English BA

The course surveys a variety of Indigenous oral and written narrative expressions (for example, bilingual texts and pictographic texts) from different regions, including Dakota, Anishinaabe, Ho-Chunk, and Potawatomi communities, as well as a possible inclusion of First Nations and Métis narratives. Students will explore themes and concepts central to Indigenous individuals, groups, and communities with a culturally-,historically-, and futuristically-informed analytical approach to literary study. Significant focus is given to issues of race and racism.

Full course description for Native American Oral and Written Narratives

This course surveys illustrative works from the beginnings of European settlement to 1870, introducing students to the study of that literature and sharpening critical reading skills. Emphasis is on the development of literary technique and on the cultural context of literary works. Readings may include religious and political documents, Native American tales and orations, exploration and captivity narratives, slave narratives, journals, novels, plays, and poems.

Full course description for American Literature: Beginnings-1870

This course surveys illustrative works from 1870 to the present, introducing students to the study of that literature and sharpening critical reading skills. Emphasis is on the development of literary technique and on the cultural context of literary works. Topics covered include the rise of modernism, its impact on a diverse population and various responses to modern culture, as well as changing perceptions of religion, race, gender, environment, the future, the self and the community. Students are introduced to a range of contemporary critical approaches to literature.

Full course description for American Literature: 1870-Present

In this course, students survey important and influential texts of the medieval, Renaissance and early modern periods. Emphasis is placed on literary history and the development of the English language as the vehicle of literary expression. Attention is also given to literary analysis and to the application of various interpretive approaches.

Full course description for English Literature: Beginnings-1800

In this course, students survey important and influential texts of the last two centuries. Emphasis is placed on literary history and the development of the English language as the vehicle of literary expression. Attention is also given to literary analysis, and to the application of various interpretive approaches.

Full course description for English Literature: 1800-Present

This course will study the Harlem Renaissance, a period of incredible productivity and creativity among black artists and intellectuals between 1920-1940, centered in Harlem, New York. The course considers how concepts -- such as race; the New Negro movement; Jim Crow, segregation, and racism; so-called racial uplift and the Talented Tenth; the Great Migration; the Roaring Twenties, and Modernism were manifested in the works of art, literature, philosophy, film, and music of Harlem's artists and thinkers. In addition to learning the specialized vocabulary and skills involved in the analysis of works from a variety of artistic genres, students will learn how Harlem's leading black intellectuals tied aesthetic theories to social and racialized principles of artistic production, inspiring some artists while prompting others to openly rebel. Given that the Harlem Renaissance is not characterized by any one style, technique, or manifesto, well pay special attention to connections among…

Full course description for The Harlem Renaissance

This course surveys how works of American literature and film assert, create, examine, reinforce, privilege, and/or question the construction of racialized and gendered narratives surrounding identity. Students discuss ways that fiction, drama, poetry, popular music, and film engage with the issues of race, racism, and gender. In addition, students will learn and apply key concepts and theories of race and gender (for example, the masculine gaze, the white gaze, queer theories, critical race theory, postcolonial theories) with a critical emphasis on intersectionality in course discussions. Students will make new discoveries about familiar works from the narrative arts; understand the complex legacies of racist and sexist tropes underlying the conventions of popular genres (e.g., the western, the buddy movie, Sci-Fi, the great American novel, the American musical, and so on); and consider personal and collective responses to racism and sexism (e.g., personal viewing habits, social…

Full course description for Gender and Race in Literature and Film

Through films, poetry, autobiography, novels, lyrics, and short essays, this intermediate-level survey course explores African-American literature from a historical perspective ranging from the works of enslaved authors to contemporary spoken-word poetry. The course celebrates the historical and aesthetic development of African-American literary arts in the face of (often legalized) racial oppression. Students learn techniques and theories for critical reading to explore literary issues related to culture, race, and social history. Significant focus is given to issues of race and racism in this literature course.

Full course description for African-American Literature

This course explores the literature by African-American women writers from the 18th century to the present, analyzing their depictions of racism, sexism, and classism as artistic, moral, and civic responses to inequality. Students learn techniques for critical reading and literary analysis at the upper-division humanities level to understand how these creative works explore issues related to the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow laws, and the influence these writers had on cultural events, such as anti-lynching journalism, the Harlem Renaissance, the Civil Rights Era, and the Women's Liberation Movement.

