Course Offerings
Department of English
Brochure produced by
Katie Naubereit ‘15
Hartwick College
Fall 2013
Key to abbreviations:
“A” = Approaches course
“cr” = credits
“FYS” = First-Year Seminar
“HMS” = Honors Mini-Seminar
“Til” = “topics in literature”
“SiST” = seminar in selected topics
“WL3” = course will facilitate advancement to WL4
“WS” = “Women Studies” cross listing
ENGL. 250-02
(3 cr.)
ENGL 190-78
(3 cr.)
FYS: Reading Modern Poetry
Shipwreck as Topos
Travisano, T. Clark 251
MWF
09:05-10:00 a.m.
Navarette, S. Clark 251
MW 02:55 –04:30 p.m.
This course will focus on one of the great literary
events of the recent past; the extraordinary literary and
cultural exchange between British, Irish and American
poets—from nations “divided by a common language”—
that took place in the first half of the Twentieth Century.
During this period, poets on both sides of the Atlantic were
actively reading and being influenced by one another, and
the results of that interchange reshaped poetry in ways that
are still being actively felt today. We will be taking a step-bystep approach to exploring this ongoing literary dialog and
in the process we will come to understand much about how
poets and other artists respond to the complex and
invigorating cultural and historical currents that surround
them. We’ll also take a step by step approach to developing
our skills in reading and interpreting poetry. I hope to show
that there’s nothing occult or mysterious about reading
poetry: it simply calls for exceptional alertness and attention
to the words out of which a poem is made.
Not fifty lines into Beowulf, before the epic events of the long poem may rightly be said to have begun, we’re told that the deceased warriorking Shield Sheafson is borne by his grieving hall-troops to the sea’s edge
in a “ring-whorled prow,” his body “laid out by the mast” of “his boat”: that
which in his lifetime had carried him and his “warrior-band” along the
“whale road” to “outlying coasts.” Simply put: Shield’s boat figures as importantly in the earliest lines of the poem as allusions to his ferocious
“courage and greatness,” the former the vehicle through which the latter is
realized.
In this day of space shuttles (now defunct), the Concorde supersonic jet (now defunct), Shinkansen (“bullet train”), Porsches; in an age
when the only boats we hear of are the disabled cruise ships with five toilets serving 3,000 passengers, we tend to forget the long and august tradition of ship history: those engines of travel that circumnavigated the earth,
that conquered and built nations, that pitted Captains against Whales.
This particular section of English 190—a course more generally intended
to introduce its clientele to the characterizing features of a range of literary
forms, known as “genres”—is built around representations and narratives
involving ships: and not ships merely, but their failure, also known as shipwrecks. The “shipwreck”—as event, as metaphor, as opportunity for storytelling—will serve as the “topos”—a typological “topic” endlessly transmogrified as theme and informing aesthetic and literary conceit—variously
treated and revisioned in the literary and cultural artifacts we will consider:
dramas such as Shakespeare’s The Tempest (of course); novels such as
Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, and H.
G. Wells’s Time Machine; personal narratives of adventurers and common
travelers (survivors’ tales, for example, of the sinking of the Titanic, and
excerpts from Sonali Deraniyagala’s memoir about the loss of her entire
family in the 2004 tsunami that hit Sri Lanka); paintings by Théodore Géricault, J. M. W. Turner, and Caspar David Friedrich; poems by Robert
Browning and T. S. Eliot; and films such as Cast Away (d. Zemeckis, 2000),
Synecdoche, New York (d. Kaufman, 2008), and The Life of Pi (d. Lee,
2012). Students will write brief reflective and analytical essays and take
quizzes and exams. Please be prepared to participate in conversation.
ENGL. 250-78
(4 cr.; WL3)
ENGL. 150-Ab
(4 cr.)
Til: Novel and Film Noir
FYS/HMS: Masculinities
Cody, D. Clark 248
MW 02:55 - 04:55 p.m.
