Saint Louis University English Department
Course Descriptions
Spring 2004
The Innocent Eye Test, Mark Tansey, American B. 1949
To be at all critically, or as we have been fond of calling it analyticallymineded—over
and beyond an inherent love of the general man-colored picture of things—is to be
subject to the superstition that objects and places, coherently grouped, disposed for
human use and addressed to it, must have a sense of their own, a mystic meaning proper
to themselves to give out: to give out, that is, to the participant at once so interested and
so detached as to be moved to repart the matter.
Henry James, The American Scene
Undergraduate Major and Minor Requirements for English
The major in English requires thirty hours minimum.
A. 300-Level courses in English:
After taking one 300-level course in English to fulfill the Core Requirements,
students may count toward the major up to twelve (12) hours in courses at the 300-level.
The department strongly recommends that students take two or more of the
following courses before embarking on extensive study at the 400-level.
ENGA-350 British Literary Tradition to 1800
ENGA-351 British Literary Tradition after 1800
ENGA-360 American Literary Tradition
ENGA-385 Postcolonial Literature
B. 400-level courses in English:
The major requires at least eighteen (18) hours at the 400-level.
C. Area requirements:
Courses taken for the major must include:
6 hours of British literature prior to 1800
6 hours of British literature after 1800 (including English, Irish, World, and Postcolonial)
3 hours of American literature.
Students may count towards Area Requirements up to six (6) hours earned in the
following 300-level courses: ENGA-350, ENGA-351, ENGA-360 and ENGA-385. All
other hours counted towards Area Requirements must be taken at the 400-level. ENGA490 may not be used to satisfy an Area Requirement.
English/Education majors may substitute 400-level state-required English
courses for the following:
3 hours of British Literature prior to 1800
3 hours of British Literature after 1800 (including English, Irish, World, and PostColonial).
D. Senior Seminar:
Major must complete 3 hours in ENGA-494.
English/Education majors may take this course in the spring of their Junior year in
order to avoid conflicts involving their pre-professional semester.
Minor in English
15-hour minimum beyond Core Requirements. At least 12 hours must be at the 400level and must include the following:
3 hours of British literature prior to 1800
3 hours of British literature after 1800 (including English, Irish, World, and Postcolonial)
3 hours in any course in American literature
SPRING 2004 COURSES THAT FILL AREA REQUIREMENTS
FOR THE MAJOR
Pre-1800 British Literature Requirement:
--ENGA 421-01, Beowulf, Dr. Shippey, MWF 11-11:50
--ENGA 432-01, Later Shakespeare, Dr. Moisan, TR 12:45-2
--ENGA 437-01, Renaissance Literature & Rhetoric, Dr. Walsh, TR 12:45-2
--ENGA 438-01, Early Women Writers, Dr. Hasler, TR 9:30-10:45
--ENGA 440-01, Restoration Drama, Dr. Heard, MWF 11-11:50
Post-1800 British Literature Requirement:
--ENGA 351-01, British Literary Tradition After 1800, Dr. Fournier, TR 9:30-10:45
--ENGA 465-01, Contemporary Irish Literature, Katie St. Peters, W 2:10-4:40
--ENGA 493-02, Violence & Trauma in Anglophone & Francophone Lit, Drs. Uraizee &
Perraudin, M 2:10-4:40
American Literature Requirement:
--ENGA 360-01, American Literary Tradition, Dr. Benoit, TR 9:30-10:45
--ENGA 470-01, American Literary Tradition to 1865, Dr. Benoit, TR 12:45-2
--ENGA 476-01, 20th Century American Literature, Dr. Bush, MW 2:15-3:30
Senior Seminar Requirement:
--ENGA 494-01, Senior Seminar, Dr. Arroyo, MW 12:45-2
--ENGA 494-02, Senior Seminar: Mark Twain, Dr. McIntire-Strasburg, TR 9:30-10:45
ENGA-202-01 and 202-02
INTRO TO LITERARY STUDIES
Heather Parks
MWF 8:00-8:50
Introduction to Literary Study (3) ENG-A202, ENG-A210, ENG-A220, ENG-A230,
ENG-A240, ENG-A250, or ENG-A260, may be taken as the first in the six-hour Core
literature requirement. Each stresses theoretical and methodological approaches to
literary texts. Through critical reading, class discussion, and written analysis of a wide
diversity of imaginative works, these courses seek to develop a mature understanding and
appreciation of literary language and structure.
ENGA-202-03
INTRO TO LITERATURE
Julien Long
TR 11:00-12:15
ENGA-202-04
INTRO TO LITERARY STUDIES
Rita Brown
MWF 11:00-11:50
This course is designed to introduce the student to analyzing and appreciating the four
main genres of literature. The class will be divided into four parts: poetry, short fiction,
drama, and the novel. We will begin the course with poetry. A good reader of poetry is a
good reader of anything, so your ability to enjoy the nuances of fiction will be enhanced
by our devoting the first part of the class to poetry. The poetry we read will be wide and
varied: everything from ancient epic to modern lyric. Several short stories will then be
read, with a probable emphasis on American authors (Nathaniel Hawthorne, Flannery
O'Conner, Joyce Carol Oates). The novels will be: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and
Mr. Hyde, The Metamorphosis, and The Sound and The Fury. For drama, we will read
Macbeth. Course Requirements: Two papers (5-7 pages) and two exams (midterm and
final). There will also be short weekly writings on works of your choice.
ENGA202-05 and 202-09
SLU2K: INTRO TO LITERARY STUDIES: THE BANALITY OF EVIL
Dr. Stephen Casmier
TR 9:30-10:45 and TR 12:45-2:00
Co-req: PLA 205-17 & 205-13, Ethics, Dr. Kevin Decker, TR 12:45-2:00 & 9:30-10:45
This course is linked to Ethics (Section 05 is linked to PLA 205-17, Ethics, Prof Decker,
TR12:45-2 and Section 09 is linked to PLA 205-13, Ethics, Prof Decker, TR 9:3010:45.). It will acquaint students with literary study through the analysis of works of
literature that grapple with the problem of evil. In this course students will become
acquainted with various literary approaches in addition to reading poems, short stories
and novels. 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 papers and several short
quizzes.
ENGA-202-06 and 202-07
INTRO TO LITERARY STUDIES
Mary Torrusio
MWF 2:10-3:00 and 3:10-4:00
This course is designed to provide an introduction to the study of literature with an
emphasis on British and American authors. We will examine plays, short stories, novels,
and poetry. Students are expected to engage in critical reading, class discussions, and
written analysis of select literary works.
