Past Course offerings:
Fall 2000

FRESHMAN ENGLISH 1,2,3, AND 4

The schedule and course descriptions for English 1, 2,3, and 4 Freshman Composition and Writing Seminars, will be available in room 316, on the third floor of East Hall.

SUBMITTED CREATIVE WRITING COURSE DESCRIPTIONS

ENGLISH 5A -- CREATIVE WRITING: POETRY -- W3

RICHARDS

This course is designed to explore and expand your imagination. For this purpose, we will study some of the methods for writing and reading poems. Since one of the most effective methods is for writers to struggle and celebrate together, we will approach this workshop as an occasion for establishing such a community. We will develop a vocabulary of terms that will be useful, not only in discussing the poets we read, but also for assessing the needs and aspirations in our own work. We will study various moments in the poetic tradition, as well as some of the more exciting experiments in contemporary poetry. In addition to poets I admire, I'll share with you essays designed to demystify the relationship between your mind and the page.

ENGLISH 5B -- CREATIVE WRITING: POETRY -- A-3+

GIBSON (KAISER)

A workshop in writing poetry is a place to experiment. We will try on various accomplishments in the poetic tradition- metrics, rhyme schemes, free verse, stanza breaks, shapes, tone, even content etc.. In this class, you will sometimes attempt to imitate, and find it oddly liberating. You may throw out these experiments once accomplished, and try something entirely different. You may embrace old forms as your own. Sometimes, the very poems you've shied away from are the ones waiting to teach you. The class is a workshop with assigned exercises.

ENGLISH 5C, 5D -- CREATIVE WRITING: POETRY 5C ( 5-3+ ) & 5D (W-3)

RIVARD

My main goal in this course is to introduce you to some of the techniques of poetry writing. To do this, I'll share with you some poets whose work I admire, and help you develop a vocabulary of appreciation for the work of others, as well as some tools for criticizing your own work. Writing poems is a creative process, often mysterious, of discovery through language. Most of the time, you sit not knowing what you're going to say, and then you say it. There are no rigid or absolute rules, but there are some common notions of craft that help. I'll be talking about metaphor and simile, tone, image, strategy and structure, point of view, etc. The class is run in workshop format, with assigned exercises.

ENGLISH 5H, 5I -- CREATIVE WRITING: FICTION 5H (B-3) & 5-I (A-3+)

HURKA

This course is designed to help you develop the essential elements of creative prose: voice, description, and empathy. Particular emphasis will be placed on precision of language, and how the voice of a story must work in tandem with conscience.

You'll also have a look at fiction, poetry, and essays written by masters. We will investigate the current publishing world, so that if you want to send out your work at the end of the semester, you can do so. Finally, I would like you to read your work in progress on class days that we will schedule together, and to comment carefully and thoughtfully on the work of your classmates when they do the same.

ENGLISH 5J, 5K -- CREATIVE WRITING: FICTION 5J (B-3) & 5K (A-3+)

SIMONS (BLAKE), MICHELLE

This class is an introduction to writing fiction. We will write stories and exercises; read stories, some poems, and some non-fiction by established writers; and talk about the basic elements of the short story, especially character, voice, dialogue, action, and conflict. In Mystery and Manners, Flannery O'Connor writes, "In most good stories it is the character's personality that creates the action of the story." That is what interests me most, both as a writer and as a reader. Students will be encouraged to use the stuff of their lives--the world and the people they know--to make stories.

ENGLISH 5L -- CREATIVE WRITING: FICTION (B-3 )

STRONG

My section of English 5 will provide deadlines, a forum for reading aloud and constructively criticizing student work, and the expectation that you will learn to create life on the page in a language natural to you. Genre writing will be discouraged. You will tell stories as only you can tell them. There will be no exercises or outside reading; the work must come from you. Regular attendance and spirited participation are valued highly -- as is the ability to keep attacking the problems and challenges that present themselves.

ENGLISH 5M -- CREATIVE WRITING: FICTION (B-3)

LEVINSON

This course is for students who want to write good stories. One way to develop that ability is to write a lot, so work includes several short pieces, one long, fully-realized story, and some revisions. The class operates primarily as a workshop, in which we discuss each other's work and the elements and sum of accomplished fiction. Students also work on developing their ideas about good writing by reading published stories and writers writing about writing.

