syllabus)

294 Milton through the Romantics: Reason and Imagination (3)
John Milton, who published Paradise Lost in 1667 at the end of his career, influenced every major writer in English for the next 150 years, yet each responded differently to Milton as a literary forebear. What did Milton mean to writers as different as Alexander Pope and William Wordsworth, and what accounts for their difference? How do England’s changing literary tastes reflect the social and economic changes that made it, by 1820, the world’s foremost industrial power? Why do classical literary forms give way to native English models, lyric displacing satiric verse? How do the poems of Wordsworth and Blake reflect the revolutionary impulse felt throughout Europe? The course considers these among other questions. Besides Milton, it includes such writers as John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Samuel Johnson, Thomas Gray, Robert Burns, William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and John Keats.

295 English Literature from the Victorians to the Present: Through a Looking Glass (3)
This course traces the evolution of English literature from roughly the 1840s to the present day, a period of extraordinary intellectual and social upheaval. Emphasis falls on novels and poetry. The readings investigate imaginative responses to such issues as the challenges of science to traditional, religiously based conceptions of reality; the reorganization of communal and even private life by the industrial revolution; the rise and then the disintegration of the British Empire; and the impact of two world wars. In this literature of our own time, we see ourselves reflected in ways both revealing and disturbing. Readings include the work of such writers as Matthew Arnold, Robert Browning, George Eliot, W. B. Yeats, James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, W. H. Auden, Philip Larkin, Seamus Heaney, and others.

297 The Emergence of American Literature (3)
Beginning with the Puritan arrival in the “ New World,” this course traces the development of an American national literature through the national upheaval of the Civil War and Reconstruction. The course considers topics including the Puritan vision of the new world, conflicts between white colonists and native peoples, tension between the ideal of republicanism and the presence of slavery, and the search for a national culture. Students read the works of a variety of Puritan figures, political writings of such important early Americans as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, the philosophical writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, the poetry of Walt Whitman, and fiction by such writers as Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Louisa May Alcott.

298 American Literature from 1880 to the Present: Realism to Postmodern Literature (3)
This course surveys American literature representing a period that ranges from the consolidation of a national culture following the Civil War to the current paradoxical condition of a sole global super-power whose national culture has seldom seemed more fragmented. Topics to be explored include intellectual and imaginative responses to industrialization and urbanization, to the culmination of westward expansion and the loss of the frontier, to the integration of free African Americans and millions of immigrants into the culture and the economy, and to the challenges and responsibilities of world power. Readings include the work of such writers as Mark Twain, Henry James, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, Robert Frost, Ernest Hemingway, Langston Hughes, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Wallace Stevens, Zora Neale Hurston, William Faulkner, Elizabeth Bishop, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, Adrienne Rich, and others.

Advanced Literature Courses

Building from the foundation laid in the literature surveys, these courses provide students the opportunity to investigate in depth a particular topic, genre, writer, or literary movement by situating individual works of literature within clearly defined historical, social, and/or cultural contexts.

When any of the following upper-division courses is offered, it will have a specific focus within the general rubric of its catalogue title. May be repeated for credit if the focus is different. These courses are designed for English majors. ENGL200C is a pre-requisite for all of the following:

305 Structure of Language (3)
This course allows students to study the English language by looking at its component parts - syntax, morphology, semantics - and how those elements help explain the power of language in the contemporary world. Possible topics include gender differences in language use, world-wide English as a colonial phenomenon, and the "science" of grammar.

312C P1 Advanced Shakespeare Seminar (3)
This course explores the way Shakespeare’s plays have been and are interpreted by critics, theatrical and film productions, and audiences. Students investigate what literary interpretation is and how it is affected by historical and cultural contexts. In doing so, students read the assigned texts both as works of literature and as scripts for a stage performance. In addition, students study current critical approaches to these plays to develop a sense of their own cultural lens for interpreting Shakespeare. May not be repeated for credit. (See Uman sample syllabus 1) (See Uman sample syllabus 2)

318 English Literary Renaissance (3)
In the sixteenth and early seventeenth century, writers saw themselves as participating in a time of artistic rebirth. This course offers an in-depth study of literature from this vibrant literary era. Reading literature of the time within a social and historical context, students focus on issues such as the emerging ideas of authorship, nation, and gender in the English Renaissance.

