Course Descriptions

ENG 353 - Shakespeare and His Contemporaries

Satisfies the Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric distribution requirement.
Fulfills the Historical Approaches requirement for the English major.

 

Prerequisites & Notes
First-year students require permission of the instructor.

ENG 355 - Milton

This course follows John Milton’s carefully shaped career, starting with early poems, such as Lycidas, before considering prose, such as Areopagitica, and the late masterpieces, Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes.  Milton’s texts ask some of the most important questions of the Western tradition:  what is the relation between an artist and predecessors?  how much should governments constrain individuals’ choices?  are there “natural” elements of gender and sexuality?  if God is both all-good and all-powerful (a huge “if”), why is there so much suffering?  As befits these big questions, ENG 355 emphasizes class discussion and individual discovery through formal and informal writing.  In the Miltonic tradition, this course also emphasizes choice:  students may choose to take a comprehensive final examination or participate in an all-day reading of Paradise Lost, a rare opportunity for students to learn about themselves and about one of the most influential poems in literary history, all in one unforgettable day.

Fulfills the Historical Approaches requirement of the English major.
Satisfies the Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric distribution requirement.

ENG 361 - Eighteenth Century Pop Culture

Satisfies the Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric distribution requirement.
Fulfills the Historical Approaches requirement of the English major.

Prerequisites & Notes
First-year students require permission of the instructor.

ENG 362 - A: British Romanticism or B: Reimagining Blake

362A British Romanticism

Instructor 
Vaz

Topical study of the poetry and prose of the period ranging from the examination of Romantic gender ideology to studies of individual authors

Satisfies the Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric distribution requirement.

362B Reimagining Blake

Instructor
Vaz

William Blake was a risk-taker and a rule-breaker.  In his creative output, he sought to unshackle the ideological “mind-forg’d manacles” that stunted human thought.  We will study Blake’s seminal works and apply some risk-taking and rule-breaking of our own by digitally recreating a few of his illustrated plates.  Just as Blake used text and image in his original plates, so will we, as we creatively and critically reimagine Blake’s work and his message.

Prerequisites & Notes
First-year students require permission of the instructor.

ENG 363 - History of the Novel

The origins of the novel in Britain and the circumstances, both historical and sociological, surrounding its emergence. 

Satisfies the Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric distribution requirement.
Fulfills the Historical Approaches requirement of the English major.

Prerequisites & Notes
First-year students require permission of the instructor.

ENG 370 - Davidson Summer Program at Cambridge University

ENG 372 - British Fiction: 19th and 20th Centuries

Selected British and Commonwealth fiction from 1800 to 2000. 

Satisfies the Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric distribution requirement.
Fulfills the Historical Approaches requirement of the English major.

Prerequisites & Notes
First-year students require permission of the instructor.

ENG 373 - “Terrible Beauty”: Yeats and Modern Poetry

ENG 374 - Picturing Disability

What does it mean to consider the visual representation of disability as a kind of text? Why does it matter? This course will consider the ways in which picturing disability helps us do several things: expose and challenge stereotype, understand how disabled or ill bodies have been used to create cultural meanings, better understand the social experience of disability, reconsider disability in the medical context, and appreciate the amazing human variation of all bodies that disability underscores.  Representation also presents us with some of the thorny issues with which we will grapple: what are the ethics of picturing disability, and how can we avoid spectacle or voyeurism even as we take advantage of the “visual activism” staring allows? How do we make typically invisible impairments like anxiety or depression visible? How do we show the reality of pain without reinforcing the sense that disability is only a tragic or isolating existence? How do we create visual representations that retort against tropes so familiar that we may not even realize we are using them to shape our personal definitions of disability? How can we create representations that suggest “disability gain”-that disability begets creativity and innovation in the arts and sciences? In this course, we’ll look at a wide-ranging assortment of ways disability has been pictured in society. We’ll explore everything from public health posters to medical textbook photographs; painting and sculpture to zines and graphic novels; charity campaigns to material objects (including medical or adaptive devices). You will create your own representation of disability, do some disability hacking of material objects, and work together to curate an online exhibition of disability representations.

This course presumes no prior coursework in English and welcomes those from all majors interested in studying the representation of disability as a way to inform their own work in the arts and sciences.

Satisfies the Literary, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric distribution requirement.
Satisfies the Diversity requirement in the English major.
Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement.

ENG 375 - Fan Fiction

The practice of writing works using the universes and characters of already established authors–Fanfiction–is a recent cultural phenomenon, beginning with Kirk/Spock slash of the 1970s and fueled by 21st century technologies that have enabled fans to appropriate, extend, and transform beloved characters and plots. The output is staggering: as of March 2017, Fanfiction.net alone holds 761,000 Harry Potter stories, and fanfiction writers have  become best-selling authors (Cassandra Clare, E.L. James). Yet centuries of adaptation and appropriate permeate the Western canon, from Homer’s stock phrases to Shakespeare’s work with sources such as the Decameron and Holinshed’s Chronicles. 

ENG 375 will explore the world of fanfiction, from past iterations to the present extensive array of fanfiction. We will consider common tropes in fanfiction, such as fanon/canon, gender swapping, shipping, and transgressive pairings of many kinds, and investigate how social media enables empowered, creative fandom. The author may be “dead,” in Barthes’ estimation, yet h/she/zer are also very much alive and writing.

Fulfills the Innovation requirement of the English major.
Satisfies the Literary Studies, Creative Writing & Rhetoric distribution requirement.

ENG 380 - Studies in American Literature

Special topics in American literature with attention to critical approaches. 

Satisfies the Literary, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric distribution requirement.
Fulfills the Historical Approaches requirement of the English major.

Prerequisites & Notes
First-year students require permission of the instructor.

ENG 381 - American Fiction: 19th Century

Historical and theoretical understanding of romanticism, realism, and naturalism, with attention to Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, James, Crane, and others. 

Satisfies the Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric distribution requirement.
Fulfills the Historical Approaches requirement of the English major.

Prerequisites & Notes
First-year students require permission of the instructor.

ENG 382 - W.E.B. Du Bois at Large (=AFR 303)

(ENG 382 cross-listed with AFR 303 during spring 2018 semester only.)

This course will introduce students to the major works of William Edward Burghardt Du Bois.  Readings will include (in chronological order): The Philadelphia Negro (1899); The Souls of Black Folk (1903); Dark Princess (1928); Black Reconstruction in America (1935); Color and Democracy (1945); and The World and Africa (1947) to name a few.  They will be supplemented with secondary readings by: Booker T. Washington, Michael Rudolph West, Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, Hazel Carby, Paul Gilroy, Adolph Reed, Lewis Gordon, Marina Bilbija, C.L.R. James and others.

Fulfills a 300-level major thinkers requirement of the Africana Studies major (Geographic Area: North America).
Counts as a 300-level elective and fulfills the Diversity requirement in the English major.
Counts as an elective in the Global Literary Theory interdisplinary minor.
Satisfies the Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric distribution requirement.
Satisfies the Justice, Community, and Equality requirement.

