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Department of English |
Fall 2006 Course Offerings
ENG 101: College Composition
ENG 001: Writing Workshop
Instructors: Staff
Anticipated Size: 20 students per section, approximately 36 sections per semester.
Prerequisites: Entering students place themselves into either ENG 001 or ENG 101. Guidelines to be used as the basis for this decision are mailed to incoming students several months before the start of the semester. Students with extremely strong backgrounds in writing may attempt credit by examination through Jerry Ellis in the Onward Office.
Course Description:
ENG 101: An introductory course in college writing in which students practice the ways in which writing and reading serve to expand, clarify, and order experience and knowledge. Particular attention is given to analytic and persuasive writing. To complete the course successfully, students must write all assignments and must have portfolios of their best work approved by a committee of readers other than their classroom teachers. Especially well-prepared students will be encouraged to submit portfolios before the end of the semester; if their work is of exceptionally high quality, they will be granted early completion.
ENG 001 is a course for students who need to develop and practice the basic writing habits necessary for successful university-level writing. Successful completion of this course should enable students to do well in ENG 101. The course grants three semester credit hours, hours that do not count toward
graduation but do count toward semester load.
ENG 129 (01): Topics in English: Reading Drama
Instructor: Brucher
Anticipated Size: 25
Prerequisite: First-year students only.
Course Description: This division of ENG 129 is an introductory course in the nature and variety of drama, with a special emphasis on reading drama imaginatively. Through analysis of 12 or so plays, we'll explore how the elements of drama--language, gesture, character, plot, spectacle--work to create meaning. The course covers ancient and modern plays, but the emphasis is on language & form rather than on theatre or literary history. We'll read the plays as literature but with performance in mind. Consequently, we'll spend a lot of class time discussing effects of language, tone, and gesture on character and ideas. This course proceeds by discussion, demonstration, and frequent writing. Videos of some plays will be available for viewing in Fogler Library. Plan to attend Maine Masque and other local productions of plays.
Probable Texts:
Aristophanes, Lysistrata, translated by Douglas Parker (NAL/Mentor)
Anton Chekhov, Uncle Vanya, adapteded by David Mamet (Grove)
Caryl Churchill, Top Girls (Methuen)
R. S. Gwynn, editor, Drama: A Pocket Anthology (Penguin Academics/Longman)
Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author (Dover)
George Bernard Shaw, Arms and the Man (Dover)
Evaluation:
Four 3-5 pp. graded papers based on frequent 1-2 pp. ungraded commentaries.
ENG 129 (02): Topics in English: Introduction to Fiction
Instructor: Rogers
Prerequisite: First-year students only.
Course Description: This class will serve as a basic introduction to fiction, focusing on the short story to practice close reading of literary texts and writing of critical discourse.
Required Texts: To be determined.
Evaluation: Quizzes, midterm, final, reading journal or blog, interpretive essays, and presentations.
ENG 131 (01): The Nature of Story
Instructor: Wilson
Anticipated Size: 350
Prerequisite: None
Course Description: Explores the fundamental activity of why and how we create, tell and read/listen to stories. An exploration of the various ways storytelling enters our lives: through music, art, literature, photography, history, film and song. We’ll use a technology appropriate to navigate through the many ways these arts weave their stories, from swing to blues, from country to classical, from film to novels, from painting to architecture. Using an anthology of world literature as a platform, we shall attempt to illuminate the centrality of storytelling to our culture. In addition to the reading, then, we’ll view films and other visual material and listen to stories in a variety of spoken and musical forms--discussing it all as we enjoy the art of storytelling. We’ll also have live guest storytellers.
Required Texts: An anthology of world literature and clickers; other material will be provided by the instructor.
Evaluation: Two exams, both taken electronically through webct.
ENG 131 (02): The Nature of Story
Instructor: Whelan
Anticipated Size: 105
Prerequisite: None
Course Description: Explores the fundamental activity of why and how we create, tell and read/listen to stories. Readings may include selections from short stories, novel, film, song, and poetry. Readings will come primarily from the modern world, from the western cultural tradition and from a variety of other cultures. (Satisfies the General Education Human Values and Social Context Western Cultural Tradition and Cultural Diversity and International Perspectives Requirements.)
