Course DescriptionsLiterature Courses
EN 11 Composition and Prose Literature
This course introduces students to the writing and reading skills and strategies that best prepare them for the writing tasks they will encounter at the university level and beyond. The course accomplishes its goals through student-generated writing and the study of essays and other forms of literary nonfiction. Note: EN 11, or its equivalent, is a prerequisite for EN 12. Designated sections meet the U.S. diversity requirement. Three credits.
EN 12 Introduction to Literature and Writing the Research Paper
This course provides a study of drama, fiction and poetry as they reflect literary and cultural approaches to the individual's experience and society. EN 12 covers critical writing as an extension of composition in EN 11. This course also teaches students to write a thesis-driven, coherently developed research paper that incorporates and documents sources. (Prerequisite: EN 11 or its equivalent)
Designated secitons meet the U.S. diversity requirement. Three credits.
EN 12, or its equivalent, is a prerequisite for all upper-level English courses.
EN 203/CL 103 Masterpieces of Greek Literature in English Translation
This course survey s major works of ancient Greek literature with an emphasis on the content of this literature as a key to understanding classical Greek civilization, and as meaningful in a contemporary context. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent)
Three credits.
EN 204/CL 104 Masterpieces of Roman Literature in English Translation
This course surveys major works of Roman literature of the Republic and early Empire with an emphasis on the content of this literature as a key to understanding Roman civilization, and as meaningful in a contemporary context. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 221/CL121 Myth in Classical Literature
This course introduces students to classical mythology through an examination of the diverse ways in which myth and legend are treated in the literature of ancient Greece and Rome. Students read texts in English translation; knowledge of Greek or Latin is not required. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 248 Allegory and Fantasy
In EN 11 and EN 12, students experience several modes of essay writing and the genres of fiction, drama, and poetry. This course offers advice and practice in responding to the allegory, another genre of literature, which can be found in prose and in epic poetry. Understanding allegory is an enjoyable and liberating task. The dramatized metaphors of allegorical characters, places, objects, and events are best viewed in ways that are neither reductive nor simplistic, but are flexible, non-doctrinaire, and open to transformation. Fantasy literature at its best is also more allegorical, provoking the reader not to escape reality but to engage reality more fully. Authors in this course may include E. M. Forster, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Barbara Kingsolver, C. C. Lewis, Flannery O'Connor, J.R.R. Tolkien, Voltaire, and Kurt Vonnegut. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 249 Literacy and Language
This course examines the concept of literacy in the United States. It considers competing definitions of literacy - contemporary and historical - and some of their implications, and examines the development of writing ability in young children and special characteristics of adult literacy. Topics include literacy in the workplace, relationships between literacy and privilege, and theories of composing. Formerly EN/W 249 (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) This course meets the U.S. Diversity requirement. Three credits.
EN 250 The Epic Hero
This course ranges from Homer to J.R.R. Tolkien. The epic writer employs a vast canvas in telling his story and giving us a picture of an entire civilization. His hero embodies the highest values of his society and represents that society against the forces of chaos and evil. Our focus, then, is on the changing image of the hero, particularly as presented in the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid, and The Lord of the Rings. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 251 British Literature Survey I
This course introduces the major styles, themes, genres, authors, and periods of British literature from the Middle Ages to the 18th century. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 252 British Literature Survey II
This course introduces the major styles, themes, genres, authors, and periods of British literature from the romantic periods through the 20th century. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 253 The African-American Literary Tradition
African-American literature exemplifies and challenges the humanist tradition; in fact, its diversity of voices, modes of representation, and the conditions of its production interrogate the very concept of tradition. This survey course examines the development of African-American literature from 1770 to the present, as well as its place within the American literary canon. The course uses themes of literacy, identity, and authority to trace this literature's history from Phillis Wheatley's 18th-century role in defining American poetry through the slave narrative to the New Negro Renaissance, the Civil Rights movement, and African-American postmodernism. This course meets the U.S. diversity requirement. (Prerequiste: EN 12 or euquivalent) Three credits.
EN 254 Chivalric Romance
The knight of chivalric romance is one of the most enduring legacies of medieval culture. He is warrior and lover, loyal to his lord and to his lady, even when, as is so often the case, these loyalties collide. This course traces the history and development of this enormously popular and enduring genre, beginning with the invention of courtly love and the formation of the legend of King Arthur. It focuses on the seminal 12th-century French romances and important and representative works from Germany and England, and concludes with the challenges posed to the genre and its values by late medieval and early modern culture, as represented by Malory and Cervantes. Issues discussed include: narrative structures and motifs; the depiction of nature and civilization; the stylized representation of gender and class; the interplay of reality and fantasy; theories of authorship and audience; connections to history-writing and to other literature. All texts are read in modern English translations. (Prerequiste: EN 12 or equivalent)
Three credits.
EN 255 Shakespeare
A study of Shakespeare's career as dramatist using plays drawn from his farces, romantic comedies, history plays, tragedies, and romances, including The Taming of the Shrew, Richard III, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and The Tempest. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 256 Myths and Legends of Ireland and Britian
This course examines the literature of early medieval cultures of Ireland and Great Britain, with special attention to Celtic culture. Divided into four parts, the course focuses on the Irish Tain Bo Cuailnge, the Welsh Mabinogion, the Latin Christian legends of English and Irish saints, and the Old English epic Beowulf. Critical issues include paganism and Christianity; conceptions of law, kinship, and nationalhood; warrior culture and the idea of the hero; the status of art and poetry; orality and literacy; the natural and the supernatural; and the construction of gender. The course also pays attention to the arts and artifacts from these medieval cultures. Students read all texts in modern English translations. Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 257 Dante
This course examines the works of Dante Alighieri, including the Vita nuova, in addition to the "Inferno," "Purgatorio," and "Paradiso" from the Devine Comedy. Students are introduced to the political, linguistic, theological, and poetic ideas that make Dante's works not only significant in the medieval context, but also continue to challenge and inform modern debates. This course, which is conducted in English, counts towards the core requirement in literature. Cross-listed with IT 289. Three credits.
