English
Department Overview
What is literature? What constitutes a literary education in the twenty-first century? How many ways are there to read and write about the same text, and how do we decide among various interpretations? How does our understanding of a work change when we consider its context, whether biographical, historical, cultural, or political? Why might we ask questions in literature classes about race, class, gender, and sexuality? Why should a student of literature study language? Why should a student interested in creative writing read literature? How does writing enable us to discover and shape our ideas? How does the English major prepare students for living in, and thoughtfully engaging with, the world?
The Skidmore English department invites students to consider such questions and to frame their own. Throughout the curriculum, English majors learn to read closely, think critically, challenge assumptions, practice methods of interpretation and research, analyze the formal qualities of texts, approach texts from various perspectives, place texts in various contexts, and write with clarity, coherence, and precision. As the English major progresses from introductory to capstone courses, students are offered increasingly sophisticated and elaborate writing and analytic tasks and are called upon to perform steadily more original, inventive, independent work.
Through class meetings, lectures, panels, and symposia, English Department faculty and students, as well as distinguished visitors, create and nourish a vital intellectual environment. In addition, publications such as Folio (edited and produced by students) and the nationally recognized Salmagundi extend our community’s ongoing discussions and debates.
Enhanced Courses
Selected English courses that ordinarily carry three credit hours may carry four credit hours when designated as enhanced courses, developing particular student skills and offering a distinctive approach to learning. Enhanced courses are so designated in the master schedule and follow one of these models:
Research in Language and Literary Studies (Designated xxxR)
Students:
- develop research questions
- establish bibliography
- review relevant literature
- assess sources
- present research findings in written reports and/or oral presentations
Collaborative Learning in Language and Literary Studies (xxxL)
Students work collectively or independently to:
- contribute to group projects
- make group presentations, and/or
- present collaborative papers
Writing in Language and Literary Studies (xxxW)
Students spend additional time drafting, revising, and critiquing:
- to hone their strategies of argumentation and analysis
- to assess their writing in the context of professional literary criticism
- to attend not only to content but also to style and voice in their critical papers
Critical Perspectives in Literary Studies (xxxP)
Students:
- study critical and/or theoretical perspectives
- apply them to particular literary works
Chair of the Department of English: Tim Wientzen
Associate Chair: Nicholas Junkerman
Director of the Writing Center: Caitlin Jorgensen
Professors: Calvin Baker, April Bernard; Barbara Black, The Tisch Chair in Arts and Letters; Robert Boyers; Janet Casey, Associate Dean of the Faculty for Diversity and Faculty Affairs; Catherine Golden,The Tisch Chair in Arts and Letters (2017-2022); Susannah Mintz; Mason Stokes
Associate Professors: Andrew Bozio, Joseph Cermatori, Margaret Greaves, Linda Hall, Nicholas Junkerman, Michael S. Marx, Tim Wientzen, Melora Wolff
Assistant Professors: Paul Benzon, Bakary Diaby, Jamie Parra
Senior Teaching Professor: Olivia Dunn
Teaching Professors: Caitlin Jorgensen, Ruth McAdams
Visiting Assistant Professors: Jennifer Fawcett, Hajar Hussaini, Lori Soderlind, Eileen Sperry,
Distinguished Artist-in-Residence: Greg Hrbek
Lecturers: 1Peg Boyers, Matt Gellman, 1Marla Melito, 1Thaddeus Niles, 1Brenda Pashley-Rabbitt, Archana Suresh, 1Marc Woodworth
Resources: Salmagundi Magazine
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Part-time
English B.A.
Effective for Those Who Entered Skidmore in Fall 2022 and Beyond
In addition to fulfilling all-college requirements for the B.A. degree, the English major requires a minimum of 32 credit hours and a total of at least 10 courses (two at the 100 level, three at the 200 level, and five at the 300 level), which includes the completion of the Literary History Requirement, taken at the 200 or 300 level, as follows:
| Code | Title | Hours |
|---|---|---|
| Introductory Requirement | ||
| Select one of the following: | 4 | |
| Writing Seminar II | ||
| Writing Seminar II | ||
| Writing About Literature 1 | ||
| Select one of the following: | 3 | |
| Fiction | ||
| Poetry | ||
| Drama | ||
| Film | ||
| Nonfiction | ||
| Introductory Topics in Literature | ||
| Intermediate Requirement | 3 | |
| English Seminar | ||
| Select two of the following: | 6-8 | |
| Literary and Cultural Theory | ||
| The Victorian Illustrated Book | ||
| Science Fiction | ||
| Special Studies in Creative Writing | ||
| Graphic Narratives and Comic Books | ||
| Prose Boot Camp | ||
| Introduction to Nonfiction Writing | ||
| Introduction to Fiction Writing | ||
| Introduction to Poetry Writing | ||
| Introduction to Asian American Literature | ||
| Women and Literature | ||
| Literature and the Environment | ||
| Introduction To Shakespeare | ||
| Introduction to American Literature | ||
| Introduction to African-American Literature | ||
| Special Topics in Literature | ||
| Bible As Literature | ||
| Writing Black/Writing Back | ||
| World Literature | ||
| Children's Literature: A History | ||
| Afrofuturism: Literature and Culture (L) | ||
| Disability in Contemporary America | ||
| Imagining the Future | ||
| Asian American Women in Literature & Media | ||
| Chekhov: Plays, Stories, Letters & Life | ||
| Peer Tutoring Project in Expository Writing | ||
| Advanced Requirement | ||
| Select four courses from "Advanced Courses in Language and Literature" 2 | 12-16 | |
| Capstone Experience | ||
| Select one of the following to satisfy the capstone experience in most cases: 3 | 4 | |
| Senior Seminar in Literary Studies | ||
EN 381 | 4 | |
| Literary History Requirement | ||
| Select one course, at either the 200 or the 300 level, in each of the early, middle, and late periods as categorized below (can include courses taken in fulfillment of requirements above): | ||
| Total Hours | 32-38 | |
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EN 110 Writing About Literature is strongly recommended as preparation for 200-level courses.
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Only one of the five required courses may be a section of EN 378 Nonfiction Workshop, EN 379 Poetry Workshop, or EN 380 Fiction Workshop.
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Students with appropriate preparation and faculty permission may instead choose the senior thesis or project options: EN 376 Senior Projects, EN 390 Senior Thesis.
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One workshop in the corresponding genre (EN 378 Nonfiction Workshop, EN 379 Poetry Workshop, or EN 380 Fiction Workshop) is a prerequisite for the EN 381 capstone.
