English
Office: 130 Sanders Classroom, Website:
departments.vassar.edu/~english,
Phone: (845) 437-5650, e-mail: english@vassar.edu
Professors: Frank Bergonb, Beth
Darlington, Robert DeMariaab, Donald Foster,
Gretchen Gerzina, Eamon Grennan, Ann E. Imbrie (Chair),
Colton Johnson (and Dean of the College), Paul Kane, Barbara
Page (and Associate Dean of the Faculty), H. Daniel Peck,
Paul Russell, Patricia B. Wallace; Associate
Professors: Mark C. Amodio, Peter Antelyes, Susan H.
Brismana, Heesok Chang, Leslie Dunn (and Dean of
Freshmen), Wendy Graham, Michael Joyce, E.K. Weedin, Jr.,
Susan Zlotnicka. Assistant Professors:
Tomo Hattori, Jean Kane, Katherine Little, James Saeger;
Adjunct Professor: Beverly Coyleab,
Adjunct Associate Professor: Karen
Robertsonb; Adjunct Assistant Professors:
Dean Crawford, Joanne Long, Judith Nichols, Ralph Sassone,
Lecturer: Nancy Willard.
Requirements for Concentration: 12 units,
including 11 graded units and an ungraded senior tutorial; 4
units, including the senior tutorial, elected at the
300level. At least 6 units, including the senior tutorial,
must be taken at Vassar; all requirements for distribution
must be satisfied. These requirements are in effect
beginning with the class of 2003.
Requirements for Distribution: The curriculum in
English offers opportunities to study literature in its
historical and cultural contexts; major authors, literary
movements and literary forms; literary theory and such
categories of analysis as gender, race, ethnicity, and
class. The department also offers courses in creative
writing. Working closely with their advisors, students
choose courses to meet the distribution requirements and are
encouraged to supplement those courses with electives which
match their interests, creating concentrations within the
major in such areas as literary history and theory, cultural
or performance studies, or creative writing. The particular
emphasis of individual courses will vary, but practice in
writing and oral discussion are essential parts of all work
in English. In order to ensure both breadth and depth in the
major, students must distribute their courses as
follows:
3 units in literature written before 1800 distributed
over at least two of the following areas: medieval;
renaissance and seventeenth century; restoration and
eighteenth century
1 unit in British or American literature of the
nineteenth century
1 unit in literature of the twentieth century
1 unit in American literature
Students may satisfy the American literature requirement
with either a nineteenth or a twentiethcentury course. No
course may be used to satisfy more than two requirements.
Students planning to spend all or part of their junior year
studying abroad should attempt to make significant progress
towards satisfying these requirements during the sophomore
year.
Requirements for the senior year: English 300a or
b (Senior Tutorial). Students must submit a written proposal
for English 300 in April of the junior year. The senior
tutorial represents the culmination of the student's work in
the major and, as such, should develop a topic or method for
which the student has been prepared by earlier course
work.
Recommendations: English 101 and 170 are strongly
recommended as foundational courses, and students are also
strongly encouraged to work from the 200 to the 300level in
at least one field of study. Acquaintance with a classical
language (Latin or Greek) or with one or more of the
languages especially useful for an understanding of the
history of English (Old English, German, French) is useful,
as are appropriate courses in philosophy, history, and other
literatures in translation.
Further information: Applicants for English
208209, English 210211 (which is offered every second year),
and English 305306 must submit samples of their writing
after spring break. Details about these deadlines,
departmental procedures, and current information on course
offerings may be found on the world wide web at:
http://departments.vassar.edu/~english/, and in the Alphabet
Book, available in the department office.
I. Introduction to Literary Study
101a or b. The Art of Reading and Writing (1)
Development of critical reading in various forms of
literary expression, and regular practice in different kinds
of writing. The content of each section varies; see
Freshman Handbook for descriptions. Satisfies college
requirement for a Freshman Course. The department.
Open only to freshmen.
170b. Texts and Contexts (1)
An introduction to the discipline of literary analysis.
Each section explores a central issue, such as "the idea of
a literary period," "canons and the study of literature,"
"nationalism and literary form," or "gender and genre" (see
department for 2001 descriptions). Assignments focus on the
development of skills for research and writing in English,
including the use of secondary sources and the critical
vocabulary of literary study. Does not satisfy college
requirement for a Freshman Course. The department.