ENG 386 - American Fiction: 20th Century

A study of realist, modernist, and postmodernist American fiction that is not only set in the past, but actively questions the ability of fiction writers to adequately capture and depict the spirit of another time. Major authors: Wharton, Faulkner, Vonnegut, Doctorow, Ishmael Reed, Morrison, Roth. Readings include fiction, criticism on major texts, and theory that deals with the relationship between historiography and fiction. An upper-division elective intended for majors but open to non-majors.

Satisfies the Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric distribution requirement.
Fulfills the Historical Approaches requirement of the English major.

Prerequisites & Notes
First-year students require permission of the instructor.

ENG 387 - Contemporary Poetry

A course concerned with schools, movements, and problems in the literary arts, “Contemporary Poetry” will include exploration of poetic geneaologies, and investigate the relationship between poetry and cultural theory, poetry and current affairs, and poetry and technology.

Satisfies the history requirement for the English major.
Counts as a literature course for the Global Literary Studies interdisciplinary minor.
Satisfies the Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric distribution requirement.

ENG 388 - Contemporary Theatre

Instructor
Fox

Despite our highly visual and multimedia age, we don’t often think of the stage as being a site of significant cultural conversation. Yest there is simply no substitute for the vitality and importance of live theater. To paraphrase Edward Albee, theater puts the mirror up infront of an audience and asks them: “This is who you are. Now what are you going to do about it?”

This course will examine the origins and development of contemporary theater in the Western tradition, post-1960, with an emphasis on American and British drama. We will particularly place heavy emphasis on text-based drama of the last two decades, examining the ways in which recent theater has asked its audiences to contemplate issues of concern to contemporary life including (though not limited to) race in America; global violence against women; class division; and the commodification of human relations, both personal and international. We will also discuss how theater challenges us to find creative solutions through connection, community, and claiming identity. No prior experience reading drama is necessary.

In the past, this course has included works by (but is not limited to): August Wilson, David Henry Hwang, Quiara Algería Hudes, Lynn Nottage, Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins, Robert O’Hara, Adrienne Kennedy, Amiri Baraka, Jez Butterworth, Tony Kushner, and Ayad Akhtar.

Satisfies the Literacy, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric distribution requirement.
Fulfills the Historical Approaches requirement of the English major.
Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement.

Prerequisites & Notes
First-year students require permission of the instructor.

ENG 390 - Word Art

Instructor
Churchill

We live in a highly visual culture.  To be literate, we need to read and interpret words, images and the interplay between them, both in print and online.  This course examines print and digital texts that combine words and images.  We will study some of the most complex and subtle word/image texts, focusing on Japanese masters and genres such as haiku, political woodblock prints, manga, and anime.  Word-Art is a hybrid course: a study of words and images, a combination of critical and creative writing, and an investigation into print and digital forms.

The Spring 2018 course will be interlinked with Professor Tyler Starr’s ART 331 - Printmaking - Japan . Students must sign up for both courses and will receive 2 course credits. Students will create their own books using paper from Japan and create interactive digital facsimiles.  While ostensibly, ENG 390 will emphasize writing and digital publication, and ART 331 will focus on images and printmaking, the pairing of the two courses will deconstruct word/image, print/digital, and East/West binaries through multimedia investigations that require interdisciplinary approaches and encourage cross-fertilization.

Fulfills the Innovation requirement in the English major.
Satisfies the Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric distribution requirement.
Satisfies the cultural diversity requirement.

ENG 391 - Literary Criticism

Analytic and comparative reading of major critical texts.

Satisfies the Philosophical and Religious Perspectives distribution requirement.
Satisfies the Diversity requirement in the English major.

Prerequisites & Notes
First-year students require permission of the instructor.

 

ENG 393 - Film Theory

This course explores theoretical approaches to fiction and nonfiction film, television, video and other media. Though no production experience is required, we will make storyboards and videos, and students have the option to make a video as a final project. We then consider “ists” and “isms” including realism and reality TV; modernism; postmodernism; materialism; evolutionary criticism, and Freudianism and gender theory. Movies we may consider: Modern Times, Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, Bicycle Thieves, Star Wars, Shane, Out of the Past, Waking Life, No Country for Old Men, Man with the Movie Camera, Un Chien Andalou, and a variety of shorter videos.

ENG 393 satisfies a Visual and Performing Arts distribution requirement.
ENG 393 fulfills a requirement in the Film & Media Studies interdisciplinary minor.

ENG 394 - Studies in Modern Literature: The Avant-Garde (Fall 2017)

A course concerned with avant-garde schools, movements and strategies, “The Avant-Garde” will include exploration of different genres, media, and cultures, and investigate relationships between avant-garde practice and theory, artistic innovation and social change, and forms, platforms, and politics. Because of its focus on challenging the white, male domination of the avant-garde with attention to women, queer, and minority poets from modernism to the present day, this course meets the diversity requirement for the English major and qualifies for GSS credit.

Fulfills the Diversity requirement of the English major.
Counts towards the Gender and Sexuality Studies major and minor (Literary and Cultural Representations track).
Satisfies a requirement in the Global Literary Theory interdisciplinary minor.
 

 

Prerequisites & Notes
First-year students require permission of the instructor.

ENG 395 - Independent Study in Literature

ENG 396 - Independent Study in Writing

ENG 397 - Independent Study

ENG 409 - Television: Queer Representations (=GSS 401)

With its roots in the gendered domestic suburban household, television has a longstanding investment in questions of gender and sexuality.  Pushing back against the assumption that LGBTQ characters did not appear on our screens in a sustained way until the 1980s, this course will investigate how TV representation of queer life have changed with the evolution of the medium since the 1950s.  Recent work in the field of queer TV studies has unearthed queer characters from previously invisible archives, charged changing conceptions of masculinity and femininity in broadcast programming, and documented the organizational strategies  employed by television narrative that disclose and contain expressions of non-normative sexualities.  We will seek to understand the dynamics of visibility and invisibility that structure representations of televised queerness.

Fulfills the Diversity requirement in the English major.
Satisfies a requirement in the Gender & Sexuality Studies major and minor.

ENG 415 - Fall 2017 Seminar Topic- Poetics of Relation: August Wilson

Poetics of Relation: August Wilson
Instructor
Flanagan 

Poetics of Relation is the rubric for a seminar in which students analyze the ways in which the discursive forms - novels, plays, essays, and poetry - of one or two major writers relate to specific cultures, landscapes, political and historical moments.  In its three previous iterations students have examined such intersections in the work of two Nobel Laureates Derek Walcott and Wole Soyinka; Vidia Naipaul and Derek Walcott, and in novels and essays by Toni Morrison and Alice Walker.  In fall 2017, the focus will be on August Wilson, one of America’s foremost playwrights.  In addition to close readings, substantive discussions, oral presentations, and two major essays, seminar participants will contribute to the Poetics of Relation website on the Davidson college website.

