ENGLISH
(AS) {ENGL}
See English Department website for current descriptions: www.english.upenn.edu
Freshman Seminar
See English Department website for current descriptions: www.english.upenn.edu
SM 016. (AFRC016, CINE016, GSOC016,
LALS016, THAR076) Topics in Literature. (C) Freshman Seminar.
Freshman Seminars under the title "Topics in Literature" will
afford entering students who are considering literary
study as their major the opportunity to explore a particular
and limited subject with a professor whose current
work lies in that area. Topics may range from
the lyric poems of Shakespeare's period to the ethnic
fiction of contemporary America. Small class-size
will insure all students the opportunity to participate
in lively discussions. Students may expect frequent
and extensive writing assignments, but these seminars
are not writing courses; rather, they are intensive
introductions to the serious study of literature. One
of them may be counted toward the English major and
may be applied to a period, genre, or thematic requirement
within the major.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
Intermediate-Level Courses 017-097
See English Department website for current descriptions: www.english.upenn.edu
017. Age of Beowulf. (M) Distribution Course in Arts & Letters.
Class of 2009 & prior only.
This course introduces students to the great Old English epic
Beowulf within the larger context of Anglo-Saxon culture. We
will read the poem in its entirety (after a crash course
on Old English grammar); as we do so, we will use our
experience of the poem to branch out into such topics
as Anglo-Saxon poetics, mythologies and genealogies,
manuscript culture, monastic life, archeology, legal
codes, slavery, and gender relations.
Finally, we will use the poem to think through the place
of Old English in modern American and British culture,
as for example, the way we conceive of the English language,
national identity, and our medieval-saturated popular
culture (romances, films, videogames, etc.).
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
018. Old English. (M) Distribution Course in Arts &
Letters. Class of 2009 & prior only.
This course introduces students to the powerful and influential
corpus of Old English literature. We will read
a wide variety of texts:short poems such as THE WONDERER,
THE SEAFARER, THE WIFE'S LAMENT and the passionate
religious poem THE DREAM OF THE ROOD; chronicles such
as THE BATTLE OF MALDON AGAINST THE VIKINGS,THE OLD
TESTAMENT, EXODUS and Bede's CONVERSION OF THE ENGLISH;
and selections from the greatest of all English epics,
BEOWULF. Readings will be in Old English,and
the first few weeks of the course will be devoted to
mastering Old English prosody, vocabulary, and grammar
(as well as a crash course on the early history of
the English language). During the last few weeks
we may read modern criticism of Old English poetry,
or we will consider the modern poetic reception of
Old English literature and explore theories and problems
of translation, reading translations of Old English
poems by Yeats, Auden, Tolkein, and Heaney.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
019. History of the English Language.
(M) Distribution
Course in Arts & Letters. Class of 2009 & prior
only.
This course traces the history of the English language through
English literaryhistory, from Anglo-Saxon England to
21st-century America. We will consider the relationship
between different language systems (e.g., syntax, morphology,
orthography, grammar) and the relation of those systems
to the liteature of different historial periods. We
will also consider the social and political events
influencing language change, such as the introduction
of Christianity, the Norman Conquest, the printing
press, colonialism, educational policies, and mass
media.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
020. Literature Before 1660. (C) Distribution Course in Arts &
Letters. Class of 2009 & prior only.
This course will introduce students to key works of English
literature written before 1660. It will explore
the major literary genres of this period, as well as
the social and cultural contexts in which they were
produced. The course will examine how literature
texts articulate changes in language and form, as well
as in concepts of family, nation, and community during
the medieval and early modern periods.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
021. (CLST321) Medieval Literature
and Culture. (M) Distribution Course in Arts & Letters. Class of 2009 & prior
only.
This course introduces students to four hundred years of English
literary culture, from approximately 1100 to 1500. This
period was marked by major transformations, not only
with respect to government, law, religious practice,
intellectural life, England's relation to the Continent
(during the 100 Years War), the organization of society
(especially after the Black Death), the circulation
of literary texts, and the status of authors.
Topics may include medieval women writers, manuscript
production, literatures of revoltd, courtly culture,
Crusades, cross-Channel influences, and religious controversy.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
022. Romance. (M) Distribution Course in Arts &
Letters. Class of 2009 & prior only.
This course will focus on what is arguably the most extravagant,
adventuresome, and fantastical of the literary genres:
the Romance. We will read a number of medieval
and renaissance romance narratives, in verse and prose,
beginning with the Arthurian romances (Malory's MORTE
D'ARTHUR, SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT) and continuing
with as many (and as much) of the great renaissance
romances as time will allow: Sir Philip Sidney's ARCADIA,
Edmund Spenser's THE FAERIE QUEEN, and Lady Mary Wroth's
URANIA.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
023. History and Theory of Genre.
(M) Distribution
Course in Arts & Letters. Class of 2009 & prior
only.
