AQ 2000 200-level ENGL courses

Course Descriptions (As of 3 August 2000)
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The following course descriptions have been written by individual instructors to provide more detailed information on specific section sthan that found in the General Catalog. When individual descriptions are not available, the General Catalog descriptions [in brackets] are used. (Although we try to have as accurate and complete information as possible, this schedule remains subject to change.)

200 A (Reading Literature)
Dy 8:30
Davis
(W)
This section of English 200 takes the general title, "Reading Literature," quite literally. In this course we will be examining our current reading practice, which could be highly sophisticated and individual or limited to what literature is assigned within a classroom context. Our goal is an exhaustive study of why we read, how we read, what we read, and how we choose what we read, in order to craft a set of reading criteria to take out of the classroom and into our "real" lives. To this end, we will be reading novels and short stories that fall into four general areas: "The Classic"; "The Movie Tie-in"; "The Bestseller"; and "The Oprah Selection." In addition to four novels, we will be reading at least eight short stories from the anthology The Story and Its Writer. The reading for this class is demanding as is the amount of reflective writing you are expected to produce. We will spend much of our time in discussion and hopefully together create and/or further an enjoyable reading practice for each of you. Texts: Ann Charters, ed., The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction; F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby; Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient; Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow.

200 B (Reading Literature).
Dy 8:30
Bredesen
(W)
As an introduction to reading and writing about literature, this course will examine texts drawn from a variety of genres ranging from scripture to satire, as well as drama and poetry, the epic, the short story and the novel. One reading strategy that will be emphasized will be to look at a part and see how that one element of a text relates to and illuminates the whole. We will do this by focusing on the peculiar status of widowhood in literature and culture. Focussing on the varied figurations of widowhood not only sensitizes the reader to multiple representations of women and their place in society, but in these fictures one finds a universe of connections to sex, death, mourning, marriage, law, and property, indeed to many subjects of literary expression and ongoing social concern. Sophomores only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Geoffrey Chaucer, The Wife of Bath; Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers; Paule Marshall, Prasesong for the Widow; Candida Lacey, ed., Barbara Bodichon and the Langham Place Group; photocopied course packet.

200 C (Reading Literature).
Dy 9:30
Bredesen
(W)
As an introduction to reading and writing about literature, this course will examine texts drawn from a variety of genres ranging from scripture to satire, as well as drama and poetry, the epic, the short story and the novel. One reading strategy that will be emphasized will be to look at a part and see how that one element of a text relates to and illuminates the whole. We will do this by focusing on the peculiar status of widowhood in literature and culture. Focussing on the varied figurations of widowhood not only sensitizes the reader to multiple representations of women and their place in society, but in these fictures one finds a universe of connections to sex, death, mourning, marriage, law, and property, indeed to many subjects of literary expression and ongoing social concern. Texts: Geoffrey Chaucer, The Wife of Bath; Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers; Paule Marshall, Prasesong for the Widow; Candida Lacey, ed., Barbara Bodichon and the Langham Place Group; photocopied course packet.

200 D (Reading Literature)
Dy 12:30
Cole
(W)
This course introduces the study of literature through a close focus on the writings of the Harlem Renaissance. A selection of poems, plays, essays, short stories, novellas, and novels will focus our exploration of the possibilities and pleasures of literary language. Through the examination of such authors as Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larson, and Jean Toomer, we will elaborate the careful practice of critical inquiry. The course will also attend to important social issues raised by these African-American writers. More than an incredibly vibrant literary movement, the Harlem Renaissance is a major event in American cultural and social history. A course packet will supplement the required texts. Texts: Hughes, Collected Poems; Five Plays; Hurston, The Complete Stories; The Complete Plays; Their Eyes Were Watching God; Larson, Quicksand and Passing; Thurmon, Infants of the Spring; Toomer, Cane; photocopied course packet.

