Spring 1998 300-level ENGL courses

Course Descriptions (as if updated February 27, 1998)
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.)

To Spring Quarter 200-level courses
To Spring Quarter 400-level courses

To 1997-98 Senior Seminars

304 A (History of Literary Criticism and Theory II)
TTh 1:30-3:20
Handwerk/Webster
This course will focus on several theoretical approaches important within contemporary literary criticism, using Nietzsche as a point of entry into the 20th century, and Woolf's A Room of One's Own as touchstone text. Readings will come from Hazard Adams' Critical Theory Since Plato and a course packet, and will include a number of brief literary works. Frequent short papers, two or three in-class exams, plus a long-term group project/presentation.

304 YA (History of Literary Criticism and Theory II)
TTh 7-8:50 pm
B. Harris
(Evening Degree)
This course provides an in-depth introduction to the theoretical approaches that are most significant in contemporary literary criticism. We will focus on Marxism, psychoanalysis, Foucauldian historicism, and feminism, and we will look more briefly at the deconstruction of Jacques Derrida and the "rhizomatics" or "schizoanalysis" of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Although our primary concern will be simply to understand the complex ideas that these traditions present, we will never lose sight of our goal as literary critics: that is, to learn how to apply these theoretical perspectives to the interpretation of literature. To provide a focal point for our applications, we will use an American classic, The Wizard of Oz. At the end of each of our theoretical units we will discuss the ways in which the theory we have just explored might help us make sense of this provocative and remarkably durable text. Requirements: Active participation in class discussions, weekly response papers, and a 10-12 page term paper. (Evening Degree students only, Registration Periods 1 & 2.) Texts: L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz; Marx, The Portable Karl Marx; Freud, On Dreams; The Ego and the Id; Grosz, Jacques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction; Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1; hooks, Yearning; photocopied course packet.

313 A (Modern European Literature in Translation)
TTh 10:30-12:20
LaGuardia
Fiction, poetry, and drama from the development of modernism to the present. Texts: Freud, Civilization and its Discontents; Ibsen, Hedda Gabler; Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground; Mann, Death in Venice; Kafka, The Metamorphosis; Conrad, Heat of Darkness.

321 A (Chaucer)
MW 8:30-10:20
Simmons-O'Neill
This course is designed to be an introductory but intensive study of selected Canterbury Tales (in Middle English), with attention to current critical responses to Chaucer's work, and to students' interests with regard to these texts and issues. Translation quizzes, oral presentation, examinations, essay. (Majors only, Registration Period 1.) Texts: Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales: Nine Tales and the General Prologue (ed. Kolve & Olson); Beidler, ed., The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale; audiotape of The Wife of Bath's Tale; optional: Benson, ed., The Riverside Chaucer.

323 A (Shakespeare to 1603)
TTh 8:30-10:20
Taylor
In this course, we will look at an assortment of comedies, tragedies and histories that characterize Shakespeare's earlier dramatic work. Students should expect to actively participate in discussion of texts. Two main papers, several short papers, midterm and final. (Majors only, Registration Period 1.) Texts: Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew; Romeo and Juliet; A Midsummer Night's Dream; I Henry IV; Hamlet.

323 B (Shakespeare to 1603)
TTh 1:30-3:20
LaGuardia
Shakepeare's career as a dramatist before 1603 (including Hamlet). Study of history plays, comedies, and tragedies. (Majors only, Registration Period 1.) Texts: Shakespeare, Richard II; 1 Henry IV; Midsummer Night's Dream; As You Like It; Romeo and Juliet; Hamlet; Twelfth Night; Troilus and Cressida.

324 A (Shakespeare after 1603)
MW 10:30-12:20
Taylor
This course will examine the later tragedies and comedies of Shakespeare, with an eye toward placing them in the cultural contexts, whether social, political, or religious, from which they arise. Most class time is devoted to open discussion of main texts, with support from ancillary materials provided over the course of the quarter. Students should expect to attend scrupulously and to involve themselves in discussion. Two main papers, several short papers, midterm and final. (Majors only, Registration Period 1.) Texts: Shakespeare, King Lear; Macbeth; Cymbeline; The Winter's Tale; The Tempest.

