Spring 2015
COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
COURSE DESCRIPTIONS:
SPRING 2015 COURSES THAT FILL AREA REQUIREMENTS FOR THE MAJOR………………...3-5
ONE-HUNDRED LEVEL COURSES……………………………………………….…………….6
TWO-HUNDRED LEVEL COURSES…………………………………………………………..7-9
THREE-HUNDRED LEVEL COURSES………………………………………………..…….10-16
FOUR-HUNDRED LEVEL COURSES……………………………………………………….17-22
FIVE-HUNDRED LEVEL COURSES…………………………………………………….… 23-24
SIX-HUNDRED LEVEL COURSES………………………………………………………... .25-26
DEGREE REQUIREMENTS:
MAJOR IN ENGLISH
NEW MAJOR (EFFECTIVE FALL 2014) ……………………………………………………27
CONCENTRATIONS…………………………………………………………………….…28
OLD MAJOR ……………………………………………………………………………...29
MINOR IN ENGLISH
NEW MINOR (EFFECTIVE FALL 2014) ……………………………………………………30
OLD MINOR …………………………………………………………………….………..31
CREATIVE WRITING MINOR…………………………………………………..………….32
INTERNSHIPS FOR ENGLISH MAJORS………………………………………...……………...33
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COURSES THAT FULFIL
MAJOR AREA REQUIREMENTS (NEW MAJOR)
Introductory Courses
ENGL 2250- Conflict, Social Justice, & Lit. | TR 11-12:15pm | Weliver
ENGL 2250- Conflict, Social Justice, & Lit. | MWF 11:00-11:50am | Mathys
ENGL 2250- Conflict, Social Justice, & Lit. | MWF 12:00-12:50am | Mathys
ENGL 2350- Faith, Doubt, & Lit. | TR 9:30-10:45am | Bush
ENGL 2450- Nature, Ecology, & Lit. | MWF 10:00-10:50pm | Evans
ENGL 2550- Gender, Identity, & Lit. | MWF 11:00- 11:50am | Benis
ENGL 2550- Gender, Identity, & Lit. | MWF 1:10- 2:00pm | Hasler
ENGL 2650- Technology, Media, & Lit | TR 2:15-3:30pm | Casmier
ENGL 2650- Technology, Media, & Lit | TR 3:45-5:00pm | Sawday
ENGL 2750- Film Culture, and Lit. | MWF 11:00-11:50am | Acker
Distribution Requirements
Area One: Form and Genre
ENGL 3030- The Writer as Reader| TR 12:45-2:00pm | Alam
ENGL 3050- CW: Poetry | MWF 9:00-9:50am | Mathys
ENGL 3060- CW: Fiction | TR 9:30-10:45am | Alam
ENGL 3860- Public Rhetoric: Manifestos | TR 12:45-2:00pm | Smith
Area Two: History and Context
ENGL 3280- American Literary Traditions: 1865-present | MWF 12:00-12:50pm | Casaregola
ENGL 3330- World Lit Traditions III | MWF 1:10-2:00pm | Uraizee
ENGL 3470- Introduction to Shakespeare | MWF 10:00-10:50am | Stump
ENGL 3490-19th C British Literature: Public Health and the Victorian Home | TR 3:45-5:00pm | Stiles
Area Three: Culture and Critique
ENGL 3500- Literature of the Postcolonial World | MWF 11:00-11:50am | Uraizee
ENGL 3520- African American Literary Traditions II: After 1900 |TR 12:45-2:00pm | Grant
ENGL 3620- Spirituality and Literature. | TR 11:00-12:15pm | Bush
ENGL 3700- The Bible and Literature | MWF 12:00-12:50pm | Stump
ENGL 3740- Medicine and Literature | TR 9:30-10:25am | van den Berg
Area Four: Rhetoric and Argument
ENGL 3850- Foundations in Rhetoric and Writing | MWF 10:00-10:50am | Zabrowski
ENGL 3860- Public Rhetoric: Manifestos | TR 12:45-2:00pm | Smith
ENGL 3930-Writing Consulting in a Multimedia World | MW 11-12:15 | Wulff
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4000-Level Advanced Seminars
ENGL 4030- Hist. of Rhet II |W 6-8:30pm |Rivers
ENGL 4060- Advanced Creative Writing: Poetry | TR 11:00-12:15pm | Johnston
ENGL 4120- Rhetorical Grammar | TR 9:30-10:45am | McIntire-Strasberg
ENGL 4220- Introduction to Old Norse | MWF 12:00-12:50pm | Acker
ENGL 4320- (RIE limited) Shakespeare: Special Topics| TR 2:15-3:30pm | Rust
ENGL 4520- The Historical Imagination in 18th-19th Century Lit | MWF 1:10-2pm | Benis
ENGL 4600-Remembering Modernity: History and Historical Fiction | M 2:10-4:40 | Crowell
ENGL 4720- Contemporary American Literature | TR 11:00-12:15pm | Smith
ENGL 4920- Introduction to Writing Instruction: Secondary Education | T 2:10-4:40pm | Buehler
Senior Seminar
ENGL 4940- Senior Seminar: Literary Salons in 19th-century Britain | TR 9:30-10:45am | Weliver
ENGL 4940- Senior Seminar: Modern Australian Poetry | T 2:10-4:40pm | Johnston
COURSES THAT FULFIL
MAJOR AREA REQUIREMENTS (OLD MAJOR)
Pre-1800 British Literature
ENGL 4220- Introduction to Old Norse | MWF 12:00-12:50pm | Acker
ENGL 4320- (RIE limited) Shakespeare: Special Topics| TR 2:15-3:30pm | Rust
ENGL 4520- The Historical Imagination in 18th-19th Century Lit | MWF 1:10-2pm | Benis
Post-1800 British Literature
ENGL 3500- Literature of the Postcolonial World | MWF 11:00-11:50am | Uraizee
ENGL 4520- The Historical Imagination in 18th-19th Century Lit | MWF 1:10-2pm | Benis
ENGL 4600-Remembering Modernity: History and Historical Fiction | M 2:10-4:40 | Crowell
American Literature.
ENGL 4720- Contemporary American Literature | TR 11:00-12:15pm | Smith
ENGL 3280- American Literary Traditions: 1865-present | MWF 12:00-12:50pm | Casaregola
Senior Seminar
ENGL 4940- Senior Seminar: The Nineteenth-Century Salon | TR 9:30-10:45am | Weliver
ENGL 4940- Senior Seminar: Topic TBD | T 2:10-4:40pm | Johnston
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MAJOR CONCENTRATION REQUIREMENTS
SPRING 2015
Creative Writing
ENGL 3030- The Writer as Reader| TR 12:45-2:00pm | Alam
ENGL 3060- CW: Poetry | MWF 9:00-9:50am | Mathys
ENGL 3060- CW: Fiction | TR 9:30-10:45am | Alam
ENGL 4060- Advanced Creative Writing: Poetry | TR 11:00-12:15pm | Johnston
Rhetoric, Writing, and Technology
ENGL 3860- Public Rhetoric: Manifestos | TR 12:45-2:00pm | Smith
ENGL 3930-Writing Consulting in a Multimedia World | TBD | Wulff
ENGL 4030- Hist. of Rhet II |TBD |
ENGL 4120- Rhetorical Grammar | TR 9:30-10:45am | McIntire-Strasberg
Research Intensive English
ENGL 4320- Shakespeare: Special Topics| TR 2:15-3:30pm | Rust
Interdisciplinary Minor Requirements
Medical Humanities Interdisciplinary Minor
ENGL 3740- Medicine and Literature | TR 9:30-10:25am | van den Berg
ENGL 3490- British Literature: Public Health and the Victorian Home | TR 3:45-5:00pm | Stiles
Film Studies Interdisciplinary Minor
ENGL 2750- Film Culture, and Lit. | MWF 11:00-11:50am | Acker
ENGL 3280- American Literary Traditions: 1865-present | MWF 12:00-12:50pm | Casaregola
Creative and Professional Writing Interdisciplinary Minor
ENGL 3030- The Writer as Reader| TR 12:45-2:00pm | Alam
ENGL 3060- CW: Poetry | MWF 9:00-9:50am | Mathys
ENGL 3060- CW: Fiction | TR 9:30-10:45am | Alam
ENGL 3930-Writing Consulting in a Multimedia World | MW 11-12:15 | Wulff
ENGL 4000-Business Writing | times vary | Instructors vary
ENGL 4060- Advanced Creative Writing: Poetry | TR 11:00-12:15pm | Johnston
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SPRING 2015
ONE-HUNDRED LEVEL COURSES
Note:
For more information about ENGL 1500: The Process of Composition or
ENGL 1900: Advanced Strategies of Rhetoric and Research,
please consult the Writing Program’s site,
http://www.slu.edu/colleges/AS/ENG/wprogram/wprogram.html
ENGL 1500 – The Process of Composition
Multiple sections. Please consult banner for sections and times.