Required Texts: To be announced
Evaluation: Two exams and two reaction papers
ENG 170 (3 Sections): Foundations of Literary Analysis
(See University Course Schedule for CED offerings)
Instructors: Staff
Anticipated Size: 20
Prerequisite: ENG 101
Course Description: This course is designed as a close reading of literary texts for students preparing to become English majors. We will explore how conventions of genre, form and style work in literature and develop a vocabulary for understanding and communicating ideas about literature. We will write regularly throughout the semester to practice the critical discourse expected of English majors.
Required Texts: To beannounced
Evaluation: Frequent papers; there will be some quizzes as well.
ENG 205 (5 Sections): Introduction to Creative Writing
Instructors: Staff
Prerequisite: ENG 101 and by permission only
Course Description: An introduction to the writing of poetry and fiction. Students will be expected to complete a body of work during the semester. Student writing will be workshopped in class.
Required Texts: To be announced
Evaluation: An end of term portfolio of work will receive a letter grade.
ENG 212 (5 Sections): Persuasive & Analytical Writing
(See University Course Schedule for CED Offerings)
Instructors: Staff
Anticipated Size: 20 per section
Prerequisite: ENG 101 and at least sophomore standing
Course Description: Designed for students and wanting practice in those forms of expository, analytical, and persuasive prose required in writing answers to essay test questions, term papers, research projects, and extended arguments.
Required Texts: To be announced.
Evaluation: An end of term portfolio of work will receive a letter grade.
ENG 222 (01) & (02): Reading Poems
Instructor: Kail (01), Moxley (02)
Anticipated Size: 25
Prerequisite: ENG 101 or equivalent
Course Description: Required of all English majors, this is an introduction to the art of poetry for readers. The course focuses on helping students develop critical skills particularly suited to the interpretation and analysis of poetry. We will examine the function of poetic conventions--including figures of speech, meter, rhythm, and rhyme--in a variety of different poetic forms--both traditional and innovative--from many eras. We will also discuss the rhetorical stances that poets assume and the responses that poets seek to evoke in their readers. The goal of the course is to instill a lifelong love of poetry in its students.
Required Texts: To be announced
Evaluation: To be decided
ENG 229 (01): Topics in Literature:
Utopias
Instructor: Jacobs
Anticipated Size: 35
Prerequisite(s): 3 hours of English
Course Description: From the Plato’s Republic to Fruitopia, human beings are always imagining a better “someplace else.” Every culture has created utopian visions, whether in myths of paradise or the Golden Age, in political projections of the ideal republic, in works of utopian fiction, in architects' drawings of ideal cities, in advertisers' representations of happy consumers, or in concrete projects such as intentional communities. These imaginings come true with surprising frequency--sometimes in beneficial forms and sometimes in disastrous ones. In this course we will explore the social and personal functions of such social dreaming, read literary utopias and dystopias, learn about some intentional communities, and refine our own visions of "the good place" through encountering the visions of others. These powerful visions of hope and of fear can encourage us to see our own culture with new eyes and to consider the benefits and the dangers of utopian projection.
Likely Texts (subject to change):
Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower (Warner)
Thomas More, Utopia (Penguin)
Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time (Fawcett)
Kim Stanley Robinson, Pacific Edge (Tor)
A film, probably eitherThe Truman Show or The Village
Tao Qian, "The Peach Blossom Spring"; Bernadette Mayer, selections from Utopia; Ursula K. LeGuin, "The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas," and other xerox and Internet readings, to be announced
Evaluation:
Class participation, in-class writings and on-line postings, a group presentation, three five-page papers.
ENG 229 (860): Literature from the Viet Nam War
Instructor: Whelan
Anticipated Size: 50
Prerequisite(s): 3 hours of English
Course Description: This course is designed to allow the student to gain an understanding of the literature that has grown from the war in Viet Nam. In this regard, it will focus on the responses of the human imagination to war, specifically the American and Vietnamese experiences in Viet Nam. The course will explore the tension between despair and hope that is created as the imagination attempts to reconcile facts of war and earlier lessons regarding humanity, goodness and truth. It will also explore reactions of both participants and non-participants in the aftermath of the war. To the extent possible in a course focusing on literature, students should gain an appreciation of the social, cultural and historical context of the war.
Additionally, the course will provide students with tools to use when critically reading works of fiction.
