Winter 2002 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 I (computer classroom)
Professor: Mara Holt
Description:
In this course, you will be introduced to college writing through a number of strategies and practices. You will interpret a song, review a web site, analyze a short story, and write a genealogy of your tastes. In this class you will use the following techniques: freewriting, peer critiques, revising, email, web research.
Exams and Quizzes:
Each project will count 25% of your grade.
Eng 151: Freshman Composition: Writing and Rhetoric I (computer classroom)
Professor: Albert Rouzie
Description:
In this course, you will be introduced to college writing through a number of strategies and practices. You will interpret a song, review a web site, analyze a short story, and write a genealogy of your tastes. In this class you will use the following techniques: freewriting, peer critiques, revising, email, web research.
Exams/Quizzes:
Each project will count 25% of your grade.
Eng 153: Freshman Composition: Special Topics -- Mysteries
Professor: Linda Beckman
Description:
The chief purpose of this course is to develop writing skills and to read more effectively. To reach this end, we will read and discuss mysteries -- stories and novels -- and see a few films. The fiction will be by authors from the nineteenth, the twentieth, and, perhaps, the twenty-first centuries, and we will consider the reasons for the enduring power of mystery. Students will write at lease five out of class papers and will also do some in-class writing.
Readings:
Diana Hacker, A Writer's Reference, 4th edition; a pocket dictionary; and stories and novels (to be assigned).
Eng 153: Freshman Composition: Special Topics in Poetry
Professor: Erin Belieu
Description:
In this course we will focus on close critical readings of poetry from the 17th-20th century. Some of the poets we will look at include Ben Jonson, Wordsworth, Emily Bronte, Hardy, Yeats, Whitman, Pound, Plath and Berryman. You will be required to write 4 explication and response papers of poems from the anthology The Top 500 Poems (Columbia University Press, 1992) and lead a discussion on one book of contemporary poetry of your own choosing. The course aims to make students comfortable with reading and interpreting poetic texts.
Eng 200: Introduction to Literature
Professor: Carey Snyder
Description:
This course will introduce students to the basics of literary analysis. Our focus will be Modern British and American short fiction and poetry, and our method will include class discussion, workshops, and intensive writing and revising.
Readings:
Writers such as Jean Rhys, James Joyce, Katherine Mansfield, E. M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Sherwood Anderson, Langston Hughes, and Jean Toomer.
Exams/Papers:
There will be no exams, but lots of writing in this course. Students will be required to keep a reading journal, write several short "response papers," and three longer essays, along with drafts.
Eng 201: Critical Approaches to Fiction
Professor: David Bergdahl
Description:
The department's three genre courses, English 201-2-3, introduce the student to the academic study of fiction, poetry & drama. In the past these courses were general education courses and received Tier II credit; with the latest revision of the English Major, however, they are now major courses focusing on the critical skills needed by professional students of literature. These courses continue to have a dual focus: on the individual works of art read and on the critical concepts necessary to discuss them intelligently. The primary focus continues to be on learning how to read a particular genre. It is generally acknowledged that reading is a constructive act, that readers use their linguistic knowledge, their knowledge of the world and of the kind of text being read to construct a "reading." We will focus on the ways readers -- ourselves, embedded in our own culture -- construct texts, but we will not limit ourselves to reader-response criticism, attending also to textual omissions and lacunae. When there are opportunities, we will be feminist or marxist readers, and we will definitely practice formalism.
Readings:
Roberta Rubenstein & Chas. Larson, ed. Worlds of Fiction, 2nd ed. Prentice-Hall 2002
Exams/Papers:
There will be two hour exams, two 1,000-word papers, and an online journal, each worth 20%. The examinations will test your familiarity with the stories read as well as the critical terms and concepts. The papers will be technical studies of individual pieces of fiction, the topics to be assigned.
Eng 201: Critical Approaches to Fiction
Professor: James Thompson
Description:
A course focusing on the close reading of short fiction, one intended to expand the critical approaches and skills of English majors, as well as improve their interpretive pleasure; the two are identical. The emphasis will be on the writer's use of the resources of fiction and the impact -- intellectual, imaginative and emotional -- that fiction can create. Close reading will be essential.
Readings:
A variety of stories drawn from The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction, Ann Charters, ed. (compact fifth edition)
Student obligations: Careful and close reading, class attendance, class discussion, mid-term exam, several in-class papers and one out-of-class final paper.
Eng 202: Critical Approaches to Poetry
Professor: Linda Beckman
Description:
This course will enable students to read poetry with more interpretive skill and pleasure. They will learn poetic terms and concepts, will hear some graduate student poets talk about their work, and will try their hand at writing a few poems.
