ENLT 109W Language and Literature
The objective of this course is to experience an array of literary works, and along the way to practice three activities - reading, discussing, and writing - that define the life of a liberally educated woman. Reading is an art as much as a skill, one that places demands on your imagination as well as your analytical faculties. Discussion and writing provide points of contact with others; they are ways of sharing your insights. By voicing your ideas in class you will gain confidence in expressing yourself, and by setting them down on paper you will practice the discipline which is necessary to communicate effectively -- that is, with clarity, force, and a little style.
ENLT 203 A Shakespeare Sampler
Explore a little (or a little more) Shakespeare in this seven-week course. Plays: the short and easy Comedy of Errors (with its embryonic ideas for later plays), Troilus and Cressida (with its problems of love and war), one of the great tragedies, either Othello or King Lear, and the late romance, Winter's Tale. We will change these choices to study and see another play that comes to a Notre Dame stage. Because the bard wrote his plays to be acted, this is the best way to enjoy any Shakespearean play.
ENLT 203 Transgressive Women - 3 credits
Ever since Eve took that first bite of the forbidden fruit, humanity has been telling itself stories about women who break the rules. Antigone defies the king's decree to bury her brother; Guenevere, Anna Karenina, Hester Prynne, and Emma Bovary break the bonds of matrimony for romance (or is it love? Or is it sex?); Nora Helmer forges a loan to save her husband's life; Violetta, the courtesan of the great opera La Traviata, ignites improper passion in a young man of good family. Female saints as well as female sinners violate social conformity; in the New Testament, Mary accepts an unconventional pregnancy before marriage and starts the calendar of the entire western world. Other women have entered history through heroic acts of civil disobedience: Rosa Parks defied segregation codes when she sat down in the front of the bus and stayed there; Susan B. Anthony demanded a ballot some fifty years before the right to vote was extended to women; Harriet Tubman illegally smuggled slaves into freedom; Miep Gies defied the Nazis to harbor Jews, among them the young diarist Anne Frank. In this course we will examine the stories, legends, and biographies of women who have overstepped their bounds, whether by violating laws or merely by challenging unwritten codes of everyday conduct. Who makes the rules, anyway, and who breaks them? For that matter, who tells the story of the female maverick, and why? In this course we will examine various women who transgress and various writers who have taken such women as their subject.
ENLT 204 Literature of Social Justice - 3 credits
This course will focus on the life of the powerless. We will read and discuss stories, novels, plays and poems that deal with the poor of the earth, the insulted and injured. Students will be asked to write two papers, to involve themselves wholeheartedly in class discussion and class reports and to submit a journal of observations at the end of the semester. We will use texts which illuminate, in one way or another, dilemmas of the rich, the nexus of power and the powerless, as well as the life of the impoverished. A tentative list includes The Great Gatsby, The Cherry Orchard, Invisible Man, l'Assomoir, Juno and the Paycock, and The Grapes of Wrath.
ENLT 206 Shakespeare: Page, Stage, and Screen - 3 credits
This course will explore aspects of six to eight plays: the texts and some ways the texts have been interpreted in theatre and film. We will be studying and attending the play being staged in Chicago, two at Notre Dame (one produced by their Summer Shakespeare Company and another by the Five Actors from the London Stage), and various national and international film adaptations. Actors and directors will be invited to class. As we see how differently some plays have been produced by directors such as Olivier, O. Welles, K. Branagh, Loncraine, J. Taymor and Almereyda, and even Shakespeare himself, we will see how creatively different parts of texts (as Hamlet, for example) can be omitted or included.
ENLT 266 Film Criticism - 3 credits
When it comes to movies, everyone is a critic, or at least it sometimes seems this way. But how does one develop the expertise to comment intelligently about a film, without being an experienced director or producer? This course provides students with a critical vocabulary regarding film terms and techniques, and it also offers students a variety of theoretical perspectives from which to view and write about cinematic art. In addition, students will gain a fundamental understanding of film genres such as screwball comedy, science fiction, horror, the Western, film noir, and the musical. Among the films we will view and discuss are Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, John Ford's The Searchers, Michael Cortiz's Casablanca, Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, Ridley Scott's Alien, Merrian C. Cooper's and Edward Schoedsack's King Kong (the 1933 original), and Stanley Donen's and Gene Kelly's Singin' in the Rain.
ENLT 275 Women and Success - 3 credits
This course will deal with the nature of success from a woman's perspective. We'll be considering a diverse selection of materials: literary as well as historical texts, films and songs, critical and polemical essays, and documentary evidence drawn from the most recent sources.
