Spring '06

Introduction to the skills necessary for clear, effective communication of ideas through careful attention to the writing process, critical analysis, and argumentation. The course emphasizes a variety of rhetorical practices. Designed for non-English majors.

AENG102 Introduction to Creative Writing
[Open to Freshmen and Sophomores Only]

2214     MWF    10:25AM-11:20AM                     Skebe,Carolyn A
2215     MWF    09:20AM-10:15AM                     Skebe,Carolyn A
2216     TTH      11:45AM-01:05PM                     Rizzo,Christopher B
5446     TTH      08:45AM-10:05AM                     Mason,John T
6522     MWF    12:35PM-01:30PM                     Lannon,Mary F

Introductory course in creative writing. Practice in the writing of poetry, fiction, autobiography, and other literary forms. May be taken only by freshmen and sophomores.

AENG121 Reading Literature

2217     MWF    01:40PM-02:35PM                     Lannon,Mary F
2218     MWF    12:35PM-01:30PM                     Murphy,Jillmarie
2219     TTH      02:45PM-04:05PM                     Colton-Heins,Alyssa
2220     TTH      08:45AM-10:05AM                     Seiler,Sabine H
      MWF          08:15AM-09:10AM                     Chirila,Alexander C

Introduction to reading literature, with emphasis on developing critical skills and reading strategies through the study of a variety of genres, themes, historical periods, and national literatures. Recommended for first and second year students.

AENG 121 Reading Literature

2222 MWF 11:30AM-12:25PM Rohr,Deeanna

This course will introduce students to the conventions of analyzing and responding to all genres, including nonfiction and film. Students will complete the course with a firm grounding in the principles of literary practice as well as an understanding of close reading and analysis. The
theme of the course asks students to think about the literary canon and their own responses to it as a series of “retellings” in which stories and patterns repeat throughout texts but change according to the teller and the reader. One unit will focus particularly on the retellings of the Salem witchcraft trials, in which we will read historical documents, Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, and Maryse Condé’s I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem. Attendance at a local performance of The Crucible will be strongly encouraged. Coursework includes regular quizzes and informal response papers as well as two critical essays. Students will be guided through the process of researching, drafting and writing their formal papers. Students will also be expected to sign up for a class facilitation on their choice of topics and to participate regularly in class discussions and activities.

AENG144 Reading Shakespeare

2223 MWF 10:25AM-11:20AM Coller,Jonathan R

Introduction to Shakespeare, with emphasis on developing critical skills and reading strategies through detailed study of the plays, from early comedies to later tragedies and romances. Recommended for first-year students and non-English majors. No prior knowledge of Shakespeare is required.

AENG205Z Introduction to Writing in English Studies

6688     TTH      10:15AM-11:35AM                     Mason,John T
6723     MW      02:45PM-04:05PM                     Zitomer,Rachel T
6795     TTH      11:45AM-01:05PM                     Jung,Anne S
7084     MWF    09:20AM-10:15AM                     Monaco,Peter C
8423     TTH      01:15PM-02:35PM                     Chepaitis,Barbara A
8424     MWF    10:25AM-11:20AM                     Reed,Hilary L

This course is an introduction to the forms and strategies of writing and close reading in English studies. The course emphasizes the relationship between writing and disciplinary context, and such concepts as genre, audience, and evidence.

AENG210 Introduction to English Studies: Author, Code, Context, Reader

2224 TTH 01:15PM-02:35PM Murakami,Ineke

Octavio Paz wrote that, “literature is an answer to the questions that society asks itself about itself.” If this is so, then one way to think of literary studies is as a never-ending conversation about the most provocative answers to these questions. As students of literature, we are expected to contribute to this

“conversation.” Our contributions are most effective when we recognize the other speakers, demonstrate familiarity with their manner of expression, signal our knowledge (and its limits) of the diverse worlds and points of view that give rise to their observations, and recognize the relationship of our own ideas to history and to the society in which we live. To improve our ability to enter these exchanges, we will examine a variety of texts and media—poetry, prose, visual arts, and drama (textual and filmic)—with the aim of sharpening our analytical and rhetorical skills. At the same time, we will look briefly at several important “schools” of literary theory (Marxism, psychoanalysis, gender and sexuality studies, cultural studies, etc.) that continue to inflect some of the most stimulating conversations today.

AENG210 Introduction to English Studies

2225 TTH 08:45AM-10:05AM Payne,Walter D

This introductory course seeks to develop skills in interpretive reading, critical writing, and reflective thinking about the purposes of the discipline of English Studies. To prepare students for further work in the field, we will explore important theoretical perspectives, such as Marxism, feminism, and deconstruction, and try to acquire a historical understanding of how the discipline has changed over the last century. We hope to make close readings of literary works and theoretical reflections on the assumptions that orient particular readings mutually illuminating.

AENG210 Introduction to English Studies: Introduction to Critical Reading

2226 MW 05:45PM-07:05PM Cohen,Thomas D

This course will introduce students to “English Studies” primarily through the issue that links its numerous extensions today, that of textual interpretation. What is the importance of reading (or different strategies of reading) today? The class will engage in a series of “literary” (and cinematic) works to explore different strategies of interpretation and the critical problems that arise with them. As a case study, we will inquire into what (if anything) distinguishes modernist and “postmodern” writing, and a series of related theoretical issues.

AENG210 Introduction to English Studies

2227 TTH 11:45AM-01:05PM Teepe,Christopher J

This course surveys a variety of influential critical theories, with the goal of giving students a theoretical foundation from which to approach literature, film and culture from lateral perspectives. Some of the theorists we may sample include (among other possibilities) Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, Gilles Deleuze, Pierre Bourdieu, Julia Kristeva, Judith Butler, Helene Cixous, Fredric Jameson, and barring any publication setbacks, late in the semester we’ll have the opportunity to read a new book of theory fresh from the press: Slavoj Zizek’s In Defence of Lost Causes (due out in March).

AENG210 Introduction to English Studies

8425 MWF 10:25AM-11:20AM Paliwoda,Daniel

This course will introduce and develop textual analysis skills, familiarize students with most literary genres from various periods, and discuss some of the key theoretical terms and issues that shape the study of literature. Emphasis will be on close readings, class participation, and writing a number of interpretive papers. Students will develop a critical language and approach to prepare them for more advanced literature courses.

AENG222 World Literature

6524 MWF 01:40PM-02:35PM Monaco,Peter C

Introduction to classics of world literature exploring national, historical and linguistic boundaries. Texts chosen will introduce students to literary traditions and provide a foundation for English literary studies.

AENG226 Focus on Literary Theme, Form or Mode

Exploration of a single common theme, form or mode using varied texts to promote fresh inquiry by unexpected juxtapositions of subject matter and ways of treating it. May be repeated once for credit when content varies. For Spring 2007, we are pleased to offer seven options below for 226.

