1999-2000 Bulletin Entry for:

(file last updated: [7/6/1999 - 13:9:57])

The English concentration is designed to train students in the formal analysis of literary texts and to introduce them to their literary and cultural heritage.

The Graduate Program in English and American literature is designed to offer training in the interpretation and evaluation of literary texts in their historical and cultural contexts.

Prospective concentrators should take one of the following: HUM 10a, HIP 20a, or HIP 20b (see "A" under the "Main Track" description below), as well as English 11a, Introduction to Literary Method, as early as possible in their careers; the latter course focuses on the basic skills required by the major. Concentrators must also take five different period courses (each period is designated by a different final digit in the course number) from a list of six periods. In addition, concentrators must take a one semester course devoted primarily to literary criticism or literary theory and a one-semester elective, which may be any course (except writing courses) offered by either the English or comparative literature departments.

Candidates for admission should have a bachelor's degree, preferably with a major in English and American literature, and a reading knowledge of French, Italian, Spanish, German, Greek, or Latin. They are required to submit a sample of their critical writing not to exceed 35 pages; the 35-page maximum may consist of a single critical essay or two shorter essays of approximately equal length. Students are also required to submit scores on the verbal aptitude portion of the Graduate Record Examination and on the GRE advanced test in literature. The general requirements for admission to the Graduate School, as specified in an earlier section of this Bulletin, apply to candidates for admission to this area of study.

Poetry. Renaissance. Theory.

Poetry.

American literature. Romanticism. Composition. Philosophy of education. Literature of the American South. Poetry.

Medieval literature. Poetry. Renaissance literature.

Modernism. American literature. Asian-American literature.

Fannie Hurst Poet

Puritanism. Literature of the American Revolution. American Renaissance. Film studies.

Nineteenth- and 20th-century literature and thought. Literary theory.

Fannie Hurst Writer.

Twentieth-century American literature, theory, and feminism.

Performance studies. Gender studies. Gay studies. Seventeenth- and 18th-century drama.

Interdisciplinary humanities. Women's studies. Medieval literature.

Shakespeare. Renaissance poetry and drama. Music and poetry. Classical and contemporary Japanese drama, poetry, and fiction.

Modern literature. Victorian and 20th-century literature.

Modernism. Literary criticism and theory.

Fiction, Writer-in-Residence.

Romanticism. Literature and philosophy. Eighteenth-century literature.

Anglophone and Postcolonial literature and theory.

African and Afro-American literature. Caribbean literature.

Restoration and 18th century.

Except for courses in the 90-99 range, English department courses are numbered systematically. The final digit for any course number identifies the subject, as follows:

0 - Courses in a literary genre

1 - Courses in literary theory and literary criticism

2 - Medieval British literature (roughly before 1500)

3 - Renaissance British literature (circa 1500-1660)

4 - Restoration/18th-century British literature

5 - 19th-century British literature

6 - 19th-century American literature

7 - 20th-century British or American literature

8 - Miscellaneous literary subjects

9 - Writing courses

Main Track

Nine semester courses are required, including the following:

A. A semester course in major foundational texts of the Western literary tradition (HUM 10a), or a semester course in major foundational texts of world literatures (HIP 20a or HIP 20b), to be taken as early as possible, either before or during the student's first years as an English concentrator.

B. A semester course in literary method, ENG 11a, which should be taken during the student's first year as an English concentrator.

C. One semester course in each of five different periods, chosen from courses with final digits numbered 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, or 7 (described above) or from cross-listed courses in the corresponding categories.

D. A one-semester elective, which may be any course (except writing courses) offered by either the English or comparative literature departments.

E. A semester course directed primarily to literary criticism or literary theory.

F. No course with a final grade below C- can count toward fulfilling the concentration requirements in English and American literature.

G. Honors Track: Graduation with honors in English requires the satisfactory completion of either: 1) a Senior Honors Essay (one semester - 99a or 99b) and a tenth course in the concentration, or 2) a Senior Honors Thesis (two semesters - 99d). Honors candidates must by the second semester of the junior year:

a) Complete at least five courses in the English concentration;

b) Have a GPA of 3.5 or higher in courses in the English concentration;

c) Submit to the Undergraduate Advising Head a satisfactory essay or thesis proposal (preferably by the second semester of the junior year, but by the first week of the fall semester of the senior year at the latest). The proposal must be signed by a faculty member who has agreed to direct the essay or thesis. The Undergraduate Advising Head will assist students in finding appropriate directors.

Department honors are awarded on the basis of excellence in all courses taken in the department, including the senior essay or thesis. Students in the Creative Writing Track who complete ENG 96d will be considered to have completed a Senior Honors Thesis.

Creative Writing Track

Students interested in the Writing Track should consult the pamphlet, The Creative Writing Track in the Department of English, obtainable from the main office of the department. The requirements of the Writing Track are, in brief, as follows:

A. A semester course in literary method, ENG 11a, which should be taken during the student's first year as an English major.

B. Two semester courses in directed writing (poetry, prose, or both): e.g., ENG 19a, ENG 109a, ENG 109b, ENG 119a, ENG 119b. At least one course in directed writing must be completed before the end of the sophomore year. All required courses in directed writing must be concluded before the beginning of the senior year. Only one course in directed writing can be taken in any semester.

C. One semester course in the student's preferred genre, to be agreed upon with the director of the Writing Track (e.g., ENG 10b or ENG 180a). This course must be completed before the student's senior year.

