English
A.	AP ENGLISH The AP course is restricted to students who have demonstrated a high degree of both interest and ability in the study of literature. It culminates with the AP exam, a test that requires the student to analyze previously unseen material and to write coherent critical essays demonstrating the ability to formulate an informed literary perspective. Intensive reading and close analysis are stressed in conjunction with the skill of composing a persuasive critical essay. Readings usually include a generous sampling of poetry from different periods, three or four plays, and approximately six novels. Reading List: The Ambassadors, Henry James, W. W. Norton and Co. Crime and Punishment, Feodor Dostoevsky, W.W. Norton and Co. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce, Penguin Go Down Moses, William Faulkner, Vintage Nausea, Jean Paul Sartre, New Direction Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf, Harcourt Brace The Wasteland, T. S. Eliot, Penguin The Norton Introduction to Poetry, ed. J. Paul Hunter (W.W. Norton & Co.) By permission of the department
B.	SHAKESPEARE This course will examine several of Shakespeare's plays in depth. Each play will be looked at as a type (history, tragedy, comedy) and as an individual work with unique characters, themes, language, and philosophical implications. Although the plays will be studied in their historical context, with discussions of Elizabethan custom and concepts where necessary, there will be an attempt to see Shakespeare as our contemporary-a man not of an age, but for all time. Reading List: Richard III Twelfth Night Taming of the Shrew   Julius Caesar Henry IV, Part I A Midsummer Night's Dream Othello Anthony and Cleopatra King Lear
C.	JUST THE FACTS: READING AND INTERPRETING NON-FICTION When we sit down to read an article in the newspaper or in a magazine, or when we go with purpose towards the non-fiction section of the bookstore, we are looking for facts, for information. But, that information is filtered through an author who has his own personal agenda, her own view. How does that subjectivity impact on the final product that we read? This course will examine this issue as it looks closely at various types of non-fiction writing: journalism, memoirs, diaries, and essays. We will read many different kinds of works, but the course will be divided neatly into six thematic groups: Love and Sex, Sports, Humor, Death and Disaster, Race and Gender, and Religion. The issues discussed are fascinating facts, real life stories, but what is even more fascinating is how these facts are observed and altered, how they are turned into literature. In addition to current works taken from newspapers and magazines, with particular emphasis on The New York Times. Reading List: The Facts & Patrimony, Philip Roth, Vintage Young Men and Fire, Normon Maclean, University of Chicago The Eloquent Essay, John Loughery, Persea Books The Summer of '49, David Halberstam, Mass Market Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion, Random House Sex and Death to the Age 14, Spalding Gray, Vintage A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, David Wallace, Little, Brown The Kiss, Kathryn Harrison, Avon A Catholic Son's Return to Judaism, Stephan Dubner, Morrow, William and Co. A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf, Harcourt Brace Cries Unheard: Why Children Kill: The Story of Mary Bell, Gitta Sereny, Henry Holt In Cold Blood, Truman Capote, Vintage Maus, Art Spiegelman, Pantheon
D.	WRITING WORKSHOP The Writing Workshop is a practical review of the fundamentals of composition. Because of its limited enrollment, this course is open only to students recommended by the English department or whose applications have been approved. Writing Workshop represents an opportunity for students who still have difficulty with the expository essay and who have not yet grasped the basics of usage and syntax. After rhetorical style has been introduced, students write in class and share their writing with the other members of the workshop. Revision techniques are emphasized, and grammar is reviewed on a diagnostic basis. There will be weekly writing of paragraphs or essays. Reading List: The Practical Stylist, Sheridan Baker, Harper and Row MLA Manual PMLA The Bedford Reader Bedford Press
E.	JEWISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE This course will examine the trajectory of the Jewish/American experience through the lens of great literature: novels, essays, short-stories, poetry and drama. The writers studied come from varied backgrounds, both secular and observant but what links them together is the willingness to confront the essential dilemmas of the Diaspora experience. They have been fearless and inventive in attempting to understand and describe their own precarious, troubling, fascinating, and joyful situations as Jews in America. These writers have tried to answer the essential questions of the Jewish/American experience: How does one meld into the American milieu, accept and believe in the American dream, while still retaining the historical, emotional connection to one's own disquieting past? What is the cost of assimilation? What is the consequences of prosperity? Issues of anti-Semitism, the Holocaust in the American consciousness, inter-marriage, sex, faith and secularism are apparent in these works, and will be investigated. We will also attempt to uncover the textual strategies these writers have turned to in order to discuss these difficult issues. Reading List: Goodbye, Columbus, The Ghost Writer & Portnoy's Complaint, Philip Roth, Vintage The Pagan Rabbi, Cynthia Ozick, Penguin The Victim, Saul Bellow, Penguin Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, Grace Paley, Noonday Press The Book of Daniel, E. L. Doctorow, Mass Market The Assistant, Bernard Malamud, Harper I Stand Here Ironing, Tillie Olsen, American Press Wartime Lies, Nathan Begley, Fawcett For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, Nathan Englander, Vintage Turbulent Souls, Stephan Dubner, Morrow A Mother's Kisses Bruce Friedman, University of Chicago Bech: A Book, John Updike, Treasure Memory
