ENG 101 Composition
Ten sections will be offered in the fall semester. Each section is limited to 15 students. While instructors may use different approaches, all are concerned with developing every student’s use of clear and appropriate English prose in course papers and on examinations. All instructors have the common goal of encouraging the student to write with accuracy of expression, as well as with logical and coherent organization. Students will be responsible for writing at least one in-class essay and a series of longer, out-of-class essays. In both full-course and half-course versions, students must develop an awareness of the strengths and weaknesses in their writing and must acquire the necessary skill to revise and rewrite what they thought were final drafts of essays. They must, in other words, become editors of their own writing. Past experience has shown the Department and the College that writing well in high school does not necessarily assure the same in college. On the basis of the English proficiency examination performance, the Department will require some first-year students to register for this course. (Three of the fall semester half-courses begin mid-semester. Students who have experienced difficulty in writing during the first several weeks may wish to consider late registration in these sections.) English 101 is NOT a remedial writing course. Special tutorial help within the department and at the Writing Center is available for students with more fundamental problems in writing. One-half or one course credit. This course is offered in the fall semester.
Credits: 1/2
|
Course Descriptions—Language Studies
Language Studies courses in English include both writing (English 101, 201, 212, 213, 410, 411, 412, 413) and language (English 121, 122, 150, 221). Students with an interest in Creative Writing might wish to speak with Professors Hudson about appropriate course selections.
ENG 121 Introduction to Language: Language Diversity Reflected in Literature
(HUM 121)
Readings in the history and culture of English through historical texts in Anglo-Saxon, Middle and Early Modern English, and American English, with particular attention to the diversity of our language. First half of the fall semester.
Credits: 1/2
|
ENG 122 Introduction to Language: Modern Linguistics
(HUM 122)
An introduction to the basic principles and methods of linguistic analysis, with emphasis on Modern English grammar. This course is offered in the first half, fall semester.
Credits: 1/2
|
ENG 123 History of the English Language
This course draws upon archaeology, literature, linguistics, and social history in order to familiarize you with the development of the English language. We will examine texts written in Old, Middle, and Early Modern English, placing them in their cultural contexts to explore how environment shapes language and language shapes environment. In this class we will consider the political and social aspects of language from prehistory to the present and engage with primary sources in their original languages. We will discuss current political and social issues like Ebonics, pidgins, and English-only "nativism" movements. Students will present a final project that address current, language-related debates such as English as a global language, the impact language has upon power structures or how language and cultural authority are linked. This course is offered in the second half, spring semester.
Credits: 1
|
ENG 150 Introduction to Mass Communication
An undergraduate introduction to the print and electronic media (communication theory, advertising, newsgathering, media effects, and investigative journalism) in which students analyze the special languages of the media, examine the economics of the communications industry, and evaluate the media as a reflection of the ideas and preoccupations of society. The goal of the course is to develop students into informed and discriminating listeners, readers, and viewers. This course is offered in the spring semester.
Credits: 1
|
ENG 201 Composition: The Essay
English 201 concentrates exclusively upon the essay as a vehicle of prose
communication. Students will read the works of several modern essayists
(for example, E.M. Forster, George Orwell, Alice Walker, Lewis Thomas,
Joan Didion) and write essays based upon thematic and rhetorical methods
discovered in the texts. Limited enrollment. This course is offered in the
first half, spring semester.
Credits: 1/2
|
ENG 212 Creative Writing: Poetry
This course includes composition, presentation, and considered discussion
of original poems in a workshop atmosphere. Experimentation with various
poetic forms will be encouraged and craftsmanship emphasized. A strong
commitment to poetry will be expected, not only in writing and rewriting
throughout the semester, but also in careful criticism of fellow students'
work. Supplementary readings in contemporary poetry will be used as models
for writing and as impetus for discussion. This course is offered in the
fall semester.
Credits: 1
|
ENG 213 Creative Writing: Short Fiction
Students will write about 12,000 words of short fiction, which will be
read and discussed in workshop sessions. The course pre-supposes a serious
interest in creative writing. It requires strict self discipline, devotion
to craftsmanship, and active critical analysis. Supplementary readings in
short fiction, past and contemporary, are assigned. This course is offered
in the fall semester.
Credits: 1
|
ENG 221 Studies in Language: American Dialects
An introduction to the study of dialects in America, with a particular focus on the diversity of American speech as reflected in its many cultural variations. Students will read about the varieties of American speech, study their historical, sociological, and linguistic background, and conduct original research in describing a cultural dialect. This course is offered in the second half, spring semester.
