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English Course Descriptions

Detailed descriptions of all courses are posted in the English department prior to each registration period. These descriptions may be found on the bulletin board near the west end of the second floor of Old Main, and on the department's website at http://www.macalester.edu/english/courses.html.

 

Introductory Writing Courses

 

101 COLLEGE WRITING

Instruction and practice for writing in college. In all sections there will be class meetings for instruction and also individual conferences. In some sections some class meetings will be workshops—students will work collaboratively while researching, planning, drafting, revising, and editing their papers. Readings may be assigned to provide subject matter for papers, or students may be directed to write on topics from other courses they are taking. Specific course descriptions for each section of English 101 will be published with registration materials. This course does not satisfy the general distribution requirement in humanities or the requirements for the English major or minor. See also the paragraph above on writing skills. Every year. (4 credits)

 

120 INTRODUCTION TO CREATIVE WRITING

The focus of this course will be on the development of skills for writing poetry and short fiction through a close study of the techniques involved in these forms, analysis of model literary works, and frequent writing exercises. This course must be completed at Macalester as a PREREQUISITE for the further study of creative writing at Macalester. Every year. (4 credits)

 

125 STUDIES IN LITERATURE

A writing-intensive course in traditional and non-traditional literatures, each section of which will have a different focus, topic, or approach; recent offerings have examined the short story, major women writers, and new international writing. Every year. (4 credits)

 

Introductory and Intermediate Courses

 

Note that students must take one class from those numbered in the 100s other than 101 and 120, as a prerequisite for literature courses numbered 300 and above; English 120, taken at Macalester, is a prerequisite for all further creative writing courses. Advanced Placement credit does not count as a prerequisite, though English 125, taken at Macalester, does count.

 

130 AMERICAN VOICES

American literature contains a greater variety of voices than most other national literatures. Each section of this course explores some aspect of that wide range of voices and may include the writing of women, of minority groups, or of various sub-groups from the dominant literary culture. Consult the detailed course descriptions in the English department or on its web page for the content of individual sections. Every year. (4 credits)

 

135 POETRY

A study of a variety of poets, both past and present, including women and people of color. The course will develop skills of close reading as a basis for interpretation, familiarize students with poetic forms, and consider new approaches to literary study. Every year. (4 credits)

 

136 DRAMA

A study of selected plays from ancient to modern times, with an emphasis on drama in production. We will read the scripts of plays alert for how they convey emotion, thought and meaning and for how they might look and sound on a real stage with its live actors, costumes, sets, props, lights, and sounds. This course does not aim to survey the high points of Western drama but rather to provide opportunities for reading dramatic texts imaginatively and in the context of the living theater. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

137 NOVEL

A study of a small number of works selected to represent the variety of language and structure in this genre. The focus will be on both their characteristics as works of art and on the ways in which they respond to and, in turn, shape the society which gives them birth. Readings will include critical essays on specific novels and on narrative fiction in general. Every year. (4 credits)

 

138 LITERATURE IN THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES

A course in the theory and practice of literary study designed to prepare students for more advanced course work in English and for a lifetime of mature reading. This course develops skills in the close reading and interpretation of literature through discussion of and writing about poetry, fiction, and drama; the study of the theoretical concepts and technical terms used in the study of literature; and discussion of major critical or interpretive approaches to literature. Every year. (4 credits)

 

140 SHAKESPEARE

Shakespeare was recently voted the greatest Briton of all time; he continues to exert a powerful influence over readers, writers, and the popular imagination. This course will offer an introduction to his work through a wide-ranging survey of his major plays in all categories: history, comedy, tragedy, and romance. Plays and topics will vary from year to year. Every year. (4 credits)

 

160 INTRODUCTION TO LITERARY AND CULTURAL THEORY

In the 20th century, the field of literary theory was entirely transformed, borrowing insights from other disciplines and influencing them in turn. Its interactions with politics, philosophy and pop culture have created new insights into cultural theory. This class will survey some of the most controversial schools of recent critical theory, including such topics as the New Criticism, Marxism, the Frankfurt School, psychoanalysis, feminism, structuralism, deconstruction, the new historicism, queer theory, critical race theory, and postcolonial theory. Readings may include essays by T. S. Eliot, Bakhtin, Adorno, Barthes, Kristeva, Cixous, Derrida, Foucault, Jameson, Greenblatt, Penley, Sedgwick, Butler, Gilroy, Anzaldua, or Said. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

260 FILM STUDIES

This course will focus on different topics from year to year. Possible topics include Great Directors, Russian Film, French Film, Film and Ideology, Literature and Film, and Images of Black Women in Hollywood Films. Please consult the specific course description in the English department. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

