Winter 2001 300-level ENGL courses

(Descriptions last updated: 8 November 2000)

300A (Reading Major Texts)
TTh 10:30-12:20
Shulman
Reading Richard Wright’s Native Son. We’ll use Native Son as a focus for examining issues of race, slavery, history, literary history, and literary art. In placing Native Son in its full American context, we will go back to the origins of the white construction of blackness (excerpts from Winthrop Jordan’s White Over Black and Ronald Takaki’s chapter on The Tempest). To give us a sense of the tradition Wright reanimates and contributes to we’ll read Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, sections of DuBois’s Souls of Black Folk, Arna Bontemps’ neglected Black Thunder, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, and Charles Johnson’s Middle Passage. During the course we’ll place Native Son in the context of the 1930s left—we’ll read a selection of Wright’s essays, journalism, and poetry and I’ll fill in the politics and cultural polictics of the period. For this unit we’ll also deal with the changing critical reception of Native Son from its immediate success through its reputation during the Cold War, the civil rights movement, and more recent feminist criticism. We’ll frame the course with two readings of Native Son, one at the start, one at the end. I hope we’ll have a deepened understanding of the novel and the issues it raises.

304A (History of Literary Criticism & Theory II)
TTh 9:30-11:20
Staten
Contemporary criticism and theory and its background in the New Criticism, structuralism, and Kant and Coleridge. Text: Adams, Critical Theory Since Plato (revised edition).

307A(Cultural Studies: Literature & the Age)
TTh 12:30-2:20
Kvidera
An Age of Reformers: American Literature and Culture in the Mid-19th Century. In his essay “Man the Reformer,” Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “In the history of the world the doctrine of Reform had never such scope as at the present hour.” This class will take up and interrogate Emerson’s claim by examining the mid-19th century as a period of reform and cultural texts emerging in this era as documents registering various responses to reform. As we read and discuss a collection of literary, journalistic, and political writings, we will consider both support of and challenges to such social and political movements as abolition, moral reform, and women’s rights. Along the way we will seek to develop a more refined (and perhaps revised) understanding of this important period in American literary and cultural history. Course requirements include active class participation, short response papers, a mid-term exam, an oral presentation, a final essay. Texts: Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass; Lydia Maria Child, Romance of the Republic; Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance; Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass; Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; photocopied course packet.

310A (The Bible as Literature)
Dy 10:30
J. Griffith
A rapid study of readings taken from both the Old and New Testaments, focusing mainly on those parts of the Bible with the most “literary” interest—narratives, poems, and philosophy. 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 in-class essays, done in response to study questions handed out in advance. Text: Metzger & Murphy, eds., The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha, Revised Standard Version

311A (Modern Jewish Literature in Translation)
Dy 10:30
Alexander
This course deals with the literary interpretation of modern Jewish experience, which includes the break-up of a cohesive religious culture, mass migrations of unprecedented magnitude, the destruction of European Jewry by National Socialism during World War II, and the effort to reestablish a national existence in the Jewish homeland of Israel. Readings include such classic Yiddish authors as Sholom Aleichem and I. L. Peretz, and more recent Yiddish writers, among them I. B. Singer and Jacob Glatstein. At least two writers who did not write in Jewish languages, the Czech Franz Kafka and the Italian Primo Levi, will also be studied. Among the Israeli authors in the syllabus are Agnon, Hazaz, and Appelfeld. Considerable attention will also be given to the play of competing ideas that form the background of the imaginative literature. Texts: Howe & Greenberg, eds., Treasury of Yiddish Stories; Appelfeld, Badenheim 1939; Levi, Survival in Auschwitz, Heller, ed., The Basic Kafka.

