Spring 2012 English Electives

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Naked English
English 3001
Prof. E. Block
Mon/Wed 5:50-7:05PM

Survey of English
Literature I
English 3010
Prof. P. Berggren
Mon/Wed 11:10AM-12:25PM
This course is intended for those who want to understand the basic construction of sentences and the complex variety of materials that can cover them; this awareness should give participants the tools to become more insightful readers and more effective writers. We will begin by exploring the categories of words [nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, interjections] and how these contribute to the unity of a sentence and its message. From there we will survey the varieties of sentences and consider them from both syntactic [structural] and semantic [meaning-oriented] points of view. We will cover areas that have been traditionally more challenging for writers: verb tenses, subject-verb agreement, sentence combining, parallelism, relative clauses, dangling constructions and others that may emerge. We will then move on to study and practice the techniques that create unity and connection within paragraphs and larger pieces of prose. Throughout the course, class participants will practice editing both their own and professionally-generated materials. There will be weekly assignments, a midterm, a final, and an independent project.

 

Recognizably English literature begins in the 7th Century with a bashful stable-hand named Caedmon singing God’s praises and soon moves on to heroic narrative and meditative reflections on the hardships of life. Then, as Germanic Old English evolves into French-influenced Middle English, both male and female writers examine relationships between men and women, capped at the end of the 14th century by the rich comic variety of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. As language changed, so did theatrical practice, as seen in Everyman, one of the most popular plays ever produced, and Shakespeare’s King Lear. We conclude by sampling some of the remarkable 17th-century poems of love, politics, and devotion that culminate in Milton’s Paradise Lost and the new narrative forms of the Restoration and 18th century, in which women like Aphra Behn and Mary Astell and satirists like Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope challenge existing authority in contrasting ways. Throughout, our concern will be to identify and analyze the characteristic structures and themes of the English literary tradition.

Survey of English
Literature II
English 3015
Prof. B. Gluck
Tue/Thu 11:10AM-12:25PM

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, Great Expectations) 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. D. Mengay
Mon/Wed 5:50-7:05PM

This course will focus on three narratives that surface in early-American writing through the middle of the nineteenth century. The first has to do with land, who owns it and by what authority a person feels entitled to claim it. The issue becomes a contested one as Euro-Americans insist increasingly the land belongs to them. The second is the rise of secular discourse and the discussion of basic human rights. We will follow the shift from Puritan views to those of John Locke and other English philosophers, whose ideas influenced American writers in the mid- and late-eighteenth century. Related to this theme is the third narrative, race, which becomes a dominant subtext in American literature prior to the Civil War. Works will include: Bradford’s Pilgrim Plantation; Rowlandson’s Narrative of a Captivity; Franklin’s Autobiography; Irving’s “Rip van Winkle”; Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans; Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter; Melville’s Moby Dick; Brent’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; and Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.

Survey of American Literature II
English 3025
Prof. C. Mead
Mon/Wed 4:10-5:25 PM
The end of the Civil War marked the beginning of the modern United States. Starting with Whitman and Dickinson, this course will provide an overview of the four major periods or styles or literary movements often used to describe American writing since 1865: Realism, Naturalism, Modernism, and Postmodernism. These broad headings will be challenged and redefined as we consider not just the canonical texts that generally define these terms but also texts by ethnic minorities, women, and others sometimes considered as less or even non-literary.

English Voices from Afar: Post-Colonial Literature
English 3036
Prof. E. Chou
Mon/Wed 2:30-3:45PM

This course examines literary works written in English in a number of genres (plays, novels, essays, film) in regions other than Great Britain and the United States. Works from Africa, South Asia, Hong Kong, the Caribbean Islands, and Australia will be read / seen. Discussion will use analyses of the works as an means of understanding some of the many issues of post-colonialism.

Survey of Caribbean Literature in English:
The Politics of Caribbean Romance
English 3038
Prof. K. Frank
Tue/Thu 5:50-7:05PM Rihanna's "Man Down" and Sean Paul's "Hold My Hand" are just two among many songs that send entirely different messages about relationships between Caribbean women and men. In this course we will focus particularly on those relationships in Caribbean literature. What myths or fantasies about the Caribbean and Caribbeanness, constructed externally or internally, inform the dynamics of "romantic" or purely exploitative, sexual Caribbean relationships? Additionally, how do issues such as agency, alienation, and authenticity pertain to such liaisons, which may be simultaneously or by turns delightful and/or dangerous?
In addition to novels involving African-Caribbean, Asian-Caribbean, and European-Caribbean experiences, we will explore these matters by reading some pertinent essays, listening to and/or watching videos of some pertinent music, and we will likely watch one film.

