Vassar College Department of English

II. Intermediate Studies

205b

Composition:  Sections of Composition are open by application to the department.  No writing sample is required, but an application form must be completed prior to the end of the pre registration period. These forms are available in the English office.  Spaces in the course are assigned according to the students' preferences and the priorities indicated in the College Catalogue.  All sections are writing intensive, but the focus of the individual sections will vary.  See descriptions below.

205.51

Mr. Crawford                  F            10:30-12:30 

Composition:

This course relies on the critical appreciation of both published work and student work. Paying less attention to the distinctions between literary forms than to effective strategies and solutions, we'll read such varied poets and prose writers and poets as Bishop, Babel,  Bloom, Carver, Cheever, Chekhov, Dickey, Faulkner, Frost, Joyce, Kafka, Lawrence, Levertov, McEwan, Munro, Nabokov, O'Connor, Paley, Sexton, Updike, Welty, and Yeats.  Since the course is both a seminar and a workshop, students will be asked to participate in class discussions, as well as to present their own work.

205.52

  Mr. Means              T            1:00-3:00

Composition:

This course will focus on the writing of narrative forms, in particular the short story.  Exercises will be assigned along with close reading of established masters in order to supplement our own attempts at writing.  Students will be asked to cross genres from fiction to poetry, although the emphasis will be the short story.  A final portfolio of creative work will be required at the end of the semester.  Readings might include works by Beckett, Welty, Babel, Chekhov, along with contemporary writers (on the fiction side), and Yates, Williams, and many contemporary poets  (on the poetry side).

205.53

Mr. Sassone        R                     3:10-5:10

Composition:

  This course will develop the student's abilities as a rigorous writer and reader of creative prose, with a particular emphasis on short fiction. Students will be expected to produce short exercises, stories, and comprehensive revisions and to participate actively in discussions of peer and published work. The syllabus will be flexible according to the emerging needs of the class. Frequent conferences with the instructor will be required.

205.55

Mr. Sassone        F            1:00-3:00

Composition:

This course will develop the student's abilities as a rigorous writer and reader of creative prose, with a particular emphasis on short fiction. Students will be expected to produce short exercises, stories, and comprehensive revisions and to participate actively in discussions of peer and published work. The syllabus will be flexible according to the emerging needs of the class. Frequent conferences with the instructor will be required.

206b

Composition:

Study and practice of various forms of prose and poetry.  Open to any student who has taken English 205 or an equivalent course.  Registration is by draw number as in any other course.  Special permission is not required.  No application form is required.
One 2-hour period and individual conferences with the instructor.

206.51

Mr. Russell        M            3:10-6:10 

Composition: Techniques of realist fiction.

206.52

Ms. Wallace         T            3:10-6:10

Composition:

This course focuses on short forms--poems, short short stories, short creative non-fiction, lyrical essays, prose poems--with the understanding that sometimes there's a lot of slippage between these forms. We use some collections, such as David Lehman's The Great American Prose Poem, and Best America Poems of 2009, as well as selections from the work of such writers as Eula Biss, Italo Calvino, Anne Carson, Matthew Dickman, Joan Didion, Lydia Davis, Tony Hoagland, Jamaica Kinkaid, Lorrie Moore, Frank O'Hara, Sharon Olds, Kay Ryan. Class time is divided between discussion of assigned readings and workshop sessions focused on class members's drafts. Frequent conferences.

206.53

Mr. Means                               R            3:10-5:10

Composition:

This course will focus on the writing of narrative forms, in particular the short story.  Students will be asked to cross genres from fiction to poetry, although the emphasis will be on finding your own unique voice, subject, and style in the short story.  An independent reading/inspiration project will be required. In addition we'll be examining other art forms (music, photography, painting) in relation to the story, and reading a wide range of short fiction, from traditional to experimental, along with Italo Calvino's book, Six Memos for the Next Millennium and Donald Barthelme's Not-Knowing.  The class will operate in a collaborative workshop format. Frequent conferences with the instructor will be required.

207 a or b  Literary Nonfiction

Study and practice of literary nonfiction in various forms.  Reading and writing assignments may include personal, informal, and lyric essay, travel and nature writing, writing, memoirs.  Frequent short writing assignments.
One 2-hour course and individual conferences with the instructor.

