Department of English
The Graduate ProgramMA in English
MA in Creative Writing
PhD in English
Courses
Directed Study
Metropolitan College Courses
The following list reflects the 2007/2008 faculty.
Chair ad interim Laurence A. Breiner
Faculty
Laurence A. Breiner Chair ad interim, Department of English. Professor of English, College of Arts & Sciences. AB, Boston College; MPhil, PhD, Yale University
Julia P. Brown Professor of English, College of Arts & Sciences. BA, Barnard College; MA, PhD, Columbia University
William C. Carroll Professor of English, College of Arts & Sciences. AB, Oberlin College; MPhil, PhD, Yale University
Robert Chodat Assistant Professor of English, College of Arts & Sciences. BA, MA, McGill University; PhD, Stanford University
Bonnie Costello Professor of English, College of Arts & Sciences. BA, Bennington College; PhD, Cornell University
Leslie Epstein Director, Creative Writing Program, Department of English; Professor of English, College of Arts & Sciences. BA, DFA, Yale University; MA, University of California, Los Angeles
Aaron Fogel Associate Professor of English, College of Arts & Sciences. BA, MA, University of Cambridge (England); BA, PhD, Columbia University
Eugene Green Professor of English, College of Arts & Sciences. BA, MA, Ohio State University; PhD, University of Michigan
Ha Jin Professor of English, College of Arts & Sciences. BA, Heilongjiang University, Harbin (China); MA, Shandong University (China); MA, PhD, Brandeis University
Gene Jarrett Associate Professor of English. BA, Princeton University; MA, PhD, Brown University
Laura Korobkin Director of Graduate Studies, Department of English; Associate Professor of English, College of Arts & Sciences. BA, Williams College; MA, Brandeis University; JD, Harvard Law School; PhD, Harvard University
Maurice Lee Assistant Professor of English, College of Arts & Sciences. BA, Stanford University; MA, PhD, University of California, Los Angeles
Robert Levine Professor of English, College of Arts & Sciences. BA, City University of New York, City College; MA, Columbia University; PhD, University of California, Berkeley
Christopher Martin Associate Professor of English, College of Arts & Sciences. BA, St. Joseph’s University; MA, PhD, University of Virginia
John T. Matthews Professor of English, College of Arts & Sciences. AB, University of Pennsylvania; MA, PhD, Johns Hopkins University
Susan Mizruchi Professor of English, College of Arts & Sciences. BA, Washington University; PhD, Princeton University
Leland Monk Associate Professor of English, College of Arts & Sciences. BA, University of California, Santa Cruz; MA, PhD, University of California, Berkeley
Erin Murphy Assistant Professor of English, College of Arts & Sciences. BA, Vassar College; MA, PhD, Rutgers University
Thomas Otten Visiting Associate Professor of English, College of Arts & Sciences. BA, MA, Lawrence University; PhD, University of California, Los Angeles
Anita Patterson Associate Professor of English, College of Arts & Sciences. BA, Harvard College; MA, PhD, Harvard University
Robert Pinsky Professor of English, College of Arts & Sciences. BA, Rutgers University; MA, PhD, Stanford University; DHL (hon.), Kenyon College
Carrie Preston Assistant Professor of English, College of Arts & Sciences. BA, Michigan State University; MA, PhD, Rutgers University
Michael Prince Assistant Dean, Writing Program; Associate Professor of English, College of Arts & Sciences. BA, Stanford University; PhD, University of Virginia
Bruce Redford University Professor; Professor of English and Art History, College of Arts & Sciences. BA, Brown University; BA, University of Cambridge (England); PhD, Princeton University
John Paul Riquelme Professor of English, College of Arts & Sciences. BA, Rice University; MPhil, PhD, Yale University
Charles J. Rzepka Professor of English, College of Arts & Sciences. BA, University of Michigan; MA, PhD, University of California, Berkeley
James Siemon Associate Chair, Department of English; Professor of English, College of Arts & Sciences. AB, Washington University; MA, PhD, State University of New York, Buffalo
Matthew Smith Assistant Professor of English, College of Arts & Sciences. BA, Brown University; MA, University of Chicago; MA, PhD, Columbia University
Andrew Stauffer Associate Professor of English, College of Arts & Sciences. BA, MA, University of Pennsylvania; PhD, University of Virginia
Sandra F. Tropp Assistant Professor of English, College of Arts & Sciences. BA, MA, Bucknell University; PhD, Boston University
Kevin Van Anglen Instructor in English, College of Arts & Sciences. AB, Princeton University; BA, MA, University of Cambridge (England); MA, PhD, Harvard University