Satisfies the Diversity requirement for the English major.
Satisfies a requirement in Africana Studies and Global Literary Theory.
Satisfies the cultural diversity requirement.

ENG 415B (SPRING 2017)

415 B Style
Instructor
Fackler

From Samuel Richardson’s titular heroine Pamela obsessing about her wardrobe (1740), to the conspicuous consumption of Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie (1900), and from the discussion of Hero’s sartorial choices in Much Ado About Nothing (1598) to the iconic Holly Golightly of Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958), there is a clear literary history of fashion. This course will consider both fictional and theoretical engagements with fashion alongside the works of authors such as Vladimir Nabokov and Henry James, whose prose reveals the fingerprint specificity of their writing styles. Working from Roland Barthes’s theory in The Fashion System to Cecil Beaton’s diaries and Joseph Roach’s study of the “It” factor (“the easily perceived but hard-to-define quality possessed by abnormally interesting people”), this transcultural and transhistorical course will investigate style as both form and content. Whether we are looking at the fashion and literary styles of the roaring twenties in Fitzgerald’s works or the punk subcultures of the UK in the 1980s, we will question how literary innovation and fashion interpenetrate.

Counts as an Innovation course for the English major.
Satisfies the Innovation requirement.

ENG 421 - Writing the Self

This seminar looks at the ways that writers, often from marginalized communities, used “non-literary” forms such as letters, diaries or notebooks as a form of expression when traditional avenues of publication or literary recognition were not available to them. In addition to looking at texts from various literary traditions we will also examine the ways that contemporary writers have returned to these forms, including a consideration of blogs and social media as part of the contemporary expression of these forms.

SPRING 2018
Instructor: S. Campbell

Looking into the past to make sense of the present pervades non-fiction writing.  This type of reflection emerges in a variety of forms and lengths, including the brief personal memoir, the podcast, and the multi-volume autobiography.  Whereas autobiography explores large pieces of a life in an effort to explain a whole person, the memoir uses a narrow focus, what William Zinsser terms a “window into a life, very much like a photograph in its selective composition” (136).  We will read memoirs that provide windows into the childhoods and adulthoods of people of varied classes, ethnicities, and experiences.  Students will approach the genre both critically and creatively, exploring what it means and can mean to write the self.

ENG 452 - Seminar: Performing Shakespeare/Radio Shakespeare

In Shakespeare’s London, audience members referred not to “watching” or “seeing” a play, but to “hearing” it.

“Radio Shakespeare” is a new incarnation of English 452, “Performing Shakespeare.”  The course will culminate in three full-length radio performances of The Merchant of Venice before live audiences.  A fourth performance, a Sunday matinee on the order of a staged reading, may occur at the Zimmermanns’ Renaissance villa, Pian del Pino.  One of the audio performances will be broadcast live on WDAV.  Post-production, engineers will assemble an immortal podcast combining the strongest elements of the three recorded performances into one whole.

ENG 462 - Seminar: A: Romantic Radicalism or B: The Long Eighteenth Century Gothic

Instructor
Vaz

For William Godwin, truth, if it exists, comes about in the “collision of mind with mind.”  In this seminar, we will investigate and interrogate how Romantic literature manifests this “collision” by creating and participating in the aesthetic, economic, and socio-political tectonic shifts of the period.  By doing so, we will examine how Romantic literature intersects with the richness and complexity of the period’s radical and revolutionary thought.

Fulfills the Historical Approaches requirement of the English major.

462B The Long Eighteeth Century Gothic

lnstructor
Vaz

There’s nothing like reading books we’ve been told we ought not read.  That’s essentially the story of the Gothic during its inception.  Lambasted by contemporary critics as literature’s illegitimate and sinful child, gothic novels nonetheless sold like hotcakes, and the infection easily spread to poetry and drama.  In our seminar, we will trace this phenomenon in England from the 1760’s through the Romantic period to study its evolution from bastard child in the eighteenth century to literature worth of scholarship only in the last 30 years of the twentieth century.

Fulfills the Historical Approaches requirement of the English major.

ENG 472 - Seminar A: Gossip or B: Twenty-First-Century British Literature or C: Joyce/Nabokov

472A Gossip

Instructor
Fackler

Drawing on cultural studies and performance studies, this trans-historical and transnational course investigates the role gossip plays in literature, psychoanalysis, journalism, politics, television, film, and new media. The seminar foregrounds the imbrication of gossip and scandal with constructions of gender and sexuality.

This topic counts for the Gender and Sexuality Studies major and minor.
 

472B 21st Century British Literature

Instructor
Fackler

This course considers the transformation of the book as artifact and idea since the turn of the century. We will investigate the new, often experimental, narrative forms authors have developed as a response to such twenty-first-century pressures as globalization, terrorism, and genetic engineering. Questions for the seminar include: What are the overarching concerns for fiction in the wake of the postmodern and postcolonial moment? What kind of relationship can we expect between science and literature in the 21^st-century novel? Does contemporary science contribute to newly emergent structures of feeling that the novel might register? And if such structures call up concepts of the posthuman, how might they sit with the traditionally humanistic orientation of the novel as a broadly popular genre?  How does post-9/11 fiction respond to current fears of technological and/or natural annihilation? What are the factors determining pre-canonical status for the texts on this syllabus, and how can we understand the new circulation of global capital and cultural value? Students will consider the following concepts: virtual fiction; cloning, the post-human, and dystopian responses to the possibility of a genetically engineered future; alternative modes of narration; the figure of the artist manqué; ghostwriting as a narrative technique (and as a 21^st-century replacement for the omniscient narrator); detective fiction; fictions of terrorism and the politics of post-9/11 vulnerability; the new Bildungsroman; the author business, and the influence of book clubs and literary prizes such as the Man Booker. 
 

472C Joyce/Nabokov

Instructor
Kuzmanovich

Why a seminar on Joyce/Nabokov?   Like most seminars, this one requires intensive attention to the themes and techniques of  major writers.  These two long dead writers consists of their still having in print almost all the books they’ve written,  with those books provoking over 10,000 critical pieces just since 1963.  Joyce’s influence is acknowledged by Samuel Beckett, Jorge Luis Borges, Anthony Burgess, Philip K. Dick, Umberto Eco, William Faulkner, Arthur Miller, Raymond Queneau, Philip Roth, Salman Rushdie, Tom Stoppard, and Derek Walcott while Martin Amis,  John Barth, Paul Bowles, Italo Calvino, Bobby Ann Mason, James Merrill, Thomas Pynchon, W.G. Sebald, Zadie Smith, Mark Strand,  Amy Tan, and Richard Wilbur mention Nabokov’s, and probably Joyce’s by way of Nabokov.

Method:  We will concentrate on (1) their styles (Joyce’s “High Modernist” and Nabokov’s supposed “post-modernist”/”metafictional”/”intertextual” one) since the grit in these men’s words has gotten under the skin of many a reader with an innovative critical approach; (2) their tendencies to generate their respective narrative authority from events in their own lives, especially their respective experiences of exile; (3) their depictions of Love in its various forms (including the loss of it); (4) the absenting presence of the big bogey, Death; and (5) the last member of that robust triumvirate, Art. 

