Antonia Losano

Reading Literature
Please refer to each section for specific course descriptions.(Formerly ENAM 0103)

Victoria's Secrets
Known as the great age of the realist novel and the epitome of staid decorum, the nineteenth century also had its guilty pleasures--mysteries, ghost stories, science fiction, adventure tales, and more--which exposed a radical underside to the Victorian imagination where norms of gendered, racial, and ethnic identity were called into question. In this course we will read both canonical realist novels and their non-traditional counterparts in an attempt to understand the productive interplay between these two seemingly disparate literary traditions. Authors may include: Austen, Dickens, Eliot, Hardy, the Brontës, Wilkie Collins, R.L. Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle, H.G. Wells, Bram Stoker, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, and others.

Animals in Literature and Culture
Animals, wrote anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, are good to think with. They are good to write with as well; almost all works of literature include animals, their importance varying from the merely peripheral to the absolutely central. Among other narrative functions, animals serve as essential metaphors for understanding the human animal. In this course we will read a wide variety of fiction, poetry, children's literature, philosophy, science, history, and cultural theory from Ancient Greek sources (in translation) to the present. We will consider theoretical, ethical, religious, psychological, linguistic, and political issues pertaining to animals and their representation in literary texts. lect./disc. (Formerly ENAM 0108)

Introduction to Contemporary Literary Theory
In this course we will introduce several major schools of contemporary literary theory. By reading theoretical texts in close conjunction with works of literature, we will illuminate the ways in which these theoretical stances can produce multiple interpretations of a given literary work. The approaches covered may include New Criticism, Psychoanalysis, Marxism and Cultural Criticism, Race Theory and Multicultural Criticism, Feminism, Post-Colonial Criticism, Queer Studies, Eco-Criticism, Post-Structuralism, and others. These theories will be applied to various works of fiction, poetry, and drama. The goal will be to make students critically aware of the fundamental literary, cultural, political, and moral assumptions underlying every act of interpretation they perform. 3 hrs. lect/disc. (ENGL 0103 strongly recommended) (Formerly ENAM 0205)

Literature and the Visual Arts
In this course we will explore the intersections of literary texts with the visual arts. What happens when literature tries to capture in words a visual image? What happens when a picture tries to tell a story? We will examine literary texts which respond directly to specific paintings as well as texts which are more broadly visual in their impact on readers; we will also look at hybrid texts like the graphic novel which include both words and images. Course readings will include poems, short stories, short novels, illustrated books, and graphic novels. We will also look at a wide range of paintings, sculptures, and other visual artifacts. (formerly ENAM 1050)