| ENGL 101-01 |
World Literature
Instructor: Sheela Jane Menon
Course Description:
What does it mean to imagine yourself as a member of a nation? What happens when nations are colonized, fractured, and reconstituted? How are conceptions of race and racial identity informed by nation states and national identity? This course considers how contemporary works of literature from around the world respond to these questions. We will focus on 20th and 21st century poetry, memoir, and short stories by writers including, among others, Nou Revilla, Haunani-Kay Trask, Tash Aw, Chris Abani, Mosab Abu Toha, and Vivien Sansour. Through close and contextualized readings, we will analyze how these authors imagine individuals, families, and communities within and across national borders, paying particular attention to questions of race, gender, class, and sexuality.What does it mean to imagine yourself as a member of a nation? What happens when nations are fractured and reconstituted? Where do you belong if you move between nations or are forcibly displaced? This course considers how contemporary works of literature from Polynesia, Asia Pacific, South Asia, and the Middle East respond to these questions. We will focus on 20th and 21st century literature by authors including Haunani-Kay Trask, Albert Wendt, Tash Aw, Rohinton Mistry, Leila Ahmed, and Rasha Abbas. Through close and contextualized readings, we will analyze how these authors imagine individuals and families within and across nations, and how their worlds are shaped by intersecting identities. In so doing, we will focus on the specific political and literary histories from which each text emerges, particularly experiences of Western colonization in each of the designated regions. By bringing these texts and contexts together, we will engage histories of both colonization and resistance, while also examining how new conceptions of nation and identity emerge from this selection of World Literature.
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10:30 AM-11:20 AM, MWF
STERN 103 |
| ENGL 101-02 |
LGBTQ Literature in the US
Instructor: Sarah Kersh
Course Description:
Cross-listed with WGSS 101-02. This course will explore how sex and gender intersect with other forms of difference- including race and class-in literature by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer-identified (LGBTQ) authors, and authors who present LGBTQ characters and themes in their texts. Students will consider the impact of sexuality and gender on literature and experience. Our readings will include a rage of literary genres, such as essay, poetry, novel, drama, and film and we will focus on the interpretation of texts particularly through the lens of queer theory. Authors may include, among others: Gloria Anzalda, Tony Kushner, Adrienne Rich, Leslie Feinberg, Dorothy Allison, and Audre Lorde.
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03:00 PM-04:15 PM, MR
EASTC 411 |
| ENGL 101-04 |
Literature and Food
Instructor: Siobhan Phillips
Course Description:
This course looks at how literary texts take on some key questions of food and culture, including the status of the body, the preservation and evolution of tradition, the effects and redress of hunger, the morality of pleasure, and the relationship of humans to the non-human world. We will consider a range of genres-fiction, poetry, memoir, essay, reportage-to understand how elements of artistic form alter potential answers to the questions thatfood presents.
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10:30 AM-11:20 AM, MWF
DENNY 304 |
| ENGL 101-05 |
Interactive Media
Instructor: Russell McDermott
Course Description:
Cross-listed with FMST 220-06. New media is considered distinctly interactive. In this class we will unpack and explore interactivity and the interactive, historically, culturally and aesthetically. We will work through a variety of media, from the obvious (video games, interactive films, choose your own adventure novels) to the less obvious (the novel, the art gallery, film). Interactivity, as a concept, will tie together a variety of objects and practices in this survey class. Ultimately, we will ask, what makes something interactive? How do passive and active media differ? What is the future of interactive media?
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01:30 PM-02:45 PM, TF
EASTC 411 |
| ENGL 101-06 |
Southern Women Writers
Instructor: Carol Ann Johnston
Course Description:
Cross-listed with WGSS 101-05.
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01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
EASTC 314 |
| ENGL 220-01 |
Introduction to Literary Studies
Instructor: Carol Ann Johnston
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.
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10:30 AM-11:45 AM, TR
EASTC 303 |
| 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.
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01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
EASTC 303 |
| 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 North America, Europe, and Southeast Asia. Students will read and respond to a diverse range of sources including: poetry, fiction, scholarly essays, advertising campaigns, political speeches, and national laws. Our primary literary texts will include Tash Aw's The Face: Strangers on a Pier (2016), Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me (2015), and Kamila Shamsie's Home Fire (2017). 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.
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11:30 AM-12:20 PM, MWF
EASTC 112 |
| ENGL 221-02 |
Activist Media/Public Scholarship
Instructor: Russell McDermott
Course Description:
Cross-listed with FMST 220-07. Many scholars and activists believe that new media democratize access to content creation and media production and distribution. Some would suggest that this has had the effect of rebalancing political and persuasive power. This class will experiment with a variety of tools in order to empower students to engage intentionally, meaningfully, and productively with a public. Working in small groups, students will be expected to produce an episode of a podcast, a video essay, and a digital project with the aim of translating big ideas into accessible forms, persuading the public to engage in meaningful reform, and/or activating a demographic to pursue social change. Discussions of course texts will compliment tutorial and exploratory work with different authoring platforms. Projects will be graded in critique, and students will be expected to create a portfolio of work for final submission.
