ENGLISH 1D:
Dickens Reading
Through the academic year, we will read one Dickens novel, one number a week for 19 weeks, as the Victorians would have done as they read the serialized novel over the course of 19 months. The group gets together once a week for an hour and a half to discuss each number, to look carefully at the pattern that the author is weaving, to guess, as the Victorians would have done, what might be coming next, and to investigate the Victorian world Dickens presents. We look carefully at themes, characters, metaphorical patterns, and scenes that form Dickens' literary world, and spend increasing time evaluating the critique that Dickens levels at Victorian life. The weekly gatherings are casual; the discussion is lively and pointed.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 1
| Repeatable
5 times
(up to 5 units total)
ENGLISH 5AA:
Queer(ing) Asian American Literature
When "inadmissible" desires and "illegible" racial identities intersect, what do their complex entanglements make visible? What histories do they illuminate? What other worlds do they make possible? Thinking with Alexander Chee's Edinburgh (2000), Monique Truong's The Book of Salt (2003), and Ocean Vuong's On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019), this course explores queer Asian American literary narratives as imperatives for fuller understandings of Asian American racial and sexual identities - and as critical interventions in the Asian American literary canon. Drawing in supplementary short stories, poetry, and art, as well as readings in criticism and theory, we will also consider: how might the doubly "inscrutable" figure of the queer Asian American destabilize the very boundaries of "Asian America" itself? No previous exposure to Asian American critique or queer theory expected: students of all backgrounds are welcome. (Note: This Writing-Intensive Seminar in English (WISE) course fulfills WIM for English majors. Non-majors are welcome, space permitting. For enrollment permission contact vbeebe@stanford.edu.)
Terms: Aut
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
ENGLISH 5BA:
Reading and Writing in the Digital Age
In this course, we will ask how acts of reading, writing, and interpretation change across different mediums, softwares, platforms, and contexts. The digital turn has fractured the historical connection between literature and the printed page, and rooted our everyday writing on seemingly immaterial mediums. So, why do we still read physical books in a world where practically all text has been digitized, a world where we have Red Dead Redemption and Wikipedia? What is the book as a literary object doing today? How have digital-age writers?particularly writers of color?reimagined the book as a means for representing historical trauma through experiments in image and typography? How, more broadly, has the digitization of communication transformed or displaced literary forms and experiences? What even is 'literary writing' (or, for that matter, 'academic writing')? To explore these questions, we will consider various mediums of reading and writing?including letters (Emily Dickinson and Eminem), artists' books (Edward Ruscha and Rupi Kaur), sound (Amiri Baraka, Kendrick Lamar, Tracie Morris), video games (Emily is Away, Doki Doki Literature Club!), fan fiction, and more?drawing on readings in media studies and reader response theory as critical frameworks for our inquiries. To supplement these readings, we will experiment with writing in several forms and platforms, exploring how different media both constrain and enable unique forms of expression and interpretation. (Note: This Writing-Intensive Seminar in English (WISE) course fulfills WIM for English majors. Non-majors are welcome, space permitting. For enrollment permission contact vbeebe@stanford.edu.)
Terms: Aut
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
ENGLISH 5CA:
WISE: Anti-Social Heroes in the Nineteenth Century
In this course, we will consider how unsociability, or anti-sociability, became a major literary trope of modernity. Reading texts by Jane Austen (Emma), James Hogg (Confessions of a Justified Sinner), and Charles Baudelaire (a translated selection of poetry and prose), we will encounter such figures as the outcast, the egotist, and the fl¿neur, and ask how they came to predominate the literary imagination. We will also engage with a variety of critical approaches as we explore questions about the aesthetics and politics of unsociability and the modern social configurations in which they took shape. With Hogg, we will think about political voice and the scapegoat's ironic mode of social critique. With Austen, we will attend to the nexus of narrative, competition, and civility, as we consider the gendered division of forms of unsociability. With Baudelaire, we will turn to the modern city and explore the psychology and philosophy underpinning its emerging cultural heroes. (Note: This Writing-Intensive Seminar in English (WISE) course fulfills WIM for English majors. Non-majors are welcome, space permitting. For enrollment permission contact vbeebe@stanford.edu.)
Terms: Aut
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
ENGLISH 5DA:
WISE: Poetic Intelligences
In a recent column on A.I. chatbots, Ezra Klein writes that their "'thinking,' for lack of a better word, is utterly inhuman, but we have trained it to present as deeply human" (The New York Times, March 12, 2023). Implicit in Klein's argument is the assumption that we do understand human thinking, or at least how to recognize it, and that A.I. confronts us with something radically different masquerading as the familiar. But perhaps the world has long been populated by different kinds of thinkers. That appears to be the claim of a number of critics working on poetry, who posit that poems are their own kinds of thinking machines, with the ability to represent a speaker's thinking, to facilitate a reader's thinking, to formulate the structure of thinking, or even to think for themselves. In this course, we'll examine such claims by close reading poems from a range of writers while also engaging works of criticism that grapple with these questions from formalist, phenomenological, and philosophical perspectives. We'll ask what it might mean to say that poems think and whether they can help us think about thinking in general, including in the context of recent developments in A.I. technology. We'll also consider our own role as thinkers and writers in a world in which the practices of thinking and writing are changing faster than ever before. (Note: This Writing-Intensive Seminar in English (WISE) course fulfills WIM for English majors. Non-majors are welcome, space permitting. For enrollment permission contact judithr@stanford.edu.)
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
ENGLISH 5EA:
WISE: Haunted Reading: Intertextuality, Adaptation, and the Gothic
What makes a narrative "Gothic"? One defining feature is the way the past seeps into the present, whether as ghosts, crumbling castles, or even old letters left behind for future readers. Across centuries, we see these tropes again and again, reimagined so that each new story is different but, at the same time, seems to remember and respond to the Gothic stories that came before it. This course will explore the relationships that Gothic texts have to each other. What can Frankenstein, with its multiple narrators, show us about how narratives pass from person to person? How does the contemporary bestseller Mexican Gothic address the colonial histories beneath older Romantic and Victorian narratives? And why might one turn a ghost story by Henry James from the end of the 19th century into a 21st-century Netflix series? In all of these cases, the Gothic effects of "haunted reading" allow the past's hidden ghosts and monstrous meanings to emerge, visibly changed and seeking attention. As we consider how old reading can influence or even "haunt" the new, we will reflect on our own reading habits in both personal and academic contexts while simultaneously investigating how intertextuality and adaptation relate to our own critical writing and original interpretations. (Note: This Writing-Intensive Seminar in English (WISE) course fulfills WIM for English majors. Non-majors are welcome, space permitting. For enrollment permission contact judithr@stanford.edu.)
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
ENGLISH 5FA:
The Romance and its Readers
What does it mean for a text to be "realistic" or "unrealistic"? Why does it feel natural to us, as readers, to evaluate a book based on its ability to represent "reality"? Then again, why attempt to reproduce the real when you could simply put the book down and walk outside? In this course, we will consider these questions through the lens of "the romance." Though extremely variable across time, the romance emerges time and again as the genre of the unreal or decidedly fictional. Here are the books, we are told, that lead to fantasy and self-delusion. Reexamining such judgments, we will read a selection of "romances" - ranging from saints' lives to lesbian pulp fiction and the contemporary romance novel - while also devoting attention to the romance-reader (as a supposedly deluded and ineffectual participant in reality) to explore the development of the novel as a category and to trouble our understandings of "real" and "unreal" modes of experience and representation. How has the romance historically been used to reject, distort, or transform reality? What gender - or other - biases inform the perennial devaluation of the romance as escapist fluff? What might it mean? What insights into literary history and politics emerge? if we take the romance and its readers seriously? (Note: This Writing-Intensive Seminar in English (WISE) course fulfills WIM for English majors. Non-majors are welcome, space permitting. For enrollment permission contact farrahm@stanford.edu.)
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
ENGLISH 5GA:
Shakespeare and His Critics
In this seminar, we delve into foundational topics in Shakespearean drama, Shakespeare Studies, and literary theory by reading key plays alongside touchstone analyses drawn from the major critical schools of the twentieth century. Each class pairs dramatic verse with academic argument, introducing theatrical characters alongside prominent scholars. Primary texts include Hamlet, As You Like It, and Richard III. Secondary works survey historicist, psychoanalytic, new critical, post-structuralist, and feminist perspectives, among others. By the end of the quarter, students will have expanded their understanding of Shakespeare and of literary criticism and will have developed their competencies as critics in their own rights. (Note: This Writing-Intensive Seminar in English (WISE) course fulfills WIM for English majors. Non-majors are welcome, space permitting. For enrollment permission contact farrahm@stanford.edu)
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
ENGLISH 9CE:
Creative Expression in Writing
Primary focus on giving students a skill set to tap into their own creativity. Opportunities for students to explore their creative strengths, develop a vocabulary with which to discuss their own creativity, and experiment with the craft and adventure of their own writing. Students will come out of the course strengthened in their ability to identify and pursue their own creative interests. For undergrads only. NOTE: For undergraduates only. Students must attend the first class meeting to retain their roster spot.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
Instructors: ;
Beaty, G. (PI);
Brewer, W. (PI);
Ekiss, K. (PI);
Frisch, S. (PI);
Kealey, T. (PI);
Nguyen, H. (PI);
Perham, B. (PI);
Pufahl, S. (PI);
Schloesser Tarano, N. (PI);
Shewmaker, M. (PI);
Tomar, R. (PI);
Trahan, J. (PI)
ENGLISH 9CFS:
Fire Stories: Narrative in the Digital Age
How do we tell stories in the age of the internet, social media, and new technology? How has the art of storytelling evolved over time? In this Creative Writing course we will explore storytelling in the digital age. We will be reading and writing in a variety of genres, workshopping our own personal projects, and considering ways in which storytelling has shifted from oral traditions to modern iterations like podcasts, songwriting, filmmaking, and multimedia. Assignments will range from reading Justin Torres' novel, 'We the Animals,' to watching films like 'Birdman' and 'La Jet¿e.' We will be listening to albums, looking at photo essays, and frequently meeting outdoors to tell stories around a fire. Anyone with a sense of adventure is welcome!
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
ENGLISH 9CI:
Inspired By Science: A Writing Workshop
How can your interest in science and the environment be enriched by a regular creative practice? How do you begin to write a poem or essay about the wonders of the natural world or the nuances of climate change? What are the tools and strategies available to creative writers, and how can these techniques be used to communicate complex concepts and research to wide-audiences? We begin to answer these questions by drawing inspiration from the rich tradition of scientists who write and writers who integrate science. Emphasizing writing process over finished product, students maintain journals throughout the quarter, responding to daily prompts that encourage both practice and play. Through open-ended and exploratory writing, along with specific exercises to learn the writer's craft students develop a sense of their own style and voice. Note: First priority to undergrads. Students must attend the first class meeting to retain their roster spot.
Terms: Aut, Spr
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
ENGLISH 9CP:
Writing Off the Page: Songwriting, Film, and Spoken Word
With recent blockbuster films like Patterson and major prizes being awarded to artists like Bob Dylan and Kendrick Lamar, the borders of what constitutes traditional literature are shifting. In this Creative Writing course we will be looking at literature `off the page,' in songwriting, spoken word, multi-media, and visual art. We will be workshopping our own creative projects and exploring the boundaries of contemporary literature. Artists we'll be looking at include Iron and Wine, Lil Wayne, Allen Ginsberg, Beyonce, David Lynch, Patti Smith, Mark Strand, Anne Carson, Danez Smith, Bon Iver, and Lou Reed. For undergraduates only. NOTE: Students must attend the first class meeting to retain their roster spot.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
ENGLISH 9CV:
Creative Expression in Writing
Online workshop whose primary focus is to give students a skill set to tap into their own creativity. Opportunities for students to explore their creative strengths, develop a vocabulary with which to discuss their own creativity, and experiment with the craft and adventure of their own writing. Students will come out of the course strengthened in their ability to identify and pursue their own creative interests.
