Fall 2000 Undergraduate Courses
Return to the archived courses or to the current course search page.
Note that the courses listed here represent many but not all the courses taught during this particular quarter. Those courses taught by graduate students and part-time instructors are not listed.
Eng 151: Freshman Composition: Writing and Rhetoric (computer classroom)
Instructor: Christina Parsons
Description:
This section of 151 is linked with a section of Political Science with the intent of creating a learning community among students.
Readings:
Readings for this course will focus on current issues that are affecting the lives of people in this country and around the world. The readings will come from a variety of sources including newspapers, popular magazines, textbooks, anthologies, the Internet, photographic essays, and other sources that will be of interest to the students. We will examine the following topics among others: freedom of speech, unalienable rights, student rights, AIDS legislation, gun control, same-sex marriage legislation, the legalization of drugs, and how a bill becomes a law. Specific books and readings TBA.
Exams/Papers:
Along with a weekly dialogue journal in which students will write about issues that we have discussed in English 151 and what they have learned in Political Science, five major projects will be assigned.
Collaborative Argument Paper and Presentation:
Students will choose a topic that we are not discussing in class and work in groups of two or three to research, write, and present all sides of the argument to the class. This assignment will require students to analyze several texts from a variety of resources and present a balanced overview of the topic they have chosen.
Writing-in-Action Paper:
Students will choose an article from a magazine or newspaper that they disagree with and will write a letter to the editor expressing their views. They may also choose to write a letter to their congressman or other political representative about concerns that they may have about current issues.
Collaborative Web Page:
Students may either choose the topic that they presented in their first assignment, the issue they wrote about in their second assignment, or a new topic altogether to create their own Web pages. They will work in groups of two or three to develop a Web page that explores their opinions and is presented in a public space. In addition to investigating their topics, students will learn how images and words work together in this multimedia environment.
Dialogue Journal Reflection:
Towards the end of the quarter, students will finish writing in their dialogue journals. To conclude this project, students will write an essay that reflects on the interaction that took place in their journals, what they learned from sharing their thoughts and opinions all quarter, and how the journal affected their understanding of the issues in English 151 and Political Science 101.
Exploratory Essay and Presentation:
For their capstone project of the quarter, students will write an essay about their personal reactions to any of the issues that were brought up in class either by the instructor, the readings, or other students. They can write this essay in any form they wish. Some students have done paintings, written and performed dances, created videos, written poetry or music, and used their bodies as canvases. Along with their projects, they must include a 2-3 page reflective statement that explains how their project fits the assignment and what they hope the audience will take away from what they have presented.
Eng 151: Freshman Composition: Writing and Rhetoric I (computer classroom)
Instructor: Kelly Kinney
Description:
This section of English 151 is linked with Interpersonal Communication 101 with the intent of creating a learning community among students.
Readings:
To be announced
Exams/Papers:
4 to 5 formal papers, multiple informal writing assignments, electronic discussion group participation.
Eng 151: Writing and Rhetoric I
Professor: Anna Dzirkalis
Description:
This section of English 151 is linked with Psychology 101 with the intent of creating a learning community among students.
Readings:
TBA
Papers:
4 formal essays, weekly email responses, and several in-class writing exercises
Eng 151: Writing and Rhetoric I
Professor: Jane Denbow
Description:
This section of English 151 is linked with Economics 103 with the intent of creating a learning community among students.
Readings:
The Wall Street Journal (students will sign up for a reduced rate, 10 week subscription on the first day of class)
Exams/Papers:
Five papers ranging from 1-4 pages (two related to economics; all will go through several drafts); journal based on the Wall Street Journal
Eng 151: Writing and Rhetoric I
Instructor: Micah Robertson
Description:
This section of English 151 is linked with Interpersonal Communication 101 with the intent of creating a learning community among students.
Eng 151: Writing and Rhetoric I
Instructor: Candace Stewart
Description:
This section of English 151 is linked with Geography 121 with the intent of creating a learning community among students.
Eng 152: Writing and Reading (computer classroom)
Professor: Albert Rouzie
Description:
A composition course that uses reading as a spur for writing topics. We will read three novels and write about them in essays and in projects for a web site. We will use a course listserve to extend our discussions of the texts and our writing.
Readings:
Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago by Octavia Butler.
Exams/Papers:
Two papers, two web projects, and a portfolio of informal writing, including listserve messages.
Eng 152: Writing and Reading
Professor: Joan Connor
Description:
Using a variety of approaches from the personal essay to argumentation, we will analyze, write, and revise with an eye to developing as writers, critics, and self-editors.
Readings:
Text: Fields of Writing: Readings Across the Disciplines
Reference: The Little Brown Compact Handbook
Exams/Papers:
Weekly essays, revisions, individual and group presentations, final portfolios.
Eng 153: Freshman Composition: Special Topics - The Brothers Karamazov
Professor: Dean McWilliams
Description:
This course has two purposes: to learn how to read and understand a challenging literary text, and to learn how to write clear and effective prose.
Reading:
The literary text is Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, one of the most important novels ever written. Students will read and discuss this novel, and write their essays on it. Roughly half the class time will be spent discussing and practicing the writing of university level prose.