EN 258 Special Topics in Literature
Special topics are offered on an experimental or temporary basis to explore literature topics or approaches that are not included in the established curriculum. Course content varies from semester to semester, depending on the professor, and may range from texts by one single author, to emergent, global literatures, and innovative or experimental ways of combining authors, periods, and genres in literature. Students are allowed to take this course twice under different rubrics. Designated sections meet the U.S. diversity requirement. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 260 Understanding Poetry I
Offered for those students with no previous knowledge of poetry as well as those who wish to develop and enrich their understanding of the genre; and students who have experienced difficulty in understanding poetry in the past, this course includes selections from narrative, epic, and lyric poetry, with concentration on shorter lyric poems. The course includes readings and discussions with visiting poets. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 261 Understanding Poetry II
This course concentrates on reading longer narrative and lyric poems to study the work of individual poets. The work includes readings and discussions with visiting poets. EN 260 is an appropriate, but not a necessary, prerequisite; students who have not taken EN 260 should read Perrine's Sound and Sense or any other introduction-to-poetry text in preparation for the course. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 262 Understanding Drama
By means of close reading of selected plays representing the major types of drama, students are introduced to both these types and the general work of drama as a special way of presenting the self in everyday life, as well as illuminating the human condition in a local-particular way. Drama is essentially a literary blueprint for theatre of performance, which is, in turn, the ideal end of fulfillment of drama. Therefore, where available, audio-visual resources are used to augment the reading of plays. Students are also encouraged to attend play productions by theatres in the immediate area. Theatre Fairfield included. (Prerequisite: EN 12 course with section on drama or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 263 Introduction to Contemporary World Literature
This course reviews recent fiction from around the world, including works from such places as Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, New Zealand, and the Middle East. Students learn strategies for comparing stories and narrative styles from different cultures, subject positions, and sociopolitical frameworks in order to develop a stronger awareness of different types of subjectivity in a global context. Non-majors seeking to fulfill the English core requirement and beginning English majors may take this course. This course meets the world diversity requirement. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 264/TA 120 American Drama
This course examines the development of American theatre from the 18th through the 21st centuries, including a study and analysis of the special problems affecting the development and changes in American society as seen through American playwriting and theatre production. The course meets the U.S. diverisity requirement. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 265 Major Works of World Literature
This course surveys some major works of world literature from ancient times to the present. Because the works are chosen from a broad span of cultures or periods, the course focuses on the function of literature: what kinds of stories do people tell about their societies? What are their major concerns, and how are these represented in fiction? How can we compare stories from one culture or period with those from another? The course discusses genre and style as well as content. Books include The Epic of Gilgamesh, Boccaccio, Marguerite de Navarre, Madame de Lafayette, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 266 The Russian Novel and Western Literature
A comparative study of major Russian authors of the 19th century and their contemporaries in France, Germany, England, and America begins with short fiction and moves to novels such as Pere Goriot, Crime and Punishment, A Hero of Our Time, and Madame Bovary. Russian writers include Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, and Tolstoy. Topics for discussion include the role of marriage and attitudes towards the family, urban vs. rural existence - especially the role of the city, the fantastic in literature, narrative technique and the development of 19th-century fiction. (formerly EN 373) Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 267 Modern British Literature
A study of Conrad, Joyce, Lawrence, and Virginia Woolf: writers who profoundly changed the shape of the novel, a change also reflected in the writings of Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, George Orwell, and Aldous Huxley. (Prerequiste: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 268 The Irish Short Story
This course examines the Irish short story, stressing its development from 1903, with the creation of a national literature in English, to the present. The course focuses on the deeply rooted oral tradition, the Anglo-Irish tradition, and the native Irish tradition. Topics include the Irish literary revival, Irish family life, and the Irish revolution as treated in the short story. Authors include George Moore, James Joyce, Liam O'Flaherty, Maria Edgeworth, Elizabeth Bowen, Edna O'Brien, Mary Lavin, Daniel Corkery, Frank O'Connor, Sean O'Faolain, and William Trevor. Students view several films including Man of Aran, The Dead, and Michael Collins. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 269 Modern Irish Drama
An introductory survey course in 20th-century Irish drama includes the plays of Sean O'Casey, J.M. Synge, W.B. Yeats, and Lady Gregory, Samuel Beckett, Brian Friel, Theresa Deevey, Frank McGuiness, and Sebastian Barry. The course considers the work of Irish repertory theatre groups such as the Abbey and Gate Theatres of Dublin, the Lyric of Belfast, and the Irish language theatre of Galway. Videos from the Lincoln Center Performing Arts Library with renowned Irish performers such as Siobhan McKenna, Barrie Fitzgerald, and Jack Macgowan and attend Irish plays performed at the Irish Arts Center and the Irish Repertory Theater in New York City. Formerly EN 357. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 270 Studies in American Literature
This course begins with a survey of the Puritan background to American literature and the writings of the early republic. The course emphasizes the early national period and the romantic phase in American literature leading up to the Civil War. Writers studied include Irving, Cooper, Melville, Poe, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and Whitman. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 271 The Frontier in American Literature
For the last five centuries, the frontier - understood as the place where humanity comes into contact with its apparent absence in the shape of alien beings and landscapes - has been the subject of some of the most lasting powerful American stories. In this course, students concentrate on some of the major representations of the frontier produced between the 1820s and the present to learn how to recognize and talk about the position that the American western has occupied in our culture. Authors include Cooper, Twain, Cather, and McCarthy; filmmakers include Ford, Peckinpagh, and Eastwood. Formerly EN 385 (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 272 Development of the American Short Story
This course traces the development of the American short story from its emergence in the literary-historical context of 19th century America to its maturity in the 20th century. It explores most intensively the writings of Poe, Hawthorne, James, and Hemingway, James and Hemingway, but considers, as well, the contributions to the genre of Irving, Crane, and numerous other writers. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 273 Irish-American Literature
This course examines the Irish voice in American literature during the past 200 years. Rooted in the 18th century, proliferating in the 19th, and flourishing in the 20th century. Irish-American literature is one of the oldest and largest bodies of ethnic writing produced by a single American immigrant group. The course focuses mainly on Irish-American writing of the 20th century, although a sampling of earlier works is also studied. The authors include Finley Peter Dunne, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Eugene O'Neill, John O'Hara, James T. Farrell, J. F. Powers, Edwin O'Connor, Maureen Howard, J. P. Donleavy, Peter Hamill, William Kennedy, Mary Gordon, Frank McCourt, Alice McDermott, and Dennis Smith. Formerly EN 272 (Prerequisite: En 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 274 American Literature and the Environment
This course aims to explore the ways in which ideas about the physical, "natural" environment have been shaped in American literature. The course will survey a variety of important texts in this tradition and introduce students to the scholarly perspective known as "Ecocriticism." Texts may include those by Austin, Cather, Leopold, Muir, Silko, Thoreau. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 275 Victorian Poetry and Poetics
This course examines the poetry and theories of poetry posited by Victorian men and women who explored concepts of identity vis-a-vis Victorian notions of culture religion, science, politics, and sexuality. Beginning with Arnold and ending with Eilde, the course covers both poetry and literary movements such as Pre-Raphaelitism, Decadence, aestheticism, and symbolism. Formerly EN 367. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 278 Irish Women Writers
A study of Irish women writers, both Angio and Gaelic, from 19th century fiction to 20th-century poetry. The course focuses on the cross-cultural differences between these two groups, one privileged, the other marginalized, and perhaps who share only a common language. Besides women's issues - education, emigration, marriage, motherhood, and equality - the themes include the Big House, colorization, the Literary Revival, folklore, mythology, the tradition of the storyteller, and the roles of religion and politics in the society. Among the authors to be explored are Maria Edgeworth, Lady Morgan, Somerville and Ross, Elizabeth Bowen, Lady Gregory, Marina Carr, Peig Sayers, Mary Lavin, Edna O'Brien, Ellis Ni Dhubhne, Eavan Boland, Nula Ni Dhomhnaill, and Medbh McGuckian. A contemporary film is shown as well. This course is cross-listed with Women's Studies. Three credits.
