Literature

Courses

LI 101H: Introduction to Literature: Short Fiction
Short stories and novels, concentrating on critical thinking, clear, concise written and spoken exposition, and values embodied in great works.

LI 102H: Introduction to Literature: The Genres
A discussion-based course studying short masterworks of fiction, poetry, and drama, and linking writers’ lives and ideas about writing with their works. Student writing assignments are linked to Portfolio Review.

LI 104H: The Stranger in Literature
Stories, poems, and plays about cross-cultural interaction, drawing on examples from the Bible and classical antiquity to the present. Emphasis on interactions between Americans and Europeans and between Western and non-Western cultures.

LI 106E: Southern Literature and the Environment
What is Southern environmentalism, and what can we learn from it? An investigation of Southern environmental literature, activism, and history with an emphasis on agrarianism, sustainability, and conservation.

LI 108H: Introduction to Poetry
An introduction to the form, style, and theme of poetry ranging from early modern England to contemporary America. Readings from a broad range of poets, movements, and genres.

LI 201H: Introduction to Children's Literature
Fable, fairy tale, short story, poetry, novel, information books, children's classics. Young readers and their development. Integration of visual and literary arts.

LI 208E: Children's Lit & Environment
How do children's books nurture environmental awareness? Study different examples, learn criteria for excellence, and assess the value of fiction vs. non-fiction in children's literature. Create an original children's book with a positive environmental purpose.

LI 212H: Introduction to Comparative Literature
Key texts in European and world literature studied comparatively and in relation to philosophy and visual art. Authors will vary from year to year but may include Aeschylus, Dante, Goethe, Baudelaire, Tolstoy, and Beckett.

LI 216H: Literature, Justice, and Law
What can great literature teach about law and justice, vengeance and mercy? How do literary depictions reflect the real-world legal/judicial system? Readings from authors such as Aeschylus, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Dickens, Faulkner. Field trips to observe court.

LI 217H: Voice of the Animal
If animals could speak, what would they say? This course studies how creative writers (e.g. Woolf, Kafka, Soseki) have taken up this question and can help us reflect on the nature of creaturely and human life.

LI 218H: Literature and Human Rights
Inquiry into the role of literature in imagining the meaning of human rights and in responding to human rights violations. This course includes a Reflective Service Learning requirement.

LI 219H: Delusion and Desire: 20th Century Drama
Works of drama, 1900 to present, by major British, Irish, and American playwrights. Discussion, theatre- and film-experiences, and writing will focus on the life-altering consequences of deception, self-delusion, and desire on individuals, family, and society.

LI 221H: American Lit: Madness & Murder
This class surveys villains throughout American literature. Why does America produce such memorable antiheroes, and what can we learn from their twisted ways? Readings may include Poe, Dickinson, Melville, Steinbeck, Nabokov, Hemingway, Vonnegut, and McCarthy.

LI 227H: Knowing Animals through Literature
How have animals been imagined in literature? Do literary representations “encage” animals, or free them? Explore cultural constructions of animals—historical and contemporary, and consider how these depictions shape our relationship to our non-human brethren.

LI 228H: The American Short Story
Introduction to genre and survey from the mid 19th century to present. Major writers include Hawthorne, Melville, Poe, Wharton, London, Hemingway, Faulkner, O'Connor, and a range of contemporary writers.

LI 235H: Shakespeare: Page, Stage, & Film
Shakespeare through dramatic genres: comedy, tragedy, history and romance. Assessment and appreciation of his plays on page, stage, and film.

LI 240H: Bioethics and Literary Imagination
How literature, primarily fiction, can illuminate major issues in bioethics, such as cloning, genetic engineering, euthanasia, and cryonics. Writers to range from classic (e.g. Mary Shelley, Tolstoy) to contemporary (e.g. DeLillo, Ishiguro).

LI 241H: Major American Novels
Major American novels, their narrative art, their reflection of American culture, their engagement of the readers' hearts and minds; exploring some of life's great questions as revealed by masterful writers.

