English Course Offerings
Electives – Fall 2009
HE217 Early Western Literature (Booth, Bushnell)
HE218 The Anglo-American Tradition in Literature (Hussey)
HE260 Literature of War (Miller)
HE302 Forms of Poetry (Petersen)
HE306 Types of Fiction (Berman)
HE313 Chaucer (Hill)
HE315 Restoration / 18th Century (Mace)
HE319 Victorian (Allen-Emerson)
HE320 Contemporary British Literature (Parker)
HE329 American Literature 1914-1945 (Nolan, Nelson)
HE333 Shakespeare (Drew, Crane)
HE340 African American Literature (Fetrow)
HE343 Creative Writing (Cone, Fleming)
HE344 Professional Communication (Kyhos)
HE353 Continental (Larabee)
HE442 Literary Theory (Beckman)
Electives – Spring 2010
HE217 Early Western Literature (Hill)
HE218 The Anglo American Literature (2) (Hussey, Mace)
HE222 Bible and Literature (Miller)
HE301 Patterns of Drama (Stanlake)
HE302 Forms of Poetry (Arbuthnot)
HE306 Types of Fiction (Nelson)
HE307 Film and Literature (3)(Berman, Bushnell, Peterson)
HE314 Renaissance Mind (Gilliland)
HE317 Romantic Period (Johnston)
HE318 Modern British Literature (Booth)
HE328 American Literature 1860-1914 (McWilliams)
HE330 American Literature 1945-Present (Parker)
HE333 Shakespeare (2) (Drew, Fetrow)
HE343 Creative Writing (2) (Fleming, Loggins)
HE344 Professional Writing (2) (Miller)
HE355 Multi-Ethnic Literature (Larabee)
HE360 Tolkien and Lewis (Crane)
HE463 A Century of Irish Poetry (Cone)
HE467 Post-War American Drama (Shaffer)
HE504 Hemingway in the 21st Century (2) (Nolan)
Special Topics
Spring 2009
HE360: Korean and Korean American Literature and Culture
LCDR Christopher Crane
This course provides an introduction to literature of Korea (in
translation), both traditional and modern, and literature in
English by Korean American authors. Genres will include
traditional poetry, epic, short narrative, and novels. We will
also look at facets of traditional Korean culture and its
intersection with Western culture in the last century, with
particular attention to the fifty years since the Korean War. We
will look at how these cultures interrelate both in Korea
(mainly South Korea) and in the culture of Korean Americans in
the US. We will explore the latter by looking at the dynamics or
tensions between first-generation immigrants, their children,
and the third culture produced by the integration of Korean
culture with American culture. We will also look at some
literature and film related to the Korean War itself, including
some comparison with the U.S. involvement in the Middle East.
Finally, we will examine portrayals of Koreans in popular film
and other media.
HE461: Questions of Identity: The Literature of Ethnic Americans
Professor Nancy Arbuthnot
What does it mean to be an American? Are we a culture of the "melting pot" or a
cultural "mosaic"--or is there another metaphor that can better describe us? In
particular, how have minority Americans helped to define the American character? A rich body
of American poetry, prose, and memoir, from classical authors such as Whitman, Dreiser, and
Hughes to contemporary authors of African, Arabic, Asian, Latino, and Native American descent,
will help us explore these questions. We will also consider the narrative and linguistic
strategies: broken chronologies, the use of multiple languages, jazz and hip-hop rhythms,
merged genres, and so on. Two short essay-exams, a term paper, and a group presentation on
an ethnic American culture will be required.
HE467: Postwar American Drama
Professor Jason Shaffer
The end of the Second World War revolutionized the American theatre, bringing forth whole
new generations of artists determined to capture American life in all its diversity on the
stage, often by giving voice to previously overlooked groups of Americans. At the same time,
American playwrights began to break out of the cage of realism to produce plays that were
(and are) as boldly experimental as anything produced by the European avant garde in the
twentieth century. This course will begin with three major voices of postwar realism: Eugene
O'Neill, Arthur Miller, and Tennessee Williams. It will then trace the formal and demographic
evolution of postwar American drama by examining works by playwrights such as Edward Albee,
August Wilson, Tony Kushner, and Suzan-Lori Parks.
HE504: Faulkner and Morrison (Honors Seminar)
Professor Mark McWilliams
This honors seminar pairs novels of the two most important American fiction writers of
the twentieth century. Nobel Laureates William Faulkner and Toni Morrison view the central
questions of American culture with what critics have called an "unflinching gaze." Yet
even while addressing complex, unsettling issues of race and gender in America, even while
confronting the violence and dispossession that has too often marked our nation's history,
they also share a "redemptive gaze" that forces us, as one critic has put it, to
"confront the possibility of grace through suffering." Moving away from simple
models of literary influence, we will read Faulkner through Morrison as much as Morrison
through Faulkner to explore the human condition as presented in their novels.
