ENGLISH COURSES 

ENG 101 - COMPOSITION I - All Sections
Review of fundamentals of writing for students with problems in writing skills so that they may continue successfully in ENG 102.

ENG 102 - COMPOSITION II -  All Sections
Practice in college level writing, includes preparation of a research paper.

ENG 150/800 - PRINCIPLES OF LITERARY REPRESENTATION - Halferty          
MWF 1:50
(Text)  
In this course we'll be examining "the principles of literary representation," or the techniques authors use to convey particular themes, moods, and messages.  We'll be reading and discussing mainly short fiction and poetry, but we'll also touch on how these principles of literary representation are utilized in the texts we encounter every day:   film/television, advertising, and lyrics.  Requirements include one paper, two tests, some short writing assignments, and a creative project.   First Choice Freshman ONLY

ENG 204 - WRITING ABOUT LITERATURE - All Sections
Exploration of our own language use through the lens of literature, and exploration of literary language from the perspective we create with our own uses of language.  We will study narrative, verse, and drama and one or two additional novels and plays.  Approximately six essays.

ENG 210/800  - WESTERN HERITAGE I:  LITERATURE - Bertonneau
TTh 3:55
(Context)
Western Heritage offers a survey of keystone primary texts indicative of the specifically western civilizational experience ranging from Homer's Odyssey and the work of the Attic tragedians through Hellenistic romance, Latin epic, Latin Late Antique prose, and early Christian evangelical writing to myths and narratives of the Gothic barbarians.  The sequence of assigned texts provides the occasion to address the question of order - social, political, intellectual, and artistic - and its continuity in an identifiable western tradition with roots in Greek thought, Hebrew ethics, and Latin and Gothic notions of law and propriety.  Socially, the course travels from the archaic Polis or city-state to feudalism.  English 210 is a reading-intensive course, which also offers an opportunity for students to hone their critical and interpretive skills.

ENG 220/800 - MODERN CULTURE AND MEDIA - Shore
MWF 9:10
(Text)
Relying upon each student's familiarity with cultural forms (for example, in film, television, popular music and music videos, comic books, cartoons, advertisements, magazines, detective fiction, and romances), this course introduces students to the methods and interpretive strategies of literary studies. 

ENG 235/800 - AMERICAN LIT. BEGINNING TO CIVIL WAR - Hill
TTh 11:10
(Context)
An introductory survey of American literature as an expression of the conditions and defining themes of American nationality through an historical-literary introduction to the cross-currents at work in American senses of national identities. We will use Colonial writers, writers of the early Republic, and American romantic writers in order to recognized the varieties of peoples and cultures that contributed to American identities as they developed up to the civil war. A midterm, final, and short online writing assignments.

ENG 237/800 - ETHNICITY AND CULTURAL DIFFERENCE IN LITERATURE  - Holt-Fortin           TTh 3:55
(Context)
This course will focus on a variety of texts and media-­novels, poetry, short stories, essays, and film­-that explore issues of ethnic identity and difference within American culture.  One of the principal issues we will examine is the meaning (or multiple meanings) of "American" as part of ethnic labels such as Asian American, African American, and Latino American.  Participation in  class discussion, quizzes, and papers will be required.

ENG 265/800  - SOPHOMORE SEMINAR IN GENRE -  Masterson
MWF 9:10         
The Lyric and the Ballad: Dante to Dylan
This class will focus on two prominent forms in poetry, the lyric and the ballad, as they are practiced throughout the last six centuries.  Although grounded in age old traditions, these forms began to be fully realized in the 14th and 15th centuries.  Poets such as Dante and Petrarch produced short, emotionally charged verses that served later as models for the lyrics of Shakespeare and Donne. The ballad, typically a plot-driven folk song, also  made its way into print about this time. Sold by lower class writers often disparaged as "pot poets," these verses had much popular appeal.  These forms were commingled by Coleridge and Wordsworth in their revolutionary volume, Lyrical Ballads in 1798.  Since this time the lyric and to a lesser extent the ballad have undergone significant change, mainly with the appearance of ‘free" verse in the mid-19th century.  Poets such as Yeats produced exemplary lyrics and ballads in the modern period. But we won't just spend our time on "big shot" poets.  Ballads by folk artists such as Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan will be studied along with lyrics by some lesser known contemporary poets.

Assignments: Short essays and a midterm and a final.

ENG 271/800 - PRACTICAL ENGLISH GRAMMAR - Murphy, M.
MWF 12:40
Designed for students intending to teach, this course focuses on teaching grammar in the context of writing.  A broad review of parts of speech, the syntax of complex sentences, and the conventions of standard usage will be supplemented by attention to the relation between standard and non-standard dialects, as well as to dealing with dialect difference in the classroom and in written work.  Graded work includes exams, tutoring, teaching a mini-lesson, and the maintenance of a journal of observed usages.

ENG 286/800 - INTRODUCTION TO CINEMA STUDIES - Shore
MWF 10:20
The purpose of this course is to provide a critical introduction to the study of cinema and screen studies. Students will be introduced to several strategies to engage with cinema, including formal analysis of films, film theory, and histories of cinema from the Hollywood studio system to contemporary transnational film markets. This course satisfies the Knowledge Foundations in the Humanities requirement of General Education, the Contexts category in the English Major and is the introductory course for the major in Cinema and Screen Studies.

ENG 302/800  - ADVANCED COMPOSITION - Murphy, M.
MWF 10:20
Ever wonder why it is that your professors write papers so filled with quotations and summaries of other people's writing - and why they ask you to write them, too?  Or why they demand such careful attention to where someone else's language ends and yours begins?  Are you puzzled by the specific conventions of citation - when to quote and when to paraphrase, what counts as "common knowledge," how to paraphrase appropriately, etc. - or by what "research papers" are for exactly?

