Department of English
Graduate Courses in Language and Literature
Semester I, 2009-2010All courses carry four credits, unless otherwise noted. Please note that these descriptions take priority over those on the link, which may be outdated.
Language and Linguistics
CAS EN 513 A1 Modern English Grammar
A systematic analysis of English, applied to the reading of literature and the writing of essays.
Bizup Mon 3:00-6:00CAS EN 518 A1 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 Tue 4:00-7:00Literature
CAS EN 533 A1 American Literature: Beginnings to 1855
American literature from the beginning 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.
Howell Tues, Thurs 2:00-3:30CAS EN 535 A1 Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry
Close reading of balladic, lyric, and longer poems by Hardy, Yeats, Lawrence, Auden, Rosenberg, Mew, Loy, MacDiarmid, Gurney, Douglas, Larkin, Hill, Harrison, Prynne, others. Poets' essays and opposed schools and approaches. Reference to other arts, and times of political tragedy.
Fogel Tues, Thurs 9:30-11:00CAS EN 542 A1 The Rise of the Novel
The development of prose fiction in England through the eighteenth century. Major themes and genres in works by Behn, Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Smollet, Lennox, Austen, and Sterne.
Prince Tues, Thurs 2:00-3:30CAS EN 543 A1 19th Century British 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 Mon, Wed 3:00-4:30CAS EN 545 A1 19th Century American Novel
From beginnings through the nineteenth century. Works by Brown, Cooper, Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, James, Howells, and others.
Van Anglen Tues, Thurs 3:30-5:00CAS EN 546 A1 Modern American Novel
From 1900 to 1950. Works by Dreiser, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, and others.
Mizruchi Mon, Wed, Fri 11:00-12:00CAS EN 547 A1 Contemporary American Fiction
Syllabus varies from semester to semester but this course may be taken only once for credit. Topic for Spring 2010: 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 Tues, Thurs 9:30-11:00CAS EN 551 A1 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.
Appleford Mon, Wed, Fri 12:00-1:00CAS EN 561 A1 Chaucer
Studied as literary exploration of old hierarchies and new economies. Chaucer's poetic sense of personal engagements, social disruptions, and spiritual challenges.
Levine Mon, Wed, Fri 11:00-12:00CAS EN 571 A1 American Renaissance Poetry
Poetry by Emerson, Poe, Sigourney, Thoreau, Whitman, Melville, and others.
Patterson Tues, Thurs 3:30-5:00CAS EN 574 A1 Eccentric Moderns
An examination of six 20th century poets (David Jones, Laura Riding, Hart Crane, Auden, Hill, and Anne Carson) in the light of ideas about Modernism. A pluralist model of Modernisms emerges. The course combines practical criticism with literary and cultural history, integrating formal analysis and historical context.
Warren Mon, Wed, Fri 9:00-10:00
CAS EN 579 A1 Moore, Bishop and Plath
Through analysis of these major 20c. women poets we will explore a shift from modernism to postmodernism. Topics will include : literary friendship and influence; gender and sexuality; relations between the arts; theory and practice of lyric; poets' prose.
Costello Tues, Thurs 9:30-11:00CAS EN 579 B1 Faulkner
Faulkner’s major novels and short stories, studied in the contexts of Southern literature and history, American and transatlantic modernism, and his global influence.
Matthews Tues, Thurs 12:30-2:00CAS EN 584 A1 Migrant Literature
Primary focus on the experiences of immigration and exile, with reading also of fiction on other kinds of human migrations. Works by Willa Cather, O.E. Rölvaag, Nabokov, V.S. Naipaul, Shusaku Endo, and contemporary authors.
Ha Jin Wed 12:00-3:00CAS EN 595 A1 American Dream
The powerful narratives that construct, and challenge, the myth that every American can achieve material success and self-realization unobstructed by class, race, ethnicity and gender. Crevecoeur, Douglass, Alger, Crane, Norris, Cather, Fitzgerald.
Korobkin Mon, Wed, Fri 10:00-11:00CAS EN 596 A1 Cinema of David Lynch
Intensive study of Lynch’s films, informed by readings in literature and Freudian psychoanalysis. Topics include: the logic of dreams, forms of evil, the death drive, and small-town America. Weekly screenings.
Monk Mon, Wed 2:00-4:00GRS EN 604 A1 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.
Patterson Tues, Thurs 11:00-12:00GRS EN 666 B1 Family Trouble: Contesting Kinship in Theory and Literature
Exploration of theories of family, gender and sexuality from ancient Greece to current gay marriage debates, concluding with the analysis of recent experiments in family narrative, including novels, graphic novels and film.
Murphy Tues, Thurs 12:30-2:00GRS EN 666 C1 (Post?)Feminisms, Secularism, and the Sacred
How does feminist thought and art engage secularity, religion, and faith? Current debates on religious fundamentalism, transnationalism, imperialism, and movements for gender justice around the globe. Readings include feminist theories and creative engagements with the Bible, Koran, other sacred texts.
Preston Tues, Thurs 9:30-11:00CAS EN 686 A1 Topic in Anglophone Literature
A survey of novels written in Africa, the Caribbean, and South Asia in the twentieth century. Writers we are likely to read include Rushdie, Kincaid, Naipaul, Rhys, Achebe, Farah, Toer, Coetzee. Krishnan Tues, Thurs 11:00-12:30GRS EN 731 A1 Wordsworth
Intense study of William Wordsworth's life and writings, focusing on the poetry of the "Great Decade," including Lyrical Ballads and the 1805 Prelude, as well as important works of criticism and theory of the last half century or so.
Rzepka Fri 12:00-2:30GRS EN 752 A1 Performing Gender on the Early Modern Stage
Masculine/feminine representations in selected plays -- Shakespeare (Twelfth Night; Hamlet; Coriolanus); Jonson (Masque of Blackness; Epicene); Middleton (Roaring Girl; Women Beware Women); Shirley (Bird in a Cage); Webster (Duchess of Malfi) -- early modern anatomies, and contemporary feminist theory.
Carroll Tues 3:00-5:30GRS EN 792 A1 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 Thurs 3:00-5:30
GRS EN 794 A1 Literature and the Postcolonial
Situating literary activity in models of decolonization posits the literary as an arena of such contested values as originality, authenticity, hybridity, language, and allusiveness. Seminar studies a series of texts in and around which these contestations have taken place.
Breiner Thurs 12:30-3:00GRS EN 796 A1 Risk and Contemporary American Culture
Western societies since the 1960s have been preoccupied with risk. Course explores role of contemporary American novels (DeLillo, Oates, Powers, etc.) in culture of risk, drawing on secondary works to probe subject from various disciplinary angles.
Mizruchi Mon 12:30-3:00GRS EN 798 A1 The New Negro in African American Literature
Examines the literature and theories of the New Negro in African American literature between the Civil War and World War II, with special attention to the culture and politics of racial uplift.
Jarrett Wed 12:00-2:30