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

Eng 101WR: 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 190S: Freshman Seminar
Faculty. Max: 15

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.

Eng 190S: Freshman Seminar: Imagining Ireland
Higgins, TT 11:30-12:45, Max: 15

Content: Ireland of the Welcomes. Ireland of the saints and scholars. Ireland of the Celtic Tiger. Ireland of the troubles. Which Ireland do we imagine is the “real Ireland?”
Declan Kiberd's influential book, Inventing Ireland begins by asking, "If God invented whiskey to prevent the Irish from ruling the world, then who invented Ireland?" 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”.

In 2005, The Economist declared Ireland the best place to live in the world in terms of growth, per capita income and future prospects. It was not always so. For centuries, Ireland has been best known for its sad songs and happy wars, a country claimed as the point of origin for seventy million people across the globe but unable to sustain its own population of four and a half million. Now the roar of the Celtic tiger has propelled Ireland to the forefront of the European Union and to the attention of struggling economies across the globe.

Ireland's four Nobel literature laureates and five Nobel peace laureates are signposts to the twin concerns of creativity and conflict that have animated the last two centuries 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.
Topics discussed will include nationalism, colonialism, Anglo-Ireland and Irish-Ireland, Women and Ireland, tourism and the Celtic tiger.

Texts: The range of writers discussed may include Eavan Boland, James Joyce, Sean O’Casey, John McGahern, Roddy Doyle, Seamus Heaney, Brian Friel, Deirdre Madden, Frank McGuinness, Michael Longley, Derek Mahon and W.B. Yeats.

(Freshman Seminar—Limited to first-year students only)

Eng 190S: Freshman Seminar
Allewaert, MWF 11:45-12:35, Max: 15

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. The primary goal of each section is to develop the arts of reading and writing about poetry with interpretive skill. This section of 190 will count as English 205, the required course for English majors, should you decide to become one.

(Freshmen Seminar—Limited to first-year students only) Counts as English 205

Eng 190S: Freshman Seminar: Afro-Cuba Then and Now
Sanders, TT 2:30-3:45, Max: 5 Eng 190 (5)/AAS 190 (10)

Content: This course will examine Afro-Cuban history and culture from the early nineteenth century to the present moment. Using history and political movements as context, and observing different forms of cultural expression such as music, dance, religion, literature, and film, the course will explore how Afro-Cubans have defined themselves culturally, and how Afro-Cuban culture has developed over time. Authors and artists will include Gabriel Valdés Concepción (Plácido), Juan Francisco Manzano, Esteban Montejo, Ricardo Batrell, Nicolás Gillén, and Nancy Morejón. No knowledge of Spanish is required.

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 214: Global Literatures in English: The Novel Sinks into Allegory: Contemporary South Asian Literature
Yusin, MWF 9:35-10:25, Max: 25

Content: This course will engage students in contemporary writings from South Asia. In addition to our attention to particular stylistic, formal, and thematic features of the individual texts, we will attend to the relationship among local political, religious, and historical contexts in order to investigate the complex processes by which individual identities are in conversation with collective identities. Through our readings of South Asian literature, we will question the meaning of the term “global” and furthermore, what it means to be writing about the “global.”

Texts: Amitav Ghosh, The Hungary Tide, Salman Rushide, The Moor’s Last Sigh, Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things, Anita Desai, Clear Light of Day, and Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss, Mosin Hamid, Moth Smoke.

Eng 216: History of Drama and Theater II
Evenden, MWF 10:40-11:30, Theater Majors Lab W 4-5:15
Max: 10 Eng 216 (10)/Thea 216 (15)

Theater Studies majors will be required to participate in a weekly laboratory in performance reconstruction; others may participate in the lab for extra credit.

Content: Content: A study of Western drama from the 18th century through the modern period. Reading of representative dramas, an average of two per week, with special attention given to their cultural and historical contexts.

Texts: Students will be expected to read two to three plays a week. Playwrights to be covered include Lillo, Marivaux, Schiller, Scribe, Feydeau, Ibsen, Shaw, Chekhov, Strindberg, Brecht, Beckett, Muller.

A $10 photocopying fee will be charged to students' Bursar accounts to cover handouts and additional materials.

Particulars: Four equally-weighted exams , including take-home analytic essays and optional final paper.

Eng 251: American Literature: 1865 to Present
Bauerlein, MWF 2:00-2:50, Max: 65

Content: Readings in American literature from 1865 to the present.

Texts: The American Tradition in Literature, vol. 2 (11th edition), edited by Perkins and Perkins.

Particulars: weekly quizzes, 2 midterms, final exam.

Eng 256: British Literature since 1660
Bahri, MWF 12:50-1:40, Max: 65

Content: An introduction to major texts and currents of thought in British Literature from the late seventeenth-century to 10 minutes ago. This course will furnish an overview of literary developments in British literature over time, with a focus on the idea of England and Englishness as it emerges through literature. By the end of it, students should have an understanding of significant literary achievements from the Restoration and Romanticism to Postmodernism and Postcolonialism.

