300-Level Course, Spring 2004

Course Descriptions (as of 19 February 2004)
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.)

First Week Attendance
Because of heavy demand for many English classes, students who do not attend all reguarly-scheduled meetings during the first week of the quarter may be dropped from their classes by the department. If students are unable to attend at any point during the first week, they should contact their instructors ahead of time. The Department requests that instructors make reasonable accommodations for students with legitimate reasons for being absent; HOWEVER, THE FINAL DECISION RESTS WITH THE INSTRUCTOR AND SPACE IS NOT GUARANTEED FOR ABSENT STUDENTS EVEN IF THEY CONTACT THE INSTRUCTOR IN ADVANCE. (Instructors' phone numbers and e-mail addresses can be obtained by calling the Main English Office, (206) 543-2690 or the Undergraduate Advising Office, (206) 543-2634.)

304 A (History of Literary Criticism & Theory II)

MW 1:30-3:20

Weinbaum

alysw@u.washington.edu
Race, Nation, Gender and the Politics of Theorizing. This course introduces students to recent theoretical and literary works that treat ideas of race, nation, and gender and/or examine the myriad ways in which racism, nationalism, and sexism intersect. It considers texts written by political scientists, legal scholars, sociologists, historians, and cultural studies practitioners – focusing particularly on works that have been taken up by literary critics seeking to understand the role of culture in contesting and/or consolidating various regimes of social subordination and domination. Throughout the quarter we will explore competing theoretical frameworks, and will examine the political stakes involved indifferent forms and genres of writing and theorizing. Emphasis will be on close reading, classroom discussion, and on learning how to write about a variety of dense theoretical texts with concision. Texts: W. E. B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk; substantial photocopied course packet.

315 A (Literary Modernism)

TTh 10:30-12:20

LaGuardia

ehl@u.washington.edu
Various modern authors, from Wordsworth to the present, in relation to such major thinkers as Kant, Hegel, Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche, Bergson, and Wittgenstein, who have helped create the context and the content of modern literature. Recommended: ENGL 230 or one 300-level course in 19th or 20th century literature. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols/The Antichrist; Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground; Mann, Death in Venice; Kafka, The Metamorphosis; Conrad, Heart of Darkness; Ibsen, Hedda Gabler; Beckett, Endgame.

316 A (Literature of Developing Countries)

TTh 8:30-10:20

Taranath

anu@u.washington.edu
Literatures of Palestine and the Palestinian Diaspora. In this discussion-oriented course we will be exploring the historical, cultural, and political nuances of Palestinian literatures in order to better understand the politics of displacement and diaspora. We will be reading novels and short stories, as well as screening films and engaging with literary and political criticism. The texts we will read and discuss thematize issues of gender, sexuality, state-sponsored violence, religious identity, historical contexts, power relations, and patriarchy. Students who enroll in this class much be willing to discuss these issues in class. Texts: Anton Shammas, Arabesque; Nur and Elmessiri, eds., A Land of Stone and Thyme: Anthology of Palestinian Short Stories; Liyana Badr, A Balcony over the Fakihani; Sahar Khalifa, Wild Thorns; Ghassan Kanafani, Palestine’s Children.

317 TS/U (Literature of the Americas)

TTh 7-8:50 pm

Kaup

mkaup@u.washington.edu
Do the Americas Have a Common Literature? Organized around the above question, this course investigates certain recurrent themes in the literatures of the U.S., the Caribbean, and Latin America. It offers a transnational approach to literature from the New World as sharing transamerican kinships beyond national traditions. In our cheek-by-cheek readings of literature from across the hemisphere, we will look at five major themes or categories which constitute possible sites of common ground in New World literature and culture: (1) Post-colonial Definitions of American Identities (Emerson, Jose Marti, Northrop Frye, Margaret Atwood, Roberto Fernández Retamar); (2) Representations of “the Indian” “civilization and Barbarism” (Mario Vargas Llosa, Helen Hunt Jackson, José Maria Arguedas, N. Scott Momaday); (3) black modernisms in Harlem and Havana (Langston Hughes, Nicolás Guillén); (4) Modernism and the Search for a Usable Past (William Carlos Williams, Alejo Carpentier); (5) Postmodern Connections and American Labyrinths of Fiction (Jorge Luis Borges, Thomas Pynchon). Part of the fun of this class is to “test-drive” a “discipline-in-progress”: transamerican Literary and Cultural Studies is still in its infancy as a discipline, and we can all participate in its creation and development. Students need to be willing to handle a demanding reading gschedule. Evening Degree Students only, Registration Periods 1 & 2. Texts: Carpentier, The Lost Steps; Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49; Jackson, Ramona; Williams, In the American Grain; Momaday, House Made of Dawn; Atwood, The Journals of Susanna Moodie; Llosa, Storyteller; photocopied course packet.

