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2024-2025 Academic Year

Fall 2024

ENGL 101 Shakespeare's Women
Cross-listed with WGSS 101-02 and MEMS 200-03. Male characters such as Lear, Othello, Hamlet, Prospero, Shylock were the focus of historical Shakespeare criticism until the late twentieth century. Even criticism complicating the reception of Shakespeare's women characters, however, have not erased their neglect. Directors looking to cut long plays and to depict straightforward female characters have limited women's lines, represented them as stereotypes, and cut evidence of their agency. In the context of Shakespeare's (uncut) play texts and in the context of Early Modern English culture, however, Shakespeare's women-Cordelia, Desdemona, Ophelia, Miranda, Portia- are equally as multifaceted as his male characters. In this course we will study a cross-section of Shakespeare's plays from each genre, considering the representation of women within the play text, as well as within historical and cultural contexts embodying changes in expectations for women's roles. Shakespeare's play texts simultaneously reproduce and subvert the evolving stereotypes of women during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Discussions of representation of women in patriarchal society will inevitably include scrutiny of our own moment in history. In addition to reading the play texts, work for the course will include students' acting out scenes from plays, viewing some films, two brief critical papers, a midterm, and a final exam.

WGSS 101 Shakespeare's Women
Cross-listed with ENGL 101-03 and MEMS 200-03. Male characters such as Lear, Othello, Hamlet, Prospero, Shylock were the focus of historical Shakespeare criticism until the late twentieth century. Even criticism complicating the reception of Shakespeare's women characters, however, have not erased their neglect. Directors looking to cut long plays and to depict straightforward female characters have limited women's lines, represented them as stereotypes, and cut evidence of their agency. In the context of Shakespeare's (uncut) play texts and in the context of Early Modern English culture, however, Shakespeare's women-Cordelia, Desdemona, Ophelia, Miranda, Portia- are equally as multifaceted as his male characters. In this course we will study a cross-section of Shakespeare's plays from each genre, considering the representation of women within the play text, as well as within historical and cultural contexts embodying changes in expectations for women's roles. Shakespeare's play texts simultaneously reproduce and subvert the evolving stereotypes of women during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Discussions of representation of women in patriarchal society will inevitably include scrutiny of our own moment in history. In addition to reading the play texts, work for the course will include students' acting out scenes from plays, viewing some films, two brief critical papers, a midterm, and a final exam.

MEMS 200 History of the Book
Cross-listed with ENGL 222-01.

MEMS 200 Shakespeare's Women
Cross-listed with ENGL 101-03 and WGSS 101-02. Male characters such as Lear, Othello, Hamlet, Prospero, Shylock were the focus of historical Shakespeare criticism until the late twentieth century. Even criticism complicating the reception of Shakespeare's women characters, however, have not erased their neglect. Directors looking to cut long plays and to depict straightforward female characters have limited women's lines, represented them as stereotypes, and cut evidence of their agency. In the context of Shakespeare's (uncut) play texts and in the context of Early Modern English culture, however, Shakespeare's women-Cordelia, Desdemona, Ophelia, Miranda, Portia- are equally as multifaceted as his male characters. In this course we will study a cross-section of Shakespeare's plays from each genre, considering the representation of women within the play text, as well as within historical and cultural contexts embodying changes in expectations for women's roles. Shakespeare's play texts simultaneously reproduce and subvert the evolving stereotypes of women during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Discussions of representation of women in patriarchal society will inevitably include scrutiny of our own moment in history. In addition to reading the play texts, work for the course will include students' acting out scenes from plays, viewing some films, two brief critical papers, a midterm, and a final exam.

