|
This site contains the Courses of Study offered by Smith College, Five-College Faculty Course Offerings, and Five-College Certificate Programs. The Smith College Courses of Study details course offerings, instructors, requirements for the majors and minors, and degree requirements.
The information contained in the Courses of Study documents is accurate as of July 2009. Smith College reserves the right to make changes to the Courses of Study, including changes in its course offerings, instructors, requirements for the majors and minors, and degree requirements. Course information contained herein is compiled by the Office of the Provost/Dean of the Faculty from data submitted by departments and programs. All data listed is as officially and formally approved by the Office of the Provost/Dean of the Faculty, the Committee on Academic Priorities, and the faculty-at-large. Additional information may be available on the individual Web sites of departments and programs.
English Language and Literature
English Language and Literature
__________________________
Professors
Carol Christ, Ph.D.
Dean Scott Flower, Ph.D.
William Allan Oram, Ph.D.
Jefferson Hunter, Ph.D.
**2 Douglas Lane Patey, Ph.D.
Charles Eric Reeves, Ph.D.
*1 Sharon Cadman Seelig, Ph.D.
†2 Michael Gorra, Ph.D.
**2 Richard Millington, Ph.D.
**1 Nora F. Crow, Ph.D.
*1 Craig R. Davis, Ph.D.
**1 Patricia Lyn Skarda, Ph.D.
†1 Naomi Miller, Ph.D.
Nancy Mason Bradbury, Ph.D., Chair
†2 Cornelia Pearsall, Ph.D.
†1 Luc Gilleman, Ph.D.
Michael Thurston, Ph.D.
Professor-in-Residence
Paul Alpers, Ph.D.
Elizabeth Drew Professor
Sue Miller, M.A.
Grace Hazard Conkling Writer-in-Residence
Annie Boutelle, Ph.D.
Joan Leiman Jacobson Visiting Non-fiction Writer
Hilton Als (English and American Studies)
Associate Professors
†1 Gillian Murray Kendall, Ph.D.
*2 Ambreen Hai, Ph.D.
Floyd Cheung, Ph.D.
McPherson Post-Doctoral Fellow
Andrea Stone, Ph.D.
Senior Lecturer
Robert Ellis Hosmer, Jr., Ph.D.
Lecturers
Julio Alves, Ph.D.
Holly Davis, M.A.
Brian Turner, M.F.A.
Ellen Doré Watson, M.F.A.
Samuel Scheer, M.Phil.
Sara London, M.F.A.
_________________________
The purpose of the English major is to develop a critical and historical understanding of the English language and of the literary traditions it has shaped in Britain, in the Americas, and throughout the world. During their study of literature at Smith, English majors are also encouraged to take allied courses in classics, other literatures, history, philosophy, religion, art, and theatre. Fuller descriptions of each term’s courses, faculty profiles, and other important information for majors and those interested in literary study can be found on the department’s web page, accessible via the Smith College home page.
Most students begin their study of literature at Smith with English 120 or a first-year seminar before proceeding to one of the courses — 199, 200, 201, and 231 — that serve as a gateway for the major. First-year students who have an English Literature and Composition AP score of 4 or 5, or a score of 710 on the Critical Reading portion of the SAT, may enter one of the gateway courses in the Fall semester. In 2009-10, English 120, 199, and 201 will be taught as writing intensive courses. Those first-year students who have taken a gateway course in the fall may, after consultation with the instructor, elect a 200-level class beyond the gateway in the spring.
To assist students in selecting appropriate courses, the department’s offerings are arranged in Levels I-V, as indicated and explained below.
LEVEL I. Courses numbered 100-199: Introductory Courses, open to all students. In English 118 and 120, incoming students have priority in the fall semester, and other students are welcome as space permits.
First-Level Courses in Writing
ENG 118 may be repeated, but only with a different instructor and with the permission of the director. Students who received scores of 4 and 5 on the Advanced Placement tests in English Language and Literature and English Language and Composition may receive 4 credits each, providing they do not take English 118.
118 Colloquia in Writing
In sections limited to 15 students each, this course primarily provides systematic instruction and practice in reading and writing academic prose, with emphasis on argumentation. The course also provides instruction and practice in conducting research and in public speaking. Bilingual students and non-native speakers are especially encouraged to register for sections taught by Holly Davis. Priority will be given to incoming students in the fall-semester sections.
