Spring 2012 English Course Offerings

 

Visit the Registrar’s webpage for additional information

PLEASE NOTE THAT COURSE AVAILABILITY AND TIMES CHANGE FREQUENTLY. CHECK BACK OFTEN FOR UPDATES.

Eng 100-01: The Novels of Charles Dickens, Pauls Toutonghi
TTH 1:50PM-3:20PM

Charles Dickens was arguably the most successful novelist of the Victorian era. His work has spawned numerous adaptations of the centuries, becoming a part of the cultural fabric of modern British and American life. February 7th is the 200th anniversary of Dickens’ birth—and this class considers four of his novels, along with the final unfinished work: Edwin Drood.
Prerequisite: None; 4 semester credits

Eng 100-02: Experimental Fiction, Kristin Fujie
 MWF 12:40PM-1:40PM

This course focuses on 20th and 21st century British and American fiction that employs innovative formal techniques. By studying our writers’ use of devices such as frame narratives, unreliable and non-traditional narrators, stream-of-conscious style, non-linear plot, collage, pastiche, we will explore how literature since 1900 bends, stretches, breaks, and otherwise manipulates linguistic and narrative conventions in order to create new experiences for its readers. Writers may include Joseph Conrad, Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, William Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, Toni Morrison, Ian McEwan, David Mitchell, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. 
Prerequisite: None; 4 semester credits.

Eng 105: Art of the Novel, Lyell Asher
MWF 11:30AM-12:30 PM

A study of major works in English, American, and European fiction, from the 17th century to the present. Goals include increasing awareness of the particular kinds of knowledge and perception that the novel makes available; considering the variety of ways in which novels braid moral and aesthetic concerns; understanding how novels respond both to everyday human experience and to previous literary history; and heightening appreciation for the range of pleasures that the novel can afford. Writers may include Cervantes, Sterne, Austen, Flaubert, Kafka, Woolf, Nabokov, Kundera, Pynchon.
Prerequisite: None; 4 semester credits.

Eng 200: Introduction to the Short Story, Pauls Toutonghi
 TTH 9:40AM-11:10AM

Elements of fiction such as plot, character development, descriptive language, and voice.  Emphasis on craft-based exercise.  Extensive reading of short stories, culminating in the writing and revision of a final story.
Prerequisite: None; 4 semester credits

Eng 201: Introduction to Poetry and Poetry Writing, Paul Merchant
MWF 9:10AM-10:10AM

Elements of poetry such as imagery, rhythm, tone.  Practice in the craft.  Frequent reference to earlier poets.
Prerequisite: None; 4 semester credits

Eng 206-01: Major Periods and Issues in English Literature,  Andrea Hibbard
 MWF 11:30AM-12:30PM

Introduction to ways of reading and writing about literature; historical development of English literature. Romantic period to middle of 20th century.
Prerequisite: Sophomore standing and completion of English 205 or consent of instructor.

Eng 206-02: Major Periods and Issues in English Literature, Rachel Cole
MWF 9:10AM-10:10AM

Introduction to ways of reading and writing about literature; historical development of English literature. Romantic period to middle of 20th century.
Prerequisite: Sophomore standing and completion of English 205 or consent of instructor.

Eng 206-03: Major Periods and Issues in English Literature, Kurt Fosso
 TTH 9:40AM-11:10AM

Introduction to ways of reading and writing about literature; historical development of English literature. Romantic period to middle of 20th century.
Prerequisite: Sophomore standing and completion of English 205 or consent of instructor.

Eng 208: Prose Writing - Creative Nonfiction, Staff
MWF 12:40PM-1:40PM

Writing in the genre known variously as the personal essay or narrative, memoir, autobiography, to introduce students to traditional and contemporary voices in this genre.  daily writing and weekly reading of exemplars such as Seneca, Plutarch, Montaigne, Hazlitt, Woolf, Soyinka, Baldwin, Walker, Hampl, Dillard, Selzer, Lopez.
Prerequisite: Sophomore standing; 4 semester credits.

Eng 209: Introduction to American Literature, Kristin Fujie
 MWF 10:20AM-11:20AM

Survey of major periods and issues in American literature, from the Puritan theocracy and early Republican period through American Romanticism and Modernism. Authors may include Edwards, Franklin, Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson, Twain, Cather, Williams, Faulkner, Wright, Ellison.
Prerequisite: None; 4 semester credits.

Eng 244: Practicum

Literary Review, Mary Szybist/Pauls Toutonghi
Content: Production of a first-rate literary review. In weekly workshops, students gain
some familiarity with all the processes involved (editorial, layout, printing, business,
distribution) and intimate experience with at least one.
Taught: Each semester, 1 semester credit. May be taken four times for credit.
Prerequisite: Consent of Instructor

Peer Tutoring in Writing, Susan Hubbuch
Content: Designed for any student interested in learning theories and methods for teaching writing one-on-one; required of students interested in becoming tutors in the Writing Center. Social dimensions of a tutorial, including a Writing Center user’s perceptions of good writing and the writing process, his or her perception of the role of the tutor, how all of these elements affect a writing conference.  Rhetorical dimensions of writing, including strategies and techniques to help student writers solve their own problems.
Taught: Annually, 2 semester credits.  Prerequisite:  Consent of Instructor

Eng 280: The Medieval World,  Karen Gross
TTH 9:40AM-11:10AM

An introduction to the world of the Middle Ages in Europe and in England.  Exploration of the richness of the medieval experience through manuscripts, visual, arts, music, architecture.  May focus on a particular theme set by the instructor, including the cult of the saints; interactions among Christians, Jews, and Muslims; medieval cities; travel and pilgrimage; court culture; rural life; chivalry and romance; university culture and medieval education; popular devotional practices.  Possible authors may include Chretien de Troyes, Marie de France, Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch, Julian of Norwich, Geoffrey Chaucer, William Langland, Ibn Battuta.
Prerequisites: None; 4 semester credits.

