English 200 Reading Literary Forms: Monstors Medieval and Modern
Dr. Sarah Nickel Moore
Class Time and Place: TTh 12:30-2:20, MEB 242
Office: Padelford A507
Office Hours: Tuesday and Thursday 10:30-12:20, and by appointment
Email: srmoore2@uw.edu
View and/or download the entire syllabus here.
Welcome to English Reading Literary Forms! This course engages with concepts of translation, monstrosity, and the medieval in a longitudinal study of the Old English Beowulf, the Middle English Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Shakespeare’s MacBeth, and the modern movie adaptation of Dune. Over the ten weeks of this course, you will read texts spanning nearly two thousand years, along with several accompanying readings that explain and engage with the text. By the end of this course, you will know a little more about monsters—both medieval and modern. You will also being the critical work of understanding how translation always impacts how we read and interpret a text.
Do not let the fact that we are reading Beowulf intimidate you! The translation we are using is very accessible and entertaining, and will make you think of this old poem in new ways. In this class we will ask ourselves what a premodern text like Beowulf and a very modern, sci-fi movie like Dune have in common. We will ask ourselves how—and why—cultures create monsters, and how media literacy helps us to identify the “monsters” in our own society.