Terms: Sum
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
ENGLISH 9R:
Humanities Research Intensive
Everyone knows that scientists do research, but how do you do research in the humanities? This seven-day course, taught over spring break, will introduce you to the excitement of humanities research, while preparing you to develop an independent summer project or to work as a research assistant for a Stanford professor. Through hands-on experience with archival materials and museum collections, you will learn how to formulate a solid research question; how to gather the evidence that will help you to answer that question; how to write up research results; how to critique the research of your fellow students; how to deliver your results in a public setting; and how to write an effective grant proposal. Students who complete this course become Humanities Research Intensive Fellows and receive post-program mentorship during spring quarter, ongoing opportunities to engage with faculty and advanced undergraduates, and eligibility to apply for additional funding to support follow-up research. Freshmen, sophomores, and qualifying transfer students only. All majors and undeclared students welcome. No prior research experience necessary. Enrollment limited: apply in October at https://humanexperience.stanford.edu/undergraduates/humanities-research-intensive.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 2
ENGLISH 9SF:
Fight the Future: Speculative Fiction and Social Justice
Imagining the future has been one of the most important ways humans have assessed their present. In this salon-style seminar we'll focus on modern speculative fiction as social critique, especially of regimes of patriarchy, racism, and capitalism. The course will be devoted to new and established writers of speculative fiction -- broadly defined and across era and geography -- whose work engages with oppression and freedom, sex, love, and other dynamics of power. We will also devote one night per week to film screenings of classic and contemporary films in the genre. Guest lecturers will discuss the work of authors such as Octavia Butler, Samuel R. Delany, Franz Kafka, Philip K. Dick, Ursula LeGuin, and others.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
ENGLISH 10E:
Intro to English I: Love and Death from Chaucer to Milton
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Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
ENGLISH 10F:
Intro to English I: The Natural World in Early English Literary History
The first poem written down in English, composed in the 7th century, is about the creation of Earth; this course surveys British literature from then until the 17th century to explore the wisdom, beauty, mystery, and terror in medieval and early modern representations of nature. While following this tradition of writing about the natural world, we will study its connection to the evolution of English literary forms and the interplay between text and culture in this period. Old English riddles that enigmatize earth and sky; beast fables drawing human morality from animal behavior; the varieties of play between love and nature in sonnets; Elizabethan drama's power to conjure wildernesses onstage.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
ENGLISH 10Q:
Technologies of Handwriting: History, Theory, Practice (DLCL 122Q)
Handwriting has a long history and significance. Think about Toni Morrison's diaries; a note by Einstein; a Laozi manuscript from the second century; Elizabeth I's poems; hieroglyphic laws; an electronic signature; a postcard from a friend. This course will investigate the history of handwriting, focusing on the importance of the technology and its digital aspects. We shall consider the training and physical efforts of scribes, and the transmission of knowledge, including that of traditionally oral cultures. We'll look at the development of western scripts, gain insight about materials and tools (from animal skin to reed pens) and learn calligraphy from an expert modern scribe, the better to understand the skill and aesthetic of this most everyday of technologies that, I shall argue, will outlive all others
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
ENGLISH 11A:
Introduction to English II: From Milton to the Romantics
English majors must take class for 5 units. Major moments in English literary history, from John Milton's 'Paradise Lost' to John Keats's 'Hyperion'. The trajectory involves a variety of literary forms, including Augustan satire, the illuminated poetry of William Blake's handcrafted books, the historical novel invented by Sir Walter Scott, the society novel of Jane Austen, and William Wordsworth's epic of psychological and artistic development. Literary texts will be studied in the context of important cultural influences, among them civil war, religious dissent, revolution, commercialization, colonialism, and industrialization.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5
ENGLISH 11B:
Introduction to English II: American Literature and Culture to 1855 (AMSTUD 150)
In this course we'll explore the uncanny world--at once strange and strangely familiar - of early American literature and culture, as we read diverse works - including poetry, captivity and slave narratives, seduction novels, Native American oratory, short stories, essays, autobiographies, and more - in relation to political, social, and artistic as well as literary contexts from the colonial period to the eve of Civil War. Note: students majoring (or planning to major) in English or American Studies should take the course for 5 units and for a letter grade.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II
ENGLISH 11Q:
Art in the Metropolis (ARTSINST 11Q, ARTSTUDI 11Q, FILMEDIA 11Q, MUSIC 11Q, TAPS 11Q)
This seminar is offered in conjunction with the annual "Arts Immersion" trip to New York that takes place over the spring break and is organized by the Stanford Arts Institute (SAI). Enrollment in this course is a requirement for taking part in the spring break trip. The program is designed to provide a group of students with the opportunity to immerse themselves in the cultural life of New York City guided by faculty and SAI staff. Students will experience a broad range and variety of art forms (visual arts, theater, opera, dance, etc.) and will meet with prominent arts administrators and practitioners, some of whom are Stanford alumni. In the seminar, we will prepare for the diverse experiences the trip affords and develop individual projects related to particular works of art, exhibitions, and performances that we'll encounter in person during the stay in New York. Class time will be divided between readings, presentations, and one studio based creative project. The urban setting in which the various forms of art are created, presented, and received will form a special point of focus. A principal aim of the seminar will be to develop aesthetic sensibilities through writing critically about the art that interests and engages us and making art. For further details please visit the Stanford Arts Institute website: https://arts.stanford.edu/for-students/academics/arts-immersion/new-york/
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
ENGLISH 12C:
Introduction to English III: Modern Literature
Survey of the major trends in literary history from 1850 to the present.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
ENGLISH 13P:
Media and Communication from the Middle Ages to the Printing Press (ENGLISH 113P, HISTORY 13P, HISTORY 113P, MUSIC 13P, MUSIC 113P)
Did you know that the emperor Charlemagne was illiterate, yet his scribes revolutionized writing in the West? This course follows decisive moments in the history of media and communication, asking how new recording technologies reshaped a society in which most people did not read or write--what has been described as the shift "from memory to written record." To understand this transformation, we examine forms of oral literature and music, from the Viking sagas, the call to crusade, and medieval curses (Benedictine maledictions), to early popular authors such as Dante and the 15th-century feminist scribe, Christine de Pizan. We trace the impact of musical notation, manuscript and book production, and Gutenberg's print revolution. To paraphrase Marshall McLuhan's famous dictum, how did the medium shape the message? Along the way, we will consider how the medieval arts of memory and divine reading (lectio divina) can inform communication in the digital world. This is a hands-on course: students will handle medieval manuscripts and early printed books in Special Collections, and will participate in an "ink-making workshop," following medieval recipes for ink and for cutting quills, then using them to write on parchment. The course is open to all interested students.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
ENGLISH 13Q:
Imaginative Realms
This class looks at the tradition of the imagined universe in fiction and poetry. Special topics include magical realism, artificial intelligence, and dystopias. Primary focus on giving students a skill set to tap into their own creativity. Opportunities for students to explore their creative strengths, develop a vocabulary with which to discuss their own creativity, and experiment with the craft and adventure of their own writing. For undergrads only.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
ENGLISH 15N:
Wastelands
Have human beings ruined the world? Was it war, or industry, or consumerism, or something else that did it? Beginning with an in-depth exploration of some of the key works of literary modernism, this class will trace the image of the devastated landscape as it develops over the course of the 20th and 21st centuries, arriving finally at literary representations of the contemporary zombie apocalypse. Authors to include T.S Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, Nathanael West, Willa Cather, Cormac McCarthy, and others.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
ENGLISH 16Q:
Family Stories
This creative writing workshop will explore the idea of family. We'll begin with our questions: How do we conceptualize the word family? How do family histories, stories, mythologies, and languages shape our narratives? What does family have to do with the construction of a self? How can we investigate the self and all of its many contexts in writing? We'll consider how we might work from our questions in order to craft work that is meaningful and revealing. Students will have the opportunity to write in both poetry and prose, as well as to develop their own creative cross-genre projects. Along the way, we'll discuss elements of craft essential to strong writing: how to turn the self into a speaker; how create the world of a piece through image, detail, and metaphor; how to craft beautiful sentences and lines; how to find a form; and many other topics.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
ENGLISH 17N:
Animal Poems
Animals have always appealed to the human imagination. This course provides basic a rubric for analyzing a variety of animal poems in order (1) to make you better readers of poetry and (2) to examine some of the most pressing philosophical questions that have been raised in the growing field of animal studies. The animals that concern us here are not allegorical-the serpent as evil, the fox as cunning, the dove as a figure for love. Rather, they are creatures that, in their stubborn animality, provoke the imagination of the poet.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
ENGLISH 17Q:
After 2001: A 21st Century Science Fiction Odyssey
In 1968, Stanley Kurick's 2001: A Space Odyssey imagined the future in the then distant year of 2001. Now that year is more than 20 years in the rearview and his science fiction future is now our past (with fewer PanAm flights to the moon and a stunning dearth of murderous AI). What is science fiction in the 21st century? What does it do? Who writes it? And, importantly, who is it for? In this class we will explore the questions of topic, author, audience, and community through the lens of the Hugo winning short stories since 2001. Hugo Awards are chosen by the fans, so this will allow us to examine the ways in which fandom and popular culture have changed in the last two decades in ways that has made the genre broader and more inclusive of writers and readers of every gender, race, and sexuality, while at the same time provoking a reactionary response in a minority of writers and fans who consider themselves decentered by these developments. Readings will include the Hugo winning short stories, some classic science fiction stories, and contemporary reports about the annual science fiction convention where these awards are given (WorldCon), and articles about science fiction fan culture. We will also view some of the science fiction visual works that have been important or influential in the past two decades. Timing and health permitted we will attend a local science fiction convention. This course will be reading- and writing-intensive but will also offer opportunities for spirited discussion. We will be engaging with sensitive subjects such as race, class, gender, and sexuality. Assignments include weekly short essays, discussion leadership, individual presentations, and a final research paper.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
ENGLISH 19Q:
I Bet You Think You're Funny: Humor Writing Workshop
Nothing is harder than being funny on purpose. We often associate humor with lightness, and sometimes that's appropriate, but humor is inextricably interlinked with pain and anger, and our funniest moments often spring from our deepest wounds. Humor can also allow us a platform for rage and indignation when other forms of rhetoric feel inadequate. This workshop will take students through the techniques and aesthetics of humor writing, in a variety of forms, and the main product of the quarter will be to submit for workshop a sustained piece of humor writing. For undergrads only.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
ENGLISH 20N:
Poetry: Wordsworth, Dickinson, Rilke
We will consider both the very short poems of these three master poets -- asking what precisely is the virtue and effect of these shortest linguistic art objects -- as well as their very long works or sequences, to think about scale and singularity or repetition in poetic utterance.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3
ENGLISH 24Q:
Leaving Patriarchy: A Course for All Genders (FEMGEN 24Q)
This is a creative writing course for writers of all genders who are interested in thinking about patriarchy and how to resist it. Our course will aim to complicate the idea that men benefit from patriarchy and are its primary enforcers, while the rest of us are simply suffering under it. We'll ask ourselves how patriarchy is bad for ALL of us, and how ALL of us are implicated in its perpetuation. Do we ALL have the reasons and the resources to leave patriarchy--and can we start to leave it right now? We'll read works of scholarship and literature that investigate patriarchy as a human relational problem. We'll write fiction and nonfiction in which we explore the ways patriarchy has shaped us, challenge ourselves to resist its manifestations in our relationships, envision a future without patriarchy, and begin to live that future right now. Most crucially, we will practice creating a space in which all of us can speak without fear of judgment about our experiences of a fraught topic.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
ENGLISH 25Q:
Queer Stories (FEMGEN 25Q)
Queer Stories is a creative writing class open to any and all students, regardless of how they define their gender or sexuality. The goals of the class are to read widely in the canon of twentieth and twenty-first century queer prose literature, and to write critical and creative work that engages with the styles, modes, and subjects of these writers. As we read and discuss texts, students will consider a variety of questions: How has queer romance, relationships, and sexuality been represented over the years, in both coded and explicit ways? How have writers grappled with representing our evolving sense of gender as a continuum rather than a binary? How have queer writers interrogated or understood the concept of family? How do queer writers handle the question of the "universal" reader to whom, arguably, they might be speaking? (In a 2012 interview with Lambda Literary, book critic Daniel Mendelsohn argues,contentiously, "It is precisely the gay book's ability to be interesting to a straight reader that makes it a great book.") Lastly, students will also create writing of their own that in some way draws upon the aesthetics or sensibilities of the authors we have read. These pieces may be short stories, personal essays, or texts that--in the spirit of queerness--blur or interrogate standard demarcations of genre. The content of this work might grapple with questions of gender and sexuality, but it might instead be queer in its affect, outlook, or style. In both the reading and writing they do in this class, students will engage with work that deviates from literary convention in the lives it represents and the ways in which it represents them.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE, WAY-EDP
ENGLISH 26Q:
The Brontes: a Victorian Family and its Marvelous Daughters
Isolated in the moorlands of Yorkshire and raised in evangelical strictness by an eccentric father, the Bronte children imagined stories of personal power and political intrigue, based on the news they read. The eldest of the three sisters, Charlotte, grew up to become a major novelist of the Victorian age. Her younger sister, Emily, became a poet and a novelist of wild genius. The youngest sister, Anne, wrote two arresting novels before her early death. The lone brother, Branwell, squandered his talents -- and much of the family's money -- before his death at thirty-one. In 1847, Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, Emily Bronte's Withering Heights, and Anne Bronte's Agnes Grey surprised literary London, and voiced an angry, sensual, urgent response to the Victorians' nagging "Woman Question." These eccentric novels register the tedium, the aspirations, and the frustrations of these gifted women. We will consider historical, cultural, and biographical questions, as we study these early novels, the children's juvenilia, and a representative later work. Each student will have the chance to investigate one of these women more deeply, and share their discoveries with the the seminar.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
ENGLISH 28Q:
The Campus Novel
The college campus is a fascinating place, where people from different backgrounds come together for different purposes. So it is no wonder that many novelists have turned their attention upon the college campus as a setting for their novels. In this Sophomore Seminar, we will read three fantastic campus novels, and use these books as means of exploring big questions about the purpose of an undergraduate education.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