F.	AMERICAN LITERATURE: MULTIPLE VOICES "I too sing America."      Langston Hughes In this course, we will examine primarily contemporary novels by African-American, Asian-American, Hispanic-American, and Native-American authors. We will be concerned with the following questions: How do these writers define themselves as Americans? Do they formulate identities which blend their individual traditions with mainstream American culture, or do they view themselves as being in conflict with or subsumed by it? If language is a reflection of culture, does the language of these works reflect the duality of cultural dislocation and dissonance? And finally, how do the authors relate to the concept of the American Dream? We will also read relevant critical articles and interviews with the writers. Students will give oral presentations as well as write essays. Reading List: The Mambo Kings Sing Songs of Love, Oscar Hujelos, Harper Trade Breath, Eyes, Memory, Edwige Danticant, Random House Ceremony, Leslie Silko, Viking The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, Sherman Alexie, Harper Collins God is Red: A Native View of Religion, Vine Deloria, Jr., Fulcrum Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison, Random House The Woman Warrior, Maxine Kingston, Random House Days of Obligation, Richard Rodriguez, Viking (selected essays) Poetry by Hayden, Hogan & others
G.	CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN LITERATURE Is there such a thing as American literature now? Non-print media capture a continually growing audience, while social tensions threaten to divide what readership remains. The class will read diverse texts in order to analyze the current role of the literary imagination in the United States. The works, which were all written within the students' lifetimes, range from comic to tragic; the settings include various regions of the nation; and the authors are drawn from the diversity of America's population. Do Don DeLillo's shopping malls, for example, have any connection to Toni Morrison's slave plantations? Are McCarthy's cowboys akin to Bank's Rastafarians? Might O'Brien's Vietnam vets face problems similar to Jen's privileged suburban high school students? In looking for connections between the texts we may find valuable common ground. Reading List: All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy, Vintage Rule of the Bone, Russell Banks, Harper Collins Mona in the Promised Land, Gish Jen, Vintage White Noise, Don DeLillo, Viking Beloved, Toni Morrison, Penguin In the Lake of the Woods, Tim O'Brien, Penguin
H.	EXPERIMENTAL FICTION Of course, every piece of art is an experiment in its own way. Each is its own small attempt at newness. And, in fact, the novel medium itself is based on the premise that whatever is written in that form should be novel, new. However, there are some pieces of fiction that stand out from the rest because they represent the largest or most successful literary innovations; that is, they are boundary-breakers, pushing beyond the perimeters defined by "tradition" and provoking new ways of communicating stories, new ways of using old languages, new ways of reading and writing text. The authors of these fictions are the great innovators of literature, and they are not always successful. Sometimes these fabricators produce some of the great fictions of literary history, and other times they produce grand failures. But, like those in the scientific world, literary experiments teach us a great deal, whether they are successes or failures. In this course, we will explore some of the more significant transgressions of "tradition" in the history of fiction. While we will read some literature from as early at the eighteenth century, most of the texts we read will come from the modernist and postmodernist eras-since those are the movements that most self-consciously set themselves against existing conventions. To prepare for the class, you should read Dave Eggers's novel A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius over the summer and be prepared to discuss it on the first day of class. Note: Because of the non-traditional nature of these texts, you may find many of them extremely challenging to read. I would recommend that you go to the library and thumb through some of the novels below before you commit yourself to the course. Reading List: Nightwood, Djouna Barnes, New Directions Lost in the Funhouse, John Barth, Bantam A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers, Vintage As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner, Vintage Neuromancer, William Gibson, Mass Market Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, Grace Paley, Farrar The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon, Harper Collins A Sentimental Journey, Laurence Sterne, Oxford University Additional readings may include works by: Walter Abish, Donald Barthelme, Jorge Luis Borges, Richard Brautigan, Italo Calvino, Robert Coover, Mark Z. Danielewski, Raymond Federman, William H. Gass, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Tim O'Brien, George Perec, Raymond Queneau, Ishmael Reed, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Jean Toomer, Tristan Tzara, Jeanette Winterson, Virginia Woolf

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