Goals:   A foretaste of mature and thoughtful reading; confidence that you can do independent, original,  and careful scholarship on even the most challenging writing.

But is this class really for you?  If you believe that certain words or subjects should be off-limits to writers or readers, this is not the class for you.  Ulysses and Lolita each continue to sell well over 100,000 copies per year, yet they not only contain but also provoke language and situations which some students may find objectionable.  This is a class for those students who not only possess the already uncommon share of discipline, imagination, memory, and attention to details vouchsafed to most who choose Davidson, but who are also blessed with an ability to heft another’s words and deliver and withstand therapeutic non-rancorous badgering especially on the topics of  suspending disbelief in the transfigurative power of art and the (ir)relevance of contemporary critical theory. 

Texts: 0-14-024774-2 Joyce,  Dubliners; 670-0 180301; Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as Young Man; 0-19-511029-3 Fargnoli: James Joyce A-Z 0-394-74312-1; Joyce: Ulysses, Gabler Edition;  0-679-72725-6 Nabokov, Gift; 1-883011-18-3 Novels and Memoirs; 1-883011-19-1 Novels 1955-1962 0-679-72997-6; Nabokov,  Stories  of Vladimir Nabokov; 052153643X; Connolly, The Cambridge Companion to Nabokov (Recommended Only); 0-679-72609-8 Nabokov: Strong Opinions (Recommended Only); 978-0-3-0-7-27189-1Nabokov, The Original of Laura (Recommended Only)

Prerequisites & Notes
Juniors and Seniors only. 

ENG 483 - Black Literary Theory (=AFR 383)

(Cross-listed with AFR 383)

This course will bring together readings both literary and critical/theoretical, beginning with Frantz Fanon’s seminal Black Skin, White Masks (1952). Taking Fanon as its point of departure, then, this course will necessarily turn to a discussion of the recent discourse on Afro-pessimism and black optimism, attempting to introduce students to issues and questions of race, race relations, anti-black racism, black sociality, the universality of whiteness, the fungibility of the black body, and of the vulnerability and precarity of black life; and together we will think more closely about how the complex and “unthinkable” histories of slavery, colonialism, and the Middle Passage, for examples, continue to challenge the representational limits and potentialities of traditional literary genres and modes of emplotment. In addition to Fanon, authors will include Orlando Patterson, Toni Morrison, Hortense Spillers, Saidiya Hartman, Frank Wilderson, Jared Sexton, and Fred Moten.

Satisfies a requirement in the Africana Studies major.
Counts as a senior seminar and fulfills the Diversity requirement for the English major.
Counts as a literature elective for the Global Literary Theory interdisciplinary minor.
Satisfies the cultural diversity requirement.

ENG 487 - Seminar: Legal Fiction

The principal claim of English 487 is that a trial is a text that can be read in much the same way that any other text can be read. Indeed, modern trials are in effect storytelling contests, with two competing “narrators” telling two versions of the same story to a captive audience. Understanding how, when, and to whom this story can be told takes some effort, however, because the language of trials is not the same as literary language and the conventions of legal storytelling are not literary conventions. Nevertheless, a great deal of contemporary literary theory offers genuine insight into the kinds of fictions that get constructed in a courtroom. This seminar tests a number of hypotheses about legal fictions, offers direct observation of some real trials in progress, and asks students to undertake research in the interdisciplinary areas where legal studies and literary studies overlap.
 

ENG 495 - Seminar: Cleopatra

Cleopatra is one of the most iconic women of all time.  Her personal history rivals in interest the history of her appropriation by various Western cultures in various time periods.  This course begins with her biography, which entails her very first public images, both those she herself projected and those that Augustan Romans fashioned.  When Shakespeare created his own image of her in Antony and Cleopatra by adapting and subverting the Roman Plutarch’s rendition of her as the toxic seductress of Marc Antony, a second icon entered the historical panorama.  Now the English playwright was subject to adaptation and appropriation by such competitive literary figures as Restoration playwright John Dryden and, later, George Bernard Shaw.  Centuries after Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, Cleopatra herself endures as an icon who attracts icons, none more notable than the glamorous Elizabeth Taylor, whose recently re-released film portrayal of the Egyptian queen is now over fifty years old.  Throughout this course, students will explore how various iconic figures have appropriated Cleopatra- as a woman, an exotic, and a royal- for their audiences: what does a particular version of Cleopatra reveal or suggest about the historical period or social milieu in which she emerges?  What is her relationship to her appropriator?  The course ends with a contemplation of Cleopatra and Taylor as iconic complements.  Are they femmes fatales or feminists? 

Satisfies a major and minor requirement in Gender and Sexuality Studies.
Fulfills the Historical Approaches requirement of the English major.

Prerequisites & Notes
Not open to first-year students and sophomores without instructor’s permission.  

ENG 498 - Seminar: Senior Honors Research

ENG 499 - Seminar: Senior Honors Thesis

ENV 120 - Introduction to Environmental Geology

A study of basic geologic principles and critical issues in environmental geology on a global scale. Topics to be covered can include: minerals, rock types and cycles, earthquakes and tectonics, volcanoes, mass wasting, stream systems, coastlines, soils, water resources, mineral and rock resources, fossil fuels, and climate change. Generally, the class will divide time between learning introductory geologic principles and applying those principles to understand environmental issues associated with geology.

Students entering 2012 and after: satisfies the Natural Science distribution requirement.
Students entering before 2012: satisfies Laboratory Science distribution requirement.
Satisfies depth or breadth course requirement in Natural Science Track of the Environmental Studies major or interdisciplinary minor.

ENV 150 - Environmental Analysis with Econ Lens

The course will introduce students to thinking about interdisciplinary environmental issues as an economist does.  We will concentrate on a few economics themes and use topical issues to motivate and to illustrate interdisciplinary economic analyses.Note: The course does not earn economics credit and does not replace the Economics 101 prerequisite for any of the three Economics environmental courses (ECO 226, 235, or 236).  

Satisfies a major requirement in Environmental Studies

Satisfies a minor requirement in Environmental Studies

Satisfies the Liberal Studies Distribution Requirement

ENV 160 - Environmental Justice

This course introduces students to the concepts, contexts, and conflicts of environmental justice, both in the U.S. and globally.  After covering some general history and theoretical frameworks, the course is organized according to six cases studies (Love Canal, Hurricane Katrina, Hydro-Quebec, US migrant farmworkers, Bhopal, and Ogoniland).  Throughout this interdisciplinary course based in the environmental humanities, students will make connections among various kinds of information sources (literary, documentary, ecocritical, theoretical, ethical, historical, etc.).  For the final course project, students will create their own environmental justice case study, based on a case not covered in class, and with their choice of relevant literary text, documentary film, and background readings.

