Undergraduate Courses (Fall 2008)
(Last updated: 4/17/08)

Please note that when a course is marked (Brit Lit Pre-1700), it means the course fulfills the British literature pre-1700 with some coverage of Medieval requirement for English majors. Such courses offered this semester include: ENGL 201 British Writers I, ENGL 313 Introduction to Old English Poetry, ENGL 416 Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

Please note that when a course is marked (Brit lit 1700-1900), it means the course fulfills the British literature 1700-1900 requirement for English majors. Such courses offered this semester include: ENGL 202 British Writers I, ENGL 358 The Romantic Poets, ENGL 491KK 18th-Century Institution & Revolution.

Please note that when a course is marked (2nd Am Lit), it means the course fulfills the second American Literature English major requirement. Such courses offered this semester include: ENGL 272-L1 American Romanticism, ENGL 273 American Realism, ENGL 279 Introduction to American Studies, ENGL 300-L5 Junior-Year Seminar in English Studies: "We of the Streets": Class, Race, and Gender in Modern American Poetry, ENGL 368 Modern American Drama, ENGL 369 Studies in Modern (20th Century) Fiction, ENGL 391M Contemporary American Autobiography, ENGL 480 Anderson, Hemingway, Purdy, ENGL 493D Bonds of Union: Frederick Douglass and Herman Melville, ENGL 493F African American Literature and Culture in the Age of Civil Rights. In addition, some courses offered at the Five Colleges also fill this requirement.

Please note that when a course is marked (Jr-Yr Writing), it means the course fulfills the Writing & Criticism/Junior-Year Writing requirement for English majors. Such courses offered this semester are: ENGL 300-L1 Junior-Year Seminar in English Studies: To Read a City: London in the 20th Century, ENGL 300-L2 Junior-Year Seminar in English Studies: Practical Criticism, ENGL 300-L3 Junior-Year Seminar in English Studies: South African Literature & Politics, ENGL 300-L4 Junior-Year Seminar in English Studies: Shakespeare and Empire, ENGL 300-L5 Junior-Year Seminar in English Studies: "WE of the Streets": Class, Race, and Gender in Modern American Poetry, ENGL 300-L6 Junior-Year Seminar in English Studies: Pirates & Mutineers: Treasure, Slavery, Rebellion and MP3's, ENGL 300-L7 Junior-Year Seminar in English Studies: Writing and Teaching Writing, ENGL 419H Honors Games Thinkers Play.

(Click here to see a list of courses from the Five Colleges Fall 2008)
(Click here to see a list of undergraduate courses from Fall 2007)
(Click here to see a list of undergraduate courses from Spring 2008)

English 115 American Experience (ALU)
Lecture 1 MWF 11:15 am Instructor TBA
This is an introductory American Studies course for non-majors, introducing students to the inter-disciplinary study of American culture. Historical in scope, ranging from the 17th - to the 20th - centuries, this course draws on a core body of American Studies materials supplemented by recent works–including fiction, prose, poetry, painting, photography, film, the natural and built environment. Approaches to diverse cultural experiences in the United States include the experience of work, travel, landscape and the environment, individualism and community.

English 115H Honors American Experience (ALU) 77765
Lecture 1 MW 4:40 – 5:55 pm Instructor M. Lowance
Commonwealth College students only. This is a 4-credit Honors course. The course will examine the literature of the antebellum slavery debates in nineteenth-century America in A House Divided: The Antebellum Slavery Debates in America , 1776-1865 ( Princeton , 2003) and through the voices of the slave narrators Olaudah Equiano, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Jacobs. Biblical proslavery and antislavery arguments, economic discourse, the conflict of writers and essayists like Emerson and Thoreau, Whitman and Lowell, James Kirke Paulding, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Mary Eastman combine with scientific arguments and Acts of Congress relating to slavery to provide the historical background for examinations of the issues surrounding slavery. The seminar will also examine the abolitionist writings of William Lloyd Garrison, Lydia Maria Child, and the New York Abolitionists Arthur and Lewis Tappan and Gerrit Smith. Four literary works will be studied in detail: Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin , Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Pudd'nhead Wilson , and Morrison's Beloved , all of which represent approaches to the legacy of slavery. We will consider minstrel stereotyping, the sentimental novel as a vehicle for abolitionist arguments, and the rhetorical strategies of each of theses texts. 

English 116 Native American Literature (ALU) 77377
Lecture 1 MW 4:40 – 5:55 pm Instructor R. Welburn
The focus of this course will be selected writings and oral tradition narratives by Indigenous North Americans. Texts being considered are an anthology, novels by Diane Glancy ( Pushing The Bear ) and Gerald Vizenor ( Dead Voices ) and poems by a major Native poet. Expect to write a series of short essays; a research project for the final; participation on a panel; and a Cherokee language syllabary exercise. Texts will be available at Food For Thought books after 15 August.

English 120 English Composition 73134
Lecture 1 MWF 10:10 am Instructor: L. Bradley
Stockbridge students only. English 120 is the writing requirement for undergraduates in the Stockbridge School . It gives practice in the persuasive techniques of expository writing and shows their usefulness in both academic and business contexts.

English 120 English Composition 73135
Lecture 2 MWF 11:15 am Instructor: L. Bradley
Stockbridge students only.

English 120 English Composition 73136
Lecture 3 MWF 1:25 pm Instructor: L. Bradley
Stockbridge students only.

English 131 Society and Literature (ALG) 73137
Lecture 1 MWF 1:25 pm Instructor: TBA
Butterfield RAP Freshman students only.

English 131 Society and Literature (ALG) 73138
Lecture 2 MWF 2:30 pm Instructor: TBA
Van Meter RAP Freshman students only.

English 132 Gender, Sexuality, Literature, and Culture (ALG) 73213
Lecture 1 MW 4:40 pm Instructor: S. Daly
This class will examine constructions of gender and sexuality through readings of 20 th and 21 st century poetry and prose from the US , Africa, and South Asia . This comparative approach allows us to consider the ways in which gender-based ideologies and practices are produced and reproduced, and how and why certain cultural norms and belief systems become naturalized, championed, or questioned in literature in different places at different historical moments. Authors may include Chinua Achebe, Sherman Alexie, Anita Desai, Mahasweta Devi, Louise Erdrich, Nadine Gordimer, Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, and Salman Rushdie.

This course will be taught as a large lecture using SPARK. An important component of the class will be students' regular attendance at, and engaged participation in, discussion sections. Assignments will include weekly response papers, two 5-page essays, a midterm, and a final examination. Discussion section required.

132 Disc 1    F  10:10 am   Instructor: TBA  73214
132 Disc 2    F    2:30 pm   Instructor: TBA   73215
132 Disc 3    F  10:10 am   Instructor: TBA   73216
132 Disc 4    F  11:15 am   Instructor: TBA   73221
132 Disc 5    F    1:25 pm   Instructor: TBA   73217
132 Disc 6    F    2:30 pm   Instructor: TBA   73218
132 Disc 7    F  10:10 am   Instructor: TBA   73219
132 Disc 8    F  11:15 am   Instructor: TBA   73220
132 Disc 9    F    1:25 pm   Instructor: TBA   73222
132 Disc 10  F 11:15 am    Instructor: TBA   73223
132 Disc 11 F    1:25 pm    Instructor: TBA   73224

English 140 Reading Fiction ( AL ) 73189
Lecture 1 MWF 11:15 am Instructor: TBA
An introduction to themes and forms of poetry through a reading of selected poems in English. Emphasis on such poetic techniques as word choice, imagery, and structure, and on such modes as the ballad, lyric, sonnet, ode, and dramatic monologue.

English 144 World Literature in English (ALG)
Lecture 1 MWF 10:10 am Instructor: TBA
An introduction to themes and forms of poetry through a reading of selected poems in English. Emphasis on such poetic techniques as word choice, imagery, and structure, and on such modes as the ballad, lyric, sonnet, ode, and dramatic monologue.

English 196 Independent Study 73139
Lecture 1 TBA Instructor: TBA
Contact department to add course.

English 200 Intensive Literary Studies Seminar for Intended Majors and Minors 73140
Lecture 1 T/Th 6:00 – 7:15 pm Instructor: R. Jennison
English majors only. Prerequisite: Gen. Ed. College Writing with a grade of ‘ B ' or better (students who received a waiver for College Writing, please contact department to add course). This course will help students develop skills in close reading and analytical argumentation. Most class sessions will involve discussion-based collective textual inquiry. To this end, students should come prepared to contribute to class discussion. We will explore the foundational terms of literary study, such as: form and content, narrative and narrative structure, poetry and poetics, author, voice, context, discourse and ideology. Students will have the opportunity to work across a variety of the 20th and 21st centuries' literary genres and forms. Our syllabus will include: Claude McKay's complex metrics, Frank O'Hara's free verse, Amiri Baraka's "Black Arts," Nathaniel West's novella Miss Lonelyhearts, Richard Wright's semi-autobiographical short stories, and finally, a constellation of contemporary poets whose work explores subjects usually condemned to the shadows of late capitalism. Students must receive a grade of ‘B-' or higher in ENGL 200 to proceed in the English major.