AENG226 Gay and Lesbian Literature and Film

2228 MWF 09:20AM-10:15AM Reed,Hilary L

In this course, we will examine 20th century gay and lesbian literature across thematic, generic, and geographical borders. We will begin with an historical and theoretical discussion about such issues as sexuality, discrimination, and coming out, interrogating the ambivalent nature of other terms such as identity, community, and the queer. What is gay and lesbian literature? How do authors represent their personal, aesthetic, and political goals? We will look, too, at authors and texts that distinguish themselves as “queer,” against the very ideas of identity and community for which many gay and lesbian authors strive. Possible authors include Audre Lorde, Allen Ginsberg, Jeanette Winterson, Achy Obejas, Dorothy Allison, Michael Cunningham, and Essex Hemphill. Course content will both include films such as Black Is…Black Ain’t, The Watermelon Woman, Saving Face, and But I’m a Cheerleader, and feature critical texts by theorists such as Michael Warner, Samuel Delany, Michel Foucault, and Adrienne Rich.

AENG226 High Modernism and Pop Culture between the World Wars

6846 MW 02:45PM-04:05PM Casto,William J

This course will examine the seemingly huge gap that opened up between
“high modernism” and what we today call “pop culture” during the 1920s and 1930s. High modernism produced art that was difficult to access and demanded a careful reading from its audience. It is often accused of being elitist and decadent for this reason. There is a line of thought, however, that sees its complication of artistic interpretation as a reaction to the rise of popular art (film, radio, magazines, etc), which was seen as oversimplified and was widely consumed. This course will cross various disciplines and genres, studying high modernism and pop culture in the historical contexts of the era(s) through art, literature, music, architecture, advertising, film, and radio. We will read authors such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Wilfred Owen, Claude McKay, Langston Hughes,James Joyce, Anita Loos, Jorge Borges, Dorothy Parker, Bertolt Brecht, films by Sergei Eisenstein, Charlie Chaplin, Shirley Temple, music by Stravinsky and various jazz musicians, listen to Orson Welles' War of the Worlds, view art by Picasso and Dali among others, photography of the early 20th century, in addition to reading reviews and reactions to the various movements and mutations from the times.

AENG226 American Modernist Women Poets

6849 TTH 11:45PM-01:05PM Thompson,Aidan P

In this class we will focus on American women modernist poets, in particular Mina Loy, Djuna Barnes, Marianne Moore, Laura Riding, and Gertrude Stein. While these poets have been aligned with high-modernism and, therefore, judge as apolitical and conservative, or aligned (to a greater or lesser degree) with turn-of-the century Futurist and Dadaist movements in their use of confrontational strategies, we will consider their contribution in relation to pragmatism, paying particular attention to notions of repetition and habit, examining the ways in which a constructive (as opposed to confrontational) strategy is employed, as well as investigating how notions of democracy, ethics, and political consciousness apply to their poetics. To help us frame our discussion we will read essays by William James, John Dewey, Gilles Deleuze, Henri Bergson, Hélène Cixous, Julia Kristeva, José Ortega y Gasset, and Jacques Rancière.
Students should be prepared to engage with complex ideas and to develop close readings of difficult texts.

AENG226 Environmental Literature:Nature, Environment, and Identity

6850 MWF 12:35PM-01:30PM Meaney,Shealeen Ann

Conflicting images of nature circulate today in the cultural marketplace, from the nurturance of the new age “mother nature” to the desperate vigilance needed to outlive the “natural disasters” in the “Survival Guides” and “Survivor” series. This is unsurprising given that historically the wilderness has been cast as site of danger and awe, the domain of darkness and evil and yet also proof of the greatness of God and a site for spiritual healing and physical restoration. In this course we will explore various constructions of “nature” in circulation in American culture, considering diverse representations of a range of natural environments as well as current debates about what gets to count as “natural” to begin with. We will examine the ways that America’s identification as a “wilderness” has contributed to the production of popular ideologies of self-reliance and authentic selfhood that are still central to “American” culture. We will discuss the relationships between identity and environment in contemporary culture and consider how treatments of wilderness and nature have reflected and produced dominant values, social relations, and ideals in American cultural history.
Readings will range from transcendentalist prose to contemporary eco-poetry and will include not only some familiar literary voices like those of Henry David Thoreau, Gary Snyder, and Linda Hogan, but also cultural theorists like William Cronon and Donna Haraway and environmental justice advocates like Terry Tempest Williams and Winona LaDuke. We will focus on contemporary North American texts, but will also address some of the predecessors of contemporary environmental writing.

AENG226 Reading Short Fiction

6851 TTH 04:15PM-05:35PM Truitt,Sam

This course will undertake the close reading of a dozen short stories with attention to the measures of such an act. How might we identify reading as both what we, as readers, do and what a writer does? What is the aim of reading a story: Namely, if fiction is an effective medium for the transmission of certain messages (that keeps us returning to this form), what are those messages? While our readings will range broadly in genre, age and culture, this course will remain focused on and open to these questions, among others

AENG226 Depicting the Native: From Robinson Crusoe to Pirates of the Caribbean

8426 TTH 08:45AM-10:05AM Secovnie,Kelly O

When it was announced that Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest had broken records by grossing over a billion dollars worldwide (a feat achieved only by two other films), it was clear that the franchise was a hit. How is it that a film whose depictions of the “natives” are clearly problematic can be such a worldwide success? In what ways do films such as this one play into the literary and filmic tradition and in what ways do they depart from it? Starting with Robinson Crusoe, this class will examine the depiction of “the native” in English literature. By examining various works of literature, films, and literary theory, we will develop our own theory of the depiction of “the native” that shows the continuities of these depictions through history and that will examine why these depictions still have such a hold on us today. In a larger sense, we will be looking at “the adventure tale” and its function for readers both historically and today. In addition to such literary texts as Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, we will be examining several popular films such as Pirates of the Caribbean and King Kong and several theoretical texts and essays such as Edward Said’s Orientalism and Chinua Achebe’s “An Image of Africa,” among others.

AENG 226 Postmodern Literature

8427 MWF 10:25AM-11:20AM Weber, Steve

This course will begin with Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 novel, Lolita. Its foreword discusses the following “memoir” written by Humbert Humbert, telling the “inquisitive” reader to research the crime in “in the daily papers for September-October 1952,” then calling this reader “old-fashioned” when s/he wishes “to follow the destinies of the ‘real’ people beyond the ‘true’ story.” Does this text discourage “old-fashioned” readings that look beyond the text for some likeness to the “real” or the “true”? What is the alternative to this “old-fashioned” reading, and how do we get away from a desire for verisimilitude, for likenesses to the “real”? Starting with these questions, we will then move on to such authors as Don Delillo, Thomas Pynchon, and Kurt Vonnegut. Looking at these authors, can we find something distinctly postmodern about their works? Or, are these gestures/concerns ones that we have seen before, in previous authors? No definitive answer need be found in this course, but these are questions to keep in mind while we look at some of the most thought-provoking literature of the latter half of the twentieth century.

