English 100

Other Readings and Media

"Hughes, T.: Tom Brown's Schooldays; Collins, W.: Moonstone; Forster, E.M.: A Passage to India or Howards End; Orwell, G.: ""England Your England""; Ishiguro, K.: The Remains of the Day; Smith, Z.: White Teeth; and a course reader with selected poems by Tennyson and Gerard Manley Hopkins and critical essays "

Description

"This is a research intensive junior seminar that explores some of the compulsions and contradictions inherent in the fabrication of a national culture. We will begin by posing two questions: who are the ""English"" who have named our language, this department, and a vast literature that has often had little to do with ""England""? What is ""Englishness""? This course is an attempt to play with these questions while reading a collection of late-19th- and 20th-century works (poems, essays, and novels mostly) and using the resources of the library and various kinds of criticism to thicken our inquiry. Our major reading (i.e., the longer novels) will include Wilkie Collins' Moonstone (1868) and Zadie Smith's White Teeth (2000). We will try to study how ""Englishness"" constantly defined (and redefined) itself alongside and against issues of race, sexuality, nation, location, class, gender, and empire. In keeping with the research and methods mandate of English 100, we will make several class trips to Doe and Bancroft Libraries in order to prepare to write a major research paper. Course requirements include attendance and active participation in all meetings, 1 graded oral presentation, 2 short papers, and a longer (15 page) research paper. There will be no midterm or final exam.



Note: Students are required to have completed at least two courses from the 45A-B-C sequence prior to enrolling in this seminar. "