Course
Listings for 2005-2006
For
updated information see http://www.columbia.edu/cu/bulletin/uwb/
More information on many courses available at courseworks.columbia.edu
Course numbers ending in x
indicate Fall, course numbers ending in y indicate Spring.
INTRODUCTORY
1201x,y. First-Year English: Reinventing Literary History
[For more information see
course
web
site or library
research guide]
Close examination of texts and regular writing assignments in composition,
designed to help students read critically and write effectively. Sections of
the course are grouped in three clusters: I. Legacy of the Mediterranean; II.
The Americas; III. Women and Culture. The first cluster features a curriculum
of classic texts representing key intellectual moments that have shaped Western
culture, as well as excursions to the opera, the theatre, and museums. Offering
revisionist responses to the constraints of canonicity, the last two clusters
feature curricula that explore the literary history of the Americas and the
role of women in culture.—Director and Staff. 3 points. Click
here for section times or consult
department bulletin board.
1202x.
Studies in Writing
Intensive practice in writing, emphasizing drafts, revision, peer response,
and individual conferences. Consideration of the conventions of English style,
usage, and grammar by means of both informal and formal writing, culminating
in expository essays. Recommended for (but not limited to) first-year students
and students whose first language is not English. Permission of the instructor
required.—Director and Staff. 3pts.
| |
Sec. 1 |
M W 9:10-10:25 |
M. Kolisnyk |
| |
Sec. 2 |
M W 2:40-3:55 |
P. Cobrin |
| |
Sec. 3 |
T Th 4:10-5:25 |
P. Kain |
WRITING
Registration
in each course is limited and permission of the instructor
required. Click here
for the additional requirements for Creative Writing courses.
Click here for
journalism. A student is not permitted to
take two writing courses concurrently.
ENGL BC3101x, 3103x, and
3104y do not count for major credit!
3101x.
The Writer's Process: A Seminar in the Teaching of Writing
An exploration of theory and practice in the teaching of
writing, designed for students who plan to become Writing
Fellows at Barnard. Students will read current theory and
consider current research in the writing process, and engage in
practical applications in the classroom or in tutoring.—N. Piore.
Application process and permission of the instructor. 3
points. Tu Th 1:10-2:25.
(ENGL BC 3101x does not count for major credit.)
3103x,
3104y.
Essay Writing
English composition above the first-year level. Techniques of argument and
effective expression. Weekly papers. Individual conferences. Some sections
have a special focus, as described. Section 3 is offered Autumn semester for
students whose first language is not English and who seek an upper-level writing
course. 3 points.
|
3103x: |
Sec.
1 |
W 2:10-4. |
P. Ellsberg. |
|
Sec.
2 |
M 9-10:50 |
J.
Runsdorf |
|
Sec.
3 |
M 11-12:50 |
this
section is cancelled |
|
3104y: |
Sec.
1 |
Th
11:00-12:50 |
H.
Schulze |
|
Sec.
2 |
T
11:00-12:50 |
P. Cobrin |
|
Sec.
3 |
W
11:00-12:50 |
P.Devlin |
Creative Writing
Registration
in each course is limited and the permission of the instructor
is required; for courses 3105–3118, submit a writing sample in
advance. Departmental application forms are available in the
department office, Room 417 Barnard, and at
www.barnard.edu/English/cwregistration.
The signed forms and writing samples must be filed with the
Director of Creative Writing, Professor Timea Szell (423
Barnard) before the end of the program planning period.
Since screenwriting is considered part of
the Film Concentration, you may apply to screenwriting in addition to
either a poetry or prose course. However, you are
strongly
advised to take only one writing class in any given semester.
Two non-film creative writing courses may not be taken
concurrently.
3105x,
3106y.
Fiction and Personal Narrative
Short stories and other imaginative and personal writing.—x:
C. Schutt;
y: T. Szell.
3 points.
x: W 6:10-8;
y: W 2:10-4:00
3107x,
3108y. Introduction to Fiction Writing
Practice in writing short stories and autobiographical narrative, with discussion
and close analysis in a workshop setting.—x: L. Tillman; y: S. D'Erasmo.
3 points. x: M 2:10-4:00; y: T 4:10-6:00
3110x,y.
Introduction to Poetry Writing
Varied assignments designed to confront the difficulties and
explore the resources of language through imitation, allusion,
free association, revision, and other techniques.—x:
M. Hofmann;
y: S. Hamilton. 3 points.
x: M 4:10-6:00;
y: W
2:10-4:00
3113x.
Introduction to Playwriting
A workshop to provoke and investigate dramatic writing.—E. McLaughlin.
3 points. M 4:10-6.
3114y. Advanced Playwriting
Advanced workshop to facilitate the crafting of a dramatic
play with a bent towards the full length form. — J. Jordan. 3
points. Th 4:10-6:00.
3115x,
3116y. Story Writing
Advanced work in writing, with emphasis on the short story. Prerequisite: Some
experience in the writing of fiction. —x,y: M. Gordon. 3 points. Conference hours to be arranged.
x: T 4:10-6:00; y: W 4:10-6:00.
