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Upper-Division Course Rotation
Successful completion (C or higher) of English 111 and 112, or their equivalents, is a prerequisite for all upper-division English courses.
305-001 Advanced Composition MW 3-4:15 CRN: 20225
505-001 CRN: 20216
Heidi Huse
Feeding the Sea of Words and Ideas in the 21st Century
The Top Ten reasons why good essay writing is cool Monday afternoons:
10. You have abundant options for developing your topic w/ flair. 9. Good essay writing’s sexy...classic.
8. You can write anywhere, anytime, on any topic. 7. A stylish essay can make people believe that any subject is exciting. 6. A well-argued essay can give you seismic power! 5. Writing’s cheaper than therapy. 4. “I’m a writer” can be a good pick-up line. 3. YOUR writing connects you to millions of people who’d otherwise never hear what you have to say. 2. Writing can make you immortal! 1. Sticks and stones can break one’s bones but writing can change the world! We’ll look at how others have used expository writing to “feed the sea” of knowledge, wisdom, belief, experience, creation…in dangerous, smart, therapeutic, entertaining, controversial, life-changing ways, beginning with Julia Alvarez’s autobiographical collage about her life as a writer, Something to Declare. We’ll read the 21st century set of essays on writing in the digital age, Hamlet’s Blackberry, in addition to an anthology of great essays from the 20th century… We may even join the blogosphere w/ our essays! A word-centered service learning component will serve as the basis for a collaborative essay anthology students create and present to the class at the end of the semester.
310-001 Fiction Workshop TR 11-12:15 CRN: 40217
510-001 CRN: 40218
David Carithers
Do you have a story—maybe more than one—you want to tell? This realistic short-fiction-writing workshop is an opportunity to explore how to write those stories. We will write flash fiction and longer drafts and then take some of those “drafts” to “stories.” We’ll participate in reader-response workshopping of our original fiction and revise that fiction in light of the responses. We’ll read short story selections from award-winning contemporary fiction writers, as well as examine both the stories read and our own stories in light of a guide, John Dufresne’s The Lie that Tells a Truth. We’ll learn about publishing through panel discussions with published writers and experience the publishing process as a class. This course is for people who would like to become stronger at writing fiction and/or would like a reason to write regularly.
325-001 Technical Communication TR 8-9:15 CRN: 40219
325-002 TR 9:30-10:45 CRN: 40221
Trisha Capansky
In this course, Technical Communication is another term for business communication – it is the way we communicate at work. Many people, when they hear the term Technical Communication, think of that horrid manual that came with the lawnmower. And yes, that is a form of Technical Communication – but it is by far not the only kind. Technical Communication can be written or spoken. It can consist of sentences or graphics or a combination of both. It can be static – a book – or it can be interactive – a website with animation and sound. The overall objective of Technical Communication is to present information in a way so that people can understand it easily, and use it safely, effectively, and efficiently. This course will prepare you to do just that. You will be provided with skills and strategies to help you address a variety of communication tasks in workplace environments and will learn how to understand the symbiotic relationships among form and content, and audience and purpose. My goal for this course is to prepare you to communicate effectively, ethically, responsibly, and professionally in the career path of your choosing.
335-001 Literature of the Holocaust TR 11-12:15 CRN: 41350
Tim Hacker
In September, 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland, thus beginning World War II. When the war ended nearly six years later, tens of millions of European civilians—seen as subhuman obstacles to the Nazi agenda of racial purification and territorial expansion—were dead. Our class will focus on the most familiar of the victim groups, the Jews, and their experience of Nazi genocide, which we now know as the Holocaust. We’ll read internationally acclaimed works of literature by Holocaust survivors, their children, and their children’s children, including Aharon Appelfeld’s Badenheim, 1939; Louis Begley’s Wartime Lies; Primo Levi’s If Not Now, When?; and Maus, by Art Spiegelman. They will raise obvious questions—how could the Holocaust occur? Could it have been prevented? What can we learn from the Holocaust? And for us, as students of literature, there will be other, more profound, questions: What does literature do for our understanding of the Holocaust that the work of other disciplines does not? Can literature be beautiful, even when it evokes one of the most horrifying acts of violence in history? We’ll work for answers to these questions, and others, with online and
in-class discussion, quizzes, two exams, short paper assignments, and at least one writing project involving independent research.
441-001 Topics American Literature before 1900 MWF 9-9:50 CRN: 40223
541-001 CRN: 40224
Charles Bradshaw
“Secrecy and Disclosure: Conspiracy Theories in Early American Literature”
From the Salem Witch Trials to the JFK assassination to current fears of terrorism, Americans have had a long-standing infatuation with detecting plots against their government, their liberties, and their “way of life.” Our class will study how these “plots” function both as conspiracy theories and as formal features of literary texts. We’ll examine the conspiracy theory as a specific brand of public paranoia that recurs in American culture and finds expression in politics and fiction. And we’ll look at how the discovery of conspiracies maps onto early American literary plots. Some of our readings include Wieland by Charles Brockden Brown, Slaves in Algiers by Susanna Rowson, The Confessions of Nat Turner, short stories by Poe and Hawthorne, James Fenimore Cooper’s The Spy, and E.D.E.N Southworth’s The Hidden Hand.
