Results for ENGLISH

Ideas matter. Concepts such as race, progress, and evil have inspired social movements, shaped political systems, and dramatically influenced the lives of individuals. Others, like religious tolerance, voting rights, and wilderness preservation 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. Some weeks will have short reading assignments, but you are not required to purchase any materials.

Required gateway course for Philosophical and Literary Thought; crosslisted in departments sponsoring the Philosophy and Literature track. Majors should register in their home department; non-majors may register in any sponsoring department. Introduction to major problems at the intersection of philosophy and literature, with particular focus on the question of value: what, if anything, does engagement with literary works do for our lives? Issues include aesthetic self-fashioning, the paradox of tragedy, the paradox of caring, the truth-value of fiction, metaphor, authorship, irony, make-believe, expression, edification, clarification, and training. Readings are drawn from literature and film, philosophical theories of art, and stylistically interesting works of philosophy. Authors may include Sophocles, Chaucer, Dickinson, Proust, Woolf, Borges, Beckett, Kundera, Charlie Kaufman; Barthes, Foucault, Nussbaum, Walton, Nehamas; Plato, Montaigne, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Sartre. Taught in English.

The course will begin with a short history of photography since the 19th century; followed by both a hands-on exploration of different types of photographs (possibly using the Cantor Collection) and then a more theoretical discussion of some of the acknowledged classics of photographic writing (Susan Sontag's On Photography, Roland Barthes' Camera lucida, Linfield's The Cruel Radiance.

The elements of fiction writing: narration, description, and dialogue. Students write complete stories and participate in story workshops. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: PWR 1 (waived in summer quarter).

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. May be repeat for credit

Prerequisite: PWR 1. Issues of poetic craft. How elements of form, music, structure, and content work together to create meaning and experience in a poem. May be repeated for credit.

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!

How much can we really know about something written a thousand or more years ago? In this class, we will work towards answering this question as we read the most famous piece of Old English literature. Our ultimate goal will be learning to read as medievalists, investigating what Beowulf's story, its characters, and its heroic ethos may have meant to its medieval audience's and what it means to us today. Whether you plan to research medieval topics in your undergraduate (or graduate) career, want to explore the medieval basis of modern fantasy and historical fiction, or just love a good epic tale, join us and learn to think, interpret, and research like a medievalist. This class can be taken as an Old English language course and/or an introduction to Old English literature in translation. All levels of experience are welcome!

What does it mean to be an animal? And what does it mean to be a person? Ideas about other species - how they think and feel, act and react - involve categories such as race, gender, class and ability in often-surprising ways. This course will trace the relationship between animal life and human identity in twentieth-century American fiction, from the advent of Darwinian thought to contemporary animal advocacy. Readings will include Jack London, Zora Neale Hurston, Linda Hogan, Ruth Ozeki, Philip K. Dick and Grant Morrison, as well selected texts from the growing field of critical animal theory. The course also offers an optional community engagement opportunity to work with Animal Assisted Happiness or another multi-species organization.

This course will consider a range of Shakespeare plays (and the language of the plays) in relation to different contemporary and post-contemporary contexts, including transvestite theater, gender, sexuality, history, geopolitics, travel, and performance.

Medieval Studies is entering a phase of digital abundance. In the last seven years, more medieval material has been put online than has ever been available for study at any point in the past. How can we engage with the growing mass of digitized material available to us? How does this sudden access impact the work we do, the types of questions we ask, the connections we make, and the audiences we write for?nnIn this course, we will examine and evaluate digital medieval resources and software that has been created for interacting with those resources. Students will have the opportunity to design and create an innovative project based on medieval primary sources held at Stanford, applying current digital methods in the analysis and presentation of those resources.

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.

The centrality of the marriage plot in the development of the British novel beginning in the 18th century with Samuel Richardson's Pamela and ending with Woolf's modernist novel Mrs. Dalloway. The relationship between novelistic plotting and the development of female characters into marriageable women. What is the relationship between the novel and feminine subjectivity? What aspects of marriage make it work as a plotting device? What kinds of marriages do marriage plots allow? Is the development of women's political agency related to their prominence in the novel form?

