ENGLISH 203 COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
SPRING 2013
Course Title:
Time:
Class #:
Place:
Instructor:
ARE WE TRULY FREE?
2:30 TR
52206
4076 Wescoe
ROCHE, Nicole
Time:
Class#:
Place:
Instructor:
4:00 TR
64322
4076 Wescoe
ROCHE, Nicole
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course will explore essential questions concerning human existence and
the individual‟s role in shaping personal identity. How much control do we have over our own destinies?
What forces, seen and unseen, govern our choices? Does the journey of life unfold according to a carefully
constructed road map, and if so, are we allowed to see the directions? What happens if we take another path
or are somehow flung off course? Are free will and fate mutually exclusive? Why should questions of this
kind concern us? In order to tackle these and related questions we will examine novels, short stories, essays,
and other works to see how our authors weigh in on the age-old debate of fate vs. free will. Our course
discussions and papers will ask you to analyze or compare those authors‟ views as well as to establish and
develop your own perspectives. Our goal will not be to answer these largely unanswerable questions, but
rather to consider how our approach to these topics might influence how we live our lives and how
meaningful those lives seem.
REQUIRED TEXTS: Abe, The Woman in the Dunes; Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund; Kundera, The
Unbearable Lightness of Being; Nabakov, Lolita; O‟Connor, The Collected Stories; Faigley, The Brief
Penguin Handbook and the Dept. of English, Composition and Literature.
Course Title:
Time:
Class #:
Place:
Instructor:
BANNED, BURNED, AND CENSORED
9:30 TR
Time:
61849
Class#:
222 Fraser
Place:
BUNTEN, Mary
Instructor:
11:00 TR
62913
222 Fraser
BUNTEN, Mary
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course examines the issue of censorship of art. To do this, we will read a
selection of 20th-century novels, poems, and plays that have been banned, censored, or both, and which discuss
censorship or some other form of curtailment as one of their themes. We‟ll use these works as the basis for
discussions about why and under what conditions they were suppressed, exploring the controversies surrounding
the works--asking why some audiences deem them harmful, while others find them excellent--and examining
how writers and societies respond to restrictions on expression. In addition to writing essays and participating in
discussions, students will be asked to present information about (in)famous censorship controversies. In the
process, we'll examine our own attitudes toward censorship.
REQUIRED TEXTS: Kundera, The Joke; Puig, Kiss of the Spider Woman; Nabokov, Lolita; Miller, The
Crucible; Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings; Faigley, The Brief Penguin Handbook; Dept. of
English, Composition and Literature; other readings, including excerpts from Milton‟s Areopagitica;
Solzhenitsyn‟s The First Circle, and Rushdie‟s The Satanic Verses, to be supplied by the instructor.
Course Title: EXPRESSIONS OF YOUTH AND REBELLION
Time:
1:00 MWF
Time:
2:00 MWF
Class #:
58766
Class#:
52205
Place:
1009 Wescoe
Place:
1009 Wescoe
Instructor:
ELLIS, Iain
Instructor:
ELLIS, Iain
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Expressions of Youth Rebellion is a course that will survey a broad range of
contemporary discourse relating to youth culture as an arena of socio-political resistance. Issues of
generation, class, race, and gender will be central to our cultural analyses. Quizzes, discussions, and essays
will revolve around the literature, films, and music that we study in class. In addition, students will be
expected to research, write, and present a fully developed analytical research paper that focuses on a writer
of “youth rebellion.”
By the end of the course, students should be able to:
1. Maintain and continue to improve the abilities gained in English 101 and 102
2. Develop multiple strategies of reading
 Contextualize a work generically or thematically
 Make comparisons among works within the genre or theme
 Engage confidently in scholarly conversations about the texts
 Use critical terminology relevant to the genre or theme effectively
3.
Write about literature in ways appropriate to the genre or theme
 Write a sustained, in-depth analysis and comparison of two texts
 Demonstrate a sophisticated understanding of a text‟s rhetorical situation
 Address multiple perspectives on a topic while clearly voicing your own
 Incorporate evidence, following the citation style particular to the genre
 Develop a consistent, mature style
4. Understand the connections between critical reading and writing
 Become familiar with a variety of critical ways of writing and reading texts and apply these critical
strategies to texts produced by critics as well as by peers
 Develop an understanding of the interrelationship of writing and reading in composing and
interpreting meaning
 Develop a deeper understanding of the rhetorical uses of language in texts to challenge accepted ideas
REQUIRED TEXTS: Ellis, Iain. Rebels Wit Attitude: Subversive Rock Humorists (RWA) (Soft Skull
2008);
Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye (Little, Brown and Co. 1951); Cleaver, Eldridge, Soul on Ice (Delta
1968); Thompson, Hunter S. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Vintage 1971); Brown, Rita Mae. Rubyfruit
Jungle (Bantam 1973); Carroll, Jim. The Basketball Diaries (Penguin 1987); Faigley, Lester. The Brief
Penguin Handbook (Pearson, 4th edition); and CAL. (KU English Department).
Course Title: LITERATURE OF ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE
Time:
11:00 MW
Time:
12:30 MW
Class#:
64321
Class#:
52203
Place:
Instructor:
155 Robinson
ECHTERLING, Clare
Place:
155 Robinson
Instructor:
ECHTERLING, Clare
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Environmental justice is a movement that recognizes and works to correct the
ways in which environmental degradation affects different populations unequally due to complex factors of
race, class, gender, location, and historical moment. In this course, we will examine environmental justice
issues through different genres--fiction, poetry, theoretical, nonfiction, journalism, and film--to more fully
understand the complicated connections between race, class, gender, nation (or location), and environment.