Authors and Texts: The Norton Anthology of English Literature; and selections from the writings of Ayub Khan-Din, Hanif Kureishi, Salman Rushdie, and Zadie Smith.

Particulars: Two in-class examinations; weekly response papers; regular attendance and participation in weekly discussion sections; a final examination.

Eng 301WR: Beowulf
Morey, TT 10:00-11:15, Max: 20 Eng 301 (20)/Ling 362R (5)

Content: The poem known as Beowulf constitutes approximately one-tenth of the extant corpus of Old English poetry and it survives in only one manuscript. This fraction and number disguise the importance of the poem to scholars from Elizabethan to modern times, from its emergence as an antiquarian curiosity to the ongoing investigations of its historic, mythic, and literary dimensions. Classes will consist of prepared translation, short lectures, and discussion. Reading in relevant scholarship will provide a basis for discussion and for term papers.

Texts: Beowulf: An Edition, ed. Bruce Mitchell and Fred C. Robinson. Blackwell, 1998.
Beowulf: A New Verse Translation, Roy Liuzza. Broadview, 2000.
A Critical Companion to Beowulf, Andy Orchard. D. S. Brewer, 2003.

Particulars: midterm (translation), term paper (approximately 15 pages), and final examination (translation). Introductory Old English (English 300) or equivalent preparation in reading Old English (please see the instructor) is required. While proficiency in class translation is not graded per se, regular attendance and preparation of the material are crucial to success in the course.

Eng 303: Middle English Language and Literature: Religious Traditions in the Literature of Late-Medieval England
Dzon, TT 2:30-3:45, Max: 3 Eng 303/IDS 385

Content: A large quantity of religious literature was produced in late-medieval England, some of it by the best poets of the age. Great diversity exists among the texts that can be placed in this category, with respect to their genre and the particular religious viewpoints and practices they advocate. In this course, we will read saints’ lives, biblical plays, religious satire, devotional and didactic texts. We will attend to orthodox clerical voices as well as those of Christians not officially authorized to speak on religious matters or who represent a marginalized sector of society. Readings and discussions will expose students to a variety of religious discourses from the period and will give them the opportunity to consider the extent to which they opposed or reinforced one another. Students will also become familiarized with some of the major criticism in the field. While participants are encouraged to read the texts in the original Middle English, modern translations are available for almost all of them.

Texts: Chaucer, select Canterbury Tales; Langland, Piers Plowman; saint’s lives; Pearl-poet; biblical plays from the York Cycle; Margery Kempe; Julian of Norwich; Nicholas Love, Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ; Wycliffite texts.

Eng 304WR: Chaucer
Bugge, TT 10:00-11:15, Max: 25

Content: Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, with attention to the historical and cultural context of the late fourteenth century. No previous acquaintance with Chaucer's work will be assumed, though all works will be read in the original Middle English. Participation in class discussion is encouraged and expected. In addition to the texts themselves, students will be held responsible for assigned background reading on important aspects of medieval English society and culture.

Requirements: 1) EIGHT SHORT READING REPORTS (no more than two pages in length) on each of eight works chosen from a bibliography supplied, exploring a topic raised there in relation to Chaucer's work (32%) -- these to be posted electronically. 2) A final, TAKE-HOME EXAMINATION consisting of two 1500-word essays in response to set questions (36%) . . . or a TERM PAPER (10-20 pages) on a topic chosen by the student (36%). 3) PARTICIPATION in class discussion (20%). 4) Regular ATTENDANCE (12%).

Text: The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson, 3rd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987.

Particulars: Students may satisfy the college writing requirement in this course. The course satisfies the English-major requirement for courses in British literature prior to 1660.

English 310WR: Medieval and Renaissance Drama: Staging the Queer Desires of Early Modern Drama
Middleton, TT 11:30-12:45, Max: 25

Content: This course will explore the variety of ways “queer” desires are staged in early modern drama, focusing on late-twentieth and early-twenty-first century productions of the plays. We will explore various definitions of queer desires, from same-sex desires to desires that contemporary audiences might label “abnormal,” and pay close attention to the historical changes in the relationship between desire and identity. From the flirting of cross-dressed youth to the riveting horror of rape and mutilation, we will examine how choices that directors and actors make in the staging of queer desires changes our understanding of and response to them.

Texts: Students will read and watch plays by Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson, and Lyly alongside critical works on gender, sexuality, and performance.

Particulars: As a writing requirement course, students will write three formal essays of increasing length, two in-class essays, and additional
shorter work. Students will also be graded on leading and participating in class discussion.

Eng 311WR: Shakespeare
Cavanagh, MWF 11:45-12:35, 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 315WR: Renaissance Literature: 1603-1660
Rambuss, TT 1:00-2:15, Max: 20 Eng 315WR (20)/CPLT 389WR (5)

Content This course examines in depth five poets—John Donne, Ben Jonson, Robert Herrick, George Herbert, and Richard Crashaw—from one of the richest and most daringly experimental periods of English poetry. We will also consider poetic works by other significant seventeenth-century authors, including John Suckling, Thomas Carew, the Earl of Rochester, and Aphra Behn.

