Literatures in English II: 1700-1900
Class Information
Instructor: Miller, Elizabeth
Time: TR 12:10-1:30
GE Areas: Writing Experience
Description
English 10B offers a survey of literature in English from 1700-1900, and is the second part of the required ENL 10 sequence for English majors. Our focus in this class will be on literature written between 1700 and 1900 in the English-speaking world. This is a reading and writing intensive class, designed to improve your critical reading and critical writing abilities and to prepare you for upper-division courses in the major. Our key goals for the class are:
- To improve your skills in close reading, attention to textual detail, and reading texts within a historical context
- To introduce you to some of the most important literary and cultural developments in the English-speaking world from 1700 to 1900
- To explore a wide range of genres, modes, and forms of literary writing
- To strengthen your writing and research skills for all majors and to give you practice in writing literary analysis and research papers for the English major
Some of the topics we will explore in this class include: transatlantic print culture; the rise of the novel; the mediation of selfhood in autobiography; and literature's relation to major historical contexts such as nationhood and colonialism, empire and slavery, the Industrial Revolution, and the changing natural world.
This class will be taught in a synchronous lecture format over Zoom, but the classes will be recorded and posted on Canvas for those who cannot attend synchronously.
Grading
Weekly reading responses
Two papers
Final exam
Texts
Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe
A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
The Time Machine, H. G. Wells
The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde
Range of short stories, poems, excerpts