The information below is offered by the Department. Official course descriptions, are the most recent available.
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 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 211 - WESTERN HERITAGE I: LITERATURE - Halferty
TR 2:20
(Context)
This course explores the literary and intellectual history of European civilization from the Viking Age to the Victorian Age; the theme of the assigned texts is, voyaging and discovery.
ENG 220 - MODERN CULTURE & MEDIA - Vanouse
TR 12:45
(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 220 - MODERN CULTURE & MEDIA - Shore
MWF 11:30
(Text)
The purpose of the course is to examine the relationship between the three terms in the title of the course: modern, culture and media. Among the issues we will discuss are: the growth and spread of nationalism through changing media formats such as the newspaper and radio; the growth of the modern metropolis and its central role in modern visual cultural forms such as cinema; the growth of consumerism and the advent of modern advertising; and the simultaneous rise of “mass culture,” mass movements and mass media. We will also look at how cultures and individuals negotiate themselves through media by examining the relationship between various media forms and race, gender, sexuality, class and nationality. At the close of the course, we will look at the rise of postmodernism and the cultural transformations produced by and reflected in new media formats. This course satisfies the Knowledge Foundations in the Humanities requirement of General Education.
ENG 236 – AMERICAN LITERATURE CIVIL WAR – PRESENT - Blissert
MWF 1:50
(Context)
A survey of American literature which includes historical and biographical writings as well as readings from the major writers of the period of American Romanticism, including Edgar Allen Poe, Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman.
ENG 237 - ETHNICITY AND CULTURAL DIFFERENCE IN LITERATURE - Curtin
TR 9:35
(Context)
This course introduces students to the ethnic and minority literature of the United States and the emergent English-language literatures of the non-Western world. Readings in different genres will include examples that illustrate a variety of ethnic identities, how they're produced, maintained, and circulated. Particular emphasis will be on literature that emerges at physical borders and boundaries and the mutations of ethnicity and culture that occur when those borders are crossed. In other words, we will explore how ethnicity is constructed--at the intersection of language, sexuality, culture, etc.--as well as consider what's at stake when ethnicity is mobilized in nation-states, institutions, and genres.
ENG 265 – SOPHOMORE SEMINAR - Cooper
TR 11:10
“Passing” in the British and American Novel: from Daniel Defoe to William Wells Brown.
This course examines the connection between literary form and psycho-social anxieties about the conflict between public and private identity in the context of upheavals in traditional social classification systems brought about by colonialism. “Passing” describes an act of deception, when someone chooses to exploit people’s assumptions about their identity and then uses the misunderstanding to their social advantage. In Daniel Defoe’s novel Moll Flanders (1722), the title character spends her entire adult life passing herself off as the kind of woman people expect and need her to be: a virtuous gentlewoman of solid social standing. In fact, she is the daughter of a criminal, and is an accomplished thief and fraud who uses disguise to disarm those whom she would rob. It is no accident that at the time this novel appeared, the British were at the forefront of European expansion, and in charge of the African slave trade. The institutionalization of an uncrossable color line in the colonies led to a tireless attempt to sort out the identities and status of mixed-race children, and an increasing fascination with light-skinned people of African ancestry who could, and sometimes did, “pass” for white. William Wells Brown’s novel, Clotel; or The President's Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States (1853) installed a new genre in American writing, featuring the “tragic mullato.” A person of white and black ancestry, and most often female, the mulatto/a’s life came to symbolize the strife and sexual violence that characterized white-black (and male-female) relations under slavery. Our main avenue of inquiry will be to ask how the novel as a form is complicit with and reflective of fears and obsessions about psychological interiority, and how it is peculiarly suited to manipulate anxieties over the fact that only the subject can ever truly “know” her or himself.
ENG 271- PRACTICAL ENGLISH GRAMMAR - Murphy, M.
TR 11:10
This course, designed for students intending to teach, focuses on teaching grammar in the context of writing. Review of parts of speech and the construction of complex sentences. Graded work includes exams, tutoring, teaching mini-lessons, and the maintenance of a journal of observed usages. Attention to relation between standard and non-standard dialects, as well as to dealing with dialect difference in the classroom and in written work.
ENG 286 – INTRODUCTION TO CINEMA STUDIES - Shore
MWF 10:20 & T 6-8pm
(Context)
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 295 – INTRODUCING THE COEN BROTHERS (QUARTER 3 - 1 cr hr) - Korbesmeyer
M 4:35
Brothers Ethan and Joel Coen grabbed the cinema world’s attention with their initial film, Blood Simple and have continued to challenge and delight audiences, culminating with No Country for Old Men (2007), their mega-award winning film that critic Roger Ebert called “the perfect film.” This quarterly course (1 credit hour) will focus on the early work of this directing-writing-editing-producing duo as we will view and study five of their first six films: Blood Simple (1985), Raising Arizona (1987), Miller’s Crossing (1990), Barton Fink (1991) and Fargo (1996). The class will meet six times with the grade based on class discussion and a final project/paper.