Literary History Requirement
Early (Pre-1700) Courses
| Code | Title | Hours |
|---|---|---|
| EN 225 | Introduction To Shakespeare | 3 |
| EN 229 | Special Topics in Literature | 3 |
| EN 230 | Bible As Literature | 3 |
| EN 329 | Shakespeare and Embodiment | 3 |
| EN 332 | The Pastoral | 3 |
| EN 341 | Special Studies In Medieval Literature | 3 |
| EN 342 | Special Studies in Chaucer | 3 |
| EN 343 | Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama | 3 |
| EN 344 | Special Studies In Sixteenth-Century Poetry and Prose | 3 |
| EN 345 | Shakespeare | 3 |
| EN 346 | Special Studies in Early Modern Drama | 3 |
| EN 347 | Special Studies In Seventeenth-Century Poetry and Prose | 3 |
| EN 348 | Milton | 3 |
| EN 362 | Special Studies in Literary History (Pre-1800) | 3 |
Middle (1700-1900) Courses
| Code | Title | Hours |
|---|---|---|
| EN 222W | The Victorian Illustrated Book | 4 |
| EN 229 | Special Topics in Literature | 3 |
| EN 315 | Eighteenth-Century Novel | 3 |
| EN 316 | Nineteenth-Century British Novel | 3 |
| EN 322 | Special Studies in Nineteenth-Century American Literature | 3 |
| EN 331 | The Wild(e) Nineties | 3 |
| EN 337 | The Continental Novel | 3 |
| EN 350 | Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Literature | 3 |
| EN 351 | English Romanticism | 3 |
| EN 352 | Victorian Literature and Culture | 3 |
| EN 354 | Jane Austen | 3 |
Late (Post-1900) Courses
| Code | Title | Hours |
|---|---|---|
| EN 221 | Introduction to Asian American Literature | 3 |
| EN 229 | Special Topics in Literature | 3 |
| EN 237 | Postcolonial Culture | 3 |
| EN 238 | World Literature | 3 |
| EN 242 | Disability in Contemporary America | 4 |
| EN 244 | Imagining the Future | 3 |
| EN 245 | Science Fiction | 3 |
| EN 246 | Asian American Women in Literature & Media | 4 |
| EN 253 | Graphic Narratives and Comic Books | 3 |
| EN 311 | Recent Fiction | 3 |
| EN 312 | Modern British Novel | 3 |
| EN 313 | Modernist Poetry: 1890-1940 | 3 |
| EN 314 | Contemporary Poetry | 3 |
| EN 325 | American Modernisms | 3 |
| EN 326 | Special Studies in Contemporary U.S. Literature and Culture | 3 |
| EN 327 | Special Studies in African-American Literature | 3 |
| EN 328 | James Joyce's Ulysses | 3 |
| EN 338 | Queer Fictions | 3 |
| EN 359 | Modernism and Drama | 3 |
Effective for Those Who Entered Skidmore Prior to Fall 2021
In addition to fulfilling all-College requirements for the B.A. degree, the English major requires a minimum of 32 credit hours and a total of at least ten courses (one at the 100 level, two to three at the 200 level, and six to seven at the 300 level), two of which must be designated early period (pre-1800), taken at the 200 or 300 level, as follows:
| Code | Title | Hours |
|---|---|---|
| Introductory Requirement | ||
| Introduction to Literary Studies | ||
| EN 110 | Writing About Literature 1 | 4 |
| Forms of Language and Literature | ||
| Select one of the following: | 3-4 | |
| Literary and Cultural Theory | ||
| Fiction | ||
| Poetry | ||
| Drama | ||
| Film | ||
| Nonfiction | ||
| The Victorian Illustrated Book | ||
EN 228 | ||
| Science Fiction | ||
| Special Studies in Creative Writing | ||
| Introduction to Nonfiction Writing | ||
| Introduction to Fiction Writing | ||
| Introduction to Poetry Writing | ||
| Language and Literature in Context | ||
| Select one of the following: | 3 | |
| Introduction to Asian American Literature | ||
| Women and Literature | ||
| Literature and the Environment | ||
| Introduction To Shakespeare | ||
| Introduction to American Literature | ||
| Introduction to African-American Literature | ||
| Special Topics in Literature | ||
| Bible As Literature | ||
| World Literature | ||
| Children's Literature: A History | ||
| Imagining the Future | ||
| Advanced Requirement | ||
| Select five courses from "Advanced Courses in Language and Literature" 2 | 15 | |
| Capstone Experience | ||
| Select one of the following to satisfy the capstone experience in most cases: 3 | 4 | |
| Senior Seminar in Literary Studies | ||
EN 381 | 4 | |
| Additional Requirement | ||
| Select one additional course at the 200 or 300 level 5 | 3 | |
| Early Period Requirement | ||
| Select two courses, at either the 200 or the 300 level, designated "early period": | 6 | |
| Introduction To Shakespeare | ||
EN 228E | ||
| Spec Studies: Texts in Context | ||
| Bible As Literature | ||
| Eighteenth-Century Novel | ||
| Special Studies In Medieval Literature | ||
| Special Studies in Chaucer | ||
| Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama | ||
| Special Studies In Sixteenth-Century Poetry and Prose | ||
| Shakespeare | ||
| Special Studies in Early Modern Drama | ||
| Special Studies In Seventeenth-Century Poetry and Prose | ||
| Milton | ||
| Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Literature | ||
| Special Studies in Literary History (Pre-1800) | ||
| Total Hours | 38-39 | |
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EN 110 Writing About Literature is strongly recommended as preparation for 200-level courses.
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Only one of the five required courses may be a section of EN 378 Nonfiction Workshop, EN 379 Poetry Workshop, or EN 380 Fiction Workshop.
- 3
Students with appropriate preparation and faculty permission may instead choose the senior thesis or project options: EN 376 Senior Projects, EN 390 Senior Thesis.
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EN 378 Nonfiction Workshop, EN 379 Poetry Workshop, or EN 380 Fiction Workshop is a prerequisite for the EN 381 capstone.
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Excluding EN 375 Senior Seminar in Literary Studies
Writing Requirement in the Major
What unites us - as students of English, as writers, and as scholars - is close attention to language as both content and practice. We read the writing of others; we write in response to that writing; and we reflect on what it means to do so. Each of us shares a concern for the written word that defines what we do at every level of the English curriculum. In the classroom, students attend carefully to the language of literary works and articulate in writing their responses and ideas. This is true both for workshops in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction and for classes in literary criticism. As students and as teachers, we work with language; therefore, writing determines both the content of our academic discipline and our particular approach to that discipline. The two are fundamentally interwoven: attention to written language embodies both the methodology and the matter of a major in English. Given the centrality of writing to every aspect of the English major, we consider the writing requirement in the major fulfilled not through any individual piece of the major, but through the whole. Therefore, a student satisfies the writing requirement in the English major when he or she completes the English major.
Note: The English Department allows no more than 12 credit hours and no more than 2 300-level courses earned through study abroad or other institutions to count toward the major. No more than 9 credits of internship may count toward the major. Only 1 independent study may be used toward the Advanced Courses in Language and Literature.
English Minor
Students wishing to declare a minor in English should consult with the chair for specific program planning. The minor includes six courses in one of two areas of concentration:
Literature
Six courses, including:
| Code | Title | Hours |
|---|---|---|
| Select one of the following: | ||
| EN 105 | Writing Seminar II | 4 |
| EN 105H | Writing Seminar II | 4 |
| EN 110 | Writing About Literature | 4 |
| Select one of the following: | ||
| EN 111 | Fiction | 3 |
| EN 113 | Poetry | 3 |
| EN 115 | Drama | 3 |
| EN 117 | Film | 3 |
| EN 119 | Nonfiction | 3 |
| EN 129 | Introductory Topics in Literature | 3 |
| English Seminar | ||
| EN 205 | English Seminar | 3 |
| Select one other 200-level Literature course | 3-4 | |
| Select two courses from "Advanced Courses in Language and Literature" | 6-8 | |
| Total Hours | 42-45 | |
Creative Writing
Six courses, including:
| Code | Title | Hours |
|---|---|---|
| Select one of the following: | 4 | |
| Writing Seminar II | ||
| Writing Seminar II | ||
| Writing About Literature | ||
| Select one of the following: | 3 | |
| Fiction | ||
| Poetry | ||
| Nonfiction | ||
| Select two of the following: | 8 | |
| Special Studies in Creative Writing | ||
| Introduction to Nonfiction Writing | ||
| Introduction to Fiction Writing | ||
| Introduction to Poetry Writing | ||
| Select two of the following: 1 | 8 | |
| Special Studies in Writing | ||
| Nonfiction Workshop | ||
| Poetry Workshop | ||
| Fiction Workshop | ||
| Total Hours | 23 | |
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300-level creative writing workshops must align with 200-level workshops with respect to genre.
Students wishing to complete a minor in English should file a Declaration of Minor with the Registrar before the last semester of their senior year at Skidmore and maintain at least a 2.0 grade average in their concentration for the minor.
Note: 200-level courses in English are open to first-year students unless prerequisites or restrictions are stated in the description.
Honors
Effective for students who entered Fall 2025 and beyond:
To qualify for departmental honors in English, a senior must complete a capstone paper, project, or thesis of the appropriate length that merits a grade of A or A+. In addition, the student must have a GPA of at least 3.8 in the major and 3.0 overall after no fewer than three semesters at Skidmore. Students who qualify for honors are required to participate in a capstone conference with the instructor and a second faculty reader.
