ENGL

Subject

ENGL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Subject

ENGL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

A study of American literature that examines relationships between literary texts and the extractive industries that shape our world. The large-scale processing of organic materials has created significant costs and unevenly distributed benefits, leading to conflicts that have informed important work in imaginative literature and film. The texts explored allow for discussions about how art interprets and protests the use and misuse of natural resources, how it describes the origins and implications of climate change, and how it imagines alternative approaches to economic production, consumption, and labor. Students use a group thematically linked texts to understand fundamentals of the study literature. Figures studied include W. E. B. Du Bois, Herman Melville, Rebecca Harding Davis, Katie Beaton; Upton Sinclair, Rachel Carson; and Jun Yung. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No Junior, Senior Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Confronting Collective Challenges and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

An introduction to the stories about mind, brain, and behavior composed by pre-modern writers. These early writers explore anger, passion, greed, pride, and despair by making stories that dramatize and sometimes personify the workings of various mental faculties. The stories ask our questions: how much control, and what type of control, might we have over our emotions and reactions? Readings begin with a discussion of contemporary cognitive theory in relation to the neuroscience of narrative by Paul Armstrong, Professor of English, Brown University. The readings then include selections from Aristotle, Homer, Virgil, St. Augustine, Chretien de Troyes, Chaucer, and the anonymous authors of medieval drama. Throughout the course, students return to the work of Paul Armstrong as they consider different types of narratives. This is a discussion-based course with a writing component.

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Literary journalists combine the best qualities of literature and journalism to make facts sing. Following their own curiosity or passions, they cover war, travel, crime, art, food, science, contemporary culture, sports, and social issues. What they have in common is a passion for telling compelling, memorable stories about real people, places, events. While their work often appears in newspapers or magazines, it's meant to transcend the daily news cycle, delivering durable truths about what it means to he human. The focus in this iteration will be on true crime writing. Students consider questions of art, craft, and ethics while reading and writing about classic and contemporary accounts of true crime. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No Junior, Senior Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

A course on poetry that is open to everyone, especially total beginners and those who "don't get it." Students learn to engage with poems in a variety of ways through activities in imitation, memorization, close reading, and critical writing. Topics may include major authors, from Shakespeare to Dickinson to Brooks and beyond; lyrics, rhythm, and the connection between words and music; poetic forms such as the sonnet, elegy, ode, and ballad; translation; certain schools or communities of poets; contemporary poetry; and other poetic matters, at the discretion of the instructor. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No Junior, Senior Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

A study of Caribbean literature and society post-independence, tracing the conflicts and contradictions inherent in the post-colonial experience. The work of decolonization is at the heart of Caribbean society, and yet the Caribbean post-independence is more than this. It is a complex society still caught up in its self- definition. As it contends with the afterlives of Empire, Caribbean society negotiates identity through discourses of race, class, gender, and sexuality. Students will explore Caribbean literature, film, music, art,

Subject

ENGL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

A reconsideration of what F. Scott Fitzgerald dubbed "the Jazz Age" in terms of the American inscription of race between the First World War and the Great Depression. Students read Langston Hughes with William Carlos Williams, Dorothy Parker with Dubose Heyward, Nella Larsen with F. Scott Fitzgerald, and read everyone in terms of the African American musics that were profoundly transforming the sound and feel of American life. And troubling the foundation of everything else is T.S. Eliot's legendary critique of modern life, The Waste Land. At all times students, consider the relations among ways of reading and writing and thinking, among ways of representing our lives and ways of changing them. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No Junior, Senior Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation or Confronting Collective Challenges Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

Through cooking and story-telling we create community. Immigrants carry their food habits and stories of home to hold on to culture. Diasporic communities create new fusion food, new mixed languages and fictional accounts of their new homes. Cooking food and women's fiction are gendered processes. The kitchen has often been designated a woman's space and is so associated with the domestic; as such, women have used the home and the kitchen for storytelling and resistance. Culinary fictions can also be a place of exclusion along caste, class and racial lines, where some people are excluded from textual authorship, the domestic and access to food. Students explore the different valences of food as they appear in fictional accounts such as Neema Shah's Kololo Hill, Jumpa Lahiri's Namesake, Chitra Divakaruni's Mistress of Spices, Shaija Patel's Migritude, Shahu Patole's Dalit Kitchens of Marathawada, Meera Nair's, Mississippi Masala, and South African cookbooks written during apartheid. Three or four times a semester, students meet during the evening to cook together and learn about the culinary experiments of our authors. Students are invited to cook food based on their own family and community histories. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

