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ENGL
2050: Self-Staging: Oral Communication in Everyday Life, Profs. Lori
Lipoma and John Sturgis
Section 01 (Lipoma): MWF 11:00-11:50, PAF 308
Section 02 (Lipoma) MWF 12:00-12:50, PAF 308
Section 03 (Sturgis) TR 9:30-10:45, PAF 307
Section 04 (Sturgis) TR 12:30-1:45, PAF 307
May count for credit in Core Area B. Same as THEA 2050.
Description:
Effective communicators are more productive, have enhanced career opportunities,
enjoy more fulfilling relationships, earn more respect, and have more
fun! The good news is that you already have the tools you need to become
a great communicator; it’s just a matter of learning how to use
them consciously and masterfully . . . in other words, learning how
to “self-stage.”
In Self-Staging:
Oral Communication in Everyday Life, we will study and practice practical
communication skills—creativity, quick thinking, risk taking, lateral
thinking, active listening, subtext mastery, self-awareness—and
apply them to virtually every interaction you encounter outside the
classroom: One-on-One Conversations, Public Presentation, Debate and
Argumentation, Conflict Resolution and Confrontation Skills, Stress
Management, Team Building, and Impression Management. By the end of
the semester, students will have had first-hand experience in all of
these areas, and, more importantly, will know exactly how to continue
honing and perfecting those skills long after.
Requirements:
Formal solo presentations, group projects and presentations, panel discussions/debates,
vocabulary-building exercises, role-playing and improvisation exercises,
journaling, and, of course, active, informed participation in each class
session.
.
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ENGL
2110-01: World Literature, Prof. Tom Dvorske
MWF 12:00–12:50, HUM 206
Required for English majors. May count for credit in Core Area C.
Description:
Whether through a hero’s noble journey or the fantastical adventures
of a disturbed mind, literature from around the world sings of our basic
human needs and desires. This survey of world literature shows that
each text attempts to tell the story of a people. We will explore how
texts grow from previous texts and cultural interactions. In fact, one
might say that the story of world literature is the story of intercultural
exchange, where stories are built upon, revised, adapted, translated,
interpreted from one culture to the next, each taking it and making
it their own in unique ways. In this course we will survey some of the
world’s best known literature, paying attention to its historical,
cultural, and geographical framework as well as how cultural interaction
makes for intertextuality and literary tradition.
Texts:
Maynard Mack, ed., The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces (single
volume edition). Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote. (trans Burton
Raffel; Norton ed., 1995).
Requirements:
Two papers, weekly reading responses, midterm and final exams.
.
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ENGL
2110-02: World Literature, Prof. Joshua Masters
T 5:30-8:00, HUM 206
Required for English majors. May count for credit in Core Area C.
Description:
This survey of World Literature will focus on the theme of travel in
imaginative literature, from early epic to the post-colonial novel.
We will explore the dominant myths and themes that attend narratives
of travel, and we will examine how travel has shaped the literary imagination,
political goals, and social values of a variety of cultures. What are
the central motives that drive us to travel? Why do some people choose
to wander the earth, while others need the imagined permanence of a
stationary “home?” What is the relationship between home and
away, here and there, self and other? Most importantly, why has much
of the world’s imaginative literature developed within the context
of travel, adventure, exploration, and conquest, from Odysseus’s
trials on the road home, to Moses’s quest for a homeland, to Arthur’s
search for the Grail, to Keruac’s desire simply to be “on
the road”? These questions, and many more, will fuel our own literary
explorations and wanderings this semester.
Texts:
The Odyssey by Homer, selections from the Old and New Testament,
The Aeneid by Virgil, Dante’s Inferno, Shakespeare’s
The Tempest, Flaubert in Egypt, Ngugi’s A Grain
of Wheat, and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony.
Requirements:
Students are expected to complete the day’s reading assignment
in advance and come to class prepared to participate in discussion.
In addition to your attendance, preparation, and intellectual curiosity,
you are also encouraged to discuss your writing and thinking with me
in my office. Your final grade will be based on short response papers,
reading quizzes, participation in class discussion, a final examination,
a four-page paper, and a six-page paper.
.
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ENGL
2110-25H: World Literature, Prof. Robert Snyder
Myth and Metaphysics
MW 3:30-4:45, TLC 2237
For Honors students only. Required for English majors. May count for
credit in Core Area C.
Description:
What exactly is myth, and how does literature participate in its construction?
How also does myth disclose a culture-specific metaphysics or Weltanschauung?
Beginning with Gilgamesh (Babylonian), Old Testament stories
(Judaic), Homer’s The Odyssey (Greek), and The Bhagavad-Gita
(Indian), this course explores this twofold issue in terms of selected
classics of world literature. Considerable attention will also be given
to Dante’s Inferno and several modern texts, including Franz
Kafka’s In the Penal Colony (selections), Jorge Luis Borges’
Labyrinths (selections), and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One
Hundred Years of Solitude. In terms of the latter, we finally will
be asking how myth survives post-Enlightenment impulses toward demythologization.
Texts:
Maynard Mack, ed., The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces
(expanded single-volume edition), and a few supplementary paperbacks.
Requirements:
Active engagement in class discussion, three short essays, oral presentation,
midterm, and final exam.
.
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ENGL
2120-01: British Literature, Prof. Fran Chalfant
The Uses of the Past
MWF 1:00-1:50, Hum 208
Required for English majors. May count for credit in Core Area C.
Description:
A survey of important works of British literature. This course will
slightly revise Winston Churchill’s comment, “Those who do
not know history will repeat its mistakes,” as “Writers who
can draw from past models with respect to genres, poetic form, and character
types often strongly enrich their own work.” This course will reveal
how the classical heroic epic, pastoral elegy, and tragedy; the Angelo-Saxon
heroic poem; the medieval romance and ballad; Shakespearean tragedy
and metaphysical poem all were utilized by later poets and prose writers,
a process in this course culminating with the late 20th century poet
Stevie Smith’s utilization of Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan.”
Texts:
Anderson, et. al., The Literature of England; Hardy, The Return
of the Native.
Requirements:
Active participation in class; four tests, including a mid-term and
final (all writing-based); plus paper.
.
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ENGL
2120-02: British Literature, Prof. Prasanta Chakravarty
MW 5:30-6:45, HUM 206
Required for English majors. May count for credit in Core Area C.
Description:
In this study of British literature, we will read selected texts, medieval
to contemporary, with an emphasis on the dynamic between individuals
and communities (familial, social, cultural, political), how individuals
are shaped by/resist these forces, and how literature and critical practices
respond to these changing dynamics. We will analyze diverse texts of
fiction, drama, poetry, film, which often offer recurrent themes. On
one hand, we will be reading such canonical authors like Chaucer, Shakespeare,
Donne, Pope, Blake, Browning, Dickens, Shaw and T.S. Eliot. On the other
hand, we will concentrate on works with more direct political and social
implications like Hooker’s Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity,
Milton’s Areopagitica, Hobbes’ Leviathan and
Marx and Engels’ The Communist Manifesto.
Text:
The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Volume I and II.
Abrams, M. H. (General Ed.); Stephen Greenblatt (Associate General Ed.);
et al.
Requirements:
Active discussion, group oral report, brief response essays, final research
essay, final exam.
.