200 E (Reading Literature)
Dy 1:30
Cole
(W)
This course introduces the study of literature through a close focus on the writings of the Harlem Renaissance. A selection of poems, plays, essays, short stories, novellas, and novels will focus our exploration of the possibilities and pleasures of literary language. Through the examination of such authors as Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larson, and Jean Toomer, we will elaborate the careful practice of critical inquiry. The course will also attend to important social issues raised by these African-American writers. More than an incredibly vibrant literary movement, the Harlem Renaissance is a major event in American cultural and social history. A course packet will supplement the required texts. Texts: Hughes, Collected Poems; Five Plays; Hurston, The Complete Stories; The Complete Plays; Their Eyes Were Watching God; Larson, Quicksand and Passing; Thurmon, Infants of the Spring; Toomer, Cane; photocopied course packet.

200 F (Reading Literature)
Dy 8:30
Cole
(W)
Added 5/31; sln: 9373
This course introduces the study of literature through a close focus on the writings of the Harlem Renaissance. A selection of poems, plays, essays, short stories, novellas, and novels will focus our exploration of the possibilities and pleasures of literary language. Through the examination of such authors as Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larson, and Jean Toomer, we will elaborate the careful practice of critical inquiry. The course will also attend to important social issues raised by these African-American writers. More than an incredibly vibrant literary movement, the Harlem Renaissance is a major event in American cultural and social history. A course packet will supplement the required texts.Texts: Hughes, Collected Poems; Five Plays; Hurston, The Complete Stories; The Complete Plays; Their Eyes Were Watching God; Larson, Quicksand and Passing; Thurmon, Infants of the Spring; Toomer, Cane; photocopied course packet.

200 G (Reading Literature)
Dy 2:30
Lundgren
(W)
Added 5/31; sln: 9374
[Techniques and practice in reading and enjoying literature. Examines some of the best works in English and American literature and considers such features of literary meaning as imagery, characterization, narration, and patterning in sound and sense. Emphasis on literature as a source of pleasure and knowledge about human experience. Texts: Beaty & Hunter, eds., Norton Introduction to Literature, 7th ed.; Lundsford & Connors, The New St. Martin's Handbook.

200 H (Reading Literature)
TTh 10:30-12:20
Laughlin
(W)
Added 5/31; sln: 9375
Innocence and Experience--Good and Evil. In this course we will learn techniques for reading literature with pleasure and writing about it with understanding. The works we will read together--written over a period of nearly 500 years--vary widely in genre, subject, and form, but they share a concern with the nature of the transition from innocence to experience, and with the difference between good and evil. By looking carefully at the way these writers work--at their use of characterization, narration, and language--we will find ways to talk and write about the deeper issues these texts explore. Texts: William Blake, Favorite Works of William Blake: Three Full-Color Books; Nick Bantock, Griffin and Sabine; Charles Williams, War in Heaven; John Milton, Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained; Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion.

200I (Reading Literature)
TTh 2:30-4:20
Laughlin
(W)
Added 5/31; sln: 9376
Focus on Women Writers. In this course we will study works in different genres--poetry, novel, and autobiography--by women writers of the past 200 years. These works share a common concern with the place of women in the world, as well as a profound insight into broader areas of "the human experience." In this course we will learn techniques for reading literature with pleasure and writing about it with understanding. By looking carefully at the way these writers work--at their use of characterization, narration, and language--we will find ways to talk and write about the deeper issues these texts explore. Texts: Sylvia Plath, Ariel; Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese; Jane Austen, Persuasion; Barbara Pym, Excellent Women; Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; Helen Keller, The Story of My Life.