Satisfies a requirement for the Environmental Studies major

Satisfies a requirement for the Environmental Studies minor

Satisfies the Liberal Studies requirement

Satisfies the Cultural Diversity requirement

ENV 181 - Food and Sustainability: Introduction to the Farm at Davidson

Did you know your college has a student farm? In this course, we will combine hands-on experience learning to grow food at the Farm at Davidson with readings, lectures and discussions that address local food systems. Our goal will be to critically analyze some of the issues facing our local food system through positive engagement with sustainable solutions. This course serves as a prerequisite for the spring research seminar where students will have an opportunity to conduct research at the Farm.

Satisfies depth and breadth course requirement in the Social Science track of the Environmental Studies major or interdisciplinary minor.

ENV 201 - Environmental Science

Overview of the scientific concepts, principles, processes, and methodologies required to understand how ecosystems work. This knowledge will be applied to selected environmental problems to help students understand the scientific basis, estimate the risks associated, and evaluate alternative solutions for resolving and/or preventing them.  One laboratory meeting per week.

Satisfies a requirement for the Environmental Studies major or interdisciplinary minor.
Students entering 2012 and after: satisfies the Natural Science distribution requirement.
Students entering before 2012: satisfies Laboratory Science distribution requirement.

ENV 202 - Environmental Social Sciences

Overview of social science approaches to environmental issues, with problem-based and topical approaches to the study of interactions between society and the environment. This course teaches students to integrate concepts and the qualitative and quantitative methods of the social sciences (primarily anthropology, economics, geography, psychology, political science, and sociology) in interdisciplinary analyses of environmental issues.

Satisfies a requirement for the Environmental Studies major or interdisciplinary minor.
Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought distribution requirement.

ENV 203 - Environmental Humanities

Overview of humanistic approaches to environmental issues, including perspectives from art, cultural studies, history, literature, philosophy, and religion.  This course emphasizes humanistic methodologies such as close reading and analysis of primary and secondary materials in both written and visual forms.

Satisfies a requirement for the Environmental Studies major or interdisciplinary minor.
Students entering 2012 and after: satisfies the Liberal Studies distribution requirement.

ENV 210 - Introduction to Environmental Literature: Food Literature

This course is for Foodies, Ag Activists, Farm Fans, and anyone who is interested in literature about food from a variety of perspectives.  We’ll read fiction, poetry, and nonfiction about the pleasures of eating, the cultural and aesthetic significance of food, rural and urban agriculture, and food justice.  Field trips will include farm visits, and students will participate in hands-on, community-based assignments connected to the college’s Food and Sustainability project. 

Students entering 2012 and after: satisfies the Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric distribution requirement.
Satisfies depth or breadth course requirement in Humanities Track of the Environmental Studies major or interdisciplinary minor.

ENV 220 - Climate Systems: Present and Past

The climate of the Earth is changing. It has always changed. It will continue to change. How do we assess the impact of humanity on climate? We need to understand how our Earth system works, now and in the past, if we expect to predict our climatic future. This course looks at the current climate system and explores the Earth archives that illuminate our climatic past.  Topics covered include: The Earth energy budget; the role of carbon dioxide and methane in short-term and long-term climate cycles; orbital cycles and the ice ages; Earth as a snowball; the Greenhouse Earth; ice cores and tree rings; oceanic and atmospheric circulation systems; and the impact of human activity on climate. Class discussions, demonstrations, and exercises provide opportunities for students to apply their knowledge and practice analytical techniques.

Satisfies depth and breadth course requirement in the Natural Science track of the Environmental Studies major or interdisciplinary minor.

Satisfies a distribution requirement in Liberal Studies

ENV 232 - Introduction to Environmental Health with Community-Based Learning (=HHV 232)

Students will apply biological, chemical and epidemiological content to environmental health case studies and community-based learning projects. This is an introductory course designed to expose students to different scientific disciplines within the context of environmental health.

Satisfies an interdisciplinary minor requirement in Health and Human Values.
Satisfies depth or breadth course requirement in Natural Science Track of the Environmental Studies major or interdisciplinary minor.
Satisfies the Liberal Studies distribution requirement.
 

Prerequisites & Notes
ENV 232 may not be taken for credit after ENV 233.

ENV 233 - Introduction to Environmental Health with Laboratory-Based Learning (=HHV 233)

Students will apply biological, chemical and epidemiological content to environmental health case studies and laboratory projects. This is an introductory course designed to expose students to different scientific disciplines within the context of environmental health. ENV 233 may not be taken for credit after ENV 232.

Satisfies an interdisciplinary minor requirement in Health and Human Values.
Satisfies the Natural Science distribution requirement.
Satisfies depth or breadth course requirement in Natural Science Track of the Environmental Studies major or interdisciplinary minor.

ENV 235 - The Ocean Environment

Covering 71% of the surface, yet mostly unexplored, the Earth’s oceans are a source of food, hurricanes, used as a wastebasket by human kind, and a great unknown in our climate future. This introductory course covers the formation of ocean basins; the composition and origin of seawater; currents, tides, and waves; the ocean-atmosphere connection; coastal processes; the deep-sea environment; productivity and resources; marine pollution; and the influence of oceans on climate. The class will focus on how oceanic systems work with class discussions, demonstrations, and exercises providing opportunities for students to apply their knowledge and practice analytical techniques.

Satisfies depth and breadth course requirement in the Natural Science track of the Environmental Studies major or interdisciplinary minor.
Satisfies Liberal Studies distribution requirement.

ENV 240 - Indian Environment and Ecology

Staff

This course, offered as part of the Davidson-in-India program, is an introduction to and comparative analysis of a variety of ecosystems in south India. Topics include tropical ecosystems’ structure and dynamics, past and present human interaction with the landscape, adaptations of flora and fauna, and natural history, life history and human interactions and influences.

Satisfies depth and breadth course requirement in the Natural Science track of the Environmental Studies major or interdisciplinary minor.
Students entering 2012 and after: satisfies Liberal Studies distribution requirement.
Students entering before 2012: satisfies natural science without a lab distribution requirement

ENV 250 - Human Geography Theory and Research

The core of geographic thought is a spatial understanding of nature-society interactions, and knowledge and theoretically informed practice that synthesizes across nature/society divides. The first part of this course explores major thinkers and key theoretical developments in the field of human geography, tracing the evolution of the discipline from its origins in classical thought to contemporary cutting edge theoretical discourses. This course explores geographic thought, various ways to ask geographic research questions, and appropriate methodologies to collect, analyze, and represent geographic data, through both quantitative and qualitative traditions. By exploring both theoretical underpinnings and current methodologies, this course provides insights into a profound discipline concerned with the myriad relationships between people and nature.

Students entering 2012 and after: satisfies Social-Scientific distribution requirement.
Satisfies depth or breadth course requirement in Social Sciences Track of the Environmental Studies major or interdisciplinary minor.

Not offered in 2016-2017.

