English Language
and Literature

The course aims to introduce students to different literary genres: poetry, prose and dramas, giving a brief historical survey of their development. The course also addresses the different elements, forms and characteristics of each genre through a close analysis of representative works of each genre. Prereq.: ENG 201

The course examines the morphology and syntax of modern English. Concerning morphology, it offers a detailed discussion of suffixes and their allomorphs as well as word formation, including derivation and the formation of compounds. As for syntax, it examines the way words are combined to form larger structural units and the interrelationship among the components of such units.

The focus in this course in on the description & classification of speech sounds and on their production. It introduces the ways in which humans produce speech, with emphasis on ear training, class tests, and speech transcription.

A study of grammar through exploration and analysis. A more detailed study of word and phrase formation, pragmatics, and critical analysis of descriptive uses of grammar will be covered. Prereq.: ENG201

This course deals with the implications of the findings of theoretical and empirical research of language in all its aspects (language structure, language acquisition, and language variation and use) for the language learner and language teacher. Prereq.: ENG201

This course is an introduction to the linguistic study of meaning and meaning relations known as semantics. The course begins with an overview of historical semantics, the scope of semantics, semantics in other disciplines and the controversy of how words acquire meaning. The major focus is on lexical semantics – a study of paradigms, synthases, collocation, sense relations (hyponymy, synonymy, antonyms, homonymy, homophony, homograph, and polysemy), and the problem of universals and cognates. The course also deals with semantics and grammar, ‘utterance meaning’ and ‘sentence meaning’, and concludes with a brief discussion of Semantics and Logic.

The course provides a survey of the major trends in critical theory from Plato to the end of the 19^th century. It covers Classicism (Plato, Aristotle, Horace, Longinus), ancient Arabic literary criticism (IbnSallam, Al-Jorjani), Renaissance criticism (Sidney), Neo-classicism (Corneille, Dryden, Johnson), Romanticism (Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, etc.– .), Realism and Naturalism (Zola and Flaubert), Symbolism (Baudelaire, Mallarme, Pater, Wilde) and other 10th century critics such as Taine, Croce, and Arnold. The philosophical and socio-political backgrounds of these trends will be emphasized. Prereq.: ENG202

On this course we will examine a range of works by Mary and Percy that reflect both the strengths and conflicts of their relationship and the culture of their time. These will include Mary’s Frankenstein, Mathilda, The Last Man, and her preface to the posthumous edition of Percy’s poetry; a range of poetry and prose by Percy, including Prometheus Unbound, and the Defense of Poetry; and their joint production, History of a Six Weeks’ Tour (1817) based on their two journeys to France and Switzerland in l814 and 1816

The course offers in-depth analysis of the main characteristics— themes, characterization, and techniques—of the golden age of the British novel: The Victorian period. The focus of the course will be on major representative works by authors such as Jane Austen, Charlotte and Emily Bronte, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy and George Gissing. Both the form and the content will be scrutinized in order to highlight the multifaceted nature of the Victorian ethos and era and to trace its connection to the 18^th and 20^th century novel.

The course is a study of major trends in modern drama (Irish, British, and American). It commences with the contribution of dramatists such as Ibsen, Srindberg, Chekov, Brecht, and Pirandello. Then, the course will focus on a close study of representative works by playwrights such as J.M. Synge, Sean O’Casey, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Eugene O’Nei1 and Tennessee Williams. Prereq.: ENG240

A course that examines recent and current trends and movements in American literature, such as Absurdum, Post-Modernism, and ethnic literatures of the United States.  Works studied might include such writers as Morrison, Walker, Vonnegut, Heller, and Carver.

This course will examine a range of texts by women and in a variety of genres—some of which women writers pioneered and in all of which they were significant experimenters and innovators. These include narrative and lyric poetry, Gothic fiction and drama, the historical novel, ‘street literature’, fictions of region and nation, social and cultural criticism, and of course polemical feminist prose. Writers include Mary Robinson, Anna Letitia Barbauld, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Hays, Charlotte Smith, Hester Piozzi, Maria Edgeworth, Jane Austen, Felicia Hemans, Mary Shelley, Sarah Wilkinson, and others.

The heart of the course is a consideration of the birth of modernism: the achievements of William Butler Yeats, T.S. Eliot Ezra Pound, H.D., Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, and Mina Loy. Their extraordinary experiments have been both inspirational and intimidating to their successors. Time will also be given to relatively traditional poets like Robert Frost, Edna St. Vincent Millay and e. cummings. In the latter part of the course, students will explore and report to the class on such subjects as African American poets and English poetry of the 1930’s. Prereq.: ENG420

A course that exposes students to some of the classical works of twentieth-century modernism and post-modernism, which will be considered against a cultural, historical, and artistic background. Major writers will include James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, Samuel Beckett, Vladimir Nabokov, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

A course that focuses on texts “writing back” to the metropolis in the era of de-colonization. Novels by authors from Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America will be studied in the contexts of neocolonialism, nationalism, and post-colonial cultures and politics. Prereq.: ENG330