Objectives

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.

How to Become an Undergraduate Concentrator

Prospective concentrators should take one of the following: HUM 10a or ENG 10a (see "A" under the "Main Track" description below), as well as English 11a, Introduction to Literary Method, 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.

How to Be Admitted to the Graduate Program

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.

Faculty

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

Poetry.

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

Medieval literature. Poetry. Renaissance literature.

Fannie Hurst Poet.

Modernism. American literature. Asian-American literature.

Poetry. Renaissance. Theory.

Twentieth-century American literature. Theory. Cultural studies.

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

Fannie Hurst Writer.

Modernism. Literary criticism and theory.

American women's poetry. Feminism. The Bible.

Fiction, Writer-in-Residence.

Romanticism. Literature and philosophy. Eighteenth-century literature.

Twentieth-century Anglophone literature. Postcolonial theory.

African and Afro-American literature. Caribbean literature.

Renaissance literature. Shakespeare. Religion and literature.

Course Numbers

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

Requirements for the Undergraduate Concentration

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 ENG 10a).

B. A semester course in literary method, ENG 11a.

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 10th 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.

Requirements for the Undergraduate Minor

Concentrators in the Department of English and American Literature are not eligible to enroll in minors offered by the department, although concentrators in the Main Track may enroll in the minor in Creative Writing.

Minor in Creative 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 (American Literature from 1832 to 1900).

B. ENG 7a (American Literature from 1900 to 2000).

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.

Minor in English Literature

Five courses are required, including the following:

A. Four courses in English literature. Two of these courses may be in the Anglophone literature of a place that has an Anglophone literary tradition because it was once a British colony, for example, Ireland, India, or South Africa. Anglophone literature courses include: AAAS 133b (The Literature of the Caribbean), ENG 17b (African Novel), ENG 127b (Migrating Bodies, Migrating Texts), and ENG 177b (Literature of Global English). This list is not exhaustive; students should check with the department office for lists of currently offered and appropriate courses.

B. One course in British history, politics, philosophy, art, or music, as approved by the advisor to minors. Or one course in the history or culture of a place that was once a British colony, or a course in Post-colonial theory. Such courses include: AAAS 85a (Survey of Southern African History), FA 43a (The Art of Medieval England), HIST 113a (English Medieval History), HIST 141b (Studies in British History: 1830 to the Present), and PHIL 174a (Hume). This list is not exhaustive; students should check with the department office of lists of currently offered and appropriate courses. Alternatively, one comparative literature course, in which British literature constitutes at least one-third of the reading.

C. Creative writing courses do not count toward the English literature minor. No advance placement courses may be counted toward the minor.

D. No course with a final grade below C- can count toward the requirements for the minor in English literature.

Special Notes Relating to Undergraduates

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.

Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts

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.

Requirements for the Joint Degree of Master of Arts in English and American Literature and Women's Studies

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, 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. First year students must present a paper at the First Year Symposium in the spring term.

H. 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.

Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

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 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.

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.

Training in teaching is provided through workshops offered in the first year. Second, third, and fourth year students are normally given a variety of supervised teaching assignments, including University Writing Seminars, University Seminars in Humanistic Inquiries, and/or in English department courses.

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.

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.

Special Notes Relating to the Graduate Program

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

Courses of Instruction

(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 first-year writing requirement for selected students identified by the director of University writing. Several sections will be offered in the fall semester.

Staff

A course in college writing, with stress on writing sound argumentative essays that demonstrate mechanical and stylistic expertise. This course satisfies Option II of the first-year writing requirement. 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.

Staff

[ hum ]

Studies 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 every second year.

Staff

[ 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.

Staff

[ 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. Last offered in the spring of 2000.

Staff

[ 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, Ms. Chu, or Ms. Irr

[ 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

[ hum ]

Helps prepare majors for study of most pre-modern and even modern literature in English through readings of major texts central to a literary education for writers in English from the Middle Ages through Modernism. Genesis, Iliad, Odyssey Sappho's lyrics, Aeneid, Metamorphoses. Will be offered every year. Will be offered in the spring of 2002.

Ms. Campbell

[ 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. Last offered in the fall of 1999.

