English Department Topics Courses for Spring 2015
ENG 220 (3 cr) Multicultural American Literature: Other Mothers – Representations of Mothering in Multicultural
American Literature
Dunbar
This course will examine a wide range of texts that prominently feature mothers, mothering, and the maternal. We
will explore definitions of “ideal” or “good” mothers, as well as what makes a mother monstrous. We will consider
what pressures race, ethnicity, sexuality, and class bring to bear on motherhood and mothering. We will read a wide
range of contemporary American literature, including novels, short stories, plays, poetry, and essays by authors such
as Toni Morrison, Maxine Hong Kingston, Louise Erdrich, Julie Otsuka, and Danzy Senna.
ENG 220 (3 cr) Multicultural American Literature: Race in American Literature
Ripley
This course will examine the pervasive impact race has had on American literature. Through short assignments and
papers, students will examine the changing notions of race and its impact on people’s lives and their conceptions of
themselves and the American experiment. The books will range from the colonial era to the late twentieth century
and include Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, Nella Larsen’s Passing, and Art Spiegelman’s Maus.
ENG 221 (3 cr) Topics in Literature: European Fiction
Buttram
With reading selections that span four centuries and five languages (in translation), this class will center on novels,
stories, and other types of prose fiction from the European tradition and will offer not only artistic pleasure, but also
intellectual exploration. Works by such figures as Cervantes, Voltaire, and Tolstoy will give students an opportunity to
approach prose fiction from diverse angles, including the perspectives of cultural dynamics, social contexts, and
literary histories.
ENG 325 (3 cr) Genres of Literature: The Beat Generation
Eddy
American Literature just wouldn’t be the same without Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and the rest of the Beat
Generation crew. Together they defined a moment in American history and started a literary heritage that has
shaped the way Americans perceive themselves. We’ll go on the road with Kerouac, howl with Ginsberg, and trace
their influence on today.
ENG 326 (3 cr) Writers of Literature: Austenland – Jane Austen's Literary Afterlife
Dunbar
This course will explore the novels of Jane Austen (including Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and
Mansfield Park), as well as contemporary and pop culture adaptations of Austen’s work. These adaptations are likely
to include Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Longbourn, Bride and Prejudice, and several recent films. We will work to
develop an understanding of Austen’s literary world and style and to examine her continuing popularity and cultural
influence. To this end, we will consider historical contexts for Austen’s work, adaptation theory, gender studies, and
cultural studies.
ENG 470 (3 cr) Seminar in American Literature: Liberty and the American Slave Narrative
Michlitsch
The slave narrative emerged at the intersection of the Atlantic slave trade and increasing opportunities for literacy,
creating a powerful legacy. In this class, students will explore the development of the slave narrative genre within its
historical context, will consider the impact of the slave narrative on U.S. history, and will turn toward the end of the
class to fictional twentieth- and twenty-first-century neoslave narratives that challenge us to think about the
limitations of history. We will read both fiction and nonfiction stories of liberation, including works by Frederick
Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harriet Jacobs, Hannah Crafts, and Toni Morrison. Oral intensive.
ENG 472 (3 cr) Seminar In Language and Discourse: Blue Collar Literature
Herndon
This class will explore literature by and about working class people across the United States. Whether working as
farmers, meat packers, factory workers or coal miners, America's working class has often sought out the American
Dream yet faced a great deal of hardship. Taking a Working Class Studies approach, we will work to understand the
experiences and representations of working class people. Although many people think of "the working class" as white
men who are native to the U.S., this class will explore the ways that women, people of color, and immigrants have
shaped working class culture in profound ways and how their representations in American Literature can help us
better understand the richness of what it means to be working class. Writing intensive.
FILM COURSES
FILM 240 (3 cr) Film Genres: Noir and Neo-Noir
Johnson
Film noir refers to a group of films—typically, ones in gritty, urban settings where dark, violent passions lead to bleak
consequences for troubled protagonists—made first during and in the decade after World War II. Film noir is at once
an historical moment, a visual style (denoted by its use of low-key, black-and-white, chiaroscuro lighting and
cinematography), and, for some, a film genre. From the latter perspective, noir films normally address some of the
cultural problems facing postwar American society, in particular questions about gender, sexuality, alienation,
paranoia, and identity. Today the tropes of film noir remain not only immediately recognizable but even iconic, a
testimony to its lasting importance in U.S. film and cultural history. Likely works will include The Maltese Falcon
(1941, dir. John Huston); Double Indemnity (1941, dir. Billy Wilder); Laura (1944, dir. Otto Preminger); Mildred Pierce
(1945, dir. Michael Curtiz); In a Lonely Place (1950, dir. Nicholas Ray); Sunset Boulevard (1950, dir. Billy Wilder); The
Sweet Smell of Success (1957, dir. Alexander Mackendrick); and such later neo-noir films as The Naked Kiss (1964, dir.
Samuel Fuller); Chinatown (1974, dir. Roman Polanski); Blade Runner (1982, dir. Ridley Scott); Fargo (1996, dir. Joen
and Ethan Coen); Memento (2000, dir. Christopher Nolan,); and others. GEP Goal 6 (Humanities).
FILM 240 (3 cr) Film Genres: Science Fiction Cinema
Wood
This course will explore the science fiction genre in film. While examining the historical and cultural contexts in which
a variety of national and international films have emerged, we will analyze how these films reflect and examine
anxieties and fears about technology, science, artificial intelligence, nuclear power, disease pandemics, gender,
sexuality, class, race, government, xenophobia, dystopian futures and more. The course requires weekly screenings
of assigned films and students will read some critical scholarship relating to film studies, the science fiction genre,
and/or specific film titles. Possible films include: A Trip to the Moon (1902), Metropolis (1927), The Day the Earth
Stood Still (1951), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), La Jetée (1962), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Solaris
(1972), Star Wars (1977), Alien (1979), Blade Runner (1982), The Thing (1982), Brazil (1985), The Fly (1986), Twelve
Monkeys (1995), District 9 (2009), Moon (2009), and Looper (2012).
GRADUATE COURSES
ENG 607 (3 cr) Seminar in English Literature: 18th Century Travel Literature
Zold
This course will examine the ways in which travel, both as a method of education and a mode of facilitating
colonization, functions within fiction and nonfiction of the eighteenth-century. Rooted in the Lockean philosophical
belief that knowing was gained through experiences, travel narratives—even some that were later realized to be
fiction—were seen as a collection of facts and truths; thus, these narratives constructed knowledge about the rest of
the world. We will be reading primary works from authors like Defoe, Swift, and Montagu as well as a range of critical
and theoretical texts.
ENG 609 (3 cr) Seminar in American Literature: Cather, Steinbeck, O'Connor
Cumberland
This course offers students the opportunity for advanced study of the works of Willa Cather, John Steinbeck, and
Flannery O’Connor, as well as an exploration of the broader contexts in which their work was created (social,
historical, literary, cultural). For each of these writers, region was a significant aspect of their work—much of
Cather’s work is grounded in Nebraska; for Steinbeck, the Salinas Valley; and for O’Connor, her native Georgia. We
will spend a significant part of the course exploring the impact of landscape on their literature, and what that may
suggest to us about how they understood the forces shaping their society.