Department of English
Prospectus for the Spring Term 2001

For your convenience, here is a list of the English Department faculty, their offices, phone extensions, and office hours for Fall '00. Make sure you speak with your advisor well in advance of registration (beginning November 6). You can always make an appointment if office hours are not convenient for you.

We offer several courses (EN 205D, 378, 379, 380 and 381) which may require written permission of the instructor. SINCE PROFESSORS STERN (EN 380) AND MILLHAUSER (380, 381) ARE NOT HERE THIS SEMESTER, THEY HAVE AUTHORIZED THE ASSOCIATE CHAIR OF THE DEPARTMENT, PROFESSOR BOSHOFF (PMH 309), TO SIGN YOUR REGISTRATION FORMS. You will need a signature for EN 379 or EN 380 only if you have not completed EN 281 or 282.

EN 103 WRITING SEMINAR I The Department

See Master Schedule

This course is an introduction to expository writing with weekly writing assignments emphasizing skills in developing ideas, organizing material, and creating thesis statements. Assignments provide practice in description, definition, comparison and contrast, and argumentation. Additional focus on grammar, syntax, and usage. Students and instructors meet in seminar three hours a week; students are also required to meet regularly with a Writing Center tutor. This course does not fulfill the all-College Foundation Requirement in expository writing.

EN 105 WRITING SEMINAR II The Department

See Sections Below

In this seminar, students will gain experience in writing analytical essays informed by critical reading and careful reasoning. Special attention is given to developing ideas, writing from sources, organizing material, and revising drafts. The class also will focus on grammar, style, and formal conventions of writing. Peer critique sessions and workshops give students a chance to respond to their classmates’ work. Weekly informal writing complements assignments of longer finished papers. This course fulfills the all-College Foundation Requirement in expository writing.

Each section of 105 is focused on a particular topic or theme.

EN 105 01 WRITING SEMINAR II V. Cahn

T/Th 8:10-9:30 ART OF THE ESSAY

This course is intended to help students refine their skills in writing expository, critical, and personal essays. Assignments include readings of short essays, eight papers (+rewrites), and frequent and unannounced quizzes.

EN 105 02 WRITING SEMINAR II M. Levith

T/Th 8:10-9:30 MILLENNIAL FEVERS

The millennial year turn has come and gone, and our world continues to take stock of the past and imagine the future. Have we learned anything from history? What will the twenty-first century be like? What about earlier century turns and their lessons, hopes, and promises? Can, for example, Shakespeare or Sherlock Holmes or Star Wars help us to understand the past and the future as we embrace the new millennium?

EN 105 03 WRITING SEMINAR II R. Janes

WF 8:40-10:00 DANGEROUS LIAISONS

A scandalous eighteenth-century novel (Choderlos de Laclos’s Les Liaisons dangereuses) and its many lives as a twentieth-century film. Read the book, see the movies, and write (a lot).

EN 105 04 WRITING SEMINAR II P. Boshoff

WF 8:40-10:00 OUR STORIES/OURSELVES

EN 105 07

WF 12:20-1:40

In this course we will investigate how stories contribute to our individual and group identity. Stories educate and define us; we choose them, and some are chosen for us. The course will lead us into an ongoing definition and redefinition of the term "story." The syllabus will begin with a study of etymologies of names, proceed to a consideration of stories within family, school, and peer group, move on to an examination of political, social, and gender influences on our stories, and conclude with an exploration and critique of the influences of popular culture and technology on the "story."

EN 105 05 WRITING SEMINAR II B. Black

T/Th 11:10-12:30 AMERICAN DREAMS

America is a country long mythified as a place where dreams come true, a land that boasts a signature fantasy called the American dream. What, however, are the dreams of 21^st-century America? What do these fantasies reveal about our values, and what role do these dreams play in the construction of our personal and collective identities? In the year 2000, having survived the new millennium’s arrival, we are invariably filled with the promise of new beginnings, yet seduced by the allure of nostalgia and memory. What is the stuff our dreams today are made of? To examine this question, we will explore the "places" of the American dream-world where our fantasies are scripted and squandered, fought for and fulfilled--places as diverse as shopping malls and monuments, movie theaters and museums, Wall Street and Silicon Valley.

EN 105 06 WRITING SEMINAR II M. Marx

MWF 11:15-12:10 WRITING TECHNOLOGY

We think of writing as that most human art: we write to convey thoughts, feelings, and ideas; to create worlds and visions; to make music that moves the soul.