Since there will be two out-of -class writing assignments, as well as a prelim and a final which will provide an opportunity to write in a classroom setting, it seems fitting that a final objective should be to improve written expression, using essays of moderate length to do so.
Texts: To be announced.
Evaluations: There will be two papers of 750 words and each will account for 20% of the grade. Topics will be provided, but students will also be allowed to choose their own with the permission of the instructor. To be completed successfully, these essays will require a critical approach which demonstrates an understanding of major themes and the ways in which the authors convey these themes.
Additionally, there will be a prelim and a final exam. Together they will count for 40% of the grade. The nature of these exams as well as the respective weights will be discussed in class.
Attendance is expected. The class participation grade (20% of the final grade) will be based on a student’s attendance record, possible periodic quizzes on the reading, and the quality as well as the quantity of contributions to the class discussion.
ENG 231 (01): Western Traditional Literature: Homer-Renaissance
Instructor: Wilson
Anticipated Size: 100
Prerequisite: 3 hours of English
Course Description: An introduction to the foundations of the western literary and cultural tradition from Stone Age Europe and its matriarchal culture witnessed in the profusion of goddess figures; through the heritage of ancient Babylon and Gilgamesh; to the drama of ancient Greek art, literature, and culture; to the religious forces of the Hebrew and the Christian; and then to the power and vitality of the Roman Empire; ending with the push into the modern with Dante’s Divine Comedy.
· Ancient Babylon, Athens, Jerusalem, and Rome will become the icons for this trip, one using WebCt and the other various technological resources so that we may both read the literature and view the art and drama of this period. Enhancing the classroom work will be video lectures by UMaine specialists Tina Passman, Classics; Michael Grillo, Art; Jay Bregman, History, and Michael Howard, Philosophy. Additionally, we’ll view Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and Aristophanes’ Lysistrada on film.
. We’ll explore these foundations within the context of their history and geography in an effort to come to some understanding as to the significance of these cultures and literature to the modern western world.
Required Texts: see http://www.umaine.edu/victorianlinks/231/231descriptions.htm.
Evaluations: Students will take three online exams
ENG 235 (01): Literature & the Modern World
Instructor: Cowan
Anticipated Size: 35
Prerequisite: 3 hours of literature or permission
Course Description: A world in crisis: This course will study the modern period as an era of political, religious, sexual, social, environmental and artistic crisis. We will examine works of art as responses to the upheavals brought about by wars, rapid industrial and technological growth, new class structures, environmental degradation, and redesigned sexual roles. While the greater share of the course work will be devoted to twentieth-century literature (mostly fiction and poetry), we will also spend class periods looking at other artistic mediums including the visual arts and film. The course will likely focus reading a variety of texts from several different modes, such as war literature, literature of the American West, nature literature, feminist literature, detective literature, etc.
Texts: To be announced.
Evaluation: One or two class presentations, once paper, quizzes, prelim, and final.
ENG 241 (01): American Literature Survey:
Beginning Through Romantics
Instructor: Friedlander
Anticipated Size: 50
Prerequisites: 3 hours of literature or permission. ENG 170 recommended.
Course Description: This course will serve as an introduction to the study of American literature and culture before the Civil War. We will read major works of poetry, fiction, drama, and nonfiction prose from colonial America and the early national period through to the 1860s and sample visual arts and music from the same period. We will also read a contemporary collection of stories drawn from Native American oral traditions and see an early-twentieth-century adaptation for film of one of our primary texts. Classes meet at the same time as HTY 103, taught by Prof. Liam Riordan, and our groups will combine for joint lectures on several occasions during the semester.
Probable Texts : To be announced.
Evaluation: To be announced
ENG 244 (01): Writers of Maine
Instructor: Irvine
Prerequisite: ENG 101 or equivalent
Course Description: I've heard living in Maine compared to living in a corner, or living on the edge, or living on an island. If any of these descriptions is valid, our geography must have affected our writers and our literature. Accordingly, in this course we'll read essays, novels, short stories and poetry in which the setting figures predominantly; we'll try to determine in what ways that setting has left its mark. Students will also, I hope, gain a greater appreciation of our state's rich literary heritage. Finally, we'll take a look at the recent controversy in Maine fiction: what is the REAL Maine, and who's writing about it?
Required Text: To be announced.
Evaluation: Two prelims, two short essays, one research project.