ENGA-202-08
INTRO TO LITERARY STUDIES
Todd Porter
TR 2:15-3:00
ENGA-202-10
INTRO TO LITERARY STUDIES
Janet Garrard-Willis
TR 11:00-12:15
ENGA-220-01
INTRO TO POETRY
Dr. Devin Johnston
TR 9:30-10:45
This course is designed to introduce students to the field of poetry through an intensive
examination of a handful of poets, including Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Bishop, and
Frank O’Hara (among others). We will focus on developing patient and close
observations of voice, tone, sound, and diction, with an emphasis on how these
characteristics contribute to what a poem “means.” We will explore the ways in which a
poem “works”—or communicates—as well is how it was constructed. By the end of the
semester, students will hopefully become comfortable articulating their responses to
poems. Written assignments: two short papers, a midterm, and a final.
ENGA-220-02
INTRO TO POETRY
Dr. Donald Stump
MWF 10:00-10:50
The course will sample a wide range of lyric poems in many moods and styles, from the
controlled delicacy and wit of early love sonnets to the explosive vividness and anger of
twentieth-century war poetry. We’ll think about ways in which poets play with ideas,
create lingering images, explore human psychology, incite laughter, make music with
words, and compress meaning into small spaces. We’ll give special attention to two
masters of lyric poetry, Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost, and take forays out into
longer and stranger works, such as C.K. Williams’s powerful poetic translation of
Euripides’s tragedy The Bacchae and Shakespeare’s raucous fairy tale A Midsummer
Night’s Dream. Requirements include several short exercises in close reading and oral
delivery, a 4-5 page analytical paper, a midterm, and a final exam.
ENGA-230-01and 230-02
SLU2K: INTO TO THE NOVEL: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RACE AND GENDER
Dr. Caroline Reitz
TR 9:30-10:45 and 11:00-12:15
Co-req: PSYA 101-01, General Psychology, Professor Clark, MWF 1:10-2:00
Cross-linked with WSA-293-01&293-02 and AAMA-230-01 and 230-02
This class is linked with PSYA101.01. Students must be registered for both classes.
Classes are limited to 19 students per section.
The novel is the literary form most associated with the development and expression of
individual psychology. This class, which is also cross-listed with Women's Studies and
African American Studies, will pay special attention to the novel's representation of how
difference, primarily racial and sexual difference, is used in the formation and expression
of both individual subjectivity and group identity. We will ask: why was the novel, from
its very beginnings, so interested in racial and sexual difference? Why do novels by and
about women seem to need to tell stories about race? Is difference celebrated, or seen as
monstrous? Novels will include Frankenstein, Jane Eyre, Uncle Tom's Cabin and
Beloved. There will be two short papers, a group presentation, a midterm and final exam.
ENGA-240-01and ENGA-240-02
INTRO TO DRAMA
Dr. Elisabeth Heard
MWF 9:00-9:50 or MWF 10:00-10:50
What does one read in drama? How is reading drama different from reading novels or
from reading poems? Drama takes into consideration elements that are not present in
other genres—such as set, actors, costumes, an audience. How do these elements effect
how we understand drama? During this class we will be reading a wide variety of plays
from the ancient Greeks through the 21st century. We will be studying how theater
buildings evolved through the ages, and will be investigating the relationships among
these buildings, the text, costumes, acting styles, and scene design. At times we will
supplement our readings with movie representations of the plays, and we will even be
reading some of the texts out loud in the classroom. The objectives of this course are (1)
to give you a broad familiarity with major British and American dramatists of various
periods, emphasizing the twentieth century, and (2) to give you some experience in
serious literary analysis as applied to drama.
ENGA-260-01, 260-02, and 260-03
INTRO TO SHORT FICTION
Dr. Whealen
MWF 8:00-8:50, MWF 9:00-9:50, MWF 10:00-10:50
This course seeks to promote student understanding and appreciation of representative
short fiction in the English language by examining the basic elements of fiction;
influences of nonliterary figures such as Darwin, Marx, and Freud; and movements
including realism, naturalism, and existentialism. Selected works reflect feminist and
ethnic as well as traditional interests. Students will study methods of writing about
literature which they will be required to demonstrate in essay performances. There will
be three regular examinations along with a comprehensive final.
ENGA-306-01
CREATIVE WRITING: FICTION
Dr. Arroyo
R 2:10-4:40
In this course we’ll study and practice the creative art of fiction writing. The primary
purpose of this course is to nurture our own writing, and to do so by writing and reading
regularly, and by beginning to understand some of the essential elements—composition,
plot, voice, point of view, setting, place, character, scene and summary—fictions are
composed of. We will focus on our fiction writing: the fictions we dream and write.
We’ll therefore write our own fictions and offer them to our fellow writers within a
workshop setting, though we’ll also read other writers for influence and learning. My
hope is that each of us will begin to know our unique imagination, that we’ll become
intimate with our distinct voice, and we’ll begin to discover and care for the stories we
are compelled to write.
ENGA-307-01
PLAYWRITING
Peggy Muldoon
T 2:10-4:40
This course will look at playwriting from both textual and performance viewpoints as a
way to focus on specific aspects of playwriting. We will read both historical and
contemporary plays and watch videos/live performances of these plays to learn about
different elements of playwriting. We will work on plot construction; character
development through dialogue and nonverbal communication; incorporating setting into
the action of the play; identifying audience and its role in the play. We will also look at
and work with a wide range of live theater conventions. The goal is for each student to
write and workshop a one-act play during the semester.
ENGA-315-01
SCIENCE FICTION
Dr. Kim Kirkpatrick
TR 2:15-3:30
This course investigates how authors have extrapolated from the question “What if?” and
visits classic science fiction themes, such as machines, the mad scientist, urbanization
and the city. We will look at how science fiction reflects and debates society’s actions
and fears of the future concerning science and technology. In addition to definitive 19thand early 20th-century science fiction, we will pursue a study of New Wave literature,
cyberpunk, and steampunk.
Required work: three exams, one paper, short presentation, group project, occasional
quizzes.
Texts to include:
H.G. Wells, The Time Machine
Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven
William Gibson, Neuromancer
Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
shorter pieces by Le Guin, E.M. Forster, Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Tiptree, Jr., Paul
McAuley
Fritz Lang, Metropolis
Ridley Scott, Blade Runner
James Whale, Bride of Frankenstein
ENGA-322-01
WOMEN IN LITERATURE
Micki Nyman
MWF 10:00-10:50
In this course we will examine how imagination and language play a central role in
depicting female character growth and change in the novel.!Do characters attain agency
and autonomy as psychological subjects? What techniques do women writers rely upon to
destabilize their era's limiting literary conventions? The protagonists of the novel
have been women as often as they have been men, and the story of a woman trapped by
social constraints has!been a particularly novelistic subject.! With this in mind, we will
explore the cultural contexts of both writers and readers in charting the rise of female
subjectivity and self-determination in the novel.
Course Requirements
Directed response journal, 2 papers, midterm, and final
Texts
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner
Martha Quest by Doris Lessing
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid
Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding
ENGA-322-02
WOMEN IN LITERATURE
Kalpana Polineni
MWF 11:00-11:50
This course will focus on the role of women in literature ranging from the Renaissance to
modern day. We will look at how women are written as insiders and outsiders by both
male and female authors. We will explore how women function, both alone and in
communities, in a world that defines their roles for them. Our reading list will include
works by Virginia Woolf, Shakespeare, Kate Chopin, Thomas Hardy, Gloria Naylor,
Toni Morrison, Charlotte Bronte, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Amy Tan.
