ENGL 5301, Old English Language

This course will introduce students to the grammar, syntax, vocabulary, phonology, and morphology of Old English and examine its relationship to the language we speak today, in addition to learning some of the basic background and history of the Early Medieval English period and developing an understanding of early English manuscripts. Our primary focus will be to develop a reading knowledge of Old English for the study of basic prose and poetic texts, as well as to prepare students for Beowulf in the Spring 2025 semester (for which this course is a prerequisite; any student contemplating the Beowulf course should plan accordingly). Course requirements: daily translations; midterm exam, periodic quizzes, and one final translation/transcription project. Texts: Moore, Knott, and Hulbert, The Elements of Old English; Mitchell and Robinson, A Guide to Old English, 8th ed.; Clark Hall, A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary; supplemental materials to be delivered via Blackboard.

Requirements fulfilled: Philology Sequence; British Literature; Period: Early; Medieval and Renaissance Studies Certificate

ENGL 5306, Studies in Seventeenth-Century British Literature: Japanese Haiku and English Sonnets, Bashō and Shakespeare

This course is a comparative study of the haiku and sonnet traditions in Japan and England, respectively, as perfected by Matsuo Bashō (1644-94) and William Shakespeare (1564-1616). Innovative and even iconoclastic for their day, Bashō and Shakespeare wrote poetry as no one had done before, and the fruit of their labors is evident in the ubiquity of haiku and sonnets today—without question, the most recognizable poetic forms in the world. But what made the craft of these two poets so unique and compelling? How did Bashō and Shakespeare reinvent—and in some cases subvert—the literary materials they inherited? How did they navigate the complex relationship between religious thought and aesthetics—a relationship that, whether in Protestant England or Buddhist Japan, was fraught with nuance and even danger?

While our focus will be the haiku of Bashō and the sonnets of Shakespeare, we will also become acquainted with the literary and religious contexts of their work. Thus, readings will include writings by Zen master Dogen and on Shintoism, as well as the haiku of Yosa Buson and Kobayashi Issa; additionally, we will read sonnets by Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser, psalm translations by Mary Sidney, and select sermons by Martin Luther and John Donne.

Final research papers will be on a subject of your choice and within your own discipline (Linguistics, Creative Writing, etc.). Additional assignments will include an annotated bibliography and a brief conference-style presentation of your work. Requirements fulfilled: British Literature; Period: Early; Genre: Poetry

ENGL 5323, Nineteenth-Century American Literature: Gender and Class in the Gilded Age

In 1873 Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner coined the term “The Gilded Age,” which would come to characterize American society in the last three decades of the nineteenth century. The obsession with wealth and its ostentatious display gave rise to a literature that was highly critical of the resulting problems in gender roles, social class, and political corruption. To explore these issues, we will begin with readings from two theoretical works from 1899, Thorstein Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Women and Economics. Then we will read and discuss novels ranging across this period, which will include: Horatio Alger's Ragged Dick, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps's The Silent Partner, Henry Adams's Democracy, Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, William Dean Howells's A Hazard of New Fortunes, Sarah Orne Jewett's The Country of the Pointed Firs, Harold Frederic's The Damnation of Theron Ware, and Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth.

Requirements fulfilled: American Literature; Period: Early; Genre: Fiction

ENGL 5351, Studies in Film & Media: Native American and Indigenous Cinemas

This course will focus on the work of Indigenous film and media artists from Native American, First Nations, and Inuit communities. Topics will include expressions of Native epistemologies through film, Indigenous Futurism, genres including horror and the Western, documentary and ethnography, relationships with state media agencies (particularly the National Film Board of Canada), media and activism, and language revitalization projects. Incorporating a broad historical scope from the silent era to the present, the course will include works by Jeff Barnaby (Mi'kmaq), Chris Eyre (Cheyenne and Arapaho), Nyla Innukshuk (Inuk), Alanis Obomsawin (Abenaki), and Jeffrey Palmer (Kiowa), among many others. Course activities will be planned in connection with the Humanities Center's 2024-25 theme of “Celebrating Indigenous Resilience and Cultural Survival: Commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the Red River War.”