ENLT 359 Women's Voices in Modern & Contemporary American Poetry
Most courses in Modern and Contemporary American Poetry have been dominated by male poets, a predominantly "masculine" point-of-view. But how and to what degree would our sense of that same hundred year span of American history be altered or amended if we focused on women poets? We will read major figures like Emily Dickinson, Marianne Moore, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Gwendolyn Brooks, Elizabeth Bishop, and Sylvia Plath; but also lesser known poets such as Muriel Rukyeser, Lucille Clifton, Audre Lorde, June Jordan (and many others).
ENLT 366 "From Fiction to Film" - 3 credits
What happens when a screenwriter or director attempts to translate a story or novel into cinematic form? What is lost in the process? What fundamentally changes as a result of the transmutation? These are among the questions we will be asking throughout this course, which deals with the problematic art of film adaptation. Our focus will always be on how the elements of fiction mutate into the strikingly different elements of cinema, no matter how faithful the adaptation.
ENLT 370 American Gothic - 3 credits
American gothic literature offers a startling glimpse into the haunted house of the irrational mind. In this course, we will explore the way that gothic writers use the supernatural and uncanny to suggest the subterranean aspect of the human psyche. Readings include Henry James' The Turn of the Screw, Steven King's The Shining, Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire, and tales by Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ambrose Bierce, Edith Wharton, and H.P. Lovecraft.
ENLT 372 Celtic Mythology - 3 credits
A survey of mythology from Ireland and Wales, including Medieval material from the Irish Ulster, Finn, and Mythological cycles, poetry, and folktale, and the Welsh Mabinogion. The readings include epic hero tales that focus on Cu Chulainn and Finn MacCool, the two most well known Irish heroes, dinnsenchas (place-name stories), dream-visions, and some of the earliest Arthurian literature. We will discuss aspects of the hero and the supernatural in early Celtic society, the gods and the way their portrayal is altered in Christianized society, and the role of supernatural women.
ENLT 370 The American Renaissance - 3 credits
The first full flowering of American Literature occurred in the three decades preceding the Civil War, an era that the noted critic F.O. Matthiessen called the American Renaissance. In this period, seven major authors stand out as towering figures: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Emily Dickinson. In this course, we will examine the optimistic and pessimistic branches of American Romanticism. Readings include Emerson's transcendental essays, Thoreau's Walden, Whitman's Leaves of Grass, Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance, Melville's Moby-Dick, and Dickinson's lyrical ballads.
ENLT 373 Studies in Comp. Lit: Women, Mystery, Detection - 3 credits
This course offers a general introduction to the detective fiction and mystery genres, emphasizing both women characters and women authors. We'll begin with classic detective stories by Edgar Allan Poe and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, then turn to Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers and P.D. James. To introduce the great American hard-boiled detective, we will study Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler before turning to Sara Paretsky's more recent, feminist, V.I. Warshawski. The course will conclude with police procedurals including a second novel by P.D. James, and the first "Prime Suspect" miniseries. Throughout the course, we will consider how the development of the genre reflects the changing social and historical context, with particular attention to the changing roles of women.
ENLT 376 American Literature 1865 to 1945 - 3 credits
A survey of major works by great American authors from the end of the Civil War to the end of World War II, this course will deal with works that focus on the conflict of the individual and society. Readings include Henry James's The Bostonians, Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Kate Chopin's The Awakening, Harold Frederic's The Damnation of theron Ware, Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie, Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, and Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises.
ENLT 378 Medieval Literature - 3 credits
The course emphasizes Middle English literature. We will read selections from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and his Book of the Duchess and other literature in the original Middle English. Some harder pieces, like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, we will read in modern English. The course includes mystery and morality plays, Breton lays, ballads, and excerpts from the Romance of the Rose, The Life of Margery Kempe, the Ancrene Riwle, and Malory's Morte D'Arthur. Topics discussed include religion, courtly love and marriage, chivalry, allegory and the roles of women.
ENLT 382 Victorian Literature - 3 credits
This course surveys English literature from 1837 to 1900, the reign of Queen Victoria. We will read about and discuss women's right and those characteristically Victorian definitions of "woman's sphere" that still influence feminists and anti-feminists alike. With Charles Dickens as our guide, we will also face the consequences of uncontrolled industrial and urban expansion, and temporarily escape that harsh reality in the seductive imaginings of Pre-Raphaelites and aesthetes. You will better understand the origin of many hot modern topics, including "moral values," the "evangelical" influence and "liberal education" after reading selections from the prose of Arnold, Newman, and Carlyle. And you will find an unexpectedly contemporary role model in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh. We will also enjoy some late-Victorian humor with Oscar Wilde and Gilbert & Sullivan.
