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Catalogue 2019-2020 [ARCHIVED CATALOG]
Course Descriptions
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English: II. Intermediate Prerequisite: open to sophomores, juniors, and seniors with one unit of 100-level work or by permission of the associate chair. Students applying for permission to elect 200-level work must present samples of their writing to the associate chair. First-year students with AP credit may elect 200-level work after consultation with the department and with the permission of the instructor. First-year students who have completed ENGL 101 may elect 200-level work with permission of the instructor. Intermediate writing courses are not open to first-year students.
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ENGL 252 - Writing the Diaspora: Verses/Versus
1 unit(s)
(Same as AFRS 252 ) Black American Culture expression is anchored in rhetorical battles and verbal jousts that place one character against another. From the sorrow songs to blues, black music has always been a primary means of cultural expression for Afirican Americans, particularly during difficult social periods and transition. Black Americans have used music and particularly rythmic verse to resist, express, and signify. Nowhere is this more evident than in hip-hop culture generally and hip-hop music specifically. This semester’s Writing the Diaspora class concerns itself with close textual analysis of hip-hop texts. Is Imani Perry right in claiming that Hip-Hop is Black American music, or diasporic music? In addition to close textual reading of lyrics, students are asked to create their own hip-hop texts that speak to particular artists/texts and/or issues and styles raised.
Prerequisite(s): One course in literature or Africana Studies.
Not offered in 2019/20.
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ENGL 255 - Nineteenth-Century British Novels Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as VICT 255 ) The nineteenth century was a preeminent age for novel writing in Great Britain, and in one semester we cannot acquaint ourselves with all the great books, or all the major novelists, of the period. Instead, the aim of this course is to learn how to read a nineteenth-century British novel by familiarizing ourselves with the conventional plots of the period (i.e., the marriage plot, the inheritance plot), its common literary idioms (such as realism, melodrama, and the Gothic) as well as some characteristic forms (the bildungsroman, the fictional autobiography) and central preoccupations (domesticity, industrialism, urbanization, imperialism, social mobility, and class relations). We also focus on careful reading and writing through short close reading assignments as well as through a few longer critical essays. Finally, this course introduces students to secondary literature, in anticipation of the work carried out in 300-level English courses. Readings vary but includes novels by Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy. Susan Zlotnick.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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ENGL 256 - Modern British and Irish Literature Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
British and Irish Literature from the first half of the 20th century. The mix and focus of genres, topics and authors varies depending on the instructor. However, the period in question covers such writers as Joseph Conrad, W. B. Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, Vera Brittain, Samuel Beckett, George Orwell, and Graham Greene. Paul Russell.
Prerequisite(s): AP credit or one unit of First-Year English.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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ENGL 257 - The Novel in English after 1945 Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
The novel in English as it has developed in Africa, America, Australia, Canada, the Caribbean, Great Britain, India, Ireland, and elsewhere. Heesok Chang.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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ENGL 262 - Postcolonial Literatures
1 unit(s)
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.
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: CLS
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ENGL 275 - Caribbean Discourse
1 unit(s)
(Same as AFRS 275 and LALS 275 ) A topics course examining the multiple forms of cultural expression and resistance that arise in response to systemic racial oppression. This course focuses on transnational and/or historical variants of racial and colonial domination. Key concepts and methodologies may include border studies, comparative racializations, decolonization, diaspora, hip hop, indigeneity, nation, and sovereignty. Contents and approaches vary from year to year.
Open to sophomores, junior, and seniors with one unit of 100-level work or by permission of the associate chair.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2019/20.
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ENGL 280 - The Futures of Africana Studies Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as AFRS 280 ) Diaspora is both a condition and a process. Diaspora carries the sense of being dispersed and transported from an origin. It also carries the possibility of sustaining ties to that point of origin and to others who share that point of origin and that experience of dispersal. The project of Africana Studies is to track and make meaning of the dispersal of peoples of African descent from the continent and the various social, political, and artistic legacies that have emerged out of this experience. In some respects, the field is also a condition and a process. It exists—and has done so for decades in the United States—it is also in process—still developing and honing its protocols and its modes of inquiry.
This fall, the Africana Studies Program is commemorating its 50th year at Vassar College by hosting a conference that accounts for the past and present work of the Field of Africana Studies. An international cast of scholars will assemble in Poughkeepsie to account for how it has chronicled and analyzed the black experience in sites across the globe. The intensive course aims to familiarize students with the work of these scholars and with how scholarship develops over a lifetime. It also supports students to arrive at their own definition of Africana Studies as they ferret out the harmonies and tensions that exist between the work of these scholars. Tyrone Simpson.
Course Format: INT
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ENGL 282 - Vassar Critical Journal Intensive Semester Offered: Spring
0.5 unit(s)
The Vassar Critical Journal intensive provides students with publishing experience at every stage of the process. Students begin as writers, submitting their own work to the journal. They then act as literary agents, reading all submissions and deciding which essays they enjoy and which will proceed to the editing level. They each offer editorial comments and advice on each accepted submission, sending the essays back to the writers for revision and doing final copy edits for publication. They also are expected to promote the journal throughout the course and be responsible for the layout and look of the issue on the whole. In addition, students perform due diligence by reading the literary texts and criticism featured in the articles under submission. (This task is divided among them.) Collectively, students compose an editors’ note to be placed at the head of the publication. By the end of the course, students have collaboratively created a journal of their own making and design. Class meets once a week, but during the initial and final stages of the process, more time is needed. The intensive is intended for the editorial board of the VCJ, and is open to a few more students who wish to join. Wendy Graham.
Prerequisite(s): Two 200-level English courses required.
First six-week course.
One 2-hour period.
Course Format: INT
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ENGL 283 - Storytelling and the Black Literary Archive Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
This intensive seeks to provide students with practical training and experience in undertaking archival research within the “manuscripts, rare books, and papers” division of centers devoted to Black Studies. The goal for each student, by the end of the semester, is to tell an “original” story about Black literature using archival documents. To do this work, students make multiple visits to the Schomburg Center for Research In Black Culture in Harlem (NYC), as well as access various digital archives available for the study of Black literary history. Students receive practical training in working with finding aids and archival documents, as well as become versed in the procedures for visiting archives and special collections. Additionally, students read contemporary Black archive theory. Writing workshops dedicated to the production of dynamic, accessible fiction/non-fiction prose round out this intensive experience. Eve Dunbar.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor.
Fridays, 12:00-4:00 pm.
Course Format: INT
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ENGL 284 - New York Stories Semester Offered: Spring
0.5 unit(s)
“New York had all the iridescence of the beginning of the world.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald. For this intensive, we read stories – novels, short fiction, journalism, memoirs – set in New York City. We visit, and in many cases, attempt to conjure, the vanished places where the stories were set. Only by haunting these physical sites and recreating them through the virtual technologies of history and literature will we get to see not only what the authors saw, but what they saw that wasn’t there, and what was there they didn’t see. Your main mentored assignment entails constructing a walking tour for your classmates based on one of the narratives. Texts might include: Teju Cole’s Open City, Chang-Rae Lee’s Native Speaker, Paula Fox’s Desperate Characters, Joseph Cassara’s The House of Impossible Beauties: A Novel, Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Patti Smith’s M Train, Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge, Toni Morrison’s Jazz, Luc Sante’s Low Life, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “My Lost City” … you name it. We devise the syllabus together. Class meets every other week, including, depending on funding, three or four daylong trips to the city. No prerequisites; open to sophomores, juniors and seniors. Heesok Chang.
