Fall Term Schedule for Graduate Courses
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Fall 2025
| Number | Title | Instructor | Time |
|---|
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ENGL 400-1
Sarah Higley
TR 11:05AM - 12:20PM
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English is a banquet of words. And language is political. How do changes in English represent and affect culture? Inflicted by invasions and adaptations it remained English. Brought to Britain by Germanic tribes in the 5th century, it was matured by violent and peaceful contact with other peoples and ideas. Few other languages are so accepting of neologism, so humongous in vocabulary, so malleable of construction. We’ll peruse texts from Old, Middle and Modern English and watch it grow from a Teutonic tongue to the powerful, ductile, and eclectic instrument it is today, spreading to other continents, colonizing and absorbing. We’ll peruse linguistic Angst and jouissance by King Alfred, Aelfric, Robert of Gloucester, Chaucer, Caxton, Mulcaster, Shakespeare, Swift, Johnson, Webster, Orwell and others who praise or blame our shifty English, or who MANIPULATE it?. We’ll grok urban dialects, vernaculars, slang, texting, gender. Is it “based on” or “based off of”? “lie” or “lay”? What’s the deal with register? Vernacular vs. high-falutin’ “academic” English? Are you down with this? Grads welcome!
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ENGL 403-1
Steven Rozenski
TR 9:40AM - 10:55AM
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What did drama look and feel like in the Middle Ages? How much can we know about performances that took place well over 600 years ago? We have two main goals ahead of us in this course: to read the major extant works of drama in Middle English, and to stage a medieval play. Along the way, we will discuss the texts themselves, the manuscript history of the surviving plays, their performance history, their relation to drama on the Continent, the religious opposition to them, sixteenth-century attempts to de-Catholicize them, their ultimate suppression after the Reformation, and their revival in twentieth-century England and North America. What did drama look and feel like in the Middle Ages? How much can we know about performances that took place well over 600 years ago? We have two main goals ahead of us in this course: to read the major extant works of drama in Middle English, and to stage a medieval play. Along the way, we will discuss the texts themselves, the manuscript history of the surviving plays, their performance history, their relation to drama on the Continent, the religious opposition to them, sixteenth-century attempts to de-Catholicize them, their ultimate suppression after the Reformation, and their revival in twentieth-century England and North America.
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ENGL 405-2
Donatella Stocchi-Perucchio
MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM
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The first of a sequence of two, the course approaches 'The Divine Comedy' both as a poetic masterpiece and as an encyclopedia of medieval culture. Through a close textual analysis of 'Inferno,' and the first half of 'Purgatorio,' students learn how to approach Dantes poetry as a vehicle for thought, an instrument of self-discovery, and a way to understand and affect the historical reality. They also gain a perspective on the Biblical, Christian, and Classical traditions as they intersect with the multiple levels of Dantes concern, ranging from literature to history, from politics to government, from philosophy to theology. A visual component, including illustrations of the 'Comedy' and multiple artworks pertinent to the narrative, complements the course. Class format includes lectures, discussion, and a weekly recitation session. Intensive class participation is encouraged. Dante I can be taken independently from Dante II. No prerequisites. Freshmen are welcome. Part of the Dante Humanities Cluster.
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ENGL 406-01
Steven Rozenski
TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM
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Varying topics relating to the literature and culture of the Middle Ages. Writing down an account of the experience of God's presence can seem like an impossible task, and mystical authors often explore this fundamental paradox (using language that can both affirm and deny its own ability to discuss God). In medieval mystical literature one finds Jesus, both divine and human, sometimes both male and female, married to both the individual soul and the church; the explicit erotic poetry in the Hebrew Bible is often invoked to enrich accounts of this "mystical marriage." Devotional manuscript images, too, often vividly depict Jesus with female or nonbinary characteristics engaged in various courtly and romantic activities; medieval devotion to the side-wound is especially shocking to contemporary readers. To understand these phenomena, we will study key authors of the medieval mystical and contemplative tradition: theologians Pseudo-Dionysius and Hildegard von Bingen, condemned heretics Meister Eckhart and Marguerite Porete, popular devotional writer Henry Suso, the hermit Richard Rolle, and the English anchoress Julian of Norwich -- as well as fascinating anonymous guides to contemplation such as "The Cloud of Unknowing" and image cycles such as "Christ and the Loving Soul." We’ll end the semester by looking at the uses of mysticism in the 20th and 21st centuries, with particular attention to T.S. Eliot’s 1943 masterpiece, "Four Quartets."
