English
Language and literature lie at the heart of a liberal education. The study of English attends to the use of language as a means of communication as well as to literary works of the imagination — poems, plays, stories, novels, and creative non-fiction. Students explore how literary forms manifest meaning, how they develop across time and cultural bounds, and how they engage a society’s fears and aspirations. As students grow adept at analyzing literary techniques, they hone their skill at shaping language to their own ends, developing into powerful writers and speakers.
Courses in the English Department offer the added benefit of preparing students for graduate study in law, medicine, business, and education, and for careers in all professional fields that value effective communication. Majors complete a three-year sequence of career development workshops that equip them to translate their interests and skills into meaningful work in today's rapidly evolving professional landscape.
Each semester the English Department offers approximately 25 upper-division courses as well as numerous courses for non-majors at the introductory and intermediate levels. Literature courses are organized by historical period (Age of Elizabeth, Contemporary African American Literature and Culture); by literary genre or theme (Medieval Romance, Reality Hunger, Modern Drama); and by author (Milton, Poe’s Haunted Poetry, T.S. Eliot). Other English Department courses deal with aesthetics and criticism (Feminist Literary Theory, Queer Theory). A third type of course focuses on the craft of speaking and writing (Rhetoric; Intermediate Academic Writing; Introduction to Creative Writing – Narrative). Tutorials, seminars, and courses on special topics are also offered. Many of the Department’s courses are cross-listed with the College’s concentrations in Africana Studies; Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies; Latin American, Latinx, and Caribbean Studies; Catholic Studies; and Medieval and Renaissance Studies; as well as with interdisciplinary majors and minors including Rhetoric and Composition, Asian Studies, and Environmental Studies. Conversely, many of the literature courses offered by the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies Department may be counted toward the requirements of the English major and creative writing minor.
Honors
The English Department Honors Program is designed for selected members of the senior class who have demonstrated excellence in the discipline and an aptitude for independent work. Candidates for honors in English must take a seminar, in addition to writing a two-semester English honors thesis in their fourth year. Only one semester of this thesis may count as a course toward the major. Admission to honors is by invited application to the English Honors Committee in the student’s third year. Students may be members of both the College Honors Program and the English Honors Program. Such students need write only one English thesis for both programs.
Sigma Tau Delta: a chapter of the national English honor society was established at Holy Cross in 1987. Eligible English majors are elected to membership and actively engage in the promotion of English studies.
Department Advanced Placement Policy
Students with AP credit in English are not awarded credit in the major or advanced placement in the English curriculum.
Shawn Lisa Maurer, Ph.D., Professor
Jonathan D. Mulrooney, Ph.D., Professor
Lee Oser, Ph.D., Professor
Oliver de la Paz, M.F.A., James N. and Sarah L. O'Reilly Barrett Professor in Creative Writing
Leila S. Philip, M.F.A., Rev. John E. Brooks, S.J. Chair in the Humanities
Paige Reynolds, Ph.D., Stephen J. Prior Professor of Humanities
Susan Elizabeth Sweeney, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Arts and Humanities
Elliott Visconsi, Ph.D., Professor
Christine A. Coch, Ph.D., Associate Professor
Debra L. Gettelman, Ph.D., Associate Professor
Madigan Haley, Ph.D., Associate Professor
Melissa A. Schoenberger, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Chair
Sharif Abdelkarim, Ph.D., Assistant Professor
Morris Collins, M.F.A., Assistant Professor
Kyle C. Frisina, Ph.D., Assistant Professor
Brent Otto, , S.J. Ph.D., Assistant Professor
Patrick Whitmarsh, Ph.D., Assistant Professor
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, M.F.A., Jenks Chair in Contemporary Letters
Rebecca Kuang, Ph.D., Millard Distinguished Writer in Residence
Lauren Cooper, Ph.D., Visiting Assistant Professor
Matthew Gannon, Ph.D., Visiting Assistant Professor
Daniela Kukrechtová, Ph.D, Visiting Assistant Professor
Nathaniel Philip Likert, Ph.D., Visiting Assistant Professor
Jessikah Diaz, Ph.D., Visiting Lecturer
ENGL 100 — Intro to Literary Study Course count: 1
How does literature matter? What use is figurative language? What truth can literature offer? This course teaches students how literary texts produce meaning through genre and form. Through frequent analytical writing assignments based on the readings, the course helps students learn to present complex arguments with clarity, logic, and persuasive style.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Fall, Spring
ENGL 110 — Introduction to Academic Writing Course count: 1
Devoted to improving the student's writing through frequent revisions. Intensive work during the semester concentrates on the student's own writing, which is examined in class and in conference with the instructor.Class size limited to 12 students.
Enrollment limited to 1st year students only
GPA units: 1
Typically Offered: Fall, Spring
ENGL 130 — Poetry and Poetics Course count: 1
The study of poetry is central to the study of literature, since it is in poetry that the power of language-play is at its most intense. This course investigates how poetry produces emotional and intellectual effects through language, sound, and form. Examining poems from a broad range of writers and periods, students will hone close reading skills as they engage with the devices poets use to prompt imaginative work in their readers. All sections will be writing-intensive, using the drafting process to develop and refine literary analysis and ultimately to present it in the form of persuasive critical arguments. The course is required for English majors, who are encouraged to take it as early as possible to prepare for more advanced literary study.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Fall, Spring
ENGL 141 — Introduction to Creative Writing: Poetry Course count: 1
An introductory course in the study of the form and technique of poetry. As readers of literature we study how a work of art and an artist's vision are pieced together; as aspiring writers of literature we come to have a hands-on understanding of how a poem is created. Emphasis is on the intensive reading of modern and contemporary poems, though the assignments are creative. Class size limited to 12 students.
