In this course, we will explore the fundamentals of creative writing. We will start by looking at the building blocks of good imaginative writing: image, voice, character, setting, story, and revision. We will then move on to a more in-depth examination of three forms: literary nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. Students will learn how to read as writers, obtain an understanding and appreciation for imaginative writing, and gain a sense of themselves as creative writers. We will be trying many exercises and assignments, from brainstorming experiments to final drafts, so come ready to write. prereq: Students may not audit this course

This is an introductory course in the art and craft of reading and writing fiction. Students will read and analyze contemporary and classic works of fiction while also constructing and revising their own fiction. Assigned works will include Black, Brown, Indigenous, and queer writers along with other writers reflecting a diversity of voices and perspectives throughout literary history. Students will be responsible for crafting original fiction, commenting on student work, workshop participation, attendance at a literary reading, short presentations and/or papers, and a final portfolio of fiction.

This is an introductory course in the art and craft of reading and writing poetry. Students will read and analyze contemporary and classic works of poetry while also constructing and revising their own poetry. Assigned works will include Black, Brown, Indigenous, and queer writers along with other writers reflecting a diversity of voices and perspectives throughout literary history. Students will be responsible for crafting original poetry, commenting on student work, workshop participation, attendance at a literary reading, short presentations and/or papers, and a final portfolio of poetry.

This is an introductory course in the art and craft of reading and writing nonfiction. By the end of the semester, you should be familiar with nonfiction's many different forms: literary journalism, memoir, personal essay, and blendings of the three. You will read and analyze contemporary and classic works of nonfiction while also constructing and revising your own essays. Assigned works will include Black, Brown, Indigenous, and queer writers along with other writers reflecting a diversity of voices and perspectives throughout literary history. Students will be responsible for crafting original nonfiction, commenting on student work, workshop participation, attendance at a literary reading, short presentations and/or papers, and a final portfolio of nonfiction.

Exercises, experiments, assigned readings, discussion of student work. prereq: [EngW 1101 OR 1102 OR 1103 OR 1104], students cannot audit course

Exercises, experiments, assigned readings, discussion of student work. prereq: [1101 or 1102 or 1103 or 1104], students cannot audit course

Exercises, experiments, assigned readings, discussion of student work. prereq: [1101 or 1102 or 1103 or 1104], students cannot audit course

This course will provide a historical survey of British literature from the Middle Ages to the end of the eighteenth century. Our focus will be on tracing the interactions between literature and wider British culture as well as on tracing the development of literary form during this period. You should leave this course being able to identify major literary trends and authors and link them to corresponding formal techniques and innovations. You should also have a sense of the major historical and political events, rulers, and social conditions in Britain at this time. Additionally, because this is a writing intensive course, you will leave this class familiar with the process of writing a research paper with a literary focus, which includes finding and successfully incorporating contemporary scholarly research about your topic into your paper, crafting an original argument, utilizing textual evidence, and evaluating existing scholarship.

In this wide-ranging survey of British and post-colonial literature from the late eighteenth century to the present, we will explore representative literary texts and genres from British Romanticism, the Victorian period, Modernism, and the postwar era. Besides analyzing the language, aesthetic features, and technical construction of these literary artifacts, we will examine our readings as reflections of and reactions to social upheavals like the Industrial Revolution, challenges to the traditional role of women, scientific discoveries that sparked religious doubt, and the First World War. Additionally, because this is a writing intensive course, you will familiarize yourself with the process of writing a research paper with a literary focus, which includes finding and successfully incorporating contemporary scholarly research about your topic into your paper, crafting an original argument, utilizing textual evidence, and evaluating existing scholarship.

This writing-intensive course will survey the Anglophone literature of what would become the United States from the arrival of English settlers to the Civil War. We will define "literature" broadly to not only include fiction and poetry but also the sermon, the letter, the essay, the autobiography, and other non-fictional forms. Course topics will include the Puritan theology that cast such a long shadow over the American cultural imagination; the fraught literary construction in the Revolutionary era of a national identity under the influence of such Enlightenment ideals as reason, civility, cosmopolitanism, and sympathy; the Gothic doubts about democracy that attended the literature of the early republic; the rise in the mid-nineteenth century of a radical intellectual and social movement in Transcendentalism; the antebellum ideological struggles over such political issues as slavery, industrialism, women's rights, and Native American rights; and the self-conscious cultivation of a national literary aesthetic in the Romantic prose and poetry of the period later critics would come (controversially) to call "the American Renaissance."