319 Satire (3)
Most often political, seen as destructive but claiming to be medicinal, satire is an old and respected literary form that goes far beyond the parody and sarcasm with which it is now most frequently associated. This course focuses on works from one of the great ages of satire, works that fall under many different generic categories - epic poetry, the epistolary poem, newspaper prose, short fiction, comedies, and tragedies. See syllabus

325 The Romantic Tradition (3)
Romanticism is a comprehensive label given to movements in politics, philosophy, and art rooted in the mid to late eighteenth century. While the range of its ideas and expressions is vast, the Romantic outlook can be broadly characterized by three principles: the central importance of the individual (and the individual's perceptions, emotions, and attitudes) in life and art; the value of imagination as a source of experience and even understanding, a faculty to be stimulated and nurtured, and a measure of genius; and a reverence for nature as a revelation of truth, a source of both wisdom and ideas of form, whether social or aesthetic. This course examines the expression and evolution of these principles in selections of texts representing the Romantic tradition in England and America, from its origins in the eighteenth century to its echoes in the twentieth.

327 Studies in Victorian Literature (3)
Queen Victoria's sixty-four-year reign (1837-1901) witnessed sweeping social changes - the growth of industrialization, imperialism, nationalism, and the struggle for women's rights. At the same time, the writings of Marx and Engels, Darwin, Freud and others challenged long-held ways of understanding the world. These profound social and intellectual changes paralleled the rise of narrative fiction and poetry, which achieved unequaled popularity with both writers and readers during this period. Because it is impossible in one semester comprehensively to "cover" Victorian literature, and because literature is inextricably linked to culture, we study several writers' imaginative responses to the sense of dividedness and loss that characterized Victorian culture.

335 Studies in African American Literature (3)
Through close attention to texts grouped by topic, genre, or historical moment, this course explores how race serves as a foundational means of thinking about America and the American experience. We focus on texts produced by both white and black writers as we consider ways in which writers have sought to represent the African-American experience. Themes and issues might include the institution of slavery and the slave narrative; uplift; passing and identity; assimilation vs. isolation; double-consciousness; the emergence of a distinctly black culture in America; manners and modes of representing African-American life and culture; and notions of America as filtered through African-American consciousness and literary production. See syllabus.

336 Studies in Native American Literature (3)
This course explores the means, styles, and purposes of self-representation, at both the individual and the communal levels, in a variety of texts by Native American writers. Themes and issues might include the struggle for cultural authenticity, the experience of conquest and the idea of the reservation, ideas of nationhood and the relations of tribal nations to the United States, and the pluralism of cultures within the Native American community itself.

337 Ethnicities in/and Literature (3)
Ethnicity, often linked to but not the same as race, has a complex history in this nation whose motto is "E Pluribus Unum" (from Many, One). It has been an obstacle to achieving our motto's unity, and it has been a sustaining value to many of our citizens. Often it has been both these things simultaneously. This course examines literary representations of ethnic identity and culture, inviting students to explore definitions of ethnicity and their implications in the daily operations of peoples and nations. The course considers such questions as these: what is the difference between race and ethnicity? do only "minorities" have ethnicity? how might we define ethnicity in an increasingly multiracial society? how do we handle the history of discrimination in today's world?

339 American Literatures (3)
This course explores the ways in which American writers have conceptualized the American experience and America as a nation. The plural in the title is deliberate; variety is a key concept. Possible areas of focus include key genres such as the Romance, realism, regionalism, and naturalism; central themes such as race and ethnicity, religion, technology and the self-making narrative; and repeated motifs such as the American Adam and the American abroad.

341 Studies in Poetry (3)
The particular poets and poems for versions of this course can be selected according to several different criteria: by historical period, for example, by particular genre (epic, lyric, etc.), by adherence to a theory of composition (e.g. projectivists, Language poets, surrealists, new formalists), and by other categories, no doubt. But however the writers and texts are chosen, the course focuses on issues specific to the genre and history of poetry, including the very definition of poetry in various places and times, the resources of prosody and form, and the relations of the art to its audience.

342 Studies in the Novel (3)
However the particular texts for any version of this course are chosen, it focuses on issues related to the nature and history of the novel, the literary form that has, over the last two hundred fifty years, become the dominant mode of literary production. The course explores conventions, traditions, and innovations in point of view, narrative structure and style, and the cultural place of the novel in relation to its historical moment and it’s audience.

343 Studies in Drama (3)
Writers of drama rely on living people - actors and auditors - to make their works fully real. Studies in drama therefore rely on an understanding of those contemporary audiences, the conditions of theater, and the politics of the day, as well as shifting generic conventions. In some semesters, this course focuses on Renaissance drama, of which Shakespeare makes only a portion, in others Restoration Comedies, or Theater of the Absurd, or any of a number of periods in which the English language theater flourished.