Literature for Young Adults
English 3045
Prof. E. Dimartino
Tue/Thu 9:30-10:45 AM

 

 

 

 

Film and Literature
Hard-boiled Fiction and Film Noir
English 3270
Prof. C. Taylor
Mon/Wed 9:30AM-10:45AM
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.

 

In the early 1930’s, a darker, leaner prose emerged on the American landscape. It evoked an underbelly of corruption and greed. Its heroes hardly seemed heroic at all. In this course, we will examine the writing and the films of the 1930’s through the 1950’s that created a new American idiom and a uniquely American art form. We will be reading and discussing authors such as Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Horace McCoy, Jim Thompson and David Goodis. We will also view a number of film noir classics and discuss their roots in German Expressionism.

 

Documentary Film
English 3280
Prof. C. Rollyson
Mon/Wed 2:30-3:45PM

 

 

The Craft of Poetry: Form and Revision
English 3645H
Prof. L. Sheck
Wed 2:30-5:25PM

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What is the truth-value of documentaries? This is the basic question explored in this course through examining the genre’s historical development and the social and political activism of filmmakers. The filmmakers covered in this course include the Lumiere Brothers, Robert Flaherty, Dziga Vertov, Leni Riefenstahl, Frank Capra, Humphrey Jennings, Jill Craigie, Michael Moore, and other contemporary directors of documentaries.

 

Harman Writer-In-Residence

This workshop in poetry writing will be taught by Laurie Sheck, the spring 2012 Sidney Harman Writer-in-Residence. Ms. Sheck is the author of five books of poems, including The Willow Grove and Captivity, and one hybrid work, A Monster’s Notes.

This course will focus on the writing and revising of poems by students in the class. In pursuing this, we will also read widely—from Emily Dickinson to Gertrude Stein; from Langston Hughes to Charles Simic, Frank O’Hara, Sylvia Plath, Federico Garcia Lorca, William Carlos Williams and other notable poetic voices both in English and in translation. We will wonder about what a poem actually is, and in the course of this inquiry will explore various approaches, traditions and forms.

IN ORDER TO REGISTER FOR THIS COURSE, STUDENTS MUST SUBMIT AN APPLICATION AVAILABLE ON THE HARMAN WRITER-IN-RESIDENCE PROGRAM WEBSITE: http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/wsas/academics/writer_in_residence . FOR QUESTIONS, CONTACT PROFESSOR ROSLYN BERNSTEIN, OFFICE: 646-312-3930 OR EMAIL: ROSLYN.BERNSTEIN@BARUCH.CUNY.EDU

Advanced Essay Writing
English 3680
Prof. C. Smith
Tue/Thu 2:30-3:45PM This course focuses on style in writing: what it is and how to get it. We will read the work of professional writers and discuss what kinds of choices they make and why. Who’s the intended audience of a piece? What’s its purpose? What kind of mood is the author trying to create? After discussing the choices writers make, students will have the chance to experiment with different options to develop their own distinctive writing style(s). Students will compose short pieces on topics of their choice that they will share with one another and the professor and, over time, develop into longer, more complete works. We will mostly write creative non-fiction essays (we will study and discuss this genre in class), but students are free to choose their own topics and write to any intended audience. Classes will be part lecture on issues of style, including sentence and paragraph construction, repetition, voice and tone, showing vs. telling, metaphor, humor, irony, vividness, and rhythm; part discussion of passages by major American essayists such as Thoreau, Twain, Hughes, Fitzgerald, Baldwin, Walker, Didion, Tan, and Dillard; and part workshopping of student writing.

Literature and Psychology
English 3730
Prof. E. Kauvar
Mon/Wed 10:45-12:00 PM

Have you ever wondered what makes someone so enraged that someone else ends up dead? Do you speculate about the reasons why two people are attracted to each other? Do you question why families end up the way they do? When you read a story, have you ever tried to figure out why you dislike it? Whether we read to escape, to discover, or even to fulfill requirements, we have a purpose, a motive, and more than likely some expectations. Both psychology and literature are windows into human behavior. English 3730 examines the similarities and differences between literary and psychological treatments of various major human motivations and conditions. Which method--psychology or literature--is the most accurate way to explain human behavior? A major objective of this course is to analyze and interpret literature in the light of psychological theories of personality and human development. Our goals will to be to gain a deeper understanding of psychological theories of personality and development and to discover how these theories provide the reader insight into literary works. Our reading will range from Freud’s case histories and other more contemporary psychologic theorists to contemporary writers like the Japanese writer Murakami.

