English (ENGL)

ENGL 201 - Advanced Expository Writing

ENGL 202 - Topics in Creative Writing: Playwriting

ENGL 203 - Topics in Creative Writing: Fiction

FDR: HA
Credits: 3 credits in Fall or Winter; 4 credits in Spring

Winter 2018, ENGL 203-01: Topics in Creative Writing: Fiction (3). Prerequisite: Completion of FW FDR. A course in the practice of writing short fiction, involving workshops, literary study, and critical writing. (HA)

Spring 2018, ENGL 203-01: Topics in Creative Writing: Fiction: Introduction to the Short Story (4). Prerequisite: Completion of FW FDR. This introduction to fiction writing mixes a traditional approach to teaching the craft of short-story writing with a residency component. You begin to sharpen your tastes and inclinations by reading and responding to short stories from significant contributors to the form. The bulk of the writing of your final short story takes place during a ten-day writing residency at Skylark Nature Preserve and Lodge outside of Lexington. It is in this setting that we collectively build a writing community free of distraction in order to facilitate a better understanding of your own writing processes. During the residency, students have structured and unstructured time to take advantage of and gain inspiration from the surrounding space. (HA) Wilson. Staff.

ENGL 204 - Topics in Creative Writing: Poetry

ENGL 205 - Poetic Forms

ENGL 206 - Topics in Creative Writing: Nonfiction

ENGL 207 - Eco-Writing

FDR: HA
Experiential Learning (EXP): Yes
Credits: 4

  Green.

ENGL 215 - Creating Comics

ENGL 230 - Poetry

ENGL 231 - Drama

ENGL 232 - The Novel

FDR: HL
Credits: 3

ENGL 233 - Introduction to Film

ENGL 234 - Children’s Literature

ENGL 235 - Fantasy

ENGL 236 - The Bible as English Literature

ENGL 237 - The Bible as Literature: Exile and Return

ENGL 240 - Arthurian Legend

ENGL 242 - Individual Shakespeare Play

ENGL 250 - Medieval and Early Modern British Literature

ENGL 252 - Shakespeare

ENGL 253 - Southern American Literature

ENGL 254 - I Heart Jane: Austen’s Fan Cultures and Afterlives

ENGL 255 - Superheroes

ENGL 260 - Literary Approaches to Poverty

ENGL 261 - Reading Gender

ENGL 262 - Literature, Race, and Ethnicity

ENGL 285 - Reading Lolita in Lexington

ENGL 291 - Seminar

ENGL 292 - Topics in British Literature

FDR: HL
Credits: 3-4

Winter 2018, ENGL 292A-01: British Literature: Weeping Men and Fainting Women: Gender and Emotion in 18th- and 19th-Century Literature (3). David Hume famously theorized that emotion is contagious, moving quickly from person to person. Interestingly, this theory threatens to disrupt traditional gender binaries, as men are no more immune to sentiment than women are. Indeed, in 18th-century sentimental fiction men are suddenly sighing, blushing, fainting, and crying all over the page. Eventually, the hyperbole of sentimental fiction (e.g., Henry Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling) gives way to the more moderate literature of sensibility (e.g., Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility), but one thing remains consistent: emotion is contagious and gender is no obstacle. This course looks at three phrases in the British novel: sentimental novels, the literature of sensibility, and, finally, sensation fiction (e.g., Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White), which deploys emotional contagion in the service of terror rather than virtue. We discuss theories of emotion ranging from Adam Smith and David Hume to 21st-century affect theory. Students learn research skills and conclude by writing a scholarly paper on a topic of their choosing. (HL) Walle.

Winter 2018, ENGL 292B-01: Topics in British Literature: Eco-Horror and the Global Weird (3). Storytellers have long been fascinated with the various ways the human species might die off, from fires to floods. In the present day, such scenarios seem ever more pressing as we face threats from global climate change caused by human industrial activity, viral diseases and epidemics accelerated by travel and global trade, and the abiding prospect of nuclear war. This course considers how various authors present a variety of catastrophic scenarios through the perspective of ecological horror: when the world itself turns, in one way or another, against its dominant species. Along the way, we take up not only fire and ice, but also plague, poison, plants, planetary impacts, and, of course, cyclones full of killer sharks—not to mention all manner of other weird phenomena. Authors read may include Daniel Defoe, Mary Shelley, H.P. Lovecraft, John Wyndham, Anna Kavan, J.G. Ballard, Margaret Atwood, China Miéville, Emily St. John Mandel, and Reza Negarastani; we also watch a handful of movies. (HL) Ferguson.

