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Spring 2011
Mar 28,2024
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LITR 100 - INDEPENDENT STUDY: LITERATURE
Limited opportunities to enroll for course work on an Independent Study basis are available. A student interested in this option should obtain an Independent Study Registration Form from the Registrar, have it completed by the instructor and school dean involved, and return it to the Registrar's Office. Consult the current Schedule of Classes for policies concerning Independent Study.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Independent Study

Literature Department

LITR 101 - THE STORY OF LITERATURE
An introduction to the study of language and literary form intended for the general student and those who are considering a Literature major. Students will encounter a number of themes, authors, texts, and literary strategies in poetry, fiction, drama, non-fiction, and mixed genres, across periods and cultures, with the aim of exploring the ways writing structures and articulates experience and engages us as readers in the process of giving it meaning. Exercises in close reading and critical writing will help students develop disciplined skills and become increasingly comfortable with the vocabulary and range of analytic approaches to the criticism of literature.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
WRITING INTENSIVE

LITR 198 - TRANSFER ELECTIVE
This course designation describes a transfer course from another institution where an equivalency to a Ramapo College course has not been determined. Upon convener evaluation, this course ID may be changed to an equivalent of a Ramapo College course or may fulfill a requirement.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

LITR 199 - TRANSFER ELECTIVE
This course designation is used to describe a transfer course from another institution which has been evaluated by the convener. A course with this course number has no equivalent Ramapo course. It may fulfill a requirement or may count as a free elective.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

LITR 200 - INDEPENDENT STUDY: LITERATURE
Limited opportunities to enroll for course work on an Independent Study basis are available. A student interested in this option should obtain an Independent Study Registration Form from the Registrar, have it completed by the instructor and school dean involved, and return it to the Registrar's Office. Consult the current Schedule of Classes for policies concerning Independent Study.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Independent Study

Literature Department

LITR 201 - READINGS IN POETRY
(Formerly LITR 215) Out of all of the art forms, poetry is the closest to music. Its intricate rhythm and melody often move and influence us on an unconscious level. As readers of poetry, the key is to pay close attention to the way language is used to evoke images and dreams. The purpose of this course is to give you an overview of the development of poetry throughout differing artistic and literary movements. We will always emphasize the close reading of poetry. By the end of the course, you should feel comfortable coming up with a reading of a poem that analyzes both its form and content.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

LITR 202 - MAGAZINE WORKSHOP
(Formerly LITR 233) A workshop in magazine production. This course will produce the College literary magazine, Trillium, from start to finish. Areas covered include: soliciting stories, poems, and art work; evaluating the material; the lay-out of the magazine; proofreading for the printer; and distribution. Critical and professional skills will be emphasized. Permission of Instructor.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

LITR 210 - LITERATURE AND FILM
(Formerly LITR 239) This class will examine the treatment of narrative as practiced in both literature and film. Students will explore the relationship between the two forms and consider which narrative devices and techniques are common to both and which are exclusive to one form or the other. Students will develop a range of critical skills to enable them to examine and discuss narrative as practiced in both literature and film. The specific topic of this course (which genres, regions, periods, etc. covered) as well as which readings and screenings will be considered will change from semester-to-semester, as well as from instructor-to-instructor.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
OLD GE-TOPICS ARTS&HUMANATIES

LITR 212 - DETECTIVE FICTION AND FILM
(Formerly LITR 243) An attempt to trace the evolution of this varied genre, and of its dominant character, the detective and its counterpart, the "killer." Born of the Gothic tradition, the detective story asks basic questions: not just "whodunit?" but what is right and what is wrong? Where can justice be found? While we may read some European texts (Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Georges Simenon) the course will focus on American writers (Poe, Twain, Raymond Chandler, Himes, Highsmith, others), exploring why the form has enjoyed such relentless fascination cross cultures and for modernist and post-modernist alike. Much of our attention will be taken up with hard-boiled fiction and film noir (two well documented genres of crime stories). Thus, the course will also consider the role of the detective story in film. Americans usually consider film a commodity, but will treat it as an art form. To become discerning viewers we will acquaint ourselves with the terminology and methods of the film critic, and develop a refined appreciation for a medium we may often take for granted.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
OLD GE-INTERCULT NORTH AMERICA, MJ-LITR-Int'l Litr Selec-Am.Li

LITR 220 - SURVEY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE I
In this class we will examine American literature from the early European colonization of the Americas to the late 19th century. From the legal, religious, and historical works of Puritan writers to the Romantic works of the American Renaissance, we will consider what kinds of stories Americans wrote about themselves and we will seek to interpret these texts. We will read at least one novel, as well as poetry, short fiction, and works from other genres. We want to consider these texts as works of art in their own right and as products of a grander American literary tradition that we can trace from the 17th century to the present.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
MJ-AMER-Amer Literature, OLD GE-TOPICS ARTS&HUMANATIES

LITR 221 - SURVEY OF AMERICAN LIT II
(Formerly LITR 218) In this class we will examine American literature from the late 19th century to the present. Beginning roughly from the Realistic and Naturalistic writers of the post-civil war period up through the Modern and Post-modern eras, we will try to consider what kinds of stories Americans wrote about themselves and how we should interpret these texts. We will read one novel, one drama, poetry, short fiction, and perhaps some non-fiction. We want to consider these texts in their own right and as products of a grander American literary tradition that we can trace back to the 19th century and beyond.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
MJ-AMER-Amer Literature, OLD GE-TOPICS ARTS&HUMANATIES, MJ-INTL-Intl Comparative 'West

LITR 223 - SURVEY OF AMERICAN POETRY
(Formerly LITR 221) A survey of American poetry from Colonial to contemporary times. We will consider the range of ideologies and styles that have determined the history of poetry in American culture, as well as the sociocultural circumstances that inform this history. Students will be expected to develop a critical understanding of how to interpret a poem and write a lucid analysis of its significance.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture, Online Course

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
MJ-AMER-Amer Literature, OLD GE-INTERCULT NORTH AMERICA

LITR 224 - AMERICAN DRAMA
(Formerly LITR 287) A study of the text and performances of characteristic American plays including 19th century melodrama, ethnic productions, musical comedy, and drama. The relationship between drama and society and between text and performance will be explored through the study of representative dramatists such as Eugene O'Neill, Thornton Wilder, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Edward Albee, August Wilson, David Mamet, and others.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
MJ-AMER-Amer Literature, OLD GE-INTERCULT NORTH AMERICA