EN 279 Irish Literature
This course surveys Irish literature, including drama, poetry, and prose, from the eighth century to the present. The course includes a study of the Irish Literary Renaissance (Yeats, Synge, Lady Gregory, the Abbey Theatre) as well as the work of more recent Irish Writers (Seamus Heaney, Eavan Boland, Brian Fried, Edna O'Brian) and some study of contemporary Irish film. Formerly EN 369. (Prerequisite: En 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 282 Modern German Literature in Translation
This course introduces students to a variety of German literature and genres (novel, short story and poem) written in the 20th century. All works are heavily influenced by the two world wars. The literary canon includes a text by Kafka, portraying hope and despair, an Anna Seghers novel written in exile, poems and short stories portraying the various social and political changes in West Germany, and essays by the East German writer Christa Wolf that deals with loyalty and dissidence. The course also addresses narrative strategies and the challenges faced by the translator. Furthermore, we talk about the different roles literature can play, including its influence and value in furthering the understanding of one's own culture. The instructor provides background material to contextualize the readings. Particular interest is paid to the portrayal of social and political issues. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 283 The Modern Italian Short Story
This course explores the Italian short story, focusing on the major writers of the 20th-century. There is an emphasis on neorealism, a term applied to a group of writers and filmmakers who emerged in 1945 and dealt in a forthright manner with everyday life. Topics include World War II, Mussolini, fascism, and the Italian family. The works of Italo Calvino, one of Italy's most imaginative storyteller, receive special attention. Other writers include: Pirandello, Svevo, Parvese, Moravia, Ginzburg, Vittorini, and Soldati. Students view two neorealist films shown: Rossilini's Open City and De Sica's The Bicycle Thief. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 284 Writers of the Asian Diaspora
This course examines the phenomenon of the explosion of Asian fiction/cinema in the west, particularly in the United States, in an effort to understand the concepts of diaspora, colonial histories, border identities, and cultural and ethnic representations. Students read novels, see films, and view art works that deal with the interpellation, for example, of contemporary Indian, Pakistani, Chinese, Japanese, Bangladeshi, Vietnamese, and Sri Lankan writers/artists into western culture to analyze the burdens of traditions and the arbitrariness of modernity.
This course meets the U.S. diversity requirement. (Prerequisite: En 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 285 The Modern Tradition: International Short Fiction
Students study important works of short fiction from around the world written during the last century. The degree to which - and the specific manners in which - these works contribute to a characteristically modern sense of human existence and the function of narrative art forms the basis for text selection. Through textual analysis, students compare and contrast various versions of the modern experience as produced by such authors as Gogol, Melville, Mansfield, Joyce, Lawrence, Cather, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Kafka, Hemingway, Lessing, Borges, Barth, Boll, Mishima, Achebe, Erdrich, and Atwood. (Prerequisite: En 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 288 African Literature
While this course does not preclude the study of poems, plays, autobiographies, and other kinds of fictional and non-fictional African writing in English, its main matter or text is short and long narrative fiction - that is to say mainly, but not exclusively, Africa south of the Sahara and as such, its central themes revolve around traumatic colonialism or white domination and the equally difficult post-colonialism or black self-rule that came tumbling after. The primary focus, however, is literature, but as pertaining to and qualified by the specific conditions of seeing and being in (sub-Saharan) Africa. This course meets the world diversity requirement. (Prerequisite: En 12 or equivalent) Three credits
EN 289 Modern Women Writers
The study of works by English, American, British and Australian writers of the 20th century, emphasizes their efforts to address the conflicts encountered by women of diverse backgrounds in their various roles and stages in life. The genres includes fiction, memoir and autobiography with continuing attention to the literary traditions established by women authors, such as Virginia Woolf, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Edith Wharton, Kate Chopin, Sylvia Plath, Susanna Kaysen, Jill Ker Conway, Maya Angelou, Carolyn Chute, Anne Tyler and Harriett Doerr. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 290 Literature of the Holocaust
After an introduction to the historical, political, and social backgrounds of the Holocaust, this course investigates through literature the systematic genocide of Jews and other groups by Germany (1933-1945). The course seeks to discover how the Holocaust came about and what it means now to our understanding of human nature and of our civilization. Readings and films include Appelfeld's Badenheim, 1939, and Weisel's Night, Borowski's This Way to the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, Levi's Survival in Auschwitz, Epstein's King of the Jews, Ozick's The Shawl, and Speigeiman's Maus. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 295 Caribbean Literature: History, Culture, and Identity
This course serves as an introduction to the field of Caribbean literatures in English and English translation, with a focus on the French-speaking Caribbean. When read in the context of African diasporic literatures, it coincides with what has been called "African American Literatures" or literature written by peoples of African descent in the New World. This course examines a wide range of theoretical and fictional texts that introduce students to the debate surrounding the formation of Antillean cultural identify/identities. It examines Caribbean literatures with respect to their language of origin (English, French, Spanish, Dutch, Creoles and patois), colonization, slavery, racial and diaspora specifically in Haiti, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Barbados, Trinidad, Cuba, and the Netherlands Antilles/Surinam. Therefore this course is a survey that engages the historical, political and cultural contexts out of which these literatures have emerges. This course meets the world diversity requirement. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 305 Literature for Young Adults
This course introduces students to a body of literature that is appropriate for young adults. Topics considered include theories and purposes for reading literature in the classroom; developing criteria for evaluating adolescent literature; reading workshops; integrating adolescent literature across the curriculum. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 319 The Enlightenment: History and Literature
In Europe, the enlightenment encompasses the period during which Western Europe modernized. The course examines this cultural and intellectual transformation, which took place across the span of the 18th century, by focusing on the French philosophies, English thinkers, and fiction writers from both countries. Students become familiar with the major ideas of the period and the ways in which those ideas were debated. Cross-listed under history as HI 319, students cannot take this course under both designations. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 335 Gender and Sexuality in Film and Literature
This course examines the way gender and sexuality are represented in film and literature, beginning with an overview of lesbians and gays in film history with Vito Russo's The Celluloid Closet. The course then moves through some popular films and novels from the 1960s to the present day, looking at the ways attitudes about gender are enmeshed with representations of homosexuality. Themes and topics include: What is the relationship between gender and sexuality? How are concepts of masculinity and femininity presented in novels and on screen? How have these representations changed, as our culture's rules about gender and sexuality have become less rigid? The course aims to develop an analysis of current cultural assumptions about gender and sexuality, as they are revealed in film and fiction. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 336 Pleasurable Decadence
This course discusses and debates the meaning of "decadence" as an aesthetic and literary category. Beginning with the works of the Pre-Raphaelites in mid 19th-century England, moving to Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde in the Victorian era, and then into Europe with Baudelaire, Flaubert, and Mann, the course focuses upon the role of pleasure in European cultures. Paintings by Moreau, Delacroix, and Ingres complement the understanding of the literary texts. The course treats metaphors of Salome as a femme-fatale and literary characters such as Huysmans' Des Esseintes or Wilde's Dorian Gray are treated as models for behavior - figures in a typology of unorthodox self-fashioning. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 338 Seminar: Gender Theory
This course continues the work of EN 335 by looking more closely at the way attitudes toward gender are enmeshed with representations of sexuality and homosexuality. Topics include the debate over origins (nature versus nurture), changing historical ideas about gender and sexuality, and political issues. The course focuses on theoretical material, fictions, and film. This course requires familiarity with some basic elements of gender and sexuality theory. (Prerequisites: EN 335, WS 101, or PO 119, or permission of instructor) Three credits.