ENGA-322-03
WOMEN IN LITERATURE
Annie Papreck
TR 12:45-2:00
Women in Literature: Re-envisioning the Female Hero will explore how modern-day
authors recreate and interpret various literary and historical female heroes in order to
make them relevant to a contemporary culture while at the same time retaining the
characteristics that made these women heroic in the first place. Our readings will include
texts from Austen, Vreeland, Woolf, Fielding, Shaw, Cunningham, Smiley, and
Shakespeare, and your grade will be based on two papers, an in-class presentation,
participation, and quizzes.
ENGA-325-01
THE LITERATURE OF THE NATURAL WORLD
Dr. Fournier
TR 12:45-2:00
This course examines selected modern and contemporary British and American literary
texts as social, aesthetic, and humanistic foundations for environmental and ecological
perspectives. Authors studied include Wordsworth and Whitman; Emerson and Thoreau;
Hardy and Frost; London, Leopold, and Silko. Coursework will include 3 formal papers,
quizzes, and midterm and final examinations.
ENGA-351-01
ENGLISH LITERARY TRADITION: 1800 TO PRESENT
Dr. Fournier
TR 9:30-10:45
This course meets the post-1800 British Literature requirement.
This course surveys major British literary periods and movements of the 19th and early
20th century. Representative authors and texts, from William Blake to T. S. Eliot, will be
closely examined and discussed. Course work includes quizzes, 3 formal papers,
midterm and final examinations.
ENGA-354-01
SHAKESPEARE FOR NON-MAJORS
Dr. Walsh
M 2:10-4:40
In this introduction to Shakespeare’s life and works, selected plays and poems
representative of his several dramatic and poetic genres—history play, tragedy, comedy,
romance, “tragicomedy,” and/or lyric—will be studied in their appropriate historical,
political, cultural, and literary contexts. Analysis of language, characterization, plot, and
structure will aim at developing an appreciation of Shakespeare’s art. Special emphasis
will be placed upon interpreting Shakespeare’s diction. Students will be invited to
read/recite passages from the plays/poems. Whenever possible, tapes, films, and or live
performances will be seen.
Students are expected to read and study all assignments as well as participate actively in
class discussions. There will be three major projects—two exams (one take-home; one inclass) and one paper. Each project is worth 100 points; total points=300. (Note: Surprise
reading quizzes may be given, if necessary. Therefore, available points may increase by
10 per quiz, if given. Extraordinary class participation will be noted.) Texts: Several
paperback editions.
ENGA-356-01
WRITING SEX IN THE MIDDLE AGES
Dr. Hasler
TR 11:00-12:15
c/l with WSA 393-01
Despite the title, this is not a course for peculiar people who like to investigate dubious
websites. It aims to introduce students to some landmark texts of the European Middle
Ages, and works from the premise that they may be best approached through their
representations of gender and sexuality, and the range of sexual possibilities and
potentialities, and alignments of power and desire, available to medieval literary culture.
Most importantly, the course takes its cue from the medieval period's entirely explicit
fascination with the multiform relations between writing and desire, a fascination which
poses many questions. Is writing in some sense a substitute for sex? Is it an extension of
it? In the medieval poetry of love that grows out of the works of the troubadours and
trouvères, to write is itself "to speak of love," to lay claim to a domain of literary pleasure
that lies outside, and perhaps subverts, more rigorous claims to authority and truth. The
chivalric romances of the period also explore and codify erotic scenarios, in the context
of a fictional and historical world shaped by masculine association and competition. Nor
are theological writers strangers to the ways in which metaphoric language articulates the
bonds between doctrine and desire. Meanwhile, the short verse narratives known as
fabliaux have their own agenda when dealing with sex, secrecy and weirdly mobile body
parts.
Readings will probably include; Béroul, Tristan; Chrétien de Troyes, Lancelot; Heldris
de Cornouälle, Silence; Abelard, Historia Calamitatum; The Book of Margery Kempe;
assorted lyrics, saints' lives, and fabliaux; and Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun,
The Romance of the Rose. Requirements will include three papers, a midterm and a
final.
ENGA-360-01
AMERICAN LITERARY TRADITION
Dr. Benoit
TR 9:30-10:45
The McGraw text The American Tradition in Literature will be used to examine the
evolution in culture and in literary thought and form through selections from Taylor to
Eliot. The focus will be, as expressed by William Lynch in Christ and Apollo, on a
formulation of an ideal attitude for the imagination in relation to the finite—“ideal in the
same sense that it preserves a balance, somehow avoiding the conflict that threatens the
imagination in an act in which it is apparently being drawn in two directions at once:
down into the concrete, up into the unlimited.” Several short interpretive/intertextual
papers will be required along with reading quizzes and semester exams.
ENGA-364-01
20th CENTURY AMERICAN NOVEL
Dr. Bush
MW 11:00-12:15
This course will be a rapid-reading, historical survey of about 8-9 major American novels
of the twentieth century. We shall give frequent consideration to the historical and
cultural forces that influenced the various writers, but our primary focus will be on a
close reading, understanding, and critical analysis of the works themselves.
We will attempt to cover generally the entire century, although much of our work will be
on the magnificent achievements of American writers of the period during and between
the two World Wars—roughly 1915-45. Although particular titles have not been selected
yet, attention will be reserved for figures generally recognized as among the century’s
major novelists: William Faulkner, Willa Cather, Edith Wharton, Ernest Hemingway,
Sherwood Anderson, Robert Penn Warren, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Nella Larsen, and James
Baldwin. Additionally, we will read and discuss selections from a number of other
important writers after mid-century, such as Kurt Vonnegut, Tim O’Brien, Don DeLillo,
Jane Smiley, Orson Scott Card, or Toni Morrison.
REQUIREMENTS:
10 minute in-class presentation on one of the works by the author of your choice.
Comprehensive final exam
Two brief essays (4-5 pp. each)
Regular pop quizzes on the readings, which are MANDATORY.
ENGA-370-01
MODERN LITERATURE:CITIES, SPACES & POETRY
Dr. Devin Johnston
TR 12:45-2:00
Through close readings of modern poetry, this course will examine crowds, tourism,
undergrounds, rush hours, apartment blocks, and sky scrapers, as well as the exhilaration
and alienation such phenomena induce. Moving from the late nineteenth century through
the present, we will draw relations between modernity and modernism, between ways of
living and ways of writing.
Out itinerary will include metropolises such as Paris, London, and New York, as well as
Patterson, New Jersey, and Birmingham, England. Readings are likely to include: Charles
Baudelaire, Guillaume Apollinaire, Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, Mina Loy,
Melvin Tolson, Frank O’Hara, Roy Fisher, and Fanny Howe. In addition to reading
poetry, we will look at maps, consult guidebooks, research history, read modern theorists
of geography, and visit art museums. In addition to short assignments, each student will
be required to undertake an investigation of a single poet and place.