A study of the writers who have made and remade British literature, from its medieval origins to the present moment. Students will learn to read across the linguistic and cultural diversity of the British Isles, which include Scotland, Ireland, England, and Wales, and trace the evolution of the languages over time. In addition to works by major authors like Chaucer, Spenser, Shelley, and Heaney, students will read widely in the resources and traditions of British literature. The course examines, for the most part, shorter works (lyric poetry, songs, essays), but longer ones (novels, epics) may be included wholly or in part. An objective of the course is to situate texts in history so that students can begin to appreciate how literary works respond to cultural and political events. An instructor may give the course a focus, such as attention to particular regional and national identities or the significance of British culture in relation to international conflicts and changes. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No Junior, Senior Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

An introduction to American literature exploring the relations among key texts and various contexts—critical, cultural and historical. The course engages a wide range of issues in American literary history, from Native American oral traditions and the European "discovery" of Indigenous lands through the colonial period and Revolution to the emergence of the women's rights movement and debates over slavery and its legacy in the decades before and after the Civil War. A central focus is the impact of race and gender on the writings of all periods; the diverse authors studied include Anne Bradstreet, Mary Rowlandson, Benjamin Franklin, Phillis Wheatley, William Apess, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Harriet Jacobs, Frederick Douglass, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Charles Chesnutt. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No Junior, Senior Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Confronting Collective Challenges and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

An introductory survey into significant debates and texts in the field of postcolonial literatures. This course explores how the field engages with questions of race, gender, sexuality, class, caste, and nation-building in societies conditioned by colonialism and decolonization movements. It also considers how writers located in

Subject

ENGL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

An introduction to literary study focusing on the nature of literary tradition and its relationship to cultural and historical contexts. The rich, varied, and enduring tradition connected with the figure of King Arthur is explored through a consideration of English, French, and Welsh texts written between the early Middle Ages and the 15th century, although some more modern works may also be considered. The course is concerned with (among other topics) how different cultures, historical epochs, and individual authors have adapted Arthurian tradition to meet their own needs and concerns and with what has made Arthurian tradition a compelling source of material for so many different interests right up to the present. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No Junior, Senior Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

An introduction to literary study focusing on the question of what it means to identify a national tradition of literature. This course examines Native American authors of the late 20th century in relation to the works of some of their contemporaries, including works by Linda Hogan, Louise Erdrich, N. Scott Mo-maday, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Simon Ortiz. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No Junior, Senior Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

Subject

ENGL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

An introduction to literary study using the relationship between sexuality, literature and the history of global cities as a jumping off point for considering the problems, practices, and possibilities of literary study. The course undertakes close reading of modern texts to discover how urban settings influence our understandings of racial and ethnic identity, gender roles, and multiple forms of sexual relationships. It also addresses the ways that the cosmopolitan city provides new forms and content for both modern identities and post-modern narratives. Works of literature are contextualized by a variety of critical and historical works from the modernist and post-modernist periods. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No Junior, Senior Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

The art and craft of imaginative writing: fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. In a given term, the emphasis may be determined by the instructor. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No Junior, Senior Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

Subject

ENGL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

A course for freshman and sophomores, dedicated to The Booker Prize. The Booker is awarded annually to one new novel published in English, in the UK. Students follow the year's Booker Prize proceedings, and the class schedule is built live alongside developments in the prize season over the course of the fall semester. In addition to analyzing these texts as works of literature, students dissect the evolving aesthetics and politics of the prize and also consider prize culture in the arts more generally. Why is the Booker a cultural phenomenon in England and how do the legacies of colonization and the former "Empire" manifest in these texts? What roles do the judges, the sponsors, and the British and international reading public have? What novels are being celebrated in this particular moment in time, and why? Students read one novel from the Booker longlist, all six novels on the shortlist, as well as supplementary critical essays relevant to the texts at hand. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No Junior, Senior Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