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ENGL
2120-25H: British Literature, Prof. Maria Doyle
MWF 11:00-11:50, TLC 1204
For Honors students only. Required for English majors. May count for
credit in Core Area C.
Description:
From the mead halls of Beowulf to the various wastelands of modernity,
this course will explore the evolution of the British literary tradition,
with particular attention to the prominence of specific literary forms
and genres within particular historical periods. Drawing together the
various threads of our conversation will be the question of “Britishness”
itself: how does a national literary tradition establish a sense of
national character, and how do the various spaces of our textual exploration—from
Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre to Brontë’s lonely manor
houses to Joyce’s “dear, dirty Dublin”—raise questions
about what it means to be included in that tradition?
Texts:
Norton Anthology of British Literature: The Major Authors; William
Shakespeare, Othello; Tom Stoppard, Arcadia.
Requirements:
Reading journal, independent analytical essay (8 pages with proposal),
midterm and final exams, group oral presentation.
.
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ENGL
2120-26H: British Literature, Prof. Nina Leacock
TR 2:00-3:15, TLC 2237
For Honors students only. Required for English majors. May count for
credit in Core Area C.
Description:
This course will survey the major periods of British Literature from
its Anglo-Saxon beginnings to the present. We will have to read the
earliest texts on our syllabus in translation, and in our subsequent
reading we will be paying close attention to the development of our
language in its literature, becoming familiar with the Oxford English
Dictionary in the process. In addition to considering the relation
of our present language and literature to the past, we will also be
exploring critical debates about problems of genre and literary periodization.
Texts:
The Norton Anthology of Poetry (5th Edition, Shorter Version),
Beowulf, King Lear, Pride and Prejudice, The Importance of Being
Earnest, To the Lighthouse, and a packet of texts available on electronic
reserve at the library. We will be working with the online Oxford
English Dictionary.
Requirements:
Active participation, weekly informal written homework, three formal
essays, reading quizzes, midterm, and final exam.
.
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ENGL
2130-01: American Literature, Prof. Debra MacComb
MWF 9:00-9:50, Hum 206
Required for English majors. May count for credit in Core Area C
Description:
This course will develop a range of enduring themes that have characterized
American literature: the encounter with and appropriation of nature;
the crafting of an identity that attempts to reconcile the desires of
the individual with the needs of society; the individual’s ability
to chart his own path to success; the “problem” of the socio-cultural
“other”; and the tension between the public and private spheres.
In exploring these themes, we will read a variety of canonical and non-canonical
texts to examine the authorial strategies that developed over time which
make these works aesthetically as well as historically pertinent.
Texts:
Nina Baym, ed., The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Shorter
Edition; Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby; Hawthorne, The
Scarlet Letter.
Requirements:
Three short papers, midterm and final examinations, informed participation
in class discussion.
.
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ENGL
2130-02: American Literature, Prof. Mitzi McFarland
TR 3:30-4:45, Hum 206
Required for English majors. May count for credit in Core Area C
Throwing
the gauntlet at society’s rigid expectations for black women, Toni
Morrison’s ambitious heroine Sula enumerates a quintessential aspect
of the American dream: “I don’t want to make somebody else.
I want to make myself.” The notion of the self-made individual
will be our focal point for exploring a range of enduring questions
that have characterized American literature: How have Americans defined
individual, cultural or national identity at different moments in our
history as a nation? Does a national and/or individual identity that
is uniquely “American” exist? What qualities or characteristics
constitute individual and/or national identity? What roles do the historical
past, personal experiences, and social environments or conditions play
in defining who we are? And to what extent has the American landscape
as a geographic or symbolic space contributed to the formation of American
identity? As we examine these questions, we will assess the importance
of language—especially writing—in rhetorically shaping, mediating
and constructing individual, national, and literary “American-ness.”
We will also explore the role of race, gender, and social class in forming
American identities as well as the criterion texts enact for the inclusion
or exclusion of these categories. Through careful study and close reading
of the texts, we want to probe the notion of literary value (“What
makes a text American?” and “What is an American masterpiece?”)
as we foray multiple genres (essay, film, non-fiction, fiction, and
poetry) and look at some of the aesthetic, literary, psychological,
and socio-historical facets out of which texts are both generated and
interpreted.
Texts:
Benjamin Franklin’s The Autobiography, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s
The Scarlet Letter, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God,
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Toni Morrison’s
Sula, Sandra Cisnero’s The House on Mango Street,
Sherman Alexie’s First Indian on the Moon.
Requirements:
Active and informed class participation, reading quizzes, one oral presentation,
three papers, a midterm, and a final.
.
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ENGL
2130-25H: American Literature, Prof. Jane Hill
MW 2:00-3:15, TLC 2237
For Honors students only. Required for English majors. May count for
credit in Core Area C.
Description:
Through examining texts representative of American literature, we will
explore how our nation's story of itself, as recorded in its literature,
has both reflected and shaped us as a people. We will consider issues
of genre and of history as they influence that story during specific
eras in our literary development, and we will seek to understand how
race, class, and gender affect representations of American lives.
Texts:
Russell Banks, Continental Drift; Ann Beattie, The Burning
House; David Bottoms, Armored Hearts: Selected and New Poems;
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby; Benjamin Franklin, The
Autobiography; Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter; Harriet
Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; Mark Twain, Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn; and Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass. In
addition to these written texts, we will also study four films: The
Last of the Mohicans, The Scarlet Letter, Avalon, and Forrest
Gump.
Requirements:
In addition to regular attendance, active class participation, and regular
reading quizzes, students will do several short response papers as well
as midterm and final essays, all written out of class, and at least
two presentations to the class.
.
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ENGL
2130-26H: American Literature, Prof. Alison Umminger
TR 9:30-10:45, TLC 2237
For Honors students only. Required for English majors. May count for
credit in Core Area C.
This survey
class on American literature centers upon the theme: “The Search
for Identity: The American Experience in Black and White.” The
first week will read Toni Morrison’s short story “Recitatif,”
and discuss cultural assumptions about race, gender, and identity. We
will then move back in time and work our way forward, starting our reading
of longer texts with Ben Franklin and Frederick Douglass’s autobiographies,
examining the tension between how an individual shapes his own identity,
and how the larger culture determines how an individual’s identity
will be shaped. We will then move to look at The Scarlet Letter
and Harriet Jacobs’ autobiography, complicating questions of race
with the intersecting rubric of gender norms and their hold on women.
Rounding out our discussion of the nineteenth century will be a number
of short readings, including sections of Walt Whitman’s “Leaves
of Grass,” Emerson’s “Self-Reliance,” Melville’s
“Benito Cereno,” and the longer text of Mark Twain’s
Huckleberry Finn. Our discussion of twentieth century literature
will begin with Jean Toomer’s Cane and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s
The Great Gatsby, and will include a discussion of the two major
literary movements of this time: Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance.
We will also read poetry by Langston Hughes and T.S. Eliot, and the
novella Passing by Nella Larsen. Moving into mid-century, we
will read Faulkner’s Light in August and Carson McCullers’s
Member of the Wedding. The course will conclude with the neo-slave
narrative, Ishamel Reed’s Flight to Canada, as part of a
larger discussion of postmodernism. While race figures prominently in
many of these readings, we will also be attentive to gender and sexuality,
community and tradition as important factors in creating American identity
and American literature.