Readings:
X. J. Kennedy and D. Gioia. An Introduction to Poetry, 9th edition.
Exams/Papers:
Three short papers, a journal, quizzes.
Eng 202: Critical Approaches to Poetry
Professor: David Bergdahl
Description:
The department's three genre courses, English 201-2-3, introduce the student to the academic study of fiction, poetry & drama. In the past these courses were general education courses and received Tier II credit; with the latest revision of the English Major, however, they are now major courses focusing on the critical skills needed by professional students of literature. These courses continue to have a dual focus: on the individual works of art read and on the critical concepts necessary to discuss them intelligently. The primary focus continues to be on learning how to read a particular genre. It is generally acknowledged that reading is a constructive act, that readers use their linguistic knowledge, their knowledge of the world and of the kind of text being read to construct a "reading." We will focus on the ways readers -- ourselves, embedded in our own culture -- construct texts but we will not limit ourselves to reader-response criticism, attending also to textual omissions and lacunae. When there are opportunities, we will be feminist or marxist readers, and we will definitely practice formalism.
Readings:
Mark Strand & Eavan Boland, The Making of a Poem. Norton, 2000.
Exams/Papers:
There will be two hour exams, two 1,000-word papers, and an online journal, each worth 20%. The examinations will test your familiarity with the poems read as well as the critical terms and concepts. The papers will be technical studies of individual poems, the topics to be assigned.
Eng 202: Critical Approaches to Poetry
Professor: David Heaton
Description:
We read lyric poems very closely with an eye to defining very carefully the voice within each and the way the poet uses his or her craft to give that voice its case about life and its tone. Key to this is the understanding of simile and metaphor, imagery, diction, prosody. This is the "critical approach" that makes any other viable or requisite and is, in my view, to be preferred to predisposing the student to "readings" that originate in sociopolitical biases or axe-grinding. Each of you will be very welcome to give your opinion(s) about the world views of these poems.
Readings:
An introductory text in the genre, perhaps The Norton Reader.
Exams/Papers:
One short paper, three exams, each worth 25% of your final grade.
Eng 202: Critical Approaches to Poetry
Professor: James Thompson
Description:
A course focusing on the close reading of poetry, one intended to enhance the critical approaches and skills of English majors, as well as enlarge their interpretive pleasure -- the two are identical. The emphasis will be on the metaphorical life of poetry (e.g., imagery, figurative language, symbol, myth) and on our imaginative, intellectual and emotional responses to that life.
Readings:
A wide range of poems from an anthology to be chosen.
Class obligations: Class attendance, careful, close reading, class discussion, mid-term exam, several in-class papers and one final out-of-class paper.
Eng 298T: English Tutorial
Professor: Loreen Giese
Description:
A survey of selected poetry, prose, and drama of early modern England.
Readings:
Lawson and Smith, The Golden Hind (Norton); Hugh Maclean, ed. Edmund Spencer's Poetry (Norton); Elizabeth Cary's, Tragedy of Miriam; John Ford's Tis a Pity She's a Whore; Shakespeare's King Lear and Twelfth Night; John Webster's, The Duchess of Malfi.
Exams/Papers:
One surprise rich and provocative assignment, short papers, and a final paper.
Eng 301: Shakespeare's Histories
Professor: Beth Quitslund
Description:
In this course we will read some of Shakespeare's richest meditations on the nature of kingship, power, and national identity: Richard III and the second Henriad (Richard II, Henry IV parts 1 and 2, and Henry V). Our discussions will focus on close textual reading as well as on the social and political context of late Elizabethan England.
Readings:
The Norton Shakespeare: Histories; Sacco, Shakespeare's English Kings.
Exams/Papers:
Short discussion papers, group presentation, quizzes, midterm, final paper, and final exam.
Eng 302: Shakespeare's Comedies
Professor: Sam Crowl
Description:
A study of six representative Shakespearean comedies with an eye to understanding their form, structure, and social origins and impact. We will pay particular attention to these plays as scripts for performance and will view several recent film and television productions to see what they can teach us about reading these plays in performance.
Readings:
A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, Measure For Measure, and The Winter's Tale.
Exams/Papers:
Frequent quizzes, midterm and final.
Eng 303: Shakespeare's Tragedies
Professor: Barry Roth
Description:
Reading tragedies by Shakespeare (and perhaps by some of his contemporaries as well) to determine what he made of the form. Plus inquiries into the nature of tragedy itself. And maybe a non-tragedy by WS for comparison?
Readings:
Not yet determined but I'm sure it will be yummy.