An examination of English novels in which the evocation of place is central to meaning. Students will consider both the means by which authors represent place and the implications of that representation. Texts will include Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, George Gissing's The Nether World, and Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Throughout the term there will be a focus on the way authors create an imaginative geography based in the physical world but not identical to it. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No Junior, Senior Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Latina/os have been present in the United States ever since the country's founding, and beyond. Yet, their contributions to the culture and literary life of the country have only been recognized all too recently. Moreover, despite being one of the fastest growing minority groups in the U.S., Latina/ os have often been sidelined by discrimination and xenophobia. Students consider these issues, and the vibrant and diverse role Latina/as have played in U.S. literature and culture. Taking a broadly historical approach, and paying particularly close attention to contemporary Latinx fiction, memoir, and poetry, it considers questions relating to place, politics, race, history, and gender. Major figures to be considered include Jose Marti, William Carlos Williams, Gloria Andalzua, Natalie Diaz, and Justin Torres. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No Junior, Senior Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Confronting Collective Challenges and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

A survey of theater history and dramatic literature from ancient practices through the early 19th century. Course readings closely consider texts from the historical global development of drama, while considering theater's broader relationship to its historical socio-political context. Crosslisted: THEA 266 When Offered: Usually in the fall semester Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No Senior Restrictions: Students with credit for ENGL 211 may not receive credit for ENGL 266 Recommended: Students intending to major/minor in theater usually take either THEA 266 or THEA 267 by the end of sophomore year. Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

A survey of the new theatrical styles to emerge around the world in the 19th and 20th centuries. Course readings closely consider the relationship between a play's literary form and its realization in performance, as well as theater's response to the emergence of film, television, and new media. Crosslisted: THEA 267

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Required of and limited to participants in the London English Study Group and is taken the term before the group's departure. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: None Liberal Arts Practices: None Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

0.25

Credits (max)

0.25

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

Opportunity for individual study in areas not covered by formal course offerings, under the guidance of a member of the faculty. Credits: variable Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: None Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

A study of the historical development of the English language from the first written records of the Anglo- Saxon period to the present day. The course is concerned both with the linguistic "laws" governing the development of English and with the political, economic, and cultural factors that have helped to determine the character of the language spoken today. Students engage in some close study of earlier forms of English. (Pre-1800 course.) Major/Minor Restrictions: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

A study of early medieval literature, focusing mainly on the great tales and poems of the Germanic and Celtic traditions. Readings include such representative major works as Beowulf, the Irish epic Táin Bó Cúailnge, the Welsh Mabinogi, and selected Icelandic sagas. By approaching these texts both as literary works and as characteristic expressions of their respective cultures, the course works toward situating Old English literature in a broader European context. Texts are in translation, with some exposure to original languages for interested students. (Pre-1800 course.) Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

A study of engagements with the world in medieval English accounts of history, adventure, travel, and pilgrimage, suggesting the sense of challenge, opportunity, and threat that the world beyond Britain's watery borders seemed to offer. The readings reveal the increasingly fluid and fraught categories of race, class, and gender from the earliest medieval writings to the beginnings of the Renaissance. (Pre-1800 course.) Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Confronting Collective Challenges and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

An introduction to the languages, literatures, and history of the early medieval cultures of Britain and Ireland. Depending on the semester, the course may concentrate on Old English, Old Irish, or Middle Welsh. The heart of the course is an intensive study of the chosen language, combining thorough and systematic instruction in the basic elements of the language with translation of selected readings from texts by early medieval authors. The course examines the cultural and historical backgrounds of early medieval literature; students work on developing the philological expertise to be able to address such topics as the heroic ethos, the impact of Christianity on the pagan peoples of western Europe, and the roles of women in early medieval society. (Pre-1800 course.)

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

A study of women's roles in fiction written in English from the eighteenth century to the present. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

A study of American literature in the context of society and culture in the United States from 1830 to the end of the Civil War in 1865, with special emphasis on the impact of the anti-slavery, utopian, and women's rights movements. The diverse readings include works by Frederick Douglass, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Fanny Fern, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Jacobs, Herman Melville, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry Thoreau, and Walt Whitman. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Confronting Collective Challenges and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

A study of representative works by 19th- and 20th-century American novels in their social, political and cultural contexts. The diverse readings will vary but will typically include works by authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Wells Brown, Herman Melville, Rebecca Harding Davis, Henry James, Alice Callaghan, Willa Cather, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner and James Baldwin. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

