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Course Description for Spring 2007
This pamphlet contains information submitted by the teaching faculty of the Department of English, SIUC, to inform students about courses being offered.
The format for each course/section description is as follows: Course number and title
The English Department Writing Centers (located in Faner 2281, Lentz Hall Learning Resource Center, and Trueblood Hall Learning Resource Center) provide resources for all SIUC students who want to improve their ability as writers. Students may be seen at any of the three Centers for single-visit appointments, which can be made two days in advance, or for regular weekly appointments, which continue for as much of the semester as the student wishes. There is no charge for these visits. The staff of the Centers are graduate and undergraduate students trained in effective one-to-one teaching strategies. For more information, check out our website www.siu.edu/~write or contact: Dr. Jane Cogie, Director, Writing Center, Faner 2281, (618) 453-6863. For explicit information on prerequisites, students should consult the Undergraduate Catalog. For further information, please contact the Department of English.
ENGLISH 100 BASIC WRITING Director of Writing Studies Designed for students who want extra help with their writing, this course teaches the processes and strategies students will need to succeed in English 101, 102, and at the University. Students in the course will be given many opportunities to draft, edit, and revise their writing; to discuss their writing with their instructor and peers; to address their specific writing needs; and to develop the confidence and enthusiasm for writing that can lead to success in future courses in which writing may be required. Some class discussion and readings focus on the function and scope of language and communication in personal contexts. English 100 is the first course in SIUC’s Stretch Program. The Stretch Program is designed to help students develop the writing skills they will need to successfully complete the English Composition requirement and excel at the University. In the Stretch Program, students take English 100 and English 101 in consecutive semesters with the same instructor, using the same primary textbook for both courses and following a carefully sequenced curriculum. This allows both the instructor and student to spend time addressing specific writing needs at a pace and in a sequence that will help students become better writers and readers. English 100 is offered for degree credit (3 hours). English 101 and 102 also count as credit toward the Core Curriculum requirement. PLACEMENT IN ENGLISH 100 All students in English 100 will be given a diagnostic essay test on the first day of class. The essay will be scored, and the results will be used to advise students whether to remain in English 100/Stretch Program or enroll in an English 101 course. For further information, please review “The Student’s Guide to Directed Self-Placement and the English 100/Stretch Program,” which will also help you decide whether English 100 is the proper course with which to begin the English Composition sequence. STUDENT LEARNING OBJECTIVES In English 100, students will become familiar with the writing demands of English 101 and of the University; learn useful methods for producing and interpreting a variety of texts of familiar and interesting subjects; learn processes for inventing and elaborating ideas, for shaping them into purposeful and successful writing, for revising, and for editing; learn strategies for effectively developing and organizing sentences and paragraphs; begin to appreciate, through dialogue and reflection, the important role of language and communication in the students’ own writing and reading, in college, and in the world; learn the appropriate use of Edited American English. Four Writing Projects 70% of course grade Each involves invention, drafting, revising, and editing. Writer’s Notebook 20% The notebook may include responses to readings, practice with invention and style, peer responses, and a variety of other types of writing that exercise students’ abilities to write clearly and analytically and to read and think critically. Final Examination 10% Students will have two hours to write an essay on a topic to be announced. ENGLISH 101 ENGLISH COMPOSITION I Director of Writing Studies English Composition I--English 101 provides students with the rhetorical foundations that prepare them for the demands of academic and professional writing. In this course, students will learn and employ the strategies and processes that good writers use whenever they try to accomplish a specific purpose. In college, these purposes include comprehending, instructing, entertaining, persuading, investigating, problem-solving, evaluating, explaining, and refuting. Each purpose can be addressed through impromptu writing, short-preparation writing, and long-term writing projects. In addition to preparing students for academic communication, this core-curriculum course prepares students to use writing to realize professional and personal goals. Therefore, class discussion and readings will address the function of rhetoric and of the composing process in a variety of contexts. To foster effective communication, the course will train students in the critical discussion of communication. During the semester, each student will learn to respond effectively to other authors’ writing and to use responses to his or her own writing as part of the composing process. PLACEMENT IN ENGLISH COMPOSITION I: ENGLISH 101 To qualify for placement in English 101, students must have completed English 100 with a C or better or have elected to enroll in the course. Students should review “The Student’s Guide to Directed Self-Placement and the English 100/Stretch Program,” which will also help students identify the introductory composition course that corresponds to their interest in, training in, and facility with critical reading and writing. This information is available on the Internet at http://www.siu.edu/departments/english/writing/index.html, from your instructor, or from the Writing Studies office in Faner 2390. COURSE GOALS After taking English 101, students should be able to: COURSE MATERIALS A 3.5” computer disk or a rewritable data CD Access to a computer that is connected to the Internet COURSEWORK During the semester, your instructor will require you to write frequently, for a variety of audiences and in variety of forms. Most of this work will serve as direct or indirect contributions to the primary project of English 101, the course Portfolio (explained below. The Portfolio will comprise revised versions of your major assignments (Unit Projects) and an analysis of your writing and your communicative development during the semester. During the semester you will do work that is equivalent to six major papers. Unit Projects English 101 is divided into four units, and at the end of each unit, you will produce a well developed