207.51

Mr. Laymon                                              M            3:10-5:10

Literary Nonfiction

This course will be an extensive exploration into the reading and writing of literary/creative nonfiction.

208 a or b Literary Nonfiction

Development of the student's abilities as a reader and writer of literary nonfiction, with emphasis on longer forms. Assignments may include informal, personal, and lyric essays, travel and nature writing, memoirs.
Prerequisite: open to students who have taken English 207 or by permission of the instructor.
One 3-hour period and individual conferences with the instructor.
Not offered "b" semester.

210.51

Ms. Kane                                             M            3:10-6:10

Narrative Writing:

This year long course develops a student's abilities as a writer and reader of narrative, with particular emphasis on the short story. The first semester of this course will focus intensely on the writerly analysis, generation, execution, and revision of short stories and creative nonfiction. The second semester will elaborate on this foundation by including more experimental work.   As the course is structured as a writing seminar, it stresses intensive, self-participation in the workshop, through written comment and class discussion.

Deadline for submission of writing samples is the week before spring break.  Check with the English office for the exact date of deadline.

One 2-hour period and individual conferences with the instructor.

212.51

Ms. McGlennen                                 M            3:10-5:10

Verse Writing:

This year long course develops a student's abilities as a writer and reader of poetry.

Deadline for submission of writing samples is the week before spring break.

Check with the English office for the exact date of deadline.

One 2-hour period and individual conferences with the instructor.

222/223

Founding of English Literature:

These courses offer an introduction to British literary history through an exploration of texts from the eighth through the seventeenth centuries in their literary and cultural contexts. Please note: historical parameters of 222 and 223 will be different in 2009-2020 from those in the printed catalogue. The fall term begins with Old English literature and continues to the early 16th-century. The spring term begins with the Protestant Reformation and continues through the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James I, the Civil Wars and Puritan Interregnum, to the Restoration in 1660. Critical issues may include discourses of difference (race, religion, gender, social class); tribal, ethnic, and national identities; exploration and colonization; textual transmission and the rise of print culture; authorship and authority.  Not offered "b" semester.

215.51

Ms. Kim                                       TR            12:00-1:15

Pre-modern Drama: Text and Performance before 1800

Study of selected dramatic texts and their embodiment both on the page and the stage.  Authors, critical and theoretical approaches, dramatic genres, historical coverage, and themes may vary from year to year.

Topic for 2009/10: From  Medieval Page to the Contemporary Stage: Performing the Chester Cycle.

In May 2010, the Poculi Ludique Societas at the University of Toronto will be mounting a production of the entire Chester Cycle. This will be a unique dramatic opportunity because the entire Chester Cycle is rarely produced and performed in one day. Members of this class and others in the Vassar community will have a chance to help produce the Dyers Play, The Antichrist, to perform it on a pageant wagon during this momentous production. What is interesting about this production is that all the different groups coming together from across North America will be imaging how to produce this play in a very specific historical moment. The Chester Cycle was witnessed in 1572 by Christopher Goodman, a protestant who strongly objected to the Catholic content of the cycle. The Chester Cycle 2010 will be performed with this religious and political tension in mind.

This class will examine the documentary artifacts of the Chester Cycle (its manuscripts, accounts of viewings, production notes, etc.) to think about what it would require for an entire civic community to produce and perform this play on a yearly basis. The Chester Cycle was produced regularly during the Middle Ages into the late sixteenth century. We will examine all of the Chester Cycle and think about it not just as a medieval artifact, but about how its dramatic shape can change depending on the historical, political, and religious pressures during the several centuries it was performed. We will think about what it means to stage it in relation to civic architecture and space, the construction and use of pageant wagons, the questions of costuming, music, visual Catholic iconography in the British Isles, and how this cycle could be used as a tool for rebellion against the Reformation.

217.51

Mr. Sharp                               TR            3:10-4:25

Literary Criticism and Theory:

A study of various critical theories and practices ranging from antiquity to the present day, including Plato, Aristotle, Dr. Johnson, Matthew Arnold, formalism, psychoanalytic criticism, Marxist criticism, feminist criticism, deconstruction, new historicism, and cultural studies.

218.51

Ms. Dunbar                            MW            1:30-2:45

Literature, Gender and Sexuality:

(Same as Africana Studies 218 and Women's Studies 218.) This course considers matters of gender and sexuality in literary texts, criticism, and theory. The focus varies from year to year, and may include study of a historical period, literary movement, or genre; constructions of masculinity and femininity; sexual identities; or representations of gender in relation to race and class.