ENGLISH 50, 5P -- CREATIVE WRITING: FICTION 50 (Z1), 5P (Z*2)

DOWNING

In this workshop, you will work as a writer and a critical reader of new fiction. All participants will write original short stories, which they will read aloud, discuss with their colleagues, and revise during the semester. In addition, you will have the opportunity to address specific challenges of voice, tone, style, and point of view by writing brief experimental fictions (50 tp250 word), which will help us to understand how writers can invent dramatically different solutions to a single problem or fictional situation. There are only two fundamental requirements: Be present. Be productive. At the semester's end, you will select your best original work and compile a portfolio, including drafts and revisions, to represent your progress and accomplishments.

ENGLISH 5Q -- CREATIVE WRITING: JOURNALISM (D-3)

MILLER

This course is an introduction to the nuts-and-bolts of print journalism. We'll focus on researching and writing news stories, features, profiles, opinion pieces, and reviews. The aim of the course will be to develop reporting and interviewing skills, master journalistic principles and forms, and encourage clear thinking and clear writing. Students will cover stories both on- and off-campus. They will read their work in class, with class members taking on the roles of editors. We'll also take a close look at the local and national press and examine how they cover various stories.

ENGLISH 5R -- CREATIVE WRITING: POETRY (Z4)

SNEFF

An immersion-course in the language of incantation. No particular background in poetry or poetry writing is required, but members of the class are expected to share a commitment to an exploration of the powers of the written and uttered word. I expect that at times this exploration may take us right off the page as we seek to widen the range of our poetic voices and sonic expressiveness, drawing from the models of -- to name just a few -- spells, chants, and lullabies, as well as from sonnets, villanelles, triolets, etc. This course is run as a workshop; subject-matter of your poems will be up to you, but there will be weekly assignments to facilitate development of the ear, alertness to the poetic tradition, and a deep and inventive awareness of poetic structure.

ENGLISH 9A -- WRITING FICTION: INTERMEDIATE (D-3)

STRONG

English 9 is designed for students who have had some experience in writing fiction. It will provide deadlines, a forum for reading aloud and constructively criticizing each other's work, and the expectation that you will create life on the page in a language natural to you. Genre writing will be discouraged. Regular attendance and spirited participation will be valued. A sample of your fiction (it needn't be long or completed, but it should be something you're pleased with) should be submitted to Professor Strong's mailbox or East Rm. 314 at pre-registration. A final class list may not be available until the first day of classes. Consent of the instructor is required. Pre-registration does not guarantee admittance.

ENGLISH 9B -- INTERMEDIATE FICTION (Z*2)

WILSON

A middle level workshop in the writing of short fiction. We'll generate our own stories for discussion, and look at the work of some masters of the genre. Those wishing to enroll should submit an example of their work at pre-registration. Consent of the instructor is required, registration alone does not guarantee a place in the class.

ENGLISH 11A -- NON-FICTION WRITING (M, W 11:30-12:45)

MILLER

This course will explore various forms of non-fiction writing, including memoir, profile, descriptive and personal essay, travel-writing, and reviews. Throughout the semester students will work on series of short weekly papers. Towards the end of the course, they will complete a longer piece of work in a particular area of interest. Students will read their work in class as often as possible, with classes functioning as workshops. During the semester, the instructor will assign readings that correspond to the area of non-fiction we are focusing on at a particular point, and these readings will be discussed in class.

ENGLISH 11B -- NON-FICTION: INTERMEDIATE JOURNALISM (D-3)

LEVINSON

This course is intended for students with some training or experience in print journalism (newspapers and magazines) who want to hone their reporting skills. We will concentrate on getting and writing the story. Students will practice finding and using sources (human, written, electronic), investigating and analyzing events, covering a beat, reporting the news accurately and engagingly, and writing feature stories. We will also look at ethical and legal issues of concern to reporters. Prerequisite: Beginning Journalism (ENG. 5 or 6) or journalistic experience.

ENGLISH 13 WRITING FICTION: ADVANCED (Z*3)

LEBOWITZ

More advanced than English 10, English 13 is intended for people who have already taken a creative writing course or who have written a fair amount of fiction on their own. Those wishing to enroll should submit a sample of their writing at preregistration. Consent of the instructor is required. English 13 may be repeated for credit.

ENGLISH 22 -- FORMS OF POETRY (Z1)

DIGGES

This course offers a more advanced approach to writing than English 5, as students put a greater pressure on experience and therefore the language of poetry. A number of contemporary texts will serve us as we investigate the tensions created between form and content, content and context. Our primary text will be the student work as we discuss the issues raised in your poems and experiment with various approaches to the language. At least eight poems will be turned in at the end of the term. A few short papers will be assigned as well. Those wishing to enroll must submit a sample of their writing at pre-registration to Professor Digges' mailbox on the second floor in East Hall. English 22 may be repeated for credit.