LITR 226 - AMERICAN SHORT STORY
(Formerly LITR 204) An in-depth study of the development of the American short story as an indigenous art form. Authors will include Hawthorne, Poe, Melville, Twain, Crane, Cather, Hemingway, Faulkner, Updike, Barthelme, Vonnegut, Oates, and others. Particular attention will be given to the evaluation of technique and the development of critical awareness.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
MJ-AMER-Amer Literature, OLD GE-TOPICS ARTS&HUMANATIES

LITR 228 - COLONIAL AMERICAN LITERATURE
(Formerly LITR 242) Colonial American Literature focuses on major Puritan and Colonial writers including Bradford, Winthrop, Williams, Wigglesworth, Bradstreet, Rowlandson, Mather, Edwards, Crevecoeur, Paine, Franklin, Jefferson, Wheatley, Native American writers, and others. We may think of Colonial literature as uniform and staid; however, these writers work in a variety of genres, including poems, sermons, histories, and narrative accounts. Nor do these writers speak with one voice. Perspectives range from Puritan patriarchs to dissenters to entrepreneurs to revolutionaries. Our writers include slaves and kidnap victims as well as wealthy Virginia landowners. From this medley, we hope to understand the tensions and paradoxes that produce our contemporary understanding of who we are as Americans and where it is we came from. From discovery to conquest to Puritanism to Revolution, we will chart the early evolution of American literary expression.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
MJ-AMER-Amer Literature, MJ-LITR-Litr Prior To 1800

LITR 230 - 19TH CENTURY AMERICAN LITERATURE
(Formerly LITR 227) This course offers a reading of fiction (the novel and short story), poetry, and drama as it was practiced in the United States in the 19th century. This century saw not only the birth of an American literary identity with Romantic fiction by James Fennimore Cooper and Washington Irving, but a later explosion of literary talent with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson. This is also the century when civil war threatened the new nation's identity and survival. Slave narratives by Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobson, fiction by Harriet Beecher Stowe, and non-fiction by Margaret Fuller and Henry Thoreau challenged Americans' fundamental notions of freedom and identity. Later, responding to a rapidly changing world, writers like Mark Twain, Paul Dunbar, Stephen Crane, and Kate Chopin turned to Realism and Naturalism. While the reading list will frequently change, students will encounter a wide variety of literary voices of the era.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
MJ-AMER-Amer Literature, OLD GE-INTERCULT NORTH AMERICA

LITR 231 - 19TH CENTURY AMERICAN WOMEN AUTHORS
(Formerly LITR 225) America's 19th century saw the emergence of a growing number of "damned scribbling" women writers who moved at times boldly, at times hesitantly, into the public space through publication. A period of enormous increase in population, of mesmerists, spiritualists, and social reform, the century's female authors participated in this ferment of new ways of thinking. The turbulence of the relatively new country emerging and dealing with abolition, the eventual Civil War and its aftermath, fostered a sisterhood of women writers working both with and against the American Transcendentalists and other well-known period authors to form a "literature of their own." Journals, letters and essays in the mass market magazines created what is often termed domestic, sentimental literature which we will analyze through a discussion of literary criticism and merit.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
MJ-AMER-Amer Literature, MJ-AMER-Gender Issues, OLD GE-INTERCULT NORTH AMERICA

LITR 232 - 20TH CENTURY AMERICAN NOVEL
(Formerly LITR 240) A survey of the modern American novel as it developed over the past century. Once considered a frivolous form of entertainment, the novel has supplanted poetry as perhaps the premier literary form of the 20th Century. At the same time, some say the novel is dying. How can both be true? Is either? What is it about long prose works of fiction that speaks to us? How have the various literary, philosophical, intellectual, social, and political events of the century changed this durable genre? The course will consider a variety of novels, but will focus on how the novelists created and responded to literary movements over the 20th century, from the Progressive age to Modernism, Postmodernism, and beyond. While the reading list will frequently change, students will encounter a variety of writers, including William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Thomas Pynchon, and Toni Morrison.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
OLD GE-INTERCULT NORTH AMERICA

LITR 233 - HARLEM RENAISSANCE
(Formerly LITR 280) The birth of the modern African American literary consciousness movement was forged by writers in the early 20th century. Centered in New York and Harlem of the 1920s, a group of talented writers and activists initiated a movement known as the Harlem Renaissance. The course will explore the works of Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Rudolph Fisher, Wallace Thurman, George Schyler, Countee Cullen, Dorothy West, Claude McKay, Carl Van Vechten, and many others whose themes and ideologies have influenced contemporary American writing.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
MN-AFR AMR STD-Hum & Culture, MJ-AMER-Amer Literature, MJ-AMER- African-Amer Studies

LITR 234 - CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN LITERATURE
(Formerly LITR 217) A discussion of selected contemporary American prose, poetry and drama, with a special emphasis on the crucial themes which emerge from this writing. Cheever, Updike, Roth, Nabokov, Ginsberg, Sexton, Rich, Plath, Baraka, Oates, and others will be discussed.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
MJ-AMER-Amer Literature, OLD GE-INTERCULT NORTH AMERICA

LITR 235 - AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE
(Fomerly LITR 230) A study of the development of the thematic, symbolic, and mythical strains in African American literature since 1940. The importance of literature as an art form to the African American writer and as a reflection of the Black experience in America will be stressed.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
MJ-AMER-Amer Literature, MJ-AMER- African-Amer Studies, OLD GE-INTERCULT NORTH AMERICA

LITR 236 - MULTICULTURAL LITERATURE
(Formerly LITR 252) Multicultural literature examines the many, varied voices of American minorities whose visions extend from pre-colonial to contemporary periods. Poetry, fiction, drama, and non-fiction form the core of the course. The purpose of the course is to define the dynamism of American culture through American literature.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
MJ-AMER-Amer Literature, MJ-AMER-Multicultural Studies