320A (English Literature: The Middle Ages)
TTh 10:30-12:20
Taylor
This course will be devoted to the poetry of Old English and Middle English, and the socio-historical backgrounds from which these works emerge. Students should expect to attend all meetings and to engage in discussion. Two main papers, midterm and final. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Hamer, A Choice of Anglo-Saxon Verse; Heaney, Beowulf: A New Verse Translation; Hanning & Ferrante, eds., The Lais of Marie de France; Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde; Covella, tr., Piers Plowman: The A-Text.

321A (Chaucer)
MW 8:30-10:20
Remley
This course will stress critical reading and group discussion of Chaucer’s most highly regarded works (Troilus and Criseyde and The Canterbury Tales) as well as a wide selection of his “minor” compositions in both poetry and prose. We will explore the biography of Geoffrey Chaucer, the historical and cultural background of his career, recent critical work on his poetry, and the Middle English language itself. Mid-term, final, one paper. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Chaucer, The Riverside Chaucer (ed. Benson); Love Visions (tr. Stone); Troilus and Criseyde (tr. Coghill); Canterbury Tales (tr. Hieatt).

321YA (Chaucer)
TTh 7-8:50 pm
Mussetter
[Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and other poetry, with attention to Chaucer's social, historical, and intellectual milieu.] Evening Degree students only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Chaucer, General Prologue and Twelve Major Tales (ed. Michael Murphy); Chaucer's Dream Poetry (ed. Phillips & Havely).

323A (Shakespeare to 1603)
Dy 8:30
Frey
Study of Shakespeare’s poems and plays to 1603 with emphasis upon meter, rhythm, imagery, tone, explication, interpretation, reader-response, and student performance. All students are required to perform memorized parts in a performance group that meets all quarter long. Also required: discussion, secondary readings, papers, and tests, including in-class two-hour final exam during exam period. Meets five days a week. Very demanding course. Texts: Bevington, ed., Shakespeare: The Poems; Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream; The Merchant of Venice; Henry V; Hamlet.

324A (Shakespeare after 1603)
Dy 10:30
Frey
Study of Shakespeare’s poems and plays after 1603 with emphasis upon meter, rhythm, imagery, tone, explication, interpretation, reader-response, and student performance. All students are required to perform memorized parts in a performance group that meets all quarter long. Also required: discussion, secondary readings, papers, and tests, including in-class two-hour final exam during exam period. Meets five days a week. Very demanding course. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Shakespeare, Measure for Measure; King Lear; Macbeth; The Winter’s Tale; The Tempest.

327A (English Literature: Restoration and Early 18th Century)
MW 1:30-3:20
McCracken
Since the early 18th century is the great age of satire, this will be a course about satire in general, and about satire in early 18th-century England in particular. We’ll be reading satiric poems by Dryden, Pope, and Johnson; satiric prose by Swift; and satiric engravings by Hogarth—all of them in our period—and some non-satiric works by other writers. For context, we’ll look at a few earlier satires (Juvenal, Horace, and Donne), and perhaps some later satires. Our focus will be on close, careful, attentive reading of words and pictures, on understanding the workings of irony, and on 18th-century London, the scene of knaves, fools, Grub Street writers, and satirists. You will need to be in class, well prepared, regularly. Course requirements will include short papers, two exams, and other projects. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Alexander Pope (ed. Brooks-Davis), Alexander Pope; John Dryden (ed. Hopkins), John Dryden; John Donne, Selected Poems; Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels and Other Writings; William Hogarth, Engravings by Hogarth.

329YA (Rise of the English Novel)
TTh 4:30-6:20 pm
Lester
Study of the development of this major and popular modern literary form in the eighteenth century. Readings of the best of the novelists who founded the form, and some minor ones, from Defoe to Fielding, Richardson and Sterne, early Austen, and the gothic and other writers. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe; Journal of the Plague Year; Samuel Richardson, Clarissa; Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels; Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas Prince of Abissina; John Cleland, Fanny Hill.

