Global Arc

In this course, we will both read from various trajectories of queer literature and engage what it means to read queerly. We will consider the historical etymology of the term queer and think through its affiliate terms and acronyms: lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans. We will investigate how discourses of power and institutions of normativity have come up against queer bodies, narratives, and politic--and how such encounters are historically situated. As the class reads through texts that range across both region and time, we will pay close attention to the ways in which desire, gender, and sexuality are queerly told.

What does Jewishness mean? Is it ethnicity or religion? Identity or culture? Belief or practice? How do performance and theater answer or illuminate these questions? We'll consider plays and performances, bodies and texts, performers and spectators, history, memory, and the present.

A close study of the works of one or two authors. May include Austen, Dickinson, Wordsworth, George Eliot, Dickens, Melville, Faulkner, James, Stevens, or Woolf, among others. Two 90-minute seminars.

A close study of the works of one or two authors. May include Austen, Dickinson, Wordsworth, George Eliot, Dickens, Melville, Faulkner, James, Stevens, or Woolf, among others. One three-hour seminar.

A close study of the works of one or two authors. May include Austen, Dickinson, Wordsworth, George Eliot, Dickens, Melville, Faulkner, James, Stevens, or Woolf, among others. One three-hour seminar.

A close study of the works of one or two authors. May include Austen, Dickinson, Wordsworth, George Eliot, Dickens, Melville, Faulkner, James, Stevens, or Woolf, among others. One three-hour seminar.

Courses offered under this rubric will investigate ethical questions in literature. Topics will range from a critical study of the textual forms these questions take to a historical study of an issue traditionally debated by both literature and ethics (responsibility, rhetoric, justice, violence, oppression). Two lectures, one preceptorial.

Approaches to the connections between literature and nationality, focusing either on literatures outside the Anglo-American experience or on the theoretical issues involved in articulating nationality through literature. Two 90-minute seminars.

Approaches to the connections between literature and nationality, focusing either on literatures outside the Anglo-American experience or on the theoretical issues involved in articulating nationality through literature. Two lectures, one preceptorial.

The "art of losing isn't hard to master," claims modern poet Elizabeth Bishop. Humans write elegies because we are shredded by loss. Yet, the genre of elegy in English isn't easy to account for. This course starts where English does--in the Anglo-Saxon period. Old English lyrics, prose reflections, and the epic Beowulf are searing witnesses to yearning and regret. Paradoxically, these texts celebrate loss, even as they console. What could be mourned, and who grieve? What is this "English" sense of loss? In readings comparative and critical, we'll discover how millenium-old speakers comprehended and perhaps mastered their losses.