English

The first half of the course analyzes Ralph Ellison's INVISIBLE MAN in relation to its context within the African American tradition as well as the many narrative strategies Ellison uses to write about such a subject, including but not limited to his use of oral wordplay in a written work and the methods through which a person can attempt to identify themselves. For the second half of the course, students examine LEAVES OF GRASS in the epic and lyric traditions, its major themes, its modernity of form and content, and the Whitman legacy in modern American poetry. Discussion groups emphasize oral expression, the technique of close reading and textual commentary, and essay-writing strategies.

One of the tools required in order to successfully interpret a medieval Celtic text, is to know as much as possible about the circumstances under which it was produced. This historicist approach is common in the field of Celtic studies. In the first four lectures of this course, students are given a brief overview of medieval Irish literature; medieval Irish history; medieval Welsh literature, and medieval Welsh history. After this, important concepts and themes relating to medieval Welsh and Irish history and literature are examined, compared, and contrasted. This is done by reading background literature, and by closely analyzing texts relating to a particular weekly topic, for example the king, the hero, the role of women, the role of the poet, the saint, and children.

Exploring the nature of myth, this course asks where we see myths being created and retold in the modern era and why a form that is often considered to be ancient still has such prominence today. Students read a range of modern mythic narratives, from the Caribbean to Japan, from the United States to the UK, considering how and why myth takes shape in 20th- and 21st-century literature. Examining the modern reception of ancient myths from Greek and Yoruba culture and delving into the creation of new mythic tales in graphic novels and performance poetry, students ask questions about what makes a text mythic and explore the ways in which myth continues to be used to address and think through very contemporary concerns.

Students study one of the most exciting periods of British literary and social history, when tumultuous political and social changes such as revolution and industrialization produced a range of remarkable and enduring literary responses. The course examines British Romantic literature through the close study of a broad range of prose, poetry, and non-fiction. The course is structured around examination of the work of the "Big Six" high Romantic writers, whose work is read alongside that of noncanonical Romantic writers. It examines a wide range of literary genres from the period, including various forms of poetry, the novel, and non-fictional prose writing, and offers the opportunity to study both canonical and lesser-known authors. 

This course examines the changes that occur as particular texts move between various cultural forms. The media under consideration will include print, radio, theatre, television, film and videogames, but some adaptations that change cultures rather than media, such as television formats and cross cultural stage adaptations will also be examined.

This course is dedicated to the practice of writing as literary experiment: a radical inquiry into the possibilities of mind and language and, by implication, an exploration into the nature of difference and interdependence. As such it regards creative writing as an extension of critical reading and seeing. Through a series of workshops this course invites students to move through a number of short literary exercises, some of which orbit existing models, while others are freshly imagined. These are culled from the study of the methods, processe, and techniques of a range of writers and artists that cut across time and discipline, and are as different from one another as Virginia Woolf, Basho, Frank O'Hara, Paul Cezanne, Gertrude Stein, Charles Olson, Hélène Cixous, Amiri Baraka, Patrick Keiller, Charlie Parker, Raymond Queneau, Michelangelo Antonioni, Jackson Pollock, and Allen Ginsberg. 

This course offers an introduction to the earliest literature in English and the language it is written in. Old English is the form of English used between the fifth and eleventh century beside languages like Celtic, Old Norse and Latin. It is one of the earliest European vernaculars to have a substantial body of written literature. This course begins by reading some texts in translation and introducing basic aspects of the grammar of the language. Students read texts in the original with the help of glossaries and other aids. At the end of the course, students read extracts from the most famous poem in Old English, Beowulf.