Academic Bulletin English - Course Descriptions - 2012-13

Multiple sections will be offered in the fall semester each limited to 15 students. While instructors may use different approaches, all are concerned with developing every student’s use of clear and appropriate English prose in course papers and on examinations. All instructors have the common goal of encouraging the student to write with accuracy of expression, as well as with logical and coherent organization. Students will be responsible for writing at least one in-class essay and a series of longer, out-of-class essays. In both full-course and half-course versions, students must develop an awareness of the strengths and weaknesses in their writing and must acquire the necessary skill to revise and rewrite what they thought were final drafts of essays. They must, in other words, become editors of their own writing. Past experience has shown the Department and the College that writing well in high school does not necessarily assure the same in college. Enrollment in this course is limited to those students required to take it, baded on SAT English Writing Exam scores. Offered fall semesters.

 Prerequisite: None.

First, a brief review of how the general reader can become a critical reader of dramatic literature—and still find the experience delightful and enriching. Then, using Pirandello’s Henry IV as a reminder of the challenges of plays about contemporary issues and personalities, we will discuss some works from the last sixty years that have addressed concerns of science and scientists. It may be just as interesting to discover that some dramatists have intriguing insights into this kind of subject as it is to realize that sometimes both humanists and scientists can speak the same language. Texts will include Brecht’s Galileo, Kipphardt’s In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer, as well as more recent efforts to present Heisenberg, Bohr, and Feynman.  Offered second half of fall semester.

 Prerequisite: None.

This is an introductory course in Creative Writing. ENG 110 will offer students an opportunity to read and write in several genres: fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. The course will focus on writing through the practice of various methods of generation used by established writers, designed to introduce students to issues of language, form, image, character, and structure. Students will also learn critical tools for assessing good writing and be introduced to the workshop model for discussing creative work. Students will acquire these tools through peer review, through close reading of contemporary texts, and through revision. The course is especially suited to students who would like to learn a variety of creative genres before committing themselves to genre-specific creative writing courses. Offered fall semesters.

 Prerequisite: None.

This course will build upon the creative principles in ENG 110. Because the course may be different every time it is taught, students may re-take the course for credit. Special Topics may cover a variety of genres such as screenwriting, novel writing, travel writing, writing the memoir, the long poem, etc. The course will have a strong workshopping component. Course readings will help students gain an understanding of the contemporary aesthetic of the genre as well as provide direction about craft. Besides generating assignments, producing original work, and reading a variety of genre-specific texts, students will also be responsible for peer evaluation and critique.

Prerequisite: ENG 110.

This course in creative nonfiction will build upon the principles in ENG 110. The course will have a strong workshopping component and focus heavily on generating creative nonfiction and learning to read as writers. Usually a combination of an anthology and a book on the craft of creative nonfiction will comprise the required texts. Besides generating assignments, producing original essays, and reading a variety of texts, students will also be responsible for peer evaluation and critique.

Prerequisite: ENG 110. 

The course will introduce students to the history, methodology and major problems in black studies. This survey will explore the interdisciplinary nature of black studies scholarship and the challenges it presents to traditional academic models. The issue of the politicization of the academy and the relationship between black scholarship production and service to the black community will also be covered. The course will draw from a number of literary sources (Toni Morrison, Houston Barker, Henry Louis Gates), cultural theorist (Bell Hooks, Mark Anthony Neal, Cornel West) and historical works (Nell Painter, John H. Franklin, Alberto Raboteau.) This course will serve students interested in the study of the black experience. All majors are welcomed. Students interested in thr black studies Area of Concentration are encouraged to enroll.

 Prerequisite: None.

This course offers an introduction to English literature as a field of study, an overview of genres (poetry, fiction, drama), and literary terms, the practice of close reading, and the basic premises of literary criticism. The course also focuses on developing research skills within the field. It is designed to help majors or potential majors utilize vocabulary essential to a successful literary and/or cultural analysis, study examples of published essays in the discipline, and consider the aims of literary criticism. This is a writing-intensive class. We welcome all students who are thinking about majoring in English to take this course. All English Majors taking the literature track are required to take this course, preferably during their freshman or sophomore years. Students taking the creative writing track are encouraged but not required to take this course. Offered fall semesters.