We think of technology as cold, hard steel. Technology is high, low, or cutting edge. It extends the physical, intellectual, and creative abilities of humans.

Or do we?

This section of Writing Seminar II will explore the relationship between writing and technology, considering writing as technology, writing with technology, and writing about technology. We will read texts from authors such as Plato, Walter Ong, and Sherry Turkle to understand this complex relationship. We will write papers examining the relationship between text and technology, consider how computers and information technology can shape and benefit our writing, and analyze new opportunities technology has created for writing.

The class will meet in 302 PMH, the Lanzit Center for Computers and Writing. It is, therefore, both writing intensive and computer intensive.

EN 105 08 WRITING SEMINAR II J. Kiehl

MW 4:00-5:20 WRITING THROUGH PERCEPTION

A course of writing experiences beginning with sensory descriptions of things, places, persons, and events; and ending with thesis propositions about the identity of the writer’s self. Each student writes a short essay every week of the semester and shares this essay with others in the class as well as with the teacher. Class meetings each week study the essays written in response to the weekly writing assignment. The class aims to teach students how to examine their own writing to recognize both the occasions and tactics for revising and improving the writing.

EN 105 09 WRITING SEMINAR II S. Pearlman

MWF 12:20-1:15 WE’RE DOING WHAT?

Ever sat in a class and wondered why you were there? If so, this class might be for you. It turns academics back on itself and simply asks "why?" Why learning? Why writing? Why thinking? And for that matter, why college? What are we up to here at Skidmore College as we meet in classes (and sit in classrooms), and discuss subjects, and take notes, and read books, and write papers?

It is an interesting thing this thing we do, especially when we consider what Oscar Wilde said, that "education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught." Is that true? Is it entirely true? Somewhat true?

Take this course if you want to reconsider the way you consider, and learn a new way to learn, and understand what college is "about."

EN 105 10 WRITING SEMINAR II M. Woodworth

T/Th 3:40-5:00 WRITING ABOUT THE ARTS

This course will give students the opportunity to write about the arts through a variety of assignments, including the short review, the essay review, and the personal essay. Whether writing about music, critiquing a painting, reviewing a theater production or analyzing a film, we will attend to the qualities that contribute to well-made essays and engaging prose. We will also read and discuss regularly, as examples or prompts, the work of accomplished authors and journalists who write about the arts.

EN 105 11 WRITING SEMINAR II T. Lewis

T/Th 12:40-2:00 ARCHETYPAL JOURNEYS

The French essayist Montaigne reminds us that the journey not the arrival matters. We will read Homer’s Odyssey, a work that set the pattern for numerous journeys–conscious and unconscious–over the centuries, and connect it with later works of literature and film.

EN 105 12 WRITING SEMINAR II A. Knickerbocker

MWF 11:15-12:10 THE CRAFTY WRITER

EN 105 13

MWF 12:20-1:15

In all writing, fiction and nonfiction, authors try to change the way readers think. In this course, we'll look at the choices writers make to help them meet their goals, and we'll examine ways we, as readers, respond. We'll also explore and experiment with choices and strategies in our own writing. Readings include short stories (Joyce, Hemingway) and essays (Machiavelli, Nietzsche).

EN 105H 01 WRITING SEMINAR II: HONORS C. Golden

T/Th 2:10-3:30 THE READER WITHIN

This course looks historically at one complex and provocative question: what does it mean to be a reader? How does reading–or the inability to read–form a part of one’s identity? What books specifically have influenced the reader within each of us? As we answer these questions, we will look back to the nineteenth century, a time when many feared the consequences of women pursuing higher education. We will explore, as well, the consequences of illiteracy and literacy today. Readings will include autobiographical writings of Malcolm X and Helen Keller and Bernhard Schlink’s challenging novel The Reader. We will examine painting and illustrations featuring the figure of the reader. Students will also have an opportunity to examine their own identities as readers. This Honors section of EN 105 is designed to help students to hone their visual and verbal analytic skills, develop thoughtful arguments, and cultivate a sophisticated writing style. Regular attendance for class and peer writing groups, participation, and active engagement with the readings are essential.

