Yeshiva College Department of English
SPRING 2005
English 1407
Expository Writing: Writing
New York
Prof. Nadine
Kavanaugh Sec. 261 M 6:45-9:15 pm
This is an advanced writing course with New York City as
its topic. Students will be asked to interact with New York by both reading
about it and going forth into it, to respond intellectually and emotionally to
the city, and to translate these responses into prose. The class will be part
seminar, part workshop, and may include field trips or class meetings off
campus. Members of the class will be expected to read their classmates’ work and
respond to it in a productive manner.
Likely readings include essays such as Joan Didion’s “Goodbye To All That” and
E.B. White’s “Here Is New York,” and selections from books like Phillip Lopate’s
Waterfront and Colson Whitehead’s The Colossus of New York. We
will also read articles and reviews from periodicals such as The New York
Times and The New Yorker. Students will write several short pieces
based on these readings and each student will also develop a longer piece on a
topic of his choice.
English
1721 Introduction to
Creative Writing
Dr. Barbara
Blatner Sec 361 T 6:45-9:15 pm
In this course,
students will write fiction, poetry and drama. Emphasis will be placed on
craft, critique, and the work of published writers as models. Each week
students will practice in-class exercises, discuss readings, and workshop the
writing of classmate peers. Several New York writers will visit the class. The
semester will conclude with a reading of work. Grades will be based on weekly
writings, a final portfolio of work, and energy of participation.
ENG 2003
British Literature: Medieval through
Shakespeare
Dr. Joan Haahr
Sec. 231 MW 3-4:15
This course will focus on major developments in British
literature, language, and culture, beginning with the Anglo-Saxon period and
concluding with a play by Shakespeare. Through close reading of selected texts,
the class will:
·
Become familiar with the distinctive voices of a
range of British writers from the early and late Middle Ages and the early
Renaissance;
·
Get acquainted with various literary genres and
their specific characteristics;
·
Explore the relationships between literature and
historical events, cultural issues, beliefs, and values, sometimes with the aid
of supplementary background readings (some of them online);
·
Develop strategies for reading and evaluating
texts perceptively, critically, and analytically, both in class discussion and
in writing.
Requirements: regular class attendance and participation;
six 15-minute quizzes (given approximately every other week); one short
analytical essay (4-5 pages); one longer essay (8-10 pages); a comprehensive
final examination.
This course can be used to fulfill either the 1st
or the 2nd semester of the two-semester literature requirement
for graduation from Yeshiva College.
English 2004
British Literature: Donne through the
Romantics
Dr. Joan Haahr Sec. 251 MW 5:00-6:15
This course will survey poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and drama by major British
authors of the renaissance, reformation, restoration, eighteenth century and
early nineteenth century. Through close
reading of selected texts, the class will:
·
Become familiar with the distinctive voices of
writers of the period (including Donne, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Swift, Johnson,
Austen, Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley and Keats);
·
Become acquainted with various literary approaches
and modes of interpretation;
·
Explore the relationship between literature and
broader cultural issues, sometimes with the aid of supplementary background
readings (some of them online);
·
Develop strategies for reading and evaluating
texts perceptively, critically, and analytically, both in class discussion and
in writing.
Requirements: regular class attendance and participation;
six 15-minute quizzes (given approximately every other week); one short
analytical essay (4-5 pages); one longer essay (8-10 pages); a comprehensive
final examination.
This course can be used to fulfill either the 1st
or the 2nd semester of the two-semester literature requirement
for graduation from Yeshiva College.
English 2005
British Literature: Victorian to
Contemporary
Dr. Pamela Brown Sec.
361 T Th 6:45-8:00
pm
This course will seek to elaborate a
number of related ideas in selected texts from the 19th century to the present.
Themes will include ownership and usurpation, the question of the stranger,
meaning, truth, and the human condition, theories of language, and
being-in-the-world. Authors will include Emily Bronte, Joseph Conrad, James
Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Samuel Beckett, and J.M. Coetzee.
Requirements: approximately 20 pp. of
writing, mid term exam and final exam.
English 2010
Interpreting Texts
Dr. Will Lee Sec.
231 MW
3:00-4:15
This course will familiarize students with a range of major
contemporary frameworks of interpretation — especially textual, reader response,
and cultural theories. By applying these frameworks to specific texts, students
will come to understand that the perceived meaning of a text depends on explicit
and implicit critical assumptions, not just a "naive reading" of the text at
hand. They will learn to appreciate the significance of various literary works
and various kinds and genres of literature. The ultimate goal will be a
complex, multi-pronged, multilevel understanding of literature and, more
generally, of the interpretation of all written and oral uses of language.
