Course Descriptions
THE WRITING PROGRAM
REQUIRED LITERATURE COURSES
ELECTIVES AND SPECIAL COURSES
The Writing Program
Cm001 Essential Writing I (no credit)
Emphasis on basic sentence patterns, paragraphing, and organization of ideas through pre-writing.
Cm003 Essential Writing II (no credit)
Further emphasis on preparation for essay writing. Attention to idiom, sentence patterns, and organization.
Cm104-115 Introduction to English Composition, I and II (6)
Instruction and practice in writing and reading English prose, with special emphasis upon individual development. The course progresses from personal experience to critical writing and research, and includes individual instruction and mandatory laboratory work (in CALL) in English grammar, spelling, and sentence structure. Special use is made of peer group discussion and other non-traditional teaching techniques. All students must take and pass a Proficiency Examination at the end of Cm104 and Cm115.
Cm106-117 Introduction to English Composition, I and II (6)
Instruction and practice in writing English prose, with special emphasis upon individual development. The course progresses from personal experience to critical writing and research, and includes instruction in English grammar, spelling, and sentence structure. Special use is made of peer group discussion and other nontraditional teaching techniques. All students must take and pass a Proficiency Examination at the end of Cm106 and Cm117.
Cm108-119 Introduction to English Composition, I and II (6)
Instruction and practice in writing English prose, reading in contemporary expository prose, and the practice of spoken English in regular classroom conversations. This course is intended to enrich the students’ vocabulary and command of English idioms, to increase their proficiency in spoken English, to teach them how to write good English prose, to develop critical thinking and research skills, and to provide them with classroom instruction and mandatory laboratory work (in CALL) to improve their pronunciation, grammar, and spelling. All students must take and pass a Proficiency Examination at the end of Cm108 and Cm119.
Cm050-051 The Spoken Word, I and II (no credit)
This course is designed to give students whose first language is not English practice in English conversation so that, with the help of the instructor, they can increase their vocabularies and command of English idioms, correct their accents, and gain a confident fluency in speaking English. Readings in short contemporary essays are assigned for use in the practice of English pronunciation, as sources for the acquisition of new words and idioms, and for the purpose of providing material for group conversations. Required of all students placed in the FE program.
CM120 Introduction to English Composition
Instruction and practice in the art of writing expository prose and the methods of writing research papers.Readingsin short prose pieces and essays by distinguished writers. All written work, including examinations, tests the students' ability to write clearly and with understanding on what they have read. Emphasis is on objectivity, accuracy, clarity of expression, logical organization, and the elimination of grammatical and mechanical errors.
REQUIRED LITERATURE COURSES
**English majors, please note that EL 201 will be offered every fall and EL 202 every spring. Courses from each group will be offered every academic year but not every semester.
EL123 The Forms of Literature: Poetry and Drama
Designed to initiate and develop understanding and appreciation of the nature, properties, and traditions of poetry and drama; and to stimulate critical interest in these literary forms by establishing standards of judgment and evaluation. Prerequisite: Cm120 or its equivalent.
EL 125 Literatue and Psychology
An interdisciplinary course that considers a particular theme from the descriptive viewpoint of Psychology.
EL134 The Forms of Literature: Fiction
Designed to initiate and develop understanding and appreciation of the nature, properties, and traditions of prose fiction; and to stimulate critical interest in this literary form by establishing standards of judgment and evaluation. Prerequisite: Cm120 or its equivalent.
EL201 Survey of English Literature, I
A study of great English writers from the Middle Ages to the Eighteenth Century. Required of all English majors. Prerequisites: El123-134.
EL202 Survey of English Literature, II
A study of major works of English literature from the latter part of the eighteenth century to the present chosen for the purpose of illustrating the forms, themes, modes, and temper of the modern experience. Required of all English majors. Prerequisites: El123-134.
ELECTIVES AND SPECIAL COURSES
Unless otherwise noted, EL123-134 are the prerequisites for the courses listed in this section.
EL 293 Today's Film Scene
Students will meet in Manhattan to view and analyze contemporary films, often before they are relased to the general public. At times the film makers are likely to participate. Prerequisites: CM 115, CM 120 or HP 122.
EL304 Medieval English Literature
Survey of the Old English period (499- 1066), covering selected prose and poetry, including Beowulf, and the Middle English period (1066-1485), surveying the works of Chaucer, Langland, the Gawain poet, Malory and others. (Group 1) Prerequisites: EL 123-134.
EL305 Chaucer
Analysis of the Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Criseyde, and several of the minor poems. (Group 1) Prerequisite: EL 123-134.
