Spring 1999 200-Level ENGL Courses

Course Descriptions (as of March 2, 1999)
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.)

To Spring 300-level courses
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To 1998-99 Senior Seminars

200A (Reading Literature)
TTh 12:30-2:20
Chaney
(W)
This course is designed to further your abilities as a reader and writer through a close and (hopefully) rewarding examination of a range of literary texts. We will discuss the very idea of what constitutes “literature” and why it may matter to both you and the world. Requirements include careful and dedicated reading, quizzes, a group project, an exam, and short papers. Texts: Bain, et al., eds., The Norton Introduction to Literature (shorter, 7th ed.); Charles Dickens, Great Expectations; Art Spiegelman, Maus I.

200 B (Reading Literature)
Dy 9:30
Barnett
(W)
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, narrative, and patterning in sound and sense. Emphasis on literature as a source of pleasure and knowledge about human experience. Texts: Michale Ondaatje, The English Patient; Laurie King, The Beekeeper’s Apprentice; Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird; Ann Charters, ed., The Story and Its Writer.

200 C (Reading Literature)
Dy 10:30 (W)
–cancelled after Time Schedule printed--

200 D (Reading Literature)
Dy 11:30
Stasiak
(W)
Gothic and Apocalyptic Fictions. This course offer an introduction to the interpretation and analysis of literary texts. Over the course of the quarter, you will concentrate on developing your close-reading and analytical skills, learn how to construct persuasive arguments, and write clear, insightful papers. We will begin by reading several poems and consider the relation of form and style to thematic content. We will then spend the remainder of the course discussing one novella, Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, and two novels, Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange. Continuing to interrogate questions of style, we will also read these texts as apocalyptic, gothic fictions—texts that rely on what Judith Halberstam has called the “technologies of monstrosity” to grapple with the national, domestic “horrors” of modern society. Requirements: 2-3 short papers (2-3 pages) and 2 longer papers (4-6 pages), one oral report, and contributions to class discussion. Texts: Madden, ed., A Pocketful of Poems; Burgess, A Clockwork Orange; James, The Turn of the Screw; Stoker, Dracula.

200 E (Reading Literature)
Dy 12:30
G. Dean
(W)
Literary Time. In this course we will read poems, short stories and novels that, in at least one of two ways, involve time: the texts we examine will either make use of musical time--rhythm and other patterned elements of sound, or they will invoke historical time--through their setting in a particular historical peiord, or by describing a historial period. Through this lens of time, we will learn some ways to approach, interpret and analyze literary texts. Sophomores only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Lunsford/Connors, Easy Writer; Ferguson, et al., Norton Anthology of Poetry, Shorter 4th ed.; Doctorow, Ragtime; Morrison, The Bluest Eye.

200 U (Reading Literature)
TTh 7-8:50 pm (W)
–cancelled after Time Schedule printed--

200 V (Reading Literature)
MW 7-8:50 pm
Andrews
(W; sln: 7919)
Our concerns will be rather straightforward: we’ll read and discuss selected poetry, short stories, and a novel, keeping an eye out and an ear open to the way sin which various writers make reading a pleasurable experience. Rather than focus on what a poem or story might mean, we’ll take a cue from John Ciardi and focus on how a poem (for instance) means. Close readings will generate discussions about hat literary devices and conventions are (ab)used and how they help make the meanings, and the pleasure, we take. However, since neither writers nor readers are immune to the visible and invisible forces of our culture(s), we’ll necessarily post the other eye and ear at the gate between text and context for dispatches from the cultural fronts. Requirements: participation; several 1-2 page papers (some in-class) and two longer papers. (Added after Time Schedule printed; sln: 7919) Texts: Hunter, ed., Norton Introduction to Poetry; Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars; photocopied short story packet.

