ENGL

This course explores the theoretical, political, and aesthetic dimensions of the gothic literary tradition in the U.S. from its late 18th-century inception to the current day. Along with a variety of primary literature, students consider foundational theoretical texts (Freud, Lacan) and secondary sources relevant to the uniquely American iteration of the Gothic, particularly those that interrogate the tradition's functions as dark counter-narrative to progressive U.S. ideology.

This course is concerned with the endurance of the "Jane Eyre" story (itself an elaboration of the Cinderella myth). Beginning with Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1847), students examine a variety of stories, novels, and films that rework aspects of Brontë's vision. Students study the context of each revision and its commentary on the original text and examine shifts in the critical and feminist reception of these texts. Texts vary, but are selected from the following: Braddon, Gissing, James, Woolf, Forster, du Maurier, Rhys, Kincaid, Balasubramanyam, Winterson.

Considered one of the greatest poems in the English language, John Milton's Paradise Lost (1667) is an epic that takes the reader from hell to heaven and everywhere in between. This is a story of identity and purpose within a seemingly infinite cosmos; of human responsibility to knowledge, the earth, and each other; and, especially, of the origins of suffering and injustice, and a blueprint of hope within a grand reconfiguration of what it means to be heroic.

This course explores some of the major theoretical and cinematic approaches to film genre, and provides the opportunity for students to produce a short film project based upon this exploration. The specific genre (e.g., documentary, horror, melodrama, film noir, etc.) under study for any given semester is at the discretion of the professor. Through the analysis and subsequent production of the selected film genre, students interrogate the ways that industrial, social, technological, and aesthetic factors shape the development, circulation, and reception of a film genre over time.

This course explores diverse genres of print media and considers topics such as how facts are constructed in news reporting, how print and electronic media relate to each other, how ethical guidelines affect print media, how different publications represent similar events, and how social forces and journalistic writing shape each other. Readings include genre theory, journalistic writing in current print and electronic publications, and case studies involving ethics and representation. Themes and texts vary by instructor.

This course focuses on one or more genres of popular writing. Examples include detective fiction, science fiction, fan fiction, westerns, romance novels, fantasy, or non-fiction. Students engage popular texts through rigorous literary analysis to ponder how such "light entertainments'' are inextricably linked to aesthetic, historical, and social circumstances.

This course studies a selection of plays in light of the history and theory of the genre, the relationship between performance and text, cultural context, and literary scholarship. While the course may incorporate acting, dramaturgy, as well as the analysis of live or filmed performance, its emphasis is on how drama is and has been interpreted as a literary artifact.

This course provides advanced study of lyric, narrative, and dramatic poetry. Specific forms studied include the sonnet, ballad, villanelle, and other stanza-forms; the epic, ode, and elegy; and free verse. The course also involves the study of prosody and examines poems from different historical periods, nations, and cultures. Themes and texts vary by instructor. Please consult the department website for information on current and upcoming offerings.

This course examines the genre of autobiography as it has evolved over time. Students consider how autobiographies written at specific points in history relate to the social, political, and aesthetic trends of the period; how the "non-fictional" genre of autobiography may be distinguished from fictional forms such as the Bildungsroman; and what characterizes major subgenres such as spiritual autobiography, slave narrative, autoethnography, and memoir. Themes and texts vary by instructor. Please consult the department website for information on current and upcoming offerings.

This course explores the aesthetics and politics of the novel form. The course may focus on a particular national iteration or cultural tradition of the novel (e.g., British, American, Postcolonial), a specific formal approach or subgenre (detective fiction), or a historical or thematic subset of the genre (the rise of the novel, the sentimental novel, the roman à clef).