LIT - Literature

New Core: Fulfills 3 credits in Area of Knowledge II or 3 credits in Area of Knowledge IV. (WEC).

This course may be taken for English major elective credit with the instructor's approval.

Course Description: A study of American ethnic literature from the Latino community: these ethnic Americans write about their personal journeys in trying to fit into the U.S., as immigrants. The course will explore and introduce immigration studies in order to better comprehend the novel, short story or poem written by authors who have encountered different issues on their way to becoming Americans. The universal appeal of ethnic literature is coupled with many kinds of migratory issues.

New Core: Fulfills 3 credits in Area of Knowledge III or 3 credits in Area of Knowledge IV. (WEC).

Course Description: This course will explore attitudes to sexuality, gender roles, and various interpretations of the meaning of love as they are reflected in a variety works from early world cultures, including the Africa, the Middle East, South and East Asia, South America, and the West. Students will observe and analyze how different geographies, histories, and traditions might affect attitudes toward sex, gender, and love.

New Core: Fulfills 3 credits in Area of Knowledge II or 3 credits in Area of Knowledge IV. (WEC).

Course Description: Great works about love, passion and desire were written in England in the 16th and 17th centuries. At the same time forces such as ambition, the will to control, and the urge to power were central literary concerns. As readers we recognize many of these driving forces in ourselves and those around us today. In this course we will examine the way selected works by Sydney, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Milton and capture and clarify our own experiences, presenting to us both frightening and amazing possibilities in human nature.

New Core: Fulfills 3 credits in Area of Knowledge III or 3 credits in Area of Knowledge IV. (WEC).

Course Description: This course surveys short stories and poems by writers of African descent.

New Core: Fulfills 3 credits in Area of Knowledge III or 3 credits in Area of Knowledge IV.

Course Description: course will study texts from ancient world (e.g. Greece, Rome) but also texts written 1,000 years later from Japan, China, and India. Study will focus on current relevance and application to problems in our society.

New Core: Fulfills 3 credits in Area of Knowledge II or 3 credits in Area of Knowledge IV. (WEC).

Course Description: This course explores the tragic and comic vision of the human condition in literary works.

New Core: Fulfills 3 credits in Area of Knowledge II or 3 credits in Area of Knowledge IV. (WEC). Fulfills 3 credits Latin American Studies Minor/Certificate, Group C

Course Description: This course explores Latino literature written by such authors as Sandra Cisneros, Julia Alvarez, Tomas Rivera, Richard Rodriguez and Jose Antonio Villareal.

Course Description:"On these battlefields," F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, "my lovely, safe world blew itself up." In this course we will explore works of literature and film about World War I (1914-1918), known at the time as "The Great War," as well as works that portray the return to peace and the turn to materialism in the 1920s. Among the works we will study are The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald, The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, and The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West; poetry by Rupert Brooke, Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Own; the play Journey's end by R.C. Sheriff; and the films Paths of Glory by Stanley Kubrick and Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo.

New Core: Fulfills 3 credits in Area of Knowledge II or 3 credits in Area of Knowledge IV. (WEC).

Course Description: This course surveys literature by and about women before 1900.

New Core: Fulfills 3 credits in Area of Knowledge II or 3 credits in Area of Knowledge IV. (WEC).

Course Description: Those Western and Eastern mythologies that have had the greatest impact on the Western tradition will be studied in this course. Greek and Norse mythology in Europe and Hebrew, Mesopotamian, and Egyptian mythology in the ancient Near East will be discussed with the goal of learning how myth functions in societies and cultures.

Prerequisite: ENG 102 or ENG 120. Fulfills 3 credits in Areas of Knowledge 2, 3, or 4 depending upon theme. Writing Enhanced Course.

Course Description: Analysis and discussion of selected literary works, with some critical writing. This course fulfills core requirements and accomplishes various objectives, including the development of critical reading, writing, and thinking skills; appreciation of the artistic and cultural heritage of people throughout the world; and awareness of fundamental issues facing human societies. May be taken twice for credit with different thematic focuses.

Seminar: Various topics. (WEC).

New Core: Fulfills 3 credits in Area of Knowledge II or 3 credits in Area of Knowledge IV. Writing Enhanced Course.

Course Description: This course surveys British literature written after 1900 by various authors.