ENLT 383 20th Century British Literature - 3 credits
Modern British literature begins as a response to the Great War that killed over two milion young men on all sides between 1914 and 1918. The need to describe the bleak landscape of the post-war world, to define its problems, and to offer alternatives is the force that unites writers as diverse as T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, and D.H. Lawrence. In addition to the literature of the period, we will also be considering other arts, music, painting, and film.
ENLT 390 Special Topic: History of English Language - 3 credits
This course traces the development of English from the time of the Anglo-Saxon invaders of Roman-Celtic Britain, through the Norman Conquest and the Great Vowel Shift, the huge expansion of the language in the Renaissance, the influence of colonized peoples on the language, to the changes caused by the computer in the present day. We will study the relationship of English to other European languages, and the differences between British and American English.
This course will introduce future teachers to different historical attitudes toward the teaching of English and enable them to see the influence of those attitudes still at work today - for instance, in our disagreements about the teaching of English to immigrant and minority students. Students will also gain a firmer grasp of grammar, as well as a greater understanding of the peculiarities of English spelling - and the reasons it is peculiar!
Literature students will learn how famous authors have contributed both to the language itself and to our study of it. All students should emerge from the course with an increased understanding of the way language works, the way it changes, and how it both influences and is influenced by our changing thought.
ENLT 390 SpTp: Reading George Eliot's Middlemarch - 1 credit
We're going to be taking our time reading in detail and discussing this crucial masterpiece, "easily the best of the half-dozen best novels in the world."
ENLT 390 SpTp: Tolkien & Modern Fantasy
This course addresses the development of modern fantasy as a genre. The heart of the course is The Lord of the Rings, which made fantasy into a recognizable literary type. The course will begin with works from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that began to turn the materials of Celtic and Germanic legend into contemporary literature and which provided early models for Tolkien's own writings. Authors in this part of the course may include W.B. Yeats, William Morris, Lord Dunsany, Hope Mirlees, and E.R. Eddison. After reading The Lord of the Rings in its entirety, we will turn to recent fantasy works that respond to the form and the vision given to fantasy by Tolkien. Authors in this part may include Peter S. Beagle, Ursula K. Le Guin, Fritz Leiber, Guy Gavriel Kay, Patricia McKillip, Jeffrey Ford, Jo Walton, Barbara Hambley, Charles de Lint, Stephen Donaldson, Neil Gaiman, Andy Duncan, Fred Chappell, and Manly Wade Wellman.
ENLT 417 Milton - 3 credits
We will read the major works of John Milton; Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes, along with shorter works: "Lycidas," Comus. "L'Allegro," "II Penseroso," the sonnets and other short poems, with selections from prose works such as Areopagitica. We will also read background and source material, including selections from The Aeneid, and selected literary criticism, both early and modern.
Reading Milton opens a window in the 17th century: his views on monarchy, his place in Cromwell's government after the English Civil War, his speculations on the expanding scientific knowledge of the world, and his strong opinions on such religious concerns as divorce, church hierarchy, the relation of man and woman, and the relation of mankind to God. Milton constructs his own literary universe, based on his vast knowledge of Biblical and pagan mythologies, and uses it to "justify the ways of God to Man."
ENLT 497 Independent Study - 1 to 3 credits
ENLT 498 Teaching Assistantship ENGL (In Writing or Literature) - 1 to 3 credits
ENLT 499 Internship (In Writing or Literature) - 1 to 3 credits
ENLT 411 Chaucer - 3 credits
We will read Chaucer's poetry, focusing on the Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Criseyde, and the dream visions. Topics discussed in class will include some background in Middle English Language, Chaucer's sources, courtly love and marriage, chivalry, religious issues, allegory, the roles of women, and medieval literary genres used by Chaucer. We will read Chaucer aloud sometimes and memorize a passage.
ENLT 413 Shakespeare, 3 credits
This course examines a representative selection of Shakespeare's major plays. We will focus initially on strategies of reading that open up the meaning of Shakespeare's dramatic verse and will then turn to methods for analyzing Shakespeare's staging. Our goal will be to reach an understanding of Shakespeare's abiding interest in the power of art to transform human experience. The course includes a trip to see a play at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater.
Students will write a short (five-page) paper and a major research paper (usually on the subject of their major presentation). The research paper should be 10 pages and use 10 sources from books or articles in reputable journals (not Web sites, though of course some of the texts and journals will be available on line). The class will demand careful reading and active participation. There will be short weekly quizzes.
