Spring 2002 300-Level Courses

Course Descriptions (as of 28 February 2002)
The following course descriptions have been written by individual instructors to provide more detailed information on specific section sthan that found in the General Catalog. When individual descriptions are not available, the General Catalog descriptions [in brackets] are used. (Although we try to have as accurate and complete information as possible, this schedule remains subject to change.)

To Spring Quarter 200-level courses
To Spring Quarter 400-level courses
To 2001-2002 Senior Seminars

307 A (Cultural Studies: Literature and the Age)
MW 9:30-11:20
Rob Mitchell
Literature in the Age of Consumption. While the "consumer society" does not come fully into its own until the twentieth century, a number of commentators have noted recently the extent to which the basic structures of the consumer society were established in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. This latter period witnessed a massive expansion of the middle class, and the subsequent development of "consumer markets," modes of intellectual property (copyrights and patents) that we now take for granted, and even the development of commercially-oriented forms of political protest such as "consumer boycotts." Poets, novelists, and essayists of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were quite aware of these changes, and one can track their engagement in the literary productions of this period. In this course, we will consider this intersection of consumer culture and eighteenth century literature from three perspectives. First, we will consider how authors reflected on and attempted to alter these commercial developments. Second, we will observe what these literary documents tell us about the history of the consumer society (especially as they reflect on the development of copyright; the political power of consumers; and the relationship between consumption and gender). Finally, we will consider how the eighteenth century obsession with commodities and consumption helps us to think about the role of consumerism in our own society. We will consider selections from Daniel Defoe, Richard Steele, Joseph Addison, Alexander Pope, Tobias Smollett (Expedition of Humphrey Clinker) and Fanny Burney (Evelina), among others In addition, we will consider several theoretical texts on consumption and commodities, including Elizabeth Kowalski-Wallace's Consuming Subjects: British Women & Consumer Culture in the Eighteenth Century, James Boyle's Shamans, Software, and Spleens: Law and the Construction of the Information Society, and selections from The Consumer Society Reader. (Will meet Period 2 requirement for majors.) Texts: Tobias Smollett, Humphrey Clinker; Frances Burney, Evelina; Erin Mackie, Commerce of Everyday Life: Selections from the Tatler & the Spectator; Elizabeth Kowaleski-Wallace, Consuming Subjects: British Women and Consumer Culture in the Eighteenth Century; James Boyle, Shamans, Software, and Spleens: Law and the Construction of the Information Society.

312 A (Jewish Literature: Biblical to Modern)
TTh 9:30-11:20
Butwin
For simplicity’s sake let’s call this 3000 years in ten weeks. In order to reduce that already vast reduction to a few words I will list the headings of sections of the course: Jewish Literature as Jewish History; Biblical Narrative; Martyrdom and Suffering; Destruction and Exile; Exile and Yearning; Messiah and the End of Days; Hasidism and Enlightenment; Zion rejects Exile; Exile in the New World; and a section on modern apocalyptic visions of the 1930s and 1940s. In this mammoth and, I hope, exhilarating task, we will see how a common culture coheres over time and how writers are obliged by the conditions of the world to depart from that coherence. In additon to Biblical texts, all readings will appear on Electronic Reserve; the course will feature lecture, discussion and short essays. Students who don’t own an English translation of the Bible should buy one. No additonal texts. Meets with SISJE 312.

315 A (Literary Modernism)
TTh 10:30-12:20
LaGuardia
Naturalism and Symbolism. Various modern authors, from Wordsworth to the present, in relation to such major thinkers as Kant, Hegel, Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche, Bergson, and Wittgenstein, who have helped create the context and the content of modern literature. Recommended: ENGL 230 or one 300-level course in 19th or 20th century literature. Texts: Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols; Mann, Death in Venice; Freud, Dora; Ibsen, A Doll's House; Strindberg, Miss Julie; Eliot, Waste Land; Flaubert,, Madame Bovary.