3117x.
Fiction Writing
Assignments designed to examine form and structure in fiction. Some attention
given to the role of the writer in society.—R. Antoni. 3 points. T 4:10-6:00.
Students will have already written
a substantial body of work. Prerequisite: Writing sample and interview with
the instructor.
3118y.
Advanced Poetry Writing
Weekly workshops designed to critique new poetry. Each
participant works toward the development of a cohesive
collection of poems. Short essays on traditional and
contemporary poetry will also be required.—S. Hamilton. 3
points. W 4:10-6:00.
FILM
3119x,y.
Screenwriting.
A practical workshop in dramatic writing for the screen. Through a
series of creative writing exercises, script analysis, and scene
work, students explore and develop the basic principles of
screenwriting. Either a polished short film script or a
preliminary draft of a feature screenplay is the final project.
(Preference given to students concentrating in film.
Since this is a Film Concentration course, it does not count
as a writing course for those with a Writing Concentration.)—
x: D. McKenna;
y:
M. Regan. 3
points.
x: W 2:10-4:00;
y: M
11:10-12:50.
Please note: For Prof. Regan's course in the spring,
students must submit a 2-3 page, dramatic
writing sample by December
1st. They may be placed in her box in the English
Department office (417 Barnard Hall).
3200x,y.
Film Production.
(This course is cancelled in the fall but will meet
in the spring)
An exploration of basic narrative tools at the filmmaker's
disposal, with a particular emphasis on camera work and editing.
Examines basic cinematic syntax that provides a foundation for
storytelling on the screen.—L. Engel. 3 points. y: F 10-1.
Prerequisite: ENGL BC 3201x and permission of the instructor.
Sophomore standing. ENROLLMENT LIMITED TO 12 STUDENTS.
Students must send a one-page application to the
instructor via e-mail (lbe1@Columbia.edu)
explaining why the student wishes to take the course, the
foundation work (whether academic or work-related) in film, video,
the arts, etc. the student has had, and any final project the
student may have in mind. They should also include their
affiliation, year of graduation and major or concentration.
3201x.
Introduction to Film and Film Theory.
A survey of the history of American and international film and an introduction
to film theory, including feminist, psychoanalytic, structuralist, and post-structuralist
methodologies. Film contextualized through theory and through the lens of popular
culture (advertising, television, music videos) and genre (the Hollywood film,
women’s film, action movies, westerns, sci-fi, documentary, “Third
World,” and “alternative” film, etc.) Weekly screening.—M.
Regan. 3 points.
M
5:40-9:40.
(See
3140y and 3998y for Film Seminar Courses)
SPEECH
Registration in each course is limited.
Students need to sign up outside the English Department office,
room 417 Barnard Hall.
3121x.
Uses of Speech
An introduction to effective oral presentation, including
interviewing and public speaking. Emphasis on self-presentation,
research, organization, and
audience analysis.—P. Denison. 3 points. Enrollment limited to 14
students. T Th 10:35-11:50.
THEATRE
Registration
in each course is limited. Students may sign up
for theatre courses outside the Theatre office, Room 507
Milbank Hall. See Theatre Department course descriptions for
Theatre History (THTR 3150, 3151), Drama and Film (THTR
BC 3143), Drama, Theatre, and Theory
(THTR 3166), Modernism
and Theatre (THTR 3737), and The History Play (THTR
BC 3750). [For
information about studio courses in theatre, go to the Theatre office, 5th floor Milbank.]
ENTH
BC 3136y. Shakespeare in Performance
The dramatic text as theatrical event. Differing performance spaces, production practices, and cultural conventions
promote different modes of engagement with dramatic texts. We will
explore Shakespeare's plays in the context of actual and possible
performances from the Renaissance to the 20th Century. Enrollment
limited to 18 students. 4 points.—P. Denison. T
11:00-12:50
ENTH
BC 3137y. Restoration and 18th-Century Drama
Performance conventions, dramatic techniques, and cultural
contexts from 1660 to 1800. Playwrights include Wycherley, Etherege,
Behn, Trotter, Centlivre, Dryden, Congreve, Farquar, Gay,
Goldsmith, and Sheridan. Enrollment limited to 18 students. 4
points.—P. Denison. Not offered in 2005-06.
ENTH
BC 3139y. Modern American Drama and Performance
Modern American drama in the context of theatrical exploration
and cultural contestation. Playwrights include Glaspell, O'Neill,
Odets, Johnson, Hurston, Hansberry, WIlliams, Hellman, Stein,
Miller, and Fornes. Enrollment limited to 18 students. $60
fee. 4 points.—P. Denison. Not offered in 2005-06.
ENTH
BC 3140y. Women and Theatre
An exploration of the impact of women in theatre history—with
special emphasis on American theatre history—including
how dramatic texts and theatre practice have reflected the
ever-changing roles of women in society. Playwrights include Glaspell, Crothers, Hellman, Finley, Hughes, and Smith. Enrollment
limited to 18 students. 4 points.—P. Cobrin. Not
offered in 2005-06.