A study of narrative fiction. Students should consult the department and registration material to learn what specific topic will be considered during a given term. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

A study of literature of the U.S. South with attention to texts ranging from the colonial period to the contemporary moment. By assessing "southern literature" as a category with a particular history, students approach texts that issue from a region at a crossroads of circum-Atlantic commerce and culture, oppression and hope. Students explore texts in a variety of media and theorize them from a range of perspectives. Major figures include Frances Harper, Kate Chopin, Zora Neale Hurston, William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Jesmyn Ward. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Confronting Collective Challenges and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

The literary culture of this period is known for its frank explorations of sexuality and gender, its crackling wit and cutting satire, its gossip and its coffee-houses, and its sensational novels. Much of it was written in and about London, a city just then emerging as a major European capital and the center of a globe-spanning empire built on trade, including the transatlantic trade in slaves. In this course, students will study works by John Dryden, Aphra Behn, Daniel Defoe, Alexander Pope, Frances Burney, and Samuel Johnson, and learn to connect their moment in literary history with the Global Enlightenment and the Ages of Revolution and Empire. (Pre-1800 course.) Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

Subject

ENGL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

A study of books that have been called obscene, irreligious, explicit, or offensive. Explore the controversies that have surrounded these complex works of literature and the historical and sociopolitical episodes that have led to acts of censorship. Writers to be studied may include Sherman Alexie, Alison Bechdel, Juno Dawson, Toni Morrison, Art Spiegelman, and Alice Walker. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation or Confronting Collective Challenges Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

A study of Shakespeare plays examined through modern and historical, social and political, theoretical and performance perspectives. English 321 is offered during the fall term. While covering a wide variety of plays, this term features Hamlet and Macbeth as major tragedies, along with the plays and The Tempest. One play by a contemporary of Shakespeare's (Marlowe, Jonson, or Middleton) is often included. Students can count both ENGL 321 and ENGL 322 for credit toward the concentration, although only one can be counted for pre-1800 credit. (Pre-1800 course.) When Offered: Fall semester only Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No First-year, Sophomore Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

A study of selected Shakespeare plays examined through modern and historical, social and political, theoretical and performance perspectives. English 322 is offered only during the spring term. While covering a wide variety of plays, this term features King Lear as one tragedy, along with Henry V, 1 Henry VI, and representative early and late comedies and romances. One play by a contemporary of Shakespeare's (Marlowe, Jonson, or Middleton) is often included. Students can count both ENGL 321 and ENGL 322 for credit toward the concentration, although only one can be counted for pre-1800 credit. (Pre-1800 course.) Crosslisted: THEA 322 When Offered: Spring semester only Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No First-year, Sophomore Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

A detailed study of works chosen to illustrate the historical development of literature in Great Britain. Taught in London. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: None Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

A study of the works of Milton with emphasis on the early poems and the epic Paradise Lost. The course includes close reading of the texts and an examination of their relationship to the art and ideas of the period. (Pre-1800 course.) Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

Subject

ENGL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

An introduction to the field of Irish Studies. Begins by considering a few influential works of earlier Irish literature and then moves on to pay close attention to the Irish Revolution and the "Easter Rebellion," particularly the explosion of creativity in the literary and dramatic arts during the Irish Literary Revival, with a special focus on the poetic work of its leader, the towering figure of W.B. Yeats, and the wide shadow his influence would cast over the work of later poets, like Nuala Ní Dhomhnail, Seamus Heaney and Paul Muldoon. Students are grounded in the history of Ireland, its conflicted colonial relationship with Britain, and the outsized influence of this small island on global and postcolonial literatures. May be offered as an extended study. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Confronting Collective Challenges and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

A study of British fiction, poetry, and drama of the 20th century. This course is taught in London. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: None Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

Subject

ENGL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Narratives by African, African American, and African Caribbean women writers. The focus of this course is the concept of the African diaspora with its broad cultural, social, political, and economic implications. Students explore how these texts represent women's experience cross-culturally. How does the condition of each nation-state, with its attendant hierarchy of race, ethnicity, class, and gender, shape the (dis)continuities in these texts? Ultimately, they question whether these narratives can cohere under the rubric of African/diaspora women's literature. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation or Confronting Collective Challenges Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

A study of works by and about Black Americans. Short fiction, the novel, drama, poetry, and the essay are examined with an eye for determining the nature of the Black American's role, as writer and as subject, in the context of American literature as a whole. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

A survey of African literature written in English in the decolonizing, post-colonial, and neo-colonial eras. This course examines a number of outstanding novels and critical writing by African writers, with a particular focus on the ways literary aesthetics change to reflect dynamic national, cultural, and subjective identities.

