Class Archive

171/1

Literature and Sexual Identity:
Gender, Sexuality, Modernism

TTh 12:30-2

This course will focus on one area of the rapidly expanding field of literature and sexual identity: the early twentieth-century literary experiments that have earned the title “modernism.” Famously “queer,” modernism’...(read more)

20/1

Modern British and American Literature:
Contemporary British Literature and Culture

TTh 8-9:30

This lower-division class offers an overview of British liter...(read more)

29/1

Major Writers:
Virginia Woolf

TTh 8-9:30

"On or around December 1910, human character changed.&qu...(read more)

190/1

Research Seminar:
Beckett's Prose

MW 9-10:30

The career of Samuel Beckett began with some (rather ragged) poetry, continued with a handful of novels and short stories, and culminated with a handful of the twentieth century’s most important plays. But most of his work refuses generic des...(read more)

126/1

British Literature, 1900-1945

Lectures TTh 2-3:30 + one hour of discussion section per week (sec. 101: F 1-2; sec. 102: F 2-3)

How did British and Irish literature change over the first half of the twentieth century? Was “modernism” a historical moment, an aesthetic movement, or a critical attitude—or some combination of the three? How did write...(read more)

134/1

Contemporary Literature:
Contemporary British Fiction (and a few films)

Lectures TTh 11-12 + one hour of discussion section per week (sec. 103: F 11-12; sec. 104: F 12-1)

This course will examine British novels and films from the past thirty years--from roughly 1990 through the present. Topics of discussion will include: the legacies of empire, World War II, Thatcherism, and New Labor; the erosion of the welfare sta...(read more)

145/1

Writing Technology:
Utopian Futures

Lectures TTh 11-12 + one hour of discussion section per week (sec. 101: F 9-10; sec. 102: F 11-12; sec. 103: F 12-1; sec. 104: F 2-3)

Recent science fiction narratives tend toward the dystopian, perhaps in reaction to the grim realities of our time.  But science fiction writers have always imagined better futures made possible by technological advances.

In this int...(read more)

80K/1

Children's Literature:
The Bad Seed: Monstrosity, Horror, and the Inhuman in Children’s Literature

TTh 12:30-2

From cannibalistic witches in the tales of the Grimm Brothers to sadistic parents in Roald Dahl, children's literature is riff with terrifying and troubling figures. This class will look at the forms of monstrosity, deviance, and horror that ap...(read more)

126/1

British Literature, 1900-1945

Lectures TTh 2-3 in 20 Barrows + one hour of discussion section per week in 305 Wheeler (sec. 101: F 2-3; sec. 102: F 3-4)

In this course, we will examine British and Irish literature from the turn of the twentieth century through the aftermath of World War II. This was a period of tremendous turmoil and thoroughgoing change in Britain, Ireland, and the world. Looking ...(read more)

145/1

Writing Technology:
Science Fiction

Lectures MW 11-12 in 3 Leconte + one hour of discussion section per week in different locations (sec. 101: F 11-12; sec. 102: F 11-12; sec. 103: F 12-1; sec. 104: F 12-1)

This introductory course considers an overlap among the disciplines of English, Computer Science, and Data Science—British and American narratives that revolve around technology. We'll look at visual and verbal texts f...(read more)

166/4

Special Topics:
Pomo: Exploring the Landscape of Postmodernism

TTh 3:30-5

Postmodernism is one of those peculiar words, like "nonfiction," that struggles to define something by what it is not. Or rather, in this case, by what it comes after: Postmodernism was what came after modernism. In this sem...(read more)

190/5

Research Seminar:
British Fiction Since 1945

TTh 9:30-11

This research seminar will survey the British novel (broadly construed) since 1945. Topics of discussion will likely include: realism and alternatives to realism; formal experimentation and novel psychology; race, immigration, and empire; feminism;...(read more)

190/8

Research Seminar:
James Joyce

TTh 3:30-5

This seminar will focus on James Joyce’s landmark modernist novel, Ulysses. In preparing to tackle the text, we will read Homer’s Odyssey, some of Joyce’s early writings, and parts of A Portrait of the Artist...(read more)

