English Courses
100 Level courses
123. Intro to Fiction
Do you enjoy reading, watching, or listening to stories, but lack the words to describe why they appeal to you and how they work? This course is designed to increase your interpretive skills by exploring the way fiction writers utilize structure, character, point of view, and other essential elements to provoke and move their readers. We will also explore how fiction writers capture important social and cultural experiences with their works. Readings may include novels, novellas, short stories, flash fiction, and comics. Students may also be invited to try out some storytelling themselves. No seniors.
124. Introduction to Poetry.
Does poetry tend to baffle you, although you know there’s something enticing about it that you’d like to understand better? Or have you enjoyed poetry before and would like to learn more about it? This is the course for you. We will explore many of the ways poets make art out of language, including the visual vistas, soundscapes, and mind-opening ideas that poems can give to their readers. Occasionally we’ll try out some of their creative techniques ourselves, but our consistent focus will be on appreciation and enjoyment. No Seniors.
125. Introduction to Dramatic Scripts.
Students are introduced to the formal aspects of play texts and develop the critical skills necessary to read plays and critique live and video performances. Representative dramas from the Greeks to the present are investigated in terms of character development, dialog, settings and central ideas, as well as their original theatrical contexts: theater architecture, stage conventions, scenic devices, costuming, and acting techniques. The emphasis is on analysis of scripts and the relationship among performance conditions, cultural context and dramatic conventions. Also offered as PCA 125. No Seniors.
190. Introduction to Literary Forms.
In this course, students will be introduced to the concept of literary genres. Each section focuses on a single genre—poetry, fiction, fairy tales, nature writing, graphic novels—with a view to describing and illustrating its major characteristics. We will explore the varieties within generic types, and our selections will be drawn from a wide historical range. As we study the particular literary form, students will also learn to respond critically to the challenges posed by literary texts and receive guidance in the composition of effective written responses to them. Topics vary according to instructor and semester. No seniors.
Sophomore Seminars
200. Sophomore Seminar.
The Sophomore Seminar is a seminar on the enduring value of literature—why we read it, how it brings us pleasure, and how it makes us better people. It examines how literature enables us to imagine new possibilities for ourselves and our world, and how it helps us to connect with ideas we have never considered. It is a seminar that emphasizes the value of literature in a liberal arts education. Topics will vary according to instructor and semester. Sophomores only.
200 LEVEL CREATIVE WRITING COURSES
201. Journalism.
A general study of journalistic principles and methods, as well as extensive practice in the gathering and writing of news. In the first half of the semester, students learn to analyze and compose basic types of stories in a style particular to new media, with an emphasis on accuracy, clarity and efficiency. In the second half of the semester, students practice and refine their reporting skills in an atmosphere closely resembling the conditions of a modern newsroom. They cover actual events of local, state, national and international importance as they unfold in real time—all under the pressure of real deadlines.
209. Internships in Sports Writing.
This internship course is designed for students who are interested gaining real-world experience writing about sports. Students will learn how to track statistics while covering a game, write game stories and feature stories, and will cap the semester with an in-depth piece that explores an issue that affects collegiate student-athletes here at St. Lawrence. Reading assignments will be primarily from The Athletic and The Best American Sports Writing series, and exemplary student work may be featured on the Saints Athletics website. The small-group setting allows for intensive peer group review and students should expect to participate in a collaborative editing process. The internship counts as a creative writing course and is completed in addition to the five courses required for the introductory level of the major.
223. Playwriting.
This course explores the processes of composition characteristic of the playwright. In a series of weekly assignments, various aspects of the art are introduced: dialogue, characterization, dramatic action, and others. The course concludes with the writing of a one-act play. Students read exemplary plays from the modern repertoire. Also offered as PCA 223.
240. Writing in the World.
Students will be introduced to ways that creative writing is revitalized by its commerce with the world—that writing can be a means of understanding, and even an engine of change. Students will produce original creative work (some of which will involve background research), craft critical responses to course readings and activities, and give oral presentations on outside texts. Instructors will offer regular skills lectures, and student pieces will be “workshopped” in small group and whole class settings. Topics and writing genres will vary according to instructor and semester. Open to all students; no previous creative writing experience needed.
