ENG 133
Princeton University Reads
(LA)
Professor(s): Michael G. Wood
Description/Objectives:
This course involves the close study of the work of distinguished writers who teach at Princeton. The reading list will include recent books by these authors as well as other works, old or new, which they have indicated are important to them. The writers themselves will actively participate in the class. The larger context of the course will include other contemporary writers, both in the U.S. and elsewhere, who form part of the current conversation about what living literature is, where it is going and what it can do.
Sample Reading List:
Jeffrey Eugenides , Middlesex
Toni Morrison , Paradise
Joyce Carol Oates , Blonde
Paul Muldoon , Horse Latitudes
C. K. Williams , The Singing
Edmund White , Hotel de Dream
Reading/Writing Assignments: Reading: about 350 pages per week. Writing: brief weekly responses; 2 papers; 1 exam.
Requirements/Grading:
Take Home Final Exam: 30%
Papers: 50%
Precept Participation: 20%
Schedule/Classroom Assignment:
Class Number: 21600 - Lecture L01 : 10:00 am - 10:50 am M W
Precept P01 : 11:00 am - 11:50 am M
Precept P02 : 1:30 pm - 2:20 pm M
Precept P03 : 11:00 am - 11:50 am T
Precept P04 : 11:00 am - 11:50 am W
Class Number: 24050 - Precept P05 : CLOSED 1:30 pm - 2:20 pm W
Precept P06 : 2:30 pm - 3:20 pm W
Precept P06 A: 2:30 pm - 3:20 pm W
Precept P07 : 11:00 am - 11:50 am Th
Precept P08 : 12:30 pm - 1:20 pm Th
Precept P09 : 1:30 pm - 2:20 pm Th
Precept P10 : 3:30 pm - 4:20 pm W
ENG 201
Reading Literature: Fiction
(LA) na, npdf
Professor(s): Maria A. DiBattista
Description/Objectives:
This course is designed to introduce and motivate an interest in a wide range of different forms of fiction. The central idea for the class will be that different fictional forms correspond to different ways of understanding the real world; because the word "fiction" derives from the Latin word for fashioning or making, we will suggest that fiction is a way of crafting alternative or other possible worlds. To this end we will consider not only traditional literary works, but film as well.
Sample Reading List:
Austen , Emma
Brontë , Wuthering Heights
Stevenson , The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Borges, Selections from [Ficciones] (in translation)
Coetzce , Waiting for the Barbarians
Hitchcock , Vertigo
Reading/Writing Assignments: About 200-250 pages per week, two papers, final exam. Required screenings of 3-4 films during the course of the term.
Requirements/Grading:
Final Exam: 20%
Oral Presentation(s): 50%
Precept Participation: 30%
Other Information: First-Year Students Welcome. This course will have two lectures per week, one two-hour preceptorial. Prospective concentrators should take this course (or 200, 202, 203) and 205.
Schedule/Classroom Assignment:
Film F01 : 7:30 pm - 10:20 pm M
Class Number: 21536 - Lecture L01 : 11:00 am - 11:50 am M W
Precept P01 : 1:30 pm - 2:50 pm M
Precept P02 : 1:30 pm - 2:50 pm W
Precept P03 : 3:00 pm - 4:20 pm W
Precept P04 : 1:30 pm - 2:50 pm Th
ENG 202
Reading Literature: Drama
(LA) na, npdf
Professor(s): Robert N. Sandberg
Description/Objectives:
This course is designed to teach students how to read plays as literature written for performance. Key assumptions are that every act of reading is an act of interpretation, that a good reader of dramatic literature engages in an activity nearly identical to that of a good director or actor or designer, and that a reader might learn from theater practitioners how to make critical choices based on close reading and a knowledge of theatre history.
Sample Reading List:
Euripides , The Bacchae
Wycherley , The Country Wife
Shakespeare , Macbeth
Brecht , Mother Courage and Her Children
Wilson , Joe Turner's Come and Gone
Kushner , Angels in America
Reading/Writing Assignments: Two - three short exercises, two 5-8 page papers. One play per week and some video viewing.
Requirements/Grading:
Final Exam: 25%
Papers: 50%
Precept Participation: 25%
Other Information: First-Year Students Welcome. This course will have two lectures per week, one two-hour preceptorial. Prospective concentrators should take this course (or 200, 202 or 203) and 205. Some theatre going will be required.
Schedule/Classroom Assignment:
Class Number: 21060 - Lecture L01 : 11:00 am - 11:50 am T Th
Precept P01 : 1:30 pm - 2:50 pm T
Class Number: 23922 - Precept P02 : CLOSED 10:00 am - 11:50 pm W
Precept P03 : 1:30 pm - 2:50 pm Th
Precept P04 : 3:00 pm - 4:20 pm Th
ENG 204
Introduction to the American Literary Tradition
(LA)
Professor(s): Eduardo L. Cadava
Description/Objectives:
This course offers a broad survey of American literature from the early colonial period to the Civil War. Ranging across historical periods and literary genres--including works of early contact and discovery, narratives of captivity and slavery, poetry of the revolutionary era, autobiographies, essays, travel narratives, and novels--we will seek to understand the ways in which this literature responded to and articulated the cultural and political rhetorics through which issues such as freedom, slavery, revolution, nationhood, race, westward expansion, and democracy were lived and debated.