Fall 2017, ENGL 292A-01: Topics in British Literature: Literature of the British Slave Trade, 1688-2016 (3). The British slave trade lasted from the mid-1600s until 1807, but its legacy is more tenacious: more than 200 years after the abolition of the slave trade, novelists like Yaa Gyasi are still writing about the horrors and indignities of this violent institution. To study British literature, however, is often to encounter the slave trade as a shadow or a gap, something that lurks in the background of our favorite 18th- and 19th-century novels but never quite breaks through the surface. By placing novels like Mansfield Park (1814) and Jane Eyre (1847) alongside works that deal more explicitly with slavery, this course aims to disrupt that image of cozy, “civilized” England and demonstrate that British literature cannot be separated out from the Atlantic slave trade and British imperialism. (HL) Walle.

ENGL 293 - Topics in American Literature

FDR: HL
Credits: 3-4

Winter 2018, ENGL 293A-01: Topics in American Literature: Wilderness, Wildness, and Cultivation: Contemporary Environmental Literature (3). In this course, we study American fascination with ideas of wilderness, wildness, and cultivation as they manifest in contemporary literature and thought. We discuss the implications of these categories for humans as members of ecosystems as well as of “advanced societies.” Our texts are at the cutting edge of environmental writing, drawing from poetry, fiction, and non-fiction, and including writers such as Camille T. Dungy, George Saunders, and Robin Wall-Kimmerer. We incorporate the work and live readings/talks of three exceptional environmental writers visiting the W&L campus this term: Ross Gay, Robert Macfarlane, and Anna Lena Phillips Bell. With the help of such authors, we test our own understandings of human roles in relation to the more-than-human world. (HL) Green.

Winter 2018, ENGL 293B-01: Topics in American Literature: Science Fiction (3). Our world—whether in its dystopian politics, climate catastrophes, or even just its driverless cars—is increasingly written of in terms once reserved for the fantastic tales of science fiction. Are we now living in a science-fictional universe? Is the genre even capable of describing where we now are, and where we go from here? In this course, we seek such answers by surveying science fiction from its beginnings to the present day. Authors read may include: Mary Shelley, H.G. Wells, E.M. Forster, Hugo Gernsback, Ray Bradbury, Ursula K. LeGuin, Samuel R. Delany, Joanna Russ, Octavia Butler, William Gibson, Karen Joy Fowler, Ted Chuang, and others; through these works as well as a few short and feature-length films, TV episodes, radio dramas, podcasts, and games, we sample a range of past visions and speculate about the futures yet to come. (HL) Ferguson.

Winter 2018, ENGL 293C-01: Topics in American Literature: The American West (3). The American West is a land of striking landscapes, beautiful places to visit, such as Yellowstone and Yosemite, and stories that have had a huge impact on the USA and the world, such as Lewis and Clark, the Oregon Trail, Custer’s Last Stand, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, and Cowboy and Indian adventures galore. This course studies some of these Western places, stories, art works, and movies. What has made them so appealing? How have they been used? We study works by authors such as John Steinbeck, Frederic Remington, Willa Cather, Wallace Stegner, and Cormac McCarthy, plus movies with actors like John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and Brad Pitt to see how Western stories have played out and what is happening now in these contested spaces. (HL) Smout.

Winter 2018, ENGL 293D-01: Topics in American Literature: The Literature of the Beat Generation (3). A study of a particular movement, focusing on the ways in which cultural and historical context have influenced the composition of and response to literature in the United States. This course examines the writings of such authors as Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Anne Waldman, Bob Dylan, Gregory Corso, and Gary Snyder, who wrote starting in the mid-1940s, continued through later decades, and became loosely known as the Beat Generation. What cultural, literary, historical, and religious influences from the U.S. and other parts of the world have shaped their work? What challenges did their boldly different writings face, and how did their reception change over time? What are their themes? Their notions of style? What have they contributed to American (and world) life and letters? The goal of this course is to lay a strong foundation from which such questions can be richly addressed and answered. (HL) Ball.

