Current Courses
Fall 2012
Here are the English courses being offered in Fall 2012 and the different ways in which they can be used to fill the English major and the Creative Writing minor. For a full description of each course, including the Special Topics courses, click on the course numbers below.
ENG 101 (10-23): Literature and Composition
ENG 101 10: Lit & Comp MWF 8:30-9:20 Foster
ENG 101 11: Lit & Comp MWF 9:30-10:20 Walsh
ENG 101 12: Lit & Comp MWF 10:30-11:20 Harrison
ENG 101 13: Lit & Comp MWF 10:30-11:20 Staff/Post
ENG 101 14: Lit & Comp MWF 11:30-12:20 Knight
ENG 101 15: Lit & Comp MWF 12:30-1:20 Walsh
ENG 101 16: Lit & Comp MWF 1:30-2:20 Staff
ENG 101 17: Lit & Comp MWF 2:30-3:20 Meehan
ENG 101 18: Lit & Comp TTH 8:30-9:45 Daley
ENG 101 19: Lit & Comp TTH 10-11:15 Wagner
ENG 101 20: Lit & Comp TTH 11:30-12:45 Purdy
ENG 101 21: Lit & Comp TTH 11:30-12:45 Ames
ENG 101 22: Lit & Comp TTH 1-2:15 Cousineau
ENG 101 23: Lit & Comp TTH 1-2:15 Boyd
ENG 101 24: Lit & Comp TTH 2:30-3:45 Cousineau
ENG 101 25: Lit & Comp TTH 2:30-3:45 Ames
This course is intended to develop the student's capacity for intelligent reading, critical analysis, and writing through the study of literature. There are frequent writing assignments, as well as individual conferences on the student's writing.
Counts for: First-Year Graduation Requirement
ENG 103 (10-13): Introduction to Creative Writing
ENG 103 10: Intro to Creative Writing MWF 10:30-11:20 Dubrow
ENG 103 11: Intro to Creative Writing MWF 11:30-12:20 Harrison
ENG 103 12: Intro to Creative Writing TTH 11:30-12:45 Wagner
ENG 103 13: Intro to Creative Writing TTH 1-2:15 Mooney
A workshop on the forms of creative writing�primarily poetry and fiction as practiced by the students themselves. Readings in contemporary literature and craft.
Restriction: First-Year students only (fall semester).
Counts for: Creative Writing minor
ENG 205 10: (Shakespeare I)
TTH 2:30-3:45 Moncrief
This course will examine some of Shakespeare's best known earlier plays (those written before the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603) both in the context of early modern English culture and as play scripts/performances. Class discussions, with significant contributions from student papers, will explore Shakespeare's writings as products/producers of early modern culture through the consideration of issues including identity, politics, monarchy, religious conflicts, crime and justice, play and festivity, enclosure and urbanization, world exploration and colonization, nation and national identity, theatricality and theatre-going, religion, family, sexuality, and gender. Using films and live productions (if available) we will also consider the plays as they have been interpreted for performance.
Counts for: Pre-1800, Humanities distribution
Also counts toward the Drama major
ENG 207 (10-11): History of English Lit II
ENG 207 10: History of English Lit II MWF 10:30-11:20 Gillin
ENG 207 11: History of English Lit II TTH 1:00-2:15 Gillin
A survey of the development of English literature from Anglo-Saxon times to the present with attention to the historical background, the continuity of essential traditions, and the characteristic temper of successive periods. The second semester begins approximately with the Restoration in 1660.
Counts for: 200-level, Humanities distribution
ENG/AMS 209 10: Intro to American Lit I
ENG/AMS 209 10: Intro to American Lit I TTH 11:30-12:45 De Prospo
ENG/AMS 209 11: Intro to American Lit I TTH 1:00-2:15 De Prospo
Taught in the fall semester, the course is concerned with the establishment of American Literature as a school subject. Texts that have achieved the status of classics of American Literature, such as Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Thoreau's Walden, and Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, will be read in the context of the history and politics of their achieving this status. Texts traditionally excluded from the canon of American literature, in particular early Hispano- and Franco-American texts, will be considered in the context of their relative marginality to the project of establishing American Literature as worthy of being taught and studied in the American academy. Other-than-written materials, such as modern cinematic representations of the period of exploration and colonization of North America, as well as British colonial portraits and history paintings, will be studied for how they reflect on claims for the cultural independence of early America. Other-than-American materials, such as late medieval and early Renaissance Flemish and Hispanic still lifes, as well as the works of nineteenth-century European romantic poets and prose writers, will be sampled for how they reflect on claims for the exceptional character of American culture.
