"English" is a little word for lots of things. Is it literature you want today, or creative writing? film? theater? journalism? debate? Maximum English introduces you to all these areas and to our unique resources for studying and enjoying them—the full range of "English" here at UR. So you'll learn the fundamentals of reading and viewing from the department's own creative writers, its literary and film critics and historians, and its theater directors. You'll enlarge the experience of reading literature and criticism by listening to writers read their own original work and then discussing it with them. You'll experience plays not only as written scripts but as living theatrical events by attending performances and talking to actors, directors, and designers about what they do to bring a play to the stage. You'll encounter works in different media, from the live human voice to printed books, from the stage to film and electronic hypermedia. Maximum English will launch you into real English—the new expanded version. Applicable English Clusters: Modern and Contemporary Literature; Novels; Plays, Playwrights, and Theater; Poems, Poetry, and Poetics.
This course will introduce you to the full range of Shakespeare's plays, including his comedies, tragedies, histories, and romances. We will pay attention to both dramatic language and historical context in order to read and analyze the plays with as much comprehension and pleasure as possible. Course requirements: attendance, two exams, and two five-page papers.
This course immerses students in the most challenging, influential, and engaging writings from the earlier periods of English literature. Our aim will be to enjoy and understand these writings in themselves, and then to see their relation to each other and to their larger historical context. Students should leave the course with some real affection for particular writings, and some assured sense of the contours and highlights of cultural history. Our emphasis will be on the careful appreciation of language and texture in representative texts and authors (including Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Donne, Jonson, Milton, Dryden, Swift, Pope and their contemporaries). Class will proceed by lecture and discussion. Applicable English Cluster: Great Books, Great Authors.
This course is a survey of American literature from the colonial period to the present. It begins with early narratives of discovery and settlement, and stretches to include contemporary poetry and novels. Our aim will be to consider how literature and print have shaped America's struggles over democracy, race, gender, and religion. We will consider a wide range of authors, including Mary Rowlandson, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Robert Frost, and Toni Morrison. Alongside our discussion of literature, will also discuss the many forms of media that have shaped the American literary tradition, including sermons, songs, performances, and popular ballads.
This course surveys African-American literature of a variety of genres—poetry, drama, autobiography, fiction, and non-fiction essays—from the 18th century to the 21st. The course interprets this tradition not only as the production of American writers of African descent, but also as a set of works that display formal characteristics associated with black cultural traditions. Discussion topics include the meanings of race, the construction of black identity, and intra-racial differences of class, gender, and sexuality. Special attention will be paid to approaching literary texts from a variety of critical perspectives.
As an introduction to the art of film, this course will present the concepts of film form, film aesthetics, and film style, while remaining attentive to the various ways in which cinema also involves an interaction with audiences and larger social structures. Applicable English Cluster: Media, Culture, and Communication.
This class provides an introduction to the writing of poetry and fiction. Students will experiment with different poetic and literary forms, and will engage in writing exercises to develop and refine their use of images, characters, and descriptive language. We will begin by studying the basic components of poetry and the short story. The course will conclude with a workshop in which every student will present material to be reviewed by the entire class.
This class will be structured as a writing workshop, with students sharing their own fiction and participating in critiques. We will read and discuss stories from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by influential writers, including Poe, Melville, Chekhov, Flaubert, Dinesen, Faulkner, Baldwin, Angela Carter, and Welty. Students will have the chance to experiment with different styles and structures as they learn about literary invention. We'll consider techniques for shaping fictional characters and the related issue of point of view, the possibilities of narrative design, the role of setting and description, and the process of revision. Permission of instructor required. Applicable English Clusters: Creative Writing; Novels.
Conducted in a workshop format, this course will introduce the young poet to the art of reading as a writer (both his or her work as well as the work of others) and the application of such discoveries into one’s poetry. Essential elements of poetic craft will be explored and practiced through weekly reading and writing assignments. Permission of instructor required. Please submit 3-5 poems to the instructor, preferably before the first class, since space is limited. Applicable English Clusters: Poems, Poetry, and Poetics; Creative Writing.