Eng 153B: Freshman Composition: Special Topics, African American Literature
Professor: Stacy Morgan
Description:
This course will offer students opportunities to develop expository writing skills applicable to a range of courses in the humanities and social sciences. For example, assignments likely will include: a personal essay; literary and popular culture analysis; a descriptive site analysis; an interview analysis; and, to a lesser extent, creative writing. Emphasis will rest on revision and discovering ways in which students can usefully synthesize these various types of writing. To generate ideas and topics, students will conduct readings from various genres of African American writing—including essays, autobiography, fiction, and poetry—dating from the 19th century to the present era.
Readings:
Joyce M. Jarrett, ed. Heritage: African-American Readings for Writing. A writing style text, TBA
Assignments:
Requirements for this course will include a variety of regular in-class writing exercises; workshop sessions in which students perform peer critiques of fellow students' work; regular reading assignments from the central course text; and approximately four essays ranging from 3-5 pages in length, for which students will write both rough and revised drafts. Regular attendance and participation in class discussions also will be required and will factor into the final grade.
Eng 201: Critical Approaches to Fiction
Professor: Jack Matthews
Description:
This course deals with fictional works as subsets of the game of language. Thus, it involves a study of language itself, with a focus upon such general semantic principles as "indexing" and "dating."
Readings:
Remainder copies of novels and/or short story collections, by predominantly modern authors. ("Remainder copies" are copies discounted by the publisher; this generally enables students to buy them for less than half their new, retail price.) Approximately one book per week will be assigned.
Exams/Papers:
Generally, short outside papers will be assigned weekly, along with frequent INCA assignments (INCA="In Class Answers") to be gathered in a portfolio and handed in at the end of the quarter. A mid-term, final exam and other tests may be assigned.
Eng 201: Critical Approaches to Fiction
Professor: Albert Rouzie
Description:
This course will approach reading and writing about short and long fiction through a variety of critical lenses. We will look at texts in terms of formal aesthetic elements, ideological effects, and philosophical implications.
Readings:
An anthology of short fiction (TBA); A packet of articles; Novel: Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie; Film: Smoke Signals (Based on a short story by Alexie)
Exams/Papers:
A number of short papers and one long paper.
Eng 201: Critical Approaches to Fiction
Professor: Robert DeMott
Description:
Introduction to reading fiction critically, and writing about technical, thematic, and narrative strategies in fiction.
Readings:
One anthology of short stories, and one or two additional short novels. Also readings in criticism and literary theory.
Exams/Papers:
One midterm and one take home final essay - study and reading responses each week, plus one or two short essays.
Eng 202: Critical Approaches to Poetry
Professor: Arthur Woolley
Description:
To increase your current skills in reading lyric poetry and to broaden your sense of the possibilities of interpretation (technical terms, metrical analysis, and exposure to basic theoretical concepts in criticism included). Primary method will be practice: reading, discussion and analysis, usually oral, sometimes written, of 100-150 poems in English, predominantly modern.
Readings:
An introduction to reading poetry, such as Schakel and Ridl, Approaching Poetry (New York, 1997), but not yet chosen and a book giving short summaries of literary theory including feminist, Marxist, New Critical, deconstructionist, structuralist, psychological and reader-response methods of approaching literature.
Exams/Papers:
One short final exam on terminology, scansion, and memorized poetry; two typed journal entries of 200 words or more each per week, to be graded; two 3-6 page papers.
Eng 202: Critical Approaches to Poetry
Professor: Albert Poyet
Description:
Close reading in British poetry, with special attention to metaphor, imagery and prosody, as well as construction.
Exams/Papers:
A mid-term and final exam (close reading of a poem) and one paper.
Eng 203: Critical Approaches to Drama
Professor: Barry Roth
Description:
Discussion of significant plays from Aeschylus to Stoppard. Great stuff all the way.
Reading:
Aeschylus/Sophocles/Euripides/Webster/Wycherley/Congreve/Ibsen/Chekhov/Stoppard.
Essays/Exams:
Quizzes, papers.
Eng 203A: Interpretation of Drama (Film)
Professor: Robert Miklitsch
Description:
This course will examine the intimate but not exact relation between film and literature or, more properly, between filmic and literary texts. The aim of the class will be to not only deconstruct the "classic"—and, yes, cliched—opposition between film and literature (i.e., the "book" is always better than the "movie") but to explore the way cinematic texts express or rearticulate particular literary in their own idiomatic, medium-specific "language" (framing, editing, sound, etc.) and, in the process, re-frame or re-constellate the "original," so much so, in fact, that sometimes the "movie" displaces the "book." To wit: A helluva lot of people have seen Forrest Gump but very few, relatively speaking, have read the Groom novel on which it is based.
Readings:
Provisional texts: Patricia Highsmith's Talented Mr. Ripley, William Inge's Picnic, Ian Fleming's Goldfinger, etc., plus either a reader on film/literature or a book on how to "read" a film.
Exams/Papers:
In addition to regular quizzes on the reading, there will be three papers: two short ones (3-5 pp.), which will be due during the course of the quarter, and a final longer one, which will be due at the end of the quarter (7-10 pp.). Attendance and participation are, as per usual, mandatory.
Eng 301: Shakespeare's Histories
Professor: Loreen Giese
Description:
"Producing History: Shakespeare's Histories and the Chronicles." This course will examine the construction of the king in both Shakespeare's histories and his sources. We will pay particular attention to social forces that would influence his production of these power figures.
Readings:
Richard II; Henry IV, parts 1 and 2; and Henry V.