320 A (English Literature: The Middle Ages)

TTh 11:30-1:20

Coldewey

jcjc@u.washington.edu
[Literary culture of Middle Ages in England, as seen in selected works from earlier and later periods, ages of Beowulf and of Geoffrey Chaucer. Read in translation, except for a few later works, which are read in Middle English.] Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy (tr. & ed. Richard H. Green); Richard Hamer, ed., A Choice of Anglo-Saxon Verse; Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales (ed. Hieatt & Hieatt); Marie Borroff, ed., Sir Gawain & the Green Knight, Patience, Pearl: Verse Translations; Sir Thomas Malory, King Arthur and His Knights: Selected Tales (ed. Vinaver); A. C. Cawley, ed., Everyman and Medieval Miracle Plays; The Holy Bible (King James version); Albert C. Labriola & John Smeltz, The Bible of the Poor.

322 A (English Literature: The Age of Queen Elizabeth)

TTh 10:30-12:20

Easterling

heasterl@u.washington.edu
“ The Age of Queen Elizabeth” is an evocative title, for a course or for a period of literary history. We’ll spend the quarter considering what “Elizabethan” meant (and means now) by way of a selection of literary and historical texts that span the 16th century and that are typically associated with Elizabeth I. This will be a reading course first and foremost, with substantial writing to support this reading. Expect to work hard and learn a lot about a fascinating time and literature. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Danrosch, et al., eds., The Longman Anthology of British Literature, Vol. 1B; Thomas Dekker, The Shoemaker’s Holiday.

324 A (Shakespeare after 1603)

Dy 8:30

Frey

cfrey@u.washington.edu
Study of Shakespeare’s plays written 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 small performance group that meets all quarter long. Also required: discussion, written exercises, and two hour tests. Meets five days a week. A demanding course. This quarter we probably will study Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida, Antony and Cleopatra, and The Tempest, plus background and critical readings. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Text: Bevington, ed., The Complete Works of Shakespeare.

325 A (English Literature: The Late Renaissance)

TTh 1:30-3:20

Easterling

heasterl@u.washington.edu
“ The Late Renaissance” in England means the 17th century – a period of enormous intellectual, political, religious, social, and artistic change. Our course will survey these changes via the complex mirror of 17th-century literature, moving mostly chronologically to consider the city, the court, the subject, and the church, among others, as these aspects of 17th-century society were examined and features in its diverse literature over the century. Substantial reading and writing demands – we’ll work hard and learn a lot. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Damrosch, et al., eds, The Longman Anthology of British Literature, Vol. 1B; George Etheredge, The Man of Mode.

329 A (Rise of the English Novel)

MW 1:30-3:20

Popov

nikolai_popov@hotmail.com
This course will introduce you to four exemplary eighteenth-century novels: Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe; Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels; Fielding’s Joseph Andrews; and Sterne’s Tristram Shandy. In addition, you’ll read extensive excerpts from the works of Bunyan, Richardson, Cervantes, and Rabelais. Discussions will focus on the poetics of the novel as a literary genre and the critical issues associated with the emergence of the novel. This is an upper-level English course with a heavy reading load: you should have read the first half of Don Quixote for the first meeting. Midterm and final (80% of grade), brief assignments, quizzes, participation (20% of grade). Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Cervantes, Don Quixote; Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress; Defoe, Robinson Crusoe; Swift, Gulliver’s Travels; Fielding, Joseph Andrews & Shamela; Sterne, Tristram Shandy.

