English

Courses numbered 30 or greater are open only to students who have fulfilled the freshman humanities requirement.

En 1 ab. English As a Second Language. 9 units (3-0-6 or 4-0-5); first, second terms. A program in the fundamentals of English composition for nonnative speakers of English, required for foreign students in need of supplementary instruction before entering freshman humanities courses. Students will be assigned to either En 1 b or the two-term sequence of En 1 ab on the basis of a diagnostic examination. Not available for credit toward the humanities–social science requirement. Instructors: Fonseca, Geasland.

En 2. Basic English Composition. 9 units (2-2-5); first term. A course in the fundamentals of English composition for native speakers of English, required for students in need of supplementary instruction before entering freshman humanities courses. Students will be assigned to En 2 on the basis of a diagnostic examination. Not available for credit toward the humanities–social science requirement. Instructor: Fonseca.

Hum/En 5. Major British Authors. 9 units (3-0-6). For course description, see Humanities.

Hum/En 6. Major American Authors. 9 units (3-0-6). For course description, see Humanities.

En 84. Writing Science. 9 units (3-0-6). Instruction and practice in writing about science and technology for general audiences. The course considers how to convey complex technical information in clear, engaging prose that nonspecialists can understand and appreciate. Readings in different genres (e.g., magazine and newspaper journalism, reflective essays, case studies, popularizations) raise issues for discussion and serve as models for preliminary writing assignments and for a more substantial final project on a topic of each student’s choice. Includes oral presentation. Satisfies the Institute scientific writing requirement and the option oral communication requirement for humanities majors. Instructors: Marsen, Youra.

En 85. Writing Poetry. 9 units (3-0-6); third term. Students will develop their poetic craft by creating poems in a variety of forms. The lecturer will provide guidance and direction, supervise class discussions of students’ works, and assign outside reading as needed. Students may apply one term of En 85, 86, 87, and 88 to the final 36-unit requirement of the division, and all other courses in this series will receive Institute credit. Instructor: Hall.

En 86. Fiction Writing. 9 units (3-0-6); second term. The class is conducted as a writing workshop in the short-story form. Modern literary stories are discussed, as well as the art and craft of writing well, aspects of the “writing life,” and the nature of the publishing world today. Students are urged to write fiction that reflects on the nature of life. Humor is welcome, although not genre fiction such as formula romance, horror, thrillers, fantasy, or sci-fi. Students may apply one term of En 85, 86, 87, and 88 to the final 36-unit requirement of the division, and all other courses in this series will receive Institute credit. Instructor: Gerber.

En 87. Writing Fiction: The Imaginary. 9 units (3-0-6); first term. Students will develop their talents for writing imaginary short stories other than science fiction. A number of models will be proposed to them for inspiration, e.g., folk tales, tales of the supernatural, fables, stories of “magic realism,” examples of surrealism and the “absurd,” and so on. The lecturer will provide guidance and direction, supervise class discussions of students’ works, and assign outside reading as needed. Students may apply one term of En 85, 86, 87, and 88 to the final 36-unit requirement of the division, and all other courses in this series will receive Institute credit. Instructors: Hall, Magun.

En 88. Writing Nonfiction. 9 units (3-0-6). Students will develop their skills in handling various forms of nonfiction, such as the memoir, the critical review, the polemic, etc. The lecturer will provide guidance and direction, supervise class discussions of students’ works, and assign outside reading as needed. Students may apply one term of En 85, 86, 87, and 88 to the final 36-unit requirement of the division, and all other courses in this series will receive Institute credit. Not offered 2005–06.

En 92. Literature of the Holocaust. 9 units (3-0-6); third term. Elie Wiesel has written: “At Auschwitz, not only man died, but also the idea of man . . . It was its own heart the world incinerated at Auschwitz.” This class will explore the reverberation of this premise in the literature that grew out of the holocaust experience, as well as the shifting aesthetics of “holocaust literature” over the last half century. Put simply, can there be “an aesthetics of atrocity”? What are the responsibilities of art and literature to history? Should a perpetrator of genocide ever engage our moral imagination? In an attempt to grapple with these questions, students will read works, both fiction and nonfiction, by a range of authors, including Primo Levi, Elie Wiesel, Ida Fink, Cynthia Ozick, Tadeusz Borowski, Bernard Schlink, and W. G. Sebold. Not offered 2005–06.

En 93. Women on the Edge. 9 units (3-0-6); third term. This class will consider how women’s writing in the 20th century often flouts the conventional portrayal of woman as ministering angel preoccupied with the needs of family without much regard to her own. Writers to be read include Kate Chopin, Colette, Marguerite Duras, Sylvia Plath, Angela Carter, Jeanette Winterson, Toni Morrison, Elfriede Jelinek. Instructor: Magun.

