Department of English
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
MAYMESTER 2012
All English courses 300 and above require ENGL 101, 102, and one course between ENGL
270-292
ENGL 282M-001
FICTION
MTWThF 11:00-1:45
DINGS
Description: This is an introductory course that will focus on mostly modern and contemporary
short fiction with a variety of authors, themes, and styles. Students will develop their skills in close
reading by learning to identify internal conflicts in characters, interpret potential epiphanies,
determine the degree of reliability of a first person narration, and identify primary and secondary
themes. Grading will be determined by examination and essay, including a final exam.
ENGL 360M-001
CREATIVE WRITING
MTWThF 2:00-4:45
BARILLA
This course will function primarily as a workshop in several genres of creative writing, in which
students will share work in progress with other members of the course. We will work with poetry,
short fiction and narrative nonfiction, with emphasis on fiction and poetry. The course will also
involve reading and discussing published work in these genres, as well as numerous in-class and
out-of-class writing exercises. Students will produce original work in each genre, which they will
turn in as a portfolio at the end of the course for a final grade.
ENGL 419M-001 “KING ARTHUR IN MEDIEVAL BRITAIN” MTWThF 11:00-1:45
GWARA
This SCHC study-abroad experience is intended to last two weeks, during which time we will visit
the major sites in southern England associated with King Arthur: London, Winchester, Salisbury,
Bath, Caerleon, and Tintagel. The course outcomes are: 1. Familiarity with the major medieval
sources of the Arthurian legend, including the characters and their relationships, events, and
geography; 2. Understanding variant emphases of the legend over time, including the changing roles
of characters and implicit socio-historical contexts; 3. Exposure to the history and landscape of
Britain as they relate to the Arthurian periods under discussion; 4. Exposure to the sources by which
the Arthurian legend was transmitted; 5. Exposure to modern British culture with an Arthurian
cultural emphasis; 6. Exposure to modern British culture.
ENGL 430M-001
BLACK POWER
MTWThF 2:00-4:45
TRAFTON
An exploration of different moments in American culture which feature the texts, images,
opportunities and threats associated the idea of African American political and cultural strength.
Texts will include David Walker, Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World, Booker T. Washington,
Up from Slavery, the writings of Angela Davis, and the music of James Brown, Public Enemy, and
Kanye West.
ENGL 566M-001 MATING GAME CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD MOVIES MTWThF 11:00-1:45 RHU
This course studies comedies and melodramas from the first three decades of the sound era. Films
will be analyzed in terms of features that define them as comedies, melodramas, and thrillers and in
terms of their preoccupation with relations between the sexes. In light of these American "talkies,"
what constitutes a genuine marriage or makes such an alliance impossible? Do such questions
require public and/or private responses. Films will include It Happened One Night, The Lady Eve, His
Girl Friday, The Philadelphia Story, Adam’s Rib, Stella Dallas, Gaslight, Now, Voyager, Letter from an
Unknown Woman, Vertigo, and North by Northwest. Some films will be analyzed in tandem with
literary texts and film criticism. Grades will be based on regular journal entries and a final exam.
Graduate students will be expected to read additional theoretical essays and to write a longer and
more substantive final research paper.
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
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Summer I 2012
ENGL 101-001
CRITICAL READING & COMPOSITION MTWTh 8:00-10:15
STAFF
A course offering structured, sustained practice in researching, analyzing, and composing
arguments. Students will read about a range of academic and public issues and write researched
argumentative and persuasive essays.
ENGL 102-001
RHETORIC & COMPOSITON MTWTh 10:30-12:45
SMITH
This course provides students with structured, sustained practice in researching, analyzing, and
composing arguments. Students will explore a range of academic and public issues and write
researched argumentative essays.
ENGL 102-002
RHETORIC & COMPOSITION MTWTh 1:00-3:15
GREER
English 102 will build upon English 101 to help students write in future English courses. English 102
will prepare students to write cogent and lucid persuasive essays. This course will also strengthen
students’ abilities for documenting and originating sources for essays.