Develops effective personal and expository prose writing skills, including methods of invention,
organization, audience analysis, and style. Focuses on the compositional process.
ENGL 1900 – Advanced Strategies of Rhetoric and Research
Multiple sections. Please consult banner for sections and times.
Studies complex structures of language including its logical and persuasive possibilities.
Emphasizes analytical reading, critical thinking, and research methodology skills. Prerequisite:
ENGL-150, or equivalent.
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TWO-HUNDRED LEVEL COURSES
Foundational Coursework (New Major)
**All 2000-level courses also fulfill a CAS core literature requirement **
ENGL 2250-01 – Conflict, Social Justice, and Literature
Phyllis Weliver
Many nineteenth and early twentieth-century British novels, poems and plays sought to
awaken awareness of serious social problems, including injustices of class, gender and empire, as
well as the wrongs of violence and anarchy. We will study these subjects, ending with the mass
marketing of social justice through the rhetoric of sin, redemption and innocence. Our texts will
include the poetry of Tennyson, Wilde and Kipling; drama by women suffrage campaigners; and
fiction by Charles Dickens, Joseph Conrad, Henry James and Frances Hodgson Burnett.
Requirements: two 4-5 page papers, weekly journal, and presentation.
ENGL 2250-02 and 03 – Conflict, Social Justice and Literature
Ted Mathys
In this class, we will explore issues of conflict and social justice by turning to a cluster of literary and
filmic texts that portray rural poverty in America. Poverty is a key issue for social justice, and rural
areas in the United States have seen higher rates of poverty than metropolitan areas every year since
poverty rates were first recorded. In the novels, stories, films and poems that we analyze, we will
encounter characters affected by agricultural policy and changing relationships to the land; access to
physical infrastructure and social services; economic migration and its social consequences; familial
and community structures; the rise of methamphetamines; and racial dimensions of rural poverty.
We’ll also look at the varying ways in which writers employ formal techniques to engage with these
themes, and we’ll gain facility with different approaches to literary analysis. Texts may include
novels such as William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying and Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones; short
stories by Appalachian writer Breece D’J Pancake; films such as John Ford’s adaptation of The
Grapes of Wrath and Debra Granick’s Winter’s Bone; and poems and documentary literary
assemblages by James Agee, Muriel Rukeyser, Mark Nowak, and others. Students will be expected
to read and analyze course texts closely, write blog posts and several papers, undertake regular
quizzes and a final exam, and help create lively class discussions.
ENGL 2350-01 – Faith, Doubt, and Literature
Hal Bush
This course will survey 8-10 major American literary works that broach and debate
issues of faith and doubt. Our primary themes will be various sorts of belief, but especially
belief about what we might call the central topics of human existence: love, death, God, and
country. Special attention will be given to the ways literature confronts, challenges, supports, or
casts doubts upon what, and how, people believe the things they believe.Although particular titles
have not been finalized yet, the course will probably include many of the following works: Norman
Maclean, A River Runs Through It; Marilynne Robinson, Gilead; James Baldwin, The Fire Next
Time; J. D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey; Ron Hansen, Mariette in Ecstasy; Octavia Butler, Parable
of the Sower; Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild; along with selected stories by Flannery O’Connor and
Eudora Welty, selected poems by Robert Frost, Wendell Berry and Denise Levertov, selected works
by Martin Luther King, the freedom songs of the Civil Rights era; folk songs by Bob Dylan and one
or two feature films such as “Leap of Faith,” “Bruce Almighty,” or “Oh God.”
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ENGL 2450-01 – Nature, Ecology and Literature
Ruth Evans
The focus of this Nature, Ecology, & Literature course is on the question of the animal in literature
and culture. We will read a selection of texts – novels, short fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and essays
about animals. We will also watch a documentary film, Project Nim and have a class visit to the St
Louis Zoo. We will look at how animals are represented at different historical periods and in
different media. We will consider the ethical questions raised by human interaction with, and use of,
animals, and how human-animal relationships might be re-imagined. Six or seven texts will be
chosen from the following: Lydia Millett, How the Dead Dream; H.G. Wells, The Island of Dr
Moreau; Devin Johnston, Creaturely and Other Essays; Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises,
“The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” “Up in Michigan,” “A Day’s Wait,” and “Fathers and
Sons”; Marie de France, “Bisclavret” [The Werewolf]; Geoffrey Chaucer, The Nun’s Priest’s Tale;
Franz Kafka, “Report to an Academy” and “Metamorphosis,” Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals.
Assignments will include several blog posts on the class website, short class presentations, several
short papers (3-4 pages), and a final longer paper (6-7 pages).
ENGL 2550-01 – Gender, Identity and Literature
Toby Benis
This course is cross-listed with Women’s and Gender Studies.
From the inevitable first question every expectant mother gets – “Boy or Girl?” – onward, gender is a
prime determinant of our perceptions of ourselves and others. This course will survey some ways in
which gender has been represented in western culture. We will consider how ideas about masculinity
and femininity have been constructed in a range of social and historical contexts, and how
contemporary discussions about gay, lesbian and transgender identity can shape our interpretations of
imaginative literature. The syllabus will include texts representing the three major genres – poetry,
drama and the novel – to facilitate our understanding of how gender impacts literary form. Readings
will include William Shakespeare’s King Lear and Anton Chekov’s Three Sisters; prose by Jane
Austen, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Zora Neale Hurston, and George Sand; and poetry by Adrienne
Rich, John Donne, and John Keats.
ENGL-2550-02 – Gender, Identity and Literature: Writing, Sex and the Middle Ages
Antony Hasler
This course is cross-listed with Women’s and Gender Studies.
Despite the title, this is not a course for peculiar people who like to investigate strange websites. It
aims to introduce students to some landmark texts of the European Middle Ages, through their
representations of sex and gender. We’ll be considering the combinations of sex, power and
possibility available to medieval society and literary culture, and above all the period's entirely
explicit fascination with relations between writing and desire, which raises several questions. Is
writing a substitute for sex, or something closer to an accessory? In medieval love-poetry, to write is
itself "to speak of love," and perhaps of pleasures that lie outside, and even subvert, academic and
religious claims to authority and truth. Medieval theologians and mystics are very familiar with
figures of speech that link sacred doctrine and desire. Chivalric romances explore erotic scenarios
shaped by male bonding and its rivalrous flipside. Meanwhile, the short verse narratives known as
fabliaux bring their own agenda to sex, secrecy and weirdly mobile body parts. Readings will
probably include; Béroul, Tristan; Chrétien de Troyes, Lancelot; Heldris de Cornouälle, Silence;
Abelard, Historia Calamitatum; assorted lyrics, saints' lives, and fabliaux; and excerpts from
Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, The Romance of the Rose. Requirements will include three
papers, an in-class presentation, a midterm and a final.
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ENGL 2650-01 – Technology, Media and Literature
Stephen Casmier
Really, Katniss Everdeen’s survival depends on one thing: Not her skill as an archer, her wit, or her
instincts, but her and Peeta’s capacity to see themselves being seen on television by the morally
anesthetized citizens of the Capitol. The Hunger Games trilogy is not just an allegory of
contemporary society, branding, celebrity and a media obsessed culture, it also speaks to the
contemporary state of a consciousness numbed and constituted by fugitive images. Through
theoretical texts, documentaries, film, stories and novels, this course will explore the ways that
technology and the media affect and control our understanding of ourselves and the world. It will
use the ideas of thinkers such as Benedict Anderson, Jacques Lacan, Walter Benjamin, Wlad
Godzich, Slavoj Žižek, Jean Baudrillard and Naomi Klein among others to read The Hunger Games,
by Suzanne Collins,Mumbo Jumbo, by Ishmael Reed and White Noise, by Don Delillo. It will also
explore the relationship of text to film, and screen documentaries such as Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph
of the Will. Through this class, students will become acquainted with various critical perspectives
and approaches to reading literature. The grade in this course will be based on the student's
performance on 2 exams (including a take-home midterm in essay format), 2 major papers, several
minor papers, formal in-class presentations and several short quizzes.
ENGL 2650-02 – Technology, Media and Literature
Jonathan Sawday
How does technology interact with us? How do we interact with technology? In this course we shall
be exploring the relationship which human beings have forged with the technology which has come
to surround, console, assist, and sometimes trouble them. We'll be looking at some historical
accounts of technology in the past, and reading imaginative literature (legends, myths, novels, films,
poems) which deal with what one philosopher (Heidegger) has termed "the problem of technology."