Eng 311: Literature of the English Renaissance, Lyell Asher
MWF 9:10AM-10:10AM

Developments in poetry, fiction, and drama during the Elizabethan period and the 17th century.  Genres such as the sonnet and sonnet sequences, the pastoral, heroic and Ovidian verse, satire; examples from the non-Shakespearean dramatists, comedy, tragedy.  May include Browne, Donne, Herbert, Jonson, Marlowe, Marvell, Milton, Raleigh, Sidnney, Spenser, Surrey, Wyatt.
Prerequisite: Junior standing or consent of instructor; 4 semester credits.

Eng 316: 20th Century British Literature,  Rishona Zimring    
T 3:30PM-5:00PM / F 3:00PM-4:30PM

Major British and Irish writers of the first part of this century whose responses to such major events as World War I shape the conventions of 20th-century British literature, in particular modernism.  Conrad, Yeats, Woolf, Joyce, Lawrence, Forster, Eliot, Auden, Rhys, Ford, Mansfield.
Prerequisites: Junior standing or consent of instructor; 4 semester credits.

Eng 321: Pre-Civil War American Literature,  Rachel Cole
 TTH 9:40AM-11:10AM

American literature in the decades preceding the Civil War.  Texts include transcendentalist essays (Emerson, Fuller, Thoreau); adventure, romance, and protest novels (Hawthorne, Poe, Sedgwick, Stowe); short stories (Davis, Melville); poems (Dickinson, Whitman); and a slave narrative (Douglass).  Topics include literary contributions to contemporary debates over religion, national expansion, national identity, slavery, and the rise of women and labor; the influence on those contributions of puritanism and other early-American ideologies in combination with British Romanticism and 18th and 19th-century philosophy; variant literary articulations of concepts that remain current in American discourse (the individual, freedom, law, the family, opportunity, happiness).
Prerequisite: Junior standing or consent of instructor; 4 semester credits.

Eng 330: Chaucer,  Karen Gross
TTH 1:50PM-3:20PM

This course introduces students to the richness and scope of Chaucer’s literary production, primarily through close study of his Canterbury Tales.  Almost all readings will be in the original Middle English.  During the course of the semester we will locate Chaucer’s poetry in a range of literary and cultural frameworks, including the rise of the vernacular in the later Middle Ages; the politics of authorship; the influence of European literary forms on English traditions; Christian allegorical modes of reading; manuscript culture and the ways of reading and writing before the advent of printing; the characteristics of different medieval literary genres (e,g, fabliau, romance, lyric, sermon, and more); and the representations of men and women in fourteenth-century society.  Chaucer is the first self-consciously constructed author in the English language and has been hailed as the father of English poetry since his death in 1400: at the end of the semester we will interrogate some of the assumptions that lay behind later generations’ invocations of Chaucer as the origin of the English canon.
Prerequisite: Junior standing or consent of instructor; 4 semester credits. 

Eng 332: Shakespeare: Later Works, Lyell Asher
MWF 1:50PM-2:50PM

Critical reading of plays representative of the development of Shakespeare’s comedies, tragedies, and romances. Usually covers six or seven plays and selected poetry from 1604 to 1611, typically including Measure for Measure, King Lear, Macbeth, Coriolanus, Antony and Cleopatra, The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest.
Prerequisite: Junior standing or consent of the instructor; 4 semester credits.

Eng 340: Topics in Literary Theory/Criticism, Kurt Fosso
TTH 11:30AM-1:00PM

Emphasis on a particular topic in literary theory and criticism, to be chosen by the professor. Topics may include theories of meaning, literature and ethics, feminist literary theory, and theories of value.
Prerequisite: Junior standing or consent of the instructor; 4 semester credits. May be taken twice for credit with change of topic.

Eng 401-01: Advanced Poetry Writing, Jerry Harp
M 3:00PM-4:30PM / TH 3:30PM-5:00PM

An opportunity for experienced student writers to develop their skills as poets and work on a sustained project. This is a workshop class in which we’ll spend at least half our time discussing student writing; emphasis on revision. Work will include the examination of literary models.
Prerequisite: English 301 and senior standing or consent of instructor; 4 semester credits.

Eng 402-01: Advanced Fiction Writing, Pauls Toutonghi
TTH 11:30AM-1:00PM

Students will complete a long project, i.e., a collection of short stories, a novella or the beginning of a novel, or some combination thereof. Workshop format plus additional reading as needed.
Prerequisite: English 200, 300, and senior standing or consent of instructor; 4 semester credits.