Literature Electives

LITERATURE ELECTIVES

BARUCHCOLLEGE - ENGLISH DEPARTMENT

SPRING 2010

Survey of English
Literature I
English 3010
Prof. D. Mengay
Mon/Wed 6:00-7:15 PM / This course will look at the broad movement from Medieval to Baroque thinking as it is expressed in English texts, with a long stop at the Renaissance along the way. We will examine not just the major texts, from Beowulf to Paradise Lost, but will discuss the cultural contexts from which each work springs. To this end we will examine themes related to class structures; fragmentations of religious beliefs; shifting epistemologies and the slow rise of science; political rivalries and, ultimately, rebellion; and the development of literary genres.
Survey of English
Literature II
English 3015
Prof. B. Gluck
Tue/Thu 2:30-3:45 PM / This course surveys the development of English literature from the eighteenth century to the present. It will focus on themes such as the innocence – and misery – of childhood, the formation and growth of a person’s identity, and the often tortured relationships between men and women. Included are authors who revel in the real world (Charles Dickens, GreatExpectations) and those who create their own realm of Gothic science fiction (Mary Shelley, Frankenstein); the visionary and rebellious Romantic poets (William Blake, William Wordsworth, John Keats); and modern writers who rejected conventional values in experimental literary forms (William Butler Yeats, T. S. Eliot, Samuel Beckett, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf). Films will be shown when appropriate.
Survey of American Literature I
English 3020
Prof. J. Brenkman
Tues/Thu 6:00-7:15 PM / Puritans—Revolutionaries and Founding Fathers—Slaveholders and Abolitionists—Transcendentalists and Realists: such is the range of writers in the first 250 years of American literature. From the compact signed on the Mayflower in 1620 down to tragic reflections on the Civil War, the literature in this course varies from novels and poems to sermons and captivity narratives to essays and treatises. The period we will study saw the emergence of many of America’s defining myths and themes: the city on the hill, the frontier, the wilderness, Manifest Destiny. Such myths and themes are often taken as defining the United States as a nation. American literature is often looked to as a way of establishing the image of the Nation, in a search for a uniquely American self, an American space, an American destiny. Can literature really serve such a purpose? How has American literature shaped American identity? A major emphasis in the course, after looking at 17th- and 18th-century texts, will be the major writers of the mid-19th century, today commonly calledthe American Renaissance: Emerson, Hawthorne, Poe, Stowe, Thoreau, Whitman, Melville, and Dickinson.
Survey of American Literature II
English 3025
Prof. T. Aubry
Tue/Thu4:10-5:25 PM / This course surveys American Literature from the Civil War to the present. We will examine how the literature of this period reflects and respond to major historical and social developments, including industrialism, urbanism, war, economic depression, racial tension, bureaucratization, the breakdown of traditional sex and gender norms, and technological innovation. We will examine naturalist, realist, and modernist literary techniques and the various artistic and political purposes they served. Among the authors we will study will be Twain, DuBois, Gilman, Wharton, Hughes, Hurston, Stevens, Faulkner, O’Connor, Plath, and Morrison.
Ethnic Literature: Asian American Literature
English 3032
Prof. E. Chou
Mon/Wed 2:05-3:20 PM / A survey of the contribution of Asian-American writers to American literature, with a particular focus on contemporary writers (the 2000s) on the one hand and writers from the 1950s on the other. The reading will include memoirs, novels, and short stories by authors such as Toshio Mori, John Okada, Bienvenido Santos, Ha Jin, Sigrid Nunez, Susan Choi, and Kirin Desai. The last three authors have Baruch connections. One or two films will be included. Through literary analyses, we will discuss issues such as ethnic identity, acculturation, response to racism, and the relations among the various Asian groups.