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ENGL 410-1
William Miller
MW 10:25AM - 11:40AM
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This class explores the full range of Shakespeare's theater, including examples of comedies, history plays, tragedies, and “romances.” We approach the plays from many angles, looking at their stark and extravagant language; their invention of complex conflicted human characters; their self-conscious references to contemporary stage practices; and their meditations on death, love, politics, power, and revenge. We learn about the literary and theatrical conventions that would have been second nature to Shakespeare and his audience over 400 years ago and consider how Renaissance stage practices might help us to better understand his plays and better appreciate why Renaissance audiences found them so compelling. When possible, we consult video of recent staged productions. This course is appropriate for all students, from those in their first semester at the university to senior English majors. No restrictions or prerequisites; all are welcome. It fulfills the pre-1800 requirement for the English major and satisfies a requirement in two English Clusters (Great Books, Great Authors; Plays, Playwrights, and Theater). One sees his face on billboards, in gift shops, on refrigerator magnets, on tote bags. One sees his scenes played in the park, at all levels of school, on Broadway, in prison theater programs, on the big screen and television. One finds mobs of academics writing about him, designing conferences around him, interrogating his every word, and interrogating those interrogations. No single writer—none—is as much an ongoing literary phenomenon as William Shakespeare. None is simultaneously such an icon of a bygone time, such a persistent contemporary, and such a figure of generative controversy. He is, as Judi Dench put it, “the man who pays the rent,” not just for many actors and directors, but for many workers with words of all sorts. This class considers approximately a dozen of Shakespeare’s plays and a selection his nondramatic poetry. We will consider these writings in themselves and also in connection to some of the major concerns that Shakespeare’s characters and plays have helped to bring into focus: sexuality, gender, race, magic, power. No restrictions or prerequisites; all are welcome.
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ENGL 421-1
Supritha Rajan
TR 9:40AM - 10:55AM
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British literature of the Victorian period (1830-1900), including prose, drama, and poetry. This topics course can be repeated (2 times) for additional credit as long as the special topic (section title) is different. Please see public notes for specific section titles and course descriptions. Before our current era of romantic comedies, who-dun-it mysteries, and television serials, the novel was considered the most popular form of entertainment and the most realistic representation of what it meant to live in the modern world. In this course we will examine a number of canonical novels from the nineteenth century and explore how and why the novel achieved such dominance. We will examine many of the signature techniques that the nineteenth-century novel uses to create a vivid fictional world and compelling characters, from combining elements of romance and realism to the gothic and marriage plot. Along the way, we will discuss how the novel not only served as a vehicle for entertainment, but also for engaging with social problems of the day such as the effects of capitalism, gender inequality, and the politics of empire and race. Some of the novels that we will discuss include Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, George Eliot’s Middlemarch, and Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge. Fulfills the post-1800 requirement for majors. Relevant clusters: Novels [H1ENG009], Great Authors, Great Books [H1ENG010].
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ENGL 434-01
Robert Doran
TR 4:50PM - 6:05PM
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Studies the history of “aesthetic” thought—namely the philosophical reflection on the concepts of beauty, taste, and sublimity, on our affective response to art and nature, and on the role of art and the artist in society—from Plato to Nietzsche, with particular emphasis on how aesthetics relates to questions of epistemology, anthropology, ethics, ontology, and politics. The concepts of mimesis and the sublime will be given special attention. Authors studied include Plato, Aristotle, Horace, Longinus, Boileau, Batteux, Burke, Hume, Rousseau, Kant, Nietzsche. Conducted in English.
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ENGL 435-1
Stephen Schottenfeld
MW 12:30PM - 1:45PM
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Varying topics in drama written after 1800, in its historical and cultural contexts. Please see public notes for specific section titles and course descriptions. This topics course can be repeated (2 times) for additional credit as long as the special topic (section title) is different. A study and exploration of the major movements of twentieth-century drama—naturalism, expressionism, surrealism, epic theater, absurdism. Possible author list: Anton Chekhov, Eugene O'Neill, Lorraine Hansberry, August Wilson, Sophie Treadwell, Tennessee Williams, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, David Henry Hwang, Caryl Churchill, Sam Shepard, Suzan-Lori Parks, Tony Kushner, Lynn Nottage.
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ENGL 437-01
Erik Larsen
W 2:00PM - 4:30PM
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Throughout much of modern medical and cultural history, bodily difference has been categorized as disability—as a problematic deviation from standards of normalcy and health. This legacy has been fiercely debated and contested in recent years, with much disagreement about the category’s usefulness in medical contexts and beyond. This course will explore different perspectives on disability through works of modern culture, and primarily through literature, television, and film. We will investigate the traditional medical model of disability, and explore what changing understandings of disability mean for the future of healthcare and the relationship between healthcare providers and patients. The course is writing-intensive, and requires students to share and workshop their papers with peers.
