Current Courses

ELIT 392 : Literary Theory (Spring 2019)
The aim of this course is to introduce students to some of the main contexts and concepts of modern literary criticism and theory; to examine, in different ways, a number of different traditions of thought and critical practice that have contributed to the formation of current debates about the nature of literature, literary criticism, and theory. By the end of the course, students are expected to have gained a critical sense of the presuppositions and principles of literary criticism, and issues of knowledge, value, tradition, and ideology arising from the practice of reading. They will be able to apply this critical sense in cogent analyses of specific literary texts, demonstrating an appropriate critical terminology and an awareness of literature as a medium through which values are explored, affirmed, and debated.

ELIT 490 : Senior Project (Spring 2019)
The senior project entails independent study by graduating students, who develop personal projects under the supervision of a faculty member. This semester I am supervising two drama projects: one a performance of Samuel Beckett’s radio plays, the other a stage adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short play ‘Porcelain and Pink’. I am also supervising an academic dissertation on the poetry of Hugh MacDiarmid.

Past Courses

ELIT 227 : Poetry and Poetics (Fall 2018)
This course aims to promote students’ understanding of poetry and poetics by developing their skills in reading poems of a wide variety of types from diverse historical periods. Students will explore various types of poetry, considering figurative language, prosodic features, sound patterns, verse and stanza forms, and the relationship between form and meaning in poetry. By the end of the course, students are expected to be able to demonstrate a clear understanding of these elements and an ability to apply this understanding to an interpretation of a given poem, using an appropriate critical vocabulary.