4 credits
Director: Julio Alves
Sections as listed below:
Re-Vision: Writing (and Looking) Again
Practice in writing essays of observation, analysis, and argument. Readings cover a range of subjects from questions of personal identity to public issues of culture and politics. WI
Brian Turner
Offered Fall 2009
The Politics of Language
Reading, thinking, and writing about the forces that govern and shape language. A series of analytical essays will focus on issues such as political correctness, obscenity, gender bias in language, and censorship. Bilingual students and non-native speakers are especially encouraged to register for this section. WI
Holly Davis
Offered Fall 2009, Spring 2010
Riding the Wave: The Women’s Movement, 1968-79
Reading and writing about the women’s movement of the late 1960s and 1970s, often called Second Wave Feminism. Readings will include primary documents, secondary sources, and statistical data. Writing will include scholarly essays, biography, and mixed genres. Regular library research and oral presentations. (E) WI
4 credits
Julio Alves
Offered Fall 2009
To Hell and Back: Trauma and Transformation
How does trauma forces us to grow? Why does it seem that in order to undergo a transformation, we must first “go through hell” of one kind of another. Readings will focus on various explorations of trauma and how the experiences shaped the authors. (E) WI
Peter Sapira
Offered Fall 2009
Consumer Culture
Reading and writing analytical essays about the pervasive effects of consumerism in American culture. Topics will include analysis of advertisements, consideration of the impoverished in a consumer society, the use of advertising in schools, the marketing of fast food in American culture, and the meaning of consumer goods in our daily lives. Enrollment limited to 15. (E) WI
Sara Eddy
Offered Fall 2009
Writing the Self: Identity and Auto/biography
Reading and writing about representations of the self, the way text expresses an author’s identity through its style as well as through its substance. How reliably does a text communicate its author’s intentions, and how is the act of writing like a search for the self? How does the production of text resemble the construction of identity? Readings include autobiography and biography, interviews, standup comedy performances, manifestoes, cultural criticism, and one play. Writing will include expository and argumentative essays, synthesis of scholarly criticism, and a biographical research paper. Enrollment limited to 15. (E) WI
Sarah Gilleman
Offered Fall 2009
119 Writing Roundtable
Students hone their writing skills (defined broadly to include critical thinking, research and documentation, argument development, and mastery of written English) as they enhance their understanding of an issue of current import and consequence. They read and write in a variety of genres (ranging from experience narratives to academic essays) and supplement their required reading with excursions to scholarly and cultural venues at Smith.
Prerequisite: One WI course or permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. (E) WI 4 credits
Topic: Poverty
What defines poverty in the U.S. and abroad? Who defines it? How do we best improve the lives of the poor? What’s the relationship between poverty and gender? Which anti-poverty programs work and which don’t? These are a few of the questions students write about in this course as they hone their writing skills. The readings include academic essays, organizational documents, newspaper articles, narrative journalism, and personal experience narratives. The course makes use of resources in the Smith libraries, the Sophia Smith Collection, and the Smith College Museum of Art. Enrollment limited to 15. (E) WI 4 credits
Julio Alves
Offered Spring 2010
First-Year Seminars
For course descriptions, see First Year Seminar section
FYS 175 Love Stories
Ambreen Hai
Offered Fall 2009
FYS 118 Groves of Academe
Patricia Skarda
Offered Fall 2009
FYS 128 Ghosts
Cornelia Pearsall
Offered Fall 2009
FYS 158 Reading the Earth
Sharon Seelig
Offered Spring 2010
FYS 162 Ambition and Adultery: Individualism in the 19th-Century Novel
Michael Gorra
Offered Fall 2009
FYS 170 Crime and Punishment
Jefferson Hunter
Offered Fall 2009
FYS 187 Writers and the Body: Health and Illness in African Diasporic Women’s Literature
Andrea Stone
Offered Fall 2009
First-Level Courses in Literature
112 Reading Contemporary Poetry
This course offers the opportunity to read contemporary poetry and meet the poets who write it. Class sessions alternate with readings by visiting poets. Graded Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory only. Course may be repeated. 2 credits
Ellen Watson
Offered Fall 2009
120 Colloquia in Literature
Each colloquium is conducted by means of directed discussion, with emphasis on close reading and the writing of short analytical essays. Priority will be given to incoming students in the fall-semester sections of the colloquia. Other students should consult the course instructor about possible openings. Enrollment in each section limited to 18. 4 credits
Fiction
A study of the novel, novella, and short story, stressing the formal elements of fiction, with intensive analysis of works by such writers as Austen, Dickens, James, Faulkner, Joyce, Lawrence, and Woolf. WI {L}
Robert Hosmer, Eric Reeves
Offered Fall 2009
Reading and Writing Short Poems
A course in the nuts and bolts of poetry. We will look at poems and study their techniques (e.g., sound patterns, image development, form). We will write and revise our own poems, using these techniques. Poets include Basho, Christopher Smart, Walt Whitman, Gwendolyn Brooks, Eavan Boland, Li-Young Lee. WI {L}
Michael Thurston, Maya Janson
Offered Fall 2009, Spring 2010
Reading and Writing Short Stories
Reading of short stories from the point of view of the would-be writer, with special attention to such problems as dialogue, narration, characterization, and style. Writing includes analysis, imitation or parody, and original stories. WI {L}
Sara London, Pamela Thompson
Offered Fall 2009, Spring 2010
Reading the Landscape
A study of contemporary environmental issues and the ways in which writers – essayists, poets, novelists, and autobiographers – have addressed them. Emphasis on questions of ecology, wilderness, landscape design, sustainability, protection of species, and the power of writer to effect social change. Discussion of such figures as Rachel Carson, Wendell Berry, Annie Dillard, Mary Oliver, Gretel Ehrlich, Edward Abbey, and Leslie Silko, along with earlier works by Thoreau, Dickinson, Frost, Cooper, and Audubon. Writing about landscapes and at least one field trip will be part of the experience. WI {L}
Dean Flower
Offered Fall 2009
The Uses of Storytelling
Stories entertain us, but they also teach, convert, mislead, mystify, and console us; they shape the way we think, and maybe even keep us alive. Readings include a wide variety of narratives from different periods and settings, nonliterary as well as literary. WI {L}
Nancy Mason Bradbury
Offered Spring 2010
English Ghost Stories
Discussion of the traditions and conventions of the ghost story as practiced chiefly by British writers in the 19th and 20th centuries, emphasizing problems of the craft, i.e., what are the deeper reasons, psychological, spiritual, moral, or other—that draw writers and readers to the genre. Study of such veteran practitioners as Charles Dickens, Sheridan Le Fanu, M.R. James, Rudyard Kipling, L.P. Hartley, Muriel Spark, Elizabeth Bowen, Penelope Fitzgerald, and others. WI {L}
Dean Flower
Offered Spring 2010
160 “What is English?”