D. One semester course in each of three different periods, chosen from the Main Track list above.

E. ENG 96d (Senior Creative Writing Thesis). The student will produce, under the direction of his or her advisor, a body of writing (usually a book of poems or a collection of stories) of appropriate scope (two semesters).

F. An elective course normally in a studio or performing art, to be agreed upon with the director of the Writing Track.

G. The Writing Track also requires an essay on a tutorial bibliography. This will be done at the end of the student's senior year.

H. Admission to the Writing Track is by application only. Admission will be decided by the faculty of the Writing Track on completion by the student of at least one course in directed writing, normally at the end of the sophomore year.

Concentrators in the Department of English and American Literature are not eligible to enroll in minors offered by the department.

Minor in Writing

Four semester courses are required, including the following:

A. Three writing workshops, chosen from the following: ENG 9a, 19a, 109a, 109b, 119a, and 119b.

B. An academic course to be chosen by the student to match a literary genre practiced in one of the chosen workshops, e.g., ENG 10b or ENG 80a.

Minor in American Literature

Five courses are required, including the following:

A. ENG 6a.

B. ENG 7a.

C. Two advanced courses (on the 100-level) in American literature.

D. One course in American history or philosophy as approved by the advisor to minors.

E. No course with a final grade below C- can count toward fulfilling the requirements for the minor in American literature.

This department participates in the European Cultural Studies concentration and, in general, its courses are open to ECS concentrators.

Transfer credit toward concentration: Application for the use of transfer credit (awarded by the Office of the University Registrar) toward concentration requirements must be accompanied by a Requirement Substitution Form provided by the English office. The student may be asked to provide a syllabus, a transcript of grades, and in some cases examples of written work for which credit is being sought. The number of concentration requirements that can be satisfied with transfer credit is at the discretion of the undergraduate advising committee.

More detailed descriptions of the courses offered each semester will be available in the English department office.

First-year students are expected to take six courses in the English department. Each student will take ENG 200a (Methods of Literary Study); each student will complete a series of workshops in the teaching of writing. Other courses may be selected from departmental offerings at the 100 and 200 level, although at least two of these electives must be 200-level seminars. First-year students must present a paper at the First Year Symposium in the spring term.

The minimum residence requirement is one year, though students with inadequate preparation may require more.

A reading knowledge of a major foreign language (normally modern European, classical Greek, or Latin) must be demonstrated by passing a written translation examination. The completion of the language requirement at another university does not exempt the student from the Brandeis requirement.

A. ENG 200a (Methods of Literary Study).

B. WMNS 205a, or a foundational course alternative.

C. Five additional courses in the English department selected from 100-level courses and graduate seminars (200-level courses). At least two of these courses must be at the 200 level. One of these five courses must be listed as an elective with the Women's Studies Program.

D. One cross-listed women's studies course in a department other than the English department.

E. Attendance at the year-long, noncredit, eight-part Women's Studies Colloquium Series.

F. Language requirement: A reading knowledge of a major foreign language (normally modern European, classical Greek, or Latin) must be demonstrated by passing a written translation examination. The completion of the language requirement at another university does not exempt the student from the Brandeis requirement.

G. Thesis requirement: This project must be 25 to 35 pages long. Papers written for course work, papers presented at conferences, and papers written specifically for the M.A. degree are all acceptable. The paper must engage a feminist perspective or deal with literary subjects appropriate to women's studies. Each paper will be evaluated by a reader for whom the paper was not originally written. The paper must satisfy the reader's standards for excellence in M.A. degree level work. For further information, contact the women's studies advisor in the English department.

Second-year students continue to take courses, usually two each term. Students have an obligation to review their preparation in the field with their advisors and to ensure that they are acquiring both a comprehensive knowledge of the various historical periods and genres of English and American literature and a deeper knowledge of the particular period or field they propose to offer as a specialty. With the exception of ENG 200 and the teaching workshops, no specific courses are required of all Brandeis Ph.D. candidates; each student's program will be designed in light of the strengths and weaknesses of his or her previous preparation and in accord with his or her own interests.

A student who comes to Brandeis with a B.A. degree is required to take 12 courses for the Ph.D. degree. A student with an M.A. degree in English is required to take eight additional courses, six of which must be taken in the Brandeis English department. Additional courses may be taken in other departments at Brandeis or at other universities through various consortium arrangements.

The minimum residence requirement is two years beyond the master's degree or three years beyond the bachelor's degree.

In addition to the first language requirement, the student must (1) demonstrate a reading knowledge of a second major foreign language; or (2) demonstrate an advanced competence in the first foreign language and a knowledge of its literature; or (3) take a graduate course, ordinarily a seminar, in a field closely related to research on the dissertation. Approval of the graduate committee must be sought before such a course is taken; the student must demonstrate the relevance of the proposed course to the dissertation.

Training in teaching is provided through workshops offered in the first year. Second, third, and fourth year students are given a variety of teaching assignments, including University Writing Seminar courses associated with the University Seminar in Humanistic Inquiries program and assistantships in English department courses. Additional opportunities are available in the University Writing Center, in the program for teaching English as a Second Language, in other departments, and in competitively awarded Prize Instructorships in the University.

All candidates for the Ph.D. will be asked to pass an oral examination in the historical period or genre in which the candidate expects to write a dissertation. This examination should be taken in the third year.

Each student will submit a dissertation in a form approved by his/her dissertation director and by a committee appointed by the director of graduate studies. The student will defend the dissertation at a Final Oral Examination.

Students should also consult the General Degree Requirements and Academic Regulations found in an earlier section of this Bulletin.

