Queens Campus
ENG 236: Shakespeare II: Jacobean
Shakespeare and Imperial Britain (13664)
R. 6:55 - 8:55 p.m.
Dr. Steven Mentz
When James VI (of Scotland) and I (of England) assumed the British
throne after the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603, Shakespeare’s
professional life had already brought him to the top of the
theatrical establishment. The new king’s reign would see
Shakespeare’s company acquire royal patronage, and Shakespeare
himself became a semi-official dramatist for the court: “the King’s
playwright,” as a recent critic puts it. There are many ways
of thinking about the later Shakespeare—as tragic poet,
social pessimist, or theatrical magician—but this course will
focus on the political subtexts of the second half of his career,
which corresponds with the birth of the official mythology of
“imperial Great Britain.” We will consider historical
documents including Machiavelli’s The Prince and the political
writings of King James himself as well as modern critical writings
on Shakespeare’s politics. We will also place Shakespeare’s
and James’s versions of imperialism in dialogue with quasi-imperial
politics in the contemporary world. We will focus on overtly
political plays like Macbeth and King Lear, reconsiderations of
comic order like All’s Well that Ends Well, Measure for Measure,
and Othello (which turns a marriage comedy into a tragedy of false
infidelity), politically controversial Roman plays like Coriolanus
and Antony and Cleopatra, and nostalgic, faux-Elizabethan late
plays like The Tempest and The Winter’s Tale.
ENG 560: American Novel to 1914:
Rethinking Masculinity (13658)
T. 6:55 - 8:55 p.m.
Dr. Jennifer Travis
We take for granted the idea that white, middle-class masculinity
connotes total control of emotions, emotional inexpressivity, and
emotional isolation. As men seek their fortunes in the
competitive world of business and politics, we assume that their
capacity for emotional expression often disappears. How did
this story come into being? This course will examine through
some of our most canonical male authors how this narrative and
others have shaped the “meanings” of manhood in the
U.S. Authors may include: Poe, Melville, Hawthorne, Howells,
and James.
ENG 650: Modern Poetry
(13662)
W. 4:40 - 6:40 p.m.
Dr. John Lowney
This course is a comparative study of innovative poetry written
during the first half of the twentieth century. This period of
revolutionary, social, political, and technological change featured
a remarkable profusion of avant-garde movements in the arts, from
cubism and futurism, to imagism and vorticism, to dada and
surrealism. Examining the interaction of poetry with developments
in the other arts, especially the visual arts, the course
introduces the plurality of movements and styles that constitute
literary modernism. While the course addresses the relation of
modern poetry to various aspects of social modernity, it
concentrates most intensively on the modernist preoccupation with
gender. It emphasizes both the social construction of gendered
subjectivity and the resistance to patriarchal authority addressed
by modernist poetry. We will read lyric poetry by W.B. Yeats,
Ezra Pound, and Wallace Stevens; prose poetry by Gertrude Stein;
long collage poems by T.S. Eliot (The Waste Land), Langston Hughes
(Montage of a Dream Deferred), and H.D. (Trilogy); and lyric
sequences by William Carlos Williams (Spring and All), Mina Loy,
and Lorine Niedecker. In addition to this poetry we will read
manifestos and brief essays by these poets and some recent
scholarly essays on modern poetry.
ENG 660: African-American Literature
(13659)
High/Low in Early U.S. African-American Literature
W. 6:55 - 8:55 p.m.
Dr. Granville Ganter
This course will examine folk traditions of early African-American
literature, paying particular attention to distinctions between
high and low culture, elite and vernacular
expression. Stretching from African epic to Du Bois’s Souls of
Black Folk, this course will examine the interplay between early
U.S. black vernacular arts (such as myth, folklore, song, and
performance) and belletristic literature. What were the
artistic and literary roots of the African nations that slaves
brought to the Americas? Course readings will include the Mali
African epic, the Sundiata; the poetry of Phillis Wheatley, 19th
century plantation, stage, and spiritual songs; representative
slave narratives 1789-1850; Gullah Brer Rabbit stories and Charles
Chesnutt’s Conjure Woman; Zora Neale Hurton’s Mules and Men and
older Afro-American folktales; and novels such as Clotel and Iola
Leroy. The course will also include critical reading in
sociology and anthropology on the concept of folk; and art
criticism on the question of high and low culture.
