Course Offerings

Each semester the English Department offers some 25 upper-level division courses. These include courses organized by theme, genre, author, and historical period; courses in theory, poetics, and hermeneutics; creative writing courses; expository writing courses; as well as interdisciplinary courses in Women's and Gender Studies, Africana Studies, and literature and philosophy.

Introductory Courses

English 110 - Composition
Fall, spring
Devoted to improving the student’s writing through frequent revisions. Intensive work during the semester concentrates on the student’s own writing, which is examined in class and in conference with the instructor. Class size limited to 12 students. One unit.

English 120 - Critical Reading and Writing: Poetry
Fall, spring
Identifies and examines prosodic and figurative elements of poetry as well as the historical context of poems of various periods, authors, and kinds. Equal emphasis falls on the student’s production of critical essays, which logically organize and persuasively present responses to the poems from a close reading. Required of all English majors. One unit.

English 121 - Critical Reading and Writing: Fiction
Fall, spring
Course topics are the elements of fiction: narrative structures, various aspects of style, and point of view. This course is also devoted to the writing of student essays on the literature. One unit.

English 122 - Critical Reading and Writing: Drama
Fall, spring
Studies carefully dramas from the Western tradition selected because they clearly reflect both the elements of drama and the nature of genre. Professors emphasize the critical analysis of each text rather than performance of them, though each class will attempt to attend at least one production. Students will be asked to write a series of essays which demonstrate their growing ability to write well-organized analytic/argumentative essays. One unit.

English 123 - Critical Reading and Writing: Non-Fiction
Fall, spring
Examines the genres of literary non-fiction, including literary journalism, the personal essay, and the memoir. Among the literary techniques examined are aspects of style, narrative structure, and narrative voice. Equal emphasis falls on the student’s production of critical essays, which logically organize and persuasively present responses to the texts from a close reading. One unit.

English 124 - Critical Reading and Writing: Multigenre
Fall, spring
Compares different genres of literature and their elements, and can include any combination of the following: poetry, fiction, drama, and non-fiction. The course is organized around a particular theme, e.g. Civil War Literature, Writing about Place. Equal emphasis falls on helping students to write perceptive critical essays about the texts. One unit.

English 141 - Introduction to Creative Writing/Poetry
Annually
An introductory course in the study of the form and technique of poetry. As readers of literature we study how a work of art and an artist’s vision is pieced together; as aspiring writers of literature we come to have a hands-on understanding of how a poem is created. Emphasis is on the intensive reading of modern and contemporary poems, though the assignments are creative. Class size limited to 12 students. One unit.

English 142 - Introduction to Creative Writing/Fiction
Annually
An introductory course in the study of the form and technique of fiction. Emphasis is on the intensive reading and writing of short stories. Lectures of form, language and finding material for fiction. Class size limited to 12 students. One unit.

English 143 - Introduction to Creative Writing/Non-Fiction
Annually
An introductory course in the study of the essay. Emphasis is on the intensive reading of professional writers of the essay and its wide range of forms, from the personal essay to the more investigative essay. Writing assignments are creative. Class size limited to 12 students. One unit.

Upper-Division Courses

English 200 - Masterpieces of British Literature
Fall, spring
A study of selected major works of British Literature. Non-majors only. One unit.

English 201 - Masterpieces of American Literature
Fall, spring
A study of selected major works of American Literature. Non-majors only. One unit.

English 241 - Intermediate Creative Writing/Poetry
Annually
For students who have taken Introduction to Poetry. A more advanced course on the reading and writing of poems with emphasis on prosody, writing in closed and open forms, and writing various types of poems. Lecture and workshop format with more attention to student writing. Class size limited to 12. Permission by instructor required. One unit.

English 242 - Intermediate Creative Writing/Fiction
Annually
For students who have taken Introduction to Fiction. A more advanced course on the reading and writing of the short story with emphasis on refining the skills learned in the introductory course. Workshop format with lectures and readings. Class size limited to 12. Permission by instructor required. One unit.

English 243 - Intermediate Creative Writing/Non-Fiction
Annually
For students who have taken Introduction to Non-Fiction. A more advanced course on the reading and writing of essays with emphasis on the structural composition of longer, more investigative pieces. Class size limited to 12. Permission by instructor required. Class size limited to 12. Permission by instructor required. One unit.