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.

 

Tradition and Influence in African American Literature
English 3830
Prof. T. Allan
Mon/Wed 6:05-7:20PM
Focusing on representative texts, we will trace the development of the African American novel from its beginnings in the antebellum and Post-Reconstruction eras through the Harlem Renaissance, the 1940s and 1960s, to the present time. Our aim is twofold: to examine the literary traditions and socio-political contexts that helped to shape the black novel and to track the ways in which some of the writers influence one another across gender and generational lines. We will pay attention to the dominant themes such as, Southern slavery, ‘passing,’ the search for freedom and identity, racial prejudice in the North, female rebellion. We will also discuss issues of style and language and the impact, if any, of the writers’ backgrounds, experiences, and beliefs on their work.
The reading list contains both familiar and unfamiliar titles but individually and together these books promise a transformative learning experience:
1. Clotel; or the President’s Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life the United States (William Wells Brown)
2. The House Behind the Cedars (Charles Chestnutt)
3. Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston)
4. Native Son (Richard Wright)
5. Go Tell It on the Mountain (James Baldwin)
6. The Color Purple (Alice Walker)

Topics in Literature:
Zones of Hell: Dante’s Inferno and Levi’s Auchwitz
English 3950
Prof. W. McClellan
Mon/Wed 9:30AM-10:45AM Dante went to Hell figuratively on his way to Paradise, guided by a divine presence that gave meaning to his experience. Levi actually went to hell in person, with little hope to survive, no superior guidance, no hope to reach paradise. In Dante’s Inferno punishments are meted out for specific sins; in Auschwitz the only ‘sin’ to be punished is that of being a Jew. In Dante’s hell the sinners retain their individuality, in the Camp the prisoners were deprived of their identity and dehumanized before extermination. Yet Levi survived his time in hell on earth, and he, like Dante, writes about it. We will read Dante’s Inferno, and Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz and The Drowned and the Saved, comparing their attitudes towards justice, the zone between good and evil, the operation of memory for the victims and the oppressors, and the new moral universe we inhabit after Auschwitz.

Topics in Literature:
Law and Literature
English 3950
Prof. S. O’Toole
Mon/Wed 07:30-8:45PM

 

 

What can literature teach us about law? What views of legal institutions do literary texts provide, and what place do these views have in a democratic society? How do imaginative writers use the law to structure and tell stories? How much of law itself is narrative, that is, involved in “telling stories” about cases? How do the interpretive tools and methods of lawyers, authors, and literary critics compare? How are human passions and the human condition differently described and treated in law and literature? This course considers these questions within the growing interdisciplinary field of Law and Literature. We will investigate enduring legal issues and themes of justice and bias explored in literary texts by William Shakespeare, Mary Wollstonecraft, Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, Wole Soyinka, Alice Sebold, and J. M. Coetzee. In addition, we will read writings by Supreme Court Justices, trial transcripts, newspaper reports, prison letters, and documentaries using the methods of literary interpretation and analysis. The 1895 sodomy trial of Oscar Wilde will provide a central case study.

Topics in Literature:
Cities under Siege: Troy and Jerusalem
English 3950
Prof. L. Silberman
Mon/Wed 2:30-3:45PM The siege and conquest of a great city has been a recurring theme in many literary masterworks. The stories of Troy and Jerusalem have been told and retold, as each successive author adapts inherited material. Mythically, the Troy story treats the fall of the city as the struggle over a woman. Jerusalem is figured as a woman—both abused and deserted by her lovers and mourning her children. Individual authors both register mythic significances that attach to the stories and shape the stories for their own purposes. Unlike Trojans, Jews wrote a lament for their own city. The Biblical Book of Lamentations (in Hebrew Echah, or “How?”) records an active process of making sense of national tragedy, whereas in the cases of Troy, the meaning comes more “ready-made” for writers who are in some way appropriating someone else’s tragedy.
This course will examine texts giving the classic representation of the story of each city, then select texts from the later literary versions of each story and conclude with Jerusalem Delivered, a Renaissance romance epic that presents the struggle for Jerusalem in the First Crusade as a reworking of the founding a new Troy in Rome.
Among the works we will read are Homer’s Iliad (selections), Virgil’s Aeneid, The Trojan Women by Euripides and Seneca, Lamentations, selections from Josephus’ Jewish Wars, The Book of Jonah, and Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered.
Written work will consist of two short critical papers, a midterm and a final. Class participation will improve the final grade.