ENGLISH 36 -- BLACK WORLD LITERATURE AND FILM (6-3+)

ROY

This course is an introduction to African literature and the culture of Africa and its diaspora in the Caribbean and in Britain. We will explore a wide spectrum of African cultural forms--fiction, autobiography, poetry, drama, film and music--and trace their transmission and transformation in various Caribbean nations and in the "mother country," Britain. The selection of texts and films is obviously not exhaustive but aims to be broad enough to allow us to begin examining the political and cultural meaning of the "black" world as a distinctive formation. The course will include the writings of Chinua Achebe, Ngg Wa Thiong'O, Caryl Phillips, Sembene Ousmane, Alex La Guma, Derek Walcott, Sam Selvon, Louise Bennet, Jamaica Kincaid, Ama Ata Aidoo, and Joan Riley among others.

ENGLISH 37 --TWENTIETH-CENTURY AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE
(D-3)

RODRÍGUEZ

A treatment of works by fiction writers, poets, playwrights, theorists and critics including, Zora Neale Hurston, Alain Locke, Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, Amiri Baraka, Robert Hayden, Ralph Ellison, Maya Angelou, Adrienne Kennedy, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Charles Johnson, Gayl Jones, and Rita Dove.

ENGLISH 50 -- LITERARY STUDIES (D-3)

DUNN

An introduction to literary studies, focusing on methods of textual analysis. We will practice reading and writing about lyric poetry, drama, the novel, and short fiction, concentrating on the skills and techniques important in analyzing each of these forms. The course requires the student to read only a small number of texts, but to read them very closely and to write intensively about them both informally and formally. We will examine concepts of form and theories of literature in their historical contexts. Open only to freshmen with an AP-5 in English.

ENGLISH 51 -- GENERAL VIEW OF ENGLISH LITERATURE

(MW 10-11:15)

FYLER

A survey of English literature from the beginning through the eighteenth century. Readings will include Spenser's Faerie Queene, Milton's Paradise Lost and Swift's Gulliver's Travles, lyrics by Wyatt, Sidney, Shakespeare, Donne, Herbert, and Marvell, and plays by Marlowe (Dr.Faustus) and Webster (The Duchess of Malfi). Designed as an introduction to the English major, this course will be of interest to anyone who wishers to gain both a broad overview of earlier English literature and a good understanding of the basic techniques of literary analysis.

ENGLISH 61 -- SHORT STORY (5-3+)

BAMBER

He said she was disagreeing with him. She said, No, that was not true, he was disagreeing with her. This was about the screen door. That it should not be left open was her idea, because of the flies; his was that it could be left open first thing in the morning, when there were no flies on the deck. Anyway, he said, most of the flies came from other parts of the building: in fact, he was probably letting more of them out than in. -Lydia Davis

Do you like this story? It is reproduced in its totality, and it is a sample of the kind of thing we will consider in this course. The short story emphasizes form far more than does the novel; we will be considering formal innovations and general fooling around. And w will be considering the short short story, also known as flash fiction. Some authors we may consider are: Langston Hughes, Alice Munroe, Jorge Luis Borges, C.H. Lawrence, Grace Paley, James Joyce, Anton Chekov, Virginia Woolf and James Baldwin.

ENGLISH 63 -- AMERICAN FICTION 1900-1950 (B-3)

JOHNSON

This course explores the emergence and character of American modernism, the self-conscious intellectual and aesthetic movement dating roughly from 1910 to 1945. We will study modernism in its experimental literary expressions; as a social period encompassing the First World War, women's suffrage, Prohibition, and the Depression; as a period of diverse cultural expressions that include the Jazz Age, the Harlem Renaissance, European expatriation, and urban bohemianism. We will focus on modernist writers' struggles to efface or subordinate plot or structure in narrative (an effort only more or less successful and oscillating in its visibility in texts under study); the condition of the modern subject, alienation; and representations of gender, racial designations, and sexuality, with emphasis on class across these categories and the difficulties attending ideas or efforts to achieve class mobility or economic self sufficiency in this period.

Texts will include: F.Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby; Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises; Jean Toomer, Cane; W.E.B. DuBois, from The Souls of Black Folk; Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God; Nathanael West, The Day of the Locust; selections from the writings fo Gertrude Stein; William Faulkner, The Bear; Carson McCullers, The Member of the Wedding; James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room, and others.

There will be a mid-term and final examinations, as well as at least one paper.

ENGLISH 67 -- SHAKESPEARE (5-3+)

DUNN

A study of eight Shakespeare plays: Richard II, The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet, Measure for Measure, Macbeth, Pericles and The Tempest. Although we will engage a variety of historical and critical contexts, our primary focus will be on the close reading of the plays.

