 |
Instructions "pages 1-3" |
 |
Concentration Areas |
| |
Announcement of Classes |
| |
RIA/BCourses |
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
|
||
|
Freshman Seminar: Shakespeare’s Sonnets
24/1 W 12-1
A. Nelson 206 Wheeler
1 unit
Book List: Wells, S., ed.: Shakespeare’s Sonnets
Course Description: Shakespeare's Sonnets were first published in 1609. Although little is known about how they were first received by the reading public, they have without doubt caused delight and puzzlement since their second edition in 1640. Over the course of the semester we will read all 154 sonnets, at the rate of approximately ten per week. The course will be a success if both students and the instructor are more puzzled at the end of the semester than at the beginning. Students will be expected to participate actively in the seminar and submit a final paper on one or more sonnets of their choice.
Freshman Seminar: The Third Man – Novel into Movie
24/2 M 3-4
M. Breitwieser 205 Wheeler
1 unit
Book List: Greene, G.: The Third Man
Course Description: The Third Man is commonly ranked among the greatest films of the twentieth century, a meditation on disappointment and betrayal in friendship and in international politics, an intertwining of personal and historical experience that will be the main concern of the class. The Third Man is also one of the few cases where the script and the novel from which it was adapted were written by the same person, in this case, Graham Greene. We will watch the film until we feel we know it well, then read the novel until we know it equally well, then study the changes Greene made in order to ascertain what was lost and what was gained. I think that the members of the class will be surprised by the way what seem to be small alterations turn out to be quite important once we get them in close focus. The first few classes will be spent viewing the movie, but I would suggest that those enrolling in the class get their own copies on VHS or DVD in advance. The novel will be the only required text, but it would be helpful if everyone had read Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, which was on Greene's mind while writing the novel and the script. Regular attendance and participation will be required, along with a five-page essay at the end of the semester.
Freshman Seminar: William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience
24/3 W 2-4
M. Paley 360 Bancroft Library (Stone Room)
1 unit
Book List: Blake, W.: Songs of Innocence and of Experience
Course Description: In this seminar we will study Songs of Innocence and of Experience as a work featuring the interplay of text and visual image, making use of the Bancroft Library's collection of Blake Facsimiles and of copies posted on the web site of the William Blake archive. Each student will be asked to participate in a short seminar presentation and also to write a twelve-hundred word essay by the next-to-the-last seminar meeting. There will be ample opportunity for conferences with the professor. Students need to bring the course text to every meeting. The class will meet for eight weeks, beginning January 22 and ending March 12.
Freshman Seminar: The English Language
24/4 M 1-2
J. Boyd 222 Wheeler
1 unit
Book List: We will be using The American Heritage Dictionary (only the editions which contain the Indo-European Appendix), and a class reader will be available at Copy Central on Bancroft.
Course Description: This seminar is about the English language—its structure and its history. We will consider the sounds, the forms, the syntax and the meanings.
Introduction to Poetry
26 TTh 2-3:30
J. Shoptaw 166 Barrows
Book List:
Course Description: In this course you will learn to describe, interpret, understand, and take pleasure in lyric poetry in English from the Middle Ages to the present. We will systematically build up your techniques, options, and background knowledge for the responsive reading of poems by proceeding through its fundamentals (sound & rhythmic patterning; quatrain & sonnet; song & ode; poetic forms (sestina, villanelle); aperture, partition, closure; free & measured verse; line & sentence; image & figure; shape & graph; draft; first, second, third and no person (persona, drama, address, story, description); language & discourse). You will be asked to write two short papers, two exercises (scansion, recitation), and a final exam. This course will give you enough knowledge & know-how for a lifetime of poetry reading.
Introduction to the Writing of Short Fiction
43A TTh 9:30-11
I. Reed 301 Wheeler
Book List: A reader to be assembled by the instructor
Course Description: In this course the elements of fiction will be practiced and discussed. Students will be expected to complete at least two short stories during the semester. This work will be edited and criticized by the instructor and the class. The class will also produce an anthology of the students’ work.
