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*Note: In 1995, the English undergraduate curriculum was revised, with many courses being re-numbered. The course numbers given for each quarter are the numbers which were current at the time, and which will appear on a student's transcript for that quarter.
Readings will consist of works (in different genres) by British writers of the 19th and 20th centuries who "didn't like the way things were going" or who presented accounts of aspects of British life ignored or minimized by their more complacent contemporaries. Tentative reading: Cobbett, Dickens, Mayhew, Butler, Lawrence, Waugh, Orwell, Amis, Larkin. (Satisfies Period 3 requirement for majors.)
A look at some medieval English literature, with particular emphasis on Chaucer and the Canterbury Tales, which has been described as providing (among other things) a "National Portrait Gallery." Students iwll be encouraged to compare and contrast what Chaucer provides with contemporary instnaces of English personalities, "pilgrimages," and popular fictions. (Satisfies Period 1 requirement for majors.)
(No description printed this year.)
(No description printed this year.)
Dozens of plays are on-stage in London at any time--revivals, new productions, musicals, repertory theatre. We'll attend a range of plays on London stages; we'll read scripts and reviews before we go, and review productions for ourselves in subsequent classes. Included will be productions from the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre, front-line West End houses, and the Fringe. Written work will consist of short evaluations of productions from a variety of poitns of view. (Satisfies Period 5 requirement for English majors.)
British mailboxes have two slots, one labelled "Country," the other "London and Abroad." This course will use this odd dividing of the world as a vehicle to explore London and some of the surrounding countryside. We'll read works of nineteenth and early twentieth century fiction (with a few poems from earlier centuries thrown in) that set Country in contrast to City. We'll also visit landmarks in and around London to recreate as best we can the times and places of the past, and written work will be short assignments linking the works we read to their landmarks. Reading will include Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice; Charles Dickens, Great Expectations; Robert Lewis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; Arthurh Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles; Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest; Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway.(Satisfies Period 3 requirement for English majors.)
A study of British schools today, from primary through university level, with the focus on the similarities and especially the differences between British methods of teaching composition and literature and those commonly employed in the U.S. The course is taught by Peter Buckroyd, who, as well as serving as administrator in London for the UW Spring Quarter in London, is Chief Examiner for various O and A level examinations in language and literature.
Decision making in contemporary Britain: a rapid survey of twentieth-century history, followed by an explanation of such British institutions as the monarchy, Parliament, the judicial system, business adn labor organizations, the media, political parties. Throughout the coruse comparison will be made with the U.S.A. We will visit Parliament and such venues as the political party headquarters for discussion with party staff. Students will have access to a series of meetings at the House of Commons for young people to meet and question government ministers.
We will see and read (or read and see) eight or nine plays. We will be dependent on what's being produced, but a typical season should include, in addition to Shakespeare, a selection of traditional and contemporary English drama, something from the American theatre, and at least one English musical, a form in which the English ahve supplanted their American predecessors as the premier creators and performers. We will discuss the difference bedtween the experience of performance and the experience of a text, between drama as a private and as a communal experience. (Satisfies Period 5 requirement for English majors.)
We will read five or six novels, from Austen to Murdoch, with special emphasis on the locales in which they take place, all of which we should be able to visit. We will see how place can function in fiction: as an eloquent backdrop; as a virtual character in itself, seeming to initiate and determine events; as an extension of human consciousness, as thought gains its language from the available land- or city-scape. Additional topics of discussion will include the changing characteristization of women, the possibilities of narrative, and the arrival (there will be a dubloon for the first to spot it) of something called modernism. Possible list of texts: Jane Austen, Persuasion; Charles Dickens, Bleak House; Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles; Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent; Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway; Iris Murdoch, Under the Sea. (Satisfies Period 3 requirement for English majors.)
This course is intended to be interdisciplinary. The material for the course is drawn from London itself and makes particular use of art galleries and the architecture of London. Students will be expected to gain an appreciation of cultural history and to gain insights into particular periods of British culture by an examination of painting, sculpture, architecture and literature in various combinations. The lecture room material will be complemented by slides and the whole course will focus on walks, gallery and site visits.
Decision making in contemporary Britain: a rapid survey of twentieth-century history, followed by an explanation of such British institutions as the monarchy, Parliament, the judicial system, business adn labor organizations, the media, political parties. Throughout the coruse comparison will be made with the U.S.A. We will visit Parliament and such venues as the political party headquarters for discussion with party staff. Students will have access to a series of meetings at the House of Commons for young people to meet and question government ministers.
We will read (and try to experience, through theatre trips and poetry readings) some of the startling diversity of poetry and drama in Engladn today. Contemporary Britain is marked by political and cultural ferment and challenge to established practices, and much of this is vividly articulated in the literature. Poets to be read include Ted Hughes, Geoffrey Hill, and Tony Harrison; and playwrights will include Harold Pinter, Caryl Churchill, David Hare and Tom Stoppard. If time permits we may even sneak in two very contrasting novels by Margaret Drabble and Salman Rushdie respectively. (Satisfies Period 5 requirement for English majors.)
This is an introduction to the systematic study of the English language using linguistic methods. Many of the elements of the standard ENGL 390 course will be covered, but here specifically with a cross-cultural and cross-dialectical emphasis. As Americans living for a period in London, you can reasonably think of yourselves as visiting anthropologists, participant-observers of a strange and barbarous tribe. Once you have a good sense of the phonetics and phonology of your own American dialect(s), we will be able to compare your pronunciation with those of colloquial London English and British Received Pronunciation (i.e., the prestige British accent). Similar comparisons will be made of morphology, syntax and usage, and interactional routines. (Satisfies Language/Theory requirement for Englihs major with Writing Emphasis.)
This course is intended to be interdisciplinary. The material for the course is drawn from London itself and makes particular use of art galleries and the architecture of London. Students will be expected to gain an appreciation of cultural history and to gain insights into particular periods of British culture by an examination of painting, sculpture, architecture and literature in various combinations. The lecture room material will be complemented by slides and the whole course will focus on walks, gallery and site visits.
Decision making in contemporary Britain: a rapid survey of twentieth-century history, followed by an explanation of such British institutions as the monarchy, Parliament, the judicial system, business adn labor organizations, the media, political parties. Throughout the coruse comparison will be made with the U.S.A. We will visit Parliament and such venues as the political party headquarters for discussion with party staff. Students will have access to a series of meetings at the House of Commons for young people to meet and question government ministers.
Though there are still visible Londons that can take us back as far as the Middle Ages, they can be seen now only in glimpses; it is mostly the London of this century that can be seen fully, in works of literature and in the city surrounding us. Texts here will include novels by John Galsworth (The Man of Property), Virginia Woolf (Mrs. Dalloway), Iris Murdoch (Under the Net), and Margaret Drabble (The Needle's Eye), a poem by T. S. Eliot (The Waste Land), and some contemporary British theatre. (Satisfies Period 5 requirement for English majors.)
