Navigating the English Major at Bates College: A Comprehensive Guide to Courses

Bates College offers a diverse range of courses within its English major, designed to cultivate students' critical reading, analytical, and communication skills. The department aims to foster an environment where students and faculty collaborate to analyze the complex dynamics between literature, social structures, and cultural processes. This guide provides a structured overview of the English major courses at Bates College, highlighting key themes, prerequisites, and learning objectives.

Introduction to the English Department at Bates College

The English Department at Bates College offers a comprehensive curriculum designed to foster critical thinking, analytical skills, and effective communication through the study of literature. Students develop the ability to read closely and engage in skilled textual analysis, gaining a sense of diverse literary histories and an understanding of literary genres. They learn to formulate and test questions about texts, compare them critically, and recognize the strengths and weaknesses of critical sources, methods, and interpretations. Discussions and coursework require students to develop their own ideas about texts and to present persuasive arguments in an articulate, responsive, and insightful manner, in both speech and writing.

The department embodies a variety of teaching styles and interests, but the faculty all believe in the art of patient, engaged reading as both knowledge and pleasure. Departmental offerings are intended to be taken in sequence. Courses at the 100 level are open to all students. Courses at the 200 level are more difficult in both the amount of material covered and the level of inquiry; they also address questions of theory and methodology in more self-conscious ways. Most 200-level courses have prerequisites.

Entry-Level Courses: 100-Level

Courses at the 100 level are designed to be accessible to all students, providing foundational knowledge and skills for literary analysis.

ENG 102: Introduction to Early Modern Literary Studies (1 Credit)

This course introduces students to the skills needed for literary analysis, focusing on topics, genres, authors, and themes resonant in English literature from 1500-1800. It provides an introduction to early modern literary studies. Special attention will be paid both to the skills needed for all literary analysis, as well as to topics, genres, authors, and themes particularly resonant in English literature from 1500-1800.

ENG 104: Introduction to Medieval English Literature (1 Credit)

ENG 104 introduces students to major texts including pre-Conquest poetry and prose (such as Beowulf and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle), early Middle English romance, post-Conquest lyric and narrative verse (including Chaucer), the fourteenth-century alliterative revival, Arthurian romance, drama, chronicles, and personal letters. This course introduces students to Medieval English Literature.

ENG 105: 9/11 in Literature and Film (1 Credit)

ENG 105 examines a wide range of literature, film, and other art that represents the September 11 attacks and their aftermath. This course examines a wide range of literature, film, and other art that represents the September 11 attacks and their aftermath.

ENG 109: Foundations of English Literature (1 Credit)

This course provides a general introduction to the study of English literature.

ENG 113: Theory of Narrative (1 Credit)

ENG 113 explores how the causal meaning of "then" explains narrative, providing a theory of reading that crosses literary criticism, neuroscience, and philosophy of law. The novelist E. M. Forster distinguished between "the king died and then the queen died," which is a story, and "the king died, and then the queen died of grief," which is a plot. How does the causal meaning of "then" explain narrative? Narratology provides a theory of reading that crosses literary criticism, neuroscience, and philosophy of law.

ENG 114: Introduction to African American Literature I: 1600-1910 (1 Credit)

This introductory course traces the development of a distinct African American literary tradition from the Atlantic Slave Trade to 1910. Students examine music, orations, letters, poems, essays, slave narratives, autobiographies, fiction, and plays by Americans of African descent. The essential questions that shape this course include: What is the role of African American literature in the cultural identity and collective struggle of Black people? This introductory course traces the development of a distinct African American literary tradition from the Atlantic Slave Trade to 1910. Students examine music, orations, letters, poems, essays, slave narratives, autobiographies, fiction, and plays by Americans of African descent. The essential questions that shape this course include: What is the role of African American literature in the cultural identity and collective struggle of Black people?

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ENG 115: Introduction to African American Literature II: 1910-Present (1 Credit)

ENG 115 traces the development of a distinct African American literary tradition from 1910 to the present, examining various forms of expression by Americans of African descent. This introductory course traces the development of a distinct African American literary tradition from 1910 to the present. Students examine music, orations, letters, poems, essays, autobiographies, fiction, and plays by Americans of African descent. The essential questions that shape this course include: What is the role of African American literature in the cultural identity and collective struggle of Black people? What themes, tropes, and forms connect these texts, authors, and movements into a coherent living tradition?

