ENGLISH ELECTIVES

BARUCH COLLEGE

SPRING 2012

Naked English
English 3001
Prof. E. Block
Mon/Wed 5:50-7:05PM
Survey of English
Literature I
English 3010
Prof. P. Berggren
Mon/Wed 11:10AM-12:25PM / This course is intended for those who want to understand the basic construction of sentences and the complex variety of materials that can cover them; this awareness should give participants the tools to become more insightful readers and more effective writers. We will begin by exploring the categories of words [nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, interjections] and how these contribute to the unity of a sentence and its message. From there we will survey the varieties of sentences and consider them from both syntactic [structural] and semantic [meaning-oriented] points of view. We will cover areas that have been traditionally more challenging for writers: verb tenses, subject-verb agreement, sentence combining, parallelism, relative clauses, dangling constructions and others that may emerge. We will then move on to study and practice the techniques that create unity and connection within paragraphs and larger pieces of prose. Throughout the course, class participants will practice editing both their own and professionally-generated materials. There will be weekly assignments, a midterm, a final, and an independent project.
Recognizably English literature begins in the 7th Century with a bashful stable-hand named Caedmon singing God’s praises and soon moves on to heroic narrative and meditative reflections on the hardships of life. Then, as Germanic Old English evolves into French-influenced Middle English, both male and female writers examine relationships between men and women, capped at the end of the 14th century by the rich comic variety of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. As language changed, so did theatrical practice, as seen in Everyman, one of the most popular plays ever produced, and Shakespeare’s King Lear. We conclude by sampling some of the remarkable 17th-century poems of love, politics, and devotion that culminate in Milton’s Paradise Lost and the new narrative forms of the Restoration and 18th century, in which women like Aphra Behn and Mary Astell and satirists like Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope challenge existing authority in contrasting ways. Throughout, our concern will be to identify and analyze the characteristic structures and themes of the English literary tradition.
Survey of English
Literature II
English 3015
Prof. B. Gluck
Tue/Thu 11:10AM-12:25PM / This course surveys the development of English literature from the eighteenth century to the present. It will focus on themes such as the innocence – and misery – of childhood, the formation and growth of a person’s identity, and the often tortured relationships between men and women. Included are authors who revel in the real world (Charles Dickens, GreatExpectations) and those who create their own realm of Gothic science fiction (Mary Shelley, Frankenstein); the visionary and rebellious Romantic poets (William Blake, William Wordsworth, John Keats); and modern writers who rejected conventional values in experimental literary forms (William Butler Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Samuel Beckett, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf). Films will be shown when appropriate.
Survey of American Literature I
English 3020
Prof. D. Mengay
Mon/Wed5:50-7:05PM / This course will focus on three narratives that surface in early-American writing through the middle of the nineteenth century. The first has to do with land, who owns it and by what authority a person feels entitled to claim it. The issue becomes a contested one as Euro-Americans insist increasingly the land belongs to them. The second is the rise of secular discourse and the discussion of basic human rights. We will follow the shift from Puritan views to those of John Locke and other English philosophers, whose ideas influenced American writers in the mid- and late-eighteenth century. Related to this theme is the third narrative, race, which becomes a dominant subtext in American literature prior to the Civil War. Works will include: Bradford’s Pilgrim Plantation; Rowlandson’s Narrative of a Captivity; Franklin’s Autobiography; Irving’s “Rip van Winkle”; Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans; Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter; Melville’s Moby Dick; Brent’s Incidentsin the Life of a Slave Girl; and Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.
Survey of American Literature II
English 3025
Prof. C. Mead
Mon/Wed4:10-5:25 PM / The end of the Civil War marked the beginning of the modern United States. Starting with Whitman and Dickinson, this course will provide an overview of the four major periods or styles or literary movements often used to describe American writing since 1865: Realism, Naturalism, Modernism, and Postmodernism. These broad headings will be challenged and redefined as we consider not just the canonical texts that generally define these terms but also texts by ethnic minorities, women, and others sometimes considered as less or even non-literary.
English Voices from Afar: Post-Colonial Literature
English 3036
Prof. E. Chou
Mon/Wed 2:30-3:45PM / This course examines literary works written in English in a number of genres (plays, novels, essays, film) in regions other than Great Britain and the United States. Works from Africa, South Asia, Hong Kong, the Caribbean Islands, and Australia will be read / seen. Discussion will use analyses of the works as an means of understanding some of the many issues of post-colonialism.
Survey of Caribbean Literature in English:
The Politics of Caribbean Romance
English 3038
Prof. K. Frank
Tue/Thu 5:50-7:05PM / Rihanna's "Man Down" and Sean Paul's "Hold My Hand" are just two among many songs that send entirely different messages about relationships between Caribbean women and men. In this course we will focus particularly on those relationships in Caribbean literature. What myths or fantasies about the Caribbean and Caribbeanness, constructed externally or internally, inform the dynamics of "romantic" or purely exploitative, sexual Caribbean relationships? Additionally, how do issues such as agency, alienation, and authenticity pertain to such liaisons, which may be simultaneously or by turns delightful and/or dangerous?
