Department of English

Last updated: July 5, 2016 at 1:15 p.m.

Objectives

Undergraduate Major in English
English has been an essential component of Brandeis from the outset. The department has three key goals in educating its students. First, students with a wide range of interests take our courses to learn about the various literary and cultural traditions that influence creative work in the English language. Second, we teach students to notice the striking and revealing features not only of literary works, but also of the texts that surround us in our daily lives. Third, those who choose to become English majors or minors will acquire the skills and the judgment required for the careful and imaginative unpacking of literary texts and their multiple contexts. Seniors may pursue an honors essay or two-semester honors thesis to culminate the major.

Undergraduate Major in Creative Writing
Creative writing workshops have been taught at Brandeis since 1951. In 1977 creative writing became one of the English tracks, and in 2003 a major in its own right. It is also a popular choice in a minor. The Creative Writing Program is structured to allow flexible participation in its activities by a diverse body of students, whose interest or commitment may vary in nature or over time. The major consists of a combination of writing workshops, literature courses, studio and performance art, and independent study, culminating in a body of creative work of high caliber, and a historical and contemporary grasp of literary currents. The major offers two honors tracks: a senior honors project, lasting one semester, or a senior honors thesis. Under the thesis option, the major culminates in a book-length thesis in poetry, fiction, or another literary genre, written under the close supervision of a creative writing faculty member over the two semesters of the senior year. Under the project option, the student works under close supervision of a creative writing faculty member over one semester to produce a 25-page chapbook of poetry or 50 pages of fiction.

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

Learning Goals

The Department of English is committed to the study of literature, as well as the cultures and history surrounding its creation and reception. We study poetry, fiction, nonfiction, drama, film, popular culture, and digital media and place them in historical and geographical context for interpretation.

Core Skills
We expect our graduating majors to be able to demonstrate:

1. Interpretation of literary and nonliterary texts; an understanding of genres and forms. This includes mediums such as lyric and narrative poetry, the epic, short fiction, the novel, non-fiction, and film and digital media.
2. Understanding of story and plot; conflict; character; theme; and language (including the nuances of words or syntax).
3. Ability to contextualize texts, including (a) relevant literary histories and movements, (b) relevant world cultures, and (c) the social and political situations in which they were written or read.
4. Development of a clear, convincing argument in critical analysis.
5. Close reading skills and critical methods, such as gender theory, critical race theory, performance theory, ideology theory.
6. Creative writing track majors will develop skills to create their own works in fiction or poetry, as well as give constructive feedback to other writers.

Knowledge

1. Study of literary texts across different geographical and historical traditions in the English-speaking world.
2. Understanding of the history and evolution of literary criticism.
3. Appreciation of the dynamics between author, text, audience, and cultural/historical context.
4. Understanding of language's capacity for rhetoric and representation.

Social Justice
Our curriculum is designed to encourage our students to attend to neglected voices and literary traditions.

How to Become a Major

English
There are no prerequisites for declaring the major, and students may declare at any time; the first step is an appointment with the undergraduate advising head (UAH), who will assign a suitable adviser based on a student’s interests. Prospective majors are encouraged to take two or three courses in the department in their first and second years. Courses with numbers below 100 are especially suitable for beginning students.

Creative Writing
Students interested in the creative writing program may find more information below.

How to Be Admitted to the Graduate Program

Candidates for admission should have a Bachelor's degree, preferably with a major in English and a reading knowledge a language other than English with evident relevance to intended field of study or to professional commitments. They are required to submit a sample of their critical writing not to exceed thirty-five pages; the thirty-five-page maximum may consist of a single critical essay or two shorter essays of approximately equal length. All applicants are required to submit scores on the Graduate Record Examination Verbal Aptitude Test. The GRE Advanced Test in Literature is also required for PhD applicants and recommended for MA and joint MA applicants. 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

Caren Irr, Chair
Twentieth-century American literature. Theory. Cultural studies.

Aliyyah Abdur-Rahman
Nineteenth- and twentieth-century African-American literature and culture. Gender, queer theory, and sexual politics. Critical race theory. Multiethnic feminisms.

Ulka Anjaria
Nineteenth- and twentieth-century South Asian literature and modernity. Postcolonial studies. Theories of the novel. Nationalism. Literature and the modern state. Cultural anthropology.

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

Mary Baine Campbell
Medieval literature. Poetry. Renaissance literature.

William Flesch
Poetry. Renaissance. Theory.

Thomas King
Performance studies. Gender studies. Gay studies. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century drama.

Stephen McCauley, Associate Director of Creative Writing
Fiction.

Paul Morrison (on leave fall 2016)
Modernism. Literary criticism and theory. Film studies. Sexuality studies.

John Plotz, Director of Graduate Studies
Victorian literature. The novel. Politics and aesthetics.

Laura Quinney, Undergraduate Advising Head
Romanticism. Literature and philosophy. Eighteenth-century literature.

David Sherman (on leave spring 2017)
Modernism. Contemporary British literature. Narrative theory. Ethical philosophy. Elegy.

Dawn Skorczewski, Director of University Writing
Twentieth-century poetry. Psychoanalysis and pedagogy. Composition studies.

Faith Smith
African and Afro-American literature. Caribbean literature.

Ramie Targoff
Renaissance literature. Shakespeare. Religion and literature.

Jerome Tharaud
Early American literature and culture; print culture and media; American religious history; art history and visual culture; theories of space and place; the American West.

Affiliated Faculty (contributing to the curriculum, advising and administration of the department or program)
Jerónimo Arellano (Romance Studies)
Patricia Johnston (Classical Studies)
Robin Feuer Miller (German, Russian, and Asian Languages and Literature)

Requirements for the Minor

Courses are listed by category after the descriptions of the majors and minors. Courses only fulfill the requirement under which they are listed. For other restrictions, please see the section, Special Notes Relating to Undergraduates.

Minor in English
Five courses are required, including the following:

A. Five ENG courses, with the following exception: only one creative writing workshop may count toward the minor.

B. Students are encouraged to speak with the UAH or their faculty advisor about clustering or distributing courses counted toward the minor.

C. Transfer credits, Advanced Placement credit, and cross-listed courses do not count toward the minor.

Minor in Creative Writing
Five semester courses are required, including the following:

A. Three semester courses in directed writing (poetry, prose, or both). See course category breakdown for list of directed writing courses. Such courses facilitate writing under direction in a creative and critical community and are offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis.

B. Two ENG electives.

C. Transfer credits, Advanced Placement credit, and cross-listed courses do not count toward the minor.

Requirements for the Major

Courses are listed by category after the descriptions of the majors and minors. Courses only fulfill the requirement under which they are listed. For other restrictions, please see the section, Special Notes Relating to Undergraduates.

English Major
Ten semester courses are required, including the following:

A. Two semester courses dealing primarily with literature in English written before 1800. For specific information about whether a particular course fulfills the pre-1800 requirement, please consult the instructor or the undergraduate advising head. See the listing of courses below.

B. Two semester courses dealing primarily with literature in English written after 1800. By definition, film courses cannot fulfill the literature distribution requirements. See the listing of courses below.

C. One course from each of the following three categories:

1)      Literary Theory
2)      Media/Film
3)      Multicultural Literature/World Anglophone

Multicultural literature courses are those that focus on texts written by ethnic or racial minorities within the US or Great Britain; World Anglophone courses focus on texts written in English outside the United States and England (e.g., Indian, African, or Caribbean literature). See the listing of courses below.

D. Three elective semester courses. These may include any course offered or cross-listed in the department with the following exceptions: no more than one creative writing workshop may be counted as an elective. Cross-listed courses are considered to be outside the department and are subject to the restriction in special notes below.

E. At least two 100-level courses in which students must write papers of 12+ pages (courses ending in 9 are excluded); these may fall into any of the above categories. We suggest 100-level courses be taken in the junior and senior years.

F. There is no double counting between course categories (i.e., The Novel in India cannot count for both the world Anglophone and post-1800 requirements). By definition, film courses cannot fulfill the literature distribution requirements.

Honors Track: Consideration for graduation with honors requires a GPA of 3.50 or higher in courses counting toward the major, and satisfactory completion of a senior honors essay (one-semester ENG 99a or 99b), which counts as an eleventh course. Qualified students may elect instead to complete the senior honors thesis (ENG 99d for two semesters) of which one section may count as an elective.

The undergraduate advising head (UAH) can assist the student in finding an appropriate director. In consultation with the director, the student should draft a proposal (two pages): outline the topic, methods, sources, texts the student plans to examine, questions to be asked and likely conclusions. The director will approve and sign the proposal. In the case of the thesis, the approved proposal should reach the UAH by the add deadline of the first thesis-writing semester. The UAH will assign a second reader by the beginning of second thesis-writing semester.

Departmental honors are awarded on the basis of excellence in all courses applied to the major, as well as all courses taken in the department, including the senior essay or thesis, as determined by the department faculty. Students in the creative writing major who complete ENG 96d will be considered to have completed a senior honors thesis.

For more information please visit www.brandeis.edu/departments/english/undergraduate/honorstrack.html.

A student majoring in English may double-major or minor in creative writing.

Creative Writing Major
This major may be declared upon the completion of three courses in directed writing and a course focused on close reading. Ten semester courses are required, including the following:

A. One close reading course: ENG 10b (Poetry: A Basic Course), ENG 11a (Close Reading: Theory and Practice), or ENG 11b (Fiction: A Basic Course), which should be taken as early as possible.

B. Four semester courses in directed writing. See course category breakdown for list of directed writing courses. At least two of the required workshops must be from the 19/39a/79b/109/119 categories. At least one course in directed writing must be completed before the end of the sophomore year. A student may take as many workshops as she or he might like, but three should be concluded before the beginning of the senior year. No more than one course in directed writing can be taken in any semester in the same genre. Two such courses may be taken in different genres. Such courses facilitate writing under direction in a creative and critical community and are offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis. All directed writing courses are by instructor's signature and require a manuscript submission. Majors cannot be guaranteed entry to such courses outside the selection process of each.

C. One course dealing primary with literature in English written before 1800. For specific information about whether a particular course fulfills the pre-1800 requirement, please see listing of courses below.

D. One course in multicultural or world Anglophone literature. Multicultural literature courses are those that focus on texts written by ethnic or racial minorities within the United States or Great Britain; world Anglophone courses focus on texts written in English outside the United States and England (e.g., Indian, African, or Caribbean literature). Other courses may also be suitable; students with questions should consult the Director of Creative Writing. See the listing of courses below. By definition, film courses cannot fulfill the literature distribution requirements.

E. Two semester elective courses, at least one of which must be offered by faculty in the English department. Cross-listed courses are considered to be outside the department and are subject to the restriction in special notes below.

F. An elective course in a studio or performing art.

Senior Creative Writing Honors Project Option:  One semester of ENG 96a or 96b, as an eleventh course required for the major.

Students interested in this option should consult with the Director of Creative Writing within the first month of the semester prior to the proposed study to discuss application guidelines and an adviser for the project, usually a senior faculty member the student has worked with before.

Normally, all four workshop requirements (including two from the 19/39a/79b/109/119 categories) will have been completed prior to the start of the project, and all but two of the literature/studio art requirements.

The project will culminate in a creative body of work of high standard smaller in scope than the book-length thesis. A 25-page chapbook of poetry, for example, or 50 pages of fiction: several short stories or a novella.

Recommendation for departmental honors will be made by the creative writing faculty to the English department based on the excellence of the student's record in the major, and the creative work as exemplified in the honors project.

Poetry or Fiction Thesis Option: Eleven semester courses are required. The directed writing requirement is reduced to a minimum of three semester courses in directed writing (poetry, prose, or both). Two of the required workshops must be from the 109/119 categories. Also required is the satisfactory completion of two semesters of the Senior Creative Writing Thesis (ENG 96d).

ENG 96d (Senior Creative Writing Thesis). The student will produce, under the direction of his or her adviser, a distinguished body of writing (usually a book of poems 50-70 pages, or a collection of stories or a novel of 125-200 pages) of appropriate scope (two semesters). The poetry or fiction thesis option major also requires an essay on a tutorial bibliography: a list of eight to twelve books, chosen by the candidate in collaboration with the thesis adviser and/or the director of creative writing in the candidate’s genre. The essay will be due at the end of the senior year, along with the thesis.

Admission to the poetry or fiction thesis option in creative writing is by application only during the first semester of the junior year. Admission will be decided by the creative writing faculty on completion by the student of at least one course from the 19/39a/79b/109/119 directed writing courses and either ENG 10b, ENG 11a or ENG 11b. The deadline for admission is usually in November. The deadline for midyear students will be in April.

Recommendations for honors in the creative writing major will be made to the English department by the creative writing faculty, based on the student's work as exemplified by the senior thesis.

A student majoring in creative writing may double-major in English or minor in English.

English/Creative Writing Double Major
This major may be declared upon the completion of three courses in directed writing and a course focused on close reading. Fourteen semester courses are required; fifteen if pursuing honors in literature or the poetry or fiction thesis option, including the following:

A. One close reading course: ENG 10b (Poetry: A Basic Course), ENG 11a (Close Reading: Theory and Practice), or ENG 11b (Fiction: A Basic Course), which should be taken as early as possible.

B. Two semester courses dealing primarily with literature in English written before 1800. For specific information about whether a particular course fulfills the pre-1800 requirement, please consult the instructor or the undergraduate advising head. See the listing of courses below.

C. Two semester courses dealing primarily with literature in English written after 1800. By definition, film courses cannot fulfill the literature distribution requirements. See the listing of courses below.

D. One course from each of the following three categories:

1)      Literary Theory
2)      Media/Film
3)      Multicultural Literature/World Anglophone

Multicultural literature courses are those that focus on texts written by ethnic or racial minorities within the US or Great Britain; World Anglophone courses focus on texts written in English outside the United States and England (e.g., Indian, African, or Caribbean literature). See the listing of courses below.

E. One elective, which may be any course offered or cross-listed in the department with the following exception: this requirement cannot be fulfilled by a creative writing workshop. Cross-listed courses are considered to be outside the department and are subject to the restriction in special notes below.

F. An elective course in a studio or performing art.

G. At least two 100-level courses in which students must write papers of 12+ pages (courses ending in 9 are excluded); these may fall into any of the above categories. We suggest 100-level courses be taken in the junior and senior years. (This suggestion does not apply to courses ending in 9.)

H. A minimum of four semester courses in directed writing. See course category breakdown for list of directed writing courses. At least two of the required workshops must be from the 19/39a/79b/109/119 categories. At least one course in directed writing must be completed before the end of the sophomore year. A student may take as many workshops as she or he might like, but three should be concluded before the beginning of the senior year. Such courses facilitate writing under direction in a creative and critical community and are offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis. See "B" in the creative writing major description.

For those students pursuing the poetry or fiction thesis option, these requirements are adjusted as follows: a minimum of three semester courses in directed writing (poetry, prose, or both). At least two of the required workshops must be from the 109/119 categories. Also required is the satisfactory completion of two semesters of the Senior Creative Writing Thesis (ENG 96d) in which the student will produce, under the direction of his or her adviser, a body of writing (usually a book of poems, a collection of stories, or a novel) of appropriate scope. The poetry or fiction thesis option also requires an essay on a tutorial bibliography: a list of eight to twelve books, chosen by the candidate in collaboration with the thesis adviser and/or the director of creative writing in the candidate’s genre. The essay will be due at the end of the senior year. This option is by application only.