Counts for: 200-level, Humanities distribution
Also counts for: American Studies major
ENG/AMS/BLS 213 10: Intro to African American Lit I
MWF 10:30�11:20 Knight
This course is a survey of African American literature produced from the late 1700s to the Harlem Renaissance. It is designed to introduce students to the writers, texts, themes, conventions and tropes that have shaped the African American literary tradition. Authors studied in this course include Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Paul Laurence Dunbar and Langston Hughes. There are no prerequisites for this course; however, students are encouraged to take HIS 319 “African American History to 1865” as a co-requisite.
Counts for: 200-level, Humanities distribution
Also counts for: American Studies major, Black Studies minor
ENG 216 10: Foundations of Western Lit II
TTH 10:00-11:15 Walsh
This course will begin with an investigation of Greco-Roman mythology, and will then proceed to a study of some of the major works of Greek and Roman literature that paved the way for all subsequent Western literature. Readings will include Ovid's Metamorphoses, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, and Sophocles's Oedipus Tyrannus.
Counts for: 200-level, Humanities distribution
ENG 220 10: Intro to Fiction
MWF 2:30-3:45 Mooney
This course will survey the rich tradition of prose fiction largely, but not exclusively, in English. Emphasis will be placed on the enduring features of this genre as it evolved throughout the centuries as well as to the innovations introduced by individual writers. The literary works selected for this course will draw upon a variety of fictional forms and styles. Class discussions will include, along with close readings of the works themselves, an appreciation of the historical and cultural contexts out of which they arose and to which they gave a fictional rewriting.
Counts for: 200-level, Humanities distribution
ENG 222 10 (Intro to Poetry)
MWF 9:30-10:20 Foster
This course will provide an introduction to the study of various styles and forms of poetry. By reading a wide range of poetic styles from a number of aesthetic schools, students will consider the ways in which poetry has become a conversation across centuries, how the genre may act simultaneously as a personal and a political voice, and how it may be interpreted not only as intimate confession but also as “Supreme fiction.”
Counts for: 200-level, Humanities distribution
ENG 320 10/GEN: Eighteenth Century English Literature
TTH 11:30-12:45 Gillin
The triumph and decline of the neoclassic ideal in the eighteenth century. The course concentrates on the great figures of Swift, Pope, Johnson, and Boswell.
Counts for: Pre-1800, Elective
Also counts for: Gender Studies minor
ENG 345/BLS 345/AMS 345 The African American Novel
MWF 9:30-10:20 Knight
This course examines the origin and development of the African American novel. We will begin with the earliest novels and conclude with an analysis of contemporary novels by African American writers. We will examine novels from multiple genres and give careful attention to the intersection of race, gender, class and environment in representative novels of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.
Counts for: post-1800, Elective
Also counts for: American Studies major, Black Studies minor
ENG 347 10/AMS 347: American Environmental Writing
MWF 10:30-11:20 Meehan
The study of writing from an environmental perspective is both an emerging field in literary criticism and a rich tradition in American literary history. What does it mean to be green from a literary point of view? This course explores that question in looking at classic and contemporary authors of American environmental writing, from Henry David Thoreau to Annie Dillard to recent examples of eco-criticism. Though the primary focus will be on nonfiction prose, the traditional home of nature writing, the course will also explore environmental perspectives in poetry, fiction, and film as well as cross-disciplinary connections with the natural sciences and social sciences.
