Fall 2009

English 327 - Milton

Spring 2010

English 302 - Special Topics in Literary Study: Comparative Arts

How can literature be usefully compared to the other arts? What would be the fundamental aesthetic issues and problems that would bring them into relation? The course will introduce students to the intersections where literature and the other arts cross over. Examples will be drawn from many different historical periods. Film, music, painting, sculpture, performance art, and much else will be considered. The purpose of the course is to expose students to reading literature as an art form, as opposed to a form of political/social analysis, which is so often the approach that is taught these days.

English 364 - Studies in Literary Criticism

Given that literary criticism itself has long passed out of fashion as an enterprise that interests English professors, we will be looking at criticism in the arts more generally to get a sense of what is happening artistically in a number of fields, of which literature is a part. The idea is to give students the tools whereby to pose critical questions that are historically relevant to the present moment, which, interestingly enough, is quite difficult to sort out. That said, we will be considering alterity politics, anti-aesthetics, grunge culture, the death of isms, life as seen through the lens of Jeff Wall, and much else. How to talk about all this comprises a challenge for developing a coherent analytic.