Effective for students who entered prior to Fall 2025:
To qualify for departmental honors in English, a senior must complete a capstone paper, project, or thesis of the appropriate length that merits a grade of A or A+. In addition, the student must have a GPA of at least 3.5 in the major and 3.0 overall after no fewer than three semesters at Skidmore. Students who qualify for honors are required to participate in a capstone conference with the instructor and a second faculty reader.
For information on the procedures and timeline for departmental honors and works of distinction, see skidmore.edu/english/ faculty/fac_resources/capstone-instructors.php.
On This Page
Course Listing
English Courses
EN 100 - English Language Skills
Credits: 3
Basic skills of the English language for special interest students requiring such a course.
Note(s): Not for liberal arts credit.
EN 103 - Writing Seminar I
Credits: 4
Introduction to expository writing with weekly writing assignments emphasizing skills in developing ideas, organizing material, and creating thesis statements. Assignments provide practice in description, definition, comparison and contrast, and argumentation. Additional focus on grammar, syntax, and usage. Students and instructor meet in seminar three hours a week; students are also required to meet regularly with a Writing Center tutor.
Note(s): This course does not fulfill the all-college requirement in expository writing.
EN 105 - Writing Seminar II
Credits: 4
This seminar immerses students in the process of producing finished analytical essays informed by critical reading and careful reasoning. Special attention is given to developing ideas, writing from sources, organizing material, and revising drafts. Additional emphasis is on grammar, style, and formal conventions of writing. Students respond to one another's work in workshops or peer critique sessions. Weekly informal writing complements assignments of longer finished papers.
Note(s): Fulfills Expository Writing requirement.
EN 105H - Writing Seminar II
Credits: 4
The honors sections of EN 105 offer highly motivated students with strong verbal skills the opportunity to refine their ability to analyze sophisticated ideas, to hone their rhetorical strategies, and to develop cogent arguments. Toward these goals, students write and revise essays drawing upon a variety of challenging readings and critique each other's work with an eye to depth and complexity of thought, logic of supporting evidence, and subtleties of style. The English Department places some students in EN 105H and encourages other students to consult with their advisors, the director of the Honors Forum, or the director of the Expository Writing Program to determine if this level of Writing Seminar is appropriate. Each section of EN 105H focuses on a topic that is listed in the master schedule and described in the English Department's prospectus and on its Web page.
Note(s): Fulfills Expository Writing requirement.
EN 110 - Writing About Literature
Credits: 4
Immerses students in the process of producing finished analytical essays informed by close reading of literary texts. Special attention is given to developing ideas, writing from texts, organizing material, and revising drafts. Additional emphasis is on grammar, style, and formal conventions of writing. Students respond to one another's work in workshops or peer critique sessions.
Note(s): Fulfills Expository Writing requirement.
EN 111 - Fiction
Credits: 3
Designed to enhance the student’s capacity to analyze novels and short stories, with particular attention to language and structure.
Note(s): Recommended preparation for advanced courses in fiction. Fulfills Humanistic Inquiry requirement. Students who completed EN 211 cannot earn credit for EN 111.
EN 113 - Poetry
Credits: 3
Designed to enhance the student’s capacity to analyze poetry, with particular attention to language and structure.
Note(s): Recommended preparation for advanced courses in poetry. Fulfills Humanistic Inquiry requirement. Students who completed EN 213 cannot earn credit for EN 113.
EN 115 - Drama
Credits: 3
Designed to enhance the student’s capacity to analyze drama, with particular attention to language and structure.
Note(s): Recommended preparation for advanced courses in drama. Fulfills Humanistic Inquiry requirement. Students who completed EN 215 cannot earn credit for EN 115.
EN 117 - Film
Credits: 3
Designed to enhance the student’s capacity to analyze film, with particular attention to image and structure.
Note(s): Fulfills Humanistic Inquiry requirement. Counts toward the Media and Film Studies minor. Students who completed EN 217 cannot earn credit for EN 117.
EN 119 - Nonfiction
Credits: 3
Designed to enhance the student’s capacity to analyze nonfiction, with particular attention to language and structure.
Note(s): Recommended preparation for advanced courses in nonfiction. Fulfills Humanistic Inquiry requirement. Students who completed EN 219 cannot earn credit for EN 119.
EN 129 - Introductory Topics in Literature
Credits: 3
Introduction to a broad topic in literature or literary studies. Emphasis falls on the skills of close reading, including analysis of the relationship between form and content.
EN 205 - English Seminar
Credits: 3
Introduction to the practice of literary studies as a scholarly discipline, with a particular emphasis on skills related to critical reading and research. Readings and discussions will focus on a range of literary texts and genres, as well as theoretical concerns and methodological approaches to the study of literature. Students will ask questions about what it means to synthesize and contribute to a critical conversation on a literary text. This course introduces students to the intellectual and artistic life of the English department beyond the classroom experience.
Prerequisites: EN 105, 105H, or 110; and one 100-level literature course (EN 111, 113, 115, 117, 119, or 129) or one 200-level EN course, except EN 251, 280, 281, and 282.
Note(s): Fulfills Humanistic Inquiry requirement. This course is a requirement of the English major and of the English and Creative Writing minors, and is a prerequisite for courses at the 300 level.
EN 210 - Literary and Cultural Theory
Credits: 3
A broad survey of the foundations of contemporary literary and cultural theory. Readings will focus upon theories of language, culture, and embodiment, tracing the developments of structuralism, post-structuralism, Marxism and the Frankfurt School, psychoanalysis, gender studies, queer theory, postcolonialism, critical race theory, disability studies, and the digital humanities. In studying these movements, students will radically rethink the way that we interpret literature, film, visual art, and digital media.
Note(s): Fulfills Humanistic Inquiry requirement.
EN 219W - Nonfiction
Credits: 4
An introduction to the reading of nonfiction in a rich variety of styles and types, from memoir and lyric essays to reportage, science writing, and cultural critique. Students will explore the form's expressive range, including the relation to and distinction from other genres, its narrative strategies, its means of achieving a distinctive voice, and its reflection of social contexts.
Note(s): Recommended preparation for advanced courses in nonfiction. Fulfills Humanistic Inquiry requirement.
EN 221 - Introduction to Asian American Literature
Credits: 3
A survey of major authors, works, and topics in Asian American literature and culture. The course aims to provide a sense of the historical conditions out of which various forms of Asian American writing and culture have emerged and changed over time. As a literature course, the class will focus on textual analysis and close reading on how specific texts give representational shape to the social and historical experiences that they depict. Readings consist chiefly of works that have canonical status within the field of Asian American literary studies but also include works that suggest new directions in the field. With regard to genre, these readings will include short stories, novels, memoir, autobiography, poetry, and film.
Note(s): Counts as a Language and Literature in Context course and Late Period course. Fulfills Humanistic Inquiry requirement.
EN 222W - The Victorian Illustrated Book
Credits: 4
An exploration of the Victorian illustrated book as it came into being, flourished, and evolved during the long nineteenth century. This course examines how a genre designed for adults found a home in children's literature at the end of the nineteenth century and gains new expression in our time through the graphic classics, a prescient form of material culture. Students will learn how to evaluate and interpret an illustrated text by "reading" illustrations to decipher meaning and engaging in creative practice to become author-illustrators. 19th century and gains new expression in our time through the graphic classics, a prescient form of material culture. Students will learn how to evaluate and interpret an illustrated text by “reading” illustrations to decipher meaning and engaging in creative practice to become author-illustrators.
Note(s): Fulfills Humanistic Inquiry requirement.
EN 223 - Women and Literature
Credits: 3
An introduction to the study of women and literature, with particular attention to the various ways literary works have helped construct and also question differences between femininity and masculinity. Matters considered include defining basic terms (character, plot, genre, author, sex, gender) and exploring the relations among those terms.
Note(s): Fulfills Humanistic Inquiry requirement.
