This course focuses on a variety of interpretive strategies and encourages students to develop a critical vocabulary in order to analyze short stories, novels, drama, and poetry in a sophisticated way. Readings will be varied, and students will learn about different critical approaches to literature and other texts. These critical approaches include psychological criticism, biographical criticism, and feminist criticism.

English 2010 - 01: Introduction to British Literary History, I
Suzanne Marrs
MWF 10 a.m. -11:15 a.m. AC 334

A history of British literature from the beginnings to 1800, with an emphasis on the meaning and development of literary history.

English 2400 - 01: Introduction to Creative Writing
Ms. Aleda Shirley
TTH 1:00 - 2:40 p.m. SHH 267

Students will study the forms, techniques, and processes of fiction, poetry, or script writing by reading models and by practicing their own writing. Students will discuss their own writing in the context of readings from traditional and contemporary works. Counts towards the concentration in creative writing.

English 2440 - 01: The Great Depression
Robert MacElvaine
TTh 1:00-2:40
Cross listed - History 3170

English 3130 -01: Sex, Disguise and Death in Late-Victorian Literature and Culture
Laura Franey
TTh 1 –2:15 in AC 222

In the 1880s and 1890s many new sciences and social sciences were born that studied parts of human behavior not formerly examined in a scientific way ― things like psychology, sexual behavior, and religious or spiritual rituals.  Much literature of the time period reflected these interests and provided readers with fascinating journeys into issues not previously talked about or written about in “polite society.”  In this course we will study some of this literature, focusing especially on texts (from all genres) that concern sex, various forms of disguise or impersonation, and death.  We will read novels like Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure, and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, but we will also read at least one play, various poems, and selections from the groundbreaking autobiography of John Addington Symonds, a homosexual man who felt forced by social constraints to live as a heterosexual (not at all an unusual type of “disguise”in the late Victorian period). 

Counts as Literary Period or Cultural Studies

English 3180 - 01: Modern Drama: O’Neill and Williams
Austin Wilson
TTh 10-11:15, AC 334

According to Tennessee Williams, Eugene O'Neill, the only American playwright to win the Nobel Prize for literature, "gave birth to the American theater and died for it."
This course will focus on the plays of both O'Neill and Williams and their importance as playwrights and on the broader dramatic and cultural contexts in which these two authors wrote and in which their plays were initially performed and the continued relevance of their work and careers for theater-goers, students of literature, and creative writers. We will consider some of O'Neill's early shorter plays (Beyond the Horizon, Anna Christie, The Hairy Ape, and The Emperor Jones), a few plays from his middle period (Desire Under the Elms and Mourning Becomes Electra), and his great late plays (Long Day's Journey Into Night, Moon for the Misbegotten, The Iceman Cometh, and Hughie). Plays of Williams we will read and/or see videos of will include This Property Is Condemned, The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Summer and Smoke, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Rose Tattoo, Orpheus Descending, Suddenly Last Summer, Sweet Bird of Youth, The Night of the Iguana, and The Red Devil Battery Sign. There will be brief (1-2 pages) response papers (focusing on the reading and viewing of the plays and on topics for discussion), two longer (7-10 pages) critical papers, a midterm and a final. Class participation will be a significant part of your grade and will include reading aloud from the plays and "acting" brief scenes from the plays with some of your classmates, other group work, regular and cogent contributions to class and group discussion, and attendance and preparation.

Focus: Genre, Authorial Studies, or Literary History

Available for Concentration in Creative Writing Credit and for Film Studies Credit

English 3200 - 01: New Orleans in the American Literary Imagination
MW 2:45-4:00
Peggy Whitman Prenshaw

     The aim of this course is to study the image and the cultural role of New Orleans in the national imagination.  We will read mostly works of fiction, but we will also consider some plays, non-fiction, and films.

     Texts will include some late nineteenth century fiction—George Washington Cable’s The Grandissimes or Old Creole Days, Kate Chopin’s The Awakening-- but otherwise we'll concentrate on 20th century works--Tennessee Williams's Streetcar Named Desire or perhaps Suddenly Last Summer, Walker Percy's The Moviegoer, John Kennedy Toole's Confederacy of Dunces, Elizabeth Spencer's The Snare, perhaps Christine Wiltz's The Glass House, or other selections.  We will see the recent documentary in the American Experience series--the 2-hour history of New Orleans and clips, at least, from such as the late 1930s Jezebel, a really interesting portrait of "the South" and of New Orleans as the southernmost South of the South!  Students doing a film concentration will have the opportunity to shape a major assignment to include the films they are most interested in. 

     Requirements: Class attendance; two 1500-word papers; a major quiz; some brief class presentations, and a final paper devoted to the topic of the course, drawing upon all readings, screenings, and discussions.

Counts as Cultural Studies

Students doing a film concentration will have the opportunity to shape a major assignment to include the films they are most interested in. 

English 3310 - 01: Shakespeare and the Play of Genre
Eric Griffin
TTh 2:45 p.m. SH 267

Focus: Genre or Author
This course also satisfies the pre-1800 requirement.

While seeking to provide an introduction to the dramatic works of William Shakespeare, this course will satisfy either an 'Author' or 'Genre' requirement for your English Major. As we work through some of his best-known plays together-including representative comedies, histories, tragedies, and romances-we will analyze key elements of Shakespeare's aesthetic practice, observing the way he experiments with generic forms, plays with language, employs and interrogates a number of theatrical conventions.

Since the number of recent film productions confirms not only that Shakespearean theater is alive and well, but that each generation constructs Shakespeare in its own image, we will want to think about how we might interpret his plays for performance today.  But because Will Shakespeare is the most important dramatist of the historical moment we know as the English Renaissance, it will also be essential that we ask why his plays might have been received so enthusiastically during his own time. Perhaps most importantly, because all effective literary, historical, and dramaturgical interpretation depends upon attention to detail, we will also focus upon the development of "close-reading" skills.

English 3350 -01: Faulkner and Morrison
Anne MacMaster
MWF 9:00-9:50, CC4

In this course, we’ll read deeply in two of the most significant novelists of the twentieth century.  We’ll read four works of each author in chronological order, tracing the development of themes and techniques over the course of each career.  At the same time, in order to compare Faulkner and Morrison, we’ll alternate between their novels, reading four pairs of works, each united by a common idea: 

1.                  the quest for Eurydice and Persephone: 

                                                               i.      Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (1929)

                                                             ii.      Morrison, The Bluest Eye (1970)

2.                  The modern/ postmodern Odyssey of Identity:

                                                               i.      Faulkner, As I Lay Dying (1930)

                                                             ii.      Morrison, Sula (1973)

3.                  children of the dark house:

                                                               i.      Faulkner, Light in August (1932)

                                                             ii.      Morrison, Song of Solomon (1977)

4.                  the sins of the fathers: novelist as historiographer:

                                                               i.      Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! (1936)

 Counts as Authorial Studies, Literary History,  or Genre

English 3900 - 01: Senior Workshop / Creative Writing
Ms. Aleda Shirley
TTh 1:00- 2:40  SHH 267

An advanced creative writing course for students completing the concentration in creative writing. Students will decide in consultation with the instructor the number and length of the pieces written and revised for the course. Students will read and discuss each other's work in the workshop (held concurrently with English 2400) and meet frequently in conference with the instructor. Each student will be expected to give a public reading of his or her work and to submit his or her work for publication. Counts towards the concentration in creative writing.

English 4900 - 01: Senior Colloquium in the Advanced Interpretation of Literary History
Anne MacMaster
MW 1:00 - 2:40 p.m. CC  21

This course, required for English majors in their senior year, is designed to help students consolidate and deepen their studies of literature. We will reflect on the history of literary genres and forms in English, literary theory and cultural studies. In addition, students will reflect on their work as English majors and as students in the liberal arts and will complete the Core 10 Reflective essay.

English Department Courses, Spring 2007

English 2020 Introduction to British Literary History II

Dr. Austin Wilson

MWF 10-10:50 a.m.

This is the continuation of English 2010. The two-course sequence is designed to introduce students to the literary history of Britain from its beginnings through the contemporary world, from Beowulf to Virginia Woolf and beyond. In the course of their journey through British Literature, students will meet many different writers and read texts representing such genres as lyric and epic poetry, romance, drama, fiction, and the critical essay. Students will also learn some of the ways in which the cultural and historical contexts shape and are shaped by literary productions and the meaning, development, and value of literary history as an approach to literary studies.  English 2020 will focus on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
 
Required for English majors and minors. 

