Spring 2020

Sections 001 and 002: Students hone their writing skills in this course by learning how to analyze sentence structure in several literary texts. They will also practice writing about literature for both academic and general audiences, while using their refined knowledge of syntax to craft their own sentences. At the...

We all know that computers do not have feelings. Yet how might we leverage technology to think about what it is to be human; to identify the emotional state of a speaker; to anticipate the affective response a text aims to produce in a reader or audience member? Or what...

For this semester the subtitle of American Poetry will be “The Visionary Tradition.” And so it was I entered the broken world To trace the visionary company of love, its voice An instant in the wind (I know not whither hurled) But not for long to hold each desperate choice...

This course explores American literature as a site of cultural intersection between European settlers and indigenous peoples. We will read early American texts in conversation with films portraying those encounters, bringing a critical and historical lens to both. For example, we will read Jacques Cartier with Hochelaga: Land of Souls...

Provides an interdisciplinary study of England in one of its most vibrant cultural and historical periods. Topics include politics, religion, family life, and the ways contemporary authors understood their world. Taught by Dr. Jillian Heydt-Stevenson . Requisites: Restricted to students with 27-180 credits (Sophomores, Juniors or Seniors) only. Additional Information:...

Vast and icy oceans, fields of daffodils, dark satanic mills. The Romantic period (roughly 1789-1832) was fraught with contradictions: country and city, nature and art, beauty and sublimity, revolution and reaction. Authors of the period used their writing to make sense of these and other seemingly irresolvable splits in their...

Marc Bousquet, an English Professor at Emory University, lit a powder keg with his 2014 Chronicle of Higher Education jeremiad, “The Moral Panic in Literary Studies.” Bousquet warned: “Combined with evidence of lowered public interest in reading traditional literature and plummeting enrollment in traditional English majors, many faculty members in...

Beowulf is much stranger, sadder, and more timely than you think. Experience the poem in its original language, using the skills built in Introduction to Old English (Engl 4003/5003)! Students will produce daily translations, and seminar-style class discussions will involve both linguistic and literary aspects of this enigmatic poem. Reading...

One of England’s greatest writers and most radical thinkers, Milton wrote during a turbulent time. His writing speaks to crises of personal and political liberty that can feel oddly familiar - and equally divisive - in our own moment. Reading and working together, we'll try to get to grips with...

Provides a chronological study of great figures and forces in English literature from Beowulf to 1660. Additional Information: Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities Departmental Category: British Literature to 1660