| ENGL 101-01 |
Silent Film
Instructor: Russell McDermott
Course Description:
Cross-listed with FMST 210-05. This course explores the emergence of the art of film from the end of the 19th century to the introduction of talkies in the late 1920s. Students will consider the foundational figures in cinema, counter-narratives in cinematic history, the rise of the studio system, and the emergence of stars. They will also examine how cinematic language developed and discuss early alternatives to the classical model. Students will engage with contemporaneous film discourse as well as contemporary reflections on the art in its nascent state. Students will discuss "attractions," the development of "national" cinemas, and the politics and aesthetics of a variety of works. Films discussed will include Modern Times, Nosferatu, Fantmas vs Fantmas, and A Cottage on Dartmoor among others. Film showings will be Mondays at 7 p.m. in East College 411.
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07:00 PM-09:30 PM, M
EASTC 411
10:30 AM-11:45 AM, TR
DENNY 313 |
| ENGL 101-02 |
Middle Ages on Film
Instructor: Chelsea Skalak
Course Description:
Cross-listed with FMST 210-01. The Middle Ages has proved a rich treasure trove of ideas, images, and narratives for modern filmmakers. Yet "medieval" as a descriptor is also often hurled as an insult, indicatingoutmoded or backwards-looking modes of thought. In this class, we will consider the ramifications of the resurgence of medievalism in popular film, taking on questions of gender, race, historical influence, and the individual in society. We will move beyond questions of whether a film is "really medieval" and instead ask ourselves what creators and audiences gain from drawing upon medieval influences. What do we think about medieval culture? How do we use these ideas about medievalism in our own art and culture, and what does that say about us? Our goals will include your enhanced ability to understand, discuss, and write about the ways in which these texts respond to each other and the particularities of their own time.
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03:00 PM-04:15 PM, MR
EASTC 411 |
| ENGL 101-03 |
Women Write War
Instructor: Claire Seiler
Course Description:
Cross-listed with WGSS 101-01. This course studies American women's war writing from the US Civil War through the "war on terror." We will ask: what literary forms have women writers adapted or developed to represent war, as well as the social, political, bodily, and emotional effects of armed conflict? How has women's war writing participated in debates about feminism, gender identity, citizenship, civil and human rights, and the American project? How have women's lived experiences and changing social roles impacted the diverse genre of war writing-and vice versa? Primary texts include works of poetry, fiction, and autobiography by writers including Gwendolyn Brooks, Willa Cather, Emily Dickinson, Elyse Fenton, Frances E.W. Harper, Toni Morrison, Toyo Suyemoto, and Natasha Trethewey.
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10:30 AM-11:45 AM, TR
DENNY 203 |
| ENGL 220-01 |
Introduction to Literary Studies
Instructor: Sheela Jane Menon
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 108 |
| ENGL 220-02 |
Introduction to Literary Studies
Instructor: Siobhan Phillips
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, TF
EASTC 410 |
| ENGL 220-03 |
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 105 |
| ENGL 221-01 |
Multiculturialism: 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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10:30 AM-11:45 AM, TR
DENNY 110 |
| ENGL 221-02 |
Writing, Identity, & Queer Studies: In & Out, Either/Or, and Everything in Between
Instructor: Sarah Kersh
Course Description:
Cross-listed with WGSS 351-01. Permission of Instructor Required. Kate Bornstein writes: "I know I'm not a man...and I've come to the conclusion that I'm probably not a woman either. The trouble is, we're living in a world that insists we be one or the other." In this reading and writing intensive course, students will investigate how we approach the space outside of "one or the other" through literature, film, and narrative more generally. Throughout the semester we will explore and engage critically with established and emerging arguments in queer theory, as well as read and watch texts dealing with issues of identity and identification. Although "queer" is a contested term, it describes-at least potentially-sexualities and genders that fall outside of normative constellations. Students will learn how to summarize and engage with arguments, and to craft and insert their own voice into the ongoing debates about the efficacy of queer theory and queer studies. Moreover, we'll take on questions that relate "word" to "world" in order to ask: How might our theory productively intervene in LGBTQ civil rights discourse outside our classroom? How do we define queer and is it necessarily attached to sexual orientation? How do our own histories and narratives intersect with the works we analyze? Our course texts will pull from a range of genres including graphic novels, film, poetry, memoir, and fiction. Some texts may include Alison Bechdel's _Fun Home_, Audre Lorde's _Zami_, Jackie Kay's _Trumpet_, David Sedaris' _Me Talk Pretty One Day_, and films such as _Paris is Burning_ and _Boys Don't Cry_.
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01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
EASTC 410 |
| ENGL 222-01 |
Theories and Methods in Media Studies
Instructor: Russell McDermott
Course Description:
Cross-listed with FMST 220-06. This course introduces students to the study of mediated communication or "media," with particular emphasis placed on mass media forms, such as print journalism, radio, television, and film, as well as digital platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Snapchat. Students will examine these or other media forms from political, industrial, and aesthetic perspectives. They will also explore how these forms have both contributed to and themselves been impacted by broader processes of social and technological change. By examining media in this manner-and by engaging with current debates regarding media's role in contemporary society-students will develop their understanding of how media functions and become, by the course's end, more literate consumers, producers, and critics of media today.