Our discussions will place these poets in a range of pertinent early modern literary and cultural contexts. Since much of the period’s lyric poetry is love poetry, the course will be particularly concerned with expressions of erotic desire, as well as with literary figurations of the self, the body, and the passions. Among the other topics that we will address are: Renaissance notions of authorship and the literary career; the staging of literary authority in relation to other kinds of authority; the post-Petrarchan love lyric; libertinism; ecstatic experience; the affective cross-affiliations between amorous and religious devotion in the period; and the “metaphysical conceit,” both in the age of Donne and in our own.

Particulars: Attendance at all classes; approximately twenty pages of formal writing, ranging from short essays to a few medium length ones; a final exam.

Eng 321WR: Later Eighteenth-Century Literature: 1740-1798: Johnson and Boswell
Brownley, TT 10:00-11:15, Max: 20

Content: English literature from 1740 to 1798, studied through a focus on Samuel Johnson and his circle. The course will focus on Johnson’s life as it is portrayed by James Boswell, the first and greatest of literary biographers, and also on Johnson’s own major writings. Because Johnson and Boswell refused to separate literature from everyday life and were deeply involved in the great events and issues of their times, the course provides an overview of social and cultural life in England during the period: its politics, art, drama, and history.

Texts: Boswell, London Journal; Boswell, Life of Johnson; Greene, ed., Samuel Johnson: The Major Works.

Particulars: Class attendance and informed participation, weekly one-page response papers, 2 shorter papers (5-7 pp.), final examination.

Eng 330WR: Romanticism
White, MWF 12:50-1:40, Max: 25

Content: Major texts of British Romanticism, a period dating (roughly) from the 1790's to the 1820's. The romantic era was a time of highly charged and self-conscious debates about the role of literature in an increasingly modern society. This course will explore the different ways in which key writers of the time engaged in the "defense of poetry" (as the poet Shelley called it) amidst the pressures of economic and political upheaval. We will consider how these debates transformed the very language of literature and produced radical claims for the power of the imagination that continue to shape the way we think about literature today.

Texts: The syllabus will focus on poetry and non-fiction prose. Authors to include: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Tighe, Shelley, and Keats.

Particulars: Three 7-8 page papers and a final exam.

Eng 336WR: The English Victorian Novel: Forms and Functions
Bowser, MWF 10:40-11:30, Max: 25

Content: In this course, we will study the issues, concerns, and spirit of the Victorian era as rendered literarily in seven Victorian novels. Our texts represent multiple genres, some of which have been critically privileged and others that have been critically marginalized. Our premise will be that literature can tell us something about the culture that produces it, and the more specific belief that the Victorian novel in various forms uncovers aspects of 19th-century culture, for Victorian readers and for us. Topics for discussion will include realism and self-fashioning, detective narratives and pleasure, individual and domestic interior spaces, and personal/national history. As we move through these topics, we will also move through different modes of the Victorian novel, all while considering the “adventure of interiority” that Lukacs says is at stake in every novel. Our discussion topics and the matter of interiority converge on the instability of identity, a problem with which Victorian novels seem preoccupied. We will ask what, if any, solutions these novels offer readers.

Texts: Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre (1847); George Eliot, Adam Bede (1859);Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (1861); Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley’s Secret (1862); Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet (1888); Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891);Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897)

Additional critical readings will be available via electronic reserve.

Eng 341WR: The Twentieth-Century English Novel
Chace, TT 10:00-11:15, Max: 25

Content: A survey of British fiction of the twentieth century. One novel per week, beginning with A. Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes) and ending with Ian McEwan. We will also read Conrad, Lawrence, Woolf, Bowen, Orwell, Waugh, Greene, and Amis.

Eng 341WR: The Twentieth-Century English Novel: 24: The Story of a Day
Sells, MWF 2:00-2:50, Max: 25

Content: This course will examine and analyze the twentieth century novel through the subgenre of the novel set in a single day (or night)—twelve to twenty-four hours. In the twentieth century the novel underwent an unprecedented amount of structural, stylistic, and narrative change—well-represented by the texts in this course—and no education in English literature or the novel in English is complete without an understanding of this period and its movements. Beginning with a consideration of the principles of narrative, genre, and setting, we will then explore their relation to ideas of time and exposition, and the cultural, technological, philosophical, and scientific reasons why this sub-genre emerges during the modernist period. Examples abound in the twentieth and early twenty-first century of novels set in a day (or night)-long timeframe. Working our way from such famous examples as Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (1925), to lesser-known novels by American writers Nathan Asch (Pay Day, 1930) and Richard Wright (Lawd, Today!, 1963), we will then take in contemporary British novelist Ian McEwan’s 2005 bestseller Saturday, before culminating our study in a six-week survey of James Joyce’s epic twenty-four hours: Ulysses (1922).