Course Format: INT
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ENGL 285 - Resistance Literature: Protest, Activism, and American Literature Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as AMST 285 ) In 1926 the African-American intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois declared, “all art is propaganda and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists.” These were and continue to be fighting words for many writers who value “craft” over ideology. But does the distinction matter? Should it? Can a text be well-crafted and move us to (want to) change the world? At some level, these are rhetorical questions. American literature is rife with stories, novels, poems, and essays that have incited or speak to the necessity of our fighting for significant shifts in American culture. Thus, this course examines how US-based writers have used their art to right/write the world otherwise. Topics covered may range from abolition, the climate crisis, food justice, Civil Rights, #BlackLivesMatter, gender equity, #MeToo, and prison reform/abolition. We will work between the genres of realism and the speculative (utopic/dystopic) in the hopes of thinking about how literature has and continues to allow us to see and be the change we need. Eve Dunbar
Two 75 minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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ENGL 287 - Reviewing Shakespeare Semester Offered: Spring
0.5 unit(s)
This course has a double objective of developing the students’ understanding of a selected Shakespeare play performed in New York City as well as enhancing their analytical and writing skills by learning how to write theater reviews. At the beginning of the semester, we decide on viewing a selected production of a Shakespeare play in New York City (funding for travel and theater tickets is available from Vassar College).
This intensive exercise has the following assignments:
1/ At the beginning of the semester, students read assigned studies on the selected Shakespeare play as well as on issues and methods of analyzing stage performances. In preparation of viewing the play, the students write an analytical paper about an assigned topic of the play and its stage history.
2/ After having viewed the play, each student collects 5-10 reviews about the stage production and writes a “review of reviews” with special attention to the methodology and structure of the discussed review articles.
3/ As the culmination of the preparatory work listed above, the students write their own review of the stage production. Zoltan Markus.
Course Format: INT
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ENGL 290 - Community-Engaged Learning Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
Prerequisite(s): Two units of 200-level work in English, and permission of the associate chair. 1 unit of credit given only in exceptional cases.
Course Format: INT
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ENGL 298 - Independent Study Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
Prerequisite(s): Two units of 200-level work in English, and permission of the associate chair. 1 unit of credit given only in exceptional cases.
Course Format: OTH
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English: III. Advanced Prerequisite: Open to Juniors and Seniors with 2 units of 200-level work in English, or by permission of the instructor. |
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ENGL 300 - Senior Tutorial Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
1 unit(s)
Preparation of a long essay (40 pages) or other independently designed critical project. Each essay is directed by an individual member of the department. The Department.
Special permission.
Course Format: INT
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ENGL 302 - Adaptations
1 unit(s)
(Same as CLCS 302 and MEDS 302 ) If works of art continue each other, as Virginia Woolf suggested, then cultural history accumulates when generations of artists think and talk together across time. What happens when one of those artists switches to another language, another genre, another mode or medium? In the twenty-first century we may reframe Woolf’s conversation in terms of intertextuality—art invokes and revises other art—but the questions remain more or less unchanged: What motivates and shapes adaptations? What role does technology play? Audience? What constitutes a faithful adaptation? “Faithful” to what or whom? In this course we consider the biological model, looking briefly at Darwin’s ideas about the ways organisms change in order to survive, and then explore analogies across a range of media. We’ll begin with Virgil’s Georgics; move on to Metamorphoses, Ovid’s free adaptations of classical myths; and follow Orpheus and Eurydice through two thousand years of theater (Euripides, Anouilh, Ruhl, Zimmerman); painting and sculpture (Dürer, Rubens, Poussin, Klee, Rodin); film and television (Pasolini, Cocteau, Camus, Luhrmann); dance (Graham, Balanchine, Bausch); music (Monteverdi, Gluck, Stravinsky, Birtwistle, Glass); narratives and graphic narratives (Pynchon, Delany, Gaiman, Hoban); verse (Rilke, H.D., Auden, Ashbery, Milosz, Heaney, Atwood, Mullen, Strand); and computer games (Battle of Olympus, Shin Megami Tensei). During the second half of the semester, we investigate other adaptations and their theoretical implications, looking back from time to time at what we’ve learned from the protean story of Eurydice and Orpheus and their countless progeny.
One 3-hour period.
Not offered in 2019/20.
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ENGL 304 - Creative Writing Seminar Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
Study and practice of various forms of prose and poetry for experienced creative writers. Molly McGlennen.
Open to juniors and seniors in all departments with permission of the instructor.
Writing samples are due before preregistration. Check with the English Office for the exact date of the deadline.
One 2-hour period and individual conferences with the instructor.
Course Format: CLS
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ENGL 305 - Senior Creative Writing Seminar Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
Study and practice of various forms of prose and poetry for experienced creative writers. David Means.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor.
Open to seniors in all departments. Writing samples are due before preregistration. Check with the English Office for the exact date of the deadline.
Yearlong course 305-ENGL 306 .
One 2-hour period and individual conferences with the instructor.
Course Format: CLS
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ENGL 306 - Senior Creative Writing Seminar Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
Study and practice of various forms of prose and poetry for experienced creative writers. David Means.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor.
Open to seniors in all departments.
Writing samples are due before preregistration. Check with the English Office for the exact date of the deadline.
Yearlong course ENGL 305 -306.
One 2-hour period and individual conferences with the instructor.
Course Format: CLS
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ENGL 318 - Literary Studies in Gender and Sexuality
1 unit(s)
(Same as WMST 318 ) Advanced study of gender and sexuality in literary texts, theory and criticism. The focus will vary from year to year but will include a substantial theoretical or critical component that may draw from a range of approaches, such as feminist theory, queer theory, transgender studies, feminist psychoanalysis, disability studies and critical race theory.
Open to Juniors and Seniors with two units of 200-level work in English or by permission of the instructor.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: CLS
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ENGL 325 - Studies in Genre
1 unit(s)
An In-depth study of specific forms or types of literature, such as satire, humor, gothic fiction, realism, slave narratives, science fiction, crime, romance, adventure, short story, epic, autobiography, hypertext, and screenplay. Each year, one or more of these genres is investigated in depth. The course may cross national borders and historical periods or adhere to boundaries of time and place.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: CLS
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ENGL 326 - Challenging Ethnicity Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
An exploration of literary and artistic engagements with ethnicity. Contents and approaches vary from year to year.
Topic for 2019/20b: Racial Melodrama. (Same as AFRS 326 and AMST 326 ) Often dismissed as escapist, predictable, lowbrow or exploitative, melodrama has also been recuperated by several contemporary critics as a key site for the rupture and transformation of mainstream values. Film scholar Linda Williams argues that melodrama constitutes “a major force of moral reasoning in American mass culture,” shaping the nation’s racial imaginary. The conventions of melodrama originate from popular theater, but its success has relied largely on its remarkable adaptability across various media, including print, motion pictures, radio, and television. This course investigates the lasting impact of such fictions as Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Fannie Hurst’s Imitation of Life, the romanticized legend of John Smith’s encounter with Pocahontas, and John Luther Long’s Madame Butterfly. What precisely is melodrama? If not a genre, is it (as critics diversely argue) a mode, symbolic structure, or a sensibility? What do we make of the international success of melodramatic forms and texts such as the telenovela and Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain? How do we understand melodrama’s special resonance historically among disfranchised classes? How and to what ends do the pleasures of suffering authenticate particular collective identities (women, the working-class, queers, blacks, and group formations yet to be named)? What relationships between identity, affect and consumption does melodrama reveal? Hiram Perez.
One 2-hour period.
Course Format: CLS
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ENGL 328 - Literature of the American Renaissance Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
In-depth 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. Peter Antelyes.
Course Format: CLS
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ENGL 329 - American Literary Realism Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as AMST 329 ) 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.
Topic for 2019/20a: American Literary Realism and Naturalism: A Reading of Major American Novels Written Primarily Between 1870 and 1910. After the Civil War, the U.S. experienced increasing rates of democracy and literacy, the rapid growth of industrialism and urbanization, an expanding population due to immigration, and a rise in middle-class affluence, which provided a fertile literary environment for writers interested in explaining these rapid shifts in culture. A grand explanatory narrative directs the plot and action of these novels. Authorial intentions give way to a set of laws or principles derived from the dominant ideologies that supported America’s maturation into a super-power: Social Darwinism, the Gospel of Efficiency (new Protestant work ethic), or Imperialism (new Manifest Destiny). Surprisingly, the myth of American ‘progress’ is tested and found wanting in almost every book on the syllabus. In seeking scientific objectivity, writers plied a representational strategy focused on ‘hard facts’ and minute detail, which as often as not found the protagonist at odds with his or her environment. Though post-war, the terrain we cover is embattled: race riots, strikes, downward economic mobility, criminality, and homelessness. Shut out of the canon by reason of changing fashions in literary tastes, the less familiar authors on the syllabus belong to the emerging protest novel. Authors include: Henry James, Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, Charles Chesnutt, Frank Norris, William Dean Howells, Edith Wharton, Thorstein Veblen, Theodore Dreiser, Richard Wright, and Ralph Ellison. Wendy Graham.
