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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 Texts (if no texts appear, they will be announced later) Course objectives General comments about assignments and grades Course procedures
The English Department Writing Centers (located in Faner 2281, Lentz Hall Learning Resource Center, Morris Library Room 30, 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 four 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, 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
Required Texts:
Ramage. Allyn & Bacon Guide to Writing: Brief. 4th ed. Longman. 2006. Belasco. Constructing Literacies: A Harcourt Reader for College Writers. Harcourt, 2001. Aaron. The Little, Brown Compact Handbook. 5th ed. Longman, 2004. 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 100All 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 ObjectivesIn 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. Coursework
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
Required Texts: Ramage. Allyn & Bacon Guide to Writing: Brief. 4th ed. Longman. 2006. Aaron. The Little, Brown Compact Handbook. 5th ed. Longman, 2004. Selzer. Conversations: Readings for Writers. 6th ed. Longman, 2006. Reynolds. Portfolio Keeping: A Guide for Students. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2000. English Composition I 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 comprehension, instruction, entertainment, persuasion, investigation, problem-resolution, evaluation, explanation, and refutation. 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 their own writing as part of the composing process. Placement in English 101To 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 after reviewing the guidelines for Directed Self-Placement. In addition, all students in English 101 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 101 or enroll in the English 100/101 Stretch Program, a two-semester sequence designed to help students develop the writing skills they will need to satisfy the English Composition requirement and to succeed in future courses that require writing and reading. For further information, 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 GoalsAfter taking English 101, students should be able to generate good writing using various methods for critical thought, for the development of ideas, for the arrangement of those ideas to achieve a specific rhetorical goal, for the application of an appropriate style, and for revision and editing; demonstrate understanding of the ways that language and communication shape experience, construct meaning, and foster community; analyze and describe rhetorical contexts and use such descriptions to increase the efficacy of communicative acts; analyze and use the forms and conventions of academic writing, particularly the forms and conventions of argumentative and analytical writing; produce texts that demonstrate an understanding of how purpose, process, subject matter, form, style, tone and diction are shaped by particular audiences and by specific communicative constraints and opportunities; understand the importance of research to writing, explain the kind of research required by different kinds of writing, and compose effective texts by judiciously using field research, library resources, and sources retrieved from electronic media; employ critical reading and listening as a form of invention, efficiently compose reading and lecture notes that are concise and clear, synthesize different and divergent information, and use the integration of information from multiple sources to engage in critical discourse; use Edited American English appropriately. Course MaterialsA 3.5” computer disk or a rewritable data CD Access to a computer that is connected to the InternetRecommended MaterialsA portable or desktop file case or an accordion folder A portable USB storage device A college-level dictionary
CourseworkDuring the semester, your instructor will require you to write frequently, for a variety of audiences and in a 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. Percentages
Small Assignments 15% Unit 1 05 Unit 2 05 Unit 3 05 Unit 4 05 Unit 5 10 Portfolio 40 Exams 15 ENGLISH 102 ENGLISH COMPOSITION II Director of Writing Studies
Required Texts:
Crusius. Selected Material from the Aims of Argument. McGraw-Hill.Lunsford. Everything’s an Argument: With Readings. Bedford/St. Martin’s. Aaron. The Little, Brown Compact Handbook. 5th ed. Longman, 2004. English Composition II prepares students to become better writers and readers at the college level. The course introduces students to the complex demands of academic literacy and trains students to respond to those demands successfully. Successful academic reading and writing requires the critical observation and production of personal and public knowledge. Students will study and perform such observation and production through (1) inquisitive reading and research, (2) the formulation of hypotheses and research designs and the use of these designs to test hypotheses, (3) the identification of new approaches to inquiry, and (4) the persuasive communication of discoveries. To ensure that students can contribute to this kind of academic discourse, English Composition II teaches students approaches to summary, paraphrase, analysis, interpretation, critical thinking, and documentation. Some class discussion and readings focus on the function and scope of language and communication in a variety of academic contexts. 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; engage in critical reading by applying various analytical techniques; conduct attentive and inquisitive library and field research; explain and employ the methods of argumentation and analysis valued in academic contexts; understand and use Edited American English and appropriate forms of documentation. CourseworkFour 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). 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
RequiredText: 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: Sophocles. Oedipus the King. or Plato. Symposium. The Bible (especially Job, Genesis, and the Gospels). Dante. The Divine Comedy: The Inferno. or Milton. Paradise Lost. Cervantes. Don Quixote. (selections) or Chaucer. The Canterbury Tales. (selections). Shakespeare. Othello. or Henry V. or The Tempest. or Twelfth Night. Voltaire. Candide. or Austen. Pride and Prejudice. Romantic verse: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats. Franklin. Autobiography. or Melville. “Billy Budd.” Kafka. “The Metamorphosis.” or Dostoyevsky. Notes from Underground. Woolf. A Room of One’s Own. 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 Required Reading: All sections will read the following texts during the opening weeks of the course.