While it might look like a solid and settled subject, English in fact is, and has always been, a discipline constituted by disagreement – over which books should be read, which students should read them, which ways of reading should be pursued, and sometimes, whether such questions have meaningful answers. If such disagreement is a problem, it is a productive one; a good deal of important literary scholarship has come from thoughtful engagement with these uncertainties. This course sketches, for English majors, prospective majors, and all students interested in literary studies, questions at the heart of the critical enterprise. In six lectures, with accompanying readings and discussion, the course illustrates the work of the critic and shows how, even though the discipline began a way to make reading literature unpleasant enough to merit academic credit, the pleasures of the text continue to enliven English. Graded S/U only. {L} 1 credit
Michael Gorra and Members of the Department
Offered Spring 2010
170 The English Language
An introductory exploration of the English language, its history, current areas of change, and future. Related topics such as how dictionaries are made and the structure of the modern publishing industry. Students will learn about editing, proofreading, and page layout; the course will also entail a comprehensive review of grammar and punctuation.
{L} WI
Douglas Patey
Offered Spring 2010
LEVEL II. Courses numbered 199-249. Open to all sophomores, juniors, and seniors, and to qualified first-year students.
Gateway Courses
These four classes serve as entry points to the major, introductions to the critical, historical, and methodological issues and questions that underlie the study of literatures in English. English majors must select at least two courses from this menu. Fall gateway courses are open to first-year students with the English Literature and Composition AP score of 4 or 5, or a score of 710 on the Critical Reading portion of the SAT.
199 Methods of Literary Study
This course teaches the skills that enable us to read literature with understanding and pleasure. By studying examples from a variety of periods and places, students will learn how poetry, prose fiction, and drama, work, how to interpret them, and how to make use of interpretations by others. English 199 seeks to produce perceptive readers well equipped to take on complex texts. This gateway course for prospective English majors is not recommended for students simply seeking a writing intensive course. Readings in different sections will vary, but all will involve active discussion and frequent writing. WI {L} 4 credits
William Oram, Floyd Cheung, Fall 2009
Ambreen Hai, Michael Thurston, Spring 2010
Offered both semesters each year
200 The English Literary Tradition I
A study of the English literary tradition from the Middle Ages through the eighteenth century. Recommended for sophomores. {L} 4 credits
Douglas Patey
Offered Fall 2009
201 The English Literary Tradition II
A study of the English literary tradition from the nineteenth century to modern times. WI {L} 4 credits
Cornelia Pearsall, Jefferson Hunter
Offered Spring 2010
231 American Literature before 1865
A study of American writers as they seek to define a role for literature in their changing society. Emphasis on the extraordinary burst of creativity that took place between the 1820s and the Civil War. Works by Cooper, Hawthorne, Emerson, Thoreau, Melville, Douglass, Stowe, Whitman, Dickinson, and others. {L} 4 credits
Richard Millington
Offered Fall 2009
Level Two Electives
These courses in particular are designed to interest non-majors as well as majors.
202/CLT 202 Western Classics in Translation, from Homer to Dante
Texts include the Iliad; tragedies by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides; Plato's Symposium; Virgil's Aeneid; Dante's Divine Comedy. WI {L} 4 credits
Lecture and discussion
Ann R. Jones (Comparative Literature)
Thalia Pandiri (Classics)
Robert Hosmer (English Language and Literature)
Offered Fall 2009
203/CLT 203 Western Classics in Translation, from Chrétien de Troyes to Tolstoy
Chrétien de Troyes's Yvain; Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra; Cervantes' Don Quixote; Lafayette's The Princesse of Clèves; Goethe's Faust; Tolstoy's War and Peace. WI {L} 4 credits
Lecture and Discussion
Maria Banerjee (Russian)
Robert Hosmer (English Language and Literature)
Offered Spring 2010
204/CLT 215 Arthurian Legend
The legend of Arthurian Britain as it developed in Wales, France, and England. Readings will include early Welsh poems and tales, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Chrétien de Troyes, Marie de France, La Queste del Saint Graal, the Gawain-poet, and Malory.