Exams/Papers:
Exams, papers, and quizzes.
Eng 304: English Bible
Professor: Beth Quitslund
Description:
This course will look at the King James Bible through a triple lens -- first, as a translation of ancient texts, second, as a record of 17th-century thought and scholarship, and third, as the most influential book on all English Literature. We will thus concentrate on sections of the Bible that exemplify the genres and kinds of writing that it contains, compare some to other (earlier and later) translations, and, in the final paper, explore the uses of Biblical material in classic English texts. These perspectives are all literary and historically specific, and the working assumption that makes them possible is that the Bible and its translations are historically-specific literature, crafted by human authors; the class will respect any religious convictions to the contrary, but not privilege them.
Readings:
The King James Bible (original text); course packet.
Exams/Papers:
Daily quizzes, two short response papers, a presentation, a long (7-10 pp) comparative essay, and a final exam.
Eng 305J: Technical Writing (physical science students 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 physical 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, the Mayfield Handbook of Technical and Scientific Writing, the National Academy of Sciences, On Being a Scientist, as well as several research articles within the student's field.
Exams/Papers:
Reading quizzes, Writing Projects: profile of the student's academic community, abstracts, research proposal, literature review, poster presentation.
Eng 306J: Women and Writing
Professor: Mara Holt
Description:
We will focus on the chapters on gender and the body in the textbook Seeing and Writing. This course views reading as closely associated with learning how to improve writing. You will read, respond to, interpret, and analyze both written and visual texts, often placed side by side. These activities, along with considerations of rhetoric, feminist theory, and writing processes, will help you to become an astute and critical interpreter of visual and written language as well as an effective and creative producer of texts.
Readings:
Seeing and Writing, McQuade & McQuade
Exams/Papers:
You will write the equivalent of four typed papers.
Eng 306J: Women and Writing
Professor: Marilyn Atlas
Description:
(Prerequisite: Junior and completion of first year composition). This course will focus on women's lives and women's memoirs and transforming rough material into art. It satisfies the upper level undergraduate writing requirement. We will begin with creative and pre-writing exercises, explore the elements necessary for writing memoirs and critical essays and end the class, hopefully, with a better understanding of "good writing." Readings will be used to illustrate effective writing and to provoke us to a reexamination of our writing styles, our own personal experiences, and our assumptions about women, writing, and the world.
Readings:
(subject to change) P. J. Corbett, The Little English Handbook; Audre Lorde, Zami; Isabel Bolton, Under Gemini; Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mother's Gardens; and Kay R. Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness.
Exams/Papers:
There will be four major assignments: personal and critical essays (4 pages each), three which will be duplicated for group critiquing, some in class writing, and unannounced reading quizzes.
Eng 306J: Women and Writing: Women and Visual-Textual Culture
Professor: Kasia Marciniak
Description:
The goal of this course is twofold: (1) to train students in argumentative writing as a process that engages critical thinking; (2) to study politics of representation which involves various images of women in contemporary culture. The class will focus on practicing argumentative college writing through an exploration of a variety of aesthetic forms: literature, film, feminist theory, visual art, magazine ads. Thematically, we will explore the underpinnings of "gender politics" and examine different modalities of representation.
Readings:
Tentative Texts: Alain Berliner, My Life in Pink; Helene Cixous, "The Laugh of the Medusa"; R. Epstein and J. Friedman, The Celluloid Closet; Stuart Hall, Representation and the Media; bell hooks, "The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators"; Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye.
Exams/Papers:
3 argumentative papers with revisions, reflective essay, in-class writing.
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; Sheridan Baker, The Practical Stylist; MLA Style Manual.
Exams/Papers:
Mostly papers, various reports. Lots of discussion. Great grammar. Sufficient irony.
Eng 307J: Writing and Research in English Studies
Professor: Mark Rollins
Description:
This course introduces students to or enhances skills in writing, research, and editing related to the English major. Following an introduction to basic editing conventions, the course will utilize collaboration with the professor and peers for invention and revision related to writing and research projects, as well as for class presentations. We will examine traditional and emerging sources of information to address primary and secondary texts. Students should expect a writing-intensive course where they should be eager to work with others. Attendance is required.
Readings:
TBA -- but expect a basic text on theory, the MLA Handbook, a book on literary terms and a primary text (probably a novel).
Exams/Papers:
Expect occasional quizzes on basic material. Students will write and revise a number of short reports. Developing a substantial research project will serve as the focus of the later part of the course.
