*English Calr. Advanced Screenwriting
Catalog Number: 1240 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Daniel J. Rubin
Half course (spring term). Tu., 1–3. EXAM GROUP: 15, 16
This course will build up writing muscles of students seriously interested in screenwriting. Students will write and re-write scenes; alter and develop characters; solve story problems; re-write dialogue; give and receive pitches; do film analysis; work-shop written materials; perform exercises related to the actual work done by Hollywood screenwriters. Students will be working on a 30-page screenplay.
Note: Admission based on submitted samples of writing.
*English Camr. Advanced Playwriting 2: Production Workshop - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 2555 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Christine Mary Evans and Gideon M. Lester
Half course (spring term). W., 2–5. EXAM GROUP: 7, 8, 9
This course is for advanced playwrights, who will begin with a draft play ready for exploration. We will work with each student’s play-in-progress through several drafts in a process that models professional practice. In addition to participating in workshop, students will be teamed with a director, actors, and dramaturge as their plays develop, culminating in rehearsed (staged) public readings as part of the inaugural Harvard Playwrights’ Festival.
Note: Admission based on submitted samples of writing.
*English Capr. Advanced Poetry Workshop
Catalog Number: 6523 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Jorie Graham
Half course (spring term). Tu., 1–4. EXAM GROUP: 15, 16, 17
Open by application to both undergraduates and graduates. Please submit a portfolio including a letter of interest, ten poems, and a list of classes (taken at Harvard or elsewhere) that seem to have bearing on your enterprise. Class lasts 3 hours and includes the study of poetic practice in conjunction with the discussion of student work.
Note: Admission based on submitted samples of writing.
*English Ckr. Introduction to Playwriting
Catalog Number: 6781 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Christine Mary Evans
Half course (fall term; repeated spring term). Tu., 1–3. EXAM GROUP: 15, 16
Plays, unusual beasts in the world of writing, are design templates for live performance. Therefore, learning to think architecturally is a vital part of the playwright’s craft. This workshop-based course introduces students to a range of structural and aesthetic approaches to playwriting—always with live performance in mind. It combines intensive weekly writing and discussion of student work with play analysis and dramatic theory. All students will complete a one-act play and several shorter pieces.
Note: Admission based on submitted samples of writing.
*English Clr. Introduction to Screenwriting
Catalog Number: 6121 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Daniel J. Rubin
Half course (fall term; repeated spring term). Fall: Section I: M., 1–3; Section II: W., 1–3; Spring: M., 1–3. EXAM GROUP: 6, 7
This workshop introduces the art, craft, and business of screenwriting. Students will complete short scripts and off-beat writing exercises focused on dramatic structure, character development, dialogue, theme, and tone; students will also analyze films and screenplays. By exploring visual storytelling, personal versus commercial sensibilities, and alternative approaches to script creation through the writing of short screenplays, students will acquire the tools, skills, and confidence to create feature film scripts.
Note: Admission based on submitted samples of writing.
*English Cnfr. Introduction to Creative Nonfiction - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 6740 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Darcy Frey
Half course (fall term; repeated spring term). Tu., 2–4. EXAM GROUP: 16, 17
Whether in essay, memoir or reportage, creative nonfiction employs many of the same literary techniques as fiction: narrative structure, character development, scene-setting, extended dialogue, emphasis on voice and point of view. In addition to workshopping student writing, we discuss examples of the genre by writers such as Joan Didion, Vivian Gornick, William Maxwell, and John McPhee. Assignments include one oral presentation, two short narratives, an extensive revision, and typed critiques of classmates’ work.
Note: Admission based on submitted samples of writing.
*English Cnnr. The Nonfiction Novella - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 2121 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Darcy Frey
Half course (fall term; repeated spring term). W., 4–6. EXAM GROUP: 9
In any long-form nonfiction (essay, memoir, travelogue, journalism), there are countless ways of structuring and telling a true story. In this workshop, students examine various techniques for giving nonfiction material dramatic and suspenseful energy: chronology, argument, juxtaposition, retrospection, evolving revelation. Students work on one major narrative while reading and presenting on the craft of writers such as Julia Blackburn, Truman Capote, Spalding Gray, and Janet Malcolm. Assignments include one oral presentation, two short narratives, an extensive revision, and typed critiques of classmates’ work.
Note: Admission based on submitted samples of writing.
*English Cpkr. Poetry Workshop - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 9817 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Joanna G. Klink
Half course (fall term). Tu., 1–4. EXAM GROUP: 15, 16, 17
Open by application to both undergraduates and graduates. This is a poetry workshop involving critical analysis of student work as well as reading and discussion of poems by established poets. On a weekly basis we will examine student poems and the practical issues in poetics (descriptive language, syntax, diction, etc.) they bring to light. Be prepared to do imitations; some memorization may also be required.
Note: Admission based on submitted samples of writing. Please submit a letter of interest and a portfolio of five poems.
*English Cpr. Poetry Writing
Catalog Number: 3053 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Peter Richards
Half course (fall term; repeated spring term). Tu., 1–4. EXAM GROUP: 15, 16, 17
A poetry workshop open by application to undergraduate and graduate students alike. In this class students will study modern and contemporary poets and can expect to submit their own poems on a weekly basis for peer review.
Note: Admission based on submitted samples of writing.
*English Cpwr. Poetry Workshop
Catalog Number: 4606 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Jorie Graham
Half course (spring term). W., 1–4. EXAM GROUP: 6, 7, 8
Open by application to both undergraduates and graduates. Please submit a portfolio including five poems, a letter explaining your interest in the class, and a list of relevant classes taken at Harvard or elsewhere. Class includes the discussion of literary texts as well as work written by students.
Note: Admission based on submitted samples of writing.
