Smith College English Courses Fall 2018

Transcription

1 Smith College English Courses Fall 2018 ENG 200 The English Literary Tradition (early British literature or 200+ English elective) MWF 11:00-12:10 Instructor: Douglas Patey A study of the English literary tradition from the Middle Ages through the 18th century. Recommended for sophomores. Enrollment limited to 20 per section. ENG 202 Western Classics: Homer to Dante (200+ English elective) TuTh 9:00-10:20 Instructor: Maria Banerjee Texts include The Iliad; tragedies by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides; Plato s Symposium; Virgil s Aeneid; Dante s Divine Comedy. Lecture and discussion. ENG 206 Intermediate Fiction Writing (200+ English elective)(creative writing) Thurs 1:00-2:50 Instructor: Russell Rymer A writer s workshop that focuses on sharpening and expanding each student s fiction writing skills, as well as broadening and deepening her understanding of the short story form. Exercises will concentrate on using real-world interviewing and reporting to feed one's fictional work. Students will analyze and discuss each other's stories, and examine the work of established writers. Writing sample and permission of the instructor are required. A writing sample and permission of the instructor are required. Enrollment limited to 12.: This course uses concepts and methods of photography to advance students' fiction-writing abilities and comprehension. Students take photographs as a way of grappling with issues of focus, framing, depth of field, point of view, "flatness," timing, and other precepts of photography that are transferable to writing, and include their photographs in their fictional pieces. The point of the course is not to improve students' photo abilities (and no pre-req skills or special equipment are required), but to use photography to enhance writing skills and understanding. Final product is a publishable short story. Writing Sample Required. ENG 216 Intermediate Poetry Writing (200+ English elective)(creative writing) Thurs 1:00-3:50 Instructor: Arda Collins In this course we read as writers and write as readers, analyzing the poetic devices and strategies employed in a diverse range of contemporary poetry; gaining practical use of these elements to create a portfolio of original work; and developing the skills of critique and revision. In addition, students read and write on craft issues, and attend Poetry Center readings/q&a s. Writing sample and permission of the instructor are required. ENG 217 Saints in Medieval Literature: Old High German (200+ English elective) MWF 10:00-10:50 Instructor: Craig Davis An introduction to the vernacular literatures of early medieval Europe with readings from the Old High German Lay of Hildebrand and Merseburg Charms, as well as the Old Saxon Hêliand 'Savior', a powerful retelling of the gospel in the style of ancient Germanic alliterative verse like the Old English Beowulf. The Hêliand offers a unique glimpse into how the new Christian religion with its Jewish spirituality and Mediterranean civic ethos was processed by the tribal peoples of Northern Europe. We also compare

2 selections from the Old English Dream of the Rood and Middle High German Lay of the Nibelungs. Enrollment limited to 20. ENG 220 Novel in England: Eliot to Woolf (course in British literature after 1700 or 200+ English elective) MonWed 1:10-2:30 Instructor: Michael Gorra What it would be like to hear the squirrel s heartbeat, to open one s mind fully to the sensations and impressions of the world around us? The image belongs to George Eliot, who in Middlemarch suggested we couldn t bear it; we would die of a sensory overload, the roar on the other side of silence. The novelists of the generations that followed tried to live in that roar: to explore the stream of consciousness, to capture the way we make sense of experience and order out of our memory s chaos. Readings in George Eliot, Henry James, Virginia Woolf and others. ENG 223 Contemporary American Gothic Literature (course in American literature after 1865 or 200+ English elective) TuTh 3:00-4:20 Instructor: Andrea Stone This course traces the emergence of a 21st-century gothic tradition in American writing through texts including novels, films and television shows. We analyze the shifting definitions and cultural work of the Gothic in contemporary American literature in the context of political and cultural events and movements and their relation to such concerns as race, gender, class, sexuality and disability. From the New Mexican desert to the rural south, from New York City, San Francisco and the suburbs of Atlanta to cyberspace, these literary encounters explore an expanse of physical, psychological, intellectual and imagined territory. ENG 224 Frankenstein: Making a Monster (course in British literature after 1700 or 200+ English elective) TuTh 3:00-4:20 Instructor: Lily Gurton-Wachter At the age of 19, Mary Shelley began writing the first science fiction novel. Frankenstein not only describes fears about monstrosity and accelerating technology; it also sets the stage for continuing discussions about gender, reproduction, race, ethics, and disability. To celebrate this groundbreaking novel s 200th anniversary, this co-taught class will explore the making of the text, alongside its monstrous legacy in contemporary culture. We will look at the novel s influences and afterlives from the Frankenstein collection in Smith s rare book room to a range of films, electronic novels, and comics that reveal the enduring role of gothic monstrosity today. Meets on alternating days at Smith and Amherst College. Enrollment limit of 36. ENG 231 Inventing America (course in American literature before 1865 or 200+ English elective) MWF 11:00-12:10 Instructor: Richard Millington This course will focus on the extraordinary burst of literary creativity that coincided with the emergence of a new American nation. From its conflicted founding episodes to the crisis of the Civil War, American writers interpreted and criticized American life with unmatched imaginative intensity and formal boldness, taking as their particular subject both the promise of freedom implicit in the nation's invention and the betrayals of that promise: in the horrors of slavery, and in the subtler entrapments of orthodox thinking, constricted vision, a self-poisoning psyche, and a repressive or unjust social life.