333 A (English Novel: Early & Middle 19th C.)

MW 1:30-3:20

Dunn

dickd@u.washington.edu
First Person Fictions. This course centers on Romantic and Victorian fictional autobiography, with four innovative primary texts: James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Converssions of a Justified Sinner; Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights; Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre; and Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield. First-person narration was not new to the English novel in the 19th century, but with that period’s intense interest in the individual, especially in how memory and imagination cope with dehumanizing forces and institutions, writers devised new use for first-person narrative as fictional autobiography, and the “first persons” (heroes and heroines) of these novels are all complicated and memorable characters. The first three texts are critical editions, and there will be assigned background and critical readings for each of them. For David Copperfield it is important to have the edition ordered for the course, because it contains all of the illustrations, which are a vital part of the text. There will be short papers for each novel and a final examination. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (Broadview Pr.); E. Brontë, Wuthering Heights (Norton, 4th ed.); C. Brontë, Jane Eyre, (Norton, 3rd ed.); Dickens, David Copperfield (Penguin Classic).

334 A (English Novel: Later 19th C.)

MW 9:30-11:20

Blake

kblake@u.washington.edu
Later Victorian Fiction: Individualism in an Expanding-Systems World. Individualism is a leading value in Victorian literature and culture. At the same time the Victorian period is characterized by large, expanding systems that suggest impersonality and dwarfing and limiting of individual power. Such a tension is not resolved, rather it is acute in our own time. We can bring very current 21st-C. interest to critical analysis and literary appreciation of 19th-C. fiction. Lewis Carroll’s Alice is an intrepid adventurer into her own dream realm, yet finds herself a Pawn in a chess-board world. George Eliot’s characters seek their ways in the midst of an all-encompassing many-pointed, always changing social “web.” The expanding systems of the Victorian age include expanding democracy and widening of horizons by gender and class, increasingly mass communications, globalizing capitalism, and empire. In Darwin’s biological theory Victorians confronted another big-system vision of interlocking forces shaping whole species and the individuals within them.

Using the section titled “Of Individuality” from J. S. Mill’s famous essay “On Liberty” as a keynote, the course begins with Carroll’s classic fantasy fiction, Alice Through the Looking-Glass. It proceeds to provide background on capitalist and Darwinian theories (with brief sample readings via in-class handouts), and background on political, economic, and imperial developments. It then moves to Anthony Trollope’s charming if rueful realist novel The Warden about the impact of a new order of things upon a member of the “old guard.” This is followed by Eliot’s Middlemarch, a great signature work of Victorian realism and example of the “Bildungsroman” about young women and men making their ways within a richly detailed social environment of multiple changing systems. This long, comprehensive work provides a centerpiece amongst the rest of the smaller-scale readings in the course. From it we move to fictions of foreign adventure and empire in both realistic and more comic/entertainment and symbolic/experimental/critically probing modes. These are the stories “Youth” by Joseph Conrad and a tale or short novel by Rudyard Kipling, whether “The Man Who Wold Be King” (with film clips featuring Sean Connery) or Kim, and Conrad’s somber while enduringly provocative novella, “Heart of Darkness.” We will return at the end for summing up to Alice. Format: Lecture/Discussion. In-class engagement is expected; standout contribution can weigh in the overall grade. Essay midterm and final (30% each – likely format of short answers plus longer critical dsay). Course paper (40% @ 8 pp.). Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Carroll, Alice in Wonderland (incl. Through the Looking Glass); Eliot, Middlemarch; Kipling, Kim; Kucich, ed., Fictions of Empire; Mill, On Liberty and Other Writings; Trollope, The Warden.

339 A (English Literature: Contemporary England)

MW 11:30-1:20

Butwin

joeyb@u.washington.edu
Every American above … a certain age has two vivid impressions of England in the 20th century: Winston Churchill in the darkest days of the Second World War delivering his confident sign of V for Victory and teenage girls going berserk over the Beatles. But Churchill’s Conservative Party was voted out of office within months of the victory itself and the Beatles didn’t drive American teenagers crazy until 1964. It is the goal of this course (in the words of the sepulchral voice that fills the London underground) to “Mind the Gap” – that is, to bring to mind the gap between the post-War decline of old-style Conservatism (along with the global Empire and rigorous class distinctions that supported it) and the rise of a largely northern, working class and exceedingly popular culture in the early 1960s. What we have in the late 1940s and ‘50s is a curious combination of humor and anger in fiction, drama, and poetry; a folk revival and the first flush of rock-n-roll in music and a series of superb (mostly) black and white movies, many of them drawing directly on current drama and fiction. We will focus on this period and try to understand its place in the extraordinary sequence of events that precede and follow it. Lecture-discussion, mid-term and final essays, short response papers in and out of class. Films (from among the following): The Third Man (1949), Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), The Horse’s Mouth (1958), Room at the Top (1958), Look Back in Anger (1959), I’m All Right Jack (1959), Loneliness of a Long Distance Runner (1962). Novels: Excellent Women by Barbara Pym, Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis, Memento Mori by Muriel Spark, Loneliness of a Long Distance Runner by Alan Sillitoe. Drama: Look Back in Anger by John Osborne. Poetry: Selections from Philip Larkin. Majors only, Registration Period 1.