English 290 - Readings in Medieval Literature
Fall and/or spring
Covers the major genres of medieval Continental and English literature, beginning with the early epic tradition and proceeding to the great religious and secular texts of the 12th through 14th centuries. One unit.

English 291 - Readings in Renaissance Literature
Fall and/or spring
Covers lyric and epic poetry, drama, and prose of the 16th and 17th centuries, read in the context of humanist ideals, new attitudes toward self-fashioning, the impact of the Protestant Reformation, life at the Tudor and Stuart courts, and the Civil War. One unit.

English 292 - Readings in 18th-Century Literature
Fall and/or spring
Covers the variety of literature from 1660 to the end of the 18th century, with a focus on the major genres of drama, lyric poetry, the novel, and prose satire in social, political, religious, philosophical, and aesthetic contexts. One unit.

English 293 - Readings in 19th-Century American Literature
Fall and/or spring
Covers poetry, prose essays, short stories, and novels that reflect the scope of this century’s engagement with issues of race, gender, Transcendentalism, science and technology, and the Civil War and its aftermath. One unit.

English 294 - Readings in 19th-Century British Literature
Fall and/or spring
Covers the major poetry, drama, fiction, and prose of the Romantic and Victorian periods in the religious, political, scientific, and aesthetic contexts of a century of revolutions that shook the foundations of Western Civilization. One unit.

English 295 - Readings in 20th-Century American Literature
Fall and/or spring
A study of the major genres of the 20th century in the context of literary and cultural developments. One unit.

English 296 - Readings in 20th-Century British Literature
Fall and/or spring
Covers the poetry, short story, drama, essay, and novels of 20th-century England and Ireland, especially as responses to industrialism, imperialism, urbanization, war, and changing paradigms of the self. One unit.

English 305 - Expository Writing
Alternate years
Intensive reading and writing of expository essays to develop the student’s authorial voice and style. Students for whom English is a second language or who come from a diverse or multicultural background will receive special help in some sections; consult the instructor. Permission of instructor required. Class size limited to 12. One unit.

English 313 - Middle English Literature
Alternate years
Develops the student’s ability to deal directly with Middle English texts. Works read include Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, Piers Plowman, and a selection of romances, lyrics, and other 13th- and 14th-century texts. One unit.

English 314 - Chaucer
Annually
A reading and critical discussion of the complete Middle English text of The Canterbury Tales and selected minor poems. One unit.

English 315 - Sex and Gender in the Middle Ages
Annually
An exploration of gender and sexuality in the Middle Ages in popular works of Arthurian romance, warrior epic, and saint’s life, as well as in letters and trial records. The course also draws on classical, medieval, and modern gender theory relevant to topics under discussion, such as virginity, homosexuality, chivalry, and romantic love. One unit.

English 320 - Age of Elizabeth
Alternate years
An exploration of the “golden age” of English Renaissance literature during the reign of Elizabeth I, asking how texts interacted with the Queen, her court, the city of London, the English nation, and ultimately the New World. Readings include poetry, drama, and prose by Sidney, Shakespeare, Spenser, Donne, Harriot, Nashe, and Elizabeth herself. One unit.

English 321 - Rule, Rebellion, & Ravishment
Every third year
A study of the literature of the first half of the seventeenth century in England. When subjects can justify beheading a king, what constitutes right rule not only for the country, but for church, city, family, and self? Readings include several plays; a court masque; some of Bacon’s essays; poems by Donne, Jonson, Lanyer, Herbert, and Marvell; and Milton’s epic Paradise Lost. One unit.

English 324 - Milton
Every third year
A study of Milton’s early poems, Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes, and selections from the prose. One unit.

English 327 - Shakespeare’s Predecessors
Alternate years
An examination of representative plays from the “native tradition” of Medieval England (in translation) as well as those plays which were popular on the early modern stage when Shakespeare first began his career. One unit.

English 328 - Shakespeare’s Contemporaries
Alternate years
A look at playwrights who are often dwarfed by Shakespeare, but who legitimately competed with him for that greatness. Other topics will include early modern notions of rivalry and collaboration, as well as the increasing tension between governing authorities and the theatre. One unit.

English 329 - Shakespeare
Fall, spring
A one-semester survey of the major works of Shakespeare, focusing on individual texts as representative of the stages in his dramatic development, with some discussion of Shakespearean stage techniques. One section each for majors and non-majors. One unit.

