English and Comparative Literature
Departmental Office: 602 Philosophy; 212-854-3215
http://www.english.columbia.edu
Director of Undergraduate Studies: Prof. Molly Murray, 406 Philosophy; 212-854-4016; mpm7@columbia.edu
Departmental Adviser:
Prof. Molly Murray, 406 Philosophy; mpm7@columbia.edu
The program in English fosters the ability to read critically and imaginatively, to appreciate the power of language to shape thought and represent the world, and to be sensitive to the ways in which literature is created and achieves its effects. It has several points of departure, grounding the teaching of critical reading in focused attention to the most significant works of English literature, in the study of the historical and social conditions surrounding literary production and reception, and in theoretical reflection on the process of writing and reading and the nature of the literary work./p>
The courses the department offers draw on a broad range of methodologies and theoretical approaches, from the formalist to the political to the psychoanalytical (to mention just a few). Ranging from the medieval period to the 21st century, the department teaches major authors alongside popular culture, traditional literary genres alongside verbal forms that cut across media, and canonical British literature alongside postcolonial, global, and trans-Atlantic literatures.
At once recognizing traditional values in the discipline and reflecting its changing shape, the major points to three organizing principles for the study of literature—history, genre, and geography. Requiring students not only to take a wide variety of courses but also to arrange their thinking about literature on these very different grids, the major gives them broad exposure to the study of the past, an understanding of the range of forms that can shape literary meaning, and an encounter with the various geographical landscapes against which literature in English has been produced.
Advising
Students are not assigned specific advisers, but rather each year the faculty members serving on the department’s Committee on Undergraduate Education (CUE) are designated undergraduate advisers (see above). Upon declaring a major or concentration in English, students should meet with the director of undergraduate studies or a delegated faculty adviser to discuss the program, especially to ensure that students understand the requirements.
Students must fill out a Major Requirements Worksheet early in the semester preceding graduation. The worksheet must be reviewed by an adviser and submitted to 602 Philosophy before the registration period for the final semester. The worksheet is available in the English Department or on-line at http://english.columbia.edu/undergraduate/major-requirements. It is this worksheet—not the Degree Audit Report (DAR)—that determines eligibility for graduation as an English major or concentrator.
Course Information
Lectures
Generally, lectures are addressed to a broad audience and do not assume previous course work in the area, unless prerequisites are noted in the description. The size of some lectures is limited. Senior majors have preference unless otherwise noted, followed by junior majors, followed by senior and junior non-majors. Students are responsible for checking for any special registration procedures on-line at http://english.columbia.edu/courses.
Seminars
The department regards seminars as opportunities for students to do advanced undergraduate work in fields in which they have already had some related course experience. With the exception of some CLEN classes (in which, as comparative courses, much material is read in translation), students’ admission to a seminar presupposes their having taken ENGL UN3001 LITERARY TEXTS & CRIT METHODS. During the three weeks preceding the registration period, students should check http://english.columbia.edu/courses for application instructions for individual seminars. Applications to seminars are usually due by the end of the week preceding registration. Students should always assume that the instructor’s permission is necessary; those who register without having secured the instructor’s permission are not guaranteed admission.
Departmental Honors
Writing a senior essay is a precondition, though not a guarantee, for the possible granting of departmental honors. After essays are submitted, faculty sponsors deliver a written report on the essay to the department’s Committee on Undergraduate Education (CUE), with a grade for the independent study and, if merited, a recommendation for honors. CUE considers all the essays, including sponsor recommendations, reviews students’ fall semester grades, and determines which students are to receive departmental honors. Normally no more than 10% of graduating majors receive departmental honors in a given academic year.
The Degree Audit Reporting System (DARS)
The DAR is a useful tool for students to monitor their progress toward degree requirements, but it is not an official document for the major or concentration, nor should it replace consultation with departmental advisers. The department’s director of undergraduate studies is the final authority on whether requirements for the major have been met. Furthermore, the DAR may be inaccurate or incomplete for any number of reasons—for example, courses taken elsewhere and approved for credit do not show up on the DAR report as fulfilling a specific requirement.
Online Information
Other departmental information—faculty office hours, registration instructions, late changes, etc.—is available on the departmental website.
Professors
- James Eli Adams
- Rachel Adams
- Branka Arsić
- Christopher Baswell (Barnard)
- Sarah Cole
- Julie Crawford
- Nicholas Dames
- Jenny Davidson
- Andrew Delbanco
- Kathy Eden
- Brent Edwards
- Stathis Gourgouris
- Farah Jasmine Griffin
- Jack Halberstam
- Saidiya Hartman (University Professor)
- Jean E. Howard
- Sharon Marcus
- Edward Mendelson
- Frances Negrón-Muntaner
- Robert O’Meally
- Julie Peters
- Ross Posnock
- Austin E. Quigley
- Bruce Robbins
- James Shapiro
- Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (University Professor)
- Alan Stewart
- Colm Tóibín
- Gauri Viswanathan
- William Worthen (Barnard)
- David M. Yerkes
Associate Professors
- Denise Cruz
- Patricia Dailey
- T. Austin Graham
- Erik Gray
- Matt Hart
- Eleanor Johnson
- Molly Murray
- Joseph Slaughter
- Dennis Tenen
- Jennifer Wenzel
Assistant Professors
- Joseph Albernaz
- Lauren Robertson
- Dustin Stewart
- Hannah Weaver
Lecturers
- Paul Grimstad
- Sue Mendelsohn
- Aaron Ritzenberg
- Maura Speigel
- Nicole B. Wallack
Guidelines for all English and Comparative Literature Majors and Concentrators
Declaring a Major in English
Upon declaring a major in English, students should meet with either the director of undergraduate studies or a departmental adviser to discuss the program. Students declaring a major should obtain a Major Requirements Worksheet from 602 Philosophy or on-line, which outlines the requirements.
Additional information, including events and deadlines of particular relevance to undergraduates, is provided at http://english.columbia.edu/undergraduate, the department’s undergraduate homepage. The sidebar on this page provides links to pages with details about undergraduate advising, major and concentration requirements, course options and restrictions, registration procedures, the senior essay, and writing prizes, as well as links to downloadable worksheets for the major and concentration and to course distribution requirement lists, past and present. For detailed information about registration procedures, students should consult http://english.columbia.edu/courses, which explains the requirements and enables students to monitor their own progress.
Newly declared majors should contact the undergraduate assistant in 602 Philosophy Hall and request that their names be added to the department’s electronic mailing list for English majors and concentrators. Because important information now routinely is disseminated through e-mail, it is crucial that students be on this list.
Literary Texts, Critical Methods
The introductory course ENGL UN3001 LITERARY TEXTS & CRIT METHODS, together with its companion seminar, ENGL UN3011 LITERARY TEXTS&CRIT MTHDS(SEM), is required for the English major and concentration. It should be taken by the end of the sophomore year. Fulfillment of this requirement is a factor in admission to seminars and to some lectures. This once-a-week faculty lecture, accompanied by a seminar led by an advanced graduate student in the department, is intended to introduce students to the study of literature. Students read works from the three major literary modes (lyric, drama, and narrative), drawn from premodern to contemporary literature, and learn interpretative techniques required by these various modes or genres. This course does not fulfill any distribution requirements.
Senior Essay
The senior essay program is an opportunity for students to explore in depth some literary topic of special interest to them, involving extensive background reading and resulting in an essay (8,000–15,000 words) that constitutes a substantial and original critical or scholarly argument. Students submit proposals in September of their senior year, with acceptance contingent upon the quality of the proposal and the student’s record in the major. Students who are accepted are assigned a faculty sponsor to supervise the project, from its development during the fall semester to its completion in the spring. It is for the spring semester, not the fall, that students officially register for the course, designated as ENGL UN3999 THE SENIOR ESSAY. Senior essays are due in early April.
Course Options and Restrictions
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No course at the 1000-level may be counted toward the major.
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Speech courses may not be counted toward the major.
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Two writing courses or two upper-level literature courses taught in a foreign language, or one of each, may count toward the major, though neither type of course fulfills any distribution requirement. Writing courses that may be applied toward the major include those offered through Columbia’s undergraduate Creative Writing Program and through Barnard College.
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Comparative literature courses sponsored by the department (designated as CLEN) may count toward the major. Those sponsored by other departments (e.g. CLFR - Comp Lit French, CPLS - Comp Lit and Society) are not counted toward the major without permission of the director of undergraduate studies. Literature courses taught in English in language departments do not count toward the major.
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No more than two courses taken during the summer session may be counted toward the major.
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Courses offered through the Barnard English Department may count toward the major or concentration. Before taking Barnard courses, students should verify with the director of undergraduate studies whether and how such courses may count toward the major.
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For courses taken abroad or at other American institutions to count toward the major, students must obtain approval of the director of undergraduate studies.
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To register for more than 42 points (including advanced standing credit) in English and comparative literature, a student majoring in English must obtain permission of the director of undergraduate studies.
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No more than five courses taken elsewhere may be applied to the major, four to the concentration.
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One independent study (for at least 3 points) may count toward the major but cannot satisfy any distribution requirements; likewise, the Senior Essay may count toward the major but fulfills no requirements. Students may not count both an Independent Study and the Senior Essay toward the major.
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Courses assigned a grade of D may not be counted toward the major.
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Only the first course taken to count toward the major can be taken Pass/D/Fail.
Major in English
Please read Guidelines for all English and Comparative Literature Majors and Concentrators above.
Ten departmental courses (for a minimum of 30 points) and, in the process, fulfillment of the following requirements. See course information above for details on fulfilling the distribution requirements.
- ENGL UN3001 LITERARY TEXTS & CRIT METHODS and ENGL UN3011 LITERARY TEXTS&CRIT MTHDS(SEM)
- Period distribution: Three courses primarily dealing with periods before 1800, only one of which may be a course in Shakespeare
- Genre distribution: One course in each of the following three generic categories:
- Poetry
- Prose fiction/narrative
- Drama/film/new media
- Geography distribution: One course in each of the following three geographical categories:
- British
- American
- Comparative/global (comparative literature, postcolonial, global English, trans-Atlantic, diaspora)
Course Distribution Lists are available in the department and on-line at http://english.columbia.edu/course-distribution-lists to help students determine which courses fulfill which requirements. A single course can satisfy more than one distribution requirement. For example, a Shakespeare lecture satisfies three requirements at once: not only does it count as one of the three required pre-1800 courses it also, at the same time, fulfills both a genre and a geography distribution requirement (drama and British, respectively). Courses not on the distribution list may count toward the major requirements only with the permission of the director of undergraduate studies. Two writing courses or upper-level literature courses taught in a foreign language, or one of each, may count toward the ten required courses.
Concentration in English
Please read Guidelines for all English and Comparative Literature Majors and Concentrators above.
Eight departmental courses and, in the process, fulfillment of the following requirements. See course information above for details on fulfilling the distribution requirements.
- ENGL UN3001 LITERARY TEXTS & CRIT METHODS and ENGL UN3011 LITERARY TEXTS&CRIT MTHDS(SEM)
- Period distribution: Two courses dealing with periods before 1800, only one of which may be a course in Shakespeare
- Genre distribution: Two courses, each chosen from a different genre category (see above)
- Geography distribution: Two courses, each chosen from a different geography category (see above)
See the Course Distribution Lists, available in the department or on-line at http://english.columbia.edu/course-distribution-lists, to determine which courses fulfill which requirements. All of the restrictions outlined for the English major also apply for the concentration in English.
