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 Writing Center provides resources for all SIUC students who want to improve their ability as writers. During the summer session, only the main Writing Center , Faner 2281, is open, with the hours to be posted on the Writing Center door and the Center's website
(<www.siu.edu/~write>). Students may be seen for single-visit appointments, which can be made several days in advance. During these appointments, students may work with a tutor to develop effective strategies for any stage of the writing process from getting started on an assignment to revising an essay draft to editing the final copy. There is
no charge for the visits. The staff during the summer session consists of two graduate assistants in English. Contact: Dr. Jane Cogie, Director of the 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 101 ENGLISH COMPOSITION I Director of Writing Studies
Required Texts:
Rhetoric:
Ramage & Bean. The Allyn & Bacon Guide to Writing, Brief. 4 rd ed. Allyn & Bacon, 2006.
Aaron. The Little, Brown Compact Handbook. 5th ed. Longman, 2004.
Selzer. Conversations: Readings for Writing. Pearson Longman, 2006.
Composition I provides students with the rhetorical foundations that prepare them for the demands of academic and professional writing. The course will help students understand the strategies and processes that good writers use whenever they try to accomplish a specific purpose. In college, these purposes include writing to understand and to demonstrate that understanding; writing to teach, entertain, or persuade a reader; writing to pose or solve problems; and writing to explain or challenge existing knowledge. The course will also teach students to respond effectively to the writing of others, and to use the suggestions of their teacher and their peers to improve their own writing. Some class discussion and readings focus on the function and scope of language and communication in a variety of social contexts.
Placement in 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 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, please review “The Student's Guide to Directed Self-Placement and the English 100/ Stretch Program ,” which will also help you decide whether English 101 is the proper course with which to begin the English Composition sequence. 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
Upon completing English 101, students should be able to effectively use and analyze forms and conventions of academic writing; these forms include argumentative and analytical writing; understand the benefits of peer feedback on their ideas, writing processes, and written drafts and be able to cooperate with others in giving and receiving such feedback; understand the importance of research to virtually all writing and be familiar with how to find articles and books using library resources, how to distinguish on-line sources from Internet sources, how to take notes, and how to synthesize information from multiple sources and integrate source material into discourse; generate good writing using specific methods for inventing and elaborating ideas, for arranging these ideas to achieve a specific rhetorical purpose, for producing good style, for revising, and for editing; write well in a variety of rhetorical contexts; understand the ways that purpose, process, subject matter, form, style, tone, and diction can be shaped to address a particular audience in a specific situation; demonstrate understanding of the ways that language and communication shape experience, construct meaning, and foster community; use Edited American English appropriately.
Coursework
Six Papers
Each involves invention, drafting, revising, and editing (70% of course 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 course grade).
Final Examination
Students will have two hours to write an essay on a topic to be announced (10% of course grade).
ENGLISH 102 ENGLISH COMPOSITION II Director of Writing Studies
Required Texts:
Aaron. The Little, Brown Compact Handbook. 5th ed. Longman, 2004.
Lunsford, et al. Everything's an Argument: With Readings . Bedford/St. Martin's, 2004.
A major goal of English Composition II is to prepare students for the complex demands of academic literacy. Successful academic writing requires that students be critical observers of personal and public knowledge; that they ask questions of reading and research, formulate hypotheses, design and conduct their own research, and identify further avenues of inquiry; and that they relate their discoveries persuasively to readers. To help them develop these abilities, English Composition II also teaches students the basic skills of 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. The course is designed to help students become better writers and readers in the University.
Course Goals
In English 102, students will reinforce the rhetorical foundations learned in English Composition I; learn to apply the practical and productive knowledge of ethos, audience, subject matter, process, and context for complex purposes; learn strategies for reading and analyzing texts; sharpen their powers of observation and inquiry in conducting research in and possibly out of the library; learn the methods of argumentation and analysis valued in academic contexts; learn the appropriate use of documentation and Edited American English.
Coursework
Four Papers
Each involves invention, drafting, revising, and editing (70% of course 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 and research that exercise students' abilities to write clearly and analytically and to read and think critically (20% of course grade).
Final Examinations
Students will have two hours to write an essay on a topic to be announced (10% of course grade).
