Kelly Fleming

Each section of these first-year seminars approaches the study of literature through the exploration of a single theme in texts drawn from a variety of literary genres (such as tragedy, comedy, lyric poetry, epic, novel, short story, film and autobiography) and historical periods. Classes are small, offering intensive discussion and close attention to each student's writing. Students in each section are asked to work intensively on composition as part of a rigorous introduction to reading, thinking, speaking and writing about literary texts. During the semester, instructors assign frequent essays and may also require oral presentations, quizzes, examinations and research projects. This course is not open to juniors and seniors without permission of the department chair. Offered every year.

Each section of these first-year seminars approaches the study of literature through the exploration of a single theme in texts drawn from a variety of literary genres (such as tragedy, comedy, lyric poetry, epic, novel, short story, film and autobiography) and historical periods. Classes are small, offering intensive discussion and close attention to each student's writing. Students in each section are asked to work intensively on composition as part of a rigorous introduction to reading, thinking, speaking and writing about literary texts. During the semester, instructors will frequent essays and may also require oral presentations, quizzes, examinations and research projects. This course is not open to juniors and seniors without permission of the department chair. Offered every year.

This course serves as an introduction to British literature and culture of the Restoration and early 18th century (c. 1660-1745). This period witnessed profound national transformations: the restoration of the British monarchy in 1660 with Charles II’s return from exile and the 1707 Act of Union, which joined Scotland to England and Wales. A burgeoning literary marketplace and leisure class facilitated the development of literary forms like the novel and a return to the theaters. The rise of Enlightenment thinking, which privileged reason and sensory experience, began to shape larger cultural discourses about the future of the British nation and the nature of man that would culminate in a series of revolutions by the end of the century. Focusing on the theme of embodiment, we consider how writers in this period imagined bodies both within and without the British Isles. How did 18th-century literature attempt to represent bodies and the relationship between bodies in the face of ongoing debates about what constituted humanness? How did these writers conceive of racial, gender or sexual difference, and to what ends? Which bodies mattered, and which were only fictions or even unworthy of representation at all?\nThis course prepares students to read and analyze both primary sources from the period and secondary sources that model different critical approaches. The course assignments also prepare students to think across multiple texts and draw them together in clear, nuanced arguments that link form and content. The course also trains students to think about literary texts within their historical contexts and trace continuities from the 18th century to the present. This counts toward the 1700-1900 requirement for the major. Prerequisite: ENGL 103 or 104. Open only to first-years and sophomores.

This course presents a survey of 18th-century literature from Jonathan Swift to such writers of the 1790s and early 19th century as Mary Wollstonecraft, Olaudah Equiano and Maria Edgeworth. Early 18th-century literature is dominated by satirical works that ostensibly aim at reform through ridicule, even while the great satirists doubt that such an aim can be achieved. Beginning in mid-century, the literary movement of sentimentalism and sensibility rejects the satirical impulse and embraces sympathy, immediacy and the "man of feeling." Throughout the period — indeed already satirized by Swift and Pope — Enlightenment ideals are explored and debated in a new public sphere. These ideals include progress, secularism, universal rights, the systematization of knowledge and the growth of liberty through print and education. Through an examination of works in a variety of literary genres (prose and verse satire, periodical essay, novel, tragedy, comedy, descriptive and lyric poetry, and travel writing), the course introduces students to such authors as Alexander Pope, Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, Samuel Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, Edmund Burke and Thomas Gray. This counts toward the 1700-1900 requirement for the major. Prerequisite: ENGL 103 or 104. Open only to first-year and sophomore students.

Prerequisite: ENGL 103 or 104. Only open to first-year and sophomore students.

Prerequisite: ENGL 103 or 104. Only open to first-year and sophomore students.

This course explores some of the complexities and contradictions in the literature of the Romantic period. A period that came to be identified with the work of six male poets in two generations (Blake, Wordsworth and Coleridge; Byron, Shelley and Keats) also is the period in which the English novel achieves considerable subtlety and broad cultural influence. In addition to the poets, then, the course includes works by such novelists as Walter Scott and Maria Edgeworth. While lyric poetry becomes increasingly dominant and the sonnet undergoes a revival in this period, there remains a poetic hierarchy in which epic and tragedy occupy the highest positions. The course therefore includes dramatic poems, whether or not such works were intended for performance, and a consideration of the epic impulse. The course examines the tension between populism (and popular superstitions) and the elitist alienation of the Romantic poet, and the relationship between political radicalism and both Burkean conservatism and an abandonment of the political ideals of the French Revolution in favor of imaginative freedom. Students are introduced to recent critical studies of Romanticism. This counts toward the 1700-1900 requirement for the major. Prerequisite: ENGL 210-291 or junior standing.