ENG 118: The Aesthetics of Seeing: Poetry as Witness (1 Credit)

This course explores poetry profoundly influenced by poets’ lived experiences as witnesses, focusing on how poets use their observations to create poems that preserve memories. This course explores poetry profoundly influenced by poets’ lived experiences as witnesses. Often the aesthetic of witness is one based in the traumatic: war, abuse, exile, and injustice. But this witnessing can also be the experience of observing kindness, joy, and beauty during times of inhumanity. The course examines how poets use what they have seen, what they have witnessed, to make poems. In effect, poetry preserves memories of the unmemorable. The course studies poems by Carolyn Forche, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Mahmoud Darwish, among others.

ENG 119: "I, Too, Sing America": Poetry of this Moment/Movement (1 Credit)

ENG 119 analyzes the work of contemporary poets responding to the current social and political moment in the United States, in the tradition of Walt Whitman and Langston Hughes. In the tradition of Walt Whitman and Langston Hughes, American poets who explicitly wrote of the political and social anxieties of their country’s moment, this course analyzes the work of contemporary poets responding to the current social and political moment in the United States. Students closely examine poetry that speaks from small-town America, environmental wreckage, #BlackLivesMatter, #MeToo, the Standing Rock Dakota Pipeline movement as well as poetry that addresses our current political leadership. Readings include Claudia Rankine, Terrance Hayes, and Layli Long Soldier.

ENG 121B: Postmodern Short Stories (1 Credit)

Focusing on short stories published from 1945-2015, this discussion-based course examines the international phenomenon of postmodern short fiction both as a natural sequence of modernism, and an expression of a new kind of post-WWII cynicism. Students are introduced to central aspects of postmodern literature through close readings of short fictions by writers as diverse as Borges, Cortazar, Lispector, Paley, Barthelme, Brautigan, Calvino, Everett, Atwood, Morrison, Hempel, Wallace, Smith, Pynchon, Lessing, and Saunders.

ENG 121D: The Many Lives of King Arthur (1 Credit)

ENG 121D analyzes the ways in which the Arthur story has been adapted for different literary, social, and political purposes according to the needs and desires of its changing audience, approaching Arthur as an idea as much as a man. King Arthur is called the "once and future king," but this malleable, mythic figure in some sense always lives in the present time. Approaching Arthur as an idea as much as a man, students analyze the ways in which the Arthur story has been adapted for different literary, social, and political purposes according to the needs and desires of its changing audience.

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ENG 121F: Modern Essays (1 Credit)

This course identifies the essential characteristics of the essay across centuries and cultures, focusing on both “classic” and contemporary texts by writers selected from among James Baldwin, Joan Didion, Annie Dillard, Donald Hall, Cathy Park Hong, Leslie Jamison, Maxine Hong Kingston, Barry Lopez, Maggie Nelson, Wesley Morris, Cynthia Ozick, Zadie Smith, Susan Sontag, John Jeremiah Sullivan, Henry David Thoreau, Jesmyn Ward, E.B. White, Virginia Woolf, and others.

ENG 121H: The Brontës (1 Credit)

Reading a selection of fiction and poetry by the four Brontë siblings, including their childhood compositions, as well as critical and biographical studies of the authors and their work, students consider the writings of Charlotte, Branwell, Emily and Anne in relation to their family dynamics.

ENG 121J: What is Poetry? Why is Poetry?

In this course, we will engage the “why?” and “what?” of poetry through introducing students to ways to close read an extensive variety of poems. Students will learn practices and literary terminology for poetic analysis. We will become knowledgeable of various poetic forms, traditions, and periods. We will read poems by John Clare, John Keats, D. H. Lawrence, Sylvia Plath, W.B. Yeats, Edna St.

ENG 132: Short Story and Novella

A study of the short story and novella as characteristic twentieth-century genres, with a brief introduction to works in the nineteenth century. The course focuses on both "classic" and contemporary texts by writers selected from among Anton Chekhov, Thomas Hardy, James Joyce, Jamaica Kincaid, Jhumpa Lahiri, D. H. Lawrence, David Leavitt, W. S. Maugham, Katherine Mansfield, Susan Minot, Shani Mootoo, Susan Sontag, Guy Vanderhaeghe, and Virginia Woolf.