Any course taught at the Graduate Consortium in Women's Studies at Radcliffe College by a faculty member in the department, and approved by the department, shall be deemed the equivalent of a 200-level course within the English department for the purposes of meeting departmental requirements.

(1-99) Primarily for Undergraduate Students

Prerequisite: Placement by the director of University Writing. Enrollment limited to 10 per section. Successful completion of this course does NOT satisfy the first-year writing requirement.

A course in the fundamentals of writing, required as a prerequisite to the University Writing Seminar for selected students identified by the director of University writing. Several sections will be offered in the fall semester.

Staff

A full-credit course for students beyond the freshman year who have yet to meet the graduation requirement otherwise met by completing the University Writing Seminar (see below). As in the University Writing Seminar, the stress is on argumentative and stylistic strategies. Usually offered every year.

Staff

A preparatory course in college writing, with stress on writing sound argumentative essays that demonstrate mechanical and stylistic expertise. This course satisfies the first-year writing requirement. University Writing Seminars are offered in conjunction with University Seminars in Humanistic Inquiries and are limited to first-year students. Each student is automatically enrolled in the University Writing Seminar connected to the particular University Seminar in which he or she enrolls. Offered every semester.

Staff

[ hum ]

Foundational texts of the Western Canon: Bible, Homer, Virgil, and Dante. Thematic emphases and supplementary texts vary from year to year.

Mr. Kimelman

[ cl³⁰ hum ]

We will study lyric, narrative, and dramatic poetry and some prose. The purpose is to acquaint students with the intellectual and stylistic transformations that mark the English Renaissance as the most varied and seminal period of "awakenings" and "reawakenings" in English literary history. Usually offered in even years.

Mr. Levitan

[ hum ]

Verse and prose by major authors including Dryden, Swift, Pope, Goldsmith, Sheridan, and Sterne. What motivates the rejection of satire and the turn to feeling and sentiment? How different are the relations of male and female writers to satire and sentiment? Usually offered every year.

Ms. Staves

[ hum ]

This survey course offers general coverage of the major literary genres in the 19th century. The course studies the cultural context forged by the interaction of fiction, prose, and poetry. Usually offered every third year. Will be offered in the spring of 2000.

Mr. Goodheart

[ hum ]

The transformation of our literary culture: the literary marketplace, domestic fiction, transcendentalism, and the problem of race. Cooper, Poe, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Fanny Fern, Harriet Wilson, Chopin, and Melville. Usually offered every year.

Mr. Gilmore

[ hum ]

Realism and beyond. Eliot, Frost, Dreiser, Fitzgerald, Hurston, Faulkner, and others. Usually offered every year.

Mr. Burt or Ms. Chu

[ hum ]

A workshop in nonfiction designed mainly for juniors and seniors who want to develop skills in the critical or personal essay, in memoir, autobiography, or scholarly writing. Readings include short works of nonfiction by a wide variety of writers. Usually offered every year.

Staff

(Formerly ENG 100b)

[ hum ]

Designed as a "first" course for all persons interested in the subject. It is intended to be basic without being elementary. The subject matter will consist of poems of short and middle length in English from the earliest period to the present. Usually offered every third year. Will be offered in the fall of 1999.

Mr. Cole

[ hum ]

The course's purpose is to train students in the critical reading of literary texts. There will be frequent assignments of writing that involve literary analysis. Usually offered every semester. Multiple sections.

Staff

(Formerly ENG 116a)

[ hum ]

We will examine some of the major 19th-century texts of African-American literature and why they are at the center of often heated debates about the canon today. We will consider why the issues raised by these texts--gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, the limits of democracy, and the relationship of African-Americans to the United States and other national spaces--resonate so profoundly in literary and cultural studies, and in national life. Usually offered in even years.

Ms. Smith

[ hum ]

A critical history of journalism in the United States. Topics to be covered include the muckrakers, partisan reportage of Spain, propaganda in the Second World War, the black press, censorship of the counter-culture, industrialization, and the Internet. Daily reading of major newspapers required. Usually offered in odd years. Will be offered in the spring of 2000.

Ms. Irr

[ hum ]

A workshop for beginning writers. Practice and discussion of short literary and oral forms: lyric, poetry, the short story, tales, curses, spells. Usually offered every year.

Ms. Campbell

(Formerly ENG 24a)

[ cl³³ cl⁴² hum ]

Seventeenth-century London performance investigated through the domains of its production--the court, the city, and the emerging "town," center of a new leisure class. Drama, masques, and music drama studied as modes of representation negotiating class mobility, changing concepts of state authority and personal identity, and shifts in gender and sexual relations. Usually offered in odd years.

Mr. King

[Formerly ENG 125a]

[ cl⁴³ hum ]

We will read the major poetry and some prose by the first generation of English Romantic poets who may be said to have defined Romanticism and set the tone for the last two centuries of English literature. Usually offered in even years.

Mr. Burt or Ms. Quinney

[ hum ]

Examines the Gothic novel from the 18th to the 20th centuries, looking at Gothic writers as rebels against the realistic novelists, incorporating some of their techniques, radically modifying others, and creating a tradition. Usually offered every summer.

Staff

[ cl³⁰ hum ]

A survey of Shakespeare as a dramatist. From nine to 12 plays will be read, representing all periods of Shakespeare's dramatic career. Usually offered every year.

Mr. Flesch or Mr. Levitan

Classic enlightenment texts about political, intellectual, economic, gender, and human rights: Milton, Locke, Adam Smith, the Bill of Rights, Paine, Wollstonecraft, and Wilberforce. Usually offered every third year. Last offered in the spring of 1999.

