Dear Liberal Arts Honors Student,

If you have looked at the course schedule, you will see that we have a rich offering of upper division Liberal Arts Honors classes for the spring semester of 2014.  I want to call your attention particularly to those being taught by Professors Thomas Staley and Steven Isenberg.

Staley just retired from a distinguished career as Director of the Harry Humanities Research Center.  A Professor of English, he is an authority on 20^th-century English and American literatures, having written extensively, for example, on James Joyce.  He will be teaching a class not to be missed for English majors or any one interested in modern literature, LAH 350 “Reading the Moderns,” MW 2:00 to 3:30 pm.

Every spring semester between 2003 and 2009, Steven Isenberg came to Austin from his home in New York City to teach some of the most exciting and popular LAH classes we have ever offered.  He left us in 2010 to become the Executive Director of PEN, the world’s oldest literary and human rights organization.  He stepped down from that position recently and is returning to U.T. Austin to teach LAH 350 “The Literature of World War I,” in conjunction with the HRHRC’s World War I Exhibition (TTH 11:00 am – 12:30 pm), and LAH 350  “Modern Masters of the Novel” (TTH 2:00 3:30 pm).  Both will count toward an English major.  For those interested in poetry, you cannot do better than taking Professor Isenberg’s one-hour class, “HMN 125K,” which will focus on the poetry of Phillip Larkin.  Professor Isenberg, who holds degrees from Berkeley, Oxford, and the Yale Law School, brings a fascinating background to the classroom, having served as President and Chairman of the Board of Adelphi University, Publisher of “New York Newsday,” Executive Vice President of the “Los Angeles Times,” and Chief of Staff to New York City Mayor, John V. Lindsay.

Every best wish, Larry Carver

Taught by the wonderful Professor Scala.

Meets T/TH 3:30 – 5 pm

This course is required for all majors and is open to everyone, not just English majors.

Description: This course serves as an overview of the most important and influential works of the British literary and linguistic tradition from its beginnings through the 20th century. The course will be conducted in both lecture and discussion format, and the goal of the course will be “coverage”—a vast majority of students’ time will be devoted to reading and annotation. The course will make an effort to give students a coherent narrative of British literature from the earliest writings in English through the major periods and transitions. It will cover important writers, genres, and styles as they characterize those literary periods. This course will aim to provide the foundation for future study in English literature by enabling students to contextualize and relate to each other the specific upper-division classes in which they enroll.

Required Texts: Two-volume Norton Anthology of British Literature: Major Authors, packaged with Norton Critical Edition of Pride and Prejudice; Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, Annotated; Alfred Hitchcock, dir.  Vertigo.

Come sign up in the LAH Office!