Emory University--- Undergraduate Program

101/181 | 100-level | 200-level | 300-level | 400-level

Eng 101: Expository Writing
Faculty. Max: 16

Content: Intensive writing course. Introduction to rhetorical principles, and practical exercises in critical analysis, research protocols, exposition, and argumentation on selected themes and issues. Specific topics and readings vary: consult descriptions for individual sections.

Texts: A rhetoric handbook, and a good college-level dictionary may be required or recommended. Consult descriptions for individual sections; check with your instructor before buying texts.

Particulars: Students can expect to produce drafts and revisions of 4 to 6 substantial papers, including a research assignment, as well as journals, summaries, and other exercises (approximately 60-75 pages of writing altogether). Evaluation of students will include their performance in all phases of the course--writing assignments, exercises, and participation in class discussion and writing workshops--but will emphasize in particular the quality of finished writing with respect to careful thought, insightful analysis, effective argument, clear exposition, sophisticated style, and sensitivity to audience.

Descriptions of individual 101 sections.

*Completion of English 101 with a passing grade fulfills the Freshman Writing Requirement. No other writing requirements may be satisfied by English 101.

English 181WR: Writing About Literature
Faculty. Max: 16

Content: Intensive writing course. Introduction to principles of literary analysis, effective writing, and research protocols through the examination of literary works and the writing of exposition and argument in support of analytic/interpretive claims. Specific topics and readings vary: Consult descriptions for individual sections.

Texts: Typically, a literary anthology or three or four literary works may be required, as well as a rhetoric handbook and/or a good college-level dictionary. Consult descriptions for individual sections; check with your instructor before buying texts.

Particulars: Students can expect to produce drafts and revisions of 4-6 substantial papers, including a research assignment, as well as journals, summaries, and other short exercises (approximately 60-75 pages of writing altogether), quizzes and exams at the instructor's discretion. Consult descriptions for individual sections. Evaluation of students will include their performance in all phases of the course—writing assignments, exercises, and participation in class discussion and writing workshops—but will emphasize in particular the quality of finished writing with respect to careful thought, insightful analysis, effective argument, clear exposition, sophisticated style, and sensitivity to audience.

Descriptions of individual 181 sections.

*Completion of English 181 with a passing grade fulfills the Freshman Writing Requirement. No other writing requirements may be satisfied by English 181.

Eng 190: Freshman Seminar
Faculty. Max: 15

Content: Through the readings, assignments, and in-class discussions the seminars will emphasize the importance of reasoned discourse and intellectual community. Readings may be in both literary and non-literary genres in order to develop the critical reading skills of freshmen when engaging many different kinds of texts. Such skills will be developed through frequent writing assignments stressing standards of argumentation, stylistic sophistication, and the ability to express and defend an original and compelling thesis. The development of library and research skills will be featured in some seminars.

*Completion of English 190S will NOT fulfill the Freshman writing requirement.

Freshmen Seminars are designated for First Year students. Sophomore, Juniors, and Seniors should not be enrolled in this Freshmen Seminar. Any student currently enrolled in a Freshmen Seminar who is not a First Year student must drop the course from their schedule immediately and enroll in another course. Periodically during the Drop/Add/Swap period, the Office for Undergraduate Education will officially drop any student enrolled in a freshmen seminar who is not a First Year student.

Eng 190: Freshman Seminar: Gossip, Secrets, and Literature
Bahri, MWF 12:50-1:40, Max: 15

Content: History, says Oscar Wilde, “is merely gossip.” Truman Capote claims that “all literature is gossip.” But what kind of gossip is Literature and what is its relationship to history and historical events? Readings in this course will focus on how literature tells the story of what happened (history, in other words) and its tendency to reveal the secrets and scandals of history through the experience of fictional characters and situations.

Texts: Novels and poems about historical events (colonialism, freedom struggles, violent conflicts)

Particulars: Presentation and short responses.

(Freshmen Seminar - Limited to first year students only)

Eng 190: Freshman Seminar: North and South American Literature
Otis, TT 10:00-11:15, Max: 15

Content: Although North and South Americans have rarely seen each other as allies with common social problems and political goals, their rich and powerful literature suggests some fundamental similarities among their cultures. Both north and south of the “border,” European immigrants have encountered native peoples, religion has inspired individuals to survive in lonely, challenging natural environments, and a life-threatening ocean voyage (in some cases forced on people against their will) has created a barrier between a remembered or imagined “old world” and a new everyday reality. Since no course could do justice to the wealth of stories that these cultures have produced, this class will offer students pairs of works that encourage discussion and invite comparative analysis. Students majoring in any subject are encouraged to take the course, and no knowledge of Spanish or Portuguese is required. The class will provide an introduction to some of the basic aspects of literary analysis as well as frank discussions about literature as art and as a means of personal, cultural, and political expression.