AENG240 Growing Up in America

2229     MWF    01:40PM-02:35PM                     Wilkie III,Robert A
8508     MWF    08:15AM-09:10AM                     Craig,Allison V
8509     TTH      10:15AM-11:35AM                     Seiler,Sabine H

Introduction to problems of social significance related to growing up in a multi-ethnic society through the study of American literature and culture.

AENG240 Growing Up in America: Rereading America / Rethinking Ourselves

8510 MW 02:45PM-04:05PM Meaney,Shealeen Ann

As we all know, this is a “diversity requirement” course, and this means many different things to many different people; in many ways, it will be up to each of us to determine what it means to talk about “cultural diversity,” to use the term “American,” or to “read” the cultural texts of said “diversity” in “America.” By what criteria do we make our definitions of American-ness? What are the components which define us as “individuals,” as members of “American” communities, as writers and active political subjects? As familiar as we may be with generic versions of “race-sex-class” discussions, this class will take up the intersections and gaps between these critical terms and ask what new questions we can pose about the relationships between them. How can self-reflection on our own experiences with “growing up in America” help us to further interrogate the conflicts, histories, and identities of “American” culture? In what ways do the cultural texts - novels, essays, films, and stories - written by differently situated others in our culture help us to re-think our definitions, visions, and ideals of “America” and what it has to offer? In what ways is our “experience” and our knowledge of it altered by being re-read in conjunction with these “other,” alternative American stories?

This is, among other things, a writing-intensive course, and students will be expected to complete a variety of writing assignments including on-line journaling, self-reflexive cultural memoir assignments, and critical research essays. Select authors may include Julia Alvarez, Linda Hogan, Toni Morrison, Sherman Alexi, Jonathan Kozol, and Beverly Tatum.

AENG240 Growing Up in America

8511 TTH 01:15PM-02:35PM Jung,Anne S
8512 MWF 09:20AM-10:15AM Craig,Allison V

Introduction to problems of social significance related to growing up in a multi-ethnic society through the study of American literature and culture.

AENG260 Forms of Poetry

2232 MWF 09:20AM-10:15AM Zitomer,Rachel T

A study of the forms of poetry, such as the ballad, sonnet and dramatic monologue, and poetic modes, such as meditative, lyrical and satiric. Students will examine why certain forms are popular at certain times, and how British and American poets adopt or change the forms they inherit.

AENG261 American Literary Traditions

7087 TTH 10:15AM-11:35AM Peters,Michael J

Introduction to representative works in the American literary tradition, emphasizing major developments in American literature.

AENG291 British Literary Traditions

6532 TTH 10:15AM-11:35AM Williams,Karen S

Introduction to representative works of British literary tradition, emphasizing major developments in British literature.

AENG295 Classics of Western Literature

6533 TTH 01:15PM-02:35PM Fox,Jr,James C

Introduction to classics of western literature, emphasizing foundational works for literary study by tracing the evolution of Anglophone modern literary genres from Homeric epics.

AENG300W Expository Writing [Permission of Instructor]

2233 MW 02:45PM-04:05PM Berman,Jeffrey

This course will emphasize personal, exploratory, expressive, and therapeutic writing. I'm particularly interested in the extent to which writing about personal conflicts leads to heightened self-awareness and psychological well-being. The assignments and readings will come from my book Risky Writing. The minimum writing requirement is forty typed pages and will include essays on divorce, eating disorders, binge drinking, suicide, and sexual abuse. Prerequisite: empathy.

AENG300W Expository Writing

2234 MWF 11:30AM-12:25PM Wilkie III,Robert A
2235 MWF 12:35PM-01:30PM Stevens,Diane K

For experienced writers who wish to work on such skills as style, organization, logic and tone. Practice in a variety of forms: editorials, letters, travel accounts, film reviews, position papers and autobiographical narrative. Classes devoted to discussions of the composing process and to critiques of student essays. Intended primarily for junior and senior English minors and nonmajors.

AENG302Z Creative Writing [Permission of Instructor]

2236 W 02:45PM-05:35PM Patrick,William B

This is a course in the writing of fiction, imaginative non-fiction, and poetry. There will be weekly writing exercises and weekly reading assignments. Half of the semester will be devoted to short fiction, and the other half divided between poetry and short, imaginative non-fiction. Much of what you write will be outside of class, and you will have to make copies two or three times during the semester for discussion in class. We’ll also occasionally try a few in-class, collaborative writing exercises, and you should expect to devote some significant energy to responsible critiques of the stories and poems written by your classmates. A portfolio of revised pieces will serve as your final project.
To apply for enrollment in this class, please e-mail a writing sample (a few pages of fiction or poetry that are basically representative of your writing) to William Patrick at caltap@nycap.rr.com

AENG305Z Studies in Writing about Texts
[Reserved for English Majors]

7088 TTH 11:45AM-01:05PM Barlow,Judith E

This advanced workshop will consider the ways we think and write about literary, critical and theoretical texts. Using four twentieth century works in different genres as our jumping off point, we will explore how academic and ‘popular’ critics have responded to these texts and how we can write about both the texts themselves and the critiques. We will pay particular attention to the ways that economic and cultural factors, gender, ethnicity and unique personal experience shape writing at every stage. Our emphasis will be on writing: students should be prepared to draft and revise several short essays as well as a research paper and to share their written work with each other. Both attendance and active participation in class discussions are required. Prerequisite: Eng 205Z

AENG305Z Studies in Writing About Texts
[Reserved for English Majors]

7089 TTH 10:15AM-11:35AM Brown,W. Langdon

Description: This course offers intensive practice in writing criticism coupled with discussion of the nature of critical thought. The course will use Hamlet and King Lear as primary texts. We will read examples from the wide range of critical response to these texts and identify persistently recurring critical questions. Some of these questions will be addressed by students in course assignments. Students will write several essays and one research paper to practice writing in the field of English Studies. Prerequisite: Eng 205Z

AENG305Z Studies in Writing About Texts
[Reserved for English Majors]

7090 MWF 09:20AM-10:15AM Hanifan,Jil E

This section of Eng 305 will trace the fairy tale as a literary genre and cultural motif through multiple perspectives and disciplinary approaches. Readings will include several versions of familiar fairy tales as well as selected critical and creative writing by literary critics, cultural theorists, social historians, and contemporary poets and fiction writers. Students will write and revise their own critical essays, including a long research paper, and will be asked to deepen their understanding of critical reading, rhetorical strategies and disciplinary conventions by analyzing and responding to the course materials in a rhetorical journal. Finally, students will be active as peer readers and editors, and will be asked to respond thoughtfully and in detail to the writing of their classmates.