350 A (Traditions in American Fiction)

MW 9:30-11:20

Mower

Leiren@aol.com
Gender and Nation in Nineteenth-Century US Literature. What is �America�? Is it a geographical space bounded by national, regional or continental borders? Is it the migrations of peoples, cultures, political alignments which have historically shaped and reshaped not just the geographies but also the collective and disparate consciousness of �America�? And what does it mean to be an �American�? Is it a national imagining or consciousness, as Benedict Anderson argues, an image we have of belonging rather than an actual experience with a shared community? Is it the presumption of a common destiny enabled by certain imagined (and discriminatory) racial and class unities? Rather than a chronological development of these ideas, this course will take up questions of nation, identity and belonging within the context of several key moments in nineteenth-century US culture, paying particular attention to the relationship between gender and the nation, between race/ethnicity and the nation. We will read and discuss a varied selection of texts — journalistic essays, short stories, novels, poetry, social criticism, photographs and other visual images, medical treatises, legal decisions and films — in order to examine the historical moments which produce these texts as well as the ways in which these texts intervene at particular junctures in order to influence, criticize, illuminate and sometimes transform deeply entrenched ideas. Course requirements: 4 short critical papers (2-3 pages) due throughout the quarter and one longer critical paper (7-8 pages) due at the end of the quarter (as well as a number of small in-class writing assignments). A great deal of emphasis will be placed on class participation, as this course will be taught using a discussion-based format. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans; Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass; Rebecca Harding Davis, Life in the Iron Mills; Nathaniel Hawthorne, Blithesdale Romance; William Dean Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham; Henry James, Daisy Miller and Other Stories; Frank Norris, McTeague; Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome.

352 A (American Literature: The Early Nation)

Dy 10:30

Griffith

jgriff@u.washington.edu
We’ll read and discuss an assortment of novels, stories, poems and memoirs by American authors 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 brief in-class essays written in response to study questions handed out in advance. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Baym, et al., eds., The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Vol. B of the 5-volume 6th ed.; Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin; Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans.

352 TS/U (American Literature: The Early Nation)

MW 7-8:50 pm

Abrams

rabrams@u.washington.edu
Conflicting visions of the national destiny and the individual identity in the early years of America's nationhood. Evening Degree students only, Registration Periods 1 & 2. Texts: Margaret Fuller, Summer on the Lakes; Frederick Douglass, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave; Henry Thoreau, The Portable Thoreau; Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Portable Hawthorne; Ralph Waldo Emerson, Selections; Herman Melville, Moby-Dick.

353 A (American Literature: Later 19th C.)

MW 12:30-2:20

Mower

Leiren@aol.com
Work and the “Labor” of National Belonging. This course will explore how mid-to-late-nineteenth-century novelists, journalists and essayists understood the meaning and uses of labor in relation to the constitution of national identity. To examine “labor” in the nineteenth century is not simply to engage a range of statistics regarding employment in the nation’s market economy. Instead, for purposes of this course, labor (in both a material and symbolic sense) refers to a heterogeneous range of activities and aspirations of particular interest to the nineteenth century: labor in the reproduction and education of children; household labor in converting the raw materials brought into the household into products consumable for the family’s support; men’s and women’s labor in maintaining the institutions of marriage and heterosexual love; men’s and women’s participation in the economic market for labor outside the home; men’s and women’s self-labor via the pursuit of education and a vocation separate from the home. In addition, however, the term labor carried important ideological weight. From the 1780s onward, “real” labor increasingly came to stand for the right to sell one’s own labor for wages or profit. Implicit within this understanding of labor is the liberal concept of owning the body, of controlling the uses of the body as well as the republican concept of using one’s own labor as a means to achieve social and economic independence – the production of the “ideal” American citizen or, to use Lauren Berlant’s term, the constitution of “normal personhood.” This course will interrogate the gender, class and racial privileges of “normal personhood,” paying particular attention to the role of labor in constituting the self as individual and as part of a collectivity. Course requirements: 4 short critical papers (2-3 pages) due throughout the quarter and one longer critical paper (7-8 pages) due at the end of the quarter (as well as a number of small in-class writing assignments). A great deal of emphasis will be placed on class participation, as this course will be taught using a discussion-based format. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Rebecca Harding Davis, Life in the Iron Mills; Harriet Wilson, Our Nig; Louisa May Alcott, Work: A Story of Experience; William Dean Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham; Henry James, Daisy Miller and Other Stories; Abraham Cahan, Yekl and The Imported Bridegroom; Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth; Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie.

