Weekly writing and reading
assignments. Introduction to oral history
interviewing techniques. Oral history interviews conducted at the
local precinct and with residents of Washington Heights are meant to act as
an impetus for students to write fiction that pays direct attention to the
world and explores the connection between literary and oral storytelling
traditions. This course places emphasis on fiction as an encounter of the
individual with history, imagination with direct observation, and the writer
with form. Students will work in a variety of forms, including short fiction
and memoir. There will be in-class reading and discussion of student
work.
Readings include: Isaac Babel; William Carlos
Williams; James Joyce; Flannery O'Connor; Grace Paley; Negba Mezlekia; Flora
Nwapa; Bruno Schulz; Maria Carolina de Jesus; Driss Ben Hamed Charhadi;
Peter Handke; Jane Bowles; Cristina Garcia; Maxine Hong Kingston; Danilo
Dolci; James Ellroy; Clarice Lispector.
In this workshop, students will write, revise, read and study poems. The
craft of poetry writing will be emphasized. To explore the liberties and
constraints of composing, students will write in a variety of forms: sonnet,
ballad, villanelle, haiku, acrostic, found and concrete, as well as in
"free" verse. Weekly sessions will include in-class exercises, and peer
workshops, and discussion of readings that will range from ancient to
contemporary. Poetry videos, audio recording of poets reading, a final
student reading, and several guest poets are on the calendar. A final grade
will be determined by the student's portfolio selection of poems, and class
participation and attendance.
ENG 2331 Shakespeare I
Sect. 231
Dr. Richard L. Nochimson
MW 3:00-4:15
This course will involve reading and discussion of
approximately ten plays, most of them either comedies or plays about English
history. There will be some supplementary reading of background and
critical material.
Students will keep a journal of their reactions to
the readings. They will have a choice between two brief papers (not
involving research) or one medium-length research paper. Also, there will
be at least one trip to a theater (to see a play).
This course can be used to fulfill the 2nd
semester of the two-semester literature requirement for graduation from
Yeshiva College.
Introduction to one of the
greatest periods in world literature. The secular and religious
poetry of John Donne; the poetry of George Herbert and Andrew Marvell; the
prose of Francis Bacon and Sir Thomas Browne; the shorter works of Milton;
Paradise Lost and Samson Agonistes.
There will be a mid-term examination and a final, as
well as one short paper early in the semester and a longer one at the end
of the semester.
This course can be used to fulfill the 2nd
semester of the two-semester literature requirement for graduation from
Yeshiva College.
Nineteenth
century British literature cries out for an interdisciplinary approach,
currently best represented by a movement in critical theory called Cultural
Studies, which updates the older Victorian Studies movement. Novels like
Dickens' Hard Times and Disraeli's Sybil focused explicitly on
societal crises, while poets like Tennyson and Hardy took on social and
moral responsibilities which they felt the Romantics had shirked. In what
ways did the various novels, poems, and essays merely describe or replicate
social fault lines? Did the authors' ideas about how to palliate or
eliminate social problems go far enough, or
anywhere at all? Did novelists go further than poets because their genre
facilitated realistic social criticism? Readings will cluster around
central issues such as industrialization, urbanization, democratization, and
crises of religious doubt. In responding, some writers fell back on
traditional literary resources, but the unprecedented circumstances
propelled others toward unconventional styles and forms. Since many if not
most of our own social problems began to take on their modern forms during
the Victorian era, students should see frequent analogies with today's
issues. Through this course, you will learn to read texts closely, to
interpret literature as part of a cultural and social fabric, to imagine
what various works meant to the authors' contemporaries, and to realize why
modern and Victorian interpretations of the same work inevitably diverge.
Readings:
Houghton, Williams, Dickens, Eliot, Carlyle, Macaulay, Mill, Newman, Arnold,
Ruskin, Darwin, Huxley, Pater, E.B. Browning, Tennyson, R. Browning, Hopkins
Course
requirements: 2 short papers, a longer term paper, and a presentation.
Prerequisites: English 2001 OR 2003 OR 2004 OR permission of the
instructor.
