Feminism and Film

(Offered as ENGL 483, FAMS 426, and WAGS 483.)  This seminar will be devoted to the study of feminism and film, considering the ways feminism has shaped both film theory and film practice.  Though focusing in large part on post-1968 writings, which largely ushered in semiotic, psychoanalytic, and feminist theory to film studies, we will also consider early writings by women from the 1910s-1950s in a range of venues–from fan magazines to film journals–that developed points of view regarding women’s practices as both artists and audience members.  We will also

Reading and Experience

By working through a combination of creative non-fiction, film, and prose texts, this course in literary theory and textual analysis explores some of the assumed tensions between experiences generally described as real and those described as imaginary.  Over the course of the semester we will consider how literature enlarges personal experience, even as we also attend to what happens when art approaches the limits of representation.  Some of our particular concerns will include:  learning how to draw relationships between texts and their social and historical moments; how to

Emily Dickinson

“Experience is the Angled Road / Preferred against the Mind / By–Paradox–the Mind itself–” she explained in one poem and in this course we will make use of the resources of the town of Amherst to play experience and mind off each other in our efforts to come to terms with her elusive poetry.  The course will meet in the Dickinson Homestead, visit the Evergreens (her brother Austen’s house, and a veritable time capsule), make use of Dickinson manuscripts in the College archives, and set her work in the context of other nineteenth-century writers inclu

Poets: Dickinson/Heaney

A seminar devoted to the work of an eclectic list of poets active from the 1850s to the 2010s:  Emily Dickinson, Thomas Hardy, A.E. Housman, T.S. Eliot, Robert Francis, Langston Hughes, W.H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, Randall Jarrell, James Merrill, and Seamus Heaney.

Open to sophomores, juniors, and seniors, with preference to junior English majors.  Although an English Department seminar, students not majoring in English are welcome.  Limited to 15 students.  Fall semester.  Professor Sofield and Simpson Lecturer Wilbur.

Reading Story Sequences

Although little studied as a separate literary form, the book of interlinked short stories is a prominent (and increasingly popular) form of modern fiction.  This course will slowly read and closely examine a variety of these compositions in order to better understand how they achieve their coherence and how they structure a larger story through an unfolding sequence of independent narratives.  Works likely to be considered include Joyce’s Dubliners, Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, Hemingway’s In Our Time, Eudora Welty’s

Amer Fiction 1950-2010

Novels and short fiction, mainly comic, by such writers as Evelyn Waugh, Saul Bellow, Flannery O’Connor, Elizabeth Taylor, Kingsley Amis, John Updike, Philip Roth, Nicholson Baker, Ian McEwan, Jonathan Franzen, Barbara Pym.  The effort will be to refine and complicate one’s performance as a critic of these writers and their books.

Not open to first-year students.  Fall semester.  Professor Pritchard.

Shakespeare

[before 1800]  Readings in the comedies, histories, and tragedies, with attention to their poetic language, dramatic structure, and power in performance.  Texts and topics will vary by instructor.

Limited to 50 students.  Fall semester:  Professor Emeritus Berek (Mount Holyoke College).  Spring semester:  Professor Grobe.

Renaissance Drama

[before 1800]  The course surveys multiple forms of drama and spectacle in Renaissance England with special attention to the cultural articulation of space. We will consider the relation of a range of texts to their real and imagined performance sites-public theatres like the Globe as well as private playhouses, castles, fairgrounds, taverns, and the streets of London-asking what impact these places had on the dramas themselves, on their representation of public and private worlds, and on the social and political role of theatre in society at large.

Poetics of Performance

Poetry is not merely a written form; it is an oral art and a prompt to performance.  Students in this course will learn to use “close listening,” as well as the embodied experience of performing poetry themselves, in order to access poetic meanings that are unavailable through silent reading alone.  This course will require both written analyses and performed repertoires of poetry.  No prior performance experience is required.

Limited to 25 students.  Fall semester.  Professor Grobe.

Writing Poetry II

A second, advanced workshop for practicing poets. Students will undertake a longer project as well as doing exercises every week exploring technical problems.

Requisite: ENGL 221 or the equivalent. Limited enrollment. Preregistration is not allowed. Please consult the Creative Writing Center website for information on admission to this course.  Fall semester. Writer-in-Residence Hall.

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