This course will offer students the opportunity to understand
what makes one genre or kind of literature different
from another. Where do their definitions originate? How
does genre affect how a literary work is written, how
it is reproduced, and how it is interpreted? To
what degree have the various genres mutated through
time? Under what circumstances do new genres
emerge? The syllabus will consist of representative
works of a number of literary generes (drama, romance,
lyric, satire, epic) as well as some readings, both
ancient and modern, in the theory of genre.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
025. The Age of Chaucer. (M) Distribution Course in Arts &
Letters. Class of 2009 & prior only.
In this class we come to speak as people spoke in England
some six centuries ago: in medieval or 'Middle' English. We
do this by reading the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer,
a great poet who has influenced everyone from William
Shakespeare to Sylvia Plath. Since Middle English
takes some getting used to, class assignments are not
heavy: usually about 800 lines per class. A typical
class might begin by looking at a few of the easier
passages in the Canterbury Tales, proceed to reading
the greatest poem of love in the English language (Chaucer's
TROILUS AND CRISEYDE), before moving on to other contemporary
writers in medieval culture. We will likely compare
representations of medieval Christianty, Judaism, and
Islam, as well as aspects of film adaptation by Italian
filmmaker Pasolini (and perhaps by Chaucer scholar
Terry Jones). We will consider what it might
have been like to live secure in an age of faith; yet
to live insecure, as a dizzying new profusion of trades
and occupations sprang up in unprecedented "divisions
of labor." We will imagine being a medieval woman,
and may visit and handle medieval manuscripts. Above
all, we will enjoy the poetry.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
026. Drama to 1660. (M) Distribution Course in Arts &
Letters. Class of 2009 & prior only.
Early drama in English had its roots as much in Christianity
as in Classical antiquity. What grew into the
theater of Shakespeare began as networks of strolling
players and church atuhorities in market towns sponsoring
cycles of "miracle" and "mystery" plays.
This course will introduce students to major dramatic
works of the medieval and early modern periods, including
plays written for the public stage, closet dramas, masques,
mayoral pageants and other kinds of performances. The
course will also pay attention to the development of
different dramatic genres during these periods, as well
as the social and cultural contexts in which they were
produced. Students thus will explore the history
of drama in English through the renaissance to the closing
of the theaters in 1641 and their eventual reopening
in 1660.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
029. (CLST167, CLST321, COML167)
Classical Antiquity and English Literature. (M) Distribution Course in Arts &
Letters. Class of 2009 & prior only. [Formerly
ENGL 096].
This course will examine the relationship between early English
literature and that of ancient Greece and Rome. At
times will will discuss how classical theories of genre
and aesthetics were appropriate and reinvented in medieval,
raniassance, and seventeenth-century texts.
What does it mean to call HAMLET and OEDIPUS THE KING
tragedies, or THE FROGS and THE WAY OF THE WORLD comedies? Should
we consider the development of English drama and poetry
as an extension of an imposing classcial traditon or
as a sustained and resistant response to it?
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
031. Introduction to Renaissance
Literature and Culture. (M) Distribution Course in Arts & Letters. Class of 2009 & prior
only. [Formerly ENGL 030].
This course will survey the cultural history of sixteenth
and seventeenth century England. Interdisciplinary
in nature and drawing on the latest methodologies and
insights of English studies, we will explore how aesthetics,
politics, social traditions, impacted literature at
this vital and turbulent time of English history.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
032. Renaissance Poetics. (M) Distribution Course in Arts &
Letters. Class of 2009 & prior only.
An introduction to the theory and practice of verse in England
from approximately 1500 to 1700. Primary concerned
with poems by Skelton, Wyatt, Surrey, Gascoigne, Sidney,
Shakespeare, Spenser, Jonson, Donne, Herbert, Herrick,
Marvel, and Milton, this course places special emphasis
on the influence of classical and continental poetry
in Renaissance England, reading English texts comparatively
with texts by Horace, Ovid, Virgil, Petrarch, and du
Bellay. The course also examines contemporary
critical writing about poetics; debates about the fitness
of English to sustain a literture; early efforts to
invent a canon of English poets; the issue of translation;
and the organization and status of pre-modern genres,
like pastoral, epigram and elegy.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
033. (RELS015) The Bible As Literature.
(M) Distribution
Course in Arts & Letters. Class of 2009 & prior
only. [Formerly ENGL 073].
Successive generations have found the Bible to be a text which
requires - even demands - extensive interpretation. This
course explores the Bible as literature, considering
such matters as the artistic arrangement and stylistic
qualities of individual episodes as well as the larger
thematic patterns of both the Old and New Testaments
and the Apocrypha. A good part of the course
is spent looking at the place of the Bible in cultural
and literary history andthe influence of such biblical
figures as Adam and Eve, David, and Susanna on writers
of poetry, drama, and fiction in the English and American
literary traditions.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
034. (CINE138, FNAR034, HIST034)
Cultures of The Book. (M) Humanities & Social
Science Sector. Class of 2010 & beyond. [Formerly
ENGL 071].