David A. Wagenknecht Professor of English, College of Arts & Sciences. BA, MA, Boston University; DPhil, University of Sussex (England)
Derek Walcott Professor of English and Creative Writing, College of Arts & Sciences. BA, University of the West Indies; LittD (hon.), Boston University; LittD (hon.), Dartmouth College; LittD (hon.), University of Oxford (England); LittD (hon.), University of Urbino (Italy)
Rosanna Warren University Professor; Emma Ann MacLachlan Metcalf Professor of Humanities; Professor of English and French, College of Arts & Sciences. BA, Yale University; MA, Johns Hopkins University
James A. Winn Professor of English, College of Arts & Sciences. BA, Princeton University; PhD, Yale University
Maria Zlateva Assistant Professor of English, College of Arts & Sciences. BA, MA, PhD, Sofia University (Bulgaria)
Affiliated Faculty
Archie Burnett Professor of English and Codirector, Editorial Institute, College of Arts & Sciences. MA, University of Edinburgh; DPhil, University of Oxford
Emeriti
Samuel Allen Professor Emeritus of English, College of Arts & Sciences. AB, Fisk University; LLB, Harvard University
Millicent Bell Professor Emerita of English, College of Arts & Sciences. AB, New York University; MA, PhD, Brown University
Morton Berman Professor Emeritus of English, College of Arts & Sciences. AB, University of Illinois; AM, PhD, Harvard University
Burton L. Cooper Professor Emeritus of English, College of Arts & Sciences. BA, Boston University; AM, PhD, University of Michigan
Emily K. Dalgarno Professor Emeritus of English, College of Arts & Sciences. BA, William Smith College; AM, PhD, Brown University
Gerald P. Fitzgerald University Professor Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of English and Italian. AB, AM, PhD, Harvard University
William G. Riggs Professor Emeritus of English, College of Arts & Sciences. BA, University of Rochester; MA, PhD, University of California, Berkeley
Robert Ryan Associate Professor Emeritus of English. BA, Western Michigan University; MA, University of Connecticut; PhD, Northwestern University
Robert L. Saitz Professor Emeritus of English, College of Arts & Sciences. BA, Boston University; MA, University of Iowa; PhD, University of Wisconsin
William L. Vance Professor Emeritus of English, College of Arts & Sciences. AB, Oberlin College; AM, PhD, University of Michigan; LittD (hon.), University of South Dakota
Donald J. Winslow Professor Emeritus of English, College of Arts & Sciences. BS, MA, Tufts University; PhD, Boston University
The Graduate Program
Students in the Graduate Program in English enjoy the advantages of a large faculty but do not suffer the disadvantages of a large program. The result is a student-centered program with a wide selection of graduate courses and teachers. A substantial number of University fellowships are open to MA students on a competitive basis. Students who continue into the PhD program are normally awarded teaching fellowships renewable for several years, contingent upon satisfactory performance in the program. Our outstanding faculty work closely with students at every stage of the program. We assist students to become publishing scholars and to find appropriate employment. Students also benefit from departmental sponsorship of Studies in Romanticism and association with AGNI.
Further information is available from the department, 236 Bay State Road, Boston, MA 02215; 617-353-2506; www.bu.edu/english.
Admissions Applicants for admission must submit results of the Graduate Record Examination General Test and the Subject Test in Literature.
MA in English
Prerequisites Applicants must submit a writing sample of scholarly work. The student is normally expected to have completed an undergraduate concentration in English. No transfer of credit is allowed toward fulfillment of the eight semester courses required for the degree.
Course Requirements Eight semester courses (32 credits) are required for the degree, normally completed within one year. Candidates for the MA are required to take at least one course that focuses primarily on critical theory, critical method, or the history of criticism.
To fulfill the linguistics/philology requirement, the candidate must complete satisfactorily at least one semester course from the following: CAS EN 511 Introduction to Linguistics; CAS EN 513 Modern English Grammar; CAS EN 514 Medieval Languages; CAS EN 515, 516 History of the English Language; CAS EN 561 Chaucer; GRS EN 815 Old English; GRS EN 816 Beowulf; or GRS EN 721, 722, 822 Studies in Medieval Literature. The linguistics/philology requirement may be waived for the candidate who has had an equivalent course as an undergraduate.