Required Texts: The Classic Fairy Tales, Maria Tatar; Transformations, Anne Sexton; Briar Rose, Jane Yolen. Prerequisite: Eng 205Z

AENG305Z Studies in Writing about Texts: Critical Perspectives on Shakespeare:
Hamlet and the Sonnets
[Reserved for English Majors]

7091 MWF 11:30AM-12:25PM Rozett,Martha T

Our primary focus will be on Hamlet, almost certainly the most written-about play in the British literary tradition. The six major writing assignments are all designed to strengthen your critical reading, research and writing skills. There will be short, in-class assignments, workshops and writing conferences as well. The assigned texts are the Longman edition of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, John Updike’s Gertrude and Claudius, the Folger edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets and a course packet of critical essays and book excerpts. Prerequisite: Eng 205Z

AENG305Z Studies in Writing about Texts: The Function of Criticism
[Reserved for English Majors]

7069 MW 04:15PM-05:35PM Craig,Randall T

This course is an intensive workshop in writing criticism and an extended discussion of what criticism should be and do. The class begins with a consideration of the relationship between critical and creative thinking, as evident in three authors who practiced both modes of writing: Matthew Arnold, Oscar Wilde, and T. S. Eliot. The second segment of the course focuses on academic novels (Lodge, Byatt) that self-consciously address the topic of academic writing, therefore, that necessarily continue the examination of criticism and creativity. A course anthology will include essays by contemporary scholars on the course's focal point, "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time." Prerequisite: Eng 205Z

ENG305Z Studies in Writing about Texts
[Reserved for English Majors]

8435 MWF 01:40PM-02:35PM North,Stephen M

In this course, we will focus on what might be called figuring the writer (“figuring” here in the sense of depicting or representing). As you are surely aware, the discipline of English has been preoccupied with the idea of the writer (and the author, a distinction we will consider) since its inception. Students in this class will join in that preoccupation for a semester by doing two kinds of writing. In the first, they will analyze existing representations of writers—constructing arguments, in essence, about when, how and why such representations have been made. In the second, informed by what they have learned from such analyses, students will write their own representations—“figure” writers in their own ways and for their own reasons.
Prerequisite: Eng 205Z

ENG310 Reading and Interpretation in English Studies: African American Literary & Cultural Criticism

7092 TTH 10:15AM-11:35AM Thompson,Lisa B

This course traces many of the major debates and themes in African American literary and cultural criticism and assesses emergent topics in the discipline. In order to give participants broad exposure to the field we will examine the contributions and influences of selected African American critics, scholars and cultural producers. By reading key critical and theoretical essays we will chart the development and formalization of African American literary studies. We will discuss such issues as the role of the black author, the race for theory, black feminism, literary aesthetics, black cultural studies, and black queer studies. We will also read primary material—novels, short stories, non-fiction and plays—along with secondary texts. These “case studies” will allow us to engage the issues, ideas and questions raised in the scholarship and examine how various theories are used in praxis. Prerequisite: C or Better in Eng 210, or Permission of Instructor.

AENG310 Reading and Interpretation in English Studies: On Translation

7095 TTH 11:45AM-01:05PM Elam,Helen Regueiro

This course deals with “translation” not in its ordinary sense of ferrying meaning from one language to another but as a problem within language. The term becomes a nickname for the problem of “meaning” at the heart of literature. Readings from a broad range of texts, philosophical and literary. Two papers, midterm, in-class essay. Prerequisite: C or Better in Eng 210, or Permission of Instructor.

AENG310 Reading and Interpretation in English Studies: Altered States: Modernity, Terror, and Identity

8436 TTH 01:15PM-02:35PM Barney,Richard A

This course will study the theory and practice of what being “modern” means, starting with its first articulations in the 18th century and tracing its development into the 21st century. It will focus particularly on how modernity defined a new concept of internalized, personal identity, which paradoxically was also often confronted with its near dissolution in the face of trauma, terror, or other extreme conditions. Starting with readings by early modern writers such as John Locke, Edmund Burke, and Aphra Behn, we will examine how individual subjectivity was both founded and persistently disturbed, tracking the development of this double pattern in the period’s literature, and then into 19th-century gothicism and 20th-century horror genres. Theoretical readings will include texts by Frances Ferguson, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Slavoj Zizek, Michel Foucault, and Judith Butler. Prerequisite: C or Better in Eng 210, or Permission of Instructor.

AENG310 Reading and Interpretation in English Studies: Literature, Truth, and Freedom

8437 W 02:45PM-05:35PM Keenaghan,Eric C

These days it's common in English Departments to hear such things as: "There is no such thing as truth"; "Everything is only language"; "The author is dead"; "There are as many interpretations of a text as there are readers". . . At the bottom of these claims are two beliefs. First, that the human subject is not the center of the known universe. Second, that we must question the qualities usually thought to define "civility" or "democracy" or even "humanity"--rationality and autonomy. But how exactly do those theories and concepts open up new ways for thinking about the sorts of truths and freedoms we can find in reading? In this course, we will investigate theoretical texts that have made it possible for English Studies to make those claims, so that we can better understand how theory importantly challenges commonplace ideas about truth, the freedom of human actors, and the arts' ability to promote social change. We will begin with Friedrich Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, a classic text that critically investigates the truth about truth. From there, we will look at key short texts by representative authors from three different "schools" of thought that, like Nietzsche, argue that art and literature challenge commonplace ideas about truth, meaning, and freedom: pragmatism (William James, John Dewey); structuralism (Ferdinand de Saussure, Roland Barthes); and post-structuralism (Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze). How do these "schools" build on and deviate from Nietzsche's ideas about the arts' ethical and political natures? How can we read these authors in relation to, or even against, one another? Exemplary work in English Studies doesn't just apply theory to literature, but it uses literary texts as test cases to think through and expand on theoretical texts' arguments. So, each week we will put one novella or short story by an early twentieth-century U.S. author into dialogue with the theory we're reading. What does literature itself suggest about its own ability to change how we tend to think about truth and freedom? The last weeks of the semester will be devoted an in-depth study of one novel and nonfiction essays by that novel's author, read together as formulating a "theory" about the nature of literature, truth, and freedom. Possible fictions may include work by Henry James, William Faulkner, Gertrude Stein, Djuna Barnes, Willa Cather, Paul Bowles, Ralph Ellison, Ernest Hemingway, or others.

