ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
ESL: Intermediate to Advanced
This three-hour noncredit English as a Second Language course is designed to improve reading, writing, and conversational skills, as well as to increase vocabulary through reviewing how the English language is put together. The grammatical structures will be taught using not only explanations and exercises, but also through reading texts by various authors showing the use of those structures. Focused writing will be an integral part of the course as well.

Course text: Ann Raimes, How English Works. Additional selected readings as needed.

Language and Literature
The first semester studies masterpieces of literature that have inspired later generations of writers to revise and retell the original tale. Inevitably the texts demonstrate the importance of "point of view," how the telling of a story shapes our narrative allegiance. As the heroes switch places with their adversaries, readers may find themselves cheering on the villains. Second semester will focus on novels, poems, and plays that illuminate the work of artists in the midst of self-creation. Can life be a work of art? Students will be required to write formal essays, response papers, and essay exams.

Course texts: Works by Homer, Walcott, Gardner, Shakespeare, Chekov, Oates, Joyce, Dinesan, Woolf, Beckett, O'Connor, and Wilson

Shakespeare's Tragedies
Samuel Johnson warned that one ought not to read more than one of Shakespeare's tragedies per year. This class will run the risk by reading a handful of tragedies and by exploring the means by which the playwright increases the depth of sorrow even as he narrows its focus onto the individual. Shakespeare's tragedies fulfill and explode expectations. This course will interrogate his methods, the contexts of the plays, and the aesthetic sense of comedy and tragedy on stage. Students will be required to participate in class discussions, write two essays, offer two oral reports, and take a number of quizzes. 

Course texts: Othello, Macbeth, Titus Andronicus, and King Lear

Modernism
Is modernism a new aesthetic? When and where did it "happen"? What does it have to do with technological and economic developments in the Industrial Age, and how does this contribute to contemporary definitions of modernism and modernity? This course will explore both canonical and noncanonical authors in the context of competing political and social paradigms at the turn of the century, with an aim to understand how modernism corresponds to changing views on mass production and mass movements, the machine, the body, and the human mind. In addition to works by Joyce, Eliot, André Gide, and Gertrude Stein, the course will consider examples of modernist art and music, as well as the emergence of radio and cinema.

More than Words: Composers' Lives Revealed Through Letters
Letter-writing, one of the most intimate forms of literature, has diminished with the integration of e-mail and instant messaging in our culture. But we're still fascinated with reading other people's letters and turn to them when we want a glimpse of someone's private world and innermost thoughts. Letters of composers reveal more about the best and worst moments of their lives, as well as their feelings and personal observations about love, music, families, friends, business relations, travels, and contemporary events. The letters of composers frequently show an unexpected side to a person known only through a series of symphonies or concertos. Study will include the history of letter- writing and focus on the letters of Mozart, Brahms and Clara Schumann, Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky.

With prior approval from the instructor and the department chair, this course can fulfill one semester of the English Literature requirement.

Fiction Workshop
The fiction-writing workshop is designed to offer students the opportunity to write numerous stories and to read great works of short fiction. The course will attend to the traditional elements of storytelling (plot, setting, characterization, and dialogue) while analyzing the work of Joyce, Porter, Hemingway, Munro, Chekhov, and O'Connor, among others. In the process, students will discover the importance of technique and voice and work to master the craft of writing a fine story while discovering and shaping their individual voices. E. B. White said that he occasionally had "the exquisite thrill of putting a finger on a little capsule of truth" (The Bedford Reader, 461) when he wrote. Participants in the fiction workshop may find themselves doing the same. Each student will be required to write short stories, read and evaluate short fiction, and produce a final portfolio of work.

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ART HISTORY
Seventeenth-Century European Art
The seventeenth century is one of the most dynamic in Western art. From Peter Paul Rubens's exuberant depictions of kings and queens to the silence of Vermeer's interior spaces, the variety in art in this century in Europe is extraordinary. As the class studies works of art, it will consider the ways in which historical and social contexts affect the making of art. Trips to the Philadelphia Museum of Art will give students the opportunity to study specific works, from contemplative still lifes to dramatic "history" paintings. The class will also visit the special exhibition at the museum on Jacob van Ruisdael, the most important seventeenth-century Dutch landscape painter. There will be two or three papers and exams. With prior approval from the instructor, this course can fulfill one semester of the English Literature requirement.

Early Twentieth-Century Art
This course will focus on the art of the early twentieth century, when abstraction emerged as the dynamic element in the visual arts. It will begin by looking at late nineteenth-century artists--Cezanne, Seurat, van Gogh, and Gauguin--to explore the ways in which these artists broke with longstanding traditions in European painting. The class will then examine the art of the early twentieth century: Expressionism, Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism, Dada, and Surrealism. Students will read artists' letters and statements, as well as critics' reactions to this new art. Field trips to the Philadelphia Museum of Art are part of the course.

With prior approval from the instructor, this course can fulfill one semester of the English Literature requirement.

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