Requirements:
You will be expected to write two longer essays, one at mid-term and
one at semester’s end, complete a number of short responses, and
give at least one presentation on the material covered. Active reading
and participation is expected.
.
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ENGL
2180-01: Studies in African-American Literature, Prof. Joshua Masters
MW 3:30-4:45, PAF 307
May count for credit in Core area C.
Description:
This survey of African American literature focuses on the formation
and development of the novelistic tradition in African American letters.
The course is divided into two sections, “From Slavery to Freedom”
and “America Re-Imagined.” In Part I of the course we will
focus on slave narratives, both actual and fictional, and their pivotal
role in establishing an African American literary tradition. As we examine
issues of voice, memory, and education, we will confront the two central
aims of the slave narrative: to present objective, authentic records
of America’s “peculiar institution” of chattel slavery;
and to present that system in such a way as to render it ethically,
politically, and economically intolerable. In Part II we will examine
the novel as a vehicle through which to explore, and ultimately destabilize,
the very notion of “race,” a category that consistently undermines
the human potential to achieve freedom. If the twentieth century was
the era of the color line, according to W.E.B. Du Bois, then what will
be the persistent moral theme of the twenty-first? Our readings, and
our discussions, will give us insight into this most urgent of questions.
Texts:
The Classic Slave Narratives, Frances Harper’s Iola Leroy,
James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man,
Ellison’s Invisible Man, Morrison’s Song of Solomon,
Charles Johnson’s Middle Passage, and Coulson Whitehead’s
The Intuitionist.
Requirements:
Students are expected to complete the day’s reading assignment
in advance and come to class prepared to participate in discussion.
In addition to your attendance, preparation, and intellectual curiosity,
you are also encouraged to discuss your writing and thinking with me
in my office. Your final grade will be based on short response papers,
reading quizzes, participation in class discussion, a final examination,
a four-page paper, and a six-page paper.
.
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ENGL
2190-01: Studies in Literature by Women, Prof. Bonnie Jett Adams
Resistance and Revision
MWF 10:00-10:50, HUM 206
May count for credit in Core area C.
Description:
We will approach the literature in this course through the lens of the
female experience itself. Beginning with Virginia Woolf, we will first
examine those writers whose work centers upon not only finding their
distinctly female voices, but expressing them as well. We will move
then to an examination of the treatment of the female body and female
sexuality: How do women writers represent their own bodies and sexuality?
How does the biological fact of their female bodies influence their
writing?
Finally,
we will examine what Joseph Boone refers to as the “countertraditional
voices” in literature by women—those texts whose premise runs
decidedly counter to the traditional structure of narrative, which deems
marriage the ultimate (and often, the only) end for the female protagonist.
Through a discussion of works spanning from the seventeenth century
(Atell’s A Serious Proposal to the Ladies) to contemporary
culture (Bushnell’s Sex and the City), we will consider
how these women writers raise their voices against marriage, whether
through uncovering the misogynist principles inherent in the traditional
structure of marriage, or through simply advocating alternative choices
which prove ultimately more satisfying.
Our class
will culminate in an examination of two seminal works: Charlotte Bronte’s
Jane Eyre and Kate Chopin’s The Awakening. We will
discuss each text in light of the writer’s revolutionary/revisionist
treatment of the issues we’ve deconstructed this semester: the
female voice, sexuality, and marriage.
Texts:
The Longman Anthology of Women’s Literature. Ed. Mary K.
DeShazer. ISBSN 0-321-01006-X. Jane Eyre. Charlotte Bronte. Ed.
Beth Newman. ISBSN 0-312-09545-7.
.
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ENGL
2300-01: Practical Criticism: Research and Methodology, Prof. Maria
Doyle
MWF 10:00-10:50, HUM 225
Required for the major in English as a prerequisite to upper-division
study. Requires permission of the department chair. Not offered during
summer session.
Description:
This course provides those preparing for upper-level work in English
with an introduction to various methods of critical analysis and the
opportunity to discover how the application of these theories can broaden
the exploration of literature. Discussions will allow students to engage
a variety of terms and ideas central to current critical debate and
will use these investigations to define the distinctive characteristics
of individual schools including psychoanalysis, feminism, reader-response,
Marxism and deconstruction.
Our main
focus, however, as the course title suggests, will be on the practical
application of theory, and thus the first portion of the term will use
these critical models to produce readings of selected shorter texts
and of a single, more substantial text (Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist
as a Young Man). Having built this analytical base, students will spend
the last few weeks of the term developing their own theoretically informed,
research-based reading of a contemporary text.
Texts:
Jonathan Culler, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction;
James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Bedford
Critical Edition); Margaret Edson, Wit; Joseph Gibaldi, ed.,
MLA Handbook.
Requirements:
3 short papers, oral presentation, final exam, final research project
(involving a proposal, draft, editing workshops and final documented
paper).
.
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ENGL
2300-02: Practical Criticism: Research and Methodology, Prof. Lisa Crafton
TR 2:00-3:15, HUM 225
Required for the major in English as a prerequisite to upper-division
study. Requires permission of the department chair. Not offered during
summer session.
Description:
As a prerequisite for upper-division English studies, this course provides
an introduction to representative critical approaches to literature.
Enabling students to develop and articulate interpretations from a variety
of theoretical approaches, the course investigates the historical development
and the key assumptions and methodologies of significant schools of
literary criticism. As the aim of the course is not literary theory,
per se, we will examine each critical theory in context of application
to literary texts in a variety of genres. In order to prepare students
for critical writing on both poetry and the novel, the course will include
intensive study of representative critical essays on Coleridge’s
poem Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Toni Morrison’s novel
Sula. As Toni Morrison has said of her heroine Sula, the novel
itself is “uncontained and uncontainable,” and provides a
particularly rich field for critical study and critically-informed writing.
Texts:
Toni Morrison, Sula and online casebook of critical essays; Coleridge,
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Case Studies in Contemporary
Criticism ed.); Critical Terms for Literary Study, eds. Lentricchia
and McLaughlin; Culler, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction.
Requirements:
3 critical essays, research paper (including proposal, required drafts,
editing workshops, a formal annotated bibliography, and final documented
research paper), oral report on critical approach to contemporary film/music,
final exam.
.
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ENGL
2300-03: Practical Criticism: Research and Methodology, Prof. Andrew
Hartley
TR 5:30-6:45, HUM 225
Required for the major in English as a prerequisite to upper-division
study. Requires permission of the department chair. Not offered during
summer session.
Description:
This course is an introduction to representative critical approaches
in literary studies which is required for English majors and is a prerequisite
for upper-division classes. Through close analysis of selected literary
texts and reading of appropriate critical materials we will learn the
basics of literary analysis and deepen our understanding of current
critical theory.
Texts:
The Dead (James Joyce: Bedford Case Studies Edition), Hamlet
(Shakespeare: Bedford Case Studies edition), Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern are Dead (Stoppard), Literary Criticism (Bressler),
A Handbook to Literature (Harmon/Holman).
Requirements:
3 short papers, one longer research paper, one exam, one oral presentation
and class participation.
.
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ENGL
3200-01W: Creative Writing, Prof. Tom Dvorske
MWF 10:00-10:50, HUM 209
No more than two (2) 3000-level courses may be counted toward the major
in English. May be taken for 3 hours of WAC requirement.