LITR 237 - IRISH AMERICAN LITERATURE
(Formerly LITR 235) A survey of Irish-American literature (fiction, poetry, drama, autobiography, short fiction). The course begins with early immigrant fiction, written before the famine of the 1840's. Then, we will consider the effect of the famine on Irish-American fiction later in the century. We will also read work by well-known Irish-American literary figures of the 20th and 21st centuries, like Fitzgerald, O'Connor, Kennedy, and others. Irish-Americans have produced significant works of drama and film as well. We may also consider popular entertainers like George Carlin and George McManus. Ultimately, the course is an attempt to understand how forces of history and culture like the famine, the Catholic Church, and the Irish Diaspora have shaped and reshaped the Irish-American experience.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
MJ-AMER-Amer Literature, OLD GE-INTERCULT NORTH AMERICA, MJ-LITR-American Literature

LITR 240 - SURVEY OF BRITISH LITERATURE I
(Formerly LITR 203) A chronological study of some of the poetry, essays, fiction and drama of the English speaking peoples of the British Isles. The course will survey a representative sample of texts and writers from the Anglo-Saxon period to about 1780. The course seeks to provide students with an overview of the historical epochs in which writers worked and the variety of traditions and genres which shaped their artistry. Recommended for students with liberal arts interest in the humanities and for students planning further study in language and literature.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
OLD GE-TOPICS ARTS&HUMANATIES, MJ-INTL-Area Studies-Europe, MJ-INTL-Intl Comparative 'West, WRITING INTENSIVE

LITR 242 - SURVEY OF BRITISH LITERATURE II
(Formerly LITR 209) A chronological study of some of the poetry, essays, fiction and drama of the English speaking peoples of the British Isles. The course will survey a representative sample of texts and writers from about 1780 to the modern era. The course seeks to provide students with an overview of the historical epochs in which writers worked and the variety of traditions and genres which shaped their artistry. Recommended both for students with liberal arts interest in the humanities and those planning further study in language and literature.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
OLD GE-TOPICS ARTS&HUMANATIES, MJ-INTL-Area Studies-Europe, MJ-INTL-Intl Comparative 'West

LITR 244 - SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS
(Formerly LITR 208) Open to all students who wish to develop greater understanding and critical appreciation of Elizabethan theater practices, Shakespeare's development as a dramatist, and his contributions to the development of the western imagination. Lectures and discussions will emphasize the treatment of Shakespeare's plays as text and script. The course will include the viewing and discussion of key 20th century expositions of Shakespeare's plays through cinematic and video media.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
OLD GE-TOPICS ARTS&HUMANATIES, MJ-INTL-Area Studies-Europe, MJ-INTL-Intl Comparative 'West, MJ-LITR-Litr Prior To 1800

LITR 246 - SHAKESPEARE ON FILM
(Formerly LITR 207) The use of Shakespeare's plays as celluloid "script" dates from the earliest stages of cinema history. One could propose that the cinema has been a major force in the way the 20th century has "Reinvented Shakespeare." This course proposes to review the history of the treatment and adaptation of selected Shakespeare plays on film. We will read a select body of plays which have received multiple treatments, either in film and/or video formats, during different cultural epochs. Though the emphasis will be on Anglo-American directors, efforts by international film directors will also be considered.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
MJ-INTL-Intl Comparative 'West

LITR 248 - LITERATURE OF THE ENLIGHTMENT
(Formerly LITR 213) An in-depth study of the 100 year period from 1660-1760, often called the Resoration and Age of Reason. It was a time of enormous growth and change in England, reflected in a shifting of the balance of power and wealth and a dramatic increase in literacy. Authors will include Pepys, Bunyan, Dryden, Pope, Defoe, Addison and Steele, Swift and others.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
OLD GE-TOPICS ARTS&HUMANATIES, MJ-INTL-Area Studies-Europe, MJ-INTL-Intl Comparative 'West, MJ-LITR-Litr Prior To 1800

LITR 250 - THE ENGLISH NOVEL
(Formerly LITR 205) A study of the rise and development of the modern English novel, from its 18th-century origins in popular journalism through the serious social realism of the Victorian era. Such major authors as Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Austen, Dickens, George Eliot, and the Brontes will be read and discussed within the context of British and European social history. (This course is also offered as a Study Abroad course)
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
OLD GE-TOPICS ARTS&HUMANATIES, MJ-INTL-Area Studies-Europe, MJ-INTL-Intl Comparative 'West

LITR 252 - MODERN IRISH LITERATURE
(Formerly LITR 281) This course will examine the works of modern Irish writers from William Butler Yeats, Sean O'Casey, and James Joyce to Seamus Heaney, Roddy Doyle and Maeve Binchy. Focus will be given to the interaction of history, culture and literature in the development of modern Ireland.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
MJ-INTL-Area Studies-Europe, MJ-INTL-Intl Comparative 'West, MJ-LITR-Int'l Litr Selection

LITR 260 - WORLD MYTHOLOGY
(Formerly LITR 244) This course will explore the meaning of mythology by examining a great variety of myths drawn from many different cultures. Although it will focus on three broad types of myth -- cosmological, fertility and hero narratives -- it will highlight the socio-historical circumstances that give each myth its particular meaning, as well as those aspects of the human condition that provide a common ground for this intricate web of meaning.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
OLD GE-TOPICS ARTS&HUMANATIES, MJ-LITR-Litr Prior To 1800, MJ-LITR-Int'l Litr Selection

LITR 264 - SURVEY OF DRAMA
The course will survey varieties of dramatic literature from the classical period to the 20th century. In addition to students with interests in literature and the theater arts, it is intended for other liberal arts students who wish to acquire a survey understanding of world dramatic literature. We will read and discuss drama, in both verse and prose, drawn from a variety of historical periods and cultural epochs. The course will emphasize the literary development of the dramatic form, the cultural context of theater production and consumption, and the manner in which drama, as the most social of the literary genres, allows us to view a society watching itself.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
MJ-LITR-Int'l Litr Selection

LITR 265 - THE HEBREW BIBLE
(Formerly LITR 219) An explanation of Biblical literature, its metaphors and literary forms, its theological constructions, and religious insights. The meaning of the Bible as a literary and religious document will be examined through a series of readings and discussions.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
OLD GE-TOPICS ARTS&HUMANATIES, MJ-LITR-Litr Prior To 1800, MJ-LITR-Int'l Litr Selection

