Spring 2010 courses in literature
To see detailed descriptions of the department’s spring 2009 literature classes, click on a course title or scroll down to see the full list.
LITR 100 | Introduction to Literary Analysis
LITR 256 | American Literature II
LITR 258 | British Literature II
LITR 265 | Shakespeare
LITR 280 | African-American Literature
LITR 266 | Studies in the Novel
LITR 291 | Topics in Literature: Metaphors and Medicine
LITR 362 | Modern Literature
LITR 370 | Creative Writing: Poetry
LITR 391 | Advanced Topics in Literature: Metaphors and Medicine
Note: Department course offerings are subject to change at any time. For the most up-to-date information, please check BenULive.
›› LITR 100 | Introduction to Literary Analysis (Amir)
As the required introductory course for both Literature majors and Writing and Publishing majors, LITR 100 has two purposes: to prepare students for more advanced work in the study of literature, and to raise and explore the question of how we interpret (and how we should interpret) literary texts. The course will address three major aspects of textual analysis: close reading, conventions of language and genre, and contextual/cultural studies. Class discussions will also give students an opportunity to reflect consciously upon their own techniques as readers of literature and to become familiar with a variety of literary genres, theoretical perspectives, and interpretive strategies.
Note: this course does NOT f ulfill the core literature requirement.
›› LITR 256 | American Literature II (Chen)
This course surveys American literature from 1865 to the contemporary period and examines such literary movements as realism, naturalism, modernism, and postmodernism. Our engagement with twentieth-century U.S. literature and culture takes seriously the notion of competing visions of modernity, and we will consider developments such as twentieth-century feminism, the Harlem Renaissance and its legacies, the diverse artistic production of the “cultural front,” and the dynamic relationships between certain forms of popular music, film, and literary culture. We will also begin to trace the development of twentieth-century U.S. multicultural literary traditions and will conclude the course with a unit on literature, transnationalism, and globalization. Course readings may include Henry James’s Daisy Miller, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper,” Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, Nella Larsen’s Passing, stories by Flannery O’Connor, stories by Raymond Carver, and Karen Tei Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange.
Fulfills core literature requirement.
Counts as post-1800 course for Literature majors and minors.
›› LITR 258 | British Literature II (Amir)
Though sometimes viewed as a last bastion of musty, unreadable literature written by dead people, the British literary tradition is a vividly alive landscape, one populated by murderous madmen, seductive women, and other unexpectedly strange literary creations. In this introductory survey of British literature written from 1789 to the early part of the twentieth century, we’ll study the complex historical and cultural forces that gave rise to these figures and shaped—and reshaped—the literary landscape of Britain in the Romantic, Victorian, and Modernist eras. We’ll also consider how texts from these periods participated in vital conversations about gender, sexuality, race, faith, and nationhood, at times reinforcing such categories and at others challenging their seemingly essential or “natural” status. As we explore these issues, we’ll discuss strategies for approaching poetry and fiction productively, giving special attention to refining critical reading and writing skills. Texts will include poetry by William Wordsworth, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Christina Rossetti, and William Butler Yeats, as well as fiction by Charles Dickens, James Joyce, and others.
Fulfills core literature requirement.
Counts as post-1800 course for Literature majors and minors.
›› LITR 265 | Shakespeare (Kubek)
Fulfills core literature requirement.
Counts as pre-1800 course for Literature majors and minors.
›› LITR 280 | African-American Literature (Chen)
This course is an exploration of African-American literature of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Moving across several genres and even some traditional disciplinary boundaries, we will study novels, autobiography, drama, and film. The course begins with James Weldon Johnson’s fictional The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912), and then moves on to engage with the literary culture of the Harlem Renaissance through a study of Langston Hughes’s The Big Sea and Nella Larsen’s Quicksand. We will also trace certain twentieth-century developments in the black feminist tradition by examining Paule Marshall’s novel Brown Girl, Brownstones (1959) and Toni Morrison’s novel Tar Baby (1981). We will conclude the course by viewing a contemporary theatrical production and a recent film.
Fulfills diversity requirement for English Language and Literature majors and the multicultural/non-western cultural requirement for Education majors.
Fulfills core literature requirement.
›› LITR 291 | Topics in Literature: Metaphors and Medicine (Kauth)
See course description for LITR 391 (Advanced Topics in Literature: Metaphors and Medicine) below.
Crosslisted with LITR 391 and MDHM 200 (Introduction to Medical Humanities).
LITR 291 fulfills core literature requirement; no prerequisite.
›› LITR 362 | Modern Literature (Kubek)
Prerequisite: LITR 100.
Counts as post-1800 course for Literature majors and minors.
Prerequisite: LITR 269.
›› LITR 391 | Advanced Topics in Literature: Metaphors and Medicine (Kauth)
When you think about gender, do you automatically assume there are two “opposite” sexes? People up through the Enlightenment thought about gendered bodies in an entirely different way. Did you know that until Newton, physicists thought of curvilinear motion as the ideal and natural motion of heavenly bodies? Have you ever considered how the metaphors pertaining to a given disease influence the experience of the disease itself? How are current technologies changing our understanding of our own bodies? In this course we will study how scientific paradigms shape the cultural imagination of the body, the physical world, and the cosmos in literature, from Hippocrates to contemporary science fiction. The course is not a complete history of science so much as an examination of how the major scientific metaphors play out within Western literature and culture. The class will focus particularly upon metaphors within medical practice and how these metaphors affect the sense of body and identity. For the final project, each student will select a contemporary work of science fiction or current issue related to science and analyze its metaphoric, political, or gender implications. Students need not have a background in literature or science, but they should bring strong analytical skills and a sense of creativity to the class.
Crosslisted with LITR 291 and MDHM 200 (Introduction to Medical Humanities).
LITR 291 fulfills core literature requirement; no prerequisite.
Prerequisite for LITR 391: LITR 100.