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The Department of English offers a wide variety of courses open to all students. Students not majoring or minoring in English or comparative literature and students not yet certain of their major can take courses for their own interest without prerequisites. Some courses are specifically designed for non-majors.

The department offers disciplinary majors and minors in both English and comparative literature. Within the English major it is possible to create programs of special concentration. Examples include creative writing, theatre, critical theory, and film studies. To count toward an English major or minor, departmental and cognate courses must be passed with a grade of C- or better. Creative writing workshop courses may be taken for credit a second time with the permission of the instructor.

The comparative literature major is an interdisciplinary program coordinated by faculty from several different departments.

This major allows students to study the international aspects of literature. A fuller description of the program appears in this Catalogue under the comparative literature program.

Faculty

• Elisabeth Lyon, Ph.D.; Associate Professor, Department Chair
• Claudette Columbus, Ph.D.; Professor
• James Crenner, Ph.D.; Professor
• Peter M. Cummings, Ph.D.; Professor
• Robert F. Gross, Ph.D.; Professor
• Grant I. Holly, Ph.D.; Professor
• Daniel O'Connell, Ph.D.; Professor
• Eric Patterson, Ph.D.; Associate Professor
• Lee Quinby, Ph.D.; Professor
• Deborah Tall, M.F.A.; Professor
• John E. Thiesmeyer, Ph.D.; Professor
• David Weiss, M.F.A.; Associate Professor
• Kirsten Wasson, Ph.D.; Assistant Professor

Courses

Course concentrations

Introductory Courses

• ENG 100 Expository Writing and Readings from Literature
• ENG 101 Literary Consciousness I: Figuration
• ENG 102 Literary Consciousness II: Storying

Courses for Non-Majors

• ENG 162 Classic American Literature
• ENG 165 Shakespeare for Non-Majors

Creative Writing Courses

• ENG 260 Creative Writing
• ENG 305 Poetry Workshop
• ENG 306 Intermediate Fiction Writing
• ENG 307 Playwriting Workshop
• ENG 308 Screen Writing I
• ENG 309 Advanced Fiction Workshop
• ENG 310 Creative Nonfiction Workshop

Core Literature Criticism and Theory Courses

• ENG 202 Modern Short Story
• ENG 207 American Literature to Melville
• ENG 208 American Literature From Crane
• ENG 210 Modernist American Poetry
• ENG 211 Language and Ideas of Language
• ENG 216 Literature of the Gilded Age
• ENG 217 Chaucer
• ENG 218 The Once and Future King
• ENG 223 Environmental Literature
• ENG 225 Shakespeare: Histories and Comedies
• ENG 226 Shakespeare: Tragedies
• ENG 228c Comparative Medieval Literature
• ENG 236c Post-Apocalyptic Literature
• ENG 240c Style and Structure in 18th-Century Literature and Art
• ENG 249 The 18th-Century Novel
• ENG 250 English Romantic Poetry
• ENG 252 Lives in Crisis: Coleridge, Wordsworth, Darwin, Ruskin
• ENG 255 Victorian Literature
• ENG 256 The Gothic Novel
• ENG 257 Dickens and His World
• ENG 258 The 19th-Century Novel
• ENG 261 The Literature of Decadence
• ENG 262 The Irish Literary Renaissance
• ENG 264 Contemporary American Poetry
• ENG 281 Literature of Sexual Minorities
• ENG 284 Comic Agony
• ENG 285 Three English Novelists
• ENG 291 Introduction to African-American Literature
• ENG 293 American Novel Since World War II
• ENG 295 20th-Century Women's Poetry
• ENG 302c Post-Structuralist Literary Theory
• ENG 304c Feminist Literary Theory
• ENG 312c Psychoanalysis and Literature
• ENG 318 Body, Memory, Representation: Reading Black Women's Texts
• ENG 322c The Renaissance Imagination II
• ENG 327 The Lyric
• ENG 337 James Joyce's Ulysses
• ENG 338 Poe, Dickinson, Frost
• ENG 339 American Tale
• ENG 342 Multi-Ethnic Women's Literature
• ENG 354 Forms of Memoir
• ENG 356c Nabokov, Borges, Calvino
• ENG 360c 20th-Century Central European Fiction: from Kafka to Kundera
• ENG 372c 20th-Century Latin American Literature
• ENG 381 Sexuality and American Literature
• ENG 388c Writing on the Body
• ENG 389 Shakespeare's Language
• ENG 399 Milton
• ENG 401 Senior Seminar

