Literature Courses
PROGRAM COORDINATOR
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Sydney Brown
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In addition to our standard literature courses, which are given at least once a year, many other literature offerings have been designed to accommodate different kinds of literature appreciation as well as the many different interests students may bring to their college experience. Although not all courses in our catalog are available each semester, their breadth of themes, topics, and perspectives demonstrates the many intellectually enjoyable and personally fulfilling ways students may explore literature. Find out more below.
COURSES
ENGLISH 122: INTRODUCTION TO LITERATURE
3 units, 3 hours lecture
Prerequisite: A “C” grade or higher or “Pass” in English 120 or equivalent. Introduces literature through the reading, analysis, and discussion of various genres
such as short stories, poetry, drama, novels, myths, essays and folktales. Literature
encompasses different time periods and a variety of male and female authors from around
the world. Students will use the literature to write critical and appreciative essays.
Recommended for English Majors. Satisfies General Education for: Grossmont College C2; CSU C2; IGETC 3B Transfers
to: CSU, UC.
ENGLISH 201: WOMEN, GENDER, AND SEXUALITY IN LITERATURE
3 units, 3 hours
This course is designed to examine gender and sexuality in diverse literature with
emphasis on the representations of women. Students learn to use different theoretical
lenses to critically interpret and discuss fiction, graphic literature, poetry, drama,
and creative nonfiction in historical, political, literary, and cultural contexts.
Through active reading and discussion, students interrogate how literature informs,
reinforces, challenges, alters, resists, or otherwise influences social constructions
of gender and sexuality. Satisfies General Education for: Grossmont College C2; CSU C2; IGETC 3B Transfers
to: CSU, UC.
ENGLISH 203: CHILDREN’S LITERATURE
3 units, 3 hours
A survey of children’s literature, from folktales to current realism, including historical
and cultural diversity. Emphasis upon definition and application of literary elements
and differentiating qualities between “good” and “poor” children’s books. The course
will prepare students to hook children on books, cultural literacy and great ideas. Satisfies General Education for Grossmont College C2. Transfers to CSU.
ENGLISH 215: MYTHOLOGY
3 units, 3 hours
Recommended preparation: A “C” grade or higher or “Pass”in English 120. Designed to explore the similarities
among the myths of widely separated peoples as a means not only of interpreting their
literature and art, but of understanding the basic inter- relationships among all
people of the great civilizations of the world. Satisfies General Education for: Grossmont College C2; CSU C2; IGETC 3B. Transfers
to: CSU, UC.
ENGLISH 217: FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION
3 units, 3 hours
Recommended preparation: A “C” grade or higher or “Pass” in English 120. An introduction to literature, ranging
from gothic romance to heroic and other fantasies and from space-adventure to socially
critical contemporary science fiction. Course will examine the traditional, canonical,
and historical backgrounds from which popular literatures derive, and explore the
place of science fiction and fantasy in popular culture. Satisfies General Education for: Grossmont College C2; CSU C2; IGETC 3B. Transfers
to: CSU, UC.
ENGLISH 218: SHAKESPEARE AND THE THEATRE OF HIS TIME
3 units, 3 hours
Recommended preparation: A “C” grade or higher or “Pass” in English 120. Reading and discussion of six to seven
selected Shakespeare plays—including the play(s) being produced or viewed locally,
that represent the full range of his works. The point of the course is to prepare
students to understand and appreciate more fully the experience of seeing, reading,
and discussing Shakespeare. The course will make apt use of actors in the classroom,
good films, videotapes, recordings of the plays and theatre tours. Satisfies General Education for: Grossmont College, C2, CSU C2. Transfers to CSU,
UC.
ENGLISH 219: VIEWS OF DEATH AND DYING IN LITERATURE
3 units, 3 hours
Recommended preparation: A “C” grade or higher or “Pass” in English 120.
This course will examine works of literature whose predominant subject focuses on
attitudes toward death and dying as a practical and philosophical concern. Satisfies General Education for: Grossmont College C2, CSU C2 or E; IGETC 3B. Transfers
to: CSU, UC.
ENGLISH 221: BRITISH LITERATURE I
3 units, 3 hours
Recommended preparation: A “C” grade or higher or “Pass” in English 120 and English 122. Surveys British literature
from the Old English Period to the Romantic Period. Students will read and interpret
literature against a background of the historical, social, and philosophical developments
of the time. Reading selections may consist of poetry, plays, novels, satires, and
nonfiction prose, including letters and essays. Authors sampled may include Geoffrey
Chaucer, William Langland, Edmund Spencer, William Shakespeare, Ben Johnson, John
Milton, Lady Mary Wroth, Aphra Behn, and Jonathon Swift. Satisfies General Education for: Grossmont College C2; CSU C2; IGETC 3B. Transfers
to: CSU, UC.
ENGLISH 222: BRITISH LITERATURE II
3 units, 3 hours
Recommended preparation: A “C” grade or higher or “Pass” in English 120 and English 122. Surveys British literature
from the Romantic Period to the present. Students will read and interpret literature
against a background of the historical, social, and philosophical developments of
the time. Reading selections may consist of poetry, short stories, plays, novels,
and nonfiction prose, including letters and essays. Authors sampled may include William
Blake, Mary Wollstonecraft, William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy
Shelley, John Keats, Robert Browning, Emily Bronte, Oscar Wilde, Jane Austen, Thomas
Hardy, William Yeats, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Doris Lessing, and Derek Walcott. Satisfies General Education for: Grossmont College C2; CSU C2; IGETC 3B. Transfers
to: CSU, UC.