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
3140x,
y. Seminars on Special Themes. 3 points. Registration
is limited. Sign up on bulletin boards across from the
English Department office, 417 Barnard Hall.
3140x: (fall)
1. Contemporary
British and Irish Poetry
A personal survey of recent and
contemporary British and Irish poetry, using the 2004 Simic/
Paterson anthology as a fairly accelerated point of departure but
taking in also Paul Muldoon and Tom Paulin from Nothern Ireland,
(the late lamented) Ian Hamilton and Hugo Williams, Christopher
Reid, Mark Ford, Vicki Feaver, Jo Shapcott, Alice Oswald, Jamie
McKendrick, and Alan Jenkins. An array of distinctive voices, from
the ludic to the lyrical to the near-abstract. -M. Hofmann. MW
1:10-2:25.
2. Explorations of Black Literature: 1760-1890
Poetry, prose, fiction, and nonfiction, with special attention to the slave
narrative. Includes Wheatley, Douglass, and Jacobs, but emphasis will be on
less familiar writers such as Brown, Harper, Walker, Wilson, and Forten. Works
by some 18th century precursors will also be considered.—Q. Prettyman. M
W 2:40-3:55.
3.
Enchanted Imagination
Romantic and post-Romantic fantasy that examines the
transformative role of imagination in aesthetic and creative
experience. Challenges accepted boundaries between the imagined and the
real, and celebrates otherness and magicality in a disenchanted
world. Authors include Blake, Coleridge, Keats, Mary
Shelley, Tennyson, Carroll, Tolkien, LeGuin, Garcia Marquez. — J. Pagano. M W 10:30-11:50
3140y:
(spring)
1. Madness and Literature
Explores the literary representation of "madness"
in works ranging from antiquity to the present. Authors include
Euripides, Chretien de Troyes, Shakespeare, Swift, Bronte,
Dostoevsky, Woolf, Plath, Kesey, and others.—E. Weinstock.
T Th 2:40-3:55
2. John Donne
This younger contemporary of Shakespeare, man-about-town,
irreverent wit, who eloped with his employer's niece, wrote
amazing lyric poetry in a "new idiom," and struggled to love God
and to find "true" religion, and eventually converted from
Catholicism and became an ordained priest. We'll read
poetry about sex, death, and devotion—and
prose he wrote when he thought he was dying, as well as some
sermons—and think about what it meant to be an outside Catholic
in Protestant England. We may end with two modern plays
inspired by Donne: Wit, and Wallace Shawn's The Designated
Mourner. A. Guibbory. T Th
10:35-11:50
3. "To speak of woe that is in marriage:" Studies in the
Marriage Plot
Short stories and novels about marriage and its reversals
from the 19th and 20th centuries, including works by Austin,
Hardy, James, Tolstoy, and others.
— P. Ellsberg. T Th 1:10-2:25
4. Dickinson and Her Era
Emily Dickinson will be the focus of
this study of mid-nineteenth-century American writers—including
Emerson, Douglass, Thoreau, Fuller, Hawthorne, Melville and
Whitman. In a variety of genres—lyric poems, personal
narratives, fiction and the new epic poem— these writers
explored the growing powers of the secular self at the dawn of
the Civil War.— E.
Schmidt. M W 11-12:15
5. Topics in Literature and Film: Memory and Forgetting
An experimental course that links literature to painting,
photography and film, as well as, texts in psychology (Freudian
trauma theory and recovered memory). We will explore the
role of personal and cultural memory in the creative process
through key examples from the Medieval "memory room" to the work
of Alain Resnais. —H. Schulze & R. Hamilton. T Th 2:10-4:00.
6. Topics in Literature and Film: The Western
and The West
A celebration and analysis of the American myth and
experience through the lens of fourteen Western films.
Screenings begin with the earliest colonial experience, explore
the high-action taming of the West, and ultimately pose
questions about the relevance of the Western in 2005. The
course (which features classics like Raoul Walsh's They Died
with Their Boots On and Howard Hawks' Red River and
revisionist films like Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch and
John Sayles' Lone Star) is designed to depict a concise
and compelling vision of how the America we know has come to be.
—D. McKenna. T 6:10-10:00.
3141x,
3142y. Major English Texts
A chronological view of the variety of English literature through study of
selected writers and their works. Autumn: Beowulf through Johnson. Spring:
Romantic poets through the present. Guest lectures by members of the department.—P.
Ellsberg. 3 points. x,y: T Th 10:35-11:50.
3143y. Middle Fictions: Long Stories, Short
Novels, Novellas
Discussion of fictions between 60-150 pages in length. Authors
include James, Joyce, Mann, Nabokov, Cather, Welty, West,
Porter, Olsen, Trevor.—M. Gordon. 3pts. T Th 1:10-2:25.
Not offered in 2005-06.
3144x.