Texts: Jorge Luis Borges, Fictions; Alejo Carpentier, The Lost Steps; James Dickey, Deliverance; Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex; William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying; Carlos Fuentes, The Death of Artemio Cruz; Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Ernesto Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries; Jack Kerouac, On the Road; Edgar Allan Poe, Tales.

Particulars: Students will be asked to write weekly 1-2 page reading responses and two 6-8 page papers which may be revised one time. There will be no midterm or final exam.

(Freshmen Seminar - Limited to first year students only)

Eng 190: Freshman Seminar: American Slavery, American Freedom
Desrochers, W 4:00-6:30, Max: 2 (Eng 190/HIST 190/AAS 190)

Content: From the seventeenth century through the founding era and down to the Civil War, the rise of liberty and equality in America occurred alongside the rise of slavery, in a symbiotic relationship that the historian Edmund S. Morgan called the “central paradox of American history.” How are we to understand this peculiar marriage of freedom and slavery? In Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study, sociologist Orlando Patterson suggested that because freedom, “an ideal cherished in the West beyond all others,” emerged as a necessary consequence of slavery, we must either “esteem slavery for what it has wrought,” or else “challenge our conception of freedom and the value we place on it.” Taking its intellectual cues from Morgan’s paradox and Patterson’s enigma, this seminar encourages students to think about the relationship between freedom and slavery in American history, and explores some of the ways in which contested commitments to both shaped the development of democracy in America.

Particulars: Course materials will include books, articles, short articles, first-person narratives, and films. Requirements include seminar participation and weekly response papers.

(Freshmen Seminar - Limited to first year students only)

Eng 205WR: Poetry
Faculty. Max: 15

REQUIRED FOR ALL ENGLISH MAJORS
(not required for English/Creative Writing majors) For course times and section numbers, please see the course schedule.

Content: This seminar is designed for students, including advanced placement students, who wish to develop their reading and writing skills through the study of poetry and poetic forms, and for students who may wish to become English majors. Though the topics of this writing-intensive course vary, the primary goal of each section is to develop the arts of reading and writing about poetry with interpretive skill.

Descriptions of individual English 205 descriptions.

Students are strongly encouraged to take English 205 in their freshman or sophomore year.

Eng 210: Major Authors for Nonmajors: Ralph Ellison: American Icon
Jackson, TT 11:30-12:45, Max: 25

Content: This course is devoted to the works, ideas, and artistic struggles of the African American writer Ralph Ellison (1913-1994). The class will try to answer the following question: Why was this Oklahoma-born and classically trained musician arguably the first black novelist considered quintessentially American? To begin answering the question, we will examine race, politics, and American literary movements during the first half of the twentieth century.

Students will generously examine Ellison’s relationship with his most famous rival Richard Wright. We will discuss in detail Ellison’s life, literary and social criticism, short fiction, and his major work Invisible Man.

Particulars: Include mandatory class attendance, participation in discussion groups, a midterm and a final exam, and two short papers.

Eng 212: Readings in Popular Literature and Culture: Academic Novel
Bugge, MWF 9:35-10:25, Max: 25

Content: An exploration of a sub-genre of the British and American novel, one that concerns itself with life inside (or in relation to) a university. The course will hope to find answers to the following questions: Why are writers attracted to academe? What characteristics do all or most of these novels share? Does academic life differ from that in the Areal world? And finally, how might these works help clarify and illuminate Emory students= own understanding of the meaning of their college experience? Our method will be comparative and cumulative: we shall try to fashion a complex understanding of the academic novel from a rich and varied selection of exemplars. Moreover, we shall consider each book both as a fiction observing or undermining certain narrative conventions, and as a critical reading of contemporary cultural issues that often transcend the university context.

Texts: Still being selected, but count on a baker’s dozen of novels ranging over the second half of the twentieth century and perhaps a bit beyond.

Particulars: Students will write a short, two-page essay on each novel and submit it electronically to the courses Learnlink conference, where it will be made available to the whole class. These papers will normally be due on Wednesdays, their topics serving as the starting points for class discussion. In addition, each student will write a term paper of 10-15 pages. There is no final exam.

Eng 215: History of Drama and Theater I
Evenden, MWF 10:40-11:30, Max: 10 (Eng 215/THEA 215)
Lab: W 4:00-5:15

Content: A survey course based on lecture and group discussion that broadly covers Western dramatic literature and theater history from the Greeks to French neoclassicism. A strong historical emphasis will be required in a course that focuses on a public art form as it transforms itself radically to correspond to many different cultural situations.

Texts: Students will be expected to read two to three plays a week. Playwrights to be covered include Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Plautus, Terence, Roswitha, Marlowe, Jonson, Shakespeare, Racine, Behn, Calderon, and Lope de Vega.