A course devoted to the understanding and execution of dramatic writing that is unique to the theatre. Students will analyze and discuss selected readings while writing an original one-act play to be completed by the end of the semester. Meets during one half of the semester only. Contact the Theatre Program at 275-4959 for details. Applicable English Cluster: Creative Writing.
Reporting and Writing the News introduces the student to journalistic writing and reporting techniques. Through a variety of classroom exercises, seven major writing assignments and a term paper, students learn to prepare accurate, balanced, complete coverage of a news topic. Students progress from single-source interviewing to news profiles, speech coverage, meetings, more complex formats, and finally, news analysis. Additional writing experience is gained through rewriting assignments, as directed by detailed editing comment. From lecture, textbooks, reading daily and periodical newspapers, the students learn to identify newsworthy topics and to develop appropriate interview techniques to produce clear, objective reports under specific deadlines. Applicable English Cluster: Media, Culture, and Communication.
Reporting and Writing the News introduces the student to journalistic writing and reporting techniques. Through a variety of classroom exercises, seven major writing assignments and a term paper, students learn to prepare accurate, balanced, complete coverage of a news topic. Students progress from single-source interviewing to news profiles, speech coverage, meetings, more complex formats, and finally, news analysis. Additional writing experience is gained through rewriting assignments, as directed by detailed editing comment. From lecture, textbooks, reading daily and periodical newspapers, the students learn to identify newsworthy topics and to develop appropriate interview techniques to produce clear, objective reports under specific deadlines. Applicable English Cluster: Media, Culture, and Communication.
Basic public speaking is the focus of this course. Emphasis is placed on researching speeches, using appropriate language and delivery, and listening critically to oral presentations. ENG 134 contains two quizzes, a final exam, and four speeches to be given by the student. The speeches include a tribute, persuasive, explanatory, and problem-solving address. Applicable English Cluster: Media, Culture, and Communication.
The purpose of this course is to give students an appreciation for and knowledge of critical thinking and reasoned decision-making through argumentation. Students will research both sides of a topic, write argument briefs, and participate in formal and informal debates. Students will also be exposed to the major paradigms used in judging debates. Applicable English Cluster: Media, Culture, and Communication.
The purpose of this course is to give students an appreciation for and knowledge of critical thinking and reasoned decision-making through argumentation. Students will research both sides of a topic, write argument briefs, and participate in formal and informal debates. Students will also be exposed to the major paradigms used in judging debates. Applicable English Cluster: Media, Culture, and Communication.
See FMS 161 for description.
An introduction to technical theater and theater technology: its materials, techniques, and equipment. Focuses on the principles and practice of set construction; the nature and use of electricity; lighting and sound equipment; tools; production organization and management; and the importance of safety in all areas. Course will include both lecture and significant hands-on experience. Practical laboratory work in association with the productions of the International Theatre Program is included.
An introductory/intermediate course on the materials, techniques and equipment involved in sound and lighting as used in theatrical applications. Focuses on the principals and practices of implementation and design. Safety practices will be taught. Course will include lecture, one-on-one tutorials, and hands-on practical laboratory work in association with a production of the International Theatre Program.
Students must register for the lab when registering for the course, Acting Techniques.
Acting Techniques focuses on the student's ability to analyze texts from a performer's viewpoint, on heightening the actor's sensitivity to language, on developing the actor's physical and vocal technique, on building awareness of character and characterization, and on engaging and actively developing creativity and imagination. This is done by constant investigation, rehearsal, and presentation of assorted texts ranging from poetry to contemporary and classical scenes and monologues. No prior acting experience or classwork is required.
Voice and Movement for the Actor aims at helping all students (irrespective of their degree—or lack—of actor training or theatrical experience) explore the full range and expressiveness of their speaking voice, and expand their capabilities for expressive movement. The course explores the relationship between text and vocal expression, and provides the student with a descriptive system for understanding movement and meaning. Students analyze their own movement profiles as performers, creating characters through clear movement choices, and learning how to embody these characters fully in voice and physicality.
