| LIT 99/English Department Orientation Seminar | 0 Course Unit |
| LIT 200/Introduction to Poetry | 1 Course Unit |
| (every semester) Prerequisite: Reserved for English students This course is designed to provide students with an overview and basic comprehension of the diverse forms and devices of poetry; in particular, students will develop a fundamental understanding of poetry’s rhetorical structures and conventions. | |
| LIT 201/Approaches to Literature | 1 Course Unit |
| (every semester) Prerequisite: Reserved for English students An introduction to the various approaches and theories employed by professional literary critics and scholars to enhance students’ understanding, evaluation, and appreciation of literary works. The course has an intensive focus on helping students think critically and write skillfully about literature. | |
| LIT 202/Cultures and Canons | 1 Course Unit |
| (formerly LIT 217/Multicultural Literature) (every semester) Prerequisite: Reserved for English students An exploration of how cultural values, aesthetics, and social constructions of race and ethnicity shape literary texts and literary production. Students will engage in debates involving aesthetic value, disciplinary politics, universality, and canonicity, and examine the role of power, categories of difference, and intersectionality. | |
| LIT 226/Genre Studies: The Film | 1 Course Unit |
| (annually) Provides students with an overview and basic comprehension of the diverse forms and functions of film as an art form; in particular, students will develop a fundamental understanding of the history, structure and conventions of film, by analyzing films that adhere to and/or challenge this generic tradition. | |
| LIT 227/Global Animated Film | 1 Course Unit |
| (same as CMP 227) (annually) This course introduces students to the fundamental aspects of animation as an art form in a global context. Students will develop a fundamental understanding of the history, structure, and conventions of animated film by analyzing a range of works within this broad tradition. | |
| LIT 231/World Literature to 1700 | 1 Course Unit |
| (same as CMP 231) (occasionally) Introduces students to selected literary traditions before 1700. The course will put readings into literary and historical context by focusing on a pivotal literary moment or text. The course will explore literary and historical relations—the textual “ancestors” and “progeny” that influenced or rewrote the pivotal text of the course, as well as the surrounding philological, social, and political contexts of the selected literary moment. The course will also draw upon at least twodistinct cultures or traditions, at least one of which must be non-English-speaking. | |
| LIT 270/Topics in Literature | 1 Course Unit |
| (occasionally) This is a topics course with no prerequisites, offered primarily for sophomores, juniors, and seniors. It may not be appropriate for freshmen. | |
| LIT 310/Literature for Younger Readers | 1 Course Unit |
| (every semester) Prerequisite: Reserved for junior and senior English Education students or by permission of instructor. This course focuses on canonical and contemporary works of literature written for children and young adults within the context of literary theory. | |
| LIT 317/The Witch in Literature | 1 Course Unit |
| (same as WGS 317) (occasionally) Exploration of the socio-historical constructions of the witch through a wide spectrum of literary texts: from medieval religious expositions to Puritan legal treatises, from German fairy tales to modern day films, from children’s literature to critical theory, from 17th -century courtroom narratives to 21st-century propaganda. | |
| LIT 340/The Bible as Literature | 1 Course Unit |
| (occasionally) An examination of the major elements and conventions of the literature of the ancient Hebrews and early Christians as exemplified in the Bible. Emphasis will be placed on influential motifs and images, narrative technique, poetic style, genre, and cultural and historical context. | |
| LIT 357/Early Modern British Literature | 1 Course Unit |
| (occasionally) An exploration of a variety of texts from 16th century England, a period that has been traditionally referred to as “the Renaissance” and more recently, the “Early Modern period.” We will consider the implications of both of these terms in our examination of a wide array of texts from this exciting, tumultuous, chaotic, and productive age. | |
| LIT 370/Studies in Literature | 1 Course Unit |
| (annually) Focuses on a different topic for each version of the course. Recently offered sections of LIT 370 have included: U.S. Satire, World Film, and Creative Non-Fiction Workshop. Course may be repeated up to three times with different topics. | |
| LIT 370/Studies in Literature | 1 Course Unit |
| (annually) Focuses on a different topic for each version of the course. Recently offered sections of LIT 370 have included: U.S. Satire, World Film, and Creative Non-Fiction Workshop. Course may be repeated up to three times with different topics | |
| 1 Course Unit | |
| LIT 376/ U.S. Literature 1900 to Present | |
| (annually) This course explores the diversity of U.S. literature in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Topics may include modernism, the Harlem Renaissance, the emergence of 1930s protest literature, mid-century experimentation, and post-modernism. | |
| LIT 377/African-American Literature to 1920 | 1 Course Unit |
| (same as AAS 377) (formerly LIT 281/AAS221) (fall) A study of selected African American Literature from the colonial period through Reconstruction, this course will build students’ knowledge and confidence as readers and critics of African American culture and society in the United States. We will look at these texts through a lens focused on the effects produced by struggles with American fictions of race, class and sex and their intersections with categories of gender, ethnicity and nation. The course will also explore the canon of African American Literature, its literary tradition, and the connection to and diversions from the canon of American Letters. | |
| LIT 379/Asian American Literature | 1 Course Unit |
| (occasionally) This course examines how issues of identity (class, race, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity) have intersected with debates about literary history and tradition (aesthetics, canonicity, and questions of cultural “value”) in Asian American literature. Although the selected course materials and assignments may vary from semester to semester, each offering of this course focuses on the issues, contexts and representations that have shaped Asian American literature over a period of at least 50 years. In particular, this course focuses on how the Asian American literary tradition and its surrounding contexts have changed in response to, among other things, new patterns of immigration and new debates about the scope, definition and value of the overarching term “Asian American.” | |
| LIT 421/Shakespeare: Comedies and Histories | 1 Course Unit |
| (spring) An in-depth study of selected comedies and histories within their generic classifications and within their historical, cultural, and critical contexts. | |
| LIT 497/Seminar in Critical Theory | 1 Course Unit |
| (same as CMP 497, ENGL 505) (fall, spring) Prerequisites: successful completion of LIT 201 (C or better), junior status, and permission of instructor This course will offer a broad-based introduction to the discipline of literary theory including, but not limited to, New Criticism, reader-response criticism, psychoanalytic criticism, feminism, postcolonialism, deconstruction, poststructuralism, Marxism, cultural studies and New Historicism. | |
| LIT 499/Seminar in Research and Theory | 1 Course Unit |
| (every semester) Prerequisites: successful completion of LIT 201 (C or better) and junior status Small classes that focus on specific topics in literary or linguistic research and theory. Formal seminar presentations and several papers, including completion of a major research essay. To be taken twice by English majors – typically once in the junior, and once in the senior year. Click here for topic descriptions for each section |
|
| LNG 201/Introduction to English Language | 1 Course Unit |
| An introduction to linguistics intended to meet the needs of students planning to teach younger children or with an interest in cognitive science, this course includes topics in phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, psycholinguistics, language acquisition, social variation, and historical linguistics. | |
| LNG 202/Structure & History of the English Language | 1 Course Unit |
| An introduction to both the structure and development of English as a spoken and written language intended to meet the needs of future secondary teachers and students of literature or language, this course introduces basic linguistic concepts and examines English’s linguistic history from Proto-Indo-European (c.3000 BC) to Present-Day English. | |