Winter 2003 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 — Writing & Rhetoric
Professor: Linda Rice
Description:
Self—reflection and reflexivity (in essence, trying on the perspective of an "other" for long enough to look back critically at ourselves, our ideas, our assumptions, and our values) are the cornerstones of this course. By reading and discussing essays by authors such as Anne Neeposh Iserfhoff, Bell Hooks, Gloria Steinem, and Victor Villanueva, students will analyze language as it is constructed in a context, affected by audience and situation. Students will apply rhetorical strategies to their own writing, realizing its power to establish, disrupt, and transform the social order. As a community of writers, students will engage in writing as a recursive and collaborative process and work toward mastering the conventions of grammar, usage, mechanics, organization, and MLA style.
Readings:
Carter, Duncan & Sherrie Gradin. Writing as Reflective Action: A Reader. New York: Longman, 2001.
Hacker, Diana. A Writer's Reference (4th Edition). Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1999.
Exams/Papers:
Routine homework assignments/informal writing (critical responses to essays read for class discussion and as writing models) Four typed essays, 4—6 pages each, prepared in MLA style. Final presentation of writing to include PowerPoint and/or film, music, and 3—D project or other performance incorporating Multiple Intelligences.
Eng 152 — Writing & Reading
Professors: Mara Holt and Albert Rouzie
Description:
Our writing, research, and discussions will focus on the work of three American novelists: contemporary American Indian, Sherman Alexie, 19th Century Southerner, Kate Chopin, and current bestseller, Alice Sebold. This course will be taught in cooperation with the other section of ENG 152 taught at the same time in the room next door. Joint projects will include peer critiques of essay drafts between the classes, screenings of films, and small group work. Students will research and write a reception study of one novel, compose a review of another, and write a literary analysis of a third. We will create structured small group tasks in which students can research an author or historical and cultural aspects of the novels.
Readings:
Reservation Blues, Sherman Alexie
The Awakening, Kate Chopin
Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold
Exams/Papers:
Quizzes.
Three essays.
Research presentation.
Final exam: revisions of two of the three essays.
Eng 152 — Writing & Reading: Freud to Fight Club
Professor: Michael Brown
Description:
English 152 is described as a freshman composition course with a basis in reading. I have therefore chosen a list of texts that I think bring into focus an interesting, maybe even compelling subject: the evolution of the psychosexual in narrative fiction and film.
1. We will begin with Sigmund Freud (1856—1939), whose theory of sexuality, tested through his technique of psychoanalysis, will provide a theoretical basis upon which to read and analyze the remaining works. The two Freud texts we are using are central to and fairly comprehensive of his theory.
2. I believe there is no better model in 19th century literature for applying and exploiting Freud's theories than Edgar Poe (1809—1849), though he may predate Freud by a generation (just as Shakespeare predates Poe and Sophocles predates Shakespeare), and no story of Poe's better provokes Freud's theory than "The Fall of the House of Usher."
3. Henry James's (1843—1916) The Turn of the Screw is an endlessly compelling work, primarily for its intended ambiguity. Critics have argued over this story's psychological intentions and implications since its first publication in 1898. We will add significantly to this body of criticism.
4. Death in Venice is Thomas Mann's (1875—1955) short masterpiece concerning a middle—aged artist confronted by a sudden but secret and intense passion for an adolescent boy. The story incorporates both classical references and contemporary (early 20th century) issues.
5. Finally, David Fincher's 1999 film Fight Club gives us a postmodern look at one man's divided psyche, where his unconscious desire takes the form of an anarchistic alterego. This film's conflicts and metaphors are begging for both psychoanalytic and cultural (economic/political/historical) interpretation.
Readings:
Freud, Sigmund. An Outline of Psychoanalysis, Standard Ed. NY: W.W. Norton, 1969.
Freud, Sigmund. The Ego and the Id, Standard Ed.. NY: W.W. Norton, 1960.
Poe, Edgar Allen. The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales. NY: Signet, 1998.
James, Henry. The Turn of the Screw. Dover Thrift, 1991.
Mann, Thomas. Death in Venice. Dover Thrift, 1995.
Fincher, David, dir. Fight Club. 1999.
Exams/Papers:
As this is a composition course you will be required to write papers of various lengths on each of the required literary texts. Since Freud's psychoanalytic theory is the foundation from which we are reading you will need to understand and be able to apply at least a limited amount of his theory throughout the course. I will give you plenty of help, and some supplementary material as the course proceeds.
English 153 — Special Topics: Short Story Analysis
Professor: Mark Halliday
Description:
We will read short stories, discuss them, and write about them from various angles. Some writing assignments will emphasize critical analysis and argument; others will seek connections between the stories' issues and our own lives. We will read eight or ten stories by Edith Wharton (1862—1937), and several stories by contemporary writers.
Readings:
A book of stories by Edith Wharton, and an anthology of stories.
Exams/Papers:
Three five—page papers, and several shorter papers. In some cases, I will ask a few follow—up questions about your paper, calling for written answers. Also, there will be one or two quizzes on our readings and on points made in class.
