English Literature in Historical Perspective: Engl 121
Link19th C Novel: Engl 349
The Gothic Subject: Engl 409
Literary Computing: Engl 304
Wordsworth and "Tintern Abbey": Engl 665
The Short Story: Engl 206
Winter 2004. We studied a selection of short stories from the 19th and 20th Centuries. Near the end of the course student groups presented projects on their approach to a theory of the short story. Here's the home page for the course.
The Shelleys: Engl 450
One of the best known marriages in literary history is that of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin with Percy Bysshe Shelley: their marriage took place in December 1816 and lasted until Percy drowned in July 1822. In this course we examined some of the principal works of both writers, and focus in particular on their relationship. Follow this link for the home page of the course. (Autumn 2003)
Romantic Travellers: Engl 450
In this course (Winter 2003) we examined a selection of travel writing by both well-known writers, i.e., Radcliffe, Wordsworth, Shelley, and Byron, and lesser known, such as William Coxe, Helen Maria Williams, and Ramond de Carbonnières. For their course work students produced four commentaries and two presentations, all of which were placed online.
Proseminar: Literary Computing
A short course for graduate students in which they examined the Internet as a source of scholarly resources (texts, critical articles, etc.), learned to write their own web sites, and discussed hypertext; then performed basic text analysis, based primarily on Concordance as a tool for studying word distributions in texts. (Autumn 2001)
Humanities Computing: Engl 417
This course explored the ways in which computers can be used to assist in the study of humanities disciplines, particularly those that are based on textual material. It included issues in building Web sites for the humanities, in terms of audience, longevity of the material, access tools and maintenance; many different formats of electronic texts which now exist; markup and encoding; simple tools for the analysis and manipulation of electronic texts and the application of basic descriptive and inferential statistics to text analysis; and a brief look at hypertext. Students' web based projects are available from the course page. (Winter 2000)
Hypertext Reading and Writing: Engl 417
In this course we examined critically the arguments for the postmodern status of hypertext, and considered to what extent such accounts of electronic textuality agree with what is known about writing and reading, both theoretically and empirically. We also studied some of the pedagogical evaluations of hypertext in order to assess their role in teaching and learning. Students learned to create hypertexts of their own, whether in the form of essays or short fiction. These were located on students' own web sites. (Autumn 1999)
Romantic Travellers: Engl 665
In this course we examined the travel phenomenon both through the writing of the most important travel writers of the period, such as Gilpin or Coxe, some of which is of high literary quality, and through poetic and fictional representations of travel from Radcliffe to Byron. We also considered the equally dramatic rise in the consumption of prints and paintings during the period. A full course outline, with online readings and a bibliography is available. (Winter 1999)
Romantic Poetry and Prose: Engl 351
In this course we focused on a selection of the poetry and prose written during the Romantic period: click here for the home page of the course. The writers studied include poets such as Blake, Robinson, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron, Hemans, Tighe, and Keats, political writings by Burke, Williams, Wollstonecraft and Godwin, selections from essayists such as Hazlitt and De Quincey; and several novels that represent the Gothic tradition or the reaction against it. In addition to considering the literary texts, we looked at some of the theoretical writings of the period, such as Wordsworth's Preface to Lyrical Ballads and Shelley's Defence of Poetry. The home page for the course includes links to related web sites, and provides a bulletin board for students' work. Also available to students in its pre-publication version was a hypertext of Romantic texts and art. (Autumn and Winter terms, 1996-97)
The Prelude: Engl 665
This is a graduate course that focused on the literary, biographical, and historical context of Wordsworth's The Prelude. For a fuller description, see the course description. (Winter 1997)