 Prerequisite: None.

This course will build on the principles of ENG 211. It is primarily a work-shopping course, which will focus on generation and revision of original creative nonfiction, with an emphasis on producing polished, publishable work. Texts will include craft/theory books, anthologies and literary journals. The course will have a critical essay component, a close study of the craft of a particular writer or some formal question. Students will also be responsible for detailed peer critique at the advanced level.

Prerequisite: ENG 211.

This course will build on the principles of ENG 212. It is primarily a work-shopping course, with a critical essay component—close study of the craft of a particular writer or some formal question. Students will continue to read and study published work, such as the annual The Best American Poetry anthologies. Each version of the course will vary some in focus. For instance, one course might focus on postmodern poetics, while another might focus on narrative poetry and prose poetry. But students will not be bound by these emphases: they will be free to follow their own creative impulses as they write new poems and revise old ones.

Prerequisite: ENG 212.

This course will build on the principles of ENG 213. It is primarily a work-shopping course, which will focus on generation and revision of original fiction, with an emphasis on producing polished, publishable work. Texts will include craft/theory books, anthologies and literary journals. The course will have a critical essay component, a close study of the craft of a particular writer or some formal question. Students will also be responsible for detailed peer critique at the advanced level. The professor may choose to focus the course further on one of the subgenres of fiction writing.

Prerequisite: ENG 213.

This course will examine the themes of migration and immigration in African-American literature from the captivity narrative of early America to the 21st century. We will examine the African-American relationship with Africa from the early stages of separation to the movements of reclamation. We will also look at contemporary works that detail immigration from the continent of Africa, the Global South, and Canada. The writers we will read are preoccupied with defining their identities as people, and not as captive. We will move from slavery to freedom, through Reconstruction, post-WWII, through the Civil Rights era and into contemporary society by reading the works of authors like: Olaudah Equiano, Nella Larsen, Jean Toomer, Ralph Ellison, Chester Himes, Dorothy West, Maya Angelou, Audre Lorde, Dione Brand, Toni Morrison, Edwidge Danticatt, Shay Youngblood, and Chris Abani. The texts reflect African-American migration from the rural South to the urban North, immigration from the Global South to the United States, expatriations to France and even “back” to Africa. The readings are compiled to allow us to explore the question: What is an “African-American?”

 Prerequisite: One English Literature course, taken at Wabash.

 Advanced (Seminar) Courses

Two sections of English 497 are the two Advanced Courses offered every fall. These are seminars designed primarily for English majors (although occasionally English minors enroll in them). The topics vary depending upon the research and teaching interests of the faculty. They demand a high level of student involvement in research and discussion. Several short papers and a long critical essay are required. Please Note: the two seminars are only offered in the fall semester.

In this course, we will explore the role of sexuality in literature and literary theory, with an emphasis on queer theory. How can paying attention to sexuality and sexual identity deepen our reading of literature? What makes a text “queer”? To what extent are the categories of “gay” or “straight” stable or useful lenses for examining ourselves or the books we read? We will ground our inquiry in the works of literary and cultural theorists such as Michel Foucault (The History of Sexuality, Volume I), Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire) and Judith Butler (Gender Trouble). Our readings will span multiple genres and time periods: authors to be considered include Shakespeare, Tennyson, Gustave Flaubert, Jeanette Winterson, Jeffrey Eugenides, and others. Assignments include weekly reading responses, several mid-length papers, a presentation, and a substantial research paper.

A character in Tim O'Brien's Vietnam novel Going After Cacciato comments that "things may be viewed from many angles. From down below, or from inside out, you often discover entirely new under­standings." This course will examine the age-old theme of conflict in general and one war in particular (Vietnam) as viewed from various angles and presented in different literary and media forms (fiction, nonfiction, and film). We will also study the biographical, literary, historical, gender, political, and cultural contexts in which the various works are produced. These prize-winning and highly acclaimed readings will place characters within situations that include Vietnam in the early 1950s and 1960s, ground combat from 1965 to 1975, and the war’s aftermath for Americans and the Vietnamese. We will read texts by American soldier-authors Philip Caputo, Karl Marlantes, Tim O’Brien, Larry Heinemann, and Robert Olen Butler. Our principal goal will be to evaluate the literary treatment of this major historical event and its impact on some of the participants. 