Sample Reading List:
Winthrop, Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln , Speeches and Political Writings
Bradstreet, Wheatley, Whitman, Dickinson , Poems
Irving, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville , Stories
Edwards, Franklin, Douglass , Autobiographies and Personal Narratives
Reading/Writing Assignments: 100-200 pages of reading per week. Two 5-6 page essays. Two 1-2 page exercises in literary analysis.
Requirements/Grading:
Final Exam: 20%
Papers: 40%
Precept Participation: 20%
Other (See Instructor): 20%
Prerequisites and Restrictions: Open to all students. This course is not a prerequisite for entry into the English concentration; however, prospective concentrators may use it as a departmental.
Schedule/Classroom Assignment:
Class Number: 21505 - Seminar S01 : 3:00 pm - 4:20 pm T Th
AAS 207/ENG 207
Introduction to African-American Literature
(LA) No P/D/F
Professor(s): Simon E. Gikandi
Description/Objectives:
This introductory course focuses on texts from the mid-eighteenth century through the early 20th century; it will cover early texts such as poetry by Phillis Wheatley & Paul Laurence Dunbar; oratory by David Walker, Sojourner Truth; slave narratives by Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs; spirituals; black theatre by Pauline Hopkins, Bert Williams; fiction by Charles Chesnutt, James Weldon Johnson; & non-fiction by W.E.B.DuBois, Anna Julia Cooper, Booker T. Washington. The course explores how black literature engages with the politics of cultural identity formation, notions of freedom, citizenship, and aesthetic forms.
Sample Reading List:
Frederick Douglass , Narrative of the Life
Harriet Jacobs , Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. , Norton Anthology of African-American Literature
Harriet Wilson , Our Nig
Frances Harper , Iola Leroy
Paul Laurence Dunbar , Selected Poetry
Reading/Writing Assignments: Attendance and class participation are mandatory. Two short critical papers, 5-7 pages. In-Class Final Exam. Reading 100-150 page/per wk.
Requirements/Grading:
Final Exam: 35%
Papers: 50%
Precept Participation: 15%
Schedule/Classroom Assignment:
Class Number: 20613 - Lecture L01 : 11:00 am - 11:50 am M W
Precept P01 : 1:30 pm - 2:20 pm M
LIN 201/ENG 213
Introduction to Language and Linguistics
(EC) No Audit
Professor(s): Robert A. Freidin
Description/Objectives:
Introduction to the major areas, problems and techniques of modern linguistics, providing an overview of what is known about human language: its unique nature, structure, universality and diversity.
Sample Reading List:
Fromkin, Victoria , Linguistics: An Introduction to Linguistic Theory
Reading/Writing Assignments: Reading 30-40 pages weekly. Approximately 4-5 problem sets over the course of the semester.
Requirements/Grading:
Midterm Exam: 30%
Final Exam: 40%
Precept Participation: 10%
Problem Set(s): 20%
Reserved Seats:
Freshmen 15
Schedule/Classroom Assignment:
Class Number: 23036 - Lecture L01 : 10:00 am - 10:50 am M W
Precept P01 : 11:00 am - 11:50 am M
Precept P02 : 9:00 am - 9:50 am T
Precept P03 : 10:00 am - 10:50 am T
Precept P04 : 11:00 am - 11:50 am W
Precept P05 : 1:30 pm - 2:20 pm W
ENG 231
Dirty Words: Satire, Slander and Society
(LA)
Professor(s): Sophie G. Gee
Description/Objectives:
What do Jon Stewart and Jonathan Swift have in common? What makes Saddam Hussein so funny in the South Park movie? This is a course about satire and its relationship to society. The course will compare modern writing and writers The Onion, The Simpsons with great British and American satirists from Alexander Pope to Thomas Pynchon. We'll look at cartoons, videos and journalism as well as novels and plays. The satirists we read in this course are virtuosic writers, whose work reveals the breathtaking range of English literature.
Sample Reading List:
Heller , Catch-22
Pynchon , The Crying of Lot 49
Bechdel , Fun Home
Waugh , Scoop
Wilde , The Importance of Being Earnest
Swift , "A Modest Proposal," "The Abolishing of Christianity."
Reading/Writing Assignments: Between 100 and 200 pages per week. Writing assignments will also give students the chance to write their own humorous articles, essays and satirical pieces. Two papers, short precept assignments and a final exam OR an optional creative project.