I. There is no double counting between course categories. (i.e., The Novel in India cannot count for both world literature and post-1800, etc.) By definition, film courses cannot fulfill the literature distribution requirements.

English Major/Creative Writing Minor
Thirteen semester courses are required, including the following:

A. All the requirements listed under the English major.

B. Three semester courses in directed writing (poetry, prose, or both). See course category breakdown for list of directed writing courses. Such courses facilitate writing under direction in a creative and critical community and are offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis.

Creative Writing Major/English Minor
Thirteen courses are required, including the following:

A. All the requirements listed under the Creative Writing major.

B. Three elective semester courses (in addition to the two listed in item E. of the Creative Writing major). These may include any course offered or cross-listed in the department with the following exception: no more than one creative writing workshop may be counted as an elective. Cross-listed courses are considered to be outside the department and are subject to the restriction in special notes below.

C. Students are encouraged to speak with the UAH or their faculty advisor about clustering or distributing courses counted toward the minor.

Special Notes Relating to Undergraduates

Courses numbered 89 and 92 do not count toward requirements for any major or minor offered by the department.

No course with a final grade below C- can count toward fulfilling the major or minor requirements in English and Creative Writing.

Advanced Placement credit and courses taken on the pass/fail option do not count toward the English and Creative Writing majors and minors.

A maximum of three non-ENG, cross-listed courses may be counted toward the majors. This restriction includes courses taken while on study abroad and approved as transfer credit.

The following policy is for students who transfer to Brandeis after one year or more at another postsecondary institution. Transfer credit toward the major: application for the use of transfer credit (awarded by the Office of the University Registrar) toward the major requirements must be accompanied by a Requirement Substitution Form and an External Transfer Credit Form. 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 major requirements that can be satisfied with transfer credit is at the discretion of the undergraduate advising committee but generally will follow these guidelines for the following tracks only: literature major, literature/creative writing double major, and the literature major/creative writing minor.

A student who transfers to Brandeis with sophomore standing can transfer up to two courses toward one of the aforementioned tracks.

A student who transfers to Brandeis with junior standing can transfer up to four courses toward one of the aforementioned tracks.

This department participates in the European cultural studies major and, in general, its courses are open to ECS majors.

COMP and UWS courses do not count toward the major or minor requirements in English and Creative Writing.

More detailed descriptions of the courses offered each semester will be available on the English department website.

Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts

To earn the Master of Arts in English (as distinct from the Master's in passing), students must complete the following requirements.

Course Requirement
Eight courses in the Department of English; at least three courses must be 200-level seminars and one course must be ENG 301a (Master's Directed Research). ENG 200a (Approaches to Literary and Cultural Studies) is optional but recommended. Master's students are expected to take all eight required courses within the Department of English. A student must petition in writing to the department chair and director of graduate studies to be exempted from this rule. (ENG 301a and ENG 352a/b cannot be counted towards the 200-level requirement.) ENG 350a (Proseminar), a credit/no-credit course that does not count toward the eight course requirement, is optional but recommended.

Residence Requirement
Students may enroll on a full or part-time basis. There is a one-year minimum residence requirement for full-time students. Most full-time students will take an additional one or two semesters beyond the first year to complete the degree as Extended Master's students. Students who wish to enroll in the program on a part-time basis are strongly encouraged to complete all the requirements within four years.

Language Requirement
A reading knowledge of a language other than English with evident relevance to intended field of study or to professional commitments 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. MA candidates who are native speakers of a language other than English are exempt from the requirement.

Master's Research Paper Requirement
This project must be twenty-five to thirty-five pages long. Papers written for course work, papers presented at conferences, and papers written specifically for the MA degree are all acceptable. Each paper will be evaluated by two faculty members, one of whom may be the faculty member for whom the paper was originally written. The second reader need not be from the English department. The paper must satisfy the reader's standard for excellence in MA degree-level work.

Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts (Earned in Passing, as Part of the PhD Program)

Students admitted to the doctoral program are eligible to apply for an MA degree in passing upon completion of the following requirements. (For information about the stand-alone MA in English, see above. For information about the joint degree of Master of Arts in English & Women's and Gender Studies, see below).

Course Requirement
Eight courses, three of which must be 200-level seminars; a capstone project (this may be fulfilled by one of the eight required courses, or by other departmental work deemed suitable by the DGS, such as an independent study or directed research comparable to the MA paper); ENG 200a (Approaches to Literary and Cultural Studies) is optional but recommended. (ENG 352a/b cannot be counted towards the 200-level requirement.)

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

Language Requirement
A reading knowledge of a language other than English with evident relevance to intended field of study or to professional commitments 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 & Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Program of Study
A. WMGS 205a, the foundational course in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

B. One course in feminist research methodologies (WMGS 208b or the Feminist Inquiry course offered through the Graduate Consortium in Women's Studies).

C. Five additional courses in the English department selected from 100-level courses and graduate seminars (200-level courses). At least three of these courses must be at the 200 level. One of these five courses must be listed as an elective with the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program. ENG 200a (Approaches to Literary and Cultural Studies) is optional but recommended.(ENG 352a/b cannot be counted towards the 200-level requirement.) Normally, only one of these courses may be a Directed Research course.

D. One Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies course in a department other than the English department.

E. Language requirement: A reading knowledge of a language other than English with evident relevance to intended field of study or to professional commitments 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. Joint MA candidates who are native speakers of a language other than English are exempt from the requirement.

F. Joint MA paper requirement: Completion of a Master's research paper of professional quality and length (normally twenty-five to forty pages) on a topic related to the joint degree. The paper will be read by two faculty members, at least one of whom is a member of the English department, and at least one of whom is a member of the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies core or affiliate faculty. In consultation with the primary advisor, a student may register for WMGS 299a,b, "Master’s Project." However, this course may not count toward the eight required courses.

G. The program may take an additional one or two semesters beyond the first year to complete as an Extended Master's student.

Note: ENG 350a (Proseminar), a credit/no-credit course that does not count toward the eight course requirement, is optional but recommended.

Requirements for the Joint Degree of Master Of Arts in English & Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (Earned in Passing, as Part of the PhD Program)

Students admitted to the doctoral program are eligible to earn the Joint MA degree in passing by completing the Requirements for the Joint Degree of Master of Arts in English & Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, listed above. Doctoral students who want to earn the Joint MA in passing should declare their intentions as soon as possible by meeting with the WGS Program Liaison who will appoint an advisor for each student. Please note non-English courses taken for the joint degree (WMGS 205a, WMGS 208b, and the WMGS course in another department) will not count towards course credit for the Ph.D.

Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Each student must complete three years in residence as a full-time student and a minimum of twelve term courses. A student who comes to Brandeis with a BA degree is required to take twelve courses for the PhD degree, ten of which are normally taken within the English department. A student who comes to Brandeis with an MA degree in English may apply to the director of graduate studies, at the end of the first year of study, to transfer up to four graduate-level courses from the institution granting the MA. Of the eight additional courses required for the PhD degree, at least seven are normally taken within the department. The program reserves the right to require additional courses to assure thorough mastery of the area of study. A student who wishes to be exempted from these rules must petition in writing to the department chair and director of graduate studies. All first and second-year PhD students are also required to enroll in the Department Proseminar (ENG 350a), a yearlong pass/fail seminar for the development of research skills, the acquisition of new methodological tools, and training in professional development. The Proseminar is in addition to the twelve course requirement.

Students may apply to the director of graduate studies for permission to take courses offered in other departments at Brandeis and by the Graduate Consortium in Women’s Studies at Radcliffe College, but not taught by department faculty members, and through consortium arrangements with Boston College, Boston University, and Tufts University. 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 degree requirements.

Program of Study: First-Year Students
First-year students normally take six courses in the English department. Each student (including those who entered with a master's degree) will take ENG 200a (Approaches to Literary and Cultural Studies) in the fall semester; this seminar includes attention to methods of analysis and research. Students select other courses from departmental offerings at the 100- and 200-level, although at least three of these electives must be 200-level seminars. (ENG 352a/b cannot be counted towards the 200-level requirement.) In addition to satisfying these core requirements, each student will design a program of study in light of the strengths and weaknesses of his or her previous preparation and in accord with his or her own interests. First-year students are encouraged to meet with their faculty advisers to discuss curricular offerings, departmental expectations, and the nature of the academic career.

First-year students attend departmental events, such as guest lectures, and participate in monthly workshops on teaching and research methods and other career skills. First-year students should demonstrate a reading knowledge of a language other than English with evident relevance to intended field of study or to professional commitments by passing a written translation examination. (See "Language Requirements.") The department meets at the end of every academic year to discuss the progress of its graduate students, particularly first- and second-year students. (See "Readmissions Criteria and Probation.")

Program of Study: Beyond the First Year
Students who come to Brandeis with a BA degree normally take two courses during each term of their second year and complete their course work during their third year. Students who come with a MA degree complete their course work during their second year. Students are encouraged to take or audit additional courses during their third year. Students have an obligation to review their preparation in the field with their advisers and to ensure that they are acquiring a comprehensive knowledge of the various historical periods and genres of English and a deeper knowledge of the particular period or field they propose to offer as a specialty.

In the fall of their second year, students present a paper to an audience of graduate students and faculty at the Second-Year Symposium.

In their third year, students must generally pass a second foreign language examination if they have not done so earlier (see "Language Requirement" below). No later than the end of the third year, students should have prepared a reading list for the field examination and submitted it to a committee of three faculty members for approval. The examination must be taken no later than the first of October during the fourth year. The department encourages students to complete all requirements for the PhD, except the prospectus review and dissertation by the end of the third year.

Second- and third-year students continue to participate in monthly workshops on teaching and research methods and other career skills. Other workshops, targeted to third- and fourth-year students, focus on such topics as publication, the field exam, and the dissertation prospectus. The job placement officer offers annual workshops for doctoral candidates and recent graduates on the job search and serves as a mentor for job seekers. Advanced graduate students have opportunities to present their work to other scholars in their field by participating in various national and international conferences, for which some travel funds are available. Each year graduate students organize colloquia, at which they present their work, and invite faculty members to speak on their current research. The graduate students organize a student conference annually.

Teaching Requirements and Preparation
Teaching is a core requirement of the PhD program in English and is integral to the professional development of all graduate students. Training in teaching is provided through assistantships in department courses and participation in the Brandeis University Writing Program, which conducts instruction in the Brandeis Writing Center, and in a key first-year course, the University Writing Seminar (UWS). Together these programs train students in writing and rhetoric. UWS courses are topics courses in which instructors create their own syllabi.

During their years at Brandeis, doctoral candidates will participate in a broad range of instructional activities, all of which are preceded by extensive training. Many first- and second-year graduate students will start their professional instructional development when they receive training to serve as tutors in the Writing Center or in Brandeis's large English Language Program.

First-year graduate students have no teaching responsibilities; instead they devote themselves to course work. Teaching assignments after the first year vary according to the pedagogical needs of the individual student, the curricular needs of the department, and enrollments. In recent years, typical assignments have been as follows. Second-year students have had two teaching assignments, typically serving as a teaching fellow in two department courses, one each semester. Third-year students have had two teaching assignments; typically, two sections of first-year writing, one each semester. Fourth-year students have had two teaching assignments; typically serving as a teaching fellow in one department course and teaching one section of writing. The university reserves the right to change these assignments as necessary.

Residence Requirement
The minimum residence requirement is two years beyond the Master's degree or three years beyond the Bachelor's degree.

Language Requirement
In addition to the first language requirement (see Requirements for Degree of Master of Arts Earned in Passing, as Part of the PhD Program), the student must (1) demonstrate a reading knowledge of a second language other than English with evident relevance to intended field of study or to professional commitments; or (2) demonstrate an advanced competence in the first language other than English by taking a graduate-level literature course in a foreign language (not in translation) and writing the seminar paper using foreign language texts; 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. Students must have completed all language requirements in order to hold the field exam.

Field Examination
All candidates for the PhD are required to pass an oral examination in the historical period in which the candidate expects to write a dissertation. Beginning with the fall 2013 entering class, each student will submit a field essay of approximately 20 pages to the examining committee at least one week before the exam. The essay will identify topics of scholarly concern and critical debates in the field and explain their significance.

This examination is taken no later than the first of October during the fourth year and must be passed by the unanimous vote of the committee members. (PhD students enrolled before fall 2013 need to take the exam no later than the first of November.) At the discretion of the examiners, students taking the field exam may be asked to retake one portion of their exam. If a student is asked to retake a portion of the exam, the time frame for the second examination will be set by the examiners in consultation with the student.

Fourth-year students should allow sufficient time beyond the field exam to prepare a dissertation prospectus and hold the dissertation prospectus conference and defense (see below), which are necessary to establish eligibility for fifth-year funding. The department encourages students to complete all requirements for the PhD, except the prospectus review and dissertation, by the end of the third year.

Dissertation Prospectus Conference and Defense
No later than six months after passing the field exam, and in time to establish eligibility for fifth-year funding, students must hold a prospectus conference and defense, which both first and second readers will attend. The prospectus must be signed by both readers in order to be approved by the department. The specific length and design of the prospectus will be agreed upon by the doctoral candidate and her/his first and second readers. A prospectus typically describes the topic, the questions to be explored, the method of research, and reasons for believing the dissertation will be an original contribution to knowledge. The student's director and/or second reader may also require a chapter outline and/or bibliography.

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. One member of this committee must be from a graduate department at Brandeis outside the department of English or from another university. The student will defend the dissertation at a final oral examination.

Readmission Criteria and Probation
Annual readmission to the doctoral program in English depends upon showing suitable academic progress. Because a career in the academy requires success as a scholar and teacher, service on administrative committees, and collegial participation in the life of the academy, suitable academic progress for students still completing coursework is judged principally by three criteria: grades, citizenship, timely completion of work. Grades: Students are expected to maintain an A- average. Citizenship: Students are expected to participate regularly in department activities, including the departmental proseminar and scheduled talks/events. Timely Completion: Students may normally take no more than one incomplete in any semester; in exceptional circumstances a second incomplete may be permitted by the DGS. All incompletes must be made up by the deadline set by the Office of the University Registrar each semester. Students who require incompletes must apply for them from the relevant instructor in advance. Incompletes will not be automatically granted.

At each end-of-year meeting, the department, using suitable academic progress as its guide, will vote to readmit, put on probation, or deny readmission to each student still in the coursework phase. Students will be informed of that decision by letter, and should feel free to meet with the DGS and their advisors to discuss it. Being readmitted in any given year does not guarantee future readmission. Students who are put on probation are required to meet with the DGS and to submit to the DGS a written plan to return to good standing--which might include completing missing work, meeting certain deadlines, and participating more robustly in the life of the department. Failure to return to good standing within one academic year will normally lead to denial of readmission in the subsequent end-of-year meeting.

Full-time doctoral students are expected to complete course requirements and pass all language exams no later than the end of the third year; pass the field exam no later than October 1 during the fourth year; and present the dissertation proposal for review and approval by the first and second readers within six months of the field exam and in time to establish eligibility for fifth-year funding. Students who do not establish candidacy according to these deadlines will be placed on probation automatically and may become ineligible for fifth-year funding. Students who do not demonstrate satisfactory academic progress during the probationary year will be withdrawn from the program. Failure to pass the field exam or defend the dissertation prospectus by the required deadlines may result in the student's being denied readmission to the program.