Winter 2018, ENGL 293E-01: Topics in American Literature: Introduction to Literary Editing (3). An apprenticeship in editing for one or more students with the editor of Shenandoah, Washington and Lee’s nationally prominent literary magazine. This is a course for anyone interested in editing literary journals, writing for the literary community (blogs, news releases, two book reviews, features, business correspondence) and how both print and on-line journals operate. Often a stepping stone to a publication career, the course involves an introduction to the creation, design and maintenance of WordPress web sites, as well as a survey of current magazines. The course also offers opportunities for each student to practice generating and editing his/her own texts and those of his/her peers. Each student oversees one facet of the journal (Poem of the Week, blog, submissions management, contests, social media), and each makes a presentation to the class on the nature and practices of two other current literary journals. Students work in pairs toward an understanding of the role journals play in contemporary literature and engage in peer editing. (HL) Smith.

Winter 2018, ENGL 293F-01: Topics in American Literature: The American Short Story (3). This course is a study of the evolution of the short story in America from its roots, both domestic (Poe, Irving, Hawthorne, Melville) and international (Gogol, Chekhov, Maupassant), tracing the main branches of its development in the 20th century. We also explore more recent permutations of the genre, such as magical realism, new realism, and minimalism. Having gained an appreciation for the history and variety of this distinctly modern genre, we focus our attention on the work of two American masters of the form, contemporaries and erstwhile friends who frequently read and commented on each other’s work—Hemingway and Fitzgerald. We examine how they were influenced by their predecessors and by each other and how each helped to shape the genre. (HL) Oliver.

Winter 2018, ENGL 293G-01: Topics in American Literature: Tales of the Forest (3). In history and literature, the forest long loomed as the enemy of life and civilization, where monsters lurked, people wandered lost, and dark ends descended. That long tradition shifted dramatically during the 19th century with the accelerating pace of technological and economic development, widespread environmental degradation, and massive deforestation. As the founding of America’s national parks made plain, forests had suddenly become treasures to cherish and protect, refuges to seek for rejuvenation—and living guarantors of our collective survival. This course explores the forest’s evolution from sublime terror to vulnerable beauty, mainly through focusing upon poems, fairy tales, short stories, novels, and films—by a range of authors from Tacitus, Tasso, and Edmund Spenser to Nathaniel Hawthorne, John Muir, Robert Frost, J.R.R. Tolkien, Annie Proulx, and Stephen King—but with supplementary readings from major historians, environmental scientists, and forest scholars such as Alexandeer von Humboldt, G.P. Marsh, William Cronon, and Robert Pogue Harrison. (HL) Adams.

Winter 2018, ENGL 293H-01: Topics in British Literature: Race and the Zombie Apocalypse (3). This course takes a critical approach to our contemporary understanding of the figure of the zombie and its inextricable link to discourses on race and blackness in the Americas. A grounding in theories of social death allows us to explore the racial anxiety that gave birth to the genre and trace its development throughout the hemisphere. This course broadens the genre to include novels that normally would not be considered antecedents and ultimately poses the following questions: What can the figure of the zombie teach us about our evolving relationship to race? What does the recent proliferation of zombie-related television shows, movies, books, and video games say about our contemporary racial anxieties? In addition to landmark films from the genre, we consider works from, among others, Toni Morrison, Colson Whitehead, Orlando Patterson, Claudia Rankine, and William Faulkner. (HL) Wilson.

Winter 2018, ENGL 293I-01: Topics in American Literature: Science Fiction (3). Our world—whether in its dystopian politics, climate catastrophes, or even just its driverless cars—is increasingly written of in terms once reserved for the fantastic tales of science fiction. Are we now living in a science-fictional universe? Is the genre even capable of describing where we now are, and where we go from here? In this course, we seek such answers by surveying science fiction from its beginnings to the present day. Authors read may include: Mary Shelley, H.G. Wells, E.M. Forster, Hugo Gernsback, Ray Bradbury, Ursula K. LeGuin, Samuel R. Delany, Joanna Russ, Octavia Butler, William Gibson, Karen Joy Fowler, Ted Chuang, and others; through these works as well as a few short and feature-length films, TV episodes, radio dramas, podcasts, and games, we sample a range of past visions and speculate about the futures yet to come. (HL) Ferguson.