To be considered for admission to this course, please submit photocopies of 5 to 10 pages (double-spaced) of your short fiction, along with an application form, to Prof. Reed’s mailbox in 322 Wheeler Hall BY 4:00P.M., TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29, AT THE LATEST.
Be sure to read the paragraph concerning creative writing courses on page 2 of this Announcement of Classes for further information regarding enrollment in such courses!
Literature in English: Through
45A/1
J. Miller
Lectures MW 10-11 in 22
Book List: A course reader
Course Description: Historical survey of literature in English from
Chaucer through
Literature in English: Through
45A/2
A. Nelson
Lectures MW 3-4 in 60 Evans, plus one hour of discussion section per week (all sections F 3-4)
Book List: Norton
Anthology of English Literature, Vol. I; Chaucer, G.: The
Course Description: This course will concentrate on Chaucer’s
Canterbury Tales, Spenser’s Faery
Queene (Book I), and
45B/1
J. Knapp
Lectures MW 11-12 in 50 Birge, plus one hour of discussion section per week (all sections F 11-12)
Book List: The exact book list has not yet been determined,
but it may include: Bronte, E.:
Course Description: An introduction to English and American literature from the eighteenth through the mid-nineteenth centuries, including works by Pope, Franklin, Equiano, Wordsworth, Emily Bronte, Hawthorne, Thoreau, Dickens, Browning, Dickinson, and Whitman. (It is strongly recommended that you take English 45A before enrolling in this course.)
Literature in English: Late-17th through Mid-19th Century
45B/2
S. Goldsmith
Lectures MW 1-2 in 2 LeConte, plus one hour of discussion section per week (all sections F 1-2)
Book List: Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. II; Austen, J.: Sense and Sensibility; Brockden Brown, C.: Wieland; Jacobs, H.: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; Melville, H.: The Shorter Novels of Herman Melville; Swift, J.: Gulliver’s Travels
Course
Description: Our course begins at sea,
with the “violent storm” and shipwreck of Gulliver’s Travels,
and ends at sea in Benito Cereno, with a tragic
convergence of
45C/1
R. Terada
Lectures MW 2-3 in 390 Hearst Mining, plus one hour of discussion section per week (all sections F 2-3)
Book List: Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. II; course reader
Course Description: This survey of the period is organized around the comparative study of avant-garde literatures, especially poetry. Among other topics, the course explores late 19th-century decadence in British literature, modernism as an international set of movements in English, and late 20th-century postmodern and postcolonial literature in English. Requirements: short papers, midterms, final.
Literature in English: Mid-19th through the 20th Century
45C/2
J. Bishop
Lectures MW 3-4 in 3 Le Conte, plus one hour of discussion section per week (all sections F 3-4)
Book List: Ellmann, R. and R. O'Clair, eds.: The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry; Ellison, R.: Invisible Man; Faulkner, W.: Absalom, Absalom!; Hemingway, E.: The Sun Also Rises; Woolf, V.: Mrs. Dalloway
Course Description: A survey of English and American literature from the late-nineteenth through the mid-twentieth century, with attention given both to conceptions of literature intrinsically claimed by the texts assigned and to the historical and cultural grounds out of which they emerged. The course will inevitably investigate the emergence and rise of modernism and also, in passing, the value and nature of such constructions as "the author," "literature," "literary history," and "period." Active participation in discussion sections will be essential. There will be two short papers, a final exam, and possibly a midterm.
Freshman-Sophomore Seminar: James Joyce
R50/1 TTh 9:30-11
Book List: Joyce, J.: Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses (the corrected text, Hans Gabler edition)
Course Description: Joyce for Dummies (er… not really). But, as we’ll see this semester, once you approach him with an open mind and a degree of application, he’s much less intimidating than you might have been led to expect. Joyce is intermittently difficult; he’s always fascinating; he’s frequently very very funny.
This is a course in English
literature for intended English majors, so it’s designed to prepare you
for what’s ahead. To that end,
we’ll do quite a bit of reading—look at the list above. The first two works are more than accessible;
we’ll spend most of the semester thinking and talking about
Not just reading, we’ll be writing about Joyce. English R50 is an intensive writing course in literature designed to improve your writing skills. And it’ll allow you to show off just how much you’re discovering about the most important writer—o.k., that’s my opinion—of the last century.
