Courses of Study 2016-2017 
    
    Mar 28, 2024  
Courses of Study 2016-2017 [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

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ENGL 4920 - Honors Seminar II


     


Spring. 4 credits.

Enrollment limited to: students in the Honors Program in English or related fields, or by permission of instructor. Seminar 101 may be used as one of three pre-1800 courses required of English majors.

L. Brown, M.P. Brady.

The purpose of the Honors Seminar is to acquaint students with methods of study and research to help them write their senior Honors Essay. However, all interested students are welcome to enroll. The seminar will require a substantial essay that incorporates literary evidence and critical material effectively, and develops an argument. Topics and instructors vary each semester.

Seminar 101: Make it New! Literary Uncertainty

A study of the impact of imaginative innovation in literary hisory—What triggers the creation of new literary genres; how is creativity shaped to convey new meanings; how does novelty enter into the literary tradition to become convention? We will apply these questions to a varied selection of works, each of which plays a distinctive role in “making it new” in English literature. ” As we consider works from slave narrative to Gothic fiction, travel literature, the erotic novel, and manners fiction, we will define the distinctive incentives for innovation and consider common forms of novelty across a range of imaginative experiences. Texts include: Behn, Oroonoko; Defoe, Robinson Crusoe; Richardson, Pamela; Fielding, Joseph Andrews; Lewis, The Monk; Cleland, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure; and Burney, Evelina.

 

Seminar 102: Traffic: Drugs, Bodies, Books

The trafficking in people and narcotics has held the attention of American writers and visual artists for more than three centuries. In this course we will read broadly to consider how various forms of trafficking and stories of captivity and treasure hunting help tell the story of contemporary culture. Drawing from decolonial studies, as well as systems and assemblage theories, this course will analyze TV series such as Weeds and The Wire as well as films, narcocorridos, novels, legal cases, and visual artworks in which the subject of traffic and trafficking play an important role. Artists and authors may include Junot Diaz, Alan Ginsberg, Sandra Cisneros, Frederick Douglass, Karen Tei Yamashita, and Faith Ringgold.



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