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Independent Study in Nonfiction Writing
Tutorial instruction oriented toward some work in progress by the student. Requires submission of a written proposal to a faculty supervisor. Section numbers vary by instructor. Instructor permission required. S/NC.
- Primary Instructor
- Jackson
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Breton
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- DeBoer-Langworthy
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Foley
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Imbriglio
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Readey
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Stanley
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Taylor
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Stewart
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Schapira
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Ward
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Golaski
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
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Undergraduate Independent Study in Medieval and Early Modern Literatures
Tutorial instruction oriented toward a literary research topic. Section numbers vary by instructor. Instructor permission required.
- Primary Instructor
- Bryan
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Foley
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Rabb
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Redfield
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Rambuss
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Newman
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Kuzner
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Jacobs
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
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Undergraduate Independent Study in the Enlightenment and the Rise of National Literatures
Tutorial instruction oriented toward a literary research topic. Section numbers vary by instructor. Instructor's permission required.
- Primary Instructor
- Burrows
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Egan
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Khalip
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Gould
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Keach
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Nabers
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Rabb
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Rooney
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Redfield
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Anderson
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Parker
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
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Undergraduate Independent Study in Modern and Contemporary Literatures
Tutorial instruction oriented toward a literary research topic. Section numbers vary by instructor. Instructor's permission required.
- Primary Instructor
- Armstrong
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Bewes
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Burrows
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Egan
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Foley
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- George
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Katz
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Kim
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Murray
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Nabers
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Reichman
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Rooney
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Rambuss
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Gandhi
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Smailbegovic
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Quashie
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Ramirez D'Oleo
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
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Graduate Independent Study in Medieval and Early Modern Literatures
Section numbers vary by instructor. May be repeated for credit. Instructor's permission required.
- Primary Instructor
- Bryan
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Egan
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Foley
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Rabb
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Redfield
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Rambuss
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Kuzner
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
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Graduate Independent Study in the Enlightenment and the Rise of National Literatures
Section numbers vary by instructor. May be repeated for credit. Instructor's permission required.
- Primary Instructor
- Burrows
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Egan
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Khalip
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Gould
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Keach
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- McLaughlin
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Nabers
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Rabb
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Rooney
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Redfield
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Anderson
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Parker
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
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Graduate Independent Study in Modern and Contemporary Literatures
Section numbers vary by instructor. May be repeated for credit. Instructor's permission required.
- Primary Instructor
- Armstrong
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Bewes
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Burrows
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- George
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Katz
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Kim
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Murray
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Nabers
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Reichman
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Rooney
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Stanley
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Rambuss
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Gandhi
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Smailbegovic
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Quashie
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
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Preliminary Examination Preparation
For graduate students who have met the tuition requirement and are paying the registration fee to continue active enrollment while preparing for a preliminary examination.
- Schedule Code
- E: Grad Enrollment Fee/Dist Prep
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Thesis Preparation
For graduate students who have met the residency requirement and are continuing research on a full time basis.
- Schedule Code
- E: Grad Enrollment Fee/Dist Prep
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Do the Right Thing
An examination of literary works as developing our modern framework of moral values, along the way taking up questions of temptation, corruption, punishment, redemption, and responsibility. We will start with Christian allegorical texts (Dr. Faustus and Pilgrim's Progress), complicate the picture with 19th century psychological fiction, and conclude with some masterpieces of art cinema.
All ENGL 0100s will be temp capped at 100 with reserved seating/registration as follows: For the SPRING term: semester-level 02/04 = 25 each; and 01/03 = 5 each Yielding: 60 total (40 remaining spots would be for upper-levels: seniors/juniors)
- Primary Instructor
- Parker
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Inoperative Selves
Romantic and post-Romantic literature often imagines characters that appear to break down, serve no purpose, act in ways that seem faulty and withdrawn. They resist social conventions and narratives of development and progress. How do such inoperative figures suggest alternative aesthetic, ethical, and political visions? And how can we conceive of inoperativity as a viable challenge to thought? Enrollment limited to 20 junior and seniors.
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Books of Love: Ruiz and Chaucer
Discourses of love animated the vernacular literary masterworks of Juan Ruiz (c.1283-c.1350) and Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1342-1400), near-contemporaries who became celebrated canonical authors in Spain and England, respectively. This course considers their writings comparatively, in literary and historical context. Readings include Le Roman de la rose; Ruiz's El Libro de buen amor; Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde (with instruction in Middle English). Qualified, advanced undergraduates will be admitted by instructor permission only.
