Course Description for Fall 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
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, 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 Back to Top
Course Director-- Director of Writing Studies
Required Texts:
Macrorie. The I-Search Paper: Revised Edition of Searching Writing. Boynton/Cook, 1988.
Maimon. A Writer’s Resource: A Handbook for Writing and Research. McGraw-Hill.
[Readings on e-reserve.]
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.
COURSEWORK
• Four Writing Projects (Each involving invention, drafting, revising, and editing; 70% of grade)
• Writer’s Notebook (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; 20% of grade)
• Final Examination (Students will have two hours to write an essay on a topic to be announced; 10% of grade).
ENGLISH 101 ENGLISH COMPOSITION I
Course Director-- Director of Writing Studies
Required Texts:
Douglass. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Dover Thrift ed. Dover.
Ramage. Allyn & Bacon Guide to Writing: Brief. 4th ed. Longman. 2006.
Reynolds. Portfolio Keeping: A Guide for Students. 2nd ed. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006.
Maimon. A Writer’s Resource: A Handbook for Writing and Research. McGraw-Hill.
[Mercury Reader.]
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:
• 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 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.
Small Assignments
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) 5%
• Unit 2 (weeks 4-7) 5% The schedule listed here is tentative and
• Unit 3 (weeks 9-11) 5% subject to some change.
• Unit 4 (weeks 14-15) 5%
• Portfolio (weeks 12-13) 40%
• Exams (week 8, finals week) 15%
ENGLISH 102 ENGLISH COMPOSITION II
Course Director-- Director of Writing Studies
Required Texts:
Crusius. The Aims of Argument (Selected Material). McGraw-Hill, 2006.*
Lunsford. Everything’s an Argument: With Readings, 4th ed.. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006.
Reynolds. Portfolio Keeping: A Guide for Students. 2nd ed. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006.
Maimon. A Writer’s Resource: A Handbook for Writing and Research. McGraw-Hill.
*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.
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.
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.
COURSE MATERIALS
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;
• engage in critical reading by applying various analytical techniques;
employ the various stages of the writing process as ways of investigating and inventing, drafting, and revising and editing;
• 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.
COURSEWORK
• Writing Projects 1 through 3 (Students will submit a writing project, each involving invention, planning, drafting, peer review, revising, and editing, at the end of a course unit. 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; 30% of grade).
• Writing Project 5: Research Portfolio (A collection of presentation-quality work will include a research paper and other texts completed and revised during the course of the semester; 35% of grade).
• Writer’s Notebook (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; 20% of grade).
• Two Tests (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; 15% of grade).
ENGLISH 119 INTRODUCTION TO CREATIVE WRITING
Course Director-- Staff
Required Texts:
Students should check textbook listing for specific sections at the bookstore.
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
Course Director-- Director of Writing Studies
Required Texts:
Students should check textbook listings 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
Course Director--Humphries
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.
*Students should check textbook listing for specific sections at the bookstore.
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 Back to Top
Course Director-- Staff
Required Reading:
Students should check textbook listings for specific sections at the bookstore.
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. (Toomer. Cane. Liveright Publishing, may be
substituted for The Waste Land).
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 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
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.
Sections 1 & 2--Professor Jackson
Required Texts:
Auch. Ashes of Roses. Bantam Doubleday Dell.
Didonato. Christ in Concrete. Penguin.
Erdrich. Beet Queen. Bantam Doubleday Dell.
McCourt. Angela’s Ashes. Simon & Schuster.
Morrison. Bluest Eye. Penguin.
Rico. American Mosaic, 3rd. Houghton-Mifflin.
Villasenor. Rain of Gold. Bantam Doubleday Dell.
ENGLISH 206A LITERATURE AMONG THE ARTS
Section 1--Professor Brunner
Required Texts:
Bechdel. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. Houghton Mifflin.
Clowes. Ghost World. Fantagraphics.
McCloud. Understanding Comics. Harper.
Miller. Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. DC Comics.
Moore and Gibbons. Watchmen. DC Comics.
Millar. Superman: Red Son. DC Comics
Satrapi. Persepolis. Pantheon.
Spiegelman. MAUS: A Survivor’s Tale. Panetheon.
Ware. Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth. Pantheon.
This Core Curriculum course fulfills the requirement for a “Fine Arts” area.
Note: The material in this course at times features images and language that were expressly designed to be controversial; please be aware of this before you enroll.
ENGLISH 290 INTERMEDIATE ANALYTICAL WRITING
Course Director-- Director of Writing Studies
Required Text:
Maimon. A Writer’s Resource: A Handbook for Writing and Research. (Or, any edition of The Little, Brown Compact Handbook may be used.)