Eng 153 — Special Topics: Willa Cather
Professor:Thomas Scanlan
Description:
We will read, discuss, and write about five Willa Cather novels. If you don't know who Willa Cather is, then you should definitely consider taking this class. Among the many questions these texts raise are the following: Are gender roles fluid? What is the nature of human sexuality? Is marriage a viable institution in the modern world? What role does the land play in the formation of our identity?
Readings:
My Antonia, O Pioneers, The Song of the Lark, One of Ours, The Professor's House.
Exams/Papers:
Five 3—5 page papers.
Eng 200 — Introduction to Literature
Professor: Robert Kinsley
Description:
Through your engagement with the world around you— the physical world, the intellectual world, the spiritual world, and your embodiment of those worlds comes the person you are and will become. The world of language, in this case the world of poetry, fiction, drama, is a world that if fully engaged can offer pleasure, assurance, and often a better understanding of ourselves. Our individual and collective attempt will be to look closely with care and attention and to discuss our emotional, intellectual, and even physical responses to this world by a close examination of each genre.
Readings:
The Norton Introduction To Literature, Shorter 7th Edition: Bain, Beaty, Hunter
In Our Time: Hemingway.
Exams/Papers:
Three Exams, Three short response papers.
Eng 201 — Critical Approach To Fiction
Professor: David Heaton M
Description:
Reading, with careful, twice a week discussion, of short stories and novellas. Mastery of the formal terminology necessary to speak intelligently about fiction: plot, setting, characterization, point of view, etc.
Readings:
An introductory text in the genre, perhaps Fiction 100.
Exams/Papers:
Three essay exams; one paper.
Eng 201 — Critical Approach To Fiction: Writing Enriched
Professor: Betty Pytlik
Required Text:
The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction. Compact Fifth Ed. Ed. Ann Charters. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1999. A handbook and dictionary of your choice.
Goals of Course:
To introduce you to several critical methods of interpreting literature. To assist you in articulating your understanding of fiction through opportunities to write about literature. To encourage an appreciation of short fiction. 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, including illness, spring fever, or athletic competitions. 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 absence. Using another person's work without citing your indebtedness is plagiarism. Such academic dishonesty will result in an F for the assignment. Please see the Student Handbook for a discussion of university policy. See me if you are in doubt. One conference is mandatory during the quarter. Others are optional.
Basis for Final Grade:
One mid—term 3—5 page essay 20
One group discussion about assigned story 10
One final essay test 20
Five 1—page single spaced typed responses
to assigned stories (topics assigned) 35
Class participation, inc. peer critiques 15
Total 100
Assignments:
Mid—term Essay. I will give you two or three topics to choose from. Example: Compare the concept of marriage in the stories of Gilman and Carver. Group Discussions. At least once a week a group of three students will lead a 45—minute class discussion of an assigned short story. During the class that precedes the discussion, the group will give us several guide questions. (The questions can also be emailed to us so long as we receive them before 5 p. m. the evening before we will discuss them.) Final Essay Test. You will illustrate definitions of literary terms we have discussed throughout the quarter. One—page Responses. Microthemes. I will give you guide questions for each of the short stories not discussed by groups. Participation. The success of the class depends on your participation, including your engagement with the material and the class discussion and your two written critiques of your peers' essays.
Eng 201 — Critical Approach To Fiction
Professor: Barry Roth
Description:
Vivid discussion of what and how prose fiction means.
Readings:
Not selected yet, but short stories and novels, perhaps by Chekhov, Flannery O'Connor, Faulkner, Barth, and others.
Exams/Papers:
Quizzes and papers and a final.
Eng 201 — Critical Approach 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).
Exams/Papers:
Careful, close reading, class attendance, class participation, mid—term exam, several in—class papers and one out—of—class final paper, final.
Eng 202 — Critical Approach To Poetry
Professor: Linda Beckman
Description:
This course has the following goals: to develop your ability to understand and enjoy poetry; to introduce you to a wide variety of poetic forms, styles, and themes; and to teach you the terminology that will allow you to talk and write about how poems work and why they matter.
Readings:
An Introduction to Poetry, ed. X.J. Kennedy and D. Gioia, 10th ed.
Exams/Papers:
Two short analytical papers, five quizzes, and a participation in a group presentation.
202 — Critical Approach To Poetry
David Bergdahl
Description:
The department's three genre courses, English 201—2—3, introduce the student to the academic study of fiction, poetry and 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 lacunæ. When there are opportunities, we will be feminist or Marxist readers, and we will definitely practice formalism.
Readings:
Helen Vendler, Poems, Poets, Poetry, 2nd ed. (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 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 Approach To Poetry
Instructor: 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 chosen from Kennedy and Gioia, eds., An Introduction to Poetry, Longman, 10th ed.
Class obligations:
Class attendance, careful, close reading, class discussion, mid—term exam, several in—class papers and one final out—of—class paper, final.
Eng 202 — Critical Approach To Poetry
Instructor: 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 worldviews 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 301 — Shakespeare's Histories
Professor: Beth Quitslund
Description:
In this course we will read some of Shakespeare's richest 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:
Two short papers, two longer essays, quizzes, midterm, and final exam.
