English
Courses
Note: see “Creative and Professional Writing” and “Film” below for courses that may be used for a maximum of two electives in the American and British Literature Concentrations.
ENG 1009: Approaches to Literature (3 cr.)
This course introduces students to the methods, terms, and theories of college-level literary study. Works from a variety of literary genres and periods will be studied. (Fall) (Spring)
ENG 2001: Comparative Literature and Culture (3 cr.)
This course will examine selected literary texts both as expressions of specific national identities and in their intercultural relatedness. Though historical roots will be treated, emphasis will be on contemporary manifestations of the intellectual and cultural heritage of Western and Eastern Europe, Latin America, Asian, and Africa. (Fall)
ENG 2004: Exploring Fantasy Worlds (3 cr.)
Fantasy fiction offers not only the pleasure of escape, but also new perspectives that help us make sense of complicated worlds, internal and external. Sharing the heroes’ adventures enables us to discover how we could, should, and would act in situations that threaten our values, our lives, and our communities. Through the works of Tolkien, Rowling, Le Guin, and others, we will examine the power of word magic to create complex and compelling worlds that challenge our imagination, thought, self-knowledge, and compassion. Note: This counts as a genre course. (Fall or Spring)
ENG 2007: Masters of the Short Story (3 cr.)
This course covers a wide range of culturally diverse short fiction. Emphasized are interpersonal relations, narrative voice, imagery, symbolism, and other aspects of short story telling. Included are Raymond Carver, Anton Chekhov, Ralph Ellison, Louise Erdrich, Gail Godwin, Zora Neale Hurston, Bernard Malamud, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Alice Munro, Flannery O'Connor, Leslie Silko, Richard Wright and others. Goals are improved critical reading, writing and speaking. Required: open class discussions, organized critical presentations, regular writing assignments. Note: this counts as a genre course. (Fall)
ENG 2011: English I: Medieval Literature (3 cr.)
English I studies a selection of masterpieces from the Dark and Middle Ages: Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Le Morte D'Arthur, Piers Plowman, The Canterbury Tales, and early English drama. Through these works we observe how individuals learn to live with God, their neighbors, and themselves as well as how women and the lower classes gain new importance. Though many works will be read in translation, during the course the student will learn to read Middle English. (Fall)
ENG 2020: English II: Renaissance Literature (3 cr.)
In an age of discovery, Renaissance writers explored the rewards and dangers of reaching into new areas of experience, of questioning the accepted social and moral order, of concentrating on their desires instead of God's. A selection of masterpieces by Shakespeare, Marlowe, Spenser, Donne, Milton and others reveals their insight, imagination and power over language as well as the possibilities and problems considered by sixteenth and seventeenth century writers. (Spring)
ENG 2021: Shakespeare I (3 cr.)
This course will explore seven plays about lovers and rebels, young and old. We will watch young men and women find their identities or forge new ones while they struggle to balance obligations to family, society, and self; and older men and women struggle with the choices they have made. We will explore Shakespeare’s dramatic art as well as his deep understanding of our humanity. Students will write several short papers and watch many scenes on film. Note: this counts as a major author course. (Fall) (Spring)
ENG 2023: English III: Neoclassical and Romantic (4 cr.)
This course is divided into two parts, A and B, each of which runs for one-half semester and carries a value of two (2) credits. The course as a whole will examine the transition that took place in literature from the Neoclassical period of the early- and mid-18th-century to the Romanticism that emerged in the late-18th- and early-19th-centuries. Emphasis will be placed on comparing and contrasting these two different approaches to literature and art. Authors studied in part A will include Defoe, Swift, Gay, Pope, Goldsmith, Johnson, and Sheridan, among others. Part B will cover Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, the Shelleys, and Keats, among others. Students may register for either a full semester or half a semester, but must ultimately take both parts in order to count as a core course or an elective for the English major or minor. (Fall)
ENG 2035: English IV: Victorian Literature (3 cr.)
