(Last updated: 10 September 2004)
Course Descriptions
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.)
Add Codes
English classes, 300-level and above, require instructor
permission for registration during Registration Period 3 (beginning
the first day of classes). If students have not registered for a class
prior to the first day, they should attend the first class meetings and/or
contact the instructor to obtain the necessary add codes.
First Week Attendance
Because of heavy demand for many English classes, students
who do not attend all reguarly-scheduled meetings during the first
week of the quarter may be dropped from their classes by the department.
If students are unable to attend at any point during the first week,
they should contact their instructors ahead of time. The Department requests
that instructors make reasonable accommodations for students with legitimate
reasons for being absent; HOWEVER, THE FINAL DECISION RESTS WITH THE
INSTRUCTOR AND SPACE IS NOT GUARANTEED FOR ABSENT STUDENTS EVEN IF THEY
CONTACT THE INSTRUCTOR IN ADVANCE. (Instructors' phone numbers
and e-mail addresses can be obtained by calling the Main English Office,
(206) 543-2690 or the Undergraduate Advising Office, (206) 543-2634.)
Upper Division (400-level) creative
writing courses
Admission to 400-level creative writing courses is by
instructor permission. To receive an add code, prospective
students must fill out an information form available in the Creative
Writing office (B-25 PDL), present copies of their transcripts verifying
that they have taken the appropriate prerequisite classes, and turn
in a writing sample for instructor screening.
Senior Seminars
ENGL 497 (Honors Senior Seminar) and ENGL 498 (Senior
Seminar) are joint-listed courses; students choose which number
to sign up for depending on their individual status. ENGL 497 is
restricted to senior honors English majors taking the additional
senior seminar required for the departmental honors program. Add
codes for ENGL 497 are available in the English Advising
office, A-2B Padelford. All other senior English majors should
sign up for ENGL 498. Neither ENGL 497 nor ENGL 498 can be taken more
than once for credit.
471 A (The Composition Process)
TTh 12:30-2:20
Dillon
dillon@u.washington.edu
Once the rallying cry of radical reform in the teaching of writing, “Process,
Not Product” is now the official line of SPS and many other public school
systems. As an official doctrine, it is ripe for analysis and critique, especially
since there are other, strong winds of “reform” now blowing both
from the State (Legislature – OSPI) and a large private corporation called
ETS. We will consider and evaluate a range of pedagogies including formulaic
writing (aka 5 paragraph/Jane Schafer method) and multigenre writing. In addition,
we are beginning to think of writing as something that does not require paper
and that can include components of several media. We begin this review and
critique with the writing process, moving then to the kinds and purpose of
Language Arts writing, the role of the teacher, and the issues of standards
and of inclusion/exclusion. Prerequisites: ability to rapidly decode and use
acronyms. Writing: lots! 2-page response journals, group project report, midterm
and final. Add codes available in English Advising, A-2B PDL. Text: photocopied
course packet.
474 A (Special Topics in English for Teachers)
MW 2:30-4:20
Peck
peckl@u.washington.edu
Writing Center Tutor Training. This class presents an opportunity for students
to expand their writing abilities and learn how to help others with their
writing while getting paid. The Dept. of English Writing Center is looking
for experienced student to enroll for this Autumn. Students will have the
opportunity both to read and write about various approaches to tutoring writing,
as well as to practice tutoring through conferencing and observation. Then,
starting in November, students will have the chance to get hands-on experience
tutoring in the English Writing Center. Students will be paid for this tutoring.
N.B.: ENGL 474 does not satisfy ENGL major requirements; it functions purely
as a general elective toward the 180 total credits required for graduation.
491 A (Internship)
*arrange*
Supervised experience in local businesses and other agencies. Open only to
upper-division English majors. Credit/no credit only. Add codes in English
Advising office, A-2B PDL.
492 A (Advanced Expository Writing Conference)
*arrange*
Tutorial arranged by prior mutual agreement between individual student and
instructor. Revision of manuscripts is emphasized, but new work may also
be undertaken. Instructor codes in English Advising office, A-2B PDL.
493 A (Advanced Creative Writing Conference)
*arrange*
Tutorial arranged by prior mutual agreement between individual student and
instructor. Revision of manuscripts is emphasized, but new work may also
be undertaken. Instructor codes in Creative Writing office, B-25 PDL.
494 A (Honors Seminar)
MW 1:30-3:20
Coldewey
jcjc@u.washington.edu
Medieval to Renaissance English Literature: From Script to Print, from
Orality to Literacy. In this class we will be examining English literature as it evolves
out of the Middle Ages into the Renaissance, and we will focus on two main
cultural events: first, the shift from orality to literacy that began taking
place during the Anglo Saxon period; and second, the invention of printing
as an important technological agent that supercharged textual production. Early
English texts are to an extraordinary degree both witnesses and children of
their own age, and we will consider how literary texts evolve out of an oral
to a literate culture, and out of a manuscript culture to a print culture.