In contemporary American politics where the phrase ¿alternative facts¿ has entered our lexicon in a post-truth attempt at media control, and where the activation of Brexit returns to Britain a little England model of insular nationalism, it might be a good time to return to the concerns of British writers in the 1930s about nationalism, militarism, and the politics of language. Well aware of nativist risks in a post-Depression era, as well as the loss of progressive ideals (unevenly) cultured during the 1920s, these writers explored the relationship and stakes between words and politics as they faced an increasingly fascistic continent. Writers include: G. Orwell, S. Jameson, W. Holtby, V. Brittain, N. Michinson, E. Waugh, S. Gibson, L. Woolf, V.Woolf, A. Huxley, W.H. Auden, C.Isherwood

This course will study the adaptation from short stories to films, with a particular eye toward the form and structure of each media and their relationship to each other. Students will read a variety of 20th and 21st century stories and watch their adaptations (including ¿Rashomon" and ¿Brokeback Mountain,¿), as well as write a short screenplay adaptation and a short critical essay on a story/film of their choosing.

What made modernism `new? Is the movement `evergreen? We examine representational change, narrative innovation, and political aesthetics in the poetry, short fiction, and novels of four iconic pioneers: Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Katherine Mansfield, and T.S. Eliot.

From its inception, Jewish-American literature has taken as its subject as well as its context the idea of Jewishness itself. Jewish culture is a diasporic one, and for this reason the concept of Jewishness differs from country to country and across time. What stays remarkably similar, though, is Jewish self-perception and relatedly Jewish literary style. This is as true for the first-generation immigrant writers like Isaac Bashevis Singer and Anzia Yezierska who came to the United States from abroad as it is for their second-generation children born in the United States, and the children of those children. In this course, we will consider the difficulties of displacement for the emigrant generation and their efforts to sustain their cultural integrity in the multicultural American environment. We'll also examine the often comic revolt of their American-born children and grandchildren against their (grand-)parents nostalgia and failure to assimilate. Only by considering these transnational roots can one understand the particularity of the Jewish-American novel in relation to mainstream and minority American literatures. In investigating the link between American Jewish writers and their literary progenitors, we will draw largely but not exclusively from Russia and the countries of Eastern Europe.

Introduction to the work of an American writer, beloved by general readers, often reviled by critics, whose career spanned from the Great Depression through World War II to the social upheavals of the 1960s. Focus on the social and political contexts of Steinbeck's major works; his fascination with California and Mexico; his interdisciplinary interest in marine biology and in philosophy; his diverse experiments with literary form, including drama and film.

Issues of authenticity, morality, personal identity, and the value of truth explored through film; philosophical investigation of the filmic medium itself. Screenings to include Blade Runner (Scott), Do The Right Thing (Lee), The Seventh Seal (Bergman), Fight Club (Fincher), La Jetée (Marker), Memento (Nolan), and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Kaufman). Taught in English.

Introduction to the reading of poetry, with emphasis on how the sense of poems is shaped through diction, imagery, and technical elements of verse.

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.

In these highly regarded, small-group seminars, students explore unique topics in English language literature, reading select primary texts alongside exemplary critical works and/or other cultural artifacts, while also honing their research and writing skills through series of assignments that culminate in a substantial original research essay. Classes are capped at 8, allowing for individualized attention and rich feedback. Click Schedule below to see individual course titles (in Notes). For fuller details and descriptions, go to https://english.stanford.edu/courses/2017-18-english-162w. Enrollment is by permission. English majors must take at least one WISE to fulfill WIM. Non-majors are welcome, space permitting. Contact the English Department's Student Services Manager, Melanie Ester (melaniee@stanford.edu), for more information.