In addition to novels involving African-Caribbean, Asian-Caribbean, and European-Caribbean experiences, we will explore these matters by reading some pertinent essays, listening to and/or watching videos of some pertinent music, and we will likely watch one film.
Literature for Young Adults
English 3045
Prof. E. Dimartino
Tue/Thu 9:30-10:45 AM
Film and Literature
Hard-boiled Fiction and Film Noir
English 3270
Prof. C. Taylor
Mon/Wed 9:30AM-10:45AM / Young adult literature includes books selected by readers between the ages of 12 and 18 for intellectual stimulation, pleasure, companionship and self-discovery. In this exciting course we will be reading literature that addresses the complexities and conflicts confronting adolescents during their journey to adulthood. Students will read fiction and nonfiction selections that deal with such themes as adapting to physical changes, independence from parents and other adults, acquiring a personal identity and achieving social responsibility. There will be ample opportunity to analyze and evaluate literary selections pertinent to the lives of young adults.
In the early 1930’s, a darker, leaner prose emerged on the American landscape. It evoked an underbelly of corruption and greed. Its heroes hardly seemed heroic at all. In this course, we will examine the writing and the films of the 1930’s through the 1950’s that created a new American idiom and a uniquely American art form. We will be reading and discussing authors such as Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Horace McCoy, Jim Thompson and David Goodis. We will also view a number of film noir classics and discuss their roots in German Expressionism.
Documentary Film
English 3280
Prof. C. Rollyson
Mon/Wed 2:30-3:45PM
The Craft of Poetry: Form and Revision
English 3645H
Prof. L. Sheck
Wed 2:30-5:25PM / What is the truth-value of documentaries? This is the basic question explored in this course through examining the genre’s historical development and the social and political activism of filmmakers. The filmmakers covered in this course include the Lumiere Brothers, Robert Flaherty, Dziga Vertov, Leni Riefenstahl, Frank Capra, Humphrey Jennings, Jill Craigie, Michael Moore, and other contemporary directors of documentaries.
Harman Writer-In-Residence
This workshop in poetry writing will be taught by Laurie Sheck, the spring 2012 Sidney Harman Writer-in-Residence. Ms. Sheck is the author of five books of poems, including The Willow Grove and Captivity, and one hybrid work, A Monster’s Notes.
This course will focus on the writing and revising of poems by students in the class. In pursuing this, we will also read widely—from Emily Dickinson to Gertrude Stein; from Langston Hughes to Charles Simic, Frank O’Hara, Sylvia Plath, Federico Garcia Lorca, William Carlos Williams and other notable poetic voices both in English and in translation. We will wonder about what a poem actually is, and in the course of this inquiry will explore various approaches, traditions and forms.
IN ORDER TO REGISTER FOR THIS COURSE, STUDENTS MUST SUBMIT AN APPLICATION AVAILABLE ON THE HARMAN WRITER-IN-RESIDENCE PROGRAM WEBSITE: QUESTIONS, CONTACT PROFESSOR ROSLYN BERNSTEIN, OFFICE: 646-312-3930 OR EMAIL:
Advanced Essay Writing
English 3680
Prof. C. Smith
Tue/Thu 2:30-3:45PM / This course focuses on style in writing: what it is and how to get it. We will read the work of professional writers and discuss what kinds of choices they make and why. Who’s the intended audience of a piece? What’s its purpose? What kind of mood is the author trying to create? After discussing the choices writers make, students will have the chance to experiment with different options to develop their own distinctive writing style(s). Students will compose short pieces on topics of their choice that they will share with one another and the professor and, over time, develop into longer, more complete works. We will mostly write creative non-fiction essays (we will study and discuss this genre in class), but students are free to choose their own topics and write to any intended audience. Classes will be part lecture on issues of style, including sentence and paragraph construction, repetition, voice and tone, showing vs. telling, metaphor, humor, irony, vividness, and rhythm; part discussion of passages by major American essayists such as Thoreau, Twain, Hughes, Fitzgerald, Baldwin, Walker, Didion, Tan, and Dillard; and part workshopping of student writing.
