Courses Offered by the Department of English

ENG 103. THE COLLEGE ESSAY (3)
What does it mean to write at the college level? Focus on the organization, coherence, and development required for college papers. Intensive study of the conventions of written English, including grammar, punctuation, and sentence construction. Placement determined by the Writing Program staff.

ENG 104. ACADEMIC WRITING I (3)
Introduction to the rhetorical and mechanical skills necessary to develop confident, informed academic voices. Study and practice of writing processes, including critical reading, collaboration, revision, and editing. Focuses on the aims, strategies, and conventions of academic prose, especially analysis and argumentation. May confer college writing proficiency based on student portfolio. Placement determined by theWriting Program.

ENG 105. ACADEMIC WRITING II (3) (GEN. ED. #1)
Advanced study and practice in the development of an academic voice, preparing students to engage with more complex and specialized texts and questions. Students plan, write, and revise several papers, honing their rhetorical skills and developing strategies for analysis, argumentation, and integration of both primary and secondary sources. Those who demonstrate their ability to write on the college level will earn college writing proficiency. Prerequisite: ENG 104 or permission of theWriting Program.

ENG 106. ACADEMIC WRITING III (3) (GEN. ED. #1)
Focuses on refining questions for writing, finding, evaluating, and incorporating evidence and writing rhetorically and grammatically correct and engaging prose. By adding tutorial instruction to classroom work, the course provides each student with intensive, individualized practice. Designed specifically for students who have not yet achieved college writing proficiency, the course allows those who demonstrate their ability to write on the college level to earn proficiency. Placement determined by theWriting Program.

ENG 111. MASTERPIECES OF ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE (3) (GEN. ED. #9)
An introduction to college-level analysis of major works of literature in various genres. Texts and emphases will vary with the instructor. Fall semester, repeated spring semester. Department. ENG 120. INTRODUCTION TO FICTION WRITING (3) (GEN. ED. #8) Introductory weekly seminar/workshop, developing basic techniques of fiction writing: plotting, characterization, imagery, tone, and other fundamentals. The discussion group employs student work as text along with exemplary works of fiction.

ENG 200. CLOSE READING, CRITICAL WRITING (3) (GEN. ED. #7)
This course is intended to provide new English majors with the skills that will enable them to approach unfamiliar texts with confidence. Students will learn what is meant by—and how to perform—close readings of texts. Students will also explore how one goes about conducting literary research. Overall, this course intends to provide a strong foundation to make future encounters with literature more meaningful and rewarding. Students can obtain writing proficiency in the major in this course. Prerequisite: limited to students who have completed their college writing proficiency and are considering a major or minor in English. May confer writing proficiency in the major.

ENG 202. SHORT-STORY WRITING (3) (GEN. ED. #8)
Fiction techniques, with special attention to the short story. Supervision of individual short stories. Seminar discussion of student work. Prerequisite: submission of a sample of fiction writing to the instructor.

ENG 203. FEATURE WRITING FOR NEWSPAPERS AND MAGAZINES (3)
Intensive writing workshop stressing techniques of interviewing and organizing material into feature stories. Interviews of various subjects from the community.Weekly stories. Final project aimed at publication.

ENG 204. PROSE STYLE (3)
The class will consider the role of style in classical rhetoric, but will focus on style in contemporary American nonfiction. Students will study a range of writers; adopt new vocabularies for assessing style; and address such topics as voice in writing, ideology and style, gender and style, academic prose, and civic and advocacy writing. Students will have regular opportunities both to analyze the style of published writers and experiment with their own nonfiction writing. Prerequisite: college writing proficiency.

ENG 205. INTRODUCTORY POETRY WORKSHOP (3) (GEN. ED. #8)
A poetry-writing course with in-class discussion of each class member’s poems. Assignments in common poetic forms (sonnet, sestina) as well as “free verse.” Readings in recent British and American poetry. Prerequisite: sophomore standing or permission of the instructor.

ENG 206. PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION (3)
Techniques of and practice in writing audience-oriented communication, including essays, reports, surveys, abstracts, persuasive arguments, and articles based on primary and secondary research and experimentation. Students will often work collaboratively and in real-world settings. Prerequisites: college writing proficiency.

ENG 208. JOURNALISM WORKSHOP (3)
Introduction to the basic techniques of journalism and practice in forms of news, interviews, features, and reviews. Critical study of the media and theories of the press. Guest lectures by professional journalists. Prerequisite: College writing proficiency.

