Instructor: Vidyan Ravinthiran
TBD | Location: TBD
Enrollment: Limited to 15 students

This course introduces students to the poetry, literary prose, and artful correspondence of one of the major poets of the twentieth century, considering her innovations in all these genres. We will look at her writing in multiple genres alongside the mid-century shift from ‘closed’ to ‘open’ verse forms, and relate stylistic issues to the intellectual and social changes, and political and historical developments of the period. Bishop’s critique of received ideas about nationality, race, power, gender, sexual orientation, and the overlap between culture and nature, is connected with her status as a cosmopolitan poet with links to Canada, the U.S. and Brazil.  ‘Others’ refers both to how her writing comes to terms with the (sociopolitical) reality of other people, and to the comparisons we’ll draw between her writing and that of other poets.   

This course satisfies the “1900-2000 Guided Elective" requirement for English concentrators and Secondary Field students.

Instructor: Elaine Scarry
TBD | Location: TBD
Enrollment: Limited to 15 students

Writings by Emily, Anne, and Charlotte Brontë, as well as the later novels and films their work inspired.

This course satisfies the “1700-1900 Guided Elective" requirement for English concentrators and Secondary Field students.

Instructor: David Levine
TBD | Location: TBD
Enrollment: Limited to 15 students

Briefly America’s most terrifying movie, now an inexhaustible source of camp, reference, and technique, William Friedkin’s The Exorcist is a rich allegory of postwar America. But its very deficiencies, blind spots, and occlusions also make a powerful lens onto the present day. This advanced workshop in devising, adaptation, and critical intervention will perform (literally) an examination of the significance, meaning, and unholy afterlife of The Exorcist, created over the semester using historical research, conversations, attempts at re- staging, religious rites, death-metal growls, and head turns of 180 degrees or more.

The Exorcist is horror fiction. The book and film contain offensive language, depictions of sexual and domestic violence, sacrilegious treatment of religious icons, realistically depicted invasive medical procedures, and expulsion of bodily fluids. We will be treating these subjects with care, but we will be discussing disturbing images and themes throughout the semester.

Students who have taken English 10 and 20, or at least two practice-based/studio courses in TDM (or TDM 97), will be prioritized for enrollment.

This course satisfies the “1900-2000 Guided Elective" requirement for English concentrators and Secondary Field students.

Instructor: Gordon Teskey
TBD | Location: TBD
Enrollment: Limited to 15 students.

Shakespeare’s career in playwriting (1589-1611) divides into two creative phases, each one lasting a decade. At the center is his most famous play, Hamlet (1600-1601), which closes with a roar of cannons, a premonition of the great tragedies to come. Before Hamlet, Shakespeare’s poetic style is brilliant, declamatory, and virtuosic. He discovers as he writes his own astonishing powers of expression, his uncanny ability to represent character from the inside and, not the least of these, his skill at plotting. Before Hamlet, Shakespeare is a crowd-pleasing entertainer who is gathering his powers. The plays of this period, especially the comedies, offer some of the purest delights in the theatre.

This course satisfies the “Pre-1700 Guided Elective" requirement for English concentrators and Secondary Field students.

Instructor: Derek Miller
TBD | Location: TBD
Enrollment: Limited to 15 students

The plays of Henrik Ibsen and Anton Chekhov effected an essential shift in the trajectory of Western dramatic writing. From a theater of melodrama and romance, Ibsen and Chekhov helped define and develop theatrical realism, symbolism, and modernism. Psychologically based acting, known generally as the Method, emerged to solve the problem of acting in their plays. Philosophical and political debates across Europe responded to their ideas. Their work became a cornerstone of the independent theater movement, and the model for playwrights from Shaw to Miller to Hansberry to Baker.

This course delves into these playwrights’ theatrical canons. We will read closely their major works, along with some lesser known plays and writing in other genres. We will attend to their experiences as nineteenth-century artists: their lives and artistic friendships, their relationships to the theater and to publishing, the reception of their works by their contemporaries and in the century since they wrote. Along the way, we will learn about the theaters that staged their works, the supporters that brought them fame in England and the United States, and the contemporary writers who challenged and learned from them, such as Zola, Hauptmann, Strindberg, and Gorky. In the final weeks we will examine their contemporary legacy in modern adaptations and plays by Ibsenite and Chekhovian artists.

This course satisfies the “1700-1900 Guided Elective" requirement for English concentrators and Secondary Field students.

Instructor: Leah Whittington
TBD | Location: TBD
Enrollment: Limited to 15 students

This course traces the reception of Ovid’s Metamorphoses through the diverse responses of Petrarch, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton and Dryden, exploring how Renaissance writers fashioned their own poetry in response to the generative power of Ovid’s work.

This course satisfies the “Pre-1700 Guided Elective" requirement for English concentrators and Secondary Field students.