In this section of ENG 302 focused on sourced writing, students will analyze the citation conventions of work in their own disciplines and prepare a major research paper, likely built around some idea they've already developed in previous coursework.  Supporting projects will include a paper identifying some pressing disciplinary question or problem as well as an annotated bibliography designed to assess the state of the conversation surrounding that question or problem.

NOTE:  This course will meet in conjunction with ENG 395/595: Authorship, Originality, and Intellectual Property and will share many of that course's readings and activities, though its requirements will be different. 

ENG 304/800  - LITERARY CRITICISM - Schaber
MWF 10:20
For better or for worse, literary criticism exists today as a predominately professional activity carried on, in general, within the boundaries of the university.  This course is an introduction to that activity.  To that end, not all of the texts you will encounter will be, strictly speaking, literary criticism.  Rather, the texts chosen seem to me to be decisive for the contemporary prosecution or exercise of criticism.  Hence we will be reading in and around linguistics, political economy, philosophy, anthropology, feminism and history in order to draw from these texts those lessons which remain today essential to critical practice.  A strange enterprise, no doubt, literary criticism operates at the intersection of several concerns: with language, with signs, with art, with culture, with the social.  In short, with differences as they are inscribed within, across and as linguistic objects.  This course is designed to help you grasp some of the various manifestations of this intersection or crossroads at which something called interpretation takes place.

ENG 304/810  - LITERARY CRITICISM - O'Shea
MWF 11:30
A survey of Modern and Contemporary Literary Criticism and Theory from the New Criticism to Post-Structuralism.  While the course is intended as an overview of movements and trends, recurrent topics will include the nature of literary study today, changing notions of text and reader and issues of gender and culture.  Mostly discussion, but also considerable close reading of critical texts.  Midterm and final exams.  2 papers, one with a research component.

ENG 304/820 - LITERARY CRITICISM - Murphy, P.
TTh 3:55
This course focuses upon some interpretive strategies in, for instance, structuralism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, post-structuralism, postmodernism, and cultural materialism.  We will also examine some developments within (and combinations of) these positions including feminism, gay and lesbian studies, and anthropology.  In reading both theory and criticism along with several specific literary texts, we will examine how literary criticism is fashioned, what is at stake in its arguments, and why literary criticism provides its own unique kinds of political, philosophical, and poetic knowledge.

ENG 315/800  - BRITISH ROMANTIC WRITERS - Masterson
MW 3-4:20
(Context)
Imagine living in time when the world was entirely changing (1789-1830).  Age old systems of power were being overthrown. Radical thinkers like Thomas Paine argued for the end of monarchies and the French sliced off their king's head. For the first time, ‘feminists" like Mary Wollstonecraft published powerful arguments vindicating the rights of women.  Children, till then considered little adults, were portrayed by Blake and Wordsworth as imaginative innocents wholly distinct from their parents. The natural world, long seen as something to be tamed, was welcomed for its wild beauty and regarded as a source of spiritual/artistic inspiration.  Science, the founding principle of the Enlightenment Age, was everywhere being challenged.  The great horror story of the time,  Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, offered a vision of science gone terribly wrong and generated countless other science "fictions" that follow her  model.  "Perfect" poems written by the twenty-something genius John Keats created a new lyric style much emulated by modern writers. Painters like Turner and composers like Beethoven altered the manner in which the world was seen and heard, encouraging the expansive vision of writers like Byron. We will also consider the influence of Romantic writers on contemporary ones: Blake/Ginsberg, Wordsworth/Seamus Heaney.  All this and more!  Assignments: A short paper and a longer research essay. A midterm and final exam. Quizzes if needed.  Graduate students will have additional responsibilities.

ENG 319/800 - INTRODUCTION TO SHAKESPEARE - Murphy, P.
TTh 2:20
(Text)
This course studies Shakespeare's development as a writer who explores new possibilities for his poetry and his plays while altering, amplifying, or discarding old strategies.  We examine the full range of Shakespeare's writing:  (1) from his somewhat early work in the sonnets and narrative poems along with his early experimentations in comedy to his more mature developments in the history play and festive comedy, (2)  from his first attempts at tragedy to the breakdown of comic form in the problem plays, and (3) from his exclusive attention upon tragedy to his almost exclusive work in the later  romances.   Our  readings  will  be selected from each of these phases and genres.  There will be two or three examinations and two essays.

ENG 321/800 - 18th CENTURY ENGLISH NOVEL - Cooper
MWF 1:50
(Text)
The development of the novel connects with large-scale forces like literacy, print technology, global expansion, commerce and consumerism, gender politics and middle class leisure time, but its subject matter concerns itself with the small-scale plight of the individual personality struggling to maintain a balance of integration with and independence from those same kinds of large-scale forces.   In addition to considering how literary traditions such as satirical moralism come into play, we will examine how elements of the two main predecessor genres for the novel--the spiritual biography and the romance--are evidenced in works by John Bunyan, Delarivière Manley, Aphra Behn, Eliza Haywood, Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, Henry Fielding and Olaudah Equiano.   Our overall goal will be to form an understanding of how the novel's aim to inscribe, as well as critique, a certain kind of personhood can express a culture's intentions for itself.

ENG 323/800  - 20TH CENTURY BRITISH FICTION - O'Shea
MWF 1:50
(Text) In order to test and challenge the course title, we will begin and end with two Irish writers, and at least one work from the 21st century,   James Joyce and Colm Toibin, with collections of short stories by each, Dubliners and Mothers and Sons (2007).  In between we will read some more arguably "British" Modernist writers,  E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, and D.H. Lawrence and some later writers who are more difficult to categorize; A.S. Byatt and Zadie Smith are two possibilities.  Two shorter analytical/synthetic essays; mid-term and final exams. 