326 A (Milton)
MW 1:30-3:20
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: Flannagan, ed., The Riverside Milton.

329 A (Rise of the English Novel)
TTh 1:30-3:20
Drake
We will be reading novels from a period of extraordinary invention and experimentation. During the eighteenth century, the novel was tremendously popular but only gradually gained stature as a "serious" art form. We will be looking at the early history of the English novel (and a French predecessor) in two ways: as it is shaped by history, and as it in turn shapes the concept of history through the representation of individual life histories. (Majors only, Registration Period 1.) Texts: Mme. De Lafayette, The Princess of Cleves; Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders; Samuel Richardson, Pamela; Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews; Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy; Ann Radcliffe, The Italian.

331 YA (Romantic Poetry I)
TTh 7-8:50 pm
Modiano
This course will focus on a close study of the deeply conflicted and remarkably intimate literary relationship between Coleridge and Wordsworth, and of Blake's poetry and art. It will also investigate the impact of the French Revolution on these authors' political philosophy and offer a broad overview of major developments during the romantic era in religion (the attack on Christianity), philosophy (the revolt against empiricism), aesthetics (the popularity of the aesthetics of the picturesque, beautiful and the sublime), science (the attack on Newtonian science). Requirements: two papers, a final exam, and oral reports. (Evening Degree students only, Registration Periods 1 & 2.) Texts: Blake, Poetry and Prose; Songs of Innocence and of Experience; America: A Prophecy and Europe: A Prophecy; Coleridge, The Oxford Authors: S. T. Coleridge; Wordsworth, The Oxford Authors William Wordsworth; M. Butler, Burke, Peirce, Godwin and the Revolution Controversy; Stephen Gill, Wordsworth: A Life.

333 A (English Novel: Early & Middle 19th Century)
Dy 10:30
Alexander
Six novels, three from the Romantic period, three from the Victorian, will be studied. Attention will be given to the way that novelists convey ideas, and to the relation between form and content in these books. (Majors only, Registration Period 1.) Texts: Austen, Pride and Prejudice; Mansfield Park; Shelley, Frankenstein; C. Brontë, Jane Eyre; E. Brontë, Wuthering Heights; Dickens, Oliver Twist.

334 A (English Novel: Later 19th Century)
TTh 1:30-3:20
Goodlad
A reading-intensive course on the later nineteenth-century novel, its historical and social determinants and, particularly, its relations to the making of mid- and late-Victorian class, gender and national identities. Students who strongly dislike reading long novels with complicated plots and challenging vocabulary are cautioned to beware. Recurring themes include courtship, marriage, adultery, illegitimacy, imprisonment and insolvency along with the occasional bout of wife-selling, mesmeric trance and one very serious termite problem. (Majors only, Registration Period 1.) Texts: Dickens, Little Dorrit; Eliot, Adam Bede; Collins, No Name; Du Maurier, Trilby; Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge.

335 A (English Literature: The Age of Victoria)
TTh 10:30-12:20
Holberg
An examination of the social, political and cultural events of Victoria's reign, focusing on the major poets and prose writers of the period. As befits a Victorian course, there will be substantial reading. Midterm, 2 papers. (Majors only, Registration Period 1.) Texts: Abrams, et al., Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 2; Richard Altick, Victorian People and Ideas; Tennyson, In Memoriam.

338 A (Modern Poetry)
Dy 12:30
Brenner
[Poetry in the modernist mode, including such poets as Yeats, Eliot, Pound, Auden and Moore.] (Majors only, Registration Period 1.) Text: Robert DiYanni, ed., Modern American Poets, 2nd ed.

339 A (English Literature: Contemporary England)
TTh 10:30-12:20
Kaplan
This class will focus on British fiction since the second World War. (Majors only, Registration Period 1.) Texts: Doris Lessing, Martha Quest; Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie; Iris Murdoch, The Nice and the Good; William Trevor, Felicia's Journey; Caryl Phillips, Crossing the River; Hilary Mantel, Experiment in Love; Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot; Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body.

350 A (Traditions in American Fiction)
Dy 10:30
Abrams
A sampling of significant American fiction, with attention to extreme and dramatic differences in literary voice, and featuring as comprehensive a look as possible at the ranges of theme and technique that have engaged American authors over the years. Students should come prepared to read texts closely and to deliberate on the reciprocity between fiction and the socio-political context it both derives from and helps to form. (Majors only, Registration Period 1.) Texts: Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Portable Hawthorne; Rebecca Harding Davis, Life in the Iron Mills and Other Stories; Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; Stephen Crane, The Portable Stephen Crane; Kate Chopin, The Awakening and Selected Stories; F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby; Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man.