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English 2110    Southern Literature and Culture

Dr. Suzanne Marrs

TTh 10 – 11:15 a.m.

Contemporary Southern Literature. In this course we will discuss the definitions of “southern” that emerged from the Southern Renascence (1920-1950) and consider the ways that contemporary southern fiction by Elizabeth Spencer, Ellen Douglas, Lewis Nordan, Richard Ford, Ann Patchett, Edward Jones, and Margaret McMullan fits or does not fit those definitions. Grades will be based on reading quizzes, a mid-term, an 8-10 page term paper, and a final exam. Ann Patchett and Margaret McMullan will each spend time with the class. Texts: The Southern Woman, Truth, Wolf Whistle, Vintage Ford, Bel Canto, The Known World, How I Found the Strong.

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English 2130     American Women Writers 
Dr. Peggy Whitman Prenshaw
Tuesday / Thursday, 1 p.m.

In this course we will read and discuss a wide selection of twentieth century writings by American women--fiction, plays and poems. Text selections include Edith Wharton's House of Mirth, Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, Eudora Welty's The Optimist's Daughter, Amy Tan's The Bonesetter's Daughter, Ellen Douglas's Can't Quit You, Baby, Toni Morrison's Beloved, and Dorothy Allison's Bastard Out of Carolina. As time permits, we will also read selected poems by Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath and screen film versions of plays by two dramatists, Margaret Edson, Wit  (Emma Thompson plays lead), and Beth Henley, Crimes of the Heart.  

Course requirements: two papers, 4-6 pages each, that will include some references to literary theory and critical sources; an oral report, and mid-term and final examinations.

Note: This course may also be counted toward the Women’s and Gender Studies concentration.

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English 2430    Introduction to Journalism
Dr. Paula Garrett
Chris Spear, Ford Fellow
MW 1 – 2:40

What's the role of the fourth estate? Is print media "just the facts"? In this course, we will study journalism from two perspectives: 1.) its history as a contributor to American democracy, and 2.) its practice in current periodicals, focusing primarily on newspapers. This course will help student writers become quality reporters, engaging critical thinking skills in reporting the news and sharpening abilities to judge "newsworthiness" of a story. In this workshop course, students will be assigned a "beat," surveying current events on and off Millsaps campus. Open to all students, this course may also count towards the concentration in creative writing.

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English 3200.01
Dr. Eric Griffin
MW 1:00 p.m.

The New World: English and American Literature in an Atlantic Context, 1500-1800

Increasingly, scholars are finding that the old distinctions between “national” literatures break down under closer scrutiny. This is especially true of the literature of older periods, when the national boundaries we take as a fact of geography were quite fluid. Since the early history of “America” was intimately related to both its native peoples, the European powers that colonized their territory, and the African peoples who provided much of the labor, we have begun to think in terms of a broader Atlantic World context in which we can imagine a far more complicated set of literary and cultural transactions than has been commonly recognized.

Tacking back and forth between the Old World and the New, this course will imagine the English and American literature of the colonial period in this broader, Atlantic context. Raising questions about the impact and influence of these disparate worlds upon each other, the relations between native peoples, European and African settlers and slaves, and the Empires in behalf of (or against which) they were all required to act, we will explore works by writers as various as “Englishmen” Thomas More, Richard Hakluyt, William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Andrew Marvell and Daniel De Foe; “Americans” John Smith, William Bradford, Anne Bradstreet, Mary Rowlandson, Edward Taylor, Benjamin Franklin and Joel Barlowe; and “Others” Chief Handsome Lake, Olaudah Equiano and Phillis Wheatly. As we explore the contributions of modern day theorists such as Bernard Bailyn, Alfred Crosby, Philip Curtin and Mary Louise Pratt, we will also put the aforementioned categories into question. In addition to regularly scheduled class meetings, students will be required to attend several film screenings during the course of the semester.

Focus: Cultural studies or literary period

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English 3320    Milton

Dr. Anne MacMaster

MWF 10 – 10:50

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English 3540: Film Studies: History of Film
Dr. Austin Wilson

MW 2:45-4 and T 7-9

This course will focus on the historical development of motion pictures as both an art form and an industry and the development of the technical features of film-making. There will be required attendance at weekly showings of videos and dvd's of the core movies under discussion and other movies will be placed on reserve in the library for individual viewing.  Instead of a movie, some Tuesdays will be devoted to labs exploring some element of movie making. Some of the movies that will be shown (at least in part) and discussed will be Voyage dans la lune (1902), The Great Train Robbery (1903), Chien Andalou (1928), City Lights (1931), Grand Illusion (1938), Citizen Kane (1941), The Seventh Seal (1957), Vertigo (1958), Some Like It Hot (1959), La Dolce Vita (1961), Jules et Jim (1962), Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Chinatown (1974), Blue Velvet (1986), Barton Fink (1991), The Player (1992), Magnolia (1999), Timecode (2000), and Adaptation (2002).  Students will keep a viewing log and write two critical papers (a film script will be an option for those taking the course for Concentration in Creative Writing credit) and/or actually make a short film.  There will be a midterm exam and a final.

Focus: Genre

Available for concentration in creative writing credit for students wishing to practice screenwriting and it is one of the foundation courses for the concentration in film studies.

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IDST 1300 (4) “Life in a Time of Death: Bubonic Plague and the Cult of Death”
Instructor: Dr. Austin Wilson
Tuesday / Thursday at 10-11:15 and Wednesday 12-12:50

This course focuses on the Black Death, the plague in the mid-14th century, and its environmental and medical causes and its profound sociological and economic consequences in the great change from the medieval period to the early modern age.  The 14^th century with its Little Ice Age, the Hundred Years War, and the Black Death seems in some ways one of the absolutely worst times to have been alive, and yet it was also a period of great flowering of literature and art and of great improvements in how people lived. We will see how religion was deeply involved in the explanation of the disease and the efforts to alleviate the suffering it caused, how  artists and writers living during the plague responded to it, and how the 14^th century plague compare with other pandemics, such as the 1918 flu epidemic, AIDS, bird flu, and other emerging diseases.  

Foci: History and Literature

English Department Courses, Fall 2006

English 1000 - 01: Introduction to Interpretation
Staff
TTH 10:00 a.m. - 11:15 a.m. AC 334

This course focuses on a variety of interpretive strategies and encourages students to develop a critical vocabulary in order to analyze short stories, novels, drama, and poetry in a sophisticated way. Readings will be varied, and students will learn about different critical approaches to literature and other texts. These critical approaches include psychological criticism, biographical criticism, and feminist criticism.

English 2010 - 01: Introduction to British Literary History, I
Dr. Greg Miller
MWF 11 a.m. -11:50 a.m. MH 205

A history of British literature from the beginnings to 1800, with an emphasis on the meaning and development of literary history.

English 2010 - 02: Introduction to British Literary History, I
Dr. Austin Wilson
MW 1 p.m. AC 218

A history of British literature from the beginnings to 1800, with an emphasis on the meaning and development of literary history.

English 2400, Section 01. Introduction to Creative Writing
Ms. Aleda Shirley
TTH 1:00 - 2:40 p.m. CC 4

Students will study the forms, techniques, and processes of fiction, poetry, or script writing by reading models and by practicing their own writing. Students will discuss their own writing in the context of readings from traditional and contemporary works. Counts towards the concentration in creative writing.

English 2440 - 01: Poetry and Painting
Dr. Greg Miller
TTH 10:00 a.m. AC 223

We'll explore the Roman poet Horace's assertion "Ut pictora, poesis" (as in painting, so in poetry), reading framing interpretive essays by Erwin Panovsky, John Hollander, and others, considering what is to be gained in studying poems and paintings together closely. We will consider such topics as possible aesthetic and ideological commonalities between eighteenth-century "landscape" poets like James Thompson, William Cowper, and Oliver Goldsmith and painters like Richard Wilson or Thomas Gainsborough; relations between the visionary poet William Blake's poems, engravings, and paintings; comparisons of the human form in Walt Whitman and Thomas Eakins; the function of idealized landscapes in Emily Dickinson, Thomas Cole and the Hudson Valley School; creative artistic biography in Robert Browning's poems; the use of ekphrasis by John Keats; artistic commentary in W. H. Auden (the several Breughel paintings to which "Musee des Beaux Arts" alludes, for example); cross-pollination in the modernist art, sculpture and painting of Mina Loy and Constantin Brancusi; cubism and fractured lyrics in Pablo Picasso and Wallace Stevens; modern and postmodern identity in John Ashberry's Portrait in a Convex Mirror and Girolamo Parmagianino's self-portrait by the same title; and contemporary American poets' fascination with painting (Tom Sleigh, Jorie Graham, and others).

