College Bulletin 2022-2023 
    
    Apr 29, 2024  
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College Bulletin 2022-2023 [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

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Educational Studies
  

  • EDUC 053. Educating Emergent Bilinguals

    (Cross-listed as LING 053 )
    Emergent bilingual youth– those students who speak another language at home and are in the process of learning English at school– are one of the fastest growing and most underserved populations in U.S. schools today. This course examines their experiences through multiple lenses, exploring the impact of immigration policy on schools, linguistic discrimination and English-only ideologies, theories of bilingualism and language development, policies and practices for teaching multilingual students, and asset-based approaches to curriculum, instruction, and parent engagement. Students in the course complete weekly fieldwork in area classrooms serving emergent bilinguals and a small-group study of the neighborhood and school context. Required for students pursuing teacher certification and an essential first course for the ESL Program Specialist certificate.
    Prerequisite: EDUC 014  or permission of the instructor.
    Social sciences.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for LALS, ESCH, ASAM
    Fall 2022. Phuong.
    Fall 2023. Phuong.
    Fall 2024. Staff.
    Catalog chapter: Educational Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/educational-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • EDUC 054. How children talk to each other: Oral and written language

    (Cross-listed as LING 054 )
    We examine children’s dialogue and its rendering in children’s literature, focusing on the voices of minority children within an American setting. Each student will pick an age group to study. There will be regular fiction-writing assignments as well as primary research assignments with children. This course is for linguists, writers of children’s fiction, and anyone else interested in child development or reading skills. It is a course in which we learn through doing. This is a 1 credit, ungraded course.
    Social sciences.
    Writing course.
    1 credit.
    Spring 2024. Napoli.
    Catalog chapter: Educational Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/educational-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • EDUC 056. TESOL Methods: Theory in Practice

    This hands-on course in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) provides students with experience designing and delivering content, and theme-based instruction for emergent bilinguals. Through readings in applied linguistics and language pedagogy, collaborative group work, and weekly apprenticeship in an ESOL classroom, students explore current issues and approaches to ESOL curriculum development, pedagogy, and assessment while developing the skills they need to support emergent bilinguals in ESOL and content classrooms, K-12. Required for the ESL Program Specialist Certificate.
    Prerequisite: EDUC 053  
    Social sciences.
    1 credit.
    Spring 2023. Cross.
    Spring 2025. Staff.
    Catalog chapter: Educational Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/educational-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • EDUC 061. Gender and Education

    This course examines how gender relations shape everyday life in schools. The course begins with the history and theory of gender and education in the United States, and then explores popular discourse and key debates in the field, with a focus on the core themes of access and equity in urban schools; the intersections of race, class, and sexuality; and the implications of gender issues for school policy and classroom practice. The goal is a reconsideration of what constitutes effective schooling for all students 
    Prerequisite: EDUC 014  or permission of the instructor.
    Social sciences.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for GSST.
    Fall 2023. Staff.
    Catalog chapter: Educational Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/educational-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • EDUC 062. Sociology of Education

    (Cross-listed as SOCI 062B )
    This course will examine urban schools and classrooms in the United States from a sociological perspective. Students are introduced to the theory and method of the sociological study of education, and the core issues taken up in the field, such as social stratification and mobility, and educational equity and opportunity. Emphasis will be placed on the influence of local, state, and federal policies on the social organization of schools, relationships among social actors within these institutions, and patterns of inequality in what students learn. Variation among these issues will be primarily explored through race and ethnicity, citizenship status and native language, gender and sexual orientation, and disability/ability. The course will conclude with applying knowledge in the field to policy and practice at the PreK-12 and postsecondary level.
    Social sciences.
    Writing course.
    1 credit.
    Catalog chapter: Educational Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/educational-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • EDUC 064. Comparative Education

    This course examines key issues and themes in education as they play out in local and global contexts around the world. We use case studies to explore the roles of local, national, and international actors and organizations in the construction of educational policy and practice. Topics will include immigration and schooling, equity, curriculum goals and constructs, and education in areas of conflict.
    Prerequisite: EDUC 014  or permission of the instructor.
    Social sciences.
    Writing course.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for GLBL- Core
    Spring 2024. Staff.
    Catalog chapter: Educational Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/educational-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • EDUC 065. Educational Research for Social Changes: Qualitative Methods

    How can educational research change policy and practice? How can educational research be anti-racist, anti-colonialist, and useful in both theory and practice? Students learn the basics of qualitative research methodology as they participate in a research. Topics include developing a question, reviewing literature, collecting and analyzing data, and communicating findings for various audiences. This course is essential for students planning to write 1- or 2-credit theses in Educational Studies.
    Prerequisite: EDUC 014  and an intermediate level educational studies course.
    Social sciences.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ESCH.
    Spring 2023. Staff.
    Spring 2024. Staff.
    Spring 2025. Staff.
    Catalog chapter: Educational Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/educational-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • EDUC 066. College for All? Critical Issues in Higher Education

    In this course, students will examine institutions of higher education as spaces within which individuals and social structures are both reproduced and recreated. Questions to be explored include: How has the history of US postsecondary education shaped the present? What are the goals of the many different forms of postsecondary institutions? Who has access - and who controls that access? How do institutional structures and cultures impact student learning, student identity, and student experience? The course will focus explicitly on how institutions and student experiences are shaped by the intersections of race, class, gender, sexual orientation.
    Prerequisite: EDUC 014.
    Social sciences.
    1 credit.
    Catalog chapter: Educational Studies
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/educational-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • EDUC 067. Fight for #PhlEd: Urban Educational and Environmental Justice

    This course examines urbanism and environmental justice as seen through the lens of urban education politics. Course readings, discussions and related field experiences will focus on key issues and debates confronting urban education as it relates to urban development and environmental sustainability and justice. We will draw on theories and approaches from critical geography and critical theories of race and political economy to examine research, policy, pedagogy and social movements as vehicles for addressing the challenges that shape the conditions of teaching, learning and community development. We will focus on - and try to build alongside - the city of Philadelphia, its racially and ethnically diverse communities, and its public schools.
    Taught in Philadelphia as part of the Tri-Co Philly Program.
    Prerequisite: Admission to the Tri-Co Philly Program, or permission of instructor.
    Social sciences.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ASAM
    Catalog chapter: Educational Studies.
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/educational-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • EDUC 068. Urban Education

    (Cross-listed as SOAN 020B )
    Drawing on anthropology, sociology, history, urban studies, and cultural studies, this course challenges popular notions of “urban education” rooted in deficit thinking.  We consider “urban” as a lens for conducting a spatial analysis of inequalities, and “education” as an expansive concept that indexes the formal institution of schools, as well as informal youth culture.  We also consider education’s dual role in exacerbating inequalities, and its potential as sites of resistance, refusal, and liberation.  Course topics include: market-based school reform, pedagogies of resistance, youth culture and the semiotics of language and fashion, school to prison pipeline, and segregation and integration.  This course focuses on Philadelphia as a case study, and includes fieldwork, films, guest speakers, and field trips to enhance the learning process.
    Social sciences.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for BLST, LALS, ESCH, ASAM
    Fall 2022. Staff.
    Spring 2025. Staff.
    Catalog chapter: Educational Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/educational-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  
  

  • EDUC 070. Outreach Practicum

    This course is offered in conjunction with the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility. It is designed to support students involved in educational and community-based outreach in urban settings. Students’ volunteer experiences will provide text and case material for course work. Historical grounding in the construction of cities in general, and Chester, PA, in particular, will be provided. Criteria for effective practices will be identified for the range of volunteer roles in community service projects.
    0.5 or 1 credit.
    Eligible for ESCH.
    Catalog chapter: Educational Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/educational-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • EDUC 072. Humanitarianism: Educ & Conflict

    Cross-listed as PEAC 072.
    This course will introduce students to the theory and practice of humanitarianism and, specifically, the provision of education as a humanitarian intervention-what practitioners call “education in emergencies.” The course will delve into the foundations and history of humanitarianism and track how humanitarian intervention evolved over the course of the 20th century, broadening and deepening in scope. It will explore continuing debates over the appropriateness of education as a humanitarian intervention and examine what types of educational interventions are prioritized by humanitarian agencies, as well as the goals that those interventions are trying to achieve. For example, what is the relationship between education and conflict and how do education in emergencies providers intervene to alter that relationship? Students will have the opportunity to study specific examples of education in emergencies programming in countries such as Afghanistan, Colombia, Nepal, Sierra Leone, and Syria, and to hear from guest speakers working in the field of education in emergencies. The course will encourage students to apply what they have learned to policy-oriented exercises.
    Social sciences.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for PEAC.
    Catalog chapter: Educational Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/educational-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • EDUC 073. Creative Writing Outreach Course