As this process takes place, the ground rules of textual production, dissemination,
and consumption themselves change. Coursework: Three quizzes (15% each, class
discussion (15%, a class presentation (15%), and a 7-11 page paper (25%). Readings will
include the following and perhaps others: Primary: The
Battle of Maldon and other Old English poetry, in translation; Sir Gawain
and the Green Knight; Chaucer’s “Wife of Bath’s Prologue
and Tale"; The Bible of the Poor; Malory’s Morte Darthur;
The Wakefield
Second Shepherds’ Play;
The York Play of the Crucifixion; Everyman; Dr. Faustus;
sonnets from Petrarch to Shakespeare; secondary: Elizabeth
Eisenstein, The Printing
Revolutin in Early Modern Europe; Walter Ong, Oralitiy and Literacy;
Michael Camille, Image on the Edge. Department Honors majors only. Add codes
in A-2B PDL.
495 A (Major Conference for Honors in Creative Writing)
TTh 1:30-3:20
Bierds
lbierds@u.washington.edu
[Special projects available to honors students in creative writing. Required
of, and limited to, honors students in creative writing.] Add codes in English
Advising, A-2B PDL. No texts.
496 A (Major Conference for Honors)
*arrange*
Individual study (reading, papers) by arrangement with the instructor. Required
of, and limited to, honors seniors in English. Add codes in English Advising
office, A-2B PDL.
497/8 A (Honors Senior Seminar/Senior Seminar)
MW 8:30-10:20
S. Browning
(W)
sbrownin@u.washington.edu
The Devil. This course will examine a variety of religious texts, literary
works and political discourses which have informed, and been informed by, the
Prince of Darkness. Possible topics include the Hebrew, pre-Christian, early
Christian, and pagan influences on the evolution of this character, the iconography
associated with Satan, treatment of the Devil in works of fiction, and portrayals
of the Devil in popular culture. 497: Honors senior majors only; add codes
in English Advising, A-2B PDL; 498: Senior majors only.
497/8 B (Honors Senior Seminar/Senior Seminar)
MW 12:30-2:20
Brown
(W)
mbrown@u.washington.edu
Philosophy and Literature. This course will pair five epochal philosophical
texts with five literary works or collections that share or reflect on their
presuppositions. The aim will not be to “apply” the philosophical
works, but to explore the utility of philosophical approaches through comparison
and contrast. The readings will be short ito moderate in length, though not
easy. Some pertinent critical essays will be assigned as well. Students will
be expected to initiate a discussion and to write a 10-15 page essay, with
drafts and a bibliography of secondary readings. It is recommended that you
pick the focus for your essay and begin reading for it before the quarter
begins. The topics and readings are:
Identity: Descartes, “Discourse on Method”; Shakespeare, Hamlet;
Sensation: selections from Locke, “Essay Concerning
Human Understanding” and
from Sterne, Tristram Shandy.
Self-consciousness: Kant, “Prolegomena
to Any Future Metaphysic”; Wordsworth and Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads;
Will: George Eliot, Silas Marner; Nietzsche, “Metaphysics
of Morals” (novella
first this time);
Being: Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art”;
Stevens, selected poems. 497: Honors senior majors only; add codes in English
Advising, A-2B PDL; 498: Senior majors only.
497/8 C (Honors Senior Seminar/Senior Seminar)
MW 1:30-3:20
Modiano
(W)
modiano@u.washington.edu
Contracts of the Heart: Sacrifice, Gift Economy and Literary Exchange in
Coleridge and Wordsworth. In this seminar we will study the literary relationship
of Coleridge and Wordsworth who, as one critic remarked, “not only pervasively
influenced one another, but did so in a way that challenges ordinary methods
of assessments.” We will explore the possibility of deriving from theories
of gift exchange and sacrifice a new model of literary influence that would
shed light on this remarkably intimate and deeply conflicted relationship.
We will spend the first four weeks of the quarter studying theories of gift
exchange and sacrifice as proposed, among others, by Marcel Mauss, Marshall
Sahlins, Georg Simmel, Lewis Hyde and Pierre Bourdieu (on the gift); and by
Sigmund Freud, Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss, René Girard and Georges
Bataille (on sacrifice). The next six weeks will be devoted to the study of
major poems by Coleridge and Wordsworth in chronological order, showing how
the two poets, while desiring to imitate each other, find themselves competing
for the same themes and appropriating each other’s subjects. Thus, while
early Coleridge wrote successful nature poetry and Wordsworth portrayed moving
stories of human suffering in a supernatural setting, after their collaboration
on the Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth turned to the philosophy of the
mind’s relationship with nature, while Coleridge started to explore the
effects of supernaturalism on the psyche.