EL311 The Renaissance: Major Texts
The course interprets the term "texts" in a liberal way. In this context they are many important intellectual or artistic productions emerging from that vaguely and variously defined era called the Renaissance. Some of the literary works to be read are Don Quixote, Hamlet, sonnets of Petrarch, and (Calderon's) Life is a Dream. (Group 2) Prerequisites: EL 123-134.
EL313 Renaissance Drama
A reading and analysis of a variety of Renaissance plays from the continent, including Spain, Italy and Portugal. (Group 2) Prerequisites: EL 123-134.
EL 314 Major Elizabethan & Jacobean Dramatists
A study of important dramatists, from Marlowe to Ford, excluding Shakespeare. Revenge tragedies, history plays and city comedies are examined both as literature and as plays intended for performance. (Group 2) Prerequisites: EL 123-134.
El315 Shakespeare
A critical appreciation of representative sonnets, history plays, comedies, "problem comedies," tragedies, romances. Works are studied within their historical context and plays are approached both as published literature and as work designed for the stage. (Group 2) Prerequisites EL 123-134.
EL321 Seventeenth-Century English Literature
Prose and non-dramatic poetry from Johnson to Milton, considered in light of the historical context; a time of great social upheaval. (Group 3) Prerequisites: EL 123-134.
EL325 Milton
We will read a selection of Milton's early poetry, then all of Paradise Lost, and, to close, the tragedy of Samson Agonistes. Paradise Lost contains celestial violence, prelapsarian nudity, and elevated language, often polysyllabic--mature readers only.. (Group 3) EL 123-134
EL326 Eighteenth-Century English Literature
The prose and poetry of the Enlightenment, from Dryden to Blake. (Group 3) EL 123-134
EL327 Eighteenth-Century English Novel
A study of the development of the novel from Richardson to Austen. (Group 3) EL 123-134
EL328 Swift, Pope, and Johnson
A study of the works of three of the major eighteenth-century English writers who helped shape the values and vision of their period. (Group 3) EL 123-134
EL331 English Romanticism
An exploration of major trends in English Romanticism with particular attention to the question of why the writers of this era had such an explosive effect on the course of English literature. This will be done primarily through an examination of the poetry of the era especially that of Blake, Burns, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Keats, and Shelley) and of a Romantic novel (Frankenstein). We will also discuss the ltierature with reference to major social and cultural issues of the era, such as the French Revolution, Women's Rights, the Napoleonic Warss, class and sexual redefinition, and the internationalization of English . (Group 4) EL 123-134
EL334 Victorian Prose and Poetry
Victorian literature from 1832-1901. The major figures: poets, essayists, novelists. (Group 4) EL 123-134
EL335 Victorian Life and Literature
A study of art, education, history, religion, and science in the literature of the Victorian era. (Group 4) EL 123-134
EL 336 Ideas and Social Problems in Victorian Literature
An exploration of major cultural and social trends of the English Victorian period through a study of its literature and historical cross-currents. (Group 4) EL 123-134
EL345 Gothic Fiction
The gothic mode in fiction has been popular for over two centuries. Exploration of storeis and novels, both British and American, that reflect basic elements of the genre. EL 123-134
EL347 The American Novel before 1900
Selected novels by such writers as Brockden Brown, Cooper, Hawthorne, Melville, and Twain. (Group 4) EL 123-134
EL348 American Literature to 1870
This class will explore the major American wrtiers and movements up to 1870. We will examine works of fiction, poetry and selected non-fiction by writers such as Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe. (Group 4)
EL351 American Literature from 1870
The major writers and movements from 1870, with emphasis on "the American dream of fulfillment." (Group 5)
El353 The American Short Story
A study of selected nineteenth and twentieth-century American short story masterpieces. (Group 5)
EL356 Modern American Poetry
A study of the lives and works of selected American poets, including Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, T.S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, and Sylvia Plath. (Group 5)
EL357 The American Novel Since 1900
Selected novels of the modern era, including works by Dreiser, Wharton, Hemingway, Faulkner and Morrison. (Group 5) EL 123-134
EL 359 Literature of Black America
A survey of the major literary achievements of black American writers. May be substituted for El 134. (Group 5) EL 123-134
EL363 Modern British Novelists
This course examines novels from such modern, modernist, and post-colonial writers as Conrad, Forster, Lawrence, Woolf, Mansfield, Joyce, and Amis. (Group 5) EL 123-134
EL367 Modern Drama
In investigating major plays of the modern period – realistic, naturalistic, expressionist, and absurdist – students will have to consider the values these playwrights embody in their work. (Group 5)
EL 368 Modernist and Post-Modernist Fiction
A study of modernists such as Kafka, Joyce, Woolf, and Freud and post-modernists, including Marquez, Pynchon, DeLillo, Satrapi, and Gibson. (Group 5)
EL383 Bearing Witness to War and Genocide
This course considers both fictional and non-fictional accounts of modern violence, destruction, ethnic cleansing, genocide, and war to ask the question: what does it mean to bear witness? EL 123-134, HS 121-122
EL/HS 384: Responses to the Land: Histories and Literatures of the Environment