ENG 248 (981 & 985-): Literature & The Sea
Instructor: Kail
Anticipated Size: 25
Prerequisite: 3 hours of literature or permission.
Course Description: This seminar is about human identity as it is shaped through our contact with the sea. This course will introduce students to at least a few of the major writ4ers who have taken the sea as their setting, and indeed, their primary character. Be prepared for bold voyaging on the tumultuous and sometimes dangerous seas of the human imaginations!
Probable Required Texts: Tania Aebi, Maiden Voyage
Joseph Conrad,, The Secret Sharer and Other Stories
Eugene O’Neill, The Long Voyage Home and Other Plays
Stephen Crane, The Open Boat
Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
Samuel Coleridege,Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Handouts of poetry and other readings.
Additional Readings: To be announced.
Evaluations: Two essays, a midterm and a final exam, class participation
ENG 251 (981 & 985) English Literary Survey:
Beginning Through Neoclassicism
Instructor: Brinkley
Anticipated Size: 38
Prerequisite: 3 hours of literature or permission
Course Description: The major patterns of development within the English literary tradition, with emphasis on the cultural and historical forces which have shaped this tradition.
Texts: To be announced.
Evaluation: To be announced.
ENG 256 (01): British Women's Literature
Instructor: Rogers
Anticipated Size: 35
Prerequisite: 3 hours of college literature or permission
Course Description: This is an introduction to literature by women of Britain and former British colonies from the Middle Ages to the present day—a group including some of the classic writers in English. We’ll look at their poetry and fiction not only for their intrinsic pleasures and insights, but also to gain a sense of how literary conventions and gender ideology have interacted with women’s experiences to shape and inform their writing. Some discussion of women’s history will be included.
Required Texts: The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women
Two novels to be selected.
Evaluation: Three 5-6 page take-home exams, quizzes, in-classes writings, and participation.
ENG 271 (01): The Act of Interpretation
Instructor: Billitteri
Anticipated Size: 25
Prerequisite: ENG 170
Focus of this course: Acts of interpretations are historical-specific acts of cultural intervention, shaped by the cultural horizon of the reader. This is granted, and even axiomatic, but equally granted is the fact that the reader’s horizon is always informed and deeply transformed by the encounter with literary texts. In other words, acts of interpretations are historical-specific acts of cultural intervention that bring the interaction between text and reader to a temporary, if significant, resolution. The dual constitution of this interaction and the dialectics of its processual unfolding will be the focus of our course.
General Course Description: ENG 271 looks closely at significant works of literary theory, combining classic works of individual critics to clusters of works by individual schools, in our case, he5rmeneutics, poststructuralism and semiotics. The close and systematic study of literary theory is meant to enhance the students’ awareness of the shaping function of theoretical perspectives in interpreting literary texts, and to facilitate the encounter with the rich complexity of the philosophical foundations of literary interpretation.
Texts: To be announced.
Evaluation: Attendance, participation in workshops, three short papers, final exam.
ENG 271 (02) : Act of Interpretation
Instructor: Brinkley
Anticipated Size: 30
Prerequisite: ENG 170
Course Description: An introduction to critical theory. Study of individual critics or schools of literary theory. Application of these interpretative strategies to literary texts.
Texts: To be announced.
Evaluation: To be announced.
ENG 280 (01): Introduction to Film
Instructor: J. Evans
Anticipated Size: 30
Prerequisite: 3 hours of literature or permission
Course Description: The course will examine the growth of narrative film from its beginnings to the present. Emphasis is placed on developing an understanding of film techniques and analysis. The course will concentrate on how films make their meanings.
Required Texts: Louis Giannetti, Understanding Film, 10 ed. (Prentice Hall)
Please note: The primary texts are the narrative films themselves.
Evaluation: Exams, exercises, out-of-class final, participation, and attendance.
ENG 307 (01): Writing Fiction
Instructor: Irvine, Alex
Anticipated Size: 16
Prerequisite: ENG 205 or 206 or permission
Course Description: The writing of fiction, for students of demonstrated ability. Submission of writing sample.
Required Texts: To be determined.
Evaluation: Quality of work, demonstrated progress, attendance and participation.
ENG 309 (01): Writing Creative Non-Fiction
Instructor: Irvine, M.
