Spring 1999 300-level ENGL courses

Course Descriptions (as of February 9, 1999)
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 1998-99 Senior Seminars

304 A (History of Literary Criticism & Theory II)
MW 1:30-3:20
Prather
Contemporary Responses to Plato. This class will consider some contemporary responses to Platonic theory. Focusing specifically on the issue of representation, we will pair particular Platonic dialogues with critiques produced by contemporary thinkers like Derrida, or Deleuze and Guattari. Short papers, in-class or take-home exams, longer final paper. Texts: Adams, Critical Theory Since Plato; photocopied course packet.

320 A (English Literature: Middle Ages)
Dy 9:30
Remley
This course will provide a lively and wide-ranging introduction to the literature of the Middle Ages, in which students will have the opportunity to place texts remote from our modern era in their social and historical contexts. In this offering of the course, an emphasis will be placed on the fictional “universe” of the court, and on the literary medium of the dream-vision. Students will read and discuss important works of prose and poetry of the early Middle Ages and the Middle English periods, including works by a range of Anglo-Saxon poets, the Old Irish Táin, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and a selection of non-canonical items. There will be a mid-term, final, and major term paper. Majors only, Registration Period 1.Texts: Lemann, tr., Beowulf; Kinsella, ed. & tr., The Táin; Tolkien, tr., Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; Chaucer, Canterbury Tales (ed. tr. Hieatt).

321 A (Chaucer)
TTh 9:30-11:20
Mussetter
Introduction to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and other poetry in Middle English, with attention to Chaucer’s historical and social context. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Text: Chaucer, Canterbury Tales (ed. Kolve & Olson).

322 YA (English Literature: The Age of Queen Elizabeth I)
TTh 4:30-6:20
A. Fisher
Literature of the Tudor period, the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I: More, Wyatt, Surrey, Sidney, Spenser, Marlowe, and the early Shakespeare. Most of this is poetry, which requires close reading, but close reading and pleasure are allies, not enemies, despite rumors to the contrary. Historical contextualization, where required, supplied cheerfully by the instructor. Group work with study questions, weekly response papers, two mid-quarter exams, and a final. Evening Degree students only, Registration Periods 1 & 2. Texts: Marlowe, Dr. Faustus and Other Plays; Spenser, The Faerie Queene; More, Utopia and Other Writings.

323 A (Shakespeare to 1603)
MW 9:30-11:20
Atchley
This course functions as an introduction to the Renaissance and to the works of William Shakespeare before 1603. We shall examine the literary, artistic, political, psychological, and philosophical ideas in some of Shakespeare’s major works of this period. We shall spend a good deal of class time in close reading of the plays not only for the understanding of sometimes obscure or difficult language but also for the sheer enjoyment of the poetry. Midterm and final exams, one longer paper, and weekly response papers as well as some memorization. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Bevington, ed., Complete Works of Shakespeare; optional: Goddard, Meaning of Shakespeare, vol. 1; Stone, Family, Sex, and Marriage in England, 1500-1800; Wrightson, English Society, 1580-1680; Charney, All of Shakespeare; Mallin, Inscribing the Time: Shakespeare and the End of Elizabethan England.

324 A (Shakespeare after 1603)
MW 12:30-2:20
Atchley
This course functions as an introduction to the Renaissance and to the works of William Shakespeare after 1603. We shall examine the literary, artistic, political, psychological, and philosophical ideas in some of Shakespeare’s major works of this period. We shall spend a good deal of class time in close reading of the plays not only for the understanding of sometimes obscure or difficult language but also for the sheer enjoyment of the poetry. Midterm and final exams, one longer paper, and weekly response papers as well as some memorization. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Evans, ed., The Riverside Shakespeare; optional: Bossy, Christianity in the West, 400-1700; Goddard, Meaning of Shakespeare; Scragg, Discovering Shakespeare’s Meaning; Dollimore, Political Shakespeare; Greenblatt, Representing the English Renaissance.

326 A (Milton)
MW 2:30-4:20
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. Texts: Milton, Selected Prose (ed. Patrides); Complete Shorter Poems (ed. Carey); Paradise Lost (ed. Fowler).