There will be a discussion section for this course.

ENGLISH 91A -- THE INVISIBLE SPECTACLE: CINEMA, DISCIPLINE, AND DESIRE

(J-3+)

EDELMAN

Our attention in this class will be directed toward appreciating the ideological complexity of some of the most influential and popular films to come out of Hollywood. We will look at examples of film noir (including The Maltese Falcon, Laura, and Gilda), romantic comedy (including Bringing Up Baby and Pillow Talk), black comedies (including Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and Happiness), animated film (including The Little Mermaid and some Bugs Bunny shorts), and contemporary thrillers (including The Crying Game, Basic Instinct, The Silence of the Lambs, and Pulp Fiction). Our aim will be to examine how narrative cinema affects, in complex and contradictory ways, the production and regulation of desire. We will attend, for example, to the dominance of heterosexual romance as the near-universal medium of cinematic narrative itself structuring almost every film, whatever its particular genre, and we will explore how the normalizing visions of heterosexual domesticity get played out in relation to another, less obvious, less readily narrated, story: one this course will be defining as the invisible spectacle of these films. That other story, that counterplot, involves the symptomatic inscription of fantasies and anxieties about the possibility of resistance to the law of sexual normativity; it speculates about alternatives to heterosexual desire, about the potential for female empowerment outside of dominant cultural scripts, and about the potential eruption, from within the most normative, apparently law-abiding subjects, of desires that threaten the framework within which cultural meaning is maintained. In short, we will explore how cinema defines and contains the desires of sexual subjects even as it expresses a counter-pressure that bespeaks its cinematic unconscious.

Students who enroll in this class must be prepared to study film closely, to work their way diligently through the critical and theoretical texts we will be reading, and to think openly about the intersections of cinematic, sexual, and textual logics. Students will be responsible for screening the films weekly outside of class time (on their own or at the public screenings in Tisch at 8:30 on Sunday nights) in addition to regular reading assignments.

ENGLISH 91B -- UNDERWORLDS (A-3+)

GENSTER

In classical mythology, the underworld is a kingdom of the dead, and yet its queen returns to the upper world for half the year, bringing with her the return of vegetative life. For the goddes Persephone the movement from one world to the other is an annual migration, but for mortals, except under the most extraordinary circumstances, strictly forbidden. Such a journey, from upper to lower world-with all the dangers, difficulties, and loss that attend mortals on the passage-is the subject of many of the most poignant myths and most powerful epics, from the story of Orpheus and Euydice to Dante's Inferno. The capacity to undertake and to understand the journey is, in fact, one of the characteristics of the hero in the terms offered by classical epic in Homer, or Judeo-Christian iconography in Milton or Poe, or in Dickens' hybridization of epic norms and novelistic representation in Our Mutual Friend, or in modern variants on those terms, as in the subversive shadow worlds offered in the fictions of Ralph Ellison, Thomas Pyncon, in Marilynne Robinson's transpositions of epic from patriarchal to matriarchal.

One might describe the evolution we'll trace as a movement from a notion of the underworld as entirely separate from the living, to the idea of an underground as a kind of shadow world, hidden within the larger culture, though not acknowledged by it. In such versions, the underworld is the site of insurgence rather than burial, as in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping, Charles Dickens' Our Mutual Friend, and selections from Homer's Odyssey, Milton's Paradise Lost and Pope's Dunciad, and Anthony Minghella's film Truly, Madly, Deeply.

ENGLISH 91C -- LITERATURE AND THE LAW (5-3+)

SHARPE

In this course we will examine various laws that have had a tremendous impact on immigration, naturalization, and access in and to the U.S. We will, for example, read Executive Order 9066, the order that interned Japanese Americans, in relation to the literary and filmic productions that arose in response to that Order (John Okada's No, No Boy, Joy Kogawa's Obasan). We will read, among other things, Brown v. Board of Education in relation to Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, the Chinese Exclusion Acts in relation to Maxine Hong Kingston's China Men, Zitkala Sa's American Indian Stories and Boarding School legislation, and Proposition 187 and Cherrie Moraga's The Last Generation or Proposition 209 and Richard Rodriguez's Hunger of Memory. We will also view several films like Ancestors in America and History and Memory. The focus of the course is on laws that were directed at multi-ethnic populations (Native American, Black, Latina, and Asian American) and these populations literary and filmic responses to the legislation.