331A (Romantic Poetry I)
TTh 2:30-4:20
Tandy
The Three R’s: Revolution, Religion and Revelations. In this course we’ll tackle all three (and more) through the works of William Blake, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The centerpiece of this course will be Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, the locus of poetic change at the turn of the century. Around it, we will look at Blake’s poetry and engravings, and Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s other poetry and autobiographical writings. Through it all, our primary focus will be the relation of the individual human being to the world around him or her: the world of nature, the world of society, the world of god, and the world of possibility. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Wordsworth, Selected Poems; Johnson & Grant, eds., Blake’s Poetry and Designs; Richards, ed., The Portable Coleridge; Favorite Works of William Blake: Three Full Color Books.

332YA (Romantic Poetry II)
MW 7-8:50 pm
Brown
[Byron, Shelley, Keats and their contemporaries.] Evening Degree students only, Registration Period 1 Texts: Damrosch, ed., Anthology of British Literature: The Romantics and Their Contemporaries; Sir Walter Scott, The Heart of Midlothian.

333A (English Novel: Early & Middle 19th C.)
MW 1:30-3:20
Bredesen
In this course we will be looking at four novels written during the early to mid-nineteenth century. Each novel features one or more characters who are orphans or “outsiders.” By “outsider,” I mean that these characters are represented as being—to lesser or greater degrees—alienated from dominant social structures and concerns. Looking at the words these characters inhabit from their estranged, often yearning, at times iconoclastic perspectives can have a defamiliarizing effect, in that many of the values and practices that other characters (and, perhaps, we ourselves) take for granted are re-examined, interrogated, and given new meanings. The objectives of this course include gaining a strong sense of what became the dominant literary genre of the nineteenth century. Further, this course will provide opportunities to extend and enhance one’s skills in reading, writing, and speaking in general and, more specifically, about each novel’s formal features and aesthetic affects, as well as the social and political concerns with which each work creatively engages. Students will augment their reading of the primary texts—the novels—with readings of secondary materials such as literary criticism and history. From students who enroll in this course much reading, writing, and discussion will be required. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Jane Austen, Mansfield Park; Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist; Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre.

333B (English Novel: Early & Middle 19th C.)
TTh 8:30-10:20
Tandy
“There is something at work in my soul,” says Walton, the narrator of Frankenstein, “which I do not understand.” This statement might be said by any of the central characters of any of the novels we’ll be reading this quarter, or even by many of the narrators. Self-knowledge (what is it, can we have it, how do we achieve it) was of major concern in England in the 19th century, and with it, its companion problem of knowing others. Much of the literature of the time, including the novels we’ll be reading, was concerned with the desire, as Wordsworth put it, to “see into the life of things.” As the variety of the novels we’ll read demonstrates, however, from gothic horror to a novel of drawing room manners, from simpleton narrators to autobiographical fictions, the ways to such knowledge of self and other were hardly clear, and never uncomplicated. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice; Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights; Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre; Charles Dickens, David Copperfield.

334A (English Novel: Later 19th C.)
MW 9:30-11:20
Bredesen
In this course students will read four novels, as well as contemporary writings, that engage with a topic of great interest to Victorians—the so-called “Woman Question.” In a century of tremendous social and political change, the natures, roles, and conditions of women and men in England and in the Colonies were scrutinized, discussed, and contested. A great deal of this interrogation was carried on within the pages of novels, the dominant literary genre of this period. The objectives of this course include gaining a strong sense of what became the dominant literary genre of the nineteenth century as we study an issue much written about at this time. Further, this course will provide opportunities to extend and enhance one’s skills in reading, writing, and speaking in general and, more specifically, about each novel’s formal features and aesthetic affects, as well as the social and political concerns with which each work creatively engages. Students will augment their reading of the primary texts—the novels—with readings of secondary materials such as literary criticism and history. From students who enroll in this course much reading, writing, and discussion will be required. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Anthony Trollope, Can You Forgive Her?; Olive Schreiner, The Story of an African Farm; George Gissing, The Odd Women; Miles Franklin, My Brilliant Career; Helsinger, et al., eds., The Woman Question: Society and Literature in Britain and American, 1837-1883: Defining Voices; recommended: Helsinger, et al., eds., The Woman Question: Literary Issues; The Woman Question: Social Issues.