Open to freshmen and sophomores, and to others by
permission.
II. Intermediate
Prerequisite: open to sophomores, juniors, and seniors
with 1 unit of 100-level work or by permission of the
associate chair. Students applying for permission to elect
200level work without the prerequisite must present samples
of their writing to the associate chair. Deadlines for
receiving papers are published in the fall and spring terms.
Freshmen with AP credit may elect 200-level work after
consultation with the department. First-year students who
have completed English 101 may elect 200-level work with
permission of the associate chair. Intermediate writing
courses are not open to freshmen.
205a or b. Composition (1)
Study and practice of various forms of prose and poetry.
Reading and writing assignments may include prose fiction,
journals, poetry, drama, and essays. The a-term course is
open by special permission to sophomores regardless of
major, in order of draw numbers, and to juniors and seniors,
in order of draw numbers, with priority given to English
majors. The b-term course is open by special permission to
sophomores, juniors, and seniors, in order of draw numbers,
with priority given to English majors.
One 2-hour period and individual conferences with the
instructor.
206a or b. Composition (1)
Open to any student who has taken English 205 or an
equivalent course. Registration is by draw number as in any
other course.
One 2-hour period and individual conferences with the
instructor.
207a or b. The Art of the Essay (1)
Study and practice of various forms of nonfiction.
Reading and writing assignments may include informal and
analytical essays, autobiographies, literary journals, and
discursive prose.
One 2-hour period and individual conferences with the
instructor.
208-209. Narrative Writing (1)
Development of the student's abilities as a writer and
reader of narrative, with particular emphasis on the short
story. Ms. Kane.
Deadline for submission of writing samples immediately
after spring break.
One 2-hour period and individual conferences with the
instructor.
210-211. Verse Writing (1)
Development of the student's abilities as a writer and
reader of poetry. Mr. Kane.
Deadline for submission of writing samples immediately
after spring break.
One 2-hour period and individual conferences with the
instructor.
213. The English Language (1)
Study of the history of English from the fifth century to
the present, with special attention to the role of
literature in effecting as well as reflecting linguistic
change. Treatment of peculiarly literary matters, such as
poetic diction, and attention to broader linguistic matters,
such as phonology, comparative philology, semantics, and the
relationship between language and experience. Mr.
Amodio.
[214. Forms of Poetry] (1)
Study of the way in which poets, in several historical
periods, have defined their relation to tradition and
reimagined the vocation of the poet, addressing such issues
as style, form, and subject matter. Readings may be drawn
from such poets as: Donne, Wordsworth, Dickinson, Yeats,
Bishop, Walcott.
Not offered in 2000/01.
215. Forms of Drama (1)
Study of selected dramatic texts that mark important
moments in the history and development of dramatic
literature in English, from the mystery cycles of the middle
ages to the present day. Particular attention will be paid
to the evolution of specific dramatic forms as influenced by
development and change in literary and cultural aesthetics,
in drama's social and historical purposes, and in theories
surrounding the nature and function of theatrical and
literary representation. Readings may be drawn from such
playwrights as the Wakefield Master, Marlowe, Jonson, Behn,
Dryden, Gay, Shaw, Beckett, O'Neill, Churchill. Mr.
Saeger.
[216. The Novel in English, 1730 to the
present] (1)
Study of the development of the novel in Britain,
Ireland, and America, through representative works. Writers
vary but may include DeFoe, Richardson, Sterne, Scott,
Austen, Dickens, George Eliot, Stowe, Hawthorne, James,
Woolf, Joyce, Faulkner, Hurston, Nabokov, and Morrison.
Not offered in 2000/01.
217. Literary Theory and Interpretation (1)
Introductory study of the nature, function, and value of
literature. Analysis of concepts and assumptions of various
critical approaches, ranging from formalism to current
post-structuralist practice.
218. Literary Perspectives on Women (1)
Consideration of women as writers, and the representation
of women in literature. The focus varies from year to year
and may include works from different historical periods. Mr.
Foster.
219. Hypertext Rhetoric and Poetics (1)
An investigation of the theory and written construction
of discursive, imaginative, popular, and scholarly
hypertexts from a variety of perspectives including ancient
and medieval rhetorics and contemporary narratology, as well
as postmodernist, feminist, and cyber theory. Readings and
discussion focus upon the emergence of polyvocal rhetorics,
multiple narratives, exploratory and constructive
hypertexts, hypertext contours, and the reconfiguration of
image/text relationships in a variety of electronic forms
including stand-alone hypertexts, the World Wide Web,
immersive environments, and virtual reality. Mr. Joyce.