{L} 4 credits
Nancy Mason Bradbury
Offered Spring 2010
207/HSC 207 The Technology of Reading and Writing
An introductory exploration of the physical forms that knowledge and communication have taken in the West, from ancient oral cultures to modern print-literate culture. Our main interest will be in discovering how what is said and thought in a culture reflects its available kinds of literacy and media of communication. Topics to include poetry and memory in oral cultures; the invention of writing; the invention of prose; literature and science in a script culture; the coming of printing; changing concepts of publication, authorship, and originality; movements toward standardization in language; political implications of different kinds and levels of literacy.
{L} 4 credits
Douglas Patey
Offered Spring 2010
208 Science Fiction? Speculative Fiction?
What sort of problems does science fiction address, what are its conventions and how is it related to other genres--utopia, fantasy, romance, imaginary voyage? Particular attention to the theme of the “other” (monsters, aliens, robots, living planets). Readings in Wells, Zamyatin, Stapleton, Lem, Hoban, Dick, Le Guin, and others. Recommended for non-majors. {L} 4 credits
William Oram
Offered Spring 2010
210 Old English
A study of the language of Anglo-Saxon England (c. 450-1066) and a reading of the Old English elegies. {L/F}
4 credits
Craig Davis
Offered Spring 2010
227 Modern British Fiction
Lectures, with occasional discussion, on the English novel from Conrad to the present day. The historical contexts and the formal devices (management of narrative and plot, stylistic and structural innovations, characterization, literary allusiveness) of works by such writers as Joseph Conrad, E.M. Forster, F.M. Ford, D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Bowen, Doris Lessing, Shirley Hazzard, V.S. Naipaul. {L} 4 credits
Jefferson Hunter
Offered Fall 2009
233 American Literature from 1865 to 1914
A survey of American writing after the Civil War, with an emphasis on writers who criticize or stand apart from their rapidly changing society. Fiction by Twain, James, Howells, Dreiser, Crane, Chopin, Chesnutt, Jewett, and Sui Sin Far;, along with a selection of the poetry of the era. {L} 4 credits
Richard Millington
Offered Spring 2010
236/AAS 237 Twentieth Century Afro-American Literature
A survey of the evolution of African-American literature during the twentieth century. This class will build on the foundations established in AAS 113, Survey of Afro-American Literature. Writers include Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and Paule Marshall. {L} 4 credits
Kevin Quashie
Offered Fall 2009
237 Recent American Writing
Study of selected novelists and short story writers since 1945 with emphasis on Welty, Nabokov, Morrison, Stone, Simpson, Tyler, Jen, Smiley, and others. {L} 4 credits
Dean Flower
Offered Spring 2010
238 What Jane Austen Read: The 18th-Century Novel
A study of novels written in England from Aphra Behn to Jane Austen and Walter Scott (1688-1814). Emphasis on the novelists’ narrative models and choices; we will conclude by reading several novels by Austen – including one she wrote when thirteen years old. (L) 4 credits
Douglas Patey
Offered Fall 2009
FLS 241 Screen Comedy
Lectures, with occasional discussion, on film comedies from a variety of places and times: American screwball comedies and British Ealing comedies; battles of the sexes; the silent or non-verbal comedy of Chaplin, Keaton, and Jacques Tati; parodies of other film genres; political satire; musical comedy; adaptations of comic novels; fast-talking comedy by the Marx Brothers, Monty Python, Woody Allen, and Howard Hawks; and to sum things up, Ingmar Bergman’s Smiles of a Summer Night. Some attention to animated cartoons; occasional readings in film criticism, film history, and the theory of comedy. Prerequisite: a college course in film or literature, or permission of the instructor. {L/A} 4 credits
Jefferson Hunter
Offered Spring 2010
242 A History of Mystery
A study of the development of detective fiction in English, starting with gothic mysteries in the late 18th century and with the investigatory puzzles of Edgar Allan Poe in the 1830s Exploration of the ways in which the conventions of the genre reflect issues of class, gender, and social change, and how in the 20th century those conventions have been re-invented, stylized, parodied, and transformed. Writers discussed will include Poe, Wilkie Collings, Charles Dickens, Conan Doyle, G.K. Chesterton, E.C. Bentley, Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie, Jorge Luis Borges, and others. Open to non-majors. (E) {L} 4 credits
Dean Flower
Offered Fall 2009
LEVEL III. Courses numbered 250-299. Open to sophomores, juniors, and seniors; first-year students admitted only with the permission of the instructor. Recommended background: at least one English course above the 100 level, or as specified in the course description.
