Spring 2000 300-level ENGL courses

Course Descriptions (as of February 2, 2000)
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.)

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To 1999-2000 Senior Seminars

302 A (Critical Practice)
MW 9:30-11:20
Lester
A survey of/introduction to a variety of contemporary critical approaches to literature (e.g., formalism, Marxism, post-structuralism or post-modernism, historicism). Particular emphasis will be placed on how the ideas presented in texts focusing on theoretical concerns can be applied, how they can be profitably employed in the actual reading of literary works. We will also examine a variety of literary texts that seem either to engage or exemplify a specific set of theoretical concerns. Texts: Julie Rivkin & Michael Ryan, Literary Theory: An Anthology; Witold Gombrowicz, Cosmos and Pornographia; Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room; Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness; Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions.

304 A (History of Literary Criticism & Theory II)
TTh 1:30-3:20
Handwerk/Webster
This course is the second in a two-quarter sequence covering the history of literary criticism and theory. It focuses primarily upon twentieth-century figures and recent critical approaches to literary and cultural interpretation. We will be reading 18 or so different authors, exploring the significance of each and their relations to one another. Written work will include response papers for each class session, two exams, one essay on an outside critical reading, and a final portfolio. Texts: Adams, Critical Theory Since Plato; Woolf, A Room of One’s Own; photocopied course packet.

311 A (Modern Jewish Literature in Translation)
TTh 9:30-11:20
Butwin
The official title of this course defies definition. The authors that qualify as “Jewish”—if the ethnicity of the author defines the literature—are numerous and diverse. Our job will be to find their common ground even while we register what may not be shared by writers who in another context might be called Russian, Polish, Italian, Egyptian and Czeck. A packet of Yiddish poetry will supplement the listed texts. Lecture, discussion and short essays. Texts: Andre Aciman, Out of Egypt; Primo Levi, Survival at Auschwitz; Irving Howe, ed., Treasury of Yiddish Stories; Franz Kafka, The Sons; Georgio Bassani, Garden of the Finzi-Continis; photocopied course packet.

313 A (Modern European Literature in Translation)
TTh 9:30-11:20
Christensen
In this course we will study outstanding examples of short stories and short novels, written in different decades of the twentieth century, by authors from France (Marguerite Yourcenar, Antoine de St. Exupery), Italy (Italo Calvino), Ireland (Samuel Beckett), and Austro-Hungary (Frnaz Kafka). The subject matter will range widely, from Kafka’s famously bizarre fictions to St. Exupery’s travel adventures, from Yourcenar’s exotic settings to Beckett’s hilarious bleakness. We will discuss literary backgrounds for each author, examine the thorny issue of literary translation, and try to solve some important genre questions, such as how to frame a collection of short stories, and how to negotiate the slippery border between memoir and novel. Students will be expected to participate actively in class discussion, and will write several short papers. There will be a final exam. Texts: Calvino, Mr. Palomar; Beckett, Mercier and Camier; de Saint-Exupery, Airman’s Odyssey; Yourcenar, Oriental Tales; Kafka, The Metamorphosis and Other Stories.

315 A (Literary Modernism)
TTh 12:30-2:20
Christensen
Literary Modernism and the City. At the turn of the twentieth century, cities had become, through their explosive growth, the rich nerve-centers of Modernist culture. Cities were both the meeting-place for exciting new art forms, and were paradoxically also the target of many artists’ anguish. This course looks at how cities are portrayed by four great Modernist authors: James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Knut Hamsun, and Franz Kafka. We will also study a wide range of background material on the modern experience of the city, and on Modernism as artistic movement. Students will be expected to participate actively in class discussion, and will write several short papers. There will be a final exam. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Joyce, Dubliners; Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway; Hamsun, Hunger; Kafka, The Trial.

320 A (English Literature: The Middle Ages)
MW 1:30-3:20
Sanok
This course will introduce you to the earliest literary traditions in England, from Anglo-Saxon poetic traditions to the flowering of Middle English literature at the end of the fourteenth century. We will read texts central to our understanding of this tradition (e.g., Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Piers Plowman) as well as those that have stood on the periphery (e.g., the writings of women mystics). Throughout, we will be concerned with the historical and social contexts engaged by these texts, exploring the cultural issues they address and how these issues are shaped by literary representation. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Michael Alexander, trans., The Earliest English Poems; E. T. Donaldson, trans., Beowulf; G. Burgess, tr., Lais of Marie de France; Borroff, trans., Pearl: A New Verse Translation; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love; E. T. Donaldson, trans., Piers Plowman.