One 2-hour period.
Course Format: CLS
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ENGL 330 - American Modernism
1 unit(s)
In-depth 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, and Dos Passos.
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: CLS
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ENGL 331 - Postmodern Literature
1 unit(s)
Advanced study of American literature from the second half of the twentieth century to the present date. 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.
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: CLS
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ENGL 340 - Studies in Medieval Literature Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
Advanced 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. Talia Vestri.
One 2-hour period.
Course Format: CLS
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ENGL 341 - Studies in the Renaissance Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as MRST 341 ) In-depth study of selected Renaissance texts and the questions they raise about their context and interpretation.
Topic 2019/20b: Sex and the City in 1600: Gender, Marriage, Family, and Sexuality in Early Modern London. This course explores everyday life in the rapidly expanding early modern metropolis of London at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries. We pay special attention to religious, social, legal as well as informal control mechanisms that influenced issues of gender, marriage, and sexuality in various layers of London society. We anchor our investigations in a handful of plays by Beaumont, Chapman, Dekker, Ford, Jonson, Marston, Middleton, Rowley, and Shakespeare, but also explore other literary and non-literary texts. By situating our early modern texts in the cultural and historical contexts in which they were written and performed, we will be able to appreciate the historical differences as well as the occasional continuities between early 17th century and early 21st century interpretations and representations regarding such basic cultural and social issues as citizenship, class and gender difference, political agency, race and ethnicity, urbanization, and subject-formation. Zoltán Márkus.
One 2-hour period.
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ENGL 342 - Studies in Shakespeare Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as DRAM 342 ) Advanced study of Shakespeare’s work and its cultural significance in various contexts from his time to today.
Topic for 2019/20a: After Shakespeare: The Poetics and Politics of Adaptation. While Shakespeare has long served as an icon of England and Englishness, he is also the most popular playwright in the non-Anglophone world, and his cultural currency circulates across nations, languages, and media. This course explores the theory and practice of adapting Shakespeare for worldwide audiences. We address issues of authenticity and authority, representations of difference, postcolonial appropriation, and cross-cultural translation. We also reflect critically on our own positions as contemporary readers, viewers, and consumers of Shakespeare. Each seminar member completes an original research or creative project. Leslie Dunn.
One 2-hour period.
Course Format: CLS
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ENGL 345 - Milton Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
Study of John Milton’s career as a poet and polemicist, with particular attention to Paradise Lost. Robert DeMaria.
Course Format: CLS
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ENGL 350 - Studies in Eighteenth-century British Literature Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as MEDS 350 ) Focuses on a broad literary topic, with special attention to works of the Restoration and eighteenth century. Robert DeMaria.
Topic for 2019/20b: Origins of the Periodical Essay. Although periodical publications got started in Europe shortly after the invention of printing, there was in England such a vast increase in their numbers and importance during the British Civil Wars (1642-60) that it’s reasonable to think of that period as giving rise to periodical writing in its modern form. In the later seventeenth century periodical publications became important vehicles for a new kind of writing aptly called the periodical essay. Among the most important eighteenth-century practitioners of this form were John Dunton, Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, Eliza Haywood, Samuel Johnson, and Oliver Goldsmith. This course will examine the periodical writing of these authors in the context of the newspapers and journals for which they wrote: The Athenian Oracle; The Review; The Tatler; The Spectator; The Female Spectator; The Gentleman’s Magazine; The Rambler; and The Bee, among other. There will be several meetings of the class in Special Collections, and students will be expected to write on an early journal or periodical writer, making use of the original publications.
One 2-hour period.
Course Format: CLS
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ENGL 351 - Studies in Nineteenth-Century British Literature Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as VICT 351 ) Study of a major author (e.g., Coleridge, George Eliot, Oscar Wilde) or a group of authors (the Brontes, 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).
Topic for 2019/20b: The Brontë Sisters. The aim of this course is two-fold: a detailed study of the major works of Anne, Emily and Charlotte Brontë as well as an examination of the criticism that has been written about the sisters’ novels and poems. We acquaint ourselves with the different critical lenses through which the Brontës have been viewed (e.g., biographical, feminist, historicist, postcolonial) in order to explore the ways in which the meaning of the Brontë sisters and their writing has changed over time. Primary texts include Jane Eyre, Shirley, Villette, Wuthering Heights, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall the Brontës’ poetry and Elizabeth Gaskell’s Life of Charlotte Brontë. Susan Zlotnick.
One 3-hour period.
Course Format: CLS
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ENGL 352 - Studies in Romanticism Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as WMST 352 In-depth study of Romantic-era texts with the option of pursuing a select group of writers under the rubric of a specific genre, methodological approach, topic or theme. This course aims to deepen students’ expertise in one or more of the topics covered in English 248.
Topic for 2019/20b: What’s Queer About Romanticism? Why is it that the most influential and ambitious work in queer studies has rarely emerged from the field of Romanticism? As Michael O’Rourke and David Collings rightly note, “We have had [scholarly studies called] Queering the Middle Ages, Queering the Renaissance, Victorian Sexual Dissidence, and Queering the Moderns—but no Queering the Romantics.” Accounting for this critical gap, Richard Sha argues that the Romantic period has been mischaracterized as a “seemingly asexual zone between eighteenth-century edenic ‘liberated’ sexuality…and the repressive sexology of the Victorians.” In reality, this relatively brief cultural moment in England produced a diverse range of queer figures, both historical and literary: from Anne Lister, whose diary records hundreds of pages in code about her sexual relationships with women, to the Ladies of Llangollen, who openly cohabited with the support of English high society, to the myth of the modern vampire, a deeply sexualized and often queer figure. Given the richness of the terrain, then, why are queer studies lagging behind in Romantic circles?
In this advanced seminar, we address this underdeveloped area of scholarly research through our reading of primary and secondary texts, our class discussion, and our critical research projects. Reading theory and criticism from Romanticism studies and adjacent scholarly fields, we ask ourselves—what is queer about this literary-historical moment that has not yet been accounted for? Our goal is to redefine the boundaries of queer Romanticism—beyond a simplistic search for queer characters in the primary texts—to include broader theoretical categories such as queer affect and queer temporality, among others. We focus primarily on the poetry of the period, but also attend to some prose genres, including the diary and the essay. Katie Gemmill.
One 2-hour period.
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ENGL 355 - Twenty- and Twenty-First Century Poetry Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
In-depth study of selected Anglophone poets. The course may focus on particular eras, schools, topics, and theories of prosody, with consideration of identity groups or locations. Jean Kane.
One 2-hour period.
Course Format: CLS
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ENGL 357 - Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
In-depth study of literatures of the twentieth century, with primary focus on British and postcolonial (Irish, Indian, Pakistani, South African, Caribbean, Australian, Canadian, etc.) texts. Selections may focus on an author or group of authors, a genre (e.g., modern verse epic, drama, satiric novel, travelogue), or a topic (e.g., the economics of modernism, black Atlantic, Englishes and Englishness, themes of exile and migration). Heesok Chang.
Topic for 2019/20a: Lost In Translation: Some Other Modern Novels. translate (verb): early 14c., “to remove from one place to another,” also “to turn from one language to another,” from Old French translater and directly from Latin translatus ”carried over,” serving as past participle of transferre ”to bring over, carry over” (see transfer), from trans ”across, beyond” (see trans-) + lātus “borne, carried.”
One 2-hour period.