Eng 302 — Shakespeare's Comedies
Professor: Barry Roth
Description:
Reading/ Studying/ Exploring/ Analyzing/ Discussing Shakespeare's Comedies.
Readings:
The class begins with The Comedy of Errors and goes as far as we get in WS's writing career.
Exams/Papers:
Exams and papers.
Eng 303 — Shakespeare's Tragedies
Professor: Andrew Escobedo
Description:
Analysis of Shakespeare's later tragedies, with special attention to the representation of the villain as a marginal figure of social critique. We will interpret the plays by means of a close examination of Shakespeare's language.
Readings:
Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth.
Exams/Papers:
Quizzes, two papers, a class presentation, and a final exam.
Eng 305J — Technical Writing (For 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 reportsand 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, a course pack, and several research articles within the student's field.
Exams/Papers:
Tests: Two exams, reading quizzes. Writing projects: profile of the student's academic community, abstracts, research proposal, literature review, poster presentation.
Eng 305J — Technical Writing
Professor: Jane Denbow
Description:
Students will practice the techniques of technical writing. In this class technical writing refers to writing done on the job. For each paper students will go through the writing process and produce several drafts before turning in the final paper.
Readings:
Course pack; material on reserve at library.
Exams/Papers:
Out of class papers include an informational paper, analysis of a Web site, letter and resume, proposal, and a formal report. In—class assignments will cover instructions and business letters. Several quizzes on grammar technical writing style.
Eng 305J — Technical Writing
Professor: Miriam Hart
Description:
The committee on composition defines 305J as "an introduction to writing which communicates and interprets specialized information for the practical or intellectual use of specific audiences, both technical and non—technical." We will hope that our extensive reading, writing and research will make us strong and clear writers. Each assignment will be targeted to your own major/profession, so that each piece should have relevance to you.
Readings:
The M—F edition of the New York Times, as well as many handouts. In addition, you will be required to find and read scholarly articles done within your profession's journals.
Exams/Papers:
The core assignments required in this course include the instruction/process paper, the proposal, and the information report. In addition, we'll study ethical issues within our field, create formal definitions, resumes, cover letters, summaries, abstracts, and an extensive information report. We will also carefully evaluate professional web sites and the language of our professions' scholarly journals. And maybe more. You will also compose a 3–5 page midterm and final essay, based on your readings in the NYT.
Eng 306J — Women & 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; Kay R. Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness; and Nancy Mairs, Plaintext.
Exams/Papers:
There will be four major assignments: personal and critical essays (4 pages each), three that will be duplicated for group critiquing, some in class writing, and unannounced reading quizzes.
ENG 306J — Women & Writing
Professor: Linda Beckman
Description:
The purpose of this course is to develop writing skills, especially those useful in writing about one's own experience; to read women's life writing, especially memoirs; and to learn about how narrative conventions shape the way women about their lives and shape the way they live. In our reading, we will focus on how contemporary women writers are modifying, breaking, and developing new narrative conventions.
Readings:
Essays from Nancy Mairs's Voice Lessons, chapters from Carolyn Heilbrun's Writing a Woman's Life, and Alice Walker's essay "In Search of My Mother's Gardens." And the whole of Mary Karr's The Liars' Club, Jill Ker Conway's The Road From Coorain, and Susanna Kaysen's Girl, Interrupted.
Exams/Papers:
Students will write four short papers and one longish one.
Eng 306J — Women & Writing
Professor: Mara Holt
Description:
We will focus on the gender and the body using a variety of texts. This course views reading as closely associated with learning how to improve writing. You will read, respond to, interpret, and analyze texts. 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:
Virginia Woolf, Natalie Angier, Kate Chopin, Milan Kundera, Anita Shreve.
Exams/Papers:
You will write the equivalent of four typed papers.
Eng 307J — Writing Research in English Studies
Professor: Albert Rouzie
Description:
In this course, you will practice the methods used for academic research and writing in the discipline of English studies. You will use library and internet databases to locate scholarship in English, practice appropriate ways of employing research in the selection and investigation of a topic, and experiment with the kinds of writing most pertinent to English studies. We will read, write about, and discuss primary and secondary texts: some poems, short fiction, a novel, and scholarship on the novel and its topics and themes. The novel, Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko, will be the central text of our literary investigations. We will investigate its critical reception (reviews) and scholarship written about it, summarizing a number of these in an annotated bibliography. You will evaluate a piece of criticism, propose an essay topic, compose a researched essay, and critique another student's essay draft.
Readings:
Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko
Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony: A Casebook. Edited by Allan Chavkin
MLA Handbook (the latest edition)
Exams/Papers:
Quizzes on readings, reception study, annotated bibliography, review essay on a piece of criticism, project proposal, researched essay, and critique of another student's essay draft.
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 English Studies as a discipline, library and online research, literary theory, and the conventions of argumentative writing. We will put these topics into practice by reading, discussing, and writing about the poems of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, a late seventeenth century libertine.
Readings:
Complete Poems by John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, Literary Conversation by Patsy Callaghan and Ann Dobyns, Falling into Theory: Conflicting Views on Reading Literature by David H. Richter, and the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers by Joseph Gibaldi.