EN 339 African American Literature and Culture, 1900-1940
A study of African American literature from Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery and W.E.B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk, through the 1920s and from the Depression's advent to the eve of U.S. participation in World War II. Grounded in the history of the first four decades of the 20th century, and explores fiction, poetry, and other forms of cultural production, such as painting and sculpture, film, and music. It examines the aftermath of Reconstruction, the effects of the Great Migration, and the responses to Du Bois's call for a "Talented Tenth." The Harlem Renaissance provides a major focus, as do the debates surrounding whether there was indeed such a movement at all. The course looks towards the contemporary development of a Black tradition in literature and the arts. This course meets the U. S. diversity requirement. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 341 Early African-American Literature
This course surveys some of the major works of African-American literature produced before the publication of W.E.B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk in 1903. The course begins with a section on the slave narrative and African-American poetry, briefly reviews the representations of black people in 19th-century literature by white people and concludes with an examination of the major fiction and non-fiction of the second half of the 19th century, with particular emphasis on works from the 1890s. Authors include Wheatley, Douglass, Jacobs, Chesnutt, Harper, Dunbar, Washington, and Du Bois. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 342 Voices and Visions: Five American Poets
Students undertake an intensive study of five major American poets. Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, T.S. Eliot and Langston Hughes. The course examines significant themes in the work of these poets, an explores the ways in which the poetic process develops structures and meanings through patterns of imagery and the complex resources of language. The course gives some attention gives to the poets' biographies of the poets and the historical periods in which they worked. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 344 African American Fiction: 1940 to 1980
Students undertake a comparative study of novels by African American men and women, beginning with Richard Wright's Native Son and Ann Petry's The Street, and ending with the works published in the 1970's. Authors include Ralph Ellison, Gwendolyn Brooks, James Baldwin, Alice Walker, Charles Johnson, and Tony Cade Bambara. Exploring race and gender in the United States from male and female perspectives, the course focuses on topics such as family, religion, slavery, urban experience, education, and history. This course meets the U.S. diversity requirement. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 345 Representations
This course focuses on "ways of seeing" and the "gaze" that are constructed and maintained in contemporary culture within the concept of representation. The course is balanced on the margins of textual and visual materials (paintings and films); offers an interdisciplinary theoretical base; examines the presentation and representation base of self, subject, and identity as narrative, biography, and autobiography, and focuses on the notion of realism and politics of realism (or between traditional ways of seeing and deconstructed ways of seeing). By reading theoretical tracts on the ways of seeing and by using films and art slides to test these theoretical materials, students critique contemporary notions of seeing and being seen. Cross listed under visual and performing arts as FA 345. Students may not take this course under both designations. (Prerequiste: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 346 The Woman Question: Early Feminism and 19th-Century American Literature
This course examines the issue popularly known as the Woman Question through some of the major works of 19th-century American literature, beginning in the 1850s, a time when American feminists began to intensify their questioning of the status of woman - philosophically and politically - and when a group of "domestic feminists," led by Harriet Beecher Stowe, became the most popular writers in the country. The course ends in the 1890s when the conventions of sentimental fiction were being superseded by realism and regionalism, and when an explicitly anti-domestic image of womanhood began to be formulated around the figure of the New Woman. Authors include Stowe, Fern, Hawthorne, Jacobs, Alcott, Gilman, Jewett, and Chopin. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 347 African American Fiction, 1980 to Present
This course studies contemporary fiction, offering a mix of now-canonical authors such as Toni Morrison, Ernest Gaines, and John Edgar Wideman, along with emerging writers such as Helen Elaine Lee and Paul Beatty, and includes a number of first novels by award-winning writers. The course begins with a neo-slave narrative paired with a novel that illustrates how the legacies of enslavement persisted into the twentieth century. The course explores both urban and rural experience in primarily African-American towns and neighborhoods, and analyzes the consequences of desegregation in different locales. Gay and lesbian lives have become more prominent in Black fiction over the past two decades, as depicted in several of the novels. Narrative techniques also offer a main thread of discussion throughout the course. This course meets the U.S. diversity requirement. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 348 Contemporary Women Writers of Color
This course offers a perspective on American literature that continues and challenges its multi-voiced tradition. The course focuses on works by Native American, Asian American, African American, and Latina women writers, from the 1980s to the present, considering issues of race, gender, ethnicity, class, and sexuality especially as these contribute to concepts of identity - for the individual and the community. Authors may include Sandra Cisneros, Leslie Silko, Louise Erdrich, Sky Lee, Lan Cao, Nora Okja Keller, Emeralds Santiago, Cristina Garcia, and Danzy Senna. This course meets the U. S. diversity requirement. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 349 Introduction to Cultural Studies
This interdisciplinary course examines the concept of culture as it is constructed, sustained and contested within the United States and United Kingdom. Readings focus upon the history, theory and practice of culture (both high and mass) in the two countries. Class discussions focus on the interactive impact of our understanding of the term "culture" upon contemporary societies as it factors into nationhood, race, gender, class and media. As a way of understanding the various theories that undergird our experience of culture, we read critical/cultural theory, take in a play in New York City, view films and art slides. This course meets the U. S. diversity requirement. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 350 Special Topics in Literature
Special topics, offered on an experimental or temporary basis, explore literature and/or approaches that are not included in the established curriculum. Courses offered under this rubric change from semester to semester, and may range from a study of texts by a single author, to studies of emergent, global literatures, to innovative or experimental ways of combining authors, periods, and genres in literature. (Prerequisite: a 200- or 300-level literature course) Three credits.
EN 352 Chaucer's Canterbury Tales
The course introduces students to Middle English language and literature through a close study of the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer, focusing on his Canterbury Tales. students analyze the stylistic forms and representations of 14th-century society through tales, selected for their generic and stylistic variety, that include the tragic and the comic, the sacred and the profane. (Prerequisites: EN 11, EN 12) Three credits.