All courses are chosen in consultation with the candidate’s advisor. The candidate must demonstrate, by a proposed program of courses together with a completed undergraduate program of courses, a reasonably comprehensive coverage of American literature and of English literature from the Middle Ages through the nineteenth century.
Course Credit in Related Fields As part of the total program of eight semester courses required for the degree, candidates may, with the approval of their advisor, elect a one-semester graduate-level course in a related area.
Foreign Language Requirement The candidate must arrange to satisfy the departmental foreign language requirement by demonstrating intermediate-level proficiency in one classical or modern foreign language. Candidates wishing to demonstrate proficiency in French, German, Spanish, Italian, or Latin may do so by achieving an appropriate designated score on the SAT II Language test during their first semester of matriculation. Arrangements for testing in other languages must be made with the department. The requirement may also be satisfied by the student earning at least a B in a specifically designated foreign-language course at the advanced intermediate level. The candidate is not to elect such a course as a fifth course in any semester, nor does this course count toward the eight semester courses required for the degree.
MFA in Creative Writing
Prerequisites To be accepted for the MFA degree in creative writing, a student must, at the time of application, furnish a creative writing sample. To have the writing sample returned, applicants must send a stamped, self-addressed manila envelope.
Course Requirements Eight semester courses (32 credits) are required for the degree; these are usually completed within one year, though they may be completed in two. At least four of the eight courses are normally taken in fiction, poetry, or drama, or a combination thereof. Thus, the four remaining courses normally are graduate-level courses not in creative writing. These must constitute a coherent program of study that includes at least three graduate literature courses. It is possible to pursue a course in another discipline when such study is demonstrably essential to the student’s creative work. The candidate must work out a specific program in consultation with the writing faculty.
Foreign Language Requirement Each student who has not previously completed at least two years of study in one foreign language at the undergraduate level or the equivalent shall make up the deficiency. The academic advisor may approve one of the following options: (1) Satisfactory completion of UNI HU 540: Literary Translation: Practice and Theory (students electing this option will be interviewed by the course instructor; if selected, the student will work with a mentor from the appropriate language department); (2) any course in a foreign language (or a 500-level reading course in a foreign language) which the director of the Creative Writing Program approves; (3) an appropriate designated score on the SAT II language test; or (4) a project, such as a translation of poetry or prose, or scholarly research involving the use of a foreign language. (The project must be approved by the director of the Creative Writing Program.)
Thesis A substantial master’s thesis in fiction, poetry, drama, or a combination thereof is required.
PhD in English
Prerequisites Applicants must submit a writing sample of scholarly work. The student must have an MA degree in English or the equivalent. No transfer of credit is granted toward fulfillment of the eight semester courses required for the degree.
Course Requirements Eight semester courses (32 credits) are required for the degree. Upon petition to the Committee on Graduate Studies, one directed study course may be elected. Candidates for the PhD are required to take at least one course that focuses primarily on critical theory, critical method, or the history of criticism. To fulfill the linguistics/philology requirement, the student must complete satisfactorily at least two semester courses from the following: CAS EN 511 Introduction to Linguistics; CAS EN 513 Modern English- Grammar; CAS EN 514 Medieval Languages; CAS-EN 515, 516 History of the English Language; GRS EN 561 Chaucer; GRS EN 815 Old English; GRS EN 816 Beowulf; GRS EN 721, 722, 822 Studies in Medieval Literature. Students need complete only one semester course of the linguistics/philology requirement if they have taken any one of these semester courses or the equivalent during their undergraduate or MA degree program; the linguistics/philology requirement may be waived entirely for students who have taken any two of these semester courses or the equivalent in a degree program. Doctoral students who have had neither an undergraduate nor a graduate course reading Chaucer in the original language must take a graduate-level course in Chaucer as part of their doctoral program. Supervised practice in the teaching of English language and literature is expected of all PhD candidates.
Course Credit in Related Fields As part of the total program of eight semester courses required for the degree, doctoral students may, with the approval of their advisor, elect two semester courses at the graduate level in related areas. A course elected to fulfill the foreign language requirement may be counted as a related course.
Foreign Language Requirement The doctoral student shall fulfill the following foreign language requirement in two languages that have relevance to literary studies in English. The Director of Graduate Studies determines which languages are appropriate to fulfill the requirement.