Description:
In this course, students will read a great deal of fiction and poetry,
write about much of it, and learn to identify elements of craft and
how they function in a literary text. On the flipside, students will
generate their own creative texts—from directed prompts and from
their own imagination—employing many of the techniques we’ve
explored. In a broader sense, students will also set forth and revise
throughout the term their notions of creativity, aesthetics, and judgment
through critiques of their own and each other’s work in an open,
workshop forum.
Texts:
Shapard & Thomas, eds., Sudden Fiction; Hemingway, In
Our Time; John Drury, Creating Poetry; Kim Addonizio, Tell
Me; Bob Hicok, Animal Soul; Toi Derricote, Tender;
Jerry Williams, Casino of the Sun; handouts and miscellany.
Requirements:
Creative work in poetry and fiction, reading responses and critiques,
two to three analysis papers.
.
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ENGL
3200-02: Creative Writing, Prof. Teresa Jones
T 5:30-8:00, TLC 1204
No more than two (2) 3000-level courses may be counted toward the major
in English.
Description:
Introduction to Writing Fiction and Poetry. Writing is always an act
of communication, an effort to reveal through words a truth of the physical
world as apprehended through the senses, an effort to reveal through
words a truth of physical, psychological, emotional human experience.
Joseph Conrad says, “My task which I am trying to achieve is, by
the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel—it
is before all, to make you see!” Rainer Maria Rilke says, “This
above all—ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must
I write? . . . then build your life according to this necessity.”
If you worry that you have nothing to say, look to Flannery O’Connor:
“Anyone who has survived childhood has enough material for a lifetime.”
In this course, we will read and study short fiction and poetry from
a writerly perspective. Then you will mine and shape your own material
into poetry that works, fiction that works, literature that honors language
and communicates something of what it means to be human. This class
will not accommodate children’s literature, science fiction, romance,
mysteries, memoirs, personal essays, or the like.
Texts:
Imaginative Writing: The Elements of Craft, Janet Burroway. Student-generated
stories and poems copied and distributed to the class by the authors.
Requirements:
Attendance is mandatory. In addition: reading assignments, active and
informed participation in class discussions, writing exercises, five
poems (revised), a fully developed short story (revised), written responses
to workshop submissions, and a comprehensive final exam.
.
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ENGL
3200-03W: Creative Writing, Prof. Todd Rudy
TR 2:00-3:15, TLC 1112
No more than two (2) 3000-level courses may be counted toward the major
in English. May be taken for 3 hours of WAC requirement.
Description:
This course is an introduction to the craft of creative writing that
focuses on the genres of fiction and poetry. Since revision is the key
to all good writing, we’ll workshop our own from inception through
drafts to a polished piece. Considering the elements of these two genres,
we’ll also examine published works by accomplished writers for
both their strengths and weaknesses, and we’ll learn about the
stark similarities between these purportedly separate genres, issues
of artistic creation and influence, and manners of accessing the minds
of our readers. Additionally, we will strive for imagination-driven
rather than memory-driven works to make the most of the qualifier “creative.”
Texts:
Knorr, Jeff & Tim Schell, A Writer’s Country: A Collection
of Fiction and Poetry; assorted in-class handouts of poems and stories.
Requirements:
Students will compose both poetry and fiction (about 6 poems & 2
stories), compose apologia reflecting upon that work, regularly submit
online exercises, maintain reflective journals, compose short analyses
of published works, engage in hearty workshops of their own work, and
participate in a final reading of their favorite creations.
.
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ENGL
3400-01W: Advanced Composition: Creative Nonfiction, Prof. Todd Rudy
TR 11:00-12:15, TLC 1110
No more than two (2) 3000-level courses may be counted toward the major
in English. May be taken for certification in Secondary English Education.
May be taken for 3 hours of WAC requirement.
Description:
This course will explore the writing of what is commonly referred to
as “the 4th genre”—creative nonfiction. We’ll analyze
published essays from accomplished writers to discover the forms and
methods used, and students will compose personal essays about matters
of importance in their own lives, experiences from their pasts, and
thoughts about their existence in the present. Since revision is the
key to all good writing, we’ll workshop our own essays from inception
through draft to polished piece. This course requires a great deal of
personal exploration and even—gracious—sharing of ourselves
with others. A final work of yours will be published online; previous
examples may be read here: http://www.westga.edu/~trudy/3400paper/paper1/paper1.htm.
Texts:
Miller, Brenda & Suzanne Paola, Tell It Slant: Writing and Shaping
Creative Nonfiction; assorted in-class selections from current magazines.
Requirements:
Students will compose 3 major essays reflecting upon their own lives,
one of which will require research into some topic close to the author,
and we will engage in hearty workshops of these essays through several
stages of revision. Students will also maintain reflective journals,
submit regular online writing we call “soul-mining” exercises,
compose brief analyses of accomplished and published essays, and submit
one personal essay for online publication.
.
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ENGL
3405-01W and 3405-02W: Professional and Technical Writing, Prof. Tiffany
Armand
Section 01W: MW 2:00-3:15, TLC 1111
Section 02W: T 5:30-8:00, TLC 1111
May be taken for certification in Secondary English Education.
Required for the BS in Computer Science. May be used to satisfy the
WAC requirement.
Description:
Professional careers require you to present and prove your skills before
you can make significant advancements, and this is usually accomplished
through written documentation. Therefore, even if you are not a professional
writer, you will be a “professional who writes”. And professionals
who can write well are usually more impressive than those who cannot.
This course
will teach you how to write proper business letters, memos, email, and
resumes. Then we will advance into proper summarization, document design,
and instructional writing. Your final assignment will be a research
project requiring you to write a proposal, a short report, and a long
assessment/recommendation report.
This class
requires you to be an already competent writer.
Text:
Successful Writing at Work, Philip C. Kolin, occasional library
reserve materials.
Requirements:
The documents described above, three tests, and some small daily assignments.
Punctual submission of assignments is crucial; if you have trouble meeting
deadlines, this is not the course for you.
.
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ENGL
4/5106-01W: Studies in Genre, Prof. Gregory Fraser
Poetry
MW 2:00-3:15, HUM 225
Required for Certification in Secondary English Education. May be taken
for 3 hours of WAC requirement.
This class
will proceed under the assumption that the very notion of a literary
“genre” is an unstable category whose definitions shift under
historical, ideological, and aesthetic pressures. Consequently, we will
begin not with the question, “What is poetry?” but instead
try to articulate, “What is poetry at these specific periods of
time; in these particular cultural circumstances; under these conflicting
ideological pressures; in the light of these specific artistic practices?”
In short, we will study the ways in which poets have produced texts
that both reflect and refract the dominant assumptions of their literary
and social contexts. To facilitate our study of this flexible genre,
we will closely examine the historical conditions and power relations
under which given texts were written; review the manifestos of several
poets; and apply the contemporary reading practices of various textual
theorists—including but not be limited to Stephen Greenblatt, bell
hooks, Roland Barthes, and Elizabeth Grosz.
Text:
Reading Poetry, Tom Furniss and Michael Bath, Prentice Hall/Harvester
Wheatsheaf, 1996. (Note: This volume is currently out of print, but
the campus book store has been notified to acquire used copies. Students
may want to take a proactive approach and try to locate the text through
an internet used-book supplier.)
