CRN

93141

Distribution

B

Course No.

LIT 2013

Title

The Novel in English,  I

Professor

Deirdre d'Albertis

Schedule

Mon Wed       10:00 am - 11:20 am     OLIN 310

In this course (one of a two-part sequence) we will examine “the rise of the novel,” to recall Ian Watt’s influential study, in the specific context of British literary culture.  The eighteenth century origins of gothic, historical, epistolary, domestic, and romantic fiction will be our main concern.  How was the dominant tradition of nineteenth-century realism forged out of such diverse beginnings?  Central texts include:  Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, Richardson’s Clarissa, Fielding’s Tom Jones, Austen’s Emma, and Shelley’s Frankenstein.  We will conclude with Thackeray and the early Dickens.  Readings on the history of the novel (Michael McKeon, Deidre Lynch) will supplement our work with the texts themselves.

 

CRN

93386

Distribution

B/D

Course No.

LIT 2117

Title

Russian Laughter

Professor

Marina Kostalevsky

Schedule

Tu Th            1:30 pm -  2:50 pm       OLIN 204

Cross-listed: Russian and Eurasian Studies

A study of humor in Russian literary tradition.  Issues to be discussed relate to such concepts and genres as romantic irony, social and political satire, literary parody, carnival, and the absurd.  We will examine how authors as distinct as Dostoevsky and Zoshchenko create comic effects and utilize laughter for various artistic purposes.  As a result, our analysis of Russian literature will be substantially different from the traditional survey.  Required readings (in translation) include the works of major Russian writers starting with the late-eighteenth-century satirical play by Denis Fonvisin and ending with Benedict Erofeev's underground cult masterpiece:  a contemplation on the life of a perpetually drunk philosopher in the former Soviet Union.

 

CRN

93466

Distribution

B

Course No.

LIT 2140

Title

Domesticity and Power

Professor

Donna Ford Grover

Schedule

Tu Th            10:00 am -  11:20 am   OLIN 309

Cross-listed:  American Studies, CCSRE, Gender Studies

Women who wrote of the home, of marriage and who detailed the chatter of the drawing room were not merely recording the trivial events of what was deemed to be their “place.” Many American women writers of the 19th and 20th centuries used the domestic novel to make insightful critiques of American society and politics. In this course we will read a range of American women novelists beginning with Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s handbook of housekeeping, The American Woman’s Home (1869). We will also read the novels and short stories of Harriet Jacobs, Frances E. W. Harper, Kate Chopin, Nella Larsen, Jessie Fausett, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, and others.

 

CRN

93461

Distribution

B

Course No.

LIT 2146

Title

Writing from Place

Professor

Susan Rogers

Schedule

Wed    10:30 am – 12:50 pm  OLIN 309

This course is for students who want to develop both their creative writing and their analytic thinking through writing essays that begin in response to place. In these personal essays, place – a house, a city, the woods – will serve as a starting point to explore how place shapes and influences out thinking. In the tradition of the personal essay, these essays will be both imaginative and analytical. Through reading contemporary essayists whose work is place-based students will gain an appreciation for the form and the imaginative possibilities of the essay. But emphasis will rest on the student’s own writings, which will be critiqued in a workshop format with an eye for the craft of the work. No prior workshop experience needed for this course but candidates must submit samples of their work via campus mail by May 6th. A course roster will be posted on May 14th outside Albee 211.

 

CRN

93385

Distribution

B/D

Course No.

LIT 2151

Title

St. Petersburg: City as Text

Professor

Jennifer Day

Schedule

Mon Wed       11:30 am -  12:50 pm   OLIN 305

Cross-listed: Russian and Eurasian Studies

The magical and terrible spaces of St. Petersburg have inspired Russian writers and artists as well as confounded the Russian quest for an integral national identity ever since Peter the Great founded the city in 1703. This course examines the "myth" of St. Petersburg in Russian literature and culture with consideration not only of how the city has Been constructed as a literary,  artistic, and folkloric text, but of how the city itself has determined the course of  Russian culture and Russian selfhood. Special critical attention is given to the nature of the city as a "sign," with appropriate strategies for "reading" the city in a variety of artistic and  philosophical mediums. Readings range from the classic Petersburg texts of Pushkin, Gogol, and Dostoevsky to twentieth-century interpretations in prose, poetry, memoirs, film, and carnival performance associated with the city's 300th-year anniversary celebrations. Conducted in English.

 

CRN

93871

Distribution

B/D

Course No.

LIT 2152

Title

Francophone African Literature

Professor

Emmanuel Dongala

Schedule

Wed   3:00 pm – 5:20 pm  OLIN 307

Cross-listed:  AADS, Human Rights

Even though African literature from francophone Africa is not yet  a century old , it has already produced many important and enduring works. In this course, we will read and discuss some of the books which are now considered as classics of that literature.  The reading list will include among others writers such as Camara Laye, Ferdinand Oyono, Cheikh Hamidou Kane, Mariama Ba.  The course will be given in English and the books will be read in translation.  However, those who want to take it as part of the French Department will read the texts in the original French and will have special tutoring sessions.

