Introduction to Literary
Study
The syllabus changes every year, but the course is designed to introduce
students to critical thinking and writing about poetry, drama, and fiction.
Students also read and discuss some theoretical essays and literary criticism.
Study of the Novel
One of the required courses for the major, this course is both a survey
of the novel from the 18th century to the present and an introduction
to various theories about the novel beginning with Bahktin and including
feminist and new historicist approaches.
Decadence and Degeneration
Senior seminar on late Victorian writing, including theories of art and
culture by Arnold, Ruskin, and Pater as well as Nordau, Shaw, and Vernon
Lee.
Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know:
Romantic Literature
This course covers the major works of the six canonical poets and Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein as well as an intensive study of at least one woman writer from
the period, such as Joanna Baillie, Felicia Hemans, Charlotte Smith.
Cultures of Empire
A team-taught course with a colleague in history. This course begins with
the French revolution and its impact on British national identity, the slave
trade, and women’s rights through the works of Burke, Wollstonecraft
and Wordsworth. We focus on the Great Exhibition, imperialism in Africa and
the Boer War, the world wars, and post-colonialism. Literary texts include
Vanity Fair, Return of the Soldier, Boy Sandwich,
and Shadowlines. In 2000, we took the students to London for a week
during Spring break to investigate the role of museums, heritage sites and
other places and monuments that represent either Britain’s imperial past
or its post-colonial identity.
Art of Cinema
This course introduces students to the language of film and film history.
By juxtaposing important narrative films with seminal works from avant garde
film-makers, the course helps students think conceptually about film as a
special kind of visual medium. The second half of the semester focuses on
questions of film and culture. Students read essays on film theory and bring
together their observations of formal structures and ideological effects in
films from different times and places. Students use these experiences to inform their
creation of an original video that imitates a scene from one of the films surveyed in class.
Projects from previous semesters can be viewed at Art of Cinema Projects