250 Chaucer
His art and his social and literary background. Emphasis on the Canterbury Tales. Students should have had at least two semester courses in literature. Not open to first-year students. {L} 4 credits
Nancy Mason Bradbury
Offered Fall 2009
252 Sixteenth-Century Literature
Topic: Passion and Despair in the English Renaissance. Ovidian, Platonic, Petrarchan and Romance traditions of love as they are questioned and reformulated by Renaissance writers. Lyric and narrative poetry by Wyatt, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Sidney, Spenser, Lady Mary Wroth and others. {L} 4 credits
William Oram
Offered Spring 2010
254 English Drama in the Age of Shakespeare
The evolution and interplay of structure, theme, and character in plays by Shakespeare's contemporaries, particularly in genres such as the tragedy of blood and the city comedy. Authors to include Kyd, Marlowe, Jonson, Webster, Tourneur, Dekker, Ford. One play by Shakespeare will also be examined. {L} 4 credits
Jane Degenhardt
Offered Spring 2010
CLT 255 Ghosts, Peasants, Doubles and Frames: Reading the 19th-Century Story
How did the modern short story emerge – why, where, when? What is its relation to other forms of short fiction – the Italian novella or the German novelle, or the fairy tale? Why are they often so elaborately framed, with their kernel presented as a kind of oral performance: a story told by one character to another? Why do they so often rely on the fantastic and the unlikely – and how, by the end of the century, did the story come to concentrate instead on the mundane and the ordinary? What, in short, makes a tale worth telling? Readings in Goethe, Hoffman, Hawthorne, Gogol, Turgenev, Maupassant, Verga, Kipling, Chekhov, Jewett, and others. {L} 4 credits
Michael Gorra
Offered Fall 2009
256 Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, I Henry IV, Measure for Measure, King Lear, Macbeth, Coriolanus, The Tempest. Enrollment in each section limited to 25. Not open to first-year students. {L} 4 credits
William Oram
Offered Fall 2009
257 Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet, Richard II, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Troilus and Cressida, Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, The Winter's Tale. Not open to first-year students. {L} 4 credits
Eric Reeves, Sharon Seelig
Offered Spring 2010
260 Milton
A study of the major poems and selected prose of John Milton, radical and conservative, heretic and defender of the faith, apologist for patriarchy and advocate of human dignity, the last great Renaissance humanist, a poet of enormous creative power and influence. Not open to first-year students. {L} 4 credits
Eric Reeves
Offered Spring 2010
264 Bloomsbury
“Bloomsbury” refers to a district in London, and also to an intricately interconnected community of influential artists and writers, bound together by complex aesthetic and political as well as personal ties. Our reading will include works by novelists Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster, economist John Maynard Keynes, essayist Lytton Strachey, and critics Clive Bell, Roger Fry, and Leonard Woolf. This course has been designed in conjunction with a Spring 2010 exhibition at the Smith College Museum of Art (A Room of Their Own: The Artists of Bloomsbury), and we’ll focus closely as well on art works by Woolf’s sister Vanessa Bell, Dora Carrington, Duncan Grant, and others. Prerequisite: a WI course; limited to 20 students.
{L} 4 credits
Cornelia Pearsall
Offered Spring 2010
265 The Victorian Novel
The English novel from Dickens and Thackeray to Conrad. Emphasis on the genre's formal development--narrative voice and perspective, the uses of plot, the representation of consciousness--but with some attention to social-historical concerns.
{L} 4 credits
Michael Gorra
Offered Spring 2010
267 Introduction to Asian American Literature
Although we sometimes think only of modern-day authors like Amy Tan or Jhumpa Lahiri when we think of Asian American literature, in fact Asian Americans have been writing and publishing in English since at least 1887. In this course, we will read selected Asian American poetry, novels, short stories, plays, and films produced from the late nineteenth century until the present. We will consider how works engage with issues that have always concerned Asian Americans, like identity development and racism. Also, we will pay attention to how works speak to concerns specific to their period, such as the exclusion acts of the 1880s, the proletarian movement of the 1930s, the decolonization of South Asian and Southeast Asian countries since the 1940s, and the increasing size and diversity of the Asian American population in the late twentieth century. At all times, we will attend closely to matters of language and form. {L} 4 credits
To be announced
Offered Spring 2010
277 Postcolonial Women Writers
A comparative study of 20th–century women writers in English from Africa, the Caribbean, South Asia and Australia. We will read novels, short stories, poetry, plays and autobiography in their historical, cultural and political contexts as well as theoretical essays to address questions such as: how have women writers addressed the dual challenge of contesting sexism and patriarchy from within their indigenous cultures as well as the legacies of western imperialism from without? How have they combined feminism with anti–colonialism? How have they deployed the act of writing as cultural work on multiple counts: addressing multiple audiences; challenging different stereotypes about gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity? What new stories have they told to counter older stories, what silences have they broken? How have they renegotiated the public and the private, or called attention to areas often ignored by their male contemporaries, such as relations among women, familial dynamics, motherhood, bodily desire, or the gendered effects of migration and diaspora? Writers include Anita Desai, Kamala Das, Thrity Umrigar, Deepa Mehta, Ama Ata Aidoo, Bessie Head, Nawal–el–Saadawi, Jamaica Kincaid, Michelle Cliff, Zadie Smith, Sally Morgan. Prerequisite: a WI course. {L} 4 credits
Ambreen Hai
Offered Fall 2009
278 Asian American Women Writers
The body of literature written by Asian American women over the past one hundred years has been recognized as forming a coherent tradition. What conditions enabled its emergence? How have the qualities and concerns of this tradition been defined? What makes a text central or marginal to the tradition? Writers to be studied include Maxine Hong Kingston, Sui Sin Far, Mitsuye Yamada, M. Eveline Galang, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Paisley Rekdal, Lynda Barry, Lois-Ann Yamanaka, Bharati Mukherjee, and Smith College alumna Frances Chung. {L} 4 credits.
