Course Descriptions

Official Course Descriptions

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Supplemental Course Descriptions

Spring 2010 Upper-Level English Course Descriptions

AML 3220 19th Century U.S. Literature and Culture
Religion and Sex in American Literature
Dr. Harrison
T 11-1:45
In the opening of The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne imagines America emerging from the twinned influences of the prison door (Puritan religious law) and the rose (the individual desire for fulfillment - aesthetically, intellectually, and especially sexually). This course explores the tension between the prison door and the rose - of religion and sex – in American literature and culture in the 19th Century and beyond. Readings include The Scarlet Letter, Stoddard's The Morgesons, Frederic's Damnation of Theron Ware, Lewis's Elmer Gantry, and Baldwin’s Just Above My Head, and Del Shores’s play, Southern Baptist Sissies.

AML 3242 20th Century Literature and Culture
Dr. Wisdom
TR 2:00-4:45
This course is an overview of U.S. literature during the 20th Century with special emphasis on the interplay between cultural change and literary art. The reading and viewing materials and our discussions of them will be far-ranging and often driven by student interests and experiences

AML 4713: Working Class Literature
Dr. Peddie
M 11-1:45
Who or what is the working class? Is working-class literature written by, for, or about the working class? These complex and challenging questions will guide our enquiry and we will spend the semester engaged in discovering some possible answers. Equally, the course will help you develop an understanding of the central debates in American working-class literature. We will be reading a variety of authors, including Nelson Algren, Thomas McGrath, Langston Hughes, and Dorothy Allison.

ENG 4930 Senior Seminar
Dr. Jackson
W 11-1:45
This seminar is the capstone course for the English major, and as such, the assignments and readings will lead you to producing a professional portfolio, which will include a resume, professional goals statement, and a researched essay in which you demonstrate your skills in literary criticism.

ENL 3323 Shakespeare Survey (pre-1800)
Dr. Totaro
MW 5:00-6:15
This course is intended for students with limited experience reading Shakespeare and/or for those who want to widen their exposure to the study of Shakespeare’s poetry and plays both as literary texts and as performance pieces. We will cover 4-6 plays, with time devoted to considering Shakespeare's historical context and other approaches to reading and viewing (and perhaps, as an option, performing) his work. It is likely that we will read at least 1 tragedy, 1 comedy, 1 history play, and 1 romance. The specific plays are yet to be determined.

ENL 4295 Literature of the Plague (pre-1800)
Dr. Totaro
MW 3:30-4:45
Our focus will be bubonic plague in early modern England; however, we begin this class in a post September 11th 2001 United States of America, with the threat of biological terrorism as much of a reality as our well-founded concerns that the H1N1 pandemic will show its teeth. Our fears about infectious disease and contagion, in general, easily pre-date recorded history. In this course, we will examine some of the earliest known and most important pieces of the genre known as “plague writing,” with a focus on English literature and with attention along the way to medical, political, and social documents written in England and on the Continent, 1348-1722.

LIT 3400 Interdisciplinary Topics: Poetry and the Other Arts
Dr. Brock
TR 3:30-4:45
This class will investigate the direct and intermedial relationships between contemporary poetry and other arts, including music, visual arts, and performing arts. We'll explore famous examples of ekphrasis poems, such as those written by W.H. Auden and William Carlos Williams, but we'll explore hybrid manifestations of ArtPoems, animepoetry, and slam poetry, ultimately exploring questions of poetry as performance. We'll use conventional books of poetry, by Keith Ratzlaff and Mia Leone, but we'll also make use of what is available on-line. The class will include critical inquiry and analyses, as well as a performative component, in which we''ll be producing/performing a hybrid poetic event.

LIT 4213 Literary Theory
Dr. Jackson
MW 9:30-10:45
This class will focus on the philosophical pre-cursors of the late twentieth-century schools of literary theory, including deconstruction, feminism, postcolonialism, and psychoanalysis. As such, we will be reading works on the relationships among art and literature, language, and the socio-political by thinkers like Plato, Nietzsche, Freud, Marx, Saussure, and Barthes. We will end the class with a look at Derridean deconstruction, a model of reading that has had a significant impact on how literature is read and understood today. We will also look at relevant literary works along the way.

LIT 4220: Film Adaptation
Dr. Tolchin
R 11:00-1:45
In this hybrid literature/film course that considers the two genres as they intersect, advanced students will have the opportunity to formulate their own opinions about the impact of the motion picture on narrative. Grounding their work in an understanding of the history, culture, vocabulary, and field of film study, students will analyze a variety of film adaptations. Students will consider each film as a new aesthetic entity alongside its original literary source material. The readings for this course include advanced theory and criticism.

LIT 4932 Caribbean Spring 2010
Dr. Wisdom
W 2:00-4:45
This semester four courses in Caribbean studies have been scheduled simultaneously as a means of collaborating on learning about the uniquely rich and multilayered social and cultural environment of the Caribbean region. These courses are:
Caribbean Art Patricia Fay
Caribbean Environments Win Everham
Caribbean History Nicola Foote
Literature of the Caribbean Joe Wisdom
Several times during the semester we will meet together to enjoy performances, lectures, and discussions culminating in an unusual group project combining the talents, energies, and disciplinary knowledge of all the students in the courses. We also will share information about travel and study abroad opportunities in the Caribbean and work together toward deepening and expanding this area as a curricular focus in the College of Arts and Sciences.

LIT 4404 Gospel Music and American Literature
Dr. Harrison
TR 9:30-10:45
This course examines gospel music (both white and black traditions) and the way the music and its cultures have shaped, and been appropriated by, American literature. Tracing modern gospel music forward from its Reconstruction roots, we’ll explore the function of musical subcultures in the south (including the infamous battles between “round-heads” and “fasola-ists”); race, sexuality, and religion in the gospel world; and how multiple generations of American writers have found a rich imaginative resource in what one historian of gospel music has called “the sound of light.” In addition to using a broad sample of recorded music and relevant critical texts, the course will draw from the literature of Harold Frederic (The Damnation of Theron Ware), Sinclair Lewis (Elmer Gantry), James Baldwin (Just Above My Head), Harry Crews (The Gospel Singer), Dorothy Allison (Bastard Out of Carolina), and plays by Langston Hughes and Del Shores.