Brief lectures will punctuate guided Socratic discussions of theories, passages,
terms, concepts, and issues. Texts will include Lois Tyson’s Critical Theory
Today, poems, short stories, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Conrad’s Heart
of Darkness, and Athol Fugard’s “Master Harold” and the Boys.
Requirements: attendance and participation, 3 essays, two
focused revisions, and a final exam.
This course can be used to fulfill either the 1st
or the 2nd semester of the two-semester literature requirement
for graduation from Yeshiva College.
English 2010
Interpreting
Texts
Dr. Paula Geyh
Sec. 341 T 4:30-5:45, Th 5:15-6:30
This course will introduce students to different theoretical approaches to
literature defining current literary studies. The course material is organized
in clusters of literary, theoretical, and critical texts in order to show how
they work together and reciprocally shape one another. The course begins with a
discussion of three founding texts of the Western tradition--Sophocles’s
Oedipus the King, on the literary side, and Plato’s dialogues and
Aristotle’s Poetics, on the theoretical side. The goal of this
discussion is to see how these works, especially Plato’s and Aristotle’s, both
establish the Western critical tradition and, against their own grain, open up a
critique of this tradition, including of their own key ideas. The course will
then proceed to examine several important contemporary paradigms of literary
criticism using key theoretical texts and representative works of literature
(including works by Conrad, James, Woolf, and Pynchon). Among the paradigms
we’ll be exploring are the psychoanalytic (via Freud and Lacan), Marxist (via
Marx, Althusser, and Williams), feminist (via Woolf, Beauvoir, Cixous, and
Butler), and postmodernist (via Lyotard and Jameson).
Requirements:
- class participation and attendance (10%)
- one 2-3 page paper (10%)
- one 7-8 page paper (30%)
- a midterm and final exam (50%)
This course can be used to fulfill either the 1st
or the 2nd semester of the two-semester literature requirement
for graduation from Yeshiva College.
English 2201
World Literature: Ancient and Classical
Dr. Richard L. Nochimson
Sec. 211 MW 1:30-2:45
This course is a survey of writings
from Ancient and Classical Greece and Classical Rome. The probable list of
authors is as follows: Homer ("The Odyssey"), Sappho, Aeschylus, Sophocles,
Euripides, Aristophanes, Plato, Aristotle, Plautus, Catullus, Ovid, Petronius,
Lucian, and Virgil ("The Aeneid," as translated by Allen Mandelbaum, a graduate
of Yeshiva College and once a member of the Yeshiva College English Department).
Class discussion is important.
Students will keep a journal of their reactions to the readings and will write
two fairly brief papers (approximately 1000-1200 words each), neither of which
will require research.
This course can be used to fulfill
either the 1st or the 2nd semester of the two-semester literature
requirement for graduation from Yeshiva College.
English 2202
World
Literature: Postclassical to Contemporary
Dr. Manfred Weidhorn
Sec. 261 MW 6:45-8:00 pm
A chronological survey of the major
works from the New Testament to the present. Objectives: [1] To teach students
how to think by showing the role of assumptions in all forms of thought and by
exposing them to unfamiliar value systems; [2] to stimulate students to know
themselves and understand others (e.g., do they really disagree with Machiavelli
on whether the end justifies the means?); [3] to provide an overview of Western
Civilization and a resulting insight into how we got to where we are (i.e., a
secular, pluralist, and allegedly pagan and immoral society); [4] to expose
students to great works from various disciplines, nations, and periods, works
dealing with "the best that has been thought," as well as to familiarize them
with the intellectual currency of the secular society in which they propose to
thrive; [5] to entertain a series of conjectures on the ultimate question--What
is the design of the universe and, consequently, the meaning of life?
Outline: The development of
Christianity as see in its three greatest literary works: the New Testament,
Augustine's Confessions, Dante's Commedia; the rise of the heterodox or
skeptical spirit in Machiavelli, Rabelais, Erasmus, Luther, Montaigne, Cervantes
and of the scientific spirit in Galileo; the Enlightenment celebration of
reason; the Romantic emphasis on the emotional life; the modern spirit of
uncertainty and pessimism.
One mid-term examination [25%], a
final [50%], a short paper and a longer one [5+20%]
Attendance is important and
intellectual curiosity is mandatory.
This course can be used to fulfill
either the 1st or the 2nd semester of the two-semester literature
requirement for graduation from Yeshiva College.
English 2332 Shakespeare
II
Dr. Richard L. Nochimson
Sec. 231 MW 3:00-4:15
Reading and discussion of 8 plays:
"Hamlet," "Measure for Measure," "Macbeth," "Coriolanus," "Antony and
Cleopatra," "The Winter's Tale," "King Lear," and "The Tempest." Supplementary
background or critical readings for
most of the plays.