ENGLISH 91D -- UNAMERICAN ACTIVITIES: POPULAR CULTURE AND THE LEFT

(H-3+)

LITVAK

Critics of mainstream American movies, television, and journalism often accuse them of conducting a liberal or even subversive conspiracy against the rest of the country. Yet the left-a remarkably elastic category, in which "liberalism" isn't always distinguishable from, say "communism"-hasn't exactly triumphed in American mass entertainment. In fact, the story of popular culture in this country is in some sense the story of how left-liberal politics keep getting stigmatized, and thus discredited, as "unamerican" which is why leftist content often has to disguise itself, and why its enemies must work to unmask it. This course will focus on the most notorious episode in the history of the left in U.S. popular culture: the period of the blacklist and the red scare, from the late 1940s to the early 1960s, when, as a result of investigations of the entertainment industry by the House Unamerican Activities Committee, left-liberal ideas and people were subjected to an explicit and systematic campaign of destruction. But while we will take into account the ravages of this campaign, we will also want to look at the ways in which the "unamerican" left resisted it, to survive and transform itself in the seventies, eighties, and nineties, as the Civil Rights movement, the antiwar movement, feminism, the sexual revolution, and gay and lesbian liberation came to reshape popular culture, and the culture as a whole. We will be examining films, plays, novels, televisionshow, memoirs, as well as some historical and critical texts. Objects of study may include films such as Polonsky's Body and Soul, Kramer's Home of the Brave, Dmytryk's Crossfire, Kazan's On the Waterfront, Zinnerman's High Noon, Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate, Wexler's Medium Cool, Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket, Pollack's The Way We Were, Ritt's The Front, Redford's Quiz Show, and Lee's Malcolm X; plays such as Hellman's Watch on the Rhine and The Children's Hour, Miller's The Crucible, and Kushner's Angels in America; novels such as Doctorow's The Book of Daniel and Roth's I Married a Communist; memoirs such as Hellman's Scoundrel Time and Kazan's Elia Kazan: A Life. We will also look at the careers of such exemplary artists and performers as Paul Robeson, Lee Grant, John Garfield, Edward G. Robinson, and Ronald Reagan. Students will be expected to see films outside of regular class sessions.

ENGLISH 91E -- GIRL'S BOOKS (5-3+)

FLYNN

Girls' books construct our ideas about femininity, sometimes deliberately, sometimes quite incidentally. This course will examine the various cultural values that girls' books produce. Without being too subjective, we will probably unpack some of the values that have become part of your own cultural baggage. We will read some of the classic nineteenth and early twentieth century texts - Little Women, The Secret Garden, Girl of the Limberlost - then some of your own classics - Blubber, Flowers in the Attic, Wrinkle in Time, Harriet the Spy. Finally, we will look at contemporary girls' books that explore issues of multicultural and sexual diversity - texts like Weetzie Bat, Eva, Toning the Sweep, and Finding My Voice. We will also read cultural critics Gilligan and Pipher. We will read quite a lot of books. If you sign up for this course, I would like you to e-mail me a short list of the girls' books that you find most important to you. I can't promise to include them all, but I am interested in adding texts that strongly interest you. We will also be doing a great deal of writing, both analytical and creative.

My e-mail address is cflynn1@emerald.tufts.edu.

ABOVE 100 LEVEL ENGLISH COURSES

ENGLISH 110 -- CHAUCER (6-3+)

FYLER

This course explores the works of one of the three or four greatest poets in English. We'll read Chaucer in Middle English, but he is in almost every respect easier to understand than Shakespeare, who lived two centuries later. We will spend roughly half of the semester on the Canterbury Tales, the other half on Chaucer's most extraordinary poem, Troilus and Criseyde. Chaucer is primarily a narrative rather than a lyric poet: though the analogy is an imperfect one, the Canterbury Tales are like a collection of short stories, and Troilus like a novel in verse. We will talk about Chaucer's literary sources and contexts, the interpretation of his poetry, and his treatment of a number of issues, especially gender issues, that are of perennial interest.

ENGLISH 110WW -- OPTIONAL RECITATION/CHAUCER  (M 3:30-4:20)

FYLER

110WW is an optional writing-workshop section of 110 that will meet once a week in addition to regular class meetings. The workshop pays special attention to paper writing and revision; it also emphasizes the function of writing in the learning process through informal, exploratory assignments and journal entries that encourage a closer examination of the course material.