Situated between three continents and at the intersection of numerous ethnic and national cultures, the Mediterranean is like no other place on earth. A place of diverse languages, religions, economies, governments, and ways of daily life, it serves as a microcosm for the world itself imagined as an integrated global system. This course explores the history of the Mediterranean with particular emphasis on the literatures it has produced over the last three millennia. As the protagonists of these epic poems, religious texts, and novels travel from one shore to another, they experience the Mediterranean as a place of violence, cultural accommodation, hope, ethnic and linguistic bewilderment, and endless moral challenge. This course will place as much emphasis on the region's history as its cultural productions. With that in mind, reading may include David Abulafia's The Great Sea in addition to The Odyssey, The Aeneid, the biblical books of Joshua and Acts, Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata (an epic set during the first crusade), Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice and Antony and Cleopatra, Flaubert's Salammbo, Akli Tadjer's Les ANI du Tassali, A.b. Yehoshua's Mr. Mani, and Pamuk's The White Castle.

Examination and analysis of 19th-century British literature about dead bodies, the science of death, burial practices and anxieties, and theories of the supernatural. This course includes fiction and poetry but also non-fiction, historical documents, and sensationalist media.

Introduction to the literary genre known as the medieval English "dream vision" and to the historical and theoretical discussion of dreams. We concentrate on four late medieval dream visions: Langland's Piers Plowman; Chaucer's Book of Duchess and House of Fame; and the Gawain-Poet's Pearl.

This course examines the lives and stories of heroic figures in the Bible. We approach the Bible as a literary work and explore themes, characters, symbolism, and narrative techniques. Our text, the King James version of the Bible, is the most important translation in terms of American and English literary traditions. Our emphasis in the course is on the Biblical heroes who are represented as living their lives in this world (the world between heaven and hell).

Milton?s three great Restoration poems?Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes?are the focus of this course. We?ll approach them by tracing Milton?s growth as poet: first, by familiarizing ourselves with the religious and social ideas found in his writings down to the Poems of 1645; and second, by studying the political ideas Milton initially set forth in The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649). Concurrently with our study of these earlier works, you?ll be reading Paradise Lost, which you should complete by the end of the spring break. At that point, you?ll be in a position to interpret Milton?s three Restoration masterpieces in the light of his grand?and rebellious?aim of reforming England?s civil and religious community, an aim Milton boldly reaffirms in 1660 in defiance of the Restoration of monarchy.

This course will introduce you to some of the best literature of the Restoration and eighteenth century in England. Think of this course as a challenge: how can you, as someone who will spend most of your life in the 21st century, learn to appreciate and learn from literature written in far different times and places? A lot depends on your willingness to empathize with ways of thinking and being that are quite different from your own and your comfort with believing that other ages were just as complicated and as interesting as the one you live in. Typical authors include Dryden, Behn, Swift, Pope, Fielding, and Burney.

In British Romantic Literature and Culture, students read poetry and prose written during the Romantic Period (1780-1832). Romantic authors permanently changed the way literature treats numerous subjects: nature, the imagination, revolution, war and politics, the role of the poet, the depiction of common life and language, and the representation of personal experience, to name a few. This was a period of great stylistic innovation, as authors experimented with the use of symbolism and the adaptation of classical mythology and explored medieval/gothic images and themes. Possible authors to be studied in this course include Jane Austen, Anna Letitia Barbauld, William Blake, Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Felicia Hemans, John Keats, Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, Charlotte Smith, Mary Wollstonecraft, William Wordsworth.

Why is the twenty-first century so obsessed with the nineteenth? From steampunk to political rhetoric, from movies to sex, writers and artists look back to the Victorian era for inspiration and challenge. One reason might be that Britain was the first country to experience the full effects of industrialized capitalism, with the opportunities and misery that it created. It also developed one of the largest empires in history, an empire whose legacy continues to shape global politics in good and bad ways. For all these reasons, understanding the Victorians is key to understanding ourselves. Women writers like Charlotte Bronte and George Eliot have always been at the center of Victorian studies, so the history and politics of gender are vital to Victorian literature. Class likewise remains inescapable in Victorian fiction with its sharp sense of a world divided into haves and have nots; depictions of the catastrophic effects of the factory system on the urban poor pervade Victorian literature and challenge readers to ponder how, and if, reading might lead to political action. Race has increasingly reshaped understandings of the literature of the period; although Britain abolished slavery in 1833-34, the period saw both a heightening of racist rhetoric and representation and the growth of a market for works by writers of color from the colonies, including Mary Seacole, J. J. Thomas, and Toru Dutt. Digital tools have made the present moment an exciting one in which to study this literature because so much information is now available: Victorian writing has become hyperaccessible for those with access to computers. For this class, this accessibility means that students have the opportunity not just to learn exiting knowledge about the period but to discover new truths about it for themselves. This course aims to empower students to find their own paths to understanding and representing the Victorians as a way of revising how they see their present.