344 Popular Genres (3)
While it is common to distinguish between "high" culture and mass culture, that distinction is often blurred, and more and more consistently, critics have devoted concentrated attention to the products of mass culture, arguing that their widespread popularity and large audiences suggest that they may be especially revealing about the structures and concerns of the public mind. Moreover, the various forms of popular culture have their own sets of styles and conventions, just as the traditional arts do, that help us to define them and to recognize innovation within them. This course focuses on such popular genres as (mass market) films, TV series, music videos, genre fiction (e.g. romances, detective novels, westerns), and comics to investigate both the nature of the forms themselves and what they may tell us about their social and cultural contexts.

347 Studies In Postcolonialism (3)
This course introduces students to postcolonial theory to help them develop an understanding of the historical forces and literary influences shaping writers in both the colonial and postcolonial eras. Reading classic literature of Empire along with emerging literature from the postcolonial world, students put texts into dialogue with each other and examine how the experience of colonization affects individual authors and the process of cultural production.

348 Women Writers (3)
An exploration of major works of English and/or American women writers often grouped by historical period. This course attempts to discover common themes and images in women's writing that we place in a cultural and historical context. Mindful of the astonishing variety in this literature, student try to discern whether there is what Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar call " a strong continuity" in the writings of English-speaking women, and if so, to what degree as Virginia Woolf contends, books (particularly by women) "continue each other. "

349 Major Authors (3)
In this course, students focus on the works of a singe author or closely allied group of authors. In addition to studying the literature in depth, students examine the literary and social context which brought these authors to a place of prominence and the ways in which literary critics have approached their work. (See sample syllabus)

350 Literary Theory (3)
This course focuses not on particular works of literature, but on methods of interpretation. Students read works of theory and learn to apply their theoretical perspectives to works of literature. In some semesters, the course might focus entirely on one branch of literary theory. In another, the course might more fully survey the history of literary theories, including new criticism, structuralism, deconstruction, feminism, race relations, and marxism, or might cover more thoroughly three of four very different moments of literary theory.

351 Literature and Other Discourses (3)
Literature, by its very nature, incorporates a multitude of topics and discourses. This course focuses on the relationship between literature and other discourses, including such diverse expressive systems as law, medicine, foreign or imaginary languages, the visual arts, and the "language" of animals. The course features a focus on these alternative systems as topics within works of literature, and as a structuring element that may radically affect the way literature is perceived by the reader. We also focus on the transformation of literary works into other forms of communication, such as films, television productions, works of art and other phenomena.

Seminar for Literature Majors

420 Senior Literature Seminar (3)
This is the capstone course for senior English Department majors, culminating in an extensive research paper (20-25 pages) of each individual student's own design, along with an oral presentation. During the semester, students read articles from academic journals in order to become familiar with critical perspectives on literary and cultural texts. In their research papers, the students then situate their own critical perspectives on a text(s) within the context of established critical discourse.

Writing Course Descriptions (ENGL)

Assumed pre-requisite for all of the following courses is ENGL101C or its Learning Community equivalent.

251 Introduction to Creative Nonfiction (3)
This course requires students to write extensively for a variety of purposes. Its goal is to help writers develop and strengthen a personal and public voice and broaden their range of writing techniques. It is designed for students who have already had some training in expository writing and who are competent in the conventions of written English. The course is structured to encourage active participation and collaborative learning. (See sample syllabus)

253 Introductory Creative Writing (3)
In this seminar-workshop, students write and respond to both fiction and poetry. The course involves extensive writing and detailed evaluation of individual students’ creative work.

255 Introduction to Professional Writing (3)
This course introduces the student to the basics of workplace writing, which include defining and establishing the context for the writing task, performing an audience analysis, using and developing effective modes and communication styles, and assessing the effectiveness of the communication. The course explores both traditional written communications as well as digital modes of communication and emphasizes editing, grammar, structure, tone, and the conventions of some specific types of workplace writing. It also begins the process of honing the student’s professional writing style.

258 The Essay (3)
This course introduces the history, rhetoric, and art of essayistic discourse, starting with Montaigne, who invented the modern essay, and extending to the present day. After analyzing the essay as a diverse rhetorical form, students produce essays of their own.

259 Argument and Persuasion (3)
In this course, students learn to analyze and produce arguments. Particular emphasis is given to understanding the appropriate means of persuasion in various rhetorical contexts across disciplines.

