Southern New Hampshire University and thematic readings of several representative works of European literature during the modern age. Readings may include such authors as: Balzac, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Mann, Gide, Proust, Kafka, Pirandello, Nabokov, Hess, and Camus. All texts are in English translation. Prerequisite: ENG 120. LIT 270 Studies in American Literature (3 credits) This course explores novels, short stories, poetry, drama, and/or non-fiction by American writers, spanning at least two literary periods or historical eras (i.e. American Colonialism, Renaissance, Realism, Modernism, Postmodernism) or focusing on one theme (i.e. violence, race, war, business, law, love and marriage, identity). The topic of the course will vary, depending on the instructor. Readings, films, and lectures on cultural and historical contexts may supplement the literary material. Prerequisite: ENG 120. LIT 275 Studies in British Literature (3 credits) This course examines novels, short stories, poetry, drama, and essays produced by British writers, spanning at least two literary periods or historical eras (Renaissance, Romantic, Postmodern, etc.) or focusing on one theme (violence, race, war, business, law, love and marriage, identity). The topic of the course will vary, depending on the instructor. Readings, lectures, and films on cultural and historical contexts may supplement the literary material. Prerequisite: ENG 120. LIT 300 Literary Theory (3 credits) This course is an introduction to the major schools of contemporary critical theory, and an examination of principal exponents of these theories. The student will become familiar with the most important features of psychoanalytic criticism, Marxism and feminism and examine the meaning of structuralism and post-structuralism. In addition, the course affords an opportunity to practice applying the theories to specific literary texts. Prerequisite: ENG 120. LIT 305 Popular Fiction (3 credits) This course will analyze today’s popular fiction in America. What makes a book a “best seller”? Writers who strike it rich generally write books that are fast-paced and easy to read, follow a set of conventions that readers recognize, and touch a nerve within their society. This course will introduce students to a variety of literary sub-genres (true crime, memoir, road novel, detective fiction, western, mystery, etc.) and to the media culture that hypes and sells these books. Prerequisite: ENG 120. LIT 316 Modern Drama (3 credits) This course explores modern, 20th and 21st-century plays from American, British, Russian, and world literature. The works taught will vary by instructor, but students may read O’Neill, Williams, Miller, Mamet, Pinter, Ionesco, Synge, Soyinka, and Beckett, among others. Prerequisite: ENG 120. LIT 319 Shakespeare (3 credits) Students will study selected Shakesperian comedies, tragedies and chronicle plays. The course also provides the students with a general overview of the Elizabethan era and the world in which Shakespeare lived and worked. Prerequisite: ENG 120. 146
LIT 320 Hemingway’s Paris Years (3 credits) Perhaps more that any other twentieth century American writer, Ernest Hemingway continues to be studied and celebrated throughout the world. This course is designed to explore the man behind the myth. Through reading, writing, discussing, and a trip to Paris—the place where it all truly started — students in this course will gain insight into this complex world icon. Update your passport and come discover the larger picture that made a young Ernest Hemingway from Oak Park, Illinois, into a worldly author that all want to claim as their own. Currently offered only at Seacoast Center. Prerequisite: ENG 120. LIT 328 Multi-Ethnic Literature (3 credits) Since the beginnings of American literature, writers have been concerned with defining and creating American identity. After the Civil Rights movement, many writers defined American identity in ethnic and racial terms, arguing for a revised, pluralistic idea of American identity. Students will read fiction, poetry, and essays by twentieth-century American authors who identify with African American, Native American, Asian American, and Chicano heritages. In addition to race and ethnicity, students will discuss how class, native language, religion, gender, sexuality, and history figure into these writers’ images of an American self and community. Prerequisite: ENG 120. LIT 330 Gender and Text (3 credits) Focusing on literary works about women, women’s roles, as well as masculinity and men’s roles, students will analyze how gender, race, sexuality, class, and other factors influence various writers’ representations of gender roles. The course also examines how definitions of gender roles change over time and across cultures. Students will read selections from feminist theory and gender studies that illuminate pervasive assumptions about women and men, past and present. Prerequisite: ENG 120. LIT 332 The Nature Writers (3 credits) This course introduces students to the prose and poetry of major British and American writers and naturalists since the 18th century who observe nature vividly and write about humanity’s relationship with the natural environment. Students will read authors such as Emerson, Thoreau, Dickinson, Wordsworth, Leopold, and Abbey. This course is offered in the fall of odd years, and it also fulfills requirements for students in the Environmental Studies program. Prerequisite: ENG 120. LIT 336 Thoreau and His Contemporaries (3 credits) This course considers the works of Henry David Thoreau as a transcendentalist, essayist, poet, naturalist and teacher. Other members of the Concord School, such as Emerson, the Alcotts, and Fuller, are also discussed. Prerequisite: ENG 120. LIT 337 Modern Poetry (3 credits) This course immerses students in modernism and postmodernism via British and American poetry. Students will read Frost, Eliot, Pound, Stevens and other major modern and contemporary poets, as well as essays on poetry and artistic ambition in the twentieth century. Prerequisite: ENG 120.