Topic for 2009/10: Black Feminism.

222/223

Founding of English Literature:

These courses offer an introduction to British literary history through an exploration of texts from the eighth through the seventeenth centuries in their literary and cultural contexts. Please note: historical parameters of 222 and 223 will be different in 2009-2010 from those in the printed catalogue. The fall term begins with Old English literature and continues to the early 16^th-century. The spring term begins with the Protestant Reformation and continues through the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James I, the Civil Wars and Puritan Interregnum, to the Restoration in 1660. Critical issues may include discourses of difference (race, religion, gender, social class); tribal, ethnic, and national identities; exploration and colonization; textual transmission and the rise of print culture; authorship and authority.

223.51

Ms. Dunn                               TR            1:30-2:45

Founding of English Literature: Reformation, Renaissance and Revolution

The period from Henry VIII's break with the Roman church in the 1530s, through the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James, to the Civil War and the restoration of the monarchy in 1660--was marked by violent conflict and profound social and political change. It was also a period of extraordinary literary and cultural production-texts that may seem remote and difficult to modern readers, but which grapple with questions that are deeply relevant to us today. As we learn to read 16^th and 17^th century texts, paying close attention to their formal features, we will also try to understand them in their historical and cultural contexts. The topics addressed over the course of the semester will include constructions of poetic subjectivity, the relationship between theatre and society, the idea of the author, and the role of literature in a time of colonization, religious strife, and civil war. The course is a survey of sorts, being organized in roughly chronological order, and featuring some of the central works of the English literary canon, including poetry and plays by Wyatt, Sidney, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Donne, and Herbert, Spenser's Faerie Queene and Milton's Paradise Lost. But we will also discover less well-known authors, many of them women, through whose writings we can hear more fully the eloquent and passionate voices of the period.

228.51

Ms. Dunbar                          TR            1:30-2:45

African-American Literature, 1946-Present: "Vicious Modernism" and Beyond

(Same as Africana Studies 228b) In the famous phrase of Amiri Baraka, "Harlem is vicious/ Modernism." Beginning with the modernist innovations of African American writers after the Harlem Renaissance, this course ranges from the social protest fiction of the 1940s through the Black Arts Movement to the postmodernist experiments of contemporary African American writers.

Engl-222 is not a prerequisite of this course; it is open to all students, including freshmen.  This course meets the pre-1800 requirement of the English Department.

231.51

Ms. McGlennen                          TR            12:00-1:15

Native-American Literature:

Drawing from a wide range of traditions, this course explores the rich heritage of Native American literature. Material for study may comprise oral traditions (myths, legends, place naming and story telling) as well as contemporary fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Authors may include Zitkala Sa, N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Silko, Louise Erdrich, Simon Ortiz, Sherman Alexie, and Joy Harjo.

Fulfills the "Race, Ethnicity, Gender and Sexuality" requirement.

231.51

Ms. McGlennen                              TR            12:00-1:15

Native-American Literature:

Drawing from a wide range of traditions, this course explores the rich heritage of Native American literature. Material for study may comprise oral traditions (myths, legends, place naming and story telling) as well as contemporary fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Authors may include Zitkala Sa, N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Silko, Louise Erdrich, Simon Ortiz, Sherman Alexie, and Joy Harjo.

Fulfills the "Race, Ethnicity, Gender and Sexuality" requirement.

236.51

Mr. Amodio                                 MW            10:30-11:45

Beowulf:

Intensive study of the early English epic in the original language.

Prerequisite:  English 235 or demonstrated knowledge of Old English, or permission of the instructor.

238.51

Mr. Amodio                                    MW            12:00-1:15

Middle English Literature:

Studies in post-Conquest medieval literature (1250-1500), drawing on the works of theGawain-poet, Langland, Chaucer, and others. Genres studied may include lyric, romance, drama, allegory, and dream vision.

240.51

Mr. Weedin                                    TR            9:00-10:15

Shakespeare:

Study of some representative comedies, histories, and tragedies.

Fulfills the pre- 1800 requirement.