text that is the equivalent of three to five double-spaced pages with one-inch margins and in twelve-point Times New Roman. For each unit, your instructor will post on the WebCT site detailed assignment guidelines (in the appropriate forum on the WebCT Discussion Board). Each of these texts (also called unit assignments, unit essays, or major assignments) will emerge from a process approach to writing. In this process, you engage in invention activities, planning activities, drafting activities, and revision/editing activities (including peer review). Unit One -- Application Packet: For a professional audience, you will compose a letter of application and a resume in support of an application for employment. Mandatory inclusion in the Portfolio. Unit Two -- Response Article: For an academic audience, you will compose a critical response to an academic article that will be assigned by your instructor. Mandatory inclusion in the Portfolio. Unit Three -- Analysis: For a business audience, you will compose a technical report that evaluates a one-page advertisement (which appears in a magazine that will be assigned by your instructor). Mandatory inclusion in the Portfolio. Unit Four -- Literature Review: You will synthesize material from a variety of sources about one subject. Optional inclusion in the Portfolio. In some sense, each Unit Project will serve as a model for the Portfolio that you will submit near the end of the semester. Each Unit Project will gather your work during the unit as evidence of your rhetorical growth, just as the Portfolio will gather your work during the entire semester. During each unit, you will engage in work that will prepare the text that you will submit for review at the end of the unit. Often, these Small Assignments will be stages in the writing process, but they might be other documents such as quizzes and reading notes. Occasionally, your instructor will assign a more demanding assignment as a portion of this grade (for instance, a peer review of a classmate’s writing or a detailed summary of a reading); to such texts, the instructor will assign a greater value (the equivalent of three or five Small Assignments). During the semester, you will likely have one of these assignments due during each class. (Frequently, you will have to submit at the beginning of class one that you have composed at home and, then, compose another during class.) Though this course does not have a specific class participation grade, the Small Assignments will indicate your level of engagement. Portfolio This course has been designed to increase your ability to communicate, particularly in writing. It does so by encouraging you to develop and then exercise a rhetorical sensitivity by which you identify the constraints and opportunities of any communicative challenge and respond appropriately. To improve this ability (which you already posses), this course is structured around a portfolio system, in which a large portion of your grade (forty percent) is based on texts (Unit Projects) that you will be able to revise for much of the semester, drawing upon the rhetorical sensitivity that you develop, your instructor’s comments, your peers’ comments, and other resources that you might employ (for instance, the Writing Center). Near the end of the semester, you will submit your Portfolio by gathering work that you have done during the semester and polished to “presentation quality” text. You will present this work to your instructor in an appropriate fashion (for instance, in a three-ring binder, as a spiral-bound book, or as a webpage) as evidence of your ability to write and as evidence of your learning during the course of the semester. This presentation-quality project will be graded on the quality of the writing, not on effort. Nonetheless, the project’s subject is your enhanced understanding and improved ability to write. Exams In this class you will take a midterm and a final exam. The material that the exams will cover will be presented by the instructor later in the semester. Percentages Small Assignments 20 % Unit 1 (weeks 1- 3) 05 Unit 2 (weeks 4-7) 05 Unit 3 (weeks 9-11) 05 Unit 4 (weeks 14-15) 10 Portfolio (weeks 12-13) 40 Exams (week 8, finals week) 15 The schedule listed here is tentative and subject to some change.
ENGLISH 102 ENGLISH COMPOSITION II Director of Writing Studies Required Texts: *These readings are from chapters ten through sixteen of The Aims of Argument. Therefore, a copy of the complete Aims of Argument (fifth edition!) is an acceptable alternative. PLACEMENT IN ENGLISH COMPOSITION II: ENGLISH 102 To qualify for enrollment in English 102, students must have completed English 101 or an approved equivalent with a C or better or have passed the Writing Studies’ English 101 proficiency exam. A 3.5" computer disk or a rewritable data CD Access to a computer that is connected to the Internet COURSE GOALS English Composition II reinforces the rhetorical foundations that students acquired in English Composition I and uses these foundations to improve students’ academic discourse. After taking English Composition II, students will be able to: • use an understanding of ethos, audience, subject matter, process, and context to identify and achieve complex rhetorical goals; COURSEWORK Four Writing Projects 65% Students will submit each writing project at the end of a course unit. In each unit, students will engage in a composition process that comprises invention, planning, drafting, peer-review, and revision and editing. Each writing project must be submitted to the instructor as a typed or computer-generated document and kept as an electronic document (in the file format that the instructor requests). The last Writing Project (35 % of the grade) will take the form of a Research Portfolio. This collection of presentation-quality work will include a research paper and other texts completed and revised during the course of the semester. Writer’s Notebook 20% Students will regularly compose small texts and preliminary texts in class and out of class in order to improve their reading and writing and to prepare the four writing projects. The notebook may include responses to readings, practice with invention and style, peer responses, and other kinds of writing and research that exercise students’ abilities to read and think critically and write clearly and analytically. Two Tests 15% During the semester, students will take one test during a class period and a two-hour final examination. The topics will be announced by the instructor prior to the tests, which will require students to employ the critical reading and writing strategies that they have developed in the course, to explain rhetorical concepts, and to evidence an understanding of the conventions of academic writing.
ENGLISH 119 INTRODUCTION TO CREATIVE WRITING Staff
This course offers an introduction to the art and craft of writing poetry and short fiction. Students read and analyze published poetry and fiction, write poems and stories, and read and discuss the work of their classmates.
