This writing-intensive introduction to literature written in English may include a selection of formal verse, fiction, drama, and at least one play by Shakespeare. The course is designed to develop the student’s imaginative understanding of literature along with the ability to write and speak with greater clarity. It is intended to be of interest to students at any level of preparation.
This writing-intensive introduction to literature written in English may include a selection of formal verse, fiction, drama, and at least one play by Shakespeare. The course is designed to develop the student’s imaginative understanding of literature along with the ability to write and speak with greater clarity. It is intended to be of interest to students at any level of preparation.
This writing-intensive introduction to literature written in English may include a selection of formal verse, fiction, drama, and at least one play by Shakespeare. The course is designed to develop the student’s imaginative understanding of literature along with the ability to write and speak with greater clarity. It is intended to be of interest to students at any level of preparation.
This writing-intensive introduction to literature written in English may include a selection of formal verse, fiction, drama, and at least one play by Shakespeare. The course is designed to develop the student’s imaginative understanding of literature along with the ability to write and speak with greater clarity. It is intended to be of interest to students at any level of preparation.
This writing-intensive introduction to literature written in English may include a selection of formal verse, fiction, drama, and at least one play by Shakespeare. The course is designed to develop the student’s imaginative understanding of literature along with the ability to write and speak with greater clarity. It is intended to be of interest to students at any level of preparation.
A course which examines texts in various genres and which may focus on a particular theme chosen by the instructor.
What is a novel? And what can a novel do? The novel has often been defined by its heterogeneity and adaptability. At the same time, to call a book "a novel" is to imply specific criteria--historical contexts, narrative structures, stylistic techniques, conceptual preoccupations--that distinguish the vast body of literature we organize under the term from other kinds of texts. Students will examine works from a range of traditions (19th-century British, 20th-century American, and 20th-century global anglophone) alongside material drawn from the critical fields of novel theory and narratology. Authors may include Austen, Dickens, Reed, Rushdie, and Nabokov.
A study of the Canterbury Tales and other poems by Chaucer. A term paper is usually expected.
A study of several plays written before 1600.
A study of the major sixteenth-century genres, with emphasis on sources, developments, and defining concerns. Readings include the sonnets of Wyatt, Surrey, Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare; the mythological verse narratives of Marlowe and Shakespeare; the pastoral poems of Spenser; and Books I and III of Spenser's Faerie Queene.
A survey of British poetry and non-fiction prose of the Victorian era (1837 to 1901). Texts include poetry by Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Arnold, Swinburne, D.G. Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, Hopkins, and Hardy, as well as prose by Carlyle, Darwin, Arnold, Ruskin, Morris, and Wilde.
Many people know one sentence from early American literature: Puritan leader John Winthrop’s 1630 claim that “we shall be as a City on a Hill.” Often misinterpreted as a promise of inevitable national success, these words were actually a warning that America’s redemptive promises carried the risk of disastrous and conspicuous failure. This course traces the efforts of English-language writers to respond to both the promises and the failures of the tiny colonial settlements that became the United States. Authors studied include Anne Bradstreet, Mary Rowlandson, Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Walt Whitman.
A study of the American environmental imagination. Readings include both literary fiction and nonfiction.
A study of twentieth-century literature written in English from Africa, South Asia, and the Caribbean, concentrating on colonial and post-colonial themes, as well as issues of gender, politics, and nationalism. Possible authors include Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Nadine Gordimer, J. M. Coetzee, Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, V. S. Naipaul, and Derek Walcott.
This course supports students in conceiving and writing an honors thesis. Students explore the research and writing methods required by a thesis, such as creating a project bibliography, reading scholarship critically, identifying a compelling research question, drafting sections, and bringing multiple pieces of writing together into an extended work of scholarship. The writing for this course will culminate in a polished draft of the thesis.
Environmental Sciences
Landscape ecology is the study of how spatial patterns in landscapes impact ecological processes. This course will explore how human and natural factors combine to produce landscape patterns. Students will learn to quantify spatial patterns, including the composition of habitat types, the configuration of habitat patches, and their connectivity to each-other. This course will investigate how these spatial characteristics influence ecological processes including species occurrences, extinctions, and ecological function. Finally, students will explore applications in spatial planning, conservation biology, and ecosystem management.
Landscape ecology is the study of how spatial patterns in landscapes impact ecological processes. This course will explore how human and natural factors combine to produce landscape patterns. Students will learn to quantify spatial patterns, including the composition of habitat types, the configuration of habitat patches, and their connectivity to each-other. This course will investigate how these spatial characteristics influence ecological processes including species occurrences, extinctions, and ecological function. Finally, students will explore applications in spatial planning, conservation biology, and ecosystem management.
Environmental Studies
An interdisciplinary introduction to Environmental Studies through the examination of the scientific and social aspects of environmental issues. Field components of the course focus on the University Domain and the surrounding area. This course is required for all students who major or minor in environmental studies and should be taken before the junior year.
Students conduct experiments in nonfiction writing and critique, informed by study of the local environment and notable contemporary essays that discuss how "nature" is understood and represented. Class activities focus on literary craft, peer critique, and revision of written work. Field study provides both substance and inspiration for student writing.
An introduction to Environmental Arts and Humanities, this course acquaints students with the diverse perspectives offered by environmental approaches in the fields of literature, history, art, art history, classical studies, music, philosophy, anthropology, and religion. Students are expected to integrate three of these perspectives in a transdisciplinary research project.