EN 105H 02 WRITING SEMINAR II: HONORS K. Greenspan

MW4:00-5:20 THE BEAST WITHIN: ANIMALS AND HUMANS IN THE MIDDLE AGES

The question of what makes human beings distinct from animals has occupied thinkers from earliest antiquity to our own time. Current debates on animal rights as well as modern attempts to define human nature in biological, social, and physiological terms draw upon ancient arguments, especially upon some that developed under the influence of Christianity in the Middle Ages. In this course, we will read and write about animals and humans in medieval European and modern American society, approaching the subject from a variety of angles, literary, artistic, legal, theological, historical and scientific.

EN 105H 03 WRITING SEMINAR II: HONORS S. Pearlman

MWF 1:25-2:20 COMMUNITY OF MINDS

This course uses the author-audience relationship as a medium for understanding "reality" itself, which means that it studies the inter-relationship between the knower and the known, between the thought and the thinker, and between the thinker and the environment. Consequently, students will gain insights into the very nature of communication, interpretation, and "meaning."

In terms of its assignments, the course emphasizes the two essential practices on which all writers depend: First, writers improve most through writing and rewriting, which means that students in this course will…well, as Maxine Hairston wrote, "To write is to write is to write is to write." Second, writers rely on frequent and constructive criticism from their peers, which means that students will receive and give extensive written and oral feedback.

Readings will include books and essays from professional writers–John Trimble, William Zinsser, Kurt Vonnegut, George Orwell, etc.–offering advice on how to write well and discussing the author-audience relationship. Grades will be based on the quality of student writings and feedback to peers.

EN 201 01 EVOLVING CANON I T. Diggory

MWF 11:15-12:10.

The first of a coordinated pair of courses offering instruction in key writers, important texts, and the historical sequence of literary movements from classical, continental, British, and American literature. Evolving Canon I extends chronologically through the first half of the seventeenth century. Intended as a foundation for the English major, this course establishes a shared experience of texts and concepts. Required of all majors as preparation for 300-level courses. Evolving Canon I is a prerequisite for Evolving Canon II.

EVOLVING CANON II

EN 202 01 B. Black

T/Th 2:10-3:30

EN 202 02 A. Wheelock

MWF 9:05-10:00

EN 202 03 S. Kress

WF 12:20-1:40

The second of a coordinated pair of courses offering instruction in key writers, important texts, and the historical sequence of literary movements from classical, continental, British, and American literature. Evolving Canon II extends chronologically from the second half of the seventeenth century through the early twentieth century. Intended as a foundation for the English major, this course establishes a shared experience of texts and concepts.

Required of all majors as preparation for 300-level courses.

Prerequisite: Evolving Canon I

EN 205C ARTS REVIEW L. Simon

MWF 10:10-11:05

How does a writer convey the grace of a dancer, the telling gestures of an actor, the resonance of a cello? How does a reviewer assert and defend aesthetic judgments? How do arts reviews reflect cultural values and shape public opinion? These questions will inform our work as we practice the art of reviewing. In this course, we will read, analyze, and discuss arts reviews and essays from a variety of sources to consider questions of authority, voice, audience, and purpose. Writing assignments will give students opportunities to review and respond to arts events on and off campus. This course requires attendance at many events during evenings and on weekends.

EN 208 01 LANGUAGE AND GENDER J. Devine

T/Th 9:40-11:00

Women and men speak a different language. According to popular belief at least, the speech of women is weaker and less effective than the speech of men; in our culture there are jokes about both the quality and quantity of women’s speech. Men’s speech is often regarded as the norm, while women’s speech is regarded as emotional, vague, euphemistic, mindless, silly and high-pitched. But is it? What are the genuine differences in the ways women and men use language? And who evaluates those differences? "Language and Gender" offers students the opportunity to investigate systematically the interaction of language and sex by raising questions about society and culture in relation to language structure and use by males and females. To this end, the course addresses such questions as: what are the specific differences in the use of language by women and men? How are these differences evaluated? What causes these differences? In addition, the course will focus on the theoretical frameworks that have been developed to interpret gender differences in language use.

Students will read a variety of sources, including research reports and synthetic/theoretical texts. Assignments include a number of short papers based on questions raised in the texts and in class discussions, a longer project, and a journal.

EN 211 01 FICTION R. Boyers

T/Th 9:40-11:00

Students will read a wide variety of stories and novellas and two substantial novels. They will write two papers and take two exams. Authors discussed include Tolstoy, Mann, Kafka, Melville, James, Faulkner, Lawrence, Joyce, Bellow, Roth and Gordimer.

Recommended preparation for advanced courses in fiction.

