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This is an archived copy of the 2016-17 catalog. To access the most recent version of the catalog, please visit http://exploredegrees.stanford.edu.

Contacts
Office: Building 460, Room 201
Mail Code: 94305-2087
Phone: (650) 723-2635
Web Site: http://english.stanford.edu

Courses offered by the Department of English are listed under the subject code ENGLISH on the Stanford Bulletin's ExploreCourses web site.

Mission of the Department of English

To study English at Stanford is to explore, deeply and rewardingly, the rich legacy of literature written in English, past and present. The department offers a wealth of courses on individual authors, the history of literary genres, literary theory, new media, and creative writing. Given the emphasis on critical thinking and interpretation, the English major is in turn an excellent preparation for many professional fields, including teaching, journalism, law, publishing, medicine, and business. The graduate program features rigorous training in the research and analysis of British, American, and Anglophone literary histories and texts, preparing students to produce scholarship of originality and importance, and to teach literature at the highest levels.

Learning Outcomes (Undergraduate)

The department expects undergraduate majors in the program to be able to demonstrate the following learning outcomes. These learning outcomes are used in evaluating students and the department's undergraduate program. Students are expected to demonstrate:

  1. an understanding of major theories, methods, and concepts of literary study and critical analysis.
  2. an awareness of how authors and texts develop in relation to their historical contexts.
  3. a comprehension of the formal qualities of key literary genres, forms, and styles.
  4. an effective style of writing and a powerful use of language.

Bachelor of Arts in English

In the undergraduate program, students explore the traditions of literature in English. Courses emphasize interpretive thinking and creative writing, examining the dynamics of literary and cultural history, the structures of literary form and genre, and the practices of reading, writing, and critical analysis.

Graduate Program in English

The graduate program features rigorous training in the research and analysis of British, American and Anglophone literary histories and texts, preparing students to produce scholarship of originality and importance, and to teach literature at advanced levels.

Learning Outcomes (Graduate)

The purpose of the master's program is to further develop knowledge and skills in English and to prepare students for a professional career or doctoral studies. This is achieved through completion of courses, in the primary field as well as related areas, and experience with independent work and specialization.

The Ph.D. is conferred upon candidates who have demonstrated substantial scholarship and the ability to conduct independent research and analysis in English. Through completion of advanced course work and rigorous skills training, the doctoral program prepares students to make original contributions to the knowledge of English and to interpret and present the results of such research.

Other Programs in English

Ph.D. in Modern Thought and Literature

Stanford also offers a Ph.D. degree in Modern Thought and Literature. Under this program, students devote approximately half of their time to a modern literature from the Enlightenment to the present, and the other half to interdisciplinary studies. Interested students should see the "Modern Thought and Literature" section of this bulletin and consult the director of the program.

Creative Writing Fellowships

The Creative Writing Program each year offers five two-year fellowships in poetry and five two-year fellowships in fiction. These are not degree-granting fellowships. Information is available in the Creative Writing office, (650) 725-1208.

Bachelor of Arts in English

The English major is designed to provide students with both an understanding of the development of literatures in English and an appreciation of the variety and richness of literary texts. It offers a rigorous training in interpretive thinking and precise expression.

Suggested Preparation for the Major

Prospective English majors are advised to consider Thinking Matters courses that relate to literature to satisfy a major requirement. Also recommended is any introductory seminar taught by English department faculty through Stanford Introductory Studies. 

Units
Thinking Matters Courses
ESF 1Education as Self-Fashioning: The Active, Inquiring, Beautiful Life7
THINK 31Race and American Memory4
THINK 49Stories Everywhere4
Introductory Seminars
ENGLISH 40NTheatrical Wonders from Shakespeare to Mozart3
ENGLISH 52NMixed-Race Politics and Culture3
ENGLISH 63NShakespeare: The Invention of the Human3
ENGLISH 68NMark Twain and American Culture4
ENGLISH 79NThe Renaissance: Culture as Conflict3
ENGLISH 82NThinking about Photographs3
ENGLISH 85NFinancial Markets in Fiction and Film3

Degree Requirements

Students interested in majoring in English are encouraged to declare during their sophomore year, but no later than the beginning of their junior year. They are urged to discuss their plans with the undergraduate student services specialist as early as possible, and to take recommended preparatory courses for the major in their freshman and sophomore years. To declare the major, a student must fill out the Declaration of Major in Axess; choose a faculty advisor; and submit a completed program proposal form approved by the adviser. It is recommended that a student meet with the adviser at least once per quarter to discuss progress towards degree completion. Students who declared prior to September 2015 should refer to previous guidelines and requirements for the major.

With the exception of the required courses listed below, which must be taken for a letter grade, any two of the elective courses may be taken on a credit/no credit basis at the discretion of the instructor. Transfer students only may apply as many as four literature courses taken at approved universities toward the English major electives.  Approval of such courses toward the major is at the discretion of the Director of Undergraduate Studies.  Request for transfer credit, including course syllabi and official transcripts, should be submitted to the undergraduate student services specialist, and to the Office of the Registrar’s external credit evaluation section.  In the case of all other students, literature courses taken outside the department will not normally be accepted for credit unless they are taken as part of the Bing Overseas Study Program.  No petitions for courses taken outside the department will be granted retrospectively.

The total number of units required to graduate for each degree option is specified in the relevant section following. All courses should be taken for 5 units. Irrespective of field of study or degree option, all English majors must complete the following requirements:

Required Courses (35 units)

Units
Historical courses
One course in the 10 series 1
ENGLISH 10AIntroduction to English I: Medieval and Renaissance Literature5
or ENGLISH 10C Introduction to English I: Tradition and Individuality, Medieval to Early Modern
One course in the 11 series 2
ENGLISH 11BIntroduction to English II: American Literature and Culture to 18555
or ENGLISH 11C Introduction to English II: Milton and Melville
One course in the 12 series 3
ENGLISH 12AIntroduction to English III: Introduction to African American Literature5
or ENGLISH 12C Introduction to English III: Modern Literature
Methodology courses
ENGLISH 160Poetry and Poetics5
ENGLISH 161Narrative and Narrative Theory5
ENGLISH 162WWriting Intensive Seminar in English (WIM)5
Also Required
One pre-1800 historical course 4 55
Total Units35
1

For students who declared prior to the 2015-16 academic year this requirement may be satisfied by the following course:

  • ENGLISH 100A.  Literary History I (no longer offered)
2

For students who declared prior to the 2015-16 academic year this requirement may be satisfied by the following course:

  • ENGLISH 100B. Literary History II (no longer offered)
3

For students who declared prior to the 2015-16 academic year this requirement may be satisfied by the following course:

  • ENGLISH 100C. Literary History III (no longer offered)
4

 In 2016-17 the following courses satisfy the pre-1800 historical requirement:

5

This requirement may also be fulfilled with the following Thinking Matters or SLE courses:

  • ESF 1 Education as Self-Fashioning: The Active, Inquiring, Beautiful Life
  • THINK 7 Journeys
  • THINK 49 Stories Everywhere
  • SLE 91 Structured Liberal Education, SLE 92 Structured Liberal Education, and SLE 93 Structured Liberal Education.

Rules that apply to all English majors irrespective of field of study or degree option

  1. Courses can only be counted once, i.e., can only satisfy one requirement.
  2. Two of the elective courses may be taken on a credit/no credit basis at the discretion of the instructor.

Fields of Study

Because the Department of English recognizes that the needs and interests of literature students vary, it has approved several major programs of study. Each of these has different objectives and requirements; students should consider carefully which program of study corresponds most closely to their personal and intellectual objectives. The department offers the following fields of study for degrees in English:

  • Literature
  • Literature with Creative Writing Emphasis
  • Literature and Interdisciplinary Studies
  • Literature and Foreign Language Literature
  • Literature and Philosophy

I. Literature (35 units)

This field of study is not declared in Axess. It does not appear on either the official transcript or the diploma. This program provides for the interests of students who wish to understand the range and historical development of British, American and Anglophone literatures and a variety of critical methods by which their texts can be interpreted. The major emphasizes the study of literary forms and genres and theories of textual analysis. In addition to the degree requirements required of all majors and listed above, students must complete at least 35 additional units of courses consisting of:

  1. Seven additional approved elective courses, only one of which may be a creative writing course, chosen from among those offered by the Department of English. In place of one of these seven elective courses, students may choose one upper-division course in a foreign literature read in the original language.

II. Literature with Creative Writing Emphasis (40 units)

This subplan is printed on the transcript and diploma and is elected in Axess. This program is designed for students who want a sound basic knowledge of the English literary tradition as a whole and at the same time want to develop skills in writing poetry or prose. In addition to the degree requirements required of all majors and listed above, students must complete at least 40 additional units of approved courses, in either the prose or poetry concentration:

Prose Concentration
Units
ENGLISH 90Fiction Writing5
or ENGLISH 91 Creative Nonfiction
ENGLISH 92Reading and Writing Poetry (Can be fulfilled with a poetry literature seminar)5
ENGLISH 146Development of the Short Story: Continuity and Innovation5
ENGLISH 190Intermediate Fiction Writing (or any 190 series or 191 series)5
or ENGLISH 191 Intermediate Creative Nonfiction
4 elective literature courses (One of the courses may be fulfilled with a creative writing workshop).20
Total Units40
Poetry Concentration
Units
ENGLISH 90Fiction Writing (Can be fulfilled with a prose literature seminar)5
or ENGLISH 91 Creative Nonfiction
ENGLISH 92Reading and Writing Poetry5
ENGLISH 192Intermediate Poetry Writing (or any 192 series)5
One literature course in poetry approved by a Creative Writing Professor5
4 elective literature courses (One of the courses may be fulfilled with a creative writing workshop)20
Total Units40

III. Literature and Interdisciplinary Studies (40 units)

This subplan is printed on the transcript and diploma and is elected in Axess. This program is intended for students who wish to combine the study of one broadly defined literary topic, period, genre, theme or problem with an interdisciplinary program of courses (generally chosen from one other discipline) relevant to that inquiry. In addition to the degree requirements required of all majors and listed above, students must complete at least 40 additional units of approved courses including:

  1. Five elective literature courses chosen from among those offered by the Department of English. Students must select two of these courses in relation to their interdisciplinary focus.
  2. Three courses related to the area of inquiry. These courses may be chosen from another department or interdisciplinary program within the School of Humanities and Sciences including (but not limited to) such as African American Studies , Anthropology , Art and Art History , Classics , Comparative Literature , Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity , Feminist Studies , Human Biology , Music , Philosophy , Political Science , Psychology , Religious Studies , Science, Technology, and Society , and Sociology . These courses should form a coherent program and must be relevant to the focus of the courses chosen by the student to meet the requirement. Each of these courses must be approved in advance by the interdisciplinary program director.
  3. In addition, students in this program must write at least one interdisciplinary paper. This may be completed with ENGLISH 194 Individual Research, ENGLISH 197 Seniors Honors Essay, ENGLISH 198 Individual Work, ENGLISH 199 Senior Independent Essay, or or a paper integrating the material in two courses the student is taking in two different disciplines.

The final course plan and interdisciplinary paper must be approved by the faculty adviser and the interdisciplinary adviser by the time the student applies to graduate.

IV. Literature and Foreign Language Literature (40 units)

This subplan is printed on the transcript and diploma and is elected in Axess. This track provides a focus in British and American literature with additional work in French literature; German literature; Italian literature; or Spanish literature. These subplans appear on the diploma as follows: English & French Literature, English & German Literature, English & Italian Literature, and English & Spanish Literature. In addition to the degree requirements required of all majors and listed above, students must complete at least 40 additional units of approved courses including:

  1. Four elective courses chosen from among those offered by the Department of English, one of which may be a creative writing course.
  2. A coherent program of four courses in the foreign language literature, read in the original language, approved by the Director of Undergraduate Studies in English and by the relevant foreign language department.

V. Literature and Philosophy (40-50 units)

This subplan is printed on the transcript and diploma and is elected in Axess. Students should meet with the undergraduate director concerning the Literature and Philosophy focus. This track is for students who wish to explore interdisciplinary studies at the intersection of literature and philosophy while acquiring knowledge of the English language literary tradition as a whole. In addition to the degree requirements required of all majors and listed above, students must complete at least 40-50 additional units of approved courses including:

  1. PHIL 80 Mind, Matter, and Meaning (WIM): Prerequisite: introductory philosophy course.
  2. Gateway course: ENGLISH 81 Philosophy and Literature. This course should be taken as early as possible in the student's career, normally in the sophomore year.
  3. Aesthetics, Ethics, Political Philosophy: one course from PHIL 170 Ethical Theory series.
  4. Language, Mind, Metaphysics, and Epistemology: one course from PHIL 180 Metaphysics series.
  5. History of Philosophy: one course in the history of Philosophy, numbered above PHIL 100 Greek Philosophy.
  6. Two upper division courses of special relevance to the study of Philosophy and Literature. Both of these courses must be in the English department. A list of approved courses is available on the Philosophy and Literature web site.
  7. Two additional elective courses in the English department.
  8. One capstone seminar of relevance to the study of Philosophy and Literature.  

Honors Program 

Students wishing to undertake a formal program of advanced literary criticism and scholarship, including the honors seminar and independent research, are invited to apply for the honors program in the Winter Quarter of the junior year. Any outstanding student is encouraged to engage in an honors thesis project.

Admission is selective. Provisional admission is announced in March. Permission to continue in the program is contingent upon submission, by May 15 of the junior year, of a senior honors essay proposal with a bibliography. Honors students are encouraged to complete before the start of their senior year the three methodology courses that are English major requirements:

Units
ENGLISH 160Poetry and Poetics5
ENGLISH 161Narrative and Narrative Theory5
ENGLISH 162WWriting Intensive Seminar in English5

In September before the senior year, students are encouraged to participate in the Bing Honors College. In Autumn Quarter of the senior year, students take a 5-unit honors seminar on critical approaches to literature. The senior-year seminar is designed to introduce students to the analysis and production of advanced literary scholarship. Students who are studying at Oxford or at other institutions may be exempted from this requirement on request and with the approval of the director of the honors program.

In Winter and Spring quarters of the senior year, honors students complete the senior honors essay for a total of 10 units under supervision of a faculty adviser.

The deadline for submitting the honors essay is May 10. Essays that receive a grade of 'A-' or above are awarded honors.

In addition to fulfilling the requirements of the major, students in the honors program must complete 15 units of the following:

Units
ENGLISH 196AHonors Seminar: Critical Approaches to Literature5
ENGLISH 197Seniors Honors Essay10

Advanced Research Options

Individual Research

Students taking 100- or 200-level courses may, with the consent of the instructor, write a follow-up 5-unit paper based on the course material and due no later than the end of the succeeding quarter (register for ENGLISH 194 Individual Research). The research paper is written under the direct supervision of the professor; it must be submitted first in a preliminary draft and subsequently in a final version.

Senior Independent Essay

The senior independent essay gives senior English majors the opportunity to work throughout the year on a sustained piece of critical or scholarly work of around 10,000 words on a topic of their choice, with the close guidance of a faculty adviser. Each student is responsible for finding an adviser, who must approve the proposed topic before the end of the third quarter prior to expected graduation. The senior essay is read and graded by the adviser and one other member of the English faculty. Senior independent essay students register for ENGLISH 199 Senior Independent Essay.

