ENGLIT 302 Literary Adaptations
Instructor: Professor Ann Campbell (see faculty profile)
Mode: In person
This course will focus on three eighteenth-century novels and a film adaptation and modernization of each. We will study the following texts and film adaptations and modernizations: Jane Austen’s Emma along with its 1996 film adaptation and its 1995 modernization, “Clueless”; Pierre Chaderlos de Laclos’s Dangerous Liaisons (1782) along with its 1988 film adaptation and its 1999 modernization, “Cruel Intentions”; Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) along with an adaptation TBA and its 2010 modernization, “Gulliver’s Travels.” We will analyze the novels closely and discuss how adaptations pick and choose from them to present coherent film version of these stories. We will also examine how modernizations of novels capture the spirit of literary texts while transporting them into modern settings.
ENGLIT 303 Gothic Literature
Instructor: Professor Tom Hillard (see faculty profile)
Mode: In person
Why do we enjoy reading and telling tales that frighten us? This question will guide us as we explore the historical emergence of Gothic fiction and its persistent influence in the centuries since. As we investigate the forms and functions of this literary mode, we will consider: How has “the Gothic” functioned in western culture? What does it mean that its rise of this literary form coincides with the formation and development of the United States? In what ways does Gothic literature reflect concerns and quandaries peculiar to American culture? Why does the Gothic remain so pervasive and appealing? To understand some roots of this literary phenomenon, we’ll begin by exploring its 18th-century British origins: Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764), Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), and Matthew Lewis’s The Monk (1796). After investigating the conventions and cultural preoccupations of these foundational works, we’ll examine an assortment of American texts that adopt and adapt the literary Gothic mode: these readings will likely include authors such as Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Edith Wharton, H.P. Lovecraft, Shirley Jackson, and possibly Stephen King, Stephen Graham Jones, and Tananarive Due. We’ll conclude by considering the lasting influence of this literary mode into our present historical moment.
ENGLIT 338 Greek Literature in Translation
Instructor: Professor Jeff Westover (see faculty profile)
Mode: In person
This version of the course will feature ancient Greek literature, including lyric poetry and drama by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.
ENGLIT 345 Shakespeare
Instructor: Professor Matthew Hansen (see faculty profile)
Mode: In person
This course introduces students to Shakespeare’s plays in various modes (Comedy, Tragedy, History). In addition to exploring the historical contexts concerning the original production, performance, and reception of Shakespeare’s plays through readings, lecture, and discussion, we will also endeavor, together, to test the validity of Shakespeare’s friend and critic Ben Jonson, who claimed that Shakespeare “was not of an age, but for all time.” Students in this course will be expected to engage with Shakespeare’s plays in a variety of ways including written analysis, performance, and imaginative engagement with music, film, and other media. An optional service-learning project – Shake It Up After School – is integrated into this course. Through it students have the opportunity to teach Shakespeare in performance to Boise elementary school students, by coaching 4th-6th to produce an abbreviated Shakespeare play.
ENGLIT 377 American Renaissance Literature
Instructor: Professor Jeff Westover (see faculty profile)
Mode: In person
The American Renaissance covers an exciting period. Writers were inspired to create a body of literature as accomplished and distinctive as that of other world cultures. Ralph Waldo Emerson encouraged his readers to reflect on values of independence, freedom, and equality in their lives. During this era, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe, Herman Melville, and Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote compelling fiction. Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs published autobiography, while Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman composed innovative poetry, and Margaret Fuller published important nonfiction.
ENGLIT 378 American Realism
Instructor: Professor Tara Penry (see faculty profile)
Mode: In person
Study and analysis of literature from the period of American Realism.
ENGLIT 386 British Modernism
Instructor: Professor Samantha Harvey (see faculty profile)
Mode: In person
British Modernism (1890-1940) was a moment of cultural upheaval shaped by rapid societal, intellectual, and technological change and seismic historical events like world war and the decay of imperialism. It was also a time of radical artistic experimentation and innovation that reflected the excitement of an emerging modern world. Students will study transformative works of prose, poetry, novels and visual art.
ENGLIT 393 Literary Criticism and Theory
Instructor: Dr. Kim Carter-Cram (see faculty profile)
Mode: In person
Learn about psychoanalysis, Marxism, feminism, deconstructionism, New Historicism, Queer criticism, post-colonialism, and many other “-isms” . . . and then learn how to apply them all to your reading of literature! This is a highly interactive class with great discussions!
ENGLIT 395 Women Writers
Instructor: Dr. Jennifer Black (see faculty profile)
Mode: In person
Autobiography is among the most popular of artistic genres, yet its creation and reception involve difficult questions: What is a self? How can an individual communicate a dynamic, changing identity through static medium like language? How can any medium accurately capture a human personality? These questions become even more complicated when applied to female writers, for the languages of literature have traditionally cast women in passive, private, or silent roles. So how does a woman create a literary self-portrait using such language? In this course, we will explore the variety of ways women have addressed these questions over the centuries and seek to understand women’s changing roles as well as the dynamic history of English literature.