ENG 332/800  - REALISM AND NATURALISM  - Blissert
MWF 11:30
(Context)
This course will study American writing between 1860 and 1900, with an emphasis on the new concentrations of social power appearing at this time.  Writers such as Twain, James, Howells, Crane and others confronted these emerging forms of power and reacted to them. Remarkably, their responses evoke not only new visions of social life, but also creative abilities for literary form.  Course requirements include tests, critical essays, and a final exam.

ENG 337/800  - AFRICAN-AMERICAN LITERATURE - Clark
TTh 11:10
(Context)
This course will examine literature written during the post-World War II years of the civil rights struggle in the United States.  We will read literary works of the period within the context of historical events, figures, organizations, and topics such as the Montgomery bus boycott, the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Fannie Lou Hamer, and Malcolm X, the Freedom Riders, the NAACP, SNCC, and Black Power.  The works of authors we might read include Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Anne Moody, James Baldwin, Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture), Gwendolyn Brooks, and Angela Davis.

ENG 342/800 - 19TH CENTURY AMERICAN NOVEL - Blissert
MWF 1:50
(Text)
This course will focus on the widespread use of gothic conventions in nineteenth-century American fiction, with the purpose of understanding the relevance of these materials in a society whose historical vision and political organization seem decidedly contrary to the nightmarish world of gothic narratives.  Works by Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, James, Norris and others will be read and analyzed in light of their gothic elements.  Requirements include tests and critical essays.

ENG 360/800 - LITERATURE IN GLOBAL CONTEXT - Jayawardane
Literature in a Global Context: Travel, Displacement, and Migration in the Transnational Memoir and Novel
TTh 9:35, 11:10
(Context)
The modern world may be a "global village" to the powerful and the mobile: accessible with the hop on the internet, a leap on an aeroplane, a swipe of the credit card.  But to the vast majority in the world, the mobility available to the "Netizen" - one that many of us takes for granted - is an ideal that one can only imagine.  I find that "mobility" is a fascinating concept when juxtaposed with/against the powerful concept of "Home"; being "homed" and being "mobile" seem to be at odds with one another, but are surprisingly dependent on each other. While the essence of being "homed" is in feeling "rooted", one of the disturbing attributes of homelessness is unrootedness, which, of course, is not synonymous with mobility, though they share various attributes.  If one has a deep sense of rootedness and comfort in family, language, culture, nation, and even one's bank account, one can travel freely, experiment with identity, and take big risks - that is, be more mobile.

It seems that a major aspect of Adulthood / Maturity has to do with pushing roots of compassion and coherence inwardly, into one's own self.  This would be the process of Knowing Oneself, or what Jung calls "Individuation".  While all external homes can be lost, this individual "self" is perhaps the only territory that can never be taken away from a person. This semester, we will explore how authors have grappled with mobility and displacement, following their journeys of "individuation":  a Jewish-American man writes about "surviving" his parents, who themselves survived Hitler's holocaust; a Spokane Indian writes about what it means to live like a foreigner in his own country, barely making it on government handouts in the Land of Opportunity and Plenty; an Indian woman who now makes her home in New York writes about the multitude of new immigrants who fuel our nation's machinery, occupying the underground basements of every restaurant - unseen by the powerful, more established immigrants they serve; and a little English girl attempts to assert her right to be called an "African" in what came to be known as Zimbabwe.  But we begin with the Granddaddy of American Writing: Papa Hemmingway, and his memoir depicting his years in Paris: it is the quintessential book about escaping a monumental national identity, intense dislike of the self, the glamour of immersing oneself in "otherness", and the romantic illusions offered by travel.

Texts
1. A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway                         
2. Maus I and Maus II by Art Spiegleman
3. Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller 
4. The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai
5. Ten Little Indians by Sherman Alexie
6. Class Coursepacket (all articles and outside readings can be downloaded from class web page)

ENG 370/800 - WOMEN IN LITERATURE - Curtin
MWF 11:30
(Context)
This course will explore what feminist critic Bonnie Kime Scott calls the "gender of modernism," a period long famous for literary experimentation-authored by a predominantly male canon-arising from an exhaustion of representation. Inspired, in part by French feminist theory about "feminine ecriture" of the latter half of the twentieth century, Scott's research served as an initial intervention to challenge the canon and to position women at the center of literary production, as catalysts running "little magazines," salons, presses, and bookstores. In studying the "gender of modernism," students will read women's and men's writings while also researching biographies and correspondence to understand the modernist network of literary production. Finally, we will explore how the writers of the Harlem Renaissance-in their texts, aesthetic experiments, and political debates-illuminate the role of "race" in the emergence of the gender of modernism.

ENG 374/800  - HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE - Hildahl
TTh 2:20
An exploration of the nature of language, and an introduction to the multiplicity of the world's languages, those that have thrived and those that have survived into modern time.  The course is primarily a study of the historical and social backgrounds and development of English as an Indo-European and Germanic language, and of its position in relation to other Indo-European and non-Indo-European languages. The course is also an inquiry into the influence of ethnicity, migration, and conquest, of the geographical displacement and absorption of non-English-speaking  groups in the development of English, and the influences of diverse languages and cultures on the English word-stock. We will address the issues of linguistic diversity and tolerance in complex, heterogeneous present-day society.

Students will need to acquire:
a)  the terminology and the linguistic concepts  to understand the internal structure of the English language and the internal changes it has undergone;
b) the  phonological tools to describe the grammatical and sound changes that have altered the language over time and distance, i.e., the symbols which comprise the phonetic alphabet [IPA] and the sounds they represent.