Overseas Studies or Study Abroad

The flexibility of the English major permits students to attend an overseas campus in any quarter, but it is advisable, and in some cases essential, that students spend their senior year at Stanford if they wish to participate in the honors program or in a special in-depth reading course. For more information on Stanford overseas programs, see the "Overseas Studies " section of this bulletin.

Students should consult their advisers and the undergraduate program officer to make sure that they can fulfill the requirements before graduation. The Stanford Program in Oxford usually offers courses which apply toward both University requirements and area requirements for the English major. In either case, students should save the syllabi from their courses if they wish to apply to use them to fulfill an English major requirement.

Overseas Studies Courses in English

The Bing Overseas Studies Program manages Stanford study abroad programs for Stanford undergraduates. Students should consult their department or program's student services office for applicability of Overseas Studies courses to a major or minor program.

The Bing Overseas Studies course search site displays courses, locations, and quarters relevant to specific majors.

For course descriptions and additional offerings, see the listings in the Stanford Bulletin's ExploreCourses or Bing Overseas Studies .

Units
OSPFLOR 6The Florentine Connection in Medieval and Renaissance Literature3-5
OSPOXFRD 17Novels of Sensation: Gothic, Detective Story, Prohibition, and Transgression in Victorian Fiction5
OSPOXFRD 57The Rise of the Woman Writer 1660-18605
OSPOXFRD 60Shakespeare and his Contemporaries5

Joint Major Program: English and Computer Science

The joint major program (JMP), authorized by the Academic Senate for a pilot period of six years beginning in 2014-15, permits students to major in both Computer Science and one of ten Humanities majors. See the "Joint Major Program " section of this bulletin for a description of University requirements for the JMP. See also the Undergraduate Advising and Research JMP web site and its associated FAQs.

Students completing the JMP receive a B.A.S. (Bachelor of Arts and Science).

Because the JMP is new and experimental, changes to procedures may occur; students are advised to check the relevant section of the bulletin periodically.

English Major Requirements in the Joint Major Program

The joint major is structured to let students thoughtfully explore the intersection of Computer Science and literary studies. Students would ideally declare the program during the sophomore year. Students are required to complete requirements in English and Computer Science. See the "Computer Science Joint Major Progra m " section of this bulletin for details on Computer Science requirements.

The requirements for English are adapted from the English major and are stated in full below. Students in the CS+English JMP are required to complete 58 total units in English compared to 68-80 units which is typically required by the English major. Students in CS+English are not required to take the Writing Intensive Seminar in English (WISE) course. Additionally, students in CS+English only have to fulfill five electives. The University Writing in the Major requirement for students in the CS+English JMP is fulfilled by the Computer Science Writing in the Major requirement. To declare the CS+English JMP, students must complete a program proposal.  

Students are encouraged to compile an ePortfolio of reflections, ideas, and work on the interplay between humanities and computer science.  

Integrative Experience

In the senior year, students are required to undertake a capstone project which involves both programming and literary research, and could include work on digital editions, analyses of corpora, the creation of electronic literature, digital representations of literary venues, studies of natural language processing as applied to literary analysis, or any other project that draws integrally on both disciplines. All capstone projects must be approved by both the student's Computer Science adviser and English adviser. This project normally takes one quarter, and should be taken concurrently with the Computer Science capstone requirement. In English, students are required to complete 3 units of ENGLISH 198 Individual Work with a faculty adviser in English as part of the integrative project. In preparation for the Independent Study in English, students must secure an adviser, complete the CS+English Capstone form , and submit a written proposal of the project.

Required Core Courses (30 Units)

Units
Historical courses
One course in the 10 series 1
ENGLISH 10AIntroduction to English I: Medieval and Renaissance Literature5
or ENGLISH 10C Introduction to English I: Tradition and Individuality, Medieval to Early Modern
One course in the 11 series 2
ENGLISH 11BIntroduction to English II: American Literature and Culture to 18555
or ENGLISH 11C Introduction to English II: Milton and Melville
One course in the 12 series 3
ENGLISH 12AIntroduction to English III: Introduction to African American Literature5
or ENGLISH 12C Introduction to English III: Modern Literature
One additional history of literature course 4 55
Methodology courses
ENGLISH 160Poetry and Poetics5
ENGLISH 161Narrative and Narrative Theory5
Total Units30
1

For students who declared prior to the 2015-16 academic year this requirement may be satisfied by the following course:

ENGLISH 100A. Literary History I (no longer offered)

 
2

 For students who declared prior to the 2015-16 academic year this requirement may be satisfied by the following course:

ENGLISH 100B. Literary History II (no longer offered)

3

For students who declared prior to the 2015-16 academic year this requirement may be satisfied by the following course:

ENGLISH 100C. Literary History III (no longer offered) 

4

In 2016-17 the following courses satisfy the history of literature requirement

5

This requirement may also be fulfilled with the following Thinking Matters or SLE courses:

  • ESF 1 Education as Self-Fashioning: The Active, Inquiring, Beautiful Life
  • THINK 7 Journeys
  • THINK 49 Stories Everywhere
  • SLE 91 Structured Liberal EducationSLE 92 Structured Liberal Education, and SLE 93 Structured Liberal Education.

Rules that apply to all English majors irrespective of field of study or degree option:

  1. Courses can only be counted once, i.e. can only satisfy one requirement.
  2. Two of the elective courses may be taken on a credit/no credit basis at the discretion of the instructor.

Field of Study Electives (25 Units)

Because the Department of English recognizes that the needs and interests of CS+English students vary, it has approved two major programs of study: Literature and Literature with Creative Writing. Each of these has different objectives and requirements; students should consider carefully which program of study corresponds most closely to their personal and intellectual objectives.

I. Literature

This field of study is not declared in Axess. It does not appear on either the official transcript or the diploma. This program provides for the interests of students who wish to understand the range and historical development of British, American and Anglophone literatures and a variety of critical methods by which their texts can be interpreted. The major emphasizes the study of literary forms and genres and theories of textual analysis. In addition to the degree requirements required of all joint majors and listed above, students must complete at least 25 additional units of courses consisting of five additional approved elective courses, only one of which may be a creative writing course, chosen from among those offered by the Department of English. In place of one of these five elective courses, students may choose one upper-division course in a foreign literature read in the original language.

II. Literature with Creative Writing Emphasis

This subplan is printed on the transcript and diploma and is elected in Axess.This program is designed for students who want a sound basic knowledge of the English literary tradition as a whole and at the same time want to develop skills in writing poetry or prose. In addition to the degree requirements required of all joint majors and listed above, students must complete at least 25 additional units of approved courses, in either the prose or poetry concentration:

Prose Concentration –

Units
ENGLISH 90Fiction Writing5
or ENGLISH 91 Creative Nonfiction
ENGLISH 92Reading and Writing Poetry5
ENGLISH 146Development of the Short Story: Continuity and Innovation5
ENGLISH 190Intermediate Fiction Writing (or any 190 series or 191 series)5
or ENGLISH 191 Intermediate Creative Nonfiction
One elective literature course5
Total Units25

Poetry Concentration –

Units
ENGLISH 92Reading and Writing Poetry5
ENGLISH 90Fiction Writing5
or ENGLISH 91 Creative Nonfiction
ENGLISH 192Intermediate Poetry Writing (or any 192 series)5
One literature course in poetry5
One elective literature course5
Total Units25

Integrative Experience (3 Units)

Units
ENGLISH 198Individual Work 13
1

Students in the CS+English JMP are required to enroll for three units of ENGLISH 198 Individual Work with a faculty adviser in English as part of the integrative project. These units should be completed concurrently with the Computer Science capstone requirement.

Declaring a Joint Major Program

To declare the joint major, students must first declare each major through Axess, and then submit the Declaration or Change of Undergraduate Major, Minor, Honors, or Degree Program. The Major-Minor and Multiple Major Course Approval Form is required for graduation for students with a joint major.

Dropping a Joint Major Program

To drop the joint major, students must submit the Declaration or Change of Undergraduate Major, Minor, Honors, or Degree Program.  . Students may also consult the Student Services Center with questions concerning dropping the joint major.

Transcript and Diploma

Students completing a joint major graduate with a B.A.S. degree. The two majors are identified on one diploma separated by a hyphen. There will be a notation indicating that the student has completed a "Joint Major".  The two majors are identified on the transcript with a notation indicating that the student has completed a "Joint Major".

Minor in English Literature

The minor in English Literature offers some flexibility for those students who want to pursue specific interests within British and American literature, while still requiring certain courses that ensure coverage of a variety of periods, genres, and methods of studying literature.

Degree Requirements

In order to graduate with a minor in English, students must complete the following program of seven 5-unit courses, at least one of which must be a seminar, for a total of 35 units:

Required Courses for the Minor 

Units
Historical courses
Select two of the following historical courses:10
One course in the 10 series 1
ENGLISH 10AIntroduction to English I: Medieval and Renaissance Literature5
or ENGLISH 10C Introduction to English I: Tradition and Individuality, Medieval to Early Modern
One course in the 11 series 2
ENGLISH 11BIntroduction to English II: American Literature and Culture to 18555
or ENGLISH 11C Introduction to English II: Milton and Melville
One course in the 12 series 3
ENGLISH 12AIntroduction to English III: Introduction to African American Literature5
or ENGLISH 12C Introduction to English III: Modern Literature
Methodology courses
Select two of the following:10
Poetry and Poetics
Narrative and Narrative Theory
Writing Intensive Seminar in English
Elective courses
Three elective courses from those offered in the English department (only one of which may be a course in Creative Writing).15
1

 For students who declared prior to the 2015-16 academic year this requirement may be satisfied by the following course:

  • English 100A. Literary History I (no longer offered)
2

 For students who declared prior to the 2015-16 academic year this requirement may be satisfied by the following course:

  • ENGLISH 100B. Literary History II (no longer offered)
3

 For students who declared prior to the 2015-16 academic year this requirement may be satisfied by the following course:

  • ENGLISH 100C. Literary History III (no longer offered)

Minor in Creative Writing (30 units)

The minor in Creative Writing offers a structured environment in which students interested in writing prose or poetry develop their skills while receiving an introduction to literary forms. Students choose a concentration in prose, poetry, or fiction into film.

Degree Requirements

In order to graduate with a minor in Creative Writing, students must complete the following program of six 5-unit courses for a total of 30 units. All courses must be taken for a letter grade. Courses taken abroad or at other institutions may not be counted towards the minor.

Required Courses for the Minor

Students must complete at least 30 units of approved courses, in the prose, poetry or fiction into film concentration:

Prose concentration

Units
ENGLISH 90Fiction Writing5
or ENGLISH 91 Creative Nonfiction
ENGLISH 92Reading and Writing Poetry5
ENGLISH 146Development of the Short Story: Continuity and Innovation5
Select two of the following intermediate or advanced prose classes: 10
any ENGLISH 190 series
any ENGLISH 191 series
Individual Work: Levinthal Tutorial
Advanced Fiction Writing
One course in pre-1800 literature 15
Total Units30
1

 In 2016-17, pre-1800 courses include:

Poetry concentration

Units
ENGLISH 90Fiction Writing5
or ENGLISH 91 Creative Nonfiction
ENGLISH 92Reading and Writing Poetry5
ENGLISH 160Poetry and Poetics5
Select two of the following intermediate or advanced poetry classes:10
any ENGLISH 192 series
Individual Work: Levinthal Tutorial
Advanced Poetry Writing
One course in pre-1800 literature 15
Total Units30
1

 In 2016-17, pre-1800 courses include:

Fiction into Film concentration

Units
ENGLISH 90Fiction Writing5
ENGLISH 92Reading and Writing Poetry5
ENGLISH 146Development of the Short Story: Continuity and Innovation5
ENGLISH 190FFiction into Film5
ENGLISH 198FHoffs-Roach Fiction into Film Tutorial5
One course in pre-1800 literature 15
Total Units30
1

 In 2016-17 pre-1800 courses include:

Minor in Digital Humanities

The minor in Digital Humanities combines humanistic inquiry with digital methods and tools to generate new questions and to foster innovative research. Students will develop critical skills that are applicable within and beyond an academic setting.  The minor consists of three clusters: Spatial Humanities, Quantitative Textual Analysis, and Text Technologies. Students may choose to specialize in one of these areas.

  • Spatial Humanities ranges from theory (space as a category of analysis) to technical representation/analysis of spatial distribution through algorithms. It can draw upon anthropology, geography, and other disciplines with a tradition of interest in space; meanwhile, it can feed into (for instance) literary studies.
  • Quantitative Textual Analysis includes anything that uses computers to quantify formal properties of texts, ranging from word frequencies to chapter divisions to character networks. Genre, authorship, sentiment analysis, “opinion mining” -- all of these can play a role. It intersects with linguistics/NLP; Classics and Cognitive Psychology can also be allies.
  • Text Technologies encompasses technologies of communication; social media analysis; database creation, coding, TEI; technologies of publishing and text access; digital curation of virtual exhibitions (which allows us to bring in the arts, digital imaging, etc.).

Degree Requirements

Students must take a minimum of twenty units: at least one core course (5 units), and at least five other courses of at least three credits each. Students complete twenty or more units in courses relevant to the major in departments across the university including Anthropology, Art, Communications, Computer Science, East Asian Languages and Cultures, Engineering, English, French, History, Italian, Linguistics, Music, Philosophy, Religious Studies, and Theatre and Performance. These electives are to be determined in consultation with the advisor to the minor (a faculty member in English).

Required Courses for the Minor

Units
Required Introductory Course
Select one of the following:5
Introduction to Geospatial Humanities (Spatial Humanties concentration)
Literary Text Mining (Quantitative Textual Analysis concentration)
ENGLISH 184H
(Text Technologies concentration)
Elective Courses
Five courses in the chosen concentration15
Total Units20
 

Coterminal Master of Arts in English 

Current Stanford undergraduate majors in English who are interested in further postgraduate work may apply for the coterminal M.A. in English. The Admissions Committee also considers applicants from related fields, such as Modern Thought and Literature, Comparative Literature, and American Studies, if they have fulfilled the requirements for the B.A. in English. The committee does, however, give preference to English majors. 

Candidates for a coterminal master’s degree must fulfill all requirements for the M.A. in English (including the graduate language requirement), as well as general and major requirements for the B.A. in English. No courses used to satisfy the B.A. requirements (either as General Education Requirements or department requirements) may be applied toward the M.A. No courses taken more than two quarters prior to admission to the coterminal master’s program may be used to meet the 45-unit University minimum requirement for the master’s degree. A minimum GPA of 3.7 in the major is required of those applying for the coterminal master’s degree. Students must also take the general GRE exam in the year in which they apply.  The department accepts applications once a year; the application deadline is February 1 for admission in the Spring Quarter immediately following. There are no exceptions to this deadline. All application materials are submitted directly to the English Coterminal Online Application . The department does not fund coterminal M.A. students. 