Anticipated Size: 20
Prerequisite: ENG 205, 206, 212 or permission
Course Description: Sometimes called “The Fourth Genre,” creative non-fiction uses the strategies of fiction (plot, dialog, characters, etc.) in writing about factual subjects: autobiography, biography, travel, science/nature, cultural issues, current events. We’ll read creative non-fiction and also write it.
Required Texts: To be selected.
Evaluation: 5 essays and class participation.
ENG 3l7: Business and Technical Writing
Instructors: Staff
Anticipated Size: 20 per section (15 sections)
Prerequisite(s): ENG 101 or equivalent; juniors and seniors in declared majors only.
Course Description: This course helps prepare students to communicate effectively in the workplace. Students become familiar with the processes, forms, and styles of writing in professional environments as they work on memoranda, business correspondence, instructions, proposals, reports and similar materials. Special attention is paid to the fundamental skills of problem-solving and analyzing and responding to purpose and audience. Some sections may be taught in a computer-equipped classroom and some may incorporate electronic communication, such as FirstClass.
Required Texts: To be selected by each instructor.
Evaluation: Several short written assignments and one major report.
ENG 395 (01): English Internship (Peer Tutoring)
Instructor: Kail
Anticipated Size: 15
Prerequisite: Recommendation from faculty
Course Description: Students in English internship will learn how to become effective peer writing tutors. Students will first experience collaborative work among themselves involving essay writing, critical reading of peers' essays, log-writing, and discussion. The second phase of the course will involve supervised peer tutoring in the English Department's Writing Center.
Required Texts: Ken Bruffee, A Short Course in Writing
Additional Readings: Selected essays on composition theory and practice.
Evaluation: Students will be evaluated on four to five argumentative essays and the written peer critiques that are part of the collaborative, peer review process.
ENG 405 (01): Directed Writing (Creative)
Instructor: Hunting
Anticipated Size: 20
Prerequisite: ENG 205, 307 or 308 and permission
Course Description: This is an upper-level creative writing course primarily for senior English majors with an emphasis in creative writing. In this course, I meet one-on-one with each student once a week to go over the work. Generally, a student in ENG 405 is working on his or her final manuscript which is a requirement for creative writing students.
Required Texts: None
Evaluation: The grade for this course is determined by the quality of the work the student produces during the semester and the dedication of the student.
ENG 406 (01): Advanced Creative Writing
Instructor: Kress
Anticipated Size: 15
Prerequisite: Permission only.
Course Description: English 406 will focus on fiction writing at the advanced level and will include a variety of experiments and exercises in fiction, readings of fiction by published authors (as well as writing about fiction by fiction writers), and regular workshops for student fiction. Each class member will write a 25-30 page portfolio of fiction
Required Texts: Italo Calvino, Cosmicomics
Ben Marcus, ed., The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories
Christina Millettti, The Religious and Other Stories
Numerous Handouts from Instructor
Evaluation: Letter grade based on class participation and commitment to revision.
ENG 418 (01): Topics in Professional Writing
Writing Business & Technical Procedures
Instructor: Staff
Anticipated Size: 20
Prerequisite: ENG 317 and permission
Course Description: Topics vary according to changes in the field, expertise of the faculty, and needs of the students. Possible topics include editing, document design and desktop publishing, and professional writing in intercultural contexts. May be repeated for credit.
Texts: To be announced.
Evaluation: To be announced.
ENG 430 (01): Topics in European Literature:
Modern and Contemporary European Drama
Instructor: Billitteri
Prerequisite: 6 hours of literature or permission
Anticipated Size: 25
Course Description: This course covers modern and contemporary European drama from symbolism to theater of the absurd and the new political theater. We will read the works of Belgian, Scandinavian, French, Spanish, German, British, and Italian playwrights: Maeterlinck, Strindberg, Jarry, Pirandelio, Lorca, Brecht, Beckett, Pinter, Churchill, Fo and Rame. Theater is not merely a book art: ad hoc screenings of theatrical performances of four plays (by Pirandello, Beckett, Brecht, Pinter) will increase our understanding and enjoyment of these works. Students will leave with an appreciation for the complex world of the modern stage, and the Tran formative influence of the European avant-garde theater on all areas of artistic production.
Tests: To be announced.
Evaluations: Attendance, weekly responses, class presentation, final research project with annotated bibliography.
