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 3137y. Restoration and 18th-Century Drama
Dramatic literature, theater practice, and cultural contexts from 1660 to 1800. Playwrights include Wycherley, Etherege, Behn, Centlivre, Dryden, Congreve, Farquhar, Van Brugh, Gay, Goldsmith, and Sheridan. Our focus will be on recurring topics in the drama of this period:  love and lust, marriage and separation, money, wit, social status and, inevitably, the relation of the sexes in all of the above. Enrollment limited to 18 students. 4 points.—A. Kaufman.  T Th 5:40-6:55 

ENTH BC 3139y. Modern America 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 Glaspell, Crothers, Hellman, Finley, Hughes, and Smith. Enrollment limited to 18 students. 
4 points.—P. Cobrin.  Not offered in 2005-06. 

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. 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

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. M W 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.  Not offered in 2005-06.

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

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.—M. Jaanus.  T 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.—T. Szell. Th 4:10-6:00
 

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 does fill up so signing up is required.  The list is posted between 403 and 404 Barnard.

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 2005-06.

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 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

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. T Th 4:10-5:25

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

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

3189. Postmodern Literature
Writers since 1945, mostly English and American, and concepts of postmodern culture. Works by Beckett, Borges, Nabokov, Rhys, Barthelme, Pynchon, and others. 3 points.  Not offered in 2005-06.

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 9:10-10:25.

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 2006 Conference: 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.  Click here for a book list.
 

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. T Th 1:10-2:25

3199y. Poetics
An investigation of philosophies of poetry and imagination. Selected prose and poetry by Petrarch, Coleridge, Clare, Dickinson, Williams, Celan, and others.—S. Hamilton. 3 points. M W 1:10-2:25.  Not offered in 2005-06.

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. W 2:10-4:00.  Enrollment limited to 18.  Permission of Instructor Required.

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. Body and Language
Interpretations of the female body and feminine sexuality in relation to issues of pleasure, love, death, and the unconscious 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 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.