220-221. British Literature through the Eighteenth
Century (1)
Consideration of the whole period combined with intensive
study of representative works. Mr. Saeger.
225. American Literature, Origins to 1865 (1)
Study of the main developments in American literature
from its origins through the Civil War, including Native
American traditions, exploration accounts, Puritan writings,
captivity and slave narratives, as well as major authors
from the eighteenth century (such as Edwards, Franklin,
Jefferson, Rowson, Brown) up to the mid-nineteenth century
(Irving, Cooper, Poe, Emerson, Hawthorne, Fuller, Stowe,
Thoreau, Douglass, Melville, Whitman, and Dickinson). Mr.
Peck.
226. American Literature, 1865-1925 (1)
Study of the major developments in American literature
and culture from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth
centuries. Literary movements such as realism, naturalism,
regionalism, and modernism will be examined, as well as
literatures of ethnicity, race, and gender. Works studied
will be drawn from such authors as Twain, Howells, James,
Jewett, Chestnutt, Chopin, Crane, London, Harte, DuBois,
Gilman, Adams, Wharton, Dreiser, Pound, Eliot, Stein,
Yezierska, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, O'Neill, Frost, H. D., and
Toomer. Mr. Antelyes.
Two 50-minute lectures and one 75-minute conference per
week.
227. African-American Literature, Origins to the
Present (1)
An examination of African-American literature from its
origins in Black folklore and slave narratives to the
present. The course seeks to identify literary
characteristics that have evolved out of the culture and
historical experience of Black people. Its goal is to better
understand how Black literature created its own aesthetic
principles in its interaction with the dominant literary
tradition. Some attention may be devoted to current debates
involving literary theory and politics. Readings include
autobiographies, nineteenth century novels and poetry, works
from the Harlem Renaissance and modernist fiction including
Black women novelists.
228. Asian/American Literature (1)
Such topics as memory, identity, liminality, community,
and cultural and familial inheritance within Asian American
literary traditions. May consider Asian American literature
in relation to other ethnic literatures. Mr. Hattori.
235. Old English (1)
Introduction to Old English language and literature. Mr.
Amodio.
236. Beowulf (1)
Intensive study of the early English epic in the original
language. Mr. Amodio.
Prerequisite: English 235 or demonstrated knowledge of
Old English, or permission of the instructor.
237. Chaucer (1)
The major poetry, including The Canterbury Tales.
Ms. Little.
238. Middle English Literature (1)
Studies in late medieval literature (1250-1500), drawing
on the works of the Gawain-poet, Langland, Chaucer,
and others. Genres studied may include lyric, romance,
drama, allegory, and vision. Ms. Little.
[239. Renaissance Drama] (1)
A study of major Renaissance works for the stage
exclusive of Shakespeare's plays.
Not offered in 2000/01.
240. Shakespeare (1)
Study of some representative comedies, histories, and
tragedies. Mr. Weedin.
Not open to students who have taken English 241-242.
241-242. Shakespeare (1)
Study of a substantial number of the plays, roughly in
chronological order, to permit a detailed consideration of
the range and variety of Shakespeare's dramatic art. Mr.
Foster, Mr. Grennan.
Not open to students who have taken English 240.
245. Pride and Prejudice: British Literature from
1640-1745 (1)
Study of various authors who were influential in defining
the literary culture and the meaning of authorship in the
period. Authors may include Aphra Behn, John Dryden, Ann
Finch, John Gay, Eliza Haywood, Mary Leapor, Katherine
Philips, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, and Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu. Ms. Gerzina.
246. Sense and Sensibility: British Literature from
1745-1798 (1)
Study of the writers who represented the culmination of
neoclassical literature in Great Britain and those who built
on, critiqued, or even defined themselves against it.
Authors may include Samuel Johnson, James Boswell, Edmund
Burke, William Beckford, William Cowper, Olaudah Equiano,
Hester Thrale Piozzi, Mary Wollstonecraft, Ann Radcliffe,
Ann Yearsley, and Hannah More.
[247. Eighteenth-Century British Novels]
(1)
Readings vary but include works by such novelists as
Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, and
Austen.
Not offered in 2000/01.
