* ENGL 0440b / ART 0740b, Writer as Designer, Designer as Writer  Rachel Kauder Nalebuff and Andrew Walsh-Lister

This seminar invites us to explore the boundaries between written and visual expression. Students with a background or interest in visual art learn to harness their voices as writers, and writers learn tools for how words take on new meaning through visual compositions. The course investigates the relationship between form and content through the creation of three projects—an interview, a manual, and an essay—each of which is written, designed, and physically produced using a variety of tools at our disposal. Through readings, in-class discussion and exercises, as well as workshops, we consider the ways language and ideas can be communicated to others through different media, and how that media in itself also carries meaning. The aim of the course is to playfully blur the categories of “writer” and “designer” so that we can be both at once: messengers. Previously ENGL 041. Enrollment limited to first-year students. This course does not count toward the Creative Writing Concentration for English majors.  HU
TTh 11:35am-12:50pm

* ENGL 0776a / CLCV 0595a, Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire  Andrew Johnston

This course, a discussion-oriented first-year seminar, explores through close readings the 18th-century British historian Edward Gibbon's magnum opus, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, with two main sets of questions in mind: Firstly, what is Gibbon's picture of the world of the Roman Empire and the processes of historical change, how do account for it, and how accurate is it?  And secondly, what is interesting and important about Gibbon's methodology, language, and rhetoric, how do we understand these elements of his work in his own intellectual and historical context, and what is the influence of his work upon the course of historical writing? Enrollment limited to first-year students. No knowledge of Roman history is required.    WR, HU
TTh 2:35pm-3:50pm

* ENGL 0831a / FILM 0100a / HUMS 0125a, Love and Death in American Film  Moeko Fujii

How do we detect when love begins—or when it ends? This course explores film noir—perhaps the most “American” of film genres—where love is rarely safe and often fatal. Rather than celebrating the formation of the American couple, noir constructs triangles that unsettle the couple form. These complications challenge the ideal of romantic love and open the door to difference and uncertainty—an ambiguity that carries its own kind of erotic charge. Like the detectives who move through these dark worlds, we follow shifting figures such as the stranger, the femme fatale, the double, and the alien. We look at how race, gender, class, and sexuality intersect with drive and desire—who or what draws us toward finding love—and how these forces help shape ideas of both “the American” and American film itself. We study key works from classic Hollywood film alongside neo-noirs from New Hollywood and contemporary cinema that inherit and transform noir’s obsessions. Students develop skills in close film analysis and acquire a theoretical toolkit for thinking critically about cinema and desire. Enrollment limited to first-year students.  HU
T 1:30pm-3:25pm, M 7pm-10pm

* ENGL 1014a, Writing Seminars  Staff

Instruction in writing well-reasoned analyses and academic arguments, with emphasis on the importance of reading, research, and revision. Using examples of nonfiction prose from a variety of academic disciplines, individual sections focus on topics such as the city, childhood, globalization, inequality, food culture, sports, and war. Formerly ENGL 114.  WR
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* ENGL 1015a, Literature Seminars  Staff

Exploration of major themes in selected works of literature. Individual sections focus on topics such as war, justice, childhood, sex and gender, the supernatural, and the natural world. Emphasis on the development of writing skills and the analysis of fiction, poetry, drama, and nonfiction prose.  WR, HU
HTBA

* ENGL 1020a, Reading and Writing the Modern Essay  Staff

Close reading of great nonfiction prepares students to develop mastery of the craft of powerful writing in the humanities and in all fields of human endeavor, within the university and beyond. Study of some of the finest essayists in the English language, including James Baldwin, Joan Didion, Leslie Jamison, Jhumpa Lahiri, George Orwell, David Foster Wallace, and Virginia Woolf. Assignments challenge students to craft persuasive arguments from personal experience, to portray people and places, and to interpret fundamental aspects of modern culture.  WR
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* ENGL 1023a, Introduction to Creative Writing  Staff

Introduction to the writing of fiction, poetry, and drama. Development of the basic skills used to create imaginative literature. Fundamentals of craft and composition; the distinct but related techniques used in the three genres. Story, scene, and character in fiction; sound, line, image, and voice in poetry; monologue, dialogue, and action in drama.  HU
TTh 11:35am-12:50pm