There will be little lecturing, so participation and original critical thought are expected of everyone. Requirements: (1) for each theoretical text, a one-page reading journal entry summarizing the author's main argument (three typed entries due for credit); (2) a group presentation, with a short critical paper by each member (5 - 8 pages), about the argument of one theoretical text in relation to one episode from the assigned fiction; and (3) a 10- to 15-page paper that performs an analysis of the final novel, treating it as a theory you put into dialogue with any other one piece of theory assigned this semester. Prerequisite: C or Better in Eng 210, or Permission of Instructor.

AENG334 19th Century British Literature

8724 MW 02:45PM-04:05PM Craig,Randall T

The course focuses on British authors of the mid- and late nineteenth century. Our objective will be to understand the term "Victorian," a label often used with self-conscious pride in the nineteenth century and with thinly disguised derision thereafter. Our lens upon the Victorian period will be the writings of major figures, with an emphasis upon literary texts that directly address intellectual and social concerns of the day. Cannot be taken by students who have received credit for A Eng 426 or A Eng 427.

AENG336 American Literature to 1800

6544 MWF 09:20AM-10:15AM Jonik,Michael E

Examination of American literature of the colonial and federal periods. Topics to be discussed may include, among others: the development of literary genres and themes; formations of national identity; theological and political contexts.

Cannot be taken by students who have received credit for A Eng 432.

AENG337 19th Century-American Literature

8452 MWF 11:30AM-12:25PM Goldberg,Shari P

Examination of American literature of the nineteenth century. Topics to be discussed may include, among others: the development of literary genres and themes; romanticism, realism, regionalism, and naturalism; literature in relation to historical and political contexts. Cannot be taken by students who have received credit for A Eng 433 or A Eng 434.

AENG337 The Hero and Heroine in 19th Century American Literature

8453 MWF 12:35PM-01:30PM Paliwoda,Daniel

The first half of the nineteenth-century was marked by a clarion call for a uniquely American literature with distinctive American characters. What identified American protagonists as such? How were they different from their British counterparts? What historical and literary forces shaped the creation of American heroes and heroines? This course will address these concerns by examining certain American literary myths such as the American Adam, the American “newness,” and others. We will also ask the question what makes a hero and heroine? Possible books to be read: Sedgwick’s Hope Leslie, Fern’s Ruth Hall, Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter. Cannot be taken by students who have received credit for A Eng 433 or A Eng 434.

AENG338 American Literature after 1900

6545 TTH 08:45AM-10:05AM Teepe,Christopher J

The 20th Century was an incredibly productive era for American authors– it marked the ascension of American letters to a footing equal with and at times superior to its foreign competition, witnessed the emergence of the nation’s first internationally recognized literary genius (eventually to be compared with Joyce, with more on the way behind him), and saw at least two avant garde engagements with revolutionary literary movements. This course accordingly attempts to tap into some of this rich legacy even as we live amidst its modern equivalents, doing its best to explore as varied a subject matter as possible. Some of the readers we may encounter include (among other possibilities) Katherine Anne Porter, Ellen Glasgow, T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Langston Hughes, Flannery O’Connor, Vladimir Nabokov, Saul Bellow, Allen Ginsburg, Maxine Hong Kingston, Toni Morrison, Thomas Pynchon, N. Scott Momaday, and William Vollmann. Cannot be taken by students who have received credit for A Eng 434 or 435.

AENG342 Authors before 1750: John Milton and His Revolutionary World

7102 TH 10:15AM-11:35AM Cable,Lana

The poetry and prose of John Milton had an impact on the political and creative thinking of nearly every major writer in the western world since his time. This course will help you to understand the causes of that impact, as well introduce you to significant critical issues that surround Milton’s works. Close reading will give you insight into the man himself: a radical thinker and iconoclast as well as classically disciplined poet, who made a public commitment to fulfill his artistic promise by devoting his talents not only to literature but to political and religious reform. By the end of the semester you should be a competent reader of Milton, able to think and write about his work with confidence and critical intelligence. You should also have gained a general sense of the political, religious, social and philosophical issues with which Milton was concerned, issues that helped to define the modern world and that remain subject to debate in the present day. Readings will include, but not be limited to, L'Allegro and Il Penseroso; Lycidas; A Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle (Comus); the Sonnets; Areopagitica; Paradise Lost; Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes.

AENG343 Authors after the Mid-18th Century: Melville & Conrad

6541 MW 04:15PM-05:35PM Paliwoda,Daniel

Despite Conrad’s dismissal of Melville’s artistic abilities and his affinities with American writer, the two artists share many similarities. These novelists draw upon the sea for many of their stories, illustrating the dangers, allure, conflicts, and problems as a result of being at sea for an extended time. Work, friendship, good and evil, and other themes will be examined. These artists are drawn to character types who are troubled, both spiritually and morally, lonely, with no family and few, if any, friends, and reckless, in need of demonstrating their manhood and existence. This course will explore those affinities, and also point out their key differences in artistic vision and style. In particular, we will discuss the distinguishing characteristics of their romantic and tragic dispositions; similarly, we will compare their aesthetic and philosophic attitudes both in their fiction and nonfiction. Books to be read: Moby-Dick with Heart of Darkness, The Confidence-Man with The Secret Agent, and Billy Budd with Lord Jim. Readings will be supplemented with some nonfiction pieces.

AENG346 Shakespeare: Comedies and Histories

7096 MW 02:45PM-04:05PM Rozett,Martha T

This course focuses on seven of Shakespeare's best-known comedies and history plays, including Twelfth Night, The Merchant of Venice, 1 Henry IV, Henry V, and Richard III. Assignments will include a performance-based project, short papers and tests, and a final exam.

AENG346 Shakespeare's Greek and Roman Plays

7097 TTH 10:15AM-11:35AM Thornton,Kathleen K

This section of Studies in Shakespeare will focus primarily on the plays Shakespeare set in Greece and Rome. We will read Titus Andronicus, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Troilus and Cressida, and Timon of Athens. We will also read the poems "Venus and Adonis" and "The Rape of Lucrece." Students will be expected to engage in research that produces two short papers. The first explores Shakespeare's source material and the second examines critical commentary about the plays/poems. Students will also write one 10 page paper that draws on two or more of the works studied. Students may be asked to develop a performance project.