Novels, from early Republic, through Hawthorne, Melville, and Stowe, to writers at end of 19th century (e.g., Howells, Twain, James, Chopin, Crane). Development of a national literature. Tension between realism and romance. Changing role of women as writers and as fictional characters.

British novel during the century in which it became widely recognized as a major vehicle for cultural expression. Possible topics include the relation of novel to contemporary historical concerns: rise of British empire, developments in science, and changing roles for women; formal challenges of the novel; definition of realism.

Major and representative works of the Middle Ages. Topics specified in the Class Schedule.

This course will survey some of the major literary figures, aesthetic movements, and thematic concerns of US literature from the Civil War to the present. Our investigation will identify common traits in the literature that causes it to fit within three very broad literary historical categories: realism, modernism, and postmodernism. We will explore what makes literature created by the people of the United States distinctly "American" during a period that extends from the Civil War and the outlawing of slavery to women's suffrage, workers' movements, the Great Depression, the First and Second World Wars, and the civil rights movement. In addition to reading and analyzing the literature itself in terms of style, form, genre, and language, we will study it in historical context: the complex interplay between the political, the social, the cultural, and the literary in the United States. This approach rests upon the notion that literature is not created in a vacuum; it is influenced by and influences the world in which it is created.

This course will survey some of the major literary figures, aesthetic movements, and thematic concerns of US literature from the Civil War to the present. Our investigation will identify common traits in the literature that causes it to fit within three very broad literary historical categories: realism, modernism, and postmodernism. We will explore what makes literature created by the people of the United States distinctly "American" during a period that extends from the Civil War and the outlawing of slavery to women's suffrage, workers' movements, the Great Depression, the First and Second World Wars, and the civil rights movement. In addition to reading and analyzing the literature itself in terms of style, form, genre, and language, we will study it in historical context: the complex interplay between the political, the social, the cultural, and the literary in the United States. This approach rests upon the notion that literature is not created in a vacuum; it is influenced by and influences the world in which it is created.

For over four hundred years, William Shakespeare has remained the most quoted poet and the most regularly produced playwright in the world. From Nelson Mandela to Toni Morrison, from South African playwright Welcome Msomi to Kuwaiti playwright Sulayman Al-Bassam, Shakespeare's works have continued to influence and inspire authors and audiences everywhere. This course examines representative works of Shakespeare from a variety of critical perspectives, as cultural artifacts of their day, but also as texts that have had a long and enduring vitality. This is a required course for English majors and minors, but it should also interest any student who wants to understand why and how Shakespeare continues to be one of the most important literary figures in the English language. English majors/minors must take this course A-F only grading basis.

Plays from all of Shakespeare's periods, including at least A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, the history plays, King Lear, Macbeth, The Tempest, Twelfth Night, Antony and Cleopatra, Othello, and The Winter's Tale. prereq: Honors or instr consent

Immigrant? Jewish? American? What do these labels mean, why are they applied, and do they ever cease to be applicable? Can we distinguish religion from culture, and what are the implications when we try? Why is it frequently asked whether Saul Bellow was "really" a Jewish writer, but it is impossible to read Philip Roth as anything other than that? How does Grace Paley's "Jewishness" come through even when she is writing about non-Jewish characters? We will address these issues and others as we explore the literature growing out of the Jewish immigrant experience in America, as well as the literature by Jewish writers more firmly, though still sometimes anxiously, rooted in American soil. In this course we will engage in a highly contextualized and historicized study of Jewish American literature from the 19th century to today. We will discover in these texts how inherited Jewish culture and literary imaginings, developed over centuries of interaction between Jewish communities and the "outside world," get reexamined, questioned, rejected, reimagined, reintegrated, and transformed within the crucible of American experience. The discussions that ensue will also provide a framework for engaging with the creative energies and cultural productivity of more recent immigrant communities in the United States and beyond. Immigration and the experience of immigrant communities continues to be at the forefront of American consciousness, as immigrants work to create new meanings and new narratives for their lives, and as those who immigrated before them provide contested meanings for the impact of immigration on their own narratives. This course, though grounded in Jewish narratives, will therefore provide students with an expanded vocabulary and perspective for engaging in this central and very current debate within the American experience.