Admission Requirements

To apply for admission to the English coterminal M.A. program, students must submit the Coterminal Online Application , which includes the following:

  1. A statement of purpose giving the reasons the student wishes to pursue this program and its place in his or her future plans.
  2. A writing sample of critical or analytical prose, about 12-25 pages in length.
  3. An official undergraduate transcript.
  4. GRE: General Section (verbal, quantitative, and analytical)--copy of ETS score report required.
  5. Three letters of recommendation from members of the faculty who know the applicant well and who can speak directly to the question of his or her ability to do graduate-level work.
  6. Preliminary Master’s Program Proposal; this is a form in the application packet. Specify at least 45 units of course work relevant to the degree program.
  7. Coterminal Course Approval Form (this form is required only if transferring courses from undergraduate to the graduate program at the time of application; students will be allowed to transfer courses between their undergraduate and graduate careers for a limited time). To be eligible for transfer, courses must have been taken in the two quarters preceding admission to the M.A. program (please note that no courses taken earlier than Autumn quarter of the senior year may count toward the M.A.).

University Coterminal Requirements

Coterminal master’s degree candidates are expected to complete all master’s degree requirements as described in this bulletin. University requirements for the coterminal master’s degree are described in the “Coterminal Master’s Program ” section. University requirements for the master’s degree are described in the "Graduate Degrees " section of this bulletin.

After accepting admission to this coterminal master’s degree program, students may request transfer of courses from the undergraduate to the graduate career to satisfy requirements for the master’s degree. Transfer of courses to the graduate career requires review and approval of both the undergraduate and graduate programs on a case by case basis.

In this master’s program, courses taken two quarters prior to the first graduate quarter, or later, are eligible for consideration for transfer to the graduate career. No courses taken prior to the first quarter of the sophomore year may be used to meet master’s degree requirements.

Course transfers are not possible after the bachelor’s degree has been conferred.

The University requires that the graduate adviser be assigned in the student’s first graduate quarter even though the undergraduate career may still be open. The University also requires that the Master’s Degree Program Proposal be completed by the student and approved by the department by the end of the student’s first graduate quarter.

Degree Requirements

  • M.A. candidates must complete with a 3.0 (B) grade point average (GPA) at least nine courses (a minimum of 45 units), at least two of which must be 300-level courses.
  • Ordinarily, graduate students enroll in courses numbered 200 and above. They may take no more than two 100-level courses without the consent of the Director of Graduate Studies. No more than two courses may be be taken outside the department and these must be pre-approved by the Director of Graduate Studies.
  • The master's student may take no more than 5 units of ENGLISH 398 Research Course.
  • No creative writing courses may be used to fulfill the requirements.

University requirements for the coterminal M.A. are described in the "Coterminal Bachelor's and Master's Degrees " section of this bulletin. For University coterminal master’s degree application forms, see the Registrar’s Publications page .

Required Courses

Units
Historical Courses20
Two courses in literature pre-1800
Two courses in literature post-1800
Elective Courses25
Five courses from those offered in the English department 1 2
Additional Requirement
Reading knowledge of a foreign language 3
Total Units45
1

 Five elective courses should represent a mixture of survey and specialized courses chosen to guarantee familiarity with a majority of the works on the qualifying exam reading list for doctoral candidates

2

 Candidates who can demonstrate unusually strong preparation in the history of English literature may undertake a 40 to 60 page master's thesis. Candidates register for 10 units of  ENGLISH 399 Thesis and are required to take only three elective courses.

3

 Reading knowledge of a foreign languages: may be fulfilled in any of the following ways:

  • A reading examination given each quarter by the various language departments, except for Latin and Greek.
  • For Latin and Greek, an examination given by one of the Department of English faculty.
  • Passage with a grade of 'B' or higher of a course in literature numbered 100 or higher in a foreign language department at Stanford.
  • Passage of the following, respectively, with a grade of 'B' or higher:  FRENLANG 250 Reading FrenchGERLANG 250 Reading GermanITALLANG 250 Reading ItalianSPANLANG 250 Reading Spanish.

Coterminal Program with School of Education 

Students interested in becoming middle school and high school teachers of English may apply for admission to the coterminal teaching program (CTP) of the Stanford Teacher Education Program (STEP) in the School of Education.

CTP students complete a special curriculum in English language, composition, and literature that combines a full English major with supplemental course work in subjects commonly taught in California public schools and a core program of foundational courses in educational theory and practice. They are then admitted to STEP for a fifth year of pedagogical study and practice teaching. Students who complete the curriculum requirements are able to enter STEP without the necessity of taking either the GRE or the usual subject matter assessment tests.

At the end of five years, CTP students receive a B.A. in English, an M.A. in Education, and a California Secondary Teaching Credential.

Students normally apply to the coterminal teaching program at the end of their sophomore year or at the beginning of their junior year. For complete program details and for information on how to apply, consult the Director of Undergraduate Studies in English or the CTP coordinator in the School of Education.

Doctor of Philosophy in English

Admission

Students with a bachelor's degree in English or a closely related field may apply to pursue graduate work toward an advanced degree in English at Stanford. Applicants for admission to graduate work must take the General Test of the Graduate Record Examination and the Subject Test in Literature. International students whose first language is not English are also required to take the TOEFL examination (with certain exceptions: see the Office of Graduate Admissions web site).

University Degree Requirements

University requirements for the Ph.D. are described in the "Graduate Degrees " section of this bulletin.

Department Degree Requirements

The following department degree requirements, which apply to students entering the program in Autumn Quarter 2013 and thereafter, deal with such matters as residence, dissertation, and examinations, and are in addition to the University's basic requirements for the doctorate. Students should also consult the most recent edition of the English Ph.D. Handbook.

A candidate for the Ph.D. degree must complete three years (nine quarters) of full-time work, or the equivalent, in graduate study beyond the bachelor's degree. Candidates are required to complete at least 135 units of graduate work in addition to the doctoral dissertation. At least three consecutive quarters of graduate work, and the final course work in the doctoral program, must be taken at Stanford.

A student may count no more than 65 units of non-graded courses toward the 135 course units required for the Ph.D., without the written consent of the Director of Graduate Studies. A student takes at least 70 graded units (normally fourteen courses) of the 135 required total units. 5 of these 70 units may be fulfilled with ENGLISH 398 Research Course or ENGLISH 398R Revision and Development of a Paper. ENGLISH 396L Pedagogy Seminar I does not count toward the 70 graded units. No more than 10 units (normally two courses) may come from 100-level courses

This program is designed to be completed in five years.

One pedagogical seminar and four quarters of supervised teaching constitute the teaching requirement for the Ph.D. Typically a student teaches three times as a teaching assistant in a literature course. For the fourth course, students have the option of applying to design and teach ENGLISH 162W. Writing Intensive Seminar in English (WISE) for undergraduate English majors or teaching a fourth quarter as a T.A..

  • 1st year: One quarter as T.A. (leading 1-2 discussion sections of undergraduate literature)
  • 2nd year: One quarter as T.A. (leading 1-2 discussion sections of undergraduate literature)
  • 4th/5th years: Two quarters of teaching, including the possibility of TA'ing or teaching an undergraduate tutorial.

I. English and American Literature

Students are expected to do course work across the full range of English and American literature. Students are required to fulfill the following requirements. Note: fulfillment of requirements 1, 2, and 3 must be through Stanford courses; students are not excused from these three requirements or granted credit for course work done elsewhere.

  1. Units
    Required Courses:
    ENGLISH 396Introduction to Graduate Study for Ph.D. Students5
    ENGLISH 396LPedagogy Seminar I2
  2. Graduate-level (at least 200-level) course work in English literature before 1700, and English or American literature after 1700 (at least 5 units of each).
  3. Graduate-level (at least 200-level) course work in some aspect of literary theory such as courses in literary theory itself, narrative theory, poetics, rhetoric, cultural studies, gender studies (at least 5 units).
  4. Students concentrating in British literature are expected to take at least one course (5 units) in American literature; students concentrating in American literature are expected to take at least one course (5 units) in British literature.
  5. Of all courses taken, a minimum of six courses for a letter grade must be graduate colloquia and seminars, of which at least three must be graduate seminars. The colloquia and seminars should be from different genres and periods, as approved by the adviser.
  6. The remaining units of graded, graduate-level courses and seminars should be distributed according to the adviser's judgment and the candidate's needs. A student may receive graduate credit for no more than two 100-level courses in the Department of English.
  7. Consent of the adviser if courses taken outside the Department of English are to count toward the requirement of 70 graded units of course work.
  8. An oral qualifying examination based on a reading guide, to be taken at the end of the summer after the first year of graduate work. The final decision as to qualification is made by the graduate studies committee in consideration of the student's overall record for the first year's work in conjunction with performance on the examination. Note: A student coming to the doctoral program who has done graduate work at another university must petition in the first year at Stanford for transfer credit for course work completed elsewhere. The petition should list the courses and grades, and describe the nature and scope of course work, as well as the content, contact hours, and writing requirements. A syllabus must be included. The Director of Graduate Studies considers the petition in conjunction with the student's overall performance.
  9. University Oral Examination—A University oral examination covering the field of concentration (as defined by the student and the student's adviser). Students take 10 units of an Orals Preparation workshop led by the Director of Graduate Studies in Spring quarter of the second year.  The oral examination, based on a reading list established by the candidate in consultation with his or her adviser, is taken taken no later than the Autumn Quarter of the third year of graduate study.
  10. Dissertation—As early as possible during graduate study, a Ph.D. candidate is expected to find a topic requiring extensive original research and to seek out a member of the department as his or her adviser. The adviser works with the student to select a committee to supervise the dissertation. candidates should take this crucial step as early in their graduate careers as possible. The committee may well advise extra preparation within or outside the department, and time should be allowed for such work. After the dissertation topic has been approved, the candidate should file a formal reading committee form as prescribed by the University. Once a first chapter has been drafted, the student meets with the full reading committee for a one hour colloquium.  The dissertation must be submitted to the adviser as a rough draft, but in substantially final form, at least four weeks before the University deadline in the quarter during which the candidate expects to receive the Ph.D. degree.
  11. Closing Colloquium—Prior to the submission of the dissertation the student and the dissertation committee holds a closing colloquium designed to look forward toward the next steps; identify the major accomplishments of the dissertation and the major questions/issues/problems that remain; consider possibilities for revision, book or article publication, etc. and to provide some intellectual closure to the dissertation.

II. English and Comparative Literature

The Ph.D. program in English and Comparative Literature is designed for students wishing an extensive knowledge of the literature, thought, and history of England and of at least one foreign country, for one period. Approximately half of the student's course work and reading is devoted to this period, with the remainder of the time given to other periods of English and American literature since 1350.

This degree, administered by the Department of English, is to be distinguished from the Ph.D. in Comparative Literature. The latter program is intended for students unusually well prepared in foreign languages and involves advanced work in three literatures, one of which may be English. Interested students should consult a Department of English adviser, but faculty from Comparative Literature may also provide useful supplementary information.

The requirements are as follows:

  1. Knowledge of the basic structure of the English language and of Chaucer. This requirement may be met by examination, or by taking 10 units of courses chosen from among those offered in linguistics, English philology, and early and middle English literature including Chaucer. No particular courses are required of all students.
  2. Units
    Required Courses:
    ENGLISH 396Introduction to Graduate Study for Ph.D. Students5
    ENGLISH 396LPedagogy Seminar I2
  3. A knowledge of one foreign language sufficient to take graduate-level literature courses in a foreign-language department and an advanced reading knowledge of a second language.
  4. A minimum of 45 units in the history, thought, and literature of one period, in two or more languages, one of which must be English and one foreign. Students normally include at least two courses in a foreign literature read in the original language and two courses listed under Comparative Literature or Modern Thought and Literature. As many as 20 units of this requirement may be satisfied through courses in reading and research. A student may receive graduate credit for no more than two 100-level courses in the Department of English.
  5. A minimum of six courses for a letter grade from graduate colloquia and graduate seminars, of which three must be graduate seminars and of which at least four must be in the Department of English. Among these courses, students should take one in literary theory or criticism. These colloquia and seminars should be in different genres and periods as approved by the adviser.
  6. An oral qualifying examination: see item 8 under requirements of the Ph.D. program in English Literature. For qualifications in the doctoral program in English and Comparative Literature, candidates are not held responsible for literature before 1350, but instead include on their reading list a selection of works from a foreign literature read in the original language.
  7. University Oral Examination—A University oral examination covering the field of concentration (as defined by the student and the student's adviser). Students take 10 units of an Orals Preparation workshop led by the Director of Graduate Studies in Spring quarter of the second year.  The oral examination, based on a reading list established by the candidate in consultation with his or her adviser, is taken taken no later than the Autumn Quarter of the third year of graduate study.
  8. Dissertation—As early as possible during graduate study, a Ph.D. candidate is expected to find a topic requiring extensive original research and to seek out a member of the department as his or her adviser. The adviser works with the student to select a committee to supervise the dissertation. candidates should take this crucial step as early in their graduate careers as possible. The committee may well advise extra preparation within or outside the department, and time should be allowed for such work. After the dissertation topic has been approved, the candidate should file a formal reading committee form as prescribed by the University. Once a first chapter has been drafted, the student meets with the full reading committee for a one hour colloquium.  The dissertation must be submitted to the adviser as a rough draft, but in substantially final form, at least four weeks before the University deadline in the quarter during which the candidate expects to receive the Ph.D. degree.
  9. Closing Colloquium—Prior to the submission of the dissertation the student and the dissertation committee hold a closing colloquium designed to look forward toward the next steps; identify the major accomplishments of the dissertation and the major questions/issues/problems that remain; consider possibilities for revision, book or article publication, etc. and to provide some intellectual closure to the dissertation.

Language Requirements

Candidates for the Ph.D. degree (except those in English and Comparative Literature, for whom special language requirements prevail) must demonstrate a reading knowledge of two foreign languages. Candidates in the earlier periods must offer Latin and one of the following languages: French, German, Greek, Italian, or Spanish. In some instances, they may be required to offer a third language. Candidates in the later period (that is, after the Renaissance) must offer either French, German, or Latin as one language and may choose the second language from the following: Greek, Latin, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, or another language relevant to the student's field of study. In all cases, the choice of languages offered must have the approval of the candidate's adviser. Any substitution of another language must be approved by the Director of Graduate Studies.

The graduate studies committee does not accept courses taken as an undergraduate in satisfaction of the language requirement for doctoral candidates. For students coming to doctoral work at Stanford from graduate work done elsewhere, satisfaction of a foreign language requirement is determined by the Director of Graduate Studies based on the contact hours, syllabus, reading list, etc. Transfer is not automatic.

The candidate must satisfy one language requirement by the end of the first year (that is, before the qualifying examination), and the other by the end of the third year.