Credits: 1/2
|
ENG 387 Independent Study in Language
Any student in good standing academically and interested in pursuing a topic in language studies in English not normally available through departmental course offerings is encouraged to apply to the Department for permission to do independent work in English language studies. Such study usually involves not more than one course credit a semester, and entails a significant academic project submitted to a department member for a letter grade. Students must receive written approval of their project proposal from a department member before registering for the course. One-half or one course credit each semester.
Prerequisites: Consent of the instructor and approval of the Department chair.
Credits: 1/2
|
ENG 410 Advanced Composition: Academic and Professional Writing
The goal of this course is for the student to gain greater awareness and control over his writing for a variety of academic and professional purposes. Students who wish to improve their college writing and those who plan to attend law or graduate school, teach, or write professionally would be well served by the course. We will focus in particular on clarity in writing, argumentative techniques, the demands of different genres, and developing a personal voice. Limited enrollment. This course is offered in the spring semester.
Prerequisite: Junior or senior standing or permission of the instructor.
Credits: 1
|
ENG 411 Advanced Composition: Business & Technical Writing
The emphasis in this course will be on technical, business, and other
forms of career-oriented writing. Topics include audience analysis, style
analysis, grammar, punctuation, and research. Assignments adapted to fit
the background and interests of each student include business
correspondence, mechanism description, process description, formal
proposal, magazine article, and formal report. Limited enrollment. This
course is offered in the spring semester.
Prerequisite: Junior or senior standing or permission of the instructor.
Credits: 1
|
STUDENTS MAY TAKE EITHER ENGLISH 410 or 411, BUT NOT BOTH.
ENG 412 Advanced Creative Writing: Poetry
This course will be conducted as a workshop. Besides writing steadily and much, the student will be expected to read carefully and criticize his peers’ work. This course is offered in the spring semester.
Credits: 1
|
ENG 413 Advanced Creative Writing: Fiction
This course will be conducted as a workshop. Besides writing steadily and much, the student will be expected to read carefully and criticize his peers’ work. This course is offered in the spring semester.
Credits: 1
|
Course Descriptions—Literature
Introductory Courses
These courses, numbered 105-160, introduce students to English, American, and World literature in translation. Two half-semester courses, English 105 and 106, introduce students to the ways of reading poetry and short stories. English 107 and 108 emphasize history as a subject matter in literature. English 109 and 160, as well as English 107 and 108, focus on world and multicultural literature.
English 215-220, offered yearly, are designated “Core” courses because they are central to our conception of an English major. They introduce the student to basic literary and cultural history, to significant writers, works, and themes, and to useful critical modes. Students will be expected to participate in classroom discussion and write several short papers. These courses also serve as the foundation for more advanced literary study.
ENG 105 Introduction to Poetry
This course introduces students to the study of poetry. The approach will be mainly formalist—close readings of a wide range of poetry, from the 16th century through the contemporary. Students will study essential aspects of the poem—image, symbol, diction, syntax, meter, rhythm, and form. Writing assignments for the course will focus on the explication of particular poems.
Credits: 1/2
|
ENG 106 Fictions of Women
This course examines the ways in which important British, U.S., Canadian, and Caribbean writers of fiction have depicted the roles, issues, struggles, triumphs, and pleasures of women in the 19th and 20th centuries. Drawing upon the theoretical and critical work of feminist thinkers, we will explore such issues as work, voice, gender, power, ethnicity, sexuality, and the body in novels and short fiction by such writers as Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, Edith Wharton, Margery Latimer, Zora Neale Hurston, Jean Rhys, Nella Larsen, Tillie Olsen, Meridel Le Seur, Doris Lessing, Paule Marshall, Alice Walker, Margaret Atwood, Angela Carter, Toni Morrison, Louise Erdrich, A. S. Byatt, Sandra Cisneros, Alice Munro, Lorrie Moore, and Jamaica Kincaid. This course is offered in the spring semester.
Credits: 1
|
ENG 107 History & Drama
Science and Scientist
First, a brief review of how the general reader can become a critical reader of dramatic literature—and still find the experience delightful and enriching. Then, using Pirandello's Each in His Own Way as a reminder of the challenge of plays about contemporary issues and personalities, we will discuss some works from the last 60 years that have addressed concerns of science and scientists. It may be just as interesting to discover that some dramatists have little insight about this kind of subject as it is to realize that humanists and scientists can speak the same language. Texts will include Brecht's Galileo, Kipphardt's In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer, as well as more recent efforts to present Heisenberg, Bohr, Kepler, and Feynman. This course is offered second half, fall semester.
