Course Descriptions (as of 10 September 1998)
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.)
200 A (Reading Literature)
Dy 8:30 (W)
Andrews
We'll explore various genres, specifically in terms of literary conventions,
in hopes that recognizing these conventions and making claims about their
effects will help produce a more manageable reading experience. We will begin
with poems, move to short stories (or shorter narratives), and conclude with
Morrison's Song of Solomon and Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Texts:
Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon; Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness;
photocopied course packet.
200 B (Reading Literature)
Dy 8:30 (W)
Chaney
This course is designed to further your abilities as a reader and writer through
a close and, hopefully, pleasurable and rewarding examination of a range
of literary texts. We will take as one of our themes the way in which family
narratives help shape identity as well as theway that history and culture
affect literature. We will read short stories, a memoir, poetry, and a novel.
Texts: Charles Dickens, Great Expectations; Art Spiegelman,
Maus I; David Madden, ed., A Pocketful of Poems; Ann Charters,
ed., The Story and Its Writers, 4th ed.
200 C (Reading Literature)
Dy 9:30 (W)
DeWolf
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: Madden, A Pocketful of Poems;
Charters, The Story and Its Writer (compact edition); DeLillo, White
Noise.
200 D (Reading Literature)
Dy 11:30 (W)
Lydia Fisher
This course is designed as an introduction to reading and writing about literature
at the college level. We will read and discuss poetry, short stories, and
a novel together, attending to formal features such as narrative point of
view, setting, and use of language. In the process of reading, we will be
focusing on the theme of American character, looking at how a national literature
works to shape a reader's sense of membership and individual identity. The
primary goal of this class is for students to learn how to read language
figuratively and critically, and write effectively about that kind of reading.
Be prepared to do lots of reading and lots of writing. Texts: Lauter,
ed., Heath Anthology of American Literature, Vol. 2, 2nd ed.;
James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man
200 E (Reading Literature)
Dy 12:30 (W)
Andrews
We'll explore various genres, specifically in terms of literary conventions,
in hopes that recognizing these conventions and making claims about their
effects will help produce a more manageable reading experience. We will begin
with poems, move to short stories (or shorter narratives), and conclude with
Morrison's Song of Solomon and Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Texts:
Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon; Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness;
photocopied course packet.
200 F (Reading Literature)
Dy 1:30 (W)
Chaney
This course is designed to further your abilities as a reader and writer through
a close and, hopefully, pleasurable and rewarding examination of a range
of literary texts. We will take as one of our themes the way in which family
narratives help shape identity as well as theway that history and culture
affect literature. We will read short stories, a memoir, poetry, and a novel.
Texts: Charles Dickens, Great Expectations; Art Spiegelman,
Maus I; David Madden, ed., A Pocketful of Poems; Ann Charters,
ed., The Story and Its Writers, 4th ed.
200G (Reading Literature)
MW 1:30-3:20 (W)
Laughlin
Added 8/19. SLN: 9159
In this course we will look at works that in various ways question the possibilities
of genre and of art itself. Reading authors from many different backgrounds
and times (including Yasmina Reza, Sherman Alexie, and Emily Bronte), we
will explore the ways in which these writers respond to the traditions--cultural
and artistic--which shape their work. This course involves a significant
amount of writing and revision. Texts: Stephen Sondheim and James
Lapine, Sunday in the Park with George; Yamina Reza, Art; Sherman
Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven; Emily Bronte,
Wuthering Heights; photocopied course packet.
205 A (Method, Imagination, & Inquiry) (W)
Dy 1:30
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 205) Texts: Plato, Phaedo; Shakespeare, The Tempest;
Descartes, Discourse on Method; Thomas Kuhn, Structure of Scientific
Revolutions; Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!; photocopied course packet
with additional texts by Aristotle, Bruno, Kant, Coleridge, Emerson, and
C. S. Peirce.
207 A (Introduction to Cultural Studies)
TTh 12:30-2:20
George
"Culture"-the traditions, beliefs, customs, habits and practices of a society-form
the basis of social institutions. These, in turn, are frequently the subject
of literary authors who use their imaginative works as a means to cultivate
and/or critique cultural values. Literary critics who employ a cultural analytical
approach seek to discover the beliefs and practices within literary texts
and link them to the social contexts within which they were composed. The
benefits to such an approach, as Stephen Greenblatt puts it in his essay
"Culture," are twofold: "…if an exploration of a particular culture will
lead to a heightened understanding of a work of literature produced within
that culture, so too a careful reading of a work of literature will lead
to a heightened understanding of the culture within which it was produced.