ENLT 495 Senior Literature Seminar - 3 credits
"Senior Literature Seminar" is an intensive course culminating in the writing of a research paper that serves as the third advanced W submission. Successful completion of the seminar satisfies the comprehensive requirement for the English literature major. For this particular seminar, a study of some of the great shorter works of Henry James and Joseph Conrad, students will have the opportunity to lead a discussion on a work of fiction. In addition to the graded presentations mentioned above, course requirements include frequent quizzes, a 10-12 - page research paper with all the trimmings, and regular attendance and enthusiastic participation in all class discussions.
ENLT 497 Independent Study - 1 to 3 credits
To do an Independent Study, you must arrange it with the appropriate professor, and submit our proposal to the Chair. (Max Westler)
ENGL 498 Teaching Assistantship ENLG - 1 to 3 credits
ENGL 499 Internship - 1 to 3 credits; TBA, Dr. Max Westler
Practical experience in writing and/or editing at an approved site, supervised by faculty member and a representative from the sponsoring agency. At least junior standing required. Consent of department chair required.
ENWR 201W Practical Writing - 3 credits
This course will help students develop and refine the skills required for practical writing in college and careers. At the end of this course, students will be able to write clearly, correctly, and concisely; to craft correct, effective sentences; to shape and develop ideas through paragraphs into coherent, focused essays, to make the best word choices; to employ the rules of grammar, spelling, and punctuation; and to revise writing to meet these goals.
As reading and writing are related activities, students will read with the goal of enriching their own resources as writers.
ENWR 311 Intro. to Creatinve Writing - 3 credits
A comprehensive course in the writings of short stories, poems, and plays. We will consider various technical gambits and strategies; we will adapt and discard conflicting aesthetic points of view. Although much of the class work will be devoted to reading and evaluating student work, we will also be studying in detail and imitating those authors, past and present, most responsible for the literature we read today. Among them: William Carlos Williams, Hemingway, Kafka, Borges.
ENWR 313 Journalism - 3 credits
This course is a study of basic journalism theory and principles. The student will be called upon to apply these principles by producing clear, objective, balanced news copy, utilizing techniques for gathering information, editing, copy editing and feature writing. Work for daily and weekly newspapers will be stressed. Free-lance, magazine and Internet news writing will be introduced and pubic relations, marketing, radio and television, as well as newspaper layout and publication will be discussed. Students will become stronger writers, but will also become more discriminating consumers of journalism.
ENWR 317 Expository Writing - 3 credits
Although exposition implies explanation, expository writing requires creativity as well as sound critical judgment. In addition to examining the craft and content of expository forms in the works of professional essayists, this course emphasizes peer evaluation of first drafts of student papers throughout the semester. The essay assignments cover several of the principal modes of exposition, such as definition, description, persuasion, and comparison and contrast, in addition to family memoir and the personal statement.
ENWR 321 Fiction Writing - 3 credits
This course explores the art of writing short fiction. Our aim is to become better writers through practice and by developing a heightened critical awareness of what we read. Each week we will discuss a handful of short stories by classic and contemporary authors, focusing on an element of fiction such as characterization, plot, or setting. We will do a variety of writing exercises to apply what we have learned about craft, and students will share these pieces as well as two of their short stories with the rest of the class. Much of our time will be devoted to workshop as we help to identify the strengths, weaknesses, and possibilities in one another's stories.
ENWR 323 Poetry Writing - 3 credits
When pressed for a definition of poetry, Robert Frost matter-of-factly stated, "Poetry is the kind of thing poets write." He might as well have said, echoing Louis Armstrong's answer to the question, "What is jazz?", "Man if you gotta ask, you'll never know." The best way to find out about poetry is to actually sit down and try to write poems. Therefore, this course is intended for poets (practicing or merely aspiring), for poetry readers and would-be poetry readers. It is especially for any student who thinks thoughts such as these: "Poetry as I see it is very difficult" or "I just don't like poetry" or "Isn't poetry simply a flowery way of saying things?" This course will change your mind. Poetry could be the most important thing about to happen to you.
ENWR 325 Playwriting - 3 credits
Experimentation and practice in writing plays within a workshop environment. Principles of writing for the stage with emphasis on dramatic structure, character development, plot management, dialogue and critical analysis.
ENWR 333 Magazine Writing - 3 credits
This course offers more focused training and practice specifically in writing successful and engaging feature articles for magazines and newspapers. Examples and models will be studied, and students will be encouraged to pursue original projects. Students will also be encouraged to publish their works; each student will create a professional writing portfolio as a final project for the course.
ENWR 495 Senior Writing Project - 3 credits
Successful completion of the Senior Writing Project satisfies the comprehensive requirement for the B.A. Prerequisite: Senior standing as ENWR major.
ENWR 497 Independent Study: see ENLT 497