Requirements/Grading:
Final Exam: 30%
Papers: 55%
Precept Participation: 15%
Schedule/Classroom Assignment:
Class Number: 21095 - Lecture L01 : 10:00 am - 10:50 am T Th
Precept P01 : 11:00 am - 11:50 am M
Precept P02 : 2:30 pm - 3:20 pm M
Precept P03 : 11:00 am - 11:50 am T
Precept P03 A: 11:00 am - 11:50 am T
Precept P04 : 1:30 pm - 2:20 pm T
Precept P05 : 2:30 pm - 3:20 pm T
Precept P06 : 10:00 am - 10:50 am W
Precept P07 : 12:30 pm - 1:20 pm W
Precept P08 : 1:30 pm - 2:20 pm W
Class Number: 23930 - Precept P08 A: CLOSED 1:30 pm - 2:20 pm W
Precept P09 : 2:30 pm - 3:20 pm W
Class Number: 24056 - Precept P09 A: CLOSED 2:30 pm - 3:20 pm W
Precept P10 : 11:00 am - 11:50 am Th
Precept P10 A: 11:00 am - 11:50 am Th
Precept P11 : 12:30 pm - 1:20 pm Th
Precept P12 : 1:30 pm - 2:20 pm Th
Precept P13 : 2:30 pm - 3:20 pm Th
ENG 300
Junior Seminar in Critical Writing
na, npdf
Professor(s): Staff
Description/Objectives:
Students learn to write clear and persuasive criticism in a workshop setting while becoming familiar with a variety of critical practices and research methods. The course culminates in the writing of a junior paper. Each section will pursue its own topic: students are assigned according to choices made during sophomore sign-ins. Required of all English majors. One three-hour seminar.
Other Requirements:
Course Open to ENG Concentrators Only.
This course is required for Concentrators.
Schedule/Classroom Assignment:
Class Number: 21066 - Seminar S01 : CLOSED 1:30 pm - 4:20 pm M
Class Number: 23758 - Seminar S02 : 7:30 pm - 10:20 pm M
Class Number: 23759 - Seminar S03 : 1:30 pm - 4:20 pm T
Class Number: 23760 - Seminar S03 A: 1:30 pm - 4:20 pm T
Class Number: 23761 - Seminar S04 : 1:30 pm - 4:20 pm W
ENG 301
The Old English Period
(LA)
Professor(s): Sarah M. Anderson
Description/Objectives:
This course introduces the chief features of Old English, the language of the Anglo-Saxons in the British Isles from about 450-1100 CE. We will focus on the linguistic skills needed to read, with the aid of a dictionary, memorable poetry like Beowulf and OE lyrics, Alfredian prose, and historical texts. By the end of the first week, we'll be back in time a millennium or more, studying the charms and riddles of OE. Time permitting, we will engage with the historical contexts of OE literature.
Sample Reading List:
Peter S. Baker , Introduction to Old English (2nd ed.)
J.R. Clark Hall with Herbert D. Meritt , A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (4th ed.)
M. Golden and M. Lapidge, eds. , The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature
John Blair , The Anglo-Saxon Age: A Very Short Introduction
Reading/Writing Assignments: 25 pages total reading per week. Weekly translation exercises; two short essays; recitation in OE; take-home midterm and final exams.
Requirements/Grading:
Take Home Midterm Exam: 15%
Take Home Final Exam: 20%
Papers: 15%
Oral Presentation(s): 5%
Precept Participation: 20%
Other (See Instructor): 25%
Other Requirements:
Course Not Open to Freshmen
Other Information: Texts may include selections from: Alfred the Great's translation of Boethius; The Wanderer; Judith; Bede's account of the conversion of Edwin; the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; Alexander's Letter to Aristotle; the 878 Anglo-Danish peace treaty; and selected charms and medicinal recipes.
Schedule/Classroom Assignment:
Class Number: 21904 - Seminar S01 : 9:00 am - 10:20 am T Th
ENG 310/COM 387
Shakespeare I
(LA)
Professor(s): Leonard Barkan
Description/Objectives:
Our theme this semester is "Shakespeare in Love." The selection of texts, predominantly from the earlier part of his career, will offer comic, tragic, and lyric approaches to the issue of desire. Emphasis above all on learning how to read Shakespeare with pleasure and understanding, paying attention to both poetry and theater. We will locate him on his own historical context--Elizabethan England, high Renaissance culture--but we will also see the theme of love as alive and well in the twenty-first century.
Sample Reading List:
Shakespeare , Love's Labour's Lost
Shakespeare , Romeo and Juliet
Shakespeare , Twelfth Night
Shakespeare , Measure for Measure
Shakespeare , Antony and Cleopatra
Shakespeare , Sonnets
Reading/Writing Assignments: Usually one play per week, suggested supplementary readings, informal discussion board responses for precept, two 5-6 pp papers and take-home final.
