English

This course examines how the 1960s saw enormous transformations in both the matter and the forms of American prose writing. It considers how writers and artists battled for new freedoms, and sex and sexuality began to be featured in books published by mainstream publishers for the first time. Accompanying the famous revolutionary political movements that marked the decade, and responding to many of the same cultural and political pressures, were various revolutions of the word. The 1960s saw a widespread reaction against a now-institutionalized modernism, and the first great statements of what would come to be thought of as literary postmodernism (Thomas Pynchon, John Barth). This course discusses how critics like Susan Sontag argued for the continued validity of the modernist project, and for the need to extend it; and novelists like Saul Bellow and Mary McCarthy sought to extend the traditions of realism and modernism in novels like Herzog (1964) and The Group (1963). American prose writing of the 1960s was also shaped and informed by the sexual revolutions that marked the decade, and writers such as Ursula Le Guin began to use the tools of imaginative writing to interrogate embedded cultural assumptions about gender, sexuality, patriarchy, and power. This course considers how in many ways, all of the key streams of 20th century American literature converged in the 1960s. The decade and its key texts explores issues central to American studies more broadly: American exceptionalism, the utopian promise underwriting the American experiment, the legacies of modernism, the meaning(s) of postmodernity, the political transformations of the postwar era, and the “hangover” of the early 1970s.

This course focuses on English literature and its internalization from the end of the Second World War to the present day, and the critical analysis of literary discourses and specific texts from that period. Students engage with the historical and cultural foundations of British society between the 20th and 21st centuries and topics include the analysis, criticism, creation, editing, and publication of texts.

This course introduces artificial intelligence (AI) applications, with particular attention to the current use of AI systems in the humanities. It reflects on the ethical implications of AI in teaching and learning contexts (e.g. for text production, translation, and language learning) as well as in a series of real-world cases. Contexts and cases focus on English language use, learning and teaching. The course introduces how generative AI systems work, including its reliance on the English language and Anglophone cultures, and the general issues covered in the course. The structure of the course consists of four blocks: bias, hallucinations and transparency; the workings of generative AI systems (LLMs and prompting), as well as data security and privacy; social inclusion and exclusion caused by the application of AI systems; and environmental impacts of using generative AI. Each block introduces students to a series of ethical issues surrounding AI use in the humanities and within the context of the English degree. These examples allow students to analyze the implications of AI in society. Throughout, important ethical issues concerning AI use are presented and critically discussed in class.

This course offers a study of English-language literature and culture from the second half of the nineteenth century with a focus on marginal and non-canonical work including poetry, fiction, drama, and visual culture. It is divided into four modules: Avant-garde movements of Victorian modernity such as Pre-Raphaelitism, Aestheticism, and Decadence; popular fiction with a focus on genre literature including adventure, detective, horror, and children's narratives; cultural particularities of the fin de siecle, examining the shift in cultural paradigms towards twentieth-century modernity; critical reception of Victorian culture in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including Neo-Victorianism and other contemporary versions of Victoriana. This course explores significant aesthetic, cultural, and ideological aspects of each module.

Pre-requisite: Nineteenth-Century English Fiction 

This course introduces English literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The course familiarizes students with some of the social, cultural, and intellectual contexts which informed the emergence and development of literature in this period. The course's set texts reflect the broad generic range and preoccupations of the era, such as authority, gender, selfhood, and nation. Two or more plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries, and a variety of poetic and/or prose texts will be studied. The course provides a foundation for further study of Renaissance literature, including Shakespeare.

This course introduces students to the literature of the English Renaissance through a combination of close reading and contextualization in the cultural, social and political milieu. It focuses on the study and analysis of the most significant authors and works, particularly those by William Shakespeare. In working with texts from this period, students build on critical and discursive skills developed in previous courses, as well as increase their literary and historical knowledge.

This course introduces a number of different texts ranging from the canonical via the postcolonial to the contemporary. The course engages in the affective turn in literary studies and explores the relationship between literature and emotions. In turning to critical theory, it also considers how affective science has impacted on literary studies. The course is organized around thematic clusters, zooming in on emotions such as passion, anger, shame and grief.

London in the 18th century was the first recognizably "modern" city, the metropolitan center of a global trading empire. For this reason, poets, artists, novelists, playwrights, travel writers, satirists, and essayists were drawn persistently to London as a fascinating and complex subject for literary representation. There were few established precedents for how cities might be imagined through text. Solving the problem of how to represent the diverse, enigmatic, ever-changing city of London is one of the core literary questions that we ask on this course. 

The course introduces students to the life and novels of Jane Austen and explores how her work has been adapted in Hollywood. Students examine the relationship between source texts and their adaptations, and analyze genre, form, and thematic concerns like feminism and class.

This course explores the development of modern British drama from the late 19th century to the present, focusing on major playwrights and their works. We approach the history of British drama in three parts: the emergence of modern drama (Oscar Wilde & Bernard Shaw) at the turn of the twentieth century, two major trends in postwar Britain (John Osborne & Samuel Beckett), and the political and experimental theatre of the late 20th century onwards (Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, Sarah Kane, Caryl Churchill). Keeping in mind that dramatic texts are realized on stage, we pay attention to theatrical elements and genres, including melodrama, social realist drama, the theatre of the absurd, the comedy of menace, the play of ideas, in-yer-face theatre, and political theatre. Films and other visual materials are used to enhance students’ understanding and engagement with the plays.