EN 353 Gender and Western Values: Literature of Early Modern Europe
Traditionally conceived as a collection of great names - Shakespeare, Rabelais, Cervantes, Machiavelli, Thomas More, early modern literature of England and the Continent includes recently recovered and rediscovered works by women such as Anna Hoyers, Madeleine and Catherine des Roches, Gaspara Stampa, and Saint Teresa. Using current knowledge of gender constructs students re-examine familiar Western values established by the traditional texts: the individual, social tolerance, religious pursuit of the ideal, and sense of humor. In the context of the new texts and the new theories, the course asks: Are these Western values universally true or culturally constructed? (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 354 Love, Gender, Spirituality: Literature of Early Modern England
Formulated during the late medieval and early modern periods, the institution of "true love" remains a basic operational truth of contemporary culture. In the literature of early modern England and Europe, male authors and recently revalorized female authors frequently write about love, among them Shakespeare, Spencer, Donne, Sidney, Katherine Philips, Mary Wroth, Vittoria Colonna, Petrarch, Helisenne de Crenne. This course asks: In today's and yesterday's cultural continuum, what is the relationship between our concept of true love, with its spiritual valence, and our construction of the masculine and feminine gender concepts? (Preprequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 355 Shakespeare I: The Elizabethan Age
Participants study of Shakespeare's earlier comedies and history plays. Works include The Taming of the Shrew, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Richard III, and Henry IV, Part 1. Students also study Romeo and Juliet as an early tragedy.
(Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 356 Shakespeare II: The Jacobean Age
Participants study of Shakespeare's later comedies and the tragedies. Plays include romantic comedies (As You Like It, Twelfth Night), tragedies (Hamlet, Othello, King Lear), problem comedies (Measure for Measure), and romances (The Tempest). Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 357 All About Eve
This course surveys the literary and artistic representation of the legendary first woman of the Judeo-Christian tradition from Genesis to the present. The course centers on a reading of Milton's Paradise Lost. Other authors include Christine de Pizan, Aemillia Lanyer, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Ursula Le Guin. Students find and interpret depictions of Eve in contemporary popular culture during this course, which emphasizes a variety of possible interpretations of Eve, including feminist and anti-feminist traditions. Non-English sources are read in English translation. (Prerequisites: EN 12) Three credits.
EN 358 17th English Literature
This course selectively surveys 17th century English literature including the drama, poetry, and prose of the century. Selected authors include Donne, Jonson, Webster, Herbert, Herrick, Suckling, Lovelace, Marvell, Crashaw, Bunyan, Walton, Pepys, Behn, and Cavendish. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 359 Milton: Poet & Rebel
Called "a church of one," Milton was an original thinker and a poetic genius. The course proceeds from his early poems, looks at his controversial prose, and focuses on his mature masterpieces: Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 360 Medieval English Drama
This study of medieval dramatic literature and the history and theory of its performance, focusing on the Corpus Christi cycles and the miracle and morality plays of late medieval England. The course examines critical issues such as civic and commercial contexts, intermingling of the sacred and the profane, unique symbolic language of medieval drama, orality and literacy, and the dramatization of contemporary social conditions. The course includes a performance component that take the form of a research paper on performance history or a historically and theoretically informed stage production of a medieval dramatic text. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 361 18th Century English Literature
A selective survey of 18th century English literature includes authors such as Pope, Swift, Gray, Johnson, Boswell, Goldsmith, Burns, and Montague. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) three credits.
EN 362 Autobiography
Autobiography holds a special fascination in its presentation of the writer's self to the reader. The author's revelation draws the reader into a unique partnership: the reader's belief joined to the author's "confession" creates the autobiographical self. This course examines autobiographical writings from St. Augustine to the 20th century and considers their purpose: What do the authors reveal about themselves, and why? How much is convention, how much the truth? This course meets the U. S. diversity requirement. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 364 The Rise of the British Novel: The Beginnings to Dickens
An intensive study of the novel as a developing literary form over the first 150 years of its existence, this course considers stylistic and thematic aspects of this earliest or traditional phase of the novel with regard to their historical evolution. Authors include Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, and Charles Dickens. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 365 The Romantic Movement
This course concentrates on the greatest poems and shorter lyrics by Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats. Infused with high emotion, reverence for nature, imaginative symbols and innovative forms of expression; these poems are among the richest treasures of English literature. The course also includes Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, a hauntingly provocative novel.
(Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 366 20th Century Russian Novel
A continuation of EN 266, this course assumes some knowledge of 19th-century Russian writers. Students read works by Russian and Soviet authors while studying parallel texts by Western and East European novelists. This course begins with the Silver Age, then moves to post-Revolutionary fiction and versions of dystopias before considering problems of exile and dual identities including the effects of the Stalin years - and ending with a contemporary and ending with the contemporary fiction from the post-Soviet era. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 368 Imperial Fictions and Colonial Voice Overs
This course examines the tenor and temper of some British novels which are also tales of colonization. These tales are measured against the responses from peoples in those colonized nations. Specifically, the course focuses on theoretical questions which address colonized subjectivities by raising questions on issues of nation/narration, minority discourse/canonical injunctions, imperial/colonial subjectivity, identity, home and location/dislocation. The foundational and over-arching premise of "orientalism" (as a gaze turned upon the colonized) undergirds most of the class discussions. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 370 Victorian Novels
This course forges a sense of continuity from the emergence of the novel in the 18th century to the development of the modern novel in the 20th century. By examining the various narrative strategies employed by writers during the 19th century, it re-addresses central Victorian concerns such as the tensions between the classes and the contentions between the sexes. This course also helps situate the origins of ideological, psychological, and social issues that come to dominate the modern novel by deconstructing the discourses of self, woman, sexuality, and family/marriage. Authors include Sand, Eliot, Dickens, Thackeray, Pater, Hardy, and Michel Foucault. Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 371 African-American Women's Writing
This course offers a comprehensive study of writing by African-American Women, from the mid-19th century to the present, including autobiography, poetry, drama, and fiction. Beginning with a slave narrative, the course moves to the turn of the century and the Harlem Renaissance. Later writers may include Hurston, Petry, Lorde, Margaret Walker, Morrison and Naylor, Sapphire, and Youngblood. This course meets the U. S. diversity requirement. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 372 Comedy
This course surveys various forms of literary, dramatic and film comedy from Aristophanes to Joseph Heller, emphasizing how comic writers and directors use structure, character, tone, and convention to create comic forms, including festive comedy, satire, comedy of manners, farce, and black comedy. (This course meets the U. S. diversity requirement. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 374 The Modern British Novel: Henry James to the Present
The course analyses of significant developments in the British novel that occurred between the end of the 19th century and the contemporary period paying particular attention is paid to the great experimental novelists whose innovations radically changed the novel as a literary form and reflector of reality. Writers such as Henry James, Joseph Conrad, D.H. Lawrence, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 376 Modern and Contemporary Drama
This course covers the modern and contemporary (post-modern) periods of drama, which is to say, from the 1850's to the present. Students read such plays by such major Western dramatists as Buchner, Ibsen, Shaw, Pirandello, Chekhov, and Brecht, as well as the odd minor, non-canonical, and/or Western writer. Run mainly as a seminar, this course emphasizes close reading and requires participation in class discussions in which students demonstrate grasp of dramatic conventions, form, structure, themes, as well as context and/or the cultural-material conditions under which each play was written and produced. or genre, and the cultural-material conditions under which the plays were created. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 378 The Spirit of Place - Environment as a Shaper of Identity in America
This course explores the psychological, sociological, and physical effects of the American Environment from the East coast to the West coast through essays, drama, novels and poetry. Through the writings of Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, Willa Cather, Edith Wharton, Nathaniel West, Wendell Berry, Philip Levine, M. Scott Momaday, among many others, the student studies the connection between place and soul as the sociological history of America unfolds chronologically. Students better understand their identity rooted in a particular place through the mirror of the literature. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 379 Film and Literature
This course surveys the film industry's historical dependency upon literary properties and conducts a comparative analysis made of specific films adapted from novels, plays, short stories, and poems. The course provides students with a historical and critical perspective on the film as an art form. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 380 Colonial American Literature
A survey of American literature between 1620 and 1830, focusing on the historical, theological, political, and personal contexts that conditioned the development of a recognizably American mode of literary representation. Authors include Shepard, Bradstreet, Rowlandson, Wheatley, Jefferson, Franklin, Brown, and Irving. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 381 American Romanticism
An introduction to selected transcendentalists and the flowering of intellectual and social life in America from 1830 to 1865, this course explores the relationship between literature and the cultural and political history of the period, including a study of paintings, photographs, and other material culture. Authors include Emerson, Thoreau, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Douglass, Davis, Whitman, and Dickinson. (Prerequisite: EN 12 equivalent) Three credits.
