English
Office: 130 Sanders Classroom, Website: english.vassar.edu,
Phone: (845) 437–5650, e–mail: english@vassar.edu
Professors: Frank Bergonab, Beth Darlington, Robert
DeMaria, Donald Fosterb, Gretchen Gerzina, Eamon Grennanb
, Ann E. Imbrieab, Colton Johnson (and Dean of the College),
Paul Kane, Barbara Page (and Associate Dean of the Faculty), H. Daniel
Peckb, Paul Russell, Patricia B. Wallaceb; Associate
Professors: Mark C. Amodio, Peter Antelyes, Susan H. Brismana,
Heesok Changb, Leslie Dunn (and Dean of Freshmen), Wendy
Graham, Michael Joyceab, E. K. Weedin, Jrab, Susan
Zlotnick; Assistant Professors: Tomo Hattoriab, Jean
Kanea, Katherine Littlea, James Saegerab;
Adjunct Professors: Beverly Coyleb; Adjunct Associate
Professor: Karen Robertson; Adjunct Assistant Professors:
Dean Crawfordb, 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, and English 305306 must submit samples of their writing before
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.
Correlate Sequences in English: Beginning in Fall, 2001, the
Department will offer correlate sequences in English, each of six correlates
focused on different areas of literary investigation. Further information
is 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. The department.
Open only to freshmen. Satisfies college requirement for a Freshman
Course.
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 2001/02 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. The department.
Open to freshmen and sophomores, and to others by permission. Does
not satisfy college requirement for a Freshman Course.
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. Ms. Long.
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. Mr. Sassone.
Deadline for submission of writing samples before 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 before 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.
Not offered in 2001/02.
[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 2001/02.
[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.
Not offered in 2001/02.
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. Ms. Zlotnick.
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.
Ms. Graham.
218. Literary Perspectives on Women (1)
(Same as Women's Studies 218) 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. Ms. Zlotnick,
Ms. Robertson.
[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.
Not offered in 2001/02.
220–221. British Literature through the Eighteenth Century
(1)
Consideration of the whole period combined with intensive study of
representative works.
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).
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. Ms. Crawford.
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.
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.
237b. 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.
Not offered in 2001/02.
[239. Renaissance Drama] (1)
A study of major Renaissance works for the stage exclusive of Shakespeare's
plays.
Not offered in 2001/02.
240. Shakespeare (1)
Study of some representative comedies, histories, and tragedies.
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.
Not open to students who have taken English 240.
Not offered in 2001/02.
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. Mr. DeMaria.
[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.
Not offered in 2001/02.
[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 2001/02.
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. Ms. Darlington.
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. Mrs. Brisman.
[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.
Not offered in 2001/02.
[256. Modern British and Irish Novels] (1)
Significant twentieth–century novels from Great Britain and Ireland.
Not offered in 2001/02.
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.
Mr. Crawford.
[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.
Not offered in 2001/02.
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–level 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)
301 Black Britain in Literature and Film (1)
(Same as Africana Studies 301) Black people have lived in Britain since
the sixteenth century, yet their presence has been ignored in the past
and contested in the present. The course examines the past and current
situations of black people in Britain as described in literature and
film. Issues concern notions of "home" and citizenship, immigration,
sexuality and intermarriage, and the recent Stephen Lawrence murder
case. Readings begin with the major black writers of the eighteenth
century, such as Olaudah Equiano and Ignatius Sancho, and end with contemporary
writers such as Caryl Phillips, S.I. Martin and Zadie Smith. Films include
Mona Lisa, Sapphire, Secrets and Lies, and excerpts from British
television documentaries. Ms. Gerzina.
Open to junior and senior majors in Africana Studies or by permission
of instructor.
One 2–hour period.
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 before 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.
Not offered in 2001/02.
[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.
Not offered in 2001/02.
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? Ms. Crawford.
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. Ms. Darlington.
325a. American Genres (1)
(Same as Environmental Studies 325a) 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. Mr. Peck.
Topic for 2001/02: American Literature of the Environment.
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. Antelyes. 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 2001/02.
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.
Not offered in 2001/02.
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. Graham.
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.
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. Mr. Russell.
Topic for 2001/02: Vladimir Nabokov.
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. Ms. Little.
Topic for 2001/02: Medieval Drama: Signs, Ritual, Performance.
341. Studies in the Renaissance (1)
Intensive study of selected Renaissance texts and the questions they
raise about their context and interpretation. Mr. Foster.
The focus of the course varies from year to year.
Topic for 2001/02: Performance of Power.
[342. Women in the Renaissance] (1)
Study of writings by women, and the representation of women in literary
and polemical texts of the period.
Not offered in 2001/02.
345. Milton (1)
Study of John Milton's career as a poet and polemicist, with particular
attention to Paradise Lost. Mrs. Brisman.
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. Mr. DeMaria.
Topic for 2001/02: The Satirical Works of Jonathan Swift and Alexander
Pope.
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). Ms. Darlington.
Topic for 2001/02: Deals with the Devil.
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. Mrs. Brisman.
[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.
Not offered in 2001/02.
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. Ms. Wallace.
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.