This course offers an introduction to key authors, texts, and preoccupations of the Victorian era. Victorian authors sought to explore identity and to represent the human experience under the influence of such powerful social forces and ideas as industrialization, imperialism, the “Woman Question,” and evolutionary theory. Novelists include Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot; poets include Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, and Matthew Arnold. (Fall)
ENG 2036: English V: The Modern Age (3 cr.)
This course focuses on 20th-century English and Irish writers whose work challenges social, religious and aesthetic conventions. It deals with the beginnings and refinements of modernism, the effects of class and cultural conflict, the risks of intimacy and the search for values in contemporary society. It includes W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Oscar Wilde, E.M. Forster, D.H. Lawrence, W.H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, Philip Larkin, Doris Lessing, Edna O'Brien, and Harold Pinter. (Spring)
ENG 2047: The Jazz Age
This course will examine a period in American social and intellectual history that produced some of the grandest names in literary folklore and a timeless catalog of great literature. The battlefields of World War I, 1920’s Paris and New York, the beaches of Key West and the French Riviera, and the breadlines of the Great Depression are just a sample of the settings out of which emerged a feverish moment in American literature.
ENG 2049: Classical Mythology and Ancient Literature (3 cr.)
This course examines the nature and meaning of the major Greek and Roman myths as expressed in the literature of the classical period. Readings include Works by Homer, Hesiod, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Vergil, and Ovid. (Fall or Spring)
ENG 2050: American Literature I: Puritans to the Civil War
(3 cr.)
The course examines American writers from the colonial period to the Civil War, including Bradstreet, Taylor, Edwards, Franklin, Irving, Emerson, Poe, Douglass, Hawthorne, Melville and Whitman. These writers helped to define the American identity by exploring conflicts and contradictions that still shape our American experience: the conflicts between spirituality and materialism, individualism and community, idealism and pragmatism, economic opportunity and economic exploitation, romanticism and realism. (Spring)
ENG 2051: American Literature II: The Age of Realism (3 cr.)
This survey of works from the Civil War to the 1920s explores American optimism, racial tension, class antagonism, romantic illusion, violence and imperialism, westward expansion, the obsession with wealth, the image of women, and the fascination with criminal behavior. Fiction from Twain to Fitzgerald; definition of self from Frederick Douglass through Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Henry James, Frank Norris, Sherwood Anderson, Kate Chopin, Harlem Poets and others. (Fall)
ENG 2052: American Literature III: The Twentieth Century
(3 cr.)
The work of notable 20th-century and contemporary writers whose work reflects various aesthetic, cultural, political, economic and regional developments. The course examines the American literary reaction to complacency, hypocrisy, vulgarity, chauvinism, social injustice; the constrictions of family, of racial and ethnic bias; the image of women. Includes Hemingway, Faulkner, Richard Wright, Philip Roth, Raymond Carver, Toni Morrison, Sandra Cisneros, Tim O'Brien, Jamaica Kincaid and others. (Spring)
ENG 2057: Reading Shakespeare (3 cr.)
This course will focus on close reading of three plays by Shakespeare, examining the rich possibilities inherent in the text from various perspectives: the English major's critical approach, the scholar's concern with text, the Elizabethan audience's cultural expectations, the actor's conception of a character, the director's wider view of the play, and the playwright's all-encompassing vision of humanity. Note: this counts as a major author course. (Fall or Spring)
ENG 2058: Survey of International Literature I (3 cr.)
This course is designed to familiarize students with great works of the western European tradition of world literature from classical times through the eighteenth century. Readings include works by Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Dante, Cervantes, Machiavelli, Moliere. (Fall)
ENG 2065: Images of Women in Literature (3 cr.)
This course offers an introduction to women's writing from ancient times until the present, with a concentration on the 19 th-21st-centuries. By reading a variety of genres—principally poetry, the novel, and the short story—we will explore how women authors of different times and nationalities have represented themselves and their gender in literatures. Additional topics will include women's approaches to love, family relationships, artistic achievement, and social differences. (Spring '07)
ENG 2072: Survey of International Literature II (3 cr.)