ENGLISH 39Q:
Were They Really "Hard Times"? Mid-Victorian Social Movements and Charles Dickens (HISTORY 39Q)
"It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it." So begins Charles Dickens description of Coketown in Hard Times. And it only seems to get more grim from there. But the world that Dickens sought to portray in the novel was a hopeful one, too. And that tension is our starting point. The intent of this class is to more closely examine mid-Victorian Britain in light of Dickens' novel, with particular focus on the rise of some of our modern social movements in the 19th century. While things like the labor movement, abolitionism, feminism, and environmentalism, are not the same now as they were then, this class will explore the argument that the 21st century is still, in some ways, working out 19th century problems and questions. At the same time, this is also a course that seeks to expand the kinds of sources we traditionally use as historians. Thus, while recognizing that literary sources are particularly complex, we will use Hard Times as a guide to our exploration to this fascinating era. We will seek both to better understand this complex, transitional time and to assess the accuracy of Dickens' depictions of socio-political life.Through a combination of short response papers, creative Victorian projects (such as sending a hand-written letter to a classmate), and a final paper/project, this course will give you the opportunity to learn more about the 19th century and the value of being historically minded.As a seminar based course, discussion amongst members of the class is vital. All students are welcome
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-ER, WAY-SI
ENGLISH 50:
Humanities House Workshop
For student-run workshops and research seminars in Ng House / Humanities House. Open to both residents and non-residents. May be repeated for credit. This course code covers several discrete workshops each quarter; sign up for a particular workshop via the Google Form at https://goo.gl/forms/TRU0AogJP3IHyUmr2.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr
| Units: 1
| Repeatable
for credit
(up to 99 units total)
ENGLISH 53Q:
Writing and Gender in the Age of Disruption (FEMGEN 53Q)
In this course, we will read a wide cross-section of British and American women writers who turned to fiction and poetry to examine, and to survive, their times: Virginia Woolf, Nella Larsen, Rebecca West, Zora Neale Hurston, Jean Rhys, Jessie Redmon Fauset, Katherine Mansfield, H.D., Marianne Moore, and Una Marson. You will learn how to pay close attention to the often radically new ways these writers bent language to their purposes to express complex emotions and vexed political realities; in your own essay writing, you will learn how to write clearly and persuasively about small units of text and to craft longer critical analyses attentive to language, history, and culture. Always, students will be encouraged to draw connections between then and now, to ponder what has changed, and what remains to be changed, in our own turbulent times.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
ENGLISH 61N:
Jane Austen's Fiction
Austen's finely wrought novels were unlike any previous fiction, offering an intensely realized example of literary originality. This class focuses on Austen's major writing, all published in a remarkable ten year period. These novels - including Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Mansfield Park and Persuasion - have had a profound impact on the development and understanding of the novel as an art form. We'll take the measure of Austen's inventiveness and her subtle, engrossing experiments in narrative voice, fictional character, representation and literary form. Our two goals will be to closely engage each novel (looking at the major interpretative and aesthetic questions that are generated) and to track the rich dialogue that takes place between her different texts when they are read together.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
ENGLISH 66:
'A Model Island': Britain in Historical and Cultural Perspective
What's `culture'? There is no such thing as `British culture' as a coherent singular phenomenon, but `culture' can be a useful lens to think about a place, its entanglement with the past and the rest of the world. In this class we can understand how the ideas and social relations that constitute the common-sense fiction of British culture and the very notions of `Britishness', `Englishness', etc. came about historically and are sustained in contemporary contexts. As well as learn how to use `culture' as a heuristic-critical tool to make sense of a particular place's entanglement in history, politics, and cultural production.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum
| Units: 2
ENGLISH 71:
Dangerous Ideas (ARTHIST 36, COMPLIT 36A, EALC 36, ETHICSOC 36X, FRENCH 36, HISTORY 3D, MUSIC 36H, PHIL 36, POLISCI 70, RELIGST 36X, SLAVIC 36, TAPS 36)
Ideas matter. Concepts such as progress, technology, and sex, have inspired social movements, shaped political systems, and dramatically influenced the lives of individuals. Others, like cultural relativism and historical memory, play an important role in contemporary debates in the United States. All of these ideas are contested, and they have a real power to change lives, for better and for worse. In this one-unit class we will examine these "dangerous" ideas. Each week, a faculty member from a different department in the humanities and arts will explore a concept that has shaped human experience across time and space.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 1
| Repeatable
4 times
(up to 4 units total)
ENGLISH 81:
Philosophy and Literature (CLASSICS 42, COMPLIT 181, FRENCH 181, GERMAN 181, ILAC 181, ITALIAN 181, PHIL 81, SLAVIC 181)
Can novels make us better people? Can movies challenge our assumptions? Can poems help us become who we are? We'll think about these and other questions with the help of writers like Toni Morrison, Marcel Proust, Jordan Peele, Charlie Kaufman, Rachel Cusk, William Shakespeare, and Samuel Beckett, plus thinkers like Nehamas, Nietzsche, Nussbaum, Plato, and Sartre. We'll also ask whether a disenchanted world can be re-enchanted; when, if ever, the truth stops being the most important thing; why we sometimes choose to read sad stories; whether we ever love someone for who they are; who could possibly want to live their same life over and over again; what it takes to make ourselves fully moral; whether it's ever good to be conflicted; how we can pull ourselves together; and how we can take ourselves apart. (This is the required gateway course for the Philosophy and Literature major tracks. Majors should register in their home department.)
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
ENGLISH 90:
Fiction Writing
The elements of fiction writing: narration, description, and dialogue. Students write complete stories and participate in story workshops. Prerequisite: PWR 1 (waived in summer quarter). NOTE: First priority to undergrads. Students must attend the first class meeting to retain their roster spot.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
Instructors: ;
Beaty, G. (PI);
Frisch, S. (PI);
HolyWhiteMountain, S. (PI);
Labowskie, M. (PI);
Porter, E. (PI);
Schloesser Tarano, N. (PI);
Smith, A. (PI);
Tanaka, S. (PI);
Tomar, R. (PI);
Trahan, J. (PI);
Williams, Z. (PI)
ENGLISH 90FC:
First Chapters
Novels only get one chance to make a good first impression. Chapter One is that opportunity, and in this course we'll read, discuss, and analyze a variety of historical and contemporary novels with a particular focus on their opening chapter (and sometimes prologue). We'll study strategies around world-building, characterization, creating the engine of a novel (its voice), and in establishing a lively, complex, and surprising world that a reader can't wait to explore in greater detail.
Terms: Win, Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
ENGLISH 90H:
Humor Writing Workshop
What makes writing funny? What are we doing when we try to be funny? In this creative writing workshop, you'll exercise your native wit by writing short pieces of humor in a variety of forms. We'll practice writing jokes, parody, satire, sketches, stories, and more, study theories of humor, research practical principles and structures that writers have repeatedly used to make things funny, and enjoy and analyze examples of humor old and new to use as models. In the service of creating and understanding humor, we'll also explore questions about what purposes humor serves, and what relationship humor has with power, culture, and history.
Terms: Win, Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
ENGLISH 90L:
Latine Stories (CHILATST 90)
This is a course on the craft of fiction writing. We will read published literary short stories by contemporary Latine writers writing in the United States and begin to explore the vast range of fictional techniques employed by these writers. In discussing these published works, we will analyze how the formal elements of story - structure, plot, character, point of view, etc. - function in these pieces, so that students can apply these principles of craft to their own work. Students will write two complete short stories, which will be discussed in a traditional workshop format.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
ENGLISH 90Q:
Sports Writing
Study and practice of the unique narratives, tropes, images and arguments that creative writers develop when they write about popular sport. From regional fandom to individualist adventuring, boxing and baseball to mascot dancing and table tennis, exceptional creative writers mine from a diversity of leisure activity a rich vein of sports writing in the creative nonfiction genre. In doing so, they demonstrate the creative and formal adaptability required to write with excellence about any subject matter, and under the circumstances of any subjectivity. Discussion of the ways in which writers have framed, and even critiqued, our interest in athletic events, spectatorship, and athletic beauty. Writers include Joyce Carol Oates, Roland Barthes, David James Duncan, Arnold Rampersad, John Updike, Maxine Kumin, Susan Sterling, Ernest Hemingway, Norman Mailer, Dervla Murphy, Haruki Murakami, Don DeLillo, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Annie Dillard, John McPhee, and Laura Hillenbrand. Close readings of essays on form and sport, as well as book excerpts. Students will engage in class discussions and write short weekly papers, leading to a more comprehensive project at the end of the quarter.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
ENGLISH 90R:
American Road Trip
From Whitman to Kerouac, Alec Soth to Georgia O'Keeffe, the lure of travel has inspired many American artists to pack up their bags and hit the open road. In this course we will be exploring the art and literature of the great American road trip, including prose, poetry, films, and photography. We will be reading and writing in a variety of genres, workshopping our own stories, and considering the ways in which our personal journeys have come to inform and define our lives. The course includes a number of campus-wide field trips, and an end-of-quarter road trip down the California coast.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
ENGLISH 90V:
Fiction Writing
Online workshop course that explores the ways in which writers of fiction have used language to examine the world, to create compelling characters, and to move readers. We will begin by studying a selection of stories that demonstrate the many techniques writers use to create fictional worlds; we'll use these stories as models for writing exercises and short assignments, leading to a full story draft. We will study figurative language, character and setting development, and dramatic structure, among other elements of story craft. Then, each student will submit a full draft and receive feedback from the instructor and his/her classmates. This course is taught entirely online, but retains the feel of a traditional classroom. Optional synchronous elements such as discussion and virtual office hours provide the student direct interaction with both the instructor and his/her classmates. Feedback on written work ¿ both offered to and given by the student ¿ is essential to the course and creates class rapport.
Terms: Sum
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
ENGLISH 90WM:
Writing Mystical, Spiritual, and Altered States: A Workshop
In this writing workshop, we will explore core fiction and nonfiction techniques by engaging with the long literary tradition of writing about mystical, spiritual, and altered states of experience. The logic is simple: if you can write well about what is often called 'indescribable; or 'ineffable,' you can write about almost anything. We will look at how mystical experiences, spiritual searching, loss of faith, drug experiences, pilgrimages, the natural sublime, and even migraines have made for exhilarating subjects by some of our best contemporary writers, including Michael Pollan, Jia Tolentino, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Oliver Sacks, Denis Johnson, Hillary Mantel, Peter Matthiessen, and Annie Dillard. After close readings and discussions, students will write and workshop their own pieces of questioning, exploration, and awe. Students must attend the first class to retain their roster spot.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
ENGLISH 91:
Creative Nonfiction
Historical and contemporary as a broad genre including travel and nature writing, memoir, biography, journalism, and the personal essay. Students use creative means to express factual content. Prerequisite: PWR 1 (waived in summer quarter and for SLE students). NOTE: First priority to undergrads. Students must attend the first class meeting to retain their roster spot.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
Instructors: ;
Beaty, G. (PI);
Brewer, W. (PI);
Ekiss, K. (PI);
Evans, J. (PI);
Frisch, S. (PI);
Holbert, J. (PI);
HolyWhiteMountain, S. (PI);
Labowskie, M. (PI);
Nguyen, H. (PI);
Perham, B. (PI);
Porter, E. (PI);
Shewmaker, M. (PI);
Smith, A. (PI);
Tanaka, S. (PI);
Tomar, R. (PI);
Williams, Z. (PI)
ENGLISH 91A:
Asian American Autobiography/W (AMSTUD 91A, ASNAMST 91A, CSRE 91D)
This is a dual purpose class: a writing workshop in which you will generate autobiographical vignettes/essays as well as a reading seminar featuring prose from a wide range of contemporary Asian-American writers. Some of the many questions we will consider are: What exactly is Asian-American memoir? Are there salient subjects and tropes that define the literature? And in what ways do our writerly interactions both resistant and assimilative with a predominantly non-Asian context in turn recreate that context? We'll be working/experimenting with various modes of telling, including personal essay, the epistolary form, verse, and even fictional scenarios. First priority to undergrads. Students must attend the first class meeting to retain their roster spot.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE, WAY-EDP
ENGLISH 91AI:
Creative Writing & Science: The Artful Interpreter (OCEANS 157H, OCEANS 257H)
What role does creativity play in the life of a scientist? How has science inspired great literature? How do you write accessibly and expressively about things like whales, DNA or cancer? This course provides a unique opportunity for students to directly engage with marine animals, coastal habitats and environmental concerns of Monterey Bay. As historian Jill Lepore writes of Rachel Carson: "She could not have written Silent Spring if she hadn't, for decades, scrambled down rocks, rolled up her pant legs, and waded into tide pools, thinking about how one thing can change another..." Students will complete and workshop three original nonfiction essays that explore the intersection between personal narrative and scientific curiosity. You will develop a more patient and observant eye and improve your ability to articulate scientific concepts to a general readership. Students must submit a Google Form to request enrollment by December 1st: https://forms.gle/yoPriHjyE1GHrCJh7 If selected for enrollment, students must attend the first class meeting to retain their roster spot. **Course taught in-person only at Hopkins Marine Station.** Please note: Depending on enrollment across the courses offered on Fridays at Hopkins, a university shuttle will be made available or carpool mileage reimbursements will be provided. Carpool reimbursement is subject to specific terms and conditions; class lists will be distributed for this purpose. However, if a university shuttle is provided, carpool reimbursements will not be honored.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
ENGLISH 91DC:
Writing the Memoir
Open to DCI Fellows and Partners only. In this course, we will practice the art and craft of writing memoir: works of prose inspired by the memory of personal events and history. In our practice, we will look at different strategies for writing with meaning and insight about the events in our lives. We will read a variety of models by published authors who have made sense of the personal alongside the profound: the sad, joyful, simple and complicated stuff of living and being alive. Our learning will be discussion-driven. You should expect to do daily writing in the class, and to write and read widely between our class meetings. We will read, discuss, and imitate excerpts of memoirs by such authors as Augustine, Andrew Solomon, Joyce Carol Oates, Tim O'Brien, Joan Didion, and Eavan Boland, among many others. At least half of our class time will be devoted to the discussion of participants' work. The course will address issues ranging from how we select and write about events from our personal lives, to the ethical obligations of memoirists, to the ways we can explore new understanding about the past, as well as our own courage and reluctance to share personal writing. Writers at all levels of experience and comfort with creative writing are very welcome.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 5
ENGLISH 91NW:
Nature Writing
In this course we will be reading some of the most beautiful, magical, vital, dangerous andrevolutionary essays and stories and poems ever written, and, in our own writing about nature, will be joining that lineage that includes writers such as Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emily Dickinson, John Muir, Wendell Berry, Rachel Carson, Annie Dillard, and many others. Expect to spend lots of time immersed in nature, literally and literarily. Required materials include: pen, notebook, magnifying glass, binoculars, and a good pair of shoes.NOTE: First priority to undergrads. Students must attend the first class meeting to retain their roster spot.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
ENGLISH 91V:
Creative Nonfiction
Online workshop course. Historical and contemporary as a broad genre including travel and nature writing, memoir, biography, journalism, and the personal essay. Students use creative means to express factual content.