354 A (American Literature: The Early Modern Period)

TTh 9:30-11:20

Emmerson

cemmerso@u.washington.edu
Modern Sophistication: Lessons in Style and Grace. This course is a study of sophistication in the literature of American modernism. We’ll track the modernist revision of the archetype of the naïve American, and the rise of the American sophisticate. What defined early twentieth-century sophistication, why did the century begin by considering it inimical to Americanness, and what changed? What did it mean to become sophisticated in twentieth-century globalization (to what extent is sophistication a factor of class? Of what else can it be a factor?)? How were American conceptions of society, democracy and the public sphere affected by the growing prominence and value of sophistication? The course will argue that one effect of the new predominance in the U.S. of sophistication as a national and aesthetic value was the feminization and racialization of the American public sphere. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Henry James, Daisy Miller; Edith Wharton, Madame de Treymes and Three Novellas; Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast; W.E.B. DuBois, Dark Princess; James Baldwin, Giovannie’s Room; Djuna Barnes, Nightwood; Gertrude Stein, Selected Writings.

358 TS (Literature of Black Americans)

MW 4:30-6:20 pm

Moody

jmoody@u.washington.edu
[Selected writings, novels, short stories, plays, poems by Afro-American writers. Study of the historical and cultural context within which they evolved. Differences between Afro-American writers and writers of the European-American tradition. Emphasis varies.] Evening Degree students only, Registration Periods 1 & 2. (Offered jointly w. AFRAM 358.)

359 A (Contemporary American Indian Literature)

TTh 9:30-11:20

Opitz

aopitz@u.washington.edu
In this course we’ll explore the “politics of storytelling” in contemporary American Indian Literature. We will engage with the fictions of James Welch, Louise Erdrich, Leslie Silko, Thomas King, to ask how these texts practice and examine the telling of stories of self and other, community and nation. We will explore the ways in which we can talk about these narratives in terms of history, place, politics, native and white relations. In addition to close reading the texts, students will learn about and investigate some of the specific historical contexts of these texts in order to get a comprehensive understanding of the issues that American Indian authors of the 20th century trouble. Students should expect to engage critically with these texts in a fair amount of writing as well as class discussions. Students are expected to do all the readings and be prepared for class discussions. Grades will be determined by preparation and participation, at least one presentation, several response papers, a midterm, and a final paper. Majors only, Registration Period 1. (Offered jointly w. AIS 377) Texts: James Welch, Fools Crow; Leslie Silko, Ceremony; Louse Erdrich, The Antelope Wife; N. Scott Momaday, The Way to Rainy Mountain; D’Arcy McNickle, The Surrounded; Thomas King, Green Grass Running Water.

361 A (American Political Culture: After 1865)

TTh 9:30-11:20

Merola

nmerola@u.washington.edu
Geographical Imaginations: Producing the National Territory in the Wake of Lewis and Clark. In this course we will consider the central place of land and landscape to the imagination and production of the United States a a coherent political and affective entity. In other words, we will examine literary, historical, painted, and legal documents to examine the ways in which “America” has represented, and thereby laid claim to, her physical terrain. Our historical range will be long: we will begin with the Lewis and Clark Expedition and trace America’s topographic affections and disaffections through to the end of the twentieth century. Topics will include exploration narratives, Indian Removal, Transcendentalism, landscape painting, tourism, the frontier, scenic monumentalism, wastelands, suburbs and roads, and ecological visions. Course requirements include active and engaged participation in discussion, group presentations, response papers, and a final research paper. . Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Margaret Fuller, Summer on the Lakes in 1843; Willa Cather, O Pioneers!; Lydia Maria Child, Hobomok and Other Writings on Indians; Jack Kerouac, On the Road; extensive course packet.