English R50 is intended for people who are planning to be English majors and who have already taken R1A. It satisfies the College’s R1B requirement. It may not be counted as one of the twelve courses required for the English major.
Freshman-Sophomore Seminar: Literature and Evil
R50/2 TTh 2-3:30
A. Daniel 250 Dwinelle
Book List: Selections from The Book of Genesis (in reader); Marlowe, C.: Dr. Faustus; Shakespeare, W.: Macbeth; Highsmith, P.: The Talented Mr. Ripley; Clowes, D.: Eightball #22; Hitchcock, A.: Rope (film); Cooper, D.: A Herd (in reader); Leroy, J.T.: Coal, Meteors (in reader)
Course Description: The goal of this class is to produce an extended and argumentative literary-critical essay, and then to polish and improve that essay through intensive revision. In order to reach this goal we will work throughout the semester on: methods of research and textual scholarship; questions of style, structure, and organization; the logic of argument and function of evidence; and how to handle secondary sources. An emphasis will be placed throughout upon the relationship between a thesis and the essay it generates. The goal will be to move from merely proving a thesis to explicating it and deepening its significance. The readings for this course were selected because of the challenges and rewards that they offer for literary interpretation; our texts and film are thematically grouped around the problem of how literary language represents "evil.” We will be discussing the ways that literature alternately relies upon, resists, and rethinks moral consensus, with a focus upon how language is used to exact or evade moral judgment. Through this discussion we will practice honing in on the kinds of specifics of language that can lead to a persuasively argued thesis. After looking briefly at some poems to get our literary-critical skills warmed up, we will examine a wide range of exemplary material, ranging from biblical texts to sixteenth-century drama to mid-20th century suspense fiction and film to contemporary short stories and a comic book. There will be a course reader with background material and relevant literary criticism.
English R50 is intended for people who are planning to be English majors and who have already taken R1A. It satisfies the College’s R1B requirement. It may not be counted as one of the twelve courses required for the English major.
Sophomore Seminar: High Culture, Pop Culture
84/1 Tues. 2-3
1 unit
Book List: Dick, P.: Blade Runner
Recommended: Bennett, J.: Enchantment of Modern Life
Course
Description: In this seminar we will
learn to analyze realist, utopian/dystopian and futurist
texts in literature and film. Through
detailed discussion of our primary text (Blade Runner) and its film version,
we will study the interplay of popular and high culture, and explore the resources
of the Pacific Film Archive, Moffitt Library’s
This course must be taken Pass/Not Pass.
Enrollment
is limited and a written application is due by
HOWEVER, PLEASE NOTE THAT THE DEADLINE TO APPLY FOR THIS
CLASS HAS JUST
BEEN EXTENDED TILL 4:00 P.M., FRIDAY, NOV. 22.
Sophomore Seminar: Twain’s Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
84/2 Thurs. 5-6
1 unit
Book List: See below
Course Description: After a quick reading of Tom Sawyer and Prince and the Pauper, we will settle down to reading Connecticut Yankee slowly, thinking about the kinds of interpretation that have been used to think about this strange novel. Students must use the Norton Critical edition of Connecticut Yankee, which contains some examples of scholarly and critical approaches to the novel. Class attendance and discussion are mandatory, and students will be asked to write a short paper (5 pages) at the end of the semester.
This course must be taken Pass/Not Pass.
Enrollment
is limited and a written application is due by
HOWEVER, PLEASE NOTE THAT THE DEADLINE TO APPLY FOR THIS CLASS HAS JUST
BEEN EXTENDED TILL 4:00 P.M., FRIDAY, NOV. 22.
Other Voices: Multicultural Literary Perspectives
95
G. Padilla
Lectures M 12-1 in 315 Wheeler, plus one hour of discussion section per week (all sections W 12-1)
2 units
Book List: A course reader
Course Description: This course will introduce students to the work
currently being undertaken by both
This course may not be counted as one of the twelve courses required for the English major.
[an error occurred while processing this directive]