ENV 256 - Environmental History

This course covers environmental interactions large and small, tracing the changing ways that Americans have shaped and thought about the places where they live and work. Course focuses on US environmental history from the colonial period to the present, including national parks, preservation, conservation, and wilderness; the relationship between the US and the rest of the world; and debates over what nature is, who it is for, and how it should be used.

Satisfies depth and breadth course requirement in the Humanities track of the Environmental Studies major or interdisciplinary minor.
Satisfies a major requirement in History.
Satisfies the Historical Thought distribution requirement

ENV 283 - Global Food Systems

Creating a sustainable world food system requires that we address both food security and sustainable food production in tandem, a clear case of intersecting challenges or “wicked” problems. Wicked problems are those issues that have so many relationships of causality and correlation that researchers and policy-makers sometimes do not know where to begin to address them. In this course, we will begin to investigate some of the ways we can understand and address the challenges of producing and provisioning food using the lens of sustainability.

Satisfies depth and breadth course requirement in the Social Science track of the Environmental Studies major or interdisciplinary minor.

ENV 284 - Latinxs and Environment (=LAS 284)

In this course, students will examine a broad range of Latinx environmental experiences across time and place in the United States.  Taking the environment as a key category of analysis, students will explore the ways that the natural and built environments shape, and are shaped by, Latinx culture.  Looking to important rural, urban, suburban, and wilderness sites across the United States, students will construct a nuanced “picture” of how Latinx environments have changes over time.  With our methodology placed squarely in historical and visual analysis, we will frequently engage interdisciplinary approaches to enhance our understanding of key issues including: labor, migration, public health, community and neighborhood building, transportation networks, natural resource development, education, and tourism.  Students will be exposed to a wide range of human expressions of place, such as art, literature, and activism, to gain a better understanding of how Latinxs have represented their environmental experiences.

Satisfies the Humanities track of the Environmental Studies major and minor.
Satisfies a requirement in the Latin American Studies major.
Fulfills the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement.
 

ENV 285 - Indigenous Perspectives on the Environment

It is often posited that indigenous peoples possess a different relationship to and cosmology of the environment, of nature, of the natural world. In this course, we will interrogate this assumption through a series of case studies that examine indigenous experiences of natural and built environments.  Our guiding questions as we examine these case studies are: Does this collectivity express a unique perspective on the environment? How does that shape their relationship to their environments and the world at large? Are those relationships necessarily more sustainable? How can the natural world be managed according to these principles, or have we reached an impasse between resource extraction and resource renewal? We will use indigenous perspectives and experiences to examine issues that affect all of us: nonrenewable resource extraction, climate change, human-animal-plant relationships, the practice of science, and the limits to economic development.

You will leave the course with the ability to explain:
1) The adaptations of indigenous peoples as they confront threats to their well-being that have arisen through environmental misuse of the earth
2) Conflicts between indigenous dwellers, colonizing states and extractive industries happening on each continent
3) The conflicts and compromises between indigenous groups themselves as they struggle to make their ways in late capitalism
4) Various perspectives in the social sciences that conceptualize how we understand our natural worlds, including the ontologies and epistemologies of western science and indigenous traditional knowledges

Satisfies the depth component of the social science track and the breadth component of the natural science and humanities tracks of the Environmental Studies major.
Satisfies the social science requirement of the Environmental Studies interdisciplinary minor.
Satisfies the cultural diversity requirement.

ENV 290 - Deserts

Deserts are among the most hostile environments on earth for the survival of humans, yet their allure has resulted in profound impacts on civilizations. Religions view deserts paradoxically as places of isolation and of deep spiritual connection. Artists and writers exploit these sparse landscapes of seemingly infinite vistas to highlight the singular aesthetics of this (allegedly) empty wilderness.  Geologists have long asserted that deserts are so unique that they require their own set of processes to explain the landforms. Climatologists realize that deserts are not local phenomena, but rather are globally forced features based on worldwide circulation and heating patterns.  In this transdisciplinary and team-taught course, students will learn about deserts from multiple perspectives and through approaches both humanistic and scientific. 

Satisfies depth or breadth course requirement in Natural Science or Humanities track of the Environmental Studies major and interdisciplinary minor.
Satisfies the Liberal Studies distribution requirement.

ENV 295 - Independent Study

Under the direction of an ENV Core faculty member, the student learns environmental studies material through a structure that primarily resembles a typical course or through independent research at an introductory level.

ENV 303 - Research Seminar in Food and Agriculture Studies

In this course, you will gain hands-on experience conducting social science research in the discipline of food and agriculture studies. Our research site is The Farm at Davidson College. Our goal is to design and implement a group study that measures the Farm holistically along the three dimensions of sustainability: environmental, economic and social sustainability. As a student in this class, you will be held to high expectations. Not only will you be responsible for reading assigned materials, you will be expected to conduct yourself as a professional scholar responsible for developing research questions, collecting, analyzing, storing and presenting data in an ethical, confidential and transparent manner. Our course will culminate in a presentation of our findings to the Davidson College community. Students in this course are expected to already have a working knowledge of the Farm at Davidson College. Please contact the instructor if you would like to enroll in the course and need extra material to familiarize yourself with the Farm.

Satisfies a requirement in the social science track in the Environmental Studies major.
Satisfies the social science breath course in the Environmental Studies Interdisciplinary minor.

ENV 315 - Analytical Chemistry I (= CHE 220)

Topics in chemical equilibrium, electrochemistry, spectroscopy, chromatography, and nuclear chemistry, with applications in biological, environmental, forensic, archaeological, and consumer chemistry. Laboratory experiments include qualitative and quantitative analyses using volumetric, electrochemical, chromatographic, and spectroscopic methods.

Satisfies the Natural Science distribution requirement.

Satisfies depth or breadth course requirement in Natural Science Track of the Environmental Studies major or interdisciplinary minor.

ENV 330 - Surface Geology and Landforms

A detailed survey of processes in surface geology including weathering, soils, landslides, stream systems, glaciers, and climate as well as differences between these processes in various environments.  The class will split time between learning and discussion of geomorphic principles and practicing them in the field.  The class will be roughly based around the collection of new field data for an overarching class project.

Satisfies depth or breadth course requirement in the Natural Science Track of the Environmental Studies major or interdisciplinary minor.

Prerequisites & Notes
ENV 120 or ENV 201 or instructor permission.

ENV 335 - Soil Science

Understanding geologic landscapes and surficial processes requires a multidisciplinary understanding of soils.  This course will examine soils with a focus on soil-forming processes and morphology.  In the classroom, students will learn the terminology and concepts of soil genesis, soil taxonomy, and soil morphology.  These concepts will then be applied in the field so that students can learn to identify and interpret horizonation and morphological characteristics. 

Satisfies depth or breadth course requirement in the Natural Science Track of the Environmental Studies major or interdisciplinary minor.

Prerequisites & Notes
ENV 120 or ENV 201 or instructor permission.