Approaches to Modern Criticism
English 4020
Prof. D. Mengay
Mon/Wed 2:30-3;45PM This course poses some big questions about not just the meaning of literature but language and culture generally. We will primarily survey the major schools of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, but we will give a nod to theorist reaching all the way back to the ancient Greeks, through the Renaissance and up to the nineteenth century. This class is invaluable for any student planning to pursue graduate studies in English, History, Philosophy or any other field; it is useful for anyone wanting to understand the many ways words, and things generally, signify. The goal is to examine our own historical moment and the place of literature in it--the role of literature as a constitutive element of culture--and where we might be heading critically and theoretically.

 

 

Chaucer
ON THE ROAD WITH THE CHIVALROUS, THE PIOUS AND THE ‘NOT-SO-PIOUS’

English 4120
Prof. C. Christoforatou
Mon/Wed 2:05-3:20 PM

 

 

 

Knights, merchants, rogues, and self-proclaimed saints share fascinating stories of their travels and misfortunes in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Written at the end of the 14th century, Chaucer’s masterpiece contains a series of stories, ranging from the serious and pious to the unabashedly earthy and outrageously funny. The tales are told by a cast of memorable pilgrims that includes a dashing knight, a drunken miller, a bookish young scholar, a conniving pardoner, and the infamous Wife of Bath.

In piecing together Chaucer’s portrait of late medieval society, we will discover how the poet illuminates and distorts social realities, rendering a colorful portrait of life that is strangely familiar to modern readers six hundred years later. Our study of the pilgrims’ quests in their various manifestations—amorous, heroic, religious, and political—will allow us to understand medieval individual’s relationship to God, society, and the foreign. As a class, we will have an opportunity to appreciate the cultural influences that allowed medieval civilizations to evolve through the study of various artifacts—illuminated manuscripts, relics, tapestries, mosaics, and ivories—in a visit to The Cloisters or the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Shakespeare
English 4140
Prof. A. Deutermann
Tues/Thu 5:50-7:05PM
During Shakespeare’s lifetime, England experienced war, outbreaks of plague, terrorist attacks, unprecedented prosperity and the growth of conspicuous consumption, religious conflict, and—for the very first time—contact with the New World. These events vitally shaped Shakespeare’s plays. Reading a selection of his comedies, histories, tragedies, and tragicomedies, we will consider these works within their historical and theatrical contexts. Who went to which playhouses, and why? What did the stages look like? What sort of sound-effects did they use? We will also ask questions about Shakespeare’s continued cultural relevance, focusing on the topics of globalization, sex and gender, and race. Readings will be supplemented with film and are likely to include 1Henry IV, Othello, Measure for Measure, and The Tempest, among other plays.

A Century of Renaissance Drama
English 4150
Prof. T. Hayes
Tues/Thu 4:10-5:25PM This course surveys the extraordinary development of English drama from 1540 to 1640, from the initial enthusiasm that encouraged the building of the first theatres in London to the harsh repression that culminated in the closing of all theatres by the Puritans. Readings demonstrate the stylistic diversity of popular plays by major playwrights.
We will read the following plays with reference to---and in light of---Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle: Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy (1586), Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus (1588), Ben Jonson, Volpone (1606), John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi (1614), Elizabeth Cary, The Tragedy of Miriam (1643-5-).

Romanticism
English 4300
Prof. J. DiSalvo
Tues/Thu 5:50-7:05PM
In response to the twin shocks of the industrial and democratic revolutions (America and France), there occurred the tremendous burst of creativity we call the Romantic Movement (1789-1830). As the original counter-culture, Romanticism both expressed the new values of individualism on which our society was founded and offered critiques which anticipate modern feminist, ecological, psychoanalytic and new age ideas. We will look at its view of childhood and personality, imagination and nature, its utopian vision, sexual radicalism, and its fascination with the outlaw and the rebel and with altered states of consciousness. We will read the poetry of the visionary, lower class, poet-painter, William Blake, and the first superstar, Lord Byron, as well as Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Keats and Shelley’s shocking drama, The Cenci. We will also read Jane Austen, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

The Nineteenth-Century Novel
English 4320
Prof. N. Yousef
Tue/Thu 11:10AM-12:25PM

