Faculty Profile

Wendy Moffat

Professor of English; John J. Curley '60 and Ann Conser Curley '63 Faculty Chair in Global Education (1984)

Contact Information

moffat@dickinson.edu

East College Room 406
717-245-1499
http://Wendymoffat.com

Bio

Her teaching interests include modernism, literature and sexuality, biography, and literary theory. Her biography, A Great Unrecorded History: A New Life of E. M. Forster, received the Biographer’s Club Prize in 2010 and was runner-up for the PEN Biography Prize in 2011.

Education

  • B.A., Yale University, 1977
  • M.A., 1979
  • M.Phil., 1981, Ph.D., 1986

Awards

  • Ganoe Award for Inspirational Teaching, 1994-1995

2023-2024 Academic Year

Fall 2023

ENGL 220 Intro to Literary Studies
In literary studies, we explore the work texts do in the world. This course examines several texts of different kinds (e.g., novel, poetry, film, comic book, play, etc.) to investigate how literary forms create meanings. It also puts texts in conversation with several of the critical theories and methodologies that shape the discipline of literary study today (e.g., Marxist theory, new historicism, formalism, gender theory, postcolonial theory, ecocriticism, etc.). This course helps students frame interpretive questions and develop their own critical practice. Prerequisite: 101. This course is the prerequisite for 300-level work in English.

WGSS 301 Jane Austen in Her Time
Cross-listed with ENGL 341-01.This course may count as either a pre-1800 or post-1800 300-level literature class, depending on the student's research. Those students who wish to earn pre-1800 credit must inform me before add/drop is over, and I will inform the registrar and supplement and guide research accordingly. Students must satisfactorily complete the final research paper as a pre-1800 course to receive pre-1800 credit.>Here is a rare opportunity to study the whole of a great writer's oeuvre in a single term. We will read all six of Austen's major novels, biographical material, and selected social history with the aim of understanding the cultural conditions described by the novels, and the novels in their cultural context. Students will lead one class discussion, write one research paper, and present an "accomplishment" befitting Austen's milieu: e. g. performing a musical composition, completing a piece of needlework, learning a card game and teaching it to the class, composing a verbal "charade," and the like. In addition, each week, each student will be expected to write and mail one letter (not e mail) to a correspondent of his/her choosing. (The letters may remain private.)

ENGL 341 Jane Austen in Her Time
Cross-listed with WGSS 301-01.This course may count as either a pre-1800 or post-1800 300-level literature class, depending on the student's research. Those students who wish to earn pre-1800 credit must inform me before add/drop is over, and I will inform the registrar and supplement and guide research accordingly. Students must satisfactorily complete the final research paper as a pre-1800 course to receive pre-1800 credit.>Here is a rare opportunity to study the whole of a great writer's oeuvre in a single term. We will read all six of Austen's major novels, biographical material, and selected social history with the aim of understanding the cultural conditions described by the novels, and the novels in their cultural context. Students will lead one class discussion, write one research paper, and present an "accomplishment" befitting Austen's milieu: e. g. performing a musical composition, completing a piece of needlework, learning a card game and teaching it to the class, composing a verbal "charade," and the like. In addition, each week, each student will be expected to write and mail one letter (not e mail) to a correspondent of his/her choosing. (The letters may remain private.)

Spring 2024

ENGL 321 James Joyce's Ulysses
Now you can tell your grandchildren that you have read, finished, and (partially) understood the Great Modern Novel almost every serious reader has picked up and attempted. The text of Ulysses (1922) is the linchpin for intertextual explorations; we will read Ulysses slowly, throughout the whole term. In addition, we will read around the novel, considering alternative contexts for understanding this complex, yet wonderful work. Other readings will include versions of Joyce's autobiography (A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Stephen Hero), biography (Richard Ellman and Edna O'Brien on Joyce and Brenda Maddox on Nora Barnacle, Joyce's lover and wife), Joyce's fiction (The Dubliners), the mythic context (The Odyssey, The Bible, Celtic myth), and Irish social history.