The English have always idealized their countryside as they ignored and partly abandoned their great industrial cities. England is a green and pleasant land, writes Blake; God made the country, man made the town, echoes Cowper. Yet some of the most powerful writing about the countryside is about kidnapping, rape, and murder. In addition to some classic novels of which this is true (Hardy's Tess of the Durbervilles, Collins's The Woman in White, Swift's Waterland), we will read some thrillers and mysteries by such authors as (depending on their availability, Dick Francis, Edmund Crispin, Conan Doyle, and Agatha Christie. (Satisfies Period 3 requirement for English majors.)
This course is intended to be interdisciplinary. The material for the course is drawn from London itself and makes particular use of art galleries and the architecture of London. Students will be expected to gain an appreciation of cultural history and to gain insights into particular periods of British culture by an examination of painting, sculpture, architecture and literature in various combinations. The lecture room material will be complemented by slides and the whole course will focus on walks, gallery and site visits.
Decision making in contemporary Britain: a rapid survey of twentieth-century history, followed by an explanation of such British institutions as the monarchy, Parliament, the judicial system, business adn labor organizations, the media, political parties. Throughout the coruse comparison will be made with the U.S.A. We will visit Parliament and such venues as the political party headquarters for discussion with party staff. Students will have access to a series of meetings at the House of Commons for young people to meet and question government ministers.
Students taking this course will be asked, first, to be good travelers--which means being adventuous, inquisitive, observant; keeping one's eyes open, ears cocked, and noses, taste-buds, etc., alert. Or, simply, paying attention to the details, great and small, of novel surroundings. Secondly, they'll be asked to do a fair amount of writing, in the form both of an ongoing journal and also of a number of short, specific, varied essays and articles. (Counts as upper-division writing course for English majors with Writing Emphasis.)
Professor William Dunlop
Of the authors of one of the books we'll be reading, a critic remarked,
"They held the mirror up to nature, and there was a comic face in the glass."
This description should hold pretty good for all the books (nineteenth- and
twentieth-century novels and some poetry) in this course, of which the keynote
will be comic realism. But remember that "comic" covers a lot of territory
(including both the kind of gentle self-deprecation which is an English foible
and also considerably more savage or more essentially serious stuff), and
also that a diet of realism probably goes down better when spiced with the
occasional dash of fantasy or the surreal. And we'll be just as "site-specific"
as we can. (Satisfies either Period 3 or Period 5
requirement for English majors.)
Professor Peter Buckroyd
This course is intended to be interdisciplinary. The material for
the course is drawn from London itself and makes particular use of art galleries
and the architecture of London. Students will be expected to gain an
appreciation of cultural history and to gain insights into particular periods
of British culture by an examination of painting, sculpture, architecture
and literature in various combinations. The lecture room material
will be complemented by slides and the whole course will focus on walks,
gallery and site visits.
Professor Dimitri Coryton
Decision making in contemporary Britain: a rapid survey of twentieth-century
history, followed by an explanation of such British institutions as the
monarchy, Parliament, the judicial system, business adn labor organizations,
the media, political parties. Throughout the coruse comparison will
be made with the U.S.A. We will visit Parliament and such venues as
the political party headquarters for discussion with party staff. Students
will have access to a series of meetings at the House of Commons for young
people to meet and question government ministers.
This class offers students the best way of discovering, communicating, and retaining their experiences in London and England--through written words. You'll need to observe and hear carefully, to be inquisitive and adventurous, as explorers of the daily--and nightly--atmosphere of London. From these details, great and small, will emerge ongoing travel journal and some essays, poems, and stories for those so inclined. (Counts as upper-division writing course for English majors with Writing Emphasis.)
We will read writers of two types: those well-centered in the literary establishment of 20th-century London by virtue of birth and education (Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster); newcomers from abroad darwn to London as the center of culture and power (T. S. Eliot and Katherine Mansfield). We'll then compare these images of London with those offered by more recent writers. REeading, talking, writing, all informed by visits around London to see what inspired it all. (Satisfies Period 5 requirement for English majors.)
This course is intended to be interdisciplinary. The material for the course is drawn from London itself and makes particular use of art galleries and the architecture of London. Students will be expected to gain an appreciation of cultural history and to gain insights into particular periods of British culture by an examination of painting, sculpture, architecture and literature in various combinations. The lecture room material will be complemented by slides and the whole course will focus on walks, gallery and site visits.
Decision making in contemporary Britain: a rapid survey of twentieth-century history, followed by an explanation of such British institutions as the monarchy, Parliament, the judicial system, business adn labor organizations, the media, political parties. Throughout the coruse comparison will be made with the U.S.A. We will visit Parliament and such venues as the political party headquarters for discussion with party staff. Students will have access to a series of meetings at the House of Commons for young people to meet and question government ministers.
Students will be asked to keep an ongoing journal recording their adventures and observations while in England, and to write a number of short, specific essays. They'll begin by exploring and writing about London, then move on to the near-retreats of city dwellers (Brighton, Bournmouth, Oxford, Cambridge, etc.), and finally to a literary adventure--tracing the route of Chaucer's pilgrims to Canterbury, visiting Penshurst, or Stonehenge, looking for ruined sheep-cotes in the Lake Country, or an industrial hell in the north, straining to see France from Lyme Regis, or any other literary adventure that haunts the imagination. (Counts as upper-division writing course for Enlgish majors with Writing Emphasis.)
We'll read seven to eight plays and see them in production in a variety of venues which make up London's theatre scene: the National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company's London Theatre (Barbican), the West End, and "the fringe." We will also take one field trip to Stratford to see a play there. What we read and see will depend on what's on in London and Stratford during spring 1994, though we'll try for plays that have mattered in the history of drama. It should be possible to do at least one Shakespeare, one Restoration-18th-century comedy, two modern plays, and two contemporary plays. We'll also take advantage of what backstage tours we can and participate in discussions with directors and actors. (Satisfies Period 5 requirement for English majors.)
This course is intended to be interdisciplinary. The material for the course is drawn from London itself and makes particular use of art galleries and the architecture of London. Students will be expected to gain an appreciation of cultural history and to gain insights into particular periods of British culture by an examination of painting, sculpture, architecture and literature in various combinations. The lecture room material will be complemented by slides and the whole course will focus on walks, gallery and site visits.
Decision making in contemporary Britain: a rapid survey of twentieth-century history, followed by an explanation of such British institutions as the monarchy, Parliament, the judicial system, business adn labor organizations, the media, political parties. Throughout the coruse comparison will be made with the U.S.A. We will visit Parliament and such venues as the political party headquarters for discussion with party staff. Students will have access to a series of meetings at the House of Commons for young people to meet and question government ministers.