Credits: 1/2
|
Introduction to Dramatic Literature
An introduction to drama itself, with conversations about the long standing tradition of reading texts aloud, whether poetry, novels, or drama. We will review and pose reasonable and helpful questions of any drama, as well as special ones appropriate for historical drama. Using Pirandello's Henry IV as a paradoxical warning about the dangers of historical fictions, we will look at the varieties of ways American and European dramatists use history, with special emphasis on playwrights' manipulation and education of audiences and the “truth” created by merging fact with fiction. A cautious, careful reader who delights in discovering truth and identifying lies in fiction: an admirable course goal. Texts include Shakespeare and Ionesco's plays about Macbeth, and Shaw and Brecht's approaches to the Joan of Arc story. This course is offered first half, fall semester.
Credits: 1/2
|
ENG 108 History and the Novel
An introduction to the novel itself in which we try to sustain the joy of first readings and attempt to understand how authors invite us to co-create this “other world,” and how historical events and individuals are a part of this creative process. Our texts may range in length from Dicken's Tale of Two Cities to Tolstoy's War and Peace, in subject from politics in Warren's All the King's Men, and Garcia Marquez' The General in His Labyrinth to debates about historical sources like Yourcenar's The Memoirs of Hadrian and Vargas Llosa's The War of the End of the World. Selections from Latin American novelists like Garcia Marques, Fuentes, and Vargas Llosa may help us understand why the historical novel has been such a prominent literary mode in Central and South America. This course is offered in the spring semester.
Credits: 1
|
ENG 109 World Literature in Translation
The course will focus on literature in translation from Europe, Japan, India, and Mexico from the 7th through the 17th centuries. Thematically, the course will address conquest, spirituality, and love with the aim of cultivating the student’s ability to consider critically class, gender, religion, and the idea of the “other” in medieval Europe and beyond. Texts will include Beowulf, The Tale of the Genji, Dante’s Inferno and the poetry of Rumi. This course is offered in the spring semester.
Credits: 1
|
ENG 160 Multicultural Literature in America
The richness of American culture is a result of the contributions made by
individuals from a variety of groups, each expanding our definition of
what it means to be American. In this course we will study the writing and
cultures of a number of groups, among them Native American, Hispanic, Gay,
African American, European American, and Asian American. We will try to
hear individual voices through a variety of literary forms (including
film), while exploring commonalities. This course is offered in the spring
semester.
Credits: 1
|
ENG 196 Religion and Literature
(HUM 196/REL 196)
A study of religious themes and theological issues in diverse literary works. Each week will focus on a single text. Authors represent various religious traditions (like Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, Buddhism, Judaism, and Hinduism) and raise particular religious questions (like the problem of evil, the question of atheism, the role of tradition, and the nature of redemption). Enrollment limited to 15 students.
Credits: 1
|
ENG 214 Introduction to British Literature after 1900
This course will introduce students to the major writers and literary trends of the British Isles after 1900. We will begin with the dawn of Modernism, after which we will trace important political, cultural, and aesthetic changes reflected in 20th and 21st century texts. How did the disintegration of the British Empire and two world wars affect British cultural identity? How was the clash between the rural and the urban reflected in the past century? We will focus on a variety of genres-fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and drama - and examine the experimentations with language and form in Modernism and Postmodernism, as well as representations of gender roles and race in selected texts by Joseph Conrad, Wilfred Owen, T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, George Orwell, Samuel Beckett, Doris Lessing, Eavan Boland, Muriel Spark, Angela Carter, and others. This course is offered in the spring semester.
Credits: 1
|
ENG 215 Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature
The study of English literature from its beginnings to the end of the
Renaissance. Readings will include Beowulf; selections from
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales; Elizabethan poetry, drama and
prose; and Milton’s Paradise Lost. This course is offered in
the fall semester.
Credits: 1
|
ENG 216 Introduction to Shakespeare
A study of the plays and sonnets of Shakespeare. Analyzing Shakespeare's dramatic and poetic techniques, we will examine some of the comedies, histories, and tragedies of the greatest dramatist in English. We will also look at the plays' major themes, styles, and sources. This course is offered in the spring semester.
Credits: 1
|
ENG 217 English Literature, 1660-1800
This course examines works by some of the best-known poets, essayists, and novelists from the Restoration and 18th Century in Great Britain, including Dryden, Swift, Pope, Fielding, and Johnson. The responses of different authors to ongoing cultural conflicts will help structure our survey. Rhetorical techniques and the development of genres will be ongoing concerns. There will be special emphasis on the comedies of the time by Wycherly, Etherege, Behn, Congreve, Gay, Steele, and Sheridan, not only as texts for performance and reading, but also as objects the authors' contemporaries reviewed with vigor and used to construct theories about comedy and satire. This course is offered in the spring semester.
Credits: 1
|
ENG 218 Introduction to English Literature, 1800-1900
A study of the life and literature of the early and middle 19th century as reflected in the poetry, fiction, and essays of this period. Texts will vary from year to year but will be drawn from the works of major poets (Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, and Hardy), novelists (Austen, Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, Eliot, and Hardy) and essayists (Wordsworth, Carlyle, Macaulay, Ruskin, Arnold, Huxley, and Pater). This course is offered in the fall semester.