322 A (English Literature: The Age of Queen Elizabeth)
MW 1:30-3:20
Streitberger
The golden age of English poetry, with poems by Shakespeare, Spenser, Sidney, and others; drama by Marlowe and other early rivals to Shakespeare; prose by Sir Thomas More and the great Elizabethan translators. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Hollander & Kermode, eds., The Literature of the Renaissance; Jamieison, ed., Ben Jonson: Three Comedies; Machiavelli, The Prince; More, Utopia; Shakespeare, Hamlet.

323 A (Shakespeare to 1603)
Dy 8:30
Frey
Study of Shakespeare’s poems and plays to 1603 with emphasis upon meter, rhythm, imagery, tone, explication, interpretation, reader-response, and student performance. All students are required to perform memorized parts in a small performance group that meets all quarter long. Also required: discussion, written exercises, and two hour-tests. Meets five days a week. A demanding course. Major emphasis this quarter will fall on the topic of “Shakespeare and Love,” emphasizing relations among Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Venus and Adonis, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, and films of those three plays together with the film Shakespeare in Love. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Shakespeare, The Poems; A Midsummer Night's Dream; Romeo and Juliet; Twelfth Night; Hamlet.

324 A (Shakespeare after 1603)
TTh 9:30-11:20
Coldewey
[Shakespeare's career as dramatist after 1603. Study of comedies, tragedies, and romances.]

327 A (English Literature: Restoration & Early 18th C.)
MW 10:30-12:20
Lockwood
The writers and literature of England from 1660 to 1750. We will be reading plays, prose, and poetry, chosen to illustrate the variety as well as the creative force of the written work in this period, bringing to live (for instance) the urban horrors of Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year, the aristocratic dreamworld of Pope’s Rape of the Lock, the cheerful crooks of The Beggar’s Opera, or the big people and little people of Gulliver’s Travels. Major authors covered include Dryden, Congreve, Defoe, Swift, Pope, Gay, Fielding, and Thompson, with emphasis on careful reading for understanding and enjoyment of this literature in its social and cultural context. Two papers with revision, weekly one-page reading responses, mid-term final. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Text: Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 1C (Restoration & 18th C.)

328 YA (English Literature: Later 18th C.)
TTh 7-8:50 pm
A. Fisher
Reading list includes novels from Tobias Smollett and Frances Burney, prose and poetry from Samuel Johnson, and poetry from Thomas Gray, William Collins, and otehrs. Focus of the course will be on two kinds of history: social history, as reflected in the novels, and literary history, as reflected in the struggle of the poets to find different voices than those of the earlier century. Course grade will be determined by a portfolio of daily response papers, no more than 2 pages long, graded as a set but not individually, by participation, and by a final examinations. Evening Degree students only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Smollett, Humphrey Clinker; Burney, Evelina; Cook, ed., The Wordswroth Book of Restoration and 18th-Century Verse; Greene, ed., Samuel Johnson: The Major Works.

329 A (Rise of the English Novel)
MW 1:30-3:20
Rob Mitchell
In this course, we will consider different attempts to define the characteristic qualities, and historical emergence, of "the novel." Our efforts will be channeled through readings of texts that have been the focus of efforts to define the novel, such as Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Samuel Richardson's Pamela, Henry Fielding's Tom Jones, Tobias Smollett's The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker, and Fanny Burney's Evelina. We will be especially concerned with the relationship between commerce and the novel, as we consider, for example, Ian Watt's account of the novel as dependent upon the emergence of the middle class, as well as Michael McKeon's more recent critique of Watt's thesis. We will also consider at length theoretical categories that have been vital to explanations of the novel, such as the distinction between "romance" and "novel"; the notion of "formal realism"; the importance of epistolary form and its relation to questions of "sensibility"; and the development of "character." Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe; Samuel Richardson, Pamela: Or Virtue Rewarded; Tobias Smollett, Humphrey Clinker; Henry Fielding, Tom Jones; Frances Burney, Evelina.