ENGLISH 118 -- RENAISSANCE DRAMA: OVER-THE-TOP PERFORMANCE AND RADICAL PLAY  (6-3+)

HABER

The Renaissance is generally thought of as the greatest age of the drama in England: Shakespeare's plays are only the most well-known examples of the outpouring of theatrical activity that occurred during this period. In this course, we will read the always fascinating (and sometimes gruesome) Plays of Shakespeare's contemporaries and successors, many of whom adopted more radical stances toward the major issue of their time. As we examine their presentations of various forms of pwer, their constructions of gender and sexuality, and their attitudes towards language and the theater, we will discover why many of these plays have been termed "oppositional drama" and "radical tragedy." We will begin by examining Christopher Marlowe's frontal assaults on contemporary orthodoxies, and we will consider the construction of sodomy in his plays. We will go on to explore the development of the drama of blood and revenge, which was introduced in The Spanish Tragedy, and which exploded in what has been called the "parody and black camp" of The Revenger's Tragedy. We will examine the tensions which tear apart Ben Johnson's more conservative comedies, and which finally erupt in his grotesque carnival comedy, Bartholmew Fair. Finally, we will look at a selection of 17-century plays about women-The White Devil, The Duchess of Malfi, The Roaring Girl, The Changeling, Tis Pity She's a Whore; we will explore their varying attitudes toward female autonomy and desire, and consider why women became such central figures in the drama at this time. Throughout the course, we will think about these plays' investment in their own (sometimes quite extreme) theatricality, and we will attempt to do justice to their pervasive sense of play.

ENGLISH 132 -- WOMEN AND FICTION (D-3)

BAMBER

"But i digressed and was free." Grace Paley

Do (or should) women's narratives emphasize the suffering of women in patriarchy? If you say "yes," you're wrong, and if you say "no," you're also wrong. In this course we will look at the different ways in which women writers simultaneously include and evade what might be called the Matter of Women. The authors we will consider are for the most part committed to both narrative and anti-narrative, representation and language. This is a course for readers who are as interested in matters of language and form as in matters of gender and identity.

Some authors we will read are: Toni Morrison, Alice Munro, Lydia Davis, Kate Chopin, Zora Neale Hurston, Virginia Woolf, Sarah Orne Jewett, Willa Cather, Grace Paley, and Maxine Hong Kingston. We will also see several woman-made movies: Clueless, Strangers in Good Company, and I've Heard the Mermaids Singing.

ENGLISH 145 -- AMERICAN REALISM (T, TH 10-11:15)

AMMONS

We will examine fiction, prose, and film from 1880-1920, a period of unusual social upheaval and conflict that offers striking insights into a number of important issues today, such as racism in the United States, economic injustice, anti-immigrant policies and attitudes, discrimination against women, US imperialism, anti-Semitism, and changing sexual mores. Our study will be multicultural in focus-we will read works by African American, Native American, European American, Asian American, and Mexican American writers-and we will place major emphasis on analysis of social issues in the literature. Also we will pay special attention to how narrative form was experimented with-questioned, altered, invented-as writers and early filmmakers helped generate what we now recognize as the modern period. We will ask: How do fiction and film operate as social criticism? Who gets to create art in America-and who does not? That is, what are the politics of representation and who decides them and why should we care? Class will be run on a discussion basis and authors will include Zitkala Ša, Henry James, W. E. B. Du Bois, Anzia Yezierska, Pauline Hopkins, María Cristina Mena, Charles Chesnutt, Edith Wharton, Sui Sin Far, and Upton Sinclair. Also, we will view and discuss D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915); a contemporary film about American Indian issues during the period; and Loni Ding's documentary about Asian American immigration, Ancestors in the Americas: Sailors, Coolies, and Settlers. Writing assignments will encourage students to do research and to experiment in one of the two papers with writing prose fiction.

ENGLISH 170 -- SEXUALITY, LITERATURE, AND CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM

(Z*2)

EDELMAN

This course, intended as a small seminar for advanced students with an interest in contemporary literary theory, will focus on exploring some major texts of deconstructive, psychoanalytic, and queer theory. We will trace the logic by which each of these modes of thought reconfigures our understanding of the nature of writing, its power to represent "reality," and the authority by which meaning is both posited and secured. In the process, we will take up a number of questions posed by various theorists, including: How, where, and by whom is the "meaning" of a text produced? What is the nature of the relationship between "theory" and "literature"? What underwrites the critic's authority in relation to her or his act of interpretation? How do the lenses of identity through which various critics may seek to read literary texts function less as stable vantage points from which analysis may proceed and more as literary products requiring analysis themselves? Because we will be studying a number of intellectually demanding, but extremely influential, works of contemporary theory, students who enroll should be prepared to accept the demands imposed by these texts and to engage them with all the passion and energy they would bring to the study of novels, poems, or plays. Authors to be read will probably include: Jacques Derrida, Paul de Man, Jacques Lacan, Barbara Johnson, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Slavoj Zizek, Diana Fuss, Judith Butler, Hortense Spillers, Leo Bersani.