Shank's mare and a sharp pencil. With a book in the duffle and a poem in the heart, like rovers always, we'll ramble and gape; like naturalists, we'll note; like students, we'll read; like cuttlefish, we'll transform experience into ink, and read ourselves along the way. Specimen texts, and a sketch a week: landscapes, portraits, dialogues, verses, street scenes, true life accounts, and taller tales, likely. (Counts as upper-division writing course for English majors with Writing Emphasis.)
One hundred years ago what we now call "Hardy Country"--SW of London along the English Channel--was already no more than a short train ride from the metropolis and yet to the citizens of each, the other was another country that would require literary initiation. In this course we will bridge the gap between the city and the country with the help of fiction, visual art and travel. Charles Dickens (Oliver Twist) and Virginia Woolf (Mrs. Dalloway) take us to opposite ends of London in the 1930s and 1920s. Jane Austen (Persuasion) and Thomas Hardy (Tess of the D'Urbervilles) present alternate rural lives within a few miles (and quite a few years) of each other. A mid-20th century novel, John Fowles' French Lieutenant's Woman recreates both the world of 19th-century fiction and its geography by shuttling its characters between London and the same southwest coast that we will have seen in Austen and Hardy. Peter Vansittart's London: A Literary Companion is an excellent panorama of its subject. Our own vision of late 20th-century London and the countryside will be juxtaposed against the vision of landscape painters, urban illustrators and photographers. (Bring your notebook, sketchbook, and camera.) (Satisfiesd Preiod 3 or Period 5 requirement for English majors.)
This course is intended to be interdisciplinary. The material for the course is drawn from London itself and makes particular use of art galleries and the architecture of London. Students will be expected to gain an appreciation of cultural history and to gain insights into particular periods of British culture by an examination of painting, sculpture, architecture and literature in various combinations. The lecture room material will be complemented by slides and the whole course will focus on walks, gallery and site visits.
Decision making in contemporary Britain: a rapid survey of twentieth-century history, followed by an explanation of such British institutions as the monarchy, Parliament, the judicial system, business adn labor organizations, the media, political parties. Throughout the coruse comparison will be made with the U.S.A. We will visit Parliament and such venues as the political party headquarters for discussion with party staff. Students will have access to a series of meetings at the House of Commons for young people to meet and question government ministers.
In this class we will read 20th-century novels set in London (Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent, Iris Murdoch's Under the Net, Kingsley Amis's Girl 20), using them to get a sense of an earlier and still-present London. As we explore London through these books, we will also be exploring the London we are living in. I hope that the books will gain resonance from our being there, and that our walks in the city will be informed by what Woolf and others have taught us. Expect a good deal of writing for the class, writing that will be "about" the books in the usual academic sense, and other writing that will make up your London journal. A camera will be sueful for making your journal, as will sketching material if you draw. (Satisfies Period 5 requirement for English majors.)
This course is intended to be interdisciplinary. The material for the course is drawn from London itself and makes particular use of art galleries and the architecture of London. Students will be expected to gain an appreciation of cultural history and to gain insights into particular periods of British culture by an examination of painting, sculpture, architecture and literature in various combinations. The lecture room material will be complemented by slides and the whole course will focus on walks, gallery and site visits.
How theater works. In a variety of settings--ranging from commercial West End productions in Victorian proscenium arch theaters to plays performed in a room above a pub and in a black box. From a variety of periods, from Shakespeare down to modern experiments. Sutdents will read a text of the play, where available, but the emphasis will be on theatrical realization rather than textual analysis. (Counts as upper-division elective within the English major.)
Decision making in contemporary Britain: a rapid survey of twentieth-century history, followed by an explanation of such British institutions as the monarchy, Parliament, the judicial system, business adn labor organizations, the media, political parties. Throughout the coruse comparison will be made with the U.S.A. We will visit Parliament and such venues as the political party headquarters for discussion with party staff. Students will have access to a series of meetings at the House of Commons for young people to meet and question government ministers.
Students taking this course will be asked, first to be good travelers, which means being adventurous, inquisitive, observant; keeping eyes open, ears cocked, and nosess, taste-buds, etc., alert. Secondly, they'll be asked to do a fair amount of writing about their experiences in a strange land, in the form both of an ongoing journal and also a number of short, specific varied essays and articles. Apart from a few handouts, there's no text: we create our own. (Counts as upper-division writing course for English majors with Writing Emphasis.)
This course will be about arriving in London. We will read one non-fiction book about being a greenhorn there (Jonathan Raban's The Soft City) and three short novels on the same subject (Margaret Drabble's Jerusalem the Golden, Timothy Mo's Sour Sweet, and Buchi Emecheta's Second Class Citizen). We will pay attention in writing our journals to our own arrival in London, and we will get out into London on foot to look carefully at the huge support network which exists there for those arriving from the provinces and abroad. (Satisfies Period 5 rrequirement for English majors.)
This course is intended to be interdisciplinary. The material for the course is drawn from London itself and makes particular use of art galleries and the architecture of London. Students will be expected to gain an appreciation of cultural history and to gain insights into particular periods of British culture by an examination of painting, sculpture, architecture and literature in various combinations. The lecture room material will be complemented by slides and the whole course will focus on walks, gallery and site visits.
Decision making in contemporary Britain: a rapid survey of twentieth-century history, followed by an explanation of such British institutions as the monarchy, Parliament, the judicial system, business adn labor organizations, the media, political parties. Throughout the coruse comparison will be made with the U.S.A. We will visit Parliament and such venues as the political party headquarters for discussion with party staff. Students will have access to a series of meetings at the House of Commons for young people to meet and question government ministers.
We'll read selections of the sonnets, Venus and Adonis, The Merchant of Venice, Henry V, and Hamlet, and we will see performances of four other Shakespearean plays in London and in Stratford. What we see will depend on what's on in London and Stratford. We'll take advantage of the opportunities England still affords to evoke the details of Shakespeare's age. We'll visit the places he lived, tour the Elizabethan theatre district in London, see the properties in Stratford-Upon-Avon, and visit playhouses and museums. (Satisfies Period 1 requirement for English majors.)
We'll see a number of plays in production in a variety of venues that make up London's theatre scene: the National Theatre, the RSC Barbican, the Royal Court, and other West End and possibly off-West End or Fringe theatres. What we see will depend on what's on in London during spring 1998, but we'll focus on modern and contemporary drama (from Ibsen in the late 19th century up to the present) and try for plays that have mattered in terms of shaping today's theatre and drama. We'll also take advantage of what backstage tours we can and possibly participate in discussions with actors and directors. (Satisfies Period 5 requirement for English majors.)
