Fall 2020 Staten Island course offerings are also available here as well as the new English major requirements.
S.I. UNDERGRADUATE FLYER
FALL 2020
ENG. 1100C: Literature in a Global Context (71277)
ONLINE
Dr. Stephen Paul Miller
Email: millers@stjohns.edu
This course will use the lens of comedy to study literature and film in a global context. Students will read Sigmund Freud and Henri Bergson concerning humor and laughter, in addition to writers such as Salmon Rushde, Muriel Spark, and Milan Kundera. Within this context, students will consider films directed by South Korea’s Lee Chang-dong, Iran’s Asghar Farhadi, Italy’s Lina Wertmüller, Israel’s Joseph Cedar, Thailand’s Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Frances’ Jean Luc Goddard, German-Americans Ernst Lubitsch and Billy Wilder, and Americans Preston Sturges and Charles Burnett.
ENG. 1100C: Literature in a Global Context (72656)
W. 7:30 – 10:20 AM
Dr. Stephen Paul Miller
Email: millers@stjohns.edu
This course will use the lens of comedy to study literature and film in a global context. Students will read Sigmund Freud and Henri Bergson concerning humor and laughter, in addition to writers such as Salmon Rushde, Muriel Spark, and Milan Kundera. Within this context, students will consider films directed by South Korea’s Lee Chang-dong, Iran’s Asghar Farhadi, Italy’s Lina Wertmüller, Israel’s Joseph Cedar, Thailand’s Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Frances’ Jean Luc Goddard, German-Americans Ernst Lubitsch and Billy Wilder, and Americans Preston Sturges and Charles Burnett.
ENG. 1100C: Literature in a Global Context (70589)
MR 10:40 – 12:05PM
Dr. Rachel Hollander
Email: hollanr1@stjohns.edu
As an introduction to literary studies and a sampling of global culture, this course will read a range of texts from a variety of historical periods and national origins. We will focus on colonialism and slavery in Africa, India, and the Caribbean, exploring how literary works represent relationships of power, oppression, and especially resistance. The class will also spend significant time learning to write (more) effectively about literature. The goal is to give you a productive overview of the pleasures and challenges of reading and writing critically, and to whet your appetite for more in depth study of both literary and non-fiction works.
ENG. 1100C: Literature in a Global Context (71742)
Ancients and Moderns
MR 12:15 – 1:40 PM
Dr. Brian Lockey
Email: lockeyb@stjohns.edu
An enduring line of questioning within the field of literary study is the following: who has composed better works of fiction, the poets of the classical world such as Homer, Virgil, and Ovid or the great vernacular writers of later European history such as Dante Alighieri, Miguel de Cervantes and William Shakespeare? A more contemporary version of the same question compares the great writers of the medieval and Renaissance period such as Dante, Shakespeare, Cervantes and John Milton to modernist or contemporary writers such as James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, and Flannery O’Connor. Which set of writers uncovered more valuable philosophical insights into the divine, into the human condition, about the world around us? Which set of writers is more worth reading in a classroom setting? Which set of writers is more worth passing on to the next generation of readers? We will attempt to address these and other questions as we read four works of fiction and some sonnets during of the semester. This course will cover the following works: Shakespeare’s King Lear, Dante’s The Inferno, Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, and Flanner O’Connor’s The Violent Bear It Away.
ENG. 2060: American Literature and the Monstrous (71502)
*DIVISION III OR PRE-1900*
ONLINE
Dr. Jennifer Travis
Email: travisj@stjohns.edu
This course will examine how images of witches, vampires, cannibals, and monsters have shaped American cultural discourse and literary history. Authors we will study include: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Edith Wharton, H.P Lovecraft, and more. For information email Dr. Travis, travisj@stjohns.edu
ENG. 2200: Reading & Writing for English Majors (75253)
MR 10:40 – 12:05 PM
Dr. Melissa Mowry
Email: mowrym@stjohns.edu
This class is designed to introduce the discipline to students who are already declared English majors or considering declaring as an English major. Together, we will develop a lexicon of important analytical terms, learn to navigate poetry effectively, understand a variety of genres, and generate compelling textual analyses. The aim here is to give you a firm foundation for doing advanced undergraduate coursework in literary and cultural studies. We will be using Eliza Haywood’s novella Fantomina as our prose text, John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera as our dramatic text, and a variety of poetry from across periods.