Requirements/Grading:
Take Home Final Exam: 20%
Papers: 60%
Precept Participation: 20%
Schedule/Classroom Assignment:
Class Number: 21125 - Lecture L01 : 11:00 am - 11:50 am M W
Precept P01 : 12:30 pm - 1:20 pm W
Precept P01 A: 12:30 pm - 1:20 pm W
Precept P02 : 1:30 pm - 2:20 pm W
Precept P02 A: 1:30 pm - 2:20 pm W
Precept P03 : 2:30 pm - 3:20 pm W
Precept P04 : 10:00 am - 10:50 am Th
Class Number: 23942 - Precept P05 : CLOSED 11:00 am - 11:50 am Th
Precept P06 : 12:30 pm - 1:20 pm Th
ENG 313
CANCELLED
The 16th Century
(LA) na, npdf
Professor(s): Jeff Dolven
Description/Objectives:
Poetry, prose and drama particularly during the reign of Elizabeth I. Questions of religious reformation; nationalism; new audiences for the printed book and the public theaters; genre, form and linguistic innovation. We will immerse ourselves in the fictions of an age whose appetite for experiment beggars our own. (Authors include More, Wyatt, Nashe, Sidney, Marlowe, Spenser.)
Sample Reading List:
More , Utopia
Wyatt , Poems
Nashe , The Unfortunate Traveler
Sidney , Arcadia
Marlowe , Doctor Faustus
Spenser , The Faerie Queene
Reading/Writing Assignments: Weekly, one page response papers, emphasizing close reading; opportunities for revision on longer papers.
Requirements/Grading:
Final Exam: 30%
Papers: 50%
Precept Participation: 20%
Schedule/Classroom Assignment:
Class Number: 21756 - Seminar S01 :CANCELLED 3:00 pm - 4:20 pm M W
ENG 316
The English Drama to 1700
(LA)
Professor(s): Oliver M. Arnold
Description/Objectives:
Incest, lurid violence, satanism, political assassinations, divinely-administered sex change operations: this is the stuff of early modern drama, and we will have plenty of fun engaging this theater of the extreme. But the very same plays also challenged-in thrillingly deep and complicated ways-almost every imaginable aesthetic, intellectual, theological, and political orthodoxy. The Elizabethan and Jacobean theater is now comfortably established as one of the great triumphs of Western art; in its own time, it was an enormously profitable institution of popular culture, the bogeyman of religious and secular authorities, and avant-garde.
Sample Reading List:
Marlowe , Tamburlaine
Kyd , The Spanish Tragedy
Jonson , Volpone
Webster , The Duchess of Malfi
Behn , The Rover
Ford , `Tis Pity She's a Whore
Reading/Writing Assignments: 100-125 pages of reading per week.
Requirements/Grading:
Final Exam: 25%
Papers: 60%
Precept Participation: 15%
Other Information: There will be some attention to Medieval and Restoration drama.
Schedule/Classroom Assignment:
Class Number: 21969 - Lecture L01 : 10:00 am - 10:50 am T Th
Precept P01 : 11:00 am - 11:50 am T
Precept P02 : 1:30 pm - 2:20 pm W
Precept P03 : 11:00 am - 11:50 am Th
COM 389/ENG 322
Love in the Novel
(LA)
Professor(s): Margaret A. Doody
Description/Objectives:
This course examines the multi-nuanced concept of erotic love in relation to prose narrative from the ancient Greeks to the present day. The representation from age to age of human feelings and their labels, and the institutions that contain, repress, or enable them, can awaken in us a fresh awareness of cultural concepts, and test words like "lover," "marriage," "adultery," "the individual". Throughout, we hope to gain a larger comprehension of nature and history of the Novel as a form, including various narrative modes and devices of characterization.
Sample Reading List:
Plato , Symposium
Longus , Daphnis and Chloe
Prévost , Manon Lescaut
Richardson , Pamela
Fielding , Tom Jones
Goethe , Sorrows of Young Werther
Reading/Writing Assignments: Students will be asked to keep electronic journals throughout the course, with entries on at least six texts. Two essays will be handed in, one (4 to 6 pages) in the first half of the semester and the other, slightly longer ( 5-10 pages), in the second. There will be a short quiz on Tom Jones. Students will participate as members of teams making reports on films. A final long paper ( 15 pages) will be required on Dean's Date.
Requirements/Grading:
Paper in lieu of Final Exam: 40%
Quizzes: 5%
Papers: 35%
Oral Presentation(s): 10%
Term Paper: 10%
Other Requirements:
Course Not Open to Freshmen
Schedule/Classroom Assignment:
Class Number: 22431 - Lecture L01 : 11:00 am - 12:20 pm M W
ENG 328
Romanticism and the Age of Revolution
(LA)
Professor(s): Esther H. Schor
Description/Objectives:
"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive," wrote William Wordsworth of the Romantic era, as he and others incited revolutions in government, in ossified social orders of race, class and gender, and even in the human mind, which laid unheard-of claim to the powers of "imagination." In close readings of poetry, prose narrative and political rhetoric, the heady experiments of this age will be our focus, experiments that vindicate the liberties of women, slaves, laborers--and poets.