Virginia Woolf once wrote, "The merest schoolgirl when she falls in love has Shakespeare or Keats to speak her mind for her, but let a sufferer try to describe a pain in his head to a doctor and language at once runs dry." Problems of representation are at the heart of the experiences of physical suffering and medical care; how has literature defined and redefined its relationship to these experiences? Topics include medical and literary interpretation, illness and metaphor, and the evolution of the surface-depth model of the self. The course centers on major works of literature that engage the imaginative potential of medicine and the narrative structures of disease, by authors including Jane Austen, Leo Tolstoy, and Arthur Conan Doyle, read alongside paintings (Rembrandt's The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp), film (Ingmar Bergman's Cries and Whispers), medical descriptions of disease, diagnostic tools, and theory (e.g., Sontag's Illness as Metaphor).

May be taken twice for credit. Lottery. Priority to last quarter/year in school, majors in English with Creative Writing emphasis, and Creative Writing minors. Prerequisite: 90 or 91.

Focus on a particular topic or process. Work includes aspects of reading short stories and novels, writing at least 30-50 pages of fiction, and responding to peers' work in workshop. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: 91 or 90.

Taught by the Stein Visiting Fiction Writer. Prerequisite: 90 or 91

Continuation of 91. Workshop. The application of advanced storytelling techniques to fact-based personal narratives, emphasizing organic writing, discovering audience, and publication. Guest lecturers, collaborative writing, and publication of the final project in print, audio, or web formats. Prerequisite: 91 or 90.

English 191DC will provide an intermediate-level course in the art and craft of writing memoir. It will build on those strategies for writing with meaning and insight about the events in our lives that were presented in English 91DC. During the term, we will read texts that broadly innovate within and outside of the formal traditions of the memoir form, finding new and exciting ways to represent personal experience. This section will also serve as the continuing examination and practice of the formal elements of the memoir. During the term, Fellows will write, workshop, present to the class, and revise at least two short pieces, one long pieces, and working drafts of excerpts. 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 planning and leading class discussions, and writing and discussing critiques of colleagues¿ essays. A variety of creative prompts, critical exercises, and assigned readings will foster your understanding and appreciation of the memoir form, as well as your growth as a creative writer. Energetic, committed participation is a must.

Taught by the Stein Visiting Writer. Prerequisite English 90 or 91. Permission number required to enroll.

May be taken twice. Lottery. Priority to last quarter/year in school, majors in English with Creative Writing emphasis, and Creative Writing minors. Prerequisite: 92.

Generation and discussion of student poems. How to recognize a poem's internal structure; how to seek models for work. Students submit portfolio for group critique. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: ENGLISH 92.

See section above on Undergraduate Programs, Opportunities for Advanced Work, Individual Research.

In two quarters.

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.

Up to three undergraduate writers work with Fiction Into Film instructors. Students design their own curriculum, and Instructors act as writing mentors and advisers. Prerequisite: 190F. Submitted manuscript required.

Open, with department approval, to seniors majoring in non-Honors English who wish to work throughout the year on a 10,000 word critical or scholarly essay. Applicants submit a sample of their expository prose, proposed topic, and bibliography to the Director of Undergraduate Studies before preregistration in May of the junior year. Each student accepted is responsible for finding a department faculty adviser. May be repeated for credit.

A slow and careful reading of Herman Melville's 1850 masterpiece, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. In the process, we will unfold the novel's nineteenth-century literary-historical context as well as the world of Melville's own literary, religious, philosophical, technological, commercial, and scientific citations and allusions. We will seek to understand the multiple significances of Melville's experiments with the novelistic genre and their relationship with his building out the meaning of Americanness. In the second half of the quarter, we will focus on a selection of major mid-twentieth-century through contemporary critical, literary-theoretical, and political-theoretical readings of Moby-Dick.

The course will deal with a number of eighteenth-century English women writers--primarily novelists, but also poets, critics and playwrights. Authors to be studied in depth will include both relatively well-known writers such as Behn and Wollstonecraft, and lesser-known authors such as Sarah Scott, Elizabeth Inchbald and Anna Seward. Considerable attention will be paid to recent feminist scholarship on eighteenth-century women's writing, generic issues and the question of a "women's literary tradition," the material conditions of female authorship in the period, and the history of the eighteenth-century literary marketplace.