334B (English Novel: Later 19th C.)
Dy 12:30
Alexander
This course offers a modest sampling of the rich abundance of the Victorian novel. Attention will be given to the historical and philosophical backgrounds against which the novels appeared, as well as to the lives of their authors. But the major emphasis will be on the aesthetic relation between content and form. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: A. Trollope, The Warden; C. Dickens, Great Expectations; G. Eliot, Middlemarch; T. Hardy, Jude the Obscure; O. Wilde, Picture of Dorian Gray; R. L. Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

335A (English Literature: The Age of Victoria)
MW 10:30-12:20
L. Green
The Victorian poet Matthew Arnold described himself as “wandering between two worlds, one dead/ The other powerless to be born.” All around him, old traditions and ways of life were being replaced by new ones: agriculture by industry, religion by science, aristocratic privilege by democratic ambition, women’s subordination by women’s right. We will read poetry, fiction, non-fiction prose and drama that reflect both the excitement and the terror of this moment of transition. Authors will include some of: Arnold, C. Brontë, the Brownings, Carlyle, Dickens, Hardy, H. Martineau, Mill, Ruskin, Shaw, Tennyson, Wilde. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 2B: The Victorian Age (7th ed.); packaged with: Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre.

335B (English Literature: The Age of Victoria)
TTh 1:30-3:20
Goodlad
We consider nineteenth-century British literature from a broadly historical and interdisciplinary perspective. We read poetry (e.g., Tennyson, Christina Rossetti), prose (e.g., Carlyle, Ruskin), short fiction (Dickens, Gaskell, H.G. Wells), and a sensation novel by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Our reading and discussion bears on national and class identity, gender and sexuality, race and empire-building and the emergence of the human sciences. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts:Mary Elizabeth Bradden, Aurora Floyd; H. G. Wells, The Time Machine; The War of the Worlds; photocopied course packet.

336A (English Literature: The Early Modern Period)
MW 1:30-3:20
Burstein
The Modernist Body. This class is a reading course in British modernism that focuses on tropes of embodiment: what constitutes a “self,” a psyche, and/or a body for these various authors? Do the characters bleed, or do they crackle with electricity? What is at stake in such distinctions? In addition to paying attention to individual bodies, we will focus on depictions of crowds and violence, attitudes toward subjectivity, and authorial tone. We will read both fiction, emphasizing narrative technique as well as the context of the works, and poetry. The emphasis will be on close reading and formal analysis. Active participation is mandatory, and your body must be in the classroom. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness; James Joyce, Dubliners; Ezra Pound, Selected Poems; Wyndham Lewis, Tarr: The 1918 Version; Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway; D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love; Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion.

338A (Modern Poetry)
MW 10:30-12:20
Burstein
Hard Women Poets. The poet-critic Thom Gunn has 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. 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. We will focus on the work of four hard women poets: Marianne Moore, H.D., Mina Loy, and Dorothy Parker. While our readings will engage the poems individually, we will also explore the issue of difficulty per se, what those difficulties imply in terms of a reading public, and different ideas of hardness. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Marianne Moore, Complete Poems; H.D., Collected Poems, 1912-1944; Mina Loy, The Lost Lunar Baedeker; Dorothy Parker, Complete Poems; recommended: Rhonda Petit, Gendered Collision: Sentimentalism and Modernism in Dorothy Parker’s Poetry and Fiction.