ENG 295 – GODARD (QUARTER 4 - 1 cr hr) - Schaber
W 5:30
A seven week seminar devoted to the second seven, full-length films of Jean-Luc Godard: Bande à part (1964), Une Femme mariée (1964), Alphaville, uneétrangeaventure de Lemmy Caution (1965), Pierrot le fou (1965), Masculin feminine (1966), Made in U.S.A. (1966), Deux out troischosesque je saisd'elle (1966)
ENG 302 – ADVANCED COMPOSITION - Halferty
TR 11:10
English 302 is designed for students who have already mastered the basics of essay writing, and are ready to move on to the subtleties of style and readability, as well as the finer points of researched writing. In this section of ENG 302 you’ll be reading/discussing/writing a variety of types of expository prose with the goal of putting together a portfolio of your writing that might be useful in applying to graduate school, looking for employment, or simply as a record of your own experiences and writing progress. Requirements include three or four fully-developed pieces, some shorter writing assignments, workshops, critiques of classmates’ writing, and consistent attendance and class participation.
ENG 304 – LITERARY CRITICISM - Curtin
TR 3:55
In this course, sequel to Writing about Literature (English 204), students will read and discuss theoretical paradigms from a range of disciplines, including linguistics, economic theory, film theory, and feminism, which, together, inform structuralism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, post-structuralism, and ethnic studies. Working in teams to lead and advance class discussions, students will engage theory in oral and written dialogue format. Additionally, students will have opportunities to develop theoretically informed analysis of literary texts in portfolios as well as in a longer, researched essay.
ENG 304 – 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 – LITERARY CRITICISM - Murphy, P.
MW 3-4:20
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 structural 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. Typically there are four or five papers, a take-home examination, and a final exam.
ENG 310 – LITERATURE OF MEDIEVAL ENGLAND - Hildahl
TR 2:20
(Context)
A study of selected pieces of English literature from about 600 AD/CE to the fifteenth century, including works by writers who were Chaucer’s contemporaries. For the first six weeks we will read from Anglo-Saxon sources, including historical works by Bede, and lyric and narrative poetry, including Beowulf. Then we will examine documents which record the Norman invasion and conquest of Anglo-Saxon England [1066], including the Bayeux Tapestry and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle account. The last half of the course will be a study of lyric poetry, romances and narrative works from the Middle English period, including the lais of Marie de France, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and selections from Malory’s Arthurian tales. All readings will be in modern English translations. Films: In one evening session we will see the recent film, “A Knight’s Tale.” [2001] We may also view another film germane to the later period of our readings, “The Return of Martin Guerre.”Papers: Three-four essays (of increasing complexity), written from journal entries. A journal, to record your reading of the assigned works. One paper with research and documentation. Exams: Mid-term, Final.
ENG 312 – 17th CENTURY PROSE AND POETRY - Cooper
TR 2:20
(Context)
Paradise Lost: John Milton’s Heroic Satan and the Political Strife of Seventeenth Century England. Paradise Lost is a hugely entertaining, highly accomplished and quite humorous portrayal of Milton’s vision of Adam and Eve and the moral miscue that led to the downfall of humanity. Milton himself was an interesting man, and full of just as many contradictions as his brilliantly rebellious Satan. Famous for his blindness, and for being among the group of revolutionary “Puritans” who took over the government after the murder of King Charles I, he is never overbearing about his faith in God. He instead combines “pagan” classicism with contemporary political issues to form an intellectually challenging picture of a faith that is just as much about the freedoms and pleasures afforded by art, philosophy and the imagination as it is about the strictures of Christian theology. Besides Milton, we will read other political prose and poetry, with an emphasis on humor and satire. Throughout we will consider the historical use of female figures like Eve to signify a whole host of socio-political obsessions, nightmares, and prideful ambitions. We will follow Milton with a look at the poetry of the renowned Katherine Philips, and conclude with samplings of prose romances by authors such as Aphra Behn, whose works were often based on real-life sex scandals, and which are the basis for the subsequent development of the novel.
ENG 319 - INTRODUCTION TO SHAKESPEARE - Murphy, P.
MWF 11:30
(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 examinations, two essays and several group projects.
ENG 323 – 20TH CENTURY BRITISH FICTION - Loe
T 6-8:40
(Text)
English 323/523 emphasizes a critical approach to British narratives in examining about ten writers who have emerged as representative of the age: Conrad, Ford, Joyce, Woolf, Lawrence, Rhys, Fowles, Byatt, and others. Some short narratives will be included. Both technique and cultural context form a background for defining the distinctive quality of prose narrative and its innovations in this century. Requirements include midterm and final examinations, a fully developed critical term paper close to 3000 words, frequent quizzes or other kinds of short writing in response to the texts, and a short presentation on the term topic. Some readings will be posted on the Angel SLN website; some scenes from films will be shown. Graduate students will be asked for a longer research oriented term paper (about 16 pages), asked to make a couple of short presentations, as well as a longer presentation based on their term project.