EN 382 American Literature: 1865-1920
This course explores the evolution of realism after the Civil War and the subsequent naturalistic movement in American literature. Topics include the rise of social activism, literary journalism, and documentary photography; theories of social elevation and the Black intellectual; changing roles of women and the construction of gender; neurasthenia and theories of medical treatment; and the impact of economic theory and technology on literature. Authors include Twain, James, Crane, Washington, Du Bois, Norris, Wharton, Chopin, and Gilman. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 383 American Literature: 1920-1950
This course traces the development of the modern American writer from the post-World War I era through the Depression and to the period immediately following World War II. Authors include Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, Frost, Steinbeck, O'Neill, Mailer, Lowell, Bellow, and others. (Prerequisite: EN 12 for equivalent) Three credits.
EN 384 American Literature: 1950-Present
This course examines significant developments in American fiction and poetry from the period immediately following World War II to the present. Authors include Salinger, Updike, Bellow, Vonnegut, Malamud, Barth, Pynchon, Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, Sexton, and others. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 385 The New Woman in American and British Literature, 1900 to 1930
This course examines the creation of the New Woman, a primarily urban cultural phenomenon that gripped the American and British popular imaginations in the early 20th century. But who, precisely, was she, what did she want, and what was her lasting impact on a society and a literature she inspired, and, in many cases, invented? The course focuses on representations of this bold, independent new ideal in novels by Anita Loos, Anzia Yezierska, Jessie Fauset, Rose Macaulay, Nelfa Larsen, and others, to consider the social, economic, and political forces that produced, championed, and undermined early 20th century feminist writing. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 386 Native American Literature
This course focuses on novels, short stories, and poems written by Native-American writers during the 20th century. For purposes of background the course also covers a number of significant works composed prior to this century. For purposes of background, the course also covers a number of significant works composed prior to this century. Students examine texts primarily for their value, but also consider the broad image of Native-American culture that emerges from these works. The course also examines the philosophical, historical, and sociological dimensions of the material, historical, and sociological dimensions of the material. This course meets the U.S. diversity requirement. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 387 The American Novel
This course traces the American novel from its imitative beginnings to its development as a unique literary form examining representative novels by Hawthorne, Melville, James, Faulkner, Bellow, and others. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 388 Jewish Literature
Called the "People of the Book" by Mohammed, the founder of Islam written narrative has been central to Jewish identity and the Jewish search for meaning since with the story of God giving the law to Moses on Mt. Sinai was first told. This course surveys Jewish Literature (sacred and secular) from Torah (the Hebrew Bible) to modern day, concentrating on modern writings, and focuses on the ethical, historical, imaginative, philosophical, and humorous richness of Judaism. Among the authors read are Josephus, Maimondies, Sholom Aleichem, Franz Kafka, I.D. Singer, Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth, and other American, European, and Israel writers. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 389 Literature and Religion: The American Experience
This course surveys the relationship of literature to religion in the history of American letters. Beginning with the moral didacticism of early Puritan literature, the American writers have manifested a persistent concern with religio-ethical matters as well as the impact of religious institutions in shaping our social and cultural environment. Using literary texts by major American writers, the course evaluates both the critical perspective and relevance of the imaginative writer's treatment of religious questions. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 390 Modern Poets and Belief
Students read Yeats, Hopkins, Eliot, Frost, and Stevens. These poets - important in themselves - adopt various strategies in confronting the modern industrial and technological world. Their individual beliefs offer a momentary stay against confusion and provide striking contrasts. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 392 The City in Literature
This course explores literary evocations of the city, focusing on different material each semester, from an interdisciplinary perspective. In many ways, a city is as much a mental landscape as a physical one; books on the city refer to it as image, idea, metaphor, vision, myth, catalyst. We consider how these terms apply to a representation of a metropolis, as well as how the city can be viewed as artifact, fiction, construct. Additional topics include the traditional dichotomy of country versus city, the relationship between gender and urban representation, and the connections between literature and other fields. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 393 James Joyce's Ulysses
The course analyzes and interprets James Joyce's comic novel, Ulysses. emphasizing intensive reading of the text and extensive reading of related criticism and scholarship. (Prerequisite: Reading of Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 394 The Inklings: Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams
The Inklings were a remarkable group of Oxford dons whose writings still influence millions of readers. As a recent literary phenomenon they deserve serious attention, as a group and individually. The course concentrates on their fictional works (the making of other worlds) as well as their literary theories. Some acquaintance with Tolkien's Lord of the Rings is presumed. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 395 The Adolescent in Literature (Coming of Age in Literature)
This course examines the evolution of the idea of adolescence and the appearance of the adolescent in literature, while also preparing students to teach English in high school. The course examines its subject from an interdisciplinary perspective, and students complete and present an independent study project. Works may include: Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, Romeo and Juliet, The Diary of Anne Frank, and fairy tales and poems about coming of age. This course meets the U.S. diversity requirement. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 396 Caribbean Women Writers
This course explores the writing of women from a range of locations throughout the Caribbean, focusing primarily on contemporary fiction. Setting the novels in a context that begins with the Middle Passage or comparable forced migration to the Americas, a history marked by colonialism and enslavement, we examine the interconnections between those traumatic experiences and the arrangements of relation established and demanded by imperialism. Topics for discussion include the following: spaces and languages of resistance; genealogies, family trees, roots, and other ways to excavate the past and forge relationships; memory and exile; political activism and its consequences; forms of labor and socioeconomics; the role of education in colonialism and in immigrant life; and challenges to conventional categories of identity (such as those based on "race," gender, and sexuality). (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 397 Modernism in World Literature
The comparative study of the period from roughly 1885 to 1940, focuses on fiction but also including poetry and developments in the other arts (painting, architecture, music, film). The course considers various concepts of modernism and the avant garde, beginning with Baudelaire. Authors include Hamsun, Kafka, Proust, Gide, Woolf, Stein, Olesha, Barnes, Bulgakov, Beckett, Hurston, Pirandello, Nabokov, Ellison, Garcia Marquez, Morrison. Discussion topics include changing views of time and space, experiments with narrative development and presentation of character, the role of technology in 20th-century culture, and new theories of language and the psyche. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 398 Women and Fiction: An International Perspective
This comparative study of fictional works by women begins with a discussion of issues raised in Woolf's A Room of One's Own, before focusing on 20th-century writers from a range of national literatures and cultural backgrounds. Authors may include Wharton, Petry, Lispector, Aidoo, Head, Yoshimoto, Voznesenskaya, and Alvarez. Topics include women's creativity and their strategies in fiction, their roles in the family, love and/or marriage, work - whether domestic or public, women's relationship to the polis - community, city, state - and their contribution to its culture. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN 399 Independent Study
See Department Chair for details. Three credits.