166/2

Special Topics:
Global Catastrophe and Modern Literature

TTh 2-5

Global crisis defined the first part of the twentieth century. Pandemic illness and catastrophic economic collapse, along with World War after World War, meant it was a time rife with ethnic, racial, imperial, and political tensions, and a time als...(read more)

128/1

Modern Drama

MW 3-4:30

This course will trace the theater's itinerary as form and idea across the twentieth century, attending to the stage as both a writerly medium and a space that contests received literary ideas. We will begin in the Euro...(read more)

134/1

Contemporary Literature

Lectures MW 12-1 in 141 McCone + one hour of discussion section per week in various locations (sec. 101: F 10-11; sec. 102: F 12-1; sec. 103: Th 11-12; sec. 104: Th 1-2)

In this course we will look at examples of very recently published literary works across a range of genres. We’ll explore some of the many ways that writerly innovation is challenging aesthetic norms (including those of “the novel,&rdqu...(read more)

175/1

Literature and Disability

TTh 3:30-5

This course will allow students to explore theories and representations of disability.  We’ll wonder whether it’s possible to develop an inclusive, common “theory” adequate to vario...(read more)

165/5

Special Topics:
Note: See English 165 section 6

On October 16 we canceled this section of English 165 because we ended up doubling the size of English 165 section 6 (on the same topic) instead. So if you are interested in this topic, please enroll in English 165 section 6.  Professors Danne...(read more)

165/6

Special Topics:
Nabokov and Naipaul

TTh 3:30-5

This is a team-taught course on two of the most controversial novelists of the 20th century and—some critics think—two of the greatest. Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) was a Russian emigre who wrote novels in both Russian and English,...(read more)

166/6

Special Topics:
Realism, Then and Now

MW 5-6:30

This course explores the relationship between life and literature, with a focus on the following types of questions: How have novelists and poets—as well as filmmakers, television producers, and Instagram aficionados—attempted to repres...(read more)

190/1

Research Seminar:
Flann O'Brien and Irish Literature

MW 10:30-12

In this seminar, we will explore the comic, satirical, and genre-crossing writings of Flann O’Brien/Myles na gCopaleen/Brian O’Nolan. We will examine him as an heir to modernist innovation, starting with his novels and moving on to his ...(read more)

20/1

Modern British and American Literature:
Reliving the Past: Art and the Historical Imagination

TTh 9:30-11

In 1951, William Faulkner wrote: "The past is never dead. It's not even past." In 2008, Barack Obama invoked Faulkner to discuss the racial inequalities that continue to fracture the American nation, suggesting that we can only allevi...(read more)

126/1

British Literature, 1900-1945

MWF 2-3

How did British and Irish literature change over the first half of the twentieth-century? Was “modernism” a historical moment, an aesthetic movement, or a critical attitude—or some combination of the three? How did write...(read more)

127/1

Modern Poetry

TTh 11-12:30

This course will concentrate intensively on four poets at the center of the modernist poetic canon: T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, and W. B. Yeats. We will read several volumes by each, but will do so chronologically, in the order of the...(read more)

134/1

Contemporary Literature

Lectures MW 11-12 + one hour of discussion section per week (sec. 101: F 9-10; sec. 102: F 11-12; sec. 103: Thurs. 9-10; sec. 104: Thurs. 1-2)

This course will survey Irish and British writing since World War II.  As we dig into the formal and generic workings of a range of texts, we will also think through the political and cultural contexts from which they emerge.  Along ...(read more)

138/1

Studies in World Literature in English:
Orphans, Feral Children, Runaways—Strange Childhood in World Literature

TTh 2-3:30

From Harry Potter to Oliver Twist, the figure of the orphan is a much beloved literary trope. Why do children have to be denuded of family ties in order to set off on self-making adventures? What in the traditional family form hinders our developme...(read more)

166/1

Special Topics:
Comedy & Violence

MWF 2-3

What relation does comedy have to violence? Can humor be a gauge of political freedom? How does it resist violence or ally itself with it? In this class, we will consider various styles of humor—wit, buffoonery, satire, parody, nonsense, absu...(read more)