Course Description: Study of key writers from the 17th and 20th centuries. Authors to be studied may include Moliere, Mon’zaemon, Rousseau, Equiano, Voltaire, Blake, Goethe, Kafka, Jacobs, Tagore, Borges, Mahfouz, Achebe, and Brecht.

New Core: Fulfills 3 credits in Area of Knowledge II or 3 credits in Area of Knowledge IV. (WEC).

Course Description: This course explores such themes and subjects as race, gender, class, ethnicity, identity, family relationships, and the individual vs. the community in selected works of American Literature from the mid 1800s through the late 20th century through analysis, discussion, and critical writing.

New Core: /strong> Fulfills 3 credits in Area of Knowledge III or 3 credits in Area of Knowledge IV. (WEC).
Course Description: How individuals face change in their societies is dependent upon both the individual personality and the values and tensions of his and her society. This course will cover literature from a range of traditions, principally non-Western (India, Nigeria, Senegal, Japan), but with a sampling of European and North American works. The course will focus on how societies and individuals confront change, sometimes adapting, sometimes resisting, and how they face cultural challenges that come from inside their culture or from the outside, as cultures collide.

Course Description: This course will examine the experience of Irish Americans through literature in a variety of genres. Texts by authors such as Eugene O'Neil, James Farrell, Brian Friel, Frank McCourt, William Kennedy, Alice McDermott, Frank O'Connor and others will be studied.

May be taken for English elective credit with the Instructor's approval. New Core: Fulfills 3 Credits in Area of Knowledge II or IV. (WEC)

This course may be taken as part of Women's and Gender Studies Major or Minor.

Course Description: This course is designed to help students gain a deeper understanding and appreciation of the diversity of the Native American experience today and in the past. We will pay particular attention to literature written by contemporary American Indian women and to issues of culture, gender and identity as they surface in the poetry, fiction, autobiography we read. From creation stories, to the book acclaimed as the first Native American novel (Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko), to the controversial essays of Lakota scholar Vine Deloria, and spoken word of John Trudell, students will explore the meaning and significance of community, ceremony, healing and storytelling. Other authors include Suzan Shown Harjo (Cheyenne/Muscogee), Wilma Mankiller (Cherokee), and Linda Hogan (Choctaw).

Course Description: In Studies in the Short Story students will study many exceptional masterpieces of the short story genre from a variety of cultures and nations and historical periods. Through reading, discussion, group work, presentations, and written analyses, students will hone their abilities to think and write critically and comprehend issues from a variety of perspectives.

Course Rotation: PLV: Spring.

New Core: Fulfills 3 credits in Area of Knowledge III or 3 credits in Area of Knowledge IV. (WEC).

Course Description: This course surveys short stories and poems written by authors of African descent after 1900.

New Core: Fulfills 3 credits in Area of Knowledge II or 3 credits in Area of Knowledge IV. (WEC).

Course Description: This course explores the development of romanticism as a literary and cultural phenomenon.

New Core: Fulfills 3 credits in Area of Knowledge II or 3 credits in Area of Knowledge IV. (WEC). Prereq is ENG 120. Satisfies 3 credits in AOK II and IV; writing-enhanced.

Course Description: In this course we will read Jane Austen's famous novel Pride & Prejudice, the story of the courtship of Miss Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy, and we will watch clips from the A&E miniseries based on the book. We will also study poetry of the Romantic era by writers such as William Wordsworth and William Blake.

New Core: Fulfills 3 credits in Area of Knowledge II or 3 credits in Area of Knowledge IV. (WEC).

Course Description: This course surveys literature by and about women written after 1900.

This course may be taken for WS elective credit.

Course Description: This course will focus on American women writing from the late 19th century to the present. These writers, who come from a variety of social, ethnic, and racial backgrounds, might include the following: Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, Zora Neale Hurston, Carson McCullers, Louise Erdrich, Grace Paley, Gish Jen, Bharati Mukherji, and Nicholasa Mohr.

Course Description: A comprehensive study of Classical writers of Greek Archaic period to the Roman Silver age, including Sophocles, Aristophanes, Homer, Hesiod, Plato, Menander, Xenophon, Plautus, Catullus, Horace, and Virgil.

Prerequisite:ENG 120. ENG/COM Major Elective.