350-001 Women Writers: Gender, Race, and Class MWF 12-12:50 CRN: 40215
Melvin Hill
An Introduction to Women and Gender Studies
This course offers an introduction to select women writers who explore critical questions about the meaning of gender in society. The primary goal of this course is to familiarize students with key issues, questions and debates in Women's and Gender Studies scholarship, both historical and contemporary. Gender scholarship critically analyzes themes of gendered performance and power in a range of social spheres, such as law, culture, education, work, medicine, social policy and the family. We will explore the complex ways in which gender intersects with class, race, ethnicity, sexuality and age within various spheres and institutions of society. Required readings include classic and contemporary texts written by both American and British women who represent diverse and meaningful gendered lives.
370-001 “Revolution!” Romantic Prose & Poetry TR 2:30-3:45 CRN: 40227
570-001 CRN: 40228
Jeffrey Longacre
On July 14th, 1789, revolution broke out in France simultaneously inspiring hope for a better—more egalitarian future—and fear of the chaos and destruction that follow in the wake of revolution. In this course, we will focus on the influence of this revolutionary “spirit of the age” on several of the most exciting and significant authors in the British literary tradition, including William Blake, Robert Burns, Anna Barbauld, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Mary Robinson, Maria Edgeworth, Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, and John Keats. Focusing on English, Irish, and Scottish prose and poetry produced between the years 1789 and 1837—the year that Queen Victoria ascended to the throne—students will cover a variety of literary-critical concepts important to understanding Romanticism and its lasting impact on the culture of Europe and beyond.
375-001 Development of English Drama MWF 10-10:50 CRN: 40229
575-001 CRN: 40230
Daniel Pigg
English 375(575) examines the growth of the traditions of English drama and theatre from its beginnings in the Middle Ages through the end of the eighteenth century. Reading approximately 12 plays and examining them both as written texts and performances, we can come to understand the place of drama as a social and literary act. We will concentrate on issues such as the nature of drama and ritual, the conception of tragedy and comedy, the development of acting companies and the building of theatres, and the impact of politics, religion, and social values on drama from its earliest days in Britain. Our readings, viewings, and discussions will cover impressive plays such as The Wakefield Flood and Second Shepherds’ Play, Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy, Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus and Edward II , Jonson’s Volpone, Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, Etherege’s Man of Mode and Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer.
425-001 Advanced Grammar MWF 11-11:50 CRN: 40231
625-001 CRN: 40232
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.
475-001 Modern Novel TR 1-2:15 CRN: 40233
675-001 CRN: 40234
Lynn Alexander
Family secrets! Crises of Faith! Dystopian Visions of the Future! In this course we will explore a range of twentieth-century American and British novels that investigate identity, cultural crisis, the existence of God, evolving social orders, and narrative play. At times tragic, at times disturbingly comic, these works ask us to question who we are, our relation to the world around us, and how “art” can, or even must, contribute to an understanding of the individual and the social. Works will include the following: Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!,Greene’s The End of the Affair, Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, O’Brien’s Going After Cacciato, Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Morrison’s Beloved, and Cunningham’s The Hours. As time permits, we will also watch and discuss film adaptations of relevant works.
485-001 Shakespeare MWF 1-1:50 CRN: 40235
685-001 CRN: 40236
Chris Hill
This will be a broad introduction to Shakespeare’s dramatic writing, focusing on a few political tragedies as well as some of the more complicated problem comedies. The centerpiece of the course will be three history plays that examine political lessons from the reigns of Richard II and Henry IV. Our texts will include useful ancillary materials to discuss as a class, and we will use film adaptations to talk about choices of staging and interpretation. Students can expect to do both formal and informal writing about the plays.
496-001 Special Topic: Genre: Fantasy Literature MWF 2-2:50 CRN: 41349
John Glass
By Request…..
from Erewhon to Earthsea, Uplands to Utterbol, from Narnia’s Lantern Waste to the Undying Lands of Aman beyond the Sundering Seas of Middle Earth…
Students in English 496 will begin by reading two early fantasy works—Samuel Butler’s Erewhon and William Morris’s The Well at the World’s End. These pieces influenced the directions of fantasy literature generally and the imaginations of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien especially. The course will then shift to its primary focus: a selection of Lewis’s Narnia books and a close study of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Our discussion will be guided by the overarching goal to understand both why and how the most successful fantasy stories captivate so many readers, and is there a difference between fantasy fiction and fantasy literature? Answering those questions will require students to consider not only the language and themes involved in the works we read, but also the ways in which those works draw on specific spiritual, mythological, and literary sources to shape the worlds they present.
The bulk of the course will be spent looking at Tolkien’s trilogy, but students will finally be asked to consider how what they find contained in The Lord of the Rings compares to the worlds of later writers—to Le Guin’s Earthsea trilogy, Rowling’s Harry Potter series, or Peake’s Gormenghast novels among others.
499-001 Senior Capstone TR 9:30—10:45 CRN 40238
Charles Bradshaw
As the final course required of all English majors, Capstone gives you the opportunity to create a portfolio of your best writing as the culmination of your English studies. Constructed as a process-oriented class, Capstone will help hone critical thinking, research, writing, and editing skills as you expand and revise writing from previous classes, and it will help you craft a graduate-length paper project under the direction of department faculty. Whether you are preparing for graduate school, a career in teaching or writing, or if you’re still unsure, this course will give you some concrete evidence to show others what you’ve accomplished.
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