Exams/Papers:
At least two short papers and a longer research paper.
Eng 311 — English Literature to 1500
Professor: Andrew Escobedo
Description:
A survey of the Anglo—French medieval period, emphasizing the issues of class, piety, and violence. In what manner did the demotic implications of Christianity interact with the medieval assumption of aristocratic prerogative? To what degree did the spiritual imperative of humility qualify the ethic of martial heroism? At all costs, we will try to think of the middle ages (who started calling them "middle" by the way?) as something other than "the olden days."
Readings:
Chrétien de Troyes, Guillaume de Lorris, Chaucer, Gawain, and Margery Kempe
Exams/Papers:
Quizzes, two papers, and 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:
1) The Literature of Renaissance England, ed. Hollander & Kermode; 2) Course pack.
Exams/Papers:
2 formal exams; 1 final; weekly homework.
Eng 313 — English Literature: 1660—1800
Professor: Linda Zionkowski
Description:
This class will acquaint students with a variety of the poetry, fiction, and drama written in the period from 1660—1800, and will make students aware of some of the cultural, social, and political movements to which these texts respondand which they help generate: namely, colonialism, capitalism, changes in the structure of gender relations, and the emergence of a literary marketplace.
Readings:
The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume 1C, ed. Lawrence Lipking; novels and supplemental texts to be announced.
Exams/Papers:
Three analytical essays; final exam.
Eng 314 — Eng Lit: 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: Arthur Woolley
Description:
"My reality just isn't your reality." Such a statement is intelligible to you because you live after twentieth century writers made their impact on your culture. This course studies the major literary developments and intellectual contexts of twentieth century British literature by spotlighting the work of a number of prominent British authors. It starts with Conrad and his 1898 book that inspired the film Apocalypse Now. It reviews some poets (Yeats, war poets) who dealt with the vaporization of Edwardian tradition and elegance culminating in The Great War and with other writers who took the fragmentation and disillusion that followed that war into a burst of artistic innovation known as modernism (Joyce, Eliot, Woolf). From the period after World War II, the course will ricochet among several authors, primarily novelists (Graham Swift and Jeannette Winterson), who are searching out ways to deal with a philosophically, morally and socially unsettled condition reflective of contemporary crossing of cultures (Achebe, Beckett, Gordimer, Rushdie, Heaney, Walcott).
Readings:
Stallworthy, et al, Norton Anthology Of English Literature, 7th ed., either volume II (if you have it) or volume 2C: The Twentieth Century (at bookstore), Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse, Graham Swift, Waterland, Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body.
Eng 321 — American Literature to 1865
Professor: Thomas 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 Discussion Board postings (1 page each); 1 Medium Length (6—8 pp.) Essay; 3 Hourly Quizzes.
Eng 322 — American Literature 1865—1918
Professor: Marilyn Atlas
Description:
We will analyze form as we examine some of the major literary movements in the United States between l865 and 1918. This course will be organized historically. We will study literary America after the Civil War and up through the First World War examining major literary trends such as Regionalism, Realism, Naturalism, and Modernism focusing on the innovative techniques explored by individual writers.
Readings:
(subject to change) Anthology of American Literature, Volume II: Realism to the Present, edited by George McMichael et. al., 7th edition).
Exams/Papers:
Pop reading quizzes, three essays (two will be 3—4 pages each; one will be comparative and probably a little longer.
Eng 323 — American Literature 1918—Present
Professor: David Bergdahl
Description:
American Literature of the 20th century with an emphasis on poetry.
Readings:
The Norton Anthology of American Literature, vol. D (1918—1945) and Vol. E (1945—present).
Exams/Papers:
2 papers, final exam, plus participation in our class's electronic jounal (all equally weighted).
Eng 325 — Women and Literature
Professor: Nicole Reynolds
Description:
"'truth[s] universally acknowledged': Jane Austen in her time and in ours" Vladimir Nabokov once observed that "at first sight, Jane Austen's manner and matter may seem to be old—fashioned, stilted, unreal. But this is a delusion to which the bad reader succumbs." In this class, we will learn to be "good" readers of Jane Austen's "manner and matter"; we'll study Austen's aesthetic strategies as well as the ways in which the novels respond to the politics and culture of Romantic Britain. This formal and historical understanding will guide our exploration of the ways in which Austen's novels, and Austen herself, have been interpreted in our own time, most notably in recent film adaptations, sequels to and retellings of the novels, and even in a fictional account of Austen's life that establishes "Jane" as a sleuth! As we move between the 19th and 21st centuries, between fiction and film, we'll discuss Jane Austen as a cultural phenomenon (from Rudyard Kipling's "Janeites" to the Austen List) and the broader social and political implications of the most recent resurgence of "Austenmania."