*English Cqr. Advanced Poetry Writing
Catalog Number: 2644 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Peter Richards
Half course (fall term; repeated spring term). W., 1–4. EXAM GROUP: 6, 7, 8
An advanced poetry workshop with an emphasis on form, revision, and aleatory methods for generating new work. Readings include Guillaume Apollinaire, W.H. Auden, Anna Balakian, Gottfried Benn, Joe Brainard, Anne Carson, Joseph Ceravolo, John Cage, Jean Cocteau, Ann Lauterbach, James Merrill, Robert Motherwell, Leslie Scalapino, Gertrude Stein, and Wallace Stevens among others.
Note: Admission based on submitted samples of writing.
*English Crr. Fiction Writing
Catalog Number: 1893 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Bret A. Johnston
Half course (fall term; repeated spring term). Fall: Th., 4–7 p.m.; Spring: W., 4–7 p.m. EXAM GROUP: Fall: 18; Spring: 9
An introduction to fundamental aspects (technical and conceptual) of writing fiction, beginning with short exercises and moving toward the completion and revision of original work. Readings include Munro, Welty, Diaz, Lahiri, and others, and explore how practicing writers negotiate character, narrative structure, setting, voice, etc. Individual reading assignments are also devised on a per project basis. As the term continues, increasing amounts of time are devoted to the discussion of student work.
Note: Written assignments include exercises, typed critiques for each workshopped story, two original short stories, and at least one extended revision. Admission based on submitted samples of writing.
*English Csr. Fiction Writing
Catalog Number: 2601 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Katherine A. Vaz
Half course (fall term; repeated spring term). Tu., 3–5. EXAM GROUP: 17, 18
An introduction to the art and craft of fiction writing. Addresses the basics of character, plot, dialogue, imagery, setting, and description with weekly exercises and informal lectures. Readings include works by Chekhov, O’Connor, Schultz, Cortázar, and Chute. Students are required to submit two stories and to provide thorough commentary on the work of colleagues. Short stories or portions of novels are acceptable.
Note: Admission based on submitted samples of writing.
*English Ctr. Advanced Fiction Writing
Catalog Number: 7175 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Bret A. Johnston
Half course (fall term; repeated spring term). Fall: W., 4–7 p.m.; Spring: Th., 4–7 p.m. EXAM GROUP: Fall: 9; Spring: 18
See English Crr. Students in the advanced class will also make presentations on craft and be expected to revise work more often and to a higher standard.
Note: Admission based on submitted samples of writing. Generally for students who have previously taken fiction workshops.
*English Cvr. Fiction Writing
Catalog Number: 1223 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Jamaica Kincaid
Half course (fall term; repeated spring term). W., 1–3. EXAM GROUP: 6, 7
A seminar/workshop. Readings include Bruno Schultz, Jean Toomer, Robert Walser, and Rimbaud’s Illuminations, among others.
Note: Admission based on submitted samples of writing. Submissions from experienced fiction writers are welcome.
*English Cwr. Advanced Fiction Writing
Catalog Number: 7765 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Katherine A. Vaz
Half course (fall term; repeated spring term). W., 1–3.
Students make weekly presentations on aspects of craft. Readings include works by Schultz, Morrison, García Marquez, Munro, Rodoreda, and Fitzgerald. Two stories (or portions of novels) are required along with revisions of material (to be decided on a per project basis). Typed critiques must be provided for all work of colleagues under review.
Note: Admission based on submitted samples of writing.
English 10b. Major British Writers II
Catalog Number: 0550
Stephen Louis Burt
Half course (spring term). M., W., at 12. EXAM GROUP: 5
An introduction to the study of British literature from the early 18th century to the present.
Note: Open to freshmen. Two lectures and one section meeting per week. Required of English concentrators. This course, when taken for a letter grade, meets the Core area requirement for Literature and Arts A.
[English 17. American Literature to 1915]
Catalog Number: 3883
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Half course (fall term; repeated spring term). Hours to be arranged.
To fulfill the English 17 requirement in 2008-09, see English 90wb, English 171a, and English 176.
Note: Expected to be given in 2009–10.
*English 90ap. Theology, Aesthetics, and History: Protestantism in American Literature - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 5850 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Jason W. Stevens
Half course (fall term). M., 1–3. EXAM GROUP: 6, 7
This course will cover American texts from the Puritan settlement through the present, with emphasis on the twentieth century. We will explore the rapid growth of Protestantism into a cultural logic which has been variously revised, conserved, caricatured, repudiated, and resurrected over the course of the American past. Authors include Jonathan Edwards, William Ellery Channing, Hawthorne, Emerson, Catherine Sedgewick, Sherwood Anderson, Sinclair Lewis, H.L. Mencken, Flannery O’Connor, Marilynne Robinson, and James Baldwin.
*English 90fa. Fantasy Before Modernity - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 9536 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Jason Monroe Crawford
Half course (spring term). Tu., 2–4. EXAM GROUP: 16, 17
This course explores the fantastic worlds of medieval poetry and asks what sort of imagination produced them. How is the pre-modern imaginiation different from our own? How do ideas about gods, or the cosmos, matter to literary form? Topics include myth and romance; visions and dreams; enchantment and disenchantment; allegory and symbol. Readings include medieval poetry but also range from Augustine and Athanasius to C.S. Lewis and Gordon Teskey.
*English 90ga. Alternative Worlds in Early Modern England
Catalog Number: 8472 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Barbara K. Lewalski
Half course (fall term). Th., 2–4. EXAM GROUP: 16, 17
This seminar explores how and why many writers in Early Modern England construct alternative worlds that may contrast with or comment on contemporary England. We will consider Utopias (More’s Utopia, Bacon’s New Atlantis, Margaret Cavendish’s Blazing World), Arcadias (Sidney’s Old and New Arcadia, Country House Poems), Faerie Land (Spenser’s Faerie Queene), Eden (Milton’s Paradise Lost), New World Places (accounts of Bermuda, Virginia, Guiana, etc.).
English 90gb (formerly English 131). Milton: Major Poetry and Prose
Catalog Number: 8005
Gordon Teskey
Half course (spring term). M., W., at 1. EXAM GROUP: 6
An introduction to Milton’s life and poetry, with emphasis on his epic poem, Paradise Lost. Milton will be studied in relation to the events of his day, in particular, the English revolution, but also in relation to later English poets, especially the romantics.