Requirements:
periodic quests (a quest is a cross between a quiz and a test); two
formal essays of at least five pages in length; one formal essay of
at least ten pages in length; a mid-term and a final exam.
.
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ENGL
4/5106-02: Studies in Genre, Prof. Margaret E. Mitchell
Fiction
TR 9:30-10:45, HUM 225
Required for Certification in Secondary English Education.
Description:
As a genre, fiction may be said to present pretense as reality, thereby
involving the reader in a temporary illusion. This course will consider
the cultural and ideological function of this process. We will raise
questions about what kinds of fictions arise from particular historical
and cultural circumstances and consider the relationship between text
and context. Some writers strive to close the gap between real and fictional
worlds, producing fictions that mirror reality as closely as possible;
others emphasize the constructed, textual nature of the worlds they
have invented. We will read an eclectic assortment of short stories
and novels that define and contest the boundaries of fiction, considering
the relationship between form and content, representation and reality.
Texts:
Virginia Woolf, The Waves; Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus;
Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient; Charles Dickens, Oliver
Twist, Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye, Colson Whitehead, The
Intuitionist; Margaret Atwood, Wilderness Tips; Raymond Carver,
collected stories; critical readings on electronic reserve.
Requirements:
Short paper, longer research-based paper, response papers, oral presentation,
final exam. Graduate students will be expected to do additional critical
readings, write a longer research paper, and take a leading role in
class discussions.
.
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ENGL
4/5109-01: Film as Literature, Prof. Andrew Hartley
Shakespeare on Film
TR 2:00-3:15, HUM 206
Description:
An examination of the way Shakespeare’s plays have been made/remade
as movies, exploring the adaptive strategies employed in making the
shift in genre from stage to screen . Among the films under consideration
will be versions of Richard III, Henry V, King Lear, Macbeth, A Midsummer
Night’s Dream and Romeo and Juliet.
Texts:
Signet Classic editions of the above mentioned plays and The Screen
Writer’s Bible (Trottier).
Requirements:
Two exams and two papers, the latter and longer of which is a full research
paper, and class participation.
.
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ENGL
4/5115-01: Renaissance Literature, Prof. Andrew Hartley
TR 11:00-12:15, HUM 206
Description:
A study of the poetry, prose and drama of one of British literature’s
richest periods, one whose writing manifests the massive cultural, religious
and economic changes taking place at the time. We will move from the
end of the medieval world to the tail end of the seventeenth century,
examining works by some of the greatest literary artists of all time,
among them Spenser, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson, Donne, Marvell and
Milton.
Text:
TBA.
Requirements:
Two exams and two papers, the latter and longer of which is a full research
paper, and class participation.
.
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ENGL
4/5145-01: Victorian Literature, Prof. Margaret E. Mitchell
TR 12:30-1:45, HUM 225
Description:
This course will consider Victorian literature as a response to the
social, political, and cultural ideals and anxieties that marked nineteenth-century
Britain. Surveying fiction and poetry as well as non-fiction, from the
“social problem novel” of the “hungry forties” to
fin de siècle Decadence, we will explore these texts as literary
responses to Victorian concerns about class boundaries, definitions
of gender, crime, science, and empire, just to name a few. We will examine
not only the cultural wishes and fears reflected in Victorian literature,
but the ways in which each work seeks to structure and resolve them.
Texts:
Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton; Charlotte Brontë, Jane
Eyre, Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son; Thomas Hardy, Jude
the Obscure; Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray. Selections
from the poetry of Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina
Rosetti, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Non-fiction selections from such
writers as Matthew Arnold, Thomas Carlyle, and John Ruskin. Critical
readings on reserve.
Requirements:
Short paper, research paper, response papers, oral presentation, final
exam. Graduate students will be expected to do additional critical readings,
write a longer research paper, and take a leading role in class discussions.
.
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ENGL
4/5150-01W: American Realism and Naturalism, Prof. Debra MacComb
MWF 11:00-11:50, HUM 225
May be taken for 3 hours of WAC requirement.
Description:
This course examines the American literary arts based in an aesthetic
of accurate, unromanticized observation/representation of life and nature
that flourished in the post-Civil War era. Students are expected to
develop a vocabulary of realist/naturalism theory and technique and
an understanding of the ideologies underlying their practice. Integral
to the study of the period and its dominant aesthetic will be an introduction
to a number of social, political and philosophical developments such
as the American Civil War, the rise of the middle class, the unrest
of the working class, the increasing segregation of the races, the rise
of regional identities, the burgeoning consumer culture, the influence
of Darwinian theories of survival and determinism, reform movements
in education, business and the workplace, and the emergence of the “New
Woman.”
Texts
by Whitman, Twain, James, Howells, Chesnutt, Jewett, Wharton, Crane,
and London are probable choices.
Requirements:
Three short response papers, a research prospectus and 8-10 page documented
essay, a final exam, and informed participation in class discussion.
.
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ENGL
4/5160-01W: Twentieth-Century American Literature, Prof. Randy Hendricks
MWF 12:00-12:50, Hum 208
May be taken for 3 hours of WAC requirement.
Description:
Concentrating on the first half of the century and using major texts
supplemented by shorter readings, our study will consider the relations
between historical and cultural developments and the literature of America
from the rise of Modernism to the emergence of the Beat Generation.
We will also become familiar with the major movements, literary works,
and critical developments of the period; and we will consider ways in
which the works we read reflect what is sometimes referred to as a cultural
crisis that dominated the thinking of much of the last century as well
as some of the century’s major socio/political debates.
Texts:
Gertrude Stein, Three Lives; Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also
Rises; T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land and Other Poems; William
Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury; Zora Neale Hurston, Their
Eyes Were Watching God. We will also read or view (on video) plays
by Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller and read
selections of poems by a number of other poets, including Robert Frost,
Edna St. Vincent Millay, Langston Hughes, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos
Williams, Carl Sandburg, Marianne Moore, Robert Penn Warren, e.e. cummings,
Allen Ginsburg, and others.
Requirements:
rigorous daily preparation for class, a number of short writing assignments,
2 short papers, midterm and final exams, 1 longer research paper (10-12
pages). In lieu of the final exam, graduate students will write a more
extensive research paper and prepare an annotated bibliography of secondary
sources relevant to their research.
.
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ENGL
4/5170-01: African-American Literature, Prof. Stacy Boyd
20th Century African-American Novel and Literary Criticism
TR 11:00-12:15, PAF 307
Description: This course will examine major trends, authors, and texts
central to the development of the twentieth-century African-American
novel. Beginning with the New Negro Movement and moving chronologically
to contemporary literature and culture, we will examine African American
fiction (and its attending criticism) as we develop definitions for
the field. The politics of race, gender, sexuality, class, and region
will play major roles as both primary and secondary texts address their
present moment, cull from the past, and begin to envision the future.
Indeed, the dynamics of inter-textual exchange—the ways in which
texts invoke and revise previous works (the ways in which they “riff”
on one another)—will also inform our analysis. And, of course,
the ways in which texts derive meaning through extra-textual references
and associations (African American music or folk culture for example)
will also shape our reading of African American literature and its place/role
in literary studies.
Texts:
Possible novels include The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois;
Passing, Nella Larsen; Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora
Neale Hurston; Native Son, Richard Wright; Invisible Man,
Ralph Ellison; Go Tell It on the Mountain, James Baldwin; Maude
Martha, Gwendolyn Brooks; The Oxherding Tale, Charles Johnson;
The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison; The Color Purple, Alice
Walker; Company Man, Brent Wade; The Man in My Basement,
Walter Mosley.