Exams/Papers:
Three short papers and one long one.
Eng 302: Shakespeare's Comedies
Professor: Jeremy Webster
Description:
English 203 introduces students to Shakespeare's comedies and equips them with the critical skills necessary to read and understand several representative plays. Our primary method for achieving this goal will be to read and to discuss six plays, but we will also participate in several other activities. We will examine a range of literary, historical, and material issues that provide the context for Shakespeare's theater; we will stage (in class) scenes from at least one of the plays we study; and we will watch and discuss film and television productions of the plays in order to see how these texts have been realized as dramatic works by various artists.
Readings:
The Taming of the Shrew, The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, and Measure for Measure.
Exams/Papers:
midterm (30%), 1 short paper (15%), a take-home final exam (30%), a group presentation (10%), and reading quizzes (15%)
Eng 303: Shakespeare's Tragedies
Professor: Albert Poyet
Description:
A study of four representative Shakespearean tragedies with an eye to understanding their structure, rhetorical and poetic power as well as their link to the period. The technique of close reading (corresponding to the French "explication de texte") will be applied to a series of passages
Readings:
Richard III, Hamlet, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra
Exams/Papers:
Mid-term and final exams.
Eng 304: English Bible: The Bible as Literature
Professor: Reid Huntle
Description:
- To read selected writings by the best authors in the Hebrew and Christian traditions: i.e. the Bible (a.k.a. The Torah, the Law and the Prophets; the Holy Scriptures). This includes the Apocrypha (the Deutero-canonical Books written during the InterTestamental period).
- As a focus, we will concentrate on the biographies of the great spiritual and religious men and women in these books.
- By the end of the term, you will have a sense of the 1500 year sweep of Jewish-Christian history. You will be acquainted with the major personalities in the Bible: Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham...to Jesus, Peter, and Paul. You will have a good grasp of the major themes of God's dealings with his human creations: covenant, faith, sin, trust and belief, forgiveness, etc.
Readings:
The New Oxford Annotated Bible, with the Apocrypha (New Revised Standard Version) 1991. Oxford University Press.
Exams/Papers:
Regular faithful attendance. Approximately 20-30 pp. of reading per class period. Two tests, occasional quizzes. One report to class. One paper.
Eng 305J: Technical Writing (science majors only)
Professor: Christine Freeman
Description:
The primary purpose of this course is to provide students in the sciences with an opportunity to practice writing within their majors. Students are expected to have a knowledge base within the hard sciences, since most examples used in class require more than a layperson's understanding of the field. The course focuses on how to review prior research, how to propose research projects, how to incorporate research results into final reports—and how to write clearly and concisely.
Readings:
Martha Davis, Scientific Papers and Presentations and the Mayfield Handbook of Technical and Scientific Writing, as well as several research articles within the student's field.
Exams/Papers:
Reading quizzes (no exams); Writing Projects: profile of the student's academic community, abstracts, research proposal, technical translation, literature review, poster presentation.
Eng 305J: Technical Writing (requires use of computers)
Professor: Barry Thatcher
Description:
The purpose of the course is to help students develop effective writing strategies for workplace communication. Students will learn how to initiate, plan, compose, and evaluate written communication. They will carry out these writing activities in real workplace scenarios, thus helping them understand how writing is used to carry out organizational goals, improve social and work relations, and develop effective and ethical uses of technology.
Objectives:
During the course, the students will learn how to do the following: Develop effective strategies for planning, composing, critiquing, and revising written communication. Create more effective ways to envision communicative purpose, analyze multiple and complex audiences, design documents, and develop professional tone and style. Develop a clearer, more concise, and more fluid writing style. Enhance the ability to give and receive peer feedback on written communication. Learn to write collaboratively. Improve sensitivity to grammar and style. Understand the relationships among document design and the cognitive, social, and technological purposes and processes of reading written communication. Integrate written communication with oral and visual media.
Readings:
Required Materials: Anderson, Paul. (1998). Technical Writing: A Reader-Centered Approach. (4th edition). Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace; Coursepack
Exams/Papers:
Resume and Cover letter (20%). Proposal or Feasibility Report (25%) - Problem Memo - Audience Memo. Final Project: Collaborative Instructional Project (20%). Personal Web Page and report (20%). Final exam or quizzes (15%).
Eng 307J: Writing and Research in English Studies
Professor: Barry Roth
Description:
Reading and writing about Mansfield Park in a number of ways—with and without secondary material—learning to use library resources to aid the study of English.
Readings:
Jane Austen, Mansfield Park and Sheridan Baker, The Practical Stylist MLA Style Manual
Exams/Papers:
Mostly papers, Various reports. Lots of discussion. Great grammar. Sufficient irony.
Eng 307J: Writing Research in English Studies
Professor: Jeremy Webster
Description:
English 307J helps students further develop their writing and research skills by giving them extensive instruction and practice in the forms of writing and research used by scholars of literature and rhetoric. Our topics will include literary analysis, library and on-line research, literary theory, and the mechanics of college-level writing. We will put these topics into practice by reading, discussing, and writing about three plays by the Renaissance playwright Christopher Marlowe (Doctor Faustus, The Jew of Malta, and Edward II).
Readings:
Short Guide to Writing About Literature by Sylvan Barnet and William E. Cain (8th edition), The MLA Handbook (current edition), The Harbrace College Handbook (current edition), and Christopher Marlowe: The Complete Plays (Penguin Classics).
