Autumn 1997 200-level ENGL courses

Course Descriptions (as of 22 August 1997)
The following course descriptions have been written by individual instructors to provide more detailed information on specific sections than 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.) Office, (206) 543-2690 or the Undergraduate Advising Office, (206) 543-2634.)

200A (Reading Literature) W
MTWThF 8:30
McRae
An introduction to reading and writing about literature at the college level. The course is not designed as an introduction to the English major, though prospective majors might find it rewarding. Its aim, first by a careful reading of poems, short stories, and a novel, and then by careful consideration of how students write about these works, is to make eeryone aware not just of the literary, emotional, and intellectual intensity and complexity of the works, but also of how much fun and sense of growth can accompany that awareness. Not as much reading, but considerably more writing, than is usual in courses of this sort. Texts: F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby; Charters, ed., The Story and Its Writer; David Madden, ed., A Pocketful of Poems.

200B (Reading Literature) W
MW 10:30-12:20
Dunlop
I'll be assuming that everyone who takes this course can read. I'll also be assuming that everyone could learn to read a lot better. So, "reading better" is the primary objective: to help achieve this we will be looking at a diversity of material (ancient and modern, prose and verse, heavy and light, etc., etc.) that illustrates various tactics writers adopt, various choices writers make--and which also demonstrates how effectively skillful tactics and smart choices contribute to and create "meaning." (Meets with 200D.)

200C (Reading Literature) W
MTWThF 12:30
Truame
[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 : David Madden, ed., A Pocketful of Poems; Charters, The Story and Its Writer; F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby.

200D (Reading Literature) W
MW 10:30-12:20
Dunlop
I'll be assuming that everyone who takes this course can read. I'll also be assuming that everyone could learn to read a lot better. So, "reading better" is the primary objective: to help achieve this we will be looking at a diversity of material (ancient and modern, prose and verse, heavy and light, etc., etc.) that illustrates various tactics writers adopt, various choices writers make--and which also demonstrates how effectively skillful tactics and smart choices contribute to and create "meaning." (Freshman Interest Group students only; meets with 200B.)

200E (Reading Literature) W
MTWThF 8:30
Freind
Section added 8/4/97; sln: 8801
[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: David Madden, ed., A Pocketful of Poems; Charters, The Story and Its Writer; F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby.

200F (Reading Literature) W
MTWThF 2:30
Atchley
Section added 8/4/97; sln: 8802
[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: David Madden, ed., A Pocketful of Poems; Charters, The Story and Its Writer; F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby.

205A (Method, Imagination and Inquiry)
TTh 1:30-3:20
Searle
[Examines ideas of method and imagination in a variety of texts, in literature, philosophy, and science. Particularly concerned with intellectual backgrounds and methods of inquiry that have shaped modern Western literature. Meets with CHID 205A.] Texts: Plato, Phaedrus; Shakespeare, The Tempest; Fancis Bacon, The New Organon; Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions; William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!

210A (Literature of the Ancient World)
MTWThF 8:30
Lowe
This course aims to provide a representative sample of the broad range of ancient and classical literature. Alongside central figures such as Homer, we will study less familiar texts such as Apuleius' Golden Ass and Biblical Apocrypha. There will be a great deal of reading in the course, and class participation is paramount. Texts also include Euripides' Bacchae, Aristophanes' Frogs and the Epic of Gilgamesh. Texts: Jackson, tr, The Epic of Gilgamesh; Apuleius, The Golden Ass; Euripides, Three Tragedies; Aristophanes, Four Comedies; Homer, Odyssey; Robert Graves, Greek Myths; The Bible ( Douay-Rheims version); Lost Books of the Bible; The Forgotten Books of Eden.

211A (Medieval & Renaissance Literature)
TTh 1:30-3:20
Remley
This 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. Students will read and discuss the best-known poems of the Old and Middle English periods (including Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and The Canterbury Tales) as well as a selection of non-canonical items (ranging from runic inscriptions to some of the earliest "marginalized" texts by women authors, and on to the pre-Malory treatments of King Arthur). The informing critical theme of the course will be the phenomenon of "syncretism," the process of cultural accommodation that accounts for the fact, e.g., that the days of the week are named after pagan Norse gods. There will be a mid-term, final, and major term paper. Texts: Richard Hamer, ed, A Choice of Anglo-Saxon Verse; Hieatt, ed., Chaucer's Canterbury Tales; Tolkein, ed., Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; Lehmann, tr., Beowulf, An Imitative Translation.