205 A (Method, Imagination, Inquiry)
Dy 10:30
Searle
(W)
This course is offered as both an English and Comparative History of Ideas course. It offers a rigorous introduction to intellectual history by examining the rich relations between method and imagination, by treating Western intellectual history as overwhelmingly motivated by the idea of inquiry. Selections include literary, philosophical and scientific texts. The reading for the course is demanding, but coherent: each text provides a basis for better understanding the next. Selections include works by Plato, Aristotle, Giordano Bruno, Francis Bacon, Shakespeare, Descartes, Kant, Coleridge, C. S. Peirce, Thomas Kuhn and William Faulkner. The course meets daily; one meeting each week will be in smaller sections to go over reading and writing assignments. There is a take-home mid-term examination, a number of short papers, and a final paper. The course does carry "W" credit. Meets with CHID 205A. Texts: Plato, Phaedo; Ackrill, ed., A New Aristotle Anthology; Shakespeare, The Tempest; Francis Bacon, The New Organon; Descartes, Discourse on Method; Thomas Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions; William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!; photocopied course packet.

210 A (Literature of the Ancient World)
MW 8:30-10:20
Taylor
In this course, we will examine some of the earliest extant literary works to emerge from the civilizations of Babylonia, the Hellenistic world, and the Roman world. Primary attention will be given to understanding the mythological traditions that develop across this period of time (3000 BCE - 1st Century CE), as well as secondary attention paid to lyrical and pastoral traditions which arise during the period. Non-majors only, Registration Period 1. (Meets w. 210 B, which is for new transfer students only.) Texts: Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth; The Epic of Gilgamesh; The Odyssey of Homer; Hamilton, Mythology; Thocritus, The Idylls; The Holy Bible, New Revised Standard Version; selected poems of Sappho, Archilocus, and Catullus.

211 A (Medieval and Renaissance Literature)
TTh 8:30-10:20
Mussetter
We will be doing an overview of Early and Late Medieval literature in English. This means Beowulf and some minor Old English poems along with some of their historical and cultural backgrounds-and this means the Germanic migrations into the British Isles, the formation of the state which will become England, the tensions between paganism and Christianity, the warrior ethic, the visual arts, the myths and lore that the Anglo-Saxons brought with them and combined with the Celtic materials of the Britons. The second half of the course will be devoted to the literature, history, and culture of the 14th-15th centuries. This means Gawain and the Green Knight, The Miller's Tale, a few plays, and a bit of Malory's Morte D'Arthur. In addition to the readings, there will be a midterm and a final (part take-home, part in-class identifications/essays). And in addition to that, there will be a weekly e-mail "paper" on some subject related to class discussion. Non-majors only, Registration Period 1. (Meets w. 211B which is for new transfer students only.) Text: Abrams, et al., Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 1.

212 A (Literature of Enlightenment & Revolution)
MW 10:30-12:20
Goodlad
[Introduction to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature from a broadly cultural point of view, focussing on representative works that illustrate literary and intellectual developments of the period.] Non-majors only, Registration Period 1 (Meets w. 212C, which is for new transfer students only.) Texts: Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South; H. G. Wells, Best Science Fiction Stories; photocopied course packet.

212 B (Literature of Enlightenment & Revolution).
TTh 12:30-2:20
R. Mitchell
In this course we will consider a number of literary texts written between roughly 1740 and 1800, a period dominated by the themes of "enlightenment" and "revolution." While we will consider texts from several national literary traditions, our emphasis will be on British literature, and we will focus our study through a series of four debates: (1) the philosohpical and political debate between the proponents of "reason" and "sentiment" (should "reason" or "sentiment" serve as the foundation of human action and political structure?); (2) the abolition debate (was slavery a good or bad thing for Britain, and if the latter, how might it be combated?); (3) the French Revolution debate (did the French Revolution signal the dawning of an utopican age or the outbreak of contagious violence?); (4) the debate about the poor (why were so many people starving and poor and in Britain, and what, if anything, should be done about it?). In each case, we will consider texts written in a variety of genres (essays, treatises, poems, etc.), and consider the ways in which the genre of a text relates to its "message." We will also consider various eighteenth-century demographic, social, and cultural changes that help us to understand why the issues above were of vital interest to the authors under consideration. Non-majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey; Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837; Alexander Pope, Essay on Man and Other Poems; William Wordsworth & Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads; Marilyn Butler, ed., Burke, Paine, Godwin and the Revolution Controversy.

