Department of English, New York University
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Course Offerings (GSAS Bulletin)


Except for creative writing courses, which have different restrictions, courses are offered on three levels, as indicated by their course number. The 1000-level courses (1000-1999) are introductory graduate courses open to M.A. and Ph.D. students and to upper-level undergraduates with permission of the instructor; 1000-level courses serve as introductions to periods, genres, or theoretical approaches. The 2000-level courses (2000-2999) are open to M.A. and Ph.D. students. The 3000-level courses (3100-3999) are doctoral seminars open to Ph.D. students only. Enrollment in writing workshops is limited to 12 students.

CREATIVE WRITING WORKSHOPS

Workshop in Poetry I, II
G39.1910, 1911  Prerequisite: admission to the Creative Writing Program. Breytenbach, Komunyakaa, Olds, Rohrer, Simic, visiting faculty. 4 points per term.
Discussion of students’ own work. Students are expected to bring in a new poem each week. They may be asked to memorize several great poems of their choosing. Regularly scheduled conferences with the instructor.

Workshop in Fiction I, II
G39.1920, 1921  Prerequisite: admission to the Creative Writing Program. Breytenbach, Safran Foer, Strauss, Wachtel, visiting faculty. 4 points per term.
Regular submission and discussion and analysis of student work in one or more fictional modes (short story, short novel, novel), with examination of relevant readings illustrating point of view, plot, setting, characterization, dialogue, and aspects of style. Regularly scheduled conferences with the instructor.

CRAFT COURSES

These courses are restricted to creative writing students.

The Craft of Poetry
G39.1950  Carson, Komunyakaa, Rohrer, visiting faculty. 4 points.
Poetry from the point of view of the writer. Discussion of ways of producing rhythm in language; formal and free verse; metaphor; the humanizing conventions; syntax; the line; revision; and so on. Students may be asked to memorize poems.

The Craft of Fiction
G39.1960  Breytenbach, Doctorow, Safran Foer, Strauss, visiting faculty. 4 points.
Study and analysis of major examples of the novel, novella, and short story to disclose the technical choices confronted by their authors. Consideration of theme and its formulation; choice of protagonists and minor characters; techniques of characterization; point of view; reflexivity and the author’s relation to his or her material; structure of the narrative; deployment of symbol and image clusters; and questions of rhythm, style, tone, and atmosphere. Complemented by the study of critical works.

PROSEMINAR

Proseminar
G41.2080  Required for and restricted to first-year Ph.D. students. Augst, Poovey, Rust. 4 points.
Introduction to the aims and methods of doctoral work in the institutional context of the literary profession.

LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS

Introductory Old English
G41.1060  Hoover, Momma. 4 points.
Study of the language, literature, and culture of the Anglo-Saxons from about AD 500-1066. Oral readings of the original texts and a survey of basic grammar. Representative prose selections are read, but emphasis is on the brilliant short poems—“Caedmon’s Hymn,” “The Battle of Maldon,” “The Seafarer,” “The Wanderer,” and “The Dream of the Rood”—that prepare the reader for the epic Beowulf.

Introductory Middle English
G41.1061  Carruthers, Dinshaw, Rust. 4 points.
Study of representative prose and verse texts from 1100 to 1500, read in the original dialects, with emphasis on the continuity of literary traditions and creative innovation.

Development of the English Language
G41.2044  Hoover, Momma. 4 points.
History of the English language from its beginnings in the fifth century to the present, with special emphasis on the Indo-European origins of English; Old and Middle English; internal developments in phonology, morphology, syntax, and vocabulary; and the rise of a standard dialect.

The Structure of Modern English
G41.2045  Hoover. 4 points.
Introduction to the linguistic study of the English language, with special emphasis on phonetics, syntax, semantics, language acquisition, and the linguistic study of style.

Topics in the English Language
G41.2072  Carruthers, Hoover, Momma. 4 points.
Varied content, approaches, and organization. Possible topics include, among others, linguistic approaches to literature, philology and literary history, speech-act theory/pragmatics and the study of literature, Standard English and the idea of correctness, and dialect and literature.

RHETORIC AND COMPOSITION

Practicum: Composition Theory
G41.2046  Required for teachers in the Expository Writing Program. Staff. 4 points.
Study of the current research on the composing process and its implications for classroom teaching. Considers all aspects of the writing process from prewriting through final product. Participants may be observed in a classroom setting.

The History of Rhetoric
G41.2048  Carruthers. 4 points.
Survey of representative Western arguments about the nature of discourse, from Plato to Erasmus. Topics include epistemological, ethical, and literary values and the questions of the power, authority, and purposes of language.