Eng 307J: Writing Research in English Studies
Professor: Betty Pytlik
Description:
To introduce you to several critical methods of interpreting literature. We will discuss and apply several theories to texts read by the entire class. We will depend on the Lynn book for those readings and discussions. To involve you in a range of research processes useful in reading and writing about literature. You will sharpen your writing skills through frequent brief writing assignments and three major writing projects. To provide practice in working with library sources and electronic databases. We will become more sophisticated in using sources, working with electronic resources and other library sources to discover paper topics and help with developing theses. As a class, we will meet twice in Alden with a reference librarian to practice finding sources on databases.
Readings:
Lynn, Steven. Texts and Contexts: Writing about Literature with Critical Theory. 3rd ed. NY: Longman, 1998. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 5th ed. Ed. Joseph Gibaldi. NY: MLA, 1995. James Still's River on Earth, Lee Smith's Oral History, Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain, and selections from Gurney Norman's Kinfolks, Elaine Fowler Palencia's Brier Country, and Joyce Dwyer's Bloodroot. (The selections are on standard and electronic reserve. The books are at Little Professors and on reserve.)
Exams/Papers:
Class Participation and Engagement in Classwork. (5 Points) Two short essays or summaries on daily reading and discussions. Sample topic: Based on your reading of Lynn's "Gendering the Text," discuss Elaine Palancia's views on women, religion, or community in "Salvation on Calfkiller." (10 points) Paper 1 due fourth week of class. Topic selections will be discussed in class and in conference with the instructor. Using New Critical strategies, provide your own original close reading of one aspect of James Still's River of Earth. Comment on at least two other readings published in scholarly journals or books, including collections of essays. (20 points) Paper 2 due sixth week of class. Develop an essay in which you show how biographical information about Robert Morgan or historical information about Appalachia informs some aspect of Gap Creek. (20 points) Paper 3 due the ninth week of class. Using suggestions from Lynn's "Gendering the Text," discuss one aspect of Lee Smith's Oral History from a feminist perspective. (25 points) Paper 4 due at the time of Scheduled Final Exam. Develop a critique of an assigned short story through a reader-response approach. (20 points) Your attendance in class is essential to make meetings as productive and interesting as possible. Therefore, you will have four hours of absences -- for any reasons. No questions asked, so long as you make up the work by contacting me or your classmates and are ready for class when you return. On the occasion of your fifth hour of absence, your grade -- which will already reflect your absences due to your having missed valuable peer and instructor evaluations of your work -- will be lowered one third of a letter grade for each subsequent hour of absences after four. We will have group or individual conferences on each essay. See MLA Handbook for a discussion of plagiarism. Unacknowledged use of others' ideas and words will result in an F on an assignment.
Eng 308J: Writing and Rhetoric II
Professor: Susan Crowl
Description:
The course will emphasize the rhetorics and writing skills most appropriate to the individual goals and disciplines of the students in the class. Different rhetorical techniques and audiences will be discussed by the class as a whole, and there will be individualized assignments and conferencing.
Readings:
Outside reading of a book chosen individually by you, plus a collection of essays by H.D. Thoreau and some selected essays by other authors. Most of the work, both in and out of class, will be writing by the class and discussion of writing by the class.
Exams/Papers:
5 papers. 3 writing assignments emphasizing different rhetorical techniques and audiences. A final paper based on biography or autobiography of an outstanding historical or contemporary figure in your academic field of study. An abstract based on this paper will be the basis of a presentation in class.
Eng 311: English Literature to 1500
Professor: Marsha Dutton
Description:
This course explores the fiction, lyric poetry, and drama of England from its seventh-century beginnings through the fifteenth century. Ranging from visionary cowherds to monsters and dragons, from Jesus as a young warrior embracing the cross to Guinevere embracing first Lancelot and then God, this literature immerses us in the life, thought, and fiction of medieval England. The broad chronological sweep of the course allows us to explore changing historical circumstances as well as evolving literary forms and themes.
Readings:
The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 1A, 7th ed.
Exams/Papers:
3 papers (15-16 pages total); a final exam.
Eng 312: English Literature 1500-1660
Professor: Janis Holm
Description:
In this course, we'll look at selected prose and poetry of sixteenth and seventeenth-century England, plus one play. We will also consider the social/historical contexts of the literature we read.
Readings:
The Literature of Renaissance England, ed. Hollander and Kermode. Course pack.
Exams/Papers:
2 formal exams; 1 final; weekly homework.