Comparative Literature Program
Students who wish to major in comparative literature should consult the Comparative Literature and Society section of this Bulletin.
Fall 2023
Introduction to the Major
ENGL UN3001 LITERARY TEXTS & CRIT METHODS. 4.00 points.
Prerequisites: Students who register for ENGL UN3001 must also register for one of the sections of ENGL UN3011 Literary Texts, Critical Methods.
Prerequisites: Students who register for ENGL UN3001 must also register for one of the sections of ENGL UN3011 Literary Texts, Critical Methods. This course is intended to introduce students to the advanced study of literature. Students will read works from different genres (poetry, drama, and prose fiction), drawn from the medieval period to the present day, learning the different interpretative techniques required by each. The course also introduces students to a variety of critical schools and approaches, with the aim both of familiarizing them with these methodologies in the work of other critics and of encouraging them to make use of different methods in their own critical writing. This course (together with the companion seminar ENGL UN3011) is a requirement for the English Major and Concentration. It should be taken as early as possible in a students career. Fulfillment of this requirement will be a factor in admission to seminars and to some lectures
Spring 2023: ENGL UN3001
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 3001 | 001/13142 | W 2:10pm - 3:25pm 402 Chandler |
Frances Negron-Muntaner | 4.00 | 70/75 |
Fall 2023: ENGL UN3001
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
ENGL 3001 | 001/11905 | T 10:10am - 11:25am Room TBA |
Edward Mendelson | 4.00 | 54/75 |
ENGL UN3011 LITERARY TEXTS&CRIT MTHDS(SEM). 0.00 points.
Prerequisites: Students who register for ENGL UN3011 must also register for ENGL UN3001 Literary Texts, Critical Methods lecture.
Prerequisites: Students who register for ENGL UN3011 must also register for ENGL UN3001 Literary Texts, Critical Methods lecture. This seminar, led by an advanced graduate student in the English doctoral program, accompanies the faculty lecture ENGL UN3001. The seminar both elaborates upon the topics taken up in the lecture and introduces other theories and methodologies. It also focuses on training students to integrate the terms, techniques, and critical approaches covered in both parts of the course into their own critical writing, building up from brief close readings to longer research papers
Spring 2023: ENGL UN3011
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 3011 | 001/13237 | M 4:10pm - 6:00pm 405 Kent Hall |
Sophia Pedatella | 0.00 | 18/15 |
ENGL 3011 | 002/13239 | M 2:10pm - 4:00pm 568 Alfred Lerner Hall |
Alice Clapie | 0.00 | 19/15 |
ENGL 3011 | 003/13243 | M 12:10pm - 2:00pm 607 Hamilton Hall |
Yea Jung Park | 0.00 | 15/15 |
ENGL 3011 | 004/13748 | M 10:10am - 12:00pm 607 Hamilton Hall |
Anirbaan Banerjee | 0.00 | 6/15 |
ENGL 3011 | 005/14542 | M 10:10am - 12:00pm 507 Philosophy Hall |
Ruilin Fan | 0.00 | 12/15 |
Medieval
ENGL UN3892 BEOWULF. 4.00 points.
This course will primarily consist in the task of translating the remarkably challenging poem Beowulf. We will be reading (smaller) portions of the vast quantity of secondary texts as we negotiate and debate issues raised by our readings and contemporary scholarship. As we work through the language of the text, comparing translations with our own, we will also be tracking concepts. Each student will be using our communal site (location tbd) for posting translations as well as for starting individual projects on word clusters / concepts
Fall 2023: ENGL UN3892
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 3892 | 001/11896 | M 4:10pm - 6:00pm Room TBA |
David Yerkes | 4.00 | 15/18 |
ENGL UN3794 Trees. 4.00 points.
Trees shadow the human in faceless fashion. They mark of a form of deep-time AN record and respond to ecological devastation and abundance. Symbolic of the strange proximity of the divine in numerous different religious and literary traditions, trees figure as alter-egos or doubles for human lives and after-lives (in figures like the trees of life and salvation, trees of wisdom and knowledge, genealogical trees). As prostheses of thought and knowledge, they become synonymous with structure and form, supports for linguistic and other genres of mapping, and markers of organization and reading. As key sources of energy, trees –as we know them today -- are direct correlates with the rise of the Anthropocene. Trees are thus both shadows and shade: that is, they are coerced doubles of the human and as entry ways to an other-world that figure at the limits of our ways of defining thought and language. By foregrounding how deeply embedded trees are in world-wide forms of self-definition and cultural expression, this course proposes a deeper understanding of the way in which the environment is a limit-figure in the humanities’ relation to its “natural” others. This course assumes that the “real” and the “literary” are not opposed to one another, but are intimately co-substantial. To think “climate” or “environment” is not merely a matter of the sciences, rather, it is through looking at how the humanities situates “the tree” as a means of self-definition that we can have a more thorough understanding of our current ecological, political, and social climate. Foregrounding an interdisciplinary approach to literary studies, this course includes material from eco-criticism, philosophy, religion, art history, indigenous and cultural and post-colonial studies. It will begin by coupling medieval literary texts with theoretical works, but will expand (and contract) to other time periods and geographic locales
Fall 2023: ENGL UN3794
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 3794 | 001/11918 | T 4:10pm - 6:00pm Room TBA |
Patricia Dailey | 4.00 | 18/18 |
ENGL GU4729 CANTERBURY TALES. 3.00 points.
(Lecture). Beginning with an overview of late medieval literary culture in England, this course will cover the entire Canterbury Tales in the original Middle English. We will explore the narrative and organizational logics that underpin the project overall, while also treating each individual tale as a coherent literary offering, positioned deliberately and recognizably on the map of late medieval cultural convention. We will consider the conditions—both historical and aesthetic—that informed Chaucer’s motley composition, and will compare his work with other large-scale fictive works of the period. Our ultimate project will be the assessment of the Tales at once as a self-consciously “medieval” production, keen to explore and exploit the boundaries of literary convention, and as a ground-breaking literary event, which set the stage for renaissance literature
Fall 2023: ENGL GU4729
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 4729 | 001/11904 | T Th 8:40am - 9:55am Room TBA |
Eleanor Johnson | 3.00 | 66/90 |
CLEN UN3243 MYSTICISM. 3.00 points.
This course covers a wide range of male- and female-authored mystical texts (poetry and prose) ranging in date from Late Antiquity to the fifteenth centuries and provides an introduction to some of the major medieval Christian mystical texts in the Western tradition. In addition, we will see how the legacy of mysticism has permeated later philosophical traditions and contemporary culture, whether it be in Descartes’ meditations, contemporary narratives of psychedelic experiences, or in representations of outsiders in film. Throughout our readings, we will confront the question of what mysticism means, how women’s and men’s mystical texts compare, and how “literariness” impacts mystical experience. How does poetic form or literary prose shape the nature of mystical experience? What do we make of the insistence on bodily experience and on the appearance of biography? How does it relate to the role of exemplarity, pedagogy, hermeneutics, or to narrative in general? Where do we find the language and tropes of mysticism in contemporary culture and to what end? Texts will include works by St. Paul, St. Augustine, Origen, Beatrice of Nazareth and her hagiographer, Hadewijch of Brabant and William of St. Thierry, Bonaventure and Angela of Foligno, Marguerite d'Oignt and Guigo II, St. Francis and St. Claire, Marguerite Porete and Meister Eckhart, St. Juan de la Cruz and Teresa of Avila Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, Walter Hilton and Richard Rolle. Middle English texts (Julian, Rolle, Hilton, and Margery) will be available in Middle English; all other texts will, however, be read in modern English translation. No prerequisites necessary. Assignments will include: two written papers (6 pp) and weekly responses to prompts
Fall 2023: CLEN UN3243
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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CLEN 3243 | 001/11906 | T Th 10:10am - 11:25am Room TBA |
Patricia Dailey | 3.00 | 38/54 |
Renaissance
ENGL UN3335 SHAKESPEARE I. 3.00 points.
Enrollment is limited to 60.
(Lecture). This course will cover the histories, comedies, tragedies, and poetry of Shakespeare’s early career. We will examine the cultural and historical conditions that informed Shakespeare’s drama and poetry; in the case of drama, we will also consider the formal constraints and opportunities of the early modern English commercial theater. We will attend to Shakespeare’s biography while considering his work in relation to that of his contemporaries. Ultimately, we will aim to situate the production of Shakespeare’s early career within the highly collaborative, competitive, and experimental theatrical and literary cultures of late sixteenth-century England
Fall 2023: ENGL UN3335
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 3335 | 001/11891 | M W 10:10am - 11:25am Room TBA |
James Shapiro | 3.00 | 55/55 |
ENGL GU4214 Milton, Colonization, Revolution. 3.00 points.
This course will look at the major works of the poet, polemicist, and revolutionary John Milton in the context of seventeenth-century English intellectual, religious, political, military and colonial events. In addition to reading Milton’s shorter poems, major prose (including Areopagitica), and the full text of Paradise Lost, we will look at the authors and agents whose activities and writings helped to create the conditions in which he wrote: poets and agitators, natural scientists and utopians, sectarians and prophets, colonists and enslavers, revolutionaries and regicides. The class will pay particular attention to political debates about freedom and tyranny and to the colonial efforts (particularly in Virginia, Ireland and Barbados) that subtended both the English revolution and Milton’s own work
Fall 2023: ENGL GU4214
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 4214 | 001/14176 | M W 2:40pm - 3:55pm Room TBA |
Julie Crawford | 3.00 | 0/54 |
ENGL GU4702 TUDOR-STUART DRAMA. 3.00 points.
This course investigates the boldly experimental world of early modern drama beyond Shakespeare. The opening of London’s commercial playhouses in the last quarter of the sixteenth century fundamentally changed the nature of popular entertainment in England, offering eager spectators an array of secular drama for the first time. The playwrights who wrote for these theaters collaborated and competed with each other to produce moving tragedies, eviscerating social satires, and fantastic romances, upending ideas about how theater worked as regularly as they invented them. We will read a range of playwrights and kinds of plays, asking how this drama intervened in the issues of class, race, gender, sexuality, and politics that defined early modern England and shaped its future. We will also spend time discussing the plays in performance, attending to how the conditions of staging influence literary meaning. Finally, we will give attention to the performance styles and techniques of those actors who, in inspiring admiration and adoration as they realized these plays onstage, became London’s very first celebrities
Fall 2023: ENGL GU4702
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 4702 | 001/13698 | T Th 4:10pm - 5:25pm Room TBA |
Lauren Robertson | 3.00 | 31/54 |
ENGL UN3847 Friendship and the Early American Frontier. 4.00 points.