Course Format: CLS
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ENGL 362 - Text and Image
1 unit(s)
(Same as AFRS 362 )
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: CLS
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ENGL 370 - Transnational Literature
1 unit(s)
This course focuses on literary works and cultural networks that cross the borders of the nation-state. Such border-crossings raise questions concerning vexed phenomena such as globalization, exile, diaspora, and migration-forced and voluntary. Collectively, these phenomena deeply influence the development of transnational cultural identities and practices. Specific topics studied in the course vary from year to year and may include global cities and cosmopolitanisms; the black Atlantic; border theory; the discourses of travel and tourism; global economy and trade; or international terrorism and war.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: CLS
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ENGL 378 - Black Paris
1 unit(s)
(Same as AFRS 378 and FFS 378 ) This multidisciplinary course examines black cultural productions in Paris from the first Conference of Negro-African writers and artists in 1956 to the present. While considered a haven by African American artists, Paris, the metropolitan center of the French empire, was a more complex location for African and Afro-Caribbean intellectuals and artists. Yet, the city provided a key space for the development and negotiation of a black diasporic consciousness. This course examines the tensions born from expatriation and exile, and the ways they complicate understandings of racial, national and transnational identities. Using literature, film, music, and new media, we explore topics ranging from modernism, jazz, Négritude, Pan-Africanism, and the Présence Africaine group, to assess the meanings of blackness and race in contemporary Paris. Works by James Baldwin, Aime Césaire, Chester Himes, Claude McKay, the Nardal sisters, Richard Wright. Ousmane Sembène, Mongo Beti, among others, are studied.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2019/20.
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ENGL 380 - English Seminar Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as AFRS 380 ) Topic for 2019/20b: Then Whose Negro Are You?: On the Art and Politics of James Baldwin. When interviewers sought out some sense of James Baldwin’s ambition, the artist often responded, “I want to be an honest man and a good writer.” The forces constellated around Baldwin’s career made this hardly a simple declaration. The issue of becoming a writer was an arduous task in itself, so much so that Baldwin felt he had to leave the United States, particularly his adored Harlem, to do so. Getting in the way of his artistry was the nation’s troubled negotiation with its own soul: the US was trying to figure out what it wanted to be—an apartheid state? A nuclear dreadnought? A den of prudish homophobes? An imperial power? A beloved community? A city on the Hill? This course looks at all things Baldwin, or at least as many things as we can over a four-month period. It certainly indulges his greatest hits-his essays, Notes of A Native Son; his novel, Giovanni’s Room; his play, Blues for Mr. Charlie’s–and several other writings both published and unpublished. It does so with an eye toward understanding Baldwin’s circulation as a celebrated author and a public intellectual both in the mid-twentieth century and the present day. Tyrone Simpson.
One 3-hour period.
Course Format: CLS
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ENGL 382 - English Seminar Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
Topic for 2019/20a: James Joyce’s Ulysses. A close reading of Ulysses. Paul Russell.
One 2-hour period.
Course Format: CLS
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ENGL 383 - English Seminar Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
Topic for 2019/20b: Sibling Theory. What role do siblings play in literature (and in our lives)? Are these characters secondary, incidental, merely complements to a protagonist—the organizing central consciousness—of a novel? Do they appear in poetry only as companions or sidekicks? Or, perhaps, do sibling relations offer a different set of tools for cultivating ways of knowing and being in the world that extend beyond, and even counter, the idea of a single, autonomous self?
In this course, we will investigate the kinship of brothers and sisters in British and American fiction and poetry from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. To inform our literary explorations, we will look at recent feminist and queer critiques of scholarly thinking about the family, kinship, and marriage, critiques that have at times turned to siblinghood as an alternate locus for the development of identity, culture, ethics, and politics. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, we will explore research in fields such as gender studies, philosophy, psychoanalysis, history, and sociology to help us inquire how siblinghood acts as a form of networked and collective existence, and how these networks confront previous paradigms of the family that are structured as reproductive, patriarchal, and linear.
Fictional texts for the course may include, but are not limited to, Antigone, Sense and Sensibility, Wuthering Heights, The Mill on the Floss, Franny and Zooey, Atonement, and The Royal Tenenbaums, which we will read in tandem with feminist and queer scholarship (e.g., Gayle Rubin, Judith Butler, Eve Sedgwick, Leonore Davidoff, Juliet Mitchell) that challenges prior twentieth-century theories on kinship (Freud, Lacan, Levi-Strauss). Talia Vestri
Course Format: CLS
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ENGL 384 - English Seminar
1 unit(s)
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: CLS
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ENGL 385 - English Seminar Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
One 3-hour period.
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: CLS
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ENGL 386 - English Seminar:Vassar Poetry Review
0.5 unit(s)
This Intensive offers students writing poetry the opportunity to revise and prepare their work for publication in a journal devoted to verse. It would be an enhancement of the current ENGL 211 Advanced Creative Writing: Verse , for those in the class wishing to learn about the principles and processes of publication, including design, editing and printing. However, it it is not limited to students in ENGL 211, but open to any qualified students, whether majors or non-majors. Mr. Kane serves as Editor but students are involved in all phases of the project. Paul Kane.
Weekly group meetings. Additional individual meetings as needed.
Course Format: INT
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ENGL 387 - Antipodes Editorial Assistant
1 unit(s)
The student intern assists Professor Kane in the selection process for poems submitted to the journal Antipodes, which is published twice-yearly by the American Association of Australasian Literary Studies. Duties include precise record keeping; evaluative reports on each submission; editing poems for publication; drafting and editing contributor notes for each issue; corresponding with contributors about contracts and payments. The student is trained in all of these areas to a professional standard and the work overseen and approved by me. Paul Kane.
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: INT
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ENGL 388 - True Crime and the American Novel Semester Offered: Fall
0.5 unit(s)
(Same as AMST 388 ) This intensive would be offered to eight students of ENGL 329 American Literary Realism , where the relationship between journalism and literature is a constant feature. Most of the writers on the syllabus were either journalists, before they became novelists, or wrote for or edited magazines throughout their lives. Literary naturalism, a sub-genre of realism, eschews literary devices and stylistic preciosity, instead describing characters and events in the direct, unembellished prose of the newspaper account. From Charles Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition (inspired by the Wilmington, NC race riot of 1898) to Frank Norris’s Mcteague (inspired by the murder of a charwoman) to Theodore Dreiser’s The Financier (inspired by Charles Yerkes financial chicanery) to Richard Wright’s Native Son (inspired by newspaper accounts of a murder) the American novel has relied on ‘real events’ to generate ideas for character and plots. Students may conduct research into the events inspiring these and other novels for the course and present their findings to the group (signed up for the intensive). In addition, students may choose a crime from any period or region (be it Lizzy Borden’s alleged murder of her parents, Jack the Ripper’s murders, serial killers, political assassinations, the murder of Emmett Till) and locate and compare multiple representations of the event (whether in novels, plays, movies, comics, newspapers, trials, forensic science). In most instances, representations highlight historical, class, and racial tensions (or obliviousness) over the subject and even who has a right to speak for the victim. (The recent controversy over the Whitney museum’s exhibition of Dana Schutz’s depiction of the open casket funeral of Emmett Till is a good example. Schutz is a white artist and her detractors objected to her appropriation of an iconic black figure and potentially profiting from her work.) Students are not limited to 19th century crimes or media for their final projects. The recent Kavanaugh hearings raise questions about the extrapolation of the principle that one is innocent until proven guilty beyond the courtroom. What should be the status of hearsay or personal testimony in determining ‘the truth’ of allegations? I see this as fertile ground for projects with a women’s studies slant. Wendy Graham.
Prerequisite(s): For juniors and seniors and with permission of the instructor.
Second six-week course.
Course Format: INT
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ENGL 399 - Senior Independent Work Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
Open by permission of the Chair.
One unit of credit given only in exceptional cases.
Course Format: OTH
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Environmental Studies: I. Introductory |
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ENST 100 - Earth Resource Challenges
1 unit(s)
(Same as ESCI 100 , ESSC 100 , and GEOG 100 ) This course combines the insights of the natural and social sciences to address a topic of societal concern. Geographers bring spatial analysis of human environmental change, while Earth scientists contribute their knowledge of the diverse natural processes shaping the Earth’s surface. Together, these distinctive yet complementary fields contribute to comprehensive understandings of the physical limitations and potentials, uses and misuses of the Earth’s natural resources. Each year the topic of the course changes to focus on selected resource problems facing societies and environments around the world. When this course is team-taught by faculty from Earth Science and Geography, it serves as an introduction to both disciplines.