GPA units: 1
Typically Offered: Fall, Spring
ENGL 142 — Introduction to Creative Writing: Narrative Course count: 1
An introductory course in the study of the varied forms and techniques of fiction and non-fiction. Emphasis is on the intensive reading and writing of various prose forms. Lectures on form, language and finding material for inspiration. Class size limited to 12 students.
GPA units: 1
Typically Offered: Fall, Spring
ENGL 200 — Masterpieces of British Literature Course count: 1
A study of selected major works of British Literature. Non-majors only.
Prerequisite: Students who are English majors are unable to enroll in this course.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Annually
ENGL 201 — Masterpieces of American Literature Course count: 1
A study of selected major works of American Literature. Non-majors only.
Prerequisite: Students who are English majors are unable to enroll in this course.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Annually
ENGL 210 — Intermediate Academic Writing Course count: 1
Intensive reading and writing of expository essays to develop the student's authorial voice and style. Students for whom English is a second language or who come from a diverse or multicultural background will receive special help in some sections; consult the instructor. Class size limited to 12.
Enrollment limited to 2nd, 3rd and 4th year students only
GPA units: 1
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
ENGL 211 — Opposites Attract: Science Writing Course count: 1
Focuses on the study and practice of various types of writing about scientific phenomena; considers fundamental questions about the relationship between scientific and humanistic modes of inquiry. One unit.
GPA units: 1
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
ENGL 212 — Introduction to Screenwriting Course count: 1
Covers the fundamentals of screenwriting (format, characterization, narrative arcs) through original creative work and close reading of example screenplays. Students will adapt a literary work to learn form, as well as draft, workshop, and revise their own scripts. Class size limited to 12. Permission of instructor required.
GPA units: 1
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
ENGL 230 — Touchstones 1: Early Brit Lit Course count: 1
This course examines the development of British literature from its beginnings to 1720, presenting at least six common texts while developing the close reading skills initiated at the introductory level of the major. Authors include Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope and Defoe. Should be taken after Poetry and Poetics and before any 300-level course.
Prerequisite: ENGL 130
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Fall, Spring
ENGL 231 — Touchstones 2A: American Lit Course count: 1
This course examines the development of American literature from its beginnings to the present, presenting at least six common texts while developing the close reading skills initiated at the introductory level of the major. Authors include Poe, Douglass, Dickinson, Whitman, Faulkner, Morrison, and Alvarez. One of two courses that can fulfill the English major Touchstones 2 requirement. Should be taken after Poetry and Poetics and before any 300-level course.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Fall, Spring
ENGL 232 — Touchstones 2B: Brit&Anglo Lit Course count: 1
This course examines the development of British literature from 1720 to the present, presenting at least six common texts while developing the close reading skills initiated at the introductory level of the major. Authors include Wordsworth, Coleridge, Dickens, T.S. Eliot, Woolf, Beckett and Ishiguro. One of two courses that fulfill the Touchstones 2 requirement. Should be taken after Poetry and Poetics and before any 300-level course.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Fall, Spring
ENGL 233 — Literary Forms Course count: 1
What does it mean to recognize a literary genre? To read for form? This course introduces students to genre thinking and cultivates the close reading skills acquired at the introductory level of the major.
Prerequisite: ENGL 100, 141, or 142 or select MONT or CRES literature courses (see list in department).
GPA units: 1
Typically Offered: Fall, Spring
ENGL 234 — Literary Histories Course count: 1
This course introduces students to literature in its historical context and to the history of literature and the literary. Students investigate how practices of historicization, periodization, and canon formation shape literary study.
Prerequisite: ENGL 100, 141, or 142 or select MONT or CRES literature courses (see list in department).
GPA units: 1
Typically Offered: Fall, Spring
ENGL 240 — Ekphrasis Course count: 1
From the Greeks onward, ekphrasis, or the practice of writing vivid description about art, has provided an excellent foundation for the development of imaginative writing in all genres. In this unique creative writing course, students will work in a museum setting to produce ekphrastic responses to artworks in several genres. They will try their hand at poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction, engaging their creativity as they learn the basic craft issues specific to each genre. No experience in creative writing or knowledge of visual art is required -- all students are welcome. This course will challenge your creativity and enlarge your understanding of both creative writing and visual art, but it will be rigorously playful, taking advantage of the creative environment of the Worcester Art Museum. Open to English majors and non-majors; no previous creative writing knowledge required; class size limited to 12.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Arts
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
ENGL 241 — Intermediate Poetry Workshop Course count: 1
For students who have taken any introductory creative writing course. A more advanced course on the reading and writing of poems with emphasis on prosody, writing in closed and open forms, and writing various types of poems. Lecture and workshop format with more attention to student writing. Class size limited to 12.
GPA units: 1
Typically Offered: Fall
ENGL 242 — Intermediate Fiction Workshop Course count: 1
For students who have taken any introductory creative writing course. A more advanced course on the reading and writing of the short story with emphasis on refining the skills learned in the introductory course. Workshop format with lectures and readings. Class size limited to 12.
