LITERATURE AND CULTURE I: TO THE 18TH CENTURY

ENGL 243

Is America a new world, a city on a hill, an imperial power? Are American literatures revolutionary, nationalist, countercultural? Explores how writers have wrestled with such questions for several hundred years. We will encounter literary figures from white whales to red wheelbarrows, focusing on the diverse geographies, cultural practices, and political mythologies that compose the Americas, and interrogating what is meant by American literature and what it means to be American. We will consider the ways that genres from Native stories to slave narratives to postmodern novels have contributed to social, intellectual, and political currents of American cultures. Develops skills of critical reading and writing that are essential to majors and non-majors alike.

ENGL 242

Considers a period of unparalleled tumult: a time of vast world empires and startling new technologies, revolutions that radically redefined self and community, two cataclysmic world wars, the emergence of ideas of human rights, and the first truly global feelings of interconnectedness. How has literature captured and contributed to these dramatic upheavals? Some writers worldwide have struggled to invent new forms, new words, and new genres to do justice to a world in crisis, while others have reached back in time, seeking continuity with the past. Explore enduring traditions of poetry and drama and think about experiments in the new, globally popular genre of the novel. Develops skills of critical reading and writing that are essential to majors and non-majors alike.

ENGL 155

Introduction to concepts of myth and mythology, myth-making and the modern study of myth in relation to myths and legends common in English and American literature.

ENGL 334

Eighteenth-century literature and culture, including such writers as Dryden, Defoe, Swift, and Pope.

ENGL 813

Literatures in English with origins outside Britain and the United States; theories and/or histories in postcolonial, Anglophone, and/or world literatures in English. Topics will vary.