Courses of Instruction Fall 2024
ENG 10b, Poetry: A Basic Course
Designed as a first course for all persons interested in the subject. It is intended to be basic without being elementary. The subject matter will consist of poems of short and middle length in English from the earliest period to the present.
William Flesch
ENG 12a, Decolonizing Tongues: Language in African Literature
A comparative exploration of the politics of language in postcolonial African Literature and its impact on literary production. It locates the language question in anglophone and francophone African Literature within the context political independence.
Emilie Diouf
ENG 19a, Introduction to Creative Writing Workshop
Offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis.
A workshop for beginning writers. Practice and discussion of short literary forms such as fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. Other forms may also be explored.
Krysten Hill
ENG 26a, Novels on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown: Fiction as Psychological Inquiry
Explores novels as a mode of psychological inquiry, particularly into trauma, addiction, delusion, and depression. Our reading will help us consider the cultural complexity of mental illness and social dimensions of private suffering. How does the genre of the novel afford special attention to the intricacies of distressed mental life? And how has this art form been important for imagining psychological healing? Readings include novels from the 19th century to the present from several regions of the world, in a long lineage of narrative fiction about human psychology.
David Sherman
ENG 33b, Shakespeare Now
This introductory Shakespeare course will be structured around the relationship between Shakespeare’s plays and issues of central relevance to our world today. We will be reading a small number of plays, leaving time to work on contemporary adaptations and uses of each of the plays we study. Topics to be explored include (but are by no means limited to) misogyny, racism, anti-Semitism, and colonialism.
Ramie Targoff
ENG 41a, Critical Digital Humanities Methods and Applications
Introduces critical digital humanities methods and applications. Considers both theory and praxis, the issues of open and accessible scholarship and work, and the centrality of collaboration. We will investigate power relations, inclusivity, and the ethics of social justice.
Dorothy Kim
ENG 43b, Medieval Play: Drama, LARP, and Video Games
Works with a selection of medieval mystery plays, medieval-themed video games and participatory live-action role play to explore: play structures and design; alternative-world creation by way of immersion; the significance of gender, race, disability, and sexuality in performance.
Dorothy Kim
ENG 45b, Romanticism: Gods, Nature, Loneliness, Dreams
A study of Romantic poetry, from love lyrics to ballads about the supernatural to philosophical meditations on self and soul. Authors include: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, Keats and Shelley.
Laura Quinney
ENG 62a, Documentary: Techniques and Controversies
An introduction to documentary, covering major works of nonfiction prose and film. Focuses on the variety of documentary techniques in both media and controversies surrounding efforts to represent the real.
Emilie Diouf
ENG 79a, Screenwriting Workshop: Beginning Screenplay
Offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis. Enrollment is by instructor permission after the submission of a manuscript sample. Please refer to the schedule of classes for submission information. May be repeated for credit.
Fundamentals of screenwriting: structure, plot, conflict, character, and dialogue. Students read screenwriting theory, scripts, analyze files, and produce an outline and the first act of an original screenplay.
Marc Weinberg
AAPI/ENG 102a, Science and Fiction of the Transpacific
Taking as its start in the Cold War, when the fear of Communist ideology and scientific advances reached its feverish peak, and ending with today’s increasing amalgamation of machine and humanity, this course opens a field of cultural inquiry into more than half a century of Transpacific imaginations of technological progress and its shadow of social retrogression. We will think capaciously about issues of colonialism and extraction in the name of science in the Pacific, transnational racialized labor and its post-apocalyptic life, techno-orientalism and the fantasy of Asiatic cyborgs, artificial intelligence and its affective concerns, as well as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and what it has to teach us about the human condition. In the wake of the highly racialized Covid-19 pandemic and its thorny questions regarding the health of the body politic, this course will introduce students to some of the most prominent examples of science fiction by diasporic Asian writers who have been inspired by the vast and multitudinous Transpacific as a space not only of conquest and competition but also of promise and possibility.
Howie Tam
COML/ENG 106a, The Lyric Imagination from Romanticism to the Present
That the poetic imagination could be not merely a source of pleasure, instruction, and inspiration, but a source of insight into the meaning of being, a way of connecting the outer world of nature and the inner world of the spirit, a source of ontological, ethical, and political truth, was a conviction entertained by many poets in English and German from the Romantic period to the present day. The course will consider these ideas in the poetry of Blake, Novalis, Eichendorff, Hölderlin, Wordsworth, Goethe, Keats, Whitman, Rilke, Eliot and Celan.
John Burt and Stephen Dowden
ENG 109b, Fiction Workshop: Short Fiction
Offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis. Enrollment is by instructor permission after the submission of a manuscript sample. Please refer to the schedule of classes for submission information. May be repeated for credit.
This workshop will focus on short fiction--stories ten pages and under in length. We will use writing exercises, assigned readings, and essays on craft to discuss structure, character development, point of view, and other elements of fiction. While appropriate for all levels, this workshop might be of special interest to writers who want a secure foundation in the basics.