Spring 2018, ENGL 293-01: Topics in American Literature: Ralph Ellison and the Making of America (3). Prerequisite: Completion of the FW requirement. A study of the writings of Ralph Ellison, the great African-American novelist, essayist, and short-story writer. The course examines Ellison’s published and unpublished writings, as well as biographical and critical writings about Ellison’s life and work. We pursue such questions as Ellison’s concepts regarding American literature, music, history, region, language, and politics; the troubled and complex challenges of race in American culture; and how Ellison expresses what he called the American tragi-comedy in his work. (HL) Conner.

Spring 2018, ENGL 293-02: Topics in American Literature: Business in American Literature and Film (4). Prerequisite: Completion of the FW requirement. In his 1776 book The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith tells a powerful story of the free market as a way to organize our political and economic lives, a story that has governed much of the world ever since. This course studies that story, considers alternate stories of human economic organization, such as those of American Indian tribes, and sees how these stories have been acted out in American business and society. We study novels, films, short stories, non-fiction essays, autobiographies, advertisements, websites, some big corporations, and some local businesses in the Lexington area. Our goal is not to attack American business but to understand its characteristic strengths and weaknesses so we can make the best choices about how to live and work happily in a free market society. (HL) Smout.

Fall 2017, ENGL 293A-01: Topics in American Literature: Literary Editing (3). An apprenticeship in editing for one or more students with the editor of Shenandoah, Washington and Lee’s nationally prominent literary magazine. This is a course for anyone interested in editing literary journals, writing for the literary community (blogs, news releases, two book reviews, features, business correspondence), and how both print and on-line journals operate. Often a stepping stone to a publication career, the course involves an introduction to the creation, design, and maintenance of WordPress web sites, as well as a survey of current magazines. The course also offers opportunities for students to practice generating and editing their own texts and those of their peers. Each student oversees one facet of the journal (Poem of the Week, blog, submissions management, contests, social media), and each makes a presentation to the class on the nature and practices of two other current literary journals. Students work in pairs toward an understanding of the role journals play in contemporary literature and engage in peer editing. (HL) Smith.

Fall 2017, ENGL 293B-01:  Topics in American Literature:  Utopia, Science Fiction, and the Idea of America(s) (3).  What value does the utopian/dystopian text hold in the development of alternative thought?  This course, grounded in science fiction and the African American and Latin American contexts, addresses this question via the thoughtful examination of a range of theoretical, fictional, and cinematic texts.  Works studied throughout the term come from, among others, Carlos Fuentes, Thomas More, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Frederick Jameson, W.E.B. DuBois, Frances Bodomo, Alfonso Cuarón, Octavia Butler, and Samuel Delany. (HL) Wilson.

ENGL 294 - Topics in World Literature

ENGL 295 - Spring-Term Seminar in Literary Studies

FDR: HL
Credits: 4

Spring 2018, ENGL 295-01: Video/Games (4). Prerequisite: Completion of FW requirement. Some have called videogames “the art form of the 21st century”; others have denied that they could ever be art at all. Whatever one’s view on their aesthetic possibilities, though, videogames have become ubiquitous, filling our spare moments, providing new and alternate identities, and sparking cultural divides. This course studies and briefly surveys the medium of the videogame, with an emphasis on developing skills in critical and cultural analysis as well as rudimentary game design. This inquiry stretches from the beginnings of the genre in analog (board or card) games and pinball, through the era of early computing and cartridge-based consoles, through to the highly sophisticated always-online formats of the present day. The course ends in the production of one analog (board or card) game, one digital story-game on the Twine platform, and one essay drawing on extensive engagement with a single game text. (HL) Ferguson.

Spring 2018, ENGL 295-02: African-American Poetry (4). Prerequisite: Completion of FW requirement. A study of African-American poetry and poetics, with an emphasis on memory and history. While we focus mainly on 20th- and 21st-century works, the presence of the past is a recurring motif in our readings and conversations. This course culminates in a digital-humanities project about race at Washington and Lee, including text and images of various kinds, but emphasizing literature as a form of history. (HL) Wheeler.

Spring 2018, ENGL 295-03: Transforming Literature: Fan Fiction, Literary Mashups, and Other Canon Fodder (4). Prerequisite: Completion of FW requirement. This course considers ways that people take works of literature, classic or otherwise, and transform them into something new. We read literary works ranging from “The Yellow Wallpaper” to “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” to Sherlock Holmes stories, as well as cartoons, poems, videos and text conversations that remake, remix and transform those literary works. We think about what makes something literature, what makes something fan fiction, and what fan fiction can show us about classic works of literature. We also create our own literary transformations, analyze the role of the Internet in fan culture, and experiment with transformative technologies. (HL) Bufkin.

