LITT Course Offerings Fall 2011
Number
Course Name
Description
LITT Attributes
2103
British
Literature II
(Koh)
This course will provide a survey of important literary movements and cultural thought within
Britain and the British Empire from the late eighteenth century till today. Topics to be discussed
include: Romanticism, the Victorian novel, Modernism and Postcolonialism.
At the end of the course, you will be expected to be able to demonstrate knowledge of important
characteristics of each of these movements; of significant historical events that have shaped them;
and to be able to identify literary techniques and concerns associated with them.
British
Literature,
Literary
Interpretations
2108
Children's
Literature
(Hussong)
We will investigate the wonderful world of children’s literature from multiple perspectives. We
will learn about the various genres of children’s literature, trace historical developments, and
study children’s stories from around the world. The course includes primary readings as well as
the examination of scholarly texts to help students gain an understanding of children’s literature as
an academic discipline. The course is a good preparation for prospective teachers and for any
individual who likes to work with children. Even those students who fit neither of those
descriptions will benefit from the course, as we will conduct serious literary interpretation through
close readings of texts. While some of the readings are undoubtedly fun, this is a serious literature
course.
Literary
Interpretations
2123
Literary
Research
(Hussong and
Honaker)
This course introduces students to the evaluation and use of scholarly electronic and traditional
library resources for literary studies. Students conduct directed research in order to understand
selected primary works within critical and cultural contexts. Developing your writing ability,
particularly in the use and incorporation of sources, is an important course goal.
Literary
Research
2143
American
Short Story
(Gussman)
This course will explore the development of the short story in the United States, from the middle
of the 19th century through the present. As this is a literary interpretation course, we will focus on
how to identify and to write about the formal elements of stories, and explore how those elements
are used to make meaning. We’ll read a wide range of writers, including Edgar Allan Poe,
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Charles Chesnutt, Zora Neale Hurston, William
American
Literature,
Literary
Interpretations
General
Studies
Attributes
W2
W2
W2
Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, and Sherman Alexie, among others. In addition to participating in
weekly Blackboard discussions and writing papers, students will create individual weblogs
devoted to a particular American writer and story of their choosing that will be added to The
American Short Story project blog: http://wp.stockton.edu/storyproject/.
2148
Introduction
to African
American
Literature
(Holton)
This course will introduce you to major African American texts from the 18th century to the
present. We will pay particular attention to the historical, social, and literary contexts from which
these texts emerge, and on which they comment. Readings may include works by the following
authors: Olaudah Equiano, Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard
Wright, Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, August Wilson, and Edwidge
Dandicat.
2160
Playwriting
(Kaissar)
2227
Arthurian
Literature
(Miyashiro)
This course will help the students develop an understanding of and appreciation for the craft of
playwriting by acquainting them with the elements of dramatic structure and
Aristotle’s Poetics. Participate in writing exercises will be required at every meeting. We will
also be reading excerpts from each student’s work out loud. By the end of the semester,
the students will understand the function of a five-act structure and use it to compose the first
draft of a full-length play. We will also examine the short play form, and compose a ten-minute
play. Texts include Aristotle’s Poetics, Arthur Miller’s All My Sons, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting
for Godot, and Take Ten: New Ten Minute Plays.
This course is designed to familiarize students with the legends about and surrounding King
Arthur and the Round Table fellowship. Through a series of readings, students will survey the
development of the legends of Arthur from their beginnings in early medieval Europe to their
modern adaptations in many cultures around the world. The Arthurian legend is an ideal vehicle
for showing the ways in which literary works capture and express changing value systems
in different cultural and historical situations, and thus the course is a good example of comparative
(international) approaches to literary study. Classes will discuss the changing cultural ideals
represented, the different characterizations of the central figures, and the literary techniques
employed. Lessons and discussions will be supplemented by slides, music, and film clips dealing
with Arthurian themes. Throughout, the course will ask why and how the stories of Arthur and the
Round Table fellowship have captured the imagination of artists, political and religious leaders,
and readers throughout the ages and around the world.