Floyd Cheung
Offered Fall 2009
279 American Women Poets
A selection of poets from the last 50 years, including Sylvia Plath, Elizabeth Bishop, Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Sharon Olds, Cathy Song, Louise Glück, and Rita Dove. An exploration of each poet's chosen themes and distinctive voice, with attention to the intersection of gender and ethnicity in the poet's materials and in the creative process. Not open to first-year students. Prerequisite: at least one college course in literature. {L} 4 credits
Susan Van Dyne (Study of Women and Gender)
Offered Fall 2009
293/ARH 292 The Art and History of the Book (C)
A survey of the book—as vehicle for the transmission of both text and image—from the manuscripts of the middle ages to contemporary artists’ books. The course will examine the principal techniques of book production—calligraphy, illustration, papermaking, typography, bookbinding—as well as various social and cultural aspects of book history, including questions of censorship, verbal and visual literacy, the role of the book trade, and the book as an agent of change. In addition, there will be labs in printing on the handpress and bookbinding. Admission limited to 20 by permission of the instructor. {H/A} 4 credits
Martin Antonetti
Offered Fall 2009
Advanced Courses in Writing
Only one course in writing may be taken in any one semester except by permission of the chair.
Courses in writing above the 100 level may be repeated for credit only with the permission of the instructor and the chair. For all writing courses above the 100 level, no student will be admitted to a section until she has applied at the English office in Pierce Hall 105, submitted appropriate examples of her work, and received permission of the instructor. Deadlines will be posted.
216 Intermediate Poetry Writing
In this course we read as writers and write as readers, analyzing the poetic devices and strategies employed in a diverse range of contemporary poetry; gaining practical use of these elements to create a portfolio of original work; and developing the skills of critique and re-vision. In addition, students will read and write on craft issues, and attend Poetry Center readings / Q&A’s. ADMISSION VIA WRITING SAMPLE E-MAILED by first day of classes to HYPERLINK "mailto:ewatson@smith.edu" ewatson@smith.edu (E) 4 credits
Ellen Doré Watson
Offered Spring 2010
290 Crafting Creative Nonfiction
A writers' workshop designed to explore the complexities and delights of creative nonfiction. Constant reading, writing, and critiquing. Admission by permission of the instructor. {L} 4 credits
Hilton Als, Robert Hosmer
Offered Fall 2009, Spring 2010
292 Crafting the Memoir
In this workshop, we will explore, through reading and through writing, the presentation of self in the memoir. A major focus will be on the interweaving of voice, structure, style, and content. As we read the work of ourselves and of others, we will be searching for strategies, devices, rhythms, patterns, and approaches that we might adapt in future writings. The reading list will consist of writings by twentieth-century women. Admission by permission of the instructor. {L} 4 credits
To be announced
Offered Spring 2010
295 Advanced Poetry Writing
Taught by the Grace Hazard Conkling Poet in Residence, this is an advanced poetry workshop for students who have developed a passionate relationship with poetry and who have substantial experience in writing poems. Texts are based on the poets who will read at Smith next semester, and students will gain expertise in reading, writing, and critiquing poems. ADMISSION VIA WRITING SAMPLE EMAILED by first day of classes to HYPERLINK "mailto:aboutell@smith.edu" aboutell@smith.edu {L}
4 credits
Annie Boutelle
Offered Fall 2009, Spring 2010
296 Writing Short Stories
ADMISSION VIA WRITING SAMPLE E-MAILED by first day of classes to HYPERLINK "mailto:smiller@smith.edu" smiller@smith.edu. {L}
4 credits
Sue Miller
Offered Fall 2009, Spring 2010
384/AMS 351 Writing About American Society
An examination of contemporary American issues through the works of literary journalists ranging from Elizabeth Hardwick to Joan Didion; Frances Fitzgerald to Adrian Nicole Le Blanc. Intensive practice in expository writing to develop the student's own skills in analyzing complex social issues and expressing herself artfully in this form. May be repeated with a different instructor and with the permission of the Director of the Program. Enrollment limited to 15. Admission by permission of the instructor. {L/S} 4 credits
Hilton Als
Offered Spring 2010
LEVEL IV. 300 Level courses, but not seminars. These courses are intended primarily for juniors and seniors who have taken at least two literature courses about the 100-level. Other interested students need the permission of the instructor.
399 Teaching Literature
Discussion of poetry, short stories, short novels, essays and drama with particular emphasis on the ways in which one might teach them. Consideration of the uses of writing and the leading of discussion classes. For upper level undergraduates and graduate students who have an interest in teaching. Enrollment limited to 15. {L} 4 credits
Samuel Scheer
Offered Fall 2009
LEVEL V. Seminars. Seminars are open only to juniors and seniors, and admission is by permission of the instructor.