ENGL 270-286 Designed for Non-majors.
ENGL 283-001
THEMES IN BRITISH WRITING
MTWTh 10:30-12:45
GWARA
(Designed for Non-majors)
Themes of British Fiction. The theme of this course is "Transgression, Loss, and Memory." We will
read five recent bestsellers from the London Times bestseller list: Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day,
De Rosnay, Sarah's Key, Swift, Waterland, Enright, The Gathering, Banville, The Sea. Students will be
asked to contribute meaningfully to class discussion and to write two-page reaction papers on each
book.
ENGL 285-001
THEMES IN AMERICAN WRITING
MTWTh 1:00-3:15
STEELE
(Designed for Non-majors)
This course will look at the widely varying ways that Colonial and American writers have responded to
nature -- in its widely varying forms -- over the past five centuries. Readings will take us from the
howling wilderness to the picturesque landscape to the wild frontier and beyond. Throughout, we will
consider the metaphorical and material roles played by nature in U.S. nationalism and cultural politics.
Readings will include works by Bradstreet, Cooper, Emerson, Thoreau, Dickinson, Cather, Hurston,
Wright, Erdrich and others. There will be a midterm, a final, and a short critical paper.
ENGL 287-001
AMERICAN LITERATURE
MTWTh 1:00-3:15
WOERTENDYKE
This course will cover a broad range of materials written about, by, and with black writers from the
fifteenth century to our contemporary moment. Drawing from many traditions and regions,
including the Caribbean, Africa, and the U.S., the course will survey the writing of/about Christopher
Columbus, Cabeza de Vaca, Bartolome de Las Casas, Phillis Wheatley, William Apess, Nat Turner,
Denmark Vesey, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Wilson, Charles Chesnutt, Martin Delaney, Alice Dunbar
Nelson, W.E.B. DuBois, Jessie Fauset, Claude McKay, Nella Larson, Jean Toomer, and James Baldwin.
We’ll ask what marks this material as particularly American and literary and will discuss key themes
and debates about topics such as liberation and confinement, individualism and collectivity, mobility
and entrenchment, the local and the global. Requirements include a creative project, presentations,
short papers, and an Exam.
ENGL 287 Is Required for English Majors
ENGL 360
CREATIVE WRITING
MTWTh 1:00-3:15
DINGS
This is an introductory course that will focus on the fundamentals of writing short fiction and
poetry. Model stories and poems will be read and discussed, then student stories and poems will be
discussed in a workshop format. Grading will be by portfolio.
ENGL 385
MODERNISM
MTWTh 10:30-12:45
GLAVEY
This course will serve as an introduction to the literature of Anglo-American--and, to a much lesser
extent, European--modernism. Our first goal will be to understand the specific features of particular
early-twentieth-century texts: how they are put together as works of art, what they attempt to
achieve, how they may or may not challenge contemporary readers. From there we will consider
how they respond to, reflect, and resist the processes of modernization. One of our primary
questions will be: What does it feel like to be modern? In thinking through what literature tells us
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about this question, we will consider the epistemological, psychological, and sociological facets of
modernity as reflected and rewritten by the particular formal and thematic choices of our authors.
Authors covered will include Djuna Barnes, Andre Breton, T. S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, Langston
Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, James Joyce, Mina Loy, Richard Bruce Nugent, Ezra Pound, Marcel
Proust, Gertrude Stein, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, and Virginia Woolf. Requirements
for the course include an essay, a creative project, and a final exam.
ENGL 406-001 SHAKESPEARE’S COMEDIES & HISTORIES MTWTh 1:00-3:15 SHIFFLETT
A survey of representative plays including A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Henry IV Part 1, Much Ado About
Nothing, Henry V, Twelfth Night, The Winter’s Tale, and The Temptest. Emphasis will be placed on
Shakespeare's artful use of language in revealing human character, his innovations in historical and
comedic form, and the cultural contexts of his plays. Requirements will include reviews of criticism and
essay exams on each play.