Fall 2009
HE360:
Heinlein’s Universe
Professor Herb Gilliland, Jr.
Robert A. Heinlein, USNA 1929,
is recognized worldwide as one of the most important science
fiction writers ever. Heinlein not only left a substantial body
of work, but influenced many other major writers in the genre.
The course will explore the tradition of “hard” (technology
centered) science fiction in which he was a key figure, as well
as works in which the fictive technology serves more as a tool
for social hypothesis. Reading will include works by writers
like Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Joe Haldeman, Sir Arthur C.
Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Michael Flynn, Jerry Pournelle, Larry
Niven and Connie Willis, as well as such novels by Heinlein as
Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land, and
Have Space Suit, Will Travel. Class discussion and
assigned papers will explore such issues as science fiction as
social comment; the tension between science and fiction;
obsolescence of fiction; science fiction tropes; and style in
science fiction.
HE462:
Boom and Bust: Financial Crisis in American Literature
Professor Mark McWilliams
Speculation. Greed. Bubble. Crash. Liquidity crisis. Bailout. Stimulus. Sound familiar? Despite Calvin Coolidge's famous assertion that "the business of America is business,
" there are remarkably few great novels about American business. Perhaps as a result, the financial world treats each new bubble and burst as a new, unexpected event--with devastating results. In this class, we'll read the great novels of
American business, and see if we can learn something about the Great Bust of 2008. In addition to literary works, the class will read excerpts of books like Charles Mackay's 1841 Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Tho
rstein Veblen's 1899 Theory of the Leisure Class, and Gary Krist's 2002 Extravagance. We will also watch several films, naturally including Oliver Stone's 1987 Wall Street.
HE463: Jane Austen
Professor Eileen Johnston
This course focuses primarily on close readings of Jane Austen’s six completed novels (Sense and Sensibility, Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion). As relevant, their literary, biograph
ical, cultural, and historical contexts will be considered. Some attention will also be given to cinematic and television versions of Austen’s novels.
HE503: Honors Seminar: Forging the City State: Theatre and Architecture of Ancient Greece
Professor Christy Stanlake
Theatre is a medium that synthesizes all of the arts (music, painting, dance, poetry, architecture) to create communal, aesthetic experiences that reflect and shape society. The ancient Greeks understood theatre's powerful potential and so devel
oped state-sanctioned play festivals intended to move Greek citizens away from their tribal affiliations into a democracy. The plays that remain from this period form the origins of western drama. In this course, we will study archeological evidence
, including the architecture of Greek amphitheatres and their surrounding land/cityscapes, in order to read a significant number of extant Greek plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, and Menander. Critical readings about the relationship
s between religion, politics, performance, and space will then allow us to analyze how these plays contributed to the construction of a national ethos. Finally, we will end the semester with an exploration of how contemporary theatre artists continue to d
raw inspiration from Greek theatre to address today's social issues.
Spring 2010
HE360:
Tolkien and Lewis
LDCR Christopher Crane, USN
This course offers a survey of the fiction, poetry, and literary theory/criticism from the early twentieth-century British writers J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, who, along with several other Oxford University academics and writers, formed a group cal
led the Inklings in the 1930's and 40's. We will examine these works in the contexts of Tolkien's and Lewis's fields of expertise (medieval and renaissance literature), the mainstream modernist literature with which they were contemporary, and the politi
cal and cultural changes of the early twentieth century. The course will also examine their popularity with many diverse readers, their rejection by many critics, their contribution to the fantasy and science fiction genres, and some of the recent film a
daptations of their work. In addition, the course will cover the friendship between these two writers and how various facets of their works were influenced by that friendship and other members of the Inklings.
HE463: A Century of Irish Poetry
Professor Temple Cone
“We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry,” wrote W.B. Yeats. This course will consider the rich “quarrel with ourselves” that is twentieth- century
(and now twenty-first-century) Irish poetry. We will focus initially on Yeats, tracing his work from its Romantic origins to the political and modernized voice of his late poetry, with particular attention to the history of British colonialism
in Ireland, the Anglo-Irish War, and the Irish Civil War. Next, we will study three major figures of the post-war period— Austin Clarke, Patrick Kavanagh, and Louis MacNeice—looking at their efforts to break from Yeats’s unifi
ed and unifying vision of Irish history. Finally, we will read a number of recent Irish poets, including Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, and Eavan Boland, for their responses to the period known as the Troubles and for their increasingly diverse u
nderstanding of Irish identity. Our goal is to understand how, as Auden once wrote of Yeats, “Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.”