332 A (Romantic Poetry II)
TTh 1:30-3:20
Modiano
The first two weeks of the course will offer a general introduction to the history (the French Revolution and its impact on the first and second generation of the romantics), philosophy, religion and aesthetics of the period. Subsequently we will engage in a close study of the works of Keats, Shelley, Byron and Mary Shelley, focusing on topics such as nature and the quest for transcendence, artistic experiments in the genre of romance and the epic, the concept of the imagination and the predicament of the poet, the aesthetics of the sublime, the representation of the Promethean myth, and Mary Shelley’s and Byron’s critique of romantic idealism. Requirements include two papers and a final exam. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Keats, Selected Poems and Letters (ed. Bush); Percy Shelley, Poetry and Prose; Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; George Gordon Byron, Byron’s Poetry; Marilyn Butler, ed., Burke, Paine, Godwin and the Revolution Controversy.

333 A (English Novel: Early & Middle 19th C.)
TTh 9:30-11:20
Hennessee
“And they lived happily ever after.” “They” more likely than not got married. As a device of narrative closure, marriage is ubiquitous, and to sustain interest until the happy event occurs novels often describe obstacles to nuptial bliss. In this course, we will examine the marriage plot under stress. We will read five novels that question, problematize, evade, or even thwart the marriage plot. In so doing, our goals will be three: (1) to understand the socio-historical conditioning of (what can seem) timeless, natural dynamics of love, sex, heterosexuality, and marriage; (2) to examine how diverse narrative forms differently shape the marriage plot (and other elements of narrative content; (3) to use the novelistic marriage plot as a window through which to view early and mid-nineteenth-century British society. More generally, the course offers introduction to some important novels of the period, whose often bizarre storylines will hopefully provide enjoyable reading. Some lecture on historical context, more discussion. Primary texts will be supplemented with historical, critical, and theoretical texts, and in-class screenings of film adaptations. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice; Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights; Charles Dickens, Great Expectations; Elizabeth Gaskell, Cranford; Daniel Pool, What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew.

334 A (English Novel: Later 19th C.)
Dy 10:30
Alexander
This course offers a modest sampling of the rich abundance of the Victorian novel. Attention will be given to the historical and philosophical backgrounds against which the novels appeared, as well as to the lives of their authors. But the major emphasis will be on the aesthetic relation between content and form. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: A. Trollope, The Warden; C. Dickens, Great Expectations; G. Eliot, Middlemarch; T. Hardy, Jude the Obscure; O. Wilde, Picture of Dorian Gray; J. Conrad, The Secret Agent.

334 B (English Novel: Later 19th C.)
MW 1:30-3:20
Tandy
Vampires, murderesses, African goddesses, creepy old ladies in wedding gowns, opium addicts, debauched gentlemen: these books have it all! This quarter we'll be looking at scandalous books; books about scandal touching the lives of respectable Victorians, and books that scandalized their respectable Victorian audience. Through them all, we'll trace the undercurrents of anxiety and obsession that ran through late Victorian society: undercurrents (for example) of sexuality, foreignness, class, and change. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Dickens, Great Expectations; Collins, The Moonstone; Braddon, Lady Audley's Secret; Stoker, Dracula; Haggard, She and Allen; Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles.