EN 224 - Literature and the Environment
Credits: 3
A study of how writers have used literature to understand and portray the natural world and our relationship to it. The course examines shifting images of nature-as a locus of the spiritual and the sacred, as a projection of the human psyche, and as a dynamic environment worthy of our concern and protection. The course focuses primarily on fiction and nonfiction of nineteenth- and twentieth-century British and American authors, such as Henry David Thoreau, William Wordsworth, John Muir, Edward Abbey, Terry Tempest Williams, and Barbara Kingsolver; readings may also include myth and poetry.
Note(s): Fulfills Humanistic Inquiry requirement.
EN 225 - Introduction To Shakespeare
Credits: 3
Selected comedies, histories, and tragedies.
Note(s): Counts as a Language and Literature in Context Course and Early Period course. Fulfills Humanistic Inquiry requirement.
EN 226 - Introduction to American Literature
Credits: 3
An introduction to the major modes and moments of American literature: the literature of contact between Native Americans and Europeans; mid-nineteenth-century literature of reform and protest; the rise of realism and naturalism; and American modernisms.
Note(s): Fulfills Humanistic Inquiry requirement.
EN 227 - Introduction to African-American Literature
Credits: 3
A chronological exploration of literature by African-Americans from the early 1700s to the present, focusing on changes in the content and style and the reasons for those changes, as well as on specific writers.
Note(s): Fulfills Humanistic Inquiry requirement.
EN 228C - Special Studies: Form
Credits: 3
Introduction to a selected topic in literature and/or language, with an emphasis on questions of form.
Note(s): May be repeated with a different topic. EN 228C designates a Cultural Diversity course; EN 228E designates an early period course; EN 228H designates an honors course; EN 228L designates a late period course; EN 228M designates a middle period course; EN 228N designates a non-Western course; EN 228W designates a writing-intensive course. Fulfills Humanistic Inquiry requirement.
EN 228H - Special Studies: Form
Credits: 4
Introduction to a selected topic in literature and/or language, with an emphasis on questions of form.
Note(s): May be repeated with a different topic. EN 228C designates a Cultural Diversity course; EN 228E designates an early period course; EN 228H designates an honors course; EN 228L designates a late period course; EN 228M designates a middle period course; EN 228N designates a non-Western course; EN 228W designates a writing-intensive course. Fulfills Humanistic Inquiry requirement.
EN 228N - Special Studies: Form
Credits: 3
Introduction to a selected topic in literature and/or language, with an emphasis on questions of form. May be repeated with a different topic. EN 228C designates a Cultural Diversity course; EN 228E designates an early period course; EN 228H designates an honors course; EN 228L designates a late period course; EN 228M designates a middle period course; EN 228N designates a non-Western course; EN 228W designates a writing-intensive course.
Note(s): Fulfills Humanistic Inquiry and Global Cultural Perspectives requirements.
EN 228P - Special Studies: Form
Credits: 4
Introduction to a selected topic in literature and/or language, with an emphasis on questions of form. May be repeated with a different topic.
Note(s): EN 228C designates a Cultural Diversity course; EN 228E designates an early period course; EN 228H designates an honors course; EN 228L designates a late period course; EN 228M designates a late period course; EN 228N designates a non-Western course; EN 228W designates a writing-intensive course. Fulfills Humanistic Inquiry requirement. May be repeated with a different topic.
EN 228R - Special Studies: Form
Credits: 4
Introduction to a selected topic in literature and/or language, with an emphasis on questions of form. May be repeated with a different topic. EN 228C designates a cultural diversity course; EN 228E designates an early period course; EN 228H designates an honors course; EN 228N designates a non-Western course; EN 228W designates a writing-intensive course.
Note(s): Fulfills Humanistic Inquiry requirement.
EN 228W - Special Studies: Form
Credits: 4
Introduction to a selected topic in literature and/or language, with an emphasis on questions of form.
EN 229 - Special Topics in Literature
Credits: 3
Exploration of a focused topic in literature or literary studies. Emphasis falls on intermediate skills of writing and reading in the discipline, including skills in research and engagement with scholarship or criticism.
Note(s): EN 229E designates an early period course; EN 229M designates a middle period course; EN 229L designates a late period course. Fulfills Humanistic Inquiry requirement. May be repeated with a different topic.
EN 229H - Special Studies: Texts in Context
Credits: 4
Introduction to a selected topic in literature and/or language, with an emphasis on the relation between text and context.
Note(s): May be repeated with a different topic. EN 229C designates a Cultural Diversity course; EN 229E designates an early period course; EN 229H designates a honors course; EN 229L designates a late period course; EN 229M designates a middle period course; EN 229N designates a non-Western course; EN 229W designates a writing intensive course. Fulfills Humanistic Inquiry requirement.
EN 230 - Bible As Literature
Credits: 3
Acquaints students with the contents of the Bible, introduces them to its history (dates of composition, establishment of canon, history of translations, especially in English), and provides practice in identifying and interpreting Biblical allusion in literary works. Some attention will also be given to doctrines and theological controversy.
Note(s): Fulfills Humanistic Inquiry requirement.
EN 235 - Writing Black/Writing Back
Credits: 4
A survey of African American literature from the 1700s to the present. We will examine the uneasy relationship between race and writing, with a particular focus on how representations of gender and sexuality participate in a literary construction of race. Though this course examines African American literary self‑representations, we will keep in mind how these representations respond to and interact with the “majority culture’s” efforts to define race in a different set of terms. We will focus throughout on literature as a site where this struggle over definition takes place—where African American writers have re-appropriated and revised words and ideas that had been used to exclude them from both American literary history and America itself.
Prerequisites: SSP 100.
Note(s): Fulfills Bridge Experience and Humanistic Inquiry requirements.
EN 237 - Postcolonial Culture
Credits: 3
A study of modern literature from three major sites of British colonialism: India, the Caribbean, and Africa. Students will learn to use postcolonial theory and historical context to analyze literary texts by such writers as Tagore, Narayan, Rushdie, Roy, Carpentier, Rhys, Walcott, Naipaul, Senghor, Achebe, and Coetzee. Literature will be primarily in English; some texts in translation. Students will explore topics like writers' negotiation of native and colonial worldviews and literary traditions; the relationship between ideology and literary form; the politics of anti-colonial nationalism, nativism, exoticism, exile, hybridity, gender, race, caste, class, and sexuality.
Note(s): Fulfills Humanistic Inquiry and Global Cultural Perspectives requirements.
EN 238 - World Literature
Credits: 3
A study of literature in the context of contemporary globalization. Students will examine transnational literary dynamics, primarily those forged originally by colonialism, which brought the entire globe into contact. Students will explore three conceptual rubrics: postcolonial revisions of major British canonical novels; narrative attempts by Metropolitan intellectuals to represent indigenous voices; and traveling genres. Students will read works by writers such as Rhys, Salih, Coetzee, Black Elk, Hooper, Adiga, Carpentier, and Césaire. Supplemental readings in theory, history, and journalism will situate these literary texts in broader socio-historical context.
Note(s): Fulfills Humanistic Inquiry and Global Cultural Perspectives requirements.
EN 239 - Children's Literature: A History
Credits: 3
Exploration of children's literature as it evolved over the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries, emphasizing the relationship between ideologies of childhood and literature for children and young adults. Students will learn how to evaluate and interpret a children's text from a range of disciplinary perspectives. Attention will be given to the socio-political context of each work, the rise of gender-specific fiction, and the ways children's literature and young adult fiction in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have responded to race, religion, and sexuality.
Note(s): Fulfills Humanistic Inquiry requirement. Must be taken for a letter grade.
EN 241 - Afrofuturism: Literature and Culture
Credits: 4
An examination of Afrofuturist cultural production across literature, music, film, and visual art. Paying close attention to how speculative, science-fictional, and technological motifs allow for new formulations of aesthetic and social possibility, students will consider how Afrofuturist creators approach questions of power, embodiment, community, and futurity in relation to Black culture and identity.
Prerequisites: SSP 100.
Note(s): Fulfills Bridge Experience requirement.