Navarette, S. Clark 251
TTh 8:00 –10:00 a.m.
In this class we will explore the dark and vivid world
of the classic American novel and film noir—a complex,
dangerous, romantic, corrupt, deceptive, ambiguous, and
remarkably entertaining realm in which dreams and
nightmares, hopes and fears, desire and dread, free will and
fate are inextricably intertwined. Novels include James M.
Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice, Horace McCoy’s
They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, and Jim Thompson’s The
Killer Inside Me, and our films—precursors, classics of the
genre, and examples of foreign and neo-noir—include The
Asphalt Jungle, The Big Sleep, Burnt by the Sun,
Chinatown, Double Indemnity, Gilda, The Grifters, In
Bruges, The Killers, The Killing, Kiss Me Deadly, The Lady
From Shanghai, Laura, M, The Maltese Falcon, Out of the
Past, The Public Enemy, Rear Window, Rififi, Shadow of a
Doubt, Strangers on a Train, Sunset Boulevard, Taxi Driver,
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, The Third Man, Touch of
Evil, Vertigo, The Wages of Fear, and White Heat. The
only prerequisite for this course is a genuine willingness to
engage with these novels and films. Each student will write
two research papers, and there will be a midterm and a final
examination.
This course will explore representations of
“masculine” behavior in contemporary American popular
culture. Novels and stories written by Ernest Hemingway,
William Faulkner, William Tenn, and James Thurber, and
films such as Fight Club, Reservoir Dogs, Robocop, and
The Graduate will serve as so many “opportunities” to examine the myths, models, and modes of masculine behavior
and manhood to which men struggle to conform—or, alternatively, those that they are desperate to avoid. We will
complement our discussion of these primary texts with a selective examination of the historical, mythopoetic, and cultural sources (ranging from classical mythology’s Hercules and
Prometheus; to the Biblical figures of Cain and David; to
“Tarzan,” G. I. Joe, and Houdini of popular lore and culture) that have helped to shape our sense of what it means
to be “a real man.” Men at work, men in love, men in the
jungle, men at play, men with guns, men at war, men on
the fringes: these will be some of the “types” and realms of
experience we will examine in our attempt to arrive at a partial understanding of the popular conceptions and constructions of men and their manhood, as well as the complex
range of behaviors that constitute public and private performances of the masculine self.
ENGL 150-03
(3 cr.)
FYS: Masquerade & Disguise in American Lit.
Seguin, R. Clark 252
MWF 10:10 –11:05 a.m.
The urge to hide one’s true identity -- in order to
outwit an enemy, or to gain access to the forbidden -- is one
of the great and abiding themes in imaginative literature.
This is a theme with an especially prominent place in
American literature, as the mobility and democratic openness
of the nation, combined with the creation of new barriers
and impediments to social freedom (centered chiefly, though
not exclusively, on race), offer a rich terrain for writers to
explore the multiple modes and uses of disguise. In this
course, we will follow the risky and agonized desires of
African Americans as they seek the freedoms of white
society, of Jewish immigrants as they seek mainstream
acceptance, of poor dreamers and outcasts of all sorts as they
look for a better life for themselves. There will be tricksters,
too, who practice deception at the expense of those around
them. As we follow these characters, we will explore how
their stories disrupt in unexpected ways our notions of what
constitutes an identity and of what counts as normal or
acceptable. All the tangled contradictions of American culture
are richly illuminated as these figures move across these
imaginary landscapes.
ENGL. 250-Ef
(3 cr.)
Til: Hawthorne's Tales & Sketches
Cody, D.
Clark 252
TTh 12:20 - 01:40 p.m.