Texts:   
Pyles and Algeo, Origins and Development of the English Language,  4th ed.
McCrum, Cran, MacNeil. The Story of English,  3rd ed.
Algeo,  Problems in the Origins and Development of the English Language [workbook]

Requirements:  Two papers:  one etymological study; one paper with research                              Mid-Term Exam, Final Exam; several quizzes

ENG 376/800  -  SCIENCE FICTION - Bertonneau
TTh 11:10
(Context)
This course investigates the historical, philosophical, mythic, and scientific origins of the literary genre known as science fiction.  The investigation begins with a survey of ancient science and the ancient critique of technology for its own sake.  The Greek atomists and Plato's "Atlantis" story provide instances in this line of Classical discourse.  From the two second-century AD lunar-excursion stories by Lucian of Samosata, a Greek writer, the syllabus moves to the work of Edgar Allan Poe in the first half of the nineteenth century.  From Poe, the survey of science-fictional texts moves through H. G. Wells, H. P. Lovecraft, William Olaf Stapledon, Philip K. Dick and others.  With a series of short stories, novels, and films providing the occasion, students will have the opportunity to understand science fiction as a philosophically charged type of narrative that comes to grips at its highest points of articulation with the grandest possible questions of God, knowledge, technique, the universe, and everything.

ENG 380/800 - NARRATIVES OF IDENTITY - Masterson
MWF 11:30
(Context)
This course will examine American literature, mainly fiction, with a view towards interrogating the ideal of the American Dream.  To that end we will have three main aims:  1) To explore its origins in late 19th century literature in such popular fiction as Alger's Ragged Dick; 2) to examine works by writers whose views run counter to the prevailing tone of American optimism; 3) To appreciate the artistic merit of celebrated works such as The Great Gatsby and Invisible Man but to also raise to promise neglected works such as Kromer's Waiting For Nothing, Ann Petry's The Street, and the memoir of Henry Miller, The Air Conditioned Nightmare.  The course will also screen appropriate films such as Citizen Kane.   Assignments include short essays, a longer paper, a midterm and final.

ENG 380/810 - NARRATIVES OF IDENTITY - Hildahl
TTh 9:35
(Context)
The readings will focus on the intersection of the self and the society in which the narrator, author or protagonist lives.  We will examine accounts of characters who attempt to live in a society while intending to survive as individuals, either in conformity with the society or in spite of its pressures.  We will focus especially on the  lives of persons who live in one society but between cultures,  caught between the dominant culture  and a sub-culture or alternate society, or between the person's present society and the culture of one's origins, or one's family's origins.  We will also examine the situation of individuals who attempt to separate themselves from the pressures and definitions of the society to which they were born, or from the family or figures of authority who gave them their personhood.

We  will consider too the sources of personal identity as presented in different texts, and the questions of whether one's identity is an absolute, a given, created before or conferred at one's birth,  whether one's character  is constructed by the  culture in which one grows and lives, or whether character and identity can be substantially chosen and fashioned by oneself.   Some of the texts we will read are self-evidently fictitious.  Others are biographical, autobiographical, historical, or quasi-historical.

Among the readings: 
                Stories by William Faulkner 
                Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club
                Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of an American Slave
                Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson 
                Witi Ihimaera's The Whale Rider 
                Selected Iroquois tales by Joseph Bruchac, from Turtle Meat & Other Stories
                Sophocles' Oedipus the King and Antigone 
                Jean de Coras's The Return of Martin Guerre

Requirements:  A reading journal, with every-class entries; four or five essays written from one's journal.  Mid-Term Exam; Final Exam.

ENG 381/800 - NARRATIVE THEORY - Bertonneau
TTh 2:20
(Theory)
Aristotle's declaration that a story must have a beginning, a middle, and an end sounds obvious until one listens to a six-year-old trying to retell the story of the cartoon that he has just watched.  Narrative is more than a function of grammar and syntax; it is a way of thinking apparently coterminous with humanity.  A myth is an oral story - about the founders of a society, the gods it worships, and the institutions on which it knows itself to depend for its survival.  A story is a literate development of a myth; but literacy exerts a powerful influence on the intellectual character of story-telling, transforming narrative into an analytical tool for the exploration of time, space, cause and effect, morality, knowledge, and the relation of subjective to objective modes of perception and cognition.  Through selected readings in philosophy and criticism, and the application of select critical approaches to an array of stories, English 381 explores the variety and meaning of plot and temporality in narrative, in both verse and prose.

ENG 385/800 - CHILDREN'S LITERATURE  - Troy Smith
MWF 9:10
(Text)
A survey course of literature for children.  Not a course in methodology, the basic purpose of this course will be to survey the various genres of literature that have been written especially for children (approximately 2-14 years of age), or literature that was originally written for adults, but now has generally been relegated to children.  The genres include:  picture books, nursery rhymes, folk literature, modern fantasy, realistic fiction, poetry, and information books.  Criteria will be established for literary evaluation.  Certain social issues such as sex, sexism, and violence will be discussed in terms of children's books.

ENG 386/800 - CINEMA - Schaber 
MW 3-4:20
Lab M 6-8
(Theory)
The course amounts to an extended inquiry into the question:  "What is a film, what can it do?"  To this end we will view a series of films and situate them in relation to:  film history, the history of images and of visuality, genre directors and actors, narration, time, movement and gesture, and the general economics of recording. Students will produce several ‘readings' of films, précis of critical essays, and a final paper dealing with a single film or group of films within the context of an active theorization of the cinema in general.

ENG 387 - VISION AND TEXTUALITY - Mejias
BRC-450: Theory, Culture and Technology
TTh 2:20
(Theory)
An introduction to existing frameworks for theorizing or conceptualizing the role of technology in creating, transforming or resisting culture. The course applies elements of critical theory to explore how technology shapes and is mutually shaped by language, ideology, and ways of thinking about the self and the world. The course also looks at how artists, feminists and non-Western thinkers have provided alternative models for theorizing the relationship between culture and technology.