Terms: Sum
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
ENGLISH 92:
Reading and Writing Poetry
Issues of poetic craft. How elements of form, music, structure, and content work together to create meaning and experience in a poem. Prerequisite: PWR 1. NOTE: First priority to undergrads. Students must attend the first class meeting to retain their roster spot.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
ENGLISH 92V:
Reading and Writing Poetry
Online workshop course in which students explore issues of poetic craft. How elements of form, music, structure, and content work together to create meaning and experience in a poem.
Terms: Sum
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
ENGLISH 93Q:
The American Road Trip
From Whitman to Kerouac, Alec Soth to Georgia O'Keeffe, the lure of travel has inspired many American artists to pack up their bags and hit the open road. In this course we will be exploring the art and literature of the great American road trip. We will be reading and writing in a variety of genres, workshopping our own personal projects, and considering a wide breadth of narrative approaches. Assignments will range from reading Cormac McCarthy's novel, 'The Road,' to listening to Bob Dylan's album, 'Highway 61 Revisited.' We will be looking at films like 'Badlands' and 'Thelma and Louise,' acquainting ourselves with contemporary photographers, going on a number of campus-wide field trips, and finishing the quarter with an actual road trip down the California coast. Anyone with a sense of adventure is welcome!
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
ENGLISH 94Q:
The Future is Feminine (FEMGEN 94Q)
Gender is one of the great social issues of our time. What does it mean to be female or feminine? How has femininity been defined, performed, punished, or celebrated? Writers are some of our most serious and eloquent investigators of these questions, and in this class we'll read many of our greatest writers on the subject of femininity, as embodied by both men and women, children and adults, protagonists and antagonists. From Virginia Woolf to Ernest Hemingway, from Beloved to Gone Girl (and even "RuPaul's Drag Race"), we'll ask how the feminine is rendered and contested. We'll do so in order to develop a history and a vocabulary of femininity so that we may, in this important time, write our own way in to the conversation. This is first and foremost a creative writing class, and our goals will be to consider in our own work the importance of the feminine across the entire spectrum of gender, sex, and identity. We will also study how we write about femininity, using other writers as models and inspiration. As we engage with these other writers, we will think broadly and bravely, and explore the expressive opportunities inherent in writing. We will explore our own creative practices through readings, prompted exercises, improv, games, collaboration, workshop, and revision, all with an eye toward writing the feminine future.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
ENGLISH 104D:
Stories from the Viking Age
In this course, students read the medieval myths, legends, folklore, travelers' tales, and chronicles that give shape and character to what we now call "the Viking Age" (793-1066 CE). Through our readings of these texts, we will answer the following questions: who were the Vikings? What language did they speak? Who were their gods and what were they like? What stories did they tell, how did these shape their values, and what were their principles of literary art? What did other cultures think of them, and who is responsible for their reputation? Readings?originally in Old English, Old Norse, Latin, Arabic, and more?will be in modern English translation.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
ENGLISH 105A:
Aesthetics and the Audience: Literary Landmarks
In this course, we will consider major landmarks of aesthetic reflection on the meanings of artworks for their audiences, each of which is a landmark of literature in its own right. Authors might include the likes of Plato, Aristotle, Burke, Schiller, Hazlitt, Nietzsche, Woolf, Sontag, Cavell, Irigaray.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
ENGLISH 106A:
Black Mirror: A.I.Activism (AMSTUD 106B, ARTHIST 168A, CSRE 106A, SYMSYS 168A)
Lecture/small group course exploring intersections of STEM, arts and humanities scholarship and practice that engages with, and generated by, exponential technologies. Our course explores the social ethical and artistic implications of artificial intelligence systems with an emphasis on aesthetics, civic society and racial justice, including scholarship on decolonial AI, indigenous AI, disability activism AI, feminist AI and the future of work for creative industries.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
ENGLISH 113A:
African American Ecologies (AFRICAAM 113A)
African American perspectives on the environment have long been suppressed in mainstream ecological discourse, despite the importance of questions of land, labor, and resource to the historical and ongoing experiences of Black people in the United States. Against this exclusion, this course takes up African American literature as a unique site of ecological knowledge and environmental thought. Drawing on texts, art, music, and film from the late nineteenth century to the present, this course considers planetary problems of ecological catastrophe and climatic change in relation to the everyday structures of U.S.-American racial politics. Through close analyses of texts and films set on plantations and steamships, in gardens and coal mines, students will explore the environmental dimensions of African American literature, and gain a deeper understanding of the real-world histories with which these works engage. Texts will include novels by Zora Neale Hurston, Percival Everett, and Toni Morrison, short stories and essays by Charles Chesnutt, Jamaica Kincaid, Katherine McKittrick, and adrienne marie brown, and films and multimedia works by Julie Dash, Stephanie Dinkins, and Jordan Peele. Important topics will include the ecology of the plantation, black feminist ecological thought, and the significance of water in African American life and culture.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
ENGLISH 113P:
Media and Communication from the Middle Ages to the Printing Press (ENGLISH 13P, HISTORY 13P, HISTORY 113P, MUSIC 13P, MUSIC 113P)
Did you know that the emperor Charlemagne was illiterate, yet his scribes revolutionized writing in the West? This course follows decisive moments in the history of media and communication, asking how new recording technologies reshaped a society in which most people did not read or write--what has been described as the shift "from memory to written record." To understand this transformation, we examine forms of oral literature and music, from the Viking sagas, the call to crusade, and medieval curses (Benedictine maledictions), to early popular authors such as Dante and the 15th-century feminist scribe, Christine de Pizan. We trace the impact of musical notation, manuscript and book production, and Gutenberg's print revolution. To paraphrase Marshall McLuhan's famous dictum, how did the medium shape the message? Along the way, we will consider how the medieval arts of memory and divine reading (lectio divina) can inform communication in the digital world. This is a hands-on course: students will handle medieval manuscripts and early printed books in Special Collections, and will participate in an "ink-making workshop," following medieval recipes for ink and for cutting quills, then using them to write on parchment. The course is open to all interested students.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
ENGLISH 114B:
Paradise Lost
Intensive reading of Milton's epic Paradise Lost together with selections from Milton's other poetry and from his prose.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4
ENGLISH 115:
Virtual Italy (ARCHLGY 117, CLASSICS 115, HISTORY 238C, ITALIAN 115)
Classical Italy attracted thousands of travelers throughout the 1700s. Referring to their journey as the "Grand Tour," travelers pursued intellectual passions, promoted careers, and satisfied wanderlust, all while collecting antiquities to fill museums and estates back home. What can computational approaches tell us about who traveled, where and why? We will read travel accounts; experiment with parsing; and visualize historical data. Final projects to form credited contributions to the Grand Tour Project, a cutting-edge digital platform. No prior programming experience necessary.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
ENGLISH 115H:
Essential Shakespeare, Shakespearean Essence
What do we mean when we call something Shakespearean? It is not uncommon to see the adjective tied to political scandals, prestige television (e.g. Succession), or inventive lyricists. But then again, for the Romantics, Shakespeare also represented the artist who disappeared behind his works?the chameleon poet whose characters become free artists unto themselves. In this course, we will read a selection of poems and plays to explore what, if anything, is Shakespearean about Shakespeare. Is there a tragic vision that is particularly Shakespearean? How has same-sex desire, ubiquitous in the poems and plays, been erased from the mainstream conception of the Shakespearean? Is there a particularly Shakespearean understanding of gender? Is there a Shakespearean politics? A Shakespearean philosophy? While we pursue this essence of Shakespeare, we will also be thinking about what it means for Shakespeare to have become an "essential" author in the canon of English literature. This course should appeal to Shakespearean devotees and skeptics alike, as well as neutral parties, since, as we might conclude, there is nothing more Shakespearean than ambivalence.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
ENGLISH 118:
Literature and the Brain (COMPLIT 138, COMPLIT 238, ENGLISH 218, FRENCH 118, FRENCH 218, PSYC 126, PSYCH 118F)
How does fiction make us better at reading minds? Why do some TV shows get us to believe two contradictory things at once? And can cognitive biases be a writer's best friend? We'll think about these and other questions in the light of contemporary neuroscience and experimental psychology, with the help of Song of Solomon (Toni Morrison), Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert), season 1 of Westworld (Lisa Joy / Jonathan Nolan), and short readings from writers like Louise Glück, Jorge Luis Borges, Virginia Woolf, and Marcel Proust. We'll also ask what we see when we read; whether the language we speak affects the way we think; and why different people react differently to the same book. Plus: is free will a fiction, or were you just forced to say that?
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
ENGLISH 119:
Pitching and Publishing in Popular Media (FEMGEN 118)
FOR UNDERGRADUATES ONLY (grad students enroll in 318 in the winter) Most of the time, writing a pitch for a popular outlet just means writing an email. So why be intimidated? This course will outline the procedure for pitching essays and articles to popular media: how to convince an editor, agent, or anyone else that your idea is compelling, relevant, and deliverable. We'll take a holistic approach to self-presentation that includes presenting yourself with confidence, optimizing your social media and web platform, networking effectively, writing excellent queries and pitches, avoiding the slush pile, and perhaps most importantly, persevering through the inevitable self-doubt and rejection.We will focus on distinguishing the language, topics and hooks of popular media writing from those of academic writing, learn how to target and query editors on shortform pieces (personal essays, news stories, etc.), and explore how humanists can effectively self-advocate and get paid for their work.