Eng 313: English Literature 1660-1800
Professor: Jeremy Webster
Description:
This course samples British drama, poetry, and prose during the "long Eighteenth Century," a period stretching from 1660 to 1820. Our particular emphasis will be on transformations in literary and historical representations of gender and sexuality during this era. Beginning with a period of great sexual experimentation among England's elite and ending with far more rigid views of marriage, gender roles, and sex, the long Eighteenth Century saw the emergence of our own culture's ideas of masculinity, femininity, and sexuality. We will focus our reading around four major texts and two additional poetry collections. The prerequisites for this course are two courses from English 201, 202, and 203 and a willingness to read, discuss, and write about literary texts that feature frank depictions of grown up issues and situations.
Readings:
Lord Rochester (Everyman's Poetry), Oroonoko by Aphra Behn (Bedford), The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope (Bedford), Thomas Gray (Everyman's Poetry), She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith (Dover), and Persuasion by Jane Austen (Penguin).
Exams/Papers:
Papers, quizzes, and a small group presentation.
Eng 314: English Literature 1800-1900
Professor: Earl Knies
Description:
A survey of poetry, prose, and fiction by major authors of the Romantic and Victorian Periods.
Readings:
The Norton Anthology of English Literature, vols. 2A and 2B: The Romantic Period and the Victorian Age.
Exams/Papers:
Midterm and final exams; two papers
Eng 315: English Literature 1900-Present
Professor: Carey Snyder
Description:
This course will survey two major literary movements (modernism and postmodernism), three genres (poetry, drama, and fiction), and a wide range of authors of the twentieth century. We will place this literature in a variety of important social and historical contexts. We will begin by "Burying Victoria," figuratively speaking -- since much of the creative energy of modernism originated in a flouting of the previous generation�s tastes and values. Next we will consider the tremendous impact of World War I on modern writers, many of whom rejected the "old lies" of pre-war society and sought new aesthetic means of capturing the fragmentation of the inter-war period. Our discussion of modernism will also address experiments in character that were informed by the new psychology and new anthropology of the first half of the century. The second portion of the course will attend to some of the recent voices that comprise the increasingly elastic category of English literature, in the post-World War II era. These include multicultural voices such as the black British writer, Hanif Kuereishi and the contemporary Irish poet, Medbh McGuckian. Finally we will discuss the postmodern innovations of writers such as John Fowles and Jeanette Winterson.
Readings:
James Joyce, Dubliners (1914); Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (1925); John Fowles, The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969); Hanif Kureishi, My Beautiful Launderette (1986); Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body (1992).
Exams/Papers:
40% Two papers (4-5 pages each); 20% Oral presentation and class participation; 25% Final exam; 15% Weekly quizzes.
Eng 321: American Literature to 1865
Professor: Tom Scanlan
Description:
In this class, we will begin by reading early colonial narratives and end with the stunning poetry of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. In between we will examine the work of writers like Jonathan Edwards, Benjamin Franklin, Hannah Foster, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Exams/Papers:
2 Short Response Papers (1 page each); 1 Essay (6-8 pp.); 1 Midterm;Final Exam.
Eng 322: American Literature: 1865-1918
Professor: Thomas Scanlan
Description:
In this class we will attempt to get a handle on the remarkable transition that takes place in American letters between the end of the Civil War and the end of the First World War. To achieve that goal, we will treat the six texts on our list as broadly representative of the literary, cultural, and social changes that mark our period of study.
Readings:
Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; William Dean Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham; Kate Chopin, The Awakening; W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk; Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons; Willa Cather, My Antonia.
Exams/Papers:
2 Short Response Papers (1 page each); 1 Short Essay (4 pages); 1 Medium Length Essay (6 pages); 4-5 Quizzes; Final Exam.
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:
An Anthology of American Literature.
Exams/Papers:
One 3 page paper; writing responses to study questions and in-class quizzes; two exams.
Eng 325: Women and Literature: Postmodern Women Writers
Professor: Kasia Marciniak
Description:
This course has a dual intent: (1) to introduce students to the literary works of contemporary postmodern women writers; (2) to familiarize the class with postmodern, specifically feminist postmodern, critical theory, its language, philosophical underpinnings, and its political goals. We will explore the concept of postmodernism and probe the place that women writers occupy in this field. The course will consider postmodernism as a historical and cultural period, as an influential aesthetic movement of the late 20th century, and as a philosophy of art with, as many critics have argued, an overt political potential. Thematically, we will investigate such concepts as sexual identity politics, politics of difference, ideology of whiteness, politics of representation, transnational subjectivity, exile and cultural dislocation, radical multiculturalism, polycentric multicultural feminism. We will also focus on stylistic narrative experiments and learn formal concepts that will help us analyze often challenging and complex texts. Additionally, we will study theoretical texts which will create a conceptual framework for our literary discussions. These texts will reveal historical and cultural contexts and terms that will allow us to place the discussed narratives within a larger literary tradition of postmodern aesthetics and politics.
