This module offers students the opportunity to engage in intensive study of an author whose work has significantly affected the traditions of literature written in English. Students will read an extensive selection of the authors works in order to understand fully his/her individual development and his/her important contributions to literary history. On successful completion of this module, students will have gained An understanding of the author in his/her political, historical, and cultural contexts; Familiarity with a range of the authors works and with a range of his/her thematic, stylistic, aesthetic, and formal concerns; An understanding of the authors importance in the literary canon; An understanding of different theoretical and methodological ways of interpreting the major author.

This module will function as a critical survey of the work of a major author. Students will study the authors development from early efforts to mature output and will be able to analyze and discuss the authors overall impact on literary history. Students will be able to position the author historically and politically and will understand the authors role as a contributor to intellectual history. Students will be able to position the author in different theoretical and methodological frameworks and will be able to assess and interpret a wide range of the authors work Example One: Virginia Woolf This module will trace the development of the modernist novelist Virginia Woolf from early work to mature output. Students will read most of her major fictions as well as a selection of her essays and autobiographical pieces. Students will study Woolf as a theorist and practitioner of modernist narrative form, as a woman writer deeply interested in questions of female creativity and a significant contributor to feminist literary theory, and as a figure increasingly relevant to studies of memory and trauma. Students will also consider Woolf as a cultural icon by considering her work in relation to recent films and novels that deploy her work and life.

To examine a wide range of texts written by a major author writing in English. To identify literary and theoretical frameworks for reading the major authors work. To enumerate the historical, political, and cultural contexts of the major authors work. To describe the major author's contributions to traditions of literature written in English. To analyze in depth literary themes and formal concerns voiced in the work of a major author. To evaluate critical assessments of the major authors work. To assess the major authors contributions to literary history.

N/A

N/A

This module will be taught as a seminar, with all students expected to engage actively in every meeting, whether the discussion is a debate of theoretical issues or a collaborative close reading of a single poem or prose passage. Students will participate in rigorous discussion of issues and lead class discussion of individual critical works. The major written requirement will be a research paper, which will enable students to compose extended arguments on complex topics, managing the needs of documented, evidence-based writing and creative analysis.

N/A