270C Peer Consulting in Writing (4)
This course trains students in consulting in writing and provides supervised tutoring experience in the College’s Writing Center. Simultaneously, it helps students improve their own writing, editing, and critical reading skills. Subjects covered include the theory and practice of collaborative learning, background in various approaches to teaching writing generally, and listening and questioning skills. An additional two hours per week in the Writing Center are required.

Restriction: Sophomore, Junior or Senior status.

302 Writers as Close Readers (3)
Avid writers are likely also to be avid readers, studying the writer’s craft. This course emphasizes critical analysis centered on the writers’ use of point of view, a variety of narrative styles and inventions, and other writers’ tools to produce deliberate effects: the evolution of the storyteller’s art. Readings will include short fiction and novels—some older for historical perspective, most relatively recent.

Prerequisite: ENGL 200C.

Advanced Practices Writing Courses

The prerequisite for any of the Advanced Practices courses is ENGL200C. It is strongly recommended that students also have taken at least one of 251, 253, 258 or 259.

355 Advanced Professional Writing (3)
This course explores principles and advanced practices of professional communications and emphasizes the design and development of professionally applicable communication projects and products. Students have the opportunity to work in collaboration with administrative areas of the college to help design actual documentation, such as web-based documents, workplace documents (including letters and reports), and technical documents, including procedures, instructions, and specifications for use. In addition, students develop a portfolio of documentation and technologically based communications. The principles of context, audience analysis, document design and development, and assessment are applied with professional rigor. Students are expected to bring advanced skills in grammar, structure, and tone to their work in this course.

356 Writing for a Living (3)
Advertising, copywriting, roving reporter, novelist, technical writer: the profession of writing involves many needs, skills, disciplines, and genres. This course provides not only a critical overview of those needs, disciplines, skills and genres, but it also helps the student become aware of her/his writing strengths and weaknesses. In addition, it helps the student focus on particular areas of interest in the profession of writing. Much in-class writing, editing, and critiquing of students’ own and others’ writing is required. A portfolio of writing that encompasses and showcases a student’s work and areas of interest completes the course.

358 Writing for Instructional Design (3)
The ability to write instructional documents (e.g., manuals and guides) that readers can understand and follow is one of the most useful skills a technical writer can have. It requires knowledge of learning theory as well as writing ability. Introduces students to the principles of instructional design, including theories of adult learning as well as practical applications of those theories for specific learning situations. In addition to the study of theory and history of adult education, students fine-tune their technical writing skills in audience, needs, and task analysis; objective and goal development; material design and/or selection and development; and assessment.

361 Writing for Websites (3)
The rules for writing for websites are very different from those of traditional media. In this course, students study the importance of website content and how to construct that content as a piece of an image-based whole. Concepts such as keywords, linking, ranking, hypertext and design are studied using analysis of a variety of websites. Students also learn to craft their writing using principles of usability, audience analysis, and purpose, as well as how to evaluate the performance results of websites.

364 Writing for Alternative Media (3)
This course presents the history and logic of mainstream media - including ownership patterns, legislative influences, theoretical strategies, and political effects - and considers the contrastive character of "alternative" media. Students research a particular alternative information source and write for it.

371 Creative Writing: Fiction (3)
A seminar-workshop in which the focus is detailed critical evaluation of individual students’ creative work in the short story and the novel. Requirements include three stories or chapters of a novel, short writing assignments, written critiques of fellow students’ work, and outside reading.

372 Creative Writing: Poetry (3)
A seminar-workshop in which the focus is detailed evaluation of individual students’ creative work in poetry. Assigned readings; individual conferences with instructor.

374 Creative Writing: Drama (3)
A seminar-workshop in which the focus is detailed critical evaluation of individual students’ creative work in drama: writing for the stage. Requirements include three one-act plays or substantial scenes from a longer work, written critiques of fellow students’ work, and outside reading.

376 Creative Writing: Non-fiction (3)
A seminar-workshop that focuses on the art and craft of creative nonfiction, with particular emphasis on structure, voice, character, and scene. Requirements include weekly reading and writing assignments, detailed critiques of peer work, and a semester project.

378 Special Topics in Advanced Writing (3)
This course offers close attention to and substantial practice in writing in particular genres writing prose fiction, poetry, drama, or creative non-fiction, whether defined by form (e.g. poetry sequences, science fiction, screenplays) or by designed audience (e.g. young adult fiction, chick lit). Students who have received credit for ENGL375 (Writing Young Adult Fiction), may not receive credit for this course unless the topic is different.