Readings:
Aiken, Joan. Jane Fairfax: Jane Austen's Emma, Through Another's Eyes. (1991); Austen, Jane. Emma. (1816), Mansfield Park. (1814). Pride and Prejudice. (1813), Sense and Sensibility. (1811); Barron, Stephanie. The Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor. Being the First Jane Austen Mystery. (1996); Fielding, Helen. Bridget Jones's Diary. (1998); Rozema, Patricia. Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. A Screenplay. (2000); Thompson, Emma. The Sense and Sensibility Screenplay and Diaries. (1995); A course packet will contain various critical essays (drawn from such recent collections as Janeites: Austen's Disciples and Devotees and Jane Austen in Hollywood) as well as supplementary historical/cultural readings, including selections from Austen's letters, juvenilia, and unpublished works.
Exams/Papers:
Take home final exam; Annotated bibliography; Five short (two—page) essays; Class presentation; Regular quizzes, in—class exercises, and homework assignments.
Eng 326 — Lesbian & Gay Literature
Professor: Jeremy Webster
Description:
This course studies literature by and/or about gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people with particular emphasis on the ways in which GLBT identities and experiences have been represented in post—1900 literary discourse. To this end, we will read three novels, a play, and several poems. The only prerequisites for this course are the successful completion of Freshman Composition and a willingness to read and discuss literary texts that feature frank examinations of issues and situations dealing with sexuality. Students who have already taken ENG 271H may enroll in and receive credit for this course also.
Readings:
Bertram Cope's Year by Henry Blake Fuller, Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg, Dancer from the Dance by Andrew Holleran, Trash by Dorothy Allison, Hedwig and the Angry Inch by John Cameron Mitchell, The World in Us: Lesbian and Gay Poetry of the Next Wave edited by Michael Lassell and Elena Georgiou, and a course packet of additional readings.
Exams/Papers:
Midterm exam, oral presentation, 2 short papers, final exam.
Eng 327 — African American Fiction: Black Cyborg Ontology in American Fiction and Film
Professor: Johnnie Wilcox
Description:
Contemporary narratives of technology tend to obscure the racial character of American cyborg consciousness while ignoring the genealogical line that descends from American slavery to the birth of human—machinic systems in the mid—twentieth century. We first will read Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass as the ground out of which this black cyborg subject, descendant of American slaves, grows. We will then strengthen the attenuated genealogical lines between slaves and cyborgs by considering how Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's tale of gothic memberment informs Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, and how the resulting cybernetic consciousness is transformed by Toni Morrison in The Bluest Eye to explore the deformation beauty rends upon black female self—perception. In the second half of the course, the themes we developed in the course's first half will serve as modes for interpreting the versions of black cyborg consciousness we encounter in several works of science fiction, film, and comic books.
Readings:
A small course pack of readings. Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein; Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man, Spike Lee, et. al., Bamboozled, Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye, Philip K. Dick, We Can Build You, Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski, The Matrix, Dwayne McDuffie and Gregory Wright, et. al. Deathlok limited series #1—4; Dwayne McDuffie and Denys Cowan, et. al. Deathlok #1—12 (July 1991—June 1992).
Exams/Papers:
weekly weblog (1 p./week)
prospectus (1—2 pp.)
10—item annotated bibliography
essay (6—8 pp.)
midterm
final exam
Eng 329 — African American Drama: The (Disfunktional) Family
Professor: Crystal Anderson
They rung my bell to ask me.
Could I recommend a maid.
I said, yes, your mama.
——Langston Hughes, "Horn of Plenty"
Description:
One of the most recurrent themes of African American drama is the family. Black playwrights have often contended with the erroneous image of the black family and the stereotypes that emerge: the controlling yet nurturing matriarch, the headstrong son, the often—absent father, and the promiscuous sister. These elements come together in what Daniel Moynihan declared as a "tangle of pathology" in referring to black families. In response, Robin D.G. Kelley writes his book, Yo Mama's Disfunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America, in "defense of many, many mothers, daughters, sisters, sons, brothers, and fathersthe nameless masses whom we rarely see beyond the statistics or news footage." This course in African American drama focuses on how black playwrights have explored the notion of family beyond bloodlines by meditating on the extended family that the black community represents. This course will explore the ways in which black dramatists deconstruct and reconstruct such images. 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.
Exams/Papers:
Drama reviews
Topic/outline
Annotated Bibliography
Final paper
Scene interpretation
Final exam
Eng 350 — Traditional Grammar, Mechanics and Usage
Professor: Arthur Woolley
Description:
English is a language you and I speak, write and think in over and over again daily. It's fluid. Grammar is the analytical description, more or less static, using fixed category definitions and relationship descriptions, of the recognized patterns in a language when it succeeds in communicating. English has been described with several grammars. The game of grammar is to keep the categories and pattern descriptions as simple as possible but still be able, using them, to describe accurately any of the trillions of acceptable acts of "sentence" construction. Language is fun; the game of grammar can be fun——if you like a challenge.
This course will cause you to learn the rudiments of the current English grammar based on phrase structure analysis. We will relate this grammar to traditional grammar as we go. You should end up with a better understanding of the relationship of grammar to language and a better understanding of the patterns of English that cause words to be spelled (is/are, he/him) or placed (John loves Mary/John Mary loves) in a particular way for communication. The course will pay supplementary attention to mechanics (spelling, punctuation, capitalization) and usage (narrowly defined as appropriate word choice: e.g., accept/except, less/few, interested/interesting).