Particulars: Three written examinations, objective and analytic. Optional paper. A $10 photocopying fee may be charged to students' Bursar accounts to cover handouts and additional materials.

Not recommended for first-year students.

Eng 250: American Literature: Beginnings to 1865
Reiss, MWF 2:00-2:50, Max: 65

Content: This course is a survey of American writing from its colonial origins through the Civil War. The term “American” is problematic for several reasons – one of the most important of which is that before the Revolution, few if any writers thought of themselves in that way. We will be tracking how early writers in and around what would become the territorial U.S. developed hybrid or “creole” identities forged out of the clash of European, Native, and American cultures in a strange new environment, and how these related to later ideas about American national identity in the years between the American Revolution and the Civil War. In literary terms, we will track how an early focus on New World subjects (the strange landscape, the contacts and conflicts between settlers and original inhabitants, and life under an economic system propelled by slavery) persisted into the nineteenth century. We will also explore writers’ attempts to forge new literary styles and forms that would make the culture of the New World as distinctive as its geographical, social, and political features.

Particulars: Two examinations, several short writing assignments, and weekly meetings of discussion sections.

Eng 255: British Literature before 1660
Morey, MWF 9:35-10:25, Max: 65

Content: An introduction to British literature and its cultural contexts from the earliest poetry in English to John Milton. Readings will include "The Dream of the Rood," Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, selections from William Langland’s Piers Plowman, Margery Kempe’s Book and Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, The Second Shepherds' Play, the end of Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur, book I of Sir Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Elizabethan sonnets, Metaphysical poetry, Christopher Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, William Shakespeare's Henry IV, part I, and selections from Paradise Lost. Classes are divided between lectures and Friday discussion sections.

Text: The Norton Anthology of English Literature, vol. 1, 8th ed., gen. ed. Stephen Greenblatt.

Particulars: Two examinations in class, weekly response papers, final examination, attendance policy.

Eng 310WR: Medieval and Renaissance Drama: Violated Bodies on the Renaissance Stage
McCauley, MWF 12:50-1:40, Max: 25

Content: This course will focus on the violations of the human body that were often enacted on (and, in some cases, off of) the Renaissance stage, as well as how these representations of bodily integrity and its rupture fit into the contexts of early modern English culture more generally. Over the course of the semester, we will read plays by Shakespeare, Marlowe, Kyd, Middleton, and others in which bodies that are wounded, mutilated, fragmented, deformed, and/or deceased perform crucial roles in the dramatic action. Although close reading of the texts of these plays will be our primary mode of inquiry, we will also attend to the ways in which the language employed by these playwrights may come to be embodied in performance.

Texts May Include: William Shakespeare, Coriolanus, Titus Andronicus, Julius Caesar; Christopher Marlowe, Edward II; Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy; Thomas Middleton and William Rowley, The Changeling; Thomas Middleton (?), The Revenger’s Tragedy; and a variety of critical/theoretical works.

Particulars: Mandatory attendance and participation; blogging; a class presentation; and three formal essays.

Eng 311WR: Shakespeare
Cavanagh, TT 11:30-12:45, Max: 18

Content: In this course, we will approach Shakespeare's plays as texts written to be performed. As we will discover, decisions made by actors, directors, and others involved in theatrical enterprises can help illuminate the richness, complexity, and ambiguity of Shakespeare's language. Although our emphasis will remain upon close textual analysis, we will use performance as a way to facilitate our examination of Shakespearean drama. The course is designed to help students become more knowledgeable readers and viewers of Shakespeare's plays.

Texts: specific texts to be announced. The books for the course will be available in the bookstore, but students do not need to purchase copies of plays that they already own.

Particulars: There will be regular writing assignments and at least one oral report. Active class participation is required.

Eng 311WR: Shakespeare
Cavanagh, TT 2:30-3:45, Max: 18

Texts: specific texts to be announced. The books for the course will be available in the bookstore, but students do not need to purchase copies of plays that they already own.

Particulars: There will be regular writing assignments and at least one oral report. Active class participation is required.

Eng 320WR: Restoration and Early Eighteenth-Century Literature: 1660-1740
Kelleher, TT 10:00-11:15, Max: 25

Content: This course explores the various forms of literary expression that arose in the generations following the English Civil War. The shadow cast by civil war is invariably long, and England is no exception: from the restoration of the English monarchy in 1660, to the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89, to the so-called “peace of the Augustans” presided over by the Hanoverian monarchs, the vicissitudes of political order and disorder provide an exciting, often volatile, context for the literature that will be our focus in this course. In addition to this political context, another set of “revolutions” transformed English life, bringing into being many of the things we understand today as cornerstones of modern life—including, among others, mass media and consumer capitalism. Given this historical climate, it is no wonder that the literature of late-seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century England is so vibrant, experimental, challenging—at times, even downright strange. Working our way across a variety of literary genres, we will pay particular attention to the ways that literature resonates with and shapes debates regarding political, social, religious, economic, and sexual power.