To qualify for ABD status, all doctoral students must satisfy the department's requirements for training in teaching. Accordingly, all doctoral students will be given a variety of teaching assignments and will be expected to attend the pedagogical workshops offered by the director of writing and the director of graduate studies.

Funding Opportunities for Advanced Graduate Students
Fifth-year graduate students who are ABD (all but dissertation) continue to receive fellowships and tuition scholarships. Doctoral candidates who have passed the field exam may apply for University Prize Instructorships; these competitive awards allow recipients to design and teach their own courses. Fifth and sixth-year students expecting to complete their dissertations in the next academic year may enter the university-wide competition for the Mellon Dissertation Year Fellowships while seventh and eighth-year students expecting to complete their dissertations in the next academic year may apply for the Redstone Dissertation Year Fellowships. Both groups may also enter the departmental competition for the Milton Hindus Memorial Endowed Dissertation Fellowship. Additional opportunities are available in the University Writing Center and in the program for teaching English as a Second Language.

Completion of Degree
Students entering the PhD program with a BA must earn the degree within eight years. Students entering the PhD program with an MA must earn the degree within seven years. A student requesting an extension must demonstrate significant progress toward completing the dissertation by submitting a prospectus (or equivalent, including a chapter outline) and at least one chapter to the student's adviser. If the student's adviser agrees to support the requested extension, the adviser will refer the case to the graduate committee for approval.

Special Notes Relating to the Graduate Program

Enrollment in all 200-level graduate seminars is by signature of the instructor or departmental representative. Enrollment in these courses by English department graduate students is guaranteed.

First-year students cannot enroll in a section of ENG 352a/b, Directed Research. Only one section of ENG 352a/b, Directed Research can count towards required coursework for a graduate degree.

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

ENG 1a Introduction to Literary Studies
[ hum ]
This course is designed to introduce students to basic skills and concepts needed for the study of Anglophone literature and culture. These include skills in close reading; identification and differentiation of major literary styles and periods; knowledge of basic critical terms; definition of genres. Usually offered every semester.
Staff

ENG 6a The American Renaissance
[ hum ]
Explores the transformation of U.S. literary culture before the Civil War: transcendentalism, the romance, the slave narrative, domestic fiction, sensationalism, and their relation to the visual art and architecture of the period. Authors will include Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, Stowe, Poe, Ridge, and Crafts. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Tharaud

ENG 7a American Literature from 1900 to 2000
[ hum wi ]
Focuses on literature and cultural and historical politics of major authors. Prose and poetry. May include Eliot, Frost, Williams, Moore, Himes, Cather, and Faulkner as well as contemporary authors. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Burt or Ms. Irr

ENG 8a Twenty-First-Century American Literature
[ hum ]
An introductory survey of trends in recent American literature with a focus on prose. Readings vary yearly but always include winners of major literary prizes such as the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, PEN/Faulkner Award, Pushcart Prize, O. Henry Award, or the Nobel Prize. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Irr

ENG 10b Poetry: A Basic Course
[ 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 fourth year.
Staff

ENG 11a Close Reading: Theory and Practice
[ hum ]
Examines the theory, practice, technique, and method of close literary reading, with scrupulous attention to a variety of literary texts to ask not only what but also how they mean, and what justifies our thinking that they mean these things. Usually offered every third year.
Staff

ENG 11b Fiction: A Basic Course
[ hum ]
Introduces moods, features, and forms of fiction. Explores a range of national literatures and historical periods. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Irr

ENG 18a Irish Literature, from the Peasantry to the Pogues
[ hum ]
Explores Irish poetry, fiction, drama, and film in English. Begins with the tradition's roots among subjugated peasants and Anglo-Irish aristocracy and ends in the modern post-colonial state. Authors include Swift, Yeats, Wilde, Bowen, Joyce, O'Brien, and Heaney. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Plotz

ENG 19a Introduction to Creative Writing
[ hum ]
Offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis. Students will be selected after the submission of a sample of writing, preferably four to seven pages. Please refer to the Schedule of Classes for submission formats and deadlines within registration periods.
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. Broumas or Ms. Campbell

ENG 20a Bollywood: Popular Film, Genre, and Society
[ hum nw ]
An introduction to popular Hindi cinema through a survey of the most important Bollywood films from the 1950s until today. Topics include melodrama, song and dance, love and sex, stardom, nationalism, religion, diasporic migration, and globalization. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Anjaria

ENG 20b The Art of Flirtation: Reading Romance from Pride and Prejudice to Harry Potter
[ hum wi ]
Introduces the history of flirtation in the romance novel and the debates that have surrounded this genre of popular literature. Starting with the emergence of the "modern" romance in the 18th century, we trace how Austen's heirs co-opted and adapted her themes. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Skorczewski

ENG 21a Adolescent Literature
[ hum ]
Literature for adolescents can't afford any self-indulgences: its audience is too impatient. So it's a great place to see what's essential to storytelling. Authors may include Shelley, Twain, Salinger, Pullman, and Rowling, whom we'll use to test basic narrative theory. Usually offered every third year.
Staff

ENG 22a Filmi Fictions: From Page to Screen in India
[ hum nw ]
An introduction to filmic adaptations of Indian novels from Bollywood, Indian art cinema, and Hollywood. Readings include novels as well as theoretical approaches to adaptation. Films include Slumdog Millionaire, Pather Panchali, Devdas, Guide, Umrao Jaan, and others. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Anjaria

ENG 27b Classic Hollywood Cinema
[ hum ]
A critical examination of the history of mainstream U.S. cinema from the 1930s to the present. Focuses on major developments in film content and form, the rise and fall of the studio and star system, the changing nature of spectatorship, and the social context of film production and reception. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Morrison

ENG 28a Contemporary Environmental Writing
[ hum ]
Explores literary responses to the natural environment, concentrating on recent decades. Several genres will be discussed, such as dystopia, the thriller, climate fiction, natural history, exploration narrative, and realist exposé. Usually offered every fourth year.
Ms. Irr

ENG 30a Introduction to Graphic Novels
[ hum ]
Introduces students to the genre conventions and theoretical context necessary for the critical study of graphic novels. In particular, we examine single-author graphic novels that trouble the border between fiction and nonfiction--memoirs, graphic reportage, and speculative histories. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Kantor

ENG 33a Shakespeare
[ hum ]
A survey of Shakespeare as a dramatist. From nine to twelve plays will be read, representing all periods of Shakespeare's dramatic career. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Flesch or Ms. Targoff

ENG 37b Modern Drama: Theatres of Rupture, Resistance, and Engagement
[ hum ]
How did theatre artists take “the modern” as a goal to be realized in the future and a crisis to be managed in the present? Playwrights include Ibsen, Wilde, Chekhov, Shaw, Synge, Glaspell, Brecht, Williams, Beckett, Pinter, Fugard, Fornes, Hwang, Churchill, Kushner, and Parks. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. King

ENG 38b Race, Region, and Religion in the Twentieth-Century South
[ hum ]
Twentieth century fiction of the American South. Racial conflict, regional identity, religion, and modernization in fiction from both sides of the racial divide and from both sides of the gender line. Texts by Chestnutt, Faulkner, Warren, O'Connor, Gaines, McCarthy, and Ellison. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Burt

ENG 40a Coming of Age in Literature
[ hum wi ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took FYS 13a in prior years.
What makes growing up such a compelling theme, even for adult readers? This seminar introduces students to several novels which feature characters who come of age. Authors include, Dickens, Salinger, Dangarembga, Diaz, and others. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Anjaria

ENG 40b The Birth of the Short Story: Gods, Ghosts, Lunatics
[ hum ]
How old is the short story? It may go back to the Stone Age, Aesop's fables, or medieval saints' lives, but some credit Edgar Allan Poe and the Scottish shepherd James Hogg. This class takes an in-depth look at three key centers of the genre: Edinburgh, New York, and Moscow. Authors include Melville, Hawthorne, Dickens, Gogol, and Chekov. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Plotz

ENG 40bj The Birth of the Short Story
[ hum wi ]
How did the genre of the short story emerge and what distinctive work has it performed in its long and protean history? What unique publication and reading practices have been a part of this history? And why does the short story still matter? With a focus on nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers such as Irving, Poe, Hawthorne, Twain, Chekhov, Mansfield, Hemingway, O’Connor, García Márquez, Johnson, Wallace, and Moore, we will work through the techniques and craft that have defined the short story tradition. And we will consider recent experiments in short stories, mapping where the genre is going next. Offered as part of JBS program.
Mr. Sherman

ENG 43a Pilgrims, Queens, and the Garden: English Literature from Chaucer to Milton
[ hum ]
Beginning with Chaucer’s pilgrims in the Canterbury Tales and ending with Milton’s Garden of Eden in Paradise Lost, this course explores the works of some of the major British authors from the late fourteenth to the mid-seventeenth century. From wandering pilgrims and powerful queens to fruitful gardens, this course surveys early modern English culture via its poetry and prose. Our course may include the works of authors such as Margery Kempe, Thomas Wyatt, Edmund Spenser, Philip Sidney, Queen Elizabeth I, William Shakespeare, Mary Wroth, John Donne, Amelia Lanyer, and George Herbert. Usually offered every third year.
Staff

ENG 44b Jane Austen's Eighteenth Century
[ hum ]
Immerses students in the world of Enlightenment thought, art, and letters, and in the political and cultural ambiance of late-eighteenth-century England, with particular emphasis on developments that most shaped Austen's ideas and imagination. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Lanser

ENG 45b Romanticism: Gods, Nature, Loneliness, Dreams
[ hum ]
A study of Romantic poetry, from love lyrics to ballads about the supernatural to philosophical meditations on self and soul. Authors include: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, Keats and Shelley. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Quinney

ENG 46a Rebelling in Print: Women, Reform, and the 19th-Century Novel
[ hum ]
Nineteenth-century novels by American women writers teach that a woman’s place is in the home; can these novels also be seen as radical? We'll focus on how these novels entered into the political and ideological debates of the time. Usually offered every third year.
Staff

ENG 46b American Gothic Romantic Fiction
[ hum wi ]
American Gothic and romantic fiction from Charles Brockden Brown to Cormac McCarthy. Texts by Brown, Cooper, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Faulkner, O'Connor, Warren, and McCarthy. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Burt

ENG 47a Frontier Visions: The West in American Literature and Culture
[ hum ]
Explores more than two centuries of literary and visual culture about the American West, including the frontier myth, Indian captivity narratives, frontier humor, dime novel and Hollywood westerns, the Native American Renaissance, and western regionalism. Authors include Black Hawk, Cather, Doig, Silko, Turner, and Twain. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Tharaud

ENG 48a Trash
[ hum ]
What can we do with trash and garbage? What have we done to living beings in their name? Examines films, novels. poems, installations, essays, and critical theory to examine the matrix of possibility and reuse, its physical and biological dimensions, and its metaphoric reaches. Students will produce discussion questions, short papers, and a major project that will include artwork, poetry, fiction, short film, problem-solving and an analytical essay. Usually offered every fourth year.
Ms. Campbell

ENG 48b Literature and Happiness
[ hum wi ]
Considers studies of happiness in economics, philosophy, psychology, neuroscience and history in relation to the American Novel. We analyze six novels to question how literary representations of happiness reflect and complicate ideas about happiness in other disciplines. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Skorczewski

ENG 49a Scriptwriting for the Short Film
[ hum wi ]
Offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis. Students will be selected after the submission of a sample of writing, preferably four to seven pages. Please refer to the Schedule of Classes for submission formats and deadlines within registration periods.
Addresses many facets of writing screenplays for short films (under eight pages). Students develop two to three scripts through creative exercises, rewriting, and critiques. Supplementary screenings and reading focuses on the particulars of short fiction and cinematic writing. Usually offered every third year.
Staff

ENG 50a Love Poetry from Sappho to Neruda
[ hum ]
This course explores the relationship between love and poetry. Starts with the ancient Greek poet Sappho and proceeds through the centuries, reading lyrics by Catullus, Ovid, Propertius, Petrarch, Dante, Shakespeare, Donne, Rossetti, and others. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Targoff

ENG 50b American Independent Film
[ hum ]
Explores non-studio filmmaking in the United States. Defines an indie aesthetic and alternative methods of financing, producing, and distributing films. Special attention given to adaptations of major film genres, such as noir thrillers, domestic comedy, and horror. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Irr

ENG 55b Romanticism and the Supernatural
[ hum ]
Study of Romantic poetry and prose about the Gothic and supernatural. What is at stake, psychologically and aesthetically, in the representation of supernatural seduction, temptation and desire? Figures include Prometheus, Faust, Frankenstein and the vampire, Christabel. Texts include Frankenstein and Northanger Abbey, as well as poetry by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Byron and Blake. Usually offered every fourth year.
Ms. Quinney

ENG 56a American Journeys
[ hum ]
Explores the ways American literature imagines a range of geographies and landscapes in the long nineteenth century, from the regional to the global, and frontier farms to urban tenements. Authors may include Olaudah Equiano, Sarah Orne Jewett, Herman Melville, and Mark Twain. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Tharaud

ENG 57b Writing the Nation: James Baldwin, Philip Roth, Toni Morrison
[ hum ]
An in-depth study of three major American authors of the twentieth century. Highlights the contributions of each author to the American literary canon and to its diversity. Explores how these novelists narrate cross-racial, cross-gendered, cross-regional, and cross-cultural contact and conflict in the United States. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Abdur-Rahman

ENG 58a Literature and Medicine
[ hum wi ]
How has literature grappled with illness, healing, and the patient-doctor encounter? How can poetry and storytelling communicate with experience of bodily pain--and how does the body seek to communicate its suffering without language? We examine literary responses to the body's biological vulnerabilities, and seek to contextualize the vulnerable body within the cultural and political fields that shape medical knowledge and practice. Readings in fiction, poetry, essay, and drama will suggest the art, or craftsmanship, involved in the healing sciences, as well as the diagnostic nature of literary criticism. Reading for new approaches, generated by the literary imagination, to controversial issues in medical ethics. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Sherman

ENG 60aj Storytelling Performance
[ hum oc ]
This experiential course is a workshop for students to craft and perform stories as part of the Brandeis Storytelling Brigade. Through a series of collaborative exercises and rehearsals, students will develop a repertoire of at least four stories: one fictional story for young children, one folk tale for young children, one story based on historical research for young adults or adults, and one autobiographical or fictional story for young adults or adults. We will tell our individual and group stories, as a team, at youth summer programs, libraries, teen centers, open mics, and other public spaces. Offered as part of JBS program.
Mr. Sherman

ENG 60b The Films of Disney
[ hum ]
Surveys Disney narratives from early shorts to recent features. Includes discussion of studio style, concept of the child viewer, social impact, and responses to changing world technologies. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Irr

ENG 61b Philosophical Approaches to Film Theory
[ hum ]
Studies a philosophical approach to film theory, examining both what philosophy has to say about film and what effects the existence and experience of film can have on philosophical thinking about reality, perception, judgment, and other minds. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Flesch

ENG 64b From Libertinism to Sensibility: Pleasure and the Theater, 1660-1800
[ 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.
Mr. King

ENG 67b Modern Poetry
[ hum ]
A course on the major poets of the twentieth century. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Morrison

ENG 68b The International Legacy of Anne Frank
[ hum wi ]
Explores how The Diary of Anne Frank has been represented in different media over time. Students participate in an international digital learning environment with students from Amsterdam. Includes short lectures, discussions, team projects, diary-writing, archival research and web tours. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Skorczewski