GPA units: 1
Typically Offered: Fall, Spring
ENGL 243 — Intermediate Creative Nonfiction Workshop Course count: 1
For students who have taken any introductory creative writing course. A more advanced course on the reading and writing of essays with emphasis on the structural composition of longer, more investigative pieces. Class size limited to 12.
GPA units: 1
Typically Offered: Spring
ENGL 251 — Irish Topics Course count: 1
Irish Topics is a course for non-majors centered on Irish literature and culture. This course features the close study of Irish and Northern Irish writing organized around a particular theme, and it focuses on helping students develop critical reading and writing skills that will serve them regardless of their major and professional interests. Course titles have included Irish Sex, Irish Literary Activism, Twenty-First Century Irish Writing, Irish Drinking Culture, etc.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Alternate Years
ENGL 259 — Disability & Literature Course count: 1
This course guides us in learning about disability and the field of Critical Disability Studies through the critical and creative works of disabled writers. We will examine how physical, mental, and emotional disability have been portrayed across U.S. literature and popular culturehistorically, often without the input of disabled people themselves. At the same time, we will draw upon the critical writing of disabled writers to help us consider the benefits and damages of such representations of disabled people in the public imaginary, while simultaneously reflecting on our own roles as learners and creators in our own communities. Our course discussions and materials will situate these conversations within the development of disability rights in the U.S., including the 20th-century Disability Rights Movement, anti-psychiatry/Mad Pride, the autism rights movement, and Disability Justice. Students will practice attending to embodiment and health in literature and rhetoric with an intersectional awareness of access, emotion, and movement.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Cross-Cultural Studies, Literature
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
ENGL 260 — Multi-Ethnic Literature of the U.S. for Non-Majors Course count: 1
This course centers literature by writers whose identities have marked them as historically other to a predominantly white European body of works, including African American, Asian American, Indigenous, and Latinx authors, among others. Through our reading, discussion, and student research, our class will consider how literature influences and responds to complex conversations about race, ethnicity, nationality, and identity. Together we will ask what brings together multi-ethnic literature as a field, as well as how variations across authors, content, and form resist easy categorization. Alongside discussion of major and lesser-known works of multi-ethnic literature, we will contextualize our reading with the crucial role of activism in the development of this field and of ethnic studies programs. Our class will bridge the fields history and contemporary moment through multi-ethnic U.S. writers reflections of their roles in education and publishing today via trends like #OwnVoices and the We Need Diverse Books organization. We will examine these concepts through and with attention to various forms, including but not limited to comics, creative nonfiction, novels, poetry, and short stories, from multiple genres.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Cross-Cultural Studies, Literature
ENGL 261 — Women Writers: Coming of Age Course count: 1
This course examines how women writers from varying class, racial, ethnic, religious, regional, and national backgrounds represent female adolescence. Exploring a range of novels and memoirs, as well as several films, we will investigate the literary, cultural, and political contexts that shape both the works themselves and the situation of women writers. In addition to learning to read and analyze a wide range of texts, the course also offers significant opportunities to strengthen your writing skills through a variety of informal and formal writing assignments. Writing includes informal responses, three essays, and a coming-of-age memoir.
Prerequisite: Students who are English majors are unable to enroll in this course.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
ENGL 299-F02 — Shakespeare for non-English majors Course count: 1
An introduction to Shakespeares drama for non-English majors.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
ENGL 299-F04 — American Crime Fiction Course count: 1
After the detective story was born in the United States, in 1841 -- thanks to Edgar Allan Poe's grisly tale "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" -- it became a literary phenomenon that is still evolving today. We'll trace the genre's evolution from its gothic origins to armchair detection, the hard-boiled crime novel, the police procedural, and the thriller. At the same time, we'll explore how it merged with other genres--especially film noir and science fiction--and spread to other media, including graphic novels and streaming TV series. Authors may include Poe, Louisa May Alcott, Mark Twain, Rex Stout, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Alfred Bester, Sara Paretsky, Tony Hillerman, Barbara Neely, Thomas Pynchon and Paul Auster. For non-majors only.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
ENGL 299-S06 — Jane Austen for Nonmajors Course count: 1
Relatively unknown during her lifetime, Jane Austen has become one of our most beloved authors -- the 250th anniversary of her birth has inspired major celebrations across the world. But who really was Jane Austen, and why do we keep reading, rewriting, and adapting her clever and compelling novels like Pride and Prejudice? Austen perfected the narrative form we know as romantic comedy, and she also addresses issues related to readers today, including social and economic privilege, war and imperialism, and gendered norms. This non-majors English course examines Austen as a writer grappling with a literary tradition and historical reality that suggested women can find fulfillment and security only through love and marriage. But well also look to films and other cultural products to consider how and why her books are continually reimagined in new and increasingly diverse ways. In addition to learning to read and analyze literary works in their broader social, political, and cultural contexts, you will also have significant opportunities to strengthen your oral presentation and writing skills through a variety of analytic and creative assignments. Readings include Austens six published novels (Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion) along with critical essays and selections from her unpublished work; we will also examine some of the many film and TV adaptations that continue to make Austen such a relevant and enduring part of our world. This course fulfills the literature common requirement and counts toward the GSWS concentration. For non-majors only. Assignments include discussion posts, three essays of increasing length and complexity, a final creative assignment, and an oral presentation.