EN 242 - Disability in Contemporary America
Credits: 4
An exploration of disability as a complex interaction between individual bodies and minds and broader social expectations, categorizations and judgments. We will learn key vocabulary and study the history of oppression and resistance that gave birth to the American disability rights movement. Finally, we will think about what these national issues mean on our own campus. Remembering that college students and college campuses have been major players in the struggle for disability justice, we will consider what it would mean for our campus to be broadly “accessible.”
Prerequisites: SSP 100.
Note(s): Fulfills Bridge Experience requirement.
EN 244 - Imagining the Future
Credits: 3
A course on the history of the future. Readings survey utopian and dystopian fiction from the nineteenth century to the present, with strategic excursions into both film and journalism. The course's final weeks turn to issues that both energize and trouble today's attempts to imagine what lies ahead: What and who will be our future?
Note(s): Fulfills the Humanistic Inquiry requirement.
EN 245 - Science Fiction
Credits: 3
An examination of the nexus of politics and science that has informed science fiction from its inception until the present day. This course explores the history of the genre and its approach to religion, race relations, gender, totalitarianism, and a host of distinctly modern phenomena. Readings will vary from year to year but may include writers like H. G. Wells, Olaf Stapledon, Octavia Butler, Margaret Atwood, Isaac Asimov, and James Tiptree Jr.
Note(s): Fulfills Humanistic Inquiry requirement.
EN 246 - Asian American Women in Literature & Media
Credits: 4
An exploration of the relationship between race, gender, and genre in U.S. literature and media by and about Asian American women from the twentieth century through the present. The course examines how Asian American women have been figured by interconnected modes of power, injustice, identity formation, representation, and knowledge production, as well as histories of U.S. wars, empire, immigration, and labor. Questions that the course addresses include: why have realist novels and autobiographies by women been the dominant genre of Asian American literature? What happens to the figure of the Asian American woman in more experimental and extravagant genres? How and to what end have various genres figured Asian American women as national, transnational, and/or diasporic figures? The course introduces students to major concepts and developments in Asian American literary and cultural studies and gender studies.
Prerequisites: SSP 100.
Note(s): Fulfills Humanistic Inquiry and Bridge Experience requirements.
EN 248 - The Brontës
Credits: 3
An intensive study of the Brontes, arguably the greatest English literary family of the nineteenth century. A madwoman in the attic, deathless love, and spousal abuse are some of the sensational themes that define the Bronte canon. Readings include Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre (1847), Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights (1847), Anne Bronte’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), biography, and poetry. We will distinguish between the Brontes’ lives and literary myths and explore why their works are read as a canon and their lives are retold collectively.
Note(s): Fulfills Humanistic Inquiry.
EN 249 - Chekhov: Plays, Stories, Letters & Life
Credits: 3
Focus of the course is on the major plays (The Seagull, The Cherry Orchard, etc.) and stories of this prolific and influential Russian writer, with supplementary reading from his letters. A biographically-inflected exploration of the work of a generous, engaged person of letters who was also a public health pioneer, early environmentalist, and critic of Russian politics and society during its famous turn-of-the-century “twilight,” on the verge of revolution.
Note(s): Fulfills Humanistic Inquiry requirement.
EN 250H - Peer Tutoring Project in Expository Writing
Credits: 4
A course that interrogates questions of identity, power, and justice as students learn to tutor in the Skidmore College Writing Center. Students learn the foundation–and interrogate the justice–of rhetoric, grammar, and composition theory in academic writing, collaborative learning, and peer tutoring. Students analyze assignments and critique sample student essays. Weekly writing assignments and a term project explore and evaluate composition theory and establish best tutoring practices. Students participate in a weekly supervised peer tutoring practicum with Writing Center tutees.
Prerequisites: SSP 100 and one course in Expository Writing. (Fulfills Bridge Experience and Humanistic Inquiry requirements.) This is an honors course.)
EN 251 - Special Studies in Creative Writing
Credits: 4
Introduction to various forms and styles of creative writing, with reading and writing assignments geared to the beginning writer. Workshop format with substantial class time devoted to discussions of student writing. Sections may focus on a range of genres, on one specific form, or on a particular theme.
Note(s): May be repeated with a different topic. Fulfills Artistic Inquiry requirement.
EN 253 - Graphic Narratives and Comic Books
Credits: 3
An exploration of major graphic narratives from the past thirty years, focusing on how authors intertwine text and image in ways that create new approaches to narrative, new perspectives on social and cultural issues, and new ways of reading. Topics for consideration may include how authors explore questions of power and politics, memory and trauma, identity and embodiment, and time and space through this hybrid form.
Note(s): Fulfills Humanistic Inquiry requirement.
EN 254 - Prose Boot Camp
Credits: 4
Prose Boot Camp offers highly motivated students an opportunity to refine their expository writing skills. In weekly copywriting and ghostwriting assignments of increasing complexity, students are exposed to and strive to meet the standards of professional editors. Close attention to style, grammar, and mechanics at the level of the sentence. Counts as a prerequisite for EN 378.
Prerequisites: Completion of the expository writing requirement.
Note(s): Fulfills Humanistic Inquiry requirement.
EN 280 - Introduction to Nonfiction Writing
Credits: 4
An introduction to the writing of nonfiction. Writing and reading assignments are geared to the beginning writer of nonfiction prose. Sections may focus on a range of nonfiction genres or on one specific form, such as the personal essay, travel writing, literary journalism, cultural critique, science writing and the arts review.
Note(s): Fulfills Artistic Inquiry requirement.
EN 281 - Introduction to Fiction Writing
Credits: 4
An introduction to the writing of short stories. Writing and reading assignments are geared to the beginning writer of fiction. Workshop format with the majority of class time devoted to discussions of student writing.
Note(s): Fulfills Artistic Inquiry requirement.
EN 282 - Introduction to Poetry Writing
Credits: 4
An introduction to the writing of poetry. Writing and reading assignments are geared to the beginning poet. Workshop format with the majority of class time devoted to discussions of student writing.
Prerequisites: EN 111 or EN 211: Fiction, EN 113 or EN 213: Poetry, or EN 119 or EN 219: Nonfiction.
Note(s): Fulfills Artistic Inquiry requirement.
EN 303H - Peer Tutoring Project in Expository Writing
Credits: 4
A course that interrogates questions of identity, power, and justice as students learn to tutor in the Skidmore College Writing Center. Students learn the foundation–and interrogate the justice–of rhetoric, grammar, and composition theory in academic writing, collaborative learning, and peer tutoring. Students analyze assignments and critique sample student essays. Weekly writing assignments and a term project explore and evaluate composition theory and establish best tutoring practices. Students participate in a weekly supervised peer tutoring practicum with Writing Center tutees. Fulfills Bridge Experience and Humanistic Inquiry requirements.This is an honors course.
EN 311 - Recent Fiction
Credits: 3
Studies of selected works of fiction published since the 1960s, with particular reference to the expanding possibilities of the genre. The readings feature authors such as Donald Barthelme, Heinrich Boll, Jorge Luis Borges, Margaret Drabble, John Fowles, John Gardner, William Gass, Gabriel Garciá Márquez, and Joyce Carol Oates.
Prerequisites: EN 205 and one additional 200-level EN course.
EN 312 - Modern British Novel
Credits: 3
Study of generic, thematic, and cultural relationships among selected novels of early twentieth-century writers such as Conrad, Ford, Joyce, Lawrence, Forster, Woolf, and Huxley.
Prerequisites: EN 205 and one additional 200-level EN course.
EN 313 - Modernist Poetry: 1890-1940
Credits: 3
A study of major British, Irish, and American poets as exponents of modernity: Yeats, Lawrence, Moore, Frost, Eliot, Pound, and Stevens.
Prerequisites: EN 205 and one additional 200-level EN course.
EN 314 - Contemporary Poetry
Credits: 3
A study of British, Irish, and American poets since the 1930s: Auden, Thomas, Larkin, Heaney, Lowell, Berryman, Plath, and Rich.
Prerequisites: EN 205 and one additional 200-level EN course.