*English 90ha. Shakespeare’s Master Orators - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 3335 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Daniel Shore
Half course (spring term). Tu., 12–2. EXAM GROUP: 14, 15
Reading of Shakespeare plays that represent improbable feats of persuasion performed by masterful, and often less than ideal, orators. By reading the plays alongside the rhetorical works that informed Shakespeare’s age, we will develop an account of how persuasion happens--how spoken words change beliefs and move listeners to action.
*English 90hs. Satire: Augustan and Modern
Catalog Number: 8795 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Michael Shinagel
Half course (spring term). M., 3–5. EXAM GROUP: 8, 9
A study of satire in poetry, prose fiction, and drama. Authors covered are Dryden, Swift, Pope, Johnson, Gay, Voltaire, Orwell, Brecht, Vonnegut, and West.
*English 90lv. Consciousness from Austen to Woolf
Catalog Number: 3200 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
James Wood
Half course (spring term). M., 1–3. EXAM GROUP: 6, 7
A look at the complex ways in which writers represent their characters’ thought in texts by Austen, Flaubert, James, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Giovanni Verga, and Woolf. More broadly, traces the development of stream-of-consciousness, from Austen’s incipient mastery of free indirect style, through Flaubert’s more sophisticated use of it, to Woolf’s full-blown inner monologues, seeing this development as not merely a fact of English and American literature, but as a phenomenon of world literature and an element of our modernity.
[*English 90mf. The Rise of the Novel]
Catalog Number: 6041 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Michael Shinagel
Half course (spring term). M., 3–5.
The course examines the rise of the novel as a genre in England through a close reading of major works by Bunyan, Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding (Pilgrim’s Progress, Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders, Pamela, Clarissa, Joseph Andrews, and Tom Jones).
Note: Expected to be given in 2009–10. Expected to be given in 2009-10.
*English 90nn. Nonfiction Novel
Catalog Number: 4416 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
J. D. Connor
Half course (fall term). M., 1–3. EXAM GROUP: 6, 7
Examines seemingly inevitable suspensions of disbelief from Defoe to Janet Malcolm. How is it possible to confuse a novel with its external world? What happens when journalism and fiction merge? Course plays close attention to the institutions of veracity (medical, historical, journalistic, legal) and their usual documents (the case history, the cache, the eyewitness account, testimony).
*English 90ow. Oscar Wilde: Artist, Martyr, Celebrity
Catalog Number: 4506 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Matthew Kaiser
Half course (fall term). W., 1–3. EXAM GROUP: 6, 7
"I have nothing to declare," Wilde reputedly informed a U.S. customs agent in 1882, "except my genius." So began his famous tour of America. We will examine the plays, philosophical writings,
poetry, journalism, literary criticism, and fiction of the nineteenth century’s most flamboyant and playful writer. We also explore Wilde’s life and legend, his literary influences, critics, and his rebirth in the twentieth century as a modern "gay martyr."
*English 90pb. Dramatic Structure and Analysis
Catalog Number: 4661 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Robert Scanlan
Half course (spring term). W., 3–5. EXAM GROUP: 8, 9
Introduces the Plot-Bead technique for analyzing and/or constructing artistic forms that are performance events. Several artworks, most of them plays, but some poems and one musical composition, are studied in detail in the light of depth action analysis and codification of the artifact’s time-form in a plot-bead diagram. The roots of these analytical techniques (which have practical utility for artists) are Aristotelian, but are reflected in 21st-century practice.
*English 90qd. Philip Larkin unless John Ashbery - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 0108 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Philip J. Fisher
Half course (spring term). M., 2–4. EXAM GROUP: 7, 8
Recent events within "air’s other side" (Rilke). Poetic and counter-poetic language; syntax and its alternatives; form and the varieties of inform; sense and reticence; voice, personhood and their absence; poems, prose and intermediate possibilities. Major and representative works by both authors will be given close, imaginative, analytic attention.
[*English 90qe. Pinter, Stoppard, Churchill, & Frayn]
Catalog Number: 9595 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Elizabeth Dyrud Lyman
Half course (spring term). W., 3–5.
An in-depth look at the four most influential British playwrights of the late twentieth century. Readings include generous selections of each author’s plays, as well as novels, screenplays, journalism, and essays. Emphasis is on recurring themes that haunt these authors’ works, and the innovative techniques they develop to convey them.
Note: Expected to be given in 2009–10. Expected to be given in 2009-10.
*English 90qm. Metaphysical Poetry - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 4727 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Gordon Teskey
Half course (fall term). M., 3–5. EXAM GROUP: 8, 9
A course on the major lyric poets of the 17th century, Donne, Jonson, Herbert, and Marvell. What is the relation between poetry and philosophy, between lyric expression and permanent order? In the seventeenth century, medieval notions of order gave way before the rise of science and of early modern philosophy.
*English 90qn. Navigating Ulysses
Catalog Number: 8643 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Peter C. Nohrnberg
Half course (fall term). Tu., 2–4. EXAM GROUP: 16, 17
James Joyce’s modernist epic supplemented by readings of significant intertexts (The Odyssey, Hamlet) along with works of secondary criticism. Attention directed to formal aspects of this difficult work as well as to its thematic engagement with important issues of its time, including: Irish nationalism and British colonialism, feminism, the advent of advertising, and the rise of consumer culture.
*English 90qp. 20th-Century American Poetry
Catalog Number: 6694 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Peter Sacks
Half course (spring term). W., 1–3. EXAM GROUP: 6, 7
This course attends to the work of several American poets whose careers span much of the second half of the 20th century. Poets include Elizabeth Bishop, James Wright, Randall Jarrell, Adrienne Rich, A.R.Ammons, Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery, and others.