ENG 211. ENGLISH LITERATURE: BEOWULF TO DRYDEN (3) (GEN. ED. #4 AND #9)
Comparative study of the literary forms and attitudes dominant in England from Beowulf to Dryden. Prerequisite: college writing proficiency or sophomore standing.

ENG 212. ENGLISH LITERATURE: POPE TO ELIOT (3) (GEN. ED. #4 AND #9)
Comparative study of the literary forms and attitudes dominant in the British Isles from the beginning of the 18th century to the Early Modern period. Prerequisite: ENG 200 (or concurrent enrollment).

ENG 215. LITERARY THEORY: EIGHT WAYS OF LOOKING AT A TEXT (3) (GEN. ED. #9)
This course explores why we do what we do. Prerequisite: English 200 or permission of instructor.

ENG 219. LINGUISTICS (3)
An introduction to modern linguistics, with special attention to grammatical structures, word and sound formation, and semantics. The course also explores recent linguistic theories, as well as the history of the English language. Prerequisite: sophomore standing.

ENG 221. THEORIES OF COMPOSING, TUTORING, AND TEACHING (3)
Designed for students who are recommended as potentialWriting Center tutors, students who are interested in teaching careers, and students in the cognitive studies and theory, culture, and interpretation concentrations. Study of current theory and research on how writers write and what teaching methods are most effective. Discussion of collaborative learning, error analysis, writing styles, and tutoring strategies. One hour a week peer tutoring inWriting Center required. Prerequisites: college writing proficiency, the instructor’s permission based on a recommendation by a Goucher College faculty member and instructor’s review of college transcript, a writing sample, and an interview.

ENG 222. WOMEN AND LITERATURE (3) (WS 222) (GEN. ED. #9 AND #10)
Topic will be posted in the course registration booklet.

ENG 226. CREATIVE NONFICTION I (3) (GEN. ED. #8)
An introduction to the techniques of creative nonfiction and possible subjects. Emphasis on memoir. Peer revision, readings of contemporary essays, conferences. Prerequisite: certified proficiency in writing or instructor’s permission.

ENG 230. THE CLASSICAL TRADITION (3) (GEN. ED. #4)
This survey of Greek and Roman literature will provide useful background for further study in English literature and such fields as women’s studies, theatre, anthropology, and history. The focus will be “Women and Men in the AncientWorld,” studying evolving and conflicting conceptions of gender from Homer to Apuleius.

ENG 232. SHAKESPEARE (3) (GEN. ED. #4 AND #9)
Study of plays in all of the Shakespearean genres and an introduction to the criticism of the plays. Viewing one or two plays to supplement an approach to the plays as drama. Prerequisite: sophomore standing or permission of the instructor.

ENG 240. MEDIEVAL LITERATURE (3) (GEN. ED. #4 AND #9)
Study of a major author or a broad issue in the literature of the Middle Ages. Aesthetic and cultural study of Medieval English verse and prose to rediscover pre-Modern cultural values. Emphasis on oral performance in pre-literate communities, manuscript construction and circulation, and the fifteenth-century transition to moveable type printed editions, using digital voice boards, original manuscripts and early print editions from Goucher’s Special Collections and the instructor’s collection, and in facsimile. Chaucer, the anonymous “Gawain”(or “Pearl”) poet, Malory, and other anonymous romancers, lyric poets, and dramatists. Prerequisite: ENG 211 or permission of instructor.

ENG 241. ARCHEOLOGY OF TEXT (3) (GEN. ED. #4 AND 7)
This interdisciplinary English course uses hands-on “laboratory” methods to introduce students to archival research using Goucher’s Rare Book Collection and online digital archives.Working backward in time, from the present to the Early Modern and Medieval periods, the course will survey ways people have packaged and used written/visual information, from digital media to early printed books to manuscripts. After training in codicology (rare book and document analysis), iconography (study of visual design), and paleography (study of old handwriting) students will conduct independent research using materials from Special Collections and Archives. Field trips to the Garrett Library (Johns Hopkins), the Library of Congress Rare Book Collection, and the Folger Shakespeare Library. Students who have completed the course will be equipped to do additional archival research in 200- and 300-level courses, and for continued work in Special Collections and Archives and internships at Johns Hopkins, LC and the Folger. Prerequisite: college writing proficiency or permission of instructor.

ENG 243. RENAISSANCE LITERATURE (3)
Study of a major author or broad issue in the literature of the Renaissance, from Sidney to Massinger, emphasizing Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Prerequisite: ENG 211.

