English

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. 

This course encourages new readings of American literature through the lens of theories that have developed in the field of gender and women’s studies over the last decades. It introduces a wide array of critical perspectives, ranging from early advocates of gynocriticism and theoreticians of “women’s writing,” to champions of intersectionality, queer studies, masculinity studies, and ecofeminism. The course pays special attention to the development of Black and Chicana feminist discourse and to their contribution to gender politics. It uses key concepts such as revision, mestizaje, silence, queering, performance, empowerment, resistance, embodiment, margin, and center to foster a revaluation of certain canonical or lesser-known texts and, sometimes, to uncover hidden layers of meaning beneath more conventional readings. The literary texts included are drawn from different periods and from a variety of genres (novel, short fiction, poetry) and include extracts from works by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Emily Dickinson, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, Alice Walker, Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, Toni Morrison, Carmen Tafolla, Paula Gunn Allen, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

Writing the Flâneuse, this seminar course explores representations of metropolitan spaces and experiences in 20th-century women’s writing. The figure of the flâneur – a term used to define a male wanderer and observer of urban life – has long been integral to critical explorations of modernity, from Charles Baudelaire's THE PAINTER OF MODERN LIFE through to James Joyce's ULYSSES (1922). However, students on this course are introduced to the contrasting feminine figure of the flâneuse – a female wanderer and observer of urban life – across the 20th century, drawing attention to the many re-evaluative efforts to bring matters of gender as well as the centrality of women's writing and experience to the forefront of studies of modern literature. It offers a critical and historical framework for approaching the figure of the flâneuse, reading primary texts alongside key critical works, and further incorporating discussions of space, spectacle, urban geography, mobility, consumer culture and labor. The course follows a broadly chronological trajectory, drawing on examples from novels, short fiction, and poetry by a diverse range of British and North American writers.

The course analyses selected American literary works from the mid-17th century to today. The texts include fiction, poetry, traditional autobiographies as well as hybrid forms. Discussions will focus on aspects such as "truth", gender, race, ethnicity and morals.

The course introduces students to the nature and applications of classical and biblical texts and traditions in English literature. The main premises of the course are that writers are also readers, and that among the factors which contribute to a reader's construction of a text is previous experience of other literature; that people have read the same texts in different ways at different times and found different texts more meaningful at some times than others; that since the 1930s, or thereabouts, we have largely lost easy, personal access to a range of expectations and knowledge of classical literatures and the Bible, which were previously shared by many writers and their readers. The course provides opportunities for students to experience at first hand, from selected texts, some of the literary forms, themes, and characteristic sensibilities of ancient Greece, Rome, and Israel, which provide meaningful contexts for English literary texts.

A century of politeness and Enlightenment, but also one of revolution and filth, the 18th century was a period of excitement and change. The literature of the time both reflects and shapes this perception, and the Irish literary scene is particularly striking for the variety and richness of its literary productions. Many of the 18th century’s greatest writers attended Trinity College Dublin – Oliver Goldsmith, Edmund Burke, Jonathan Swift – while many also attended the city’s brothels and taverns, as well as frequenting Smock Alley Theatre or visiting Marsh’s Library. Different urban and rural venues provide the setting, the stage, or the inspiration for a variety of literature across genres, including poetry, plays, life writing and novels. Many of the male and female writers on this course also had cosmopolitan aspirations, and several moved to London to pursue careers there. The course will highlight these connections between Ireland and England, and indeed France, investigating the realities of authorship and readership across the 18th century. As well as familiarizing students with the literary developments taking place in Ireland, and Dublin in particular, the course also engages with issues such as gender, sexuality, and the commodification of the female body; performance and the self; and politics and national identity. It also draws on the wonderful richness of built literary heritage from eighteenth-century Dublin, and includes a research visit to Marsh's Library. 

As critics including Eric Hayot have pointed out, it can be difficult to analyze and write about contemporary culture because we lack the critical distance to gain perspective on works that depict our own historical moment. This course provides some of that critical distance, or "leverage" as Hayot describes it. Through its comparative approach, the course explores how socio-political topics that are of pressing concern to writers, artists, and thinkers now were also examined in earlier periods. The course illustrates how studying the ways in which these themes and issues were represented and understood in the past enables us to enrich our engagement with the contemporary iteration of those topics today. The course considers a different socio-political topic each week, examining how it has been explored in a pair of texts. The course covers a range of creative works, critical concepts and cultural theories from the 20th and 21st centuries. The genres covered by the course include novels, films, essays, autofiction, memoir, a play, TV episode, and photo-text book.