The impact of various technologies (from writing to various
forms of manuscript to print to electronics) on the
way the written word gives shape to a culture. Emphasis
on western cultures from Plato to the present, but
participation by students with interest or expertise
in non-western cultures will be of great value to the
group as a whole. The course offers an ideal
perspective from which students can consider meta-issues
surrounding their own special interests in a wide variety
of fields, as well as learn to think about the way
in which traditional fields of study are linked by
common inherited cultural practices and constructions.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
038. The Age of Milton. (M) Distribution Course in Arts &
Letters. Class of 2009 & prior only.
The seventeenth century was a time of revolution and upheaval,
of excesses both puritanical and cavalier. It
saw the execution of one kind and the restoration of
another,a nd surved the English Civil War and the great
Fire and Great Plague of London. This course
explores the literature of this century through the
works of John Milton Milton's major works (selected
sonnets, COMUS, AREOPAGITICA, PARADISE LOST, PARADISE
REGAINED, and SAMSON AGONISTES), and his contemporaries. We
will concentrate on a number of issues that governed
writing in the period, particularly the tension between
individual interiority and historial, social and political
activity.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
040. British Poetry 1660 - 1914.
(M) Distribution
Course in Arts & Letters. Class of 2009 & prior
only.
This course provides students with a survey of British poetry
and poetics from the Restoration to the Modern period,
and usually will include writers ranging from Aphra
Behn and Alexander Pople to Thomas Hardy. The
course may be offered in various fromsn, some coverning
less,and some more historial ground. Most will provide
a sampling of eighteenth-centure, Romantic, and Victorial
poets.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
041. 18th-Century British Literature.
(M) Distribution
Course in Arts & Letters. Class of 2009 & prior
only.
An introduction to British literary and cultural history in
the eighteenth century. Typically, this course
will contain materials from the later seventeenth to
the early nineteenth centuries--from the Restoration
and Glorious Revolution through the Englightenment,
the American and French Revolutions, and the Napoloeonic
Wars--though it need not cover the entire period. We
will read plays, poetry and prose in order to understand
the aesthetic, intellectual, social and political issues
germane to literary production and achievement in this
period.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
042. 18th-Century Poetry. (M) Distribution Course in Arts &
Letters. Class of 2009 & prior only.
An introduction to poetic practices as they developed in England,
and in English-speaking Britain and its colonies, between
the late seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries. Typically,
this course will survey poetry on both sides of the
Atlantic, though its geographic focus will vary with
the instructor. Students will focus on a variety
of peotic forms including, through not restricted to:
satire, the ode, panegyric, pastoral and topographical
poetry, lyric poetry. We will seek to understand
poetry as crucial to, and constitutive of, eighteenth-century
aesthetic and cultural practice.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
043. Early American Literature.
(M) Distribution
Course in Arts & Letters. Class of 2009 & prior
only. [Formerly ENGL 082].
An introduction to the English-language literatures of North
America and the Caribbean from the late 16th century
to the early 19th.
Works in various genres by Thomas Hariot, John Smith,
William Bradfor, Mary Rowlandson, Anne Bradstreet, Jonathan
Edwards, Sarah Knight, Franklin, Jefferson, Wheatley,
Freneau, Bryant, Poe, and many others.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
045. 18th-Century Novel. (M) Distribution Course in Arts &
Letters. Class of 2009 & prior only.
This survey of the novel addresses key questions about the
novel's "rise" in the eighteenth century
on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as attending
to the cultural conditions that attended this new literary
from. How did the concurrent "rise" of
the middle classes and the emergence of an increasingly
female reading public affect the form and preoccupations
of early novels? What role did the institutions like
literary reviews, libraries, and the church play in
the novel's early reception? While reading will
vary from course to course, students should expect
to read such authors as Austen, Behn, Brockden Brown,
Burney, Defoe, Fielding, Richardson, Rowlandson, Rowson,
Scott, and Smollett.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
046. Drama from 1660 - 1840. (M) Distribution Course in Arts &
Letters. Class of 2009 & prior only.
