ENL 5246 Pascoe Spring 2021

This course will introduce students to the long Romantic period (1750 to 1850), with an emphasis on recent methodological innovations. Reading assignments will cover a generous selection of poetry (including poems by Wordsworth, Byron, Keats, Robinson, Smith, and Barbauld), fiction and drama (in particular, novels and plays by Inchbald, Austen, and Brontë), and critical/theoretical texts that have shaped our understanding of the field. We will especially focus on how Romantic-era writers moved (imaginatively and literally) beyond their national boundaries in such works as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Mary Wollstonecraft’s Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, and Olaudeh Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative.

Students will read from new monographs in the areas of postcolonial studies, book studies, and computational analysis, and will meet via Zoom with the authors of these works. Students will also be encouraged to define their own research methodologies, and to envision how their research skills prepare them for a variety of professional careers. To inspire these thoughtful endeavors, we will meet with the creators of two mold-breaking dissertations.

Students from all departments and disciplinary groups are welcome.