Students taking Directing are also required to register for Directing Lab.
This is an introductory course focusing on directing for the theater. The class will guide students through the directing process: from textual interpretation and production conceptualization, through staging and visualization, to working with actors. Please note: students taking Directing are also required to register for Directing Lab.
"To men I shall speak wisdom where none speak a word on earth; though sons of land-dwellers now eagerly seek after my tracks, I sometimes hide my path from everyone." Riddle 94 of the Exeter Book. In following the dark tracks of the Old English writers who left their almost unrecognizable English words on tenth-century vellum, we will have to acquire skills and tools. This course will ask you to learn the Old English language, but translations will also be provided for most of the texts as a guide only. With these in hand, we will explore the dark world of Anglo-Saxon writing for its illuminations, but our emphasis will be on loss, love, hardship, riddle, wisdom, and the spiritual and magical powers of writing in a culture that stood on the cusp of orality and literacy. Texts: King Alfred, The Chronicles, Aelfric's "Preface to Genesis," "The Wanderer," The Seafarer," "The Wife's Lament," "Wulf and Eadwacer," "Gnomes," "Enigmas," "The Battle of Maldon." Applicable English Cluster: Medieval Studies. Fulfills the pre-1800 requirement for the major.
Medieval Drama is essentially a course in religious comedy - bawdy, pious, threatening, salvific comedy. The course begins with a brief look at Christian liturgical drama, then traces the origins of vernacular folk drama through the mystery cycles to the humanistic writers and Tudor drama of the 16th century. We will read two Corpus Christi cycles (the York and N-Town plays), along with excerpts from others (Chester and Towneley, particularly the Wakefield master), three saints and conversion plays, a couple of morality plays, some examples of humanistic drama, and conclude with Marlowe's Dr. Faustus and/or Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus. We will examine the plays in terms of their stagecraft, their message and performative values, their comic genius, and their cultural significance. Some attention will be devoted to iconography and parallels of representation within the plays and other literary and fine arts. We will make a day trip to Toronto later in the semester to see a couple of productions at the Center for Medieval Studies. Texts: David Bevington, Medieval Drama; Clifford Davidson, York Corpus Christi Plays; Douglas Sugarno, The N-Town Plays; Richard Emmerson, Approaches to Teaching Medieval Engish Drama; Russell Peck, Heroic Women from the Old Testament in Middle English Verse; Saint Bonaventura, The Mind's Journey to God; and the Middle English Pearl. Applicable English Clusters: Medieval Studies; Plays, Playwrights, and Theater. May be used to fulfill the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.
See IT 220 for description.
The course will explore the full range of Shakespeare's theater, including history plays, comedy, tragedy, and romance. We will be approaching the plays from many angles, looking at their extravagant language, the movement and structure of their plots, their invention of complex, conflicted human psyches, their self-conscious theatricality, as well as their ways of joining together play and earnest, tragic and comic tonalties. Weíll be probing the plays' fascination with madness and delusion, their use of ghosts, witchcraft, and magic, and their penetrating explorations of human history and politics. Lectures will consider Shakespeare both in his own time and in ours, in order to understand why his work still speaks to us so powerfully, why modern writers and directors often cannot get Shakespeare out of their heads. The reading list will include Romeo and Juliet, Richard II, Twelfth Night, The Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Coriolanus, Antony and Cleopatra, and The Winter's Tale. Course Work: two shorter and one longer essay and a final examination. Also fulfills pre-1800 requirement for the English major. Applicable English Clusters: Great Books, Great Authors; Plays, Playwrights, and Theater.
This course surveys the emergence of American literary culture, with a special emphasis on the relationship between print and other forms of media. We will consider a broad range of American writing from this period, from the jeremiads of English Puritan reformers to the literature of the American revolution. Our literary readings will range from sermons and captivity narratives to canonical classics like Franklin's Autobiography, yet along the way, we will also consider a wide range of media, from epitaphs, broadsides, and songs to more ephemeral forms of communication like rumors and gossip, natural soundscapes, and animal noises. Topics of discussion will include oral culture, magic and sorcery, cross-cultural interaction, and political revolution.