Kafka. Metamorphosis. Dover. Woolf. Mrs. Dalloway. Harcourt. Eliot. The Waste Land. W. W. Norton. O’Neill. Four Plays. (“The Hairy Ape”) (“The Emperor Jones”) Signet. Penguin. Faulkner. As I Lay Dying. Vintage International Series. Random House. During subsequent weeks of the course, instructors will teach three or four works from the following lists: Hurston. Their Eyes Were Watching God. HarperCollins. Nabokov. Lolita. Vintage. Random House. Beckett. Waiting for Godot. Grove. Ginsberg. Howl and Other Poems. City Lights. Burgess. A Clockwork Orange. W. W. Norton. Vonnegut. Slaughterhouse-Five. Dell. Kingston. Woman Warrior. Random House. Delillo. White Noise. Penguin. Ishuguro. The Remains of the Day. Vintage. Random House. 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 DescriptionThe 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 GradingMidterm and final examinations (essay) Papers on topics inspired by texts and discussion ENGLISH 205 THE AMERICAN MOSAIC IN LITERATURE Jackson
Didonato. Christ in Concrete. Penguin. Erdrich. Beet Queen. Bantam Doubleday Dell. Jen. Typical American. Penguin. McCourt. Angela’s Ashes. Simon & Schuster. Morrison. Bluest Eye. Penguin. Rico. American Mosaic. Houghton-Mifflin. Villasenor. Rain of Gold. Bantam Doubleday Dell.
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 290 INTERMEDIATE ANALYTICAL WRITING Director of Writing Studies
Required Text:
Aaron. The Little, Brown Compact Handbook. 5th ed. Longman, 2004. Rosenwasser and Stephen. Writing Analytically. 4th ed. Thomson/Heinle, 2006. 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 GoalsAfter taking Intermediate Analytical Writing, students will be able to investigate, identify, and explain the conventions, purposes, patterns of arrangement, forms of proof, and style appropriate to a particular discipline; analyze and conduct research in various forms; differentiate various analytical techniques and employ them to realize particular rhetorical goals; adapt to the demands of various rhetorical contexts in the students’ own disciplines and across disciplines; identify potential for the cross-disciplinary application of rhetorical forms and genres and adapt other disciplines’ rhetoric to the students’ own discipline; compose texts that are incisive, logical, persuasive, informative, and interesting; use an understanding of style, purpose, form, and situation to compose coherent texts that are characterized by their appealing texture, rhythm, and grade. CourseworkFour Writing Projects 70% Students will compose four writing projects (of five to ten pages), including one research-based text. These projects will emerge from a composition process in which students apply analytical techniques to invention, development, and revision. The process will also require students to explore potential applications of the writing projects to their disciplines. 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: Aaron. The Little, Brown Compact Handbook. 4th ed. Longman, 2001. Anderson. Technical Communication: A Reader-Centered Approach. 5th ed. Thomson/Heinle, 2003. 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 GoalsIn English 291, students will continue with the development of strategies for assessing and integrating the demands of context, purpose, audience and subject matter; write documents that address a variety of audiences; adapt form, style, and tone to enhance credibility; develop strategies for assertive and effective collaboration; analyze and synthesize research from various sources and of different genres; sharpen powers of observation and listening through dictation and interviewing; revise by synthesizing different levels and sources of feedback; develop tools for organization and readability such as visual display; reinforce usage of Edited American English. 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 Staff
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.