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 204 LITERARY PERSPECTIVE ON THE MODERN WORLD Collins
Albee. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Signet. Penguin.
Baldwin . The Fire Next Time. Vintage. Random House.
Didion. Slouching towards Bethlehem . Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
McCullers. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Mariner. Houghton Mifflin.
Morrison. Sula. Vintage. Random House.
Williams. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Signet. Penguin.
In this course, we try to describe and understand specifically literary treatments of some related topics: modern culture, community, and family (as the gauge of social change); gender and ethnicity; and social disjunctures in relation to political ideologies and conflicts.
Requirements: Since this course meets for only four weeks, regular on-time attendance is an absolute requirement, as are thorough preparation and willing participation in class discussion. Other requirements include a short paper or writing assignment on each of the four weekly units (poetry, fiction, drama, non-fiction), regular reading quizzes and in-class writing, and a final examination.
ENGLISH 290 INTERMEDIATE EXPOSITORY WRITING Director of Writing Studies
Required Texts:
Aaron. The Little, Brown Compact Handbook. 4th ed. Longman, 2001.
Rosenwasser and Stephen. Writing Analytically. 3rd ed. Thomson/Heinle, 2003.
Since individual instructors may select a reader, students should check listing for specific sections at the bookstore.
English 290 is a course designed for any student enrolled in the University who wishes to improve his or her writing skills to meet the demands of academic writing across the disciplines. The emphasis is on analytical writing and research, and students will have opportunities to study and practice the rhetorical forms appropriate to their discipline. The course also teaches students the rhetorical foundations necessary for adapting writing to any situation.
Course Goals
to foster rhetorical awareness of the conventions, purposes, patterns of arrangement, forms of proof, and style appropriate to a particular discipline.
to teach methods of conducting and analyzing research, which includes textual and non-textual sources.
to provide ample opportunities for various writing experiences.
to develop prose that is clear, incisive, logically organized, persuasive, informative, and interesting.
to teach students strategies for improving the texture, rhythm, grace, and coherence of sentences and paragraphs and for suiting style to purpose, form, and situation.
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 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 involves invention, drafting, revising and editing (50%).
In Class Assignments
Includes assessing rhetorical situations, dictation, and responses to readings (20%).
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%).
ENGLISH 301 INTRODUCTION TO LITERARY ANALYSIS Bogumil
Joyce. The Dubliners. Dover .
Brookner. Hotel du Lac. Vintage. Random House.
McPherson. The Weir. Dramatists Play Service.
Mamet. The Cryptogram. Dramatists Play Service.
Hwang. Golden Child. Dramatists Play Service.
Course Packet: contains an introduction to Literary Criticism. Available at Kopies & More.
English 301 is required of all English majors and 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.
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.
Requirements: Five analyses (3 pages plus/ 10 points ea./total 50 points);one critical paper (6 – 8 pages/ 60 points); one examination of 20 quotations (identification and explication worth 5 points ea./100 points total). Total for course 210 points. Attendance and class participation is expected.
ENGLISH 302B LITERARY HISTORY OF BRITAIN , RESTORATION TO 1900 Boulukos
Required Texts:
Abrams, et al., eds. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Vol. 1C, The Restoration and Eighteenth Century. 7 th ed. W. W. Norton.
Abrams, et al., eds. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Vol. 2A, The Romantic Period. 7 th ed. W. W. Norton.
Abrams, et al., eds. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Vol. 2B, The Victorian Age. 7 th ed. W. W. Norton.
Equiano. The Life of Olaudah Equiano. Dover Thrift Ed. Dover .
This course surveys British literature from 1660 to 1900. Roughly a third of the course is devoted each to Restoration and 18 th- 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.
Requirements:
3 hours examinations
Brief Response papers (2 pages ea.)
Attendance and participation
ENGLISH 303 LITERARY HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES BEFORE 1900 Anthony
ENGLISH 307I FILM AS LITERARY ART Williams
Corrigan. A Short Guide to Writing About Film. 5 th ed. Pearson Education. Prentice-Hall.