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ENGL 440-1
David Bleich
TR 11:05AM - 12:20PM
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Varying topics in the theoretical and historical study of literary analysis and its methods. This course considers readers’ literary response processes. Class members are asked to observe how they feel while reading and to take note of the moments of the most compelling feelings. Class time is spent articulating these feelings to other readers, and, if possible, to trace the feelings of the present to past experiences of such feelings in one’s own life. Weekly response essays are addressed to the class, and a portfolio of literary responses will accumulate for each reader. The responses are discussed in class alongside of the readings. We take time to compare our responses to “story” and “character” to our responses to language With regard to the final projects, we outline how to understand our own responses, as we look for patterns and tastes that guide us to identify our paths of interest in language and literature. Reading list includes individual works by William Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Harold Pinter, George Orwell, Toni Morrison, Franz Kafka, D.H. Lawrence, and Sharon Olds.
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ENGL 443-2
John Michael
MW 12:30PM - 1:45PM
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Intensive study of the writings of a single author or small group of authors from literary traditions in English. Please see public notes for specific section titles and course descriptions. This topics course can be repeated (2 times) for additional credit as long as the special topic (section title) is different. This course will focus on the art and influence of Edgar Allan Poe, a writer who has often been misunderstood but who nonetheless exerted a definitive influence on generations of writers who came after him both in the United States and around the world. He has been credited with formulating the modern detective story and originating science fiction. Will read widely among his short stories, his major criticism, and his poetry. We will also give some attention to his contemporaries and his legacies and to the role he plays in the exploration of the psyche and the creation of a modern literature.
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ENGL 445-01
Jeff Tucker
MW 11:50AM - 1:05PM
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Varying topics relating to literature and culture representing specific styles, modes, genres, or media. Please see public notes for specific section titles and course descriptions. This topics course can be repeated (3 times) for additional credit as long as the special topic (section title) is different. Despite a long history of relegation to sub-cultural status, comic books have recently proven themselves capable of astonishing artistic achievements, infiltrating academia, and providing content for films, television, video games, and more. This course introduces students to comics in three parts: 1) a formal analysis of the artform--a combination of text and image used to tell a story, convey information, or produce an aesthetic effect; 2) a cultural history of comic books, from their modern origins during the Great Depression to the 21st Century; and 3) close readings of primary works in the field, including Alan Moore & David Gibbons’ Watchmen, Sonny Liew’s The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye, Ta-Nehisi Coates & Brian Stelfreeze’s Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet, G. Willow Wilson and Adrian Alphona’s Ms. Marvel: No Normal, Dave Chisholm’s Miles Davis & the Search for the Sound, and more. Course requirements include class participation, bi-weekly 1-page reading responses, a mid-term examination, and a final paper. This course is applicable to post-1800 literature and LMC Core Course requirements.
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ENGL 449-1
Supritha Rajan
TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM
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Varying topics relating to writings by women and the representation of gender from a variety of periods and cultures. Please see public notes for specific section titles and course descriptions. This topics course can be repeated (3 times) for additional credit as long as the special topic (section title) is different. Opium-induced fantasies. Detectives investigating violent crimes. Prostitutes lurking city streets. These are not the things that immediately come to mind when one thinks of nineteenth-century British literature—a literature more typically associated with poets writing meditative poems about nature or marriage-plot novels expressing conservative attitudes toward gender and sexuality. But nineteenth-century British literature was also deeply interested in representing various types of behavior that British society deemed to be dangerous and transgressive: prostitution, homosexuality, drug addiction, and urban crime. In this course we will read a number of major nineteenth-century authors (e.g. Thomas DeQuincey, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Christina Rossetti, Oscar Wilde) and examine a variety of genres, from poems and essays to detective novels as they explored the underbelly of British society. Fulfills the post-1800 requirement. No prerequisites.
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ENGL 452-1
Katherine Mannheimer
7:00PM - 7:00PM
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This 4-credit intersession course will be conducted in London, UK, for approximately two weeks at the end of December into Early January. Attending two plays per day with a seminar discussion each morning, students in this course are exposed to a full range of theatre experiences, from intimate theatre-in-the-round to monumental productions at the National Theatre, and from West End spectaculars to cutting-edge works mounted in post-industrial spaces. See the link on the English Department homepage to find the course's website, which describes the program in greater detail and contains syllabi from the past 25+ years. Need-based financial aid is available. The fee total is $2850. Please see the public notes for the exact travel dates.
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ENGL 455-1
Danielle Genevro
MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM
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This course surveys the history of cinema from its emergence in the mid-1890s to the transition to sound in the late 1920s. We will examine the cinema as a set of aesthetic, social, technological, national, cultural and industrial practices as they were exercised and developed during this 30-year span. We will explore the diverse forms cinema took and functions it performed during this period by looking closely at a range of films and writings about films and film culture. We will also examine contexts within which these films were produced and experienced as well as theorizations of cinema that emerged concurrently with them. The course thus introduces students to the study of film history as well as a key national and international trends in making and thinking about cinema as it rose to prominence as a vital component of the art and culture of the twentieth century. Previous coursework in film is recommended, though not required; please contact the professor if this will be your first experience studying film in an academic setting.