Open only to first-year students; satisfies college requirement for a First-Year Writing Seminar.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: CLS
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ENST 106 - Philosophical & Contemporary Issues Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
Topic for 2019/20b: Biopower in the Age of the Anthropocene. (Same as PHIL 106 and STS 106 ) This course examines the notion of biopower in the historical, geological, and geopolitical period identified as the anthropocene. Quite simply: what is the relation between the human animal and their environment? What does one choose to include in their environment? Michel Foucault identified biopower as the power to foster life and disallow it to the point of death. The anthropocene, as contemporary buzzword and historical designation, is recognized as the period in which humans have been seen as playing a significant part in affecting the ecological and climatic systems. The anthropocene is the proposed name for the period of anthropogenic climate change. How is life fostered or disallowed during this period? What sorts of life are promoted and what are the ways in which one should approach life? As a way of dealing with this spatially, historically, and conceptually expansive topic, the course focuses on specific case studies. Particular policies addressed include: the New Green Deal, Health Care and Resource Allocation in the United States, the Management or Mismanagement of Refugees of Climate Catastrophes, and the Distribution of Health Care Globally. Osman Nemli.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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ENST 107 - Global Change and Sustainability Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
This class offers an interdisciplinary introduction to the climate, ecosystem and sustainability principles needed to understand human impact on the natural environment. We discuss the issue of global change prediction and the scientific basis for global change assessments and policy measures. Key topics are the physical climate system and its variability, the carbon cycle and related ecosystem processes, land use issues, nutrient cycles, and the impact of global change on society. Common threads in all of these topics include the use of observations and models, the consideration of multiple scales (temporal and spatial), the interaction of human behaviors and choices with natural systems, and the linkages among aspects of the global change issue. Stuart Belli.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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ENST 124 - Essentials of Environmental Science Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
1 unit(s)
A lecture/laboratory course in which basic topics in environmental biology, geology, and chemistry are covered with examples from current environmental issues used to illustrate the application and interdisciplinary nature of these fields. This course treats the following topics: energy sources and waste products, atmospheric patterns and climate, biogeochemical cycles, properties of soils and water, and ecological processes. Using these topics as a platform, this course examines the impact humanity has on the environment and discusses strategies to diminish those effects. The laboratory component includes field trips, field investigations, and laboratory exercises. Kirsten Menking.
Two 75-minute periods; one 4-hour laboratory.
Course Format: CLS
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ENST 125 - Environmentalisms in Perspective Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
1 unit(s)
This multidisciplinary course examines significant approaches to the theory and practice of environmentalisms past and present. Students explore possible connections between the ethical, aesthetic, social, economic, historical, and scientific concerns that comprise environmental studies. The methods of inquiry we follow and the environmentalisms we consider vary among sections. Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert
Required of students concentrating in the program.
Course Format: CLS
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ENST 177 - A Prehistoric Perspective on Climate Change Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
This course situates current climate change in the context of that which shaped the human species, from evolutionary and social perspectives. The course opens by reviewing how the Earth’s climate has changed over the past century, and the ecological consequences of this. We then review the history of climate change since our species’ origin, and how such instances have impacted the environments in which we evolved. We transition from this evolutionary perspective to a social one, asking, ‘at what point did human intelligence and technology mitigate the evolutionary consequences of climate change? At what points was climate change more than civilizations could handle?’ The latter half of the class examines archaeological and historical evidence of how human societies have handled environmental hardships resulting from climate change. We end by examining the parallels between past and present and asking what environmental, ecological and biological consequences might await our still short-lived species in the present climatic conundrum. Zachary Cofran.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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Environmental Studies: II. Intermediate |
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ENST 201 - Class Without Walls in Nature Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
Considering the profound changes facing our globe, studying the environment is not only crucial but also extremely daunting. While it is more critical than ever that we understand environmental risks, studying issues that are seemingly out of our control is not sufficient for effectively confronting the global crises we face. This class aims to enhance experiential learning through the review of literature, evaluation of policy issues, and the interpretive assessment of complex social, political and economic conditions. This intensive learning/teaching experience integrates elements of agency and activism to academic reflection and critical analysis. We explore topics in Environmental Studies chosen to reflect the array of community organizations where students enrolled in the course are doing community-engaged learning placements. Pinar Batur.
Prerequisite(s): SOCI 151 or ENST 125 or ENST 124 .
One 2-hour period and individual conferences with the instructor.
Course Format: INT
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ENST 202 - Public Policy and Human Environments Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as ESCI 202 , ESSC 202 , GEOG 202 and URBS 202 ) This course combines the insights of the natural and social sciences to address a selected topic of global concern. Geographers bring spatial analysis of societal and political-ecological changes, while Earth Scientists contribute their knowledge of the diverse natural processes shaping the earth’s surface. Together, these distinctive but complementary fields contribute to comprehensive understandings of the physical limitations and potential, uses and misuses of the Earth’s natural resources.
Topic for 2019/20a: Water and Cities. The explosive urbanization of the modern world places new and unprecedented demands on the earth’s hydrological systems. A variety of environmental issues—such as water provision and drought, depletion of aquifers, pollution of watersheds, flooding, regional climate change, socioeconomic disparities in water infrastructures (environmental injustice), privatization of supply and other policy questions—arise out of the insatiable demands for water of contemporary metropolitan regions. This course combines geographical and geological perspectives on the increasingly urgent problems of urban water. Case studies focus on of water problems in the New York metropolitan region, cities and suburbs of the arid U.S. Southwest, Beijing, Mexico City, São Paulo, Capetown, and other rapidly growing mega-cities of the developing world. Brian Godfrey and Kirsten Menking.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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ENST 238 - Environmental China: Nature, Culture, and Development
1 unit(s)
(Same as ASIA 238 , GEOG 238 and INTL 238 ) China is commonly seen in the West as a sad example, even the culprit, of global environmental ills. Besides surpassing the United States to be the world’s largest source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, China also experiences widespread pollution of its air, soil and water–arguably among the worst in the world. Yet, few will dispute the fact that China holds the key for the future global environment as it emerges as the largest economy on earth. This course examines China’s environments as created by and mediated through historical, cultural, political, economic and social forces both internal and external to the country. Moving away from prevailing caricatures of a “toxic” China, the course studies Chinese humanistic traditions, which offer rich and deep lessons on how the environment has shaped human activities and vice versa. We examine China’s long-lasting intellectual traditions on human/environmental interactions; diversity of environmental practices rooted in its ecological diversity; environmental tensions resulting from rapid regional development and globalization in the contemporary era; and most recently, the social activism and innovation of green technology in China. Yu Zhou.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2019/20.
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ENST 254 - Environmental Science in the Field Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as BIOL 254 and ESCI 254 ) The environment consists of complex and often elegant interactions between various constituents so that an interdisciplinary approach is required to understand how human interactions may affect it. In this course, we study a variety of aspects of a specific environment by considering how biological, chemical, geological, and human factors interact. We observe these interactions first hand during a weeklong field trip. Some of the questions we may consider are: How does a coral polyp create an environment that not only suits its particular species, but also helps regulate the global climate? How has human development and associated water demands in the desert Southwest changed the landscape, fire ecology, and even estuary and fisheries’ health as far away as the Gulf of California? How have a variety of species (humans included) managed to survive on an island with the harsh environment of the exposed mid-ocean ridge of Iceland? The course is offered every other year, and topics vary with expertise of the faculty teaching the course. Kirsten Menking and Mark Schlessman.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of the Instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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ENST 258 - Environment and Culture in the Caribbean
1 unit(s)
(Same as AFRS 258 ) The ecology of the islands of the Caribbean has undergone profound change since the arrival of Europeans to the region in 1492. The course traces the history of the relationship between ecology and culture from pre-Columbian civilizations to the economies of tourism. Among the specific topics of discussion are: Arawak and Carib notions of nature and conservation of natural resources; the impact of deforestation and changes in climate; the plantation economy as an ecological revolution; the political implications of the tensions between the economy of the plot and that of the plantation; the development of environmental conservation and its impact on notions of nationhood; the ecological impact of resort tourism; the development of eco-tourism. These topics are examined through a variety of materials: historical documents, essays, art, literature, music, and film.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: CLS
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ENST 260 - Issues in Environmental Studies Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
The purpose of this course is to examine in depth an issue, problem, or set of issues and problems in environmental studies, to explore the various ways in which environmental issues are embedded in multiple contexts and may be understood from multiple perspectives. The course topic changes from year to year.