Foreign language requirements for the Ph.D. may be fulfilled in any of the following ways:

  1. A reading examination given each quarter by the various language departments, except for Latin and Greek.
  2. For Latin and Greek, an examination given by one of the Department of English faculty.
  3. Passage with a grade of 'B' or higher of a course in literature numbered 100 or higher in a foreign language department at Stanford. As an alternative for Latin, French, Italian, German, and Spanish, passage of the following, respectively, with a grade of 'B' or higher:
Units
FRENLANG 250Reading French4
GERLANG 250Reading German4
ITALLANG 250Reading Italian4
SPANLANG 250Reading Spanish3

Emeriti: (Professors) George H. Brown, W. B. Carnochan, W. S. Di Piero, John Felstiner, Albert J. Gelpi, Barbara C. Gelpi,  Shirley Heath, John L’Heureux, Herbert Lindenberger, Andrea A. Lunsford, Nancy H. Packer, Marjorie G. Perloff, Robert M. Polhemus, Arnold Rampersad, David R. Riggs, Lawrence V. Ryan, Elizabeth C. Traugott, Tobias Wolff; (Associate Professor) Sandra Drake; (Professor, Teaching) Larry Friedlander; (Senior Lecturer) Helen B. Brooks; (Lecturer) David MacDonald

Chair: Alex Woloch

Director of Creative Writing Program: Eavan Boland

Professors: John B. Bender (English, Comparative Literature, on leave autumn), Eavan Boland, Terry Castle, Margaret Cohen (English, Comparative Literature, on leave),  Michele Elam, Kenneth W. Fields, Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Denise Gigante, Roland Greene (English, Comparative Literature), Blair Hoxby, Adam Johnson (on leave winter, spring), Gavin Jones, Chang-rae Lee, Mark McGurl, Franco Moretti (English, Comparative Literature, on leave), Paula Moya, Sianne Ngai, Stephen Orgel, Patricia A. Parker (English, Comparative Literature), Peggy Phelan (English, Drama), Nancy Ruttenburg, Ramón Saldívar (English, Comparative Literature), Elizabeth Tallent, Elaine Treharne, Blakey Vermeule, Alex Woloch

Associate Professors: Nicholas Jenkins

Assistant Professors: Mark Algee-Hewitt, Michaela Bronstein, Claire Jarvis (on leave autumn), Ivan Lupić, G. Vaughn Rasberry (on leave autumn)

Senior Lecturer: Judith Richardson

Courtesy Professors: Joshua Landy, David Palumbo-Liu, Kathryh Starkey, Bryan Wolf

Lecturers:  Jasper Bernes, Heather Brink-Roby, Kai Carlson-Wee, Harriet Clark, Keith Ekiss, John Evans, Nicholas Friedman, Sarah Frisch, Scott Hutchins, Tom Kealey, Dana Kletter, Mark Labowskie, Brittany Perham, Ryan Perry, Kate Petersen, Edward Porter, Shannon Pufahl, Nina Schloesser, Solmaz Sharif, Michael Shewmaker, Austin Smith, Alice Staveley, Shimon Tanaka, Elizabeth Tshele, Hannah Walser

Adjunct Professor: Valerie Miner

Visiting Professors:  Stuart Dybek, Louise Glück, Robert Pinsky, Rebecca Solnit

Overseas Studies Courses in English

The Bing Overseas Studies Program manages Stanford study abroad programs for Stanford undergraduates. Students should consult their department or program's student services office for applicability of Overseas Studies courses to a major or minor program.

The Bing Overseas Studies course search site displays courses, locations, and quarters relevant to specific majors.

For course descriptions and additional offerings, see the listings in the Stanford Bulletin's ExploreCourses or Bing Overseas Studies .


Units
OSPFLOR 6The Florentine Connection in Medieval and Renaissance Literature3-5
OSPOXFRD 17Novels of Sensation: Gothic, Detective Story, Prohibition, and Transgression in Victorian Fiction5
OSPOXFRD 57The Rise of the Woman Writer 1660-18605
OSPOXFRD 60Shakespeare and his Contemporaries5

Courses

ENGLISH 1. CSN Undergraduate Colloquium. 1 Unit.

This colloquium is intended for undergraduates who are interested in the history and theory of the novel, and who would like to attend the Center for the Study of the Novel's (CSN) annual conference. Before the conference, students will meet with CSN's graduate student staff, to read and discuss a small number of key texts by participating scholars, whose presentations students will then attend. After the conference, the colloquium will meet again, to discuss both the readings and conference papers, and explore their broader implications for the study of the novel. Attendance at both meetings of the colloquium, and at least one panel at the conference, is required for course credit.
Same as: DLCL 1

ENGLISH 1D. Dickens Book Club. 1 Unit.

Through the academic year, we will read one Dickens novel, one number a week for 19 weeks, as the Victorians would have done as they read the serialized novel over the course of 19 months. The group gets together once a week for an hour and a half to discuss each number, to look carefully at the pattern that the author is weaving, to guess, as the Victorians would have done, what might be coming next, and to investigate the Victorian world Dickens presents. We look carefully at themes, characters, metaphorical patterns, and scenes that form Dickens' literary world, and spend increasing time evaluating the critique that Dickens levels at Victorian life. The weekly gatherings are casual; the discussion is lively and pointed.

ENGLISH 9CE. Creative Expression in Writing. 3 Units.

Primary focus on giving students a skill set to tap into their own creativity. Opportunities for students to explore their creative strengths, develop a vocabulary with which to discuss their own creativity, and experiment with the craft and adventure of their own writing. Students will come out of the course strengthened in their ability to identify and pursue their own creative interests. For undergrads only.

ENGLISH 9CT. Special Topics in Creative Expression. 3 Units.

Focus on a particular topic or process of creative expression. Primary focus on giving students a skill set to tap into their own creativity. Opportunities for students to explore their creative strengths, develop a vocabulary with which to discuss their own creativity, and experiment with the craft and adventure of their own writing. Students will come out of the course strengthened in their ability to identify and pursue their own creative interests. For undergrads only.

ENGLISH 9CV. Creative Expression in Writing. 3 Units.

Online workshop whose primary focus is to give students a skill set to tap into their own creativity. Opportunities for students to explore their creative strengths, develop a vocabulary with which to discuss their own creativity, and experiment with the craft and adventure of their own writing. Students will come out of the course strengthened in their ability to identify and pursue their own creative interests. For undergrads only.

ENGLISH 10A. Introduction to English I: Medieval and Renaissance Literature. 5 Units.

From the 14th to the 17th centuries, what are the relations between literature and history? How has our understanding of key works changed as historicisms--or the approach that treats a period in its specificity--have changed? Discussion of how literature works as a force in culture, not only a reflection of other forces. Chaucer's General Prologue and Knight's Tale; More, Utopia; Wyatt and Sidney, poems; Lock, Meditation of a Penitent Sinner; Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book One; Shakespeare, The Tempest; Donne, Songs and Sonets and Holy Sonnets; Milton, Paradise Lost.

ENGLISH 10C. Introduction to English I: Tradition and Individuality, Medieval to Early Modern. 5 Units.

This course offers a comprehensive introduction to English literature from its beginning in the medieval period to the early seventeenth century. We will study individual literary voices and styles in the context of a growing national tradition. We will discuss major authors (such as Chaucer, More, Wyatt, Surrey, Sidney, Spenser, Jonson, Donne) and analyze representative literary works in a variety of genres, from the Old English elegy and Middle English lyrics to the Elizabethan sonnet, Renaissance comedy, and the allegorical epic. While the course equips students with specific analytical and interpretative tools necessary for a historical understanding of literature, it is equally committed to revealing the aesthetic interest that medieval and early modern literature still holds for the modern reader.

ENGLISH 10UK. Lost in the Myths of Time. 1 Unit.

Robin Hood the Outlaw; Grendel, the monster of the moors; medieval battle-sites; early roadways: the remnants of medieval villages visible through Google Earth and cyber-visualization: this course will explore what ancient English landscapes and landmarks reveal about culture, society, politics, nation and identity a thousand years ago. (Mandatory for participants in the Lost in the Myths of Time Bing Overseas Seminar).

ENGLISH 11AX. Creative Writing: Short Fiction and Storytelling in the Arts. 2 Units.

When we look closely at a photograph or painting, a story emerges, but how do we begin to interpret the meaning of that story without narration or passing time? When we listen to music or watch a ballet, we have a sense of emotion and drama, but why? And how has the artist created such things for us?<br><br> These questions have great resonance for the fiction writer, who must generate from the most basic tool all the necessities of the short story: drama, character, setting, emotion, and lyricism. In order to write more affecting and beautiful stories, this course will ask us to explore beyond the literary, into the world of the visual and performing arts. We will pair short stories with paintings, films, songs, and performances. As we learn the many ways stories are told and experienced, we will bring these insights into our own work through prompted exercises, improv, games, collaboration, workshop, and revision. In addition to exercises, vignettes, and sketches, each student will complete a short story and have that story critiqued by both her peers and the instructor. Our primary aim in this class will be to make writing a daily practice that considers the work and value of art generally and in that way to take risks, succeed, reflect, revise, fail, and recover from failure.

ENGLISH 11B. Introduction to English II: American Literature and Culture to 1855. 5 Units.

(Formerly English 23/123). A survey of early American writings, including sermons, poetry, captivity and slave narratives, essays, autobiography, and fiction, from the colonial era to the eve of the Civil War.
Same as: AMSTUD 150

ENGLISH 11C. Introduction to English II: Milton and Melville. 5 Units.

This course will study four literary masterpieces in depth: John Milton's Paradise Lost (1667; 1674); Book 4 of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726); Jane Austen's Persuasion (1817); and Herman Melville's Moby Dick (1851). All of these works are complex and will repay close study. But they also work their way into an ongoing literary conversation in the western world and in that sense serve as touchstones for later writers. We will consider each work not only for its own aesthetic accomplishment but also in sometimes passionate debate with its author's historical circumstances.

ENGLISH 12A. Introduction to English III: Introduction to African American Literature. 5 Units.

(Formerly English 43/143). In his bold study, What Was African American Literature?, Kenneth Warren defines African American literature as a late nineteenth- to mid-twentieth-century response to the nation's Jim Crow segregated order. But in the aftermath of the Jim Crow era and the Civil Rights movement, can critics still speak, coherently, of "African American literature"? And how does this political conception of African American literary production compare with accounts grounded in black language and culture? Taking up Warren's intervention, this course will explore African American literature from its earliest manifestations in the spirituals and slave narratives to texts composed at the height of desegregation and decolonization struggles at mid-century and beyond.
Same as: AFRICAAM 43, AMSTUD 12A

ENGLISH 12C. Introduction to English III: Modern Literature. 5 Units.

Survey of the major trends in literary history from 1850 to the present.

ENGLISH 14SC. Three Versions of Hamlet. 2 Units.

Shakespeare's Hamlet exists in three early editions published in 1603, 1604-05, and 1623. Nearly all modern editions conflate the three into a single text that includes famous or important speeches into a fourth version that would have been unrecognizable to Shakespeare's audience. For instance, the to be or not to be speech is utterly different across the three versions.<br><br>nThis course asks what we learn about Shakespeare's play and the culture in which it was written and performed by treating the three versions as distinct texts with their own histories, purposes, and perhaps even world-views. The procedure of the course will be to read the three versions closely and, more often as we move through them, to note their variants and speculate about how these differences might inform a wide-ranging interpretation of Shakespeare's world. A few ancillary readings in textual studies, theater history, and Renaissance culture will cast light on the central questions.

ENGLISH 15SC. A New Millennial Mix: The Art & Politics of the "Mixed Race Experience". 2 Units.

Recently, The New York Times and the National Geographic have hailed the "new face of America" as young, global, and hybrid. The NY Times gave this demographic a name: Generation E.A. (Ethnically Ambiguous). Our course examines the political and aesthetic implications of Generation E.A., and the hot new vogue for all things mixed. Galvanized by the 2000 census with its "mark one or more" (MOOM) racial option, dozens of organizations, websites, affinity and advocacy groups, modeling and casting agencies, television pilots, magazines, and journals--all focused on multi-racial/multi-cultural experiences--have emerged in the last few years. We will analyze representations of mixed race and multiculturalism in law, literature, history, art, performance, film, comedy, and popular culture. These cultural and legal events are changing the way we talk and think about race.<br><br>Importantly, our seminar also broadens this discussion beyond race, exploring how crossings of the color-line so often intersect with other aspects of experience related to gender, religion, culture, or class.nField trips, films, communal lunches, and interactive assignments help us explore the current controversies over mixed-race identification and, more generally, the expressive and political possibilities for representing complex identities. Requirements include three two- to three-page analytical writing assignments, a presentation that can include an optional artistic or media component, and a final group-designed project.<br><br>If you are a citizen of the 21st century, this class is for and about you.

ENGLISH 16SC. Learning Theater: From Audience to Critic at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. 2 Units.

Who doesn't love going to a play: sitting in the darkened theater, an anonymous member of the audience waiting to be entertained, charmed, and challenged? But how many of us know enough about the details of the plays, their interpretation, their production, and acting itself, to allow us to appreciate fully the theatrical experience? In this seminar, we will spend 13 days in Ashland, Oregon, at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF), where we will attend these plays: Shakespeare's Henry IV1, Henry IV2, Julius Caesar, and The Merry Wives of Windsor; the world premiere of Jiehae Park's Hannah and the Dread Gazebo; Universes' August Wilson's Poetry in UniSon; Mary Zimmerman's adaptation of Homer's The Odyssey; the world premiere of Randy Reinholz's Off the Rails; Disney's Beauty and the Beast, with music by Alan Menken and lyrics by Howard Ashman and Tim Rice; and Shakespeare in Love, based on the screenplay by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard. (To read more about these productions, go to www.osfashland.org). We will also spend time backstage, meeting with actors, designers, and artistic and administrative directors of OSF. Students will read the plays before the seminar begins. In Ashland, they will produce staged readings and design a final paper based on one of the productions. These reviews will be delivered to the group and turned in on Thursday, September 21.nnNote: This seminar will convene in Ashland on Monday, September 4, and will adjourn to Stanford on Sunday, September 17. Students must arrive in Ashland by 4:00 p.m. on September 4. Room and board in Ashland and transportation to Stanford will be provided and paid for by the program.

ENGLISH 40N. Theatrical Wonders from Shakespeare to Mozart. 3 Units.

What is the secret of theatrical illusion? How does the theater move us to wonder, sympathetic identification, and reflection? How do the changing stories that theater tells reveal our values? We will ask these questions through a close examination--on the page and on the stage--of dramatic masterpieces by Shakespeare, Calderón, and Mozart. We will attend a live performance of The Magic Flute. No prior knowledge of music is required.

ENGLISH 44B. Contemporary British Fiction. 3-5 Units.

(English majors and others taking 5 units should register for 144B). How do contemporary British novelists represent dramatic changes in culture, class, demography, generation, economy, gender, race, and national identity following the allied victory in the Second World War (1939-1945)? Focusing on writers born between 1948 and 1975, we examine the structuring of historical consciousness in novels by Zadie Smith, Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro, Jeanette Winterson, Hanif Kureishi, Julian Barnes, Ali Smith, and Hilary Mantel.
Same as: ENGLISH 144B

ENGLISH 50Q. Life and Death of Words. 4 Units.