338B (Modern Poetry)
TTh 2:30-4:20
Reed
American Poetry 1900-1945. This course will survey American poetry of the first half of the twentieth century by means of four general approaches: the study of representative works by major figures such as H.D., T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, Wallace Stevens, and William Carlos Williams; the examination of significant movements or moments such as Imagism, Objectivism, New Criticism, and The Harlem Renaissance; the exploration of poetic responses to momentous historical events such as World War I and the Great Depression; and the recovery of then-fraught topics in poetics such as free verse and the search for an “American language.” All readings will be drawn from the first two volumes of the Library of America’s comprehensive opus, American Poetry: The Twentieth Century. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: American Poetry: The Twentieth Century, vol. 1: Henry Adams to Dorothy Parker; American Poetry: The Twentieth Century, vol. 2: E.E. Cummings to May Swenson.

345A (Studies in Film)
MW 2:30-4:50/ TTh 2:30-3:20
Gillis-Bridges
This course focuses on the relationship between U.S. cinema and culture. Beginning in the early twentieth century, we will examine the U.S. motion picture as an art form and a mass communication medium that shapes and is shaped by social, historical, political, and cultural factors. Students will work individually and in groups on cinematic and cultural analyses that include frequent short responses, a group presentation and a co-developed Web site. ENGL 345 is computer-integrated. The computer-lab setting allows students to participate in inclusive electronic discussions, to incorporate visual aids into their presentations, and to compose Web film analyses with video and audio clips. However, technical savvy is not a course prerequisite: students will receive instruction in all technical tools used in the classroom. Texts: Timothy Corrigan, A Short Guide to Writing About Film, 3rd ed.; photocopied course packet.

350A (Traditions in American Fiction)
MW 1:30-3:20
L. Fisher
Land of the Free and Home of the Brave. From the beginnings of the nation, American literature has grappled with the sometimes conflicting national ideologies of individualism and democracy. The literature of the “new World” is also preoccupied with the status of the American nation among civilizations, undecided as to whether America is a youthful land of savages or a leader in republican virtue. The significant cultural, political, scientific, and demographic upheavals of the nineteenth century made the literature of this period especially telling, as they challenged America’s existing understandings of innocence and knowledge, freedom and restraint. This course will examine American writers’ response to this age of great upheaval, asking how fiction represents the national character and ideals with figures and images of civilization and savagery. Course requirements: Active participation in discussions; group presentations; short response papers and two written exams. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Henry James, Daisy Miller; Kate Chopin, The Awakening; Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance; James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans; James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man.

350B (Traditions in American Fiction)
TTh 10:30-12:20
Searle
This course provides an opportunity to study a number of major American novels (and several shorter pieces) that have shaped subsequent American literary and cultural traditions. We will begin with historical and philosophical texts that provide essential background. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: William Bradford, A Historie of Plimouth Plantation; Jonathan Edwards, The Nature of True Virtue; William Carlos Williams, In The American Grain; Nathaniel Hawthorne, Selected Short Stories; Novels (Vol. 2 in Library of America); Herman Melville, Moby Dick; Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn; F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby; Kate Chopin, The Awakening; William Faulkner, Go Down Moses.

351A (American Literature: The Colonial Period)
MW 9:30-11:20
Kuske
This course is an in-depth exploration of the literature of the colonial and revolutionary periods. We will begin with the literatures of “first contact”—early writings (and oral traditions) that record European and Native American representations of one anther and of the continent. Next, we will consider two very different early colonial communities: Puritan New England and Virginia. Despite their common origins, these two colonies developed very different kinds of literary traditions, and reveal a great deal about the commonalities and differences in the Anglo-American views about the meanings of the “New” world they inhabited. In the second half of the quarter, we will examine both the literary traditions of travel and nature writing and the role of literature in the creation of a revolutionary culture. We will read a broad range of texts—memoirs, sermons, histories, letters, political essays, novels, poetry and plays—and our focus throughout the quarter will be on understanding the intersections between literature, colonization, and identity. Written work will consist of two papers and two exams. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Sacvan Bercovitch, ed., The Cambridge History of American Literature, Vol. 1; Giles Gunn, ed., Early American Writing; Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Huntley; Susanna Rowson, Charlotte Temple and Lucy Temple.

