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, Theatre, and Theory (THTR 3166), Modernism and Theatre (THTR 3737), and The History Play (THTR BC 3750).

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 3144y. Black Theatre
An exploration of Black Theatre, specifically African-American performance traditions, as an intervening agent in racial, cultural, and national identity.  African-American theatre artists to be examined include Amiri Baraka, Kia Corthron, W.E.B. DuBois, Angelina Grimke, Langston Hughes, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Adrienne Kennedy, Suzan-Lori Parks, Adrian Piper, and August Wilson. 3 points.—P. Cobrin. M 11-12:50

3140y. Seminars on Special Themes. 3 points. Registration is limited. Sign up on bulletin boards across from the English Department office, 417 Barnard Hall.

1. Erring Othello: Othello and Appropriation.
For 400 years authors have felt compelled to revisit Othello’s tragic narrative with new perspectives on issues of desire, loyalty, honor, love, sexuality, and race. This course examines appropriations of the Othello story in literature, film, and visual arts with a focus on how these later works address issues of race, gender, colonialism and desire.
—K. Hall. This course is canceled.

See Film Department offerings for film seminars usually listed here.

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.—C. Plotkin. 3 points. T Th 5:40-6:55

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.  Not offered in 2006-07.

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. MW 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 10:35-11:50.  (No auditors)

3160y. 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.

Students may substitute 3 courses—from ENGL 3163-3164, 3165-3169, ENGL 3173-3174, and 3179, or ENTH 3136-3137. Students may also take 1 colloquium and 2 substitutions. At least one substituted course must cover material before 1660 (i.e. Renaissance) and one material after 1660 but before 1800 (i.e., Restoration or 18th Century). One of these substituted courses 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.--R. Hamilton. 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.—E. Schmidt.  T 2:10-4

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.—C. Plotkin W 4:10-6

IV. Order and Disorder
The Tension, conflicts, and upheavals of an era in the arts, religion, politics, politics, aesthetics, and society.     --J. Basker. M 2:10 - 4
 

3164y. Shakespeare II
A critical and historical introduction to Shakespeare's comedies, histories, tragedies, and romances.--P. Platt.  3 points.  M W 9:10-10:25
This course limited to 60 and does fill up so signing up is required on 4th floor of Barnard Hall.

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. 3 points.  Not offered in 2006-07.

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. TuTh 10:35-11:50

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.  Course limited to 25.  Sign up on the fourth floor of Barnard Hall

3173y. Eighteenth Century Literature: The Novel.
Origins 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, Sterrne, Machenzie, Walpole, Austen. Enrollment limited to 20 students.—B. Rizzo. 3 points. T Th 11:00-12:15

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

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.—M. Vandenburg. 3 points. Not offered in 2006-07.

3182y. American Fiction
American fiction from the 18th to the early 20th centuries. Writers include Twain, James, DuBois, Wharton, Cather, Wister, Faulkner, Hurston.--J. Kassanoff. 3 points. T Th 10:35-11:50

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. Not offered in 2006-07.

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. Not offered in 2006-07.

3188y. The Modern Novel
Works by Woolf, Joyce, Faulkner, Lawrence, Forster, West, Barnes, and Desani. 3 points.—M. Vandenburg. 
Not offered in 2006-07

3189y. Postmodernism
New literary forms emerge from the rubble of representation produced by the tyranny of progress (commodification, mass media, globalization) and the deconstruction of grand narratives.  Works by Pynchon, Nabokov, Barthelme, Reed, Auster, Robinson, Delany, Barnes, Beckett, Pinter, Ashbery, Merrill, and Hejinian.—M. Vandenburg T Th 4:10-5:25

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). 3pointts.—B. Abu-Manneh. T Th 2:40-3:55

3191y. The English Conference: The Lucyle Hook Guest Lectureship.
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.  Enrollment limited: Deadline to register is 2/13. Sign up on the English Department bulletin board.

Spring: (ENGL BC 3191y). "Whitman and After: the First Person Singular"
—P. Hampl. Monday February 5th, 12th, 19th, and 26th, 4:10-6
Four lectures devoted to the first person voice in literature and its special attraction for iconic American authors as well as for contemporary writers.  This series of talks will cross genres, with individual sessions on poetry, fiction and forms of nonfiction including memoir and the personal essay.  The first lecture will focus on Walt Whitman (with a couple of nods to Emily Dickinson).  The second lecture, turning to fiction, will consider The Great Gatsby in depth but will also look at Moby Dick and Huckleberry Finn.  The third and fourth lectures discuss forms of nonfiction (literary journalism, the personal essay and other autobiographical forms), perhaps the signature genres of contemporary letters.
 

3193y. 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.

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. Not offered in 2006-07.

ENGL V 3260y. The Victorian Age in Literature
The 19th century saw the birth of the social and psychological sciences, along with the new representations of the self in everyday life. Works by Dickens, Eliot, Meredith, Darwin, Arnold, Mill, Ellis, and others.—W. Sharpe. 3 points. MW 9:10-10:25

ENRE 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. Enrollment limited to 18.  Permission of Instructor Required. Not offered in 2006-07.

3996y. 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.

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.

1. Christian and Jews in the Renaissance and After
Reading a variety of texts both "literary" (Shakespeare, Milton) and not. Course focuses on England and (to a lesser degree) America in the 17th century, but also looks back to earlier (including Biblical) definitions of Christian identity, in relation to Judaism and Jews, and forward towards the present.
—A. Guibbory. Th 2:10-4

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. Th 4:10-6

3. The Family in Turn-of-the-Century American Fiction
An inter-disciplinary examination of changing cultural dynamics of the American family. Considers issues such as the family and the market, immigration, "race," reproductive politics, and nativism. Authors include James, Wharton, Cahan, Hopkins, Gilman, Cather, and Faulkner. —J. Kassanoff.  Th 2:10-4.

 4. Late Shakespeare: Visions and Revisions
Shakespeare's last plays as both experimental and revisionary. Topics will include aesthetics, philosophy, politics, sexuality, and gender, as well as 20th-century criticism's reconstruction of these final plays. Probable texts: Measure for Measure, Othello, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest.   —P. Platt T 4:10-6

5. City in Literature- London and New York
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 20^th century. Gender divisions; images of fragmentation and reconstruction.—C. Brown. W 4:10-6:00
 

3999y. 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.