This course is intended to be interdisciplinary. The material for the course is drawn from London itself and makes particular use of art galleries and the architecture of London. Students will be expected to gain an appreciation of cultural history and to gain insights into particular periods of British culture by an examination of painting, sculpture, architecture and literature in various combinations. The lecture room material will be complemented by slides and the whole course will focus on walks, gallery and site visits.
Decision making in contemporary Britain: a rapid survey of twentieth-century history, followed by an explanation of such British institutions as the monarchy, Parliament, the judicial system, business and labor organizations, the media, political parties. Throughout the course comparison will be made with the U.S.A. We will visit Parliament and such venues as the political party headquarters for discussion with party staff. Students will have access to a series of meetings at the House of Commons for young people to meet and question government ministers.
The characters in Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, Maitland's Three Times Table, and Ghosh's Between the Lines know how to see the London they move in, and we will see what they can teach us. We'll also just go to a few places, ordinary places like train stations, tube stops, pubs, coffee houses, to see if we can learn "how to see" and make bits of London truly ours. And constantly to use writing to show how we read London "fiction" and London "fact." (Satisfies upper-division writing requirement for English majors following the writing emphasis or Period 5 requirements for English majors.)
There may be no better city in the world than London for going to the theatre and studying theatre. We'll do both, choosing plays to stuy that are being performed on the London stage, reading them, discussing them, going to see them, and writing about them. In addition, we'll make an excursion to Stratford for two productions of the Royal Shakespeare Company. And we'll make a number of excursions in London to see places important in the theatre and to help us understand theatre production and back-stage operations. Plays studied will be from Shakespeare's time to the present--Spring 1999. Our goal will be to learn how to watch, talk about, and write about plays in informed and interesting ways. (Satisfies upper-division elective requirement for English majors.)
This course is intended to be interdisciplinary. The material for the course is drawn from Lonodn itself and makes particular use of art galleries and the architecture of London. Students will be expected to gain an appreciation of cultural history and to gain insights into particular periods of British culture by an examination of painting, sculpture, architecture and literature in various combinations. The lecture room material will be complemented by slides and the whole course will focus on walks, gallery and site visits.
The aim of this course is to introduce students to some of the many features that make up contemporary Britain and to put these in the context of the country's history and development. Using a mixture of discussion, reading, observation and participatsion, the course will try to show aspects of contemporary Britain that are familiar and unfamiliar and encourage students to compare these with their own experiences.
This course will explore a range of works which have been inspired by different visions of London, a city of shifting class and cultural boundaries: a city that is both inviting and hostile. It has its public and its private faces, its open and its secret places. For over five hundred years, as setting, metaphor, and symbol, London has excited the imaginations of writers and artists. We will read some of the most powerful and vivid of those imaginative visions created within the last hundred years or so. After examining historical and biographical material on the authors and after assessing the meanings and craft of their texts, we will go in search of the “reality” (or what remains of it) and construct for ourselves a newer vision from the primary text that is London itself. Texts may include the following: Dickens, Our Mutual Friend; Conrad, The Secret Agent; Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway; Eliot, The Waste Land; Greene, The End of the Affair; Ackroyd, The Great Fire of London; Mo, Sour Sweet; Moorcock, Mother London. (Meets Period 5 requirement for English Majors.)
This course is intended to be interdisciplinary. The material for the course is drawn from London itself and makes particular use of art galleries and the architecture of London. Students will be expected to gain an appreciation of cultural history and to gain insights into particular periods of British culture by an examination of painting, sculpture, architecture and literature in various combinations. The lecture room material will be complemented by slides and the whole course will focus on walks, gallery and site visits.
London provides an exceptionally rich laboratory for the study of plays. Taking advantage of its variety, both in offerings and performance spaces, will allow students not only to expand their knowledge of dramatic texts, but also to study how they interact with theatrical places. In addition to reading and attending a number of the best offerings available to us during our Spring in London—at the National and the Globe, at theatres in the West End, and at established houses outside the West End—we’ll take some backstage tours and visit the Museum of London and the London Theatre Museum to get a sense of the modern theatres in their historical and geographical contexts. (ENGL 444 meets upper-division elective requirement for English majors; DRAMA 494 does not count toward the Drama major.)
The study of Shakespeare’s texts has diverged into two streams: studies of his texts as “classic” texts, and studies of his texts as bases for live performance. This course will consider a selection of Shakespeare’s sonnets and four plays performed at London and Stratford while we are there. We shall first read each play, and come to terms with it as a reading experience, then see the play performed, which should give us surprises. We shall also go back stage at a couple of the places we visit, to see how theatres really work, and visit the theatre museum, to see how they once worked. (Meets Period 1 requirement for English majors.)
This course will divide evenly between using London to read literature and using literature to read London. We will focus on two recent novels which are saturated with London names, places, and history, and through coming to know all that material we will recognize how different the novels are once we become insiders. The novels are 253 by Geoff Ryman and Bleeding London by Geoff Nicholson. We will also look at various aspects of London through the prism of literature. For example, we will study the Museum of London in order to understand what “story” the exhibition tells, and we will look at St. Pancras and the new British Library as adjacent buildings in “dialogue” with each other. Our ability to read literature will enhance our understanding of London. (Meets Period 5 requirement for English Majors.)
London is a great capital of theatre, and in this course we will get to know that side of the city by immersion—seeing as many plays as we can across a whole range of periods and playwrights, from Shakespeare to our own contemporaries, on various stages from the National Theatre and big commercial houses to low-rent fringe venues and pub theatres. We will also be reading most of the plays we see and writing a lot about both the reading and the playgoing. London, like most international cities, is also itself a great theatre, with all sorts of public performances on display everywhere, for free: in the Underground, the parks, the shopping streets, Covent Garden, Trafalgar Square, the museums, the pubs, and just about anyplace you look when you aren’t actually sitting in a theatre looking at people performing for money on a stage. So we will also consider and write some about this unscripted form of theatrical London, and see what connections we can make between the on-stage and off-stage dramas. The goal of the course will be to enlarge your knowledge of plays and theatre, and to sharpen your critical thinking about playtexts, performance, and London. (ENGL 444 meets upper-division elective requirement for English majors; DRAMA 494 does not count toward the Drama major.)
This course introduces students to various aspects of life in Britain, from royalty to the homeless, from politics to sport. There is a major emphasis on direct contact with the people and institutions of contemporary Britain, including meetings with homeless people and politicians, visits to Parliament and the media, and individual research projects which encourage students to follow up their own interests. The course also looks at issues such as race, crime, the family and the problems (and delights) of being young in Britain today. The course should enable students to gain a deeper understanding of contemporary Britain and equip them better to understand their own society.