327 A (English Literature: Restoration & Early 18th C)
MW 10:30-12:20
Lockwood
The writers and literature of England from 1660 to 1750. We will be reading plays, prose, and poetry, chosen to illustrate the variety as well as the creative force of the written word in this period, bringing to life (for instance) the urban horrors of Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year, the aristocratic dream world of Pope’s Rape of the Lock; big people and little people in Gulliver’s Travels, or the cheerful crooks of The Beggar’s Opera. Major authors covered: Dryden, Congreve, Defoe, Swift, Pope, Gay, Fielding, Thomson, with emphasis on careful reading for understanding and enjoyment of this literature in its social and cultural context. Two papers with revision, weekly one-page reading responses, mid-term, final. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Tillotson, et al., eds., Eighteenth-Century English Literature; Salgado, ed., Three Restoration Comedies; Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (ed. Turner).

328 A (English Literature: Later 18th C.)
TTh 12:30-2:20
Laughlin
In this course we will explore the literature of what has been called the “classic age of English prose,” 1750-1800. Through reading of a wide variety of texts—poetry, drama, novel, biography, journalism, as well as political and didactic writing—we will gain a deeper understanding of the ideas and people who made this one of the most fascinating periods in English literature. Authors include Goldsmith, Sheridan, Chesterfield, Boswell, Johnson, Wollstonecraft, and more. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Mary Wollstonecraft, The Vindications; Chesterfield, Lord Chesterfield’s Letters; Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield; Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The Rivals, the Duenna, a Trip to Scarborough, The School for Scandal, The Critic; James Boswell, Life of Johnson; Frances Burney, Evelina.

329 A (Rise of the English Novel)
TTh 8:30-10:20
Laughlin
At the beginning of the 18th century, the novel was looked upon as a relatively insignificant popular form; by the end of the century, it had emerged as one of the major genres of English literature. In this course we will trace this remarkable transformation by reading a sampling of the best and the most influential novels of the period (they are not always one and the same!). Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Aphra Behn, Oroonoko; Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe; Samuel Richardson, Pamela; Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews with Shamela and Related Writings; Frances Burney, Evelina, or The History of a Young Lady’s Entrance into the World; Lawrence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey; Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice.

330 A (English Literature: The Romantic Age)
MW 10:30-12:20
Prather
This course will examine some of the texts (novels, poems and memoirs) that contributed to the Romantic Age, with special attention to questions of psychological and political identity. In-class or take-home exams, in-class presentations, short papers. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Rousseau, Reveries of the Solitary Walker; Shelley, Frankenstein; Blake, Marriage of Heaven and Hell; Austen, Northanger Abbey; Wu, ed., Romanticism, an Anthology.

331 A (Romantic Poetry I)
MW 8:30-10:20
Chaney
This course will provide an opportunity for in-depth study of the “first generation” of Romantic poets—Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth. We will consider these writers in the context of the history, philosophy, religion, and aesthetics of the period, as well as in relation to their less well-known precursors and contemporaries. We will examine the major works of these poets closely, exploring romantic notions of the sublime, the self, nature, and transcendence. Requirements include two papers and two exams. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Duncan Wu, ed., Romanticism: An Anthology; Andrew Lincoln, ed., William Blake: Songs of Innocence and Experience.

333 A (English Novel: Early & Middle 19th C.)
TTh 8:30-10:20
Bredesen
One of the attributes of the work of art is its tendency to “defamiliarize” things we take for granted. In literature, this defamiliarization effect is often achieved by telling a story through the perspectives of the orphan and the outsider. In this class we will read novels written during the first half of the nineteenth century, the narratives of which are focalized through characters who feel themselves to be in some way alienated from a dominant culture. Assignments will include in-class writing assignments, presentations and two essays. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Jane Austen, Mansfield Park; James C. Hogg, Private Memoirs and Confessions of the Justified Sinner; Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist; Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre; optional: Jeremy Hawthorn, Studying the Novel: An Introduction (3rd ed.); Franco Moretti, Atlas of the European Novel.

334 A (English Novel: Later 19th C.)
TTh 11:30-1:20
Butwin
England, at the heart of its massive empire, was undergoing a gringing transofrmation in the second half of the nineteenth century-- most notably from a rural to a largely urban society. On our list George Eliot and Thomas Hardy describe a crisis in agricultural England; Wild and Conrad show a phantasmagoric city, exploding at the seams. Lewis Carrol and William Morris open both to the cure of the utopian imagination. Lecture, discussion, short essays and a final exam. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland; George Eliot, Adam Bede; Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles; William Morris, News from Nowhere; Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray; Joseph Conrad, Secret Agent.

