Prereq: One subject in Literature
U (Spring)
3-0-9 HASS

Examines English literature across genre and historical period. Designed for students who wish to study English literature or writing in some depth, or wish to know more about English literary culture and history. Learn about the relationships between literary themes, forms, and conventions and the times in which they were produced. Students examine Renaissance lyrics, Enlightenment satire, and modernist short stories. Focused on England because of its historical importance and its usefulness as an example for illustrating patterns over the centuries. Students form a framework for understanding how more focused subjects fit into literary studies, and what terms, concerns, and methods provide connections among the diverse subjects grouped under "literature."

Spring: S. Tapscott

Prereq: –
U (Fall, Spring)
3-3-6 HASS-D, Category 1, CI-H

Surveys a range of comic texts in different media, the cultures that produced them, and various theories of comedy. Authors and directors studied may include Aristophanes, Shakespeare, Molière, Austen, Wilde and Chaplin.

Fall: H. Eiland, S. Tapscott
Spring: W. Kelley

Prereq: –
U (Spring)
3-0-9 HASS

Aspects of the tragic as a mode of literature and a quality of lived experience pursued in readings that extend from the warfare of the ancient world to the experiences of modern life. Authors include Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Shakespeare, Balzac, Tolstoy, Ibsen, Conrad, Dinesen, Faulkner, and Camus. Includes viewing of at least two films.

H. Eiland

(Same subject as 21M.223J)
Prereq: –
U (Fall)
3-1-8 HASS-D, Category 3, CI-H

Examines the production, transmission, preservation and the qualities of folk music in the British Isles and North America from the 18th century to the folk revival of the 1960s and the present. Special emphasis on balladry, fiddle styles, and African-American influences.

G. Ruckert, R. Perry

(Subject meets with SP.492, CMS.920)
Prereq: –
U (Spring)
3-3-6 HASS; Can be repeated for credit

Examines the relationship between popular and high culture and the problem of evaluating texts that tell stories. Treats a range of narrative and dramatic works as well as films. Previously taught topics include Masterminds, and Popular Culture in an Age of Media Convergence. May be repeated for credit with permission of instructor.

A. Braithwaite

(Subject meets with CMS.915)
Prereq: One subject in Literature or Comparative Media Studies
U (Spring)
3-3-6 HASS; Can be repeated for credit

A cultural approach to television's evolution as a technology and system of representation. Considers television as a system of storytelling and mythmaking, and as a cultural practice studied from anthropological, literary, and cinematic perspectives. Focuses on primetime commercial broadcasting, the medium's technological and economic history, and theoretical perspectives. Considerable television viewing and readings in media theory and cultural interpretation are required. Previously taught topics include: American Television -- A Cultural History. Meets with CMS.915, but assignments differ.

D. Thorburn

Prereq: 21L.011 or permission of instructor
U (Fall)
3-3-6 HASS; Can be repeated for credit

Close study of one or more directors, genres, periods, artistic movements, or national cinemas which have been of major significance in the history of film. Previously taught topics include: Hollywood and Hong Kong; and Movie Realists --Chaplin, Renoir, Neo-realism, Truffaut. May be repeated for credit by permission of instructor.

Staff

Prereq: –
U (Fall)
3-3-6 HASS

Traces the history of science fiction as a generic tradition in literature, media, and popular culture. Considers formal ideological and cultural approaches to the analysis and interpretation of science fiction and fantasy texts.

Staff

(Subject meets with CMS.840)
Prereq: One subject in Literature or Comparative Media Studies
U (Spring)
3-3-6 HASS; Can be repeated for credit

Investigates relationships between the two media, including film adaptations as well as works linked by genre, topic, and style. Explores how artworks challenge and cross cultural, political, and aesthetic boundaries. Previously taught topics include: Shakespeare, Film and Media. Meets with CMS.840, but assignments differ.

A. Kibel

(Same subject as 21W.739 J)
Prereq: –
U (Fall)
3-0-9 HASS-D, Category 2, CI-H

In The Origin of Species, Darwin provided a model for understanding the existence of objects and systems manifesting evidence of design without positing a designer, and of purpose and mechanism without intelligent agency. Texts deal with pre-Darwinian and later treatment of this topic within literature and speculative thought since the 18th century, with some attention to the modern study of feedback mechanism in artificial intelligence. Readings in Hume, Voltaire, Malthus, Darwin, Butler, Hardy, H. G. Wells, and Freud.