Theories, Contexts, Communities Writing Courses

The pre-requisite for any of the Theories, Contexts and Communities courses is ENGL200C. It is strongly recommended that students also have taken at least one of 251, 253, 258 or 259.

352 Rhetorical Theory (3)
This course explores such aspects of classical rhetorical theory as invention, organization, style, adaptation to an audience, ethos, and image. Students identify these elements in examples of contemporary rhetoric ranging from speeches and rap songs to television, film, and print communications. Students learn to write and speak persuasively and to think critically about both contemporary and classical rhetoric. (See sample syllabus)

353 Rhetorical History and Traditions (3)
This course examines the rhetorical traditions of a given social group (ethnic, religious, political, etc.) in historical and cultural contexts. Speeches, sermons, letters, essays, music, art, and other rhetorical forms are studies as means of persuasion and self-representation in a political world of difference.

370 Women’s Autobiography (3)
Studies women’s writing in the genres of life writing, autobiography, and memoir and focuses primarily on contemporary female authors. Readings include the work of such writers as Maxine Hong Kingston, Audre Lorde, Natalie Kusz, Judith Kitchen, Naomi Shihab, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Lucy Grealy and others. This course examines evidence of a shared tradition among the women writers of our time, including common topics and shared perspectives. Students improve their critical and analytical skills through a variety of reading and writing assignments, including both critical and creative writing.

379 The Rhetoric of Social Movements (3)
This course introduces students to the history and rhetoric of a given social movement. Essays, speeches, literature, and propaganda associated with the movement are studies in historical, cultural, and democratic contexts. Students produce analytical papers and a research project.

380 Visual Rhetoric (3)
This course begins with the assumption that every image functions as an argument. Students learn to analyze the rhetoric inherent in visual culture, including photography, film, and art. Syllabus

381 The Rhetoric of Hate and Social Justice (3)
In this course, students learn how rhetorical histories of hate have formed the foundations of genocide, white supremacy, homophobia, and sexism. They analyze the historical, political, and economic contexts that have produced the rhetoric of hate in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

382 Digital Literacy (3)
In this course students study both the conceptual and practical aspects of digital literacy involving media such as websites, email, and synchronous modes including chats and VoIP devices. The study involves understanding the various rhetorical modes inherent in the media, how these modes are changing, and the effects of digital communications on society and culture. The course studies ancient rhetoricians such as Aristotle and Socrates, as well as modern day influencers including Foucault, Gee, Kahan, Berger & Luckmann, and Selfe.

Seminar for Writing Majors

425 Senior Writing Seminar (3)
A seminar-workshop in writing open only to senior English majors with a writing concentration and senior writing minors.

Special Courses

490 Internship (3)
Through the department’s internship program, eligible junior and senior majors may earn academic credit for supervised off-campus work in business and industry. No more than three credits earned in an internship will be counted toward the major. Permission of internship coordinator.

Restrictions : Junior and senior ENGL majors with a 3.00 GPA.

496 Independent Study (1-3)
In consultation with a given instructor, the student decides on a topic for consideration. A written proposal, approved by the instructor, is then submitted to the department chair for approval. The student’s independent study culminates in a paper of approximately 25-30 pages. Completion of the Independent Study/Tutorial Authorization form is required. See Policy on Independent Study.

Restrictions : Seniors with a cumulative grade point average of 3.00.

Honors Options in English

The English department offers a degree with Honors in English to qualified students who complete a substantial project in literary criticism or creative writing. Students must have at least a 3.50 GPA in English courses and a 3.30 GPA overall. Candidates must fulfill the following requirements:

1. Receive an “A” on the honors thesis. The paper should display originality and sophistication of thought, as well as stylistic excellence.
2. Successfully defend the thesis at an open colloquium. Although anyone from the academic community may attend the colloquium, the student meets primarily with a committee of readers, who will decide whether to award honors. The committee is composed of the project director, a second reader from the English department, and the chair of the department. The colloquium is usually held during the week of final exams.

498H, 499H Honors in English (3, 3)
A one- or two-semester sequence of independent study during the senior year, culminating in a thesis. Upon completion of the project, a student receives three or six hours of 400-level credit toward the major. The candidate should carefully select a member of the department to direct the project and work closely with him/her. The advisor evaluates the student’s performance and determines a final grade. No later than the end of the junior year, the student should consult with his/her director and submit a detailed description of the project to the chair of the department for approval. Completion of the Independent Study/Tutorial Authorization form is required. See Requirements for Honors in the Major.