EN 211 02 FICTION L. Simon

MW 2:30-3:50

In this course, we will ask why and how writers create fiction, and we will consider ways that stories influence and change our sense of self, our beliefs, and our perspectives. Reading closely and attentively, we’ll consider how a writer’s choices — of plot, setting, character, and point of view, for example -- shape our understanding of fiction. We will question our assumptions and expectations as readers; we will learn about strategies available to writers who invent stories. Our texts will include quirky, disturbing, surprising, and often enchanting short stories and novels by authors such as James Joyce, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, John Cheever, Flannery O’Connor, and Margaret Atwood. Critical essays will supplement our readings. Your own writing (several short papers and two essays) and your participation in class discussions will give you a chance to develop your authority as a critic and to enrich your pleasure as a reader.

Recommended preparation for advanced courses in fiction.

EN 211 03 FICTION T. Lewis

T/TH 3:40-5:00

This course will consider the elements of fiction, including plot, character, structure, setting, theme, tone, and point of view. It includes selections of shorter fiction by authors such as Flannery O'Connor, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, William Faulkner, Shirley Jackson, James Baldwin, Robert Coover, Katherine Anne Porter, and Vladimir Nabokov as well as longer works by Robert Penn Warren and Virginia Woolf. Requirements include regular attendance, three short essays (each 4 to 5 typed pages), and several shorter papers that will serve as springboards for class discussion.

Recommended preparation for advanced courses in fiction.

HF 200 HONORS WORKSHOP FOR EN 211 L. Simon

F 12:20-1:15

The Honors Forum Workshop will give students a chance to look deeply into the work of three writers. We will examine the thematic and stylistic patterns that recur in each writer’s work, read critical essays, and discover related material (biographical, historical, literary) to help us understand these writers’ interests, aims, and strategies. The purpose of this examination is not only to become familiar with the authors, but, more importantly, to develop skills of analysis that can be applied to other texts. The course will require short papers, class presentations, and enthusiasm.

EN 213 01 POETRY B. Goldensohn

T/Th 9:40-11:00

This course is an introduction to poetry in English with extensive readings from Chaucer to the present. Emphasis is on the major techniques, styles, details of prosody, and the strategies for approaching difficult poems like T.S. Eliot’s "The Waste Land" and works from distant historical periods. Two papers and many unannounced quizzes.

Recommended preparation for advanced courses in poetry.

EN 215 01 DRAMA V. Cahn

WF 8:40-10:00

The tentative reading list includes works by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Shakespeare, Molière, Büchner, Ibsen, Strindberg, O’Casey, Chekhov, Pirandello, Beckett, and Reza.

Three papers, two exams, frequent and unannounced quizzes.

EN 217 01 FILM J. Kiehl

T/Th 12:40-2:00 Lecture

MW 6:30-9:30 Film

Examination of a dozen or so movies that somewhat represent the various kinds–both themes and methods–of professional narrative films in the international history of the art. Primarily the course presents study of these films as works of art, and so the study is substantially rhetorical and semiotic. But the course peripherally includes some film history as well.

EN 227 01 INTRODUCTION TO AFRICAN-AMERICAN LITERATURE M. Stokes

MW 2:30-3:50

This course will survey African American literature from the 1700s to the present. Beginning with Phillis Wheatley and Frederick Douglass, we will examine the uneasy relationship between "race" and writing, with a particular focus on how representations of gender and sexuality participate in a literary construction of race. Though this course is a survey of African American literary self-representations, we will keep in mind how these representations respond to and interact with the "majority culture’s" efforts to define race in a different set of terms. We will focus throughout on literature as a site where this struggle over definition takes place–where African American writers have reappropriated and revised words and ideas which had been used to exclude them from both American literary history and America itself. Our text will be the Northern Anthology of African American Literature. Assignments include two short essays (3-4 pages), one longer essay (6-8 pages), weekly electronic submissions, and a final exam.

EN 281 01 INTRODUCTION TO FICTION WRITING S. Millhauser

T/Th 2:10-3:30

This course is an introduction to the writing of short stories. You will read and discuss the works of several published writers and student writers, and do a number of exercises before writing the first story. The course is taught as a workshop; that is, written work will be copied for every student and read by all of us before each class. Attendance is required. Final grades will be based on written work (exercises and stories), on class participation, and on written critical responses to other students’ work.