ENGLISH 191A -- HEMINGWAY AND FAULKNER (D-3)

LEBOWITZ

We will read the major novels, focusing on the authors' careers and creative lives and on the environment-cultural and psychological-which influenced their work.

ENGLISH 191B -- ULYSSES (5-3+)

ULLMAN

After a cursory examination of Joyce's Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, we shall spend the semester going through Joyce's masterwork Ulysses, elucidating many of the difficulties and trying to understand its structure as well as its details. I will lecture on Joyce's predecessors briefly, his place in the history of the novel, his philosophical background, and say some things about Irish history, when it is necessary background. But most of out time will be spent on the actual novel. Two papers, one a shorter one at midterm and the second a longer one at the end of class, will be required, as will class attendance and participation.

No prerequisites, but it would be helpful if students had read Dubliners, Portrait, and perhaps The Odyssey before the semester begins.

ENGLISH 191C -- FEMINIST LITERATURE AND THEORY: WOLLSTONECRAFT TO WOMANISM (6-5+)

HOFKOSH

Starting with the early feminism struggling to articulate itself in Mary Wollstonecraft's Maria; or the Wrongs of Woman (1798), we will read a range of imaginative literature from the 19^th and 20^th centuries in conjunction with contemporary theoretical writing to explore what feminism is: how it has understood the oppression of women and the potential for women's empowerment; how is poses, and tries to answer, questions about biological difference and social construction, about selfhood solidarity, about the very category of "woman." We will look both at the Anglo-American tradition of liberal feminism developed from Wollstonecraft and challenges to its basic assumptions from French feminists, women of color, and non-Western writers and activists. Readings may include novels, poems, or theoretical texts by Charlotte Bronte, Helen Cixous, Buchi Emecheta, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, bell hooks, Luce Irigaray, Audre Lorde, Chandra Mohanty, Cherrie Moraga, Toni Morrison, Jean Rhys, Adrienne Rich, Jeanette Winterson, Monique Wittiq, Virginia Woolf, and other thinkers about women, gender and feminism.

ENGLISH 191D -- STUDIES IN ETHNIC AMERICAN LITERATURE

TBA TBA

ENGLISH 191E -- EPIC STRAIN (5-3+)

GENSTER

Reading and discussion of a variety of epics and mock-epics in poetry and prose, with a focus on how writers have adapted epic to the requirements of their times and their voices. We will look particularly at the way that the epic has been explored by imitation, by parody, and by extension into novel and autobiography. Writers to be read may include Homer, Virgil, Milton, Pope, Fielding, Burney, Boswell, and Marilynne Robinson.

ENGLISH 191F -- VICTORIAN NOVEL (6-3+)

LITVAK

In this course, we will read novels by Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, George Eliot, Anthony Trollope, and Thomas Hardy. Our discussions will be based on careful analysis of the novels, but we will also be considering such general literary and cultural issues as realism, the gothic, and the grotesque; comedy, sentimentality, and sensationalism; gender and the novel; subjectivity and middle-class ideology; "Englishness" and its racial others; sexualtiy and the marriage plot; childhood, illness and death; fiction, literacy, and the marketplace. The novels we'll be reading are all long, so you should try to read at least one of them during vacation. A list of title and editions will be available in the English department office during preregistration.

ENGLISH 191G -- POETS IN THEIR YOUTH (Z4)

DIGGES

W.B. Yeats poses a question for himself and for poets in general. What is more important, he asks, perfection of the life or of the art? "Poets in Their Youth" is a course that raises this question and the struggles implied in such a question as it concentrates on the lives, early poetry and subsequent careers of five contemporary American poets, including Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, Yusef Kommenyakka, and Larry Levis.

As we study each poet, we will examine early themes and obsessions as they exhaust themselves, transform and/or resurface in the later work. And we will examine the failure, at times, of the poets' aesthetics as they work to change, even escape their original voices. Where applicable, we will look at the work of each poet's mentor or mentors (among them Marianne Moore, Robert Lowell, Ted Hughes, and Philip Levine) and their friendships with other writers and artisits who have influenced them. The life and culture from which, and sometimes against which our poets write will be an ongoing part of our discussion.

Our texts will be the poet's work, excerpts from biographis, selected letters, and other writing, these documents put together in a booklet by the professor. Several short papers and a final project will be required.