Exams/Papers:
three short essays (a close reading essay, a review of a film, and a compare and contrast paper of two critical articles), a research paper (with a proposal and an annotated bibliography), and a (small) group research project/presentation
Eng 307J: Writing Research in English Studies
Professor: Linda Zionkowski
Description:
This class will emphasize the techniques and skills necessary to pursue scholarship in English. We will focus on sharpening our analytical writing; locating, using, and evaluating research materials (in print and online); and familiarizing ourselves with some theoretical concepts and methodologies.
Readings:
To be announced.
Exams/Papers:
Library exam; annotated bibliography; paper proposal; research essay; article review.
Eng 308J: Advanced Composition
Instructor: David Bergdahl
Description:
This section will be taught in the computer classroom, so much—maybe all—of our work will be done online. Ways of Reading is organized by modules of readings and writing assignments: I anticipate that we will do one together and then the class will organize itself into interest groups for the remaining three modules. The "electronic journal" will be a site for sharing common concerns.
Readings:
Bartholomae and Petrosky, Ways of Reading, 5th ed.
Exams/Papers:
Four or more papers plus participation in our class's forum.
Eng 308J: Advanced Composition
Professor: Sherrie Gradin
Description:
When you come to college you bring your individual self, your personal history, your beliefs, your prior schooling, your regional or national origin, your rich cultural heritage. While I want to see you develop facility with academic discourses, I do not expect you to check your individual identity at the door on the way in to this course. I am, therefore, especially interested in helping you explore the intersection of the personal and public, the private and social in your thinking, your reading, your writing, and your life. To come to these ends in our class, I invite you to engage in extended reflection and reflexivity, collaborative learning, informal writing and formal writing, and writing for the academy. This class will ask you to explore what you know about culture (academic and otherwise) and yourself.
Readings:
Selections from Ways of Reading, by David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky. Selections from other sources.
Exams/Papers:
You will be responsible for journal assignments, formal essays, and a mid-term and final portfolio.
Eng 311: English Literature to 1500
Professor: Beth Quitslund
Description:
This class serves as an introduction to medieval English literature. Although readings will extend from Anglo-Saxon oral poetry to the beginnings of printed prose in England, we will concentrate on the flowering of Middle English vernacular writing in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In particular, we will focus on the interaction between social conditions, religious movements, gender position, and available literary modes in the High Middle Ages.
Readings:
(tentative) Beowulf; Geoffrey of Monmouth's Chronicles; Marie de France, Lais; Julian of Norwich, Showings; Gawain and the Green Knight; Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales; The Book of Margery Kempe; Malory, The Death of Arthur. All editions TBA.
Exams/Papers:
Three short responses (ca. 1 page), two 4-6 pp. essays, final exam.
Eng 312: English Literature 1500-1660
Professor: Beth Quitslund
Description:
A survey of English literature from More to Marvell, and the pivotal changes that this literature reflects and shapes: the shift from medieval to early modern culture, from Catholic to Protestant, from isolation to colonial exploration, and from absolutism to Revolution. Authors will include Sidney, Wroth, Spenser, Donne, Jonson, Herbert, Milton, and others.
Readings:
The Norton Anthology of English Literature, vol. 1B; More, Utopia; Milton, A Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle.
Exams/Papers:
A short in-class presentation, two 4-6 pp. essays, final exam.
Eng 313: English Literature 1660-1800
Professor: Mark Rollins
Description:
Read and discuss Restoration and eighteenth-century literature in the context of early-modern English literary and social history and with reference to modern theories of literature. Students should be willing and prepared to discuss in class their reactions to the readings.
Readings:
Rochester, Behn, Dryden, Finch, Congreve, Prior, Swift, Pope, Montagu, Gay, Johnson, Boswell, and Gray. Textbooks to be announced.
Exams/Papers:
Students will keep a journal recording their responses to readings; write four two-page papers, one due every two weeks, and a final research paper dealing with a topic agreed upon by the student and instructor. Frequent quizzes on the assigned readings. No in-class exams.
Eng 314: English Literature 1800-1900
Professor: Joe McLaughlin
Description:
This course will introduce important authors, issues, and criticism of 19th century British literature and culture. It will explore major poets and novelists, as well as some of the century's lesser known works in traditional and non-traditional genres. We will learn about the Romantics and Victorians by attending to how the works which they produced speak from and to a particular historical place that continues to fascinate and shape our own.
Readings:
Jane Austen, Emma; Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre; The Longman Anthology of British Literature, Vol. 2
Exams/Papers:
Two Formal Essays; One Brief Class Presentation/Paper; Final Exam.
Eng 315: English Literature 1900-Present
Professor: George Hartley
Description:
In this course we will become familiar with major authors, texts, movements, and contexts in British Literature from the turn of the century to the present in fiction, poetry, and drama. Authors include Shaw, Yeats, Joyce, Woolf, Walcott, Heaney, Achebe and more.
Texts:
Norton Anthology of English Literature, vol.2C, 7th Ed. Woolf, To the Lighthouse. Winterson, Written on the Body.
Exams/Papers:
2 exams, one paper, quizzes, and reading journals.
Eng 321: American Literature to 1865
Professor: Marilyn Atlas
Description:
This class will introduce the literature of the "New World", Colonial America, the early Republic, and the American Renaissance. We will discuss major literary and cultural trends and changes in style and purpose as we examine the writing of some of the period's most fascinating writers.