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ENGL 457-01
Sharon Willis
MW 2:00PM - 3:15PM
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This course will explore developments in world cinema industrial, social, and political from 1959 to 1989. It will explore film aesthetics, technologies, and circulation questions, considering questions like the following: What’s new about the French New Wave? What do we mean by Third Cinema? How do different national cinemas influence each other? In what ways have various national cinemas responded critically to Hollywood’s commercial dominance and to its conventions? How do popular and art? cinemas speak to each other. How does cinema respond to the pressures and provocations of other media at the inception of the digital age? Weekly screenings and film journals required.
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ENGL 469-1
Jeff Stoiber
7:00PM - 7:00PM
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Restricted to Selznick Students
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ENGL 470-1
Jeff Stoiber
7:00PM - 7:00PM
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Restricted to Selznick Students
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ENGL 471-1
Jeff Stoiber
7:00PM - 7:00PM
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Restricted to Selznick Students
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ENGL 475-2
Stephen Schottenfeld
M 2:00PM - 4:40PM
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Read short stories by contemporary writers along with fiction by the students in the workshop, and discuss ways writers can sharpen the conversation between text and reader. Also consider editing and reviewing techniques. Students expected to write and revise at least three original stories or three sections of a longer work of fiction.
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ENGL 476-1
Jennifer Grotz
T 2:00PM - 4:40PM
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Prerequisites; English 122 or equivalent; instructor permission. Students are to submit 3-5 typed poems to jennifer.grotz@rochester.edu to obtain permission to register.
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ENGL 478-1
Joanna Scott
T 4:50PM - 7:30PM
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Read short stories by contemporary writers along with fiction by the students in the workshop, and discuss ways writers can sharpen the conversation between text and reader. Also consider editing and reviewing techniques. Students expected to write and revise at least three original stories or three sections of a longer work of fiction.
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ENGL 487-4
Stella Wang
W 2:00PM - 4:40PM
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This course will introduce students to the theoretical backgrounds, practical challenges, and creative activity of literary translation. We will consider varied descriptions by translators of what it is they believe they are doing and what they hope to accomplish by doing it; and we will study specific translations into English from a variety of sources to investigate the strategies and choices translators make and the implication of those choices for our developing sense of what kinds of texts translations are. Finally, students will undertake a translation project of their own. By the end of this class each student should have a working knowledge of both the theory and the craft of literary translation.
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ENGL 491-1
David Bleich
7:00PM - 7:00PM
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This course is for master's students that have made arrangements with a faculty member to complete readings and discussion in a particular subject in their field of study.
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ENGL 491-3
William Miller
7:00PM - 7:00PM
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This course is for master's students that have made arrangements with a faculty member to complete readings and discussion in a particular subject in their field of study.
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ENGL 500-1
William Miller
7:00PM - 7:00PM
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Graduate colloquium is a semester-long introduction to doctoral study in English.
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ENGL 514-1
Gregory Heyworth
M 2:00PM - 4:40PM
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In medieval and early modern Europe, the book functioned as a master trope for a world whose mysteries lie open to those who can read them, a world in which every action, gesture, image, utterance, is significant and imbued by God with a hidden meaning. This course is an introduction to metaphorics, semiotics, allegoresis, and iconography in the pre-Modern period before printing standardized our notion of what books are, do, and mean. In it we will reading various kinds of books writ large: the Book (Books) of God, Nature, Love, Fortune, and Secrets. That is to say, we will be reading the Bible, Augustine, Petrarch, Chaucer, Alain de Lille, Ovid, Boethius, Shakespeare and the forerunners of the encyclopedia. In addition we will learn to read visual books,? including the Biblia Pauperum, and the stained glass sequences of the Cathedral of Chartres, as well as the arcane miscellanies of the Early Modern period known as books of secrets (think Prosperos book, or Newtons alchemical notebooks).
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ENGL 534-1
Matthew Omelsky
R 2:00PM - 4:40PM
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This is a course, fundamentally, about relationality as it 1) materializes in culture, politics, aesthetics, and historical experience and 2) constitutes the fields of black studies and indigenous studies. In these fields, relationality not only involves acknowledging difference and incommensurability, but it also calls for belonging, solidarity, and, crucially for us, speculation. Our seminar will examine how 20th and 21st century artists and scholars imagine and theorize relationality from a speculative vantage point, envisioning “otherwise worlds” in the face of empire, (settler) colonialism, and white supremacy. We’ll aim to speculate collectively as well, producing knowledge together and always working on the assumption that no one enters the room with the complete tools to make sense of the full scope of what speculation means and enables in black and indigenous studies. In the process, we’ll move capaciously across North America, the Caribbean, Africa, and Oceania, spanning multimedia installation, fiction, poetry, music, film, and writing by artists like Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Octavia Butler, Mati Diop, Grace Dillon, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Lisa Reihana, Sofia Samatar, Miryam Charles, and Canisia Lubrin, and theorists and critics such as Saidiya Hartman, Kathryn Walkiewicz, Jayna Brown, Mark Rifkin, Ian Baucom, Keguro Macharia, Edouard Glissant, Tiffany King, Joseph Pierce, and Hugo Ka Canham.