323 A (Shakespeare: to 1603)
MW 12:30-2:20
Dunlop
Not the very earliest works, but Shakespeare coming into his prime with tragedy, comedy, history—and the intermingling of all three. Plenty of in-class performance; various writing options. Majors only, Registration Period 1 Texts: Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost; Julius Caesar; 1 Henry IV; 2 Henry IV; Twelfth Night.

324 A (Shakespeare: after 1603)
Dy 8:30
Frey
Study of Shakespeare’s poems and plays after 1603 with emphasis upon meter, rhythm, imagery, tone, explication, interpretation, reader-response, and student performance. All students are required to perform memorized parts in a performance group that meets all quarter long. Also required: discussion, secondary readings, papers, and tests, including in-class two-hour final exam during exam period. Meets five days a week. Very demanding course. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Shakespeare, Measure for Measure; King Lear; Macbeth; The Winter’s Tale; The Tempest.

326A (Milton)
TTh 10:30-12:20
van den Berg
English literature, wrote T.S. Eliot, could only afford one Milton. We'll consider why that might be so. We'll read and discuss his impassioned poetry and prose, seeing how he shaped the politics and literature of his time. He thought in terms of oppositions: good and evil, destruction and creation, time and eternity, soul and body, freedom and service. He valued introspection, intimate friendship, and sweeping vision. A profoundly religious man, his beliefs were uniquely his own. He believed in free will and a free society, writing in defense of regicide, divorce and writing itself. We'll read his prose and his poetry,especially Paradise Lost, and discuss the paradoxes in the work, the man, his era and the criticism he has evoked. Course requirements: two midterms, final exam or term paper. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Milton, Selected Prose (ed. Patrides); Complete English Poems (ed. Campbell).

328 A (English Literature: Later 18th Century)
MW 9:30-11:20
McCracken
We will be reading and discussing late eighteenth-century English writers, among them Samuel Johnson, Wollstonecraft, Smollett, Blake, Sterne, Paine, and Austen. Readings will include novels, essays, poems, travel books, and a play, and we will be thinking about them in the context of history, ideas, and literary forms—comedy, satire, apologue, irony, etc. Close reading, good preparation, and class discussion are important. There will be some in- and out-of-class essays, a mid-term, and a final portfolio. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility; William Blake, Songs of Innocence; Songs of Experience; Marriage of Heaven and Hell; Samuel Johnson, Rasselas; Thomas Paine, Common Sense; R. B. Sheridan, The School for Scandal; Tobias Smollett, Humphry Clinker; Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey; Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary and The Wrongs of Woman.

329 YA (Rise of the English Novel)
MW 7-8:50 pm
Mazzeo
This course will consider the relationship between travel writing and the rise of the English novel in the 18th and 19th centuries. Our readings will include novels by Defoe, Swift, Johnson, Sterne, Radcliffe, and Mary Shelley, as well as selections from contemporary travel writing. Requirements for course include oral presentation, exam and essay. Evening Degree students only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Defoe, Robinson Crusoe; Swift, Gulliver’s Travels; Johnson, Rasselas; Sterne, Sentimental Journey; Radcliffe, The Italian; Shelley, Frankenstein; Adams, Travel Literature and Evolution of the Novel.

332 A (Romantic Poetry II)
MW 12:30-2:20
Mazzeo
This course will focus on two important literary figures of second generation Romanticism: Lord Byron and Mary Shelley. We will read some of each writer’s major works in their entirety, including Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Don Juan, Frankenstein, Falkner, and The History of A Six Weeks’ Tour. Course requirements: oral presentation, exam, and essay. Majors only, Registration Period 1 Texts: Byron, Selected Poems; Don Juan; Mary Shelley, Falkner; Frankenstein; Caroline Lamb, Glenarvon.

333 A (English Novel: Early & Middle 19th Century)
TTh 10:30-12:20
Blake
The development of the English novel in its “golden age.” Attention to themes, forms, and styles. The fiction of the era is known for its realism, while authors also pushed the boundaries of the real in fiction. The detail on everyday life makes these works wonderful windows into the past. Emphasis on placing the novels in their times, with background on the authors to enhance historical understanding; also selected critical reading. References/clips from recent film productions of the Austen, Brontë, and Dickens novels. Some lecture, more discussion. Requirements: class participation, take-home essay midterm, paper, in-class mainly essay final. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice; Mansfield Park; William Thackeray, Vanity Fair; Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre; Charles Dickens, Great Expectations; recommended: Daniel Pool, What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew.