Readings:
Tentative Texts: Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body; Cristina Garcia, Dreaming in Cuban; Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony; Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye. Theoretical Texts: Paula Geyh, "Postmodern American Fiction"; bell hooks, "Postmodern Blackness"; Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, "Unthinking Eurocentrism"; Bonnie Zimermman, "Feminist Fiction and the Postmodern Challenge".
Exams/Papers:
Several explication papers; midterm exam; final project.
Eng 327: African American Literature: Fiction
Professor: Crystal Anderson
Description:
"I, too, sing America. I am the darker brother." Langston Hughes Whether personal or communal, the construction of that identity often takes into account the hybrid legacy of African Americans. As descendants of Africans in the United States, black Americans grapple with a multifaceted heritage that draws from both an American and an African American experience. The contours of both cultures, impacted by such factors as gender, class, generation and geographical location result in a myriad of ways that fiction writers construct complex identities to address Hughes's dilemma. This course will examine this recurrent theme in 19th and 20th century narrative texts by African Americans. Over the course of this quarter, students will become familiar with various interpretative strategies, changing literary priorities and aesthetics and the literary dialogue not only among black writers, but between black writers and the larger American culture.
Readings:
Major, Clarence, ed. Calling the Wind: Twentieth Century African American Short Stories; Harper, Frances E.W. Iola Leroy; Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man; Naylor, Gloria. Mama Day; Reed, Ishmael. Japanese By Spring; Coursepack of critical articles.
Exams/Papers:
Two 3-page response papers; Two exams; One 6-8 page paper; Final exam; Class Participation.
Eng 329: African American Drama
Professor: Crystal Anderson
Description:
"The Changing Same": Cultural Memory in African American Drama Cultural memory plays a large part in the African American experience. More than just the recollection of facts from the past, cultural memory is a shifting entity, a combination of personal and communal recollection. As a performance art, drama has the unique ability to place the fluidity of cultural memory on public display, for dispute, debate and discussion. This course will examine the changing role and function of cultural memory through African American drama of the 19th and 20th centuries. Over the course of this quarter, students will become familiar with various interpretative strategies, changing literary priorities and critical issues surrounding black drama and its production.
Readings:
Hatch, James Vernon and Ted Shine. Black Theater USA: Plays by African Americans, 1847-Today; Wilson, August. Three Plays; Coursepack of critical articles.
Exams/Papers:
Two 3-5 page papers; Two exams; Group Presentation/project; Final exam; Class Participation.
Eng 351: History of the English Language
Professor: Josephine Bloomfield
Description:
This course is a linguistic, historical, and literary exploration of the roots and sources of modern day Englishes. After a linguistic grounding in the phonetic alphabet and the major Indo-European sound laws, the course moves through Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English, and American English, investigating both the external historical events that have affected the development and structure of the language (kings, conquests, invasions, family feuds, etc.) and internal events (such as the Great Vowel Shift) that have affected the way we speak the language.
Readings:
Albert C. Baugh and Thomas Cable, A History of the English Language, Fifth Edition (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993). Thomas Cable, A Companion to Baugh and Cable's History of the English Language, Second Edition (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2001).
Exams/Papers:
Homework, quizzes, essay exams, and a term paper.
Eng 356: Young Adult Literature
Professor: Jackie Glasgow
Description:
This course introduces students to selected types of literature that interest young adult readers in secondary schools. We will develop a profile of the adolescent reader and explore the role of literature in the adolescent's life. We attend to the current issues and trends in the field and focus on social justice issues in young adult literature.
Readings:
Common reading: Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse and the text, Literature for Today's Young Adults, 6th ed., by Nilsen and Donelson. Students will choose other honor books to read to meet course requirements.
Exams/Papers:
Students will keep a reader response log, do a class project, and take a final exam.
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 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 precessions 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" journal, 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: Darrell Spencer
Description:
I've designed English 361, Creative Writing: Fiction, as a course that focuses on reading and writing short stories. First, we'll discuss and practice ways of generating stories. Second, we'll work through practical exercises in revision, emphasis on form, structure, conflict, plot, diction -- above all, clarity. Third, in class we'll practice what I call Nuts & Bolts exercises in setting, characterization, immediacy, dialogue, etc.
Readings:
An anthology of short fiction, most likely the O'Henry Awards collection for 1999.
Exams/Papers:
Two short stories, writing exercises, and a final portfolio.
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 362: Creative Writing: Poetry
Professor: Mark Wunderlich
Description:
To be announced.