Course Description:This class gives students an understanding of the history of children's literature and of some of its major genres, including picture books, animal fables, fairy tales, fantasies, and poetry. We will consider what texts from different periods teach children both explicityand implicity - for example about how to behave, about gender roles, and about the dangers of the world. Some of the longer works to be covered include Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, and The Wind in the Willows.

Course Rotation: PLV: Fall.

Prerequisite: ENG 102 or ENG 120. 3 credits.

Course Description: This course looks at the way 20th and 21st century filmmakers from different countries has interpreted Shakespeare's plays. Students will read assigned texts and watch a wide range of film adaptations and interpretations of Shakespeare's ideas and plots.

Course Rotation: PLV: Summer

Course Description:With the rise of trade routes and venture capital, wealth was open to ambitious individuals such as the "Merchant-Princes" of Italy. Power became consolidated in nations and family dynasties rather than in the regional land lords of the medieval period. This course will study several works of literature that explore the inner workings of money and power in the period 1500-1600, including Machiavelli's The Prince, Castiglione's The Courtier, Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, and Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.

Course Description: Students in this course will explore the culture of India, a nation playing a central role in globalization. While focus of the course will be literature, students will begin by learning about formative events in modern Indian history and go on to explore Indian film culture (Hooray for Bollywood!), religions of India (including Hinduism, Islam, Christianity and others), the development and role of Indian diasporic culture, and current social practices and issues regarding gender and class. The debate on IWE (Indian Writing in English) - e.g., what makes a work "Indian" -- will be central to discussions in the course. Texts will include writing in English (Midnights Children, Malgudi Days, The God of Small Things, etc.), translations from India's many languages, films, and essays. This class will be of special interest to students curious about post-colonial literature, concerned with social issues and globalization.

Course Description: Great Britain is a county with a rich literary and artistic history. In this course, we will study how the country's arts - literature, painting, architecture, landscape architecture, and music - were shaped by and, in turn, reflected the country's history and culture. Using the arts as a mirror, we will see how the eighteenth-century Industrial Revolution changed Great Britain from a rural, agricultural society to an increasingly urban, wealthy, socially mobile, technological one. We will watch the rise and fall of the global British Empire. Changing gender roles will be examined, along with the many other social changes that occurred as Great Britain transformed itself into a modern society. Writers to be studied include Wordsworth, Blake, Austen, Tennyson, Kipling, Wilde, and Woolf.

Course Description: This course will focus on the literary genre known as "storytelling" and look at the ways the movement known as Photo Voice has created a kind of visual storytelling for disenfranchised communities. In addition to online class discussion and analysis of selected texts, Pace university students engage in the art of mentoring children at the Pleasantville Cottage School, helping these children to create verbal and visual stories of their own lives.

Course Rotation: Spring, even years.

Formerly LIT 396L. Prerequisite: LIT 212 or permission of department.

Course Description: This course covers American literature written about and marketed to young adults (6th-12th grades). The writers to be studied may include the following: J.D. Salinger, Harper Lee, Mildred Taylor, S.E. Hinton, Paul Zindel, Robert Cormier, Walter Dean Myers, Jerry Spinelli, Katherine Paterson, Sarah Dessen, and Laurie Halse Anderson.

Course Description: A study of major British prose writers chosen to illustrate important phases of life and letters from 1900 to present with emphasis on the authors' ideas in relationship to their culture, and their forms of expressions.

Course Rotation: NYC: Spring - Even years.

Course Description: This course introduces Cultural Studies as it is practiced in the U. S. and elsewhere. In addition to examining literature and popular culture, this course will explore cultural theory and criticism.

Course Description: This course examines the literatures that have emerged following decolonization in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. The course will also consider more popular forms and introduce postcolonial theory and criticism.

Course Rotation: NYC: Fall, even years; PLV: Fall, even years.

ENG/COM Major Elective.

Course Description: This class gives students an understanding of the history of children's literature and of some of its major genres, including picture books, fairy tales, fantasies, realistic fiction, and verse. Students will closely read a variety of key texts and will articulate their understanding of what they read in essays supported by carefully analyzed evidence from the primary sources. Throughout the term we will consider what texts from different periods say about the particular era's views of children. Among the classic texts to be studied are Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, and The Wind in the Willows, The Velveteen Rabbit, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and Anne of Green Gables.

Course Rotation: PLV: Fall.