ENG 332 – REALISM AND NATURALISM - Hill
TR 9:35
(Context)
This offering of the Rise of Realism and Naturalism will focus on how nineteenth-century writers treated cities as central elements of their fiction. Our focus will be on Boston (William Dean Howells); San Francisco (Frank Norris); and Chicago (Theodore Dreiser). To illustrate sources and ideas, we will look at Paris (Balzac) and London (Dickens and Henry James). There will be two shorter essays, a longer essay, and in-class midterm and final examinations. If we need the discipline, we will have reading quizzes as well.
ENG 333 – 20th CENTURYAMERICAN LITERATURE - Blissert
MWF 11:30
(Context)
This course will focus on the “modernist” revolution in literary styles that occurred early in this century, with the aim of identifying basic relationships between historical events and the stances of individual writers. This pattern of radical experimentation in form and the search for a meaningful social vision will be followed in American writing from 1910 to 1950. Course requirements include 2 critical essays, tests and a final examination.
ENG 340 – MODERN AMERICAN DRAMA - Moore
TR 11:10
(Text)
Reading plays is an intricate, creative act. It is significantly different from reading a poem or a short story or a novel. Although we begin with a written text, we are asked to imagine that text in production; and a production of the play involves many creative inputs beyond those of the writer. This course surveys modern American drama from O’Neill to contemporary dramatists, such as Mamet, Wilson, Wasserstein, and Labute, considering both how they use their form and what their plays reveal about the world in which they move. These texts were meant to be viewed in performance; therefore, whenever possible, we’ll make frequent use videotaped productions as well as the printed text. This feature may lead you to spend time out of class watching videotapes. For those of you who are interested in performance, there will also be some opportunity to indulge that interest in class, reading scenes. Our primary objective, however, will be to read, think about, write about and discuss, and ultimately to enjoy some of the best plays written by Americans in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Course requirements: (1) 2 essays (one 3-5 pages, the other 8-10 pages); (2) midterm and final exams; (3) participation in group panel discussions
ENG 360 – LITERATURE IN GLOBAL CONTEXT - Jayawardane
TR 9:35
(Context)
Literature in a Global Context: Travel, Displacement, and Migration in the Transnational Memoir and Novel
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 360 – LITERATURE IN GLOBAL CONTEXT - Holt-Fortin
TR 12:45
(Context)
This class looks at a broad selection of writing from Asia, Africa and Latin American. We focus on work from the second half of the 20th century and the 21st century, looking in a large part at the effects of colonialism and its aftermath. The readings include poetry, short stories, and novels. Work includes weekly writings, a paper, and a final.
ENG 365 –JUNIOR SEMINAR - Clark
TR 11:10 - Zora Neale Hurston
Since Alice Walker’s recovery of Zora Neale Hurston’s work in the mid-1970s, the interest in her work as novelist, anthropologist, memoirist, ethnographer, and womanist that spans from the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s through the mid-twentieth century has not abated. This course will examine Hurston’s oeuvre, which may include the following: Their Eyes Were Watching God, Seraph on the Suwanee, Mules and Men, Mule Bone, Dust Tracks on a Road. Additionally, we will explore her collaborations, conversations, and relationships with other writers such as Langston Hughes, Carl Van Vechten and Fanny Hurst in order to apprehend Hurston’s oft-overlooked intellectualism in her creative work, her acceptance of patronage, and her conservatism, considered controversial by some. The principle course requirement will be the completion of an extensive research project.
ENG 365 – JUNIOR SEMINAR - Masterson
MWF 1:50
Critical Response / Critical Reputation: Jack Kerouac
This course examines issues surrounding canon formation in Modern American literature, using as a primary example the increasingly strong critical reputation of the Beat writer and cultural icon Jack Kerouac. Students will read selections of Kerouac’s fiction, poetry, essays, letters, and the developing critical response to that work. Ever since Gilbert Millstein’s famous New York Times review of On the Road in 1957, Kerouac’s status and that of his Beat Generation counterparts, has moved from the margins of the canon to a central position. A number of critics now claim that Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, will soon be joined by Kerouac, the “memory babe” as a essential voice in 20th century American writing. We will study a number of Kerouac’s novels, including On the Road, Dr. Sax, Visions of Cody, Desolation Angels, and The Subterraneans. Careful attention will also be given to Kerouac’s poems, especially Mexico City Blues and the Bebop jazz context from which these poems were drawn. Students will find and compare reviews at the time of the first publication and will develop annotated bibliographies of contemporary responses to this body of work. Precis of these articles will serve as one element of class presentations given on this research. Course Requirements: in-class reaction/response writing, evaluative précis of critical articles, a formal essay, in class presentations and regular Angel posts. Note: if possible the class will make a field trip to Lowell, MA, Kerouac’s home town and site of four of his novels.