248. The Age of Romanticism, 1789-1832 (1)
Study of British literature in a time of revolution.
Authors may include such poets as Blake, Wordsworth, and
Keats; essayists such as Burke, Wollstonecraft, Hazlitt,
Lamb, and DeQuincey; and novelists such as Edgeworth,
Austen, Mary Shelley, and Scott. Mrs. Brisman.
249. Victorian Literature: Culture and Anarchy
(1)
Study of Victorian culture through the prose writers of
the period. This course explores the strategies of
nineteenth-century writers who struggled to find meaning and
order in a changing world. It focuses on such issues as
industrialization, the woman question, imperialism,
aestheticism, and decadence, paying particular attention to
the relationship between literary and social discourses.
Authors may include nonfiction prose writers such as
Carlyle, Ruskin, Arnold, Pater, and Wilde as well as fiction
writers such as Disraeli, Gaskell, Dickens, Mary Elizabeth
Braddon, George Eliot, and Arthur Conan Doyle. Ms.
Zlotnick.
250. Victorian Poets: Eminent, Decadent, and Obscure
(1)
A study of Romantic impulses and Victorian compromises as
expressed in the major poems of Tennyson, Browning, Arnold,
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Swinburne. The second half of
the course turns from economies of the aesthetic to material
conditions of the literary marketplace and to challenges met
and posed by women writers such as Felicia Hemans, Letitia
Elizabeth Landon, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Emily
Brontë, Christina Rossetti, Michael Field (Katherine
Bradley and Edith Cooper), and Alice Meynell. Some
preliminary study of romantic poetry is strongly
recommended. Mr. Kane.
255. Nineteenth-Century British Novels (1)
Readings vary but include works by such novelists as
Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, the Brontës, Trollope,
George Eliot, and Hardy. Ms. Zlotnick.
256. Modern British and Irish Novels (1)
Significant twentieth-century novels from Great Britain
and Ireland. Mr. Russell.
[257. The Novel in English after 1945]
(1)
The novel in English as it has developed in Africa,
America, Australia, Canada, the Caribbean, Great Britain,
India, Ireland and elsewhere.
Not offered in 2000/01.
260. Modern British Literature, 1901-1945 (1)
Study of representative modern works of literature in
relation to literary modernism. Consideration of cultural
crisis and political engagement, with attention to the Great
War as a subject of memoir, fiction, and poetry, and to the
new voices of the thirties and early forties. Authors may
include Hardy, Yeats, Eliot, Lawrence, Woolf, Conrad,
Graves, Vera Brittain, Rebecca West, Orwell, and Auden. Ms.
Gerzina.
261. The Literary Revival in Ireland, 1885-1922
(1)
Study of the background and growth of national expression
in Ireland between 1885 and 1922, with emphasis on Yeats, A.
E., Synge, Lady Gregory, and Sean O'Casey. Mr. Grennan.
262. Post-Colonial Literatures (1)
Study of contemporary literature written in English from
Africa, Australia, Canada, the Caribbean, the Indian
subcontinent and elsewhere. Readings in various genres by
such writers as Chinua Achebe, Margaret Atwood, Janet Frame,
Nadine Gordimer, V. S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Derek
Walcott, Patrick White. Some consideration of post-colonial
literary theory. Ms. Kane.
290. Field Work (1/2 or
1)
Prerequisite: 2 units of 200-level work in English, and
by permission of the associate chair. 1 unit of credit given
only in exceptional cases.
298a or b. Independent Study
(1/2 or 1)
Prerequisite: 2 units of 200-1evel work in English, and
by permission of the associate chair. 1 unit of credit given
only in exceptional cases.
III. Advanced
Prerequisite: Open to juniors and seniors with 2 units of
200-level work in English; or, for juniors and seniors
without this prerequisite, 2 units of work in allied
subjects and permission from the associate chair.
300a or b. Senior Tutorial (1)
305-306. Composition (1)
Advanced study and practice of various forms of prose and
poetry. Open in the senior year to students concentrating in
English. Deadline for submission of writing samples
immediately after spring break. Mr. Russell.
315. Studies in Poetry (1)
Advanced study of selected topics in the history and
theory of poetry, exploring a range of interpretive contexts
for understanding individual poems. Discussions may consider
such issues as the poetic canon, attacks on the defenses of
poetry, and the boundaries of what constitutes poetry
itself. The course includes both poetry and criticism, and
may focus upon a particular period, genre, poet, or poetic
tradition. Enrollment limited. Mr. Chang.