ENGLISH 120 ADVANCED FRESHMAN COMPOSITION Director of Writing Studies RequiredTexts: Students should check textbook listing for specific sections at the bookstore. This course provides an opportunity for students in the top ten percent of the English section of ACT or with the qualifying score on the CLEP to fulfill the six-hour Foundation Skills requirement in Composition with an Advanced Freshman Composition course. The course offers a reading and analysis of five critically important books addressed to the general reader. The books represent the following categories: autobiography; eyewitness reporting; an intellectual discipline; politics and the public good; and a book of fiction. Writing assignments involve rigorous critiques of each of the assigned books.
ENGLISH 121 THE WESTERN LITERARY TRADITION Humphries Students should check textbook listing for specific sections at the bookstore. Required Reading: This course promotes an awareness of tradition as something formed and revised within particular historical contexts. As a body of beliefs, premises, and ideas, tradition does not persist through time merely by the inertia of its dead weight. Tradition is a function of intellectual and aesthetic preservation, and literary tradition continues because readers and writers have reasons--both good and bad--to keep it alive. The course readings provide an opportunity to help students develop a rational view of the Western literary tradition by studying a variety of recurrent themes and forms. A few such themes may include innocence and divine justice (or punishment), love and sexuality, forbidden or tragic knowledge, and politics (not the least the politics involved in tradition itself). Formally, the readings can be arranged to pose questions about literary forms: epic, tragedy, comedy, parable, and the novel.
ENGLISH 204 LITERARY PERSPECTIVE ON THE MODERN WORLD Staff Kafka. Metamorphosis. Dover. During subsequent weeks of the course, instructors will teach three or four works from the following lists: Hurston. Their Eyes Were Watching God. HarperCollins. Furthermore, instructors of individual sections may supplement the reading requirements listed above with one or two additional works of their own choosing relevant to the historical era and the “theme” of English 204. Student Learning Objectives Students should be able to: (a) use appropriate literary-critical vocabulary; (b) identify, analyze, and discuss key themes of modern literature; and (c) support interpretive readings with appropriate, coherently presented textual evidence. Course Description The literature of the 20th century depicts the modern world as a place of shifting perspectives and uncertain values. Many writers and critics refer to our time as one of dislocation. This description can be seen as positive or negative. On the one hand, the modern world is a place where the creativity of the artistic and technological imagination has brought us delight and comfort, along with considerable ethical and moral puzzlements. On the other hand, the modern world is a place of conflict and homelessness (from traditions, families, values and familiar narrative forms), a situation that can result in exhilaration and terror both. In the twentieth century, our capacity for genocidal warfare is precariously balanced against our awareness of the integrity of others different from ourselves and our responsibility for the world. These are the perspectives that define this course. In English 204 students will be expected to participate in discussion and to practice critical and thoughtful reading and writing. Instructors will choose readings from 1900 to the end of century, giving balanced attention to each quarter of the century. Some sections may require attendance at films or dramatic productions outside of regular class sessions. Course Requirements and Grading Midterm and final examinations (essay) Papers on topics inspired by texts and discussion
ENGLISH 205 THE AMERICAN MOSAIC IN LITERATURE Jackson The predominant theme for the American Mosaic in Literature is family life, since family life seems at once to isolate and preserve cultural differences and to provide some means, usually through self-discovery, to resolve conflicts arising from these differences in a reconciliation without loss of identity. Course units: First Encounters; Captivity, Slavery -- and Escape; Immigration and City Life; Cultures and Families in Transition.
ENGLISH 225 WOMEN IN LITERATURE Yeomans Gilbert & Gubar, eds. The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women. 2nd ed. W. W. Norton.
ENGLISH 290 INTERMEDIATE ANALYTICAL WRITING Director of Writing Studies Required Text: Aaron. The Little, Brown Compact Handbook. 5th ed. Longman, 2004. (Any edition of The Little, Brown Compact Handbook or the Maimon. A Writer’s Resource: A Handbook for Writing and Research may be used.) Since individual instructors may select a reader, students should check listing for specific sections at the bookstore. Intermediate Analytical Writing is designed for any student who wishes to improve his or her writing skills to meet the demands of academic writing across the disciplines and/or the demands of professions that value careful analysis and communication. The course emphasizes analytical writing, both as means of invention and a form of persuasion. Course readings and assignments will provide students with opportunities to study and practice the rhetorical forms used in their discipline, but attention to the persuasive nature of analysis will teach students the rhetorical foundations necessary for adapting writing to any situation. Course Goals After taking Intermediate Analytical Writing, students will be able to: Coursework Four Writing Projects 70% Small Writing Assignments 20% Students will regularly compose brief texts and preliminary texts in class and out of class to improve their analytical skills and to prepare their writing projects. Regular small writing will include exercises in analysis, critical responses to readings, short-answer questions, and modeling exercises. The composing process for the writing projects will require invention exercises, rough plans, drafts, and peer-reviews. As students will write in class every day, a portion of this notebook grade will contribute to the class-participation grade. Final Examination 10% Students will engage in a final examination or project in which they will communicate the results of their analyses of text(s) chosen by the instructor.
ENGLISH 291 INTERMEDIATE TECHNICAL WRITING Director of Writing Studies Required Texts: This course provides students with a greater awareness of the demands of professional literacy. Students will assess rhetorical situations (context, purpose, audience and subject matter) that are typical of nonacademic settings, while fostering skills that are essential for academic literacy. Emphasis will be placed on writing as a process with particular focus on making the transition from academic to work world writing tasks: recursive writing, using group conflict for invention, synthesizing research and feedback, and confronting issues of authorship. Course Goals In English 291, students will: Coursework Five Assignments 50% Each involves invention, drafting, revising and editing. In-Class Assignments 20% Includes assessing rhetorical situations, dictation, and responses to readings. Collaborative Project 20% Final Examination 10% Students will have two hours to demonstrate their knowledge by choosing from a list of rhetorical situations, assessing the situation, and chronicling the process an individual or group would go through to produce the appropriate, final document.