HE467: Post-War American Drama
Professor Jason Shaffer
The end of the Second World War revolutionized the American theatre, bringing forth whole new generations of artists determined to capture American life in all its diversity on the stage, often by giving voice to previously overlooked groups of Americ
ans. At the same time, American playwrights began to break out of the cage of realism to produce plays that were (and are) as boldly experimental as anything produced by the European avant garde in the twentieth century. This course will begin with
three major voices of postwar realism: Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller, and Tennessee Williams. It will then trace the formal and demographic evolution of postwar American drama by examining works by playwrights such as Edward Albee, August Wilson, T
ony Kushner, and Susan-Lori Parks.
HE504: Honors Seminar: Hemingway in the Twenty-First Century
Professor Charles Nolan
The course will examine Hemingway’s major works and themes, his considerable literary talent (with special focus on his style—its roots and impact), and his position in modern American literature. Readings will, of course, include th
e famous novels—The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Old Man and the Sea—but students will also study the short stories, including newly discovered ones, nonfiction prose, and o
ther works that comprise the Hemingway canon.
In exploring the diversity of Hemingway’s art, students will move chronologically, tracing Hemingway’s development, his changing themes, and his artistic response to social events. In addition, because it is important to understand H emingway the man and the milieu in which he lived, students will also read around in the plethora of biographies (now six, a few of them multivolume) and will explore some cultural history. Selected criticism will, of course, provide a background fo r further literary analysis.
Core Courses
All midshipmen are required to complete or validate two semesters of English during the fourth-class year: HE111 and HE112. Validation of HE111 is awarded for:
- exceptional performance on the Validation/Placement Exam that all 4th class midshipmen take soon after their arrival at the Naval Academy; or
- an Advanced Placement score of 5 on the Composition and/or Literature exam; or
- a score of 7 on the International Baccalaureate Higher Level (HL) English Exam (A1 Exam).
Students who have taken the AP or IB English exams and have earned a 5 on the AP or a 7 on the IB, must have their scores sent to the Naval Academy. Official documentation is required for validation credit. Transfer credit is not accepted for core English courses.
HE101 Practical Writing (3-0-3) The study and practice of grammatically correct and rhetorically effective expository prose, supplemented by the analysis of essays by professional writers. For students whose writing skills need reinforcement prior to taking HE111W and HE112W. Enrollment in HE101 does not necessitate summer school because the course counts as a Humanities/Social Sciences elective. [fall]
HE111 Rhetoric and Introduction to Literature I (3-0-3) The first of a two course sequence stressing the writing of rhetorically effective and grammatically correct expository prose. Readings include essays, short stories, and plays. [fall]
HE111W Rhetoric and Introduction to Literature I (3-0-3) A course similar to HE111 but for students who need more concentrated instruction in writing. Section size limited to 16 students. [fall, spring]
HE111S Rhetoric and Introduction to Literature I (3-0-3) An honors level of HE111 for students with well-developed writing skills. [fall]
HE112 Rhetoric and Introduction to Literature II (3-0-3) The second of a two course sequence stressing the writing of rhetorically effective and grammatically correct expository prose. Readings include novels and poetry. Prereq: HE111. [spring]
HE112W Rhetoric and Introduction to Literature II (3-0-3) A course similar to HE112 but for students who need more concentrated instruction in writing. Section size limited to 16 students. Prereq: HE111W. [fall, spring]
HE112S Rhetoric and Introduction to Literature II (3-0-3) An honors level of HE112 for students with well-developed writing skills. Prereq: HE111S. [spring]
HE112V Rhetoric and Introduction to Literature II (3-0-3) A one-semester course in writing and literature, focused on novels and poetry. Prereq: validation of HE111. [fall]
Upper Level Courses
200-Level Courses
The literary content of courses on this level is eclectic. These courses offer wide surveys of materials from different cultures, historical periods, and literary genres. In each course substantial practice in writing is to be expected. There are no prerequisites for any course in the 200 group. They may be taken at any class level, including the fourth-class year.