350 YA (Traditions in American Fiction)
MW 7-8:50 pm
Crane
The 19th century was marked by massive social upheavals that disrupted a decentralized, rural society's values, principles of order, and image of community. The period's fiction registers these upheavals by depicting the individual as a mediate figure caught between and produced by shifting and conflicting cultural contexts. We will analyze the ways in which 19th-century American fiction displays the tectonic movements in American society and we will study the effects of those changes on the language of individualism in these texts.(Evening Degree students only, Registration Periods 1 & 2.) Texts Chopin, The Awakening; Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham; Cooper, Last of the Mohicans; Melville, Great Short Works; Jewett, A Country Doctor; Hawthorne, Blithesdale Romance; Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man; Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.

352 A (American Literature: The Early Nation)
TTh 1:30-3:20
Shulman
During the first half of the nineteenth century, American writers explored the contradictions and possibilities of the new nation. They experimented with a range of languages and engaged with the challenge of creating fiction and poetry for a developing market in which, as Melville wrote, "dollars damn me." Issues of race and slavery pervaded public discourse, as they do several of our works. The ideology of "the woman's sphere" was developed during this period, with consequences that continue to reverberate. Writers as different as Melville, Whitman, and Elizabeth Stoddard were pioneer explorers of the American sexual frontier. Our writers brought to a focus the contradiction between class differences and egalitarian ideals in "the era of the common man." During the quarter I hope we will become increasingly aware of the languages, power relations, and creative achievements of an exceptionally revealing period. (Majors only, Registration Period 1.) Texts: Davis, Life in the Iron Mills; Melville, Moby-Dick; Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass; Whitman, Complete Poems; Stoddard, The Morgensons.

353 A (American Literature: Later 19th Century)
MW 9:30-11:20
Patterson
American Culture, American Nature. After the Civil War (the period covered by this course), America witnessed the closing of the frontier and the rise of the modern city. These two historical developments will organize the readings for this course. While the city became the site for economic and social competition, nature was often described as the place to restore and recreate. In this course, we will look at a series of novels and stories that take place in both the city and in nature; these stories often complicate the common distinctions we make between what is "culture" and what is "nature." At the same time we will look at a number of issues-success and failure, the "primitive," and freedom-that recur throughout American literature. (Majors only, Registration Period 1.) Texts: Edith Wharton, House of Mirth; Horatio Alger, Ragged Dick and Struggling Upward; Frank Norris, McTeague; Stephen Crane, Great Short Works; Charles Chesnutt, The Conjure Woman; Kate Chopin, The Awakening.

354 A (American Literature: The Early Modern Period)
MW 1:30-3:20
Sheehy
We will be examining the poetry and prose of the early part of the 20th century. We will focus on writers who, to various degrees, inherited an old world they did not particularly care for; and who, again to various degrees, attempted in their art to transform it into a new world which was worth caring for (thereby helping to create the world we have inherited, whether we care for it or not). Poetry to include Frost, Eliot, Moore, Hughes and others; prose to include Faulkner, Hurston, Hemingway, Wright, Anderson and Fitzgerald. (Majors only, Registration Period 1.) Texts: DiYanni, ed., Modern American Poets; Faulkner, Go Down, Moses; Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God; Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises; Wright, Uncle Tom's Children; Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio; Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby.

355 A (American Literature: Contemporary America)
MW 1:30-3:20
Eversley
"Modernism," the term associated with an artistic movement that occurred during and after the first World War, claims a response to a sense of social breakdown. In many instances, the modernist work consists of an assemblage of fragments intended to demonstrate dissonance and discontinuity and reveal structural falsehoods in the social order. In this course we will study a variety of American modernist writers to explore some of the defining characteristics of the moment. Students will be expected to participate in class discussions, group work, in-class writing assignments, as well as take a mid-term and final exam. (Majors only, Registration Period 1.) Texts: Willa Cather, Alexander's Bridge; Jean Toomer, Cane; John Dos Passos, Big Money; F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby; William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury.

356 A (Classic American Poetry)
TTh 9:30-11:20
Donahue
This course will examine the classic American poetry of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Our emphasis will be on the spiritual and occult preoccupations, the exalted moods, extreme states of mind, and religious manias that so many of these poets explored and that still in many ways shape the literary culture of the present. While significant attention will be paid to works by Whitman, Dickinson and Poe, we will also look at popular poetry and songs of the period, dialect poems, spirituals, folk ballads, and ethnographic transcriptions of Native American poetry. (Majors only, Registration Period 1.) Text: American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century.

