ENGL 510

ENGL 110

College Composition I:  Expository Writing

3 credits

Staff

The object of this course is to train students in techniques of college-level reading and writing so they become active participants in the projects of analysis and interpretation that constitute the work of the university.

In a flexible workshop setting, you will learn strategies of revision and intellectual reflection, learning how to work recursively as you read, re-read, write, and re-write intellectually challenging essays that mediate between theoretical frameworks and real-world examples (both personal and cultural). While the focus of the course is on “expository”, scholarly prose, you will read a variety of texts (paintings, advertisements, videos, buildings, automobiles, etc.).

With the help of the instructor and your peers, you will draft, critique, and revise your work, building a collection of rough drafts and final drafts for evaluation by the instructor. Grading criteria and common expectations for the amount and kinds of writing to be produced in the course are spelled out in the course packet distributed to each student at the beginning of the semester.

Required Text:

     Varies with instructor

ENGL 120

College Composition II: Writing from Research

3 credits

Staff

Writing from Research teaches independent research in the academy. The course builds on the techniques and skills learned in English 110, by teaching critical research writing. English 120 is designed to stimulate thinking and writing on a broad range of topics within a specific field of research. Individual sections are organized around a particular subject or issue, but the purpose of English 120 is common to all sections: by mid-semester we expect each student to be doing critical research in an area of interest that is both personal and academic.

Students in 120 are invited to become active researchers, developing ways of understanding unfamiliar subjects by building on personal interest and knowledge. By the end of the semester students will produce a long critical research paper that develops an argument by applying skills of academic analysis to a particular case study. Instructors will offer guidance in the development and revision of theoretical ways of thinking, teaching students how to conduct independent research and how to make scholarly use of research materials.

Writing from Research is designed to invite all students to find a way of becoming passionate about a particular aspect of academic writing. The texts used in the course are designed to get things started, but it is the responsibility of the individual student, in collaboration with the other participants in the class, to make the subject personally interesting.

Required Text:

     Varies with instructor

ENGL 125

Technical and Business Writing

3 credits

Staff

Technical and Business Writing is designed as a writing course to follow at least one semester of freshman composition (English 110 being the standard expected prerequisite). It is a course in composition for students interested in professional careers, particularly for future scientists, engineers, technicians or writers of nearly any kind of specialized report.

This course is specifically designed to provide for the technical or professional student who desires to develop technological work, particularly the process of researching, preparing, and writing a professional report substantial in length and competent in quality.

Required Text:

     Varies with instructor

ENGL 209

Introduction to Linguistics

3 credits

Jessica Zerr
3:00-4:15 MW

This course is designed to give you an overview of the study of language as well as a greater appreciation for language. We will familiarize ourselves with the structure of language, ask how language works to make meaning, consider how people acquire language(s), discuss how language is used in particular social contexts, and examine the dynamic nature of language. We will also briefly consider how language is encoded into writing systems and how literacy skills relate to language. While we may look at examples from many different languages, English will provide the basis for most discussion and analysis.

Typical assignments will include in-class quizzes on assigned readings, periodic take-home assignments, and 3 exams (including a final).

Text:
     Fromkin, Rodman, Hyams. An Introduction to Language. (8th ed.) Thomson-Wadsworth.

ENGL 209

Introduction to Linguistics

3 credits

Xiaozhao Huang
9:30-10:45 TR

This course is designed for you to learn different areas of language including morphology, semantics, syntax, phonetics, phonology, sociolinguistics, language changes, history of writing systems, and language acquisition.

Course requirements: take-home assignments and examinations.

Text:

     Fromkin, Rodman, Hyams. An Introduction to Language. (8th ed.) Thomson-Wadsworth.