Prerequisite: EN 211

EN 281 01 INTRODUCTION TO FICTION WRITING S. Stern

MW 4:00-5:20

An introduction to the writing of short stories. Writing and reading assignments are geared to the beginning writer of fiction. Workshop format with the majority of class time devoted to discussions of student writing. Two stories of at least twelve pages. Attendance required. Grades based primarily on written work, also exercises and class participation.

Prerequisite: EN 211

EN 282 01 INTRODUCTION TO POETRY WRITING R. Parthasarathy

T/Th 3:40-5:00

This is a seminar course in the writing of poetry. The main focus will be to read and discuss poems written by members of the class and to try to be appreciative and critical in constructive ways about their attempts to explore their imagination in words. Class discussion is important, as is also the willingness to discuss their own and others’ work frankly and openly. The course is self-paced. Weekly poems, or revisions of poems, are copied, distributed to the class, and then discussed, with the goal of providing helpful criticism toward future versions of the work. In addition to this kind of informal but intense group discussion of a member’s own work, there will be some reading and discussion of the work of contemporary poets, and occasional discussions of technique. While the course assumes sincere interest and diligence in wanting to write, and in wanting to learn to approach the poems of others with sophistication, class atmosphere is generally relaxed, and the instructor hopes for a feeling of cordiality and community. Course work includes weekly poems, or parts of poems of members’ own composition, plus class participation, and a brief manuscript of members’ own poems representing a final project. There is no final examination.

Prerequisite: EN 213

ADVANCED COURSES IN BRITISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE

The following courses have these prerequisites: EN 201 and 202 (in sequence); and 211, or 213, or 215; or permission of the instructor.

EN 311 01 RECENT FICTION R. Boyers

T/Th 11:10-12:30

A study of the best recent fiction by the best recent writers in a wide range of styles. Throughout, we’ll ask how these various works contribute to the art of the novel and how they enhance our sense of what it feels like to live in the late years of the twentieth century. Included will be works of Nadine Gordimer and J.M. Coetzee (both of South Africa), V.S. Naipaul (of Trinidad), Mario Vargas Llosa (of Peru), Norman Manea (of Romania), Natalia Ginzburg (of Italy), Ingeborg Bachmann (of Austria), and Saul Bellow (of the USA). Requirements: two short papers or one longish one; mid-term and final.

EN 313 01 MODERNIST POETRY: 1890-1940 T. Diggory

MW 2:30-3:50

An explosion of the varieties of modernist poetry guided by two organizing themes: 1) the heightened consciousness of craft typical of modern art; 2) the artist’s struggle to portray realistically the conditions of the modern world, including world war, waning imperialism, racial tension and sexual revolution. Authors will include: W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, H.D., Wilfred Owen, Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Robert Frost, D.H. Lawrence, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Carl Sandburg, Langston Hughes and Hart Crane. Writing: five 3-5 pp. papers, of which one may be a revision.

EN 316 01 NINETEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL C. Golden

T/Th 12:40-2:00

During the nineteenth century in England–an age of rapid change in industry, science, religion, education, and gender roles–the novel became a formal genre that dominated the British literary scene. This course will examine a selection of nineteenth-century British novels. Beginning with Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, we will explore works which describe and reflect the major issues of the Victorian age, many of which are still with us today: industrialization and urbanization, childhood, religious upheaval, and, in particular, the changing roles of women. We will consider the "woman question," the Victorian sexual triangle, repression, social class, and the Victorian preoccupation with death, the pastoral, nonsexual love, and the family circle. Beyond theme, we will examine "realism" and its inherent problems, the development of narrative strategies, "multiplot" structure, techniques of characterization, the relationship between Victorian literature and art, and the role of illustration in these panoramic novels.

The readings are lengthy. Novels include Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Gaskell’s Mary Barton, Dickens’s David Copperfield, Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, Eliot’s Mill on the Floss, and Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Jane Eyre is a prerequisite for the course. Writing assignments include four briefs (short papers), a comparative midterm paper, and a longer final paper on three works. Regular attendance, participation, and active engagement with the readings are essential.

Fulfills the LATER PERIOD REQUIREMENT for English Majors.