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

A study of selected British and American poets active between 1900 and 1950. Amidst all the discourse about the "postmodern," it becomes increasingly clear that there is no consensus on what it is "post." More recent versions of the "postmodern" argue that it is not a period but a mode - one coeval with Modernism itself. Modernity and postmodernity can thus be understood only in relation to one another. This course pursues that relation by focusing on poets like W.H. Auden, Sterling Brown, T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Mina Loy, Marianne Moore, Ezra Pound, Muriel Rukeyser, Wallace Stevens, Melvin Tolson, or William Carlos Williams. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

A survey of important developments in the formation of literary criticism as a modern discipline. Topics may include Freudian, feminist, deconstructive, Marxist, semiotic, and historical approaches. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Confronting Collective Challenges and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

A survey of African American literature after 1900. Reading across time, space, and genre, students examine how African American writers have developed traditions of protest and political dissent, navigated the evolution of racial discourse after Reconstruction, and explored the terms of freedom, citizenship and belonging in the United States. Students also engage African American literary production across a variety of forms to consider how African American writers respond to social and cultural movements of the 20th and 21st centuries. Topics include the artistic renaissance in Harlem and Chicago, the Civil Rights movement, the Black Arts movement, the emergence of the New Black Aesthetic, and Black writing in the age of Black Lives Matter. Authors may include the following: Nella Larsen, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Lorraine Hansberry, Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, August Wilson, Toni Morrison, and

Subject

ENGL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

An examination of British fiction in the Victorian age (roughly 1837-1901). Texts include works by such writers as Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, Charlotte Brontë, Wilkie Collins, Anthony Trollope, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson, George Egerton, and George Gissing. Attention is paid to the many forms that Victorian fiction took, and to the variety of topics that it addressed. There are opportunities to consider such subjects as Victorian publishing practices, fiction as a vehicle for social criticism, the relationship of fiction to other cultural forms, and the growing frankness of mainstream fiction. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

An exploration of Asian, African, intercultural, and postcolonial performance traditions, spanning theater, dance, ritual, and everyday life. Course materials include both classic and contemporary play texts along with selected readings in history, anthropology, and performance studies. Crosslisted: THEA 349 Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

A master class in how works of literature come to be. Students study nine to eleven works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama by contemporary writers. Each year, the list is carefully curated to bring a diversity of perspectives. In a typical week, students discuss one of the works on the syllabus with the professor on Tuesday afternoon, then meet the author on Thursday afternoon. Attendance at literary

Subject

ENGL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

The social, political, and cultural background to Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Chaucer's Canterbury Tales capture the liveliness and precision of Middle English and the variety of late medieval English life. In them Chaucer explores issues of community, gender, identity, and authority as the pilgrims tell tales, quarrel with one another, and assert themselves. Through their narratives, the pilgrims attempt to make sense of the social, religious, and political challenges of a world at least as confusing as our own. (Pre-1800 course.) Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No First-year Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

A study of very recent short and long fiction by writers both renowned and slightly secret. Students should consult the department and registration material to learn what specific topic will be considered during a given term. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

Subject

ENGL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Subject

ENGL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

An investigation of the impact of genocide on the self and the imagination's representations in literature, film, and art. Primary texts include poetry, memoir, video testimony, film, and visual art. Scholarly methodology involves readings of literary criticism and theoretical work in the study of trauma, literary theory, and testimony. Among the questions the course asks are: How does trauma shape imagination and open up access to the site of disaster that is now carried in fragments which inform memory? How do representations of violence shape and inflect aesthetic orientations and literary and artistic forms? The course concerns itself with the aftermath of two 20th-century genocides--that of the Armenians in Turkey during World War I and of the Jews in Europe during World War II--both seminal events of the 20th century that, in various ways, became models for ensuing genocides. Crosslisted: PCON 368 Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

Students read texts written by diversely queer writers about diversely queer folks. Students should consult the department and registration material to learn what specific topic will be considered during a given term. Crosslisted: LGBT 369 Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No First-year, Sophomore Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: None Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