Focus: Genre or Theory

English 3180 - 01: American Novel Twain to Faulkner
Dr. Suzanne Marrs
MWF 10 a.m. AC 218

This study of novels by Twain, James, Dreiser, Wharton, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner will focus upon issues of genre and literary history. Short quizzes, a term paper, mid-term and final examinations will provide the basis for grading. Texts: Huckleberry Finn, The Portrait of a Lady, Sister Carrie, The Age of Innocence, The Sun Also Rises, The Great Gatsby, The Sound and the Fury.

Focus: Genre or Literary History

English 3180 - 01: The Sixties
Dr. Robert McElvaine
TTH 1:00 p.m. CC 21
W 7:00 p.m. SH 221

The Sixties." The name brings up all sorts of images: Sex, drugs, and rock `n' roll, civil rights, Vietnam, student protest, JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Betty Friedan, Tom Hayden, Chicago, Norman Mailer, Hippies, Yippies, street theater, Allen Ginsberg, the Free Speech Movement, Freedom Rides, the New Frontier, the Great Society, Janis Joplin, the Beatles, the Doors, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, the Stones, Peter, Paul and Mary . . . The list could go on indefinitely. What does it all mean? In this course we shall begin to explore the diverse experiences of Americans in this turbulent decade--a decade that has shaped the remainder of the twentieth century, much as did the sixties of the nineteenth century. There was a civil war in the 1960s, albeit of a different sort than THE Civil War of the 1860s. The nation came apart during the 1960s to a greater degree than at any time since the Civil War a century earlier. Some of the questions were the same, involving the unfinished business of the nineteenth century conflict: full participation by black people in American society. Other fault lines along which the nation split in the 1960s were new. Dominating the experience of the decade was the coming of age of a generation born after World War II. This "Baby Boom" generation was of unprecedented size, and much of it had grown up in unprecedented material prosperity coupled with rigid conformity imposed because of the fear of communism in the 1950s. Taught that everything Americans had ever done was right, many of these young people reacted strongly to the rediscovery of racial injustice and poverty, and to a war of questionable motivation, goals, and tactics. For the first time since the War of 1812 (forgetting, as almost everyone did, the Filipino Insurrection), Americans confronted a war that they could not win, at least within acceptable bounds of military conduct. The decade also coincided with long-term social and economic changes that helped to bring about the re-birth of feminism.

A decade that began with idealistic self-sacrifice, community orientation, and a commitment to nonviolence seemingly ended with cynical self-indulgence, extreme individualism, and violence. What happened? The course will focus on the question of whether there were, in fact, two sixties: one concentrated in the early part of the decade and centering on civil rights and political and economic justice; the other rising in prominence as the decade proceeded and essentially cultural, emphasizing complete individual freedom.

English 3330 - 01: Shakespeare and the Play of Culture
Dr. Eric Griffin
MW 6:30 p.m.

This course will explore the poetic and dramatic career of William Shakespeare within the context of his time, with a particular focus on cultural studies and literary theory. Beginning with the award-winning screenplay, Shakespeare in Love, we will examine the theatrical mileau in which Shakespeare lived and worked. Approaching Shakespeare as a writer among other writers, we will consider intertextual links between his plays and those by contemporaries such as Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Kyd and John Webster. By way of providing dramatic and theoretical counterpoint, we will also view film versions of several Shakespeare plays that offer more self-consciously presentist interpretations of his drama.

Focus: Cultural Studies or Author

English 3350 - 01: Joyce, Woolf, and the Modern Novel
Dr. Anne MacMaster
TTH 1:00 p.m. SH 268

In this course we'll chart the development of modernist fiction, reading James Joyce's Dubliners, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Ulysses and Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando, and The Waves. This course fulfills the English major requirement for Author or Literary Period or Genre/Theory. And, with special attention to film on writing assignments it can count towards the film concentration. Films that we'll view and discuss as adaptations of novels include The Dead, Ulysses, Bloom, Mrs. Dalloway, The Hours, To the Lighthouse, and Orlando.

Foci: Author, Literary Period, or Genre/Theory
Available for Film Concentration credit

English 3500 - 01: Modern Drama: Eugene O'Neill and Tennessee Williams CANCELLED
Dr. Austin Wilson
MW 2:45-4 p.m. SH 221

According to Tennessee Williams, Eugene O'Neill, the only American playwright to win the Nobel Prize for literature, "gave birth to the American theater and died for it."
This course will focus on the plays of both O'Neill and Williams and their importance as playwrights and on the broader dramatic and cultural contexts in which these two authors wrote and in which their plays were initially performed and the continued relevance of their work and careers for theater-goers, students of literature, and creative writers. We will consider some of O'Neill's early shorter plays (Beyond the Horizon, Anna Christie, The Hairy Ape, and The Emperor Jones), a few plays from his middle period (Desire Under the Elms and Mourning Becomes Electra), and his great late plays (Long Day's Journey Into Night, Moon for the Misbegotten, The Iceman Cometh, and Hughie). Plays of Williams we will read and/or see videos of will include This Property Is Condemned, The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Summer and Smoke, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Rose Tattoo, Orpheus Descending, Suddenly Last Summer, Sweet Bird of Youth, The Night of the Iguana, and The Red Devil Battery Sign. There will be brief (1-2 pages) response papers (focusing on the reading and viewing of the plays and on topics for discussion), two longer (7-10 pages) critical papers, a midterm and a final. Class participation will be a significant part of your grade and will include reading aloud from the plays and "acting" brief scenes from the plays with some of your classmates, other group work, regular and cogent contributions to class and group discussion, and attendance and preparation.

Focus: Genre, Authorial Studies, or Literary History
Available for Creative Writing Concentration credit


English 4900 - 01: Senior Colloquium in the Advanced Interpretation of Literary History
Dr. Laura Franey
MW 1 - 2:40 p.m. SH 269

This course, required for English majors in their senior year, is designed to help students consolidate and deepen their studies of literature. We will reflect on the history of literary genres and forms in English, literary theory and cultural studies. In addition, students will reflect on their work as English majors and as students in the liberal arts and will complete the Core 10 Reflective essay. The course will be loosely centered on the theme of family dynamics, and we will approach this theme through theories of archetypes, psychoanalytic theory, feminist theory, cultural studies, and deconstructionist theories. Primary texts will most likely include the anonymous medieval romance Athelston, John Ford’s Renaissance tragedy ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders, Byron’s closet drama Manfred, Henry James’s psychological thriller The Turn of the Screw, and Rita Dove’s poetic series Thomas and Beulah from the late 20th century.

English Department Courses, Spring 2006

English 1000, Section 01. Introduction to Interpretation.
Dr. Eric Griffin
MWF 10 a.m. AC 218
This course focuses on a variety of interpretive problems and on different kinds of texts, including films.

English 1000, Section 02. Introduction to Interpretation.
Dr. Eric Griffin
MWF 11 a.m. AC 218
This course focuses on a variety of interpretive problems and on different kinds of texts, including films.

English 2020, Section 01. Introduction to British Literary History, II.
Dr. Greg Miller
MWF 10 a.m. SHH 269
A history of British literature from the beginnings to 1800, with an emphasis on the meaning and development of literary history.

English 2020, Section 02. Introduction to British Literary History, II.
Dr. Laura Franey
MWF 11 a.m. MH 201
In this course, we will read and analyze representative British literature from 1800 to the present day so as to develop a better understanding and appreciation of changes in poetry, drama, and prose fiction from the Romantic era to our own era. We will read such canonical writers as William Wordsworth, Charlotte Bronte, Oscar Wilde, and T. S. Eliot, but we will also read less canonical texts such as Hanif Kurieshi's hilarious recent novel, The Buddha of Suburbia.