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Naturalism and the Anthropocene
The world of naturalist fiction is strange and terrifying: monstrous new forms of life; speaking animals; suicide; madness; financial ruin; ecological disaster. We will study this world in light of our catastrophic present, reading recent work in new materialism, neuroscience, animal studies, science studies, and environmentalism. Authors include Zola, Stein, Wharton, Chesnutt, Conrad, Hardy, Nietzsche, Bergson, Freud, Du Bois, James. Enrollment limited to 15 graduate students.
- Primary Instructor
- Burrows
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Theory, Technics, Religion
Critical theory has a rich history of engagement with fundamental and overlapping questions of technics, media and religion. This seminar focuses mainly on important texts from the last century (Benjamin, Heidegger, Levinas, Derrida, Agamben), but also reads more broadly in the post-Enlightenment critical and speculative tradition (Kant, Hegel, Marx, Freud, Weber). Selections from the Bible and readings from a few literary texts from various eras will also be assigned. Enrollment limited to 15 graduate students.
- Primary Instructor
- Redfield
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Studying Humanities in an Information Age
What roles can the humanities serve in a culture increasingly dominated by and imagined in terms of information? What are the conceptual and political implications of the use of “big data” in humanistic study? More broadly, what role does the digital turn play in shaping cultural concepts that provide the foundation for dominant ways of organizing knowledge and social structures? Enrollment limited to 15.
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Love and Friendship
What do we talk about when we talk about love? This course poses this question in various ways. How, for instance, can we tell the difference between love's various forms—between love that is friendly and love that is romantic? How do the different forms of love differently shape people? How does love work when it involves sex, or marriage, or children, or divinity? And what must love involve to be called “good”? Why? Materials will range from Plato and St. Augustine to Leo Bersani and Allen Bloom and will also include popular filmic representations of love. Limited to 19.
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Realism and Modernism
The novel as a genre has been closely identified with the act of representation. What it means to represent "reality," however, has varied widely. This seminar will explore how the representation of reality changes as modern fiction questions the assumptions about knowing, language, and society that defined the great tradition of realism. English and American novels will be the primary focus of our attention, but influential French, German, and Russian works will be studied as well. Limited to 19 first-year students. Banner registration after classes begin requires instructor approval.
- Primary Instructor
- Armstrong
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Gender and Genre in Medieval Celtic Literatures
This course traces images of masculinity and femininity in Welsh, Cornish, Breton, and Irish narratives within and around early medieval Britain. You will be introduced to the genres of saga, romance, and the short poetic lai as you consider how the nature and gender of the hero changes in specific cultural and linguistic moments.
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Death and Dying in Black Literature
How is death represented in black literature as a topic and as a figure of genre? Which theoretical ideas help us think about the intertwining of blackness and death? How do notions of gender and sexuality inform this thinking? This course will explore works from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to consider the scope of black literary imaginings of death.
- Primary Instructor
- Quashie
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Writing Science
This course explores how science, as an academic way of thinking and a method, affects our critical thinking and expression of culture. Readings examine the various dialects of scientific discourse. Students write three major research essays on self-selected scientific topics from both within and outside their fields of study. Enrollment limited to 17. Writing sample may be required. Banner registrations after classes begin require instructor approval. S/NC.
- Primary Instructor
- DeBoer-Langworthy
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Narrative
This course offers a broad exploration of the many kinds of essays you can write in creative nonfiction. We will be looking at how authors structure their pieces and the range of narrative techniques they often use. You can expect workshops, in-class prompts and readings by Jamaica Kincaid, John McPhee, David Foster Wallace, Annie Dillard, David Sedaris and others. Enrollment limited to 17. Writing sample required. Banner registrations after classes begin require instructor approval. S/NC.
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Backstory
Everything has a backstory—every event, every object, every idea. In this workshop-based course we will explore the archives at Brown and RISD to write three research essays for general audiences. You can expect readings, looking at how authors like David Foster Wallace, John McPhee and Eula Biss structure their pieces, workshops and in-class writing prompts to get you going. Enrollment limited to 17. Writing sample may be required. Banner registrations after classes begin require instructor approval. S/NC.