English 330 — Shakespeare and Religion
Alternate years
An examination of theological and philosophical issues in Shakespeare’s plays, with emphasis on tragedies. There will be additional readings from a number of sources, including the Bible, Luther, Montaigne, and major Shakespearean critics. One unit.

English 336 - 18th-Century Novel
Alternate years
A close examination of the novel as formal prose narrative. Novels by Defoe, Fielding, Richardson, Smollet, the Gothic novelists, Sterne, and Austen are considered in detail with collateral readings. One unit.

English 337 - 18th-Century Poetry
Every third year
A study of the development of 18th-century English poetry from the canonical Augustans, Dryden, Pope, Swift, Anne Finch and Lady Montagu through the mid-century and later work of Gray, Collins, the Wartons, Smart, Cowper, Charlotte Smith, Joanna Baillie and Anna Seward, ending with Blake’s lyrics. One unit.

English 339 - Restoration and 18th-Century Drama
Every third year
A survey of English drama from Dryden to Sheridan, including heroic drama, Restoration comedy, sentimental developments of the 18th century, and the re-emergence of laughing comedy. One unit.

English 341 - Advanced Creative Writing/Poetry
Annually
For students who have taken Introduction and Intermediate Poetry. This is a capstone course with concentration on reading essays by professional poets on the craft of poetry and on developing a student portfolio of poetry. Workshop format. Class size limited to 12. Permission by instructor required. One unit.

English 342 - Advanced Creative Writing/Fiction
Annually
For students who have taken Introduction and Intermediate Fiction. This is a capstone course with concentration of developing a student portfolio of short stories. Workshop format. Class size limited to 12 students. Permission by instructor required. One unit.

English 343 - Advanced Creative Writing/Non-Fiction
Annually
For students who have taken Introduction and Intermediate Non-Fiction. This is a capstone course with concentration on developing a student portfolio on non-fiction pieces. Workshop format. Class size limited to 12. Permission by instructor required. One unit.

English 344 - The Romantic Revolution
Alternate years
A study of the major writers of the Romantic movement– Edmund Burke, Mary Wollstonecraft, William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordswroth, Coleridge, Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Byron, Keats, Hazlitt, Lamb, and DeQuincey. One unit.

English 345 - British Women Writers: 1780-1860
Every third year
A study of novels, poetry, and prose writings by women writing during and after the Romantic Movement- Frances Burney, Jane Austen, the Brontes, Mary Wollstonecraft, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and others. One unit.

English 346 - Victorian Poetry
Alternate years
A study of the British poetry and poetic theory composed during Queen Victoria’s reign (1837-1901). Authors treated may include Alfred Lord Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, D.G. Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, Matthew Arnold, and Gerard Manly Hopkins. One unit.

English 347 - 19th-Century Novel
Every third year
A close examination of the British novel in the 19th century, including novels by Thackeray, Dickens, the Brontes, George Eliot, and Hardy. One unit.

English 350 - Early American Literature Every third year
A study of the development of cultural contact between Native Americans and Europeans, the Puritan experiment, and the founding of the nation from 1600-1830. One unit.

English 351 - American Renaissance
Alternate years
A study of the American Renaissance through selected prose and poetry of Poe, Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Hawthorne, and Melville. One unit.

English 352 - American Realism
Alternate years
A study of the rise of variant expressions of realism, its evolution into naturalism, the revival of local color and the flowering of regionalism, all in response to the changing American scene through immigration, segregation, business, technology and other forces between the Civil War and World War I. One unit.

English 353 - 19th-Century American Women Writers
Every third year
A study of various genres in which 19th-century women engaged restrictive definitions of woman’s sphere. Authors treated may include Davis, Child, Stowe, Alcott, Dickinson, Phelps, and Wharton. One unit.

English 354 - Civil War & Reconstruction Literature
Every third year
A survey of how the Civil War and Reconstruction periods have been described in American literature, from both the northern and southern perspective. Possible works include selected Civil War poetry and speeches, Stephen Crane’s Red Badge of Courage, Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, and Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain. One unit.

English 355 - Poe’s Haunted Poetry
Every third year
This course examines Poe’s contribution as editor and critic; as pioneer of short fiction and science fiction; as inventor of the detective story; as author of strange and powerful poems; and as master of horror. It surveys recurrent topics such as doubleness, death, and insoluble mystery in Poe’s poems, essays, tales, and novel, within the broader context of 19th’century American culture. One unit.