ENG 70a Magic Lanterns to Movies: The Origins of Narrative Film
[ hum ]
Explores the birth of moving pictures, from Edison and Lumiere's experiments to "Birth of a Nation" and "The Jazz Singer". Traces film's roots in the photographic experiments, visual spectacles and magical lanterns of late nineteenth-century France, England, and America, and its relationship to the era's literary experiments. Filmmakers include: Georges Melies, Abel Ganz, Sergei Eisentein, D W Griffiths, Charlie Chaplin. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Plotz

ENG 75b The Victorian Novel: Secrets, Lies, and Monsters
[ 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' Bleak House, and Trollope's The Prime Minister. Usually offered every fourth year.
Mr. Plotz

ENG 77b Literatures of Global English
[ hum nw ]
Survey of world Anglophone literatures with attention to writers' literary responses 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, Coetzee, Kincaid, Atwood, Anzaldua. Usually offered every third year.
Staff

ENG 78a Virginia Woolf
[ hum ]
An immersion in Woolf's astonishing body of writing. How did her fiction and non-fiction re-imagine the self in the changing social worlds of the early twentieth century? How did her experiments with narrative open new understandings of gender, sexuality, war, the knowing subject, the dimensions of space and time> A chronological survey of her diverse forms of writing that energized, all at once, modernist aesthetics, feminist politics, and philosophical speculation. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Sherman

ENG 78b Modernism, Atheism, God
[ hum ]
Explores European and U.S. literature after Nietzsche's proclamation, at the end of the 19th century, that God is dead. How does this writing imagine human life and the role of literature in God's absence? How does it imagine afterlives of God, and permutations of the sacred, in a post-religious world? How, or why, to have faith in the possibility of faith in a secular age? What does "the secular" actually mean, and how does it persuade itself that it's different than "religion"? Approaches international modernism as a political and theological debate about materialism and spirituality, finitude and transcendence, reason and salvation. Readings by Kafka, Joyce, Rilke, Faulkner, Eliot, Beckett, Pynchon, and others. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Sherman

ENG 79a Directed Writing: Beginning Screenplay
[ hum wi ]
This course may not be repeated by students who have taken ENG 129b in previous years. Offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis. Students will be selected after the submission of a sample of writing of no more than five pages. Please refer to the Schedule of Classes for submission formats and deadlines within registration periods.
Fundamentals of screenwriting: structure, plot, conflict, character, and dialogue. Students read screenwriting theory, scripts, analyze files, and produce an outline and the first act of an original screenplay. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Weinberg

ENG 79b Writing Workshop: From Memory to Craft
[ hum wi ]
Prerequisite: ENG 19b is recommended. This course may not be repeated by students who have taken ENG 129a in previous years. Offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis. Students will be selected after the submission of a sample of writing of no more than five pages. Please refer to the Schedule of Classes for submission formats and deadlines within registration periods.
This combination workshop and contemporary literature course explores the process by which prose that engages with place moves from simple accounting into art. Texts include work by writers such as Christine Byl, James Galvin, Rebecca Solnit, Craig Childs, and Zadie Smith. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

ENG 80a Black Looks: The Promise and Perils of Photography
[ hum ]
Explores photography and Africans, African-Americans and Caribbean people, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. This course will examine fiction that refers to the photograph; various photographic archives; and theorists on photography and looking. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Smith

ENG 80b The Tale
[ hum wi ]
The oral form of the story; also a non-realist modern literary genre. Students study and create myths, ballads, folktales, ritual drama, and ethnographic approaches to the transmission of tales, including Genesis, Metamorphosis, fairy tales, pre-Columbian myths, Poe, Angela Carter. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Campbell

ENG 87a Sex and Race in the American Novel
[ hum ]
Depictions of racial and sexual others abound in American literature of the twentieth century. Reading texts across racial, geographical, and temporal divides, this course investigates the representation of non-normative sexualities as signaled, haunted, or repaired by an appeal to race. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Abdur-Rahman

ENG 88a European Encounters: American Writers and Artists Abroad
[ hum ]
Explores the dynamic interchange between American genius and European tradition as great minds grappled with the tension between newness and a weighty cutlural inheritance. We will examine novels and autobiographies of travel, paintings, sculptures, and photography created under the influence of Paris, Rome, Florence, and Venice by Hawthorne, James, Wharton, Fitzgerald, Sargent, Whistler, and St. Gaudens, among others. Usually offered every fourth year.
Ms. Lawrence

ENG 96a Creating Writing Senior Honors Project
Required for creative writing majors fulfilling the project option. Usually offered every year.
Staff

ENG 96d Senior Creative Writing Thesis
Required for creative writing majors fulfilling the thesis option. Usually offered every year.
Staff

ENG 97a Senior Essay
For seniors interested in writing an essay outside of the honors track. Usually offered every year.
Staff

ENG 97d Senior Thesis
For seniors interested in writing a thesis outside of the honors track. Usually offered every year.
Staff

ENG 98a Independent Study
Usually offered every year.
Staff

ENG 98b Independent Study
Usually offered every year.
Staff

ENG 99a The Senior Honors Essay
For seniors interested in qualifying for departmental honors when combined with a tenth course for the major. Usually offered every year.
Staff

ENG 99b The Senior Honors Essay
For seniors interested in qualifying for departmental honors when combined with a tenth course for the major. Usually offered every year.
Staff

ENG 99d The Senior Honors Thesis
For seniors interested in qualifying for departmental honors with a thesis. Usually offered every year.
Staff

HUM 10a The Western Canon
[ hum ]
May not be taken by students who have taken ENG 10a or FYS 18a in prior years.
Foundational texts of the Western canon: the Bible, Homer, Vergil, and Dante. Thematic emphases and supplementary texts vary from year to year.
Staff

(100-199) For Both Undergraduate and Graduate Students

AAAS/ENG 141b Critical Race Theory
[ hum ]
Traces an intellectual and political history of critical race theory that begins in law classrooms in the 1980s and continues in the 21st century activist strategies of Black Lives Matter movement. We proceed by reading defining theoretical texts alongside African American literature of the 20th and 21st centuries. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Abdur-Rahman

COML/ENG 140b Children's Literature and Constructions of Childhood
[ hum ]
Explores whether children's literature has sought to civilize or to subvert, to moralize or to enchant, forming a bedrock for adult sensibility. Childhood reading reflects the unresolved complexity of the experience of childhood itself as well as larger cultural shifts around the globe in values and beliefs. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Miller

COML/ENG 141b Literature and Time
[ hum ]
Explores the human experience of temporality and reflection upon it. Texts include: Waiting for Godot, To the Lighthouse and Combray, along with philosophical speculation by Aristotle, Kierkegaard and Heidegger, as well as two films, La Jeteé and 12 Monkeys. Themes covered by this course include: memory, nostalgia, anxiety, ethics, eternity, and time travel. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Quinney

COML/ENG 148a Fiction of the Second World War
[ hum wi ]
Studies novels of the Second World War from Great Britain, France, Germany, the United States, the Soviet Union, Hungary and Japan (all readings in English). Usually offered every fourth year.
Mr. Burt

COML/ENG 149a Hell: The Poetry
[ hum ]
Studies the Classical underworld and its reworking in English verse. Topics include the descent to the underworld, the ambiguous Satan, the myths of Orpheus and Penelope, and the psychological Hells of the modernists. Special one-time offering, fall 2016.
Ms. Quinney

ENG 103a Exploring the Self in Seventeenth-Century Poetry
[ hum ]
Examines the poetry of Donne and his contemporaries, including George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, and Andrew Marvell. These "metaphysical poets" will be read alongside critical accounts by Samuel Johnson, T. S. Eliot, and others. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Targoff

ENG 104a Eighteenth-Century British Poetry, from Dryden to Blake
[ hum ]
The major British poets of the eighteenth century, from Dryden to Blake, with an emphasis on the expressive experiments in form and content which set the terms and showed the possibilities available to all subsequent English poetry. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Flesch

ENG 108b Second Language Writing Instruction: Theory and Practice
[ hum ]
Yields six semester-hour credits.
Explores current theory and research in second language (L2) writing and tutoring pedagogy. All students will work with English language learners in the Waltham community, tutoring them in their various English writers needs. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Lederman

ENG 109a Directed Writing: Poetry
[ hum wi ]
Offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis. Students will be selected after the submission of a sample of writing, preferably four to seven pages. Please refer to the Schedule of Classes for submission formats and deadlines within registration periods. May be repeated for credit.
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 or Visiting Poet

ENG 109b Directed Writing: Short Fiction
[ hum wi ]
Offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis. Students will be selected after the submission of a sample of writing, preferably four to seven pages. Please refer to the Schedule of Classes for submission formats and deadlines within registration periods. May be repeated for credit.
This workshop will focus on short fiction--stories ten pages and under in length. We will use writing exercises, assigned readings, and essays on craft to discuss structure, character development, point of view, and other elements of fiction. While appropriate for all levels, this workshop might be of special interest to writers who want a secure foundation in the basics. Usually offered every year.
Mr. McCauley or Visiting Writer

ENG 111a How Fiction Works: Narrative in Theory and Practice
[ hum ]
We will explore the forms and functions of fictional narrative, emphasizing the workings of plot, narration, character, time and point of view, and studying the variety of effects produced by the diverse, historically shifting practices of short stories and novels. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Lanser

ENG 111aj Narrative Theory
[ hum ]
Explores fundamental concepts in narrative theory and narratology, from Aristotle until today. We will consider the formal features of plots, characters, and narrative discourse. And we will read theoretical accounts of the role that narrative plays in personal identity, community belonging, moral judgment, historical knowledge, and political authority. As a prominent body of scholarship within literary studies, narrative theory offers insights into a fundamental way in which we organize our experiences and make sense of our world. Offered as part of JBS program.
Mr. Sherman

ENG 111b Postcolonial Theory
[ hum ]
Seminar in postcolonial theory with relevant background texts, with an emphasis on the specificity of its theoretical claims. Readings from Spivak, Said, Bhabha, Appiah, Mudimbe, Marx, Lenin, Freud, Derrida, Césaire, and Fanon, among others. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Anjaria

ENG 115b Fictions of Liberty: Europe in a Revolutionary Age
[ hum ]
The "Age of Enlightenment" fostered new notions of human rights that found their tumultuous proving ground in the French Revolution. Through writings from several genres and nations, this course explores some of the political, economic, religious, racial, and sexual "fictions of liberty" that have shaped our own time. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

ENG 117b Novels of William Faulkner
[ hum wi ]
A study of the major novels and stories of William Faulkner, the most influential American novelist of the twentieth century. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Burt

ENG 119a Directed Writing: Fiction
[ hum wi ]
Offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis. Students will be selected after the submission of a sample of writing, preferably four to seven pages. Please refer to the Schedule of Classes for submission formats and deadlines within registration periods. May be repeated for credit.
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.
Visiting Writer

ENG 119b Directed Writing: Poetry
[ hum wi ]
Offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis. Students will be selected after the submission of a sample of writing, preferably four to seven pages. Please refer to the Schedule of Classes for submission formats and deadlines within registration periods. May be repeated for credit.
For those who wish to improve as poets while broadening their knowledge of poetry, through a wide spectrum of readings. Students' 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.
Visiting Poet

ENG 123a Dream Visions: Genre, History, and the Mysterious
[ hum ]
A study of the mysterious function of imaginary dreams in medieval and Renaissance writing, along with actual dream dictionaries and dream transcriptions of the period. Visions of Hell, prophetic dreams, apocalypse, Chaucer, Dante, Shakespeare, Nashe, and others. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Campbell

ENG 125b Romanticism II: Byron, Shelley, and Keats
[ 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 third year.
Mr. Burt, Mr. Flesch, or Ms. Quinney

ENG 126a American Realism and Naturalism, 1865-1900
[ hum ]
Focuses on 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.
Mr. Burt

ENG 127a The Novel in India
[ hum nw ]
Survey of the novel and short story of the Indian subcontinent, their formal experiments in context of nationalism and postcolonial history. Authors may include Tagore, Anand, Manto, Desani, Narayan, Desai, Devi, Rushdie, Roy, Mistry, and Chaudhuri. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Anjaria

ENG 127b Migrating Bodies, Migrating Texts
[ hum nw ]
Beginning with the region's representation as a tabula rasa, examines 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.
Ms. Smith

ENG 128a Alternative Worlds: Modern Utopian Texts
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: ENG 1a or ENG 11a.
British, European, and American works depicting alternate, often "better" worlds, including More's Utopia, Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World, Voltaire's Candide, Casanova's Icosameron, selections from Charles Fourier, Alexander Bogdanov's Red Star, Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis: Dawn, Wolfgang Becker's Goodbye Lenin! Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Campbell

ENG 129a Directed Writing: Creative Nonfiction
[ hum wi ]
Offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis. Students will be selected after the submission of a sample of writing of no more than five pages. Please refer to the Schedule of Classes for submission formats and deadlines within registration periods.
Students will learn how to use a wide range of literary techniques to produce factual narratives drawn from their own perspectives and lives. Creative assignments and discussions will include the personal essay, the memoir essay and literary journalism. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

ENG 130a Representing Poverty
[ hum ]
Explores influential theories of poverty and their impact on filmmakers. Compares cinematic tools and traditions for representing the lives of the world's poor. Includes neorealist classics and many contemporary variations. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Irr

ENG 130b Writing the American Self: American Lives From Franklin to Eggers
[ hum ]
As a genre inextricably intertwined with individualism, autobiography has developed as an expression of American identity since the inception of the republic. Setting iconic personal narratives in the context of history and theories of life-writing, we will study works from Ben Franklin's autobiography and Frederick Douglass' "Narrative of the Life of a Slave" to Mary McCarthy's "Memoir of a Catholic Girlhood" and Dave Eggers' "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius." Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Lawrence

ENG 131a Comedy: Literature, Film, and Theory
[ hum ]
Explores comedy as an enigma at the heart of social belonging, psychological coherence, and philosophical speculation. Investigates the strangeness of human laughter. Compares comic literary and film genres in different historical periods as a way to ask: what is the nature of comic pleasure? How does comedy organize desire and make sense of suffering? How are communities regulated by comedy, and how is comedy involved in social freedom? How are basic philosophical questions about minds and bodies illuminated by comedy? Texts by Chaplin, Shakespeare, Monty Python, Swift, Marx Brothers, Aristophanes, Wilde, and others. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Sherman

ENG 132b Chaucer I
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: ENG 1a or ENG 10a or ENG 11a.
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

ENG 134b Subjectivity
[ hum ]
Studies how the experience of subjectivity and selfhood is represented in literature and philosophy of the early modern period, primarily in Britain. Authors include Renaissance lyric poets, Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Blake, with philosophical texts by Descartes, Pascal, Locke, Hume, and Kant. Usually offered third year.
Ms. Quinney

ENG 136b Our Bondage and Our Freedom: Representing Slavery, 1789-2013
[ hum ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took ENG 16a in prior years.
Examines U.S. slave narratives from the late eighteenth-century through the antebellum period. We will also see how contemporary authors and filmmakers revise earlier ways of representing slavery. Special one-time offering, spring 2015.
Ms. Halpern

ENG 138b Toni Morrison
[ hum ]
An advanced introduction to the oeuvre of Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison. Reading her novels and nonfiction, we investigate concerns that shaped our world in the last century and haunt the current one, foregrounding Morrison's writing as a key site of trouble and of transformation. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Abdur-Rahman