Writing Courses
EN/W 200 Creative Writing
This course is fosters creativity and critical acumen through extensive exercises in the composition of poetry and fiction. Formerly EN/W 300. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN/W 202 Creative Writing: Poetry I
This workshop course concentrates on the analysis and criticism of student manuscripts, devoting a portion of the course to a discussion of major trends in contemporary poetry and significant movements of the past. The course considers traditional forms, such as the sonnet and villanelle, as well as modern experimental forms and free verse. Students learn how to prepare and submit manuscripts to publishers. Formerly EN/W 302. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN/W 204 Creative Writing: Drama
This course teaches the writing of one-act plays for the stage in a workshop format that involves envisioning, writing/drafting, and regular revision of see-ideas and subjects. The process requires skillful, imaginative handling of the formative elements of drama, including plot, character, language or speech-action, envisaged staging, and form. It also involves timely submission of assignments and drafts of scenes and whole plays for periodic in-class readings and feedback. Students are expected to submit at specified times midterm and final drafts that demonstrate the technique or art of playwriting as well as conform to the general requirements of the course. Formerly EN/W 304. (Prerequisite: EN 12 that includes a section on drama and/or theatre or equivalent) Three credits.
EN/W 205 Creative Writing: Fiction I
This course is for the student who seeks an intensive workshop approach to fiction composition emphasizes the short story and focuses on the analysis of student manuscripts. It includes some discussion of the work of significant authors (past and present) as a way of sharpening the student's awareness of technique and the literacy marketplace for fiction. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN/W 209 Classical Rhetoric and Contemporary Applications
Throughout the centuries, rhetoric-study and practice of effective communication - has been a cornerstone of liberal education. In this course students examine classical rhetorical theory and apply its insights to their own writing. Students read selections from the Sophists, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Quintillian, and others, and practice skills essential for persuasive writing and speaking, such as audience analysis, invention, arrangement, and the development of style. Formerly EN/W 307. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN/W 214 Professional Presentations: Writing and Delivery
The ability to speak confidently and convincingly is an asset to everyone who wants to take an active role in his or her workplace and community. This interdisciplinary and writing-intensive course provides audience-centered presentations and develops critical-thinking skills. It also introduces the techniques of argumentation and persuasion, and the use of technology in presentations. (Prerequisite: EN 12 to equivalent) Three credits.
EN/W 220 News Writing
This introductory course emphasizes the techniques used by reporters to collect information and write stories for newspapers, magazines, the internet and broadcast outlets. Students learn how to gather information, interview sources, write leads, structure a story, and work with editors. Students analyze how different news organizations package information, hear from guest speakers, and visit working journalists in the field. Students develop a higher level of media literacy and learn how to deal with the news media in their career. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN/W 222 Journalism Editing and Design
Editing skills are in high demand in today's journalism job market, both for traditional and on-line sources of information. This intermediate level course emphasizes conciseness, precision, accuracy, style, and balance in writing and editing. The course includes researching and fact-checking, basic layout and design, headline and caption writing, and on-line editing. (Prerequisite: EN/W 220 or permission of instructor) Three credits.
EN/W 290 Writing and Responding
This course introduces the field of contemporary composition theory. Composition theorists consider ways of responding to the words of other people in a manner that is thoughtful, careful, and provocative. At the same time, they learn that by responding to the work of others, they ultimately become better writers and better thinkers themselves. This course focuses specifically on the response types appropriate for one-to-one work with writers. Students also gain hands-on experience in the course by writing extensively, sharing texts, and engaging in trial tutoring sessions. This course is a prerequisite for anyone wishing to apply for a paid position as a peer tutor in the Fairfield University Writing Center. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN/W 295 Composition and Style
This intermediate course in basic non-fiction prose expands the writing skills gained in EN 11, emphasizing cultivation of an individual style in short essays on everyday topics. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN/W 302 Creative Writing: Poetry II
In a workshop setting, the class discusses six assignments - writing about a painting or writing in a structured form such as a sestina or sonnet. In addition to looking at models that illustrate individual assignments, the class reads collections by six poets and discusses a book of traditional forms. (Prerequisite: EN/W 202). Three credits.
EN/W 305 Creative Writing: Fiction II
This advanced workshop further develops skills begun in EN/W 205 by looking closely at the craft of fiction. Students produce a substanial body of quality work such as several full-length short stories or substantial revisions, a novella, or several chapters of a novel. In addition to reading selections from published fiction writers, students read and comment extensively on their peers' work. (Prerequisite: EN/W 205 or permission of instructor) Three credits.
EN/W 309 Topics and Techniques for Women Writers
In response to feminist commentaries on the problems encountered by women writers, students seek to understand those problems through selected readings from eminent critics and contemporary authors, and to overcome them in weekly writing assignments with a gender orientation. These may be familiar essays, personal memoirs, fictional vignettes, persuasive argument, or literary criticism. Ultimately they are encouraged to develop their special assets as writers on feminist topics. The seminar consisting of workshop discussions in which peers evaluate each other and themselves in terms of their individual writing goals and their techniques for achieving them, encourages students to develop their special assets as writers on feminist topics. Students may seek clarification of this course's purpose from the instructor if desired. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN/W 310 Advanced Composition
This course develops mature writing skills through intense study of the essay and other non-fiction forms. Students read and write a broad range of non-fiction forms including personal narratives, "familiar" essays, argument, and humor. Formerly EN/W 311. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN/W 311 Advanced Composition for Secondary School Teachers
This course has helps students to develop mature writing skills through intense study of the essay and other non-fiction forms, while introducing students to research in composition that will help them teach writing in their own classrooms. Students read and write a broad range of non-fiction forms - including personal narratives, "familiar" essays, argument, and humor. Students will also read articles on composition theory. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN/W 317 Traditional and Structural Grammar
This course provides students with a solid background in traditional and structural grammar. Students can apply this background to what they write and how they write it. Therefore, apply to their own writing what they learn about the parts of speech and about phrases, clauses, and sentences. To achieve greater linguistic sensitivity and mastery, students also learn how to analyze the smaller components of language (sounds and word segments) and the more complex and elusive elements of style. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN/W 320 Writing the Feature Story
Students learn how to generate and develop feature story ideas, including human-interest stories, backgrounders, trend stories, personally profiles and other softer news approaches for use by newspapers, magazines, and web sites. The course stresses story-telling techniques and use of alternative leads. Interviewing, web research and rewriting techniques are stressed. (Prerequisite: EN/W 220 or permission of instructor) Three credits.