ENG 246. ENGLISH LITERATURE 1660-1800 (3) (GEN. ED. #4 AND #9)
Studies of major literary themes and traditions in historical, intellectual, political, and aesthetic contexts. Extensive readings in Swift, Pope, Johnson, and Austen. Prerequisite: ENG 212.

ENG 249. THE LEGACY OF SLAVERY (3) (GEN. ED. #4 AND #10)
In this interdisciplinary course on African-American literature, culture, and history students will examine the impact and legacy of slavery on the experiences of all Americans, but particularly African Americans as they negotiate and define “freedom” for themselves throughout history. The theme of enslavement will be explored from the American Colonial period to the present in literary genres that include slave narratives, poetry, drama, fiction, nonfiction, and science fiction. Authors include Butler, Chesnutt, Douglass, Hansberry, Ellison, andWright. Prerequisite: college writing proficiency, permission of the instructor, or sophomore standing.

ENG 250. AMERICAN LITERATURE I (3)
This course explores issues of nationality, spirituality, race, gender and sexuality from the Colonial Period to the CivilWar in literary genres that include letters, journals, essays, poetry, the sermon, autobiography, short story, novel, and the slave narrative. Prerequisite: college writing proficiency.

ENG 254. AMERICAN LITERATURE II (3) (GEN. ED. #4 AND #9)
This course traces developments in American Literature from the 1880s through the 1920s, a period dominated by the rags-to-riches plot. Students will explore how writers such as Alger (Ragged Dick), Twain (Puddn’headWilson), Dreiser (Sister Carrie), James (Daisy Miller), Wharton (The House of Mirth), Chopin (The Awakening), Chesnutt (The Passing of Grandison), Norris (McTeague), and Burroughs (Tarzan) obsessively reworked this plot, even as they grappled with the moral costs of social ambition and the obstacles that women, minorities, and the lower classes faced in their struggle upward. Prerequisite: college writing proficiency.

ENG 255. THE MODERN AMERICAN NOVEL (3) (GEN. ED. #9)
Studies of modern American fiction. Special topics. Announced prior to registration.

ENG 256. MULTIETHNIC AMERICAN LITERATURE (GEN. ED. #9)
An examination of literature written by Americans of various ethnic and racial backgrounds. Works studied may include Native American tales, Sui Sin Far, Anzia, Yezierska, Rudolfo Anaya, and Maxine Hong Kingston. Course also discusses theories of ethnic literature and immigrant experience. Prerequisite: college writing proficiency.

ENG 257. ROMANTICISM (3) (GEN. ED. #4 AND #9)
Topic for 2009-10: Romantic Love. Examination of seminal romantic explorations of love in the writings of Austen, Blake,Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, and Byron, as well as an ironic, postmodern perspective on the subject in Alain de Botton’s novel On Love. Prerequisite: ENG 212 or sophomore standing.

ENG 259. THE VICTORIAN PERIOD (3) (GEN. ED. #4 AND #9)
Topic: The Education of the Senses. A study of the worship of beauty in the Victorian period, including Pre-Raphaelitism in literature and painting, Aestheticism, Decadence, and the fascination with femmes fatales as "idols of perversity."

ENG 260. THE EARLY ENGLISH NOVEL (3) (GEN. ED. #4 AND #9)
Study of the themes and forms of major 18th- and early 19th-century novels within the context of social and intellectual history.Works by Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Sterne, Austen. Prerequisite: Frontiers or sophomore standing.

ENG 264. THE VICTORIAN ENGLISH NOVEL (3) (GEN. ED. #4 AND #9)
Study of the themes and forms of major Victorian and early 20th-century novels within the context of social and intellectual history.Works by Dickens, Eliot, Thackery, Hardy, Conrad, Ford. Prerequisite: Frontiers or sophomore standing.

ENG 270. MODERNISM (3) (GEN. ED. #9)
Topic for Fall 2010: “Text and the City.” The setting and subject of much modernist literature, 1910–1940, is urban. This course initially examines the country/city tension in Forster’s Howards End and then explores the literary “scenes” of the greatWestern capitals: Dublin, London, Berlin, and Paris. Works include Joyce’s Dubliners,Woolf ’s Mrs. Dalloway, Eliot’s poetry, Isherwood’s Berlin Stories, Auden’s poems, Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, Fitzgerald’s “Babylon Revisited,” Rhys’ Good Morning, Midnight. Prerequisite: ENG 212 or junior standing.

