ENGL 4910 - Honors Seminar I

Fall. 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. Seminar 102 co-meets with FGSS 4920 .

Seminar 101, B. Correll; seminar 102, M. Hite.

Seminar  101: Shakespeare and Marlowe

This honors seminar brings together two of the most striking and influential writers of the early modern period. Pairing and comparing their work introduces questions not only about their sensational lives and texts but also about power (including the power of classical authority), gender/sexuality, literary influence and the work of cultural adaptation. The only prerequisite for the course is an adventurous mind; no previous exposure to the authors is assumed. For students who are familiar with Shakespeare, the goal of this course is to establish a larger cultural and literary context for close and critical study of both writers. We will include some film, as another kind of adaptation, and there will be some reading in (translated) primary sources: Ovid, Virgil, Plutarch.

Seminar 102: Becoming Virginia Woolf

This honors seminar explores Virginia Woolf’s development from her early stories and first novel, A Voyage Out, to her experiments with various narrative structures and some of her most famous nonfiction essays, including the book-length manifestoes A Room of One’s Own and Three Guineas. We also will read various kinds of critical and historical articles and explore research methods aimed at preparing students to write the honors thesis. Assignments include a weekly discussion board post, a research report, and a final essay.