Graduate Courses in English at Main Campus
Summer 2011
English 556A Chaucer
(cross-listed as English 451A)
TTh 6:00-9:00
Dr. Kevin J. Harty
This advanced literature course studies the works of Geoffrey Chaucer, England’s first great author, focusing particularly on The Canterbury Tales. Attention will be paid to Chaucer’s sources and analogues, his language, and his world view.
English 562A World Literature, The Non-Western Tradition
(cross-listed as English 438A)
MW 6:00-9:00
Dr. Judith Musser
This advanced literature course considers primarily 20th and 21st century works from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Pacific Rim. The course emphasizes the ways in which such literary works are a reflection of their historical and cultural contexts.
Fall 2011
English 501. 41 Proseminar
Thursdays 5:15-7:50
Dr. Maryanne Bednar
This gateway course to graduate study in English examines the comparative and contrastive relationships between critical and pedagogical theory. The course’s approach is both historical and international with the dual aims of making students keen readers of literature and of preparing them better to show others how to become such readers. Requirements: a series of projects integrating the dual aims of the course.
English 551.41 American Fiction since 1900
(cross-listed as English 447.41)
W 5:15-7:50
Dr. Ryan Heidger
This course follows American literature through the drastic changes of the 20th century into the present. We will read mostly novels and a number of short stories. Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Hurston, Salinger, Roth, Morrison, and Silko are our likely novelists, with shorter works probably from Faulkner, O’Connor, Baldwin, Updike, O’Brien, and Alexie. The selected texts reflect the broad range of American fiction. Discussion, presentations, regular response papers, and a research essay (with proposal and annotated bibliography)—14+ pages for 400-level, 20+ pages for 500-level.
English 556.41 King Arthur
(cross-listed as English 441.41)
T 5:15-7:50
Dr. Kevin J. Harty
This course focuses the literature of England from medieval times (500-1500). For the current semester, we will study the development of one of the sustaining myths of western European culture, the story of King Arthur. We will begin with a look at the Arthur of (pseudo-) history, and then trace the development of Arthurian literature through Celtic, French, and finally English traditions. We will look carefully at the chronicles of Geoffrey of Monmouth and his imitators, romances such as those by Chrétien de Troyes and the anonymous Gawain-poet, and finally Sir Thomas Malory’s great fifteenth-century synthesis of the medieval traditions, Le Morte Darthur. Towards the end of the semester, we will consider the phenomenon of Arthur as once and future king by looking at twentieth- and twenty-first century versions of the story of Arthur in print and on film. Students will be graded on the basis of discussions, presentations, shorter reader- response papers, and a research essay (with proposal and annotated bibliography)—10+ pages for undergraduates, 20+ pages for graduate students.
English 562.01 South African Literature
(cross-listed as English 438.01)
MWF 11:00-11:50
Dr. Judith Musser
South Africa has a diverse literary history which includes various nationalities, ethnicities and languages. The goal of this course is to have students examine this diversity from a pre- and post- apartheid political context. How do two Nobel Prize winners, a South African beekeeper, a descendent of early Dutch settlers, a mixed racial journalist, a black psychologist, a domestic servant, a daughter of Jewish Lithuanian immigrants, an imprisoned black South African writer, and the founder of the South African Liberal Party portray notions of truth, justice, gender and race equality, shame, repentance and forgiveness? Students will also be asked to examine South African art and film as additional artistic representations of South Africa’s social transformation. Finally, students will explore how and why the issues of South Africa’s racially charged history connect with American political and literary history.
English 662.41 Philadelphia and Regional Studies
M 6:15-9:05
Dr. James A. Butler
Stephen Smith, Ph.D.
Director
M.A. in English Programs
1900 West Olney Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19141 USA
Phone: 215.951.1145
E-mail: gradenglish@lasalle.edu
La Salle University reserves the right to alter or change this information
at any time, without notice.