ENGL 299 - Seminar for Prospective Majors

FDR: HL
Credits: 3

Winter 2018, ENGL 299-01: Seminar for Prospective Majors: Weeping Men and Fainting Women: Gender and Emotion in 18th- and 19th-Century Literature (3). David Hume famously theorized that emotion is contagious, moving quickly from person to person. Interestingly, this theory threatens to disrupt traditional gender binaries, as men are no more immune to sentiment than women are. Indeed, in 18th-century sentimental fiction men are suddenly sighing, blushing, fainting, and crying all over the page. Eventually, the hyperbole of sentimental fiction (e.g., Henry Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling) gives way to the more moderate literature of sensibility (e.g., Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility), but one thing remains consistent: emotion is contagious and gender is no obstacle. This course looks at three phrases in the British novel: sentimental novels, the literature of sensibility, and, finally, sensation fiction (e.g., Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White), which deploys emotional contagion in the service of terror rather than virtue. We discuss theories of emotion ranging from Adam Smith and David Hume to 21st-century affect theory. Students learn research skills and conclude by writing a scholarly paper on a topic of their choosing. (HL) Walle.

Winter 2018, ENGL 299-02: Seminar for Prospective Majors: Shakespeare’s Tragic Vision (3). In this gateway course to the English major, students practice the skills of nuanced reading, mature discussion, analytical writing, and scholarly research expected in upper-division English classes. This section focuses on close readings of several Shakespearean tragedies, beginning with an in-depth investigation of Hamlet. Field trips to Staunton to see Hamlet at the American Shakespeare Center and to the Lenfest Center to see Washington and Lee’s production of Romeo and Juliet enhance our study of the texts. (HL) Pickett.

Fall 2017, ENGL 299A-01: Seminar for Prospective Majors: Margaret Atwood and Human Rights Discourse (3). Discover the variety of genres (poetry, satire, novels, dystopias) written by one of the greatest living writers, Margaret Atwood. We consider the usefulness of comparative discussion of Atwood’s sources (from Homer to Shakespeare to Orwell’s 1984), and we employ a human rights framework in discussing her entertaining writings. A sequence of shorter writing assignments lead to a research paper, composed in stages. (HL) Keen.

Fall 2017, ENGL 299B-01: Seminar for Prospective Majors: The Lord of the Rings from Page to Screen (3). J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic novels and historical fantasies along with Peter Jackson’s spectacular CGI film versions have together made these texts and, more important, the narrative they tell among the most significant cultural events of the 20th and 21st centuries. This course centers upon The Lord of the Rings novels and films but frames that dual achievement by looking, first, back to Tolkien’s roots in 19th-century romance fiction and historical philology and, second, ahead to the important role played by Jackson’s film adaptations in the development of modern CGI films. In these ways this course highlights Tolkien’s larger cultural achievement, even as it provides students with a rich set of research questions and topics. (HL) Adams.

ENGL 305 - Writing Outside the Lines

ENGL 306 - Advanced Creative Writing: Poetry

ENGL 307 - Fresh/Local/Wild: The Poetics of Food

ENGL 308 - Advanced Creative Writing: Fiction

FDR: HA
Credits: 3 in fall and winter, 4 in spring

  Gavaler.

ENGL 309 - Advanced Creative Writing: Memoir

ENGL 311 - History of the English Language

ENGL 312 - Gender, Love, and Marriage in the Middle Ages

FDR: HL
Credits: 3

  Kao.

ENGL 313 - Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales

ENGL 316 - The Tudors

ENGL 319 - Shakespeare and Company

ENGL 320 - Shakespearean Genres

ENGL 326 - 17th-Century Poetry

ENGL 330 - Milton

ENGL 334 - The Age of Unreason: Studies in 18th-Century Literature

ENGL 335 - 18th-Century Novels

FDR: HL
Credits: 3

ENGL 336 - Ghost in the Machine

ENGL 341 - The Romantic Imagination

ENGL 345 - Studies in the 19th-Century British Novel

ENGL 348 - Victorian Poetry: Victorian Pairs

FDR: HL
Credits: 3

  Adams.