ENG 373 – THEORIES OF LANGUAGE - Hill
TR 3:55
(Theory)
The course will survey and analyse twentieth-century theories of language as the ground for literary activity, including writing, speaking, reading, and understanding. How do we produce, receive, and interpret linguistic, and particularly, literary messages? We will examine the interplay between our ideas about language and issues of class, culture, gender, race, and childhood.
1) Part one of the course will survey ideas from philosophy and semiotics, but will concentrate on recent research and hypotheses in linguistics and cognitive psychology as they bear on the interests and concerns of students of literature. A central question we will explore is whether it is more useful to think about languages (in our case, English) as the "outside" of language, or to think about language use as the way we respond to particular languages. That question will be at work in the rest of the course.
2) Part two of the course will address meaning and interpretation, using data from the history of English to illustrate how words, sounds, and syntactic rules of combination have changed as our language has developed.
3) Part three of the course will examine how varieties of language use (and attitudes toward those varieties) affect our understanding and judgment of people's use of language. Where do "standards" come from? Is there such a thing as "purity" in language? What is the relation of literary culture to the social and political standards some people wish to impose on language use?
4) In part four of the course we will divide into several groups to carry out individual projects which will be presented to the class as a whole.
a) One group will explore how we talk about and analyze language use—what is the relation between school "grammars," usage, and what linguists know about language and its use.
b) Another group will continue to explore variation in language and its effect on meaning. We will examine the problems like those translators have with the words in Russian, German, and French which often end up being lumped into the perhaps ill-fitting English word "soul" —as well as the "translation" into modern English use of Shakespeare's use of that word.
c) Another group will explore the more interpretive dimensions of language theory, addressing questions such as how recent linguistic and cognitive research might affect the enterprise of interpretation, reinforcing or revising currently productive directions in literary theory.
ENG 376 – SCIENCE FICTION - Bertonneau
TR 2:20
(Context)
This course explores the development of scientific, philosophical, technical, and religious themes in the speculative genres, concentrating on science fiction; the course includes science fiction films in its purview.
ENG 380 – NARRATIVES OF IDENTITY - Loe
TR 11:10
(Context)
Stories provide a fundamental means humans have always used in defining themselves and their experience. Using an interdisciplinary approach, this course focuses on examining half a dozen such narratives that are distinguished by their concern with defining the individual and the individual consciousness in the context of their familial, ethnic, political, social, intellectual, philosophical and/or historical cultures. The course employs theoretical avenues from a variety of academic disciplines to show how different approaches and terms change and complicate definitions of self depending upon context. Readings will include both narratives and the works that help establish their context. Classes are mostly discussion, some lecture, and requirements include many short in-class essays, one longer (8 to 10 page) term paper, a mid-term and a final exam.
ENG 381 – NARRATIVE THEORY - Bertonneau
TR 3:55
(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 - 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 387 – VISION AND TEXTUALITY - Shore
W 3-5:40
(Theory)
“Film noir” is a term originally coined by French film critic Nino Frank in 1946 to describe a cycle of dark crime and detective films produced and distributed by American filmmakers in the post-World War II era. Literally translated as "black film or cinema," film noir has been examined from many perspectives by film and cultural critics. Debates swirl over whether or not film genre is a historic film cycle or a film genre that is rearticulated across different eras. The alienated (anti) heroes of film noir questioned the homogeneous ideals of American masculinity by placing them into morally-ambiguous narratives, while the femme fatales can be seen as either creations of a misogynistic world view or a feminist figure of the eras between the first and second wave women's movements. This course will explore these formal, historical and cultural concerns by looking at films noir from the "classical" era of the 1940-1960s, antecedents to the classical noir cycle, as well as "neo noir" and "post-noir" films of later eras.
ENG 390 – IMAGES OF NATIVE AMERICANS IN FILM - LaLonde
T 5:30-8:10
(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 – TOLKIEN - Holt-Fortin
TR 9:35
(Text)
Speak friend, and enter! Welcome Tolkien readers. In this course we explore not only The Lord of the Rings and its critical reception, but also the minor and scholarly works of J.R.R. Tolkien. We also look briefly at the films. The course requires a short paper, a project, and participation in the end of term Hobbit Feast.
ENG 395 – BUSINESS IN LITERATURE - Moore
M 5:30
(Context)
This course will focus on creative representations of American economic and business life from the latter part of the nineteenth century through the first decade of the twenty-first century. Popular depictions of American business and labor, from the West Virginia coal mines to corporate board rooms to the floor of the New York Stock Exchange have shaped our understanding – sometimes accurately, sometimes not – of the our economic selves. The reading will be primarily in American fiction and drama; we will also screen several films outside of class time for in-class discussion. The secondary purpose of this course is to sharpen your skills as critical readers, as effective speakers, and as clear, concise writers. Course requirements will include an oral presentation, several short writing assignments, a thesis-based essay involving research, occasional quizzes, and a final exam.