Credits: 1
|
ENG 219 Introduction to American Literature before 1900
A survey of major writers and literary trends from the period of
exploration to the Naturalists. We will study the forging of the American
literary and social consciousness in the writings of the early explorers,
through the Native American oral tradition, and in works by Bradstreet,
Edwards, Franklin, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Jacobs, Melville,
Douglass, Whitman, Dickinson, Twain, James, Crane, and Chopin. Guiding our
study will be questions like “What is ‘American' about American
literature?” and “In what ways do myths generated by our formative
literature continue to shape our personal and national identities?” This
course is offered in the fall semester.
Credits: 1
|
ENG 220 Introduction to American Literature after 1900
This survey introduces the writers and trends of our century, from realism
and naturalism through modernism to the rich, fragmented energy of
postmodernism and multiculturalism. Writers covered vary from year to year
but may include Henry James, James Weldon Johnson, Edith Wharton, Robert
Frost, Edna St. Vincent Millay, William Carlos Williams, E. E. Cummings,
Ernest Hemingway, Margery Latimer, William Faulkner, Langston Hughes,
Willa Cather, F. Scott Fitzgerald, J. D. Salinger, Allen Ginsberg, Gary
Snyder, Amiri Baraka, John Barth, Raymond Carver, Galway Kinnell, Sharon
Olds, Louise Erdrich, Sandra Cisneros, Toni Morrison, and Don DeLillo.
This course is offered in the spring semester.
Credits: 1
|
ENG 296 Religion and Literature
(HUM 296/REL 296)
A study of religious themes and theological issues in literary works and films. (In some years the course may be offered for one-half credit.)
Credits: 1
|
Intermediate Courses
COURSES NUMBERED 300-370 HAVE THE PREREQUISITE OF ANY ONE ENGLISH LITERATURE COURSE AT WABASH. They are designed to complement and develop historical and cultural awareness, and the knowledge of authors, themes, topics, genres, modes, and critical approaches encountered in Introductory and Core courses. Students in Intermediate courses take initiative in class discussion, write several analytical papers, and become familiar with the use of secondary critical sources. Topics for Intermediate courses are generally repeated every two or three years.
ENG 300 Studies in Historical Contexts
The Literature of the American 1920's
“Here was a generation,” wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald in the aftermath of the Great War, “grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in mankind shaken.” This course examines the literature and culture of the 1920's in America and, in passing, the American civilization that produced an extraordinary number of talented writers. We will focus upon major writers and significant texts of this decade—the Roaring Twenties, the jazz age, the great age of sport, the age of leisure, the plastic age. The 20's produced great literature and great literary figures. We will choose from among the best of the period. Writers may include Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Willa Cather, Sherwood Anderson, Sinclair Lewis, Eugene O'Neill, T.S. Eliot, John Dos Passos, Robert Frost, William Faulkner (and perhaps others of lesser renown). This course is offered in the fall semester.
Credits: 1
|
King Arthur, Romance and Chivalry
What was the medieval chivalric code? How did it define the knight’s relationship to his lord or his lady? How closely does Arthurian literature reflect actual medieval behavior? We will explore these kinds of questions by examining texts such as The Art of Courtly Love, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Malory’s Morte D’Arthur. Finally, this class will consider idealized codes for living embedded in contemporary culture to see how (and if) chivalry operates in the world today.
Credits: 1
|
Beat Poetry
Though Ginsberg is dead and Snyder is 70, the Beat movement still has a charisma and a living energy. Its writers professed the ecstatic moment and the revolt of the imagination against the chafing strictures of Eisenhower's America. We'll read Jack Kerouac's On the Road, but otherwise stay with the remarkable poetry of several key writers—Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Michael McClure, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Greg Corso. Our focus will be the poetry itself—its techniques and themes of liberation and transcendence—and its relationship to American culture of the 50's. The course will include the class production of a performance of the famous Six Gallery Reading in which Ginsberg, Snyder, McClure, and others participated. This course is offered in the second half, spring semester.
Credits: 1/2
|
ENG 310 Studies in Literary Genres
British Drama: Medieval and Tudor
A survey of early English drama from the first plays in the English church through the medieval mystery, morality, and miracle dramas, to the early Renaissance entertainments and histories. In addition to reading the texts of plays, we will also look at the contexts in which they were presented and the sources of their success.
Credits: 1/2
|
Drama: Elizabethan and Jacobean
A survey of non-Shakespearean drama of the English Renaissance, through the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. We will read tragedies, histories, and comedies by several of Shakespeare's contemporaries, including Christopher Marlowe, Ben Johnson, Thomas Dekker, and John Webster. We will also consider the actual conditions of acting, producing, and audience reception for early English drama plays.