ENV 356 - Diversity & Extinction Analysis (= BIO 356)

This group investigation course focuses on the analysis of patterns of biodiversity and biodiversity loss. Students conduct literature reviews to compile data on biodiversity and/or extinction events to identify patterns of biodiversity, biodiversity function, and extinctions, with the goal of understanding the causes and consequences of biodiversity variation and loss. An emphasis is placed on the analysis of biodiversity data and the development of novel analyses to address issues such as sampling effects, extinction bias, random extinction, and emergent properties of biodiversity. The course culminates with a group project that addresses student-driven questions via the application of analyses developed during the semester.

Counts as an elective in the Data Science interdisciplinary minor.

Prerequisites & Notes
Successful completion of BIO 112/114 and BIO 227 or 321 is required.  Completion of BIO 240 is recommended.

ENV 366 - Renew Natural Resources: Science and Policy (= BIO 366, ANT 382)

This interdisciplinary seminar course focuses on developing a scientific understanding of renewable natural resources such as fisheries and forests and how resources are then used, overused, managed, and conserved by humans.  The course primarily consider smodern methods of resource management, including adaptive and ecosystem-based management.  The course builds upon knowledge gained in the foundation courses of Anthropology, Biology, or Environmental Studies.  It addresses natural resource and environmental issues from ecosystem and policy perspectives.  Through case studies, readings, class discussions, and knowledge construction, students gain deep knowledge of ecosystem ecology and management policies and approaches.  Students then apply their knowledge to identify management principles that are consistent with a more holistic ecosystem approach and develop a case study of one natural resource and how it is managed.

Satisfies depth or breadth course requirement in Natural or Social Science track of the Environmental Studies major or interdisciplinary minor or the breadth requirement of the Humanities track.

ENV 367 - Ecotoxicology (= BIO 367)

Ecotoxicology is the science that examines the fate and effects of toxicants in and on ecological systems.  While toxicology examines effects at molecular, cell, and organism levels, effects at higher levels are not always predictable based on findings at lower levels. Ecotoxicology integrates effects at multiple levels of biological organization.

Satisfies depth or breadth course requirement in Natural Science Track of the Environmental Studies major or interdisciplinary minor.

Prerequisites & Notes
BIO 111 and 112 (or 113 and 114) or ENV 201 required and permission of the instructor required; CHE 115 recommended.

ENV 395 - Independent Research

ENV 495 - Independent Research

ENV 497 - Honors Research

ENV 498 - Environmental Studies Capstone I

In collaboration with their capstone mentor, students will formally propose and carry out a project based on fieldwork and/or substantive library research in the area of the student’s depth component track - Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, Humanities, or self-designed.  Projects will demonstrate an integration of the methods and theory appropriate to the student’s depth component by investigating a question or problem that is significant, situated, and original in its application within the context of Environmental Studies.

Satisfies major requirement in Environmental Studies.

Prerequisites & Notes
ENV 201, ENV 202, ENV 203. Offered in the Fall. 

ENV 499 - Environmental Studies Capstone II

The goal of this course is to integrate the depth and breadth components of the Environmental Studies major as a complement to Capstone I.  The students will integrate information, concepts and methods learned in their previous courses to explore an environmental theme through an interdisciplinary lens, over a range of geographical scales and accounting for a variety of perspectives.

Satisfies major requirement in Environmental Studies.
 

Prerequisites & Notes
ENV 498. Offered in the Spring.

ETH 236 - Ethics and Warfare

This course examines key philosophical and religious concepts in the history of moral deliberations about war, modern analyses of the diverse and sometimes conflicting moral principles that those traditions have bequeathed to us, and theories about why human beings engage in mass killing. Students will develop an appreciation for the richness of ethical thinking about war, and enhance their skills in applying moral philosophical reasoning to con­tem­porary wars. Questions that will be tackled in readings, class discussions and exams include: Do people have a right not to be killed? Is that right absolute, or not? If it’s an absolute right, how can war ever be justified? If that right is not absolute, can we nonetheless establish sensible limits on when and how war may be waged? Can we clearly distinguish between combatants and non­com­batants? If so, may noncombatants ever be directly targeted in war? If not, may they be threatened in order to deter attacks against us? Or is that equivalent to terrorism? What’s the right way to balance risks to noncombatants vs. risks to our troops?

Students entering 2012 and after: satisfies the Philosophical and Religious Perspectives distribution requirement.

ETH 237 - Business Ethics

What does society have a right to expect from corporations in the realm of moral respon­si­bility?  Do corporate leaders have any obligations beyond serving the interests of stockholders and obeying the law?  Do they have moral obligations to other “stakeholders” such as employees, consumers, suppliers, members of communities living near factories, et al.?  This course will address these and other related questions.

Students entering 2012 and after: satisfies the Philosophical and Religious Perspectives distribution requirement.

ETH 238 - Ethics in Professional Life

This course is intended  to foster your awareness of ethical concerns across a wide range of professions (such as law, medicine, journalism, and business); to enable you to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of various moral beliefs and ethical arguments relative to professional life; and to reinforce your personal sense of compassion and fairness in the context of your future professional roles. Does loyalty to one’s professional clients permit one to ignore at least some ethical obligations that the rest of us would be condemned for violating? What counts as a conflict of interest in various professional contexts? How should physicians deal with tensions between preventing avoidable harms to their patients and respecting their autonomous choices? How far may lawyers go in protecting their clients’ interests? Must they defend clients they know are guilty? May they undermine the credibility of witnesses they know are testifying truthfully? Are business managers solely obligated to maximize stockholders’ wealth? Or do they have moral duties to other “stakeholders” as well?

Students entering 2012 and after: satisfies the Philosophical and Religious Perspectives distribution requirement.

ETH 239 - The Moral Status of Humans and Other Animals

There is a general consensus today that all people share a set of basic rights, or what might also be called full moral status. But we are less likely to agree about the moral status of human beings at the edges of life, such as early embryos (may we use them to extract stem cells, or freeze them indefinitely?) and individuals who are permanently unconscious (should they be considered dead?). We also have not reached a consensus about the moral status of various non-human animals: some cultures revere all living things, while others grant non-human animals little or no independent moral status at all. Some contemporary theorists argue that any sentient animals (capable of suffering) deserve to have their interests count in our moral deliberations; among them are many proponents of vegetarianism who regard our treatment of food animals as unnecessarily cruel. A few philosophers go so far as to argue that highly intelligent animals like chimpanzees and dolphins have rights like ours, and should not be kept in zoos or used in biomedical experiments. This course will explore these and other fascinating ethical questions, drawing in part on recent findings in neuroscience and zoology.

Students entering 2012 and after: satisfies the Philosophical and Religious Perspectives distribution requirement.

FMS 220 - Introduction to Film and Media Studies

An introduction to the history and analysis of screen media, with an emphasis on film (feature films, documentaries, animation, and experimental) together with an examination of ways cinematic techniques of storytelling do and do not find their ways into later media like television and video games. Lectures and discussions supplemented by theoretical readings and weekly screenings.