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ENGL 538-1
John Michael
T 2:00PM - 4:40PM
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Recent critical work has called into question the saliency of national traditions and the efficacy of conventional periodization in literary studies. This shift in critical focus from the nation to the globe has implications for the field of American literature and the rationale for literary studies more generally. In this seminar we will consider reevaluations of the always evolving canon of nineteenth-century American literature in light of our increased awareness of globalization’s long history. Does rereading writers once considered “pure products of America,” like Cooper, Child, Emerson, Melville, Poe, Whitman, Hawthorne, Douglass, Delaney, Thoreau, Stowe, Dickinson, Twain, James and others, in contexts that traverse the once heavily policed borders of the U.S.A., change the meaning and implications of their work? What is the purpose of studying any national literature when the concept of the nation itself seems increasingly questionable? We will read representative works by selected canonical “American” authors as well as recent critical reevaluations of the field by Robert Levine, Wai Chee Dimock, Lisa Lowe, Edward Said, Paul Gilroy, Paul Giles, John Guillory and others.
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ENGL 553-1
Joel Burges
W 2:00PM - 4:40PM
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This course traces the career of contemporary Marxism through its most well-known proponent of the last fifty years: Fredric Jameson. In light of Jameson’s recent passing, we have a chance to evaluate his legacy vis-a-vis what Marxists have been doing for the past half century, especially in the study of aesthetics, economics, and politics. While Jameson’s expansive body of work will provide the backbone of the course, we will always pair him with historical and contemporary figures who analyze the work of culture from a materialist standpoint. In so doing, students will engage not only with Jameson’s many lines of thought but also with thinkers who are both parallel and perpendicular to him. Echoing his own efforts in Marxism and Form, Late Marxism, and The Years of Theory, the course hopes to model the intellectual complexity of any theoretical tradition, its most famous representatives, and the paradigmatic texts to which they are sometimes reduced. We will resist such reductions ourselves to see what is gained and lost by positing any thinker as “representative” of a field of thought. Our goal will thus not be to lionize Jameson but, rather, to tussle with his influence on contemporary Marxism such that we unpack its antinomies, assumptions, and antagonisms as they pertain to the interpretation of culture.
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ENGL 571-1
Matt Bayne; Kate Soules
MWF 11:30AM - 2:30PM
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Restriction: Instructor's permission required
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ENGL 574-01
Jeff Stoiber
7:00PM - 7:00PM
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Under the direction of English Department Faculty and staff of George Eastman Museum’s Moving Image Department, the student will plan and undertake a significant project designed to challenge her/his abilities to function at a professional level in the moving image archive field. Examples of potential projects include: archival projection, public programming and exhibitions, collection management, video and digital preservation techniques, processing and conservation of motion picture related materials, acquisitions, access and cataloging.
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ENGL 575-1
–
7:00PM - 7:00PM
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topic specific training/study in film preservation work.
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ENGL 580-1
William Miller
7:00PM - 7:00PM
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2nd year PhD or 2nd year MA Selznick pedagogical TA training.
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ENGL 591-1
William Miller
7:00PM - 7:00PM
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This course is for PhD students that have made arrangements with a faculty member to complete readings and discussion in a particular subject in their field of study.
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ENGL 591-3
Steven Rozenski
7:00PM - 7:00PM
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This course is for PhD students that have made arrangements with a faculty member to complete readings and discussion in a particular subject in their field of study.
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ENGL 591-4
–
7:00PM - 7:00PM
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This course is for PhD students that have made arrangements with a faculty member to complete readings and discussion in a particular subject in their field of study.
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ENGL 591-5
Katherine Mannheimer
7:00PM - 7:00PM
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This course is for PhD students that have made arrangements with a faculty member to complete readings and discussion in a particular subject in their field of study.
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ENGL 591-6
Supritha Rajan
7:00PM - 7:00PM
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This course is for PhD students that have made arrangements with a faculty member to complete readings and discussion in a particular subject in their field of study.
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ENGL 595-1
William Miller
7:00PM - 7:00PM
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This course provides PhD students with fewer than 90 credits the opportunity to conduct, develop, and refine their doctoral research projects. Students will engage in research relevant to their field of study and make progress toward completing their dissertations.
