English

This course explores how variation in language use relates to broader variation in the daily experiences of individuals and groups. It examines how language constructs cultural abstractions such as social class, gender, and power relations and how these abstractions play out in language varieties and shape their defining characteristics. 

This course introduces students to medieval literature, and presents both the diversity of literature written between 1150 and 1550 and its distinctive qualities. Students study a selection of texts including some of Chaucer’s CANTERBURY TALES, SIR GAWAIN, and THE GREEN KNIGHT, medieval drama, romance, and court poetry; religious writing, lyrics and travel writing may also feature. Students learn to read and translate Middle English, but also read some texts in the other languages of medieval Britain in translation, and study texts by both male and female writers. Students learn to analyze medieval poetry and prose, and gain an understanding of medieval modes of writing, genres and meters. 

How does America begin? With the fertile imagination of the first Europeans who arrived at its shores? With the creation myths of its indigenous communities? With John Winthrop’s utopian vision of a “City on a Hill?” With the Declaration of Independence that severed the ties with the British Empire? Questions of origin and identity sit at the center of this course. Every week the course analyzes fictional and non-fictional accounts of America as an idea, from its beginnings up to the early nineteenth century. We will pay attention to the so-called “founding fathers” and, especially, to those silenced by their master narrative of “fatherhood:” women, African slaves, and displaced American Indians. Whereas the course revolves around a specific historical context, the course explores relevant themes and problems to your own experience as a 21st century student and citizen: cross-cultural encounters, gender inequality, violence, war, colonialism, racism, democracy, capitalism, and labor rights. 

This course provides the groundwork for understanding the shape and status of the English language. The course is divided between the study of the ways in which it has changed since the Old English period, and the study of the social and cultural contexts in which those changes have happened. Special attention is given to the emergence of key dialects and to the relations between English and other languages in the British Isles. Students also gain experience of a range of different varieties of English. 

This course investigates the way in which literary texts and cultural theories have responded to the emergence of multiple new media formats through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. By situating literary and theoretical texts in a broader network of visual, aural and interactive media the course invites students to consider: the social, political and cultural effects of technology; the specificity of written texts as distinct from other forms of technical media; relationships between text, image, and sound; the historical implications of mechanical reproduction; the emergence of networked communication; the cultural and political impact of the computer.

This course explores four plays by four different writers from the Renaissance period: Christopher Marlowe’s THE JEW OF MALTA, William Shakespeare’s THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, Kyd’s THE SPANISH TRAGEDY, and Jonson’s VOLPONE. Students examine the development of theatrical drama during this era and invigilate many of the concerns of the day that were addressed by said theatre: power, race, gender, revenge etc.

The course provides an introduction to selected genres of Celtic literature from the early modern and modern periods, and an understanding of the social and historical background that gave rise to the texts studied. Two strands make up the course, one dealing with the Scottish Gaelic tradition and the other looking at Early Modern and Modern Irish literature. English translations are used throughout the course, and no knowledge of the original Celtic languages is required. The course is aimed at students who have successfully completed Celtic Civilization 1A and 1B, as well as Heroes, Wonders, Saints and Sagas: Medieval Celtic Literature in Translation, but it is also open to anyone who has taken a course in a literary or historical or similar subject at university level and wishes to explore the Celtic tradition. The course does not provide a comprehensive survey of the two literatures studied, but rather to examine in greater depth certain periods or themes or genres which are characteristic of the tradition, which offer cross-cultural comparisons within the Celtic world, and which are amenable to study through translation. For history students, the course offers insight into the nature and working of the two literary traditions; for literature students, enhanced understanding of the social and political background to the selected parts of Scottish Gaelic and Early Modern and Modern Irish literature; for students of Celtic Studies, the opportunity to range widely in the early modern and modern fields.

The course offers an introduction to English language history, paying attention to language changes, language contact, and the development into a modern national language in particular. An introduction is also given to the main characteristics of Old English and Middle English. The course discusses topics including the main lines of development of written English from approximately 700 AD to modern times; the most important changes in the fields of phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics; and the basic structure of Old English, Middle English, and Early Modern English grammar. The course requires students have completed courses in English grammar and phonetics and intonation or similar courses as a prerequisite.