Browse Hierarchy ESH5990: Columbia in London

This module will introduce students to the archival, site-specific study of literature, specifically the literature of London. In discrete units, we will study major English authors spanning several centuries of English literary history: these might include Chaucer, Donne, Dickens, and Woolf. In doing so, we will consider London not (or not merely) as an object of representation within their works, but rather as a site for the production, reception, and preservation of their works. In each unit of the course, we will visit a scholarly archive (from the British Library, to St. Paul's Cathedral, to the Victoria and Albert Museum), in order to examine and understand our respective authors' texts as they were created, disseminated, and conserved in a London context. We will also, however, visit other urban archives - museums, prisons, churches, and playhouses- to situate and contextualize our readings within their broader London contexts.