ENGLISH 301 INTRODUCTION TO LITERARY ANALYSIS Chandler and Klaver Required of all English majors, English 301 is intended to be one of the first English courses a student takes. The emphasis is on writing based upon intensive rather than extensive reading, although selections are drawn from several major genres (poetry, fiction, drama, non-fiction). 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.
Chandler’s section: Section 3
Required Texts: Defoe. Moll Flanders. Signet Classic. Penguin. Tennyson. Selected Poems. Dover Thrift Edition. Dover. Rossetti. Goblin Market and Other Poems. Dover Thrift Edition. Dover. Stevenson. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Dover Thrift Edition. Dover. Kafka. The Metamorphosis and Other Stories. Dover Thrift Edition. Dover. Murfin and Ray. The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms. Bedford/St. Martin’s. Aaron. Little, Brown Compact Handbook. 5th ed. Longman.
Requirements: Five critical essays of varying lengths, with accompanying preliminary work; weekly reading quizzes; midterm exam, “chronic problems” quiz at end. Klaver’s section: Section 2Required Texts: Churchill. Vinegar Tom. Samuel French. James. The Turn of the Screw. 2nd ed. Case Studies. Bedford/St. Martin’s. Birenbaum. The Happy Critic: A Serious but Not Solemn Guide to Thinking and Writing about Literature. McGraw-Hill. ENGLISH 302A LITERARY HISTORY OF BRITAIN, BEOWULF TO CIVIL WAR Riedinger
Required Texts: Abrams, et al., eds. Norton Anthology of English Literature. Vol. 1A. The Middle Ages (or Medieval Period). 7th ed. W. W. Norton. Abrams, et al., eds. Norton Anthology of English Literature. Vol. 1B. The 16th and Early 17th Century. 7th ed. W. W. Norton.
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. 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. ENGLISH 302B LITERARY HISTORY OF BRITAIN, RESTORATION TO 1900 Boulukos and Collins
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 302B LITERARY HISTORY OF BRITAIN, RESTORATION TO 1900 Boulukos and Collins
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. Boulukos’s section: Section 2
Required: Abrams, et al., eds. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Vol. 1C, The Restoration and Eighteenth Century. 7th ed. W. W. Norton. Abrams, et al., eds. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Vol. 2A, The Romantic Period. 7th ed. W. W. Norton. Abrams, et al., eds. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Vol. 2B, The Victorian Age. 7th ed. W. W. Norton. Equiano. The Life of Olaudah Equiano. Dover Thrift Ed. Dover.
Requirements: Midterm examination Final examination 5 page paper 5 response papers (2 pages ea.) Attendance and participation
Collins’s section Section 1
Abrams, et al., eds. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Vol. 1C, The Restoration and Eighteenth Century. 7th ed. W. W. Norton. Abrams, et al., eds. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Vol. 2A, The Romantic Period. 7th ed. W. W. Norton. Abrams, et al., eds. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Vol. 2B, The Victorian Age. 7th ed. W. W. Norton.
Requirements: Regular attendance, full participation in class discussion, three critical-analytic papers (each around five pages in length), a mid-term examination, and a final examination. There will also be occasional quizzes and in-class writing. ENGLISH 303 LITERARY HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES BEFORE 1900 Wells
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.
Wells’s section: Section 2 Sedgwick. Hope Leslie. Rutgers. Hawthorne. Selected Tales and Sketches. Penguin. Thoreau. Walden and Civil Disobedience. Penguin. Whitman. Leaves of Grass. Penguin. Dickinson. Final Harvest. Back Bay Books. Stowe. Uncle Tom’s Cabin. W. W. Norton. Jacobs. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Harvard University Press. Chesnutt. The Marrow of Tradition. Penguin. Chopin. The Awakening. Penguin. Requirements: Likely to include weekly reading quizzes, two 4-5 pp. papers, and vigorous participation in class discussions. StaffSection 2ENGLISH 305 LITERARY HISTORY OF BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES, 1900 TO PRESENT Bogumil
Chopin. The Awakening. Dover. World War One British Poets. Dover. Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby. Scribner. Pomerance. The Elephant Man. Samuel French. Mantel. The Giant O’Brien. Owl Books. McDonagh. The Cripple of Inishmaan. Dramatist Play Service. Wilson. Fences. Plume. Penguin. Margulies. Dinner with Friends. Dramatist Play Service. Mills. The Restraint of Beasts. Scribner.