Topic for 2019/20b: Grasslands: Human History and Ecology of the American Plains. For thousands of years, humans have sought ways to survive and prosper in the semi-arid plains–an area popularly known in the 19th century as the “Great American Desert,” a place devoid of life. This class explores the roots of such misconceptions and their often catastrophic legacies, as well as other modes of life on the grasslands, including those of native peoples. Environmental and cultural histories of the Plains provide a framework for examining such complex issues as tallgrass prairie conservation and restoration; water management; climate change; and use of land for energy production and carbon farming. Visions of different futures for this critical place in the American heartland are placed in the context of major ecological and cultural transitions over the past 10,000 years. The course includes a one-week trip to the Plains over spring break, with visits to bison re-introduction sites, a restored Pawnee earth lodge, a perennial agriculture research facility, and a viewing site for hundreds of thousands of migrating sandhill cranes along the Platte River. Rebecca Edwards and Margaret Ronsheim.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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ENST 261 - “The Nuclear Cage”: Environmental Theory and Nuclear Power Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as SOCI 261 and INTL 261 ) The central aim of this course is to explore debates about the interaction between beings, including humans, animals, plants and the earth within the context of advanced capitalism by concentrating on the production, distribution, consumption, and disposal of nuclear power. The first question concerning the class is how does Environmental Theory approach nuclear power and its impact on the environment. The second question deals with how this construction interacts with other forms of debate regarding nuclear power, especially concentrating on the relation between science, market and the state in dealing with nature, and how citizens formulate and articulate their understanding of nuclear power through social movements. Pinar Batur.
Course Format: CLS
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ENST 266 - Racism, Waste and Resistance
1 unit(s)
(Same as SOCI 266 ) The 21st century will be defined in the dramatic consequences of the current events and movements regarding our waste: global climate change, pollution, resource depletion, contamination and extinction. One of the most striking and consistent observations is that racism plays a major role in placing waste in close proximity to those racially distinct, economically exploited and politically oppressed. This class examines the destructive global dynamics of environmental racism and resistance, as struggles against it.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2019/20.
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ENST 270 - Topics in Environmental Studies Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
The purpose of this course is to take up topics relevant to environmental studies, and examine them through the perspectives of the humanities and the natural or social sciences.
Topic for 2019/20b: It’s Only Natural: Contemplation in the American Landscape. This course examines the ways in which Americans have approached the natural world as both a source of revelation and an object of contemplation. Drawing on a wide range of literary, environmental and religious texts, we explore the dynamic relations between concepts of the natural, the human, and the divine in American and Native American experience. We also consider the American landscape tradition in painting and photography, as well as certain forms of folk music. We take field trips to local sites, including parks, farms, museums and monasteries, and host class visits from educators and artists. Techniques of contemplation play a role in the course. Paul Kane.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor.
One 2-hour period plus one 4-hour lab.
Course Format: CLS
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ENST 271 - Literature and the American Environment
1 unit(s)
This course considers the representations of nature and the environment in American literature, from the nineteenth century to the present, with special emphasis on contemporary experience and perception. Topics will include: the importance of sense of place (and displacement); multiple cultural discourses about nature; the rise of modern ecocriticism; indigenous understandings of the natural world; and the role of literature in environmental movements. Readings will be drawn from such authors as H. D. Thoreau, Mary Austin, Jean Toomer, Aldo Leopold, Gary Snyder, Barry Lopez, Leslie Silko, John Edgar Wideman, Annie Dillard, Mary Oliver, and Terry Tempest Williams, as well as from critical and scholarly sources.
(Not available to students who have taken ENST 270 .)
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: CLS
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ENST 284 - Africa: Development and Environment Semester Offered: Spring
0.5 unit(s)
(Same as AFRS 284 and GEOG 284 ) Africa often appears in the news as a hungry continent, plagued by civil conflict and environmental crisis, and left behind by increasing global integration. Such framings obscure the continent’s great ecological, political, cultural, and religious diversity and its rich histories of powerful empires and trans-continental economic and botanical exchange. Employing a political ecology approach, the course explores the origins and making of Africa’s highly unequal relationship with the Global North, one shaped by the transatlantic slave trade, colonization, and neoliberalism, among other factors. In doing so, the course investigates, from various theoretical perspectives, a wide range of themes, including agriculture; hunger and poverty; gender and women’s roles in development; the scramble for mineral resources and land; urbanization; and South-South investment. As part of its goal to develop a broad understanding of Africa’s important place in the world, the course also examines African-led innovations and initiatives for environmental and climate justice, resource conservation, and sustainability. Ashley Fent.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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ENST 288 - Ethical Problems of Climate Change Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as ECON 288 and PHIL 288 ) The individuals and nations who have benefited most from carbon emissions are not those who will bear the most significant harms of climate change. Most of the earliest harms will be borne by some of the most vulnerable populations in the world, especially in the Global South. And the most severe harms will be borne by future generations. These forms of “climate injustice” raise a host of practical and theoretical problems, some arising within philosophy, others arising within economics. We explore ways in which discussions of these questions in each of these disciplines may be enriched by importing ideas and methods from the other. Among the “philosophical” questions we ask: What sorts of moral obligations, if any, do individuals in wealthy economies have to constrain their own emissions? Can those obligations be met by offsetting? Are there collective obligations? How can we justly allocate obligations across nations and economic agents? How should we think about harms to, or obligations to, people who do not now exist, because they have not yet been born? Can we have moral obligations to things other than human beings (other species, or ecosystems)? Among the “economic” questions we ask: in calculating the costs and benefits of various policy options, how can we aggregate welfare cross-temporally (including across people who do not exist yet)? Should costs and benefits that accrue in the future be discounted? If so, at what rate? Apart from the harms suffered by persons, should harms suffered by other species, or by ecosystems, count as “costs” in a cost-benefit analysis? Does the fact that carbon is an externality, which generates market inefficiencies, mean that proper pricing of carbon would allow a “sacrifice-free” solution to climate change? Finally, is cost-benefit analysis the right framework in which to think about policy decisions in the face of uncertainty where there are existential risks? Paul Ruud and Jeff Seidman.
Prerequisite(s): One 100-level course in Philosophy or one 100-level course in Economics.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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ENST 290 - Community-Engaged Learning Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
Individual or group field projects or internships. Prior approval of advisor and instructor supervising the work are required. May be taken during the academic year or during the summer. Participating faculty.
Course Format: INT
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ENST 291 - Field Experiences in the Hudson Valley Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
0.5 unit(s)
(Same as CHEM 291 ) Topic for 2019/20a: Students learn the basics of water, soil, and sediment sampling through field excursions. Students then develop research projects in consultation with the instructor. These projects are conducted individually or in pairs, utilizing these sampling methods. Topics for these research projects fall under the instructor’s research interests, primarily on metal contamination in the environment, and are conducted in the Hudson Valley and surrounding areas. Alison Keimowitz.
Prerequisite(s): CHEM 109 or 125 . ENST 107 , 124 or ESCI 151 .
Required for Environmental Studies majors. ENST 276 can be taken instead if 291 is not being offered.
One 4-hour period.
First 6-weeks of fall semester.
Course Format: INT
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ENST 298 - Independent Research Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
Individual or group project or study. Prior approval of advisor and instructor supervising the work are required. May be taken during the academic year or during the summer. Participating faculty.