212A (Literature of Enlightenment and Revolution)
MTWThF 10:30
Drake
Enlightenment and Romantic ideas about liberty, nature, and education continue to shape our thinking in profound ways. And yet the meaning of these words was vigorously contested throughout Europe and changed radically between the early 18th and early 19th centuries. The works we will be reading this term were shaped by--and in some ways shaped--deep cultural transformations and the French and American revolutions. It was a time when writers became celebrities, and books engaged in battles. Texts: Swift, Gulliver's Travels; Pope, Essay on Man; Voltaire, Candide; Johnson, Rasselas; Shelley, Frankenstein; McGann, ed., New Oxford Book of Romantic Period Verse; photocopied course packet.

213A (Modern & Postmodern Literature)
MTWThF 9:30
Long
This course will provide a point of entry into the literary and intellectual concerns of twentieth-century literature. While our attention will be focused on the assigned texts, we will be concerned with the ways literature intersects with social, economic, political and aesthetic phenomena, as well as with how the terms modern and postmodern serve as descriptive categories for literature written during the twentieth century. Class requirements include attendance, active participation, several short papers, and a final examination. Texts: F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby; Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse; Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Chronicle of a Death Foretold; Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler; Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting; Laurence Thornton, Imagining Argentina; J. M. Coetzee, Foe.

213B (Modern & Postmodern Literature)
MTWThF 11:30
Harris
For many observers, the Anglophone literature of the twentieth century seems to emerge in two loosely defined waves or styles: modernism and postmodernism. To sharpen our understanding of these labels (and their uses and abuses), we'll read representative texts from the U.S. and Great Britain, paying close attention to form and content. Students will write two papers, keep a reading journal, and participate very actively in discussion. Texts: James Joyce, Dubliners; Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway; Charles Henri Ford & Parker Tyler, The Young and Evil; Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49; Xam Wilson Cartier, Muse-Echo Blues; J. G. Ballard, Crash; Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body.

225A (Shakespeare) W
MTWThF 8:30
Alfar
Shakesperean Tyrannies. In this course, we will examine a number of Shakespeare's plays through the issue of tyranny: romantic, sexual, cultural, and political. In our inquiry regarding Shakespeare's treatment of tyranny we will ask questions about the subtleties required of playwrights writing under governmental censorship. What are the limits to which Shakespeare could interrogate absolute monarchies, gender and class hierarchies, and race relations? What are the ideological limits of such interrogation? We will view several contemporary films of his plays on video. There will be pop quizzes, written responses, two papers, a midterm, and a final. Texts: Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale; Romeo and Juliet; Four Tragedies; The Tempest; Merchant of Venice; Much Ado About Nothing; McDonald, The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare.

228A (English Literary Culture: to 1800)
TTh 12:30-2:20
Mussetter
We will be looking at the three main types of writing in the Middle Ages: epic, romance, and allegory. Since our stories come from a period spanning 600 years, we will be talking about cultural and historical changes as well as literary ones. Two papers, weekly e-mail commentaries. Texts: Chickering, tr., Beowulf; Palsson, tr., Hrafnkelssaga; Marie de France, Lais; Borroff, tr., Gawain and the Green Knight.

229A (English Literary Culture: 1600-1800)
MTWThF 11:30
Drake
An intensive reading of English literature and culture during two centuries of profound social and intellectual change. It was an age of experimentation with new forms of writing and of a transformation of the reading public. Civil war, revolution, religious conflict, the rise of science, and economic upheavals reshaped the cultural landscape. Poets and philosophers began to explore the interior landscape, and their ideas about the mind continue to shape our sense of self today.Text: Abrams, et al., Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 1 (6th ed.).

230A (English Literary Culture: after 1800)
MW 8:30 (lecture); quizzes: T Th 8:30, T Th 9:30
Butwin
The dual revolution of modern times--industrial and political--has helped to define the project of English literature from the French Revolution through the Cold War. A study of representative writers and genres will help us situate ourselves as readers in the last years of the 20th century. Large lecture and discussion sections, short essays and exams. Texts: Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist; Abrams, et al., eds., The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 6th ed., Vol. 2.