Texts: We will study the works of Hobbes, Locke, Astell, Wycherley, Rochester, Behn, Dryden, Haywood, Defoe, Swift, Pope, and Richardson.

Particulars: Attendance and active class participation are required; written work will include a combination of exams and essays.

Eng 330WR: Romanticism
Peck, MWF 3:00-3:50, Max: 25

Content: This course will focus on major texts of the British Romantic era, the period (roughly) from 1780-1830 when political and economic upheaval across Europe accompanied in British letters a distinctive reassessment of literature and its relation to the “modern” world. While many Romantic poems, such as Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn” or Shelley’s “Ozymandias,” are already recognizable to many students, this course will establish a context for such literary creations that continue to frame our notions of what literature should look like today. We will explore the “spirit of the age” that developed in this time period and how the age’s authors understood, and re-imagined, the self, society, history, politics, and religion. Though we will attend primarily to the period’s wealth of poetic productions, we will also examine the Gothic romance, the comic novel and the critical essay.

Texts: Authors will include William Blake, Charlotte Smith, Robert Burns, William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy and Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, Jane Austen and William Hazlitt.

Particulars: Students can expect two or three critical essays, occasional informal writing assignments, an oral presentation and a final exam.

Eng 336WR: The English Victorian Novel: Blackness, Slavery, and the Mid-Victorian Novel
Muneal, MWF 10:40-11:30, Max: 25

Content: Britain banned the Atlantic slave trade in 1807 and abolished colonial slavery in 1834; not until thirty years later, at the close of the War Between the States, did America free its black men and women in bondage. This course will focus on that liminal period in which transatlantic cultural exchange could not but confront the specter of slavery. Questions we will address include: How does a nation’s stance on the slavery issue define national identity and national pride? Why does Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin gain an unprecedented following in Britain, selling five times more copies there than in America during its first year of publication? Why is blackness an inescapable metaphor or symbol in the social-cause novels of the 1850s? Why are authors and critics tempted to compare hardship and inequality? To close the course, we will jump forward a hundred years to the postcolonial Caribbean and note the appropriation of Victorian texts to revisit issues of color, class, status, and nationhood. While this course will have a definite thematic focus, we will also pay attention to questions of period and genre, exploring the form of the Victorian novel and discussing novel serialization and audience awareness. In individual research projects, students will place the mid-Victorian texts we read in the larger continuum of the period, examining how they anticipated the substantial and formal development of the genre as the century progressed.

Texts May Include: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin; Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Villette; Charles Dickens’s Martin Chuzzlewit, Bleak House, and Hard Times; Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South; Charles Kingsley’s Two Years Ago; George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss; Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea; Elizabeth Nunez’s Beyond the Limbo Silence.

Particulars: active participation in class and on discussion board/blog; one fifteen-minute presentation; in-class midterm exam; research proposal and final research paper or annotated bibliography. The instructor will not assume that students have prior knowledge of the Victorian period or the texts to be covered; the instructor will assume, however, that students read diligently, attend class regularly, and write clearly and grammatically.

Eng 341WR: The Twentieth-Century English Novel: Writing in Conflict
Chase, MWF 2:00-2:50, Max: 25

Content: This course will undertake a survey of 20th century English novels, beginning with the late Victorian/early modernist novel The Heart of Darkness. The first half of the course will then focus on the emergence of modernism in the novel, paying attention to the formal, stylistic, and narrative changes made by writers such as Joyce, Woolf, and Lawrence. The second half of the course will take up two themes. First, we will examine literary representations of the world wars and seek to understand how these catastrophic events consumed authors’ literary imaginations throughout the remainder of the 20th century (and into the 21st). Second, we will discuss the decline of the British Empire, including what “counts” as an English novel, by examining novels by writers from former colonies or contested sites, such as India and Northern Ireland. Thus, the second half of the syllabus will cover some texts less frequently seen in an English novels course, but which challenge and are indebted to earlier 20th century English writers in significant ways. This course will include a heavy reading load and students should expect to read approximately one novel per week; however, class sessions will involve a mixture of lecture and discussion covering manageable sections of each novel. Throughout the course, we will pay attention to questions of historical context, readership, and—where applicable—authors own writings both about their novels and about the process of literary creation.

Texts may include: Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness; James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; D. H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers; Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway; E. M. Forster, A Passage to India; Iris Murdoch Under the Net; Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children; A. S. Byatt Possession; Sebastian Faulks, Birdsong; Pat Barker, Regeneration; and Deirdre Madden, One by One in the Darkness.

Particulars: class participation, bi-weekly 2 page response papers, two 7-8 page papers, and a final exam.