One language shall be at the level of advanced proficiency. This requirement can be fulfilled in the following ways:
- by taking a translation test administered by the Department
- by achieving an appropriate designated score on the SAT II language test currently offered in French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Latin
- by completing with a grade of B or better one literature course at the graduate level (courses numbered 500 or higher) in an approved language
One language shall be at the level of intermediate proficiency. This requirement can be fulfilled in the following ways:
- by achieving an appropriate designated score on the SAT II language test
- by completing with a grade of B or better (after gaining admission to the graduate program) the fourth semester of college-level language study in an approved language, or GRS LG 621, GRS LS 621, GRS CL 621, GRS LF 621, or another 621-level course in an approved language.
A student wishing to fulfill the requirement with a language for which there is no available examination (for example, Hebrew or Greek) may ask first to have the language approved and then to take a written translation examination. Requests should be discussed with the student’s faculty advisor, then forwarded in writing to the Director of Graduate Studies.
Note: A student who successfully completes a graduate-level literature course in a foreign language can count the course toward the eight-course requirement for the PhD; only one such course will be accepted toward fulfilling the eight-course requirement.
The Department strongly recommends that students achieve proficiency in a modern foreign language and in a classical language. During the first semester of their doctoral program, all students are expected to discuss the language options with their faculty advisors and to submit to the Director of Graduate Studies a plan for achieving language proficiency. The plan should include a brief justification for the languages chosen. In the case of students for whom English is not the native language, the student’s mastery of the native language will be accepted as fulfilling the requirement for advanced proficiency in one foreign language.
The language requirement must be fulfilled before the qualifying examination is scheduled, that is, before the student proceeds to the dissertation.
Qualifying Examinations To be admitted to doctoral candidacy, the student must pass the Qualifying Oral Examinations.
Residency Requirement The student must be in residence for at least one continuous academic year, i.e., enrolled as a full-time student.
Dissertation Prospectus See the General Requirements for the PhD section of this website.
Dissertation Doctoral candidates write their dissertations under the supervision of two readers, normally professors of the department.
Final Oral Examination Upon completion of the dissertation, but before its final approval, candidates present themselves for the final oral examination, which is based principally on the dissertation and related problems in the area of the candidate’s specialization. The primary purpose of the final oral examination is to allow candidates to demonstrate the ability to discuss clearly, objectively, and critically their methods and conclusions, as well as their knowledge of the related material.
For further information about the department, students should write to the Director of Graduate Studies, Department of English, 236 Bay State Road, Boston, MA 02215.
Courses
Courses are listed in three categories: creative writing, language and linguistics, and literature.
Creative WritingCAS EN 503, 504 Fiction Workshop
Prereq: consent of instructor, to whom two or three stories or a portion of a novel must be submitted during the period just before classes begin. A workshop in the writing of fiction. Manuscripts are read and discussed in class. Individual conferences. Limited enrollment. Goodman. 4 cr, 1st sem. Jin. 4 cr, 2nd sem.CAS EN 505, 506 Poetry Workshop
Prereq: consent of instructor, to whom a selection of poems must be submitted during the period just before classes begin. A workshop in the writing of poetry. Manuscripts are read and discussed in class. Individual conferences. Limited enrollment. Pinsky. 4 cr, either sem.CAS EN 507 Seminar in Creative Writing: Fiction
Prereq: consent of instructor, to whom two or three stories or chapters from a novel must be submitted during the period just before classes begin. Individual conferences. Limited enrollment. Epstein. 4 cr, either sem.CS EN 508 Seminar in Creative Writing: Poetry
Prereq: consent of instructor, to whom a selection of poems must be submitted during the period just before classes begin. Individual conferences. Limited enrollment. Warren. 4 cr, 1st sem. Glück. 4 cr, 2nd sem.CAS EN 509, 510 Exercises in Dramaturgy
Prereq: consent of instructor, to whom a short play or scene from a play must be submitted just before classes begin. A seminar in the writing of original plays, emphasizing a dramaturgical approach to structure, language, and theme. Exercises in imitation of the masters of modern drama to be assigned, beginning with Ibsen (fall semester) and ending with Mamet. Schotter. 4 cr, 1st sem. Snodgrass. 4 cr, 2nd sem.GRS EN 706 Writing Plays
Prereq: consent of instructor, to whom a one-act or full-length play must be submitted during the period just before classes begin. A workshop in the writing of plays. Manuscripts are read and discussed in class. Individual conferences. Limited enrollment. Lopet. 4 cr, 1st sem. Noone. 4 cr, 2nd sem.