177/1

Literature and Philosophy:
Surveillance, Paranoia, and State Power

TTh 9:30-11

This course examines the long, intimate relationship between technologies of surveillance and the making of British and American empires. While digital technology and state surveillance has been significant in the post-9/11 world, identifying, moni...(read more)

190/2

Research Seminar:
James Joyce

MW 10:30-12

Our course traces the evolution of Joyce’s writing, from his angry essays at the turn of the twentieth century to his all-compassing comedy, Finnegans Wake, published just before the outbreak of World War II. We will consider the tra...(read more)

190/7

Research Seminar:
Contemporary Historical Fiction

TTh 9:30-11

The last few decades of British fiction have brought with them a notable resurgence of interest in historical literary fiction. Why this renewed investment in writing about the past now, two centuries after the historical novel’s emergence? I...(read more)

126/1

British Literature, 1900-1945

TTh 11-12:30

The British novel in the first half of the twentieth century was a site of massive formal experimentation. Time, space, narrators, characters, and language were dismantled and reconfigured in startling new ways. In this survey, we will look at...(read more)

180L/1

Lyric Verse

TTh 5-6:30 PM

This course will examine the historical trajectory of a very fuzzy category, “lyric,” from its identified origins and early practice in English (anonymous medieval lyrics) to its 20^th- and 21^st- cent...(read more)

190/1

Research Seminar:
Britain in the ‘60s

MW 2-3:30

This seminar will examine the fiction, drama, poetry, film, and music of Great Britain in the 1960s. Topics will possibly include: post-war and post-Empire; race and immigration; economic austerity and welfare policy; social realism and dystopia; f...(read more)

190/3

Research Seminar:
Another Day in Purgatory: Irish Literature and the Afterlife

MW 3:30-5

Life is full of death; the steps of the living cannot press the earth without disturbing the ashes of the dead—we walk upon our ancestors—the globe itself is one vast churchyard.
(read more)

190/12

Research Seminar:
Making Memories

TTh 5-6:30

This seminar examines a literary turn toward narratives of counterfeit confessional memory. It asks what is at stake in narratiing and even confessing a past that didn't happen—and what that even means in the context of a fictional text. ...(read more)

250/1

Research Seminar:
Victorian Cultural Studies

W 9-12

This course will follow the long history of the culture concept in Britain.  We will begin by working through Raymond Williams’ account in Culture & Society in order to see how several senses of the word “culture&rdquo...(read more)

180L/1

Lyric Verse

TTh 2-3:30

This course will examine the historical trajectory of a very fuzzy category, “lyric,” from its identified origins and early practice in antiquity (Sappho, Catullus, et al.) to its 20^th and 21^st century rejections ...(read more)

N125D/1

The 20th-Century Novel

MTTh 2-4

This course is a general survey of the 20th-century novel. The novel is the quintessential form of expression of modernity and modern subjectivity. In this survey of key works of the century, we will explore the novel form as it is framed by these ...(read more)

N180Z/1

Science Fiction

MTTh 10-12

This course will examine in depth the history of speculative fiction and its engagement with the thematics and topoi of the new life sciences--representation of cloning, ecological dystopias, hybrid life-forms, genetic engineering dystopia...(read more)

126/1

British Literature, 1900-1945

TTh 11-12:30

(read more)

138/1

Studies in World Literature in English:
Global Cities

MWF 1-2

Globalization has given rise to a new kind of urban space, a nexus where the networks of capital, labor, and bodies meet: the global city. This course, a survey of contemporary Anglophone literature, considers the narratives—fictional and ot...(read more)

171/2

Literature and Sexual Identity:
Gender, Sexuality, and Modernism

TTh 2-3:30

“Is queer modernism simply another name for modernism?” The question Heather Love poses in her special issue of PMLA will also guide this seminar on the crossovers between formal and sexual “deviance” in modernist ...(read more)

190/9

Research Seminar:
On Style

TTh 2-3:30

NOTE: The topic, course description, book list, and instructor for this section of English 190 changed on May 2.

