This writing-intensive introduction to literature written in English may include a selection of formal verse, fiction, drama, and at least one play by Shakespeare. The course is designed to develop the student’s imaginative understanding of literature along with the ability to write and speak with greater clarity. It is intended to be of interest to students at any level of preparation.
This writing-intensive introduction to literature written in English may include a selection of formal verse, fiction, drama, and at least one play by Shakespeare. The course is designed to develop the student’s imaginative understanding of literature along with the ability to write and speak with greater clarity. It is intended to be of interest to students at any level of preparation.
An examination of several masterpieces of Western literature, including Homer's Iliad and Dante's Divine Comedy. Some sections are writing-intensive.
An examination of several masterpieces of Western literature, including Homer's Iliad and Dante's Divine Comedy. Some sections are writing-intensive.
An examination of novels and short fiction from British and American literature selected by the instructor. Writing-intensive some semesters.
Students examine the memoirs of writers such as Richard Wright, Maya Angelou, Tobias Wolff, Joan Didion, Patti Smith, J. Drew Lanham, Garrett Hongo, Jesmyn Ward, Maggie Nelson, Stephanie Danler, and Kiese Laymon. Students analyze the techniques of memoir with an eye towards addressing the difference between memoir and autobiography, engaging the matter of “truth” in memoir, and discerning the influence of literary traditions as well as regional, racial, ethnic, and gendered histories within an author’s articulation of self. Students write several short memoir pieces as well as analytical essays.
Speculative fiction is a genre that asks “what if,” allowing us to imagine alternative social arrangements while holding up a mirror to our own assumptions about culture and human identity. The nationality and time period of speculative fiction examined in this course may vary based on the instructor. In different semesters, this class may focus on such topics as the origin and development of science fiction, featuring such writers as Mary Shelley and H.G. Wells; climate speculative fiction (Richard Powers), feminist speculative fiction (Margaret Atwood, Ursula K. Le Guin), or Afrofuturism (Octavia Butler, N.K. Jemisin).
This course focuses on literary representations--in fiction, nonfiction and poetry--of the experience and meaning of the imaginary line that divides the United States and Mexico. Among the themes to be discussed are the experience of border-crossing (in both directions), the possibility or impossibility of assimilating to life across the border, and especially the desire that draws migrants toward el otro lado (the other side). Writers to be discussed may include Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton, Katherine Ann Porter, Americo Paredes, Sandra Cisneros, Cormac McCarthy, Oscar Casares, and Luis Alberto Urrea.
A study of the Canterbury Tales and other poems by Chaucer. A term paper is usually expected.
A study of several plays written before 1600.
A study of the major sixteenth-century genres, with emphasis on sources, developments, and defining concerns. Readings include the sonnets of Wyatt, Surrey, Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare; the mythological verse narratives of Marlowe and Shakespeare; the pastoral poems of Spenser; and Books I and III of Spenser's Faerie Queene.
This course explores some of the radical shifts that occurred in English literature during the late eighteenth century. These developments involved not only changes in style, subject matter, and poetic theory, but also changes in the role of the author and the social purpose of writing. Both “major” and “minor” authors, male and female, are read as part of a complex revolution in cultural taste and literary practice.
A survey of British poetry and non-fiction prose of the Victorian era (1837 to 1901). Texts include poetry by Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Arnold, Swinburne, D.G. Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, Hopkins, and Hardy, as well as prose by Carlyle, Darwin, Arnold, Ruskin, Morris, and Wilde.
Many people know one sentence from early American literature: Puritan leader John Winthrop’s 1630 claim that “we shall be as a City on a Hill.” Often misinterpreted as a promise of inevitable national success, these words were actually a warning that America’s redemptive promises carried the risk of disastrous and conspicuous failure. This course traces the efforts of English-language writers to respond to both the promises and the failures of the tiny colonial settlements that became the United States. Authors studied include Anne Bradstreet, Mary Rowlandson, Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Walt Whitman.
"On or about December 1910" human character changed,” Virginia Woolf wrote, and we will consider what truth might have been in her cheeky claim. Starting about twenty-five years before this supposed inflection point (Conrad, Wilde) and continuing about twenty-five years after it (Bowen, Anand), this course focuses on the British aspect of the complex global movement known as literary modernism: its ambivalences, false starts, poses, challenges, habits, and experiments.
A study of the major traditions of African-American writing from the nineteenth century to the present, including Frederick Douglass, Linda Brent, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Ernest Gaines, Toni Morrison, and Rita Dove.
A study of twentieth-century literature written in English from Africa, South Asia, and the Caribbean, concentrating on colonial and post-colonial themes, as well as issues of gender, politics, and nationalism. Possible authors include Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Nadine Gordimer, J. M. Coetzee, Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, V. S. Naipaul, and Derek Walcott.
This course supports students in conceiving and writing an honors thesis. Students explore the research and writing methods required by a thesis, such as creating a project bibliography, reading scholarship critically, identifying a compelling research question, drafting sections, and bringing multiple pieces of writing together into an extended work of scholarship. The writing for this course will culminate in a polished draft of the thesis.
Environmental Sciences
In this course, students learn to carry out their own independent research on important issues in environmental management and sustainability. Meetings are focused upon hands-on practice in experimental design, field data collection, data management, basic coding, project management, grant proposal writing, and public speaking. Throughout those experiences, students gain foundational knowledge in the sciences of climate change, carbon sequestration, pollution, and environmental justice.
Environmental Studies
An interdisciplinary introduction to Environmental Studies through the examination of the scientific and social aspects of environmental issues. Field components of the course focus on the University Domain and the surrounding area. This course is required for all students who major or minor in environmental studies and should be taken before the junior year.