ENGL 3340 - [Race, Class, Gender and Violence]

(crosslisted) ASRC 3340
(HB) (LA-AS)

Fall or Spring. Next Offered: 2020-2021. 4 credits. Student option grading.

May be used as one of the three pre-1800 courses required of English majors.

M. Ngugi.

Ideas change the world. Sometimes the same ideas can do tremendous good and also cause great suffering. In this course we will consider violence and revolutionary changes through the prism of British 17th and 18th century Enlightenment thought. Thinking through the writings of Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, Mary Wollstonecraft and others, we will explore the ways in which the brilliance and blind spots of Enlightenment thinking influenced contemporary notions of race, class, gender and changed the world.