Ms. Staves

[ hum ]

How did American women writers engage with the social, political, and economic changes of the 19th century? Focuses on gendered rhetorics of industrialization, imperialism, immigration, and abolition, as well as concepts of national identity. Examines how these writers related themselves to literary movements of the period. Usually offered in even years.

Ms. Chu

[ hum ]

Examines literature in English by North American writers of Asian descent from the 19th century to the present. Focuses on issues of literary collectivity based on national origin and race, and how gender, sexuality, and class have affected critical approaches to this literature. Usually offered in even years.

Ms. Chu

[ wi hum ]

A survey of English fiction written during the first half of the first half of the 20th century, including works by Joseph Conrad, E. M. Forster, Katherine Mansfield, and Virginia Woolf. Usually offered in odd years.

Mr. Luftig

[ hum ]

Examines the many tensions between gender, racial, and communal meanings that been constructed by and through the mystical and often violent imagery of the West in the nation's cultural imagination. Will be offered in the spring of 2000.

Mr. Morgan

[ cl⁴⁶ cl⁴⁷ hum ]

Selected topics in the cultural construction and representation of AIDS. Usually offered every third year. Last offered in the spring of 1997.

Mr. Morrison

[ cl¹⁶ hum ]

A course on writing persuasively about humans' interactions with, and responsibilities for, the world around us. Practice in several forms of non-fiction prose; readings from various cultures and periods, mainly from the United States since Thoreau, including Berry, Carson, Dillard, and Lopez. Usually offered in odd years.

Mr. Luftig

(Formerly ENG 163a)

[ cl³⁰ hum ]

We will read lyric and narrative poetry by Wyatt, Surrey, Marlowe, Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, Jonson, Donne, and Herbert. Usually offered in even years.

Mr. Levitan

[ cl²⁶ hum ]

A course on the major poets of the 20th century. Usually offered every year.

Mr. Morrison

[ hum ]

The rhetorical strategies, themes, and objectives of Victorian realism. Texts may include Eliot's Middlemarch, Thackeray's Vanity Fair, Brontë's Villette, Gaskell's Mary Barton, Dickens's Bleak House, and Trollope's The Prime Minister. Usually offered every year.

Staff

Examines how wit operates as an effective writing strategy in the fiction of Grace Paley, Shirley Jackson, Elinor Lipman, Anne Tyler, and Lisa Alther. Wit is studied as a controlling device, as a way to enliven a text and charm a reader into a sympathetic response. Usually offered every summer.

Ms. Levy

[ hum ]

A study of major short works of modern fiction with a view toward understanding the modern element in those works. Readings will include James, Conrad, Joyce, Faulkner, Hemingway, Mann, Kafka, Gide, and Camus. Usually offered in even years.

Mr. Goodheart

Required for English concentrators on the Creative Writing Track. Usually offered every year.

Staff

For seniors interested in writing an essay outside of the Honors track. Usually offered every year.

Staff

For seniors interested in writing a thesis outside of the Honors trac. Usually offered every year.

Staff

Usually offered every year.

Staff

Usually offered every year.

Staff

For seniors interested in qualifying for departmental honors when combined with a 10th course for the concentration. Usually offered every year.

Staff

For seniors interested in qualifying for departmental honors when combined with a 10th course for the concentration. Usually offered every year.

Staff

For seniors interested in qualifying for departmental honors with a thesis. Usually offered every year.

Staff

(100-199) For Both Undergraduate and Graduate Students

[ hum ]

A critical analysis of contemporary culture, including television, film, video, advertising, and popular literature. Combines applied criticism and theoretical readings.

Mr. Morrison

[ hum ]

Using a variety of genres (prose, novel, poetry), the course explores how women writers of the 19th century negotiated the split between public (commercial, political) and private (domestic) concerns in their writing. How did these women writers understand the intersections between sexual, racial, class, and national forms of identity? Usually offered every third year. Last offered in the spring of 1998.

Staff

[ hum ]

A study of the changing relations between self and society in the 19th-century novel in a world in which society has achieved an unprecedented, almost god-like, authority-creating values, shaping behavior, passing judgement. What are the possibilities of personal freedom and self-expression? We consider the ways in which Jane Austen, George Eliot, Charles Dickens, Emily Brontë, and Thomas Hardy represent marriage, passion, work, and the moral life. Usually offered in odd years.

Mr. Goodheart

[ hum ]

A seminar devoted to rigorous and full analyses of selected poetry, in English, by recent and contemporary American writers.

Staff

[ hum ]

Satire, farce, comic monologue, and more in 20th-century American novels and short stories. What makes a work of fiction funny? How do Nabokov, Roth, Edith Wharton, Randall Jarrell, and others employ the language of comedy to express the social, sexual, and political anxieties and absurdities of their times? Usually offered in odd years.

Staff

[ hum ]

Usually offered every year.

Staff

[ hum ]

A workshop for motivated students with a serious interest in pursuing writing. Student stories will be copied and distributed before each class meeting. Students' stories, as well as exemplary published short stories, will provide the occasion for textual criticism in class. Usually offered every year.

Staff

(Formerly ENG 21b)

[ hum ]

A study of the modern representation of self as porous and fragmented. We trace the evolution of this notion in literature, philosophy, and psychoanalysis. Texts will include: Locke, Hume, Wordsworth, Woolf, Freud, and Ashbery. Usually offered every third year. Last offered in the spring of 1999.