English 356 - Growing Up American
Every third year
The course will examine the various traditional and heterodox ways in which American writers have conceptualized growing up. Characteristic writers of both fiction and non-fiction that might be examined include M. Twain, E. Wharton, W. Cather, J.D. Salinger, S. Millhauser, M. Robinson, T. Morrison, R. Baker, D. Barthelme, M.H. Kingston.

English 357 - Modern American Poetry
Every third year
A close analysis of the development of American poetry from the early 20th century up to the contemporary period, including such poets as Pound, Eliot, Williams, Crane, Frost, Stevens, Bishop, and others. One unit.

English 358 - Modern American Novel
Every third year
A study of the emergence of Modernism and other currents in the American novel from 1900 to the contemporary period. One unit.

English 359 - Southern Literature
Every third year
A study of the writers of the so-called Southern Renaissance that began in the 1920’s because of Old and New South tensions, including such figures as Faulkner, Penn Warren, Welty, Tate, Ransom, Styron, Flannery O’Connor, and Tennessee Williams. One unit.

English 361 - Modernism and the Irish Literary Revival
Every third year
A study of the relationship between international modernism and the cultural nationalism of the Irish Literary Revival. Authors treated include Oscar Wilde, G. B. Shaw, W. B. Yeats, Lady Augusta Gregory, James Joyce, Sean O’Casey, Elizabeth Bowen, Samuel Beckett, and Liam O’Flaherty, among others. One unit.

English 362 - T. S. Eliot
Every third year
A close study of Eliot’s poetry, criticism, and drama, including unpublished and lesser-known writings. One unit.

English 363 - Joyce
Every third year
A close study of Joyce’s modernist epic novel Ulysses as an experimental narrative; preceded by a close reading of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man or Dubliners. One unit.

English 364 - Contemporary Irish Literature
Alternate years
A study of the prose, poetry, and drama produced in Northern Ireland and the Republic from the last quarter of the 20th century to the present. Writers studied include Boland, Doyle, Friel, Heaney, and Ni Dhomhnaill as well as those less familiar to American readers, and readings are explored in light of relevant contemporary cultural concerns such as sectarianism, gender, the Celtic Tiger, and post-colonial identity. One unit.

English 365 - Modern British Poetry
Every third year
A study of the major British poets in the 20th century, including Hardy, the Georgians, the Imagists, Lawrence, Yeats, Eliot, Auden, and Dylan Thomas. One unit.

English 366 - Modern British Novel
Alternate years
A study of developments in the British novel from 1900-1950, with an emphasis on Modernist texts, through an examination of works by novelists such as Forster, Joyce, Woolf, Lawrence, Rhys, Greene, and Waugh. One unit.

English 367 - American Women Writers
Every third year
A study of the history of female authorship in America, emphasizing the ways in which individual women circumvented cultural proscriptions against female reading and writing, and manipulated existing literary genres in order to make their voices heard. One unit.

English 368 - African-American Literature
Alternate years
A survey of the literary tradition from slave narratives to contemporary writing by authors of African and African-American descent, with emphasis on the tradition’s oral beginnings and the influence of the vernacular on the written literature. One unit.

English 369 - Modern Drama
Every third year
A study of developments in drama from 1890 to 1960 in England, America, and on the Continent through an examination of selected works of such playwrights as Ibsen, Chekhov, Shaw, Pirandello, O’Neill, Brecht, Williams, and Beckett. One unit.

English 371 - Detective Fiction
Alternate years
A study of detective fiction from its 19th-century beginnings (Poe, Doyle) to the British Golden Age (Christie, Sayers), and recent metaphysical parodies of the genre (Pynchon, Auster). One unit.

English 372 - Contemporary African-American Literature and Culture
Alternate years
An investigation of literature by African-American authors dating from the 1970’s to the present day in the genres of science fiction/fantasy, mystery, memoir, novels exploring gender and sexuality, and cultural theory, with emphasis on the issues of visibility and invisibility as well as the theme of the American Dream. One unit.

English 374 - The Bible and Literature
Alternate years
This course takes its title from Northrop Frye’s book, “The Great Code.” Studies what Frye calls the “mythological universe” of the Bible that stretches from creation to the end of the world, looking particularly at the narrative structures of the Bible and its recurrent patterns of imagery. One unit.