241. Techniques of Fiction.
In this introductory course on the basics of writing prose fiction, we will read and analyze a variety of short stories with an eye toward becoming better fiction writers ourselves. By reading diverse authors, periods, and approaches to storytelling, we will become more adept at important techniques such as narrative form, characterization, and point of view. We will compose a series of short exercises that may be reviewed in workshop for possible inclusion in a portfolio of significantly revised and polished work.
242. Techniques of Poetry.
An introductory study of prosody and poetics. Class attention is divided among student writing, theory and published models. Weekly writing assignments address a variety of technical issues connected with both traditional and experimental verse, while reading assignments providing examples to follow or possibilities for further study. Matters of voice, affect, intuition, chance and imagination are given as much attention as those analytic skills necessary for clear communication. All students are required to share their oral and written work for group discussion and critique.
243. Techniques of Creative Non-Fiction.
In this introductory course on the basics of writing literary nonfiction, we will read and analyze a variety of examples of creative nonfiction, including memoirs and personal essays, with an eye toward becoming better nonfiction writers and readers ourselves. By encountering diverse authors, periods, and approaches to storytelling and sharing insights and knowledge about our personal encounters with the world around us, we will improve our application of various important techniques such as form, structure, persona, characterization, and voice. We will compose a series of short exercises that with revisions may become longer memoirs and personal essays to share with the class workshop, and assemble a final portfolio of revised and polished work.
244. Techniques of Screenwriting.
An introductory study of basic technical problems and formal concepts of screenwriting. The study of produced screenplays and formal film technique, along with writing scene exercises, builds toward the construction of a short (50-minute) script. Also offered as PCA 244, and through Film and Representation Studies.
293. A Literary Harvest.
This is a creative writing course in literary nonfiction that focuses on food, food security, and farming. In Closing the Food Gap, Mark Winne talks about affordable access to good, healthy food as an issue of social and environmental justice. While environmental writers and activists such as Wendell Berry, Michael Pollan, and Vandana Shiva have alerted us to the ecological, ethical, and health problems associated with large-scale industrial farming, the North Country has long been a haven for sustainable, small-scale organic agriculture. The course has both a CBL component and a cross-cultural, comparative focus (India). Students will do their CBL work on a local farm or in a food kitchen, and are required to sign up for the CBL lab as well. Prerequisite: ENVS 101. Also offered as ENVS 293.
200 LEVEL Literature Courses
212. The London Stage.
Offered by St. Lawrence’s program in England. Students read, view and discuss plays being produced in London during the semester. The formal study of the plays and their productions is supplemented by frequent attendance at various forms of theatre and occasional tours and lectures. Students with some background in drama may petition to take this course as 312L and substitute an independent project for the regular course work (see below).
215. Dramatic Texts in Context.
This course takes a sustained look at the theatrical and cultural contexts of plays that enable theatre practitioners to make informed choices regarding how to stage them. Topics for the course may be organized through time period – Greek and Roman drama, medieval English drama, contemporary American drama, for instance – or through thematic content: plays across time periods that foreground questions of identity formation, gender, sexuality, religion, class, or politics. Students should expect significant performance work in this class; however, no previous acting experience is required. Also listed as PCA 215.
222. Introduction to Multi-Ethnic American Literature.
This course introduces students to a broad range of literary arts crafted by racial minorities in the U.S. during the last two centuries. The main questions of early ethnic literature revolve around what it means to be a first- and second-generation American: how might we assimilate to this new and exciting country and how can be enrich it? More contemporary authors ask why and how race continues to define the self and how the current generation relates to ethnic traditions that might seem distant. As we read novels, poems, non-fiction, and drama, we will explore this set of questions as well as how the answers might change according to the intersections of gender, sexuality, class, ethnicity, and immigration. This survey course will enable us to glimpse into the experiences and histories of different racial groups: African Americans, Asian Americans, Latino/a Americans, and Indigenous Peoples.