Black
Theatre
An exploration of Africana-American Theatre as an intervening
agent inracial, cultural, and national identity. African and
African-American theatre artists to be examined include Wole
Soyinka, Efua Sutherland, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Angelina Grimke,
Adrienne Kennedy, Suzan-Lori Parks, Adrian Piper, and August
Wilson.—P.
Cobrin. 3 points. M 11-12:50
English-Women's
Studies ENWS
BC 3144y. Minority Women Writers in the United States
Literature
of the 20th-century minority women writers in the United States,
with emphasis on works by Asian, Black, Hispanic, and Native
American women. The historical and cultural as well as the
literary framework.—Q. Prettyman. 3pts. M W 2:40-3:55.
Not offered in 2005-06.
3148y.
Literature of the Great Migration: 1916-1970
Explores, through
fiction, poetry, essays, and film, the historical context and
cultural content of the African American migration from the
rural south to the urban cities of the north, with particular
emphasis on New York, Chicago, Boston, and Philadelphia.—Q. Prettyman. 3 points. M W 2:40-3:55.
3149y. Cultures of Colonialism: Palestine/Israel
The significance of colonial encounter, statehood, and dispossession in Palestinian and Israeli cultures from 1948 to the present, examined in a range of cultural forms: poetry, political tracts, cinema, fiction, memoirs, and travel writing. Authors include:
Darwish, Grossman, Habibi, Khalifeh, Khleifi, Kanafani, Oz,
Shabtai, Shalev, and Yehoshua.—B. Abu-Manneh.
3pts. T Th 9:10-10:25.
(No auditors)
3155y.
Canterbury Tales
The foundation of early modern literature. Chaucer as
inheritor of late-antique and medieval conventions, and as
founder of the later English literary tradition. Formalist,
historicist, and feminist approaches.—E. Weinstock. 3pts.
Not offered in 2005-06.
3158y.
Medieval Literature: Performing the Passion in Late-Medieval
Culture
Explores the medieval engagement with
the gospel story of Christ’s Passion in a range of literary and
art historical materials, including poems, plays,
visions, and manuscript illuminations. Special emphasis on the
symbolics of Christ’s crucified body and the cultural work
performed by images of Jesus as mother, child, and lover.—E.
Weinstock. 3 points. T Th 11:00-12:15.
3159x-3160y. The English Colloquium
Major writers and literary works of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment,
examined in terms of leading ideas in those periods. Required of majors in
the junior year. 4 points.
Students may
substitute 3 courses--from ENGL 3154-3158, 3163-3164, 3165-3169,
or ENTH 3136-3137. This 3140y sec. 2 will also count as a
substitution. Students may also take 1 colloquium and 2
substitutions. At least one of these courses must cover Medieval
or Renaissance material; at least one material of the 17th or
18th Century. One of these will also count toward satisfying the
“before 1900” requirement.
I.
Imitation and Creation
New ideas of the mind's relation to the world. New perspectives, the emergence
of new forms, experimentation with old forms, and the search for an
appropriate style.
x,y: R. Hamilton. x: T 9:00-10:50; y: W 9:00-10:50.
II.
Skepticism and Affirmation
The development of modern concepts of subjectivity and authority. The rise
of art and the artist. Humanism and education. Rationalism and empiricism.
The tension between belief and doubt. The exploration of the limits and the
limitless.
x: A. Guibbory; y: M. Jaanus. x: Th 11:00-12:50; y: Tu 11-12:50.
III.
Reason and Imagination [fall
syllabus] [spring
syllabus]
Humanism, reformation, and revolution: the possibilities of human knowledge;
sources of and strategies for secular and spiritual authority; the competing
demands of idealism and experience.
x: C. Plotkin; y: T. Szell. x: W 4:10-6:00; y: Th 4:10-6:00.
3163x,
3164y. Shakespeare I & II
A critical and historical introduction to Shakespeare's comedies, histories,
tragedies, and romances. 3 points.—P. Platt. x, y: M W 9:10-10:25.
This course requires signing up with the English Department.
3165y.
The Elizabethan Renaissance
Literature and culture during the reign of Elizabeth I.
Topics include God, sex, love, colonization, wit, empire, the
calendar, cosmology, and Elizabeth herself as author and
subject. Authors include P. Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare,
Marlowe, and Mary Sidney Herbert.—A.
Prescott. 3points. Not offered in 2005-06.
3166x.
Seventeenth-century Prose and Poetry
Lyric poetry about love, sex, death,
and God in Donne and others (e.g., Herbert, Lanyer, Wroth,
Herrick, Marvell, Phillips). Prose about science, politics,
religion, and philosophy (e.g., Bacon and Cavendish, Hobbes and
early communists "The Levellers") in what has been called the
"century of revolution."—A. Guibbory. 3 points. T Th 2:40-3:55.
3167y. Milton
Paradise Lost, Samson Agonistes and selections of Milton's
earlier poetry and prose (defenses of free press, divorce,
individual conscience, political and religious liberty) read
within the context of religious, political, and cultural
history, but with a sense of connection to present issues.—A.