Counts toward: post-1800, elective
Also counts for: American Studies major
ENG 351 10/DRA 351 (Playwriting I)
W 1:30-4 Maloney
Counts for: Elective
Counts for: Creative Writing minor
Also counts toward the Drama major
ENG 353 10: Contemporary American Literature: Living Writers, Fiction
TTH 2:30-3:45 Mooney
This course guides a close examination of contemporary fiction written by some of the finest writers of our time, literature of our current culture that serves as context for our lives. We will proceed on the assumption, to paraphrase Josephine Hendin, that fiction offers us the opportunity to see the social patterning of our personal lives, and in that alone there is great value in its study. To make the challenges this course provides more poignant, four of the writers whose work is studied will come to Washington College to visit the class, discuss their work with students, and give a public reading from their work.
Counts for: Post-1800, elective
Counts for: Creative Writing minor
ENG 362: Literary Romanticism in the US II
W 7-9:30 De Prospo
Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman, Dickinson.
Counts for: Post-1800, Elective
ENG 390 10 Internship: Journalism
TBA McIntire
ENG 394 10: SpTp: Yeats, Joyce, Beckett
MW 2:30-3:45 Cousineau
A study of William Butler Yeats's major poems, James Joyce's short-story collection, *Dubliners*, and Samuel Beckett's plays for stage, radio, and television. The principal emphasis throughout this course will be on the relationship between tradition and innovation.
Counts for: Post-1800, Elective
ENG/AMS 394 11: SpTp: American Jewish Literature
MWF 11:30-12:20 Dubrow
This course will consider the significant role that Jewish writers have played in the shaping of 20th and 21st century American literature. In order to learn how a small community of people have responded to and have been influenced by the experience of living in the United States, students will study works of fiction, theater, and poetry. Assigned texts will trace the evolution of American Jewish writers from tentative, newly-arrived immigrants into self-assured citizens.
Counts for: Post-1800, Elective
Also counts for: American Studies major
ENG/AMS 394 12: SpTp: Approaches to Hollywood Film
TTH 10-11:15 & T 7-10
Approaches to Hollywood Film is designed to familiarize students with a variety of critical approaches to Hollywood cinema and its role in American culture. Through the study of fourteen films and various readings, students should develop a knowledge of historical, aesthetic, genre-based, auteurist, and feminist approaches to the American film industry and its products.
Counts for: Post-1800, Elective
Also counts for: American Studies major
ENG 394 13: SpTp: Writing for the Media
MWF 1:30-2:30 Harrison
This course builds writing and reporting skills with a primary focus on writing for print and web news sources including newspapers, magazines, and web news sites like Slate, Salon and the Huffington Post. Students will be able to hone their reporting and news gathering skills and develop feature stories, profiles, spot news stories, opinion pieces, wikipedia entries, and long-form journalism, travel, and other magazine feature stories. We will also discuss policy, ethics and legal issues for journalists. Students who wish to do so may also explore writing for advertising and public relations or creating a web persona and web following via social media sites like google+, twitter, and facebook.
Counts for: Elective
Counts for: Creative Writing minor
ENG 394 14/DRA 394 10: SpTp The Screenplay
TTH 11:30-12:45 Price
This course will introduce participants to the basic architecture of the film play. Instruction will concentrate on the synopsis, the treatment and sequencing. Through this exploration participants will acquire a basic understanding of conventional and experimental designs of screenwriting. Students will explore cinematic techniques that provide a vocabulary for creating tightly crafted film stories.
Counts for: Elective
Counts for: Creative Writing minor
H *ENG 410 10/DRA: Shakespeare Now: Shakespeare and Contemporary Criticism (Honors)
TTH 1-2:15 Moncrief
This course focuses on the advanced study of plays initially covered in the 200-level Shakespeare course in conjunction with the study of contemporary literary theory. The semester begins with an introduction to literary theory and methodology. Then, using plays as case studies, we will examine each play in relation to historical, seminal, or controversial criticism. Reading will concentrate on important critical approaches to the study of Shakespeare (i.e., New Criticism, Reader Response Theory, Structuralism, Post-structuralism, Psychoanalytic Criticism, Marxism, Feminism, New Historicism/ Cultural Materialism, Performance Criticism and Post-Colonialism).
Counts for: Pre-1800, elective
Also counts toward the Drama major