213 A (Modern & Postmodern Literature)
TTh 2:30-4:20
Keeling
In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf said that relationships between women, conventionally depicted in literature at the end of the nineteenth century were "fictitious" and "too simple." While they might be seen as "confidantes," "mothers and daughters," and "shown in their relation to men," women in fiction were rarely "represented as friends." In this course, we will explore the representation of women in several twentieth-century texts written by both women and men. And we will consider such representations in view of Woolf's declaration that, for writers, it "is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple; one must be woman-manly or man-womanly." This course is not a survey of Anglo-American modernism/postmodernism per se, but, rather, an introduction to just one of the significant issues emerging from and raised in many modern and postmodern texts. Non-majors only, Registration Period 1 (Meets w. 213B, which is for new transfer students only.) Texts: Michael Cunningham, The Hours; Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway; H.D., Bid Me to Live: A Madrigal; Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body; Joan Didion, Play It As It Lays.

225 A (Shakespeare).
TTh 1:30-3:20
Lester
(W)
In the recently published Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, Harold Bloom proposes that Shakespeare's plays should not be regarded as imitations of life so much as inventions of it. "Personality, in our sense," Bloom contends, "is a Shakespearean invention, and is not only Shakespeare's greatest originality but also the authentic cause of his perpetual pervasiveness." Such a bold assertion attests to the continued vitality and relevance of Shakespeare. In this course, a survey of Shakespeare's career as a dramatist, we will examine this claim through the study of representative comedies, histories, romances and tragedies. Special attention will be given to story, theme and language, in addition to character; and a variety of critical perspectives from which the plays may be approached will be explored. Texts: Greenblatt, ed., The Norton Shakespeare; Platus, The Menaechmus Twins and Two Other Plays; McDonald, The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare.

228 A (English Literary Culture: to 1600)
MW 10:30-12:20
Remley
The course will provide a lively and wide-ranging introduction to the literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, an introduction that will endeavor to place texts remote from our modern era in their social and historical contexts. For this iteration of the course, an emphasis will be placed on the fictional "universe" of the women and men of Arthur's court. Students will read and discuss important works of prose and poetry of the early Middle Ages and the Middle English periods, including works by a range of Anglo-Saxon poets, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and a selection of non-canonical items. There will be a mid-term, final, and major term paper. Non-majors only, Registration Period 1 (Meets w. 228B MW; new transfer students only.) Texts: Hamer, ed., A Choice of Anglo-Saxon Verse; Thorpe, tr., Geoffrey of Monmouth: The History of the Kings of Britain; Marie de France, Lais (tr. Hanning & Ferrante), Stone, tr., King Arthur's Death.

229 A (English Literary Culture: 1600-1800)
TTh 11:30-1:20
Tandy
This course covers two centuries of English literature, roughly from the end of the reign of Elizabeth I to the beginnings of revolutionary stirrings in Europe. England experienced some startling changes in this period, as her people reevaluated their position with regards to their God, their monarch, other nations and each other; part of our project this quarter will be to explore how these changes are reflected in the literature of the time. Another part of our project, however, will be to read these texts for their own sake, with an eye towards their artistic merits and appeal to audiences of any period. Non-majors only, Registration Period 1 (Meets w. 229B, which is for new transfer students only.) Texts: Abrams, et al., Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 1; Defoe, Moll Flanders.