English 200 Intensive Literary Studies Seminar for Intended Majors and Minors 73141
Lecture 2 T/Th 9:30 am Instructor: A. Nadkarni
English majors only. Prerequisite: Gen. Ed. College Writing with a grade of ‘ B ' or better better (students who received a waiver for College Writing, please contact department to add course). This course addresses the relationship between writing and identity, focusing explicitly on discourses of race, ethnicity and postcoloniality. Through an examination of postcolonial and diasporic novels, short stories, poetry and dramatic works, we will ask how each genre generates different expressions of identity and voice. Questions we will consider include: what kind of voice is enabled by the formal aspects of each genre? How does the play of identity work similarly or differently across genres? What is the relationship between postcolonial and diasporic writings and their American and British antecedents—is it merely imitative or does it entail a radical remaking of Western forms? The course may include poetry by Meena Alexander, Agha Shahid Ali, Sarojini Naidu, and Derek Walcott; novels by Michelle Cliff and R. Zamora Linmark; short stories by Jhumpa Lahiri; and a play by David Henry Hwang. There will be weekly writing assignments and three papers.. Students must receive a grade of ‘B-' or higher in ENGL 200 to proceed in the English major.

English 200 Intensive Literary Studies Seminar for Intended Majors and Minors 73142
Lecture 3 T/Th 2:30 pm Instructor: E. Gallo
English majors only. Prerequisite: Gen. Ed. College Writing with a grade of ‘ B ' or better better (students who received a waiver for College Writing, please contact department to add course). Students must receive a grade of ‘B-' or higher in ENGL 200 to proceed in the English major.

English 200 Intensive Literary Studies Seminar for Intended Majors and Minors 73143
Lecture 4 MW 4:40 – 5:55 pm Instructor: J. Freeman
English TAP majors only. Prerequisite: Gen. Ed. College Writing with a grade of ‘ B ' or better better (students who received a waiver for College Writing, please contact department to add course). We will begin by studying poetry and then move on to short fiction. Much discussion, close reading of works, and papers. Possible reading list: a booklet of love poetry; lives of medieval saints; Boccaccio, Decameron ; Poe tales; Sherlock Holmes adventures; Hemingway short stories. Students must receive a grade of ‘B-' or higher in ENGL 200 to proceed in the English major.

English 200 Intensive Literary Studies Seminar for Intended Majors and Minors 78177
Lecture 5 MWF 1:25 pm Instructor: H. Holder
English majors only. Prerequisite: Gen. Ed. College Writing with a grade of ‘ B ' or better better (students who received a waiver for College Writing, please contact department to add course). This course will provide students with the skills and terminology necessary for literary analysis. Genres studied include the essay, poem, novel, short story, and drama. Students will acquire a basic understanding of a range of critical and theoretical approaches to texts. Requirements: regular short “discussion papers” (1 page), two short essays (3-4 pages), one longer essay (6-8 pages), and participation in class discussions. Students must receive a grade of ‘B-' or higher in ENGL 200 to proceed in the English major.

English 200 Intensive Literary Studies Seminar for Intended Majors and Minors
Lecture 6 T/Th 1:00 pm Instructor: T. Russworm
English majors only. Prerequisite: Gen. Ed. College Writing with a grade of ‘ B ' or better better (students who received a waiver for College Writing, please contact department to add course). Students must receive a grade of ‘B-' or higher in ENGL 200 to proceed in the English major.

English 200H Honors Intensive Literary Studies Seminar for Intended Majors and Minors 77766
Lecture 1 MWF 2:30 pm Instructor: N. Bromell
English majors only. Prerequisite: Gen. Ed. College Writing with a grade of ‘ B ' or better better (students who received a waiver for College Writing, please contact department to add course). Students must receive a grade of ‘B-' or higher in ENGL 200 to proceed in the English major.

English 201 Major British Writers I 73188 (Brit Lit Pre-1700)
Lecture 1 MWF 2:30 pm Instructor: J. Adams
English majors only. Prerequisite: English 200 with a grade of ‘B-' or better. The English language has changed considerably over the past thousand years, and with the changes in language have come redefinitions of culture, literature, and society. In this course, we will explore the early stages of English language and literature with an eye to how texts, both poetry and prose, contributed to a sense of "Englishness." In other words, we will consider the ways that early English authors helped to "write" a nation. Readings will include Beowulf , Sir Gawain and the Green Knight , More's Utopia , Spenser's Faeire Queene , and Milton 's Paradise Lost . Three medium-length papers, one midterm, and one final exam.

English 202H Honors Major British Writers 77768 (Brit lit 1700-1900)
Lecture 1 MW 6:30 – 7:45 pm Instructor: J. Freeman
English majors only. Prerequisite: English 200 with a grade of ‘B-' or better. Many of our current ideas about individuals, society and art began in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  The works we read explore these new questions about people:  what forms them, what is sanity, how unconventional can they be, what roles should they perform, how can they live in harmony with their unique imaginations?  Readings include Swift's Gulliver's Travels , Pope's Rape of the Lock , Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," the best poems of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Tennyson and Browning.  Much discussion, some lecturing, short exercises, weekly e-mail responses required.

English 221 Shakespeare ( AL ) 73144
Lecture 1 T/Th 2:30 – 3:20 pm Instructor: A. Zucker
A survey that covers Shakespeare's entire career, from early, sensationally bloody works like Titus Andronicus to the meditative late plays like Cymbeline and The Tempest. Along the way, we'll investigate the language, the structure, and the elaborate plotting of some of the most famous (and infamous) works ever written in English. Special focus given to Shakespeare's revealing explorations of the interplay between family, political hierarchies, and sexuality; his interest in distant settings and peoples; and, perhaps most importantly, his attempts to dramatize the struggle of individuals to make sense of the worlds in which they live. Through careful reading and discussion, we will work towards an understanding of why plays that seem so removed from our day-to-day concerns have remained powerfully relevant for four hundred years. Two essays, a mid-term and a final exam. Attendance at lecture and consistent participation in discussion sections required.  Discussion section required.

221 Disc 1    F  10:10 am   Instructor: TBA   73145
221 Disc 2    F  11:15 am  Instructor: TBA   73146
221 Disc 3    F     1:25 pm  Instructor: TBA   73147
221 Disc 4   F     2:30 pm   Instructor: TBA   73148

English 254 Writing and Reading Imaginative Literature ( AL ) 73149
Lecture 1 MWF 11:15 am Instructor: TBA
Analysis of issues of form, elements of genre, style, and development of themes of stories and poems, written by class members and in class texts.

English 254 Writing and Reading Imaginative Literature ( AL ) 73150
Lecture 2 MWF 10:10 am Instructor TBA

English 254 Writing and Reading Imaginative Literature ( AL ) 73151
Lecture 3 T/Th 9:30 am Instructor: TBA

English 254H Honors Writing and Reading Imaginative Literature ( AL ) 73205
Lecture 1 T/Th 2:30 pm Instructor: TBA
Honors RAP Creativity students only.

English 270 American Identities ( AL ) 73152
Lecture 1 T/Th 9:30 am Instructor: D. Carlin
"The old America, the America of our hopes and our dreams, has come to an end, and a new America is entering on the false course which has been tried so often and which has often led to calamity," wrote Harvard Professor Charles Eliot Norton in 1898, at that precise historical moment when the United States recast itself as an imperial global power with the invasion and occupation of the Philippines during the Spanish-American War. A little over one century later, we are again faced with the questions of what kind of America we have become and what version of America we wish to embrace. Such questions have long animated much of American literature, and this course will spend its time examining how writers such as Jefferson, Wheatley, Crèvecouer, Franklin, Apess, Zitkala-Sa, Thoreau, Douglas s , Whitman, Melville, Davis, DuBois, Chopin, Dunbar, Chesnutt, James, Bulosan, Lazarus, Sin Far, Hughes, McKay, Baldwin, Brooks, Obejas, Cisneros, Ortiz Cofer, Rose, Simon J. Ortiz and Anna Deavere-Smith have given shape to multiple and diverse configurations of American selves through fiction, autobiography, poetry, political rhetoric and performance art. Students will meet three times a week, twice in large lectures and once in discussion sections. Lectures will be augmented with computer technology, both visual and interactive; attendance in both lectures and sections is mandatory and will be monitored. Our primary texts will be The Pearson Custom Anthology of American Literature and Anna Deveare-Smith's Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, available at Food For Thought Books in Amherst . Please Note: This is a course that counts both toward a General Education (AL) requirement and is a required course for English majors.  If you are a slow reader, or if reading comprehension and textual analysis are difficult for you, you are encouraged to take a 100-level General Education English course instead of this one . Requirements: Two in-class exams (one at midterm and one at end of semester), one 2-3 pp. essay and one 5-7 pp. essay. Discussion section required .