Immigrant? Jewish? American? What do these labels mean, why are they applied, and do they ever cease to be applicable? Can we distinguish religion from culture, and what are the implications when we try? Why is it frequently asked whether Saul Bellow was ?really? a Jewish writer, but it is impossible to read Philip Roth as anything other than that? How does Grace Paley?s ?Jewishness? come through even when she is writing about non-Jewish characters? We will address these issues and others as we explore the literature growing out of the Jewish immigrant experience in America, as well as the literature by Jewish writers more firmly, though still sometimes anxiously, rooted in American soil. In this course we will engage in a highly contextualized and historicized study of Jewish American literature from the 19th century to today. We will discover in these texts how inherited Jewish culture and literary imaginings, developed over centuries of interaction between Jewish communities and the ?outside world,? get reexamined, questioned, rejected, reimagined, reintegrated, and transformed within the crucible of American experience. The discussions that ensue will also provide a framework for engaging with the creative energies and cultural productivity of more recent immigrant communities in the United States and beyond. Immigration and the experience of immigrant communities continues to be at the forefront of American consciousness, as immigrants work to create new meanings and new narratives for their lives, and as those who immigrated before them provide contested meanings for the impact of immigration on their own narratives. This course, though grounded in Jewish narratives, will therefore provide students with an expanded vocabulary and perspective for engaging in this central and very current debate within the American experience.

Immigrant? Jewish? American? What do these labels mean, why are they applied, and do they ever cease to be applicable? Can we distinguish religion from culture, and what are the implications when we try? Why is it frequently asked whether Saul Bellow was ?really? a Jewish writer, but it is impossible to read Philip Roth as anything other than that? How does Grace Paley?s ?Jewishness? come through even when she is writing about non-Jewish characters? We will address these issues and others as we explore the literature growing out of the Jewish immigrant experience in America, as well as the literature by Jewish writers more firmly, though still sometimes anxiously, rooted in American soil. In this course we will engage in a highly contextualized and historicized study of Jewish American literature from the 19th century to today. We will discover in these texts how inherited Jewish culture and literary imaginings, developed over centuries of interaction between Jewish communities and the ?outside world,? get reexamined, questioned, rejected, reimagined, reintegrated, and transformed within the crucible of American experience. The discussions that ensue will also provide a framework for engaging with the creative energies and cultural productivity of more recent immigrant communities in the United States and beyond. Immigration and the experience of immigrant communities continues to be at the forefront of American consciousness, as immigrants work to create new meanings and new narratives for their lives, and as those who immigrated before them provide contested meanings for the impact of immigration on their own narratives. This course, though grounded in Jewish narratives, will therefore provide students with an expanded vocabulary and perspective for engaging in this central and very current debate within the American experience.

For at least two and a half millennia, prophets, politicians, and poets have crafted terrifying accounts about the end of the world. This comparatist seminar examines the way different cultures have imagined a final apocalypse with particular attention to the political and social consequences of their visions. Students will read texts that focus on pandemic, extraterrestrial attack, nuclear holocaust, prophecy, cybernetic revolt, divine judgment, resource depletion, meteoric impact, or one of the many other ways in which humans write of their demise. They will use literary analysis to explore the many historical and contemporary wastelands they will encounter. They will write short papers and give in-class presentations on different kinds of apocalypse.

For at least two and a half millennia, prophets, politicians, and poets have crafted terrifying accounts about the end of the world. This comparatist seminar examines the way different cultures have imagined a final apocalypse with particular attention to the political and social consequences of their visions. Students will read texts that focus on pandemic, extraterrestrial attack, nuclear holocaust, prophecy, cybernetic revolt, divine judgment, resource depletion, meteoric impact, or one of the many other ways in which humans write of their demise. They will use literary analysis to explore the many historical and contemporary wastelands they will encounter. They will write short papers and give in-class presentations on different kinds of apocalypse.