ENG 436 (01): Topics in Canadian Literature: Eight Contemporary Canadian Poets
Instructor: Norris
Anticipated Size: 25
Prerequisite: 6 hours of literature or permission
Course Description: In this course we'll be taking a look at the work of eight contemporary Canadian poets who appeared on the scene in the 1970s and 1980s. These are the poets who come AFTER Atwood, Ondaatje and bpNichol.
No prior knowledge of Canadian literature is necessary.
Required Texts:
Mountain Tea Van Toorn
Short Journey Upriver Toward Oshida Borson
News & Smoke Thesen
The Centre: Poems 1970-2000 McKinnon
The Beautiful Chemical Waltz Gold
Short Talks Carson
Glass, Irony and God Carson
The Beauty Of The Husband Carson
Little Theatres Moure
Sheep's Vigil By A Fervent Person Moure
Hotel Montreal Norris
Evaluation: 3 papers
ENG 440 (01): Major American Writers
Instructor: Kress
Anticipated Size: 25
Prerequisite: 6 hours of literature or permission
Course Description: We will look at the ways three major American writers—Gayle Jones, Thomas Pynchon, Ishmael Reed—have shaped and defined contemporary American fiction. In terms of style, language, structure, and topic, each of these writers has boldly staked out a daring territory that is challenging and even disturbing, defying the status quo of both American society and of traditional paradigms for fiction.
Each student will be responsible for one in-class presentation and for two 8-10 page critical papers. Revision of written work will be emphasized. May be repeated for credit when writers differ.
Required Texts: Gayl Jones, Corregidora
Gayl Jones, Eva’s Man
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
Thomas Pynchon, V.
Ishmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo
Ishmael Reed, Flight to Canada
Ishmael Reed, The Terrible Twos
Evaluation: Letter grade based on class participation, quality of critical thought, and commitment to revision.
ENG 445 (01): The American Novel
Instructor: Evans, J.
Anticipated Size: 25
Prerequisite: 6 hours of literature
Course Description: The class will examine closely themes, attitudes, and techniques that contribute to the development of the American novel of the 19th and 20th centuries. The classes will emphasize discussion and class participation. Particular attention will be paid to narrative techniques. The emphasis throughout is on close analysis of the texts.
Sample Texts: We will read eight or nine substantial works; readings will probably be chosen from among the following:
Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Norton Critical)
Stephen Crane, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets
Willa Cather, My Antonia, (Houghton Mifflin)
William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury, (Vintage)
Vladimir Nabakov, Pale Fire, (Vintage)
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, (Dell)
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God, (Harper)
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Love of the Last Tycoon, (Scribners)
Henry James, Portrait of a Lady (Norton Critical)
Harold Frederic, Damnation of Theron Ware
Additional Readings: Hibbard & Holman, A Handbook to Literature (on library reserve)
Evaluation: Attendance, participation, commentaries and exercises, papers.
ENG 450: Cultural Borderlands
– Contemporary American Literature
Instructor: Staff
Anticipated Size: 25
Prerequisite(s): 6 hours of literature or permission
Course Description: Explores the psychic middle ground where tensions between competing claims for identity, myth and belonging play out. The tenacity of cultural distinctions, the deep hunger of people for roots, and conflicts between national and cultural mythos will be explored in fiction and nonfiction from contemporary American writers whose native cultural traditions strongly inform their work, including Franco-American, Native American, Latino-Latina and African-American writers.
Texts: Books to be announced.
Evaluation: To be announced.
ENG 457 (01) : Victorian Literature and Culture
Instructor: Wilson
Anticipated Size: 25
Prerequisite: 6 hours of literature or permission.
Course Description: Victorian Romanticism and the Visual Imagination:
• The Eighteenth-Century “Grand Tour”: Roman ruins and the British sensibility.
• The English garden: From Versailles, to the Picturesque, to Burke and the Sublime.
• Rousseau and Blake.
• Paintings of Thomas Gainsborough.
• Horace Walpole and the gothic and the pagan.
• Wordsworth, “Tintern Abbey,” Preface to Lyrical Ballads, 1800.
. William Blake.
• Paintings of Joshua Reynolds, John Constable and William Girtin.
• The 1840s: the emergence of photography, especially in the work of Henry Fox Talbert.
• Ruskin’s Modern Painters.
• Paintings of J. M. W. Turner.