ENGL 2750 – Film, Culture and Literature
Paul Acker
This course is cross-listed with Film Studies.
In this course we will view and discuss films that are adapted from literary works. Two main areas of
comparison will be addressed: 1) hardboiled detective fiction and “film noir,” and 2) “art novel/ art
film.” For most weeks, students will read the literary work before required Thursday screening; write
a short (4 page) paper (when assigned) or set of study questions (when assigned) to be turned in to
my departmental mailbox by Monday noon (or 4:30 AT THE LATEST); and then discuss the film on
Monday evening. Films viewed will include The Maltese Falcon, Blade Runner, Apocalypse
Now and The Graduate. Your papers will compare the literary texts and film adaptations and will not
involve research (which means no, I do not want you to plagiarize from the internet). Please note you
must attend BOTH evening sessions, Monday and Thursday: one is for class discussion and the other
is for watching the film and taking notes. Do not ask to watch the films on your own; we watch them
all together. Please take note also that this is a course on film AND literature. Do not enroll if you are
hoping to just watch movies. The texts are all short and reader friendly (crime novels, short stories,
novellas) but you will be required to read them.
Additional sections of all 2000-level course topics will be offered with shared texts and
assignments.
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THREE-HUNDRED LEVEL COURSES
Distribution Requirements (New Major)
Form and Genre
ENGL 3030 – The Writer as Reader
Saher Alam
This course meets a requirement for Creative Writing Concentration.
It’s often noted that writers learn to write by reading. But how do writers read? Is it different
from how a scholar reads? And how are the acts of reading and writing related? In this hybrid
literature/creative writing course, we’ll consider what it means to read like a writer and practice
doing so with a range of classic and contemporary works of short fiction, including but not
limited to stories by Chekhov, Joyce, Alice Munro, Edward P. Jones, Rushdie. As we read these
texts, we’ll try to reconstruct the field of possibilities that might have been available to the writer
as s/he went about choosing and arranging the elements that would best tell her/his story. We’ll
ask the questions that writers ask when they read: How does this story work? What choices did
the author make (or what alternatives did she discard) to achieve a given effect? We will begin
by looking broadly at the basic workings of prose: words, sentences, paragraphs. We will spend
time examining our own personal reading habits—and look for ways these habits might be
refined so that we can better access the depths of a given text. After this general study of prose,
we will investigate the particular features of fiction that distinguish it from other kinds of prose.
We will spend the first part of the semester acting more like scholars. Our focus will be on how
close reading leads to literary analysis; and you will do several close readings that will culminate
in an analytical paper. Then we’ll turn to how writers make use of close reading, and here your
efforts will culminate in either writing an original short story for workshop or making a craftfocused presentation that excavates the depths of a longer piece of fiction.
ENGL 3050 – Introduction to Creative Writing: Poetry
Ted Mathys
This course meets a requirement for Creative Writing Concentration.
Get yourself out of whatever cage you find yourself in. – John Cage
How can poems help spring us free from common modes of thought and experience? How do
outsider poets bust open the cages of dominant literary culture? How might we create our own
poetic cages and constraints in order to discover, while rattling their bars, new energies and
sparks of language we didn’t know existed within us? In this course, we will explore a wide
range of poetic styles and approaches – from American classics like Walt Whitman and Emily
Dickinson to some of the most exciting contemporary poets writing today – in order to find
fodder for our own writing and invigorate our thinking about the possibilities of poetry in the
world. The course will focus predominantly on your creative work. Each week you will write
one new poem and workshop the poems of your peers. Each week we will also discuss a few
poems clustered around a form, genre, or theme – such as landscape and environment; ekphrastic
poetry (about works of art); epistolary poems; Google-sculpting, crowd-sourcing and textual
collage; spells, incantations, and magic; prose poems; elegies; and a crash course on prosody and
rhythm from anonymous lyrics of the 14th to Dr. Seuss and Kanye West. We’ll also read several
book-length experiments in form, to get a sense of how contemporary poets, like filmmakers,
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think beyond the scene of each poem to the architecture of the whole project. You will be
required to produce weekly poems; attend public poetry readings and write short responses to
them; read several books of contemporary poetry and write responses to them; and assemble a
final portfolio of polished poems. Come ready to dismantle your cage.
ENGL 3060 – Introduction to Creative Writing: Fiction
Saher Alam
This course meets a requirement for Creative Writing Concentration.
In this class you will write, learn how to read like a writer, and write some more. Our focus will
be on short fiction, and our approach will be to explore the stages linking inspiration to final (or
nearly final) draft. That is, we will learn how to find an idea and search for ways to grow the idea
into a short story. The class will be run as a workshop, which means you’ll be actively engaged
in (and regularly lead) discussions about your classmates’ original works-in-progress, and you’ll
be putting your own compositions up for such discussions. Over the course of the semester, we
will examine common craft-of-fiction elements, progressing from basic building blocks (details,
characters, dialogue) to more slippery units of narrative design (scene, summary, point of view,
theme). Along the way, we will also read and examine a range of published short stories, from
classics to works by contemporary masters. The grading will depend heavily on your
participation in the class discussions, the quality of the written feedback you provide in the
workshop, and your ability to keep up with the weekly assignments (which may be critical or
creative in nature). Our readings will most likely be drawn from a textbook you’ll be expected to
purchase and a supplemental set of short stories that will have been put on e-Reserve.
ENGL 3860 – Public Rhetoric: Manifestoes
Rachel Greenwald Smith
This course meets a requirement for the Rhetoric, Writing and Technology Concentration.
1. The manifesto is a way of articulating the identity of a group and collectively stating a set
of goals. In this class, we will read manifestoes written from in the seventeenth-century to
the present. We will investigate how the form has functioned historically, rhetorically,
and performativity, and we will write and publish our own manifestoes.
2. Our world would not be what it is today without manifestoes. From the Declaration of
Independence to the statements of various social movements in the 1960s, manifestoes
have shaped our current political system and our social values. We will cover a wide
range of political movements in this class, looking at them through the lens of their
defining statements.
3. While the manifesto began as a political form, it became an important form for artists in
the twentieth-century. Modernists interested in developing new approaches to art began
writing manifestoes to define their artistic aims in the early twentieth century. Futurism,
Dada, and Surrealism all produced multiple manifestoes. We will study these and other
art movements and ask why the manifesto form suited their goals.
4. Most manifestoes are written collectively. Because manifestoes are driven toward
developing a group identity, they are usually written by groups and they tend to use the
collective pronoun “we.” We will experiment with writing in groups and talk about the
collective writing practices that led to a range of famous manifestoes.
5. Manifestoes are radical, polarizing, and uncompromising. Be prepared to make demands.
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History and Context
ENGL 3280 – American Literary Traditions: 1865-Present
Vincent Casaregola
Meets the American literature area requirement for the (old) English Major; Cross-listed with Film Studies.
This course examines American cultural history from the time of the Civil War to the present by
studying works by the major writers of the period. It will emphasize reading from a wide variety
of writers so that students can grasp both the artistic and literary diversity of the whole period.
Additionally, we will consider film (both documentary and fictional), the visual arts, and
architecture as supplements to the literature. We will also explore other forms of cultural
representation, including advertising and a range of popular culture forms. Our approach will be
chronological, but we will make occasional adjustments to compare works from one period with
those of another, especially more recent works that reflect on or comment upon earlier ones. We
will consider specific issues that are fundamentally important: identity (especially race, gender,
ethnicity, and class); media and mass culture; science, technology, and industrialization;
economics; and war and international relations. Students will demonstrate their knowledge of the
course material, along with their mastery of the skills of analysis and interpretation, through their
examinations and essays, as well as through their class participation. Note: Whether taken under
the English or Film Studies number, this course can count toward the Film Studies minor.
ENGL 3330 – World Literary Traditions III
Joya Uraizee
This course fulfils the Global Diversity requirement.
In keeping with the mission of the core curriculum, this course promotes an appreciation of
literature as a creative act and as an expression of the human search for meaning. Accordingly,
you will read selected works of contemporary world literature, focusing on themes related to
internationalism and migration; gender and sex; family and nationality; class and politics; race
and ethnicity. You will also analyze various approaches to world literature, including cultural,
post-structural and psychoanalytical. Some of the texts you will study include Joseph Conrad’s
Heart of Darkness, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, Chinua Achebe’s
Things Fall Apart, Vaclav Havel’s Temptation, Toni Morrison’s Sula, Arundhati Roy’s The God
of Small Things, and Dionne Brand’s No Language is Neutral. Some of the assignments for the
class include several short quizzes, several short in-class exercises, 2 blogs, 2 short papers, a
midterm exam, a website project, and a group presentation.