Language and Linguistics
CAS EN 511 Introduction to Linguistics
Not offered 2008/2009CAS EN 513 Modern English Grammar
Not offered 2008/2009CAS EN 515 History of the English Language I
How do the experiences of young adults contribute to the development of the English language? From early American English to current times, we examine how they learned and changed their native tongue at home, in schools, and neighborhoods. Green. 4 cr, 1st sem.CAS EN 516 History of the English Language II
Dryden said that few in England could read Chaucer. How did English change radically in 300 years, from 1400 to 1700? Social, cultural, and linguistic dynamics of this change. Green. 4 cr, 2nd sem.CAS EN 518 Linguistic Problems in the Teaching of English as a Foreign Language
Prereq: consent of instructor. Application of linguistic concepts to the teaching of English as a foreign language. Includes description of contemporary English grammatical structures that pose problems for learners and teachers. Saitz. 4 cr, 1st sem. Zlateva. 4 cr, 2nd sem.GRS EN 815 Old English
Poems such as “The Seafarer,” “The Wanderer,” and “The Wife’s Lament.” Riddles from the Exeter Book, King Alfred’s prose; all in the original, all well-glossed and made available by a concise, clear grammar and by discussion of Anglo-Saxon culture. Green. 4 cr, 2nd sem.GRS EN 816 Beowulf
Not offered 2008/2009
Literature
CAS EN 523 Literature of the Renaissance I
Non-dramatic poetry of the Tudor era—from the works of John Skelton to the Elizabethan sonneteering vogue, Spenserian narrative, and Donne’s early lyrics—with special attention to English Humanism and the native responses it provoked. Martin. 4 cr, 1st sem.CAS EN 524 Literature of the Renaissance II
Not offered 2008/2009CAS EN 526 Literature of the Seventeenth Century
Not offered 2008/2009CAS EN 527 Literature of the Eighteenth Century I
Not offered 2008/2009CAS EN 528 Literature of the Eighteenth Century II: The Age of Johnson
Not offered 2008/2009CAS EN 529 The Romantic Age I
Intensive study of the writings of the so-called “First Generation” British Romantics, with emphasis on the poetry of Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge and the political and philosophical writings of the era. Attention to cultural, social, and political contexts. Other writers may include Walpole, Equiano, Radcliffe, Edgeworth, Godwin and/or Wollstonecraft. Rzepka. 4 cr, 1st sem.CAS EN 531, 532 Victorian Literature
Not offered 2008/2009CAS EN 533 American Literature: Beginnings to 1855
American literature from the beginnings to the brink of the Civil War. Puritan origins, print culture, American poetic taste, entertainment, and the debate over slavery. Works by Bradstreet, Jefferson, Franklin, Poe, Emerson, Hawthorne, Stowe, Jacobs, and Melville. Otten. 4 cr, 1st sem.CAS EN 534 American Literature: 1855 to 1918
American literature from the Civil War to WWI. Realism and naturalism, race, class and urbanization, marriage and the new woman. Alger, Twain, James, Harper, Howells, Crane, Norris, Dreiser, Wharton, Dickinson, Frost. Jarrett. 4 cr, 2nd sem.CAS EN 535 Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry
Exploration of major poets of the long twentieth century from Thomas Hardy and W. B. Yeats through the War Poets, Lawrence, Eliot, and Auden to Seamus Heaney and Eavan Boland. Fogel. 4 cr, 1st sem.CAS EN 536 Twentieth-Century American Poetry
Study of five or six poets from the following: Pound, Eliot, Stevens, Williams, Moore, Frost, Lowell, Bishop, Berryman, Ammons, Ashbery, Plath, Ginsberg, or Merrill. Costello. 4 cr, 2nd sem.CAS EN 542 The Rise of the Novel
Not offered 2008/2009CAS EN 543 Nineteenth-Century English Novel
The development of the novel form in its social-historical context. Authors may include Austen, Thackeray, the Brontës, Dickens, George Eliot, Hardy, and others. Brown. 4 cr, 1st sem.CAS EN 544 The Modern British Novel
Conrad, Woolf, Lawrence, Ford, Forster, Beckett, and other novelists of the period 1895–1956. Fogel. 4 cr, 2nd sem.CAS EN 545 The Nineteenth-Century American Novel
From its beginnings through the nineteenth century. Works by Brown, Cooper, Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, James, Howells, and others. Otten. 4 cr, either sem.CAS EN 546 The Modern American Novel
From 1900 to 1950. Works by Dreiser, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, and others. Van Anglen, Patterson. 4 cr, either sem.CAS EN 547 Contemporary American Fiction