ENG 139a Broadsides, Public Art, and Non-Traditional Publishing
[ hum wi ]
Offered exclusively on a graded basis. Students will be selected after the submission of an introductory letter including student's major, previous art/creative writing experience, previous experience in public projects (art or other), why public art is of interest to them, what public art has moved them. Please refer to the Schedule of Classes for submission formats and deadlines within the Registration periods.
How can art and literature, often the most solitary of pursuits for the creator, matter in the public realm? This experiential learning course will provide students an opportunity to study the history of public art, focusing specifically on literature-related installations; get hands-on experience with one such project, Broadsided Press (www.broadsidedpress.org), and conceptualize and execute their own public art project. Special one-time offering, spring 2016.
Ms. Bradfield

ENG 139b Intermediate Screenwriting
[ hum wi ]
Prerequisites: ENG 129b or ENG 79a. Offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis. Students will be selected after the submission of a sample of writing of no more than five pages. Please refer to the Schedule of Classes for submission formats and deadlines within registration periods.
In this writing-intensive course, students build on screenwriting basics and delve more deeply into the creative process. Participants read and critique each other's work, study screenplays and view films, and submit original written material on a biweekly basis. At the conclusion of the course each student will have completed the first draft of a screenplay (100-120 pages). Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Weinberg

ENG 142a Literary Booms: Latin America, South Asia and Beyond
[ hum ]
What makes literature from a certain region trend in the world market? Does it have to do with style and talent, or are extraliterary factors more important? This course addresses these questions by reading fiction in conjunction with secondary literatures that present various arguments for why trends occur. Special one-time offering, spring 2016.
Ms. Kantor

ENG 145b Just Jane Austen: Gender, Justice, and the Art of Fiction
[ hum ]
Explores the novels of Jane Austen in historical context, with particular attention to the ways in which they engage ethical questions, address the economic and social implications of gender, and negotiate tensions between social justice and narrative form. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Lanser

ENG 146a Reading the American Revolution
[ hum ]
Explores the role of emerging literary forms and media in catalyzing, shaping, and remembering the American Revolution. Covers revolutionary pamphlets, oratory, the constitutional ratification debates, seduction novels, poetry, and plays. Includes authors Foster, Franklin, Jefferson, Paine, Publius, Tyler, and Wheatley. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Tharaud

ENG 147a Film Noir
[ 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.
Mr. Morrison

ENG 147b 20th-Century American Bestsellers
[ hum ]
Bestselling fiction opens a window on publishing, narrative production, and popular culture in 20th-century America. Students will contribute five original research assignments on one bestseller to an online database; midterm and final exams are based on assigned reading. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Unsworth

ENG 149a Writing for Television
[ hum wi ]
Offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis.
Introduces students to the craft of writing for a variety of television programming formats, including episodic, late-night, and public service announcements. Students will read and view examples and create their own works within each genre. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Weinberg

ENG 150a Sex and Cinema
[ hum ]
Studies the construction and representation of sexuality, both normative and deviant, in film from the 1930's to the present day. We will pay particular attention to evolving strategies of censorship and resistance to it. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Morrison

ENG 150b Out of This World: Science Fiction's Cyborgs, Time Travellers, and Space Invaders
[ hum wi ]
Charts four principal ways that SF over the past two centuries has imagined alternatives to ordinary reality: cyborgs, time travellers, dystopias and space invaders. It tests scholarly ideas about "cognitive estrangement," technological innovation ("novum") and self-contained "secondary worlds" and culminates in independent research projects. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Plotz

ENG 151a Queer Studies
[ hum ]
Recommended preparation: An introductory course in gender/sexuality and/or a course in critical theory.
Historical, literary, and theoretical perspectives on the construction and performance of queer subjectivities. How do queer bodies and queer representations challenge heteronormativity? How might we imagine public spaces and queer citizenship? Usually offered every second year.
Mr. King

ENG 151b Performance Studies
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: A course in dramatic literature and familiarity with theatrical production.
The theater, etymologically, is a place for viewing. Theory, etymologically, begins with a spectator and a viewing. Reading theories of theater and performance against paradigmatic dramatic texts and documents of social performance, speculation, and spectatorship are reviewed. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. King

ENG 152b Arthurian Literature
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: ENG 1a, ENG 10a, HUM 10a or ENG 11a.
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.
Ms. Campbell

ENG 153a Enlightenment of the Flesh: Reading and Writing Sex in the Eighteenth Century
[ hum ]
Reading libertine and erotic writing alongside medical and philosophical treatises and commercially mainstream fiction, we will ask how practices of writing and reading sex contributed to the emergence and surveillance of a private self knowable through its bodily sex and sensations. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. King

ENG 157a Contemporary Poetry
[ 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.
Ms. Quinney

ENG 157b American Women Poets
[ hum wi ]
Prerequisite: ENG 1a, ENG 10a, HUM 10a or ENG 11a.
Students 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 twentieth-century writers. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Campbell or Ms. Skorczewski

ENG 160a Digital Media and Culture
[ hum ]
Studies the history and development of digital media, with an emphasis on modes of literature and entertainment. We will examine the digital revolution's effect on such concepts as narrative, politics, aesthetics, identity, knowledge, and humanism. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

ENG 160b Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath
[ hum wi ]
Traces the trajectories of Sylvia Plath's and Anne Sexton's careers, their poetic achievements and cultural legacies. We read Plath's and Sexton's poems, prose, and journals and examine work by contemporaries to study what came to be called "confessional" poetry. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Skorczewski

ENG 162b Narratives of Disability in South Asia
[ hum nw ]
Explores literary and filmic narratives about disability in India and Pakistan. In conjunction with secondary literature that contextualizes the experience of living with disability and its representation in aesthetic forms, and the particular disabling effects of social and historical realities of South Asia. Special one-time offering, spring 2016.
Ms. Kantor

ENG 166b Whitman, Dickinson, and Melville
[ hum ]
Poetry of Whitman, Dickinson, Emerson, and Melville, with representative poems of Whittier, Bryant, Longfellow, Poe, Sigourney, and Tuckerman. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Burt

ENG 167a Decolonizing Fictions
[ hum nw ]
An introduction to basic concepts in postcolonial studies using selected literary works from South Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. Specific themes covered include the colonial encounter; colonial education and the use of English; nationalism; gender, violence, and the body; and postcolonial diasporas. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Anjaria

ENG 171a The History of Literary Criticism: From Plato to Postmodernism
[ hum wi ]
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.
Mr. Morrison or Ms. Quinney

ENG 173a Spenser and Milton
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: ENG 10a, 11a, or HUM 10a (may be taken concurrently) or by permission of the instructor.
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 third year.
Mr. Flesch

ENG 177a Hitchcock's Movies
[ hum ]
A study of thirteen films covering the whole trajectory of Hitchcock's career, as well as interviews and critical responses. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Morrison

ENG 180a The Modern American Short Story
[ 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 third year.
Staff

ENG 187a American Fiction since 1945
[ hum ]
Readings of contemporary postrealist and postmodernist fiction. Authors and themes vary but always include major figures such as Nabokov, Pynchon, DeLillo. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Irr

ENG 188b Capitalism and Culture
[ hum ]
What characterizes literary accounts of capitalism processes? How do authors from different periods or regions narrate the history of capitalism? What do they describe as the central conflicts between capitalism and other pre-, post-, or non-capitalist economic systems? Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Irr

ENG 197b Within the Veil: African-American and Muslim Women's Writing
[ hum ]
In twentieth-century United States culture, the veil has become a powerful metaphor, signifying initially the interior of African-American community and the lives of Muslims globally. This course investigates issues of identity, imperialism, cultural loyalty, and spirituality by looking at and linking contemporary writing by African-American and Muslim women. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Abdur-Rahman

(200 and above) Primarily for Graduate Students

ENG 200a Approaches to Literary and Cultural Studies
Required of all first-year Ph.D. graduate students. Optional for MA students. Can be repeated for credit with permission from advisor (if applicable) and the Director of Graduate Studies.
A broad-based theory course that will include a unit on research methods. Usually offered every year.
Staff

ENG 201a Gender and Sexuality Studies
Investigates sex assignment, genders, and sexualities as categories of social knowledge and modes of social production. Reading recent critical discussions and crossing disciplinary boundaries, this course explores gender, desire, and pleasure in everyday and formal performance, literary and other written texts, and visual representations. Usually offered every fourth year.
Mr. King

ENG 202a Thomas Malory: Fiction before Novels
Reading of the complete Works of Malory, also known as the Morte D'Arthur, as 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.
Ms. Campbell

ENG 207a Race, Desire, and the Literary Imagination
An examination of the interlocking constructions of race, sexuality, and gender in United States culture. Probes the relation among embodiment, racial and sexual ideologies, the formation of identity, and U.S. literary production. Readings include critical works of African American studies, performance studies, queer theory and gender studies alongside key texts of twentieth-century U.S. literature. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Abdur-Rahman

ENG 213a Milton
Considers the writings of John Milton in terms of the revolutionary world of mid-seventeenth century England. We will focus on Milton's active engagement in political and religious controversy, as well as his extraordinary innovations as a poet. Works to be read include major poems and prose. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Flesch or Ms. Targoff

ENG 216b The James Siblings
Focuses on the powerful and competing ideas of human nature and social interaction that Henry, William and Alice James articulated and embodied, in their writing considered on its own and in the intense familial interaction that so affected their thinking. Works may include Ivy Tower and Sacred Font. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Flesch

ENG 227a Studies in Modernism
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.
Mr. Morrison

ENG 230a Realism
An intensive study of literary realism. Students will trace how critics and authors have defined realism, and explore its vexed history in relation to naturalism and modernism. Readings will consider contemporary debates around peripheral realisms and the future of realism. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Anjaria

ENG 231a Performing the Early Modern Self
Examines contemporary performance theory against everyday and formal performances of the Restoration and eighteenth-century England. Investigates agents' negotiations of social and personal space in plays, diaries, novels, and treatises. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. King

ENG 233a Shakespeare Seminar
An intensive reading of Shakespeare's work from a theoretical and historical viewpoint. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Flesch

ENG 237a Reading the Black Transnation
Fiction, theory, film of what is variously termed the African Diaspora or the Black Atlantic. Acquaints students with major and lesser-known figures, concepts, and strategies. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Smith

ENG 238a Capitalism and the American Novel
How does American fiction envision the processes, conflicts, and ideologies associated with capitalism? These topics have had a major presence in the American novel since before independence, but they took hold with particular force during the rapid industrialization of the late nineteenth century as well as the crises of the 1930s and the turn to financial capitalism in the 1970s and 80s, and they continue to preoccupy many of the most important American novelists today. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Irr

ENG 238b Against Forgetting: Literature between History and Memory
Explores literature in the space between history and memory, as counter-history, with theoretical readings on temporality and philosophy of history. Issues include the role of the witness, collective memory, the imagination in historical knowledge, and politics of memorialization practices. Usually offered every fourth year.
Mr. Sherman

ENG 240a Sexualities
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.
Mr. Morrison

ENG 241b Theory of Poetry
Studies the most important and exciting works of 2,000-year old history of the theory of poetry. Readings include works by Plato, Aristotle, Longinus, Shelley, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Stein, Pound and Kristeva. Usually offered every fourth year.
Ms. Quinney

ENG 245a Naturalism between Realism and Modernism
Attempts a genealogy of Naturalism in the wake of Marx, Darwin and Zola's "experimental novel," drawing on Toril Moi's account of Idealism's decline and Jameson's account of Naturalist pessimism. Authors include Hardy, Gissing, Crane, Norris, James, and Lawrence. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Plotz

ENG 247a American Literary Geographies
Explores the spatial frameworks developed by scholars to study American Literature and culture in recent decades, from micro-geographies like the plantation and the region to transnational spaces such as hemisphere and the planet. Readings include foundational literary texts from the colonial period to the twentieth century. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Tharaud

ENG 254a Gender and the Genealogy of the Novel
Explores the form, functions, and focal interests of the eighteenth-century novel with particular attention to the significance of gender to this "rising" genre that was shaped by, and in turn shaped, the social, political, and cultural changes that characterize the period. Usually offered every fourth year.
Ms. Lanser

ENG 257b Modernism's Broken World
Seminar on literary modernism as it imagines experiences of brokenness and reparation, involving questions of trauma, collective memory, secularization, and historical justice. Work by Woolf, Eliot, Joyce, Faulkner, Stein, Barnes, Beckett are studied, as well as theoretical writing by Benjamin, Adorno, Freud, and others. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Sherman

ENG 266a Slavery and the American Imagination
Examines slavery in both a historical and literary way, including some of the most important histories of slavery, a selection of classic slave narratives, accounts by masters of slaves, and a selection of some of the important political oratory about slavery in the antebellum era. Usually offered every fourth year.
Mr. Burt

ENG 298a Independent Study
Staff

ENG 299b Classroom Pedagogy and the Teaching of Writing
An introduction to the theory and practice of teaching college-level writing courses. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Skorczewski

ENG 301a Master's Directed Research
This course entails the creation of a research paper under the direction of a faculty member. Usually offered every year.
Staff

ENG 350a Proseminar
Yields half-course credit. Offered exclusively on a credit/no-credit basis. Required of all PhD students. Optional for MA students.
Focuses on professional development, including teaching competency. Usually offered every year.
Staff

ENG 352a Directed Research
Specific sections for individual faculty members as requested. Permission of the director of graduate studies required.
Staff

ENG 352b Directed Research
Staff

ENG 402d Dissertation Research
Specific sections for individual faculty members as requested.
Staff

Close Reading Courses for the Creative Writing Major

ENG 10b Poetry: A Basic Course
[ 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 fourth year.
Staff

ENG 11a Close Reading: Theory and Practice
[ hum ]
Examines the theory, practice, technique, and method of close literary reading, with scrupulous attention to a variety of literary texts to ask not only what but also how they mean, and what justifies our thinking that they mean these things. Usually offered every third year.
Staff

ENG 11b Fiction: A Basic Course
[ hum ]
Introduces moods, features, and forms of fiction. Explores a range of national literatures and historical periods. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Irr

English: Literary Theory / Criticism Courses

AAAS/ENG 141b Critical Race Theory
[ hum ]
Traces an intellectual and political history of critical race theory that begins in law classrooms in the 1980s and continues in the 21st century activist strategies of Black Lives Matter movement. We proceed by reading defining theoretical texts alongside African American literature of the 20th and 21st centuries. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Abdur-Rahman

COML/ENG 141b Literature and Time
[ hum ]
Explores the human experience of temporality and reflection upon it. Texts include: Waiting for Godot, To the Lighthouse and Combray, along with philosophical speculation by Aristotle, Kierkegaard and Heidegger, as well as two films, La Jeteé and 12 Monkeys. Themes covered by this course include: memory, nostalgia, anxiety, ethics, eternity, and time travel. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Quinney

ENG 11a Close Reading: Theory and Practice
[ hum ]
Examines the theory, practice, technique, and method of close literary reading, with scrupulous attention to a variety of literary texts to ask not only what but also how they mean, and what justifies our thinking that they mean these things. Usually offered every third year.
Staff

ENG 61b Philosophical Approaches to Film Theory
[ hum ]
Studies a philosophical approach to film theory, examining both what philosophy has to say about film and what effects the existence and experience of film can have on philosophical thinking about reality, perception, judgment, and other minds. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Flesch