*English 90sb. Samuel Beckett’s Plays and Prose
Catalog Number: 3487 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Robert Scanlan
Half course (fall term). W., 2–5. EXAM GROUP: 7, 8, 9
Studies systematically the arc of Samuel Beckett’s literary career, with particular emphasis on Beckett’s stage and video plays. The course proposes the idea of a “stable habitation for the Self” as one way of understanding both Beckett’s thematic matière and his astonishing aesthetic innovations in three media: stage, page, and video screen. Video resources supplement reading and discussion of texts, and local productions of the plays are studied when available.
*English 90wb. Jameses and Jameseans - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 6768 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Elisa New
Half course (spring term). M., 2–4. EXAM GROUP: 7, 8
First half of the course: Henry James: readings to include The Portrait of a Lady, The Spoils of Poynton, The Turn of the Screw and The Golden Bowl as well as representative shorter fictions. Second half of the course: William James, readings in Pragmatism, The Will to Believe and Principles of Psychology plus works by key modernist and pragmatist heirs, W.E.B. Du Bois, John Dewey, Robert Frost, Marianne Moore, Gertrude Stein, Ralph Ellison, Philip Roth.
*English 90xt. Theater/Theory/Text - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 6372 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Elizabeth Dyrud Lyman
Half course (fall term). Tu., 1–3. EXAM GROUP: 15, 16
The world of theater is a world of ideas. Theory and practice, however we distinguish them by the forms of their articulation ("plays," "manifestos," "theory," "criticism"), are interrelated: we learn by doing, and we revise and expand ideas and techniques in the process. Close readings of selected plays and ideas from Adorno, Artaud, Barthes, Baudrillard, Beckett, Benjamin, Bergson, Butler, Churchill, Cixous, Freud, Hooks, Kane, Kushner, Nietzsche, O’Neill, Parks, Pinter, Shaw, Stoppard, Wilde, and Yeats.
*English 97. Seminar—Sophomore Year
Catalog Number: 0280
Daniel G. Donoghue and members of the Department
Half course (fall term; repeated spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Introduction to methods of literary analysis. Selected texts studied along with readings in theory and criticism. Required of concentrators in the sophomore year.
*English 98r. Tutorial—Junior Year
Catalog Number: 3831
Daniel G. Donoghue and members of the Department
Half course (fall term; repeated spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Supervised small group tutorial in the study of literature in English.
Note: Limited to honors concentrators.
*English 99r. Tutorial—Senior Year
Catalog Number: 3901
Daniel G. Donoghue and members of the Department
Half course (fall term; repeated spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Supervised individual tutorial in an independent scholarly or critical subject.
Note: Two terms required of all thesis honors seniors. To enroll, students must submit for approval a Thesis Proposal.
Prerequisite: Satisfactory completion of one term of English 98r, completion of an undergraduate seminar (90-level) taken in the junior year or earlier, and faculty approval of proposed thesis topic.
English 102d. Anglo-Saxon Language and Culture: Poetry and Belief - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 1178
Joseph C. Harris
Half course (fall term). M., W., (F.), at 10. EXAM GROUP: 3
Introduction to the language and culture of England before 1066, with special attention to religion and its expression in poetry. By the end of the term we will have read, in the original, a handful of the greatest short poems in the English language, among them The Wanderer and The Seafarer and gained some insight into an unfamiliar Christianity. Note: Fulfills the College language requirement and the English Department’s Foreign Literature requirement if its continuation English 103 is also completed.
English 103g. Anglo-Saxon Language and Culture: Working with Manuscripts
Catalog Number: 0326
Daniel G. Donoghue
Half course (spring term). Tu., Th., 2–3:30. EXAM GROUP: 16, 17
The task of translation will be supplemented by consistent attention to the manuscript contexts of Old English literature. The texts will include selections from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Genesis, the Exeter Book Riddles, Beowulf, and others. The course will guide students through basic principles of manuscript study and will culminate in a collaborative edition of an Old English text.
Prerequisite: Honors grade in English 102 or the equivalent.
English 121. Shakespeare After Hamlet - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 2100
Gordon Teskey
Half course (fall term). M., W., at 12. EXAM GROUP: 5
Written at the midpoint of Shakespeare’s career (1600-01), Hamlet marks the culmination of an experiment in representing the inner life with remarkable human sympathy. Hamlet also marks the beginning, in the comedies as much as in the famous tragedies, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, of a new and disturbing interest in the human mysteries of sadism, power, eroticism and loss.
English 127 (formerly Humanities 27). A Silk Road Course: Travel and Transformation on the High Seas: An Imaginary Journey in the Early 17th Century
Catalog Number: 6630
Stephen J. Greenblatt
Half course (spring term). Tu., Th., at 11 and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 3
A course about global mobility, encounter, and exchange at the time that Harvard College was founded in 1636. Using the interactive resources of computer technology and drawing upon faculty experts from many disciplines, we follow imaginary voyages of three ships that leave England in 1633. Sites include London’s Globe Theatre, Benin, Barbados, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, Morocco, Istanbul, Venice, Virginia, and Cambridge, Massachusetts. Topics include the slave trade, reconnaissance, colonization, conversion, geography, navigation, and literary culture.
Note: This course, when taken for a letter grade, meets the General Education requirement for Aesthetic and Interpretive Understanding. This course, when taken for a letter grade, meets the Core area requirement for Literature and Arts C.
English 129. Shakespeare in Slow Motion: Conference Course - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 0193 Enrollment: Limited to 35.
Marjorie Garber
Half course (spring term). M., 2–4. EXAM GROUP: 7, 8
Close reading of four or five plays by Shakespeare. Participants will be expected to familiarize themselves with the critical, historical, and editorial questions provoked by these plays, and to read some ancillary criticism and theory, but the seminar will focus on an intensive ("slow reading") attention to the text, including, but not limited to, questions of imagery, symbolism, allegorization, philology, nuance, gesture, and affect.
Note: Preference given to undergraduates who have taken a previous course in Shakespeare. Open to all graduate students in English and Comparative Literature without prerequisite.