261 FROM LITERATURE TO FILM: STUDIES IN ADAPTATION

From its earliest days, film has drawn on literature for subject matter and modes of narration. Adaptations of literary sources have formed a significant part of all movies made in the west. This course will study the problems of adapting literature to film, dealing with the representations of time and space in both forms, as well as the differences in developing character and structuring narratives. The course will consider a novel, short story or play each week along with its cinematic counterpart. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

265 JUSTICE (Same as Environmental Studies 265)

In this course we will examine texts by, about, and for workers for social justice. Our method will be interdisciplinary. With an eye toward aesthetics, we will examine novels and plays that have at their center protagonists who have been called to realize a vision of the just society or, more desperately, to stand alone against seemingly inevitable assaults upon human dignity. We will at the same time examine philosophical and sociological accounts of political action, including works that evaluate the effectiveness of different individual and organizational strategies for social change. Central issues may include obedience and disobedience, economic justice, eco-activism, globalization, human rights, gender, race, and the question of personal vocation—that is, how do we bring together our ethical commitments and our working lives? Central figures will range from Sophocles to Naomi Klein, Zola to James Baldwin. Students will be provided extensive opportunities for service and experiential learning in local organizations committed to social justice. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

268 NABOKOV (Same as Russian Studies 268)

The scandal surrounding Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 novel about the nymphet Lolita finally made him a hugely successful celebrity, allowing him to retire from teaching at Cornell University and move to Switzerland to devote himself to fiction, translation, criticism and lepidoptery. This was only one of the many metamorphoses Nabokov underwent while in exile, moving from Russia to the Crimea, Cambridge UK, Berlin, Paris, Cambridge MA, Ithaca, Hollywood, and finally Montreux. Members of the Russian nobility, the Nabokovs lost everything with the 1917 Revolution except for their immense cultural capital, which Nabokov transformed into a tremendously productive career as a writer, critic, translator and scholar in Russian, French, and English. This course examines both the Russian (in translation) and English novels. A merciful defier of national, linguistic, cultural and theoretical categories, Nabokov remains paradoxically elusive and monumental, a thrilling and exasperating genius. Spring semester. (4 credits)

 

270 LITERATURE AND SEXUALITY

This course examines some ways in which literary works have represented desire and sexuality. It looks at how constructions of sexuality have defined and classified persons; at how those definitions and classes change; and at how they affect and create literary forms and traditions. Contemporary gay and lesbian writing, and the developing field of queer theory, will always form part, but rarely all, of the course. Thinkers and theorists may include Ellis, Freud, Klein, Lacan, Foucault, Kristeva, Cixous, Jessica Benjamin, D. A. Miller, Barbara Smith, Sedgwick, or Butler. Poets, novelists, playwrights, memoirists and filmmakers may include Shakespeare, Donne, Tennyson, Whitman, Dickinson, or Henry James; Wilde, Hall, Stein, Lawrence, or Woolf; Nabokov, Tennessee Williams, Frank O'Hara, Baldwin, or Philip Roth; Cukor, Hitchcock, Julien, Frears, or Kureishi; White, Rich, Kushner, Monette, Lorde, Allison, Cruse, Morris, Winterson, Hemphill, or Bidart. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

280 THE CRAFTS OF WRITING: POETRY

This course will focus in a variety of ways on the development of skills for writing poetry, building on the work done in English 120. Depending on the instructor, it may approach the creative process through, for example, writing from models (traditional and contemporary), formal exercises (using both traditional and contemporary forms), or working with the poetry sequence (or other methodology selected by the instructor: see department postings for details). It will involve extensive readings and discussion of poetry in addition to regular poetry writing assignments. The course may be conducted to some extent in workshop format; the emphasis will be on continuing to develop writing skills. Prerequisite: English 120 (Introduction to Creative Writing) taken at Macalester. Every year. (4 credits)

 

281 THE CRAFTS OF WRITING: FICTION

This course will focus in a variety of ways on the development of skills for writing fiction, building on the work done in English 120. Depending on the instructor, it may approach the creative process through, for example, writing from models of the short story (both classic and contemporary), working with the technical components of fiction (e.g., plot, setting, structure, characterization), or developing linked stories or longer fictions (or other methodology selected by the instructor: see department postings for details). It will involve extensive readings and discussion of fiction in addition to regular fiction writing assignments. The course may be conducted to some extent in workshop format; the emphasis will be on continuing to develop writing skills. Prerequisite: English 120 (Introduction to Creative Writing) taken at Macalester. Every year. (4 credits)

 

282 THE CRAFTS OF WRITING: NONFICTION

This course will focus in a variety of ways on the development of skills for writing nonfiction, building on the work done in English 120. Depending on the instructor, it may approach the creative process through, for example, translating personal experience into autobiography or memoir, or developing the essay form, the opinion piece, the journalistic report or a variety of other forms. It will involve extensive readings and discussion of nonfiction in addition to regular nonfiction writing assignments. The course may be conducted to some extent in workshop format; the emphasis will be on continuing to develop writing skills. Prerequisite: English 120 (Introduction to Creative Writing) taken at Macalester. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