Eng 342WR: Modern Irish Literature
Higgins, TT 11:30-12:45, Max: 25

Content: This course will offer a contextual and thematic examination of Irish writing from the Revival to the present. Ireland has been imagined or invented since ancient times by the writers, artists and thinkers who lived in, worked in or colonized "this most distressful country". W.B.Yeats and his contemporaries in the Irish Revival believed that writers could change the course of history. Indeed according to Denis Donoghue, "Yeats invented a country and called it Ireland." We will read a wide range of Irish authors, concentrating on the ways in which the imagined Ireland often suppressed and surpassed the "real" Ireland. There will be three topics of particular study (i) Staging Ireland (ii) Women and Ireland and (iii) Irish writing and Violence.

Texts: Possible authors include: Brendan Behan, Eavan Boland, Ciaran Carson, Brian Friel, Lady Augusta Gregory, Seamus Heaney, James Joyce, Michael Longley, Deirdre Madden, Derek Mahon, John McGahern, Joseph O'Connor, J.M. Synge, W. B Yeats.

ENG 345WR : Postcolonial Literature: Literature of the Indian Partition
Bahri, MWF 3:00-3:50, Max: 15 Eng 345WR/AS 370WR

Content: The partition of India in 1947 left a million dead and 12 million displaced. How does history recount this traumatic event? What stories are told about the partition in the community? How do writers, poets, artists, cartoonists, and filmmakers recreate the drama of partition? How does literature render the historic poetic, the traumatic theoretical, the violent aesthetic?

In this multi-media course we will learn about the treatment of the historical event of the partition of the Indian subcontinent history in literary and popular accounts: novels, stories, poems, art, cartoons, and films from Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. Translated texts constitute about 10% the course content, while the rest of the material is originally in English. Special features of this course include a blackboard platform and lectures by survivors of the partition from the Atlanta South Asian community.

Texts: Literary readings include Amitav Ghosh's The Shadow Lines,Bapsi Sidhwa's Cracking India, Khushwant Singh's Train to Pakistan, short stories and poetry.

Particulars: Presentation and two papers.

Eng 348SWR: Contemporary Literature: Contemporary Irish Poetry
Schuchard, TT 11:30-12:45, Max: 18

Content: This course is based upon a close critical reading and evaluation of poetry written by Irish poets in English during the past forty years and whose work is currently at the forefront of international poetic discourse. The course focuses on poets from Northern Ireland and the Republic, on Protestant and Catholic, on urban working class poets and feminist poets, all in the context of the Irish literary tradition, the history of modern Ireland, and the Troubles.

Poets to be studied include John Montague, Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon, Michael Longley, Eavan Boland, Paul Muldoon, Rita Ann Higgins, Bernard O'Donoghue, Dennis O'Driscoll, and Medbh McGuckian.

Particulars: Writing requirements include two 5-7 page critical papers based on the work of poets studied, and one longer 10-12 page final essay based upon independent study of additional work (poems or volumes not studied in class) by one or more poets studied. The focus of the course is on individual volumes of poetry and on their relation to the poet's entire oeuvre. Each student is responsible for reading the complete poems of one poet and leading a discussion of a particular volume studied by all students. Textual study of the poems will be complemented by manuscript examination in Special Collections when possible.

As this is an advanced course, it is assumed that students have taken English 205 or its equivalent; otherwise, students should seek permission of the instructor before registering.

Eng 352WR: American Literature since 1900
Kalaidjian, TT 10:00-11:15, Max: 25

Content: English 352--This course will feature selected major works of modern and contemporary American fiction, poetry, and drama.

Texts: Assigned texts will include Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth, Ernest Hemingway, The Complete Short Stories, F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, Toni Morrison, Sula, with additional readings from The Heath Anthology of American Literature Vol. 2.

Particulars: In addition to the readings, there will be a number of essay assignments and a final exam.

Eng 354WR: The Nineteenth-Century American Novel
Elliott, MWF 10:40-11:30, Max: 25

Content: This course will combine the careful reading of nineteenth-century American novels with an introduction to narrative theory and other critical methods for reading prose. We will use this combination to consider how novels render the problems of their time, and the particular kinds of social knowledge novels can offer. The syllabus will include examples of a variety of novelistic genres, including the romance (Hawthorne), the novel of manners (James), the sentimental novel (Stowe), regional fiction (Jewett), and the experimental novel (Melville’s Moby-Dick).

Texts may include: Nathaniel Hawthorne, House of Seven Gables; Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin; Henry James, Washington Square; Henry James, Turn of the Screw; Sarah Orne Jewett, Country of the Pointed Firs; and H. Porter Abbott, The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative.

Particulars: While students need not have experience reading literary criticism or theory, they should be prepared to devote every third or fourth class to reading of that kind. Class participation, three papers, and a final examination will be required.

