Graduate Program

The second 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 the second half of 'Purgatorio' and the entirety of 'Paradiso,' students learn how to approach Dante's 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 Dante's 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. No prerequisites. Freshmen are welcome. Part of the Dante Humanities Cluster.

Location

(MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

Varying topics relating to Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century drama, 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.

Location

(MW 10:25AM - 11:40AM)

We will focus on American literature, especially fiction, from 1865 to 1914. We will also consider some philosophical, polemical, and popular texts from the period. We will read works by Mark Twain, W. E. B. Dubois, Henry James, Edith Wharton, Kate Chopin and others. After the cataclysm of the Civil War and the final abolition of slavery, the United States confronted new complexities and conflicts of national identity, changing gender roles, increasing stratifications of social and economic relationships and power and an increasingly interrelated global environment. Writers in this era redefined the aesthetics of realism and reconsidered the relationship of literary art to the world and artists to their audiences, They debated the potentialities of fiction to represent and influence (for good or ill) society and politics, and the nature and implications of nationalism, imperialism, and justice

Location

(MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

Varying topics relating to the literature and culture of people of African descent in the United States. Please see public notes for specific section titles and course descriptions. This topics course can be repeated (4 times) for additional credit as long as the special topic (section title) is different.

Location

(MW 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

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.

Location

(TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

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.

Location

(MW 11:50AM - 1:05PM)

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.

Location

(TR 9:40AM - 10:55AM)

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.

Location

(MW 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

This course is designed for students who have completed introductory and intermediate level courses in film and media, and are prepared to engage with more advanced readings in film theory and analysis. Subject areas will include semiotics, psychoanalysis, Marxist theory, feminist theory, queer theory, genre studies, phenomenology, cinematic realism, and theories of the avant-garde. The course will closely examine significant works of global cinema in the narrative, documentary, and experimental traditions.

Location

(W 4:50PM - 7:30PM)

This is a study-abroad course based in Florence, Italy, and dedicated to the intensive study of Creative Writing. Both interdisciplinary and international, this course will offer students the opportunity to work on their writing projects in one of the most culturally significant cities in the world. The course will combine group workshops, tutorial meetings, site visits, and walking tours through Florence and the surrounding countryside. Students will complete a portfolio in their preferred genre: fiction, creative nonfiction, playwriting, or literary translation.

Location

( 7:00PM - 7:00PM)

The origins and later developments of the chivalric romance tradition centering on the legends of King Arthur and his knights.

Location

(TR 9:40AM - 10:55AM)

Topics in the study of film. 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.

Location

(TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

This course introduces students to the methods involved in turning real objects into virtual ones using cutting edge digital imaging technology and image rendering techniques. Focusing on manuscripts, paintings, maps, and 3D artifacts, students will learn the basics of multispectral imaging, photogrammetry, and Reflectance Transformation Imaging, and spectral image processing using ENVI and Photoshop. These skills will be applied to data from the ongoing research of the Lazarus Project as well as to local cultural heritage collections.

Location

(TR 11:05AM - 12:20PM)

Restricted to Selznick Students

Location

( 7:00PM - 7:00PM)

Restricted to Selznick Students

Location

( 7:00PM - 7:00PM)

Restricted to Selznick Students

Location

( 7:00PM - 7:00PM)

This workshop is for advanced fiction writers who have completed ENG 121 or have permission from the instructor. The course emphasizes the development of each student's individual style and imagination, as well as the practical and technical concerns of a fiction writer's craft. Readings will be drawn from a wide variety of modern and contemporary writers. Students will be expected to write three original short stories as well as to revise extensively in order to explore the full range of the story's potential. Applicable English Cluster: Creative Writing.

Location

(M 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

Advanced creative writing workshop in poetry. Work by various contemporary poets will provide the framework for explorations into technique and poetic narrative.

Location

(T 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

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.

Location

(W 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

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.

Location

( 7:00PM - 7:00PM)

This course takes an ecocritical look at what the medieval world considered to be “nature” as it “framed” and was framed by humanity and its artifices. What did the word “forest” really mean, then? How was it put to use for human resources? Does the city encroach on the forest or the forest on the city? What was considered “wilderness? Our concept of nature today is different from theirs, but throughout time, nature has been viewed from an anthropocentric lens. We’ll start with the figure of the Goddess Natura as she developed into a complex idea in the twelfth century. Next, how forests were managed and misused especially in England after the Norman Conquest; then myths of the forest and its magical and dangerous properties; and finally human nature and illness, and how the natural world was used medicinally.
The books you will need to get are these: Alan de Lille, The Complaint of Nature (online at RR); Guilluame Lorris and Jean de Meun's Romance of the Rose (ed. Francis Horgan); Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (ed. Simon Armitage—facing page original), Hildgard of Bingen’s Physica (ed. Priscilla Throop), Hildegard of Bingen’s De Causae et curae (ed. Margret Berger), and Melusine: or the Noble History of Lusignan (eds. Maddox and Maddox). Additional readings on Blackboard: Selections from the Cosmography of Bernard Sylvestris; Forests: the Shadow of Civilization (Harrison); Greenery: Ecocritical Readings of Late Medieval English Literature (Rudd); and various other critical articles and medieval romances.

Location

(M 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

From Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to Alfred Lord Tennyson’s In Memoriam, nineteenth-century British writers are well-known for exploring the cutting-edge sciences of their day in their literary works. As much recent scholarship has shown, these interactions between literature and science did not rest at the level of metaphor or analogy, but profoundly shaped understandings of aesthetic experience, the imagination, and literary experiments in genre. In this course, we will read and discuss a number of canonical Romantic and Victorian writers (e.g. William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Walter Pater) in order to understand how their knowledge of sciences like geology, chemistry, astronomy, and various life sciences shaped their writings, as well as their evolving attitudes on what distinguished the literary arts from the increasingly differentiated domain of the natural sciences. The course will thus simultaneously ground students in canonical literary figures and texts of the nineteenth century and introduce them to an ongoing debate within the university on the particular status of the literary arts vis à vis the natural sciences.

Location

(R 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

This class explores the representation of sexuality, and gender in nature writing through the lens of queer theory. Drawing on a variety of disciplines, including environmental justice, feminist studies, and LGBTQIA+ movements, this class will consider how queer ecologies reveal and disrupt traditional gendered and heterosexual ideologies around nature, that are often iterated in how we understand the environment and bodies.

Location

(T 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

The yearlong practicum has two components, a practicum group, which is led by a 571 course instructor, and a mentor group, which is led by an experienced WSAP instructor. These two groups involve new instructors in a combination of small group meetings, class observations, individual meetings, and workshops designed to support and further educate new instructors. Small group meetings, classroom observations, and individual meetings offer new teachers a chance to gain different perspectives on their teaching, identify their teaching strengths, and work out solutions to teaching difficulties. The larger goal of all meetings is to encourage instructors to work with colleagues across the disciplines to create a supportive and intellectually challenging community, a community that they can call on throughout their career as educators.

Location

(M 9:00AM - 10:15AM)

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.
 

Location

( 7:00PM - 7:00PM)

topic specific training/study in film preservation work.

Location

( 7:00PM - 7:00PM)

2nd year PhD or 2nd year MA Selznick pedagogical TA training.

Location

( 7:00PM - 7:00PM)

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.

Location

( 7:00PM - 7:00PM)

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.

Location

( 7:00PM - 7:00PM)

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.

Location

( 7:00PM - 7:00PM)

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.

Location

( 7:00PM - 7:00PM)