English 141. The 18th-Century Novel
Catalog Number: 8683
Leah Price
Half course (spring term). Tu., 2–4. EXAM GROUP: 16, 17
The rise of the novel, seen through eighteenth-century fiction by Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Sterne, Radcliffe, and Jane Austen, plus films, paintings, and engravings, magazine articles, and excerpts from literary and social theory. Issues include genre (what differentiates novels from epics, romances, newspapers, correspondences, biography, pornography?), modernity (what was novel about the novel?), gender, reading, and pleasure. Lecture-discussion format.
English 151. The 19th-Century Novel
Catalog Number: 8396
Elaine Scarry
Half course (spring term). M., W., at 1. EXAM GROUP: 6
Realism and the problem of consciousness, social knowledge, mobility, the city, and the fantastic within experience. The ethos of self-construction and its recognition of childhood; the irrational, the accidental, and the unconscious. Binary structures, the biographical and the social form of fiction. Austen’s Emma, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Eliot’s Adam Bede, Dickens’s Bleak House, Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Mayor of Casterbridge.
Note: This course, when taken for a letter grade, meets the Core area requirement for Literature and Arts A.
English 154. Literature and Sexuality - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 5928
Matthew Kaiser
Half course (fall term). Tu., Th., at 12. EXAM GROUP: 14
Over the last 300 years, "sexuality" has gradually displaced "soul," "mind," and "character" as the most essential and salient ingredient in modern subjectivity, as the "truth" of the self. How has Western literature grappled with, embraced, or stubbornly resisted the sexualization of subjectivity? From Freud to Foucault, Fanny Hill to Story of O, D.H. Lawrence to Dennis Cooper, we will map the uneasy alliance between— and intertwining histories of — literature and sexuality.
English 156. Crime and Horror in Victorian Literature and Culture
Catalog Number: 4752
Matthew Kaiser
Half course (spring term). Tu., Th., at 12. EXAM GROUP: 14
The Victorian middle classes were both titillated and repelled by transgression and abnormality: from Jack the Ripper to the Elephant Man, from venereal disease to self-murder. In an era marked by unprecedented prosperity and widespread poverty, the Victorians aggressively policed—and clandestinely crossed—increasingly porous and unstable boundaries. Across a range of literary genres, we will map the nineteenth-century British obsession with crime and horror, with phenomena that rattle one’s sense of self.
English 157. The Classic Phase of the Novel
Catalog Number: 4786
Philip J. Fisher
Half course (fall term). M., W., (F.), at 10. EXAM GROUP: 3
A set of major works of art produced at the peak of the novel’s centrality as a literary form: Pride and Prejudice, Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, The Brothers Karamazov, Buddenbrooks, Great Expectations, L’Assommoir. Society, family, generational novels and the negations of crime and adultery; consciousness and the organization of narrative experience; the novel of ideas and scientific programs; realism, naturalism, aestheticism and the interruptions of the imaginary.
Note: This course, when taken for a letter grade, meets the Core requirement for Literature and Arts A.
*English 158. The Novel in Europe - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 1641
Louis Menand and Leah Price
Half course (fall term). Tu., 2–4, and a weekly section and screening to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 16, 17
A study of nineteenth-century European novels using the concept of adaptation as interpretation. We will read works by Austen, Stendhal, Balzac, Dickens, Flaubert, and Proust and consider a variety of adaptations: films, plays, television mini-series, other works of fiction, and even paintings. Students engage with the material critically (by writing analytical papers) and creatively (by producing their own adaptations of portions of the novels being studied). Lecture-discussion plus section led by the instructors.
Note: This course, when taken for a letter grade, meets the General Education requirement for Aesthetic and Interpretive Understanding and the Core area requirement for Literature and Arts A. Freshmen as well as others are encouraged to apply.
English 160c. Modern British Fiction: Conrad to Beckett
Catalog Number: 7772
Peter C. Nohrnberg
Half course (spring term). M., W., at 11. EXAM GROUP: 4
A survey of major works of British fiction written in the first half of the twentieth century by Kipling, Conrad, Forster, Ford, West, Woolf, Joyce, Butts, and Beckett, among others. Topics include: innovations in narrative form, the representation of individual consciousness and identity, responses to imperialism, the Great War, mass culture, and the rise of feminism.
Note: This course, when taken for a letter grade, meets the Core requirement for Literature and Arts A.
[English 162c. Modern Drama]
Catalog Number: 4717
Elizabeth Dyrud Lyman
Half course (spring term). Tu., Th., at 2.
A survey course which examines landmark works from Ibsen to Kushner through a focus on generative cultural and stylistic moments (The Woman Question 1880-1900; The Theater of the Absurd 1950-60; The AIDS Crisis 1985-95, etc.). Plays are considered on their own merits and in terms of the broader movements they helped to define. Course includes introduction to terminology and conventions of the genre.
Note: Expected to be given in 2009–10. This course, when taken for a letter grade, meets the Core area requirement for Literature and Arts A.
English 168d. Postwar American and British Fiction
Catalog Number: 8250
James Wood
Half course (fall term). M., W., at 2. EXAM GROUP: 7
Examines a range of works, including novels and stories by Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Raymond Carver, Henry Green, Muriel Spark, Ian McEwan, Penelope Fitzgerald, and Martin Amis. Attempts to situate these books in their larger historical traditions, while emphasizing that we are reading a living literature. Some of the selected authors may visit and address our class.
Note: This course, when taken for a letter grade, meets the Core area requirement for Literature and Arts A.
English 169. Modern American Poetry - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 9364
Stephen Louis Burt
Half course (fall term). M., W., at 1. EXAM GROUP: 6
Major poets and poems from T.S. Eliot and Robert Frost almost to the present day: we may also read, among others, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, Lorine Niedecker, Gwendolyn Brooks, James Merrill and John Ashbery. Appropriate both for students who know some of these poets well, and for those relatively new to the study of poems.
English 171a. Colonial American Literature - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 9912
Joanne van der Woude
Half course (fall term). M., W., at 11. EXAM GROUP: 4
From Columbus to freed slaves, nuns to angry Indians: the most exciting period in American literature. Images, objects, and manuscripts help us analyze settler communities, native responses, and national formation.