This course examines the problem of possession, romantic and economic, in the nineteenth-century British novel. What is the connection between marriage and romance with other forms of possession such as land, money, or things, in the nineteenth-century British novel? In addressing this question, we will discuss how narrative devices and genres like the marriage-plot or national tale offer vehicles for novelists such as Walter Scott, Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot to explore the linkages between romance, sexuality, property, and capitalism. Other key topics for the class will include (but not be limited to) nationalism, the woman question and the problem of separate spheres, changes in class structure, and British imperialism. Applicable English Cluster: Novels.
From orphans and the working poor to prostitutes and “homosexuals,” Victorian literature is filled with representations of individuals who were either marginalized within or neglected by British middle-class society. This course examines novels, prose, and poetry from the Victorian period that depicted such individuals and, in the process, engaged contemporary political debates on sexuality, education, women’s rights, and industrialism (to name a few). The course will explore how Victorians saw their own society as something that needed to be “formed” or “reformed,” both through governmental social reforms and by reshaping individual moral character. Authors to be studied include Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, John Ruskin, Matthew Arnold, Oscar Wilde, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, and Alfred Lord Tennyson.
The course covers the period roughly between World War I and World War II, dealing with the rich creativity we associate with Modernism. We will read and discuss such writers as Eliot, Faulkner, Hemingway, Dos Passos, Steinbeck, etc., studying not only the works but some of the major trends in art, culture, and knowledge that make the modern period so important and exciting. The method will be a combination of close reading, lecture, and discussion with (probably) one short paper and one longish paper. Not open to freshmen. Applicable English Clusters: American and African American Studies; Modern and Contemporary Literature.
In this class we will read widely in the writings by these three crucial figures in American nineteenth-century literature. We will relate their work to their cultural and historical moment, and also consider how they become founding figures both in an American literary and poetic tradition and also in the transatlantic development of modernism.
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, Tennessee Williams, Bertolt Brecht, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Edward Albee, David Mamet, Caryl Churchill, August Wilson, Sam Shepard, Paula Vogel, Suzan-Lori Parks, Yasmina Reza.
“All of the new thinking is about loss. / In this it resembles all the old thinking,” opens a poem by the contemporary poet Robert Hass. This course will explore American poetry written after 1945, beginning with what the critic M. L. Rosenthal coined “Confessional” poetry and proceeding to other movements such as the New York School, the Beats, and Black Mountain. Some of the questions we will consider include: how does contemporary poetry respond to Modernism? How does contemporary poetry borrow elements from both music and visual arts? What is contemporary poetry about? What makes a book of poems and how should one read a poem? Rather than use an anthology, we will read individual collections of poems supplemented by secondary material I will provide. Poets we will study are likely to include: Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, John Berryman, Randall Jarrell, Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery, Allen Ginsberg, Philip Levine, Yusef Komunyakaa, Louise Gluck, and Tony Hoagland.
This course will study the major discourses of contemporary literary and cultural theory, including Marxism, psychoanalysis, deconstruction, gender and race studies, queer theory, new historicism, post-colonial criticism, and cultural studies. The goal will be not only to become conversant in these discourses, but also to explore a number of them in great depth. Course requirements: attendance and three five-page papers.
What is an author? This course begins with the premise that the answer to this question is anything but self- evident. How does the literary ideal of the author as solitary genius—as sole creator of a unique, original work of art—correspond to the actual practices of ordinary writers? And, for that matter, how does it correspond to the actual practice of even the great authors (Shakespeare, for example) it purportedly describes? Was such an ideal ever anything but a myth? What role do editors play in the practice of authorship? When does an editor count as a co-author? How do market factors and modes of publication affect what and how an author writes? How has our understanding of authorship changed in a world of virtual authors and virtual texts? How do we make sense of the journalistic scandals (involving authors, editors, and sources) that seem to have become so prevalent today? What happens when readers become authors, as in zines? For some time now, debates have raged, in both the academy and the popular media, about the nature and practice of authorship. Looking at examples drawn from both literature and journalism, this class will examine a number of sites of these debates: collaborative authorship; ghost writing; editorial theory and practice; forgeries and hoaxes; plagiarism; cult or celebrity authorship; pulp fiction, best-sellerdom, and popular authorship; authorial practices in media other than print (film, electronic and digital media, etc.); vanity presses and on-demand publishing; copyright law; readership and reception. Students will have the opportunity to do original research and pursue case studies of their own choosing.