Readings:
Anita K. Barry, English Grammar and (probable) Kenneth Wilson, Columbia Guide to American English.
Exams/Papers:
Three hourly exams and a final, no paper.
Eng 351 — History of the English Language
Professor: Marsha Dutton
Description:
This course surveys the growth of English from its Indo—European beginnings through Old English and Middle English into twentieth—century American English, using the students' own language experiences as a point of entry. It also explores aspects of the development of formal language study, explores the way language changes over time and varies over space, studying linguistic concepts and terminology that allow us to recognize and describe that change and variation. The course will also include a research component, directed by Ms. Laura Windsor of Alden Library, to learn how to locate primary and secondary sources in linguistics.
Readings:
Barbara A. Fennell, A History of English: A Sociolinguistic Approach.
Exams/Papers:
3 papers (18—20 pages), an observation journal, occasional short quizzes, a midterm, and a final exam.
Eng 356 — Young Adult Literature: Writing Enriched
Professor: Jackie Glasgow
Description:
The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the genres of young adult 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:
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 and do a course project.
Eng 361 — Creative Writing: Fiction
Professor: John 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. Probably a short—story collection (not yet decided—upon).
Eng 362 — Creative Writing: Poetry
Professor: Jill Rosser
Description:
This course is designed to help you write better poems. Our texts will include both contemporary and "dead" poets' work, which will serve either as models of a given tradition or as thematic and technical jumping—off points for your own poems. Half of class discussion will be devoted to student work, the other half to assigned reading. You will be required to submit at least ten original poems during the quarter as well as occasional exercises, an informal biweekly reading journal, and a final portfolio with revisions. We will emphasize experimentation in writing and responsibly worded candor in discussion.
Readings:
To be announced.
Exams/Papers:
Occasional quizzes and a final portfolio.
English 362 — Creative Writing: Poetry
Professor: Mark Halliday
Description:
Every creative writing workshop has the double purpose of developing your writing skills and your reading skills. The two are interdependent. In this introductory poetry workshop, some of the poems we read will be by published poets, and some by workshop members. Constantly we'll be asking how a poem can do some or all of the things we want people to do — delight, instruct, reveal, question, confess, explore, honor, challenge, console, puzzle, amuse, tease, fascinate, help. During the first five or six weeks there will be weekly assignments asking you to write on a given topic, or according to a "recipe," or using a certain stylistic maneuver or structure. Meanwhile you will have your own independent ideas for poems as well. Each student will be expected to offer at least five original poems (and hopefully more) in addition to the assignments.
Readings:
We will read three contemporary books of poetry; possible poets include Claire Bateman, Dean Young, Cynthia Huntington, Catie Rosemurgy, Cathleen Calbert. Also, at least twenty poems (in photocopies) by poets of the past.
Exams/Papers:
Regular attendance and active involvement in discussions are crucial. There will probably be two "quiz homeworks" on our readings; but there is no final exam.
Eng 393 — Creative Writing Workshop: Short Story
Professor: William Black
Description:
This class pays particular attention to the formal aspects of short stories. While its emphasis will be on student writing of and about short stories, it begins by recognizing that reading and writing are acutely interrelated errands and that the most effective way to extend one's talents as a writer is to read closely and deeply and alongside one's ongoing writing projects. Therefore, the class will divide time between discussions of recent and contemporary short stories and work submitted by students.
Readings:
The Story and its Writer (Fifth Edition), Ann Charters.
Exams/Papers:
Two short papers in addition to scheduled workshop submissions.
Eng 398T & 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 multi—cultural context. Readings from a large anthology of American Literature (which includes several key full length texts including Douglass' 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. There will be a weekly tutorial paper, some collaborative projects and presentations, and a final research paper.
Eng 399 — Literary Theory
Professor: Robert Miklitsch
Description:
This course will offer an introduction to literary theory and cultural studies. We will endeavor, as much as possible, to cover the extensive terrain of contemporary criticism, which includes not only historically important critical discourses such as Marxism and feminism, structuralism and psychoanalysis, but rather more recent, emergent perspectives such as gay/lesbian, African—American, and post—colonial theory.
Readings:
Texts will include one "secondary" overview (Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory, John Storey), an anthology of "primary" material (xeroxes) as well as illustrative fictions (e.g., Ian Fleming's Dr. No).
Exams/Papers:
In addition to regular quizzes on the reading, there will be three papers: two shorter 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 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 447 — Studies in Criticism: Cybercult Criticism
Professor: George Hartley
Description:
This course explores the interconnections between digital media, contemporary literature (especially poetry), and late capitalist culture. We will ask how representational technologies of our computer age affect not just the content of contemporary art but its various formal media as well. How does the web browser, for example, affect the conception and production of poetry? What is the effect of the fusion of text and graphics in digital presentations? How is our culture being shaped by these new media and technologies? And why might the trope of hypertext be just the metaphor contemporary capitalism was waiting for?
Readings:
We will engage websites, CD-ROMs, film, and even printed books. Print material will include William Gibson's Neuromancer, Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, and essays by Donna Haraway, Lev Manovich, Alan Sondheim, and others.