Good style is easy to spot but tough to imitate, and "style," good or bad, is itself difficult to define: does style ...(read more)

190/10

Research Seminar:
Do I Dare? Indecision and Modernist Literature

TTh 3:30-5

From Prufrock's peach to Frost's two roads, modernism gave us many famous moments of indecision. We will follow along with texts depicting speakers and characters as they hesitate, delay, cavil, evade, hedge, sidestep, prevaricate, tergive...(read more)

126/1

British Literature: 1900-1945:
The Modernist Novel

TTh 2-3:30

The British novel in the first half of the twentieth century was a site of massive formal experimentation. Time, space, narrators, characters, and language were dismantled and reconfigured in startling new ways. In this survey, we will look at nov...(read more)

172/1

Literature and Psychology:
Literature and the Brain

TTh 3:30-5

What can the scientific study of mind tell us about literature? And what can literature tell us about the ways our minds and brains do—and do not—work? Looking at literature, philosophy, and the sciences of mind from the past three hun...(read more)

190/5

Research Seminar:
Contemporary British Literature and Culture

MW 4-5:30

In this course, we will investigate the literary and cultural landscape of contemporary Britain.  After several introductory sessions on the postwar period (1945-1979), we'll spend the bulk of our time working our way from the 1980s to th...(read more)

250/4

Research Seminar:
Modernism's Metaphysics

F 9-12

Over recent decades, we have become accustomed to speaking of the ‘cultural logic’ of modernism, using a periodizing term to delineate a larger complex of historical effects, while also insinuating its availability to the integrated de...(read more)

N125D/1

The 20th-Century Novel

MTTh 2-4

This course is a general survey of the 20th-century novel. The novel is the quintessential form of expression of modernity and modern subjectivity. In this survey of key works of the century, we will explore the novel form as it is framed by these...(read more)

45C/1

Literature in English: Mid-19th Through the 20th Century

MW 10-11; discussion sections F 10-11

This course will provide an overview of the aesthetic shifts captured by such terms as realism, modernism, and postmodernism, with an emphasis on the relation between literary form and historical context. We will explore how literature responds to...(read more)

45C/2

Literature in English: Mid-19th Through the 20th Century

MW 11-12; discussion sections F 11-12

This course will survey a range of English-language works spanning more than a century, examining the upheavals in literary forms during this period in relation to their historical and socio-political contexts. We will give prominence to the moder...(read more)

126/1

British Literature: 1900-1945

MWF 1-2

How did the form, content, circulation, and ambitions of British literature change over the first half of the twentieth century? How did writers contend with historical upheavals such as World War I, suffrage, and the wane of empire? With the adve...(read more)

134/1

Contemporary Literature

This course has been canceled.

171/1

Literature and Sexual Identity:
Gender, Sexuality, and Modernism

TTh 12:30-2

“Is queer modernism simply another name for modernism?” The question Heather Love poses in her special issue of PMLA will also guide this seminar on the crossovers between formal and sexual “deviance” in modernist ...(read more)

246L/1

Literature in English:
1945 to the Present

This course has been canceled.

250/3

Research Seminar:
Black + Queer

Thursdays 3:30-6:30

Co-taught by Professors Nadia Ellis (English) and Darieck Scott (African American Studies); African American Studies 240 section 1 is the course number for the latter component of the course.

This graduate seminar surveys the intersections ...(read more)

27/1

Introduction to the Study of Fiction

MWF 2-3

A 2013 study at the New School for Social Research corroborates the truism that reading literary fiction enhances our ability to understand the emotional states of other people. Even without the blessing of the sciences, it is undeniable that fict...(read more)

N125D/1

The 20th-Century Novel

MTTh 2-4

This course is a general survey of the 20th-century novel. The novel is the quintessential form of expression of modernity and modern subjectivity. In this survey of key works of the century, we will explore the novel form as it is framed by these...(read more)