This
course can be used to fulfill the 2nd semester of the
two-semester literature requirement for graduation from Yeshiva College.
In this survey of American literature, we will study
the works within the context of the aesthetic movements (particularly
modernism and postmodernism) of which they were a part, in the process
gaining a sense of the ideas, styles, and influences of those movements. We
will also examine how various broader political, social, and cultural forces
have shaped American literature. The works we’ll be reading include Twain,
Pudd’nhead Wilson; Whitman, “Leaves of Grass”; Fitzgerald, The
Great Gatsby; Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God; Faulkner,
As I Lay Dying; selected Modernist poetry (Eliot, Stevens, Williams,
etc.); Ginsberg, “Howl”; Plath (excerpts from The Bell Jar); O’Brien,
The Things They Carried; Robinson, Housekeeping; Vizenour,
“Feral Lasers”; and excerpts from Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions
and Cantor’s Krazy Kat.
Course Requirements include active class
participation, a 7-8 pg. paper, a midterm and final exam.
This course can be used to fulfill the 2nd
semester of the two-semester literature requirement for graduation from
Yeshiva College.
ENG 2862H James
Joyce
Sect. 341
Dr. Joan Haahr
T 4:30-5:45; R 5:15-6:30
The
goals of this course are to read Joyce’s texts closely and to explore some
of the critical debates surrounding his canon. Because Joyce was an
unusually evolutionary writer, we will study his major works in
chronological order. We will begin the term with a quick reading of
Dubliners, spend 3-4 weeks on A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,
then focus on Ulysses for most of the term, and (if we have time)
end with a few selections from Finnegan’s Wake. In addition, we will
read selections from Joyce’s poetry and early prose and explore some of the
vast critical resources of the Joyce “industry.”
Course
requirements are:
This course can be used to fulfill the 2nd
semester of the two-semester literature requirement for graduation from
Yeshiva College.
What is literature now? The
literary canon has squeezed through modernism and postmodernism and has
expanded to include cultural traditions from around the world. In this
course we will read books written within the past 20 years, identify what
traditions these books come out of, and discuss where new literary
developments may take us. Some possible authors include: Toni Morrison,
Michael Cunningham, Don DeLillo, David Foster Wallace, A.L. Kennedy, Paul
Auster, Salman Rushdie, Lorrie Moore, and Nick Hornby.
Coursework includes participation,
a journal of responses to the readings, one short essay, and one long one.
This course can be used to fulfill the 2nd
semester of the two-semester literature requirement for graduation from
Yeshiva College.
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).
Class discussion is important. Students will keep a
journal of their reaction of the readings and will write two fairly brief
papers (approx. 1000-1200 words each), neither of which will require
research.
This course can be used to fulfill either the
1st or 2nd semester of the two-semester literature
requirement for graduation from Yeshiva College.
The primary goal of the semester will be to gain a
greater understanding and appreciation for some of the masterpieces of
Western literature. The reading will span the later Ancient, Middle Ages,
Renaissance, Enlightenment, and Romantic periods, as well as the
Realism/Naturalism of the 20th century. Active and attentive
reading of the texts will be stressed as the content, form, and style will
be closely examined. Each text will be placed within its historical,
philosophical, and cultural context. Students will be encouraged to think,
read, discuss, and write critically about the literature. The readings will
be selected from the New Testament, and the works of St. Augustine, Dante,
Chaucer, Montaigne, Machiavelli, Cervantes, Swift, Moliere, Rousseau,
English Romantic poets, Whitman, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Ibsen, Kafka,,
and 20th century American poets.
In addition to the readings, course requirements
will include a take-home mid-term and a take-home final exam (both requiring
the writing of mid-length essays) as well as a long paper on one full-length
work outside of the syllabus.
This course can be used to fulfill either the
1st or 2nd semester of the two-semester literature
requirement for graduation from Yeshiva College.