Survey of African American Literature
English 3034
Prof. T. Allan
Mon/Wed 6:00-7:15 PM / While this course offers an overview of African American literature produced over three centuries, we will focus attention on some of the critical stages of its development, from the poetry, fiction, and slave narratives of the 18th and 19th centuries to the glorious age of the Harlem Renaissance, the hard-hitting realism of Richard Wright, and the feminist revolution of our time. We will read and discuss the works of both well-known and lesser known writers, including Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larsen, Richard Wright, Ann Petry, Amiri Baraka, Paule Marshall, and Toni Morrison. We will discuss historical, social, and cultural contexts to provide a fuller understanding of the writing; compare writers on the basis of gender and ideology; and above all define the distinguishing characteristics of each writer’s creative art.
Join us for a stimulating intellectual experience!
Post-Colonial Literature
English 3036
Prof. P. Hitchcock
Tue/Thu 11:10-12:25 PM / This course examines literary works written in English in regions other that Great Britain and the United States, namely Africa, Australia, South Asia, Canada, and the Caribbean Islands. The focus is on different genres produced in the post-colonial period including works by such writers as Athol Fugard, Nadine Cordimer, V. S. Naipaul, James Ngugi, Derek Walcott, and Patrick White.
Literature for Young Adults
English 3045
Prof. E. Dimartino
Tue/Thu 9:30-10:45 AM / Young adult literature includes books selected by readers between the ages of 12 and 18 for intellectual stimulation, pleasure, companionship and self-discovery. In this exciting course we will be reading literature that addresses the complexities and conflicts confronting adolescents during their journey to adulthood. Students will read fiction and nonfiction selections that deal with such themes as adapting to physical changes, independence from parents and other adults, acquiring a personal identity and achieving social responsibility. There will be ample opportunity to analyze and evaluate literary selections pertinent to the lives of young adults.
The Craft of Poetry: Form and Revision
English 3645
Prof. G. Schulman
Tue/Thu 6:00-7:15 PM / Although this is the second of two poetry courses offered here, you may enroll in it without having had the other. Here you will be learning about form in poetry – from the line to the stanza, and beyond. You will be writing in freer forms and in set forms such as sonnets, villanelles, haiku. You will be learning how major poets, from William Shakespeare to Elizabeth Bishop, and from Robert Frost to Gwendolyn Brooks, write in such a way as to convey their thoughts and loves and passions. If you love good books, if you enjoy reading Shakespeare or Chaucer or Dickinson, if you have ever been moved or disturbed or frightened by the sounds of the language, if you have wanted to write but can’t get started, this course is all yours.
You will be practicing revision, which is at the heart of writing poetry. You will be sharing your poems with the class in a workshop, and soon you will be sharing your feelings in ways you never thought possible. You will be learning to use language in ways that will convey your wishes, fears, and dreams.
Your instructor, Grace Schulman, Distinguished Professor at Baruch, is a poet whose latest book of poems is The Broken String and whose latest prose collection is First Loves and Other Adventures.
If you have passed English 2150 or 2800/2850, you are eligible to enroll in this course. Poetry 3640 is not required. Departmental permission is not required.