358 A (Literature of Black Americans)
MW 12:30-2:20
Moody
In this course we will study selected African American autobiographies, poems, and novels written during the American Reconstruction and at the turn of the nineteenth century, to examine the representation of black experiences of Christianity and capitalism in the period following slavery. These two institutions were of great significance to African Americans during the antebellum era: the former constituted one of the major sources of endurance of slavery and resistance to it while the latter constituted one of the primary motivations for slavery (which was fundamentally a system of labor and profit). Reading broadly among writings by ministers, entrepreneurs, ideologues, poets, and suffragists, we will explore ways that African Americans determined how they would be perceived and understood by nonblacks in the aftermath of slavery. (Majors only, Registration Period 1; meets with AFRAM 358.) Texts: W. L. Andrews, ed., The African-American Novel in the Age of Reaction: Three Classics; Elizabeth Keckley, Behind the Scenes; Anna J. Cooper, A Voice from the South; Sojourner Truth, Narrative of the Life of Sojourner Truth (ed. Stewart); Dorothy Sterling, ed., We Are Your Sisters; recommended: Diana Hacker, The Bedford Handbook, 5th ed.; Deborah Willis, ed., Picturing Us.

359 U (Contemporary American Indian Literature)
MW 5:00-6:50 pm
Colonnese
American Indians have been portrayed in thousands of books and movies and many or most of these portrayals have been unsympathetic, culturally biased, and inaccurate. During this century, American Indian authors have used the artistic form of the novel in an act of resistance to regain Indian identity. This course will examine five novels in terms of the statements each makes about Indian identity. The course will involve two in-class tests, a short analysis assignment, and a small group presentation. Meets with AIS 377U. (Majors only, Registration Period 1.) Texts: Deloria, Waterlily; Alexie, Tonto and the Lone Ranger Fist Fight in Heaven; Erdrich, Tracks; Welch, Fools Crow; Silko, Ceremony.

361 A (American Political Culture: After 1865)
TTh 10:30-12:20
Shulman
Twain, DuBois, and Chesnutt bring into the open strains and contradictions in turn-of-the-century American political culture. We will examine their insights into American racial relations and imperialism and we will also consider the early phase of consumer capitalism. Le Sueur and Langston Hughes add a radical critique of America and like their predecessors highlight the situation of women, African Americans and working class people in the diverse cultures they explore. Le Sueur's work during "the dark time," Navatsky's Naming Names; HUAC testimony and Woody Allen in The Front illuminate the political culture of Cold War anti-communism. Bob Dylan and 60s documentaries take us into the energies of the 1960s. DeLillo's White Noise and Wallace Shawn's The Designated Mourner will help us with the postmodern aftermath of our own period. Howard Zinn's People's History provides historical context and so will outside reading of secondary sources on assigned topics. I hope we can work toward a deepened understanding of American political culture, a concept I do not take as fixed but as open to definition. (Majors only, Registration Period 1.) Texts: DuBois, Writings; Chesnutt, Marrow of Tradition; LeSueur, Salute to Spring; Harvest Song; Hughes, Good Morning Revolution; Navatsky, Naming Names; DeLillo, White Noise; Shawn, Designated Mourner; Zinn, People's History.

368 A (Women Writers)
TTh 1:30-3:20
Eversley
American Women. This course will consider the ways in which women writing in the United States imagined themselves as a part of what counts as American life. We will consider how their gender, race, or social status informed their work as writers. In addition, we will explore issues such as citizenship, domesticity, sexuality and power to question the relevance of gender-specific literature. Students will be expected to participate in class discussions, group work, in-class writing assignments as well as take a mid-term and final exam. Texts: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper; Harriet Wilson, Our Nig; Anzia Yezierska, The Bread Givers; Kate Chopin, The Awakening; Gwendolyn Brooks, Maud Martha; Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior; Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye; recommended: Hortense Spillers, Comparative American Identities; Valerie Smith, Not Just Race, Not Just Gender; Claudia Tate, Desire and the Protocols of Race; Domestic Allegories of Political Desire; Gillian Brown, Domestic Individualism; Margaret Beetham, Domesticity of Her Own; Lora Romero, Homefronts; Mary Kelley, Private Woman, Public Stage; Glenna Matthews, Just a Housewife; Douglas Anderson, A House Undivided.