Eng 342WR: Modern Irish Literature: Civilizing Outrage: Contemporary Irish Poetry and the Troubles
Kress, MWF 3:00-3:50, Max: 25

Content: In 1949 the philosopher Theodor Adorno argued that “writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.” While Adorno later retracted this statement the sentiment remains with us: that poetry belongs to an old order rendered obsolete by the horrors of the twentieth century.
In this course we will investigate the role of violence, history, and politics in the literature of Northern Ireland during the period of armed sectarian conflict called the Troubles (1968-1998). The literature of the Troubles and the debates it has inspired, have become a site for hashing out the role of myth, art, and history in Irish culture, as well as the role of poetry in addressing these subjects. Although we will begin our study with a look back to Yeats, Joyce and other writers of the revival, we will spend the majority of our time reading contemporary Irish poets such as Seamus Heaney, Eavan Boland, and Paul Muldoon. We will ask ourselves: How do these poets respond to violence? Is writing poetry in such a climate barbaric or civilizing? When is poetry political? Finally, drawing from Emory’s extensive archive of Northern Irish poetry we will supplement our readings of the poems with studies of manuscript drafts, publication and reception history, and correspondence between poets.

Texts: McKittrick and McVea, Making Sense of the Troubles; Seamus Heaney, Opened Ground; Michael Longley, Selected Poems; Derek Mahon, Selected Poems; Eavan Boland, Outside History; Paul Muldoon, Poems 1968-1998; Ciaran Carson, Belfast Confetti; Tom Paulin, Fivemiletown, and Medbh McGuckian, Selected Poems.

Eng 348WR: Contemporary Literature
Kalaidjian, MWF 11:45-12:35, Max: 25

Content: This course will explore literary and cinematic representations of the post 9/11 condition, globalization, and futurity taking into account contemporary racial, gender, sexual, and social differences.

Texts will include: Toni Morrison, Love, Jhumpa Lahiri, The Interpreter of Maladies, Hanif Kureishi, My Beautiful Laundrette, Raymond Carver, Short Cuts, Michael Cunningham, Specimen Days, Don Delillo, The Falling Man, Neil LaBute, The Mercy Seat, Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, John Updike, Terrorist, Hany Abu-Assad, Paradise Now.

Particulars: In addition to the readings, the work load will comprise short essay assignments and a final exam.

Eng 348WR: Contemporary Literature: Studies in Contemporary Literature: History, Trauma, and Literary Witness
Yusin, MWF, 11:45-12:35, Max: 25

Content: This course will explore literary texts and critical theories that link contemporary politics, history, cultures, identities, etc. with psychoanalytic accounts of trauma and violence in public and private spheres. Our aim will be to examine the ways in which language, history, and globalization are conceived and reconceived by contemporary literature. Through the literary and supplemental texts, this course will ask: What is the role of literature in historiography? What does literature uniquely reveal about contemporary history, politics, and culture? Can literature witness history, and can it be cultural testimony? Can literature teach us something about the human condition in the global scene we would not otherwise know?

Texts: Milan Kundera, The Joke, Gunter Grass, The Tin Drum, Reinaldo Arenas, Before Night Falls, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Collected Stories, Elias Khoury, Gate of the Sun, Nadine Gordimer, July’s People.

Eng 352WR: American Literature since 1900: American Modernisms
Ayer, MWF 12:50-1:40, Max: 25

Content: Radical experimentation with language and form characterizes the poetry and prose of the modernist period, a time in which cataclysmic changes in the physical, spiritual, and intellectual environments brought the culture to crisis. Revolutionary discoveries in science, technology, philosophy, psychology, history, and economics triggered an explosion of creative energy as writers strove to create a new art to express a new reality: they questioned the received traditions, threw convention to the winds, introduced taboo topics, and generally shook things up. Pound’s dictum, MAKE IT NEW, became a rallying cry for the avant-garde, a challenge many writers rose to meet. Through analyzing the radical experiments in language and form of American poets and novelists writing from 1905-1940, we will explore the meanings of modernism.

Texts: Readings will include works by Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, H. D., Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams Wallace Stevens, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Zora Neale Hurston, and Jean Toomer, and selected poems by Sterling Brown, Marianne Moore, and Mina Loy.

Particulars: Active class participation, frequent short assignments, oral presentation, mid-term, 2 short essays, and one long essay carried through several drafts

Although not a prerequisite, Poetry 205 or the equivalent is strongly recommended.

Eng 357WR: Southern Literature
Ladd, TT 8:30-9:45, Max: 25

Content: A study of selected texts from the 19th and 20th centuries. We will focus primarily on literary form and strategy as they shape interpretation within specific contexts (the Louisiana Purchase, Manifest Destiny, the Civil War, U.S. nationalism, Radical Racism, Feminism, Civil Rights, Americas Studies, and/or other contexts). We will examine the longstanding tension between the southern writer and the “community,” the ways that various authors have chosen to represent (often very critically) the South, and the significance of southern literature in the past and at present with some attention to southern literature in global contexts.

