English 101: Introduction to English Studies
Professor Patricia Stephens
Wednesdays, 6:00 to 8:30 pm
What does one need to know to be an English major or minor?
What do English majors and minors study and learn? What kinds of careers
and educational opportunities await those who graduate with a degree
in English? This course is designed to familiarize students with the
diversity and scope of English studies and to introduce students to contemporary
debates concerning such issues as the connection between reading and
writing, the relationship among different interpretive/critical strategies,
and the nature and politics of the literary canon. In this course, we
will 1) learn about the rise of English as a discipline and how the profession
of English has changed over time; 2) analyze the formation and politics
of the literary canon; 3) engage in close readings of literary texts;
and 4) examine and experiment with numerous methods of literary criticism
and analysis. This course will be conducted as a seminar, and students
will be expected to participate in and take responsibility for class
discussions. We will read selections from David Richter’s Falling
Into Theory: Conflicting Views on Literature alongside numerous literary
texts (poetry, fiction, and drama selections TBA).
English 104 (section 1): Creative
Writing
Professor Lewis Warsh
Tuesdays & Thursdays, 1:30 to 2:45 pm
The goal of the workshop is to expand on our ideas of
“what is a poem” and “what is a work of fiction.” Are
poetry and fiction exclusive or related genres? Weekly assignments will
question preconceived notions of form, content and gender, with emphasis
on the best ways of transcribing thought processes and experiences into
writing. Work by Andre Breton, William Carlos Williams, Lydia Davis and
Allen Ginsberg will be discussed in class and used as models, but much
of the workshop time will be spent reading and discussing our own work.
English
104 (section 2): Creative Writing
Professor Barbara Henning
Mondays, 6:00 to 8:00 pm
In this writing workshop, students will read, study, and
write poetry and short-short fiction, using various forms and approaches.
A writer’s notebook will be an ongoing project from which students will
gather material for their assignments. Part of each class period will
be devoted to reading poems and stories by published authors. The rest
of the class period will be a workshop where students learn how to critique
their work. A final portfolio will include an evaluation of the student’s
learning along with revised poems and stories. Books for class will include The
Handbook of Poetic Forms and an anthology of short-short fiction.
English
128: Gender and Sexuality in Early British Literature
Professor Sealy Gilles
Thursdays, 6:00 to 8:30 pm
This course explores the formation of masculine and feminine
identities in the literature of the British Isles during the middle ages
and the early modern period. Medieval and Renaissance romances, folk
tales, love lyrics, and plays have shaped our ideas of what it is to
be a man or a woman and our attitudes towards sexuality. The course examines
those notions about who we are and how we relate to others as they are
embodied in texts from the tenth through the sixteenth centuries. These
texts examine familial, hierarchical, and friendship bonds between men
and women, as well as the nature of marriage and parenthood. The nature
of heroism, in men and women, and of the beloved will be particular topics
of concern.
English 158: Literature of the U.S. I
Professor
Patrick Horrigan
Mondays & Wednesdays, 1:30 to 2:45 pm
The
course will survey the literature of the early republic, from the founding
of the American colonies in the seventeenth century, through the American
Revolution in the late eighteenth-century, and up to the period of industrialization
and the Civil War in the mid-nineteenth century. We will examine a variety
of texts, both “classic” and the less well known, including poetry, sermons,
captivity narratives, fiction, political philosophy, feminist manifestos,
and slave narratives. We will also read selections of modern and contemporary
literary criticism that shed light on the primary, literary texts. Students
will give in-class presentations and write formal and informal essays.
English
229: New York City Literature
Professor
Deborah Mutnick
Tuesdays & Thursdays, 12:00 to 1:15 pm
This course focuses on the literature of New York City—how this quintessential
urban experience has inspired writers for centuries and, conversely,
how literature has “written” the city itself. Along with novels, essays,
short fiction, and poetry, students will read some urban theory and history.
Throughout the semester, we will “read” the city through historical depictions
of it and compare those to contemporary scenes of writing such as the
St. Mark’s Poetry Project and the 92nd Street Y.
Students will keep an in-depth journal, write critical essays,
and complete a field project in which they, too, write about some aspect
of urban life. Project sites could range from museums and poetry cafés
to schools, non-profits, and neighborhoods. A tentative reading list
includes: Washington Irving, Henry David Thoreau, Henry James, Wtitle Whitman,
Herman Melville, Anzia Yezierska, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin,
Ralph Ellison, E.B. White, E.L. Doctorow, Paule Marshall, Grace Paley,
Jamaica Kincaid, Vivian Gornick, Edwidge Danticat, David Harvey, and
Jane Jacobs.
English
231: Twice-Told Tales
Professor Maria McGarrity
Tuesdays, 6:00 to 8:30 pm
In this course, we will examine the enduring tales of
fiction that writers have revisited repeatedly. We will read for both
the appreciation of the aesthetic completeness of each individual work
while also investigating the endurance, appeal, and variety of manifestations
of each tale. We will examine how writers conceptualize narrative differently
while attending to and responding to the concerns of their predecessors.
We will analyze the creative process, the notion of inspiration, and
investigate the conceptualization of new fiction that responds to old.
We will discuss how these new fictions operate as both homage and critique.
Our reading list will include works from Europe, the Caribbean,
and the U.S. We will juxtapose Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Murdoch’s The
Black Prince, Bronte’s Jane Eyre and Rhy’s Wide Sargasso
Sea, Hawthorne’s The
Scarlet Letter and Conde’s I Tituba, Black Witch of Salem,
Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and Cunningham’s The Hours, and finally,
examine selections of Joyce’s Ulysses and Walcott’s Omeros.
Requirements: A mid-term exam, final exam, a 5-7 page
creative re-imagination of a recurring literary tale, and a final 10
page research paper on an approved topic related to the course.
English
301: Foundations of Rhetoric
Professor
Donald McCrary
Tuesdays & Thursdays, 3:00 to 4:15 pm
This survey course will examine major theories of rhetoric
from the classical to the postmodern era, from the Sophists to the deconstructionists
and beyond. The course will interrogate rhetoric from a historical, cultural
and political perspective, exploring ideas such as the relationship between
rhetoric and political power, the use of rhetoric as a humanizing and
liberating force, and rhetoric as a tool of capitalist consumerism. The
course will discuss illuminating rhetorical theories, including the theories
of rhetoricians such as Gorgias, Plato, John Locke, Maria W. Stewart,
Frederick Douglass, I.A. Richards, Michel Foucault, Helene Cixous, and
Stanley Fish.
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Upper Division Courses