English 2110, Section 01. Life Stories in Southern Memoir, Fiction and Drama
Peggy Whitman Prenshaw
MWF 11 a.m. AC 222
How do you transform a life into a story? This is the central question we will pursue as the class reads, discusses, and writes autobiographical texts. One direction we will explore is the ways in which a writer's life may be expressed in works of fiction and drama, taking as our examples Eudora Welty's One Writer's Beginnings and The Optimist's Daughter, excerpts from Tennessee Williams's Memoirs and The Glass Menagerie, and Dorothy Allison's One or Two Things I Know for Sure and Bastard out of Carolina. Other texts may include Mary Karr's The Liars' Club, Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s Colored People, and, for individual projects, choices of books by Richard Wright, Elizabeth Spencer, Tim McLaurin, Lewis Nordan, Ellen Douglas, Willie Morris, Rick Bragg, Bobbie Ann Mason, Florence King, and Noel Polk. We will also consider several short excerpts by Paul John Eakin and Patricia Hampl on autobiographical theory and a "self interview" by Walker Percy.
Requirements : Class participation, six to eight reading response papers (typically short--300-500 words), a final portfolio of the revised papers, and a creative autobiographical essay. This essay comprises an early short draft and a longer version presented in lieu of a final examination.
Focus: Genre or Cultural Studies. May count toward the concentration in Creative Writing.

English 2400, Section 01. Introduction to Creative Writing.
Ms. Aleda Shirley.
MW 2:45 - 4 p.m. SH 347
Students will study the forms, techniques, and processes of fiction, poetry, or script writing by reading models and by practicing their own writing. Students will discuss their own writing in the context of readings from traditional and contemporary works. Counts towards the concentration in creative writing.

English 2450, Section 01. Women & Men in America.
Dr. Bob McElvaine.
TTh 1-2:15, W. 7 - 9 p.m.
(See History 2120)

English 3130, Section 01. Nineteenth-Century British Literature.
Dr. Hollis Robbins.
MWF 9 a.m. SH 263
The Nineteenth Century is considered by many the "Great Century of Literary Achievement." Why? From Jane Austen's unsettling stories about the perils of courtship to Lord Byron's erotic poetry to Charles Dickens's dark tales of seedy London slums, to Oscar Wilde's bizarrely religious passions, to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's cocaine-addicted detective, this course will examine what made this century of British literature so appealing.

Focus: Literary History

English 3180, Section 01. Modernist Manners.
Dr. Anne MacMaster
TTh 1 - 2:40 p.m. AC 335
In the Modernist period, while writers like Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and William Faulkner broke with the artistic past by creating new literary forms, other writers continued to use traditional literary forms to explore the new problems raised by the new century. Edith Wharton, Nella Larsen, and Jessie Fauset use the novel of manners to explore how American concepts of race, gender, and class are changing in the first few decades of the twentieth century. We'll read their novels alongside stories and poems of the high modernists Eliot, Pound, and Faulkner, with an eye to the questions that this juxtaposition raises. What is the relation between the modernist movement and the "New Negro" or Harlem Renaissance? How is it that the novels of Jessie Fauset and Nella Larsen have been judged to be too elitist for the Harlem Renaissance and yet not elitist enough for modernism? And where does Zora Neale Hurston fit in here? Is she part of the modernist movement or of the "New Negro" movement? Or both? Or neither? How do our categories of literary history blind us to some important truths about American literature and culture?
Readings will be drawn from the following list: novels: Edith Wharton, The Custom of the Country; Jessie Fauset, either Comedy, American Style! or Plumbun; Zora Neale Hurston, either Their Eyes Were Watching God or Moses, Man of the Mountain; novellas: Nella Larsen, Quicksand and Passing; poems by T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Langston Hughes; short stories by Hurston and Faulkner; and possibly one novel by Faulkner or Virginia Woolf or Ford Madox Ford.
Focus: Literary History.

English 3300, Section 01. Chaucer.
Dr. Greg Miller
MWF 1:30 - 2:45 p.m. CC 04
The course is designed to help students develop a greater appreciation and understanding of the literary works and career of Geoffrey Chaucer. We'll work hard together at becoming proficient readers of Chaucer's Middle English, reading short lyrics, The Book of the Duchess, much of Troilus and Criseyde, and the lion's share of The Canterbury Tales. We'll attempt to understand more fully Chaucer's handling of a variety of literary genres and modes and to articulate for ourselves the particular nature of this writer's achievement.
Focus: Author or genre. Satisfies the pre-1800 requirement.

English 3350, Section 01. Eudora Welty and Artistic Transformations.
Dr. Suzanne Marrs
TTh 10 -11:15 a.m. AC 222
In the course of the spring semester, we will examine the ways in which Eudora Welty translated her experiences as a southerner into a fiction that transcends the region, and we will look at the way dramatists, film makers, and composers have translated Welty's stories into other genres or art forms. Guest speakers will include Bruce Schwartz (director/producer of "A Worn Path"), Alfred Uhry (playwright whose works include The Robber Bridegroom and Driving Miss Daisy), and Samuel Jones (composer of "Trumpet of the Swan" and "Eudora's Fable"). Grades will be based upon a mid-term examination, short reading quizzes, a term paper, a group project, and a final examination. Texts: Eudora Welty: Stories, Memoir, Essays; Eudora Welty: Complete Novels; The Shoe Bird.
Focus: Author or Cultural Studies.

English 3500, Section 01. British Stage Comedy: 1660-present.
Dr. Laura Franey
MWF 10 a.m. AC 335
Ever wonder what kinds of comedies followed the brilliant comedies that William Shakespeare wrote in the late 15th century and early 16th century? Here's your chance to learn about developments in British stage comedy from the 1660s through the present as we read, perform scenes from, and study carefully two Restoration-period comedies, two eighteenth-century comedies, two nineteenth-century comedies, and two twentieth-century comedies. Some of the comedies revolve around social critique, some focus on scientific themes, some present political satire, and some have elements of "romantic comedy" as we use that term in movie critiques today. Playwrights to be studied include Aphra Behn, Oliver Goldsmith, Gilbert & Sullivan, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, and Tom Stoppard.
Focus: Genre. Satisfies the pre-1800 requirement.

English 3500, Section 02. The Romance
Dr. Eric Griffin
MW 2:45 - 4 p.m. AC 335
This course will explore one of the most important, enduring modes in world literature, the Romance. After glimpsing its (re)birth in Medieval France, we will watch the genre grow, develop, mature, and cast its spell over some of the most important works of the Renaissance, ultimately infusing both modern drama and the novel with its spirit of wonder.
We will also seek to identify relationships between key Romance works by following the rich tapestry they weave "intertextually." As we learn to identify-via some of the seminal literary criticism of the 20th century-the special mimetic languages (or discourses) of the Romance, we will see how practitioners of its art breathe new life into the genre, both by both dressing new characters in its old clothes, and by playing against the literary fashions they have inherited. And, by placing our own Romances in dialogue with those of earlier ages, re-casting and reinvigorating their conventions for a new millennium, we will seek to converse with these texts across the boundaries of time and space.
Our texts will include works by Chretien de Troyes, Thomas Malory, Geoffrey Chaucer, Ludovico Ariosto, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, Miguel de Cervantes and J.R.R. Tolkien, criticism by C. S. Lewis, Erich Auerbach and M. M. Bakhtin, and films such as Excalibur, The Natural, and Monty Python and the Holy Grail, among others.
Focus: Genre or Literary History. This course will also be applicable to the concentration in Film Studies.
Satisfies the pre-1800 requirement.

English 3750, Section 01. Post Office Stories.
Dr. Hollis Robbins
TTh 2:45 - 4 p.m. SH 268
Post Office Stories will explore questions of communication within works of fiction, focusing on postal delivery as a particular mode of interpersonal communication. We will also consider the extent to which mail has affected the wide circulation of stories, the circulation of information within stories. We will explore the representation and use of the post office in 19th- and 20th Century literary works from Jane Austen to Charles Bukowski to Thomas Pynchon. We will examine the physical and psychological space of mail, a place of privacy, anonymity, safety, and equality produced by the postal system. Is the mail like sex (circulating promiscuously)? Or like salvation (don't we all want Deliverance)? Finally, we will consider the emergence of a brand new literary type: the postman. Who is this person, sung about so sadly in pop music, who has become a sit-com buffoon (Cliff Clavin and Seinfeld's Newman).

Focus: Cultural Studies

English 3900, Section 01. Senior Workshop / Creative Writing.
Ms. Aleda Shirley.
MW 2:45 - 4 p.m. SH 347
An advanced creative writing course for students completing the concentration in creative writing. Students will decide in consultation with the instructor the number and length of the pieces written and revised for the course. Students will read and discuss each other's work in the workshop (held concurrently with English 2400) and meet frequently in conference with the instructor. Each student will be expected to give a public reading of his or her work and to submit his or her work for publication. Counts towards the concentration in creative writing.