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 Goals
After 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.
Coursework
• Four Writing Projects (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. 70% of grade).
• Small Writing Assignments (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. 20% of grade).
• Final Examination (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; 10% of grade).
ENGLISH 291 INTERMEDIATE TECHNICAL WRITING
Course Director-- Director of Writing Studies
Required Texts:
Anderson. Technical Communication: A Reader-Centered Approach. 6th ed.Thomson/Heinle, 2006.
Maimon. A Writer’s Resource: A Handbook for Writing and Research. (Or, any edition of The Little, Brown Compact Handbook may be used.)
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:
• 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 (Each involving invention, drafting, revising, and editing; 50% of grade).
• In-Class Assignments (Includes assessing rhetorical situations, dictation, and responses to readings; 20% of grade).
• Collaborative Project 20%
• Final Examination (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; 10% of grade).
ENGLISH 300--INTRODUCTION TO LANGUAGE ANALYSIS Back to Top
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 dialect variation. Another area of interest will be language acquisition and development, both in children and non-native speakers of English. A strong emphasis will be placed on critical thinking skills, including recognition of the various purposes for which language is used and decoded, and the various ways that society, culture, economics and politics impact our language use. Concurrently, we will be studying elements of grammar and usage in Edited American English.
Because this is a required course for teacher training candidates, the course will contain both theoretical and applied pedagogical components. Students will have an opportunity to collaborate, as well as to develop and present their own “grammar lessons” to the class. To teach a subject well, one must gain a solid mastery of the subject matter—in this way, your teaching will facilitate your learning. This will culminate in an individual age-level-appropriate “teaching portfolio/textbook” of student-created and adapted materials. These textbooks can be modified to reflect your interests. 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 how to position yourself as a co-creator of language among others.
Section 1—Professor Nelms
Required Texts:
Redd & Webb. A Teacher's Introduction to African American English: What a Writing Teacher Should Know. NCTE.
Weaver. Teaching Grammar in Context. Heinemann.
Woods. English Grammar for Dummies. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
[Course pack of readings.]
Section 2—TBA
Required Texts:
TBA
ENGLISH 301--INTRODUCTION TO LITERARY ANALYSIS
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.
Section 1—Professor Klaver
Required Texts:
Conrad. Heart of Darkness. Ed. Ross C. Murfin. Bedford/St. Martins.
Churchilll. Vinegar Tom. Samuel French.
Griffith. Writing Essays about Literature. Thomson.
Section 2—Professor Wiley
Required Texts:
Hall. Literary and Cultural Theory: From Basic Principles to Advanced Applications. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2001.
Hamilton. Essential Literary Terms: A Brief Norton Guide with Exercises. New York: W. W. Norton, 2007.
Yeats, W. B. The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats, 2nd Revised Edition. Ed. Finneran. Scribner, 1996.
LeFanu. Uncle Silas. Ed.Victor Sage. Penguin Classics, 2001.
Shakespeare. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Folger Shakespeare Library. Washington Square Press, 2004.
Ibsen. Master Builder. Dover Thrift Edition. New York: Dover Publications, 2001.
Jacobs. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Dover Thrift Edition. New York: Dover Publications, 2001.
Requirements: One paper on each genre, one research paper, two examinations, in-class presentations.
Section 3—Professor Molino
Required Texts:
Doyle. Paddy Clarke ha ha ha. Penguin.
Joyce. Dubliners. Signet, New American Library.
Heaney. Open Ground. Farrar, Straus, Giroux.
McPherson. The Weir. Dramatists Play Service.
Strunk &White. The Elements of Style. 4th ed. Longman.
Requirements: Two documented research papers (6-8 pages), several short literary analyses of assigned texts, summaries of library research, oral presentations of library research.
Section 4—Professor Dougherty
Required Texts:
Banks. Rule of the Bone. Harper Perennial, reprint ed.
Blake. Songs of Innocence and Experience. Tate Publishing, Facsimile ed. 2007.
Equiano. The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings, edited by Vincent Carretta.
Penguin Classics, revised ed. 2003.
Gibaldi. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. Modern Language Association of America, 6th ed.
Nealon and Giroux. The Theory Toolbox: Critical Concepts for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences. Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2003.
Silko. Ceremony. Penguin, reprint ed., 1986.
Section 5—Professor Zimra
Required Texts:
Bressler. Literary Ciriticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice, 3rd ed. 2002.
ATTENTION, NOT THE LATEST (4th) which is full of egregious errors and typos.
Conrad. Heart of Darkness. Dover ed.
Achebe. Things Fall Apart. Anchor. Any edition as long as in full.
