A historical overview of Black literary expression from the 19th century to present day. Will emphasize a critical and analytical approach to considering the social, cultural, and political dimensions of African American literature.
Topics in African American Literature
Professor/Instructor
African American Autobiography
Professor/Instructor
Highlights the autobiographical tradition of African Americans from the antebellum period to the present as symbolic representations of African American material, social, and intellectual history and as narrative quests of self-development. Students will be introduced to basic methods of literary analysis and criticism, specifically focusing on cultural criticism and psychoanalytic theory on the constructed self.
New Diasporas
Professor/Instructor
Simon Eliud GikandiThis course will explore the works of contemporary authors of the African and Caribbean diaspora in Europe and North America in relation to the changing historical and cultural context of migration and globalization. The course will consider how these writers have represented the process of relocation, acculturation, and the transnational moment. What is the role of the imagination in the rethinking of identities lived across boundaries? Why and how do these authors use the term diaspora to describe their experiences? How do the works of a new generation of writers from Africa and the Caribbean transform theories of globalization?
Forms of Literature
Professor/Instructor
Lee Clark MitchellEach term course will be offered in special topics of English and American literature. One three-hour seminar.
Forms of Literature
Professor/Instructor
Susan A. StewartEach term course will be offered in special topics of English and American literature. One three-hour seminar.
Forms of Literature
Professor/Instructor
Claudia L. JohnsonEach term course will be offered in special topics of English and American literature. One three-hour seminar.
Forms of Literature
Professor/Instructor
Each term course will be offered in special topics of English and American literature. One three-hour seminar.
Topics in Poetry
Professor/Instructor
Joshua Isaac Kotin, Nigel SmithA focused view of a problem or issue in poetry, changing from year to year. Recent topics have emphasized problems of poetic language, metrics, poetry and social life, poetic influence and canonization, and the relations between poetry and other art forms. One three-hour seminar.
Topics in Drama
Professor/Instructor
Bailey Elizabeth SincoxA detailed discussion of different bodies of theatrical literature, with emphasis and choice of materials varying from year to year. The focus will be on a group of related plays falling within a specific historical period, the developing work of one playwright, or the relationships among thematics, characterization, and structure. Two lectures, one preceptorial.
Major Author(s)
Professor/Instructor
Eduardo Lujan CadavaA close study of the works of one or two authors. May include Austen, Dickinson, Wordsworth, George Eliot, Dickens, Melville, Faulkner, James, Stevens, or Woolf, among others. Two 90-minute seminars.
Major Author(s)
Professor/Instructor
A close study of the works of one or two authors. May include Austen, Dickinson, Wordsworth, George Eliot, Dickens, Melville, Faulkner, James, Stevens, or Woolf, among others. One three-hour seminar.
Major Author(s)
Professor/Instructor
Susan A. StewartA close study of the works of one or two authors. May include Austen, Dickinson, Wordsworth, George Eliot, Dickens, Melville, Faulkner, James, Stevens, or Woolf, among others. One three-hour seminar.
Major Author(s)
Professor/Instructor
Rebecca E. RainofA close study of the works of one or two authors. May include Austen, Dickinson, Wordsworth, George Eliot, Dickens, Melville, Faulkner, James, Stevens, or Woolf, among others. One three-hour seminar.
Topics in Literature and Ethics
Professor/Instructor
Simon Eliud GikandiCourses offered under this rubric will investigate ethical questions in literature. Topics will range from a critical study of the textual forms these questions take to a historical study of an issue traditionally debated by both literature and ethics (responsibility, rhetoric, justice, violence, oppression). Two lectures, one preceptorial.
Topics in Literature and Ethics
Professor/Instructor
Simon Eliud GikandiCourses offered under this rubric will investigate ethical questions in literature. Topics will range from a critical study of the textual forms these questions take to a historical study of an issue traditionally debated by both literature and ethics (responsibility, rhetoric, justice, violence, oppression). Two lectures, one preceptorial.
Topics in Postcolonial Literature
Professor/Instructor
Zahid Rafiq ChaudharyApproaches to the connections between literature and nationality, focusing either on literatures outside the Anglo-American experience or on the theoretical issues involved in articulating nationality through literature. Two 90-minute seminars.
Topics in Postcolonial Literature
Professor/Instructor
D. Vance SmithApproaches to the connections between literature and nationality, focusing either on literatures outside the Anglo-American experience or on the theoretical issues involved in articulating nationality through literature. Two lectures, one preceptorial.
The Lyric
Professor/Instructor
Sandra Lekas BermannThe lyric as a form of literary art, as distinct from narrative or drama. Readings encompass a variety of lyrical forms and a number of different cultures. Translations will be used. One lecture, one two-hour seminar.
Vladimir Nabokov
Professor/Instructor
Yuri LevingAn examination of Nabokov's major accomplishments as a Russian/American novelist in the context of the Russian literary tradition and the cultural climate of emigration. Two lectures, one preceptorial.
Topics in London
Professor/Instructor
Tamsen Olivia WolffIn conjunction with University College London, this topic course addresses a range of topics, including the role of class, gender, ethnicity, race, and sexuality in the social dynamics of London life. Students will be considering works that represent the city in terms of the longing for kinds of relation that the city promises but may withhold. We will consider London as a city of neighborhoods, a national and imperial metropolis, a postcolonial and global city. By attending to our texts in their historical contexts and in relation to one another, we will be exploring writing about London that is as restless as the city itself.
The Modern European Novel
Professor/Instructor
Maria A. DiBattistaUsing Flaubert's Madame Bovary as a paradigm of the major thematic and technical preoccupations of the novel, lectures offer detailed interpretations of Ulysses, The Magic Mountain, Swann's Way, and theoretical speculations on symbolism, stream-of-consciousness, linguistic structures, psychoanalysis. Two lectures, one preceptorial.
God, Satan, Goddesses, and Monsters: How Their Stories Play in Art, Culture, and Politics
Professor/Instructor
Elaine Hiesey PagelsThe seminar will investigate sources ranging from the Babylonian creation story and Homer's Illiad to passages from Genesis, Exodus, Job, the Hebrew prophets, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the New Testament to see how stories of invisible beings (gods, demons, angels) construct group identity (who "we" are, and who are the "others"--and what characterizes each) and express group values. One three-hour seminar.
Advanced Seminar in American Studies
Professor/Instructor
Advanced seminars bring students into spaces of collaborative exploration after pursuing their individual paths of study in American studies, Asian American/diasporic studies, and/or Latino studies. To students culminating programs of study toward one or more of the certificates offered by the Effron Center for the Study of America, advanced seminars offer the important opportunity to integrate their cumulative knowledge.
Princeton Atelier
Professor/Instructor
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Publishing Journal Articles in the Humanities and Social Sciences
Professor/Instructor
Wendy Laura BelcherIn this interdisciplinary class, students of race and gender read deeply and broadly in academic journals as a way of learning the debates in their fields and placing their scholarship in relationship to them. Students report each week on the trends in the last five years of any journal of their choice, writing up the articles' arguments and debates, while also revising a paper in relationship to those debates and preparing it for publication. This course enables students to leap forward in their scholarly writing through a better understanding of their fields and the significance of their work to them.