ENGA-373-01
AFRICAN DIASPORA WRITING
TBA
TR 9:30-10:45
c/l with AAMA 373-01, ISA 373-01
Meets cultural diversity requirement.
ENGA-386-01
EASTERN EUROPEAN LITERATURE
Dr. Smith
MWF 10:00-10:50
Eastern Europe played a central role in the history and politics that in some ways define
the 20th century. This course will focus on the ways that literature responded to the often
turbulent and violent changes that took place, especially as those historical and political
events wrote themselves on the lives of the individuals involved. The works of Franz
Kafka in some ways epitomize many of the themes, issues, and concerns that recur in the
literature throughout the century, and Kafka’s short stories, “In the Penal Colony” and
“Metamorphosis,” and novel, The Trial, will likely provide the beginning point for our
discussions. Subsequently, we will trace the development of these central themes
through a range of writers, representing a variety of national and ethnic peoples.
Readings for the course are likely to include Bruno Schulz (Sanatorium Under the Sign of
the Hourglass), Witold Gombrowicz (Cosmos), Anna Akhmatova (Requiem), Lydia
Chukovskaya (Sofia Petrovna), Mikhail Bulgakov (The Master and Margarita), Tadeusz
Borowski (This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen), Slavenka Drakulic (S: A Novel
of the Balkans), and Danilo Kis (Garden/Ashes). While some would describe the
literature as “depressing,” it provides a striking testament to the resilience of the human
spirit.
Format: lecture and discussion
Requirements: short papers, exams, presentations, and class participation.
ENGA-389-01
SPECIAL TOPICS: ETHNIC AMERICAN LITERATURE
Dr. Jeffery Schwarz
TR 11:-00-12:15
This course will explore themes of identity, assimilation, memory, mobility, and space
within selected ethnic-American works in conjunction with ethnic-American history and
culture. Of particular focus will be the double consciousness that pervades these works,
for the ethnic-American authors and characters repeatedly attempt to establish a balance
between their ethnic cultures and a normative American culture. Additionally, we will
examine the diverse literary styles of these works, and how stylistic elements register
various ethnic-American themes and cultural ideologies. Selected African-American,
Latino/Latina-American, Asian-American, Native-American, and Euro-American literary
works will include fiction, autobiographies, short stories, and poetry. Grades will be
based upon class participation, a midterm examination, a final examination, a short paper
(5 pages), and a longer paper (8-10 pages).
Possible primary works include Toni Morrison’s Jazz, selected Harlem Renaissance
poetry by Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Countee Cullen, Ernesto Galarza’s
Barrio Boy, Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, Sherman Alexie’s The Lone
Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, Pietro di Donato’s Christ in Concrete, and Anzia
Yezierska’s Bread Givers.
ENGA-389-02
MEMORY, TECHNOLOGY, & CULTURE
John Walter
TR 12:45-2:00
This course will explore themes of identity, assimilation, memory, mobility, and space
within selected ethnic-American works in conjunction with ethnic-American history and
culture. Of particular focus will be the double consciousness that pervades these works,
for the ethnic-American authors and characters repeatedly attempt to establish a balance
between their ethnic cultures and a normative American culture. Additionally, we will
examine the diverse literary styles of these works, and how stylistic elements register
various ethnic-American themes and cultural ideologies. Selected African-American,
Latino/Latina-American, Asian-American, Native-American, and Euro-American literary
works will include fiction, autobiographies, short stories, and poetry. Grades will be
based upon class participation, a midterm examination, a final examination, a short paper
(5 pages), and a longer paper (8-10 pages).
Possible primary works include Toni Morrison’s Jazz, selected Harlem Renaissance
poetry by Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Countee Cullen, Ernesto Galarza’s
Barrio Boy, Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, Sherman Alexie’s The Lone
Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, Pietro di Donato’s Christ in Concrete, and Anzia
Yezierska’s Bread Givers.
What is the relationship between technology and thinking? Between remembering and
archiving? Between memory and knowledge? Between trauma and narrative? What is the
difference between ritual and memory? Between story-telling and history? Between
memory and writing? Between truth and memory? How do we remember facts? How do
sights and sounds and smells and tastes and sensations recall memories? How do
societies remember important events? What is the function of a library? Of a monument?
Of a ceremony? Of story-telling? In short, what is the relationship between memory and
technology and between memory and culture?
This course will explore these issues by considering the interplay among memory,
technology, and culture. Central to this course is the belief that memory is both
technology and culture and that technology and culture are both memory. Drawing from
literary studies, philosophy, psychology, anthropology, rhetorical theory, and history, this
course will use a number of texts — literature, film, and scholarship — to present a cross
section of the ways memory, technology, and culture intersect.
There are five sections:
•An introduction where we will get an overview of memory and the study of memory.
•A section on the technologies of memory such as mnemotechniques, writing, storytelling, databases, libraries, and artificial intelligence.
•A section on the practice of memory, in particular the Ars Memoria of ancient and
medieval scholars and their contemporary appropriations.
•A section on social and cultural memory in which we will consider such issues as the
role of monuments and ceremonies; the relationship among history, story, and
memory; and literature as social memory.
•A section on trauma and witnessing in which we will explore the drive to use narrative
to make sense of personal and social traumatic experiences.
Texts we’re likely to examine in full include the stories Beowulf, 1984, Slaughterhouse
Five, and Borges’ “Funes, his Memory” and “Library of Babel;” the films Blade Runner,
Memento, and Rashoman; and the non-fiction works Memory Trade: A Prehistory of
Cyberculture, The Art of Memory, “Phaedrus,” and “As We May Think.”
http://pages.slu.edu/student/walterj/courses/spring2004/389/syllabus.html
ENGA 402-01
RHETORICAL THEORY: APPLICATIONS IN WRITING PEDAGOGY
Victoria Carlson-Casaregola
W 6:00-8:30
This course introduces future high school or middle school English or Language Arts
teachers to the theory and practice of writing instruction, one of the most fundamentally
important areas of English curricula at all levels. Students will read materials reflecting a
range of issues and viewpoints on writing pedagogy and literacy instruction. They will
respond to this reading and study through active discussion and writing. Students will
also explore how to apply what they are learning to hypothetical classroom situations in
the future, as well as to possible, current classroom experiences gained through a
practicum or through student teaching. Particular attention will be given to the
epistemological and neuro-developmental aspects of writing instruction, as well as to
how writing teachers can encourage reflection and metacognition in their students. This
course will be of use not only to English Education majors but also to students who plan
to teach in areas such as Theology, History, and Social Sciences, where writing
instruction will be an important element of pedagogy. Likewise, English majors with
plans for graduate school will find the course beneficial in helping them to prepare for
teaching first-year writing courses in college.