This course uses literature to analyze social behavior and discursive practice, specifically processes of inclusion and exclusion. How communities are constructed, around what signs and sets of practices, and the role that exclusion plays in defining a community are topics we will explore. What does it mean to belong? To be excluded? And just how stable are these categories? Literature from a variety of traditions, historical periods, and genres will provide examples, case histories, and a vocabulary with which such social and discursive phenomena can be discussed. Texts include Beowulf, John Gardner's Grendel, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Seamus Heaney's The Cure at Troy, Amin Maalouf's In the Name of Identity, Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Peter Shaffer's Equus, Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, Richard Wright's Black Boy, and more.
Beginning with a discussion of what race can signify, this course will examine representations of racialized subjects in nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature. We will focus on the relationship between racial constructions and the development of a national identity through a broad collection of works including novels, memoirs, essays, films and documents issued by the U.S. government. Students will explore the nature of racialized identity, the possibilities of passing and hybridity, definitions of citizenship, the relationship between class and race, opposing constructions of whiteness and blackness and the "browning" of America. We will conclude the course by expanding our discussion of race to include other forms of social difference, including those of language, culture, religious practice, education and generational values to understand how race operates beyond simplistic designations of color.
English 252: Theater in England will be conducted in London from Tuesday, December 29, 2009, through Saturday, January 9, 2010. Students should arrive in London no later than the evening of December 28. They may return on Sunday, January 10. We will see approximately 18 plays. We will not know what the full spate for-the coming year will be until next November, but you can be certain that we will be seeing the best of what's available in the world's theater Mecca. Last year we saw Patrick Stewart and David Tennant in Hamlet, Derek Jacobi in Twelfth Night, Michael Gambon and David Bradley in No Man's Land, Ralph Fiennes and Clare Higgins in Oedipus, and such award winning productions as August: Osage County, Nick Stafford's War Horse, and La Cage aux Folies. We saw several world premieres such as David Hare's Gethsemane, Marina Carr's The Cordelia Dream, Zorro, the Musical, and Emma Rice's Don John, along with brilliant productions of Sondheim's A Little Night Music, T.S.Eliot's rarely performed Family Reunion, Neil LaBute's In a Dark Dark House, and Stephen Daldry's Billy Elliot. Many in the group sat with the choir at Westminster Abbey to hear the Collegiate Singers perform Tomas Luis de Victoria's Missa 0 magnum mysterium. I have no reason to believe that this coming year will be any less rich than this past season. You can go online to see what we have done in the previous seventeen years. One thing for sure: We will see a terrific lot of theater and get to know London like an old friend. There will be ample time to visit such museums as the National Gallery, the old and new Tate Galleries, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Museum, the Royal Academy of Art, the Courtauld Institute, the London Museum, the Museum of Natural History, and historical sites like the Tower, Dickens' House, Parliament, and the Inns of Court. You can witness the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, explore Covent Garden, Camden Town, the antique shops of lslington or Portobello Market, and go to Harrods. And you will be able to sample the atmosphere of many a historic pub, like the Sherlock Holmes. You might also want to hear evensong at St. Paul's Cathedral and/or Westminster Abbey and attend free lunchtime concerts at St. Martin-in-the-Fields. We will stay at the Harlingford Hotel, 61-63 Cartwright Gardens, a couple of blocks from the British Museum and the new British Library. The course is restricted to 23 students and carries four credits. The fee will be $2500.00, which includes tickets to all plays and housing. Students must obtain passports and make their own travel arrangements to and from London. If you wish to see what students have seen on previous years go the Web site for the course where you can investigate various aspects of the seminar—syllabuses from 1992 to the present, student journals, information about the Harlingford Hotel, in Bloomsbury, where we always stay, the London Theatre scene in general. You may obtain the application form from the English Department or Professor Peck. You need permission of the instructor to register. See Professor Russell Peck (phone 275-0110 or 473-7354).