In these two half-credit courses, the student writes and revises a portfolio of his work in a single genre. The portfolio should include the author’s best work, accompanied by an introductory aesthetic statement. During the first semester in 498, the student will meet in workshop with other senior writers in their chosen genre. In the second semester in 499, the graduating writing concentrator will further develop and revise his portfolio, and give a reading of his work. The portfolio courses will provide workshops to help students in publication and in application to graduate programs. Readings in the courses will be varied; some will be guides for practical instruction, others will be theoretical or craft texts to help the student find formal coherence in his portfolio.

Prerequisite: 300-level workshop, majors only.

This continuation of ENG 122 (HUM 122, MLL 176-01) will deal with the social phenomena of language, including social and regional variation, and language change over time.

 Prerequisite: ENG 122 or HUM 122

This course is an introduction to the basic principles of linguistics, the theory and analysis of human language. The first half of the course will focus on structural aspects of language: speech sounds and sound systems, and the formation of words and sentences.

Prerequisite: None. 

This course includes composition, presentation, and considered discussion of original poems in a workshop atmosphere. Experimentation with various poetic forms will be encouraged and craftsmanship emphasized. A strong commitment to poetry will be expected, not only in writing and rewriting throughout the semester, but also in careful criticism of fellow students’ work. Supplementary readings in contemporary poetry will be used as models for writing and as impetus for discussion. Offered fall semesters.

Prerequisite: ENG 110. 

Students will write about 12,000 words of short fiction, which will be read and discussed in workshop sessions. The course pre-supposes a serious interest in creative writing. It requires strict self discipline, devotion to craftsmanship, and active critical analysis. Supplementary readings in short fiction, past and contemporary, are assigned. This course is offered in the fall semester.

 Prerequisite: ENG 110.

Any student in good standing academically and interested in pursuing a topic in language studies in English not normally available through departmental course offerings is encouraged to apply to the Department for permission to do independent work in English language studies. Such study usually involves not more than one course credit a semester, and entails a significant academic project submitted to a department member for a letter grade. Students must receive written approval of their project proposal from a department member before registering for the course.

Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor and department chair.

The goal of this course is for the student to gain greater awareness and control over his writing for a variety of academic and professional purposes. Students who wish to improve their college writing and those who plan to attend law or graduate school, teach, or write professionally would be well served by the course. We will focus in particular on clarity in writing, argumentative techniques, the demands of different genres, and developing a personal voice. Limited enrollment. Offered spring semesters. STUDENTS MAY TAKE EITHER ENG 410 OR 411, BUT NOT BOTH.

Prerequisite: Junior or senior standing.

The emphasis in this course will be on technical, business, and other forms of career-oriented writing. Topics include audience analysis, style analysis, grammar, punctuation, and research. Assignments adapted to fit the background and interests of each student include business correspondence, mechanism description, process description, formal proposal, magazine article, and formal report. Limited enrollment. Offered spring semesters. STUDENTS MAY TAKE EITHER ENG 410 OR 411, BUT NOT BOTH

Prerequisite: Junior or senior standing.

Course Descriptions—Literature

Introductory Courses

These courses, numbered 105-160, introduce students to English, American, and World literature in translation. Two half-semester courses, English 105 and 106, introduce students to the ways of reading poetry and short stories. English 107 and 108 emphasize history as a subject matter in literature. English 109 and 160, as well as English 107 and 108, focus on world and multicultural literature.

English 214-220, offered yearly, are designated “Core” courses because they are central to our conception of an English major. They introduce the student to basic literary and cultural history, to significant writers, works, and themes, and to useful critical modes. Students will be expected to participate in classroom discussion and write several short papers. These courses also serve as the foundation for more advanced literary study.

This class will introduce you to the study of poetry through intensive reading and intensive written analysis. We will focus on close reading of a wide range of poems from a variety of historical periods, genres, and cultures. Through a study of image, symbol, diction, syntax, meter, rhythm, and sound, we will analyze the ways in which a poem creates meaning. Your written analyses will emphasize the marriage of formal and thematic elements in particular poems.

 Prerequisite: None.