ENGL J423-655
MODERN AMERICAN LITETATURE
DVD COURSE
WENTZ
(Schedule Code Required: See Distance Education Course Listings)
Modern American Literature is a survey of the major American writers of fiction and poetry of
roughly the first half of the twentieth century. In addition, the course attempts to place these writers
and their works within the context of the most important literary movements of the time. This is an
upper-level English course. Students should have completed one sophomore literature course (ENGL
282-289) before taking any upper-level course.
ENGL J429B-655
TOPIC/SCOTT FITZGERALD
WEB COURSE
BUCKER
(Schedule Code Required: See Distance Education Course Listings)
(Prereq: Students must complete one sophomore literature course (282-288) before taking any upper
level course. A survey of the author’s works and career through 26 recorded lectures by preeminent
Fitzgerald scholar and biographer Matthew J. Bruccoli.
ENGL 431B-001
CHILDREN’S LITERATURE
MTWThF 8:00-10:15
JOHNSON
This course is a broad introduction to the world of contemporary American children’s literature.
Students will examine texts which are in some way related to central ideas of and about America and
Americans of various ethnicities and backgrounds. Discussion topics will include the meaning of
“excellence” in children’s book-writing and illustration, the cultural politics of the children’s book
publishing world, and current issues and controversies in the field.
ENGL 439T-001
ROMANTICISM & GLOBALIZATION MTWTh 10:30-12:45 JARRELLS
(Meets with ENGL 650T)
We tend to think of Romanticism as being about nature, the imagination, and the myriad
associations of locale – be it a specific region or the nation itself. “Breathes there the man, with soul
so dead,” wrote Walter Scott, “Who never to himself hath said, / This is my own, my native land.”
But Romanticism, too, marks a key moment in the history of what we now call “globalization” – that
is, it was a moment when there emerged a real sense of connection between “my native land” and
the wider world. Such a sense was facilitated by transport, trade, empire, cultural curiosity, aswell
as by various new media. Yet it often was framed precisely by the regional and local emphases that
continue to dominate our sense of the “romantic.” In this class, we’ll explore the relationship
between the local and the global, in part by looking at some recent theories of globalization, and in
part by surveying a vibrant field of Romantic literature (and visual representation) in which writers
struggled to represent, report on, and imagine a world beyond the borders of region or nation even
as they worked to preserve a sense of “home.” Readings will include work by Edmund Burke, Robert
Burns, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Anna Barbauld, Sydney Owensen, Walter
Scott, Jane Austen, Lord Byron, Thomas De Quincey, and Felicia Hemans.
ENGL 450-001
ENGLISH GRAMMAR
MTWTh 3:30-5:45
DISTERHEFT
(Cross-listed with LING 421)
An intensive survey of English grammar: sentence structure, the verbal system, discourse, and
transformations. Also discussed are semantics, social restrictions on grammar and usage, histories
of various constructions, etc. Please read Chapter 1 of the textbook before the first class meeting.
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ENGLISH DEPARTMENT COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
Summer II 2012
ENGL 102-001
RHETORIC & COMPOSITION
MTWTh 10:30-12:45
SMITH
This course provides students with structured, sustained practice in researching, analyzing, and
composing arguments. Students will explore a range of academic and public issues and write
researched argumentative essays.
ENGL 270-286 Designed for Non-majors.
ENGL 282-001
FICTION
MTWTh 8:00-10:15
RICE
An introduction to the genre of fiction and to theories of interpretation. This class will concentrate
on close reading, analysis, and interpretation of individual stories, on the cultural contexts of the
works, and on theories of narrative.