Texts: Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins; Kate Chopin, The Awakening and Selected Stories; Charles Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition; William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying; Arna Bontemps, Black Thunder; J.M. Coetzee, In the Heart of the Country; Donald Harington, Some Other Place, the Right Place. Other texts available online or on reserve.

Particulars: 2 in-Class exams as well as two in-class essays using research sources (prepared beforehand; written in class); a major research project (paper and presentation); unannounced quizzes, short reaction papers; a final examination.

Eng 359WR: African American Literature since 1900: African American Literature in the Age of Insurgency, 1960-1980
Jackson, TT 11:30-12:45, Max: 20 Eng 359WR (20)/AAS 272WR (5)

Content: This course will explore literature concerned with the texture of African American radical consciousness during the 1960s and 1970s. How did black writers depict the American scene during this vital period of American social transformation, characterized initially by the liberal domestic policies of the Great Society Program and conservative foreign policies directed toward African and Asian efforts to overcome colonial domination? How did the writers respond to more conservative domestic policies in the 1980s? What constitutes an act of dissent or insurgency? The class will pursue in depth the multiple ideological positions tendered by the texts, that typically fluctuate along an axis between revolution and assimilation. Further, we will seek to understand the perpetual redefining of the culprit that seems to stand in the way of black progress: Western society, the United States, the legacy of slavery, black patriarchy, western epistemology, the fragmented black identity, an impoverished historical understanding.

We will regularly engage the complex dynamics of memory, race, sexuality, nostalgia, social class and national position in fiction narratives written by African Americans between roughly 1960 and 1980.

Eng 365SWR: Modern Drama
Benston, TT 11:30-12:45, Max: 5 Eng 365SWR (5)/Thea 365SWR (7)

Content: A survey course tracing the development of modern drama covering works from Ibsen and Strindberg to Ionesco and Beckett.

Texts: Masters of Modern Drama, Block, Haskell & Shedd, Robert, eds. Random House.

Particulars: There will be three papers. There will be no scheduled exams, but an occasional specific exercise in examining specific questions relating to a script may be assigned.

Note: Students will be required to purchase textbook from the Theater Studies department.

Eng 368WR: Literature and Cultural Studies: From the Culture Concept to the Culture Wars
Elliott, TT 2:30-3:45, Max: 25

Content: “Culture” is a term that we use constantly, but that means a myriad of things. This course will trace the genealogy of ideas of culture from the late nineteenth century to the present, and explore what the shifting meanings of culture have meant for literature and literary studies during that time. Our readings will take us from literary theorists of culture Matthew Arnold, T. S. Eliot) to anthropologists (Ruth Benedict, James Clifford) from the fiction of the nineteenth century (Henry James) to the twenty-first (Zadie Smith). We will conclude by reading contemporary arguments about the relationship of literature to culture from the so-called “culture wars” of the last twenty years. Throughout, we will return to central questions about the different values assigned to literature as ideas about culture have changed.

Possible texts include: Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy; T. S. Eliot, Notes on Culture; Henry James, The Awkward Age; Charles Chesnutt, The Conjure Woman and Other Tales; Ruth Benedict, Patterns of Culture; Zadie Smith, On Beauty; Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age

Particulars: Frequent short writing assignments as well as three papers of seven to eight pages.

Eng 369WR: Satire: Satire, Irony, and the Political
Allewaert, MWF 2:00-2:50, Max: 25

Content:What kinds of knowledge do irony, satire, and parody make possible? What sort of affective orientation do they encourage? Do communities forged through these rhetorical modes necessarily exclude those who aren't in on the joke? We will begin to address these questions by looking at Cervantes's Don Quixote, Sterne's Tristram Shandy, and several shorter works from the 18th century. After familiarizing ourselves with traditional ways of conceiving satire, irony, and parody (i.e. Menippean, Juvenalian, Hortatian, Socratic irony, comic irony) we will assess how they function in more recent cultural loci. First, we will examine the emergence of irony as a cultural paradigm, focusing on the art of Warhol, Nabokov’s Pale Fire, and The Colbert Report. Next, we will consider the arguments of critics who suggest that irony, satire, and parody discourage earnestness. Finally, we will investigate the role of satire and parody in postcolonial writing and in contemporary black arts movements.

Primary texts may include: Cervantes’s Don Quixote, Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, Dryden’s MacFlecknoe, Swift’s ”Modest Proposa,l, Fielding’s Shamela, Pope’s “Rape of the Lock,” Franklin’s bagatelles, Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, Nabokov’s Pale Fire, Lehmann’s Heathers, Hutcheon’s “Irony’s Edge,” David Foster Wallace’s A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, Bruno Latour’s We Have Never Been Modern, Homi Bhabha’s “Of Mimicry,” Coetzee’s Foe, Percival Everett’s Erasure, and Chapelle’s Show.