• Dickens’s Pickwick Papers.
• The Pre-Raphaelites—in poetry and art—with an emphasis on D. G. Rossetti, William Holman
Hunt, John Everett Millais, Algernon Swinburne, William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones, and
J.W. Waterhouse.
• The journey to inner nature, the landscape of the mind: The “aesthetic” end of the century:
Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde, and Aubrey Beardsley: decadent and perverse? Does Freud belong
here?
Using the resources of the Web and the technology of WebCt and PowerPoint, we’ll explore,
first, the creation of the Eighteenth-century platform from which the British romantics launched
their verbal and visual pyrotechnics, and then explore the Victorian reaction in image and word
to the romanticism of Blake, Keats and Wordsworth and their view of the natural world.
Evaluation: weekly electronic interactive responses to the reading; final paper of about fifteen pages—all on WebCt. Chance to have the final paper published on my website.
ENG 459: Contemporary British Literature
Instructor: Cowan
Anticipated Size: 25
Prerequisite(s): 6 hours of literature or permission
Course Description: The course begins with a review of modernism and its place in the English tradition. It will continue with a consideration of postmodernism and the various trends in English literature since the 1930’s. Readings will include fiction, drama, poetry, and essays. The course involves reading and writing about literature.
Required Texts: To be selected. Following are some of the possible authors: W. H. Auden, Samuel Beckett, Henry Green, Nadine Gordimer, Seamus Heaney, George Orwell, Muriel Spark, Dylan Thomas, Rebecca West.
Evaluation: Your grade will be based on attendance, participation, weekly quizzes, one or two short papers, two medium length papers, class presentations, midterm, and a final.
ENG 499: Capstone Experience in English
Anticipated Size: 50
Prerequisite: None
Course Description: Student teaching has been designated as Capstone. Three courses, ENG 405, 406, and 395, have been designated as Capstone courses if certain conditions are met. For ENG 405 and 406, students must submit and have approved "a finished manuscript (e.g., a novella or a collection of poems or stories)." For ENG 395, students must also tutor in The Writing Center for one semester. Because these three courses can be taken as either a Capstone experience or a regular course, a bookkeeping issue has arisen. To resolve this issue, a zero credit, pass/fail course, ENG 499, has been created to make the distinction between those using one of these three courses as a Capstone and those simply taking it a regular course.
Accordingly, students should enroll in ENG 499 for the semester in which they plan to tutor in The Writing Center or complete the required manuscript.
Required Texts: None
Evaluation: None
ENG 505 (01): Graduate Writing Workshop
Instructor: Moxley
Anticipated Size: 15
Prerequisite(s): Graduate standing or permission
Course Description: This course is an advanced workshop in the practice and theory of writing poetry. It is intended to help you improve your artfulness as a poet and your acumen as a reader. You will also be asked to begin the process of articulating your poetics, and to address the key formal and metaphysical questions facing any serious artist.
Required Texts (subject to change):
Yeats. Selected Poems
H. D. Selected Poems
Crane, Hart. White Buildings
Stevens, Wallace. The Palm at the End of the Mind
Duncan, Robert. The Opening of the Field
Spicer, Jack. Collected Books
Howe, Susan. The Europe of Trusts
Notley, Alice. The Descent of Alette
Evaluation: Letter grade based on quality of critical and creative work, in-class presentation, and participation.
ENG 541 (01): Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Herman Melville
Instructor: Friedlander
Anticipated Size: 10
Prerequisite: Graduate standing in English or permission
Course Description: In this seminar we will study the work of three significant poets from the second half of the nineteenth century: Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Herman Melville, Other writers from the same period are equally deserving of attention. What recommends these three in particular is their early articulation, in very different ways, of a modernist sensibility. In form, feeling, and attitude, as well as in their evocations of social and metaphysical crisis, their work speaks to us in a manner we still recognize as our own.
Required Texts: We will read two versions of Leaves of Grass, examples of Walt Whitman’s prose, and excerpts from his lively conversations with Horace Traubel; we will also read all of Emily Dickinson’s poetry and a substantial number of her letters. The poetry of Herman Melville is more forbidding on first acquaintance and his total output too voluminous for meaningful abridgement, so we will focus instead on a single work: Clarel, a Pilgrimmage to the Holy Land., a long narrative poem in rhymed iambic tetrameter, viewed by a small but growing number of admirers as one of the finest philosophical poems in the English Language.