English 173. Southern Literature and Culture in the United States
Catalog Number: 6162
John Stauffer and Jason W. Stevens
Half course (spring term). M., W., at 12. EXAM GROUP: 5
This interdisciplinary course examines the rich tradition of Southern literature and culture in the US from slavery to the present. We construe culture widely to mean the ways of life as represented by fiction, biography, poetry, cinema, music, theater, photography, historiography, and religion. At least since the antebellum period, the South has defined itself in a defensive and sometimes belligerent posture in relation to the US. We explore the South, as imagined by Southerners, and focus on how the art of this region functions ideologically, rhetorically, aesthetically, and religiously in order to imagine constructions of Southern and national identities.
English 176. The 19th-Century American Novel - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 6267
Elisa New
Half course (fall term). Tu., Th., 11:30–1. EXAM GROUP: 13, 14
The 19th-century American novel jettisons European forms before constituting its own. Declaring independence, plagued by guilt, early novels teeter on (literal and figurative) frontiers--sea/land, history/fantasy, forest/town. Mid-century finds the United States disunited, the novel’s sentimental ideal of "Home" tested by slavery, feminism, sectionalism; post-bellum fiction absorbs immigration, new social theories, cities, maturing theories of art, competing media. Foster, Cooper, Poe, Melville, Hawthorne, Stowe, Wilson, Clemens, James, Norris, Cahan, Cather.
English 178x. The American Novel: Dreiser to the Present
Catalog Number: 2168
Philip J. Fisher
Half course (spring term). M., W., at 10. EXAM GROUP: 3
A survey of the 20th-century novel, its forms, patterns of ideas, techniques, cultural context, rivalry with film and radio, short story, and fact. Dreiser, Sister Carrie; Wharton, The House of Mirth; Cather, My Ántonia; Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms and stories; Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury and stories; Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night; Ellison, Invisible Man; Nabokov, Lolita; Bellow, Herzog; DeLillo, White Noise. Stories by London, Anderson, Salinger, Gaitskill, Wallace, Beattie, Lahiri, Roth and Ford.
Note: This course, when taken for a letter grade, meets the Core area requirement for Literature and Arts A.
[English 182. Science Fiction]
Catalog Number: 3189
Stephen Louis Burt
Half course (fall term). Tu., Th., at 11.
High points, innovations, and explorations in science fiction as a prose genre from the late 19th century to the present: likely readings include Mark Twain, H. G. Wells, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Robert A. Heinlein, James Tiptree, Jr. (Alice Sheldon), Octavia Butler, William Gibson, Cordwainer Smith, Richard Powers, and more. (Not a course in television or film.)
Note: Expected to be given in 2009–10.
English 185. Wit and Humor
Catalog Number: 3941
Leo Damrosch
Half course (spring term). M., W., at 1. EXAM GROUP: 6
A wide-ranging survey, with class participation in lecture as well as section, exploring the psychological, sociological, commercial, and artistic dimensions of humor. In addition to theoretical readings by Freud, Bergson, and others, texts will include works by Twain, Wilde, Wodehouse, Barry, Sedaris, and Ephron; among the films will be Dr. Strangelove, Annie Hall, Office Space, and performances by Richard Pryor and Eddie Izzard.
[English 187. Native American Literary Traditions]
Catalog Number: 3570
Lisa T. Brooks
Half course (spring term). Tu., Th., at 11. EXAM GROUP: 13
Introduction to the Native literatures of North America, focusing on the interpretation of oral traditions, political prose, fiction and poetry through indigenous cultural and historical frameworks. Includes a wide range of readings, from the Mayan Popol Vuh and the Haudenosaunee Great Law to the contemporary fiction of Erdrich, Silko, and Alexie. Features an interactive component, offering students the opportunity to learn through speakers and events that locate texts in particular social and geographic landscapes.
Note: Expected to be given in 2009–10.
English 189. The Novella
Catalog Number: 4246
John M. Picker
Half course (spring term). Tu., Th., at 11. EXAM GROUP: 13
In their concentration of focus, their commitment to ambiguity, and the techniques they use to complicate perspective and emphasize selectivity, novellas become miniature testing grounds for many of the governing concerns of fiction of our time. Readings in primarily British and American texts from the last two centuries with some Continental works as well.
English 192p. Postmodern Literature
Catalog Number: 5249
Glenda R. Carpio
Half course (spring term). Tu., Th., at 3. EXAM GROUP: 17
Discusses novels classified by the term “postmodern” and investigates what ideological and stylistic qualities such novels share. Questions how and why writers like Barth, DeLillo, Pynchon, and Reed challenge modernist aesthetics. In what ways does their stylistic experimentation respond to and critique our modes of being and thinking? How is it connected to historical events and technological advancements? In what ways does postmodernist literature renew and transform older forms of literary expression? Readings include Gravity’s Rainbow and Underworld.
English 197. Religion and American Film
Catalog Number: 4712
Jason W. Stevens
Half course (fall term). Tu., Th., at 12; plus a discussion section and film screening section. EXAM GROUP: 14
Religion has proven a profitable, controversial subject in American cinema. This course introduces students to the topic by combining narrative analysis, film history, and religious study. Areas of inquiry include: how has the cinema’s illusionism enhanced the revivalistic power of traditional iconography? How have films shaped Americans’ perceptions of religious nationalism and empire or supported the belief in a civil religion or reinforced the ideology of a Judeo-Christian consensus?
*English 227. Fictions of Kin and Kind: Graduate Seminar - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 6338
Marc Shell
Half course (fall term). Th., 4–6. EXAM GROUP: 18
The literature and rhetoric of kinship. Special attention to the incest taboo, orphanhood, the human-animal distinction, and social fictions of nationhood. Readings include texts by modern theorists of language as well as by Sophocles, Marguerite of Navarre, Elizabeth Tudor, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Racine, Schiller, Goethe, Melville, and Nabokov.