335 A (English Literature: The Age of Victoria)
MW 12:30-2:20
Chaney
Queen Victoria’s reign spanned 64 years (1837-1901) and saw England change from a rural and agrarian nation to an imperial world power. To get a sense of such a vast and contradictory age, we will read widely in the literature of the period—everything from newspaper accounts to poetry to the novel and essays. In addition, all throughout the quarter we will read one of the age’s greatest novels (in the “golden age” of the novel), David Copperfield, as the Victorians themselves would have, that is, in weekly installments. Requirements include 2 exams, a gropu project, and 2 papers. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Damrosch, ed., The Longman Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 2; Dickens, David Copperfield; Altick, Victorian People and Ideas.

338 A (Modern Poetry)
TTh 1:30-3:20
Burstein
Hard Women Poets. The poet-critic Thom Gunn once grouped the modernist poets Mina Loy, Marianne Moore, and H.D. as “Three Hard Women”; the critic Yvor Winters once said that reading Mina Loy was like moving through granite. Surprisingly, these are terms of approbation. This course will focus on those poets and that premise, as well as exploring a few other modernist female poets whose work should prove similarly obdurate. We will engage in close reading—intensive textual analysis and formal criticism—as well as comparative analysis. Students are expected to be present as well as vocal; those who go in fear of dictionaries are not encouraged to attend. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Marianne Moore, The Complete Poems; Louise Bogan, The Blue Estuaries; Mina Loy, The Lost Lunar Baedeker; H.D., Selected Poems; recommended: Jeanne Heuving, Omissions Are Not Accidents: Gender in the Art of Marianne Moore; Schreiber & Tuma, eds., Mina Loy: Woman and Poet.

339 A (English Literature: Contemporary England)
TTh 12:30-2:20
Kaplan
This quarter we will read British and Irish fiction written since 1970. Course requirements include active participation in class discussion, written assignments (papers, exams, and in-class quizzes), and an oral group project. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Iris Murdoch, The Unicorn; Doris Lessing, Memoirs of a Survivor; William Trevor, Felicia’s Journey; Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke HaHaHa; Caryl Phillips, Crossing the River; Julian Barnes, Flaubert’s Parrot; Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body; Hilary Mantel, An Experiment in Love.

340 A (Modern Anglo-Irish Literature)
MW 1:30-3:20
Freind
In the middle of the nineteenth century, the Young Ireland movement began to produce a popular and deeply nationalistic literature. At the same time, scholars on the continent began to study and translate ancient Irish poems and epics. Those developments helped to promote the belief that Ireland had a national literature which was as important as any in Europe. That belief had political ramifications, as many extended that national pride into calls for independence from Britain. This class will examine the complicated relation of literature history and politics in Irish literature. We’ll begin with medieval texts and a review of Irish history and then move to the literary revival of the late 19th century. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: W. B. Yeats, Selected Poems; John P. Harrington, ed., Modern Irish Drama; James Joyce, The Portable James Joyce; Samuel Beckett, Stories and Texts for Nothing; photocopied course packet.

345 A (Studies in Film)
MW 1:30-3:50
Leyda
Sexual and Gendered Spaces in Recent Cinema. This course looks at a wide range of films from the past five years for the representations of space and its interrelations with sexuality, gender, and class and caste. Public and private spaces such as bathrooms, kitchens, and offices are central to these films’ approach to gender and sexuality. We will investigate ways of talking about space, reading some key essays from critical geography. No texts to buy; short response papers, group reports, and a final exam. Films: 301/302 (Park 1994); Heavenly Creatures (Jackson, 1994); Bandit Queen (Kapur, 1994); Silences of the Palace (Tlatli, 1994); Antonia’s Line (Gorris 1995); Chungking Express (Kar-Wai 1995); Girls Town (Casano 1995); Safe (Haynes 1995); Female Perversions (Streitfeld 1996); In the Company of Men (La Bute 1996); Buffalo 66 (Gallo 1998).

350 A (Traditions in American Fiction)
TTh 2:30-4:20
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; James, The Portable Henry James.