In this course we will explore a number of tales and
sketches written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of our first
great fantasists and chroniclers of the twilight realm of the
imagination. Our readings will range from acknowledged
masterpieces of world literature such as “Young Goodman
Browne” and “Rappaccini’s Daughter” to more obscure but
equally interesting works such as “The Celestial Rail-Road”
and “Wakefield.” In discussing these fictions we will also be
inquiring into the nature of Hawthorne’s relationships with
literary precursors such as Spenser, Mather, and Browne,
with contemporaries such as Poe, Melville, and Thoreau,
and with literary heirs and disciples such as Dickinson,
Lovecraft, and Frost. Students will write two research papers, and there will be a midterm and a final examination.
ENGL. 312 & 412-Cd (4 cr.)
Creative Writing-Poetry Workshop
Bensen, R. Clark 352
TTh 10:10-12:10 p.m.
“We can only write when we have reached that point which we can only
reach in the space to which writing gives access. To write we must
already be writing.”
Maurice Blanchot, from “Orpheus’s Gaze” (1955)
ENGL 312 and 412 are offered concurrently in order to provide
continuity of sequence and advancing expectation, as well as repeated
grounding in essentials.
Students may register for ENGL 312 who have completed the
prerequisite ENGL 213: Introduction to Creative Writing. Students may
register for ENGL 412 who have completed the prerequisite ENGL 312.
For fourteen weeks, you will have the opportunity to live a writer’s
life. You will write when you feel like writing, as well as when you do
not. You will discover the writing habits and dispositions that you have
built into your circuitry; you will learn and unlearn. You will practice
reading as a writer. You will devote yourself to craft. You will learn to
present poems on the page as well as in public reading and
performance.
We will write in and out of class. We will hold workshops regularly
to discuss our poems. We will also read a wide variety of poems, and
read intensely in a poet of choice. Our final exam consists of a public
reading of our work, together with the presentation of a portfolio of
finished poems and brief annotations on our readings through the
term.
The ability to use the English language—its resources and ways it
fits together to create verbal energies—in a competent, even masterful
way is requisite. As John Gardner said, “Don’t try to write without the
basic skills of composition; don’t try to write ‘what you know,’ [but
instead] create a kind of dream in the reader’s mind, and avoid… all that
might distract from that dream—a notion wherein a multitude of rules
are implied.” One can play tennis without a net, but it’s not tennis.
First-Year Seminars
ENGL. 489-16W (1 cr.)
Senior Project Methods
Travisano, T. Clark 352
W 01:50 - 02:45 p.m.
This class is designed to provide senior English
majors with a structured approach to preparing for a
successful senior project in literature. The class will provide
guidance in focusing on and developing a core idea for the
thesis, in finding and using primary and secondary sources,
in creating a proposal bibliography, in choosing critical or
theoretical approaches and methodologies, in developing a
full proposal, and in preparing to launching a successful
senior project during the coming January terms. Seniors will
have the advantage of receiving regular feedback from their
peers in class, who will be sharing the process of laying the
groundwork for a successful senior project.
ENGL. 329-04
(3 cr.)
British Lit: Begin Through Milton
Darien, L.
MWF
Clark 251
11:15- 12:10 p.m.
NOTE: Completion of any section of ENGL 190, Introduction to
Literature and Criticism, with a grade of C or better, is a
prerequisite for enrollment in this course.
In this course we will read and analyze some of the greatest
works of English literature, those that were written in the earliest
periods of English literary history beginning with, well, the
beginning, and ending with the death of John Milton in the late
seventeenth century.
We will start by reading a few works in Old English, paying
particular attention to Beowulf, the masterpiece of that (or any)
era. The Middle English period will be represented by Sir Gawain
and the Green Knight and by selections from Chaucer’s Canterbury
Tales. As we move from the medieval to the early modern, we will
explore the growth and development of the sonnet and other lyric
forms during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. We will also
read parts of the two great epics of the time, Spenser’s Fairie
Queene and Milton’s Paradise Lost.
