University of St. Thomas

4 Credit Hours

Travel writing has a long history. It was one of the most popular genres during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when people found it much harder than today to get around (passengers on sailing vessels usually made out their wills before they left!). Yet it remains a steady crowd-pleaser even now because it reminds us that the world is a place full of wonders and that life can be enriched by the experience of other cultures and climes. There is a dark side to travel too, though, as economies that depend on tourism sometimes create hardship for the people who actually live in those countries. This course hopes to examine both the bright side and dark sides of travel. Readings may include excerpts from early travel writing and letters, E.M. Forster's A ROOM WITH A VIEW (Italy), Willy Russell's SHIRLEY VALENTINE (Greece), Frances Mayes's UNDER A TUSCAN SUN (Italy), David Hwang's M. BUTTERFLY (China), and Jamaica Kincaid's A SMALL PLACE (Antigua). The writing load for this course is a minimum of 15 pages of formal revised writing. Prerequisite: ENGL 121.

4 Credit Hours

Travel writing has a long history. It was one of the most popular genres during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when people found it much harder than today to get around (passengers on sailing vessels usually made out their wills before they left!). Yet it remains a steady crowd-pleaser even now because it reminds us that the world is a place full of wonders and that life can be enriched by the experience of other cultures and climes. There is a dark side to travel too, though, as economies that depend on tourism sometimes create hardship for the people who actually live in those countries. This course hopes to examine both the bright side and dark sides of travel. Readings may include excerpts from early travel writing and letters, E.M. Forster's A ROOM WITH A VIEW (Italy), Willy Russell's SHIRLEY VALENTINE (Greece), Frances Mayes's UNDER A TUSCAN SUN (Italy), David Hwang's M. BUTTERFLY (China), and Jamaica Kincaid's A SMALL PLACE (Antigua). The writing load for this course is a minimum of 15 pages of formal revised writing. Prerequisite: ENGL 121.

4 Credit Hours

This course will focus on the history of literature by women. It will concentrate on the traditions in Britain and America, but also will include some attention to non-Western women writers. It will address issues of canon formation, as well as the role of gender in the composition and reading of literary texts. This course fulfills the Human Diversity requirement in the core curriculum. Prerequisites: ENGL 201, 202, 203, or 204

4 Credit Hours

This course will focus on the history of literature by women. It will concentrate on the traditions in Britain and America, but also will include some attention to non-Western women writers. It will address issues of canon formation, as well as the role of gender in the composition and reading of literary texts. This course fulfills the Human Diversity requirement in the core curriculum. Prerequisites: ENGL 201, 202, 203, or 204

4 Credit Hours

Students will read and write about literary texts critically and closely. The course emphasizes recursive reading and writing processes that encourage students to discover, explain, question and clarify ideas. To this end, students will study a variety of genres as well as terms and concepts helpful to close analysis of those genres. They will practice various forms of writing for specific audiences and purposes. Students will reflect on and develop critical awareness of their own strengths and weaknesses as readers and writers. The writing load for this course is a minimum of 12 pages of formal revised writing.

4 Credit Hours

Students will read and write about literary texts critically and closely. The course emphasizes recursive reading and writing processes that encourage students to discover, explain, question and clarify ideas. To this end, students will study a variety of genres as well as terms and concepts helpful to close analysis of those genres. They will practice various forms of writing for specific audiences and purposes. Students will reflect on and develop critical awareness of their own strengths and weaknesses as readers and writers. The writing load for this course is a minimum of 12 pages of formal revised writing.

3 Credit Hours

American schoolteacher Rachel Mordecai Lazarus and Anglo-Irish writer Maria Edgeworth maintained an avid transatlantic correspondence from 1815 until Lazarus's death in 1838. Along with letters, each woman sent packages across the sea to bring delight to the far-away friend. Preserved plants and insects, samples of needlework, and books made up many of these mailings. Of all the presents, the latest novel from abroad seemed to bring the greatest pleasure. British books had always flooded the American market; British authors were eager to obtain an international readership, while enterprising American publishers knew that English texts would bring ready, paying customers in the States. Although it was commonplace for British reviewers like the 1818 BRITISH CRITIC to insist that "The Americans have no national literature, and no learned men," the United States was, by the 19th century, producing distinctively American works that were bestsellers in England. Eve Taylor Bannet and Susan Manning argue that "Americans conceived of the works they wrote in America as participating in English literature, even as they declared the particularity of their experiences...The political independence of the American colonies was not so much a severing of ties as the renegotiation of a relationship." Bannet and Manning refer to this relationship, the interplay and influence of British and American writers upon each other, as a "transatlantic dialogue." This "transatlantic dialogue" will will be the subject of our course as we study the "conversation" between British and American counterparts such as William Godwin and Charles Brockden Brown, Maria Edgeworth and Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper, William Wordsworth and Walt Whitman, Nathaniel Hawthorne and George Eliot. This course satisfies the pre-1900 American literature distribution requirement.

3 Credit Hours

American schoolteacher Rachel Mordecai Lazarus and Anglo-Irish writer Maria Edgeworth maintained an avid transatlantic correspondence from 1815 until Lazarus's death in 1838. Along with letters, each woman sent packages across the sea to bring delight to the far-away friend. Preserved plants and insects, samples of needlework, and books made up many of these mailings. Of all the presents, the latest novel from abroad seemed to bring the greatest pleasure. British books had always flooded the American market; British authors were eager to obtain an international readership, while enterprising American publishers knew that English texts would bring ready, paying customers in the States. Although it was commonplace for British reviewers like the 1818 BRITISH CRITIC to insist that "The Americans have no national literature, and no learned men," the United States was, by the 19th century, producing distinctively American works that were bestsellers in England. Eve Taylor Bannet and Susan Manning argue that "Americans conceived of the works they wrote in America as participating in English literature, even as they declared the particularity of their experiences...The political independence of the American colonies was not so much a severing of ties as the renegotiation of a relationship." Bannet and Manning refer to this relationship, the interplay and influence of British and American writers upon each other, as a "transatlantic dialogue." This "transatlantic dialogue" will will be the subject of our course as we study the "conversation" between British and American counterparts such as William Godwin and Charles Brockden Brown, Maria Edgeworth and Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper, William Wordsworth and Walt Whitman, Nathaniel Hawthorne and George Eliot. This course satisfies the pre-1900 American literature distribution requirement.