    (Cross-listed as ENGL 070L )
    Where do arts, education and activism meet? In this course students will explore artistic affinities through creative writing activities and consider arts education and advocacy through diverse texts. Students will cultivate skills necessary to becoming Teaching Artists in imaginative writing at the elementary level through coursework as well as through volunteer placement in local schools. Topics covered include: creative curriculum development and presentation, educational climate for grades K-5 and teaching pedagogy. 
    Graded CR/NC.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ESCH.
    Catalog chapter: Educational Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/educational-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • EDUC 075. Introduction to Science Pedagogy: Theory and Practice

    (Cross-listed as PHYS 095)
    This course is designed for students who are interested in learning about issues surrounding science education, particularly at the high school and college level. How do students most effectively learn science? How can we facilitate this learning process as instructors and educators? How do we best assess whether such learning is happening? Since the course will integrate educational theory with concrete, practical strategies for becoming better teachers, it will be particularly relevant for students currently serving as Science Associates (or those who are interested in being Science Associates.) We will touch on issues related to students’ conceptual development and conceptual change, collaborative learning, as well as practical issues encountered when engaging in responsive, interactive teaching. This is a seminar course where students are responsible for weekly readings (1-2 papers per week from the education research literature), in class discussions, and brief written reflections. Students will be encouraged to bring to the discussion their own unique experiences as both science students and science teachers.
    Instructor approval required for enrollment.
    0.5 credit.
    Catalog chapter: Educational Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/educational-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • EDUC 076. Pre Student Teaching Practicum

    In this field-based practicum for students pursuing teacher certification, students will progress from observing, to working with individuals and small groups, to planning and teaching a full class lesson.  Students will be placed in a classroom for 4-5 hours/week at the same grade level and/or subject level at which they will student teach. Supervision will be provided.  Open to sophomores and juniors (and seniors pursuing the 9th semester) who plan to student teach.
    Graded CR/NC.
    0.5 - 1 credit.
    Catalog chapter: Educational Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/educational-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • EDUC 078SR. Schooling to Education: How Restorative Practices Can Transform Public Schools

    This course will examine the ways Restorative and Transformative Justice approaches are, or could be, applied within under-resourced American public schools. Students will engage with both philosophical and practical considerations around justice and punishment within the context of public education. Through a combination of theoretical readings, case studies, and field placement within a public school, students will deepen their understanding of how practices underlying Restorative and Transformative Justice could work within the context of public education.
    Social sciences.
    1 credit.
    Department website: www.swarthmore.edu/educational-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  
  
  

  • EDUC 092. Curriculum and Methods

    This seminar is taken concurrently with EDUC 093 by students pursuing teacher certification. The goal of this course is to explore praxis: the application of educational research and theory to the classroom practices of student teachers. Course content covers: lesson planning; classroom management; inquiry-oriented teaching strategies; questioning and discussion methods; literacy; the integration of technology and media; classroom-based and standardized assessments; instruction of special needs populations; multicultural, nonracist, and nonsexist education; and the legal rights of students and teachers. As part of the seminar, students take a series of special methods workshops, tailored to their content area. Required for students pursuing teacher certification
    Social sciences.
    2 credits.
    Fall 2022. Bradley.
    Fall 2023. Mayorga.
    Fall 2024. Staff.
    Catalog chapter: Educational Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/educational-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  
  
  
  
  

  • EDUC 104. Humanitarianism: Education in Emergencies

    Cross-listed as PEAC 104.
    This honors seminar will explore paradigms of humanitarian aid, particularly focusing on the subfield of “education in emergencies.” The semester will begin by considering Western forms of humanitarian aid in relation to other forms of aid, such as mutual aid and solidarity. Next, we will explore the relationship between education and armed conflict, including the role of outside education providers. We will discuss the ways in which global discourses and norms shape humanitarian aid to education. We will finish the semester by specifically looking at refugee education. Throughout the semester we will interrogate the extent to which humanitarian aid helps to improve people’s lives and to achieve social justice and equity. Case studies will include Afghanistan, Guatemala, Nepal, Palestine, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Kenya.
    Social Sciences.
    2 credits.
    Eligible for GLBL-paired, PEAC
    Spring 2023. Kapit.
    Catalog chapter: Educational Studies
    Department website: Peace & Conflict Studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • EDUC 126. Narratives of Disability & Intersectionality in School

    This class is rooted in narrative analysis and disability using lenses and practices developed within disability justice and disability studies in education. Unpacking notions like disability, ability, capacity, and debility, we will explore narratives and stories, both fiction and nonfiction, that can help us explore schools and educational spaces through critical disability theories. We will also engage in narrative and discourse analysis as research methods to examine such stories. In doing so, we will learn and practice multiple ways of knowing and being when considering ableism and education. 
    Prerequisite: EDUC 014   or EDUC 014F . Pedagogy and Power: Introduction to Education and an additional course in the 040-060s. Either EDUC 024  or EDUC 026   is highly recommended.
    Social Sciences.
    1 or 2 credits.
    Fall 2024. Phuong.
    Catalog chapter: Educational Studies  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/educational-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENVS 023. Politics of Population

    (Cross-listed as POLS 048 )
    The role of population and demographic trends in local, national, and global politics will be examined. Topics include the relationship between population and development, causes of fertility decline, the impact and ethics of global and national family planning programs, and contemporary issues such as population aging and the AIDS pandemic.
    Social Sciences.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ENVS, ESCH, GLBL-Core
    Spring 2023. White.
    Catalog chapter: Environmental Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/environmental-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.

Educational Studies - Seminars
  

  • EDUC 121. Motivation and Learning

    This seminar focuses on general developmental principles specific to understanding motivation and its relation to learning. Seminar foci include: (1) use of the literatures in cognitive, developmental, educational, and social psychology, the learning sciences, neuroscience to identify key indicators of motivation and learning; (2) preparation of a literature review on a topic of the student’s choice related to motivation and learning; and (3) collaborative work on an evaluation research project addressing a “live” issue or problem identified by a stakeholder (e.g., teacher, school, or community organization). 
    Honors candidates must take the seminar for two credits, course students may opt to take it as a 2- or a 1- credit seminar.
    Prerequisite: EDUC 021  Educational Psychology, or permission of the instructor.
    Social sciences.
    Writing course.
    2 credits.
    Spring 2024. Renninger.
    Catalog chapter: Educational Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/educational-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • EDUC 131. Social and Cultural Perspectives on Education

    In this seminar, students examine schools as institutions that both reflect and challenge existing social and cultural patterns of thought, behavior, and knowledge production. Seminar participants study and use qualitative methods of research and examine topics including the aims of schooling, parent/school/community interaction, schooling and identity development, and classroom and school restructuring.
    Prerequisite: EDUC 014  and an additional course in the 060s.
    Social sciences.
    Writing course.
    2 credits.
    Eligible for ESCH.
    Catalog chapter: Educational Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/educational-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • EDUC 133. Race, Boyhood, and Education

    (Cross-listed as BLST 133 )
    This seminar examines the lives of Black boys in U.S. schools and classrooms. Black boyhood and Black masculinity are utilized as frameworks to interpret how aspects of school life influence their learning and identities, such as teacher expectations, school discipline policy, and special education referral processes. Rooted in boys’ agency and resistance, its goal is to inform a (re)imagining of educational spaces in ways that cultivate the promise of Black boys, and other boys (and girls) of color.
    Social sciences.
    2 credits.
    Eligible for BLST, GSST.
    Spring 2025. Nelson.
    Catalog chapter: Educational Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/educational-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • EDUC 151. Read, Make, and Mend the World: Anti-racism through books, materials, and literacy practices

