麻花影视

Academic Writing Courses

Below are the course descriptions for the English courses offered for Fall 2023. Click the course title to read the full description and see the book list for each course.听

EN 1000 Sections

EN 1000A: ALTERED STATES with Professor Gunn

Mon, Wed, Thurs: 9:00鈥10:20

This EN1000 course will look at different ways in which literature has represented 鈥渁ltered states鈥. What are the different sorts of state to which literature can give access, and how does it help to define or reinterpret notions of normality? Among the different sorts of 鈥渆cstasy鈥 which we shall look at are those induced by love, by rage, by madness, by alienation, and by repression. And underlying our enquiry will be always the concern for how the written word can give access to greater realms of thought and of feeling than are usually recognized.

Books:

  • Georges Perec, W or The Memory of Childhood (Godine)
  • Franz Kafka, Selected stories (Everyman)
  • Henry James, The Turn of the Screw (Penguin)
  • Shakespeare, Measure for Measure (New Cambridge)
  • Muriel Spark, The Driver鈥檚 Seat (Penguin)
EN 1000B: FAMILY MATTERS with Professor Mott

Mon, Wed, Thurs: 12:10鈥13:30

鈥淎ll happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.鈥 These lines by Leo Tolstoy in Anna Karenina point to the often contorted, always intense connection between individuals and the families to which they belong and oftentimes distance themselves. Is the 'happy' family simply a myth, especially when jealousy, poverty, social exclusion or politics and policing rear their ugly heads? Or when children and spouses are mistreated and neglected? What prompts young individuals to (re)create family with their peers instead of their families? This College Writing course will explore, through film and literature, the countless ways different characters respond to the family pressures which alternately define, nourish, and sometimes smother them.听 Depending on the social norms and culture, family breakdowns may occur in the form of violence, intimidation, drug addiction and alcoholism, crime and corruption. Each work we study this term will offer rare glimpses into both traditional and contemporary family structures inviting us to investigate the different ways we 鈥榢now鈥 ourselves and family, and the many ways we deceive ourselves about we think we know. Primarily, though, this is a WRITING course, and so writing is what we will do, a lot. Students will learn that writing is a process of forming and refining ideas, honing your prose and enjoying every single minute of doing so.

Books / films:

  • Tennessee Williams, Streetcar Named Desire
  • Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See
  • James Baldwin, 鈥淪onny鈥檚 Blues鈥 鈥淭wo Kinds,鈥 Amy Tam
  • Alice Walker, 鈥淓veryday Use鈥
  • Wes Anderson, The Royal Tenenbaums
EN 1000C: ON THE MOVE with Professor Rast

Tues, Wed, Fri: 10:35鈥11:55

People move. We change homes, schools, jobs or sometimes countries. We leave one neighbourhood, city, region or country for another, and in so doing we confront new habits, traditions, cultures and languages. We move into worlds that welcome, worlds that ignore, worlds that reject, or worlds that show indifference. One place may feel suddenly foreign, while another feels like home. Personal journeys take place during these moves, creating life stories. In this course we will contemplate these life stories and the implications of personal journeys on individual and collective experience and identity. Based on films and readings, we will experiment with academic, journalistic and creative writing, always working towards developing your own voice in written and spoken English.听

叠辞辞办蝉:听

  • Ryszard Kapuscinski, The Shadow of the Sun
  • Julie Otsuka, When the Emperor was Divine
  • Additional readings and films
EN 1000D

Tues, Wed, Fri: 9:00鈥10:20

EN1000: Emphasizes the stages required to produce a polished, articulate essay by practicing the necessary components of excellent academic writing: sharpening critical thinking skills, organizing ideas, choosing appropriate and dynamic words, varying prose style, editing, refining, and proofreading.