Prerequisite: Students who are English majors are unable to enroll in this course.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
ENGL 299-S07 — Alcohol in Irish Literature and Culture Course count: 1
The warm social embrace of Irish pubs. Raucous St. Patricks Day celebrations and the drunken Irish paddy. The craic. The global market for Irish brands like Guinness stout and Jameson whiskey. Irish culture has long been known for its relationship, positive as well as negative, with the consumption of alcohol. In this class, well move through centuries of Irish writing across genres and media drama, fiction, poetry, non-fiction prose, and film to examine the complexities and contradictions of stereotypes associated with drinking and Irish identity. Well not only hone your close reading and writing skills, but also interrogate broader themes and issues tied to alcohol consumption, including pleasure and sociability, mental and physical health, addiction and recovery.
Prerequisite: Students who are English majors are unable to enroll in this course.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
ENGL 299-S10 — Fundamentals of Speculative Fiction Course count: 1
This creative writing seminar covers the craft fundamentals of science fiction and fantasy (e.g. worldbuilding, magic systems, characters, plotting). How can we make fantastical worlds and characters come alive on the page? How can we use the genre scaffold of speculative fiction to interrogate ideas about our own world? We will close read canonical works by authors such as Ursula Le Guin, Octavia Butler, and Ray Bradbury. Meetings consist of discussions of assigned readings, timed writing exercises, and workshopping sessions. Students may turn in either a short story or an excerpt of a longer work for their final project. Class size limited to 12.
GPA units: 1
ENGL 312 — Medieval Romance Course count: 1
A study of the flowering of the Romance genre in late medieval England. Exploration of Continental and Middle Eastern origins; focus on popular subject matters of Romance in England, including Robin Hood and King Arthur.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
ENGL 314 — Chaucer Course count: 1
A reading and critical discussion of the complete Middle English text of The Canterbury Tales and selected minor poems.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Annually
ENGL 315 — Sex & Gender in Middle Ages Course count: 1
An exploration of gender and sexuality in the Middle Ages in popular works of Arthurian romance, warrior epic, and saint's life, as well as in letters and trial records. The course also draws on classical, medieval and modern gender theory relevant to topics under discussion, such as virginity, homosexuality, chivalry, and romantic love.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
ENGL 316 — The World Novel Course count: 1
The novel is a literary genre that has unique capacities to represent the modern world, in all its complexity. This course explores how novels from around the globe have done so from 1945 to the present, a period of profound historical transformation, when processes of modernization, decolonization, and global interconnection remade the world to an extent that is perhaps unique in human history. During this period, English came into its own as a global literary language, animating new traditions from Africa to Asia, the Caribbean to the Pacific and making the novel in English a powerful medium for rendering diverse experiences of contemporary life. Examining major works by writers such as Chinua Achebe, Jean Rhys, and Arundhati Roy, this course will help students become better readers of the contemporary novel and the world at large.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Alternate Years
ENGL 318 — Renaissance Marvels & Monsters Course count: 1
This course explores the literature of Renaissance England through its fascination with romance. Knights, dragons, magic, adventure, fair queens and foul seductresses, even a werewolf all fill the pages, stages, and entertainments of the day. The course will consider how such excesses came to have value in an age that privileged classical learning and Reformed faith. Readings include texts by Spenser, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Webster, Nashe, Jonson, Bacon, Wroth, and more.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
ENGL 320 — Age of Elizabeth Course count: 1
A study of the golden age of English Renaissance literature. The course explores how imaginative texts helped create the Virgin Queen, courtly culture, the cosmopolitan city of London, the English nation, and the New World. Readings include works by Sidney, Shakespeare, Spenser, Donne, Harriot, Nashe, and Elizabeth Tudor herself.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
ENGL 324 — Milton Course count: 1
A study of Milton's early poems, Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes, and selections from the prose.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Alternate Years
ENGL 325 — Georgic and Pastoral Course count: 1
As we continue to move into the twenty-first century, how will we ensure that everyone can enjoy nature in peaceful, safe, and healthy ways? This course aims to broaden students' understanding of the literary history informing these questions. "Georgic and Pastoral" asks students to consider poetry that explores the relationship between the human being and the natural world. As pastoral and georgic modes move through the late antique, medieval, early modern, and modern periods, they differ from one another in fairly consistent ways: pastoral poetry usually focuses on the lives of shepherds and rural deities living in a peaceful, natural space. Georgic poetry, on the other hand, takes up the subject of work, and tends to retain its didactic tone. Both modes, however, use these fundamental premises to engage with larger questions about human life and culture: who has the right to access land? Who has the right to evict someone else? What are the dangers of all-consuming love? What can the process of cultivation help us understand about creativity, humility, and perseverance?