Workshop critique of original short stories or novel. Prerequisites: manuscript, consent of instructor, and 190-level fiction workshop. May be repeat for credit

Focus is on generation and discussion of student poems, and seeking published models for the work.

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.

This course will explore the illuminated world of William Blake poet, prophet, revolutionary, and visionary artist in the context of intellectual history, culture, and aesthetics. To study Blake is to witness the birth pangs of modernity and the pathos energy and agony of alternate, impossible histories that fell by the wayside. The task is multidisciplinary, and it is one that opens literary history into our contemporary moment. Blake challenges virtually every aspect of literary representation, from character to narrative structure, from poetic meter to typology and other features of print culture. He is historical in his situatedness (religious dissent, the chemical revolution, industrialization, commodification, and controversies about human and animal rights were all part of his milieu) but he is also radically present in his ongoing influence and relevance. The course will unpack Blake's iconography, ideology, mythology, and infernal method which made every illuminated book a unique work of art.

After its heyday in the 1970s and 1980s, many wondered whether the law and literature movement would retain vitality. Within the last decade there has, however, been an explosion of energy in the field, which has expanded beyond the boundaries of the literary text narrowly conceived and incorporated a range of other genres and humanistic approaches. Several recent or forthcoming books survey the range of emerging scholarship and the potential for new directions within the field.  Using one of these--New Directions in Law and Literature (Oxford, 2017)--as a guide, this course will delve into a variety of topics that law and literature approaches can illuminate. These include, among others, conceptions of sovereignty and non-sovereign collectivities, the construction of the citizen and refugee, competing visions of marriage and its alternatives, law and the rhetorical tradition, and theoretical perspectives on intellectual property. Nearly every session will pair recent scholarship in the field with a literary or artistic work, ranging from Claudia Rankine's Citizen to Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. Students taking the course for R credit can take the course for either 3 or 4 units, depending on the paper length.  This class is limited to 22 students, with an effort made to have students from SLS (16 students will be selected by lottery) and six non-law students by consent of instructor.  Elements used in grading:  Attendance, Class Participation, Written Assignments, Final Paper. Cross-listed with the Law School (LAW 3517).

Primary reading in Freud, Lacan, Laplanche, Irigaray and Kristeva. Secondary readings in film theory (Mulvey to Silverman), art history (Bryson, Bersani) and poststructuralism (Derrida, Foucault, Butler).

An exploration of the some of the main currents in post-WWII and contemporary literary theory from the new criticism to deconstruction, new historicism, etc., arriving at contemporary debates about surface reading, digital humanities, affect, and the new materialisms.

Through intensive close reading of Joyce's novel along with selected theoretical texts, we will examine the formal structures and cultural and political implications of Ulysses. Topics will include modernist aesthetics and narrative innovation, depictions of consciousness, gender and sexuality, vernacular modernism, and the sensorium of modernity.

For Stegner fellows in the writing program. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.

For Stegner fellows in the writing program. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.

Preparation for first-year Ph.D. qualifying examination and third year Ph.D. oral exam.

Three or more graduate students who wish in the following quarter to study a subject or an area not covered by regular courses and seminars may plan an informal seminar and approach a member of the department to supervise it.

This two-quarter-long reading group will alternate from week-to-week between Old English Biblical and Elegaic Poetry and David Jones¿s twentieth-century transnational Modernist masterpiece, "Anathemata" (which W. H. Auden called very probably the finest long poem written in English in this century). Students can choose to join biweekly for just Old English (in the original language) or just David Jones, or complete both sets of allied reading.

A special subject of investigation under supervision of a member of the department. Thesis work is not registered under this number.

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.

Students revise and develop a paper under the supervision of a faculty member with a view to possible publication.

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.

For M.A. students only. Regular meetings with thesis advisers required.