Studies of the novels reflecting the historical and cultural forces that shaped these texts and their authors. This course may focus on English, American, World, or comparative literatures. This course may be taken for credit more than once in versions A through C, focusing on different centuries or themes, such as the development of the novel and Realism, or the contemporary novel.

Course Description: Study of Continental and British novels representative of the nineteenth century world and of the historical and cultural forces that shaped them and their authors.

Course Description: Topics in literature reflecting the dominant influences of 20th century life and culture. Instructors may offer this course focusing on American, British, World, or comparative literatures. The course may be organized around a specific theme, movement, or genre, and may be taken for credit more than once. Topics may include existentialism, postmodern literature, and diasporic literatures.

Course Description: "Topics in literature reflecting the dominant influences of twentieth-century life and culture. Instructors may offer this course focusing on American, British, World, or comparative literatures. The course may be organized around a specific theme, movement, or genre, and may be taken for credit more than once. Topics may include existentialism, postmodern literature, and diasporic literatures."

Course Description: Labyrinths can be found all over the planet in a variety of forms: in nature (the inner ear, the brain, spiders’ webs, shells, snails, ammonite fossils, etc.), as buildings and cities, as sewers and subways, as visual representations, in mythology and literature, as architecture, as spiritual centers of cathedrals, in dances, in mandalas, in children’s games, in puzzles, in films and video games. Even the "World Wide Web" with its various links can be seen as a form of labyrinth. This course focuses on exploring why the symbol of the labyrinth is among the most fascinating, perplexing, and enduring as we read 20th-21st-century fiction and see films that draw on theme of the labyrinth as it has appeared in the mythology, art, literature, and popular culture of societies from around the globe. As we read surrealist, magic realist, and postmodern fiction by such authors as Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, André Gide, Gabriel García Márquez, and Jennifer Egan and see several labyrinthine films, we’ll consider how each medium views and employs the symbol of the labyrinth or maze.

Course Description:The short novel, or novella, employs a smaller canvas than the full-length novel to explore broad philosophical ideas, dramatic events, and curious characters. An ideal form for exploring an idea in depth, we will study the preoccupations of Henry James, Edith Wharton, James Joyce and others through their novellas. The art of concision and narrative intensity in the late 19th century and early 20th century short novel offers a unique lens into the craft of fiction.

Course Description: A methodologies course for majors to be taken as soon after completing sophomore literature requirement as possible. The course will be conducted as a seminar with emphasis on discussion and sharing of written work, as well as group projects. Recommended particularly for majors who plan on becoming teachers or attending graduate school.

Prerequisite:ENG 120.

Course Description: This course considers major developments in American literature from the beginnings to the end of the 19th century. Authors may include Hawthorne, Melville, Jacobs, Dickinson, Twain, Dreiser, and Chopin.

Course Rotation: NYC: TBA.

Course Description: This course considers selected authors in American literature from the beginning of the 20th century to the present. Authors may include Eliot, Anderson, Stein, Hemingway, Wright, Faulkner, Kingston, and Morrison.

Prerequisite:ENG 120.

Course Description: Study in African-American thought and literature, focusing on specific time periods, topics, or themes. Authors may include Douglass, Jacobs, Du Bois, Hurston, Wright, Baldwin, Brooks, Ellison, Walker, Wideman, and Kincaid.

Course Rotation: TBA.

An introduction to contemporary theories as well as other selected approaches to literary criticism. Topics may include deconstruction, feminism, Marxism, psychoanalytic theory, reader response, new historicism, and cultural studies.

Prequisite: ENG 120 or Eng 102.

Course Description: Study of selected literary works from Greek and Roman literature.

Course Rotation: PLV-TBA

Students taking course for the Translation Studies Minor must have 6 credits of intermediate foreign language level (or the equivalent approved by the instructor).

Course Description: A study of the history and various theories of translation, focusing largely but not solely on literary translation.

Course Rotation: NYC: Spring

Course Description: Topics in American literature and culture, which may range from the beginnings to the present. This course may be taken for credit more than once, focusing on different centuries or themes, such as the American gothic or constructions of race in American literature.

Topics in American literature and culture, which may range from the beginnings to the present. This course may be taken for credit more than once in versions A through C, focusing on different centuuries or themes, such as the American gothic or constructions of race in American literature.

Course Description: This course will provide an intensive study of major American dramatist August Wilson and his plays, situating them within the larger contexts of history, race, culture, gender, and theater.

