English
Spring in Love
English
Spring in Love
Literary lovers, it seems, break the rules, exploring the boundaries set by family, society, religion or law. What can we learn from their defiance? Why does such love so often end in disaster? Is love socially constructed or universal? We will explore these...
Poetry and Song
English
Poetry and Song
An exploration into the deep and longstanding relationship of poetry and song, this course asks (among other things) how the presence of music alters and enhances our experience of poetry; what qualities make song lyrics “poetic”; and how...
Science Fiction and Fantasy
English
Science Fiction and Fantasy
Whether it is Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings or H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds, science fiction and fantasy can not only delight our imagination but also help us understand our real, present world more thoroughly. Students in this course will...
Stranger in a Strange Land
English
Stranger in a Strange Land
Drawing from a range of essays and literature about travel, this course seeks to equip students with the tools to process and reflect upon their own personal journeys, abroad and otherwise. Through a range of assignments, we will examine closely what it means...
Baseball: the American Narrative
English
Baseball: the American Narrative
A. Bartlett Giamatti, former president of Yale and commissioner of Major League Baseball, believed that this game is “the plot of the story of our national life.” In this course we will look at how baseball reflects, embodies and illuminates...
Utopias & Dystopias in Literature
English
Utopias & Dystopias in Literature
Fantastic societies have held a fascination for writers from Thomas More to the present day. Utopia, “no place,” represents an idealized society whose inhabitants willingly embrace its difference from our own world. Dystopic visions are the...
Writing the Body
English
Writing the Body
“I’ve only ever wanted to write about what it feels like to be alive, and it turns out being alive is always about being in a body. We’re never not in bodies: That’s just our fate and our assignment.” (Leslie Jamison, “Why...
Crime Fiction
English
Crime Fiction
This course introduces students to early works in the development of the “detective story” (Edgar Allan Poe, Agatha Christie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) and the ways in which those early works help establish the foundations for a variety of...
Homer’s Odyssey
English
Homer’s Odyssey
In this interdisciplinary class, taught jointly by members of the Classical Languages Department and the English Department, we will read Homer’s Odyssey in translation and then trace its afterlife from antiquity to the present day. The hero Odysseus is...
American Political Literature
English
American Political Literature
Seniors participating in the spring term Washington Intern Program may elect to enroll in this English seminar which focuses on political literature and American...