45C/1

Literature in English: Mid-19th Through the 20th Century

MW 11-12 + discussion sections F 11-12

This course provides an overview of the many literary innovations now grouped under the term “modernism,” as well as their relations to the historical and social disruptions associated with the term “modernity.”  After...(read more)

45C/2

Literature in English: Mid-19th Through the 20th Century

MW 3-4 + discussion sections F 3-4

This course examines a range of British and American texts from the period with an emphasis on literary history and its social and political contexts. We will focus on the emergence, development, and legacy of modernism as a set of formal innovati...(read more)

126/1

British Literature: 1900-1945

MW 3-4 + discussion sections F 3-4

(read more)

127/1

Modern Poetry

TTh 11-12:30

This course will survey the work of major American and British poets who flourished in the twentieth century.  Poets will include W.B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, W.H. Auden,  Hart Crane, Wallace Stevens, W.C. Williams, ...(read more)

171/1

Literature and Sexual Identity:
Gender, Sexuality, and Modernism

TTh 3:30-5

Gender norms and literary forms both exploded at the turn of the twentieth century. These paired crises in social and literary narratives were perceived on the one hand as the stuttering end of western culture's story, the drying up of libidin...(read more)

173/1

The Language and Literature of Films:
British Cinema

TTh 12:30-2 + films Tues. 6-9 P.M.

This course will look at the British cinema from the 1930s to the present from a number of different angles. First, we will consider British cinema as a national industry and ask how the economic and social conditions under which British films hav...(read more)

190/3

Research Seminar:
James Joyce

MW 4-5:30

Our course traces the evolution of Joyce’s writing, from his angry essays at the turn of the twentieth century to his all-compassing comedy, Finnegans Wake, published just before the outbreak of World War II. We will consider the tr...(read more)

190/7

Research Seminar:
Virginia Woolf

TTh 12:30-2

This course will examine the evolution of Woolf’s career across the nearly three decades that define the arc of British modernism. This co-incidence will allow us to theorize the shape of a career and of a literary movement, and to re-read t...(read more)

190/9

Research Seminar:
Contemporary British Culture and Literature

TTh 12:30-2

In this course, we will investigate the literary and cultural landscape of contemporary Britain.  After several introductory sessions on the postwar period (1945-1979), we'll spend the bulk of our time in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s.&nbsp...(read more)

246K/1

Literature in English 1900-1945:
The Modernist Novel

MW 12-1:30

127/1

Modern Poetry

TTh 2-3:30

A survey of the modernist turn in poetry. This course will explore some of the more remarkable (and occasionally notorious) formal experiments of the twentieth century's turbulent first half. We will contend with work from Britain, Ireland, an...(read more)

166/2

Special Topics:
Contemporary British and Irish Poetry

TTh 11-12:30

This course will survey British and Irish poetry from the past sixty years. It is a large and multifaceted body of work, and much of it remains under-read, especially in the U.S. We will consider the development of a late modernist and postmodern ...(read more)

171/1

Literature and Sexual Identity:
Gender, Sexuality, and Modernism

MW 4-5:30

Gender norms and literary forms both exploded at the turn of the twentieth century. These paired crises in social and literary narratives were perceived on the one hand as the stuttering end of western culture's story, the drying up of libidin...(read more)

190/4

Research Seminar:
Samuel Beckett

TTh 11-12:30

An intensive reading of the works of Samuel Beckett.

Please read the paragraph on page 2 of the instructions area of this Announcement of Classes for more details about enrolling in or wait-listing for this course.

203/2

Graduate Readings:
Campus/Novel/Theory

Tues. 3:30-6:30

This course considers the relationship between the campus, the novel, and literary theory in the West. Accordingly, we will discuss theories of the novel, read some post-war British and American “campus novels,” consider the campu...(read more)

N20/1

Modern British and American Literature

MTuTh 10-12

Virginia Woolf famously wrote that “on or about December 1910, human character changed.” In her view, the exciting and experimental works of modernism—written by authors like T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, and Woolf herself—came ...(read more)