En 98. Tutorial for English Majors. 9 units (2-0-7). Prerequisite: instructor’s permission. An individual program of directed reading and research for English majors in an area not covered by regular courses. Instructor: Staff.

En 99 ab. Senior Tutorial for English Majors. 9 units (1-0-8); second, third terms. Students will study research methods and write a research paper. Required of students in the English option. Instructor: Staff.

En 114 ab. Shakespeare. 9 units (3-0-6). Offered by announcement. Not open to freshmen. A close study of Shakespeare’s plays with an emphasis on his language, dramatic structures, characters, and themes. Each term will concentrate on a detailed consideration of three or four of Shakespeare’s major plays. The first term is not a prerequisite for the second. Instructors: La Belle, Marneus.

En 116. Milton and the Epic Tradition. 9 units (3-0-6); third term. Milton’s major works—Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes—and some of the prose and shorter poems. Instructors: Pigman, Haugen.

En 122. The 18th-Century English Novel. 9 units (3-0-6); third term. The realistic novel as a surprising, even experimental moment in the history of fiction. How and why did daily life become a legitimate topic for narrative in the 18th century? The realistic turn clearly attracted new classes of readers, but did it also make the novel a better vehicle for commenting on society at large? Why were the formal conventions of realistic writing so tightly circumscribed? Authors may include Cervantes, Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Sterne, Walpole, Boswell, and Austen. Instructor: Haugen.

En 123. The 19th-Century English Novel. 9 units (3-0-6); first term. A survey of the 19th-century novel from Austen through Conrad, with special emphasis upon the Victorians. Major authors may include Austen, Shelley, Dickens, Eliot, Thackeray, Gaskell, Brontë, Collins, Trollope, Stoker, Hardy. Not offered 2005–06.

En 124. 20th-Century British Fiction. 9 units (3-0-6); third term. A survey of the 20th-century British and Irish novel, from the modernist novel to the postcolonial novel. Major authors may include Conrad, Joyce, Woolf, Forster, Lawrence, Orwell, Amis, Lessing, Rushdie. Not offered 2005–06.

En 125 ab. British Romantic Literature. 9 units (3-0-6); second term. A selective survey of English writing in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Major authors may include Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Keats, Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, and Austen. Particular attention will be paid to intellectual and historical contexts and to new understandings of the role of literature in society. Instructor: Gilmartin.

En 126. Gothic Fiction. 9 units (3-0-6); third term. The literature of horror, fantasy, and the supernatural, from the late 18th century to the present day. Particular attention will be paid to gothic’s shifting cultural imperative, from its origins as a qualified reaction to Enlightenment rationalism, to the contemporary ghost story as an instrument of social and psychological exploration. Issues will include atmosphere and the gothic sense of space; gothic as a popular pathology; and the gendering of gothic narrative. Fiction by Walpole, Shelley, Brontë, Stoker, Poe, Wilde, Angela Carter, and Toni Morrison. Film versions of the gothic may be included. Instructor: Gilmartin.

En 128. Modern and Contemporary Irish Literature. 9 units (3-0-6). Offered by announcement. The development of Irish fiction, poetry, and drama from the early 20th-century Irish literary renaissance, through the impact of modernism, to the Field Day movement and other contemporary developments. Topics may include the impact of political violence and national division upon the literary imagination; the use of folk and fairy-tale traditions; patterns of emigration and literary exile; the challenge of the English language and the relation of Irish writing to British literary tradition; and recent treatments of Irish literature in regional, postcolonial, and global terms. Works by Joyce, Yeats, Synge, Friel, O’Brien, Heaney, Boland, and others. Not offered 2005–06.

En 129. Enlightenment Fiction. 9 units (3-0-6); third term. What was the fate of fiction in an age of reason? Historians have in fact questioned whether “Enlightenment” adequately describes European culture in the 18th century, and imaginative fiction seems particularly unsuited to generalizations about order, reason, and polite society. This course will focus on experimental narratives from the “antinovel” tradition, and on philosophical satires that undermine Enlightenment assumptions about social reform. It will look ahead to related developments in romantic and postmodern fiction. Readings may include Voltaire, Diderot, Defoe, Hoffman, and fairy tales from the brothers Grimm. Not offered 2005–06.

En 132. American Literature Until the Civil War. 9 units (3-0-6); second term. The course will analyze the literature of this period, from the Puritans through Melville, to determine how various writers understood their relationship to a new world of seemingly unlimited possibility. Authors covered may include Mary Rowlandson, Benjamin Franklin, Hannah Foster, Harriet Jacobs, Emerson, Thoreau, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Hawthorne, and Melville. Not offered 2005–06.

