Spring 2023

Course Code Title/Instructor Meets
ENGL 101-01 The History of Love
Instructor: Jacob Sider Jost
Course Description:
We will trace the long history of love narratives in the Western tradition, from the classical world to today. We will follow the evolution of key concepts such as sexuality, property, contract, parental authority, mutuality, companionship, possession, jealousy, and subjectivity. Authors read will likely include Sappho, Plato, Dante, Shakespeare, de Lafayette, Austen, Stein, Hurston.
10:30 AM-11:45 AM, TR
DENNY 317
ENGL 101-02 The American Comic Book
Instructor: Greg Steirer
Course Description:
Cross-listed with FMST 220-04. This course explores the history, aesthetics, and business aspects of the American comic book. Attention will also be given to the comic book's relationship with other media, such as animation and live-action film.
09:00 AM-10:15 AM, TR
EASTC 411
ENGL 101-03 The American Comic Book
Instructor: Greg Steirer
Course Description:
Cross-listed with FMST 220-05. This course explores the history, aesthetics, and business aspects of the American comic book. Attention will also be given to the comic book's relationship with other media, such as animation and live-action film.
10:30 AM-11:45 AM, TR
EASTC 411
ENGL 220-01 Introduction to Literary Studies
Instructor: Claire Seiler
Course Description:
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.
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
EASTC 410
ENGL 220-02 Introduction to Literary Studies
Instructor: Sarah Kersh
Course Description:
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.
10:30 AM-11:45 AM, TR
EASTC 314
ENGL 221-01 Multiculturalism: Race, Rhetoric, and Writing
Instructor: Sheela Jane Menon
Course Description:
Multiculturalism is often celebrated as the ideal approach to managing racial, cultural, and religious differences within society. However, this concept has also been critiqued for the ways in which it masks systemic inequalities and deep-seated prejudices. Focusing on questions of race, power, and privilege, this course will examine narratives of multiculturalism in the United States, Canada, and Malaysia. Over the course of the semester, students will read and respond to a diverse range of sources including: poetry, fiction, scholarly essays, advertising campaigns, political speeches, and national laws. In addition to engaging these texts and contexts through ongoing class discussions and debates, students will also produce formal and creative essays, opinion pieces, and an interdisciplinary research project. This course aims to help students strengthen their analytical writing, critical thinking, and close reading skills, thereby enabling them to understand and critique how multiculturalism has shaped the lived experiences of communities around the world.
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, TF
EASTC 303
ENGL 222-01 History of the Book
Instructor: Carol Ann Johnston
Course Description:
Book history is an interdisciplinary field that began as a study of bibliography but has come to include studying patterns of book production and book consumption over extended periods of time. Book historians study the history of libraries, of publishing, the production of paper, varieties of type, and the history of reading. We will examine the many forms that books have taken in the history of writing in the European tradition. We will also investigate the technology of book production and dissemination, and books as cultural factors--how they were manufactured and sold, used, read, and transmitted. Our study will include looking at the technology of printing, invented by Gutenberg in Mainz, Germany, using an adapted wine press with moveable type. We will learn how to read the book as physical object, to understand clues about when and where and by whom texts were produced, and how to read the text more closely once these clues are deciphered. Projects may include "adopting" a rare text from our archive and exploring all its material features and writing a researched paper on one element of book history.
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
LIBRY ARCHCLS
ENGL 321-01 Literature of Migration & Displacement
Instructor: Sheela Jane Menon
Course Description:
This course examines contemporary literature that has emerged from complex histories of displacement, migration, war, and exile, and analyzes how these histories continue to shape texts and communities around the world. We will focus on 20th and 21st century literature that spans countries including: Palestine, Syria, Central America, Vietnam, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Our readings may include: Susan Muaddi Darraj's, The Inheritance of Exile (2007); selections from Syria Speaks: Art and Culture from the Frontline (2014), edited by Malu Halasa, Zaher Omareen, and Nawara Mahfoud; Valeri Luiselli's Tell Me How it Ends (2017), and Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Sympathizer (2016). Guided by Postcolonial and Cultural Studies methodologies, we will examine how race, class, gender, and politics influence the movements of people across the globe.
03:00 PM-04:15 PM, TF
EASTC 301
ENGL 321-02 Celtic Revival/Harlem Renaissance
Instructor: Claire Seiler
Course Description:
This course studies two major art movements of the modernist period, both of which tie formal innovation to questions of national citizenship, racial equality, and political autonomy. How did these "minor" literatures challenge majority national or imperial cultures? What events and forms galvanized the social and aesthetic work of the Celtic Revival (Ireland) and the Harlem Renaissance (US)? Primary readings cover several genres (fiction, drama, poetry, and essay), and students will work with print materials in the Harlem Renaissance teaching archive housed in Waidner-Spahr Librarys Special Collections; primary authors include Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, James Joyce, Nella Larsen, J.M. Synge, Jean Toomer, and W.B. Yeats.
03:00 PM-04:15 PM, MR
EASTC 411
ENGL 331-01 Romantic and Victorian Poetry
Instructor: Sarah Kersh
Course Description:
This course will introduce students to Romantic and Victorian poetry as well as British literature and culture. Through close reading of a range of canonical and non-canonical works the course will ask questions about the social and cultural frameworks that shaped the poetics of the period and the. Authors covered will range from the 1780s through the 1890s and may include authors such as Robinson, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, the Brownings, the Rossettis, Hopkins, Tennyson, Kipling, Wilde, Tennyson, Swinburne, Field, and Caird. We will approach the poetry to see how the forms of these poems intersect with debates during the era with regards to imperialism, the nature of race, the experience of disability, the woman question, masculinity, socialism, and aestheticism.This course may count as a pre-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 paper as a pre-1800 course to receive pre-1800 credit.
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, TF
DENNY 211
ENGL 341-01 English Literature: 1660-1800: Plagues, Petticoats, Poems & Plays
Instructor: Jacob Sider Jost
Course Description:
Canonical authors and marginal voices of the long eighteenth century. Plagues, fires, invasions, fashion, theology, flirtation, lexicography, heavy drinking, slavery, rebellion, municipal sanitation, love. Pepys, Dryden, Rochester, Behn, Addison, Pope, Swift, Johnson, Wheatley, the sarcastic works of teenage Austen.
09:00 AM-10:15 AM, TR
DENNY 110
ENGL 404-01 Senior Thesis Workshop
Instructor: Carol Ann Johnston
Course Description:
A workshop requiring students to share discoveries and problems as they produce a lengthy manuscript based on a topic of their own choosing, subject to the approval of the instructor.Prerequisites: 403.
01:30 PM-04:30 PM, W
EASTC 303
ENGL 404-02 Senior Thesis Workshop
Instructor: Sheela Jane Menon
Course Description:
A workshop requiring students to share discoveries and problems as they produce a lengthy manuscript based on a topic of their own choosing, subject to the approval of the instructor.Prerequisites: 403.
01:30 PM-04:30 PM, M
EASTC 303