367 A (Women and the Literary Imagination)

TTh 10:30-12:20

Liu

msmliu@u.washington.edu
In an essay entitled “Women Novelists,” Virginia Woolf observed that though some female writers had adopted male pseudonyms to prevent their work from being dismissed as frivolous, “No more than men, however, could they free themselves from a more fundamental tyranny – the tyranny of sex itself.” In this course, we will start by looking at how a gendered analysis of literature and cultural production provides a unique understanding of how language both enables and disrupts social structures of power. We will then examine how the “tyranny of sex” has inspired both the imagining of alternative utopias and unspeakably violent acts. The works covered this quarter will range from Michael Cunningham’s The Hours, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s imagining of an all-female society in Herland, and to Toni Morrison’s examination of infanticide in Beloved. Other texts assigned: Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston, The Dispossessed by Ursula LeGuin, and Medea by Euripides.

368 A (Women Writers)

TTh 11:30-1:20

Taranath

anu@u.washington.edu
Literatures by Pakistani Women Writers. In this discussion-oriented course we will be exploring the historical, cultural, and political nuances of Pakistani literatures written by women. We will be reading novels and short stories, as well as screening a few films and engaging with literary criticism. The texts we will read and discuss thematize issues of gender, sexuality, domesticity, religious identity, historical context, power relations and patriarchy. Students who enroll in this class must be willing to discuss these issues in class. Texts: A. Hussein, ed., Hoops of Fire; Talat Abbasi, Bittergourd and Other Stories; Rokeya Sukawat Hussain, Sultana’s Dream; Bapsi Sidhwa, Cracking India; Ismat Chugtai (tr. Naqvi), The Quilt and Other Stories.
.

370 A (English Language Study)

MW 9:30-11:20 S.

S. Browning

sbrownin@u.washington.edu

English 370 is an introduction to the study of the English language. Our focus will be on language as both systematic and social. We will examine the structures of English - from sounds to syntax, from words to texts - in order to accurately describe and analyze the language we all use. We will also question these structures and their social implications. This course will require you to think about language in new ways, and to explore the social, political, and personal power that language encodes. Majors only, Registration Period 1.

381 A (Advanced Expository Writing)

MW 12:30-1:50

S. Browning

sbrownin@u.washington.edu
[Concentration on the development of prose style for experienced writers.] Majors only, Registration Period 1.

381 B (Advanced Expository Writing)

TTh 1:30-2:50

Liu

msmliu@u.washington.edu
Marco Polo and Mark Twain are just a couple examples of travel writers who, through their rendition of faraway locations in persuasive prose, radically altered how readers pictured the world. Through descriptions of people encountered and landscapes traversed, travel writers familiarize, exoticize, or destabilize the unknown in order to transform places into cultural significant landmarks in the imagination of their armchair readers. As a genre, travel writing is an excellent illustration of the immediate power of prose and lends itself well to the study of the effective use of words. In this class, we will analyze some signature pieces of this genre as a way to develop our own prose styles. Classwork will consist of discussion of various essays and peer critiques of student writing. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: The Best American Travel Writing 2003 by Ian Frazier (ed.) and The Travel Writer’s Handbook by Louise Purwin Zobel.

382 A (Advanced Web Writing)

MW 12:30-2:20

Dillon

dillon@u.washington.edu
[Writing substantial Web essays on topics of current concern. Extensive analysis and criticism of on-line essays. Prerequisite: ENGL 282.] Interested students who do not have the formal prerequisite are encouraged to contact Prof. Dillon for information on registering for the course. For overview, see courses.washington.edu/englhtml/engl382

383 A (Intermediate Verse Writing)

MW 10:30-11:50

Wagoner

renogawd@aol.com
[Intensive study of the ways and means of making a poem. Further developmenet of fundamental skills. Emphasis on revision.] Majors only, Registration Period 1. Prerequisite: ENGL 283.

383 B (Intermediate Verse Writing)

TTh 11:30-12:50

Kenney

rk@u.washingotn.edu
[Intensive study of the ways and means of making a poem. Further developmenet of fundamental skills. Emphasis on revision.] Majors only, Registration Period 1. Prerequisite: ENGL 283.