270 Disc 1    Th 11:15 - 12:05 am   Instructor: TBA   73225
270 Disc 2    Th      2:30 - 3:20 pm   Instructor: TBA   73226
270 Disc 3    Th      1:00 - 1:50 pm   Instructor: TBA   73227
270 Disc 4    Th  11:15 - 12:05 am   Instructor: TBA   73228
270 Disc 5    Th      2:30 - 3:20 pm   Instructor: TBA   73229
270 Disc 6    Th     1:00 – 1:50 pm   Instructor: TBA   73230

English 272 American Romanticism 77769 (2nd Am Lit)
Lecture 1 T/Th 2:30 pm Instructor: H. Phan
This course will focus on the relationships between the literature of American Romanticism and the broader cultural debates and social transformations of this period.  We will study a wide range of texts, by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Frederick Douglass; Herman Melville; Harriet Beecher Stowe; and Walt Whitman.  Throughout our readings we will examine the ways in which the literature of this period contributed to the “imagined community” of America , as well as raised problems for the dominant narratives of the nation.

English 273 American Realism 77770 (2nd Am Lit)
Lecture 1 MWF 1:25 pm Instructor: R. Knoper
A course on American literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, focusing on fiction, but trying to do some justice to the diversity of literature during this period.  There will, however, be some centers of gravity in our survey, including: 1) the ways in which various developments in this period (accelerated urbanization and industrialization, exacerbated class conflict, increased immigration, imperialist expansion, emancipation of slaves and Reconstruction, segregation and racial violence, radically shifting notions of gender and sexuality) precipitated not only crises in social relations, but also crises in knowing and representing social realities; 2) the effect of science (theories of evolution, "race science," criminology, physics, psychology, new conceptions of body and mind, new conceptions of the relations between humans and animals, etc.) on both literary subject matter and ways of investigating, observing, knowing, expressing, and writing reality; 3) other areas of cultural production that left deep imprints on fiction, including popular literature and journalism, popular theater and other entertainments, painting, and photography.  We'll read W. D. Howells, Mark Twain, Henry James, Theodore Dreiser, Frank Norris, Kate Chopin, Sui Sin Far, Abraham Cahan, Edith Wharton, W. E. B. Du Bois, Charles Chesnutt, Pauline Hopkins, and others. Requirements: regular written responses to readings, two 5-7 page papers.

English 279 Introduction to American Studies 77771 (2nd Am Lit)
Lecture 1 MWF 11:15 am Instructor: J. Skerrett
John Sayles's America .  This course will explore the work of fiction writer, screenwriter and film director John Sayles as an approach to American self-examination in the late twentieth century.  Sayles is perhaps the most successful director of independent films, successful enough to maintain control over his subjects and to attract high profile actors who help the films reach relatively large audiences. Both as writer and director, he projects his dreams of America at an audience that responds and encourages him by attending the films.  His films explore racial oppression ( Brother from Another Planet ), sports and corruption ( Eight Men Out ), economic oppression ( Matewan ), borderland social relations ( Lone Star ), and other topics avoided by most Hollywood productions. The films also explore a variety of settings, urban and rural, and a variety of historical moments. We will read some short stories and a novel by Sayles, look at six or eight of the films and discuss the relations among his dreams and nightmares of America and our own. Students will produce two five-page papers and a longer final paper or take-home exam assignment. Films will be shown in the late afternoon or evening, outside of class time.

English 296 Independent Study 73153
Lecture 1 TBA Instructor: TBA
Contact department to add course.

English 298A Practicum: Shakespeare on Film 73203
Lecture 1 M 6:30 – 9:00 pm Instructor: A. Zucker
Mandatory Pass/Fail course. This series screens classic Shakespeare performances, one film each week. 1 credit. Requirements: attendance.

English 298B Practicum: Literary Classics on Film 73204
Lecture 1 W 6:30 – 9:00 pm Instructor: K. Farrell
Great Novels on Film. Mandatory Pass/Fail course. One film each week. 1 credit. Requirements: attendance.

English 300 Junior-Year Seminar in English Studies 76573 (Jr-Yr Writing)
Lecture 1 MW 4:40 – 5:55 pm Instructor: T. Fernando
Junior and Senior English majors only. Prerequisite: English 200 with a grade of ‘B-' or better.
To Read a City: London in the 20th Century.   This class focuses on the trope of the city in literature, specifically choosing London as a modernist city.  It traces the way that London has appeared as an image in the literature of the twentieth century.  We will examine how and why the image of the city changes or remains the same, by beginning with earlier accounts of the city, such as texts by Addison and Steele, Wordsworth, and Dickens.  Some questions we will ask: Why is there an interest in the city?  How does it become a symbol of modernism itself?  How is the image of the city often juxtaposed to another place, by both English writers and non-English writers?  How does London signify both the nation and empire?  After decolonization how does it deal with its self-conception, especially with the influx of immigrants?  The class will analyze literary, theoretical, and even visual texts by writers and artists such as Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, Roger Fry, Samuel Selvon, Caryl Phillips, Hanif Khureshi, Walter Benjamin, and Raymond Williams.

English 300 Junior-Year Seminar in English Studies 77772 (Jr-Yr Writing)
Lecture 2 MW 6:30 – 7:45 pm Instructor: R. Welburn
Junior and Senior English majors only. Prerequisite: English 200 with a grade of ‘B-' or better.
Practical Criticism.   This course will guide English majors in advanced critical thinking about literary texts, how to seek out and develop critical strategies in order to render cogent discussions about texts, and how to develop theses and utilize rhetorical and discursive strategies like the abstract, antithesis, induction and deduction.  Texts will include stories on the element of chance, James Joyce's The Dead , selected short fiction and poems, and Lillian Hellman's play, The Little Foxes .  Expect to write drafts and critical essays of various lengths and a research essay as the final project.

English 300 Junior-Year Seminar in English Studies 77773 (Jr-Yr Writing)
Lecture 3 T/Th 1:00 pm Instructor: S. Clingman
Junior and Senior English majors only. Prerequisite: English 200 with a grade of ‘B-' or better.
South African Literature & Politics. This course will be a study of some of the major moments and texts in South African literature, ranging from the colonial period, to the apartheid era, to the post-apartheid decade since Nelson Mandela's first democratically elected government in 1994. In this setting South African literature has kept the pulse of its society, registering the lived experience and telling the "inner history" of these years. In this context we'll read a variety of works by writers both black and white, male and female, in the genres of fiction, drama and poetry, to gain a sense of how writing works in such circumstances and what its struggles and significance might be. Some of it may be surprising: not only the need to be political, but also to deepen what the "political" means through the specificities of writing; not only the question of race but how this is complicated by gender and other issues. We'll also gain a sense of the extraordinary cultural and social range of South African literature—of its voices, views and perspectives, the possibilities, complexities and challenges of a new society in the making. Authors will include Nadine Gordimer and J.M. Coetzee (both Nobel Prize winners), Athol Fugard, Mongane Serote and other poets of the 1970s, as well as Njabulo Ndebele and a more recent generation of writers, such as Sindiwe Magona, Zoe Wicomb, Zakes Mda, and some very exciting poets of the current era. Classes will involve some lecturing, much discussion, and of course reading and writing.

English 300 Junior-Year Seminar in English Studies 77774 (Jr-Yr Writing)
Lecture 4 T/Th 9:30 am Instructor: J. Degenhardt
Junior and Senior English majors only. Prerequisite: English 200 with a grade of ‘B-' or better.
Shakespeare and Empire.   This course proposes a broad sampling of Shakespeare's plays--covering a range of time, genre, and themes—with emphasis on how they engage England 's contemporary concerns about travel, trade, colonialism, and empire.  For example, we will look at how plays like Cymbeline and Henry V project English fears and fantasies about empire onto past time periods from Britain's classical and medieval pasts.  We'll also consider the stakes involved in representing different geographical settings to the east and west of England .  How does the "undiscovered" territory of The Tempest differ from the Mediterranean setting of Othello , or from the more familiar, provincial setting of The Merry Wives of Windsor ?  We will place our readings of the plays in conversation with selected critical works in order to engage current debates about the significance of race, nation, and empire in early modern drama and culture.

English 300 Junior-Year Seminar in English Studies 77775 (2nd Am Lit) (Jr-Yr Writing)
Lecture 5 T/Th 2:30 pm Instructor: R. Jennison
Junior and Senior English majors. Prerequisite: English 200 with a grade of ‘B-' or better.
“We of the Streets: Class, Race, and Gender in Modern American Poetry.” This course explores the intersections of class, race and gender in Modern American Poetry.  We will trace the emergence of various poetic tendencies that cohere around collective and individual struggles against capitalism, racism and sexism in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. Alongside primary texts, we will also read current critical scholarship that examines the relationship between modern poetic traditions and social movements and formations.  Students will also gain an introduction to 19th and 20th century thinkers central to theorizing structural and psychical formations of class, race and gender; the writings of Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud and W.E.B DuBois will provide critical touchstones for our discussions of poetic texts. Frequent quizzes will ensure a democracy of informed participants. Prospective students should be aware that this course demands vocal engagement; seminar-like collective discussions will structure many of our meetings.