ENG 152: The Sonnet

This course explores the formal constraints, thematic conventions, historical contexts, and aesthetic and philosophical adaptations and reimaginations of a single poetic form: the sonnet. Beginning with the Italian Renaissance, students follow the form’s movement to Tudor England; its transformation during the sonnet "vogue" of the 1590s; its recuperation by the Romantics; its cooptation during the Harlem Renaissance; its tactical exploitation in feminist and queer poetry; and, its radical, digital, avant-garde, and political remediations by contemporary poets.

ENG 143: Voice in Tragedy

"Why does tragedy exist?" asks Anne Carson. The answer: "Because you are full of rage. And why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief." This course explores how dramatic tragedy expresses such rage and such grief through the medium of the embodied, dramatic voice. By probing the voice’s place in tragedy, emotion, and politics, students seek to better understand tragedy as a genre.

ENG 131: Inventing Originality

immigration law, from the 1882 passage of the first Chinese Exclusion Act through the so-called "Muslim Ban" of 2017. Students examine how writings by and about diverse American immigrants’ experiences of assimilation and alienation variously reflect and respond to this history. Originality, varyingly described and likely socially constructed, is linked to creativity and defined as the first appearance of an idea. It is a term relevant to the arts, science, and cultural history and augmented by concepts both tied and in opposition to it: individuality, authority, imitation, genius, creativity, and plagiarism. “Inventing Originality” focuses on romanticism as the historical beginning of the concept. It examines originality expressed by imitation in classical and early modern texts, queries Baudrillard’s simulacrum appearing in twenty-first century experiments in poetry and fiction, Dadaist poetry, and postmodernist efforts to randomize thought, and presents the impact of British imperialism, American immigration policy, and university gender preferences on the scientific discoveries of Ramanujan, Charles Steinmetz, and Rosalind Franklin.

ENG 152: Black Performance

Muhammad Ali in New York. James Baldwin in Paris. Josephine Baker in Berlin. This course explores how iconic Black American athletes, writers, and performers shaped cultures, challenged norms, and inspired audiences at home and abroad. Students will study letters, diaries, speeches, performances, and films-from the 20th century to the present-to see how these figures used their talents and public presence to drive diasporic social change. Through hands-on exercises, projects, and small-group discussions, students will examine how these trailblazers engaged societies and pushed boundaries, and in doing so, will develop their own skills in communication, critical thinking, and leadership.

Advanced Courses: 200-Level

Courses at the 200 level require more in-depth analysis and often have prerequisites.

ENG 201: American Literature to 1900

A critical study of American literary history from the early national period through the Gilded Age. Students examine a wide range of texts in relation to key historical phenomena and events. These historical concerns provide a context for understanding the work of literature in constructions of the nation and of American identity. Special emphasis is placed on writing by African American and Native American authors working within and against dominant literary traditions.

ENG 202: American Literature After 1900

A study of ten to twelve American texts selected from the works of such writers as Dickinson, Twain, Gilman, Chesnutt, James, Adams, Dreiser, Hughes, Frost, Stein, Hemingway, Larsen, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Pound, Eliot, Crane, Cullen, Wright, Stevens, Williams, Baldwin, Plath, Albee, Brooks, Walker, Ellison, Pynchon, and Morrison.

ENG 205: Old English Literature

This course explores selections from texts (poetry and prose) recorded before the fifteenth century. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course.

ENG 207: Chaucer

Reading and interpretation of Chaucer’s major works, including The Canterbury Tales. Students interrogate the many ways Chaucer’s texts challenge assumptions of fixity, including definitions of gender, class, territory, and time.

ENG 208: Disability in 19th-Century British Novels

In what critic Martha Stoddard Holmes terms "fictions of affliction," nineteenth-century novelists construct stories of disability that dramatize the medical and social treatment of those deemed "impaired," and that consider a range of alleged limitations in relation to social and cultural norms, often to a critical end.

ENG 213: Shakespeare

A study of the major plays, frequently taught under different themes, with some emphasis on the biography of Shakespeare and the Elizabethan milieu. ENG 213 is offered in the fall. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course.