Topic for 2000/01: Poetic Matter/s: Leaves of
Grass.
317. Studies in Literary Theory (1)
Advanced study of problems and schools of literary
criticism and theory, principally in the twentieth century.
May include discussion of new criticism, structuralism,
deconstruction, reader-response theory, new historicism, and
Marxist, psychoanalytic, phenomenological, and feminist
analysis. Mr. Chang.
Topic of 2000/01: Ideology and Criticism: From
Althusser to Zizek.
319. Race and Its Metaphors (1)
Re-examination of canonical literature in order to
discover how race is either explicitly addressed or
implicitly enabling to the texts. Does racial difference,
whether or not overtly expressed, prove a useful literary
tool?
The focus of the course varies from year to year.
320. Traditions in the Literature of England and
America (1)
The course studies varied attempts by writers to imagine
human conduct and speech that is heroic and yet not
ridiculous in the time and landscape of the writer and the
reader. The writers read may include Homer, Vergil, Chaucer,
Spencer, Shakespeare, Milton, Radcliffe, Austen, Twain,
Faulkner, Cheever, and Angelou.
325. American Genres (1)
Intensive study of specific forms and types of American
literature, such as the American short story, women's
fiction, the Black novel, the ethnic novel, the romance and
the Gothic, autobiography, drama, and the American poetic
tradition. Each year, one or more of these genres is
investigated in depth. The course may be repeated for credit
if the subject has changed. Ms. Graham.
Topic for 2000/01: Exemplary and Dysfunctional
American Autobiography in the Twentieth Century.
326. Studies in Ethnic American Literature (1)
Exploration of literature by members of American ethnic
groups, such as Asian-American, Latina/o, Jewish-American,
and other literatures. The content may vary from year to
year, from works by writers of one particular group to a
comparison of works from two or more groups. Readings cover
a number of different genres, as well as historical,
critical and theoretical writings which place the works in
the contexts of the ethnic experience and discussions about
the nature of American ethnicity. Mr. Hattori. Alternates
with English 327 (Native American Literature).
[327. Native-American Literature] (1)
Study of Native-American storytelling in its mythic and
literary forms. Attention is given to the ways in which
recent American Indian scholars and artists have reshaped
our understanding of Native-American literature. Texts
include transcriptions and videos of oral storytelling,
autobiographies of Plenty Coups, Pretty Shield, Chona, and
Sun Chief; novels by N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Silko, James
Welch, and Louise Erdrich; and poetry by Joy Harjo, Simon
Ortiz, and Nila NorthSun. Alternates with English 326
(American Ethnic Literature).
Not offered in 2000/01.
328. Literature of the American Renaissance
(1)
Intensive study of major works by American writers of the
mid-nineteenth century. Authors may include: Cooper, Poe,
Hawthorne, Emerson, Thoreau, Douglass, Fuller, Stowe,
Delany, Wilson, Melville, Whitman, and Dickinson. In
addition to placing the works in historical and cultural
context, focusing on the role of such institutions as
slavery and such social movements as transcendentalism, the
course also examines the notion of the American Renaissance
itself. Mr. Kane.
329. American Literary Realism (1)
Exploration of the literary concepts of realism and
naturalism focusing on the theory and practice of fiction
between 1870 and 1910, the first period in American literary
history to be called modern. The course may examine past
critical debates as well as the current controversy over
realism in fiction. Attention is given to such questions as
what constitutes reality in fiction, as well as the
relationship of realism to other literary traditions.
Authors may include Henry James, Mark Twain, Stephen Crane,
Charles Chestnutt, Edith Wharton, Theodore Dreiser, and
Willa Cather. Ms. Graham.
330. American Modernism (1)
Intensive study of modern American literature and culture
in the first half of the twentieth century, with special
attention to the concept of "modernism" and its relation to
other cultural movements during this period. Authors may
include Dreiser, Wharton, Cather, Frost, Anderson, Millay,
Pound, Stein, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, O'Neill, H. D.,
Faulkner, Wright, Eliot, Williams, Moore, Stevens, Crane,
Yezierska, Toomer, Hughes, Cullen, Brown, Hurston, McKay,
Steinbeck, and Dos Passos. Ms. Wallace.