English 300 Junior-Year Seminar in English Studies 77776 (Jr-Yr Writing)
Lecture 6 T/Th 2:30 pm Instructor: J. Almeida-Beveridge
Junior and Senior English majors only. Prerequisite: English 200 with a grade of ‘B-' or better.
Pirates and Mutineers: Treasure, Slavery, Rebellion, and MP3s. As the swashbuckling Jack Sparrow in  Pirates of the Caribbean  (2003; 2006), Johnny Depp revives a long tradition of tantalizing pirate lore. Yet the incredible success of  Pirates  comes at a time when transnational entertainment giants like Universal, BMG, EMI, and Sony spend millions of dollars to prosecute college students and individuals who “pirate” MP3s. In this course, we will analyze how representations of piracy and rebellion have evolved alongside the laws that regulate global markets. This interdisciplinary approach will help us analyze why and how battles against piracy are waged with as much intensity now as in the late 1700s and the 1800s, when the British Navy scoured the Caribbean and the  South   Pacific   Seas  in search of infamous pirates like Blackbeard and Anne Bonny. Mutineers, often considered “pirates” by the captains against whom they revolted, also risked death by hanging if they were caught. We'll examine the mutinies of Fletcher Christian against Captain William Bligh in the  Bounty , and Cinque, who led the  Amistad  mutiny to liberate himself and other Africans destined for slavery in  Cuba . Readings include selections from Daniel Defoe's  A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates ; Lord Byron's “The Island”; the court martial testimonies of William Bligh and Edward Christian ;  a critical text, C.R. Pennell's  Bandits at Sea: A Pirate's Reader , and a reading packet.  We'll also watch the films  Pirates of the Caribbean (2006),   Mutiny in the Bounty (1935), and Amistad (1997). Our course will end with a brief exploration of the contemporary debate on piracy and intellectual property. Requirements: response papers, two shorter (4-5 page) essays, and a 12-15 page research essay.     

English 300 Junior-Year Seminar in English Studies 78178 (Jr-Yr Writing)
Lecture 7 T/Th 9:30 am Instructor: B. Penniman
Junior and Senior English majors only. Prerequisite: English 200 with a grade of ‘B-' or better.
Writing and Teaching Writing.   This seminar is designed for junior and senior English majors who are interested in teaching, particularly at the middle and high school levels.   Its aim is to provide students the opportunity to reflect on their own literacy learning experiences, to explore composition theory and research, and to examine current issues in the teaching of writing.  Though not intended to be a "methods" course, the seminar will highlight and attempt to demonstrate effective teaching practices.  Readings and research projects will focus on the writing process and its linguistic, psychological, and socio-cultural underpinnings.  Concepts such as audience, voice, identity, and dialect - as well as practical matters such as approaches to teaching grammar and working with English Language Learners - will all be considered.  A key assumption of this course is that the best way to learn about writing is to write - in a variety of modes and for a variety of purposes - and to reflect on the complex processes involved in that act. Students can expect to write regularly: low-stakes experiments in different genres, informal reading responses, portfolio reflections, a literacy self-study, and a well-documented research essay will all be part of the mix. Class meetings will include discussions, workshops, response groups, and student presentations.  There will also be a Saturday on-campus "field trip" to the Western Massachusetts Writing Project's annual Best Practices in the Teaching of Writing conference. 

English 313 Introduction to Old English Poetry 73231 (Brit Lit Pre-1700)
Lecture 1 MWF 11:15 am Instructor: S. Harris
Old English is the language spoken by Germanic peoples in  Britain  from the early 400s to just after the Norman Conquest in 1066. In this course, you will learn it. We will read the oldest English poetry in the original language, including "Caedmon's Hymn," "The Seafarer," "The Wanderer," "Dream of the Rood," "The Battle of Maldon," and the epic of Judith, the warrior maiden who leads her army to heroic conquest ("Sloh tha wundenlocc thone feondsceathan fagum mece ..."). A working knowledge of English grammar is recommended.

English 319 Representing the Holocaust (ALG) 73181
Lecture 1 T 2:30 pm Instructor: J. Young
Discussion section required .

319 Disc 1   Th    1:00 pm    Instructor: J. Young   73182
319 Disc 2    Th    2:30 pm   Instructor: TBA           73183
319 Disc 3    Th    1:00 pm   Instructor: TBA           73184
319 Disc 4    Th  11:15 am   Instructor: TBA           73185
319 Disc 5    Th    9:30 am   Instructor: TBA           73186

English 329H Honors Tutoring Writing: Theory & Practice 77777
Lecture 1 MW 10:10 am Instructor: H. Hoang
Prerequisite: Gen. Ed. College Writing 112 or 113 with a grade of ‘B' or better. Admission by permission of professor. This course prepares students for a tutoring internship in the University Writing Center .  Students will be introduced to research on writing processes, disciplinary writing norms, and diverse cultural literacies.  By looking at writing as a situated and social act, we will investigate how writing is impacted by local contexts of the writing act and writer, the wider cultural context, and the assumptions about literate behavior embedded in such contexts.  After the sixth week of the semester, students will tutor two hours per week in the University Writing Center .  The goal of the course is for students to develop a tutoring philosophy that is based in writing research and also addresses diverse writers and texts.  Note: English 329H is the first half of a one-year commitment to the University Writing Center ; those receiving a grade of ‘B' or higher are invited to register for the spring semester English 298H (a practicum for writing tutors).

Students interested in applying for enrollment should send a letter of interest to Professor Haivan Hoang ( hhoang@english.umass.edu ) by April 18 ; letters received after April 18 and before May 13 may be considered if seats are still available.  The letter should include reasons why the student is interested in the course, a brief description about how previous writing and tutoring experiences might help them become a strong writing tutor, and the name and email address of an English department faculty member or college writing (English 112 or an equivalent) instructor.

English 354 Creative Writing: Introduction 73155
Lecture 1 MWF 9:05 am Instructor: TBA
English majors, BDIC, or UWW students only. Prerequisite: English 200 with a grade of ‘B-' or better. Writing in the various modes of fiction, poetry, drama, and essay. Analysis of student writing in class and in tutorial; development of critical skills.

English 354 Creative Writing: Introduction 73156
Lecture 2 MWF 10:10 am Instructor: TBA
Introduction to Poetry . English majors, BDIC, or UWW students only. Prerequisite: English 200 with a grade of ‘B-' or better.

English 354 Creative Writing: Introduction 73157
Lecture 3 T/Th 9:30 am Instructor: TBA
Introduction to Fiction . English majors, BDIC, or UWW students only. Prerequisite: English 200 with a grade of ‘B-' or better.

English 356 Creative Writing: Poetry 73206
Lecture 1 MW 4:40 – 5:55 pm Instructor: M. Espada
English majors , BDIC, or UWW students only. Prerequisite: ENGL 354 or 354H with a grade of 'B' or better. Admission by permission of professor.   Students should submit a portfolio of three poems with name, student ID number and contact information to Professor Espada's mailbox outside the main English Office, Bartlett 170 by April 15th , and he will notify students about their status (invited, not invited, or wait-listed) by
May 15 th . R egistration after this date will be possible, but priority will be given to students who meet the April 15th deadline.

This is an advanced undergraduate poetry workshop. Students produce poems independently for review in class, review work submitted by others, and engage in writing exercises. There are two major objectives: 1) finding a voice, i.e. a distinct identity in terms of language and subject; and 2) reinforcing the fundamentals of writing poetry, with a particular emphasis on the image. The various strengths of student poems receive as much attention as those areas requiring improvement. The course text is Poetry Like Bread , an anthology providing models for class discussion and writing.

English 358 The Romantic Poets 73208 (Brit lit 1700-1900)
Lecture 1 T/Th 11:15 am Instructor: J. Almeida-Beveridge
English majors only. Prerequisite: English 200 with a grade of ‘B-' or better. In her preface to Percy Shelley's drama, Prometheus Unbound , his wife Mary Shelley writes that he “believed that mankind had only to will that there should be no evil, and there would be none.” The transformative ethos in which Shelley placed such faith animates the literary period that we have come to know as Romanticism. In this course, we will examine major Romantic poets and their contemporaries. Alongside the canonical poetry of Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Byron and Shelley, we will also consider the works of women Romantic writers like Mary Shelley and Felicia Hemans, and relative newcomers to the Romantic canon like Olaudah Equiano and Mary Prince. We will explore questions such as: How do Romantic poets transform poetic form and language? How do they define poetry and the role of the poet? What is the Romantic writer's relationship to nature and place? How do Romantic poets define the role of the imagination in the creative process? What is their take on the defining events of their time (and our own modernity) like the French Revolution or the anti-slavery debate? How do women writers envision authorship? Our discussions will engage a variety of critical approaches, including formalism, feminism, post-colonialism, and new historicism.

English 365 20 th Century Literature of Ireland ( AL ) 77778
Lecture 1 T/Th 1:00 pm Instructor: M. O'Brien
The purpose of this course is, first of all, to read closely and carefully books by established Irish writers of this century including Joyce, Yeats, Synge and Heaney. Having no pretensions of being exhaustive, we will look at representative texts that provide an initial understanding of each writer. Beyond appreciating each work in its own right as literature, we will attempt to use these texts as springboards to explore key questions about Irish society, history and culture, especially literary activity. We will, for example, ask whether there really are separate native Irish and Anglo-Irish literary traditions. How do urban and rural motifs and attitudes figure? What are the differences between the experience of men and women in Ireland ? What is the attitude toward history and geography in these writers? Towards the Catholic Church? What social mores are revealed, particularly with regard to family, tribe and nation? Class? The Irish language? How are Irish mythology and legend used? How has an oral tradition influenced a written one? How are idiom and dialect deployed, a unique Hiberno-English? Is there an identifiable Irish voice?