351 A (American Literature: The Colonial Period)
Dy 9:30
J. Griffith
We’ll read and discuss an assortment of novels, memoirs, sermons, journals, treatises and other writings by American authors of the colonial and early national periods. Students will be expected to attend class regularly, keep up with reading assignments, and take part in open discussions. Written work will consist entirely of between five and ten brief in-class essays, done in response to study questions handed out in advance. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: John Tanner, The Falcon: A Narrative of the Captivity & Adventures of John Tanner; Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography and Other Writings; Michael Kammen, ed., The Origins of the American Constitution; Charles Brockden Brown, Wieland; Susanna Rowson, Charlotte Temple and Lucy Temple; Washington Irving, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon; St. Jean de Crevecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of 18th-Century American Life; Hannah Foster, The Coquette.

352 YA (American Literature: The Early Nation)
TTh 4:30-6:20
Andrews
“In the vale, which lay at a distance of several hundred feet lower, there was what in the language of the country was called a clearing, and all the usual improvements of a new settlement….” By italicizing “clearing,” James Fenimore Cooper not only situates his reader within the landscape depicted in The Pioneers, but also apprises that reader of the fact that language would also be part and parcel of what constitutes “the usual improvements of a new settlement.” Using “clearing” as a rhetorical focal point, students in this course will be asked to analyze the works of various authors as they represent, “in the language of the country” the political, aesthetic, and social complications between the apparent (dis) comforts of “the usual” against the lure of the “new.” Writers as varied as Cooper, Child, Hawthorne, Emerson, Douglass, Thoreau, Dickinson, and Whitman, provide ample opportunity to see the vaunted, ostensibly neutral spaces of democracy exposed as a contested relation between social convention and discriminating individual perceptual resistances that can, in the best of circumstances, lead to the embrace of conceptual vagrancy. Requirements: participation; several short response papers; 2 longer papers. Evening Degree students only, Registration Periods 1 & 2. Texts: Cooper, The Pioneers; Child, Hobomok; Hawthorne, The Portable Hawthorne; Whicher, ed., Selections from Emerson’s Essays; Douglass, The Narrative of the Life.

353 A (American Literature: Later 19th C.)
TTh 12:30-2:20
--cancelled after Time Schedule printed—

353 B (American Literature: Later 19th C.)
TTh 9:30-11:20
Posnock (sln: 7928)
“How It Feels To Be a Problem.” This famous phrase of W. E. B. Dubois’s can stand as the title for this course on some of the key texts and contexts of late nineteenth-century American literature and culture. The “problems” we will encounter include the paradoxical situation of the black intellectual circa 1900, the plight of the “tragic mulatto” female, the reduction of the leisure class woman to property, the power of capitalist consumption to purchase freedom at the price of self-alienation, and the destructive compulsion to make racial identity be fixed by blood and “nature.” With great power and subtlety, the texts we will be reading illuminate these still very relevant “problems.” Majors only, Registration Period 1. (Added after Time Schedule printed; sln: 7928) Texts: DuBois, Souls of Black Folk; Chesnutt, House Behind the Cedars; James, Washington Square; Chopin, The Awakening and Short Stories; Dreiser, Sister Carrie; Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson; Wharton, House of Mirth.

353 YA (American Literature: Later 19th C.)
TTh 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 & 2. 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.

354 YA (American Literature: The Early Modern Period)
MW 4:30-6:20 pm
Brenner
In this course we’ll concentrate on the 1920s (with some spillover into the 1930s), a yeasty, vigorous period in American literature. Expect some writing every week, with allowance given for revising the final papers you choose to be graded. Evening Degree students only, Registration Periods 1 & 2. Texts: Earnest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises; William Faulkner, Go Down Moses; T. S. Eliot, Selected Poems; Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God; Robert Frost, Selected Poems.

355 A (American Literature: Contemporary America)
Dy 8:30
Wacker
There is little consensus about the masterpieces of the contemporary period. Below are some of the candidates. As we read them, we will focus on the problems of fixing esthetic standards in the absence of stable literary canons and of appreciating the specifically literary excellence of diverse works. We will also trace the developing reception of each of these works from initial reviews to recent scholarly criticism. In the process we will examine changes in the status of the literary as a contemporary cultural institution. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Barthelme, The Dead Father; Bellow, Seize the Day; Bishop, Collected Poems; Lowell, Life Studies; Merrill, Braving the Elements; Nabokov, Lolita; Walcott, Omeros.