This course will explore the developments in world cinema—industrial, technological, social, and political—in the second half of the sound period (1959 to the present). What brought about the collapse of the Hollywood studio system? What's new about the French New Wave? What do we mean by "Third Cinema"? How do different national cinemas influence each other? Requirements: mandatory weekly screenings, participation in class discussions, weekly film journals, and three take-home exams.
The course will deal with a selection of films directed (and some also written) by the highly regarded contemporary director, Martin Scorsese. We will proceed in roughly chronological order, examining the growth and development of his career, his characteristic manner and matter, his successes and failures. We will also discuss the concept of the auteur as it applies to his work. Applicable English cluster: Media, Culture, and Communication.
The course examines diasporic Chinese cinemas from the People's Republic of China (PRC), the Republic of China on Taiwan (ROC), Hong Kong (HK), and perhaps even the U.S. and Canada, from the 1960s to the present. We will pay special attention to the migrations of individuals (actors, actresses, directors, cinematographers, and others) and to texts (the films and in some cases television programs). We will cover a wide variety of genres, including epic, martial arts, action, thriller, comedy, and drama. The majority of our films are in Mandarin Chinese and all are subtitled in English. Some experience with film studies, especially world cinema, and Chinese history will be helpful but not required. Outside screenings of films are required. Applicable English cluster: Media, Culture, and Communication. Not open to students who took ENG 267, Topics in Media Studies: Chinese Cinemas, in fall 2004.
Recently the large-scale dissemination of erotic and pornographic literature and film has begun to affect the majority of the population in the West. There are two main issues in the course: 1) the history of the changing genres of erotica and the social changes taking place because of its wide dissemination; and 2) the proposition that if societies were different little harm and much good would come from the inclusion of erotica in people's reading and viewing habits: erotic materials, by removing sex from the realm of the forbidden and viewing it as a species of everyday life, can contribute to the education of both sexes and people of all sexual tastes and preferences. Readings in the course will concentrate on classical, early modern, enlightenment, and contemporary erotica, with attention to the contemporary debates about pornography begun by the activism of MacKinnon and Dworkin. Of particular interest in this critique is the claim that erotic materials encourage the practice of violence against women and children, and help to promote a culture dependent on the use of force and violence. The course reviews the current debate on pornography and sexually explicit language as a context for viewing the history of the more familiar erotic materials from classical times, to the Renaissance and 18th century, to D.H.Lawrence, and Erica Jong. Film showings Thursday evenings 7-10.
This course investigates technical theater beyond the realms of ENG 170 (Technical Theater). It focuses on work related to the scenic design and technical production of the semester's Theatre Program productions. Working in small seminars and one-on-one tutorials, the instructor will assist students in learning more in the chosen technical areas and about problem-solving scenic and technical questions raised by the set(s) being built. Course work will consist of supervisory responsibilities, one major and several smaller research projects.
This new workshop will offer students a chance to write creatively in the genres of fiction and creative nonfiction. As we explore the murky border that separates the two, we'll be looking for qualities that are shared by both genres, and we'll examine the ways their defining differences are reshaped in inventive prose. In particular, we'll focus on the imaginative representation of real places in fiction, travel literature, and autobiography. The reading list will include a diverse group of writers, including Thoreau, Barry Lopez, Bruce Chatwin, James Joyce, Isak Dinesen, Italo Calvino, and Annie Dillard.