English 368 Modern American Drama ( AL ) 73192 (2nd Am Lit)
Lecture 1 MW 11:15 am Instructor: H. Holder
This course offers a survey of American drama from the mid-nineteenth century into the twenty-first, examining how notions of an American national identity are negotiated through theater and performance. Requirements: two essays (3-5 pages), and midterm and final exams. Discussion section is required.

368 Disc 1    F              10:10 am    Instructor: TBA   77779
368 Disc 2    F              11:15 am    Instructor: TBA   77780
368 Disc 3    F                2:30 pm    Instructor: TBA   77781
368 Disc 4    F    1:00 – 1:50 pm    Instructor: TBA   77782

English 369 Studies in Modern (20 th -Century) Fiction ( AL ) 77783 (2nd Am Lit)
Lecture 1 T/Th 1:00 pm Instructor: K. Farrell
The end of "the war to end all wars" (WW 1) kicked off a boom decade ("the roaring 20s") and a bust (the Great Depression) whose fantasies still define some of the crucial themes in America life.  We'll be concentrating on novels and films from 1920 - 1998 that dramatize the impact of modernism.  In the face of overwhelming change, how can people resist paralysis or violent reactions? How did Americans manage their fear and desires in the 20 th Century?  How have artists found ways to express these challenges?

This is not a conventional literature course.  We'll be using history, anthropology, psychology, and other disciplines to explore the texts.  To become comfortable with these other perspectives, you may have to do some serious outside reading.  While your own ideas are of course important, the material requires that you be willing to master some concepts from other disciplines. Ernest Becker's Escape from Evil (pap.) and Karen Horney's Neurosis and Human Growth (pap) offer powerful tools to understand the work that art and culture do.  Ideally this is a place where insights from other work you've done at the University can come together.

The lab section (Th 4-6:30 PM) screens documentary and dramatic films that open up important perspectives, and we'll be discussing them as we go.  The lab is required and attendance counts.  Since you'll be making an extra commitment of time, consider signing up for 1-2 Independent Study credits and doing an extra 5-10 pp of writing about film/lit.

Readings include: F Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby ; Nathaniel West, Miss Lonelyhearts ; William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury ; Chester Himes, If He Hollers ; Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita ; and John Barth, The End of the Road (1958). Lab section required .

369 Lab 1   Th 4:00 - 6:30 pm  Instructor: K. Farrell   77783

English 379 Introduction to Professional Writing 73158
Lecture 1 MWF 1:25 pm Instructor: D. Toomey
Junior and Senior students with a cumulative GPA of 3.0 or better. This course offers an overview of the field of professional writing in both theoretical and practical contexts. It also provides practice in the composition of traditional writing forms, especially letters and memorandums, interim reports, feasibility studies and formal proposals. It serves as the gateway course to the specialization in Professional Writing and Technical Communication ( http://www.umass.edu/pwtc/ ) and the specialization in Nonfiction Writing ( http://www.umass.edu/english/undergraduate_specializations_nonfiction.htm ).

English 379 Introduction to Professional Writing 73159
Lecture 2 MWF 2:30 pm Instructor: TBA
Junior and Senior students with a cumulative GPA of 3.0 or better.

English 380 Professional Writing & Technical Communication I 73160
Lecture 1 MW 4:40 – 5:55 pm Instructor: J. Solberg
Junior and Senior students with a cumulative GPA of 3.0 or better. Introduces principles of technical writing and software documentation. Simulates the writing/editing process used in the computer industry; students write a 30-35 page manual documenting a software product, usually Microsoft Word.

English 391M Contemporary American Autobiography 73250 (2nd Am Lit)
Lecture 1 T/Th 11:15 am Instructor: J. Greve
What are the current-day preoccupations and purposes of writers given to self-reflection? To what degree do the stories we tell of ourselves limit, enable, or otherwise make us? What shapes our stories? Examining a range of autobiographical texts, this course will investigate the subjects and trends of recent American autobiographies, while pursuing important questions about our current, twenty-first century notions of the self. Our pursuit will include an examination of fairly recent developments in printed autobiography, such as the travelogue, memoirs of crisis, and comic book autobiographies, while also exploring the visual narratives of documentary film. Looking at texts from the 1970's to the present, we will keep in focus autobiography's reigning points of interest: the relation between self and language, the blurring of "truth" and fiction, the role of memory, and the gains as well as risks of public self-construction. Supplementary readings in several fields will enhance our understanding of the dramas of identity in the texts we study. Taking cues from the strategies and topics employed by the writers we study, students interested in trying their own hand at the art of autobiography will be encouraged to do so in two or three short writings. Presentations as well as two longer, critical essays will also be assigned. Authors will include, among others, Haven Kimmel, bell hooks, Kathryn Harrison, Lynda Barry, Harvey Pekar, Michael Ondaatje, N. Scott Momaday, Louise Erdrich. Films to include David Holzman's Diary , Tarnation , 51 Birch Street , Sherman 's March .

English 396 Independent Study 73161
Lecture 1 TBA Instructor: TBA
Contact department to add course.

English 416 Chaucer's Canterbury Tales 73233 (Brit Lit Pre-1700)
Lecture 1 MWF 11:15 am Instructor: J. Adams
This course provides an introduction to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales . Although this poem will form the centerpiece of our discussions, we will also read more broadly in order to place the Tales in the context of Chaucer's other works and in the context of late 14th-century literary culture. Questions we will consider range from formal and literary matters (i.e., Does Chaucer share the opinions of his characters? Why do some characters speak in a high style while others tell bawdy tales?) to historical ones (i.e., What might Chaucer's poetry tell us about medieval ideals of political organization?). Assignments include two papers, a midterm, and a final exam.

English 419H Honors Games Thinkers Play 77786 (Jr-Yr Writing)
Lecture 1 T 5:00 – 7:30 pm Instructor: E. Gallo
Junior and Senior English majors only. Prerequisite: English 200 with a grade of ‘B-' or better. Subject matter: the act of interpretation. Most texts are ambivalent and support a wide range of interpretation—even contradictory interpretations. From this fairly obvious fact certain less obvious consequences arise. We interpret certain texts in order to see how their language behaves and just where ambivalence resides. We then examine other critics' interpretations of texts in order to decide how persuasive these interpretations are.

Language is ambivalent and reason is often uncertain: does it follow that its meaning is forever unrecoverable? We examine postmodern claims that even the language of the hard sciences is ambivalent, that all of our knowledge is no more than an inflated myth-making. We consider the possible ways in which an interpretation can be grounded on fact--the facts of the author's intention, historical background, and--in a few cases--well supported scientific theory. There are no predetermined answers to the questions we will consider.

Nine short papers and four exercises (done in class).

Texts include Burke (on Keats' " Ode on a Grecian Urn "); selections from the Presocratic poet-philosophers; Kenneth Burke (dramatism); Lévi-Strauss (structuralism); Joseph Campbell (Jungian analysis); Derrida and J. Hillis Miller (deconstruction); Niels Bohr (on complementarity); and others.

English 437 Milton 77793
Lecture 1 T/Th 1:00 pm Instructor: J. Black
This course offers an in-depth look at the writings of John Milton, one of the most central figures of the English literary and cultural tradition. We will read a broad selection of Milton 's writings, including his shorter English poems and selections from his prose in addition to Paradise Lost and Samson Agonistes. We will also read some classical texts (in translation), some recent critical and theoretical writings, and some poetry, short stories, and drama by nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers whose work engages with Milton 's. The course will explore such issues as the intersection of literature and revolution; Milton and the politics of gender; and Milton 's afterlife in the imagination of writers and critics through to the twentieth century. A few short writing assignments, a test, and a longer final paper.

English 480 Anderson, Hemingway, Purdy 77795 (2nd Am Lit)
Lecture 1 MWF 2:30 pm Instructor: J. Skerrett
We will read work by and about three twentieth-century writers from the American Midwest who wrote about the Midwest but also about the wider world. Each of them was an innovative voice in the American short story who also excelled at the novel; common themes abound. Their stories and novels explore dysfunctional families, alienation and the oppressions of village life, anxieties of sexual identity and orientation and the vexed issues of race, gender and class. Readings will include: Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg , Ohio and Poor White ; Ernest Hemingway, The Nick Adams Stories and To Have and Have Not ; James Purdy, Color of Darkness and The Nephew ; additional texts and critical materials in a course packet and/or library reserve. Requirements: three (3) five page papers and a final exam.

English 491H Honors Irish Female Imagination 77796
Lecture 1 T/Th 9:30 am Instructor: M. O'Brien
Junior and Senior students only. The purpose of this course will be to read the work of a number of contemporary, women poets from Ireland . The syllabus will include not just the established voices of Eavan Boland, Eilean Ni Chuilleanain, Medbh McGuckian and Nuala NiDhomhnaill but also of the less well known Rita Ann Higgins, Paula Meehan, Mary O'Malley, Kerry Hardie and Moya Cannon. We will also consider the work of newcomers Catriona O'Reilly and Sinead Morrissey, and the posthumously published poems of Dorothy Molloy. Our first and abiding aim will be to read the work of each poet closely. We will pay detailed attention to language, noting the choices these writers make with regard to diction and form in order to accommodate unique, often subversive visions. While each one of these voices is distinctive, they all share certain cultural concerns and inherit a history. The second part of our job, therefore, will be to establish that context. Regular, selected reading will be required from the recently published and ground-breaking Field Day Anthology of Irish Women's Writing and Traditions , a work in two volumes which will be on reserve in the library. Two essays will be required.