LITR 266 - THE CHRISTIAN BIBLE
(Formerly LITR 220) An explanation of Biblical literature, its metaphors and literary forms, its theological constructions, and religious insights. The meaning of the Bible as a literary and religious document will be examined through a series of readings and discussions.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
OLD GE-TOPICS ARTS&HUMANATIES, MJ-LITR-Int'l Litr Selec-Am.Li, MJ-LITR-Litr Prior To 1800

LITR 268 - SURVEY OF GREEK DRAMA
(Formerly LITR 254) The earliest traceable influence on the development of western drama is that exerted by the plays performed in the amphitheater at Athens, most of which may now be lost, as are the plays of those early traditions that lead to the construction of such a theater. We do possess, however, several works by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes, all of which developed out of Athenian culture and were recognized for greatness in ancient texts of the period. These works were known to western dramatists since the time of their composition, and have helped to shape the development of that art. But of course this beginning must arise from very different ground than the works that follow, and for that reason, it presents its own difficulties to the reader. The course will provide a general familiarity with the authors listed above by reading representative works of each. We will try to see these works in the context of Greek myth, the culture of fifth century Athens, and the hints and fragments of earlier ceremony and drama. In this manner we may hope to bring a light to texts which otherwise may seem somewhat foreign to many interests we now require from our literature
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
MJ-LITR-Litr Prior To 1800, MJ-LITR-Int'l Litr Selection

LITR 269 - LITERATURE OF THE MIDDLE AGES
(Formerly LITR 210) In this course we will explore some of the literature produced during the Middle Ages, focusing on the Western tradition. As we read the major works introduced here we will examine various critical and interpretive issues relevant to the period including genre, content, convention, and the meaning of the label "medieval literature" itself. What does it mean to talk about medieval literature or culture in terms of religious, social, and philosophical ideals and/or realities? We will consider these and other questions primarily through class discussion and close reading, supplemented by occasional lectures to provide cultural and literary contexts. All works will be read in translation.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
MJ-LITR-Litr Prior To 1800, MJ-LITR-Int'l Litr Selection

LITR 270 - SURVEY OF EUROPEAN LITERATURE
(Formerly LITR 223) An overview of the main periods and movements of Western European literature from the Middle Ages to modern times, stressing the concept of genres, the development of ideas, and the relationship of literature to the development of Western culture. The class will hold in-depth discussions on representative works selected from the masterpieces of each period.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
OLD GE-TOPICS ARTS&HUMANATIES, MJ-INTL-Intl Comparative 'West, MJ-LITR-Int'l Litr Selection

LITR 271 - EUROPEAN SHORT STORY
(Formerly LITR 211) The course is a survey of the short story genre as practiced by the European masters of the form from Boccaccio to Solzhenitsyn. The chronological approach is hoped to provide students with a firm sense of a logical development of the genre's form. Much attention will be given to the moral, aesthetic, and other concerns of cornerstone authors and works.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
MJ-INTL-Area Studies-Europe, MJ-INTL-Intl Comparative 'West, MJ-LITR-Int'l Litr Selection

LITR 272 - MODERN EUROPEAN DRAMA
(Formerly LITR 212) A survey of modern trends in dramatic literature from realism and naturalism to the "Theater of the Absurd." Students will read and discuss plays by such major authors as Ibsen, Chekhov, Shaw, Pirandello, Beckett, and Ionesco.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
OLD GE-TOPICS ARTS&HUMANATIES, MJ-INTL-Area Studies-Europe, MJ-INTL-Intl Comparative 'West, MJ-LITR-Int'l Litr Selection

LITR 273 - MODERN NOVEL IN FRANCE
(Formerly LITR 253) A study of the development of the French novel into a major art form in the 19th and 20th centuries. Nineteenth century novelists such as Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert, and Zola powerfully illuminate psycho-social problems and the new social conditions that created them. In the 20th century, writers like Proust, Gide, Malraux, and Camus have proposed new formulations of these problems.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
MJ-INTL-Intl Comparative 'West, MJ-LITR-Int'l Litr Selection

LITR 274 - RUSSIAN LITERATURE & CULTURE
(Formerly LITR 258) The course suggests an acquaintance with National Riches of Russia both in literature and art. A study of famous Pushkin's verse and a poem, Chekhov's stories; a survey of modern Russian literature (K. Paustovskly, A. Akhmatova). The second part introduces students to folk art: painting, music, decorative, trades. The students will discuss Russia, its people, traditions, past and contemporary life.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
OLD GE-TOPICS ARTS&HUMANATIES, MJ-INTL-Intl Comparative 'West, MJ-LITR-Int'l Litr Selection

LITR 275 - SURVEY OF LATIN AMERICAN LITERATURE
(Formerly LITR 268) This course will be an interpretation of the Spanish-American Literature. The material will introduce us to its social-economic and political situation through the exploration of masterpieces of Hispanic letters in English translations, considered comparatively as contributions for the main currents of thought and expression in the Americas.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
OLD GE-TOPICS ARTS&HUMANATIES, MJ-LITR-Int'l Litr Selection

LITR 276 - LITERATURE OF THE AMERICAS
(Formerly LITR 255) This course is designed to introduce students to the many historic, thematic, and stylistic concerns common throughout the literature of the Americas. From the colonization that disrupted Native populations, to settlement, slavery, revolution, immigration, and many other issues, New World nations share a common heritage that we will explore. We will, therefore, read works from throughout the Americas: Canada, the United States, Central and South America, and the Caribbean, and our readings will represent different genres, from pre-Columbian times through the present. We will engage with these texts by reading and writing about them, and by discussing them during our class time.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
MJ-AMER-Amer Literature, OLD GE-INTERCULT NORTH AMERICA, MJ-LITR-Int'l Litr Selection

LITR 277 - SURVEY OF AFRICAN LITERATURE
(Formerly LITR 228) This course is designed to provide an introduction to the literatures of the African continent. Over the course of the semester, we will read and discuss works from several different African nations, including Kenya, Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria, Guinea, and others. These works will represent different literary genres: essays, a play, poetry, short stories, and novels. They will also include, albeit in written form, works from the oral literatures fundamental to the African canon. Of course, in a single semester, we cannot possibly do justice to the rich literary tradition of all of Africa. However, I hope that this course will give you a sense of some of Africa's most noteworthy authors, literary forms, and concerns.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
OLD GE-TOPICS ARTS&HUMANATIES, MJ-INTL-Area Studies-Africa, MJ-LITR-Int'l Litr Selection