Satisfies the Visual and Performing Arts distribution requirement.
Required course for fulfilling the Film and Media Studies Interdisciplinary Minor.

FMS 321 - Interactive Digital Narratives

A close study of selected video games using an interdisciplinary blend of methodologies culled from cultural studies, film and media studies theory, literary criticism, and history.

Film and Media Studies Interdisciplinary Minor Credit.
Satisfies the Visual and Performing Arts distribution requirement.

Prerequisites & Notes
FMS 220 or ENG 293.

FMS 323 - Special Topics in Digital Media and Film

An intensive investigation of digital media and film production.  Screenings, discussions, and readings will explore the theory and practice of a selected cinematic tradition.  Significant production component will include videography, non- linear video editing, lighting, and sound recording.

Satisfies Film and Media Studies Interdisciplinary Minor requirement.
Satisfies Visual and Performing Arts distribution requirement.
 

FMS 385 - Video Game Music (= MUS 385)

Historical, stylistic, and analytic study of video game music from its origins in the arcade games of the 1970s to the present. Emphases on close readings of music in relation to gameplay, and vice versa. Includes training in digital audio manipulation to create sound design and musical sequences.

Satisfies the Liberal Studies distribution requirement.

Prerequisites & Notes
Normally offered in alternate years; not offered in 2016-17.

FMS 421 - Seminar in Film and Media Studies: After Birth of a Nation

This seminar will take the occasion of the 100th anniversary of D. W. Griffith’s controversial film The Birth of a Nation (1915) as an invitation to conduct a close investigation of the original film and its impact on film history and U.S. culture along with a study of this film and the history and representation of racial identities in U.S. media. The historical scope of the seminar will reach back to the nineteenth century and up to the present, with attention given to Oscar Micheaux’s cinematic response (Within Our Gates) and the entire twentieth century history of what have been called “race movies.” Projects will include both scholarly writing along with production exercises involving editing, remixing, and re-composing. Weekly screenings expected outside of class.

NOTE: This seminar will fulfill the 400-level capstone requirement for the FMS minor in 2015-16.

Prerequisites & Notes
FMS 220. (Fall)

FRE 101 - Elementary French I

FRE 102 - Elementary French II

FRE 103 - Intensive Beginning French (2 credits)

FRE 201 - Intermediate French Through Cinema

Satisfies distribution requirement in foreign language.

Prerequisites & Notes
French 102 or 103-104 at Davidson, or placement exam.

FRE 212 - Oral Expression, Listening Comprehension and Practical Phonetics

Discussion, continuing oral practice, and corrective pronunciation. Requires participation in weekly AT session.

Prerequisites & Notes
French 201, placement examination, or permission of the instructor. (Fall and Spring)

FRE 220 - Literature and Madness

FRE 221 - Visions of the City

Satisfies distribution requirement in Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric.

Prerequisites & Notes
French 210 or above. (Not offered 2016-17.)

FRE 223 - Childhood and Youth

FRE 224 - The Return in Francophone Literature

Is it possible to go home again?  Through poetry, novel, graphic novel, and film, we examine how francophone authors try to answer this question.  Readings and films from Césaire, Laferrière, Mabanckou, Teno, Gomis, Belkaïd, and Burton.

FRE 225 - Rich and Poor

FRE 226 - Geographies of Desire

Desire is a passion that has driven men and women to build and destroy empires, and has thus been a topic and subject in French literature since medieval times. This course examines the various forms of desire, and maps the spaces and places in which it is expressed, from France to the confines of the colonial Empire and more recently the Francophone world.

Prerequisites & Notes
(Not offered 2016-17.)

FRE 227 - French Writers: Love Hurts

We all love love.  Not surprisingly, French writers are passionate about it.  In this course,  we will read literature where love occurs and is sought.  But for the best French writers, oftentimes love hurts.  In this course, we will follow how this happens, the many different versions of love, and,  across four centuries of great literature,  how writers and fictional characters  navigate through it.

Reading in a foreign language is a challenge for all of us.  One of my promises is to give you the guidance and tools to be an effective and efficient reader in French literature. 

No previous experience in reading French literature is required.

Satisfies distribution requirement in Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric.

Prerequisites & Notes
French 201 or above.

FRE 228 - Introduction to Francophone Literature Abroad

Satisfies distribution requirement in Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric.

FRE 229 - Introduction to French and/or Francophone Literature Abroad

Satisfies distribution requirement in Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric.

FRE 230 - Québec Through Film

An introduction to contemporary Québec society as portrayed in film, with a focus on questions of individual and collective identities.  Students will develop critical skills as readers of film as they examine feature films, documentaries, and animated short subjects.  Typical directors include Arcand, Dolan, Jutra, Pool and Vallée. 

Satisfies a requirement in the French and Francophone Studies major and minor.
Satisfies Visual and Performing Arts distribution requirement.

Prerequisites & Notes
FRE 201 or FRE 212.
FRE 230 is dual-listed with FRE 360.  Students who have completed FRE 220 or above must enroll in FRE 360.

FRE 241 - Poetry, Passion, Painting

Poetry by Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, Heather Dohollau, Anne Hébert. Close Reading. Resonances with impressionists and other art. Dynamics of image, rhythms, sounds, time, space, emotions, poetic voice.

Satisfies distribution requirement in Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric.

Prerequisites & Notes
FRE 241 is dual-listed with FRE 341. FRE 241 is open to students coming out of FRE 201 or FRE 212 or the equivalents. Students who have completed FRE 220 or above must enroll in FRE 341. FRE 241 does not count in lieu of the requirement in “Introduction to Literature” for departmental majors and minors. (Fall)

FRE 242 - Autobiographies, Journals, Diaries (=FRE 321)

Reading and discussion of first-person narratives from a variety of periods. Typical authors: Diderot, Guillerargues, Graffigny, Camus, Gide, Duras.

Satisfies distribution requirement in Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric.

Prerequisites & Notes
FRE 201 or FRE 212. Students who have completed FRE 220 or above must enroll in FRE 321.

FRE 260 - Contemporary France

FRE 287 - Studies in Civilization and Culture Abroad

FRE 288 - Studies in Civilization and Culture Abroad

FRE 295 - Independent Study for Non-Majors

Independent Study for Non-Majors

Prerequisites & Notes
Permission of instructor required.

FRE 295, 296, 297 - Independent Study for Non-Majors

FRE 313 - Advanced Grammar Review and Written Expression

Advanced work in written French.

Prerequisites & Notes
French 220 or above. (Spring)
 

FRE 320 - Husbands, Wives, and Lovers

FRE 321 - Autobiographies, Journals, Diaries (=FRE 242)

Reading and discussion of first-person narratives from a variety of periods. Typical authors: Diderot, Guillerargues, Graffigny, Camus, Gide, Duras.

Satisfies distribution requirement in Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric.

Prerequisites & Notes
Any course numbered French 220 or above, or permission of the instructor. (Spring)