English 491KK 18th-Century: Institution & Revolution 73201 (Brit lit 1700-1900)
Lecture 1 T/Th 2:30 pm Instructor: J. Bartolomeo
English majors only. Prerequisite: English 200 with a grade of ‘B-' or better. We will read and discuss poetry, drama, fiction, essays, and criticism by a wide variety of authors writing in the period from 1660-1789, an era that saw the emergence of modern publishing and of a large and diverse audience for literature and other writing.  The issues that we will consider include: the nature and limits of satire, both personal and political; the significance of gender and the roles of women as writers and readers; the implications of colonization, slavery, and empire; the "cult" and culture of sensibility; the distinctions and connections between the "literary" and the popular.  There will be two papers and a take-home final exam.

English 491Z Poetry of the Political Imagination 73235
Lecture 1 M 6:30 – 9:00 pm Instructor: M. Espada
Junior and Senior students only. Poetry of the political imagination is a matter of both vision and language. Any progressive social change must be imagined first, and that vision must find its most eloquent possible expression to move from vision to reality. Poets have a role in this dynamic process. The poets of the political imagination studied in this course go beyond protest to define an artistry of dissent. The course addresses how best to combine poetry and politics, craft and commitment. Every week, students read and dis cuss one book by a poet of the political imagination, such as Walt Whitman, Wilfred Owen, Sterling Brown, Pablo Neruda, Allen Ginsberg, Marge Piercy or Carolyn Forché. Readings are also augmented on occasion by recordings of the poets. Students respond to these poets with papers, presentations, or some combination.

English 493A Primitivism and Modernism 77824
Lecture 1 MW 6:30 – 7:45 pm Instructor: T. Fernando
Junior and Senior students only. In 1984, the Museum of Modern Art in New York organized a show, "'Primitivism' in 20th Century Art: Affinities of the Tribal and the Modern," that caused enormous controversy.  Critics charged the curators with promoting an idea of western cultural superiority and racial insensitivity towards non-western societies.  Foremost among the criticism was the assertion that the exhibition did not explore the vexed relationship between the "modern" and the "primitive."  The curators had attached assumed, antithetical values to these categories that were both facile and unreflective.  This course examines these two categories and the complex ways in which they are related.

Through literature, art, dance, music, ethnography, and cultural criticism, this interdisciplinary course seeks to explore how and why "primitivism," as an aesthetics and an ideology, is an integral part of modernist texts and works of art.  Some questions we ask are: How and why is the primitive a marker of the modern?  Why did modernist artists and thinkers turn to the primitive?  What kinds of social and political statements were these artists making?  What value were they placing upon the primitive?  Why is it that we can neither celebrate primitivism as innovative and revolutionary (as some avant-garde theorists contend) nor simply dismiss it as imperialist?  In the end, through careful analysis of twentieth-century works, we hope to achieve a better understanding of both the primitive and the modern and the ways in which they are inextricably tied.

English 493B Caribbean Literature 77826
Lecture 1 T/Th 9:30 am Instructor: R. Mordecai
Junior and Senior students only. Students will read major works of Caribbean literature, comprising a mixture of "canonical" and emerging authors.  While most of the texts are by anglophone Caribbean writers, the course list includes texts from the francophone and hispanophone Caribbean (in translation).  Lectures and discussions will address central themes in Caribbean writing, as well as issues of form and style (including the interplay between creole and European languages).  A central thematic concern will be the development of postcolonial Caribbean identities, which look towards distant origins (in Africa and Asia) and old and new metropoles (in Europe and North America), as well as making connections across language barriers in the region itself.  The students will also be introduced to theories of Caribbean culture and identity by such authors as Césaire, Walcott, Brathwaite, Benítez-Rojo and Glissant.  Films such as The Harder They Come , Sugar Cane Alley , and Life and Debt will supplement the readings.

English 493C Introduction to Postcolonial Literary Studies 77828
Lecture 1 T/Th 1:00 pm Instructor: A. Nadkarni
Junior and Senior students only. In this course we will read Anglophone novels, short stories, poetry, drama and cultural theory by contemporary writers from South Asia, Africa and the Caribbean .  In doing so, we will survey the major approaches, debates and questions within postcolonial literary studies.  The course will be structured around three major themes: nationalism and nativism; subalternity; and hybridity and diaspora.  In each of these units we will be concerned with questions of identity formation, representation, and literary form. Authors may include Mulk Raj Anand, Salman Rushdie, Attia Hossain, Chinua Achebe, Buchi Emecheta, Ama Ata Aidoo, Tayib Salih, Michelle Cliff, Derek Walcott, Jamaica Kincaid, and Ania Loomba.

English 493D Bonds of Union : Frederick Douglass and Herman Melville 77830 (2nd Am Lit)
Lecture 1 T/Th 6:00 – 7:15 pm Instructor: H. Phan
Junior and Senior students only. Through close study of key literary texts from the period 1829-1865, this course will explore the transformations of modern America set in motion by the mid-nineteenth century Union crisis.  While we will read a range of texts, the course will focus on the writings of Frederick Douglass and Herman Melville.  The guiding lines of inquiry for this course will be: How did their writings engage with the radical changes and retrenchments occurring in that period called “the American 1848”?  How did their writings imagine alternatives to dominant understandings of social, civic, and national identities?  In addition to studying their representations of their world, and their imaginations of alternatives, we will approach their writings as themselves representative of changes in the modern American cultural imagination: changes in interpretive practices, rhetorical strategies, and models of subjectivity and personhood.  Accordingly, we will also study several twentieth-century interpretations of their writings.  Through supplementary readings in modern criticism and theory, the course will introduce students to various critical models and reading practices.  Readings will include Douglass, Narrative of the Life , The Heroic Slave , My Bondage and My Freedom , and selected speeches; Melville, Moby Dick ; The Confidence Man , Billy Budd , and selected short fiction and poetry. 

English 493E Nonfiction Writing and Commercial Publishing 78280
Lecture 1 MWF 2:30 pm Instructor: D. Toomey
Junior and Senior students only. This course will be a practicum in imagining and writing book-length nonfiction and understanding the nonfiction genre in the context of commercial publishing.  The class as a whole will undertake a study of the history of commercial publishing in the United States from the 1930s to present. In the process we will work to understand the mechanics of book production from manuscript to bound copy, along with the individuals and groups who play roles in that process: namely, literary agents, acquisition editors, managing editors, copy editors, publicity departments, sales departments, book "packagers," and bookstore representatives.  Meanwhile, individual students will choose a nonfiction subject and develop it first, into a submission-ready magazine piece and second, into a submission-ready book proposal.

David Toomey's most recent book is The New Time Travelers: a Journey to the Frontiers of Physics (W.W. Norton, 2007). Other books include Stormchasers: the Hurricane Hunters and their Flight into Hurricane Janet (W.W. Norton, 2002), and (with Leslie Haynsworth) Amelia Earhart's Daughters: the Wild and Glorious Story of American Women Aviators from World War II to the Dawn of the Space Age (William Morrow, 1998).  He has published in such forums as Forbes.com and worked with several editors and literary agents.

English 493F: African American Literature and Culture in the Age of Civil Rights (2nd Am Lit)
Lecture 1 T/Th 2:30 pm Instructor: T. Russworm
This course will adopt an interdisciplinary approach to the study of representations of “blackness” during the Civil Rights era (1952-1978) as a way of addressing the dichotomy between the high and low culture(s) of blackness. The time period will be our excavation site, the cultural documents will become our artifacts of a past that is rarely examined in all its tensions and complexities. Students will become more adept at writing formal and cultural-historical analyses of canonical African American literature (Walker, Baldwin, Hansberry), popular fiction (Iceberg Slim, Donald Goines), film (dramas and action), and television (televised media events like Roots and The Richard Pryor Show ). Rather than accept one cultural artifact's articulation of black identity as “true” or more “valuable,” we will track various—often contradictory—expressions of black identity and culture through three major themes: respectability, revolution, and transformation. How is black subjectivity (or objectivity) imagined, rationalized, subverted, or longed-for during each decade of national transition? What roles do authorship, genre, ideology, and audience play in determining whose version of black identity is being communicated and why? Written assignments are likely to include two papers, a midterm exam, and a final. A regular screening lab section is required .

493F Lab 1   M 4:40 – 6:40 pm   Instructor: T. Russworm

English 496 Independent Study 73162
Lecture 1 TBA Instructor: TBA
Contact department to add course.

English 497B Writing as Democratic Action: The Art of the Essay 78281
Lecture 1 MWF 4:40 pm Instructor: N. Bromell
English majors only. Prerequisite: English 200 with a grade of ‘B-' or better. This course is about writing essays and articles that contribute directly or indirectly to democratic energies in the United States . This can mean writing anything from an essay that explores baseball as a quintessentially democratic sport, to a researched article about the history of malls on Route 9, to a personal memoir about the ways politics shaped one's childhood .... to name just a few of an infinite number of possibilities. This course also has a service learning component: Students will be encouraged (though not required) to partner with an organization that serves the public interest and to learn to write for and about it. Doing so will earn them a fourth credit. (I will have done the advance work of identifying organizations that would be interested in working with student writers.)