210 A (Literature of the Ancient World)
Dy 12:30
--cancelled after Time Schedule printed—

211 A ( Medieval & Renaissance Literature)
Dy 8:30
--cancelled after Time Schedule printed—

211 B (Medieval & Renaissance Literature)
TTh 10:30-12:20
Rose
Introduction to literature from a broadly cultural point of view, focusing on major works that have shaped the development of literary and intellectual traditions from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century.

212 A (Literature of Enlightenment & Revolution)
Dy 11:30
Hennessee
This introductory course will examine literature of the 18th – early 19th centuries. Writers of this time took on “big” questions: what is the nature of God? Can humans know and understand the world? What is the best way to organize society? What should our relationship with nature be? What is the role of imagination? Reason? Education? Feeling? Love? Their answers to these questions continue to influence the way we think. Course requirements include: take-home midterm, in-class midterm, group project, 4-6 pp. essay, various short writing assignments, active class participation. Expect some lecture (on historical background and other contexts), more discussion, demanding (but rewarding) reading. Texts: Alexander Pope, Essay on Man and Other Poems; David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion; Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels; Voltaire, Candide; Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther; Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience; Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility.

213 A (Modern & Postmodern Literature)
MW 10:30-12:20
Friend
Whose Text Is It Anyway? One of the hallmarks of both modernism and postmodernism is a fundamental questioning of the notion of artistic originality. From collage in the visual arts, to the use of quotation, allusion, borrowing in poetry and fiction, to the use of digital sampling in hip-hop and electronics, the twentieth century has been characterized by a complex intertextuality. We’ll be examining some of the ways that intertextuality has functioned in poetry, fiction, and (to a lesser extent) music. Texts: Andre Breton and Philippe Soupault, The Magnetiic Fields; Marianne Moore, Collected Poems; Jack Spicer, Collected Books; Araki Yasusada, Doubled Flowering; Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum; photocopied course packet.

213 B (Modern & Postmodern Literature)
Dy 1:30
Raine
What happens when you define yourself by the land you inhabit—and that landscape begins to change? In this course, we’ll investigate how twentieth-century American writers use literary form to make sense (or not) of the changing landscapes of (post-)modernity. We’ll focus on how modern and postmodern texts register and respond to social and environmental change, and how class, gender, race, and notions of the past intersect with the different landscapes we encounter in the fiction and poetry we read. Course requirements will include four short response papers, a midterm exam and a final essay. Sophomores only, Registration Period 1. Texts: F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby; Willa Cather, The Professor’s House; Nella Larsen, Quicksand; William Faulkner, Go Down, Moses; Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49; photocopied course packet.

225 A (Shakespeare)
Dy 12:30
C. Fischer
(W)
This course is designed as an introduction to the formal elements—language, poetry, rhetoric—of Shakespeare’s plays. But we will also take a more thematic tack and examine the role of the scapegoat in the comedies, histories, and tragedies. The starting premise for the course will be that the lover, the hero/king, the depressed person, the evil brother, and the murderer all function to channel communal aggression, and as such, Shakespeare uses this age old convention to reconcile the competing claims of laughter, ideology, and ritual renewal. Texts: Shakespeare, Hamlet; Macbeth; Richard III; Henry V; Much Ado About Nothing; A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

228 A (English Literary Culture: to 1600)
MW 8:30-10:20
Simmons-O’Neill
This course is designed to introduce students to selected texts and issues in English literature from Anglo-Saxon poetry through Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It will also introduce students to skills necessary to research and writing about literary texts. We will use a variety of approaches, including films, audio tapes, lectures, full class and small group discussion, library and web-based research training, viewing medieval manuscripts and facsimiles, and essay and exam writing. Texts: Hamer, ed., A Choice of Anglo-Saxon Verse; Winny, ed & tr., Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; Wilson, ed., Medieval Women Writers; Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales (Hieatt & Hieatt, eds.); Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (ed. Foakes).