Individual study in English is a privilege reserved for senior majors who want to pursue a course of reading or complete a writing project on a topic not regularly offered in the curriculum. Because individual study is one option in a rich and varied English curriculum, it is intended to supplement, not take the place of, coursework, and it cannot normally be used to fulfill requirements for the major. An IS earns the student 0.5 units of credit, although in special cases it may be designed to earn 0.25 units. To qualify to enroll in an individual study, a student must identify a member of the English department willing to direct the project. In consultation with that faculty member, the student must write a one- to two-page proposal that the department chair must approve before the IS can go forward. The chair’s approval is required to ensure that no single faculty member becomes overburdened by directing too many IS courses. In the proposal, the student should provide a preliminary bibliography (and/or set of specific problems, goals and tasks) for the course, outline a specific schedule of reading and/or writing assignments, and describe in some detail the methods of assessment (e.g., a short story to be submitted for evaluation biweekly; a 30-page research paper submitted at course’s end, with rough drafts due at given intervals). Students should also briefly describe any prior coursework that particularly qualifies them for their proposed individual studies. The department expects IS students to meet regularly with their instructors for at least one hour per week, or the equivalent, at the discretion of the instructor. The amount of work submitted for a grade in an IS should approximate at least that required, on average, in 400-level English courses. In the case of group individual studies, a single proposal may be submitted, assuming that all group members follow the same protocols. Because students must enroll for individual studies by the seventh class day of each semester, they should begin discussion of their proposed individual study well in advance, preferably the semester before, so that there is time to devise the proposal and seek departmental approval.

To know where to go, one needs to know where one has been. Join us on our intellectual odyssey as we trace the history of ideas, political revolutions and technological changes that have shaped our shared human culture. We begin with the earliest efforts to understand ourselves and the world around us. Through a highly diverse and inclusive conversation among philosophers and poets, historians and artists, scientists and humanists, we explore the vast system of interconnected ideas that makes us who we are. Focusing on texts, political movements, cultural changes, religious beliefs and scientific discoveries that have transformed the world, this course challenges students to ask some of life’s most fundamental questions: What is a truly happy life? Is there an ideal human community? Why do we tell stories? When confronted with other ways of living, how do we evaluate our own life? We also consider the relative value of human reason and emotion: Which should guide our lives and the organization of our political communities? In a secular world, does art replace religion as a way to make sense of and give value to life? And does the radical violence of revolutions and world wars challenge our very premise of human excellence and exceptionalism? Near the end of our odyssey, we touch on the origins of computer science in ideas borrowed from math, philosophy and linguistics. Do the sometimes centuries-old answers to life's fundamental questions still hold? With guest lectures by professors from a wide range of Kenyon departments and weekly seminars during which smaller groups of students debate the material with one another and their seminar leader, our unique course provides one of the best introductions to liberal education. Students enrolled in this course are automatically added to IPHS 112Y for the spring semester. IPHS 111-112Y fulfills the Humanities diversification requirement.\n

To know where to go, one needs to know where one has been. Join us on our intellectual odyssey as we trace the history of ideas, political revolutions and technological changes that have shaped our shared human culture. We begin with the earliest efforts to understand ourselves and the world around us. Through a highly diverse and inclusive conversation among philosophers and poets, historians and artists, scientists and humanists, we explore the vast system of interconnected ideas that makes us who we are. Focusing on texts, political movements, cultural changes, religious beliefs and scientific discoveries that have transformed the world, this course challenges students to ask some of life’s most fundamental questions: What is a truly happy life? Is there an ideal human community? Why do we tell stories? When confronted with other ways of living, how do we evaluate our own life? We also consider the relative value of human reason and emotion: Which should guide our lives and the organization of our political communities? In a secular world, does art replace religion as a way to make sense of and give value to life? And does the radical violence of revolutions and world wars challenge our very premise of human excellence and exceptionalism? Near the end of our odyssey, we touch on the origins of computer science in ideas borrowed from math, philosophy and linguistics. Do the sometimes centuries-old answers to life's fundamental questions still hold? With guest lectures by professors from a wide range of Kenyon departments and weekly seminars during which smaller groups of students debate the material with one another and their seminar leader, our unique course provides one of the best introductions to liberal education. IPHS 111-112Y fulfills the Humanities diversification requirement.