Ellen Mankoff has taught a wide variety of courses in the Department of English since joining the faculty in 1980. She has directed the Kenyon-Exeter program, was a member of the faculty of the Kenyon Summer in Rome, and she has also taught in the Integrated Program in Humane Studies. Several of her courses are cross-listed in Women's and Gender Studies. Her essay "Approaching Paradise Lost through a Reading of Milton's Sonnets" is included in the MLA volume Approaches to Teaching Milton's Paradise Lost (1st edition). She has a special interest in the poetry of Edmund Spenser and in early modern women writers.
Education
1978 — Master of Arts from Johns Hopkins University
1975 — Bachelor of Arts from Reed College, Phi Beta Kappa
Courses Recently Taught
ENGL 254
Literary Women: 19th-century British Literature
ENGL 254
"What art's for a woman?" asks Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Her question was echoed by many other writers throughout the 19th century, nonetheless -- or all the more -- a great age for literary women. This course will introduce major writers of the Romantic and Victorian periods, exploring the relationships between their lives and works, and examining issues such as women as readers; the education of women; the changing roles of women in the home, in the workplace and in the community; the growth of the reading public; and the gendering of authorship. We will consider relations between genres as we read fiction ("Gothic" and "realistic" novels), poetry, letters, journals, biography, autobiography and essays on education, travel, literature and politics. Authors will include Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria Edgeworth, Dorothy Wordsworth, Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Florence Nightingale, George Eliot and Christina Rossetti. This counts toward the 1700-1900 or approaches to literary study requirements for the major. Open only to first-year and sophomore students. Prerequisite: ENGL 103 or 104. Offered two of every three years.
ENGL 338
Milton
ENGL 338
This course will undertake a close reading and analysis of the great English epic "Paradise Lost" in the context of Milton's political and literary career: his early experiments in lyric poetry and masque; his radical support -- through prose, the writings of "[his]left hand" -- of revolution, freedom of the press and divorce; and his personal response to imprisonment and the death of his political hopes in the restoration of the English monarchy under Charles II. As we examine issues of freedom, authority and authorship in "Paradise Lost" and "Samson Agonistes", we will consider Milton's revisioning of classical epic and drama and of biblical texts. And as we explore the attempt "to justify the ways of God to men," we will pay particular attention to Milton's account of gender and his examination of the literary imagination and the creative process. We also will consider the responses of other great writers, from Milton's time to our own, to this most provocative and enduring epic. This counts towards the pre-1700 requirement for the major. Prerequisite: junior standing or ENGL 210-291 or permission of instructor.