383C (Intermediate Verse Writing)

Wed. 3:30-6:20

Larios

jalarios@u.washington.edu
Added 2/19; sln: 8650
Further development of both the vocabulary for discussing and the tools for crafting original poems. This class will sign on to the belief that poetry is not primarily a vehicle for personal therapy, best explored elsewhere. Instead, the manifesto will be that writing a poem takes blood, sweat, laughter, perseverance and (occasionally) serendipity. The instructor signs on to the idea that a poet-teacher's job is to sound "a subversive plea for the power of control, discipline and study." We'll be looking at poems from many traditions and periods of history, taking them apart like puzzles, memorizing some of them, imitating others. We'll examine various traditional forms, rhythms, and sonic techniques. Inflexibility and entrenchment in old patterns will be a liability, so please be prepared to think new thoughts and try new ideas, flexing your poetic muscles and staying limber. Expect also to have fun while reading hard, writing hard and talking hard. This class will be conducted in the usual workshop format when looking at student poems, though there will be a substantial amount of reading of poetry criticism outside class and discussion of that material in class. Students will write original poems and submit them for class discussion (all students will be expected to prepare written comments in response to fellow students' work, in addition to discussing the poems in class.) You will memorize several poems and recite them in class, and you will keep an observatory log, highlights of which will be shared during the quarter. Attendance at the UW's Roethke Reading this spring is required, as is a Final Portfolio of your work for the class. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Prerequisite: ENGL 283.

Grades will be based on the following: 1. Regular participation in all class discussions (chronic tardiness and/or a failure to prepare for class discussions will lower your grade.) 2. On-time delivery of all assignments - will include original work, exercises, memorizations, written critiques, final portfolios. 3. Responsiveness to class readings and discussions, as evidenced by the quality of new poems generated.

Texts: IMPORTANT NOTE: all textbooks for this class will be available through Open Books, an all-poetry bookshop IN THE WALLINGFORD NEIGHBORHOOD JUST WEST OF THE UNIVERSITY DISTRICT. The website, including a map, phone number and hours of operation, is viewable at www.openpoetrybooks.com. As of the writing of this course description, the texts being considered are The Book of Forms by Lewis Turco and First Loves: Poets Introduce the Essential Poems that Captivated and Inspired Them, edited by Carmela Ciuraru. Check with John Marshall and Christine Deaver, owners of Open Books, for a final list. An additional course packet will be available from The Ave Copy Center after the first day of class.

384 A (Intermediate Short Story Writing)

MW 1:30-2:50

Wong

homebase@u.washington.edu
Exploring and developing continuity in the elements of fiction writing. Methods of extending and sustaining plot, setting, character, point of view, and tone.Majors only, Registration Period 1. Prerequisite: ENGL 284. No texts.

384 B (Intermediate Short Story Writing)

MW 4:30-5:50

Sherman

iansage@u.washington.edu
This course continues practices in, and extends understanding of, the fundamental structures of contemporary short story writing first learned in English 284, Beginning Short Story Writing. In addition, Intermediate Short Story Writing heavily emphasizes development of theme, story arc, and pacing. The primary focus of the course will be the production and critique of student writing. However we will also consider published short stories working from a variety of aesthetic and theoretical perspectives; note that stories that seek to redefine or expand the scope of contemporary short fiction will constitute a large portion, though probably not the majority, of the published readings for the course. Whether working with experimental or traditional stories, whether peer-written or published, our questions will be the same: What makes a short story successful? And how is a successful short story constructed? How does it move, where does it go, and where does it finally let us go?

In additional to the prerequisite of ENGL 284, it is highly recommended that students keep and regularly make use of a writing journal, where thoughts, story seeds, images, and character sketches are stored. Such material proves invaluable once the quarter arrives, and production of full stories must begin.

Assignments will consist of two complete stories of eight to twelve pages in length, consisting of a fully-developed beginning, middle, and end. These stories, though still initial drafts, should be complete movements, and should be clean of inadvertent grammatical and spelling errors. Stories
will be given a numerical grade based upon completeness (both in terms of assignment requirements and story movement) and awareness of technique. One of these stories shall be workshopped by the entire class, and the other will be discussed privately with the instructor. Stories will count for sixty percent of class grade. In-class participation and written commentary on peer work shall count for forty percent of class grade. Students are free to revise their stories as often as desired in order to increase their initial grades. By the last day of class, all students must turn at least one revised story. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Prerequisite: ENGL 284.

384 C (Intermediate Short Story Writing)

TTh 1:30-2:50

McElroy

dragnldy@u.washington.edu
The Practice of Fiction: a workshop in characterization, narration, and setting. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Prerequisite: ENGL 284. Text: Tom Bailey, A Short Story Writer’s Companion.

SPRING 2004 300-Level Courses

SPRING 2004
300-Level Courses