Seminars in the English Department stand as the capstone experience in the major. They bring students into the public aspects of intellectual life, and the papers they require are not only longer but also different in kind from those in 200-level classes. These papers require a research component in which students engage the published arguments of others, or at least demonstrate an awareness of the ongoing critical conversation their work is entering. But such work proves most useful when most available, and so we also require that students present their thinking in some way to the semi-public sphere of the seminar itself.
All students who wish to take a seminar must apply at the English department office by the last day of the pre-registration period. The instructor will select the students admitted from these applicants.
PRS 306 Beowulf and Archaeology
The Old English poem Beowulf may be the most expressive document we possess for the cultural world of Europe from the 5th through 8th centuries AD, even though it survives in a single copy from c. 1000. Our interpretation of this poem has been enhanced by discoveries of the Sutton Hoo ship-burial in East Anglia, a huge 6th –century hall in Denmark, and other significant finds. This seminar will examine the way archaeological investigation, historical research and literary criticism all combine to create a more revealing, though still controversial “assemblage of texts” from this formative phase of early European society. Enrollment limited to 12 juniors and seniors. (E) {L/H/A} 4 credits
Craig R. Davis (English)
Offered Spring 2010
308 Seminar: One Big Book
This capstone course offers an intensive, research-based study of a single important work of literature in English, seen in its social, historical, and intellectual context on the one hand, and in terms of its reception history on the other. Course may be repeated once for credit with different topic and instructor. Permission of the instructor required. Enrollment limited to 12. {L} 4 credits
Topic for 2009-2010: George Eliot’s Middlemarch. Prerequisites: two 200-level courses in either the reading of fiction or in 19th century British literature, or a combination thereof.
Michael Gorra
Offered Spring 2010
312 Seminar: Converts, Criminals, and Fugitives: Print Culture of the African Diaspora, 1760-1860
This seminar will explore the varied publications produced by people of African descent, America, Canada, and England, including early sermons and conversion narratives, criminal confessions, fugitive slave narratives, and the black press. We will consider these works in terms of publishing history, editorship (especially women editors), authorship, readership, circulation, advertising, influence, literacy, community building, politics, and geography. We will examine their engagements with such topics as religion, law economics, emigration, gender, race, and temperance. Smith’s manuscript and periodical holdings will offer us a treasure trove of source materials.
{L} 4 credits
Andrea Stone
Offered Spring 2010
315 Seminar: Victorian Imperialism
At its height, the British Empire spanned over a quarter of the earth’s population and a fifth of its surface; to study the Victorians is therefore to study the globe. This seminar focuses on literary engagements with a series of explosive events in India, Jamaica, Ireland, Sudan, Burma, and South Africa that helped create the empire over which “the sun never set.” Readings are drawn from a range of authors who promoted or challenged Victorian Britain’s aggressive imperial expansion, including Joseph Conrad, H. Rider Haggard, Rudyard Kipling, Olive Schreiner, Alfred Tennyson and Queen Victoria. Admission by permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 12. {L} 4 credits
Cornelia Pearsall
Offered Fall 2009
333 Seminar: A Major British or American Writer
Alice Munro
Alice Munro has won extraordinary and steadily growing recognition as one of the very finest and canniest writers of our time. The subtlety of her narrative skills and the subdued brilliance of her moral insights mark her as a major figure. And yet this has not translated into the kind of attention one might expect in college and university curricula. Certainly there are challenges for both student and teacher in tracing out the arc of her achievement, beginning with the early “Dance of the Happy Shades” to her most recent work. But this tracing provides an opportunity to follow Munro “writing her lives” – in all their narrative sublimity. Prerequisites: Three literature courses, including one American literature course and one upper-level course in fiction. Enrollment limited to 12. (E) {L} 4 credits
Eric Reeves
Offered Fall 2009
Heaney and Muldoon
In-depth study of two living poets important not only in the context of Northern Ireland but also for their impact on poetry in English during the latter twentieth century. Discussions will focus on the intersecting poetic trajectories of these two careers and on the poets’ negotiation of the poetry/politics intersection.
Michael Thurston
Offered Spring 2010
365 Seminar: Studies in 19th Century Literature
Topic: Women in Romantic Literature. A study of sisters, wives, mothers, and nature in the works of Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, Sir Walter Scott, the Brontës, and the Romantic poets. {L} 4 credits
Patricia Skarda
Offered Fall 2009
376 Contemporary British Women Writers
Consideration of a number of contemporary women writers, mostly British, some well-established, some not, who represent a variety of concerns and techniques. Emphasis on the pleasures of the text and significant ideas—political, spiritual, human, and esthetic. Efforts directed at appreciation of individuality and diversity as well as contributions to the development of fiction. Authors likely to include Anita Brookner, Angela Carter, Isabel Colegate, Eva Figes, Penelope Fitzgerald, Molly Keane, Penelope Lively, Edna O’Brien, Barbara Pym, Jean Rhys, Muriel Spark, and Jeanette Winterson; some supplementary critical reading.