LITR 279 - THE GRAPHIC NARRATIVE
The Graphic Narrative studies the rise and development of what some consider a "new" literary form: the graphic novel (or graphic narrative, or sequential art, or comic book). Of course, this "new" art form is at least a century old. In this course, we will consider the graphic narratives primarily as literary texts. Of course, graphic narratives are also works of visual art. Comics are filled with pictures, but these are not illustrations in the traditional sense--they are part of the language of the form. Students will need to negotiate two symbol systems--cartooning and language--and determine how they work together to create meaning. While many think of the graphic novel as an American form, it has become an international phenomenon. We will read comics from around the globe and consider them in cultural, historical, and literary contexts. To help us with this analysis, students will be asked to apply various theoretical concepts to the comics, including Cultural and Marxist Criticism. We will also read works in theory and criticism, as well as traditional literary texts.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
MJ-AMER-Amer Literature, OLD GE-INTERNATIONAL ISSUES, MJ-LITR-Int'l Litr Selection

LITR 280 - INTRODUCTION TO CREATIVE WRITING
(Formerly LITR 216) This course is an introductory course to issues of craft and aesthetics as they apply to the writing of short stories and poetry. The class will be devoted to student work and critiquing skills as well as to the analysis of literary texts.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture, Seminar

Literature Department

LITR 282 - FICTION WRITING WORKSHOP
(Formerly LITR 229) This course focuses on the craft and production of student fiction and on the problems of craft and aesthetics as they apply to the writing of short stories. The class will be devoted to student work and critiquing skills as well as to the analysis of literary and craft texts.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture, Seminar

Literature Department

LITR 283 - POETRY WRITING WORKSHOP
(Formerly LITR 236) An analysis of the theories and visions of modern poetry.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture, Seminar

Literature Department

LITR 284 - CREATIVE NONFICTION WRITING WORKSHOP
(Formerly LITR 222) If you want to get serious about your writing, this course is a great place to begin. We will be concentrating on personal essays, memoir, and literary journalism. Through a variety of exercises, writing assignments, reading assignments--and through participating in the workshop aspect of the course, as an editor/critic and as a recipient of writing suggestions--your writing is bound to improve. Keep in mind that the purpose of this class is to give you the structure to work creatively on your writing and be productive. How much your writing ultimately blossoms will depend on the time and commitment you put into the course.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture, Online Course, Seminar

Literature Department

LITR 290 - TOPICS:
The descriptions and topics of this course change from semester-to-semester, as well as from instructor-to-instructor. Prerequisite: varies with the topic offered. LITR 290 AMERICAN REALISM. This course traces the dramatic change from romanticism to realism which occurred in the approximately 60 years from the end of the Civil War in 1865 to the beginning of the Depression in 1929. Many new developments in social, psychological, and philosophical thought caused the change in the relation of the individual to the universe, resulting in vivid forays into the inner workings of the mind and a new, often negative and depressing deterministic and naturalistic view of the external environment. Lectures and discussion will cover the relevant background of this period. However, the emphasis will always be on the techniques authors use to display their new sense of the world. Readings will include poetry, fiction, paintings, photography, and films will be used for illustration. Authors will include Whitman, Biere, Chopin, Crane, Porter, Cather, Williams, Stevens, Pound, Eliot, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and others. LITR 290 RUSSIAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE. An introduction to Russian culture and literature through a consideration of the literature, political, religion, and other factors which have contributed to modern Russian life. The course will include films and written works as well as class discussion. The professor is an exchange scholar from Volgograd Pedagogical University in Russia.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

LITR 298 - TRANSFER ELECTIVE
This course designation describes a transfer course from another institution where an equivalency to a Ramapo College course has not been determined. Upon convener evaluation, this course ID may be changed to an equivalent of a Ramapo College course or may fulfill a requirement.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

LITR 299 - TRANSFER ELECTIVE
This course designation is used to describe a transfer course from another institution which has been evaluated by the convener. A course with this course number has no equivalent Ramapo course. It may fulfill a requirement or may count as a free elective.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

LITR 300 - INDEPENDENT STUDY: LITERATURE
Limited opportunities to enroll for course work on an Independent Study basis are available. A student interested in this option should obtain an Independent Study Registration Form from the Registrar, have it completed by the instructor and school dean involved, and return it to the Registrar's Office. Consult the current Schedule of Classes for policies concerning Independent Study.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Independent Study

Literature Department

LITR 302 - GRAMMAR: THEORY AND PEDAGOGY
(Formerly LITR 314) This course is designed to introduce you to the study of grammar and to provide you with an overview and detailed analysis of the structure of the English language. It is also designed to introduce you to concepts of language change, regional and social dialects--both standard and nonstandard, and the makeup of Standard American English. We will distinguish between descriptive and prescriptive grammars and examine their implications for the teaching of grammar and usage. Throughout this course, we will use the tools of linguists to critically approach and analyze the structure of Standard American English. Topics covered will include a brief examination of varieties of English; constituent structure and syntax; the morphology of English, both derivational and inflectional; the major parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives, and qualifiers, prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions, etc.) We will also study ways that clauses can be combined into sentences using coordination and subordination.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

LITR 304 - HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
(Formerly LITR 344) This course traces the development of the English language from its Indo-European roots through the major stages of English, including Old English (the language of Beowulf), Middle English (Chaucer's English), and early modern English (Shakespeare's English), through present day English. We will begin by establishing grammatical and linguistic categories and examining some principles of historical linguistics, focusing on the mechanisms and causes of language change. Our study will include etymology (particularly work with the OED) and developments in American English, including dialectical variety. The course seeks to make students aware of the structure of their language and help them become sensitive to linguistic change and difference.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

LITR 306 - LITERATURE:THEORY & CRITICISM
(Formerly LITR 301) An exploration in historical and contemporary terms of the tradition, from Plato to post-modernism, that struggles both to express the mysterious power of art and language and to explain it -- to make it a conscious, even rational, activity. The course, which will focus on how literary discourse responds to historical change, concludes with a workshop component in the currents shaping such discourse today. Students will understand the assumptions and practices that have silently shaped their thinking and become conscious shapers of their own responses.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
OLD GE-TOPICS ARTS&HUMANATIES, SS-Sch Core-Consc & Society