ENGLISH 231: AMERICAN LITERATURE I
3 units, 3 hours
Recommended preparation: A “C” grade or higher or “Pass” in English 120 and English 122.
First course in the study of American literature which explores literary works and their political, religious, economic, and aesthetic context from pre-Colonial American to the Civil War. Reading selections may consist of poetry, short stories, novels, and nonfiction prose, including essays, letters, political tracts, and autobiographies. Authors such as the following will be read, analyzed, discussed, and written about in essays and exams: pre-Colonial Native American authors, Anne Bradstreet, Benjamin Franklin, Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Fenimore Cooper, Sojourner Truth, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglass, Emily Dickinson, and Herman Melville. Satisfies General Education for: Grossmont College C2; CSU C2; IGETC 3B. Transfers to: CSU, UC.
ENGLISH 232: AMERICAN LITERATURE II
3 units, 3 hours
Recommended preparation: A “C” grade or higher or “Pass” in English 120 and English 122. Second course in the
study of American literature which explores literary works and their political, religious,
economic, and aesthetic context from the Civil War to the present. Reading selections
may consist of poetry, short stories, novels, plays, and nonfiction prose, including
letters and essays. Authors such as the following will be read, analyzed, discussed,
and written about in essays and exams: Mark Twain, Henry James, Walt Whitman, Kate
Chopin, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Langston Hughes,
Tennessee Williams, Allen Ginsberg's, Alice Walker, and Leslie Marmon Silko. Satisfies General Education for: Grossmont College C2; CSU C2, IGETC 3B. Transfers
to: CSU, UC.
ENGLISH 236: CHICANA/O LITERATURE
(Ethnic Studies 236)
3 units, 3 hours
Recommended preparation: A “C” grade or higher or “Pass” in English 120 or equivalent.
This course is a survey of colonial, post-colonial, and contemporary Chicano/Chicana literature. Literary works originally written in English and the Chicano/a bilingual idiom as well as English translations of works written in Spanish will be taught. Reading selections may consist of poetry, ballads, short stories, novels, plays, and nonfiction prose. Students analyze the literature and apply critical theory to describe critical events in the histories, cultures, and intellectual and literary traditions, with special focus on the lived experiences, social struggles, and contributions of Latino/a Americans in the United States. Satisfies General Education for: Grossmont College C2; CSU C2; IGETC 3B.
ENGLISH 237: AMERICAN INDIAN LITERATURE
(Ethnic Studies 237)
3 units, 3 hours
Recommended preparation: A “C” grade or higher or “Pass” in English 120 or equivalent.
A survey and literary analysis of American Indian literature; folk, creation and origin stories, legends, and poetry from the oral tradition to contemporary American Indian authors. Satisfies General Education for: Grossmont College C2; CSU C2; IGETC 3B Transfers to: CSU, UC (credit limited: see Catalog).
ENGLISH 238: BLACK LITERATURE
(Ethnic Studies 238)
3 units, 3 hours
Recommended preparation: A “C” grade or higher or “Pass” in English 120 or equivalent.
This course introduces students to a survey of Black literature, focusing on the early oral tradition, literature of slavery and freedom, the Harlem Renaissance, Modernism, the Black Arts Era, and the contemporary period. Reading selections may consist of poetry, short stories, plays, novels, and nonfiction prose, including essays, letters, political tracts, autobiographies, speeches, and sermons. Students analyze the literature and apply critical theory to describe critical events in the histories, cultures, and intellectual and literary traditions, with special focus on the lived experiences, social struggles, and contributions of African Americans in the United States. Satisfies General Education for: Grossmont College C2. Transfers to: CSU.
ENGLISH 239: ASIAN AMERICAN LITERATURE
(Ethnic Studies 239)
3 units, 3 hours
Recommended preparation: A “C” grade or higher or “Pass” in English 120 or equivalent.
This course in Asian American Literature will include poetry, ballads, short stories, novels, plays, and nonfiction prose. “Asian” is a broad category that includes, but is not limited to, persons who trace their roots to at least China, Japan, Korea, Burma (or Myanmar), Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Hawai’i, the Pacific Islands, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, India, Bangladesh, or Pakistan. Historically, industrialization, technological development, and a rejection of tradition have invoked ideologies of the “Oriental other,” “the Yellow Peril,” and the “model minority.” But the literary works herein challenge such narratives and set the stage to examine an age marked by migration, war, imperialism, (neo)colonialism, and globalization. Students will be invited to read and discuss a variety of texts that represent Asia and the Pacific Islands during and after World War II, and that challenge ideas about the past and present, the traditional and the modern, and “the West” and “the East.” Students will analyze the literature and apply critical theory to describe events in the histories, cultures, and intellectual and literary traditions, with special focus on the lived experiences, social struggles, and contributions of Asian Americans, Native Hawai’ians, and Pacific Islander Americans in the United States. Satisfies General Education for: Grossmont College C2. Transfers to: CSU
ENGLISH 271: WORLD LITERATURE II
3 units, 3 hours
Recommended preparation: A “C” grade or higher or “Pass” in English 120.
This class offers a survey and analysis of diverse literary texts across the world. Students examine how literature shapes and reflects the human experience as well as global struggles over power, identity, and language. Students learn to use different theoretical lenses to interpret critically the historical, political, social, psychological, philosophical, aesthetic, and cultural aspects of literature from Africa, the Middle East, South and East Asia, the Caribbean, Oceania, Latin America, and Europe. Primary texts consist of fiction, graphic literature, poetry, drama, creative nonfiction, and film.