Exams/Papers:
Graded projects will include producing your own cybercult website which will include an essay you have written about the topics and material we have studied.
Eng 451 — Teaching Language & Composition
Professor: Linda Rice
Description:
This course is designed to acquaint students with various materials, teaching methods, and theories appropriate for teaching composition in middle schools and high schools based on the NCTE/IRA standards and those newly—adopted by the Ohio Department of Education. In addition to class meetings, students must enroll in 451L and spend 20 hours in a middle school or high school English/Language Arts classroom to gain Field Experience.
Readings:
Glasgow, Jacqueline (2002). Standards—Based Activities With Scoring Rubrics: Middle and High School English. Volume 1: Portfolios. Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education. Noden, Harry R. (1999). Image Grammar: Using Grammatical Structures to Teach Writing. Boynton/Cook Heinemann. Ramono, Tom (2000). Blending Genre, Altering Style: Writing Multigenre Papers. Boynton/Cook.
Exams/Papers:
Literacy Autobiography or Archaeological Literacy Dig
Multigenre Paper and/or I—Search Paper
Portfolio of Writing and Grammar Lessons (particular focus on Image Grammar)
Eng 452 — Teaching Literature
Professor: Jackie 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.
*Students who enroll for English 452 must also enroll in English 452L.
Eng. 453 — World Literature: Transnational Narratives/American Contexts
Professor: Kasia Marciniak
Description:
This course examines recent transnational narratives in the context of American literature. We will study literary texts whose narratives move across national boundaries, languages, cultures, and competing ideologies, and, in doing so, explore and question the notion of privileged Americanness. We will place our inquires within the emerging field of Transnational Studies, generally defined as an area within English Studies that focuses on aesthetic productions foregrounding trans—cultural experiences of those who belong to more than one nation. Transnational narratives are often linked to the experience of exile, displacement, and dislocation. Hence, in our explorations we will accentuate such key terms as liminality, nationalism, hybridity, strangerhood, phobic citizenhood, and exilic selfhood. Our discussions will probe how transnational location can speak against nationalistic desires to define the self according to a phobic model of identity.
Since this is a senior seminar, students who enter this course should expect to grapple with complex and often challenging literary and theoretical texts. Both class discussions and written assignments will ask the students to engage theoretical materials. Furthermore, because this is a Women's Studies cross—listed course, our analysis will highlight feminist investigations.
Readings:
Tentative Literary Texts: Diana Abu—Jaber, Arabian Jazz, Julia Alvarez, Yo!, Chitra B. Divakaruni, Arranged Marriage, Chang—Rae Lee, Native Speaker, Theoretical Readings: Zygmunt Bauman "The Making and Unmaking of Strangers," Trinh T. Minh—ha "Other than Myself/My Other Self," Chandra Mohanty "Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses," Dorothy Roberts "Who May Give Birth to Citizens?: Reproduction, Eugenics, and Immigration," Edward Said "The Mind of Winter: Reflections on Life in Exile," Jenny Sharpe "Is the United States Postcolonial? Transnationalism, Immigration, and Race."
Exams/Papers:
Explication Papers/Final Exam.
Eng 460 — Literary Topics
Professor: George Hartley
Description:
This course will introduce you to a variety of contemporary Chicano poets from the 1960s to the present. One focus of our study will be the social and political development of Chicanismo as the context which shaped the poetry, that is, the shifts in Chicano politics from a focus on ethnicity to gender to sexuality. Poets we will study include Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales, Alurista, Carmen Tafoya, Lorna Dee Cervantes, and Francisco Alarcón.
Readings:
Chicano Poetics:Heterotexts and Hybridities by Alfred Arteaga, La frontera/Borderlands by Gloria E. Anzaldúa, With His Pistol in His Hand by Americo Paredes, Breathing Between the Lines:Poems by Demetria Martinez, Border—Crosser With a Lamborghini Dream by Juan Felipe Herrera, Floricanto Si: A Collection of Latina Poetry by Bryce Milligan (Editor), Mary Guerrero—Milligan (Editor).
Exams/Papers:
Two short papers and one long one.
Eng 464 — Major English Authors
Professor: Carey Snyder
Description:
In this course, we will consider the works of two major English authors of the twentieth centuryVirginia Woolf (1882—1941) and her self—styled literary heir, Jeanette Winterson (1959—present). Class discussions will address these writers' important aesthetic innovations, while also situating their novels in a literary tradition and cultural history, particularly with regard to women's rights and roles in the twentieth century. Topics will include the female bildungsroman (or novel of development), modernism and postmodernism, the figure of the female artist, and the concept of écriture feminine, or "women's writing."
Readings:
Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out, To the Lighthouse, Orlando; Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Aren't the Only Fruit; Written on the Body; The Powerbook; packet
Exams/Papers:
Six 1—2 page Response Essays
Annotated Bibliography
7—10 page Final Research Paper
Eng 465 — Authors: American
Professor: Paul Jones
Description:
This course will focus on the fiction of Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of the major figures of "the American Renaissance," in the context of America's Puritan past. Spending much of his life in Salem, Massachusetts (site of the famous witchcraft trials) as the ancestor of one of the trials' infamous judges, Hawthorne was haunted by the stories of those early Americans, especially their misdeeds and contradictions. Because this context is so important for an understanding of Hawthorne's work, this course will begin with some reading of 17th—century Puritan texts to provide background for exploring the author's short stories and the novels The Scarlet Letter and The House of Seven Gables. We will also read a novel by Hawthorne's contemporary, Catharine Maria Sedgwick, to explore how another author from this period dealt with the legacy of Puritanism.
