Honors Courses Spring 2025
ENGL 105: Honors Introduction to English – Mythic Epic
Instructor: Sarah Van der Laan
46700 | TuTh 1:00-2:15 PM | Wescoe 4021- Lawrence
A victorious hero, cast adrift on uncharted seas on his return from a cataclysmic war, struggles through unimaginable dangers and powerful temptations to return to the wife and home he left twenty years ago. The Odyssey—one of the oldest surviving works of European literature—continues to inspire films, plays, novels, poems, graphic novels, and artworks: war stories and love stories, postcolonial and feminist revisions, parodies and tragedies. We will explore the Odyssey and three contemporary adaptations: Caribbean poet Derek Walcott's stage adaptation for Britain's Royal Shakespeare Company, the Coen brothers' film O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and Madeline Miller's recent novel Circe. We will ask why Homer’s tales of Troy, with their questioning of ideals of honor and glory, their awareness of the human cost of warfare, and their struggle to find heroism in human experience, remain necessary today. And we will engage with adaptation theory to discover how contemporary authors and directors reinvent myths for new audiences and examine the nature of adaptation itself.
ENGL 205: Ways of Seeing
Instructor: Mary Klayder
50855 | MWF 10:00-10:50 AM | Wescoe 4020 - Lawrence
55656 | MWF 11:00-11:50 AM | Wescoe 4020 - Lawrence
The course will focus on the concepts of perception, perspective, and vision in literature. How do we see things? How do we view the world? How does literature show our different ways of seeing? We will consider different perceptions of art, nature, gender, race, and culture; we will investigate various cultural and personal perspectives; and we will address the notion of vision as a metaphor in literature. In addition to literary texts, we will look at how other disciplines intersect with literature regarding these issues. There will be three critical papers, a final exam, a perception project, and assorted playful response assignments throughout the semester. Texts: Lakoff and Johnson, 'Metaphors We Live By;' Donne, 'Selected Poetry;' Dickinson, 'The Collected Poems;' Edson, 'Wit;' Joyce, 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man;' Woolf, 'To The Lighthouse;' Haig, 'The Midnight Library;' and selected essays and poetry handouts.
ENGL 492: The London Review
Instructor: Mary Klayder
42682 | W 04:30 - 05:50 PM WES 4023 - ABROAD
This class meets one day a week throughout the semester and includes a nine-day visit to London over the spring break period. Students spend the early part of the semester selecting special interests, researching places to visit and study, and exchanging information. After the trip, students compile and publish a journal entitled "The London Review", which is comprised of essays, photos, art work, and other reflections about their experience in London.
ENGL 590: Travel Writing & Costa Rica
Instructor: Marta Caminero
54714 | APPT STUDY - ABROAD JAN-03/JAN-14
On this program, students will investigate a variety of current issues in Costa Rican politics, culture, ecology, and tourism through lectures, excursions, and individual writing projects.
ENGL 598: Honors Proseminar - Shakespeare's Writing Craft
Instructor: Jonathan Lamb
53539 | MW 12:30-1:45 PM | Wescoe 4020 – Lawrence
In this course, we will study William Shakespeare’s craft as a writer of plays and poems. Informed by recent Shakespeare scholarship, we will focus on a small number of texts: Love’s Labour’s Lost, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, Venus and Adonis and the Sonnets. (This list may change, based on student interest and enthusiasm!) We will consider how questions of language, form, textuality, value, and dramatic structure help us speak to critical concerns of gender, social class, race, emotion, and maybe even computation. Students will complete several formal papers and projects, including a long final research project on a topic of their choice.
ENGL 599: Honors Essay
Instructor: Mary Klayder
44533 | By Appointment | Lawrence