Terms: Win
| Units: 1
| Repeatable
3 times
(up to 3 units total)
ENGLISH 122C:
Medieval Fantasy Literature
This is a comparative medieval literature course that surveys Anglo-Norman and English romance, English and Norse heroic epic, and Norse and Celtic mythology. What significance and meaning did medieval writers from different times and places see in magic and monsters; what superstitions and beliefs converged in their efforts to represent things from the other side, and what compelled them to do so? We will address such questions by reading the literature against the social, cultural, and religious contexts that shaped medieval life and artistic production. Finally we will turn to some modern works inspired by these medieval texts, reflecting on how literary medievalism has cultivated the tropes of medieval fantasy to produce works which mediate between an imagined history, sublime fabrication, and contemporary concerns.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
ENGLISH 124:
The American West (AMSTUD 124A, ARTHIST 152, HISTORY 151, POLISCI 124A)
The American West is characterized by frontier mythology, vast distances, marked aridity, and unique political and economic characteristics. This course integrates several disciplinary perspectives into a comprehensive examination of Western North America: its history, physical geography, climate, literature, art, film, institutions, politics, demography, economy, and continuing policy challenges. Students examine themes fundamental to understanding the region: time, space, water, peoples, and boom and bust cycles.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
ENGLISH 131D:
Imagining Adaptive Societies (CSRE 161, CSRE 261, POLISCI 131, POLISCI 331D, SUSTAIN 131, SUSTAIN 231)
The ecological, social, and economic crises of the Anthropocene suggest it is time for us to re-imagine how best to organize our communities, our institutions, and our societies. Despite the clear shortcomings, our society remains stuck in a rut of inaction. During periods of rapid social and economic change, segments of society become gripped by a nostalgia for idealized pasts that never really existed; such nostalgia acts as a powerful force that holds back innovation and contributes to a failure of imagination. How, then, might we imagine alternative social arrangements that could allow us to thrive sustainably in an environment of greater equity? Moshin Hamid reminds us that literature allows us to break from violent nostalgia while imagining better worlds, while Ursula K. Le Guin notes that "imaginative fiction trains people to be aware that there are other ways to do things, other ways to be; that there is not just one civilization, and it is good, and it is the way we have to be." There are - there has to be - other and better ways to be. In this multi-disciplinary class, we turn to speculative fiction as a way of imagining future societies that are adaptable, sustainable, and just and can respond to the major challenges of our age. In addition to reading and discussing a range of novels and short stories, we bring to bear perspectives from climate science, social science, and literary criticism. We will also be hosting several of the authors to talk about their work and ideas.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
ENGLISH 133B:
Storytelling and Mythmaking: Modern Odysseys
In 1923, the poet T.S. Eliot wrote an essay in praise of James Joyce's Ulysses' a novel that adapted episodes of Homer's Odyssey into the daily life of twentieth-century Dublin. "It has the importance of a scientific discovery. No one else has built a novel upon such a foundation before: it has never before been necessary, In using the myth, in manipulating a continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity, Mr. Joyce is pursuing a method which others must pursue after him, Instead of the narrative method, we may now use the mythical method. "In this class, as both readers and writers, we will make use of this "mythical method" ourselves, as critical readers and creative writers. Using the same ancient material as a foundation, we'll follow a host of modern writers and critics who have been inspired by Homer to create new stories and to theorize narrative itself. These writers include Joyce, Franz Kafka, Derek Walcott, Junot D¿az, Margaret Atwood, Louise Gl¿ck, and Daniel Mendelsohn.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
ENGLISH 140C:
Sex and Violence in Jacobean Tragedy
Jacobean tragedy refers to the high-water mark of English tragedy achieved during the reign of James I. Think Othello and Macbeth. During these years (1603-25) Shakespeare and his talented contemporaries unflinchingly examined the role played by lust, violence, political intrigue, revenge ('a wild kind of justice'), and the certitude of death in constituting the meaning of human existence. We will read classic examples of this 'theater of cruelty' by Shakespeare and his rivals and collaborators Thomas Heywood, Thomas Middleton, and John Webster.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
ENGLISH 144B:
Contemporary British Fiction: History, Language, Place
How do contemporary British novelists represent dramatic changes in culture, class, demography, generation, economy, gender, race, and national identity following the allied victory in the Second World War (1939-1945)?¿ Focusing on writers born between 1948 and 1975, we examine the structuring of historical consciousness in novels by Zadie Smith, Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro, Jeanette Winterson, Hanif Kureishi, Julian Barnes, Ali Smith, and Hilary Mantel.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
ENGLISH 146F:
Fiction Intensive: Crafting a Short Story Collection
In this seminar, we will take a deep dive into the creation of short stories. You will come away from the course with an expansive sense of what goes into crafting a short story collection, from its earliest ideas to a fully realized book. Reading some of the most exciting contemporary fiction -- including work by Jhumpa Lahiri, Edward P. Jones, Carmen Maria Machado and Joy Williams -- we will examine each story as a model for inspiration and imitation. Through weekly writing prompts and in-depth discussions, we will explore and practice how writers build nuanced and multi-dimensional characters, sharp and believable dialogue, sustained suspense and other techniques essential to writing powerful short fiction. We will read a variety of short story collections, with each week centered around a specific topic, including World Building and Ghost Stories. Some weeks the author will visit the class, giving us the unique chance to analyze their work with them, and to learn about the craft and life of a working fiction writer. Fulfills short story literature requirement for the Minor in Creative Writing and the Creative Writing Emphasis in the English Major.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
ENGLISH 146W:
Iconic Short Stories
Exploration of classic (mostly) and contemporary short stories emphasizing craft aspects useful to writers and looking closely at how Chekhov, Kafka, Woolf, Flaubert, Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Munro, and others evoke emotion. Fulfills short story literature requirement for the Minor in Creative Writing and the Creative Writing Emphasis in the English Major. Admission by consent of instructor.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
ENGLISH 152G:
Harlem Renaissance (AFRICAAM 152G, AMSTUD 152G)
Examination of the explosion of African American artistic expression during 1920s and 30s New York known as the Harlem Renaissance. Amiri Baraka once referred to the Renaissance as a kind of "vicious Modernism", as a "BangClash", that impacted and was impacted by political, cultural and aesthetic changes not only in the U.S. but Europe, the Caribbean and Latin America. Focus on the literature, graphic arts, and the music of the era in this global context.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
ENGLISH 152K:
Mixed-Race Politics and Culture (AFRICAAM 226, AMSTUD 152K, CSRE 152K)
Today, almost one-third of Americans identify with a racial/ethnic minority group, and more than 9 million Americans identify with multiple races. What are the implications of such diversity for American politics and culture? This course approaches issues of race from an interdisciplinary perspective, employing research in the social sciences and humanities to assess how race shapes perceptions of identity as well as political behavior in 21st-century U.S. Issues surrounding the role of multiculturalism, immigration, acculturation, racial representation, and racial prejudice in American society. Topics include the political and social formation of race; racial representation in the media, arts, and popular culture; the rise and decline of the "one-drop rule" and its effect on political and cultural attachments; the politicization of census categories and the rise of the multiracial movement. If you have any questions about enrollment or need a permission number, please contact Farrah Moreno (farrahm@stanford.edu).
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
ENGLISH 159:
James Baldwin & Twentieth Century Literature (AFRICAAM 159, AMSTUD 159, FEMGEN 159)
Black, gay and gifted, Baldwin was hailed as a "spokesman for the race", although he personally, and controversially, eschewed titles and classifications of all kinds. This course examines his classic novels and essays as well his exciting work across many lesser-examined domains - poetry, music, theatre, sermon, photo-text, children's literature, public media, comedy and artistic collaboration. Placing his work in context with other writers of the 20C (Faulkner, Wright, Morrison) and capitalizing on a resurgence of interest in the writer (NYC just dedicated a year of celebration of Baldwin and there are 2 new journals dedicated to study of Baldwin), the course seeks to capture the power and influence of Baldwin's work during the Civil Rights era as well as his relevance in the "post-race" transnational 21st century, when his prescient questioning of the boundaries of race, sex, love, leadership and country assume new urgency.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
ENGLISH 160:
Poetry and Poetics
Introduction to the reading of poetry, with emphasis on how the sense of poems is shaped through diction, imagery, and technical elements of verse.English majors must take this class for 5 units.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
ENGLISH 161:
Narrative and Narrative Theory (COMPLIT 161E)
An introduction to stories and storytelling--that is, to narrative. What is narrative? When is narrative fictional and when non-fictional? How is it done, word by word, sentence by sentence? Must it be in prose? Can it be in pictures? How has storytelling changed over time? Focus on various forms, genres, structures, and characteristics of narrative. English majors must take this class for 5 units.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
ENGLISH 165:
Perspectives on American Identity (AMSTUD 160)
Required for American Studies majors. In this seminar we trace diverse and changing interpretations of American identity by exploring autobiographical, literary, and/or visual texts from the 18th through the 20th century in conversation with sociological, political, and historical accounts. *Fulfills Writing In the Major Requirement for American Studies Majors*
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
ENGLISH 169D:
Contemporary Asian American Stories (ASNAMST 169D)
This course will examine the aesthetics and politics of contemporary Asian American storytellers, with an emphasis on work produced within the past five years. We will investigate the pressures historically placed on Asian Americans to tell a certain kind of story e.g. the immigrant story in a realist mode and the ways writers have found to surprise, question, and innovate, moving beyond those boundaries to explore issues of race, sexuality, science, memory, citizenship, and belonging. Course materials will consist of novels, short stories, graphic narrative, and film, and may include work by Ocean Vuong, Mira Jacobs, Gish Jen, Charles Yu, and Adrian Tomine, as well as Lulu Wangs 2019 film The Farewell. This seminar will feature both analytical and creative components, and students will be encouraged to produce both kinds of responses to the material.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
ENGLISH 175:
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales
Embark on an engaging journey through medieval literature with Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales," along with the works of Marie de France and Boethius. This course offers a vibrant exploration of storytelling, featuring interactive discussions, multimedia resources, and creative projects. Discover the rich tapestry of medieval thought, culture, and philosophy through a diverse range of texts. Dive into the world of knights, love, betrayal, and philosophical quests, making connections to contemporary issues. Ideal for anyone interested in the roots of modern literature and storytelling and the fascinating world of medieval society.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5
ENGLISH 177:
Contemporary Novel in U.S. Perspective (AMSTUD 177)
This course investigates a selection of novels from 2001 to the present, either authored in the United States or strongly and meaningfully received here by critics and gatekeepers. In the absence of a fixed academic canon or acknowledged tradition of exemplary works, this course includes evaluation as one of its central enterprises. Students help to make arguments for which works matter and why. Students consider topics including the demotion of the novel to a minor art form, competition from the image, transformations of celebrity culture (in literature and outside it), relevance or irrelevance of the digital age, aftermaths of the modernist and postmodernist project, eccentricity and marginality, race and gender politics in putatively post-feminist, post-racial,and post-political vantage, and problems of meaning in rich societies oriented to risk, probability, economization, health, consumption, comfort, and recognition or representation (rather than action or event). Novels and short stories may be supplemented by philosophical and sociological visions of the contemporary.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
ENGLISH 177B:
Contemporary American Short Stories (AMSTUD 177B)
An exploration of the power and diversity of the American short story ranging from the 1970s to the present day. By examining short stories historically, critically, and above all as art objects, students will learn how to read, interpret, critique, and enjoy short stories as social, political, and humanist documents. Students will learn techniques to craft their own short stories and their own critical essays in a course that combines creative practice and the art of critical appreciation.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
ENGLISH 180:
Public Service and Social Impact: Pathways to Purposeful Careers (CSRE 190A, INTNLREL 74, POLISCI 74B, PUBLPOL 75B, SOC 190A, SYMSYS 193, URBANST 190A)
How do I translate my interests and skills into a career in public service and social impact? This course will introduce you to a wide range of roles that help shape public policy and civic life, including government, education, nonprofits, social enterprises, and arts/media. It can be taken for one or two units. For one unit, you participate in a weekly, interactive speaker series designed to give you a sense for what different public service careers are like. Each week, guests describe their organizations and roles, highlight key intellectual issues and policy challenges, discuss their career paths, and describe skills crucial for the job. For a second unit, you participate in a hands-on weekly session designed to help you translate this knowledge into action. You will identify roles and organizations that might be a good match for you, build your network through informational interviewing, receive career coaching, and acquire the tools you need to launch your job or internship search. This course is intended for all students and all majors. Course content will be relevant to students soon entering the job market as well as those facing choices about courses of study and internships. Class sessions will be 60 minutes. This course is co-sponsored by the Haas Center for Public Service, the School of Humanities and Sciences, and Stanford in Government. Students taking the course for one unit (Tuesday lecture) must enroll in the -01 course option, and students taking the course for two units (Tuesday lecture and Thursday seminar) must enroll in the -02 course option. IR approved.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 1-2
ENGLISH 180A:
Velocity and Suspension: The Sense of Time in Early Modern Writing
'A book that never ends, an ongoing book to tell you what is true.' Thus one literary critic describes the strangest of literary innovations from the late seventeenth century: the periodical form. Between 1641-1700, periodicals made up fully one-fourth of printed titles. Authors more often recognized as practitioners of other forms (Daniel Defoe, Eliza Haywood, Jonathan Swift, Frederick Douglass) also headed up their own journals as editors. This course, which prioritizes breadth of exposure, will also consider the temporal rhythms that a literary form like the periodical introduces and alters. By situating journalistic time within a range of calendrical regimes from the medieval period onward (the seasonal, monastic, public, scientific and yes, academic), students should find resources anew to guide their own practices of recurrent writing.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
ENGLISH 184E:
Literary Text Mining
This course will train students in applied methods for computationally analyzing texts for humanities research. The skills students will gain will include basic programming for textual analysis, applied statistical evaluation of results and the ability to present these results within a formal research paper or presentation. Students in the course will also learn the prerequisite steps of such an analysis including corpus selection and cleaning, metadata collection, and selecting and creating an appropriate visualization for the results. This class is enrollment by permission only. To request a spot in the class, please fill out the survey: https://stanforduniversity.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6PrXGyFeo7g5eNU