This course is designed to familiarize students with great works of world literature written outside of England and the United States since the eighteenth century. Literature from a variety of regions and backgrounds will be examined, with special emphasis on works outside the western European tradition. (Spring)
ENG 3020: Jane Austen and Popular Culture (3 cr.)
This seminar examines the status of the Regency writer Jane Austen, often considered one of England's finest novelists, in our own popular culture. Readings will include a biography of Austen, four of her novels, selected scholarly articles on her current popularity, and creative responses to her work in the realms of fiction and non-fiction. We will also view several recent film adaptations of her novels. Note: this course counts as a major author course. (Fall '07)
ENG 3026: Shakespeare on Film (3 cr.)
Through films or videotapes of Shakespeare's plays, we will explore how productions illuminate, enhance, or distort the script and how the change of medium makes different effects possible or even necessary. This course will examine interpretations of the text as well as foster awareness of dramatic and film technique. Previous study of Shakespeare is very helpful. This course may be used as an elective for the Film Concentration. Note: this counts as a major author course. (Fall)
ENG 3041: Modern Love Poetry (3 cr.)
Twentieth-century and contemporary treatments of intimacy in poems from various traditions in English and in translation from other languages. Emphasis is on tenderness, erotic attraction, courtship, "falling in love", addiction, martyrdom, obsession, compulsion, fantasy, loving the self, living with loss and living together. Discussion of problems in communication, education, censorship. In-class readings required. Some strong language. Note: this counts as a genre course. (Spring)
ENG 3050: American Poetry (3 cr.)
This seminar in 19th-century, 20th-century, and contemporary poetry traces the transition from "Romantic" to "Modern" sensibility from Emerson to T.S. Eliot and beyond to living poets of the Americas. Discussion of forms and technique, but emphasis is on reading well, finding distinct voice and dramatic context in each poem. Includes Whitman, Dickinson, Frost, Langston Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Pablo Neruda, Derek Walcott, Sharon Olds, Julia Alvarez, Billy Collins and others. Required recitations, analyses and writing assignments. Some strong language. Note: this counts as a genre course. (Fall)
ENG 3057: Hawthorne, Melville, Poe (3 cr.)
This seminar examines in depth the short stories and the novels of Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe, focusing on their shared literary techniques and their relationship to earlier American thought. Special emphasis will be placed on the ways in which they developed or diverged from Emerson's use of symbolism as a literary technique and as a means of shaping one's understanding of reality. Note: this counts as a major author course. Research paper. (Fall '06)
ENG 3061: The English Novel (3 cr.)
This seminar will examine definitions of the novel as a genre from the eighteenth century to the twentieth century. As a new art form in the eighteenth century, the novel represented a new voice and new values in literature, embedded in realism, relatively democratic, sometimes female, and often middle class. Readings will include representative novels from the 18th- 19th- and 20th-centuries. Alternates every other year with ENG 3076: Satire in Literature and Film. Note: this counts as a genre course. Research paper. (Spring)
ENG 3065: Visions of Hell (3 cr.)
This course examines how the conception of Hell evolved from that of an afterworld where the dead dwell, to a place of diabolically appropriate punishment, to a state of mental and moral torment, to a useful incentive for impeccable behavior, to a means of revealing the nature of God and Heaven. Authors studied include Dante, Milton, Sartre, Joyce, and C.S. Lewis. Students need to be able to consider objectively the religious beliefs or disbeliefs assumed by the works. (Fall) (Spring)
ENG 3071: Laughter: Definitions of Comedy (3 cr.)
This seminar will explore the nature of comedy in its various forms from classical times to the present. It will examine comedy's appearance in various genres: drama, fiction, and film. At each of the weekly meetings, the course will pair a reading with a film. Seminar sessions will be organized around reports and discussion. A research paper is required for this course. (Spring)
ENG 3073: International Writers in English: Global Voices (3.cr.)