A. Kibel, J. Paradis

Prereq: –
U (Spring)
3-0-9 HASS

A brief history of conflicting ideas about mankind's relation to the natural environment as exemplified in works of poetry, fiction, and discursive argument from ancient times to the present. What is the overall character of the natural world? Is mankind's relation to it one of stewardship and care, or of hostility and exploitation? Readings include Aristotle, The Book of Genesis, Shakespeare, Descartes, Robinson Crusoe, Swift, Rousseau, Wordsworth, Darwin, Thoreau, Faulkner, and Lovelock's Gaia.

A. Kibel

Prereq: One subject in Literature
U (Fall)
3-0-9 HASS

Examines competing ethical concepts and the ethical implications of certain actions and commitments by close reading of literary works. Topics include origins of morality, ideals of justice, the nature of the virtues, notions of responsibility, ethics and politics, and the ethics of extreme situations. Philosophic texts by Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Kant. Narrative and dramatic texts by Sophocles, Euripides, Shakespeare, Swift, Ibsen, Shaw, Dostoyevsky, and Conrad, plus some Biblical materials.

A. Kibel

Prereq: –
U (Spring)
3-0-9 HASS

Examines the ways texts can be read and questions that readers ask of texts. Aims to provide students with a sense of the different critical approaches to literature. Topics include: structuralism and semiotics; post-structuralism and post-modernism; historicism and historicist paradigms; psychoanalysis; intertextuality; and cultural criticism.

S. Raman

 

Prereq: –
U (Spring)
3-0-9 HASS, CI-H; Can be repeated for credit

Explores the classical roots of Western civilizations through a close examination of the social and cultural contexts in which selected literary texts were first produced, the influence of political structures and ideologies, the function of rhetorical forms, the purpose and significance of ancient mythologies, and the relation of literature to shared developments in art, architecture, and religion. Texts taught in translation, but direct readings in the original languages are encouraged. Authors include Livy, Lucretius, Cicero, Julius Caesar, Virgil, Horace, and Ovid. Enrollment limited.

A. Bahr

Prereq: –
U (Fall, Spring)
3-0-9 HASS

An introduction to major books from both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. Particular attention given to literary techniques, issues resulting from translation from the original Hebrew and Greek, and the different historical periods that produced and are reflected in the Bible. Investigation of the Bible as influence in later narrative, philosophic, and artistic traditions.

I. Lipkowitz

(Subject meets with SP.514)
Prereq: One subject in Literature
U (Fall)
3-0-9 HASS, CI-H; Can be repeated for credit

Surveys a range of literary works across different European cultures from the Roman Empire to the beginnings of the Renaissance. Literary movements and cultural developments discussed in their social, political, and historical contexts. Topics covered include the growth of religious communities, the shift from orality to literacy, the culture of chivalry and courtly love, the emergence of scholasticism and universities, changes in devotional practices and popular piety, religious intolerance and the Crusades, and the rise of nationalism and class consciousness. Previously taught topics include: Medieval Women Writers; the Crusades; Dante, Boccaccio and Chaucer. Enrollment limited.

A. Bahr

Prereq: One subject in Literature
U (Spring)
3-0-9 HASS, CI-H

Readings are organized around topics (Renaissance self-fashioning, courtship and courtier-ship, gender and the emerging individual) or literary genres (lyric, epic, drama, prose). Works drawn primarily from the Italian and English Renaissance, and may include such figures as Petrarch, Shakespeare, More, Jonson, Machiavelli, Castiglione, Milton, Spenser, Bacon, Donne, and Sidney. Previously taught topics include Renaissance Poetry and Strivers and Slackers. Enrollment limited.

S. Raman

Prereq: One subject in Literature
U (Fall)
3-0-9 HASS

An examination of 18th century English writers in their historical context. Authors James Thomson, Joseph Addison, Laurence Sterne, Mary Robinson, and Mary Wollstonecraft address issues of capitalism and class mobility; romantic love and the changing definition of femininity and masculinity; the mutual emergence of mass culture and of high-cultural aesthetics; and colonialism and international travel. Previously taught topics include Gods and Monsters: Versions of the Self in 18th-century Britain.

Staff

Prereq: One subject in Literature
U (Spring)
3-0-9 HASS; Can be repeated for credit

Studies important examples of the literary form that, between the beginning of the 18th century and the end of the 19th century, became an indispensable instrument for representing modern life, in the hands of such writers as Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Sterne, Burney, Austen, Scott, Dickens, the Brontës, Eliot, Hardy, and Conrad. The class alternates between 18th and 19th century topics, and may be repeated for credit with instructor's permission.

A. Kibel

Prereq: –
U (Spring)
3-0-9 HASS, CI-H

A study of changing narrative forms in the 19thcentury European novel. The changing fortunes of the heroic and romantic ideals. The motif of the outsider as a means for depicting social reality. Readings in Cervantes, Balzac, Stendhal, Flaubert, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Proust. Enrollment limited.