* ENGL 1025a or b, Readings in English Poetry I  Staff

Introduction to the English literary tradition through close reading of select poems from the seventh through the seventeenth centuries. Emphasis on developing skills of literary interpretation and critical writing; diverse linguistic and social histories; and the many varieties of identity and authority in early literary cultures. Readings may include Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales, Middle English lyrics, The Faerie Queene, Paradise Lost, and poems by Isabella Whitney, Philip Sidney, William Shakespeare, Amelia Lanyer, John Donne, and George Herbert, among others.  WR, HU
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* ENGL 1026a, Readings in English Poetry II  Staff

Introduction to the English literary tradition through close reading of select poems from the eighteenth century through the present. Emphasis on developing skills of literary interpretation and critical writing; diverse genres and social histories; and modernity’s multiple canons and traditions. Authors may include Alexander Pope, William Wordsworth, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, Langston Hughes, Gertrude Stein, Gwendolyn Brooks, Elizabeth Bishop, and Derek Walcott, among others.  WR, HU
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* ENGL 1027a, Readings in American Literature  Staff

Introduction to the American literary tradition in a variety of poetic and narrative forms and in diverse historical contexts. Emphasis on developing skills of literary interpretation and critical writing; diverse linguistic and social histories; and the place of race, class, gender, and sexuality in American literary culture. Authors may include Phillis Wheatley, Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Frederick Douglass, Gertrude Stein, Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison, Flannery O’Connor, Allen Ginsberg, Chang-Rae Lee, and Toni Morrison, among others.  WR, HU
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* ENGL 1028a, Readings in Comparative World English Literatures  Staff

An introduction to the literary traditions of the Anglophone world in a variety of poetic and narrative forms and historical contexts. Emphasis on developing skills of literary interpretation and critical writing; diverse linguistic, cultural and racial histories; and on the politics of empire and liberation struggles. Authors may include Daniel Defoe, Mary Prince, J. M. Synge, James Joyce, C. L. R. James, Claude McKay, Jean Rhys, Yvonne Vera, Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, J. M. Coetzee, Brian Friel, Amitav Ghosh, Salman Rushdie, Alice Munro, Derek Walcott, and Patrick White, among others.  WR, HU
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* ENGL 1029a / CPLT 1680a / HUMS 1270a / TDPS 1005a, Tragedy in the European Literary Tradition  Ruth Yeazell

The genre of tragedy from its origins in ancient Greece and Rome through the European Renaissance to the present day. Themes of justice, religion, free will, family, gender, race, and dramaturgy. Works might include Aristotle's Poetics or Homer's Iliad and plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Seneca, Hrotsvitha, Shakespeare, Lope de Vega, Calderon, Racine, Büchner, Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, Wedekind, Synge, Lorca, Brecht, Beckett, Soyinka, Tarell Alvin McCraney, and Lynn Nottage. Focus on textual analysis and on developing the craft of persuasive argument through writing. Formerly ENGL 129.  WR, HU
MW 1:05pm-2:20pm

* ENGL 2011a / TDPS 3011a, Acting Shakespeare  James Bundy

Acting Shakespeare is a practical studio course based in close reading, rehearsal, and limited performance, as tools for exploring the central questions of his plays—in both form and content—from the actor’s perspective. The course focuses on the text as a source of given circumstances, actions, and a range of interpretations, with particular attention to techniques, in and out of rehearsal, that position actors to enliven their imaginations and take unique responsibility for elements of the story being told. We examine the use of language and typography as an imperfect and malleable literary road map including, but not limited to, argument, rhythm, tempo, and musicality, all of which actors may access and combine with their own craft to begin to unleash the works’ theatrical potential. Progressing from monologues and soliloquys, to scenes, and solo performance, the course also, to a limited degree, allows students to consider and deploy elements of stagecraft including properties, costumes, and music, especially in one short performance project at the end of the semester.  HU  RP
F 1:30pm-5:30pm

ENGL 2100a / CPLT 1001a / DEVN 1150a / EDST 1116a / HUMS 1150a, Purposes of College Education  Staff