Requirements:
Normally, weekly response papers, presentation, a research prospectus
for a longer literature project.
.
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ENGL
4/5180-01W: Studies in Regional Literature, Prof. Debra MacComb
The West
MWF 1:00-1:50, HUM 225
May be taken for 3 hours of WAC requirement.
“I
see now that this has been a story of the West, after all—Tom and
Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners . . .”
—F.
Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Description:
Taken in light of Frederick Jackson Turner’s assessment that the
West’s “significance” lay in its capacity to arouse utopian
expectations, Nick Caraway’s rather opaque conclusion about his
Long Island summer makes more sense: indeed, perhaps more than any other
regional literature, that of the American West exists as a mental rather
than geographical territory. That is, while the values associated with
“the” West—limitless possibility, natural justice, vast
wealth, Adamic renewal—have remained constant, the physical space
denoted has shifted—well, west—from the Atlantic settlements
of the seventeenth century across the North American continent and beyond
in the twentieth. This course will focus on works shaped by the idea
of the West, from narratives of captivity, exploration, settlement and
enterprise in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to those which,
in the twentieth century, redefine, subvert or parody the dominant themes
and conventions of the genre.
Texts:
Lewis and Clark, Cooper, Sedgwick, Twain, Harte, Wister, Grey, Cather,
L’Amour and Didion seem likely choices.
Requirements:
Three short response papers, a research prospectus and 8-10 page documented
essay, a final exam, and informed participation in class discussion.
.
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ENGL
4/5188-01W: Individual Authors, Prof. Maria Doyle
Seamus Heaney
MW 3:30-4:45, HUM 206
Required for English Majors. May be taken for certification in Secondary
English Education. May be taken for 3 hours of WAC requirement.
Description:
Seamus Heaney is a writer invested in the project of digging for origins,
a concern introduced in the first poem of his first collection (aptly
entitled, “Digging”) and pursued in various forms into his
most recent work. This course will explore the evolution of that quest,
examining Heaney’s concern for the physical and intellectual penetration
of landscape and his wide-ranging interest in myth—from Danish
sacrificial rites to the legends of ancient Greece to figures from pre-Christian
Ireland. Discussions will also explore his sense of his own position
within a literary heritage (both Irish and international) and his sense
of his personal and writerly place within the political/historical world.
Texts:
Heaney, Opened Ground: Selected Poems 1966-1996, Sweeney Astray,
The Cure at Troy, Finders Keepers: Selected Prose 1971-2001 .
Requirements:
2 short response papers, oral presentation, 8-10 page research paper
(with proposal), midterm and final exams, active participation in discussions.
Requirements for graduate students: Short response paper, annotated
bibliography, oral presentation, 12-15 page research paper (with proposal),
midterm and final exams, active participation in discussions
.
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ENGL
4/5188-02W: Individual Authors: Edgar Allan Poe, Prof. David Newton
TR 12:30-1:45, HUM 208
Required for English Majors. May be taken for certification in Secondary
English Education. May be taken for 3 hours of WAC requirement.
Description:
Much like the haunted landscapes and figures found in his poems and
tales, Edgar Allan Poe lurks at the margins of the American—as
well as the European—literary imagination. While debates about
his status as a canonical writer persist, a wealth of writers have publicly
acknowledged Poe as a seminal literary and theoretical influence, including
Baudelaire, Doyle, Dostoevski, Nabokov, Barth, and Borges. Beyond his
innovative contributions to the theory of poetic composition, to the
development of the short story, and to the gothic tradition, Poe contributes
to (if not outright invents) a number of important contemporary fields
of writing, such as detective/mystery fiction and horror/fantasy. Poe’s
influence also extends to the psychology of literature and psychoanalytic
theory. In particular, “The Purloined Letter” has served as
a basis for a series of studies beginning with Freud and continuing
with Lacan and Derrida.
Beyond
the scope of his influence on other writers and literary genre, an individual
author course on Poe seems especially apt, since so many of Poe’s
literary works have been read—usually incorrectly—through
biographical and psychological misinterpretations of his life. The course
will allow us to chart a more accurate appraisal of the relationship
between his life and works, emphasizing his contributions as a literary
theorist and as an editor of several significant nineteenth-century
literary magazines, including the Southern Literary Messenger.
Texts:
Poe, Poetry and Tales. Eds., Quinn and Thompson. Library of America
Edition, 1984; Arthur Quinn, Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography.
New York, 1941. Ppbk rpt., John Hopkins UP, 1998; Other works by Poe
(Letters, Critical Essays, Reviews in the Southern Literary Messenger,
etc.) will be available online as electronic texts. We will also read
one contemporary detective novel and view several science fiction and
horror films to analyze Poe’s continuing influence on American
culture.
Requirements:
For undergraduates, active participation in class discussions, reading
quizzes, 2 short response papers, midterm and final exams, in-class
presentations; and 8-10 page research paper (with proposal). For graduate
students, all of the requirements listed above as well as an annotated
bibliography (min. 10 sources), and a more extensive 12-15 page research
paper.
.
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ENGL
4/5210-01: Advanced Creative Writing, Prof. Alison Umminger
Fiction
TR 3:30-4:45, HUM 225
Prequisite: ENGL 3200.
This class
will look at the short story from a writerly perspective, and require
students to complete and workshop at least two longer stories (10-20
pages) along with a number of weekly responses. As a craft text, we
will be using John Gardener’s The Art of Fiction. We will
begin the class by reading such masters of the genre as Chekov and O’Connor,
then turn our attention to more recent collections, such as Adam Haslett’s
You are Not a Stranger Here and Dana Johnson’s Break
Any Woman Down. We will also be reading from Ben Marcus’s recent
anthology The Anchor Book of New American Short Fiction. You
will develop your skills as active readers and writers, with attention
not only to craft and form, but to thematic content and relevance. I
expect active engagement with and respect for the work of fellow students,
and some familiarity with fiction writing. This is primarily a workshop
class, but active reading produces good writing, thus the longer reading
list.
.
ENGL
4/5210-02W: Advanced Creative Writing, Prof. Gregory Fraser
Poetry
W 5:30-8:00, HUM 225
Prerequisite: ENGL 3200. May be taken for 3 hours of WAC requirement.
Strong
poetry grows from, converses with, and revises other strong poetry.
With that in mind, we will read and discuss the work of established
poets who write in a variety of styles, from a range of cultural and
aesthetic backgrounds. These writers will include Elizabeth Bishop and
Derek Walcott, Lorna Dee Cervantes and Fernando Pessoa, Gwendolyn Brooks
and Wislawa Szymborska, Frank O’Hara and Ai, among many others.
Poets such as these can teach us a great deal about craft; about the
intellectually rigorous ways in which the poetic imagination can engage
with and transform the world; and about the restless, revisionary process
of discovering an authentic poetic voice (or voices). In group workshop
sessions, students will give constructive comments to, and receive them
from, their peers. There will be a strong audio-visual component to
this course, as well. Students will study videos about major poets,
listen to a great deal of recited poetry, and create audio-video projects
that promote the study and composition of poetry. Ultimately, each member
of the class will produce a portfolio of at least a dozen poems that
have undergone substantive revisions; write a critical introduction
situating his or her work in the larger context of contemporary verse;
and construct an anthology of influential poems.