Certain questions hold an endless fascination: Can something be both frightening and attractive? Is passion beautiful or monstrous? What makes us want another person? What keeps individuals together? What pulls them apart? This course looks at the expression given to such questions in the nineteenth-century novel. The novel is usually associated with realism, with the attempt to represent the world as we know it. Some of the most interesting novels are works in which authors experiment with making worlds that look like those we live in while also presenting surprising and illuminating deviations from what we take for granted as “real.” In this course we will read some of the most astonishing and influential stories of the nineteenth century in order to learn something about the imaginative limits of things we think we all know: beauty, love, curiosity, ambition, longing. This year, we will focus in particular on the topic of desire and its manifestations in romantic, fantastic, and realistic novels of the period. Possible readings might include: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, Charles Dickens’ Great Expectation, George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss, Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, E.M. Forster’s Passage to India.
Modern Irish Writers
English 4410
Prof. C. Jordan
Mon/Wed 4:10-5:25PM

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The American Novel
English 4510
Prof. F. Cioffi
Tue/Thu 9:30-10:45 AM

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lesbian and Gay Themes in Twentieth-Century Literature
English 4525
Prof. E. Shipley
Tue/Thu 7:30-8:45PM

 

 

 

 

 

 

Research Seminar
English 4920
Prof. C. Rollyson
Mon/Wed 5:40-7:20PM

 

 

 

 

If you want to go on an odyssey with some of the most exciting writers of the modern era (many of whose books were banned when they were first published), register for Modern Irish Writers. You will be drawn in by the raw intensity of Edna O’Brien’s compelling stories of sexual seduction and betrayal—stories that earned for her the reputation of being one of the most daring women writers of the twenty-first century. We will read a fascinating novel about a man who sells his soul to the devil in return for eternal youth and beauty (Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray), and luxuriate in the poetry of a man whose obsession with a beautiful revolutionary haunted his life (W.B.Yeats). Another provocative work we will read is George Bernard Shaw’s play, St. Joan, which is based on the true story of St. Joan of Arc who was burned as a witch in medieval France, and hundreds of years later, was canonized by the Vatican as a saint! She wore men’s clothes as she led the French troops into battle, and scholars refer to her as one of the first feminists. Another wild, irreverent play we will be reading next semester is John Millington Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World, which has for its hero, a young man who falsely believes he has murdered his father and tells such an exciting story about it that he attracts droves of women. The play caused riots on its opening night in Dublin in 1907. Other works discussed will include a series of psychological masterpieces by James Joyce—stories praised not only for their daring penetration of the dark recesses of the human psyche, but for their extraordinary lyrical beauty as well. The course offers students the golden opportunity of hearing Yeats’s words put to music by Mary Courtney, the lead singer of the traditional Irish band, “Morning Star.” Mary will visit the class in person.

What makes a novel popular, and what makes it worthy of study as a “classic”? Is there something “special” about the novels that we all read in high school and college English courses (i.e., “the canon”)? The American novel offers us an interesting field for examining these issues, especially since what was popular once often falls out of favor and more or less disappears. In addition, as scholars re-assess older texts, they sometimes seek to “recover” some of them—why is that? What elements make for a “class text” and what elements seem to prevent that status? Is it characterization, language, complexity, outlook? Are “happy” novels excluded from the canon? Do novels have to have some kind of social consciousness or attempt to raise ours before we teach them in classes? In this course we will examine four “pairings” of novels—in each case, one of them popular at the time, and the other a “canonical” work—with an eye toward answering some of these questions. We will look at The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne,1850) and Ruth Hall (Fanny Fern,1854); The Great Gatsby (F.Scott Fitzgerald, 1925), and Salt (Charles Norris,1919); Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston, 1937) and The Enchanted Voyage (Robert Nathan, 1936; Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison, 1952), and What Mad Universe (Fredric Brown, 1949); two short novels, The Beast in the Jungle (Henry James, 1903), and Mr. Wilmer (Robert Lawson, 1945); and two works separated by more than 100 years but thematically quite similar, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain, 1884), and Cold Mountain (Charles Frazier, 1997). →Please note that some of these works are out of print, and students will be asked to obtain them through online used book retailers or read one of the copies I place on reserve.