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Line Work: Experiments in Short-Form Writing
This class is based on the premise that to improve your writing, you need to write often. By responding to almost daily drills, you will develop a regular writing habit and explore a range of styles. We will take your most successful pieces through a series of workshops, helping you refine your work and ultimately build a writing portfolio. Enrollment limited to 17. Writing sample required. Banner registrations after classes begin require instructor approval. S/NC.
- Primary Instructor
- Stewart
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Journalistic Writing
This course teaches students how to report and write hard news and feature stories for newspapers and online. Students learn to gather and organize material, develop interviewing techniques, and hone their writing skills – all while facing the deadlines of journalism. The first half of the semester focuses on “hard" news: issues, crime, government, and courts. The second half is devoted to features, profiles, and narrative story telling. Writing sample required. Class list will be reduced to 17 after writing samples are reviewed in first week of classes. Banner registrations after classes begin require instructor approval. S/NC.
Spring: 1050H section 01 is reserved for first-year and sophomore students.
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Intellectual Pleasures: Reading/Writing the Literary Text
Riffing on the generative tensions between intellectual rigor and aesthetic pleasure, this seminar will examine (through the theoretical framework of cognitive poetics) a richly diverse range of literary texts, from Susan Howe to Beowulf. Our objective: to develop an awareness of language that will reshape how we read and how we write literary texts in various genres. Writing centered. Enrollment limited to 12. Prerequisite: ENGL 0930 or any 1000-level nonfiction writing course. S/NC.
- Primary Instructor
- Stanley
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Reporting Crime and Justice
Crime and justice stories are people stories. The drama of everyday life is played out every day in courtrooms. This advanced journalism course will get students into the courtrooms, case files and archives of Rhode Island's judicial system and into committee hearings at the State House where they will report on stories that incorporate drama, tension, and narrative storytelling. Prerequisite: ENGL1050G, ENGL1050H or ENGL1160A (Advanced Feature Writing). Enrollment limited to 17. Instructor permission required. Preference will be given to English concentrators. S/NC.
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Digital Nonfiction
In this class, we will join the host of other artists, activists, and writers that have used Twitter bots, iPhone apps, virtual reality experiences, and more to tell compelling stories. No previous digital writing experience is necessary, however, as an advanced creative nonfiction class, Digital Nonfiction requires students to have completed ENGL 0930 or any 1000-level nonfiction writing course. Enrollment is limited to 17. Instructor permission required. S/NC.
- Primary Instructor
- Stewart
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Advanced Creative Nonfiction: Writing with Food
This course examines writing about food and how writing affects food and food culture. We shall explore the relationship of food to the pen through reading classic texts, writing in and out of class, guest lectures, and touring culinary archives. The goal is to polish personal voice in menus, recipes, memoir, history, reportage, and the lyric essay. Prerequisite: ENGL 0930 or any 1000-level nonfiction writing course. Class list will be reduced to 17 after writing samples are reviewed during the first week of classes. Preference will be given to English concentrators. Banner registrations after classes begin require instructor approval. S/NC.
- Primary Instructor
- DeBoer-Langworthy
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Lyricism and Lucidity
For the advanced writer. This course will explore two subsets of the personal essay that blur or cross boundary lines--the lyric essay and the photographic essay-- in both traditional and experimental formats. Writing sample required. Prerequisite: ENGL 0930 or any 1000-level nonfiction writing course. Not open to first year students. Class list will be reduced to 17 after writing samples are reviewed during the first week of classes. Preference will be given to English concentrators. Banner registrations after classes begin require instructor approval. S/NC.
- Primary Instructor
- Imbriglio
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Satire and Humor Writing
For the advanced writer. This course will introduce students to the practice of writing satire and humorous essays. Readings will include works by Jonathan Swift, Mark Twain, Garrison Keillor, Bill Bryson, David Foster Wallace, David Sedaris, and others, and students will develop skills in analyzing, writing, and workshopping in the genre. Prerequisite: ENGL 0930 or any 1000-level nonfiction writing course. Class list will be reduced to 17 after writing samples are reviewed during the first week of classes. Preference will be given to English concentrators. Banner registrations after classes begin require instructor approval. S/NC.
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Testimony
How does the creative nonfiction writer bear witness to profound political, social, and environmental change? In this course students engage with the world as writers. They will conduct extensive interviews within the Brown community and beyond and will turn those first hand testimonials into a suite of creative nonfiction pieces in various genres including the lyric, personal, “found,” and multi-media essay. Writing sample required. Prerequisite: ENGL 0930 or any 1000-level nonfiction writing course. Class list will be reduced to 17 after writing samples are reviewed during the first week of classes. Preference will be given to English concentrators. S/NC.