    While delving deeply into literacies and curriculum theories, and recent research, such as that which recognizes that prior knowledge is more predictive of reading success than other factors (Korbey, 2020), we will build a humanistic, book-centered, anti-racist, interdisciplinary elementary curriculum. We will use the many beautiful, diverse, celebratory, children’s books published in the last decade about Black Americans who work with their hands and minds – quilters, painters, reclamation artists, puppet-makers, basketmakers. We will create an engaged set of experiences for teachers and children that celebrate and honor the accomplishments of Black and other underrepresented Americans, to work for an anti-oppressive state of literacy curricula that honors people’s spoken and visual languages, and choose books intentionally to develops spirit-serving, uplifting, empathetic, honoring, engaging, and critical spaces for young readers. We will focus on creating mirrors, windows, and doors for children’s expanding identities through literature, diverse role models, community exploration and celebration, artifact finding and making, and honoring the essential, hope-engendering, and artful work that people do in their everyday lives. In doing so we will use Gholdy Muhammad’s Historically Responsive Literacy (HRL) model.
    Prerequisite: EDUC 014  and an additional course in the 040-060s. Either EDUC 042  or EDUC 045  is highly recommended.
    Social sciences.
    Writing course.
    2 credits.
    Eligible for ESCH.
    Spring 2023. Anderson.
    Catalog chapter: Educational Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/educational-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • EDUC 152. Researching Immigration and Education

    In this collaborative research seminar, students will study intersections between immigration and education policy and practice in the United States, with a focus on methodology. By exploring key topics, theoretical frameworks, and research methodologies that have shaped this field, students will develop an understanding of how immigration policies impact the everyday experiences and future prospects of immigrant youth at different ages and educational stages in the United States, from childhood through higher ed. All students in the seminar will join an ongoing research project related to immigration and education, thereby learning key skills in qualitative and mixed-method data collection, analysis, and communication, including special considerations in conducting research with immigrant youth and families in the U.S. and transnationally.
    Prerequisite: EDUC 014   or EDUC 014F  Pedagogy and Power: Introduction to Education.

    Recommended: One or more courses related to immigration (e.g. EDUC 053  or other courses) as well as an introductory research methods course in the social sciences (e.g. EDUC 065 ). Students without this background should reach out to the professor ahead of enrolling.
    Social Sciences.
    1 or 2 credits.
    Eligible for GLBL-paired, LALS.
    Fall 2023. Allard.


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • EDUC 153. Latinos and Education

    Amidst talk of a border wall and “bad hombres”, ramped up deportations, and rising unease about immigration and educational policy shifts to come, what can schools and teachers do to support Latino students and families? This Honors research seminar will explore the schooling experiences of Latinos in the U.S. with a special focus on confronting the challenges undocumented students face in the current era. Participants will examine questions around educational quality and access, language and culture, immigration and demographic change, curriculum and pedagogy, and community activism in relation to Latino education.
    Prerequisite: EDUC 014  and one additional course in Educational Studies or Latin American and Latino Studies.
    Social sciences.
    1 or 2 credits.
    Eligible for LALS
    Catalog chapter: Educational Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/educational-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • EDUC 161. Politics, Policy and Education

    Policy, Politics & Education is an honors seminar that explores the intersections of social policy, urban politics, and urban schooling. Drawing on a racial-economic analytic framework we will study the geo-political formation of U.S. cities (Philadelphia serves as our primary case study), policy and social movement. We will also look at urban education policy and pedagogical practices. With this literature as a foundation, students will receive training in the theories and methods of critical, participatory action research (CPAR). Over the course of the semester students work in small groups with a Philadelphia school or an education-focused based organization (CBO). In consultation with their partnering organization, student groups will develop and implement a CPAR project.
    Honors candidates and students using this seminar as the capstone must take the seminar for two credits, course students may opt to take it as a 2- or a 1- credit seminar.
    Prerequisite: EDUC 014 .
    Recommended: EDUC 068  and EDUC 041  
    2 credits.
    Eligible for ASAM
    Spring 2024. Mayorga.
    Catalog chapter: Educational Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/educational-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • EDUC 166. College for All? Challenges in Higher Education.

    In this seminar, students will examine institutions of higher education as spaces within which individuals and social structures are both reproduced and recreated.  Questions to be explored include: How has the history of US postsecondary education shaped the present? What are the goals of the many different forms of postsecondary institutions?  Who has access - and who controls that access?  How do institutional structures and cultures impact student learning, student identity, and student experience? The seminar will focus explicitly on how institutions and student experiences are shaped by the intersections of race, class, gender, sexual orientation.

    Prerequisite: EDUC 014 Pedagogy and Power: Introduction to Education
    Prerequisite: EDUC 014
    Social science.
    Writing course.
    2 credits.
    Fall 2022. Smulyan.
    Catalog chapter: Educational Studies
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/educational-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • EDUC 167. Education, Race, and the Law

    This course explores the struggle for racial equality in education through examining federal and state lawsuits. We will look at changing ideologies about race and inequality, moving from the notion of “separate but equal” in Plessy v. Ferguson, to “separate as inherently unequal” in Brown v. Board of Education, to today’s school funding lawsuits which strategically sidestep the use of race as a legal argument. Students will develop theoretical frameworks, drawn from the fields of legal anthropology and critical race theory. Since this is a community-based learning (ESCH) course, fieldwork and research is a major component of the course. In addition to readings, assignments, and class time, students will conduct interviews with lawyers and judges from past school funding lawsuits. Students will also partner with local groups that are active in the campaign for school funding to learn about and contribute to advancing racial equality in education.
    Prerequisite: EDUC 014 and one other educational studies course.
    Social sciences.
    2 credits.
    Eligible for ESCH, BLST.
    Catalog chapter: Educational Studies.
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/educational-studies.


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • EDUC 180. Honors Thesis

    A 2-credit thesis is required for students completing special honors majors including educational studies. The thesis may be counted for 2 credits in educational studies or for 1 credit in educational studies and 1 credit in the other discipline in the student’s Honors Program.
    Writing course.
    2 credits.
    Spring 2023. Staff.
    Fall 2023. Staff.
    Spring 2024. Staff.
    Fall 2024. Staff.
    Spring 2025. Staff.
    Catalog chapter: Educational Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/educational-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.

English Literature - Academic Writing Courses
  

  • ENGL 001C. Writing Pedagogy

    (Cross-listed as EDUC 001C )
    This seminar serves as the gateway into the Writing Associates Fellowship Program (WAs). Students are introduced to the theory and pedagogy of composition studies and the concept of reflective practice. The seminar asks students to connect theory with practical experience when assessing how best to engage with different student writers and different forms of academic prose.  

     
    Open only to those selected as Writing Associates. Meets distribution requirements but does not count toward the major. 
    Graded CR/NC.

     
    Humanities.
    Writing course.
    1 credit.
    Fall 2022. Mera Ford
    Fall 2023. Newmann Holmes
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  
  

  • ENGL 001F. First-Year Seminar: Transitions to College Writing

    This class introduces students to the different genres of writing required at the College. Through assignments and class readings students learn what they might need to transition from writing in high school to writing at Swarthmore.  Meets distribution requirements but does not count toward the major. Students may take ENGL 001F and an English Literature first-year seminar (ENGL 008 A-Z and 009A-Z).
    Humanities.
    Writing course.
    1 credit.
    Fall 2022. Bragg, Mishra
    Spring 2023. Bragg
    Fall 2023. Mishra, Staff
    Spring 2024. Mishra
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 001J. First-Year Seminar: Persuasion

    This course will ask students to explore the tools of oral and written persuasion across different academic and public discourse communities. Students will engage with such questions as: How do we listen and empathize with a diverse range of views in order to argue from one’s own position? How does the motivation “to persuade” shape a rhetorical situation? How has persuasion in rhetoric evolved from its historic to modern contexts? How do we use a range of resources, such as rhetorical traditions, genre knowledge, and multimodality, to speak to different audiences?
    Students will be able to critically examine how persuasion works in their own communications and the communications of others in real contexts.

    *The course might have a specific theme. Please check with the instructor for details.

