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 selected by English Department.

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. During the first semester students read essays, short stories and plays, and they write brief essays. During the second semester students read novels and poetry and write longer essays.  Prereq: HE101 [fall, spring] 

HE112 Rhetoric and Introduction to Literature II (3-0-3). Continuation of HE111.  See HE111 for a listing of topics.  Prereq:  HE111. [fall, spring]

200-Level Courses: General Description 
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: General Description 
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, Ishiguro, 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. [spring] 

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-Level Courses: General Description 
The HE400 series allows 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.

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. [fall] 

HE504 Seminar in an Advanced Topic (3-2-4). A concentrated honors seminar exploring individual literary works or issues. [spring]