352A (American Literature: The Early Nation)
Dy 8:30
J. Griffith
We’ll read and discuss an assortment of novels, stories, poems and memoirs by American 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. 1, 5th ed.; James Fenimore Cooper, The Prairie; Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin; Herman Melville, Moby-Dick.

352B (American Literature: The Early Nation)
TTh 12:30-2:20
Prebel
In this class we will examine narratives that contribute to the construction of an American Republic at the end of the 18th/early 19th centuries. In addition to the texts listed below, there will also be a reading packet that includes Emerson, Dickinson, Thoreau and other writings. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life…; Moira Ferguson, ed., The History of Mary Prince; Margaret Fuller, Woman in the 19th Century and Other Writings; Lydia Maria Child, Hobomok and Other Writings; Hannah Foster, The Coquette.

353A (American Literature: Later 19th C.)
MW 9:30-11:20
Moody
Reconstructing Women in the Wake of the Civil War. This course will begin with a viewing and study of D. W. Griffith’s 1912 film The Birth of a Nation, which fictionalizes the formation of the Ku Klux Klan as an institution committed to reintegrating the North and the South after the U.S. Civil War. From that point of departure, we will read and analyze many additional texts about women by American writers. We will read across literary genres as well as across multiple racial and ethnic lines to examine how men and women authors portrayed the concept of womanhood and women and their roles in the (reconstruction of the) post-Civil War Nation. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Robert Lang, ed., The Birth of a Nation: D. W. Griffith, Director; Paul Lauter, et al., eds., The Heath Anthology of American Literature, vol. 2 (3rd ed.); Chopin, The Awakening (Margo Culley, ed.); recommended: Ross Murfin & Supryia M. Ray, eds., The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms; Lynn Q. Troyka, ed., Quick Access.

353YA (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 Period 1. Texts: Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems; Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; Henry James, The Portable Henry James; Rebecca Harding Davis, Life in the Iron Mills and Other Stories; Stephen Crane, The Portable Stephen Crane; Kate Chopin, The Awakening and Selected Stories.

354A (American Literature: The Early Modern Period)
MW 10:30-12:20
Kaup
Literary responses to modernity in American literature between the wars. We’ll read selected novels and short stories, focusing on experiments in form and the development of new cultural identities by American writers as they negotiate the ambivalent (disruptive and liberating) impact of forces of modernity with the disappearing traditions of the past. The use of the plural (modernisms and traditions) is crucial; the course will juxtapose canonical modernisms (i.e., that of the post-war expatriate “lost generation”) to alternative modernisms emerging in the work of women and non-Anglo American writers. Majors only, Registration Period 1 Texts: Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises; Américo Paredes, George Washington Gómez; Djuna Barnes, Nightwood; Willa Cather, The Professor’s House; Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God; William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury; Black Elk & John Neilhardt, Black Elk Speaks; Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio.

354B (American Literature: The Early Modern Period)
TTh 1:30-3:20
Keeling
In 1921, Van Wyck Brooks described the literature originating from the United States as being in a "chronic state . . . of a youthful promise which is never redeemed." According to Brooks, the American writer "has been insufficiently equipped, stimulated, nourished by the society in which he [and she] has been born," and he adds, "If our creative spirits are unable to grow and mature, it is a sign that there is something wanting in the soil from which they spring and the conditions that surround them." In this course we will attempt, in part, to evaluate the merits of Brooks's claim by exploring a number of twentieth-century texts that may reflect a spirit of disillusionment and alienation, that may privilege either individualism or social consciousness, and that may express an interest in both internationalism (perhaps due to World War I and its aftermath) and regionalism (perhaps due to a desire to probe for or create cultural roots). Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Nella Larsen, Passing; Gertrude Stein, Fernhurst, Q.E.D.; John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men; Willa Cather, O Pioneers!; H.D., Kora and Ka; Nights; Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises; Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence.