Ms. Quinney

[ hum ]

Addresses the history of Afro-American literature from its mid-18th-century beginnings through the post-Civil War Reconstruction of the late 19th century. We will examine transcriptions of oral folk productions, slave narratives, autobiography, essays, poetry, and prose fiction. Usually offered in odd years.

Ms. Smith

[ hum ]

Examines prose and poetry that enlarge our perception of the possible, in literature and the imagination. We look at sentence patterns as choreographers, write under their influence, and generate a hands-on understanding of literary invention and the exciting generosities of form. Usually offered every third year. Last offered in the fall of 1998.

Ms. Broumas

[ hum ]

This combination literature/creative writing course will combine the study of contemporary autobiographical prose and poetry with a series of writing exercises based on these texts. We'll examine--as writers--what it means to construct the story of one's life, and the ways in which lies, metaphor, and imagination transform memory to reveal and conceal the self. Usually offered in even years.

Ms. Broumas

[ hum ]

An advanced fiction workshop for students primarily interested in the short story. Students are expected to compose and revise three stories, complete typed critiques of each other's work weekly, and discuss readings based on examples of various techniques. Usually offered every year.

Ms. Phillips

[ hum ]

For those who wish to improve as poets while broadening their knowledge of poetry. Half the semester is devoted to prosody, with formal exercises as preparation for later "free-assignments." Student's poems are discussed in a "workshop" format with emphasis on revision. Remaining time covers assigned readings and issues of craft. Usually offered every year.

Ms. Broumas or Mr. Cole

[ cl²¹ hum ]

A broad consideration of recent issues and trends in literary theory, primarily formalist, structuralist, psychoanalytic, poststructuralist, feminist, and Marxist. Usually offered in odd years.

Staff

[ cl³⁹ hum ]

A survey of early English literature. The first half will be Old English in translation: charms, riddles, elegiac poetry, the epic poem Beowulf. The second half will consist of selected Canterbury Tales in Middle English and some literature in translation: lyric poetry, the Gawain Romance, and Malory's Morte d'Arthur. Usually offered every year.

Ms. Klein

[ cl⁹ hum ]

Writers' concern with "criticism" broadly understood, including literary criticism in Johnson and Sheridan, skeptical historiography in Gibbon and Hume, and political criticism in Paine and Wollstonecraft. Debates on the effectiveness and propriety of wit in reasoned argument and political debate. Usually offered every third year. Will be offered in the spring 2000.

Ms. Staves

[ cl⁴³ hum ]

The "younger generation" of Romantic poets. Byron, Shelley, and Keats both continue and react against poetic, political, and philosophical preoccupations and positions of their immediate elders. We will read their major works, as well as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Usually offered in odd years.

Mr. Burt or Ms. Quinney

[ cl⁴⁴ wi hum ]

The course's concern will be how some of the central American Realists and Naturalists set about representing and analyzing American social and political life. Topics include the changing status of individuals, classes, and genders, among others. Usually offered every third year. Will be offered in the spring of 2000.

Staff

[ cl³ cl⁴³ hum ]

Essays, poems, and fiction by Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Dickinson, Melville, Fuller, Poe, and Hawthorne. Usually offered every third year. Last offered in the spring of 1995.

Mr. Burt

[ hum ]

A study of the major works of the two great antithetic novelists of the Modern period. Usually offered in odd years.

Mr. Goodheart

[ hum ]

As colony, homeland, Paradise, Babylon, the Caribbean has been at the center of theorizations of identity, imperialism, nation, and diaspora. We examine the impact of migration on the imagination of writers from and on the region. Usually offered in odd years.

Ms. Smith

[ hum ]

A workshop for writers. Usually offered in even years.

Staff

Examines the screenplay as a unique literary genre, and investigates the differences between writing stories in prose and writing for the screen. The course is divided into three equal parts: reading theory; reading published screenplays; editing a published story into screenplay format.

Staff

[ hum ]

Introduces students to critical feminist thought by focusing closely each year on a different specific "problem", for example: 19th- and 20th-century modernity as manifested in the development of globalizing capitalism, the racialized democratic citizen and wage work; our understanding of cultural production; debates about the nature, applications, and constitution of feminist theory. Usually offered in odd years.

Ms. Chu

[ cl³⁹ hum ]

In addition to reading Chaucer's major work, The Canterbury Tales, in Middle English, we will pay special attention to situating The Tales in relation to linguistic, literary, and social developments of the later Middle Ages. No previous knowledge of Middle English required. Usually offered in even years.

Ms. Campbell

[ hum ]

An intensive analysis of a single play or a small number of Shakespeare's plays. Usually offered in odd years.

Mr. Flesch or Mr. Levitan

[ cl⁷ cl¹⁵ hum ]

Women writers from Behn to Austen; novels, plays, pamphlets, diaries, and letters. The culture's attitudes to women writers; women's attitudes to literary achievement and fame, women's resistance to stereotypes, and women's complicity in the promulgation of images of the "good woman." Usually offered every third year. Last offered in the fall of 1995.

Ms. Staves

[ cl⁴³ hum ]

Major texts by Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, and Byron, among others. Our purpose is to define the common ground of the Romantics' poetic, political, and philosophic goals and to determine the singularity of each writer's achievement. Usually offered in even years.

Staff

[ hum ]

Novels to be read feature finely etched portrayals of change within the primal family structure, specifically death or loss of a parent and resulting transformation in the family gestalt. Films of four of the novels read will be screened. Usually offered in even years.