Sample Reading List:
William Blake , Poetry
William Wordsworth , Poetry
Mary Wollstonecraft , The Vindications: Rights of Men; Rights of Woman
Thomas DeQuincey , Confessions of an English Opium Eater
S. T. Coleridge , Poetry and Prose
Dorothy Wordsworth , Poetry, Journals
Reading/Writing Assignments: 50 poetry /150 prose readings per week.
Requirements/Grading:
Paper in lieu of Midterm Exam: 30%
Final Exam: 30%
Papers: 30%
Precept Participation: 10%
Schedule/Classroom Assignment:
Class Number: 21730 - Seminar S01 : 1:30 pm - 2:50 pm T Th
ENG 334
Literature of the [Fin de Siecle]
(LA)
Professor(s): Jeff E. Nunokawa
Description/Objectives:
This course will study the literature of the Fin de Siècle (1880-1900). We will be concerned especially with how these texts embody and illuminate various crises--aesthetic, sexual, ethnic, economic--that occupied the culture of the late nineteenth century.
Sample Reading List:
Wilde , Picture of Dorian Gray, plays, essays
James , Altar of the Dead
Stoker , Dracula
Conrad , Heart of Darkness
Gilbert and Sullivan , Patience
Pater , The Renaissance
Reading/Writing Assignments: Approximately 150-300 pages weekly reading; two 6-8 page papers.
Requirements/Grading:
Paper in lieu of Final Exam: 25%
Papers: 50%
Precept Participation: 25%
Schedule/Classroom Assignment:
Class Number: 21602 - Lecture L01 : 2:30 pm - 3:20 pm M W
Precept P01 : 3:30 pm - 4:20 pm M
Precept P02 : 10:00 am - 10:50 am T
Precept P03 : 3:30 pm - 4:20 pm W
Precept P03 A: 3:30 pm - 4:20 pm W
Precept P04 : 11:00 am - 11:50 am Th
Precept P05 : 12:30 pm - 1:20 pm Th
Precept P06 : 1:30 pm - 2:20 pm Th
ENG 346
Modern British Drama
(LA) No P/D/F
Professor(s): Michael W. Cadden
Description/Objectives:
A study of major British dramatists from 1890 to the present, with an emphasis on plays as scripts written for performance.
Sample Reading List:
Wilde , The Importance of Being Earnest
Shaw , St. Joan, Heartbreak House
Stoppard , Arcadia, Travesties
Beckett , Happy Days, Play
Pinter , The Homecoming, Betrayal
Churchill , Cloud Nine, Top Girls
Reading/Writing Assignments: One or two plays a week. Two 8-10 page papers. Weekly online journal entries.
Requirements/Grading:
Final Exam: 25%
Papers: 50%
Precept Participation: 25%
Other Information: Special attention to "state of the nation" plays, the "wit" tradition, and the "indomitable" woman.
Schedule/Classroom Assignment:
Class Number: 21795 - Lecture L01 : 10:00 am - 10:50 am M W
Precept P01 : 11:00 am - 11:50 am W
Class Number: 24054 - Precept P02 : CLOSED 1:30 pm - 2:20 pm M
Precept P03 : 11:00 am - 11:50 am T
ENG 347
Topics in Drama: Contemporary American Drama and Performance
(LA) No P/D/F
Professor(s): Tamsen O. Wolff
Description/Objectives:
This course will look at a wide range of the most important American drama and performance of the last thirty years. Questions will include the relevance of drama in a culture of mass entertainment, and drama as a response to history, place, and social trauma.
Sample Reading List:
Rivera , Marisol
Vogel , How I Learned to Drive
Wilson , Joe Turner's Come and Gone
Fornes , Abingdon Square
Kushner , Angels in America
Stew , Passing Strange
Reading/Writing Assignments: Two to three plays a week. Two 6-8 page papers. Two reviews of productions.
Requirements/Grading:
Other Exam: 15%
Papers: 40%
Precept Participation: 30%
Other (See Instructor): 15%
Schedule/Classroom Assignment:
Class Number: 22201 - Lecture L01 : 12:30 pm - 1:20 pm M W
Precept P01 : 1:30 pm - 2:20 pm W
ENG 350
Contemporary Poetry
(LA)
Professor(s): Susan A. Stewart
Description/Objectives:
This is a course regarding a baker's dozen of books that made a difference in the path of poetry after World War II. We will read the works in their entirety and in chronological order, tracing those important changes in form, voice, perspective, and theme that have led to the present.
Sample Reading List:
Allen Ginsberg , Howl 1956
Philip Larkin , The Whitsun Weddings 1964
Sylvia Plath , Ariel 1965
Gwendolyn Brooks , In the Mecca 1968
Elizabeth Bishop , Geography III 1977
Ciaran Carson , The Twelfth of Never 2001
Reading/Writing Assignments: Students will read between 50-70 pages of poetry a week. Three papers of 7-8 pages. A take-home final examination of 10 pages.