ENG 272G. INTENSIVE COURSE ABROAD: SHAKESPEARE: STAGE AND PAGE (3) (GEN. ED. #3)
This course examines the relationship between Shakespeare as literature and Shakespeare as theatre; we examine Shakespeare’s works both from a historical/critical perspective and from a performance perspective. January intersession.

ENG 272Y. INTENSIVE COURSE ABROAD (GEN. ED. #3)
Course includes a pre-departure or post-departure, seven-week course or both in the fall and/or spring and a three-week intensive course abroad in the winter or summer. ENG 273. POSTMODERNISM (3) (GEN. ED. #9) This course explores various theories and examples of postmodern literature and culture. Texts, from 1960 to the present, that focus on writing, reading, and storytelling as acts of profound political, social, and existential significance. Prerequisite: ENG 212 or junior standing.

ENG 275. LITERATURE OF THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE (3) (GEN. ED. #4 AND #10)
Poetry and fiction conventionally assigned to the Harlem Renaissance. Authors include Hughes, Hurston, Cullen, McKay, and others. Discussion of the delineation of the movement’s boundaries, both temporally and by subject, the construction and reconstruction of a racial identity, and the tension between a progressive literary movement and the “masses” it would represent. The approach will be interdisciplinary. Fulfills American studies elective. Prerequisite: college writing proficiency.

ENG 276. MODERN POETRY (3) (GEN. ED. #4 AND #9)
An exploration of works by British and American poets of the early 20th century in their historical, intellectual, and cultural context. Yeats, Pound, Eliot, Auden, Stevens, Moore, Frost, and their contemporaries. Prerequisite: Frontiers or sophomore standing.

ENG 277. CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN POETS (3) (GEN. ED. #9)
Major writers representing various schools, regions, and ethnic groups. Particular attention will be paid to the historical and cultural context of the work. Lowell, Ginsberg, Ashbery, Rich, and others. Prerequisite: Frontiers or sophomore standing.

ENG 280. THE NOVEL AND THE FILM (3) (GEN. ED. #9)
The Films and Sources of Stanley Kubrick. This course offers a comparative study of form and theme in the novel and film versions of Lolita, Dr. Strangelove, 2001, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, The Shining, and EyesWide Shut. Prerequisite: one course in literature or film, or sophomore standing.

ENG 285. CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE FROM INDIA, AFRICA, AND AUSTRALIA (3) (GEN. ED. #9 AND #10)
How do the time you spend abroad and the time you spend on campus fit together?What is the legacy of colonialism in the modern world? This contemporary literature course may allow you to find some answers by examining works from three very different locales (India, Africa and Australia).We will pursue our literary study of novels, plays and poetry while also considering the socio-cultural contexts that produce these works and the historical events and legacies that have made them what they are. Prerequisite: Frontiers or sophomore standing.

ENG 290. INTERNSHIP IN ENGLISH (3-4)
Internships involving the application of knowledge and skills in composition, language, and literature, typically in editing, publishing, journalism, radio and television, advertising, and public relations. Businesses, professional firms, and government agencies sometimes accept students with composition skills as interns. Credit for off-campus experience is available in some cases to students working for the college newspaper. Prerequisite: Varies according to the nature of the internship, but usually consists of a course in journalism, ENG 221, or a 200-level course in composition. Faculty sponsorship required. May be taken either for a letter grade or pass/no pass.
Department.

ENG 299. INDEPENDENT WORK IN ENGLISH (3-4)
Department.

ENG 300. SPECIAL TOPICS IN ENGLISH (3)
Advanced creative writing workshop taught by a visiting writer to the Kratz Center for Creative Writing. Prerequisite: ENG 315 and/or manuscript submission and approval of Madison Smartt Bell. Can be taken twice.

ENG 305. WRITING WORKSHOP: POETRY (3) (GEN. ED. #8)
Supervision of individual creative projects in poetry. Formal and thematic weekly assignments with in-class discussion of class members’ poems. Prerequisites: ENG 205 or permission of the instructor. Manuscript required for prerequisite to be waived.

ENG 306. WRITING WORKSHOP: FICTION (3)
Supervision of individual creative projects. Individual conferences and weekly seminar meetings. Prerequisites: ENG 202 and submission of a sample of creative writing to the instructor.