This class has two goals: to introduce students to the study of short fiction through intensive reading, and to familiarize students with strategies and methodologies for writing about literature. In our readings, we will explore formal issues such as tone, structure, and symbolism as well as social issues such as sexuality, race and gender. Moreover, this class focuses on ways of grappling with these big questions in writing, as literary scholars do.

Prerequisite: None. 

This course will focus on 20^th-century literature in translation from South America, the Caribbean, Europe, Japan, China, Senegal, India, Egypt, and Israel. Thematically, the course will address nationalism, language, political violence, ethnic cleansing, colonialism, exile, gender inequality, and globalization. We will examine a variety of texts translated into English to determine how people in non-Anglophone nations have defined their national identities, often after decades or centuries of foreign oppression. Offered spring semesters.

 Prerequisite: None.

The richness of American culture is a result of the contributions made by individuals from a variety of groups, each expanding our definition of what it means to be American. In this course we will study the writing and cultures of a number of groups, among them Native American, Hispanic, Gay, African American, European American, and Asian American. We will try to hear individual voices through a variety of literary forms (including film), while exploring commonalities. Offered spring semesters.

Prerequisite: None. 

This course will introduce students to the major writers and literary trends of the British Isles after 1900. We will begin with the dawn of Modernism, after which we will trace important political, cultural, and aesthetic changes reflected in 20th and 21st century texts. How did the disintegration of the British Empire and two world wars affect British cultural identity? How was the clash between the rural and the urban reflected in the past century? We will focus on a variety of genres-fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and drama - and examine the experimentations with language and form in Modernism and Postmodernism, as well as representations of gender roles and race in selected texts by Joseph Conrad, Wilfred Owen, T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, George Orwell, Samuel Beckett, Doris Lessing, Eavan Boland, Muriel Spark, Angela Carter, and others. Offered spring semesters.

 Prerequisite: None.

The study of English literature from its beginnings to the end of the Renaissance. Readings will include Beowulf; selections from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales; Elizabethan Poetry (Including Book I of Spenser's The Faerie Queen); drama and prose; and Milton’s Paradise Lost.

 Prerequisite: None.

A study of the plays and sonnets of Shakespeare. Analyzing Shakespeare’s dramatic and poetic techniques, we will examine some of the comedies, histories, and tragedies of the greatest dramatist in English. We will also look at the plays’ major themes, styles, and sources. This course also includes as a final assignment, work as a member of a team on the presentation of a scene from one of Shakespeare’s plays.

 Prerequisite: None.

This course examines works by some of the best-known poets, essayists, and novelists from the Restoration and 18th Century in Great Britain, including Dryden, Swift, Pope, Fielding, and Johnson. The responses of different authors to ongoing cultural conflicts will help structure our survey. Rhetorical techniques and the development of genres will be ongoing concerns. There will be special emphasis on the comedies of the time by Wycherly, Etherege, Behn, Congreve, Gay, Steele, and Sheridan, not only as texts for performance and reading, but also as objects the authors’ contemporaries reviewed with vigor and used to construct theories about comedy and satire. Offered spring semesters.

 Prerequisite: None.

A study of the life and literature of the early and middle 19th century as reflected in the poetry, fiction, and essays of this period. Texts will vary from year to year but will be drawn from the works of major poets (Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, and Hardy), novelists (Austen, Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, Eliot, and Hardy) and essayists (Wordsworth, Carlyle, Macaulay, Ruskin, Arnold, Huxley, and Pater).  Offered spring semesters.

Prerequisite: None. 

A survey of major writers and literary trends from the period of exploration to the Naturalists. We will study the forging of the American literary and social consciousness in the writings of the early explorers, through the Native American oral tradition, and in works by Bradstreet, Edwards, Franklin, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Jacobs, Melville, Douglass, Whitman, Dickinson, Twain, James, Crane, and Chopin. Guiding our study will be questions like “What is ‘American’ about American literature?” and “In what ways do myths generated by our formative literature continue to shape our personal and national identities?” Offered fall semesters.

 Prerequisite: None.