This course examines selected forms of fiction written in English by modern novelists from various regions, backgrounds, social experiences, and points of view. Major authors from Australia, South Africa, Canada, India, and other countries will be represented.
ENG 3101: New York City in Literature and Film (3 cr.)
This course will examine the ways in which New York City has been portrayed in literature and film. Literature will cover several authors from the 19th- through the 21st-centuries. Films will include comedies, satires, musicals, films about immigrant and ethnic experiences, and gangster and crime films. (Fall)
ENG 3108: Victorian Novels of Vocation (3 cr.)
This course examines the importance of vocation - a call to meaningful work in the world, which sometimes takes the form of a particular profession - in the novels by Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy. It will also attend to other key themes and to evolving techniques of narration, characterization, and description; contextual reading will include brief biographical selections and some criticism. Recommended: ENG 2035 (Victorian Literature). Note: this counts as a genre course. (Spring)
ENG 3115: Contemporary Memoirs (3 cr.)
This course investigates the significance of the memoir - a first-person account of a portion of one's life, often written by a person not otherwise famous - in late 20th-and early-21st-century literature and culture. Examining the ways in which memoirists represent themselves through prose and the choices they make in shaping their life stories, we will approach these memoirs both as literature and in terms of their appeal to present-day mass audiences. Both American and international authors will be represented. Note: this counts as a genre course. (Spring)
ENG 3998: Senior Comprehensives (3 cr.)
A comprehensive examination in English and American literature, which is required of all senior English majors.
(Fall) (Spring)
ENG 3999: Senior Honors Project (3 cr.)
Students nominated by the faculty may be invited to do the Senior Honors Project, usually a major research paper. Further information may be found in the description of the departmental Honors Program. (Spring)
Creative and Professional Writing Courses:
ENW 2030: Approaches to Creative Writing (3 cr.)
This prose class will examine the mechanics and basic techniques essential to master such prose forms as: the memoir, the short story and the personal essay. These essentials of the craft of writing are 1) narrative voice, 2) characterization, 3) use of critical details as well as 4) fluency with college level grammar and vocabulary. The course is writing intensive and reading intensive. (Fall) (Spring)
ENW 3005: Writing for the Media (3 cr.)
Oriented toward social-science and business media, this creative nonfiction course examines issues of style, history, ethics and practice in writing for media research and criticism, public relations, advertising and the internet. Types of writing to be covered include copy editing, position papers, proposals, releases, "backgrounders" and new media copy. Students interested in journalism should take ENW 4011. (Spring)
ENW 3007/3008: Narrative Writing Seminar (6 cr.)
A seminar in the practice of writing forms other than expository. Through experimentation in various genres including short story, dramatic dialogue, autobiographical sketch and creative non-fiction, students develop critical sensitivity to technique in their own and others' work as well as awareness of their own authorial voice. The year-long project is the completion of two or three successful narrative pieces, no less than 40 pages in total length. Writing efforts are supported by conference with the instructor and seminar readings and discussions. Note: this is a year-long course; semesters may not be taken independently. Prerequisite: ENW 2030: Approaches to Creative Writing completed with a grade of "C+ " or better, or permission of the instructor. (Fall) (Spring)
ENW 3062: Advanced Writing with Research (3 cr.)
This course treats writing a research paper on a topic in the humanities as an art as well as a science. After refining basic techniques of organizing and integrating sources, we will study how style can make an argument more convincing, how shaping affects response, how varying pace can make difficult material easier to grasp, how using good research well convinces the reader that the writer is an authority. Prerequisite : B or better in ENC 4010: Freshman Writing Seminar or an equivalent course, as well as approval of the instructor, based on a five page sample of writing with research, presented to the instructor during pre-registration or on the first day of the class (Fall)
ENW 3244: Playwriting (3 cr.)