335 A (English Literature: The Age of Victoria)
MW 1:30-3:20
Blake
Individualism. Victorian literature and culture provide many sources for values we would place under the term Individualism. Individualist values are at stake in this period in concrete areas of commerce and industry and social and political reform, while they are also at stake in art and in more intangible areas of philosophic ideas of what constitutes reality. We will look at important texts that characterize the age and range across Victorian themes of “self help,” the “gospel of work,” capitalist “free enterprise,” sociopolitical “liberalism,” the “woman question,” reality as made-up “wonderland,” and “art for art’s sake.” Emphasis on prose essays and fiction, with texts drawn from full works or shorter selections from J. S. Mill, Thomas Carlyle, George Eliot, Matthew Arnold, Lewis Carroll, Oscar Wilde, and/or possibly Anthony Trollope. Lecture-discussion format. Requirements: class participation, essay midterm and final and 8 - 10 pp. paper. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Matthew Arnold, Selected Poems and Prose; Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass; Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus; George Eliot, Middlemarch; John Stuart Mill, On Liberty and the Subjection of Women; Anthony Trollope, The Warden; Aldington, ed., The Portable Oscar Wilde.

336 A (English Literature: The Early Modern Period)
MW 9:30-11:20
Keeling
[Experiments in fiction and poetry. Novels by Joyce, Woolf, Lawrence, and others; poetry by Eliot and Yeats and others.] Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Roome; Mrs. Dalloway; Mrs. Dalloway's Party; Rebecca West, The Return of the Soldier; James Joyce, The Dead; D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover; E. M. Forster, Maurice; May Sinclair, Mary Oliver: A Life; Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure; Jean Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight.

338 A (Modern Poetry)
Dy 1:30
Sale
The Modern is now almost a century old; it has always had a reputation for being Difficult. So here we make our way with three Difficult poets: W.B.Yeats and Robert Frost seemed to get more Difficult as they got older; Wallace Stevens was Difficult with his first breath. If everyone tries to be open and honest about whatever difficulty they are having, we can give all three a decent shot. Non-majors okay, Registration Period 1. Texts: Yeats, Collected Poems; Stevens, Emperor of Ice Cream; Frost, Collected Poems.

340 A (Modern Anglo-Irish Literature)
MW 1:30-3:20
McRae
This course examines how the work of several early twentieth Irish authors both expressed and shaped Irish history and culture, and influenced the literary forms and thematic concerns of international literary modernism. Authors will include James Joyce, W.B. Yeats, Sean O'Casey, John M. Synge, Flann O'Brien and Samuel Beckett, and genres will include poems, plays and novels. Recommended preparation: genuine interest in early twentieth century Irish authors; at least one course in composition and one in literary study; familiarity with or tolerance for difficult or obscure literary forms. Assignments will include several short essays; grading will be based on successful completion of written assignments, class participation. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Yeats, Collected Poems; Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; O’Casey, Three Plays; Synge, The Playboy of the Western World and Other Plays; Beckett, Malloy/Malone Dies/The Unnameable; O’Brien, At Swim Two Birds.

342 A (Contemporary Novel)
MW 11:30-1:20
C. Fischer
[Recent efforts to change the shape and direction of the novel by such writers as Murdoch, Barth, Hawkes, Fowles, and Atwood.] Majors only, Registration Period 1.

345 A (Studies in Film)
T 11:30-2:20/Th 11:30-1:20
Elkington
American Independent Film Since Soderbergh. How do we define the independent film in America? When Steven Soderbergh won the Oscar for Best Director at the 2001 Academy Awards, it marked the culmination of a fitting metaphor for the development of the American independent industry and its commodification by the Hollywood industry. Debuting at the Sundance Film Festival in 1989, Soderbergh's sex, lies and videotape was hailed as the coming of American independent cinema's new voice, and was almost single-handedly responsible for establishing Sundance as the primary marketplace for filmmakers looking to make an entrance to the American film industry. Soderbergh's career since 1989 has shuttled between intensely personal and esoteric films such as Schizopolis (1996) and more straightforward, though intelligent, Hollywood fare such as Out of Sight (1998). Looking to Soderbergh's career and Sundance's history as two templates for understanding recent events in American film, this course traces the independent aesthetic through filmmakers such as Richard Linklater, Hal Hartley, Quentin Tarantino, and Alison Anders. Pointing to films like Being John Malkovich (1999), Election (1999), American Beauty (1999), and Soderbergh's Traffic (2000), we will discuss the influence of the independents upon the larger film industry. Soderbergh's acceptance of the Best Director Oscar then parallels both the commercial victory of American independent filmmaking and the consupmption of that vision by Hollywood at large. N.B.: Students may not be concurrently enrolled in C LIT 397YA. Text: Emanuel Levy, Cinema of Outsiders.