333 B (English Novel: Early & Middle 19th Century)
TTh 1:30-3:20
Blake
The development of the English novel in its “golden age.” Attention to themes, forms, and styles. The fiction of the era is known for its realism, while authors also pushed the boundaries of the real in fiction. The detail on everyday life makes these works wonderful windows into the past. Emphasis on placing the novels in their times, with background on the authors to enhance historical understanding; also selected critical reading. References/clips from recent film productions of the Austen, Brontë, and Dickens novels. Some lecture, more discussion. Requirements: class participation, take-home essay midterm, paper, in-class mainly essay final. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice; Mansfield Park; William Thackeray, Vanity Fair; Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre; Charles Dickens, Great Expectations; recommended: Daniel Pool, What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew.

334 A (English Novel: Later 19th Century)
Dy 10:30
Alexander
This course tries to suggest the richness and variety of the English novel by studying the relations between content and form in six novels, ranging from Barchester Towers to The Secret Agent. Although considerable attention will be paid to the social, historical, and philosophical backgrounds against which the novels appeared, no attempt will be made to reduce the novels to “reflections” of a ruling class or learned elite, or to an assemblage of dirty tricks played by white Europeans against the rest of the human race. On the contrary, it will be assumed that, as Kenneth Burke once wrote, the law of the imagination is “when in Rome, do as the Greeks.” Majors only, Registration Period 1.Texts: Trollope, Barchester Towers; Dickens, Great Expectations; Eliot, Middlemarch; Hardy, Jude the Obscure; Wilde, Picture of Dorian Gray; Conrad, The Secret Agent.

335 A (English Literature: The Age of Victoria)
Dy 12:30
Alexander
Among the poets and prose writers to be studied are Carlyle, Tennyson, Mill, Newman, Arnold and Ruskin. They will be viewed in relation to what the historian G. M. Young called “A tract of time where men and manners, science and philosophy, the fabric of social life and its directing ideas, changed more swiftly perhaps, and more profoundly, than they have ever changed in an age not sundered by a political or a religious upheaval.” Some of the recurrent topics will be: the reaction against the Enlightenment; rejections and revisions of romanticism; the nature of authority; the religion of work; the idea of a university. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Text: Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol 2B (“The Victorian Age”).

336 A English Literature: The Early Modern Period)
MW 12:30-2:20
Stearns
The Modernist Literary Consciousness. In this course we will consider how writers in Britain perceived twentieth-century culture prior to World War II and how they communicated what we will call a modernist consciousness in their poetry and fiction. How do we distinguish such a consciousness? What elements of modernism “make it new?” Are there several distinct kinds of modern perception, or can we identify commonalities in the works of the authors whom we will read? Requirements of the class include your conscious attention to reading, to writing, and to participation in class. Our reading will include Joyce, Woolf, Yeats, Lawrence, and Eliot. You will write response papers and longer essays. We will actively discuss our ideas with each other. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Wyndham Lewis, Tarr; James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; Damrosch, ed., The Longman Anthology of British Literature, Vol. 2; D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love; . Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse; Ezra Pound, Selected Poems; Hilda Doolittle (H.D.), Selected Poems; optional: Lawrence, The Rainbow.

338 A (Modern Poetry)
TTh 12:30-2:20
Cole
What is modern poetry? What does it mean to be modern? How should poetry function in a changing world? This course examines some of the early twentieth century’s most interesting responses to these questions. We will concentrate on the writings of Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, H. D. (Hilda Doolittle), Hart Crane, and Gertrude Stein, with substantial readings of other poets. In addition to giving presentations, students will write a mid-term and a final essay. A course reader with critical essays and other materials will supplement the required texts. Majors only, Registration Period 1 Texts: Hart Crane, Complete Poems; H.D., Collected Poems: 1912-1944; Ezra Pound, The ABC of Reading; Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons; Ellman & O’Clair, eds., The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry; photocopied course packet.

350 A (Traditions in American Fiction)
MW 9:30-11:20
Murphy
Writing the Home in U.S. Culture, 1830-1945. The purpose of this course is to explore the meaning and creation of a space that many Americans feel is one of their most sacred traditions: the domestic home. Our particular emphasis will be the role that narrative (mostly literature, some film) has played in constructing certain dominant ideas about home life, ideas that were a crucial part of the social relations of race, class, gender and sexuality in this period. Literature in this course will be regarded as one cultural site among others where dominant ideas about the home were strengthened, negotiated and contested. Thus our primary texts will include works by Susan Warner, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, Harriet Jacobs and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, but we will also read some history and look at cultural texts like domestic manuals, architecture, urban planning, and advertisements. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables; Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life; Susan Warner, The Wide Wide World; Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland.