ENG 388/800  - FILM GENRE - Shore
MWF 11:30
Lab T 6-8
(Theory)
A history and analysis of film genre. The course will examine the notion of film genre as distinct from other notions of genre, in particular, literary genre. Special attention will be paid to horror, melodrama, film noir, musicals, science fiction, and teen pics.

ENG 390/800 -  IMAGES OF NATIVE AMERICAN FILM - LaLonde
Th 5-7:40
(Context)
This is a course in the cinematic representations of Native Americans by  non-Natives. The figure of the /Indian/, present from the very beginnings of filmmaking and the film industry in America, will help us think about identity and identification, culture and the culture industry, and the Nation. We'll spend our time situating the /Indian/ in a number of contexts, screening and discussing films that position the /Indian/ in a number of genres and narratives, and reading and discussing essays on the Other and the nation. The course should help us better hear and understand what is meant by the line penned by Spokane-Coeur d'Alene native Sherman Alesie: "Extras, we're all extras."  Students can be expected to take a number of essay exams. The course is dual-listed with Native American Studies and serves as an elective for students seeking to complete a Native American Studies minor.

ENG 395/800 - ON THE ROAD TO KEROUAC COUNTY - Masterson
Th 6-7:20 Qtr 1 FCM Oct. 2
For information, please email Dr. Donald Masterson - masterso@oswego.edu

ENG 395/810 - HEMINGWAY & FITZGERALD - Moore
M 5-7:40
The careers of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, who met for the first time in Paris in the early 1920s, were inextricably linked. They shared a friendship and at times an intense rivalry as well as a literary relationship with the most influential American editor of fiction of the period, Scribner's Maxwell Perkins.  But most importantly they shared their commitment to fiction.  And their novels, explore the intertwining of their lives through biographical sources and letters, and consider what critics have had to say about their work over the past three-quarters of the century.  Texts:  The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald, ed. by Bruccoli; The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway; Tender is the Night,  Fitzgerald; The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway; A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway; The Old Man and the Sea, Hemingway; The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald; For Whom the Bell Tolls, Hemingway; A Moveable Feast, Hemingway.  Course Requirements:  1) critical secondary reading 2) research essay 3) oral presentation 4) final exam

ENG 395/820 - CAPE TOWN - A GLOBAL CITY - Jayawardane
T 5-6:30 Qtr 2     FCM Oct 21
South Africa is the outcome of the dynamic interaction, on African shores, of at least three streams of human experience: African, European settlers from The Netherlands (mainly) and Britain, plus immigrants from all other parts of Europe (Italy, Greece), including Jewish settlers (mainly from Lithuania, who came to South Africa following WWII), and South Asians, originally brought by the Dutch East India Company to work as slaves or indentured servants on the winelands, railroads, cane plantations, and on the very construction of the civilization that is modern South Africa. 

The Cape Colony, situated at the very tip end of the African continent, was originally meant to be a "watering station" - simply a place for ships passing on towards India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Malaysia to stop and get fresh water, and a few fresh vegetables from local farmers.  In fact, the Dutch first used the port in the Cape as a prison colony, much like we now use Guantanamo Bay - to remove and "erase" political and religious leaders in the Asian countries that they were trying to take over (Malaysia, Indonesia, Ceylon - or Sri Lanka - and parts of India).  So the first Asians in South Africa were political prisoners - men of high standing (princes and Imams), who were brought over with entire entourages of family and followers.

Modern South Africa is, plainly, a country with as diverse a population as the US: nobody agrees on what it means to "be" a South African - just as Americans can never seem to agree on a definitive description of the self.  Our class - a second quarter course with a ten-day component in the city of Cape Town - will combine vigorous academic work, including the study of the history, culture, and current economic basis of the Western Cape Province.  Only the responsible, conscientious, and motivated student should apply for this course; it's no joll (party) in Cape Town.

TEXTS will include a selection of contemporary literature, including:
1. Rayda Jacobs, The Slave Book                                  
2. Jackie Loos, Echoes of Slavery
3. Achmat Dangor, Bitter Fruit                                        
4. No Man's Land, Carel van der Merwe      
5. COURSE PACKET (ALL articles will be downloadable from the class website)

Films: "Long Walk to Freedom",  "Country of My Skull", "The Age of Aids",  "Born into the Struggle", "Amandla!",  "Bushman's Secrets

ENG 395/830 - AUTHORSHIP, ORIGINALITY AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY - Murphy, M. MWF 1:50
Ever wonder about the relationship of ownership we tend to take for granted between authors and their work - perhaps as you download a remixed version of a favorite song your friend gave you on your ipod, prepare the long works cited list for a literary theory paper on the often-declared "death of the author," or consider whose permission (producer, director, writer, actor?) was legally required for the latest film remake of a classic 70s tv show?  Does it mean the same thing to "author" a text at this moment that it did to most people fifty years ago - or five hundred?  Do standards of ownership vary at all from context to context (say, from political speech-making to stand-up comedy to fiction or poetry)?  Should they?  And how are all these questions connected to our evolving expectations about what counts as plagiarism, both inside and outside academic writing?

This course will consider the ongoing discussion of plagiarism and citation, especially as it's related to various contemporary challenges to the prevailing notion of the author as a solitary originator - the creative genius locked away in his of her garret - in literature, literary theory, popular culture, and intellectual property activism.  Students should expect to read in a variety of genres and to write frequently, developing a position on some aspect of this discussion, experimenting with the ancient art of literary imitation, and analyzing the ways some writer (or graphic artist, filmmaker, musician, etc.) of their choosing manages references to the works of others on which he or she builds. 

Note:  This course will meet in conjunction with ENG 302:  Writing from Sources, sharing many of that course's readings and activities, though its requirements will be different.  Graduate students will be required to work with undergraduates on citation and research projects, using ENG 302 as a kind of lab.  Undergraduates interested in the plagiarism issue - like English concentrates in Secondary Education - may also choose this option.