 

CRN

93299

Distribution

B/F

Course No.

LIT 223

Title

Workshop in Cultural Reportage

Professor

Peter Sourian

Schedule

Tu                 4:00 pm -  6:20 pm       OLIN 307

For the self‑motivated student interested in actively developing journalistic skills relating to cultural reportage, particularly criticism. The course stresses regular practice in writing reviews of plays, concerts, films, and television. Work is submitted for group response and evaluation. College productions may be used as resource events. Readings from Shaw's criticism, Cyril Connolly's reviews, Orwell's essays, Agee on film, Edmund Wilson's Classics and Commercials, Susan Sontag, and contemporary working critics. Enrollment limited, but not restricted to majors.

 

CRN

93295

Distribution

B/C

Course No.

LIT 227

Title

Ideology and Political Commitment in Modern Literature

Professor

Justus Rosenberg

Schedule

Mon Wed       1:30 pm -  2:50 pm       LC 210

Cross-listed:  Human Rights

We examine how political issues and beliefs, by they of the left, right, or center, are dramatically realized in literature. Works by Dostoyevsky, Ibsen, T.S. Eliot, Kafka, Thomas Mann, Brecht, Sartre, Malraux, Gordimer, Kundera, Neruda, and others are analyzed for their ideological content, depth of conviction, method of presentation, and the artistry with which these writers synthesize politics and literature into a permanent aesthetic experience. We also try to determine what constitutes the borderline between art and propaganda and address the question of whether it is possible to genuinely enjoy a work of literature whose political thrust and orientation is at odds with our own convictions. The discussions are supplemented by examples drawn from other art forms such as music, painting and film.

 

CRN

93290

Distribution

B

Course No.

LIT 2306

Title

William Faulkner: Race, Text and Southern History

Professor

Donna Grover

Schedule

Tu  Th           11:30 am - 12:50 pm     OLIN 306

Cross-listed: American Studies

One of America’s greatest novelists, William Faulkner was deeply rooted in the American South.  Unlike other writers of his generation who viewed America from distant shores, Faulkner remained at home and explored his own region.  From this intensely intimate vantage point, he was able to portray the south and all of its glory and shame. Within Faulkner’s narratives slavery and its aftermath remain the disaster at the heart of American History.  In this course we will read Faulkner’s major novels, poetry, short stories as well as film scripts.   We will also read biographical material and examine the breath of current Faulkner literary criticism.

 

CRN

93429

Distribution

B

Course No.

LIT 2371

Title

Twentieth Century African-American Literature

Professor

Mat Johnson

Schedule

Tu  Fri        11:30 am – 12:50 pm  OLIN 301

Cross-listed:   AADS, American Studies

African-American literature is a dialogue, a conversation about the nature and identity of a people, their relationship with the land of their birth, and their relationship with their land of ancestral origin. To read the major African-American works of the twentieth century is be at the center of that dialogue. We will begin with the emergence of the New Negro, identifying, in W. E. B. DuBois's The Souls of Black Folk (1903) and Charles W. Chesnutt's The House Behind the Cedars (1900), the building blocks of modern black identity and political thought. We will then explore the development of the Harlem Renaissance, reading Alain Locke's The New Negro (1925), Jean Toomer's Cane (1923), Claude McKay's Home to Harlem (1928), Nella Larsen's Quicksand (1928), Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), the poems of Countee Cullen, and the multiple-genre work of Langston Hughes. In each case we will listen to how the work speaks to issues like DuBois's theory of "double consciousness," the role of women within the black community, the social responsibility of the black artist, and the relationship of Africa to the so-called Negro. We will follow these debates into some of the major works of the mid-twentieth century: Richard Wright's Native Son (1941), Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (1952), and James Baldwin's Go Tell It On the Mountain (1953). Their contributions to the debate over the purpose of black writing and the nature of black humanity will lead us to the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s, where we will shift our focus from the protest novel to the poetic dialogue, examining the voices of Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, June Jordan, Haki Madhubuti, and others. To identify the historical context of the movement, we will examine the impact of nationalism on black artistic thought, the growing importance of Africa in black writing and the recurring issue of black masculinity. Moving into the 1970s and the modern era, our focus will be on the ascendance of black women writers, including Alice Walker, Toni Cade Bambara, Wanda Coleman, Toni Morrison, and Gloria Naylor. Our class will reach its conclusion with contemporary black intellectual writing, as exemplified by works like John Edgar Wideman's Fever (1989).