College is a crucial institution in which our society works through its expectations for young people. The first half of this course explores some of the purposes that have been ascribed to college, including development of personal character, participation in a community, preparation for citizenship, and conversation with others on intellectual matters. The second half touches on the social and economic contexts of college education, including the history of the curriculum, the role of social class, the cost of higher education, and career preparation. We read Plato's Republic, a key text for the philosophy of education, in its entirety. Other readings from Aristotle, Confucius, Bhagavad-Gita, Virginia Woolf, Martin Luther King, Max Weber. Lectures are designed for interactive conversation.  Preference for first-year and sophomore students, but all students are welcome.  HU  0 Course cr
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* ENGL 2144a / CPLT 3440a / HUMS 3400a, The Detective Story: Solving Mysteries from Oedipus to Sherlock  Paul Grimstad

The course looks closely at detective stories, novels and films, with attention to the narrative structure of criminal enigma, logical investigation and denouement (whodunit, howdunit), and considers “genre” more broadly. Starting with the proto-detective story Oedipus Rex—in which tragic drama takes the form of a murder mystery—we move on to Edgar Allan Poe’s invention of the genre proper in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Purloined Letter.” From there we go to Poe’s “golden age” inheritors Arthur Conan Doyle, G.K. Chesterton, Agatha Christie, and Dorothy Sayers, as well as the adaptation of Doyle’s tales for the BBC series Sherlock. We also spend time on American “hard boiled” writers (Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon and John Huston’s 1941 film adaptation of the novel; Chester Himes' The Real Cool Killers); fiction which draws upon the conventions of detective stories without being genre fiction (Nabokov, Borges), non-fiction works which have the structure of a detective story (Freud’s “Wolf Man” case study); neo-noir film (Chinatown); works that fuse detective fiction and science-fiction (Minority Report) and recent film homage to “golden age” whodunnits (Knives Out). Students write essays making interpretive claims and using evidence from works on the syllabus, with emphasis on writing clear prose in support of an original argument.  HU
HTBA

* ENGL 2151a / FILM 2540a, Skin and Surface: Fashion and Culture  Moeko Fujii

What do we mean by fashion? This course explores the intimate relationship between film, fashion, and various modes of self-fashioning and unfashioning. By examining the sartorial—what, or whom, we wear—in literature and film, we consider the ramifications of style in discourses on race and gender. We study films, novels, and photography that focus on garments in ways that highlight the complex relationship among material histories, social fabrics, and notions of the corporeal and the human. Along the way, we unsettle the easy yet stubborn distinction between surface and interiority. From Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo to Wendell B. Harris’s Chameleon Street, Frederick Wiseman’s documentary of department stores to Lee Bul’s cyborg sculptures, this course asks: how does fashion constitute—or unravel—our notions of the self and of the world as “surface” activity?  HU
W 4pm-5:55pm

* ENGL 2411a / FILM 3990a, The Craft of Graphic Narrative  Alison Bechdel

This class explores the ways that text and sequential images work together to tell stories. This class will be a roughly equal mix of theory and practice, of reading comics with a critical eye and making your own comics. We’ll study aspects of craft like voice, structure, point of view, description, and character development, as well as comics-specific elements such as page layout, panel transitions, and the abstract-to-realistic drawing style continuum. This is a beginner-level class. You don't need to be an experienced cartoonist, but an affinity for drawing will serve you well.  RP
TTh 9am-10:15am

* ENGL 2455a / TDPS 2301a, Writing Dance  Brian Seibert

The esteemed choreographer Merce Cunningham once compared writing about dance to trying to nail Jello-O to the wall. This seminar and workshop takes on the challenge. Taught by a dance critic for the New York Times, the course uses a close reading of exemplary dance writing to introduce approaches that students then try themselves, in response to filmed dance and live performances in New York City, in the widest possible variety of genres. No previous knowledge of dance is required.  WR, HU
M 4pm-5:55pm

* ENGL 2505a / FREN 3050a, Medieval Biography  Ardis Butterfield

The sources, aims, and diversity of biographical forms in medieval literature. Analysis of the medieval world through the study of autobiography, hagiography, political martyrology, and literary biography; the challenges of viewing a historical period primarily through a single life. Includes a research trip to New York City. Recommended preparation: reading knowledge of French.  HU
MW 1:05pm-2:20pm