Evaluation: Three brief response papers and a final project on some aspect of nineteenth-century American poetry (topic to be chosen in consultation with the instructor); students will also be responsible for a prospectus and annotated bibliography preparatory to their final projects. Experiments in scholarship and editorial work are welcome.
ENG 542: Studies in Multicultural American Literature:
Intertextuality in Native American Literature
Instructor: Lukens
Anticipated class size: 10
Prerequisite: Graduate Standing or Permission.
Course Description: When reading across any cultural divide, one needs to find information on unfamiliar contexts and influences on the work's creation. Writers of Native American heritage have sometimes written in response to the influence of mainstream Anglo-American texts or authors. However, often the influence is a text or narrative from within the tribal culture, both distinct from and ancestral to the modern work. We will read this semester with emphasis on the wide range of connections among texts and people in North America.
Texts: will probably include:
James Stevens, Combing the Snakes from His Hair
Roger Williams, A Key into the Language of America
Gerald Vizenor, Earthdivers (or another title)
Louise Erdrich, Love Medicine
Thomas King, Green Grass, Running Water
Mary Rowlandson, The Captivity and Restauration . . .etc
Hanay Geiogamah, ed. Stories of Our Way (anthology of plays)
Leslie Silko, Ceremony
N. Scott Momaday, House Made of Dawn
Sherman Alexie, The Business of Fancydancing (film)
Evaluation: Weekly writing & discussion in response to reading; one in-class presentation of a secondary perspective on the week's reading; term paper or final project.
ENG 553 (01): Shakespeare and His Contemporaries
Instructor: Brucher
Anticipated Size: 15
Prerequisite(s): Graduate standing or permission
Course Description:
This course offers relatively broad reading in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama (roughly 1587 - 1642) and scholarship. To develop a sense of this once popular (and still bold, quirky) drama we'll explore the conventions of revenge tragedy, domestic tragedy, and comedy of social life. Over and over the plays raise issues of class and gender, justice and desire. We'll consider Shakespeare as a working dramatist among his contemporaries, sometimes using him as a foil for his contemporaries. Oral presentations and class discussions will define interpretive problems and test effects of the plays against critical principles and historical evidence.
Required Texts:
David Bevington, ed., English Renaissance Drama (Norton, 2002). (Plays by Marlowe, Kyd, Dekker, Jonson, Middleton, Webster, and Ford, among others.)
David Scott Kastan & Peter Stallybrass, eds., Staging the Renaissance: Reinterpretations of Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama (Routledge, 1991).
William Shakespeare, any recent edition of the plays.
Evaluation: Two oral presentations, two short (4-5 pp.) papers (perhaps based on the oral presentations), and a long (12 pp.) paper.
ENG 556(01): English Romanticism
Instructor: Brinkley
Anticipated Size: 10
Prerequisite(s): Graduate Standing in English or permission.
Course Description: A survey of the six major romantic poets with attention to the critical writings of the period.
Texts: To be determined.
Evaluation: To be determined.
ENG 606: Rhetorical Theory
Instructor: Stormer
Anticipated Size: 10
Prerequisite(s): Permission
Course Description: Survey of basic issues in and the contributions of major theorists, historical and contemporary.
Texts: To be announced.
Evaluation: To be announced.
ENG 693 (01): Teaching College Composition
Instructor: Burnes
Anticipated Size: 15
Prerequisite: Graduate standing and appointment as a Teaching Assistant in the Department of English.
Course Description: A seminar in the theory and practice of teaching ENG 101, College Composition. Seminar participants actively review their understanding of the conventions and contexts of academic writing, practice and critique ways of responding to student writing and of planning sequences of writing assignments, and begin to read in the discipline of composition studies. They pay particular attention to current scholarship on processes of writing, on reading and writing as functions of academic discourse communities, and on the institutional setting of writing instruction. Throughout the semester, they keep teaching journals, plan assignments sequences with theoretical justifications and present these to their peers, compile annotated bibliographies on topics of interest, and write position papers on selected aspects of their teaching.
Required Texts: To be decided
Evaluation: Teaching journal, assignment sequence with accompanying rationale, annotated bibliography with critical introduction, two position papers, and seminar presentation: both oral and written.
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