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Asian American Narrative
This course considers themes, forms, and contexts of Asian American narratives. We will examine diverse representations of Asian American experience and explore the questions these texts raise about race and ethnicity; self-invention and identity; and visibility and representation. We’ll consider how Asian American authors have used writing to reclaim agency, preserve cultural memory, and redress past and present injustice. Prerequisite: ENGL0930 or any 1000-level nonfiction writing course. Writing sample required. Class list will be reduced to 17 after writings samples are reviewed during the first week of classes. Preference given to English concentrators. Instructor permission required. S/NC.
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Introduction to the Old English Language
This course offers a thorough introduction to the earliest period of English language and literature. We begin with an extensive coverage of grammar and syntax before reading short texts and a few Old English poems, including The Battle of Brunanburh and Judith. Enrollment limited to 20.
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Jane Austen and Her Predecessors: The Other History of the Novel
This course focuses on the novels of Jane Austen — from Sense and Sensibility to Persuasion. The course first establishes some familiarity with the earlier women writers of narrative fiction, in order to gain a deeper understanding of the development of the novel and of Austen's place in that rich tradition. Additional readings include work by Aphra Behn, Eliza Haywood, Charlotte Lennox, Elizabeth Inchbald, and Mary Wollstonecraft.
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Swift and His Contemporaries
Jonathan Swift's works are central to this course's investigation of early 18th-century literature and culture. The reading focuses on the period as an "information age" energized by issues not unlike those of our own time: partisan politics, money, proliferation of new forms of textuality, globalization, changing views on gender and sexuality, love, religion, and war. The emphasis will be on irony, parody, and satire. Other writers include Congreve, Defoe, Manley, Pope, Gay, Montagu, Addison, and Steele. Students who have taken ENGL 1510T may not register for this course. Not open to first-year students or students who have taken ENGL1510T. Enrollment limited.
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The Literature and Culture of Black Power Reconsidered
This course reexamines the Black Power movement as a signal development in American literature and culture. We will read classics from the period with a view toward reassessing the nuances and complexities of their form and politics. At the same time, we will recover less familiar texts that complicate conventional understandings of what defines this movement. Authors include Malcolm X, Huey P. Newton, Angela Davis, Eldridge Cleaver, John Edgar Wideman, Ernest Gaines, and Amiri Baraka.
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The Korean War in Color
We examine US and South Korean representations of the Korean War. We look at how this event was depicted in US films of the 1950s with a focus on how it occasioned a transformation of American understandings of race, both domestically and transnationally. We then look at how this event has been memorialized by contemporary American authors as well as in South Korean literature and film. Authors we read include: Susan Choi, Ha Jin, Chang-rae Lee, Toni Morrison, Jayne Anne Phillips and Hwang Sok-Yong. Enrollment limited to 20. Not open to first-year students.
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Neuroaesthetics and Reading
Analysis of the theories of art, reading, and aesthetic experience proposed by neuroscience and cognitive science in light of traditional aesthetics and contemporary literary theory. Enrollment limited to 20. Prerequisite: At least one course on neuroscience or cognitive science and one 1000-level literature course. Instructor permission required.
- Primary Instructor
- Armstrong
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Dickens: The Novel and Society
This course rehabilitates Charles Dickens from his reputation as a mainstream writer paid by the word, most famous as the author of sentimental, implausible works for children, such as A Christmas Carol. We will be looking at Dickens’s social novels as a formally innovative response to the urban and industrial capitalism of his time. Issues will include: realism, the relation of his fiction to his journalism, serial form, and representations of work, the city, and bureaucracy.
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Gertrude Stein and What Comes After
In this course, we will read a range of works written by Gertrude Stein and examine how they have influenced the landscape of post-1945 literature, focusing primarily on poetry.
- Primary Instructor
- Smailbegovic
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Kubrick
On Kubrick’s feature films, documentaries, and photography, starting with his sci-fi masterpiece 2001, followed by his early noirs (Killer’s Kiss; The Killing); sex films (Lolita; A Clockwork Orange; Eyes Wide Shut); and war films (Paths of Glory; Dr. Strangelove; Full Metal Jacket). Topics include: adaptation; genre; masculinity in extremis; technophilia and technophobia; the aesthetics of violence; and sex on film.
Limited to 20 junior and senior concentrators in English and MCM. Instructor permission required.