This seminar interrogates friendship in theory and in practice in Anglophone colonial America. Friendship, when satisfying, seems simple andstraightforward, a meeting of like minds and hearts. But early Americans just as often as not experienced disorienting frustrations in their intimate social lives, dissatisfactions that led them to reflect more broadly on problems inherent to civic and political community, as well as problems unique to collective life the colonial context. This course hones skills of close reading on literary, documentary, and philosophical texts, examining them for the challenges to friendship that their manifest and latent contents propose. Students will write a shorter midterm paper (8-10 pp) and a longer final paper (15-20 pp) to showcase their apprehension of the course content. Readings indicated for a particular week should be completed by that week
Fall 2023: ENGL UN3847
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 3847 | 001/14143 | T 2:10pm - 4:00pm Room TBA |
4.00 | 0/18 |
18th and 19th Century
ENGL UN3398 Odd Women in Victorian England. 4.00 points.
Victorian England remains known for its rigid definitions of femininity, but it also produced a remarkable number of “odd women”: female outlaws, eccentrics, and activists including spinsters, feminists, working women, women who desired other women, and people assigned female at birth who lived as men. This undergraduate seminar will explore the pains and pleasures of gender non-conformity through the lens of nineteenth-century literary works, historical documents, and foundational theories of gender and sexuality. Readings will include the diaries of Anne Lister, a wealthy Yorkshire lesbian libertine; a slander trial involving accusations of lesbianism at a Scottish all-girls school; the diaries of Hannah Munby, a London servant whose upper-class lover fetishized her physical strength; the autobiography of Mary Seacole, a Jamaican nurse who traveled the world; and fiction, including Charlotte Bronte’s novel *Villette; *Margaret Oliphant’s novel *Miss Marjoribanks; *Christina Rossetti’s poem “Goblin Market”; and Sheridan Le Fanu’s vampire tale “Carmilla.” Application instructions: E-mail Professor Marcus (sm2247@columbia.edu) with your name, school, major, year of study, and a brief statement about why you are interested in taking the course
Fall 2023: ENGL UN3398
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 3398 | 001/11930 | W 6:10pm - 8:00pm Room TBA |
Sharon Marcus | 4.00 | 0/18 |
ENGL UN3387 AUSTEN, ELIOT, JAMES. 4.00 points.
A study of the work of three writers most often credited with developing the narrative techniques of the modern Anglo-American novel, who also produced some of their culture’s most influential stories of female autonomy. What do the choices of young women in the nineteenth century— their ability to exercise freedoms, the forces that balk or frustrate those freedoms, even their choices to relinquish them— have to do with the ways that novels are shaped, with the technical devices and edicts (free indirect discourse, ‘show don’t tell,’ etc.) that become dominant in the novel’s form? One or two texts by each author read carefully, with attention to relevant critical discussions of recent decades
Fall 2023: ENGL UN3387
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 3387 | 001/11913 | T 4:10pm - 6:00pm Room TBA |
Nicholas Dames | 4.00 | 18/18 |
CLEN UN3335 Poetry and Philosophy. 4.00 points.
Since Plato, poets and philosophers have been at odds as often as they have cross-pollinated. How should we think about the relation between these two discourses? In this seminar we will put the following dictum of Romantic poet and philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge to the test: “No man was ever yet a great poet, without at the same time being a profound philosopher.” We will read philosophical poetry, poetic philosophy, and texts that don’t seem to quite fit in any genre. What makes certain poets particularly inspiring to philosophers, and vice versa? How does each group appropriate the tools of the other for their own purposes? We will be especially interested in the question of how poetic language offers a mode of thinking that may be philosophical in character, but is also fundamentally different from the conceptual and argumentative constraints of philosophy as it is usually conceived. The first part of the class will be focused on the Romantic period, especially the two central philosophical Romantic poets: William Wordsworth and Friedrich Hölderlin. In the second part of the class, we will read several contemporary poets who are redefining the philosophical power of poetry in our time. Our focus will be on deep thinking, and slow, close reading. In addition to two papers, you will choose between a presentation, a commentary, or writing a poem for a more creative assignment. All readings will be provided in English, but having studied German will be useful
Fall 2023: CLEN UN3335
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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CLEN 3335 | 001/15235 | Th 4:10pm - 6:00pm Room TBA |
Joseph Albernaz | 4.00 | 0/18 |
ENGL UN3946 Movement and Feeling in the 18th Century. 4 points.
Prerequisites: the instructor's permission.
Literature, we like to say, moves us. We also say that it makes us feel for others, moved on their behalf. This seminar asks what it means to think of literary experience as both feeling for someone (but whom?) and traveling to someplace (but where?). We will trace the history of this connection between motion and emotion back to the Restoration and eighteenth century, an age of remarkable expansion for the British Empire. Though travel and sentiment are often kept separate in studies of this exuberant period, we will find that British writers working across a range of genres—novels, plays, poems, sermons, journals, and philosophical treatises—frequently drew the two together. Their works raise questions about empire and relocation even as they contribute to a new psychological and textual emphasis on the sympathetic heart. Slaves, prisoners, servants, and political or religious outliers test this emphasis, and we’ll discuss how our authors by turns facilitate and foreclose emotional identification with them.
Fall 2023: ENGL UN3946
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 3946 | 001/11908 | T 12:10pm - 2:00pm Room TBA |
Dustin Stewart | 4 | 17/18 |
CLEN GU4820 Comparative Romanticisms. 3 points.
The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries witnessed the explosion of Romanticism: a sweeping cultural movement that developed alongside—and deeply impacted—revolutions in politics, philosophy, industry, and the arts. Romanticism not only spanned multiple media (literature, visual art, music), but also was in essential ways a trans-national phenomenon, with rich cultural cross-pollinations among a number of countries and languages.
This course will introduce literary Romanticism as what William Hazlitt called “the spirit of the age,” primarily in the comparative contexts of Great Britain, Germany, and France. We will explore similar themes and concerns in some of the major writers in these traditions, and also ask what makes each “Romanticism” singular to its time and place. One particular thread for our inquiry will concern how writers confronted crisis and creativity in the religious sphere during a time of political upheaval. From the German Romantic Friedrich Schlegel’s call for a “new mythology,” to William Blake’s “Bible of Hell,” to Mary Shelley’s “modern Prometheus” and Victor Hugo’s wrestling with God and Satan, what new gods come to the fore in Romanticism, and what is their legacy today?
While our main focus will remain on Britain, Germany, and France, we will also glance at contemporaneous Romantic currents in Italy, India, and the United States. All readings will be provided in English translation, but students with reading knowledge of French and/or German are encouraged to read texts in the original languages.
Fall 2023: CLEN GU4820
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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CLEN 4820 | 001/14175 | T Th 2:40pm - 3:55pm Room TBA |
Joseph Albernaz | 3 | 0/54 |
ENGL GU4407 VICTORIAN LITERATURE. 3.00 points.
A wide-ranging introduction to British literature in the age of Victoria (1837-1901), focusing on the many-faceted cultural impact of unprecedented material change. Victorian Britain was the world’s first industrial society, at its zenith the most powerful nation on earth, ruling an empire on which the sun proverbially never set. But this manifold success, many writers feared, was subsuming all values in economic self-interest, and they responded by exploring sources of meaning and value outside the realm of exchange. They were especially drawn to domestic life, centering on an ideal of selfless femininity, and to an ideal of “culture” as a realm of disinterested contemplation, immune to the demands of practicality (“So what do you do with an English major?”), and associated above all with the experience of literature and art. Hence multi-volume novels of domestic life, lyrics of frustrated desire and agonizing doubt, and an explosion of critical writing devoted to (among other things) the social effects of industrialism, challenges to religious faith, the nature of art, the rise of mass culture, and new models of gender and sexuality. We’ll be especially interested in a host of formal innovations—the serial novel, “sage writing,” the dramatic monologue, the “novel in verse,” melodrama, the short story—as they reshape the representation of personal identity and social life. Authors include Dickens, Tennyson, Carlyle, Mill, George Eliot, R. Browning, E.B. Browning, Ruskin, Morris, Arnold, Pater, Stevenson, Kipling, and Wilde.
Fall 2023: ENGL GU4407
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 4407 | 001/11892 | M W 10:10am - 11:25am Room TBA |
James Adams | 3.00 | 31/54 |
CLEN GU4723 18th C Comparative Novel. 4 points.
This course encompasses a series of readings in the eighteenth-century European novel. Style, narratology, the “rise” of realism and the history of novel criticism will all figure in our discussions; the seminar offers a theoretical rather than a thoroughly historical survey, and should serve as groundwork for considering questions about style and the novel in other periods and national traditions.
Fall 2023: CLEN GU4723
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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CLEN 4723 | 001/11932 | Th 12:10pm - 2:00pm Room TBA |
Jenny Davidson | 4 | 1/18 |
ENGL GU4619 AFRICAN-AMERICAN LITERATURE I. 3.00 points.
(Lecture). This lecture course is intended as the first half of the basic survey in African-American literature. By conducting close readings of selected song lyrics, slave narratives, fiction, poetry, and autobiography, we will focus on major writers in the context of cultural history. In so doing, we will explore the development of the African- American literary tradition. Writers include, but are not limited to, Wheatley, Equiano, Douglass, Jacobs, Harper, Dunbar, Chestnutt, Washington, Du Bois, and Larsen. Course requirements: class attendance, an in-class midterm exam, a five-page paper, and a final exam
Fall 2023: ENGL GU4619
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 4619 | 001/11911 | T Th 2:40pm - 3:55pm Room TBA |
Robert O'Meally | 3.00 | 19/54 |
20th and 21st Century
ENGL UN3520 Introduction To Asian American Literature and Culture. 3 points.
This course is a survey of Asian North American literature and its contexts. To focus our discussion, the course centers on examining recurring cycles of love and fear in Asian North American relations from the late nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries. We will first turn to what became known as “yellow peril,” one effect of exclusion laws that monitored the entrance of Asians into the United States and Canada during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the corresponding phenomenon of Orientalism, the fascination with a binary of Asia and the West. The second section of the course will focus on how Asian North American authors respond to later cycles of love and fear, ranging from the forgetting of Japanese internment in North America and the occupation of the Philippines; to the development of the model minority mythology during the Cold War. The final section will examine intimacies and exclusions in contemporary forms of migration, diaspora, and community communities.
Fall 2023: ENGL UN3520
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 3520 | 001/11910 | T Th 1:10pm - 2:25pm Room TBA |
Denise Cruz | 3 | 120/120 |
ENGL UN3863 Dramatic Breakups. 3.00 points.
Modern drama keeps on breaking up. From the moment a stage door slammed shut on a failed marriage in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll House (1879), dramatic breakups no longer seemed the purview of tragedy, but rather a harbinger of new social potentialities. Modern stages helped to invent the notion of the romantic breakup that we have received today, and yet love was not all that shattered in the modern theater. After rupturing romances, modern playwrights went on to fracture families, upend political institutions, demolish scenic spaces, and ultimately, explode the form of drama itself. This course provides an introduction to twentieth and twenty-first century theater by surveying the many things that it breaks: hearts, homes, ideologies, and dramatic forms. We will examine the contention that drama, as a form in which conflict and transformation are vividly enacted, provides a critical lens for examining the dissolution of relationships at a wide range of scales, including the national, imperial, and ecological. In our encounters with diverse dramatic materials from the late nineteenth century to the present, we will explore how, when, and towards what end drama reimagined itself as “modern.” Students will read approximately two plays each week and will have the option to present a creative response to our course materials at the conclusion of the semester
Fall 2023: ENGL UN3863
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 3863 | 001/14151 | T Th 10:10am - 11:25am Room TBA |
Rebecca Kastleman | 3.00 | 1/54 |
ENGL GU4826 American Modernism. 3.00 points.