Readings:
The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume 1, 7th Ed.
Exams/Papers:
Three essays (two single text essays 4-5 pages; one comparative essay 5-7 pages), oral reports, and random reading quizzes.
Eng 322: American Literature: 1865-1918
Professor: Reid Huntley
Description
Aims: 1. To read selected writings by the best of American authors from the Civil War to WWI; includes stories, novels, poems, and essays (where possible: a film version). 2. To gain a sense of the historical development of American literature. 3. To get a firm grasp of the 2nd flowering of world-class literature by American authors, and of the two major movements: realism and naturalism, 1860-1918.
Methods: Lectures by the professor, discussions, either 4-5 minute reports by volunteers on a variety of topics, or papers on a topic you become interested in. Basic approaches: - poetics (close analysis of short passages of text) - archetypal (seeing the universal implications in the concrete images and patterns. An archetype is a universal symbol: true for all times and places.) - historical (seeing a work in its historical milieu: time and place) - cultural and artistic (seeing the work as a product of a culture, and similar to other forms of art in its day) - biographical (understanding how an author's own personal experiences helped shape the work)
Readings:
- Selections from Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson: A Supplement of the Heath Anthology.
- The Portable Henry James, ed. Morton Dauwen Zabel (Viking Press).
- Selected shorter writings of Mark Twain, ed. Walter Blair (Riverside).
- Kate Chopin. The Awakening, ed. Nancy A. Walker (five contemporary critical perspectives also included).
- Stephen Crane. The Red Badge of Courage and Other Writings (Riverside).
Exams/Papers:
- Approximately 40-75 pages of reading per class meeting (A rule of thumb is that students should spend up to two hours outside of class preparing for each hour in class. In a 4-hour class your should be willing to spend 8hours/week reading, working on a report or paper, reviewing for tests, etc. With a 16-hour class load, this means 48 hours/week work-week.).
- Assignments are to be read BEFORE the day we discuss that piece of writing. (If necessary, I may have to give an occasional brief quiz to assure this. I hope and trust this practice will not often be necessary.)
- Regular faithful attendance: by being in class each session both in body and mind.
- Two tests spaced through the term.
- Five-minute report to the class, or a 3-5 page paper.
Eng 323: American Literature 1918-Present
Professor: Darrell Spencer
Description:
This class will study the fiction, poetry, drama, and nonfiction written by American writers since World War II. We'll begin by looking at contemporary work and then back-track as a way of discovering how today's writers have responded to the literature that has preceded them and why they have responded as they have. We'll ask what stylistic changes have occurred, what changes have been made in content and form. We'll also examine the work in a larger context of history, philosophy changes in world views. We'll read such writers as Roth, Walker, Morrison, Bellow, Pynchon.
Readings:
Anthology of American Literature, Vol. 2, seventh edition.
Exams/Papers:
Two 2-3 page papers; writing responses to study questions and in-class quizzes; two exams.
Eng 325: Women and Literature
Professor: Marilyn Atlas
Description:
This class will survey the work of significant women writers, the forms they have used and the ideas that have interested them. As we move through the centuries of women writers, we will discuss how they write to one another through the centuries and how they fit into the classical canon of literature.
Readings:
Sandra N. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, eds., The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women, second edition.
Exams/Papers:
Three essays (two singe text essays 3-5 pages; one comparative essay 5-7 pages). Oral reports. Random reading quizzes may be given.
Eng 328: African American Poetry
Professor: George Hartley
Description:
A survey of major works by African American poets. Poets likely to be included are Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Gwendolyn Brooks, Amiri Baraka, Yusef Komunyakaa, Ntozake Shange, and Nathaniel Mackey.
Exams/Papers:
Midterm exam, Response papers, Final paper.
Eng 351: History of the English Language
Professor: Marsha L. Dutton
Description:
This course surveys the growth of English from its Indo-European beginnings into twentieth-century American English, with special attention to regional American dialects and African American English. We will be constantly confronting the reality that language changes over time and varies over space, studying linguistic concepts and terminology that allow us to recognize and describe that change and variation.
Readings:
The Cambridge Encyclopedia of The English Language.
Exams/Papers:
3 papers (18-20 pages), an observation journal, frequent short quizzes, a final exam.
Eng 353: The Structure of American English
Professor: David Bergdahl
Description:
A linguistic analysis of the grammar of contemporary English: not your high school teacher's idea of "grammar" but syntactic structure as theorized by Noam Chomsky.
Readings:
Stageberg & Oaks, Introduction to English Grammar, 5th Ed.
Exams/Papers:
Two hour exams and a final plus participation in our class's newsgroup (which functions as an "electronic journal").
Eng 356: Young Adult Literature
Professor: Jackie Glasgow
Description:
The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the genre of adolescent literature. We will examine the characteristics of these various types of literature and give some attention to current issues of and trends in the field of young adult literature. A particular focus of the course will be social justice issues in young adult literature.
Readings:
Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse. Students will choose other honor books to read to meet course requirements.
Exams/Papers:
Students will complete eight reader response activities and a class project.
Eng 361: Creative Writing: Fiction
Professor: Jack Matthews
Description:
This course is designed to study the art of narrative by means of short stories - not as a professional course preparing you to get published, but to help you understand fiction "from the inside," along with how all of us organize our experiences by means of language and narrative principles. There will be great emphasis upon precisions of language.