Guibbory. 3 points. T Th 2:40-3:55
3169y.
Renaissance Drama: Kyd to Ford
Major plays of the English Renaissance (excluding
Shakespeare), with emphasis on Marlowe and Middleton.—P.
Platt. 3 points. MW 1:10-2:25
3171y.
The Novel and Psychoanalysis
The novel in its cultural context,
with an emphasis on psychoanalysis. Readings in Freud and Lacan.
Selected novels from Defoe to D.H. Lawrence.—M. Jaanus.
3 points. MW 11-12:15.
3173y. Eighteenth-Century
Literature: the Novel
Originals and development of the novel in England. Topics will
include: historical, cultural, and literary influences;
narrative innovation and experimentation; sentimentalism;
gothicism. some attention to recent theories of the development
of the novel. Readings will include Defoe, Richardson, Fielding,
Sterne, Mackenzie, Walpole, Austen. Enrollment limited to 20
students. Not offered in 2005-06.
3176y. The Romantic Era
Romantic writers in their intellectual, historical, and
political context, with reference to contemporary movements in
philosophy, music, and the plastic arts. Authors include Blake,
Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, P.B. Shelley, and Keats. An
emphasis on close reading of the poetry.—R. Hamilton. 3 points.
T Th 9:10-10:25
3178x.
Victorian Poetry and Criticism.
Poetry, art, and aesthetics in an industrial
society, with emphasis on the role of women as artists and
objects. Poems by Tennyson, Arnold, Christina and D.G, Rossetti,
Swinburne, and Elizabeth and Robert Browning; criticism by Ruskin,
Arnold, and Wilde; paintings by the Pre-Raphaelites and Whistler;
photographs by J.M. Cameron.—W.
Sharpe. 3 points. MW 11:00-12:15.
3179x.
American Literature to 1800 [web
site]
The formation and development of American literary traditions. Writers include
Bradford, Shepard, Cotton, Bradstreet, Taylor, Rowlandson, Edwards, Wheatley,
Franklin, Woolman, Brown. 3 points. L. Gordis. MW 11:00-12:15.
3180y.
American Literature, 1800-1870
The development of a national literature from the late
Republican period through the Civil War. Writers include Irving,
Emerson, Poe, Fuller, Thoreau, Douglass, Stowe, Jacobs, Whitman,
Dickinson.—L.
Gordis. 3 points. MW 11:00-12:15.
3181y.
American Literature, 1871-1945
American
literature in the context of cultural and historical change.
Writers include Twain, James, DuBois, Wharton, Cather, Wister,
Faulkner, Hurston.—M. Vandenburg. 3 points.
T Th
4:10-5:25.
3183x.
American Literature since 1945
History, memory, family, death, machines, sex and worry are
preoccupations of the texts selected for this course. Authors
will include: Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Paula Fox, Jonathan
Franzen, Toni Morrison, Richard Powers, Ishmael Reed and Phillip
Roth.—M. Spiegel. 3 points.
MW 5:40pm-6:55pm.
3184y. House and
Home in American Culture
An interdisciplinary examination of house, home, and family
in American life from 1850 to the present. Attention to the
interrelation between architectural design, ideologies of
family, class identity, racial politics and gender formation.
Historical sites include the plantation, the nomadic dwelling,
the mansion, the tenement, the apartment, and the suburb.—W.
Sharpe. 3 points. M W
9:10-10:25.
3185x. Modern British and
American Poetry
The poetry of three decades, 1915-25, 1955-65, and 1991-2001.
Poems by Yeats, Eliot, Williams, Millay, Larkin, O'Hara, Rich,
Hughes, and others.--W. Sharpe. 3 points. MW 9:10-10:25.
3187y. American Writers and
Their Foreign Counterparts
Developments in modern fiction as seen in selected 19th and
20th-century American, European, and English works by Flaubert,
Dostoevsky, James, Proust, Gide, Woolf, Faulkner, and others.--M.
Gordon. 3 points. T Th 1:10-2:25
3188y,
The Modern Novel
Works by Woolf, Joyce, Faulkner, Lawrence, Forster,
West, Barnes, and Desani.
3 points.—M. Vandenburg. T Th 1:10-2:25
3190y.
Global Literature in English
A selective survey of fiction from the
ex-colonies, focusing on the colonial encounter, cultural and
political decolonization, and belonging and
migration in the age of postcolonial imperialism. Areas covered
include Africa (Achebe, Aidoo, Armah, Ngugi); the Arab World (Mahfouz,
Munif, Salih, Souief); South Asia (Mistry, Rushdie, Suleri); the
Carribean (Kincaid); and New Zealand (Hulme).
3pts.—B. Abu-Manneh. T Th 9:10-10:25.
3191x,y. The English Conference: The Lucyle Hook Guest Lectureship.
Enrollment limited: sign up in the Department office.
Special topics presented by visiting scholars in courses that will meet for
two to four weeks during each semester. To be taken only for pass/fail. 1 point. To
receive credit for this course students must attend all lectures. Information
will be available online.