Ms. Phillips

[ hum ]

An attempt to explore the concept of "modernism" through an intensive reading of seminal poems, novels, and plays. Focuses on the formal innovations of modernism and their relation to various ideological and political issues. Usually offered in even years.

Mr. Morrison

[ hum ]

Examines the forms and methods of satirical fiction and poetry, with emphasis on writers from classical Greece and Rome, Britain, and the United States.

Staff

[ hum ]

Designed to introduce students to the linguistic structure of Old Norse, to develop reading proficiency in Old Norse, and to introduce students to some of the classic texts of the Old Norse sagas, especially those with parallels to Beowulf. Usually offered in odd years.

Ms. Maling

[ hum ]

A study of the revenge tradition in the work of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. The problem of blood-revenge will be looked at as a historical phenomenon in Renaissance society and as a social threat transformed into art in such dramatists as Shakespeare, Marlowe, Kyd, Marston, Tourneur, Chapman, and Webster. Usually offered every year.

Mr. Levitan

(Formerly ENG 141b)

[ cl⁴ cl³⁵ cl⁴² wi hum ]

How are our bodies the material for our presentations of self and our interactions with others? We will read contemporary theories and histories of the body against literary, philosophical, political, and performance texts of the 16th- through the 18th-centuries. Usually offered every third year. Last offered in the fall of 1997.

Mr. King

[ hum ]

Examines the ways that 19th-century American writers imagine the nation in spatial terms. We look at a range of genres, examining the role of a pre-national topography of America in terms of borders, racialized spaces, the public and private division of gendered space, and the new urban space. Usually offered every third year. Last offered in the spring of 1999.

Ms. Buck

[ hum ]

A study of classics of the genre("The Killers," "The Maltese Falcon," "Touch of Evil") as well as more recent variations ("Chinatown," "Bladerunner"), Readings include source fiction (Hemingway, Hammett) and essays in criticism and theory. Usually offered every third year. Will be offered in the spring of 2000.

Ms. Quinney

[ hum ]

This course examines a publicly prominent literature and its testing and validation of the identities of various constituencies: Irish, Irish-American, Irish-Jewish, Irish-Unionist, and so on. Writers considered include Joyce, Yeats, Synge, and Beckett. Other prominent figures as well as a wide range of contemporary authors are also taken up. Usually offered in even years.

Mr. Luftig

[ cl⁴⁶ hum ]

Historical, literary, and theoretical perspectives on the construction and performance of homosexual identities. How has the sin that cannot be named been overdetermined as the margin against which heterosexuality defines itself? How has that margin provided a space for radical praxis? Usually offered in even years.

Mr. King

[ cl³⁹ cl⁴⁸ hum ]

A survey of (mostly) medieval treatments of the legendary material associated with King Arthur and his court, in several genres: bardic poetry, history, romance, prose narrative. Usually offered in odd years.

Ms. Campbell

[ hum ]

Focuses on William, Henry, and Alice James, and on the different ways they approach the representation of human interaction, thought, perception, and suffering in their novels, philosophical essays, and diary. We pay particular attention to their intellectual and aesthetic contexts. Usually offered every third year. Will be offered in the spring of 2000.

Mr. Flesch

[ hum ]

An introduction to recent poetry in English, dealing with a wide range of poets, as well as striking and significant departures from the poetry of the past. We will look, where possible, at individual volumes by representative authors. Usually offered every third year. Last offered summer 1995.

Staff

[ cl¹⁵ cl³⁶ hum ]

In this course we will imagine meanings for terms like "American" and "women" in relation to poetry. After introductory study of Anne Bradstreet, Phillis Wheatley, and Emily Dickinson, readings of (and about) women whose work was circulated widely, especially among other women poets, will be selected from mainly 20th-century writers. Usually offered in odd years.

Ms. Campbell

[ hum ]

Investigates the exchange between performance texts and contemporaneous discussions of class, nationality, and political party. Emphasizes the emergence of modern gender and sexual roles and the impact of the first professional women actors. Usually offered in odd years.

Mr. King

[ wi hum ]

Studies how poetry was written and read during the last time poetry held a prominent role in England's public life. The course centers on Tennyson's career as Poet Laureate, but also gives full attention to Robert Browning's work. The course also surveys the work of E. B. Browning, the Pre-Raphaelites, and others, and concludes with the poetry of Hardy and of the early Yeats. Usually offered every third year. Last offered in the fall of 1998.

Mr. Luftig

[ cl⁴³ wi hum ]

Poetry of Whitman, Dickinson, Emerson, and Melville, with representative poems of Whittier, Bryant, Longfellow, Poe, Sigourney, and Tuckerman. Usually offered every third year. Will be offered in the fall of 1999.

Mr. Burt

[ hum ]

This course explores the slave narrative genre, with close attention to 19th- and 20th-century texts by Frederic Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Ralph Ellison, Sherley Ann Williams, and others. Close attention is paid to the politics of authorship and endorsement, as well as to the controversy over William Styron's 1967 Confessions of Nat Turner. Usually offered in odd years.

Ms. Smith

[ hum ]

Explores major documents in the history of criticism from Plato to the present. Texts will be read as representative moments in the history of criticism and as documents of self-sufficient literary and intellectual interest. Usually offered every third year. Will be offered in the fall of 1999.

Mr. Morrison or Ms. Quinney

[ cl³⁰ hum ]

A course on poetic authority: the poetry of authority and the authority of poetry. Spenser and Milton will be treated individually, but the era they bound will be examined in terms of the tensions within and between their works. Usually offered in even years.