ENG 706: Emergence of Modernism: The
Fascist Aesthetic (13661)
T. 4:40 - 6:40 p.m.
Dr. Gregory Maertz
Walter Benjamin defined fascism as “the aestheticization of
politics.” Besides inaugurating a new style of political
leadership and governance (e.g., Mussolini and Hitler), the fascist
seizure of power in Western Europe transformed all aspects of life,
from high brow and popular culture to public buildings and ordinary
household objects. Especially in Germany and Italy, fascism
left its indelible aesthetic imprint everywhere, becoming
synonymous with all things new, technologically advanced, and
“modern.” Moreover, a great many of the vehicles of popular
entertainment and popular persuasion that are the mainstays of
modern global capitalism and American cultural imperialism were
perfected during the period of fascist domination of Europe. This
course will trace the growth of the fascist and Nazi aesthetic out
of the fertile soil of Modernism and identify parallels and
continuities between the aesthetics of Modernism and fascism,
including comparisons between German Classical Modernism
(“Degenerate Art”) and Nazi art (especially in their appropriation
of archetypes and tropes from classical antiquity, the Renaissance,
and Romanticism), government-sponsored cultural programs in
Germany, Italy, the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union,
allied and axis propaganda, UFA and Hollywood film production, and
the romantic myths of national regeneration promulgated by writers
and artists in Italy, Germany, England, and Ireland. Discussion of
texts and images will be supplemented by the screening of films and
visits to important museum collections in New York City
(Metropolitan Museum, MoMa, Neue Galerie).
ENG 725: Literature and the Other
Disciplines (13657)
R. 4:40 - 6:40 p.m.
Dr. Angela Belli
This course examines the points of intersection between literature
and other disciplines. It explores the relationship of
literature with philosophy and theology; sociology, history and
political science; law; science, including medicine; and the fine
arts, including popular forms such as the Broadway
musical. Students will examine such questions as how
ideas—philosophical, theological—enter into literature; ways in
which culture becomes imprinted in literary forms; parallel
sensibilities in the artist and the scientist; the complex scheme
of dialectical relationships between the various arts—the plastic
arts, literature, and music; and the methodology of adaptation from
one form to another. The situation in a literary work, whether
it be social, political, legal, medical, etc. will be examined in
the light of the aesthetic values it engenders. The object of
the course is to study the intricate pattern of coincidences and
divergences which occur when one discipline crosses another.
ENG 751: Constructing Suburbia/Film &
Literature (13660)
M. 4:40 - 6:40 p.m.
Dr. Derek Owens
Lawns, driveways, and nuclear families. Backyard barbecues,
cocktail parties, two car garages. A controlled landscape of
cultural homogenization and class conflict. A laboratory for the
marketing and assimilation of post-World War II consumer desires. A
state of mind; a genre filled with clichés. Romanticized and
demonized, parodied and condemned, embraced and revised--suburbia
is an evolving idea, a mirror reflecting an assemblage of fears and
desires. This class will explore "the suburban" as a genre (like
"the western"). We'll look at pre-suburban landscapes (The Great
Gatsby), the rise of suburbia ("The Man Who Loved Levittown,"
magazine articles from the 1940s, 1950s, & 1960s), studies of
suburbia (Crabgrass Frontier, Picture Windows, Geography of
Nowhere, Suburban Nation), and portrayals of families, parents,
children, sexuality, race, work, crime, and monsters in film and
television (Poltergeist, Edward Scissorhands, Avalon, Blue Velvet,
Parents, A Raisin in the Sun, The Graduate, American Beauty, Serial
Mom, The Simpsons, Rugrats, The X-Files, Home Improvement, etc.).
The major project for this course will be a research portfolio in
which you document your own neighborhood (whether you live in the
city or the burbs) through essay, memoir, oral history,
photography, and, if possible, video.
Staten Island Campus
ENG 655: Contemporary Poetry
(13883)
T. 4 - 6 p.m.
Dr. Stephen Paul Miller
ENG 500: Colloquia (10321)
ENG 900: Master’s Research (10320)
ENG 901: Readings and Research (10319)
ENG 906: Internship (10318)
ENG 925: Maintaining Matriculation (MA) (10317)
ENG 930: Maintaining Matriculation (DA) (10316)
ENG 975: Doctoral Research Essay (DA) (10315)