230 A (English Literary Culture: after 1800)
MW 12:30-2:20
Hennessee
Why is it that "If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear.as it is, Infinite?" What does it mean to have "a heart that watches and receives"? Is "Beauty truth, truth beauty"? How is finding yourself like putting on new clothes? How do you achieve your "best self"? How do you "burn like a hard gem-like flame"? Why should we "multiply our personalities"? In what way is identity like an orange? These questions and more will be asked in ENGL 230. The course offers a general introduction to English literature in a period of sweeping change. Our main object of inquiry will be changing conceptions of selfhood; we will pose questions concerning how writers envision the self in relation to nature, imagination, art, culture, politics, economics, gender, race, colonialism, sexuality, religion.and anything else that might come up. We will spend roughly 1/3 of our time with Romantics (William Blake, William Wordsworth, Percy Shelley, John Keats), 1/3 with Victorians (Thomas Carlyle, Matthew Arnold, Charlotte Brontë, Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde), 1/3 with Modernists (T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, E. M. Forster) and gesture toward Postmodernism with Jeanette Winterson. Course requirements include active participation, an in-class midterm,, a take-home midterm, a group project with a writing component (on a primary text or an historical topic), and one 4-5 pp. critical essay. Expect some lecture, more discussion, demanding but rewarding texts that will hopefully not only give you a sense of the literature of the period, but whose explorations of selfhood will have meaning and relevance to your own lives. Non-majors only, Registration Period 1 (Meets w. 230B, which is for new transfer students only.) Texts: Aldington & Weintraub, eds., The Portable Oscar Wilde; Cullen, ed., Poetry and Criticism of Matthew Arnold; James Joyce, Dubliners; Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus; E. M. Forster, A Passage to India; Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre; Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit; William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience.

242 A (Reading Fiction)
Dy 8:30
Kvidera
(W)
This is an introductory course in reading and writing about American fiction. We will read short stories and novels that demonstrate the power of fictional narratives to structure personal and community identity, as well as social and cultural relations. As we do so, we'll examine how writers use narrative form to explore the complexities of identity and consciousness. Course requirements include active participation, short papers, a mid-term, and a final exam. Texts: Kate Chopin, The Awakening; William Faulkner, Light in August; Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God; Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven; photocopied course packet.

242 B (Reading Fiction)
Dy 9:30
Kvidera
(W)
This is an introductory course in reading an dwriting about American fiction. We will read short stories and novels that demonstrate the power of fictional narratives to structure personal and community identity, as well as social and cultural relations. As we do so, we'll examine how writers use narrative form to explore the complexities of identity and consciousness. Course requirements include active participation, short papers, a mid-term, and a final exam. Texts: Kate Chopin, The Awakening; William Faulkner, Light in August; Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God; Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven; photocopied course packet.

242 C (Reading Fiction)
Dy 12:30
Emmerson
(W)
Is This Desire? Desire, Fiction and the Modern. In this course we will read texts that try to describe what it means to want something (or someone), the frustrations of not getting it, and the equally unsatisfying prospect of satisfaction. We will discuss what it means to write fiction in order to name what one wants, and we will talk about the process of writing itself as an expression of longing. And finally, we will try to see what is particularly modern about some forms of desire. The reading list will be long and arduous, as all paths to desire must be. Our discussions of fiction, desire and modernity will include the themes of dying, buying, loving, and pornography. Writing assignments will include response papers, two longer papers, a midterm, and a final. Attendance is mandatory, and so is active participation in class discussions. Texts: Thomas Mann, Dean in Venice; Emile Zola, The Ladies Paradise; Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway; Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary; Nella Larsen, Quicksand and Passing.

242 D (Reading Fiction)
Dy 1:30
Emmerson
(W)
Is This Desire? Desire, Fiction and the Modern. In this course we will read texts that try to describe what it means to want something (or someone), the frustrations of not getting it, and the equally unsatisfying prospect of satisfaction. We will discuss what it means to write fiction in order to name what one wants, and we will talk about the process of writing itself as an expression of longing. And finally, we will try to see what is particularly modern about some forms of desire. The reading list will be long and arduous, as all paths to desire must be. Our discussions of fiction, desire and modernity will include the themes of dying, buying, loving, and pornography. Writing assignments will include response papers, two longer papers, a midterm, and a final. Attendance is mandatory, and so is active participation in class discussions. Sophomores only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Thomas Mann, Dean in Venice; Emile Zola, The Ladies Paradise; Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway; Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary; Nella Larsen, Quicksand and Passing.