[*English 228y. Milton and His Contemporaries: Literature in the Era of the English Revolution (1629-1674): Graduate Seminar]
Catalog Number: 1277
Barbara K. Lewalski
Half course (fall term). M., 3–5.
Milton’s poetry and prose, examined in relation to other texts that refract the experience and culture of the period: e.g., the poetry of Vaughan, Herrick, the Cavaliers, and Marvell; histories, sermons, political tracts, autobiography, biography.
Note: Expected to be given in 2009–10.
*English 229s. Spenser: Graduate Seminar
Catalog Number: 1130
Gordon Teskey
Half course (spring term). Tu., 12–2. EXAM GROUP: 14, 15
An introduction to Spenser’s poetry, concentrating on The Faerie Queene. We discuss such problems as the theory of allegory and the question of poetic thinking.
*English 230. 20th Century Drama: Theory & Texts: Graduate Seminar - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 7715
Elizabeth Dyrud Lyman
Half course (fall term). M., 3–5. EXAM GROUP: 8, 9
Major 20th-century texts, approached through close analysis of the texts themselves, and readings in their theoretical and literary-historical contexts. Plays by Beckett, Churchill, Kane, Kushner, O’Neill, Parks, Pinter, Shaw, Stoppard, Wilde, and Yeats.
*English 232a. Authorship, Genre, and Culture, 1603-1640: Graduate Seminar - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 8379
Barbara K. Lewalski
Half course (fall term). W., 3–5. EXAM GROUP: 8, 9
Explores various concepts of authorship and the multiple genres emerging within institutions promoting Jacobean and Caroline culture (e.g., court, church, theater, city of London, patronage and coterie circles). Focus on Donne, Johnson, Herbert, Bacon, Wroth, and others.
*English 251. Comparative Romantic Theory: Graduate Seminar
Catalog Number: 5675
James Engell
Half course (spring term). W., 10–12. EXAM GROUP: 3, 4
Key romantic topics that remain relevant to literature and art, e.g., symbol, language, aesthetics, nature (“green” romanticism), history, irony, gender. Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley, Kant, Schelling, Schiller, Emerson, Fuller, and Poe; others and recent critics as well.
*English 256n. The Victorian Novel: Graduate Seminar
Catalog Number: 4996
Leah Price
Half course (spring term). W., 3–5. EXAM GROUP: 8, 9
The theory and practice of the Victorian novel. Fiction by Brontë, Gaskell, Dickens, Collins, Eliot, and James, read against Victorian criticism and modern theories of the novel.
*English 257. Joyce: Graduate Seminar - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 2510
Peter C. Nohrnberg
Half course (spring term). Th., 2–4. EXAM GROUP: 16, 17
Includes Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Exiles, Ulysses, and portions of Finnegans Wake. Our reading will be supplemented by a variety of critical approaches: Post-Colonial, Feminist, and Deconstructive.
*English 268. The Poetry of Wallace Stevens: Graduate Seminar
Catalog Number: 5831
Helen Vendler
Half course (fall term). Tu., 2–4. EXAM GROUP: 16, 17
A study of the poetry of Wallace Stevens. Topics: Harmonium and “the whole of Harmonium”; stylistic variation; Stevens’ genres, from the epigram to the sequence; second-order poetry; the social and the imaginative; allegorical personae.
*English 270. American Civil War (Graduate Seminar in General Education) - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 7867
John Stauffer
Half course (spring term). W., 4–6. EXAM GROUP: 9
This interdisciplinary seminar explores the literature, history, and art of the Civil War, from letters, speeches, poetry, and photography to novels, stories, memoirs, and films from the 1850s to World War II. We examine how the war shaped writers and artists and how they shaped the legacies of the war. Authors include Melville, Whitman, Twain, Stowe, Alcott, Dickinson, Douglass, Lincoln, Chesnutt, Bierce, Faulkner, and others. The seminar will design and develop a General Education course on these themes for undergraduates.
*English 271. New England -- Classic Texts and Critical Approaches: Graduate Seminar - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 9834
Elisa New
Half course (fall term). M., 1–3. EXAM GROUP: 6, 7
This course introduces graduate students to classic and current debates by means of the country’s most "exceptional region," New England. Readings include texts by Winthrop, Bradford, Mather, Franklin, Hawthorne, Melville, Dickinson, Jewett, Bishop and Lowell as well as critical readings treating such topics as autobiography and authorship, exceptionalism, history and historicism, romance, canon, regionalism, power, and pragmatism.
*English 276x. African-American Literary Tradition: Graduate Seminar
Catalog Number: 3536
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Half course (spring term). Th., 2–4. EXAM GROUP: 16, 17
An exploration of the emergence and development of the African-American literary “tradition” from the 18th to the 20th century. Close reading of the canonical texts in the tradition, and their structural relationships are stressed.
*English 280. Critical History: Graduate Seminar - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 9043
Louis Menand
Half course (spring term). M., 2–4. EXAM GROUP: 7, 8
Theory and methodology of historically embedded criticism. Readings from theoretical and exemplary texts. Students will work on individual exercises in critical history under the supervision of the instructor and with the participation of the rest of the class. Graduate students only.
*English 286a. W.H. Auden: Graduate Seminar - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 9629
Stephen Louis Burt
Half course (spring term). Th., 2–4. EXAM GROUP: 16, 17
All the verse and most of the prose by this major figure of English and American poetry, who moved to the United States in 1939; with some attention to writers he influenced.
*English 292. Methods of Approaching American Literature; Hemingway and Beyond: Graduate Seminar
Catalog Number: 1618
Werner Sollors
Half course (spring term). Tu., 2–4. EXAM GROUP: 16, 17
Issue-oriented approaches to modern literature, using Hemingway as a point of departure; close reading, in different contexts, of an exemplary classic whose current stock seems to be low; archival research in the Hemingway papers.
Note: Please read or reread Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises for the first meeting.