LI 244G: Postcolonial Literature
An introduction to major postcolonial writers, primarily from South Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. Authors may include Chinua Achebe, Aime Cesaire, J.M. Coetzee, Jamaica Kincaid, and Jean Rhys.

LI 244H: Drama: Stage and Screen
Most works for the screen (ads, TV shows, films) are based on dramatic structures developed over centuries. Analyzing plays and screen pieces, students will explore how drama functions and gives screenwork its life.

LI 245H: Regional American Literature
Exploration of the "sense of place" in literary traditions emerging from American cultural regions (the South, the West, the Northeast) and applying those principles through service-learning. Reflective writing and service at Boyd Hill Nature Preserve.

LI 246H: Breaking Free: 20th Century British Literature
Focused study of several groundbreaking 20th century British authors writing in different genres. To include writers such as Hardy, Conrad, Yeats, Woolf, Joyce, Eliot, Beckett, Lessing, Pinter, Achebe, Rushdie, Naipaul, Stoppard, Atwood, Heaney, Coetzee.

LI 253H: Adaptation: Literature & Film
Investigates filmic adaptations of great literature: how do filmmakers interpret classic drama, Gothic novels, detective stories, and graphic novels in creative and unorthodox ways? Counts as a Film Studies course; lab time used for screenings.

LI 314G: Caribbean Literature and Film
Major writers and filmmakers from the English-, French-, and Spanish-speaking Caribbean. Particular attention to questions of postcolonial identity, culture and globalization, and relationships between literature and film. All texts in translation. Writing Intensive.

LI 325H: Modern American Poetry
Major American poets from 1900, concentrating on the image of American and the development of modernism. Poets may include Frost, Pound, Eliot, Williams, Stevens, Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, Richard Wilbur, Denise Levertov.

HI 326H: Automobile & American Culture
This course explores the invention and development of the automobile in the United States, and ways it transformed everyday life, our basic values, the nature of work, the environment, leisure time, sexuality, and the arts.

LI 327: Chaucer to Shakespeare
Survey of major authors and forms of earlier English non-dramatic poetry, with emphasis on Chaucer, Spenser and Shakespeare. Prerequisite: one course in literature and Junior or Senior standing.

LI 330H: American Epic Poetry
An exploration of 19th, 20th, and 21st century American poetry in the light of existing traditions of epic poetry. Readings may include Whitman, Hart Crane, W.C. Williams, James Merrill, Ezra Pound, W.S. Merwin, and others.

LI 345H: Word&World: The European Novel
Study of influential works in the tradition of the European novel from Don Quixote to the twentieth century, focusing on major innovations in form and subject matter.

LI 348H: Literature and Film after Auschwitz
Inquiry into the cultural significance of the Holocaust and the challenges of living in its aftermath through study of testimony, literature, visual art, film, philosophy, and memorials.

LI 360G: Holocaust Memory: Berlin and Poland
This course asks what the Holocaust means today, and what it might mean in the future, through studying testimony, film, literature, museums and memorials, on campus and through site visits in Berlin and Poland (including Auschwitz). Prerequisite: Permission of Instructor.

LI 361: Literary Criticism and Theory
Readings in literary criticism from classical, Renaissance, neo-Classical, and modern writers. Representative figures include Plato, Aristotle, Longinus, Sidney, Johnson, Coleridge, Arnold, and selected modern thinkers. Prerequisite: Upperclass standing recommended, first-year students by instructor's permission only.

LI 382H: Contemporary American Poetry
Poems of post-1950 American poets, opposing movements that developed and the values they represent, and the difficult relations between poet and reader.

LI 425: Seminar on Shakespeare
In depth study of selected sonnets and several plays of Shakespeare (including instances of performance), supplemented by readings in theory and current criticism. Prerequisites: one course in literature and Junior or Senior standing.

LI 432: Major Authors
This course will focus on one or two important authors (John Milton; Donne and Jonson; Whitman and Dickinson; Flaubert; Charles Dickens; Joyce and Woolf, Ibsen and Miller, etc.) Junior/Senior standing.

LI 498: Comprehensive Examination

LI 499: Senior Thesis