Literary
Interpretations,
Ethnic/Postcolon
ial, American
Literature
Literary
Interpretation
W2
2412
English
Language &
Grammar
(Kinsella)
2XXX
Classical
Comedy
(Roessel)
Intro to
Creative
Writing (new
instructor)
2237
2170
Disability and
Literature
(Fecteau)
3131
Comparative
American
Literatures
(Holton)
American
Drama
3240
English Language & Grammar (LITT 2412). This course provides an intensive
review of modern English Grammar. If you cannot identify a participial phrase,
but would like to do so, this is the course for you. Especially recommended
for students who plan to teach at the elementary or secondary levels, but also
for creative writers and all who are interested in the basic underpinnings of
language.
Intro to Creative Writing will introduce students to the basics of creative writing, giving them a
chance to practice a variety of techniques such as creating an image, developing metaphor,
showing abstract ideas, working in form, giving vivid detail, and developing interesting
dialogue. The course will have daily in class writing as well as homework in to all genres,
including writing various poetry forms, short story, creative non-fiction, dialogue and
monologue. Students will write over 20 short assignments and have a chance to revise some
work, workshop a poem, and submit a work for publication. Besides numerous handouts, texts
include A Pocketful of Poems (David Madden) and Sudden Fiction Continued, ed Robert Shapard
and James Thomas.
Prerequisites: A W1 course with a c or better.
We will be looking at how society's views of the disabled community are reflected in its literature.
Our study will start with ancient cultures and progress to contemporary literature. We will also
discuss how an author's disability affects his/her works. Finally, we will end with a brief
exploration of ablest studies, analyzing literature through its representation of the body. Readings
will include: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wall Paper, Mark Haddon, A Curious Incident
of the Dog at Night-time, Andre Dubus, Dancing After Hour, Leonard Davis, The Diability
Studies Reader, AL Davidson, The Spiral Cage, Elyn Saks, The Center Cannot Hold.
3000 level courses
This course explores multiple literature traditions of the Americas within a comparative
framework. We will consider the relationship of literary works to their social, cultural, political,
and historical contexts. Readings may include works by the following authors: Junot Díaz, Gabriel
Garcia Marquez, Alejo Carpentier, William Faulkner, and Toni Morrison.
This course is an upper-division survey of plays written by American playwrights, mostly during
the 20th century. We will be examining some of the major figures and events in American
W2
Intro to Creative
Writing (CW
requirement)
Prerequisites:a
W1 with a C or
better
W1
W2
Ethnic/Postcolon
ial, American
Literature
W2
American
Literature, 20th
W2
(Gussman)
theatrical history, as well as reading some newly recovered and contemporary works. Writers we
are likely to encounter include Sophie Treadwell, Lillian Hellman, Clifford Odets, Eugene
O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, August Wilson, David Henry Hwang and others
(note: this list is subject to change!) The primary focus of the course is the analysis of dramatic
texts in relation to their theatrical, cultural, and historical contexts. By the end of the term, you
should have a clear sense of the significant themes, dramatic styles, and concerns of American
dramatists. You should also be able to generalize meaningfully about continuity and change in
American drama during the 20th century. Course assignments will include exams on readings and
issues, a group performance of a scene from a play, attendance at and review of a play written by
an American playwright (either at Stockton or off-campus), and an 8-10 page final research essay.
century
Literature
3615
Victorian
Literature
(Honaker)
The course will look at the major thinkers, poets, novelists, and issues of the period. The realist novel and
the ways in which it both developed and came to dominate the literary landscape during the Victorian era
will be a particular focus.
Authors will include such major figures as Thomas Carlyle, John Stuart Mill, John Ruskin, Matthew
Arnold, Walter Pater, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rosetti,
George Meredith, William Makepeace Thackeray, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot,
Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Oscar Wilde as well as other writers and
public figures commenting on the issues of the day. Primary texts will include the Broadview Anthology of
British Literature: The Victorian Era, Dickens's Oliver Twist, Bronte's Jane Eyre, George Elliot's
Middlemarch, Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Hardy's Jude the Obscure.