Particulars: Assignments will include several short responses, two formal papers, and a final project.

Eng 379RWR: Special Topics: Creative Writing and the Health Sciences Grimsley, W 3:00-5:30, Max: 16 (Eng 379 (1)/ Eng 798(1)/IDS 385(1)/
ILA 790(1)/SPH(4)/Med School(4)/Nursing School (4)

Content: This workshop offers an introduction to the use of creative writing in prose as a technique for exploring and consolidating learning in the health sciences, including the School of Nursing, the School of Medicine, the School of Public Health, and Emory College. Students will employ the writing of prose fiction, essays, and formal journal writing to explore scenarios that have arisen in their studies in the health sciences and related fields and to consolidate learning about the human dimension of these fields. Short stories offer an opportunity to explore human interactions in a hypothetical realm that can result in extraordinary narratives of instruction and catharsis. Essays can offer a space in which a health science student can organize the personal aspect of knowledge that he or she is studying; a personal essay or journalistic study of a topic in this field can help a student to formulate his or her stance to a particular area of study. Journal writing can offer a place for reflection on the changes that the study of health sciences can bring about in students, and can help them cope with the need to preserve a rich inner life in arenas that can be depersonalizing. In addition, all areas of health sciences can benefit from students with an understanding of clear writing. The course will emphasize all of these areas of study. Students will be required to engage their study of the health sciences directly in their writing; it is expected that this will lead to substantial writing that explains science in clear, understandable prose.

Texts: Suggested reading list, no assigned texts.

Particulars: Pre-requisite: any 200-level creative writing workshop. This is a workshop crossing four schools for which there are few seats. Creative Writing majors with a health-science-related double major are eligible to apply. Non-majors may not apply for this course. Students should budget for photocopying. Students are required to attend on-campus readings and colloquia sponsored by the Creative Writing Program outside of class time.

Eng 383R: Studies in Women's Fiction: Dangerous Women: Feminist Science Fiction
Jones, TT 10:00-11:15, Max: 9 Eng 383 (9)/WS 383 (9)

Content: Long considered the domain of a white masculine reader- and writer-ship frequently characterized by the employ of time machines and zap guns, the genre of science fiction has been revolutionized over the past thirty to thirty-five years by the influence and increased participation of women in the field, so much so that in 1991 the James Tiptree, Jr. Award was founded. The award recognizes literature by women and men who challenge the conceptions of traditional gender roles and provide provocative speculation about changes in our societies relative to so-called normative gender and sexuality. Through the examination of the literature of various Tiptree Award winning authors, this course will mine the way in which feminist science fiction not only challenges our hidden assumptions and confronts the unconscious prejudices that influence our perceptions, but imagines worlds beyond our current social limitations.

Possible Texts: Margaret Atwood, A Handmaid’s Tale; Octavia Butler, Dawn; Ursula LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness, and others.

Eng 384R: Criticism: Literary Theory
Caruth, Th 1:00-4:00, Max: 5 Eng 384R (5)/CPLT 302(12)/IDS 385(3)

Content: An introduction to literary theoretical thinking, focusing on twentieth century structuralism, post-structuralism and contemporary theory. We will examine the ways in which "language" is conceived and reconceived by major theoretical writers and the implications of this rethinking for our notions of literature, history, politics, ideology, sexuality, trauma, etc. We will also examine the ways in which these texts not only theorize literary language but are also, themselves, subject to its surprises.

Texts: Authors include Ferdinand de Saussure, Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Paul de Man, Shoshana Felman, Thomas Keenan, Cixous, among others.

Particulars: Active class participation, ungraded but required weekly responses (on major theoretical terms), and two short papers.

Eng 386WR: Literature and Science
Johnston, MWF 9:35-10:25, Max: 25

Content: What is life? What makes human life unique? With the rise of the life sciences in the 19th century and then Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, new answers were proposed that were completely at odds with traditional understandings and beliefs. Yet these new answers raised many new questions in turn, which become disturbingly insistent in the 20th century with the advent of new life-altering and life-simulating technologies and sciences like genetic engineering, artificial life and artificial intelligence. In this course we will consider a series of literary narratives that elicit and sustain reflection upon many of the complexities these new sciences provoke.

Required Texts: Mary Shelly, Frankenstein; Charles Darwin, selections; H.G. Wells, The Time Machine; Karel Capek, R.U.R; Aldous Huxley, Brave New World; Rudy Rucker, Software; Greg Egan, Permutation City; Syne Mitchell, The Changeling Plague; A selection of short essays.

Particulars: Regular attendance and participation in class discussions of assigned readings, two essays, a longer research essay, a midterm exam, and class participation.