Speak friend, and enter! Welcome Tolkien readers. In this course we explore not only The Lord of the Rings and its critical reception, but also the minor and scholarly works of J.R.R. Tolkien. We also look briefly at the films. The course requires a short paper, a project, and participation in the end of term Hobbit Feast.
ENG 395 – IRISH CINEMA - Masterson
M 3-6:40
(Context)
The Irish film industry, although it emerged late in the 20th century, has nonetheless become one of the most vibrant cinemas in the world. Film makers such as Neil Jordan and Jim Sheridan gave us remarkable movies. My Left Foot (1989), The Field (1990), The Crying Game (1992), and Michael Collins (1996) presented an array of controversial, dramatically charged social, historical, political and gender issues. Irish cinema had clearly awakened from decades of parochialism, censorship, and, quite simply, a lack of production. Once the industry came of age with the establishment of the Irish Film Board, younger artists such as Lenny Abrahamson secured funding for wonderfully quirky efforts like Garage (2008). Once (2008), an independent film made on a shoestring, garnered international attention and an Academy Award. Now is the time for Irish cinema! The course will examine the history of Irish cinema from its origins in the silent era to the above mentioned flowering in the last twenty years. Attention will be given to both feature films and documentaries. A “doc” such as The Rocky Road to Dublin (1967) paved the way for the truth telling films of later years. My cousin, Liam Nolan, has established himself internationally with his gritty documentary on boxing, Saviours. Lastly, we will study at least two films focused on Irish issues by English filmmakers—Ken Loach’s, The Wind that Shakes the Barley, and Steve McQueen’s Hunger, both winners of the Palme de Or at Cannes. Requirements will include a final exam, Angel posts and short essays.
ENG 395 – DIASPORA - Jayawardane
TR 2:20
(Context)
Diaspora evokes a social and political experience that is at the same time precarious and empowering. It involves displacement (the loss of "home"); the friction of movement and conflict across established borders (geographical, cultural, social and political); and the reinvention of community in new locations that become home – but remain, simultaneously, places of dislocation. As such, Diaspora can tell us much about the more general social and political experience of life in a global age. Through readings of novels, visual art, performance art, and social and political theory, we will seek to understand this highly charged experience of social and political life. The course is an interdisciplinary collaboration across several disciplines. This class will bring together students from various fields – English, Politics, Global and International Studies -- who come to the class with varying backgrounds and interests in the study of Diaspora. Through such collaboration and discussion of shared material across disciplines, the students will gain a broader and more critical understanding of Diaspora. All students will be required to participate in class discussions and to undertake guided, individual research that will result in a seminar paper. Both the English and Politics sections will meet together once per week (Tuesdays) and once in seminars specific to the group (Thursdays) designed to focus on the literary or the political aspects of Diaspora. The course requires junior or senior standing, and presupposes some background in either global politics or global literature.
ENG 395 – STEPHEN CRANE - Vanouse
W 6-8:40
(Context)
This course will examine the themes and the subject matter which Stephen Crane's writings brought to American literature, and we also will explore such issues as Crane's extravagant use of color, his verbal and dramatic ironies, and his experiments in literary structure. The readings for the course will include Crane's journalistic reports and sketches, his prose fiction, and his poetry. In discussing the ways Crane sought to make these forms "new," we will seek to define the characteristics of literary Modernism. Course requirements will include one brief critical essay (2-3 pp), a term paper (8-10 pp), a mid-term examination and a comprehensive final. Some of this work may be done in group projects. Graduate students will make presentations to the class on textual issues, such as the "real" Maggie, or on critical controversies, such as that over the image of the "red like a wafer" in The Red Badge, or on other topics which emerge from class discussion.
ENG 465 – SEMINAR IN ADVANCED LITERARY STUDIES - Clark
TR 2:20 - Food and Identity
This seminar will examine an array of issues regarding food and how issues such as food sustainability, cooking, eating, etc. intersect with race, gender, class, etc. While the field of food studies has been dominated by other disciplines and fields, particularly sociology and anthropology, in recent years, humanities scholars’ contributions to this field has been increasingly sought after. In imagining research on food in the humanities, we will read and examine the works of writers as diverse as Barbara Kingsolver, Verta Mae Grosvenor, Ntozake Shange, and Michael Pollan among others to understand the human value(s) of food particularly in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Members of the seminar will conduct research, and write about representations of food, eating and cooking in literature and other texts, as well as participate in local discussions on food activism and issues of sustainability.