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
ENGL 326 — Dickensian Fiction Course count: 1
Charles Dickenss novels have been so widely read for almost two hundred years that his name has come to describe any novel with a convoluted plot, urban setting, criminals, coincidences, and comically grotesque characters. This course pairs several of Dickenss novels with contemporary descendants such as Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead and Peter Careys Jack Maggs, as we identify the characteristics of this unique subset of British fiction. Given the length of Victorian novels and the courses focus on nineteenth-century narrative conventions and their legacy, this course satisfies the Group B requirement for the English major.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
ENGL 328 — Shakespeare's Contemporaries Course count: 1
A look at playwrights who are often dwarfed by Shakespeare, but who legitimately competed with him for that greatness. Other topics will include early modern notions of rivalry and collaboration, as well as the increasingtension between governing authorities and the theatre. One unit.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
ENGL 329 — Shakespeare Course count: 1
A one-semester survey of the major works of Shakespeare, focusing on individual texts as representative of the stages in his dramatic development, with some discussion of Shakespearean stage techniques.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Fall, Spring
ENGL 332 — Reading Nature Course count: 1
Designed for English majors, non-English majors and Environmental Studies Concentrators this course offers students an overview of writing in response to nature in American literature with an emphasis upon environmental history, narratives of eco-criticism and the role of literature in the formation of the American environmental movement from the 19th century onward. The course begins with the writings of Thoreau and Emerson , then moves to consider works by writers such as Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, John McPhee, Bill McKibben, Lauret Savoy, Elizabeth Kolbert and others. The course finishes with the study of contemporary writing that challenges ways we view the environment in the face of climate change and climate instability in the 21st century. No previous study in environmental history or American literature is required -- all students are welcome. This course will challenge you with new ideas and lots of reading, but it will incorporate creative approaches to writing assignments.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Every Third Year, Spring
ENGL 336 — 18th-Century Novel Course count: 1
A close examination of the novel as formal prose narrative. Novels by Defoe, Fielding, Richardson, Smollet, the Gothic novelists, Sterne, and Austen are considered in detail with collateral readings.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Alternate Years
ENGL 337 — 18th-Century Poetry Course count: 1
A study of the development of 18th-century English poetry from the canonical Augustans-Dryden, Pope, Swift, Anne Finch, and Lady Montagu - through the mid-century and later work of Gray, Collins, the Wartons, Smart, Cowper, Charlotte Smith, Joanna Baillie, and Anna Seward, ending with Blake's lyrics.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
ENGL 338 — 18th-Century Satire Course count: 1
The course will focus on a variety of 18th-century prose, dramatic, and verse satires, including works by Defoe, Swift, Pope, and others. Special attention will be given to modes of satire (burlesque, parody, travesty, mock epic, etc.) as well as to the objectives of satire (amendment, punishment).
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
ENGL 339 — Restoration & 18th-Century Drama Course count: 1
A survey of English drama from Dryden to Sheridan, including heroic drama, Restoration comedy, sentimental developments of the 18th century, and the re-emergence of laughing comedy.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
ENGL 340 — Caribbean Literature: Zombies, Witches, and Time Travel Course count: 1
A study of selected writers from the Caribbean whose texts help to address the ways in which Caribbean literary thought and culture has evolved from the colonial times to the present.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
ENGL 344 — The Romantic Revolution Course count: 1
A study of the major writers of the Romantic movement -- Edmund Burke, Mary Wollstonecraft, William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth, Coleridge, Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Byron, Keats, Hazlitt, Lamb, and De Quincey. One unit.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Alternate Years
ENGL 345 — British Women Writers 1770 - 1860 Course count: 1
A study of novels, poetry, and prose writings by women writing during and after the Romantic Movement - Frances Burney, Jane Austen, the Brontes, Mary Wollstonecraft, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and others. One unit.
Enrollment limited to 2nd, 3rd and 4th year students only
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Alternate Years
ENGL 346 — Victorian Poetry Course count: 1
A study of the British poetry and poetic theory composed during Queen Victoria's reign (1837 - 1901). Authors treated may include Alfred Lord Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, D. G. Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, Matthew Arnold, and Gerard Manly Hopkins.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
ENGL 347 — 19th-Century British Novel Course count: 1
A close examination of the British novel in the 19th century, including novels by Thackeray, Dickens, the Brontes, George Eliot, and Hardy.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
ENGL 348 — Reality Hunger Course count: 1
A study of the evolution of contemporary American non-fiction narrative, which traces its roots to the 19th-century writing of Emerson and Thoreau.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
ENGL 350 — Early American Colonialism Course count: 1
A study of the development of cultural contact between Native Americans and Europeans, the Puritan experiment, and the founding of the nation from 1600 - 1830.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
ENGL 351 — Walking with Thoreau Course count: 1
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) is often credited as being the founder of the American environmental movement. We will read Thoreaus rich Journals and world-famous Walden, and his political manifesto Civil Disobedience to understand the reasons for his continuing influence around the world: What has people building replicas of Thoreaus cabin today, or living in tiny houses, a la Thoreau? What has activists still using his essay Civil Disobedience as a guide? How is he valued today as a scientist? And how does his scientific and poetic approach to nature help widen and deepen our sense of what we now call the environmental humanities? Thoreau was in many ways a founder of the field. This course involves much walking and fieldwork around Pakachoag (College Hill) and other locations, including Walden Pond and Walden Woods. Well practice Thoreaus methods of observation and reflection by keeping a field journal. We will read current scholarship on Thoreau as an early ecologist, geologist, and recorder of Native American knowledge. Well read wildlife biologist Drew Lanhams Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Mans Love Affair with Nature to put Walden in dialogue with other rich studies of place being written today.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
ENGL 352 — American Realism Course count: 1
A study of the rise of variant expressions of realism, its evolution into naturalism, the revival of local color and the flowering of regionalism, all in response to the changing American scene through immigration, segregation, business, technology and other forces between the Civil War and World War I.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
ENGL 353 — American Women Write the World Course count: 1
A study of various genres in which 19th-century women engaged restrictive definitions of a woman's sphere. Authors treated may include Davis, Child, Stowe, Alcott, Dickinson, Phelps, and Wharton.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
ENGL 354 — Lincoln, Civil War, & Memory Course count: 1
A survey of how the Civil War and Reconstruction periods have been described in American literature, from both the northern and southern perspective. Possible works include selected Civil War poetry and speeches, Stephen Crane's Red Badge of Courage, Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind, and Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain.