Terms: Aut
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-AQR
ENGLISH 184F:
Literary Text Mining 2: Studies in Cultural Analytics
In this course, students will learn how to apply quantitative and computational methods for analyzing text to questions that are of significance to Literary Studies, and the humanities more broadly. Beginning with a series of readings and discussions on the theoretical implications of using quantitative methods for literary analysis, we will move to in-depth instruction in more advanced methods for computational text analysis, including topic models, word embeddings, and large language models. Students will not only become familiar with training and querying these models, but, more importantly, will gain hands-on experience in how to build these analytical techniques into humanities-based research.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-AQR, WAY-FR
ENGLISH 185B:
'In her this brutal monster': Fiction of Mental Illness (FEMGEN 185B)
'In her this brutal monster': Literature of Mental Illness. How have literary traditions of madness informed modern fiction's portrayals of the human mind, particularly in the context of rapidly shifting cultural frameworks about the origins and manifestations of mental illness? What are the repercussions of new forms, trends and genres for parsing (or blurring) the line between condition and personhood? Using the novels of Akwaeke Emezi, Toni Morrison, Virginia Woolf, and Leslie Marmon Silko to guide our inquiries, we'll consider inherited and new metaphors of madness in light of emerging theoretical interpretations of disability, identity, gender and trauma.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 5
ENGLISH 190:
Intermediate Fiction Writing
Intermediate course in the craft and art of fiction writing. Students read a diverse range of short stories and novel excerpts, complete writing exercises, and submit a short and longer story to be workshopped and revised. Prerequisite: 90 or 91. NOTE: First priority to undergrads. Students must attend the first class meeting to retain their roster spot.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
ENGLISH 190A:
AAPI Fiction Writing (ASNAMST 190)
This intermediate fiction writing course will feature readings from a variety of contemporary AAPI fiction writers. We will examine the various approaches and forms writers have utilized in writing about subjects political and personal. We will also look beyond the story itself to understand the authors' approaches to centering the AAPI experience, confronting intergenerational trauma, employing multilingual dialogue, repurposing genre, and navigating the ethics of incorporating family narratives. Students will write their own short stories which will be workshopped by the class. Entry into the course is via application.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
ENGLISH 190E:
Novel Writing Intensive
The main requirement for this course is a 50,000 word novel. The course explores elements of novel writing including fictional structure, character creation, scene vs. summary, as well as description, narration, and dialogue. Students will read four to five short novels during the first half of the course and then participate in National Novel Writing Month, an international writing event. Students will additionally write synopses, outlines, character sketches, and search tirelessly for the novel's engine: its voice. Designed for any student who has always wanted to write a novel. Prerequisite: 90 or 91. NOTE: First priority to undergrads. Students must attend the first class meeting to retain their roster spot.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
ENGLISH 190F:
Fiction into Film
Workshop. For screenwriting students. Story craft, structure, and dialogue. Assignments include short scene creation, character development, and a long story. How fictional works are adapted to screenplays, and how each form uses elements of conflict, time, summary, and scene. Prerequisite: 90.nNOTE: First priority to undergrads. Students must attend the first class meeting to retain their roster spot.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
ENGLISH 190L:
Levinthal Tutorial in Fiction
Undergraduate writers work individually with visiting Stegner Fellows in fiction. Students design their own curriculum; Stegner Fellows act as writing mentors and advisers. Students will meet once per week with the Stegner Fellow and also four times a quarter in discussions sections with other students and the Levinthal Program Coordinators. Times to be announced upon acceptance. Prerequisites: any course in 90 or 91 series; submitted application and manuscript.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
ENGLISH 190NS:
Novel Salon
Who better to discuss a book with than its author? In this course we will immerse ourselves in eight novels and meet with their authors to hear about their drafting, revising, and publishing experiences. We will read as writers¿for inspiration and craft¿and analyze novels for structure, scope, character development, dialogue, setting, style, and theme. We will examine how craft conventions are applied and subverted, while asking, ¿What makes a novel work?¿ Students will write about, discuss, and present the novels we read, participate in Q&A with visiting authors, and complete in-class writing exercises designed to inform and inspire. Note: First priority to undergrads. Students must attend the first class meeting to retain their roster spot.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
ENGLISH 190QN:
Quantum Narratives
Intermediate course in the craft and art of fiction writing, focusing on speculative fiction.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
ENGLISH 190SW:
Screenwriting Intensive
The main requirement for this course is a full length film script. The course explores elements of screenwriting including beat structure, character creation, scene vs. montage, as well as description and dialogue. Students will read four to five screenplays during the first half of the course and then write a 90-page film script in the second half of the course. Students will additionally write synopses, treatments, character sketches, and beat sheets. Designed for any student who has always wanted to write a screenplay
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 5 units total)
ENGLISH 190V:
Reading for Writers
Taught by the Stein Visiting Writer. Prerequisite: Introductory prose course.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| Repeatable
4 times
(up to 20 units total)
ENGLISH 190W:
Contemporary Women Writers (FEMGEN 190W)
"Every word a woman writes changes the story of the world, revises the official version¿¿is this what sets contemporary women writers apart? How can we understand the relation between the radically unprecedented material such writers explore and ¿the official version¿? What do we find compelling in their challenging of structure, style, chronology, character? Our reading- and writing-intensive seminar will dig into the ways women writers confront, appropriate, subvert, or re-imagine convention, investigating, for example, current debate about the value of ¿dislikable¿ or ¿angry¿ women characters and their impact on readers. While pursuing such issues, you'll write a variety of both essayistic and fictional responses, each of which is designed to complicate and enlarge your creative and critical responsiveness and to spark ideas for your final project. By affirming risk-taking and originality throughout our quarter, seminar conversation will support gains in your close-reading practice and in articulating your views, including respectful dissent, in lively discourse¿in short, skills highly useful in a writer¿s existence. Our texts will come from various genres, including short stories, novels, essays, blog posts, reviews, memoir.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
ENGLISH 190YA:
Young Adult Fiction
This is an intermediate course on the art and craft of fiction writing in the young adult genre. We will read widely in the genre. The aim of our reading will be to discover principles of craft, at the sentence level and at the narrative level, that generate powerful and enduring fiction. As we read, we will work to develop a writer's definition of YA. What are the differences between great YA and other great literature? What are the best ways to understand quality in a YA text? Within what bounds, stylistic, ethical, and otherwise, are we working as practitioners of the art form? Students will begin a young adult novel and submit pages from their work to the class on a regular basis. We will convene as a workshop to discuss one another's work.nNOTE: First priority to undergrads. Students must attend the first class meeting to retain their roster spot.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
ENGLISH 191:
Intermediate Creative Nonfiction
Continuation of ENGLISH 91. Reading a variety of creative essays, completing short writing exercises, and discussing narrative techniques in class. Students submit a short (2-5 page) and a longer (8-20 page) nonfictional work to be workshopped and revised. Prerequisite ENGLISH 90 or ENGLISH 91. NOTE: First priority to undergrads. Students must attend the first class meeting to retain their roster spot.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
ENGLISH 191DC:
DCI Intermediate Memoir Workshop
Open to DCI Fellows & Partners only. DCI Intermediate Memoir Workshop will take as its occasion for your creative development a continuing examination of memoir essays and memoir book excerpts. These texts broadly innovate within and outside of the formal traditions you studied in DCI Memoir workshop, to find new and exciting ways to represent personal experience. We will read authors including Kathryn Harrison, Brian Doyle, Jerald Walker, Patricia Hampl, MFK Fisher, Jo Ann Beard, and Tressie McMillan Cottom. This course will also serve as the continuing examination and practice of formal memoir writing. My goal for your learning in this class is that you walk out of our last session having done the following: 1) Written a next piece to follow in some way on your work in DCI Memoir: a new or next chapter, a related or new essay, an expansion into a larger piece, etc. 2) Looked at more sophisticated models for writing about your own life in a meaningful way, including hybrids of journalism and personal writing (e.g., The New Yorker), deep dives into personal subjects that twin with passions or areas of expertise, travel writing, and lyric forms of the essay. 3) Written two Short Essays based on more sophisticated writing prompts. 4) Participated in whole-class workshops for both Short Essays, and in a full-class workshop for your next piece. 5) Practiced giving and receiving helpful individual and workshop peer feedback. A variety of creative prompts, critical exercises, and assigned readings will foster your understanding and appreciation of creative nonfiction, as well as your growth as a creative writer. Energetic, committed participation is a must.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
ENGLISH 191L:
Levinthal Tutorial in Nonfiction
Undergraduate writers work individually with visiting Stegner Fellows in nonfiction. Students design their own curriculum; Stegner Fellows act as writing mentors and advisers. Students will meet once per week with the Stegner Fellow and also four times a quarter in discussions sections with other students and the Levinthal Program Coordinators. Times to be announced upon acceptance. Prerequisites: any course in 90 or 91 series; submitted application and manuscript.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
ENGLISH 192:
Intermediate Poetry Writing
Students will examine a diverse range of contemporary poetry. Students write and revise several poems that will develop into a larger poetic project. Prerequisite: 92. NOTE: First priority to undergrads. Students must attend the first class meeting to retain their roster spot.
Terms: Aut, Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
ENGLISH 192B:
Poetry Is Not a Luxury (AFRICAAM 192B, FEMGEN 192B)
Poetry Is Not a Luxury * These places of possibility within ourselves are dark... The titles of this course are words thought and dreamed by Audre Lorde in her essay "Poetry Is Not a Luxury" (a version of which was first published in 1977). In this essay she writes: "For within living structures defined by profit, by linear power, by institutional dehumanization, our feelings were not meant to survive. Kept around as unavoidable adjuncts or pleasant pastimes, feelings were expected to kneel to thought as women were expected to kneel to men. But women have survived. As poets. And there are no new pains. We have felt them all already. We have hidden that fact in the same place where we have hidden our power. They surface in our dreams, and it is our dreams that point the way to freedom. Those dreams are made realizable through our poems that give us the strength and courage to see, to feel, to speak, and to dare." In this course we will consider the powers, resuscitations, and strategies found in the texts of a constellation of contemporary Black poets whose work emerges out of Black feminist thought and practices. My hope is that we will together listen toward the possibilities of this work, and through experiments in reading and writing, realize some of what these texts make it possible for us to think and feel and write and be.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 5
ENGLISH 192L:
Levinthal Tutorial in Poetry
Undergraduate writers work individually with visiting Stegner Fellows in poetry. Students design their own curriculum; Stegner Fellows act as writing mentors and advisers. Students will meet once per week with the Stegner Fellow and also four times a quarter in discussions sections with other students and the Levinthal Program Coordinators. Times to be announced upon acceptance. Prerequisites: any course in 92 series; submitted application and manuscript.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
ENGLISH 192V:
The Occasions of Poetry
Taught by the Mohr Visiting Poet. Prerequisite: 92. By application. Permission number required to enroll.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
| Repeatable
4 times
(up to 20 units total)
ENGLISH 194C:
Curricular Practical Training
CPT course required for international students completing degree.Following internship work, students complete a research report outlining work activity, problems investigated, key results and follow-up projects. Meets the requirements for curricular practical training for students on F-1 visas. Student is responsible for arranging own internship and faculty sponsorship.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum
| Units: 1
ENGLISH 196A:
Honors Seminar: Critical Approaches to Literature
Overview of literary-critical methodologies, with a practical emphasis shaped by participants' current honors projects. Restricted to students in the English Honors Program.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
ENGLISH 197:
Seniors Honors Essay
In two quarters.
Terms: Win, Spr
| Units: 1-10
| Repeatable
for credit
ENGLISH 198:
Individual Work
Undergraduates who wish to study a subject or area not covered by regular courses may, with consent, enroll for individual work under the supervision of a member of the department. 198 may not be used to fulfill departmental area or elective requirements without consent. Group seminars are not appropriate for 198.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum
| Units: 1-5
| Repeatable
for credit
Instructors: ;
Algee-Hewitt, M. (PI);
Beaty, G. (PI);
Brewer, W. (PI);
Bronstein, M. (PI);
Carlson-Wee, K. (PI);
Castle, T. (PI);
Cohen, M. (PI);
Cravens, M. (PI);
Ekiss, K. (PI);
Elam, M. (PI);
Evans, J. (PI);
Fishkin, S. (PI);
Frisch, S. (PI);
Gigante, D. (PI);
Greene, R. (PI);
Greif, M. (PI);
Holbert, J. (PI);
HolyWhiteMountain, S. (PI);
Hoxby, B. (PI);
Hutchins, S. (PI);
Jenkins, N. (PI);
Johnson, A. (PI);
Jones, G. (PI);
Jordan, A. (PI);
Kantor, R. (PI);
Kealey, T. (PI);
Labowskie, M. (PI);
Lee, C. (PI);
McGurl, M. (PI);
Michas-Martin, S. (PI);
Moya, P. (PI);
Nguyen, H. (PI);
Palumbo-Liu, D. (PI);
Parker, P. (PI);
Perham, B. (PI);
Phelan, P. (PI);
Phillips, P. (PI);
Porter, E. (PI);
Pufahl, S. (PI);
Quayson, A. (PI);
Richardson, J. (PI);
Ruttenburg, N. (PI);
Saldivar, R. (PI);
Schloesser Tarano, N. (PI);
Shewmaker, M. (PI);
Smith, A. (PI);
Staveley, A. (PI);
Tallent, E. (PI);
Tanaka, S. (PI);
Tomar, R. (PI);
Trahan, J. (PI);
Treharne, E. (PI);
Vermeule, B. (PI);
Williams, Z. (PI);
Woloch, A. (PI);
Yu, E. (PI)
ENGLISH 199:
Why Literature Matters (To Me)
A hands-on, co-taught seminar with English and Creative Writing faculty/lecturers, featuring a complimentary commonplace book and fountain pen as gifts of the department. The development of topic or themes from reading, examination of commonplace books and manuscripts, friendship albums, notebooks, scrapbooks, and journals in Special Collections. Close reading of canonical poets and prose writers on their own reading experience. Study of and creative exercises in notation and annotation. Development of a final project in creative nonfiction on the topic of "Why Literature Matters to Me." Requirements: 5 literature courses in any department.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3
ENGLISH 215E:
Shakespeare and His Contexts: Race, Religion, Sexuality, Gender
This course will explore contexts of race, religion, sexuality and gender in multiple Shakespeare plays (A Midsummer Night's Dream, Twelfth Night, As You Like It, The Merchant of Venice, Titus Andronicus, Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, and The Tempest), with critical readings on topics including feminist and queer theory, transvestite theater, historically blackface performance, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, forced conversion, competing empires, colonialism and postcolonialism, and racial profiling (among others).