Working with students’ writing and exemplary American and European plays, this course will explore the basic principles and practices of playwriting – play and scene structure, characterization, language, tonal and thematic concerns. (Spring)
ENW 3998: Senior Writing Portfolio (3 cr.)
The student's work in the Creative and Professional Writing concentration culminates in the Senior Writing Portfolio. Each student meets individually and regularly with a mentor. The Portfolio will consist of at least forty pages of creative non-fiction, fiction, journalism, or poetry. Since the finished manuscript will demonstrate the student's mastery of language and form, students should include work in only one or two genres. Note: a grade of "C" or higher is required for graduation. Students may be asked to repeat ENW 3998 in the Spring of their senior year if this criterion is not met. (Fall)
ENW 4003: Screenwriting Workshop I (3 cr.)
Students are introduced to the craft of visual story-telling, exploring character, dialogue, plot setting and tone. Students view movies weekly and read extensively in professional film scripts. Each week student writing is discussed in a workshop format. The semester project is the completion of the "First Act" of a feature screenplay, approximately thirty pages of writing, as well as an accompanying outline of the entire screenplay. May be used as an elective for the Film Concentration. (Fall)
ENW 4004: Screenwriting Workshop II (3 cr.)
Students continue their work begun in ENW 4003. They work intensely on their own projects, workshopping scenes and sequences. Class lectures involve thorough examinations of story structure and address larger questions of authenticity and voice. ENW 4004 requires a major commitment to reading, viewing, and writing. The Semester project is the completion of a full-length feature film script draft of at least 90 pages. Prerequisite: Grade of "B" or better in ENW 4003. This class is repeatable for credit. May be used as an elective for the Film Concentration. (Spring)
ENW 4005: Topics in Broadcast Media Writing (3 cr.)
This course covers various genres of creative fictional and no-fictional writing in the realms of television and/or radio. Students will study relevant video and audio examples of successful writing for broadcasting and will work on small exercises in order to build up to a larger project. Student work will be shared in class, and might also utilize the campus TV and radio stations. This course is repeatable for credit provided the topic of focus varies; such topics could include authorizing the TV situation comedy, on-air promotions, short teleplays or radio plays, film criticism and news and interview writing. May be used as an elective for the Film Concentration. (Spring)
ENW 4009: Poetry Workshop (3 cr.)
The poetry workshop presents an opportunity for students to write and revise poems in free or fixed forms. Emphasis is on three elements of poetry: 1) memorable language, 2) remarkable imagery, 3) engaging story lines. This class is repeatable for credit. (Fall) (Spring)
ENW 4011: Journalism (3 cr.)
Students will learn about news, feature and article writing as well as plan and carry out reporting assignments on topics of current interest. The course will include discussion of such issues as objectivity, ethics, investigation and interpretation. Occasionally the class will visit or be visited by working journalists. Prerequisite: a minimum of B in ENC 4010 or an equivalent writing course. This class is repeatable for credit. (Fall) (Spring)
ENW 4020: Fiction Workshop (3 cr.)
Through readings, discussion and critique, students will hone their skills and refine their literary judgment. A minimum of 40 pages of manuscript during the semester is required; this may take the form of drafts of a single story, several shorter pieces, or an extended work. Prerequisite: Grade of C+ or better in ENW 2030 or ENW 3008. This class is repeatable for credit. (Fall) (Spring)
ENW 4030: Advanced Fiction Workshop (3 cr.)
In this advanced seminar class, admitted students will look deeply at voice, character, plot and language in both published and peer work. Students will be expected to produce new work, in the form of short stories and/or novel excerpts. This course is writing and reading intensive. Prerequisite: Grade of B or better in ENW 4020. (Spring )
Film Courses:
Note: The following literature and writing courses may also be used as electives for the Film Concentration: ENG 2038, ENG 3026, ENG 3066, ENW 3003, ENW 4003.
ENG 2079: Women's Film (4 cr.)
