Can a story be accurate but false? Should reporters value protecting national security over telling the truth? Is it ethical to tell a lie if it allows access to important information? Journalists face difficult ethical dilemmas every day. But how do they know what to do? Are there rules? In this class we will study ethics in journalism from the time of the muckrakers to the rise of the blog.

'This course examines the work of a variety of twentieth-century women writers located in the United States, focusing on the genre of prose fiction and the themes of gender, race, and sexuality. Particular attention will be paid to developments in African American women's writing, to Southern writers, and lesbian literary representation. Writers may include Gwendolyn Brooks, Willa Cather, Kate Chopin, Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larsen, Carson McCullers, Flannery O'Connor, Gertrude Stein, Alice Walker, Edith Wharton, and Hisaye Yamamoto.'

'Surveys the growing body of literature termed 'transnational,' with special focus on the theme of memory. How is culture defined by how we remember? What separates private and public histories? What role does temporality play in narratives extending across geographic regions? Reading novels, memoirs, short stories, and poems from the last half-century, we will consider themes of nostalgia, trauma, cognition, repression, archaeology, and myth in the contexts of colonialism, cosmopolitanism, migration, and diaspora.

'This course will examine the major African American writers of the twentieth century, beginning with the poetry and prose of Paul Laurence Dunbar and ending with the fiction of Toni Morrison, John Wideman, and the poetry of Yusef Koumanyaka, Rita Dove, and others. We will discuss the strategies involved in the creation of a 'black voice' and its relationship to Anglo-American literature.

'A study of major figures and trends in American poetry from the early 1900s through the 1960s. Topics include tradition vs. experiment in poetic style; regionalism vs. cosmopolitanism; responses to the decline of faith and to social and political changes and controversies. Poets include Frost, Eliot, Moore, Stevens, Williams, Lowell, Bishop, and others.'

'Throughout America's history, the essay has been a vital literary genre. From personal, religious, and confessional essays to highly political, satirical, and sometimes preposterous ones, American authors have revealed their passions and hatreds both eloquently and roughly. We will read essays from the eighteenth century to the present, concentrating on masters of the form. Authors include Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mark Twain, Henry James, James Baldwin, Joan Didion, Gore Vidal, and E. B. White.'

'This section examines the major ideas, shifts, expansions, and disruptions of the Victorian period. We will discuss prose, poetry, fiction, and art to understand how these forms engage with movements in voting rights, industry, living conditions, money, gender, definitions of class, and imperialist expansion. Writers may include Arnold, Carlyle, Martineau, Mill, Eliot, Dickens, Bronte, W. Collins, Browning, Rossetti, Hopkins, and many others, as well as painters and current readings in criticism and theory.'

'Arthurian legend conjures enduring stereotypes of chivalry and romantic love, but how do we go about situating medieval romance in literary history? Where does it come from, why was it written, who read it, and how did it change over time? In this course, students will learn about romance's historical and social contexts, its form, tropes, and imagery. We will think about romance's contemplation of justice, loyalty, subjectivity, love, and shame, especially as this body of literature grapples with the conflicts that arise between the mortal and divine.

'A study of some of Shakespeare's plays, emphasizing both the poetic and the dramatic aspects of his art, with attention to the historical context and varieties of critical interpretations, including those of the twentieth century. Nine or ten plays.'

'A narrative of English literary history from the Old English period to the Restoration of the monarchy (700-1660), paying attention to works, authors, and genres, and to changes of language and culture. Readings include Beowulf, selections from The Canterbury Tales, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a Shakespeare play, and selections from such authors as Julian of Norwich, Sir Thomas Wyatt, Edmund Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney, John Donne, Andrew Marvell, and John Milton.'