AENG350 Contemporary Writers

2240 TTH 04:15PM-05:35PM Brown,W Langdon

In this course we will read and discuss published work by the authors appearing on campus in the New York State Writers Institute Visiting Writers Series. We will meet, hear, and speak with the visiting writers in colloquia devoted to in-depth conversations not only about the authors' works, but also about the issues facing writers today. Recent visiting writers have included Julian Barnes, Mary Gaitskill, John Berendt, Tracy Kidder, Gary Wills, Spike Lee, Margaret Atwood and many others. We will read from a wide variety of genres and, by the end of the semester, after a great deal of reading and writing and discussion, students should have a deeper, richer appreciation and understanding of what it means to work as a writer in our world. There will be short papers, a midterm exam, and a final project.

AENG355 Studies in Film: From High Noon to Brokeback Mountain

7098 T 01:15PM-04:05PM Thornton,Kathleen K

Since cinema began, directors have had a fascination with depicting the open spaces of the American west. While the tradition begins with Stagecoach, we will begin our investigation with films of the 1950s, leading up to the highly acclaimed Brokeback Mountain. Films are, to be sure, a reflection of the social climate in which they are made and we will explore the cultural impulses that produced them. Some are clearly limited by those impulses while other films seem to break free of them and stand as artistic renderings that defy time. To that end, music, set design, costumes, and technical aspects of cinema will be of interest to us. Among the many films available for study, we may explore Shane, High Noon, Red River, The Sons of Katie Elder, The Magnificent Seven, Silverado, Unforgiven, Wyatt Earp, Jeremiah Johnson, Little Big Man, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Blazing Saddles, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Nevada Smith, The Outlaw Josey Wales. The Shootist or The Oxbow Incident. Some of these films will be the subjects of in class viewing while others will be viewed outside class and brought to bear on the discussions in class. We will explore the role of the landscape, the gunman, the loner, the mentor, women (both schoolmarms and saloon girls), the cattle baron, etc. Evaluation will be based on journals, and two projects.

AENG358 Emily Dickinson

8462 TTH 02:45PM-04:05PM Elam,Helen Regueiro

This course deals with a poet renowned for her compression, and simultaneously for her accessibility and her difficulty. Focus will be on close, slow reading, in the predicate that the literary text wrestles with and is constituted by what impedes it. Two papers, midterm, in-class essay.

AENG358 Studies in Poetry

8463 T 05:45PM-08:35PM Johnson,Judith E

The course this semester will focus on Mythopoiesis in poetry and film. To identify the many ways in which myth continues to inform the imagery and language of literature, we shall concentrate on 3 broad mythic groups: myths of the Goddess, myths of the death and rebirth of the Year-God, and myths of the Quest Hero. Beginning with one of the earliest narrative poems, the Sumerian “Descent of Innanna,” we shall include among our texts one long poem (The Waste Land), sections of classical and medieval epics, sections of Trilogy, and others TBA. Among our films will be Medea, He Who Must Die, Carrie, and The Magnificent Seven. Required work: one midterm project, one final project, participation classroom discussions and dramatizations.

AENG366 Black Is/Ain't:Ethnicity in Theory and Practice
[Crosslisted with A WSS 366]

5562 TTH 10:15AM-11:35AM Payne,Walter D

This course undertakes a critical exploration of ethnicity in literature focused on African American writing and historical experience. Literary and theoretical readings are organized around three major topics: (1) problems of boundaries which propose to define the ethnic group, as exemplified in narratives of “passing” and amplified by poststructuralist theory; (2) the search for roots or principles of ethnic coherence in various aspects of history and culture; and (3) the transformation of ethnic identities under the pressure of specific social conflicts. Material includes some consideration of other ethnicities for comparative purposes and works by David Bradley, Nella Larsen, Toni Morrison, Anna Deavere Smith, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Molefi Kete Asante, and others.

AENG367 The Jewish Literary Imagination
[Crosslisted with A JST 367]

8567 TTH 02:45PM-04:05PM Berkowitz,Joel

The 19th century witnessed the birth of secular literature in two Jewish languages, Yiddish and Hebrew, as well as Jewish writing in other European languages that would blossom in the 20th century, in the process putting issues of Jewish identity and history on the world literary map. This course will examine important works of modern Jewish fiction that address the many ways in which Jews have reinvented Jewish identity in modern times: sometimes by exploring areas of religious belief and practice that did not exist earlier, at other times rejecting religion altogether in favor of other means of self-expression.

Over the course of the semester, then, fiction will serve as a lens through which to view some of the most important transformations in Jewish life in the past century and a half. We will read works written in a variety of times and places, from late 19th-century Eastern Europe, to early 20th-century Argentina, to the Soviet Union in the 1920s, and on to Israel and North America in modern times. Students will read a variety of short fiction and novels by leading Jewish writers, as well as critical studies to help place the readings in historical and cultural context. Written work includes frequent, short writing assignments, and a term paper that will be conceived and written in stages throughout the semester.

AENG368 Women Playwrights [Crosslisted with AWSS 368]

2241 MWF 11:30AM-12:25PM Hanifan,Jil E

By studying plays by Susan Glaspell, Clare Boothe, Lillian Hellman, Lorraine Hansberry, Maria Irene Fornes, Ntozake Shange, Tina Howe, Susan-Lori Parks and others, this course will survey the works of women playwrights in the U. S. through the twentieth century. Special attention will be paid to the social, cultural and theatrical contexts of the plays, and some grounding concepts of feminist drama and gender theory will be introduced. Only one of A Eng 368 and A Wss 368L may be taken for credit.

AENG372 Postcolonial Novels

8464 TTH 11:45AM-01:05PM Benjamin,Bret Elliot

The novel—by which I mean both the literary genre and a conception of radical new-ness—underpins and undercuts the postcolonial. This course will examine novelistic writing from formerly colonized areas of Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean in an effort to assess the novelties of the postcolonial both as an historical era beginning with the decolonization of the “Third World” in the aftermath of World War II, and as a body of critical and artistic production that collectively constitutes the academic discipline of postcolonial studies. Further, we will address the continued relevance of postcolonial studies in a contemporary historical moment, often referred to as “globalization,” which is marked not only by the legacies of colonialism, but also by what appear to be new and exacerbated forms of imperial intervention and exploitation.

Readings will include a selection of novels by authors such as Achebe, Djebar, Dangarembga, Farah, Coetzee, Abani, Rushdie, Toer, Roy, Hagedorn, Harris, Kincaid, Chamoiseau, Danticat, and Lin. The literary readings will be paired and supplemented with theoretical and historical texts that help to define the field of postcolonial studies and that address some of its central themes including Nation and Culture, Home and Exile, City and Country, Space and Movement, among others.

AENG399Z Honors Seminar: To Open the Question
[Permission of Instructor]

6026 TTH 04:15PM-05:35PM Scheck,Helene

Scholarly and creative endeavors typically begin with questions or problems. As a prelude to the thesis-writing year, this semester will be devoted to identifying and developing a question or problem important to the student and complex enough to sustain a long-term project. To facilitate the process, this course will guide students to develop research methods, argumentation, and critical/theoretical approaches to literary and cultural studies, so that each student becomes conversant with the material and current discussions within the particular field of inquiry that most interests her/him.