HE217 Early Western Literature (3-0-3) A balanced survey of the Western literary tradition and its backgrounds, from ancient Greece through the Middle Ages. Readings may include classical Greek and Roman epic, drama, and philosophy; selections from the Bible; and medieval poetry, drama, and philosophy. [fall, spring]
HE218 The Anglo-American Tradition in Literature (3-0-3) A balanced survey of British and American literary history from the Renaissance through the early twentieth century. The course emphasizes the movements that have shaped our tradition: Renaissance humanism, empiricism and skepticism, Romanticism and transcendentalism, realism and naturalism, and modernism. [fall, spring]
HE222 The Bible and Literature (3-0-3) The Bible and its influence on European and American literature. Emphasis will be placed on modern biblical literary-critical methodology and on the symbolic richness of derivative literature from Dante to Nikos Kazantzakis. [spring]
HE224 Literature and Science (3-0-3) The interrelationships among science, technology, and literature. The course considers both the impact of science on literature and the implications of science as reflected in literary responses. [fall]
HE250 Literature of the Sea (3-0-3) Study of sea literature from the epic to the novel, with an emphasis on literary qualities, human relationships with the sea, and problems of command. [spring, summer]
HE260 Literature of War (3-0-3) A multi-genre survey of war and its consequences as represented in classic and contemporary literature with an emphasis on such issues as individual responsibility, leadership, societal values, and military culture. [fall, summer]
300-Level Courses
These courses build on the skills acquired in HE111-112. The HE301-306 series goes more deeply into each of the basic literary genres; the HE313-333 series approaches literature in its historical and cultural context; the HE343-344 series offers extensive practice in a variety of writing forms. All courses have a writing requirement. Prerequisites for all 300-level courses are HE111-112.
HE301 Patterns in Drama (3-0-3) A study of drama, emphasizing reading, viewing, and analyzing dramatic literature and performance. [fall, spring]
HE302 Forms of Poetry (3-0-3) A study in the analysis of poetic form and expression. [fall, spring, summer]
HE306 Types of Fiction (3-0-3) A study of the novel and short story with particular emphasis on the conventions, techniques, and innovations in the form. [fall, spring, summer]
HE307 Topics in Film and Literature (3-0-3) A study of American, European, and world film in conjunction with relevant literary works. [spring, summer]
HE313 Chaucer and His Age (3-0-3) The literary and philosophical traditions of Chaucer, the Gawain poet, and other contemporaries, including early and late medieval writers from England and the continent. [fall]
HE314 The Renaissance Mind (3-0-3) Literature and thought of the period bracketed by the two great English epics, Spenser's Faerie Queene and Milton's Paradise Lost. The course includes a continental perspective, with readings from such authors as Machiavelli, Rabelais, Cervantes, Montaigne, and Castiglione. [spring]
HE315 Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Literature (3-0-3) The literature of the period 1660-1780. Readings may include the plays, novels, satires, and poetry of such writers as Behn, Dryden, Swift, Defoe, Fielding, Pope, Steele, Sheridan, and Johnson. [fall]
HE317 The Romantic Period (3-0-3) Literature and culture of the Romantic period in Britain from the 1780s to the 1830s. Readings may include works by such writers as Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Austen, the Shelleys, Byron, and Keats. [spring]
HE318 Modern British Literature (3-0-3) The literature of Great Britain and Ireland since 1900. Readings may include the novels of Conrad, Joyce, Lawrence, Woolf, and Lessing; the plays of Shaw, Synge, O'Casey, and Pinter; the poetry of Hardy, Yeats, Eliot, Auden, and Dylan Thomas. [spring]
HE319 Victorian Literature (3-0-3) British literature from the 1830s to the end of the nineteenth century. Readings may include works from such authors as Dickens, the Brontës, George Eliot, Hardy, Tennyson, the Brownings, Arnold, Carlyle, and Darwin. [fall]
HE320 Contemporary British Literature (3-0-3) British Literature from 1945 to the present day. Reading may include the novels of Orwell, Greene, Murdoch, Naipaul, Barnes, Ishigura, and Zadie Smith; the plays of Beckett, Pinter, Orton, Stoppard, Churchill, and Friel; and the poetry of Larkin, Heaney, Hughes, Gunn, and Motion. [fall]
HE326 Early American Literature, 1607-1860 (3-0-3) A survey of American literature including the Native American tradition from European settlement to the Civil War, emphasizing the relationship between the emerging culture and literature. Readings may include works from such authors as Bradford, Bradstreet, Franklin, Wheatley, Cooper, Emerson, Thoreau, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, and Douglass. [fall]