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03:00 PM-04:15 PM, TF
EASTC 301 |
| ENGL 222-01 |
Dogs: An Introduction to Animal Studies
Instructor: Greg Steirer
Course Description:
What is it like to be a non-human animal? Why do animals behave the way they do? How do animal species evolve and what can humans learn from their genetic histories? How has human society depended upon the management of non-human animals? What do humans owe-morally and ethically-to non-human animals? Questions like these are at the core of Animal Studies, a rapidly growing field that takes an interdisciplinary approach to examining both human-animal relationships and non-human animals themselves. In this course, students will be introduced to the foundational concepts, methods, and research goals of Animal Studies through a focus on Canis familiaris-that is, the dog. We will pay special attention to the way dogs get represented in different kinds of discourse: literature (including memoirs and novels), ethology, sociology, and philosophy.
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01:30 PM-02:45 PM, TF
EASTC 301 |
| ENGL 321-01 |
Border Crossings in Asian American Literature
Instructor: Sheela Jane Menon
Course Description:
This course explores the various borders and border crossings that emerge across 20th and 21st century Asian American literature by writers including Celeste Ng, Carlos Bulosan, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, l thi diem thy, and John Okada. Our examination of these texts will be framed by the following questions: What kinds of borders are imagined in these texts? How do these borders intersect with the realities of actual geopolitical borders and immigration acts? How do race, gender, citizenship, and class influence the ways in which characters and communities negotiate these borders? We will unpack how literary texts articulate diverse immigrant experiences and engage the tensions of both real and imagined border crossings. In the process, this course will also explore the very definition of "Asian American," considering the communities that are included and excluded from this collective, as well as their specific socio-political histories.
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01:30 PM-02:45 PM, TF
EASTC 314 |
| ENGL 321-02 |
Mapping the Global Middle Ages
Instructor: Chelsea Skalak
Course Description:
Cross-listed with MEMS 200-02. From England to Jerusalem, Morocco to Rome, Ireland to India, the medieval traveler encountered and came to terms with varieties of cultures, religions, and races. The maps and written records of these travelers, both imagined and real, inspired the imaginations of their contemporaries and helped shape larger cultural narratives about nationalism, religion, and personal identity. This course will examine medieval maps and travel narratives from 1000-1500 CE in order to better understand the diverse cultural work performed by reports of encounters with other cultures. How did these travel narratives strengthen or question faith, critique or support nationalism, and establish or sustain gendered and racial identities?
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10:30 AM-11:45 AM, TR
EASTC 301 |
| ENGL 331-01 |
First-Person Fiction in the Twenty-First Century
Instructor: Siobhan Phillips
Course Description:
This course will consider the prevalence, importance, and variety of the first person in recent Anglophone fiction; through this focus, we will examine possibilities of character and narration while relating these aspects of craft to contemporary literary culture and broader historical developments. Authors may include Anna Burns, Rachel Cusk, Noor Naga, Julie Otsuka, and Joseph Earl Thomas.
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11:30 AM-12:20 PM, MWF
EASTC 314 |
| ENGL 331-02 |
The Essay Film
Instructor: Greg Steirer
Course Description:
Cross-listed with FMST 310-01. In this course, students will examine the essay film, a genre of documentary that eschews traditional rhetorical and narrative cinematic approaches in favor of an exploratory, digressive, and often self-reflective approach to filmmaking. Readings will include a number of literary essays, as well as theoretical works on the essay as a genre of writing and filmmaking. Films may include works by Werner Herzog, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Derek Jarman, Jean-Luc Godard, Chris Marker, and Agns Varda.
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03:00 PM-04:15 PM, TF
EASTC 314 |
| 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.
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09:00 AM-10:15 AM, TR
DENNY 211 |
| ENGL 403-01 |
Methods and Models of Literary Scholarship
Instructor: Carol Ann Johnston
Course Description:
This course prepares students to write a senior thesis by exploring key questions and methods in literary scholarship. Students in this seminar will pursue intensive reading, writing and discussion designed to: (1) strengthen their grasp of the history and current configuration of literary studies and related fields; (2) help them frame and begin to pursue the questions that will motivate their senior theses; and (3) hone their critical self-awareness as readers and writers.
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01:30 PM-04:30 PM, W
EASTC 303 |
| ENGL 403-02 |
Methods and Models of Literary Scholarhsip
Instructor: Jacob Sider Jost
Course Description:
This course prepares students to write a senior thesis by exploring key questions and methods in literary scholarship. Students in this seminar will pursue intensive reading, writing and discussion designed to: (1) strengthen their grasp of the history and current configuration of literary studies and related fields; (2) help them frame and begin to pursue the questions that will motivate their senior theses; and (3) hone their critical self-awareness as readers and writers.
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01:30 PM-04:30 PM, T
EASTC 303 |
| ENGL 403-03 |
Methods and Models of Literary Scholarship
Instructor: Chelsea Skalak
Course Description:
This course prepares students to write a senior thesis by exploring key questions and methods in literary scholarship. Students in this seminar will pursue intensive reading, writing and discussion designed to: (1) strengthen their grasp of the history and current configuration of literary studies and related fields; (2) help them frame and begin to pursue the questions that will motivate their senior theses; and (3) hone their critical self-awareness as readers and writers.
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01:30 PM-04:30 PM, R
EASTC 410 |