242A (Reading Fiction) W
MTWThF 8:30
Holberg
What is fiction? And what does it mean to read it? This course will examine 3 pairs of novels in order to try to answer these fundamental questions. In general, we will read pairs of novels which share roughly similar thematic concerns, alternating between nineteenth- and twentieth-century novels. We will be i nterested both in formal concerns of narrative technique and in theoretical questions of content. At the same time, we will examine not only what the text is doing, but we will think about our own responses as readers--what we bring to fiction, what we expect of it--and how these texts interact with us as readers. Active participation is crucial; keeping up with the reading expected. Periodic quizzes possible. Response papers, mid-term, final, 2 papers. Texts: Jane Austen, Persuasion; A. S. Byatt, Possession; Italo Calvion, If On a Winter's Night; George Eliot, Middlemarch; David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars; Bar bara Pym, Excellent Women. (Meets with 242D.)

242B (Reading Fiction) W
MTWThF 12:30
Alfar
This course on reading fiction will focus on novels from Behn's Oroonoko to Ondaatje's The English Patient to examine anxieties about gender, race, and class in the colonial context. We will consider our texts as cultural artifacts to ask questions about Britain's changing economic and social structure. How do these texts by men and women work through the perplexing issues of gender relations and confrontation with non-European cultures through travel and colonialism? What are the ways in which colonialism, a type of political power and cultural authority with a specific history, manifests itself as and through discourse, or a system of representations--in this instance fiction? Finally, we will ponder what fresh perspectives the emergent strategies of reading labelled postcolonial bring to our understanding of ourselves and our place in a global culture. We will view film adaptations of Robinson Crusoe and The English Patient. Pop quizzes, written responses, two papers, midterm and final. Texts: Behn, Oroonoko; Defoe, Robinson Crusoe; Edgeworth, Belinda; Forster, Passage to India; Ondaatje, The English Patient.

242C (Reading Fiction) W
MTWThF 1:30
Adair
Reading Ethnic Fiction. In this class we will read, analyze, and write about "ethnic" fiction from the Harlem Renaissance and from contemporary American authors. Using novels, short stories, and poetry from the Harlem Renaissance as a starting point, we will consider subjectivity ased on, and resistant to, codes of race, class and gender during that period/genre and in subsequent contemporary representations. Course work includes weekly response papers, a mid-germ exam and a final paper.Texts: The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader; Silko, Ceremony; McBride, The Color of Water; Kingston, The Woman Warrior; Cisneros, The House on Mango Street; Morrison, The Bluest Eye.

242D (Reading Fiction) W
MTWThF 8:30
Holberg
What is fiction? And what does it mean to read it? This course will examine 3 pairs of novels in order to try to answer these fundamental questions. In general, we will read pairs of novels which share roughly similar thematic concerns, alternating between nineteenth- and twentieth-century novels. We will be i nterested both in formal concerns of narrative technique and in theoretical questions of content. At the same time, we will examine not only what the text is doing, but we will think about our own responses as readers--what we bring to fiction, what we expect of it--and how these texts interact with us as readers. Active participation is crucial; keeping up with the reading expected. Periodic quizzes possible. Response papers, mid-term, final, 2 papers. Texts: Jane Austen, Persuasion; A. S. Byatt, Possession; Italo Calvion, If On a Winter's Night; George Eliot, Middlemarch; David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars; Bar bara Pym, Excellent Women (Freshman Interest Group students only; meets with 242A.)

250A (Introduction to American Literature)
MTWThF 10:30
Pancake
[Survey of the major writers, modes, and themes in American literature, from the beginnings to the present. Specific readings vary.] Texts: Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life...; Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God; Edith Wharton, House of Mirth; Hisaye Yamamoto, Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories; Henry David Thoreau, Walden; John Krakauer, Into the Wild, Olson, Yonnondio.

250B (Introduction to American Literature)
MTWThF 11:30
Adair
In this course we will examine a range of literary representations from the 19th century. Using novels, short stories and poetry as a starting point, we will consider issues central to Americans as a people and as a nation experiencing rapid industrial growth, westward expansion, the issues and realities of slavery, the civil war and reconstruction, a burgeoning women's movement, the experience of immigration and urbanization, and the overwhelming question of national identity and national voice.Course work will include wekly response papers, a mid-term exam, and a final paper.Texts: The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Vols. 1 & 2.

