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Upper Division Rotation
305-001 Advanced Composition TR 11-12:15 CRN: 20727
505-001 CRN: 20728
David Carithers
From student editorials in The Pacer to academic essays written by tenured professors, much of what we read and write is expository prose, or non-fiction writing that attempts to explain something. Students in English 305/505 will study the principles of the various modes of expository composition. As we will discover together, there is plenty of room for creativity within these modes of writing. The primary text for this course is student writing, which we will work on together through in-class free-writes, workshops, and revision sessions. We will also read and discuss several collections of expository prose, including the essays of Michel de Montaigne and a collection by younger writers, Twenty-Something Essays by Twenty-Something Writers.
315 -001 Poetry Workshop MW 3-4:15 CRN: 20715
515-001 CRN: 20716
Leslie LaChance
Poetry Workshop is designed for students interested in developing their creative and intellectual abilities through writing poetry. The course addresses all aspects of the poetry writing process from the genesis of a poem through early drafts, critique, revision and manuscript submission. Since the course is a hands-on workshop, much of our time will be devoted to writing and discussing students’ original poems. Students will write and revise a substantial body of original work for portfolio-based evaluation and publication. To better inform the creative process and knowledge of craft, we will study selected poetic forms including free verse, sonnets, blues poems, ballads, haiku, renga, and performance poems. Selected readings from various poetic traditions will be required, as will a short research project, two response papers, weekly written homework, attendance and participation in live readings, and an interdisciplinary poetry assignment.
320-001 Introduction to English Linguistics TR 1-2:15 CRN: 20729
Tim Hacker
At the end of the 19th century, several new disciplines emerged that sought to apply the research methods of the natural sciences to human behavior. These disciplines, called the social sciences, include several that are well known to students on this campus: criminal justice, political science (or government), psychology, and sociology. Another discipline that is less familiar to us here is linguistics, the scientific study of human language.
In this introductory course, we will learn what linguistics is, and how it divides up the study of language into components such as phonology (the sound system), morphology (word building, including features like prefixes and suffixes), syntax (sentence-level grammar) and semantics (the connection between language and meaning). We’ll also learn what linguists do and how their work is a useful complement to other branches of English Studies.
Students in this class will complete exercises from the course textbook and supplemental workbook. They will write several short, exploratory papers; one for each linguistic sub-discipline. There will also be three exams, including a comprehensive final.
325-001 Technical Communication TR 8-9:15 CRN: 20722
325-002 TR 9:30-10:45 CRN: 20724
525-001 TR 8-9:15 CRN: 20723
525-002 TR 9:30-10:45 CRN: 20725
Heidi Huse
When asked what is the most important workplace skill and what is the skill many new graduates lack, most employers will say “communication.” In this era of outsourcing and markets flooded with graduates who have high levels of technical expertise, it is becoming increasingly important to develop excellent written, oral, and technical communication skills so that a prospective employee can set him/herself apart from his or her peers. The primary goal of this course, then, is to help students develop, practice, and hone these skills. Though the course includes readings, many written by professionals with years of experience communicating in business and industry settings, the focus of the course will be on
practical application of the theories in those readings. Thus, students will have the opportunity to compose a variety of genres—such as workplace correspondence, fact sheets, websites, and reports—as a way to develop a clear understanding of and strong skills in visual design, clear and concise writing, and effective oral communication.
330-001 Topics in World Literature: The Fantastic in Literature MW 3-4:15 CRN: 20717
Daniel Nappo
What happens when insanity, drug-induced hallucinations, cerebral trauma, dreams, and divine intervention confuse our understanding of the story we are reading? In his Biographia Literaria (1817), Samuel Taylor Coleridge declared that the fundamental criterion for any successful narrative is a “willing suspension of disbelief” on the part of the reader. More precisely, if the beginning of a novel or short story does not seem credible, readers will dismiss the rest of the story out of hand, or stop reading entirely, because there is nothing engaging or believable to encourage them to find out how the story ends. But what happens when a novel or short story establishes a suspension of disbelief, then leaves the fundamental question of “What happened?” unanswerable? This is the essence of the fantastic, a rare genre of narrative literature found only in short stories and a handful of novels. In this course, we will apply Tzvetan Todorov’s classic study, The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre (1970), in our analysis of dozens of short stories by writers of six different countries, one novel, and two recent films. This introductory course in comparative literature will encourage students to think about the narrative in new and dynamic ways. There will be regular quizzes, midterm and final exams, and a final paper in which students share the results of their research.
345-001 Black Writers in America Theme: “Racial Masquerade: Passing, Miscegenation, and the
Construction of Identity in American Society” MWF 9-9:50 CRN: 20707
Melvin Hill
What does it mean to racially pass in America? What are the effects, the benefits, the consequences? This course explores African American literature through narratives of “race passing,” a form of racial masquerade. Prominent in literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, race “passers” are culturally and legally “black” people whose light complexion allows them to live as if they are “white.” Because they act out racial roles differently from the ones they were born into, these literary figures allow authors and readers to redefine the meaning of race and identity. Students will emerge from this course with a solid familiarity with primary works in what has become a subgenre African American literature, the passing narrative, as well as other works that stretch the traditional bounds of this subgenre. The course will be organized as a conversation on these matters.
