Department of English

This course offers a rare opportunity for students to study a broad range of major English-language literary texts across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries under the direction of Jennifer Egan (C '85), Artist-in-Residence at Penn English and President of PEN America.  Egan has garnered critical acclaim with works such as A Visit from the Goon Squad (winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction) and Manhattan Beach (winner of the 2017 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence). 

We will examine the ways in which important writers of the last 150 years —including Anthony Trollope, Edith Wharton, Nella Larsen, Jean Rhys, Philip Roth, Claude Brown, and Joan Didion— have helped to excavate and elucidate themes of modern life such as solitary vs. communal experience, interior perception vs. public role-playing, the rise of mass consumerism/image culture, and national belonging/alienation. The course will encourage individual literary expression through frequent in-class creative writing exercises. Assessments include a short creative paper, a longer research paper, and a take-home final exam. No previous literary training is required.

All mandatory recitations are held R 4:30-6

Please see below for TA contact and office hour assignment:

ENGL 086.201, TA: Howie Tam (haot@sas.upenn.edu)  FBH 118

ENGL 086.202, TA: Eleni Palis (epalis@sas.upenn.edu) FBH 118

ENGL 086.203, TA: Natalie Amleshi (amleshi@sas.upenn.edu) FBH 238

ENGL 086.204, TA: Micah Del Rosario (micahdel@sas.upenn.edu) FBH 238