En 133. 19th-Century American Women Writers. 9 units (3-0-6). This course will analyze many of the most popular novels written in the 19th century. How might we account for their success in the 19th century and their marginalization (until recently) in the 20th century? Why were so many of these texts “sentimental”? How might we understand the appeal of “sentimental” literature? What are the ideological implications of sentimentalism? Authors may include Stowe, Warner, Cummins, Alcott, Phelps, Fern, etc. Not offered 2005–06.

En 134. The Career of Herman Melville. 9 units (3-0-6). The course will focus on Melville’s works from Typee through Billy Budd. Special emphasis will be placed on Melville’s relations to 19th-century American culture. Instructor: Weinstein. Not offered 2005–06.

En 135. The Literature of American Reform. 9 units (3-0-6); third term. The course will consider how American literature—from its inception to the present day—has been used as a vehicle for reform. To what extent is literature capable of bringing about social change? What changes, if any, did these texts effect? Do texts that seek to effect social change require a different analytical vocabulary than the one we conventionally use when discussing literary texts? A range of reform movements, including abolitionism, feminism, Native American rights, in view of these and other questions, will be considered. Texts may include Uncle Tom’s Cabin, White-Jacket, Ramona, Looking Backward, The Jungle, The Grapes of Wrath, Uncle Tom’s Children, and Silent Spring. Instructor: Weinstein.

En 138. Twain and His Contemporaries. 9 units (3-0-6); third term. This course will study the divergent theories of realism that arose in the period after the Civil War and before World War I. Authors covered may include Howells, James, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Twain, Sarah Orne Jewett, Jacob Riis, Stephen Crane, and W. E. B. DuBois. Instructor: Weinstein.

En 141. James and Wharton. 9 units (3-0-6); third term. The course covers selected novels, short fiction, and nonfiction writings of friends and expatriates Henry James and Edith Wharton. It will consider formal questions of style and genre as well as the literature’s preoccupation with describing and defining American modernity, despite the authors’ shared ambivalence toward their native country. Students will read as many as, but no more than, five novels. Texts covered may include The Portrait of a Lady, Daisy Miller, The Ambassadors, selections from The Decoration of Houses, The House of Mirth, The Custom of the Country, and The Age of Innocence. Not offered 2005–06.

En 150. Fundamentals of the Art of Poetry. 9 units (3-0-6); second term. What is poetry? Why and how should one read it? What “weapons’’ does the good poem deploy in order to give pleasure? How does an inexperienced reader develop into an expert and a sensitive one? To illustrate the nature, functions, and resources of poetry, a wide-ranging selection of poems will be read and discussed. Not offered 2005–06.

En 170. Drama from the Middle Ages to Molière. 9 units (3-0-6); third term. A study of major dramatic works from the 15th to the mid-17th century. Students will read medieval plays like Abraham and Isaac and Everyman; British Renaissance works including Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and two Shakespearean plays; several Spanish comedias of the Golden Age, among them the original Don Juan play; and Molière’s masterpieces: Tartuffe and The Misanthrope. Not offered 2005–06.

En 171. Drama from Molière to Wilde. 9 units (3-0-6). A study of French plays of the age of Louis XIV, featuring Molière and Racine; English comedies of the 17th and 18th centuries, including Sheridan’s The Rivals; masterpieces of German drama of the Romantic age, among them Schiller’s Maria Stuart and Goethe’s Faust; The Inspector General by the Russian Nikolay Gogol; Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac; Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, and other works as time permits. Instructor: Mandel.

En 172. Drama from Ibsen to Beckett. 9 units (3-0-6). A wide international range of plays will be studied, beginning with major texts by Ibsen and Chekhov, and concluding with Ionesco and Beckett. In between, students will read important plays by G. B. Shaw, Sean O’Casey, Pirandello, Bertolt Brecht, T. S. Eliot, Arthur Miller, and others. Instructor: Mandel.

En 180. Special Topics in English. 9 units (3-0-6). See registrar’s announcement for details. Instructor: Staff.

En 181 a. Classics of Science Fiction: 1940–70. 9 units (3-0-6); first term. This course will aim to examine, critically, the achievements of one of the many “golden ages” of science fiction. Among the authors examined will be Pohl and Kornbluth, Bradbury, Bester, Vonnegut, Wyndham, Heinlein, Dick, Herbert, Ballard, Le Guin, Asimov, Clarke, Silverberg, Aldiss. The course will aim to give formal and generic definition to the texts examined and to reinsert them into the period of their original publication. Instructor: Sutherland.

En 181 b. Hardy: The Wessex Novels. 9 units (3-0-6); third term. This course will examine the body of work that the late Victorian novelist Thomas Hardy published under the general title The Wessex Novels, that is, the sequence of works from Far from the Madding Crowd to Jude the Obscure. The six main novels will be read critically to give a sense of the totality of this greatest British regional novelist’s achievement. Instructor: Sutherland.