Course Listings for Fall 2005

For updated information see http://www.columbia.edu/cu/bulletin/uwb/
More information on many courses available at courseworks.columbia.edu

Introductory

1201x.  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.

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.  3 points.

WRITING

Registration in each course is limited and written permission of the instructor required; for courses 3105-3118, submit a writing sample in advance.  Click here for the additional requirements for Creative Writing courses.  A student is not permitted to take two writing courses concurrently.

ENGL BC 3101x, 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 (see page 43). 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.

3103x.  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 4 is offered in each semester for students whose first language is not English and who seek an upper-level writing course. 3 points.

(ENGL BC 3101x, 3103x, and 3104y do not count for major credit.)
 

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, (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.

File signed departmental registration blanks with the Director of Creative Writing, T. Szell (423 Barnard).  A student is not permitted to take two creative writing courses concurrently.

3105x.  Fiction and Personal Narrative
Short stories and other imaginative and personal writing. —C. Schutt.  3 points. W 6:10-8.

3107x.  Introduction to Fiction Writing
Practice in writing short stories and autobiographical narrative, with discussion and close analysis in a workshop setting. —L. Tillman. 3 points. M 2:10-4:00.

3110x.  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.—M. Hoffman. 3 points. M 4:10-6:00.

3113x.   Introduction to Playwriting
A workshop to provoke and investigate dramatic writing.—E. McLaughlin. 3 points. M 4:10-6.

3115x.  Story Writing
Advanced work in writing, with emphasis on the short story.  Prerequisite:  Some experience in the writing of fiction. —M. Gordon.  3 points.  Conference hours to be arranged. Tu 4:10-6.

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. Students will have already written a substantial body of work. Prerequisite: Writing sample and interview with the instructor.

Film

3119x.  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 screenwriting is considered part of the Film Concentration, it does not count as a writing course for those with a Writing Concentration.—D. McKenna. 3 points. W 2:10-4:00. 

3200x.  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. M 1:00-4:00. 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.

Speech

Registration in each course is limited and permission of the department required.

ENGL BC 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. TuTh 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 (THR BC 3150, 3151, 3152), Drama, Theatre, and Theory (THR BC 3166), Modernism and Theatre (THTR BC 3737), and The History Play (THTR BC 3750). 

LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

BC 3140x.  Seminars on Special Themes. 3 points.
Registration is limited. Sign up on bulletin boards outside 403 Barnard Hall.

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 Northern 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. MW 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. MW 10:35-11:50.

3141x.  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.  TuTh 10:35-11:50.

3144x.  Black Theatre
An exploration of Africana-American Theatre as an intervening agent in racial, 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.

3159X.  The English Colloquium
Major writers and literary works of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment examined in terms of leading ideas in those periods. Required of majors in the junior year.  4 points. 
Any student who wishes may substitute 3 course, ENTH BC 3137, and ENGL 3154-3158, 3163-3164, 3165-3169 or ENTH BC 3136-3137. Courses in the Medieval period also count as substitutes. At least one of these courses must cover material before 1660; at least one material after 1660 but before 1800 (i.e., Restoration or 18^th Century). One of these will also count toward satisfying the “before 1900” requirement.  4 points.

 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. —R. Hamilton. T 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, rationalism, and empiricism.  Sadism and evil.  The exploration of limits and the limitless. —A. Guibbory.  Th 11:00-12:50.

III.  Reason and Imagination
Relation of subjective to objective vision; reason and the irrational; reason vs. reasonableness; outward and inward authority; faithful reason and reasonable faith; empiricism and its discontents; historicity and freedom; reason and revolution.—C. Plotkin. W 4:10-6:00.

IV. Order and Disorder
The tension, conflicts, and upheavals of an era in the arts, religion, politics, aesthetics, and society.—A. Prescott. T 4:10-6:00.

3163x.  Shakespeare I
A critical and historical introduction to Shakespeare's comedies, histories, tragedies, and romances.—P. Platt. 3 points. MW 9:10-10:25.

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. TuTh 2:40-3:55.

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
The formation and development of American literary traditions. Writers include Bradford, Shepard, Cotton, Bradstreet, Taylor, Rowlandson, Edwards, Wheatley, Franklin, Woolman, Brown. —L. Gordis. 3 points. MW 11:00-12:15 .

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 Philip Roth.— M. Spiegel. 3 points.  MW 5:40-6:55.

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.

3191x.  The English Conference: The Lucyle Hook Guest Lectureship
Various topics presented by visiting scholars in courses that will meet for two to four weeks during each semester.  Topics, instructors, and times will be announced by the department. Students must attend all classes to receive credit for this course.—Peter Widmer. 1 point. To be taken only for P/D/F. Departmental registration required.

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.

3193x.  Literary Criticism and Theory
Provides experience in the reading and analysis of literary 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 BC 3193 in the autumn term.—Staff. 4 points. Note: Literary Criticism and Theory is merely our new title for what was called Critical Writing.

    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

3194x.  Critical and Theoretical Perspectives on Literature: 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. 3 points. Tu Th 11-12:15.

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.—M. Vandenburg.   3 points. TuTh 1:10-2:25.

3996x.  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 an additional course in their special field.  This counts in place of one of the Senior Seminars. In certain cases, Independent Study (BC 3999) may be substituted for the Special Project. Permission of the instructor and 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. 1 point.  

3992x, 3997x.  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.

ENGL BC 3997x. Senior Seminars: Studies in Literature

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 of Fortuna and Natura, the figure of the prostitute and the redeemed or redeeming woman.  Readings from the Bible, Augustine, Shakespeare, and Milton but also Defoe, Flaubert, Bronte, 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 preformativity, 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.

3999x.  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 Departmental Chair is required. 4 points.

Graduate Courses

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. 3 points. MW 4:10-5:25.

CLEN G4563x. Reading Lacan
An intensive reading of the selections from Lacan’s Seminar VI: Desire and Its Interpretation with Hamlet, of Seminar VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis with Antigone and Kant’s Ethics; of Seminar VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis with Antigone and Kant’s Ethics; of Seminar VIII: Transference with Plato’s Symposium, and of Seminar X: Anxiety and Seminar 20: Encore: On Feminine Sexuality with selected novels. Emphasis on the relevance of Lacan’s thought to literature and culture and on his shift from desire to language to jouissance, love, and poetry as well as on the significance of his inclusion of the symptom in his knot of the Imaginary, Symbolic, and the Real.—M. Jaanus. 3 points. M 4:10-6:00.

The Guidelines for Independent Study Projects and the Independent Study Application are also available.

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