In this course we will sample the range of mainstream and experimental drama that has been composed during the past century. Half of these plays are now acknowledged to be influential "classics" of modern drama; the other half are prize-winning contemporary plays that have broken new ground. We will study them both as distinguished writing and as scripts for performance. Moreover, all of these plays are historical: some draw their subject matter from past centuries, while others convey a sense of how contemporary events are informed by and located within a larger historical frame. During the first century of film, television, and computers, it seems that writers for the theater have been especially attuned to the relationships between past and present, in their art and in society. Within this multimedia context, we will consider what drama in particular has to offer now and in the future. This is also a HASS Communication-Intensive Course, in which we will work on improving your skills, awareness, and confidence as a writer and speaker; a variety of writing opportunities (including revision of at least one essay), class reports, and group performance work will aid us in realizing these goals.

There are a number of goals for this course. By the end of the semester, it is my hope that you will:
* Gain comfort in reading difficult fictional narratives with a careful attention to detail, narrative technique, intertext, and context;
* Reflect on how you read literature and share these reflections with the class;
* Learn to engage in a critical dialogue with your peers and with the scholarship in the field;
* Develop research skills applicable to the study of literature;
* Be able to articulate significant, researchable questions about the works and their literary and historical contexts.
In addition, the primary goal of the course is to help you gain a better understanding of the works of Samuel Beckett, Jorge Luis Borges, and Vladimir Nabokov.

Subject focuses on fiction, drama, and poetry and possibly films inspired by these topics mostly of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. This semester, Contemporary Literature (21L.488) deals with Irish literature, a subject broad and deep. To achieve a manageable volume of study, the course focuses primarily on poetry and prose, at drama's expense, and on living writers, at the expense of their predecessors. Each class session follows a discussion format, often with students assigned to lead-off or summarize the day's topic.

This course seeks to develop a nuanced understanding of the scope of cultural and literary expression in the late 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries. It attends to broad socio-historical happenings, from the birth of modernism in the late 19th century to the post-modern moment. In addition to literary modernism, the course will also take a brief look at the cultural production of modernism in art, music, architecture, cinema, philosophy, and drama. Upon completion of this course, students will be able to: Define the terms modernism and modernity and explain the similarities and differences between these terms using specific works to illustrate comparison and contrast; List and explain the importance of a variety of social, cultural, and historical developments leading up to and occurring during the modern period; Cite and analyze the meaning of primary works of literature, poetry, art, music, architecture, cinema, philosophy and drama to illustrate the principle characteristics of modernism; Compare and contrast the literatures of both France and England from the start of the modern era (i.e., the turn of the twentieth century); Explain the impact of the Great War upon the development and expression of a variety of literary and artistic forms and especially on poetry in a number of genres; Describe the aftermath of World War I and its variety of effects upon literature and art and especially upon the poetry of T.S. Eliot and the novels of Virginia Woolf and Ernest Hemingway; Define High Modernism and give examples of the tenets, ideals, and even the contradictions and self-contradictions of this movement in history and literature (and especially in both its Irish and British contexts); Define the terms postmodernism and deconstruction as well as the phrase Magical Realism and identify the most important characteristics of the movements, fields, theories, and texts associated with these terms; Explain the premises of postcolonial literature and literary theory and identify, describe, compare, and contrast postcolonial texts from range of national origins. (English Literature 204)

This course analyzes major modern plays featuring works by Shaw, Pirandello, Beckett, Brecht, Williams, Soyinka, Hwang, Churchill, Wilson, Frayn, Stoppard, Deveare Smith, and Kushner. The class particularly considers performance, sociopolitical and aesthetic contexts, and the role of theater in the world of modern multimedia.