Readings:
A Worker's Writebook, by Jack Matthews, along with possible other assigned texts.
Exams/Papers:
A portfolio consisting of 20 pages of finished narrative, a "piggy-back" jounal, focussed upon that of a successful writer (to be kept daily) and all notes, drafts, and assignments for the quarter. (If you think of this course as an easy "A", think again.)
Eng 361: Creative Writing: Fiction
Professor: Joan Connor
Description:
In exercises we will develop aspects of the short story: dialogue, sensory description, setting, characterization, beginnings, and point of view. In assigned readings and student stories, we will focus on what makes a story tick.
Readings:
Packet, The Passionate Accurate Story, and The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction.
Exams/Papers:
Two stories, a short-short, exercises, final portfolio.
Eng 362: Creative Writing: Poetry
Professor: Mark Halliday
Description:
In this introductory poetry workshop, half our class time (and occasionally more than half, especially near the start of the quarter) will be devoted to close examination of a variety of published poems; some by William Wordsworth (he'll be our chief example of greatness from an earlier era) and some by Angela Sorby and Dean Young; and many others. Meanwhile, students will be writing poems -- one each week. In the early weeks, there will be poem-assignments (exercises) which develop from our readings and our discussions; in the later weeks, you'll have more freedom about your poem-of-the-week. Always what we're looking for is another way to generate poems that feel fresh and true, strange and deep, hot and chilly, wise and wild.
Readings:
Everyone will buy books of poems by William Wordsworth, Angela Sorby, and Dean Young. Other poems will come in photocopy.
Exams/Papers:
Besides the poem-per-week, students will be expected to write "journal entries" almost every week responding to poems discussed in class. Sometimes I'll pose specific questions for these. Journal entries will be graded. Poems will usually be due on Tuesday, and journal entries on Thursday.
Eng 362: Creative Writing: Poetry
Professor: Robert DeMott
Description:
A beginning level creative writing class, with emphasis on workshop structure: student-centered discussions of new poems by each class member.
Readings:
One anthology of contemporary poems, plus readings in contemporary poetry theory and practice.
Exams/Papers:
A few short papers on related poetry/poetics matters; a final portfolio of poems, with an introductory essay.
Eng 362: Creative Writing: Poetry
Professor: Erin Belieu
Description:
This course is designed to teach interested students the fundamentals of writing and reading contemporary poetry. Each class will begin with an examination of craft and thematics in poetry selections I bring into the class (though you may occasionally be asked to bring in poems by poets who already interest you). The class will be divided between reading poetry and workshopping poems written by the students. You will be required to turn in a poem a week and keep a poetry journal comprised of drafts and more considered responses to class discussions.
Eng 363: Creative Writing: Nonfiction
Professor: David Lazar
Description:
An introduction to the writing of personal essays, or Return of the First Person. We'll read widely in the form to start off, followed by presentations of three essays by each student in workshop over the course of the quarter. This class is a prerequisite for 395, the advanced nonfiction workshop, offered in the Spring.
Eng 378T / Eng 397T: English Tutorial
Professor: Linda Hunt Beckman
Description:
In this course we will study some of the literature of England written in the nineteenth century. The major emphasis will be on romantic and Victorian poetry, but we will also read three important novels and excerpts from a few writers of nonfictional prose. The tutorial method: each student will have an individual weekly conference with me that lasts about 45 minutes in which we discuss the readings for the week. In preparation, students will do the reading on the syllabus for that week, read an assigned critical article, and write a short paper that they will deliver orally during the tutorial session. The presentation will be informal, so I will stop the student to ask questions and discuss the paper. The student will give me a copy of this paper, and I will provide a critique of it, but the paper will not be graded. The article for the week should be used as a springboard for the paper, and students should integrate some of its ideas into their own essays. Students will meet as a group twice each week, first without me and then with me. The session without me will be a good time to generate questions and ideas about the reading that will be pursued further when I meet with the group. During the session that I attend, I will provide historical background, literary and cultural theory, and facilitate a discussion of the literature.
Readings:
The Norton Anthology of English Literature, vol. 2; Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice; Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre; Charles Dickens's Great Expectations; M. A. Abrams's A Glossary of Literary Terms.
Exams/Papers:
Grades will be based on three formal papers and on an assessment of your performance in the tutorials and in class. Formal papers will be 8-10 pages in length, and some may be expansions of a tutorial paper; you may be asked to do library research for these essays.
Eng 393: Creative Writing Workshop: Poetry
Professor: Darrell Spencer
Description:
The course is classified as a workshop, and it will be. We'll look closely at fiction you produce as a writer in the class, and you'll evaluate each other's writing. But in addition, we will also spend a great deal of time analyzing published stories, trying to determine what makes them succeed or what makes them fail as fictional narratives. We'll also read articles written by writers about writing fiction. In other words, the course will combine theory and workshops. You'll be doing some writing exercises; these will be connected to the reading we do in class.
Readings:
An anthology of short stories.
Exams/Papers:
Two short stories, exercises, some reading quizzes and a final portfolio and a final exam.