GRADUATE LEVEL COURSES

ENGLISH 291A "Romance Without Finance is a Nuisance"  (Z4)

FLYNN

We will be reading British literary and cultural texts from the Restoration, 1660 until the 1740's. Restoration texts will include the plays of Dryden, Wycherly, Etherege, Behn, and Congreve, the philosophy of Hobbes and Locke, and the poetry of Dryden and Rochester. While these early works interrogate most closely the tensions between the court and the citizens, ideas of political authority become inextricably linked to issues of financial speculation and the development of empire. Eighteenth century texts are obsessed with money, the getting of it, the preservation of it, and the loss of it. We will read the journalism of Ward, Addison and Steele, poetry and prose by Swift and Pope, plays by Gay and Centilivre. (All of these writers were affected dramatically by the South Sea Bubble while they struggled to cultivate a "taste" that appeared not to be tainted by money.) Finally we will read novels by Defoe, a hard-headed analyst of the growing capitalism he both celebrates and deplores, and look at the early novels of Richardson and Fielding. Pamela, Shamela, and Joseph Andrews, write new versions of romance which attempt to replace the family and societal demands with individual interpretations of sexuality and desire.

ENGLISH 291B PARTIALLY BURIED: RACE AND VISUAL CULTURE Z1 SHARPE

In this course we will read works by Adrienne Kennedy, Gayl Jones and Bessie Head alongside critics/theorists like Kobena Mercer, Francoise Verges, Jacqueline Rose, and Frantz Fanon. We will also study the work of visual artists like Ellen Gallagher, Adrian Piper, Renee Green, Kara Walker, Michael Ray Charles, Fred Wilson and Alison Saar among others.

Texts may include:

Gayl Jones: Corregidora, Eva's Man,

Adrienne Kennedy: People Who Led to my Plays and Adrienne Kennedy in One Act

Bessie Head: Tales of Tenderness and Power, Maru, A Question of Power

Films may include: Daughters of the Dust, Watermelon Woman

Exhibits: Looking Forward, Looking Black- Aidekman Gallery

ENGLISH 291C -- POSTCOLONIALISM: IN THEORY AND FICTION (Z2)

ROY

Postcolonial theory has become an important and controversial new field in literary, cultural and historical studies. The exact definition of the term, however, remains diffuse and the subject of intense and often contentious debates. The purpose of this seminar is to develop a historical and intellectual genealogy of the term and to acquire a sense of the central debates and ideas informing postcolonial theory. We will begin by examining the "origins" of the theories of colonialism and imperialism, then turn to debates in the 60's, and move to discussions of the current disputes that have emerged in the field. Our understanding of the central issues of postcolonial theory will then be tested via readings of literary texts. Theoretical texts will include, among others, Lenin's Imperialism, Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, Edward Said's Orientalism, Aijaz Ahmad's In Theory. Novels will include (if available) Nuruddin Farah's Maps, Tayib Salih's Season of Migration to the North, Ngugi's A Grain of Wheat, Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses.

RADCLIFFE COLLEGE

TELLING LIVES: GENRE AND GENDER IN WOMEN'S LIFE NARRATIVES

Tuesday 5:30-8:30pm, Sept. 19- Dec. 12, 2000

This course will look at how women give meaning to their lives through written and oral forms that focus on life experience. Using the lens of gender, we will explore the use, collection, and construction of autobiography, biography, ethnography, oral history, diaries, and other personal and collective narratives. The course will consider the various ways in which women create themselves as subjects and develop authority and authenticity by telling the stories of their lives. We will also explore methods for reading life narratives as "social texts" constructed by authors and readers. Each participant will write a brief autobiographical account, a brief oral history, and a 15 to 20 page paper on an individual biographical topic.

Faculty

Joyce Antler is the Samuel Lane Professor of American Jewish History and Culture at Brandeis University, where she chairs the American Studies Department. Her books include Lucy Sprague Mitchell: The Making of a Modern Woman and The Journey Home: How Jewish Women Shaped Modern America. She is co-editor of The Challenge of Feminist Biography: Writing the Lives of Modern American Women, and the editor of Talking Back: Images of Jewish Women in American Popular Culture, and American and I: Short Stories by American Jewish Women Writers.

Kathleen Weiler is Associate Professor of education at Tufts University. Her research focuses on gender and the social context of education, including ethnographic studies of classroom teaching and a historical study of women teachers in the American West using oral histories. She is the author of Women Teaching for Change and Country Schoolwomen: Teaching in Rural California, 1862-1950 and has co-edited several collections.

Barbara Rodríguez is Assistant Professor of English at Tufts University, where she teaches courses in African-American literature, and literature by American women writers of color. She is the author of Autobiographical Inscriptions: Form, Personhood, and the American Woman Writer of Color, forthcoming from Oxford University Press. She is working on a study of the slave narrative in American literature, art, and music.