ENGL 3470 – Introduction to Shakespeare
Donald Stump
In this course, we’ll begin with the bright comedies of Shakespeare’s early years,using the
Sonnets to set the stage for the love rivalries, the conflicts between theold and the young, and
competing ideas about the roles of the genders that markthose plays. We’ll then turn to the
English histories, focusing on corrupt rulers and the long-term effects of rebellion, assassination,
and civil war. In discussing the tragedies of Shakespeare’s maturity, we’ll follow his great turn
inward, exploring the kinds of shocks that lead to psychic breakdown and extreme acts of
violence. We’ll end with a late romance, in which characters undergo slow processes of healing
and redemption after such a crushing tragic fall. Readings will include works such as A
Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, I Henry IV, Richard III, Julius Caesar,
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Anthony and Cleopatra, and The Winter’s Tale. Lively and engaged class discussion will be the
heart of the course. Written work will include brief essay quizzes, response papers, a midterm,
and a final exam..
ENGL 3490 – 19th Century British Literature: Public Health and the Victorian Home
Anne Stiles
This course counts towards the Medical Humanities Interdisciplinary Minor.
This course will focus on nineteenth-century homes and other aspects of the built environment,
as depicted in poetry, short stories, and novels by George Eliot, Charles Dickens, Emily Brontë,
and other major authors of the period. We will learn about the spaces in which Victorians lived
their day-to-day lives, reflecting upon the architecture, furniture, interior design, and fashion of
the period. By focusing on the material realities of Victorian homes, nineteenth-century authors
were able to illuminate matters of class, gender, and domesticity, not to mention the public health
issues often encountered in Victorian dwellings. In addition to reading literature of the period,
students will watch relevant documentaries and visit local examples of Victorian homes in order
to see how people really lived in the nineteenth century. Since this class is taught in the Learning
Studio, which houses exciting new instructional technologies, students will complete
multimedia projects (PowerPoint presentations, short films, etc.) in addition to papers and
quizzes. No prior experience with these technologies is necessary.
Note: This course is cross-listed with the Medical Humanities Interdisciplinary Minor.
Culture and Critique
ENGL 3500 – Literature of the Postcolonial World: the Islamic World
Joya Uraizee
This course meets the Post-1800 area requirement for the (old) English Major; this course is cross-listed with
Women’s and Gender Studies; this course fulfils the Global Diversity requirement.
In keeping with the mission of the core curriculum, this course promotes an appreciation of
literature as a creative act and as an expression of the human search for meaning. Accordingly,
you will read selected works of contemporary postcolonial literature from Muslim-majority
countries in Africa and Asia. You will focus on themes related to internationalism and transnationalism; gender and sex; family and identity; class and politics; race and ethnicity. You will
also learn to appreciate various approaches to postcolonial literature, including cultural, poststructural and psychoanalytical. Some of the texts you will examine include Monica Ali’s Brick
Lane, Khaled Hossaini’s The Kite Runner, Etel Adnan’s Arab Apocalypse, Nuruddin Farah’s
Links, Naguib Mahfouz’s Sugar Street, Halman & Warner’s I Anatolia and Other Plays, and
Rashid Masharawi’s Laila’s Birthday. Some of the requirements for the class include 2 blogs,
several short quizzes, several short in-class exercises, 2 short papers, a midterm exam, a website
project, and a group presentation.
14
ENGL 3520 – African American Literary Traditions II: After 1900
Nathan Grant
This course fulfils the U.S. Diversity requirement.
“The problem of the twentieth century,” W. E. B. Du Bois said in The Souls of Black Folk in
1903, “is the problem of the color line.” Black intellectuals and culturalists, including Du Bois,
would begin to shape American modernism by imagining a world free of racism. When this was
insufficient, they used the paradoxical intention of showing America its own face in the mirror
they held. Blacks and progressivist whites would consistently expose the human cost of the
abuses of economics, politics and power through modernist and Left sensibilities, and through
their engagements with the Cultural Front and trans-Atlantic culture, also represent to the rest of
the world insecurities and frustrations of a burgeoning U. S. culture. This course will include one
required text, The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, vol. II. Authors may
include: Paul Laurence Dunbar, Nella Larsen, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Zora Neale
Hurston, Toni Morrison, John Edgar Wideman, Gloria Naylor.
ENGL 3620: Topics in Spirituality and Literature: What is Spirituality?
Hal Bush
This course will study the forms, features, and rhetorical strategies of literature that considers the
nature of God and of spirituality. To begin, we will discuss some meaningful ways to talk about
spirituality, spiritual practice, and the “spiritual” itself. This discussion will include some
sociological aspects of current American spiritualities, broadly speaking. We will also study the
ways people write about the spiritual—and some of the assignments will allow students We will
begin with a number of critical/sociological essays or chapters, by the likes of Martin Buber,
Rudolph Otto, Kathleen Norris, Eugene Peterson, Wendell Berry, Thomas Merton, Belden Lane,
Annie Dillard, C. S. Lewis, Robert Wuthnow, Ronald Rolheiser, and others. Then we will study
a number of literary texts in which spiritual issues are crucial, such as Norman Maclean, A River
Runs Through It; Marilynne Robinson, Gilead; James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time; Octavia
Butler, Parable of the Sower; J. D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey; Ron Hansen, Mariette in
Ecstasy; Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild; Anne LaMott, Traveling Mercies; along with selected
stories by Flannery O’Connor and Eudora Welty.
ENGL 3700 – The Bible and Literature
Donald Stump
This course is cross-listed with Theology
The course will focus on a selection of the greatest--and the most puzzling--stories in Scripture,
such as those of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Abraham and Isaac, Moses and the Israelites,
Saul and David, Job and Satan, along with psalms, parables and accounts of the life of Christ.
From each of these, we will turn to works of literature that have drawn on them, including
Dante's Inferno, Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, and a selection of scriptural poems and short
stories. The aim will be to probe key passages in these works, pondering not only their literary
beauty and power but also the great questions that they raise—questions about divine justice,
human nature, good and evil, and the afterlife. Course requirements will include written
exercises, a medium-length paper, a mid-term, and a final exam. The course may be counted
toward the Manresa Program Certificate.
15
ENGL 3740 – Literature and Medicine
Sara van den Berg
This course counts towards the Medical Humanities Interdisciplinary Minor.
This course will discuss works of fiction and nonfiction that portray the experience of disease,
and the dilemmas of care, to examine how narratives can play an important role in healthcare.
We’ll read about helplessness, hope, exhilaration, dependency, determination and frustration.
Readings will include excerpts from critical work by Arthur Frank (The Wounded Storyteller),
Rita Charon (Narrative Medicine), Kathryn Hunter (Doctors’ Stories), and Atul Gawande (Being
Mortal). Experiences of physicians will be explored in fiction and nonfiction by David Hilfiker
(Not All of Us are Saints), William Carlos Williams (Doctor Stories), Terence Holt (Internal
Medicine), and Chris Adrian (“Grand Rounds”). We’ll consider when the doctor becomes a
patient (Oliver Sacks, A Leg to Stand On) and when a caregiver and a community are confronted
by plague (Geraldine Brooks, Year of Wonders; Andrea Barrett, Ship Fever). We’ll then focus on
narratives of thee personal experiences of patients and families (John Donne, Devotions upon
Emergent Occasions, Jean-Dominique Bauby, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly; Akhil Sharma,
Family Life; and short stories by Leo Tolstoy, Lorrie Moore, Raymond Carver, and Alice
Munro). We may end with a set of reading about genetics: a novel (Simon Mawer, Mendel’s
Dwarf) and brief memoirs of people who cope with genetic disease (Amy Boesky, The Story
Within). Course requirements: 2 short papers; midterm exam; final OR term paper.
Rhetoric and Argument
ENGL 3850 - Foundations in Rhetoric and Writing
Katie Zabrowski
This course meets a requirement for the Rhetoric, Writing and Technology Concentration.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Furthermore, it is a rhetorical method for acquiring
skill in a range of activities – think: learning to cook a dish by following the recipe of a chef or
cook you admire, completing a craft project inspired by Pinterest, or writing in the style of your
favorite author. Combining the rhetorical principles of imitation and practice, ENGL 3850
introduces students to the field of rhetoric and writing through a sustained engagement with a
Do-It-Yourself project or series of related projects of their choice in which they learn how to
make something through imitation, adaptation, and revision. The course will operate as a
workshop, treating student productions as its principal content but supplementing their work with
readings in rhetorical history and theory. Students will be tasked with producing continuous
reflection, in the media of their choosing (journal, blog, photography, podcasts, video series,
etc.), that tracks the experience of engaging with their chosen DIY projects for an appropriate
audience. This reflection will investigate the rhetorical principles at work in making-byimitating, and will consistently and effectively incorporate primary research, document design,
and audience awareness, considerations that will inform the professional lives of students.