Eng 363: Creative Writing: Nonfiction
Instructor: Michael Danko
Description:
In this class we will work on (1) gaining an understanding of the personal essay as a distinct yet flexible nonfiction form, on possessing its own characteristics that distinguish it from other genres, and (2) working on the craft of writing and revising your own essays. To this end, we will be reading a number of works from The Art of the Personal Essay anthology that demonstrate the essay's protean adaptability, and we will be using the workshop format.
Readings:
TBA, but the required text is The Art of the Personal Essay, edited by Phillip Lopate (1994) and writers covered will include: Montaigne, William Hazlitt, Charles Lamb, Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, James Baldwin, Joan Didion, Richard Rodriguez.
Exams/Papers:
Attendance required. Three essays to be presented to the workshop. Essays must be turned in, with sufficient copies for the class, at least one class before they are to be workshopped. Revision of all three essays and a final essay or prose project. One-page responses to the readings; occasional assigned exercises.
Eng 393: Creative Writing Workshop: Short Story
Professor: Jack Matthews
Description:
The advanced undergraduate workshop will be conducted in essentially the same way as its prerequisite, English 361, although the pace is intensified, with greater demands upon the quality of student work.
Readings:
The Worker's Writebook, by Jack Matthews, along with a short story collection to be decided upon.
Exams/Papers:
Midterms on the WWBk and the short story collection will be given. At the end of the quarter, you will hand in a portfolio consisting of three parts: 20 pages of original, completed and polished fiction, a journal consisting of daily entries (every day) from journals, diaries and notebooks of established writers, along with your response to each of the entries in the form of a brief notation; and all the notes, false starts, etc. that have accumulated during your quarter's work.
Eng 395: Creative Writing Workshop: Nonfiction
Professor: David Lazar
Description:
We will continue our exploration of the personal essay and related forms.
Readings:
The Gastronomical Me, by M.F.K. Fisher; Maus, by Art Siegelman; Autobiography of a Face, by Lucy Grealy.
Eng 398T: English Tutorial/Eng 477T: English Tutorial
Professor: Robert DeMott
Description:
Imagining America, English 398T/477T, is only for students enrolled in English Departments Honors program (either through Arts and Sciences or Honors College). This course provides immersion in American Literature from beginnings to 1900. The focus is on the problematics of constructing personal and national identities in a multicultural context.
Readings:
Readings from a large anthology of American Literature (which includes several key full length texts including Douglas's Narrative, Twain's Huck Finn, Chopin's The Awakening), plus an edition of Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Melville's Moby-Dick OR Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, and one other to be announced.
Exams/Papers:
There will be a weekly tutorial paper, some collaborative projects and presentations, and a final research paper.
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 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.
Readings:
To be announced.
Exams/Papers:
Three papers; final exam.
Eng 452: Teaching Literature (Students who enroll for English 452 must also enroll in English 452L.)
Professor: Jacqueline Glasgow
Description:
Students will learn student-centered, developmental strategies for teaching literature in the middle school and high school English/Language Arts classrooms.
Readings:
You Gotta Be the Book and Using Young Adult Literature Attitudes Based on Gardner's Multiple Intelligences.
Exams/Papers:
Multigenre research paper; Thematic Unit.
Eng 452: Teaching Literature (Students who enroll for English 452 must also enroll in English 452L.)
Professor: Carolyn Tripp
Description:
Students will explore strategies for teaching literature that are learner centered and developmentally appropriate for the middle school and high school English/Language Arts classrooms.
Readings:
You Gotta Be the Book and Using Young Adult Literature Attitudes Based on Gardner's Multiple Intelligences.
Exams/Papers:
Multigenre research paper; Thematic Unit.
Eng 452L: Field Experience in Secondary English Literature
Professor: Jacqueline Glasgow
Description:
Students will spend 20 hours in local schools teaching Thematic Units to small groups of students.
Eng 452L: Field Experience in Secondary English Literature
Professor: Carolyn Tripp
Description:
Students will spend time in the public school classroom at the middle school or high school level to observe and participate in class activities.
Eng 460: Literary TopicsShakespeare on Film: The Branagh Era
Professor: Sam Crowl
Description:
The last decade of the 20th century witnessed an explosion of films based on Shakespearean material. The explosion was ignited by the artistic success of Kenneth Branagh's film of Henry V and the commercial success of Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing and Baz Luhrmann's Romeo And Juliet. We will study six representative Shakespeare films of the period along with the texts on which they are based. The class will be conducted as a seminar with the participants playing a starring role in each session.
Readings:
Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, Romeo And Juliet, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Titus Andronicus and selected literary and film criticism.
