ENGL 388 - Exploring the West of Ireland

Planned Offering: Spring 2017 and alternate years
Credits: 4

Prerequisites: ENGL 384 and at least one course in English at the 200-level or higher or instructor consent. Non-majors welcome. Spring-term abroad course. This course spends four weeks in the southwest of Ireland, based in Dingle, County Kerry. From here we visit and study the dramatic Irish landscape of the Dingle Peninsula and the Irish Southwest. We focus primarily on sites associated with the great 20th-century Irish writers, such as Yeats’s tower of Thoor Ballylee, Lady Gregory’s estate of Coole Park, and the Aran Islands so beloved of J. M. Synge. We read a range of Irish literature, from medieval poetry and mythic saga to the great achievements of the Irish Revival, such as the poetry of Yeats and the plays of Synge, and also work from more recent Irish writers such as Heaney and O’Brien. Students write four interpretive essays, several “site readings,” and a travel journal/experiential web log of their travels. Conner.