331. Postmodern American Literature (1)
Advanced study of American literature in the second half
of the twentieth century. Authors may include Welty,
Ellison, Warren, O'Connor, Olson, Momaday, Mailer, Lowell,
Bellow, Percy, Nabokov, Bishop, Rich, Roth, Pynchon,
Ashbery, Merrill, Reed, Silko, Walker, Morrison, Gass, and
Kingston. Mr. Russell.
[332. Major American Author] (1)
Study of a major American author. The seminar addresses
issues of what makes an author "major" and how a body of
work becomes canonical. The work may be read in relation to
that of significant literary predecessors and descendants as
well as in relation to the history of the writer's critical
and popular reception.
Not offered in 2000/01.
340. Studies in Medieval Literature (1)
Intensive study of selected medieval texts and the
questions they raise about their context and interpretation.
Issues addressed may include the social and political
dynamics, literary traditions, symbolic discourses, and
individual authorial voices shaping literary works in this
era. Discussion of these issues may draw on both historical
and aesthetic approaches, and both medieval and modern
theories of rhetoric, reference, and text-formation. Mr.
Amodio.
Topic for 2000/01: The Middle English Romance.
341. Studies in the Renaissance (1)
Intensive study of selected Renaissance texts and the
questions they raise about their context and interpretation.
Mr. Saeger.
The focus of the course varies from year to year.
Topic for 2000/01: Identity, Sex, Soul, Power:
Renaissance Subjectivities.
342. Women in the Renaissance (1)
Study of writings by women, and the representation of
women in literary and polemical texts of the period. Ms.
Roberston.
345. Milton (1)
Study of John Milton's career as a poet and polemicist,
with particular attention to Paradise Lost. Mr.
Weedin.
350. Studies in Eighteenth Century British Literature
(1)
Focuses on a broad literary topic such as satire, with
special attention to works of the Restoration and eighteenth
century, and a consideration of the genre of satire as a way
of understanding the world; or sensibility and the Gothic, a
study of the origins of these literary trends and of their
relationship to each other, with some attention to their
later development. Ms. Gerzina.
Topic for 2000/01: The Eighteenth Century
Woman.
351. Studies in Nineteenth Century British Literature
(1)
Study of a major author (e.g., Coleridge, George Eliot,
Oscar Wilde) or a group of authors (the Brontës, the
Pre-Raphaelite poets and painters) or a topical issue
(representations of poverty; literary decadence; domestic
angels and fallen women; transformations of myth in Romantic
and Victorian literature) or a major genre (elegy, epic,
autobiography). Mrs. Brisman.
Topic for 2000/01: Becoming George Eliot.
352, 353. Romantic Poets (1)
Intensive study of the major poetry and critical prose of
Blake, Wordsworth, and Coleridge (first semester), and
Byron, Shelley, and Keats (second semester) in the context
of Enlightenment thought, the French Revolution, and the
post-Napoleonic era. Readings may include biographies,
letters, and a few philosophical texts central to the
period. Some preliminary study of Milton is strongly
recommended. Ms. Darlington.
355. Modern Poets (1)
Intensive study of selected modern poets, focusing on the
period 1900-1945, with attention to longer poems and poetic
sequences. Consideration of the development of the poetic
career and of poetic movements. May include such poets as
Auden, Bishop, Eliot, Frost, Hopkins, Moore, Pound, Stein,
Stevens, Williams, and Yeats. Ms. Wallace.
356. Contemporary Poets (1)
Intensive study of selected contemporary poets, with
attention to questions of influence, interrelations, and
diverse poetic practices. May include such poets as Ashbery,
Bernstein, Brooks, Graham, Harjo, Heaney, Hill, Merrill,
Rich, and Walcott. Mr. Grennan.
Seminar 380-389a or b. (1)
Advanced literary study, open to juniors and seniors. The
focus of each section varies from year to year. Permission
of the instructor required. Enrollment is limited to 15. The
department.
381. Art of Anonymity (1)
"What matter who's speaking?" asked Foucault, quoting
Beckett. (Would not Hamletor Foucault's questionbe as
meaningful if originally produced by the proverbial ape at a
keyboard?) This course considers issues of authorship and
anonymity from the Book of Genesis to the Internet. How is
the anonymous text different from the attributed text in the
cultural work that it performs? What happens to an
unvalued or "bad" text when attached to the name of a
"great" author? What happens to the author? What is
an "author"? How does one's knowledge or understanding of
the author affect the interpretive enterprise? How do
anonymous and attributed texts differ with respect to
marketability, aesthetic valuation, reader response? Are the
gender, race, creed, color and ideology of the author
legible in an unattributed text? Readings include the
English Bible, pseudo-Chaucer, Jane Anger, Shakespeare,
Louisa May Alcott, Samuel Clemens, Ted Kaczynski, and Joe
Klein. Mr. Foster.