This course surveys drama from the Restoration through the
Romantic period, and in so doing explores arguably
the most tumultuous period of Brish and American Theater
history. These years saw the reopening of the
theaters in London in 1660 after their having been
closed through two decades of Civil War and Puritan
rule. They witness the introduction of actresses
to the stage, the development of scenery and the modern
drop-apron stage, the establishment of theatrical monopolies
in 1660 and stringent censorship in 1737, and the gradual
introduction, acceptance, and eventual celebration
of the stage in America. Perhaps most important,
they oversaw some of the best comedies and farces in
the English language, the introduction of pantomime
and the two-show evening, sustained experimentation
with music and spectacle on stage, and the transformation
of tragedy into a star vehicle of actors and actresses
like David Garrick, Sarah Siddons, John Philip Kemble,
and Edmund Kean.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
048. Transatlantic Literature.
(M) Distribution
Course in Arts & Letters. Class of 2009 & prior
only.
A survey of the literatures of the English-speaking Atlantic
world, from the earliest colonial ventures in North
America to the cosmopolitan cultures of the 19th-century
empire. In prose, poetry, and drama by a diverse
range of writers, the course will trace numerous transatlantic
dialogues--on colonialism, aesthetics, revolution,
slavery, imagination, nationalism, and religion--from
the British Isles to the Americas to Western Africa.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
049. Enlightenment and Romanticism.
(M) Distribution
Course in Arts & Letters. Class of 2009 & prior
only.
A survey of literature from the Enlightenment to Romanticism,
focusing on the interdisciplinary nature of literary
and social change between 1745 and 1848. Students will
read the aesthetic, philosophical, and literary writings
from this century of American, European, and Caribbean
revolutions. While readings will vary from course
to course, students should expect to read such authors
asAnna Barbauld, William Blake, Edmund Burke, Olaudah
Equinao, Henry Fielding, Benjamin Franklin, Philip
Freneau, Margaret Fuller, David Hume, Thomas Jefferson,
Hannah More, Thomas Paine, Walter Scott, Percy Shelley,
Adam Smith, Horace Walpole, Phillis Wheatley, Helen
Maria Williams, and Mary Wollstonecraft.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
050. The Romantic Period. (M) Distribution Course in Arts &
Letters. Class of 2009 & prior only.
This course offers an introduction to the literature of the
Romantic period (ca. 1770-1830). Some versions
of this course will incorporate European romantic writers,
while others will focus exclusively on Anglo-American
romanticism, and survey authors such as Austen, Blake,
Brockden Brown, Byron, Coleridge, Emerson, Irving,
Keats, Radcliffe, Scott, Shelley, and Wordsworth.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
051. (GSOC051) 19th-Century British
Literature. (M) Distribution Course in Arts & Letters. Class of 2009 & prior
only.
In 1815 in the wake of the battle of Waterloo, Great Britain
controlled a staggering quarter of the world's landmass
and half of its gross national product. This
course will begin with the Napoleonic Wars and this
Regency aftermath to survey a century of British literature
-- from Romanticism through the revolutions of 1848
and the Victorian and Edwardian periods to the beginning
of the first World War. Most versions of this
course will read both novels and poetry, often focusing
on the relation between the two and their function
within nineteenth century culture. Others may
incorporate drama and non-fiction prose.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
052. 19th-Century Poetry. (M) Distribution Course in Arts &
Letters. Class of 2009 & prior only. [Formerly ENGL
051].
An introduction to British and American poetry and poetics
from the early Romantics to the early Modernists._Authors
may include Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Hemans, Shelley,
Keats, Byron, Bryant, Tennyson, Poe, Longfellow, the
Brownings, Whitman, Dickinson, the Bront_s, Swinburne,
the Rossettis, Hopkins, Arnold, Dunbar, Hardy, and
Robinson.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
053. 19th-Century American Literature.
(M) Distribution
Course in Arts & Letters. Class of 2009 & prior
only. [Formerly ENGL 083].
A consideration of outstanding literary treatments of American
culture from theearly Federalist period to the beginnings
of the first World War. We will traverse literary
genres, reading autobiographies and travel accounts
as well a fiction and poetry.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
055. (COML055, GSOC055) 19th-Century
Novel. (M) Distribution Course in Arts & Letters. Class of 2009 & prior
only.
During the nineteenth century the novel became the dominant
literary form of its day, supplanting poetry and drama
on both sides of the Atlantic. In this introduction
to the novelists of the period, we will read the writers
who secured the novel's cultural respectability and
economic prominence. Likely authors will include
Austen, the Brontes, Collins, Dickens, Eliot, Hardy,
Hawthorne, Melville, Poe, Thackeray, Scott, and Stowe. The
course will explore the themes, techniques, and styles
of the nineteeth-century novel. It will focus
not only on the large structural and thematic patterns
and problems within each novel but also on the act
of reading as a historically specific cultural ritual
in itself.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
056. Modern Drama. (M) Distribution Course in Arts &
Letters. Class of 2009 & prior only.