Eng 358WR: African American Literature to 1900
Green, MWF 11:45-12:35, Max: 20 (Eng 358WR/AAS 358WR)

Content: Throughout United States history, African Americans have used various forms of movement in order to attain freedom. We will focus on primarily eighteenth and nineteenth century literary representations of migration (physical movement), educational attainment (intellectual movement), and economic advancement (economic movement) as movements toward freedom. We will not rely on a fixed definition of freedom. Rather, we will think about and articulate multiple and varied conceptualizations of freedom. The following questions will guide literary analysis and critical writing, prompt class discussion, and inspire researched writing: How did African Americans define freedom across place and time? What influence did gender and perspectives on citizenship have on ideals of freedom and movements to attain those ideals?

Required Texts: Henry Bibb’s The Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, An American Slave, Harriet Wilson’s Our Nig; or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black , Harriett Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Iola Leroy, and Charles Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition.

Eng 386WR: Literature and Science
Otis, TT 1:00-2:15, Max: 25

Content: This course will explore the ways that scientists and literary writers inspired each other and developed each other’s ideas before science assumed the prominence it did in the twentieth century. Both science majors and literature majors are encouraged to take this class, since no expertise in the natural sciences or in literary analysis will be assumed. Instead, the course will offer an opportunity for direct, honest dialogue between people from different fields and a chance to learn from students with different perspectives. It will provide an opportunity for future scientists and literary scholars to explore the basic principles of each other’s fields in a friendly environment. Students will be asked to read the works of scientists and fiction writers in parallel and to examine the ways that they approached questions such as, “How did life emerge?” “What is individual identity?” and “Will life someday die out?” In some cases, students will read stories written by scientists, comparing their fiction and non-fiction. The emphasis will be on nineteenth-century works and on the biological sciences.

Texts: Charles Darwin’s The Voyage of the Beagle, Santiago Ramón y Cajal’s Vacation Stories, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues under the Seas, H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, and selections from some famous scientific essays.

Particulars: Students will be asked to write weekly 1-2 page reading responses and three 4-6 page analytical essays which may be revised one time. There will be no midterm or final exam.

Eng 389S: Special Topics in Literature: Hamlet in Theory: Page, Stage, Screen, Criticism
Rambuss, TT 2:30-3:45, Max: 4 (Eng 389RS/CPLT 301S/FILM 373S)

Content: This seminar affords the opportunity for intensive study of Hamlet—an enduringly significant Renaissance cultural artifact, yet also one of Shakespeare’s most difficult, enigmatic plays—on page, stage, and screen. Rather than merely alighting upon the play’s many dramatic highlights, the format of this single-text class will allow us to linger over Hamlet, scene by scene. In conjunction with our close reading of Shakespeare’s play, the seminar will engage a variety of critical approaches—including psychoanalytic theory, deconstruction, new historicism, feminism, and queer theory—which we will then ply as interpretive tools for forging different ways of reading Hamlet.

The seminar will also consider three very different cinematic renderings of the play: Laurence Olivier’s 1948 expressionist Hamlet; Franco Zeffirelli’s 1990 action-hero Hamlet (starring Mel Gibson); and Michael Almereyda’s 1990 technoculture Hamlet (starring Ethan Hawke). And we will glance at the re-citation of Hamlet—its characters, set pieces, adages, and literary and philosophical tropes—in some disparate non-Hamlet movies: Last Action Hero, Clueless, and A Nightmare on Elm St. Our juxtaposition of lowbrow, popular cinematic forms (the action movie, the teen comedy, and the horror film) with the “classic Shakespeare film” will thus set the stage for a consideration of Shakespeare’s cultural status, both in his time and ours, as well as the shifting relations between high culture and popular culture more generally.

Texts: Hamlet; an anthology or two of critical essays.

Particulars: Attendance at all classes; a short paper; a longer seminar paper; a group seminar presentation.

Permission Only.

Eng 389R: Special Topics in Literature: Deception, War and the Image
Caruth, TT 10:00-11:15, Max: 5 (Eng 389R/CPLT 389/IDS 385)

Content: Why is war-making so deeply bound up with deception? And how are politics and history affected by the centrality of war in the political realm? Starting from the questions, this course will examine 20th century literature, film and (political and literary) theory in order to consider the relation between war and image, lying and politics, the production of history and its denial.

Eng 389RWR: Special Topics in Literature: Introduction to Media Theory and Media Fiction
Croxall, TT 10:00-11:15, Max: 20 (Eng 389RWR/CPLT 389WR)

Content: In the age of Google, iPhones, and the World of Warcraft, it may seem self-evident that, as Friedrich Kittler claims, “media determine our situation.” But it was not until the middle of the twentieth century that media began to be considered as important as the messages they conveyed. With this realization and the continued development of the computer came more thinking about the importance of media in our lives. How do media proliferate and become interconnected? How do media affect our perception of political and cultural events? How can we best represent our experiences within different media? To what extent does digital computing affect the media ecology in which we find ourselves today? About these and related questions, a body of media theory has arisen. This course will introduce you to some of the important texts in this field. At the same time we will consider both print and electronic literature—including novels about the Internet, virtual reality, and gaming—that engage these questions. We will consider how literature is determined by and at the same time extends the theories of media. Along the way, you and I will do our own share of writing—both print and digital.

