English

This course examines major theories of the aesthetic and aesthetic value. Commonly defined as a philosophy of Art and the way in which we judge and appreciate artistic productions, the discourse of aesthetics raises a set of compelling questions about the fraught relationship between beauty, pleasure, judgment, and value. Students will explore a range of theories on the aesthetic and aesthetic judgment, and think more broadly about the purpose of the literary in broader society. Writers considered may include Plato on Mimesis; Aristotle on Catharsis; Burke on the sublime; Kant on Hedonism; Marx on art and value; as well as more recent debates on aesthetic affects coming out of contemporary queer theory.

This course examines how linguistic forms and literary devices are related to aesthetic effects and ideological functions. It will analyze and discuss how the choice and the patterning of words, sounds and images orchestrate to embody, mediate and elicit feelings and thoughts, and views and values. Topics include: towards characterizing literary linguistics; collocation, deviation and word play; prosody, parallelism and performance; discourse into discourse; narration and representation of speech and thought; reader positioning and response.

The course focuses on the main concepts of unification-based syntax and their application to the analysis of English. It examines the features that make up sentences, syntagms, words, and grammatical morphemes.

The course introduces seminal examples, key texts of game theory and relevant critical theory. Students consider the creative aspects of writing for games including: narrative and storyboards, world building, shooting/scripts, characters and avatars, players, virtuality and corporeality, queer feminist game play, play addiction, and algorithms and chance.

From sparkly vampires to blockbuster monsters, gothic tropes appear to be all-pervasive in contemporary culture. As Catherine Spooner claims in CONTEMPORARY GOTHIC (2006), like "a malevolent virus, Gothic narratives have escaped the confines of literature and spread across disciplinary boundaries to infect all kinds of media, from fashion and advertising to the way contemporary events are constructed in mass culture." This course introduces students to Gothic’s literary expression in the British 19th century, before exploring the many ways in which this dark heritage continues to affect contemporary cultural production. Focusing on three key texts from the 19th century, FRANKENSTEIN (1818), THE STRANGE CASE OF DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE (1886), and DRACULA (1897), this course discusses their adaptation, appropriation, and influence on popular narratives such as those found in fiction, film, tv, fashion, and music video. 

This course examines the dominant socio-cultural framework and literary and critical practices that define postmodernism in the twentieth century. Students will explore the major debates, key ideas and texts that enable an understanding of the postmodern turn and continue to define contemporary literature in the present.

This is an introductory course in English-language literature written by, about, or for gay men and lesbians in the twentieth century. It studies a variety of representations of homosexuality in a selection of novels, short stories, plays, and essays. The course also covers literature on other identities within the LGBTQ spectrum, such as bisexuality, asexuality, and transgender identities.

This course discusses what it means to read for the politics of a text and to read a text politically. We reflect on the different kinds of desire at play in the class: desire for social justice, for solidarity, for purpose in what we, as readers, activists and critics, do. In so doing, we learn to situate texts in terms of their contemporary commitments and in relation to our own. In the second half of the class, students discover literature in the context of, and in service to, a series of social movements and hone our skills in the archive to recreate these past moments of insurgency.

In this course, students read a range of literature by writers from the British Romantic period (c1776-1832) – an age of political, social, environmental, and aesthetic revolution. In a period marked by rapid industrialization at home, and overshadowed by the practices and legacies of slavery and empire internationally, writers such as Mary Wollstonecraft, William Blake, Lord Byron, Mary Prince, Jane Austen, Felicia Hemans, and P. B. Shelley were negotiating what it meant to live and write in a rapidly changing world.

This course offers a study the literature of the United States to 1850, taking into consideration the history of the country and the evolution of literary forms, notably prose and poetry. It examines the context of socio-political and cultural relations that have shaped the literary history and traditions of the US. This course discusses literary works from the following historical periods: Pre-colonial and Puritan traditions (1492-1776), literature of the New Republic (1776-1836), and Romanticism and the so-called American Renaissance (1836-1850).