This course is interdisciplinary. The material is London itself. The course is taught entirely on the streets and in buildings, ranging from medieval, Elizabethan and Jacobean to Victorian, modern and post-modern. One day will be spent on the works of Sir Christopher Wren. Field trips outside London take students to Hampton Court and to Stratford-upon-Avon. As well as equipping students to look more carefully at buildings, pictures and sculpture, the course encourages them to do some imaginative re-creation, considering what it might have been like to have lived at different times in the past as a member of different social classes.
This course is interdisciplinary. The material is London itself and is taught entirely on the streets and in buildings, ranging from medieval, Elizabethan and Jacobean, to Victorian, modern and post-modern. A field trip outside of London takes students to Stratford-upon-Avon. As well as equipping students to look more carefully at buildings, pictures, and sculpture, the course encourages them to do some imaginative recreation, considering what it might have been like to have lived at different times in the past as a member of different social classes. This class begins on Monday, 23 July.
We will read four of Shakespeare’s plays and see them performed on stage in London (at the new Globe, at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s London venue at the Barbican, and possibly in Regents Park) and at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s home in Stratford-upon-Avon. What we see will depend on what’s on in London and Stratford. We’ll also take advantage of the opportunities London and Stratford afford to evoke the details of Shakespeare’s age. We’ll spend a fair amount of time in London visiting the places he lived and touring the remains of the Elizabethan and more modern theatre districts. Meets Period 1 requirement for English majors.
From the opening sentence of Our Mutual Friend – “on the Thames, between Southward Bridge which is of iron, and London Bridge which is of stone” – London is a central figure in Dickens’s narrative. During the course we’ll explore both the novel and the city. We’ll stay alert to continuities and changes in the urban and social landscape and to the ways Dickens can help us understand the modern metropolis. Meets Period 3 requirement for English majors.
As a journalist and as one of the first truly urban novelists, Dickens presents the attractions and repulsions of London during one of the periods of its greatest vitality. In his writing we see its places and people and institutions, its history and its novelty. We will visit many sites Dickens knew and wrote about, including one of his homes (now a museum), and there should be opportunity for an excursion to the Great Expectations country in Kent. Our objective is to let Dickens be our guide, not only to what remains of his particular world but also to how one can see, understand, discuss the London of today. Readings will include selections from his essays, articles from the weekly magazines he edited, and a Dickens novel of your choice (excluding Pickwick Papers, Hard Times, A Tale of Two Cities, and Edwin Drood, because they deal less with the city than do the rest of his novels). (Meets Period 3 requirement for English Majors.)
London is the world center of English language theatre. With its dozens of playhouses, its two nationally supported theatre companies—the Royal National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company—and its many experimental and developmental companies, London provides an astonishing array of dramatic enterprise. From revivals of older English classics to plays directly from a writer’s pen, no place in the English-speaking world provides more material through which to become a sophisticated viewer. This class will use that richness to help students become that kind of audience. We’ll see plays of different eras produced in theatres themselves different in terms of philosophy, financing and stage facilities. Beginning with the basics of stage design, directorial decision making, acting and lighting, students will read, see and write about a play a week for the entire quarter. (ENGL 444 meets upper-division elective requirement for English majors; DRAMA 494 does not count toward the Drama major.)
This course introduces students to various aspects of life in Britain, from royalty to the homeless, from politics to sport. There is a major emphasis on direct contact with the people and institutions of contemporary Britain, including meetings with homeless people and politicians, visits to Parliament and the media, and individual research projects which encourage students to follow up their own interests. The course also looks at issues such as race, crime, the family and the problems (and delights) of being young in Britain today. The course should enable students to gain a deeper understanding of contemporary Britain and equip them better to understand their own society.
This course is interdisciplinary. The material is London itself. The course is taught entirely on the streets and in buildings, ranging from medieval, Elizabethan and Jacobean to Victorian, modern and post-modern. One day will be spent on the works of Sir Christopher Wren. Field trips outside London take students to Hampton Court and to Stratford-upon-Avon. As well as equipping students to look more carefully at buildings, pictures and sculpture, the course encourages them to do some imaginative re-creation, considering what it might have been like to have lived at different times in the past as a member of different social classes.
This course is interdisciplinary. The material is London itself and is taught entirely on the streets and in buildings, ranging from medieval, Elizabethan and Jacobean, to Victorian, modern and post-modern. A field trip outside of London takes students to Stratford-upon-Avon. As well as equipping students to look more carefully at buildings, pictures, and sculpture, the course encourages them to do some imaginative recreation, considering what it might have been like to have lived at different times in the past as a member of different social classes.
London is the world center for English-speaking drama. Students in this course will read and discuss four plays before seeing them in the theater and will discuss and evaluate the productions after they have seen them. In addition there will be practical workshops and site visits in order to broaden students’ experience of London theater and enrich their understanding of how plays are transformed from the page to the stage. Meets upper-division elective credit for English majors.
In late 18th- and 19th-century England the revolutionary new aesthetics of the picturesque led to an unprecedented interest in nature: natural gardens began to be preferred to more formal designs, landscapes in painting became more popular than historical subjects or portraits, in both art and literature ruins were preferred to formal monuments, and destitute figures were found more intriguing than heroes or members of the upper classes. In this course we will investigate how Romantic poets and painters responded to these changes in sensibility and cultural practices. We will read selections from aesthetic treatises and poems by British Romantic poets, spend time in London’s museums and galleries, and take field trips to London gardens and into the nearby countryside. Meets Period 3 requirement for English majors
London provides an exceptionally rich laboratory for the study of the theatre. Its variety, both in plays and performance spaces, offers students an almost unequaled opportunity to expand their knowledge of dramatic texts and also to study, in performance, how plays work in different theatrical spaces. We will read, discuss, and attend performances of about five of the best current plays available to us while we are in London – at the National on the South Bank, at theatres in the West End and elsewhere in London. To supplement these, we’ll take a backstage tour or two, visit the Museum of London and the London Theatre Museum, and try to observe a play in rehearsal. Together, these will provide students with a concrete and particular sense of modern plays in their varied theatrical and historical contexts. The course will require weekly response papers, a group presentation, and a final exam. (ENGL 444 meets upper-division elective requirement for English majors; DRAMA 494 does not count toward the Drama major.)
Ever since the eighteenth century, when Shakespeare’s plays began to be regarded as “classics,” the study of Shakespeare has tended to diverge into two streams -- a stream that studies his text as a text, and a stream that studies the live performance of Shakespeare’s plays. In London, we are privileged to do both at once and think about the differences. This course will take up four or five of Shakespeare’s plays that are being performed in London and Stratford while we are there, along with a selection of his sonnets to build up a sense of his language and his techniques for constructing dramatic situations. With each of these plays we will first read the play, and come to some terms about what we think we find there, then see the play performed, which almost surely will provide interesting surprises. We will also go backstage to see ho theatres really work, and visit the theatre museum, where we can get a good sense of how they once worked. The course will require a series of response papers, a group presentation, and an exam. (Meets Period 1 requirement for English Majors.)