English 375 - Asian American Literature
Alternate years
A survey of representative Asian American literature from early twentieth century immigrant narratives to contemporary writings. Examines Asian American literary production and its main literary themes. One unit.

English 376 - Postmodern British Novel
Every third year
A study of the rise and development of the “postmodern” novel in Britain from the late 1960’s to the present, including works by Rhys, Fowles, Lodge, Rushdie, Weldon, Winterson, Amis, and Barnes. Topics to be discussed include: postmodernism, historicity, post-colonialism, pop culture, and constructions of race/gender/sexuality. One unit.

English 378 - 21st Century Literature
Every third year
Explores award-winning British and American literature of the new millennium in an attempt to “take the pulse” of what’s going on in our most contemporary literature. Texts are read in the contexts of late 20thcentury literary and theoretical movements such as: postmodernism, post-colonialism, gender studies, and multiculturalism. One unit.

English 379 - Contemporary Drama
Every third year
A study of developments in Anglo-American drama from 1960 to the present through the work of playwrights such as Shepard, Mamet, Wasserstein, Norman, Hare, Churchill, Wilson, Fugard, Parks, and Kushner. One unit.

English 380 - Representing the Law in Drama
Alternate years
A study of drama from various epochs and genres, inquiring how legal systems shape plays centered on questions of justice and how drama itself critiques different systems of law. One unit.

English 381 - Rhetoric
Alternate years
A consideration of rhetorical theory in the classical texts of Plato and Aristotle, an analysis of some famous examples of persuasive eloquence, and the student’s own exercise of persuasive speech on subjects of public concern. One unit.

English 382 - Queer Theory
Every third year
A continuously evolving off shoot of Gender Studies inspired by the work of Foucault, Sedgwick, Butler, and others, Queer Theory is explored in this course to determine the degree to which it approximates an authentic discipline generative of productive insights by examining diverse but conventionally understood works of the canon in more heterodox ways. One unit.

English 383 - Feminist Literary Theory
Alternate years
An examination of major directions in 20th-century feminist literary theory, with study of works by writers such as Charlotte Bronte, Chopin, Gilman, Woolf, Atwood, and Morrison. Theory may address such issues as gendered reading and writing, representation of the body and sexuality, gender/race/class, feminism and ideology. One unit.

English 384 - Literary Theory
Alternate years
A study of the aims and procedures of literary criticism and of representative approaches, both ancient and modern. Selected readings from influential critics from Plato and Aristotle to the late 20th century, with application to literary works. One unit.

English 385 - Contemporary Literary Theory
Alternate years
An introduction to some of the major positions in modern and contemporary literary criticism: the “old” and “new” historicisms, formalism, reader-response criticism, structuralism, hermeneutics, deconstruction, critique of ideology, and cultural studies. Seeks to clarify literary criticism’s place among the contemporary
disciplines. One unit.

English 387 - Composition Theory and Pedagogy
Annually
An investigation of how people learn to write, and how they can be helped to write better. Topics include individual composing processes, academic discourse constraints, and cultural influences on writing. This by permission course is required for all students who wish to become peer tutors in the Holy Cross Writer’s Workshop. One unit.

English 399 - Special Topics in English
Fall, spring
The study of a special problem or topic in literature or language, or a body of literature outside present course listings. Representative examples include: Renaissance Love Lyric, Arthurian Tradition, Contemporary Women Writers, Renaissance Women Writers, 19th-century Novel & Crime, Frost/Stevens. One unit.

Advanced Courses

English 400 - Tutorials and Independent Study Projects
Fall, spring
Permission of the instructor and/or the department chair ordinarily required for such courses. One unit.

English 401, 405 - Seminars
Annually
Advanced seminars are classes with prerequisites that offer the student an opportunity to pursue an ambitious independent project and to take more responsibility for class experience. Some recent advanced courses have been: Book as Text/Object, Keats and Wordsworth, Medieval East Anglia, Gender in the Renaissance, Austen: Fiction to Film, Shakespeare’s Romances, Literary Constructions of Romantic Love, Forgotten Language: The Art of Nature Writing, and Slavery & the Literary Imagination, Shakespeare’s Comedies. One unit.

English 407, 408 - English Honors Thesis
Annually
Two semesters credit, granted at end of second semester. Candidates selected from invited applicants to the English Honors Committee. One unit each semester.

The final authority on College and departmental policy, including faculty and course information, is the Course Catalog.  Please consult the Catalog for more information.