283 SCRIPTWRITING

This course will focus in a variety of ways on the development of skills for writing plays. The emphasis will be on written dialogue and dramatic action, with the aim of producing brief scripts. There will be extensive readings and discussion of published and unpublished plays in addition to regular writing assignments. The course may be conducted to some extent in workshop format; the emphasis will be on continuing to develop writing skills. Prerequisite: English 120 (Introduction to Creative Writing) taken at Macalester. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

284 SCREENWRITING

This course will focus in a variety of ways on the development of skills for writing screenplays, building on the work done in English 120. The emphasis will be on narrative films, with the objective of writing a feature-length screenplay during the semester. There will be extensive readings and discussion of published and unpublished screenplays in addition to regular writing assignments. The course may be conducted to some extent in workshop format; the emphasis will be on continuing to develop writing skills. Prerequisite: English 120 (Introduction to Creative Writing) taken at Macalester. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

303 CHAUCER

Geoffrey Chaucer—soldier, bureaucrat, diplomat, and finally poet—is still the most famous of the new English poets that emerged during the period of the Hundred Years' War, but his most famous poem, a series of narrative experiments collected under the title of The Canterbury Tales, remained in fragments at his death in 1400. This course will devote itself to exploring and reassembling this unfinished masterpiece, both in the broader context of the late medieval world, and in the literary context of manuscript culture before the invention of the printing press. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

304 MEDIEVAL MONSTERS, MAGIC, AND MARVELS

Monsters, dragons, demons, magicians, shape-shifters, nature spirits, fairies, giants, cannibals, grotesques, and many other fantastic creatures inhabit the stories, poems, and visual arts of the Middle Ages. (No vampires, to our knowledge.) By surveying as many of these works from Britain as possible, and studying several closely—Beowulf, the Welsh compendium of mythic tales The Mabinogion, The Marvels of the East, Sir Orfeo, Sir Bevis of Hampton, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, bestiaries, prose accounts of King Arthur fighting a cannibalistic giant, pictures and tales of St. George fighting a dragon, at least one of many Grail legends—we will consider subjects like the nature of the uncanny and the fantastic; the ways that monstrosity works out anxieties about unknown others (Easterners, Africans, women, Saracens, Jews); the effects of enchantment, disenchantment, shape-shifting; why monsters fit so well into genres of heroes and of saints; the ways that monster-vs.-hero stories handle the interior strains of change, transformation, growing to adult identity; differences between today's monsters and medieval ones. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

305 FALLING IN LOVE IN THE MIDDLE AGES

Around the twelfth century in Western Europe, passionate love between man and woman became a crucial literary subject; in writing, epic made room for romance and love lyric, and love came to be as important a sphere as war in which to work out a sense of individual identity or even destiny, social bonds, religious issues, family matters. What defines the forms of medieval love in poetry and narrative: How did medieval folks negotiate issues that we now refer to with terms like "gender orientation," "gender identity," the difference between "sex and gender"? What was courtly love—or did it exist at all? What did it offer to expanding articulations of love: surprisingly, Islamic poetry seems to have made major contributions to western ideas of love; what do the poems of medieval Arabic Andalusia contribute to medieval love? How do stereotypes of women and men inform the new ideas of love: What did the cult of the Virgin Mary bring to literary experiences of love? We will study lyrics of Andalusia; men and women troubadour poets; the letters of Heloise, the short verse narratives of Marie de France, and the long verse Arthurian romance Lancelot, or the Knight of the Cart of Crítien de Troyes from the twelfth century; excerpts from Dante's Vita Nuova and Divine Comedy on Beatrice; Chaucer's long romance Troilus and Criseyde. All works will be read in modern English versions. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

309 ANCIENT MYTHOLOGY AND LITERATURE IN ENGLISH

Myths from early Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Celtic traditions, chosen with an eye to later writers' fascination with them, especially in British and American poetry. After an intensive survey of the primary works in translation—Hesiod's Theogony, Homer's Illiad and Odyssey, Ovid's great book of changes the Metamorphoses, Apuleius' The Golden Ass, the Welsh Mabinogion—we will set ourselves to reading some big mythopoeic poems in the English language, with a fat dictionary of mythology and lots of visual representations at hand, to figure out what poets do with myth, why some rebel against it so strongly and repeatedly in their poetry, why it comes to seem coterminous with poetry itself. For research and writing projects, each class member will make herself or himself an expert on one of the gods, one ancient poem, and one later poem in English. Poets to be considered might include Christopher Marlowe, Edmund Spenser, Ben Jonson, John Milton, William Blake, John Keats, Wallace Stevens. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