16
ENGL 3860 – Public Rhetoric: Manifestoes
Rachel Greenwald Smith
This course meets a requirement for the Rhetoric, Writing and Technology Concentration
1. The manifesto is a way of articulating the identity of a group and collectively stating a set
of goals. In this class, we will read manifestoes written from in the seventeenth-century to
the present. We will investigate how the form has functioned historically, rhetorically,
and performativity, and we will write and publish our own manifestoes.
2. Our world would not be what it is today without manifestoes. From the Declaration of
Independence to the statements of various social movements in the 1960s, manifestoes
have shaped our current political system and our social values. We will cover a wide
range of political movements in this class, looking at them through the lens of their
defining statements.
3. While the manifesto began as a political form, it became an important form for artists in
the twentieth-century. Modernists interested in developing new approaches to art began
writing manifestoes to define their artistic aims in the early twentieth century. Futurism,
Dada, and Surrealism all produced multiple manifestoes. We will study these and other
art movements and ask why the manifesto form suited their goals.
4. Most manifestoes are written collectively. Because manifestoes are driven toward
developing a group identity, they are usually written by groups and they tend to use the
collective pronoun “we.” We will experiment with writing in groups and talk about the
collective writing practices that led to a range of famous manifestoes.
5. Manifestoes are radical, polarizing, and uncompromising. Be prepared to make demands.
ENGL 3930 – Writing Consulting in a Multi-Media World
Alex Wulff
This course meets a requirement for the Rhetoric, Writing and Technology Concentration
English 4930 is a practical course that trains students to be writing consultants in University
Writing Services. This is a hands-on, discussion-oriented course that requires engagement with
the diverse community of the entire SLU campus. Course work includes weekly writing,
assigned reading, and participating in projects in cooperation with other consultants. Freshmen,
Sophomores and Juniors will be encouraged to apply for staff consultant positions after
completing the course. During the second half of the course—after learning how to set priorities
in a writing consultation, how to work within various fields and genres, and how to respond to
writing at various stages of completion—students will conduct writing consultations. Although
the emphasis of this course will be on practical issues relating to the work of writing consultants,
we will begin the course by asking broad questions about how and why one-on-one consultations
are effective. Students will posit what it means to be a writer, what it means to respond to
writing, and how to negotiate our position as liaisons between the writer, the instructor and the
university. The fundamental goal of the course is to become better writers and better consultants.
17
FOUR-HUNDRED LEVEL COURSES
Advanced Seminars
ENGL 4000 – Business and Professional Writing
This course meets requirements for the following programs: Creative Writing Concentration; Rhetoric,
Writing, Technology Concentration; Creative and Professional Writing Interdisciplinary Minor
Explores the principles of effective writing in business, science, and other professions through
letters, memos, and reports.
ENGL 4030 – History of Rhetoric II
Nathaniel Rivers
This course meets a requirement for the Rhetoric, Writing and Technology Concentration.
Rhetoric evolves in response to both time and place. Indeed, we could go so far as to say that
each time and place has its own unique rhetoric(s). The period from the dawn of the
Enlightenment up to the present, which is the focus of this course, has been no different.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this history of rhetoric course will proceed in a chronological fashion.
That said, the present often appears in the past, and the past stays with us as we move toward the
present. There is a fair amount of time travel in this course. For each period of time, we will take
a look at the technologies, in particular the communication technologies, in and around which
rhetoric takes place:
•
1700s: the paper machine, the steam engine, and the distillery
•
1800s: the telegraph, the railroad, and industrial fermentation
•
1900s: the telephone, the airplane, and steroids
•
2000s: the smartphone, a manned mission to mars, and nanotechnology
There is a range of projects and assignments throughout the semester, which each attempt to
create a unique engagement with rhetorics and their technologies. We begin the semester with
the Rhetoric Q&A essay, which has students draft a working definition of rhetoric by asking
some specific question of it (e.g., How do technologies such as letter writing and text messaging
shape interpersonal rhetoric? How has diplomatic rhetoric responded to the telegraph and to
Wikileaks?). A follow-up assignment of sorts, the Rhetorical Object Analysis, has students
investigate and describe the active, rhetorical role played by a particular technology in the
history of rhetoric. Course Texts: The Rhetorical Tradition. Eds. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce
Herzberg; Lines: A Brief History. Tim Ingold; Communication in History: Technology, Culture,
Society, 6/E. Eds. David Crowley and Paul Heyer.
ENGL 4050: Advanced Creative Writing, Poetry
Devin Johnston
This course meets a requirement for Creative Writing Concentration.
This course will address a range of techniques for writing poetry, making use of a few
compelling models on which to base our own writing (both reading and writing will be
assigned). In this sense, the course will constitute an apprenticeship to modern poetry. We will
consider the breadth of approaches currently available to poets, as well as the manner in which
poetry relates to other forms of discourse in our culture. Each week students will bring poems for
discussion, developing a portfolio of revised work by the semester’s end. Students will also be
expected to attend several poetry events.
18
ENGL 4120 – Rhetorical Grammar
Janice McIntire-Strasburg
This course meets a requirement for the Rhetoric, Writing and Technology Concentration.
Rhetorical Grammar is not a course in dos and don’ts to which you slavishly obey. It is a course
that covers a little linguistics and a little phonetics along with more traditional grammar
information in the first few weeks and then spends the rest of the time showing students what
using the various structures and strictures of grammar can do for you as you write for readers.
For example, it is not illegal to begin a sentence with “There is..” or “There are...;” however, it
means something particular when you do it, and most people overuse this construction. Come to
the class and find out everything you ever wanted to know about grammar and how writers can
use it to create the rhetorical effect they desire.
ENG 4220 – Introduction to Old Norse
Paul Acker
This course meets the Pre-1800 area requirement for the (old) English Major.
The course aims at enabling students to read Old Norse works in the original, thereby
providing access to the myths and sagas of the Viking Age. This year we will work our way
through Jesse Byock’s new introductory text, Viking Language, which provides grammar and
short ‘graded readings’ that start out easy and then increase in complexity. Byock’s book also
includes a good deal of contextual material on the history and culture of medieval Scandinavia as
well as images of artifacts and rune stones. In the latter portion of the semester we will read
additional works in translation, Grettis saga (or a different saga) and the poetic Edda. There will
be quizzes on the introductory grammatical material (on a near-daily basis until the midterm), a
midterm on a selection of paradigms and conjugations, and a quiz and final involving inclass
translation. During the last week of classes, students will give short oral presentations on critical
approaches to an Eddic poem of their choosing (the rest of the class will have read the poem in
translation). At that time also students will pass in a translation of a passage from said poem, an
annotated bibliography of useful studies of the poem (four articles for graduate students, two for
undergraduate), and a page or two of original remarks.I want to make it clear that daily
assignments are not optional, and failure to be adequately prepared on more than three occasions
will adversely affect your grade. You may find the material difficult to at first but I expect you to
carry on with fortitude and diligence. Your reward will be access to one of the most diverse and
fascinating bodies of medieval literature. Required Text: Viking Language (Jesse L. Byock,
2013).
ENGL 4320: Shakespeare: Special Topics - Shakespeare’s Rome
Jennifer Rust
Limited to Research Intensive English students. Please contact Dr. Ellen Crowell, director of the Research
Intensive English concentration, for information about how to apply to the program. This course meets the
Pre-1800 area requirement for the (old) English Major.
This course will focus on Shakespeare’s major dramas set in classical Rome, ranging from early
plays (Titus Andronicus and Julius Caesar) to his final tragedy Coriolanus. We will also read
several plays which, though set in the Hellenistic world, are based on Roman sources and
traditions of satire (such as the experimental Timon of Athens). We will consider as well some
contemporary cinematic adaptations of Shakespeare’s Roman dramas (such as Julie Taymor’s
Titus and Ralph Fiennes’s Coriolanus). Along the way, we will read a range of modern criticism
19
on Shakespeare’s Roman works. Shakespeare was engaged with reimagining the Roman world
throughout his career. Rigorously educated in the Latin classics from grammar school onward,
early modern English writers like Shakespeare drew on Roman narratives as imaginative
landscapes and cultural archives. Roman tropes allowed Elizabethans to articulate ideologies of
gender, political sovereignty, and national identity. While Roman narratives could be used to
reinforce patriarchal political and social norms or project imperial ambitions, they also offered
complex, ambivalent material that could throw these ideological projects into question. We will
begin with Virgil’s Aeneid, perhaps the single most important source text for early modern ideas
about Rome’s origins and imperial destiny and a rich source of Shakespearean allusions. Beyond
Virgil, we will be concerned with Shakespeare’s relationship to other crucial classical sources
(Ovid, Plutarch, Livy, Augustine), writers who offer critical counter-narratives that compete with
the Virgilian paradigm. Throughout, we will ask: how does Shakespeare rework this range of
inherited narratives about the Roman world to produce new versions of the classical tradition that
respond to the political, religious and economic pressures of his own era? Furthermore, how do
the issues at stake in Shakespeare’s Roman works extend beyond his immediate historical
framework to touch on contemporary questions of race, gender, class, and politics? Coursework
will consist of several presentations and a substantial final research paper.