EN 1010 Sections

EN 1010A: OVERSTEPPING with Professor Hollinshead-Strick

Mon, Thurs: 9:00鈥10:20 听

The works we will read this semester negotiate the boundaries of what is acceptable in the societies and situations they portray. Many of them describe transgressions which are cosmically (and/or personally) destabilizing.听 In this course, we will be paying attention to how literature represents and upsets world views. We will consider both the contexts in which it does so and the textual strategies involved in managing readers鈥 expectations.听 Close reading will be encouraged, and we will work extensively on the skills involved in constructing strong academic papers.听

EN1010: By engaging with major works of World Literature across genres, time-periods and cultures, you will be able to read critically, recognise historical contexts, and craft well-structured academic arguments in oral and written form. All EN1010 classes help you fulfil the 鈥淐ritical Inquiry and Expression鈥 core curriculum requirement.听听

Books:

  • Aeschylus, Oresteia
  • William Shakespeare, Macbeth
  • Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
  • Edwidge Danticat, Everything Inside听听
EN 1010B: COLLEGE WRITING

Mon, Thurs: 10:35鈥11:55

EN1010: By engaging with major works of World Literature across genres, time-periods and cultures, you will be able to read critically, recognise historical contexts, and craft well-structured academic arguments in oral and written form. All EN1010 classes help you fulfil the 鈥淐ritical Inquiry and Expression鈥 core curriculum requirement.听听

EN 1010C: COLLEGE WRITING

Mon, Thurs: 12:10鈥1:30

EN1010: By engaging with major works of World Literature across genres, time-periods and cultures, you will be able to read critically, recognise historical contexts, and craft well-structured academic arguments in oral and written form. All EN1010 classes help you fulfil the 鈥淐ritical Inquiry and Expression鈥 core curriculum requirement.听听

EN 1010D: ANIMALS with Professor Roy

Tues, Fri: 15:20鈥 6:40

鈥淎nimals are good to think with,鈥 observes the French anthropologist Claude L茅vi-Strauss. We will think about concepts like animal/human, nature/culture, body/mind, chaos/order by examining the representation of animals across a range of contexts and traditions 鈥 Hindu and Buddhist folk tales (Panchatantra, Jataka Tales), the Chinese novel Journey to the West (also known as Monkey), Virginia Woolf鈥檚 Flush, a biography of a cocker spaniel, and contemporary rewritings of oral Native American animal-trickster myths. We will see how the place we give (or don鈥檛 give) to animals creates a structured view of the world based on constructed relations between different forms of life. Ultimately, we will be asking: What makes us human 鈥 politically, socially, economically, anthropologically, philosophically, aesthetically? Is the line between human and animal clear-cut? What do 鈥渉uman鈥 rights mean? What are 鈥渢he humanities鈥? Does 鈥渢he human鈥 exist?听

EN1010: By engaging with major works of World Literature across genres, time-periods and cultures, you will be able to read critically, recognise historical contexts, and craft well-structured academic arguments in oral and written form. All EN1010 classes help you fulfil the 鈥淐ritical Inquiry and Expression鈥 core curriculum requirement.听听

Books:

  • Vishnusharma, The Panchatantra
  • The Jataka Tales
  • Wu Cheng鈥檈n, Journey to the West
  • Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew
  • Virginia Woolf, Flush
  • Thomas King, One Good Story, That One
EN 1010 E: COLLEGE WRITING

Mon, Thurs: 16:55鈥18:05

EN1010: By engaging with major works of World Literature across genres, time-periods and cultures, you will be able to read critically, recognise historical contexts, and craft well-structured academic arguments in oral and written form. All EN1010 classes help you fulfil the 鈥淐ritical Inquiry and Expression鈥 core curriculum requirement.听听

EN 1010 F: IDEAS OF THE OTHER with Professor Tresilian

Tues, Fri: 10:35鈥11:55

This course looks at ideas of self and other as these are expressed in selected literary texts. It starts with ideas of otherness, sexual and cultural, as expressed in a major work of ancient Greek tragedy, Euripides鈥檚 Medea, before moving on to the representation of cultural and racial otherness in Shakespeare鈥檚 Othello, one of the English Renaissance dramatist鈥檚 four major tragedies. The course examines how the other or outsider can be seen as at once seductive and disruptive, forcing a reconsideration of hierarchies of sex and power. Longer prose works read in the course, Defoe鈥檚 Robinson Crusoe and Stoker鈥檚 Dracula, examine the possibilities and anxieties associated with the opening up of the wider world. While Defoe is writing during the heroic phase of early capitalist expansion, his lonely protagonist exploiting and reordering the non-European world, Stoker鈥檚 wildly popular horror novel dramatizes late-Victorian anxieties of invasion in lurid and melodramatic terms. Kafka鈥檚 The Trial presents a world in which the individual is alienated and alone in the face of a thoroughly modern style of bureaucracy, while Tayeb Salih鈥檚 Season of Migration to the North, a Sudanese rewriting of themes from Othello, reverses the gaze of Shakespeare鈥檚 play in a twentieth-century tale of otherness at home and abroad.

