ENGL 429C: Contemporary American Fiction
This course surveys American fiction from 1980 to the present, a literary period that is perhaps best characterized by a proliferation of critical categories: while some scholars see the current situation in US letters as witnessing the manifestation of full-blown ‘postmodernism,’ others emphasize the continuities with earlier literary periods and invent terms such as ‘metamodernism’ or ‘metafictive realism.’ Yet other critics intuit a decisive break from prior modes of literary production and name the rupture ‘postpostmodernism.’ Notably, then, the situation facing writers today is one of competing demands, issuing from the past and the future, which determine the way fiction is written. […]
ENGL 429B: Mid-20th Century American Fiction
This course focuses on American novels published between the end of World War Two and the mid-1970s. During this time of material plenty and rapid social change, literary production accelerated, and fiction enjoyed perhaps its highest point of influence on American society before it was replaced as a predominant cultural force by later technological innovations. We will try to do justice to this breadth of creative output by focusing on a variety of schools and genres: from literary realism (Bellow) to the experiments of modernism (Nabokov) and postmodernism (Pynchon/Reed), and from the role of African-American literature (Ellison) to the rise of science fiction (Le Guin). […]
ENGL 203: Introduction to American LiteratureThis course is a ‘greatest hits’ sampler of more than 300 years of American literature, from the early romantics and modernists to the Beats, Black artists, and feminist science fiction writers of the 20th century. The course will take the form of a historical overview of American literary culture, focusing on fiction, poetry, and essay writing. Along the way, we will take side-glances at other media and other disciplines to frame our reading of key US literary works. This will help us understand the unique contributions of American thought to the history of ideas—e.g., transcendentalism, pragmatism, and
pluralism—and the development of the American imaginary as it grapples with some of the defining contradictions that are internal to the project of “America”: the role of the individual vs. the community, the legacy of slavery and genocide, the promise of freedom and the reality of inequality. […]
ENGL 201: Introduction to ModernismThis course will introduce students to literary modernism through select novels, short stories, and poetry. Its emphasis will be on the revolutions in aesthetic form and the social, philosophical, and cultural developments that marked the late 19th and early 20th century. Considerable emphasis will be placed on topics such as irony, authenticity, uncertainty, history, and identity. […]
ENGL 146: The Literature of Our Era
In ENGL 146, you will encounter some of the most exciting literature produced in the 20th and 21st centuries. Bringing different forms of writing together, the course invites you to think about works comparatively, asking questions such as, “what is different about the ways a novel and a poem reflect on human experience?” Literature has changed in dramatic ways since 1900, and this course will encourage you to think about how writers have adapted and sometimes revolutionized forms, techniques, and styles to address the questions and challenges that characterize our era. […]
ENGL/ATWP 135: Introduction to Academic Reading and Writing
ENGL/ATWP 135 introduces you to university-level reading and writing. Its goal is to enable you to build on the reading and writing skills you have developed through your earlier school years and to progress toward the advanced level of literacy that is the hallmark of the educated citizen. ENGL 135 will help you develop the core transferable skills in critical thinking, reading, and writing that you will use in your university courses, regardless of your program of studies. […]