ENG. 3260: Women Writers of the 19th Century (75416)
*DIVISION II OR PRE-1900*
MR 3:25 – 4:50 PM
Dr. Rachel Hollander
Email: hollanr1@stjohns.edu
In this course, we will read novels, poetry, and non-fiction prose by a range of nineteenth-century woman writers from England. The class will be organized historically, in order to provide a solid grounding in the development of literary forms over the course of the century: we will cover the distinction between the Romantic and Victorian periods, the evolution of the realist novel, and the major cultural shifts taking place in Britain, including industrialization, imperialism, and urbanization. We will also, however, view these larger trends through the particular perspective of the woman writer, exploring how ideas about marriage, family, education, gender roles, class, and race are reflected in the fiction, poetry, and prose of our literary women. Finally, we will look at how feminist criticism of the twentieth and twenty-first century has played a role in our understanding of what it means to be a woman writer. Given the ways we now think about gender, does it still make sense to read authors AS women at all? Readings may include Jane Austen, Mary Prince, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, and Olive Schreiner.
ENG. 3590: Literature and the Other Arts (75257)
Science Fiction
*DIVISION IV*
MR 10:40 – 12:15 PM
Dr. Brian Lockey
Email: lockeyb@stjohns.edu
Science fiction emerged as a popular genre of writing during the late 19th and early 20th centuries and its popularity has continued to the present day. This course will consider major works of science fiction within their literary and historical contexts, the most important being the Darwinian revolution in evolutionary biology. We may consider examples of other genres such as the mystery story that also emerged as a response to scientific discoveries during this period. In particular, we will consider two major traditions within science fiction writing. The first tradition emerges from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and involves the “horrible human invention,” which threatens to destroy the world. The second, embodied in C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, probably goes back earlier and involves the discovery of a parallel world or universe. Among the questions we will ask are the following: How does science fiction emerge from the scientific revolutions of the Enlightenment period? How does science fiction register the 20th century tensions between religion and scientific reasoning? How does science fiction reflect transforming gender roles of men and women, especially given how many prominent science fiction writers have been women? Among the books we will read and the films we will view are the following: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1821), H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine (1895), H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu,” and other stories (1928), C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (1950), Ursula LeGuin’s The Wizard of Earthsea (1968), Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982), and Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982).
ENG. 3830: Topics in Film Authors (75255)
*DIVISION IV*
10:40 – 1:30 PM
Dr. Stephen Miller
Email: millers@stjohns.edu
This course will juxtapose and analyze related film from different cultures and eras to better understand both these films and the cultures and times that produced them. For example, Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite may be studied alongside Joseph Losey’s and Harold Pinter’s The Servant in terms of class issues concerning domestic servants. Parasite may also be seen in apposition with Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver regarding an unexpected and problematic violent resolution. Parasite might also be considered in terms of class issues addressed in Busby Berkeley’s Gold Diggers of 1933. Other comparative examples might include the unfolding of narrative through a central character in Agnès Varda’s Cléo from 5 to 7, Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, and François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows.
ENG. 4994: Seminar Themes & Genres (75254)
*SENIOR SEMINAR/SENIOR CAPSTONE*
MR 12:15 – 1:40 PM
Dr. Melissa Mowry
Email: mowrym@stjohns.edu
Home—The idea of home is central to who we are. Often we use the word “home” as a synonym for comfort and love. For as long as there has been literature, we have told stories about home—think about Homer’s Odyssey, Milton’s Paradise Lost, and Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. What happens to the stories we tell when home is something that has been lost to war, bondage, climate crisis, or is just inhospitable. How does that displacement alter the kinds of stories it is possible to tell? This class will start with Defoe’s 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe, we will move on to consider Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, J.M. Coetzee’s Foe, and will finish with some modern diasporic writing. The class will also integrate modern criticism that considers the effect of being a stranger in a strange land.
SJC ONLINE ENGLISH ELECTIVE COURSES
ENG. 1040 – 72081 WRITING FOR BUSINESS
ENG. 1040 – 72452 WRITING FOR BUSINESS
ENG. 1040 – 74458 WRITING FOR BUSINESS
ENG. 1040 – 74456 WRITING FOR BUSINESS
ENG. 2060 – 71502 STUDY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE
ENG. 2210 – STUDY OF BRITISH LITERATURE
ENG. 2100 – LITERATURE AND CULTURE
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