ENG 214: Race in the Renaissance

This course examines the historical, ideological, and discursive construction of race in early modern England. Through the lens of Shakespearean drama, we will also trace, interrogate, and consider the ways that our contemporary world has inherited and perpetuated such constructions. At stake in examining this relationship between our moment and Shakespeare’s moment, then, is the possibility that understanding the early formations of violent, racist ideologies and systems of thought (including anti-Blackness, antisemitism, white supremacy, and settler-colonialism), as well as ruptures in and resistances to such logics, may help us do the work of dismantling them in our own time and furthering the cause of anti-racist scholarship, pedagogy, and being.

ENG 217: English Literature to 1700

A survey of major literature - poetry, drama, and prose - written before 1700.

ENG 221: Caribbean Literature

This course examines the literatures of the African diaspora in the Caribbean and the Caribbean diaspora in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. Some texts are drawn from Anglophone authors such as Lamming, Anthony, Walcott, Brodber, Danticat, Lovelace, Brathwaite, NourBese (Philip), Hopkinson, and Dionne Brand; others, from Francophone and Hispanophone writers, including Guillen, Carpentier, Condé, Chamoiseau, Depestre, Ferré, Santos-Febres, and Morejón. The course places each work in its historical, political, and anthropological contexts, and introduces students to to a number of critical theories and methodologies with which to analyze the works, including poststructural, Marxist, Pan-African, postcolonial, and feminist.

ENG 241: Women Writers of the 1950s

Was the ’50s woman a radical? By brazenly exploring taboo identities of family, race, class, religion, sexuality and gender in their work, how did women writers of the post-war era reject and/or ironically embrace the confines of social conservatism to advance their art? This discussion-based course reads expansively from women writers around the country during the post-war period, examining both individualized and shared characteristics of their disparate voices. Did women writers of the 1950s create a foundation for social justice movements to come, such as Women’s Lib, #MeToo, #BlackLivesMatter? Can or should we consider them to be a school as codified as, say, the Beat Poets? Readings may include Brooks, Childress, Hansberry, Jackson, McCullers, O’Connor, Paley, Plath, Porter.

ENG 273: New York City Poems

What poet does New York City make? Why has New York City been "the" place for poets to be, live, and converge? This course explores poems and poets emerging from the experience of either being a native New Yorker or influenced or inspired by this metropolis. Students examine poets including those from the New York School, a group of poets of the 1950s and 1960s allied with and interested in visual art and artists, urban wit, and casual address including Frank O’Hara, Barbara Guest, and John Ashbery. Students also examine Langston Hughes, Audre Lorde, Eileen Myles, Hettie Jones, Allen Ginsberg, and Federico Garcia Lorca, the lauded Spanish poet who lived in New York City for nine months, among others.

ENG 274: Jane Austen

Students read Austen’s six major works, investigate their relation to nineteenth-century history and culture, and consider the Austen revival in film adaptations and fictional continuations of her novels. The course highlights the various and conflicting ways in which critics represent Austen, and the cultural needs her stories now seem to fulfill. Readings include Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion.

ENG 295: Queenship in Shakespeare

When Shakespeare began writing plays, England was ruled by a queen. Elizabeth I understood that her power was inextricable from her gender, and she developed intricate iconography and ideology to support her queenly rule-iconography and ideology which also made it into some of the greatest art of the age. This course considers the question of queenship in Shakespeare’s poetry and plays. Centralizing concerns of gender-including those of sovereign rule, race, queerness, desire, religion, agency, performativity, and intersectionality-students work to understand forms of "queenship" in playful as well as serious ways.

ENG 287: Literature and Cognitive Neuroscience

Freudian approaches to the mind, which influence literary ideas, have been supplanted by cognitive neuroscience. Can today’s neurobiology explain literary imagination, and would eighteenth-century aestheticians understand such explanation? This course inquires how philosophers and sc…

Interdisciplinary Connections

The English Department at Bates College also fosters interdisciplinary connections, with courses cross-listed with other departments such as Africana, American Cultural Studies, and Classical and Medieval Studies. These connections enrich the study of literature by providing diverse perspectives and methodologies.

Africana: Courses such as ENG 114 and ENG 115 are cross-listed with Africana, providing an interdisciplinary approach to understanding African American literature within the context of African diaspora studies.
American Cultural Studies: Courses explore how institutions, values, and practices shape and challenge relations of power, using texts, performance, and material culture to explore American culture.
Classical and Medieval Studies: Courses such as ENG 104 and ENG 121D are cross-listed with Classical and Medieval Studies, providing insights into the literature and culture of these periods.

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