British Literature
W2
3635
Advanced
Poetry
Workshop
(King)
Advanced Poetry Workshop will include intense writing regimen, the reading of important
American 20th century foundational poets, workshopping, and the writing of annotative responses
to the literature we read. Students also partake in a literary agent exercise to get them familiar with
the professional nuts and bolts of poetry submission. The task of assembling an anthology of your
favorite poems will be incorporated into the course as a new exercise.
W1
3636
Fiction
Workshop
(Instructor
TBD)
The course will primarily be in workshop form, which requires students to prepare copies of their
new manuscripts in advance and distribute them to each class member. Workshops require active
participation from the group in discussing the student work as well as significant written
comments on the text. Revisions or new work will be required at the end of the semester along
with a writer’s memo describing the writing process. Lectures, readings, audio tapes, and
handouts will supplement the workshop to instruct students on specific advanced techniques of
Advanced
workshop
requirement (CW
Requirement)Pre
reqs: LITT 2237
and LITT 3273
Advanced
workshop
requirement (CW
Requirement)Pre
reqs: LITT 2237
and LITT 3273
W1
fiction writing. Students are expected to produce forty pages of well-edited, workshopped fiction,
as well as a final portfolio and writer's memo.
Prerequisites: LITT 2730, LITT 2123, LITT 3270, all with C or better
3270
Creative
Writing
Workshop
(King)
Creative Writing Workshop is a three genre workshop: poetry, fiction and cross-genre. We will
read contemporary texts, practice an intensive amount of written critiques, and explore revision in
this second part of the Creative Writing track's workshop series.
3261
Medieval
English
Literature
(Miyashiro)
3XXX
Studies in
Textual
Research
(Kinsella)
3XXX
Jonson’s
Circle
(Kinsella)
Shakespeare
(Tompkins)
Moving from the earliest in English literature to the works of Thomas Malory, this course
examines roughly 1000 years in the development of English as a literary language that was both
competing with, and influenced by, Latin, Welsh, and continental European literatures (French,
Provencal, and Italian). Includes Beowulf and other Old English poetic texts, Marie de France,
Geoffrey of Monmouth, some early Middle English romances, and the major writers of the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries: Geoffrey Chaucer, William Langland, John Gower, and
Thomas Malory.
An introduction to the literary culture of South Jersey. Students will complete research on local
communities using primary sources available in Stockton’s William Leap Collection as well as
other collections. An important focus of the course is the creation of library and on-line
exhibitions. The class will make trips to area repositories and will hear from local experts about
South Jersey literature in particular, and the field of library/archive studies in general.
An in-depth study of Samuel Johnson's major works as well as those of his contemporaries. We
will read selections from Johnson, Burney, Goldsmith, Sheridan, Boswell, and others. Works will
be considered in the context of eighteenth-century literature, culture, politics, and religion.
Major modes and themes of Shakespeare's art. Considers the relationship of the Shakespearean
canon to the English Renaissance.
This course is POI. Seniors only.
The course will focus on Faulkner's major "YOKNAPATAWPHA" novels. We will explore his
contributions to American literature and Modernism, as well as his conflicting ideas about the
South, race, and social class.
3XXX
3112
Faulkner
(Lenard)
Intermediate
workshop
requirement
(Creative writing
requirement)
Pre-1800
W1
W2
Pre-1800
W2
Shakespeare
W1
4610
Senior
Seminar:
Postcolonialis
m (Koh)
SENIOR SEMINAR
Postcolonial Studies is the study of the nature of power and oppression in fields such as art,
literature, philosophy, anthropology and political economy. Questions that we will ask include:
How do we construct our notion of "Otherness," of people different from our selves? How are
political and cultural institutions involved in the construction of "Otherness"? How do political
and economic motives filter into literary and aesthetic works?
We will be reading theoretical works by leading postcolonial studies critics, and applying these
theories to a selection of novels and films. Possible critical readings include work by Frantz
Fanon, Albert Memmi, Gayatri Spivak, Partha Chatterjee, Simon Gikandi and Ann Stoler.
Primary texts and films may include work by Chinua Achebe, Chimamande Adichie, Jamaica
Kincaid, Pramoedya Ananta Toer and Yasmin Ahmad.
This course is POI.
Senior Seminar