Fall 1999 Courses:

ENGL 112: The Environmental Imagination: Green Writing and Ecocriticism: This course will study the relations between literature, literary criticism, cultural criticism, and the natural environment. Drawing on the works of such writers as Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Annie Dillard, Terry Tempest Williams, Rachel Carson, Edward Abbey, and John McPhee, and on contemporary comentary on these writers and on the environmental movement in general, we will discuss such topics as the ideology of wilderness, pollution and politics, landscape and environment, and nature in the marketplace.

Major readings include Carson, Silent Spring; Fromm, IndianCreek Chronicle; Faulkner, Go Down, Moses; Abbey, Desert Solitaire; McPhee, The Control of Nature; Williams, Refuge.

NOTE: This is a First Year Initiative seminar, open to first year students only.

Click here to view syllabus.

ENGL 201: The Study of Literature: "A course to introduce students to the careful reading of texts, especially lyric poems, and familiarize them with the idea of literature as a part of culture."

MAJOR READINGS FOR THIS SECTION will include Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and The Tempest, Aimé Césaire's A Tempest,a selection of lyric poems from the Renaissance to the present, a selection of modern short stories, and a book of poems and a memoir by Lucille Clifton.

NOTE: This course is a prerequisite for the English major. Ordinarily it is only open to sophomores.

Click here to view syllabus.

Spring 1999 Course:

ENGL 112: The Environmental Imagination: Green Writing and Ecocriticism: This course will study the relations between literature, literary criticism, cultural criticism, and the natural environment. Drawing on the works of such writers as Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Annie Dillard, Terry Tempest Williams, Rachel Carson, Edward Abbey, and John McPhee, and on contemporary comentary on these writers and on the environmental movement in general, we will discuss such topics as the ideology of wilderness, pollution and politics, landscape and environment, and nature in the marketplace.

Major readings include Carson, Silent Spring; Fromm, IndianCreek Chronicle; Faulkner, Go Down, Moses; Abbey, Desert Solitaire; McPhee, The Control of Nature; Williams, Refuge.

NOTE: This is a First Year Initiative seminar, open to first year students only.

Click here to view syllabus.

Fall 1998 Courses:

ENGLISH 201, SECTION 01: THE STUDY OF LITERATURE: "A course to introduce students to the careful reading of texts, especially lyric poems, and familiarize them with the idea of litertura a part of culture."

MAJOR READINGS FOR THIS SECTION will include Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and The Tempest, Aimé Césaire's A Tempest,a selection of lyric poems from the Renaissance to the present, short stories by Langston Hughes and others, and a detective novel.

Link to syllabus.

ENGLISH 236: THEORY OF DRAMA: This course covers modern dramatic theory from Artaud to Grotowski and contemporary critical theory including theater semiotics, feminism, post-modernism. Discussion is keyed to current local productions and student interests.

MAJOR READINGS INCLUDE Artaud, The Theater and Its Double; Brecht, Brecht on Theater; Grotowski, Towarda Poor Theater; Brook, The Empty Space.

Link to syllabus.

Spring 1998 Courses:

ENGL 234: MODERN DRAMA 1: A survey of classic modern European and American drama. Major focus on Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, and the comic tradition, with related contemporary works.

Link to syllabus.

ENGL 277/AMST 210/CHUM 277: Versions of Pastoral in U.S. Literature Settlement and wilderness, city and country, "civilization" and "the Territories," "Nature" and culture, machines and gardens, "ecocriticism." From colonial times to the present, writers of all kinds--farmers, explorers, naturalists, novelists, anthropologists, essayists, poets, scholars, and critics--have sought or invented versions of pastoral arcadian North America. Why reimagine a Grecian paradise in "Kentucky"? Why people a Georgia valley with dryads and nymphs? Why build a cabin at Walden Pond or spend a season at Tinker Creek? Why move to the suburbs or vacation in the "bosom of Nature"? These are some of the questions we will try to answer in this course on the place of the "pastoral" in U.S. literature, culture, and criticism.

MAJOR READINGS include literary texts by Crevecoeur, Jefferson, Filson/Boone, Bartram, Emerson, Thoreau, Dillard, Jewett, Cather, Hurston, Frost, Silko, Abbey, as well as critical and historical texts by D.H. Lawrence, Leo Marx, Henry Nash Smith, Richard Slotkin, Annette Kolodny, Lawrence Buell.

Link to syllabus.

Fall 1997 Courses

ENGLISH 201, SECTION 01: THE STUDY OF LITERATURE: "A course to introduce students to the careful reading of texts, especially lyric poems, and familiarize them with the idea of litertura a part of culture."

MAJOR READINGS FOR THIS SECTION will include Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and The Tempest, Aimé Césaire's A Tempest,a selection of lyric poems from the Renaissance to the present, short stories by Langston Hughes and others, and a detective novel.

link to syllabus

ENGLISH 263/AMST 225: AMERICAN REALISM: "The faithful representation of 'reality' as a political and aesthetic project in the U.S. from the mid-nineteenth century to the 1940s. Primary emphasis on fiction; some attention to painting, photography, and journalism." Special focus for 1997 will be on "realism and reform."

MAJOR READINGS will include works by Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Upton Sinclair, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Kate Chopin, Jacob Riis, Stephen Crane, Charles Chesnutt, and Edith Wharton.

link to syllabus

Spring 1997 Course:

ENGL 277/AMST 210/CHUM 277: Versions of Pastoral in U.S. Literature Settlement and wilderness, city and country, "civilization" and "the Territories," "Nature" and culture, machines and gardens, "ecocriticism." From colonial times to the present, writers of all kinds--farmers, explorers, naturalists, novelists, anthropologists, essayists, poets, scholars, and critics--have sought or invented versions of pastoral arcadian North America. Why reimagine a Grecian paradise in "Kentucky"? Why people a Georgia valley with dryads and nymphs? Why build a cabin at Walden Pond or spend a season at Tinker Creek? Why move to the suburbs or vacation in the "bosom of Nature"? These are some of the questions we will try to answer in this course on the place of the "pastoral" in U.S. literature, culture, and criticism.

MAJOR READINGS include literary texts by Crevecoeur, Jefferson, Filson/Boone, Bartram, Emerson, Thoreau, Dillard, Jewett, Cather, Hurston, Frost, Silko, Abbey, as well as critical and historical texts by D.H. Lawrence, Leo Marx, Henry Nash Smith, Richard Slotkin, Annette Kolodny, Lawrence Buell.

Click here to view coursepage.