310 SHAKESPEARE: HISTORIES AND TRAGEDIES

This course will consider links, alterations, and evolution between Shakespeare's early history plays and his tragedies. The course will explore the roots of Shakespeare's plots in historical narratives, and the relationship between history and fiction. Topics will include moral ambiguity and the complex relationship between heroism and villainy. Every year. (4 credits)

 

311 SHAKESPEARE: COMEDIES AND ROMANCES

This course will examine recurring themes and their variations in Shakespeare's comedies, as well as their re-visitation and revision in the later romances. Readings will include both commonly performed plays, and some which might not be included in a one-semester Shakespeare course. Discussions will consider the nature of genre in the period, and Shakespeare's innovations upon them. Every year. (4 credits)

 

312 RENAISSANCE DRAMA

This course examines the theatrical explosion of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, a phenomenon sometimes eclipsed by the fame of its most legendary figurehead, Shakespeare. We will read a selection of plays by Kyd, Marlowe, Jonson, Webster, Middleton, Beaumont and Fletcher. Themes will include staging and performance, meta-theatricality, disguise, revenge, melodrama, transvestitism, and black comedy. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

313 RENAISSANCE POETRY

Lyric and narrative poetry from the end of the Middle Ages to the Restoration, including such texts as the works of Queen Elizabeth I, the sonnets of Sidney and Shakespeare; the epics of Spenser and Milton; the metaphysical lyrics of Donne and Herbert; the neoclassical epigrams of Jonson and Herrick; and the political odes of Marvell. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

314 EPIC TRADITIONS

In English translation, we will read significant portions of epics and origin stories: Homer's Iliad and Odyssey; Gilgamesh; the Aeneid; the Divine Comedy; Milton's Paradise Lost; Derek Walcott's Omeros, a twentieth century reflection on the European literary tradition as engaged by a writer from a colonial culture; and lyrics from the sixth century B.C.E. poet Sappho onward about the splendor and ironies of epic. We will consider questions about how the ideal of the warrior-hero figures masculine identity and male-male relationships; how women characters and the feminine function in different epics; the relationship of the warrior world to the domestic, peacetime world; how their writers think about desire, adventure, death; how the realm of the gods interacts with that of mortals; how the epic came to be thought of as the most ambitious, grandest of all genres. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

315 MILTON

Best known for the epic poem Paradise Lost, John Milton was also a forceful advocate of free speech who lost his eyesight arguing for the overthrow of the English monarchy. This course will explore a range of Milton's writings in prose and verse, from his early lyrics to the longer works of his final decades. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

316 LOVE, DESIRE, SEXUALITY IN THE RENAISSANCE

Visions of erotic love in sixteenth and seventeenth century poetry and narrative. After a survey of major traditions about love from ancient and medieval philosophy and poetry, we will turn to concentrated attention on the forms in which Renaissance writers represented desire, consummation, seduction, betrayal; courtship and marriage; same-sex intimacy; the social, religious, and political demands that complicated eros in personal experience. Thomas Wyatt's lyrics written in the dangerous court of Henry VIII, mythic tales of desire and a play that deals with homosexual desire from Christopher Marlowe, Philip Sidney's sonnet sequence Astrophel and Stella, tales from Edmund Spenser's epic-romance The Faerie Queene, a romantic comedy and a domestic tragedy from Shakespeare, the anti-Petrarchan lyrics of John Donne, Thomas Carew on the ravages of desire, Katherine Phillips; excerpts from John Milton on marriage from his divorce tracts and from Paradise Lost: libertine lyrics by seventeenth century poets. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

320 AGE OF SATIRE

The theory and practice of satire from 1660 to 1800. Emphasis upon British writers such as John Dryden, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, Samuel Johnson, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and Jane Austen, with some attention to Voltaire and other continental writers. The course will examine how they attacked the evils and absurdities of their day and what value their work still has for readers and for satirists of today's society. Recent criticism of this period and satire in general will be considered. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

321 THE BRITISH NOVEL IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

The rise of the novel as illustrated in the works of Aphra Behn, Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, Fanny Burney, Ann Radcliffe, Jane Austen, and others. Emphasis upon the writers' attitudes toward the social and spiritual values of early modern Britain and upon the great variety of forms and moods that invigorated the new genre. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

330 THE ROMANTIC PERIOD

The works of writers such as William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the Shelleys, Lord Byron, John Keats, William Hazlitt, Thomas De Quincey, and Charles Lamb in the context of the rapid cultural changes experienced in Great Britain between the French Revolution of 1789 and the Reform Bill of 1832. Emphasis on the distinctive responses of each writer to these changes, and on the nature of romanticism. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