A chronological survey of the major works from the
New Testament to the present: The development of Christianity
in the New Testament, Augustine's Confessions, and Dante's
Divine Comedy; the great schism, in the debate between Erasmus and
Luther; the rise of the skeptical spirit in Machiavelli, Montaigne,
Cervantes, and of the scientific spirit in Galileo; the Enlightenment
celebration of reason; the Romantic emphasis on the emotions; the Modern
spirit of uncertainty and pessimism.
There will be a mid-term examination and a final, as
well as one short paper early in the semester and a longer one at the end
of the semester.
This course can be used to fulfill either the
1rst or 2nd semester of the two-semester literature
requirement for graduation from Yeshiva College.
ENG 4551H
Nietzsche: English/Political Science Honors Elective
Sect. 231
Dr. Ruth Bevan & Dr. Elizabeth Stewart
MW 3:00-4:15
Friedrich Nietzsche, the great iconoclast and
forerunner--if not institutor-- of postmodernism, forces us, by way of his
questioning and lampooning of the fundamental
values of Western civilization (Christianity, progress, democracy and its
associative identity categories) to rethink and re-evaluate this Western
heritage.
This interdisciplinary English-Political Science
course focuses on the importance of Nietzsche’s thought in political
philosophy, in literature, and in literary theory. The three main objectives
of the course are to 1) introduce students to this pivotal thinker and his
continuing influence, 2) to expose students to the Nietzschean
ground-breaking notion of interpretation and critical analysis, and 3) to
stimulate interdisciplinary thinking.
Topics include Nietzsche’s notions of “the
political”: power, leadership, and excellence; his theories of metaphor,
style, and rhetoric; his deconstructions of “identity,” “truth,” and “being”
into the workings of interpretation and will to power; the idea of the
“world” as a world of “play” and “eternal return.”
Readings include Nietzsche’s major texts; key texts
by Machiavelli, Leo Strauss, Plato, and Hannah Arendt; literary texts by
Euripides, Thomas Mann, R.M. Rilke, and Peter Shaffer; theoretical texts by
Foucault, Derrida, and Deleuze. Two film screenings and a lecture on
Nietzsche and the music of Wagner, Strauss, and Mahler.
Course requirements include weekly interrogative
response to readings (1/2-1 page), 3 short papers (4-5 pages); oral
presentation of work-in-progress for longer paper (approximately 10
pages); 1 longer paper.
Prerequisites: This course is intended for students with JUNIOR or
SENIOR standing only.
This seminar will discuss the concept and material
form of the book—past, present, and future—a subject that has been central
both to literary and art history and to the history of critical and cultural
theory, especially during the last several decades. Accordingly, beyond
engaging with a number of major literary and theoretical works, the course
will serve both as a comprehensive introduction to a particular subject, the
idea of the book, and as a survey of the current state and scope of critical
and cultural theory.
We’ll begin by studying fictional texts that
self-consciously engage with their own textuality and explore, or “play” on,
the interrelationship between form and meaning in writing and reading
literary works (among them, Swift’s “The Battle of the Books,” Sterne’s
Tristram Shandy, and Calvino’s If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler).
We will then review the history of the book as a form of information
technology and investigate the relationship between that technology and the
ways in which we perceive and think about the world. Readings in this
section will include Plato’s Phaedrus; Derrida’s “The End of the Book
and the Beginning of Writing”; Hugo’s “This Will Kill That” from
Notre-Dame of Paris; McLuhan’s, The Medium is the Message;
Foucault’s, “What is an Author”; and Barthes’s “From Work to Text.” We’ll
move on to artists’ books (among them, Phillips’s A Humument) that
question various cultural, social and aesthetic functions of the book by
re-imagining what the book is or could become. Finally, we’ll look at such
contemporary forms of the book as graphic novels (Danielewski’s House of
Leaves) and hypertext narratives (Joyce’s afternoon, a story),
and consider the possible futures of the book and how it may shape the
futures of literature and culture, and the ways we think about them.
Course requirements: Several short response papers,
an in-class presentation, a research project, and a cumulative final exam.
Prerequisites: This course is intended for advanced
literature majors. Students should have completed at least four upper-level
literature courses prior to enrollment in the class.