 

CRN

93462

Distribution

B

Course No.

LIT 238

Title

Modern African Fiction

Professor

Chinua Achebe

Schedule

Wed         1:30 pm – 3:50 pm  OLIN 101

Cross-listed:  AADS, CCSRE, Human Rights

Related interest: French Studies

The second half of the 20th century saw the emergence of modern African literature. This course will introduce this new writing through a few key texts in its fiction. Works written originally in French or Arabic will be read in their English translations. The course will relate the literature, wherever appropriate to Africa's past traditions as well as its contemporary reality. The authors to be studied include Cheikh Hamidou Kane, Alex La Guma, Nadine Gordimer, Ferdinand Oyono, Amos Tutuola, Nawal El Saadawi, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Tayeb Salih.

 

CRN

93291

Distribution

B

Course No.

LIT 2401

Title

Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

Professor

Mark Lambert

Schedule

Mon Wed       10:00 am - 11:20 am     OLIN 307

Cross-listed:  Medieval Studies

The unities and contrasts, pleasure, and meanings of this rich collection. Study of Chaucer's language and some background readings (e.g. Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy), but primarily an examination of a great poem. No previous knowledge of Middle English required.

 

CRN

93823

Distribution

B

Course No.

LIT 2412

Title

Four Jewish Authors

Professor

Elizabeth Frank

Schedule

Wed Th         10:00 am - 11:20 am     OLIN 305

Cross-listed:  Human Rights, Jewish Studies

This course will be an intensive examination of four different Jewish writers:  S.Y. Agnon, I.B. Singer, Primo Levi, and Philip Roth.  We will read "satellite" texts in our efforts to establish a literary, cultural and historical context for each. For example, both Agnon and Singer will be considered in light of the emergence of Yiddish and Hebrew letters as well as connections with Jewish folklore and Kabbalah; Primo Levi's great Extermination trilogy will take us to Dante; and Roth will be considered in relation to twentieth-century American fiction, including works by other Jewish-American writers, some of them women.  Further contexts to explore include the literary representation of such perennial Jewish matters as the Tradition, Emancipation, Exile, Diaspora, and Return, and, of course, the Extermination. Students should be prepared to do independent research, and short papers given as class reports.

 

CRN

93324

Distribution

B

Course No.

LIT 2501

Title

Shakespeare's Comedies

Professor

Mark Lambert

Schedule

Tu Th            10:00 am - 11:20 am     OLIN 101

This course will start with A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It, Twelfth Night and Much Ado About Nothing, the four delightful plays which are for most of us the central, essential, normative Shakespearean comedies. From there we will move to variously different and sometimes disturbing dramas (The Merchant of Venice, Measure for Measure, The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest, Henry IV, Part I ) as we consider the developing meanings and values of comedy and the comic in Shakespeare’s work. For lower college students.

 

CRN

93287

Distribution

B/C

Course No.

LIT 261

Title

Growing Up Victorian

Professor

Terence Dewsnap

Schedule

Mon Wed       11:30 am - 12:50 pm     OLIN 308

Cross-listed: Victorian Studies

Victorian children come in a variety of forms: urchins, prigs, bullies, grinds. They are demonstration models in numerous educational and social projects intended to create a braver future. The readings include nursery rhymes, fairy and folk tales, didactic stories, autobiography, and at least two novels: Hughes’s Tom Browns Schooldays and Meredith’s The Ordeal of Richard Feverel.

 

CRN

93289

Distribution

B/C

Course No.

LIT 272

Title

The Irish Renaissance

Professor

Terence Dewsnap

Schedule

Tu Th            3:00 pm -  4:20 pm       OLIN 303

Cross-listed: Irish and Celtic Studies

The Irish Renaissance of the first few decades of the twentieth century was the creation of those cultural leaders who founded the Abbey Theatre to nourish a specifically Irish (not British, not European) imagination. The revival exploited three sources: the mythical Ireland of Celtic legend where Cuchulain, Maeve, Finn, and Fergus waged epic battles over cows and birthrights with the aid and interference of magic; western Ireland, poetry and story; and a political history that is a persistent record of invasion, oppression, and faction, and of heroic gestures accompanied by a mood of tragic failure. The course begins with a brief history of Ireland, concentrating on three discrete moments: the end of the seventeenth century and the battles of Boyne and Aughrim, the abortive rising of 1798, and the 1890s spirit of nationalistic renewal. Then we consider the Abbey Theatre and its reconstruction of the legends of the past and the use of idioms and characters of the west of Ireland, chiefly in the drama of Yeats and Synge. We will look at the development of these themes in the literature associated with the troubles of 1916‑22 and in later writings, which continue or challenge the themes of the Renaissance, including works by Sean O'Casey, Liam O'Flaherty, Frank O'Connor, Flann O'Brien, and Brendan Behan.