Exams/Papers:
Two short (2-3 PP) papers and one longer (10-12 PP) essay.
Eng 460: Literary Topics
Professors: David Lazar and Robert Miklitsch
Description:
We're off to see the Wizard. We will examine aspects of the American musical through film, theoretically, culturally, historically, considering, among others: The Wizard of Oz, Brigadoon, The Sound of Music, West Side Story...
Readings:
Since this course on the musical will be an introductory one, texts will include one overview of the genre plus an anthology of critical readings (xeroxes).
Exams/Papers:
There will be three to four short papers (2 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 (6-8 pp.). Attendance and participation, as per usual, will constitute a substantial part of the final grade.
Note: though this class is offered under the auspices of the English Department, non-majors are encouraged to enroll. In short, everybody is welcome!
Eng 464: Major English Authors
Professor: Joseph McLaughlin
Description:
One very long and very, very good Victorian novel: Bleak House, by Charles Dickens. Lots of historical, critical, and literary context.
Readings:
Charles Dickens, Bleak House; Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor; Karen Chase & Michael Levenson, The Spectacle of Intimacy.
Exams/Papers:
Two papers, one oral presentation, regular reading and attendance.
Eng 465: Major American Authors
Professor: David Heaton
Description:
We will read carefully selected poems from the work of Sylvia Plath, Elizabeth Bishop and Wallace Stevens. You will build up an increasingly comprehensive sense of the themes and poetic tactics of these poets by close daily work with the most significant and revealing lyrics of each.
Readings:
Three volumes, one for each poet, of selected poems. Each text will be a very valuable addition to your library of major authors.
Exams/Papers:
Two exams (one hour each); two short papers (three to four pages maximum); one long paper. Short papers will be presented and read to the whole class.
T308 407A: Darwin as Poet
Professor: Joseph McLaughlin
Description:
The year 1859 saw the publication in England of an unusually large number of major works: Darwin's Origin of Species, Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, Eliot's and Meredith's first novels Adam Bede and The Ordeal of Richard Fevere, the first volume of Tennyson's Idylls of the King, Fitzgerald's Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Mill's On Liberty, and Samuel Smiles's Self Help. Through this rich variety of texts, we will examine crucial Victorian issues, trying to see how they come together in 1859. The touchstone for our endeavor will be Darwin's monumental Origin, arguably the most important book published in the nineteenth century. The class will focus on three other works to explore ways that science, political economy, fiction, and poetry speak to some of the same ideas. We will attempt to synthesize the historical, social, religious, and artistic contexts of Darwin and think about ways his work arose in and from a common intellectual environment. Class discussion, team projects, and research will be an important part of the course because, ideally, our purpose is not to demonstrate relationships among diverse practices but to discover them.
Readings:
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species; Alfred Tennyson, The Idylls of the King; John Stuart Mill, On Liberty; George Eliot, Adam Bede; or Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities.
Exams/Papers:
Two Papers (5-7pp); In-Class Presentation; Team Project.
T308 407B: The Autobiographical Quest
Professor: Susan Crowl
Description:
For the purposes of this course, "the autobiographical quest" means the study of several "model" lives, and of the intersections between self and world narrativized in each of them. We will focus on the ways that differing perspectives are represented and integrated in the writing and reading of personal and cultural history, fiction, philosophy, and science, and we will invite and explore the interplay and synthesis represented in the variety of individual and disciplinary perspectives in the class.
Readings:
Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn; Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography; Henry David Thoreau, Walden; Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild.
Exams/Papers:
In-class response exercises; final paper and final exam.
T308 407P: Sin, Sex, Western Legal History
Professor: Miriam Shadis
Description:
Using letters, legal documents, poetry, prose, rule books, art, music, and religious and philosophical texts from Plato to Chaucer, this class examines Western attitudes toward sex and sexuality and considers questions such as these: what do we mean by "masculine" and "feminine" and what do masculinity and femininity have to do with sin and sex? what are the connections between sin, sex, and politics? how did we get our notions of "proper" and "improper," "superior" and "inferior" sex and sexualities? This class will feature debates, discussions, group reports and presentations, slides, and films in addition to the usual readings, exams, and papers.
Readings:
James A. Brundage. Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago, 1987. Elaine Pagels. Adam, Eve, and the Serpent. New York: Vintage, 1988. Geoffrey Chaucer. The Canterbury Tales. Trans. Kent and Constance Hieatt. New York: Bantam, 1964. Course Pack: Available on reserve at the Duplication Station, Union Street.
Exams/Papers:
Reports, quizzes, midterm, final, and two essays.
T308 407Q: 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.