This course is also about writing for publication . Intended for our “writing track” in the undergraduate program, it has been designed for advanced writers of non-fiction prose who wish to take their work to a professional level. Because everyone writes better when they have a particular audience and publication in mind, students will research specific publications they might want to contribute to and learn how to pitch ideas and proposals to editors. And because writing and editing are complementary skills, students will learn to become expert editors of their own and others' writing.

This rigorous course requires not just a good deal of writing and reading but a thorough mastery of the fundamentals of editing, including the rules set forth in The Chicago Manual of Style . Students will work on in-class and take-home editing assignments; at the end of the semester, they will be tested on this material, and thereafter they should be able to pass any editing test given by a prospective employer.

Assigned Texts will include: Essays and articles by many contemporary writers and journalists. The Elements of Style (Strunk and White)

Assigned Writing : Two drafts and a finished version of three essays (memoir, satire, and topical). Approximately 45 pages.

Final Examination : There will be a final exam in editing. Nick Bromell was editor of The Boston Review for four years, and has edited as well for Harvard University Press and Stanford University Press. His essays and articles have appeared in the New York Times , the Boston Globe , Harper's , Fortune , The Sewanee Review , The Georgia Review , The Boston Review , the Los Angeles Times , Tikkun , and The American Scholar . His articles have appeared on-line at Alternet and Exquisite Corpse .

English Courses From The Five Colleges (Fall 2008)

Please note that when a course is marked (Engl 200), it means the course fulfills the pre-major requirement English 200: Seminar in Literary Studies for Pre-English majors.

Please note that when a course is marked (Brit Lit Pre-1700), it means the course fulfills the British literature pre-1700 with some coverage of Medieval requirement for English majors.

Please note that when a course is marked (Brit lit 1700-1900), it means the course fulfills the British literature 1700-1900 requirement for English majors.

Please note that when a course is marked (Engl 221/222), it means the course fulfills the British literature Shakespeare English 221/222 requirement for English majors.

Please note that when a course is marked (2nd Am Lit), it means the course fulfills the second American Literature requirement for English majors.

Please note that when a course is marked (JR-YR WRITING), it means the course fulfills the Junior-Year Writing requirement for English majors.

Please note that when a course is marked (Upper-level elective), it means the course fulfills an Upper-Level 300 or 400 level requirement for English majors.

(Click here to see Amherst College classes)
(Click here to see Hampshire College classes)
(Click here to see Mount Holyoke College classes)
(Click here to see Smith College classes)

AMHERST COLLEGE

CS 0104-1 Cognitive Science Fiction (Upper-level elective)
Lee Spector 10:30AM-11:50AM T,TH; 7:00PM-9:00PM M
Can androids fall in love? Could a planet have a mind of its own? How might we communicate with alien life forms? Will it ever be possible for two people to "swap minds"? How about a person and a robot? And what would it feel like to engage in a Vulcan "mind meld"? Cognitive science research can shed light on many of these questions, with results that are often as strange and as wonderful as the inventions of science fiction authors. In this course we will read and view science fiction while simultaneously reading current scientific literature on the mind, the brain, and intelligent machines. The science fiction will provide a framework for our discussions, but the real goal of the course is to provide a tour of issues in cognitive science that will prepare students for more advanced cognitive science courses.

HACU 0141-1 Novels in the U.S. , 1900-1945 (2nd Am Lit) (Upper-level elective)
Michele Hardesty 1:00PM-2:20PM M,W
The novel has a certain centrality in conceptions of U.S. literature, with the "Great American Novel" standing as the pinnacle of national literary creation. In this course, we will examine the novel genre in the United States in first half of the twentieth century, considering what it means for a novel to be "great" as well as what it means for a novel to be "American." Authors may include Theodore Dreiser, Nella Larsen, John Dos Passos, Djuna Barnes, Zora Neale Hurston, Ernest Hemingway, and Amirico Paredes. Course requirements will include weekly reading responses and three essays, one of which will have a research component. This course will offer an introduction both to modern U.S. literature and to literary studies more broadly. This course will be followed in the spring with a course entitled The Novel in the U.S. since 1945.

HACU 0148-1 Mysteries of Petersburg (Upper-level elective)
Polina Barskova 10:30AM-11:50AM T,TH; 6:00PM-9:00PM W
How do you wander through the literary city? How do you read its map, encoded in a text densely "populated" with characters and events? What happens if you find yourself lost in the citytext? Building on the works of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, this course uses the lower depths of Petersburg as a symptomatic locus that may serve as a prism through which this city was read and written. Aside from Dostoevsky, we will consider the authors who influenced him (Sue, Hugo, Dickens) and were influenced by him (Bely and Vaginov). In order to more fully attune students' strolling skills to the problems and strategies of urban modernity, our introductory critical reader includes Bakhtin, Benjamin, and de Certeau. One of the central course goals is to help students better understand the anatomy of the Russian literary metropolis at its historical, architectural, social and legendary levels.

HACU 0186-1 Jewish Literature: Bible to Modernity (Upper-level elective)
Rachel Rubinstein 2:00PM-3:20PM T,TH
Secular Jewish imaginative writing is usually thought of as a modern, post-Enlightenment phenomenon, when modern Jewish writers declared their independence from traditional Judaism by creating a body of secular Jewish fiction, drama and poetry. These modern writers were in rebellion from traditional Judaism. And yet, they took their very materials from the traditional culture they cast themselves against, creatively re-imagining or "betraying" tradition to suit a very modern, progressive, secular agenda. This course introduces students to modern secular Jewish literature while also examining the traditional sources that were adopted and transformed in modernity. We begin with the Bible and continue through Talmudic and Midrashic literature, medieval literature, and into the modern era with the rise of a modern, multilingual Jewish literature. We will consider the varieties of Jewish identities and experiences, both individual and collective, represented in this highly heterogeneous literary tradition, and, finally, perform some of our own "creative betrayals."

HACU 0187-1 Myth, Belief, Reality in Literature (Upper-level elective)
McKinley Melton 12:30PM-1:50PM T,TH
What does it take for a myth to become a widely held belief? At what point does that belief become reality? This course will engage these questions by examining literature from different time periods representing various cultures throughout the world. Furthermore, we will consider the role of mythology, legend, and popular lore in defining a culture as well as the people within it, shaping societal views on everything from gender, race, and class to religious beliefs and family dynamics. Throughout the semester, as we focus on novels, short stories, and drama, we will also discuss the manner by which writers have represented the belief systems that under gird the communities in their literature. With the literature as our guide, we will seek greater understanding of the construction of not only other cultures, but also our own.

HACU 0199-1 High Spirits: Reading/Writing (Upper-level elective)
Deborah Gorlin 10:30AM-11:50AM T,TH
Also IA 0199 and WP 0199. The age-old search for the Divine, the Sacred, the Great Spirit, the Source, the Goddess, the Ancestors, among other names, has been the subject of countless literary texts, whether it is the Buddhist-inspired poetry of the Beats, the gothic Catholicism of Flannery O'Connor's short stories, the visions of Black Elk, the confessions of Augustine. In this analytical and creative writing course we'll examine varieties of spiritual experience as they are represented in both past and present literature, including poetry, fiction, memoir, and biography. You'll be asked to do all sorts of writing pertinent to the topic: close readings and literary analyses of texts, personal essays and memoirs based on your own spiritual encounters, and out- in-the-field non-fiction pieces.

HACU 0238-1 Myths of America (2nd Am Lit) (Upper-level elective)
Rachel Rubinstein 1:00PM-2:20PM M,W
This course investigates the imaginative, mythic, historical, and aesthetic meanings of " America ," from its earliest incarnations through the mid-nineteenth century, and the ways in which the "national imaginary" has continually been challenged, shaped and pressured by the presence of radical and marginal groups and individuals. We will read both major and unfamiliar works of the colonial, revolutionary, early republic and antebellum years, and examine how these works embody, envision, revise, and respond to central concepts and tropes of national purpose and identity. Our conversations will address the spiritual and religious underpinnings of American nationhood; exploration, conquest, and nature; notions of individualism, progress, improvement, and success; race, ethnicity, class, and gender; alternative nationalisms and communities. This course is ideal for students seeking to ground and fortify their study of nineteenth and twentieth century American literature, history and culture.

HACU 0263-1 Americans Abroad (2nd Am Lit) (Upper-level elective)
Michele Hardesty 10:30AM-11:50AM T,TH; 6:00PM-9:00PM M
The stereotype of the "ugly American" is quite alive in U.S. public discourse, especially when referring to Americans (tourists, diplomats, businessmen, soldiers, etc.) outside of the nation's borders. However, the this stereotype also has a literary history: the "ugly American" derives from Eugene Burdick's and William Lederer's 1958 novel of the same name, but goes back much further. This course will trace a genealogy of the "American abroad" in literature (and in a few films) from just before the closing of the U.S. frontier in the late 19th century up to the present. Authors will include Mark Twain, Henry James, John Reed, Ernest Hemingway, Paul Bowles, W.E.B. DuBois, Mary McCarthy, Joan Didion, and Ben Fountain. Course requirements include frequent reading responses, a class presentation, and a research essay. This course is best suited for students who are confident in their ability to critically read and write about literary texts. Prerequisite: A 100-level literature course.