Advanced Essay Writing

English 3680
Prof. C. Mead
Tue/Thu 11:10-12:25 / The primary aim of this intensive writing course will be to expand the horizons and challenge the assumptions that we have about non-fiction writing through our reading and writing. Students will be encouraged to experiment with form and to widen the repertoire of the subject of their writing.
To those ends, we will study and produce creative nonfiction (sometimes known as literary nonfiction). This will include but not be limited to literary journalism; multi-genre writing (essays that incorporate techniques borrowed from other forms—e.g., poetry, diary, etc.; and essays that attempt to bring divergent discourses into the same space—e.g., scientific and poetic observation); and literary memoir.
The work in this course will consist of assigned readings and class discussions, workshopping of student writing, individual and small group conferences with the professor, and intensive drafting and revision.

Literature and Psychology

English 3730
Prof. E. Kauvar
Mon/Wed 10:45-12:00 PM / Do you wonder where personality traits come from? Is inheritance restricted to biology? Do parents pass on their psychological issues? This course will explore a number of psychological forces as they are translated into literature. If you’ve ever wondered what a split personality is, you’ll find a fascinating example in one of the texts we’ll read. If you want an answer to the question Freud repeatedly asked—What do women want?—you’ll get several responses. You’ll explore a variety of experiences—some familiar and others utterly strange—and gain an awareness of human motivation and how writers depict it in literature. We will examine case histories as narratives along withvarious other forms of literature.

Contemporary Drama: The New Theatre

English 3780
Prof. H. Brent
Mon/Wed 9:05-10:20 AM / This course traces contemporary drama’s remarkable history of experiments with new and powerful techniques of dramatizing and analyzing human behavior. The emphasis is on groundbreaking works from provocative contemporary playwrights such as Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett, Edward Albee, Eugene Ionesco, Bertolt Brecht, Tom Stoppard, Joe Orton, and Sam Shepard.

Topics in Film: Blaxpoitation

English 3940
Prof. Eversley
Mon/Wed 12:25-1:40 PM / In this course, we will study the 1970s African American film genre known as blaxploitation. Our critical engagement with films such as “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song” (1971), “Shaft” (1971), “Super Fly” (1972), “Cleopatra Jones,” (1973), “Foxy Brown” (1974), and “The Spook Who Sat By the Door” (1973), will allow us to explore converging political, sexual and racial dynamics of American culture within the contexts of civil rights, decolonization and the Vietnam War. We will also engage the ways in which blaxploitation’s cinematic structures correspond with other genres such as the action/adventure of the James Bond series, martial arts films made famous by Bruce Lee, and classic horror such as “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” (1974). Our readings of cultural and film theory will lead us to a better understanding of the language of cinema criticism and contemporary film. The course will culminate with a final research paper.

Topics in Film:

Cinema of Anxiety, Fear, and Paranoia
English 3940H
Prof. M. Gershovich
Tue/Thu 4:10-5:25 PM / This course will explore representations and manifestations of fear, anxiety, and paranoia in American films between the end of WWII and the present. We will consider the ways in which films speak to broader cultural anxieties particular to specific historical moments. We will likewise explore the ways in which the stylistic and aesthetic means of representing fear and anxiety on screen have evolved over the medium’s history. Viewing will include a variety of films across periods and genres including Pickup on South Street, Rear Window, Dawn of the Dead (Romero and Snyder versions), The Conversation, and The Manchurian Candidate (Frankenheimer and Demme versions). Readings will include works of social history as well as theoretical texts on spectatorship, the psychology of fear and paranoia, film genres, and film aesthetics; they will facilitate a critical exploration of the complex ways popular films are informed by, play on, and reinforce prevailing fears and anxieties.

Topics in Literature: Global Narratives and the Contemporary Novel

English 3950
Prof. S. Cucu
Tue/Thu 7:35-8:50 PM / As a historical reality reflecting the last development of modern technological civilization, globalization refers to a complex web of relations between nation-states, corporations, institutions and individuals. At the same time, our inter-connectedness is amplified by the information revolution (from television to social media), which has transformed our world into a spectacle both fascinating and frightening.
In this course, we will examine positive and negative consequences of globalization by discussing contemporary novels by Don DeLillo, Dave Eggers, Leslie Marmon-Silko and Orhan Pamuk. The course will focus on these writers’ response to phenomena such as politico-economic networks, humanitarian interventions, illegal immigration and sexual tourism.