This survey introduces the writers and trends of our century, from realism and naturalism through modernism to the rich, fragmented energy of postmodernism and multiculturalism. Writers covered vary from year to year but may include Henry James, James Weldon Johnson, Edith Wharton, Robert Frost, Edna St. Vincent Millay, William Carlos Williams, E. E. Cummings, Ernest Hemingway, Margery Latimer, William Faulkner, Langston Hughes, Willa Cather, F. Scott Fitzgerald, J. D. Salinger, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Amiri Baraka, John Barth, Raymond Carver, Galway Kinnell, Sharon Olds, Louise Erdrich, Sandra Cisneros, Toni Morrison, and Don DeLillo. Offered spring semesters.

Prerequisite: None. 

The writers of the Beat Generation have a perennial appeal. Perhaps it is the Dionysian energy of their writing, perhaps the myths that arose around their self-destructive lives, but they have come to represent for us “the other side” of the Fifties. Since much of this course is focused on poetry, and Kerouac’s novels may be considered extended prose poems, we will begin with some selections from Whitman’s Song of Myself. We will also do some reading on the Fifties, and view The Beat Generation. Then we will turn to the early work of Ginsberg, especially his tremendous poem, “Howl.” Next up is that late Ur-Text of the Beat Movement, Kerouac’s novel, On the Road. We will focus next on four poets of the San Francisco Renaissance, Michael McClure, Philip Lamantia, Gary Snyder, and Philip Whalen. Because Gary Snyder emerged as a major American poet, we will read one of his early books, Riprap, in its entirety and learn some principles of ecocriticism, Then we will turn to two later novels, Williams Burroughs’ famous, infernal satire, Naked Lunch, and Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums. We will conclude by reading the work of some less well-known Beats and fellow travelers, and the later work of Ginsberg and Snyder. Our focus will be the texts themselves and their relationship to American culture of the 1950s and after.

 Prerequisite: One English Literature course taken at Wabash.

 Intermediate Courses

COURSES NUMBERED 300-370 HAVE THE PREREQUISITE OF ANY ONE ENGLISH LITERATURE COURSE AT WABASH. They are designed to complement and develop historical and cultural awareness, and the knowledge of authors, themes, topics, genres, modes, and critical approaches encountered in Introductory and Core courses. Students in Intermediate courses take initiative in class discussion, write several analytical papers, and become familiar with the use of secondary critical sources. Topics for Intermediate courses are generally repeated every two or three years.

“Here was a generation,” wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald in the aftermath of the Great War, “grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in mankind shaken.” This course examines the literature and culture of the 1920’s in America and, in passing, the American civilization that produced an extraordinary number of talented writers. We will focus upon major writers and significant texts of this decade—the Roaring Twenties, the jazz age, the great age of sport, the age of leisure, the plastic age. The 20’s produced great literature and great literary figures. We will choose from among the best of the period. Writers may include Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Willa Cather, Sherwood Anderson, Sinclair Lewis, Eugene O’Neill, T.S. Eliot, John Dos Passos, Robert Frost, William Faulkner (and perhaps others of lesser renown).

Prerequisite: One English Literature course taken at Wabash.

This course will examine the rich dramatic heritage of the United States from the American Revolution to the present, with emphasis on the history of the U.S. stage and the work of major dramatists including Eugene O’Neill, Thornton Wilder, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, and Edward Albee, among others. Plays to be studied include The Contrast, Secret Service, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, A Moon for the Misbegotten, Awake and Sing!, The Little Foxes, Our Town, The Skin of Our Teeth, Mister Roberts, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Night of the Iquana, Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, A Raisin in the Sun, The Zoo Story, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Glengarry Glen Ross, True West, Brighton Beach Memoirs, The Colored Museum, A Perfect Ganesh, Fences, Angels in America, How I Learned to Drive, and The America Play. The plays will be discussed as instruments for theatrical production; as examples of dramatic style, structure, and genre; and, most importantly, as they reflect moral, social, and political issues throughout the history of the United States. Students taking this course for credit toward the English major or minor must have taken at least one previous course in English or American literature. No more than one course taken outside the English Department will be counted toward the major or minor in English.

 Prerequisite: One English Literature course taken at Wabash.

One could argue that the short story form as we know it today was born in the 19th century America. In this course we will read some of the great writers and stories that defined and shaped that form. Authors will include Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, James, Chessnutt, Crane, Wharton, and Chopin.