ENGL 225

Introduction to Film

3 credits

Chris Jacobs

This class will introduce you to the basics of film production, narrative, performance, style, cinematography, editing, sound, etc. It will also expose you to a variety of films produced in the U.S. and other countries from the very beginnings of the medium in the 1890s, through the so-called "silent era" of the 1910s-20s and the "golden age" of Hollywood in the 1930s-50s, up to the present, including some films in foreign languages with English subtitles. Students interested only in the latest Hollywood hits are in the wrong class and should drop immediately to make room for serious students. We will be viewing films to see how they function as commercial/entertainment/artistic artifacts, as well as how we might place them within certain historical/cultural perspectives, and why these ways of seeing film might be more or less important to us as viewers. You will learn how filmmakers can guide and manipulate audience response. By the end of this class you will become adept at viewing films with an eye toward how they affect you as a person. There will be two papers and three unit tests, but no comprehensive final exam.

Our text will be Richard Barsam's "Looking at Movies" (second edition), which comes with two DVDs of tutorials and short films.

ENGL 225

Introduction to Film:  Not Another Teen Movie

3 credits

Crystal Alberts

2:00-2:50 T
2:00-4:00 R

Who amongst us hasn’t felt the need to play hooky in honor of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)?  What most people probably don’t realize is that it is just one later example of the film industry’s catering to a now very financially powerful youth culture that emerged in the 1950s. 

This class will introduce basic techniques of film production and formal methodologies for analyzing film art.  With these tools and the course topic in mind, we will evaluate films such as Rebel Without a Cause (1955), A Hard Day’s Night (1965), Cooley High (1975), Carrie (1976), Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), The Breakfast Club (1985), Boyz N the Hood (1991), Kids (1995), Saved (2004), Mean Girls (2004), and Brick (2005) to consider how film has represented the youth subculture over the past fifty years.

Students in this course will learn the essential components of film language—staging, camera placement, camera movement, editing, lighting, special effects—to heighten perceptual skills in viewing films and increase critical understanding of the ways films function as visual discourse.  Students will also learn how to write analytical, argumentative essays on films.  

Requirements: Regular attendance and thoughtful contributions to class discussion, three papers, two unit tests, and in-class screening reports.

ENGL 226

Introduction to Creative Writing

3 credits

Brian Maxwell
2:00-2:50 MWF

As an introductory course, the focus of this class will be on learning to read, recognize, and analyze elements conducive to the genres of fiction and poetry in an attempt to better understand the literary aspects of each. This is not a lecture class; students enrolled will participate in readings, discussions, and production of both genres. We will spend part of the semester working toward a better understanding of fiction and poetry as it exists in a literary context; then we will move on to the traditional creative writing workshop format where students will produce their own pieces and submit them for critical assessment and group discussion. Our emphasis will be not on perfection, but on revision, practice, theory, and understanding.

This is an “all comers” course; you don’t have to be an expert in either of the genres, but I expect you to bring effort, energy, and a measure of patience to the class environment. In other words, no prior background in literary studies is necessary. But please come ready to work and appreciate the process and production of the literary arts. We will read across styles and genres, looking to any and each possible point of inspiration and understanding. That means that we’ll be busy reading and writing prose and poetry side by side, perhaps even some creative nonfiction; along the way we’ll be learning about how to distinguish the parameters of each—and maybe even blur them a little. Be prepared to read, write, and enjoy.

ENGL 226

Introduction to Creative Writing

3 credits

Elly Williams
3:00-4:15 MW

Beginning course in writing short fiction, poetry, drama, creative nonfiction with emphasis on invention, craft & criticism of student writing and published writing. The emphasis will be on fiction.

The novelist Sinclair Lewis once began a lecture by asking how many people in the audience wanted to be writers.  When half the people there raised their hands he pounded the podium and demanded, “Then how come you aren’t home writing?”  Lewis was asking the right question.  If you want to be a writer (or if you just want to find out whether you might want to be a writer) there’s nothing more important than writing as much as you can.  You might have all the talent in the world.  You might have lived through a thousand fascinating experiences.  But talent and experience will get you nowhere as a writer if you don’t develop the ability to spend hours and hours and hours at the keyboard.  Accordingly, the main aim of this class is to help its members cultivate or maintain the habit of writing a great deal.  Students will be expected to bring new work (although not necessarily completed work) to every class and to write in class as well.