ENG 395/840 - WOMEN'S PROSE AND POETRY ABOUT NATURE - Troy Smith
MWF 11:30
This course will deal with literary themes, myths and metaphors reflecting our planet seen from the perspective of women writers.  Among the women writers I am selecting for study are Willa Cather, Annie Dillard, Mary Austin, Linda Hogan and Ann LaBastille.  Course objectives are 1) to study the historical legacy of women writers of nature; 2) to analyze the literary contribution of women writers who use earth-centered myths in their words; 3) to develop an understanding of women's responses to the natural world.  Methods of assessment will include oral presentations, discussions, short essays, and a longer final essay.

ENG 465/800 - SEMINAR IN ADVANCED LITERARY  STUDIES - Cooper
MWF 12:40
English 465 Senior Seminar:  A Short History of Soul
Soul is an ancient concept, and circulates in some form in every culture.   Our word "soul" has its origins in Old English, and is native to the English language.   We will examine a variety of works in English from the middle ages to the twentieth century that help us trace soul's literary presence within English-speaking cultures.   At times it refers to the invisible aspect of existence, or the life force, at other times it is a term designating a living human body, while elsewhere (in Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, for instance) it has religious, moral, even aesthetic ramifications.  By the twentieth century, it becomes more and more a word of empowerment used to convey what is felt to be the depth, richness and authenticity of the lived experience of black people ("Our Spiritual Strivings," as W.E.B. DuBois titled the opening section of his 1903 treatise, The Souls of Black Folk).  We will attempt to understand the poetic resonance and authority of this small, but perpetually powerful word.

ENG 465/810 - SEMINAR IN ADVANCED LITERARY STUDIES - Curtin
MW 3-4:20
The seminar will address feminist utopias and dystopias, dating to the seventeenth century, including some of the following: Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World (1666); Mary Shelley's The Last Man (1826); Rokeya Hosain's, Sultana's Dream (1905); Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland (1917); Joanna Russ' The Female Man (1975); Marge Piercy's He, She, It (1991); Octavia Butler's Dawn (1987); and Toni Morrison's Paradise (1999). Other potential authors include: Zainab Amadahy, Jewelle Gomez, Ursula LeGuin, Margaret Atwood, and Chitra Divakaruni. Students may also expect to encounter films, graphic texts, and possibly even virtual reality, which poses itself as a new kind of utopia rehearsing many of the same feminist themes.

In order to apprehend the compelling challenges these texts and authors pose to sexual, racial, and class taxonomies, students will collaborate regularly to investigate and report on the social and political contexts in which the writers, filmmakers, artists, and software developers operate(d). At the same time, primary textual and visual materials will be supplemented with theoretical readings which challenge the neatness of the binaries so often invoked and inverted in utopias, including: nature/culture; nature/technology; white/black; feminine/masculine; past/future; individual/community, etc. Students will maintain journals; conduct research; lead and facilitate discussions on a weekly basis; and write papers.

CREATIVE WRITING COURSES

CRW 201/800 - SCREENWRITING: INTRODUCTORY - Korbesmeyer
MWF 9:10
This introductory writing course (first course of a two-part screenwriting track with CRW 301 Screenwriting: Intermediate) explores the screenwriting genre through practical application of various writing techniques, exercises, and organizational concepts, and through critical analysis of professional screenplays, film clips, and student work.  Writer's coursework will build toward the reworking and completion of a strong opening (10 - 15 pages) of a complete screenplay.

CRW 201/801 - SCREENWRITING: INTRODUCTORY - Staff
MWF 11:30

CRW 205/800/810/820  - POETRY WRITING: INTRODUCTORY - Kwiatek
TTh 2:20, 3:55, T 6-8:40
CRW 205 is an introductory course in the reading and writing of poetry.  A premise of this course, and of most other writing courses, is that reading and writing are reciprocal activities.  A goal of this course is to make that reciprocity legible.  To that end, students will learn to read poetry (their own, their classmates, and those of published writers) rhetorically, acquiring two vocabularies, two languages almost; that of poetic practice and prosody, and that of critique.

CRW 206/800 - FICTION WRITING: INTRODUCTORY - Motto
TTh 8:00
In this fiction writing course, students will read and critique each other's work, as well as the work of established authors. Students should expect daily exercises, quizzes, class discussion, one story and one re-write. This introductory course is designed for students who are non-writing majors.

CRW 206/810/820 - FICTION WRITING: INTRODUCTORY - Wilson
TTh 9:35, 11:10
Toni Morrison wrote: "If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it."  You can get started in this beginning fiction writing workshop.  You'll be reading contemporary short stories and writing exercises using a variety of fiction techniques.  In the latter half of the semester everyone will produce a full-length story, which will be discussed by the entire class.  You'll be giving written critiques of everyone's stories and this will help you form a critical aesthetic in the genre. 

CRW 207/800 - PLAYWRITING: INTRODUCTORY - Korbesmeyer
MWF 10:20
This introductory course in playwriting uses a wide-variety of techniques, exercises and organizational concepts to explore the particular challenges and rewards of this genre. Existing theatrical literature as well as our own work will be evaluated and discussed, culminating in a ten-page play.

CRW 208/800 - CREATIVE NONFICTION WRITING: INTRODUCTION - Halferty
MWF 10:20
I can't think of a better way to describe what happens in a course like CRW 208, where your primary subjects are your own life and the things you're passionate about, than this quote by Anne Lamott:  "Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability. Don't worry about appearing sentimental. Worry about being unavailable; worry about being absent or fraudulent.  Risk being unliked. Tell the truth as you understand it. If you're a writer, you have a moral obligation to do this.  And it is a revolutionary act-truth is always subversive."   In this section of 208 you'll be writing two fully-developed essays, completing a few shorter writing assignments, and participating in writers' workshops.  Along the way we'll also read a variety of types of creative nonfiction, attend some readings by professional writers, and work on developing your individual style and voice. 