IDS 1300 (03): Fables, Tales, and Songs: Pre-Modern Islam and Christianity
Core 3, focus: literature
Dr. Greg Miller, English House

How did poets, historians, musicians, and theologians in the pre-modern Christian and Muslim worlds reflect on the nature of reality? What were the ideals of people within these cultures? What conflicts did cultures register between their ideals for themselves and reality? We will read and discuss a variety of literary texts: selections from The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer, the Lais of Marie of France, the Persian collection of stories The Arabian Nights, poems by the Persian mystic Jalaloddin Rumi, and musical lyrics by the Christian mystic Hildegard von Bingen. We will also examine the role of music and dance within the Sufi tradition. We will compare examples of architecture and art from each religious tradition. To explore and understand early encounters between Islam and Christianity, we will read and evaluate translations of primary historical documents written by Christians and Muslims.

Focus: Literature.

English Department Courses, Fall 2005

English 1000 - 01: Introduction to Interpretation
Dr. Laura Franey
MWF 11 a.m. - 11:50 a.m. AC 334

This course focuses on a variety of interpretive strategies and encourages students to develop a critical vocabulary in order to analyze short stories, novels, drama, and poetry in a sophisticated way. Readings will be varied, and students will learn about different critical approaches to literature and other texts. These critical approaches include psychological criticism, biographical criticism, and feminist criticism.

English 2020 - 01: Introduction to British Literary History, I
Dr. Greg Miller
MWF 10 a.m. SH 269

A history of British literature from the beginnings to 1800, with an emphasis on the meaning and development of literary history.

English 2020 - 02: Introduction to British Literary History, I
Dr. Austin Wilson
MW 1 p.m. CC 21

A history of British literature from the beginnings to 1800, with an emphasis on the meaning and development of literary history.

English 2120 - 01: African-American Literature
Dr. Hollis Robbins
MWF 11 a.m. CC 21

This course will examine the literary history of African-American literature from the eighteenth century through the late twentieth century. We will read works by the key contributors to this important American literary tradition and attend to the aesthetic, cultural, and critical legacy of this tradition to the literary sensibility of the twenty-first century. From the poems of Phillis Wheatley to the speeches of William Wells Brown to essays by James Baldwin to the fiction of Nella Larson and Richard Wright, we will ponder the role that race, cultural identity, and legal status have played in shaping these literary works.

Focus: Cultural Studies

English 3150 - 01: Hawthorne and the Mob of Scribbling Women
Dr. Paula Garrett
MW 2:45 p.m. CC 22

In his 1855 letter to publisher William Ticknor, Nathaniel Hawthorne penned his now famous damning of literary women, "Besides, American is now wholly given over to a d----d mob of scribbling women, and I should have no chance of success while the public taste is occupied with their trash-and should be ashamed of myself if I did succeed," ? Who were these "scribbling women" and what "trash" did they write? In this class, we will read popular nineteenth century American fiction by women alongside the works of Hawthorne in order to understand the context that produced both Hawthorne, one of the most important writers in the American literary canon, and these more popular but less respected women writers-Lydia Maria Child, Maria Cummins, Fanny Fern, Grace Greenwood, Catherine Maria Sedgwick, Susan Warner, and others. We will also explore the landscape of literary magazines and publishers to contextualize Hawthorne's chaffing against the surge of women writers. Finally, we will read these extraordinary texts by women writers in an effort to understand the gender politics that would prompt Hawthorne to describe the works and their authors variously as "ink-stained," "as if the devil was in her," and "like emasculated men."

Focus: Author and Literary Period

English 3180 - 01: Contemporary Literature
Dr. Austin Wilson
MWF 10 a.m. AC 335

English 3180 (Studies in 20th Century Literature: Contemporary Literature) will be concerned with literature published in the last 25 years. Everything that will be read, discussed, and/or written about in the class was published after 1980; most of the texts will be from the nineties; and some will be from the 21st century. We will read and discuss representative fiction by a number of British and American writers: novels by Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian), Ian McEwan (Atonement), Rick Moody (The Ice Storm), Ann Patchett (Taft), and Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things); representative short stories by David Foster Wallace, John Updike, Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Munro, Will Self, Mary Gaitskill, Lorrie Moore, Amy Hempel, Susan Minot, T. Coraghessan Boyle, Tim Gautreaux, Brad Watson, and ZZPacker; representative poetry by John Ashbery, Seamus Heaney, W.S. Merwin, Robert Hass, Eavan Boland, Robert Pinsky, Louise Glück, Billy Collins, Sharon Olds, Li-Young Lee, Charles Simic, Lucille Clifton, Ellen Bryant Voigt, Yusef Komunyakaa, Paul Muldoon, and Jorie Graham; and representative drama by Tom Stoppard, Beth Henley, Sam Shepard, and Tony Kushner. Current magazines such as McSweeney's, Zoetrope, Tin House, and American Poetry Review, which publish some of the best current fiction and poetry, will also be explored in the class (in some cases, the on-line versions). There will be a reading journal; two brief papers (3-5 pages); a longer paper (6-10 pages); two oral reports (one about a particular poet and one on a fiction writer); a take-home, open-book midterm; and a take-home, open-book final. Available for Concentration in Creative Writing Credit.

Focus: Literary Period

English 3310 - 01: Shakespeare and the Play of Genre
Dr. Eric Griffin
TTh 2:45 p.m. SH 268

Focus: Genre or Author
This course also satisfies the pre-1800 requirement.

English 3350 - 01: Donne and Herbert
Dr. Greg Miller
TTh 1 p.m. CC 22

Focus: Author
This course also satisfies the pre-1800 requirement.

English 3540 - 01: Fiction and Film: Adaptation as Interpretation
Dr. Anne MacMaster
TTh 1 p.m. SH 221 W 7 p.m. AC 215

Our slogan in this course will be the chant "Every adaptation is an interpretation." We'll read three novels or novellas each by Jane Austen, Henry James, and Edith Wharton, and we'll view at least one film adaptation of each novel we read, considering what makes an adaptation a good one. What techniques allow writers to translate fiction to film, and what gets lost in translation? Probably readings and viewings include Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Persuasion or Sense and Sensibility; James's Washington Square (and the film The Heiress), The Europeans, and either The Wings of the Dove or the Golden Bowl, and Wharton's The House of Mirth, The Age of Innocence, and The Buccaneers. Students will also have the opportunity to do projects and presentations on adaptations of works of these authors not read by the whole class.

Focus: Genre

English 3750 - 01: The Empire Writes Back: Postcolonial Literature
Dr. Laura Franey
TTh 10 - 11:15 Olin Hall 201

Much famous literature in European languages during the 18th and 19th century focused on European colonies in Africa, South Asia, and the Caribbean (Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, for example), but have you ever wondered what kind of literature the people in those colonized places produced and are continuing to produce? This class will help answer that question and others by looking at novels, drama, and some poetry written in the English language by African, Indian, and Caribbean authors after British (and some American) colonies began gaining their independence from the 1940s onwards. The writers we'll read include Salman Rushdie (India), Ngugi wa Thiong'o (Kenya), V. S. Naipaul (Trinidad), Ama Ata Aidoo (Ghana), Ken Saro-Wiwa (Nigeria) and Jessica Hagedorn (the Philippines and the United States). We'll look at ways these authors both interact with the English and American literary traditions and attempt to create new traditions that reflect their own cultural origins. We will also pursue answers to the following questions:

oIn what ways has literature operated as an active force in the decolonization process?
oWhat is the status of literature today in former colonies?
oWhat are the problems in studying postcolonial literature as an entity separate from "English" literature?
oCan writing by ethnic minorities in the United States and other "settler colonies" qualify as "postcolonial"?
oHow much does the question of authenticity play a role in determining what kinds of literature can be considered "postcolonial"?

Focus: Literary Period or Cultural Studies

English 4900 - 01: Senior Colloquium in the Advanced Interpretation of Literary History
Dr. Laura Franey
MW 1 - 2:40 p.m. SH 269

This course, required for English majors in their senior year, is designed to help students consolidate and deepen their studies of literature. We will reflect on the history of literature in English, literary theory and cultural studies, and ways of reading and interpreting literary genre and form. Also, students will reflect on their work as English majors and as students in the liberal arts and will complete the Core 10 Reflective essay.