Credits: 1/2
|
Science Fiction
In this course we will consider the development and variety of science fiction literature, particularly as it has reflected concurrent societal anxieties. We will begin with early classics, such as H.G. Well's The Time Machine and Ray Bradbury's R is for Rocket, as well as works from more contemporary authors such as Phillip K. Dick, Ursula LeGuin, Harlan Ellison, and Dan Simmons. Since any study of science fiction is incomplete without films, readings will be coordinated with public screenings of important science fiction films. This course is offered in the spring semester.
Credits: 1
|
American Nature Writing
Even in the 21st century, Americans remain haunted by the power and beauty of their landscapes and by the idea of wilderness. Thoreau’s gnomic statement, “In wilderness is the preservation of the world,” still has some currency in our culture. While Americans are far from forging a common environmental ethic, the attempt continues, especially in the face of our growing awareness of the fragility of earth’s ecosystems, and the power of our technologies to subdue and destroy them. In this course, we will read a few essential classic texts – Thoreau’s “Walking” and Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac to get our bearings, but the focus will be on texts of the late 20th century to the present. We will read such nonfiction works as Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire and Terry Tempest Williams’ Refuge; fictions such as Seth Kantner’s 2004 novel, Ordinary Wolves, and various stories by Rick Bass; and Gary Snyder’s poetry collection, Turtle Island. We will also read some poetry and fiction by Nicaraguan writers, Ernesto Cardenal and Gioconda Belli. The course will also introduce students to the practice of ecocriticism. We will read the texts as literary works of art, but also as explorations of the connections between humans and the natural world, of nature and spirit, of environmental ethics and justice, and of arguments for the preservation of the natural world.
Credits: 1
|
ENG 320 Study in Literary Modes
British Modernism
In this course we will explore the production of British fiction from the turn of the 20th century to World War II. Our attention will focus on the relationship between the disintegration of traditional moral, social, and intellectual values and the development of new literary forms. We will read and discuss works that illustrate a variety of cultural concerns, paying particular attention to those texts which use experimental, audience challenging, and language-focused narrative strategies to foreground the relationship of individuals to economic, political, and cultural forces. We will explore various traditions and innovations in literature as they reflect and incorporate shifting attitudes toward love, marriage, family, social institutions, nature, technology, and war. The metaphor of voyage, of travel to the unknown—whether to a physical, a social, or a psychological wilderness—will provide a unifying point of reference for our discussions of the texts by Conrad, Forster, Joyce, Lawrence, Mansfield, Rhys, and Woolf. This course is offered in the spring semester.
Credits: 1
|
American Modernism
This course explores the literature and culture of the United States in the early part of the 20th century, with its overlapping milieu of high modernists, Harlem Renaissance writers, young bohemians, and political radicals. We will examine the profound redefinitions of the self catalyzed by the rise of psychology, rapid urbanization and mechanization, and the Great War, and we'll discuss the public's response to the varied artistic movements of the period, from Primitivism's allure to the impersonal promise of Futurism. From painting to film, from Gertrude Stein's Three Lives to Langston Hughes's poetry and Meridel Le Sueur's reportage, this course will examine a variety of texts that contributed to the literary experimentation and extraordinary achievement of the period. Other readings may include but are not limited to Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, Zona Gale's Miss Lulu Bett, T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land and Other Poems, Willa Cather's The Professor's House, Ernest Hemingway's In Our Time, William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, Nella Larsen's Passing, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, and poetry by Williams, Taggard, Stevens, Frost, Cummings, Moore, and Millay. This course is offered in the fall semester.
Credits: 1
|
English Romanticism
Romanticism in all of its aspects and manifestations roared across Europe and America in the latter years of the 18th and first half of the 19th centuries. This course examines the poetry and prose of the major English Romantic writers and the development and elaboration of the romantic movement in England roughly during the years 1790 to 1840. We will read widely in the works of Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats with some attention to the shift from neo-classic to romantic poetic forms and critical premises and particular emphasis on the romantic imagination and its legacy, including its relevance to the contemporary world. This course is offered in the fall semester.
Credits: 1
|
ENG 330 Studies in Special Topics: Literature of War: Classics of VietNam War Literature
In this intermediate seminar, we will explore prize-winning plays, novels, and poetry about the Viet Nam War written by journalists, soldiers, and concerned citizens, Perspectives of the war will include those of Americans, Vietnamese, British, men, women, and minorities. Readings will place characters within contexts that include Viet Nam in the early 1950s and 1960s, combat from 1965 to 1975, and the war's aftermath for Americans and the Vietnamese. Some of our texts will include Graham Greene's The Quiet American, Robert Olen Butler's A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, Bao Ninh's The Sorrows of War, Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato, Larry Heinemann's Paco's Story, David Rabe's Sticks and Stones, Bobbie Anne Mason's In Country, and the poetry of W.D. Ehrhart and Yusef Komunyakaa. This course is offered in the fall semester.