Staff

[ 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

[ hum ]

Examines 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. Considers 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 every second year.

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 World War II, the black press, censorship of the counter-culture, industrialization, and the Internet. Daily reading of major newspapers required. Usually offered every second year.

Ms. Irr

[ nw hum ]

Examines the African novel in English, along with works in translation. Attention to language address, and narrative form, in, among others: Achebe, Ousmane, Thiong'o, Farah, Head, Hove, Gordimer, and Coetzee. Usually offered every second year. Last offered in spring 2001.

Mr. Sanders

[ 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)

[ 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 every second year.

Mr. King

[Formerly ENG 125a]

[ hum ]

Examines 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 every second year. Will be offered in the fall of 2001.

Mr. Burt or Ms. Quinney

[ hum [

Traces the development of the gothic novel from Horace Walpole to Anne Rice. Focuses on monstrosity as an intersection of class, gender, colonial and sexual power, and the persistence of gothic conventions in popular culture. Texts include The Monk, Frankenstein, Dracula. Special one-time offering. Will be offered in the fall of 2001.

Mr. Cole

[ 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 Ms. Targoff

[ hum ]

Examines Austen's six novels in depth and investigates the cultural phenomenon of recent film adaptations. Looks closely at narrative strategies, competing interpretations, and the relationship between Austen's popular success and her place in the literary canon. Special one-time offering. Will be offered in the fall of 2001.

Ms. Ellington

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

Staff

[ 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 every second year.

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 every second year. Will be offered in the fall of 2001.

Ms. Chu

[ 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 every second year.

Staff

[ hum ]

Studies epic's unruly opposite--romance, focusing on experiments in narrative, epistemology, and gender. Readings in Chaucer, Sidney (Arcadia), Spenser (The Faerie Queene), Greek and Italian tales, and late Shakespeare (Pericles, The Tempest). Special one-time offering. Was offered in the fall of 2000.

Staff

[ 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

[ 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 every second year.

Staff

[ hum ]

Examines lyric and narrative poetry by Wyatt, Surrey, Marlowe, Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, Jonson, Donne, and Herbert. Usually offered every second year.

Staff

[ hum ]

Literary and political texts of the African American literary movements of the 1920s centered in Harlem, New York City. Addresses issues of literary history, canonization, connections to other 20th-century arts and political movements. Authors includeCountee Cullen, W.E.B. DuBois, Langston Huges, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnston, and Claude McKay. Will be offered every third year starting 2003.

Ms. Chu

[ 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

[ 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 every second year.

Staff

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 track. 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. Will be offered in the fall of 2001.

Mr. Morrison

[ hum ]

How has the Internet changed the practice of writing? How can writing map cyber-space? What happens to the personnel of writing (author, reader, publisher) in context of cybernetics? Immerses students in critical and utopian theories of cyber textuality. Usually offered every second year. Will be offered in the spring of 2002.

Ms. Irr

[ hum ]

Studies several major prose writers of the late 18th century, with attention not only to their distinctive and powerful styles of writing, but to the three radically different views of human nature that they present. Special one-time offering. Will be offered in the spring of 2002.

Ms. Quinney

[ 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? Considers 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 every second year.

Mr. Morrison

[ hum ]

A workshop for poets willing to explore and develop their craft through intense reading in current poetry, stylistic explorations of content, and imaginative stretching of forms. Usually offered every year.

Ms. Broumas

[ 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

[ hum ]

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

Ms. Quinney

[ hum ]

Seminar in postcolonial theory with relevant background texts, with an emphasis on the specificity of its theoretical claims. Readings from, among others, Spivak, Said, Bhabha, Appiah, Mudimbe, Marx, Lenin, Freud, Derrida, Césaire, and Fanon. Usually offered every second year. Last offered in the spring of 2001.

Mr. Sanders

[ 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. Examines transcriptions of oral folk productions, slave narratives, autobiography, essays, poetry, and prose fiction. Usually offered every second year.

Ms. Smith

[ hum ]

Examines prose and poetry that enlarge our perception of the possible, in literature and the imagination. Looks 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. Examines--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 every second year.