ENGA-403-01 cross-listed with ENGA-503-01
HISTORY OF RHETORIC
Dr. Casaregola
M 6:00-8:30
This will be a survey of the history of rhetorical theory and practice in what might be
described as the Mediterranean and European traditions. As such we will begin with
ancient Greco-Roman rhetoric, along with its continuing derivations during the Medieval
and Renaissance periods.
We will examine the shift in rhetorical theory that accompanies the philosophical shifts
during the Early Modern period, continuing to examine the development of rhetoric
through the 18th and 19th centuries. We will conclude with an examination of 20th-century
and contemporary rhetoric.
Given the broad scope of this course, we can engage only in samplings of each period,
while we will try to trace common themes, issues, and problems across the full range of
the course. Class sessions will focus on reading and discussion of selections taken from
The Rhetorical Tradition, supplemented with additional outside readings. Students will
also select, from an extended reading list, two book-length works, for each of which they
will do a brief in-class presentation and written commentary. Students will complete a
set of midterm and final take-home, essay examinations, along with an in-class final
examination. Graduate students will complete some form of additional research project
and will be asked to do an additional presentation in class.
This class is particularly useful for advanced English majors contemplating graduate
school, for English education majors, and for English graduate students who wish to
develop greater expertise in the areas of Rhetorical Theory and Composition Studies. It
will also be useful for Communication majors and Communication graduate students.
ENGA-405-01
CREATIVE WRITING: POETRY
Dr. Acker
W 2:10-4:40
This workshop offers an opportunity to engage in a disciplined process of weekly poetry
writing. It also provides a setting in which students can respond to each other’s work on
a regular basis. The workshop meets once a week on Wednesday afternoons. Generally
we will spend the first half of the session discussing Xerox copies of representative
samples of student work for the week. We will then discuss some poems by (primarily)
contemporary poets organized around a particular theme or aspect of writing. Some of
these poems will be taken from an anthology which will be available for purchase at the
bookstore. Students will then write a poem drawing on what they have learned from the
poets discussed in class. If you would like to be considered for this weekly workshop in
poetry writing, please follow the directions posting on my office door. I am located in
Humanities 228.
ENGA-421-01
BEOWULF
Dr. Shippey
MWF 11:00-11:50
c/l with ENGA-536-01
This course meets the pre-1800 British Literature requirement.
No secure “reading context” has ever existed (in modern times) for Beowulf. The course
will attempt to approach one. The basis of the course will be directed reading and
translation of the poem in Old English. Comparisons will however be made wherever
possible with works in both Old English and Old Norse (the latter in translation), while
individual topics will be considered both as they arise out of the poem, and
comparatively.
Works with which Beowulf will be compared include the Old English poems Widsith,
Waldere, Finnsburch, and Deor, and sections of the Old Norse sagas of Grettir and Hrolf
Kraki. Topics include: structure and genre; religious context; orality, aurality and
literacy; tradition and design; the relationship of history and myth in the poem; and
modern fictional and critical reactions.
The course will be assessed by a combination of: translation quizzes; a short paper (6-8
papges) leading to an oral report; a final seminar paper intended as a try-out for a
conference paper or published work.
ENGA-432-01
LATER SHAKESPEARE
Dr. Moisan
TR 12:45-2:00
This course meets the pre-1800 British Literature requirement.
“Later” Shakespeare covers the time of Shakespeare’s emergence as the leading
playwright of his day. It is a period that coincides with most of Shakespeare’s greatest
tragedies—Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus—but also
with such socially probing comedies as Measure for Measure and All’s Well That Ends
Well, and those plays that come near the very end of Shakespeare’s career which have
been grouped together as the Romances, such as The Winter’s Take, Pericles, and The
Tempest.
In this class, we’ll be reading six or seven of these plays very closely, studying them for
the ways in which they spoke to the concerns of their own times, while managing, almost
four centuries later, to entertain us and speak to our times as well. We’ll be seeking to
understand these texts not only as literary works, but as pieces of theater; therefore, we’ll
be reading these plays with close attention to their language, with an awareness of the
issues of the time their audience would have perceived in them, and with an effort to
appreciate them as dramas to be staged.
Tentative Requirements:
Participants in the class will write one short paper (3 pages) and one longer one (7-8
pages), along with which there will be a mid-term and final examination, and some
reading quizzes. In addition to having general discussion, the class will also work in
small groups and will take up the challenges, interpretative and physical, of performing a
scene chosen from the plays we’ll be studying.
In our effort to approach the plays as theatrical performances, we’ll also be making use of
various film an video productions of the plays, and those enrolled in the class will need to
be able to write in detail about one or more of these.
Required Text:
We’ll use the Riverside, published by Houghton Mifflin. Among complete editions this
is still the best text, and in cost compares favorably with the expense of six or seven good
single paperback editions of the plays.
ENGA-437-01
RENAISSANCE RHETORIC AND LITERATURE
Dr. Walsh
TR 12:45-2:00
This course meets the pre-1800 British Literature requirement.
This course will familiarize students with the oral-rhetorical tradition in Renaissance and
Early Modern England, focusing prominently but not exclusively on the Early Tudor
humanist program of rhetoric, including its celebrated “kinds,” “parts,” and inherently
formulary, oral-residual schemes, such as praise and dispraise, as well as its mnemonic
patternings, enshrined in the “art of memory,” such as the Seven Deadly Sins, the “Sins
of the Tongue,” the Four Cardinal Virtues, among many others. The course will also
explore the humanists’ quest for copia—the power or ability to provide a rich flow of
words and ideas—accommodated by skillful rhapsody—the “stitching” of diverse
commonplace materials. Excerpts from works like Erasmus’ On Copia of Words and
Ideas, The Adages, The Tongue, On the Proper Pronuntiation of Latin and Greek;
Thomas Wilson’s translation of Aristotle’s Rhetoric; Richard Rainolde’s translation of
Aphthonius’ School Exercises; Henry Peacham’s The Garden of Eloquence; and
Theordore Zwinger’s Theater of Human Life will illustrate these oral-rhetorical drives in
keenly typographical, textual Early Modern Europe. Within this oral-residual matrix of
copia, of formulary themes and organization in literary works, of rhapsodic composition,
and of lavish deployment of commonplaces and epithets, we will examine aspects of
“verbomotor” diction, such as “mouth,” “breath,” “tongue,” “throat,” “ear,” etc., as oralaural residue. Many Early Modern literary works evince stunning verbal power and
variety when experienced in these contexts. Thus, students will derive a practical-critical
aesthetic for interpreting aspects of Tudor-Stuart literature, including Shakespeare’s
Richard II, Othello, and The Winter’s Tale; Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus (possibly); Sidney’s
An Apologie for Poetrie; Milton’s Areopagitica; and selected lyric poetry by Spenser,
Sidney, Shakespeare, Drayton, Lady Mary Wroth, Donne, Herbert, and others. Students
will also discern fascinating connections among the senses (including synaesthesia),
corporeality, gender, writing, manuscripts, printing, books, book production, cartography,
anthologies, emblem books, pageant literature, authorship, censorship, copyright,
plagiarism, intellection, privacy, and the history of silence.