331 THE BRITISH NOVEL IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

The fiction of such authors as Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, the Brontés, Elizabeth Gaskell, Anthony Trollope, George Eliot, George Meredith, and Thomas Hardy. Individual works will be discussed in relation to the society they mirror and as examples of the novel's evolving form and function. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

332 THE VICTORIAN PERIOD

British literature from the 1830s to about 1900, emphasizing poetry and non-fiction prose by Alfred Lord Tennyson, the Brownings, Matthew Arnold, the Rossettis, William Morris, Algernon Swinburne, Thomas Carlyle, John Stuart Mill, John Ruskin, Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde, and others. Attention is paid to social, economic, political and scientific developments of the age; Victorian music, painting and architecture are briefly examined. This course is usually taught in conjunction with History 353, and when it is, students will be required to register for both courses. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

340 TWENTIETH CENTURY BRITISH LITERATURE

A study of works of British and Irish fiction, poetry, drama, and non-fiction prose from 1900 to the present. Along with novelists such as those enumerated under English 341 below, this course treats selected poets such as W. B. Yeats, W. H. Auden, Stevie Smith, and Philip Larkin, playwrights from the Irish National Theater at the beginning of the century (Lady Gregory, Sean O'Casey, J. M. Synge) through Samuel Beckett to current dramatists such as Michael Frayn or Tom Stoppard, and non-fiction commentary from Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, and others. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

341 TWENTIETH CENTURY BRITISH NOVEL

Fiction from a range of British and Irish novelists, including authors from the early part of the century such as E.M. Forster, Joseph Conrad, D.H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Elizabeth Bowen, along with more recent writers such as Iris Murdoch, Martin Amis, Anita Brookner, Kazuo Ishiguro, Jeanette Winterson, and Julian Barnes. Works will be considered both in their historical contexts and as examples of the evolving form of the novel itself. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

342 ANGLOPHONE LITERATURE

A study of works written in English from English-speaking countries other than the U.S. and Great Britain. Countries whose literature might be examined in this course include Canada, India, Australia, South Africa, and the English speaking countries of the Caribbean. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

350 TWENTIETH CENTURY POETRY

An analysis of twentieth century poetry from such traditional figures as W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Robert Frost through major midcentury poets such as Elizabeth Bishop and Langston Hughes, and up to contemporary writers such as Adrienne Rich, Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott, John Ashbery and C. D. Wright. This course will stress close analytical reading of individual poems. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

351 TWENTIETH CENTURY DRAMATIC LITERATURE

Study of the development of modern drama from Ibsen to the present by reading and discussion of the major late nineteenth century and twentieth century European and American dramatists such as August Strindberg, Henrik Ibsen, Anton Chekhov, Federico Garcia Lorca, Eugene O'Neill, Samuel Beckett, Lillian Hellman, and August Wilson. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

352 GENDERED, FEMINIST, AND WOMANIST WRITINGS (Same as Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies 310)

This course foregrounds how gender constructions and politics inform the writing of a period and place; how various genres use gender-saturated discourses; how the gendered body is represented; images of masculinity and femininity; the status of women as writers, readers, and purveyors of the written word. Examples range from feminist thought in mediaeval women's writing to gender differences in expatriate Black cultural modernism to transnational women's literature on utopia. The course will always emphasize gender as a category of critical analysis, and the ways that reading and writing with an eye to gender can transform the futures of texts and their readers. Instructor and focus will vary. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

367 POSTCOLONIAL THEORY (Same as Humanities and Cultural Studies 367 and International Studies 367)

Traces the development of theoretical accounts of culture, politics and identity in Africa, South Asia, the Caribbean and related lands since the 1947–1991 decolonizations. Readings include Fanon, Said, Walcott, Ngugi and many others, and extend to gender, literature, the U.S., and the post-Soviet sphere. The course bridges cultural representational, and political theory. Prior internationalist and/or theoretical coursework strongly recommended. Alternate years; next offered Spring 2008. (4 credits)

 

368 LITERATURE OF THE AMERICAS

The literature of the United States exists in a broader hemispheric context which will be the subject of this course. The specific focus of this course will vary, but may include Caribbean literature (including francophone and hispanophone in translation), Latin American literature in a comparative U.S. context, Canadian literature, or other combinations in the writings of the Americas. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

369 AFRICAN LITERATURE

A study of the fiction and poetry of writers from sub-Saharan Africa. The focus will be on fiction since 1945, and readings will be taken both from anglophone writers and from francophone and other writers in translation. The specific content of this course may vary. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

370 AMERICAN LITERATURE OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC

This course focuses on American literature from the late 18th century to just before the Civil War. It will be concerned with the ways in which the attempt to build a democratic republic is taken up and critiqued in a range of literature from the period. Included will be such writers as Charles Brockden Brown, Washington Irving, Susanna Rowson, James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allan Poe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Frederick Douglass, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Susan Warner, and Herman Melville. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

