Bulletin - John Jay College Of Criminal Justice - CUNY

Courses Offered
develop critical skills such as close reading, analysis, organized
thought, and effective writing.
Prerequisite: ENG 102 or 201. Prerequisite or co-requisite: LIT 260
or permission of the instructor
LIT 371 Topics in Medieval Literature
3 hours, 3 credits
Topics in Medieval Literature may focus on a literary genre or
convention (e.g., epic, romance) or an important theme (e.g.,
chivalric and warrior codes, heresy and devotion, impermanence,
erotic love) 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 Medieval Literature will examine select literary
movements, authors, and ideas with an eye to the formal features of
texts as well as the social, historical, and political contexts in which
they appear.
Prerequisite: ENG 102 or 201. Prerequisite or co-requisite: LIT 260
or permission of the instructor
LIT 372 Topics in Early Modern Literature
3 hours, 3 credits
Topics in Early Modern Literature may focus on a literary genre or
convention (e.g., drama, sonnet) or an important theme (e.g., the
Other in literature, hierarchy, literature of love, monarchy in crisis) as
a means of understanding the literature of the period. The specific
focus of the course will be determined by the individual professor
and may be concerned exclusively with English literature, Western
Literature more broadly, or Western and non-Western literature. 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 Early Modern Literature will examine
major and minor literary movements, authors, or ideas at work in
16th- and 17th-century literature with an eye to the formal features of
texts as well as the social, historical, and political contexts in which
they appear.
Prerequisite: ENG 102 or 201. Prerequisite or co-requisite: LIT 260
or permission of the instructor
LIT 373 Topics in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-
Century Literature
3 hours, 3 credits
Topics in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Literature introduces
students to a pivotal period that witnessed the development of modern
politics and democracy, the rise of the novel, the appearance of the
professional woman writer, and the emergence of Enlightenment
philosophy and literature. As a means of understanding the literature of
the period, the course may focus on a literary genre or mode (e.g., the
novel, satire, sentimentality) or on an important theme (e.g.,
nationalism, colonialism, human rights, parliamentary democracy,
status and class, revolution, the rise of Enlightenment thought, The
Black Atlantic, New Science and the human). The specific focus of the
course will be determined by the individual professor, and specific
syllabi may draw on British literature and Western Literature more
broadly, as well as on Anglophone literature and/or literature in
translation originating from locations and cultures around the globe.
The course will approach the canon of this period as a body of work
consistently open to reevaluation and critique; alternative texts, voices,
and perspectives relevant to the topic(s) will be included. Topics in
Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Literature is one of six historically
specific Topics courses, students majoring in English are required to
take four.
Prerequisite: ENG 102 or 201 Prerequisite or co-requisite: LIT 260
or permission of the instructor
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