Requirements (overall 500 points possible):
• 4 basic analyses (essays practicing various approaches / 5 pages each / 25 points each / 100 points total).
• 8 basic analyses (essays practicing various approaches / 5 pages each / 25 pts. Each / total 100 pts).
• Major critical analysis paper (in stages, as teams; focus on Conrad and Achebe /200 points).
• Final (submit class portfolio, with self-assessment (100 points).
ENGLISH 302A--LITERARY HISTORY OF BRITAIN, BEOWULF TO CIVIL WAR
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.
Section 1—Professor Wiley
Required Texts:
Greenblatt, ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 8th ed. Volumes A & B. W. W. Norton and Company, 2005.
We will cover the following authors and/or texts: Medieval (Bede, Beowulf, Judith, Gawain and
the Green Knight, The Wakefield Second Shepard’s Play, Middle English Lyrics); The Sixteenth Century (Wyatt and Henry Howard, Spenser, Sidney, Marlowe, Shakespeare); The Seventeenth Century before 1660 (Donne, Jonson, Herbert, Vaughan, Herrick, Marvell, Milton).
Section 2—Professor Amos
Required Texts:
Damrosch, et al., eds. The Longman Anthology of British Literature. Vols. 1A & 1B. Addison Wesley Longman.
Recommended:
Abrams. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 7th ed. Harcourt Brace.
Hieatt & Hieatt. The Canterbury Tales. Bantam, 1964. or
Chaucer. Canterbury Quintet: The General Prologue & Four Tales, A Reader-Friendly Edition. Conal & Gavin Press.
Requirements: active participation in class discussion, short essays, periodic preliminary examinations (no final examination).
ENGLISH 302B--LITERARY HISTORY OF BRITAIN, RESTORATION TO 1900
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.
Section 1—Professor McEathron
Required Texts:
Alexander Pope, Essay on Man and Other Poems (Dover).
Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. D: The Romantic Period.
Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. E: The Victorian Age.
Requirements: Three 3-5 pp. papers, two examinations.
Section 2—Professor Chandler
Required Texts:
Norton Anthology of English Literature, 8th ed., the following 3 volumes:
Vol. C, The Restoration and Eighteenth Century.
Vol. D, The Romantic Period.
Vol. E, The Victorian Age.
Requirements: Three 4-5-page papers, midterm, final.
ENGLISH 303--LITERARY HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES BEFORE 1900
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.
Sections 1 & 2—Professor Anthony
Required Texts:
Lauter, et al, eds. The Heath Anthology of American Literature: Early Nineteenth Century: 1800-1865, Vol. B.
Foster. The Coquette. Oxford UP.
Twain. Pudd’nhead Wilson. Penguin Classics.
Hawthorne. The Scarlet Letter. Penguin Classics.
Chopin. The Awakening and Selected Stories. Penguin Classics.
Dickinson. The Poems of Emily Dickinson. ed., Thomas Franklin. Belknap Press.
Johnson. The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man. Hill and Wang.
ENGLISH 305—MODERN BRITISH US LITERARY HISTORY
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.
Section 1—Professor Bogumil
Required Texts:
Conrad. The Heart of Darkness. Dover.
World War One British Poets. Dover.
Woolf. Mrs. Dalloway. Harcourt.
McPherson. Dublin Carol. Dramatists Play Service.
Faulkner. The Sound and the Fury. Vintage.
Wilson. Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. Samuel French.
Shepard. True West. Samuel French.
Mamet. The Crytogram. Dramatist Play Service.
Miller. A View from the Bridge. Dramatists Play Service.
Requirements: 8 critical analysis papers (5 pages plus/ 10 pts. ea./ total 80 pts); 2 tests (quotation identification and explication/ 10 quotations worth 10 pts. ea/ 100 pts. per test/ total 200 pts.)
ENGLISH 307—FILM AS LITERARY ART
Section 1—Professor Williams
Required Texts:
Corrigan. A Short Guide to Writing about Film, 6th ed. Longman, 2005.
McBride & Wilmington. John Ford. Da Capo Press, 2001.
This Core Curriculum Fall class will examine the work of Irish-American Director John Ford (1894-1973). Although identified with the Western genre throughout his career, identification he ascribed to (“My name’s John Ford. I make westerns”), the director’s work actually encompasses key issues affecting American society throughout his lifetime. Beginning his career in silent film, Ford began to be identified as one of the most poetic or American film directors operating within the classical Hollywood system. As well as exhibiting a unique cinematic style, Ford’s work is notable for its interrogation of the viability of community within American society whether Irish, native-American, or military establishment. His films often raise issues but fail to resolve them as if recognizing a difference between American masculinity as well as those inner tensions that called the ideal into question.