This course introduces students to various aspects of life in Britain, from royalty to the homeless, from politics to sport. There is a major emphasis on direct contact with the people and institutions of contemporary Britain, including meetings with homeless people and politicians, visits to Parliament and the media, and individual research projects which encourage students to follow up their own interests. The course also looks at issues such as race, crime, the family and the problems (and delights) of being young in Britain today. The course should enable students to gain a deeper understanding of contemporary Britain and equip them better to understand their own society.
This course is interdisciplinary. The material is London itself. The course is taught entirely on the streets and in buildings, ranging from medieval, Elizabethan and Jacobean to Victorian, modern and post-modern. One day will be spent on the works of Sir Christopher Wren. Field trips outside London take students to Hampton Court and to Stratford-upon-Avon. As well as equipping students to look more carefully at buildings, pictures and sculpture, the course encourages them to do some imaginative re-creation, considering what it might have been like to have lived at different times in the past as a member of different social classes
This course is interdisciplinary. The material is London itself and is taught entirely on the streets and in buildings, ranging from medieval, Elizabethan and Jacobean, to Victorian, modern and post-modern. A field trip outside of London takes students to Stratford-upon-Avon. As well as equipping students to look more carefully at buildings, pictures, and sculpture, the course encourages them to do some imaginative recreation, considering what it might have been like to have lived at different times in the past as a member of different social classes.
London is the world center for English-speaking drama. Students in this course will read and discuss four plays before seeing them in the theater and will discuss and evaluate the productions after they have seen them. In addition there will be practical workshops and site visits in order to broaden students’ experience of London theater and enrich their understanding of how plays are transformed from the page to the stage. Meets upper-division elective credit for English majors.
An investigation of the configurations of urban space and what this indicates about the social history of London and its diverse inhabitants. The objects of our study will include parks, museums, monuments, palaces, and prisons in conjunction with the many people who dwell in or pass through these sites. We'll tour Jack the Ripper's London, visit the wax museum, and explore open air markets in North, South, East and West London -- areas that materially represent the changing character of "English" identity. Meets upper-division elective credit for English majors.
For over four hundred years London has been the most important
center for drama. Two nationally-supported theatre companies, the famous
West-End theatres, and dozens of independent, experimental companies make
today’s London still THE place for theatrical innovation in the
English-speaking world. We’ll spend our time learning about this
and in reading and seeing about nine plays from different eras staged in
venues in London and Stratford-upon-Avon. We’ll also do some readings
in theory and background to contextualize the plays, but London is the principal
classroom for this course. We’ll spend most of our time out on the
town, walking the theatre districts, doing backstage tours, and talking
to actors. (ENGL 444 meets upper-division elective requirement
for English majors; DRAMA 494 does not count toward the Drama major.)
Place is often important in the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.
So we’ll read novels in which London figures as an important place and
consider, among other things, the various ways in which it is imagined:
as a place of exile, as a home for a woman with wings, as a setting for
love. We’ll read Vikram Seth’s Unequal Music, Zadie
Smith’s White Teeth, Angela Carter’s Nights and the Circus,
and Graham Swift’s Waterland. (Meets Period 5 requirement for English Majors.)
This course introduces students to various aspects of life
in Britain, from royalty to the homeless, from politics to sport.
There is a major emphasis on direct contact with the people and institutions
of contemporary Britain, including meetings with homeless people and
politicians, visits to Parliament and the media, and individual research
projects which encourage students to follow up their own interests.
The course also looks at issues such as race, crime, the family and the
problems (and delights) of being young in Britain today. The course
should enable students to gain a deeper understanding of contemporary
Britain and equip them better to understand their own society.
This course is interdisciplinary. The material is London
itself. The course is taught entirely on the streets and in
buildings, ranging from medieval, Elizabethan and Jacobean to Victorian,
modern and post-modern. One day will be spent on the works of
Sir Christopher Wren. Field trips outside London take students
to Hampton Court and to Stratford-upon-Avon. As well as equipping
students to look more carefully at buildings, pictures and sculpture,
the course encourages them to do some imaginative re-creation, considering
what it might have been like to have lived at different times in the
past as a member of different social classes.
ART H 399: Art, Architecture, and Society in London (5 credits)
Professor
Peter Buckroyd
This course is interdisciplinary. The material is London itself and is taught
entirely on the streets and in buildings, ranging from medieval, Elizabethan
and Jacobean, to Victorian, modern and post-modern. A field trip outside
of London takes students to Stratford-upon-Avon. As well as equipping students
to look more carefully at buildings, pictures, and sculpture, the course
encourages
them to do some imaginative recreation, considering what it might have been
like to have lived at different times in the past as a member of different
social classes. This class begins on Monday, 26 July.
The Pasts and Futures of Multicultural Britain (ENGL 490 & HST
499)
This two-part course will explore the intersections of culture, history, aesthetics
and politics in modern Britain. It will provide students with an engaged
introduction to London through in-class discussion of novels, films, historical
and theoretical writings, and a variety of coordinated field trips. The aim
of the course is to craft a framework for understanding the social dynamics
and cultural formations of multicultural Britain today, in particular the
ways in which contemporary Britain has been shaped by the legacy of Empire.
Students will be required to enroll in both sections of the course; these
will often meet separately, but will share thematic foci and field trips. The
two specific course numbers are:
ENGL 490: Literature and Society (5 credits)
Professor Alys Weinbaum
This part of the course will explore what it means to be a critical visitor
to London through an examination of shifting cultural constructions of “Britishness” from
the late nineteenth century through the present. Our investigation will
proceed through “readings” of fiction, theatre, and film as
well as parks, museums, monuments and markets. In particular we will examine
the representation
(and self-representation) of London as a city whose inhabitants are shaped
within a transnational crucible of empire and its aftermath. (Will
meet Period 5 requirement for English majors.)
HST 499: Critical History (5 credits)
Professor Nikhil Singh
This part of the course will investigate the social, cultural, and political
movements that have shaped multicultural Britain in the contemporary period.
We will consider how contemporary social hierarchies of class, race, and
gender have been shaped by the legacies of British Imperialism. In addition
to examining the dominant historical legacies of Empire, we will explore
how socially marginalized subjects have sought to “write back” and
to challenge imperial culture, often through popular cultural forms including
music and protest.