Prerequisite: ENGL 251 or ENGL 293. ENGL 283 is recommended.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
ENGL 355 — Poe's Haunted World Course count: 1
This course examines Poe's contribution as editor and critic; as pioneer of short fiction and science fiction; as inventor of the detective story; as author of strange and powerful poems; and as master of horror. It surveys recurrent topics such as doubleness, death, and insoluble mystery in Poe's poems, essays, tales, and novel, within the broader context of 19th-century American culture.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
ENGL 356 — American Immigrant Narratives Course count: 1
American Immigrant Narratives traces the development of the genre across the 20th century. While outlining and theorizing the tropes, settings, and expectations of this genre, we will keep an eye towards how particular authors make use of the genre to respond to or explore U.S. racial and social discourses concerning immigration in play at the time. We will focus on authors from various literary traditions, such as Mary Antin, Cristina García, and Gish Jen, while blending in work from popular culture, such as Mark Waid's Superman: Birthright, Lin Manuel-Miranda's Hamilton, and James Mangold's 2017 film Logan.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Alternate Years
ENGL 357 — The United States of Poetry Course count: 1
A close analysis of the development of American poetry from the early 20th century up to the contemporary period, including such poets as Pound, Eliot, Williams, Crane, Frost, Stevens, Bishop, and others.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
ENGL 358 — Modern American Novel Course count: 1
A study of the emergence of Modernism and other currents in the American novel from 1900 to the contemporary period.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
ENGL 359 — African American Poetry Course count: 1
In this course, you'll explore the rich, vibrant history of African American poetry, from its beginnings in colonial America to influential cultural moments such as the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, and contemporary advocacy for justice and human rights. We'll read poems by Phillis Wheatley, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Amiri Baraka, and many others, including Black poets associated with Worcester (Etheridge Knight and Chris Gilbert) and contemporary poets such as Terrance Hayes, Harryette Mullen, and Natasha Trethewey.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
ENGL 362 — T.S. Eliot Course count: 1
A close study of Eliot's poetry, criticism, and drama, including unpublished and lesser-known writings.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
ENGL 363 — Joyce Course count: 1
A close study of Joyce's modernist epic novel Ulysses as an experimental narrative; preceded by a close reading of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man or Dubliners.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
ENGL 364 — Contemporary Irish Literature Course count: 1
A study of the prose, poetry, and drama produced in Northern Ireland and the Republic from the last quarter of the 20th century to the present. Writers studied include Boland, Doyle, Friel, Heaney, and Ni Dhomhnaill as well as those less familiar to American readers, and readings are explored in light of relevant contemporary cultural concerns such as sectarianism, gender, the Celtic Tiger, and post-colonial identity.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
ENGL 365 — Modern British Poetry Course count: 1
A study of the major British poets in the 20th century, including Hardy, the Georgians, the Imagists, Lawrence, Yeats, Eliot, Auden, and Dylan Thomas.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
ENGL 366 — Modern British Novel Course count: 1
A study of developments in the British novel from 1900 - 1950, with an emphasis on Modernist texts, through an examination of works by novelists such as Forster, Joyce, Woolf, Lawrence, Rhys, Greene, and Waugh.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
ENGL 367 — Latinx Literature Course count: 1
This class will consider a variety of Latino/a texts both for their narrative content and their historical context. This course examines how each author struggles with their own sense of cultural identity while locating themselves in a fraught U.S. racial landscape. We will closely examine the narrative content of each text, as well as consider how the role of genre shapes each story. Furthermore, we will also consider the role of the specific national histories and their incumbent relationships to gender, race, class, religion, war, and diaspora for each individual text.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Alternate Years
ENGL 368 — African American Literature Course count: 1
This course will examine works in the African American literary tradition from its beginnings in antebellum poetry and the slave narrative, through the flourishing of the New Negro Movement, to the Black Arts Movement and its influence on the late twentieth century. These works struggle with declarations of personhood, the battle for equality, and most of all, the creation of an African American voice. We will read a wide range of influential African American texts in a variety of genres and situate them in their literary, historical, and/or political contexts.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Annually
ENGL 369 — Staging Public Life: Crises of Community in Modern and Contemporary Drama Course count: 1
A study of developments in drama from the late nineteenth century to the present in the US, UK, and Europe.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
ENGL 370 — Being Modern Course count: 1
A study of the major genres of modernist writing (fiction and poetry) in the context of global modernity. Includes works by writers such as James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, Claude McKay, Nella Larsen, and Mulk Raj Anand.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Alternate Years
ENGL 372 — Contemporary African American Literature and Culture Course count: 1
An investigation of literature by African American authors dating from the 1970's to the present day in the genres of science fiction/fantasy, mystery, memoir, novels exploring gender and sexuality, and cultural theory, with emphasis on the issues of visibility and invisibility as well as the theme of the American Dream.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Alternate Years
ENGL 374 — Contemp. African Amer. Drama Course count: 1
This course will examine contemporary African American drama and highlight long-running traditions in the genre as well as revisions and sequels to some of its most canonical plays. Through the plays, additional readings, and performances, we will explore questions of slang, dialect, and accent; how history is presented and challenged on stage; the relationship between social justice and drama; debates about colorblind versus color-conscious casting; and audience reception.