LITERATURE

The Literature of Modern Ireland I, II
G41.1083, 1084  Identical to G58.1083, 1084. 4 points.

Topics in Irish Literature
G41.1085  Identical to G58.1085. 4 points.

The Bible as Literature
G41.1115  Identical to G90.2115. Feldman. 4 points.

Shakespeare
G41.1345  Archer, Gilman, Newman. 4 points per term.
Shakespeare’s major comedies, histories, and tragedies.

World Literature in English
G41.1764  Sandhu, Young. 4 points.
Literature that emerged with the breakup of the British Empire, with representative works from India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.

Topics in Performance
G41.1770  Chaudhuri, Harries. 4 points.
Various topics in the history and theory of performance, including animality, spectatorship, mass culture, and others.

Introductory Topics in the History of the Production of Knowledge
G41.1800  Poovey. 4 points.

Introduction to American Fiction, 1900-1945
G41.1841  Harper, Hendin, McHenry. 4 points.

Introductory Topics in Literary Theory
G41.1957  Freedgood, Guillory, Harper, Haverkamp, Hoover, Meisel. 4 points.

Studies in Prose Genres
G41.2062  Hamlin, Poovey, Ross. 4 points.

Topics in Early Modern Culture
G41.2155  Newman. 4 points.

Paleography and Codicology
G41.2200  Rust. 4 points.
A survey of Latin scripts of the European Middle Ages and Renaissance (500-1550) and of methods and materials of medieval book production.

Chaucer I, II
G41.2266, 2267  Carruthers, Dinshaw, Rust. 4 points per term.
First term: reading and discussion of the text of Canterbury Tales. Second term: Troilus and other works.

Topics in Medieval Literature I, II
G41.2270, 2271  Carruthers, Dinshaw, Momma, Rust. 4 points per term.

Topics in Renaissance Literature
G41.2323  Archer, Fleming, Gilman, Guillory, Newman, Wofford. 4 points.

Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama
G41.2333  Archer, Gilman, Guillory, Newman. 4 points.
Marlowe, Jonson, Kyd, Marston, Tourneur, Webster, Middleton, Rowley, Ford, Chapman.

The Age of Donne
G41.2414  Gilman. 4 points.
The poetry of Donne, Herbert, Jonson, and selected minor poets; the prose of Hooker, Donne, Bacon, Browne, and Burton.

Milton
G41.2430  Gilman, Guillory. 4 points.
The poems of Milton, with emphasis on the major works Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes, together with selected readings in Milton’s prose.

Restoration and Early 18th-Century Literature
G41.2521  Siskin, Starr. 4 points.
The major works of Dryden, Swift, and Pope, together with the works of such contemporaries as Bunyan, Butler, Rochester, Marvell, Behn, Astell, Addison, and Steele.

Topics in 18th-Century Literature I, II
G41.2540, 2541  Siskin, Starr. 4 points per term.

The Romantic Movement I, II
G41.2620, 2621  Lockridge, Siskin. 4 points per term.
First term: prose and poetry of Blake, Wordsworth, and Coleridge, with romantic prose. Second term: prose and poetry of Byron, Shelley, and Keats, with romantic prose.

Topics in Romanticism
G41.2626  Lockridge, McLane, Siskin, Ziter. 4 points per term.
Topics in political, philosophical, and critical approaches to romanticism.

Topics in Victorian Literature
G41.2650  Freedgood, Levine, Maynard, Poovey, Spear. 4 points.

Victorian Studies
G41.2661  Freedgood, Levine, Maynard, Poovey, Spear. 4 points.
Victorian poetry, fiction, and nonfiction prose in cultural context.

The Victorian Novel
G41.2662  Freedgood, Levine, Maynard, Poovey, Spear. 4 points.
Novels selected from those of Dickens, Thackeray, the Brontës, Mrs. Gaskell, Trollope, George Eliot, Meredith, Hardy, Samuel Butler, and Gissing.

The Literature of the Transition
G41.2700  Maynard, Meisel, Spear. 4 points per term.
The emergence of modern British literature from the 1800s to the 1920s.

Topics in the Literature of the Transition
G41.2710  Haverkamp. 4 points.

Modern British Novel
G41.2720  Deer, Meisel. 4 points.
The problem of modernism in English prose fiction from Pater to Joyce and Woolf.

Contemporary British Novel
G41.2721  Deer, Sandhu. 4 points.
Topics include pulp; fictions and documents of the permanent war culture; popular music; graphic, avant-garde, children’s, and postcolonial narrative and film. Readings include Beckett, Burgess, Sillitoe, Spark, Lessing, Rushdie, Amis, Ishiguro, Alan Moore, Ballard, Dyer, Sinclair, and Welsh.