- Primary Instructor
- Rambuss
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Critical Reading and Writing I: The Academic Essay
An introduction to university-level writing. Students produce and revise multiple drafts of essays, practice essential skills of paragraph organization, and develop techniques of critical analysis and research. Readings from a wide range of texts in literature, the media, and academic disciplines. Assignments move from personal response papers to formal academic essays. Enrollment limited to 17. Banner registrations after classes begin require instructor approval. S/NC.
Spring 2020 sections 01 and 02 are reserved for first-year students.
- Primary Instructor
- Ward
Spring 2020 sections 01 and 02 are reserved for first-year students.
- Primary Instructor
- Golaski
Spring 2020 sections 01 and 02 are reserved for first-year students.
- Primary Instructor
- Jackson
Spring 2020 sections 01 and 02 are reserved for first-year students.
- Primary Instructor
- Dun
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Introduction to Creative Nonfiction
Designed to familiarize students with the techniques and narrative structures of creative nonfiction. Reading and writing focus on personal essays, memoir, science writing, travel writing, and other related subgenres. May serve as preparation for any 1000-level nonfiction writing course. Writing sample may be required. Enrollment limited. Banner registrations after classes begin require instructor approval. S/NC.
Spring 2020 sections 01 and 03 are reserved for first-year and sophomore students.
- Primary Instructor
- Golaski
Spring 2020 sections 01 and 03 are reserved for first-year and sophomore students.
- Primary Instructor
- Ward
Spring 2020 sections 01 and 03 are reserved for first-year and sophomore students.
- Primary Instructor
- Arnold
Spring 2020 sections 01 and 03 are reserved for first-year and sophomore students.
- Primary Instructor
- Rush
Spring 2020 sections 01 and 03 are reserved for first-year and sophomore students.
- Primary Instructor
- Schapira
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The Thoughtful Generalist
This *ONLINE* section of “ENGL1030: Critical Reading and Writing II: Research” will prepare you for academic and real-world discourse. In Canvas, you will discuss essays demonstrating deep research distilled into engaging intellectual journey. You will research and revise four explanatory, analytical, persuasive essays, using varied sources to explore subjects or issues of your choice. Mandatory peer reviews and conferences ONLINE. Enrollment limited to 17. Banner registrations after classes begin require instructor approval. S/NC.
This course is offered fully online. Students do not need to be on Brown's campus to participate in this course. Learn what it is like to take an online course at Brown and view technical requirements at: http://brown.edu/go/whatisonlinelike
- Primary Instructor
- Taylor
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Late Romantics
An introduction to the varied work of canonical and non-canonical writers often described as British second-generation or late Romantics: Keats, the Shelleys, Byron, Clare, de Quincey, Hemans, Austen. We will explore what lateness constitutes for these authors as a political, aesthetic, and ethical category, and consider how it informs the kind of distinctly "Romantic" work that characterizes their writings. Particular emphasis on close readings of poetry and theoretical texts, as well as excursions into late nineteenth-century authors.
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Emily Dickinson and the Theory of Lyric Form
This class examines the extraordinary work of Emily Dickinson in an attempt to understand what lyric poetry is and how it works. We will read a generous sampling of Dickinson’s poetry as well as a number of the major theoretical accounts of the lyric. Enrollment limited to juniors and seniors.
- Primary Instructor
- Burrows
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Renegades, Reprobates, and Castaways
In this ONLINE course, we’ll look at a range of literary works--including short stories, novels, graphic novels, films, and electronic literature—populated by characters cast as pirates, degenerates, depraved, and miscreants. We’ll examine how the seemingly disreputable characters, settings, and/or forms offer alternative visions of a just society by challenging powerful institutions, conventional moral principles, and/or dominant conceptions of the “normal” and “natural.”
This course is offered fully online. Students do not need to be on Brown's campus to participate in this course. Learn what it is like to take an online course at Brown and view technical requirements at: http://brown.edu/go/whatisonlinelike
- Primary Instructor
- Egan
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Renaissance Poetry and Its Kinds
English poetry from 1500-1650 traces a revolutionary arc of poetic invention remarkable for diverse individual voices and literary kinds. Forms such as lyric, heroic, pastoral, satiric, epistle, and epigram embraced concerns that were at once affective, political, and religious. How does this variety constitute literature? Wyatt, Surrey, Raleigh, Spenser, Sidney, Marlowe, Donne, Jonson, Herrick, Herbert, Crashaw, Milton.