In this course, we explore the world of words: their creation, evolution, borrowing, change, and death. Words are the key to understanding the culture and ideas of a people, and by tracing the biographies of words we are able to discern how the world was, is, and might be perceived and described. We trace how words are formed, and how they change in pronunciation, spelling, meaning, and usage over time. How does a word get into the dictionary? What do words reveal about status, class, region, and race? How is the language of men and women critiqued differently within our society? How does slang evolve? How do languages become endangered or die, and what is lost when they do? We will visit the Facebook Content Strategy Team and learn more about the role words play in shaping our online experiences. Together, the class will collect Stanford language and redesign the digital dictionary of the future. Trigger Warning: Some of the subject matter of this course is sensitive and may cause offense. Please consider this prior to enrolling in the course.
Same as: CSRE 50Q, FEMGEN 50Q, LINGUIST 50Q, NATIVEAM 50Q

ENGLISH 52N. Mixed-Race Politics and Culture. 3 Units.

Today, almost one-third of Americans identify with a racial/ethnic minority group, and more than 9 million Americans identify with multiple races. What are the implications of such diversity for American politics and culture? In this course, we approach issues of race from an interdisciplinary perspective, employing research in the social sciences and humanities to assess how race shapes perceptions of identity as well as political behavior in 21st century U.S. We will examine issues surrounding the role of multiculturalism, immigration, acculturation, racial representation and racial prejudice in American society. Topics we will explore include the political and social formation of "race"; racial representation in the media, arts, and popular culture; the rise and decline of the "one-drop rule" and its effect on political and cultural attachments; the politicization of Census categories and the rise of the Multiracial Movement.
Same as: AFRICAAM 52N, POLISCI 29N

ENGLISH 63N. Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. 3 Units.

Harold Bloom has argued that Shakespeare is the first literary writer to invent three-dimensional fictional human beings: characters who, in hearing themselves think, develop. With that premise in mind, we will explore two key dimensions of Shakespeare's originality: his poetic language and his genius for unfolding character. Above all, we will examine the extremities of the human condition-villainy, monstrosity, betrayal, seduction-in selected "problem plays" and tragedies.

ENGLISH 67. Contemporary Chicano & Latino Literature. 4 Units.

What does it mean to be Chicano and Latino in the United States today? And, how have U.S. writers portrayed the evolution of a Latino identity as it has changed from the age of the Civil Rights Movement to the age of Twitter? This class provides students with an overview of 20th and 21st century U.S. Latino/a literature by focusing on American authors writing after the 1960s to the present. We will read a range of writers, including Gloria Anzaldúa, Sandra Cisneros, Héctor Tobar, and Junot Díaz, and examine how these authors grapple with the artistic task of representing the different national cultures and histories (Mexican American, Puerto Rican, etc.) that inform the U.S. Latino experience. Throughout the quarter we will explore how these fictional narratives offer insights into the topics of American identity, immigration, assimilation, class status, Women of Color feminism, gender and sexuality. In addition, we will also consider contemporary representations from film and television, ultimately working toward a comprehensive analysis of how literary genres and popular cultural contribute to the meaning of Latinidad in the U.S.
Same as: CHILATST 67

ENGLISH 68N. Mark Twain and American Culture. 4 Units.

Preference to freshmen. Mark Twain defined the rhythms of our prose and the contours of our moral map. He recognized our extravagant promise and stunning failures, our comic foibles and  tragic flaws. He is viewed as the most American of American authors--and as one of the most universal. How does his work illuminate his society's (and our society's) responses to such issues as race, gender, technology, heredity vs. environment, religion, education, art, imperialism, animal welfare, and what it means to be "American"?.
Same as: AMSTUD 68N

ENGLISH 71. DANGEROUS IDEAS. 1 Unit.

Ideas matter. Concepts such as equality, progress, and tradition have inspired social movements, shaped political systems, and dramatically influenced the lives of individuals. Others, like freedom of the press, fact versus fiction, and citizenship play an important role in contemporary debates in the United States. All of these ideas are contested, and they have a real power to change lives, for better and for worse. In this one-unit class we will examine these dangerous ideas. Each week, a faculty member from a different department in the humanities and arts will explore a concept that has shaped human experience across time and space. Some weeks will have short reading assignments, but you are not required to purchase any materials.
Same as: ARTHIST 36, EALC 36, HISTORY 3D, MUSIC 36H, PHIL 36

ENGLISH 76. After the Apocalypse. 3 Units.

What happens after the world, as we know it, has ended? In the course of examining classic and newer speculative fictional narratives detailing the ravages of various post-apocalyptic societies and the challenges those societies pose to the survivors, we explore several related questions: What is an apocalypse? What resources does speculative fiction offer for understanding and responding to oppressive societies? Where does the idea of the apocalypse originate? Is an apocalypse always in the future? Or has it already occurred? For whom might apocalypse constitute an ongoing present? In this course, we use the tools of close reading and historical criticism to build an archive of knowledge about the narrative, visual, and aural features of apocalypse. Students will be guided through the creation of a multimedia portfolio over the course of the quarter, for presentation at the end. No written midterm or final exam.

ENGLISH 79N. The Renaissance: Culture as Conflict. 3 Units.

Focus is on the Renaissance not as a cultural rebirth but as a scene of cultural conflict. Course materials are selected from Renaissance art, history, philosophy, politics, religion, and travel writing; authors include More, Luther, Erasmus, Machiavelli, Michelangelo, Montaigne, Shakespeare. Among the conflicts we will explore are: old (world)/new (world), wealth/poverty, individual/collectivity, manuscript/print, religion/secularism, Catholicism/Protestantism, monarchism/republicanism, femininity/masculinity, heterosexuality/homosexuality.

ENGLISH 81. Philosophy and Literature. 5 Units.

Required gateway course for Philosophical and Literary Thought; crosslisted in departments sponsoring the Philosophy and Literature track. Majors should register in their home department; non-majors may register in any sponsoring department. Introduction to major problems at the intersection of philosophy and literature, with particular focus on the question of value: what, if anything, does engagement with literary works do for our lives? Issues include aesthetic self-fashioning, the paradox of tragedy, the paradox of caring, the truth-value of fiction, metaphor, authorship, irony, make-believe, expression, edification, clarification, and training. Readings are drawn from literature and film, philosophical theories of art, and stylistically interesting works of philosophy. Authors may include Sophocles, Chaucer, Dickinson, Proust, Woolf, Borges, Beckett, Kundera, Charlie Kaufman; Barthes, Foucault, Nussbaum, Walton, Nehamas; Plato, Montaigne, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Sartre. Taught in English.
Same as: CLASSICS 42, COMPLIT 181, FRENCH 181, GERMAN 181, ITALIAN 181, PHIL 81, SLAVIC 181

ENGLISH 82N. Thinking about Photographs. 3 Units.

The course will begin with a short history of photography since the 19th century; followed by both a hands-on exploration of different types of photographs (possibly using the Cantor Collection) and then a more theoretical discussion of some of the acknowledged classics of photographic writing (Susan Sontag's On Photography, Roland Barthes' Camera lucida, Linfield's The Cruel Radiance.

ENGLISH 85N. Financial Markets in Fiction and Film. 3 Units.

The financial markets have been an enormously fruitful subject for fiction writers and filmmakers since the 17th century--but the financial crisis of 2008 has energized this interest again. We will study the literature (film, fiction, journalism) of the financial markets, and talk in great detail about moral, social, economic and political issues that such literature raises.

ENGLISH 90. Fiction Writing. 5 Units.

The elements of fiction writing: narration, description, and dialogue. Students write complete stories and participate in story workshops. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: PWR 1 (waived in summer quarter).

ENGLISH 90Q. Sports Writing. 3 Units.

Study and practice of the unique narratives, tropes, images and arguments that creative writers develop when they write about popular sport. From regional fandom to individualist adventuring, boxing and baseball to mascot dancing and table tennis, exceptional creative writers mine from a diversity of leisure activity a rich vein of ¿sports writing¿ in the creative nonfiction genre. In doing so, they demonstrate the creative and formal adaptability required to write with excellence about any subject matter, and under the circumstances of any subjectivity. Discussion of the ways in which writers have framed, and even critiqued, our interest in athletic events, spectatorship, and athletic beauty. Writers include Joyce Carol Oates, Roland Barthes, David James Duncan, Arnold Rampersad, John Updike, Maxine Kumin, Susan Sterling, Ernest Hemingway, Norman Mailer, Dervla Murphy, Haruki Murakami, Don DeLillo, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Annie Dillard, John McPhee, and Laura Hillenbrand. Close readings of essays on form and sport, as well as book excerpts. Students will engage in class discussions and write short weekly papers, leading to a more comprehensive project at the end of the quarter.

ENGLISH 90V. Fiction Writing. 5 Units.

Online workshop course that explores the ways in which writers of fiction have used language to examine the world, to create compelling characters, and to move readers. We will begin by studying a selection of stories that demonstrate the many techniques writers use to create fictional worlds; we'll use these stories as models for writing exercises and short assignments, leading to a full story draft. We will study figurative language, character and setting development, and dramatic structure, among other elements of story craft. Then, each student will submit a full draft and receive feedback from the instructor and his/her classmates. This course is taught entirely online, but retains the feel of a traditional classroom. Optional synchronous elements such as discussion and virtual office hours provide the student direct interaction with both the instructor and his/her classmates. Feedback on written work ¿ both offered to and given by the student ¿ is essential to the course and creates class rapport.

ENGLISH 91. Creative Nonfiction. 5 Units.

(Formerly 94A.) Historical and contemporary as a broad genre including travel and nature writing, memoir, biography, journalism, and the personal essay. Students use creative means to express factual content.

ENGLISH 91DC. Writing the Memoir. 5 Units.

Open to DCI Fellows and Partners only. In this course, we will practice the art and craft of writing memoir: works of prose inspired by the memory of personal events and history. In our practice, we will look at different strategies for writing with meaning and insight about the events in our lives. We will read a variety of models by published authors who have made sense of the personal alongside the profound: the sad, joyful, simple and complicated stuff of living and being alive. Our learning will be discussion-driven. You should expect to do daily writing in the class, and to write and read widely between our class meetings. We will read, discuss, and imitate excerpts of memoirs by such authors as Augustine, Andrew Solomon, Joyce Carol Oates, Tim O¿Brien, Joan Didion, and Eavan Boland, among many others. At least half of our class time will be devoted to the discussion of participants' work. The course will address issues ranging from how we select and write about events from our personal lives, to the ethical obligations of memoirists, to the ways we can explore new understanding about the past, as well as our own courage and reluctance to share personal writing. Writers at all levels of experience and comfort with creative writing are very welcome.

ENGLISH 92. Reading and Writing Poetry. 5 Units.

Prerequisite: PWR 1. Issues of poetic craft. How elements of form, music, structure, and content work together to create meaning and experience in a poem. May be repeated for credit.

ENGLISH 93Q. The American Road Trip. 3 Units.

From Whitman to Kerouac, Alec Soth to Georgia O¿Keeffe, the lure of travel has inspired many American artists to pack up their bags and hit the open road. In this course we will be exploring the art and literature of the great American road trip. We will be reading and writing in a variety of genres, workshopping our own personal projects, and considering a wide breadth of narrative approaches. Assignments will range from reading Cormac McCarthy¿s novel, The Road, to listening to Bob Dylan¿s album, ¿Highway 61 Revisited.¿ We will be looking at films like Badlands and Thelma and Louise,¿acquainting ourselves with contemporary photographers, going on a number of campus-wide field trips, and finishing the quarter with an actual road trip down the California coast. Anyone with a sense of adventure is welcome!.

ENGLISH 94. Creative Writing Across Genres. 5 Units.

For minors in creative writing. The forms and conventions of the contemporary short story and poem. How form, technique, and content combine to make stories and poems organic. Prerequisite: 90, 91, or 92.

ENGLISH 102E. Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: Openings and Closings. 5 Units.

This course, centered on Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, is first and foremost a class about beginnings and endings. To put the problem in its general form, we will be wondering where a literary text begins, and what it means for it to end. Chaucer's Canterbury is constantly ending and beginning again, starting anew as the tale-telling game breaks down, is interrupted, and recommences. We will also think about the Canterbury Tales as open and closed in terms of their material existence. What do the Canterbury Tales tell us about how we open or close a medieval manuscript or a digital text?.

ENGLISH 103. Riddles, Runes, and Other Old English Enigmas. 5 Units.

What was English like before Shakespeare? Before Chaucer? In this class, you will learn to read Old English the ancestor of Modern English, spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons over a thousand years ago¿and in the process, you will begin to unravel the mysteries of the earliest English literature. These mysteries include riddles and other puzzles that have baffled readers for centuries, but they also include modern mysteries caused by damaged manuscripts and allusions to characters and texts now lost to the ages. We will encounter all of these enigmas (and many more) throughout the quarter as we read texts such as Widsith, the Exeter Book Riddles, The Wife¿s Lament, and The Husband¿s Message. For your final project, you will have the chance to interpret one of them and offer your own favorite solution.

ENGLISH 112A. Humanities Core: Great Books, Big Ideas -- Europe, Medieval to Early Modern. 3-4 Units.

This three-quarter sequence asks big questions of major texts in the European and American tradition. What is a good life? How should society be organized? Who belongs? How should honor, love, sin, and similar abstractions govern our actions? What duty do we owe to the past and future? The second quarter focuses on the transition from the Middle Ages to Modernity, Europe's re-acquaintance with classical antiquity and its first contacts with the New World. Authors include Dante, Shakespeare, Machiavelli, Cervantes, and Milton.
Same as: DLCL 12, FRENCH 12

ENGLISH 115C. Hamlet and the Critics. 5 Units.

Focus is on Shakespeare's Hamlet as a site of rich critical controversy from the eighteenth century to the present. Aim is to read, discuss, and evaluate different approaches to the play, from biographical, theatrical, and psychological to formalist, materialist, feminist, new historicist, and, most recently, quantitative. The ambition is to see whether there can be great literature without (a) great (deal of) criticism. The challenge is to understand the theory of literature through the study of its criticism.
Same as: TAPS 151C

ENGLISH 115D. Shakespeare, Language, Contexts. 5 Units.

This course will consider a range of Shakespeare plays (and the language of the plays) in relation to different contemporary and post-contemporary contexts, including transvestite theater, gender, sexuality, history, geopolitics, travel, and performance.

ENGLISH 118. Literature and the Brain. 5 Units.

Recent developments in and neuroscience and experimental psychology have transformed the way we think about the operations of the brain. What can we learn from this about the nature and function of literary texts? Can innovative ways of speaking affect ways of thinking? Do creative metaphors draw on embodied cognition? Can fictions strengthen our "theory of mind" capabilities? What role does mental imagery play in the appreciation of descriptions? Does (weak) modularity help explain the mechanism and purpose of self-reflexivity? Can the distinctions among types of memory shed light on what narrative works have to offer?.
Same as: ENGLISH 218, FRENCH 118, FRENCH 318, PSYCH 118F

ENGLISH 122A. Austen and Woolf. 5 Units.

Reading of three novels by Jane Austen¿arguably the most influential and gifted of British female novelists-¿and three novels by Virginia Woolf, whose debt to Austen was immense. Topics include the relationship between women writers and the evolution of the English novel; the extraordinary predominance of the marriage plot in Austen¿s fiction (and the various transformations Woolf works on it); each novelist¿s relationship to the cultural and social milieu in which she wrote.

ENGLISH 124. The American West. 5 Units.