    Humanities.
    Writing Course.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ENVS.
    Spring 2023. Mishra
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 002M. Medical Writing and Rhetoric

    This course introduces students to the field of medical humanities and to typical genres of writing within medicine. By analyzing texts and narratives by physicians and other health practitioners, we will identify and assess rhetorical strategies used to communicate with specialist and non-specialist audiences. By composing their own patient or witness narratives, students will further develop effective rhetorical techniques to engage both a scholarly and civic audience. We will also explore representations of medical (mal)practice from popular culture to interrogate dominant myths–perpetuated through visual, digital, and written media–that inform the social and rhetorical contexts of medical discourse.
    Humanities.
    Writing.
    1 credit.
    Spring 2024. Mera Ford
    Catalog chapter: English Literature
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 002V. Visual Rhetorics and Multimodal Writing:Making arguments with image, text, and sound

    We live in visually-mediated times. The rhetorical power of images-to inform, persuade, and manipulate-is especially worthy of our attention as 21st-century writers. Increasingly, whether in the sciences, humanities, or in popular discourse, we are asked to create multimodal texts-that is, texts which combine visual, aural and alphabetic modes. In English 2V students will gain hands-on experience producing maps, video essays, and argument-driven essays for online audiences and analyzing multimodal arguments made by others. Students will revise projects in response to feedback from classmates, the professor, and other readers/audience members, and class time will be given to developing both traditional and multimodal writing processes.
    Humanities.
    Writing Course.
    1 credit.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 002W. Words Matter: Crafting and Critiquing Rhetorically Effective Styles

    What does it mean to write an awkward or a clear sentence? Who determines what counts as appropriate or “good” writing, and how are such notions of standardized English currently being challenged? Can a scholarly voice be an authentic personal voice, too? In this course, we will examine the grammatical building blocks of written style while scrutinizing larger cultural concerns about the effectiveness of distinct styles. While recognizing famous tenets of style in creative writing, we will primarily focus on stylistic features of academic, civic, and professional discourse. We will learn grammatical terminology and apply it in analyzing and evaluating the stylistic impact of a variety of passages while at the same time exploring the rhetorical contexts and sociopolitical implications of so-called norms for writing in English. Throughout, we will seek to equip you to make rhetorically savvy stylistic choices in your own writing for distinct purposes and audiences.
    Humanities.
    Writing Course.
    1 credit.
    Spring 2023. Mera Ford
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  
  

  • ENGL 005. Journalism Workshop

    An introduction to news gathering, news writing, and journalism ethics. Students learn the values, skills, and standards crucial to high-quality journalism. They write conventional news stories, narratives, profiles, non-deadline features, trend stories, and point-of-view articles on a beat of their choosing. Guest speakers include award-winning reporters and editors. This course counts as a general humanities credit and as a writing course, but does not count as a credit toward a major or minor in English literature. This course is open to first year students.
    Humanities.
    Writing course.
    1 credit.
    Fall 2023. Jones.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.

English Literature - First-Year Seminars and Writing Courses
  

  • ENGL 009A. First-Year Seminar: Literature and Law

    In this course we will explore the forms law and literature take as they work through similar concerns, determining how social systems should function and puzzling over the moments when they don’t. When does fiction appropriate the law’s penchant for articulating rights and defining relationships? And when does the legal imagination draw from literature? We will read works of tragedy, detection, confession and evasion as we sort through these questions, supplementing our conversation with critical legal theory, trauma studies, and case law.
    Humanities.
    Writing course.
    1 credit.
    Spring 2023. Patnaik.
    Fall 2023. Patnaik.
    Fall 2024. Patnaik.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 009C. First-Year Seminar: Why College? The Past and Future of Liberal Arts

    Cross-listed as EDUC 009C  
    Look past the brochures and the info sessions and ask: what is college in the early 21st Century, how did it get that way? Why do people go to college? Should they? Students in this course will examine the history of higher education, and study controversies over the economics, mission, and values of colleges and universities as they appear in curricula, admissions and financial aid policies, student life, and more. Students will develop an understanding of the behind-the-scenes operations of higher education institutions like Swarthmore through reading, seminar discussion, visits from experts, and independent research.
    Humanities
    Writing course.
    1 credit.
    Spring 2023. Hines.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 009D. First-Year Seminar: Nation and Migration

    Drawing on novels, short stories and film produced by immigrant writers from South Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean, this course explores the ways in which identity and community is shaped in the modern world. How does the migrant/diasporic writer rewrite the English language to reflect questions of race and power, nationhood and citizenship, and histories of the past and present? Authors include Salman Rushdie, Edwidge Danticat, Chimamanda Adichie, and Mohsin Hamid.
    Humanities.
    Writing course.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ASAM.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 009E. First-Year Seminar: Narcissus and the History of Reflection

    Narcissism seems at once reprehensible and an unavoidable part of personhood. This course investigates how, over the course of many centuries, the story of Narcissus has been reworked as a way to think about process of creative reflection and how we see ourselves in relation to others. At stake are questions of desire, gender, racial identities, and language. Authors include Ovid, Milton, Wilde, Freud, and Fanon; also visual art and film.
    Humanities.
    Writing course.
    1 credit.
    Spring 2024. Song.
    Fall 2024. Song.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 009F. First Year Seminar: Introduction to Latinx Literature and Culture

    (Cross-listed as SPAN 015 , LITR 015S , LALS 015 )
    This course is an introduction to the writings of Latino/as in the U.S. with emphasis on the distinctions and similarities that have shaped the experiences and the cultural imagination among different Latino/a communities. We will focus particularly in works produced by the three major groups of U.S. Latino/as (Mexican Americans or Chicanos, Puerto Ricans or Nuyoricans, and Cuban Americans). By analyzing works from a range of genres including poetry, fiction, film, and performance, along with literary and cultural theory, the course will explore some of the major themes in the cultural production of these groups. Topics to be discussed include identity formation in terms of language, race, gender, sexuality, and class; diaspora and emigration; the marketing of the Latino/a identity; and activism through art. 
    Taught in English.
    Humanities.
    Writing Course.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for LALS
    Fall 2022. Diaz.
    Fall 2023. Diaz.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 009G. First-Year Seminar: Comedy

    This course covers a range of comic dramas and comic performances. It will introduce key theories about comedy as a genre and comic performance as a cultural practice. We will also work intensively on expository writing and revision. Likely texts include films, plays by Plautus, Shakespeare, Behn, Wilde, and Churchill; and materials on minstrelsy, genre theory, gender, and performance studies.
    Humanities.
    Writing course.
    1 credit.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 009H. First-Year Seminar: Portraits of the Artist

    We will study works portraying artists in a variety of media, seeking a critical understanding of the ways in which artists in different times and places have interacted with their societies. We’ll also seek to answer broader questions:

    • What is cultural studies?
    • How can we ask better questions about how a particular story-world creates meaning?
    • In what ways are artists part of their place & time, yet also able to imagine worlds that may resonate with audiences in very different eras?
    • How does literature inspire critical thinking and imagining a different future?

    Here are some of the materials for the Fall 2022 syllabus:

    • “How 17 Outsize Portraits Rattled a Small Southern Town/ Newnan, Ga., decided to use art to help the community celebrate diversity and embrace change. Not everyone was ready for what they saw.”/ Artist featured: Mary Beth Meehan NYTimes, Jan. 20, 2020.
    • Lin-Manuel Miranda, the music & lyrics for “Breathe” from In the Heights (2008); ”My Shot” from Hamilton (2015); and “Surface Pressure” from Encanto (2021).
    • Hope Boykin, choreographer: ”It’s OK too. Feel” (dance during 2020 quarantine).
    • Ghost in the Shell (film, 1995) based on the manga of the same name by Masamune Shirow; screenplay by Kazunori Itō; directed by Mamoru Oshii. 
    • A short story/portrait of the artist as a young woman by Sandra Cisneros, from Woman Hollering Creek (1991).
    • Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass (first novel in the His Dark Materials trilogy, 1995, also made into an HBO series).
    • Janelle Monáe, Dirty Computer 2019 “emotion picture”/music video.
    • Poems by Audre Lorde, Ada Limón, and Franny Choi.
    • A brilliant short parable by Jorge Luis Borges.

    Also to be assigned will be selected background and critical materials. All of the assigned and optional readings/viewing will be available on the course’s Moodle website, with the exception of Pullman’s novel The Golden Compass (available from the Bookstore).