Course Description: This course surveys African American authors whose writings published during the 1920's continue to hold relevance in the contemporary world. The PBS broadcast, A Walk Through Harlem cites James Weldon Johnson’s Black Manhattan as a major source for the documentary. W.E.B. DuBois warned about the levees of New Orleans more than fifty years ago. Langston Hughes’ reputation is international. We have just seen a screen adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. Sterling a. Brown, Claude McKay, Dorothy West, James Vanderzee, Carter G. Woodson, Paul Robeson, Alaine Locke and many other writers and poets, visual artists and educators bring us a vital literature that is both local, Harlem based, and international since many of the authors traveled the world This course highlights the beauty and acknowledges the terror of the period in American history when Harlem was "in vogue".

Course Description: Topics in American literature and culture, which may range from the beginnings to the present.

Course Description: Study of American writers, chosen to illustrate important phases of life and letters, as well as artistic, cultural, and historical forces, from 1945 to the present. Authors may include Okada, Roth, Doctorow, Lorde, Silko, and Cisneros.

Course Rotation: TBA.

Prerequisite: Open only to students enrolled in an Online Accelerated Bachelor's Degree Completion Program. Permission of Director required. Contact Janet Kirtman at JKirtman@pace.edu for further registration information.

Course Description: A study of important works of authors with diverse class, racial, ethnic, and sexual identities.

Course Rotation: TBA.

Course Description: A survey of American fiction which includes short stories and novellas.

Course Rotation: TBA.

Prerequisite: ENG 120.

Course Description: A survey of American fiction which includes short stories and novellas.

Course Rotation: PLV: Summer

Prerequisite: ENG 102 or ENG 120 or permission of Instructor.

Course Description: A study of the relationships between literature and film. Through an analysis of significant films, prose, fiction, and plays, the course will examine film adaptations of literary works and/or the characteristic structures of literary and cinematic forms.

Course Rotation: Spring - Odd years.

Course Description This course will examine African American literature that has been adapted to film or video. Selected novels, short stories and plays will be analyzed in relation to screen versions of the same works, focusing on the additions, deletions, and other changes made by the filmmakers in adapting the source material for the screen.

Study of major playwrights and dramatic forms and their social and artistic influences. This course may focus on American, English, World, or comparative literatures. The course may be organized around a particular time period, literary movement, or theme, such as Greek theater, Jacobean drama, the Theater of the Absurd, or contemporary American theater.

Course Description: This course will focus on the study of selected plays by major African American dramatists from the early 20th century to the present and explore themes and developments in African American theatre related to issues of culture, performance, politics, race, ethnicity, class, and gender. Some playwrights whose works will be examined include Lorraine Hansberry, August Wilson, Alice Childress, Amiri Baraka, and Charles Fuller.

Course Description: A study of major Old and Middle English texts in the context of continental drama, romance, epic, lyric, and narrative poetry. This course will be offered in A and B forms focusing on different time periods, themes, or bodies of work, both of which may be taken for credit.

A comprehensive study of selected readings in the prose and poetry of the early 16th century and the Elizabethans.

Course Description: This course explores literature by women of the sixteenth and seventeenth century.

A study of English literature from Donne to Dryden.

Major period or major elective course.

Course Description: Study of English literature of the 18th century, with reference to the historical and cultural environment. Authors may include Swift, Pope, Dryden, Ann Radcliffe, and Aphra Behn.

Course Rotation: TBA.

Course Description: A study of the literature of the Victorian period (1832-1900) with reference to the historical and cultural background. Authors may include Dickens, the Brontes, George Eliot, and Wilde. While the focus will be on English literature, instructors may offer a comparative approach with American authors of this time period.

Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 102.

Course Description: This course studies the growth of American crime fiction with particular attention to the figure of the detective as a focus of social values and to the cultural contexts in which this genre has developed. Students will become familiar with the foundational work of Poe and the further development of the genre in authors such as Hammett, Fisher, Chandler and others.

Course Rotation: PLV: TBA

Course Description: This course will trace the development of the supernatural as a literary device and a vehicles for social concerns from the 18th century to the present in a variety of works, including novels and short stories, non-fiction and films.