Medieval writers and readers were fascinated by stories about knights and about pilgrims. In this course, we study some of the best-known and most compelling narratives and poems from the Middle Ages. Although written hundreds of years ago, these literary works speak to us of the human desire to strive for meaning and excellence, to work toward shared ideas of community, and to explore worlds beyond the sometimes narrow confines of home. Knights and pilgrims appear as central figures in a wide range of literary works. Some of the texts are humorous, like Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in which pilgrims, from social classes ranging from knights to tradespeople, travel together and tell stories. Some are exciting and emotional, like Malory's retelling of stories about King Arthur and his knights. Others provide us with explorations of longing for change: in these works people search for new kinds of social and spiritual life such as Margery Kempe's autobiographical account of her experiences as a pilgrim to Rome and the Holy Land. Still others, such as Langland's Piers Plowman, which incorporates pilgrimage and chivalric quest, critique and explode static ideas about social problems such as poverty and hunger. Some draw our attention to the dangers and turmoil involved in love and relationships, such as Marie de France's courtly, aristocratic lays: Marie's knights and ladies take up the search for love and meaning. Some, finally, invite us to imagine ourselves in mysterious otherworlds, such as Mandeville's Travels and Sir Orfeo, both of which focus on travel and self knowledge. These exciting and challenging works continue to speak to us about the quest to pursue ideals and to change the world and ourselves.

Medieval writers and readers were fascinated by stories about knights and about pilgrims. In this course, we study some of the best-known and most compelling narratives and poems from the Middle Ages. Although written hundreds of years ago, these literary works speak to us of the human desire to strive for meaning and excellence, to work toward shared ideas of community, and to explore worlds beyond the sometimes narrow confines of home. Knights and pilgrims appear as central figures in a wide range of literary works. Some of the texts are humorous, like Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in which pilgrims, from social classes ranging from knights to tradespeople, travel together and tell stories. Some are exciting and emotional, like Malory's retelling of stories about King Arthur and his knights. Others provide us with explorations of longing for change: in these works people search for new kinds of social and spiritual life such as Margery Kempe's autobiographical account of her experiences as a pilgrim to Rome and the Holy Land. Still others, such as Langland's Piers Plowman, which incorporates pilgrimage and chivalric quest, critique and explode static ideas about social problems such as poverty and hunger. Some draw our attention to the dangers and turmoil involved in love and relationships, such as Marie de France's courtly, aristocratic lays: Marie's knights and ladies take up the search for love and meaning. Some, finally, invite us to imagine ourselves in mysterious otherworlds, such as Mandeville's Travels and Sir Orfeo, both of which focus on travel and self knowledge. These exciting and challenging works continue to speak to us about the quest to pursue ideals and to change the world and ourselves

Major/representative works written by Chaucer, including The Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Criseyde, and the dream visions. Historical, intellectual, and cultural background of the poems. Language, poetic theory, form.

Major/representative works written by Chaucer, including The Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Criseyde, and the dream visions. Historical, intellectual, and cultural background of the poems. Language, poetic theory, form.

African American oral tradition, slave narrative, autobiography, poetry, essay, fiction, oratory, and drama, from colonial era through Harlem Renaissance.

African American oral tradition, slave narrative, autobiography, poetry, essay, fiction, oratory, and drama, from colonial era through Harlem Renaissance.

Topics specified in Class Schedule. prereq: 1101 or 1102 or 1103 or 1104 or dept consent

An introductory workshop to screenwriting basics, including formatting, style, and structure. In-class and take-home exercises will assist the students in learning techniques for developing engaging characters, writing concise description and vivid dialogue, and outlining a usable plot. prereq: EngL 3001W or 3001V or EngW 3102 or 3104 or 3106 or 3110, or jr or sr in SCMC major or minor

Exercises, experiments, assigned readings, discussion of student work. prereq: [EngW 1101 OR 1102 OR 1103 OR 1104], students cannot audit course

Exercises, experiments, assigned readings, discussion of student work. prereq: [1101 or 1102 or 1103 or 1104], students cannot audit course

Exercises, experiments, assigned readings, discussion of student work. prereq: [1101 or 1102 or 1103 or 1104], students cannot audit course

Advanced workshop for graduate students with considerable experience in writing fiction.

Advanced workshop for graduate students with considerable experience in writing poetry. Students will explore new poetic possibilities while studying contemporary poetry and poetics.

Advanced workshop for graduate students with considerable experience in writing literary nonfiction.

Special topics in reading fiction, literary nonfiction, poetry. Topics specified in Class Schedule.