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ENGL 895-1
–
7:00PM - 7:00PM
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This course is designed for master's degree students who have completed all required coursework but still need to finalize specific degree requirements under less than half-time enrollment.
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ENGL 897-1
William Miller
7:00PM - 7:00PM
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This course provides master's students who are currently completing their final required coursework, or with special circumstances like an approved reduced courseload, with the opportunity to work full-time on their degrees. Students will make significant progress toward completing their degrees.
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ENGL 995-1
William Miller
7:00PM - 7:00PM
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This course is designed for PhD students who have completed all required coursework but still need to finalize specific degree requirements under less than half-time enrollment.
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ENGL 999-01
William Miller
7:00PM - 7:00PM
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This course provides PhD students who have completed or are currently completing 90 credits of coursework and have fulfilled all degree requirements (except for the dissertation) with the opportunity to work full-time on their dissertation. Students will make significant progress toward completing their degrees.
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Fall 2025
| Number | Title | Instructor | Time |
|---|---|
| Monday | |
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ENGL 475-2
Stephen Schottenfeld
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Read short stories by contemporary writers along with fiction by the students in the workshop, and discuss ways writers can sharpen the conversation between text and reader. Also consider editing and reviewing techniques. Students expected to write and revise at least three original stories or three sections of a longer work of fiction. |
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ENGL 514-1
Gregory Heyworth
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In medieval and early modern Europe, the book functioned as a master trope for a world whose mysteries lie open to those who can read them, a world in which every action, gesture, image, utterance, is significant and imbued by God with a hidden meaning. This course is an introduction to metaphorics, semiotics, allegoresis, and iconography in the pre-Modern period before printing standardized our notion of what books are, do, and mean. In it we will reading various kinds of books writ large: the Book (Books) of God, Nature, Love, Fortune, and Secrets. That is to say, we will be reading the Bible, Augustine, Petrarch, Chaucer, Alain de Lille, Ovid, Boethius, Shakespeare and the forerunners of the encyclopedia. In addition we will learn to read visual books,? including the Biblia Pauperum, and the stained glass sequences of the Cathedral of Chartres, as well as the arcane miscellanies of the Early Modern period known as books of secrets (think Prosperos book, or Newtons alchemical notebooks). |
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| Monday and Wednesday | |
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ENGL 410-1
William Miller
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This class explores the full range of Shakespeare's theater, including examples of comedies, history plays, tragedies, and “romances.” We approach the plays from many angles, looking at their stark and extravagant language; their invention of complex conflicted human characters; their self-conscious references to contemporary stage practices; and their meditations on death, love, politics, power, and revenge. We learn about the literary and theatrical conventions that would have been second nature to Shakespeare and his audience over 400 years ago and consider how Renaissance stage practices might help us to better understand his plays and better appreciate why Renaissance audiences found them so compelling. When possible, we consult video of recent staged productions. This course is appropriate for all students, from those in their first semester at the university to senior English majors. No restrictions or prerequisites; all are welcome. It fulfills the pre-1800 requirement for the English major and satisfies a requirement in two English Clusters (Great Books, Great Authors; Plays, Playwrights, and Theater). |
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ENGL 445-01
Jeff Tucker
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Varying topics relating to literature and culture representing specific styles, modes, genres, or media. Please see public notes for specific section titles and course descriptions. This topics course can be repeated (3 times) for additional credit as long as the special topic (section title) is different. |
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ENGL 435-1
Stephen Schottenfeld
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Varying topics in drama written after 1800, in its historical and cultural contexts. Please see public notes for specific section titles and course descriptions. This topics course can be repeated (2 times) for additional credit as long as the special topic (section title) is different. |
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ENGL 443-2
John Michael
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Intensive study of the writings of a single author or small group of authors from literary traditions in English. Please see public notes for specific section titles and course descriptions. This topics course can be repeated (2 times) for additional credit as long as the special topic (section title) is different. |
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ENGL 457-01
Sharon Willis
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This course will explore developments in world cinema industrial, social, and political from 1959 to 1989. It will explore film aesthetics, technologies, and circulation questions, considering questions like the following: What’s new about the French New Wave? What do we mean by Third Cinema? How do different national cinemas influence each other? In what ways have various national cinemas responded critically to Hollywood’s commercial dominance and to its conventions? How do popular and art? cinemas speak to each other. How does cinema respond to the pressures and provocations of other media at the inception of the digital age? Weekly screenings and film journals required. |
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ENGL 405-2
Donatella Stocchi-Perucchio