This course approaches modernism as the varied literary responses to the cultural, technological, and political conditions of modernity in the United States. The historical period from the turn of the century to the onset of World War II forms a backdrop for consideration of such authors as Getrude Stein, Willa Cather, Jean Toomer, Zora Neale Hurston, Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Djuna Barnes. Assigned readings will cover a range of genres, including novels, poetry, short stories, and contemporary essays
Fall 2023: ENGL GU4826
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 4826 | 001/13697 | T Th 11:40am - 12:55pm Room TBA |
Rachel Adams | 3.00 | 25/54 |
ENGL UN3241 African American Literature: The Essay. 4 points.
According to literary critic Cheryl A. Wall, African American writers have done their most influential work in the essay form. Using Wall’s scholarship as a starting point, this course explores essays by a distinguished group of writers from Frederick Douglass to Toni Morrison to consider the centrality of this understudied form to African American writing.
Fall 2023: ENGL UN3241
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 3241 | 001/11935 | Th 12:10pm - 2:00pm Room TBA |
Farah Griffin | 4 | 0/18 |
ENGL UN3228 Aldous Huxley. 4 points.
The course proposes to examine the major works of Aldous Huxley as vital contributions to the emerging 20th century canon of modernism, internationalism, pacifism, spiritualism, and the psychology of modern consciousness. Critical studies of Huxley have typically split his work into two phases—social satire and mysticism—that roughly correspond to Huxley’s perceived oscillation between cynicism and religiosity. This course proposes a less disjunctive approach to his writings. Huxley’s starkly dystopian vision in Brave New World often overshadowed his earnest endeavors to find a meeting point between mainstream Western thought and the philosophical traditions of the non-Western world, particularly of Hinduism and Buddhism. His early novels, including Brave New World, bear traces of his deep-seated spiritual quest, even as his works were steeped in critiques of the ominous trends towards regimentation and authoritarian control of the social body.
As a novelist of ideas, Huxley gave voice to the most vexing intellectual and moral conflicts of his time, refusing to retreat into the solipsism of experimental writing while at the same time searching for wholeness in Eastern meditative systems. This course probes Huxley’s writings from a multitude of angles, examining his works (both fiction and nonfiction) in the context of evolutionary, secular thought, while also reading them as strivings towards models of world peace inspired, to some extent, by mystical thought. The latter invoked concepts drawn from Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain thought, alongside Christian mysticism and Taoism, in an eclectic practice that Huxley called “the perennial philosophy.” Organized chronologically, course readings include Point Counter Point (1928), Brave New World (1932), Eyeless in Gaza (1936), Time Must Have a Stop (1944), The Perennial Philosophy (1944), Ape and Essence (1948), The Devils of Loudun (1952), The Doors of Perception (1954), The Genius and the Goddess (1955), Island (1962), and The Divine Within (1992). This course will be of importance especially to students interested in the intersections of 20th century British modernist literature and non-Western philosophical and religious systems, as well as more generally to students interested in an intensive study of one of the 20th century’s most prolific authors.
Fall 2023: ENGL UN3228
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 3228 | 001/11915 | T 4:10pm - 6:00pm Room TBA |
Gauri Viswanathan | 4 | 15/18 |
CLEN UN3905 What is Art For? Modernism and the Problem of Autonomy. 4 points.
This seminar explores the meaning of aesthetic autonomy for 20th- and 21st-century art and literature. Modernist artists are famous for fomenting revolutions in form and value. But did those revolutions attack the idea of aesthetic autonomy or entrench it? The critics disagree. For every poet like T. S. Ellio, committed to aesthetic autonomy, there's another like Bertolt Brecht, who seeks to reconnect art and society. The seminar begins by illustrating the split character of modernist attitudes towards autonomy, moves on to classic modern accounts of aesthetic autonomy, surveys a variety of modernist assaults on autonomous form, and concludes by illustrating the stakes of such debates for contemporary writers and theorists. This seminar will appeal to students with an interest in the philosophy of art, literary theory, and the history and future of modernist culture.
Fall 2023: CLEN UN3905
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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CLEN 3905 | 001/11939 | Th 2:10pm - 4:00pm Room TBA |
Matthew Hart | 4 | 7/18 |
ENGL UN3480 The Novel after the Age of Literature. 4.00 points.
What is the value of literature today, amid dire predictions about its waning cultural authority and shrinking popularity? In this seminar, we'll explore this question by studying major variants of the contemporary novel that are responding to the cultural, social, and economic forces restructuring literary culture, while also learning about the corporations, institutions, and readers who mediate their production, circulation, and reception. Based on the novel's relative social prevalence from the 1800s on in Britain and America, literary scholars have often ascribed grand effects to the fonn: it has shaped modern ideas about the self, organized people's sense of national belonging, and even fueled protests that prompted political change. Can we say as much today? Access to traditional literary culture, while it has always been exclusive based on race, gender, and class, appears to be contracting due to the ongoing erosion of its socioeconomic suppmts: affordable education, well-funded publishing, secure paid work, and ample leisure time. Meanwhile, novels exist in an increasingly crowded media field that includes television, film, video games, and social media, all of which may be said to have a greater hold on our limited attention. How has the novel adapted to these conditions? How should we adapt our understanding of the novel in response? This course begins with two cases from the British tradition to explore ideas about the form and function of the novel across what scholars have called the period of"literary dominance": Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (1813) and Ian McEwan's Saturday (2005). The changing form and function of the novel will then be examined through analysis of four major trends in twenty-firstcentury literary culture: the rise of hybrid literary-genre fiction (Colson Whitehead and Emily St. John Mandel); the feminization of literary work (Colleen Hoover and Delia Owens); the proliferation of autofiction (Ocean Vuong and Patricia Lockwood); and evolutions in the metaliterary novel (Isabel Waidner and Ruth Ozeki). Through class discussion, literary-critical writing, and a literary-sociological project, where students will analyze the way readers talk about novels online, this course develops interdisciplinary approaches to illuminate the many forms that novels and novel-reading (including via audiobook) are taking today
Fall 2023: ENGL UN3480
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 3480 | 001/15169 | W 12:10pm - 2:00pm Room TBA |
Patrick Anson | 4.00 | 0/15 |
CLEN GU4644 REVOLUTION IN/ON THE CARIBBEAN. 4.00 points.
Although a geographically small area, the Caribbean has produced major revolutionary movements, and two globally influential revolutions: the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) and the Cuban Revolution (1959-1976). It has also produced literature and poetic discourse that has sought to revolutionize politics through language. In this course, we will examine texts that reflect on revolution and/or attempt to revolutionize by writers such as Aimé Césaire, CLR James, Derek Walcott, Alejo Carpentier, Frantz Fanon, Reinaldo Arenas, Michelle Cliff, and V.S. Naipaul, among others. We will also read essays by Hannah Arendt, André Breton, Paul Breslin, A. James Arnold, Phyllis Taoua, Robin D.G. Kelley, Brad Epps, Kimberle Lopez, Bruce King, Maria Elena Lima, Yoani Sánchez, and Audre Lorde. In addition, we will listen to a variety of music by Caribbean and African American musicians that take revolution as its theme in form and/or content
Fall 2023: CLEN GU4644
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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CLEN 4644 | 001/11922 | W 2:10pm - 4:00pm Room TBA |
Frances Negron-Muntaner | 4.00 | 20/18 |
ENGL GU4669 Hollywood's Countercultural Cinema: Movies of the 1970s. 4.00 points.
You will be asked to watch a lot of movies for this course. Some of the films will be assigned primarily to provide background and will receive only glancing attention in class; others (as indicated) will be the focus of our discussion. Your postings on Courseworks will draw from both categories of assigned films
Fall 2023: ENGL GU4669
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 4669 | 001/11931 | Th 12:10pm - 2:00pm Room TBA |
Maura Spiegel | 4.00 | 12/18 |
ENGL UN3488 Silence and Screaming: the Sound of African American Literature. 4.00 points.
Why and when do we scream or remain silent? Do we scream out of joy or in terror? Do we remain silent out of respect or fear? Perhaps more importantly, who screams (or who do we scream at), and who remains silent? And how do we register those sonic utterances in between the extremes of screaming and silence, the groans, moans, coughs, and grunts that resist transcription? This course develops out of the convergence between the study of African American Literature and Sound Studies to examine the affective and political resonances of these auditory modes. In this course we will think about how screaming, silence, and utterances are embodied auditory practices marked by race, gender, and sexuality that the artists on this syllabus transcribe into text, music, and image. These three auditory modes, screaming, silence, and utterance, share the commonality of being difficult to transcribe into written text and of being difficult to understand: they resist singularity and definition. In this course we will examine how writers, composers, performers, and directors engage in the ambivalences of these auditory modes. Our goal is not to remove that ambivalence, to clearly or definitively decide what something means, but to investigate the multiplicity contained within that ambivalence. No prerequisites
Fall 2023: ENGL UN3488
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 3488 | 001/15201 | M 10:10am - 12:00pm Room TBA |
Alex Valin | 4.00 | 0/15 |
ENGL UN3790 ‘The Rich are Different from Us’: Wealth in American Literature and Culture, 1913-2022. 4.00 points.
To say “wealth” is to say “class,” which is also to say “manners” and “snobbery,” and, especially in America, is to say vaulting “ambition.” This course examines how the amassing of wealth --individual & corporate-- creates class tensions and social manners over the course of a century. And we will conduct this examination aware that to make these matters explicit disturbs some basic American habits of mind that prefer fictions of egalitarianism. As Lionel Trilling observed in 1950: “Americans appear to believe that to touch accurately on the matter of class, to take full note of snobbery, is somehow to demean themselves…We don’t deny that we have classes and snobbery, but we seem to hold it indelicate to take precise cognizance of these phenomena. As if we felt that one cannot touch pitch without being defiled.” Among the topics/figures to be studied: the “New Woman” divorcee (Wharton), the social climbing arriviste (Fitzgerald), the pathologies of wealth (Chesnutt, Fitzgerald), the Black elite (Chesnutt, West), corporate capitalism as it colonizes the human body (Powers), wealth and post modernism (Diaz)
Fall 2023: ENGL UN3790
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 3790 | 001/13702 | Th 2:10pm - 4:00pm Room TBA |
Ross Posnock | 4.00 | 19/18 |
ENGL UN3832 New York Intellectuals: Mary McCarthy, Hannah Arendt, Susan Sontag. 4.00 points.