ENG 111a How Fiction Works: Narrative in Theory and Practice
[ hum ]
We will explore the forms and functions of fictional narrative, emphasizing the workings of plot, narration, character, time and point of view, and studying the variety of effects produced by the diverse, historically shifting practices of short stories and novels. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Lanser

ENG 111aj Narrative Theory
[ hum ]
Explores fundamental concepts in narrative theory and narratology, from Aristotle until today. We will consider the formal features of plots, characters, and narrative discourse. And we will read theoretical accounts of the role that narrative plays in personal identity, community belonging, moral judgment, historical knowledge, and political authority. As a prominent body of scholarship within literary studies, narrative theory offers insights into a fundamental way in which we organize our experiences and make sense of our world. Offered as part of JBS program.
Mr. Sherman

ENG 111b Postcolonial Theory
[ hum ]
Seminar in postcolonial theory with relevant background texts, with an emphasis on the specificity of its theoretical claims. Readings from Spivak, Said, Bhabha, Appiah, Mudimbe, Marx, Lenin, Freud, Derrida, Césaire, and Fanon, among others. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Anjaria

ENG 131a Comedy: Literature, Film, and Theory
[ hum ]
Explores comedy as an enigma at the heart of social belonging, psychological coherence, and philosophical speculation. Investigates the strangeness of human laughter. Compares comic literary and film genres in different historical periods as a way to ask: what is the nature of comic pleasure? How does comedy organize desire and make sense of suffering? How are communities regulated by comedy, and how is comedy involved in social freedom? How are basic philosophical questions about minds and bodies illuminated by comedy? Texts by Chaplin, Shakespeare, Monty Python, Swift, Marx Brothers, Aristophanes, Wilde, and others. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Sherman

ENG 151a Queer Studies
[ hum ]
Recommended preparation: An introductory course in gender/sexuality and/or a course in critical theory.
Historical, literary, and theoretical perspectives on the construction and performance of queer subjectivities. How do queer bodies and queer representations challenge heteronormativity? How might we imagine public spaces and queer citizenship? Usually offered every second year.
Mr. King

ENG 151b Performance Studies
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: A course in dramatic literature and familiarity with theatrical production.
The theater, etymologically, is a place for viewing. Theory, etymologically, begins with a spectator and a viewing. Reading theories of theater and performance against paradigmatic dramatic texts and documents of social performance, speculation, and spectatorship are reviewed. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. King

ENG 171a The History of Literary Criticism: From Plato to Postmodernism
[ hum wi ]
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.
Mr. Morrison or Ms. Quinney

English: Media and Film Courses

ENG 20a Bollywood: Popular Film, Genre, and Society
[ hum nw ]
An introduction to popular Hindi cinema through a survey of the most important Bollywood films from the 1950s until today. Topics include melodrama, song and dance, love and sex, stardom, nationalism, religion, diasporic migration, and globalization. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Anjaria

ENG 22a Filmi Fictions: From Page to Screen in India
[ hum nw ]
An introduction to filmic adaptations of Indian novels from Bollywood, Indian art cinema, and Hollywood. Readings include novels as well as theoretical approaches to adaptation. Films include Slumdog Millionaire, Pather Panchali, Devdas, Guide, Umrao Jaan, and others. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Anjaria

ENG 27b Classic Hollywood Cinema
[ hum ]
A critical examination of the history of mainstream U.S. cinema from the 1930s to the present. Focuses on major developments in film content and form, the rise and fall of the studio and star system, the changing nature of spectatorship, and the social context of film production and reception. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Morrison

ENG 30a Introduction to Graphic Novels
[ hum ]
Introduces students to the genre conventions and theoretical context necessary for the critical study of graphic novels. In particular, we examine single-author graphic novels that trouble the border between fiction and nonfiction--memoirs, graphic reportage, and speculative histories. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Kantor

ENG 50b American Independent Film
[ hum ]
Explores non-studio filmmaking in the United States. Defines an indie aesthetic and alternative methods of financing, producing, and distributing films. Special attention given to adaptations of major film genres, such as noir thrillers, domestic comedy, and horror. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Irr

ENG 60b The Films of Disney
[ hum ]
Surveys Disney narratives from early shorts to recent features. Includes discussion of studio style, concept of the child viewer, social impact, and responses to changing world technologies. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Irr

ENG 61b Philosophical Approaches to Film Theory
[ hum ]
Studies a philosophical approach to film theory, examining both what philosophy has to say about film and what effects the existence and experience of film can have on philosophical thinking about reality, perception, judgment, and other minds. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Flesch

ENG 70a Magic Lanterns to Movies: The Origins of Narrative Film
[ hum ]
Explores the birth of moving pictures, from Edison and Lumiere's experiments to "Birth of a Nation" and "The Jazz Singer". Traces film's roots in the photographic experiments, visual spectacles and magical lanterns of late nineteenth-century France, England, and America, and its relationship to the era's literary experiments. Filmmakers include: Georges Melies, Abel Ganz, Sergei Eisentein, D W Griffiths, Charlie Chaplin. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Plotz

ENG 80a Black Looks: The Promise and Perils of Photography
[ hum ]
Explores photography and Africans, African-Americans and Caribbean people, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. This course will examine fiction that refers to the photograph; various photographic archives; and theorists on photography and looking. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Smith

ENG 130a Representing Poverty
[ hum ]
Explores influential theories of poverty and their impact on filmmakers. Compares cinematic tools and traditions for representing the lives of the world's poor. Includes neorealist classics and many contemporary variations. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Irr

ENG 147a Film Noir
[ 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.
Mr. Morrison

ENG 150a Sex and Cinema
[ hum ]
Studies the construction and representation of sexuality, both normative and deviant, in film from the 1930's to the present day. We will pay particular attention to evolving strategies of censorship and resistance to it. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Morrison

ENG 151b Performance Studies
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: A course in dramatic literature and familiarity with theatrical production.
The theater, etymologically, is a place for viewing. Theory, etymologically, begins with a spectator and a viewing. Reading theories of theater and performance against paradigmatic dramatic texts and documents of social performance, speculation, and spectatorship are reviewed. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. King

ENG 160a Digital Media and Culture
[ hum ]
Studies the history and development of digital media, with an emphasis on modes of literature and entertainment. We will examine the digital revolution's effect on such concepts as narrative, politics, aesthetics, identity, knowledge, and humanism. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

ENG 177a Hitchcock's Movies
[ hum ]
A study of thirteen films covering the whole trajectory of Hitchcock's career, as well as interviews and critical responses. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Morrison

English: Multicultural Literature/World Anglophone Courses

AAAS/ENG 141b Critical Race Theory
[ hum ]
Traces an intellectual and political history of critical race theory that begins in law classrooms in the 1980s and continues in the 21st century activist strategies of Black Lives Matter movement. We proceed by reading defining theoretical texts alongside African American literature of the 20th and 21st centuries. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Abdur-Rahman

ENG 20a Bollywood: Popular Film, Genre, and Society
[ hum nw ]
An introduction to popular Hindi cinema through a survey of the most important Bollywood films from the 1950s until today. Topics include melodrama, song and dance, love and sex, stardom, nationalism, religion, diasporic migration, and globalization. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Anjaria

ENG 22a Filmi Fictions: From Page to Screen in India
[ hum nw ]
An introduction to filmic adaptations of Indian novels from Bollywood, Indian art cinema, and Hollywood. Readings include novels as well as theoretical approaches to adaptation. Films include Slumdog Millionaire, Pather Panchali, Devdas, Guide, Umrao Jaan, and others. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Anjaria

ENG 57b Writing the Nation: James Baldwin, Philip Roth, Toni Morrison
[ hum ]
An in-depth study of three major American authors of the twentieth century. Highlights the contributions of each author to the American literary canon and to its diversity. Explores how these novelists narrate cross-racial, cross-gendered, cross-regional, and cross-cultural contact and conflict in the United States. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Abdur-Rahman

ENG 77b Literatures of Global English
[ hum nw ]
Survey of world Anglophone literatures with attention to writers' literary responses 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, Coetzee, Kincaid, Atwood, Anzaldua. Usually offered every third year.
Staff

ENG 80a Black Looks: The Promise and Perils of Photography
[ hum ]
Explores photography and Africans, African-Americans and Caribbean people, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. This course will examine fiction that refers to the photograph; various photographic archives; and theorists on photography and looking. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Smith

ENG 87a Sex and Race in the American Novel
[ hum ]
Depictions of racial and sexual others abound in American literature of the twentieth century. Reading texts across racial, geographical, and temporal divides, this course investigates the representation of non-normative sexualities as signaled, haunted, or repaired by an appeal to race. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Abdur-Rahman

ENG 127a The Novel in India
[ hum nw ]
Survey of the novel and short story of the Indian subcontinent, their formal experiments in context of nationalism and postcolonial history. Authors may include Tagore, Anand, Manto, Desani, Narayan, Desai, Devi, Rushdie, Roy, Mistry, and Chaudhuri. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Anjaria

ENG 127b Migrating Bodies, Migrating Texts
[ hum nw ]
Beginning with the region's representation as a tabula rasa, examines 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.
Ms. Smith

ENG 136b Our Bondage and Our Freedom: Representing Slavery, 1789-2013
[ hum ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took ENG 16a in prior years.
Examines U.S. slave narratives from the late eighteenth-century through the antebellum period. We will also see how contemporary authors and filmmakers revise earlier ways of representing slavery. Special one-time offering, spring 2015.
Ms. Halpern

ENG 138b Toni Morrison
[ hum ]
An advanced introduction to the oeuvre of Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison. Reading her novels and nonfiction, we investigate concerns that shaped our world in the last century and haunt the current one, foregrounding Morrison's writing as a key site of trouble and of transformation. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Abdur-Rahman

ENG 142a Literary Booms: Latin America, South Asia and Beyond
[ hum ]
What makes literature from a certain region trend in the world market? Does it have to do with style and talent, or are extraliterary factors more important? This course addresses these questions by reading fiction in conjunction with secondary literatures that present various arguments for why trends occur. Special one-time offering, spring 2016.
Ms. Kantor

ENG 162b Narratives of Disability in South Asia
[ hum nw ]
Explores literary and filmic narratives about disability in India and Pakistan. In conjunction with secondary literature that contextualizes the experience of living with disability and its representation in aesthetic forms, and the particular disabling effects of social and historical realities of South Asia. Special one-time offering, spring 2016.
Ms. Kantor

ENG 167a Decolonizing Fictions
[ hum nw ]
An introduction to basic concepts in postcolonial studies using selected literary works from South Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. Specific themes covered include the colonial encounter; colonial education and the use of English; nationalism; gender, violence, and the body; and postcolonial diasporas. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Anjaria

ENG 197b Within the Veil: African-American and Muslim Women's Writing
[ hum ]
In twentieth-century United States culture, the veil has become a powerful metaphor, signifying initially the interior of African-American community and the lives of Muslims globally. This course investigates issues of identity, imperialism, cultural loyalty, and spirituality by looking at and linking contemporary writing by African-American and Muslim women. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Abdur-Rahman

English: Pre-1800 Courses

COML/ENG 149a Hell: The Poetry
[ hum ]
Studies the Classical underworld and its reworking in English verse. Topics include the descent to the underworld, the ambiguous Satan, the myths of Orpheus and Penelope, and the psychological Hells of the modernists. Special one-time offering, fall 2016.
Ms. Quinney

ENG 33a Shakespeare
[ hum ]
A survey of Shakespeare as a dramatist. From nine to twelve plays will be read, representing all periods of Shakespeare's dramatic career. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Flesch or Ms. Targoff

ENG 43a Pilgrims, Queens, and the Garden: English Literature from Chaucer to Milton
[ hum ]
Beginning with Chaucer’s pilgrims in the Canterbury Tales and ending with Milton’s Garden of Eden in Paradise Lost, this course explores the works of some of the major British authors from the late fourteenth to the mid-seventeenth century. From wandering pilgrims and powerful queens to fruitful gardens, this course surveys early modern English culture via its poetry and prose. Our course may include the works of authors such as Margery Kempe, Thomas Wyatt, Edmund Spenser, Philip Sidney, Queen Elizabeth I, William Shakespeare, Mary Wroth, John Donne, Amelia Lanyer, and George Herbert. Usually offered every third year.
Staff

ENG 44b Jane Austen's Eighteenth Century
[ hum ]
Immerses students in the world of Enlightenment thought, art, and letters, and in the political and cultural ambiance of late-eighteenth-century England, with particular emphasis on developments that most shaped Austen's ideas and imagination. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Lanser

ENG 50a Love Poetry from Sappho to Neruda
[ hum ]
This course explores the relationship between love and poetry. Starts with the ancient Greek poet Sappho and proceeds through the centuries, reading lyrics by Catullus, Ovid, Propertius, Petrarch, Dante, Shakespeare, Donne, Rossetti, and others. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Targoff

ENG 64b From Libertinism to Sensibility: Pleasure and the Theater, 1660-1800
[ 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.
Mr. King

ENG 80b The Tale
[ hum wi ]
The oral form of the story; also a non-realist modern literary genre. Students study and create myths, ballads, folktales, ritual drama, and ethnographic approaches to the transmission of tales, including Genesis, Metamorphosis, fairy tales, pre-Columbian myths, Poe, Angela Carter. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Campbell

ENG 103a Exploring the Self in Seventeenth-Century Poetry
[ hum ]
Examines the poetry of Donne and his contemporaries, including George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, and Andrew Marvell. These "metaphysical poets" will be read alongside critical accounts by Samuel Johnson, T. S. Eliot, and others. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Targoff

ENG 104a Eighteenth-Century British Poetry, from Dryden to Blake
[ hum ]
The major British poets of the eighteenth century, from Dryden to Blake, with an emphasis on the expressive experiments in form and content which set the terms and showed the possibilities available to all subsequent English poetry. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Flesch

ENG 115b Fictions of Liberty: Europe in a Revolutionary Age
[ hum ]
The "Age of Enlightenment" fostered new notions of human rights that found their tumultuous proving ground in the French Revolution. Through writings from several genres and nations, this course explores some of the political, economic, religious, racial, and sexual "fictions of liberty" that have shaped our own time. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

ENG 123a Dream Visions: Genre, History, and the Mysterious
[ hum ]
A study of the mysterious function of imaginary dreams in medieval and Renaissance writing, along with actual dream dictionaries and dream transcriptions of the period. Visions of Hell, prophetic dreams, apocalypse, Chaucer, Dante, Shakespeare, Nashe, and others. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Campbell

ENG 128a Alternative Worlds: Modern Utopian Texts
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: ENG 1a or ENG 11a.
British, European, and American works depicting alternate, often "better" worlds, including More's Utopia, Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World, Voltaire's Candide, Casanova's Icosameron, selections from Charles Fourier, Alexander Bogdanov's Red Star, Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis: Dawn, Wolfgang Becker's Goodbye Lenin! Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Campbell

ENG 132b Chaucer I
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: ENG 1a or ENG 10a or ENG 11a.
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

ENG 134b Subjectivity
[ hum ]
Studies how the experience of subjectivity and selfhood is represented in literature and philosophy of the early modern period, primarily in Britain. Authors include Renaissance lyric poets, Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Blake, with philosophical texts by Descartes, Pascal, Locke, Hume, and Kant. Usually offered third year.
Ms. Quinney

ENG 146a Reading the American Revolution
[ hum ]
Explores the role of emerging literary forms and media in catalyzing, shaping, and remembering the American Revolution. Covers revolutionary pamphlets, oratory, the constitutional ratification debates, seduction novels, poetry, and plays. Includes authors Foster, Franklin, Jefferson, Paine, Publius, Tyler, and Wheatley. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Tharaud