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The first of a sequence of two, the course approaches 'The Divine Comedy' both as a poetic masterpiece and as an encyclopedia of medieval culture. Through a close textual analysis of 'Inferno,' and the first half of 'Purgatorio,' students learn how to approach Dantes poetry as a vehicle for thought, an instrument of self-discovery, and a way to understand and affect the historical reality. They also gain a perspective on the Biblical, Christian, and Classical traditions as they intersect with the multiple levels of Dantes concern, ranging from literature to history, from politics to government, from philosophy to theology. A visual component, including illustrations of the 'Comedy' and multiple artworks pertinent to the narrative, complements the course. Class format includes lectures, discussion, and a weekly recitation session. Intensive class participation is encouraged. Dante I can be taken independently from Dante II. No prerequisites. Freshmen are welcome. Part of the Dante Humanities Cluster. |
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ENGL 455-1
Danielle Genevro
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This course surveys the history of cinema from its emergence in the mid-1890s to the transition to sound in the late 1920s. We will examine the cinema as a set of aesthetic, social, technological, national, cultural and industrial practices as they were exercised and developed during this 30-year span. We will explore the diverse forms cinema took and functions it performed during this period by looking closely at a range of films and writings about films and film culture. We will also examine contexts within which these films were produced and experienced as well as theorizations of cinema that emerged concurrently with them. The course thus introduces students to the study of film history as well as a key national and international trends in making and thinking about cinema as it rose to prominence as a vital component of the art and culture of the twentieth century. Previous coursework in film is recommended, though not required; please contact the professor if this will be your first experience studying film in an academic setting. |
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| Monday, Wednesday, and Friday | |
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ENGL 571-1
Matt Bayne; Kate Soules
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Restriction: Instructor's permission required |
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| Tuesday | |
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ENGL 476-1
Jennifer Grotz
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Prerequisites; English 122 or equivalent; instructor permission. Students are to submit 3-5 typed poems to jennifer.grotz@rochester.edu to obtain permission to register. |
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ENGL 538-1
John Michael
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Recent critical work has called into question the saliency of national traditions and the efficacy of conventional periodization in literary studies. This shift in critical focus from the nation to the globe has implications for the field of American literature and the rationale for literary studies more generally. In this seminar we will consider reevaluations of the always evolving canon of nineteenth-century American literature in light of our increased awareness of globalization’s long history. Does rereading writers once considered “pure products of America,” like Cooper, Child, Emerson, Melville, Poe, Whitman, Hawthorne, Douglass, Delaney, Thoreau, Stowe, Dickinson, Twain, James and others, in contexts that traverse the once heavily policed borders of the U.S.A., change the meaning and implications of their work? What is the purpose of studying any national literature when the concept of the nation itself seems increasingly questionable? We will read representative works by selected canonical “American” authors as well as recent critical reevaluations of the field by Robert Levine, Wai Chee Dimock, Lisa Lowe, Edward Said, Paul Gilroy, Paul Giles, John Guillory and others. |
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ENGL 478-1
Joanna Scott
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Read short stories by contemporary writers along with fiction by the students in the workshop, and discuss ways writers can sharpen the conversation between text and reader. Also consider editing and reviewing techniques. Students expected to write and revise at least three original stories or three sections of a longer work of fiction. |
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| Tuesday and Thursday | |
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ENGL 403-1
Steven Rozenski
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What did drama look and feel like in the Middle Ages? How much can we know about performances that took place well over 600 years ago? We have two main goals ahead of us in this course: to read the major extant works of drama in Middle English, and to stage a medieval play. Along the way, we will discuss the texts themselves, the manuscript history of the surviving plays, their performance history, their relation to drama on the Continent, the religious opposition to them, sixteenth-century attempts to de-Catholicize them, their ultimate suppression after the Reformation, and their revival in twentieth-century England and North America. |
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ENGL 421-1
Supritha Rajan
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British literature of the Victorian period (1830-1900), including prose, drama, and poetry. This topics course can be repeated (2 times) for additional credit as long as the special topic (section title) is different. Please see public notes for specific section titles and course descriptions. |
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ENGL 400-1
Sarah Higley
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English is a banquet of words. And language is political. How do changes in English represent and affect culture? Inflicted by invasions and adaptations it remained English. Brought to Britain by Germanic tribes in the 5th century, it was matured by violent and peaceful contact with other peoples and ideas. Few other languages are so accepting of neologism, so humongous in vocabulary, so malleable of construction. We’ll peruse texts from Old, Middle and Modern English and watch it grow from a Teutonic tongue to the powerful, ductile, and eclectic instrument it is today, spreading to other continents, colonizing and absorbing. We’ll peruse linguistic Angst and jouissance by King Alfred, Aelfric, Robert of Gloucester, Chaucer, Caxton, Mulcaster, Shakespeare, Swift, Johnson, Webster, Orwell and others who praise or blame our shifty English, or who MANIPULATE it?. We’ll grok urban dialects, vernaculars, slang, texting, gender. Is it “based on” or “based off of”? “lie” or “lay”? What’s the deal with register? Vernacular vs. high-falutin’ “academic” English? Are you down with this? Grads welcome! |