 Prerequisite: One English Literature course, taken at Wabash.

Romanticism in all of its aspects and manifestations roared across Europe and America in the latter years of the 18th and first half of the 19th centuries. This course examines the poetry and prose of the major English Romantic writers and the development and elaboration of the Romantic Movement in England roughly during the years 1790 to 1840. We will read widely in the works of Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats with some attention to the shift from neo-classic to romantic poetic forms and critical premises and particular emphasis on the romantic imagination and its legacy, including its relevance to the contemporary world.

Prerequisites: One English Literature course, taken at Wabash. 

This course explores the literature and culture of the United States in the early part of the 20th century, with its overlapping milieu of high modernists, Harlem Renaissance writers, young bohemians, and political radicals. We will examine the profound redefinitions of the self catalyzed by the rise of psychology, rapid urbanization and mechanization, and the Great War, and we’ll discuss the public’s response to the varied artistic movements of the period, from Primitivism’s allure to the impersonal promise of Futurism. From painting to film, from Gertrude Stein’s Three Lives to Langston Hughes’s poetry and Meridel Le Sueur’s reportage, this course will examine a variety of texts that contributed to the literary experimentation and extraordinary achievement of the period. Other readings may include but are not limited to Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, Zona Gale’s Miss Lulu Bett, T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and Other Poems, Willa Cather’s The Professor’s House, Ernest Hemingway’s In Our Time, William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, Nella Larsen’s Passing, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, and poetry by Williams, Taggard, Stevens, Frost, Cummings, Moore, and Millay. 

 Prerequisite: One English Literature course, taken at Wabash.

A character in Tim O’Brien’s Vietnam Novel, Going After Cacciato, comments that “things may be viewed from many angles. From down below, or from inside out, you often discover entirely new under­standings.” This course will examine the age-old theme of conflict in general and war in particular (WWI and Vietnam) as viewed from various angles and presented in different literary and media forms (poetry, fiction, non­fiction, and film). We will also study the biographical, literary, historical and cultural contexts in which the various works are written. Through research, panels, readings, critical papers, films, slides, and discussion, our principal goal will be an in-depth assessment of the literary treatment of this major theme across time and genres. Writers and texts studied in this class will be Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness; Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front; Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms; Graham Greene, The Quiet American; World War One British Poets; Bao Ninh, The Sorrow of War; Tim O’Brien, Going After Cacciato; Pat Barker, Regeneration; and Larry Heinemann, Paco’s Story.

 Prerequisite: One English Literature course, taken at Wabash.

James Joyce was born and raised in colonized Ireland. In English 340, we will read Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Exiles, Ulysses, and some of Joyce’s political writing. Our discussion of these texts will focus mainly on the writer’s commentary on imperialism, racial bias, anti-Semitism, and other forms of oppression present in late-colonial Ireland. We will try to determine why Joyce famously declared: “I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church.” In some texts, Joyce anticipates the postcolonial challenges the Irish people may face after their liberation from the British Empire. All of the books included in this course are deeply embedded in and inspired by Dublin—a city with which Joyce had a love-hate relationship, and which provided him with a wealth of characters and stories for his fiction. Ulysses is a challenging book, but its plot and structure become much clearer when one immerses oneself in the life of the city and mimics the path of Leopold Bloom and Stephen Daedalus.

Prerequisites: Junior or Senior standing, and one English Literature course, taken at Wabash.

Although a major writer in the American literary canon, Melville seems almost non-canonical in his constant experimentation with literary form and questioning of societal conventions of race, gender, and class. In this course we will study a number of Melville's major works—Typee, Redburn, Moby Dick, Billy Budd—and several lesser known texts, particularly the poetry. In addition to enjoying the variety of stories Melville tells, meeting his distinctive characters, and exploring his unconventional ideas, we will consider Melville's life and times as well as the history of his literary reputation.

Prerequisite: One English Literature course, taken at Wabash. 

In this half-course, we will study six plays or more by Shaw (1857-1950), each of which provides a different answer to his recurring question: what is wrong with civilization? Shaw's wit and satire make his frequently disagreeable answers both provocative and entertaining. Texts will include three major works, Man and Superman (1903), Heartbreak House (1917), St. Joan (1923).