Texts may include: Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49; Rudy Rucker, The Hacker and the Ants; Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash; Jeanette Winterson, The.PowerBook; Charles Stross, Halting State; Stuart Moulthrop, Victory Garden; Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves; Marshall McLuhan, The Essential McLuhan; Jean Baudrillard, The Gulf War Did Not Happen; Paul Virilio, Desert Screen; N. Katherine Hayles, Writing Machines; and various essays on course reserve.

Particulars: Regular attendance and participation in class discussion; regular, short response papers; two essays; and an annotated bibliography. In addition, there will be several multi-media assignments incorporating tools such as del.icio.us, Twitter, and PMOG.

Eng 389RWR: Special Topics in Literature: Malcolm X and The Making of Twentieth-Century Radical Celebrity
Jackson, TT 2:30-3:45, Max 20 Eng 389RWR/AAS 271WR

Content: This course will examine the remarkable life and public career of Malcolm X and in the process shed light on the phenomenon of myth-making, political reputation, and the culture of celebrity in twentieth century United States. Specifically, the course hopes to answer this question: How did Malcolm X, an ex-convict and convert to a tiny religious cult, become one of the most influential political revolutionaries of the twentieth century? We will examine the life and work of Malcolm X (1925-1965) from two distinct angles. First, we will try to understand Malcolm X, the charismatic political figure, in his own time. We will listen to and read many of the speeches given by the popular Minister during his years as the national spokesman for the Nation of Islam and then we will focus special attention to X’s work as a black internationalist revolutionary after November 1963 until his death in February 1965.

The second portion of the course will be devoted to El Hajj Malik Shabazz’s meaning and influence in the United States and abroad after 1965. This portion of the course is explicitly concerned with the process of celebrity image manufacture, both by institutions anxious to quell political dissent as well as by artists and political insurgents hoping to inspire radical opposition. To carry out this part of our investigation, we will examine popular media such as film and music.

Particulars: Include a major presentation, a weekly journal, a midterm examination, and a final paper.

Eng 389RWR: Special Topics in Literature: Native Literature (CANCELLED)
Womack, MWF 2:00-2:50, Max: 25

Content: English 389 examines Native American novels, drama and poetry in the first half of the twentieth century in relation to federal Indian policy. Texts include E. Pauline Johnson's The Moccasin Maker, Mourning Dove's Cogewea, Lynn Riggs's The Cherokee Night, D'arcy McNickles's The Surrounded and John Joseph Mathews Sundown.

Texts: E. Pauline Johnson's The Moccasin Maker, Mourning Dove's Cogewea, Lynn Riggs's The Cherokee Night, Dary McNickles's The Surrounded and John Joseph Mathews's Sundown.

Particulars: Grades will be based on quizzes, an exam, and an end of the semester paper.

Eng 389RWR: Special Topics in Literature: Shakespeare in Russian Culture
Glazov-Corrigan, MWF 2:00-2:50, Max: 3 (Eng 389RWR/RUSS 374WR/
CPLT 389WR/IDS 385WR)

Content: This class examines several paradigms for understanding Shakespeare's formidable influence in Russian culture: from Bloom's anxiety of influence, to Eliot's claim that Shakespeare cannot be a poetic influence, to Pasternak's conception of the battle entailed in the transmission of tradition, and then to Mandelstam's vision of influence as a forceful impulse to speech or even a mating call. Eight of 10 Shakespeare's plays will carefully discussed in order to understand which of the themes have the strongest impact and new life in a Russian culture and which are overlooked and downplayed.

Eng 399R: Independent Study. Variable credit. (PLEASE NOTE THIS SECTION WILL NOT SATISFY THE WRITING REQUIREMENT).
Morey, Permission required

GUIDELINES:

1) Independent study normally consists of a project involving independent research and/or creative endeavor. In some cases, a directed reading program may constitute independent study, provided that such reading does not duplicate or closely parallel the content of existing courses. Broad latitude is expected in the nature of the individual topics, but independent study in English should appropriately be concerned in some fashion with the written or spoken word.

2) At a maximum no faculty member will be expected to direct more than three independent study projects in a semester. The consent or refusal to direct any project rests with the individual faculty member.

3) To pre-register for independent study a student must have the written permission of a faculty member who
has consented to direct and evaluate the student's project. This permission must stipulate the number of credit hours which the student and his or her director have agreed upon as suitable for the project. Such permission is considered tentative until the student's formal proposal in writing has been approved (see next paragraph).