3 ENG 257 Shakespeare (early British literature or 200+ English elective) TuTh 10:30-11:50 Instructor: Gillian Kendall Romeo and Juliet, Richard II, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Troilus and Cressida, Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, The Winter s Tale. Not open to first-year students. Enrollment limited to 25. Not open to first-years. ENG 295 Advanced Poetry Workshop (300+ English elective)(creative writing) Tues 1:00-4:00 Instructor: Ellen Watson Taught by the Grace Hazard Conkling Poet in Residence, this advanced poetry workshop is for students who have developed a passionate relationship with poetry and who have substantial experience in writing poems. Texts are based on the poets who are reading at Smith during the semester, and students gain expertise in reading, writing and critiquing poems. Writing sample and permission of the instructor are required. ENG 296 Advanced Fiction Writing (300+ English elective)(creative writing) Tues 1:00-4:00 Instructor: Ruth Ozeki The goal of this workshop is to help more advanced fiction-writing students become stronger writers in a supportive context that encourages experimentation, contemplation, and attention to craft. The workshop will include all the traditional elements of a fiction writing workshop, focusing on writing skills and technique, close reading, and the production of new work. In addition, the workshop will include instruction in mindfulness meditation to help students cultivate their powers of concentration, observation, imagination, and creative expression on the page. Students will be asked to submit manuscripts for discussion in class, to revise and edit their work, and to keep a process journal about their writing practice. They will be asked to read fiction by established authors in a range of genres and to lead a class forum discussion on a published short story of their choosing. Reading Like A Writer by Francine Prose, will be a required text for the class. Writing Sample Required. ENG 299 Literary Research Methods (300+ English elective) TuTh 3:00-4:50 Instructor: Naomi Miller Colloquium on literary research methods for advanced English majors. The course provides guidance on design and conduct supporting the development of literary research projects, including question definition, choice of methodology and critical framework, selection of sources, and evidence evaluation, in a research community of one's peers. This course trains students to employ sophisticated research techniques that can support advanced work in honors or special studies projects, and interested students will be encouraged to develop proposals for honors or special studies over the course of the semester. Prerequisites: ENG 199, ENG 200 and two 200-level literature courses. Enrollment limit of 15. ENG 323 Seminar on Toni Morrison (course in American literature after 1865 or Anglophone/ethnic American or 300+ English elective) Tues 3:00-4:50 Instructor: Flavia Santos De Araujo This seminar focuses on Toni Morrison s literary production. In reading her novels, essays, lectures and interviews, we pay particular attention to three things: her interest in the epic anxieties of American identities; her interest in form, language and theory; and her study of love. Instructor Permission. Not open to first-years, sophomores. ENG 333 Seminar on Edith Wharton (course in American literature after 1865 or 300+ English elective) Tues 3:00-5:45 Instructor: Michael Gorra She was one of the hardest-working and highest paid professional writers of her generation; she was the

4 product of a cushioned life at the upper end of New York Society. Edith Wharton ( ) examined the privileged world into which she was born with an anthropological skepticism, a sardonic dissection of unforgiving social laws and mores, and yet also provided a backwards glance at a vanishing world. A reading of her major work in social and historical context: The House of Mirth, The Custom of the Country, Ethan Frome, Summer, The Age of Innocence, and others. Instructor Permission. Not open to first-years, sophomores. ENG 361 Poetry of War (course in British literature after 1700 or 300+ English elective) Tues 1:00-3:05 Instructor: Cornelia Pearsall This course studies a range of poetic representations of war. After reviewing some of the writings of Homer, Virgil and Shakespeare that were most influential for British poets of the 19th and 20th centuries, the course moves from Tennyson, Hardy and Kipling to the poets of the first and second world wars (Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and others). We situate the poetry with relevant historical and theoretical materials, as well as prose responses to war by authors such as Vera Brittain and Virginia Woolf. We end by reading poets who did not see combat (W.B. Yeats, W. H. Auden, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath) but whose work is nevertheless profoundly concerned with the complex relation of the martial to the lyrical, the destructive to the creative. By permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 12. ENG 382 Writing American Society: Women (300+ English elective)(creative writing) Thurs 1:00-2:50 Instructor: Susan Faludi Topics course. A writing sample and permission of the instructor are required. Enrollment limited to 12.: Women have historically exerted their voice and power through writing, even as the professional writing trades of journalism and publishing have historically been unwelcoming of their presence. This class examines reporting and writing by and about women, and engages students in the practice of writing about gender, feminism, and women's lives. This is a workshop class where students produce their own research and reported magazine-style writing, while simultaneously inspecting how the media represents women's issues and learning the history of women writers in American journalism. As we examine these works, we grapple with questions of interviewing, structure, ethics, fair representation and more. This critical approach informs the course's workshop component, in which students compose and revise their own stories, receiving feedback from peers as well as the instructor. Writing Sample Required. Not open to first-years, sophomores. ENG 399 Teaching Literature (300+ English elective) Wed 7:00-9:30 Instructor: Samuel Scheer Discussion of poetry, short stories, short novels, essays and drama with particular emphasis on the ways in which one might teach them. Consideration of the uses of writing and the leading of discussion classes. For upper-level undergraduates and graduate students who have an interest in teaching. Enrollment limited to 15. Limited to juniors, seniors.

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