382. Currencies of Culture (1)
This course is a study of culture as currency both
in the sense of culture as capital and as the pursuit of
modern, up-to-date social practices. We explore cultural
institutions and their roles within systems of gender,
sexuality, class, religion, race, nation, and empire.
Authors may include Benedict Anderson, Matthew Arnold,
Judith Butler, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, W.E.B.
DuBois, Sigmund Freud, John Guillory, Guy Hocquenghem, Karl
Marx, Bill Readings, Adrienne Rich, Gayle Rubin, Edward
Said, Eve Sedgwick, Slavoj Zizek. Previous study of literary
theories (in particular Marxist, feminist, psychoanalytic
and post-structuralist) will be a useful preparation for
this course. Mr. Hattori.
384. The Bible as Literature (1)
This course examines what is arguably the most
influential text in European literaturethe Bible. We explore
both the extraordinary diversity of the Bible, whose genres
include historical narratives, poetry, prophecies, and
epistles, and the traditions of interpretation that the
Bible has generated, particularly allegory and typology.
Readings include the Bible, St. Augustine's On Christian
Doctrine, selections from St. Bernard's sermons on the
Song of Songs, Frank Kermode's The Genesis of
Secrecy, and Robert Alter's The Art of Biblical
Narrative. Some background in Milton and/or medieval
literature is helpful. Ms. Little.
385. Unspeakable Confessions (1)
(Same as Jewish Studies 385) This course explores a
paradox at the heart of much confessional and testimonial
writing: How can words claim to speak about events that
resist conscious knowledge? Some events of this kind are
called "traumatic" insofar as they are registered rather
than experienced. They are "missed encounters" that can only
be inferred or reconstructed from certain symptoms, since
the original "experience" (sexual abuse, trench warfare, or
the Holocaust itself) proves too powerful to retrieve or
communicate without distortion. To understand the workings
(and undoing) of metaphor in narratives of "missed events"
we acquaint ourselves with deconstruction (Jacques Derrida
and Paul de Man on Rousseau) and with trauma theory (Theodor
Adorno and Maurice Blanchot). Most of our discussions,
however, center on poetry: Wordsworth's Prelude,
Shelley's Cenci, Browning's dramatic monologues, and
the so-called confessional poetry of Lowell, Plath, and
Sexton. The second half of the course is devoted to
Holocaust testimony, in theory and practice, with readings
drawn from memoirs (Primo Levi and Charlotte Delbo) and
poetry (Nelly Sachs, Paul Celan, Haim Gouri, and Dan Pagis).
Mrs. Brisman.
386. American Landscapes: Changing Conceptions of
(1)
Natural Beauty, 1820-1920
(Same as Environmental Studies 386) We examine changing
conceptions of natural beauty, as expressed in literature
and painting, from the antebellum period to World War I.
Writers including Bryant, Cooper, Thoreau, Henry James,
Stephen Crane, and Mary Austin will be considered in
relation to landscape painters from the Hudson River School,
the Luminist Movement, American Impressionism, and American
Modernism. Some background in American literature and
American art is useful preparation for this course. Mr.
Peck.
387. City of Text (1)
The city of text is something other than the city in or
as text, but rather an isomorphic and virtual space
constructed of verbal and visual forms in various media.
There the unseen becomes the un-scene, the space where we
form transgressive and emergent discourses, communities, and
embodiments out of silence or absence. Our consideration of
fiction, poetry, image/text constructions, and hypermedia
both in English and in translation includes works by Kathy
Acker, Georgio Agamben, Djuna Barnes, Nicole Brossard,
William Burroughs, Italo Calvino, Rem Koolhaas and Bruce
Mau, Clarice Lispector, and Charles Olson, as well as
selections from Saint Augustine, James Joyce, John Winthrop,
and other visionaries of the city of text. Mr. Joyce.
399a or b. Senior Independent Work
(1/2 or 1)
Open by permission of the associate chair. 1 unit of
credit given only in exceptional cases.