EN 315 - Eighteenth-Century Novel
Credits: 3
A generic, thematic, and cultural consideration of selected romances and novels by Behn, Defoe, Swift, Richardson, Fielding, Sterne, Goldsmith, Burney, and Austen. The study begins with the formulae of fictional romance and examines the development of the more sophisticated, psychological novel as it rises to eminence in English literature.
Prerequisites: EN 205 and one additional 200-level EN course.
EN 316 - Nineteenth-Century British Novel
Credits: 3
A generic, thematic, and cultural consideration of selected novels by Austen, the Brontes, Thackeray, Dickens, Eliot, Trollope, and others.
Prerequisites: EN 205 and one additional 200-level EN course.
EN 322 - Special Studies in Nineteenth-Century American Literature
Credits: 3
Investigation of a topic in American literature in the context of the sometimes competing social, economic, racial, political, and nationalist attitudes of the century. Students may study various topics including nature and the environment, gender and relationships, slavery and abolition, and protest and reform; and may draw upon letters, diaries, travel writing, poetry, novels, personal narratives, and political essays by such writers as Brown, Irving, Cooper, Wheatley, Thoreau, Emerson, Hawthorne, Whitman, Dickinson, Melville, Twain, Poe, Stanton, Truth, Douglass, and Stowe.
Prerequisites: EN 205 and one additional 200-level EN course.
EN 323 - American Literary Realisms
Credits: 3
A study of realism as both a late-nineteenth-century literary movement and a style with continuing influence in the U.S. Students will examine not only the classic stage of realism through writers that may include Twain, Howells, Dreiser, Wharton.
Prerequisites: EN 205 and one additional 200-level EN course.
EN 324 - American Fictions
Credits: 3
A study of major American novels in their literary, cultural, and theoretical contexts, with an emphasis on the literary construction of "America" as both idea and place. Readings will vary from one year to the next, but may include works by Stowe, Hawthorne, Melville, James, Twain, Wharton, Cather, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, Ellison, Morrison, and Silko.
Prerequisites: EN 205 and one additional 200-level EN course.
EN 325 - American Modernisms
Credits: 3
A consideration of the multiple literary expressions of the American Modernist period (roughly 1900-1940), with particular attention to the aesthetic issues that preoccupied leading writers and critics, as well as the cultural formations and controversies that marked these years. Topics will include "high" modernism, modernist uses of realism, the Harlem Renaissance, Depression-era radicalisms, and "middlebrow" paradigms e.g., magazine fiction or hard-boiled detective fiction.
Prerequisites: EN 205 and one additional 200-level EN course.
EN 326 - Special Studies in Contemporary U.S. Literature and Culture
Credits: 3
Topics, genres, and authors selected from U.S. literary and cultural history after 1945. Course content will vary but could include contemporary U.S. literatures, popular culture, new media, and/or critical theory. Matters considered include social and historical contexts race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, digital culture, technology, globalization.
Prerequisites: EN 205 and one additional 200-level EN course.
EN 327 - Special Studies in African-American Literature
Credits: 3
Topics, genres, traditions, and authors selected from African-American literary history. Topics will vary from one year to the next, but could include the literature of slavery: African-American domestic fiction; the Harlem Renaissance; African-American realisms, African-American poetics; contemporary African-American writing; single author studies.
Prerequisites: EN 205 and one additional 200-level EN course.
EN 328 - James Joyce's Ulysses
Credits: 3
An exploration of the work of one of the defining writers of the early twentieth century, James Joyce. This course focuses in particular on one of the most celebrated and despised novels in the English language, his 1922 novel, Ulysses . Famously difficult, Ulysses often defeats even the most hardcore readers. The majority of this class focuses on the process of analyzing Joyce's audacious novel and understanding how it became for many the paradigmatic expression of a modernist sensibility. This class may include Joyce's short story collection, Dubliners (1914), and his first novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1915).
Prerequisites: EN 205 and one additional 200-level EN course.
EN 329 - Shakespeare and Embodiment
Credits: 3
A study of the way that Shakespeare stages embodiment, with a particular emphasis upon categories of gender, race, sexuality, and ability. To that end, the course begins with a survey of queer theory, critical race theory, disability studies, and posthumanism in order to give students insight into the ways that bodies are constructed and contested. Readings then include Richard III, The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, Macbeth, King Lear, and Antony and Cleopatra, as well as several scholarly works that will help students to think about the history and politics of embodiment in the early modern period.
Prerequisites: EN 205 and one additional 200-level EN course.
EN 331 - The Wild(e) Nineties
Credits: 3
A course on the literature, arts, and culture of the 1890s in England. Oscar Wilde is the course's presiding genius as he was for the decade.
Prerequisites: EN 205 and one additional 200-level EN course.
EN 332 - The Pastoral
Credits: 3
Racing this central theme of Western art from its classical origins (Hesiod, Theocritus, Virgil) to its flowering in 16th and 17th century English poetry (Spenser, Sidney, Shakespeare, Marvell, Herbert, Milton), to later versions in Romantic and Environmentalist poets. Final research papers will explore Pastoral concerns in such 20th and 21st century writers as Hardy, Frost, Grahame, Snyder, Oliver, Merwin, Gander, et alia.
Prerequisites: EN 205 and one additional 200-level EN course.
Note(s): Fulfills Humanistic Inquiry requirement.
EN 337 - The Continental Novel
Credits: 3
The continental novel as an expression of social, intellectual, and artistic problems; not an historical survey. Readings may vary from one year to the next but will include major authors such as Stendhal, Flaubert, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Proust, Gide, Mann.
Prerequisites: EN 205 and one additional 200-level EN course.
EN 338 - Queer Fictions
Credits: 3
A study of twentieth-century gay and lesbian literature, with a focus on British and American authors. Students will explore a literary tradition in which the invisible was made visible-in which historically marginalized sexualities took literary shape. Questions to be considered include: What strategies have lesbian and gay authors used to express taboo subject matter, and how have these strategies interacted with and challenged more traditional narrative techniques? How does the writing of queer sexuality recycle and revise notions of gender? What kind of threat does bisexuality pose to the telling of coherent stories? In what ways do class, race, and gender trouble easy assumptions about sexual community?
Prerequisites: EN 205 and one additional 200-level EN course.
EN 339 - Queer Theories (and Practices)
Credits: 4
An overview of foundational texts and significant ideas in the field of gender and sexuality studies, focusing on the interplay between theory and praxis in the struggle for queer liberation. Our readings will be focused on key U.S.-American writings from the past half century. Students will gain familiarity with major thinkers and important concepts for LGBTQ+ life and critique today, including: gender and sexual norms and nonconformity; queer intersections with race, ethnicity, and nationhood; LGBTQ+ aesthetics, sociality, and world-making; dissident forms of desire and identification; solidarities and protest. As an advanced English Department seminar, we will also devote special attention to queer literary critique and contemporary LGBTQ+ fiction, poetry, and drama. The course will culminate in students designing and executing a mid-length independent research project. Involves several practice-based/application components, including special guest conversations, service learning events, and creative writing assignments.
Prerequisites: EN 205 and one additional 200-level EN course.
Note(s): Fulfills Humanistic Inquiry and Bridge Experience requirements.
EN 341 - Special Studies In Medieval Literature
Credits: 3
Investigation of a special topic in medieval English literature with special attention to medieval literary conventions and to the cultural context in which they developed. Topics studied may draw on the works of the Gawain-poet, Langland, Malory, and others, and may focus on a genre, a theme, or a period.
Prerequisites: EN 205 and one additional 200-level EN course.
Note(s): With permission of the department, the course may be repeated once with a different topic for credit.
EN 342 - Special Studies in Chaucer
Credits: 3
Chaucer's dream visions and The Canterbury Tales ca. 1370-1400.
Prerequisites: EN 205 and one additional 200-level EN course.
EN 343 - Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama
Credits: 3
Study of the drama of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, exclusive of Shakespeare, but including such writers as Marlowe, Jonson, Webster, Beaumont, and Fletcher.