* ENGL 2772a / HUMS 4372a, George Eliot's Middlemarch  Ruth Yeazell

An intensive study of George Eliot’s  Middlemarch (1871-72)—a work she called a “home epic” and Virginia Woolf  declared “one of the few English novels for grown-up people.”   Our close reading of Middlemarch itself is framed by a brief selection from George Eliot’s essays and short fiction, as well as by a more extended study of some critical responses, both Victorian and modern.  HU
T 1:30pm-3:25pm

* ENGL 2802a / CPLT 2004a / HUMS 2620a, Modernism and Domesticity  Katie Trumpener

This course explores turn-of-the-century European attempts to craft modernist lives: how new ideas of women’s roles, childhood, the family, the domestic shaped modernist literature and art—even as modernist designers tried to change people’s experience of daily surroundings. Reform drama (Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov), experimental novels and memoirs (Joyce, Woolf, Andrei Bely, Proust, Walter Benjamin) stage the house as bourgeois comfort zone and psychic trap, while modernist architects and designers envisioned aestheticized or communal housing, experimental furniture design, reform fashion changing the parameters of daily experience. Children too were to be raised as modernists, sleeping in constructivist cradles, imbibing avant-garde picture books. The course examines modernist literature, New Woman novels and children’s books (Robert Louis Stevenson, A.A. Milne, Mary Poppins) in relationship to modernist design, fashion, stage sets, paintings, film, exemplary artists’ houses as designs for living---and their present-day posterity (Karl Ove Knausgård; “shelter magazines”, IKEA).   WR, HU
M 1:30pm-3:25pm

* ENGL 2826a / AMST 2246a / PLSC 2846a, The Media and Democracy  Joanne Lipman

In an era of "fake news," when the media is under attack, misinformation is at epidemic levels, and new technologies are transforming the way we consume news, how do journalists hold power to account? What is the media’s role in promoting and protecting democracy? Students explore topics including objectivity versus advocacy, and hate speech versus First Amendment speech protections. Case studies span from 19th century Yellow Journalism to the #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter movements, to the rise of AI journalism and social media “news influencers.”  SO
T 1:30pm-3:25pm

* ENGL 2846a / ER&M 3046a, Critical Reading Methods in Indigenous Literatures  Tarren Andrews

This course focuses on developing critical readings skills grounded in the embodied and place-based reading practices encouraged by Indigenous literatures. Students are expected to think critically about their reading practices and environments to consciously cultivate place-based reading strategies across a variety of genres including: fiction and non-fiction, sci-fi, poetry, comic books, criticism, theory, film, and other new media. Students are required to keep a reading journal and regularly present critical reflections on their reading process, as well as engage in group annotations of primary and secondary reading materials. This course is offered during the fall and spring term and may be taken both terms for credit. During the fall term the focus is on Indigenous literatures and new media from North America produced primarily in the 21st century. Critical readings include some historical context, both pre- and post-contact, as well as Indigenous literary theory. During the spring term, the focus becomes Indigenous literatures and games in a global context with emphasis on Indigenous land relations and ecocriticism across the 20th and 21st centuries.  WR, HU
MW 4pm-5:15pm

* ENGL 3432a / TDPS 3402a, Production Seminar: Playwriting  Deborah Margolin

A seminar and workshop in playwriting with an emphasis on exploring language and image as a vehicle for “theatricality.” Together we will use assigned readings, our own creative work, and group discussions to interrogate concepts such as “liveness,” what is “dramatic” versus “undramatic,” representation, and the uses and abuses of discomfort.
MW 4pm-5:55pm

* ENGL 3467b / EVST 3224b, Writing About The Environment  Staff

Exploration of ways in which the environment and the natural world can be channeled for literary expression. Reading and discussion of essays, reportage, and book-length works, by scientists and non-scientists alike. Students learn how to create narrative tension while also conveying complex—sometimes highly technical—information; the role of the first person in this type of writing; and where the human environment ends and the non-human one begins. Previously ENGL 418.. Admission by permission of the instructor only. Students interested in the course should email the instructor at alan.burdick@gmail.com with the following information: 1.) A few paragraphs describing your interest in taking the class. 2.) A non-academic writing sample that best represents you.  WR
T 9:25am-11:20am