371 NINETEENTH CENTURY AMERICAN LITERATURE

This course examines an array of American literature written in the second half of the nineteenth century, including poetry, autobiography, essays, stories and novels. It might focus on a particular moment in the late nineteenth century, a particular group of authors, or a particular thematic concern, but it will be concerned to trace out the complicated relation between literary representation and a rapidly changing social, economic, and political landscape. Authors might include Ralph Waldo Emerson, Frederick Douglass, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Kate Chopin, William Dean Howells, Edith Warton, Henry James, Charles W. Chesnutt, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

372 AMERICAN LITERATURE 1900–1945

America in the first half of the twentieth century seemed to be infatuated with the future—with skyscrapers and automobiles, Hollywood cinema and big business. But in an age that also saw the struggle of Progressivism, the Great Depression, and two foreign wars, many voices called attention to the dark side of success. This course will include such authors as Edith Wharton, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, T. S. Eliot, Zora Neale Hurston, William Faulkner, Willa Cather, Dorothy Parker, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Langston Hughes, Walker Evans and James Agee, Eugene O'Neill, and Dashiell Hammett. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

373 AMERICAN LITERATURE 1945 TO THE PRESENT

The complacent malaise of the Cold War, the turmoil of Vietnam and the Sixties, and the postmodern fascination with computers and visual culture—all of these have had radical consequences for the American literary form. While questioning boundaries between high and low culture, image and reality, and identity and difference, recent American writers work against a pervasive sense of fragmentation to imagine new relations between community and personal desire. The course will consider authors such as Vladimir Nabokov, Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, Ralph Ellison, Walker Percy, John Ashbery, Adrienne Rich, Joan Didion, Tom Wolfe, Robert Stone, Thomas Pynchon, John Guare, Raymond Carver, Toni Morrison, Maxine Hong Kingston, Sandra Cisneros, Art Spiegelman, and Neal Stephenson. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

374 THE AMERICAN NOVEL

Traces the history of the novel in America from its epistolary beginnings in the late 18th century to its postmodern incarnations in the late twentieth century. Possible works will include Hannah Wester Foster's The Coquette, James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans, Herman Melville's Moby Dick, Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage, Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth, Henry James's The Europeans, Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire, and Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

375 AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE TO 1900

This course will trace the development of an African American literary tradition from the end of the eighteenth century to the turn of the twentieth century, from authors such as Phillis Wheatley and Olaudah Equiano to Frances Harper and Charles Chesnutt. The course will investigate the longstanding project of writing an African American self as both a literary and a political subject, and it will consider texts from multiple genres—such as lyric poetry, protest poetry, slave narratives, spirituals, folktales, personal correspondence, essays, short stories, autobiographies, novels, transcribed oral addresses, and literary criticism and theory. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

376 AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE FROM 1900 TO THE PRESENT

This course will trace the development of an African American literary and cultural tradition from the turn of the century to the present, from writers such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Pauline Hopkins to Walter Mosley and Toni Morrison. It will examine the ways that modern and contemporary African American writers and artists have explored political, social, racial, and aesthetic issues in a variety of genres—including autobiographies, poetry, novels, blues songs, photographs, short stories, plays essays, film, visual art, and literary and cultural criticism. Among the many topics the course will consider are: the Harlem Renaissance, the Great Migration, the Black Arts Movement, and the current flourishing of African American arts and letters and cinema. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

377 NATIVE AMERICAN LITERATURE

A study of fiction and poetry by American Indian writers, e.g., N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Silko, James Welch, Louise Erdrich, Gerald Vizenor and others. This course is a study of voices built on an absence of place and identity. The voices are in the process of what Gerald Vizenor calls "Survivance." Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

379 TOPICS IN NINETEENTH CENTURY AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE

This course will explore African American writing of the nineteenth century and, depending on the instructor, may focus on a particular genre (e.g., The Autobiographical Tradition, Abolition and Authorship, From Nonfiction to Fiction), or on particular authors (e.g., Frederick Douglass, Frances Harper, Charles Chesnutt). Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

380 TOPICS IN TWENTIETH CENTURY AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE (Same as American Studies 380)

This course will explore African American cultural production during the twentieth century and, depending on the instructor, may focus on a particular genre (e.g., novels, short stories, drama, poetry, detective fiction, speculative fiction, film), or on a particular period (e.g., the Harlem Renaissance, the 1950s, the Black Arts Movement, the Contemporary), or on a particular theme (e.g., African American Women's Writing, the Politics of Modern African American Literature), or on a particular author (e.g., Du Bois, Hughes, Hurston, Wright, Brooks, Baldwin, Wideman, Morrison, Parks). Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