Because the new Essential Studies Program has a Global Diversity Goal, we will examine works by Migdakia Cruz, Juan Diaz, Chitra Banjerjee Divakaruni, Salmon Rushdie, Timothy Liu, Lorraine Lopez, Akil Sharma, Naomi Shihab Nye, Aleida Rodriguez, Ofelia Zepreda, Nabokov, as well as American writers such as Hemingway,Welty, Faulkner, Capote, Olds, Collins, Moody, Cunningham, Levine, Shephard, and Oates.

COURSE GOALS: SPECIAL EMPHASIS ON HOW WRITERS FROM OTHER COUNTRIES APPROACH CULTURE, DIFFERENCE, and DIVERSITY.

To introduce students to the different genres of writing and how they can work together.

To help students learn and understand the elements of fiction.

To help students learn possible techniques of fiction writing.

To help students learn to read like writers.

To help students produce one complete short story.

To help students discover the possibilities in the revision of their work.

To help students learn the philosophy and techniques of the traditional writing workshop— be it fiction, creative nonfiction, drama, or poetry.

To help students learn the different forms of poetry—such as free verse, the sonnet, the narrative poem, pantoum, and villanel.

Required Texts:
     Diaz, Junot: Drown

     Sellers, Heather: The Practice of Creative Writing

ENGL 226

Introduction to Creative Writing

3 credits

Elizabeth Harris Behling
2:00-3:15 TR

This course introduces students to reading and writing short stories and poems and to the process of evaluating and revising one’s writing.

Requirements:

Enthusiastic participation in all discussions and workshops; writing exercises; weekly evaluations of published poems and stories; final portfolio

Texts:

     Boisseau and Wallace, Writing Poems, current edition

     Hansen and Shepard, You’ve Got to Read This

     Schoen, The Truth About Fiction

ENGL 227

Introduction to Literature and Culture
Topic:  The Vampire in Literature and Film

3 credits

Michelle Sauer
11:00-11:50 MWF

This course has no prerequisites, assumes no previous college work in English, and is open to students at all levels.  English 227 counts for General Education and Essential Studies credit in the Arts and Humanities.

Vampires have become a staple of popular culture. Emerging from a tradition of classical and medieval myths, in the 18th and 19th centuries, the vampire became a complex creature full of transcendent desire for power and sexuality among other, lesser hungers. The vampire became symbolic of change, exploitation, and social anxiety. The 20th century built upon this tradition, but also incorporated more modern concerns about mental and physical disease and apocalyptic tensions into the legend. By the late 20th century, the vampire subculture underwent yet another twist—humor—as the anxiety over social concerns became expressed in different ways.

In this class, we will examine representative vampire legends, literature, art, and films, with particular attention to the developing intertextual complexity of the image of the vampire and to its evolving capacity to address issues of social moment, especially issues relating to race, class, gender, and sexuality. We will further investigate the transformation of the vampire from a dark soulless creature into a mysterious and seductive enigma.

Some of the texts will include: Dracula by Bram Stoker, Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu, The Vampyre by John William Polidori, Interview with the Vampire by Ann Rice, The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova, 30 Days of Night, Nosferatu, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

ENGL 227

Introduction to Literature and Culture
Topic: The Fairy Tale as Literature

3 credits

Jennifer Groucutt
12:00-12:50 MWF

This course has no prerequisites, assumes no previous college work in English, and is open to students at all levels.  English 227 counts for General Education and Essential Studies credit in the Arts and Humanities.

The overall goal of this course is to examine the literary fairy tale as a valid tradition that has much to tell us about the changes and challenges of the human condition.  We will uncover the varied oral and written sources of these tales, along with the historical and cultural circumstances which helped to shape them in terms of both content and purpose.  Texts will include a wide array of fairy tale literature from multiple cultures, time periods, and genres – prose tales, poetry, and drama/film.  Contemporary re-workings of familiar tales by writers such as Angela Carter, Jane Yolen, and Italo Calvino will be taught alongside their predecessors from the collections of the Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault, and others.  My hope is that class readings and discussions will shed new light on such classic stories as “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and “Cinderella,” revealing the reasons why these “wonder tales” continue to enchant children and adults alike.