228 B (English Literary Culture: to 1600)
Dy 1:30
Easterling
This course will be less a survey than a sampling of the earliest English literature—we will not march relentlessly from Chaucer to Shakespeare, but will instead spend time on a smaller number of works from this period, including selections from The Canterbury Tales, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, lyric poetry by Sidney, Shakespeare, Wyatt, among others, and selections from Spenser’s Faerie Queene. There will be a considerable emphasis on writing—weekly response papers, two critical papers over the course of the quarter, as well as a mid-term and a final. Text: Abrams, et al., eds., Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 1.

229 A (English Literary Culture: 1600-1800)
Dy 11:30
J. Fisher
This course surveys English literature from 1600-1800. The poetry, plays, and fiction that we will be reading all reflect some of the political and ideological struggles of the times. Therefore, we will pay especially close attention to issues of gender, social class, religion, sexuality, colonialism, and race as they are dealt with in these books and within the context of English history. Because of the vast quantity of literature printed during these two hundred years, we will only be able to read a small representation. However, the range of texts selected should provide a useful introduction to the periods under consideration. Texts: Abrams, et al., The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 1; Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe.

229 B (English Literary Culture: 1600-1800)
Dy 12:30
Tate
In this course we will survey representative anthologized texts from the close of the Renaissance to the beginning of the Romantic era (1600 to 18000). The writers we will study include, but are not limited to: Lady Mary Wroth, John Donne, Ben Jonson, Aphra Behn, Robert Herrick, George Herbert, Andrew Marvell, John Milton, Francis Bacon, John Locke, John Dryden, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, Samuel Johnson and Thomas Gray. Our foremost course goal is to gain a critical understanding of the texts in question through close reading as we also discover ways to experience personally the aesthetic pleasure of both content and form without losing sight of the literature’s valuable historicity. Sophomores only, Registration Period 1. Text: Abrams, et al., Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 1.

230 A (English Literary Culture: after 1800)
Dy 8:30
Frank
This course is an introductory survey of English literature of the Romantic and Victorian periods. Special emphasis will be placed on such issues as the relationship between the individual and society, identity construction, and the woman question. We will also explore the larger issue of periodization by questioning the readily accepted division between the Romantic and the Victorian periods. Requirements include one or two short critical essays, a midterm, and a final. Texts: Abrams, et al., eds., The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 2; George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss.

230 B (English Literary Culture: after 1800)
Dy 10:30
Tandy
In this course we will follow English literature through some of the most astounding historical and cultural changes that England has ever experienced. Our project this quarter will be two-fold: first, we will examine the literature we read in light of its cultural and historical contexts, examining both how culture determines literature and how literature affects culture; second, we will read these texts in order to appreciate them as works of art, as beautiful creations with much to offer us in terms of personal enjoyment and much to tell us about the human condition. Texts: Abrams, et al., Norton Anthology of American Literature, Vol. 2; Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre.

242 A (Reading Fiction)
Dy 8:30 (W)
--cancelled after Time Schedule printed—

242 B (Reading Fiction)
Dy 9:30
L. Fisher
(W)
This is a course aimed at developing students’ analytical reading and writing abilities. You will be reading and discussing fiction in class, looking at related literary criticism and historical works, and writing about what you read both formally and informally. In this section we will be looking specifically at American political and reform literature, working together to figure out what is different about literature that has been characterized as overtly political and how literature has been used for the purposes of political critique and persuasion. Throughout the quarter we will be examining stories and novels for their political content, asking how our political positionings are shaped by and shape our reading. We’ll be concerned with how individuals and “types” are depicted in the texts we read, and how those characterizations transform or mirror the “real” world, challenging or reinforcing the social order being represented. Texts: Lydia Maria Child, Hobomok; Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin; Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland; Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man; E. L. Doctorow, The Book of Daniel; recommended: Diana Hacker, A Writer’s Reference (3rd ed.).