CRW 208/810 - CREATIVE NONFICTION WRITING: INTRODUCTION - Steiner
TTh 9:35
CRW 208 is an introductory creative writing workshop in nonfiction. Students will read and discuss the work of established writers and discuss pertinent ethical issues, such as telling the "truth" in writing.  They will complete short craft exercises and a full-length essay.  Students will earn to share constructive criticism in a workshop setting, improve their writing skills, and become familiar with the genre of nonfiction.                                            

CRW 300/800 - LIVING WRITERS SERIES - Wilson
MW 3:00-4:20
This course explores the creative process via a series of lectures and seminars presented by a wide variety of artists/writers.  Class participants develop their own creative values and aesthetics, and express them through in-class exercises and assigned analysis papers.  Unlimited enrolment and open to all majors/minors.

CRW 301/800 - SCREENWRITING: INTERMEDIATE - staff
MWF 1:50
This intermediate level writing course builds upon the basic concepts of screenwriting and focuses on completing the first half of a full-length screenplay.  Prerequisite:  CRW 201

CRW 305/800 - POETRY WRITING: INTERMEDIATE - Steiner
TTh 2:20
EWA 305 continues the practices of reading and writing poetry developed in EWA 205.  Students will read and discuss contemporary and established poets' work, write their own poetry, and critique the work of their peers.  Students will also refine their critical vocabularies and investigate technical and aesthetic questions related to poetry, Prerequisite: CRW 205 Nature of Poetry

CRW 306/800 - FICTION WRITING: INTERMEDIATE - O'Connor
TTh 2:20, Th 4-6:40
A short story workshop.  Students will read and critique each other's stories, as well as the stories of established authors. Prerequisite:   CRW 206

CRW 307/800 - PLAYWRITING: INTERMEDIATE - Korbesmeyer
MWF 12:40
Advanced playwriting techniques will be explored with the specific objective of creating a one-act play (or the first act of a full-length play).  Existing theater literature will be analyzed with particular emphasis on modern use of language. Prerequisite CRW 207

CRW 308/800 - CREATIVE NONFICTION WRITING: INTERMEDIATE - Steiner
TTh 11:10
CRW 308 is an intermediate nonfiction workshop.  Students will read and discuss essays by contemporary and established writers, write their own essays, and critique the work of their peers.  Students will also refine their critical vocabularies and investigate technical, aesthetic and ethical questions related to writing nonfiction.  Several short pieces, along with two longer essays, will be required.  CRW 208 is a prerequisite.

CRW 395/800 - GRAPHIC NOVEL - Heimes
Th 3-6 pm
This course is a hands-on engagement with graphic literature, exploring the integration of graphics and the written word to produce visual forms of literature. Students will work with photography, found visual materials, and basic illustration to develop themes and narratives from their chosen written format (poetry, essay, memoir, etc.). The course will be taught in a media lab environment that will allow students to present and work on projects in a collaborative manner.  CCIT Lab fee: $6.00

Graduate Courses

ENG 537/800 - Ethnicity & Cultural Differences in Literature - Clark
TH 5:00
This course will focus on a variety of critical and literary texts that explore issues of ethnic identity and difference within American culture.  Specifically, we will critically examine the notion of the United States of America as a "melting pot," through texts that critique (and, perhaps to some extent, "celebrate") ethnic and cultural difference, as one that gives rise to interrogations into the nature of our national identity and the project of multiculturalism in this country.  The critical and literary works we might read include those by Frank Wu, Hortense Spillers, Maxine Hong Kingston, Philip Roth, and Percival Everett.

ENG 581/800 - NARRATIVE THEORY - Bertonneau
TTh 2:20
Aristotle's declaration that a story must have a beginning, a middle, and an end sounds obvious until one listens to a six-year-old trying to retell the story of the cartoon that he has just watched.  Narrative is more than a function of grammar and syntax; it is a way of thinking apparently coterminous with humanity.  A myth is an oral story - about the founders of a society, the gods it worships, and the institutions on which it knows itself to depend for its survival.  A story is a literate development of a myth; but literacy exerts a powerful influence on the intellectual character of story-telling, transforming narrative into an analytical tool for the exploration of time, space, cause and effect, morality, knowledge, and the relation of subjective to objective modes of perception and cognition.  Through selected readings in philosophy and criticism, and the application of select critical approaches to an array of stories, English 381 explores the variety and meaning of plot and temporality in narrative, in both verse and prose.

ENG 595/800 - HEMINGWAY & FITZGERALD - Moore
M 5-7:40
The careers of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, who met for the first time in Paris in the early 1920s, were inextricably linked. They shared a friendship and at times an intense rivalry as well as a literary relationship with the most influential American editor of fiction of the period, Scribner's Maxwell Perkins.  But most importantly they shared their commitment to fiction.  And their novels, explore the intertwining of their lives through biographical sources and letters, and consider what critics have had to say about their work over the past three-quarters of the century.  Texts:  The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald, ed. by Bruccoli; The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway; Tender is the Night,  Fitzgerald; The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway; A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway; The Old Man and the Sea, Hemingway; The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald; For Whom the Bell Tolls, Hemingway; A Moveable Feast, Hemingway.  Course Requirements:  1) critical secondary reading 2) research essay 3) oral presentation 4) final exam

ENG 595/810 - AUTHORSHIP, ORIGINALITY AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY - Murphy, M.
MWF 1:50
Ever wonder about the relationship of ownership we tend to take for granted between authors and their work - perhaps as you download a remixed version of a favorite song your friend gave you on your ipod, prepare the long works cited list for a literary theory paper on the often-declared "death of the author," or consider whose permission (producer, director, writer, actor?) was legally required for the latest film remake of a classic 70s tv show?  Does it mean the same thing to "author" a text at this moment that it did to most people fifty years ago - or five hundred?  Do standards of ownership vary at all from context to context (say, from political speech-making to stand-up comedy to fiction or poetry)?  Should they?  And how are all these questions connected to our evolving expectations about what counts as plagiarism, both inside and outside academic writing?