Texts:
     The Classic Fairy Tales, Norton Critical Edition, Ed. Maria Tatar
     Briar Rose, Jane Yolen
     Transformations, Anne Sexton

ENGL 227

Introduction to Literature and Culture
Topic:  Literature and Film of War

3 credits

Sharon Carson
3:00-5:30 M

This course has no prerequisites, assumes no previous college work in English, and is open to students at all levels.  English 227 counts for General Education and Essential Studies credit in the Arts and Humanities.

Our project in this class will be to analyze the ways that writers, filmmakers, journalists and visual artists work with war as both the explicit subject matter of their art, and as a realm of metaphor for exploring multiple dimensions of human experience.

We’ll start with a non-fiction book entitled War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, by war correspondent and social philosopher Chris Hedges.  

This book offers us a philosophical starting point for our work.  One reason I picked this particular book is that almost everyone who reads it finds things they strongly agree with in the book, things they strongly disagree with, and things about which they aren’t sure what they think.  This makes it a good and intellectually demanding book to discuss and write about.  The book’s subject matter is never “out of the news,” sorry to say, and our time is certainly no exception.  We’ll spend some time discussing this book in relation to current wars (on several scales), and hopefully we will have a good and productive range of opinion about these matters in the class.

Our other readings for this class will include:

     Segments from The Iliad (Homer)

     All Quiet on the Western Front (Erich Remarque)

     The Seventh Cross (Anna Seghers)
     --and regular reading and written analysis of national and international media coverage of           current wars. (“journalism as war literature”)

Our films will include:

     Documentary art: 

          --   “Dietrich Bonhoeffer” (WWII German resistance to Hitler)

          --   “Eyes on the Prize” (Black Civil Rights Movement, U.S.)

     A Soldier’s Story

     Battle of Algiers

     Paradise Now              

     Life is Beautiful

     The Thin Red Line

     (we may adjust these films, depending on student interests)

And we will also look at war photography, video art, and visual art.

ENGL 227

Introduction to Literature and Culture
Topic:  Drugs and Literature

3 credits

Adam Kitzes
9:30-10:45 TR

CANCELLED

This course has no prerequisites, assumes no previous college work in English, and is open to students at all levels.  English 227 counts for General Education and Essential Studies credit in the Arts and Humanities.

What do stories about drugs teach us about what we look for in literature? We tend to care about literature because we like to observe how characters undergo transformations. As we become involved with characters and the trials and adventures they undergo, we grow interested in seeing them change – hopefully for the better, though not always. And mainly, we want to know what they do to make that change take place.

Our attitudes about characters become increasingly complex when the source of those changes is perceived to be artificial, inauthentic, temporary, possibly dangerous, sometimes illegal. In reading stories about drug users, then, we will really be exploring how our attitudes about characters take shape when we aren't quite sure what to make of the way they are transformed.

While we will sample a few "older" stories, including a famous tale by Cervantes, the bulk of our texts will be taken from modern and contemporary writers. Beginning with selections from Poe, de Quincey and Robert Louis Stevenson, we will move to a number of contemporary fiction writers, including Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Ken Kesey, Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly (we will watch the film version of this as well). American playwrights will include Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night, and Tennessee Williams' Small Craft Warnings. Additional films will likely include Reefer Madness, Alex Cox's Repo Man and Sid and Nancy, Oliver Stone's The Doors, Steven Soderbergh's Traffic, and Antoine Fuqua's Training Day. Finally, we will take a brief look at accounts of contemporary cultural controversies, including America's War on Drugs, steroids in sports, weight-loss remedies (and other types of popular medicine), and contemporary attitudes toward hedonism.