Eng 394: Creative Writing Workshop: Poetry
Professor: Jill Allyn Rosser
Description:
This intermediate poetry workshop will divide class time between our discussion of readings in contemporary poetry and our critique of poetry written by students. Among the criteria for a successful workshop experience will be your enthusiastic and thoughtful participation in discussion; your willingness to explore kinds of poetry that you have not previously encountered or appreciated; and your interest in experimentation, in stretching your aesthetic muscles and writing poems whose daring and genius will surprise even you.
Required: A minimum of ten new original poems during the course of the quarter, plus a few substantial revisions.
Readings:
The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry; Course pack
Exams/Papers:
One brief oral report and a final portfolio
Eng 399: Literary Theory
Professor: Linda Zionkowski
Description:
This course will introduce students to several different types of literary theory as they are practiced by a variety of critics and scholars; we will also study the historical development of these theories to determine how they have changed focus and direction over time. Our emphasis will be on gender theory (including feminist and queer theory), Marxist/historist approaches, and post-colonial theory.
Exams/Papers:
Three papers; final exam.
Eng 399: Literary Theory
Professor: Andrew Escobedo
Description:
This course will introduce students to literary and cultural theory from the 1940s to the present. For the most part we'll proceed by "movement": reader-response, structuralism and deconstruction, psychoanalysis, feminism, Marxism, New Historicism, and postcolonial theory. Individual concepts will recur from movement to movement (intentionality, the uncanny, base and superstructure, etc.). We will think about both philosophical implications and practical applications.
Readings:
A course packet with primary writings; an edition of Frankenstein as a case study.
Exams/Papers:
Frequent short reading responses, a longer paper, and a final exam.
Eng 451: Teaching Language and Composition
Professor: Jacqueline Glasgow
Description:
This course is designed to acquaint students with various materials, methods, and theories appropriate for teaching language and composition in middle schools and high schools based on the NCTE/IRA Standards and the Ohio State Department of Education's modified NCATE/NCTE Guidelines.
Readings:
Teaching English in Middle and Secondary Schools. Maxwell, R. & Meiser, M.J. (1997) and Blending Genre, Altering Style by Tom Romano (2000)
Exams/Papers:
Students will compose a multi genre paper based on a current issue in the teaching of language and composition in middle and/or high school. Students who enroll for English 451 must also enroll in English 451L.
Eng 451: Teaching Language and Composition
Professor: Deborah Brown
Description:
This course is designed to acquaint students with various materials, methods, and theories appropriate for teaching language and composition in middle schools and high schools based on the NCTE/IRA Standards and the Ohio State Department of Education's modified NCATE/NCTE Guidelines.
Readings:
Teaching English in Middle and Secondary Schools. Maxwell, R. & Meiser, M. J. (1997) and others to be announced
Exams/Papers:
Students will produce a portfolio including such items as weekly responses to class readings and discussions, a literacy autobiography, in-class activities, and a two-week instructional unit. Students who enroll for English 451 must also enroll in English 451L.
Eng 451L: Field Experience in Secondary English Language and Composition
Professor: Deborah Brown
Description:
This is a field-based course operating concurrently with English 451 to provide a pre-student teaching experience. Students will observe and teach lessons in approved school settings as they work collaboratively with a classroom teacher and their university instructor.
Exams/Papers:
Students will produce a teaching log of their field experience and use it to write a reflective paper about their field experience.
Eng 451L: Field Experience in Secondary English Language and Composition
Professor: Jacqueline Glasgow
Description:
This is a field-based course operating concurrently with English 451 to provide a pre-student teaching experience. Students will observe and teach lessons in approved school settings as they work collaboratively with a classroom teacher and their university instructor.
Exams/Papers:
Students will produce a teaching log of their field experience and use it to write a reflective paper about their field experience.
Eng 460: Literary Topics
Professor: Ken Daley
Description:
This course explores competing theories of beauty in Victorian poetry, painting, aesthetics, and art criticism. Throughout the class we'll address a range of issues associated with British aestheticism - the concern with history and temporality, the tendency toward ekphrasis (the verbal description of visual works of art), the representation of femininity, the relation of art to life, the place of art in a consumerist society. In addition, we'll periodically address these nineteenth-century issues from the perspective of contemporary American culture and the debates over national funding for the arts.
Readings:
Keats, Tennyson, D.G. Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, Dickens, Ruskin, R. Browning, Pater, Morris, Swinburne, Kant, Wilde.
Exams/Papers:
Weekly e-mail reader responses and class participation; Oral presentation; Term research paper.
Eng 465: American Authors
Professor: Mark Halliday
Description:
MAD BAD AMERICA We will read and compare five contemporary novels which offer visions of American society as a terribly confusing and toxic realm in which individuals seem forced to become harmfully insensitive. We will ask whether each novel is convincing; we will compare the novels with each other and with our own impressions of the effects of social inequities and social pressures upon individuals. We will be wary of melodrama and hyperbole, but also of our own natural inclination to separate our own lives from the novelists' grim visions.
Readings:
Probable texts include THE CRYING OF LOT 49 by Thomas Pynchon, DOG SOLDIERS by Robert Stone, MAO II by Don DeLillo, GOING NATIVE by Stephen Wright. The fifth novel could be another by DeLillo, or possibly one by Joan Didion, Denis Johnson, or Jonathan Franzen.
Exams/Papers:
There will be at least two, and maybe three, "take-home quizzes" involving sets of specific questions on the readings. One 8-page paper involving two of the novels will be due late in the quarter. Also, I may ask for e-mail responses to a certain question, once or twice during the quarter.
