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

Credits: 3 in fall or winter, 4 in spring Prerequisite: Take one English course between 201 and 295, and one between 222 and 299. Enrollment limited. A seminar course on literature written in English from 1700 to 1900 with special emphasis on research and discussion. Student suggestions for topics are welcome. May be repeated for degree credit if the topics are different.

Spring 2021, ENGL 393-01: Topics in Literature in English from 1700-1900: The Mad, Bad Women of the Eighteenth Century (3). When you think of the eighteenth century, you might imagine a conservative society in which women’s lives were highly restricted. Eighteenth-century women’s literature, however, tells a different story. From Eliza Haywood’s brazen depiction of female sexuality, to the queer friendship of the Ladies of Llangollen, the early feminism of Mary Wollstonecraft, and the powerful abolitionism of Mary Prince, the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries feature a range of subversive femininities. Pairing period texts with more recent scholarly and popular writing, this course will look at the lives of women outside the English country house: women who might be considered less “respectable” than their buttoned-up peers but whose lives are decidedly more interesting. (HL) Walle.
 

Winter 2021, ENGL 393A-01: Topics in Literature in English from 1700-1900: Romantic and Victorian Poetry (3). Prerequisite: Take one English course between 201 and 295, and one between 222 and 299. The nineteenth century witnessed the peak of Great Britain’s political, economic, and cultural role in the world and was, not surprisingly, an era of unprecedented literary innovation. This course explores its long list of magnificent poets through a wide-ranging survey combined with a focus on three or four major figures such as Wordsworth, Byron, Keats, Tennyson, Rosetti, or Hardy. Though dedicated to poetry, this course contextualizes its primary concern by attending to the effects of economics (esp. industrial capitalism), politics (esp. democratic reform and imperial expansion), cultural changes (esp. the increasing importance of women readers and writers), and wider literary developments (esp. the growing dominance of the rival novel). (HL) Adams.

Fall 2020, ENGL 393A-01: Topics in Literature in English from 1700-1900: Re(Negotiating) the 19th Century (3). Prerequisite: Take one English course between 201 and 295, and one between 222 and 299. Enrollment limited. How has the 19th century echoed through the subsequent 20th and early 21st centuries? For instance, how have authors responded to the challenges of representing the institution and afterlife of slavery? More broadly, how have ideas of race been explored through the canon, and how has literature participated in creating, challenging, or perpetuating such ideas? In this seminar, students read and juxtapose canonical works from the 19th century with a smaller selection of contemporary works that call upon central conflicts from the 19th century as a site for exploring their echoes and impact. Potential writers include: Mark Twain, Herman Melville, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harriet Jacobs, Edgar Allan Poe, Ida B. Wells, James McCune Smith, William J. Wilson, Octavia Butler, Toni Morrison, George C. Wolfe, and Nafisa Thompson-Spires. (HL) Millan.