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
ENGLISH 218:
Literature and the Brain (COMPLIT 138, COMPLIT 238, ENGLISH 118, FRENCH 118, FRENCH 218, PSYC 126, PSYCH 118F)
How does fiction make us better at reading minds? Why do some TV shows get us to believe two contradictory things at once? And can cognitive biases be a writer's best friend? We'll think about these and other questions in the light of contemporary neuroscience and experimental psychology, with the help of Song of Solomon (Toni Morrison), Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert), season 1 of Westworld (Lisa Joy / Jonathan Nolan), and short readings from writers like Louise Glück, Jorge Luis Borges, Virginia Woolf, and Marcel Proust. We'll also ask what we see when we read; whether the language we speak affects the way we think; and why different people react differently to the same book. Plus: is free will a fiction, or were you just forced to say that?
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
ENGLISH 221:
Software, Hardware, Wetware: Cyberpunk Systems Theory
This course explores the ways we talk and think about how systems work, using nonfiction and science fiction to understand software, hardware, and wetware. A theoretical grounding in the tools used to analyze such systems from a humanistic perspective, including tools from cyber/data feminism, anti-orientalism, and queer theory, as well as practical experience in systems analysis. Students will produce soft/hard/wetware criticism of their own in addition to literary-critical argument. No coding experience required.
Terms: Sum
| Units: 3-5
ENGLISH 250A:
Character: Studies in Fictional Being
Of all the components of prose fiction and the novel in particular, the most slippery is character. What kind of personhood is fictional personhood? What is a textual human? Do characters possess individuality or do they form networks or zones? Do these networks and zones extend beyond the boundary between fiction and reality to take in author and readers? If so, how? Are the categories by which we classify character - narrator, protagonist, antagonist, hero/heroine, etc. - adequate as descriptors of their function in a literary text? In this course, we will examine subgenres of the novel that focus on these questions, particularly the bildungsroman, autofiction, and novels in which a central character lacks interiority or self-awareness, and is therefore almost incapable of self-expression. How minimal can a character be? What happens when a first-person narrator, who is also a character, represents his or her altered consciousness? In such cases, who narrates? What resources does the novelist have to negotiate such formal contradictions? And what do we make of doubles, dybbucks, secret sharers, and other uncanny selves? Is character an infinite regression - fictions of fictions of persons? Authors may include Herman Melville, Gustave Flaubert, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Joseph Conrad, Jane Bowles, Cormac McCarthy, J. M. Coetzee, Don DeLillo, Philip Roth, Patrick Modiano, Sheila Heti, Rachel Cusk. Theorists may include M. M. Bakhtin, Ian Watt, Erich Auerbach, Dorrit Cohn, Maurice Blanchot, Franco Moretti, Catherine Gallagher, Alex Woloch.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
ENGLISH 255A:
Old English Anew (ENGLISH 355A)
Why are the thoughts, feelings, and actions of English poets a millennium ago still so important in modern and contemporary poetry? Early English literature has long had an extraordinary influence on later writers from John Milton to Elizabeth Elstob, William Morris, W. H. Auden, Seamus Heaney, Evan Boland, Denise Levertov, Jorge Luis Borges, and Maria Dahvana Headley. This course will ask what is so special about these creative connections across time. We'll closely examine English lyrical, devotional, heroic, and fantastic poetry from the tenth to the twelfth centuries to consider the themes, ideas, and emotion that motivated later poets to adopt, adapt, and echo their age-old predecessors. Students will learn?through hard work?how to translate and evaluate Early English (getting an excellent knowledge of English grammar, lexis, and form into the bargain) in order to produce their own inventive poetry in the vein of inspired Old English shapers of verse.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4-5
ENGLISH 283:
The Sublime and the Ugly
Why is it that the aesthetic pleasures resulting from artistic representation so often depart from the "pure" ideal of beauty? Is tainted beauty more, or less, than beautiful? Is there any such thing as a "pure" aesthetic category, after all, or is all experience in relation to the arts hybrid? Pain may enhance pleasure in the case of the sublime, but where does disgust fit in? or does it? And what about ugliness? Campiness? Grotesqueness? The uncanny? This course is designed to put literary, psychoanalytic, sociological, architectural, post structural, and queer theory as well as philosophical and art historical writings in conversation with poetry, narrative fiction, creative nonfiction, and film, in order to develop a critical skill set designed not only to address such questions but, more critically for an active mind, to posit new ones.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
ENGLISH 290:
Advanced Fiction Writing
Workshop critique of original short stories or novel. Prerequisite: Intermediate prose workshop.
Terms: Win, Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
ENGLISH 291:
Advanced Creative Nonfiction
English 291 takes as its occasion for your creative and critical development an examination of essays and book excerpts in various creative nonfiction subgenres. These essays and excerpts work within traditional and innovative forms to find new and exciting ways to represent personal experience. This course also serves as the continuing examination and practice of creative nonfiction in English 191. You will write, workshop, present to the class, and revise drafts of work. All workshops will serve as the springboard for larger class conversations about theme and craft. A variety of creative prompts, critical exercises, and assigned readings will foster your understanding and appreciation of creative nonfiction, as well as your growth as a creative writer. All prompts will move you toward a culminating project of realizing either an essay to submit for possible publication or a draft book-length synopsis and outline. This course is designed for students who have completed English 191. Students who have completed creative nonfiction writing course elsewhere or who have extensive other writing workshop experience may petition the instructor for enrollment. Energetic, committed participation is a must.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
ENGLISH 291DC:
DCI Advanced Memoir Workshop
Open to DCI Fellows and Partners only. DCI Advanced Memoir will take as its occasion for your creative and critical development an examination of essays and book excerpts in groundbreaking and traditional memoir forms. These texts broadly innovate within and outside of the formal traditions you studied in DCI Memoir and DCI Intermediate Memoir, finding new and exciting ways to represent personal experience. This section will also serve as the continuing examination and practice of those formal elements. You will write, workshop, present to the class, and revise at least two short essays, one long essay, and working drafts of excerpts from those essays. All workshops will serve as the springboard for our larger class conversation about theme and craft. During the quarter, we will meet in individual conferences. Throughout the quarter, creative work will be assigned in the form of essays, imitations, and revisions. Critical work will be assigned in the form of written analysis, a reading response, starting a class discussion, and writing and discussing critiques of your colleagues' essays. A variety of creative prompts, critical exercises, and assigned readings will foster your understanding and appreciation of creative nonfiction, as well as your growth as a creative writer. Energetic, committed participation is a must.
Terms: Sum
| Units: 5
ENGLISH 292:
Advanced Poetry Writing
The focus of the course will be both on the generation of new work and on strategies to solve artistic problems through studies in poetic craft.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
ENGLISH 293:
Literary Translation: Theory and Practice (COMPLIT 293, DLCL 293)
An overview of translation theories and practices over time. The aesthetic, ethical, and political questions raised by the act and art of translation and how these pertain to the translator's tasks. Discussion of particular translation challenges and the decision processes taken to address these issues. Coursework includes assigned theoretical readings, comparative translations, and the undertaking of an individual translation project.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
ENGLISH 300A:
Theories and Methods in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CSRE 300)
This course examines the concept of race, processes of racial formation, and theory and methods for the interdisciplinary study of race and ethnicity. The course will focus on expressions and representations of race and racialization through comparative analyses and conceptualizations, and will feature guest lecturers drawn from within and beyond Stanford.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
ENGLISH 303A:
The Interruption of the Machine: Introduction to Sound Studies through Literature (COMPLIT 333, ITALIAN 302, MUSIC 303, TAPS 302)
This course will introduce students to the field of Sound Studies (methodology, vocabulary, main claims) with a focus on the various sonic articulations of human-machine interactions in literature. The world of fiction as a sonic machine that articulates noise, sound, music, voice, or silence offers an excellent archive. We will read works by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Eça de Queirós, Mark Twain, the Italian Futurists, Zora Neale Hurston, and Luigi Pirandello. Secondary readings will include seminal contributions by R. Murray Schafer (the soundscape), Leo Marx (U.S. industrialization), Jacques Attali (noise and music), Mladen Dolar (philosophy and voice), Adriana Cavarero (gender, voice, and the body), Jonathan Crary (culture, aesthetics, and perception), Friedrich Kittler (media), and Daphne Brooks (black feminist sound).
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
ENGLISH 308B:
Gilded Age American Literature
Introduction to the creative innovations and the political tensions that stemmed from the formation of a multicultural society during the age of industrialization. We will attempt to place literary works in their historical and cultural contexts, while also surveying recent critical and theoretical developments in areas such as Realism, Naturalism, Regionalism, Minority and Race Studies, and so on.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
ENGLISH 313:
Performance and Performativity (FEMGEN 313, TAPS 313)
Performance theory through topics including: affect/trauma, embodiment, empathy, theatricality/performativity, specularity/visibility, liveness/disappearance, belonging/abjection, and utopias and dystopias. Readings from Schechner, Phelan, Austin, Butler, Conquergood, Roach, Schneider, Silverman, Caruth, Fanon, Moten, Anzaldúa, Agamben, Freud, and Lacan. May be repeated for credit.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5
| Repeatable
for credit
ENGLISH 314:
Epic and Empire (COMPLIT 320A)
Focus is on Virgil's Aeneid and its influence, tracing the European epic tradition (Ariosto, Tasso, Camoes, Spenser, and Milton) to New World discovery and mercantile expansion in the early modern period.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
ENGLISH 318:
Pitching and Publishing in Popular Media (DLCL 312, FEMGEN 312F)
FOR GRADUATE STUDENTS (undergraduates enroll in 119) Most of the time, writing a pitch for a popular outlet just means writing an email. So why be intimidated? This course will outline the procedure for pitching essays and articles to popular media: how to convince an editor, agent, or anyone else that your idea is compelling, relevant, and deliverable. We'll take a holistic approach to self-presentation that includes presenting yourself with confidence, optimizing your social media and web platform, networking effectively, writing excellent queries and pitches, avoiding the slush pile, and perhaps most importantly, persevering through the inevitable self-doubt and rejection.We will focus on distinguishing the language, topics and hooks of popular media writing from those of academic writing, learn how to target and query editors on shortform pieces (personal essays, news stories, etc.), and explore how humanists can effectively self-advocate and get paid for their work.
Terms: Win
| Units: 1
ENGLISH 318A:
Advanced Workshop in Pitching and Publishing for Popular Media (FEMGEN 312G)
Graduate students may self-determine a popular media project¿such as an essay, column/series of essays, podcast, agent query, or book proposal¿to be completed, with consent, under the mentorship of the Graduate Humanities Public Writing Project. Prerequisite: Pitching and Publishing in Popular Media (DLCL 312/ENG 318/FEMGEN 312F), approved project proposal. Students will determine their individual meeting schedule with the instructor, and will also convene for at least one group meeting.