Full course description for Black Women Writers

Students in this course examine literature, film, and expository articles to investigate ways that people of color represent their experiences as immigrants to the U.S. Throughout the course we analyze how various texts present the main themes, perspectives, and socio-cultural contexts of contemporary immigration, which has historically been shaped by racialized discourses and racist gatekeeping practices. We also interrogate how the concerns articulated by immigrants of color intersect with broader social categories such as race, gender, sexuality, age, religion, and citizenship status. Through lectures, discussions, compositions, and small-group activities, students will critically examine the complexities of acculturation and the creativity it takes to balance one's cultural heritage with life in another country as a racialized ethnic minority.

Full course description for Literature by Immigrants of Color

This course will explore the ways Asian American novels, short stories, poetry and film represent, elaborate and challenge how we understand Asian American experience as is it informed by race, gender, sexuality and age. Focusing on major texts of Asian American literature from the early 20th century to the present, we will discuss how and why the study of Asian American literature emerged from its historical exclusion from the U.S literary canon, and how this exclusion is tied to structural racism in the academy, a major institution in U.S. cultural gatekeeping. We will also discuss how the study of Asian American literature benefits from understanding broader historical and political issues relevant to the Asian American experience. To this end, we will read and discuss relevant primary texts and secondary criticism on topics such as (but not limited to), law, citizenship, labor, imperialism, war, anti-Asian racism, comparative racialization, queer identities and activism to deepen…

Full course description for Asian American Literature

This course examines significant works of Latinx literature written in the U.S., focusing on the diversity of the Latinx literary expression. Students will explore relevant sociopolitical contexts and how literature provides insight into the commonalities and differences of the experiences of Latin American diasporas in the US. Topics that may be studied in relation to literary production, include but are not limited to identity (e.g. mestizaje, Afro-Latino/a/x), race, indigeneity, gender, sexuality, as well as borderlands, citizenship, migration, and multilingualism. Emphasis will be on U.S. based literature, but may include some comparative analysis with literary texts across the Americas and the Caribbean. Significant emphasis on race and racism.

Full course description for Latinx Literature of the U.S.

This course explores expressive culture, including oral and written traditions, arts, music, and architecture of the ancient world with an emphasis on the formal, aesthetic, and relevant geopolitical contexts of human creativity. Students will learn how the formal analysis of a variety of ancient artifacts leads scholars to insights about humanistic expression, constructions of self and other, and cultural values and ideals. While the course may include discussion of work from ancient Greece or Rome, it will draw additional emphases from two or more of the following areas: North Africa, Mesopotamia, Persia, East Asian, South Asia, and Central and South America. All texts will be in English or English translation.

Full course description for Global Humanities: Ancient Cultures

Around the world, at different moments in history, artists have questioned older social, philosophical and artistic forms and sought to create radically new, "modern" forms. To understand these developments and how they have influenced the contemporary world, this course examines several influential modern(ist) texts in a global frame, in connection with developments in modern art, music, politics and thought. Selections will vary but will draw from modernisms around the world, including cultural Africa, East Asia, Europe, the Americas, and South and Southeast Asia. All texts read in English or English translation.

Full course description for Global Modernisms

Postmodernism is cultural movement that has been characterized by a radical rejection of traditional aesthetics to the extreme limit, developing new theories and aesthetics. From the blurring of high and low culture, through the use of pastiche, collage, and bricolage, to the status of the object in an era of simulacra, postmodernism is characterized by a number of distinct techniques and critical theories which we'll explore in a wide variety of art, film, new media, literature, architecture, and music. Readings will consider postmodernism in a global frame. All texts read in English or English translation.

Full course description for Global Postmodernism

Folklore, one of the oldest forms of human expression, continues to shape contemporary culture and everyday life. This course examines the nature of folklore; the study, analysis and interpretation of folklore; various folk traditions; and real-life examples and uses of folk-lore. Selections will vary but typically represent folklore originating from regions of Africa, East Asia, Europe, the Americas, and South and Southeast Asia. All texts read in English or English translation.