ENG 465 – SEMINAR IN ADVANCED LITERARY STUDIES - Voo
W 3-6:40
Herman Melville and the Anatomies of Empire
In Moby-Dick (1851) Melville engages in an analytic approach of the discourses of mid-nineteenth-century US territorial expansion and empire-building. At the time of the annexation of Texas, the Mexican War and the extension of US influence in the Pacific area, American society confronted the dangers of unexplored wilderness as well as the presence, within its borders, of the racial and cultural alien. Through Ishmael's multi-layered narration Melville reproduces and ironically subverts contemporary discourses regarding the anatomy of the human body, racial taxonomy, and gender psychology. Melville comments on his society's fascination with technological ingenuity, but does not accept as unquestionable truth the knowledge that has been accumulated at that moment in history. Rather, he dismantles culturally established dualities of savagery and civilization, nature and culture, blackness and whiteness. The objective of the course will be to read and discuss Moby-Dick, and also to explore the novel's influence on N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn (1968) and Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian (1985). Course requirements: (1) one research essay of 15-20 pages; (2) midterm and final exams; (3) participation in group panel discussions.
ENG 470 – FEMINIST THEORY - Curtin
TR 12:45
(Theory)
Our purpose in this course is to engage with several foundational and vibrantly contested conversations within feminist theory. We will examine basic issues such as gender difference and its relationship to women's subordination; the intersections of gender with other dimensions of social identity and power (e.g., class, race/ethnicity, sexuality, nation); the way gendered discourse shapes social reality. These issues will be discussed from a variety of feminist theoretical perspectives (e.g., those influenced by liberalism, Marxism/socialism, psychoanalysis, radical feminism, post-modernism, and post-colonialism). The course is organized around central “keywords” (or conversations) within feminist theory. The readings for each keyword challenge, support, augment, and contradict one another, illustrating that feminist theory is a polyphonic, complex, and self-reflexive dialogue.
ENG 486 – WORLD CINEMA - Schaber
MW 3-4:20, M 6-8
(Context)
A history and examination of cinema as a global phenomenon. The course will explore the idea, effects and institutions of many different cinemas, growing in different parts of the world, as these constitute both a single, global phenomenon and a set of independent existences and resistances.
CREATIVE WRITING COURSES:
CRW 201 – SCREENWRITING: INTRODUCTORY - Adams
MWF 9:10, 10:20
This intensive writing course explores the methods of which a beginning screenwriter will approach structure, formatting, story and genre in a workshop-style setting. Analyzing film clips and excerpts from existing screenplays, students will learn to incorporate professional screenwriting techniques into their own scripts and work towards completing the first act of a feature-length screenplay. Prerequisite: ENG 102 or waiver.
CRW 205 - POETRY WRITING: INTRODUCTORY - Kwiatek
TR 12:45, 3:55
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 – FICTION WRITING: INTRODUCTORY - O’Connor
MWF 11:30
CRW 206 is a beginning level class in fiction writing. Students will engage in readings and exercises to learn how to construct a short story. The class culminates in a fiction workshop in which students will prepare and critique original short stories. Exercises, critiques, 1 or 2 stories and revisions.
CRW 206 - FICTION WRITING: INTRODUCTORY - Wilson
TR 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 – PLAYWRITING: INTRODUCTORY - Korbesmeyer
MWF 10:20, 1:50
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 - CREATIVE NON-FICTION WRITING: INTRODUCTORY - Steiner
TR 12:45, 2:20, T 5:30
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 301 – SCREENWRITING: INTERMEDIATE - O’Connor
W 4:35-7:15
William Goldman wrote, “Screenplays are structure.” Students in the intermediate screenwriting workshop will analyze screenplays and movies and develop an in-depth understanding of screenplay structure, as well as build on what was learned in CRW 201. We will be using the online teaching resource Angel to workshop your original screenplays and attempt to complete a full screenplay by the end of class. Exercises, critical responses and written critiques of other students’ screenplays are required. CRW 201 is a prerequisite.
CRW 306 – FICTION WRITING: INTERMEDIATE - O’Connor
MWF 1:50
A short story workshop. Students will read and critique each other’s stories, as well as the stories of established authors. CRW 206 is a prerequisite.
CRW 405 - POETRY WRITING: ADVANCED - Kwiatek
T 5:30-8:10
In this workshop course, students inquire into the nature of "advanced" (what constitutes "advanced writing" in the genre of poetry? in the experience of the individual poet?); the nature of influence; a poet's relationship to prose; the relationship between process, form, and product; "habits" of style (identifying, outwitting, and exploiting them); the reciprocities between the reading and writing of poems; and, finally, the rhetoric of critique (what sort of "critical" language would provide for process, invention, and reflection?). CRW 305 is a prerequisite.