EN/W 321 Broadcast and Web Writing
Students will learn how to plan, write and edit hard news and feature news stories for broadcast and internet sites. Topics include basic broadcast news writing, copy preparation and style, broadcast terminology, and how to write to pictures to create broadcast news pieces. Students will hear from broadcast professionals and visit news operations. Prerequisite of ENW220 News Writing is strictly enforced. Three credits.
EN/W 322 Literary Journalism
This course focuses on the use of story telling techniques in writing creative non-fiction. Students learn how to make factual articles come alive by incorporating techniques usually associated with fiction, such as narrative, dialogue, scene-setting, pacing, conflict and resolution. The course emphasizes interviewing and advanced research techniques used in writing these creative nonfiction articles for newspapers, magazines, books, and online sources. There will be substantial reading and analysis of classics in the literary journalism field. While there are no formal prerequisites beyond EN11-12, students are encouraged to have completed ENW220 News Writing, ENW320 Writing the Feature Story, or have taken several literature courses. Three credits.
EN/W 323 Photojournalism
Photography is derived from the Greek words for light and writing. This introductory photojournalism course provides students with experience in newspaper and magazine assignments. By the end of the semester you will better understand how to analyze and appreciate photographs, especially those that make an impact on the reader; how newspapers and magazines use images; how to produce a Photo Story; and how to deal with editors and the editing process. While there are no formal prerequisites beyond EN11-12, students are encouraged to have completed ENW220 News Writing or have a photography background. Three credits.
EN/W 324 Political and Government Reporting
Students gain experience in reporting on campus and local government events, state and federal government activities, public opinion polls, school board meetings, state and federal government activities, public opinion polls, and political campaigns. Guest speakers from politics and journalism help students deepen their understanding of the role of the press as a government watchdog. (Prerequisite: EN/W 220 or permission of instructor.) Three credits.
EN/W 325 Environmental Reporting
From land use disputes to problems with air, land, and water pollution, environmental concerns touch the lives of everyone. This course gives students experience in reporting and writing about the environment and related science and health concerns. Students meet with environmental reporters for newspapers and magazines, visit environmental sites, and write about environmental issues to examine the challenges of covering this field. Students interested in this course are encouraged to complete some coursework in journalism, environmental science, environmental studies, or an environmental course in applied ethics prior to enrolling. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN/W 326 Contemporary Journalism
This course sharpens student news-gathering, writing, and editing skills and prepares them for the demands of journalism jobs in the 21st century. Students write longer story packages in conventional print formats and in HTML language for World Wide Web distribution. Students cover on-campus and off-campus events and discuss libel and ethical concerns that can affect their writing and careers. (Prerequisite: EN/W 220 or permission of instructor) Three credits.
EN/W 332 Business Writing
This course investigates the demands of business writing, including designing documents that visually display information and invite readers to read either quickly or thoroughly. The course stresses theoretical issues as well as practical skills. Students practice writing skills on a variety of projects including memos, proposals, reports, collaborative writing, and writing in business and industry, writing with a clear sense of audience, becoming familiar with document design and electronic communication, ethical and cross-cultural issues, and reviewing scholarly writing and research in this academic field. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN/W 335 Technical Writing
This course investigates the theory and practice of writing in technical fields, introducing students to types of oral, written, and hypertext communication that technical writers use in workplace settings. In-class writing activities, workshops, and lengthier projects familiarize students with the styles, organizations, and formats of various documents, and prepare students for the special demands of technical writing. The course also introduces students to research and scholarly writing in the academic field. This course is suitable for advanced undergraduate school, as well as technical writing professionals and practitioners who wish to plan, research, and write more effectively. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN/W 336 Issues in Professional Writing
This course investigates a variety of issues relevant to contemporary professional writing. In addition to surveying theoretical positions in the discipline, the course emphasizes preparing effective written products for academic and professional settings. In-class writing activities, workshops, and lengthier projects prepare students to think critically in this dynamic and ever-changing profession while familiarizing them with the writing styles, organizations, and formats of various documents. Topics include international technical writing; gender, writing, and technology; and technical and professional editing. This course is suitable for advanced undergraduate school, as well as professional writing practitioners who wish to plan, research, and write more effectively and efficiently. Students may take this course twice under different subtitles. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or the equivalent) Three credits.
EN/W 338 Persuasive Writing
This course strengthens student skills in argument and encourages development of a clear forceful prose style. Students write to a variety of audiences in a variety of forms, including editorials and proposals and persuasive Web pages. The class, which emphasizes revision, includes some workshops and peer-editing sessions. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN/W 340 The World of Publishing: Working on Fairfield's Dogwood Magazine
This course introduces students to the field of publishing, particularly book and magazine publishing. It provides students with a solid foundation in the publishing field (e.g., selecting and editing manuscripts, book/magazine production, and marketing) and offers students practical hands-on experience similar to that of an internship position at a magazine or publishing house. In addition to attending lectures and participating in discussion, students work on the University's national literary magazine, Dogwood. (Prerequisite: EN12 or equivalent) Three credits.
EN/W 345 (Fall) or EN/W 346 (Spring) Internships
The internship program allows students to gain on-site experience in the fields of journalism, publishing, and public relations through supervised work for local newspapers, magazines, publishers, and news agencies. These positions are available upon recommendation of the department intern supervisor, under whose guidance the students assume the jobs, which require 10 to 15 hours a week. Students may take one internship for credit toward the English major. Students may take a second internship for elective credit. (Prerequisites: intern supervisor) Three credits.
EN/W 347 (Fall) or EN/W 348 (Spring) Independent Writing Project
Students undertake Individual tutorials in writings and can obtain credit for writing for The Mirror, The Sound, or for other projects of personal interest. Only one independent writing project can be counted towards fulfilling the five field electives required to complete an English major. The department will consider exceptions only if multiple Independent Writing Project courses cover totally different subject areas and approval in advance is obtained. (Prerequisites: EN 12 or equivalent and permission of instructor) Three credits.
EN/W 350 Special Topics: Writing
This course is an umbrella under which a variety of courses can be taken on an experimental or temporary basis, exploring different writing styles and approaches. (Prerequisite: EN 12 or equivalent) Three credits. |