The 2005 Summer School will focus upon the films of Robert Aldrich (1918-1983). Although generally labeled as a director of macho action films such as The Dirty Dozen and T he Longest Yard, the films are actually more complex in nature. This course aims to show the influences of the American New Deal of the 1930s as well as the post-war significance of the screenplays of Abraham Polonsky with Aldrich who worked in the short-lived Enterprise Studio during 1947-49. Aldrich attempted to keep faith with many of his formative influences and directed films which subverted the normal structure of the genres which existed in Hollywood .
After screening Crossfire (1847) as an example of the type of film which no longer became possible in Hollywood after the Red Scare, the Enterprise Studio productions of Body and Soul and Force of Evil followed. Both starred John Garfield, from Abraham Polonsky screenplays. The films Aldrich directed such as Kiss Me Deadly, Attack!, Gothic melodramas such as What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte , as well as his final masterpieces Ulzana's Raid and Twilight's Last Gleaming will be included.
The aim of this class is to show the diverse cultural influences affecting the work of this currently neglected director.
ENGLISH 325 BLACK AMERICAN WRITERS Professor Fox
Harper and Walton, ed. The Vintage Book of African American Poetry. Vintage. Random House.
Wilson . Joe Turner's Come and Gone. Plume. New American Library. Penguin.
Wright. The Wig. Mercury House.
Requirements:
Conscientious attendance and participation.
Three short essays.
Final examination.
ENGLISH 471 SHAKESPEARE; THE EARLY PLAYS, HISTORIES, AND COMEDIES Lamb
Shakespeare. The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies. W. W. Norton.
---. The Norton Shakespeare: The Histories . Ed. Greenblatt. W. W. Norton, 1997.
Saccio. Shakespeare's English Kings. Oxford University Press, 1977.
This course explores Shakespeare's plays before 1600, primarily comedies and histories. This term we will read Richard 2, Henry 4 pt. 1, Henry 5, Henry 6 pt. 2 ( also called The First Part of the Contention), Comedy of Errors, Much Ado about Nothing, Merchant of Venice , Merry Wives of Windsor .
Requirements: two papers, two hourly tests, and a final examination. There will also be quizzes, response paragraphs, and summaries of secondary material for each play. Graduate requirements may vary somewhat to include an extra assignment.
ENGLISH 493 SPECIAL TOPICS IN LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE Molino
Topic: British Women Writers of the Twentieth Century
Atkinson. Behind the Scenes at the Museum. Picador.
Atwood. Alias Grace. Anchor.
Boland. Outside History. W. W. Norton.
Duffy. Selected Poems. Penguin.
Hall. The Well of Loneliness. Anchor.
Smith. New Collected Poems. New Directions.
There are inherent problems with terms such as “women's writing” because the distinction along gender lines implies that writing is primarily the domain of men into which a few exceptional women have recently ventured. Compounding that problem is the prospect of a literary ghetto in which authors are women who write about and for other women. The label “feminist literature” can be used as a slur to segregate literature assumed to be more ideologically motivated than aesthetically minded. Despite such pitfalls, many female writers have developed strategies in their poetry and prose to engage in forms of women's writing that acknowledge but challenge the dominant male perspective, explore the place of women in the world without assuming women as the implied reader of the text, and advocate a feminist aesthetic by both mastering and undermining dominant literary practices. In this course we shall read three novels and three collections of poems written by women.
Both Margaret Atwood and Eavan Boland imagine a past, a history, that co-exist with the recorded events and views of recognized history. Their literary texts thereby create a space in which a previously untold story can be told or imagined that fills history's existing blanks. Carol Ann Duffy and Radclyffe Hall (nee Marguerite Radclyffe Hall) explore gender identity, particularly in the myriad ways the terms “masculine” and “feminine” carry social, political, and artistic assumptions that can be challenged, but often at a price. Stevie Smith and Kate Atkinson create unique, often nimble and nuanced, voices in their texts whose inflections and perspectives treat otherwise sacrosanct subjects – religion, family, marriage – with irreverence and humor that exposes the danger of a staid acquiescence to accepted social beliefs and practices.
Assignments: Several short essays to facilitate class discussion; one research paper, 8-10 pages for undergraduates, 15 to 20 pages for graduate students.
ENGLISH 593 SPECIAL TOPICS Dettmar
Topic: Irony in the Public Sphere
Colebrook. Irony. Routledge, 2004.