361A (American Political Culture: After 1865)
TTh 9:30-11:20
Kvidera
Cultural Negotiations: Literature and the Politics of Race, Ethnicity and Gender at the Turn of the 20th Century. In this course we will explore national debates that exhibited, illuminated, and challenged American literary and political culture from post-Reconstruction to the early decades of the 20th century. A diverse collection of texts (including literary, legal, sociological, and journalistic) will help us to define this particularly volatile period of American political history Our main focus will be on questions of race, ethnicity, and gender, but we will extend that inquiry to include such topics as imperialism, socialism, and urbanization as we find them intertwined with these broader political, social, and cultural issues. Our goal will be to consider the interaction between the literary and the political and discuss the ways these two inform each other to clarify a picture of American culture in this era. Course requirements include active class participation, short response papers, a mid-term exam, an oral presentation, and a final essay. Majors only, Registration Period 1 Texts: Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court; Charles Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition; Kate Chopin, The Awakening and Selected Stories; Abraham Cahan, Yekl and the Imported Bridegroom; Upton Sinclair, The Jungle; photocopied course packet.

368A (Women Writers)
MW 9:30-11:20
--cancelled 9/22--

368B (Women Writers)
MW 1:30-3:20
Kaup
Feminist Domesticity: Women’s Revisions and Myths of the Home. So, talking about feminism, what’s home got to do with it? A whole lot. Domestic interiors have shaped women’s identities—as Virginia Woolf wrote, “Women have sat indoors all these millions of years, so that by this time the very walls are permeated by their creative force.” The domestic sphere is also the cradle of feminism, for by making the home an issue of public debate (and by claiming the authority to speak in public about the home), women, raised as homemakers, have turned a private matter into a matter of public concern. In the process, women intellectuals themselves have emerged from the shadows of the household into the light of the public sphere. Moving by key texts in 19th and 20th-century women’s fiction and scholarship, we will study the diverse ways in which women writers have reconceptualized the social (and sometimes also the material) structures of the home. The course uses a multicultural approach to establish a dialogue between Anglo American, Mexican American, and African American feminisms and texts. Texts: Stepford Wives (film); Jovita González, Caballero; Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own; Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street; Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; Toni Morrison, Beloved; Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale; photocopied course packet with readings by Catharine Beecher, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Betty Friedan, bell hooks, and others.

368C (Women Writers)
TTh 9:30-11:20
Prebel
We will look at issues of female mobility across a wide range of texts and cultural registers. We will also consider how gender intersects with race, class, and national identity. Six novels and a reading packet – a rigorous reading schedule. Texts: Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway; Anzia Yezierska, Arrogant Beggar; Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping; Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible; Anita Desai, Clear Light of Day; Harriet E. Wilson, Our Nig.

370A (English Language Study)
MW 9:30-11:20
Stevick
ENGL 370 is a beginning course in the study of language, narrowed to an introduction to the linguistic study of English. ENGL 373 is a beginning course in the history of English, scanning the changes in its phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon, together with some of the major changes in the populations using English. These two courses are being offered in close coordination, requiring any student enrolled in one to be enrolled in the other. The coordinate offering of the courses makes the time spent in preparation and the time spent in class much more efficient than separate offerings of these courses could ever be. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Concurrent enrollment in ENGL 373A required; add codes in English Advising office, A-2-B Padelford. Texts: Edward Finegan, Language: Its Structure and Use; Albert C. Baugh and Thomas Cable, A History of the English Language, 4th ed.

370YA (English Language Study)
MW 7-8:50 pm
Dillon
We will survey the sounds and sound system of English, inflection and word formation, syntactic categories and rules of combination, the structures of text, punctuation, and the pragmatics of use. There will be various exercises, a midterm and a final. The text will be Sidney Greenbaum’s Oxford Grammar of English and we will make use of various online resources as well. Evening Degree students only, Registration Period 1.