     
    Humanities.
    Writing course.
    1 credit.
    Fall 2022. Schmidt.
    Fall 2024. Schmidt.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 009J. First-Year Seminar: Revolution and Revolt

    What makes a revolution? This course investigates the literature of rebellion from the late 18th century’s “Age of Revolution” to the George Floyd rebellions. We will read the works of not only famous revolutionary leaders, but also infamous and obscure ones, including radical abolitionists, communists, anarchists, feminists, student activists, and more, asking how their writing interprets the memory of previous revolutions and imagines possibilities beyond them.
    Humanities.
    Writing course.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for PEAC, ESCH
    Spring 2024. Cohen.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 009L. First-Year Seminar: Imagining Natural History

    Cross-listed as ENVS 045C  
    “Natural history” is full of complicated stories of human beings in a larger-than-human world. This course invites students to build a creative community with one another and with the Crum Woods as they explore some of the various ways human beings have thought about and responded to “Nature.” Some class periods and much homework will take place in the Crum. Readings include contemporary poetry and natural history; student writing ranges from academic prose through creative nonfiction to poetry and digital storytelling. (Poets include Oliver, Mullen, Hillman, Heaney, Rich and others; essayists include Dillard, Pollan, Quammen, Sheldrake, Young.)
    Humanities.
    Writing course.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ENVS.
    Fall 2023. Bolton.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 009O. First-Year Seminar: American Archipelagos

    This course will untether the term “America” from its all-too-easy connotation with the continental United States and set it adrift among the island formations comprising the western hemisphere and beyond. By accounting for the ocean as a crucial shaping force of human culture and survival, much in the same way that land has been understood, we will craft an archipelagic approach to our study of the Americas and, indeed, the globe.  We will examine how colonial discourses and expansionist policies have attempted to construct islands as spaces to be governed, instrumentalized, and appropriated while at the same time immersing ourselves in literature and other forms of cultural production that imagine islands as portals towards more liberatory ways of belonging in this globe. By thinking with a variety of American Archipelagoes, students will come out of this course with a more nuanced grasp of the multi-racial, multi-lingual, and trans-imperial American oceanscape, as well as how the United States has drawn from it to take on its various, shifting forms. The course will commence with an in-depth study of Shakespeare’s The Tempest and end with an exploration of contemporary literature by authors that may include Raquel Salas Rivera, Haunani-Kay Trask, Craig Santos Perez, and Tiphanie Yanique.  
    Humanities.
    Writing course.
    1 credit.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 009P. First-Year Seminar: Refuge: Resettled in Philadelphia

    Cross-listed as ARAB 009P  
    The number of individuals displaced by persecution, war, or climate, who then seek refuge in another place, continues to grow. This course will explore the theme of refuge broadly-to cover various political, institutional, and cultural understandings of the term-but will specifically focus on the experiences of Philadelphia’s Arabic-speaking community that has navigated the resettlement process. Students will analyze literature, artworks, films, and nonfiction texts that address the theme of refuge. We will explore broad topics such as: language, culture, and religion; race and ethnicity; war and militarism. Students will have the opportunity to collaborate directly with Philadelphia’s Arabic-speaking community through a series of artist-led workshops that will explore the idea of a “sticky family” that is formed beyond national and linguistic boundaries. These workshops will result in a professionally-illustrated comic book. This course is conducted in English.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ESCH. PEAC. GLBL-paired.
    Fall 2023. Price, Smith.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 009R. First-Year Seminar: Grendel’s Workshop

    This course will be a study of several traditional literary texts and of modern reshapings of these old stories into new artistic forms. Pairings of old and new will include various versions of Cinderella/Ashputtle, Little Red Riding Hood, Beowulf and Gardner’s Grendel, and Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. There will be both critical and creative writing assignments in the class.

    John Gardner rewrote the ancient epic Beowulf in modern idiom from the monster’s viewpoint. Tom Stoppard showed us what Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were up to offstage in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Angela Carter’s Red Riding Hood was fascinated by the company of wolves. Students will study old texts and their modern revisions and then write both critical papers about the them and also, using the re-telling models as starting points, reshape their own beautiful or beastly visions in creative writing forms. Here are some retelling slants: What is the story of the rat in Cinderella who is turned into a coachman?  What is Ophelia dreaming in Hamlet as she slides into the netherworld of drowning and death?  What is the mute lullaby which Grendel’s mother uses to sing him (or herself) to sleep in her underwater cave each night?  What might the wolf in LRRH and Grendel have to say to one another over cappuccino in Kohlberg?
    This First-year Seminar counts as both a Writing Class (W) and an English Dept. Creative Writing workshop.
    Humanities
    Writing course.
    Fall 2022. Williamson.
    Fall 2023. Williamson.
    Fall 2024. Williamson.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 009S. First-Year Seminar: Black Liberty/Black Literature

    How have African American writers told stories of freedom, and how have they tried to tell them freely? How has the question of freedom shaped the development of, and debates over, an African American literary tradition? Drawing upon fiction, poetry, personal narratives, and critical essays, we will examine freedom as an ongoing problem of form, content, and context in black literature from antebellum slavery to the Harlem Renaissance.
    Humanities.
    Writing course.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for BLST
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 009Y. First-Year Seminar: Metropolitan Forms and Fictions

    Urban life is a definitive feature of modernity. As people moved into increasingly massive cities, basic ways of life changed: how people earned a living, what kinds of communities they formed, the gendered and sexual identities that became possible and legible, the spaces people inhabited and how they moved through them. Urban life, in turn, shaped literary expression. This course will examine modern and contemporary works about metropolitan experience, by writers such as Virginia Woolf, Nella Larsen, Mohsin Hamid, and N. K. Jemisin. Key topics include flânerie, anonymity, migrations, chance and repetition, and visibility and (dis)connection. As a first-year seminar, we will dedicate considerable attention to forming analytical arguments, practicing revision, and entering into scholarly conversations. 
    Humanities.
    Writing course.
    1 credit.
    Fall 2022. Bryant.
    Spring 2023. Bryant.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 009Z. First-Year Seminar: Close Reading and Its Discontents

    What is close reading? How do we do it? What is its (unexpectedly complex) history? And what might it mean for us to reject it? We will study close readings of all kinds of text (from John Donne poems and Jane Austen novels to car advertisements and Tweets), practice traditional and experimental forms of close and distant reading, and write in several genres.
    Humanities.
    Writing course.
    1 credit.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 011. Comedy

    The course covers a range of comic dramas and comic performances. It will introduce key theories about comedy as a genre and comic performance as a cultural practice. We will also work intensively on expository writing and revision. Likely texts include plays by Plautus, Shakespeare, Wilde, and Churchill, Hollywood romantic comedies, television comedy, and materials on minstrelsy, genre theory and performance studies.
    A version of this course has been offered in the past as a First-Year Seminar, English 009G, but this new version is open to any student, without any prerequisite.  If you have taken English 009G, you are not able to enroll in English 011.
    GATEWAY English Literature.
    Humanities.
    Writing course.
    1 credit.
    Spring 2023. Johnson.
    Spring 2024. Johnson.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.

English Literature - Medieval and Renaissance
  

  • ENGL 010. Monsters, Marvels, and Mysteries: Beowulf to Paradise Lost

    The first thousand years of English Literature with an emphasis on monsters like Grendel and Satan, marvels like a talking tree and a boy actor playing a woman pretending to be a man, and mysteries like the moth that devours words and a green knight who offers a hero the chance to chop off his head. Some modern retellings such as Gardner’s Grendel and Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead will be included. Major authors include Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton.
    Med/Ren
    GATEWAY English Literature.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for MDST
    Fall 2022. Williamson.
    Fall 2023. Williamson.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 014. Old English/History of the Language

    (Cross-listed as LING 014 )
    A study of the origins and development of English-sound, syntax, and meaning-with an initial emphasis on learning Old English. Topics may include writing and speech, changing phonology and morphology, wordplay in Chaucer and Shakespeare, pidgins and creoles, and global English.
    Med/Ren.
    GATEWAY English Literature.
    Prerequisite: This course may be taken without the usual Prerequisite course in English; however, it may not serve in the place of a Prerequisite for other advanced courses.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for MDST
    Spring 2023. Williamson.
    Spring 2024. Williamson.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 016. Chaucer

    Readings in Middle English of most of Chaucer’s poetry with emphasis on The Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde. The course attempts to place the poetry in a variety of critical and cultural contexts which help to illuminate Chaucer’s art. Medieval cultural readings include Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, and Andreas Capellanus’ The Art of Courtly Love.
    Med/Ren
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for MDST
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 020. Shakespeare