By no means will this course be a celebration of drug users or their stories. But neither will it be a mere condemnation. The classroom will be neutral enough to allow everyone to consider how diverse and complex attitudes can take shape around an inherently controversial subject.

In addition to readings and film viewings, the workload primarily will consist of classroom activities, short writing assignments, and a final essay.

ENGL 227

Introduction to Literature and Culture
Topic:  Popular Culture: Television

3 credits

Kathy Dixon
11:00-12:15 TR

This course has no prerequisites, assumes no previous college work in English, and is open to students at all levels.  English 227 counts for General Education and Essential Studies credit in the Arts and Humanities.

This course will be an introduction to mass media studies, humanities style, with a focus on television. We will see how media theorists consider images and language, narrative, genre, and other characteristics of television "texts." This knowledge, plus our understanding of social context, will enable us to analyze intelligently the many videotaped examples of television programming that professor and students will bring to class. This will definitely be a course where you learn as you do.

Evaluation: Midterm, final, short exercises, and a group project.

Text:
     Branston, Gill. Media Student’s Book

ENGL 227

Introduction to Literature and Culture
Topic:  Farming in Literature and Contemporary Culture

3 credits

Alexander McEllistrem Evenson
12:30-1:45 TR

CANCELLED

This course has no prerequisites, assumes no previous college work in English, and is open to students at all levels.  English 227 counts for General Education and Essential Studies credit in the Arts and Humanities.

Anyone who has spent time on a farm or lived in a rural community is aware how multifaceted and complex farming really is:  the high stress resulting from epic struggles with the elements, markets, and government; the allure of independence; and the paradox of a beautiful landscape paired with a fearful isolation all contribute to this complexity.  It is no wonder that so many significant and engaging works of American literature focus on agrarian life.  Author Gene Logsdon has made the argument that agriculture itself is a form of art, holding aesthetic appeal and cultural significance beyond most other vocations.

There is no denying that agriculture is a cornerstone of American culture. However, despite this prominent historical role, current media, politics, and pop culture focus heavily on urban issues, making the implicit assumption that the family farm is dead and that anyone living in rural / agrarian communities will soon leave, or face cultural irrelevancy. 

The goal of this course will be to contextualize fictional representations of agriculture ranging from European pioneers to contemporary farmers with representations (or the lack thereof) of farming and rural life in media, politics, and pop culture in order to gain some understanding of what is at stake when representations of the family farm die before the actual farm itself.  We will also examine why farming holds aesthetic appeal for writers & visual artists, and compare the manner in which selected artists go about representing this subject.

We will read four novels, and students will be asked to write about and use them creatively and analytically.  This course will be structured more like a workshop than a standard discussion-based setup, and as a result, the experiences and concerns you bring to the course will take on primary importance.  This course has no prerequisites, assumes no previous college work in English, and is open to students at all levels. 

Primary texts:

     O.E. Rolvaag.  Giants in the Earth.  1927
     Willa Cather.  O Pioneers!.  1941
     Lois Phillips Hudson.  The Bones of Plenty.  1962
     Jane Smiley.  A Thousand Acres.  1991

ENGL 241

World Literature I

3 credits

Michael Beard
9:00-9:50 MWF

In this course we will read famous works from the history of world literature, from the beginning of the written record to the period of the European Renaissance, starting with brief selections from Homer (ca. 9th century B.C.) and concluding with selections from Cervantes’ Don Quixote (early 1600's).  Our readings from European literature occupy the center of the course, in part because they are already familiar to our culture, in part because they offer us a reference point from which we add selections from literature outside Europe.  We will emphasize parallel developments and alternative styles.  We will read them more or less in chronological order and our attention will often be directed towards historical background.  In that respect this is like a world history course.