ENGLISH 300 INTRODUCTION TO LANGUAGE ANALYSIS Costello, C. C. Costello’s section: Required texts: Recommended text: English 300 is concerned with the nature of language and linguistic inquiry. The course will begin with a brief review of the evolution and historical context of English. A general linguistic introduction will follow, which will include material on semantics, syntax, morphology, phonology and dialectic variation. A strong emphasis will be placed on critical thinking skills, including recognition of the various purposes for which language is decoded, and the various ways that society, culture, economics and politics impact our language use. Concurrently, the students will study elements of grammar and usage in Edited American English and practice using this understanding to revise and edit text. Because teacher-training candidates must take this course, the course will contain both theoretical and applied pedagogical components. Since the ability to teach a subject requires a developed understanding of that subject, all students enrolled in this course will engage in these pedagogical activities. During the semester, students will be expected to engage in collaborative instruction and to develop and present their own “grammar lessons.” This instructional practice will culminate in an individual age-level-appropriate “teaching portfolio/textbook” of student-created and adapted materials. These textbooks can be modified to reflect students' interest. For example, in addition to the required elements of the portfolio, there are several optional assignments. Creative writing students might choose to look at elements of language via reflective essays, poetry, and fiction. Students of literature might work on a stylistic and/or grammatical analysis of a favorite writer. Your textbook is meant to demonstrate your understanding and application of the content of the class – and to position yourself as a co-creator of language among others. Requirements:
ENGLISH 301 INTRODUCTION TO LITERARY ANALYSIS Students are introduced to basic terms and concepts of literary study and to different ways of approaching literary texts. Students are required to write and revise at least seven papers of various kinds, including a documented research paper. Bogumil’s Section: James Joyce. Dubliners. Dover. Requirements: 8 Analyses (4 pages plus/ 10 pts. ea./ total 80 pts); 2 examinations (quotation identification and explication/ 10 quotations worth 10 pts. ea/ 100 pts. ea) ; Critical Analysis Paper (10 pts. for draft/ 50 pts for paper/ 60 pts. total). Klaver’s Section: Required Texts: E. Anthony’s Sections:
ENGLISH 302A LITERARY HISTORY OF BRITAIN, BEOWULF TO CIVIL WAR Chandler and Riedinger Chandler’s Section: Requirements: Riedinger’s Section: Required Texts: Requirements: Attendance, informed participation in discussion of assigned readings, three short papers, two hour-examinations and a final. Papers and all examinations are of equal weight in determining course grade. This course surveys British literature from its beginnings through the work of Milton. Emphasis is upon close reading of major works by major authors, although the course also traces the chief lines of literary continuity from the Middle Ages to the Restoration.
ENGLISH 302B LITERARY HISTORY OF BRITAIN, RESTORATION TO 1900 Boulukos and Chandler The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Vol. C, The Restoration and Eighteenth Century. 8th ed. W. W. Norton. Boulukos’s Section: Additional Texts: Requirements: Chandler’s Section: Requirements: This course surveys British literature from 1660 to 1900. Roughly a third of the course is devoted each to Restoration and 18th- century literature, the Romantics, the Victorians. Emphasis is on an understanding of the literature itself, but students also consider works in relation to their historical eras and their social contexts.
ENGLISH 303 LITERARY HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES BEFORE 1900 Brunner and Wells, J. This course surveys American literature from its beginning to the end of the nineteenth century, with emphasis on selected major writers such as Hawthorne, Melville, Dickinson, Whitman, Stowe, and Twain, and cultural movements such as Puritanism, Romanticism and Realism as well as the writing of women and ethnic and minority groups. Brunner’s Section: American Literature (Volume One), edited by Cain. (An anthology of material from pre-colonial days to the Civil War). Longman / Pearson. Section Two is a specialized section of the American literary survey that is designed to help prepare for teacher education (primarily in the high school); it is limited to those who are either in, or who are moving toward, the later stages of a degree in teaching at the high school level. It is open to Education majors minoring in English and who are working toward a B.S. degree and English majors with a program that specializes in Education courses and who are working toward a B.A. degree. For students who do not fit either of these descriptions, Section One is available. Section Two emphasizes “classic” texts of American literature that are likely to appear in the high school curriculum, and this course approaches those texts by devising possible teaching strategies for them. At its center is an extensive (four-week) concentration on a novel that, after 125 years or so, is still capable of arousing strong controversy, especially when taught to young readers: Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Using a critical edition that includes additional material, including the original illustrations for the first edition, contemporary book reviews that condemn and praise the work, a brief history of the various moves to ban the texts from libraries and schools, plus essays by teachers that comment upon such problem areas as the use of black and southern dialect and the controversial final chapters, this class will help each student prepare material for an individual portfolio on teaching this controversial work. Portfolio preparation is a large part of this course. We begin the class by studying various other texts that form the basis for a distinctive American literature. We will examine travel writings by early explorers, the Puritans and the Quakers whose approaches to community pulled the early colonies in opposite directions, and the popular writings of the early Republic, including writings by Washington Irving, Edgar Allen Poe, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Working in small groups of three, students will assemble material for presentation to the class that can be used as the basis for teaching portfolios on this material. Following our introductory weeks on the beginnings of American literature and our in-depth study of Huckleberry Finn, we will examine in detail the poetry of Whitman and Dickinson, devising useful ways to introduce poetry to young readers, and we will conclude with an in-depth discussion of writings on the Civil War, both poetry (Whitman, Melville, Emerson, Longfellow and