As a way to focus the critical process, we will consider forms of literacy, whether in terms of writing, literature, culture, technology, information, etc., from the pre- to postmodern, and issues surrounding those forms. What does it means to be literate? Who sets the standards, why, and how? What are the implications of literacy in constructions of gender, race, class, and belief systems? Readings will include historical, literary, and theoretical perspectives on assorted literacies and early assignments will respond to these readings. Students will move toward independent research as they become “literate” in a particular area of inquiry, and produce a substantial research paper in that area by the end of the term. Prerequisite: A Eng 398Z.

AENG402Z Advanced Writing Workshop [Permission of Instructor]

7103 T 02:45PM-05:35PM Patrick,William B

This course is a workshop for experienced writing students in fiction, poetry, or imaginative non-fiction who feel ready to commit to a longer project in their chosen genre. Students might concentrate on developing one or two longer short stories or a novella, a chapbook of related poems, or an extended, creative essay. There will be some required readings in each of the three genres, and extensive class discussions of works in progress. Students should expect to help each other, imaginatively and critically, throughout the semester.

To apply for enrollment in this class, please e-mail a writing sample (at least five pages of fiction, poetry, or imaginative non-fiction that demonstrate your best writing), a list of other writing courses you have taken, your major area of study,

reasons you want to take this class, and anything else you feel is relevant to William Patrick at caltap@nycap.rr.com.

AENG404Z Writing Drama [Cross Listed with ATR 406Z]

6648 W 01:40PM-04:40PM Farrell,James

A workshop dealing with the craft of playwriting. Focuses on preparing stageworthy one-act plays; some of these scripts may be considered for presentation in the Plays in Process Festival of new student plays. Limited enrollment. No previous playwriting experience necessary.

AENG411 Renaissance Allegory & Masque

7104 TTH 01:15PM-02:35PM Cable,Lana

Spurred by the New Historicist argument that Renaissance literature did not simply reflect history but helped to make it, this course explores symbolic genres whose original political force in English culture is only now being rediscovered. Beginning with theory of allegory as a symbolic mode, we will move on to examine concrete cultural dimensions of that symbolic reading in Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, with excursions into Phineas Fletcher’s graphic Spenserian anatomy The Purple Island and Richard Overton’s allegorical drama Araignment of Mr. Persecution. Further exploring how containment, subversion and circulation of cultural power depended on ceremonies and myths of political rule, we will inquire into the Stuart masque as a medium for exercising political authority. Masques on our reading list will include Ben Jonson’s The Masque of Blackness, The Masque of Queens, Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue and others. Our critical reading will include authors such as Angus Fletcher, Paul Alpers, Matthew Greenfield , Leonard Barkan, Maureen Quilligan, Linda Gregerson, Andrew Hadfield, Susanne Wofford, David Norbrook, Martin Butler, Stephen Orgel, Tom Bishop, David Bevington, Leah Marcus, Barbara Lewalski, Leeds Barroll and others. Prerequisite: C or better in A Eng 210, or permission of instructor.

AENG412 Cinema and Espionage—Hitchcock

8465 MW 04:15PM-05:35PM Cohen,Thomas D

Hitchcock’s work has emerged as a continuing hive of theoretical issues in 20th century cinema. This course will explore how the problem of spies and spying primarily in Alfred Hitchcock’s films. Espionage goes to the root of a kind of resistance in “cinema” to the modes of perception it both generates and, in a sense, atomizes. We will first examine the narrative, philosophic, and cognitive patterns that emerge in these works—ciphers, secret writing, stratagems of sabotage, war—and interpret them within an evolving horizon of cinema and memory today. The class will also sample diverse critical writings on film and this topic. Prerequisite: C or better in A Eng 210, or permission of instructor

AENG413 New Art in New York: 1945-1975

8466 T 05:45PM-08:35PM Byrd,Donald J

In New Art City, Jed Perl noted, “To discover art and ideas and New York all at once in a couple of decades after World War II was to be enveloped by experiences that could be as confusing as they mesmerizing, and no doubt the confusion was part of the fascination. ‘Swimming in the reflected surfaces of some great goldfish bowl’ was how literary critic Alfred Kazan recalled a lunch in midtown, in the roof garden of the Museum of Modern Art’s chic building.” This course will explore the interrelations among the poetry of the New York school, fiction, music, art, cinema, and theater of avant- garde New York, from 1945 to1975, when the U.S. became the dominant world power. Attention will be paid to bebop, the New York School of Poets, the Fluxus movement, free jazz, experimental theater, dance, and performance, and the visual arts. . The significance of new technology and the Cold War will be considered. Class participation will be emphasized, and students will be required to make a formal class presentation. There will also be a major writing assignment and a final examination. Prerequisite: C or better in A Eng 210, or permission of instructor

AENG413 Civil War Studies

8467 TTH 01:15AM-02:35AM Teepe,Christopher J

The Civil War is the defining mythic event in America’s history, and its influence upon the socio-political, cultural, and literary realities of the nation are still being felt a century and a half later. This course seeks to trace some of that influence in letters, film and occasionally other mediums both as a means to further understand America’s seminal event and to understand how the war still operates as a tangible force in the nation’s modern culture. Unfortunately we can not hope to cover everything in a single semester, but within the confines of a reasonable workload we may read from Abraham Lincoln’s speeches and Mary Chesnut’s diary, hear from those I select from among Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Thomas Nelson Page, Ambrose Bierce, Charles W. Chesnutt, Sutton Griggs, Stephen Crane, Ellen Glasgow, William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Cormac McCarthy, Tobias Wolff, James Dickey, Lee Smith and others, consider Matthew Brady’s photographs of dead soldiers in the light of the grisly newsreel of Tarawa, look at parts of D.W. Griffith’s epic The Birth of a Nation (from Thomas Dixon’s trilogy) and Ron Maxwell’s Gettysburg, and, believe it or not, glace at Pickett’s Charge re-inscribed in Edward Zwick’s The Last Samurai and at Joss Whedon’s sci-fi neo-Reconstruction epic Serenity. Ideologues should check any predetermined ideologies at the door, as both Yankee and Rebel will have their say in this course. Prerequisite: C or better in A Eng 210, or permission of the instructor.