373A (History of the English Language)
TTh 9:30-11:20
Stevick
ENGL 370 is a beginning course in the study of language, narrowed to an introduction to the linguistic study of English. ENGL 373 is a beginning course in the history of English, scanning the changes in its phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon, together with some of the major changes in the populations using English. These two courses are being offered in close coordination, requiring any student enrolled in one to be enrolled in the other. The coordinate offering of the courses makes the time spent in preparation and the time spent in class much more efficient than separate offerings of these courses could ever be. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Concurrent enrollment in ENGL 370A (NOT ENGL 370YA) required; add codes in English Advising office, A-2-B Padelford. Texts: Edward Finegan, Language: Its Structure and Use; Albert C. Baugh and Thomas Cable, A History of the English Language, 4th ed.

381A (Advanced Expository Writing)
MW 9:30-10:50
Keeling
Gilbert H. Muller and Alan F. Crooks remind us that “writing does not—and, indeed, cannot—exist in a formal or aesthetic vacuum,” and that while texts “must be understood in their own terms,” they should also be explored “in relation to each other, and in relation to the social pressures of the age.” In this course we will consider the purpose and meaning, the language and style, and the strategy and structure in our readings. More importantly, we will consider the same categories—purpose/meaning, language/style, strategy/structure—in our own writing. Enrolling in this course suggest to me that you consider yourself an experienced writer devoted to exploring and developing your own prose styles as well as discussing the styles of others. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Phillip Lopate, ed., The Art of the Essay; Roland Barthes (tr. Howard), Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography; H.D., Notes on Thought and Vision: And the Wise Sappho; Jeanette Winterson, Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery.

381B (Advanced Expository Writing)
TTh 11:30-12:50
Hennessee
This course will focus on style, a clearly crucial (but often vaguely understood) aspect of writing. We will work to refine our individual prose styles through several means. We will perform stylistic analyses on a diverse group of prose stylists in different genres, examining how their writing achieves its effects. Through the study and practice of what Martha Kolln calls “rhetorical grammar” we will learn to exercise more conscious control over our own stylistic choices. Lastly, we will experiment with testing the stylistic limits of the academic essay, the personal reflection, and the polemical opinion piece. Readings will likely include works by Pater, Orwell, Woolf, Arnold, Carlyle, Mill, Longinus, Sontag, Gore Vidal, David Sedaris, Jerzy Kosinski, Barthes, Baldwin and others. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Martha Kolln, Rhetorical Grammar; Joseph M. Williams, Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace.

383A (Intermediate Verse Writing)
MW 11:30-12:50
Haruch
[Intensive study of the ways and means of making a poem. Further development of fundamental skills. Emphasis on revision.] Prerequisite: ENGL 283.

383B (Intermediate Verse Writing)
TTh 1:30-2:50
Dunlop
No writing class can provide the essentials (of imagination, eyes and ear, etc.), but this one will try to encourage them. What a class can provide is improved technique, but this can only be acquired by practice: one learns by doing. Therefore, there'll be a lot of writing--in the shape of specific exercises as well as original work. No heavy seriousness: light verse (which depends for its success on technical dexterity) much encouraged. Prerequisite: ENGL 283.

384A (Intermediate Short Story Writing)
MW 9:30-10:50
Shields
Strong emphasis on learning about narrative forms by reading and writing short-short stories. Prerequisite: ENGL 284. Text: photocopied course packet.

384B (Intermediate Short Story Writing)
TTh 1:30-2:50
Glickfeld

Class will emphasize the following elements of fiction: scene, voice, point of view, tone. Students will learn how to critique each other’s and their own work. In the workshop, students bring fiction manuscripts in advance for class discussion the following week. Textbook is an anthology of short stories. Prerequisite: ENGL 284. Text: Halpern, ed., The Art of the Tale.

Winter Quarter 2001300-Level Classes

Winter Quarter 2001
300-Level Classes