The nation’s most distinguished homegrown network of thinkers and writers, the New York intellectuals, clustered in its major decades from the late thirties to the late sixties up and down Manhattan, centered mainly in and around Columbia University and the magazine Partisan Review on Astor Place. Although usually regarded as male dominated—Lionel Trilling, Clement Greenberg and Dwight Macdonald were among the leaders—more recently the three key women of the group have emerged as perhaps the boldest modernist thinkers most relevant for our own time. Arendt is a major political philosopher, McCarthy a distinguished novelist, memoirist, and critic, and Susan Sontag was the most famous public intellectual in the last quarter of the 20th century. This course will explore how this resolutely unsentimental trio—dubbed by one critic as “tough women” who insisted on the priority of reflection over feeling—were unafraid to court controversy and even outrage: Hannah Arendt’s report on what she called the “banality” of Nazi evil in her report on the trial in Israel of Adolph Eichmann in 1963 remains incendiary; Mary McCarthy’s satirical wit and unprecedented sexual frankness startled readers of her 1942 story collection The Company She Keeps; Susan Sontag’s debut Against Interpretation (1966) turned against the suffocatingly elitist taste of the New York intellectuals and welcomed what she dubbed the “New Sensibility”—“happenings,” “camp,” experimental film and all manner of avant-garde production. In her later book On Photography (1977) she critiques the disturbing photography of Diane Arbus, whose images we will examine in tandem with Sontag’s book
Fall 2023: ENGL UN3832
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 3832 | 001/11921 | W 2:10pm - 4:00pm Room TBA |
Ross Posnock | 4.00 | 19/18 |
Special Topics
ENGL UN3795 SENIOR ESSAY RESEARCH METHODS. 3.00 points.
The senior essay is, for most English majors, the most substantial research you will have produced to this point in your intellectual life. As seniors tackle their essays, they discover that the methods they used to write smaller projects often don’t transfer to a project of this size. The English Senior Essay Seminar prepares English majors to make the leap to this longer project. It guides you through the process of crafting your proposal and teaches the research methods that you will rely upon to complete your thesis in the spring. In the process, you will learn what researchers have discovered about how seasoned scholars research and write. This learning prepares you for the next stage of your writing career, whether it be in graduate school or the workplace. By the end of the semester, you will produce about 20 pages of writing toward your senior essay, some of it in rough draft form and some more polished. That writing includes an evolving set of research questions, a literature review, a senior essay proposal, an outline, and partial rough drafts of two sections of your essay
Fall 2023: ENGL UN3795
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 3795 | 001/15199 | M 6:10pm - 8:00pm Room TBA |
Jenny Davidson | 3.00 | 0/18 |
ENGL UN3943 ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF THE BIBLE. 4.00 points.
English translations of the Bible from Tyndale to the present
Fall 2023: ENGL UN3943
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 3943 | 001/11907 | T 10:10am - 12:00pm Room TBA |
David Yerkes | 4.00 | 17/18 |
ENGL UN3402 Language Rights and Wrongs. 4.00 points.
This course examines public battles over language in American and invites you to situate your linguistic history in the larger context of thesebattles. We will ask, Is Northern English more correct than Southern English? Are Black English speakers disadvantaged in the job market? Should English be our national language? What should the language of instruction be in public schools? Do nonbinary students have a right to determine the pronouns their professors use to address them? These language rights battles play out in Congress, the courts, and classrooms. At stake are voting access, employment rights, learning opportunities, and the pathway to American citizenship. The first half of the semester will introduce you to sociolinguists’ understandings of language differences. We will put their research in conversation with the lived experiences of diverse Americans by exploring a number of literacy narratives. And as a class, we will carry out research to study the language attitudes and experiences of members of our own community. The second half of the semester features a series of case studies—legal cases, school board fights, academic battles, legislation—that will lay bare the surprising disagreements between what sociolinguists understand about language and what laypeople passionately believe about it. The goal of the course is to equip you to address language rights in ways that account for research and people’s lived experiences
Fall 2023: ENGL UN3402
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 3402 | 001/14145 | Th 10:10am - 12:00pm Room TBA |
Susan Mendelsohn | 4.00 | 3/18 |
CLEN W3740 The Thirties: Metropole and Colony. 4 points.
Prerequisites: Instructor's permission.
(Seminar). This course focuses on the tumultuous 1930s, which witnessed the growth of anticolonial movements, the coming to power of totalitarian and fascist regimes, and calls for internationalism and a new world vision, among other developments. Even as fascism laid down its roots in parts of Europe, the struggle for independence from European colonial rule accelerated in Asia and Africa, and former subjects engaged with ideas and images about the shape of their new nations, in essays, fiction, poetry, and theater. Supporters and critics of nationalism existed on both sides of the metropole-colony divide, as calls for internationalism sought to stem the rising tide of ethnocentric thinking and racial particularism in parts of Europe as well as the colonies. We'll read works from the metropole and the colonies to track the crisscrossing of ideas, beginning with writers who anticipated the convulsive events of the 1930s and beyond (E.M. Forster, H.G. Wells, Gandhi), then moving on to writers who published some of their greatest work in the 1930s (Huxley, Woolf, C.L.R. James, Mulk Raj Anand), and finally concluding with authors who reassessed the 1930s from a later perspective (George Lamming). Application Instructions: E-mail Professor Viswanathan (gv6@columbia.edu) by noon on Wednesday, April 13th, with the subject heading, "The Thirties seminar." In your message, include basic information: name, school, major, year of study, and relevant courses taken, along with a brief statement about why you are interested in taking the course.
CLEN UN3983 WRITING ACROSS MEDIA. 4 points.
This course is structured as a comparative investigation of innovative modernist and postmodernist strategies for conjoining or counterpoising literature with other media, such as photography, painting, film, music, and dance. We will focus on experimental writing practices that deliberately combine disciplines and genres — mixing political commentary with memoir, philosophy with ethnography, journalism with history — with special attention to the ways that formal innovation lends itself to political critique. The course will be especially concerned with the ways that the friction among media seems to allow new or unexpected expressive possibilities. The syllabus is structured to allow us to consider a variety of edges between literature and other media — spaces where writing is sometimes taken to be merely raw material to be set, or ancillary comment on a work already composed (e.g. libretto, screenplay, gloss, caption, song lyric, voiceover, liner note). Examples may include lecture-performances by Gertrude Stein, John Cage, Spalding Gray, and Anne Carson; talk-dances by Bill T. Jones and Jerome Bel; sound poems by Kurt Schwitters, Langston Hughes, and Amiri Baraka; graphic novels by Art Spiegelman, Joshua Dysart, and Alison Bechdel; language-centered visual art by Vito Acconci, Carl Andre, Martha Rosler, and Jean-Michel Basquiat; texts including photographs or drawings by Wallker Evans and James Agee, Roland Barthes, W. G. Sebald, Aleksandar Hemon, Theresa Cha, John Yau, and John Keene; and hypertext/online compositions by Shelley Jackson, among others. Requirements will include in-class presentations and regular short structured writing assignments, as well as a 10-12 page final research paper.
Fall 2023: CLEN UN3983
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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CLEN 3983 | 001/11894 | M 2:10pm - 4:00pm Room TBA |
Brent Edwards | 4 | 0/18 |
ENTA UN3701 DRAMA, THEATRE AND THEORY. 4.00 points.
Prerequisites: Instructor's permission. (Seminar). Theatre typically exceeds the claims of theory. What does this tell us about both theatre and theory? We will consider why theatre practitioners often provide the most influential theoretical perspectives, how the drama inquires into (among other things) the possibilities of theatre, and the various ways in which the social, spiritual, performative, political, and aesthetic elements of drama and theatre interact. Two papers, weekly responses, and a class presentation are required. Readings include Aristotle, Artaud, Bharata, Boal, Brecht, Brook, Castelvetro, Craig, Genet, Grotowski, Ibsen, Littlewood, Marlowe, Parks, Schechner, Shakespeare, Sowerby, Weiss, and Zeami. Application Instructions: E-mail Professor Austin Quigley (aeq1@columbia.edu) with the subject heading Drama, Theatre, Theory seminar. In your message, include basic information: your name, school, major, year of study, and relevant courses taken, along with a brief statement about why you are interested in taking the course. Admitted students should register for the course; they will automatically be placed on a wait list, from which the instructor will in due course admit them as spaces become available
Fall 2023: ENTA UN3701
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENTA 3701 | 001/11928 | W 4:10pm - 6:00pm Room TBA |
Austin Quigley | 4.00 | 13/15 |
AMST UN3930 Topics in American Studies. 4 points.
Please refer to the Center for American Studies website for course descriptions for each section. americanstudies.columbia.edu
Fall 2023: AMST UN3930
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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AMST 3930 | 001/11940 | T 10:10am - 12:00pm Room TBA |
James Shapiro | 4 | 12/18 |
AMST 3930 | 002/11948 | T 12:10pm - 2:00pm Room TBA |
Mark Lilla | 4 | 5/18 |
AMST 3930 | 003/11960 | W 10:10am - 12:00pm Room TBA |
Roosevelt Montas | 4 | 8/18 |
AMST 3930 | 004/11962 | W 2:10pm - 4:00pm Room TBA |
Hilary-Anne Hallett | 4 | 13/18 |
AMST 3930 | 005/11963 | Th 2:10pm - 4:00pm Room TBA |
Michael Hindus | 4 | 9/18 |
AMST 3930 | 006/12009 | T 2:10pm - 4:00pm Room TBA |
Casey Blake | 4 | 0/18 |
AMST 3930 | 007/12015 | W 2:10pm - 4:00pm Room TBA |
John McWhorter | 4 | 0/18 |
ENTA UN3707 Memes, Metaphors, and Performances. 4.00 points.
From millenary ritual songs to deep fried Wojaks, memes have always been an integral part of how we transfer cultural information. Since their mainstream widespread in 2008, memes have shifted from being mere online entertainment to a tool for disseminating worldviews and modes of understanding. In recent years, memes have shown to have the capacity to affect political elections. Understanding these cultural objects has become a pressing task, allowing the development of the research field of memetics. By outsourcing their reproducibility to the user, memes provide us with an opportunity to question our own social structures. In this course we’ll take a deep dive into the liminal world of memes, using metaphor and performance theory. We’ll explore their conceptual origins, discuss cultural memetic examples throughout history, and apply that understanding to our current political landscape. Since current memes are designed to take advantage of the different social media algorithms, new formats emerge all the time. In each class we’ll discuss a text or a movie alongside a meme format, and use the assigned theoretical framework to close-read memes and their cultural consequences. How can we use them as an effective tool in today’s realist capitalism? How does our role as users affect the social media algorithm and its tightly controlled echo chambers? Each participant will engage with these questions via weekly discussions and writing explorations. By the end of the semester, everybody will develop a personal project, exploring the ideas we’ve seen
Fall 2023: ENTA UN3707
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENTA 3707 | 001/15200 | M 12:10pm - 2:00pm Room TBA |
Eduardo Pavez Goye | 4.00 | 0/15 |
ENGL GU4898 THE BILDUNGSROMAN: COMING OF AGE IN THE NOVEL. 3.00 points.
The bildungsroman is the modern, realist version of the hero’s quest. Instead of slaying dragons and weaving spells, the protagonist of the bildungsroman struggles with what it means to become an adult – or to refuse to. Also known as the novel of development or coming-of-age novel, the bildungsroman typically focuses on growth and development, the cultivation of the self, and the tensions between individual and society, idealism and realism, dreamy inertia and future-oriented action. The reading list spans coming-of-age novels from Germany, France, England, and the United States, from the 1790s through the 2010s. Lectures will focus on the novel as a literary form in dialogue with other literary works; with historical events; and with ideas drawn from philosophy, psychology, and sociology. The course will address questions that include: what is society, what is a self, and what is the shape of a human life? What fosters human development and what thwarts it? How do coming-of-age novels engage with social norms concerning love, work, personhood, and maturity? The earliest novels of development focused on the dilemmas faced by white, middle-class men; how have subsequent works represented the challenges that non-dominant subjects encounter? This is a 3-point lecture course. In accordance with university guidelines, you should expect to spend about six hours per week outside of class doing the course reading, which will consist entirely of novels and vary from ~150 to ~300 pages per week
Fall 2023: ENGL GU4898
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 4898 | 001/11919 | T Th 6:10pm - 7:25pm Room TBA |
Sharon Marcus | 3.00 | 80/120 |
University Writing
ENGL CC1010 UNIVERSITY WRITING. 3.00 points.