ENGL 349 - Middlemarch and Devoted Readers

ENGL 350 - Postcolonial Literature

ENGL 351 - World Fiction in English

ENGL 352 - Modern Irish Literature

ENGL 353 - 20th-Century British and Irish Poetry

ENGL 354 - Contemporary British and American Drama

ENGL 355 - Studies in British Fiction Since 1900

ENGL 358 - Literature of Gender and Sexuality Before 1900

ENGL 359 - Literature by Women of Color

ENGL 360 - Cowboys and Indians

ENGL 361 - Native American Literatures

ENGL 362 - American Romanticism

ENGL 363 - American Poetry from 1900 to 1945

ENGL 364 - American Poetry at Mid-Century

ENGL 365 - Studies in Contemporary Poetry

FDR: HL
Credits: 3

ENGL 366 - African-American Literature

ENGL 367 - 19th-Century American Novel

ENGL 368 - The Modern American Novel

ENGL 369 - Late 20th-Century North American Fiction

ENGL 370 - Contemporary North American Fiction

ENGL 373 - Hitchcock

ENGL 374 - King and Kubrick

ENGL 375 - Literary Theory

ENGL 382 - Hotel Orient

ENGL 384 - Ireland in Literature, History, and Film

ENGL 385 - Preparatory Reading for Study Abroad

ENGL 386 - Supervised Study in Great Britain

ENGL 387 - Visions and Beliefs of the West of Ireland

ENGL 388 - Exploring the West of Ireland

ENGL 391 - Topics in Creative Writing

FDR: HA
Three credits in 200-level English and instructor consent. Previous workshop experience recommended. Students who have successfully completed ENGL 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, or 207 should inform the department’s administrative assistant, who will grant them permission to enroll; otherwise a writing sample will be required. An advance workshop in creative writing. Genres and topics will vary, but all versions involve intensive reading and writing. May be repeated for degree credit if the topics are different.

Spring 2018, ENGL 391-01: Topic: Exploring Prose Poems and Other Hybrid Forms (3). Prerequisite: Students who have taken a previous creative writing workshop in any genre should write to Mrs. O’Connell at oconnells@wlu.edu to obtain instructor consent. Other students should send a short sample of their creative writing to Professor Wheeler at wheelerlm@wlu.edu. Students explore how the language, devices, forms, music, cadences, and impulses of poetry, prose, and related disciplines may be brought to bear on the creation of hybrid forms. We read, discuss, and write reflective essays about hybrid works that blur or multiply a text’s visual, aural, sonic, intellectual, emotional, tactile, political, cultural, and other effects. Students also create at least one hybrid piece each week and prepare a larger final project or portfolio. Above all, they playfully engage practices outside their usual comfort zones, and in generating new work, push towards intellectually and aesthetically challenging experiences. (HA) Igloria.

ENGL 392 - Topics in Literature in English before 1700

ENGL 393 - Topics in Literature in English from 1700-1900

Credits: 3 in fall or winter, 4 in spring

Fall 2017, ENGL 393A-01: Moby Dick: Its Origins, Legacy, and Environmental Context (3). Prerequisite: ENGL 299. This course centers upon Melville’s famous quest narrative, which many critics regard as having the best claim to the title of “Great American Novel”. We first look to such major British influences as Romantic poet S.T. Coleridge, Victorian prose master Thomas Carlyle, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea, and Spielberg’s Jaws. The literary and theoretical emphasis, however, stresses Moby Dick’s generic status as both an epic and a georgic, that is, a heroic tale of humankind’s effort to conquer the natural world through technological prowess—and the tragic results of that (in)glorious aspiration for both humanity and the environment. In this regard, both genre theory and eco-criticism are central to this course’s effort to contextualize and comprehend the larger achievement of Melville’s masterpiece. (HL) Adams.

ENGL 394 - Topics in Literature in English since 1900

Credits: 3 in fall or winter, 4 in spring

Winter 2018, ENGL 394A-01: Topics in Literature in English since 1900: New Topographers: Contemporary Environmental Writers (3). In this seminar, we read contemporary environmental writers of the last 40 years. The readings include poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, including major works by Barry Lopez, Robert Macfarlane, and Robin Kimmerer. A course pack is the source for representative works by some 25 other writers. Along with shorter writing assignments and oral presentations, plan to write a research paper for the course. (HL) Warren.