ENG 152b Arthurian Literature
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: ENG 1a, ENG 10a, HUM 10a or ENG 11a.
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.
Ms. Campbell

ENG 153a Enlightenment of the Flesh: Reading and Writing Sex in the Eighteenth Century
[ hum ]
Reading libertine and erotic writing alongside medical and philosophical treatises and commercially mainstream fiction, we will ask how practices of writing and reading sex contributed to the emergence and surveillance of a private self knowable through its bodily sex and sensations. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. King

ENG 173a Spenser and Milton
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: ENG 10a, 11a, or HUM 10a (may be taken concurrently) or by permission of the instructor.
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 third year.
Mr. Flesch

English: Post-1800 Courses

ENG 6a The American Renaissance
[ hum ]
Explores the transformation of U.S. literary culture before the Civil War: transcendentalism, the romance, the slave narrative, domestic fiction, sensationalism, and their relation to the visual art and architecture of the period. Authors will include Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, Stowe, Poe, Ridge, and Crafts. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Tharaud

ENG 7a American Literature from 1900 to 2000
[ hum wi ]
Focuses on literature and cultural and historical politics of major authors. Prose and poetry. May include Eliot, Frost, Williams, Moore, Himes, Cather, and Faulkner as well as contemporary authors. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Burt or Ms. Irr

ENG 8a Twenty-First-Century American Literature
[ hum ]
An introductory survey of trends in recent American literature with a focus on prose. Readings vary yearly but always include winners of major literary prizes such as the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, PEN/Faulkner Award, Pushcart Prize, O. Henry Award, or the Nobel Prize. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Irr

ENG 18a Irish Literature, from the Peasantry to the Pogues
[ hum ]
Explores Irish poetry, fiction, drama, and film in English. Begins with the tradition's roots among subjugated peasants and Anglo-Irish aristocracy and ends in the modern post-colonial state. Authors include Swift, Yeats, Wilde, Bowen, Joyce, O'Brien, and Heaney. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Plotz

ENG 20b The Art of Flirtation: Reading Romance from Pride and Prejudice to Harry Potter
[ hum wi ]
Introduces the history of flirtation in the romance novel and the debates that have surrounded this genre of popular literature. Starting with the emergence of the "modern" romance in the 18th century, we trace how Austen's heirs co-opted and adapted her themes. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Skorczewski

ENG 21a Adolescent Literature
[ hum ]
Literature for adolescents can't afford any self-indulgences: its audience is too impatient. So it's a great place to see what's essential to storytelling. Authors may include Shelley, Twain, Salinger, Pullman, and Rowling, whom we'll use to test basic narrative theory. Usually offered every third year.
Staff

ENG 28a Contemporary Environmental Writing
[ hum ]
Explores literary responses to the natural environment, concentrating on recent decades. Several genres will be discussed, such as dystopia, the thriller, climate fiction, natural history, exploration narrative, and realist exposé. Usually offered every fourth year.
Ms. Irr

ENG 30a Introduction to Graphic Novels
[ hum ]
Introduces students to the genre conventions and theoretical context necessary for the critical study of graphic novels. In particular, we examine single-author graphic novels that trouble the border between fiction and nonfiction--memoirs, graphic reportage, and speculative histories. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Kantor

ENG 37b Modern Drama: Theatres of Rupture, Resistance, and Engagement
[ hum ]
How did theatre artists take “the modern” as a goal to be realized in the future and a crisis to be managed in the present? Playwrights include Ibsen, Wilde, Chekhov, Shaw, Synge, Glaspell, Brecht, Williams, Beckett, Pinter, Fugard, Fornes, Hwang, Churchill, Kushner, and Parks. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. King

ENG 38b Race, Region, and Religion in the Twentieth-Century South
[ hum ]
Twentieth century fiction of the American South. Racial conflict, regional identity, religion, and modernization in fiction from both sides of the racial divide and from both sides of the gender line. Texts by Chestnutt, Faulkner, Warren, O'Connor, Gaines, McCarthy, and Ellison. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Burt

ENG 40a Coming of Age in Literature
[ hum wi ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took FYS 13a in prior years.
What makes growing up such a compelling theme, even for adult readers? This seminar introduces students to several novels which feature characters who come of age. Authors include, Dickens, Salinger, Dangarembga, Diaz, and others. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Anjaria

ENG 40b The Birth of the Short Story: Gods, Ghosts, Lunatics
[ hum ]
How old is the short story? It may go back to the Stone Age, Aesop's fables, or medieval saints' lives, but some credit Edgar Allan Poe and the Scottish shepherd James Hogg. This class takes an in-depth look at three key centers of the genre: Edinburgh, New York, and Moscow. Authors include Melville, Hawthorne, Dickens, Gogol, and Chekov. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Plotz

ENG 40bj The Birth of the Short Story
[ hum wi ]
How did the genre of the short story emerge and what distinctive work has it performed in its long and protean history? What unique publication and reading practices have been a part of this history? And why does the short story still matter? With a focus on nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers such as Irving, Poe, Hawthorne, Twain, Chekhov, Mansfield, Hemingway, O’Connor, García Márquez, Johnson, Wallace, and Moore, we will work through the techniques and craft that have defined the short story tradition. And we will consider recent experiments in short stories, mapping where the genre is going next. Offered as part of JBS program.
Mr. Sherman

ENG 45b Romanticism: Gods, Nature, Loneliness, Dreams
[ hum ]
A study of Romantic poetry, from love lyrics to ballads about the supernatural to philosophical meditations on self and soul. Authors include: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, Keats and Shelley. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Quinney

ENG 46a Rebelling in Print: Women, Reform, and the 19th-Century Novel
[ hum ]
Nineteenth-century novels by American women writers teach that a woman’s place is in the home; can these novels also be seen as radical? We'll focus on how these novels entered into the political and ideological debates of the time. Usually offered every third year.
Staff

ENG 46b American Gothic Romantic Fiction
[ hum wi ]
American Gothic and romantic fiction from Charles Brockden Brown to Cormac McCarthy. Texts by Brown, Cooper, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Faulkner, O'Connor, Warren, and McCarthy. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Burt

ENG 47a Frontier Visions: The West in American Literature and Culture
[ hum ]
Explores more than two centuries of literary and visual culture about the American West, including the frontier myth, Indian captivity narratives, frontier humor, dime novel and Hollywood westerns, the Native American Renaissance, and western regionalism. Authors include Black Hawk, Cather, Doig, Silko, Turner, and Twain. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Tharaud

ENG 48a Trash
[ hum ]
What can we do with trash and garbage? What have we done to living beings in their name? Examines films, novels. poems, installations, essays, and critical theory to examine the matrix of possibility and reuse, its physical and biological dimensions, and its metaphoric reaches. Students will produce discussion questions, short papers, and a major project that will include artwork, poetry, fiction, short film, problem-solving and an analytical essay. Usually offered every fourth year.
Ms. Campbell

ENG 55b Romanticism and the Supernatural
[ hum ]
Study of Romantic poetry and prose about the Gothic and supernatural. What is at stake, psychologically and aesthetically, in the representation of supernatural seduction, temptation and desire? Figures include Prometheus, Faust, Frankenstein and the vampire, Christabel. Texts include Frankenstein and Northanger Abbey, as well as poetry by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Byron and Blake. Usually offered every fourth year.
Ms. Quinney

ENG 56a American Journeys
[ hum ]
Explores the ways American literature imagines a range of geographies and landscapes in the long nineteenth century, from the regional to the global, and frontier farms to urban tenements. Authors may include Olaudah Equiano, Sarah Orne Jewett, Herman Melville, and Mark Twain. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Tharaud

ENG 58a Literature and Medicine
[ hum wi ]
How has literature grappled with illness, healing, and the patient-doctor encounter? How can poetry and storytelling communicate with experience of bodily pain--and how does the body seek to communicate its suffering without language? We examine literary responses to the body's biological vulnerabilities, and seek to contextualize the vulnerable body within the cultural and political fields that shape medical knowledge and practice. Readings in fiction, poetry, essay, and drama will suggest the art, or craftsmanship, involved in the healing sciences, as well as the diagnostic nature of literary criticism. Reading for new approaches, generated by the literary imagination, to controversial issues in medical ethics. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Sherman

ENG 67b Modern Poetry
[ hum ]
A course on the major poets of the twentieth century. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Morrison

ENG 75b The Victorian Novel: Secrets, Lies, and Monsters
[ 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' Bleak House, and Trollope's The Prime Minister. Usually offered every fourth year.
Mr. Plotz

ENG 78a Virginia Woolf
[ hum ]
An immersion in Woolf's astonishing body of writing. How did her fiction and non-fiction re-imagine the self in the changing social worlds of the early twentieth century? How did her experiments with narrative open new understandings of gender, sexuality, war, the knowing subject, the dimensions of space and time> A chronological survey of her diverse forms of writing that energized, all at once, modernist aesthetics, feminist politics, and philosophical speculation. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Sherman

ENG 78b Modernism, Atheism, God
[ hum ]
Explores European and U.S. literature after Nietzsche's proclamation, at the end of the 19th century, that God is dead. How does this writing imagine human life and the role of literature in God's absence? How does it imagine afterlives of God, and permutations of the sacred, in a post-religious world? How, or why, to have faith in the possibility of faith in a secular age? What does "the secular" actually mean, and how does it persuade itself that it's different than "religion"? Approaches international modernism as a political and theological debate about materialism and spirituality, finitude and transcendence, reason and salvation. Readings by Kafka, Joyce, Rilke, Faulkner, Eliot, Beckett, Pynchon, and others. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Sherman

ENG 88a European Encounters: American Writers and Artists Abroad
[ hum ]
Explores the dynamic interchange between American genius and European tradition as great minds grappled with the tension between newness and a weighty cutlural inheritance. We will examine novels and autobiographies of travel, paintings, sculptures, and photography created under the influence of Paris, Rome, Florence, and Venice by Hawthorne, James, Wharton, Fitzgerald, Sargent, Whistler, and St. Gaudens, among others. Usually offered every fourth year.
Ms. Lawrence

ENG 117b Novels of William Faulkner
[ hum wi ]
A study of the major novels and stories of William Faulkner, the most influential American novelist of the twentieth century. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Burt

ENG 125b Romanticism II: Byron, Shelley, and Keats
[ 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 third year.
Mr. Burt, Mr. Flesch, or Ms. Quinney

ENG 126a American Realism and Naturalism, 1865-1900
[ hum ]
Focuses on 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.
Mr. Burt

ENG 130b Writing the American Self: American Lives From Franklin to Eggers
[ hum ]
As a genre inextricably intertwined with individualism, autobiography has developed as an expression of American identity since the inception of the republic. Setting iconic personal narratives in the context of history and theories of life-writing, we will study works from Ben Franklin's autobiography and Frederick Douglass' "Narrative of the Life of a Slave" to Mary McCarthy's "Memoir of a Catholic Girlhood" and Dave Eggers' "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius." Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Lawrence

ENG 145b Just Jane Austen: Gender, Justice, and the Art of Fiction
[ hum ]
Explores the novels of Jane Austen in historical context, with particular attention to the ways in which they engage ethical questions, address the economic and social implications of gender, and negotiate tensions between social justice and narrative form. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Lanser

ENG 147b 20th-Century American Bestsellers
[ hum ]
Bestselling fiction opens a window on publishing, narrative production, and popular culture in 20th-century America. Students will contribute five original research assignments on one bestseller to an online database; midterm and final exams are based on assigned reading. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Unsworth

ENG 150b Out of This World: Science Fiction's Cyborgs, Time Travellers, and Space Invaders
[ hum wi ]
Charts four principal ways that SF over the past two centuries has imagined alternatives to ordinary reality: cyborgs, time travellers, dystopias and space invaders. It tests scholarly ideas about "cognitive estrangement," technological innovation ("novum") and self-contained "secondary worlds" and culminates in independent research projects. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Plotz

ENG 157a Contemporary Poetry
[ 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.
Ms. Quinney

ENG 157b American Women Poets
[ hum wi ]
Prerequisite: ENG 1a, ENG 10a, HUM 10a or ENG 11a.
Students 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 twentieth-century writers. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Campbell or Ms. Skorczewski

ENG 160b Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath
[ hum wi ]
Traces the trajectories of Sylvia Plath's and Anne Sexton's careers, their poetic achievements and cultural legacies. We read Plath's and Sexton's poems, prose, and journals and examine work by contemporaries to study what came to be called "confessional" poetry. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Skorczewski

ENG 166b Whitman, Dickinson, and Melville
[ hum ]
Poetry of Whitman, Dickinson, Emerson, and Melville, with representative poems of Whittier, Bryant, Longfellow, Poe, Sigourney, and Tuckerman. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Burt

ENG 180a The Modern American Short Story
[ 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 third year.
Staff

ENG 187a American Fiction since 1945
[ hum ]
Readings of contemporary postrealist and postmodernist fiction. Authors and themes vary but always include major figures such as Nabokov, Pynchon, DeLillo. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Irr

ENG 188b Capitalism and Culture
[ hum ]
What characterizes literary accounts of capitalism processes? How do authors from different periods or regions narrate the history of capitalism? What do they describe as the central conflicts between capitalism and other pre-, post-, or non-capitalist economic systems? Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Irr

English: Directed Writing Courses

ENG 19a Introduction to Creative Writing
[ hum ]
Offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis. Students will be selected after the submission of a sample of writing, preferably four to seven pages. Please refer to the Schedule of Classes for submission formats and deadlines within registration periods.
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. Broumas or Ms. Campbell

ENG 49a Scriptwriting for the Short Film
[ hum wi ]
Offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis. Students will be selected after the submission of a sample of writing, preferably four to seven pages. Please refer to the Schedule of Classes for submission formats and deadlines within registration periods.
Addresses many facets of writing screenplays for short films (under eight pages). Students develop two to three scripts through creative exercises, rewriting, and critiques. Supplementary screenings and reading focuses on the particulars of short fiction and cinematic writing. Usually offered every third year.
Staff

ENG 79a Directed Writing: Beginning Screenplay
[ hum wi ]
This course may not be repeated by students who have taken ENG 129b in previous years. Offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis. Students will be selected after the submission of a sample of writing of no more than five pages. Please refer to the Schedule of Classes for submission formats and deadlines within registration periods.
Fundamentals of screenwriting: structure, plot, conflict, character, and dialogue. Students read screenwriting theory, scripts, analyze files, and produce an outline and the first act of an original screenplay. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Weinberg

ENG 79b Writing Workshop: From Memory to Craft
[ hum wi ]
Prerequisite: ENG 19b is recommended. This course may not be repeated by students who have taken ENG 129a in previous years. Offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis. Students will be selected after the submission of a sample of writing of no more than five pages. Please refer to the Schedule of Classes for submission formats and deadlines within registration periods.
This combination workshop and contemporary literature course explores the process by which prose that engages with place moves from simple accounting into art. Texts include work by writers such as Christine Byl, James Galvin, Rebecca Solnit, Craig Childs, and Zadie Smith. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

ENG 109a Directed Writing: Poetry
[ hum wi ]
Offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis. Students will be selected after the submission of a sample of writing, preferably four to seven pages. Please refer to the Schedule of Classes for submission formats and deadlines within registration periods. May be repeated for credit.
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 or Visiting Poet