The class will view selected examples of Ford’s work such as the rarely seen Pilgrimage (1934), Stagecoach (1939), They Were Expendable (1945), My Darling Clementine (1946), Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), Wagonmaster (1950), The Quiet Man (1952), The Wings of Eagles (1957), Sergeant Rutledge (1960), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), Donovan’s Reef (1963), and the director’s last completed film Seven Women (1966).
Since this class also represents an introduction to the discipline of film study, the first film chosen for analysis will be Ford’s classic western The Searchers (1956) which also represents an introduction to the issues within the director’s work that the class intends to examine.
Requirements: Four written papers, six pages and over.
ENGLISH 325—BLACK AMERICAN WRITERS
Section 1—Professor Bogumil
Required Texts:
Hatch, ed. Lost Plays of the Harlem Renaissance 1920-1940. Wayne SU Press.
Wilson, August. Seven Guitars. Samuel French.
Parks. Venus. Theatre Communications Group.
Schuyler. Black No More: A Novel Modern Library.
Thurman. Blacker the Berry. Touchstone.
Sherman. African American Poetry: An Anthology, 1773-1927. Dover.
Requirements: 8 critical analysis papers (5 pages plus/ 10 pts. ea./total 80 points); 2 tests (quotation identification and explication/ 10 quotations worth 10 pts. ea/ 100 pts. per test/ total 200 pts.)
ENGLISH 351—FORMS OF FICTION
Section 1—Professor Benedict
Required Texts:
Hoban. Riddley Walker (Expanded Edition). Indiana University Press.
James. Children of Men (Rack Size). Warner Mass Market.
King. Stand (Complete and Uncut). NAL Penguin Mass Market.
Leguin. Lathe of Heaven (Perennial Classics Edition). Harper Collins Trade.
Matheson. I am Legend. Tor Books/Tom Doherty.
Saramago. Blindness. Harcourt Trade.
Vaughan. Y: The Last Man. Vol 1: Unmanned.
Wells. War of the Worlds. Tor Books/Tom Doherty.
ENGLISH 365—SHAKESPEARE
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.
Sections 1 & 2—Professor Netzley
Required Texts:
Greenblatt, ed. The Norton Shakespeare: Based on the Oxford Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1997.
How do Shakespeare’s plays represent the relationships between and among violence, nationalism, and morality? How is the theater similar to surveillance, a mechanism for probing the interiority of characters like Hamlet? In what ways is such surveillance necessary to make persons free and autonomous? How do these plays represent desire and exchange, in both sexual and economic realms? This course serves as an introduction to Shakespeare’s plays via three separate but related conceptual issues: 1) violence and morality; 2) surveillance and selfhood; 3) the relationship between desire and its exchangeable objects. The goal of this topical organization is to provide you with a host of different ways to engage and respond to this gargantuan entity, “Shakespeare.” More generally, in this course, we’ll examine the historical circumstances in which Shakespeare’s plays appeared, recent appropriations, deployments, and parodies of “Shakespeare” from film and television, as well as the specifically literary aspects of these plays as texts. In addition to providing an introductory survey of Shakespeare’s work, the general goal of this course is to make you a sophisticated reader of and a critically engaged respondent to Shakespeare. That means that we’ll be examining how these plays mean and how they function, not just what they mean. Finally, since English 365 is a WAC (Writing Across the Curriculum) course, we will focus considerable attention on how to write intelligently, seriously, and thoughtfully about Shakespeare.
Readings: Moral Violence (Titus Andronicus and Henry V); Theater’s Surveillance (Hamlet and Measure for Measure); Desiring Exchange (The Merchant of Venice and As You Like It).
Requirements: One midterm essay exam (5-7 pages), one major paper (7-10 pages), six short analysis papers. Since this is a WAC course, all evaluation will be based on written work.
Sections 3 & 4—Professor Collins
Required Texts:
Bevington, ed. The Necessary Shakespeare. 2nd ed. New York: Pearson Longman, 2005.
Lecture and discussion. 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 and active participation; in-class writing and/or quizzes; five response papers (500 words each); three critical papers (1,250 words each); and mid-term and final examinations.
ENGLISH 381A—CREATIVE WRITING: BEGINNING FICTION
This is the first fiction workshop in a series intended for majors in Creative Writing. Students will be expected to read and respond to literature with careful attention focused on craft, language, and form. In addition to the study of established writers, students will complete several writing exercises to strengthen their abilities within specific elements of the craft of fiction (point of view, scene, dialogue, etc.). Later in the semester, students will be expected to write one or two complete stories and participate in a workshop with the class.