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ENGL 440-1
David Bleich
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Varying topics in the theoretical and historical study of literary analysis and its methods. |
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ENGL 406-01
Steven Rozenski
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Varying topics relating to the literature and culture of the Middle Ages. |
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ENGL 449-1
Supritha Rajan
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Varying topics relating to writings by women and the representation of gender from a variety of periods and cultures. Please see public notes for specific section titles and course descriptions. This topics course can be repeated (3 times) for additional credit as long as the special topic (section title) is different. |
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ENGL 434-01
Robert Doran
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Studies the history of “aesthetic” thought—namely the philosophical reflection on the concepts of beauty, taste, and sublimity, on our affective response to art and nature, and on the role of art and the artist in society—from Plato to Nietzsche, with particular emphasis on how aesthetics relates to questions of epistemology, anthropology, ethics, ontology, and politics. The concepts of mimesis and the sublime will be given special attention. Authors studied include Plato, Aristotle, Horace, Longinus, Boileau, Batteux, Burke, Hume, Rousseau, Kant, Nietzsche. Conducted in English. |
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| Wednesday | |
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ENGL 437-01
Erik Larsen
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Throughout much of modern medical and cultural history, bodily difference has been categorized as disability—as a problematic deviation from standards of normalcy and health. This legacy has been fiercely debated and contested in recent years, with much disagreement about the category’s usefulness in medical contexts and beyond. This course will explore different perspectives on disability through works of modern culture, and primarily through literature, television, and film. We will investigate the traditional medical model of disability, and explore what changing understandings of disability mean for the future of healthcare and the relationship between healthcare providers and patients. The course is writing-intensive, and requires students to share and workshop their papers with peers. |
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ENGL 487-4
Stella Wang
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This course will introduce students to the theoretical backgrounds, practical challenges, and creative activity of literary translation. We will consider varied descriptions by translators of what it is they believe they are doing and what they hope to accomplish by doing it; and we will study specific translations into English from a variety of sources to investigate the strategies and choices translators make and the implication of those choices for our developing sense of what kinds of texts translations are. Finally, students will undertake a translation project of their own. By the end of this class each student should have a working knowledge of both the theory and the craft of literary translation. |
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ENGL 553-1
Joel Burges
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This course traces the career of contemporary Marxism through its most well-known proponent of the last fifty years: Fredric Jameson. In light of Jameson’s recent passing, we have a chance to evaluate his legacy vis-a-vis what Marxists have been doing for the past half century, especially in the study of aesthetics, economics, and politics. While Jameson’s expansive body of work will provide the backbone of the course, we will always pair him with historical and contemporary figures who analyze the work of culture from a materialist standpoint. In so doing, students will engage not only with Jameson’s many lines of thought but also with thinkers who are both parallel and perpendicular to him. Echoing his own efforts in Marxism and Form, Late Marxism, and The Years of Theory, the course hopes to model the intellectual complexity of any theoretical tradition, its most famous representatives, and the paradigmatic texts to which they are sometimes reduced. We will resist such reductions ourselves to see what is gained and lost by positing any thinker as “representative” of a field of thought. Our goal will thus not be to lionize Jameson but, rather, to tussle with his influence on contemporary Marxism such that we unpack its antinomies, assumptions, and antagonisms as they pertain to the interpretation of culture. |
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| Thursday | |
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ENGL 534-1
Matthew Omelsky
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This is a course, fundamentally, about relationality as it 1) materializes in culture, politics, aesthetics, and historical experience and 2) constitutes the fields of black studies and indigenous studies. In these fields, relationality not only involves acknowledging difference and incommensurability, but it also calls for belonging, solidarity, and, crucially for us, speculation. Our seminar will examine how 20th and 21st century artists and scholars imagine and theorize relationality from a speculative vantage point, envisioning “otherwise worlds” in the face of empire, (settler) colonialism, and white supremacy. We’ll aim to speculate collectively as well, producing knowledge together and always working on the assumption that no one enters the room with the complete tools to make sense of the full scope of what speculation means and enables in black and indigenous studies. In the process, we’ll move capaciously across North America, the Caribbean, Africa, and Oceania, spanning multimedia installation, fiction, poetry, music, film, and writing by artists like Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Octavia Butler, Mati Diop, Grace Dillon, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Lisa Reihana, Sofia Samatar, Miryam Charles, and Canisia Lubrin, and theorists and critics such as Saidiya Hartman, Kathryn Walkiewicz, Jayna Brown, Mark Rifkin, Ian Baucom, Keguro Macharia, Edouard Glissant, Tiffany King, Joseph Pierce, and Hugo Ka Canham. |
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| Friday | |