Eng 389R: Special Topics in Literature: Feminist Postcolonial Theories
Prasetyaningsih, TT 4:00-5:15, Max: 6 Eng 389 (6)/WS 385(12)

Content: In this course, students will learn how feminist theorists have complicated the debates within the colonial and post-colonial fields and how feminist postcolonial theorists have problematized the field of feminism. Additionally, this course will help students have a better understanding of “tropes” and key terms used in feminist postcolonial theories. We will therefore read some key texts in the field, fictions, and films that address issues of colonialism and post-colonialism from a feminist perspective.

Texts: Kincaid, Jamaica. A Small Place. New York: Farrar, 1988. Lewis, Reina and Sara Mills, eds. Feminist Postcolonial Theory: A Reader. New York: Routledge,
2003. Mangunwijaya, Y. Durga/Umayi. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004.

Short stories, poems, and films: by Jhumpa Lahiri, Chitra Divakaruni, Bharati Mukherjee, Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Shani Mootoo, Fatimah Tobing Rony, Trinh T. Minh-Ha, and Mira Nair.

Eng 389R: Special Topics in Literature: Reading Alice Walker
Warren, W 4:00-6:00, Max: 2 Eng 389R (2)/WS 385 (2)/AAS (15)

Content: In this seminar students will study the novels by Alice Walker. Major emphasis of the course centers on discussion and analysis of the texts. The goal of the seminar is to create a cycle of reading, reflecting, discussing, analyzing, and writing about Walker’s texts, understanding their relationship to the African American literary tradition in general and to African American women’s literature and history in particular.

Texts: The Third Life of Grange Copeland; Meridian; The Color Purple; The Temple of My Familiar; Possessing the Secret of Joy, By the Light of my Father’s Eyes, and Now is the Time to Open Your Hear; In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens.

Particulars: 5 short critical papers (2-3 pages); one oral presentation, midterm and final examination.

Eng 389RWR: Special Topics in Literature: The Irish-American Experience
Flannery, Tu 4:00-7:00, Max: 20 Eng 389WR (20)/Hist 385WR (5)

Content: St. Patrick’s Day is the only American ethnic holiday to have become a national holiday. There is a reason for that, namely the fact that in literature, music, sports, business, politics, theater, film and plain upward mobility, the experience of the Irish in America became the role model for virtually all other immigrant peoples. This course examines the journey of Irish Americans from the origins of many of them in a rural Ireland of incredible poverty to the citadels of American privilege and power. In keeping with the subject, the approach will be interdisciplinary, but with a strong emphasis on literary as well as historical explorations of the Irish-American experience.

Texts: The course will include plays by Eugene O’Neill and William Hogan as well as novels by Edwin O’Connor, Peter Quinn, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Kennedy and Cormac McCarthy. The course will also draw upon readings from Making the Irish-American: History and Heritage of the Irish in the United States, J. J. Lee and Marion R. Corey, eds., and other sources.

Particulars: The writing demands of the course include bi-weekly response papers as well as a final paper. Students will also be required to deliver an oral presentation to the class on a subject to be chosen in consultation with the instructor. In most cases, this will also be the topic of the final paper.

Eng 389RWR: Special Topics in Literature: Sympathy and Its Discontents
Kelleher, TT 1:00-2:15, Max: 25

Content: This course investigates the literary and cultural history of sentimentalism, from the eighteenth century to the present. Our particular focus will be the concept of "sympathy," which signifies the various ways in which an individual witnesses and emotionally responds to the spectacle of human suffering. Although sympathetic response often has been understood as a natural and spontaneous human capacity, we will be especially interested in exploring how sympathy’s “discontents” (its failure, blockage, and/or exhaustion) have been theorized and represented. As we work our way from the eighteenth century to the present, we will have the opportunity to consider how “sympathy” informs (often implicitly) contemporary debates around the issues of traumatic experience, human rights, political activism, and historical memory.

Texts: We will study the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, Laurence Sterne, William Wordsworth, Mary Shelley, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Emmanuel Levinas, and Susan Sontag. Films may include It’s a Wonderful Life and The Lives of Others.

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

Eng 389RWR: Special Topics in Literature: Literature and Psychology: On Going Mad in America
Reiss, TT 2:30-3:45, Max: 25

Content: This course will explore the relation between the history of madness in America and a wide range of literary texts from the eighteenth century to the end of the twentieth. The term "madness" here refers to a state of being that is opposed to "reason": a state that in medical terms has been called insanity or mental illness but that in certain religious or artistic contexts is allied with inspiration, prophetic vision, or genius. How does the social condition of the mad change over time, and how does literature participate in and comment on that change? What sorts of behaviors are sufficiently "abnormal" to warrant medical intervention, and how does literature make sense of such behaviors? How does the development of various psychological and psychiatric approaches to madness relate to literary history? What spaces are opened up in literary history for the voices of madness to be heard? As we watch what happens to the "mad" over time - how they are labeled, diagnosed, treated, listened to, or silenced - we will also be watching what happens to literature as it charts out interior spaces that cannot be rationalized.