Not open to students who have taken English 241, 242

246.51

Ms. Park                                          TR            10:30-11:45

Sense and Sensibility: British Literature from 1745-1798

Study of the writers who represented the culmination of neoclassical literature in Great Britain and those who built on, critiques, or even defined themselves against it.  Authors may include Samuel Johnson, James Boswell, Edmund Burke, William Beckfor, William Cowper, Olaudah Equiano, Hester Thrale Piozzi, Mary Wollstonecraft, Ann Radcliffe, Anne Yearsley, and Hannah More.

247.51

Ms. Park                                   TR            1:30-2:45

Eighteenth Century British Novels:

Readings vary but include works by such novelists as Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, and Austen.

252.51

Mr. Laymon                                  TR            3:10-4:25           

Writing the Diaspora: Verses/Versus

(Same as Africana Studies 252) Black American cultural expression is anchored in rhetorical battles and verbal jousts that place one character against another. From sorrow songs to blues, black music has always been a primary means of cultural expression for African Americans, particularly during difficult social periods and transition. Black Americans have used music and particularly rhythmic verse to resist, express, and signify. Nowhere is this more evident than in hip hop culture generally and hip hop music specifically.

This semester's Writing the Diaspora class concerns itself with close textual analysis of hip hop texts. Is Imani Perry right in claiming that Hip Hop is Black American music, or diasporic music? In addition to close textual reading of lyrics, students are asked to create their own hip hop texts that speak to particular artists/texts and/or issues and styles raised.

261.51

Ms. Kane                                TR            12:00-1:15

Literatures of Ireland:

The course will examine Irish poetry, drama, and fiction in the twentieth century, in light of aesthetic, political, and historical questions about the unstable location of Irish literature as British, provincial, international, postcolonial, or diasporic.  After an introduction to Irish orature, we will examine the "Irish Renaissance" and modernism as the moments of Ireland's "sensational re-entrance" into metropolitan literature, as one critic called it.  Critiques of patriarchal nationalism and of the Catholic-Celtic imaginary characterize both the modern and contemporary works that we'll read.  Potential authors include Yeats, Synge, Joyce, Beckett, O'Brien, McDonagh, Enright, McDowell, Friel, Boland, and McGuckian.  We may examine some visual art and pop culture, as well as the movie The Magadelenes.

265.51

Ms. Zlotnick                              TR            3:10-4:25

Selected Author: 

Study of the work of a single author. The work may be read in relation to literary predecessors and descendants as well as in relation to the history of the writer's critical and popular reception. This course alternates from year to year with English 365.

Fulfills the English department's pre-1900 requirement.

Topic for 2009/2010b: Jane Austen.

277.51

Ms. Yow                                    TR            12:00-1:15

Sea-Changes: Caribbean Rewritings of the British Canon

(Same as Africana Studies 277) From William Shakespeare's The Tempest to James Joyce's Ulysses, the classic texts of the British literary canon have served as points of departure for Caribbean writers seeking to establish a dialogue between a colonial literary tradition and post-colonial national literatures. This course addresses the many re-writings of British texts by Caribbean authors from Roberto Fernandez Retamar's Caliban to Jamaica Kincaid's The Autobiography of My Mother. Among the texts to be discussed are Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, V.S. Naipaul's Guerillas, Micelle Cliff's Abeng and No Telephone to Heaven, Maryse Conde's Windward Heights, and Riosario Ferre's Sweet Diamond Dust.

290 a or b.

Field Work

Field work is open by special permission of the associate chair, and is usually offered for one-half unit of credit. Field Work projects are sponsored by individual faculty members in the department.  Students interested in Field Work should see page 30 for further details on the requirements.

Independent Study

Independent Study is open by special permission of the associate chair. Independent Study is intended to supplement (not duplicate) the regular curricular offerings by defining special projects in reading and writing under the direction of an individual faculty member.  The prerequisite for Independent Study includes 2 units of 200-level work in English.  One unit of credit given only in exceptional cases.

Application forms for Independent Study are available in the English department office.

298 a or b (1/2 Unit)

Prerequisite:  2 units of 200-level work in English, and by permission of the associate chair.  1 unit of credit given only in exceptional cases.

399 a or b (1/2 Unit)

Open by permission of the associate chair.  1 unit of credit given only in exceptional cases.

Senior Independent Work

Open by permission of the associate chair.  1 unit of credit given only in exceptional cases.