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2024-2025 Academic Year

Fall 2024

FYSM 100 First-Year Seminar
The First-Year Seminar (FYS) introduces students to Dickinson as a "community of inquiry" by developing habits of mind essential to liberal learning. Through the study of a compelling issue or broad topic chosen by their faculty member, students will: - Critically analyze information and ideas - Examine issues from multiple perspectives - Discuss, debate and defend ideas, including one's own views, with clarity and reason - Develop discernment, facility and ethical responsibility in using information, and - Create clear academic writing The small group seminar format of this course promotes discussion and interaction among students and their professor. In addition, the professor serves as students' initial academic advisor. This course does not duplicate in content any other course in the curriculum and may not be used to fulfill any other graduation requirement.

ENGL 403 Questions/Methods of Lit Schol
Permission of Instructor Required. This class will prepare students for writing a senior thesis by exploring some central questions of literary scholarship. Our class will begin with various analyses of a single novel, using this focus to exemplify possibilities in framing and investigating a scholarly question. Meanwhile, students will pursue a series of independent projects that test different parts of the research process for other primary texts of their own choosing.

Spring 2025

ENGL 221 Writing, Identity, & Queer St
Cross-listed with WGSS 351-01. Permission of Instructor Required. Kate Bornstein writes: "I know I'm not a man...and I've come to the conclusion that I'm probably not a woman either. The trouble is, we're living in a world that insists we be one or the other." In this reading and writing intensive course, students will investigate how we approach the space outside of "one or the other" through literature, film, and narrative more generally. Throughout the semester we will explore and engage critically with established and emerging arguments in queer theory, as well as read and watch texts dealing with issues of identity and identification. Although "queer" is a contested term, it describes-at least potentially-sexualities and genders that fall outside of normative constellations. Students will learn how to summarize and engage with arguments, and to craft and insert their own voice into the ongoing debates about the efficacy of queer theory and queer studies. Moreover, we'll take on questions that relate "word" to "world" in order to ask: How might our theory productively intervene in LGBTQ civil rights discourse outside our classroom? How do we define queer and is it necessarily attached to sexual orientation? How do our own histories and narratives intersect with the works we analyze? Our course texts will pull from a range of genres including graphic novels, film, poetry, memoir, and fiction. Some texts may include Alison Bechdel's _Fun Home_, Audre Lorde's _Zami_, Jackie Kay's _Trumpet_, David Sedaris' _Me Talk Pretty One Day_, and films such as _Paris is Burning_ and _Boys Don't Cry_.

WGSS 301 Victorian Sexualities
Cross-listed with ENGL 321-01. Permission of Instructor Required. The Victorian era (1832-1901), so we are told, fostered rigid attitudes toward morality, gender, and sexuality. Yet an array of "dangerous" characters inhabit the pages of nineteenth-century literature, among them effeminate men, political women, prostitutes, and hysterics. This course puts Victorian writing about sexuality into conversation with the period's debates about democracy and equality, scrutiny of marriage and property law, and surprising openness to diversity in gender and sexuality. We will concentrate on changing conceptions of the individual, sexuality, and gender, and explore how these conceptions intersect with race, class, nationality, and other identity categories. The syllabus includes a variety of genres (poetry, drama, novel, and non-fiction prose) and authors (including Lord Alfred Tennyson, George Eliot, Oscar Wilde, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Meredith, Charles Dickens, Sigmund Freud, and Michael Field).

ENGL 321 Victorian Sexualities
Cross-listed with WGSS 301-02. Permission of Instructor Required. The Victorian era (1832-1901), so we are told, fostered rigid attitudes toward morality, gender, and sexuality. Yet an array of "dangerous" characters inhabit the pages of nineteenth-century literature, among them effeminate men, political women, prostitutes, and hysterics. This course puts Victorian writing about sexuality into conversation with the period's debates about democracy and equality, scrutiny of marriage and property law, and surprising openness to diversity in gender and sexuality. We will concentrate on changing conceptions of the individual, sexuality, and gender, and explore how these conceptions intersect with race, class, nationality, and other identity categories. The syllabus includes a variety of genres (poetry, drama, novel, and non-fiction prose) and authors (including Lord Alfred Tennyson, George Eliot, Oscar Wilde, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Meredith, Charles Dickens, Sigmund Freud, and Michael Field).

WGSS 351 Writing, Identity, & Queer St
Cross-listed with ENGL 221-02. Permission of Instructor Required. Kate Bornstein writes: "I know I'm not a man...and I've come to the conclusion that I'm probably not a woman either. The trouble is, we're living in a world that insists we be one or the other." In this reading and writing intensive course, students will investigate how we approach the space outside of "one or the other" through literature, film, and narrative more generally. Throughout the semester we will explore and engage critically with established and emerging arguments in queer theory, as well as read and watch texts dealing with issues of identity and identification. Although "queer" is a contested term, it describes-at least potentially-sexualities and genders that fall outside of normative constellations. Students will learn how to summarize and engage with arguments, and to craft and insert their own voice into the ongoing debates about the efficacy of queer theory and queer studies. Moreover, we'll take on questions that relate "word" to "world" in order to ask: How might our theory productively intervene in LGBTQ civil rights discourse outside our classroom? How do we define queer and is it necessarily attached to sexual orientation? How do our own histories and narratives intersect with the works we analyze? Our course texts will pull from a range of genres including graphic novels, film, poetry, memoir, and fiction. Some texts may include Alison Bechdel's _Fun Home_, Audre Lorde's _Zami_, Jackie Kay's _Trumpet_, David Sedaris' _Me Talk Pretty One Day_, and films such as _Paris is Burning_ and _Boys Don't Cry_.

ENGL 404 Senior Thesis Workshop
Permission of Instructor Required.

WGSS 500 WGSS Independent Study