225. English Literature I.
Survey of English Literature I. In this course, students will learn about the history of British literature from the 8th through the 17th centuries. The course invites students to explore developments in British literature through the lens of history and its relation to the development of the concept of the individual as well as competing philosophies of religious, political, and social life. Within this context, the course traces literary movements and the evolution of literary forms. It features a variety of drama, poetry, and some fiction and nonfiction from writers whose gender, class, and cultural outlook vary widely from historical era to era. Some of the texts we read are by famous authors like Chaucer, Shakespeare, or Milton; others are composed by less well-known and even anonymous authors. Some of the texts we read are in languages other than English, so we'll read those in translation, with the exception of Chaucer, whom we'll discover in his original middle English; others employ syntax that, though the same as our modern English, differs in exciting and beautiful ways. With each new text, students will gain a deeper appreciation of the volume, breadth, and variety of written work created in the British archipelago from the Medieval Period to the Restoration. Students contemplating graduate study in English are strongly recommended to take this course.
226. English Literature II.
Survey of English Literature II. In this course, students will learn about the history of British literature starting at about 1700 and extending into the twentieth century and beyond. The course invites students to explore developments in British literature through the lens of history and its relation to competing philosophies of political and social life. Within this context, the course traces literary movements and the evolution of literary forms. It features a variety of fiction, nonfiction, drama, and poetry from writers of different social classes, genders, and cultural traditions. Some of the texts we read are by famous authors like Jane Austen or T. S. Eliot; others are composed by less well-known authors. Students contemplating graduate study in English are strongly recommended to take this course.
228. Irish Literature.
A cultural studies course on 20th-century Ireland, with a focus on literature. Literary texts are contextualized by cinematic and musical sources, history and politics. The course examines the ways literature from the early 20th century and the contemporary period has been used to create and represent the postcolonial nation of Ireland, what stories it tells about history, identity and nationhood. Attention is paid to the vexed relationship between the Irish nation/culture/people and the divided polities that occupy the island today. Authors include Yeats, Joyce, Lady Gregory, Synge, O’Casey, Friel, Nuala O’Faolain, Edna O’Brien, Heaney, Muldoon, Doyle and others. Also offered through European Studies.
230. Introduction to African American Literature.
Beginning with the voices of poet Phillis Wheatley and abolitionist Sojourner Truth and the slave narratives of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, the course traces the vast expressions of the black experience through poetry, political writings and speeches, autobiography, fiction, drama, sermons, and music into the present. The course asks students to connect history and literature to gain an understanding of the black experience and black literary innovations. Writers might include W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Malcolm X, and Toni Morrison. Also offered through African American Studies.
231. Adirondack Literature.
This course explores the literary history of the Adirondacks in an effort to understand how natural and cultural forces have shaped a sense of place in this storied geographic region. We’ll examine a series of colonial encounters between Euro-American and Native American peoples; we’ll study the cult of wilderness and conservation movements that inspired the creation of the Adirondack Park; and we’ll read some works of historical fiction set in the region. Along the way, we’ll ask the following questions: How have different people, over the past three centuries, imagined this natural and cultural landscape? How have they exploited, defined, and defended the Adirondack wilds? And what lessons for the future—environmental, social, or otherwise—can we draw from our study of this particular region?
237. American Literature I.
In this course, we'll study a variety of American literature written between the founding of the Jamestown colony and the U.S. Civil War. Historically, these two events book-end a dramatic period of cultural contact, political conflict, scientific enlightenment, and artistic production in the transatlantic world. To give shape to our survey of American literature, we'll focus on a few primary issues-colonialism, race and slavery, and gender politics-and consider how these issues shaped literary expression in this era. We'll revisit some famous "American" legends, encounter the major thinkers of the "American Enlightenment," and read several works by the canonical writers of the "American Renaissance." We'll also discuss how writers from different backgrounds invoked the idea of "America," how they represented the "American" project, how (or if) a distinctly "American" literature emerged, and why the notion of "America" continues to carry so much cultural baggage.