Section 1—Professor Flamm-Costello
Required Texts:
Charters, ed. The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction, 6th. Bedford/St. Martin’s.
Section 2—Professor Magnuson
Required Texts:
The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Norton, 2005.
Section 3—Professor Townsend
Required Texts:
Charters, ed. The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction, 6th. Bedford/St. Martin’s.
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
Section 1—Professor Benedict
Required Texts:
No texts requested.
Section 2—Professor Skaggs
Required Texts:
Charters, ed. The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction, 6th. Bedford/St. Martin’s.
Section 3—Professor Townsend
Required Texts:
The Art of the Tale. Penguin (Non-Classics); Reissue edition, 1987.
This course assumes that you have established enough of a familiarity with your imagination that we can “take it to the next level”: you will zero in on issues of language, character, plot and structure to produce two works that are at or near publication quality. Accordingly, workshopping, at this level, will be intense. We will also be reading from a text to examine how established writers tackle specific issues of craft.
ENGLISH 382A—CREATIVE WRITING: BEGINNING POETRY
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.
Section 1—Professor Jones
Required Texts:
TBA
Section 2—Professor Jordan
Required Texts:
Kimball. My Psychic. Sarabande Books.
Kimball. The Gatehouse Heaven. Sarabande Books.
Forche. The Country Between Us. Harper & Row.
Waniek. The Homeplace. Louisiana State University.
ENGLISH 382B—CREATIVE WRITING: INTERMEDIATE POETRY
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.
Section 1—TBA
Required Texts:
TBA
Section 2—Professor Joseph
Required Texts:
Open Roads: Exercises in Writing Poetry. Longman, 2004.
This intermediate-level poetry-writing workshop is designed for students with previous poetry-writing experience (English 382A is a prerequisite). We will write new poems, read and comment on one another’s poems, and continue learning about poetry’s formal elements. We will use our text as a basis for poetry discussions and as a source of poetry exercises. Each student in class will be expected to duplicate copies of his or her poems for class discussion. All work handed in to class or to me must me typed.
Requirements:
• A portfolio of ten (10) poems, written over the course of the semester from exercises in our text, revised by semester’s end (50% of grade).
• A book review of 400 words on a book of poetry published in 2005 or 2006. This review will serve as a midterm and will be submitted for possible off-campus publication. (20% of the final grade).
• Participation in a public poetry reading for the class. You will read your work to an audience and will be judged on both the quality of your work and the effectiveness of your presentation (30% of grade).
ENGLISH 393— SPECIAL TOPICS IN LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE
Section 1/ Advanced Writing Technology & Composition—Professor McClure
Required Texts:
Anderson. Technical Communication: A Reader-Centered Approach. 6th ed. Heinle, 2006.
McClure. Advanced Writing Technology and Composition. CD, 4th ed. McClure, 2007.
All assignments (or writing tasks) will be based on a mock company and will be set up in the form of cases or scenarios. Each of 6 cases based on real work situations will set up several writing tasks. You will be required to complete drafts for at least two tasks and one quiz for each case. Writing tasks will consist of some combination of letters, memos, reports, and the like. The drafts written in response to writing tasks will be graded on performance, not quality; that is, if a draft is submitted on time and meets the criteria specified in the assignment description, you will receive full credit for that draft. Optional assignments are not to be construed to provide opportunities for extra credit; they will, however, offer opportunities to provide additional practice and drafts (drafts, thus being potential for revision for the writing portfolio). Given appropriate circumstances and written request by the student, optional writing tasks might be counted in place of a previously missed assignment. A representative portion of the drafts will be revised for the final portfolio. The portfolio will be assessed on the quality of the work and the portfolio.
Section 2/TBA—TBA (Fulbright)
Required Texts:
TBA
Section 3/Irish Culture & Conversation—TBA (New Irish)
Required Texts:
TBA
ENGLISH 405—MIDDLE ENGLISH LITERATURE: CHAUCER Back to Top
Section 1—Professor Amos
Required Texts:
Blamires. Woman Defamed and Woman Defended. Oxford University Press.
Chaucer. Canterbury Tales (Ed. Hieatt). Bantam.
Chaucer. Canterbury Tales (Ed. Cawley). Everyman.
Chaucer. Riverside Chaucer (Ed. Benson). Houghton Mifflin.
Chaucer. Wife of Bath (Ed. Beidler). St. Martin’s.
Optional texts:
Chaucer. Canterbury Tales (Eds. Kolve and Olson). Norton Critical Editions.
Davis. Chaucer Glossary. Oxford University Press.