Fall 2017, ENGL 394A-01: Topics in Literature in English since 1900: Between the Acts: The Life and Writing of Virginia Woolf (3). Virginia Woolf is one of the most important writers of the 20th century. She is best remembered for contributions to the modern British novel, but she was also an astute (and prolific) literary critic, as well as an influential feminist thinker. This course considers Woolf in context, reading her work alongside key examples of modernist fiction. Born into a world of strict Victorian morals but coming of age among the vibrant avant-garde, Woolf’s life mirrors the fast-paced changes of the early 20th century, and thus her biography and her literary coterie are focal points of our discussion. In addition to canonical works like Mrs. Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927), we also read Between the Acts (1941) and Orlando (1928), as well as selections of Woolf’s feminist theory and literary criticism. (HL) Walle.

ENGL 395 - Topics in Literature in English in Counter Traditions

Credits: 3-4

Spring 2018, ENGL 395-01: Planetary Lines in World Literature (3). Prerequisite: ENGL 299. How do we read world literature in the Age of the Anthropocene? The growing debates around environmental crises have an emerging literary counterpart—whether these be realist novels on climate refugees in the Global South, eco-fiction works on dystopic survival, or documentary representations of a dissolving and privatizing landscape. This reading-intensive course examines multi-genre depictions from North America, Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Oceania of a human-impacted ecology. The question of “world” as universal and “planet” as material are thus considered, as are aesthetic moves narrating dis/placement and non/human relations. Course work includes in-class writing, group presentations, and a hybrid final paper that may incorporate creative elements. A midterm field project engaging with translation, as an underlying aspect of worlds in world literature, helps students collaborate across disciplinary and linguistic interests. (HL) Rajbanshi.

ENGL 403 - Directed Individual Study

ENGL 413 - Senior Research and Writing

Credits: 3

Winter 2018, ENGL 413-01: Senior Research and Writing: Trans*ing the Text (3). How does a text generate and direct its economy of movements? A prefix, trans denotes moving across, into, and through; it connotes departure, flow, and arrival—from here to there. It is a turn (think of the volta in sonnets) that, as Eva Hayward and Jami Weinstein observe, “is cause to move, a difference in position, a change in nature”. The asterisk affixed to trans* further marks both the word’s prefixial motions and its expansive suffixial space to which all sorts of objects and ideas can attach themselves. With roots in affect, gender, and post-human studies, trans*ing investigates various tipping points that facilitate the traffic within and transgression of socio-political norms. For instance, the bite of a monster induces a transformation of not only the body but the nature of desire; or, a rejection of the marriage plot blocks certain narrative fulfillments but makes available the transition into different possibilities of identity. We learn how to engage in practices of trans*ing, a la Raymond Williams, through a cluster of sticky keywords: animacy, speciation, form, matter, body, object, affect, monstrosity, liminality, and border. Students compile a portfolio of reading responses in the first half of the seminar as preparation for their individual guided research project. (HL) Kao.

Winter 2018, ENGL 413-02: Senior Research and Writing: Documentary Poetics (3). How do 20th- and 21st-century poets bear witness to social change, violence, and disaster? Students in this capstone read works by Muriel Rukeyser, Carolyn Forché, Patricia Smith, and many others, considering both the uses of poetry and the politics of documentation. What sources do documentary poets draw on and how do they handle the ethics of representation and citation? In response to the readings, students write critically and creatively, eventually pursuing research-based poetry projects on topics of their choosing. Previous workshop experience is not required but may be helpful. (HL) Wheeler.

Fall 2017, ENGL 413-01: Senior Research and Writing: The Art of Narrative (3). This seminar focuses on the development of narrative strategies in short stories and narrative essays. You identify specific literary techniques, analyze them, and apply them in your own writing—fiction, non-fiction, or a combination. A literary technique is any use of language that can be studied in the context of a literary work, abstracted into a general method, and then recreated in an entirely new work. During the term, you develop two major pieces of writing simultaneously, each worth one third of your final grade: (1) a portfolio of original short fiction and/or personal essays that employs some of the identified techniques; and (2) an analytical essay exploring literary techniques from a range of published works. The essay establishes patterns of technique use and argues why certain techniques are employed for similar or contrasting effects in varying contexts. The remaining third of your final grade is the accumulative average of smaller and process assignments leading up to the major pieces. (HL) Gavaler.

ENGL 453 - Internship in Literary Editing with Shenandoah

ENGL 493 - Honors Thesis