English Department Courses, Spring 2003

English 1000: Introduction to Interpretation
Dr. Suzanne Marrs
MWF 10

Students will focus on a variety of interpretive problems and on different kinds of texts, including films. The course introduces students to issues of form and genre and to the techniques necessary for writing within the discipline.

English 1000: Introduction to Interpretation
Dr. Laura Franey
TTh 1:30

Students will focus on a variety of interpretive problems and on different kinds of texts, including films. The course introduces students to issues of form and genre and to the techniques necessary for writing within the discipline.

English 2020: Introduction to British Literature History II
Dr. Anne MacMaster
MW 1:30

This course is designed to introduce students to the literary history of Britain from its beginnings through the contemporary world, from Beowulf to Virginia Woolf and beyond. In the course of their journey through British Literature, students will meet many different writers and read texts representing such genres as lyric and epic poetry, romance, drama, fiction, and the critical essay. Students will also learn some of the ways in which the cultural and historical contexts shape and are shaped by literary productions. [English 2020 will focus on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.]

English 3110: Seventeenth Century British Literature
Dr. Greg Miller
MWF 11

This course will explore of the latter half of what we call the English Literary Renaissance, beginning with the reign of James I and ending with the Restoration. We will read such writers as John Donne, Ben Jonson, Aemelia Lanyer, George Herbert, John Milton, John Webster, and Mary Wroth, examining the development of literary genres and modes. Students will write a brief analytical essay, take exams, and develop a final essay based on research.

Focus: literary history or genre

This course may be taken as part of the concentration in creative writing for students wishing to write poetry.

English 3130: Exploration and Imagination in Victorian Literature
Dr. Laura Franey
TTH 10

During the Victorian period (ca. 1840-1900), the British empire expanded exponentially and scientific discoveries about the world came fast and fresh. Literature reflected growing interests not only in foreign places and peoples but also in the applications of science for society and the future of humankind. This course will focus on exploration in Victorian literature, but this does not mean we will be limited to consideration only of colonialism and the physical exploration of the concrete world. We will also look at the developing genre of science fiction and the Victorian fascination with the gothic/medieval era. We will read the following prose fiction (novels, novellas, and short stories): Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim; Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone; H. G. Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau; A. Conan Doyle, The Sign of Four (a Sherlock Holmes book); Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland; Rudyard Kipling, "The Man Who Would Be King"; and Olive Schreiner, The Story of an African Farm. Reading selections will also be taken from the following poetic or nonfictional works: Tennyson's poetic cycle Idylls of the King (about King Arthur's court); Mary Kingsley's Travels in West Africa; and Henry Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor. We'll likely watch a couple of Hollywood movies about Victorian exploration (like Mountains of the Moon or the original version of The Four Feathers).

Focus: literary history or cultural studies

English 3180: Modern American Literature
Dr. Suzanne Marrs
MWF 9

This course will discuss the development of the American novel from the 1920s to the present. We will look at the novels in terms of form and structure and will also examine the social and historical contexts from which they emerged. Texts will be The Great Gatsby, The Sun Also Rises, The Sound and the Fury, All the King's Men, Invisible Man, The Moviegoer, The Optimist's Daughter, and Beloved. Requirements include reading quizzes, mid-term and final examinations, and an 8- to 10-page paper.

Focus: literary history

English 3330: Shakespeare and the Play of Culture
Dr. Eric Griffin
MW 1:30

This course will explore the poetic and dramatic career of William Shakespeare within the context of his time, with a particular focus on cultural studies and literary theory. Beginning with the award-winning screenplay, Shakespeare in Love, we will examine the theatrical mileau in which Shakespeare lived and worked. Approaching Shakespeare as a writer among other writers, we will consider intertextual links between his plays and those by contemporaries such as Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Kyd and John Webster. By way of providing dramatic and theoretical counterpoint, we will also view film versions of several Shakespeare plays that offer more self-consciously presentist interpretations of his drama.

Focus: cultural studies or author

English 3350: Wharton and Morrison
Dr. Anne MacMaster
TTh 1:30

Authorial Studies: Edith Wharton and Toni Morrison In this course, we will read deeply in the works of two major American novelists, Edith Wharton and Toni Morrison, comparing Wharton's early twentieth century realism and naturalism to Morrison's late twentieth century modernism and post-modernism. While we will attend to each writer's characteristic style, techniques, and contributions to the genre of the novel, we will also look at both writers' works in biographical, historical, and cultural context. We will also chart developments of theme and technique over the course of each writer's career, and we will read short excerpts from relevant works of criticism, theory, and biography. The course will be organized around thematically, divided into four thematic units will run as follows: Sacrifice - what frivolous societies waste: Wharton's The House of Mirth Morrison's The Bluest Eye Ambition and its discontents- family status, generations, and the American Dream: Wharton's The Custom of the Country Morrison's Song of Solomon Ghosts (ghosts of memory and desire; ghosts of warning, protection, and rebellion): Wharton, Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton Morrison, Beloved Artist as Pariah in America- conformity and community in the land of individualism Wharton, The Age of Innocence Morrison, Sula

Focus: author or genre

English 3400: Writing and Reading Fiction
Dr. Austin Wilson
TTH 3:15

An advanced class in the reading and writing of fiction. Stories (there will be an anthology of short fiction) and two novels will be read and discussed from the perspective of the writer, students will write and revise several short stories that will be discussed by the class in workshops and with the instructor in individual tutorials. Prerequisite: English 2400 or permission of instructor. Counts toward the Creative Writing Concentration.

Focus: genre

English 3540: Introduction to Film Studies
Dr. Austin Wilson
MW 3:15

This course will focus on the cultural and artistic significance of film. It will give attention to the historical development of motion pictures and the technical features of film-making. There will be required attendance at weekly out-of-class showings of videos and dvd's of the core movies under discussion . Some of the movies that will be shown (at least in part) and discussed will be Chien Andalou (1928), City Lights (1931), Grand Illusion (1938), Citizen Kane (1941), The Seventh Seal (1957), Vertigo (1958), Some Like It Hot (1959), La Dolce Vita (1961), Jules et Jim (1962), Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Chinatown (1974), Blue Velvet (1986), Barton Fink (1991), The Matrix (1999), and Magnolia (1999). Students will keep a viewing log and write a critical paper.

Focus: genre

This course may be taken as part of the concentration in creative writing by students wishing to practice screenwriting.

English 3750: Literature and Sexualities
Dr. Greg Miller
MWF 10

This course will be an introductory survey of literature in English through which we will question literary representations of sexuality, desire , identity, politics, and culture. We will consider the shaping forces of religion, the law, psychology, class, and race, studying texts such as Christopher Marlowe's Edward II (along with Derek Jarman 's 1992 film interpretation of the play); Shakespeare's sonnets and scenes from A Midsummer Night's Dream; Walt Whitman's Calamus; selections from Emily Dickinson's poems and letters; E. M. Forster's novel Maurice (along with James Wilby's 1987 film); Oscar Wilde's prison memoir about his affair with Lord Alfred Douglas, De Profundis; Nella Larsen's Passing; Adrienne Rich's Dream of a Common Language and "Compulsive Heterosexuality"; Thom Gunn's The Passages of Joy, Edmund White's A Boy's Own Story; Stephen Frears' 1986 film My Beautiful Laundrette; Audre Lorde's poems and essays, and Larry Cramer's play The History of Me. We will consider theoretical studies of gender and sexuality, including such thinkers as Sigmund Freud, Michel Foucault, Adrienne Rich, Eve Sedgwick, Jonathan Goldberg, and David Halperin.

Focus: cultural studies

English 3900: Senior Writing Workshop
Dr. Austin Wilson
TTH 3:15

Students writing in a variety of genres will work together to complete substantial creative projects. Prerequisites: English 2400 and two courses designated by the English department as intermediate courses in creative writing or the consent of the instructor. Counts toward the Creative Writing Concentration.

English 4900: Senior Colloquium
Dr. Eric Griffin
MW 6

This course, required of all senior English majors, is designed to help students consolidate and deepen their literary studies. We will reflect on the history of literature in English, literary theory and cultural studies, and ways of reading and interpreting literary genre and form. As part of the plan for this semester, students will reflect on their work as English majors and students of the liberal arts

English HI: Honors in English
Staff
TBA

Interdisciplinary Studies

Students may fulfill one elective towards the English major in one of the following ways: (1) two semesters of Heritage, (2) one core topics course which has a primary emphasis on literature and which is taught by an instructor from the English department, or (3) one course cross-listed with another department.