For all of humankind’s recorded existence, our species has had a complex relationship to the natural world it inhabits. The earliest works of literature, like the epic poem Gilgamesh, are centered around the conflict between the wild and civilization, or between the powerful forces of nature and humankind’s relative weakness. Nature in early myths and stories is something whose uncontrollable power is a threat that strikes fear into men’s hearts. In the Eastern cultures of China and Japan, and the native Indian cultures of North America, there existed a strong sense of the positive role that nature played in spiritual life. Nature in these cultures is sacred space wherein we achieve a spiritual connection with creation. Generally in the West, the fear of the unknown in nature and of its power, combined with the development in the 14th century of the notion of progress, created conditions that made the conquest or taming of nature of paramount value. As the rate of progress, and therefore of the transformation of nature, increased beginning with the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th century, some poets, painters, and thinkers began to step back and take another look at the role nature plays in our lives. The philosopher/writer Henry David Thoreau surveyed America in the middle of the 19th century and suggested that unless we changed our lifestyles we were doomed not only to destroy precious nature but ourselves. He noted that using up nature to achieve material aims might result in economic gain, but at a terrible price: the inability to achieve psychological or spiritual health. Today, of course, the issues surrounding humankind’s use of nature have become even more predominant. Material progress and the means we use to achieve it have some people worried that we’re destroying the world, while others consider it a matter of necessity and a strength of our human abilities. Viewed predominantly through the lenses of poets, essayists, and historians, this course will take an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural approach to the questions posed by humankind’s relationship to the environments “natural and ‘man-made’” that we inhabit.
EL402 Literary Theory
This course explores developments in literary theory from classical times to the present, inclding Plato, Aristotle, Dryden, Johnson, Coleridge, Wilde, Pater, Lacan, and Foucault. Students will apply literary theories to works of literature. EL 123-134
EL403 Great Books
A study of some texts fundamental to the Western literary tradition and to a liberal education. Designed to provide a background in intellectual history, to provoke a reconsideration of basic values, and to train the mind. Writers include Homer, Plato, St. Augustine, Machiavelli, Cervantes, Rousseau, Nietzsche, and Dostoevsky. EL 123-134
EL404 Crime and Punishment in Literature
A study of the theme of crime and its subsequent punishment as presented in various literary genres.
EL407 Tragedy and Comedy
A study of Western drama, from ancient Greece to the contemporary stage, invesigating the nature of dramatic genres, from tragedy to comedy and what lies in between. Plays are examined on the page, stage, and screen.
EL410 Arthurian Legend
A survey of the origins and growth of the legends of King Arthur, concentrating on texts from the Middle Ages, especially Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur, with some attention to modern retellings as well. (Group 1) EL 123-134
EL 414 The Historical Novel
The treatment of the past in a number of English, American, and continental novels of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The special problems of the exercise of the historical imagination within the formal demands of the novel.
EL/ED416 Children’s Literature
An examination of fiction written for children, including classic and modern stories. Students will read traditional literature, picture books and genre texts including realism, history and fantasy. The publishing of children’s books and book choices for the classroom considered. (Check with the English Department; not always cross-listed with English).
EL417 Detective Fiction
A study of major British and American writers of detective fiction from Collins and Anna Katherine Greene through the Golden Age to contemporary subgenres.
EL418 British Poetry
A study of Major poets---including Shakespeare, Donne, Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson, Yeats, Hopkins, and Heaney---and their impact on aesthetic, cultural, and political trends from teh sixteenth century to our contemporary age.
EL420 Contemporary Theatre
Appreciation of contemporary theatre through attendance of Broadway, Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway theatre in New York City.
EL421 Fiction and Film
The coures provides an introductory understanding of film, of the novel, and of the ways they interrelate. (This course is sometimes cross-listed with Communications)
EL473 Shakespeare: from the Page to the Stage
Since Shakespeare's plays were intended to be performed live, not read in silence, we will both critically analyze a selection of his works and then bring the texts alive in performance, employing both original theatrical practices and modern acting techniquez. EL123-134; or HP 119-120
EL493 Film Noir: The Dark Side of American Film
An introduction to this American Film genre with reference to its origins in European films and painting of the 1920’s and 1930’s, and in American hard-boiled detective fiction of the 1930’s, as well as to its significance to the development of Hollywood. Values course. EL 123-134
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