ELL324American Literature
2 credits
This course offers an introduction to various forms of American literature in the 19th and 20th century. It traces the relationship between the intellectual, political and cultural background of American poetry and the novel. The course focuses on major figures such as Emerson, Poe, Whitman, Melville, Hawthorne, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Pound, and Eliot. The course leads students to gain awareness in the multicultural nature of American literature, as well as with the specificity of the American experience.
ELL422Comparative Literature
2 credits
This course is designed to focus on major issues in literature, such as gender, racial, ethnic, religious, political, colonial and postcolonial, cultural and multicultural. The course focuses on the universality of the human experience in the dialectic of the Self and Other, of East and West, of Male and Female, of Master and Slave. Accordingly, the course examines works from different countries, periods, and cultures that could be selected for study to illustrate any of the above issues, such as works by Joseph Conrad (United Kingdom), David Malouf (Australia), William Faulkner (America), Chinua Achebe (Nigeria), Gibran Khalil Gibran, Amin Rihani (Lebanon), and Najeeb Mahfouz (Egypt). The course aims to raise awareness of the interrelationship between literature and society in all of its facets, and to sharpen the ability of students to analyze cultural nuances and subversions.
ELL322Development of English Poetry
3 credits | Pre-requisite: ELL221
The course traces the development of English poetry in the 19th and 20th century through an indepth study of its major figures. The focus of the course is to delineate the changes in poetic modes and sensibility, from Romanticism to Modernism, and in the literary theory which permeated the period and affected directly and indirectly the poetry of the 20th century. Along these lines, the course will take a close look at works of poets such as Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, the Nineties, Yeats, Eliot, Auden, and Larkin, among others.
ELL323Development of the English Novel
3 credits | Pre-requisite: ELL310
This course offers students a close study of the development of the 20th century novel as an outcome and reaction to 19th century novel. The course focuses on how the writers of the early 20th century abandoned the previous literary conventions and adopted new ones in their under standing of the role of the novelist. Social, psychological, moral, literary, political, and philosophical change called for experimentation in form, in narrative techniques, in characterization, and in style. The course gives special attention to some of the major novelists, such as Hardy, Conrad, Lawrence, Forster, Woolf, and Joyce. The course enables students to analyze the formalistic and thematic concerns of the novelists of the period.
ELL313English Morphology and Syntax
3 credits
This course introduces the basic concepts of syntax and morphosyntax, considering both functional and formal aspects. It introduces students to the study of the meaningful components of words and sentences, and of the principles by which parts of words are organized into larger lexical units (morphology), and by which words pattern into phrases and sentences (syntax). Data from English and other languages will be analyzed, in order to illustrate how language is structured.
ELL321History of the English Language
3 credits
This course offers a broad study of the development of the English language from its beginnings to the present time. The course addresses the relationship between the history of society and the history of sounds, inflection, and vocabulary of the English language. The course also surveys English grammar from the point of view of modern linguistic scholarship or transformational grammar. The course aims to help students understand how the English language should be used, rather than simply how it is used.
ELL311Introduction to Drama
3 credits
The course offers both a historical survey and a literary history of the development of drama. It concentrates on critical analysis of the distinguishing features of the different genres and subgenres in drama: tragedy, comedy, tragicomedy, morality, Elizabethan, Jacobean, comedy of manners, the wellmade play, one act play, closet drama, monodrama, superstar play, absurd play, etc. The course also introduces the practical or technical side of the theater by looking at stage conventions and artistry. The course aims at helping students gain awareness of the technicalities involved in the theater, as well as the correlation between the genres of drama and the diction, the characterization, and the stage setting. Students are expected to give presentations on their favorite form and try to write scenes based on themes, characters or forms of their choice.
ELL210Introduction to Linguistics
3 credits
The aim of this course is to introduce the major subdisciplines in linguistics. Topics include the emergence of language, the sounds and sound systems of language, word structure, sentence structure, meaning, language use and variation, language history and language acquisition. The course combines theoretical and descriptive aspects of linguistic analysis as well as the application of basic tools and techniques used in the field.