Texts:
By the end of the term, each student will purchase at least five poetry
books of his or her choosing and offer an in-class oral rationale for
these selections.
.
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ENGL
4/5300-01: Studies in the English Language, Prof. David Newton
History and Development of the English Language
TR 9:30-10:45, TLC 1116
Required for Certification in Secondary English Education.
Description:
This course will explore the historical development of the English language
from its origins as a member of the Indo-European family of languages
through its emergence as one of the most influential languages in the
modern era. Along the way, we will examine the English language at different
stages of development, including Old English, Middle English, Early
Modern English, and contemporary varieties of modern English. We will
learn about some of the major structural changes that have contributed
to the development of English and investigate how the grammar of the
English language and the pronunciation and meaning of English words
have changed over time. We will also consider some of the major social,
cultural, and intellectual influences that have contributed to the development
of the English language at different historical moments.
Text:
Graddol, Leith, and Swann. English: History, Diversity and Change.
New York: Routledge, 1996. Paperback (ISBN: 0415131189).
Requirements:
For undergraduates, active participation, four exams (a midterm and
final included in this number), in-class and homework assignments, and
a final research project. For graduate students, all of the items above,
as well as a formal class presentation and an annotated bibliography
that corresponds to the final research project.
.
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ENGL
4384-01W: Senior Seminar, Prof. Randy Hendricks
Regionalist Perspectives in Literature
MW 2:00-3:15, TLC 1204
Required for the major in English. Enrollment requires permission of
department chair. Not offered during summer session. May be taken for
3 hours of WAC requirement.
Description:
As the capstone course for the English major, the senior seminar provides
individual students an opportunity to draw upon their course of study
and apply it to a new topic in the collaborative production of a class
anthology. In this course, our topic will be regionalist perspectives
in literature. We’ll first ground ourselves by reading together
some traditional and contemporary essays on regionalist theory and by
identifying an extensive bibliography. Then, through lecture, discussion,
and group presentations, we will study two works that clearly meet some
of the criteria, both conventional and radical, of regionalist literature:
Sarah Orne Jewett’s The Country of the Pointed Firs and
Robert Drake’s Survivors, and Others. After that, we’ll
break apart the notion that regionalist literature concerns itself only
with life in the hinterland and the small town by considering Woody
Allen's film Annie Hall as a regionalist work of art.
Having
firmly established that much of what students have read during their
course of study is open to regionalist interpretations, we’ll begin
the second half of the class by identifying topics for and producing
individual seminar papers that will be collected in a class anthology.
(Note: While the texts we’ll study together are all written by
American authors, students are free, and are in fact encouraged, to
choose subjects in British or other national literatures for their projects.)
Students should expect to be deeply engaged not only in writing their
own papers, but in editing the work of others throughout this process.
Texts:
Jewett’s The Country of the Pointed Firs, Drake’s Survivors,
and Others, and a course packet.
Requirements:
thorough preparation for each class, a number of short writing assignments
(formal response papers, abstracts, etc.), presentations, editing, and
a seminar paper.
.
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ENGL
4384-02W: Senior Seminar, Prof. Robert Snyder
Sacrifice, Scapegoating and Sacrality
R 5:30-8:00, TLC 2237
Required for the major in English. Enrollment requires permission of
department chair. Not offered during summer session. May be taken for
3 hours of WAC requirement.
Description:
How are the concept of sacrifice, especially as involves the shedding
of blood, and the practice of scapegoating related to ideas of sacrality
in literature? What differentiates, in this regard, the “holy”
from the “demonic”? Drawing on some theoretical frameworks
by Søren Kierkegaard, Mircea Eliade, E. M. Cioran, and René
Girard, we will begin by examining the story of Abraham and Isaac in
the Hebrew Scripture. The course will then branch out to consider, in
addition to one or two films, some of the following texts: Sophocles
Oedipus Rex, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov
(“Grand Inquisitor”), Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles,
Joseph Conrad’s Under Western Eyes, William Faulkner’s
Light in August, Franz Kafka’s In the Penal Colony,
Cormac McCarthy’s Suttree, and Mary Lee Settle’s The
Scapegoat. Concomitantly, students will develop independent research
projects linked with the seminar topic and collaborate in the editing
of an anthology featuring their work.
Texts:
Several of the titles noted above, including Girard’s Violence
and the Sacred. Photocopies of short stories and brief theoretical
readings will be provided.
Requirements:
Reading responses, active engagement in class discussion, two short
essays, oral presentation, prospectus, and research-based seminar paper
(15-16 pages).
.
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ENGL
6115-01: Seminar in British Literature II, Prof. Lisa Crafton
Romantic Women Writers: The Gothic and Literary History
T 5:30-8:00, TLC 2237
Description:
Romanticism has been defined as a “spirit of the age” characterized
by political/cultural revolutions, a self-conscious break with inherited
literary tradition, and a subversion of political, cultural, and sexual,
and oppression. Yet these inherited notions of Romanticism, like any
movement, depend upon selection of texts. This course investigates the
relationship of gender and literary history by reading a variety of
Romantic women writers and considering how texts by women writers subvert
or complement traditional seminal texts of Romanticism. We will focus
particularly on the appropriations of the period’s most notorious
popular genre—the gothic (Radcliffe’s classic, Austen’s
parody Northanger Abbey, and manipulations by Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley,
and Emily Bronte). We will question how cultural struggles were encoded
in the images of aristocratic villains, haunted castles, and beleaguered
heroines. Using Mellor’s Romanticism and Gender as a critical guide,
our study will emphasize how theoretical orientations (feminist, psychoanalytical,
new historicist) have shaped contemporary readings of Romantic women
writers (for example, Said’s postcolonial reading of Austen’s
Mansfield Park) and we’ll test the dominance of radical discourse
by reading conservative responses (Hannah More’s counter-revolutionary
texts and the cults of beauty and domesticity in poetry of Hemans and
Landon).
Texts:
Wollstonecraft Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman; A Vindication of the
Rights of Woman (excerpts); Mary Shelley Frankenstein; Austen,
Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park; Bronte, Wuthering Heights;
Anne Mellor, Romanticism and Gender; online selections from More,
Hemans, Landon, Dorothy Wordsworth; critical readings on reserve.
Requirements:
2 analytical response essays, 15 page seminar research paper, oral report,
and class colloquia presentation.
.
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ENGL
6120-01: Seminar in American Literature II, Dr. Randy Hendricks
Robert Penn Warren and the Changing South
M 5:30-8:00, TLC 2237
Robert
Penn Warren was the only writer ever to win a Pulitzer Prize in both
fiction and poetry, the first to hold the title of America's Poet Laureate,
a teacher and critic who influenced the teaching of literature for several
decades during the twentieth century, and, to some minds, “America’s
most distinguished man of letters.” But beneath this somewhat puffy,
if true, book-jacket summary lay the career of an artist who struggled
during his long life to find adequate forms and voices to explore the
tensions between idealism and materialism, democratic zeal and bloodletting,
cultural order and racism as they were played out on individual, regional,
and national levels. The result was an examination and reexamination
of a core of central themes—the meaning of America in world history,
the concept of freedom in an “osmosis of being,” the legacy
of the Civil War, the terms on which literature may be valued in a technological
society. Another result was a powerful body of literature interesting
from the vantage point of any number of scholarly disciplines and rewarding
to a variety of critical approaches.