Whittier) and prose (Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage). For a final project, all students will prepare a teaching portfolio on a short story by Kate Chopin. The class will be graded both individually and for group work. All students in Section Two will prepare material for class presentation by working in small groups in the first and second half of the course; students will also submit an example of their individual work in a portfolio at the midpoint of the class and as a final project; and students will be asked to contribute brief essays and proposals for course assignments throughout the semester. Well’s Sections: Required Texts: Packet of shorter texts from such writers as Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Herman Melville, Washington Irving, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. This course provides an introduction to several important forms of literature characteristic of the 18th and 19th-century United States. Because it is a survey course, it places an emphasis on variety. We will survey multiple genres, including novels, memoirs, poetry, and short stories. Along the way we will encounter several literary modes and styles, from the sentimentality that governs Catharine Maria Sedgwick’s Hope Leslie and the gothicism that defines Edgar Allan Poe’s stories to the utopian visions of Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward and the dark humor of Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court. We will also encounter writers who write from a variety of subject positions, from Nathaniel Hawthorne, who could trace his ancestry to the Puritans who colonized Massachusetts in the 1630s, to Harriet Jacobs, whose ancestors arrived on slave ships. Among several of the authors we will read, these differing relationships to family will give rise to differing representations of American community and history. Hawthorne, who knew more about his great-great-great grandfather than Jacobs did about her own father and mother, wrote about his native Salem with a sense of “sensuous sympathy of dust for dust.” Jacobs, who had to escape her native North Carolina before she could ever write her own story, wrote with a sense of permanent displacement, a “sad feeling” of being “afraid of one’s native country.” To give some coherence to this varied set of authors and texts, we will think about how each writer sought to imagine “America” and to articulate a relationship with the country’s present and past. We will explore how a fantasy of belonging to a nation with a deep past and promising future is written into the very words of the Constitution, which envisions a “We the people” bound together by a responsibility “to form a more perfect union” and “secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.” This fantasy of belonging has proven seductive to some, alienating to others. We will encounter many examples of both in this course, providing, I hope, not only an introduction to early American literature but also to ways of conceptualizing the relationships that link literary texts, national histories, and ourselves.
ENGLISH 305 LITERARY HISTORY OF BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES, 1900 TO PRESENT Dettmar Dettmar, et al. Longman Anthology of British Literature. 3rd ed., Vol. 2C. Addison-Wesley Longman. This course surveys literature in America and Great Britain from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present including the writings of women and minority and ethnic groups with an emphasis on comparing and contrasting significant writers in both countries and on the distinction between modernist works and postmodernist texts.
ENGLISH 307I FILM AS LITERARY ART Weedman This course changes its emphasis periodically, but the common feature of the last two years has involved the question of film authorship in relation to the American cultural tradition. It is not a literature into film adaptation class whereby films are selected to illustrate the supposed “superiority” of the novel but rather one which examines the complex relationship film has to literature and culture in terms of relevant factors of history and industry. Required texts: The emphasis this semester is on the work of British-expatriate director Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980). Although today regarded as the “Master of Suspense” and one of the cinema’s most respected artists, Hitchcock did not receive the same level of critical adulation throughout the majority of his career. The director’s box-office success coupled with his regular use of the suspense film genre – a genre that he helped formulate and make distinctively his own – contributed to his being passed off by American film critics as little more than a populist entertainer. “Hitchcock’s reputation has suffered from the fact that he has given audiences more pleasure than is permissible for serious cinema,” Village Voice critic Andrew Sarris wrote in The American Cinema in 1968. Due in part to the writings of Sarris, Robin Wood, and the French New Wave critics, Hitchcock’s filmography began to be reevaluated in the 1960s and analyzed for its thematic and stylistic complexity. This course will not only examine how Hitchcock appropriated and refined the filmmaking techniques of German Expressionism and Russian Montage to realize his own idea of “Pure Cinema” – filmmaking emphasizing the composition and juxtaposition of images, instead of reliance on dialogue – but also how his recurring themes and visual style evolved throughout is career and influenced future directors’ work in the suspense film genre. Over the course of the semester, we will screen eleven of the director’s classics – The Lodger, The 39 Steps, Shadow of a Doubt, Notorious, Strangers on a Train, Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, Marnie, and Frenzy – and three films in the same vein by acknowledged Hitchcockian disciples: Brian DePalma’s Dressed to Kill, Martin Scorsese’s remake of Cape Fear, and Dario Argento’s Do You Like Hitchcock?
ENGLISH 352 FORMS OF POETRY Joseph Strand and Boland, eds. The Making of a Poem. W.W. Norton. In this class we will study formal poetic techniques in order to learn the fundamental principles that poets use to create poetry. We will practice those techniques in a series of exercises that will allow us to explore different forms of poetry from English, Italian, French, African-American, Asian, and Arabic traditions. This class will give you a basic understanding of poetic form, which you can draw upon as you continue to write poetry. Requirements: A portfolio of 12 poems, written over the course of the semester, and (and in the following forms: blank verse, Italian sonnet, English sonnet, villanelle, sestina, pantoum or rondeau, blues poem, ghazal, haiku, syllabic poem or cinquain, free verse or prose poem, occasional verse poem), memorization and public recitation of a poem before the class, a two to three page paper on the poem you recited (due with portfolio), two quizzes, class participation.