There is no better place on earth to see great theatre than London. It has
extraordinary theatrical spaces (including a reconstruction of Shakespeare's
Globe), famous directors, actors, and actresses, and more productions of plays,
ancient and modern, than any one person could possibly see. In this course
we will read, see, and discuss at least three plays by Shakespeare (one or
two of them in Stratford, where they will open, before moving to London) as
well as some modern and contemporary plays being produced in London while we
are there. The focus will be on plays as theatrical productions: we will try
to absorb and think about texts, acting, sets, costumes, lighting, colors,
and sounds as signs that generate meanings in particular productions. With
most of the plays, we will first read the play and talk about what we think
we find there, and then see the play performed, which almost certainly will
provide interesting surprises. We will also go backstage to see how theatres
really work, visit the theatre museum to see how they once worked, and talk
with actors. (ENGL 444 meets upper-division elective requirement for
English majors; DRAMA 494 does not count toward the Drama major.)
This is a course organized around some novels and plays of interest both as
literary works and as reflections of contemporary London experience. The idea
will be for you to get to know these texts as you are also getting to know
London, so that we are reading—that is, interpreting—both together.
In the case of the plays, you will also be seeing performances. London itself
is a very complicated sort of text, your “reading” of which starts
from the time you land at Heathrow; and as a reading experience the city can
be both absorbing and maddening. The literary and dramatic works I am choosing
for the course are not “about” London but do contain or reflect
contemporary London experience in one way or another, and my hope is that as
we work through the quarter we will find an increasing pleasure and skill in
close reading of city and books alike. Monica Ali’s novel Brick Lane (2003)
will be on the syllabus; other readings not yet determined. (Meets Period
5 requirement for English Majors.)
This course introduces students to various aspects of life in Britain, from
royalty to the homeless, from politics to sport. There is a major emphasis
on direct contact with the people and institutions of contemporary Britain,
including meetings with homeless people and politicians, visits to Parliament
and the media, and individual research projects which encourage students to
follow up their own interests. The course also looks at issues such as
race, crime, the family and the problems (and delights) of being young in Britain
today. The course should enable students to gain a deeper understanding
of contemporary Britain and equip them better to understand their own society.
This course is interdisciplinary. The material is London itself. The
course is taught entirely on the streets and in buildings, ranging from medieval,
Elizabethan and Jacobean to Victorian, modern and post-modern. One day
will be spent on the works of Sir Christopher Wren. Field trips outside
London take students to Hampton Court and to Stratford-upon-Avon. As
well as equipping students to look more carefully at buildings, pictures and
sculpture, the course encourages them to do some imaginative re-creation, considering
what it might have been like to have lived at different times in the past as
a member of different social classes.
ART H 399: Art, Architecture, and Society in London (5 credits)
Professor Peter Buckroyd
This course is interdisciplinary. The material is London itself and is taught
entirely on the streets and in buildings, ranging from medieval, Elizabethan
and Jacobean, to Victorian, modern and post-modern. A field trip outside
of London takes students to Stratford-upon-Avon. As well as equipping students
to look more carefully at buildings, pictures, and sculpture, the course
encourages them to do some imaginative recreation, considering what it might
have been like to have lived at different times in the past as a member of
different social classes. This class begins on Monday, 26 July.
ENGL 490: High (and Low) Fidelity: London Landscapes and the Facts of Fiction (5 credits)
Professor Laurie George
In basic terms, this course will help you to appreciate an author’s sense
of place when penning fiction. We’ll test the mettle of literary landscapes
in 20th-century fiction located in London – from the highbrow locale’s
of Mrs. Dalloway’s destinations to the meaner streets under which Nick
Hornby’s characters commune in avant-garde, alternative fashion. We’ll
search high and low, in and out of the classroom, to discover the ways in which
novelists writing about London become landscape architects, mixing and matching
fact in fiction to enhance their settings and deepen our reading pleasure. (Meets
Period 5 requirement for English majors.)
ENGL 431: Divisions in 19th-Century Britain (5 credits)
Professor Henry Staten
Through texts by George Eliot, Matthew Arnold, Thomas Carlyle and others, we
will study the divisions in 19th-century Britain between the upper and working
classes, between intellectuals and the “Philistine” bourgeoisie,
and between liberal and conservative visions of British democracy. Since
country “estates” were the center of the aristocratic economic
and social dominance, we will make a field trip to one, and we will also
visit museums and other sites around London to fill in our sense of what
we read in the books. (Meets Period 3 requirement for English majors.)
How do you go to a theatre? What do you need to notice? What questions can
you ask? This class will use the astounding range of theatrical productions
running at any one time in London to help you develop your own answers to those
questions. We will see a production every other week, take trips to theatrically
important places, and review productions. For most plays we will read the script
ahead of time, design for ourselves an imaginary production, and go to the
play looking to see how our choices compare with those of the actual production.
You will leave the quarter something of an expert on theatre-going, equipped
to talk about how direction choices, lighting, set construction, and costume
design work to fill the stage with excitement and significance. Students are
encouraged to enroll concurrently in “Shakespeare: On the Page / On the
State.” Though co-enrollment is not required, Professors Vaughn and Webster
will share teaching of the classes, and we will try to ensure that discussions
in one class can extend and develop discussions in the other. (ENGL 444
meets Period 5 or Forms and Genres requirement for English majors; DRAMA 494
does not count toward the Drama major.)
Since Shakespeare achieved “classic” status (in the 18th century), study of his dramatic works has tended in two, not always compatible, directions: one views his text as a text, and the second studies his text as a basis for live performance. In London we will have the privilege to be able to examine both of these strands of Shakespearean study, and look at the connections and disconnections between them. We will take up four (or five) of Shakespeare’s plays that are being performed at various theatres in London and Stratford while we are there. With each of the plays, we shall first read the play, and come to terms about what we think we find there, then see the play performed, which almost surely will give us interesting surprises. (We might also reverse the order if necessary: see the play first and then read it.) To increase our practical familiarity with how theatres really work, we will also arrange backstage tours at a couple of the theatres (e.g., the Globe, the Royal National), and visit the Theatre Museum, where we can get a broader sense of the rich theatrical history and life of London. (Meets Period 1 or Histories of Literature requirement for English Majors.)
This course introduces students to various aspects of life in Britain, from
royalty to the homeless, from politics to sport. There is a major emphasis
on direct contact with the people and institutions of contemporary Britain,
including meetings with homeless people and politicians, visits to Parliament
and the media, and individual research projects which encourage students to
follow up their own interests. The course also looks at issues such as
race, crime, the family and the problems (and delights) of being young in Britain
today. The course should enable students to gain a deeper understanding
of contemporary Britain and equip them better to understand their own society.
This course is interdisciplinary. The material is London itself. The
course is taught entirely on the streets and in buildings, ranging from medieval,
Elizabethan and Jacobean to Victorian, modern and post-modern. One day
will be spent on the works of Sir Christopher Wren. Field trips outside
London take students to Hampton Court and to Stratford-upon-Avon. As
well as equipping students to look more carefully at buildings, pictures and
sculpture, the course encourages them to do some imaginative re-creation, considering
what it might have been like to have lived at different times in the past as
a member of different social classes.