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. Requirements: 8 critical analyses (5 pages plus/ 10 pts. ea./ total 80 pts); 2 tests (quotation identification and explication/ 20 quotations worth 5 pts. ea/ 100 pts. per test/ total 200 pts.) Class participation is appreciated.
ENGLISH 307I FILM AS LITERARY ART Williams
A critical introduction to some of the most influential and representative works in the study of World Cinema as an historical and artistic tradition. Specifically, this course studies cinema in relationship to the literary world from which film has emerged. Course screenings and readings are designed to give the student an awareness of the Cinema’s claims as a unique art form, but also as Cinema is connected to significant movements in literature. The course will concentrate upon relevant movements in western mainstream narrative Cinema in comparison to the major historical achievements in Asian and Third World Cinema. The primary intention of the class is to stimulate students to engage in critical readings of films. Representative course topics: Early Cinema; French Impressionism and German Expressionism; Silent Hollywood; American Cinema 1930s-1945; Italian Neorealism; French New Wave; and Political Cinema in the West.
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: Bogdanovich. This is Orson Welles. Ed. Rosenbaum. DaCapo Press, Inc. Naremore. The Magic World of Orson Welles. Southern Methodist University Press. Corrigan. A Short Guide to Writing About Film. 5th ed. Addison Wesley Longman. As a core curriculum “Film as Literary Art” course, the cinema of Orson Welles is ideally suited for inclusion in the Fall semester slot. As a twentieth century renaissance man, Welles’s talent encompassed the diverse worlds of literature, theater, acting, television, and film direction. As well as screening his acknowledged masterpieces such as Citizen Kane and Touch of Evil, the class will examine his various Shakespeare adaptations such as Macbeth, Othello, King Lear, and The Chimes at Midnight as well as Welles’s affinity to many national cinematic styles and movements such as “film noir.” One particular emphasis of this class will be on the formative period of the New Deal Federal Theatre productions which offered Welles the opportunity to stage various classics such as voodoo Macbeth and the modern dress version of Julius Caesar as well as the Mercury Theatre radio productions, several of which (such as Heart of Darkness and The Magnificent Ambersons) are very relevant to his later film productions. This class will meet weekly with evaluations based upon written papers and regular class attendance. ENGLISH 352 FORMS OF POETRY Joseph
Strand & Boland, eds. The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms. W. W. Norton. Drury. Poetry Dictionary. 2nd ed. Story Press. Writer’s Digest Book. Merriam Webster’s Pocket Rhyming Dictionary. Pocket Reference Library. Merriam-Webster. This course is designed for students with previous poetry-writing experience and aims to give students a working familiarity with poetic techniques and forms. Topics covered include the use of accentual-syllabic meter, and the writing of blank verse, sonnets, French forms (villanelles, sestinas, and rondeaus), pantoums, ghazals, syllabic verse, blues poems, prose poems and free verse. Students will be required to present copies of their poems to their classmates for discussion, to comment on those poems, both verbally and in writing, to memorize a poem and recite it in front of class, and to write a paper on that poem. In addition to that paper, there will be two quizzes and one major exam, plus a final portfolio of poems due at semester’s end, including revisions of poems previously submitted for class discussion.