* ENGL 3501b / LING 1500b, Old English  Emily Thornbury

An introduction to the language, literature, and culture of earliest England. A selection of both major and less-studied works of prose and verse, including charms, saints' lives, meditations on loss, a dream vision, and heroic verse, which are read in the original Old English. No prior knowledge of Old English is expected.  WR, HU
M 1:30pm-3:25pm

* ENGL 3577a / TDPS 2028a, Medieval Drama  Jessica Brantley

An exploration of medieval dramatic traditions in the context of other medieval and modern performative practices, including pageantry, song, spectacle, recitation, liturgy, and meditative reading. Texts include the York plays, Everyman, Mankind, the Digby Mary Magdalene, Sarah Ruhl's Passion Play, and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' Everybody.  WR, HU
TTh 1:05pm-2:20pm

ENGL 3610a, Shakespeare: Page, Stage, and Screen  Staff

A lively and wide-ranging introduction to the plays of William Shakespeare: comedies, histories, tragedies, and romances, in print, on stage, and as adapted for television, film, and other media, from the early modern period to the present. In addition to giving novices and Shakespeare buffs alike a thorough grounding in the content and contexts of the plays themselves, this course aims at developing students' abilities to analyze, interpret, and take pleasure in linguistic complexity, to think critically and creatively about the relationship between text and performance, to experiment with reading like an actor, a director, a costume designer, a queer theorist, an anti-theatrical Puritan, or a sixteenth-century playgoer, and to explore enduring issues of identity, family, sexuality, race, religion, power, ambition, violence, and desire. Lectures are complemented by weekly discussion sections, conversations with practicing theater artists, a trip to the Beinecke Rare Books Library, and opportunities to see plays in performance.  WR, HU  0 Course cr
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* ENGL 3820a / AFAM 3820a / AMST 2286a / HUMS 2410a, James Baldwin's American Scene  Staff

In-depth examination of James Baldwin's canon, tracking his work as an American artist, citizen, and witness to United States society, politics, and culture during the Cold War, the Civil Rights era, and the Black Arts Movement.  HU  0 Course cr
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* ENGL 4100a, The Senior Essay I  Feisal Mohamed and Marcel Elias

Students wishing to undertake an independent senior essay in English must submit a proposal to the DUS in the previous term; deadlines and instructions are posted at https://english.yale.edu/undergraduate/courses/independent-study-courses. For one-term senior essays, the essay itself is due in the office of the director of undergraduate studies according to the following schedule: (1) end of the fourth week of classes: five to ten pages of writing and/or an annotated bibliography; (2) end of the ninth week of classes: a rough draft of the complete essay; (3) end of the last week of classes (fall term) or end of the next-to-last week of classes (spring term): the completed essay. Consult the director of undergraduate studies regarding the schedule for submission of the yearlong senior essay.
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* ENGL 4101a, The Senior Essay II  Feisal Mohamed

Second term of the optional yearlong senior essay. Students may begin the yearlong essay in the spring term of the junior year, allowing for significant summer research, with permission of the instructor. Students must submit a proposal to the DUS in the previous term; deadlines and instructions are posted at https://english.yale.edu/undergraduate/courses/independent-study-courses. After ENGL 490.
HTBA

* ENGL 4432a / TDPS 3403a, Advanced Playwriting  Branden Jacobs-Jenkins

A seminar and workshop in advanced playwriting that furthers the development of an individual voice. Study of contemporary and classical plays to understand new and traditional forms. Students write two drafts of an original one-act play or adaptation for critique in workshop sessions. Familiarity with basic playwriting tools is assumed. Open to juniors and seniors, nonmajors as well as majors, on the basis of their work; priority to Theater Studies majors. Writing samples should be submitted to the instructor before the first class meeting. Prerequisite: TDPS 3400, TDPS 3402, or a college seminar in playwriting, or equivalent experience.  RP
M 1pm-4pm