Course Rotation: PLV: Summer; Fall

Course Description: In this course on the transition of texts in England from manuscript to print, students will develop an appreciation for book history, knowledge about early book production, and an understanding of the shaping of English literary culture from the medieval period through the mid-sixteenth century. They will gain insight into the culture and thought of earlier periods and their connections to our own.

Course Rotation: Fall

Course Description: A critical study of filmed versions of Shakespeare's plays alongside the original texts.

Course Rotation: TBA.

Course Description: Study of the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer, primarily in the original Middle English. Includes The Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Criseyde and selected minor poems.

Course Rotation: TBA.

Course Description: Study of Shakespeare as poet and playwright. This course uses performance-based activities to explore the plays in the terms of their original context and their possibilities for modern audiences.

Course Rotation: PLV: Spring.

Course Description: Study of Shakespeare as poet and playwright. This course will be offered in A and B forms, both of which may be taken for credit.

Course Rotation: NYC: TBA.

Course Description: Study of Shakespeare as poet and playwright in the plays written after 1600, with emphasis upon the great tragedies.

Course Description: A comprehensive study of Milton's major works in prose and poetry, with emphasis on his artistic and intellectual development.

Course Rotation: PLV: TBA.

In this course we will explore the lives and works of the Bronte sisters in the context of their era. We will read Jane Eyre and Villette (Charlotte); Wuthering Heights (Emily); and Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Anne).

Course Description: In this course, we will read short stories and novels by authors whose works reflect the great changes that occurred in British literature and culture from 1890, through the outbreak of World War I in 1914, to the end of the 1920s. Authors to be studied: Thomas Hardy, E.M. Forster, Ford Madox Ford, James Joyce, Katherine Mansfield, D.H. Lawrence, and Virginia Woolf.

Revised Course Description: Where does "modern poetry" begin? What makes it "modern"? What forms does it take? This course begins with an examination of some of the major forerunners of "modern poetry" from an international perspective—the French poets Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, Stéphane Mallarmé, and Paul Valéry-- and continues by examining some of the major modern poets whose work we will read in translation, including Pablo Neruda (Chile), Rainer Maria Rilke (Czechoslovakia), Gabriel García Lorca (Spain), André Breton (France), Paul Éluard (France), César Vallejo (Peru), Anna Akhmatova (Russia), Marina Tsetayeva (Russia), and C.P. Cavafy (Greece). Students will also achieve an understanding of theories and problems of translation.

Course Description: Study of major poets and poetic forms and their social and artistic influences. Focusing on American, English, World, or comparative literatures, this course may be organized around a particular time period, literary movement, or theme, such as the metaphysical poets, modernism, or contemporary American poetry. This course will be offered in A and B forms, both of which may be taken for credit.

Course Rotation: TBA.

Course Description: This course recovers 246 years of literary history missing from the university curriculum. This study makes available the powerful voices calling us to a greater humanity as they give personal accounts of survival under American slavery. Course Rotation : Fall

Course Description: Each time that the course is offered it will focus on a different topic such as Women, Culture and Fiction; Major Women Poets; Literature of American Ethnic Women; Feminist Theories and Criticism; Gender and Genre; etc. The course may be taken more than once.

Course Description: Introduction to specialized study in selected areas of literature and the application of contemporary critical theory. Open to upper-division majors from any discipline.

Course Rotation: PLV: Spring.

Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 102.

Course Description: A study of portraits of women in literature created by male and female writers of the late 19th and 20th centuries: James, Wharton, Hemingway, Porter, Doctorow, and others.

Course Rotation: PLV: Fall - Even years.

Selected topics ,focusing on a particular genre, theme, director, among others, will be studied intensively. Emphasis will be placed on independent research under the guidance of the instructor. This course may be taken for credit more than once.

Selected topics,focusing on a particular genre, theme, director, among others, will be studied intensively. Emphasis will be placed on independent research under the guidance of the instructor. This course may be taken for credit more than once.

Course Description: This course will look at the fiction, criticism, visual art, philosophy, and lives of the Bloomsbury Group, an influential group of intellectuals whose work helped shape modern sensibilities in the first few decades of the twentieth century. In addition to Woolf, the Group included economist John Maynard, novelist E. M. Forster, art critic Roger Fry, and biographer Lytton Strachey.