350 A (Traditions in American Fiction)
TTh 8:30-10:20
L. Fisher
American Civility. In the American literary tradition, the “land of the free, home of the brave” often figures as an untamed wilderness – the untainted territory of “natural man.” And, alternately, American writers have imagined their nation as a model society of republican virtue, peopled by democratically cultured citizens. Through our readings of course texts we will examine writers’ responses to social movements and historical conditions that have contributed to changing conceptions of the “nature” and culture of the American people. We will investigate early Americans’ fascination with imagery of vast untamed lands full of rustic pioneers and Indians, and then ask how later writers’ responses to such institutions and conditions as American slavery, immigration, class unrest, gender inequality, and racial tensions revisit and revise powerful ideologies that have produced Americans and American national identity. This is a discussion course – your active participation is key. Requirements: regular written responses to readings, group project, final longer paper. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Zitkala-Sa, American Indian Stories; Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin; Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man; Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes; Henry James, Daisy Miller; Stephen Crane, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets; photocopied course packet.

351 A (American Literature: The Colonial Period)
Dy 8:30
J. Griffith
We’ll read and discuss an assortment of novels, memoirs, sermons, journals, treatises and other writings by American authors of teh Colonial and early national periods. Students will be expected to attend class regularly, keep up with reading assignments, and take part in open discussions. Written work will consist entirely of between five and ten brief in-class essays, done in responses to study questions handed out in advance. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: John Tanner, The Falcon: A Narrative of the Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner; Benjamin Franklin, The Authobiography and Other Writings; Michael Kammen, ed., The Origins of the American Constitution; Charles Brockden Brown, Wieland; Susanna Rowson, Charlotte Temple and Lucy Temple; St. Jean de Crevecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of 18th-Centiury American Life; Hannah Foster, The Coquette; Washington Irving, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon.

352 A (American Literature: The Early Nation)
Dy 9:30
Abrams
Conflicting visions of the national destiny and the individual identity in the early years of America's nationhood. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Margaret Fuller, Summer on the Lakes; Frederick Douglass, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass; Henry Thoreau, The Portable Thoreau; Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Portable Hawthorne; Ralph Waldo Emerson, Selections from Ralph Waldo Emerson; Herman Melville, Moby-Dick.

353 A (American Literature: Later 19th C.)
Dy 10:30
Abrams
We will concentrate on major American writers and their efforts to create satisfying art during an especially interesting period in American history. How these authors responded to a variety of traumas, jolts, and anxieties--the Civil War, the accelerating rate of growth and technological change, the rise of commercialism, the waning of old values, the new discoveries of science--will be the subject of the course. Probably two papers of reasonable length and a final exam. Majors only, Registration Periods 1. Texts: Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems; Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; Henry James, The Portable Henry James; Rebecca Harding Davis, Life in the Iron Mills and Other Stories; Stephen Crane, The Portable Stephen Crane; Kate Chopin, The Awakening and Selected Stories.

353 B (American Literature: Later 19th C.)
TTh 1:30-3:20
Joly
[Literary responses to an America propelled forward by accelerating and complex forces. Works by Twain, James, and such other writers as Whitman, Dickinson, Adams, Wharton, Howells, Crane, Dreiser, DuBois, and Chopin.] Majors only, Registration Period 1.