359 A (Contemporary American Indian Literature)
Dy 11:30
Miranda
In this course we’ll examine and discuss just some of the tremendous literary output by North American Native women writing in the 20th century. Forms studied will include autobiography, short story ,poetry and novels; perhaps we’ll even touch on what seems inevitable for literature evolving from an oral authority: contemporary Native women’s music for example, Joy Harjo’s Indian jazz/chant/songs). Our man text will be Re-Inventing the Enemy’s Language (ed. Harjo and Bird), but we will also be reading Zitkala-Sa, Velma Wallis, Silko, and Betty Louise Bell, as well as looking at some of the critical work produced about these writings. Majors only, Registration Period 1. (Offered jointly with AIS 377A) Texts:Joy Harjo & Gloria Bird, eds., Re-Inventing the Enemy’s Language; Zitkala-Sa, American Indian Stories; Velma Wallis, Two Old Women; Betty Louise Bell, Faces in the Moon; Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony.

367 A (Women and the Literary Imagination)
TTh 1:30-3:20
Rose
Sexuality, Textuality and Spirituality: Writing Women in the Middle Ages. This course explores issues of gender in writings by and about medieval women and discusses medieval women’s visionary literature, devotional texts written for a female audience, religious texts which “read” women, images of women in secular medieval literature, and reading and writing as a woman in the Middle Ages. How are women represented in the Middle Ages? How do they represent their gender in their writings? What, indeed, is Gender? What do they write about? How do they see themselves? What is the margin, what is the center? How do they represent their relationship with their God? Other topics we will explore are the social/historical/political contexts of the literature which is at the core of the course, feminist theory which illuminates medieval texts, medieval misogamous and misogynous literature, what it might mean to read “as” a woman, and the question of “voicing” and authority in a text. Outside readings and class lectures contextualize the works we will read in terms of iconography, history, and medieval culture. Required primary texts and context readings (feminist theory, sources, criticism). Quizzes, class reports/participation, mid-term, final paper/exam. Groups will have a final project on one of the “optional” books. Much emphasis on discussion. Readings will be in modern translation (alas). Meets Period 1 requirement for majors. Texts: Petroff, ed., Medieval Women’s Visionary Literature; Marie de France, Lais (ed. Ferrante & Hanning); Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies; Cazelles, ed., The Lady as Saint: A Collection of French Hagiographic Romances of the Thirteenth Century; Windeatt, ed., The Book of Margery Kempe; Fiero, et al., eds., Three Medieval Views of Women; Blamires, ed., Women Defamed and Women Defended: An Anthology of Medieval Texts; Shahar, The Fourth Estate: A History of Women in the Middle Ages; Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love; Power, Medieval Women; optional: Radice, ed., The Letters of Heloise and Abélard; Bayard, ed., A Medieval Home Companion; Lemay, ed. & tr., Womens Secrets; Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast; Christine de Pizan, Treasury of the City of Ladies; Delany, ed., & Tr., A Legend of Holy Women; Savage, et al., Anchoritic Literature: Ancrene Wisse and Associated Works; Andreas Capellanus, The Art of Courtly Love; MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers; packet of readings available in Reserve Library and Electronic Reserve.

368 A (Women Writers)
MW 10:30-12:20
Moody
Sentimental Power. This course will introduce students to American women’s sentimental literature of the late eighteenth through the nineteenth century. We will study sentimentalism for its aesthetic and ideological functions, differentiating between literature that reinforces patriarchal codes of women’s conduct and literature that challenges restrictive norms. Texts: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin; Harriet A. Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; Hannah Foster, The Coquette; Catharine M. Sedgwick, A New-England Tale; June E. Hahner, ed., Women Through Women’s Eyes: Latin American Women in Nineteenth-Century Travel Accounts; Pauline Hopkins, Contending Forces.

368 B (Women Writers)
MW 1:30-3:20
Allen
Recent Fiction by Women: Emotional Lives. What are women who are writing right now thinking and feeling about the complications of family life—or of ethnic identities—or of sexualities—or of love? This course focuses on the emotional lives of women in recent noels as they experience private complexities and personal triumphs. We’ll read a range of fictions with different styles, different struggles, and different worlds to celebrate. We’ll also give attention to how readers make their own responses to fictional lives—how we come to love, or hate or envy characters whose ways of being may seem at first to be so unlike our own. Discussion, debate, and lively exchanges of opinion will be crucial to the class. Texts: Manette A. Ansay, Sister; Barbara Gowdy, Mister Sandman; Danzy Senna, Caucasia; Rebecca Brown, The Dogs; Edwidge Danticat, Breath Eyes Memory; Toni Morrison, Jazz; Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body; Nora Keller, Comfort Woman.