* ENGL 4459a / EVST 4469a / MB&B 4590a, Writing about Science, Medicine, and the Environment  Carl Zimmer

Advanced non-fiction workshop in which students write about science, medicine, and the environment for a broad public audience. Students read exemplary work, ranging from newspaper articles to book excerpts, to learn how to translate complex subjects into compelling prose. Admission by permission of the instructor only. Applicants should email the instructor at carl@carlzimmer.com with the following information: 1. One or two samples of nonacademic, nonfiction writing. (No fiction or scientific papers, please.) Indicate the course or publication, if any, for which you wrote each sample. 2. A note in which you briefly describe your background (including writing experience and courses) and explain why you’d like to take the course. Formerly ENGL 459.  WR
M 1:30pm-3:25pm

* ENGL 4721a, Novel Feelings  Anastasia Eccles

This course studies the emergence of the modern novel as an event in the history of emotions. The long eighteenth-century saw the rise of the novel as we know it as well as a major intellectual shift in how the passions and emotions were conceptualized. We investigate the relationship between these developments, particularly as they converged in the cultural movement of sentimentalism. With our focus on this historical nexus, we take up broader questions about the ways that aesthetic form mediates the emotions, and the ways that emotion responds to social realities like capitalism, imperialism, secularization and patriarchy. Our focus is on those feelings that might be considered distinctively novelistic—feelings that have influentially served to theorize the novel as a genre (interest for the German romantics; desire for psychoanalytic accounts of narrative), and that novels of the period helped codify and theorize (embarrassment, sympathy, wonder, happiness, complicity). Authors include Eliza Haywood, Daniel Defoe, Laurence Sterne, Henry Mackenzie, Frances Burney, William Beckford, William Godwin, and Jane Austen.   WR, HU
F 1:30pm-3:25pm

* ENGL 4736a, Charles Dickens and George Eliot  Stefanie Markovits

Overview of the works of Charles Dickens and George Eliot through exploration of a series of paired texts that allow perspective on two different approaches to a variety of novelistic modes, including the Bildungsroman, the historical novel, and the political novel.  Prior course work on Victorian literature and on the novel is recommended.  WR, HU  RP
M 9:25am-11:20am

* ENGL 4835a / AFAM 4249a / AFST 4449a, Challenges to Realism in Contemporary African Fiction  Stephanie Newell

Introduction to experimental African novels that challenge realist and documentary modes of representation. Topics include mythology, gender subversion, politics, the city, migration, and the self. Ways of reading African and postcolonial literature through the lenses of identity, history, and nation. Formerly ENGL 449.  WR, HU
T 1:30pm-3:25pm

* ENGL 4838a / HIST 3441a / SAST 4740a, The Novel and the Nation: Reading India in Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy  Priyasha Mukhopadhyay and Rohit De

This course pairs two interconnected phenomena: the rise of the Indian Republic and the birth of the postcolonial novel. Over the course of the semester, we read a single primary text: Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy (1993). Set in the 1950s in the aftermath of India’s Independence and Partition, Seth’s encyclopaedic novel is the story of four families brought together by a mother’s search for a “suitable boy” for her daughter to marry. In the process, it builds a microcosm of an Indian society coming to terms with postcolonial statehood and weighing the aftereffects of British colonialism. Entwined in its plot about marriage, love, and relationships are some of the most urgent cultural and political concerns facing the new nation: legislative changes and land reforms, the violent aftermath of the Partition, secularism tainted by communal tensions, the disintegration of courtly forms of sociality, the reconstruction of city life, and the fate of the English novel in the postcolonial classroom. We read A Suitable Boy as literary critics and historians, pairing close readings of language and literary form with historical scholarship. Over the course of our discussions, we address the following questions: what is the relationship between the nation, the novel, and identity in the postcolonial world? How do we read narratives of “nation building” as literary and cultural constructions? What do we make of “literature” and “history” as disciplinary categories and formations? The seminar introduces students to methods of literary criticism and textual studies, and teaches them how to read a range of primary sources, from legislative debates, bureaucratic reports, newspapers, poetry, cinema, and radio.  HU
T 9:25am-11:20am