This course should provide you both benefits. During the quarter we will
explore academic, corporate, and cyber cultures within contemporary American
society by critically and carefully reading short stories, a feature film,
and Internet discussions that represent in various fashions those culture.
Course requirements include regular class attendance and thoughtful participation;
a willingness to learn to think seriously, critically, and contextually about
texts that are conventionally viewed as commonly "popular" or merely base;
online research, and a writing portfolio (based on three assignments) completed
in a process fashion. (Computer-Integrated section; no computer experience
necessary.) Texts: Joyce Carol Oates, "Theft"; Labute, In the
Company of Men; photocopied course packet including texts about academia
and a variety of critical article on cultural approaches to literary criticism;
variety of online Listservs, Newsgroups, and Web sites.
210 A (Literature of the Ancient World)
MW 12:30 (lecture); quizzes: TTh 12:30, TTh 1:30
Alan Fisher
This course kills two university birds with one stone. The "birds" are humanities
(VLPA) breadth requirements on the one hand, entrance into the English major
on the other; the "stone" is a group of well-known texts representing ancient
literature. "Well-known texts" of ancient literature, according to the anthologies
that make them available, mean pretty much the same thing all over: Gilgamesh,
bits of Homer, some Greek plays (including Oedipus Rex), Plato's Apology,
love poems from Sappho and Catullus, and bits of Vergil's Aeneid.
We'll read them and talk about them. The class is two lectures a week given
to all sections, in which general issues are discussed, and two section meetings
a week, to discuss particular interpretive problems and questions of reading.
Work required consists of two 4 to 6 page papers, a portfolio of 1-2 pp.
response papers, and a final examination. Text: Wilkie & Hurt,
eds., Literature of the Western World.
211 A (Medieval & Renaissance Literature)
Dy 8:30
Mussetter
We will be looking at the development of some literary/cultural ideas from
their earliest articulation in medieval literature to their reformulation
in the Renaissance. Some of these "ideas" are the hero and his relation to
society, love, the literary representation of the ;inner man," the interrelation
of literature and politics, the development of literary genres, and so on.
The course is designed to be "introductory," and as such is appropriate to
pre-majors and non-majors. Besides the readings, there will be two substantial
exams-part take-home essays, part in-class identifications and short answers.
There will also be a weekly e-mail "paper" due on some aspect of current class
material. Attendance will be taken, participations counted toward final grade.
Text: Abrams, et al., Norton Anthology of English Literature,
Vol. 1.
212 A (Literature of Enlightenment & Revolution)
MW 10:30 (lecture); quizzes: MW 11:30; TTh 11:30; TTh 12:30
Shabetai
Innocence Lost. This course will examine literature from the Enlightenment
through the early years of the Romantic period. In particular, we will study
various kinds of loss as represented in a number of literary works: the fall
from Eden, the loss of certainty about our ability to know the world, attacks
on religious faith, challenges to human dignity, and finally, the loss of
innocence. Students will attend two hours of lecture in addition to two hours
of discussion in smaller sections. Requirements: regular attendance and participation,
frequent writing assignments, and an exam. Texts: Pope, Essay on
Man; Swift, Gulliver's Travels; Hume, Dialogues Concerning
Natural Religion; Voltaire, Candide; Blake, Blake's Poetry
and Designs; Goethe, The Sufferings of Young Werther; Wordsworth
& Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads; Austen, Northanger Abbey;
Shelley, Frankenstein.
213 A (Modern & Postmodern Literature)
MW 11:30 (lecture); quizzes: MW 12:30; TTh 11:30; TTh 12:30
Cummings
Twentieth-century American dreams and nightmares are the subject of this
course: short stories, novels, poetry, film, and political speeches are the
texts. Three basic questions will guide our reading of each dream work: (1)
What is the vision and how is it expressed? (2) Under what socio-historical
conditions is the dream produced and how might they shape its composition?