We’ll
examine Warren’s development in multiple genres as he moves from
his early entrenchment in High Modern themes, naturalistic techniques,
and “Southern Defensiveness” through a growing dissatisfaction
with his early “stand” that required a radical absorption
of these techniques in more idiosyncratic, personal, or hybrid forms,
forms that blurred the lines of art and commentary and figured a Wanderer
struggling with the term “South.” The course will concentrate,
in part at least, on the relation between Warren’s developing aesthetic
theories and practices and the process of interpreting Southern and
American history. As suggested above, however, students will be free
to define, in consultation with the instructor, their own areas of interest
in Warren or in relation to his work for individual research projects.
Students who are interested may have an opportunity to work with
Warren’s letters, which are currently being edited for publication.
A unique
opportunity for spring 2005. April 24, 2005, marks the centennial of
Warren’s birth. Seminar members will be encouraged (but not required,
of course) to attend the joint meeting of the Robert Penn Warren Circle
and the Center for Warren Studies at Western Kentucky University in
Bowling Green, April 22-25, 2005. Financial assistance will be available
to offset the costs of attending the conference, which represents a
rare opportunity to meet and discuss common interests with established
scholars and graduate students from across the country. For more details
e-mail rhendric@westga.edu.
Texts:
Novels: Night Rider, All the King’s Men, Flood: A Romance of
Our Time. Poetry: Selected Poems of Robert Penn Warren, Brother
To Dragons (1979 version). Nonfiction: Segregation: The Inner
Conflict in the South, The Legacy of The Civil War, selections from
other works.
Requirements:
Consistent participation, a number of short writing assignments, an
oral report (20 minutes), a seminar paper of 12-15 pages.
.
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ENGL
6385-01: Seminar in Special Topics, Prof. Nina Leacock
Theory and History of the Novel
R 5:30-8:00 TLC 1204
Description:
The novel is a self-theorizing genre. That is to say, since its emergence
or invention sometime in or around the eighteenth century, this genre
has been concerned with questions of its own definition. As the earliest
novelists were already arguing, the novel differs from other literary
genres because its medium, prose rather than verse, is the same as the
medium of theoretical and critical writing. This shared medium makes
for easy crossing over what is, in the case of this genre, a relatively
fluid boundary between critical and literary language. Reading novels
and reading theories of the novel turn out to be intimately related
practices, and in this seminar we will aim both to bring greater theoretical
reflectivity into our literary reading, and to read theory with greater
enjoyment and comfort.
This seminar
will attempt to provide an overview of a broad field by investigating
two competing theories or hypotheses. The first proposes that the novel
was invented as a self-conscious rejection of the older narrative form
of romance, while the second instead suggests that the novel emerges
as an open continuation of romance narrative. “Old romance”
had provided foundational stories for European nations, so these hypotheses
in effect offer competing versions of national history and identity.
Furthermore, modern nations develop and confirm their identities in
part through their systems of public education, so this seminar will
also raise questions about the role of novels in our own educational
institutions.
Texts:
Cervantes, Don Quixote (Ecco / translated by Grossman); Defoe,
Robinson Crusoe (Oxford), Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship
(Princeton / translated by Blackall); Waverley (Oxford);
Pride and Prejudice (Oxford); The Charterhouse of Parma
(Modern Library / translated by Howard); Lermontov, A Hero of Our
Time (Penguin / translated by Foote); Eliot, Middlemarch
(Penguin). Most of our shared theoretical readings will be from Michael
McKeon's anthology Theory of the Novel: A Historical Approach,
which is worth owning, though there will also be a copy on reserve in
the library for xeroxing.
Requirements:
Weekly short response papers; oral report on a theoretical or critical
text; individual research project including prospectus, annotated bibliography,
final research paper, and oral presentation.
.
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XIDS
2100 01: Arts and Ideas: Special Topics, Prof. Lori Lipoma
Myth and Religion
MW 2:00-3:15, Pafford 308
May count for credit in Core area C.
Description:
Hercules, Sundiata, Thor, Gilgamesh—these exciting heroes leap
to mind when we think of mythology, yet myths are more than just stories
of deities and fantastic beings from other people’s religions.
They are simultaneously the most particular and the most universal feature
of civilization, and they help each of us understand and face common
concerns with which every society on Earth struggles; indeed, Joseph
Campbell calls mythology “the wonderful song of the soul’s
high adventure.”
In XIDS
2100 “Myth and Religion,” we’ll study common themes throughout
world myths and religions—including creation, birth and death,
great floods, initiation, hero, cosmology, deities, and transformation
myths—as they appear in the rich traditions of cultures worldwide.
Moreover, we’ll hear from speakers who will tell us about the world
religious traditions which they practice, including Hinduism, Judaism,
Buddhism, Christianity, Baha’i, Cherokee Shamanism, Paganism, Islam,
and Zoroastrianism.
Text:
Leeming, David Adams. The World of Myth. Oxford UP, 1992.
Requirements:
Reading quizzes and unit tests, 2 brief response essays, and active,
informed participation in each class session.
.
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XIDS
2100-04: Arts and Ideas: Special Topics, Prof. Patricia Reinhard
Photography and Short Stories
TR 11:00-12:15, TLC 1116
May count for credit in Core Area C.
Description:
Photography and Short Stories will study the dialogic relationship between
photographic images and short stories. Fraternal twins separated at
birth, the modern short story and the photographic image have flourished,
one form shadowing the other, since their origins in the mid-nineteenth
century. This course will analyze the synergistic effect created by
photographic images and short fiction when they are scrutinized through
the dual lenses of perspective and point of view. Both disciplines present
sketches, slices of perspective that concentrate on a single or unique
effect. In their uses and manipulations of point of view, both disciplines
appear infinitely malleable and wildly flexible as artists continually
craft and redefine the ways in which a story or an image can be “told.”
Our study of the synergy between short fiction and image will begin
with Eudora Welty, an artist who serves as the literal and physical
embodiment of the interpenetration of these two disciplines. As a young
woman, Welty worked for the Works Progress Administration in a job that
allowed her access to places and people throughout her home state. Before
she wrote, Welty photographed—recorded on film her sojourn through
Mississippi’s eighty-two counties. Closely reading a Welty short
story and several of her images will enable students to formulate a
set of terms and concepts that are shared by both disciplines. Welty’s
fiction and images, along with these specific terms and concepts descriptive
of both disciplines, provide the springboard to all that follows—dozens
of photographic images, thirteen stories, and Susan Sontag’s On
Photography and Regarding the Pain of Others.
Texts:
Susan Sontag’s On Photography and Regarding the Pain
of Others; course packet of short stories, an online portfolio of
photographic images, and selected essays on photography.
Requirements:
Students will write three essays on topics derived from the themes and
concepts in the texts. These essays will be approximately 1000 words
and will require secondary sources. Weekly informal response writing
intended to generate ideas and concepts explored in greater depth and
detail in the essays will be assigned. This writing is designed as write
to learn exercises and offers students a free space in which to begin
exploring the texts. Students will select an essay, article, photographer,
or series of images and present a report on it to the class. A midterm
and a final exam.
.
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