Deeply troubled by accelerating change and alarming social upheaval, 19th century British poetry veers between prophecy and doubt, neither entirely sure of its vision nor willing to surrender hope. Perhaps even more than ourselves, the poets of this era felt keenly the forces of social fragmentation and the constriction of the human spirit by machinery and technology. Students start with fiery seers like William Blake or Percy Shelly, observe poets like Tennyson, Barrett-Browning, Arnold or the Rossettis wrestling with the role of the poet in modern society, and follow the self-described "last of the Romantics," the Irish poet William Butler Yeats, as he prepares the way for modernism precisely by digging deeper yet into tradition. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

An introduction to literatures, films, and critical theory from the South Asian diasporas in North America, England, and South Africa. Student understandings of the fields of Ethnic and Diaspora Studies are enhanced. Focused on participants in the diasporas, emphasizing their different histories of arrival, their place as hyphenated identities, and their shared struggles with other oppressed groups within a framework of segregation at home and empire abroad. Readings focus on texts from the early colonial periods, Jim Crow/apartheid, the Post-WWII reconstruction of England, and the War on Terror. Authors/film-makers may include, Sam Selvon, Mira Nair, Rayda Jacobs, Imraan Coorvadia, Salman Rushdie, Achmat Dangor, Hanif Kureishi, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Amitav Ghosh, Jumpa Lahiri, and H.M. Naqvi. Major/Minor Restrictions: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

A workshop-based course in the theory and practice of personal writing. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

Instructor approval on the basis of writing samples

Corequisite

None

Building on playwriting skills and techniques introduced and practiced in THEA 276: Playwriting, students will study and practice the art and craft of writing and revising the one-act play (45-60 minutes in length). The course will be run as a workshop and is intended for students with playwriting experience. Crosslisted: THEA 376 Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

ENGL 256 or THEA 256 or THEA 276

Corequisite

None

A workshop in the writing of prose fiction. This course includes study of professional writers' work, group analysis of students' work, and individual conferences. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

An advanced workshop in the writing of poetry; includes group analysis and criticism.

Subject

ENGL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Courtly and popular writing in England, 1485-1603. Writers studied include the canonized greats (Sidney, Spenser, Marlowe, and Shakespeare) and their equally flamboyant contemporaries. (Pre-1800 course.) Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

1600-1700 A study of the impact of Renaissance science and political and economic turmoil on English literature through the revolution of mid-century. Works include prose, poetry, and drama of the "metaphysical" and "cavalier" schools: Donne, Jonson, Webster, Herbert, Herrick, Browne, Marvell, and their contemporaries. (Pre-1800 course.) Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

Opportunity for individual study in areas not covered by formal course offerings, under the guidance of a member of the faculty. Credits: variable Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression

Subject

ENGL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

A study of selected texts from the medieval Welsh and Irish literary traditions. Readings span the period from the 7th to the 15th centuries and include such works as the Irish epic Tain Bo Cuailnge ("The Cattle Raid of Cooley"), the Welsh mythological stories of The Mabinogi, and the love and nature poetry of Dafydd ap Gwilym. Students consider these works as cultural and historical artifacts, and also explores their accessibility to more modern critical and theoretical approaches. (Pre-1800 course.) Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No First-year Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

Race is a fiction, but its effects in the world are real. Students study the literary sources of racial typologies and race-based subordination in the early modem world. In works by white and Black authors, ranging from William Shakespeare's Othello (1603) to Aphra Behn's Oroonoko (1689) to Olaudah Equiano's Interesting Narrative (1789), students read narratives of colonial encounter, accounts of slave trafficking and the experience of bondage, philosophical discussions of human variety, and many other works that present less familiar practices of race-making and racial self-understanding. Students learn the early modem literary history of race-making so that they are better equipped to think critically about how race is made to matter in our time. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No First-year, Sophomore Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Confronting Collective Challenges and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

A consideration of the works of the Brontës, including the following: Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre and Villette, Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, and Anne Brontë's Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. This seminar also examines Brontë biography, taking Elizabeth Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Brontë as its point of departure. Students gain an understanding of the Brontës' literary and social contexts; they also gain an appreciation of the powerful myth that has grown up around these three sisters. Major/Minor Restrictions: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