Readings:
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. (Norton Critical Edition)
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The House of Seven Gables. (Norton Critical Edition)
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Tales. (Norton Critical Edition)
Gunn, Giles (editor). Early American Writing.
Sedgwick, Catharine. Hope Leslie.
Exams/Papers:
One class presentation, two papers, a midterm and a final.
Eng 466 — Authors: International
Professor: Zakes Mda
Description:
J.M. Coetzee is one of the major post—colonial writers. Until Australian author Peter Carey won his second Booker Prize in 2002, Coetzee had been the only writer to win this prestigious award twice (for Life and Times of Michael K in 1983 and Disgrace in 1999.) In this course we examine how Coetzee manages to transmute political concerns into imaginative landscapes in which South Africa becomes a nightmarish — almost Kafkaesque — out—of—time dystopia, yet the work retains its social reality. Coetzee, according to such critics as David Attwell has, with his "situational metafiction", absorbed the textual turn of post—modern culture while still addressing the ethical tensions of the South African crisis.
Readings:
Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee
Life and Times of Michael K by J.M. Coetzee
Foe by J.M. Coetzee
Age of Iron by J.M.Coetzee
Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee
J.M. Coetzee: South Africa and the Politics of Writing (Berkley: University of California Press, 1993)
Recommended Reading: Maher, Susan N. "Confronting Authority: J.M. Coetzee's Foe and the Remaking of Robinson Crusoe" International Fiction Review, Fredericton, NB, Canada, 1991, 18:1, 34—40. Macaskill, Brian and Jeanne Colleran. "Reading History, Writing Heresy: The Resistance of Representation and the Representation of Resistance in J.M. Coetzee's Foe" Contemporary Literature, Madison, WI 1992 Fall, 33:3, 432—57, Jolly, Rosemary Jane. "Territorial Metaphor in Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians" Ariel: A Review of International English Literature, Calgary, AB, Canada. 1989 Apr. 20:2. 69—79, Hawthorne, Mark D. "A Storyteller without Words: J.M. Coetzee's Life and Times of Michael K" Commonwealth Novel in English, Bluefield, W.V. 1993
Spring—Fall 6:1—2, 121—32.
Exams/Papers:
Worksheets on Primary Texts: 15%
Major Assignment of Formal Argumentative Paper (8—10 pages): 45%
Final Exam: 40%
Eng 482 — Form And Theory of Prosody
Professor: Erin Belieu
Description:
In this course we will study and practice the basics of prosody, concentrating on the history of poetry in forms and arriving at the shapes of poetry written in free verse. Students will learn scansion and the traditional theory behind various stanza structures and other craft considerations. Students will be expected to try writing in a number of meters and forms, including blank verse, the Petrarchan and Elizabethan sonnets and Welsh syllabic structures. There will be in—class discussions of our readings from Paul Fussel's Poetic Meter and Form. For their final project, the students will devise their own form (called a "nonce" form) and write a critical analysis of their invention presenting the form's larger aesthetic objectives.
Eng 486 — Advanced Workshop in Fiction
Professor: William Black
Description:
An advanced workshop, the emphasis of this class will be on fiction produced by students, but as a means of raising the bar and expanding our appreciation of what fiction is, and what fiction can do, our reading will also include works by established writers.
Readings:
Max Frisch, Homo Faber
Exams/Papers:
Regular attendance and active involvement are crucial. Students will submit two original works of fiction and write one short critical paper.
Hum 108 — Great Books: Renaissance
Professor: Valorie Worthy
Description:
This term we will read an array of Western Medieval Renaissance works including the following which are available at Little Professor Books: The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in translation, Marlowe's "Dr. Faustus" and Shakespeare's "Hamlet." The following will be handed out in class by me: Marie De France's Lais, "Guigemar" and "Equitain," "Sir Orfeo," Francois Villion's Poem "The Ballade of Dead Ladies" and Montaigne's essay "On Education," plus numerous Handouts.
Quizzes, Exams, Etc.
Come to class having read the works and ready to participate in class discussion. Two absences will be excused for University sanctioned and personal reasons. Further absence will reduce your grade.
Quizzes on readings before class discussion totaling 25% of your course grade. Midterm: take home essay due in class the following week, worth 25% of your course grade. Final: No exam during final's week. There will be an essay passed out in the last class, that will be due during exam week. The essay will be worth 25% of your course grade. Presentation: You will be assigned 2 or 3 partners and an author—topic from our reading list . Together you will present your topic to the class, ask questions and lead discussion for one hour of our class period. TOGETHER YOU WILL SHARE A GRADE FOR THIS ASSIGNMENT. This project will be worth 25% of your total course