The American West is characterized by frontier mythology, vast distances, marked aridity, and unique political and economic characteristics. This course integrates several disciplinary perspectives into a comprehensive examination of Western North America: its history, physical geography, climate, literature, art, film, institutions, politics, demography, economy, and continuing policy challenges. Students examine themes fundamental to understanding the region: time, space, water, peoples, and boom and bust cycles.
Same as: AMSTUD 124A, ARTHIST 152, HISTORY 151, POLISCI 124A

ENGLISH 126B. The Nineteenth Century Novel. 5 Units.

A set of major works of art produced at the peak of the novel¿s centrality as a cultural form: Austen¿s Emma, Bronte¿s Wuthering Heights, Eliot¿s Middlemarch, Dickens¿s Great Expectations, Stevenson¿s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Hardy¿s Tess of the d¿Urbervilles. The paradoxes of work, consciousness and the organization of narrative experience, habit and attention. Urban experience, shifting forms of individualism, ways of knowing other persons. Binary and concentric structures, happiness and moral action, arrays of characters.

ENGLISH 127A. American Madness. 3-5 Units.

This course delves into the bizarre annals of nineteenth-century madness -- the world of Ahab's "monomania," Edgar Allan Poe's "brain fever," and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "hysteria". Placing these literary texts in the context of the historical development of psychiatry during the nineteenth century, we will find that madness often assumes different forms in men and women, white Americans and African-Americans, capitalists and laborers -- suggesting that social inequalities cannot be cleanly separated from biological dispositions in our understanding of insanity. Reading these fictions of madness will not only illuminate the fundamental tensions of American culture, but will give us a new perspective on the construction of mental illness in the contemporary United States.

ENGLISH 130. Sex and the Novel. 5 Units.

How do novels represent sexual life? This course reads texts from the eighteenth century to the present day, and considers how novelists represent the discombobulating effects of desire in fictional prose. Authors may include: S. Richardson, N. Hawthorne, J. Austen, E. Brontë, G. Gissing, H. James, D.H. Lawrence, J. Joyce, V. Nabokov, J. Baldwin, A. Hollinghurst and Z. Smith.
Same as: FEMGEN 130S

ENGLISH 131B. Sexuality and Scandal in the Early Novel. 3-5 Units.

The age of political and scientific revolution between 1660 and 1832 also saw a revolution in storytelling. This course examines experiments in fiction during this period, including titillating secret histories and epistolary novels written as letters. How do these fictions portray gender and sexuality, and how have they influenced the commercial novels that we read today? To approach these questions, we study stories by the first women who made a living as authors; the notorious French bestseller Dangerous Liaisons; and Jane Austen's first published novel, Sense and Sensibility, with an eye to how Austen addresses the genre's scandalous earlier history.

ENGLISH 134A. Historical Fiction: Bringing the Past to Life in Text and Film. 3-5 Units.

How does the past come to life, on the page and on the screen? From Walter Scott, to Toni Morrison, to the popular romances, films, and television series of today, this course considers a range of texts that draw their settings, characters, and plots from history. We will examine how each work addresses some of the central tensions of historical fiction: between the imagined past and the past as reconstructed through research, between description and the spirit of the past, between accuracy and relevance. Our focus will be on the craft of historical fiction and the power of techniques like description, dialogue, setting, and character to reanimate the past. For the final assessment, students will choose between a traditional argumentative paper and a historical story of their own invention.

ENGLISH 136. Great Poems: The Romantics. 5 Units.

Major Romantic writers including William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats.

ENGLISH 144. Major Modernists: Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Katherine Mansfield, T. S. Eliot. 5 Units.

What made modernism `new? Is the movement `evergreen? We examine representational change, narrative innovation, and political aesthetics in the poetry, short fiction, and novels of four iconic pioneers: Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Katherine Mansfield, and T.S. Eliot.

ENGLISH 144B. Contemporary British Fiction. 3-5 Units.

(English majors and others taking 5 units should register for 144B). How do contemporary British novelists represent dramatic changes in culture, class, demography, generation, economy, gender, race, and national identity following the allied victory in the Second World War (1939-1945)? Focusing on writers born between 1948 and 1975, we examine the structuring of historical consciousness in novels by Zadie Smith, Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro, Jeanette Winterson, Hanif Kureishi, Julian Barnes, Ali Smith, and Hilary Mantel.
Same as: ENGLISH 44B

ENGLISH 146. Development of the Short Story: Continuity and Innovation. 5 Units.

Exploration of the short story form's ongoing evolution as diverse writers address love, death, desire. Maupassant, D.H. Lawrence, Woolf, Flannery O'Connor, Hurston, and others. Required for Creative Writing emphasis. All majors welcome.

ENGLISH 146A. Steinbeck. 3-5 Units.

Introduction to the work of an American writer, beloved by general readers, often reviled by critics, whose career spanned from the Great Depression through World War II to the social upheavals of the 1960s. Focus on the social and political contexts of Steinbeck's major works; his fascination with California and Mexico; his interdisciplinary interest in marine biology and in philosophy; his diverse experiments with literary form, including drama and film.
Same as: AMSTUD 146A

ENGLISH 146C. Hemingway, Hurston, Faulkner, and Fitzgerald. 3-5 Units.

While Hemingway and Fitzgerald were flirting with the expatriate avant-garde in Europe, Hurston and Faulkner were performing anthropological field-work in the local cultures of the American South. Focus on the tremendous diversity of concerns and styles of four writers who marked America's coming-of-age as a literary nation with their multifarious experiments in representing the regional and the global, the racial and the cosmopolitan, the macho and the feminist, the decadent and the impoverished.
Same as: AMSTUD 146C

ENGLISH 147A. Speaking of Baseball. 3-5 Units.

Since its invention in the nineteenth century, baseball has been steeped in lore and rhetoric. A cultural commentator recently pegged it one of three significant American contributions to world culture, along with jazz and the U.S. constitution. Literary and artistic representations of baseball abound, often treating it as more than a game and only a little less than a religion. In this class, we¹ll track representations and grand claims made for baseball by American poets, novelists, and commentators of all sorts. We'll weigh the cornucopia of literary nonfiction depicting the game. The goal will be to map the scope of this literature, defining a tradition's edges, determining its peaks, assessing its limits, challenges, and stakes.

ENGLISH 150A. Great Poems: Modern and Contemporary. 5 Units.

Ten weeks, twenty-four poets, as follows: The Ache of the Modern: Hardy and Hopkins; The Making of Irish Modernism: W. B. Yeats; American Romanticism: Whitman and Dickinson; American Modernism: Frost and Stevens; Transatlantic Modernism: Eliot and Auden; Imagism: William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, H.D.; Sappho's Sisters: Elizabeth Bishop and Adrienne Rich; Poetry and Madness: Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton; Harlem Renaissance and Poets of Color: Jean Toomer, Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Derek Walcott; The Indomitable Irishry: Heaney, Muldoon, Boland.

ENGLISH 150D. Women Poets. 5 Units.

The development of women's poetry from the 17th to the 20th century. How these poets challenge and enhance the canon, amending and expanding ideas of tone, voice and craft, while revising societal expectations of the poet's identity. Poets include Katharine Philips, Letitia Barbauld, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Charlotte Mew, Sylvia Plath, and Adrienne Rich.
Same as: FEMGEN 150D

ENGLISH 150E. The American Songbook and Love Poetry. 5 Units.

A study of performances (Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra etc) of songs by classic American composers (Porter, Rogers and Hart, Cohen).

ENGLISH 150J. Queer Poetry. 3-5 Units.

Some poets are known for portraying alternative sexualities in their poetry. Others seem to cover sexuality up. Can we use a poem to determine whether a poet is gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or questioning? Or do some poets simply defy categorization? What makes a poem queer? Is poetry somehow more or less queer than other literary forms? Even if we can answer these questions, what would they tell us about literature in general? This course will investigate such topics and more by tracking queer poetry in twentieth-century America. We'll start with nineteenth-century figures Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, then move on to Gertrude Stein, Hart Crane, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Elizabeth Bishop, Allen Ginsberg, Frank O'Hara, and others. We'll ask what their poetry meant in their own times, as well as what it means to us in our present era of expanding civil rights and changing sexual attitudes.

ENGLISH 152G. Harlem Renaissance and Modernism. 5 Units.

Examination of the explosion of African American artistic expression during 1920s and 30s New York known as the Harlem Renaissance. Amiri Baraka once referred to the Renaissance as a kind of "vicious Modernism", as a "BangClash", that impacted and was impacted by political, cultural and aesthetic changes not only in the U.S. but Europe, the Caribbean and Latin America. Focus on the literature, graphic arts, and the music of the era in this global context.

ENGLISH 153. Time, Space, and Place: Humanistic Inquiry in a Digital Age. 2-5 Units.

What are the digital humanities? A definition might be: Digital humanities are those pursuits which use digital tools to explore topics of humanistic inquiry. But that definition is rather general. To have a more nuanced understanding of the digital humanities, students will be exposed to a number of its practices, and practitioners. Active engagement by all participants is expected. Students will read and annotate, map and perform digital textual analysis. Ultimately, students will have a better idea of what the digital humanities are, and will be introduced to different ways they can be practiced, opening up possibilities for further exploration.

ENGLISH 153H. The Text in the Machine: Digital Approaches to Literature. 5 Units.

Whether you¿re an avid programmer and an equally avid science fiction reader or an English major who designs apps in her spare time, you¿ve probably had some experience switching between literary and technological modes of thinking, between following a story and debugging a script. What if these distinct cognitive styles could be combined? In this course, we will try to learn things about narratives by counting, clustering, and networking their contents, exploring the burgeoning field of digital humanities. We will practice some basic techniques of quantitative textual analysis, from identifying a text¿s most distinctive words to determining its favorite topics and themes. But we will also find that these technical questions point us back to more basic interpretive or even philosophical ones: what is an author? What is a character? When we have a sense of a poem¿s mood, what exactly are we responding to? When we feel suspense or anxiety while reading a story, how is the text creating that effect?.

ENGLISH 156B. Yvor Winters: Poetry and Criticism. 5 Units.

Yvor Winters¿s poetry and fiction spanned several important eras: Renaissance poetry, American and French Symbolism, Imagism, and what he called ¿Post Symbolism.¿ In this course we will cover a good deal of literary history through the works of Winters, the fiction and poetry of his wife, Janet Lewis, and a variety of poems that touched on their work, including American Indian songs, Japanese haiku, and the poetry of Emily Dickinson, Hart Crane, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Louise Bogan, Catherine Davis, J.V. Cunningham, Edgar Bowers, and N Scott Momaday. Among our concerns will be ways of addressing a wide variety of poetic styles.

ENGLISH 157F. The Experience of Narrative: Serial Storytelling in Print and on TV. 5 Units.

¿TV¿s Lost Weekends,¿ a recent headline calls them, referring to our modern habit of binge-watching television shows. Today¿s commentators debate the right way to watch TV and, as they do, they echo longstanding arguments about how to read books. This course juxtaposes contemporary television with novels from the last 150 years in order to explore different ways of experiencing longform narratives. Primary examples will most likely be Dickens¿s Bleak House, The Wire Season 1, Conrad¿s Lord Jim, and True Detective Season 1.

ENGLISH 159. James Baldwin & Twentieth Century Literature. 5 Units.

Black, gay and gifted, Baldwin was hailed as a "spokesman for the race", although he personally, and controversially, eschewed titles and classifications of all kinds. This course examines his classic novels and essays as well his exciting work across many lesser-examined domains - poetry, music, theatre, sermon, photo-text, children's literature, public media, comedy and artistic collaboration. Placing his work in context with other writers of the 20C (Faulkner, Wright,Morrison) and capitalizing on a resurgence of interest in the writer (NYC just dedicated a year of celebration of Baldwin and there are 2 new journals dedicated to study of Baldwin), the course seeks to capture the power and influence of Baldwin's work during the Civil Rights era as well as his relevance in the "post-race" transnational 21st century, when his prescient questioning of the boundaries of race, sex, love, leadership and country assume new urgency.
Same as: AFRICAAM 159, FEMGEN 159

ENGLISH 160. Poetry and Poetics. 5 Units.

Introduction to the reading of poetry, with emphasis on how the sense of poems is shaped through diction, imagery, and technical elements of verse.

ENGLISH 161. Narrative and Narrative Theory. 5 Units.

An introduction to stories and storytelling--that is, to narrative. What is narrative? When is narrative fictional and when non-fictional? How is it done, word by word, sentence by sentence? Must it be in prose? Can it be in pictures? How has storytelling changed over time? Focus on various forms, genres, structures, and characteristics of narrative.

ENGLISH 162W. Writing Intensive Seminar in English. 5 Units.

Small literature-based, writing-intensive seminars taught by advanced graduate students in the English Ph.D. program. The goal will be to produce a high-quality final research paper. Courses will be oriented around a single text or a small group of texts in conversation with a larger spectrum of scholarship and knowledge in literary criticism and theory, film, painting, or material culture. The small format will allow undergraduates to receive detailed commentary and one-on-one feedback on their writing. To review the full list of WISE seminars, please visit this link: https://english.stanford.edu/courses/2016-2017-english-162w.
Same as: WISE

ENGLISH 163. Shakespeare. 5 Units.

Readings of six Shakespeare plays, with attention to poetic and dramatic elements, performance history, and historical and cultural contexts.

ENGLISH 166. Who were the Vikings?. 3-5 Units.

Who were the Vikings and what has been their influence on contemporary culture? This course provides a broad introduction to Viking society and culture as well as to their legacy in the modern world. We will look at Viking life, mythology, literature, art and archaeology as well as modern adaptations of Viking culture in music, literature, film and television. We will read some of the great works of Viking literature ¿ tales of Odin and Thor, of magic and monsters, of adventures across the seas - and examine online exhibitions of Vikings artefacts and settlements in Europe and Newfoundland. During the first half of the course, students will begin thinking about their final project ¿ a creative reimagining one of the texts or artefacts which we will discuss in class. The latter half of the course will focus on the development of the Vikings as a cultural model for modern creative expression. We will investigate how Norse themes, characters and forms were adapted in Germany, England and the USA in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by writers, artists and composers such as Richard Wagner, William Morris, Henry Longfellow and J.R.R. Tolkien. The course will conclude with a discussion of how the Vikings (and Viking ideas) are represented today in popular culture, including the 1958 Kirk Douglas film, ¿the Vikings¿, the TV shows ¿The Vikings¿ and ¿Game of Thrones¿ and the Marvel comic books series. Students will be encouraged to examine the ways in which these texts engage with their historical models and consider how this might influence their own creative project.

ENGLISH 172D. Introduction to Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. 5 Units.

How different disciplines approach topics and issues central to the study of ethnic and race relations in the U.S. and elsewhere. Lectures by senior faculty affiliated with CSRE. Discussions led by CSRE teaching fellows. Includes an optional Haas Center for Public Service certified Community Engaged Learning section.
Same as: COMPLIT 195, CSRE 196C, PSYCH 155, SOC 146, TAPS 165

ENGLISH 172E. The Literature of the Americas. 5 Units.