ENG 307. CREATIVE NONFICTION II (3) (GEN. ED. #8)
Further work in creative nonfiction. This writing workshop requires several extensively revised papers, peer critiques of essays, work on a class anthology, and submission of a final portfolio. Prerequisite: English 226 or another 200-level writing course, certified proficiency in writing.

ENG 315. ADVANCED SEMINAR IN CREATIVE WRITING (3)
An advanced workshop with sections on fiction and poetry.Written work for the seminar will be an extended project consisting of either three or four finished short stories or 10 to 15 pages of poetry. In-class critique of student’s work. Prerequisites: ENG 202 and 306, or ENG 205 and 305. For admission to the seminar, students will submit creative writing samples to Jessica Anya Blau (fiction) or Elizabeth Spires (poetry).

ENG 316. ENTERPRISE JOURNALISM (3)
A course designed to teach students not only journalistic writing, but also journalistic thinking. Students will research and write topical news features that hinge not only on daily events, but on student-journalists’ insight and initiative. Examples include fleshing out quiet trends, explaining hidden conflicts, charting social changes, and investigating public policy matters.Workshop format. Prerequisite: ENG 203, 208.

ENG 330. SPECIAL TOPICS IN ENGLISH LITERATURE TO 1700 (3) (GEN. ED. #4 AND #9) TOPIC: CHAUCER, THE CANTERBURY TALES.
A complete reading of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, with attention to the critical controversies of the past five hundred years, and to the cultural context from which the tales emerged. Early Modern (1475-1700) commentaries on, and editions and translations of the tales will be consulted in Goucher’s Rare Book Collection and at the Garrett Library (Johns Hopkins). May be repeated for credit with different topic. Prerequisite: ENG 211, 240, or 243, or permission of the instructor.

ENG 340. SPECIAL TOPICS IN ENGLISH LITERATURE SINCE 1700 (3) (GEN. ED. #7 AND #9)
Topic for 2010-11: Byron, Romanticism’s Last Stand. A study of the major works of the godfather of modern nihilism, alienation, despair, and absurdist black humor in literature and the arts. May be repeated for credit with a different topic.

ENG 350. SEMINAR IN SHAKESPEARE (3) (GEN. ED. #4 AND #9)
A close reading of Shakespearean drama, supplemented by secondary readings from both Shakespeare’s time and the subsequent critical heritage, as an exploration of Shakespeare’s world and our interpretation of it. Topic: A very close reading of King Lear in an attempt to understand (or at least understand why we don’t understand) every line in the play.We will also examine the quarto and folio texts, supplemented by important secondary material on the play. Prerequisite: ENG 211 or 232.

ENG 361. STUDIES IN FICTION (3) (GEN. ED. #7 AND #9)
Topic for 2011-12: Readings and Rereadings: Contemporary Intertextuality. Although early in the 20th century Ezra Round famously urged moderns to “make it new,” postmodern writers and filmmakers frequently prefer to re-read or re-envision older literary classics. This seminar explores such revisionists’ texts and their varied responses to their predecessors.Works include comparisons such as Bronte’s Jane Eyre and Rhys’Wide Sargasso Sea;Woolf ’s Mrs. Dalloway and Cunningham’s The Hours; Melville’s Bartley the Scrivener and Vila-Matas’ Bartleby & Co.; films such as Adaptation, etc.

ENG 371. SEMINAR IN AMERICAN LITERATURE (3)
Topic for 2010-2011: Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick

ENG 372. SEMINAR IN AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE (3)
Topic: The African American Novel—an examination of thematic, structural, and stylistic characteristics of the African American novel from its rise in the 19th century through contemporary works. Prerequisite: sophomore standing and a course in literature, or permission of the instructor.

ENG 392. CONTEMPORARY LITERARY THEORY (3)
Post-colonial theory frequently critiques the biases that allowed colonialism to happen in the first place. It often also examines the implications of colonialism for individuals who are no longer colonized. This course considers theoretical writings that deal with the construction of race, gender, and class, as well as with the validity of the term “post-colonial” itself. Students will read excerpts of the works of major post-colonial theorists (among them, Gayatri Spivak, Homi Bhabha, and Edward Said—often referred to as post-colonial theory’s “holy trinity”). The readings will generally be short but complex; class discussion will emphasize disentangling ideas and concepts. Prerequisite: ENG 215.

ENG 400. INDEPENDENT WORK IN ENGLISH (1.5-4)
Fall and spring semesters. Department.

ENG 450. SENIOR THESIS (4/4)
Fall and spring semesters. Department.