EN 342 01 CHAUCER: AND THE CLASSICAL WORLD; K. Greenspan

M/W 6:30-7:50 PM DREAM VISIONS AND ROMANCE

The Middle Ages looked back on the classical world with mingled admiration and disgust, more than a tinge of envy, and a tigerish appetite for stories. Reshaping what they knew of Greek and Roman mythology, literature, philosophy and science in their own Christian-inflected image, medieval poets built up a heroic world that complemented, complimented, and criticized their own. Few poets could match Chaucer in his greed for classical tales, his skill in reconceiving the Middle Ages in their terms, and his powerful imagining of a fresh, bright and marvelously ahistorical Golden Age of gods and heroes. We will sample some of Chaucer’s shorter classical delights–dream visions (The House of Fame and The Parliament of Fowls), selected Canterbury Tales (the Monk’s, the Knight’s and the Squire’s Tale), short poems "Complaints to Mars," "Venus and Fortune," and the Ovidian Legend of Good Women–before sitting down to the main course, Chaucer’s great romance, Troilus and Criseyde.

We will read Chaucer’s poetry in the original Middle English. Don’t be intimidated: you will find his language easy to learn, and the effort required to master it will be repaid ten times over by the surprise and delight his works afford.

Requirements include regular attendance and participation, daily reading aloud, an oral presentation, and a substantial

research paper, to whose development we will give considerable attention throughout the semester.

Fulfills the EARLY PERIOD REQUIREMENT for English Majors.

EN 346 01 SHAKESPEARE: THE TRAGEDIES V. Cahn

T/Th 9:40-11:00

The reading list includes Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus.

Three papers and two exams, frequent and unannounced quizzes.

Recommended preparation: EN 201 and 202 (in sequence); and 211, or 213, or 215; or permission of the instructor.

Fulfills the EARLY PERIOD REQUIREMENT for English Majors (classes 2002 and later).

EN 346 02 SHAKESPEARE: THE TRAGEDIES M. Levith

T/Th 11:10-12:30

TEXT: THE NORTON SHAKESPEARE (or another modern edition or editions)

Order of reading and study:

Romeo and Juliet (1595-6)

A three-stage research paper on one of the major tragedies will be required, as well as a mid-term and a final exam.

IMPORTANT NOTE: More than four absences for any reason will result in course failure.

Fulfills the EARLY PERIOD REQUIREMENT for English Majors (classes 2002 and later).

EN 350 01 RESTORATION AND 18^TH CENTURY LITERATURE R. Janes

W/F 12:20-1:40

"Pleased Sempstresses the Lock’s famed Rape unfold." Who thinks about London seamstresses, stitching in their shops, thrilling over the fantasy world, lives of the rich and famous, of Pope’s Rape of the Lock? Pope’s contemporaries and friends took a critical look at high and low social life, and their works sometimes suggest that great social change originates in an absurd joke. Moving down from Miltonic heights (sometimes very far down indeed, to unimagined lows in the witty Lord Rochester), the Restoration and eighteenth century put in place many of our modern assumptions about the self, science, history, gender, colonialism, and happiness. It first put actresses on the stage and ranked women among its most popular playwrights and novelists. In the 1770’s, the two London theatres ran simultaneously, for the first and only time in English history, plays by a mother and son, the Sheridans.

Authors may include Behn, Rochester, Pepys, Swift, Pope, Gay, Johnson [Samuel], Gibbon, Sterne, Boswell, Burns, Cowley, Sheridans.

Assignments: response papers, midterm, final, two mid-length papers, commonplace book.

Fulfills the EARLY PERIOD REQUIREMENT for English Majors (classes 2002 and later).

EN 357 01 RISE OF MODERN AMERICAN LITERATURE A. Wheelock

MWF 11:15-12:10

This course will focus on the studies in American literature from the Civil War to World War I. The course covers major figures of the era–Twain, James, Dickinson, Crane, Wharton, Norris, Dreiser, as well as certain of the so-called regionalists–Harding Davis, Chopin, Jewett, Freeman, Chesnutt, and Garland. Included are essays on realism, naturalism, and regionalism. A documentary film, "Lewis Hines’ America," is also offered, as well as supplementary lectures on the social/intellectual environment of American realism, 1870-1920.

Students will be asked to submit two "formal" (6-7 pp) papers, two short (2-3 pp) reports, and one oral report (in a collaborative situation), and to take a midterm and a final examination.

EN 360 01 WOMEN WRITERS S. Kress

T/Th 2:10-3:30

This course will focus not only on women writers but on women as writers. We have come a long way since 1650 when a certain Thomas Parker publicly rebuked his sister: "Your printing of a book beyond the custom of your sex doth rankly smell." We will follow the adventures of women writers as they write of their craft, write in accordance with, or against, convention, and struggle to carve out the social and artistic space that makes art possible. In studying novels, short stories, poetry, autobiographies, and essays that portray or discuss women’s relation to artistic creation, we will explore various controversial topics: Is gender imprinted upon style? Do women have a tradition of their own? What is "women’s fiction"? How are all these notions complicated by the differences among women writers?