Advanced creative writing workshop in poetry. Work by various contemporary poets will provide the framework for explorations into technique and poetic narrative. Students' poems will be discussed weekly. Students will be expected to do extensive reading and research on their own and to keep a poetic journal. Assignments will be given, but there is a lot of latitude for students who wish to design a poetic project or work on a series. Permission of instructor is required (submit 3-5 typed poems, preferably before the first class). Applicable English Cluster: Creative Writing.
Presidential Rhetoric, taught by former presidential speechwriter Curt Smith, helps students critically examine the public rhetoric and themes of the modern American presidency. Particular attention will be given to the symbolic nature of the office, focusing on the ability of 20th-century presidents to communicate via a variety of forums, including the press conference, inaugural and acceptance speeches, political speech, and prime-time television address. Smith will draw on many of his experiences in Washington and with ESPN/ABC Television to link the most powerful office in the world and today's dominant medium. Applicable English Cluster: Media, Culture, and Communication.
Each student in Plays in Production participates fully in the exciting behind-the-scenes world of theatrical production. Students build sets, create and make props and costumes, hang and rig lighting and sound equipment, and create and distribute publicity materials for the plays currently in production in Todd Theatre. The class comprises a once-weekly lecture and a series of practical labs. This 4.0-credit course meets for the entire semester. Applicable English Cluster: Plays, Playwrights, and Theater.
Plays in Performance is a class made up of actors, assistant directors and stage managers working on the current production in Todd Theatre. Actors are cast after auditioning at the beginning of each semester. Students wishing to stage manage should approach the director of the production either at the time of auditions or before the beginning of the play's rehearsal process. Although there is no written component for this course (the performance of the play constitutes a final "exam"), a significant time commitment is required of actors and stage managers, both on weekday nights and over weekends. This class meets during the first half of the semester. Permission of instructor required. Applicable English Cluster: Plays, Playwrights, and Theater.
Plays in Performance is a class made up of actors and stage managers working on the current production in Todd Theatre. Actors are cast after auditioning at the beginning of each semester. Students wishing to stage manage should approach the director of the production either at the time of auditions or before the beginning of the play's rehearsal process. Although there is no written component for this course (the performance of the play constitutes a final "exam"), a significant time commitment is required of actors and stage managers, both on weekday nights and over weekends. This class meets during the first half of the semester. Permission of instructor required. Applicable English Cluster: Plays, Playwrights, and Theater.
Students in Stage Management I and/or II (fall/spring) will get an in-depth introduction to and immersion in stage managing a theatrical production. In addition to class work covering all areas of management skills, safety procedures, technical knowledge and paperwork, students will be expected to serve as an assistant stage manager or production stage manager on one (or both) Theatre Program productions in their registered semester.
1.0 credit/Pass-Fail. This class is a lab tutorial for actors cast in productions in Todd Theatre. Working one-on-one with an acting and voice coach, students tackle specific technical challenges raised by their involvement in the specific theatrical work in production.
1.0 credit/Pass-Fail. This class is a lab tutorial for actors cast in productions in Todd Theatre. Working one-on-one with an acting and voice coach, students tackle specific technical challenges raised by their involvement in the specific theatrical work in production.
This is an independently designed course, focusing on specific theater or theater-related projects, and demanding significant skill application or acquisition, independent and self-motivated research, including advanced written work, if appropriate. Topics may include elements of theater related to production, management, and/or design.
RESEARCH SEMINAR. This course will investigate the powers of American media to appropriate, "improve," and export the celebrity of the legendary outlaw hero Robin Hood. We will concentrate our attention on the half century that rendered the outlaw All-American (1875 to 1925), looking at children’s books (Twain’s Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Pyle’s Adventures of Robin Hood), stage musicals (de Koven’s Robin Hood, 1891, the most familiar musical in America through WW II), and silent cinema (focusing on the landmark blockbuster Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood, 1922). A major highlight of the course will be students’ participation in the Seventh International Congress on Robin Hood Studies, a spectacular event to be held at the UR in late October. As a research seminar, the course will try to model and encourage the production of "new" knowledge. This will take in not only work in archives at the George Eastman House and on campus, but also original, individual projects that will make each student an expert on some aspect of Robin Hood. Moreover, students will be asked to produce and share their expertise through digital media, and instruction and practice in digital Humanities will be an integral part of the course. In this way, the course experience itself will represent a kind of new knowledge, to which all members will make significant contributions. No pre-requisites; non-majors welcome. See complete description at http://www.rochester.edu/registrar/. Note: Students in ENG 380 may elect to enroll for an additional two credits of directed research work in a Humanities Research Lab course (ENG 381).
