This course list is organized according to the 3 tracks available within the English Major:

• Literature
• Creative and Professional Writing
• Film Studies

Literature Courses

Note: see "Creative and Professional Writing"and "Film" below for courses that may be used for a maximum of two electives in the Literature Concentration.

ENG 1016: Introduction to American Literature (4 cr.)
This course introduces some of the major authors and dominant genres of American literature in the Colonial, Civil War, Gilded Age, Modern, and Postmodern eras, roughly spanning the years 1776-1999. Students will read U.S. literary works that shed light on what literature was understood to be in these historical periods, what purposes it was believed to serve, who wrote it, how it was shared and read, and how it was received.  Some of the topics to be discussed include: the relationship of reason to madness and religion; the fact of slavery and its ongoing racial legacy; urban and rural reactions to the rise of industrial capitalism; shifting attitudes toward gender and sexuality; and the changing relationship of America to Europe and the world at large, particularly the experience of immigration and global diaspora. Throughout the course, we will seek to understand literature as a medium that articulates specific formal, national, racial, and sexual ideologies while also providing stylistic and intellectual resources from which these discourses can be challenged or reformed. With its 4-credit structure, the course develops fundamental college-level skills in analyzing literature through extensive oral discussion in class and the writing of several argumentative essays that feature strong principles of organization, conceptual clarity, and the careful analysis of textual evidence (“close reading”)

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: 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: 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 (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: 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: 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: 20th c. British Literature (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: Early American Literature: 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: 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 Modernism (3 cr.)
This course explores a diverse range of American literature written in the first half of the 20th century.  We will consider what is “modern” or “modernist” about the form and content of these works and situate them in relation to their historical and cultural contexts. Some of these contexts include: the rise of the flapper and the New Woman, representations of queer sexuality, the impact of two World Wars, the Jazz age, the New Negro movement, immigration and migration, the Great Depression, the popularization of Freudian psychoanalysis, consumer experiences in advertising and shopping, changing modes of locomotion (automobiles, subways, airplanes), the birth of radio and cinema, and physical spaces like the tenement, the hotel, and the skyscraper. Our syllabus will be select from representative authors of the period—e.g., James, Stein, Frost, Cather, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, T.S. Eliot, W.C. Williams, Hughes, Faulkner, Hurston, Steinbeck, Ellison—who offer complex, and often conflicting, responses to the conditions of modernity in the United States.

ENG 2053: American Literature after 1945 (3 cr.)
This course explores some of the common intellectual preoccupations, historical experiences, and stylistic tendencies among American writers after 1945. We begin with several writers (Vonnegut, Salinger, Roth) who served as soldiers in World War Two, weighing the impact that this experience had upon their representations of ethnic solidarity, love, death, and the nature of time. Then we turn to “Beats,” freaks, “queers", blacks, and feminists (O'Connor, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Plath, Brooks, Clifton) in the context of movements of resistance and rebellion from the 1950s to the 1980s.  Next, we examine the relationship of literary language to historical memory and physical violence in several profoundly beautiful and disturbing works by authors such as Nabokov, Morrison, McCarthy, and Robinson. A final unit considers the relationship of late capitalism to the experience of globalization, the post-nuclear family, and irony and immersion in mass media by way of narratives written from 1985-2006 (Delillo, Lahiri, Saunders, Safran Foer, and Eisenberg). Where possible, we will read literature alongside selections from significant historical documents and visual artifacts from this period.

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: Women's Writing (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 2077: Caribbean Literature (3 cr.)

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. 

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.

ENG 3050: American Poetry (3 cr.)
The primary aim of this seminar is to help you understand and appreciate some of the most intellectually innovative, formally challenging, and emotionally exciting American poetry of the late 19th and 20th centuries. In particular, we will focus on the following questions: What were some of the aesthetic and historical pressures that led 20th century poets to write the way they did?  What consequences might this history have for poets and readers in the present?  What is (or was) Modernism and Postmodernism?  How well do traditional definitions of the field (by period, community, or style) capture the rich variety of 20th c. verse? As a result of taking this course, students will improve their close reading skills and gain the historical background necessary to appreciate many varieties of twentieth-century poetry; creative writers will encounter powerful literary models that can expand one’s sense of what poetry can be and do.

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.  Research paper. 

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. 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.  

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. 

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 3117: Reading and Writing Literature in the Digital Era (3 cr.)

This course focuses on the ways that literature, broadly defined, has attempted to position itself with respect to other forms of media (TV, film, internet, comics, etc.) from the mid-1980s to the present. What special pleasures and compensations might literature offer rarely found in other forms of media? Can literary works absorb and represent forms of aesthetic experience that are primarily non-verbal, graphic, sonic, or based on moving images or hyperlinks? What is the status of reading, books, and literary writing in the digital era?  How has the rise of "Big Data" and the digital humanities come to impact literary study? Throughout the course, students will be asked to question what literature is or does that is analogous to, and perhaps different from, other forms of media. They will develop critical frameworks for analyzing literature alongside of visual or web-based objects, and use these critical tools to ask questions about the changing nature of modern reading and writing practices, different styles of attention, modes of selfhood, and methods of gathering information in the twenty-first century.

ENG 3118: Major Modern Authors (Fitzgerald and Hemingway) (3 cr.)
This course considers some of the major works of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway.  Working chronologically, we will gain a sense of the contours of each author’s literary career; discern characteristic patterns and themes within and among each author; and get a feel for the historical circumstances in which both men wrote. Some of our leading questions will be: to what extent did Fitzgerald and Hemingway share an approach to writing and/or life? In what ways were their fictions driven by commercial instincts and the desire for artistic prestige?  How does each author articulate specific ideas of masculinity and femininity, and touch on issues of hetero-, homo-, and bi-sexuality? How might we compare their views of America and Europe, or the American past versus the present?  How did each author manage to invent a new way of writing that continues to inspire admiration, imitation, and sometimes mockery?  Throughout the course, students will practice writing critically about multiple prose genres (stories, novels, essays, memoirs, letters, scholarly criticism).  This practice will take the form of weekly written responses, intensive oral discussion, a short comparative essay, and a longer research essay that involves the incorporation of secondary sources and a substantial act of revision.

ENG 3998: Senior Thesis (3 cr.)
A substantial research essay with appropriate document.  This course is required of all senior English majors. 
(Fall) (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 2040: 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 class fully explores the question: what is narrative? Writing efforts are supported by conference with the instructor and seminar readings and discussions. 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 Studies Courses

Note: The following literature and writing courses may also be used as electives for the Film Concentration: ENG 3020, ENG 3026, ENG 3071, ENG 3101, ENW 2040, ENW 4003, ENW 4004.

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 3173: Queer Film and Media Studies (4 cr.)
This seminar explores "queer theory" as applied to one of its key texts, the mass media and particularly film. We historicize lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and other queer media from Weimar culture to Hollywood's Production Code era, from underground cinema to later cracks into mainstream, avant-garde and new media. Coverage of AIDS receives attention, as do lesbian-feminist issues, the now- mainstream gay representations in the news, TV and other media, New Queer Cinema, controversial artists in photography, and other U.S. and international expressions of queer politics and culture. Research paper required. Prerequisite: One previous course in film studies or Comm 1001 or instructor permission. (Spring 2013)

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)