Readings may include works by Virginia Woolf, Willa Cather, Louisa May Alcott, Emily Dickinson, Doris Lessing, Maya Angelou, Adrienne Rich, Alice Walker, and others.

Written requirements include two substantial papers, an oral presentation, and a final examination.

THIS COURSE IS APPROVED FOR WOMEN’S STUDIES CREDIT.

EN 363C 01 WORLD LITERATURE IN ENGLISH–EXAMPLE OF INDIA R. Parthasarathy

T/Th 2:10-3:30

The New English Literatures from Africa, the Caribbean, and India have, since the end of British colonialism, redrawn the map of English studies. Among the issues that this course will address is that of understanding the nature of the world represented by the literature and by implication the strategies of discourse adopted by writers to nativize the English language. Writers studied include Rao, Narayan, Anand, Kamala Markandaya, Attia Hosain, Chaudhuri, Exekiel, Ramanujan, and Parthasarathy. With the politicization of literary studies, it is only appropriate to introduce a course in the English Department that offers a case study to examine the implications of Pax Britannica: the emergence of English as a global lingua franca, the condition of a society caught up between the opposing pressures of tradition and modernity, and the displacement of the oral by the written tradition. Students read the texts (fiction, autobiography, and poetry) in an inter-disciplinary and cross-cultural context. The course offers students an opportunity to consider English studies in a global context.

This course carries credit for the major as an advanced course in British and American literature, but will count for neither period requirement. This course fulfills non-Western culture requirement.

EN 363C 02 SPECIAL STUDIES IN LITERARY HISTORY S. Stern

T/Th 3:40-5:00 JEWISH AMERICAN FICTION

Studies in the fiction of the Jewish American immigrant experience, focusing on life in the Lower East Side ghetto. Issues examined will include the collision of Old with New World values, Jewish tradition versus American dream, assimilation, generational conflicts, the role of women, etc., as depicted in representative works by Cahan, Yezierska, Gold, Ornitz, Roth, Helprin, Doctorow, and others. Supplementary works describing the background and the history of Jewish immigration will also be assigned. In addition, there will be two formal papers and one classroom presentation.

This course carries credit for the major as an advanced course in British and American literature, but will count for neither period requirement.

EN 372 01 INDEPENDENT STUDY IN ENGLISH The Department

-TBA

This course will include research in English or American literature and special projects in creative writing. Independent study provides an opportunity for any student already grounded in a special area to pursue a literary or creative writing interest that falls outside the domain of courses regularly offered by the department. The student should carefully define a term's work which complements his or her background, initiate the proposal with a study sponsor, and obtain formal approval from the student's advisor and the department chair.

EN 374 01 SENIOR PROJECTS IN ENGLISH The Department

-TBA

This offering allows a senior the opportunity to develop a particular facet of English study that he or she is interested in and has already explored to some extent. It could include projects such as teaching, creative writing, journalism, and film production, as well as specialized reading and writing on literary topics. All requirements for a regular Independent Study apply.

Prerequisite: permission of the department.

OUTSTANDING WORK WILL QUALIFY ELIGIBLE STUDENTS FOR DEPARTMENTAL HONORS.

EN 378 01 RESEARCH SEMINAR: S. Goodwin

T/Th 11:10-12:30 ROMANTICISM AND ENVIRONMENTALISM IN BRITAIN

In this seminar, we will study English writers of the Romantic period with the goal of understanding the important role they played in shaping our concepts of nature and the environment. We will focus in particular on Wordsworth, because of his widespread influence both during and after his lifetime, and we will read widely in other figures to get a broad historical sense of the period.

Some of the questions we will be raising as we read these authors: How do they understand the word "Nature"? How does this thing Nature relate to human nature? Can we discover hierarchies in the ways these terms are used, and do the hierarchies shift over time? Do their ideas of nature bear any particular relations to nationalism, to gender, to social class? To what extent are they preservationist in their understanding, and why? To what extent, if any, do they anticipate or lay the groundwork for the more radical, anti-hierarchal positions taken by some who practice ecocriticism or environmental philosophy? And why was poetry such an important means for discovering and conveying a new set of ideas about nature?