242 C (Reading Fiction)
Dy 11:30
Lamm
(W)
In this class our primary goal will be to strengthen your skills as attentive and sensitive readers of difficult fiction. To focus our readings thematically, we’ll explore these novelists’ representations of the impediments and opportunities the twentieth century provides for women’s “becoming.” And while looking closely at these novelists’ varied and distinct representational strategies, we’ll also reflect upon how these novels structure our “becoming” as readers. Texts: Henry James, Daisy Miller; Portrait of a Lady; Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth; Gertrude Stein, Three Lives; Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God; Christa Wolf, Inquest of Christa T.; The Author’s Dimension.

242 D (Reading Fiction)
Dy 1:30
Keeling
(W)
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick tells us that “homosocial” is a term “occasionally used in history and the social sciences, where it describes social bonds between person of the same sex” (emphasis mine). In this course, we will be reading novels written during the early years of the twentieth century that explore same-sex relationship for both their “social” and “sexual” implications. We will consider ways in which these texts might attempt to collapse the social/sexual into the sexual/social while simultaneously striving to distinguish between what is social and “acceptable and what is sexual and “unspeakable.” We will discuss the writing requirements for the course as a group, but do be prepared for assignments that may include weekly response papers, term papers, and a midterm (take-home and/or in-class) examination. Texts: Forster, Maurice; Larsen, Passing; Lawrence, Women in Love; Stein, Fernhurst, Q.E.D.; Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men; Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway.

242 U (Reading Fiction)
MW 7-8:50 pm
Aanerud
(W)
Critical interpretation and meaning in fiction. Different examples of fiction, representing a variety of types from the medieval to modern periods. Text: Charters, The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction.

243 A (Reading Poetry)
Dy 10:30
Cavender
(W; sln: 7942)
In this course we will practice both the attentive reading of poems and the art of writing about poems with precision and elegance. The course is organized around a selection of readings in American poetry, from Walt Whitman up through contemporary poets who are at work today, so we will also read a few essays by American poets addressing issues of the poetic art which may be particular to this soil. (Added after Time Schedule printed; sln: 7942) Texts: T. S. Eliot, Selected Poems; W. C. Williams, Selected Poems; Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass and Selected Poems; Emily Dickinson, Selected Poems.

250 A (Introduction to American Literature)
TTh 8:30-10:20
Patterson
American Utopias and Distopias. America has always been as much an idea as a real place, and American literature has been deeply and ambivalently involved in representing and critiquing these ideas. This course will look at the utopian strain of American literature as a way understanding some of its main issues, topics, and problems. While this is an introduction to American literature, I also want it to be, to some extent, an introduction to reading literature in general. Requirements will include short in-class writing assignments, participation, and longer essays. Texts: Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49; Susanna Rowson, Charlotte Temple; Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance; Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward; Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life; Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland; F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby.

250 B (Introduction to American Literature)
TTh 12:30-2:20
Aanerud
Survey of the major writers, modes and themes in American literature, from the beginnings to the present. Specific readings vary, but often included are: Taylor, Edwards, Franklin, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Dickinson, Twain, James, Eliot, Stevens, O’Neill, Faulkner, Hemingway, Ellison, and Bellow. Texts: Charters, The Story and Its Writer; Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye.

281 A (Intermediate Expository Writing)
MWF 8:30
--cancelled after Time Schedule printed—

281 B (Intermediate Expository Writing)
MWF 8:30
--cancelled after Time Schedule printed—

281 C (Intermediate Expository Writing)
MWF 9:30
--cancelled after Time Schedule printed--

281 D (Intermediate Expository Writing)
MWF 10:30
Landwehr
[Writing papers communicating information and opinion to develop accurate, competent, and effective expression.] Texts: Dorothy Allison, Bastard Out of Carolina; Diane Hacker, A Writer's Reference.