    Topics in this survey of Shakespeare’s plays, include kingship, comedy and tragedy, family, sexuality, race, performance, language, and the rewriting of history. We will frequently return to the question of theater’s place in early modern England, while also examining the place Shakespeare holds in the cultures we inhabit. The list of plays may include Taming of the Shrew, Henry V, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure, Hamlet, Othello, Lear, and The Tempest.
    Med/Ren
    GATEWAY English Literature.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Fall 2022. Johnson.
    Fall 2023. Johnson.
    Fall 2024. Johnson.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 021. Shakespeare and Race

    This course pursues a particular line of thinking about race and Shakespearean drama. In previous decades, scholarship emphasized how modern categories of race had not yet taken root in Shakespearean England. More recently, scholars have discerned the relevance of race and racism in Shakespeare’s plays. This course considers how the meaning of blackness and anti-black racism on stage develops alongside the shifting relationship between religious belief and dramatic entertainment. Titus Andronicus, The Merchant of Venice, and Othello will be our main primary texts; supplemental readings from The Tempest and the Sonnets possible as time permits. Attention to criticism and performance & film history.
    Med/Ren.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 022. Literature of the English Renaissance

    This course will begin with More’s Utopia and end with selections from Paradise Lost, paying particular attention to literature’s political contexts, gender, genre, and the relation of women’s writing to the male canon. Among the other writers included will be Wyatt, Surrey, Philip Sidney, Mary Herbert, Mary Wroth, Spenser, Elizabeth Cary, Jonson, Bacon, Donne, Herrick, George Herbert, and Marvell.
    Med/Ren.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 023. Renaissance Sexualities

    The study of sexuality allows us to pose some of the richest historical questions we can ask about subjectivity, the natural, the public, and the private. This course will explore such questions in early modern England, examining several sexual categories (the homoerotic, chastity and friendship, marriage, adultery, and incest) in a range of literary and secondary texts.
    Med/Ren
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for GSST
    Fall 2022. Johnson.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 024. The Revolutionary Seventeenth Century

    This course traces how English writers anticipated, participated in, and made sense of the civil wars that led to the execution of Charles I (1649) and a failed attempt at non-monarchical government (1649-1660). Authors include William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, John Milton, and Aphra Behn, as well as less familiar but important writers of both imaginative texts and polemics. 
    Med/Ren.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Fall 2022. Song.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 025. Christopher Marlowe: Works, Life, and Afterlives

    Marlowe’s writing career was brief (cut short by his murder at the age of twenty nine) but made a lasting impression on English poetry and drama. This course offers a comprehensive overview of Marlowe’s literary output and samples some contemporaneous writings influenced by his work. This semester-long study will be enhanced by attention to Marlowe’s mysterious biography, which has generated questions about his religious belief (or putative atheism), political allegiances (and activity as a spy), and sexuality.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 026. Allegory and Allegoresis in the English Renaissance

    Allegory designates a mode of writing and of interpreting narratives. The decline of allegory marks a shift from medieval to modern culture, eventually giving way to realism. Yet allegory has never left us, as we continue to read allegorically to some degree. This course turns to the English Renaissance as a literary turning point. Readings from The Faerie Queene, Paradise Lost, and Pilgrim’s Progress; theoretical work by Walter Benjamin, Paul de Man, and others.
    Med/Ren
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 027. Queen Elizabeth: Power, Gender, and Art

    The memory of Elizabeth I still looms large on both sides of the Atlantic. We continue to generate and circulate depictions of the Queen who remained unmarried, ruled England during a decisive and turbulent time of national development, and died heirless. In this course, we revisit sixteenth-century England to examine the interlace between Elizabeth’s private life and the political mythology built around her during her long rule. Although we will attempt to be as historically accurate as possible, the basic premise of this course is that political realities, artistic representations, and intimate concerns are so intertwined around Elizabeth as to be inseparable. We will study a wide range of texts and materials, including Elizabeth’s own writings, drama, poetry, paintings, and clothing. Key topics include early modern (and modern) theories of political sovereignty, religious conflict at home and abroad, Petrarchism, early exploits in the New World, and gender. 
    Med/Ren
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 027B. Performing Justice on the Renaissance Stage

    Courtroom spectacles-tragic injustices or the satisfying punishment of villains-have become familiar sources of entertainment. This course will examine how Shakespeare, Jonson, and their contemporaries turn repeatedly to the law for dramatic energy. Their plays compel a number of questions: what does it mean to take pleasure in injustice? What is the relationship between human and divine justice? These questions often demand historical answers, and our class will examine how dramatic works think through specific developments in legal thinking and practice. 
    Med/Ren
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 028. Milton

    Intensive study of one of the most influential writers in English literary history. Units on: Milton’s early poetry; political writings during the Civil Wars and the experiment in non-monarchical government; and major later works, with special emphasis on the epic Paradise Lost. Overarching topics include the relationship between Christian belief and classical mythology, contested gender norms, and liberty as a religious and political concept.
    Med/Ren
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Spring 2024. Song.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 029. The Fat Renaissance.

    Depictions of body size in early modern England could be connected to ideas about social cohesion and differences in wealth, gender, religion, and sexuality, among other considerations. This course will look closely at some of those representations, especially in Shakespearean and non-Shakespearean drama, in relation to the widespread present-day obsession with bodily regulation and control of body size. The course will be taught from the perspective of conscious respect for bodily diversity. We’ll look at plays like Bartholomew Fair, A Chaste Maid at Cheapside, and Comedy of Errors, considering representations of hunger, “excess,” and pleasure in the context of larger social forces.
    Med/Ren
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Spring 2023. Johnson.
    Fall 2024. Johnson.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 046. Tolkien and Pullman and Their Literary Roots

    A study of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and Pullman’s His Dark Materials in the context of their early English sources. For Tolkien, this will include Beowulf, Old English riddles and elegies, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. For Pullman, this will include Biblical stories of the Creation and Fall, Milton’s Paradise Lost, and selected Blake poems. Some film versions will be included.
    Med/Ren or 20th/21st.
    GATEWAY English Literature.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for MDST, CPLT
    Spring 2023. Williamson.
    Spring 2024. Williamson.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.

English Literature - 18th and 19th Century
  

  • ENGL 033. The Romantic Sublime

    “The essential claim of sublime is that man[sic] can, in speech and feeling, transcend the human” (Weiskel). What does this transcendence look like? How is it achieved? What resources does it offer us, and at what cost? Authors include Burke, Blake, the Wordsworths, Coleridge, Byron, the Shelleys, and Keats.
    18th/19th c.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for GSST
    Spring 2023. Bolton.
    Spring 2025. Bolton.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 035. The Rise of the Novel

    Why do we read novels? How has the history of novel-reading shaped the way we think about ourselves, about other people, and about the world? In answering these questions, we will study the long history of the novel in English considered as an aesthetic and material form, as a record of social life, and as a way of imagining other possible worlds. We will begin in the eighteenth century, travelling through the novel’s Victorian and Modernist incarnations and its post-colonial and post-modernist reconfigurations to end in the present. Includes close attention to major canonical novels and authors, a survey of the main critical and theoretical approaches to the novel, strategies for close reading and interpretation, introductory text-mining techniques, and investigation of how novels were printed and circulated. Recommended for anyone interested in reading, writing, or reviewing novels.
    For majors and minors, this course can count either as an 18th/19th or 20th/21st century course.
    GATEWAY English Literature.
    Humanities.
    Writing course.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for GSST, INTP
    Fall 2022. Buurma.
    Fall 2023. Buurma.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 036. Jane Austen

    Mingling stylistic precision with an uncanny eye for social foibles, Austen’s novels off a useful entry point into the study of literature and the ways literature reflects and refracts social conditions.   We’ll read Austen’s major novels along with the 18th-century fiction, politics, and philosophy to which she was responding; we’ll also consider recent critical views on Austen and the ways films of the1990s through the present engaged Austen’s style and social critique.  At the same time, students will engage the genre of the academic essay by writing and revising several kinds of literary essays: close readings; analysis of a novel’s use of source material or a film’s use of addressing one or more of the novels in a broader historical or stylistic context.
    18th/19th c.
    GATEWAY English Literature.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for GSST
    Fall 2024. Bolton.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature   
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 037B. Vision and the Late Victorians

