LIT 374 Topics in Nineteenth-century Literature

3 hours 

Topics in Nineteenth-century Literature may focus on a literary genre or convention (e.g., lyric or narrative poetry, realist, romantic or naturalistic novels) or an important theme (e.g., industrialization, slavery, imperialism, and the romantic imagination) as a means of understanding the literature of the period. Each semester individual instructors will anchor the course in specific sub-topics, primary texts, cultures, historical moments, etc., depending on their own areas of specialization. The course will approach the canon for this period not as a fixed entity but as a body of work consistently open to reevaluation and critique; alternative texts, voices, and subject positions relevant to the topic(s) will be included. Topics in Nineteenth-Century Literature will examine select major and minor literary movements, authors, and ideas at work in 19th-century literature with an eye to the formal features of texts as well as the social, historical, and political contexts in which they appear.