ENGLISH 365 SHAKESPEARE Collins and Staff Collin’s Section: Bevington, ed. The Necessary Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Pearson Longman, 2005. Lecture with separate discussion sections. Detailed study of seven plays: two tragedies (Othello and Hamlet); two comedies (As You Like It and Twelfth Night); one “problem play” (The Merchant of Venice); one history play (1 Henry 4 or Henry 5); and a late romance (The Tempest). Requirements: regular attendance at lectures and active participation in the discussion sections; in-class writing and/or quizzes; three papers (5+ pages each); and mid-term and final examinations. Sections 1 and 2
ENGLISH 381A CREATIVE WRITING: BEGINNING FICTION Lordan and Townsend Lordan’s Section: Readings: This is the plan. It may change, but probably only in the direction of more reading. We’ll read about 20 stories from the text in the first half of the semester, and a few essays. Writings: This is the plan. It may change, but probably only in the directin of more exercises and more revisions. Townsend’s Section: Kenison and Chabon, eds. The Best American Short Stories, 2005 Houghton Mifflin, 2005. Workshopping is the major part of this course—you will be reading your classmates’ stories and offering them much in the way of constructive criticism. To that end, class participation will be a significant part of your grade. You will also be expected to read, aloud, in-class exercises focusing on specific craft elements. More important than anything, for your writing future, is that you read, and we will be discussing a wide variety of established writers. We will all be writing stories set in the same American town this semester.
ENGLISH 381B CREATIVE WRITING: INTERMEDIATE FICTION Benedict and Magnuson Benedict’s Section: Magnuson’s Section:
ENGLISH 382A CREATIVE WRITING: BEGINNING POETRY Jordan and Meyerhofer Jordan’s Section: Nelson. The Home Place. Louisiana State University. This is an introductory level poetry writing class, taught in a mixture of discussion, workshop, and lecture format. There is a prerequisite of English 102 or 120 or consent of instructor. We will look at various craft issues of importance to poets, learn the vocabulary to discuss poetry, and read contemporary poems carefully with the goal of learning craft techniques from those poets and adapting their strategies to our own ends. Writing poetry entails reading poetry; thus reading and responding to readings will be an Kowit. In the Palm of Your Hand. Tilbury House. Requirements:
ENGLISH 382B CREATIVE WRITING: INTERMEDIATE POETRY Jordan and Meyerhofer Jordan’s Section: Kimbrell. The Gatehouse Heaven. Sarabande. English 382B is an intermediate level poetry writing class with the prerequisite of English 382A. This class is designed for students with some poetry writing experience who wish to generate new poems while furthering their knowledge of craft and poetic technique. The class will focus equally on studying the technique of several contemporary poets and adapting those techniques to our own writing, writing and workshop of original poems, and learning and using poetic craft. Students will be expected to read many contemporary poems, write poems for workshop and participate fully in class discussions including putting written comments on their fellow poet’s poems submitted to workshop, to take and pass one test on the vocabulary of poetry, and to submit a final revised portfolio of approximately 10 poems. This class is taught with the assumption that only serious students of poetry take it; if you do not wish to learn and improve and are not willing to work, then it is highly recommended that you not take this class. Pay close attention: You must attend the first class or contact Professor Jordan with information concerning your intentions for the class; otherwise you will lose your position in the class to someone wishing to add in. Meyerhofer’s Section: Thiel. Open Roads. Pearson Longman. This is an intermediate-level workshop in poetry-writing, designed for students with some previous poetry-writing experience, who are seeking to improve their writers skills as well as their understanding of and appreciation for poetic techniques. We will write new poems, read and comment on one another’s poems, and learn about poetry’s formal elements. We will use our text as a basis for discussion about poetry and as a source for poetry exercises. Each student in class will be expected to duplicate copies of his or her poems for class discussion. Requirements:
ENGLISH 393 SPECIAL TOPICS IN LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE Costello, C.
ENGLISH 401 MODERN ENGLISH GRAMMARS Nelms Required Texts: English 401, Modern Grammars, is NOT a course simply in English grammar. The term grammar is used here in both its definitions—in its broader meaning of the system of rules that governs all aspects of the language and in its narrower meaning of syntax (sentence structure). English 401 will survey the field of linguistics (the study of language and its “grammar”) as it relates to the teaching of written communication in English, with special emphasis on syntax and punctuation. This survey will include brief discussions of phonology, morphology, and semantics. Language acquisition and emergent literacy will be discussed at greater length, as will sociolinguistics, especially African American English. The bulk of the course will focus on English syntax and punctuation and how to effectively teach English syntax and punctuation. We now have over a century of research that tells us in no uncertain terms that the teaching of formal grammar—that is, teaching standard English grammar rules in traditional ways—not only does not improve the quality of one’s writing, reading, or thinking; it can have detrimental effects. Yet, we also know that “errors”—that is, variations from Standard English—especially in formal writing situations, can “mark” the writer as inferior and diminish the effectiveness of her or his writing. So how, then, can we help writers improve their syntax and punctuation and avoid such marking? That will be one of the primary emphases of the course. And in order to understand how to do that, we will need to have a good (though not complete) understanding of English syntax and punctuation.
