Upcoming Courses
The following are courses new to the English Department! If you are interested in any, please contact the professor holding the course.
Fall 2009
English 482: The City, and Other Spaces in Literature
This course will explore the relationship between space and identity mostly through fiction from the 18th century Gothic to the postmodern present. We will read topographically (by space) rather than chronologically (by history). Our "topos" will include the city, the home, the castle, built space, and "other" spaces (e.g,. the tomb, the labyrinth). We'll also dip into some contemporary philosophy (such as phenomenology, postmodern theory, and psychoanalysis) to enliven and provide texture to our literary study. The class will make strategic use of non-traditional discussion and writing formats (Facebook, blogging, electronic chat) partly as a way to experiment with the space of the classroom but also to diversity our approach to literary study. Students will have the option of pursuing a creative project for their final assignment
Dr. Bryan B. Rasmussen
MWF, 1:30 - 2:35
English 456: Major British Authors: Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf was one of the most significant novelists, literary critics and cultural theorists of the 20th century. She was an original member of London’s famous and controversial Bloomsbury group, an elite circle of friends and artists that included the painters Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, fellow novelist E. M. Forster, the art critics Roger Fry and Leonard Woolf, and the economist John Maynard Keynes. This group was determined to leave behind the 19th century’s crippling and sterile conventions, both social and artistic—conventions predicated upon structures of sexual, racial and economic oppression and that had led to the errors of imperialism and the bloodbath of the Great War. Informed by the insights of Freud, Havelock Ellis and others in the fields of psychology and sexology, and new scientific investigations of human perception and cognition, Woolf developed a style of literary impressionism that came to be the hallmark of high modernism. In this course we will read several of Woolf’s novels including To the Lighthouse, Mrs. Dalloway, and The Waves; the essays A Room of One’s Own and Three Guineas; several short personal essays and works of literary criticism; and selected excerpts from her remarkable letters and journals. A few pertinent works by her contemporaries will also be addressed as time allows.
Dr. Allison Wee
TTh, 10:00 - 11:50