EN1010: By engaging with major works of World Literature across genres, time-periods and cultures, you will be able to read critically, recognise historical contexts, and craft well-structured academic arguments in oral and written form. All EN1010 classes help you fulfil the 鈥淐ritical Inquiry and Expression鈥 core curriculum requirement.听听

Books:

  • Euripides, Medea and Other Plays
  • Salih, Season of Migration to the North
  • Shakespeare, Othello
  • Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
  • Stoker, Dracula
  • Kafka, The Trial
EN 1010 G: COLLEGE WRITING with Professor Craven

Tues, Fri: 10:35鈥11:55

EN1010: By engaging with major works of World Literature across genres, time-periods and cultures, you will be able to read critically, recognise historical contexts, and craft well-structured academic arguments in oral and written form. All EN1010 classes help you fulfil the 鈥淐ritical Inquiry and Expression鈥 core curriculum requirement.听听

EN 1010 H: THE WRITER鈥橲 WORLD with Professor Harding

Tues, Fri: 09:00-10:20

When we read, we enter a different world, travelling in an unknown country where some things are familiar, others strange and new; our adjustment to this theatre of the real reconstructs our own world, emotionally, morally, politically. Empathy arises in the midst of this strangeness, and we find ourselves (in many senses) in the place of the other. As our contemporary world is more and more violently tested, our course looks at this intensely powerful creative process. We begin with one of the greatest and freshest theatrical representations of emotional exploration, Shakespeare's听Romeo and Juliet, reading substantially from the point of view of the actor exploring a role.听Xavier de听Maistre鈥檚听playfully profound conversation with himself in his Voyage Around My Room, written under house arrest in 1790 with no intention of publication, announces the ironic solitude of nineteenth century Romanticism, but speaks volumes to our own experience of lockdown. We enter the surreal, grotesque and poignant world of Russia鈥檚 encounter with modernity in Gogol鈥檚 tales. We end with three very different, fragmented narratives of life in the twentieth century, from Persian and Japanese explorations of the imaginary and the real, of worlds inner and outer, and somewhere in between, to our final text, a selection of Carver鈥檚 short stories, turned into a memorable film by Robert Altman, with which we shall finish our course.

EN1010: By engaging with major works of World Literature across genres, time-periods and cultures, you will be able to read critically, recognise historical contexts, and craft well-structured academic arguments in oral and written form. All EN1010 classes help you fulfil the 鈥淐ritical Inquiry and Expression鈥 core curriculum requirement.听听

Books:

  • William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
  • Xavier de Maistre, Voyage Around My Room
  • Nikolai Gogol, Collected Tales
  • Katherine Mansfield, The Garden Party and Other Stories
  • Yasunari Kawabata, Palm of the Hand Stories
  • Sadegh Hedayat, Three Drops of Blood
  • Raymond Carver, Short Cuts
EN 1010 I: THE WRITER鈥橲 WORLD with Professor Harding

Tues, Fri: 10:35鈥11:55

When we read, we enter a different world, travelling in an unknown country where some things are familiar, others strange and new; our adjustment to this theatre of the real reconstructs our own world, emotionally, morally, politically. Empathy arises in the midst of this strangeness, and we find ourselves (in many senses) in the place of the other. As our contemporary world is more and more violently tested, our course looks at this intensely powerful creative process. We begin with one of the greatest and freshest theatrical representations of emotional exploration, Shakespeare's听Romeo and Juliet, reading substantially from the point of view of the actor exploring a role.听Xavier de听Maistre鈥檚听playfully profound conversation with himself in his Voyage Around My Room, written under house arrest in 1790 with no intention of publication, announces the ironic solitude of nineteenth century Romanticism, but speaks volumes to our own experience of lockdown. We enter the surreal, grotesque and poignant world of Russia鈥檚 encounter with modernity in Gogol鈥檚 tales. We end with three very different, fragmented narratives of life in the twentieth century, from Persian and Japanese explorations of the imaginary and the real, of worlds inner and outer, and somewhere in between, to our final text, a selection of Carver鈥檚 short stories, turned into a memorable film by Robert Altman, with which we shall finish our course.