As the greatest author to write in Middle English, Geoffrey Chaucer offers us a unique view of the early development of English literature. At the same time, his complex and delightful texts invite and reward investigation of a variety of topics of particular concern in our postmodern world, especially the construction and transmission of historical and cultural definitions of class, gender, and identity.
Our examination of Chaucer's poetry will be trifocal: 1) we will explore those "universal" aspects of his poetry that have intrigued and irritated his readers for centuries, considering and critiquing the processes by which Chaucer has become canonized as the "father of English literature"; 2) we will situate Chaucer within the context of 14th and 15th century English letters by reading his works alongside his contemporaries; and 3) we will explore how his writings intersect with the major cultural, social, political, and religious events of the time.
This course assumes no knowledge of late medieval literature or of Middle English. Non-medievalists are strongly encouraged to enroll, especially as discussions and written assignments will be matched to the interests of class members. We'll read as much of Chaucer's writings in the original Middle English as possible -- starting slowly with an introduction to Middle English and gathering speed as everyone gets comfortable with the language - and deploy and critique modernizations where necessary. For the work of other medieval authors we'll use modern-English versions.
Graduate requirements: active participation, a thoughtful program of outside reading, and a seminar-length research paper or two shorter papers.
ENGLISH 414—LATER EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH LITERATURE
Section 1—Professor Chandler
Required Texts:
Johnson. Selected Writings. Penguin.
Goldsmith. The Vicar of Wakefield. Dover.
Goldsmith. She Stoops to Conquer. Dover.
Blake. Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Dover.
Burke. Reflections on the Revolution in France. Dover.
Paine. The Rights of Man. Dover.
Smith. Desmond. Broadview.
Lewis. The Monk. Dover.
Sometimes called the “age of Johnson” course, this survey will indeed deal with Samuel Johnson’s huge influence as an arbiter of cultural value from the late 1740s until his death in 1784. However, the march to Revolution and Romanticism included intellectual trends whose language Johnson did not speak fluently, and whose importance he underestimated. We will discuss both a moderate, essayistic mindset, growing from neoclassicism and the “dramatic” novel, and traceable in figures like Johnson, Goldsmith, and the novelist and playwright Frances Burney; and a more subversive, “genius” mentality, growing from the literature of Sensibility (poets like Gray; novelists like Sterne, and later, Goethe), that became linked with the radicalism of Wollstonecraft, Godwin, Charlotte Smith, and Blake, as well as with the phantasmagoria of Gothic fiction. The phenomenon of working-class poetry was also gaining momentum during this period. A lot of this, of course, is behind the new Romantic agenda that would first be formulated in the Lyrical Ballads collaboration of Wordsworth and Coleridge in 1797-98. But for writers flourishing slightly earlier, in the eras of the American and French Revolutions, the clearer premium was upon a political and sociological incisiveness, laced with ironic humor, the motivations of which we will explore in the writings of Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and other commentators.
Requirements: For undergraduates, two 5-7-page papers, midterm, and final; for graduates, two 10-15-page papers and presentation.
ENGLISH 421—ENGLISH ROMANTIC LITERATURE
Section 1—Professor McEathron
Required Texts:
Perkins, ed. English Romantic Writers. 2nd ed. Harcourt Brace, 1995.
De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater, and Other Writings. ed. Barry Milligan. Penguin.
ENGLISH 436—MAJOR AMERICAN WRITERS
Section 1/Topic: William Faulkner—Professor Wells
Required Texts:
Faulkner. The Sound and the Fury. Vintage International.
Faulkner. As I Lay Dying. Vintage International.
Faulkner. Sanctuary. Vintage International.
Faulkner. Light in August. Vintage International.
Faulkner. Absalom, Absalom! Vintage International.
Faulkner. The Portable Faulkner. Vintage International.
Optional Text:
Minter. William Faulkner: His Life and Work. Johns Hopkins.
This course will explore the writings of William Faulkner, the Mississippi-born novelist whose experimentations in form and subject matter made him among the most influential American authors of the early twentieth century, especially to those who would later write about the South and the problems of race in U.S. history. Our goals in this course will be several. Above all, we will work to become adept readers of Faulkner's fiction, which is no small goal, given its formal and thematic complexities. We will also engage questions of place, concentrating on the Yoknapatawpha County novels and how, in them, Faulkner explored the intersections of much larger social and historical forces. We will place Faulkner's fiction in multiple historical contexts, examining what they reveal about a Depression-era South still recovering from slavery and the Civil War even as it found itself on the verge of modernization, industrialization, and the emergence of the modern Civil Rights movement. We will also think about the novels in terms
of Faulkner's own life and his reception among subsequent generations of literary critics.
Requirements: Graded work will likely include weekly reading quizzes, a short paper on a
particular work, and a longer paper involving research into Faulkner criticism.