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Fanon and Spillers
This course will consider the conceptual/theoretical contributions of Frantz Fanon and Hortense Spillers, as frames for reading some iconic texts in the black literary canon. Central to our study will be an exploration of blackness, subjection, and gendering—as well as thinking about how these idioms relate to the genre conventions of our course’s literary works. Enrollment limited to 20 juniors and seniors. Instructor permission required.
Class list for ENGL 1901J will be finalized after the first day of classes. Please email the professor to add your name to the potential roster.
- Primary Instructor
- Quashie
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Shakespeare, Love and Friendship
Shakespeare portrays friends who are compared to a "double cherry"; a lover who wants to cut her beloved out in little stars; and subjects who sweat with desire to see their kings. How does Shakespeare imagine the possibilities and pitfalls of affection, whether personal or political? What happens to that affection when Shakespeare is adapted into film?
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Writing for Activists
How can writing support and further change? In this course students will practice grant applications, budget narratives, mission and strategy statements, press releases, position papers, op-eds, and other writing strategies with practical application in activist work. We’ll read examples and theoretical grounding, and guest speakers will introduce us to writings and needs specific to a range of fields. Prerequisite: ENGL 0930 or any 1000-level nonfiction writing course. Class list will be reduced to 17 after writing samples are reviewed during the first week of classes. Preference will be given to English concentrators. Instructor permission required. S/NC.
- Primary Instructor
- Schapira
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The Recent Novel and its Cultural Rivals
A careful consideration of several major late twentieth- and early twenty-first century Anglophone novels in terms of their relationship to rival aesthetic forms and media--film, television, radio, video games, and the like. Writers to be considered included: Morrison, Lee, Rushdie, Smith, Didion, Díaz, Pynchon, and Egan. Enrollment limited to 20 senior English concentrators. Others admitted by instructor permission only.
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Zoopoetics
This course will explore the intersections between the depictions of plants and animals in twentieth and twenty-first century poetry and the theoretical conversations about non-human worlds unfolding in emerging fields, such as animal studies and the environmental humanities. Readings will range from poetic texts by Francis Ponge and Marianne Moore to theoretical texts by figures such as Donna Haraway.
- Primary Instructor
- Smailbegovic
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Literature of US Inequality, 1945-2020
Study of the way inequality has been represented in US literature from 1945 to the present. Authors to be considered include Morrison, Updike, Wright, Highsmith, Lee, Adichie, Leavitt.
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Matters of Romance
Narratives (1100-1500) of men, women, and elves seeking identity on the road, in bed, and at court. Readings (in modern English) include Arthurian romances, Havelok, lais by Marie de France, and Chaucer's "Wife of Bath's Tale." Primarily for freshmen and sophomores. Students should register for ENGL 0100D S01 and may be assigned to conference sections by the instructor during the first week of class.
All ENGL 0100s will be temp capped at 100 with reserved seating/registration as follows: For the SPRING term: semester-level 02/04 = 25 each; and 01/03 = 5 each Yielding: 60 total (40 remaining spots would be for upper-levels: seniors/juniors)
- Primary Instructor
- Bryan
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Senior Honors Thesis in English
Independent research and writing under the direction of a faculty member. Permission should be obtained from the Honors Advisor in English. Open to senior English concentrators pursuing Honors in English. Instructor permission required.
- Primary Instructor
- Armstrong
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Senior Honors Thesis in Nonfiction Writing
Independent research and writing under the direction of the student’s Nonfiction Writing honors supervisor. Permission should be obtained from the Honors Advisor for Nonfiction Writing. Open to senior English concentrators pursuing Honors in Nonfiction Writing. Instructor permission required.
- Primary Instructor
- Imbriglio
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One True Pairing (“OTP”): The Courtship Plot from Jane Austen to Jane the Virgin
What’s love got to do with it? This course examines how the courtship plot, from meet-cute to marriage, shapes our understanding, not only of romance and seduction, but also of gender, race, social class, sexual orientation, empire, and literary genre. Texts include fiction by Jane Austen, Nella Larsen, Jenny Han, and Henry James, alongside Clueless, Moonlight, and Jane the Virgin. Enrollment limited to 17.