354 A (American Literature: The Early Modern Period)
TTh 11:30-1:20
L. Fisher
In this course we will examine significant texts representative of trends in American writing produced between the world wars. In our discussion of these texts, we will try to arrive at some conclusions about how we can define this period (and possibly how this period resists definition). The age of modernism – commonly characterized by a cultural movement of disruption, innovation, reconceptualization, disillusion, isolation and reintegration – produced a wealth of fascinating art in America. We will immerse ourselves in the styles and subject matter of a handful of American modernists, articulating for ourselves what it is that distinguishes each artist and what commonalities, if any, exist among a diverse selection of course texts. This is not a lecture class, and I expect everyone to participate in class discussions and group work. Requirements: Three take-home essay exams and a group project. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: William Faulkner, Light in August; Nella Larsen, Quicksand/Passing; Gertrude Stein, Three Lives; Willa Cather, My Antonia; Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises; photocopied course packet.

354YA (American Literature: The Early Modern Period)
MW 4:30-6:20 pm
Barnett
Literary responses to the disillusionment after World War I, experiments in form and in new ideas of a new period. Works by such writers as Anderson, Toomer, Cather, O'Neill, Frost, Pound, Eliot, Cummings, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Stein, Hart Crane, Stevens, and Porter. Evening Degree students only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Nella Larsen, Quicksand/Passing; Willa Cather, O Pioneers!; Jean Toomer, Cane; Americo Paredes, George Washington Gomez; William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!; F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night.

358 A (Literature of Black Americans)
MW 11:30-1:20
McDade
African-American Literature 358 is an introduction to literature by African Americans. It includes a study of the historical and cultural context within which the literature evolved.. (Offered jointly with AFRAM 358.) Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Long & Collier, Afro-American Writing: An Anthology; Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man; Richard Wright, Native Son.

359 A (Contemporary American Indian Literature)
MW 2:30-4:20
Shafer
[Creative writings -- novels, short stories, poems -- of contemporary Indian authors; traditions out of which they evolved. Differences between Indian writers and writers of the dominant European/American mainstream. Offered: jointly with AIS 377. ] Majors only, Registration Period 1.

363 A (Literature & the Other Arts & Disciplines)
MW 12:30-2:20
Searle
Music and Poetry. This course offers an intensive examination of conceptual, theoretical, and aesthetic relations between poetry and music. It will not focus on such relations as songs or words set to music, but will explore instead the nature of the two arts as essentially mediated and explicitly expressive forms of thinking. No prior training is presupposed, either in literary or musical theory, but all students will write papers that involve working closely with both literary texts and musical compositions, including a final essay on one or more literary works that are intimately concerned with music. This course also has a required practical, performative element, either in a musical ensemble, singing or playing instruments (preferred option) or in a thoroughly rehearsed poetry reading. The final, that is to say, is a private concert, by the class and for the class. This will require (as homework) at least one hour a week for group rehearsals and preparation. Groups will be organized in the first week of the quarter, and assistance will be provided for selection of materials, rehearsals, and coaching as required. (Meets with C LIT 421A) Texts: F. Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music; Aaron Copland, Music and Imagination; AMSCO, The Little Book of Music Theory; J. S. Bach, Inventions, Little Preludes & Fughetta; Ludwig von Beethoven, Late String Quartets; Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being; The Book of Laughter and Forgetting; The Art of the Novel.

368 A (Women Writers)
TTh 10:30-12:20
Kaplan
British Women Writers of the 1920s. The decade following the end of World War I was a significant one for women. British women finally were able to vote and the long struggle over women’s suffrage had ended. This class will focus on the fiction of women during this decade and how it reflected both their changed status and their imaginative responses to their newly won independence. We will read fiction by Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Jean Rhys, Radclyffe Hall, and Dorothy Sayers. Texts: Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own; To the Lighthouse; Katherine Mansfield, The Garden Party and Other Stories; Jean Rhys, Quartet; Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness; Sylvia Townsend Warner, Lolly Willowes; Dorothy Sayers, Gaudy Night.