A wide-ranging overview of the literatures of the Americas inncomparative perspective, emphasizing continuities and crises that are common to North American, Central American, and South American literatures as well as the distinctive national and cultural elements of a diverse array of primary works. Topics include the definitions of such concepts as empire and colonialism, the encounters between worldviews of European and indigenous peoples, the emergence of creole and racially mixed populations, slavery, the New World voice, myths of America as paradise or utopia, the coming of modernism, twentieth-century avant-gardes, and distinctive modern episodes--the Harlem Renaissance, the Beats, magic realism, Noigandres--in unaccustomed conversation with each other.
Same as: AMSTUD 142, COMPLIT 142, CSRE 142

ENGLISH 172J. The Ethics of Metaphor: Identities in Parallel. 5 Units.

Many of our political arguments are arguments by analogy. But analogies between ethnic and racial experiences are especially problematic, and especially incendiary. This class will think about metaphor and contend with how it¿s used in both fictional and nonfictional texts concerning race and ethnicity. nThe works we will read in this class are uncomfortable. They¿re uncomfortable because they address suffering and pain; they¿re uncomfortable because they compare suffering and pain; they¿re uncomfortable because of what they get right and because of what they don¿t. This is a class fundamentally concerned with how we traverse boundaries of race and ethnicity ethically, and about thinking through when and how authors have failed to do so. When does empathy become presumption? When does altruism become condescension? When does exploration become voyeurism? We will plumb these questions (to which there are no clear answers) through the lens of speeches, poetry, sci-fi, film, essays, short stories, and novels.

ENGLISH 175E. Animals and the Fictions of Identity. 3-5 Units.

In a post-Darwin world, the notion that we might all have an animal alter-ego lurking inside seems quite familiar. But ideas about animals¿how they think and feel, act and react¿involve identity categories such as race, gender, class and ability in surprising ways. This course will trace the relationship between animality and human life in twentieth-century American fiction, from race and indigeneity in Jack London¿s dog stories to the storytelling practices of contemporary animal advocacy groups. The course may also include an experiential component in which students will have the opportunity to explore multispecies concerns with a local organization.

ENGLISH 179. Cultures of Disease: Cancer and HIV/AIDS. 5 Units.

History, politics, science, and anthropology of cancer; political and economic issues of disease and health care in the U.S., including the ethics and economics of health care provision, the pharmaceutical industry, carcinogen production, and research priorities.
Same as: ANTHRO 179

ENGLISH 179D. Empire and Revolution: Joseph Conrad and Ng¿g¿ wa Thiong'o. 5 Units.

This class juxtaposes the works of two landmark experimental novelists: Joseph Conrad, one of the first major modernist writers of the early 20th century; and Ng¿g¿ wa Thiong'o, the first East African novelist published in English and a leading voice of political activism in Kenya. Novels will include, among others, Conrad's Under Western Eyes and Nostromo; Ng¿g¿ wa Thiong'o's A Grain of Wheat and Petals of Blood..
Same as: AFRICAAM 179D

ENGLISH 180B. Reading Politics: The History and Future of Literacy. 3-5 Units.

Reading is a political act. Through our major texts of Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist, Zora Neale Hurston¿s The Eatonville Anthology, and Azar Nafisi¿s Reading Lolita in Tehran, we will explore the classed, racialized, and gendered power dynamics of literacy and literature. How can books incite social revolutions? How can they maintain harmful inequalities? When is reading a tool of empowerment and when is it a tool of social control? We will examine these questions in a number of contexts, ranging from Victorian London, to the Jim Crow American South, from the Islamic revolution in Iran to a Silicon Valley proliferating with new forms of scientific, technological, and financial literacy. The course includes a significant service learning component, in which students will volunteer to tutor underprivileged readers through Bay Area literacy programs. Final projects will ask students to reflect on these tutoring experiences and consider the complex politics at work in the act of teaching someone to read.

ENGLISH 181C. Shakespeare and Dickens. 5 Units.

An exploration in the problems and stakes of reading two central but historically-separated authors through one another. How theatrical are Dickens's novels and how much can we understand the theatrical, in Dickens, as a working-through of Shakespeare? How do the elements of performance manifest themselves in both? What substitutes for the role of "narrator" in Shakespearean drama? How can we understand these two authors as both paradigms of "national" writing -- defining normative British culture -- and as fundamentally eccentric?.

ENGLISH 182J. "When We Dead Awaken": Breakthroughs in Conceptions of the Gendered Self in Literature and the Arts. 4-5 Units.

Remarkable breakthroughs In conceptions of the gendered self are everywhere evident in literature and the arts, beginning primarily with the Early Modern world and continuing into today. Many of these works inhere in innovations in literary and artistic forms in order to capture and even evoke the strong cognitive, or psychological, dimension of such ¿awakenings.¿ The reader, or viewer, is often challenged to adapt her or his mind to new forms of thought, such as John Donne¿s seventeenth century creation of the Dramatic Monologue, a form popular with modern writers, which requires the reader¿s cognitive ¿presence¿ in order to fill out the dramatic scene. In so doing, the reader often supplies the presence of the female voice and thereby enters into her self-consciousness and inner thoughts. Adrienne Rich, for example, specifically ¿rewrites¿ one of Donne¿s major poems from the female perspective. This can be, in Rich¿s words, an ¿awakening¿ for the active reader, as he or she assumes that often-unspoken female perspective. The course will also explore male conceptions of the self and how such conceptions are often grounded in cultural attitudes imposed on male subjects, which can contribute to gender-bias toward women, a subject often neglected in exploring gendered attitudes, but which is now gaining more study, for example, in Shakespeare¿s ¿Othello.¿ Readings from recent developments in the neurosciences and cognitive studies will be included in our study of artistic forms and how such forms can activate particular mindsets. Writers and artists will include Shakespeare, Michelangelo, John Donne, Virginia Woolf, Adrienne Rich, Gertrude Stein, Picasso, June Wayne, and Edward Albee¿s 1960¿s play, ¿Who¿s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?¿.
Same as: FEMGEN 112, FEMGEN 212

ENGLISH 183E. Self-Impersonation: Fiction, Autobiography, Memoir. 5 Units.

Course will examine the intersecting genres of fiction, autobiography, and memoir. Topics will include the literary construction of selfhood and its constituent categories (gender, race, ethnicity, religion, etc.); the role of language in the development of the self; the relational nature of the self (vis-à-vis the family, "society," God); the cultural status of "individuality"; the concept of childhood; and the role of individual testimony in our understanding of family, religious and national history.
Same as: COMPLIT 183

ENGLISH 184. The Novel, the Global South. 5 Units.

Literary inventiveness and social significance of novelistic forms from the Great Depression to the present. The seminar will focus on texts by William Faulkner, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Toni Morrison, and Junot Diaz.
Same as: COMPLIT 123, DLCL 143

ENGLISH 184C. Data and Knowledge in the Humanities. 5 Units.

How do different disciplines understand and use data, and how do skills such as interpretation and critical thought work with data to create knowledge? The introduction of mathematics reshaped disciplines like cosmology and sociology in the past while, in the present, the humanities are facing the same challenges with the emergence of fields such as spatial history and the digital humanities. In this class we will study how the introduction of data has transformed the way that we create knowledge.

ENGLISH 184E. Literary Text Mining. 5 Units.

This course will train students in applied methods for computationally analyzing texts for humanities research. The skills students will gain will include basic programming for textual analysis, applied statistical evaluation of results and the ability to present these results within a formal research paper or presentation. As an introduction, students in this course will also learn the prerequisite steps of such an analysis including corpus selection and cleaning, metadata collection, and selecting and creating an appropriate visualization for the results.

ENGLISH 186. Tales of Three Cities: New York, Chicago, Los Angeles. 5 Units.

How urban form and experience shape literary texts and how literary texts participate in the creation of place, through the literature of three American cities as they ascended to cultural and iconographical prominence: New York in the early to mid 19th century; Chicago in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; and Los Angeles in the mid to late 20th century.
Same as: AMSTUD 186

ENGLISH 186B. The American Underground: Crime and the Criminal in American Literature. 5 Units.

The literary representation of crime and the criminal from postrevolutionary through contemporary American literature. Topics will include the enigma of the criminal personality; varieties of crime, from those underwritten by religious or ethical principle to those produced by the deformations of bias; the impact on narrative form of the challenge of narrating crime; and the significance attributed to gratuitous crime in the American cultural context.

ENGLISH 187G. Queer Lives: LGBT Memoirs of the Past 100 Years. 5 Units.

The course will examine LGBT autobiographical writing from roughly 1900 to the present. The focus will be on how Gay and Lesbian writers have adapted to longstanding cultural disapproval and the stigmatizing, often bitter constraints of the "Closet." We will also examine what happens to the memoir form when social taboos against homosexuality (and/or transgenderism) come to be relaxed or overturned--as has been the case in many western societies in the new millennium.

ENGLISH 187S. Literature, Film, and Adaptation. 5 Units.

This course studies many aspects of translating fiction into film, written media into visual and written. Topics include short story into feature film: Alice Munro's The Bear Came Over the Mountain, into Sarah Polly's Away from Her ; conventional police procedural into post-WWII Japanese hybrid of procedural and film noir: Ed McBain's King's Ransom into Kurosawa's High and Low which deals with changing standards of Japanese business, class issues, the effects of the American atomic bomb; classic southern gothic horror novel (Davis Grubb's Night of the Hunter) into Charles Laughton's American expressionist masterpiece; complete revision of Dorothy B. Hughes novel into Nicholas Ray's In a Lonely Place (Humphrey Bogart); Philip K. Dick and the various interpretations of Blade Runner.
Same as: AMSTUD 187S

ENGLISH 189. Literature of Adoption. 3-5 Units.

From Sophocles to Barfield, adoption has been at the center of Western literature. This course will explore adoption as both plot point as as symbolic structure for meaning-making in myth and fiction. While this course will not count as Creative Expression, final projects can be creative and/or scholarly.
Same as: ENGLISH 289, TAPS 189, TAPS 289C

ENGLISH 189D. Literature and Science. 5 Units.

Classic literary and scientific works by writers such as Darwin, Thomas Hardy, Einstein, and Virginia Woolf. Considers how literature assays the consequences and potential of scientific theories within the subtle orderings of narrative, how a scientific theory is developed through and precipitated in language, and how novelists and scientists think outside the accumulated meanings of their time. Attends to their shared methods and preoccupations, including rendering visible the invisible; the idea of the generally significant individual; changing models of the shape of history; the contours of experiment; the cult and culture of experience and the dream of objectivity; regulative and investigatory fictions. Some discussion of literature and medicine.

ENGLISH 190. Intermediate Fiction Writing. 5 Units.

May be taken twice for credit. Lottery. Priority to last quarter/year in school, majors in English with Creative Writing emphasis, and Creative Writing minors. Prerequisite: 90 or 91.

ENGLISH 190D. Dialogue Writing. 5 Units.

For Fiction and Film students. Study how dialogue develops character, reveals information, moves plots forward, and creates tension. Use of short story, novels, graphic novels, and films. Students will write many short assignments, one dialogue scene, and one longer story or script (10-20pages). Priority to Fiction Into Film students, but open to all. Prerequisite: 90.

ENGLISH 190F. Fiction into Film. 5 Units.

Workshop. For screenwriting students. Story craft, structure, and dialogue. Assignments include short scene creation, character development, and a long story. How fictional works are adapted to screenplays, and how each form uses elements of conflict, time, summary, and scene. Priority to seniors and Film Studies majors. Prerequisite: 90.

ENGLISH 190G. The Graphic Novel. 5 Units.

Interdisciplinary. Evolution, subject matter, form, conventions, possibilities, and future of the graphic novel genre. Guest lectures. Collaborative creation of a graphic novel by a team of writers, illustrators, and designers. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.

ENGLISH 190H. The Graphic Novel. 5 Units.

Continuation of ENGLISH 190G. Interdisciplinary. Evolution, subject matter, form, conventions, possibilities, and future of the graphic novel genre. Guest lectures. Collaborative creation of a graphic novel by a team of writers, illustrators, and designers. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.

ENGLISH 190T. Special Topics in Intermediate Fiction Writing. 5 Units.

Focus on a particular topic or process. Work includes aspects of reading short stories and novels, writing at least 30-50 pages of fiction, and responding to peers' work in workshop. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: 91 or 90.

ENGLISH 190V. Reading for Writers. 5 Units.

Taught by the Stein Visiting Fiction Writer. Prerequisite: 90 or 91.

ENGLISH 191. Intermediate Creative Nonfiction. 5 Units.

Continuation of 91. Workshop. The application of advanced storytelling techniques to fact-based personal narratives, emphasizing organic writing, discovering audience, and publication. Guest lecturers, collaborative writing, and publication of the final project in print, audio, or web formats. Prerequisite: 91 or 90.

ENGLISH 191T. Special Topics in Intermediate Creative Nonfiction. 5 Units.

Workshop. Continuation of 91. Focus is on forms of the essay. Works from across time and nationality for their craft and technique; experimentation with writing exercises. Students read and respond to each other's longer nonfiction projects. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: 91 or 90.

ENGLISH 191V. Reading for Creative Non-Fiction Writers. 5 Units.

Taught by the Stein Visiting Writer. Prerequisite ENGLISH 90 or 91. Permission number required to enroll.

ENGLISH 192. Intermediate Poetry Writing. 5 Units.

May be taken twice. Lottery. Priority to last quarter/year in school, majors in English with Creative Writing emphasis, and Creative Writing minors. Prerequisite: 92.

ENGLISH 192T. Topics in Intermediate Poetry Writing. 5 Units.

Generation and discussion of student poems. How to recognize a poem's internal structure; how to seek models for work. Students submit portfolio for group critique. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: ENGLISH 92.

ENGLISH 192V. The Occasions of Poetry. 5 Units.

Taught by the Mohr Visiting Poet. Prerequisite: 92. Permission number required to enroll.

ENGLISH 194. Individual Research. 5 Units.

See section above on Undergraduate Programs, Opportunities for Advanced Work, Individual Research.

ENGLISH 196A. Honors Seminar: Critical Approaches to Literature. 5 Units.

Overview of literary-critical methodologies, with a practical emphasis shaped by participants' current honors projects. Restricted to students in the English Honors Program.

ENGLISH 197. Seniors Honors Essay. 1-10 Unit.

In two quarters.

ENGLISH 198. Individual Work. 1-5 Unit.

Undergraduates who wish to study a subject or area not covered by regular courses may, with consent, enroll for individual work under the supervision of a member of the department. 198 may not be used to fulfill departmental area or elective requirements without consent. Group seminars are not appropriate for 198.

ENGLISH 198F. Hoffs-Roach Fiction into Film Tutorial. 2-5 Units.

Up to three undergraduate writers work with Fiction Into Film instructors. Students design their own curriculum, and Instructors act as writing mentors and advisers. Prerequisite: 190F. Submitted manuscript required.

ENGLISH 198L. Individual Work: Levinthal Tutorial. 5 Units.

Undergraduate writers work individually with visiting Stegner Fellows in poetry, fiction, and if available, nonfiction. Students design their own curriculum; Stegner Fellows act as writing mentors and advisers. Prerequisites: 90, 91, or 92; submitted manuscript.