Selected writings for the stage from the mid-nineteenth century
to the present, encompassing such radical movements
as realism and naturalism, symbolism and surrealism,
metatheatre, expressionism, epic theatre, the theatre
of the absurd, and post-modernism. Major playwrights
include Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, Shaw, Pirandello,
Brecht, Beckett, Kushner, and Parks.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
057. (AFRC057, LALS057) Literature
of the Americas to 1900. (M) Distribution Course in Arts & Letters. Class of 2009
& prior only. [Formerly ENGL 080].
This course examines U.S. literature and culture in the context
of the global history of the Americas. Historical
moments informing the course will range from the origins
of the Caribbean slave-and-sugar trade at the beginning
of the nineteenth century, to the Monroe Doctrine of
1823 and the U.S. Mexico and Spanish-American
wars.
Readings will include works by authors such as Frances
Calder_n de la Barca, Frederick Douglass, Helen Hunt
Jackson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Jose Marti, Herman
Melville, John Rollin Ridge, Mar_a Amparo Ruiz de Burton,
and Felix Varela.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
058. Irish Literature. (M) Distribution Course in Arts &
Letters. Class of 2009 & prior only. [Formerly ENGL
063].
This course will provide an introduction to modern Irish literature,
focusing on the tension between Ireland's violent history
and its heroic mythology. This tension leaves its mark
not only on the ravaged landscape, but also on the
English language, which displays its
"foreignness" most strongly in the hands of Irish writers.
Readings will span the genres of poetry, drama, fiction,
and history, and will include works by Sommerville and
Ross, Yeats, George Moore, Joyce, Synge, O'Casey, Beckett,
Edna O'Brien, and Brian Friel.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
059. (CINE059, COML059) Modernisms
and Modernities. (M) Distribution Course in Arts & Letters. Class of 2009
& prior only.
This class explores the international emergence of modernism,
typically from the middle of the 19th century to the
middle of the 20th century. We will examine the
links between modernity, the avant-garde, and various
national modernisms that emerged alongside them.
Resolutely transatlantic and open to French, Spanish,
Italian, German, or Russian influences, this course assumes
the very concept of Modernism to necessitate an international
perspective focusing on the new in literature and the
arts -- including film, the theatre, music, and the visual
arts. The philosophies of modernism will also be
surveyed and concise introductions provided to important
thinkers like Marx, Nietzsche, Sorel, Bergson, Freud,
and Benjamin.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
060. Rise of the Novel. (M) Distribution Course in Arts &
Letters. Class of 2009 & prior only.
This course explores the history of the British novel and
the diverse strategieof style, structure, characterization,
and narrative techniques it has deployed since the
late seventeenth century. While works from the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries will form the core
of the reading, some versions of this course will include
twentieth-century works. All will provide students
with the opportunity to test the advantages and limitations
of a variety of critical approaches to the novel as
a genre. Readings may include works by Behn,
Swift, Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Lennox, Smollett,
Burney, Scott, Austen, the Brontes, Dickens, Eliot,
Hardy, Conrad, Joyce, Lawrence, Woolf, Rhys, Greene,
Naipaul, Carter, Rushdie, and Coetzee.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
061. (CINE160) 20th-Century British
Literature. (M) Distribution Course in Arts & Letters. Class of 2009 & prior
only.
This course introduces major works in twentieth-century British
literature. We will read across a range of fiction,
poetry, plays, and essays, and will consider aesthetic
movements such as modernism as well as historical contexts
including the two World Wars, the decline of empire,
and racial and sexual conflict. Authors treated
might include: Conrad, Yeats, Joyce, Eliot, Lawrence,
Forster, Shaw, Woolf, Auden, Orwell, Beckett, Achebe,
Rhys, Synge, Naipaul, Rushdie, Heaney, and Walcott.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
062. (COML062) 20th-Century Poetry.
(M) Distribution
Course in Arts & Letters. Class of 2009 & prior
only.
From abstraction to beat, from socialism to negritude, from
expressionism to ecopoetry, from surrealism to visual
poetry, from collage to digital poetry, the poetry
of the twentieth century has been characterized by
both the varieties of its forms and the range of its
practitioners. This course will offer a broad
overview of many of the major trends and a few minor
eddies in the immensely rich, wonderfully varied, ideologically
and aesthetically charged field. The course will
cover many of the radical poetry movements and individual
innovations, along with the more conventional and idiosyncratic
work, and will provide examples of political, social,
ethnic, and national poetries, both in the Americas
and Europe, and beyond to the rest of the world. While
most of the poetry covered will be in English, works
in translation, and indeed the art of translation,
will be an essential component the course.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
063. (AFRC063) 20th-Century American
Literature. (M) Distribution Course in Arts & Letters. Class of 2009 & prior
only. [Formerly ENGL 058].
This course surveys American literature across the twentieth-century,
considering its formal innovations in the wake of modernism,
the two World Wars, the Cold War and postmodernity. Authors
treated might include: James, Wharton, Eliot, Pound,
Faulkner, Hemingway, Rhys, Baldwin, Ginsberg, Plath,
Pynchon, Walcott, and Morrison.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
064. Modern America. (M) Distribution Course in Arts &
Letters. Class of 2009 & prior only. [Formerly ENGL
084].
