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.
An examination of several masterpieces of Western literature, including Homer's Iliad and Dante's Divine Comedy. Some sections are writing-intensive.
A course which examines texts in various genres and which may focus on a particular theme chosen by the instructor.
A course which examines texts in various genres and which may focus on a particular theme chosen by the instructor.
This course is an introduction to Old English, the language spoken in (what would become) England between the 5th – 11th centuries. Students will learn pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar as they read a variety of works written in Old English, both prose (including selections from The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle) and verse (including "Cædmon's Hymn," "The Dream of the Rood," "The Wanderer," "The Battle of Maldon," and selections from Beowulf).
This course focuses on literary representations--in fiction, nonfiction and poetry--of the experience and meaning of the imaginary line that divides the United States and Mexico. Among the themes to be discussed are the experience of border-crossing (in both directions), the possibility or impossibility of assimilating to life across the border, and especially the desire that draws migrants toward el otro lado (the other side). Writers to be discussed may include Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton, Katherine Ann Porter, Americo Paredes, Sandra Cisneros, Cormac McCarthy, Oscar Casares, and Luis Alberto Urrea.
A study of several plays after 1600.
A study of Milton's poetry and prose in the context of religious and political upheavals in mid-seventeenth-century England. Particular emphasis is on Lycidas and Paradise Lost.
This course explores some of the radical shifts that occurred in English literature during the late eighteenth century. These developments involved not only changes in style, subject matter, and poetic theory, but also changes in the role of the author and the social purpose of writing. Both “major” and “minor” authors, male and female, are read as part of a complex revolution in cultural taste and literary practice.
A study of several major Victorian authors, including Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and Oscar Wilde.
Like Abraham Lincoln’s announcement of “a new birth of freedom” in the Gettysburg Address, the American literature covered in English 378 struggles to articulate, then problematize, American freedom in the era surrounding the Civil War and emancipation. What is freedom? To whom does it extend? What are its blessings and its costs? Nobody has ever thought more profoundly about these issues than the American writers who emerged before, during, and after the war America fought with itself: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Harriet Jacobs, Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Henry James, Charles Chesnutt, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and others.
A consideration of British fiction from the last half-century, this course will put you into the most current currents of literary expression. There is no canon yet in this course; instead, you will be invited to make and test bold claims about canonicity and how literary value is accorded and revised.
A paradox of American literary history is that the South--the poorest and least educated American region, the one beset by the most glaring injustices, the one that seemed to resist modernity most fiercely—produced the most innovative and important American writers of the twentieth century, writers like William Faulkner, Zora Neale Hurston, Eudora Welty, Flannery O’Connor, and Ernest Gaines. This course focuses most intently on their era, “the Southern renascence,” but examines its origins in the nineteenth century and its echoes in the remarkable Southern writing of contemporaries like Jesmyn Ward, Natasha Trethewey, Janice Ray, and others.
A study of the major traditions of African-American writing from the nineteenth century to the present, including Frederick Douglass, Linda Brent, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Ernest Gaines, Toni Morrison, and Rita Dove.
Environmental Arts & Humanities
This seminar course involves the production of video, sound, and the moving image. Students pursue a combination of advanced assignments and self-directed projects aimed towards furthering the study of these art forms through a focused set of methods and technologies. This course can be repeated twice for credit.
This course introduces religious artworks of Japan from the sixth century to the present day. Following a chronological sequence, examines artwork from Buddhist, Shinto, and Christian belief systems. Investigates two-dimensional works, sculpture, and architecture. Explores topics such as the relationship between ritual practice and the visual arts, images of heaven and hell, hidden icons, relics, and interactions of sacred and secular in the visual realm. Readings taken from primary sources and scholarly articles in the field.
A study of ecology, evolution and biological diversity, with an emphasis on scientific investigations in the natural areas in and around the university. The course, which is scheduled for one afternoon each week, meets the general education requirement for a natural science course but does not fulfill the requirement for a laboratory science course.
A study of ecology, evolution and biological diversity, with an emphasis on scientific investigations in the natural areas in and around the university. The course, which is scheduled for one afternoon each week, meets the general education requirement for a natural science course but does not fulfill the requirement for a laboratory science course.
A study of ecology, evolution and biological diversity, with an emphasis on scientific investigations in the natural areas in and around the university. The course, which is scheduled for one afternoon each week, meets the general education requirement for a natural science course but does not fulfill the requirement for a laboratory science course.
A study of ecology, evolution and biological diversity, with an emphasis on scientific investigations in the natural areas in and around the university. The course, which is scheduled for one afternoon each week, meets the general education requirement for a natural science course but does not fulfill the requirement for a laboratory science course.