CRW 406 - FICTION WRITING: ADVANCED - Wilson
TR 2:20
Writing Flash Fiction
It takes skill to compress the universe of a story or tale into less than a thousand words. Flash fiction must deliver an impact and ramify in subtext while paying attention to economies of scale. In this class we'll be writing almost a dozen different flash fictions, and we'll be reading widely in contemporary flash fiction. The course will require you to write a flash every week. You will be expected to make group presentations and organize a final portfolio of your best work. CRW 306 is a prerequisite.
CRW 407 – PLAYWRITING: ADVANCED - Korbesmeyer
MWF 11:30
This level of playwriting focuses on the revision process, particularly through the use of staged readings and dramaturgical feedback. Whenever possible, a workshop structure will be employed to simulate the participatory elements inherent in play development. CRW 307 is a prerequisite.
CRW 408 – CREATIVE NONFICTION WRITING: ADVANCED - Steiner
R 5:30
This is an advanced workshop in creative nonfiction. Students will read and discuss samples of the essay form by established writers, write their own essays for workshop, and refine the practice of critique. We’ll also talk about publication considerations, and students will investigate contemporary literary journals and other resources for writers. CRW 308 is a prerequisite.
GRADUATE COURSES:
ENG 502/800 – THEORIES OF TEACHING COMPOSITION - Murphy, M.
T 6- 8:40
Sharon Crowley calculates in Composition in the University (1998) that there are some 160,000 sections of required first-year Writing taught every semester in U.S. colleges and universities. This makes "Freshman English" easily the most frequently offered course -- perhaps even the most universally shared academic experience -- in American higher education (as well, increasingly, as the likeliest source of employment for those seeking faculty positions in English Studies, as a quick look at any recent MLA Job Information List will attest.) And yet, though we’ve clearly been teaching advanced literacy skills for a long time, it's only been during the last twenty-five years or so that we've been thinking very deeply about those skills and what it means to teach them. ENG 502 focuses on this relatively recent attempt to close the gap between theory and practice in Composition and Rhetoric, exploring some of the most important theories of composing and Composition pedagogy developed during that time.
Placing special emphasis on the assumptions about language, knowledge, and learning that underwrite the major pedagogical traditions in Composition, we will ask such questions as: Where do our standards for what counts as good writing come from? What is grammar anyway, and how should we respond to student work composed in non-standard grammars? What are the relations between academic discourse and personal writing, as well as between formal and informal writing? How do we juggle the communication model of language so important in a positivist culture with the inclination to teach writing as thinking and with a sense of the importance of language as a mode of social differentiation? Is political and cultural contest an inherent part of the production of knowledge in text, and if so, how should such contest be accounted for inside a classroom or curriculum? If teaching Writing means initiating students into an academic community with specific intellectual concerns and practices, what are the socio-cultural ramifications of such initiation? Have the very nature of what we recognize as “literacy” and “authorship” shifted during the last twenty years – for both technological and cultural reasons – in ways we need to consider in first-year writing courses? To what extent might the study of literacy itself be made the focus of a Writing course? And finally, can Writing be taught at all, particularly in a course traditionally separate from the kind of organic intellectual inquiry that goes on in students’ disciplinary coursework?
In keeping with this general goal of bringing theory and practice together, class each week will be divided between group discussions of readings in Composition theory, group responses to undergraduate writing, and student presentations of teaching plans or materials.
Requirements will include class participation, one critical essay, a tutoring project and the development of elaboration of a course plan.
ENG 512/800 - 17th CENTURY PROSE & POETRY - Cooper
TR 2:20
Paradise Lost: John Milton’s Heroic Satan and the Political Strife of Seventeenth Century England. Paradise Lost is a hugely entertaining, highly accomplished and quite humorous portrayal of Milton’s vision of Adam and Eve and the moral miscue that led to the downfall of humanity. Milton himself was an interesting man, and full of just as many contradictions as his brilliantly rebellious Satan. Famous for his blindness, and for being among the group of revolutionary “Puritans” who took over the government after the murder of King Charles I, he is never overbearing about his faith in God. He instead combines “pagan” classicism with contemporary political issues to form an intellectually challenging picture of a faith that is just as much about the freedoms and pleasures afforded by art, philosophy and the imagination as it is about the strictures of Christian theology. Besides Milton, we will read other political prose and poetry, with an emphasis on humor and satire. Throughout we will consider the historical use of female figures like Eve to signify a whole host of socio-political obsessions, nightmares, and prideful ambitions. We will follow Milton with a look at the poetry of the renowned Katherine Philips, and conclude with samplings of prose romances by authors such as Aphra Behn, whose works were often based on real-life sex scandals, and which are the basis for the subsequent development of the novel.
ENG 523/800 - 20th CENTURY BRITISH FICTION - Loe
T 6:00 – 8:40
This course emphasizes a critical approach in British novel tradition in examining ten writers who have emerged as representative of the age: Conrad, Ford, Joyce, Woolf, Lawrence, Rhys, Fowles, Byatt, and others. Both technique and cultural context form a background for defining the unique quality of prose narrative and its innovations in our century. Requirements include midterm and final examinations, a fully developed critical term paper about 12 pages and frequent quizzes or other kinds of short writing in response to the texts*. *Graduate students will be asked for a longer research oriented term paper (about 16 pages). They will also be required to make a couple of short presentations, as well as a longer presentation (about 20 minutes) based on their term project.