Fall 2008: Examination of a range of American fiction (stories, novellas, novels) written since WW II. Authors include Bellow, Roth, Ozick, Pynchon, DeLillo, Morrison; topics include modern disenchantment, faith and science, “world-making,” and the fate of character. Chodat. 4 cr, 1st sem.CAS EN 551 English Drama to 1590
Mystery, morality, interludes and the first rollicking public-stage plays. Piety, blasphemy, scatological humor, horrific violence, trans-gendering, black magic, bad verse and politically-incorrect fun, from Anonymous to early Shakespeare, including the bad-boy playwrights of London’s first mass-entertainment industry. Siemon. 4 cr, 2nd sem.CAS EN 552 English Drama from 1590 to 1642
Not offered 2008/2009CAS EN 553 Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Drama
Not offered 2008/2009CAS EN 561 Chaucer
Studied as literary exploration of old hierarchies and new economies. Chaucer’s poetic sense of personal engagements, social disruptions, and spiritual challenges. Levine. 4 cr, 1st sem.CAS EN 565 Spenser
Not offered 2008/2009CAS EN 566 Milton
Careful exploration of Milton’s powerful poetry (including Paradise Lost) and stunning prose in the revolutionary political and social context of the seventeenth century. Issues include “regicide,” gender, colonialism, religion, political slavery, and the public sphere.
Murphy. 4 cr, 2nd sem.
CAS EN 571 Studies in American Literary Movements: Transatlantic Romanticism
Focusing on aesthetic and philosophical influence, this course traces the transmission of British romanticism to United States literature. Major authors include: Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Carlyle, and Barrett Browning, as well as Emerson, Poe, Melville, Whitman, and Dickinson. Lee. 4 cr. 1st sem.CAS EN 576 Studies in Literature and Gender: Gay/Lesbian Literature and Film
Literary and cinematic representations of gay and lesbian life in historical and cultural contexts. Topics include: mechanisms of homophobia; forging of homosexual identities; effects of same-sex desire on artistic forms and conventions. Weekly screenings. Monk. 4 cr, 2nd sem.CAS EN 578 Studies in British Writers: Tennyson and Browning
Two Victorian poets studied in the context of the rapid changes in Victorian culture. Readings will move from the invention of the dramatic monologue to longer works such as The Ring and the Book and In Memoriam. Henchman. 4 cr, 2nd sem.CAS EN 582 Studies in Modern Literature: Modern Irish Writers
Fiction, poetry, drama, and meditations on art from 1890 to now, with attention to Irish modernism’s styles and cultural contexts. Readings by writers such as Wilde, Yeats, Joyce, Synge, Lady Gregory, O’Casey, Beckett, Heaney, Friel, and Boland. Riquelme. 4 cr, 1st sem.CAS EN 584 Studies in Literary Genres: Medieval Romance: Faith and Nation, Violence and Desire
Marvelous and magical, medieval romances also offered an important fictive space to think through cultural ideas of identity, sexuality, history, and social order. Chrétien de Troyes, Marie de France, Chaucer, Gawain-poet, Malory, Spenser. Appleford. 4 cr, 2nd sem.CAS EN 586 Studies in Anglophone Literature
Two topics are offered 2008–2009. Students may take either or both for credit. Caribbean Poetry. Study of twentieth-century Caribbean poetry written in English(es). Anthologies and major figures (Walcott, Brathwaite, Goodison, Roach). Consideration of poetry in small societies, creole vs. standard language, oral vs. literate norms, relation to literary traditions, African and European. Breiner. 4 cr, 1st sem. African Literature and its Gods. Nigerian literature in English, with emphasis on elements of indigenous African mythology, and on conflict and accommodation with Western values. Reading includes the plays of Ladipo and Soyinka, fiction of Fagunwa, Tutuola, Achebe, and Okri. Breiner. 4 cr, 2nd sem.CAS EN 587 Studies in African American Literature: Racial Uplift
We will examine the ideology of racial uplift in nineteenth-century African American literature, focusing on the themes of literacy, civilization, political constituency, class, gender, and the black intelligentsia. Jarrett. 4 cr, 2nd sem.CAS EN 588 Studies in African American Literature: Political Activism and African American Literature
We will examine representations of politics in African American literature, along with the historical impact of U.S. political movements on the tradition’s forms and themes. Authors include Wheatley, Equiano, Douglass, Delany, Hopkins, Washington, Du Bois, Garvey, Wright, Giovanni, and Lorde. Jarrett. 4 cr, 1st sem.CAS EN 590 Studies in Comparative Literature
