Course Descriptions

ENG 4899

Senior Capstone in English

Mark Walhout

MWF 2:30–3:50 p.m.

LITERARY FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

This senior capstone course (which juniors may take take with the instructor's permission) will examine classic and contemporary works of fantasy and science fiction that qualify as "literary." Not that there is anything wrong with "genre" fiction, to which, for many of us, our love of reading can be traced.  

We will start with two great sci fi and fantasy authors of the early twentieth century, H. G. Wells and Lord Dunsany.  We will then move on to contemporary novels, including Kazuo Ishiguro's The Buried Giant and Klara and the Sun as well as Michel Faber's The Book of Strange New Things and Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry for the Future.

Writing on the window of an English classroom

How to Read a Poem

English Professor Susan Van Zanten gives you a quick guide on how to get the most out of reading poetry.

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
Jane Austen
Pride & Prejudice