Marjan Kamali
AAPI/ENG 115a, The Asian American Memoir
The recent flourishing of the memoir genre in Asian American literature coincides with the increased visibility and participation of Asian Americans in U.S. culture and politics. This course examines how the memoir has found primacy as a literary genre for articulating Asian American political subjects over a century. We will query the ethics behind crafting selfhood as a racial minority—complicated by class, gender and sexual identities—while navigating the gaps between private memories and national history. We will learn about flashpoints in the turbulent history of migration and wars between the U.S. and various Asian countries over the twentieth century through intimate accounts of lived experiences. We will study how various authors manage the intractable issue of unreliability in memory work while responding with nuance to the pressure of speaking for their communities. Above all, we will appreciate how, by articulating themselves, each author also theorizes America and what it means as a social experiment.
Howie Tam
ENG 119a, Fiction Workshop
Offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis. Enrollment is by instructor permission after the submission of a manuscript sample. Please refer to the schedule of classes for submission information. May be repeated for credit.
An advanced fiction workshop. Students are expected to compose and revise their fiction, complete typed critiques of each other's work weekly, and discuss readings based on examples of various techniques.
Stephen McCauley
ENG 124a, Renaissance Women’s Writing
This course explores the extraordinary writing done by women during the Renaissance, spanning the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and including (among other works) theatrical plays, poems, diaries, religious treatises, Biblical translations, and proto-feminist diatribes. Although the primary focus will be on England, several French and Italian authors will be read in translation.
Ramie Targoff
ENG 129a, Creative Nonfiction Workshop
Offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis.
Students will learn how to use a wide range of literary techniques to produce factual narratives drawn from their own perspectives and lives. Creative assignments and discussions will include the personal essay, the memoir essay and literary journalism.
Krysten Hill
AAAS 134b, Novel and Film of the African Diaspora
Writers and filmmakers, who are usually examined separately under national or regional canonical categories such as "(North) American," "Latin American," "African," "British," or "Caribbean," are brought together here to examine transnational identities and investments in "authentic," "African," or "black" identities.
Faith Smith
ENG 149a, Screenwriting Workshop: Writing the Streaming Series
Offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis. Enrollment is by instructor permission after the submission of a manuscript sample. Please refer to the schedule of classes for submission information. May be repeated for credit.
Introduces students to the craft of writing for a variety of television programming formats, including episodic, late-night, and public service announcements. Students will read and view examples and create their own works within each genre.
Marc Weinberg
ENG 151b, Performance Studies
Explores paradigms for making performance inside and outside of institutionalized theater spaces, with an emphasis on the performance of everyday life. Students read theories of theater and performance against paradigmatic dramatic texts and documents of social performance. Combining theory with practice, students explore and make site-specific and online performances.
Tom King
ENG 180b, Romantic Comedy / Matrimonial Tragedy
A genre study of romantic comedy, from early to recent cinema. How does its narrative machinery work and what social functions does it serve? An exploration of comedic pleasure as strategy for fashioning gender identities, sexualities, marriages, and anti-marriages.
David Sherman
COML/ENG 191a, Environmental Aesthetics
Explores major schools of thought about nature, ecology, and art.
Caren Irr
ENG 200a, Approaches to Literary and Cultural Studies
A broad-based theory course that will include a unit on research methods.
Ulka Anjaria
ENG 208a, Poetry and Poetics Continuing Seminar
A study of poetry and poetics with a syllabus TBD, this course will meet once weekly and continue from fall into spring. It is a 4-credit course spread over two semesters, offering 2 credits per semester. Students will have the option of taking one or both semesters. It will have the character of a reading course, but students taking it for credit will have writing assignments. Auditors, both faculty and advanced graduate students, will be encouraged to attend. The plan is to involve as much of the community as possible. The syllabus will be shaped by students’ interests. It will include close study of particular poets and poems as well as attention to the broader approaches offered by poetics and literary theory.
Laura Quinney
This course will provide an introduction to classical and contemporary film theory. Topics will depend, whenever possible, on the interests of students in the seminar, but the general focus will be on the relation of film to modernity. We will pay particular attention to issues of race, class, and sexuality. Students will be required to read broadly in film criticism and theory and to watch a variety of movies from Birth of a Nation to Barbie.
Paul Morrison
ENG 350a, Proseminar
Yields half-course credit. Offered exclusively on a credit/no-credit basis. Required of all first-year PhD students. Optional for MA students.
Focuses on professional development, including teaching competency.
John Plotz
GSAS 360c, Article Publication Workshop
Yields half-course credit per semester. Offered exclusively on a credit/no-credit basis. May be repeated for credit.
Focuses on scholarly journal publication, encompassing various aspects of the process.
Ulka Anjaria
ENG 375c, Field Exam Proseminar
Full year credit/no credit proseminar required of third-year PhD students. Yields two credits per semester. Does not count towards the twelve required courses for the degree.
Supports PhD students preparing for the field exam.
Caren Irr