Irony as a trope has a history as old as human language itself; but for most of its existence, irony was a wink-and-nudge way of communicating important truths that was available only to an educated elite. In the mid-nineteenth century, however, growing adult literacy rates and a burgeoning visual/commercial culture brought a sophisticated form of irony to a public of unprecedented size. This “irony in the public sphere” is unusually vulnerable to misreading; the politics of this mass irony has, to date, been but little studied.
This course will be made up of four week-long segments. In the first, we will consider the theoretical bases for the study of irony, including a discussion of the course textbook, Claire Colebrook's Irony , as well as excerpts from Soren Kirkegaard's The Concept of Irony, Wayne Booth's The Rhetoric of Irony, and Linda Hutcheon's Irony's Edge. We will also look at some milestones in the movement of irony from the private to the public sphere.
Week Two will consider the use of ironic strategies in prime-time television programs, including All in the Family, The Simpsons, South Park , and perhaps others including The Larry Sanders Show.
Week Three will be devoted to musical irony, as manifest in rock & roll in particular: British Invasion, REM/U2, hip-hop, etc. Is irony even possible in the discursive space of the stadium rock concert? Does rock fandome render ironic strategies useless, or worse?
In Week Four, we will conclude by considering what has happened to irony in the wake of 9/11: the embargo on irony in the immediate aftermath, and the way that irony has gradually crept back into public discourse, indeed has even helped us to cope with a post-9/11 reality. We will probably look at some of Jedediah Purdy's For Common Things, songs like Bright Eyes' “When the President Talks to God,” episodes of The Daily Show , perhaps other things that we'll discover together.
Course “texts” are to some degree flexible; the Colebrook is the only text to purchase, but we will be considering in some detail other literary, theoretical, musical, and televisual texts during the course. These will be made available by the instructor.
ENGLISH 598 LITERARY THEORY Zimra
Topic: Readings in Theory: Marxist Socio-Critique
Required:
Gottlieb, ed. An Anthology of Western Marxism: From Lukacs and Gramsci to Socialist-Feminism. Oxford University Press, 1989.
Bakhtin. The Bakhtin Reader. Oxford University Press, 1994.
Jameson. Fredric Jameson Reader. Ed. Kellner Palgrave, Macmillan, 2004
---. Jameson Reader . Ed. Weeks. Blackwell Publishers.
Landry, ed. Spivak Reader. Routledge, 1995.
Recommended:
Woodfin. Introducing Marxism. Totem Books, 2004.
The primary emphasis is on Marxist and Marxist-derived (or Marxist-challenging) approaches. Covered chronologically from Hegel-Marx-Gramsci through the Frankfurt School and the post-Marxist cultural critics, the material is suitable for developing any number of interpretive paradigms. Students are thus free to explore more traditional textual or historical analyses, all the way from “old” historicism to “new historicism,” post-colonial materialist critique and, as a natural overlap of these last two, cultural studies.
This is primarily a reading course; assume a minimum of 50pp. per day. Over the month of analytical reading, each student's aim is to develop an interpretive grid. The resulting research project, due six weeks later, consists in applying your grid to a text, or an author, or a genre, or a period or a literary problem of your choice. Hence, you are welcome to develop the first stages of a possible dissertation project, both to determine which theoretical approach is applicable and to work in depth on one focus.
This class is not limited to PhD students. MA students will find it both challenging and highly useful in roughing out an MA thesis.
The class meets in the Dean's Conference Room, Faner 2408, for 4 hours daily, Monday, Wednesday and Thursday (on Tuesday the class meets in Faner 2061) from 10:30 to 12:30 and 2:00-4:00 for 4 weeks. Expect to start May 16 and 17 a couple hours each day, then we will begin on Tuesday, May 24 and stop June 17. The resulting research project (25 to 50pp) is due August 1; grades clear in August and, as far as Woody is concerned, this is counted as a summer class.
Fridays are off. Students post a minimum of 5 weekly pp. by Sunday midnight as an analytical recap of the week. Rotating student teams lead the daily discussion, so expect to present once a week.
Preliminaries start with May 16 th (2 hours only; bring your questions). Reading assignments are distributed and team presentations assigned. Note that I am out of town May 18 th through 23rd, so class resumes May 24 th .