Course Format: OTH
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Environmental Studies: III. Advanced |
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ENST 300 - Senior Project/Thesis Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
1 unit(s)
Recognizing the diverse interests and course programs of students in Environmental Studies, the program entertains many models for a senior project/thesis. Depending on their disciplinary concentration and interests, students may conduct laboratory or field studies, literary and historical analyses, or policy studies. Senior project/thesis proposals must be approved by the steering committee. The Department.
Prerequisite(s): Senior Environmental Studies Major
Course Format: INT
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ENST 303 - Thesis Semester Offered: Fall
0.5 unit(s)
Recognizing the diverse interests and course programs of students in Environmental Studies, the program entertains many models for a senior project/thesis. Depending on their disciplinary concentration and interests, students may conduct laboratory or field studies, literary and historical analyses, or policy studies. Senior project/thesis proposals must be approved by the steering committee. The Department.
Prerequisite(s): Senior Environmental Studies Major
Yearlong course 303-ENST 304 .
Course Format: INT
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ENST 304 - Thesis Semester Offered: Spring
0.5 unit(s)
Recognizing the diverse interests and course programs of students in Environmental Studies, the program entertains many models for a senior project/thesis. Depending on their disciplinary concentration and interests, students may conduct laboratory or field studies, literary and historical analyses, or policy studies. Senior project/thesis proposals must be approved by the steering committee. The Department.
Prerequisite(s): Senior Environmental Studies Major
Yearlong course ENST 303 -304.
Course Format: INT
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ENST 306 - Building Thoreau’s Cabin Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
An experiential investigation into carpentry, construction and environmental thinking. Paul Kane.
Course Format: INT
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ENST 321 - Advanced Topics in Environmental Geology
1 unit(s)
(Same as ESCI 321 ) This course investigates fundamental geologic controls on environmental issues such as resource distribution and use, ground and surface water pollution, and atmospheric pollution. A specific topic is selected each year, and work in the class includes a survey of relevant literature, field visits to local sites, and development of a group project.
Prerequisite(s): ESCI 151 or ENST 124 .
One 4-hour period.
Not offered in 2019/20.
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ENST 331 - Topics in Archaeological Theory and Method
1 unit(s)
The theoretical underpinnings of anthropological archaeology and the use of theory in studying particular bodies of data. The focus ranges from examination of published data covering topics such as architecture and society, the origin of complex society, the relationship between technology and ecology to more laboratory-oriented examination of such topics as archaeometry, archaeozoology, or lithic technology.
May be repeated for credit if the topic has changed.
Prerequisite(s): Previous coursework in Anthropology or Environmental Studies, or permission of the instructor.
May be repeated for credit if the topic has changed.
One 2-hour period plus one 4-hour lab.
Not offered in 2019/20.
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ENST 333 - The Art of the Garden in Early Modern Italy
1 unit(s)
(Same as ART 333 ) Changing attitudes toward the relationship between art and nature were played out in the design of Italian villas and gardens, c. 1450- c. 1650. These large-scale estates generated by renowned architects and patrons established models for the Western landscape tradition. Their designs for buildings, hardscaping, plantings, waterworks, and decorations blurred distinctions among art, architecture and landscape, as well as between indoors and outdoors; city and country; and nature and artifice. We examine sites from Tuscany, Rome, the Veneto, and Naples, considering the inheritance of ancient Roman, medieval, and Islamic landscape traditions, and the later reception of Italian planning in France and England. We also explore the impact of new flora and fauna brought to Europe in the age of overseas exploration, trade, and conquest, as well as changing patterns of collecting and display. Readings explore villa ideology, the relation between city and country life, the garden as utopia, and human dominion over nature. During excursions to local landscapes, we experience the agency of the ambulatory spectator in constructing place and narrative, and consider the reception of the Italian garden in America. Yvonne Elet.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor.
One 3-hour period.
Not offered in 2019/20.
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ENST 335 - Paleoclimatology: Earth’s History of Climate Change Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as ESCI 335 ) In recent decades, record high temperatures and extreme weather events have led scientists and policy makers to grapple with the fact that human activities are affecting the climate system. At the same time, scientists have come to realize that climate is capable of dramatic shifts in the absence of human intervention. The science of paleoclimatology seeks to understand the extent and causes of natural climatic variability in order to establish the baseline on top of which anthropogenic changes are occurring. In this course we examine the structure and properties of the oceans and atmosphere and how the general circulation of these systems redistributes heat throughout the globe; study how cycles in Earth’s orbital parameters, plate tectonics, changes in ocean circulation, and the evolution of plants have affected climate; and explore the different lines of evidence used to reconstruct climate history. Weekly laboratory projects introduce students to paleoclimatic methods and to records of climatic change from the Paleozoic through the Little Ice Age. Kirsten Menking.
Prerequisite(s): 200-level work in Earth Science or permission of the instructor.
One 4-hour classroom/laboratory/field period.
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ENST 352 - Conservation Biology
1 unit(s)
(Same as BIOL 352 ) Conservation Biology uses a multidisciplinary approach to study how to best maintain the earth’s biodiversity and functioning ecosystems. We examine human impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem function and discuss how to develop practical approaches for mitigating those impacts. We start the semester by assessing the current human footprint on global resources, asking questions about what we are trying to preserve, why we are trying to preserve it, and how we can accomplish our goals. We critically examine the assumptions made by conservation biologists throughout, using case studies from around the world to explore a range of perspectives. Discussion topics include conservation in an agricultural context, the efficacy of marine protected areas, the impact of climate change on individual species and preserve design, restoration ecology, the consequences of small population sizes, conservation genetics, the impacts of habitat fragmentation and invasive species, and urban ecology.
Prerequisite(s): Two units of 200-level biology or one unit of 200-level biology and one of the following: ESCI 221 , ESCI 361 , GEOG 224 , GEOG 260 , or GEOG 356 .
Recommended: BIOL 241 , BIOL 208 , or BIOL 226 , GEOG 260 , GEOG 224 , or GEOG 356 ; or permission of the instructor.
Not offered in 2019/20.
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ENST 356 - Environment and Land-Use Planning Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as GEOG 356 and URBS 356 ) This seminar focuses on land-use issues such as open-space planning, urban design, transportation planning, and the social and environmental effects of planning and land use policies. The focus of the course this year is impacts of planning policies (such as transportation, zoning, or growth boundaries) on environmental quality, including open space preservation, farmland conservation, and environmental services. We begin with global and regional examples and then apply ideas in the context of Dutchess County’s trajectory of land use change and planning policies.
Topic 2019/20a: Re-Envisioning The North Side: From Automobility to Place. This seminar focuses on planning issues such as sustainable land use planning, urban design, transportation planning, and social/economic effects of urban planning policies. Using the City of Poughkeepsie as a laboratory, this seminar will focus on how transportation and land use planning decisions affect the social, economic, cultural, and environmental resources of neighborhoods and communities through an in-depth look at the north side parking lots in downtown Poughkeepsie and the “East-West Arterial”. We specifically examine the socio-economic, demographic, mobility and access issues, as well as environmental, and planning concerns surrounding the history of the downtown and the City’s transportation decision making, (including the provision of large parking lots and construction of the “Arterial” in the early 1970s in tandem with creation of a pedestrian mall on Main Street). Though fieldwork, readings and exercises, we will explore potential opportunities for re-envisioning the north side parking lots and the roadways that serve the study area (especially the “Arterial”). Susan Blickstein.
Prerequisite(s): One 200-level course in Geography, Urban Studies or Environmental Studies.
One 3-hour period.
Course Format: CLS
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ENST 361 - Modeling the Earth
1 unit(s)
(Same as ESCI 361 ) Computer models are powerful tools in the Earth and Environmental Sciences for generating and testing hypotheses about how the Earth system functions and for allowing simulation of processes in places inaccessible to humans (e.g. Earth’s deep interior), too slow to permit observation (e.g., erosion driven uplift of mountains ranges), or too large to facilitate construction of physical models (e.g., Earth’s climate system). Taking readings from the scientific literature, we create and then perform experiments with simple computer models, using the STELLA iconographic box-modeling software package. Topics include the global phosphorus cycle, Earth’s radiative balance with the sun and resulting temperature, the flow of ice in glaciers, and the role of life in moderating Earth’s climate. Toward the end of the semester, students apply the skills they have acquired to a modeling project of their own devising.