In another respect our interest is not contained by history.  Obviously, the works we are reading have some quality that makes them stand apart from, or transcend, the period in which they were recorded.  The fact that they were preserved is evidence of it. At some point we need to notice not just what they say but how they say it.  Consequently, alongside the historical theme (which will allow you to see the major works of the western world as part of a system of relationships, a tradition, to see how they have influenced one another, and influenced us) there is another issue—their style.  I’ll try to point out how styles change with time, and what makes each writer distinct as a stylist—always asking how translation may shape that effect.  Between these two issues—their content and their form--we'll attempt to help you appreciate these works as meaningful statements about universal issues (ethics, love, mortality, self-expression and its limits), in other words about things that concern us to, and we’ll attempt to show how how their styles shape the message.  We want you to see how a work of literature grows out of particular concerns, in a particular place and moment in history, but ends up taking on universality which allows it to speak for later generations.

There will be two midterm tests plus a short paper and a final.

Text:
     Norton Anthology of World Literature, 2nd ed., vols. A, B & C

ENGL 271

Reading and Writing about Texts

3 credits

Michael Flynn
1:00-1:50 MWF

What does it mean to be an English major?  This class will focus on the kinds of work scholars do in constructing the discipline of English.  We will consider poetry, short fiction, the novel, drama, and film, using the basic formal features of each genre to explore the ways literary texts produce meanings.  We will practice the basic interpretive skills that every scholar of English draws on, breaking down reading and writing about literature into component parts which you will be able to put back together in future classes.  As we do so, we will improve your ability to write and revise effective interpretive arguments.  In addition, the class will introduce you to many other facets of the discipline of English – linguistics, composition, creative writing, editing, and cultural studies – and explore that discipline’s relevance in our culture today.  By considering your coursework in this larger context, you will become more aware of the professional options available to you, and be able to make better-informed choices about your future course of study.

ENGL 271

Reading and Writing about Texts

3 credits

Yvette Koepke
9:30-10:45 TR

What does it mean to study "English"? This class will focus on the kinds of work English majors, faculty, and scholars do in constructing the discipline of English. The class will use the basic formal features of literary genres to explore how texts produce meanings. Through learning the analytic skills that every scholar of English—and indeed every reader—draws on, this course will improve your ability to write and revise effective interpretive arguments. To this end, we will break down reading and writing into their component parts to enable you to put them together on your own in future classes. In addition, the class will introduce you to the many facets of the discipline of English including the branches of creative writing, editing, linguistics, and composition and pursue the field’s relevance in our larger culture and world. By placing your course-work in its larger context, the broader goal is to make you more aware of the options available to you and so enable informed choices about your future course of study and intellectual development.

The course requires consistent participation in class discussions, numerous informal writings, and four papers.

ENGL 272

Introduction to Literary Criticism

3 credits

Chris Nelson
10:00-10:50 MWF

Designed as the second part of the introduction to the English major, this class surveys the dominant ways of approaching literature, known as “theory.” This knowledge will show you how the discipline works, help you understand your coursework in a larger context, and deepen your ability to analyze texts. At the same time, this class is also about recognizing how and why you already interpret literature in the ways you do, and what the social and political implications of those interpretations are. Rather than an abstract imposition on texts, critical theory arises organically from attempts to interpret texts in various social, political, and economic contexts, and so is something you already do. Critical theory gives us a shared vocabulary to talk about what we do as readers and writers of texts, as thinkers, as historical and cultural subjects; it challenges us to make more thoughtful choices as members of academic and social communities; and enables us to revisit our basic assumptions and values, and try on new ways of thinking.

The course will be divided into three parts that balance accessible explanations of critical theory with examples of primary thought, and literary applications with abstract theoretical issues and implications beyond the classroom. The first part will use selections from The Seagull Reader: A Poetry Anthology and The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter to illustrate the premises of major theoretical schools, including new criticism, structuralism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, poststructuralism, feminism, queer theory, new historicism, critical race theory, cultural studies, and postcolonialism. The second part will explore these theories further as ways of thinking. Working through Lois Tyson’s Critical Theory Today, we will reflect on the broader implications of theory, and what theories suggest about the world. How texts and theories reciprocally illuminate one another will be the focus of the third part of the course, which will use brief excerpts of the work of major theorists alongside Leslie Marmon Silko’s Storyteller and Tim O’Brien’s In the Lake of the Woods as case studies.

