English

This course introduces students to English poetry of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Poetry written during this period tends to be formal and stylized as well as public and political in content. Students will learn how to analyze the formal elements of poetry and to identify various poetic genres including the sonnet, epic/mock-epic, pastoral/georgic, and the elegy. The course will address the following questions: How does poetic form communicate meaning? Why do certain poetic forms prevail over others in given historical periods? What kinds of changes do we see in poetic authorship and readership in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries? How do poets engage in conversations with one another? We will begin with shorter poems, progress to longer selections from Milton and Pope, and end with abolition poetry and poems about animals. 

This course fosters creative and critical thinking through the diversification of reading texts and modes of expression (writing, performance, artwork). Students practice various communication skills centered on a specific topic and cultivate creative thinking processes. The course explores various historical forms of communities and examines works related to these themes to reflect on what a truly just community and its leadership should be like. While engaging with the texts through discussions and writing, the course emphasizes creative thinking rather than purely academic understanding. 

Topics include: reading texts without relying on fixed interpretation; seeking answers actively rather than passively accepting traditional responses; how to independently gather materials on a given topic, reconstruct various types of texts (literature, film, art) from one’s perspective, and derive new interpretations; how to organize and express independently interpreted materials from a unique viewpoint; and how to develop a capacity to move beyond exclusive thinking that holds one's own ideas as the only truth. 

This course aims to develop students' English language skills at an advanced level via reading, performing, and writing about various types of drama. Students will read and perform selections ranging from comedy through tragedy to a contemporary play to examine the differences between the English language in drama and English language in other types of written text.

This is an independent research course with research arranged between the student and faculty member. The specific research topics vary each term and are described on a special project form for each student. A substantial paper is required. The number of units varies with the student’s project, contact hours, and method of assessment, as defined on the student’s special study project form.

This course explores the literary tradition of German women writers, focusing on primary texts by contemporary women writers from the 20th and 21st centuries, with an additional focus on Berlin. The course examines modern German culture, society and the gender politics that create the frame of reference for understanding literary texts.

This course examines the rise of novel reading in English as an educative, aesthetic and passionate practice from the 17th century to the present. The course moves chronologically to examine how novels and the world came to be understood as mutually constitutive, how novels create and sustain attachments amongst their readers, how the genre of the novel became available for interrogations of national, gendered, racial, sexual and class identity, of liberty and intellectual emancipation, and of pleasure.

This course focuses on academic writing, equipping students with a solid foundation regarding its basic components and methods. To this end, students will develop a research project over the course of the semester, starting from the beginning stages of proposing a research topic and question for study, through to the steps of finding and using material from sources, outlining and drafting the paper, and revising and presenting their work. These efforts will culminate in the successful submission of a research paper at the end of the semester. Note: This course assumes that students are familiar with the basic paragraph structure as well as basic essay format—for example, by having taken College English 2: Writing, though this is not a prerequisite nor is it the only way to acquire an understanding of how to write paragraphs and essays. If this is not the case, please be sure to talk with the professor on the first day of class. 

This course connects students to the city of Berlin through the study and production of non-fiction writing. In order to understand the rich and complicated past and present of this city, students read non-fiction writing about Berlin from the 1920s to the present. Students also experience the city directly through excursions to important city sites, interviewing locals, and conducting their own research. Students turn these moments of engagement into reflective essays about the sites and people they encounter.

This course examines the ways in which language is being (re)formulated on the Web, especially in multilingual settings. The course focuses on the study and management of electronic language evidence on the Web. The course requires students to take prerequisites.

A workshop in writing based on the reading excerpts from world literature, this course aims to practice writing skills while deepening communication with literature while engaging with peers. Readings consist of short and medium-length excerpts (no whole books) from writers including James Baldwin, Edna O’Brien, Patrick MacGill, Naguib Mahfouz, and Émile Zola. Writing will be shared with the class and discussed. Students will be encouraged (not required) to keep a journal for building on ideas they began in class, sharing excerpts only if they wish to do so. In their final paper, students will be asked to write a short work based on anything in class that affected them—in a personal, aesthetic, political, or any other way.