352 A (American Literature: The Early Nation)
Dy 8:30
J. Griffith
We’ll read and discuss an assortment of novels, stories, poems and memoirs by American writers in the period preceding the Civil War. Students will be expected to attend class regularly, keep up with reading assignments, and take part in open discussion. Written work will consist entirely of a series of between five and ten brief in-class essays written in response to study questions handed out in advance. Majors only, Registration Period 1 Texts: Baym, et al., The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Vol. 1 (5th ed.); James Fenimore Cooper, The Prairie; Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin; Herman Melville, Moby-Dick.

353 A (American Literature: Later 19th Century)
TTh 10:30-12:20
Prebel
In this class we will examine representations of American identity in the post-Civil War, Reconstruction era. We will pay particular attention to tropes of mobility in order to consider how movement is fundamental to notions of American identity Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson; Henry James, Daisy Miller; Abraham Cahan, Yekl; Kate Chopin, The Awakening; Pauline Hopkins, Contending Forces; photocopied course packet.

353 B (American Literature: Later 19th Century)
TTh 1:30-3:20
Kvidera
In this course we will consider writing that addresses the question of American identity as it was understood, contested, and (re)constructed during a period of profound socio-political change, from the Civil War to the early years of the twentieth century. We will focus on how issues of race and gender shape literary narratives and reveal important transformations in “America” and “Americans.” Requirements: class participation, several short response papers, a mid-term exam, and a final paper. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts:Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; Charles Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition; W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk; Kate Chopin, The Awakening and Selected Stories; Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie; Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth.

353 YA (American Literature: Later 19th Century)
MW 7-8:50 pm
Abrams
We will concentrate on major American writers and their efforts to create satisfying art during an especially interesting period in American history. How these authors responded to a variety of traumas, jolts, and anxieties--the Civil War, the accelerating rate of growth and technological change, the rise of commercialism, the waning of old values, the new discoveries of science--will be the subject of the course. Probably two papers of reasonable length and a final exam. Evening Degree students only, Registration Periods 1. Texts: Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems; Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; Henry James, The Portable Henry James; Rebecca Harding Davis, Life in the Iron Mills and Other Stories; Stephen Crane, The Portable Stephen Crane; Kate Chopin, The Awakening and Selected Stories.

355 A (American Literature: Contemporary America)
TTh 12:30-2:20
Somerson
This class will focus on the intersections of identity, memory, and history in works by contemporary North American authors. We will be considering how these narratives evoke memory in relation to the formation of various aspects of identity (including race, gender, sexuality, and class) within the larger realm of national identity. We will also investigate how national and international histories (including slavery, colonialism, and World War II) are represented via personal relationships in these narratives. Majors only, Registration Period 1 Texts: Joy Kogawa, Obasan; Toni Morrison, Beloved; Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient; Jamaica Kincaid, Lucy; A Small Place; Nora Okja Keller, Comfort Woman; Jim Grimsley, My Drowning; Jane Smiley, A Thousand Acres.

356 A (Classic American Poetry)
MW 2:30-4:20
Crane
This class will cover a broad range of 19th-century American poetry, focusing on Whitman, Dickinson, and Melville. We will read the poems, discuss them, discuss the act off reading poetry, and attempt to get a feel for the 29th-century American’s approach to poetry. Each of the poets will be put in a historical context by the instructor. There will be two short papers and a final exam. Majors only, Registration Period 1 Texts: William Spengeman, ed., Nineteenth-Century American Poetry; Charles Sullivan, ed., America in Poetry.

359 A (Contemporary American Indian Literature)
TTh 1:30-3:20
Shafer
[Creative writings – novels, short stories, poems – of contemporary Indian authors; traditions out of which they evolved. Differences between Indian writers and writers of the dominant European/American mainstream.] Meets with AIS 377; majors only, Registration Period 1.

363 YA (Literature & the Other Arts & Disciplines)
TTh 7-8:50 pm
Dunlop
Shakespeare and Opera. This class offers a different kind of “approach to Shakespeare,” via some plays (which, being verse-drama, already lie somewhere between play and music-drama) and the operas based on these. We’ll see what changes (sometimes drastic ones) occur in translations from play to opera; we’ll also necessarily be concerned with areas like the relative advantages/disadvantages of words and music as dramatic agents. Above all, we’ll be listening carefully, to both plays and operas. No special musical (or indeed literary) knowledge is required—only a mind and willingness to listen. Texts: Shakespeare, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, Othello, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Antony and Cleopatra; recommended: Kernan, Opera as Drama.

