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Course Criteria
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3.00 Credits
This course develops students' ability to analyze gender in relation to other issues, including race, class, and sexuality. Students explore the multiple theories of how these issues intersect in literature, including black feminism, socialist feminism, queer theory, deconstruction, and psychoanalytic theory. Some attention is paid to media feminism, both the brand of feminism popular in current movies and television shows, and media reactions to feminism. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Enrollment limited to 25. (Critical thinking.) C. Malcolmson.
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3.00 Credits
This seminar explores American concepts of "self" in historical and cultural context, focusing on distinct yet overlapping discourses of privacy, intimacy, and identity, as these are shaped by evolving understandings of race, sexuality, gender, class, and nation. Beginning with a critical investigation of how the nation's Puritan settlers articulated, practiced, and regulated "the self" and concluding with a consideration of how self and identity are presented in mediated environments such as Facebook and MySpace, students consider scholarship in American literary and cultural history, critical theory, and primary literary and legal texts. Prerequisite(s): one 200-level English course or one 200-level American Cultural Studies course and English 141 or 152. Recommended background: Women and Gender Studies 100. Enrollment limited to 15. [W2] E. Osucha.
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3.00 Credits
The American "frontier" has long been a controlling idea in the production of U.S. national identity: less physical reality than ideological framework, what historian Frederick Jackson Turner called "the meeting point between savagery and civilization." Drawing on theoretical and historical writings, studied alongside twentieth-century U.S. literary texts, this course examines the history and legacy of this concept, and the new interpretive and cultural paradigms of "the border" that have supplanted Turner's "frontier thesis." Studying the border as "contact zone," students read widely in Chicana/o and Native American literatures, studying connections and commonalities in what are often treated as distinct traditions, toward a more nuanced understanding of the diverse territories - real and imagined - engaged by critical discourses of the border. Prerequisite(s): one 200-level course in American cultural studies or English. Instructor permission is required. (Critical thinking.) [W2] E. Osucha.
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3.00 Credits
Romance was the most popular literary genre of the later Middle Ages. Originating in France in the twelfth century, this highly adaptable form quickly became an international phenomenon, with numerous examples found across Europe and the British Isles. Many romances tell tales of amorous exploits, exotic travels, and quests for knowledge; the celebration of chivalric ideals is a central theme. But many of these tales seem to question and sometimes undermine the very ideals they otherwise espouse: courtly love mingles with sexual adventurism, for instance, and loyalty to one's lord often results in alienation or death. Students read a selection of romances from France and Britain (all texts are in modern English translation or manageable Middle English) with an eye toward how they variously articulate and deconstruct the notion of chivalry. Prerequisite(s): one English course. Enrollment limited to 15. Instructor permission is required. (Pre-1800.) [W2] S. Federico.
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3.00 Credits
The saints of the Christian church were not only central to the belief system of the European Middle Ages, they also provided an opportunity for rich and varied narrative and cultural constructions. The saints' legends found in the medieval English collection that is the focus of this course sometimes reveal more about the hopes and fears of the people by and for whom they were composed than about the saints themselves, but they are no less interesting for that reason. Translation of a chosen text, historical investigation, and creative rewriting all play a part in the process of acquainting students with the nature of narrative and the continuing hold the saints have upon our imagination. Prerequisite(s): English 206. Not open to students who have received credit for Classical and Medieval Studies/English 395Q. Not open to students who have received credit for CM/EN 395Q. Enrollment limited to 15. Instructor permission is required. (Pre-1800.) [W2] Staff.
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3.00 Credits
This seminar examines feminist literary theories and the implications and consequences of theoretical choices. It raises interrelated questions about forms of representation, the social construction of critical categories, cross-cultural differences among writers and readers, and the critical reception of women writers. Students explore the use of literary theory through work with diverse texts. Enrollment limited to 15. Instructor permission is required. (Critical thinking.) [W2] Normally offered every year. L. Shankar, C. Malcolmson, C. Taylor.
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3.00 Credits
European art film tends to be more realistic than Hollywood film, yet at the same time it is more conscious of its artifice. What does nature look like when framed in these art-conscious, self-reflexive terms This course considers challenging masterworks of European cinema from the 1950s until today, with special attention to the place of nature in cinematic narrative and representation. Students watch two films each week and read several theoretical essays. Directors may include Ingmar Bergman, Andrei Tarkovsky, Jean-Luc Godard, Roberto Rossellini, and Claire Denis. Enrollment limited to 15. Instructor permission is required. [W2] S. Dillon.
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3.00 Credits
The most popular forms of literature in the Middle Ages, including chivalric epic, courtly romance, hagiography, and fabliaux, work from specific assumptions regarding normative gender roles. The qualities of a perfect knight, for example, include certain types of gendered behavior, including casual promiscuity with women and an appetite for violence with men. This course examines literary representations of medieval gender roles in relation both to their origins (often in Church teachings) and their manifestations in the social world. Students read a number of late medieval poems, prose treatises, and excerpts from legal and theological documents. Readings are in (manageable) Middle English or in Modern English translation. Prerequisite(s): one English course. Enrollment limited to 15. Instructor permission is required. (Pre-1800.) [W2] S. Federico.
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3.00 Credits
This seminar studies from a literary and a sociohistorical perspective the fiction, memoirs, and critical theories of Asian American women such as Meena Alexander, Rey Chow, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Ginu Kamani, Maxine Hong Kingston, Lisa Lowe, Bapsi Sidhwa, Cathy Song, Shani Mootoo, Jhumpa Lahiri, Joy Kogawa, and Hisaye Yamamoto. It explores their constructions of personal and national identity, as hybridized Asians and Americans, and as postcolonial diasporics making textual representations of real and "imaginary" homelands. Films by Trinh Minh-ha, Indu Krishnan, Deepa Mehta, Mira Nair, Jayasri Hart, and Renee Tajima are also analyzed through critical lenses. Enrollment limited to 15. Instructor permission is required. (Critical thinking.) [W2] L. Shankar.
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3.00 Credits
Known among Victorians as the "Queen of the Circulating Libraries," Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1835-1915) was immensely popular in her day. Reading a selection of Braddon's best- and lesser-known works, students explore the reasons for her popularity. They consider the subversive and conservative strains in Braddon's writing, her aims and accomplishments as a "sensation novelist," and the significance of her own unconventional lifestyle. Readings include a number of Braddon's novels, short stories, and plays, as well as biographical and critical studies. Not open to students who have received credit for EN/WS 395E. Enrollment limited to 15. Instructor permission is required. [W2] L. Nayder.
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