Brecht and Anglophone Drama. The influence of English-language drama on Bertolt Brecht, and vice versa. What Brecht learned from Shakespeare, Gay, and Shaw; what theatrical artists have learned from Brecht. Reading, writing, and occasional scenework required; no theatrical experience necessary. Smith. 4 cr, 2nd sem.CAS EN 594 Studies in Literature and the Arts
Three topics are offered 2008-2009. Students may take any or all three for credit. Fall 2008: The English Country House. For almost three centuries, the English country house played a central role in English literary culture. We will be exploring a variety of poetic and fictional texts, as well as attending to architecture and landscape design. Redford. 4 cr, 1st sem. Spring 2009: Section A1: The Baroque. Examines seventeenth-century architecture, painting, music, poetry, and drama. The syllabus is organized both topically and topographically: issues of space, light, ornamentation, and theatricality are explored in relation to the cultural capitals of Rome, Paris, and London. Redford. 4 cr, 2nd sem. Section B1: Modern Poetry and the Visual Arts. Shared movements, theories and techniques; international modernism and the New York avant-garde; collaborations and exchanges; poems and poets on painting; word/image rivalries and distinctions; Williams, Moore, Stevens, Stein, O’Hara, Ashbery, Graham, others; lots of slides. Costello. 4 cr, 2nd sem.CAS EN 604 Literary Criticism I
Survey of major philosophical discussions of literature from ancient Greece to the late nineteenth century. Figures include Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant, and Nietzsche. Themes include art’s relation to truth, ethics, and politics; interpretation; aesthetic judgment; the sublime. Chodat. 4 cr, 1st sem.GRS EN 606 Literary Criticism II
Survey of literary critical perspectives and trends in humanistic theory relevant to literary interpretation from the middle of the twentieth century onward, including formalism, structuralism, post-structuralism, gender studies, new historicism, and post-colonial studies. Frequent writing assignments of varying length. Riquelme. 4 cr, 2nd sem.CAS EN 666 Critical Studies in Literature and Society: Time and Literature 1800–1930
Examines models of time (pace, narrative, scale) in Romantic, Victorian, and Modernist texts during major transformations in science and technology (geology, dinosaurs, Darwin, railways, film and Einstein). Authors may include Tennyson, Hardy, Wells, Proust, and Woolf. Henchman. 4cr, 1st sem.CAS EN 694 Critical Studies in Literature and the Arts
Two topics are offered spring 2009. Students may take either or both for credit. Section A1: Music and Literature. A historical survey of the relations between the two arts from the Greeks to the present. Discussion of poetry in many languages; emphasis on English. Chant, song, madrigal, opera, and other forms. Ability to read music required. Winn. 4 cr, 2nd sem. Section B1: Renaissance Literature of the Visual Arts. A survey of interrelationships between visual and verbal representation in early modern Europe, from Giotto’s narrative frescos in the Arena Chapel, to the book as art, to the “painter poems” of late seventeenth-century England. Martin. 4 cr, 2nd sem.CAS EN 695 Critical Studies in Literary Topics: American Literature and Pragmatism
Major American authors (including Emerson, Dickinson, Henry James, Stephen Crane, Du Bois, and Frost) read in relation to classical pragmatists such as William James, Peirce, Dewey, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Lee. 4 cr, 1st sem.CAS EN 696 Critical Studies in Literary Topics
Two topics are offered 2008-2009. Students may take either or both for credit. Fall 2008: Section A1: Freud & Lacan. Not the application to literature of psychoanalysis as an alien technology, but discovery that Freud’s and Lacan’s texts themselves are “in the loop.” How literature is connected to psychoanalysis and philosophy; various theoretical and literary texts. Wagenknecht. 4 cr, 1st sem. Spring 2009: Section B1: Dialogue, Laughter, and the Grotesque. Philosophies and aesthetics of laughter and carnival in criticism and history, through dialogues, novels, poems, other genres. Selections from Bakhtin, Rabelais, Sterne, Byron, Dickens, Freud, Bergson, Marx Bros., Koch, others. Critiques of this tradition also. Fogel. 4 cr, 2nd sem.GRS EN 699 Teaching College English
The goals, contents, and methods of instruction in English. General teaching-learning issues. Required of all teaching fellows. TBA. 2 cr, 1st & 2nd sem. (Does not carry degree credit.)GRS EN 726 Seventeenth-Century English Women Writers