TBA

(Same subject as SP.513J)
Prereq: One subject in Literature
U (Fall)
3-0-9 HASS

An examination of Jane Austen's satire in her seven complete novels, several fragments, and juvenilia. Students read these texts in relation to her letters and other biographical and historical information. Instruction and practice in oral and written communication provided. Enrollment limited.

R. Perry

Prereq: One subject in Literature
U (Spring)
3-0-9 HASS

Close readings of the major British Romantic poets (Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Scott, Shelley, and Keats) and important fiction writers (Mary Shelley and Walter Scott). Attention given to literary and historical contexts.

N. Jackson

Prereq: One subject in Literature
U (Fall)
3-0-9 HASS; Can be repeated for credit

British literature and culture during Queen Victoria's long reign, 1837-1901. Authors studied may include Charles Dickens, the Brontës, Lewis Carroll, George Eliot, Robert Browning, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, and Alfred Lord Tennyson. Discussion of many of the era's major developments such as urbanization, steam power, class conflict, Darwin, religious crisis, imperial expansion, information explosion, and bureaucratization. Fiction, nonfiction, and poetry; syllabi vary.

J. Buzard

Prereq: One subject in Literature
U (Spring)
3-0-9 HASS

Tradition and innovation in representative fiction of the early modern period. Recurring themes include the role of the artist in the modern period; the representation of psychological and sexual experience; and the virtues (and defects) of the aggressively experimental character. Works by Conrad, Kipling, Isaac Babel, Kafka, James, Lawrence, Mann, Ford Madox Ford, Joyce, Woolf, Faulkner, and Nabokov.

D. Thorburn

Prereq: One subject in Literature
U (Spring)
3-0-9 HASS, CI-H

Anaylsis of major modern plays featuring works by Shaw, O'Neill, Beckett, Brecht, Williams, Soyinka, Churchill, Wilson, Friel, Stoppard, Deveare Smith, and Kushner. Special consideration of performance, sociopolitical and aesthetic contexts, and the role of theater in the world of modern multimedia. Enrollment limited.

Staff

Prereq: One subject in Literature
U (Fall)
3-0-9 HASS

Study of major 20th-century English language poets, typically including such figures as William Carlos Williams, Langston Hughes, Eliot, Pound, Frost, and Moore. Previously taught topics include: Time in 20th-Century; Anglo-American Poetry; Poetic Voices in early 20th-Century America. Enrollment limited.

J. Hildebidle

Prereq: One subject in Literature
U (Spring)
3-0-9 HASS

Focus on fiction, poetry, and drama of recent decades. Previously taught topics include: New Irish Writing; Contemporary Novels and Poetry.

S. Brouillette

(Same subject as 21W.765J)
(Subject meets with CMS.845)
Prereq: –
U (Fall)
3-0-9 HASS

Techniques of creating narratives that take the advantage of the flexibility of form offered by the computer. Study of the structural properties of book-based narratives that experiment with digression, multiple points of view, disruptions of time and storyline. Analysis of computer-based narratives including hyper-texts, adventure games, and classical artificial programs like Eliza. With this base, students use authoring systems to model a variety of narrative techniques and to create their own fictions. Knowledge of programming helpful but not necessary.

E. Barrett

 

Prereq: –
U (Spring)
3-0-9 HASS, CI-H

Works by major American novelists, beginning with the late 18th century and concluding with a contemporary novelist. Major emphasis on reading novels as literary texts, but attention paid to historical, intellectual, and political contexts as well. Syllabus varies from term to term, but many of the following writers are represented: Rowson, Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, Wharton, James, and Toni Morrison. Previously taught topics include: The American Revolution. Enrollment limited.

S. Alexandre

(Subject meets with SP.518J)
Prereq: –
U (Fall)
3-0-9 HASS

Questions posed by the literature of the Americas about the relationship of race and gender to authorship, audience, culture, ethnicity, and aesthetics. Social conditions and literary histories that shape the politics of identity in American literature. Specific focus varies each term. Previously taught topics include Cultural Encounters from 1492 to the Civil War, Immigrant Stories, African American Literature, and Asian American Literature.

S. Alexandre

(Subject meets with SP.517)
Prereq: One subject in Literature
U (Fall)
3-0-9 HASS

Examines in detail the works of several American authors selected according to a theme, period, genre, or set of issues. Through close readings of poetry, novels, or plays, subject addresses such issues as literary influence, cultural diversity, and the writer's career. Previously taught topics include: American Women Writers; Hemingway; American Short Fiction.

A. Braithwaite