Terms: Sum
| Units: 1
ENGLISH 319C:
Utopian Realism and the Global South
What is Utopia and why does it generate so many different versions of itself, including, most powerfully, negations of itself as dystopia? As a vision of human perfectibility, Utopian literature has from its inception in Thomas More's Utopia (1517) been concerned with the social nature of humanity. It is always therefore political in nature. Almost exactly contemporaneous with the defining moments of the modern era (the conquest of the Americas, Machiavelli and modern politics, the emergence of modern literature in Cervantes, Luther and modern consciousness, printing and the beginning of the modern public sphere), Utopia is also unavoidably a product of the literary and imaginary worlds. Concerned with the development of Utopian and anti-Utopian thinking in the modern world, we will see how issues of science and technology, race and sexuality, freedom and determination, and salvation and apocalypse are embedded in the history of utopian literature and contemporary science fiction. Why did the modern world develop as it did? Can we imagine alternative worlds and histories? As future-oriented thinking, how does utopian literature offer possibilities for a better life? As a forum for future thinking Utopia also offers a platform for thinking anew the working of race and racial formations as well as constructions of gender in the contexts of what has been called "the Subject of Utopia." This course addresses the poetics and generative power of classic Utopian forms to examine how differing aesthetics as well as differing conceptions of history are linked fundamentally to the possibility of reshaping conceptions of race and gender in sustainable future orientations. Concerned with understanding how the traditional forms of the novel are altered in the context of the contemporary drive to represent a new stage in global and hemispheric race relations as well as by the forces of global climate change and the imperatives of decolonization, our readings will investigate how contemporary versions of literary realism change to represent the experiences of the crises of our time and the need to imagine alternative futures.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
ENGLISH 321:
Sixteenth-Century Poetry and Poetics
The course elucidates sixteenth-century English poetry in a continental context. While narrative and discursive poetry will be explored, the emphasis is on lyric poetry, and the continuous focus is on generic experimentation from several distinctive standpoints: e.g. Petrarchism; the plain style; psalters, religious lyrics, and contrafacta; lyric sequences and other fictions of scale; and socially (but not necessarily poetically) marginal voices. Even where the course broaches conventional material, there will be an effort to redefine the questions that animate the field.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
ENGLISH 322:
Enlightenment and its Shadows: British Literature of the long Eighteenth Century
British literature of the long 18th century
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
ENGLISH 323A:
Baroque Tragedy
A study of major theories of the baroque by theorists such as Wolfflin, Croce, and Benjamin together with a close reading of baroque tragedies by Tasso, Milton, Shakespeare, Calderon, Racine, Joseph Simon, and others.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5
ENGLISH 333:
Philosophy, Literature, and the Arts Core Seminar (DLCL 333, MUSIC 332, PHIL 333)
This course serves as the Core Seminar for the PhD Minor in Philosophy, Literature, and the Arts. It introduces students to a wide range of topics at the intersection of philosophy with literary and arts criticism. The seminar is intended for graduate students. It is suitable for theoretically ambitious students of literature and the arts, philosophers with interests in value theory, aesthetics, and topics in language and mind, and other students with strong interest in the psychological importance of engagement with the arts. In this year's installment, we will focus on issues about the nature of fiction, about the experience of appreciation and what it does for us, about the ethical consequences of imaginative fictions, and about different conceptions of the importance of the arts in life more broadly. May be repeated for credit.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 2-4
| Repeatable
5 times
(up to 20 units total)
ENGLISH 342:
Milton
This course reads through the poetry and prose of a writer whose whole course of life was given, as one critic puts it, to "pursuing practical ways of restoring paradise." Non-specialists are welcome; Milton arguably represents the single best figure from the English literary past with whom to think about the problem of poetry as a vocation. Depending on participant interest, a portion of this seminar may be set aside for joint preparation towards the departments comprehensive exam.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
ENGLISH 343:
Culture and Subculture
This course will look at classic writings on cultures and subcultures, publics and counterpublics/"intimate publics," highbrow and lowbrow, both to map some basics about representations and corresponding cultural identities -- and to begin a practical project of inviting graduate students to research and write about contemporary subcultures after the transition to the internet.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 5
ENGLISH 355A:
Old English Anew (ENGLISH 255A)
Why are the thoughts, feelings, and actions of English poets a millennium ago still so important in modern and contemporary poetry? Early English literature has long had an extraordinary influence on later writers from John Milton to Elizabeth Elstob, William Morris, W. H. Auden, Seamus Heaney, Evan Boland, Denise Levertov, Jorge Luis Borges, and Maria Dahvana Headley. This course will ask what is so special about these creative connections across time. We'll closely examine English lyrical, devotional, heroic, and fantastic poetry from the tenth to the twelfth centuries to consider the themes, ideas, and emotion that motivated later poets to adopt, adapt, and echo their age-old predecessors. Students will learn?through hard work?how to translate and evaluate Early English (getting an excellent knowledge of English grammar, lexis, and form into the bargain) in order to produce their own inventive poetry in the vein of inspired Old English shapers of verse.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4-5
ENGLISH 360C:
History and Theory of the Novel I & II
Can the novel, as genre, be conceptualized or critically synthesized? This course will approach such a daunting question from its two necessary starting-points: fiction and theory. On the one hand, we'll take up several of those major novels that have so often been viewed as aesthetically foundational: most likely Don Quixote, Emma, Madame Bovary and The Brothers Karamazov. On the other hand, we'll read the major theoretical statements of Lukacs (Theory of the Novel, Studies in European Realism, The Historical Novel) and Bakhtin (The Dialogical Imagination, Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics), as well as text-specific criticism. This small group of texts might be seen as both necessary and insufficient to the largest questions of the genre. Our focus will be on closely reading and engaging each text in its inviting and demanding singularity and in building an open, imaginative and wide-ranging dialogue between fictions and theories. (This course might be followed by a class the next year on History and Theory of the Novel: Experiments, extending these questions in a number of further formal, geographic and chronological directions).
Terms: Aut, Win
| Units: 5
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
ENGLISH 362C:
Language Politics and the Literary Imagination in Africa
This seminar considers the tremendous linguistic diversity of the African continent and the cultural, political, and socioeconomic dilemmas that define the question of language policy in Africa since decolonization. In the modern world, some languages die, and others are killed. In this course, we will ask how the slow or rapid death of a language - the phenomenon known as linguicide - is a crucial but underexplored dimension of colonialism and slavery in the Atlantic, Saharan, and Indian Ocean worlds. In my usage, the search for a mother tongue denotes an array of literary and linguistic efforts to unify disparate peoples and to heal the divisions of colonialism in Africa and its diaspora. This phrase names an aspiration for individual and collective restoration of selfhood through language. But this effort has come at the cost of intense internal conflict in the African world. The quest for linguistic restoration is a key determinant of internecine strife and civil war in Africa. In Sudan, for example, British colonial authorities employed indirect rule to elevate the Arabic-speaking Muslim populations in the northern regions at the expense of the linguistically and religiously diverse populations of southern Sudan. Over time, the south became politically subordinate to - and economically exploited by - the north, and this process of disenfranchisement fomented a protracted civil war of the late twentieth century that resulted in the secession, in 2011, of South Sudan from Sudan. How have creative writers, theorists, and policy makers sought to reconstitute the colonized self via language and linguistic practices such as state-imposed language rationalization policies or the collective recovery of lost languages? And how do these thinkers strive to resolve or reimagine ongoing antagonisms in literary form? This course ponders these questions via readings of key authors such as Ngugi wa Thiong¿o, Assia Djebar, Abdulrazak Gurnah (winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature), Leila Lalami, and Sulaiman Addonia, among others."
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
ENGLISH 362E:
Toni Morrison: Modernism, Postmodernism, and World Literature
This course will take a close look at Toni Morrison's oeuvre to explore question of Modernism, Postmodernism, and World Literature. Texts to be looked at will include The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Jazz, Paradise, Beloved, Love, and Playing in the Dark, among others.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
ENGLISH 363:
Modern Physics and Literature (APPPHYS 363)
Reading and discussion of selected works of contemporary literature (fiction) and philosophy that engage concepts of modern physics grounded in relativity and quantum theory. This is intended as a seminar that mixes students from physical sciences and the arts/humanities, with no specific prerequisites-- we will discuss the physics invoked by works of fiction and philosophy in a conceptually rigorous but non-mathematical way. How do writers of speculative fiction make sense of challenging ontological claims from empirical science, what implications do they explore, and how is the worldview of theoretical physics augmented or contested?
Terms: Spr
| Units: 2-4
ENGLISH 366F:
Media Theory for Literary Studies
Introduction to media theory by way of some of its key texts and themes, with particular emphasis on how questions of medium, media, and mass media might be useful to literary studies in particular - that is, the study of predominantly textual artifacts. Works by Innis, McLuhan, Derrida, Adorno, Kittler, Hayles, Flusser and others.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
ENGLISH 385:
Computationally Mapping the Literary Imagination
Computational approaches to fiction have given us a suite of new methods for understanding the role of space in literature. In this class, we will explore how the "spatial humanities" leverages these developments to aid us in identifying and exploring places within the imagined world of the novel. We will explore how named entity recognition and embedding spaces can be used to identify the places with the goal of extracting all place information, real or imaged, from a corpus of novels. We will also investigate visualization methods for spatial data (Geographic Information Systems/GIS, network theory) and study how a sense of space affords us new perspectives on the objects we study.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 5
ENGLISH 389:
What was (is?) Modernism?
An introduction to modernism, focusing on the novel. Modernist studies has been eager to explore various axes of expansion, geographic (beyond Europe), temporal (beyond the early twentieth century), and cultural (across the divide between "high" and "low" realms of culture). The class will focus both on familiar modernist such as James, Joyce, Woolf, and Faulkner; we'll also look at case studies of potential forms of expansion (temporal: James Baldwin; geographic: Mulk Raj Anand; and others); secondary sources will focus on recent developments that stretch the boundaries of the field of modernist studies.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
ENGLISH 390:
Graduate Fiction Workshop
For Stegner fellows in the writing program. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr
| Units: 3
| Repeatable
for credit
ENGLISH 392:
Graduate Poetry Workshop
For Stegner fellows in the writing program. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr
| Units: 3
| Repeatable
for credit
ENGLISH 394:
Independent Study
Preparation for first-year Ph.D. qualifying examination and third year Ph.D. oral exam.
Terms: Win, Spr, Sum
| Units: 1-10
| Repeatable
for credit
Instructors: ;
Elam, M. (PI);
Fishkin, S. (PI);
Gigante, D. (PI);
Greene, R. (PI);
Hoxby, B. (PI);
McGurl, M. (PI);
Moya, P. (PI);
Orgel, S. (PI);
Phelan, P. (PI);
Woloch, A. (PI)
ENGLISH 396:
Introduction to Graduate Study for Ph.D. Students
Required for first-year graduate students in English. The major historical, professional, and methodological approaches to the study of literature in English.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 5
ENGLISH 396L:
Pedagogy Seminar I
Required for first-year Ph.D students in English. Prerequisite for teaching required for Ph.D. students in English, Modern Thought and Literature and Comparative Literature. Preparation for surviving as teaching assistants in undergraduate literature courses. Focus is on leading discussions and grading papers.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 2
ENGLISH 398:
Research Course
A special subject of investigation under supervision of a member of the department. Thesis work is not registered under this number.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum
| Units: 1-18
| Repeatable
for credit
Instructors: ;
Algee-Hewitt, M. (PI);
Bronstein, M. (PI);
Castle, T. (PI);
Cohen, M. (PI);
Elam, M. (PI);
Fishkin, S. (PI);
Gigante, D. (PI);
Greene, R. (PI);
Greif, M. (PI);
Hoxby, B. (PI);
Jenkins, N. (PI);
Johnson, A. (PI);
Jones, G. (PI);
Kantor, R. (PI);
Lee, C. (PI);
McGurl, M. (PI);
Meyler, B. (PI);
Moya, P. (PI);
Palumbo-Liu, D. (PI);
Parker, P. (PI);
Phelan, P. (PI);
Phillips, P. (PI);
Quayson, A. (PI);
Rasberry, V. (PI);
Richardson, J. (PI);
Ruttenburg, N. (PI);
Saldivar, R. (PI);
Staveley, A. (PI);
Tallent, E. (PI);
Treharne, E. (PI);
Vermeule, B. (PI);
Woloch, A. (PI);
Yu, E. (PI)
ENGLISH 398L:
Literary Lab (COMPLIT 398L)
Gathering and analyzing data, constructing hypotheses and designing experiments to test them, writing programs [if needed], preparing visuals and texts for articles or conferences. Requires a year-long participation in the activities of the Lab.
Terms: Win, Spr, Sum
| Units: 2-5
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
ENGLISH 398Q:
Qualifying Exam Workshop
Qualifying Exam Workshop for 1st year cohort
Terms: Sum
| Units: 1
ENGLISH 398R:
Revision and Development of a Paper
Students revise and develop a paper under the supervision of a faculty member with a view to possible publication.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum
| Units: 4-5
| Repeatable
for credit
Instructors: ;
Algee-Hewitt, M. (PI);
Bronstein, M. (PI);
Cohen, M. (PI);
Elam, M. (PI);
Fishkin, S. (PI);
Gigante, D. (PI);
Greene, R. (PI);
Greif, M. (PI);
Hoxby, B. (PI);
Jenkins, N. (PI);
Johnson, A. (PI);
Jones, G. (PI);
Kantor, R. (PI);
Lee, C. (PI);
McGurl, M. (PI);
Moya, P. (PI);
Parker, P. (PI);
Phelan, P. (PI);
Phillips, P. (PI);
Quayson, A. (PI);
Rasberry, V. (PI);
Richardson, J. (PI);
Ruttenburg, N. (PI);
Saldivar, R. (PI);
Staveley, A. (PI);
Tallent, E. (PI);
Treharne, E. (PI);
Vermeule, B. (PI);
Woloch, A. (PI);
Yu, E. (PI)
ENGLISH 398W:
Orals, Publication and Dissertation Workshop
For third- and fourth-year graduate students in English. Strategies for studying for and passing the oral examination, publishing articles, and for writing and researching dissertations and dissertation proposals. May be repeated for credit.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr
| Units: 1
| Repeatable
for credit
ENGLISH 399:
Thesis
For M.A. students only. Regular meetings with thesis advisors required. To enroll, make an appointment with English student services and provide confirmation of advisor consent.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum
| Units: 1-10
| Repeatable
for credit
ENGLISH 802:
TGR Dissertation
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum
| Units: 0
| Repeatable
for credit
Instructors: ;
Algee-Hewitt, M. (PI);
Bronstein, M. (PI);
Castle, T. (PI);
Cohen, M. (PI);
Elam, M. (PI);
Fishkin, S. (PI);
Gigante, D. (PI);
Greene, R. (PI);
Greif, M. (PI);
Hoxby, B. (PI);
Jenkins, N. (PI);
Johnson, A. (PI);
Jones, G. (PI);
Kantor, R. (PI);
Lee, C. (PI);
McGurl, M. (PI);
Meyler, B. (PI);
Moya, P. (PI);
Owens, T. (PI);
Parker, P. (PI);
Phelan, P. (PI);
Phillips, P. (PI);
Quayson, A. (PI);
Rasberry, V. (PI);
Richardson, J. (PI);
Ruttenburg, N. (PI);
Saldivar, R. (PI);
Staveley, A. (PI);
Tallent, E. (PI);
Treharne, E. (PI);
Vermeule, B. (PI);
Woloch, A. (PI);
Yu, E. (PI)