Credits: 1
|
ENG 340 Studies in Individual Authors
George Bernard Shaw
In this half-course, we will study six plays or more by Shaw (1857-1950), each of which provides a different answer to his recurring question: what is wrong with civilization? Shaw's wit and satire make his frequently disagreeable answers both provocative and entertaining. Texts will include three major works, Man and Superman (1903), Heartbreak House (1917), St. Joan (1923). This course is offered in the spring semester.
Credits: 1/2
|
Jane Austen
In this half-course, we will study several of the six novels completed by Austen (1775-1817), paying particular attention to their reception by her contemporaries. We will continue by researching the print and electronic information about her reputation over the next two hundred years, focusing finally on a few of the fifteen or so film adaptations (and how they were reviewed) during the last thirty years of the 20th century. Throughout the half-course, we will be interested in finding out what her novels tell us about the craft of fiction, as well as what is either appealing or off-putting (or both) about her work at the beginning of a new century. This course is offered in the spring semester.
Credits: 1/2
|
Herman Melville
Although a major writer in the American literary canon, Melville seems almost non-canonical in his constant experimentation with literary form and questioning of societal conventions of race, gender, and class. In this course we will study a number of Melville's major works—Typee, Redburn, Moby Dick, Billy Budd—and several lesser known texts, particularly the poetry. In addition to enjoying the variety of stories Melville tells, meeting his distinctive characters, and exploring his unconventional ideas, we will consider Melville's life and times as well as the history of his literary reputation. This course is offered in the spring semester.
Credits: 1
|
ENG 350 Studies in Media: Literature and Film
Is the novel always better than its film adaptation? After an introduction to the art of film and a theoretical consideration of the similarities and differences between fiction and film, we will compare four or five novels with their film adaptations. This course is offered in the spring semester.
Credits: 1
|
ENG 360 Studies in Multicultural/National Literatures
African-American Literature: The Novel
African Americans have employed the novel form in a variety of ways. In this course we will sample this rich tradition in works by F.E.W. Harper, Charles Chessnutt, James Weldon Johnson, Jean Toomer, Nella Larsen, Zora Neal Hurston, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, and Charles Johnson. We will consider how each work reflects its particular historical/cultural moment as well as how it participates in the American literary tradition. This course is offered in the fall semester.
Credits: 1
|
Jewish American Literature
The contributions of Jewish American writers and filmmakers have been pervasive and significant. We will read selected fiction, poetry and plays, and see films that focus on the Jewish American experience. Authors and filmmakers may include Philip Roth, Bernard Malamud, Cynthia Ozick, David Mamet, Allen Ginsberg, and Woody Allen.
Credits: 1/2
|
Pen and Protest: Literature and Civil Rights
This course takes a literary approach to the study of the civil rights movement. Students will examine the autobiographies, plays, novels, and other various artistic expressions of the mid-1950s through 1980. The aim of the course is to explore the use of literature and art as means of political, cultural, and religious expression. Students are introduced to critical theory as well as black studies. This course is offered in the fall semester.
Credits: 1
|
ENG 370 Studies in Special Topics: Medieval/Modern Literature
Ezra Pound, James Joyce, and T.S. Eliot, arguably the greatest Modernists of 20th century literature in English, drew deep inspiration from the Middle Ages. C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams, a literary group known as the Inklings, drew even more directly on the Middle Ages in their rich fantasies. In this course, we'll read and study some medieval texts—Beowulf, Chretien's romance, Yvain, some troubadour poetry—and consider their refractions in one major 20th century text, Personae (Pound), as well as in more popular works, such as Tolkien's The Hobbit and John Gardner's Grendel. In the process, we will examine the literary relations between the medieval world and modernism and the diverse medieval worlds “invented” by several interesting 20th century writers.
Credits: 1
|
ENG 388 Independent Study in Literature
Any student who has completed at least one literature course, is in good standing academically, and is interested in pursuing a topic in English not normally available through departmental course offerings, is encouraged to apply to the department for permission to do independent study in literature. Such study usually involves not more than one course credit a semester, and entails a significant academic project submitted to a department member for a letter grade. Students must receive written approval of their project proposal from a department member before registering for the course. One-half or one course credit each semester.
Prerequisites: Consent of the instructor and approval of the department chair.