ENGLISH 412 ENGLISH NON-DRAMATIC LITERATURE: THE RENAISSANCE Cancelled
ENGLISH 425 MODERN CONTINENTAL POETRY Zimra Required Texts: Rimbaud. Season in Hell and Drunken Boat. New Directions. This course introduces students to major poetic schools and movements of the 20th century, as they articulate and reshape 19th century Romanticism. Whenever possible, we study an entire cycle, rather than march through disconnected excerpts. We start with foundational texts (Rimbaud, Rilke) and, the better to understand the comparative nature of modern poetics, we end with two seminal poets in the Americas, Spain’s Octavio Paz and Martinique’s Aime Cesaire. Objectives: Requirements:
ENGLISH 426 AMERICAN POETRY TO 1900 Anthony Emily Dickinson: Selected Letters. ed. Johnson. Belknap Press. In this course we will examine in detail the intense and fascinating world of Emily Dickinson’s poetry. Dickinson’s 1700-plus poems cover a wide range of topics, but we will group them into units that will allow us to gain interpretive traction, and understand how her often obscure work was in fact engaging quite closely with some of the period’s most pressing issues (the rise of consumerism and capitalism; the rise of a feminist sensibility; the changing nature of race relations, post-Civil War; the rise of mass culture; etc.). We will focus mainly on Dickinson’s poetry, but we will also spend time on her often amazing correspondence, as well as some novels, stories and other poems that might help us understand the contest in which Dickinson was working. Requirements: 2 short papers of approximately 5 pages; one longer term paper (10-15 pages for undergraduates; 15-20 pages for graduates).
ENGLISH 427 AMERICAN POETRY FROM 1900 TO PRESENT Brunner Nelson, ed. Anthology of Modern American Poetry. Oxford University Press. American poetry has always been in the process of being invented and reinvented. But this state of flux has radically increased in the last hundred years. Those poets who are currently considered “major” always seem to be in the process of defending their reputations against newcomers (or the newly-rediscovered) who – history shows us – will eventually edge some of them out. This survey takes into account both those who have managed to remain as established figures as well as those who have begun to overtake them, based on a changing set of interests driven by an increasing attention to race, gender, and ethnicity. Along with teaching selected works by major modernist poets (Eliot, Pound, Williams, Stevens, Crane, Moore, and H.D.) this course will also teach works by those who objected to the modernists either for being too extreme or not extreme enough. These others, from the opening years of the century, include Langston Hughes, Mina Loy, Vachel Lindsay, e.e. cummings and Edna St. Vincent Millay. This survey course also continues to bring the same kind of attention to the poets of the so-called “mid- This is also, to no small extent, a class that demonstrates how to apply some of the fundamental precepts of prosody. This class will devote time in various class periods to explaining the kind of prosody that various American poets draw upon to individualize their own styles. Because American poetry has been particularly interested in vernacular language – in the way that everyday persons speak, including slang, dialect, and regionalist talk – it is especially important to extend the examination of prosody well beyond that of simply scanning lines for their metrics. We begin with the need to understand the ground rule for rhythm and meter, but we proceed to investigate such matters as diction, line break, and syntax. Students should also be prepared to work with a computer of their own choice that has access to the internet. Class sessions will regularly draw on material that is only available on-line, at the Modern American Poetry Site (MAPS) website which has additional material on individual poets that was developed for use in conjunction with this anthology.
ENGLISH 436 MAJOR AMERICAN WRITERS Anthony Required Texts: Hawthorne. The Blithedale Romance. intro. Kolody. Penguin. In this course we will examine the gothic as the genre in which American culture has conducted its most intensive responses to the rise of capitalism and consumerism over the past 200 years. Focusing on the way in which the middle-class family has acted as the focus of this genre, we will spend time seeking to understand how the thematics so central to the gothic--the haunted house; the maiden in distress; incest; gender panic; racial Othering; etc.--can themselves be understood as attempts to make sense of the increasingly fraught nature of middle-class (and usually white) selfhood as it has evolved within a capitalist system. This course will be comparative in nature, which is to say that we will move back and forth between nineteenth-century gothic fiction, and very recent versions of the gothic in fiction and film. Film: Requirements: 2 short papers of approximately 5 pages; one longer term paper (10 pgs. for undergraduates; 15-20 for graduates).
ENGLISH 445 CULTURAL BACKGROUNDS OF WESTERN LITERATURE Humphries Lawall, ed. The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces. Vol. I, 8th ed. W. W. Norton. This course provides a historical, thematic, and stylistic study of literary masterpieces by Requirements: There will be a midterm and a final, each containing ID questions (covering the reading assignments) and a section requiring a short essay. Also, there will be a short term paper on a subject of a comparative nature. Graduate students are required to give in addition an oral report on an assigned subject. NOTE: Because of the substantial amount of reading required for this course, it is absolutely essential that students keep up with the daily reading as assigned in the syllabus.