238. American Literature II.
These courses offer an overview of American literature from the early colonial era to the present, with selections from fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama. Both courses invite students to view American literature through the lens of different historical and literary contexts and both feature writers who helped define the American literary canon. The courses examine the American literary imagination by focusing on a set of key issues that preoccupied the nation: colonial contact and resistance; slavery and abolition; women's rights; environmental politics; the rise of capitalism; modern cities and travel; movements for social justice and equality; and the shifting relationship between self, community, nation, and world. ENG-237 covers writings from the colonial period to 1865; ENG-238 concentrates on literary texts from the Civil War until the early 21st century.
245. Literatures in Context.
In these courses, students will be introduced to the ways in which literary works engage with the world that lies outside the text: historical events, social movements, political issues, artistic trends, scientific developments, geographic regions, and so on. Each course focuses on a specific work or set of works that have developed within particular real-life contexts, and students will learn strategies for analyzing the relationships between texts and contexts. While the course emphasizes critical reading, writing, and research skills, students may also have the opportunity to engage in creative writing as well. This course is suitable for students at any stage of their academic careers. Topics vary according to instructor and semester, so please view specific sections to find the different section descriptions.
250. Methods of Critical Analysis.
This course introduces students to a range of theoretical methodologies used by creative writers and literary scholars. While each section of the course may focus on a different theme or on a different group of primary texts, all sections encourage students to learn and to apply a variety of methods with the goal of crafting critical analyses of literature. In addition, students learn to situate their own critical analyses in conversation with those of other literary scholars, to employ literary and other kinds of evidence in support of their arguments, and to document this research with the conventions most commonly employed in the field of literary study. Students will continue applying the course methodologies in upper-division creative writing and literary studies courses.
253. The Aftermath of Troy.
This course explores the city of Troy and the mythology that grew up around it. Once a flourishing center of trade between the East and West in the ancient world, Troy remained a center of cultural contact long after its physical demise through the stories that Greek and Roman authors told about it. But why did Troy and the actions of Achilles, Hector, Odysseus, and Helen so thoroughly capture the attention of ancient audiences? And why do they continue to fascinate people today? We’ll begin to investigate these questions by delving into the world of ancient Greece and Rome, reading Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil’s Aeneid, and a selection of plays about the heroes of Troy. We’ll also interrogate our own culture, asking why what happened at Troy many millennia ago can become successful motion pictures – like Wolfgang Petersen’s 2004 movie Troy, for instance – and why television shows like The Simpsons and Family Guy can successfully satirize the Trojan War. To complement our study of literature and media, we’ll also consider how the history of Troy’s rediscovery in the nineteenth century and its present day excavation in the city of Hissarlik, Turkey, perpetuate the myth of this famous city.
263. Native American Literature.
This course concentrates on Native American literature printed in English. Some versions will focus exclusively on contemporary fiction; others will take a historical approach to Native writing from the colonial era to the present day; and still others will survey multiple genres, including creation stories, memoirs, nature writing, poetry, short stories, and novels. Students will come to recognize some of the subjects and themes common to Native American studies, and they will learn to examine the forms and techniques of Native American literature. Also offered through Native American Studies.
200 Level Special Topics in language and literature (3,000-3,999)
The content of each course or section of these introductory special topics courses is different and is announced in the Class Schedule. Open to all students.
300 LEVEL CREATIVE WRITING COURSES
306. AW: Advanced Screenwriting Workshop.
An extension and intensification of ENG 244. Students are expected to work independently on the preparation of two feature-length screenplays. Workshop format emphasizes the revision and editing process. Prerequisite: ENG 244. Also offered as PCA306 and through Film and Representation Studies.
308. AW: Advanced Creative Non-Fiction Writing.
Building upon the techniques that we acquired in ENG 243, Techniques of Creative Nonfiction, we will seek to deepen our exploration of writing, reading, and analyzing literary essays by reading a diverse range of authors who challenge basic approaches to writing memoirs and literary essays. We will focus on more nuanced concerns, such as style, voice, narrative stance, and structure, and we may experiment with forms and sub-genres such as the lyric essay, the segmented essay, and other hybrid forms. We will also read theory and criticism on creative nonfiction so as to better understand the possibilities this genre offers writers. In a workshop setting, we will analyze our own work in depth with an eye toward deep, comprehensive revision. Preparing the final portfolio will allow us to learn how to line-edit our prose as well as how to critically situate our own work within the genre. Prerequisite: ENG 243. CBL.