Requirements/Grading:
Take Home Final Exam: 30%
Papers: 50%
Precept Participation: 20%
Schedule/Classroom Assignment:
Class Number: 21591 - Lecture L01 : 1:30 pm - 2:20 pm M W
Precept P01 : 2:30 pm - 3:20 pm W
ENG 363
American Literature: 1930-Present
(LA)
Professor(s): Lee C. Mitchell
Description/Objectives:
A study of eleven modern American writers over seventy years that emphasizes their range of formal experimentation.
Sample Reading List:
DeLillo , White Noise
Ellison , Invisible Man
Faulkner , As I Lay Dying
Roth , American Pastoral
Nabokov , Lolita
Diaz , Brief Wondrous Life
Reading/Writing Assignments: Approximately 300+ pages per week; two 5 pp papers; and final examination.
Requirements/Grading:
Final Exam: 25%
Papers: 50%
Precept Participation: 25%
Related Web Site
Schedule/Classroom Assignment:
Class Number: 21365 - Lecture L01 : 11:00 am - 11:50 am T Th
Precept P01 : 12:30 pm - 1:20 pm T
Precept P02 : 11:00 am - 11:50 am W
Precept P03 : 10:00 am - 10:50 am Th
Precept P04 : 12:30 pm - 1:20 pm Th
ENG 366
Topics in American Literature: Twentieth-Century American Autobiography
(LA) No P/D/F
Professor(s): Benjamin L. Widiss
Description/Objectives:
Through an examination of autobiographies ranging from bestsellers to avant-garde challenges (and even, arguably, avant-garde bestsellers), we will trace some of the changes in America's conception of itself --as a collectivity and as a group of singular individuals--over the last hundred years. We will explore radical shifts in the country's demographics and in story-telling modes, with an eye to how autobiographers have exploited their interactions. At stake will be not only varying conceptions of identity, but also the stability of many terms on which autobiography might be thought to rely, including: self, memory, coherence, and history.
Sample Reading List:
Teresa Cha , Dictée
Dave Eggers , A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Mary Karr , The Liars' Club
Vladimir Nabokov , Speak, Memory
Gertrude Stein , The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
Malcolm X and Alex Haley , The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Reading/Writing Assignments: Approximately 300 pages of reading per week. Two standard essays, some experimental autobiographical writing.
Requirements/Grading:
Final Exam: 20%
Papers: 50%
Precept Participation: 30%
Schedule/Classroom Assignment:
Class Number: 21437 - Lecture L01 : 2:30 pm - 3:20 pm T Th
Precept P01 : 3:30 pm - 4:20 pm Th
ENG 370/AAS 370
History of Criticism
(LA) na, npdf
Professor(s): Daphne A. Brooks
Description/Objectives:
A survey of literary works in the field of popular music cultural criticism. We will examine a variety of critical and popular music texts from diverse genres ("classic aor" rock, hip hop, R&B, country, techno, indie rock, jazz). Readings include journalistic essays, as well as musician interviews, album liner notes and scholarly articles. The course traces the evolution of rock music criticism from the late 1960s to the present day. It explores the aesthetics of popular music writing, as well as the ways in which racial, gender, class and sexual identity politics radically shape and influence the form as well as the content of the genre.
Sample Reading List:
Greil Marcus , Mystery Train
Robert Christgau , Any Old Way You Choose It
David Brackett , The Pop, Rock, and Soul Reader
Joy Press and Simon Reynolds , The Sex Revolts
Evelyn McDonell and Ann Powers , Rock She Wrote
Mark Anthony Neal , Songs in the Key of Black Life
Reading/Writing Assignments: Weekly discussions, weekly writing exercises, one feature writing project 15-20 pages.
Requirements/Grading:
Paper in lieu of Final Exam: 40%
Papers: 30%
Oral Presentation(s): 15%
Precept Participation: 15%
Schedule/Classroom Assignment:
Class Number: 22351 - Seminar S01 : 1:30 pm - 4:20 pm T
ENG 387/AAS 387
Topics in Black Literature: Toni Morrison
(LA) na, npdf
Professor(s): Valerie A. Smith
Description/Objectives:
We will read Morrison's fiction (short story and children's books as well as novels) in relation to her cultural and literary criticism. We will consider how Morrison exposes the power of language both to fracture our sense of common humanity and bind us into a shareable existence.
Sample Reading List:
The Bluest Eye
Jazz
Paradise
Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination
Remember: The Journey to School Integration
Reading/Writing Assignments: 200-300 pages of reading per week. One 5-page, one 10-page paper, and an oral presentation.
