ENGLISH 197: Seniors Honors Essay
In two quarters.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr
| Units: 1-10
| Repeatable
for credit
Instructors:
Staveley, A. (PI)
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)
;
Antopol, M. (PI)
;
Ashton, M. (PI)
;
Beaty, G. (PI)
;
Bo, M. (PI)
;
Brewer, W. (PI)
;
Bronstein, M. (PI)
;
Carlson-Wee, K. (PI)
;
Cohen, M. (PI)
;
Ekiss, K. (PI)
;
Elam, M. (PI)
;
Evans, J. (PI)
;
Fishkin, S. (PI)
;
Frisch, S. (PI)
;
Gigante, D. (PI)
;
Girmay, A. (PI)
;
Goldstein, Z. (PI)
;
Greene, R. (PI)
;
Greif, M. (PI)
;
Hinojosa, B. (PI)
;
Holbert, J. (PI)
;
HolyWhiteMountain, S. (PI)
;
Hoxby, B. (PI)
;
Hubbard, C. (PI)
;
Hutchins, S. (PI)
;
Jenkins, N. (PI)
;
Johnson, A. (PI)
;
Johnson, A. (PI)
;
Jones, G. (PI)
;
Jordan, A. (PI)
;
Jordan, J. (PI)
;
Kantor, R. (PI)
;
Kealey, T. (PI)
;
Labowskie, M. (PI)
;
Lee, C. (PI)
;
Madani, A. (PI)
;
McGurl, M. (PI)
;
Meyler, B. (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)
;
Rasberry, V. (PI)
;
Richardson, J. (PI)
;
Ruttenburg, N. (PI)
;
Saldivar, R. (PI)
;
Schloesser Tarano, N. (PI)
;
Shewmaker, M. (PI)
;
Smith, A. (PI)
;
Staveley, A. (PI)
;
Tanaka, S. (PI)
;
Tomar, R. (PI)
;
Trahan, J. (PI)
;
Treharne, E. (PI)
;
Vermeule, B. (PI)
;
Williams, Z. (PI)
;
Wolf, J. (PI)
;
Woloch, A. (PI)
;
Yu, E. (PI)
ENGLISH 199: Capstone: Why Literature Matters (To Me)
This class will be a hybrid seminar and workshop. In the seminar, we will be pairing short literary texts with critical essays that respond to them. These will provide models for the work you will be pursuing in your capstone. Roughly one-half of the class meetings will be workshops. During the workshop, you will be actively revising a previously written essay, often expanding on the strengths of the earlier work, and cutting or rewriting entirely the weaker points. Additionally, all students are encouraged to meet with a professor who has expertise in your topic to discuss your topic and revisions at least twice during the quarter.Readings will be drawn from poetry, short stories, creative non-fiction, drama and journalism, and each of these will be paired with a critical response. We will be looking at issues of narrative voice, as well as assessing what makes a great critical essay, noting especially protocols of scholarly research. Prior to the first class, each student must email me (pphelan@stanford.edu) a copy of the paper or project that will constitute the core of your capstone. This will assist me in selecting relevant readings.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
Instructors:
Phelan, P. (PI)
ENGLISH 201: The Bible and Literature
Differences in translations of the Bible into English. Recognizing and interpreting biblical allusion in texts from the medieval to modern periods. Readings from the Bible and from British, Canadian, American, and African American, and African literature in English.
Last offered: Winter 2022
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
ENGLISH 202: Practical Paleography
This is an Introduction to the major medieval hands that will help a scholar identify, date, and localize any manuscript they might encounter. The goal is to provide exposure to fundamental paleographic principles of features, aspect, scholarly descriptive language, paleographic historiography, and methodologies, to build an analytical toolset for future in-depth manuscript study. Over the course of ten sessions, team-taught by Stanford experts, students will gain broad exposure to a range of document types from a broad chronological and geographic sampling, learning how to apply paleographic analysis to these documents. Directed readings through the quarter will allow for further self-guided learning and provide a core of reference materials for future study. The emphasis is on practical skills acquisition for any student hoping to work with medieval documents. The course will be held in Stanford's Department of Special Collections and draw upon our extensive collection of medieval pr
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This is an Introduction to the major medieval hands that will help a scholar identify, date, and localize any manuscript they might encounter. The goal is to provide exposure to fundamental paleographic principles of features, aspect, scholarly descriptive language, paleographic historiography, and methodologies, to build an analytical toolset for future in-depth manuscript study. Over the course of ten sessions, team-taught by Stanford experts, students will gain broad exposure to a range of document types from a broad chronological and geographic sampling, learning how to apply paleographic analysis to these documents. Directed readings through the quarter will allow for further self-guided learning and provide a core of reference materials for future study. The emphasis is on practical skills acquisition for any student hoping to work with medieval documents. The course will be held in Stanford's Department of Special Collections and draw upon our extensive collection of medieval primary source materials and reference library of secondary literature and facsimiles. Weekly exercises will focus on transcription, paleographic feature recognition, comparison, and other hands-on exercises. For one unit, weekly attendance and participation is required. For two units, a substantial transcription and analysis final project will be added.
| Units: 1-2
ENGLISH 210: The Transoceanic Renaissance (COMPLIT 332, ENGLISH 310)
The emergence of a transatlantic and transpacific culture in the early modern period. How is the Renaissance of Europe and England fashioned in a conversation with the cultural forms and material realities of the colonial Americas? And how do colonial writings expand and complicate the available understanding of the Renaissance? Readings in More, Hakluyt, Lery, Spenser, Camoes, Erauso, Shakespeare, the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 5
Instructors:
Greene, R. (PI)
ENGLISH 212: Making and Interpreting Historical Records, 100-1600 (ENGLISH 312A)
Accessing the past through the cultural record provides us with the ability to read primary sources for ourselves; and determine the reasons behind, and resources given over to, the production of documents and manuscripts. This course will introduce students to the places and spaces that created literary and historical texts, the materials and skills involved, and the methods by which these artifacts were produced. In this course, students will be introduced to the essential skills of epigraphy, paleography, codicology and diplomatics, which involve learning how to read inscriptions, manuscripts, and single-leaf documents, like writs and charters. Students will be immersed in first-hand learning in Special Collections, and will work collaboratively on a project that brings to light thoroughly interpreted and edited early textual materials from archive to publication.
Last offered: Spring 2025
| Units: 3-5
ENGLISH 215E: Shakespeare and His Contexts: Race, Religion, Sexuality, Gender (FEMGEN 215E)
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 216: Huckleberry Finn and its Afterlives (AFRICAAM 215, AMSTUD 216)
How did Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn change American literature? How did it come to be viewed as representative of the nation in which it was produced? How have Black writers viewed the book from the 1930s to the present? How have reactions to the racial politics of the book changed over time? This course will examine the evolution of responses to the best-known American novel around the world. It will explore adaptions of it in films made in the US, Ukraine, and Romania by American, Soviet, and German directors; translations of it into some of the 67 languages into which it has been translated; and literary sequels to it penned by other writers, including Percival Everett's 2024 novel, James.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Fishkin, S. (PI)
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?
Last offered: Winter 2025
| Units: 3