 Prerequisite: One English Literature course, taken at Wabash.

William Butler Yeats and Ezra Pound were close friends for a time, living a portion of each year in Stone Cottage in the Sussex countryside (1913-1916): Yeats, the already distinguished Irish poet, and Pound, 20 years Yeats’ junior, the brash and brilliant American émigré. Together, they would become two of the principal architects of international Modernism. They shared a dream of poetry as a high and sacred calling and would produce some of the 20th century’s most memorable verse. Their years together at Stone Cottage proved to be a crucible for Modernism, and helped move Pound from his rather dreamy-eyed Victorianism to a tougher and often satiric mode of poetry. Both poets continued to develop, and both would engage the broken history of the twentieth century more and more deeply. Yeats’ poetry grew more vigorous and passionate as he aged, while Pound’s grew more fractured, but no less ambitious. Pound became the greatest translator of poetry into English and the author of a vast, difficult epic, The Cantos. Yeats simply became the greatest poet in English of the past century. In this course, conceived in honor of the centennial of Pound’s brief tenure at Wabash (1907-1908), we will trace the development of both poets’ work and the formal and thematic connections between them.

 Prerequisite: One English Literature course, taken at Wabash.

Is the novel always better than its film adaptation? After an introduction to the art of film and a theoretical consideration of the similarities and differences between fiction and film, we will compare four or five novels with their film adaptations. In recent years, this course has focused on literature and film representing New York City, including an immersion trip to the City.

 Prerequisite: One English Literature course, taken at Wabash.

This course takes a literary approach to the study of the civil rights movement. Students will examine the autobiographies, plays, novels, and other various artistic expressions of the mid-1950s through 1980. The aim of the course is to explore the use of literature and art as means of political, cultural, and religious expression. Students are introduced to critical theory as well as black studies.

Prerequisite: One English Literature course, taken at Wabash. 

African Americans have employed the novel form in a variety of ways. In this course we will sample this rich tradition in works by F.E.W. Harper, Charles Chessnutt, James Weldon Johnson, Jean Toomer, Nella Larsen, Zora Neal Hurston, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, and Charles Johnson. We will consider how each work reflects its particular historical/cultural moment as well as how it participates in the American literary tradition.

 Prerequisite: One English Literature course, taken at Wabash.

The contributions of Jewish American writers and filmmakers have been pervasive and significant. We will read selected fiction, poetry and plays, and see films that focus on the Jewish American experience. Authors and filmmakers may include Philip Roth, Bernard Malamud, Cynthia Ozick, David Mamet, Allen Ginsberg, and Woody Allen.

 Prerequisite: One English Literature course, taken at Wabash.

This course is about one thing, reading Toni Morrison’s novels and her literary essays. In the process, we will explore the features of what Morrison calls the African American novel. We will also come to see and understand Morrison’s mastery of craft and subject in the production of amazing stories that speak the “truth in timbre.” The goals are to read, learn and grow in your understanding of the possibilities and limitations of rendering a people’s lived experience in language.

Prerequisite: One English Literature course, taken at Wabash. 

This course explores various genres of African American Literature. Emphasis is placed on works that reflect the socio-historical development of African American life. Poetry, Slave narratives, autobiographies, novels, plays, musical lyrics, and spoken word form the subject of study in the course. Special attention is given to works of fiction that become motion pictures and the emerging area of audio books. The aim of the course is to provide students with a sense of the historical and contemporary developments within African American literature. Students are introduced to African American critical theory as will as African American history.

 Prerequisite: One English Literature course, taken at Wabash.

Any student who has completed at least one literature course, is in good standing academically, and is interested in pursuing a topic in English not normally available through departmental course offerings, is encouraged to apply to the department for permission to do independent study in literature. Such study usually involves not more than one course credit a semester, and entails a significant academic project submitted to a department member for a letter grade. Students must receive written approval of their project proposal from a department member before registering for the course.

Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor and the department Chair.

This course introduces English majors and minors to a number of literary genres, makes available to them systematic critical approaches, and gives them practice in scholarly and critical disciplines. Frequent written exercises. All members of the English Department will occasionally assist in classroom work. Offered spring semester.

 Prerequisite: None.