Catalogue 2019-2020 [ARCHIVED CATALOG]
Victorian Studies Program
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Director: Susan Zlotnick;
Participating Faculty: Wendy Graham (English), Paul Kaneb (English), Brian Lukacherb (Art), Lydia Murdoch (History), Susan Zlotnick (English).
b On leave 2019/20, second semester
The interdepartmental program in Victorian Studies is designed to enable students to combine courses offered in several departments with independent work and, through an interdisciplinary approach, to examine the assumptions, ideas, ideals, institutions, society, and culture of nineteenth-century Britain, a complex society undergoing rapid transition at the height of global power.
Major
Correlate Sequence in Victorian Studies
Victorian Studies
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VICT 150 - Revolution, Evolution, and the Global Nineteenth Century Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as CLCS 150 and HIST 150 ) The world as we know it largely came into being during the nineteenth century. Marked by social, political, cultural, and technological transformations, the nineteenth century witnessed the emergence of modernity out of the instabilities of change. Railways crisscrossed continents; European empires expanded; agricultural laborers flocked into mushrooming urban centers; and the enslaved, the colonized, and the disenfranchised around the world fought for liberty and citizenship. In this course, we consider these and other nineteenth-century transformations in a global context by focusing on the interconnections between North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia. Our investigations are organized around five core areas: revolutions, emancipations, evolution and progress, popular culture, and the domestic sphere. Students analyze a variety of sources, including novels, plays, short stories, photographs, early films, paintings, periodicals and pamphlets, government documents, letters, music, and scientific works. The course is team taught with occasional guest lectures. Lydia Murdoch and Susan Zlotnick.
Three 50-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
VICT 254 - Victorian Britain Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as HIST 254 and URBS 254 ) This course examines some of the key transformations that Victorians experienced, including industrialization, the rise of a class-based society, political reform, and the women’s movement. We explore why people then, and historians since, have characterized the Victorian age as a time of progress and optimism as well as an era of anxiety and doubt. Lydia Murdoch.
Two 75-minute periods.
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VICT 255 - Nineteenth -Century British Novels Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as ENGL 255 ) The nineteenth century was a preeminent age for novel writing in Great Britain, and in one semester we cannot acquaint ourselves with all the great books, or all the major novelists, of the period. Instead, the aim of this course is to learn how to read a nineteenth-century British novel by familiarizing ourselves with the conventional plots of the period (i.e., the marriage plot, the inheritance plot), its common literary idioms (such as realism, melodrama, and the Gothic) as well as some characteristic forms (the bildungsroman, the fictional autobiography) and central preoccupations (domesticity, industrialism, urbanization, imperialism, social mobility, and class relations). We also focus on careful reading and writing through short close reading assignments as well as through a few longer critical essays. Finally, this course introduces students to secondary literature, in anticipation of the work carried out in 300-level English courses. Readings vary but includes novels by Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy. Susan Zlotnick.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
VICT 290 - Community-Engaged Learning
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
Course Format: INT -
VICT 298 - Independent Work
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
Course Format: OTH -
VICT 300 - Thesis Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
1, 2 to unit(s)
The senior thesis is required for the major. The Department.
Course Format: INT -
VICT 355 - Childhood and Children in Nineteenth-Century Britain Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as HIST 355 and WMST 355 ) This course examines both the social constructions of childhood and the experiences of children in Britain during the nineteenth century, a period of immense industrial and social change. We analyze the various understandings of childhood at the beginning of the century (including utilitarian, Romantic, and evangelical approaches to childhood) and explore how, by the end of the century, all social classes shared similar expectations of what it meant to be a child. Main topics include the relationships between children and parents, child labor, sexuality, education, health and welfare, abuse, delinquency, and children as imperial subjects. Lydia Murdoch.
One 2-hour period.
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VICT 399 - Senior Independent Work
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
Course Format: OTH
Other Courses
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VICT 351 - Studies in Nineteenth-Century British Literature Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as ENGL 351 ) Study of a major author (e.g., Coleridge, George Eliot, Oscar Wilde) or a group of authors (the Brontes, the Pre-Raphaelite poets and painters) or a topical issue (representations of poverty; literary decadence; domestic angels and fallen women; transformations of myth in Romantic and Victorian literature) or a major genre (elegy, epic, autobiography).
Topic for 2019/20b: The Brontë Sisters. The aim of this course is two-fold: a detailed study of the major works of Anne, Emily and Charlotte Brontë as well as an examination of the criticism that has been written about the sisters’ novels and poems. We will acquaint ourselves with the different critical lenses through which the Brontës have been viewed (e.g., biographical, feminist, historicist, postcolonial) in order to explore the ways in which the meaning of the Brontë sisters and their writing has changed over time. Primary texts include Jane Eyre, Shirley, Villette, Wuthering Heights, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall the Brontës’ poetry and Elizabeth Gaskell’s Life of Charlotte Brontë. Susan Zlotnick.
One 3-hour period.
Course Format: CLS
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