ENGLISH 199. Senior Independent Essay. 1-10 Unit.

Open, with department approval, to seniors majoring in non-Honors English who wish to work throughout the year on a 10,000 word critical or scholarly essay. Applicants submit a sample of their expository prose, proposed topic, and bibliography to the Director of Undergraduate Studies before preregistration in May of the junior year. Each student accepted is responsible for finding a department faculty adviser. May be repeated for credit.

ENGLISH 201. The Bible and Literature. 5 Units.

Differences in translations of the Bible into English. Recognizing and interpreting biblical allusion in texts from the medieval to modern periods. Readings from the Bible and from British, Canadian, American, and African American, and African literature in English.

ENGLISH 202. History of the Book. 5 Units.

Taught in the Department of Special Collections, the course examines the book as both a developing concept and as a material object, from scroll to codex, from manuscript to print, from cold type to electronic medium. Basic bibliographical and paleographical techniques will be taught, and readings in history and theory will be discussed. Attention will focus particularly on the use of books, and hence on the history of reading practices, including marginalia and other marks of ownership. Students will be expected to develop their own projects from among the riches of Stanford's rare book collection. The final project may be a collaborative one, with contributions by the class as a whole. This has typically been the preparation of an edition of a manuscript or piece of ephemera in Stanford's collection.

ENGLISH 218. Literature and the Brain. 5 Units.

Recent developments in and neuroscience and experimental psychology have transformed the way we think about the operations of the brain. What can we learn from this about the nature and function of literary texts? Can innovative ways of speaking affect ways of thinking? Do creative metaphors draw on embodied cognition? Can fictions strengthen our "theory of mind" capabilities? What role does mental imagery play in the appreciation of descriptions? Does (weak) modularity help explain the mechanism and purpose of self-reflexivity? Can the distinctions among types of memory shed light on what narrative works have to offer?.
Same as: ENGLISH 118, FRENCH 118, FRENCH 318, PSYCH 118F

ENGLISH 233. Baroque and Neobaroque. 5 Units.

The literary, cultural, and political implications of the 17th-century phenomenon formed in response to the conditions of the 16th century including humanism, absolutism, and early capitalism, and dispersed through Europe, the Americas, and Asia. If the Baroque is a universal code of this period, how do its vehicles, such as tragic drama, Ciceronian prose, and metaphysical poetry, converse with one another? The neobaroque as a complex reaction to the remains of the baroque in Latin American cultures, with attention to the mode in recent Brazilian literary theory and Mexican poetry.
Same as: COMPLIT 233, ILAC 293E

ENGLISH 234G. Literature and Empire. 4-5 Units.

This course will explore the relationship between modern British literature and imperialism. We will attend to the way imperialism shaped the evolution of a range of styles and genres, from romantic to gothic to modern, epistolary to mystery to fantasy. We will read works by authors such as Charlotte Bronte, Rudyard Kipling, Joseph Conrad, E. M. Forster, complementing them with key works of literary criticism.
Same as: HISTORY 234G, HISTORY 334G

ENGLISH 239B. Literature and Social Online Learning. 3-5 Units.

Study, develop, and test new digital methods, games, apps, interactive social media uses to innovate how the humanities can engage and educate students and the public today. Exploring well-known literary texts, digital storytelling forms and literary communities online, students work individually and in interdisciplinary teams to develop innovative projects aimed at bringing literature to life. Tasks include literary role-plays on Twitter; researching existing digital pedagogy and literary projects, games, and apps; reading and coding challenges; collaborative social events mediated by new technology. Minimal prerequisites which vary for students in CS and the humanities; please check with instructors.
Same as: COMPLIT 239B, CS 27

ENGLISH 244. 101 YEARS OF LONDON. 5 Units.

101 Years of London juxtaposes older representations of the UK's capital city (from Defoe, Dickens, Woolf and others) with contemporary accounts (from Zadie Smith, Ian McEwen and others). We will also look at films, painting, photography and websites about London.

ENGLISH 255. Speaking Medieval: Germanic Vernaculars and their Remains. 1-5 Unit.

This class presents a survey of medieval German vernaculars and their documentation in manuscripts and on material objects. The languages include Gothic, Old Norse, Old Frisian, Old Saxon, Old English, and Old High German. Readings will include runic inscriptions, magic charms, proverbs and riddles, apocalyptic visions, heroic lays, and sermons and prayers. (This course must be taken for a letter grade and a minimum of 3 units to satisfy a Ways requirement.)nPlease note this course meets MW 1:30-2:50 and is taught by Professors Kathryn Starkey and Elaine Treharne.
Same as: GERMAN 255

ENGLISH 256. Postwar US Poetry: The New Americans and Beyond. 5 Units.

This course will examine influential American poetry of the postwar period, taking as its starting point the poets included in Donald Allen¿s landmark anthology The New American Poetry: 1945-1960. After a reading of the Beat, Black Mountain, and New York School poets found there, we will probe the limits of Allen¿s selection, considering figures proximate to the New Americans or influenced by them. Topics to be discussed will include the relationship between New American poetry and its modernist predecessors, the status of poetic form, and the connection between these literary movements and the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s.

ENGLISH 289. Literature of Adoption. 3-5 Units.

From Sophocles to Barfield, adoption has been at the center of Western literature. This course will explore adoption as both plot point as as symbolic structure for meaning-making in myth and fiction. While this course will not count as Creative Expression, final projects can be creative and/or scholarly.
Same as: ENGLISH 189, TAPS 189, TAPS 289C

ENGLISH 290. Advanced Fiction Writing. 5 Units.

Workshop critique of original short stories or novel. Prerequisites: manuscript, consent of instructor, and 190-level fiction workshop. May be repeat for credit.

ENGLISH 292. Advanced Poetry Writing. 5 Units.

Focus is on generation and discussion of student poems, and seeking published models for the work.

ENGLISH 293. Literary Translation. 4 Units.

An overview of translation theories and practices over time. The aesthetic, ethical, and political questions raised by the act and art of translation and how these pertain to the translator's tasks. Discussion of particular translation challenges and the decision processes taken to address these issues. Coursework includes assigned theoretical readings, comparative translations, and the undertaking of an individual translation project.
Same as: DLCL 293

ENGLISH 300C. Introduction to Manuscript Studies. 5 Units.

.

ENGLISH 303D. Thinking in Fiction. 5 Units.

Narrative and cognition in 18th-century fictional, philosophical, scientific, and cultural texts. Probable readings: Hobbes, Locke, Newton, Swift, Defoe, Hume, Lennox, Sterne, Adam Smith, Wollstonecraft, and Bentham.
Same as: COMPLIT 303D

ENGLISH 304H. Romanticism: The Visionary Company. 5 Units.

Coverage of the major Romantic poets (William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, John Keats) in cultural, historical, and book-historical context.

ENGLISH 308B. Gilded Age American Literature. 5 Units.

Introduction to the creative innovations and the political tensions that stemmed from the formation of a multicultural society during the age of industrialization. We will attempt to place literary works in their historical and cultural contexts, while also surveying recent critical and theoretical developments in areas such as Realism, Naturalism, Regionalism, Minority and Race Studies, and so on.

ENGLISH 313. Performance and Performativity. 1-4 Unit.

Performance theory through topics including: affect/trauma, embodiment, empathy, theatricality/performativity, specularity/visibility, liveness/disappearance, belonging/abjection, and utopias and dystopias. Readings from Schechner, Phelan, Austin, Butler, Conquergood, Roach, Schneider, Silverman, Caruth, Fanon, Moten, Anzaldúa, Agamben, Freud, and Lacan. May be repeated for credit.
Same as: FEMGEN 313, TAPS 313

ENGLISH 314. Epic and Empire. 5 Units.

Focus is on Virgil's Aeneid and its influence, tracing the European epic tradition (Ariosto, Tasso, Camoes, Spenser, and Milton) to New World discovery and mercantile expansion in the early modern period.
Same as: COMPLIT 320A

ENGLISH 327. Genres of the Novel. 5 Units.

Provides students with an overview of some major genres in the history of the modern novel, along with major theorists in the critical understanding of the form. Novels might include works by Cervantes, Defoe, Lafayette, Radcliffe, Goethe, Scott, Balzac, Melville, and Woolf. Theorists might include Lukacs, Bakhtin, Jameson, Gallagher, Barthes, Kristeva, and Bourdieu. *PLEASE NOTE: Course for graduate students only.*.
Same as: COMPLIT 327, FRENCH 327

ENGLISH 334B. Concepts of Modernity II: Culture, Aesthetics, and Society in the Age of Globalization. 5 Units.

Emphasis on world-system theory, theories of coloniality and power, and aesthetic modernity/postmodernity in their relation to culture broadly understood.
Same as: COMPLIT 334B, MTL 334B

ENGLISH 345G. Modeling the Post45 Literary Field: Forms, Frames, Contexts, Themes. 5 Units.

Exploration of various post45 literary phenomena with special attention to broader conceptual models in and by which they might be interpreted.

ENGLISH 353. Digital Aesthetics. 5 Units.

In this course we will explore the intersection between Digital Humanities and aesthetic theory. Although quantitative analysis is frequently called reductive when it comes to the study of text, we will study how computational methods can help nuance or expand our understanding of aesthetic phenomenon. In addition to studying the background theories to operationalize, much of our time will be spent learning computational methods with which to analyze text. No prior experience with programming or digital humanities methods is required.

ENGLISH 363D. Feminist Theory: Thinking Through/With/About the Gendered Body. 5 Units.

Organized around a series of case studies, this graduate feminist theory course will consider issues related to the complex relationship between sex, gender, sexuality, biological reproduction, violence, and social power. It is a core course for the PhD minor in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Enrollment is limited to PhD-level students.
Same as: FEMGEN 363D

ENGLISH 365A. Forms of Selfhood and Subjectivity in Early America, 1630-1800. 5 Units.

Exploration of the formation of models of selfhood and subjectivity, both individual and corporate, in colonial through postrevolutionary America Readings encompass literary and non-literary expressive forms. Categories of selfhood and subjectivity drawn from political, religious, social, and metaphysical thought, including the concepts of sainthood and election; republican and democratic subjectivity; the now-competing, now-contiguous notions of inherent right and conscience; and the processes of conversion and secularization. Current theoretical attempts to frame the subject, predominantly the work of Foucault on the hermeneutics of subjectivity.

ENGLISH 373C. Text of Shakespeare. 5 Units.

Shakespeare through textual history: where do our texts of Shakespeare come from, and how has editorial practice transformed them over the centuries? The course will focus on Hamlet, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth..

ENGLISH 375. Henry James. 5 Units.

Major and minor works, with a focus on the later style.

ENGLISH 379B. Novels of Virginia Woolf. 5 Units.

We will read all the major Woolf novels: The Voyage Out, Jacob¿s Room, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando, The Waves and Between the Acts---with additional reading from her essays and letters. Considerable attention will be paid to Woolf's family history, the evolution of her pioneering literary style, her views on sexuality, women, and society, and her complex personal relationships with other members of the so-called Bloomsbury Group (Leonard Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Clive Bell, Lytton Strachey, Duncan Grant, Roger Fry, John Maynard Keynes, Dora Carrington, Katherine Mansfield, et al.).

ENGLISH 381B. Theories of Race and Ethnicity. 5 Units.

This interdisciplinary and reading-intensive course has been designed to familiarize you with the key scholars, as well as the most recent developments, in theorizations of race and ethnicity in literary and cultural studies, performance studies, visual studies, and philosophy. As we work our way through this diverse set of readings, particular attention will be paid to how the various approaches illuminate key issues under current debate: subjectivity, identity, biological difference, racial representation, affect, and political activism.

ENGLISH 389. What was (is?) Modernism?. 5 Units.

An introduction to modernism, focusing on the novel. Modernist studies has been eager to explore various axes of ¿expansion¿¿geographic (beyond Europe), temporal (beyond the early twentieth century), and cultural (across the divide between ¿high¿ and ¿low¿ realms of culture). The class will focus both on familiar modernist such as James, Joyce, Woolf, and Faulkner; we¿ll also look at case studies of potential forms of expansion (temporal: James Baldwin; geographic: Mulk Raj Anand; and others); secondary sources will focus on recent developments that stretch the boundaries of the field of modernist studies.

ENGLISH 390. Graduate Fiction Workshop. 3 Units.

For Stegner fellows in the writing program. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.

ENGLISH 392. Graduate Poetry Workshop. 3 Units.

For Stegner fellows in the writing program. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.

ENGLISH 394. Independent Study. 1-10 Unit.

Preparation for first-year Ph.D. qualifying examination and third year Ph.D. oral exam.

ENGLISH 395. Ad Hoc Graduate Seminar. 1-5 Unit.

Three or more graduate students who wish in the following quarter to study a subject or an area not covered by regular courses and seminars may plan an informal seminar and approach a member of the department to supervise it.

ENGLISH 396. Introduction to Graduate Study for Ph.D. Students. 5 Units.

Required for first-year graduate students in English. The major historical, professional, and methodological approaches to the study of literature in English.

ENGLISH 396L. Pedagogy Seminar I. 2 Units.

Required for first-year Ph.D students in English, Modern Thought and Literature, and Comparative Literature. Preparation for surviving as teaching assistants in undergraduate literature courses. Focus is on leading discussions and grading papers.

ENGLISH 396P. Publication Workshop: The Article. 3-5 Units.

For English Ph.D. candidates only. A practical and theoretical study of the genre of the journal article, with critical reflection on its status as a gateway to academic professionalization and as a highly specialized form of public address. We will be reading articles published over the last decade across a diverse range of journals, focusing on issues surrounding methodology, style, tone, and audience. Participants will work on developing an already polished piece of writing into the form of an article publishable by a peer-reviewed publication. Admission by application in Autumn quarter .

ENGLISH 396R. Old and Modern(ist) Reading Group. 2 Units.

This two-quarter-long reading group will alternate from week-to-week between Old English Biblical and Elegaic Poetry and David Jones¿s twentieth-century transnational Modernist masterpiece, "Anathemata" (which W. H. Auden called very probably the finest long poem written in English in this century). Students can choose to join biweekly for just Old English (in the original language) or just David Jones, or complete both sets of allied reading.

ENGLISH 398. Research Course. 1-18 Unit.

A special subject of investigation under supervision of a member of the department. Thesis work is not registered under this number.

ENGLISH 398L. Literary Lab. 2-5 Units.

Gathering and analyzing data, constructing hypotheses and designing experiments to test them, writing programs [if needed], preparing visuals and texts for articles or conferences. Requires a year-long participation in the activities of the Lab.
Same as: COMPLIT 398L

ENGLISH 398R. Revision and Development of a Paper. 4-5 Units.

Students revise and develop a paper under the supervision of a faculty member with a view to possible publication.

ENGLISH 398W. Orals, Publication and Dissertation Workshop. 2 Units.

For third- and fourth-year graduate students in English. Strategies for studying for and passing the oral examination, publishing articles, and for writing and researching dissertations and dissertation proposals. May be repeated for credit.

ENGLISH 399. Thesis. 1-10 Unit.

For M.A. students only. Regular meetings with thesis advisers required.

ENGLISH 802. TGR Dissertation. 0 Units.

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