Prerequisite(s): One 200-level course in the natural sciences.
Satisfies the college requirement for quantitative reasoning.
One 4-hour classroom/laboratory period.
Not offered in 2019/20.
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ENST 368 - Toxic Futures: From Social Theory to Environmental Theory Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as INTL 368 and SOCI 368 ) The central aim of this class is to examine the foundations of the discourse on society and nature in social theory and environmental theory to explore two questions. The first question is how does social theory approach the construction of the future, and the second question is how has this construction informed the present debates on the impact of industrialization, urbanization, state-building and collective movements on the environment? In this context, the class focuses on how social theory informs different articulations of Environmental Thought and its political and epistemological fragmentation and the limits of praxis, as well as its contemporary construction of alternative futures. Pinar Batur.
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ENST 370 - Feminist Perspectives on Environmentalism
1 unit(s)
(Same as ESSC 370 and WMST 370 ) In this seminar we explore some basic concepts and approaches within feminist environmental analysis paying particular attention to feminist theory and its relevance to environmental issues. We examine a range of feminist research and analysis in ‘environmental studies’ that is connected by the recognition that gender subordination and environmental destruction are related phenomena. That is, they are the linked outcomes of forms of interactions with nature that are shaped by hierarchy and dominance, and they have global relevance. The course helps students discover the expansive contributions of feminist analysis and action to environmental research and advocacy; it provides the chance for students to apply the contributions of a feminist perspective to their own specific environmental interests.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor; WMST 130 recommended.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2019/20.
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ENST 375 - Aquatic Chemistry
0.5 or 1 unit(s)
(Same as CHEM 375 ) This course is a qualitative and quantitative treatment of chemical processes in atmospheric, aqueous, and soil environments. Geochemical cycles of major and trace elements through these reservoirs are explored including the magnitude of anthropogenic perturbations. General topics include isotope geochemistry, equilibrium thermodynamics, solubility and precipitation, acid-base equilibria, oxidation-reduction chemistry, and remediation of organic and inorganic pollution. Alison Keimowitz.
Prerequisite(s): CHEM 245 ; PHYS 113 , PHYS 114 ; MATH 121 , MATH 126 and MATH 127 or the equivalent; or permission of the instructor.
Not offered in 2019/20.
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ENST 381 - Topics in Ecosystem Ecology - Ecosystem Structure and Function Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as BIOL 381 ) Topic for 2019/20b: Structure and Function of Ecosystem. Ecosystems are complex systems, where biotic and abiotic factors interact to create the world we see around us. Understanding the nature of ecosystems is fundamental to understanding how disturbance and change in a dynamic world will influence ecosystem stability. This is especially critical as we enter the Anthropocene; a time in our planets history where one species, modern humans, dominate. Major changes brought about by increased human activity include changing climate regimes, invasive species spread and biodiversity loss. This course explores how ecosystems, both aquatic and terrestrial, are assembled (structured) and how different ecosystems process energy and matter (function). We use our understanding of structure and function to explore how different ecosystems respond to changes in the environment (including climate change, invasive species introductions, loss of biodiversity and pollution). A class project explores an ecosystem scale problem, and students develop a plan for effectively communicating the scientific understanding of the problem to multiple stakeholders. Lynn Christenson.
Prerequisite(s): One course in Ecology, e.g., BIOL 241 or BIOL 356 .
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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ENST 383 - Dissent at the End of the Anthropocene
1 unit(s)
(Same as INTL 383 and SOCI 383 ) Thomas Jefferson famously argued, “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.” The hallmarks of globalization—financial oligarchies, resource depletion, environmental pollution, global climate change, profound inequality—have given us the most convincing evidence to date that the ideals of progress, optimism, and humanism that have grew out of the Enlightenment are not fulfilling their promise. Perhaps these concepts became corrupted, or perhaps this is because these thought-systems have not paid adequate attention to the ethical dimensions of our economic, geopolitical, and social development, and counter cultural movements. On the other hand, movements of dissent have grown up around these ideals since at least the eighteenth century and some argue that if the Anthropocene, “the age of humankind,” is to continue, we will have to fundamentally change our thinking. This course addresses the legacy of progressive “counter-Enlightenment” movements to develop an understanding of their discourse.
One 3-hour period.
Not offered in 2019/20.
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ENST 385 - Technology, Ecology, and Society
1 unit(s)
(Same as STS 385 ) Examines the interactions between human beings and their environment as mediated by technology, focusing on the period from the earliest evidence of toolmaking approximately up to the Industrial Revolution. Student research projects often bring the course up to the present. Includes experimentation with ancient technologies and field trips to local markets and craft workshops.
Prerequisite(s): Previous coursework in Anthropology, Environmental Studies, or Science, Technology, and Society, or permission of the instructor.
One 2-hour period; plus 4 hour lab.
Not offered in 2019/20.
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ENST 386 - Global Environmental Activism: Political Ecology, Liberation and Citizenship Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as GEOG 386 ) Environments are political and politicized in varied ways. Some environmental movements adopt militant tactics or use environmental grievances as part of broader political resistance, while in other cases, environmentalism serves as a powerful way of practicing citizenship or demanding rights and recognition from the state. In this seminar, we apply a political ecology framework to interrogate the complex relationships between local and global socio-ecologies, activists in the Global North and South, international environmental NGOs, and nation-states. Focusing on case studies from around the world—such as the Zapatistas, the Brazilian MST (Landless Workers Movement), Earth Liberation Front, the Chipko Movement, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, and the Green Belt Movement in Kenya—we seek to understand how, when, and why environmentalism intersects with political movements and demands. In examining these cases, we also consider ideas of “nature” and distinctive approaches to the environment. Overall, we interrogate processes through which radical ideas about ecological, social, and political life may be co-opted, formalized, or undermined. Ashley Fent.
One 3-hour period.
Course Format: CLS
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ENST 399 - Senior Independent Research Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
Individual or group project or study. Prior approval of advisor and instructor supervising the work are required. May be taken during the academic year or during the summer. Participating faculty.
Course Format: OTH
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Film: I. Introductory |
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FILM 175 - Introduction to Screen Arts Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
An introductory exploration of central features of film and television aesthetics, including formal and stylistic elements, such as color, lighting, editing, sound, narrative structure, etc. Students will be exposed to a wide spectrum of types of films and television shows, including: silent, abstract, non-narrative, foreign, and documentaries, and the artistic choices manifested by each. We look at issues pertaining to production, distribution, and exhibition. Subjects are treated topically rather than historically, and emphasis is placed on mastering key vocabulary and concepts. Erica Stein.
Open only to first-year students.
Two 75-minute periods plus outside screenings.
Course Format: CLS
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Film: II. Intermediate |
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FILM 209 - World Cinema Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
1 unit(s)
An international history of film with a greater emphasis on world cinemas from the 1930s to the contemporary period. The course focuses on major directors, industrial organization, and the contributions of various national movements. In addition to the historical survey, this course introduces students to the major issues of classical and contemporary film theory. The Department.
Two 75-minute periods plus outside screenings.
Course Format: CLS
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FILM 212 - Genre: The Musical
1 unit(s)
Examines the development of American film musicals from The Jazz Singer to the present day. The course looks at major stars such as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Gene Kelly, and Judy Garland, and the contributions of directors such as Vincente Minnelli and Bob Fosse. Students examine the interrelationships between Broadway and Hollywood, the influence of the rise and fall of the Production Code, the shaping hand of different studios, the tensions between narrative and spectacle, sincerity and camp. Reading assignments expose students to a wide range of literature about film, from production histories to feminist theory. Sarah Kozloff.
Prerequisite(s): FILM 175 or FILM 210 and permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods plus outside screenings.
Not offered in 2019/20.
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