Global Arc

This course looks at the construction of "Chinatown" -- as historic reality, geographic formation, architectural invention, and cultural fantasy -- in the heart of America. We will study novels, plays, films, and photography that focus on or use Chinatown as a central backdrop -or even as a conspicuous absence -- in ways that highlight the complex relationship between material history and social imagination when it comes to how America incorporates, or fails to digest, its racial or immigrant "others".

This course explores the intimate relationship between literature, fashion, and various modes of self-fashioning and unfashioning. We will study novels, films, and photography that highlight the relationship among material histories, social fabrics, and notions of the corporeal and the human. Along the way, we will unsettle the easy yet stubborn distinction between surface and interiority.

Love is a many splendored thing. Love is dangerous. Love is a drug. Love is carnal ecstasy. Love is supernatural sympathy. Love is a subject of art; loving well is an art in itself. Many experiences, emotions, actions, and ideals travel under the name of romantic love. This course will contrast the wild and wide depictions of romance in drama, fiction, letters, poetry, and other mediums: from medieval courtiers to modern blues musicians, from yearning love letters to ecstatic sonnets. Why do we worship and worry about this singular feeling? What do the different forms and phases of love's passions have to tell us about being human?

If we remember one thing about ancient myths, it is not to read them literally: Icarus didn't really fall into the sea because he flew too close to the sun. In this class, we will explore the frequently contentious debates about how to interpret myth as they played out in Europe from about 1500-1750. As we shall see, writing about myths ("mythography") mattered to the early moderns as a powerful way of making arguments about topics including politics, philosophy, religion, science, and sexuality. We will consider the histories of literature, ideas, and visual art, and treat authors ranging from Boccaccio and Machiavelli to Milton and Newton.

Students learn to write clear and persuasive criticism in a workshop setting while becoming familiar with a variety of critical practices and research methods. The course culminates in the writing of a junior paper. Each section will pursue its own topic; students are assigned according to choices made during sophomore sign-ins. Required of all English majors. One three-hour seminar.

Fundamental questions about the nature, function, and value of literary theory. A small number of strategically selected theoretical topics, including exemplary literary works as reference points for discussion. One three-hour seminar.

A study of particular developments in criticism and theory, from Aristotle to Nietzsche. The course will also consider the relation of contemporary criticism to movements and issues such as deconstruction, feminism, psychoanalysis, and cultural materialism. One three-hour seminar.

This new film genre course addresses the cultural heritage of our national cinema. \How has cinema shaped American culture, and how has American culture shaped cinema? We will focus on iconic figures in American film: cowboys, gangsters, detectives, soldiers, aliens, machines, lovers, orphans, monsters, teenagers. Each week will pair an early film with a later one to trace a given genre's evolution; for example, the week on westerns might pair John Ford's "The Searchers" (1956) with Ang Lee's "Brokeback Mountain" (2005). The course studies not art house films but commercial Hollywood films that serve as important barometers of their times.

An intensive introduction to the English language spoken and written in the British Isles approximately 500 to 1100 C.E., leading to a critical survey of the literature. Attention is paid both to linguistic questions and to the cultural context of such poems as Beowulf and the Dream of the Rood. Two 90-minute seminars.

A study of the Middle English texts that span the period from the Norman Conquest to the Tudor Renaissance, with attention paid to Middle English as a language. Readings will be chosen from verse romance, drama, political and religious writings, romance and/or lyric. One three-hour seminar.