Probable Texts: H.G. Wells, The Time Machine, J. Conrad, Heart of Darkness, G. Greene, The Third
Man, W. Golding, Lord of the Flies, M. Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, I. Murdoch, The Severed
Head, M. Drabble, The Millstone, T. Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49, K. Vonnegut, Slaugherhouse‐Five,
K. Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day
Paper: a comparative critical essay (c. 5 pp.)
Examinations (2): short answers (possible), identifications, and analytical essay(s).
Quizzes: There will be daily quizzes (3‐5 brief objective questions) on the assigned readings.
Format: mix of informal lecture and class discussion, with emphasis on the latter.
ENGL 285-001
THEMES IN AMERICAN WRITING MTWTh 1:00-3:15
STAFF
(Designed for Non-majors)
Reading a variety of American texts that exemplify persistent themes of American culture. For more
information, contact the instructor.
ENGL 288-001
ENGLISH LITERATURE
MTWTh 10:30-12:45
STAFF
An introduction to English literary history, emphasizing the analysis of literary texts, the
development of literary traditions over time, the emergence of new genres and forms, and the
writing of successful essays about literature.
ENGL 387-001
INTRO TO RHETORIC
MTWTh 1:00-3:15
GEHRKE
(Cross-listed with SPCH 387)
For well over two thousand years scholars, speakers, philosophers, and scientists have asked how
rhetoric functions and what rhetoric entails. The classical definition of rhetoric is the capacity to
see, in any given situation, the available means of persuasion, but the study of rhetoric today has
expanded to every use of language and every aspect of human communication in argument, dialogue,
media, politics, and social life. This writing-intensive course gives students an introduction to this
robust body of scholarship by focusing on those thinkers and movements in rhetorical studies most
significant to the field and to our own lives today. Each theory is connected to a problem or
opportunity present in our contemporary communication ecologies and examined for how that
theory can be deployed as part of the art of living our lives. Student work in this course will follow a
similar structure, regularly producing short writing assignments, both in and out of class, that
engage in critical assessment and application of rhetorical theories. The course will conclude with a
final paper and presentation from each student that focuses on a core problem, principle, theory, or
method in rhetorical studies, chosen by the student. That final paper and presentation will display
not only an understanding of its chosen rhetorical component but will apply that element of rhetoric
to a contemporary question, situation, problem, or opportunity. Students will be given wide latitude
in their selection of final paper topics. Conversation and collaboration in class will be essential. All
readings will be posted on-line as downloadable files.
ENGL E389-001
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
MTWTh 6:00-8:15
STAFF
(Cross-listed with LING E301-300)
Introduction to the field of linguistics with an emphasis on English. Covers the English sound system,
word structure, and grammar. Explores history of English, American dialects, social registers, and
style. For more information, contact the instructor.
ENGL 435-001
SHORT STORY
MTWTh 1:00-3:15
RICE
An introduction to the short-story genre and to theories of interpretation, through in-depth reading
of works by five international masters of the form: Anton Chekov, Katherine Mansfield, James Joyce,
Ernest Hemingway, and Jorge Luis Borges. This class will concentrate on close reading, analysis, and
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interpretation of individual stories, on the cultural contexts of the works, and on theories of
narrative.
Texts: A. Chekov, Short Stories, K. Mansfield, Selected Stories, J. Joyce, Dubliners, E. Hemingway, in our
time, J.L. Borges, Ficciones
Papers (2): a brief diagnostic essay (c. 2 pp.) and a comparative critical essay (c. 5 pp. ea.)
Examinations (2): short answers (possible), identifications, and analytical essay(s).
Quizzes: There will be daily quizzes (3-5 brief objective questions) on the assigned readings.
Format: mix of informal lecture and class discussion, with emphasis on the latter.
ENGL 437-001
WOMEN’S WRITERS
MTWTh 10:30-12:45
(Cross-listed with WGST 437)
Representative works written by women. For more information, contact the instructor.
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STAFF