English

In this course students are exposed to reading the work of poets and narrators of the 15th century in their historical and cultural context. Provides analytical tools to recognize and identify the topics of melancholy and nostalgia in the poets of the Late Middle Ages. The course looks at the relationship between the medieval authors and the romantic artistic and literary movements of the 19th century.

This course explores the relationship between literature and technology. It begins by formulating an understanding of writing itself as a technology – that is as a cultural practice involving dedicated tools invented at a specific historical juncture (to be contrasted with spoken language, as a human universal). This encourages students to examine literature as a product of various writing technologies – from manuscript, to print, to typewriting, to a variety of electronic forms of textual production and presentation. How these modes of production can influence the form and content of literature are explored, as are the strategies used by authors to represent these different varieties of text within literature itself. Students consider the role of standardization in literature, and how and why a variety of writers have chosen to step outside the usual written standard. They consider the integration of images with text and discuss the semiotics of different forms of text.

This is a special studies course involving an internship with a corporate, public, governmental, or private organization, arranged with the Study Center Director or Liaison Officer. Specific internships vary each term and are described on a special study project form for each student. A substantial paper or series of reports is required. Units vary depending on the contact hours and method of assessment. The internship may be taken during one or more terms but the units cannot exceed a total of 12.0 for the year.

Literature is a cultural and aesthetic phenomenon that takes on many different forms in different periods, regions, and languages. In all of these forms, literature reflects in one way or another the society in which it emerges. This course connects the complex relations between literature and society and teaches how to write and speak about them in an academic way. The characteristics of narrative, interpretation, poetics, and textuality, and place literary texts and analyses in specific historical and cultural contexts are considered. Questions are considered via the analysis of one novel from a number of key theoretical perspectives in literary studies, such as narratology, memory studies, and reader-response theory. 

This course examines the art of writing about Hong Kong. Through the use of writing prompts, it introduces students to the different ways of writing about different social and physical environments in Hong Kong. Students will be able to discuss and articulate the feelings, thoughts and experiences evoked by these social and physical environments. They will be able to consider issues such as genre, gender and language use in relation to readership. 

This course analyses a selection of poems written by authors in English, with special emphasis on the literary and linguistic aspects of the language. It also involves the analysis of poems, the theories that feed poetic creation and its critical reception. The course will consider the status of lyric poetry in Western culture, and the history of the form in English poetry.

This course examines how literary and cultural works address the state of perpetual war of the historical present. Focusing on Third World decolonization contexts, it considers how writers and artists interrogate the gender, racial, and national ideologies that fuel violence, and how literary cultural analysis contributes towards understanding the global unevenly distributed effects of war.

This course explores the interplay of parody, rewriting, and intertextuality in eighteenth-century British fiction and will examine how authors of the period and beyond engage with each other's works and with broader cultural contexts and norms. Through close reading, analysis, and discussion students will gain an understanding of the evolution of the novel form and its relationship to other forms, texts, and contexts.

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.