381 LITERATURES AND CULTURES OF THE CARIBBEAN

This course will focus primarily on the writing but also on the music and film of the Caribbean. It will examine the works of authors such as Derek Walcott, V.S. Naipaul, Jamaica Kincaid, Merle Hodge, George Lamming, Edwidge Danticat, Frances Aparicio, Rosario Ferre, Mayra Santos-Febre, Ana Lydia Vega, Reynaldo Arenas, Deborah Pacini Hernandez, Maryse Condé, Lyonel Trouillot, René Depestre, Patrick Chamoiseau, and Aim\ea Césaire. It will also examine the works of musicians and performers such as Attila the Hun, Bob Marley, Jimmy Cliff, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Boukman Eksperians, Manno Charlemagne, and Haitiando. The course will cover multiple literary genres—among them, calypso, ska, reggae, compa, music rasin, and troubadou. The course material may also include Caribbean films, such as "The Harder They Fall," "Life and Debt," and "Haiti: Killing the Dream." Finally, the course will include extensive readings in literary and postcolonial theory, situating the literature, music, and film within specific historical, political, regional, ethnic, linguistic, national, and postcolonial contexts. Theorists will be chosen from among Paul Gilroy, Antonio Benitez-Rojo, Kamau Brathwaite, Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Michael Dash, Paul Farmer, Mimi Sheller, Joan Dayan, Laennec Hurbon, Edouard Glissant, Françoise Lionnet, and others. The course may focus on Anglophone, Francophone, and/or Hispanophone texts and be team-taught by faculty from English, French and Francophone studies, and/or Hispanic and Latin American studies departments. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

382 TOPICS IN AFRICAN DIASPORIC LITERATURE, CULTURE AND THOUGHT

The focus of this course is on the literary, cultural and philosophical productions of "blackness" that have preoccupied African Diasporic writers, philosophers, activists and artists from the Eighteenth century to today. Every semester, the course will focus on a specific literary, cultural and or theoretical movement or topic such as Negritude, the Black Arts Movement, Black British Literature, Black subjectivity, Black Nationalism, or African American Literature and Culture from Europe. Writers and theorists may include Prince Hall, Mary Seacole, Olaudah Equiano, Martin Delaney, W.E.B. Du Bois, Mary Church Terrell, Aimé Césaire, René Maran, George Padmore, Frantz Fanon, Richard Wright, Grace Nichols, Ann Petry, Paule Marshall, Maryse Condé, Patrick Chamoiseau, Paul Gilroy, Hazel Carby, May Ayin and Joanne Traynor. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

383 INTRODUCTION TO TWENTIETH CENTURY GAY AND LESBIAN LITERATURE

This course traces the broad literary history of gay and lesbian novels and poetry in English. It begins with a look at the earliest invention of the "invert," "Uranian" and/or "homosexual" in biology, psychology and sociology before moving to the early twentieth century novels that were influenced by these theories. The focus of this course is to trace the ways in which gay and lesbian identity has been constructed as both a model for the "homonormative" and/or a critique of the heteronormative by drawing heavily upon conservative and progressive notions of race, class and gender. Writers may include: Radclyffe Hall, E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, William S. Burroughs, Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, Leslie Feinberg, Paul Monette, and Jackie Kay. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

384 LANGSTON HUGHES: GLOBAL WRITER (Same as International Studies 384)

The great African American writer Langston Hughes (1902-1967) is best know as the poet laureate of the Harlem Renaissance. But his career was vaster still. He was a Soviet screenwriter, Spanish Civil War journalist, African literary anthologist, humorist, playwright, translator, social critic, writer of over 10,000 letters, and much more. This course engages Hughes's full career, bridging race and global issues, politics and art, and makes use of little-known archival materials. Next offered Spring 2008. (4 credits.)

 

390 WOMEN AND VOICE: ROOTS OF A FEMINIST IDEA

Who is speaking, especially when a male author represents a woman speaker? Why does second-wave feminism invest so much urgency in the notion that women must have a voice? Why does literature and art so often associate the feminine with voice and sound: What do poets and artists do with tropes of the maternal voice, the singing woman, the operatic diva, the garrulous woman, women's sharp tongues (and, in real life, brutal scold's bridles), the maternal lullaby, the "sonorous cavern" of the womb, the music lesson in which the instructor is a man, the student a woman keyboard player, for example? How do feminist theorists intervene in these traditions, turn them to account, make something of them? Who is speaking, and why does it matter? Readings will include: the Biblical Wisdom books; Sappho's poetic fragments, and later writers' poems on Sappho; Ovid's Heroides, his verse epistles written by the famous women of ancient myth, usually to the men who have abandoned them; Chaucer, the Wife of Bath's Prolouge and Tale—the most indefatigable speaker in English writing—and the Clerk's Tale of Patient Griselda, the most silent suffering woman; Erasmus, The Praise of Folly; H. Cixous, "The Laugh of the Medusa"; Irigaray's reading of Plato from Speculum of the Other Woman; Kaja Silverman, The Acoustic Mirror; Sigmund Freud's infamous case history of Dora. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