4) To complete registration students must present a written proposal of their project in duplicate, on a form obtainable in the English office. One copy of the proposal must go to the faculty member responsible for directing the project, and the other to the Director of Undergraduate Studies. The written proposal should preferably be submitted and approved before or during the preregistration period, and in no case later than the end of the semester preceding the student's planned enrollment in 399R. Only rarely, in unusual cases, will a student be allowed to submit a proposal during the drop-add period at the beginning of the semester. Without a written proposal describing the project and what they hope to accomplish in it, students will not be allowed to enroll in English 399R.

5) A student may take up to eight hours of independent study distributed over one or more projects. The eight hours may be used in a single semester or over two semesters.

6) Students and Professors must determine whether or not they will be doing the independent study for WR. (A WR independent study must typically be taken for four credit hours and involves approximately 20 pages of polished writing over the course of the semester.)

Eng 399RWR: Independent Study (PLEASE NOTE: THIS SECTION WILL SATISFY THE WRITING REQUIREMENT).
4 hrs. credit
Morey, Permission required

GUIDELINES:

3) To pre-register for independent study a student must have the written permission of a faculty member who has consented to direct and evaluate the student's project. This permission must stipulate the number of credit hours which the student and his or her director have agreed upon as suitable for the project. Such permission is considered tentative until the student's formal proposal in writing has been approved (see next paragraph).

5) A student may take up to eight hours of independent study distributed over one or more projects. The eight hours may be used in a single semester or over two semesters.

Eng 489RSWR: Special Topics for Advanced Study: Three Postmodern Writers: Samuel Beckett, Thomas Bernhard, Marguerite Duras
Gruber, M 2:00-5:00, Max: 15

Content: In this advanced seminar we will study in depth three major writers whose work defines the “postmodern” era, the last half of the twentieth century. Beckett, Bernhard, and Duras are profoundly original writers; their stories and/or plays and films often blur the boundaries between prose and poetry, narrative and drama, fiction and autobiography, sometimes even between literary fragments and “whole” works of art. Their writing is both beautiful and disquieting; all three authors push beyond older or more familiar representations of character and experience, but all three still have much to tell us about everyday life and the hearts and minds of people we know.

Texts will likely include Beckett, Shorter Plays and The Complete Short Prose; Bernhard, The President, Eve of Retirement, Force of Habit, Three Novellas, and Woodcutters; Duras, Hiroshima Mon Amour, India Song, Savannah Bay, and The Ravishing of Lol Stein.

Particulars: participation in class discussions; occasional brief presentations (2-3, depending on enrollment); two shorter papers (5-6 pages, each on a single author; these can grow out of your presentations), and one longer comparative paper (10-12 pages).

Eng 489RSWR: Special Topics for Advanced Study: Senior Seminar in Southern Literature: Faulkner, Welty, and Flannery O’Connor
Wolff King, TT 2:30-3:45, Max: 15

Content: This course will consider work by some of the South’s great writers. We will study the great and difficult novels of William Faulkner, who still holds the place of high distinction in American Literature for his literary achievement. We will read the work of Eudora Welty and discuss the Mississippi duet that she and Faulkner created. We will then turn eastward and consider the writing of Georgia native, Flannery O’Connor, whose letters to her friend Betty Hester, recently became available for study in the Woodruff Library MARBL collection.

The course will focus on the biographical and contextual, with plenty of attention to the textual.

Particulars: one short paper, one long research paper, class presentations, and final exam.

Eng 490SWR: Seminar in Literary Interpretation
Bauerlein, MWF 3:00-3:50, Max: 15

Required of Honors Students.

Content: We will examine classic statements in the theory and practice of literary criticism, from the ancients forward. We will also treat the course as a thesis workshop, with numerous oral presentations about student projects and written exercises to prepare for their completion.

Requirements: Weekly one-page papers on reading assignments; Updates given orally by students on reading and research progress; Several practice oral presentations; One thesis statement (5 pages); One research bibliography and one descriptive outline of the project (20 pages).

(Written permission of Honors Director required prior to enrollment)

Eng 495RWR: Honors Thesis
Morey, Permission required; honors students only

Particulars: Prerequisites: Admission to College Honors Program and approval of project by Department. See the Director of Undergraduate Studies.

Eng 496R: Internship in English. Variable credit
Morey, Permission required

Maximum number of hours in 496R is 12, but no one internship may count for more than four hours. Please note that internship hours DO NOT count towards the major.
Applied learning in a supervised work experience utilizing skills related to the English major. Open to English majors (seniors or second-semester juniors) with the approval of the internship coordinator.

Particulars: Prerequisite: Submission and approval of application before the end of the add/drop period.

SEE CREATIVE WRITING COURSE ATLAS FOR ENGLISH COURSES WITH CREATIVE WRITING CONTENT.

Fall 2008 Course Atlas