We will look closely at the social and historical context of the texts while also thinking about the ways in
which environmental literature can serve and has served as fuel for social and environmental change.
In order to reflect the diversity of the texts and environmental experiences that we will study, students will be
asked to write in a variety of genres, such as formal literary analysis, advocacy writings (like those published
by environmental magazines such as Mother Earth News and GRIST), and creative nonfiction work.
REQUIRED TEXTS: Blackwell, Visit Sunny Chernobyl: And Other Adventures in the World‟s Most
Polluted Places; Clare, Exile and Pride; Sinha, Animal‟s People; Saro-Wiwa, A Month and a Day and
Letters; Faigley, The Brief Penguin Handbook; and the Dept. of English, Composition and Literature. The
instructor will provide selected poems, articles, and essays.
Course Title:
Time:
Class#:
Place:
Instructor:
LITERATURE OF SPORTS
12:00 MWF
52207
4023 Wescoe
WEDGE, Philip
COURSE DESCRIPTION: In the Literature of Sports course students will study and write essays on a
significant body of sports literature, examining such topics as sports as character-building, sports hero types,
hero-worship in fans, violence in sports, corruption in sports, and so on. Required coursework consists of 4
major Essays (45%), a Mid-term (15%), and comprehensive Final (25%). Homework (15%) includes pop
quizzes and short writing assignments. Class participation is also of considerable importance.
REQUIRED TEXTS: Greenberg, The Celebrant; McPhee, Levels of the Game; Odets, Golden Boy;
Abdou, The Bone Cage ; Wilson, Fences; Lamott, Crooked Little Heart; DeLillo, End Zone; Toole, Million
Dollar Baby; Dickey, Deliverance; Faigley, The Brief Penguin Handbook; and Dept. of English,
Composition and Literature.
Course Title:
Time:
Class #:
Place:
Instructor:
POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE
11:00 TR
59353
144 JRP
CONSOLE-SOICAN, Paula
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This Postcolonial Literature class seeks to explore the different meanings
behind the terms postcolonial and postcolonialism, hoping to untangle some of their complexity. What makes
a text, an author, or a character postcolonial? What is postcolonialism? Some of the texts that will help us
answer these questions are the sardonic African novels of Chinua Achebe (Things Fall Apart) and Tayeb
Salih (Season of Migration to the North), Caribbean writings such as Jamaica Kincaid‟s Lucy and Maryse
Condé' s I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem, and the most recent literary forays of J.M. Coetzee (Waiting for the
Barbarians) and Mohsin Hamid‟s The Reluctant Fundamentalist. These stories shed light on the voice of the
„native‟ and the „colonized‟ and invite us to take a close look at the relationship between home as periphery
or colonial outpost and the safeguarded imperial centers of the twentieth century. As such, they are meant to
help us understand the need to “write back” to the Empire and to critique the larger discourse of imperialism .
REQUIRED TEXTS: Young, Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction; Ashcroft, Post-Colonial
Studies: The Key Concepts; Achebe, Things Fall Apart; Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians; Conrad, Heart
of Darkness; Lamming, In the Castle of My Skin; Kincaid, Lucy; Rao, Kanthapura; Rushdie, The Satanic
Verses; Faigley, The Brief Penguin Handbook; and Dept. of English, Composition and Literature.
Course Title:
Time:
Class #:
Place:
Instructor:
SEPARATING TRUTH FROM LIES: NON-FICTION AND THE CALL FOR JUSTICE
1:00 TR
58043
222 Fraser
TORRES, Stefanie
Time:
Class#:
Place:
Instructor:
2:30 TR
65192
1003 Wescoe
TORRES, Stefanie
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course will closely examine and analyze the roots and characteristics of
creative nonfiction in different subtypes, including nature writing, memoir, personal essay, new journalism. As
students begin to notice authors‟ rhetorical strategies within the genre, as well as the issues in question within
the texts, they will use their interpretations to understand how creative nonfiction can be used as a tool for social
justice and advocating social change. Students will gain understanding of the texts by explaining the
relationship between writers, audience, genre and context through their examination of the social and historical
contexts within the books/essays, audience reaction, and change (or possible change) that came about from the
text. Students will be asked to demonstrate their understanding of nonfiction by composing an analysis and
evaluation of the texts, addressing multiple perspectives on the genre and the issues raised in the texts, and
composing their own creative nonfiction works.
REQUIRED TEXTS: Urrea, The Devil's Highway; Capote, In Cold Blood; Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma;
Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed; Krakauer, Under the Banner of Heaven; Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta
Lacks; Faigley, The Brief Penguin Handbook; and Dept. of English, Composition and Literature.
Course Title:
Time:
Class #:
Place:
Instructor:
WRITING WITH STYLE
1:00 TR
58259
1003 Wescoe
FARMER, Frank
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Style has been defined variously throughout history--sometimes in mystical or
romantic terms (the purest expression of the soul), sometimes in scientific terms (as deviation from linguistic
norm), sometimes in moral terms (as sincerity, authenticity, the truth of plain speaking), sometimes in rhetorical
terms (style as decorum, or fitness for the occasion), and sometimes even in terms of social etiquette (style as
ingratiation). This course will examine some of the different conceptions of style, as well as the ideologies that
inform these conceptions. Equally important, this course is intended to help students develop their own writing
style. Over the course of the semester, then, students will have opportunities to practice such stylistic virtues as
diction, concision, amplification, voice, figurative language, clarity, and readability. Each week, we will devote
time to a stylistic issue, theme, or controversy, as well as time to assignments designed to give you practice in
addressing some aspect of your writing style.
REQUIRED TEXTS:
TBD