(3) What are the dream work's real life consequences and for whom? (A critical
essay, mid-term, and final are required writing assignments.) Texts:
Doctorow, Ragtime; Marshall, Brown Girl, Brownstone; Fitzgerald,
The Great Gatsby; Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God; Kerouac,
On the Road.
213B (Modern & Postmodern Literature)
TTh 2:30-4:20
Laughlin
Added 8/19. SLN: 9160
In this course we will read some of the major writers of this century. We
will begin with the great figures of the Modern period--Woolf, Joyce, Eliot--then
move on to the Postmodern era, with writers such as Samuel Beckett, Sylvia
Plath, and Allen Ginsberg. The end of a century is always a time of
self-reflection, and at the end of our course we will look at a very contemporary
and very self-reflective work, Ted Hughes' Birthday Letters. "Postmodern" sounds like a contradiction in terms--but what happens after
Postmodernism? Texts: Virginia Woolf, Monday Or Tuesday: 8 Stories;
James Joyce, Dubliners; T. S. Eliot, The Waste-Land, Prufrock,
& Other Poems; Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot; Sylvia Plath, Ariel;
Barbara Pym, Quartet in Autumn; Ted Hughes, Birthday
Letters; photocopied course packet.
225 A (Shakespeare)
Dy 8:30 (W)
Charles Fischer
This course is designed as an introductory offering of Shakespeare's major
plays-a survey of his histories, comedies and tragedies. No previous knowledge
of the period is necessary. Texts: Shakepeare, Much Ado About Nothing;
A Midsummer Night's Dream; Richard III; Henry V; Macbeth; Hamlet.
228 A (English Literary Culture: to 1600)
Dy 12:30
Dunlop
British literature from the Middle Ages to the end of the sixteenth century.
Study of literature in its cultural context, with attention to changes in
language, form, content, and style. Text: Abrams, et al., eds., Norton
Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 1.
229 A (English Literary Culture: 1600-1800)
Dy 8:30
Ellsworth
This course will provide a broad survey of English literature in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries. We will look at the cultural context for the literature
as we examine individual works closely. There will be weekly response papers,
some short research projects, two exams, and a short final paper. Text:
Damrosch, ed., The Longman Anthology of British Literature, Vol.
1.
230 A (English Literary Culture: after 1800)
MW 8:30-10:20
Freind
This class will offer a broad survey of British literature from the beginning
of the 1800's until the 1930's. We'll start with the Romantic poets, reading
both canonical writers and others whose work has traditionally been overlooked,
then move to the Victorians. When we reach the twentieth century, we'll discuss
whether the term "British literature" still has any real meaning, since many
of the most prominent writers in England were from other countries, and since
advances in transportation and printing facilitated a much higher degree
of circulation of ideas from Asia, the Continent, and the US. Assignments
will consist of a midterm, final, three short papers of at least a page,
and a longer paper of at least five pages. Texts: Longman Anthology
of Birtish Literature, Vol. 2; Austen, Pride and Prejudice.
230 B (English Literary Culture: after 1800)
TTh 12:30-2:20
Ellsworth
This course will provide a broad survey of English literature in the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries. We will look at the cultural context for the literature
as we examine individual works closely. There will be weekly response papers,
some short research projects, two exams, and a short final paper. Text:
Damrosch, ed., The Longman Anthology of British Literature, Vol.
2.
Dy 8:30 (W)
Prather
Semblance and Resemblance. This course will consider how "fiction"-a
"feigned or false story: a falsehood"-is implicated in relationships between
models and copies, reality and appearance. We will be looking at different
types of fictional texts-literature, visual art, film, and music-from different
theoretical and practical perspectives: Plato's theory of forms, the postmodern
"simulacrum," the notion of microcosm, mimicry in nature, copyright law. Expect
plenty of in-class and computer-based discussion, at least one major paper,
in-class essays and journal writing or response papers. Texts: Angela
Carter, The Bloody Chamber; Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire; Mary
Shelley, Frankenstein; Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case
of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; photocopied course packet.