380. Oral Theory: From the Spoken Word to the Written Text (1)
In this course we trace the development of oral theory from its early
articulations in the works of Milman Parry and Albert B. Lord to its
current reformulation in the works of John Foley, Katherine O'Brien
O'Keeffe, and others. After grounding ourselves in oral theory, we consider
how well (or poorly) the dominant theory of oral composition reflects
the processes at work in a range of ancient, medieval, and modem texts
(including hypertexts). We also consider how the intersection of orality
and literacy shapes the composition, physical production, and reception
of texts that lie at various points along the oral–literate continuum.
Mr. Amodio.
381. Screen Texts: The Flicker of Modernism (1)
Literary modernism is haunted by the imaginary. We interrogate this
image obsession by reading between page and screen, between the novel
and its cinematic adaptation(s) (Dracula, Turn of the Screw, Heart
of Darkness, Mrs. Dalloway, Lolita). Instead of evaluating
narrative fidelity, our readings analyze the apparitional flow of story
and meaning piecemeal . That is, we attempt to locate the hermeneutic
melodrama of the unspeakable and the invisible in the social and technological
machinery of textual production, in the materiality of the respective
media (the phonogram and the photogram), and in the distracted reception
of the moviegoer. We supplement this ghostly textual analysis with modernist
writings on the image (Ford, Conrad, Pound, Fenellosa) and with some
contemporary film theory (Garrett Stewart, Hollis Frampton, Gilles Deleuze,
Fredric Jameson). Mr. Chang.
382. Victorian Women Novelists (1)
Middle–class women in nineteenth–century Britain lacked economic
power and basic political rights. At the same time, however, they possessed
a great deal of cultural authority, dominating the literary marketplace
as both popular and acclaimed novelists. How do we explain this striking
disjunction? What were the material and discursive conditions that allowed
Victorian women to produce a literature of their own at a time when
they were largely excluded from the public sphere? This course tries
to answer these questions by exploring such topics as the ideology of
domesticity, Victorian book publishing and reviewing, British imperialism,
class relations, and the place of the novel in the Victorian culture.
Primary readings may include works by Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte Brontë,
George Eliot, M.E. Braddon, Mrs. Henry Wood, Margaret Oliphant,
Mary Augusta Ward, Rhoda Broughton, Charlotte Yonge, Frances Trollope,
Flora Annie Steel, and Olive Schreiner. Ms. Zlotnick
383. Race, Gender, and Fetishism (1)
This course explores the usefulness and limitations of theories of
the fetish as a means of understanding race and gender. In 1952, Frantz
Fanon began a psychoanalysis of race in Black Skin, White Masks.
Contemporary theorists of "race and psychoanalysis" aim to
become much more specific about the relevance and irrelevance of psychoanalysis
to race. We enter this debate by reading descriptions of the fetish
by Freud and Lacan. After considering sexual fetishism, we will read
contemporary theoretical work on the fetishism of skin colorracial fetishism.
Are there significant differences between racial fetishism and sexual
fetishism? Can we compare Marx's understanding of fetishism to racial
and sexual fetishism? In addition to reading Freud, Lacan, Fanon, and
contemporary theorists of "race and psychoanalysis," we read
novels that revolve around representations of skin color fetishism.
Our novelists may include Faulkner, Morrison, and Wideman. We will also
read a memoir, The Black Notebooks. Ms. Crawford.
384. Fathers and Daughters, Mothers and Sons (1)
An archetypal exploration of the dynamics of primal relationships,
from devotion to incest and murder. Readings include classical myths,
fairy tales, autobiographical and biographical texts, psychological
studies, and works by Aeschylus, Shakespeare, Hawthorne, Woolf, and
Winterson. Ms. Darlington.
385. Transgressive Aestheticism, 1860–1895 (1)
Studies works of fiction, painting, and art criticism that outraged
the Victorians, making threatened or de facto prosecution for
obscenity a virtual requirement for inclusion on the syllabus. This
seminar highlights fin de siecle redefinitions of femininity,
masculinity, and sexual deviance, inspired, in large part, by the eroticization
of taboo and the aestheticization of violence in works of high culture.
Paradoxically, the public outcry generated by controversial art works
facilitated the communication and assimilation of avant–garde aesthetic
notions by the haute monde and bourgeoisie. Aestheticism shaped public
perceptions of domestic and social life, creating the decadent (homosexual)
and New Woman as emergent social types as well as figures of parody.
While emphasizing the British cultural scene (Pre–Raphaelitism),
the seminar includes the relevant European literature and also take
account of forebears, such as Balzac and Baudelaire. We consult philosophical
works, Queer and literary theory. Likely authors: Rachilde, Sacher–Masoch,
Nietzsche, Meredith, Rossetti, Swinburne, Browning, Pater, Wilde. Ms. Graham.
386. Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) (1)
This course studies the writings and the life of one of Britain's greatest
literary figures. The son of a provincial bookseller, Johnson aspired
to join the elite, European community of poet/scholars but had to make
his living as a translator, journalist, political writer, and literary
hack. In 1755 he published his world famous Dictionary of the English
Language but remained insolvent until 1763 when he was pensioned
by King George III. Only in this last phase of his life was he widely
known and only during three hundred days of his last 20 years did he
consort with his irrepressible biographer James Boswell. Attention is
paid to the relatively unknown early career and Johnson's politics as
well as to the well–chronicled later life and works. Readings in
such works as Debates in the Senate of Magna Lilliput, London,
the Vanity of Human Wishes, Irene, the Dictionary,
the Rambler, the Idler, Rasselas, the Lives
of the Poets, and Boswell's Life of Johnson. Mr. DeMaria.