ENGLISH 446 CARIBBEAN LITERATURE Zimra Required Texts: Open to English majors and minors, this class fulfills the “continental literature” requirement. Also, “Women’s Studies”. We follow the identity quest of a young female narrator coming of age as her country achieves political independence. These women writers offer us feisty characters grappling with a changing sense of self in a society where race and gender are tightly pre-scripted for them. Expect intensive close-reading, shared research resulting in team-presentations (followed by short position papers); and, instead of a final examination, a final individual annotated bibliography. If you have not had the opportunity to take a class on literary analysis, such as ENGL 301, now would be a good time to do so, since your presentations and position papers will need to demonstrate good analytical skills. If you have had other 400-level classes on modern topics (literature, history, sociology), you are welcome to explore a comparative topic for your final project. Objectives: Goals:
ENGLISH 448 IRISH LITERATURE Dougherty Required Texts: In this course we will examine British and Irish writing of the nineteenth century purporting to represent Ireland and the Irish. Requirements:
ENGLISH 459A AMERICAN PROSE FROM 1900 TO MID-CENTURY: THE MODERN AGE Fox Himes. If He Hollers Let Him Go. Thunder’s Mouth. (1947) A detailed examination of selected works of American prose (mostly fiction) from the first half of the twentieth century. Requirements:
ENGLISH 462 ENGLISH RESTORATION AND EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY DRAMA Boulukos Required Text: The period of the mid-seventeenth century was one of the most turbulent in all of English history. Parliamentary and Puritan forces defeated the Royalists and took control of the country after the civil war, going so far as to execute the King, and even to close down the theater (due, of course, to its immorality). Perhaps naturally, when the Puritans could not maintain power after Cromwell’s death, both the royal court and the theater returned with a vengeance. For the first time, women were allowed on the stage, a development that did nothing to diminish the perception of the theater as transgressive and even sinful. Having been completely outlawed, playwrights now flaunted their immodesty as a badge of honor, and the comedy of the period is distinguished by some of the bawdiest and wittiest plays ever written in English. Figures like the poet Lord Rochester, a notorious rake and libertine, the actress Nell Gwynn, who acknowledged herself to be “the King’s whore,” and the playwright Aphra Behn, one of the first women to support herself as a professional writer, seemed to typify the era. None of these developments did anything to placate the Puritans, and in 1698, Jeremy Collier launched an attack on “The Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage.” The return of the King was often addressed through the metaphor of patriarchal power, and therefore gender relations and marriage became doubly important to dramatic plots. Furthermore, England’s emerging colonial ambitions, and its internal political strife, led to a strong interest in heroic and tragic roles. In the early eighteenth-century, the most popular plays followed the poetry of the age by turning to satire and even farce. This produced one of the most enduringly popular plays of all time in John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera, set in London’s criminal underworld, and drawing constant parallels to the upper classes and the political figures of the day. Finally, the best plays of the late century, such as Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer and Sheridan’s School for Scandal self-consciously returned to the bawdy wit of the Restoration era. Theater was never as much fun again, at least not until Oscar Wilde wrote over one hundred years later. In this course, we will examine the theater of the time in detail, reading a dozen plays spanning the restoration and eighteenth century. We will pay close attention to the historical and cultural contexts of these plays, and to the contributions of female playwrights. Texts, in addition to those mentioned above, will likely include Behn’s The Rover, Wycherly’s Country Wife, Centlivre’s Bold Stroke for a Wife, Southerne’s Oroonoko, Otway’s Venice Preserved, Farquhar’s Beaux Strategem, and Cowley’s Belle’s Strategem. Requirements:
ENGLISH 464 MODERN BRITISH DRAMA Bogumil Required Texts: In this course, we will read British and Irish playwrights. Our study of these plays will also include situating those texts within relevant historical, political, social, critical and literary contexts. Requirements: For undergraduate and graduate students—10 analyses (5 pages plus/ 15 pts. Ea./ total 150 pts); 2 tests (Quotation identification and explication/ 10 quotations worth 10 pts. ea/ 100 pts. per test/ total 200 pts.) For graduate students only: a mid-length annotated bibliography that entails a survey of a particular playwright’s work and presentation of findings (100 points). Only one absence is permitted, more than two will result in your grade being lowered unless suitable documentation is provided. Assignments—readings, analyses and papers--must be completed by the designated due date. Only typed material is graded. Simply put, no late work will be accepted after the discussion of the text.
ENGLISH 468 AMERICAN DRAMA Klaver Treadwell. Machinal. Nick Hern.
ENGLISH 485A TEACHING WRITING AND LANGUAGE IN THE SECONDARY SCHOOL Nieveen-Pheley Cooper & Odell, eds. Evaluating Writing: The Role of Teachers’ Knowledge About Text, Learning and Culture. National Council of Teachers of English. The primary objectives for this course are 1) to help English education majors become critically reflective composition instructors and 2) to equip these aspiring educators with specific strategies for teaching language and writing at the secondary level. Significant emphasis will be placed on the roles that technology may assume in the contemporary composition classroom. Students will work toward developing a philosophy of integrated secondary Language Arts instruction that is consistent with various national, state, and district standards and guidelines.
ENGLISH 485B TEACHING READING AND LITERATURE IN THE SECONDARY SCHOOL Jackson This course will explore various approaches to teaching literature and critical reading skills at the secondary level, with special attention to strategies for motivating and supporting reluctant readers. Course topics will include: 1) principles of curriculum design, including the selection of appropriate literary works; 2) suggestions for devising and implementing a response-based literature program; 3) approaches to teaching young adult literature; 4) overview of professional resources concerning the teaching of literature in the secondary school. Students will work toward developing a philosophy of integrated secondary Language Arts instruction that is consistent with various national, state, and district standards and guidelines.
ENGLISH 490 EXPOSITORY WRITING Cancelled
ENGLISH 492A CREATIVE WRITING SEMINAR: FICTION Magnuson
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