ELL225Poetry
3 credits
This course is an introduction to the major poetic movements that shaped English poetry. Starting with Plato’s definition of poetry, the course traces the major developments in poetic conventions, modes and genres: Classicism, Neoclassicism, Romanticism, Victorianism, Aestheticism, Modernism (Symbolism, Impressionism, Imagism, Surrealism) and the contemporary experimental movements (Concrete, Beat, Slam). The poetry selections will be used as a vehicle to examine universal themes basic to the human condition, and to investigate these themes as they relate to life experiences. The course also teaches the skills one needs to study poetry with understanding and pleasure. During this course students will interpret, analyze, and critically evaluate representative works of these movements. Using examples from different periods, the students will be able to develop a sense of how poetic modes, genres, and forms change across different periods.
ELL223Sophomore Rhetoric
3 credits
The aim of this course is to enable students to read critically, evaluate what they read and formulate verbal or written opinions based on the best available evidence. It also covers methods of formal argumentation suitable for students majoring in linguistics and literature. During the course students will develop research, writingprocess, and timedwriting skills. They will also use primary and secondary sources to write an effective collegelevel documented expository essay.
ELL425Special Literary Themes
3 credits
The focus of the course is on modern drama which has been preoccupied with expressing the spirit of the modern age. A profound sense of disillusionment, fragmentation and absurdity of human experience pervades the plays of this period. The course investigates the reasons for and the dramatizations of the modern condition by studying European and American drama, illustrated by representative works of the major Irish, American and British playwrights. Although the focus of the course will be on Synge, O'Casey, Beckett, Pinter, Stoppard, O'Neill and Albee, both the precursors (Ibsen, Strindberg, Checkov, and Shaw) and the inheritors of modern drama (Hare, Storey, Mamet, Shepard, etc.) will be introduced. The course aims at helping students gain awareness in the cultural experience of modern drama, and the rendering of the theater as a private space for the playwright’s alienation from the audience and from language itself. It familiarizes students with movements such as Naturalism, Symbolism, Realist, and Absurdist, and how these movements manipulate stage settings, language, and other dramatic features.
ELL413Special Topics in the English Language
2 credits
The aim of this course is to introduce students to topics suggested by their special interests and those of the Faculty or their instructor, and not included in the regular curriculum. Topics may include study of the grammar of a language whose structure is significantly different from English, with special emphasis on problems of interest in the study of linguistic universals. The course aims to give students a detailed examination of the grammar of the English language, be it through its own structure or through the structure of another less familiar language.
ELL222Survey of English Literature I
3 credits | Pre-requisite: ELL211
The course is a close examination of the early beginnings of the novel in the 18th century, culminating with the Gothic School. After introducing the different factors (social, economic, and literary) that brought about the rise of this genre, the students will be introduced to the prevalent modes/techniques as well as the main themes that concerned early novelists such as Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Sterne, and Mary Shelley. Moreover, successful completion of the course will enable students to construct appropriate oral and written statements concerning literary, historical, cultural, and philosophical movements from the classical up to approximately the romantic era.
ELL310Survey of English Literature II
3 credits | Pre-requisite: ELL222
The course offers an indepth analysis of the main characteristics (themes, characters, and techniques of the golden age of the novel: the Victorian period). It focuses on major representative works by such authors as Austen, the Bronte sisters, Eliot, and Hardy. Both the form and the content will be scrutinized in order to highlight the multifaceted nature of the Victorian era and to trace its connection to the 18th and 20th century novel. The course makes students aware of the diversity of the Victorian novel and the various social, intellectual, and religious thoughts that permeated the age.
ELL411The Age of Shakespeare
3 credits
The course is designed to introduce students to a representative sample of Shakespeare's dramatic output. The six plays for study include two comedies, two tragedies, a history play and a romance, covering virtually the entire period during which Shakespeare was active as a playwright. The aim of the course is to provide an understanding of the historical conditions above all the theatrical in which Shakespeare lived and worked.