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English 299 (Seminar for Prospective Majors)
Topics
Go to description of
the goals of English 299.
2008-9 299 Topics (Subject to Change)
Fall 2008
Braunschneider, Gothic Literature (Later British)
Hall, Contact and Captivity Narratives (American)
Winter 2009
Miranda, Native American Literatures (American)
Matthews, The Shelleys OR Dickens (Later British)
Spring 2009
No sections to be offered
Fall 2007
English 299—H. G. Wells
Professor Edward Adams
This course offers an intensive study of the life, works, and cultural status of one of the modern world’s most influential writers. Best known as one of the pioneers of science fiction, Wells was also one of the leading realistic novelists of the early 20th century, and later an innovative and popular historian and autobiographer. This course samples all of these aspects of his career—and allows the students a wide variety of research topics: on Wells’s science fiction classics and their various film adaptations, on his realistic novels of everyday life, on his great Outline of History, and on his fascinating meditations upon his life as a writer and the complex relations between his fictions and his experiences. (FDR HL)
English 299—Seduction and Literature
Professor Susan Hall
Stories of seduction captivate us with their themes of virtue and villainy. These tales of love and abuse ask us to think about agency, complicity, responsibility, and resistance because they highlight the workings of power dynamics within erotic relationships. The roles of seducer and seduced are often unstable, forcing us to think about how we distinguish between coercion and consent. Scenes of seduction also offer provocative representations of female and male desire, which provides us with an opportunity to consider desire at the level of fantasy and to interrogate the gender politics behind portrayals of desire. In this course, we will consider both non-fiction and fiction, including works by Plato, Roland Barthes, Vladimir Nabokov, and Marguerite Duras, as we investigate the psychic, political, and sexual stakes of seduction. As readers, we'll also reflect on our own responses to the verbal persuasiveness of the narrative's seductive designs. (FDR HL)
Winter 2008
English 299—Justice and the Law
Professor Craun
A critical shift in Western beliefs about what could achieve justice in society occurred from the late medieval to the early modern period. Medieval society had few laws, believing that pledged word and loyalty should govern social, political, and economic relations. By contrast, Tudor England, especially its leaders educated as humanists, saw law as a tool to wipe out systemic injustices and to regulate both sexual conduct and speech. We will explore this shift by contrasting, first, two works about making just judgements: Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur , a nostalgic late medieval romance celebrating the just character of some of King Arthur's knights in their role as "enforcers," and Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, in which a puritanical regent attempts to enforce strictly a law against fornication. Then we will examine how Piers Plowman (read in translation) searches for the means to reform entrenched economic and legal corruption while Sir Thomas More's Utopia imagines a country in which law achieves strict equality in politics, in labor, and in standard of living. (FDR HL)
English 299—For Love or Money: Renaissance Drama in Performance
Professor Holly Pickett
This seminar for prospective majors juxtaposes well-known works by Shakespeare with more unfamiliar masterpieces by his contemporaries, including Marlowe, Jonson, Middleton, and Ford. While our discussions will be wide-ranging, one of our recurring themes will be the conjunction of economic and religious language with romantic love in early modern drama. We will also be mindful of what separates plays from novels: the fact that they are performed. The seminar’s reading list is designed around the Renaissance season of Staunton’s American Shakespeare Center, which offers us the rare opportunity to see live productions of early modern drama in our own backyard. The performance focus of the course will also entail explorations of the production history of the plays as well as the economics of playing in Shakespeare’s day and our own. (FDR HL)
Spring Term 2008
Previous 299 (290) topics
Black Satire
Professor Asali Solomon
Aphra Behn in Context
Professor Theresa Braunschneider
Western American Literature
Professor Kary Smout
Biographical Criticism and its Discontents
Professor Edward Adams
Introduction to Native American Literature
Professor Deborah Miranda
The Damned: Hell from Virgil to Milton
Professor Genelle Gertz-Robinson
W. B. Yeats and the Irish Revival
Professor Marc Conner
Justice in Late Medieval Literature
Professor Edwin Craun
Poetry and Performance
Professor Lesley Wheeler
The Brontės
Professor Suzanne Keen
Staging the City: Dekker, Heywood,
Middleton
Professor Eric Wilson
Native American Renaissance: Momaday, Welch, and
Silko
Professor Kary Smout
Whitman's Century
Professor James Warren
Jane Austen and Walter Scott
Professor Edward Adams
Lyric and Voice: Dickinson, Hughes, Merrill
Professor Lesley Wheeler
Thomas Hardy, Novelist and Poet
Professor Suzanne Keen
Turning Sonnet
Professor Eric Wilson
Nabokov: Selected Novels
Professor Dabney Stuart
Emily Dickinson
Professor Lesley Wheeler
King Arthur and Robin Hood: Medieval Legendary
Heroes and Modern Revisions
Professor Edwin Craun
T. S. Eliot and H.D.
Professor Lesley Wheeler
Tragedy and Comedy
Professor Marc Conner
Ethics and the Reading of Shakespeare and Chaucer
Professor Edwin Craun
Appalachian Literature and Culture
Professor Heather Miller
Modern Irish Literature
Professor Marc Conner
Walter Scott
Professor Edward Adams
George Eliot and her Times
Professor Suzanne Keen
Technology and Culture in Nineteenth-Century
America
Professor Jim Warren |
