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 102 may be used as one of three pre-1800 courses required of English majors.

D. Woubshet, J. Mann.

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: Contemporary Black Literature and Art

In this honors seminar we will explore the work of contemporary black writers and artists from around the world—including England, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Haiti, Jamaica, the United States, and Zimbabwe. What similarities of experience and aesthetics can we glean from comparing black art globally? And what differences stand out? Along with literary works, we will consider visual art and music to gain a more textured sense of black art in today’s global world. Authors/artists will include: Afrika Bambaattaa, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Edwidge Danticat, Spike Lee, Toni Morrison, and Yinka Shonibare.

Seminar 102: Literature and the Scientific Revolution in England

“I trust nothing but on the faith of my eyes”: Francis Bacon’s declaration became a central tenet of philosophical inquiry during the seventeenth century, as gentlemen and artisans began to collect specimens, dissect bodies, and survey the physical universe. This course explores how the new experimental “science” reverberated in imaginative productions in the age of Shakespeare and Milton. How did poetry and fiction find room for the growing domain of “fact”? Why did Englishmen focus this new scientific gaze on “curiosities” such as the human cadaver, the hermaphrodite, and the New World Indian? In surveying the major developments in English scientific thought before the Enlightenment, the interdisciplinary readings in this course will also introduce students to important literary and philosophical texts from the Renaissance.