ENGLISH 365 SHAKESPEARE Collins
Bevington, ed. The Necessary Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Longman, 2005. This course offers an introduction to Shakespeare through study and appreciation of six of his major plays. Along with an examination of staging and performance of the plays in films, lectures and discussions invite the students to measure their contemporary experience of plays against their literary and historical backgrounds. 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. ENGLISH 381A CREATIVE WRITING: BEGINNING FICTION Magnuson This is the first fiction workshop in a series intended for majors in Creative Writing. ENGLISH 381B CREATIVE WRITING: INTERMEDIATE FICTION Westmoreland Intended for students with prior background and familiarity with contemporary literature and fictional devices, this course will be largely conducted as a workshop in which students’ own writing will be the subject of discussion. (Note: English 381A is a prerequisite for taking this class.) A basic understanding of the elements of fiction (narration/dramatization/flashback, description, dialogue, and point-of-view) will be assumed, though we will cover these matters on a more sophisticated level than in English 381A. Moreover, we will focus on the more difficult tasks of producing publishable quality work. Issues of consistency of voice and tone, freshness of style and originality, as well as aesthetic and audience, will be discussed and emphasized through writing exercises and assigned readings. We will divide our time between your work and that of professional writers. I expect many issues will arise including, for example, the idea of place and how it affects characters’ lives, as well as the actions, diction, tone, and ultimately the shape of fictional narratives. Through close reading and writing you’ll be asked to answer questions such as: What is place and how is it achieved? How has narrative design evolved and what is our current concept of “story”? We can expect that many other related questions and topics will arise and you are encouraged to bring in craft essays or supporting materials for exploration. Students will be expected to bring in their new original fiction on a regular basis—at least two original short stories to be workshopped by your peers. Participation is a must, and students should be willing to share their own work, listen to the work of others, and both accept and provide insightful, judiciously offered commentary about each other’s work. At the end of the semester you’ll be expected to turn in a portfolio of your work, including your reading journal, both short stories and the comments your peers provided, a substantial revision of one story, a process note, and a 5-10 page critical essay evaluating your literary technique. The focus of this workshop should be on process and discovery, and for the experience to be satisfying, you must be willing to invest yourself, learn from others, reinforce your own fictional voice/identity, and in some cases grow beyond any misguided preconceptions you have about what it means to create meaningful fiction. I urge you to look closely at the requirements described and think about whether this is really the course you want, and also whether you have the time and energy to devote to this class. ENGLISH 382A CREATIVE WRITING: BEGINNING POETRY Joseph
Kowit. In the Palm of your Hand: The Poet’s Portable Workshop. Tilbury House. English 382A is an introductory level-poetry writing class, taught in mostly workshop, rather than lecture, format. Prerequisite: English 101. This class is for those who seek to generate new poems and receive feedback on those poems. Previous poetry-writing experience is not required, but active class participation is. Each student will be required to turn in a poem every week, to participate in discussions on poems submitted by classmates, and to write written comments on those poems. There will be one test on poetic terminology, three quizzes, and in-class writing exercises as well. Each student will also choose a contemporary poet to study and will write a book review on that poet’s work. A final portfolio of 8 revised poems, with revisions, will be due at semester’s end. ENGLISH 382B CREATIVE WRITING: INTERMEDIATE POETRY Jordan Kimbrell. The Gatehouse Heaven. Sarabande. Forche. The Country Between Us. Harper & Row. 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. ENGLISH 391 PRECISION IN READING AND WRITING Nelms
Required Texts: Lunsford. The St. Martin’s Handbook. 5th ed. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003. Wiener and Bazerman. A Reader’s Guide: A Brief Handbook. Houghton Mifflin, 1999. Other readings will be put on electronic Reserve through Morris Library.