*English 294z. On Beauty: Graduate Seminar
Catalog Number: 7277
Elaine Scarry
Half course (spring term). Th., 10–12. EXAM GROUP: 12, 13
Philosophic and literary accounts of beauty from Greek through modern, including Plato, Aquinas, Dante, Kant, Keats, and Rilke. In addition, the major arguments against beauty; and its stability across four objects (God, gardens, persons, and poems).
*English 295. Marxism and Postcolonial Studies: Graduate Seminar
Catalog Number: 0865
Biodun Jeyifo
Half course (spring term). W., 12–2. EXAM GROUP: 5, 6
Divergent formations of postcolonial studies explored against the background of Marxist theorizations of transnational, postindustrial, postfordist capitalism and its dominant intellectual currents and cultural contradictions. Some feminist, Post-Marxist, liberal-humanist and "Third World" theories of capitalist modernity also explored.
Note: Open to advanced undergraduates with permission of instructor.
*English 299. The Intellectual Life of the Profession: Proseminar
Catalog Number: 7739
Marjorie Garber
Half course (fall term). Tu., 12–2. EXAM GROUP: 14, 15
Developments in literary criticism and theory since the 60s (including historicism, psychoanalysis, deconstruction, gender theory, postcoloniality, cultural studies, book history, visual and performance studies), and an overview of the profession: publication, teaching, conferences, research, etc.
Note: An introduction to graduate study in English, open to both first and second year graduate students.
*English 302hf. Renaissance: Doctoral Conference
Catalog Number: 2814
Marjorie Garber 7264, Stephen J. Greenblatt 3436, Barbara K. Lewalski 7450 (on leave spring term), and Gordon Teskey 4466
Half course (throughout the year). Alternate W., at 4:15.
The Conference focuses upon dissertations in progress and other research topics of mutual interest.
Note: Limited to faculty members teaching or conducting research in Renaissance literary studies and to graduate students working in the field. Enrollment is open to all such students, and is required of those who have been admitted to candidacy for the PhD and who intend to work on Renaissance topics.
*English 304hf. The Extended 18th Century: Doctoral Conference
Catalog Number: 6110
Leo Damrosch 2200 (on leave fall term), James Engell 8076, Leah Price 3501, and Michael Shinagel 7659
Half course (throughout the year). Hours to be arranged.
Focuses on dissertations, dissertations in progress, and research topics of mutual interest.
Note: Required of graduate students working, or intending to work, on the Restoration, 18th century, or Romanticism (the periods 1660–1830), and who have been admitted to candidacy for the PhD. Open to other students working on topics in Restoration and 18th-century literature.
*English 306hf. 19th- and 20th-Century British Literature: Doctoral Conference
Catalog Number: 5268
Leah Price 3501
Half course (throughout the year). Hours to be arranged.
*English 308hf. Drama: Doctoral Conference
Catalog Number: 6909
Marjorie Garber 7264, Elizabeth Dyrud Lyman 4433, and Elaine Scarry 2206 (on leave fall term)
Half course (throughout the year). Hours to be arranged.
Focuses on research topics related to dramatic literature, theatre, and performance. Open to all faculty members and graduate students teaching or conducting research in the field.
*English 310hfr. American Literature and Culture: Doctoral Conference
Catalog Number: 6235
Lawrence Buell 2655 (on leave 2008-09), Elisa New 2428, and Werner Sollors 7424 (on leave fall term)
Half course (throughout the year). Hours to be arranged.
Colloquium open to all graduate students working in the area of American literature and culture. Papers delivered by students writing seminar papers or dissertations, faculty members, and visiting scholars.
*English 350. Teaching Colloquium
Catalog Number: 8208
Marjorie Garber 7264
Half course (fall term). M., 3–5 (biweekly).
The craft of teaching (discussion, lectures, tutorials, course descriptions, syllabi). This colloquium, designed for third-year graduate students, also considers issues related to the field exam, prospectus, and other aspects of advanced graduate study in English.
Note: Required of all third-year graduate students.
*English 397. Directed Study
Catalog Number: 6588
Members of the Department
*English 398. Direction of Doctoral Dissertations
Catalog Number: 5968
Daniel Albright 4615 (on leave spring term), Homi K. Bhabha 4100 (on leave fall term), Lawrence Buell 2655 (on leave 2008-09), Stephen Louis Burt 5945 (fall term only), Glenda R. Carpio 4408, Leo Damrosch 2200 (on leave fall term), Leland P. de la Durantaye 4457, Daniel G. Donoghue 1469, James Engell 8076, Philip J. Fisher 1470, Marjorie Garber 7264, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 2899, Jorie Graham 2358 (on leave fall term), Stephen J. Greenblatt 3436, Joseph C. Harris 1089, Matthew Kaiser 5443 (fall term only), Barbara K. Lewalski 7450 (on leave spring term), Elizabeth D. Lyman 4433, Louis Menand 4752, Elisa New 2428, Peter C. Nohrnberg 4726, John M. Picker 3728, Leah Price 3501, Peter Sacks 2161 (on leave fall term), Elaine Scarry 2206 (on leave fall term), Marc Shell 3176 (on leave spring term), Michael Shinagel 7659, James Simpson 4791, Werner Sollors 7424 (on leave fall term), John Stauffer 1006, Jason W. Stevens 5406 (fall term only), Gordon Teskey 4466, Helen Vendler 7226 (on leave spring term), and Nicholas Watson 3851 (on leave 2008-09)
Note: Normally limited to students reading specifically in the field of a proposed doctoral dissertation. Open only by petition to the Department; petitions should be presented during the term preceding enrollment, and must be signed by the instructor with whom the reading is to be done. All applicants for admission should first confer with the Director of Graduate Studies.
*English 399. Reading and Research
Catalog Number: 1825
Members of the Department
Half course (fall term; repeated spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Note: Conducted through regular conferences and assigned writing. Limited to students reading specifically on topics not covered in regular courses. Open only by petition to the Department; petitions should be presented during the term preceding enrollment, and must be signed by the instructor with whom the reading is to be done. All applicants for admission should first confer with the Director of Graduate Studies.