Students are expected to read and study all assignments, as well as participate actively in
class discussions. There will be a take-home exam project, a paper, and a final exam.
Quizzes may be given, if necessary. Texts: Several paperback editions.
ENGA-438-01
EARLY WOMEN WRITERS
Dr. Hasler
TR 9:30-10:45
This course meets the pre-1800 British Literature requirement.
This course seeks to consider medieval writing by women, and the ways in which it is
framed by late medieval society, gender politics and culture. While the focus will be on
writing in English, we'll also be concerned with European works which had a significant
impact on English textual production, and indeed with other spheres in which women and
their words are figured as the objects of idealizing - or anxious - contemplation, often by
male authors (virginity, gossip). Among the authors we read will be Julian of Norwich,
Margery Kempe, Christine de Pizan and Marie de France, and there will also be a wealth
of material to illuminate the contexts in which acts of female authorship and self-
authorizing take place in the Middle Ages. Requirements will include three papers, a
midterm and a final.
ENGA-440-01
RESTORATION AND 18TH CENTURY LITERATURE
Dr. Heard
MWF 11:00-11:50
This course meets the pre-1800 British Literature requirement. After Shakespeare and
before the Romantics, the writers during the Restoration and Eighteenth Century wrote
about, worried about, and did it all—sex, science, slavery, religion, politics—no subject
was too big, or too small, for them to tackle. The Restoration and Eighteenth Century
was a time of bawdy plays, the emerging of the novel in English, and the beginning of
England’s rise as a colonialist world power. Women were finding their voices in plays,
poetry, and novels, and former slaves were as well. In this class, we will be reading a
wide variety of texts from the Restoration and Eighteenth Century in an attempt to
understand the complexities and changes that occurred during this 140 year period in
England.
ENGA-465-01
CONTEMPORARY IRISH LITERATURE
Katie St. Peters
W. 2:10-4:40
This course meets the post-180 0 British Literature requirement.
ENGA-470-01
AMERICAN LITERARY TRADITION
Dr. Benoit
TR 12:45-2:00
This course meets the American Literature requirement.
The class will focus on selected works of Taylor, Franklin, Irving, Poe, Hawthorne,
Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman. Several short interpretive/intertextual papers will be
required along with reading quizzes and semester exams. The Present Age, by
Kierkagaard, The Broken Center by Nathan Scott, and selections from Jung, Freud,
Mircea Eliade, Erich Neumann and others will be used towards identifying and exploring
emerging themes and methods—particularity the oscillation and tension between
“knowing and being” –in the Puritan, Enlightenment, and Romantic period.
ENGA-476-01 c/l 676-01
20th CENTURY AMERICAN LITERATURE
Dr. Bush
MW 2:15-3:30
This course meets the American Literature requirement.
Roughly speaking, a rapid-reading, historical survey of major literary works (8-9, almost
all of which will be novels) leading up to and including the turn of the 21st century. We
shall consider in particular the changing vision of what “America” (a word that is itself
under attack these days) might actually mean for us, both as a nation and as a set of
beliefs or values in our persnickety postmodern ethos. This will necessarily include many
writers who have presented sustained, and sometimes even violent critiques, of American
policy and practice, both at home and overseas. But critique and dissent are themselves
central American values as well. Some attention will be given to the 2004 presidential
campaign, a preoccupation reflected in several of the texts which deal with issues of
political rhetoric and public & foreign policy.
Theoretical emphasis: Rhetorical/Cultural Studies.
Key Theoretical text to begin the class: Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.
REQUIREMENTS:
1) 3-4 research responses about the course objectives (e.g. interviews, etc.)
2) abstract & annotated bibliography for the final paper (due week 12, mid-November)
3) final essay (8-10 pp)
4) frequent, energetic class participation
5) for undergraduates; mid-term exam.
6) (optional: in-class presentations on a novel of the student’s choice)
TEXTS: A final list is not yet available, but the class will include most of the following
works: William Faulkner, The Unvanquished; Willa Cather, My Antonia; F. Scott
Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby; Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men; James Baldwin,
The Fire Next Time; Eugene Burdick & William Lederer, The Ugly American; Richard
Condon, The Manchurian Candidate; Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower; Gore Vidal,
Kalki; and John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany.
Graduate students will be required to lead one of the class sessions and to read an
additional list of secondary texts, among which will be books or chapters by leading
contemporary critics such as Andrew Delbanco, Richard Rorty, Benedict Anderson, John
Carlos Rowe, Robert Bellah, James Davison Hunter, Sidney Mead, Sandra Silberstein,
Stanley Hauerwas, Deborah Tannen, Cornel West, bell hooks, Noam Chomsky, or
Kathryn Kohrs Campbell and Kathleen Hall Jamieson. Suggestions from potential
students are welcome. The final graduate seminar paper will be at least twice as long
(18-20 pp.).
ENGA-493-01
SPECIAL TOPICS: TEACHING LITERATURE
Dr. Schwartz
T 2:10-4:40
ENGA/FRA-493-02
VIOLENCE AND TRAUMA IN ANGLOPHONE AND FRANCOPHONE
POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE
Dr. Joya Uraizee and Pascale Perraudin
M 2:10-4:40
c/l ENGA/FRA 593
Note: this is a team-taught course that is open to both English and French majors
and to both graduate and undergraduate students. For undergraduate students it
will count as credit for the French major or as filling the post-1800 British literature
requirement in the English major.
This course will explore the ways in which violence and trauma are depicted in
Anglophone and Francophone postcolonial literature. We will try to understand the
socio-political conditions that produced the violence in individual cultures and countries.
We will analyze the ways in which films and novels made about that violence arouse
horror, disgust, discomfort, and denial in us, as spectators/viewers. We will examine how
these texts represent the relationship between the perpetrators and the victims. We will
scrutinize our own role as bystanders and spectators, and our relationship to the
survivors. We will look for ways in which the violence can be represented without
making the trauma experienced by the survivors into an object of compassion and
consumption for sympathetic Western audiences. Some of the texts we will analyze
include: Cracking India by Bapsi Sidhwa, Destination Biafra by Buchi Emecheta, Delta
Force by Glen Ellis, Camp de Thiaroye by Ousmane Sembene, Lumumba, Death of a
Prophet by Raoul Peck, L’Amour, La Fantasia [Fantasia, an Algerian Cavalcade] by
Assia Djebar, A l’ombre d’Imana [The Shadow of Imana: Travels in the Heart of
Rwanda] by Véronique Tadjo, L’Aîné des orphelins [The Oldest Orphan] by Tierno
Monenembo and a selection of short stories from Madagascar. Requirements for the
course include oral presentations, 1 short paper and 1 long paper, and a mid-term exam.