368 (Women Writers)
TTh 1:30-3:20
Kaplan
A Room of One’s Own: British Women Writers of the Early Twentieth Century. This quarter we will read fiction by British women written between 1908 and 1938, and consider in particular the various ways women participated in the development of modernism. Texts: Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own; To The Lighthouse; Katherine Mansfield, Stories; Jean Rhys, Voyage in the Dark; Sylvia Tounsend Warner, Lally Willowes; Elizabeth Bowen, Death of the Heart.

370 A (English Language Study)
MW 9:30-11:20
Curzan
This course introduces the systematic study of language and aims to help you step back and think about language in new ways. The course covers the many levels of structure working in language--from sounds to words to sentences to discourse--as well as the ways speakers learn and change language over time. Discussions will also focus on the social issues tied up in language, including attitudes to dialects, gender and language, Standard English, and national language policies. The focus of much of the course will be words—how they work structurally and socially. We will address questions such as: Why isn’t pfigr a possible English word? What is the difference between religiousness and religiosity? When could boys be girls because girl meant child? Why isn’t ain’t always in the dictionary? Words are one of the primary building blocks of language and by studying how they work, we can gain insight into the structure and meaning of language, and into the social and political power we wield with words. Majors only, Registration Pd. 1. Text: Cipollone, ed., Language Files, 7th ed.

371 A (English Syntax)
MW 11:30-1:20
Dillon
English 371 equips students with the means of analyzing the grammatical structure of sentences and more extended discourses. We will discuss the classification of words as parts of speech, the grammatical function of words and phrases in sentences, coordination and subordination of clauses, and the connection of sentences in discourse. In addition, attention will be devoted to punctuation, usage, written and spoken language. The course will include learning to use online resources for grammatical analysis and investigation. Students will each work with two passages from a list provided or supplied by them and will use the passages to practice grammatical analysis. To use these tools, we will meet once a week in the ASCC Lab. Graded work will include exercises, papers on the passages (2), midterm and final. Prerequisite: ENGL 370. Text: Sydney Greenbaum, The Oxford English Grammar.

381 A (Advanced Expository Writing)
MW 12:30-1:50
Murphy
Relativism, Knowledge and Education. The title of this course refers to some central debates about the goals and standards of primary, secondary and university education over the past thirty years. We will loosely refer to those debates as “the culture wars”; at issue in them is the very ability of a writer to locate and communicate objective truths. We’ll explore and engage these debates through class discussion and argumentative and analytic papers. Writing will be due every week; assignments range from short response papers and summaries to an 8-10 page research project. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Martha Kolln, Rhetorical Grammar; Americo Paredes, George Washington Gomez.

381 B (Advanced Expository Writing)
TTh 10:30-11:50
Cole
This course is a writing workshop designed to introduce the practice of writing for publication. Students will submit a previously written English paper at the beginning of the quarter. That essay will go through two revisions, with intensive peer and instructor review before both rewrites. Each student will present a report on an academic journal appropriate to the particular subject of her or his paper. In addition, there will be assignments related to writing for non-academic publication. Majors only, Registration Period 1. No texts.

383 A (Intermediate Verse Writing)
MW 11:30-12:50
McNamara
[Intensive study of the ways and means of making a poem. Further development of fundamental skills. Emphasis on revision.] Prerequisite: ENGL 283. Texts: Hollander, Rhyme's Reason; Harmon-William, ed, The Classic Hundred.

383 B (Intermediate Verse Writing)
TTh 1:30-2:50
McElroy
[Intensive study of the ways and means of making a poem. Further development of fundamental skills. Emphasis on revision.] Prerequisite: ENGL 283. Text: Myers & Weingarten, New American Poets of the 90s.

384 A (Intermediate Short Story Writing)
MW 11:30-12:50
Sonenberg
This class will ask what can fiction do? What can fiction be? It will emphasize the many and various approaches possible to writing the short story. We will spend about half the time discussing your stories, the other half discussing published stories. Over the term, each of you will write two stories. Expect to read and comment on each other’s work in writing, as well as during class discussion. This is not a class in writing genre fiction (science fiction, horror, romance, mystery, western). I expect you to be seriously interested in writing short stories. Prerequisite: ENGL 284. Texts: Willford & Martone, The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction; Stern, Making Shapely Fiction

384 B (Intermediate Short Story Writing)
TTh 3:30-4:50
D’Ambrosio
[Exploring and developing continuity in the elements of fiction writing. Methods of extending and sustaining plot, setting, character, point of view, and tone.] Prerequisite: ENGL 284.

SPRING 2000300-level Courses

SPRING 2000
300-level Courses