309. AW: Feature Writing/Literary Journalism.
In this course, students study the basic techniques of literary journalism, a specific genre that combines best practices of journalistic reporting with creative writing. Students survey examples of excellent feature stories, develop their own topics, and produce a series of feature stories, experimenting with various sub-genres, story lengths and literary approaches. Prerequisite: ENG 201, 221, 243, or 295.
310. AW: Advanced Fiction Writing.
Building upon the craft techniques that we acquired in ENG 241, Techniques of Fiction, we will seek to expand our repertoire of approaches to writing, reading, and analyzing short fiction. We will do this by reading an eclectic range of authors who challenge basic storytelling approaches by experimenting with structure, style, voice, and point of view. We will also read theory and criticism on writing fiction and the short story so as to better understand the possibilities this genre offers writers. We’ll discuss our writing in a workshop setting, and, in the preparation of a final portfolio, will learn how to line-edit our prose as well as how to critically situate our own work within the genre. Prerequisite: ENG 241.
311. AW: Advanced Poetry Workshop.
An extension and intensification of ENG 242. The class combines workshop critique of student poems with discussions of readings in twentieth century and contemporary poetry (including Modernism, Confessionalism, the Beats, the Black Mountain School, the New York School, and Ellipticism). Poetic theory is also discussed. Students are required to submit a formal manuscript of poems, an arts poetica or manifesto, and to read from their work in public. Prerequisite: ENG 242.
300 LEVEL Literature Courses
307. GS: The Short Story.
In this course, we explore the evolution of the short story—especially in the United States—with special attention to how authors from diverse backgrounds have used this literary genre from the mid-1900s forward. We’ll pay special attention to story collections, including story cycles, graphic stories, novels-in-stories, and thematically-linked stories. We will also explore how authors have utilized the short story’s flexibility to capture and respond to social and political movements, important historical periods, and the influence of technological and cultural changes. Prerequisite: ENG 250.
312. GS: The London Stage.
Offered by St. Lawrence’s program in England. Students attend the same plays as the ENG 212L class but undertake an independent project instead of the regular classwork. Prerequisites: two English courses, one of which must include the study of drama, and permission of the instructor.
315. AS: Chaucer.
This course introduces you to the Father of English literature – Geoffrey Chaucer. Chaucer was the son of a wine merchant, a servant to three kings, a member of Parliament, and an inspired poet. He also was the first author to write in the English language – and what stories he wrote! Examples include The Canterbury Tales (a collection of racy narratives told by pilgrims for entertainment), Troilus and Criseyde (a tragic romance about two lovers separated by the Trojan War), and several dream visions like The Book of the Duchess, The Parliament of Fowls, The House of Fame, and The Legend of Good Women (all poems that explore the reality of waking existence through the subconscious of dreamers). We will examine Chaucer’s prodigious and learned output in the context of his own life and the historical turmoil of the mid- to late-fourteenth century that transformed it, focusing on the complex issues of religion, class, gender, sexuality, politics, and authorial influence with which Chaucer himself engages. Prerequisite: ENG 250. Also offered through European Studies.
316. LT: English Literature of the Middle Ages.
What do you think of when you hear the word “medieval”? King Arthur, Lady Guinevere, and Sir Lancelot? Magic, faeries, and monsters? Bubonic plague? Game of Thrones? All of these answers are right – to certain extents – but would you have guessed that the Middle Ages also left us with the University system and the liberal arts curriculum, cathedrals, and those nativity plays you may have performed in during elementary school? People in the medieval period were smart, innovative, socially and culturally aware, and had a deep sense of piety that they expressed through creative and devotional outlets, one of which was literature. Topics for this course will vary and will be arranged thematically, but will consistently foreground questions about identity formation, prejudices, gender, sexuality, religion, and politics as we interrogate the literature of our medieval past, a literature that thought of itself as modern and cutting edge. Examples of texts and authors you may encounter in this course could include but are not limited to epics like Beowulf, The Tain, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; Old English maxims and riddles; Middle English lyrics; civic and touring drama; saints’ lives; romances like Marie’s Lais and Malory’s Morte D’Arthur; John Gower’s Confession of Love; William Langland’s Piers Plowman; and mystical writings by Margery Kempe, Julian of Norwich, Ricard Rolle, and the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing. Prerequisite: ENG 250. Also offered through European Studies.