 

This course will trace the emergence of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer identities and tendencies in twentieth-century literature. While this course will introduce students to queer theory, our main theorizing force will be poems, plays, novels, and films (written by authors as varied as Federico Garcia Lorca, Nella Larsen, HD, Jean Genet, Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, Yukio Mishima, Allen Ginsberg, Frank O’Hara, Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldúa, Reginald Shephard, Joy Harjo, and Dorothy Allison). In a range of texts, from early sexologists, Freud, and Kinsey, to classic “high modernist” writings, to the memoirs of controversial artist David Wojnarowicz and cartoonist Alison Bechdel, to films such as By Hook or By Crook, Tongues Untied, and Paris is Burning, we will devote particular attention to intersections of queer theory with feminisms, gay and lesbian history, psychoanalysis, deconstruction, theories of race, and literary theoretical issues of form.

This workshop format capstone course provides each student with the opportunity to produce an in-depth journalistic project, whether in print or online journalism, or a substantial work of creative writing such as a series of short stories, a novella, a play, a screenplay or a collection of poetry. Students engage in a semester-long dialogue about reporting and writing strategies and each participate in extensive research, reporting and writing activities culminating in the completion of their projects. Students expand their knowledge of journalism and creative writing through their work on their individual projects, by receiving and providing feedback from and to other students, and through the active supervision, criticism, and commentary provided by the instructor. 


For students with two other upper-level (3000-level or above) English courses, this course may serve as the capstone for the Tier III requirement.
Prerequisite: ENG 2150, 3050 and one other Journalism or Creative Writing course at the 3000-level.

Representing the Holocaust
IDC 4050H
Prof. M. Staub
Prof. J. Lang
Mon/Wed 11:10AM-12:25PM

 

 

 

 

 

 

From Page to Stage
IDC 4050H
Prof. P. Berggren
Prof. S. Tenneriello
Mon/Wed 12:50PM-2:05PM

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Women at Work
IDC 4050H
Prof. M. McGlynn
Prof. K. Pence
Tues/Thu 2:30- 3:45PM

 

 

 

 

 

Independent studies
English 5050
Prof. M. McGlynn The Holocaust occupies a uniquely painful place in the history of the twentieth century, and its impact on the visual arts, literature, music, philosophical inquiry, and religious thought has been profound. This course will place the history of the Holocaust – the murder of European Jews – at the center of a broader discussion of anti-Semitism, the rise of Nazism, and the persecution of other groups designated as outsiders and/or enemies of the Nazi regime. It will examine a wide range of cultural documents – fiction and memoirs, films and photographs, testimonies and essays – that focus on historical circumstances and events often understood as indescribable. Students will be responsible for reading, discussing, and analyzing these diverse and often difficult materials – both in class and in written assignments.

 

This seminar looks at plays in successive phases, from their gestation, before they are set down on the page, to their realization by actors, directors, and designers in actual production, and their afterlife, as new generations restage and reinterpret dramatic texts. Concentrating on a group of plays and other theatrical events scheduled for performance in New York City during the semester, including Shakespeare’s Richard III, Brecht’s Galileo, and Tennessee Williams’s Streetcar Named Desire, we will ask why some creative artists choose to treat their particular subjects as dramatic vehicles in the first place and examine how scripts are inevitably and constantly transformed through physical and visual embodiment. Students will function as audiences, critics, directors, and actors as we see what happens to words on the page when we speak them ourselves and visit local theaters, among them Baruch’s own performance facilities. The class offers students the opportunity to engage in theater practice and collaborate using digital media, storytelling, and performance, leading to independent final projects.

 

This course examines the experience of women in a variety of urban workplaces in the 19th and 20th centuries. Beginning with an exploration of what constitutes work; students will read historical documents, works of literature, and historical accounts relating to women as household servants, nurses, industrial workers, service and sales clerks, clerical workers, and professionals during and after industrialization. Issues addressed will include the balance of work and family, participation in labor unions, discrimination in terms of skill levels, wages, sexual harassment, and hiring and firing practices. Students will also investigate how changing worlds of women’s work affected their everyday experiences, identities, leisure and consumerism, and political engagement. Written assignments will include short response papers, an annotated bibliography, and a researched term paper.

The English independent study can be designed to be an internship, which will provide English students with an opportunity to apply their skills in critical writing, research, bibliography, and cultural analysis by working for a semester in the media, a library, a museum, or another profession requiring strong writing skills. Students work under the supervision of both the employer and faculty advisor and write a paper related to their project. Please contact Prof. Mary McGlynn for more information on arranging an internship.

Prerequisites: permission of the faculty advisor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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