ENGLISH 445—CULTURAL BACKGROUNDS OF WESTERN LITERATURE
Section 1—Professor Humphries
Required Texts:
Lawall, ed. The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces. Vol. I, 8th ed. W. W. Norton.
Strassburg. Tristan. Penguin.
Voltaire. Candide. Ed. Adams. 2nd ed.. W. W. Norton.
Prévost. Manon Lescaut. tr.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
Section 1—Professor Dougherty
Required Texts:
Beckett. Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts. Grove Press 1994.
Crotty, ed. Modern Irish Poetry. Blackstaff Press, 1995.
Edgeworth. Castle Rackrent. Hackett Publishing Co.
Finneran, ed. The Yeats Reader. Scribner, 2002 Revised ed.
Harrington, ed. Modern Irish Drama. Norton and Company, first ed. 1991.
Heaney, ed. Over Nine Waves. Faber and Faber, new ed. 1995.
Kinsella, ed. The New Oxford Book of Irish Verse. Oxford UP, USA, 2001.
Levin, ed. The Portable James Joyce. Penguin, rep. ed. 1976. Isobel Murray, ed. The Major Works of Oscar Wilde. Oxford UP, USA Revised ed.
Sheridan. The Rivals. Digireads.com 2006.
ENGLISH 451—EIGHTEENTH CENTURY ENGLISH LITERATURE
Section 1—Professor Boulukos
Required Texts:
Defoe. Moll Flanders. (Broadview).
Austen. Northanger Abbey. (Broadview).
Burney. Evelina. Ed Howard. (Broadview).
Fielding. Shamela and Eliza Haywood Anti-Pamela. (Broadview).
The above 4 titles packaged together
Richardson Pamela: Ed Keymer & Wakely (Oxford).
Fielding Tom Jones Ed Bender (Oxford).
Goldsmith The Vicar of Wakefield Ed Coote (Penguin).
Sterne The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy Ed New (Penguin).
Walpole The Castle of Otranto (Dover Thrift edition).
Please use the suggested edition.
For our first meeting, please read the following brief texts:
Eliza Haywood, “The City Jilt” (available on my office door) and Madame de Lafayette, Princesse de Cleves (Gutenberg Etext, URL below)
http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext96/pclev10.txt
In addition, there will be critical readings assigned throughout the semester.
The emergence of the recognizably modern novel in early eighteenth-century Britain is one of the most significant, and controversial, developments in literary history. Clearly, there was a break with the supernatural and aristocratic romances of the past, and clearly a vast new market of readership clamored for these new literary productions. (“Novel,” of course, really means “new.”) Critics and historians, however, still argue about whether the imaginary world of the novel reflected the vision of a newly powerful middle class, or whether the cultural power of the novel itself brought the middle class into existence. Similarly, feminist scholars still debate whether novels were yet another tool of patriarchal oppression, or offered a new arena empowering women to challenge male conceptions of gender.
However, what is undeniable is that a compelling new and fascinating body of literature came into being in the period, and defined the parameters of the genre that many have seen as most basic to, and most in tune with, the modern world. In this course we will examine some of the greatest of these works, from the gritty realism of Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders—a first person account of a London pickpocket and prostitute—to the rollicking humor and superb plotting of Fielding’s Tom Jones, and on to the witty experiments of Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, which plays with narrative form (and even techniques of book production) in ways not attempted again until the “innovations” of modernist and postmodernist novelists more than 150 years later. We will also examine such eighteenth-century phenomena as the gothic and the sentimental modes, and the emergence of women authors, including the much abused Eliza Haywood and Burney and Austen, the first female novelists to gain the respect of the male-dominated literary establishment.
Requirements:
Response Papers, Midterm, Final Exam; careful reading and participation in discussion
Undergraduate: 2 5-7p papers; Archival Report
Graduate: 10p paper, 5-7p annotated bibliography, 5-7p report on criticism, Archival Report
ENGLISH 455—MODERN CONTINENTAL FICTION
Section 1—Professor Fox
Required Texts:
Ransmayr. The Last World. Grove.
Mann. Doctor Faustus. Vintage.
Proust. Swann’s Way. Modern Library.
Kafka. The Trial. Vintage.
Pasternak. Doctor Zhivago. Pantheon.
Calvino. Invisible Cities. Harvest.
Kundera. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. Harper Perennial.
ENGLISH 458— American Fiction to 1900: Realism, Regionalism, Naturalism
Section 1—Professor Wells
Required Texts:
Nagel & Quirk. The Portable American Realism Reader. Penguin.
Davis. Life in the Iron Mills. Bedford/St. Martins.