319. AT: Shakespeare in Performance.
An intensive study of Shakespeare’s plays in performance, and theories of staging, including original practice and contemporary adaptation on stage and screen. Instructors will select from the tragedies, histories, comedies, and romances for thematic integrity. Students should expect significant performance work. Also offered as PCA 319 and through European Studies. Prerequisite: ENG 250.
320. AS: Shakespeare.
An intensive study of Shakespeare’s plays and their cultural context, including but not limited to the early modern era and successive centuries’ reception and interpretation. Instructors will select from the tragedies, histories, comedies, and romances for thematic integrity. Students should expect some performance work. Also offered as PCA 320 and through European Studies.
324. GS: Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama.
This course surveys early modern English drama from 1580 to 1640, exploring a selection of comedy, tragedy, and history plays written not by Shakespeare but by his contemporaries. We will consider a range of questions about genre, authorship, gender, performance and performance theory, and the transformation of theatrical conventions from the early days of popular theatre to the last years before Parliament closed the playhouses in 1640. A particular point of emphasis will be the plays’ production histories from their earliest stagings to contemporary revivals and adaptations; to this end, we’ll study early modern “original practices” to help us understand what sixteenth- and seventeenth-century spectators would have seen (and heard) when they attended a play at The Rose or Blackfriars theatres. Authors studied may include Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Dekker, Ben Jonson, Thomas Kyd, Thomas Middleton, John Ford, John Webster, and William Heminge. Prerequisite: ENG 250. Also offered through European Studies.
325. LT: Eighteenth-Century English Literature.
From the Financial Revolution to the French Revolution, the eighteenth century was a period of tremendous change. Literature reflects this period of exciting possibilities in new and evolving genres. In studying texts across the century, we examine how authors use significant form to engage both shifting values and timeless questions about what it means to be human. Prerequisite: ENG 250.
328. LT: English Romanticism.
The Industrial Revolution. The French Revolution. Abolition. World exploration. The British Romantic period saw huge paradigm shifts in ideas about human rights, the natural world, and what it meant to be “English.” This period also saw a set of intellectual and aesthetic revolutions that resulted in a nearly complete overturning of what were considered the aims of “good” poetry and fiction. This course will explore the works of Romantic writers and thinkers such as poets William Wordsworth and John Keats, novelists Mary Shelley and Jane Austen, and critics Edmund Burke and Samuel Taylor Coleridge as they responded to these many revolutionary changes. Prerequisite: ENG 250. Also offered through European Studies.
329. GS. The Gothic Novel.
What is a Gothic novel? How and when did this subgenre originate? How have its conventions changed, and why? In this course, we answer these questions while examining how the Gothic reflects shifting concepts of science and religion, humanity and monstrosity, the individual and society. In the process, we will try to understand why the Gothic continues to appeal to readers. What functions does it serve? Prerequisite: English 250. Fulfills HU distribution.
331. LT: American Romanticism: 1830-1860.
In this course students will embark on a wild ride through the canon of mid-nineteenth-century American literature. During this literary odyssey, we’ll explore both land and sea in the company of several great American writers: Cooper, Emerson, Fuller, Thoreau, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman, and Dickinson. Our discussions will highlight the broad philosophical shift from the Enlightenment to Romanticism; the tension between transatlantic contexts and American literary nationalism; the emergence of new forms of environmental aesthetics; and the political agenda of a generation of writers who were committed to radical projects of social reform, sexual freedom, and racial equality. Prerequisite: ENG 250.