250 A (Introduction to American Literature)
TTh 9:30-11:20
L. Fisher
This course is designed to develop students' understanding of a variety of American texts as products of and participants in the nation's transforming artistic, intellectual, political and social trends. The course will focus predominantly on literature written from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century, but we will also look at Early American and more contemporary literature for a broader historical view of structural and thematic issues. Though this is a survey course, we will always work to engage with and appreciate individual texts, practicing critical reading skills that can make complex literature enjoyable and illuminating. Assignments will include short response papers, one longer paper, group presentations and a final exam. Non-majors only, Registration Period 1. (Meets w. 250B, which is for new transfer students only.) Texts: Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson; Yezierska, Breadgivers; Baym, ed., Norton Anthology of American Literature (shorter 5th ed.).

250C (Introduction to American Literature)
Early Fall Start: August 21-September 15
M-Th 8:30-10:20
Wacker
sln: 9585
Contemporary American literature (1948 to the present) is a unique area of literary study. The output and the range of innovation practiced by writers during this period is enormous. At the same time the grounds for determining what is truly masterful in this literature are unsettled; time has not yet performed its trick of securing some reputations that once seemed obscure and upending those that once seemed mighty. There is often surprisingly little overlap in the booklists for courses in this period as there is so much literature of genuine interest and so little certainty about its central figures and central works. Outside the windows of our writers, post-war American society was itself undergoing dizzying social, technical and cultural transformation. Their writing reflects this fact, and their innovations in style and language, their explorations of the themes, are accelerated by the momentum of the times.

Our course will look closely at some representative work and at the complexities of the way it mirrors the society in which it was written. We will begin by reflecting on the role literature played during the prewar peiord, particularly as articulated in the influential work of T. S. Eliot, and we will trace the way postwar writers reinterpreted and often worked against the grain of Eliot's ideas of tradition and of the moral and artistic nature of modern writing. We will identify new ideas about the nature of knowledge, of beauty and of the relationshiop of literature to society that emerge in Robert Lowell's Life Studies, Saul Bellow's Seize the Day, Elizabeth Bishop's Collected Poems, Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, and Don DeLillo's Libra.

Please note: This course assumes no prior knowledge of the period and will focus on learnign the skills needed to critically read and write about literature. We will use frequent short writing assignments to develop and deepen reader responses. We will closely examine specific passages to develop styles of reading appropriate to the particular work, and we will review the contemporary social and cultural contexts in which the work was written. Short essays built on your reading, your short overnight writing assignments, class discussion and student peresentations will be completed on each of the above major works.

This course is part of the Early Fall Start program, and is available to entering freshmen only. See the Early Fall Start web page for more information.

281 A (Intermediate Expository Writing)
MWF 8:30
Hogan
[Writing papers communicating information and opinion to develop accurate, competent, and effective expression.] Sophomores and above only, Registration Periods 1 & 2.

281 B (Intermediate Expository Writing)
MWF 8:30
C. Nelson
This course will investigate the different ways twentieth-century writers have attempted to redefine conventional notions of identity. By examining fiction and non-fiction texts by W.E.B. DuBois, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, and James Baldwin, we will explore how writing and art can serve as a potential tool for recreating the "self" and her/his role in society. Course requirements include three 5-7 page papers, one of which will involve library research on a contemporary social issue. All students will be expected to attend class regularly, participate in daily class discussions and exercises, and complete all written assignments. Sophomores and above only, Registration Periods 1 & 2. Texts: Baldwin, Giovanni's Room; Futwiler & Hayakawa, The College Writer's Reference, 2nd ed.; photocopied course packet.