ENGL 222 History of the Book
Cross-listed with MEMS 220-02. Book history is an interdisciplinary field that began as a study of bibliography but has come to include studying patterns of book production and book consumption over extended periods of time. Book historians study the history of libraries, of publishing, the production of paper, varieties of type, and the history of reading. We will examine the many forms that books have taken in the history of writing in the European tradition. We will also investigate the technology of book production and dissemination, and books as cultural factors--how they were manufactured and sold, used, read, and transmitted. Our study will include looking at the technology of printing, invented by Gutenberg in Mainz, Germany, using an adapted wine press with moveable type. We will learn how to read the book as physical object, to understand clues about when and where and by whom texts were produced, and how to read the text more closely once these clues are deciphered. Projects may include "adopting" a rare text from our archive and exploring all its material features and writing a researched paper on one element of book history.

ENGL 341 Shakespeare: Politics/Culture
Shakespeare: Politics and Culture is a course most often guided by class discussion. Lectures on historical, literary, and critical matters will occur when useful. We will read and discuss seven plays representing Shakespeare's comedies, tragedies, and romances: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado ºìÐÓÖ±²¥app Nothing, Measure for Measure, The Merchant of Venice, Macbeth, Hamlet, and The Tempest. Where appropriate, we will also view and discuss scenes from films of the plays by directors Branagh, Taymor, Radford, Kurzel, Kurosawa, Goold, Olivier, and Reinhardt. The secondary-theoretical-reading for the course will draw upon New Historicist and Cultural Materialist criticism, first practiced in the U.S. by Stephen Greenblatt in his Renaissance Self-Fashioning (1980) and in the U.K. in Political Shakespeare: New Essays in Cultural Materialism (1985), edited by Alan Sinfield and Jonathan Dollimore. Where helpful, we will further consider colonial, race, and feminist theory. We will also read primary documents from the period that converse with the play texts. Assignments will include an in-class performance of a scene from one of the plays, a word-study essay, a paper based upon the performance, and a final historicist essay.

Spring 2025

MEMS 200 Revolutionary Milton
Cross-listed with ENGL 311-01. John Milton at times emerges in the popular imagination as the benign Christian poet of Paradise Lost. While Paradise Lost is a Biblical epic poem about the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, Milton addresses in the poem polemical subjects such as the role and place of women in an ideal society; the relationship between God and Christ the Son; the question of personal responsibility; the role of monarchy and religion in the state; the idea of a republic. Paradise Lost, along with the Bible, was one of the most frequently read books in Colonial America, and we have in our archive Benjamin Rush's copy of Paradise Lost. In addition we also have first editions of Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, and other beautiful and significant Milton volumes. Our study of these editions will show Milton's understanding and manipulation of the press and censorship, and suggest how Milton the revolutionary came to be recognized as one of the greatest poets in the English language.

ENGL 220 Intro to Literary Studies
In literary studies, we explore the work texts do in the world. This course examines several texts of different kinds (e.g., novel, poetry, film, comic book, play, etc.) to investigate how literary forms create meanings. It also puts texts in conversation with several of the critical theories and methodologies that shape the discipline of literary study today (e.g., Marxist theory, new historicism, formalism, gender theory, postcolonial theory, ecocriticism, etc.). This course helps students frame interpretive questions and develop their own critical practice. Prerequisite: 101. This course is the prerequisite for 300-level work in English.

ENGL 311 Revolutionary Milton
Cross-listed with MEMS 200-01. John Milton at times emerges in the popular imagination as the benign Christian poet of Paradise Lost. While Paradise Lost is a Biblical epic poem about the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, Milton addresses in the poem polemical subjects such as the role and place of women in an ideal society; the relationship between God and Christ the Son; the question of personal responsibility; the role of monarchy and religion in the state; the idea of a republic. Paradise Lost, along with the Bible, was one of the most frequently read books in Colonial America, and we have in our archive Benjamin Rush's copy of Paradise Lost. In addition we also have first editions of Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, and other beautiful and significant Milton volumes. Our study of these editions will show Milton's understanding and manipulation of the press and censorship, and suggest how Milton the revolutionary came to be recognized as one of the greatest poets in the English language.