A consideration of women writers (Lanyer, Trapnel, Cavendish, petitioners, Hutchinson, Philips, Halkett, Astell) as participants in seventeenth-century culture and politics. Should prove useful for seventeenth-century literature students and for those working on gender issues more broadly. Murphy. 4 cr, 2nd sem.GRS EN 727 Literature and Politics in the Age of Queen Anne
Authors will include Pope, Swift, Defoe, Manley, Addison, Steele, and Gay. Close attention to partisan politics and the other arts, including such figures as Wren, Kneller, and Handel. Winn. 4 cr, 1st sem.GRS EN 731 Romantic Aesthetics/Psychoanalytic Ethics
Readings of radical Romantic texts by Wordsworth, Blake, Keats, and Shelley will be guided by a careful study of Jacques Lacan’s seminar, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (where Antigone is an issue), to explore how ethics may be related to aesthetics. Wagenknecht. 4 cr, 2nd sem.GRS EN 733 Nineteenth-Century American Women Writers
Hawthorne’s “damned mob of scribbling women” in historical/cultural context. Gender, genre, authorship, canonicity, sexuality, class, race, recent shifts in critical approaches. Stowe, Warner, Fern, Southworth, Jacobs, Phelps, Hopkins, Chopin, Gilman. Korobkin. 4 cr, 1st sem.GRS EN 734 Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Science
Jefferson, Poe, Hawthorne, Thoreau, Melville, Dickinson, and James (among others) read in relation to (among other scientific and pseudo-scientific contexts) race theory, spiritualism, probability, evolution, and physiological psychology. Lee. 4 cr, 2nd sem.GRS EN 744 Bildungsroman and Film
Classic Bildungsroman and its afterlife in literature and film of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Texts by Goethe, Austen, Balzac, and others. Films directed by Ray, Richardson, Cacoyannis, Olmi, and Schlesinger. Brown. 4cr, 2nd sem.GRS EN 746/HI 757 Global South
Examination of U.S. South in global historical and cultural contexts: New World colonialism; hemispheric plantation society; U.S. imperialism; decolonization; African diaspora; contemporary globalization and idea of global South. Attention to interdisciplinary method. Readings in history, literature, theory. Matthews and Silber. 4 cr, 2nd sem.GRS EN 763 Shakespeare, Tragedy, Succession
Early modern stagings of the logic and tragedy of succession–the political level as well as that of the family. Readings include historical texts on Tudor-Stuart succession, and Shakespeare’s Richard II-Henry V, Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth. Carroll. 4 cr, 1st sem.GRS EN 772 Modernist Authenticity
Shifting notions of authenticity and the aesthetics of the counterfeit (mask, lying, forgery) from Wilde through figures such as Yeats, Joyce, Beckett, Magritte, and Warhol, with attention to bad faith and a possible alternative in the negative authenticity of lying. Riquelme. 4 cr, 2nd sem.GRS EN 773 Later Modernism
Modernist poets in the thirties: their work changed with new social, economic, and political pressures between the wars. Emerging poets reveal their debt to Modernism while forging a poetry for their time. Stevens, Moore, Williams, Bishop, and Auden, others. Costello. 4 cr, 1st sem.GRS EN 776 Performing Gender in the Twentieth Century
Representations of gender on twentieth century stages and intersections of gender with sexuality, race, and class. The legacy of melodrama, dramatic realism, theatrical expressionism, the rise of film, postmodern performance, readings in gender and performance theory. Preston. 4 cr, 1st sem.GRS EN 788 Transnationalism and African American Literature
We will examine scholarship on literary transnationalism, alongside transnational representations of cultural, ethnic, or racial similarity and difference in African American literature, including works by Delany, Hopkins, Du Bois, McKay, Hughes, and Shakur. Jarrett. 4 cr, 1st sem.GRS EN 792 Introduction to Recent Critical Theory and Method
A selective study of recent literary theory and criticism, with emphasis on comparison of critical frameworks and methodologies. Fulfills the graduate requirement in literary theory. Matthews. 4 cr, 1st sem.Directed Study
GRS EN 993, 994 Directed Study in English
Variable cr, 1st & 2nd sem.Metropolitan College Courses
A number of courses are offered in Metropolitan College under the auspices of the Department of English and are approved for graduate credit for students enrolled in the MA and PhD program. For further information, see the Metropolitan College Bulletin.
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