Taught by Monika Kaup, his course was the second prerequisite that I took in order to declare the English major, and it helped me develop important skills in critical practice that I continue to use today. Over the course of the quarter, we read a number of canonical texts, including Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. Each of these texts were related in that they were all written by women in the form of narrative fiction, and that they all dealt with the theme of madness. As we discussed each of these texts, we were introduced to a range of critical lenses, including feminist, post-colonial and psychoanalytical theory, as well as narratology. This course gave me the tools I needed to engage with literature in more depth while also introducing me to the subfield of feminist literary criticism, my main field of study today.

This course was a broad survey of American literature in the later half of the 19th century taught by John Griffith. My main takeaway from this course was a wide breadth of familiarity with American literature from this era. I had lots of practice reading texts and articulating my thoughts under tight time constraints, which allowed me to develop critical time management skills.

I registered for this course with Professor Frances McCue while I was in the process of applying to a year-long exchange program at University College Dublin. The course texts combined essential cultural and historical context with imaginative pieces, prompting thoughtful discussion of the complicated conditions in which a selection of Irish writing was produced. Our primary readings included poetry by W.B. Yeats, Vona Groarke, Paula Meehan and Eavon Boland, as well as prose by Sara Baume, James Joyce and Frank O’Connor, and a play by Samuel Beckett. For the final project, I worked with a group of my classmates to put together a collection of essays that expressed our personal connections with the course texts. This experience allowed me to further expand my skills in collaboration, editing and design, as well as develop a firm foundational knowledge regarding Irish literature that guided my future studies.

Inspired by my experience in English 207, I decided to take another course focusing on cultural studies. This course was taught by Daniel Roberts, concentrating on the genre of speculative fiction. Our readings ranged from Ursula Le Guin’s 1974 novel The Dispossessed to Alex Garland’s 2018 film Annihilation. Over the course of the quarter, I was introduced to the field of queer literary criticism which enriched my learning and allowed me to write nuanced critiques of our course texts in the three academic essays that we wrote for the course.

This course was taught by John Webster and fulfilled the historical breadth requirement for the English major. I was introduced to a variety of Shakespeare’s plays, and learned to appreciate the enduring impact Shakespeare’s work has had on literary genre and convention. I even memorized a sonnet for an assignment that I still remember to this day.