English

This course examines some of the best contemporary writing in English, from a range of cultures. It covers a range of genres including the novel, the graphic novel, short fiction, and poetry. In addition to providing a grounding in contemporary literature, this course focuses on what it means to read and write in the twenty-first century.

This course provides an introduction to the literature of the English Renaissance, studied in a variety of historical contexts—poetic, intellectual, religious, and political. It offers a broad understanding of the most important literary trends in Renaissance England, analyzes the trends as connected with the ideas and socio-political development of the period, and develops critical reading and writing skills in English.

This course provides an introduction to the analysis of discourse and dialogue. It discusses the major theoretical and methodological areas of study in discourse analysis from functional and socio-cognitive perspectives as well as applications in mediated, multimodal, and computational/corpus-assisted settings. 

This course is a dynamic exploration of William Shakespeare’s London and literature inspired by and set in his city. The course is designed introduces students to the historical and cultural milieu of 16th and 17th-century London through a variety of genres, including drama, prose, verse, and broadside ballads. Historical accounts, artefacts, and maps provide context to the rich material for critical reading offered by these texts. Students learn about historical research methodologies while sharpening their literary close reading skills. 

This course introduces students to a range of Victorian fiction. It addresses the content, form, and significance of the Victorian novel and how it develops amid the cultural, historical, and intellectual contexts of 19th-century Britain. It also examines the alternative form of the short story and considers what specific kinds of narrative and narrative effects this form enables. Authors to be studied may include Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, Lewis Carroll, Wilkie Collins, Dinah Mulock Craik, Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, Thomas Hardy, Henry James, Vernon Lee, Margaret Oliphant, Bram Stoker, and William Thackeray.

On this course, students read a variety of Victorian texts from across many genres to explore many different issues and themes including print culture; periodicals and serialization; religious, sexual, national, and ethnic identity; the women’s movement; the crisis of faith; industrialization and the city; ecology; human and non-human animal identity; imperialism. Although the course is structured around the work of major representative writers, students consider a variety of literary and non-literary texts to get a sense of the dynamism and variety of writing and debate in the period. This course examines a range of English writing across the Victorian period, some of it very familiar and some of it neglected or forgotten work. Authors studied vary from year to year, but representative authors include the Brontës, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Gerard Manley Hopkins, George Eliot, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Thomas Hardy, Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, Christina Rossetti, Elizabeth Braddon, and H. G. Wells. A major focus of this course is the exploration of relationships between literary texts and the historical, social, and political contexts which shaped their imaginative creation. Essentially, this is a course about setting Victorian writing in its intellectual and cultural context. 

Throughout this course, the class reflects on individuals and cultures that have at one time been considered (and are sometimes happy to be considered) aberrant, not “normal”. The course balances questions of identity (who we are, who we think we are, who others think we are) with questions of desire and sexual aim (who – or what – we are attracted to, if anything). This course asks students to focus on one question throughout: should we understand ourselves, and be understood in turn, as sexual and gendered identities; “straight”, “queer”, “female”, “heterosexual”, etc., or by our attachments; who we love, who we desire?

Emphasis is be placed on works from Britain or from the British post-colonial diaspora and students examine mediums including literature, art, and film.

This course covers the following: 1. study of 20th-century British literature (prose, poetry, and drama) in its socio-political context; study of individual authors (in weekly lectures) 2. study of major cultural themes running through the century, e.g., literature of war; imperialism; feminism; modernism; postmodernism; political writing, 3. several trips to theatre productions during the year, 4. extensive use of archive recordings of authors, and video.

This course provides a survey of Irish-language poetry composed during the twentieth century. Using Louis De Paor’s bilingual edition of poems from the period, Leabhar na hAthghabála | Poems of Repossession, the course discusses questions of thematic and stylistic continuity as well as evidence for evolution within the poetic tradition of the Irish. Common themes and conventions in the Irish language poetry of the 20th century as well as an understanding of how these themes underwent development and were re-articulated over the course of the century are acquired. Such themes include gender discourse, post-colonialism, and the politics of language. Introductory use of literary theories and secondary sources is also included.

This course deepens students' understanding of the writer’s craft and enhance the development of techniques they acquired in Prose Fiction. The first ninety minutes of every workshop is devoted to the critique of student work-in-progress (either a short story or a novel excerpt). Discussions are guided by the lecturer, who offer feedback tailored to the craft-related issues evident in each submission. This may include topic such as characterization, plot, structure, dialogue, voice, point of view, narrative time, conflict, and prose style. The last half-hour of each workshop promotes the close reading and evaluation of established authors’ work, exemplifying matters of technique and the various stylistic approaches to the form.