Prerequisites: EN 205 and one additional 200-level EN course.
EN 344 - Special Studies In Sixteenth-Century Poetry and Prose
Credits: 3
Topics, genres, traditions, and authors selected from the wide range of sixteenth-century non-dramatic literature, poetry, and/or prose. Topics studied may draw on such authors as More, Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Queen Elizabeth. Selections will vary depending upon the area of interest emphasized in a given semester.
Prerequisites: EN 205 and one additional 200-level EN course.
EN 345 - Shakespeare
Credits: 3
A study of selected comedies, histories, tragedies, and romances.
Prerequisites: EN 205 and one additional 200-level EN course.
EN 346 - Special Studies in Early Modern Drama
Credits: 3
A study of ten tragedies.
Prerequisites: EN 205 and one additional 200-level EN course.
EN 347 - Special Studies In Seventeenth-Century Poetry and Prose
Credits: 3
Topics, genres, traditions, and authors selected from the non-dramatic literature of the seventeenth century, poetry and/or prose. Selections will vary depending upon the area of interest emphasized in a given semester. Topics studied may draw on such authors as Donne, Jonson, Bacon, Burton, Locke, Newton, and others.
Prerequisites: EN 205 and one additional 200-level EN course.
EN 348 - Milton
Credits: 3
Milton's English poetry, the vision it expresses, and its stylistic range. The course focuses on a measured, close examination of Paradise Lost especially noticing its heritage, its structural genius, and its psychologizing and indicates the ways in which this epic anticipates the succeeding ages of great English fiction.
Prerequisites: EN 205 and one additional 200-level EN course.
EN 350 - Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Literature
Credits: 3
Literature in the ages of Dryden, Congreve, Swift, Addison, Pope, Johnson, and Sheridan. Plays, essays, and the tradition of derivative-epic poems, studied with regard to major social and intellectual dispositions of culture: humanism, the new science, individualism, psychology, mercantilism, urbanization, and sentimentality. The study appreciates the vigorously renewed dramatic tradition from the reopening of the theaters in 1660. It also recognizes the shift from patrician verse toward bourgeois prose manner in literature.
Prerequisites: EN 205 and one additional 200-level EN course.
EN 351 - English Romanticism
Credits: 3
Studies in English romanticism, its philosophic and psychological departures from neoclassic poetry, and its consequences for modern literature. Emphasis on the major works of Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, Keats, and Shelley.
Prerequisites: EN 205 and one additional 200-level EN course.
EN 352 - Victorian Literature and Culture
Credits: 3
A study of nineteenth-century English literature and thought, featuring such principal prose writers as John Stuart Mill, Matthew Arnold, John Ruskin, Thomas Carlyle, Walter Pater, and William Morris, and such poets as Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning, and Christina Rossetti. Emphasis is given to a wide range of topics including political reform, evolution, the rise of liberalism, the hero in history, the meaning of literary ideas, and conceptions of beauty.
Prerequisites: EN 205 and one additional 200-level EN course.
EN 354 - Jane Austen
Credits: 3
An examination of the novels of Jane Austen, a keenly satiric writer whose work, deeply rooted in her time, resonates in our time. Beginning with biography, students will read Austen's six published novels in the order they were published-Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), Emma (1816), Persuasion (1818), and Northanger Abbey (1818).
Prerequisites: EN 205 and one additional 200-level EN course.
EN 359 - Modernism and Drama
Credits: 3
An internationally comparative study of authors and artists key to the development of drama from the late 19th to the mid-20th century. Emphasis on tensions between realism and formalism; between classical, textual drama and new modes of theatricality; and between dramatic and literary modernism. Students will investigate the history of significant art movements such as naturalism, absurdism, and epic theater, among others. Readings will vary from year to year, but may include works by Luigi Pirandello, Gertrude Stein, and Zora Neale Hurston.
Prerequisites: EN 205 and one additional 200-level EN course.
EN 360 - Women Writers
Credits: 3
Advanced studies in selected women writers. Students will read a group of women writers in the context of recent literary criticism and feminist theory. Issues addressed may include the relations among gender and style, psychological constructs, genre, literary history, audience, and social context.
Prerequisites: EN 205 and one additional 200-level EN course.
EN 361 - Theories of Literary Criticism
Credits: 3
An examination of modern literary methodologies, including new criticism, structuralism, archetypal criticism, and psychoanalytic criticism. The course explores both the theories and their practical application, with a concentration on a particular literary problem of significance, such as the question of meaning, the nature of the text, or the contribution of reader response.
Prerequisites: EN 205 and one additional 200-level EN course.
EN 362 - Special Studies in Literary History (Pre-1800)
Credits: 3
Studies in one or two authors of the British and American traditions, or in a specific literary topic, genre, or question in literary history or theory, prior to 1800.
Prerequisites: Two 200-level courses, one of which must be EN 205.
Note(s): May be repeated for credit with a different topic.
EN 363 - Special Studies in Literary History
Credits: 3
Studies in one or two authors of the British and American traditions, or in a specific literary topic, genre, or question in literary history or theory.
Prerequisites: EN 205 and one additional 200-level EN course.
Note(s): May be repeated for credit with a different topic.
EN 364 - Advanced Special Studies in Literature and Language
Credits: 3
Advanced study of a selected topic in literature and/or language. May be repeated with a different topic.
Prerequisites: EN 205 and one additional 200-level EN course.
EN 371 - Independent Study in English
Credits: 1-4
Research in literature and special projects in creative writing. Independent study provides an opportunity for any student already well grounded in a special area to pursue a literary or creative writing interest that falls outside the domain of courses regularly offered by the department. The student should carefully define a term's work which complements their background, initiate the proposal with a study-sponsor, and obtain formal approval from the student's advisor and the department chair. Application to do such work in any semester should be made and approved prior to preregistration for that semester or, at the very latest, before the first day of classes for the term.
Prerequisites: Two 200-level courses, one of which must be EN 205.
EN 375 - Senior Seminar in Literary Studies
Credits: 4
A seminar in which seniors progress through the stages of writing an extended scholarly research paper. Common discussion of individual projects and reading of published scholarship emphasize research as a process of shared inquiry. Students practice research methods, present work in progress, and complete a substantial paper.
Prerequisites: EN 205 and one additional 200-level EN course, and senior class standing.
Note(s): Outstanding work may qualify the senior for departmental honors. May substitute for EN 389. Fulfills Senior Experience Coda requirement.
EN 376 - Senior Projects
Credits: 3
Senior Projects offer students an opportunity to work independently, with the guidance of a faculty supervisor, on a hybrid project that does not fall under the parameters of Senior Seminar (EN 375), Senior Thesis (EN 389, 390), or Advanced Projects in Writing (EN 381). Such hybridity might include a mixing of genres (e.g., a project that combines memoir with a research-based analytical piece or poetry and short fiction) or media (e.g., a project that involves the creation of text as well as music, film, or art); a translation project; an applied learning project; and so on. Students must find a project supervisor in advance of registering for EN 376 in the fall or the spring of their senior year. May be repeated once for credit.
Prerequisites: EN 205 and one additional 200-level EN course, senior class standing, and permission of the Department. Outstanding work may qualify the senior for departmental honors.
EN 377 - Special Studies in Writing
Credits: 4
Combines study of literature in a specified genre with related creative writing assignments in a workshop format. Students examine literary models, contexts, and methodologies for reading that emphasize craft and specific genre concerns of practicing creative writers.
Prerequisites: EN 205 and a creative writing workshop at the 200-level: EN 251, EN 280, EN 281, or EN 282.
Note(s): Fulfills Humanistic Inquiry requirement. Counts toward maturity credit within the English major in addition to creative writing workshops: 378, 379, 380.
EN 378 - Nonfiction Workshop
Credits: 4
Intensive practice in writing nonfiction. May be repeated once for credit. As with the Introduction to Nonfiction Writing, sections may focus either on a range of genres or on a specific nonfiction form. May be repeated once for credit. Students may take no more than two-300 level creative writing workshops (377, 378, 379, and 380) toward the maturity requirement in the Major.