Also, in this class students will explore the historical and
linguistic contexts of these works of literature as well as their
formal qualities and their relation to one another. Finally, we will
also concentrate on learning to understand poetic genres,
conventions, and forms as almost all of the works we will read are
verse.
Besides the prerequisite noted above, students should be aware
that this course is required for all English majors, both those who
are concentrating in literature and those concentrating in creative
writing, and that it is offered only once a year, in the Fall semester
of each academic year.
ENGL. 350-Ef
(4 cr.)
ENGL. 470-78 (4 cr.)
Navarette, S. Clark 251
Sist: Elizabeth Bishop
Travisano, T.
Clark 352
TTh 12:20-2:20 p.m.
MW 02:55 – 04:55 p.m.
Jane Austen: Texts & Contexts
This course will examine Jane Austen’s life, her world,
her artistry, her novels, her letters (primarily to her sister Cassandra), her reputation (Ralph Waldo Emerson declared that
he preferred the idea of suicide to that of being forced to live
in the society portrayed in Miss Austen’s novels), and contemporaneous as well as contemporary responses to her
work, including the “Austenmania” of 1995 and the ongoing
devotion of her apostles, the “Janeites.” Participants will, by
the semester’s close, possess an aficionado’s—as opposed to a
“dabbler’s”—understanding not only of the defining purposes
and principles (aesthetic and political) informing Austen’s
works, but also of the cultural, historical and literary contexts
to which it responds. Two essays and two exams will constitute the written submissions required of participants.
This course fulfills the English major requirement concerning literature written before 1800.
This seminar will explore the life and work of
Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), one of the great American
poets of the twentieth century. Your professor, who is
founding president of the Elizabeth Society, has devoted
much of his career to the study of Bishop’s work and is
currently embarking on a new critical biography of the poet.
This course will be designed with an eye toward exploring
Bishop’s development as a poet, a prose writer, and a writer
of brilliant letters as well as exploring her as a fascinating
biographical subject who faced and overcame many
obstacles, traveled worldwide, had many famous and
interesting friends, and constructed a unique aesthetic that
remains influential to this day. Students will get an inside
look into a researcher’s workshop as he attempts to construct
the story of a masterly poet’s life.
ENGL. 380-Cd
(3 cr.)
Fitzgerald & Cather (A)
Seguin, R.
Clark 251
TTh 10:00– 12:10 p.m.
Scott Fitzgerald, as the author of one of the perennial
candidates for the Great American Novel, likely needs no
introduction. We’ll also read a selection of his marvelous
short stories, as well as his letters, diaries, and essays in an
effort to place the achievement of The Great Gatsby in its
full personal and historical context. Willa Cather is perhaps
less well heralded, but as I hope we’ll see, the two make a
felicitous pairing. She probes, with subtlety and elegance,
many of the themes that preoccupied Fitzgerald: the mystery
and weight of social origins; the spectacle of ambition; the
lure of wealth. A great sensitivity to social codes and boundaries also marks the work of both writers, and together the
two offer a fascinating window into the rapidly changing texture of early 20th-century American culture.
ENGL. 372-Gh (3 cr.)
The American Romantics
Cody, D. Clark 251
TTh 02:30 – 03:50 p.m.
Edgar Allan Poe, Henry David Thoreau, and Emily
Dickinson were all part of the vast (and arguably on-going)
cultural movement that we now know as “Romanticism.”
To these American Romantics the world seemed a place of
wonder, mystery, ecstasy and terror, and like the poems and
romances of English precursors such as Coleridge, Keats,
Scott, Byron, and the Shelleys, the highly distinctive works
produced by our authors chronicled the Romantic search for
ultimate Truth and Beauty. This course might be thought of,
then, as a series of journeys—into Poe’s dark night of the
soul (Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque and selected poems), Thoreau’s earthly paradise (Walden and selected poems), and Dickinson’s manic empire of the spirit (selected
poems). There will be two research papers, a midterm and
a final examination, and all students are expected to play an
active part in class discussions.