Requirements/Grading:
Papers: 50%
Oral Presentation(s): 25%
Precept Participation: 25%
Other Requirements:
Course Not Open to Freshmen
Schedule/Classroom Assignment:
Class Number: 21978 - Seminar S01 : 1:30 pm - 4:20 pm W
ENG 396/WOM 396
CLOSED
Queer Theory
(SA) na, npdf
Professor(s): Gayle M. Salamon
Description/Objectives:
In this course, we will read extensively in the interdisciplinary field of queer theory, from its emergence two decades ago to its present day articulations. We will explore what is meant by "queer," what relation it may or may not have to "homosexuality" and "gay and lesbian," and what challenges it poses to a politics of identity. We will also interrogate the category of "theory" itself-what it is, what it does, and what kinds of literary or historical interventions it can perform. Particular attention will be paid to the queering and de-queering of public space.
Sample Reading List:
Eng, Munoz, and Halberstam, eds. , What's Queer about Queer Studies Now?
Abelove, Barale Halperin, eds. , The Lesbian And Gay Studies Reader
Alison Bechdel , Fun Home
Judith Butler , Gender Trouble
Samuel Delany , Times Square Red, Times Square Blue
Michel Foucault , The History of Sexuality, Volume I
Reading/Writing Assignments: 150-200 pages of reading per week; two papers.
Requirements/Grading:
Midterm Exam: 30%
Paper in lieu of Final Exam: 40%
Precept Participation: 15%
Other (See Instructor): 15%
Schedule/Classroom Assignment:
Class Number: 21420 - Seminar S01 : CLOSED 7:30 pm - 10:20 pm W
AAS 326/ENG 398
CLOSED
The Foreigner's Home: Studies in the Literature of Dispossession
(LA) na, npdf
Enrollment by application or interview.
Departmental permission required.
Maximum Enrollment: 15
Professor(s): Toni Morrison
Description/Objectives:
This course examines the literary strategies employed in select mid- to late-20th-century fictional representations of the gaze of 'the foreigner' in narratives of dispossession. The primary sources include: a) novels driven by characters defined as 'foreign' in their own homes; b) those estranged and/or excluded within their chosen countries; and c) those mediating their status between longing subjects to belonging objects, transforming ideas of 'self'. By close examination of the language, imagistic and structural choices and their consequences in these narratives, the course will solicit meanings of and agendas for embodying foreignness.
Sample Reading List:
J.M. Coetzee , Life & Times of Michael K.
Michael Ondaatje , In the Skin of a Lion
Camera Laye , The Radiance of the King
Valerie Martin , Property
Andre Dubus III , House of Sand and Fog
John Gardner , Grendel
Reading/Writing Assignments: Class reports/ Term paper
Requirements/Grading:
Papers: 20%
Oral Presentation(s): 30%
Term Paper: 50%
Prerequisites and Restrictions: Enrollment by application and writing sample
Other Information: Letter grade only; no audit; no p/d/f
Schedule/Classroom Assignment:
Class Number: 20662 - Seminar S01 : CLOSED 1:30 pm - 4:20 pm T
ENG 400/WOM 403/AMS 400
Latina/o Sexualities
(LA)
Professor(s): Staff
Description/Objectives:
This course examines the study of sexuality as it pertains to the production and representation of Latina/o identities. Through an analysis of Latina/o literature and scholarship, students will critically engage the ways in which Latina/o sexuality has been taken up as an exotic and radical departure from foundational work on gender and sexuality. Sexuality will be studied in its plurality, examining multiple imaginings of Latina/o sexuality through fiction, performance theory, queer Latina/o critiques, and studies on emerging Latino masculinities.
Sample Reading List:
Mary Pat Brady , Extinct Lands: Temporal Geographies
José Munoz , Disidentifications: Queers of Color, Peformance of Politics
Licia Fiol-Mata , A Queer Mother for the Nation
José Quiroga , Tropics of Desire: Interventions from Queer Latino America
Juana Maria Rodriguez , Queer Latinidad: Identity Practices, Discursive Spaces
Piri Thomas , Down These Mean Streets
Reading/Writing Assignments: Students must write a 2 page response paper in response to each week's readings. These are due the first class of every week. Mid-term paper (8-10 pages). This paper will require that students engage a contemporary event (news story, performance, art exhibit, etc.) utilizing the concepts and themes explored during the first half of the semester.
Requirements/Grading:
Paper in lieu of Midterm Exam: 30%
Final Exam: 30%
Papers: 25%
Precept Participation: 15%
Schedule/Classroom Assignment:
Class Number: 23151 - Seminar S01 : 3:00 pm - 4:20 pm M W
ENG 401
Forms of Literature: Poetry, Music, and Philosophy
(LA)
Professor(s): Nigel Smith
Description/Objectives:
How does poetry relate to music, and how does each relate to thought? This course is an investigation of the relationship through history of words and music, both the song and other musical forms that have had a literary component or reflex. Ideas relating to the philosophical status of music will be discussed as well as the function of music in social formation and protest.