Course Description: In this course, students will close-read three Shakespeare plays and film productions thereof, examining them through the lens of contemporary literary theory, which includes new historicism, cultural materialism, postcolonial critcism, feminism, performance criticism, reader-response criticism and post-structuralism. In addition to studying plays, students will read a range of essays written by theorists in the above fields. Students can expect to write and edit at least four essays in which they adopt and apply literary theory to the Shakespeare playtexts.

Course Description: This course examines the complex relationship between literature, technology, and culture. In addition to addressing the ways in which technological change affects the production, distribution, and consumption of cultural materials, including literacy texts, we will consider how cultural norms affect technological development. Although the course’s primary focus will be contemporary, we will consider early periods as well, considering, for example, how the advent of movable type and the printing contributed to the development of the novel and how film, radio, and television impacted existing genres. The course has both in-class and online components. In addition, to attending weekly class meetings, students are required to complete regular Blackboard assignments and utilize other electronic resources.

Course Rotation: NY: Spring, even years.

Course Description:

Course Rotation: NYC: Spring.

Prerequisite: Junior standing and a minimum CQPA of 3.00.

Course Description: With the approval of the appropriate faculty member, the department Chairperson, and the academic dean, students may select a topic for guided research that is not included in the regular course offerings. The student meets regularly with the faculty member to review progress. A research project or paper must also be submitted.

Course Rotation: Fall, Spring, and Summer.

Prerequisite: ENG 120.

Course Description: Study in selected areas of literature, varied according to student need and interest.

Course Rotation: NYC, PLV: TBA

May be taken for Women's Studies Credit.

Course Description: In this course we will explore the lives and works of the Bronte sisters in the context of their era. We will read Jane Eyre and Villette (Charlotte); Wuthering Heights (Emily); and Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Anne).

Course Descrption: This course will explore works of African-American literature and works about African Americans that have been made into film, including works by Alice Walker, Lorraine Hansberry, August Wilson and Walter Mosely. The course will consider representations of African Americans in literature and film, the generic differences between these two mediums and issues of race and prejudice in America.

Course Description: This course will examine the way humor works in literature and popular culture. We will begin by defining terms such as comedy (and tragedy), humor, and funny, exploring how these terms have been used in cultural history. We will then move into a more semiotic approach to what makes things funny (or not) and the way humor functions emotionally and intellectually. This course serves as a more specialized complement to LIT 303.

Course Description: This course approaches a number of classic and contemporary dramatic works using the techniques and strategies employed by directors and actors when they prepare to put on a production of a play. Using one-act plays and/or scenes from full-length plays, the course will explore the role of preparation, character development, and improvisation as ways to move the dramatic work from the page to performace. The course will include an end of term performance of selected scenes. This course is taught by actor, director and producer, Denise Bessette, of the Hudson Stage Company, a professional non-profit theatre in Westchester County.

Course Description: Postmodernism, as a genre, explores pop culture, multiculturism, mass media, and other aspects of contemporary and mass culture. This course will look at specific contemporary novels, short stories, films and other texts that analyze and question the role and influence of mass and pop culture on contemporary life. Possible authors include Irvine Welsh, Martin Amis, Don Delillo, and Alex Garland. Possible films include Fight Club, Rent, Romeo and Juliet, and the Beach.

Prerequisite: ENG 120 and Junior or Senior standing (minimum 64 credits).

Course Description: This service learning course will focus on the traditions of oral literature and oral history, including storytelling, folktales, and oral memoir. In addition to online class discussion and analysis of selected texts, students will serve elderly residents of nursing homes or lower-income housing by visiting them on a regular basis to record their memories and stories. Working with the professor, students will develop their own project by contacting local advocates for the elderly, finding a person to interview and scheduling visits. These visits will help students gain ahnds-on experience in oral lilterature and history, while offering the elderly interviewee companionship and the opportunity to speak about his or her life to the larger world (through the Web archive we will create). The interview tapes will be transcribed to create an electronic archive of oral literature and history, which will be published on the Dyson college webpage, creating a resource for students, the elderly participants and anyone interested in oral history.

Course Description: A study of the most representative and influential British and American poets from 1900 to the present.

Course Description:The term "postcolonial" literally refers to a period "after colonization," yet postcolonial literature explores not only the colonial past but its continuing legacy. We will therefore examine the relationship between the "post" and "the colonial" in our reading of literature by Caribbean authors. For 500 years, the Caribbean has been the site of cultural and historical connections to Europe, Africa, Asia, and various areas in the Americas. By approaching a regional literature through its global context, we will also discuss the ways in which the current phenomenon of globalization is informed by the post/colonial histories we have covered during the semester.