ENGL 4520 – Special Topics in 18th and 19th Century Literature: The Historical
Imagination
Toby Benis
This course meets both the Pre-1800 and Post-1800 area requirements for the (old) English Major.
This course will explore how the Romantics and Victorians used literature to talk about their
past. Since Homer’s Iliad, literature and history often have treated the same material. In the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, British literature turned to the past in a desperate attempt to
understand and challenge the monumental changes taking place in the present. The industrial
revolution and the rise of modern capitalism made paupers out of artisans; created new cities
whose fabulous wealth (and abject poverty) was virtually ignored by Parliament; led to the
creation of an empire on which the sun never set; and raised disturbing questions about the rights
of women and children. To some writers, past societies served as comforting models of stability
and morality amid the anarchy of the present. To others, the British, the classical, or the biblical
past offered a more ambiguous or even oppressive model for living that the present was lucky to
have escaped. Throughout the course, we will ask where on the continuum between these
extremes various authors, and texts, fall. Texts will include drama (Lord Byron’s Cain, Oscar
Wilde’s Salomé); non-fiction prose (Catharine Macaulay’s History of England, Thomas
Carlyle’s Past and Present); poetry (lyrics by Thomas Gray, Thomas Chatterton, and Lucy
Aiken); and Thomas Hardy’s novel Tess of the D’Urbervilles.
ENGL 4600 / HIST 393 – Remembering Modernity
Ellen Crowell (English) and Flannery Burke (History)
This course meets the Post-1800 area requirement for the (old) English Major.
This interdisciplinary seminar will study recent and contemporary works of British and
American historical fiction to develop a sustained focus on late-nineteenth and early-twentieth
century urban life. Despite disciplinary differences, historians and fiction writers share a
fascination with verifiability, authenticity, and how one’s sensibility and subjectivity is shaped
by a particular apprehension of the past—shared interests this class will explore by working with
20
visiting novelist Scott Blackwood. Focusing on two distinct locations and historical moments—
London and New York circa 1890-1940—this course will explore the narrative tensions,
harmonies, and distinctions between the disciplines of History and English.
Through six historical novels—Regeneration (Pat Barker); The Night Watch (Sarah Waters), The
Arrival (Shaun Tan), The Alienist (Caleb Carr), The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
(Michael Chabon), and See How Small (Scott Blackwood)—students will consider
commonalities and divergences between the research processes of the historian and the historical
fiction writer, engage in research of their own, and produce a deeply researched account of one
of the themes engaged by our course texts. Final research projects (15-20 p) are required of both
English and History students. English majors have two options: a traditional research paper
analyzing how historical fiction creates a rich dialogue between past and present conceptions of
modernity, or a short work of historical fiction that draws upon research skills honed in the
seminar and is accompanied by a critical analysis. History students also have two options: a
traditional research paper about a historical figure, incident, or place that appears in the works
read in class, or the creation of a historical map and guided tour of London or New York City,
accompanied by a research paper with Chicago Style footnotes explaining what understanding of
the city the map and tour provide.
ENGL 4720 – Contemporary American Literature
Rachel Greenwald Smith
This course meets the American literature area requirement for the (old) English Major.
This course asks how changes in literary form over the past twenty-five years reflect, resist,
conform to, and enable critiques of the peculiarities of contemporary American life. In order to
tackle this project, we will read works of contemporary America literature that take up major
events of the past twenty-five years including the end of the Cold War and the rise of global
capitalism; the birth of the Internet and digital technology; assertions of post-racial and postfeminist politics; the highly polarized political response to the war on terror; and a major
rethinking of American exceptionalism in the wake of the so-called “Great Recession.” Our goal
will be to contribute to the ongoing effort in literary scholarship and cultural studies to periodize
the present: that is, to understand what is distinct about our moment aesthetically, historically,
politically, and socially. Works may include novels by Colson Whitehead, Jonathan Franzen,
Jennifer Egan, and Tao Lin; poetry by Jorie Graham, Harryette Mullen, Juliana Spahr, Ben
Lerner, and Dana Ward; and essays by Kenneth Goldsmith, James Wood, Ben Marcus, Stephen
Burt, Rebecca Wolfe, Amy Hungerford, and Kenneth Warren. Supplemental materials may
include works drawn from a range of genres and media, including Flarf poetry, television, video
and performance art, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry and theory, quantitative studies on
American reading habits, hypertext fiction, and online publication venues like The Claudius App
and HTMLGiant.
ENGL 492: Introduction to Writing Instruction: Secondary Education
Jennifer Buehler
This course meets a requirement for Education Secondary Area of Concentration: English
The best teachers of writing are writers themselves. They understand that while writing is messy
and idiosyncratic, there are many ways to help individual writers accomplish their goals.
English492 is designed to help you gain knowledge and experience in both of these areas. Our
work together will help you become a better writer while you learn from classroom practitioners
21
and composition researchers the most effective ways to teach others to write. As you learn more
about your own writing process, you will better understand how to help student writers. And as
you learn how expert practitioners teach writing, you will develop a clearer vision of what the
teaching of writing can look like in secondary classrooms. In order to accomplish these goals,
you will be asked to write a lot in this course, and you will be asked to reflect on your own
writing as a way to better understand how secondary students experience school-based writing
tasks. We will read each other’s work and respond to it as fellow writers and as future teachers.
We will also read about best practices in the teaching of writing, and then we’ll try out those
practices in our work together. Our learning will be guided by questions such as: What makes a
piece of writing good? What do student writers need in order to produce their best work? How
can teachers find ways to grow as writers at the same time they are teaching writing to
adolescents? Because writing pedagogy is such a big topic, however, expect this course to
merely scratch the surface. You will leave the course with a lot of ideas about how to teach
writing well, but with an equal number of questions that will guide you in ongoing professional
learning.
ENGL 4940: Senior Seminar: Literary Salons in 19th-century Britain
Phyllis Weliver
Limited to senior English majors
During the nineteenth century, family and friends often met in each others’ homes in order to
converse with other political, literary, and artistic elite and to hear new literature recited aloud. In
part, this community was simply continuing a well-established tradition, begun in Renaissance
Italy and subsequently developed throughout the Western world. However, each salon also
developed distinctive qualities, and the Romantic and Victorian salons were no exception. The
19th-century British salon was a space (a room) and an event reliant upon hostess, family, stable
group of friends and newly introduced guests. A network of salons created the sense of both a
real and an imagined community that writers drew upon when thinking about an audience for
their works. They also relied upon listeners’ responses for their manuscript revision. Ultimately,
this course aims to explore what distinguished the nineteenth-century salon; how textuality was
mediated by sociability and close listening (reading aloud elicited a new or revised manuscript);
and what role elite women played in cutting-edge intellectual change. Our readings will draw
from prose by Germaine de Staël, Fanny Trollope, Margaret Oliphant, Vernon Lee (Violet Paget)
and Amy Levy; verse by poets such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Alfred Tennyson, A. Mary F.
Robinson, Dollie Radford, and Michael Field (Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper); and current
scholarship. We will also consider salonnières Germaine de Staël (Paris), Rahel Varnhagen
(Berlin), Vernon Lee (Florence), A. Mary F. Robinson (London), and Mary Gladstone (daughter
of Prime Minister Gladstone, London and Wales).
ENGL 4940: Senior Seminar: Modern Australian Poetry
Devin Johnston
Limited to senior English majors
This course will address poetry from the other side of the world, written in English,
but little read in North America. We will explore adventuresome strains of modern Australian
poetry in terms of encounters—between language and landscape, between humans and birds,
between colonists and Aboriginal Australians, between traditions and modernity. Authors
addressed will include Judith Wright, David Campbell, Les Murray, Oodgeroo Noonuccal,
22
Kevin Gilbert, John Tranter, Martin Harrison, and others. In March, we will be joined for two
weeks by one of Australia’s most celebrated poets,
Robert Adamson. Requirements for the course will include attending his reading and
lecture, as well as informal class presentations (one on a modern Australian novel), short
responses, and a substantial final project.