    In the last decades of the 19th century, British society perceived upheavals: rapid colonial expansion, new scientific theories and fields (such as Darwinism, psychology, sexology), the phenomenon of the New Woman, and fears about degeneration at the fin de siècle. At the same time, visual technologies were altering the idea of realism: photography became widespread and cinema came into being. In the artistic world, the Aesthetic and Decadent movements explored what can and cannot be made visible. This course explores how the late Victorians thought about visuality in an era of anxious change. We will study texts that engage with visibility and visual practices, paying attention to photography and painting as well as exhibition catalogs of the British empire, advertising, and periodical illustrations. Authors will include Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Amy Levy, Vernon Lee, and Oscar Wilde, among others. 
    18th/19th c.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Spring 2023. Bryant.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 038. Regency Skepticism, 1812-1832

    Skepticism and critique, rather than prophecy and transformation, are the common threads linking the “second-generation Romantics”: writers like Jane Austen, Byron, and the Shelleys.  Indeed, Regency writers, pursuing formal and psychological integrity within a period of complex social changes, transform a certain wry cynicism into both an art form and a tool of inquiry.  We’ll explore the different visions of power at work in such diverse texts as Austen’s Emma, Percy Shelley’s “Mont Blanc” as well as parts of Prometheus Unbound and The Cenci, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and Byron’s Don Juan. To see the relevance of regency skepticism today, we’ll close the semester with a reading of the Romanticist anti-hero of J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace. At the same time as we dwell on the textual choices of these fabulous writers, students will explore their own writing process, developing strategies to help them create more nuanced, unified, and sophisticated written arguments.
    18th/19th c.
    Humanities.
    Writing course.
    1 credit.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 040. Victorian Literature and Victorian Informatics

    A broad survey of canonical Victorian literature, including Charlotte Brontë, John Stuart Mill, Charles Darwin, George Eliot, Christina Rossetti, Alfred Tennyson, Oscar Wilde, and others. This class focuses on developing techniques of close, middle-distance, and distant reading, with an emphasis on exploring digital tools for organizing, curating, decompasing, and remaking literary texts, including some treatment of theories of knowledge organization and literary histories of information. 
    Pre-1830 or 18th/19th c.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 041. The Victorian Poets: Eminence and Decadence

    From Tennyson’s mythic moralizing to Robert Browning’s vivid ventriloquism, from Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s sharp-eyed social commentary to Oscar Wilde’s tragic outrageousness, from the “fleshly school” of Dante Gabriel Rossetti to the provocative nonsense of Lewis Carroll, this course examines the responses of Victorian poets to the stresses peculiar to their era. 
    18th/19th c.
    GATEWAY English Literature.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 050R. 19th Century Radicalisms

    What can the radical thinking and practice of the past teach us about the political possibilities of today? This course explores the explosion of anti-slavery, anti-racist, socialist, free love, anarchist, and anti-imperialist writing in and around the nineteenth-century US. It looks to these past radicalisms not only as forerunners of present ones, but also for models of revolutionary world-making that may appear strange, irrational, or incomprehensible from the point of view of the present. We will read primary texts across a range of genres, placing a particular emphasis on the early Black radical tradition, as well as a selection of secondary texts to help us theorize and historicize this work.
    Eligible for GLBL-Paired


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 051. Mariners, Renegades, and Castaways: Early American Literature

    This course examines American literature from its earliest recorded oral traditions to the Civil War by focusing on outsiders, or what Trinidadian critic C.L.R. James, writing about Moby-Dick, called “mariners, renegades, and castaways.”  Our readings will include not only Melville’s once neglected, now famous novel, but also a wide range of less familiar texts, including origin stories, captivity narratives, poetry, and manifestoes.  
    18th/19th c.
    GATEWAY English Literature.
    Humanities.
    Writing course.
    1 credit.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 051F. Moby-Dick

    Hailed as a masterpiece of U.S. fiction, Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (1851) is a genre-defying work that pulls epic, romantic, dramatic, scientific, and historiographic forms into its literary vortex. The cosmic scope and metaphysical complexity of this text have enthralled, and sometimes left stranded, many an intrepid reader. Members of this course will embark on a semester-long study of a text that has become a key touchstone for writers, artists, philosophers, and political thinkers alike. Guided by their own close-readings of Moby-Dick and selected contemporaneous texts drawn from their own archival research, students will engage with the historical and cultural contexts in which the novel was written, including the proliferation of new forms of print media, the rise of industrial capitalism, continuing processes of enslavement and indigenous dispossession, and U.S. expansionist efforts across the hemisphere and the globe. At once a rigorous and irreverent meditation on literary form and knowledge-production, Moby-Dick will serve as a crucial point of departure for students’ own critical explorations in and beyond the major.

    Students should have completed strong work in prior classes in cultural studies, U.S. literature, history, and/or theory (including colonial/postcolonial studies), preferably including both at least one mid-level English literature course and an advanced course in other humanities or social sciences departments or interdisciplinary programs.

    Limited to 15 students. For English Literature majors and minors, this course will count as an 18th/19th century course towards the historical distribution requirements.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 055. Apocalypse Then

    Many of us feel like we are living on the edge of apocalypse. In this class we will address our imminent future by looking to the apocalyptic literature of the past. We will begin with N. K. Jemison’s 2015 novel The Fifth Season and then move back in time to consider earlier visions of the end of the world, focusing on the nineteenth-century US. Some of the texts we’ll read describe apocalypses as they were unfolding, like Sarah Winnemucca’s narrative of the annihilation of indigenous lives and lifeways by settler-colonialism, Life among the Paiutes. Others visualize apocalypses that had yet to take place, like the prophecies of earthly destruction that inspired Nat Turner’s and John Brown’s revolts against slavery. Our task will be to explore how these works confront the end of the world-and what new ideas and relations they forge by living with the end in sight. 
    18th/19th c.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Fall 2024. Cohen.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 059. 19th Century American Novels

    When we think of 19th century American literature, we tend to think of novels: Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans, and so on. But the novel was still a new and somewhat dubious genre in the nineteenth-century U.S., and its identity was not yet settled. In this course, we will read some of the “big” books of the period, but we will try to read them as they might have been read at the time, as experimental controversial works. Texts may include Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables, William Wells Brown’s Clotel, and Helen Hunt Jackson’s Ramona, in addition to those listed above.
    18th/19th c.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 060. Early Black Media Cultures

    (Cross-listed as BLST 060 )
    This course studies the wide variety of Black media cultures in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Atlantic world, including newspapers, broadside poetry, sheet music, friendship albums, political pamphlets, and novels. We will attend closely to the materiality of these texts, reading not only for the work of authors but also that of illustrators, editors, typesetters, and readers. How did these cultural workers shape racial identities, aesthetic forms, and political possibilities through media technologies? Our investigations will be informed by readings in recent theory and criticism on Black Studies, media culture, and literary history. In their final projects, students will have the chance to pursue their own original research using the rich resources of Philadelphia-area libraries.
    18th/19th c.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for BLST.
    Fall 2022. Cohen.
    Spring 2025. Cohen.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 061. The Literatures of Slavery

    How did Black literary production emerge to resist the institution and ideology of slavery in the United States? While this course will focus largely on antebellum slave narratives- powerful acts of self-presentation that challenged the racial logic of slavery and bore witness to its brutal violence-we will also consider Black oratory, essays, poetry, and fiction of the late 18th and 19th centuries.
    18th/19th c.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for BLST.
    Spring 2024. Foy.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 064A. The New Negro Versus Jim Crow

    The first in a sequence of courses on the post-Emancipation development of African American literature, this course focuses on the Black literary florescence that began at the end of the 19th century even as the strictures and structures of the Jim Crow regime hardened. What, then, is the relationship between the birth of Jim Crow and the birth of a “New Negro”?
    18th/19th c.
    GATEWAY English Literature.
    Humanities.
    Writing course.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for BLST.
    Fall 2024. Foy.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 071A. The Short Story en las Américas

    (Cross-listed as SPAN 071 , LITR 071S )  
    This team-taught course will offer a wide-ranging overview of the short story in the Americas from a comparative perspective, emphasizing continuities and also identifying areas of innovation and transformation.

    The course will begin in the early 19th century with masters whose daring work in this “minor” form gave the short story new prominence in literary history: Poe, Hawthorne, and Chesnutt. Later, the class will focus on Quiroga and Borges whose innovations redefined the genre, and moved Latin American fiction into the forefront of world literature.