ENGL CC/GS1010: University Writing, is a one-semester seminar designed to facilitate students’ entry into the intellectual life of the university by teaching them to become more capable and independent academic readers and writers. The course emphasizes habits of mind and skills that foster students’ capacities for critical analysis, argument, revision, collaboration, meta-cognition, and research. Students read and discuss essays from a number of fields, complete regular informal reading and writing exercises, compose several longer essays, and devise a research-based project of their own design. Courses of Instruction ENGL CC1010 University Writing. 3 points. ENGL CC/GS1010: University Writing (3 points) focuses on developing students’ reading, writing, and thinking, drawing from readings on a designated course theme that carry a broad appeal to people with diverse interests. No University Writing class presumes that students arrive with prior knowledge in the theme of the course. We are offering the following themes this year: UW: Contemporary Essays, CC/GS1010.001-.099 UW: Readings in American Studies, CC/GS1010.1xx UW: Readings in Gender and Sexuality, CC/GS1010.2xx UW: Readings in Film and Performing Arts, CC/GS1010.3xx UW: Readings in Urban Studies, CC/GS1010.4xx (will be sharing 400s with Human Rights) UW: Readings in Climate Humanities, CC/GS1010.5xx (will be sharing 500s with Data & Society) UW: Readings in Medical Humanities, CC/GS1010.6xx UW: Readings in Law & Justice, CC/GS1010.7xx UW: Readings in Race and Ethnicity, CC/GS1010.8xx University Writing for International Students, CC/GS1010.9xx For further details about these classes, please visit: http://www.college.columbia.edu/core/uwp
Spring 2023: ENGL CC1010
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
ENGL 1010 | 002/14897 | M W 8:40am - 9:55am 201b Philosophy Hall |
Gabrielle DaCosta | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 013/14898 | M W 1:10pm - 2:25pm 502 Northwest Corner |
Austin Mantele | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 014/14899 | M W 1:10pm - 2:25pm 313 Hamilton Hall |
Jason Ueda | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 017/14901 | M W 2:40pm - 3:55pm 408a Philosophy Hall |
Jessica Campbell | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 018/14902 | M W 2:40pm - 3:55pm 201d Philosophy Hall |
Glenn Gordon | 3.00 | 13/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 019/14903 | M W 2:40pm - 3:55pm 508 Lewisohn Hall |
Elena Dudum | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 021/14904 | M W 4:10pm - 5:25pm 307 Mathematics Building |
Seth Cosimini | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 022/14906 | M W 4:10pm - 5:25pm 331 Uris Hall |
Austin Mantele | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 033/17212 | T Th 10:10am - 11:25am 201d Philosophy Hall |
Emily Foster | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 035/14908 | T Th 10:10am - 11:25am 502 Northwest Corner |
Brianne Baker | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 039/14910 | T Th 11:40am - 12:55pm 201b Philosophy Hall |
Emily Weitzman | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 040/14911 | T Th 11:40am - 12:55pm 502 Northwest Corner |
Brianne Baker | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 042/14912 | T Th 1:10pm - 2:25pm 201b Philosophy Hall |
Emily Weitzman | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 054/18030 | T Th 4:10pm - 5:25pm 652 Schermerhorn Hall |
Andrew Slater | 3.00 | 13/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 055/14913 | T Th 5:40pm - 6:55pm 502 Northwest Corner |
Michael Schoch | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 056/14914 | T Th 5:40pm - 6:55pm 201d Philosophy Hall |
Julia Bannon | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 112/14918 | M W 1:10pm - 2:25pm 408a Philosophy Hall |
Jessica Campbell | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 141/14919 | T Th 1:10pm - 2:25pm 201d Philosophy Hall |
Kirkwood Adams | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 143/14920 | T Th 1:10pm - 2:25pm 652 Schermerhorn Hall |
Hannah Gold | 3.00 | 13/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 220/14921 | M W 2:40pm - 3:55pm 652 Schermerhorn Hall |
Genevieve Shuster | 3.00 | 12/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 227/14922 | M W 5:40pm - 6:55pm 408a Philosophy Hall |
Natalie Adler | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 244/14923 | T Th 1:10pm - 2:25pm 408a Philosophy Hall |
Kendall Collins | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 245/17216 | T Th 2:40pm - 3:55pm 476b Alfred Lerner Hall |
Evyan Gainey | 3.00 | 11/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 249/14924 | T Th 2:40pm - 3:55pm 502 Northwest Corner |
Ashley Thomas | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 252/14925 | T Th 4:10pm - 5:25pm 307 Mathematics Building |
Connor Spencer | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 324/14926 | M W 4:10pm - 5:25pm 201b Philosophy Hall |
Adrian Guo-Silver | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 325/15460 | M W 4:10pm - 5:25pm 104 Knox Hall |
Geoffrey Lokke | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 332/14927 | T Th 8:40am - 9:55am 307 Mathematics Building |
Abigail Melick | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 346/14929 | T Th 2:40pm - 3:55pm 408a Philosophy Hall |
Jehbreal Jackson | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 353/17427 | T Th 1:10pm - 2:25pm 476a Alfred Lerner Hall |
Claudia Grigg Edo | 3.00 | 13/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 406/14955 | M W 10:10am - 11:25am 307 Mathematics Building |
Grant Miner | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 415/14930 | M W 1:10pm - 2:25pm 508 Lewisohn Hall |
Tyler Grand Pre | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 416/14931 | M W 2:40pm - 3:55pm 307 Mathematics Building |
Seth Cosimini | 3.00 | 13/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 436/14932 | T Th 10:10am - 11:25am 201b Philosophy Hall |
Eman Elhadad | 3.00 | 13/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 438/14933 | T Th 11:40am - 12:55pm 652 Schermerhorn Hall |
Therese Cox | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 447/14934 | T Th 2:40pm - 3:55pm 652 Schermerhorn Hall |
Mieko Anders | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 504/14935 | M W 10:10am - 11:25am 502 Northwest Corner |
Adam Winters | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 508/14936 | M W 11:40am - 12:55pm 201b Philosophy Hall |
Elizabeth Walters | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 510/14937 | M W 11:40am - 12:55pm 502 Northwest Corner |
Adam Winters | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 531/14938 | T Th 8:40am - 9:55am 201b Philosophy Hall |
Julia Ryan | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 550/14939 | T Th 4:10pm - 5:25pm 502 Northwest Corner |
Michael Schoch | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 603/14940 | M W 8:40am - 9:55am 307 Mathematics Building |
Angelica Modabber | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 607/14941 | M W 10:10am - 11:25am 201b Philosophy Hall |
Meg Zhang | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 623/14942 | M W 4:10pm - 5:25pm 201d Philosophy Hall |
Ayesha Verma | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 630/14943 | T Th 8:40am - 9:55am 652 Schermerhorn Hall |
Kristie Schlauraff | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 705/14944 | M W 10:10am - 11:25am 201d Philosophy Hall |
Wally Suphap | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 711/14945 | M W 11:40am - 12:55pm 652 Schermerhorn Hall |
Kaagni Harekal | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 734/14946 | T Th 10:10am - 11:25am 307 Mathematics Building |
Celine Aenlle-Rocha | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 737/14947 | T Th 11:40am - 12:55pm 201d Philosophy Hall |
Pichaya Damrongpiwat | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 809/14948 | M W 11:40am - 12:55pm 201d Philosophy Hall |
Tejan Waszak | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 828/14949 | M W 5:40pm - 6:55pm 201d Philosophy Hall |
Stephanie Wambugu | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 848/14950 | T Th 2:40pm - 3:55pm 307 Mathematics Building |
Amy Barenboim | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 851/14951 | T Th 4:10pm - 5:25pm 201d Philosophy Hall |
Catherine Fisher | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 857/14952 | T Th 5:40pm - 6:55pm 307 Mathematics Building |
Gabriella Etoniru | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 901/14953 | M W 8:40am - 9:55am 502 Northwest Corner |
Charles Green | 3.00 | 14/14 |
ENGL 1010 | 926/14954 | M W 5:40pm - 6:55pm 201b Philosophy Hall |
Justin Snider | 3.00 | 14/14 |
Senior Essay Methods Seminar
ENGL UN3795 SENIOR ESSAY RESEARCH METHODS. 3.00 points.
The senior essay is, for most English majors, the most substantial research you will have produced to this point in your intellectual life. As seniors tackle their essays, they discover that the methods they used to write smaller projects often don’t transfer to a project of this size. The English Senior Essay Seminar prepares English majors to make the leap to this longer project. It guides you through the process of crafting your proposal and teaches the research methods that you will rely upon to complete your thesis in the spring. In the process, you will learn what researchers have discovered about how seasoned scholars research and write. This learning prepares you for the next stage of your writing career, whether it be in graduate school or the workplace. By the end of the semester, you will produce about 20 pages of writing toward your senior essay, some of it in rough draft form and some more polished. That writing includes an evolving set of research questions, a literature review, a senior essay proposal, an outline, and partial rough drafts of two sections of your essay
Fall 2023: ENGL UN3795
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 3795 | 001/15199 | M 6:10pm - 8:00pm Room TBA |
Jenny Davidson | 3.00 | 0/18 |
Spring 2023
Introduction to the Major
ENGL UN3001 LITERARY TEXTS & CRIT METHODS. 4.00 points.
Prerequisites: Students who register for ENGL UN3001 must also register for one of the sections of ENGL UN3011 Literary Texts, Critical Methods.
Prerequisites: Students who register for ENGL UN3001 must also register for one of the sections of ENGL UN3011 Literary Texts, Critical Methods. This course is intended to introduce students to the advanced study of literature. Students will read works from different genres (poetry, drama, and prose fiction), drawn from the medieval period to the present day, learning the different interpretative techniques required by each. The course also introduces students to a variety of critical schools and approaches, with the aim both of familiarizing them with these methodologies in the work of other critics and of encouraging them to make use of different methods in their own critical writing. This course (together with the companion seminar ENGL UN3011) is a requirement for the English Major and Concentration. It should be taken as early as possible in a students career. Fulfillment of this requirement will be a factor in admission to seminars and to some lectures
Spring 2023: ENGL UN3001
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 3001 | 001/13142 | W 2:10pm - 3:25pm 402 Chandler |
Frances Negron-Muntaner | 4.00 | 70/75 |
Fall 2023: ENGL UN3001
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
ENGL 3001 | 001/11905 | T 10:10am - 11:25am Room TBA |
Edward Mendelson | 4.00 | 54/75 |
Medieval
ENGL UN3920 MEDIEVAL ENGLISH TEXTS. 4.00 points.
Prerequisites: the instructor's permission.