281 E (Intermediate Expository Writing)
MWF 11:30
Boyd
This course aids students in honing their critical reading and writing skills, with an emphasis upon the argumentative essay form. As such, students are expected to have a basic familiarity with the fundamentals of argumentative essay writing upon entrance. The topic for this section will be “Contemporary American Victims.” We will examine the construction of the “victim” within a contemporary American socio-historical context. We will examine narratives of victimhood in the construction of such figures as JonBenet Ramsey, Christopher Reeve, Mary Kay LeTourneau and others in visual and textual popular media. Two major questions we will consider are: In what ways are these victimhood narratives informed by/informing “traditional” narratives of American identity? How do specificities of time, geographic place, gender, race, class, sexuality, etc., shape these narratives, and to what degree? Texts: Lunsford & Connors, The Everyday Writer; photocopied course packet.

281 F (Intermediate Expository Writing)
MWF 12:30
Harding
American Autobiography: Telling the Story of Self and Nation. What is an American autobiography? What is the relationship between self/author and self/citizen? How do language, sexuality, race and nationhood interact and at times collude in autobiographical works? We will examine both the methodological strategies and theoretical concerns of four authors: Malcolm X, Kate Simon, Richard Rodgriguez, and Eve Hoffman. Weekly response papers will be required. Final project will consist of a 10-page autobiography and a 10-page analysis that brings in the assigned texts and outside research. Texts: Rodriguez, Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez; Simon, Bronx Primitive; Hoffman, Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language; Malcolm X (w. Alex Haley), Autobiography of Malcolm X

281 G (Intermediate Expository Writing)
MWF 1:30
Browning
This course will explore the discursive means by which science defines itself and its role in larger, “non-scientific” culture. Potential points of exploration include: the generation of scientific facts in the laboratory setting; the ways in which scientific structures for organizing and discussing knowledge are manifest in “non-scientific” thought; the concept of “paradigm shift” or “scientific revolution”; and the relations between “hard” and “soft” scientific thought. Text: Photocopied course packet.

281 H (Intermediate Expository Writing)
MWF 1:30
--cancelled after Time Schedule printed—

281 I (Intermediate Expository Writing)
TTh 10:30-12:20
Mandaville
(sln: 7925)
This is a class designed for the intermediate composition writer. We'll be exploring the art of the essay through lots of reading and writing. This section particularly focuses on the author's stake in her writing. We will read Williams' Alchemy of Race and Rights as well as reference the user-friendly Rhetorical Grammar by Kolln. (Added after Time Schedule printed; sln: 7925)

281 U (Intermediate Expository Writing)
MW 7-8:20 pm
Imre
This course will help you practice and further develop the argumentative writing skills you have mastered in lower-level writing courses. In this section, we will focus our reading, writing, and discussion on one of the fundamental organizing models of social interaction: the (Western family. We will draw on visual and written texts from various fields in order to investigate the family in several, interconnected spheres: in individual psychological development, in the national order, and in the history of international politics. The question we will repeatedly ask is: to what extent is the family a useful, or else, oppressive, model of explaining and controlling human relations. Assignments will include a series of argumentative essays. Texts: The Brief Holt Handbook; photocopied course packet.

283 A (Beginning Verse Writing)
MW 9:30-10:50
Pecqueur
This course will study the use of image, sound, and form in the composition of poetry. Sophomores and above only, Registration Period 1. Text: McClatchy, ed., Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry.

283 B (Beginning Verse Writing)
TTh 11:30-12:50
Whitmarsh
Intensive study of the ways and means of making a poem. Sophomores and above only, Registration Period 1. Text: McCarthy, Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry.

284 A (Beginning Short Story Writing)
MW 11:30-12:50
A. Nelson
[Introduction to the theory and practice of writing the short story.] Text: Shapiro and Thomas, eds., Sudden Fiction Continued. English majors only, Registration Period 1.

284 B (Beginning Short Story Writing)
TTh 10:30-11:50
Nestor
Introduction to the theory and practice of writing the short story. English majors only, Registration Period 1. Text: Kercheval, Building Fiction.

SPRING 1999 200-Level Courses

SPRING 1999
200-Level Courses