EN 379 - Poetry Workshop
Credits: 4
Intensive practice in the writing of poetry. Workshop format with most class time devoted to discussion of student writing. Reading and weekly writing assignments aimed at increasing the poet's range and technical sophistication. May be repeated once for credit. Students may take no more than two 300-level creative writing workshops (377, 378, 379, and 380) toward the maturity requirement in the Major.
EN 380 - Fiction Workshop
Credits: 4
Intensive practice in the writing of fiction. Workshop format with most class time devoted to discussion of student writing. Readings and weekly writing assignments aimed at increasing the fiction writer's range and technical sophistication. May be repeated once for credit. Students may take no more than two 300-level creative writing workshops (377, 378, 379, and 380) toward the maturity requirement in the Major.
EN 381F - Advanced Projects in Writing: Fiction
Credits: 4
Workshop format concentrating on discussion of projects. The instructor determines whether the course will be offered in fiction [F], poetry [P], or nonfiction [N]. Preparation of manuscript to be considered for departmental honors, in support of application for graduate writing programs, and/or for publication. May be repeated once for credit.
Prerequisites: One section of EN 380.
EN 381N - Advanced Projects in Writing: Non-Fiction
Credits: 4
Workshop format concentrating on discussion of projects. The instructor determines whether the course will be offered in fiction [F], poetry [P], or nonfiction [N]. Preparation of manuscript to be considered for departmental honors, in support of application for graduate writing programs, and/or for publication. May be repeated once for credit.
Prerequisites: One section of EN 378.
EN 381P - Advanced Projects in Writing Poetry
Credits: 4
Workshop format concentrating on discussion of projects. The instructor determines whether the course will be offered in fiction [F], poetry [P], or nonfiction [N]. Preparation of manuscript to be considered for departmental honors, in support of application for graduate writing programs, and/or for publication. May be repeated once for credit.
Prerequisites: One section of EN 379.
EN 389 - Preparation for The Senior Thesis
Credits: 3
Required of all second-semester junior or first-semester senior English majors who intend to write a thesis (EN 390). Under the direction of a thesis advisor, the student reads extensively in primary and secondary sources related to the proposed thesis topic, develops his or her research skills, and brings the thesis topic to focus by writing an outline and series of brief papers which will contribute to the thesis.
Prerequisites: EN 205 and one additional 200-level EN course, and senior class standing.
Note(s): Offered only with approval in advance by the department.
EN 390 - Senior Thesis
Credits: 3
Intensive writing and revising of a senior thesis under the close guidance of the student's thesis committee. The thesis provides an opportunity for English majors to develop sophisticated research and writing skills, read extensively on a topic of special interest, and produce a major critical paper of 40 to 80 pages. Not required for the English major but strongly recommended as a valuable conclusion to the major and as preparation for graduate study.
Note(s): Fulfills Senior Experience Coda requirement.
EN 399 - Professional Internship in English
Credits: 1-4
Professional experience at an advanced level for juniors and seniors with substantial academic and cocurricular experience in the major field. With faculty sponsorship and department approval, students may extend their educational experience into such areas as journalism, publishing, editing, and broadcasting. Work will be supplemented by appropriate academic assignments and jointly supervised by a representative of the employer and a faculty member of the Department.
Prerequisites: Two 200-level courses, one of which must be EN 205.
Note(s): Does not count as an Advanced Course in Language and Literature. Must be taken S/U.
Courses in Expository Writing
| Code | Title | Hours |
|---|---|---|
| EN 095 | 0 | |
| EN 100 | English Language Skills | 3 |
| EN 103 | Writing Seminar I | 4 |
| EN 105 | Writing Seminar II | 4 |
| EN 105H | Writing Seminar II | 4 |
| EN 110 | Writing About Literature | 4 |
| EN 303H | Peer Tutoring Project in Expository Writing | 4 |
Courses in Poetry, Fiction, and Nonfiction Writing
| Code | Title | Hours |
|---|---|---|
| EN 280 | Introduction to Nonfiction Writing | 4 |
| EN 281 | Introduction to Fiction Writing | 4 |
| EN 282 | Introduction to Poetry Writing | 4 |
| EN 377 | Special Studies in Writing | 4 |
| EN 378 | Nonfiction Workshop | 4 |
| EN 379 | Poetry Workshop | 4 |
| EN 380 | Fiction Workshop | 4 |
| EN 381 | 4 |
Forms of Language and Literature
| Code | Title | Hours |
|---|---|---|
| EN 210 | Literary and Cultural Theory | 3 |
| EN 211 | 3 | |
| EN 213 | 3 | |
| EN 215 | 3 | |
| EN 217 | 3 | |
| EN 219 | 3 | |
| EN 228 | 3 | |
| EN 251 | Special Studies in Creative Writing | 4 |
| EN 253 | Graphic Narratives and Comic Books | 3 |
| EN 280 | Introduction to Nonfiction Writing | 4 |
| EN 281 | Introduction to Fiction Writing | 4 |
| EN 282 | Introduction to Poetry Writing | 4 |
Language and Literature in Context
| Code | Title | Hours |
|---|---|---|
| EN 221 | Introduction to Asian American Literature | 3 |
| EN 223 | Women and Literature | 3 |
| EN 224 | Literature and the Environment | 3 |
| EN 225 | Introduction To Shakespeare | 3 |
| EN 226 | Introduction to American Literature | 3 |
| EN 227 | Introduction to African-American Literature | 3 |
| EN 229 | Special Topics in Literature | 3 |
| EN 230 | Bible As Literature | 3 |
| EN 238 | World Literature | 3 |
| EN 239 | Children's Literature: A History | 3 |
Advanced Courses in Language and Literature
| Code | Title | Hours |
|---|---|---|
| EN 311 | Recent Fiction | 3 |
| EN 312 | Modern British Novel | 3 |
| EN 313 | Modernist Poetry: 1890-1940 | 3 |
| EN 314 | Contemporary Poetry | 3 |
| EN 315 | Eighteenth-Century Novel | 3 |
| EN 316 | Nineteenth-Century British Novel | 3 |
| EN 322 | Special Studies in Nineteenth-Century American Literature | 3 |
| EN 323 | American Literary Realisms | 3 |
| EN 324 | American Fictions | 3 |
| EN 325 | American Modernisms | 3 |
| EN 331 | The Wild(e) Nineties | 3 |
| EN 337 | The Continental Novel | 3 |
| EN 338 | Queer Fictions | 3 |
| EN 341 | Special Studies In Medieval Literature | 3 |
| EN 342 | Special Studies in Chaucer | 3 |
| EN 343 | Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama | 3 |
| EN 344 | Special Studies In Sixteenth-Century Poetry and Prose | 3 |
| EN 345 | Shakespeare | 3 |
| EN 346 | Special Studies in Early Modern Drama | 3 |
| EN 347 | Special Studies In Seventeenth-Century Poetry and Prose | 3 |
| EN 348 | Milton | 3 |
| EN 350 | Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Literature | 3 |
| EN 351 | English Romanticism | 3 |
| EN 352 | Victorian Literature and Culture | 3 |
| EN 359 | Modernism and Drama | 3 |
| EN 360 | Women Writers | 3 |
| EN 361 | Theories of Literary Criticism | 3 |
| EN 362 | Special Studies in Literary History (Pre-1800) | 3 |
| EN 363 | Special Studies in Literary History | 3 |
| EN 364 | Advanced Special Studies in Literature and Language | 3 |
| EN 365 | 3 | |
| EN 371 | Independent Study in English | 3 |
| EN 377 | Special Studies in Writing | 3 |
Capstone Experience
| Code | Title | Hours |
|---|---|---|
| EN 375 | Senior Seminar in Literary Studies | 4 |
| EN 376 | Senior Projects | 3 |
| EN 381 | 3 | |
| EN 389 | Preparation for The Senior Thesis | 3 |
| EN 390 | Senior Thesis | 3 |
Internships
| Code | Title | Hours |
|---|---|---|
| EN 399A-D | 1-4 |