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 will be devoted to prosody, with formal exercises as preparation for later "free-assignments." Student's poems will be discussed in a "workshop" format with emphasis on revision. Remaining time will cover assigned readings and issues of craft. Usually offered every year.

Mr. Campo

[ hum ]

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

Staff

[ 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.

Staff

[ 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. Last offered in the spring of 2000.

Staff

[ wi hum ]

The "younger generation" of Romantic poets. Byron, Shelley, and Keats continue and react against poetic, political, and philosophical preoccupations and positions of their immediate elders. Examines their major works, as well as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Usually offered every second year. Will be offered in the spring of 2002.

Mr. Burt or Ms. Quinney

[ 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 fall of 2001.

Mr. Burt or Ms. Chu

[ hum ]

Beginning with the region's representation as a tabula rasa, we examine the textual and visual constructions of the Caribbean as colony, homeland, backyard, paradise, and Babylon, and how the region's migrations have prompted ideas about evolution, hedonism, imperialism, nationalism, and diaspora. Usually offered every second year. Will be offered in the fall of 2001.

Ms. Smith

[ hum ]

A workshop for writers. Usually offered every second year.

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 every second year.

Ms. Chu

[ hum ]

In addition to reading Chaucer's major work, The Canterbury Tales, in Middle English, pays 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 every second year.

Ms. Campbell

[ hum ]

An intensive analysis of a single play or a small number of Shakespeare's plays. Usually offered every second year.

Mr. Flesch

[ 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 1999.

Staff

[ 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 every second year.

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 every second year. Will be offered in the spring of 2002.

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 every second year.

Ms. Chu or 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 every second year.

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 third year. Last offered in the spring of 1999.

Staff

[ hum ]

How are our bodies the material for our presentations of self and our interactions with others? Examines 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. Will be offered in the spring of 2002.

Mr. King

[ 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. Last offered in the spring of 2000.

Ms. Quinney

[ 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 every second year.

Mr. King

[ 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 every second year. Will be offered in the fall of 2001.

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. Pays particular attention to their intellectual and aesthetic contexts. Usually offered every third year. Last 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. Looks, where possible, at individual volumes by representative authors. Usually offered every third year. Last offered in the fall of 2000.

Staff

[ hum ]

In this course we 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 every second year.

Ms. Campbell

[ hum ]

Introduces theories of culture--what it is, who has it, where it is located, when it changes, and why it endures. Emphasis on analyzing assumptions and consequences of theories, with short papers applying major concepts and a scavenger hunt. Usually offered every second year. Last offered in fall of 2000.

Ms. Irr

[ 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 every second year. Will be offered in the fall of 2001.

Mr. King

[ 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.

Staff

[ hum ]

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

Mr. Burt

[ hum ]

Close reading of American women writers who work in an experimental vein: Stein, Barnes, Nin, Bowles, diPrima, Acker, Anderson, Hejinian, and others. Situates writers in relation to movements such as cubism, surrealism, existentialism, performance art, and language poetry. Usually offered every third year. Last offered in spring 2001.

Ms. Irr

[ hum ]

Examines a wide array of gendered narratives in the Old and New testaments (in English translation). Alongside the Biblical texts, we consider feminist theology and biblical commentary, and read re-visionary poetry and fiction by women using biblical themes. Special one-time offering. Will not be offered again.

Ms. Ostriker

[ 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 second year.

Mr. Morrison or Ms. Quinney

[ 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 every second year.

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.

Staff

[ 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 every second year.

Mr. Burt

[ nw hum ]

Survey of world Anglophone literatures, as well as in translation, with attention to literary responses of writers to aspects of English as a global language with a colonial history. Focus on Indian subcontinent, Africa, the Caribbean, North America. Writers may include: Rushdie, Devi, Coetzee, Kincaid, Atwood, Anzaldua. Usually offered every year.

Mr. Sanders

[ hum ]

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

Staff

[ 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 every second year.

Mr. King

[ hum ]

Readings of contemporary post-realist fiction. Authors include Hawkes, Nabokov, Pynchon, Reed, Momaday, Morrisson, Sorrentino, DeLillo, Auster, and Brossard. Usually offered every second year.