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01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
ALTHSE 08 |
| ENGL 311-01 |
Revolutionary Milton
Instructor: Carol Ann Johnston
Course Description:
Cross-listed with MEMS 200-01. John Milton at times emerges in the popular imagination as the benign Christian poet of Paradise Lost. While Paradise Lost is a Biblical epic poem about the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, Milton addresses in the poem polemical subjects such as the role and place of women in an ideal society; the relationship between God and Christ the Son; the question of personal responsibility; the role of monarchy and religion in the state; the idea of a republic. Paradise Lost, along with the Bible, was one of the most frequently read books in Colonial America, and we have in our archive Benjamin Rush's copy of Paradise Lost. In addition we also have first editions of Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, and other beautiful and significant Milton volumes. Our study of these editions will show Milton's understanding and manipulation of the press and censorship, and suggest how Milton the revolutionary came to be recognized as one of the greatest poets in the English language.
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03:00 PM-04:15 PM, TF
LIBRY ARCHCLS |
| ENGL 321-01 |
Victorian Sexualities
Instructor: Sarah Kersh
Course Description:
Cross-listed with WGSS 301-02. Permission of Instructor Required. The Victorian era (1832-1901), so we are told, fostered rigid attitudes toward morality, gender, and sexuality. Yet an array of "dangerous" characters inhabit the pages of nineteenth-century literature, among them effeminate men, political women, prostitutes, and hysterics. This course puts Victorian writing about sexuality into conversation with the period's debates about democracy and equality, scrutiny of marriage and property law, and surprising openness to diversity in gender and sexuality. We will concentrate on changing conceptions of the individual, sexuality, and gender, and explore how these conceptions intersect with race, class, nationality, and other identity categories. The syllabus includes a variety of genres (poetry, drama, novel, and non-fiction prose) and authors (including Lord Alfred Tennyson, George Eliot, Oscar Wilde, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Meredith, Charles Dickens, Sigmund Freud, and Michael Field).
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10:30 AM-11:45 AM, TR
DENNY 204 |
| ENGL 331-01 |
Science Fiction: Past, Present, and Future
Instructor: Sheela Jane Menon
Course Description:
How have writers imagined alternative pasts and futures? More specifically, how have writers from around the world imagined these alternatives through science fiction? This course examines the genre of science fiction, focusing on work by a diverse range of authors including Octavia Butler, Nick Harkaway, Ursula Le Guin, Robert Heinlein, Nalo Hopkinson, N. K. Jemison, H. P. Lovecraft, Nnedi Okorafor, Chang-rae Lee, Vandana Singh, and Dan Simmons. We will consider how science fiction has developed as a genre and a writing community, and how these writers have reinforced, challenged, or reframed its evolving norms. Students will engage a range of scholarship on speculative fiction, as well as theories drawn from Genre, Postcolonial, Critical Race, and Gender and Sexuality Studies, as well as History of the Book. In using these theories as lenses through which to read science fiction, we will analyze how the genre reimagines systems of power tied to race, gender, class, sexuality, technology, business enterprise, and political organization.
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01:30 PM-02:45 PM, TF
DENNY 311 |
| ENGL 331-02 |
Video Games
Instructor: Russell McDermott
Course Description:
Cross-listed with FMST 320-01. This course introduces students to game studies. Students will examine games as an art form, as a cultural phenomenon, as a fan activity, as a form of storytelling, and as one kind of ludic experience in the history of games. Students will discuss whether or not games are texts or some other kind of thing altogether. They will consider questions of authorship, interactivity, genre, and effects. Students will read both early and contemporary games studies scholarship and will be expected to generate their own sustained work of scholarship on a single game title, a set of games, or on a conceptual subject related to video games. Games played will include Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros., Chrono Trigger, Jumping Jack Flash, Halo, Dark Souls, Stardew Valley and more.
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03:00 PM-04:15 PM, MR
EASTC 301 |
| ENGL 341-01 |
Medieval Women Writers
Instructor: Chelsea Skalak
Course Description:
Cross-listed with MEMS 200-03 & WGSS 301-01. This course examines the writing of female mystics, abbesses, poets, and scholars from the time period 1100-1500. In a historical time in which women were alternately represented as innocent virgins or devilish temptresses, these women negotiate for themselves far more complex identities and relationships with the world than their societies often believed them capable. We will consider issues of class, gender, sexuality, and religion, through the writings of Heloise, Margery Kempe, Julian of Norwich, Marie de France, and Christine de Pizan.
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01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
EASTC 301 |
| ENGL 404-01 |
Senior Thesis Workshop
Instructor: Sarah Kersh
Course Description:
Permission of Instructor Required. 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.
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01:30 PM-04:30 PM, T
EASTC 303 |
| ENGL 404-02 |
Senior Thesis Workshop
Instructor: Siobhan Phillips
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.
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01:30 PM-04:30 PM, W
EASTC 303 |