ENGL 200X World Literature: Colonial Encounters

Dr. Michael Edson

This course will focus on literature and film representing encounters between white Europeans and non-European peoples in three locations: the Caribbean, South America, and Africa. We will read slave narratives by Mary Prince and Olaudah Equiano, novels by Jean Rhys, Jamaica Kincaid, and Chinua Achebe, a play by Wole Soyinka, and a selection of African poetry. We will also watch Ousmane Sembene’s 2004 film Moolaadé. Consistent with an intensive-reading, discussion-based course, graded work will include participation, daily reading quizzes, and two exams.

ENGL 200X World Literature

Dr. Sean Hill

This course is an introduction to reading and appreciating a wide variety of literary texts, including myth, poetry, storytelling, and drama, from different cultures. Students will gain an understanding of cultural differences and similarities. This course will expand students' knowledge of the human condition and human cultures through the reading of literatures from diverse times and places, especially in relation to behaviors, ideas, and values expressed in works of human imagination and thought.

ENGL 211X Academic Writing about Literature

Dr. Sean Hill

This course, English 211X, is the second of the two writing courses required for the bachelor’s degree. This writing course is designed to provide students with instruction and practice in writing effectively about literature. We will read short stories, poems, essays, and plays, and it is my hope that this course will deepen students’ understanding of literature while building their appreciation for the literary arts. Through class discussions, in-class writing exercises, explications, creative and critical responses, essay exams, essays, research papers, and oral presentations students will develop the skills necessary to analyze, respond to, and think critically about literature. Emphasis will be placed on writing as a process of generating ideas, drafting, revising, and editing; it is work that hopefully students will find rewarding.  

ENGL 211X -  Academic Writing About Literature: Depictions of Violence in Narrative

Eric Notaro

This section of 211x will introduce students to literary analysis by focusing on the role of violence in written and other forms of narrative. From the slaying of Humbaba in the Epic of Gilgamesh, to the stories of Greek myth, acts of force pervade some of the oldest incarnations of western literature. What drives storytellers and poets to these depictions? In modern times, violence is often a driving force for conflict in contemporary plots as is evident by the proliferation of gritty crime-scene investigation television dramas and gory horror movies. The class will explore and examine different approaches and styles behind these depictions from classical ancient texts, to more contemporary authors such as Flannery O'Connor, Cormac McCarthy and Donald Ray Pollock. Class readings will range from various fiction genres, poetry, drama, memoir and journalism. Students will also have the opportunity to draw on representations of violence from other media such as photography, fine arts, video games, movies and television to analyze the role of violence in modern narrative. Class topics will range from defining and framing what is considered violent, cultural and historic boundaries of such depictions, and academic theoretical discourses concerning the role of violence in art. Through essays, reading responses and other projects, this class will involve close written examination of the symbolism and purposes behind violence in narrative as a means to articulate and discover the roles of literature and narrative itself.

ENGL 211x - The Graphic Novel Narrative

ENGL 213 - Quests and Journeys: the Literature of Travel

Amy Marsh

“Travel is a creative act,” argues Paul Theroux, “not simply loafing and inviting your soul, but feeding the imagination.” This course will revolve around the travel narrative, primarily nonfiction essays. We will go on a literary journey around the world and then try to go home again. We will explore the following questions: How does moving away from home change our perception of the world? After going away on a journey, how do we come home again? In today’s globally connected world, how does place define our identities? How might travel stories be a way of asking broader questions about ourselves or our society? We will use these questions to practice and explore the process of writing. The class will consist of reading assignments, writing exercises, and peer review workshops. You do not need to have traveled widely—you can travel without going far from home—but you should have a curiosity for global culture. 

ENGL 213 - Academic Writing About Science and Nature: Challenging Authority

Derick Hinckley

By standing in line at the coffee shop, stopping at red lights, or following our employer's orders, we acknowledge and submit to authority. But why? In this course, we will explore texts from psychology, politics, philosophy, literature, and the natural sciences in an attempt to answer this question. What is authority and why do we submit to it? Do we submit out of fear, to serve the greater good, or out of a moral obligation? How do individuals or groups decide it is time to challenge an established authority and what happens when they do? 

ENGL 213X - “Leviathan Pursued his Placid Way”: Humans, Whales, and Their Interspecies Relationships

Dr. Jennifer Schell

We will read and write about a variety of non-fictional and interdisciplinary texts by authors who are concerned with whales and humankind’s relationships with them.  We will trace the origins of this relationship back to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and we will study how it has developed and changed over time.  Throughout the term, we will examine and interrogate the writings of various social scientists, ecologists, and biologists in an effort to better understand the history of humankind’s interactions with these magnificent sea creatures.   

ENGL F273 – Introduction to Creative Nonfiction

Daryl Farmer

Creative Nonfiction can take many forms including memoir, travel writing, writing about the natural world, personal essays, profiles and literary journalism. In this class students will learn about the forms and elements of creative nonfiction, and how to write in some of these subgenres. We will spend the semester writing about our own lives and experiences and attempting to give them shape, structure, design and individual voice. Work in this class will include reading assignments, writing exercises, and respectful criticism in peer review workshops. 

