Hello all, As you may know, the College opened registration early for Summer 2019. You may now register for summer classes in CUNYFirst. Below, I have pasted the course descriptions for our summer offerings. I have also attached these to this message as a pdf file. If you any questions about these classes or need assistance registering, feel free to contact me. Best, Bill _________________________________________________ William Orchard Assistant Professor Department of English Queens College/ CUNY worchard@qc.cuny.edu http://english.qc.cuny.edu/quick-links/william-orchard/ ENGLISH MA COURSE DESCRIPTIONS SUMMER 2019 SESSION I (June 3 to June 26) ENGL 781-01: Special Seminar Classic and Contemporary Male Playwrights Rhoda Sirlin Class no. 1287 MTWTh 6:45 to 8:25 PM This special topics graduate course will focus on post-1945 American male playwrights, beginning with classic Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatists: Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller. We will then explore their influence on late 20th-century and early 21st-century playwrights, such as David Mamet, Donald Margulies, August Wilson, Alfred Uhry, Edward Albee, Tracy Letts, John Patrick Shanley, Ayad Akhtar, and Stephen Guirgis, all Pulitzer Prize winners. In the process we will analyze the role of realism, naturalism, and expressionism in American theater and the nature of the tragic hero in contemporary American life and theater. ENGL 781-02: Special Seminar Coming of Age Literature Megan Milks Class no. 1288 MTWTh 6:45 to 8:25 PM In this course we will explore coming-of-age literature as it has evolved over time. In examining how (mostly) American writers have variously narrativized maturation, we necessarily embark on a critical study of what constitutes im/maturity in American culture. What does it mean to grow up, and when do we know when we’re done? Engaging with texts across genres, we will ask how literature has shaped and been shaped by changing conceptions of adolescence and adulthood--and how such stories, and the models of development they present, may be complicated by social differences such as sexual identity, race, ethnicity, class, ability, gender identity, and citizenship status. Among other topics we’ll read up on the bildungsroman, the birth of the teenager, and the emergence of Young Adult as a genre/market, and when and how coming-of-age literature itself came of age in the US. Readings may include SE Hinton’s The Outsiders, Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, Kai Cheng Thom’s Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir, Angie Thomas’ The Hate U Give, Cameron Awkward-Rich’s Sympathetic Little Monster, and short works by James Baldwin, Sonja Livingston, and Junot Díaz. SESSION II (July 1 to August 12) ENGL 721-01: Seventeenth-Century Literature Milton Richard Marotta Class no. 1303 MW 6:00 to 8:05 pm This course will focus on Milton’s Paradise Lost as a major example of the visionary epic. We will examine the intellectual, theological and mythical contexts of the poem and then move on to such issues as sexual politics, the emergence of gender identity, the authority of the Divine voice, the rhetoric of the Satanic voice, the birth of the Human voice, the “contradictory energy” (Smith) between paganism and Christianity and the various configurations of Adam and Eve. Milton made a number of poetic choices in the context of an epic poem that have endeared him to some readers and alienated him from others. We will look at these choices in the context of an epic poem that is very much heir to a non-Christian classical epic tradition and, at the same time, the recipient of a very specific Christian theological influences and conventions. These conflicted imaginative moments engender some of the more problematical and visionary elements in Paradise Lost. English 727-01: Studies in American Literature, 1820-1920 Whitman and Whitman’s Influence Dara Barnat Class no. 1304 TTh 6:00 to 8:05 pm In the extraordinary 1855 Leaves of Grass, Whitman announced himself to be America’s poet-prophet: “I celebrate myself, / And what I assume you shall assume.” In this course we will focus on a 19th-century poet whose role in the American literary tradition is perhaps unparalleled. Whitman’s writing drew great controversy as he challenged formal and thematic boundaries of poetry. He explored race, sexuality, religion, and democracy, promoting a united vision for America divided by the Civil War. We will be reading from the editions of Leaves of Grass revised between 1855 and 1892, as well as relevant scholarship. Finally, we will seek to uncover Whitman’s influence on the American literary tradition and beyond.