281 C (Intermediate Expository Writing)
MWF 9:30
Robertson
This computer-integrated course will explore the nature of time as it is interpreted in a range of literary, cinematic, philosophical and scientific texts. We will also examine the impact our own understanding of time has on the writing process. For details see: http://staff.washington.edu/vmr/281F2K.htm. Sophomores and above only, Registration Periods 1 & 2. Texts: Alan P. Lightman, Einstein's Dreams; H. G. Wells, The Time Machine; J. L. Borges, Labyrinths; photocopied course packet.

281 D (Intermediate Expository Writing)
MWF 12:30
Parr
This intermediate expository writing course will examine narratives of gender in U.S. culture. We will research medical explanations for gender identity, and explore the ways in which gender is constructed in recent cultural texts (movies, TV, etc.), as well as in personal narratives. This course will familiarize students with reading and writing in a variety of academic discourses. Students will produce three 5-7 page papers, along with short reviews of researched materials. Sophomores and above only, Registration Periods 1 & 2. Texts: Bornstein, My Gender Workbook; photocopied course packet.

281 E (Intermediate Expository Writing)
MWF 1:30
Walker
This course will track some intersections between comedy and romantic love. We'll start in the 4th century B.C., with Aristophanes' sex strike (Lysistrata), and end in 1999, with David Foster Wallace's hideous men. As we read novels, plays, stories, essays, and poems, we'll discover one constant: Eros contains error. Students should expect to write three five-to-seven-page papers. Sophomores and above only, Registration Periods 1 & 2. Texts: Aristophanes, Four Plays; Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream; Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays; Nick Hornby, About a Boy; David Foster Wallace, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men; photocopied course packet.

281 F (Intermediate Expository Writing)
MWF 2:30
Tracy
The Medium and the Message. Are sound bytes destroying the democratic process? What do Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton have in common? What gives George W. Bush the "personality" Al Gore lacks? And why do all politicans sound alike? In this course, we won't necessarily answer all of these questions, but we will draw on the upcoming presidential election to investigate whether our next president will be one who walks the walk, or talks the talk--and to consider whether the quality of leadership might lie somewhere in between. As an intermediate expository writing class, this course will focus, of course, on developing your writing of critical arguments in a variety of contexts, and we will do this by working with various strategies for unpacking language itself--looking at how the medium of political rhetoric shapes the "messages" of political figures both historic and contemporary. We will begin by analyzing short historical texts, moving into contemporary examples from the current presidential campaign, including the analysis of political advertisements and televised speeches and debates. Readings will include historic speeches, contemporary speeches, basic readings on rhetorical analysis, and contemporary journalism by such authors as Joe Klein and David Foster Wallace. Students will write several short rhetorical analyses (2-3 pages) leading to three longer papers (7-8 pages). Political knowledge and activism are not required; an interest in language and a desire to improve your own writing are strongly recommended. Sophomores and above only, Registration Periods 1 & 2.

283 A (Beginning Verse Writing)
MW 9:30-10:50
Silver
[Intensive study of the ways and means of making a poem.] Sophomores and above only, Registration Periods 1 & 2.

283 B (Beginning Verse Writing)
TTh 11:30-12:50
Winakur
[Intensive study of the ways and means of making a poem.] Sophomores and above only, Registration Periods 1 & 2.

284 A (Beginning Short Story Writing)
MW 12:30-1:50
Henkle
[Introduction to the theory and practice of writing the short story.] Majors only, Registration Period 1. Sophomores and above only, Registration Periods 1 & 2.

284 B (Beginning Short Story Writing)
TTh 10:30-11:50
Jackson
[Introduction to the theory and practice of writing the short story.] Majors only, Registration Period 1. Sophomores and above only, Registration Periods 1 & 2. Text: Seymour Chatman, Reading Narrative Fiction.

Autumn 2000

200-level Courses