Texts: Literary readings will likely include works by Charles Brockden Brown, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe, Jones Very, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Ross Macdonald, Flannery O'Connor, William Styron, and Susanna Kaysen. Theoretical and historical readings will range from Cotton Mather to Sigmund Freud, Michel Foucault, and beyond.

Particulars: Three papers, including some revision: two 5-6 page papers dealing with the assigned readings and one 8-page research paper analyzing a literary or artist work not assigned on the syllabus in terms developed during the course.

Eng 389RWR: Special Topics in Literature: Breaking the Taboo
Schessler, TT 8:30-9:45, Max: 25

Content: Our class will explore American literature and the expression of the taboo, from the Confessional poetics of the mid-twentieth century to more recent novels, poems, short stories, television shows, and films. The topics range from the racy to the traumatic: sex, drugs, scandal, war, abuse, mental illness, and rape. With each reading or viewing, our seminar will assess the shock value of the work as set against its enduring artistic quality, and discuss the dangers and rewards of writing beyond the edge.

Texts: Works will include Anne Sexton, The Complete Poems; Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar; Jim Grimsely, Dream Boy; Alice Sebold, Lucky: A Memoir; selected poems and short stories from Allen Ginsberg, Tim O’Brien, Ernest Hemingway, Cynthia Ozick, et. al.; theoretical works from Sigmund Freud, André Green, Walter Benjamin, et. al.; the film adaptation of Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted; “Dexter,” “The Family Guy,” “The Sarah Silverman Program”; selected short films; and, of course, the occasional tabloid.

Particulars: Students can expect to produce drafts and revisions of 2 substantial papers, in addition to weekly response journals.

Eng 389RWR: Special Topics in Literature: Intersections of African and Native American Literature
Womack, TT 4:00-5:15, Max: 18

Content: A historical and literary investigation of the contact between African and Native cultures in the American southeast.

Texts: When Brer Rabbit Meets Coyote edited by Jonathan Brennan, Meridian by Alice Walker,
Paradise by Toni Morrison, African Creeks by Gary Zellar, A Creek Warrior for the Confederacy by
G. W. Grayson Black, White, and Indian by Claudio Saunt.

Particulars: The course will examine the impact of African and Native cultures on each other, especially in the American southeast, through imaginative, critical, and historical writings.

Eng 389RWR: Special Topics Literature: The Celtic Legacy
Flannery, TH 4:00-7:00, Max: 25

Content: The Celts represent one of the founding traditions of Western culture. At one point this loosely affiliated tribal people occupied territories extending from the Carpathian Basin in Hungary to Galicia in Northwest Spain and from the Mediterranean to the North Sea; their descendents have been pushed to the furthest extremes of Europe: Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, the Isle of Man and Brittany.

Because of its relative isolation, the island nation of Ireland has preserved its Celtic heritage more fully than any of the other Celtic lands. Arguably, because of this still-living heritage, the artistic contributions of Ireland have had an impact on the world far out of proportion to her actual size. This course examines the legacy of the Celts primarily through the eyes of those modern Irish writers – Thomas Moore, Yeats, Synge, Joyce, Patrick Kavanaugh, Seamus Heaney and others whose work reflects the distinctive characteristics of Celtic culture. The course also explores the Celtic legacy through a comparative study of the literature, mythology, music, religious traditions and visual arts of Ireland in relation to the other Celtic lands.

Particulars: Students are required to write a two-page weekly response paper based upon the assigned reading. Papers will be graded for both expressive form and substantive content.

Students will also be required to write a term paper of approximately 5000 words. During the second half of the course each student will make a half-hour oral presentation to the class based upon their research. Research topics must be chosen in consultation with the instructor.

Class attendance is mandatory and absences must be explained in writing.

Eng 389R: Special Topics in Literature: Asian American Literature
Nickerson, TT 10:00-11:15, Max (ENG 389RSWR/AMST 364SWR/ASIA 370SWR)

Content: This course focuses on the rich literature that has come out of the Asian American experience. The course will focus on fiction and memoir, but will include some comics, poetry and drama. The emphasis of the course is on the cultural context of this literature, how it is related to the history of Asian-Americans, and how it expresses the subjective experience of a minority group. Major themes in the course will include the concepts of claiming voice and breaking silence; ways of writing about family and childhood; eating and cultural identity; exploring the past (both personal and collective); humor and parody as tools to fight against discrimination.

Texts (tentative): Gene Luen Yang, American Born Chinese; Chang-Rae Lee, A Gesture Life; Julie Otsuka When the Emperor was Divine; David Henry Hwang’s Flower Drum Song; Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior; Andrew Pham, Catfish and Mandala; Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake, Henry Chang, Chinatown Beat; Patti Kim, A Cab Called Reliable

Particulars: Frequent short writing assignments, two 3 page essays, one 8-10 research paper or critical essay, active participation in class discussion.

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.

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

GUIDELINES:

2) At a maximum, no faculty member will be expected to direct more than three independent stu

Spring 2008 Course Atlas

Although not a prerequisite, Poetry 205 or the equivalent is strongly recommended.