A study of key medieval texts from the 12th to the 15th centuries in which the authors attempt to articulate individual identity in relation to the medieval social codes and expectations that shaped their experience. Students consider such issues as love, gender, religious vocation, and court and town life. (Pre-1800 course.) Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No First-year Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

An advanced seminar in a topic - author, genre, or theme - in American literature. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No First-year, Sophomore Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

A study of the two major figures of American transcendentalism in their social, political, and religious context. The course focuses on the major writings of Emerson and Thoreau, with some attention to related works by their contemporaries. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No First-year Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: None Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

Subject

ENGL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Helps students navigate fiction's complex relationship with representation and reality. Scans a broad spectrum of texts, beginning with 18th- and 19th-century European novels, and continue onto contemporary writings from the postcolonial world. Students discuss the complex ways in which fiction documents the social world, produces historical archives, bears witness to trauma and violence, and memorializes loss, but also rejects and/or makes readers critically aware of realism's positivist impulses. Also guides students in reading theoretical texts on the topic. Possible authors include Daniel Defoe, Rudyard Kipling, Leonard Woolf, Bertolt Brecht, Chinua Achebe, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Michael Ondaatje, and David Henry Hwang. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No First-year Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

A study of several of the author's major works, including Ulysses. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No First-year, Sophomore Recommended: Prior course work in Shakespeare, 19th- or 20th-century narrative recommended. Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

Developing from the "wisdom literatures" of both Greco-Roman and Hebrew tradition, the modern aphorism is characterized by its brief and often pointed expression of an observation or precept. It differs from, say, maxims, proverbs, or apothegms in that it turns on paradox and antithesis; it differs from earlier forms in the ways it undermines rather than supports certainty. Students explore the relations of literary form to convictions about the nature and limits of human knowledge, habits of reading, and its uses in life. Students follow the transformation of the aphorism both as form and as impulse as it is reinvented in the Modern period-chiefly following the example of Friedrich Nietzsche-and explores its character as a lyrical corrective to overly definitive and linear ways of organizing and writing about experience. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No First-year Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

How do we tell stories about people? What historical and cultural elements shape our narratives about them? What materials do we have with which to build these portraits? This course is an exploration of biography, as non-fiction narrative, practiced both by modern writers and Renaissance writers. The subjects, ranging across a variety of countries, include a statesmen and an impersonator, an alchemist and a painter, a noblewoman and an executioner. Materials include original letters, diaries, autobiographies, travel journals, and legal records. (Pre-1800 course.) Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No First-year, Sophomore Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

An advanced seminar in a topic - author, genre, or theme - in English literature, 1580-1660. (Pre-1800 course.) Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No First-year, Sophomore Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

An intensive study of the works of one or two writers, as announced. (Post-1800 course.) Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No First-year Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: None Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

A study of the major novels and selected short stories of William Faulkner. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

An advanced workshop in the writing of fiction, poetry, and/or creative nonfiction. Depending on the semester and the instructor, the course may be structured around a topic, a genre, or both. It will always include the study of literary texts, discussion of student work, and one-on-one conferences. Preference is given to students who have already taken at least one 300-level creative writing workshop and who are majoring in English with an emphasis in creative writing. While this course is required for all students pursuing honors in creative writing, it is also open to students who are not pursuing honors. This course does not fulfill the major requirement for a 400-level seminar in literature. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

This seminar, taken in the senior year, is required of all English majors pursuing a scholarly honors project. The course has a twofold purpose. First, on a theoretical level, it problematizes familiar attitudes about and approaches to literary texts and contexts, while introducing students to the methodologies of twenty-first- century scholarship. Second, it inaugurates honors research, requiring the completion of essential preliminary tasks for the thesis that will be written in the spring.

Subject

ENGL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Writing the honors essay. This course must be taken in addition to the nine courses required for the major in English literature and the eleven courses required for the major in English with an emphasis in creative writing. It does not count as a seminar in literature. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: Only Senior Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation and The Process of Writing Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

Opportunity for individual study in areas not covered by formal course offerings, under the guidance of a member of the faculty. Credits: variable Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation Core Component: None

Subject

ENGL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

Individually supervised studies for students selected by the department. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression

Subject

ENGL

Credits (min)

0.5

Credits (max)

0.5

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.colgate.edu

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None