Catalog Description: “To improve the student’s ability to read and write with precision and clarity, depending on reading complex material (requiring no particular background for comprehension) and on writing précis of it.” Prerequisite of a grade of C or better in English 102 or 290 is required. English 391 required for English majors in the Pre-Professional Specialization but also may be appropriate for majors and minors in other English specializations or other disciplines (pre-law, pre-med, business, science, mass communication, education, liberal arts, etc.), any student seeking to improve the precision and clarity of their writing and their learning through reading. Course Description:Philosopher Hannah Arendt once wrote, “For excellence, the presence of others is always required.” She doesn’t say genius is required. Nor divine inspiration. Nor writerly genetics. Others are required. What she means is that writers should always be aware that they are writing from others to others—that is, their writing is informed by texts they have read or heard or experienced and is directed to audiences of others. Writing and reading are social activities, responses to our human urge to participate in the on-going conversations of different communities, whether these be academic, professional, or non-professional/extra-curricular. Writing requires reading just as reading requires writing. In ENGL 391, then, we will seek to improve our writing and reading by focusing on how they interact in order for us to participate in the human deliberations we confront every day. This course is constructed around what you may view as the traditional research process: reading, taking notes, writing about the readings you do, and citing and documenting sources. However, this course is about much, much more and will follow an innovative curriculum that teaches the nuances of the researched writing (reading and writing) process by beginning at the end (practice bringing source material together or synthesis) and working our way back to end with the beginning (searching for source materials). This is done to create a heightened awareness of how research informs writing and to reinforce the different skills involved in researched writing. Crucial to learning and the future application of learning is reflection. So, we will spend time reflecting on what we have learned in the past, what we can learn from each other in the present, what we are learning as we progress through the course, and how we might apply what we are learning to other writing situations in the future. ENGLISH 401 MODERN ENGLISH GRAMMARS McClure
Required Texts: Kolln. Rhetorical Grammar: Grammatical Choices, Rhetorical Effects. 4th ed. State University of New York Press, 2004. Lakoff & Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. 2nd ed. University of Chicago Press, 2003. Ogulnick, ed. Language Crossings: Negotiating the Self in a Multicultural World. Teachers College Press, 2000. Vygotsky. Thought and Language. Rev. ed., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1986.
Group Texts: (you’ll need to purchase only one of the following depending on group assignment)
Danon-Boileau. Children without Language: From Dysphasia to Autism. Oxford University Press, 2005. Delpit & Dowdy, eds. The Skin That We Speak. W. W. Norton, 2003. Donnelly. Linguistics for Writers. State University of New York Press, 1994. Eckert & McConnell-Ginet. Language and Gender. Cambridge University Press, 2003. Liddell. Grammar, Gesture, and Meaning in American Sign Language. Cambridge University Press, 2003. Nero, ed. Dialects, Englishes, Creoles, and Education. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2005.
In the most general sense, a grammar is a set of relational principles that direct the living process of the mind making connections. With that in mind, this course explores modern attempts to articulate grammars that can account for the dynamics of texts and the production of meaning. Course participants, therefore, survey the discipline of linguistics as it relates to literacy and English studies. Among the topics we’ll cover are these: prescriptive vs. descriptive grammar, linguistics and grammar, the “ebonics” controversy, the “English only” debates, and grammar and gender. We’ll also consider options for teaching grammar and ways in which the study of grammar can enhance the reading of any text. The knowledge gained from this survey provides students in English with an extensive linguistic background for graduate study in composition, literacy, literature, and rhetoric.
Requirements: daily/journal assignments; major paper assignment; group project (oral and written); a midterm and a final examination. Graduate students will also write a longer paper. ENGLISH 413 ENGLISH NON-DRAMATIC LITERATURE: THE RESTORATION AND EARLIER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY Boulukos