368 C (Women Writers)
TTh 9:30-11:20
Aanerud
Women and Nature. In this course we will read a variety of texts by women in the field of nature writing. As we work through the readings, some of which are scientific, others tending towards poetic and philosophical, we will consider questions of gender, autonomy, landscape, solitude, race and/or class privilege, national belonging, and activism. Texts: Terry Tempest Williams, An Unspoken Hunger; Mary Austein, Land of Little Rain; Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm; Sharon Butala, Perfection in the Morning; Dian Fossey, Gorillas in the Mist; Rachel Carson, Silent Spring; Linda Hogan, Dwellings; Anne Haymond Zwinger, The Nearsighted Naturalist; Jennifer Ackerman, Notes from the Shore; Anne La Bastille, Woodswoman; Sue Hubbell, A Country Year; Gretel Ehrlich, The Solace of Open Spaces.

370 A (English Language Study)
MW 1:30-3:20
Curzan
This course introduces the systematic study of language and aims to help students 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 how speakers learn and change language over time. Discussions will also focus on social issues tied up in language, including attitudes to dialects, gender and language, “standard English,” and national language policies. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Text: Cipollone, et al., Language Files, 7th ed.

381 A (Advanced Expository Wrtng)
MW 11:30-12:50
Leyda
Bestsellers and Blockbusters of the 1990s. What makes a bestseller or a blockbuster? What do the critics have to do with it (if anything)? What do Oprah’s Book Club, amazon.com, and your local video chain store have to do with it? What do these popular books and films say about their cultural contexts—why is this particular text popular here and now? We will study novels and films that have topped the bestseller lists and box office charts and captivated the national and international press in the 1990s. Supplementing our discussions will be contemporary reviews of the books and films and student group reports on audience and press reception Prepare to write and revise a great deal. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X; Tom Clancy, Clear and Present Danger; Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park; Terry McMillan, Waiting to Exhale.

381 B (Adv. Expository Writing)
TTh 1:30-2:50
Bredesen
Travel/Culture/Writing. This course will allow students to focus upon tourism and culture, the rhetoric of travel writing, as well as developing and extending their skills in expository composition. This class will be divided into three units. The first unit, “Imperial Eyes,” borrows its heading from Mary Louise Pratt’s book by that title. In this unit we will examine the travel writings of Richard Burton and Mary Kingsley in relation to the historical/rhetorical structures of British colonialism. The second unit, “Extremities,” brings us into the twentieth century and to the critique of two travel trends: “going to extremes,” and “eco-tourism.” Among the texts we will look at is Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air. The third unit gives students the opportunity to develop their competence in research methodology, proposal writing, critical analysis, and persuasive composition while also planning their dream trip. The course will include at least one field trip, a “travel” journal, two essays and one 10-12 page research paper. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Kingsley, Travels in West Africa; Burton, Wanderings in West Africa; Krakauer, Into Thin Air; Tannen, The Argument Culture; photocopied course packet; optional: Pico Iyer, Tropical Classical; Mary Lovell, A Rage to Live: A Biography of Richard and Isabel Burton; Timothy Corrigan, A Short Guide to Writing about Film.

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. No texts.

383 B (Intermediate Verse Writing)
TTh 1:30-2:50
McNamara
Intensive study of the ways and means of making a poem. Further development of fundamental skills. Emphasis on revision. Prerequisite: ENGL 283. Texts: Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry; John Hollander, Rhyme’s Reason.

384 A (Intermediate Short Story Writing)
MW 3:30-4:50
--cancelled after Time Schedule printed--

384 B (Intermediate Short Story Writing)
TTh 10:30-11:50
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.]

384 C (Intermediate Short Story Writing)
TTh 3:30-4:50
Johnson
[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.] Texts: John Gardner, The Art of Fiction; Northrup Frye, The Educated Imagination; Delbanco & Goldstein, eds., Writers and Their Craft; Julie CHeckoway, Creating Fiction.

SPRING 1999 300-level Courses

SPRING 1999
300-level Courses