AENG413 Experimental American Poetics at the Dawn of the 21st Century

8513 MW 04:15PM-05:35PM Joris,Pierre

“To imagine a language,” said Wittgenstein, “is to imagine a form of life.” This course will investigate the poetry and poetics of such key “imaginings” in the U.S. at the hinge of the last & the new centuries. The emphasis is squarely on the new, experimental literary forms that evolved from the earlier twentieth-century avant-garde modernism, and their most contemporary incarnations, so as to discover how their respective “forms of life” both converge and cross. Authors will include Lyn Hejinian & Nathaniel Mackey, Charles Bernstein and Rachel Blau Duplessis, Robert Kelly & Birgit Kemper, as well as Marjorie Perloff and Jed Rasula, Robin Blaser and Alice Notley. Prerequisite: C or better in A Eng 210, or permission of the instructor.

AENG416 Imagining the Black Middle Class in the US

8458 TTH 11:45AM-01:05PM Thompson,Lisa B

During this term we will embark on an interdisciplinary exploration of the African American middle class with a particular emphasis on post-Civil Rights era developments. Using autobiography, film, history, photography, literature, television, and sociology this course will examine how the black middle class has been imagined and defined. Some of the other issues we will investigate include: The history of the black middle class in the United States; the idea of class privilege for a racially marginalized group; conflicts between the black middle class and the "underclass”; the role of the black middle class in policing black sexuality; the notion of middle class rage; assertions of racial authenticity; and the politics of affirmative action and identity. Moreover, by examining some of the debates within and about the black middle class this course will suggest ways to complicate constructions of race in America. Prerequisite: C or better in A Eng 210, or permission of the instructor.

AENG449 Topics in Comparative Literatures and Cultures: “Nineteenth-Century British and American Romantics”

7113 M 04:15PM-07:05PM Bosco,Ronald A

The English Department defines courses listed under “Topics in Comparative Literatures and Cultures” as follows: “Focused examination of selected topics in the study of comparative Anglophone literatures and cultures from any period. Individual semesters may focus on, among other areas: comparative study of particular aesthetic movements, cultural texts, political questions, or historical problems. May be repeated once for credit when content varies.”

This section of the English 449 will focus on the writings and reputations of a number of British and American authors whose work collectively spans from the late-eighteenth through the mid-nineteenth centuries. While taking appropriate notice of those issues typically developed in courses using a comparatist approach to topics, this course will also devote particular attention to the political and literary assumptions underlying the identification of the chronological periods associated with these writers as the periods of British Romanticism and American Romanticism. In this connection, the course will work out of and test prevailing definitions of “Romanticism” and consider the reliability of those definitions across lines drawn from respective nationalistic interests (British vs. American).

The course opens with the poetry and selected prose of major British Romantic writers (Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats), and then moves to the prose and selected poetry of several major American Romantics (Hawthorne, Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller, Whitman, Dickinson, and others). Throughout, discussion will center on individual readings, on prevailing as well as on shifting notions of what “Romanticism” (however defined) entailed for British or American writers, and on the role historical events played in the initial formulation of these notions and their eventual decline.
Course requirements include regular attendance, active participation in class discussion, a mid-term examination and a cumulative final examination administered during the University’s final examination period, and four unannounced quizzes/in-class writing exercises on assigned readings.

Note 1: Prerequisite: C or better in A Eng 210, or permission of the instructor.
Note 2: Students who have previously taken Professor Bosco’s English 432, 433, or 447 courses may not register for this course.

AENG 449 Topics in Comparative Literatures and Cultures
Seminar in Dramatic Literature: Strindberg and Beckett
[Crosslisted with A THR 456] [Permission of Instructor]

8877 TTH 01:15PM-02:35PM Szalczer, Eszter

The class will study the work of two leading figures of modern drama, Swedish playwright August Strindberg (1849-1912) and Irish playwright Samuel Beckett (1906-1989). We will read their plays against the cultural background of their time and trace significant influences that informed their vision. We sill also explore points of connection between them, looking at how Strindberg’s dramatic experiments impacted the ways Beckett conceived of drama and, by turn, how both of their contributions helped shape the theatre of today internationally. Besides the plays of Strindberg and Beckett readings will include excerpts from their fiction, poetry, and theories, writings by major contemporary cultural figures such as Freud and Camus, and various critical approaches to their works and time, including feminist criticism, cultural criticism, and other post structuralist perspectives. A combination of lectures and discussion, analytical and research papers will ensure that students actively engage with the material.

AENG450 Topics in Writing Studies: Tutoring and Writing [Permission of Instructor]

7527 MW 04:15PM-05:35PM Wilder,Laura A

This course is primarily designed to train tutors to work in the University’s Writing Center, though those interested in exploring writing instruction, writing processes from brainstorming to revision, or rhetorical concerns of audience and purpose may also find this course of value. We will investigate our own and others’ writing processes, styles and purposes for writing in various academic disciplines, and the dynamics of giving and receiving useful feedback on writing as well as the role of a Writing Center on campus. Despite the 400 level designation, the course is intended for sophomores and juniors who will be eligible to apply for positions as tutors in the University Writing Center upon successful completion of the course. Non-English majors are also welcome. (Permission of the Instructor required. Please email Lwilder@albany.edu if interested.)

AENG450 Special Topics in Rhetoric and Poetics: Images of the Writer in U.S. Culture [Permission of Instructor]

8459 MWF 11:30AM-12:25PM North,Stephen M

One hears this sort of utterance fairly often, especially around English departments: “I want to be a writer” or “I am a writer” or “Wouldn’t it be great to be a writer?” In this course, we will explore what such locutions might mean–who might come to utter them, under what circumstances, and why—by examining some of the ways in which “the writer” has come to be represented in U.S. culture. To this end, we will consider images with pretty extensive histories (possibilities here include such figures as Poe, Hemingway, and Plath), but also those of fairly recent vintage (e.g., Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy or Michael Chabon’s Wonderboys) in a variety of forms (e.g. novels, biographies, autobiographies, poems, interviews, films, etc.). Student projects will involve both analysis of and efforts at such representation, with comparable possibilities in terms of form.

AENG490 Internship in English [Permission of Instructor]

2242 ARR ARRANGED Yalkut,Carolyn

Internships are practical apprenticeships in real-world work situations using the skills gained in English Studies such as critical reading, analysis, writing, research, editing, etc. Interns work between 10 and 15 hours per week and complete an academic component as well as weekly reports.
Internships count as upper-division electives and carry 3 credit hours pass/fail. Internship placements include: advertising/marketing, public relations, publishing, the arts, television, radio, state agencies, literary journals and organizations, law, education, community outreach, the New York State Writers Institute, and the English department's Advisement Office. Available to junior and senior English majors. Application forms are available in the Advisement Office and outside Carolyn Yalkut’s office, (HU 317).

The Department of English
University at Albany
State University of New York
Humanities 333
1400 Washington Avenue
Albany, NY 12222

Phone: (518) 442-4055
Fax: (518) 442-4599

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