Students will keep an informal
journal of reactions to the plays and other readings. For papers, there will be
two options. Option A: a review of a live performance of a play by Shakespeare
(approx. 1000 words) and a brief research paper (min. 2000 words). Option B: an
analysis of some critical material (approx. 1000 words), a review of a live
performance of a play by Shakespeare (approx. 1000 words), and a very brief
response to a live performance of another play by Shakespeare (approx. 500
words).
This course can be used to fulfill
the 2nd semester of the two-semester literature requirement for graduation from
Yeshiva College.
English 2611
American Literature Through the Civil War
Dr. Joanne Jacobson
Sec. 341 T 4:30-5:45, Th 5:15-6:30
This course will examine writing from the time of the
earliest European explorations of North America through the Civil War. We will
be particularly concerned with literature’s role in dialogues between “old” and
“new” worlds and in the development of modern notions of “literature” and of
“America.” Our discussion will therefore focus especially on the relationship
between literature and cultural transition: on the ways in which writing and
reading literature became legitimated in this country; on the part that our have
played in defining, and re-defining, the terms of community and nationhood; on
evolving notions of human authority, potential, and creativity; on shifting
attitudes toward (cultural, gender, racial) difference; and on the emergence of
an urban industrial society.
Writers discussed will include: Columbus; Cabeza de Vaca;
Rowlandson; Franklin; Irving; Poe; Douglass; Emerson; Thoreau; Hawthorne;
Melville; Whitman.
Students will be required to write two critical essays, and
to take a mid-term exam and a final exam.
This course can be used to fulfill either the 1st semester
or the 2nd semester of the two-semester literature requirement
for graduation from Yeshiva College.
English 2612 American
Literature: 1865-to the present
Prof. Allison Smith Sec.
261 MW 6:45-8:00 pm
In this survey of American literature, we will focus
on works produced from the late 19th century to the present, a period marked by
rapid and intense change. Devoting careful attention to major literary
movements such as Modernism and Postmodernism, we will examine literary trends,
techniques, and motifs that developed over this time period. Crucial to our
exploration will be an examination of the historical, social, and political
contexts in which the texts were produced and an investigation of how these
contexts shaped changing ideas about race, gender, class, and the very
boundaries of American literature.
The texts that we will examine will likely include:
Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson, Cahan’s Yekl, Chopin’s The
Awakening, Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Modernist selections (Eliot
and Stein), Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!, Hurston’s Their Eyes Were
Watching God, Miller’s The Crucible, Beat selections (Kerouac and
Ginsberg), and Postmodern selections (Pynchon, O’Brien, and Alexie).
This course can be used to fulfill either the 1st semester
or the 2nd semester of the two-semester literature requirement
for graduation from Yeshiva College.
English 2612
American Literature: 1865 to the Present
Prof. Clarence H. Robertson Sec.
311 T Th 1:30-2:45
Literature is both reflective and generative. It both
mirrors our world and participates in the production of our world. It shapes the
world we see, the way we see this world, and the way we see ourselves. For
example, while literature reflected the rise of industrialism, the growing
dominance of a market economy, and the emergence of an apparently permanent
lower class in America, it also participated in the naturalization of these
social forces, and in the construction of our selves in relation to these social
forces. While literature both illustrated and often critiqued racism, sexism,
classism and homophobia, it also, often within the same text, naturalized many
of these very discourses. This course will engage the American literary
landscape from 1865 to the present through the many theoretical and
philosophical traditions that emerged during this time period. There will be a
midterm exam, a final exam, and two short papers.
This course can be used to fulfill either the 1st or
the 2nd semester of the two-semester literature requirement for graduation from
Yeshiva College.
English 2961 Contemporary
Literature
Dr. Paula Geyh Sec.
331 T 3:00-4:15, Th 3:45-5:00
This course explores “the postmodern condition” as it is portrayed in
contemporary, multinational literature. Through the literature, we’ll explore
some of the central issues of postmodernity, including textuality and meaning;
memory and history; subjectivity and gender; postcolonialism, ethnicity and
hybridity; and the rise of technoculture. Among the texts we may be reading are
DeLillo, White Noise; Morrison, Beloved; Borges, selected stories;
Calvino, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler; Rushdie, Shame; Sebald,
Austerlitz; Perec, Things; Wittig, Guerilleres; Sacco,
Safe Area Gorazda; and Gibson, Neuromancer. In order to develop a
more thorough understanding of these issues, the literary readings will be
supplemented by theoretical essays by Lyotard, Jameson, Barthes, Cixous, and
others.
Requirements:
-
Steady attendance and participation in class discussions
(10% of grade)
-
Several short papers explicating key concepts/issues (10%
of grade)
-
A midterm and a final examination (60%)
-
A final paper (8-10 pgs) (20%)
This course can be used to fulfill
the 2nd semester of the two-semester literature requirement for graduation from
Yeshiva College.