This course is concerned with American literature and cultural
life from the turn of the century until about 1950. The
course emphasizes the period between the two World
Wars and emphasizes as well the intellectual and cultural
milieu in which the writers found themselves.
Works by the following writers are usually included:
James, Eliot, Frost, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, West, Stevens,
DuBois, Williams, Wharton, Stein, West, Moore, and Hemingway.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
065. (AFST065, COML065) 20th-Century
British Novel. (M) Distribution Course in Arts & Letters. Class of 2009
& prior only.
This course traces the development of the novel across the
twentieth-century. The course will consider the formal
innovations of the modern novel (challenges to realism,
stream of consciousness, fragmentation, etc.) in relation
to major historical shifts in the period. Authors
treated might include: Conrad, Lawrence, Joyce, Forster,
Woolf, Cather, Faulkner, Hemingway, Achebe, Greene,
Rhys, Baldwin, Naipaul, Pynchon, Rushdie, and Morrison.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
066. (ASAM066) Literature and Law.
(M) Humanities
& Social Science Sector. Class of 2010 & beyond.
An introduction not only to representations of the law and
legal processes in literary texts, but also to the
theories of reading, representation, and interpretation
that form the foundation of both legal and literary
analysis.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
067. 20th-Century Literature of
the Americas. (M) Distribution
Course in Arts & Letters. Class of 2009 & prior
only.
This course situates major U.S. literary movements of the
twentieth century within the political and cultural
histories of the Americas. With this more global
context we will survey writing about revolution, imperialism,
social protest, feminism and sexuality, and the influence
of the "boom" writers and magical realism
on U.S. culture. Writers might include Willa
Cather, Michelle Cliff, Coco Fusco, Langston Hughes,
Jack Kerouac, Leslie Marmon Silko, Gabriel Garc_a Marquez,
Katherine Anne Porter, and William Carlos Williams.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
069. Poetry and Poetics. (M) Distribution Course in Arts &
Letters. Class of 2009 & prior only.
What is poetry and what place does it have among literary
forms? What is its relation to culture, history,
and our sense of speakers and audiences? This
course will focus on various problems in poetic practice
and theory, ranging from ancient theories of poetry
in Plato and Aristotle to contemporary problems in
poetics. In some semesters a particular school
of poets may be thefocus; in others a historical issue
of literary transmission, or a problem of poetic genres,
such as lyric, narrative, and dramatic poetry, may
be emphasized. The course will provide a basic
knowledge of scansion in English with some sense of
the historical development of metrics. This course
is a good foundation for those who want to continue
to study poetry in literary history and for creative
writers concentrating on poetry.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
070. (GSOC060, LALS060) Latina/o
Literature and Culture. (M) Distribution Course in Arts & Letters. Class of 2009 & prior
only.
A survey of cultural productions by Latinas/os (i.e. people
of Latin American descent who have been raised in the
U.S.) that usually will focus on the twentieth century,
but might at times examine earlier periods instead. The
course will take a culturally and historically informed
approach to a wide range of novels, poems, plays, and
films, and will sometimes include visual art and music. Writers
and artists might include Am_rico Paredes, Piri Thomas,
Cherr_e Moraga, Sandra Cisneros, Julia Alvarez, Junot
D_az, Cristina Garc_a, El Teatro Campesino, John Leguizamo,
Carmen Lomas Garza, the Hernandez Brothers, and Los
Tigres del Norte.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
071. (AFRC071, AFST071) Literatures
of Africa and the African Diaspora. (M) Distribution Course in Arts &
Letters. Class of 2009 & prior only.
This course will serve as an introduction to a particularly
rich arena of literature in English. It will
also help students to begin to understand many other
racial subtexts underlying the culture wars in America,
where too often, in the full glare of cameras, an anguished
voice informs the audience that 'as an African, I cannot
expect justice in this America.'
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
072. (ASAM002) Asian American Literature.
(M) Distribution
Course in Arts & Letters. Class of 2009 & prior
only.
An overview of Asian American literature from its beginnings
at the turn of the twentieth century to the present. This
course covers a wide range of Asian American novels,
plays, and poems, situating them in the contexts of
American history and minority communities and considering
the variety of formal strategies these different texts
take.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
073. 19th-Century Literatures in
Dialogue. (M) Distribution
Course in Arts & Letters. Class of 2009 & prior
only.
What dialogues have defined and constituted American and other
literatures? This course examines critical intersections
between different literatures of the 19th century,
addressing questions of race, ethnicity, and culture.