LITR 308 - CHILDREN'S AND YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE
(Formerly LITR 306) This course introduces the major genres of children's literature from both the oral and written traditions: folk tales, fairy tales, myths, legends, prose fiction (realistic and fantastic), verse, and picture books. The course aims at developing techniques for a close reading of representative texts. In addition, it may examine the influence of gender, class, cultural assumptions, and literary fashion on the writing, reading, and criticism of books for children. Although this course is designed specifically for perspective teachers of elementary and secondary schools, all literature majors are urged to enroll.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

LITR 310 - EXISTENTIALISM
(Formerly LITR 315) The course will establish the theoretical background of Existentialism; survey existentialist themes in the Bible and Greek tragedy; study in-depth, selected works of French Existentialists, such as Andre Malraux, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, and the "dramatists of the absurd"; and analyze how form and techniques reflect philosophical assumptions.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
OLD GE-TOPICS ARTS&HUMANATIES, MJ-LITR-Int'l Litr Selection

LITR 312 - COMPARATIVE FEMINIST THEORIES
(Formerly LITR 351) This course is designed to ground students in the historical foundations of feminist theory and to introduce them to some of the wide range of current feminist thinking. As no course can claim to cover all of feminist thought in a single semester, priority has been given here to texts and concepts considered truly fundamental in the development of a feminist criticism. In order to demonstrate how the concerns of feminist thinkers carry over into fictional writing, and to show how feminist theory can be a useful tool for analyzing the understanding literary texts, we have also included here a few landmark works by women writers. Both the literary texts and the theoretical pieces selected should also serve to acquaint students with writers from around the world.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
OLD GE-INTERNATIONAL ISSUES, MJ-LITR-Int'l Litr Selection

LITR 314 - TRANSATLANTIC 19TH CENTURY POETRY
(Formerly LITR 305) We will read preeminent American poets of the 19th century in tandem with the British Romantic and Victorian poets that influenced their work. Concentrating on the major figures of Emerson, Poe, Dickinson, and Whitman, the course will explore how they both borrowed from and challenged such poets as Coleridge, Byron, E. B. Browning, and Wordsworth. By identifying the concerns these poets shared, we will get a sense of the crosscurrents of thought that shaped the Transatlantic literary scene at a time when America still looked to England for cultural guidance. The course emphasizes close-reading techniques that will enable students to improve their ability to speak and write about poetry.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
MJ-AMER-Amer Artistic Express, MJ-AMER-Advanced Cat Elective

LITR 319 - MAJOR AUTHORS:
Each section focuses on one or two individual authors whose work has had a sustained impact on literary culture. Authors studied vary from semester-to-semester, as well as from instructor-to-instructor. Students should expect to engage in sophisticated discussion of literary topics ranging from contemporary criticism to literary biography. The course requires substantial writing and research. Recent topics include (among others): Jane Austen, Eugene O'Neill and Tennessee Williams, Geoffrey Chaucer, Herman Melville, Charlotte Bronte, and J.R.R. Tolkien. For this semester's course sections, please see the Literature Major Webpage (http://phobos.ramapo.edu/majors/literature/) or contact the Literature Convener. Prerequisites: varies with the topic offered.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
WRITING INTENSIVE

LITR 320 - COMIC AMERICAN NOVEL
(Formerly LITR 308) We will read a series of comic novels written in the United States, mostly in the 20th century. We will examine the varieties of comic expression. We will begin with Twain's Huckleberry Finn. This class will be an examination of the comic spirit as seen in selected American novels. Sometimes these books will not seem "funny." They feature murder, slavery, child abuse, drug addiction, and war. So how can we call them "comic"? But there will certainly be some laughs along the way. We will try to come to a deeper understanding of the term "comic" by the time the class is done. During the course not only do many of the characters reveal themselves, but American society itself: We will try to answer the question: What do we laugh at when we laugh at ourselves?
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
MJ-AMER-Amer Artistic Express, OLD GE-INTERCULT NORTH AMERICA

LITR 326 - AMERICAN ROMANTICISM
(Formerly LITR 331) In American Romanticism we read the literture of a key period in American history and American literary history: the early to mid 19th century, an era often called the American Renaissance. During a very short time, a people who had previously cared little for literary expression suddenly produced a series of literary masterpieces and landmarks: Moby Dick, Leaves of Grass, The Scarlet Letter, Walden, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, and The Raven. What happened? Why such an unprecedented burst of expression?
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
MJ-AMER-Amer. Regionalism, MJ-AMER-Amer Artistic Express, MJ-AMER-Advanced Cat Elective, OLD GE-INTERCULT NORTH AMERICA, MJ-LITR-American Literature

LITR 332 - SOUTHERN AMERICAN WRITERS
(Formerly LITR 333) This course will examine the rich diversity of literature by writers of the American south from the 1800s to the present in prose, short and long fiction, poetry, and drama. Themes such as racial conflict, attitudes towards women, nature as a defining force, and others will form a basis for exploring such authors as Faulkner, Welty, Warren, Gaines, Hurston, O'Connor, and others.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
MJ-AMER-Amer. Regionalism, MJ-AMER-Amer Artistic Express, MJ-AMER-Advanced Cat Elective, MJ-LITR-American Literature

LITR 334 - AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN WRITERS
This course will explore the writings of African American women, also including African women of the Diaspora. We will explore works in a range of genres, starting in the 1700s with Phillis Wheatley's poetry, then moving into 19th century slave narratives, fiction, and essays. We will devote particular attention to the remarkable productivity of women writers from the African Diaspora in the 20th and 21st centuries, including authors such as Toni Morrison, June Jordan, Paule Marshall, Alice Walker, Edwidge Danticat, Zora Neale Hurston, and Natasha Trethewey. We will also read samples from the growing tradition of African American feminist literary criticism. Students will be encouraged to consider these texts in the context of the American literary canon, and in the larger context of African Diaspora literature.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
MN-AFR AMR STD-Hum & Culture, MJ-AMER-Amer Artistic Express, MJ-AMER-Advanced Cat Elective, OLD GE-INTERCULT NORTH AMERICA