Mr. Flesch

[ hum ]

The early development of the novel in England, with particular attention to contemporary theories of the novel and the relationship between the literary history of genre and the social history of class. Authors include Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Sterne, and Burney. Usually offered every year.

Ms. Staves

[ hum ]

Readings will include Moby Dick, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, The Scarlet Letter, and The Marble Faun, as well as short novels by all three authors. Usually offered every fourth year. Last offered in the spring of 1998.

Staff

[ hum ]

Examines Gothic fiction as a method of exploring the capacities of the imagination, disclosing its power, and meeting its threat. Beginning with the 19th-century founders of the genre in America, the second half of the course deals with some 20th-century masters. Usually offered in even years.

Mr. Burt

[ hum ]

Fiction of the 20th-century American South: Faulkner, Warren, Porter, Welty, and others. Usually offered every third year. Last offered in the fall of 1994.

Mr. Burt

[ hum ]

Close study of American short fiction masterworks. We read as writers write, discussing solutions to narrative obstacles, examining the consequences of alternate points of view. We study words and syntax to understand and articulate how technical decisions have moral and emotional weight. Usually offered in even years.

Staff

[ cl¹² cl⁴² cl⁴⁶ hum ]

Gender and sexuality studied as sets of performed traits and cues for interactions among social actors. Theorists suggest that gender and sexual identities are neither biologically innate nor psychologically essential, but are repeatedly produced in everyday social practices. Readings will argue that differently organized gender and sexual practices are possible for men and women. Discussion and three short papers. Usually offered in odd years.

Mr. King

[ hum ]

Readings of contemporary post-realist fiction, with an emphasis on works concerning catastrophes and secrets. Authors include Hawkes, Nabokov, Pynchon, Reed, Momaday, Morrisson, Sorrentino, DeLillo, Auster, and Brossard. Usually offered in odd years.

Ms. Irr

[ hum ]

Focuses on literary explorations of American childhood and identity. Race, gender, and the search for meaning and connection through language in a multicultural society are represented through a range of contemporary American voices.

Ms. Phillips

[ cl¹² cl²⁰ cl²⁷ cl²⁹ hum ]

Defining politics as strategies of power, we will look at these strategies in sexual, racial, economic, and ideological terms as they are represented in primarily British and American novels of the 20th century. We will focus on literary responses to various political and economic systems and on the literary depictions of the body in public and institutional spaces. Usually offered every year.

Ms. Klein

(200 and above) Primarily for Graduate Students

Usually offered every year.

Mr. Gilmore

A series of test cases for the study of poetry's roles in British culture, from the 16th-century to the present, including works by Shakespeare, Defoe, Byron, Tennyson, Yeats; criticism by Greenblatt, McGann, Rich, and others. Usually offered every third year. Will be offered spring term 2000.

Mr. Luftig

Examines fiction of the era of modernization and desegregation. Readings include novels by Robert Penn Warren, Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, Ernest Gaines, Margaret Walker, Caroline Gordon, Ellen Glasgow, and William Faulkner. Usually offered every third year. Last offered in the spring of 1999.

Mr. Burt

This seminar considers a broad range of recent issues and trends in literary theory. Attention is given to structuralist, post-structuralist, psychoanalytic, Marxist, and feminist theories. Usually offered every third year. Last offered in the fall of 1994.

Mr. Morrison

(Formerly ENG 242a)

Reading in (primarily) English genres of the period of discovery and colonial exploration (up to 1727): "births" of Utopia, anthropology, science fiction, and the novel; relations of science to prose fiction and sensational genres. Collaterally an overview of the methods and assumptions of intellectual history in its "new historicist" and "cultural materialist" avatars. Usually offered every third year. Last offered in the spring of 1997.

Ms. Campbell

An exploration of the concept of the modern through an intensive reading of The Waste Land, Ulysses, Between the Acts, and Endgame. Usually offered every third year. Will be offered in the spring of 2000.

Mr. Morrison

The cultural criticism of the past 200 years may be read as a history of the quarrel between literature and the modern world. We will read, among others, Carlyle, Dickens, Ruskin, Arnold, Marx, Eliot, Orwell, Trilling, Williams, Eagleton, Jameson, and Said. Usually offered in odd years.

Mr. Goodheart

The debates, theoretical and practical, historical and contemporary, on canonicity and taste. How and what is the canon? What is a canon? Is the canon oppressive? Would every canon be? Are there any criteria for literary evaluation? Readings include Dryden, Burke, Hume, Kant, Kierkegaard, Woolf, Smith, Harpham, Sedgwick, Guillory, Nussbaum, Bourdieu, Gates, Froula, Ronald Dworkin, Fish, both Blooms, Rorty, and William James. Usually offered every third year. Last offered in the spring of 1993.

Mr. Flesch

This course, primarily devoted to literary theory, will also pay some attention to feminist scholarship in related disciplines, including history, anthropology, and legal studies. Usually offered in odd years.

Ms. Chu

In this seminar we read contemporary performance theory against everyday and formal performances of the Restoration and the 18th century in England. We will investigate agents' negotiations of social and personal space in plays, diaries, novels, and treatises. Usually offered every third year. Will be offered in the fall of 1999.

Mr. King

A survey of the historically pivotal literary career of Chaucer, with emphasis on The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer's works as social analysis and critique, from the point of view of a bourgeois outsider in an aristocratic milieu; Chaucer's medieval genres and their transformation into vehicles of early modern sensibility; medieval relations of secular literature to its audience(s); orality, literacy, and the book. Usually offered in odd years.