Sample Reading List:
John Donne , Songs and Sonnets
Shakespeare , Twelfth Night
John Gay , The Beggar's Opera
Dryden, Sir Robert Howard, Purcell , The Indian Queen
Christopher Ricks , Dylan's Visions of Sin
Paul Muldoon , General Admission
Reading/Writing Assignments: Two 10-12 pp. papers. Short class presentations.
Requirements/Grading:
Paper in lieu of Midterm Exam: 30%
Paper in lieu of Final Exam: 40%
Precept Participation: 30%
Schedule/Classroom Assignment:
Class Number: 21495 - Seminar S01 : 2:30 pm - 3:50 pm T Th
ENG 403
CANCELLED
Forms of Literature: Modernism and Its Prehistories
(LA) No Audit
Professor(s): Anne A. Cheng
Description/Objectives:
This course offers a survey of modern British and American literature through the lens of "nostalgia" as a central trope. Even as Euro-American literary modernism looks eagerly towards the future with mantras such as Ezra Pound's proclamation "Make it new," problems of memory and nostalgia suffuse almost all high modernist fiction and poetry in the first half of the 20th century. What are the longings and the losses being mourned or denied? This course begins to answer this question by unearthing the submerged presences of transatlantic cultures and the Pacific Rim in Modernist works.
Sample Reading List:
Joseph Conrad , Heart of Darkness
Viriginia Woolf , Between the Acts
Samuel Beckett , Company
D. H. Lawrence , The Rainbow
F. M. Ford , The Good Soldier
K. Ishiguro , When We Were Orphans
Reading/Writing Assignments: Required texts, plus course packet of essays.
Requirements/Grading:
Paper in lieu of Final Exam: 30%
Take Home Midterm Exam: 30%
Oral Presentation(s): 20%
Precept Participation: 20%
Other Requirements:
Course for Juniors and Seniors Only.
Other Information: Special attention will be placed on the roles that Primitivism, Orientalism, and other "prehistories" played in the formation of Western modernity.
Schedule/Classroom Assignment:
Class Number: 21139 - Seminar S01 :CANCELLED 11:00 am - 12:20 pm M W
AAS 329/ENG 415
Chinatown USA
(LA)
Professor(s): Anne A. Cheng
Description/Objectives:
This course registers the tension between the domestic and the foreign that has long since haunted the ideal of American integration. We will look at the construction of "Chinatown" -- as historic reality, geographic formation, cultural fantasy, even architectural innovation -- in the making of the American nationalism. We will study novels, plays, films, and photography that focus on or use Chinatown as a central backdrop in ways that highlight the complex relationship between material history and social imagination when it comes to how America incorporates (or fails to digest) its racial or immigrant "other".
Sample Reading List:
Maxine Hong Kingston , The Woman Warrior
Fae Ng , Bone
Kan Gotanda , Yankee Dawg You Die
David Henry Hwang , F.O.B and Yellow Face
Arnold Genthe , Genthe's Photograpy of San Francisco's Old Chinatown
Roman Polanski , Chinatown- film
Reading/Writing Assignments: 150-200 pages of reading per week. Two short papers, and one long paper.
Requirements/Grading:
Paper in lieu of Final Exam: 50%
Papers: 30%
Precept Participation: 20%
Schedule/Classroom Assignment:
Class Number: 20663 - Lecture L01 : 10:00 am - 10:50 am M W
Precept P01 : TBA
AAS 428/ENG 428
Latina/o Performance
(LA)
Professor(s): Alexandra T. Vazquez
Description/Objectives:
This interdisciplinary seminar examines U.S. Latina/o performance from the 1960s to the present. Students will engage the creative traditions that have emerged from the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, the post-colonial aesthetic concerns shaped by Caribbean migration, and the social preoccupations that have defined urban and suburban life. The class will learn to put formal motifs in conversation with a set of conceptual terms, including mestisaje, borderlands, transculturation, choteo, and disidentification. We will alternate between plays, critical readings, live performances, videos, and music.
Sample Reading List:
Yolanda Broyles-González , Theater in the Chicano Movement
Maria Irene Fornes , Maria Irene Fornes: Plays
John Leguizamo , Mambo Mouth
Cherríe Moraga , Heroes and Saints and Other Plays
Raquel Rivera , New York Ricans in the Hip Hop Zone
Carmelita Tropicana , I, Carmelita Tropicana: Performing Between Cultures
Reading/Writing Assignments: 'Students are responsible for at least 6 (out of 11) 2-3 page, typed responses to each week's readings and performances. Three of the response papers must be completed by Oct. 25th. This first set of response papers will be given a cumulative grade and used as the midterm evaluation.
Requirements/Grading:
Paper in lieu of Midterm Exam: 20%
Paper in lieu of Final Exam: 40%
Papers: 20%
Precept Participation: 20%
Other Information: Students are expected to examine all outside course materials (videos, recordings, etc.) as indicated by the syllabus. Field trips are mandatory.
Schedule/Classroom Assignment:
Class Number: 23663 - Seminar S01 : 1:30 pm - 4:20 pm T
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