ENGL 309 - British Literature: The Making of the British Canon

Dr. Michael Edson

This course will survey literature published in the British Isles from 1789 to the present. We will read a selection of writings from the Norton Major Authors anthology, including texts by William Wordsworth, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, and Oscar Wilde. Other notable readings will include Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia. Throughout the course we will interrogate the rationales, ideologies, and agendas that helped shape the “canon” of texts now embodied in the modern Norton anthology. Students will write three short “close-reading” essays, take two exams, and participate in a collaborative teaching project.

Engl. F318: Modern English Grammar, Spring 2013

Prof. Burns Cooper

Although "grammar" means different things to different people, in this course we will focus mainly on the syntactic and morphological structure of English: that is, how its words are put together into phrases and sentences.  Students will learn some terms and methods for describing a variety of phrase and sentence structures, learn how to argue for or against different grammatical analyses, learn how to diagram sentences, and occasionally stop to look at some practical applications of these ideas.  Students should gain a greater appreciation for the grammatical complexity and systematicity of English.  Some very basic grammatical knowledge is assumed: basic terms such as subject, verb, preposition, and tense will be reviewed early on, but the course may be challenging for those who have never been exposed to these concepts at all.

ENGL 350—Literature of Alaska and the Yukon—“The Sea Around Us: Alaska and the American Maritime Tradition”

Dr. Jennifer Schell

Alaska has approximately 44,000 miles of coastline. This simple fact has prompted a wide variety of Alaskan writers—from all sorts of different cultures—to write about the seas that surround them. This semester, we will be reading an assorted array of maritime literature, which addresses the special relationships the peoples of Alaska have with the ocean and its creatures.  We will travel from Barrow to Sitka, from Homer to Kotzebue, and from Resurrection Bay to the Aleutian Islands in an effort to learn more about the range of approaches Alaskan authors have taken towards their nautical subject matter.

ENGL F371 – Topics in Creative Writing: Travel and Adventure

Daryl Farmer

“ Travel writing,” says Pico Iyer, “is essentially a dialogue between a person and a place.” This course will focus on how best to record that dialogue, and how to use writing to deepen our understanding of our travel and adventure experiences. As we will see, travel writing may be about anything from exotic safaris to Namibia to a road trip to a small town fair. Writing in this class may be in either fiction or nonfiction prose. We will begin by examining examples of the form, and then move on to writing our own, based on past experiences, and on field assignments. Then we’ll move to the essentials of quality writing, not only in terms of craft and technical skill, but also in determining what separates a piece of writing that is merely competent from one that is a work of art, or that “breathes life”. By semester’s end, students should have a sense of how to record their experiences while living them, and then how to shape them into complete drafts when they get home. The class will consist of reading assignments, writing exercises and peer review workshops.

ENGL 410:  Women's Stories in American Fiction 1875-1915

Dr. Eric Heyne

The Realist Period in American literature was an exciting
opportunity for novelists to explore social roles, especially the
opportunities and challenges facing women at a time when they still
couldn't vote in most places, still couldn't own property in their own
names in some states, and still faced stiff challenges to divorce even as
the practice was becoming more common.  This course will read novels and
short stories focused on women's choices, by authors including Edith
Wharton, Kate Chopin, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Henry James, Sarah Orne
Jewett, Mary Austin, Stephen Crane, and others.

ENGL/FLM F427 F01  Films of Alfred Hitchcock

Dr. Karen Grossweiner

This course is intended to be an intensive study of variable topics in film studies. This semester we will explore some of the major films of Alfred Hitchcock, the self-styled master of suspense.   Through both careful analysis of the films themselves and intensive reading in contemporary film theory and criticism, we will identify stylistic, narrative and thematic aspects of Hitchcock's work and look at Hitchcock = s contribution to cinematic language and genre. Because Hitchcock films have strongly influenced many filmmakers, we will also analyze a recent film that is considered "Hitchcockian." Additionally, we will explore the applicability of modern critical theories (especially auteur, feminist, psychoanalytic, Marxist and queer) to Hitchcock's films to explore such issues as scopophilia, female subjectivity and spectatorship

ENGL 465—Genre—“Not Your Grandfather’s Western: The Wild West and the American Imagination”

Dr. Jennifer Schell

As a geographic region, the West so influenced American writers that it spawned its own genre, the Western.  What made the American West such a popular literary setting?  This semester we will attempt to answer this question. Among other things, we will talk about the violence of Western life, the code of Western justice, the bravado of Western heroes, and the mythology of the West.  As a genre, the Western has its clichés, and we will spend some time interrogating both Westerns which employ these generic conventions as well as those which resist them.  Because the West was not just the realm of cowboys, we will also be considering the roles women, Native Americans, and African Americans played in the settlement of the West.  In this way, we will read closely and discuss the themes, styles, and myths of the literary “Wild West.”  