The class will read the poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in the original Middle English language of its unique surviving copy of circa 1400, and will discuss both the poem's language and the poem's literary meritThe class will read the poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in the original Middle English language of its unique surviving copy of circa 1400, and will discuss both the poem's language and the poem's literary merit
Spring 2023: ENGL UN3920
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 3920 | 001/13181 | T 2:10pm - 4:00pm 401 Hamilton Hall |
David Yerkes | 4.00 | 18/18 |
CLEN GU4015 VERNACULAR PALEOGRAPHY. 4.00 points.
This class is designed to introduce graduate students (and some advanced undergraduates) to the paleography of English vernacular manuscripts written during the period ca. 700 -1500, with brief excursions into Latin and into French as it was written on the Continent. The purpose of the course is fourfold: (1) to teach students how to make informed judgments with regard to the date (and sometimes place) of origin, (2) to provide instruction and practice in the accurate reading and transcription of medieval scripts, (3) to learn and use the basic vocabulary of the description of scripts, and (4) to examine the manuscript book as a product of the changing society that produced it and, thus, as a primary source for the study of that society and its culture. In order to localize manuscripts in time and place, we also examine aspects of the written page besides the script, such as the material on which it is written, its layout and ruling, the decoration and illustration of the text, the provenance, and binding. We also examine the process of manuscript production itself, whether institutional, commercial, or personal. The history of book production and of decoration and illumination are thus considered part of the study of paleography, as is the history of patronage and that of libraries. Manuscripts are among the most numerous and most reliable surviving witnesses to medieval social and intellectual change, and they will be examined as such. To become proficient in the study of manuscripts it is necessary to look at manuscripts, as well as to read about them. The more time you are able to spend looking at manuscripts critically, in the manuals and in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the greater will be your first-hand experience and hence your reliable knowledge
Spring 2023: CLEN GU4015
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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CLEN 4015 | 001/13115 | T Th 12:10pm - 2:00pm Chang Rm Butler Library |
Christopher Baswell | 4.00 | 5/12 |
ENGL GU4790 ADVANCED OLD ENGLISH. 4.00 points.
Prerequisites: Students must have previous knowledge of Old English -- minimum one semester.
The course description will remain the same
Spring 2023: ENGL GU4790
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 4790 | 001/13197 | M 4:10pm - 6:00pm 612 Philosophy Hall |
Leslie Carpenter | 4.00 | 7/18 |
ENGL GU4791 MYSTICISM & MEDIEVAL DRAMA. 3.00 points.
(Lecture). This class is designed to interrogate the genre-boundary that has traditionally separated visionary writings from dramatic ones in the study of English medieval literature. Although this separation has long existed in scholarship, it is deeply problematic, and produces an understanding of the relationship between private devotion and publically performed religious ritual that is untenable, and does considerable violence to our understanding of the medieval imagination. As we will see, notionally "private" visionary writings and notionally "public" dramatic writings have a great deal in common, not just in terms of their overt content, but also in terms of their formal construction, their poetic devices, their favorite rhetorical maneuvers, and their articulated relationship with history and English literature. The works we will read this term are all phenomenally strange, many of them extremely difficult because of their unfamiliarity. For this reason, we will divide the semester into three sections: the first will deal with the famous medieval cycle dramas, which narrate events from the New Testament. The second section will transition to examine three important visionary texts that were written between 1370 and 1430, contemporaneous with the efflorescence of dramatic composition and performance in England, and two late Antique visionary texts that inspired them. The final section of class will turn to examine the so-called "morality plays," which emerge just slightly after the cycle dramas and after the visionary works we will have read. Since all of these works are linguistically challenging, we will work with translations in certain instances (Piers Plowman, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe). For all of the other works, we will be reading in Middle English, but you are welcome to consult translations, online summaries, or anything else that helps you get up to speed on what´s going on in the plays. Bear in mind, however, that your midterm and final will be based on the Middle English texts, so you do need to make a serious effort to read them (except in the case of Piers Plowman, which will be in modern English).
Spring 2023: ENGL GU4791
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 4791 | 001/13198 | T Th 10:10am - 11:25am 702 Hamilton Hall |
Eleanor Johnson | 3.00 | 46/60 |
Renaissance
ENGL UN3336 SHAKESPEARE II. 3.00 points.
(Lecture). Shakespeare II examines plays from the second half of Shakespeare’s dramatic career, primarily a selection of his major tragedies and his later comedies (or “romances”)
Spring 2023: ENGL UN3336
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 3336 | 001/13151 | M W 10:10am - 11:25am 503 Hamilton Hall |
Alan Stewart | 3.00 | 43/54 |
ENGL 3336 | AU1/19952 | M W 10:10am - 11:25am Othr Other |
Alan Stewart | 3.00 | 3/3 |
CLEN GU4122 RENAISSANCE IN EUROPE II. 3.00 points.
Major texts of the Renaissance both south and north of the Alps, including those of Petrarch, Valla, Machiavelli, Castiglione, Erasmus, Thomas More, and Montaigne, with special emphasis on diverse style of early modern writing and the habits of reading they encouraged
Spring 2023: CLEN GU4122
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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CLEN 4122 | 001/13123 | M W 11:40am - 12:55pm 503 Hamilton Hall |
Kathy Eden | 3.00 | 38/54 |
18th and 19th Century
ENGL UN3626 GREAT SHORT WORKS OF AMERICAN PROSE. 4.00 points.
The aim of this course is to read closely and slowly short prose masterworks written in the United States between the mid-19th century and the mid-20th century, and to consider them in disciplined discussion. Most of the assigned works are fiction, but some are public addresses or lyrical or polemical essays. We will read with attention to questions of audience and purpose: for whom were they written and with what aim in mind: to promote a cause, make a case for personal or political action, provoke pleasure, or some combination of all of these aims? We will consider the lives and times of the authors but will focus chiefly on the aesthetic and argumentative structure of the works themselves
Spring 2023: ENGL UN3626
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 3626 | 001/13168 | M 4:10pm - 6:00pm 317 Hamilton Hall |
Andrew Delbanco | 4.00 | 15/18 |
ENGL UN3789 AMERICAN NATURE WRITING TO 1900. 4.00 points.
The course is a survey of canonical texts from the American Literary Canon, with emphasis on how these writers experienced the natural world. Some of them had to deal with extreme cold, others with tropical heat. Some of them encountered abundance, others sparsity and famine. They all encountered new life forms – from marine life to birds, reptiles and animals. They had to cope with frequent earthquakes and hurricanes, and classify newly discovered species of vegetal life. What they saw, however, was read not only through the lenses of natural history, but also theologically and politically. For some, the natural world was rich with signs sent by God for them to interpret, for others it was a political space that they organized according to the a theocratic or plantation logic. The class will therefore also pay special attention to politics, and investigate how the ecological spaces that the colonists encountered shaped their politics and ethics
Spring 2023: ENGL UN3789
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 3789 | 001/13179 | M 2:10pm - 4:00pm 507 Philosophy Hall |
Branka Arsic | 4.00 | 18/18 |
ENGL UN3991 ROMANTIC MARGINS. 4.00 points.
British literature of the Romantic period, from the late eighteenth to the early nineteenth century, displays a fascination with what is on the margins. This manifests itself most memorably in the unprecedented focus on socially marginalized figures – the beggars, madmen, abandoned women, and solitary wanderers who populate the pages of Romantic poetry and fiction. The author too is often figured as an outsider in this period, someone whose authority derives specifically from his or her position of marginality, looking in from the fringes. Geographically, the peripheries of the island of Great Britain (Wales and especially Scotland) were major sites of literary experimentation in the Romantic era, while the south coast of England attracted particular interest because of the constant threat of invasion from France during these years. And of course Romantic writers famously exploited textual margins: many of the major literary works of the period make innovative use of footnotes, glosses, and other paratextual apparatus. This course considers these various aspects of Romantic marginality and the intersections between them. In addition to the work of more canonical authors (William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Walter Scott, Mary Shelley), we will be reading poems, novels, essays, and letters by writers, especially women, whose work has historically been marginalized
Spring 2023: ENGL UN3991
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 3991 | 001/13225 | Th 12:10pm - 2:00pm 522c Kent Hall |
Erik Gray | 4.00 | 12/18 |
ENGL GU4404 VICTORIAN POETRY. 3.00 points.
Open to all undergraduates (regardless of major) and graduate students.
(Lecture). This course examines the works of the major English poets of the period 1830-1900. We will pay special attention to Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning, and their great poetic innovation, the dramatic monologue. We will also be concentrating on poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Christina Rossetti, Matthew Arnold, A. E. Housman, and Thomas Hardy
Spring 2023: ENGL GU4404
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 4404 | 001/13184 | M W 10:10am - 11:25am 330 Uris Hall |
Erik Gray | 3.00 | 42/60 |
20th and 21st Century
ENGL GU4622 AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE II. 3.00 points.
(Lecture). This survey of African American literature focuses on language, history, and culture. What are the contours of African American literary history? How do race, gender, class, and sexuality intersect within the politics of African American culture? What can we expect to learn from these literary works? Why does our literature matter to student of social change? This lecture course will attempt to provide answers to these questions, as we begin with Zora Neale Hurstons Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) and Richard Wrights Native Son (1940) and end with Melvin Dixons Loves Instruments (1995) with many stops along the way. We will discuss poetry, fiction, drama, and non-fictional prose. Ohter authors include Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Gwendolyn Brooks, Malcom X, Ntzozake Shange, Audre Lorde, and Toni Morrison. There are no prerequisites for this course. The formal assignments are two five-page essays and a final examination. Class participation will be graded
Spring 2023: ENGL GU4622
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 4622 | 001/13190 | T Th 10:10am - 11:25am 503 Hamilton Hall |
Farah Griffin | 3.00 | 50/54 |
ENGL GU4110 Avant-Garde Feminist Poetry. 3.00 points.
This course will wrangle with three simple-seeming, but actually fraught and electrified questions: what does it mean to be “feminist”? What is “poetry” in the contemporary American poetry world? And what is “avant-garde?” One could read a thousand books of poetry to answer these questions, but in this course, we’ll stick to works written by women between 1990 and today. We will pay sustained, careful attention to poetic form and structure, and we will look at how formal experimentation might intersect with ethical and political realities. And, as a heuristic device, we’ll read two or three works by individual authors, to get a sense of their evolution over the course of a period of their careers
Spring 2023: ENGL GU4110
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 4110 | 001/13183 | T Th 8:40am - 9:55am 702 Hamilton Hall |
Eleanor Johnson | 3.00 | 37/60 |
ENGL UN3042 Ulysses. 4.00 points.
The seminar will look at the structure of the novel, its plan, with special attention paid to ‘The Odyssey’, but also to the variations in tone in the book, the parodies and elaborate games becoming more complex as the book proceeds. We will examine a number of Irish texts that are relevant to the making of ‘Ulysses’, including Robert Emmett’s speech from the dock, Yeats’s ‘The Countess Cathleen’ and Lady Gregory translations from Irish folk-tales
Spring 2023: ENGL UN3042
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 3042 | 001/13148 | T 12:10pm - 2:00pm 613 Hamilton Hall |
Colm Toibin | 4.00 | 20/18 |
ENGL UN3286 Freaks & Aesthetes in Fifties Families. 4 points.