ENGA-494-01
SENIOR SEMINAR
Dr. Arroyo
MW 12:45-2:00
“In documentary work,” Robert Coles tells us, “imagination encounters and tries to come
to terms with reality; and the way in which this is done, the outcome achieved, is as
various as the individual involved in the effort, the struggle” (Doing Documentary Work).
In this senior seminar students will engage the interdisciplinary practices needed to do
“documentary work.” Turning to narratives (autobiographies, novels, poems, histories),
photographs, photo-texts, film, music (jazz), art, and theoretical texts, students will begin
to understand and create narratives they take an active, imaginative, critical part in
constructing, which not only document and represent a “reality” (peoples, places,
practices) but struggle with the very interpretations of that reality. We’ll study different
texts, of course, but we’ll be looking closely at the ways narratives “document” and the
ways documents “narrate.” Nevertheless, we won’t simply be studying different
texts—we’ll be required to create different texts, different documents, and this creative
effort will call us to tell or narrate stories from within our individual imaginations and
intellects. Please consider, therefore, that each seminar participant will be required to do
extensive writing, keep a journal over the semester, have a camera and produce
photographs, and create a final narrative document.
ENGA-494-02
SENIOR SEMINAR: MARK TWAIN
Dr. McIntire-Strasburg
TR 9:30-10:45
This senior seminar will take an in-depth look at Mark Twain, from his early
“apprentice” work in the 1860s and 70s to his late (sometimes unpublished in his
lifetime) works. As a major writer and popular icon, Twain commented on everything
from politics to religion. We will be looking at several novels as well as short fiction,
journalistic articles, and non-fiction essays. Requirements for the course will include a
research essay, one presentation, and a final exam. Novels have yet to be chosen, but I
will assume that students have already read Adventures of Huckleberry Finn before the
course begins. If arrangements can be made, the course will include a talk from one of
the editors of The Bible According to Mark Twain.
ENGA-503-01
HISTORY OF RHETORIC
Dr. Casaregola
M 6:00-8:30
ENGA-511-01
INTRO TO LITERARY THEORY
Dr. Joya Uraizee
W 2:10-4:40
Note: Either ENGA500 (Methods of Literary Research) or ENGA511 (Literary
Theory) is required of all students in the master’s program and of those students in
the doctoral program who have not taken the equivalent in another program at
another university.
This course will focus on a number of current critical theories and approaches to
literature, especially postcolonial ones. For the first part of the course we will explore the
influence of psychoanalytic, materialist and poststructuralist thought on literature,
reading selections from Freud, Lacan, Kristeva, Marx, Althusser, Benjamin, de Saussure
and Derrida. In the second half of the course we will take up the feminist and/or
postcolonial theories of Cixous, Irigaray, Gilbert and Gubar, Said, Spivak, Bhabha, and
Fanon. Though our main focus will be on the theories, we will spend a small amount of
time analyzing their impact on postcolonial texts, such as those by Vera, Roy and Cliff.
Requirements for the course include several position papers, a research essay and a
midterm exam.
ENGA-536-01
BEOWULF
Dr. Shippey
MWF 11:00-1150
c/l ENGA 421-01
ENGA-615-01
GENRE STUDIES: THEORY OF THE NOVEL
Dr. Reitz
R 5:00-7:30
"No intelligent remark known to me will define the tract as a whole." - E.M.
Forster
This course is designed for students who plan to do graduate work on the novel and do
not yet have comprehensive knowledge of the major theoretical arguments that make up
the discursive field they plan to enter. Our discussions will deal with successive
generations of thinking about the novel, beginning with critical writings of George Eliot,
proceeding through some of the texts most responsible for creating national literatures, to
theories that define the novel in terms of its relation to cultures the canon has excluded or
marginalized. As we consider the novel's role in modern nationalism and identity
politics, we want to reopen the issue of aesthetic form and why specific narrative forms
and figural patterns seem to dominate or exclude others at certain moments of time.
A majority of our readings will be from Michael McKeon's anthology Theory of the
Novel. We will also read Forster's Aspects of the Novel as well as representative chapters
from seminal books not included in McKeon, such as Eve Sedgwick's Epistemology of
the Closet, D. A. Miller's The Novel and the Police, Edward Said's Culture and
Imperialism, and Walter Benn Michael's Our America. There will be group presentations
as well as a conference-style presentation at the end of the semester.
ENGA 635-01
17th CENTURY LITERATURE
Dr. van den Berg
T 5:00-7:30
Old maps marked borders by the words “There be monsters.” We can mark the borders
of culture by the words “There be women.” In 17th century Europe, women wrote poetry,
fiction, drama, polemic, and personal prose. This seminar will focus on a range of
women who wrote—noblewomen, commoners, scholars, religious radicals, even a con
artist. These women write as lovers, wives, mothers, friends, scholars, and visionaries,
depicting life in the country house, the court, the city, and the New World. They write of
war, religion, depression, and loss. They often occupy the center of the private sphere and
the margin of the public sphere. They write about being women, and about being
writers. Most write for a coterie audience, but one wrote for profit. Most of the women
we’ll study are English, but we’ll also read tales of domestic violence by a Spanish
woman, love poems by Italian courtesans, and apologias for women’s education by a
German scholar and a Mexican nun. Texts: Wiesner, Women and Gender in Early
Modern Europe; Marion Wynne-Davies, ed., Women Poets of the Renaissance; James
Fitzmaurice, ed., Major Women Writers of 17th Century England; Graham, Her Own Life:
Autobiographical Writings by 17th Century Englishwomen; Lucy Hutchinson, Memoirs of
the Life of Colonel Hutchinson; Bowerbank and Mendelson, eds., Paper Bodies: A
Margaret Cavendish Reader; Aphra Behn, Oroonoko, The Rover, and Other Writings;
Maria de Zayas y Sotomayor, The Disenchantments of Love; Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz,
Poems, Protest, and a Dream. Requirements: one critical book review, one class
presentation, one term paper.
ENGA-660-01
20th CENTURY FICTION— READING JAMES JOYCE
Dr. Dillon Johnston
M 5:00-7:30
The course will concentrate on the texts of Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artists as a Young
Man, and Ulysses, reading them in relation to early twentieth-century contexts—Irish,
colonial, global, literary, biographical—and through the changing lens of criticism. The
class will also observe various examples of reading and misreading in the
texts—newspapers, ads, circulars, letters, romances, pornography, codes, misprints—and
consider the theoretical implications of these examples. All students will write miniature
papers, a large paper, and final, brief retrospective paper, and graduate students will
report on certain critical texts.
ENGA-693-01
MANUSCRIPT STUDIES
Dr. Acker
R 2:10-4:40
The course offers an introduction to the various aspects of manuscript study: paleography
(styles of handwriting); codicology (physical make-up of manuscript books); cataloguing
(description of MSS, identification of texts, & ownership); and textual studies (preparing
an edition based on one or more manuscript witnesses). Students will transcribe from
photographic and microform facsimiles; acquaint themselves with research aids;
catalogue a Middle English MS from microfilm; and prepare an edition of a short text. A
previous course in Chaucer or ME literature is required; a course in Old English and/or
Latin is desirable but not required.
