An intermediate-level workshop in which writers develop their skills through intensive reading, writing, revising, and critique. Emphasis on narrative writing, broadly defined to include a variety of genres, depending on the interests of the current holder of the Lakes writing residency. Topic changes annually.: This course aims to strengthen students' relationship to their own curiosity in the world around them and to equip them with practical, ethical tools to fully engage that curiosity and to render their discoveries in engaging, literary, nonfiction prose.

What do we do when we read literature? Does the meaning of a text depend on the author’s intention or on how readers read? What counts as a valid interpretation? Who decides? How do some texts get canonized and others forgotten? How does literature function in culture and society? How do changing understandings of language, the unconscious, class, gender, race, history, sexuality or disability affect how we read? “Theory” is “thinking about thinking,” questioning common sense, critically examining the categories we use to approach literature or any discursive text.

A study of novels written in England from Aphra Behn to Jane Austen and Walter Scott (1688–1814). Emphasis on the novelists’ narrative models and choices; we conclude by reading several novels by Austen—including one she wrote when 13 years old.

"Not as good as the book,” is a frequent response to film adaptations of novels. Adaptation studies, an interdisciplinary field that combines literary and film studies, rejects this notion of “fidelity” (how faithful a film is to its source) and instead reads literature and film as equal but different artistic and cultural forms, where the film may translate, transmute, critique, or re-interpret the novel. This course will look closely and analytically at some paired fiction and film adaptations that focus on issues of imperialism, race, class, and gender.

Same as ENG 207. An introductory exploration of the physical forms that knowledge and communication have taken in the West, from ancient oral cultures to modern print-literate culture. Our main interest is in discovering how what is said and thought in a culture reflects its available kinds of literacy and media of communication.

Same as HSC 207. An introductory exploration of the physical forms that knowledge and communication have taken in the West, from ancient oral cultures to modern print-literate culture. Our main interest is in discovering how what is said and thought in a culture reflects its available kinds of literacy and media of communication.

In this course we journey from the Romantics to the Victorians to the Modernists, reading a wide variety of poetry, plays, and novels from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first. We read some of the most important, strange, beautiful, and complex texts of the English literary tradition, while considering the formations and deformations of that tradition, with its inclusions and exclusions, its riches and its costs, its ceaseless attention to and radical deviations from what is past or passing, or to come.

A study of the English literary tradition from the Middle Ages through the 18th century. Recommended for sophomores. Enrollment limited to 20 per section.

This course teaches the skills that enable us to read literature with understanding and pleasure. By studying examples from a variety of periods and places, students learn how poetry, prose fiction and drama work, how to interpret them and how to make use of interpretations by others. English 199 seeks to produce perceptive readers well equipped to take on complex texts. This gateway course for prospective English majors is not recommended for students simply seeking a writing intensive course. Readings in different sections vary, but all involve active discussion and frequent writing.

This course teaches the skills that enable us to read literature with understanding and pleasure. By studying examples from a variety of periods and places, students learn how poetry, prose fiction and drama work, how to interpret them and how to make use of interpretations by others. English 199 seeks to produce perceptive readers well equipped to take on complex texts. This gateway course for prospective English majors is not recommended for students simply seeking a writing intensive course. Readings in different sections vary, but all involve active discussion and frequent writing.