Fall: (ENGL BC 3191x)
Psychoanalysis and Literature: Lacan and Kleist
This course will examine some Kleistian works from
a psychoanalytical point of view. Kleist described how major
topics of psychoanalysis, such as unconscious, mirror stage,
transference, object a, the peculiar position of femininity,
Oedipe and others function. Kleist gives us an example how
psychoanalysis can borrow insights, sometimes even concepts, from
belletristic literature. Of course, this affinity does not exclude
a questioning about limits of comparability.
This
course will confront four psychoanalytic fundamental concepts
(mirror-stage; anxiety; transference; femininity) with some
Kleistian works, such as Amphitryon, Schroffenstein
Family, About The Gradual Formation of Thoughts in
Speaking, The Foundling, The Earthquake of Chili,
Käthchen von Heilbronn, and Penthesilea.—P.
Widmer. MW Oct. 10, 12,17, and 19th at 6:10-8:00 pm.
Deadline to register is 10/12. Sign up on the English Department
bulletin board.
Peter
Widmer is a practicing psychoanalyst in Zurich as well as the
founder and publisher of RISS. He has taught at the University of
Kyoto and at the University of Zurich.
Spring: (ENGL BC 3191y)
Stage Comedy
We will read four plays: Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being
Ernest; Alan Ayckbourn's Absurd Person Singular; Joe Orton's What the Butler Saw; and Tom Stoppard's
The
Real Thing. We will have a double focus--the plays
themselves and the relevant theories of comedy and how they are
illustrated by the plays we’ve read.—A. Kaufman.
M Feb. 6, 13, 20, 27th
6:10-8 pm .
Deadline to register is 2/13. Sign up on the English Department
bulletin board.
3193x,y.
Literary Criticism and Theory [sample
web site]
The purpose of the course is to provide experience in the reading and analysis
of texts and some knowledge of conspicuous works of literary criticism. Frequent
short papers. Required of all majors before the end of the junior year. Sophomores
are encouraged to take it in the Spring Term even before officially declaring
their major. Transfer students should plan to take it in the Autumn Term. Registration
in each section is limited. Please sign up on the bulletin board between rooms
403 and 405 Barnard Hall. 4 points.—Members of the Department.
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3193x:
|
Sec. 1
|
Th
|
4:10-6:00
|
C.
Brown
|
|
|
Sec. 2
|
Th
|
11:00-12:50
|
L.
Gordis
|
|
|
Sec. 3
|
Tu
|
6:10-8:00
|
C.
Plotkin
|
|
|
Sec 4
|
Tu
|
2:10-4:00
|
W.
Sharpe
|
|
|
Sec.
5
|
W
|
4:10-6:00
|
M.
Cregan
|
| 3193y: |
Sec. 1 |
M |
4:10-6:00 |
J. Pagano |
|
Sec. 2 |
Tu |
4:10-6:00 |
P. Platt |
|
Sec. 3 |
Tu |
11:00-12:50 |
J. Runsdorf |
|
Sec. 4 |
Tu |
6:10-8:00 |
G.
Fleischer |
3194x. Marxist Literary Theory
Evolution of Marxist criticism from Marx to Jameson and Eagleton.
Central questions: What is unique about Marxist cultural
analysis? What are the different Marxist schools of criticism?
Is there a future for Marxism? Issues considered: capitalism and
culture, class analysis, commitment, modernism, and
postmodernism, commodification and alienation, and
postcolonialism.--B. Abu-Manneh. T Th 11:00-12:15.
3195x.
Modernism
Modernist responses to cultural fragmentation and gender anxiety in the wake
of psychoanalysis and world war. Works by Woolf, Joyce, Yeats, Eliot, Stein,
Hemingway, H.D., Pound, Lawrence, Barnes, and other Anglo-American writers. 3
points.—M. Vandenburg. T Th 1:10-2:25.
3196y.
Home to Harlem: Literature of the Harlem Renaissance
Explores the cultural contexts and aesthetic debates
surrounding the Harlem or New Negro literary renaissance,
1920-30s. Through fiction, poetry, essays, and artwork, topics
considered include: modernism, primitivism, patronage, passing
and the problematics of creating a "racial" art in/for a
community compromised of differences in gender, class,
sexuality, and geographical origin.--M. Miller. 3 points. T Th
1:10-2:25.
3810y. Literary
Approaches to the Bible
Interpretive strategies for reading the Bible as a work with
literary, historical, and social dimensions. Considerations of
poetic and rhetorical structures, narrative techniques, and
feminist exegesis will be included. Topics for investigation
include the influence of the Bible on later literature, combined
with the more formal disciplines of biblical studies.—P. Ellsberg.
4 points. W 2:10-4:00. Enrollment limited to 18.
Permission of Instructor Required.