HACU 0276-1 The Past Recaputred (Upper-level elective)
Michael Lesy 9:00AM-10:20AM M,W
Also IA 0276 and SS 0276. This course is for intellectuals who are artists and artists who are intellectuals. The course has two goals: (First) To investigate life in the U.S. ,1890-1910, using an array of primary visual and written documents. Images will come from archival collections, available, on line, through the Library of Congress. These collections include: 25,000, turn-of-the-century, newspaper photos; 25,000 postcard "views" of urban, rural, and industrial landscapes; 12,000 stereographs of small towns; 9,000, turn-of-the-century advertising images. Contemporary newspapers and novels will serve as primary written sources. Novels will include: Dreiser's Sister Carrie, Sinclair's The Jungle, Rolvaag's Giants in the Earth, and Wescott's The Grandmothers. (Second) To teach students how to choose and use primary visual and written documents to build narratives that-like documentary films-tell true stories about the American past. All research will be informed/anchored by such American history texts as Brand's Restless Decade, Edward's New Spirits, and Smith's Rise of Industrial America. Prerequisite: Secondary school Advanced Placement(AP) American history and/or American literature.Or: Introductory/Survey college courses in American/European history or American/European literature This course satisfies Division I distribution requirements.

HACU 0288-1 Shakespeare and Woolf (Upper-level elective)
L. Brown Kennedy 2:00PM-3:20PM T,TH
"Lovers and mad men have such shaping phantasies, that apprehend more than cool reason ever comprehends." (A Midsummer Night's Dream) In the first part of the course we will read Shakespeare (five plays) and in the latter part Virginia Woolf (four novels and selected essays). Our main focus will be on the texts, reading them from several perspectives and with some attention to their widely different literary and cultural assumptions. However, one thread tying together our work on these two authors will be their common interest in the ways human beings lose their frames of reference and their sense of themselves in madness, lose and find themselves in love or in sexuality, and find or make both self and world in the shaping act of the imagination. The method of the course will include directed close reading, discussion, and periodic lectures. Three to four pieces of student writing are expected. No first semester students.

HACU 0292-1 Augustine and Camus (Upper-level elective)
Robert Meagher 10:30AM-11:50AM M,W
From his university thesis to his last writings, Camus confronted and responded to the writings of Augustine, arguably the most profound single influence on his intellectual and spiritual life. Through a close comparative study of such works as Augustine's Confessions , City of God , and On the Trinity, The Stranger , The Plague , and The Fall , this course will seek to reconstruct and enter the enduring dialogue between these two seminal North African thinkers whose minds were first ignited by the contradictions of faith and the incomprehensibility of evil.

HACU 0293-1 State of Poetry (Upper-level elective)
Polina Barskova 12:30PM-1:50PM T,TH
Where do poets belong: outside of the walls of the city-state (as Plato angrily suggested) or in its very heart in accordance to the lamentations of Ovid and odes of Horace? Should a poet work in prison, in exile, or on the barricade? Or abide in the quieter joys of library and boudoir? Is it the task of the poet to seduce power or to be seduced by it, to oppose it or ignore it? Can a woman (or even a child) be issued a visa to the "state of poetry" and what might be the conditions? We address these issues via close readings of poetic texts from three historical contexts: poets in reaction to Imperial Roman, the Romantic Europe of the Napoleonic Era, and some of the totalitarian states of the 20th century. Through this comparative analysis, we hope to arrive at a representative and convincing set of subversions and oppositions known as the "poet and state" motif. Catullus, Byron, Pushkin, Kharms and Akhmatova are among the many names on our syllabus. Prerequisites: at least one previous course on literature, and students should be II/III division level.

IA 0147-1 Literary Journalism (Upper-level elective)
Constance Kelly 2:00PM-3:20PM T,TH
Literary journalism is the intersection of art and craft. In this course, we'll explore the practical, theoretical, and ethical issues of writing non-fiction that combines interview, observation, and investigation with narrative techniques of character development and scene creation. The format of the class will be discussion/lecture/ workshop. All written work will receive ongoing review and evaluation from the instructor and the class members.

IA 0192-1 Directing Contemporary American Drama (2nd Am Lit) (Upper-level elective)
Djola Branner 2:00PM-3:20PM T,TH
An introductory course which examines and applies principles of directing through the lens of twentieth and twenty-first century American drama. Primary considerations are identifying the conflict of the play, investigating the world of the play, interpreting the action of the play, developing a collaborative language (with designers, playwrights and actors), and staging the play. The principles are examined in at least four written assignments, and a showcase of selected scenes from a list of contemporary plays TBA. Required texts: Three plays TBA, and ?Thinking Like a Director? by Michael Bloom. Recommended texts: ?A Director Prepares? by Anne Bogart and ?The Director's Voice: Twenty-One Interviews? edited by Arthur Bartow.

IA 0213-1 A Century of British/Irish Drama (Upper-level elective)
Talya Kingston 9:00AM-10:20AM M,W
This course will take a close look at plays written in Britain and Ireland over the last century, exploring works by playwrights such as John M. Synge, George Bernard Shaw, Shelagh Delaney, Harold Pinter, Edward Bond, Carol Churchill, Brian Friel and Martin McDonagh. Each week will be devoted to a different playwright. Students will both examine how the plays speak to the particular time and society in which they were written, and explore the creative potential of producing them on our own stages now.

IA 0220-1 Playwriting Seminar (Upper-level elective)
Talya Kingston 9:00AM-11:50AM F
A workshop which offers practical exercises and techniques in writing for the stage. Weekly writing assignments will include scene work, character development and experimentation of form. The class will also read and analyze published scripts, speak with professional playwrights and attend Hartford Stage?s Brand:NEW Festival. Over the course of the semester each student will complete a short play script.

IA 0230-1 West African Literature (Upper-level elective)
Robert Coles 10:30AM-11:50AM T,TH
Our main thrust will be to read West African literature, mostly of the twentieth century, which originated from former British and French colonies. In this process, we will seek to understand how West African literature evolved in relationship to the slave trade and, later, to colonialism. We will discuss the regional events, such as the Negritude movement, Pan-Africanism, and the spread of Islam. We will also examine African writers in relationship to cultural issues. For example, how has oral expression and indigenous language affected written texts? What impact has traditional society had on contemporary African writers? Whenever possible we will make comparisons between West African literature and African people throughout the world, especially Africans in America . The course will require three formal essays in addition to other informal written assignments.

IA 0236-1 Practice of Literary Journalism (Upper-level elective)
Michael Lesy 9:00AM-10:20AM T,TH
Literary journalism encompasses a variety of genres, including portrait/biography, memoir, and investigation of the social landscape. At its best, literary journalism uses such dramatic devices as plot, characterization, and dialogue to extend and elaborate the who/what/where/when/and why of traditional journalism. By combining evocation with analysis, immersion with investigation, literary journalism tries to reproduce the complex surfaces and depths of the real world. Books to be read will include: (1) Kerrane and Yagoda's Art of Fact; (2) Blumenfeld's Revenge; (3) Malan's My Traitor's Heart; (4) Oliver Sack's Awakenings; (5) Wendy Doniger's The Implied Spider. Students will be asked to write as many as six, medium length nonfiction narratives. These narratives will require participant-observation of local scenes and interview/conversation with the people who inhabit them. Students will then be asked to extend these "short stories" into longer pieces that have casts of "characters" and plots. The very best of these longer pieces may be published in LIVING NOW, the online magazine. All fieldwork will demand initiative, patience, curiosity, and guts. The writing itself will have to be excellent. An ability to meet weekly deadlines as well as well-prepared class participation will be required. No excuses.

IA 0251-1 Intermediate Poetry Writing (Upper-level elective)
Paul Jenkins 12:30PM-3:20PM TH
Intended for Division II students who have begun writing poetry on their own or have some familiarity with contemporary poetry, this course will be conducted as a workshop in which students' own writing will be the subject of discussion. Over the course's first half, students will do assigned writing and reading designed to sharpen alertness to language, sound and line, and imagery. Over the last half of the semester, students will bring on a regular basis new work of their own devising. At the course's end, workshop participants will be expected to submit a group of poems in a state of near completion for evaluation. Instructor Permission Required.

IA 0277-1 Style/Sense; Strat Fiction Writers (Upper-level elective)
Nathalie Arnold 6:30PM-9:20PM W
What does it mean to say a writer's work is "lyrical" or "spare," "realistic," "modern" or "mythical"? In this reading and workshop course, we will explore the concepts of 'sensibility' and 'style' as they apply to language and story. We will identify the actual sentence-level underpinnings of specific tonal/narrative effects, considering: syntax, diction, word families, the color and rhythm of language, punctuation, point of view, voice, and the arrangement of imageries. Through close reading of works by a wide range of writers, we will analyze writing styles, link aesthetic effects and intellectual/political commitments to craft choices, and explore relationships between literal content and the way content is deliv