- Primary Instructor
- Gilligan
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Godforsaken Spaces: Literatures of the Demonic
Has fear of the Devil outlived the fear of God? While the demonic rationalizes unfathomable violence and renders forms of otherness intolerable, it may also allow us to imagine social alternatives. This course will explore demonic figures in contemporary literature/film: the scapegoats, witches, and misfits that occupy the margins of society. Authors include: McCarthy, O’Connor, Morrison, Gyasi, Erdrich. Enrollment limited to 17.
- Primary Instructor
- Nagelhout
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City Novels
This course examines 20th and 21st century novels to consider how these narratives envision the city, its possibilities and limits. How does the city shape how we think, wander, grow up, see and know each other? How does the city divide people? How does the novel imagine ways to bridge those divisions? Readings by Woolf, Chandler, Wright, Cisneros, Smith, Calvino, Adiga, Whitehead.
All ENGL 0100s will be temp capped at 100 with reserved seating/registration as follows: For the SPRING term: semester-level 02/04 = 25 each; and 01/03 = 5 each Yielding: 60 total (40 remaining spots would be for upper-levels: seniors/juniors)
- Primary Instructor
- Katz
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Reading Practices: An Introduction to Literary Theory
What is it to read? This course is an introduction to theories of reading that have shaped literary interpretation and definitions of literature from the early twentieth century to the present, with particular attention to the relation between “literary theory” as a discipline and the broader reading practices it engenders and from which it emerges. We will read the New Criticism, structuralism, post-structuralism, and new historicism, critical race theory and feminist critiques, and recent work in aesthetics. Topics include literariness and textuality, the reader and subjectivity, narrative, rhetoric, and the problem of representation, and "new formalism." Enrollment limited to thirty.
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Writing for Today's Electronic Media
This course introduces students to the practice of reporting for television news, radio, and their online equivalents--online news and podcasts. Exploring the world of communications for contemporary media, the course features hands-on work in writing news, features, and opinion pieces for television, radio, online news, and podcasts. Students will develop skills in analyzing, writing, revising, and workshopping in these media. Enrollment limited to 17. Writing sample required. Banner registrations after classes begin require instructor approval. S/NC.
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Literatures of Anxiety
From Xanax to safe spaces to #MAGA, our age is notoriously characterized as an unduly anxious one. But anxious by what measures? Tracking expressions of anxiety through a range of literary works, we’ll explore how the so-called “anxious” subject may yet signal a crucial, generative political position. Works by: Atwood, Dostoevsky, Abdellah Taïa, Dionne Brand, Hieu Nguyen, Lacan and LaWhore Vagistan. Enrollment limited to 17.
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Black Internationalism and Its Discontents
This seminar reassesses the broad influence of internationalism in African American letters from the age of abolition to the present. We will be concerned with literary writings that foreground the global struggle of black subjects to assert political agency in relation to Western imperialism and transatlantic slavery. Equally crucial will be a reconsideration of an established body of theoretical writings that conceive of diasporic modes of solidarity and cultural expression as alternatives to the black nationalist intellectual tradition. Authors include Martin Delany, W.E.B Du Bois, Richard Wright, Angela Davis, Brent Edwards, and Paul Gilroy.
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Courses of Interest to Students Concentrating in English
These courses, offered in other departments, are cross listed with the English Department and do not require advisor approval to count toward the concentration for English concentrators. Please refer to the primary department for registration details.
Ethnic Studies
ETHN 1750S Extravagant Texts: Reading the World Through Asian American Literature
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Writing the Family
“You must not tell anyone” writes Hong Kingston’s auto-fictional narrator—and then a book of family secrets follows. This class examines how authors (authorized or not) use their families as subject matter, storying family and family life. Over the term, we’ll work on developing a practical and theoretical ethics of family-writing while contextualizing and practicing writing nonfiction about the family. Enrollment limited to 17. No prerequisites. Writing sample required. Instructor permission required.
Permission to register will be based on review of writing samples after the first day of classes.
Interested students must attend the first class meeting.
- Primary Instructor
- Hipchen
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Trans–: Transformation, Translation, Transgression in Literature
From transgression to transformation to trans rights, why does the prefix “trans” appear inescapable whenever one is discussing radical change? Centering on this mercurial prefix, this course examines the possibilities and limits of change from ancient anxieties about transcendence to contemporary discussions of transnationalism and transgender identities. Authors include: Wordsworth, Woolf, Ginsberg, Plath, Morrison, Imogen Binnie, hooks, Dylan, Against Me!. Enrollment limited to 17.
- Primary Instructor
- Brooksher