23
FIVE-HUNDRED LEVEL COURSES
ENGL 5030 – History of Rhetoric II
Nathaniel Rivers
Rhetoric evolves in response to both time and place. Indeed, we could go so far as to say that
each time and place has its own unique rhetoric(s). The period from the dawn of the
Enlightenment up to the present, which is the focus of this course, has been no different.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this history of rhetoric course will proceed in a chronological fashion.
That said, the present often appears in the past, and the past stays with us as we move toward the
present. There is a fair amount of time travel in this course. For each period of time, we will take
a look at the technologies, in particular the communication technologies, in and around which
rhetoric takes place:
•
1700s: the paper machine, the steam engine, and the distillery
•
1800s: the telegraph, the railroad, and industrial fermentation
•
1900s: the telephone, the airplane, and steroids
•
2000s: the smartphone, a manned mission to mars, and nanotechnology
There is a range of projects and assignments throughout the semester, which each attempt to
create a unique engagement with rhetorics and their technologies. We begin the semester with
the Rhetoric Q&A essay, which has students draft a working definition of rhetoric by asking
some specific question of it (e.g., How do technologies such as letter writing and text messaging
shape interpersonal rhetoric? How has diplomatic rhetoric responded to the telegraph and to
Wikileaks?). A follow-up assignment of sorts, the Rhetorical Object Analysis, has students
investigate and describe the active, rhetorical role played by a particular technology in the
history of rhetoric. Course Texts: The Rhetorical Tradition. Eds. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce
Herzberg; Lines: A Brief History. Tim Ingold; Communication in History: Technology, Culture,
Society, 6/E. Eds. David Crowley and Paul Heyer.
ENGL 5110 – Literary Theory
Stephen Casmier
This is a graduate, introduction to literary theory course. The course will mostly rely on the
anthology, Literary Theory: An Anthology, by Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan and explore areas
such as post-structuralist, psychoanalytic, cultural, feminist, post-colonial and Marxist
theories. Finally, the course will tie into my own research into vernacular theory and some
questions about the ethnocentric dimensions of European epistemology. Texts will
include: Literary Theory: An Anthology, Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan, The Johns Hopkins
Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism, Michael Groden and Martin Kreiswirth (On-Line, Pius
Library), and Black Marxism, by Cederic Robinson, and other readings that will be
provided. The grade in this course will be based on oral reports, write-ups of the reports, a
written mid-term and a final research paper.
24
ENGL 5260 – Introduction to Old Norse
Paul Acker
The course aims at enabling students to read Old Norse works in the original, thereby
providing access to the myths and sagas of the Viking Age. This year we will work our way
through Jesse Byock’s new introductory text, Viking Language, which provides grammar and
short ‘graded readings’ that start out easy and then increase in complexity. Byock’s book also
includes a good deal of contextual material on the history and culture of medieval Scandinavia as
well as images of artifacts and rune stones. In the latter portion of the semester we will read
additional works in translation, Grettis saga (or a different saga) and the poetic Edda. There will
be quizzes on the introductory grammatical material (on a near-daily basis until the midterm), a
midterm on a selection of paradigms and conjugations, and a quiz and final involving inclass
translation. During the last week of classes, students will give short oral presentations on critical
approaches to an Eddic poem of their choosing (the rest of the class will have read the poem in
translation). At that time also students will pass in a translation of a passage from said poem, an
annotated bibliography of useful studies of the poem (four articles for graduate students, two for
undergraduate), and a page or two of original remarks.I want to make it clear that daily
assignments are not optional, and failure to be adequately prepared on more than three occasions
will adversely affect your grade. You may find the material difficult to at first but I expect you to
carry on with fortitude and diligence. Your reward will be access to one of the most diverse and
fascinating bodies of medieval literature. Required Text: Viking Language (Jesse L. Byock,
2013).
25
SIX-HUNDRED LEVEL COURSES
ENGL-6270 Middle English Lit: The Poetry of Scotland, 600-1600
Antony Hasler
There was a referendum and there is a Scotland, and that Scotland has always had multiple
identities and languages. Our course will aim to engage with that diversity; while poetry in Scots
will dominate, there will be excursuses into Gaelic and other Celtic bodies of writing (in
translation) and Latin. There will be predictable visits to the best-known late-medieval Scottish
poets (Henryson, Dunbar, King James I, Lyndsay) and Gavin Douglas’s seminal translation of
Virgil’s Aeneid into Scots. However, we’ll also look at the fascinating, uniquely Scottish genreblending historiographies of Barbour’s Bruce and Hary’s Wallace; a Scottish romance and
fabliau or two; the wild transformations of court lyric into Protestant piety in
Wedderburn’s Gude and Godlie Ballatis; the enjoyably nasty Reformation satire of Robert
Sempill; and the complex genderings of poetry found in the courts of Mary Queen of Scots and
James VI (Alexander Scott, Alexander Montgomerie, some fascinating anonymous
writing). There was, of course, a further destiny in store for the latter monarch, and we’ll close
out with a look at the poetry, and writings on poetry, of James VI of Scotland and I of England.
We’ll also address the ways in which nationhood, and the nostalgias and anxieties of political
displacement created by a dual monarchy, figure in the curiously moving poetry of William
Drummond of Hawthornden, compelled by history to write court poetry for a court that is no
longer there. Requirements: one short paper, one major seminar paper, one class presentation.
ENGL 6320 – Shakespeare: Medieval Shakespeare
Jennifer Rust
Illuminating the connection between the cultural and religious heritage of the Middle Ages and
Shakespeare’s early modern drama has become an increasingly prominent concern in recent
criticism. The number of monographs, edited collection and articles that address various facets of
Shakespeare’s relationship to the medieval world has visibly grown in the last 10-15 years and
shows no sign of abating. Indeed, Shakespeare is, among other things, a crucial figure in the
reception history of much medieval English literature; in this sense, he is perhaps most
influential medievalist in English literary history. In this seminar, we will pursue the question of
medieval legacies in Shakespeare’s work from several angles. We will consider Shakespeare’s
critical reception and adaptation of Chaucer, that most celebrated medieval poet, in works such
as Midsummer Night’s Dream, Two Noble Kinsmen and Troilus and Cressida (and possibly the
cameo appearance of Chaucer’s colleague Gower in Pericles as well). We will consider the
relationship between Shakespeare’s professional commercial drama and medieval dramatic
traditions, particularly mystery cycles and morality plays. Many scholars believe that
Shakespeare may have been in the audience at some of the last performances of mystery plays at
Coventry in the mid-sixteenth century (experiences that may lie behind such memorable lines as
Hamlet’s “it out-Herods Herod”). We will consider possible traces of the mystery cycle tradition
in plays as diverse as Macbeth and The Winter’s Tale. Similarly, critics have long recognized the
morality tradition of the Vice behind some of Shakespeare’s most memorable rogues and villains
(such as Richard III and Falstaff); the influence of the morality represents another strand we will
pursue. Closely related to any inquiry into Shakespeare’s debt to medieval drama is the question
of remainders of medieval Catholicism (so-called “traditional religion”) in Shakespeare’s
Reformation-era work; strains of traditional religion are notable in plays such as Hamlet (where
26
Purgatory is a vexed signifier, as Stephen Greenblatt has argued) and Measure for Measure
(where nuns and friars traverse an urban Vienna that otherwise uncannily resembles postReformation London). Finally, in the midst of these other inquiries, we will also consider certain
episodes of Shakespeare’s epic treatment of medieval English history (likely Richard II, I Henry
IV, and Richard III at the very least). Reading will consist of selected Shakespearean plays as
well as a mix of pertinent medieval drama and verse and current criticism focused on
Shakespeare’s medievalism. Coursework will consist of several presentations and a final seminar
paper.
27
THE MAJOR IN ENGLISH
(effective Fall 2014)
Requirements
Courses
Hrs.
Description
Foundational Coursework
CAS Core Requirements and
Major Requirements
5 x 3000-level courses:
 1 x Culture & Critique
 1 x Form & Genre
 1 x History & Context
 1 x Rhetoric &
Argumentation
 1 x free choice
ENGL 2XXX: _______
3 hrs.
BOTH the 2000-level course
and 3000-level Core courses
count toward the English
major.
ENGL 3XXX: _______
3 hrs.
Students take 5 courses for
15 hours at the 3000-level.
ENGL 3XXX: _______
3 hrs.
ENGL 3XXX: _______
3 hrs.
ENGL 3XXX: _______
3 hrs.
ENGL 3XXX: _______
3 hrs.
Two of these 3000-level
courses must be taken before
proceeding to the 4000-level
course.
Advanced Seminars
5 x 4000-level courses
1 x Senior Seminar
ENGL 4XXX: _______
3 hrs.
ENGL 4XXX: _______
3 hrs.
ENGL 4XXX: _______
3 hrs.
ENGL 4XXX: _______
3 hrs.