N125D/1

The 20th-Century Novel

MTuTh 2-4

This course is a general survey of the 20th-century novel. The novel is the quintessential form of expression of modernity and modern subjectivity. In this survey of key works of the century, we will explore the novel form as it is framed by these...(read more)

45C/1

Literature in English: Mid-19th Through the 20th Century

MW 11-12 + discussion sections F 11-12

This course will survey British, Irish, and American literature from the mid-nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth. We will try to evoke some of the key aesthetic...(read more)

45C/2

Literature in English: Mid-19th Through the 20th Century

MW 12-1 + discussion sections F 1-2

This course examines a range of British and American texts from the period with an emphasis on literary history and its social and political contexts. We will focus on the emergence, development, and legacy of modernism as a set of formal innovati...(read more)

45C/1

Literature in English: Mid-19th Through the 20th Century

MW 9-10 + discussion sections F 9-10

This course provides an overview of the many literary innovations now grouped under the term “modernism,” as well as their relations to the historical and social disruptions associated with the term “modernity.”  After...(read more)

127/1

Modern Poetry

MWF 12-1

This course will survey major work and significant stylistic innovations in a variety of poets.  Major figures incude William Butler Yeats, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Mina Loy, T.S. Eliot and Wallace Stevens.  I...(read more)

45C/2

Literature in English: Mid-19th Through the 20th Century

MW 1-2 + discussion sections F 1-2

This survey course of literature in English from the mid-nineteenth century to the present will consider a variety of literary forms and movements in their historical and cultural contexts. We'll examine the literature of colonization and impe...(read more)

125E/1

The Contemporary Novel:
The Novel Since 2000

TTh 12:30-2

We who study literature are perhaps always belated. This course aims to redefine at least one literary period: the “contemporary” novel, scholarship about which sometimes stretches as far back as novels written in the 1950s! I protest....(read more)

126/1

British Literature: 1900-1945

TTh 11-12:30

This survey will look at British and Irish literature written in the first half of the twentieth century, focusing on key works by major modernist figures. The course will explore the different aims and effects of modernist innovation and consider...(read more)

250/1

Research Seminars:
Victorian Cultural Studies

M 3-6

This course will follow the long history of the culture concept in Britain.&n...(read more)

45C/2

Literature in English: Mid-19th Through the 20th Century

MW 3-4, + discussion sections F 3-4

A broad survey of the period that witnessed the arrival of English as a fully global literary language, with Anglophone empires (both political and cultural) centered on both sides of the Atlantic and spread around the world.  (read more)

134/1

Contemporary Literature

MWF 11-12

This course will survey British and Irish writing since World War II.  We will dig deeply into the texts' formal and generic workings, and think through the cultural and social contexts from which they emerge. Along the way, we'l...(read more)

190/2

Research Seminar:
Yeats, Joyce, & Beckett

MW 4-5:30

This course will focus on the major writings by this trio of Irish modernists.  We will think about the ways in which these writers fit into and challenge international canons of modernist literature, about the Irish attachments and condition...(read more)

190/14

Research Seminar:
Cultures of Realism in Postwar Britain

Tues. 3:30-6:30

This course traces transformations in British literary culture in the two decades following the Second World War.  Toward that end we'll read a diverse set of writings, emphasizing prose narrative in genres including documentary, social c...(read more)

126/1

British Literature: 1900-1945

Note new format: Lectures MW 2-3 + discussion sections F 2-3

A survey of the modernist period in British and Irish writing, with special attention given to some of the period’s central figures and works. Students should be prepared to read adventurously and to read a lot. We will attempt about a work ...(read more)

134/1

Contemporary Literature

TTh 12:30-2

This course will entail serious and sustained reflection upon the two terms invoked in its title: "literature" and "the contemporary." Our reading list will feature a series of very recent works (almost all written within the l...(read more)

126/1

British Literature, 1900-1945

TTh 5-6:30

134/1

Contemporary Literature:
Contemporary Literature

MW 3-4, Discussion F 3-4

134/1

Upper Division Coursework:
Contemporary Literature

MWF 11-12

126/1

Upper Division Coursework:
British Literature: 1900-1945

TTh 3:30-5