Literature and Psychology
English 3730
Prof. E. Kauvar
Mon/Wed 10:45-12:00 PM / Have you ever wondered what makes someone so enraged that someone else ends up dead? Do you speculate about the reasons why two people are attracted to each other? Do you question why families end up the way they do? When you read a story, have you ever tried to figure out why you dislike it? Whether we read to escape, to discover, or even to fulfill requirements, we have a purpose, a motive, and more than likely some expectations. Both psychology and literature are windows into human behavior. English 3730 examines the similarities and differences between literary and psychological treatments of various major human motivations and conditions. Which method--psychology or literature--is the most accurate way to explain human behavior? A major objective of this course is to analyze and interpret literature in the light of psychological theories of personality and human development. Our goals will to be to gain a deeper understanding of psychological theories of personality and development and to discover how these theories provide the reader insight into literary works. Our reading will range from Freud’s case histories and other more contemporary psychologic theorists to contemporary writers like the Japanese writer Murakami.
Contemporary Drama: The New Theatre
English 3780
Prof. H. Brent
Mon/Wed 9:05-10:20 AM / This course traces contemporary drama’s remarkable history of experiments with new and powerful techniques of dramatizing and analyzing human behavior. The emphasis is on groundbreaking works from provocative contemporary playwrights such as Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett, Edward Albee, Eugene Ionesco, Bertolt Brecht, Tom Stoppard, Joe Orton, and Sam Shepard.
Tradition and Influence in African American Literature
English 3830
Prof. T. Allan
Mon/Wed 6:05-7:20PM / Focusing on representative texts, we will trace the development of the African American novel from its beginnings in the antebellum and Post-Reconstruction eras through the Harlem Renaissance, the 1940s and 1960s, to the present time. Our aim is twofold: to examine the literary traditions and socio-political contexts that helped to shape the black novel and to track the ways in which some of the writers influence one another across gender and generational lines. We will pay attention to the dominant themes such as, Southern slavery, ‘passing,’ the search for freedom and identity, racial prejudice in the North, female rebellion. We will also discuss issues of style and language and the impact, if any, of the writers’ backgrounds, experiences, and beliefs on their work.
The reading list contains both familiar and unfamiliar titles but individually and together these books promise a transformative learning experience:
1. Clotel; or the President’s Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life the United States (William Wells Brown)
2. The House Behind the Cedars (Charles Chestnutt)
3. Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston)
4. Native Son (Richard Wright)
5. Go Tell It on the Mountain (James Baldwin)
6. The Color Purple (Alice Walker)
Topics in Literature:
Zones of Hell: Dante’s Inferno and Levi’s Auchwitz
English 3950
Prof. W. McClellan
Mon/Wed 9:30AM-10:45AM / Dante went to Hell figuratively on his way to Paradise, guided by a divine presence that gave meaning to his experience. Levi actually went to hell in person, with little hope to survive, no superior guidance, no hope to reach paradise. In Dante’s Inferno punishments are meted out for specific sins; in Auschwitz the only ‘sin’ to be punished is that of being a Jew. In Dante’s hell the sinners retain their individuality, in the Camp the prisoners were deprived of their identity and dehumanized before extermination. Yet Levi survived his time in hell on earth, and he, like Dante, writes about it. We will read Dante’s Inferno, and Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz and TheDrowned and the Saved, comparing their attitudes towards justice, the zone between good and evil, the operation of memory for the victims and the oppressors, and the new moral universe we inhabit after Auschwitz.
Topics in Literature:
Law and Literature
English 3950
Prof. S. O’Toole
Mon/Wed 07:30-8:45PM / What can literature teach us about law? What views of legal institutions do literary texts provide, and what place do these views have in a democratic society? How do imaginative writers use the law to structure and tell stories? How much of law itself is narrative, that is, involved in “telling stories” about cases? How do the interpretive tools and methods of lawyers, authors, and literary critics compare? How are human passions and the human condition differently described and treated in law and literature? This course considers these questions within the growing interdisciplinary field of Law and Literature. We will investigate enduring legal issues and themes of justice and bias explored in literary texts by William Shakespeare, Mary Wollstonecraft, Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, Wole Soyinka, Alice Sebold, and J. M. Coetzee. In addition, we will read writings by Supreme Court Justices, trial transcripts, newspaper reports, prison letters, and documentaries using the methods of literary interpretation and analysis. The 1895 sodomy trial of Oscar Wilde will provide a central case study.
Topics in Literature:
Cities underSiege: Troy and Jerusalem
English 3950
Prof. L. Silberman
Mon/Wed2:30-3:45PM / The siege and conquest of a great city has been a recurring theme in many literary masterworks. The stories of Troy and Jerusalem have been told and retold, as each successive author adapts inherited material. Mythically, the Troy story treats the fall of the city as the struggle over a woman. Jerusalem is figured as a woman—both abused and deserted by her lovers and mourning her children. Individual authors both register mythic significances that attach to the stories and shape the stories for their own purposes. Unlike Trojans, Jews wrote a lament for their own city. The Biblical Book of Lamentations (in Hebrew Echah, or “How?”) records an active process of making sense of national tragedy, whereas in the cases of Troy, the meaning comes more “ready-made” for writers who are in some way appropriating someone else’s tragedy.