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

[ hum ]

From Israel to India, Jewish settlement is always subject to relentless self-evaluation, adaptation, and judgement. Focusing on contemporary literature, we explore shades of Diaspora across the globe. Students should read Flotsam by Erich Maria Remarque in advance preparation. Usually offered every year.

Staff

[ hum ]

A study of the cross-disciplinary linkages between literature and law, through works of testimonial writing such as slave narratives, Testimonio, and holocaust narrative, as well as testimony from South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Usually offered every second year. Will be offered in the spring of 2002.

Mr. Sanders

(200 and above) Primarily for Graduate Students

Usually offered every year.

Mr. Morrison

Reading of the complete Works of Malory, also known as the Morte D'Arthur, as both the postponed climax of high and late medieval romance and the early triumph of a nascent English fiction in the modern vernacular. Usually offered every third year. Will be offered in the spring of 2002.

Ms Campbell

Study of Blake’s major poems, including the prophecies, in the context of his debate with the prevailing philosophical currents of his day. Focuses on his critique of the Enlightenment. Readings include work by representative Enlightenment thinkers. Special one time offering. Was offered in the spring of 2001.

Ms.Quinney

Examines the American commitment to external and internal legibility or accessibility. Readings span the nation's history from the Federalist Papers to Ellison's Invisible Man. Topics include the Americanization of cinema and psychoanalysis in the 20th century. Usually offered every third year. Last offered in the fall of 2000.

Mr. Gilmore

Concentrating on Africa, and drawing relavant comparisons, this course prepares graduate students pursuing research in postcolonial literatures and theory. Possible topics: orature and literature; multilingualism and translation; colonialism and apartheid; Négritude and pan-Africanism, gender and human rights; truth and reconciliation. Usually offered every second year. Will be offered in the spring of 2002.

Mr. Sanders

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

[ hum ]

Milton's poetry and selected prose, with particular attention to Paradise Lost and its intellectual, historical, and literary contexts. Usually offered every third year. Will be offered in the fall of 2001.

Mr. Flesch

A survey of the 19th-century novel from Austen to Hardy. Investigates the invention and promulgation of literary affects as well as their social conditions and consequences. Usually offered every third year. Last offered in the spring of 2000.

Staff

Examines how and why the project of American literature changes after the advent of television. Readings include theoretical essays on technology and representation, and literary texts by Nabokov, Mailer, Didion, DeLillo, Bernstein, Reed, Pynchon, Silko, and Wallace. Usually offered every third year. Will be offered in the fall of 2001.

Ms. Irr

(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. Last offered in the spring of 2000.

Mr. Morrison

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 every second year.

Ms. Chu

Examines contemporary performance theory against everyday and formal performances of the Restoration and the 18th century in England. Investigates agents' negotiations of social and personal space in plays, diaries, novels, and treatises. Usually offered every third year. Will be offered in the spring of 2002.

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 every second year.

Ms. Campbell

An intensive reading of Shakespeare's work from a theoretical and historical viewpoint. Usually offered every third year. Last offered in the fall of 2000.

Mr. Flesch

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 every second year.

Staff

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 every second year.

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 spring of 2001.

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; focuses 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 spring of 2001.

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. Raises 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 2000.

Staff

[ hum ]

A study of major recent poetry in English. Authors include Merrill, Ashbery, Heaney, Ammons, and Glück. Special one-time offering. Will not be offered again.

Ms. Quinney

Explores the relation between selected American novels and the social order out of which they emerged. Poses the following questions: Is literature a criticism of society, or an affirmation of prevalent values? Do novels challenge or reinforce popular sentiment? Usually offered every second year.

Mr. Gilmore

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 a 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 20th-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. Usually offered every third year. Last offered in the spring of 2000.

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

Cross-Listed Courses

The Theater of the Absurd

Women in American Jewish Literature

Feminist Theory in Literary and Cultural Studies

Love in the Middle Ages

The Literature of the Caribbean

Love in the Middle Ages

Art for the People

The City: Metropolitan Glory and Urban Alienation

Reading, Writing, and Teaching across Cultures

Women in American Jewish Literature

Nabokov

The Grammar of English