ENGL 471W Undergrad Writing Workshop: Advanced Creative Writing

Dr. Sean Hill

This multi-genre workshop will focus on elements of creative writing—image, metaphor, rhythm, voice, character, setting, and story—and teach them to read texts as writers with an eye for these elements. The course will give students the opportunity to practice using these elements in their own creative work. Class discussions will focus on craft and techniques and student work. By the end of the semester, each student will have completed one personal essay, one short story, and at least one poem. 

English 472: History of the English Language, Spring 2013

Burns Cooper  

This is a course on the origins and development of the language we now know as English, from its prehistory as a Germanic dialect in Europe to its development as Old English in the early Middle Ages, on through to its modern forms and its spread as a global language.  We will pay some attention both to external historical events that have influenced the way people speak (wars, migrations, inventions, etc.) and to internal details of the language as they have changed through the centuries.  However, we will spend more of our time on the development of these internal features such as pronunciation, meaning, the way words are formed, the way phrases and sentences are formed, and the ways the language differs among different groups of speakers.  Along the way, though, we'll look at examples of writing and (where possible) speaking from each period, to get a sense of the language in use.

English 482: Metaphor as Rhetoric for Social Change

Sarah Stanley

In this course, we will work to develop a more conscious metaphor awareness in the ways that we read, write, and live. Drawing on an Experimentalist theory of language, this course examines the cognitive trope of metaphor and applies this theory to metaphor’s various contexts, disciplines, and rhetorics. We will learn how metaphors systematically and partially frame perspectives on reality. We will discuss how such metaphorical framing largely operates in our unconscious minds, despite at the same time revealing itself through our conscious action. Our discussion will center on the consequences of metaphor—particularly those metaphors many of us do not recognize as metaphorical or figurative (time, for example: a resource, in U.S. culture, which can be used up). After this investigation and discussion, students will then apply the emerging theoretical framework of metaphor—for which the instructor has drawn heavily from cognitive science, cognitive linguistics, and critical discourse analysis—to uncover the limits and possibilities of figurative relationships in their own lives.

Our time in class will consist of discussion, small group work, and workshop. We will learn from each other to locate the vexed relationships between our language and social realities. Such looks at language often reveal hidden, unconscious assumptions and beliefs about reality that we do not hold explicitly true, despite our language powerfully constituting and re-constituting them. Based in that assumption between conscious and unconscious meaning, the course will culminate in an inquiry project designed to challenge given metaphors in particular contexts surrounding students—as writers, consumers, or citizens. This project is encouraged to help students better understand, address, and potentially work to change a conceptual metaphor’s social function and ideological power.

English 608 - Studies in British Literature after 1900 - Bodies

Chris Coffman

This seminar will explore significant texts in twentieth-century British literature (as well as some texts from other national literatures) by focusing on their figuration of bodies:  animal, insect, human, and posthuman bodies;  abject, disciplined, diseased, gendered, grotesque, repressed, sexual, and surreal bodies.  Primary readings will include Oscar Wilde’s Salome;  Djuna Barnes’s The Book of Repulsive Women and Nightwood;  Franz Kafka’s "The Metamorphosis" and "In the Penal Colony;"  James Joyce’s Ulysses;  W.B. Yeats’s poetry;  Imagist poetry by Ezra Pound, H.D., and Amy Lowell;  T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and The Waste Land;  Radclyffe Hall’s “Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself;”  Virginia Woolf’s Orlando;  Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber;  and Jeanette Winterson’s Sexing the Cherry.  Secondary readings will provide historical context, as well as expose students to a variety of feminist, Foucauldian, phenomenological, psychoanalytic, queer, and transgender perspectives on embodiment.

ENGL 614 -  SEMINAR IN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE:  EUROPEAN FICTION—MODERN, POSTMODERN, CONTEMPORARY

Dr Rich Carr

Plan to spend Spring Semester 2013 on a literary journey like no other.  Walk the streets of Christiania (Oslo) with a starving artist, travel to Italy with a writer who little knows what danger lurks in the streets and waterways of Venice, see what happens when an insomniac bites into a madeleine and is suddenly awash—for hundreds of pages—in memories.  Civil War Spain, medieval Iceland and Norway, post-Holocaust New York City—these places and more will be your destination.  A continent in upheaval as evidenced by World Wars I & II, major civil conflicts, the Russian Revolution, totalitarianism made concrete by the Soviet Union, the rise—and fall—of the Iron Curtain; artistic breakthroughs—or outrages—by such figures as Igor Stravinsky or Pablo Picasso; humanity at its most monstrous in the concentration camps or the Soviet Gulag—these events , trends, and phenomena form the backdrop to a new world of fiction emerging on the continent from the last decade of the nineteenth century forward.

Seminar participants will produce two response papers, facilitate a discussion, write a book review of a work not on the reading list, and develop an extended study on one or more of the works or writers from the course.  They will also read an exciting, even astonishing array of works that will expand and enrich their appreciation for the great world of writing.  This is no postcard tour of museums & monuments!  Surely you want to be part of this continental pilgrimage.