ENGL 4XXX: _______
3 hrs.
ENGL 4940: ________
3 hrs.
Total
*
Students take 5 x 4000-level
courses of their choice plus
the Senior Seminar; no
distribution requirements. *
All majors take 4940 in their
senior year (fall or spring) †
36 hrs.
See next page for information about how concentrations within the major structure a student’s 4000-level
coursework.
†
See next page for exceptions.
28
Concentrations within the Major
Creative Writing (CW)
Students completing the English major with emphasis in Creative Writing follow the Major curriculum
(see reverse). The difference is that students prioritize Creative Writing courses when completing
Foundational Coursework distribution requirements at the 3000-level and Advanced Seminars at the
400 level. A total of TWELVE hours within Creative Writing courses is required to complete the
concentration.
 CW students can count up to SIX hours at the 3000-level towards their CW concentration: two Creative
Writing courses (ENGL 3000 through 3100) offered within the Form and Genre (FG) category.
 CW students then take SIX OR NINE hours of additional CW courses at the 4000-level (for example,
ENGL 4060: Advanced Poetry Workshop). Finally, in addition to taking ENGL 4940: Senior Seminar,
CW students submit a portfolio of representative work for assessment prior to graduation.
Rhetoric, Writing and Technology (RWT)
Students completing the English major with emphasis in Rhetoric, Writing and Technology
(RWT) follow the Major curriculum (see reverse). The difference is that students prioritize RWT
courses when completing distribution requirements at the 3000-level and Advanced Seminars at
the 4000- level. A total of TWELVE hours within RWT courses are required to complete the
concentration.
Required courses:


ENGL 3850: Foundations in Rhetoric and Writing; this course fulfils the Rhetoric and Argumentation
(RA) category at the 3000-level.
Either ENGL 4020: History of Rhetoric from Classical Athens until 1700 or English 4030 History of
Rhetoric from 1701 until the present; both courses fulfill 3 hours of the Advanced Seminar requirement
within the major.
Electives:
RWT students will also take at least TWO additional RWT courses from the following:
• ENGL 3860: Public Rhetoric
• ENGL 3870: Technical Writing
• ENGL 3960: Rhetoric, Reasoning, and Law
• ENGL 4010: New Media Writing
• ENGL 4040: Special Topics in Rhetoric
• ENGL 4080: Adv. Creative Writing: Non-Fiction
• ENGL 4120: Language Studies: Special Topics
• ENGL 4930: Writing Consultation
Capstone
Instead of ENGL 4940: Senior Seminar, RWT students complete a capstone project with a faculty mentor
under ENGL 4980: Independent Study.
Honors Concentration: Research Intensive English (RIE)
Students admitted to the departmental honors concentration (Research Intensive English) follow the
Major curriculum (see reverse). The difference is that English honors students prioritize RIE seminars
(limited to admitted RIE students) when completing their Advanced Seminar requirements at the 4000
level. RIE students also add three additional hours to the major (39 total hours rather than 36) to complete
ENGL 4990: Senior Honors Project with a faculty mentor.
 RIE students complete AT LEAST THREE RIE seminars to complete this honors concentration.
 Finally, in addition to taking ENGL 4940: Senior Seminar, RIE students complete ENGL 4990: Senior
Honors Project under the supervision of a faculty mentor prior to graduation.
29
ENGLISH MAJOR CHECKLIST (old major)
Core (Courses used for the Core do not count towards the major)
1 ___________________ (ENGL 1900)
2 ___________________ (2000-level literature)
3 ___________________ (3000- or 4000-level literature)
Major
Hours:
1. (Up to)12 hours of 3000- and (at least)18 hours of 4000-level courses. 3000-level courses may be
taken across the Major, in either Area Requirements or Electives, BUT
2. No more than 6 hours (of the possible 12 hours) of 3000-level courses may be used to satisfy the Area
Requirements, and these are limited to the surveys: 3250, 3260, 3270, 3280, and 3500 [those numbers
used to be 320, 321, 323, 324, and 325].*
Course
Pre-1800 British (Area Requirements)
1 ___________________
2 ___________________
Credits
___3________________
___3________________
Post-1800 British (Area Requirements)
1 ___________________
2 ___________________
___3________________
___3________________
American (Area Requirement)
1 ___________________
___3________________
Senior Seminar
1 ___________________ (ENGL 4940)
___3________________
Electives
1 ___________________
2 ___________________
3 ___________________
4 ___________________
___3_______________
___3________________
___3________________
___3________________
Total
(Must equal 30 hours)
__30________________
*ENGL 320 British Literary Traditions to1800 (pre-1800 British),
ENGL 321 British Literary Traditions after 1800 (post-1800 British),
ENGL 323 American Literary Traditions to 1865 (American),
ENGL 324 American Literary Traditions after 1865 (American), and
ENGL 325 Literature of the Postcolonial World (post-1800 British).
30
THE MINOR IN ENGLISH
(effective Fall 2014)
Requirements
Courses
Hrs.
Core Requirements
1 x 200 / 300 -level course:
ENGL 2XX: _______
or
ENGL 3XX: _______
3 hrs.
Description
Both 200-level and 300-level
Core courses count toward the
minor. Students not required
to take a 200-level literature
course should use their 300level Core requirement here.
Foundations Coursework
3 x 300-level courses:
 1 x Culture & Critique
 1 x History & Context
 1 x Form & Genre
 1 x Rhetoric &
Argumentation
ENGL 3XX: _______
3 hrs.
ENGL 3XX: _______
3 hrs.
ENGL 3XX: _______
3 hrs.
Students take one 300-level
course from 3 of the four
possible distribution
categories. (9 hours total at the
300-level)
Two of these 300-level
courses must be taken before
proceeding to the 400-level.
Advanced Coursework
2 x 400-level courses
ENGL 4XX: _______
3 hrs.
ENGL 4XX: _______
3 hrs.
Minors take TWO 400-level
courses to complete the minor.
Any 400-level course (other
than 494 Senior Seminar)3
counts towards this
requirement.
18 hrs.
Total courses / hours
Six courses
Includes Core courses.
31
SAINT LOUIS UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
English Minor Checklist (old minor)
Core requirements (courses used for the Core do not count toward the Minor)
1 ___________________ (ENGL 1900)
2 ___________________ (2000-level literature)
3 ___________________ (3000- or 4000-level literature)
English Minor
Hours:
Beyond the core, the English Minor requires 15 hours of upper-division coursework. Of these,
➢ At least 12 credit hours must be taken at the 4000-level.
➢ Only 3 credit hours at the 3000-level may count towards the English Minor.
Area Requirements [all must be 4xxx courses]:
Pre-1800 British:
Semester taken
1 ___________________________ (3 credits)
____________
Post-1800 British:
1 ___________________________ (3)
____________
American:
1 ___________________________ (3)
____________
1 ___________________________ (3)
____________
2 ___________________________ (3)
____________
Electives:
Total Hours
3
15
____________
The English Senior Seminar (ENGL 494) is restricted to English majors.
32
SAINT LOUIS UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
MINOR IN CREATIVE WRITING
The requirements for the creative writing minor are 15 hours: nine hours of coursework
in creative writing (three hours chosen from ENGL 3040-3090; six hours chosen from
ENGL 4050-4090 and ENGL 4120); and six hours of complementary courses in literature to
be chosen in consultation with the chair of the creative writing committee. Examples of
complementary courses would be: two courses in American, British, or post-colonial
fiction; two courses in American or British poetry; two courses in British or American
drama; two courses in American ethnic literatures.
For both the major and the minor, each student is required to submit a portfolio of representative
work for assessment prior to graduation.
For more information:
Contact Devin Johnston, Ph.D., Chair of Creative Writing, Department of English:
[email protected].
33
SAINT LOUIS UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
INTERNSHIPS FOR ENGLISH MAJORS
The SLU English Department's internship program supports upper-level English majors who
wish to supplement their academic course of study with an educational work experience.
The English Department seeks to place its students in internship environments where they go
beyond doing purely clerical work and can make meaningful connections between their course of
study and the practical, social, and intellectual demands of a workplace. For this reason, the
English Department requires a significant academic component to the internship, one through
which students extend their on-site work through a process of critical reflection and analysis.
Here are the basic elements of a SLU English internship:
1. on-site work (amounting to 10 hours/wk for 15 weeks)
2. academic component
3. evaluation
Internships are voluntary (unpaid) but can be taken for 3 hours of course credit within the major
if they meet the English Department's guidelines and requirements, which can be found
at http://slu-english-internships.weebly.com. Here students can also determine whether they are
eligible to register for an internship and read about the stages of the internship process.
For questions about the English Department's internship program, please contact the
department's Internship Coordinator, Saher Alam, at [email protected].