This course examines films written, directed, and/or produced by women. Although the majority of films treated will be by American women, significant examples will be drawn from other countries as well. Special attention will be given to artists who attempt to develop film images of women that are freed from the stereotypes imposed by the classical Hollywood film. Alternates every other year with ENG 2080: American Film. (Spring '09)
ENG 2080: American Film (4 cr.)
This course begins with an examination of representative American film genres, such as the western, the gangster, and the screwball comedy, tracing their roots back to early American literature and culture, and following their development to the present. The course will also examine major new directors in contemporary American cinema. Taught every other year, this course alternates with ENG 3076: Women's Film. (Spring ' 08)
ENG 2083: Introduction to Film Criticism (4 cr.)
This course is an introduction to principles important to a critical appreciation of film. Students will view a representative variety of American and foreign films with an eye to the aesthetic and technical choices made by directors in their attempts to create coherent works of art. The course will trace the development of film as an art form and as a vehicle for social subject analysis throughout the twentieth century. (Fall)
ENG 3028: History of Cinema 1: The Beginnings to WW II
(4 cr.)
Topics include pre-20th-century protohistory; the cinema of attractions; the development of narrative, features, stars and the classical Hollywood studio system; French impressionism; Weimar expressionism; Scandinavian naturalism; Soviet montage; documentary and avant-garde cinema; early Asian film; the changeover to sound; censorship; French poetic realism; developments in British, German and Latin American film. Students are not required to take part 2. (Fall)
ENG 3029: History of Cinema 2: WW II to the Present (4 cr.)
The course begins with the war years and includes: Italian neorealism, film noir, the decline of the Hollywood studio system, and new documentary and avant-garde approaches. Also considered are: International art cinemas from Europe and Japan in the 50s and 60s and other key movements, from Brazilian Cinema Novo to New German Cinema, African and Indian cinema and other postcolonial cinemas. The course also examines: Hollywood’s revival and its increasing commercialism, China’s “Fifth Generation,” feminist and other independent practice, and films from Australia, the Middle East, Hong Kong and elsewhere. Part 1 is not a prerequisite. (Spring)
ENG 3075: Film Theory (4 cr.)
This course will examine the range of contemporary theory about film through readings and viewings of selected films. The writings of earlier film theorists such as Eisenstein, Kracauer, Deren, and Bazin will provide a base for the examination of more recent theories rooted in genre studies, semiotics, Marxism, psychoanalysis, and feminism. Prerequisite: ENG 2083: Introduction to Film Criticism. Research paper. (Fall)
ENG 4010: Major Film Directors (4 cr.)
This course examines several filmmakers whose work has been considered to have sufficient consistency and merit as to be made by an "author." We interrogate the concept of authorship in cinema in terms of its history, politics, explanatory power, use as marketing strategy and other strengths and limitations. Directors will vary, but the course is international in focus, with at least one non-English language filmmaker represented. Prerequisite: One other film studies course or Instructor's permission. (Fall)
ENG 4020: Topics in Film Genres (4 cr.)
The basics of genre are considered through the prism of one genre studied in depth. Iconography, narrative, theme, ideology, audience response, generic evolution and industrial marketing of genres are explored. Hollywood films form the backbone for analysis, but alternatives receive attention. Focus varies with each offering and could include horror, the musical, gangster film, science fiction, Westerns, film noir, documentary, comedy, melodrama. Prerequisite: One film studies course, or permission of instructor. (Spring)
ENG: 4030: Topics in National and Regional Cinemas (4 cr.)
This course considers one or, for comparative study, two cinemas in historical, cultural, aesthetic and political contexts. Key filmmakers receive attention, and concepts of identity, the nation and Diaspora are interrogated. Some cinemas to be studied include Asian, German and Scandinavian, French, International Jewish, Pan-African, British and Irish, Soviet/Russian, Italian film or others. Prerequisite: One film studies course, or permission of instructor. (Spring)