ART H 399: Art, Architecture, and Society in London (5 credits)
Professor Peter Buckroyd
This course is interdisciplinary. The material is London itself and is taught
entirely on the streets and in buildings, ranging from medieval, Elizabethan
and Jacobean, to Victorian, modern and post-modern. We will also take some
field trips outside of London. As well as equipping students to look more
carefully at buildings, pictures, and sculpture, the course encourages them
to do some imaginative recreation, considering what it might have been like
to have lived at different times in the past as a member of different social
classes. This class begins on Monday, 24 July.
ENGL 490: The British Novel and Cultural Change (5 credits)
Professor Norman Wacker
This London course will focus on the novel and cultural change in short modernist
and contemporary British novels by Conrad, Woolf, Achebe and Carter. Written
in London, or under its influence, these novels capture well the intersection
of London as metropolos, global capital and matrix of social and cultural
transformation. We will place special emphasis on the way our emerging knowledge
of the city and of British society in our two companion courses deepens our
understanding of the meaning and the significance of what we read. (Meets
Period 5 or “Forms and Genres” requirement for English majors.)
HST 490 or POL S 495: Contemporary Britain (5 credits)
Professor Mike Fosdal
This course introduces students to various aspects of life in Britain, from
royalty to the homeless, from politics to sport. There is a major emphasis
on direct contact with the people and institutions of contemporary Britain,
including meetings with homeless people and politicians, visits to Parliament
and the media, and individual research projects which encourage students
to follow up their own interests. The course also looks at issues such as
race, crime, the family and the problems (and delights) of being young in
Britain today. The course should enable students to gain a deeper understanding
of contemporary Britain and equip them better to understand their own society.
ENGL 490 or DRAMA 494 (5 cr.)
London Theatre
Professor John Coldewey
Since the time of Shakespeare, London has dominated the world of theatre.
Today, two nationally-supported theatre companies, a large number of famous
West-End theatres, and dozens of independent experimental companies perform
new and old plays for eager audiences. Exactly what we will see depends on
what’s on when we get there, but we’ll see about nine plays in
all. Three of them will be plays by Shakespeare – two at the Royal Shakespeare
Theatre on our two-day trip to Stratford, and one at the reconstructed Globe
Theatre in London. We’ll see the rest of the plays – some
contemporary and some from other eras – in London at the National Theatre
complex on south bank, in the West-End theatres around Leicester Square and
Piccadilly Circus, and in fringe theatres. We will read some play texts to
familiarize our theatre experiences within a literary context, but our main
focus will be on plays as scripts for production, observing how set design,
lighting, costumes, and stage direction work to surprise us. Much of our
time will be spent out on the town, going to the theatre, walking the theatre
districts,
taking backstage tours, visiting theatre museums, and talking with actors
and directors. (ENGL 490 meets Forms and Genres requirement for English majors;
DRAMA 494 does not count toward the Drama major.)
HST 399 or POL S 495 (5 cr.)
Contemporary Britain
Professor Michael Fosdal
This course introduces students to various aspects of life in Britain, from
royalty to the homeless, from politics to sport. There is a major emphasis
on direct contact with the people and institutions of contemporary Britain,
including meetings with homeless people and politicians, visits to Parliament
and the media, and individual research projects which encourage students to
follow up their own interests. The course also looks at issues such as
race, crime, the family and the problems (and delights) of being young in Britain
today. The course should enable students to gain a deeper understanding
of contemporary Britain and equip them better to understand their own society.
ART H 399 (5 cr.)
Art, Architecture, and Society in London
Professor Peter Buckroyd
This course is interdisciplinary. The material is London itself. The
course is taught entirely on the streets and in buildings, ranging from medieval,
Elizabethan and Jacobean to Victorian, modern and post-modern. One day
will be spent on the works of Sir Christopher Wren. Field trips outside
London take students to Hampton Court and to Stratford-upon-Avon. As
well as equipping students to look more carefully at buildings, pictures
and sculpture, the course encourages them to do some imaginative re-creation,
considering
what it might have been like to have lived at different times in the past
as a member of different social classes.
ENGL 431 (5 cr):
20th-Century Literary Responses to London
Professor Sydney Kaplan
We will explore a range of works by poets, novelists and dramatists who wrote about life in London during the twentieth century: some well-centered in the literary establishment, such as Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster; others newcomers to London, such as T. S. Eliot, Katherine Mansfield, and D. H. Lawrence. As we reach the later decades of the century, we’ll turn to younger writers such as Caryl Phillips, Zadie Smith, and others, who reflect the exciting multicultural diversity of contemporary London. We’ll also read and attend a few plays by British writers that are currently being produced in London. Our reading will be enhanced by excursions. (ENGL 431 meets either the Histories of Language and Literature requirement or the “capstone” course requirement for English majors.)
ENGL 481 (5 cr)
Special Studies in Expository Writing: Writing in London
Professor Linda Bierds
How can you record your travel experiences in ways that remain meaningful to you throughout the years? Why is the personal diary so often inadequate, so often abandoned mid-journey? Using London as a source of inspiration – its theatre, literature, architecture, and contemporary culture – this course offers concrete ways of discovering, communicating, and retaining significant travel experiences. You’ll need to be inquisitive and adventurous, to observe and listen carefully as explorers of the daily – and nightly – atmosphere of London. From these details great and small will emerge an ongoing travel journal and some essays, poems and stories for those so inclined. (ENGL 481 meets either the Forms and Genres requirement for English majors or the 400-level creative writing requirement for majors following the CW track.)
HST 399 or POL S 495 (5 cr.)
Contemporary Britain
Professor Michael Fosdal
This course introduces students to various aspects of life in Britain, from royalty to the homeless, from politics to sport. There is a major emphasis on direct contact with the people and institutions of contemporary Britain, including meetings with homeless people and politicians, visits to Parliament and the media, and individual research projects which encourage students to follow up their own interests. The course also looks at issues such as race, crime, the family and the problems (and delights) of being young in Britain today. The course should enable students to gain a deeper understanding of contemporary Britain and equip them better to understand their own society.
ART H 399 (5 cr.)
Art, Architecture, and Society in London
Professor Peter Buckroyd
This course is interdisciplinary. The material is London itself. The course is taught entirely on the streets and in buildings, ranging from medieval, Elizabethan and Jacobean to Victorian, modern and post-modern. One day will be spent on the works of Sir Christopher Wren. Field trips outside London take students to Hampton Court and to Stratford-upon-Avon. As well as equipping students to look more carefully at buildings, pictures and sculpture, the course encourages them to do some imaginative re-creation, considering what it might have been like to have lived at different times in the past as a member of different social classes.