HE328 American Literature from the Civil War to World War I, 1860-1914 (3-0-3) A survey of American literature from the Reconstruction through the Gilded Age, emphasizing the rise of realism and naturalism. Readings may include works from such authors as Whitman, Dickinson, Twain, Howells, Crane, Dreiser, Chesnutt, Chopin, James, and Wharton. [spring]
HE329 Modern American Literature, 1914-1945 (3-0-3) A survey of American literature between the wars. Readings may include works by such authors as Stein, Eliot, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Hughes, Hurston, Larsen, O'Neill, Steinbeck, West, and Wright. [fall]
HE330 Contemporary American Literature, 1945-Present (3-0-3) A survey of American literature and culture since World War II. Readings may include works by such authors as Ellison, Ginsberg, Lowell, Bishop, Baraka, Heller, Pynchon, Bellow, Plath, Sexton, Rich, Roth, Updike, DeLillo, Mamet, McCarthy, and Morrison. [spring]
HE333 Shakespeare (3-0-3) A study of a representative sample of Shakespeare's tragedies, histories, and comedies. Readings may also include works by Shakespeare's contemporaries. [fall, spring]
HE340 African-American Literature (3-0-3) A survey of representative African-American literature from such major figures as Wheatley, Toomer, Hughes, Hurston, Wright, Ellison, Baldwin, Baraka, Brooks, Hayden, Wilson, and Morrison. [fall]
HE343 Creative Writing (3-0-3) An introduction to the writing of prose, poetry, and drama. [fall, spring]
HE344 Professional Communication (3-0-3) A study of advanced methods of presenting information in a wide variety of forms. Assignments may include preparing articles, reports, and military documents. Students may be asked to design and present a persuasive or analytical speech. [fall, spring, summer]
HE353 Topics in Continental Literature (3-0-3) This course explores the variety of works produced from the Renaissance to the rise of the European Community, emphasizing the exchanges between social and literary history and the interactions between cultures. [fall]
HE355 Topics in Multi-Ethnic Literature (3-0-3) This course considers literature that raises questions of race and ethnicity, postcolonial responses to hegemonic culture, canon formation, and shifting definitions of nation and subjectivity. Readings may include the works of Achebe, Cisneros, Coetzee, Desai, Diaz, Erdrich, Gordimer, Hagedorn, Hong Kingston, Llosa, Mahfouz, Mishima, Marquez, Naipaul, Neruda, Ngugi, Puig, Rushdie, Soyinka, Tan, and Walcott. [spring]
HE360 Special Topics in Literature (3-0-3) An open-topics literature course. Specialized offerings vary from semester to semester. [fall, spring]
400- and 500-Level Courses
These courses allow students to pursue an intensive study of a restricted literary subject with English department faculty members specializing in that area. Emphasis in each course will be upon extensive and intensive reading in a limited body of material, techniques of research, and development of independent critical judgment. As capstones for the English major, each of these courses has a significant writing component. Prerequisites for these courses are at least one 300-level English course and permission of the chair. (See special topics courses below for current offerings.)
HE442 Literary Theory and Criticism (3-0-3) A survey of key problems, figures, and texts in the history of literary and cultural thought. Required of all honors English majors. [fall]
HE461 Studies in a Literary Period (3-0-3) In-depth study of a limited period in literary history. For example: the Augustan period, the beginnings of Romanticism, the fin de siècle, and the 1960s in American literature. [fall, spring]
HE462 Studies in a Literary Problem (3-0-3) In-depth study of a problem that cuts across traditional divisions of nationality, historical period, or genre. For example: myth and symbol in literature, literature and science, the concept of the hero. [fall, spring]
HE463 Studies in Literary Figures (3-0-3) Extensive reading in the works, biography, and criticism of major figures in world literature. For example: Milton, Wordsworth, George Eliot, Dickens, Dostoevsky, O'Neill, Melville, Faulkner, Stevens, Morrison. [fall]
HE467 Studies in a Literary Genre (3-0-3) Study in a special genre. For example: the epic, the autobiographical novel, science fiction, imagist poetry. [spring]
HE503 Seminar in Arts and Literature (3-2-4) An interdisciplinary honors seminar concerning a special topic in literature and the arts. Prereq: 1/C Honors English majors only. Coreq: HE521. [fall]
HE504 Seminar in an Advanced Topic (3-2-4) A concentrated honors seminar exploring individual literary works or issues. Prereq: 1/C Honors English majors only. Coreq: HE522. [spring]
HE521 Honors Supplement (1-0-1) Focused study of a topic generated in HE503. Prereq: 1/C Honors English majors only. Coreq: HE503. [fall]
HE522 Honors Supplement (1-0-1) Focused study of a topic generated in HE504. Prereq: 1/C Honors English majors only. Coreq: HE504. [spring]
