printer friendly pageENGLISH 215C: Hamlet and the Critics (ENGLISH 115C, TAPS 151C, TAPS 251C)
Focus is on Shakespeare's
Hamlet as a site of rich critical controversy from the eighteenth century to the present. Aim is to read, discuss, and evaluate different approaches to the play, from biographical, theatrical, and psychological to formalist, materialist, feminist, new historicist, and, most recently, quantitative. The ambition is to see whether there can be great literature without (a) great (deal of) criticism. The challenge is to understand the theory of literature through the study of its criticism.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5
Instructors:
Lupic, I. (PI)
ENGLISH 227: Melville's Moby-Dick
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.
Last offered: Spring 2018
ENGLISH 230: Consent Culture and #MeToo
This seminar will examine narratives of sexual consent in light of the #MeToo movement in America. Considering shifting models and standards of consent in relation to changing cultural awareness about harassment, violence, and abuse, the class will study how consent is construed as a narrative, the history of consent culture on campus and in sex education, approaches to consent developed by minority sexual cultures, and intersectional approaches to consent, among other topics. Readings will be cross-disciplinary and will include legal theory, sociology, psychology, contemporary journalism, essays, and fiction.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
Instructors:
Frost, L. (PI)
ENGLISH 240A: Crooks, Quacks, and Courtesans: Jacobean City Comedy (ENGLISH 340A, HISTORY 232E, HISTORY 332E)
We will read a series of plays set in or around early modern London, written by playwrights such as Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, and John Marston. The course will explore the plays¿ hilarious representations of the London underworld, with its confidence tricksters and naive victims, as well as more serious topics such as social mobility and social relations, economic expansion, disease transmission, and the built environment. Plays studied will include:
The Alchemist, Epicene, The Roaring Girl, A Chaste Maid In Cheapside, The Dutch Courtesan.
Last offered: Autumn 2017
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
ENGLISH 241: Eighteenth-Century Women Writers (FEMGEN 241W)
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.
Last offered: Spring 2018
ENGLISH 251: Paradise Lost for Beginners
A reading class for those studying Paradise Lost in its entirety for the first time. A close reading of this very long poem, plus study of pertinent Miltonic prose, as well as historical background and classic interpretive essays.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
Instructors:
Jenkins, N. (PI)
ENGLISH 280: Eighteenth-Century British Literature
The course will survey some of the major texts and authors of eighteenth-century British literature. No previous knowledge of the period is required. Particular topics we will address will include: the social and historical backgrounds of eighteenth-century literature, satire and the rise of the novel, the relationship between "elite" art and popular culture, literature and the visual arts (Hogarth), the rise of new critical approaches to works of the period.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5
Instructors:
Castle, T. (PI)
ENGLISH 287G: A Woman's Life: 20th- (and 21st-) Century Memoirs by Women (FEMGEN 287G)
Why do women write memoirs? Why has the memoir form become such a popular genre for American female authors? What do such books reveal, More broadly, about the condition of women in Contemporary Society? We will approach these questions by reading autobiographical works by some if not all of the following writers: Gertrude Stein, Joan Didion, Kathryn Harris, Audre Lorde, Patti Smith, Lucy Grealy, Michelle Tea, Jeannette Walls, Carrie Fisher, and Alison Bechdel.
Last offered: Winter 2018
ENGLISH 290: Advanced Fiction Writing
Workshop critique of original short stories or novel. Prerequisites: manuscript, consent of instructor, and 190-level fiction workshop. nNOTE: First priority to undergrads. Students must attend the first class meeting to retain their roster spot.
Terms: Win, Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
Instructors:
Johnson, A. (PI)
;
Tallent, E. (PI)
ENGLISH 292: Advanced Poetry Writing
Focus is on generation and discussion of student poems, and seeking published models for the work.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
Instructors:
Phillips, P. (PI)
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