ENGA-693-02
STUDIES IN RHETORICAL THEORY: LITERACY AS CULTURAL
PRACTICE
Dr. Ruggles-Gere
W 5:00-7:30
In recent years our understanding of literacy and its relationships to individuals, social
groups, and cultural institutions has been challenged and revised. Many traditional ideas
about literacy and its function have given way to new understandings shaped by critical
theory as well as historical scholarship. This course considers literacy as a cultural
practice that raises questions like these: How does literacy function in identity politics?
How might we describe the interrelations of literacy and cultural institutions? How does
literacy figure in nation building/reshaping? How do literacy and technology interact?
Texts will include Brandt's Literacy in American Lives, Callahan's Wynema, Crain's The
Story of A, Cushman et al.'s Literacy: A Critical Sourcebook, Ginsburg's The Cheese and
the Worms, Selfe's Technology and Literacy in the 21st Century, and Williams' Dessa
Rose, along with selected articles on e-reserve. Course requirements will include an oral
presentation, a final paper, and several shorter writing assignments.
SPRING 2004 ENGLISH COURSES AT MADRID
ENG-E500 Methods of Literary Research
Anne Dewey, Ph.D.
Focuses on the aims and methods of literary research. The course introduces
the practicalities of collecting material, weighing evidence, reaching conclusions, and
writing scholarly articles through hands-on research and analysis of published criticism.
Includes an overview of methods of literary criticism as the theoretical background to
literary research.
ENG-E599 Master’s Thesis Research
Staff
An opportunity to study material not offered in the regular course offerings and/or to
pursue thesis research. Student should approach professor with a brief course proposal
before the beginning of the semester in which s/he wishes to enroll. A student may count
six credits of independent study toward the Master’s degree.
ENG-E639 Discovery and Colonization in Renaissance Literature
Brian Lockey, Ph.D.
This course will look at how the Spanish conquests of the Americas, the English conquest
and settlement of Ireland, and the settlements in Virginia and Massachusetts figure in
English Renaissance literature. We will pay attention to the way in which literary works
and historical texts and contexts as well as to how Ireland was viewed by many English
writers as a natural “jumping off” point into the New World. Works include More’s
Utopia, Las Casas’ Una brevisima relación in the 1583 English trans. The Spanish
Colonie, Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Spenser’s A View of the Present State of Ireland
and The Faerie Queene, and Aphra Behn’s The Widow Ranter and Oroonoko.
ENG-E653 The Nineteenth-Century Novel in Britain
Paul Vita, Ph.D.
Studies in the genre and its transformations over the nineteenth century, with special
attention to formal and generic developments, reading and writing as a social practice, the
politics of class and empire, the representation of marriage and family life. Texts include
works by Austen, Shelley, the Brontës, Dickens, Eliot, Thackeray, Trollope, and Hardy.
ENG-E667 Twentieth-Century American Poetry
Esteban Pujals, Ph.D.
Study of the most significant stages in the radical transformation by twentieth-century
U.S. poets of the methods and techniques constituting the art of poetry. The course
focuses on texts that illustrate the profound nature of this transformation, involving a
complete reconceptualization of language that happened in a surprisingly short period of
time.
ENG-E678 Modern American Drama: O’Neill, Miller and Williams
James Scott, Ph.D.
The course concentrates on American drama at mid century, organizing itself around the
major works of O'Neill, Williams, and Miller, specifically The Iceman Cometh, Long
Day's Journey, The Glass Menagerie, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Death of a Salesman, The
Crucible. Using the theoretical perspective of M. M. Bakhtin, we will take a “cultural
studies” approach to the material, cross-referencing the plays with the rapidly-changing
American society of the 1940s and 1950s.
ENG-E685 Twentieth-Century Canadian Literature
Pilar Somacarrera, Ph.D.
STUDY OF CANADIAN LITERATURE FROM THE 1960S TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. THE
AUTHORS SPAN THE MULTICULTURAL RANGE CHARACTERISTIC OF CANADIAN
LITERATURE IN ITS DIVERSE GENRES—POETRY, NARRATIVE, AND DRAMA—AND
INCLUDE MARGARET LAURENCE, MARGARET ATWOOD, TOMSON HIGHWAY,
MICHAEL ONDAATJE AND ROBERTSON DAVIES.
CERTIFICATE IN CREATIVE
AND PROFESSIONAL WRITING
The Certificate Program in Creative and Professional Writing offers students an opportunity to
gain experience in many different kinds of writing, from poetry and fiction to journalism and
public relations. The program helps students develop and mature as writers by providing
extensive practice in both creative and professional forms of writing. Though English or
communication majors frequently seek the Certificate in Creative and Professional Writing as an
additional credential, students from any discipline may pursue it.
The Certificate can help students prepare directly for careers in journalism, public relations,
advertising, or corporate communications, as well as for graduate study in creative writing or
journalism. Any student who completes the Certificate will have strengthened his or her ability to
compete in the many professional settings that demand extensive writing.
REQUIREMENTS
The Certificate requires 18 semester hours of writing courses, nine hours from English and nine
hours from communication. 400-level writing courses in the English department may count both
for the Certificate and as electives for the English major or minor. Only one 300-level course may
count for both the Certificate and the English major or minor (as long as the student has already
completed the 300-level literature course required for the College of Arts and Sciences core).
ENGLISH COURSES THAT MAY BE USED TO FULFILL THE REQUIREMENTS
ENG 303 CREATIVE WRITING: PROSE NONFICTION ENG 401 ADVANCED EXPOSITORY
WRITING
ENG 304 CW: FICTION
ENG 405 ADV. CW: POETRY
ENG 305 CW: POETRY
ENG 406 ADV. CW: FICTION
ENG 306 CW: LITERATURE AND TRANSLATION
ENG 407 ADV. CW: DRAMA
ENG 307-309 CW: SPECIAL TOPICS
ENG 408 ADV. CW: NONFICTION
ENG 400 BUSINESS AND PROFESSIONAL WRITING
ENG 409 ADV. CW: SPECIAL TOPICS
ENG 499 ADVANCED INDEPENDENT STUDY; MAY BE A WRITING INTERNSHIP
COMMUNICATION COURSES THAT MAY BE USED TO FULFILL THE REQUIREMENTS
CMM 210 JOURNALISM: NEWSWRITING
CMM 414 ESSAYS
CMM 311 EDITORIAL AND FEATURE WRITING
CMM 415 PUBLICATION
CMM 412 AUDIO-VISUAL SCRIPT WRITING
CMM 416 EDITING
CMM 413 IN-HOUSE PUBLICATIONS
CMM 435 BROADCAST JOURNALISM
FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONSULT ONE OF THE CO-DIRECTORS:
AVIS MEYER, PH.D.
PAUL ACKER, PH.D.
DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNICATION
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
(314) 977-3011
(314) 977-3189