Credits: 1 or 1/2
|
ENG 397 Studies in Critical Reading
This course introduces English majors and minors to a number of literary
genres, makes available to them systematic critical approaches, and gives
them practice in scholarly and critical disciplines. Frequent written
exercises. All members of the English Department will occasionally assist
in classroom work. This course is offered in the fall and spring semester.
Please note: in future years this course will only be offered in the
spring semester.
Credits: 1
|
ENG 497 Seminar in English Literature
George Bernard Shaw
This seminar will focus on the kinds of comedy and satire that Shaw developed (and sometimes created) over the 56 years of his career as a playwright. It will also focus on the different but complementary ways Shaw devised to reach his public: performance and publication. Seminar members will research initial productions as well as revivals and how they were received by the public; seminar members will also research the reception of printed versions of plays with specially written prefaces. (Shaw was the first dramatist to assume readers could understand his plays as well or better than performance audiences.) Texts for the seminar will include works like Arms and the Man, Man and Superman, The Doctor's Dilemma, Heartbreak House, Back to Methuselah, Saint Joan, and In King Charles' Golden Days. Looking back over Shaw's career, his contemporary Thomas Mann affirmed: “Convinced that the aesthetic element creative joy is the most effective instrument of enlightened teaching, he tirelessly wielded the shining sword of his word and wit against the most appalling power threatening the triumph of the experiment stupidity.”
Credits: 1
|
Narrative Theory and Contemporary Memoir
Once upon a time, according to the historians of life-writing, only the Great wrote autobiographies and memoirs: great kings and leaders, great artists, great geniuses. But toward the end of the twentieth century, the Freudian/Modernist inquiry into subjectivity, the Marxist valorization of the common person's role in history, and poststructuralism's interest in social location as a (or the) determinant of identity all conspired to lay the groundwork for a burgeoning of the genre. At the turn of the millennium, the field includes dozens of permutations, but, in this seminar, we will concentrate on coming-of-age memoirs, using the insights of narrative theory to explore the choices writers have made (of incident, of persona, of chronological revelation, of tone). To understand first hand the demands of such choices, students will compose and workshop a ten-page work of life-writing in addition to completing a linked series of short scholarly essays that will prepare them to write their final seminar paper. Our texts may be drawn from among the following: Tobias Wolff's This Boy's Life, Lucy Grealy's Autobiography of a Face, Mary Karr's The Liar's Club, Li Young Lee's The Winged Seed, Kim Barnes's In the Wilderness, Peter Balakian's Black Dog of Fate , Kathryn Harrison's The Kiss, Mark Doty's Firebird, Greg Bottom's Angelhead, Antwone Fisher's Finding Fish, Marie Arana's American Chica, Jimmy Santiago Baca's A Place to Stand , Dave Eggers's A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Linda Hogan's The Woman Who Watches Over the World, and Nasdijj's The Blood Runs Like A River Through My Dreams. This course is offered in the fall semester.
Credits: 1
|
Advanced (Seminar) Courses
Two sections of English 497 are the two Advanced Courses offered every fall. These are seminars designed primarily for English majors (although occasionally English minors enroll in them). The topics vary depending upon the research and teaching interests of the faculty. They demand a high level of student involvement in research and discussion. Several short papers and a long critical essay are required. Please Note: the two seminars are only offered in the fall semester.
Ecocriticism and the Reading and Writing of News
The Greek philosopher Protagoras wrote, “Man is the measure of all things.” The past half century has brought that assumption into question. A whole body of literature and a science, ecology, have come into being, suggesting humans are not the measure, but that the earth is. In the past twenty years or so, a body of criticism has evolved to think about these earth-oriented texts as well as to ponder how our reading of literature and culture is, or should be, affected by our awareness of the fragility of earth's ecosystem's and the power of our technologies to subdue and destroy them. In this seminar, we will read widely in this criticism and consider how it illumines our interpretations of literary texts. Writing assignments will include several short essays and a final seminar paper. Our texts may be drawn from among the following: Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire, David Abram's The Spell of the Sensuous, Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Robert Pogue Harrison's Forests, Linda Hogan's The Book of Medicines, Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac, Gary Snyder's Backcountry and The Practice of the Wild, Terry Tempest Williams's Red and Refuge and selections from Glotfelty's Ecocriticism Reader. This course is offered in the fall semester.