242 B (Reading Fiction)
Dy 9:30 (W)
Prather
Semblance and Resemblance. This course will consider how "fiction"-a
"feigned or false story: a falsehood"-is implicated in relationships between
models and copies, reality and appearance. We will be looking at different
types of fictional texts-literature, visual art, film, and music-from different
theoretical and practical perspectives: Plato's theory of forms, the postmodern
"simulacrum," the notion of microcosm, mimicry in nature, copyright law. Expect
plenty of in-class and computer-based discussion, at least one major paper,
in-class essays and journal writing or response papers. Texts: Angela
Carter, The Bloody Chamber; Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire; Mary
Shelley, Frankenstein; Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case
of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; photocopied course packet.
242 C (Reading Fiction)
Dy 12:30 (W)
Christensen
Reading Fiction: Modes of Remembrance. One particularly interesting
novelistic technique is to portray characters remembering their past and gathering
it up in fragments. This creates an intriguing opposition between the imagined
and the real, and invites us to ask why the characters seem obsessed with
remembering, with re-collecting their experiences. Are they trying to reconstitute
or reinvent an identity from the pieces of an old puzzle, or are they trying
to redeem themselves, to cleanse their conscience in some fashion? What is
so compelling about such fictional structure? We will look at four twentieth-century
novels that explore the question of memory and its relation to present reality.
Our works include one of the greatest and most famous instances of the theme
of remembrance, Proust's In Search of Lost Time (the first volume),
and three more recent-and more fragmented-novels: Duras's The Lover,
Lively's Moon Tiger, and Ondaatje's The English Patient. To
help us analyze the relation between memory, "objective reality" and identity,
we will also study a range of short stories and parables by Jorge Luis Borges
from his Personal Anthology. Students will write one paper on each
novel, as well as several short response papers and creative assignments.
No exam.
242 D (Reading Fiction)
Dy 1:30 (W)
Rose
[Critical interpretation and meaning in fiction. Different examples of fiction
representing a variety of types from the medieval to modern periods.] Texts:
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; Edith Wharton, Summer; Charlotte
Brontë, Villette; David Staines, ed, The Complete Romances
of Chrétien de Troyes; Ellen Wynn, ed., The Short Story: 50
Masterpieces.
250 A (Introduction to American Literature)
MW 1:30-3:20
Chait
A selection of American texts, from Jefferson to Barthelme, that presents
different perspectives on American culture, ideology, and the creation of
the American self. We shall examine these narratives in their historical and
cultural contexts, paying special attention to the role of class, race, gender,
and religion, and their respective transformations of the American Dream.
Starting with the Declaration of Independence from the Autobiography of
Thomas Jefferson, we will move via essays, short stories and poems (Ralph
Waldo Emerson's "The American Scholar," Herman Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener,"
Walt Whitman's "Calamus" poems) to Nathanael West's Miss Lonelyhearts, Saul
Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March, Ralph Ellison's Invisible
Man, Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, and, finally, Frederick Barthelme's
1995 image of cyberpunk America in the Painted Desert. Texts: Nathanael
West, Miss Lonelyhearts and the Day of the Locust; Saul Bellow, The
Adventures of Augie March; Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man; Sylvia
Plath, The Bell Jar; Frederick Barthelme, Painted Desert.
258 B(African-American Literature: 1745-Present)
MW 10:30-11:20. Fri 10:30-12:20
Ralston
Course reinstated 6/30; new SLN: 9023
[A chronological survey of Afro-American literature in all genres from its
beginnings to the present day. Emphasizes Afro-American writing as a literary
art, the cultural and historical context of Afro-American literary expression
and the aesthetic criteria of Afro-American literature. Offered jointly
with AFRAM 214B.]
281 A (Intermediate Expository Writing)
MWF 8:30
Dunn
To address the catalog objectives of this course concerning "accurate, competent,
and effective expression," frequent writing assignments will draw upon Neil
Postman's The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School and
the writing of John Stuart Mill as examples of effective expression. Texts:
Postman, The End of Education; Mill, On Liberty, Subjection
of Women, chapters On Socialism. Prerequisite: sophomore
standing and above.
281 B (Intermediate Expository Writing)
MWF 9:30
White
Ralph Waldo Emerson asked, "Where do we find ourselves?" In this course, you
will find your answer to this question. Rather than explicate texts, the
students' writing will develop their own thoughts and beliefs. Students will
work toward writing styles beyond the merely functional, to write with what
I like to call "texture." As a means of developing texture, we will explore
the relation between writing and speech. The class readings, Emerson and
William James, will present examples of writings closely related to speech.