This course will consider the ongoing discussion of plagiarism and citation, especially as it's related to various contemporary challenges to the prevailing notion of the author as a solitary originator - the creative genius locked away in his of her garret - in literature, literary theory, popular culture, and intellectual property activism.  Students should expect to read in a variety of genres and to write frequently, developing a position on some aspect of this discussion, experimenting with the ancient art of literary imitation, and analyzing the ways some writer (or graphic artist, filmmaker, musician, etc.) of their choosing manages references to the works of others on which he or she builds.

Note:  This course will meet in conjunction with ENG 302:  Writing from Sources, sharing many of that course's readings and activities, though its requirements will be different.  Graduate students will be required to work with undergraduates on citation and research projects, using ENG 302 as a kind of lab.  Undergraduates interested in the plagiarism issue - like English concentrates in Secondary Education - may also choose this option.  The requirements will be different for graduate students.

ENG 595/820 - GLOBAL CITIES - CAPE TOWN - Jayawardane
T 5 - 6:30
South Africa is the outcome of the dynamic interaction, on African shores, of at least three streams of human experience: African, European settlers from The Netherlands (mainly) and Britain, plus immigrants from all other parts of Europe (Italy, Greece), including Jewish settlers (mainly from Lithuania, who came to South Africa following WWII), and South Asians, originally brought by the Dutch East India Company to work as slaves or indentured servants on the winelands, railroads, cane plantations, and on the very construction of the civilisation that is modern South Africa.

The Cape Colony, situated at the very tip end of the African continent, was originally meant to be a "watering station" - simply a place for ships passing on towards India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Malaysia to stop and get fresh water, and a few fresh vegetables from local farmers.  In fact, the Dutch first used the port in the Cape as a prison colony, much like we now use Guantanamo Bay - to remove and "erase" political and religious leaders in the Asian countries that they were trying to take over (Malaysia, Indonesia, Ceylon - or Sri Lanka - and parts of India).  So the first Asians in South Africa were political prisoners - men of high standing (princes and Imams), who were brought over with entire entourages of family and followers.

Modern South Africa is, plainly, a country with as diverse a population as the US: nobody agrees on what it means to "be" a South African - just as Americans can never seem to agree on a definitive description of the self.  Our class - a second quarter course with a ten-day component in the city of Cape Town - will combine vigorous academic work, including the study of the history, culture, and current economic basis of the Western Cape Province.  Only the responsible, conscientious, and motivated student should apply for this course; it's no joll (party) in Cape Town.

TEXTS will include a selection of contemporary literature, including:
1. Rayda Jacobs, The Slave Book
2. Jackie Loos, Echoes of Slavery
3. Achmat Dangor, Bitter Fruit
4. No Man's Land, Carel van der Merwe      
5. COURSEPACKET (ALL articles will be dowloadable from the class website)

Films: "Long Walk to Freedom", "Country of My Skull", "The Age of Aids", "Born into the Struggle", "Amandla!", "Bushman's Secrets

ENG 595/830 - WOMEN'S PROSE AND POETRY ABOUT NATURE - Troy Smith
MWF 11:30
This course will deal with literary themes, myths and metaphors reflecting our planet seen from the perspective of women writers.  Among the women writers I am selecting for study are Willa Cather, Annie Dillard, Mary Austin, Linda Hogan and Ann LaBastille.  Course objectives are 1) to study the historical legacy of women writers of nature; 2) to analyze the literary contribution of women writers who use earth-centered myths in their words; 3) to develop an understanding of women's responses to the natural world.  Methods of assessment will include oral presentations, discussions, short essays, and a longer final essay.

ENG 685/800 - THEMES IN AFRICAN/ASIAN LITERTURE - Jayawardane
Th 5:30 - 8:10
Oceanic Worlds: Modernity, Hybridity, Globalization, and the Cape of Good Hope
What divides as well as links South Africa and South Asia is the ocean between. People crossed this body of water, ideas and objects traveled it, and concepts reached the shores on both sides. Taking fluidity, the defining property of water, as a metaphor, we will explore how the Indian Ocean transported, kept afloat, and drowned ideas and concepts, how it became a pathway dividing as well as connecting people.

As scholars interested in the concept of "hybridity" and "modernity", we will be invested in conceptualizing the city/metropolis - and "civilization" itself - as things that came into being as a result of forced/hidden labor, annexed landscapes, and contested histories; much of modernity is based on concepts and practices that go against the very project of Enlightenment and the resulting push for individual human rights.  While cities such as Cape Town and Johannesburg flourished as a result of the desire for goods and services demanded by a burgeoning European population, allowing for the melding of ideas, peoples and material objects, these seemingly benign flows of people and goods were troubled and compromised by the use of kidnapped labour, slavery, and general brutality.   Our class will interrogate the fluidity within such sea-based communities by navigating the historical terrain of this empire-making ocean.

TEXTS
1. Rayda Jacobs, The Slave Book
2. Jackie Loos, Echoes of Slavery
3. Achmat Dangor, Bitter Fruit
4. Ishtiaq Shukri, The Silent Minaret
5. Imraan Coovadia, Green-Eyed Thieves                             
6. COURSEPACKET (ALL articles/outside readings will be dowloadable from the class
    website)