Ms. Campbell

Recent feminist criticism of texts written by women between 1660 and 1800. The emphasis will not be on feminist theory, but rather on issues in the criticism and interpretation of literary texts and on feminist issues in literary theory. Usually offered in even years.

Ms. Staves

This seminar looks in depth at issues surrounding English Romanticism. Works considered include the poetry of Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Percy Shelley, and Keats, and the prose of De Quincey, Hazlitt, Lamb, Mary Shelley, and Brontë. The works are examined from theoretical, historical, political, and formal perspectives. Usually offered in even years.

Ms. Quinney

A graduate seminar on American poetry of the 19th century, including Dickinson, Whitman, Emerson, Melville, Tuckerman, the "Fireside poets" (Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, Bryant), the "Nightingales" (Sigourney and Oakes-Smith), religious and patriotic lyrics, and much more. Usually offered every third year. Last offered in the fall of 1994.

Mr. Burt

Using rotating topics ("Black British," "Anglophone Caribbean," "Intellectuals and the British Empire"), this course is designed to introduce students to some of the major issues and thinkers in this field. Usually offered every fourth year. Last offered in the fall of 1998.

Ms. Smith

Studies in the cultural construction and representation of the self and its sexuality; we focus primarily on the various technologies of self-knowledge and self-fashioning (literary and otherwise) in the modern West. Usually offered every third year. Last offered in the fall of 1996.

Mr. Morrison

Examining exemplary works of 19th- and 20th-century fiction, we study the ways in which narrative construction (plotting, rhetoric, narrative voice, ideological motivation) represent personal and social reality. We raise questions about the relationship between the real and the ethical, between what is and what ought to be, and how our own ethical concerns complicate our understanding of the novels we read. Usually offered every third year. Last offered in the fall of 1997.

Mr. Goodheart

Once recovered, to what degree are the paradigmatic texts of classical antiquity--or even the later models of Petrarch and the "Pléiade"--rather re-covered by Renaissance English poets? How and why do texts influence texts? Translation, imitation, and variation will be the subjects of inquiry. Usually offered every third year. Last offered in the fall of 1995.

Mr. Levitan

Studies the short poem between 1520 and 1600, in the native and continental traditions. The major figures to be read include John Skelton, Wyatt, Surrey, Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare. Among the motifs to be examined are Renaissance musical realization of lyric texts (Dowland, Campion, and the madrigalists), variations on classical sources, and stylistic innovations. Usually offered every third year. Last offered in the spring of 1993.

Mr. Levitan

Explores a variety of 18th-century representations of marriage, each of which has been thought to make some claim to being a "realistic" representation. Sources include legal documents, medical treatises, paintings, periodical accounts, conduct books, drama, and novels. We concern ourselves with the apparent social function of each text and with the ideology of marriage it promotes. Usually offered in even years.

Ms. Staves

The history of English versification from Wyatt on is the history of the theory of versification. This course studies both, asking what rhyme and meter are, and what their connection to poetic meaning is. We consider the answers given by poets from Wyatt through Ashbery and Merrill and theorists from Spenser and Milton through Freud, Empson, and Easthope. Usually offered in even years.

Mr. Flesch

A comprehensive survey of American literature, with particular emphasis on its interactions with a range of disciplines: history, law, linguistics, philosophy, and science. Usually offered in even years.

Staff

A study of three major 18th-century comic writers with an emphasis on exploring some common ground among them, including their complex uses of irony and sentiment, and considering their generic experiments. Among the issues to be considered are the writers' highly self-conscious relation to new developments in the early modern book trade. Usually offered every third year. Last offered in the spring of 1994.

Ms. Staves

This course will explore the relation between selected American novels and the social order out of which they emerged. We will pose the following questions: Is literature a criticism of society, or an affirmation of prevalent values? Do novels challenge or reinforce popular sentiment? Usually offered in odd years.

Mr. Gilmore

Critical investigation of representational practices as modes of agency, problematizing identity and difference, and negotiating hegemony and marginality. Interdisciplinary focus including performance and cultural studies; the practice and theory of literary, visual, and performing arts; and historiography. Usually offered every third year. Last offered in the spring of 1996.

Mr. King

Modern theories of pedagogy and composition with practical experience. Students are apprenticed to current instructors. Usually offered in even years.

Mr. Luftig

Specific sections for individual faculty members as requested. Permission of the director of graduate studies required.

Staff

Specific sections for individual faculty members as requested.

Staff

Courses by Brandeis Faculty at the Graduate Consortium in Women's Studies at Radcliffe College

Team-taught by an historian of science and a literary critic. Explores the intersections between two early modern developments: the new genre of utopia, and the new ideas about the goals and methods of natural inquiry identified with the "Scientific Revolution." Early modern (and some twentieth-century American) authors will include: Christine de Pizan, Raleigh, Bacon, Campanella, Catalina de Erauso, Cyrano de Bergerac, Margaret Cavendish, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Naomi Mitchison, and Octavia Butler.

Ms. Campbell (Brandeis) and Ms. Park (Harvard University)

Lyric Poetry and Drawing

Women in American Jewish Literature

Feminist Theory in Literary and Cultural Studies

Imagining How We Are: East and West I

Imagining How We Are: East and West II

Madness and Folly in Renaissance Literature

Sex and Sensibility in Pre-Revolutionary European Novels

Dickens and Dostoevsky

Afro-American Literature of the Twentieth Century

American Jewish Writers in the Twentieth Century

Seminar in American Jewish Fiction: Literary Readings: Roth and Ozick

The Grammar of English