Prerequisites: E-mail Professor Ross Posnock (rp2045@columbia.edu ) with the subject heading "seminar application." In your message, include basic information: your name, school, major, year of study, and relevant courses taken, along with a brief statement about why you are interested in taking the course. Admitted students should register for the course; they will automatically be placed on a wait list from which the instructor will in due course admit them as spaces become available.
We will read J.D. Salinger's Glass Family fiction, which features a group of hyper-articulate New York prodigies who experiment with Eastern religion, Robert Lowell's prose and poetry in Life Studies, a breakthrough in "confessional" subject matter, and Carson McCuller's novel A Member of the Wedding,about the coming of age of a Southern tomboy. We will also watch and discuss Nicholas Ray's film Rebel Without a Cause with James Dean, the most famous portryal of teenage rage and angst. All these works narrate crises of conformity in postwar America--the much advertised sense of "alienation"--and dramatize the possibility of alternative values and improvised families.
Spring 2023: ENGL UN3286
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 3286 | 001/13149 | T 12:10pm - 2:00pm 309 Hamilton Hall |
Ross Posnock | 4 | 12/18 |
ENTA UN3970 MAJOR 20TH CENTURY PLAYWRIGHTS. 4.00 points.
Prerequisites: the instructor's permission.
The course will trace the pattern of the evolving theatrical careers of Henrik Ibsen and Harold Pinter, exploring the nature of and relationships among key features of their emerging aesthetics. Thematic and theatrical exploration involve positioning the plays in the context of the trajectories of modernism and postmodernism and examining, in that context, the emblematic use of stage sets and tableaux; the intense scrutiny of families, friendships, and disruptive intruders; the experiments with temporality, multi-linearity, and split staging; the issues raised by performance and the implied playhouse; and the plays' potential as instruments of cultural intervention. Two papers are required, 5-7 pages and 10-12 pages, with weekly brief responses, and a class presentation. Readings include major plays of both writers and key statements on modernism and postmodernism. Application Instructions: E-mail Professor Austin Quigley (aeq1@columbia.edu) with the subject heading "Ibsen and Pinter seminar." In your message, include basic information: your name, school, major, year of study, and relevant courses taken, along with a brief statement about why you are interested in taking the course. Admitted students should register for the course; they will automatically be placed on a wait list from which the instructor will in due course admit them as spaces become available
Spring 2023: ENTA UN3970
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENTA 3970 | 001/13214 | W 4:10pm - 6:00pm 301m Fayerweather |
Austin Quigley | 4.00 | 14/18 |
ENGL GU4956 THE ASIAN AMERICAN NOVEL. 4.00 points.
What does it mean to write an Asian American novel? In this seminar, we will explore this question by examining a range of novels written by Asian American authors. I use the term “Asian American” to underscore its political importance as an identity and community formation that consolidated in the late 1960s. These novels we will read were published from the early twentieth century to as recently as earlier this calendar year. Some are bestsellers, prize winners, or have been deemed as pivotal to the development of Asian American literature and its history. Others are not. Some are well known authors; others are newer or emergent writers. Some feature characters who are Asian or Asian American. Others explicitly questions our assumptions and expectations regarding literary and cultural representations of Asians and Asian Americans. Across their work, these authors are nevertheless held together in part by their engagement with transnational relations in Asia and North America, including U.S. expansion across to the Pacific, migration and immigration legislation, labor exclusions and political resistance, and the changing dynamics of the United States in the wake of a so-called global Asian century. A guiding principle will inform our work: Asian American writers have long been interested in theorizing the novel as an artistic, literary, and political form. While the content of these novels will of course be important, we will also examine how Asian American writers have explicitly experimented with the form of the novel as a genre, including romance, bildungsroman, hybrid creative nonfiction, speculative fiction, postmodern palimpsest, YA novel, apocalyptic dystopia. To guide us in this goal, we will read scholars who have theorized the novel as a genre, we’ll also situate this work alongside the substantial history of Asian American literary scholarship on the novel
Spring 2023: ENGL GU4956
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 4956 | 001/13203 | F 10:10am - 12:00pm 302 Hamilton Hall |
Denise Cruz | 4.00 | 16/18 |
CLEN GU4565 Postcolonial Theory and Decolonization. 4.00 points.
This course will examine the major debates, contested genealogies, epistemic and political interventions, and possible futures of the body of writing that has come to be known as postcolonial theory. We will examine the relationships between postcolonial theory and other theoretical formations, including post-structuralism, feminism, Marxism, subaltern studies, Third Worldism, Global South Studies, and Decolonial Theory. We will also consider what counts as “theory” in postcolonial theory: in what ways have novels, memoirs, or revolutionary manifestos, for example, offered seminal, generalizable statements about the (settler) colonial and postcolonial condition? How can we understand the relationship between the rise of postcolonial studies in the United States and the role of the U.S. in the post-Cold War era? How do postcolonial theory and its insights about European and American imperialism contribute to analyses of contemporary globalization?
Spring 2023: CLEN GU4565
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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CLEN 4565 | 001/13127 | M 4:10pm - 6:00pm 1102 International Affairs Bldg |
Joseph R Slaughter | 4.00 | 14/18 |
CLEN GU4742 WORLD FICTION SINCE 1965. 3.00 points.
In the period since 1965, fiction has become global in a new sense and with a new intensity. Writers from different national traditions have been avidly reading each other, wherever they happen to come from, and they often resist national and regional labels altogether. If you ask the Somali writer Nuruddin Farah whether the precocious child of Maps was inspired by Salman Rushdie´s Midnight´s Children, he will answer (at least he did when I asked him) that he and Rushdie both were inspired by Sterne´s Tristram Shandy and Grass´s The Tin Drum. At the same time, the human experiences around which novelists organize their fiction are often themselves global, explicitly and powerfully but also mysteriously. Our critical language is in some ways just trying to catch up with innovative modes of storytelling that attempt to be responsible to the global scale of interconnectedness on which, as we only rarely manage to realize, we all live. Authors will include some of the following: Gabriel Garcia Márquez, Jamaica Kincaid, W.G. Sebald, Elena Ferrante, and Zadie Smith
Spring 2023: CLEN GU4742
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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CLEN 4742 | 001/13131 | M W 10:10am - 11:25am 516 Hamilton Hall |
Bruce Robbins | 3.00 | 50/54 |
ENGL GU4943 CRITICISM AND POLITICS. 4.00 points.
“Poetry makes nothing happen.” So wrote W. H. Auden, encapsulating one of the most powerful concepts in literature for the last 100 years: literature is not meant to do anything in the world, it is not directly interventionist; it is meant to stand the test of time but not to intervene in the politics of the moment or change the views of readers. This is the orthodoxy of modernism and its entrenched legacies. In this course, we will explore an alternate model of literary self-assessment: the desire to effect real changes in one’s society. “Books that Change the World” is offered as a thought exercise, a new way to conceptualize literary self-understanding and value. We will read works mostly from the 20th century, with several forays into the 19th and 21st, wondering how, if at all, these might aim to stimulate new ways of reading, thinking, responding, and indeed writing, in an activist spirit. The course is organized thematically and chronologically, with works from the U.S., England, Canada, India, and elsewhere. Each week we will read a novel (some novels are spread across two weeks), and these will often be paired with other materials, such as visual works, other literary materials, theoretical readings, etc. Themes to which these activist works are geared include: slavery and abolition; working conditions; gender and patriarchy; war and revolution; race and racism; and environmental crisis. This is a discussion seminar, and each student is expected to participate in every class meeting. The primary written work for the course is a final paper on a book of your choosing; the question will be, what work would you add to our syllabus, and why? The paper is an explanation/defense of your selection, with critical reading of the text itself along with appropriate context, and it is due at the end of the semester. Students concerned about work management can meet with me to come up with a different time-table. Weekly reading responses, posted to the Canvas page, are also required. In addition, after the first two weeks, we will begin each class with a short student presentation on the material (an outline is also required, to be shared with the group). Your grade for the course will be determined as follows: final paper (30%); presentation and outline (20%); class participation and reading responses (50%). Please note the heavy weight toward classroom participation and reading responses. If participating in class is not comfortable for you, please see me early on and we can work out some alternatives. The goal for our classroom is to be inclusive and to stimulate a positive, active learning environment for all
Spring 2023: ENGL GU4943
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 4943 | 001/16668 | M W 2:40pm - 3:55pm 503 Hamilton Hall |
Bruce Robbins | 4.00 | 28/54 |
ENGL GU4932 ESSAYISM. 4.00 points.
In the second decade of the 21 st century there is more critical attention than ever before on the essay as a literary genre and a cultural practice that crosses media, registers, disciplines, and contexts. The concept of “essayism” was redefined by the Robert Musil in his unfinished modernist novel, The Man Without Qualities (1930) from a style of literature to a form of thinking in writing: “For an essay is not the provisional or incidental expression of a conviction that might on a more favourable occasion be elevated to the status of truth or that might just as easily be recognized as error … ; an essay is the unique and unalterable form that a man’s inner life takes in a decisive thought.” In this course will explore how essays can increase readers’ andwriters’ tolerance for the existential tension and uncertainty we experience both within ourselves as well as in the worlds we inhabit. As Cheryl Wall argues, essays also give their practitioners meaningful work to do with their private musings and public concerns in a form that thrives on intellectual as well as formal experimentation. The course is organized to examine how practitioners across media have enacted essayism in their own work and how theorists have continued to explore its aesthetic effects and ethical power
Spring 2023: ENGL GU4932
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 4932 | 001/13202 | W 10:10am - 12:00pm 569 Alfred Lerner Hall |
Nicole Wallack | 4.00 | 8/18 |
Special Topics
ENGL UN3394 HOW WRITERS THINK. 4.00 points.
Prerequisites: Permission of instructor.
Prerequisites: Permission of instructor. (Seminar). This course uses contemporary philosophies of research and writing to train students to become writing center and library consultants. Readings will highlight major voices in rhetoric and composition research, with an emphasis on collaborative learning theory. We will ground our study in hands-on teaching experiences: students will shadow Columbia Writing Center consultants and research librarians and then practice strategies they learn in consultation with other students. Those who successfully complete this course will be eligible to apply for a peer writing consultant job in the Columbia Writing Center. This course is co-taught by the director of the Writing Center and the undergraduate services librarian
Spring 2023: ENGL UN3394
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 3394 | 001/13154 | W 8:10am - 10:00am 401 Hamilton Hall |
Susan Mendelsohn | 4.00 | 18/18 |
ENGL GU4561 CHILDREN'S LITERATURE. 3.00 points.
This is a historical survey of literature written principally for children (primarily narrative), which will explore not only the pleasures of imagination but the varieties of narrative and lyric form, as well as the ways in which story-telling gives shape to individual and cultural identity. Drawing on anonymous folk tale from a range of cultures, as well as a variety of literary works produced from the late 17 th century to the present, we’ll attend to the ways in which changing forms of children’s literature reflect changing understandings of children and childhood, while trying not to overlook psychological and formal structures that might persist across this history. Readings of the primary works will be supplemented by a variety of critical approaches—psychoanalytic, materialist, feminist, and structuralist—that scholars have employed to understand the variety and appeal of children’s literature.
Spring 2023: ENGL GU4561
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ENGL 4561 | 001/13188 | M W 2:40pm - 3:55pm 233 Seeley W. Mudd Building |
James Adams | 3.00 | 39/45 |
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