Zwicker, ed. Cambridge Companion to English Literature, 1650-1740. Cambridge University Press. Damrosch & Sherman. The Longman Anthology of British Literature, Volume 1C: The Restoration. 3rd ed. Longman. Montagu. Letters. Everyman’s Library, Knopf. Defoe. The Journal of the Plague Year. Modern Library. Random House. Swift, Tale of a Tub and Other Works. ed. Ross. Oxford World Classics, Oxford University Press. The Restoration and Augustan ages in British literature are among its richest and most complex. On the one hand, they were the great, classical ages of English literature and art; on the other, they took place during the most tumultuous times in British history culturally, politically, economically, and sexually. We will examine the tumult and contradictions of the age that saw the beginnings of modern culture, in the first emergence of a capitalist economy, politically influential public opinion, modern imperialism, modern feminism, and the philosophy of sexual libertinism. Crucially, these developments entailed the disruption of traditional family and gender roles and the entry of literature into a market-based economy. Nonetheless, the Augustan age is often characterized as the most conservative in British literature, noted for the beginnings of the novel, the greatest technical accomplishments in the history of British poetry, and the greatest British satire. We will explore the contradictions and continuities between these literary and cultural developments as we read poetry, prose, journalism, letters, fiction and plays by writers including Dryden, Pope, Swift, Rochester, Behn, Haywood, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Requirements: Undergrad: 5 2page Prep Papers; Midterm & Final Exam; 2 5pp papers Grad: weekly criticism response papers; Midterm & Final exam; 10-15p paper; annotated bibliography
ENGLISH 422 VICTORIAN POETRY McEathron
Required Texts: Houghton and Stange, eds. Victorian Poetry and Poetics. 2nd ed. Houghton-Mifflin. Carroll. Jabberwocky and Other Poems. Dover. This course will feature close readings of the work of the major Victorian poets, including Alfred Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, Matthew Arnold, Christina Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward FitzGerald, Algernon Swinburne, William Morris, Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, and Thomas Hardy. We will also focus on the various visual and design elements that were important to these poets, including Pre-Raphaelite painting, neo-gothic architecture, and comic sketches and caricatures. In examining the range of the Victorians’ formal experiments in lyric and narrative poetry, we will move from the aggressiveness of Browning to the sumptuousness of Swinburne, Morris, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. In all of this, we will be examining contrasting visions of the roles of the poet and of poetry in a time of unrelenting social, technological, and scientific change. Requirements: Undergraduates: Three 3-5 pp. papers; midterm and final Graduate Students: Two 8-10 pp. papers; midterm and final
ENGLISH 425 MODERN CONTINENTAL POETRY Zimra
Required Texts: Whenever possible (and where price is reasonable), editions are bilingual.
Rimbaud. Season in Hell and Drunken Boat. New Directions. Rilke. Book of Hours: Love Poems to God. tr. Barrows and Macy. Riverhead Books, 1997. Caws. Surrealist Love Poems. University of Chicago Press, 2002. Cesaire. Notebook of a Return to the Native Land. tr. Smith & Eshleman, Wesleyan University Press, 2001. Garcia-Lorca. Poet in New York. Revised ed. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998. Szymborska. View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems. Harvest Books, 1995. 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: to follow the thematic development of lyrical poetryto understand the relationship between literary and social history to see more clearly the connection between modern poetry and the other arts Requirements: Undergraduates and graduates work together but are graded on a different scale. Expect regular quizzes (take the best 3 for 45%); a close textual analysis of at least two different versions of the same poem (25%); and one oral presentation to be turned into a short paper (30%). Grads turn their oral presentation project into a solid research paper on poetics. No midterm as such, but if you maintain a solid 93 points average (out of a possible 100), no final.
ENGLISH 445 CULTURAL BACKGROUNDS OF WESTERN LITERATURE Humphries
Required Texts: Lawall, ed. The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces. Vol. I. 7th ed. W. W. Norton. Strassburg. Tristan. Penguin. Voltaire. Candide. Ed. Adams. 2nd ed. W. W. Norton. Prévost. Manon Lescaut. Trans. Tancock. Intro. and notes Sgard. Penguin. Goethe. Faust. Part One. Revised ed. Bantam. This course provides a historical, thematic, and stylistic study of literary masterpieces by Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Plato, Aristotle, Virgil, Ovid, St. Augustine, Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch, Gottfried, Rabelais, Cervantes, Voltaire, Abbé Prévost, and Goethe. Particular emphasis is on the influence of these authors’ works on later English, American, and European writers, all together establishing the Western literary and cultural tradition as we now know it. 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 448 IRISH LITERATURE Dougherty
Required Texts: O’Brien. Wake Forest Book of Irish Women’s Poetry. Wake Forest University Press. If unavailable: Kelly. Pillars of the House: An anthology of Irish Women’s Poetry. Wolfhound Press (Ireland) DeSalvo. Short Fiction By Irish Women Writers, Beacon. If unavailable: Oeser. Cutting the Night in Two: Short Stories By Irish Women Writers. New Island Books. Edgeworth. Castle Rackrent and Ennui. Penguin. Owenson. The Wild Irish Girl. Oxford University Press. Bowen. The Last September. Anchor Books. Gregory. Selected Writings. Penguin O’Brien. Down By The River. Plume, New American Library. Penguin. Dhuibhne |