In addition to meetings devoted to discussion of the texts, there will be
a weekly "writing workshop" in which students will present their work in
writing and out loud to their fellow students. Texts: Emerson, Essays:
First and Second Series; James, The Varieties of Religious Experience:
A Study in Human Nature; Strunk, Elements of Style. Prerequisite:
sophomore standing and above.
281 C (Intermediate Expository Writing)
MWF 10:30
Mazzeo
Although this course focuses primarily on the development of effective composition
skills, its literary context asks you at the same time to consider some of
the "real" effects of language and representation. We will be investigating,
in particular, the role that twentieth-century "utopian" writing played in
developing the political conflict between "communism" and "capitalism" that
finally resulted in the Cold War. To what degree, we will ask, is it true
that "it is by words that the world's great fight, in these civilised times,
is carried on"? The course readings will begin with two utopian models of
political theory-Rousseau's Social Contract and Marx and Engels' Communist
Manifesto. After considering how these writers configure the relationship
between the individual and society, we will turn our attention to a few works
that attempt to imagine the "logical" results of different social contracts;
these texts include Animal Farm (Orwell), and The Time Machine
(Wells). Additional course material will focus on contemporary mass-media
reactions to these works, with an emphasis on their manipulation (especially
in film versions) as "war" propaganda. Course requirements will include
weekly critical essays (8), which will expose students to several different
models of expository writing. Students will also be asked to engage in a
"discussion partnership" with the instructor. Class discussion will be divided
between attention to literary texts and a consideration of writing issues.
Due to the organization of this course, regular attendance and active participation
will be necessary for your success. Texts: Rousseau, Social
Contract; Marx & Engels, Communist Manifesto; H. G. Wells,
Time Machine; George Orwell, Animal Farm; photocopied course
packet. Prerequisite: sophomore standing and above.
281 D (Intermediate Expository Writing)
MWF 11:30
Hoblit
[Writing papers communications information and opinion to develop accurate,
competent, and effective expression.] Prerequisite: sophomore standing and
above.]
281 E (Intermediate Expository Writing)
MWF 12:30
Cole
Cultural Cool. What's really cool? This course critically examines
the construction of coolness in contemporary American society, with special
attention to how the culture industry manipulates our perceptions and desires.
The essay collection, Commodify Your Dissent, will orient our exploration
of cultural artifacts, such as commercials and magazine articles. We will
also read fictional texts that broach the issue of the cool. Toni Morrison's
The Bluest Eye is the other required text; I will prepare a course
packet of several short stories. This class offers students opportunity both
to write about literature and to analyze and write about contemporary culture.
Please expect a variety of writing assignments. Prerequisite: sophomore
standing and above. Texts: Frank & Weiland, eds., Commodify
Your Dissent; Morrison, The Bluest Eye; photocopied course packet.
Prerequisite: sophomore standing and above.
281 F (Intermediate Expository Writing)
MWF 1:30
Kupka
[Writing papers communications information and opinion to develop accurate,
competent, and effective expression.] Texts: Richard Sennett, Flesh
and Stone: The Body and the City in Western CivilizationI; Michael Dibdin,
Dead Lagoon. Prerequisite: sophomore standing and above.
283 A (Beginning Verse Writing)
MW 9:30-10:50
Whitmarsh
[Intensive study of the ways and means of making a poem.] Prerequisite:
sophomore standing and above. No texts.
283 B (Beginning Verse Writing)
TTh 11:30-12:50
Lewis-Hawk
This course will study use of image, sound, and form in the composition of
poetry. We will read poetry and do assignments to use the tools of the trade.
The second half of the course will consist of an open workshop in which students
share and discuss their own original poems. Prerequisite: sophomore
standing and above. Text: Nims, Western Wind: An Introduction to
Poetry.
284 A (Beginning Short Story Writing)
MW 12:30-1:50
A. Nelson
Introduction to the theory and practice of writing the short story. Prerequisite:
sophomore standing and above. English majors only, Registration period
1. No texts.
284 B (Beginning Short Story Writing)
TTh 10:30-11:50
Nestor
Introduction to the theory and practice of writing the short story. Prerequisite:
sophomore standing and above. English majors only, Registration period
1. Text: Lamott, Bird by Bird.