    By focusing on close reading and class discussions, we will seek to discover the distinctive characteristics of the short story, and outline its development and transformation across the continents. Does the short-story bind together the diverse literatures of the United States and Latin America?  How should we identify and understand parallels between the works in English and those in Spanish?  How should we explain contrasts? Of particular interest will be dialogues and influences crossing languages and literary traditions: Poe and Horacio Quiroga; Hemingway and Borges; Borges/Cortázar inspiring Barth; Rulfo’s and García Márquez’s (and others’) influences on US-based Latinx writers.

    Readings, assignments, and class discussions will be in English. No prior knowledge of Spanish or Portuguese is necessary.  This class is open to all students, without prerequisites.

    For English Literature majors and minors, this course can count either as an 18th/19th or 20th/21st century course.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for LALS
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 071B. The Lyric Poem in English

    English 071B is a survey of the lyric poetry in English from the Middle Ages up to the present, along with a few works read in translation. Students will learn the basics in understanding and enjoying the music of poetry, including scansion and prosody (beats and sounds). They will also learn to appreciate the basic forms of lyric poetry, including ballads and sonnets and many other forms, as well as “free” verse; they will also receive instruction on how to appreciate metaphors, irony, and the many other figures of speech and rhetorical techniques poems employ. They will also gain appreciation of poetic history and the many ways in which poets and their work have historically interacted with their eras, while also creating work that can powerfully speak to us in our present moment.

    We’ll use The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms (Ed. Mark Strand and Eavon Boland) and Camille Paglia’s Break, Blow, Burn, a collection of essays on some of the most famous poems in English. Other course materials will be posted as needed on the English 71B Moodle site.

    This course is focused on great poems from the past (from the medieval era to the twentieth century), but both Making of a Poem and Paglia treat us to some very contemporary poems and poets as well.
    For majors and minors, this course can count either as a Med/Ren, 18th/19th, or 20th/21st century course, depending on the topics of the majority of the student’s written work. Discuss your options with the professor.
    GATEWAY English Literature.
    Humanities.
    Writing course.
    1 credit.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.

English Literature - 20th and 21st Century
  

  • ENGL 012. Writing and Sustenance

    Food embodies culture and its paradoxes: it delineates ‘taste,’ it offers us delight and decadence and comfort, it defines both home and the ‘unheimlich’-the ritually forbidden-which is the antithesis of home. Major novelists of the past decade have engaged deeply with food production and consumption as a lens on contemporary culture more generally. What do contemporary novels and memoirs have to teach us about food politics and and human resilience? Authors include Kingsolver, Franzen, Ozeki, Desai, Yoshimoto, Kimball. The course will also include some practical experiences (labs, field trips) engaging writing and sustenance.
    GATEWAY English Literature.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ENVS
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature

     


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 045. Modern British Poetry

    Steven Spender called Modern poets “recognizers,” creating a complex, fractured art out of circumstances they experienced as extraordinary, unprecedented. This course examines the responses of British male and female poets­­ (and some American expatriates) to the wars, shifting beliefs, complicated gender roles, and other dislocations of early 20th century life.
    20th/21st c.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 047A. Asian American Literature and Culture

    Cross-listed as ASAM 047A  
    To what extent does Asian American invisibility betray a constitutive role in U.S. history? Through literary and cultural texts as well as ethnic historiography and criticism, this course charts the shifting place of Asians in modern America by examining im/migration, empire’s wars, and the interracial future/diaspora. In the process, it will shed light on the different subject positions that Asians have occupied in the West-as transnational holders of capital, immigrants, coolies, migrant laborers, colonized “nationals,” internees, refugees, diasporic and hybrid subjects of color, alien suspects, and activists. In providing a critical history of Asian America, this course expands the field’s foundational concerns toward a transpacific and continental Asia/America while exploring minor adoptions and resistances of America, including of its aesthetic and social movements. Readings may include Crazy Rich Asians, The Year of the Dragon, America is in the Heart, Philippine-American War political cartoons, Obasan, Dictee, We Should Never Meet, Night Sky with Exit Wounds, Tropic of Orange, Homeland Elegies, Robot Stories, Immigrant Acts, Coolies and Cane, Impossible Subjects, The Oriental Obscene, Partly Colored, and Alien Capital.
    20th/21st c.
    Prerequisite: At least one W course. 
    Recommended before or while taking the course: HIST 05B or HIST 010.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ASIA, GLBL-paired.
    Fall 2023. Ku.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 047B. Alternate War Histories of Asia/America

    In what ways do cultural disparities and conflictual historical experiences lead to not only different perceptions of reality but in fact multiple realities? Anchored in two wars-World War II, from which the US emerged as a world power, and the Vietnam War, the first televised war and America’s “unwinnable war”-this course focuses on Asian/American entanglement and the worlds to which it gives rise. There are multiple Japans that emerged in World War II: the empire that might have conquered the US, as imagined in the alternate history of The Man in the High Castle; the lost land of origin that has brought trauma on its “heirs,” the Japanese interned by the US; the Japan experienced by comfort women in Asia. Similarly, the story of the Vietnam War has been told almost exclusively from an American viewpoint. Yet The Sympathizer promises to tell another story: not only of the US in Vietnam as seen by the Vietnamese but of the Vietnamese in America, indeed of two Vietnams. What might we learn from alternate (hi)stories about the political functions and ontological power of narrative? Texts may include The Man in the High Castle, No-No Boy, Comfort Woman, The World at War, Cold War, Apocalypse Now, Vietnam War protest poetry, The Sympathizer, Night Sky with Exit Wounds, We Should Never Meet, Forgetting Vietnam, Maya Lin, and the Vietnamese Oral History Project, along with theoretical texts on war and reality. Students will be evaluated based on class participation and presentations, written responses, (con)textual analysis, and comparative analysis.
    20th/21st c.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ASIA, GLBL-paired, PEAC.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 047C. Asian American Gender/Sexuality/Species

    Cross-listed as ASAM 047C .
    Asian Americans are typically represented as either the model minority, the immigrant whose successful assimilation serves to discipline other minorities, or the yellow peril, the eternal foreigner threatening to invade from within. How are these figures not only racial but also gendered and sexual, consistent with constructions of the hardworking but racially “castrated” Asian man and the desirable because “domestic” Asian woman? To what extent are these tropes premised on animality, rooted in the fear that the other may not be human, and that this other will encroach upon the self, reveal the human as other? Through an examination of the representation and performance of gender and sexuality in Asian American literature and culture, this course considers the intertwined constitution and contradictions of race, gender, and sexuality while keeping an eye on the animal that serves as their limits. We will focus on U.S. representations of Asian masculinity and femininity, the association of Asians in the (post)colony with appetite, and Asian reclamations of the child and the queer along with the animal. Readings may include M. Butterfly, Bruce Lee and Wang TV clips, Charlie Chan is Dead 2, The Chinaman Pacific and Frisco R. R. Co, The Joy Luck Club, ”Happiness: A Manifesto,” The Book of Salt, Dogeaters, The Assassination of Gianni Versace, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, The Hypersexuality of Race, Eating Asian America, and Dangerous Crossings.
    20th/21st c.
    Prerequisite: At least one W course. 
    Recommended before or while taking the course: ENGL 47A, GSST 001, or HIST 010.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for GSST.
    Spring 2024. Ku.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
  

  • ENGL 047D. Southeast Asian Literature in English

    In traditional terms the part of the world between China and India, Southeast Asia lies at a global crossroads where the giants of the continent have historically spread their influence and where the East met the West due to the European scramble for “the (East) Indies.” Its position at these borderlands has made Southeast Asia one of the world’s most diverse, but also liminal, sites, as indicated by its elision in history and literary studies (including in postcolonial studies, if not as much in area studies). Given the minor role to which it is relegated in the world and in Asia, how does the history of Southeast Asia get narrated in its literature-in particular, in literature written in or translated into English, the postwar lingua franca? This course charts modern Southeast Asian history through literature from or about its different periods-from the colonial era to the world between the wars to independence to the contemporary time. In the process, we will examine the literary strategies invented and adopted by locals to tell their (version of) history as well as the language of transmission-a language that, as it becomes more and more universal, might efface the very thing for which we are looking. Readings will come from mainland and maritime Southeast Asia as well as the diaspora and may include Dumb Luck, The Harmony Silk Factory, A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino, Only a Girl, Insurrecto, Virtual Lotus, and A/PART.
    20th/21st c.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ASAM, ASIA, GLBL-paired.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.
 

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