281A (Intermediate Expository Writing)
MWF 8:30
Chester
This is a writing class in which our topic will be representations of sports and athletes in contemporary media. We will watch such films as Field of Dreams, White Men Can't Jump, and Hoop Dreams in order to provoke discussions about athletics from a variety of positions. We will also use readings from different disciplines and popular media to shape and provide depth for our discussions. Primarily, the purpose of this course is to develop student writing skills. We will do this through a series of short papers turned in once or twice a week and two longer papers that use multiple sources. We will workshop and revise our papers in order to improve stylistic qualities, as well as to develop student abilities to express complicated ideas. Students will also write a research paper that addresses the class topic from a unique perspective. (No Freshmen, Registration Periods 1 & 2.) Text: Photocopied course packet.

281B (Intermediate Expository Writing)
MWF 9:30
Kluepfel
Writing, Self, and Society. Writing in this course emphasizes the development of well-reasoned, expository essays by using what others have to say on a specific topic to formulate your own argument. So that we can have a common ground for writing and discussion, we'll write about a shared topic, which for this section will concern how individuals develop personal identities in contemporary American society, with readings from a variety of social scientific (and some literary) perspectives. Also includes application of theoretical readings to interpretation of a contemporary film, either Terminator 2 or Terry Gilliam's Brazil. Because composition is the central focus of the course, we'll also be sharing our writing with each other and learning how knowledge of some grammatical terms can help us identify ways to polish our writing styles. (No Freshmen, Registration Periods 1 & 2.) Texts: Martha Kolln, Rhetorical Grammar: Grammatical Choices, Rhetorical Effects, 2nd ed.; photocopied course packet .

281C (Intermediate Expository Writing)
MWF 10:30
Sale
A course in writing intelligent college level prose. We will explore a subject through a small body of readings--past incarnations of the course have concerned themselves with the Depression, Places, Difficulty in Reading--with assignments designed to start with something that looks quite simple, and then complicates it into something denser and more interesting. Be prepared to write a lot, perhaps as much as a short paper for every other class, and to spend a lot of class time looking at sample papers with an eye to making a weak paper stronger, a good paper better. (No Freshmen, Registration Periods 1 & 2.)

281D (Intermediate Expository Writing)
MWF 11:30
Osell
This is a writing class in which our subject will be images of masculinity in the media. We'll use movies and articles from different disciplines to write about masculinity from a number of angles. The movies will include such films as Lone Star, Menace II Society, and Heat; there will be at least 3 extra class meetings (evenings) to watch them. The articles will include psychoanalytic, anthropological, autobiographical and popular media sources, as well as articles about aspects of writing. Short papers once or twice a week, and two longer papers using a variety of sources. Our goal will be learning to clearly express complicated ideas. Lots of revision and some workshopping. The final paper is a research project on a topic, related to the course material, of the student's choosing. (No Freshmen, Registration Periods 1 & 2.) Text: photocopied course packet.

281E (Intermediate Expository Writing)
MWF 12:30
--cancelled 5/27/97--

281F (Intermediate Expository Writing)
MWF 8:30
Stearns
This course will emphasize writing effective, persuasive, and critically interesting prose. Several short essays and one or two longer essays will be required from class participants. Our focus texts will include Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by Walker Evans and James Agee, and documentary films. Over the course of the term, our attention will be directed towards refining our ability to think and write about an interconnected set of issues and ideas that will be foregrounded by these texts and by what the course participants bring to the class from their own experience and knowledge. Through an investigating writing process, we will develop our capacity for intelligent, independent expression by examining the ideas that emerge from class discussion, from research, and in our writing. (No Freshmen, Registration Periods 1 & 2.) Text: Agee and Evans, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.

283A (Beginning Verse Writing)
MW 9:30-10:50
Fuhrman
[Intensive study of ways and means of making a poem.] Text: photocopied course packet. (No Freshmen, Registration Periods 1 & 2.)

283B (Beginning Verse Writing)
TTh 11:30-12:50
Mandaville
[Intensive study of ways and means of making a poem.] (No Freshmen, Registration Periods 1 & 2.)

284A (Beginning Short Story Writing)
MW 12:30-1:50
Michelson
[Introduction to the theory and practice of writing the short story.] (Majors only, Registration Period 1; no Freshmen, Registration Periods 1 & 2.)

284B (Beginning Short Story Writing)
T Th 10:30-11:50
Dye
Introduction to the theory and practice of writing the short story. Class time will be divided equally between workshops of student work and exercises designed to sharpen writing technique in five areas crucial to short fiction: character, voice, plot, idea, and image. Text: photocopied course packet. (Majors only, Registration Period 1; no Freshmen, Registration Periods 1 & 2.)

AUTUMN 1997 200-Level Courses

AUTUMN 1997
200-Level Courses