Credits: 1
|
Place, Space, and Community in the Novels of Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy
The following passage, appearing in The Country and the City by British cultural critic Raymond Williams, suggests the focus of this advanced seminar on place, space, and people in Victorian literature: “‘Country' and ‘city' are very powerful words, and this is not surprising when we remember how much they seem to stand for the experience of human communities. In English ‘country' is both a nation and a part of a ‘land'; the country can be the whole society or its rural area. In the long history of human settlements, this connection between the land from which directly or indirectly we all get our living and the achievements of human society has been deeply known. And one of these achievements has been the city: the capital, the large town, a distinctive form of civilization.” Such a quote suggests some of the ways in which two particular places—the city and the country—influence different views of human connection, relationships with particular places and spaces, values, and ways of life. Places (buildings) and spaces...(landscapes and streetscapes) can create community as well as social division and individual isolation. They can evoke in literature images, associations, and interpretations of life that provide entry points in understanding social, political, cultural, and artistic concerns of a particular period. Two important spaces and their related buildings in Victorian England were the countryside and the large cities. The former was undergoing continued upheaval with changes in agricultural practices and the ongoing migration of people from the country to urban centers of commerce and industry. The latter—most notably London—was also undergoing upheaval as its spaces and places changed to accommodate the influx of people, continued growth as the commercial and mercantile center of the world, and emerging urban problems. Two Victorian authors are closely associated with these changing physical and social landscapes: Charles Dickens, whose life and writings were shaped by his London experiences, and Thomas Hardy, whose life and writings were shaped by his experiences of growing up and living in rural Dorset in southwest England. Each uses his relationships with space and place to establish settings and themes in his novels-especially an examination of the themes of community along with individual and class isolation. In this advanced seminar, we will examine through relevant novels, essays, art, architecture, historical documents, 19th-century periodicals, and literary/cultural criticism, the roles of rural and urban places and spaces in the novels of Charles Dickens (London in Bleak House and Our Mutual Friend) and Thomas Hardy (rural Wessex in Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Far From the Madding Crowd). Our critical angles of examining these texts will be cultural criticism and new historicism as we focus on major themes of community and isolation within Dickens's and Hardy's novels and within the nation's changing social, political, economic, religious, and intellectual milieus. Supplemental texts will include chapters from Raymond Williams's The Country and the City, Richard Altick's Victorian People and Ideas, Howard Newby's Country Life: A Social History of Rural England, and Peter Ackroyd's London: The Biography. Class activities will include discussion, student reports, extensive library research, short writing projects, and a major seminar paper. Thus, the following quote from William J. Palmer’s Dickens and New Historicism establishes a central metaphor for our class: “Part of the uneasiness Dickens felt was with the surface consensus of Victorian life, which one of Dicken’s strenuous night walks through the city — with all its poverty, crime, and confrontation — would immediately dispel. But the uneasiness that Dickens felt was also occasioned by a personal need to understand, from the bottom up, the truth of his times expressed in the voices of the streets.” As a class, we will be taking “strenuous” literal and figurative walks through the city and country. This course is offered in the fall semester.
Credits: 1
|
Gender Criticism
In what ways do conceptions of “masculinity” and “femininity” shape the way we create and respond to texts? In this seminar, we will consider this question, one that has been central to literary study for the past two decades. We will also look at gender criticism in relation to other critical currents like formalism, psychoanalysis, multiculturalism, new historicism, gay studies, and cultural studies. During the first half of the semester we will read and view a range of works to create a common context for our discussions. (Writers and filmmakers might be chosen from among Shakespeare, Austen, Melville, Dickinson, Cather, Hemingway, E.M. Forster, John Ford, Richard Wright, Anne Sexton, Russell Banks, Jane Campion, Toni Morrison). The second half of the semester will be devoted to individual research projects shared with the class. This course is offered in the spring semester.
Credits: 1
|
Science Fiction Studies
This senior-level seminar will begin with a scholarly study of Phillip K. Dick, one of the most important American authors of science fiction. In the second part of the course, each student will select a well-known science fiction author as the subject of an intensive 15-20 page scholarly essay. All students will be required to take responsibility for presenting their work, both written and verbal, during each class period. There will be frequent short writing assignments and oral reports in the early part of the course and a series of drafts and presentations of the final essay, during the second half. One highlight of the course will be a visit to the offices of a major science fiction journal and a discussion with the editors about current scholarship. Since the subject is futuristic, students will be encouraged to draw upon digital technologies as a means of presenting their research. Class open to junior and senior English majors only. This course is offered in the fall semester.
Credits: 1
|
Postmodern Chaucer
The focus of this seminar will be Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The first part of the course will be devoted to close reading and analysis of many well-known tales, such as those by the Miller, the Reeve, the Merchant, the Wife of Bath, the Friar, the Summoner, the Clerk, and the Merchant. We will consider the effect of modern critical perspectives on our readings: what can we learn from historical, psychological, gendered, and structural approaches? In the second half of the course, each student will select a particular Canterbury Tale which will become the subject of a class presentation and a substantial critical essay. The best essays will be nominated for competition at a national Medieval conference.
Prerequisites: English 497; previous experience with Chaucer's English
Credits: 1
|