ENGL 299

Special Topic:  Creative Movie Production

4 credits

Chris Jacobs
5:30-7:30 TW

Recommended prerequisites: any introductory class in film, drama, popular culture, creative writing, media, or video production.

This is intended as a concise but comprehensive course on using recent digital technology for personal self-expression in the dominant literary form of the past century—moving pictures—starting with the written word (the screenplay). While learning various cinematic storytelling concepts, the class will work together to develop a script and follow it into a finished movie through the various stages of preproduction, production, and postproduction. Class members will take turns performing the various crew functions to gain a broad range of experience planning, shooting, and editing. Some time may also be devoted to discussing options for distribution and exhibition for the independent moviemaker. During the early weeks, the class will view episodes of "Project Greenlight." Several feature films (Hollywood and independent) will also be viewed and discussed as examples of motion picture production realities and/or what can be done with limited means. Each student will write one script from which the class project(s) will be chosen. The final grade will depend heavily upon class participation. The main project for this class will be a group effort by the whole class or two or more smaller groups, depending upon prior experience and/or length of the script(s) chosen to produce. There will be no exams.

ENGL 301

Survey of English Literature I

3 credits

Adam Kitzes
12:30-1:45 TR

This course is designed to introduce students to a selection of the major writers who lived from, approximately, the fourteenth through the eighteenth century. During this long historical period, literature in English effectively came to life, underwent several transformations, and set many of the parameters for what we recognize as literature in our own historical period. The writers we will cover in this course are by no means mere historical curiosities; their contributions to literature continue to be felt even to this very day. There is no way we can cover every writer of importance from this lengthy historical period. Instead, we will engage a small selection of writers and topics with the invitation to look further in future courses. By the end of the course, you should have a grasp of the writers we cover, as well as the major themes and problems they addressed through their poems, plays, and prose writings. In addition, you should have some familiarity with the various literary styles that appeared, with an understanding of both how and why they “work.” Finally, you will demonstrate your engagement with these texts through a series of writing assignments. Some will be analytical/interpretive essays. Others will invite you to take a more creative approach. All of them will challenge you to respond to the works from this exciting period in original, thoughtful ways.

Text:

     The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 8^th Edition, Vols. A, B, & C

ENGL 303

Survey of American Literature I

3 credits

Chris Nelson
12:00-12:50 MWF

This course will be a broad survey of American literature from its origins to the Civil War focusing on multiple aspects of US cultural history, including conventional literary periodizations (Puritanism, the Enlightenment, Romanticism, Trancendentalism) and genre (autobiography, pamphlets, the sermon, the slave narrative, romance, and so on). As we do so, we will also trace the connections between the burgeoning literary output and its social and political contexts. In particular, we will consider the consolidation of “American” literature as a coherent body and the emergence of cultural nationalism, especially in response to and as shaped by the questions of slavery and westward expansion. Work for the class includes active participation in class discussion, in-class writings, two papers and a final exam.

Text:
     Norton Anthology of American Literature, Seventh Edition, Volumes A and B

ENGL 306

Creative Writing: Intermediate Fiction Workshop

3 credits

Elly Williams

5:00-7:30 M

This class will expand on your knowledge of the craft of fiction learned in Intro to Creative Writing. Through class discussions, readings, and review of the elements of fiction, we will go deeper into what a short story is both through reading well-known authors’ stories and through reading your own work. Consider this class primarily a workshop of your own work. Thoughtful critiques of each others’ work will be expected. Grading will come from a combination of critiques, class discussion, your own progress in writing and revising, and attendance.

SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT FICTION

Janet Burroway:  A successful story can be defined in a number of ways. 

It is a period of time during which a character has changed.

It is the resolution, however subtle, of a conflict.

It fulfills whatever implied promis