Professor: Curley

This course is a comprehensive survey of Irish dramatic literature from the late nineteenth century to the present, examining the emergence of an aesthetic movement attempting to create and redefine a nation and its literature. The revival of certain ancient myths and stories and their adaptation to this creative effort paralleled the invention of new concepts and literary tropes to explain Irish identity and its colonial legacy. Our exploration will begin with Yeats, Lady Gregory, and the legacy of the Irish Literary Revival, finishing with the plays of Martin MacDonagh, one of the leading lights in the new generation of contemporary Irish drama.

Literature of the Jazz Age

Professor: Donahue

Literature and Medicine Professor: D. Fleischer This course examines the relationship between literature and medicine by focusing on important literary works, fiction and non-fiction, and relevant films. These works reveal how medical issues underlie many of the vital questions of our age. Among the subjects considered are the conflict in the medical profession between achieving wealth and popularity as opposed to maintaining one's courage and integrity; urgent public health questions; medicine as art as well as science; the daily realities of a family doctor's life; eugenics and euthanasia; and physician-assisted suicide.

Previous Literature Seminars

Multiculturalism in Cinema
Professor: Castronova
Multiculturalism in Cinema is a capstone seminar that presents the international world of movies for student viewing and discussion.  Students will watch and study films from various countries.  Each film will be shown in its original language.  Therefore, students will hear the original languages of the films and will read them with English subtitles.  There will be film-related projects as part of this capstone seminar, and students will research films from various countries and/or directors.  The course will provide the idea of film-making as a global effort to explore the human condition.  Interaction between the instructor and the students in regard to each film should help to illuminate what is seen and felt by each viewer.

Chaucer and Late Medieval Diversity
Professor: Donahue
This seminar will explore Chaucer's use of various literary forms, from bawdy tales to heroic narratives and saints' lives, to capture the cultural, social and financial pluralism of his land. His Canterbury Tales examine the diverse lovers, saints, scoundrels and heroes of a land that had survived frequent wars and a mysterious plague and that was working with a new language and accommodating a variety of new social and economic groups. The letters of the socially and economically emerging Paston family will supplement our study of selected Canterbury Tales.

Literature and Diversity
Professor: T. Hunt
Scientifically speaking, diversity is the term used to describe the relative uniqueness of each individual in the population. The social sciences use the term diversity to explore representation of and respect for difference and “uniqueness” among people in populations. This seminar will consider these concepts of diversity, primarily to explore how literature represents and responds to issues that arise in diverse populations. We will begin by considering a variety of historical perspectives on diversity, including narratives from early settlement and colonial periods in America. As the course progresses, we will also approach more contemporary concerns, considering how issues of diversity impact and influence civil rights, globalization, immigration, war, and terrorism.

A close look at how literature responds to the concerns of diversity will also help us compare various cultural perspectives on the issues. Texts to be considered may include Hany Abu-Assad’s Paradise Now, Sindewe Magona’s Mother to Mother, Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss, Nella Larsen’s Passing, Octavia Butler’s Kindred, and Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies. 

Digital Poetry
Professor: C. Funkhouser
Digital poetry is a genre based in literary, visual, and sonic arts launched by poets who began to experiment with computers in the late 1950s. Using Espen Aarseth’s concept of cybertext as a theoretical foundation, this course investigates the different activities taken up by poets who integrate computer technology in their works. Students will discuss and evaluate virtues of the dynamics presented in an array of works produced by poets and programmers. Poems that include algorithmic programming, graphical artistry, videography, and hypertext designs are introduced and explored, in order to build an understanding of the values of these disparate forms of expression and deliberate on the creative potential of this new genre.

Moby-Dick
Professor: R. Friedman
It may be sitting on your shelf, this enigmatic beast of a book, a source of inspiration for adventurers, both real and armchair. You may have read chapters of it, seen a movie or cartoon version of the tale, or have always wanted to take the time to read it.  Now's your chance (and you get credit for it, too).  Written over 150 years ago by Herman ("I prefer not to") Melville, Moby-Dick is an American culturally iconic novel, a tour de force that went absolutely nowhere when first released.  What makes it one of the most well-known American novels in the world? Join us as we dig into this epic melange of allegory and symbolism, technical reportage and metaphysical quest and find out, as Ishmael tries to beat the blues, Ahab tries to settle scores, and little Pip tries to get his groove back.  Learn what it means to be a monomaniac so that when you meet up with one, (and you will,) you can deal with it.

Before clicking "drop/add," be aware that this course requires a boatload of reading.  In addition to 135 chapters of the central text, we'll be reading about and discussing Melville's contemporary contexts (environmental, literary, economic and political), as well as some of the more profound critical commentary of your contemporaries.  Once this ship sets sail, there's no successful return to land unless you stay on board, on deck and on track with weekly commentary about your reading experience, your insights into Melville's views of culture, politics, religion and the sea-faring life, and your demonstration of mastering the material.  http://web.njit.edu/~friedman/Moby08.html

Talking to Themselves: Interior Monologues of Samuel Beckett and
Virginia Woolf
Professor: E. Alexander
We all talk to ourselves, but most often, without much awareness. This class is intended to closely observe how two particular writers handle this constant, interior word-flow, and turn it into an emotional, yet emotionally-controlled, narrative device. We will make use of film, psychology, journal writing, and, of course, Beckett's and Woolf's texts, themselves, to further explicate this. In addition to journal writing, we'll examine other ways in which we might further grasp the patterns of our own thoughts and feelings.