Early American Literature
G41.2802  Baker, Waterman. 4 points.
American literature, 1607-1800, in its cultural setting. Topics include the literature of exploration and promotion; American Puritan poetry and prose; writing in the early South and the middle colonies; rise of the epic, the novel, and the theatre during the American Revolution, with related study of music and painting of the period; the beginning of American romanticism.

Topics in Transatlantic Literature
G41.2805  Baker, McLane, Nicholls, Waterman. 4 points.

American Literature: 1800-1865 I, II
G41.2810, 2811  Baker, Waterman. 4 points per term.
First term: Brown, Irving, Cooper, Poe, Emerson, Douglass, and Thoreau. Second term: Hawthorne, Melville, and Whitman.

American Literature: 1865-1900
G41.2820  Baker, Crain, McHenry, Patell. 4 points.
The poetry and fiction of the post-Civil War era, including Dickinson, De Forest, Howells, Twain, Garland, James, Crane, Frederic, Chopin, and Norris.

Colloquium in American Civilization
G41.2834  Patell. 4 points.

Topics in American Literature I, II
G41.2838, 2839  Baker, Crain, Harper, Hendin, McHenry, Patell, Parikh, Waterman. 4 points per term.
Studies in major authors and themes.

American Fiction: 1900-1945
G41.2841  Hendin, McHenry, Patell. 4 points.
Readings in 20th-century American fiction and nonfiction prose, with emphasis on the theory of fictional genres, literary innovation, stylistic experimentation, and recurrent themes in the modern novel; Dreiser, Wharton, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, Dos Passos, Cather, Steinbeck, Lewis, and Wolfe.

American Fiction 1945-Present
G41.2843  Harper, McHenry, Patell. 4 points.
Examines works of prose fiction produced in the United States since the end of World War II in 1945.

Henry James: Major Works
G41.2861  Crain, Hendin. 4 points.
In-depth study of the major works of Henry James, emphasizing his treatment of the American scene, the aesthetic and moral impact of Europe on the American character, and his changing literary, formal, and psychological preoccupations.

Topics in Postcolonial Literature
G41.2900  Gajarawala, Sunder Rajan, Watson, Young. 4 points.
Intermediate-level study of literary and theoretical works pertaining to the eras of decolonization and globalization.

Topics in Postcolonial Theory
G41.2901  Gajarawala, Sunder Rajan, Watson, Young. 4 points.
Introduces M.A. and Ph.D. students to advanced study of postcolonial theory, its forms of philosophical and cultural analysis, and its theoretical advances and difficulties.

Literature and Philosophy
G41.2912  Haverkamp, Lockridge. 4 points.
Mutual influence of “literary” and philosophical texts; philosophical and rhetorical terminology; poetics, politics, and law; poetics, aesthetics, and hermeneutics; critique, criticism, and deconstruction; theories of fiction and memory.

Literature and Psychology
G41.2913  Fleming, Haverkamp, Meisel. 4 points.
Examination of the common ground of literature and psychology in the light of modern psychoanalytic theory.

Topics in Literature and Politics
G41.2916  Deer, Donoghue, Sandhu. 4 points.
Studies in the interaction of literature and modern culture.

Topics in Modern Literature and Culture
G41.2917  Deer, Donoghue, Sandhu. 4 points.
Topics may include the formal properties of literary modernism, its social and political contexts, or particular modernist authors.

Modern British and American Poetry
G41.2924  Donoghue. 4 points.
Studies in major poets, with emphasis on the intrinsic character of poems; Hardy, Hopkins, Yeats, Pound, Stevens, Williams, Eliot, Crane, Auden, Thomas, Lowell, and Hughes.

Contemporary Poetry
G41.2927  Shaw. 4 points.
Approaches to the work of contemporary poets. Context varies yearly.

Modern Drama
G41.2930  Chaudhuri, Harries, Ziter. 4 points per term.
Representational drama of Scribe, Hauptmann, Ibsen, Strindberg, Gorki, Chekhov, Wilde, Shaw, O’Casey, O’Neill, Williams, Miller, Albee, and Osborne; nonrepresentational drama of Büchner, Strindberg, Kaiser, O’Neill, Jarry, Apollinaire, Ibsen, Yeats, Eliot, Brecht, Pirandello, Artaud, Genet, Ionesco, Beckett, and Pinter.

The Politics of Culture
G41.2934  Parikh. 4 points.
This course considers human rights discourses as an interpretive framework for literary and cultural production, emphasizing perspectives from postcolonial and critical American studies.