LITR 338 - LATINO LITERATURE OF THE USA
(Formerly LITR 341) The course offers an in-depth study of some outstanding fiction and non-fiction works of the extensive Latino literature written in English in the U.S.A. This course will focus on the importance of understanding Latino culture; the choice of language, themes, and style of writing; cultural differences; literary techniques as well as the social and political aspects reproduced in these creations. Fiction and non-fiction works have been chosen representing the Cuban-, Colombian-, Dominican-, Chicano- and Puerto Rican-American writers.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
MJ-AMER-Amer Artistic Express, MJ-AMER-Advanced Cat Elective, OLD GE-INTERCULT NORTH AMERICA

LITR 340 - BRITISH MEDIEVAL LITERATURE
This course surveys the earliest literature of England, from its beginnings in the Anglo-Saxon past through the medieval period. In it, we will examine some canonical texts (Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Chaucer) as well as some less well-known works. While the specific thematic emphasis may vary, we will be reading a wide variety of genres (epic, elegy, lyric, chronicle, riddle, romance, etc.) and authors. We will trace developments of significant ideas and consider the relationship of the texts to the social, cultural, and historical environments that produce them. Some of the earliest works will be read in translation, but the majority of the later material will be read in the original Middle English.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
MJ-LITR-Litr Prior To 1800

LITR 342 - AGE OF CHAUCER
(Formerly LITR 337) This course focuses on the literature of late 14th century England, taking Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales as a focal point. We will study a generous selection of the tales in some detail, along with a tale collection from Chaucer's contemporary John Gower, Confessio Amantis. In addition we will consider religious poetry (Langland's Piers Plowman, Pearl) and romance (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Chaucer's Knight's Tale), among other genres. We will read Chaucer, Gower, and Langland in the original Middle English, and will focus on the language as part of our study, as well as consider relevant social and political contexts of Chaucer's day, and some of the varying ways the differnet authors engage them.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
MJ-LITR-Litr Prior To 1800

LITR 344 - ENGLISH RENAISSANCE STUDIES
(Formerly LITR 361) This course will examine the rise of English letters during the period 1510-1610. Though emphasis will be given to the literary assumptions and aspirations of the age, and its lyric, epic and dramatic forms, attention will also be given to narratives which illuminate the period's interest in education and translation, the design and purpose of history, the exploration of the world, and the role of men and women in the social order. The course is open to students of literature and other humanities disciplines and will include critical discussions of texts, student presentations and the development of research topics for a final paper.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
MJ-LITR-Litr Prior To 1800

LITR 346 - ENGLISH ROMANTIC POETS
(Formerly LITR 354) A study of Romantic poetry concepts. In the 50 years stretching from 1780 to 1830, writers in Germany and England made the concept of a creative imagination basic to aesthetics, and developed a theory of the interconnection between mind and nature that made a fundamental contribution to western cultural attitudes. The course will examine works of Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelly, and Keats.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

LITR 348 - VICTORIAN SECRETS:POETRY AND PROSE
(Formerly LITR 342) Britain under Queen Victoria (1837-1901), transformed itself into the first urban, industrial, technological, democratic, and imperial modern state. Writers -- men and women alike -- understood the revolutionary character of the times and confronted newly the full range of social realities that continue to beset us now: the alienated workplace, the degraded environment, mass culture, changing sex roles, race, colonialism, and the endangered child. This course will explore the achievement of such writers in all its variety of form, content, and self-expression, from poetry to fiction to journalism to autobiography, to see it not only as a literature but, in its own terms, as a "culture."
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
OLD GE-INTERNATIONAL ISSUES, MJ-LITR-Int'l Litr Selection

LITR 362 - INTERNATIONAL 19TH CENTURY NOVEL
(Formerly LITR 338) The 19th century is generally considered as the era during which the novel became a dominant literary genre. In this course, we will examine the development of the novel in an international context. We will explore how different literary movements (such as romanticism, realism, and sentimentalism) were articulated in different geographic and cultural contexts, and how these movements interacted with and were influenced by political and social concerns of the day. The primary objective of this course is thus to better understand both the novel as genre, and its development over this crucial time period.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
MJ-LITR-Int'l Litr Selection

LITR 363 - INTERNATIONAL 20TH & 21ST CENTURY NOVEL
(Formerly LITR 310) The 19th century is often seen as the era in which the novel established itself, taking on a certain form and a certain prominence. While its importance as a genre only continued to increase over the 20th and 21st centuries, that genre has changed in many important ways. This course is designed to explore some of the novel's most striking changes in form and in content over the course of the 20th and 21st centuries. Such changes are best studied from a comparative perspective; accordingly, we will examine how writers from several countries manipulate the structure of the novel to accommodate their thematic concerns and their artistic visions. We will acquaint ourselves with some of the important literary movements of the 20th century as they are exemplified in the works listed in the syllabus. And we will consider how these novels reflect the cultural concerns of their times. (The book list will be subject to change; we may study other, equally important and/or representative works in other semesters.) This course will help students to further develop their critical and close reading skills, and their research skills. By participating in class discussions, preparing and giving presentations, and writing papers, students will also learn to express themselves more clearly and precisely.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
OLD GE-INTERNATIONAL ISSUES, MJ-LITR-Int'l Litr Selection

LITR 366 - LITERATURE OF THE HOLOCAUST

0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
OLD GE-INTERNATIONAL ISSUES, MJ-INTL-Area Studies-Europe, MJ-LITR-Int'l Litr Selection

LITR 368 - ITALIAN RENAISSANCE STUDY
(Formerly LITR 363) A survey of Italian Renaissance literature through consideration of major authors such as Petrarch, Boccaccio, Macchiavelli, and Castiglione. The course will explore the changing significance of the role of human love, the relations between intellectual and civic life, and the role of literature itself.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
MJ-INTL-Area Studies-Europe, MJ-LITR-Litr Prior To 1800, MJ-LITR-Int'l Litr Selection