The course will be run as a seminar; discussions and workshops form the basis of our work together. At the beginning of the semester, we will be working together on assigned readings; by mid-semester, the emphasis will shift to student-led discussions and workshopping of drafts. Each student will complete a major research paper on a topic of your choice by the end of the semester. Readings will include the primary sources (poetry and prose by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, Shelley, and Keats, as well as M. Shelley's Frankenstein), and selected essays by literary scholars and "eco-critics"; students will be asked to read widely in the secondary literature and to do some additional research in primary sources.

This course is cross-listed with Environmental Studies. Non-English majors are welcome in the course; EN 201 and 202 recommended but not required for non-majors. EN 213 strongly recommended for all students. All students must obtain permission of the instructor.

OUTSTANDING WORK CAN QUALIFY ELIGIBLE STUDENTS FOR DEPARTMENTAL HONORS.

THIS COURSE FULFILLS THE LATER PERIOD REQUIREMENT FOR ENGLISH MAJORS.

EN 379 01 POETRY WORKSHOP B. Goldensohn

T/Th 2:10-3:30

Practice for students seriously interested in writing poetry. Poems are to be submitted each week, copied for all the class to read and discuss. Six books will be dealt with in short papers, and the final project for the class is a manuscript of the fully revised poems written during the semester.

Prerequisite: EN 282 or permission of instructor.

EN 380 01 FICTION WORKSHOP S. Millhauser

MW 2:30-3:50

This course includes writing and discussion of stories in a workshop format; that is, all stories will be copied for the entire class and read by everyone for discussion. Students should expect to write three stories of about ten pages each. You’re welcome to write very short stories, if that feels more comfortable at first, but then you must write more of them, and in any case you will be required to write at least one ten-page story. You’re also welcome to write longer stories, but whatever the length you will be required to write a minimum of three stories. Attendance is required. Final grades will be based on the stories (the revised versions rather than the originals), on class participation, and on written critical responses to other students’ stories.

Prerequisite: EN 281 or permission of instructor.

EN 380 02 FICTION WORKSHOP S. Stern

MW 6:30-7:50

This is an intensive workshop designed for students who have already had experience in writing and critiquing short fiction. The course will focus on the ways in which a story is shaped and realized through the various stages of revision. There will be occasional readings from the works of short story masters by way of considering models and precedents, and exercises to help warm you to the task, but the bulk of class-time will consist of the discussion of the students' own stories-in progress. Class members will therefore be required to participate in the discussions and to complete two short stories of no less than twelve pages each during the term. Prerequisite: EN 281 or permission of instructor.

EN 381 01 ADVANCED PROJECT IN WRITING S. Millhauser

WF 12:20-1:40

This course involves advanced fiction writing for students serious about writing. There will be weekly meetings in a workshop format and individual meetings as needed. All work will be discussed in detail. Students will be expected to complete a definite project of about fifty pages (for instance, three short stories or a novella). I’d like to discourage you from using this course to embark on a novel, but I’m willing to consider a massive project like a novel if you’re able to make a good case for it. This is an advanced course that assumes a high degree of commitment; students who wish to enroll should have a clear idea of what it is they hope to do.

Prerequisite: two Fiction Workshops (EN 380).

DISTINGUISHED WORK WILL QUALIFY ELIGIBLE STUDENTS FOR DEPARTMENTAL HONORS.

EN 390 01 SENIOR THESIS The Department

-TBA

Intensive writing and revising of senior thesis under the close guidance of the student’s thesis committee. The thesis provides an opportunity for English majors to develop sophisticated research and writing skills, read extensively on the topic of special interest, and produce a major critical paper of forty to eighty pages. Not required of the English major, but strongly recommended as a valuable conclusion to the major and as preparation for graduate study.

Prerequisite: Either EN 377, 378, or 379, and approval in advance by the Department of the thesis proposed.

DISTINGUISHED WORK WILL QUALIFY ELIGIBLE STUDENTS FOR DEPARTMENTAL HONORS.

EN 399 01 A & B PROFESSIONAL INTERNSHIP IN ENGLISH The Department

-TBA (3 or 6 credits)

Professional experience at an advanced level for juniors and seniors with substantial academic and cocurricular experience in the major field. With faculty sponsorship and department approval, students may extend their educational experience into such areas as journalism, publishing, editing, and broadcasting. Work will be supplemented by appropriate academic assignments and jointly supervised by a representative of the employer and a faculty member of the department. Only three semester hours credit may count toward the 300-level requirement of the major. Must be taken S/U.