EN1010: By engaging with major works of World Literature across genres, time-periods and cultures, you will be able to read critically, recognise historical contexts, and craft well-structured academic arguments in oral and written form. All EN1010 classes help you fulfil the 鈥淐ritical Inquiry and Expression鈥 core curriculum requirement.听听

Books:

  • William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
  • Xavier de Maistre, Voyage Around My Room
  • Nikolai Gogol, Collected Tales
  • Katherine Mansfield, The Garden Party and Other Stories
  • Yasunari Kawabata, Palm of the Hand Stories
  • Sadegh Hedayat, Three Drops of Blood
  • Raymond Carver, Short Cuts

EN 2020 Sections

EN 2020 A: WRITING AND CRITICISM with Professor Dow

Mon, Thurs: 9:00鈥10:20

This course invites students to consider the role of cruelty in our encounters with literary and literary-journalistic works. As a concept that defines a relation to suffering, cruelty demands reexamination of many notions we have about ourselves. What can literature and other narrative forms show us about how we respond鈥攐r fail to respond鈥攖o the pain of others? How do texts mediate our perceptions of others and of our relationships or obligations to others? How do fictional works complicate our efforts to distance ourselves from cruelty? Is there something distinctive about how cruelty functions in narrative texts? In examining a range of works from Renaissance England to Depression-era America, from post-war France to postcolonial India, we will see how encounters with literary cruelty might alter our awareness of the ethical stakes of reading.

EN2020: By engaging with major works of World Literature across genres, time-periods and cultures, you will be able to sharpen your critical reading skills, compare historical contexts, and craft independent, well-researched academic arguments in oral and written form. All EN2020 classes help you fulfil the 鈥淐ritical Inquiry and Expression鈥 core curriculum requirement.听听

Books:

  • William Shakespeare, Hamlet
  • Albert Camus, The Outsider
  • Richard Wright, Native Son
  • Frederick Douglass, Narrative
  • Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
EN 2020 B: WRITING AND CRITICISM

Mon, Thurs: 10:35 鈥11:55

EN2020: By engaging with major works of World Literature across genres, time-periods and cultures, you will be able to sharpen your critical reading skills, compare historical contexts, and craft independent, well-researched academic arguments in oral and written form. All EN2020 classes help you fulfil the 鈥淐ritical Inquiry and Expression鈥 core curriculum requirement.

EN 2020 C: CHILDREN AND PARENTS with Professor Gunn

Mon, Thurs: 12:10鈥13:30

This Writing and Criticism course will look at various ways in which children and their parents have interacted through the ages. Why is childhood so important to writers, and has this importance changed over the centuries or remained constant? Certain works will focus on a child鈥檚 view of the universe, others on adults鈥 feelings in relation to both their childhood and their own children. Childhood is perhaps best understood when it is disappearing, in adolescence, hence certain of our texts will deal with the teenage years and experience. Children will be seen as engendering both love and hate in parents. In turn, parents will be seen as longing after their childhood, either as a time of innocence or as a time of freedom. A series of important texts will highlight these and other themes. As in all EN 2020 courses, students will be required to read and discuss the set texts, as well as to reflect on writing more generally.

EN2020: By engaging with major works of World Literature across genres, time-periods and cultures, you will be able to sharpen your critical reading skills, compare historical contexts, and craft independent, well-researched academic arguments in oral and written form. All EN2020 classes help you fulfil the 鈥淐ritical Inquiry and Expression鈥 core curriculum requirement.听听

Books:

  • Marguerite Duras, The Lover
  • Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
  • Sophocles, Antigone
  • Shaespeare, A Midsummer Night鈥檚 Dream
EN 2020 D: WRITING AND CRITICISM

Mon, Thurs: 3:20鈥4:40

EN2020: By engaging with major works of World Literature across genres, time-periods and cultures, you will be able to sharpen your critical reading skills, compare historical contexts, and craft independent, well-researched academic arguments in oral and written form. All EN2020 classes help you fulfil the 鈥淐ritical Inquiry and Expression鈥 core curriculum requirement.听听

EN 2020 E: AUTHOR, SELF AND TEXT

Mon, Thurs: 16:55鈥18:15 听

What is the relationship between the author, their autobiographical self, and the work they produce? How do writers draw from, and work with, texts that came before to create new works of literature, and how do they challenge or expand our ideas about authorship and originality? Our critical reading will focus on the language, images, and styles employed to express such novel relationships in literary texts. Through independent research we will gain a contextual understanding of the social and political climate of the time during which texts were written. We will also pay particular attention to the relations between form and content in these texts. How does the inclusion of stories from the margins of gender, society, or history influence the form in which these stories are told? Through our readings we will discover how literary experimentation has enabled a broader range of modes of being in relationship with each other.