LITR 370 - CONTEMPORARY ITALIAN LITERATURE
(Formerly LITR 357) The course will be organized around the various literary movements from the turn of the century to the present (from relativists, futurists, and "crepuscolari" to the neo-realists and neo-experimentalists). The course will cover texts by Pirandello, Svevo, Marinetti, Moravia, Calvino and Eco. This course is also designed to introduce students to the rich and often overlooked body of works by Italian women writers and theorists. We will focus on a range of texts from political manifestos to the fiction of Aleramo, Maraini and Durante, to movies by controversial directors such as Liliana Cavani and Lina Wertmuller.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
OLD GE-INTERNATIONAL ISSUES, MJ-LITR-Int'l Litr Selection

LITR 372 - SPANISH RENAISSANCE LITERATURE
(Formerly LITR 328) Through historical, sociological, religious and cultural approaches, this course analyzes some of the best literary works of the 16th and 17th centuries produced in Spain. Selections "in translation," from Garcilaso de la Vega, San Juan de la Cruz, Fray Luis de Leon, El lazarillo, Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Calderon, Quevedo and Gongora will provide the students with a clear understanding of the ideology and Renaissance Spain's literature. Besides critical discussions of texts, this course includes development of research topics for a term paper.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
MJ-LITR-Litr Prior To 1800, MJ-LITR-Int'l Litr Selection

LITR 376 - BRAZILIAN LITERATURE & CULTURE
(Formerly LITR 330) This course will provide students with an introduction to Brazilian literary production within the context of major historical periods. They will also explore the diverse social and political movements and cultural practices that coincide with them. Ideally, students will identify, despite the diversity and transnational character of many of its people, the search for and development of a distinctly Brazilian national identity. Selected major literary works in translation will be studied alongside other Brazilian cultural products, such as film, music, visual and plastic arts, architecture, historical documents and non-fiction writing in order to gain a critical understanding of this Latin American "invisible giant" and its people. A central objective here is to interpret cultural products and practices with a critical awareness of identity, economy and power. This advanced course fulfills the international focus requirement for the Literature Major. As the only course that focuses entirely on Brazil, it is an excellent option for the Latin American Studies Minor.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
OLD GE-INTERNATIONAL ISSUES, MJ-LITR-Int'l Litr Selection

LITR 378 - BLACK ODYSSEY
(Formerly LITR 320) The course will examine literary and critical writings of the African Diaspora. We will study major writers of Africa, North America, and the Caribbean, such as W.E.B. DuBois, Leopold Sedar Senghor, Aime Cesaire, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Amiri Baraka, James Baldwin, Henry Louis Gates, Maryse Conde, Adrienne Kennedy, and others, representative of the literary movements and critical concepts of Negritude, the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement. While offering crucial insights into the dynamics of modern and contemporary criticism, the post-colonial vision of these writers traces a quest for new identities.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
MN-AFR AMR STD-Hum & Culture, OLD GE-INTERNATIONAL ISSUES, MJ-LITR-Int'l Litr Selection

LITR 381 - CREATIVE WRITING CAPSTONE
(Formerly LITR 395) This course fulfills the capstone requirement for the concentration in creative writing in the Literature major. This course focuses on the craft and production of a collection of student writing in fiction or creative non-fiction or poetry. Notions of what makes a book, a collection, and the shaping of a manuscript will be explored and adopted. Prerequisites: LITR 216, LITR 229, LITR 236, LITR 222, LITR 349 or permission of instructor.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture, Seminar

Literature Department

LITR 390 - TOPICS:
The descriptions and topics of this course change from semester-to-semester as well as instructor-to-instructor. Prerequisites: varies with the topic offered. LITR 390 IDENTITY AND CULTURE IN AMERICAN AND RUSSIAN WRITERS. Most of the course will be conducted via video camera linking Ramapo students and Russian students and their professor from Volgograd State Pedagogical University in Russia. This will be an unusual opportunity for Ramapo students to discuss selected texts of Russian and American literature and receive the cultural perspectives of Russian students. In this way, both Russian and American students and professors will learn from each other. Selected writers will include Tennessee Williams, Anton Chekhov, Arthur Miller, Leo Tolstoy, and modern Russian and American short story writers.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture, Seminar

Literature Department

LITR 398 - TRANSFER ELECTIVE
This course designation describes a transfer course from another institution where an equivalency to a Ramapo College course has not been determined. Upon convener evaluation, this course ID may be changed to an equivalent of a Ramapo College course or may fulfill a requirement.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

LITR 399 - TRANSFER ELECTIVE
This course designation is used to describe a transfer course from another institution which has been evaluated by the convener. A course with this course number has no equivalent Ramapo course. It may fulfill a requirement or may count as a free elective.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

LITR 400 - INDEPENDENT STUDY: LITERATURE
Limited opportunities to enroll for course work on an Independent Study basis are available. A student interested in this option should obtain an Independent Study Registration Form from the Registrar, have it completed by the instructor and school dean involved, and return it to the Registrar's Office. Consult the current Schedule of Classes for policies concerning Independent Study.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Independent Study

Literature Department

LITR 414 - SEMINAR:
The topics studied in this course change from semester-to-semester, as well as from instructor-to-instructor. This course is the capstone of the Literature Major. Students should expect to engage in sophisticated discussion, to work independently, and to participate in--and lead--seminar discussions. The course will require students to call on the experience of their previous coursework in the major to produce polished writing informed by research. Recent topics include (among others): The Bible as Literature and Philosophy, The Working Class in American Literature, Fictional Histories of the Americas, and Classics of War Literature. For this semester's course sections, please see the Literature Major webpage (http://phobos.ramapo.edu/majors/literature/) or contact the Literature Convener.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Seminar

Literature Department

Course Attributes:
WRITING INTENSIVE

LITR 498 - TRANSFER ELECTIVE
This course designation describes a transfer course from another institution where an equivalency to a Ramapo College course has not been determined. Upon convener evaluation, this course ID may be changed to an equivalent of a Ramapo College course or may fulfill a requirement.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department

LITR 499 - TRANSFER ELECTIVE
This course designation is used to describe a transfer course from another institution which has been evaluated by the convener. A course with this course number has no equivalent Ramapo course. It may fulfill a requirement or may count as a free elective.
0.000 TO 4.000 Credit hours
0.000 TO 4.000 Lecture hours

Levels: Undergraduate
Schedule Types: Lecture

Literature Department


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