334. GS: Reading the Land: Pastoral and Georgic Literature.
Two different ethics have dominated environmental literature since the classical age. The pastoral involves a retreat from society, an escape into the wilderness, and an embrace of rural leisure. Pastoral writing often features shepherds frolicking in fields, tending their flocks, and piping on flutes. In contrast, the georgic celebrates more intensive agricultural labor and promotes an ethic of hard work. Georgic writing often depicts crop-based agriculture, draft animals pulling plows, and farmers who are committed to a particular piece of ground. In this course, we will study the pastoral and georgic modes as they took shape in the work of the Roman poet Virgil, gained popularity in British literature, and then migrated across the Atlantic to America and across genres from poetry into prose. To conclude the semester, we will discuss the emergence of a “new” georgic in response to contemporary environmental concerns. Prerequisite: ENG 250.
339. LT: The Eighteenth-Century Novel.
The novel is a relatively new genre that emerged in the early eighteenth century. Why did the English novel originate at this time? What did authors imagine it as being and doing? And how did the genre evolve during this century? To answer these questions, we will situate the novel within its historical contexts, examine eighteenth-century debates about the form, and read influential examples by writers such as Aphra Behn, Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, Horace Walpole, and Jane Austen. Prerequisite: ENG 250.
340. LT: The Victorian Novel.
The British Victorians ran the mightiest global power of their time and struggled with many of the same issues as we do—both public (technology, prejudice, pollution) and private (love, marriage, family). This course examines their novels within this context, and we will read a selection of works written in both the realistic tradition and in novelistic forms that arose or resurfaced late in the period (science fiction, horror, and detective fiction). Prerequisite: ENG 250. Also offered through European Studies.
346. LT: American Literature and the Environment.
This course explores the relationship between American culture and the natural environment through the lens of literary expression. We will study the evolution of environmental aesthetics from the colonial period through the Romantic era and into the twentieth century. Students will draw upon the insights of environmental history and apply them to literary analysis. The course will generally take shape around a particular theme (e.g., the history of frontier settlement, the politics of wilderness preservation, Adirondack literature, Arctic/Antarctic exploration, animal studies, environmental justice movements, or the desert/ocean aesthetic). Prerequisite: ENG 250. Meets the EL requirement. Also offered as ENVS 346.
349. Modern British and American Poetry.
At its heart, poetry is an intentional arrangement of sound and rhythm. Over time, some of those arrangements have been established as more pleasing, natural, and meaningful, i.e. as poetic conventions. But when the world comes undone, looking and sounding completely different, so too must poetic form. "To break the pentameter, that was the first heave,” Ezra Pound writes. Starting with the “sprung rhythm” of Gerard Manley Hopkins, we will study key innovations of modern poetry such as free verse, intentional “dissonances" and "irregularities,” polyglotism, avant-garde manifestos, and other strange and new shapes, sounds, and rhythms definitive of the 20th century. Particular attention will be devoted to Gertrude Stein, Wallace Stevens, H.D., Claude McKay, T.S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, Langston Hughes, Stevie Smith, and W.H. Auden. Prerequisite: ENG 250.
352. GS: Contemporary Literature and the Environment.
A study of the contemporary literary response to rising national interest in the natural world and rising awareness about the danger to natural resources. Readings are predominantly in prose (novels and essays), with some poetry included. Among the questions the authors ask: as we approach the natural world, how can we move beyond metaphors of dominion? What are the biases of gender, geography, and culture that we bring to our inquiry? What is the relationship between the human and the “natural”? What does it mean to fully invest ourselves in our local environment? Prerequisite: ENG 250. Also offered as ENVS 352, and through Outdoor Studies.
353. AT: Modernist British Fiction.
This course focuses on an era of radical change and experimentation in fictional narrative, during which new ideas in psychology, philosophy, and science accompanied the development of new fictional techniques designed to explore and revise how time and identity might be represented. Readings are largely in British fiction from 1900 to 1930. Prerequisite: ENG 250. Also offered through European Studies.
355. LT: Contemporary British Novel.
This course focuses on the post-World War II British novel. Authors studied have included: Julian Barnes, A. S. Byatt, Angela Carter, John Fowles, William Golding, Kazuo Ishiguro, Doris Lessing, Ian McEwan, Iris Murdoch, V. S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Zadie Smith, and Jeanette Winterson. Prerequisite: ENG 250. Also offered through European Studies.