360-001 Sixteenth Century Literature MWF 10-10:50 CRN: 20708
560-001 CRN: 20709
Chris Hill
Consider this an English course with a Continental scope! This class will break down roughly into three units: we will study some prose works from the Italian and Northern European Renaissance, then turn our attention to lyric poetry, then spend the latter third of the class reading at least one book of The Faerie Queene. Writers we will cover—in addition to Spenser—will include Machiavelli, Castiglione, Erasmus, More, and Sidney. We will of course do lots of informal writing as well as a couple of longer written assignments.
365-001 Restoration and Eighteenth-Century British Literature MWF 1-1:50 CRN: 20712
565-001 CRN: 20713
Daniel Pigg
Beginning with 1660, a new day in the life of English politics, philosophy, and literature, English 365 considers the range of poetry, prose, and drama written during this very important period in the development of literary forms and ideas. The old order was changing; a new one was struggling to be born! Often misunderstood as overly devoted to the concept of human reason, the period explores such topics as reason and passion, gender roles, satire, history and politics, nature, imagination, and comedy, all with the intention of understanding the role of human beings in relation to themselves and their world. In addition to reading the key male writers of the period (Rochester, Dryden, Pope, Swift, Boswell, Johnson, Blake, and early Wordsworth), we will examine works by women writers such as Aphra Behn, Katherine Phillips, Eliza Heywood, Mary Manley, and Mary Wollstonecraft and works by several Black Atlantic writers such as Olaudah Equiano and Quobna Cugoano.
385-001 Modern Poetry MWF 2:00-2:50 CRN: 20714
John Glass
English 385 will provide students with a foundation in Modernist aesthetics, poetry, and poetics in English. The course will begin by looking at several nineteenth century poets and move quickly to its primary focus on the high Modernists from both sides of the Atlantic. Along with assigned poems, students will also be responsible for biographical and historical information. Students will write two papers for the class, one close reading of a single piece and one longer researched paper on a broader topic to be determined as the semester develops. There will be a mid-term and a final exam.
395-001 Literature and Film: “Monsters and Madmen: Gothic Literature and
the Horror Film” TR 2:30-3:45 CRN: 20731
595-001 CRN: 20732
Jeff Longacre 395/595 Film Lab T 6-8
Why are so many of us drawn to entertainments that intentionally elicit responses of fear, terror, shock, and even repulsion? Why has horror, as a genre, enjoyed such an enduring popularity? What does the popularity of this genre suggest about our deepest drives and our darkest impulses, both as individuals and as a culture? From things that go bump in the night to vampires, mad scientists, resurrected corpses, and poltergeists, horror and the Gothic continue to shock and fascinate us. Through intensive study of key texts in the gothic tradition and a survey of selected horror films, we will work together in a seminar format to define Horror and Gothic as critical terms and as distinctive genres. We will also devote some time to learning about film as an art, its relationship to literature, how to “read” films (and write about them), and the process of adapting books to the screen. Our primary focus will be on the influential “unholy trinity” of Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Dracula, and the variations that these definitive texts spawned through over a century of cinematic adaptations. Warning: this class is not for the faint of heart, those with weak constitutions, or the easily disturbed; it may just scare you to death!
Note: this course will have a lab component so that we will have an opportunity to screen more films in their entirety.
425-001 Advanced Grammar MWF 11-11:50 CRN: 20710
625-001 CRN: 20711
Jenna Wright
Would you like to know more about the English language—basics of grammar, use of standard English, an overview of how people learn language through both structured and inherent processes, and the relationship of grammar to the process of writing? Discover the system and pattern implicit in the English language—basic sentence patterns, inflections, determiners, parts of speech, expansions, complementation, and usage—while exploring social and economic implications of grammar, the significance of dialects and regionalisms, grammar demons, grammar software, and the effects of technology on language. This course will encourage and help you to undertake an analysis of grammar as it relates to your professional field and your career aspirations
445-001 The American Novel to Faulkner W 3-5:50 CRN: 20719
645-001 CRN: 20721
Roy Neil Graves
A powerful yet elusive magnet in our cultural history, the “great American novel” began to exert its pulls early in our national history, filling the niche in the American canon that expansive epics had filled in Western literature before about 1700, when prose effectively outstripped verse as the main medium for belletristic storytelling. At first echoing British models but soon conversing in its own twangs, the American novel flourished concurrently and symbiotically with the growing country whose kaleidoscopic vitality it mirrored and encouraged. This course, then, lets you as a privileged modern reader inhabit plausible, richly varied microcosms of the sort that artful narratives can conjure up—works by such crafty wordsmiths as Charles Brockden Brown, Hawthorne and Melville, Clemens and James, Jewett and Cather, Crane and Faulkner. Individual student projects and reports will broaden your acquaintance with the literary artifacts of a young nation feeling its way toward modernity. Expect to read canonical novels and novellas of reasonable lengths and to sample relevant criticism. Also expect one short and one longer paper, oral presentations, a final exam, and informed classroom discussions of the shape, substance, and significance of the texts we’re exploring together.
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