ENG385

Description

Fall 2026 Special Topic: The Mad King The course explores early modern literature in its historical and political context through the lens of critical disability and mad studies, as well as theories of affect and histories of medicine to help us understand how ideas like authority, civility, sanity, and likeness are embodied and wielded for governance, control, and chaos. Studying madness may help us better understand the work of the mind and body, and the human emotions we cultivate and share. Studying madness also illuminates the effects of discipline and power and othering at work in the world. Madness may be a response to chaos or it could be the instigator of chaos. As our seminar will show, studying literature from early modern Europe allows us to see how madness works as both an instrument of power and, potentially, as a disruptor of oppression. Madness forms and unravels the intersection of class, race, gender, disability, climate, and sexuality as it troubles categorization. Our seminar will analyze premodern literature from writers such as Sophocles, Euripides, Thomas More, Machiavelli, Philip Sidney, Shakespeare, John Donne, John Milton, Margaret Cavendish, Queen Elizabeth, and King James through critical reading, discussion, and writing in ways that open up questions about how to see, feel, and interact with madness in the world. For English majors, this course satisfies the D-1 or the D-2 requirement. For English minors, this course counts as a 200-level English seminar.