Full course description for World Folklore

This course examines the work of contemporary African films with particular emphasis on the continuities and disruptions of Black cultures across transnational lines. The course studies a wide range of expressive possibilities, from analyses of African nations¿ legacies of colonization to art house visionaries, from fun comedies celebrating romance to slice-of-life realism. We pay significant attention to African films as political, aesthetic, and anti-racist practice. All works are in English, English translation, and/or with English subtitles.

Full course description for African Film

This rich, interdisciplinary course studies how popular and classical artistic genres (such as painting, sculpture, installations, music, literature, dance, film, digital media, photography, happenings, cartoons, criticism, theories, etc.) shape our understanding of and discussions about environmental issues. We examine how artists from across the world have sought to use, recreate, idealize, manipulate, mar, intervene in, and affect the environment and public attitudes toward the environment. Key critical theories informing environmental art will be covered (e.g., ecocriticism, environmental racism, indigenous activism, animal rights, radical plant studies, global ecofeminism, the Anthropocene, apocalypse, poverty, religion, etc.). This course has a community engagement element.

Full course description for Environmental Humanities

This course will study expressions of love and sexuality in ancient world literatures. Students will explore how ancient literary traditions engaged eroticism and imagined possibilities for sexual being. By closely analyzing literature from distinct pre-modern global traditions, students will learn the terminology, theories, and methodologies of contemporary comparative literature approaches. Students will also apply contemporary critical lenses to the study of love and sexuality in pre-modern world literatures, such as empire studies, body and disability studies, queer theory, feminism, eco-erotics, and anticolonialism. All texts will be read in English or English translation.

Full course description for Love and Sex in Pre-Modern World Literature

This course examines Asian and Asian diasporic literatures written in or translated to English. Students will analyze how these literatures have contributed to and transformed the study of English in a global frame. Students will investigate how Asian and Asian diasporic literature emerges from specific cultural, historical, national, global and American multiethnic contexts and demonstrate how ¿Asia¿ is itself a distortion of a broad region, largely produced from a western imperial imagination. Topics that may be studied in relation to literary production, include but are not limited to, gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, language, immigration, global migrant labor, citizenship, imperialism, as well as Asian indigenous histories. All texts will be in English or English translation.

Full course description for Asian and Asian Diasporic Literatures

This course examines contemporary literatures by African and African diasporic writers. Students will identify and compare the diversity of African and African diasporic literatures to critique and challenge monolithic understandings of Africa and the African diaspora. As students deepen their understanding of the construction of ¿Africa¿ and the African diaspora, we will distinguish the various ways these literatures reflect and innovate traditional narrative practices and Western literary forms. Finally, students will apply relevant socio-political and literary scholarship about literatures from the continent and the diaspora to literary analysis. Topics that may be studied in relation to literary production include but are not limited to, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, language, nationalism, anti-colonial resistance, decolonization, and globalization. All texts will be in English or English translation.

Full course description for African and African Diasporic Literatures

This course examines world literatures from regions (e.g. Latin and Central America, Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Caribbean) previously described as "Third World." Students analyze literatures that emerge from, reflect, and respond to geopolitical phenomena that have produced the "Global South," namely colonization, globalization, slavery, indigenous dispossession, and displacement that continue to inform global North-South relations. In addition, students explore how literatures of the Global South offer creative responses and resistances to the violent imperialisms of the Global North and represent transformative Global South identities, movements, and solidarities. All required reading will be in English. Geographic emphasis of literature will vary by semester.

Full course description for Literature of the Global South

This course introduces influential literary theories developed between 1950 and the present. Students become familiar with the main concepts of each theory and with how these theories can be applied to particular texts, past and present. Discussions focus on how contemporary theory challenges older ideas about literature, what distinguishes literature from other uses of language, how literature should be read, what roles literature plays in social, political, and personal life, and what makes a work of literature effective.

Full course description for Literary Theory: 1950-Present

This capstone course for English majors focuses on integrative processes in the study of literature. (The course is also open to appropriately prepared nonmajors.) Students work together as a community of inquiry to study a particular author, genre, period or problem selected for each section by the instructor. Each student completes a course paper or project using concepts and methods derived from this and other literature courses to explore a literary topic of personal interest. Prerequisite: Students completing an English major must be within two semesters of graduation. Other students must secure the instructor's consent before registering.

Full course description for Literature Capstone Seminar