Alcott. Alternative Alcott. Rutgers.
James. The Portrait of a Lady. Penguin.
Howells. The Rise of Silas Lapham. Penguin
Chesnutt. The Marrow of Tradition. Penguin.
Jewett. The Country of the Pointed Firs. Signet.
Crane. Maggie, a Girl of the Streets. Penguin.
Chopin. The Awakening. Penguin.
"Manure is a reality," observed one early 20th-century U.S. writer unhappy about recent trends in his nation's literature. But "[b]ecause manure is a reality is no reason why an author or producer should be allowed to cart a load of it into the theatre, dump it on the stage, put shovels in the hands of skilled actors and have them throw it into the faces of a decent audience." What this writer was protesting-what, in fact, he was comparing to barnyard excrement-were the major developments in American literature between 1860 and 1900. Above all was the turn toward Realism, which involved "nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material," according to William Dean Howells, Realism's leading advocate in the United States. Realist fiction brought readers into territories they had not likely encountered before, some of them physical (Civil War hospitals, urban tenements, brothels), some of them psychological (the mind
of a man who awaits his own hanging, or of a young woman at her moment of sexual awakening). Related to this movement was an explosion of Regionalist literature, which, like Realism more generally, sought to expose readers to the less familiar, less traditionally "literary" peoples and places of the United States. Following both of these movements came the rise of Naturalism, which built upon the theories of Charles Darwin by depicting humans as struggling to survive in an essentially amoral, often Godless universe.
We will read examples from each of these movements in this course in order to familiarize ourselves with an important period in American literature-and to discover, one hopes, a body of texts considerably more appreciable than its early critics alleged. The texts themselves will not often be uplifting, at least not in any easy-to-get-to way. Yet the quality of the fiction will often be startling, and the course will in any event show that the late 19th-century is much more than a "transitional period" in American literature. It constitutes instead an era of exciting literary developments in its own right.
Requirements: Graded work will likely include weekly reading quizzes, a short paper about a particular story, and a longer, research-based paper about a group of stories, a novel, or a persistent issue from the course.
ENGLISH 469— Contemporary Topics in Drama
Section 1/ Topic: Women Playwrights and Cultural Studies—Professor Klaver
Required Texts:
Bordo. Unbearable Weight. University of California Press.
Churchill. Vinegar Tom. Samuel French.
Edson. Wit. Dramatists Play Service.
Ensler. The Vagina Monologues. Dramatists Play Service.
Grealy. Autobiography of a Face. Harper Collins.
Hughes. Clit Notes: A Sapphic Sampler. Grove Press.
Moraga. Heroes and Saints & Other Plays. West End Press.
Parks. The America Play: And Other Works. Theatre Communications Group.
Sontag. Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and its Metaphors. Anchor Books.
Terry. Plays by Megan Terry. Broadway Play Publishing.
English 496 looks at modern American women playwrights in a cultural studies context. We read plays by women as well as television shows and films that are primarily about women. Some of the topics we will consider are post-feminism, post-humanism, the feminine body, transgender women, lasbian sexuality, women in prison, and women as spectacle. The scope of the plays will center on the late 20th century and early 21st century (from 1980 on). The course will examine such cultural phenomenon as Ugly Betty and Chicago as well as writings by Susan Bordo, Judith Butler, and Teresa deLauretis.
ENGLISH 471— Shakespeare: The Early Plays, Histories, and Comedies
Section 1—Professor Lamb
Required Texts:
Greenblatt, et al., eds. The Norton Shakespeare's Comedies. Norton, 2000.
Greenblatt, et al., eds. The Norton Shakespeare's Histories. Norton, 2000.
Saccio. Shakespeare's English Kings. Oxford University Press, 2000.
We will be reading seven plays: Richard 2; Henry IV, pt. 1; Henry 5; Taming of the Shrew; Merchant of Venice; Merry Wives of Windsor; Much Ado About Nothing.
The history plays trace the evolution of a nation imagined as a stable, feudal hierarchy to a more modern political world where power depends on the consensus of the governed, gained through the charisma of the king. What are the viewpoints presented in these plays about this movement towards modernity? The history plays explore power and politics from a theatrical perspective. What are the implications of a “theatrical” view of history? It is said, “History is written by the winners.” Is this true also for history plays? Are there signs of strain or traces of alternative histories present in these texts?
In the early modern period, comedies were defined as plays ending in marriage rather than plays meant to make audiences laugh. Some comedies (Taming of the Shrew and Much Ado) present new kinds of heroines (more feisty ones) as better wife-material than innocent ingénues. Played by boys, these female characters provide a theatrical perspective on gender roles. What are the implications of a “theatrical&