Course Description: This course will be concerned with the novels of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Bronte, including Jane Eyre, Villette, Wuthering Heights, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. This is a course on major nineteenth-century women novelists.

Prerequisite: Major Elective as an English and Communications or English Major.

Course Description: The famous sisters Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Bronte all wrote their books under the watchful eye of their minister father in northern England during the middle of the conservative Victorian era. Yet the Bronte sisters' books are anything but conservative. Indeed, their readers were repeatedly shocked by the intensity of the Brontes' stories. We will read Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and The Teneant of Wildfell Hall, works that feature passionate, often illicit, relationships. We will also watch film versions of some of the Brontes' books, and we will study the lives and era of these unusual women writers who were so ahead of their time.

Course Rotation: PLV: TBA.

Junior or Senor Standing & permission of the instructor required.

Course Description: Fairy tales and folk tales charm us with their depictions of princes and princesses, fairy godmothers, enchantments, wishes granted, true love found, and the promise of living happily ever after. But these stories also have a dark side that has been censored in modern times. Familiar tales such as "Little Red Riding Hood," "Sleeping Beauty," and "Hansel and Gretel" originally depicted acts of cannibalism, incest, and rape. Even tales that have been sanitized for today’s children contain power struggles, family conflicts, and extreme acts of cruelty. While these stories date back at least a thousand years, they remain a source of entertainment and truth for adults, as well as children, in books, films, operas, and popular culture. In this class, we will examine many of the classic tales by Straparola and Basile (Italy), Perrault (France), the Grimm Brothers (Germany), Jacobs and Lang (England), and Andersen (Denmark). We will also study modern literary works and films that take these tales as their inspiration. Among the modern writers we will read are Angela Carter, Neil Gaiman, Margaret Atwood, and Anne Sexton.

Course Description: This seminar will look at the works of playwright and screenwriter Tennessee Williams, whose powerfully emotional and controversial work revelutionized American Theater in the 1940's. We will read plays like A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Sweet Bird of Youth and Night of the Iguana and consider Williams' films such as Baby Doll and The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone.

Course Description: Through reading of detective fiction from several parts of the world this course will examine how the genre has been used not simply to narrate criminal investigations, but to ask – and investigate – large questions about life, such as questions about individuality and identity, time and temporality, guilt and innocence, and about what "justice" is. Readings will include short stories, novels, at least one play, and possibly a film or two and will be drawn from the U. S., Latin America, Europe and Asia.

Prerequisite: Junior Standing or permission of the Department Chair.

Course Description: A course designed to serve as a capstone for majors in the English Department. Emphasis is on analytical reading, advanced writing and research directed toward individual students' career goals or plans for advanced study.

Course Rotation: PLV: Spring.

Prerequisite: Senior standing or permission of Instructor.

Course Description: This seminar explores literature from around the world in which writers take on important social issues and look critically at their cultures. We will consider the role of the literary artist in shaping and revising the moral values of a culture and analyze the way literature is a necessary force for creating a humane society.

Junior or Senior standing as an English or ENG/COM major or permission of instructor.

Course Description: A study of the "best of all possible worlds" as conceived by writers from Plato ("The Republic") and Sir Thomas More ("Utopia") to contemporary environmentalist and feminist visionaries such as Kim Stanley Robinson and Ursula LeGuin.

Prerequisite: Junior or Senior standing in ENG, ECM, TAE or CED, or permission of chair.

Course Description: Literature Between Worlds provides a broad survey of contemporary women's fiction, focusing on 20th and 21st century writers whose writing negotiates cultural spaces "between worlds." These spaces often relate to issues of dislocation, split identity, family disunity, culture shock, language barriers, marginalization, and racial, cultural, and national oppression. The course explores some of the ways in which communication and culture are intertwined and how freedom and belonging are articulated through women's writing.

Prerequisite: ENG 120 and permission of Department Chair.

Course Description: This course introduces students to literature written for adolescents (6th to 12th grades). It includes both classics and contemporary examples. Classics explored may include Little Women, The Adventures of Huck Finn and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. More contemporary texts might include Lord of the Flies, Catcher in the Rye, The House on Mango Street, The Summer of My German Soldier, and others.