Topics in Literature:

Narrative Theory and British Detective Fiction

English 3950
Prof. M. McGlynn
Tue/Thu 9:30-10:45 AM / Detective stories may seem light and entertaining, but the forms they take raise interesting questions about how authors structure their narratives and what we expect as readers. Beginning with the progenitors of the genre in the nineteenth century, we will consider how literary genres take shape: what needs do they fill for their societies? We will see detective fiction evolving in the work of such famous mystery writers as Arthur Conan Doyle, Dorothy Sayers, and Agatha Christie, considering notions of narrative contract and genre rigidity. Next we will explore novels written during postwar prosperity (e.g. Margery Allingham) and the rise and fall of the British Welfare State (e.g. Ted Lewis, Colin Dexter), ending with postmodern iterations of the detective story (Ian Rankin, Val McDermid). Throughout our survey we will blend a narratological approach with a focus on how cultural and political factors can nudge generic evolution. The roles of masculinity and femininity, of spaces (country/city, nation, etc), of race and fears of contamination, as well as of legal documents and the power of the written word will also be ongoing concerns in our discussions. Due to the nature of the genre, the reading assignments will almost always be long and will always be fun; please come to the first class session having read half of Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone (about 260 pages in the Modern Library Edition).

Topics in Literature:

Mystery and Melodrama: Gothic Literature Revisited
English 3950
Prof. C. Jordan
Mon/Wed3:45-5:00 PM / Against a background of haunted castle, demonic predators and victims who unconsciously collaborate in their own ruin, Gothic Literature takes us on a journey into the dark recesses of the human psyche that fascinated Freud, and examines its insatiable appetite for danger and forbidden pleasure. Through a psychoanalytical and feminist lens, we will explore Gothic stories written by both men and women. We will see how Victorian medical attitudes towards the body forced the female writer of the Gothic novel to create erotically coded texts which psychologists are still unraveling today. If you like exotic settings, you will revel in Jean Rhys’s Caribbean Gothic novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, about fatal passion, voodoo priestesses, sexual addiction, and mad Creole heiresses set in the lush islands of Jamaica and Dominica. You will love Bram Stoker’s nineteenth century masterpiece of voluptuous terror, Dracula, which changed the way we view vampires forever. Stoker transformed the traditional emaciated vampire into a tantalizingly dangerous predator who provides his victims with a taste of ecstasy before luring them into the world of the damned. Readings will include Mary Shelley’s classic of monstrous creation, Frankenstein, Sheridan Le Fanu’s dark tale of female vampirism, Carmilla, Charlotte Bronte’s multi-layered, erotically coded novel, Jane Eyre and R.L. Stevenson’s psychological thriller, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Topics in Literature:

Poetry and Imitation
English 3950H
Prof. M. Jackson
Mon/Wed 2:05-5:00 PM
/ MAJOR JACKSON
Harman Writer-in-Residence
This special workshop in poetry writing will be taught by
Major Jackson, the author of Hoops and Leaving Saturn andthe poetry editor of the Harvard Review.
In this poetry workshop, we will write poems based on our study of the rich and varied poetic movements of present day and 20th century schools of thought including Ezra Pound and the Imagists, Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance poets, Frank O’ Hara and the New York School, Allen Ginsberg and the Beat Poets, Saul Williams and other Slam Poets.
We will study the manifestoes, personages, and pioneering poems as well as the socio-political and aesthetic ferment that gave rise to such rich flourishings in American poetry. We will study poems, read correspondences, listen to recordings, and acquaint ourselves with important biographies.
Globalization of English
English 4015
Prof. E. Block
Mon/Wed12:25-1:40 PM / Is English killing off other languages or harmoniously co-existing with them?
Is it imposing homogeneity or fostering cultural diversity?
How would international communication take place when every community claims the right to use its own variety of English?
What does it take to read and write in English when the “text” is becoming multilingual and multimodal?
What does it mean to be proficient in English when we must shuttle between diverse communities with different varieties of English in the postmodern world?
This course analyzes how English language aids globalization and how globalization changes English. After studying the historical and geopolitical bases for the rise of English as a global language, we will explore the implications of decolonization, diaspora communities, the Internet, and the new economy for diversifying the structure, norms, and usage of this language. As informed users of the English language, we have to understand the controversial history, changing attitudes, new competencies, and competing ideologies associated with English. Adopting a communication-intensive curriculum, the course will encourage research, presentation, electronic discussion, and collaborative inquiry to explore the subject.