356. LT: Contemporary American Literature.
How do American writers conceptualize past, present, and future from a contemporary moment, and how does literature structure our contemporary identities in a global age? Focusing on U.S. fiction, this course examines works from the 1950s to the present in historic, social, political, and aesthetic contexts. Course texts engage with a variety of themes related to the construction and deconstruction of American identity. Topics include the culture of the Cold War; postmodernism and paranoia; consumerism and technology; Native American dispossession and resistance; the legacy of slavery; diaspora and displacement; issues of identity and collective memory; border crossing and migration; globalization; and the post-9/11 world. Questioning shifting definitions of citizenship and nationhood in a period characterized by transnational circuits of exchange, we also consider whether it even makes sense to speak in terms of national affiliations and literatures in an era of globalization. Prerequisite: ENG 250.
357. Postcolonial Literature and Theory.
This course introduces a distinct way of organizing literary study, substituting for the study of national traditions the notion of postcoloniality as a global condition affecting not only literature but also categories we use to think about human experience: relations between colonizers and colonized and between culture and power; identity, authenticity and hybridity; roots, motherland, mother tongue; nationality. Readings may include contemporary literature produced in the Indian subcontinent, Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific, Africa, Canada and the Caribbean, as well as important theoretical texts about postcoloniality. DIV13. Prerequisite: English 250. Also offered as Philosophy 357 and Global Studies 357.
364. AS: J.R.R. Tolkien.
This course explores the endlessly alluring world of Middle-earth, which J. R. R. Tolkien was developing throughout the sixty years of his adulthood. Our real-world contexts for this exploration might include his work as a 20th-century scholar of medieval languages and literatures, his service as a lieutenant his during World War I, and his love of the natural world, while our literary contexts might include his translations or rewritings of Anglo-Saxon epic, medieval romance, Norse myth, and Arthurian legend. Certainly, we will be reading The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and selections from Tolkien’s scholarship and short fiction. Prerequisite: ENG 250 or FRPG 1011 (the Tolkien FYP).
368. Contemporary American Poetry
This course examines post-modern American poetics through close attention to collections published after 1970 and traces how contemporary poets have borrowed from, challenged, and continued to develop the poetic theory and social engagement characteristic of major movements like Confessionalism, the Beats, the New York School, the Black Arts movement, and the L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E poets. Prerequisite: ENG 250.
300 Level Projects for Juniors
389, 390. Projects for Juniors.
Student-initiated projects involving significant study and writing carried out through frequent conferences with a faculty sponsor. These projects are completed in addition to the five courses required for the advanced level of the major. Prerequisites: junior standing, a 3.4 GPA in English, and approval by the departmental Honors/Independent Projects committee. Proposals must be submitted to the committee by March 1 of the semester preceding the beginning of fall projects, and by November 1 of the semester preceding spring projects.
300 Level Special Topics in Language and Literature (4,000-4,999).
The content and the studies rubric area of these advanced special topics courses varies, and is announced when the Class Schedule is published prior to registration.
Senior Year Experiences
450. SYE: Senior Seminar.
Senior seminars are designed to provide students with the opportunity to apply the knowledge and skills they have developed in their own progress toward completion of the major. Seminars vary in topic, but each requires participants to complete a substantial writing project and to contribute both formally and informally to classroom discussions. Prerequisites: ENG 250 and senior standing.
489,490. Projects for Seniors.
Student-initiated projects involving significant study and writing carried out through frequent conferences with a faculty sponsor. These projects are completed in addition to the five courses required for the advanced level of the major. Prerequisites: senior standing, a 3.4 GPA in English, and approval by the departmental Honors/Independent Projects committee. English majors who complete a senior project will earn the Honors in English designation if, at the conclusion of the semester they complete their project, their English GPA (including the project grade) is at least 3.7. Proposalsfor fall projects must be submitted to the committee by March 1 of the semester preceding the beginning of fall projects, and by November 1 of the semester preceding the beginning of spring projects.