Requirement Fulfilled: Genre: Film; Graduate Certificate in Indigenous and Native American Studies

ENGL 5355, Studies in Comparative Literature: Re-enchantment in the Secular Age

According to the political philosopher Charles Taylor, we live in a secular world. By this, he means that over the span of 300-400 years the (European) world has undergone a huge transformation from believing in God to believing that God and religion are options among many (including atheism) that one can choose from. While some critics have celebrated this change, others (including Taylor) have acknowledged that this has resulted in a loss on “enchantment”. If the enchanted world was one in which God existed alongside ghosts, demons, angels, magic, mystery, and wonder, the “disenchanted” world has reduced the earth to a dead space ruled by a set of mechanical and rational principles that define and determine life. It is a world devoid of wonder, beauty, and mystery.

Critics, deeply influenced by Taylor, have taken up the problem with disenchantment and have tried to explore how we can re-enchant this world. While some of have called for a renewal of religion and faith, others have seen art, philosophy, and music as forms of “secular enchantment.” Still others have sought to re-enchant the world by recognizing the “call” of inanimate objects and the environment. Finally, scholars who are atheists too have been rethinking enchantment as a means to recognize the mystery and the beauty of life.

This course will examine the variety of ways in which our modern generation has attempted to re-enchant the world. We'll be using a comparative framework—reading texts (primarily fiction and critical theory) from across the world to explore how different theorists across a broad spectrum of political and ideological beliefs have grappled with this issue of re-enchantment.

Possible texts:

• • Selections from A Secular Age (Charles Taylor)
  • Selections from Vibrant Mattes or The Enchantment of Modern Life (Jane Bennett)
  • Selections from Darwin Loves You (George Levine)
  • Anil's Ghost (Michael Ondaatje)
  • The Hungry Tide (Amitav Ghosh)
  • Death and the King's Horseman (Wole Soyinka)

Assignments include: short paper (7-8 pages), final paper (15-20 pages), and two presentations.

Requirements fulfilled: Comparative Literature, Globalization, and Translation (CLGT); Period: Later; Genre: Fiction

ENGL 5380, Special Topics in Literary Studies: Dystopias/Utopias of the American West

The 19th-century American West promised an empty landscape of unlimited potential for early Euro-American settlers, a utopian vision of an Edenic garden full of promise and opportunity shaped by western mythogenesis and early frontier writings. By the mid-20th century, this move galvanized visions and stories of apocalypse and dystopia for Indigenous and Indohispanic cultures. In this class, we look to utopian inclinations within the American frontier to examine how ideas surrounding westward expansion, colonization, and the silencing of Indigenous voices catalyzed apocalyptic, post-apocalyptic, and dystopic scenarios in the literature of the 20th and 21st centuries. Some of the questions that frame our discussions include: How do dystopic landscapes challenge and fracture capitalist/modernist assumptions of space in the West? How do memory and collective histories, tied to geography and place, eclipse the spatial domination of landscape? To what ends and how is the West allegorized within dystopic and post-apocalyptic narratives of desolation and social and ecological decay? To answer these questions, we will take an ecocritical, social justice, and decolonial approach to understanding ideas of scarcity, natural resources, and identity in dystopic literature. Some of the authors we will study include Gloria Anzaldúa, Ursula K. Leguin, Octavia Butler, Louise Erdrich, and Rebecca Roanhorse.

Requirements fulfilled: American Literature; Period: Later; Genre: Fiction; Literature, Social Justice, and the Environment (LSJE)

ENGL 5380, Advanced Problems in Literary Studies: Translation Theory and Practice in Prose & Poetry

This course is extremely important for us—poets, fiction writers, dramaturges, linguists, literary critics, technical writers…all—in the grand scheme of an education in the arts. We must not only be aware of basic grammatical, syntactical, and phonological nuances, but also a writer's craft, literary and cultural traditions, and contemporary literary contexts. This course will be a combination seminar/workshop in which we will read and discuss translation theory and then put it to practice by translating literary texts from a foreign language into English.

Requirements fulfilled: Comparative Literature, Globalization, and Translation (CLGT); Period: Later; Genre: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry; CMLL Graduate Certificate in Translation and Interpretation