370 A (English Language Study)
TTh 9:30-11:20
Branch
[Wide-range introduction to the study of written and spoken English. The nature of language; ways of describing language; the use of language study as an approach to English literature and the teaching of English.] Text: Clark, et al., eds., Language: Introductory Reading. (Majors only, Registration Period 1.)

373 A (History of the English Language)
TTh 10:30-12:20
Wennerstrom
This course gives an overview of the history of the English language with a focus on how cultures have interacted over time to create an innovative language. We will explore the linguistic form, purpose, and preservation of ancient texts, and consider how change in the English language continues today as world Englishes influence the future forms and uses of the language. (Prerequisite: ENGL 370 or equivalent) Texts: Graddol, Leith, & Swann, English: History, Diversity, and Change; Bryson, Made in America; optional: McCrum, Cran, MacNeil, The Story of English; Bryson, Made in America.

374 A (The Language of Literature)
MW 12:30-2:20
Dillon
We will look at various aspects of language structure and use as they enter into our making of meaning with texts. The texts will be principally those of fiction, poetry, and drama, mostly contemporary, but we will feel free to analyze "non-literary" pieces as they prove interesting. The basis of the grade will be two 4-5 page papers, a mid-term, and a final (four papers, really). Texts: Ron Carter & Paul Simpson, eds., Language, Discourse, and Literature; Paul Simpson, Language Through Literature; John Haynes, Style; Nigel Fabb, Linguistics and Literature.

381 A (Advanced Expository Writing)
MW 9:30-10:50
Hill
You will write in this course as members or observers of self-chosen rhetorical fields, cultural or social groups (and their discursive practices) which you will examine for the ways their dramas unfold, stories get told, controversies raised and resolved. Such groups can be found across a wide range of environments: work-related one for instance, disciplinary, or professional. With the assumption that the writing generated by rhetorical fields is argumentative (implicitly or explicitly), we will concentrate as a class on examining assumptions in some of the typical kinds of writing you find in your respective fields (some of your fields may overlap with those of others, some not). Your own five papers will be based on your rhetorical engagement with aspects of your chosen field; one of the five will analyze a document type you find there. Woven through your writing of these papers will be talk in class about and work with stylistic choices and their rhetorical function. There will be peer review groups, some incidental writing, and expectation of two or more drafts of most papers. No texts.

381 B (Advanced Expository Writing)
TTh 11:30-12:50
Drake
The focus of our reading and writing will be nature and the environment, but the writing skills you develop will be applicable across disciplines. We will analyze the different styles and rhetorical devices that nature writers adopt for specific audiences and purposes, and examine the versions of nature that emerge from their modes of investigation. You will have the opportunity to experiment with and develop your own prose style in a series of papers and shorter exercises. Texts: Slovic & Dixon, Being in the World; photocopied course packet.

383 A (Intermediate Verse Writing)
MW 11:30-12:50
Kenney
[Intensive study of the ways and means of making a poem. Further development of fundamental skills. Emphasis on revision.] Prerequisite: ENGL 283 or equivalent. Add codes in Creative Writing office, B-25 PDL, (206) 543-9865; open 11-3 daily.

383 B (Intermediate Verse Writing)
TTh 11:30-12:50
Gomez
This class will be run as a creative writing workshop. Significant time will be spent on reading poems-and observing their rhetorical elements and design. The requirements of the course involve writing and critiquing poems as well as development of an individualized reading project. Prerequisite:ENGL 283 or equivalent. Add codes in Creative Writing office, B-25 PDL, (206) 543-9865; open 11-3 daily.

384 A (Intermediate Short Story Writing)
MW 1:30-2:50
Flygare
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 or equivalent. Add codes in Creative Writing office, B-25 PDL, (206) 543-9865; open 11-3 daily. Text: Ann Charters, The Story and Its Writer.

384 B (Intermediate Short Story Writing)
TTh 3:00-4:20
Shields
Intermediate reading, discussing, writing, and rewriting short stories. Prerequisite: ENGL 284 or equivalent. Add codes in Creative Writing office, B-25 Padelford, open 11-3 daily.Text: Proulx, Best American Stories 1997.

SPRING 1998300-level Courses

SPRING 1998
300-level Courses