IDS 1300 (4): 1492: Europe Faces its Others-Antecedents and Aftermath
Dr. Eric Griffin
MWF 11

This course will consider the inter-relation of the three major historical events of 1492- Columbus's landfall in the New World, the expulsion of the Jews from the Spanish kingdoms, and the fall of Muslim Granada-by observing both the long-standing cultural tensions that produce them, and the new tensions that arise in their wake. While we will consider at several junctures later interpretations, most of our readings will be either from accounts written by the participants themselves, or slightly later works which both draw upon these accounts and transform them fictively. Our readings will include both European voices, and the voices of Europe's Native American, Jewish and Islamic "Others." We will also consider how the Protestant Reformation complicates an already complex situation by multiplying the range of othernesses possible within Christendom itself. Our readings will include, among others, selections from the poet of El Cid, Columbus, Las Casas, Cabeza de Vaca, Bernal Diaz, Hernando De Soto, Desiderius Erasmus, Walter Raleigh, Christopher Marlowe, and William Shakespeare.

Focus: Literature or History

IDS 1300, Section 7: Life in a Time of Death: Bubonic Plague and the Cult of Death
Dr. Austin Wilson
TTh 10, W 12

A consideration of the bubonic plague of the mid-1300's as a historical event that greatly affected religious, intellectual, artistic, economic, and social life. Particular attention will given to literary treatments of the Black Death. Parallels will be drawn with more recent epidemics, such as the 1918 flu epidemic and AIDS.

Focus: Literature or History.

IDS 2500: Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance
Dr. Anne MacMaster
MWF 11, Th 9

This course will examine the relationship between Modernism - an international movement in art and literature during the years just before, during, and immediately following the Great War - and the Harlem Renaissance, a flowering of African- American art and literature during the same years. We will read selections from the writings of modernists like Joseph Conrad, T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf as well as selections from Harlem Renaissance writers like Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Nella Larsen, and Claude McKay, and we will discuss the relationship between these two literary movements as well as between each one and its historical contexts. We will consider modernist themes like the individual's alienation in modern society and modernist techniques of fragmentation of the text and stream-of-consciousness narration in the context of historical events and phenomena like World War I and trench warfare, feminism and woman suffrage, and post-war upheaval and the rise of fascism. In exploring the question of whether the Harlem Renaissance is part of modernism or something distinct from it, we will explore particularly American and African-American experiences in this period of the first World War and the decades that followed..

Focus: Literature or Fine Arts

English 2450: Native American Literature (Cross-listed Soan 3120-01)
Dr. George Bey
MWF 10, Th 8

This course examines the culture and society of the North American Indians, with a special focus on contemporary issues. Indian culture and identity are explored through the the myths, literature, and poetry of Native Americans, as well as anthropological studies and popular culture.

English Department Courses, Spring 2002

English 1000: Introduction to Interpretation

REQUIRED FOR ENGLISH MAJOR
Dr. Laura Franey
MWF 11
Dr. Austin Wilson
TTh 10

Students will focus on a variety of interpretive problems and on different kinds of texts, including films. The course introduces students to issues of form and genre and to the techniques necessary for writing within the discipline.

English 2010: Survey of British Literature II (1800 to Present)

REQUIRED FOR ENGLISH MAJOR
Dr. Greg Miller
TTh 1:30

This course is designed to introduce students to the literary history of Britain from its beginnings through the contemporary world, from Beowulf to Virginia Woolf and beyond. In the course of their journey through British Literature, students will meet many different writers and read texts representing such genres as lyric and epic poetry, romance, drama, fiction, and the critical essay. Students will also learn some of the ways in which the cultural and historical contexts shape and are shaped by literary productions. [English 2020 will focus on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.]

English 2400: Introduction to Creative Writing

Aleda Shirley
T 6

Students will study the forms, techniques, and process of fiction, poetry, or script writing by reading models and by practicing their own writing. Students will discuss their own writing in the context of readings from traditional and contemporary works.

Counts toward concentration in Creative Writing

English 3150: Nineteenth-Century American Novel: American Selves and Canons

Dr. Paula Garrett
MWF 10

This course will focus on selected novels from the American Nineteenth Century. We will note the development of the novel within the century, and we will also discuss various "American" themes in the period. Although our primary theoretical inquiry in the course will concern the nature and development of "the" American literary canon, we will also examine issues relative to this, such as the tensions between literary and popular culture, between romance and realism, between private and public spheres, and between gender/sexuality constructions. Authors whose works may be considered may include Hannah Foster, Charles Brockden Brown, James Fenimore Cooper, Catherine Maria Sedgwick, Nathaniel Hawthorne, E.D.E.N. Southworth, Mark Twain, Kate Chopin, and Henry James.

Focus: cultural studies or genre

English 3180: Contemporary Southern Literature

Austin Wilson
TTh 3:15

This course will focus on the writing of Southerners published in the last quarter of the twentieth century and the first few years of this one. The course will focus on a number of questions. Is "Southern literature" still a valid and useful category in understanding contemporary literature? If so, what constitutes "Southernness" when we discuss contemporary literature--is it the author’s place of birth, the place of birth of the major characters, the setting of the piece of writing, the themes of the work, or the sensibility of the writer? Are there continuities between recent Southern writing and the work of their great predecessors--Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Welty, O’Connor, and Percy? Are there differences between contemporary Southern writers and those coming into prominence in the early and mid-twentieth century that are brought about by the writers’ deliberate break with Southern writing of the past and/or by the sweeping changes in the South itself? In trying to answer these and other questions the course will consider four genres: fiction (both short stories and novels), poetry, drama, and creative non-fiction. Among the writers we will read and discuss will be Andre Dubus, Anne Tyler, James Alan McPherson, Cormac McCarthy, Barry Hannah, Richard Ford, Kaye Gibbons, Rick Bass, Dorothy Allison, Larry Brown, James Wilcox, Madison Smart Bell, Nancy Lemann, Randall Kenan, Tony Earley, Chris Offutt, Tom Franklin, Wendell Berry, Ellen Bryant Voigt, Andrew Hudgins, Charles Wright, Dave Smith, Henry Taylor, Yusef Komunyakaa, Cleopatra Mathis, C.D. Wright, Frank Stanford, Kelly Cherry, T. R. Hummer, David Bottoms, Brooks Haxton, and Mark Jarman. We will read and see videos of plays by Beth Henley and Marsha Norman.

Focus: literary history or cultural studies
(may be taken for credit toward the Creative Writing Concentration)

English 3300: Chaucer

Dr. Greg Miller
MWF 11

This course will consider Chaucer’s major works, including most of The Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseide as well as such early poems as The Book of the Duchess. We will read the poems in Middle English and spend much of our time together reading the poems aloud to gain a deeper understanding of their linguistic and imaginative richness. Special attention will be given to Chaucer’s use of a wide variety of literary genres.

Focus: author or genre
(pre-1800)

English 3310: Shakespeare

Dr. Eric Griffin
MWF 9

This course will provide either an introduction to, or continuation of, the study of William Shakespeare’s dramatic works. By exploring a representative group of comedies, histories, tragedies, and romances (different from those that were the focus of the fall 2000 course), we will analyze key elements of Shakespeare’s aesthetic practice (with particular attention to the way he makes use of generic conventions), consider the cultural context in which his plays were produced, and sample important Shakespearean criticism from the past and present.

Focus: author or cultural studies

(pre-1800)

English 3750: Irish Renaissance

Dr. Austin Wilson
MW 1:30

This course will focus on the poetry, fiction, drama, and autobiographies produced by Irish writers from l888 through the middle of the twentieth century in the context of Irish culture and history. We will look at the renewed interest in Irish mythology, folklore, and the Gaelic language in the late nineteenth century and how that interest led to such things as the poetry of the Celtic Twilight and the founding of the Irish national theatre (The Abbey Theatre). We will be concerned with Irish political and religious issues of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and their impact on the literature being produced (for example, the growing nationalism, the sectarian conflicts between Protestants and Catholics, the Easter Rising of 1916, the Irish Civil War of 1922, and the founding of the Irish Free State, the Troubles). Yeats, Lady Gregory, James Joyce, Frank O’Connor, A. E. (George Rusell), John Millington Synge, and Sean O’Casey will be some of the writers we will read. Each student will write a paper on one Irish writer and present a formal oral report on that paper in class.