{L} 4 credits
Robert Hosmer
Offered Fall 2009
393 South Asian Fictions of Autobiography
How have modern South Asians adapted the forms of autobiography to make sense of their lives? What can individual idiosyncratic life stories tell us more broadly about culture or history? How does writing help us to process, or create meanings from, experiences of colonization, national independence, family, race, gender, sexuality, migration, loss, or trauma? What are the implications of creating intimacy, voice or subjectivity in a colonizer’s alien language? This course explores how diverse writers (Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, diasporic) have crafted life writing in English to produce broader meanings for various purposes (nation building, anti-colonial resistance, self fashioning, diasporic identity formation, telling of suppressed histories, remembrance). Readings include fictional and actual autobiographies by Ghandi, Nehru, G.V. Desani, Nirad Chaudhuri, Attia Hosain, Sara Suleri, Michael Ondaatje, Shyam Selvadurai, Hanif Kureishi, Meena Alexander, and theories of autobiography. Enrollment limited to 15. {L} 4 credits.
Ambreen Hai
Offered Spring 2010
Cross-listed and Interdepartmental Courses
AAS 202 Black Music and Literature
FYS 175 Love Stories
FYS 118 The Groves of Academe
FYS 128 Ghosts
FYS 157 Literature and Science: Models of Time and Space
FYS 158 Reading the Earth
FYS 162 Ambition and Adultery: Individualism in the 19th-Century Novel
FYS 187 Writers and the Body: Health and Illness in African Diasporic Women’s Literature
CLT 205 Twentieth-Century Literature of Africa
CLT 215 Arthurian Legends
CLT 237 Traveller’s Tales
CLT 255 Ghosts, Peasants, Doubles, and Frames: Reading the 19th-Century Novel
CLT 300 Contemporary Literary Theory
FLS 241 Screen Comedy
PRS 306 Beowulf and Archaeology
PRS 311 Bodies and Machines
THE 261 Writing for the Theatre
400 Special Studies
1 to 4 credits
Offered both semesters each year
408d Special Studies
8 credits
Full year course; Offered each year
The Major
Advisers: Members of the Department.
Major Requirements
Twelve semester courses are required for the major. In March 2009, the Department voted in a new set of requirements. Students in course may choose either the old or new requirements; students in the class of 2013 and thereafter must complete the new ones.
New Requirements
1 Two of our four gateway courses – ENG 199 (methods), 200 (British survey I), 201 (British survey II), or 231 (American survey I) – ideally to be taken by the end of the sophomore year;
2. Two courses concentrating on literature written before 1832;
3. Semester courses on two of three early canonical authors; Chaucer (250), Shakespeare (256 or 257), and Milton (260);
4. Culminating Experience: two seminars in literature 300 level, at least one to be taken in senior year. A senior who has undertaken an honors thesis, year-long Kahn Institute project, or research-based 4-credit special studies may substitute her project for the second seminar.
Old Requirements
1. Two of the following: 199, 200, 201, or 231;
2. Two courses concentrating on literature written before 1832;
3. Semester courses on two of three early canonical authors: Chaucer (250), Shakespeare (256 or 257), and Milton (260);
4. A seminar;
5. Five additional courses
In 2009-2010 the following courses fulfill requirement #2: 200, 202, 204, 207, 210, 231, 238, 250, 252, 254, 256, 257, 260, 365, PRS 306.
No course may be used to fulfill more than one requirement.
Up to two courses in film, a foreign or comparative literature, or dramatic literature offered through the theater department may count toward the major. Up to three advanced writing courses may count toward the major. Only one colloquium (120) may count toward the major. English 118 does not count. No course counting toward the major may be taken for an S/U grade.
We strongly recommend that all students take at least one historical survey sequence: English 200, 201; English 202, 203; or English 231, 233. We recommend that students interested in graduate school in English literature or in high school English teaching take both the British (200, 201) and the American (231, 233) surveys. Those considering graduate school should be aware that most doctoral programs in English require a reading knowledge of two foreign languages, and that preparation in literary theory will be extremely useful.
The Minor
The minor in English consists of six courses: English 199; a two-semester survey (ENG 200, 201 ENG 202, 203 or ENG 231, 233); plus three additional English courses chosen in consultation with the minor adviser, two of which must be above the 100 level.
Honors
Director: Michael Gorra (2009-2010).
430d Honors Project
8 credits
Full year course; Offered each year
Applicants to honors (which is done in addition to the requirements of the major) must have an average of B+ or above in the courses they count toward the major, and an average of B or above in all other courses. During the senior year they will present a thesis, of which the first complete formal draft will be due on the first day of the second semester. After the readers of the thesis have provided students with their evaluations of this draft, the student will have time to revise her work in response to their suggestions. The final completed version of the thesis will be due after spring vacation, to be followed during April by the student's oral presentation and discussion of her work. Students in honors will normally be given priority in seminars.
In exceptional circumstances the department will permit a student to submit a work of fiction, poetry, or creative non-fiction for honors.
Graduate
580 Graduate Special Studies
Independent study for graduate students. Admission by permission of the Chair.
4 credits
Offered both semesters each year
580d Graduate Special Studies
8 credits
Full year course; Offered each year
|