Previous versions of this course have included such
titles as "Postbellum/Pre-Harlem" and "Victorian
Literature and Ireland." Our readings will consider
a range of literary interactions, and will take a self-consciously
comparative and intertextual approach.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
074. (AFRC085) Contemporary American
Literature. (M) Distribution Course in Arts & Letters. Class of 2009 & prior
only. [Formerly ENGL 085].
The readings for this course expose the student to a wide
range of American fiction and poetry since World War
II, giving considerable attention to recent work. Works
may include ALL THE KING'S MEN by Robert Penn Warren,
HERZOG by Saul Bellow, ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac,
V by Thomas Pynchon, OF LOVE AND DUST by Ernest J.Gaines,
A FLAG FOR SUNRISE by Robert Stone, THE KILLING GROUD
by Mary Lee Settle, and selected poems by Ginsberg,
Plath, and Walcott. Readings vary from term to term.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
L/R 075. (HIST117, HSOC110, STSC110)
Science and Literature. (M) Arts & Letters Sector. All Classes.
The separation of scientific and humanistic inquiry from one
another is a fairly modern occurrence, not more than
100 or 200 years old. In the early 19th century,
for example, a student studying
"natural philosophy" at a university would have studied what we now
would recognize as biology, chemistry, ethics, mathematics, philosophy, and
physics, and would also have been expected to be an accomplished classicist
and well-versed in modern literature. The tradition of the poet-scientist
established with Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles) and John Keats finds
its modern heir in writersas diverse as Tom Lehrer and William Carlos Williams. This
course will survey both representations of science and the scientist in literature
and the intersections between scientific and literary writing and inquiry. Sometimes
the course will have a broad thematic and historical focus; recent offerings
of this kind include "Anatomies of Literature" and "Darwin's
Legacy."
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
077. (COML077, SAST124) Literature
and Empire. (M) Distribution Course in Arts & Letters. Class of 2009 & prior
only.
Since the sixteenth century English has been, among other
things, an imperial language, and ideas about empire
and imperialism have shaped not only many of English
literature's central texts but also the development
of English literary study as a discipline. This
course is an introduction to the way imperial contact
and changing ideas about empire and decolonization
have shaped literature in English from the sixteenth
to the twentieth centuries. We will consider historical
and cultural materials to offer contexts for literary
production of texts from the sixteenth to the twentieth
centuries. The course also will serve as a comprehensive
introduction to the way literary and cultural representations
of Europe have been influenced by changing ideas about
empire and imperialism. Different versions of
the course will vary in the historical and cultural
material they cover as they offer a context for literary
production.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
079. (GRMN263, JWST179, JWST261)
Jewish-American Literature. (M) Arts & Letters Sector. All Classes.
From vaudeville comedy to modernist poetry, from Tin Pan Alley
to the postwar novel, from Yiddish theater to midrashic
approaches to literary interpretation, Jewish American
literature and thought have been central to, and on
the cutting edge of, the fabric of American culture
-- high, low, and, especially, in between. This
course will examine the many facets of Jewish American
literature, both secular and observant, assimilationist
and particularist -- from films such as The Jazz Singer
(1927) to the fiction of Roth and Bellow to the poetry
of Bob Dylan and Adrienne Rich. While we will
focus on significant works of fiction and poetry, we
also will read within the wider world of philosophy,
criticism, radio, film, theater, and television that
surround them.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
080. (AFRC079) Literatures of Jazz.
(M) Distribution
Course in Arts & Letters. Class of 2009 & prior
only.
That modernism is steeped as much in the rituals of race as
of innovation is most evident in the emergence of the
music we have come to know as jazz, which results from
collaborations and confrontations taking place both
across and within the color line. In this course
we will look at jazz and the literaryrepresentations
it engendered in order to understand modern American
culture. We will explore a dizzying variety of
forms, including autobiography and album liner notes,
biography, poetry, fiction, and cinema. We'll
examine how race, gender, and class influenced the
development of jazz music, and then will use jazz music
to develop critical approaches to literary form. Students
are not required to have a critical understanding of
music. Class will involve visits from musicians
and critics, as well as field trips to some of Philadelphias
most vibrant jazz venues.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
081. (AFRC081, CINE081) African-American
Literature. (M) Distribution Course in Arts & Letters. Class of 2009
& prior only.
An introduction to African-American literature, typically
ranging across a wide specturm of moments, methodologies,
and ideological postures, from Reconstruction and the
Harlem Reanaissance to the Civil Rights Movement. Most
versions of this course will begin in the 19th century;
some versions of the course will concentrate only on
the modern period.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
082. Native-American Literature.
(M) Distribution
Course in Arts & Letters. Class of 2009 & prior
only.