Enrollment limited to 2nd, 3rd and 4th year students only
GPA units: 1
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
ENGL 375 — Asian American Literature Course count: 1
A survey of representative Asian American literature from early twentieth-century immigrant narratives to contemporary writings. Examines Asian American literary production and its main literary themes.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Cross-Cultural Studies, Literature
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
ENGL 377 — Environmental Poetics Course count: 1
Rather than provide a survey of environmental literature, this course will explore how various literary texts imagine a relation (or non-relation) between the human being and the non-human world. We will consider works from multiple genres and time periods alongside longstanding and recent theoretical approaches to the question of nature. How do imaginative writers represent the place of the human being in the larger, "natural" world? Do their texts have an ethical or political valence? What kind of local and global environments do they represent, or attempt to bring into being? What place does human labor, or human indolence, have in shaping the world? What role does the animal take in human imagining? Assignments are designed to help students frame these and other questions for themselves while attending closely to questions of literary form.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
ENGL 378 — 21st-Century Literature Course count: 1
Explores award-winning British and American literature of the new millennium in an attempt to take the pulse of what's going on in our most contemporary literature. Texts are read in the contexts of late 20th-century literary and theoretical movements such as: postmodernism, post-colonialism, gender studies, and multiculturalism.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
ENGL 379 — Confrontations with Christianity Course count: 1
Course explores a variety of American ethnic authors' engagement with Chrsitiantiy in the context of racial strife, uplift, and hierarchy in the United States. Spanning multiple genres and communities of faith, this course examines how literature confronts racial injustice with Christianity or within Christianity. Our task will be to examine these confrontations and how they intersect with related issues concerning sexuality, gender, class, revolution, and many others.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
ENGL 381 — Rhetoric Course count: 1
A consideration of rhetorical theory in the classical texts of Plato and Aristotle, an analysis of some famous examples of persuasive eloquence, and the student's own exercise of persuasive speech on subjects of public concern.
GPA units: 1
Typically Offered: Annually
ENGL 382 — Queer Theory Course count: 1
Built upon but departing from the identity-based approach of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) Studies, Queer Theory critically investigates cultural normativities related to sexuality, sex, and gender. This highly theoretical course will introduce students to the foundational thinkers of the field, including Foucault, Sedgwick, and Butler. We will also consider literary works that enact queer theory.
GPA units: 1
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
ENGL 383 — Feminist Literary Theory Course count: 1
An examination of major directions in 20th-century feminist literary theory, with study of works by writers such as Charlotte Bronte, Chopin, Gilman, Woolf, Atwood, and Morrison. Theory may address such issues as gendered reading and writing, representation of the body and sexuality, gender/race/class, feminism and ideology.
GPA units: 1
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
ENGL 384 — Literary Theory Course count: 1
Literary Theory is a unique English class: rather than spending the semester reading works of literature (of the kind you might expect to find in a typical English course), we will be studying some of the major ways in which human beings have sought to understandor theorizewhat literature is, what it does, and what it might teach us. Though we will begin by studying some of Western intellectual history's foundational literary theorists (including Plato, Immanuel Kant, and Friedrich Nietzsche), the bulk of the course will be devoted to considering major movements that have emerged in contemporary literary studies (from, roughly, the mid-twentieth century through to the present). These include New Criticism, an approach thatdespite its namehas come to be viewed as outdated but which nonetheless gave us the widespread practice of close reading; Post-Structuralism, an approach that focuses on challenging or deconstructing seemingly stable binary oppositions; and the distinct but related fields of Critical Race Theory, Post-Colonialism, Gender Studies, and Queer Theory, all of which urge us to place renewed focus on authors and characters identities and on the cultural and political environments in which texts were produced. Key questions running throughout the course will include: What, if anything, is unique or special about literature? Can literature give us knowledge of the worldor only of itself? Can reading literature make us better people? And if so, how? Can reading literature make us worse people? And if so, should we keep doing it anyway?
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Annually
ENGL 388 — Adv Creative Writing Workshop Course count: 1
An advanced multi-genre workshop. Only those who have completed at least one introductory-level and one intermediate-level creative writing course will be considered. Specialization in one genre and completion of the creative writing concentration are both recommended. Permission of the instructor required.
GPA units: 1
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
ENGL 391 — Topics in Rhetoric Course count: 1
This course explores histories, theories, and cultures of rhetoric in and beyond the Western world. Possible topics include Queer Rhetorics, Digital Writing, Rhetoric and Gender, Native American/Indigenous Rhetorics, Transgender Rhetorics, Multimodal Rhetoric, and American Political Rhetoric.
GPA units: 1
Typically Offered: Annually
ENGL 392 — Topics in Composition Course count: 1
This course explores the theory and practice of composition. Students will explore writing in a variety of contexts from academic to professional with a particular focus on digital and multimodal composition.