ENG 109b Directed Writing: Short Fiction
[ hum wi ]
Offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis. Students will be selected after the submission of a sample of writing, preferably four to seven pages. Please refer to the Schedule of Classes for submission formats and deadlines within registration periods. May be repeated for credit.
This workshop will focus on short fiction--stories ten pages and under in length. We will use writing exercises, assigned readings, and essays on craft to discuss structure, character development, point of view, and other elements of fiction. While appropriate for all levels, this workshop might be of special interest to writers who want a secure foundation in the basics. Usually offered every year.
Mr. McCauley or Visiting Writer

ENG 119a Directed Writing: Fiction
[ hum wi ]
Offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis. Students will be selected after the submission of a sample of writing, preferably four to seven pages. Please refer to the Schedule of Classes for submission formats and deadlines within registration periods. May be repeated for credit.
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.
Visiting Writer

ENG 119b Directed Writing: Poetry
[ hum wi ]
Offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis. Students will be selected after the submission of a sample of writing, preferably four to seven pages. Please refer to the Schedule of Classes for submission formats and deadlines within registration periods. May be repeated for credit.
For those who wish to improve as poets while broadening their knowledge of poetry, through a wide spectrum of readings. Students' 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.
Visiting Poet

ENG 129a Directed Writing: Creative Nonfiction
[ hum wi ]
Offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis. Students will be selected after the submission of a sample of writing of no more than five pages. Please refer to the Schedule of Classes for submission formats and deadlines within registration periods.
Students will learn how to use a wide range of literary techniques to produce factual narratives drawn from their own perspectives and lives. Creative assignments and discussions will include the personal essay, the memoir essay and literary journalism. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

ENG 139a Broadsides, Public Art, and Non-Traditional Publishing
[ hum wi ]
Offered exclusively on a graded basis. Students will be selected after the submission of an introductory letter including student's major, previous art/creative writing experience, previous experience in public projects (art or other), why public art is of interest to them, what public art has moved them. Please refer to the Schedule of Classes for submission formats and deadlines within the Registration periods.
How can art and literature, often the most solitary of pursuits for the creator, matter in the public realm? This experiential learning course will provide students an opportunity to study the history of public art, focusing specifically on literature-related installations; get hands-on experience with one such project, Broadsided Press (www.broadsidedpress.org), and conceptualize and execute their own public art project. Special one-time offering, spring 2016.
Ms. Bradfield

ENG 139b Intermediate Screenwriting
[ hum wi ]
Prerequisites: ENG 129b or ENG 79a. Offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis. Students will be selected after the submission of a sample of writing of no more than five pages. Please refer to the Schedule of Classes for submission formats and deadlines within registration periods.
In this writing-intensive course, students build on screenwriting basics and delve more deeply into the creative process. Participants read and critique each other's work, study screenplays and view films, and submit original written material on a biweekly basis. At the conclusion of the course each student will have completed the first draft of a screenplay (100-120 pages). Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Weinberg

ENG 149a Writing for Television
[ hum wi ]
Offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis.
Introduces students to the craft of writing for a variety of television programming formats, including episodic, late-night, and public service announcements. Students will read and view examples and create their own works within each genre. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Weinberg

English: Independent Instructional Courses

ENG 96d Senior Creative Writing Thesis
Required for creative writing majors fulfilling the thesis option. Usually offered every year.
Staff

ENG 97a Senior Essay
For seniors interested in writing an essay outside of the honors track. Usually offered every year.
Staff

ENG 97d Senior Thesis
For seniors interested in writing a thesis outside of the honors track. Usually offered every year.
Staff

ENG 98a Independent Study
Usually offered every year.
Staff

ENG 98b Independent Study
Usually offered every year.
Staff

ENG 99a The Senior Honors Essay
For seniors interested in qualifying for departmental honors when combined with a tenth course for the major. Usually offered every year.
Staff

ENG 99b The Senior Honors Essay
For seniors interested in qualifying for departmental honors when combined with a tenth course for the major. Usually offered every year.
Staff

ENG 99d The Senior Honors Thesis
For seniors interested in qualifying for departmental honors with a thesis. Usually offered every year.
Staff

English: Other Elective Courses

COML/ENG 140b Children's Literature and Constructions of Childhood
[ hum ]
Explores whether children's literature has sought to civilize or to subvert, to moralize or to enchant, forming a bedrock for adult sensibility. Childhood reading reflects the unresolved complexity of the experience of childhood itself as well as larger cultural shifts around the globe in values and beliefs. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Miller

COML/ENG 148a Fiction of the Second World War
[ hum wi ]
Studies novels of the Second World War from Great Britain, France, Germany, the United States, the Soviet Union, Hungary and Japan (all readings in English). Usually offered every fourth year.
Mr. Burt

ENG 1a Introduction to Literary Studies
[ hum ]
This course is designed to introduce students to basic skills and concepts needed for the study of Anglophone literature and culture. These include skills in close reading; identification and differentiation of major literary styles and periods; knowledge of basic critical terms; definition of genres. Usually offered every semester.
Staff

ENG 48b Literature and Happiness
[ hum wi ]
Considers studies of happiness in economics, philosophy, psychology, neuroscience and history in relation to the American Novel. We analyze six novels to question how literary representations of happiness reflect and complicate ideas about happiness in other disciplines. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Skorczewski

ENG 60aj Storytelling Performance
[ hum oc ]
This experiential course is a workshop for students to craft and perform stories as part of the Brandeis Storytelling Brigade. Through a series of collaborative exercises and rehearsals, students will develop a repertoire of at least four stories: one fictional story for young children, one folk tale for young children, one story based on historical research for young adults or adults, and one autobiographical or fictional story for young adults or adults. We will tell our individual and group stories, as a team, at youth summer programs, libraries, teen centers, open mics, and other public spaces. Offered as part of JBS program.
Mr. Sherman

ENG 68b The International Legacy of Anne Frank
[ hum wi ]
Explores how The Diary of Anne Frank has been represented in different media over time. Students participate in an international digital learning environment with students from Amsterdam. Includes short lectures, discussions, team projects, diary-writing, archival research and web tours. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Skorczewski

ENG 108b Second Language Writing Instruction: Theory and Practice
[ hum ]
Yields six semester-hour credits.
Explores current theory and research in second language (L2) writing and tutoring pedagogy. All students will work with English language learners in the Waltham community, tutoring them in their various English writers needs. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Lederman

Cross-Listed in English: Media/Film

HISP 167b Twice-Told Tales: Colonial Encounters and Postcolonial Fiction in the Americas
[ hum nw wi ]
Taught in English.
A wide range of modern and contemporary writers and artists in the Americas have examined the legacies of European colonialism in the continent. This course explores this persistent engagement with colonialism in narrative fiction and cinema from Latin American and the United States. The first part of the course introduces key texts from the colonial period, written by European and indigenous chroniclers of the colonization of the New World. In the second part of the course we look at fiction, film, and visual art by Latin American, African American and Native American artists who set out to retell colonial histories in the present, oftentimes in controversial ways. Materials discussed include works by Juan José Saer, Octavia Butler, Coco Fusco, Guillermo Gómez Peña, Gerald Vizenor, Peter Greenaway, and Nelson Pereira dos Santos, among others. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Arellano

Cross-Listed in English: Multicult/World Anglo. Lit

AAAS 79b Afro-American Literature of the Twentieth Century
[ hum ss wi ]
An introduction to the essential themes, aesthetic concerns, and textual strategies that characterize Afro-American writing of this century. Examines those influences that have shaped the poetry, fiction, and prose nonfiction of representative writers. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Abdur-Rahman or Ms. Smith

AAAS 132b Introduction to African Literature
[ hum nw ss wi ]
Examines the cultural production of African writers and filmmakers and their critiques of the postcolonial state. Topics include their exploration of gender, sexuality, language choice, the pressures placed on "authentic" identities by diasporic communities, and the conflicting claims of tradition and modernity. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Smith

AAAS 133b The Literature of the Caribbean
[ hum nw ss wi ]
An exploration of the narrative strategies and themes of writers of the region who grapple with issues of colonialism, class, race, ethnicity, and gender in a context of often-conflicting allegiances to North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Smith

AAAS 134b Novel and Film of the African Diaspora
[ hum nw ]
Writers and filmmakers, who are usually examined separately under national or regional canonical categories such as "(North) American," "Latin American," "African," "British," or "Caribbean," are brought together here to examine transnational identities and investments in "authentic," "African," or "black" identities. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Smith

COML 117a Magical Realism and Modern Myth
[ hum ]
An exploration of magical realism, as well as the enduring importance of myth, in twentieth and twenty-first century fiction and film from the United States, Latin American, and beyond. authors include Toni Morrison, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Salman Rushdie; films include Wings of Desire and Hero. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Sherman

SAS 101a South Asian Women Writers
[ hum nw ]
Includes literature by South Asian women writers such as Amrita Pritam, Ismat Chugtai, Jhumpa Lahiri, Kamila Shamsie, Tahmina Anam, and Chandini Lokuge. Some of the works were originally written in English, while others have been translated from the vernacular. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Singh

Cross-Listed in English: Post-1800

RECS 154a The Art of Vladimir Nabokov
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English. Readings in English.
A concentrated study of Vladimir Nabokov, the most noted Russian author living in emigration and one of the most influential novelists of the twentieth century. Focuses on the major Russian- and English-language novels. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Powelstock

THA 66a The American Drama since 1945
[ ca ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took THA 150a in prior years.
Examines the major plays and playwrights representing styles from social realism to avant-garde performance groups and the theater of images. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Holmberg

THA 76a British, Irish, and Postcolonial Theater
[ ca wi ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took THA 106a in prior years.
An exploration of the playwrights, political struggles, and aesthetic movements that shaped the evolution of British, Irish, and post-colonial drama in the twentieth century. Attention paid to race, class, gender, sexuality, and theater in performance. Playwrights include: Shaw, Yeats, Synge, O'Casey, Orton, and Churchill. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Holmberg

Cross-Listed in English: Directed Writing Courses

THA 71a Playwriting
[ ca wi ]
Prerequisite: THA 10a or permission of the instructor. May not be taken for credit by students who took THA 104a in prior years.
Introduces students to the fundamentals of playwriting. Attention will be given to dramatic structure, the development of character, and stage dialogue. In addition to completing a number of playwriting exercises, students will write one ten-minute play and one one-act play. Work will be shared with the class and read aloud. Usually offered every year.
Mr. McKittrick

Cross-Listed in English: Other Elective Courses

AMST 177b True Crime and American Culture
[ ss ]
Explores a series of enduringly fascinating cases from the true crime files of American culture. Our crime scene investigations range from 1692 Salem to 1994 Brentwood; our line-up includes witches, outlaws, kidnappers, gangsters, murderers, and serial killers; and our evidence is drawn from literature, film, and television. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Doherty

COML 164b Reading Screenplays
[ hum ]
How do you read a screenplay? Are screenplays artworks in their own right, independent from the film they were turned into or might become? Why do creative industries value the work of screenplay readers? This course serves as an introduction to the emergent field of screenwriting studies and demonstrates the professional application of screenplay analysis in the contemporary media industry. A professional script reader and development executive will feature as guest speaker. Materials include Hollywood screenplays, foreign language scripts in translation, and unproduced screenplays under consideration with production companies. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Arellano

ECS 100a European Cultural Studies Proseminar: Modernism
[ hum wi ]
Explores the interrelationship of literature, music, painting, philosophy, and other arts in the era of high modernism. Works by Artaud, Baudelaire, Benjamin, Mann, Mahler, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Kandinsky, Schiele, Beckett, Brecht, Adorno, Sartre, Heidegger, and others. Usually offered every fall semester.
Mr. Dowden

FYS 44a JustBooks: Tragedy, Right vs. Right?
[ hum ]
Most stories are about good vs. evil. Even if they end unhappily, we know what the happy alternative would be. But tragedy often seems about elemental, irresolvable conflict. Is such conflict inevitable? Can there be just solutions to tragic situations? Offered as part of the JustBooks program.
Ms. Quinney (English)

GECS 130b The Princess and the Golem: Fairy Tales
[ hum wi ]
Conducted in English.
Compares Walt Disney’s films with German and other European fairy tales from the nineteenth and twentieth century, focusing on feminist and psychoanalytic readings. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. von Mering

HOID 102b Knowledge and Power
[ hum ]
What is the relationship between knowledge and power? Using the work of Michel Foucault as a foundation, this course will explore the interweaving effects of power and knowledge in institutions and their systems of thought. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Gamsby

HSSP 118b Viewing Medicine and Health Policy Through the Lens of Literature
[ oc ss ]
Literature – fiction, memoir, poetry and drama – offers a powerful lens for studying key health policy issues. By harnessing the power of authors’ imaginations, insights and compelling stories, students can gain deeper insight into patient centered care, ethics in research, access to healthcare, obesity and hunger, role of the pharmaceutical and tobacco, aging policy, disability, and clinicians’ roles and training. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Garnick

NEJS 72a Representing the Arab Israeli Conflict
[ hum ]
Explores how the Arab-Israeli conflict is portrayed in literature, film and political writing. The course explores questions such as: what are the ways in which we find conviction, legitimacy, moral support, pain and enjoyment in the images, narratives and ideas surrounding the conflict; what is the relationship between narrative and ideology; how are fictional representations and ideological discourse constructed poetically and rhetorically; what are the ways in which images repress/empower women who partake in the conflict. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Ofengenden

NEJS 176b Jewish Graphic Novels
[ hum ]
Examines the complex genre of the Jewish graphic novel. Explores Jewish artists' use of graphic narratives to grapple with issues of acculturation, trauma, and identity. Special focus on the reconfiguration of Jewish gender identities. Structured around primary texts. Secondary readings provide historical context and theoretical analysis. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Kellman

PHIL 182a Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations
[ hum ]
An intensive study of Ludwig Wittgenstein's seminal work, Philosophical Investigations. This course should be of interest to philosophy and literature students who want to learn about this great philosopher's influential views on the nature of language and interpretation. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Flesch and Mr. Hirsch

THA 11a Theater Texts and Theory I
[ ca ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took THA 100a in prior years.
The evolution of Western drama from its ritual origins through the mid-eighteenth century. Greek tragedy, Roman comedy, medieval drama, Italian humanism, Spanish Golden Age comedias, and French neoclassicism. Attention paid to theater history, dramatic theory, and performance. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Holmberg

THA 11b Theater Texts and Theory II
[ ca ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took THA 100b in prior years.
A continuation of THA 100a, covering plays, history, and political theory. Romanticism to the present, including realism and the avant-garde. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Holmberg

THA 102b Shakespeare: On Stage and Screen
[ ca ]
Shakespeare wrote his plays to be seen and heard, not read. This course approaches Shakespeare as a man of the theater who thought visually as well as verbally. Explores Shakespeare's scripts in their original theatrical context, subsequent production history, and migration to film. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Holmberg

THA 142b Women Playwrights: Writing for the Stage by and about Women
[ ca wi ]
Introduces the world of female playwrights. This course will engage the texts through common themes explored by female playwrights: motherhood (and daughterhood), reproduction, sexuality, family relationships, etc. Students will participate in writing or performance exercises based on these themes. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

THA 145a Queer Theater
[ ca ]
Explores significant plays that have shaped and defined gay identity during the past 100 years. Playwrights span Wilde to Kushner. Examining texts as literature, history, and performance, we will explore religion, poiltics, gender, the AIDS epidemic, and coming out. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Troyanovksy