ENG 587/800 – BUSINESS IN LITERATURE - Moore
M 5:30 – 8:10
This course will focus on creative representations of American economic and business life from the latter part of the nineteenth century through the first decade of the twenty-first century. Popular depictions of American business and labor, from the West Virginia coal mines to corporate board rooms to the floor of the New York Stock Exchange have shaped our understanding – sometimes accurately, sometimes not – of our economic selves. The reading will be primarily in American fiction and drama; we will also screen several films both in and outside of class time for in-class discussion. The secondary purpose of this course is to sharpen your skills as critical readers, as effective speakers, and as clear, concise writers. Course requirements will include active participation in discussion, several short writing assignments, a thesis-based essay involving research, occasional quizzes, and a final exam.
ENG 595/800 – TOLKIEN - Holt-Fortin
TR 9:35
The Work of J R Tolkien
Speak Friend, and enter!
Since the first appearance of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien’s works of fantasy have attracted a devout, albeit somewhat underground, following. Despite some positive and negative critical attention in the 1960’s and 70’s, Tokien’s work was thought of as the Ur-fantasy novel, the best of its type, but a type nonetheless. With the advent of the year 2000 and the subsequent evaluation of the passing century, Tolkien’s work was also reevaluated. The Peter Jackson production of the novels renewed interest in Tolkien as a writer. The class will explore, critically, the novels and critical work of Tolkien. We might also look at the beginning body of criticism of the films.
ENG 595/810 - SPECIALIZED STUDIES: IRISH CINEMA - Masterson
M 3:00 – 5:40
The Irish film industry, although it emerged late in the 20th century, has nonetheless become one of the most vibrant cinemas in the world. Film makers such as Neil Jordan and Jim Sheridan gave us remarkable movies. My Left Foot (1989), The Field (1990), The Crying Game (1992), and Michael Collins (1996) presented an array of controversial, dramatically charged social, historical, political and gender issues. Irish cinema had clearly awakened from decades of parochialism, censorship, and, quite simply, a lack of production. Once the industry came of age with the establishment of the Irish Film Board, younger artists such as Lenny Abrahamson secured funding for wonderfully quirky efforts like Garage (2008). Once (2008), an independent film made on a shoestring, garnered international attention and an Academy Award. Now is the time for Irish cinema!
The course will examine the history of Irish cinema from its origins in the silent era to the above mentioned flowering in the last twenty years. Attention will be given to both feature films and documentaries. A “doc” such as The Rocky Road to Dublin (1967) paved the way for the truth telling films of later years. My cousin, Liam Nolan, has established himself internationally with his gritty documentary on boxing, Saviours.
Lastly, we will study at least two films focused on Irish issues by English filmmakers—Ken Loach’s, The Wind that Shakes the Barley, and Steve McQueen’s Hunger, both winners of the Palme de Or at Cannes.
Requirements will include a final exam, Angel posts and short essays.
ENG 595/830 – STEPHEN CRANE: MODERNIST - Vanouse
Th 6 – 8:45
This course will examine the themes and the subject matter which Stephen Crane's writings brought to American literature, and we also will explore such issues as Crane's extravagant use of color, his verbal and dramatic ironies, and his experiments in literary structure. The readings for the course will include Crane's journalistic reports and sketches, his prose fiction, and his poetry. In discussing the ways Crane sought to make these forms "new," we will seek to define the characteristics of literary Modernism. Course requirements will include one brief critical essay (2-3 pp), a term paper (8-10 pp), a mid-term examination and a comprehensive final. Some of this work may be done in group projects. Graduate students will make presentations to the class on textual issues, such as the "real" Maggie, or on critical controversies, such as that over the image of the "red like a wafer" in The Red Badge, or on other topics which emerge from class discussion.
ENG 595/840 - SPECIALIZED STUDIES: Feminist Theory - Curtin
TR – 12:45
Our purpose in this course is to engage with several foundational and vibrantly contested conversations within feminist theory. We will examine basic issues such as gender difference and its relationship to women's subordination; the intersections of gender with other dimensions of social identity and power (e.g., class, race/ethnicity, sexuality, nation); the way gendered discourse shapes social reality. These issues will be discussed from a variety of feminist theoretical perspectives (e.g., those influenced by liberalism, Marxism/socialism, psychoanalysis, radical feminism, post-modernism, and post-colonialism). The course is organized around central “keywords” (or conversations) within feminist theory. The readings for each keyword challenge, support, augment, and contradict one another, illustrating that feminist theory is a polyphonic, complex, and self-reflexive dialogue.
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