Core Theatre Courses

• ENG 178 Acting I
• ENG 242 American Experimental Theatre
• ENG 271 Fundamentals of Directing
• ENG 275 Theatre Techniques: Acting II
• ENG 307 Play Writing Workshop
• ENG 328c European Drama From Lessing to Ibsen
• ENG 369 Before the Word

Core Film Courses

• ENG 229 Television Histories, Television Narratives
• ENG 230 Film Analysis
• ENG 274c Film History I
• ENG 276 Film History II
• ENG 277 Film History III
• ENG 308 Screen Writing
• ENG 368 Film and Ideology
• ENG 370 Hollywood on Hollywood
• ENG 375 Science Fiction Film
• ENG 376c New Waves

Literary Courses Outside the Department

• AMST 100 History and Forms of American Culture
• AMST 101 America: I, Eye, Aye
• AMST 201 American Attitudes Toward Nature
• CLAS 108 Greek Tragedy
• CLAS 112 Classical Myths
• CLAS 213 Ancient Comedy
• MDLN 210 Buddhism and Taoism through Chinese Literature
• MDLN 220 Male and Female in East Asian Societies and Cultures
• MDLN 341 Boulevard Saint Germain: Sartre
• MDLN 342 Chinese Cinema
• MDLN 350 Survey of 19th-Century Russian Literature
• MDLN 351 20th-Century Russian Literature: Women Writers
• WRRH 220 Breadwinners and Losers
• WRRH 250 Talk and Text: An Introduction to Discourse Analysis
• WRRH 300 Issues and Practice of American Journalism
• WRRH 310 Power and Persuasion I
• WRRH 312 Power and Persuasion II
• WRRH 322 Adolescent Literature
• WRRH 420 The Writer's Guild

Crosslisted Courses

• ALST 308 Latin American Latino Cinema
• AMST100 History and Forms of American Culture
• AMST 101 America: I, Eye, Aye
• AMST 201 American Attitudes Toward Nature
• CLAS 108 Greek Tragedy
• CLAS 112 Classical Myths
• CLAS 213 Ancient Comedy
• CLAS 228 Homer, Vergil, and the Epic Tradition
• MDLN 209 The Golden Age of Chinese Culture
• MDLN 210 Buddhism and Toaism Through ChineseLiterature
• MDLN 220 Male and Female in East Asian Societies and Cultures
• MDLN 212 Dragonladies: Women in Modern Chinese Fiction
• MDLN 310 The Latino Experience
• MDLN 311 Medieval Women in France, Vietnam, and Japan
• MDLN 315 Samurai and Salary-Man: Japan Through Cinema
• MDLN 332 Language, Literature, and Culture
• MDLN 340 Modern Chinese Literature in Translation
• MDLN 341 Existentialism: Beauvoir, Sartre, and Camus
• MDLN 342 Chinese Cinema
• MDLN 343 Paris-Outremer: French Literature III
• MDLN 347 Early 18th-Century Literature: Aufklarung
• MDLN 350 19th-Century Russian Literature: Russian Realism
• MDLN 351 20th-Century Russian Literature: Russia's Divided Imagination
• MDLN 361 Literature of the Middle Ages
• MDLN 410 Faust
• MDLN 411 19th-Century Novel
• MDLN 425 Special Topics: Immigranten Literature (German)
• MDLN 444 Hispanic Metafiction
• REL 258 Do They Mean What They Say? An Introduction to the Koran and the Bible
• WRRH 220 Breadwinners and Losers
• WRRH 250 Talk and Text: An Introduction to Discourse Analysis
• WRRH 300 Issues and Practice of American Journalism
• WRRH 305 Power and Persuasion I
• WRRH 312 Power and Persuasion II
• WRRH 322 Adolescent Literature
• WRRH 420 The Writer's Guild

Click here for course descriptions

Click here for the Comparative Literature Program

Faculty Homepages

Robert Gross

For Degree Program Information

• Class of 2000: The Guide
• Classes of 2001-3: T-Book II

For Prospective Students

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For more information about Hobart and William Smith Colleges, or to begin an application process, visit this section of our website.

Welcome to Prospective Students
A list of suggested links for high school and transfer students considering Hobart and William Smith.