From oral traditions to modern forms, this course surveys
the diverse body of Native American literature through
its many transformations and contexts, from examples
of oral literature to film, poetry, fiction, essays,
and drama. Possible authors include Leslie Marmon Silko,
Sarah Winnemucca, Sherman Alexie, James Welch, N. Scott
Momaday, and Louise Erdrich.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
083. (AFRC083, JWST083) 20th-Century
Literatures In Dialogue. (M) Distribution Course in Arts & Letters. Class of
2009 & prior only.
What dialogues have defined and constituted American and other
literatures? This course examines critical intersections
between different literatures, addressing questions
of race, ethnicity, and culture. Previous versions
of this course have included such titles as
"African-American and Jewish-American Literature." Our readings will
consider a range of literary interactions, and will take a self-consciously
comparative and intertextual approach.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
084. (AFRC084) Theories of Race
and Ethnicity. (M) Distribution
Course in Arts & Letters. Class of 2009 & prior
only.
The idea of 'race' broadly defined as the signification of
biological and sociocultural differences as an index
of human superiority or inferiority has played a crucial
role in the literary imagination and is fundamental
to studying most literatures in English
This course will
examine representations of race in literary practices
and in particular the centrality of such representations
to the historical unfolding of communities and nations.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
086. American Drama. (M) Distribution Course in Arts &
Letters. Class of 2009 & prior only. [Formerly ENGL
076].
Selected writings for the American stage from the nineteenth
century to the present, in relation to American history,
culture, other forms of literary expression, and major
movements in theatre aesthetics. Major playwrights
include O'Neill, Odets, Hellman, Miller, Williams,
Albee, Shepherd, Mamet, Baraka, Wilson, Kushner, and
Parks.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
087. (COML110, HIST246, THAR110)
Theatre, History and Cultural I, Classical Athens
to Elizabethan London. (C) Arts & Letters Sector. All Classes.
Fulfills Arts & Letters Distribution Requirement.
This course will explore the forms of public performance,
most specifically theatre, as they emerge from and
give dramatic shape to the dynamic life of communal,
civic and social bodies, from their antropological
origins in ritual and religious ceremonies, to the
rise of great urban centers, to the closing of the
theaters in London in 1642. This course will
focus on development of theatre practice in both Western
and non-Western cultures intersects with the history
of cities, the rise of market economies, and the emerging
forces of national identity. In addition to examining
the history of performance practices, theatre architecture,
scenic conventions and acting methods, this course
will investigate, where appropriate, social and political
history, the arts, civic ceremonies and the dramaturgic
structures of urban living.
088. American Poetry. (M) Distribution Course in Arts &
Letters. Class of 2009 & prior only.
Some versions of this course survey American poetry from the
colonial period to the present, while others begin
with Whitman and Dickinson and move directly into the
20th century and beyond. Typically studetns read
and discuss the poetry of Williams, Stein, Niedecker,
H.D., Pound, Stevens, Fearing, Rakoksi, McKay, Cullen,
Wilbur, Plath, Rich, Ginsberg, Kerouac, Waldman, Creeley,
Ashberry, O'Hara, Corman, Bernstein, Howe, Perelman,
Silliman, and Retallack.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
089. American Fiction. (M) Distribution Course in Arts &
Letters. Class of 2009 & prior only.
Some versions of this course survey the American novel from
its beginnings to the present, focusing on the development
of the form, while others concentrate on the development
of American fiction in one or two periods. Readings
may include novels by writers such as Brown, Cooper,
Hawthorne, Melville, Wharton, Morrison, Twain, James,
Adams, Chopin, Howells, Norris, Whitman, Dreiser, Fitzgerald,
Hemingway, Faulkner, Dos Passos, Ellison, and Nabokov.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
090. (AFRC090, COML090, GSOC090)
Gender, Sexuality, and Literature. (M) Distribution Course in Arts & Letters. Class of 2009
& prior only.
This course will focus on questions of gender difference and
of sexual desire in a range of literary works, paying
special attention to works by women and treatments
of same-sex desire. More fundamentally, the course
will introduce students to questions about the relation
between identity and representation. We will attend
in particular to intersections between gender, sexuality,
race, class, and nation, and will choose from a rich
vein of authors: Mary Wollstonecraft, Jane Austen,
Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, the Brontes, Christina Rossetti,
George Eliot, Oscar Wilde, Henry James, Gertrude Stein,
Zora Neale Hurston, E. M. Forster, Virginia
Woolf, Nella Larsen, Radclyffe Hall, Willa Cather,
Elizabeth Bishop, Jean Rhys, James Baldwin, Sylvia
Plath, Bessie Head, Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, Cherr_e
Moraga, Toni Morrison, Michael Cunningham, Dorothy
Allison, Jeanette Winterson, and Leslie Feinberg.
See the English
Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a
description of the current offerings.
093. (COML093, GSOC093, LALS093)
Introduction to Postcolonial Literature. (M) Distribution Course in Arts & Letters. Class of
2009 & prior only.