3996x,y. Special Project in Theatre,
Writing, or Critical Interpretation
Senior majors who are concentrating in Theatre or Writing and have completed
two courses in writing or three in theatre will normally take the Special Project
in Theatre or Writing (3996x, y) in combination with another course in their
special field. This counts in place of one of the Senior Seminars. In certain
cases, Independent Study (3999) may be substituted for the Special Project. Permission
of the instructor and the chair required. In rare cases,
with the permission of the chair, a special project in conjunction with a course may
be taken by other English majors. Click here
for the form to complete. 1 point.
3992x, 3997x,
3998y. Senior Seminars: Studies in Literature
Required of all majors, these seminars are designed to deepen knowledge of
periods, writers, works, genres, and theories through readings, discussion,
oral reports, and at least one significant research paper. Written
permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to seniors. 4
points.
ENGL BC 3992x. Senior Post-Colonial Literature
Seminar: The literature of the Middle Passage [website]
This course will look at the literature that has been produced as
a result of the Atlantic Slave Trade. This includes writings from
Africa, Britain, and the Americas which reflects the huge changes
in history that have occurred as a result of this process of
involuntary migration out of Africa. We will study literary texts
by Achebe, Ama Ata Aidoo, Du Bois, Conrad, Equiano, and Baldwin,
among others. The course has a study abroad component. Open to
senior majors and others by application.—C. Phillips, E. Schmidt,
and M. Jaanus. T
9:00-10:50.
3997x,
3998y. Senior Seminars: Studies in
Literature
Required of all majors, these seminars are designed to deepen
knowledge of periods, writers, works, genres, and theories
through readings, discussion, oral reports, and at least one
significant research paper. Written permission of the
instructor. Enrollment limited to seniors. 4
points.
3997x (fall)
1. Fallen Women
We will follow Eve's legacy from the Reformation to
the present. Gendered notions of embodied sin and the acquisition
of knowledge, the emblematic associations with the figure Fortuna
and Natura, the figure of the prostitute and the redeemed or
redeeming women. Readings from the Bible, Augustine, Shakespeare,
and Milton but also Defoe, Flaubert, Brontë, Collette and Rhys.—R. Hamilton. T 11:00-12:50.
2.
Reading and Writing Women in Colonial America
In
April 1645, John Winthrop lamented the sorry state of Ann Yale
Hopkins, "who fallen into a sadd infirmytye, the losse of
her vnderstandinge & reason…by occasion of her giving her
selfe wholly to readinge & writing, & had written many
bookes." Many
colonial women were avid readers and writers, composing and
publishing poetry, autobiographies, captivity narratives,
novels, and commonplace books. Consideration of these texts, including works by Anne
Bradstreet, Mary Rowlandson, Phillis Wheatley, and Hannah
Foster, as well as texts that reveal women's reading and
publication practices, such as accounts of Anne Hutchinson and
Milcah Martha Moore's Book. —L. Gordis. Th 2:10-4:00.
3.
Late Shakespeare: Visions and
Revisions
Shakespeare's late plays as both
experimental and revisionary.
Topics will include performance and performativity,
aesthetics, philosophy, politics, sexuality, and gender, as well
as twentieth-century criticism's reconstructions of these final
plays. Texts: Measure for Measure, Othello, King Lear, Antony and
Cleopatra, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest.--P. Platt. W
2:10-4:00
4.
Gerard Manley Hopkins and Unorthodoxy
A devout Anglican
turned devout Catholic, a Tory who favored Irish Home Rule and
expressed an attraction for communism, a double first in Greats at
Oxford who retained a fascination for scientific advances, an
admirer of Whitman's poetry who would read no more of it because
Whitman was "a very great scoundrel," an admirer of male
beauty, a priest, and a poet whose poetry disrupted the language
of English poetry so radically that it was not judged publishable
until nearly thirty years after his death in 1889, Hopkins was
first championed by the modernists, then appropreiated by the
Jesuits, reclaimed by the Victorianists, and at length recognized
as one of the great poets not only of English but of European
Poetry. This course will cover his complete works.—C. Plotkin.
Th 6:10-8:00.
5.
Courtship and Marriage in the Works of Chaucer
Erotic,
courtly, and divine love, marriage and power, the connections
between poetry and courtship in selected dream visions ("The
Book of the Duchess," "The Parliament of Fowls"),
Canterbury Tales ("Miller's Tale," "Wife of Bath's
Tale," "Merchant's Tale," "Franklin's
Tale"), and most important, Troilus and Criseyde.
Reading include the biblical Song of Solomon,
selections from Ovid's Art of Love, Arab love poetry,
troubadour lyrics, Dante's La Vita Nuova, lyrics by
Petrarch, Andreas Capellanus's De Amore, poems of adoration
to the Virgin, and some mystical religious literature.—T. Szell.
W 4:10-6:00.
3998y
(spring)
1.
Body and Language
Interpretations of
femininity in relation to issues of identification, sexuation, desire,
love, and anxiety in various postmodern literary and theoretical
(mainly Lacanian) texts.—M. Jaanus.
W
2:10-4:00.
2.