English 3189
Comedy and Satire
Dr. Manfred Weidhorn
Sec. 251 MW 5:00-6:15
A mainly chronological survey of some
of the greatest comic works in the Western tradition, in various literary genres
and from various countries. We will begin with a series of one-liners by
probably the first stand-up comic, Mark Twain, in order to define what is
"comedy," "comic." Then we will do plays by the first great comedy writer (and
inventor of imaginative literature), the ancient Greek Aristophanes, followed by
Roman plays by Plautus and Terence. Boccaccio's short stories represent the
Middle Ages and Erasmus the Renaissance. Moliere is the purest, most universal
of comic writers, while Swift is the most destructive. We will conclude with
Byron's breezy Don Juan.
One mid-term examination [25%], a
final [50%], a short and a longer paper [5+20%].
Attendance is important and a sense
of humor is mandatory.
This course can be used to fulfill
the 2nd semester of the two-semester literature requirement for graduation from
Yeshiva College.
English
3316 The English Novel II
Dr. Joan Haahr
Sec. 341 T 4:30-5:45, Th 5:15-6:30
This course will survey representative canonical novels written in English from
the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century. In the first section of the
course, we will examine the formal evolution towards literary modernism as
revealed in the work of two late Victorian and two early modernist novelists,
looking at the varied ways these writers confront history, culture, individual
identity, and literary aesthetics. Later in the course, we will turn our
attention to the complex historical and cultural tensions between “colonialist”
fictions and the “postcolonial” fictional responses of the formerly colonized.
Towards Modernism: George Eliot, Middlemarch;
Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure;
James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man;
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse.
Colonialism and Post-Colonialism: Joseph Conrad,
Heart of Darkness; Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart; E. M. Forster,
A Passage to India; Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children.
Requirements:
·
Regular attendance and active class participation.
·
A weekly critical question or comment (short
written responses to the readings), submitted to the entire class via e-mail.
·
A midterm “response paper” of 4-5 pages.
·
An 8-10 page final paper.
·
A final examination.
This course can be used to fulfill
the 2nd semester of the two-semester literature requirement for graduation from
Yeshiva College.
English/History 3622H
Jewish
New York
Dr. Jeffrey
Gurock, Dr. Hadassa Kosak, Dr. Joanne Jacobson
Sec.
461 W
6:45-9:15 pm
This course examines, chronologically, the emergence and
development of a rich and complex Jewish culture—and cultures—in New York City
since the end of the nineteenth century. The course will use a team-taught,
interdisciplinary (literature, film, television; social, cultural, religious
history) approach to explore key arenas of community, tension and change—work
and worship on the turn-of-the-twentieth-century Lower East Side; political,
economic and ethnic conflict between the world wars; post-World War II
suburbanization; and the legacy of the Holocaust—and to locate them within the
general history and literature of the metropolis and of larger themes in Jewish
history of the time. Several class sessions will take place at off-campus sites
in “Jewish New York,” or will present guest lecturers working in this field.
Requirements:
(1) completion of assigned readings and participation in
class discussion;
(2) three 5-page critical essays, each of which will
involve using primary materials from outside the course syllabus to approach
“Jewish New York” from a different methodological angle;
(3) a take-home final project involving original research
and the synthesis of materials and issues presented throughout the course.
This course can be used to fulfill
the 2nd semester of the two-semester literature requirement for graduation from
Yeshiva College.
English 4551
Topics in Literature: Science Fiction
Dr. Elizabeth Stewart
Sec.
231 MW 3:00-4:15
Major Science Fiction texts, from H.G.
Wells to Cyberpunk. Representative
texts from the first wave of modern
SF (Abbott, Wells, Huxley), the “Golden
Age” of SF (Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke,
Twilight Zone), the New Wave (Lem,
Philip K. Dick, Le Guin),
“mainstream”/SF hybrids (Vonnegut, DeLillo), and
Cyberpunk (Gibson, Greg Bear). Films
will include 2001 Space Odyssey and Blade
Runner.
We will examine SF as speculative fiction that projects scientific
fantasies and mythologies of
technology, and that is concerned with questions
of identity, the nature of memory and
language, philosophies of history and
time, alternative universes and
epistemologies, and more.
This course can be used to fulfill
the 2nd semester of the two-semester literature requirement for graduation from
Yeshiva College.
►► Please
note: Although the prerequisite for all English Department literature and
advanced writing courses is English 1101-1102 or 1931H-1932H, students who are
considering an English major are encouraged to request permission to enroll in
these courses concurrently with the 2d course in each Composition sequence.