RESEARCH SEMINAR. This seminar stipulates the following issues as underlying problems of Western civilization: pederasty, slavery, censorship, heresy, witch-hunting, androcentrism and misogyny, violence against children, and war. It studies literary treatments of these issues as well as some nonliterary texts. Emphasis is on how literature (and our responses to it) dealing with these problems reaches forms of understanding that are distinct from what is given by critical and historical accounts. The seminar addresses how the different problems overlap and continue in contemporary societies. We will ask how they are rationalized and treated as normal or as strange aberrations, though rarely as practices that constitute civilization. The seminar proceeds in two phases. The first part, of seven or eight weeks, articulates the themes. Modern readings come from Virginia Woolf's Three Guineas, Kafka, Morrison, Ibsen, Dostoevsky, and Freud's commentaries on the problems of civilization. Classical readings will likely include: Plato's Symposium and Republic, Aristotle's biology, Aristophanes' Lysistrata, Sophocles' Oedipus Rex. The second part of the course asks members to present research proposals related to one or more of the stipulated problems. Readings and discussions in this part of the course are determined by the students' research projects.
RESEARCH SEMINAR. This course examines major critical issues surrounding the horror genre, through close study of Classical Hollywood, post-Classical, and international horror films, and readings in critical theory. Issues to be explored include boundary transgression and bodily abjection in the construction of the horror monster; gender, pregnancy, and the "monstrous feminine"; social Otherness (race, class, sexuality) as monstrosity; the figure of the serial killer and the shift from classic to modern horror; the grotesque and the blending of comedy and horror in the zombie film; international horror (especially Japan) and cross-cultural influences with Hollywood. As a research seminar, the course will involve the development of a substantial research project.
The rehearsal of remembered tales, the recollection of past loves, battles, voyages, dreams, and even other poems—these things have always been part of Western literary tradition. The muses are after all, mythically speaking, the daughters of Memory. Elegy, the poetic memorializing of the dead, has long been a central genre, and both epic poetry and romance often focus on the evocation of long past events. But the centrality of personal memory to poetry and fiction, and the probing of its vexed workings, is a peculiar aspect of modern literature—literature after Romanticism, that is. Here entire poems, short and long, are built around the struggles between what Elizabeth Bishop calls “life, and the memory of it.” The workings of memory and imagination are seen as more complexly implicated in each other; they tell us about our life in time, personal and collective. For some writers, the self’s exploring the field of memory becomes simply the definition of literature itself. One important facet of this change involves probing memories of childhood; it is a probing of personal and cultural origins, measuring old powers that are lost or that survive. Here Romantic and post-Romantic writers have helped to transform our ideas of childhood itself, along with our ideas of time and innocence. They have also transformed our ideas of landscape, our ways of describing the physical places so often bound up with memory. In modern literature, the issue of memory is also inevitably bound up with the problem of forgetting, with the fact of past events or memories being made opaque, or getting buried. Hence so many literary texts that offer themselves as strange mixtures of what is remembered and what forgotten. In such cases, as important as the agency of recollection may be a sense of some active process of forgetting—including what Sigmund Freud called “repression.” The seminar will focus on a group of poets for whom the matter of memory is central, including, among others, William Wordsworth, Thomas Hardy, Wallace Stevens, and Elizabeth Bishop. We will also be looking at descriptions of memory in other authors, including Marcel Proust, Vladimir Nabokov, and James Merrill, for example, as well as descriptions of memory in work by Sigmund Freud and Oliver Sacks, as well as recent work on traumatic memory. Admission into this course is reserved for senior English majors who have been admitted into the English Honors Program.