GPA units: 1
Typically Offered: Annually
ENGL 394 — The Black Urban Experience Course count: 1
This course examines the relationship between African American literature and urban spaces in the twentieth century. While the majority of the nineteenth-century African American population lived in the South, by World War I the "Great Migration" northward had begun. The assigned works tackle issues such as segregation and "the ghetto," the alienation of city living, and the influence of "the city" on music, sexuality, art, and crime.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
ENGL 399-F05 — Strange Poetry Course count: 1
Literature is strange. Poetry, in particular, is weird. This course focusing mainly on modern and contemporary literature will consider unusual poetic works from a wide range of traditions: nonsense verse, cosmic horror, surrealism, modernist experimentation, the avant-garde, and more. Authors studied will include Lewis Carroll, H. P. Lovecraft, Gertrude Stein, and M. NourbeSe Philip among others. In thinking about how and why poetry became weirdor came to be seen as weirdwe will ask deeper questions about what art is and what its purpose is. We will read theoretical works suggesting that literatures primary power lies in making the familiar strange, and we will discuss how poetrys capacity to challenge the conventional has important philosophical, political, and personal implications. Students in this course will write an analytical paper close reading poetry as well as a research paper drawing on recent scholarship. During an in-class Strange Poetry Symposium, students will present on works of strange poetry: either works discovered through research or poems they themselves have written. At the end of the semester, these discovered and/or created works will be collectedalong with brief commentaries from studentsin our classs Strange Poetry Anthology.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
ENGL 399-F06 — Love and Death in the American Novel Course count: 1
In Love and Death in the American Novel (1960), Leslie Fiedlers groundbreaking and controversial study of the origins of American literary identity, Fiedler argues that early American literature is a gothic fiction, nonrealistic and negative, sadist and melodramatica literature of darkness and the grotesque in a land of light and affirmation. The American novel, he argues, bears the mark of our early national anxiety over the violencein colonial revolt and the institution of slavery, at sea and on the western frontierthat characterizes our nations history. In early American literature, he suggests, we encounter a haunted world where American novelists, adopting formal prototypes from the European horror and sentimental literary traditions, explore certain obsessive concerns of our national life in an attempt simultaneously to dramatize and repress historical, cultural, and sexual anxieties. In this class, we will investigate these claims by reading American novels, starting with some of the classics that Fiedler himself examined, before moving on to more contemporary examples. In so doing, we will ask: how does the contemporary American novel negotiate or transcend similar anxieties? How does the novel as a form allow us to investigate history and desire, reality and reason, dream and nightmare, desire for freedom and cultural pressures for domestic responsibility? Works will likely include novels by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, Toni Morrison and Gayl Jones among others and will include engagement with literary criticism.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
ENGL 399-F07 — Moby Dick Course count: 1
A comprehensive study Herman Melville's Moby Dick, including sources, contexts, and critical approaches.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
ENGL 399-F08 — American Detective Fiction Course count: 1
A comprehensive analysis of American Detective Fiction from the 19th Century to Contemporary Literature. Authors may include Edgar Allan Poe, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Elmore Leonard, and Walter Mosley.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
ENGL 399-S13 — World Poetry & English Translation Course count: 1
This course focuses on translations of poems by modern and contemporary poets who are concerned with the way the art of poetry can help us think more deeply, and perhaps more wisely, about what it means to live in a complex and difficult modern world. This concern became especially relevant in the modern time period when poets started using forms, themes, and poetic language that were more closely tied to their political and social experience and found it both irresistible and difficult to reconcile the issues of aesthetics and politics. The modern and contemporary poets that we will examine in this course offer both new literary traditions and distinct poetic voices to the English-speaking audience; their poetry also, in Seamus Heaneys words, link[s] the new literary experience to a modern martyrology, a record of courage and sacrifice which elicits our admiration. Fulfills Group D (Theories and Methodologies) requirement for the English major.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
ENGL 399-S15 — Spenser's Changing Climates Course count: 1
A man so envious he turns into Jealousy itself. A secret land that turns out to be inside your own mind. Two rivers that get married. These are just some of the wild transformations of Edmund Spensers poetry, which respond to equally dramatic shifts in the English Renaissance he wrote within. These in turn bear uncanny parallels to the key issues of today: a climate damaged by human enterprise, authoritarian politics, and the question of how to be a good person in and around it all. We will track the key motif of metamorphosis throughout Spensers works, including the astonishing genre and verse innovations he used to capture it. This course will grow up alongside our poet, following Spenser from his youthful experiments in pastoral through his adolescent sonnets all the way to his mature epic one of the strangest and richest poems in English The Faerie Queene. We will carefully evaluate its place as a document of empire, reading it alongside Spensers own (often queasy) participation in the colonization of Ireland, with consequences ecological, political, and personal.
GPA units: 1
ENGL 399-S16 — Global Medievalisms Course count: 1
A study of medieval England's inspirations from and outlooks toward the wider world, with special attention to literary innovations.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
ENGL 400 — Tutorial Course count: 1
Permission of the instructor and/or the department chair ordinarily required for such courses. One unit.
GPA units: 1
Typically Offered: Fall, Spring
ENGL 401 — Seminar Course count: 1
Advanced seminars offer students an opportunity to pursue an ambitious independent project and to take more responsibility for class experience. Recent seminars have included: Tolkien, Dickens, Catholicism in Irish Literature, Transgender Memoir, American Historical Romance, Global Modernism, Graphic Novel, Jane Austen, Shakespeare's Christian Humanism, and Medieval Otherworlds. One unit each semester.
GPA units: 1
Typically Offered: Fall, Spring
ENGL 407 — English Honors Thesis Course count: 1
Two semesters' credit, granted at end of second semester. Candidates selected from invited applicants to the English Honors Committee.
GPA units: 0
Typically Offered: Fall
ENGL 408 — English Honors Thesis Course count: 1
Two semesters' credit, granted at end of second semester. Candidates selected from invited applicants to the English Honors Committee. One unit each semester.
GPA units: 2
Typically Offered: Spring
ENGL 409 — English Honors Colloquium Course count: 0
English Honors thesis students and College Honors English thesis students. One-half credit, granted at end of second semester.
GPA units: 0.5
Typically Offered: Fall, Spring