The Social Life of Paper
G41.2944  Gitelman. 4 points.
Considers the history, production, circulation, and use of paper in the social production of knowledge, the shared imagination of value, and the mutual relations of consumers and commodities.

Poetic Structure and Genres
G41.2952  4 points.
Part one: a survey of the classical genres, e.g., epic, pastoral, elegy, and satire; their decline in the 18th century; and, in their place, the rise of the modern lyric. Part two: an examination of the structure of poetic texts, with special attention to their representation of cognitive states and processes.

Major Texts in Critical Theory
G41.2953  Haverkamp, Lockridge. 4 points.
Major texts in critical theory from Plato to the present century are examined in order to raise fundamental questions concerning the origins, nature, and uses of literature.

Contemporary Criticism
G41.2954  Gilman, Harper, Meisel. 4 points.
Comparative examination of major schools of contemporary criticism, American and European, describing the variety of critical perspectives and how they are interrelated.

Topics in Criticism I, II
G41.2955, 2956  Donoghue, Harper, Haverkamp, Maynard, Meisel. 4 points per term.
Application, exemplification, and reception of literary theory; history of criticism and theory. Critical configurations like the division of the public sphere and private space.

Topics in Literary Theory I, II
G41.2957, 2958  Freedgood, Guillory, Harper, Haverkamp, Meisel. 4 points per term.
Content varies.

Rhetoric and Deconstruction
G41.2964  Haverkamp. 4 points.
Continuity/discontinuity of rhetoric and poetics with deconstruction as criticism. First- and second-degree deconstruction. Theory of metaphor and tropes; allegories of reading.

Survey of Critical Theory I, II
G41.2965, 2966  Identical to G29.2500, 2501. 4 points per term.

History of the Book
G41.2970  Augst, Crain, McDowell, McHenry, Siskin. 4 points.

Introduction to Advanced Literary Study for M.A. Students
G41.2980  Required for the M.A. degree. Archer, Chaudhuri, Freedgood, Harries, Maynard, Rust. 3 points.
An introduction to major methodological and theoretical approaches to literature and culture through the close reading and contextualization of select literary works.


RESEARCH

Guided Research
G39.3001, 3002, 3003, 3004  Prerequisite: permission of the director of graduate studies. 1-4 points per term.


DOCTORAL SEMINARS

Ordinarily open only to Ph.D. students. Open to exceptionally qualified M.A. students only with permission of the instructor. Admission for all students ordinarily requires prior work in the field. Work in the course is geared to the writing of a potentially publishable research paper. With the approval of the instructor and the director of graduate studies, seminars offered in other departments might in some cases count as doctoral seminars.

Topics in Medieval Literature
G41.3269  Carruthers, Dinshaw, Rust. 4 points per term.

Topics in Renaissance Literature I, II
G41.3323, 3324  Archer, Gilman, Guillory, Newman. 4 points per term.

Topics in 18th-Century English Literature
G41.3536  Siskin, Starr. 4 points per term.

Topics in Romantic Literature I, II
G41.3626, 3627  Lockridge, Siskin. 4 points per term.

Topics in Literary Theory
G41.3629  Haverkamp. 4 points.

Topics in Victorian Literature
G41.3650  Freedgood, Maynard, Poovey, Spear. 4 points per term.

Topics in British Fiction from 1890 to the Present
G41.3720  Deer, Meisel. 4 points.

Topics in Irish Literature
G41.3730  Donoghue. 4 points.

Topics in Early American Literature
G41.3802  Waterman. 4 points.

Topics in American Literature: 1800-1865
G41.3810  Waterman. 4 points per term.

Topics in American Literature: 1865-1900
G41.3820  Baker, McHenry, Patell. 4 points.

Topics in American Literature Since 1900 I, II
G41.3840, 3841  Harper, Hendin, McHenry, Parikh, Patell. 4 points per term.

Topics in Postcolonial Literature
G41.3900  Gajarawala, Sunder Rajan, Watson, Young. 4 points.
Advanced study of literary and theoretical works pertaining to the eras of decolonization and globalization.

Topics in the History of Rhetoric
G41.3918  Carruthers. 4 points.

Topics in Criticism I, II
G41.3920, 3921  Haverkamp, Maynard, Meisel. 4 points per term.

Topics in British and American Literature
G41.3926  Donoghue. 4 points per term.

History of the Book
G41.3940  Augst, Crain, McDowell, McHenry, Siskin. 4 points per term.

Topics in Criticism I, II
G41.3957  Haverkamp, Patell, Poovey, Starr. 4 points per term.

Topics in the History of the Production of Knowledge
G41.3951  Poovey, Siskin. 4 points.

Archival Practices and Politics
G41.3975  Augst, McHenry. 4 points per term.


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