This class provides a survey of major works from Beowulf in the Anglo-Saxon period through the renaissance and ending with the 18th century, the Age of Reason. This course is particularly exciting and challenging in that the reading is in early literatures (all before 1800) and so is of particular value for those seeking to understand worlds different from our own which are, at the same time, the bases of modern culture. Students should seek to gain a deep appreciation of the works themselves and to be able to place the works and their authors in their historical/stylistic context. There will be quizes, three essay exams, and , in addition, the opportunity to do creative writing.

The Longman Anthology of British Literature. 3nd edn, vols. 1A, 1B, 1C, ed. David Damrosch. New York.

Drawing on ancient art, archaeology and the written record, this class focuses on the major Greek divinities with emphasis on their origins and evolution in classical culture, their function in ancient literature, and their presence in the modern world. The last third of the class will look at Ovid's treatment of the myths in his Metamorphoses.

There will be quizes, three essay exams, and, in addition, the opportunity to do creative writing.

Mark P.O. Morford and Robert J. Lenardon, Classical Mythology, Longman; 7th or 8th edn is acceptable. Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. Rolfe Humphries, Indiana U. Press.

Using a feminist perspective, this course surveys women writers (English-language tradition) from Middle Ages to the present as well as contemporary women authors (world, non-English-language writers). Students should plan on polishing their writing and close-reading skills.

This class fulfills upper division GE, provided the student is at least a junior; the class may also be double-counted as part of the English major.

There will be quizes, three essay exams, the option to write a paper or do a researched presentation, and, in addition, the opportunity to do creative writing.

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No experience required! This is a course for anyone who has ever thought, someday I’d like to try to write a novel! It is equally appropriate, however, for those who already have a novel underway. We will explore all the problems and dynamics of novel writing in a writing workshop setting.

Instructor: Thaine Stearns

In this course we will consider the first novels of Anglo-American literary modernism, circa 1916-1925, as our means to understand how this important movement responded to a radically changing twentieth-century culture, and how novelists undertook to examine the novel and to make it new. We will read first modernist novels by Joyce, Woolf, West, Ford, Lawrence, Conrad, Barnes, and H.D.

This course will center on a study of American gothic literature, primarily of the nineteenth century. We will begin the course with an interrogation and analysis of the terms, "American" and "gothic" as they exist independently and as they converge. We will examine, as our primary subject matter, the representation of American identities and concurrent anxieties about early national identity formation through our study of American gothic texts by writers such as Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Pauline Hopkins, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and James Joyce, to name a few. In addition, we will examine the role of nineteenth century American gothic literature in the emergence and persistence of the popular genre of American horror--looking specifically at contemporary American horror and some science fiction literature and film. Finally, we will continue to engage, throughout the term, the representation of gender and race, as well as class, in the American gothic and horror narrative.

English 487.1: Classical Rhetoric

Instructor: Scott Miller

Studying classical rhetoric--the founding statements in Western culture about how language is powerful or can be made to be powerful--is for many students a life-changing event, allowing an understanding of some ways words move people and some ways of analyzing those words. This course will survey the theories of rhetoric that were developed in antiquity by the great founders of the liberal studies, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian, and the itinerant Athenian instructors collectively known as the Sophists. The course will study both the theories themselves (inviting the students to employ them in practice or use them as critical tools) and the vibrant controversies, which raged throughout the period over those theories' usefulness and morality. Looking at copious examples of rhetorical discourse from modern popular culture (film, music, advertising), students will perceive the continued relevance of these 2500-year old theories and of the equally ancient controversies about them.

English 500: Research and Critical Writing
Instructor: Cathy Kroll

Special course theme: Nationalisms and Narratives.
English 500 orients students to the discipline of advanced English studies by providing a thorough grounding in research methodology, theoretical practices, and instruction in critical writing.
Texts will include, among others:
        Ben Okri, The Famished Road
        Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient
        The Narrative Reader, ed. Martin McQuillan

A fiction writing workshop for graduate students. We will look at some Freud, some Bachelard, and some other theory for illumination about the writing process, but the main text is the writing of the members of the class.

Does colonialism only operate according to the inside/outside border logic of the nation-state? Traditionally postcolonial theories emphasize on the profound cultural and economic impact of colonial powers on the colonized countries. While this emphasis is crucial in many aspects, as an unintended side-effect, by targeting on the damage colonizers done to others, postcolonial critique generates an image of Empire that is invincible, ruthless and carefree—kind of like a womanizer, isn’t it?

In this course, we will examine how colonialism structures-- not merely “friendship” between nations—but life in various parts of the world from the 17^th century onward. We will ask: If the nuclear family is an integral part of capitalist mode of production, what is happening to love in this process? Is it simply privatized? What is the power of love (in the marketplace)? In what way can a decolonized mode of loving possible?

Key critical texts: John Berger, Ways of Seeing. Fredrick Engels, Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. Nancy Armstrong, Desire and Domestic Fiction.

Primary texts: John Dryden, Amboyna, Cao Xueqin, The Story of Stone (selection), Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea, Tayeb Salih, Season of Migration to the North, Jamaica Kincaid, The Autobiography of My Mother, and other shorter texts.