401 HISTORY OF A LITERARY GENRE

A look at the development of one major literary genre or mode across several historical periods, with sustained scrutiny of key examples, and attention to the relevant criticism and theory. A given year and section might cover the history of lyric poetry, with examples from Sidney to Seamus Heaney; or the history of the novel, from Richardson or Fielding to Toni Morrison or David Foster Wallace; or the history of satire and irony, from Swift to contemporary practitioners. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

402 SEMINAR IN BRITISH AUTHORS

A study of single authors, pairs of authors, or related groups of authors: e.g., the metaphysical poets, Jane Austen, William Wordsworth and John Keats, the Pre-Raphaelites, the Bloomsbury group. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

403 SEMINAR IN AMERICAN AUTHORS

A study of single authors, pairs of authors, or related groups of authors: e.g., Herman Melville; Mark Twain and Emily Dickinson; Henry James and his circle; William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor; Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

404 SEMINAR IN CONTEMPORARY THEORY AND CRITICISM

Depending on the instructor, this advanced course will either focus on a specific kind of literary or cultural theory (like Marxism, psychoanalysis, or postcolonial theory), or present a series of readings of literary or cultural materials unified by a coherent theoretical perspective. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

405 ADVANCED WRITING WORKSHOP

This creative writing workshop will center on work in a chosen genre (fiction, non-fiction, poetry, scriptwriting) written by class members, with a strong secondary emphasis on the development of group critical skills. Through the presentation of new and revised work, critiquing of work-in-progress, and discussion of extensive reading in contemporary writing of the chosen genre, the workshop will focus on developing constructive criticism of the writing of participants. Prerequisites: English 120 (Introduction to Creative Writing), and either 280, 281, 282, or permission of the instructor. Every year. (4 credits)

 

406 PROJECTS IN CREATIVE WRITING

This seminar will provide a workshop environment for advanced students with clearly defined projects in poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, drama or a combination of genres. The seminar will center initially on a group of shared readings about the creative process and then turn to the work produced by class members. Through the presentation of new and revised work, and the critiquing of work-in-progress, each student will develop a significant body of writing as well as the critical skills necessary to analyze the work of others. By permission of instructor. Every year. (4 credits)

 

410 COMPARATIVE STUDIES

This comparative course will focus on two or more authors of different nationalities (e.g. Proust, Joyce and Beckett; or Dante, Pound and Eliot) or a comparison of literary movements (e.g. the Irish Renaissance and the Harlem Renaissance) or a study of transnational movements, such as romanticism or the symbolist movement. Alternate years. (4 credits)

 

412 THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE

This course will give students the exciting opportunity to see a variety of plays and theatrical events currently being performed in the Twin Cities. Each week we will attend a performance and/or hear from guest speakers (directors, actors, playwrights, designers). Plays will be considered along with readings in performance theory, cultural theory, and theatre history. Response papers, a group presentation and a final project/along with class participation and attendance at all plays will be required. The class is limited to 12 students and must have the permission of the instructor. Alternate years.(4 credits)

 

604 TUTORIAL

Closely supervised individual or small group study in which a student explores a selection of texts differing from what is usually covered in the department's established courses. Prerequisites: sufficient preparation in English courses to provide the necessary context for the area of study chosen and permission of the instructor. Application must be made through the chair of the English department on a form available from the departmental office. Every semester. (4 credits)

 

614 INDEPENDENT PROJECT

Production of original work, either scholarly or creative, of substantial length, such as an honors project, which may develop out of study done in English 604, or previous course work. Prerequisites: sufficient preparation, demonstrated ability, and permission of the instructor. Application must be made through the chair of the English department on a form available from the departmental office. Every semester. (4 credits)

 

624 INTERNSHIP

Work in practical (usually off-campus) experiences that explore potential careers, apply an English major's skills, or make a substantive addition to the student's knowledge of literary issues. Prerequisites: sufficient preparation in courses to provide the necessary background, consent of the instructor and sponsor, and completion of an Internship Learning Contract (signed by the Director of Internships and the faculty sponsor). Every semester. (1–4 credits.)

 

634 PRECEPTORSHIP

Work assisting a faculty member in planning and teaching a course. Prerequisite: invitation by a faculty member. Every semester. (4 credits)

 

644 HONORS INDEPENDENT

Independent research, writing, or other preparation leading to the culmination of the Senior Honors Project. Every semester. (1–4 credits)

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