Film: The Man in the Crowd/The Woman of the Streets
Examines the American crowd as a
trope for modernity and for democracy in American film and works
of fiction. Fiction includes works by Hawthorne, Poe, Melville,
Whitman, Stephen Crane, Sinclair Lewis, Nathanael West; Films by
Chaplin, Vidor, Busby Berkeley, Capra, Kazan, and others;
photographs by Weegee and Gursky, and essays by Simmel,
Benjamin, Canetti and others.—M.
Spiegel.
F 11:00-1:00.
3.
Black
Stereotype and Racial Performance: Negotiations
of Identity and Difference
Exploration of the relationship
between stereotypical images of African Americans and their
constant rewriting and revision in American literary and visual
culture. Topics addressed: blackface minstrelsy, tricksters,
passing, standards of beauty, Hollywood, and the art market.
Authors include Brown, Stowe, Melville, Twain, Chesnutt, Larsen,
C. Johnson, Ellison, and Morrison. Artwork, films, and performance
pieces.—M. Miller. T 4:10-6:00
4.
Victorian and Modern Drama
Drama in
transition. Changing social structures and dramatic structures at
the turn of the century. The relationship between convention and
invention in the plays of Shaw, Wilde, Pinero, Ibsen, Chekhov,
Robins, and others.—P. Denison.
M
11:00-12:50
5.
City in Literature
How did New Yorkers create
a self-consciously modern and ethnic brand of American culture?
This course will explore literary and artistic representations of
the city, especially at nighttime, and the ways in which the city
has been used as an arena to explore issues of sexuality,
violence, assimilation, alienation, race, cultural difference, and
aesthetic form. Reading list and interdisciplinary framework--art,
literature, architecture, music, photography, etc.--to be shaped
by the students.—W. Sharpe.
T 2:10-4:00.
6.
Modernist Visions: Conrad, Eliot, Woolf
Hearts of darkness and light, overseas and at
home in London, in the first decades of the 20th
century. Gender divisions; images of fragmentation and
reconstruction.—C. Brown.
W 4:10-6:00.
3999x,y. Independent Study
Senior majors who wish to substitute Independent Study for one of the two required
senior seminars should consult the chair. Permission is
given rarely and only to students who present a clear and well-defined topic of study,
who have a Department sponsor, and who submit their proposals well in advance
of the semester in which they will register. There is no independent study for
screenwriting or film production. Permission of the
Instructor and Department Chair is required.
Click here
for the form to complete. 4 points.
Additional Courses
CLEN G4653x. Reading Lacan.
Reading Lacan's Seminar VI: Desire and Its Interpretation with
Hamlet, Seminar VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis with Antigone;
Seminar VIII: Transference with Plato's Symposium, Seminar X:
Anxiety with selected novels. Emphasis on the relevance of
Lacan's thought to literature and culture and on his shift from
desire and language to jouissance, love, and poetry.—M. Jaanus. 3pts.
M 4:10-6.
CLEN W4122x.
Renaissance in
Europe: The Erotic in Renaissance Literature
How did Renaissance writers imagine the erotic from serious
idealized love to comic sexual dysfunction, from homoerotic
passion to marriage. Texts include some background reading in Ovid
and Petronius as well as such Renaissance writers as Rabelais,
Louise Labe, Donne, and William Shakespeare.—A. Prescott.
MW 4:10-5:25.
CPLS BC3147y. Comparative
Literature: Renaissance Women Writers
An exploration of women writers on England, France, and Italy
from the 15th to 17th century. Poetry, narrative and theater
focusing on topics such as love, sex, society, power, and God by
Christine de Piza, Marguerite de Navarre, Gaspar Stampa, Louise
Labe, Elizabeth Cary, Mary Wroth, Madame de Lafayette, and
others.—A. Prescott and L. Postlewate. MW 1:10-2:25
ENGL W3270y.
British Literature 1950-Present; Modern British Literature II
This course will trace English fiction (and a few films) from
the center and from the margins, from the post-WWII era to
contemporary and postmodern preoccupations. Writers will
include: Martin Amis, John Banville, Pat Barker, Graham Greene,
Kazuo Ishiguro, James Kelman, Ian McEwan, Iris Murdoch, V.S.
Naipaul, John Osborne, Salman Rushdie, W.G. Sebald, and films by
Carol Reed, Michael Apted, Joseph Losey,
Tony Richardson, Mike Leigh, Stanley Kubrick and Stephen Frears.—Maura
Spiegel. 3 pts. T Th 6:10-7:25.
Instructions on Applying:
This
lecture is limited to 40 students; students must submit an
application to be considered for admission. Students interested
in this course should use the green seminar application cards in
602 Philosophy; fill out the information requested on the card;
and deposit it in the appropriate box by 5 pm Thursday, November
10. An admit list will be posted Monday, November 14. Students
will be blocked from registering for this course; the department
itself will submit to the registrar a list of the students
admitted and ask that their names be placed on the official
class roster.
The Guidelines
for Independent Study Projects and the Independent
Study Application are also available.
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