368 B (Women Writers)
MW 8:30-10:20
Taranath
South Asian Literature: Contemporary Writings from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and India. This reading-intensive course investigates literature written by women from South Asia. We will read mostly novels in conjunction with some short stories and social history. Topics that will be covered include the following: social constructions of identity; sexuality and cultural production; class relations; race and racism; patriarchy; imperialism and colonial history; gender identities and feminism. Students who enroll in this course must be prepared to engage with these and other related issues. By reading and discussing such a wide variety of literature, the course encourages students toward three interrelated goals: (1) to expand students’ points of reference; (2) to develop an analysis of how gender, sexuality, religion, nation, class, and race impact the lived experiences of many South Asians; (3) to begin to learn how to analyze literature and literary texts. Texts: Sunny Singh, Nani’s Book of Suicides; Urvashi Butalia, The Other Side of Silence: Voices of Partition; R. Vanita & S. Kidwai, eds., Same Sex Love in India: Readings in Literatures and History; Y. Hameed, ed., So You Can Know Me: An Anthology of Pakistani Women Writers; V. K. Mina, The Splintered Day; L. Anterjanam, Cast Me Out If You Will: Stories and Memoirs.

370 A (English Language Study)
TTh 11:30-1:20
Vaughan
In this course, we will introduce various ways we can study and understand human language. The course will exemplify systematic ways we have of describing features of language and language use by looking carefully at elements of the structure, style, syntax, and history of English. We will consider words and their sounds, their origins and development. We’ll investigate and discuss dialects and Standard English; prescriptive and descriptive grammars; and various social aspects of language use and language policy. Our goal in the course will be for students to develop some confidence in and demonstrate some competence in describing what language is and how it works. Assignments will include oral and written classroom exercises, short essays and reports, and a final exam. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Stewart & Vailette, Language Files, 8th ed.; David Crystal, Language Play.

381 A (Advanced Expository Writing)
MW 12:30-1:50
Keeling
[Concentration on the development of prose style for experienced writers.] Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway; Mrs. Dalloway's Party; Michael Cunningham, The Hours; Robin Lippincott, Mr. Dalloway: A Novella; Seldent, Widdowson, Brooker, eds., Reader's Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory, 4th ed.

381 B (Advanced Expository Writing)
TTh 9:30-10:50
Plevin
[Concentration on the development of prose style for experienced writers.] Majors only, Registration Period 1.

383 A (Intermediate Verse Writing)
TTh 11:30-12:50
McElroy
Poetry writing workshop. Requirements: minimum of seven (7) workshop poems following bardic exercise assignments. Attention to metaphor, music, and pattern. Techniques leading to class reading of poems from text, and required attendance at two public readings. Prerequisite: ENGL 283. Text: Spreading the Word: Editors on Poetry.

383 B (Intermediate Verse Writing)
TTh 2:30-3:50
Kenney
Intensive study of the ways and means of making a poem. Further development of fundamental skills. Emphasis on revision. Prerequisite: ENGL 283. No texts.

384 A (Intermediate Short Story Writing)
MW 11:30-12:50
Gunn
[Exploring and developing continuity in the elements of fiction writing. Methods of extending and sustaining plot, setting, character, point of view, and tone. Prerequisite: ENGL 284.]

384 U (Intermediate Short Story Writing)
Tues. 4:30 – 7:10 pm
Bosworth
This course will aim to foster the discipline necessary to write regularly, to elaborate on the elementary skills of fiction writing and on the techniques necessary to design a completed story. It presumes, therefore, previous experience in fiction writing. We will practice as well, through the reading of exemplary stories and fellow students' work, the critical reading skills necessary for any aspiring writer. If you can't read carefully, you can't write carefully; if you can't help solve another author's fictional problems, you're unlikely to be capable of solving your own. Fiction writing is a serious way of knowing the world, an no time will be squandered on analyzing the commercial marketplace, or on how one might reduplicate fiction whose only function is the passing of time or the making of money. Prerequisite: ENGL 284.

SPRING 2002 300-level Courses

SPRING 2002
300-level Courses