Hum 107: Great Books: Ancient
Professor: Duane Schneider
Description:
A sampling of some of the best of Greek classical literature, as represented in Homer's epic narrative, The Odyssey; an introduction to the philosophical thought of Socrates by way of Plato's dialogues; and dramas of Sophocles and Aeschylus. Some films will supplement the readings.
Readings:
Greek Tragedies, ed. Grene and Lattimore. Vol. 1, 2nd ed. Univ. of Chicago Press. Homer, The Odyssey, trans. Robert Fagles. Penguin. Plato, The Last Days of Socrates. Penguin. Sophocles, Electra and Other Plays. Penguin.
Exams/Papers:
Two exams and a final. Notes on readings to be submitted weekly
Hum 307: Great Books: Ancient
Professor: Mark Rollins
Description:
Class consists of lecture, discussion and group work. Students should be prepared to discuss their ideas with others as well as make presentations to the class. The objectives of this course are: 1. Study some significant works of ancient literature. 2. Discuss the concept of ancient literature and its role in the human experience. 3. Consider the influence of some traditional ideas in modern life. 4. Gain an insight into the foundations of some literary, political, religious and philosophical traditions. 5. Understand better and learn to explain more clearly in prose and in discussion with peers why we think and live as we do.
Readings:
Bible (Old and New Testaments), Homer, Sappho, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Plato.
Exams/Papers:
No exams per se, but occasional quizzes. Three short papers (2-4 pages) and one longer paper.
T308 407B: The Autobiographical Quest
Professor: David Lazar
Description:
Discovering truths about oneself and one's life may seem like a desirable goal: the resolution of questions, discernible conclusions. But memory is an unreliable narrator, and opening a box of questions can let all Pandora's hell loose. Through literary and cinematic texts, this class will examine some of the forms and theories of autobiography, paying particular attention to autobiographies and memoirs by women.
Readings:
Prozac Nation, Elizabeth Wurtzel; Thief's Journal, Jean Genet; Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady, Florence King; Henry and June, Anais Nin; Zami, Audre Lorde; Memoirs of a Catholic Gilrhood, Mary McCarthy; Maus, Art Spiegelman; Operation Shylock, Phillip Roth; Bad Judgement, Cathleen Calbert; Films/video by Sandra Bernhard, Spalding Gray, Ross McElwee.
T308 407C: The Existential Vision: Philosophy, Literature, and Film
Professor: Dean McWilliams
Description:
This course will explore a unifying theme of European and American culture since World War II by focusing on the problems raised by the existential philosophers but confronted also by writers and film makers of the period. We will discuss these thinkers and artists thematically, examining characteristic themes such as the death of God, anxiety, absurdity, and the necessity of commitment. We will also, however, approach these figures formally, exploring the distinctive philosophical literary, and cinematic strategies that they employ in exploring these themes. Some of the philosophical essays we will read are difficult. Students who are unwilling to give these texts the time and patient attention they require should not take this course.
Readings:
Essays by Sartre, Camus, Nietzche, and Heidegger; plays and novels by Sartre, Camus, and Kafka; films by Bergman, Fellini, Godard, and others.
T308 407N: Renaissance Texts and Sex
Professor: Loreen Giese
Description:
Through the disciplines of law, literature, social history, and theatre, Renaissance Texts and Sex examines female and male sexuality, particularly state versus individual control, as evidenced in Renaissance theatre and drama and Renaissance courts and law. We will also study and synthesize sixteenth-, seventeenth-, late twentieth-century and early twenty-first century attitudes about sexuality. Evidence of sexuality includes family law issues, (sex, marriage, illegitimacy, etc.) and property law (inheritance). We will explore such questions as: to what extent is sexuality historically constructed? Why is sexuality adjudicated? Who sanctions sexual behavior and why? How does understanding the control of sexuality in the Renaissance inform our understanding of that in our own society?
Readings:
Legal handbooks, court depositions, sex manuals, sermons, and Measure for Measure.
Exams/Papers:
Three Papers
T308 495Q: Kiss Me Deadly
Professor: Robert Miklitsch
Description:
This course will explore the literary and cinematic world of noir, a critical term that refers to certain "black" or darkly-lit American films of the 1940's and 1950's and to American, "hard-boiled" detective fiction of the same period, so-called roman noir. The class will examine classic, cinematic examples of the genre of film noir, read a number of canonical "hard-boiled" detective novels, and investigate the historical context out of which the fiction and films emerged. Synthesis in the course will be twofold, one particular and one general. In particular, the class will explore how, in film noir, the literary conventions of the roman noir or "dark" detective novel are translated into the language of cinema and, in the process, transformed. In general, the course will endeavor to reconstruct the historical context out of which American detective fiction and film noir materialized.
Readings:
Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon; Richard Schickel, Double Indemnity; Raymond Chandler, Lady in the Lake, etc. NB: Students will also be asked to duplicate a number of critical articles.
Exams/Papers:
There will be regularly scheduled reading quizzes. Five "reaction papers" (2-3 pp.) will be assigned; in these short papers, students will be asked to synthesize the previous weeks' reading and film viewing. A final, formal paper, (6-11 pp.), on one of the themes of the course will be due at the end of the quarter. Attendance in the class will be mandatory, participation imperative, and enthusiasm much appreciated and rewarded.