EN2020: By engaging with major works of World Literature across genres, time-periods and cultures, you will be able to sharpen your critical reading skills, compare historical contexts, and craft independent, well-researched academic arguments in oral and written form. All EN2020 classes help you fulfil the 鈥淐ritical Inquiry and Expression鈥 core curriculum requirement.听听

Books:

  • Tom Phillips, A Humument
  • Sappho, If Not, Winter,
  • Shakespeare, Sonnets
  • Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red
  • Virginia Woolf, Orlando
EN 2020 F: WRITING AND CRITICISM

Mon, Thurs: 18:30鈥19:50

EN2020: By engaging with major works of World Literature across genres, time-periods and cultures, you will be able to sharpen your critical reading skills, compare historical contexts, and craft independent, well-researched academic arguments in oral and written form. All EN2020 classes help you fulfil the 鈥淐ritical Inquiry and Expression鈥 core curriculum requirement.听听

EN 2020 G: QUESTIONING THE SELF with Professor Tresilian

Tues, Fri: 9:00鈥10:20

鈥榃hat a piece of work is a man. How noble in reason. How infinite in faculty. In form and moving how express and admirable. In action how like an angel. In apprehension how like a god.鈥 Hamlet鈥檚 words from Shakespeare鈥檚 play express optimism about human possibilities, ironically placing them in the mouth of one of the dramatist鈥檚 most self-conflicted protagonists. This course will look at a range of works with such self-questioning in mind. Who am I? What am I? What kinds of relationship do I have with others? Even with myself? It starts with 鈥楢ntigone,鈥 a work of ancient Greek tragedy having much to say about social and moral bonds. 鈥楬amlet鈥 introduces the liberal themes of self and society, separating private conscience from public roles and the range of selves presented to others. Mary Shelley鈥檚 鈥楩rankenstein鈥, written against the background of the Industrial Revolution in Europe and the growth of the factory system, poses the question of human possibilities anew, this time in terms of scientific discovery.听 Freud鈥檚 鈥楩ragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria鈥 and Woolf鈥檚 鈥楻oom of One鈥檚 Own鈥 present new ways of writing about the self, whether in terms of psychoanalysis or against the background of political and social change, while Sartre鈥檚 Nausea draws together themes of self and society, personal identity and social relations, in the context of an elaborate philosophical system.

EN2020: By engaging with major works of World Literature across genres, time-periods and cultures, you will be able to sharpen your critical reading skills, compare historical contexts, and craft independent, well-researched academic arguments in oral and written form. All EN2020 classes help you fulfil the 鈥淐ritical Inquiry and Expression鈥 core curriculum requirement.听听

Books:

  • Sophocles, Theban Plays
  • Mary Shelley, Frankenstein.
  • William Shakespeare, Hamlet.
  • Virginia Woolf, A Room Of One's Own.
  • Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
  • Sigmund Freud, Complete Psychological Works Volume Seven.
EN 2020 H: WRITING AND CRITICISM

Tues, Fri: 10:35鈥11:55

EN2020: By engaging with major works of World Literature across genres, time-periods and cultures, you will be able to sharpen your critical reading skills, compare historical contexts, and craft independent, well-researched academic arguments in oral and written form. All EN2020 classes help you fulfil the 鈥淐ritical Inquiry and Expression鈥 core curriculum requirement.听听

EN 2020 I: WRITING AND CRITICISM with Professor Craven

Tues, Fri: 15:20鈥16:40

EN2020: By engaging with major works of World Literature across genres, time-periods and cultures, you will be able to sharpen your critical reading skills, compare historical contexts, and craft independent, well-researched academic arguments in oral and written form. All EN2020 classes help you fulfil the 鈥淐ritical Inquiry and Expression鈥 core curriculum requirement.听听

EN 2020 J: WRITING AND CRITICISM

Tues, Fri: 12:10鈥13:30

EN2020: By engaging with major works of World Literature across genres, time-periods and cultures, you will be able to sharpen your critical reading skills, compare historical contexts, and craft independent, well-researched academic arguments in oral and written form. All EN2020 classes help you fulfil the 鈥淐ritical Inquiry and Expression鈥 core curriculum requirement.听听