Focus: literary history or cultural studies

English 4900: Senior Colloquium

Dr. Eric Griffin
MW 3:15

This course, required of all senior English majors, is designed to help students consolidate and deepen their literary studies. We will reflect on the history of literature in English, literary theory and cultural studies, and ways of reading and interpreting literary genre and form. As part of the plan for this semester, students will reflect on their work as English majors and students of the liberal arts.

INTERDISCIPLINARY COURSES Spring 2002

IDS 1300 (3): Fables, Tales, and Songs: Medieval Islam and Christianity

Dr. Greg Miller
MWF 10, Th 8

How did literature and music reflect on the medieval Christian and Muslim worlds? What were the ideals of people within these cultures? What conflicts did each culture register between its ideals for itself and reality? We will read and discuss a variety of literary texts: selections from The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer, the Lais of Maire of France, the Persian collection of stories The Thousand and One Nights, poems by the Persian mystic Jalaloddin Rumi, and musical lyrics by the Christian mystic Hildegard von Bingen. We will also examine the role of music and dance within the Muslim mystical sect known as the Sufis. We will compare examples of architecture and art from each religious tradition. To explore and understand early encounters between Islam and Christianity, we will read and evaluate translations of primary historical documents written by Christians and Muslims.

Focus: Literature.

*Enrollment is limited to freshmen and transfers.

IDS 1300 (5): 1492: Europe Faces its Others-Antecedents and Aftermath*

Dr. Eric Griffin
MWF 11, Th 9

This course will consider the inter-relation of the three major historical events of 1492- Columbus's landfall in the New World, the expulsion of the Jews from the Spanish kingdoms, and the fall of Muslim Granada-by observing both the long-standing cultural tensions that produce them, and the new tensions that arise in their wake. While we will consider at several junctures later interpretations, most of our readings will be either from accounts written by the participants themselves, or slightly later works which both draw upon these accounts and transform them fictively. Our readings will include both European voices, and the voices of Europe's Native American, Jewish and Islamic "Others." We will also consider how the Protestant Reformation complicates an already complex situation by multiplying the range of othernesses possible within Christendom itself. Our readings will include, among others, selections from the poet of El Cid, Columbus, Las Casas, Cabeza de Vaca, Bernal Diaz, Hernando De Soto, Desiderius Erasmus, Walter Raleigh, Christopher Marlowe, and William Shakespeare.

Foci: Literature and History

*Enrollment is limited to freshmen and transfers.

IDS 2500 (1, 2): Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance*

Dr. Anne MacMaster
MTWF 9 and MWF 10, Th 8

This course will examine the relationship between Modernism — an international movement in art and literature during the years just before, during, and immediately following the Great War — and the Harlem Renaissance, a flowering of African- American art and literature during the same years. We will read selections from the writings of modernists like Joseph Conrad, T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf as well as selections from Harlem Renaissance writers like Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Nella Larsen, and Claude McKay, and we will discuss the relationship between these two literary movements as well as between each one and its historical contexts. We will consider modernist themes like the individual's alienation in modern society and modernist techniques of fragmentation of the text and stream-of-consciousness narration in the context of historical events and phenomena like World War I and trench warfare, feminism and woman suffrage, and post-war upheaval and the rise of fascism. In exploring the question of whether the Harlem Renaissance is part of modernism or something distinct from it, we will explore particularly American and African-American experiences in this period of the first World War and the decades that followed

*Enrollment is limited to freshmen and transfers.

English Department Courses, Spring 1998

English 1000. Introduction to Interpretation
REQUIRED FOR ENGLISH MAJOR
Suzanne Marrs MWF 9:00
Anne MacMaster TTh 1:30

Students will focus on a variety of interpretive problems and on different kinds of texts, including films; the course introduces students to issues of form and genre and to the techniques necessary for writing within the discipline.

ENGLISH 2020. Survey of British Literature II
Judith Page TTh 10:00
Austin Wilson TTH 10:00
[This is the continuation of English 2010.]

This course is designed to introduce students to the literary history of Britain from its beginnings through the contemporary world, from Beowulf to Virginia Woolf and beyond. In the course of their journey through British literature, students will meet many different writers and read texts representing such genres as lyric and epic poetry, romance, drama, fiction, and the critical essay. Students will also learn some of the ways in which the cultural and historical contexts shape and are shaped by literary productions. [English 2020 will focus on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.]
English 2110/5110. Welty and Faulkner
Suzanne Marrs MWF 10:00

The fiction of Eudora Welty and William Faulkner is typically set in their native Mississippi, yet the two writers create vastly different fictional worlds. We will examine both those worlds and the historical and social contexts which have shaped them. Works to be studied include, As I Lay Dying, Absalom, Absalom, The Hamlet, A Curtain of Green, The Golden Apples, and The Optimist's Daughter. Reading quizzes, mid-term and final examinations, and a term paper will provide the basis for grading. Focus: Authorial or Cultural Studies

English 3100. Medieval Literature
Teresa Faherty TTH 1:30
This course is designed to introduce students to a wide range of themes, genres, and texts written before 1500. The specific topics may include the romance, women's spiritual autobiography, cycle plays, and religious writings. Possible writers might include Chaucer, William Langland, Julian of Norwich, and Marie of France. Focus: Literary History (before 1800)

English 3110/5110 Survey Renaissance Drama
Teresa Faherty T 5:45
The English Renaissance theater was created from the ashes of rejected Catholicism. We will begin with an example of Catholic medieval drama (which was amateur and an offshoot of the liturgy), and then move to early Reformation drama, which likewise aspired to be a didactic tool of the Protestant church. But by the 1580's, Renaissance drama began to flower and to accommodate the work of professional actors and playwrights - Marlowe, Shakespeare, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher. It began to absorb new, non-didactic social functions. Originally Protestant, the English Renaissance theater was eventually banned as immoral by the Puritan avant-garde. The reading list will include plays as well as Renaissance defenses and attacks on the theater by writers who wondered whether actors (the Greek work was hypocrites) were corruptors or benefactors of society. We will also read some critical essays about Renaissance theatrical phenomena, such as transvestitism, children's companies, the role of women as playgoers, and the relationship between theater and ritual in the early modern period. Focus: Literary History (before 1800) or Genre

English 3120. Restoration 18th Century: The Rise of the Novel and a Novel-Reading Public
Lisa Whitney TTH 10:00
Shipwrecked! Seduced! Captured by little people! These are just a few of the situations in which the characters of the 18th century narratives find themselves. You, too, may find yourself experiencing similar adventures in this class as we trace the development of the novel in 18th-century England. We'll read works by Defoe, Richardson, Burney, Swift, and Fielding, among others. These authors made very different choices about how to construct a narrative and what subject matter and themes to treat in their narratives. Their choices say as much about the reading public in 18th-century England as they do about the authors' personal and artistic concerns. If you devour novels like candy and want to see how the form arose, why it became so popular, and what its significance for modern readers may be, this is the place to be! Focus: Literary History (before 1800) or Genre

English 3130. British Romantics II
Judith Page TTH 8:30
This course will focus on writers not covered in Romantic Literature I: Scott, Byron, Hemans, the Shelleys, and Keats, to name a few. The course will reflect exciting developments in the study of Romanticism: the rediscovery of once-popular writers, the availability of some rare texts on the internet, the debate over the canon and the very definition of Romanticism itself. Students will read truckloads of poetry, some non-fiction prose, and a few works of narrative fiction and drama. Both students who have taken part I and those who have not are welcome in this class. Focus: Literary History (after 1800)

English 3180/5180. Modern American Poetry
Greg Miller MW 3:15
Our subject of study will be verse written in the United States since the First World War. Ezra Pound, Robert Frost, Marianne More, Elizabeth Bishop, Allen Ginsberg, Frank O'Hara, John Berryman, Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Nikki Giovanni, Adrienne Rich, Robert Hass, Louise Gluck, Robert Pinsky, Rita Dove, and Frank Bidart may be among the poets we will study together. In reading so many poets, we will develop a sense of the historical development of poetic forms and ideas. We will also study how poets make books of poems, how lyrics can be used to shape a whole. Though we will use anthologies for much of the class, we will also read together such book-length works as Elizabeth Bishop's Geography III, Robert Frost's North of Boston, or Robert Hass's P