Such moments of merging and separation can be profitably viewed through the lens of gift exchange and sacrifice. The gift, for example, generates a number of paradoxes that are relevant to the relationship between Coleridge and Wordsworth, being at once an altruistic model of social interaction, placing value on human bonds above economic or private interests, while at the same time remaining embedded in a self-interested power structure. Gift exchange often secures the privileged position of the donor at the expense of receivers and yet, as Mauss showed, receivers seem to retain “a sort of proprietary right” over everything that belongs to the donor. The gift thus generates the obfuscation of ownership rights and an erasure of the differences between donors and beneficiaries. We will see how Wordsworth and Coleridge, while collaborating early on a single unauthored volume (Lyrical Ballads) and wanting to write the same poem (“The Wanderings of Cain,” “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”), found themselves increasingly asserting “proprietary rights” over the stock of inventions which they initially passed on to each other according to the law of the gift. Wordsworth continued to use Coleridge’s ideas but tried hard to displace Coleridge as a gift-giving source, turning to nature or his private fund of “possessions,” to “Something within, which yet is shared by none” (“Home at Grasmere”). Assignments: A long paper (10-16 pp.), written in two stages and subject to revision; bi-weekly comments on assigned readings; a final exam. 497: Senior honors majors only (add codes A-2B PDL); 498: Senior majors only. Texts: Marcel Mauss, The Gift; Rene Girard, Violence and the Sacred; S. T. Coleridge, Selected Poetry (ed. Beer); Wordsworth, Selected Poetry.
497/8 D (Honors Senior Seminar/Senior Seminar)
MW 2:30-4:20
Reddy
(W)
ccreddy@u.washington.edu
Imperialism, Neo-Colonialism, and the Politics of U.S. Culture, 1898-1953.
497: Honors senior majors only; add codes in English Advising, A-2B PDL;
498: Senior majors only. Texts: W. E. B. DuBois, Darkwater:
Voices From Within the Veil; Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness; photocopied course packet.
497/8 E (Honors Senior Seminar/Senior Seminar)
TTh 8:30-10:20
Olsen
(W)
elenao@u.washington.edu
Letters in Literature. We’ll be reading a few real letters,
but mostly epistolary fiction, theory, novels, stories, and other writing that
rely on
letters in interesting ways but are not strictly “epistolary,” and
e-mail and cyber writing. We’ll begin with some background and early
epistolary writing, but will move fairly quickly into the twentieth century.
The point is to explore interesting examples of the fascination with the letter
in literary consciousness and the evolution of this fascination from the late
seventeenth century to modern e-mail culture. 497: Honors senior majors only;
add codes in English Advising, A-2B PDL; 498: Senior majors only. Texts: Samuel
Richardson, Pamela; Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr. Ripley;
A. S. Byatt,
Possession; Michael J. Rosen, Chaser: A Novel in E-Mails; Monica
Ali, Brick Lane; Michael Civen, Male, Female, Email: The Struggle
for Relationshiops in
a Paranoid Society.
497/8 F (Honors Senior Seminar/Senior Seminar)
TTh 9:30-11:20
Chaudhary
(W)
zahidc@u.washington.edu
Urban Fictions. Cities have figured prominently in much recent
literature and film. Though sometimes shown as places for escape and reinvention,
cities
are also places of despair and alienation. In this course we will analyze
experiences of urban environments: the redemptive potential of commodity
culture, alienation
and depersonalization, the formation of the crowd, tourist culture, and imperialism.
We will assume a global context for our discussions, and course material
will draw on literature, film, photography, and contemporary art, from around
the
world. Virginia Woolf, Gillo Pontecorvo, Ousmane Sembene, Anton Shammas,
Salman Rushdie, and Cindy Sherman are among the writers and artists we may
consider,
in addition to exploring a range of critical readings including selections
from Karl Marx, Frantz Fanon, and Laura Mulvey. Texts: Paul
Auster, City of Glass; Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place;
Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto; Salam Pax, The Baghdad Blog;
Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children; Raymond Williams, The Country
and the City; Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway; optional: Kevin
Lynch, The Image of the City; David Mazzucchelli, Paul Auster's
City of Glass; Cindy Sherman, Film Stills. 497:
Honors senior majors only; add codes in English Advising, A-2B PDL; 498:
Senior majors only.
497/8 G (Honors Senior Seminar/Senior Seminar)
TTh 10:30-12:20
Kaplan
(W)
sydneyk@u.washington.edu
British Writing of the Nineteen Twenties. This seminar will read a
variety of works from this turbulent decade of modernist experimentalism and
dramatic
social change. We’ll read the decade’s most famous poem, “The
Waste Land,” and fiction by Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, and
Aldous Huxley, as well as two notorious novels banned by the censors: D.
H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Radcliffe
Hall’s
The Well of Loneliness. 497: Honors senior majors only; add codes
in English Advising, A-2B PDL; 498: Senior majors only. Texts: Katherine
Mansfield, The Garden Party; T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land;
Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway; D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover;
Radcliffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness; Aldous Huxley, Point Counter
Point.
497/8 H (Honors Senior Seminar/Senior Seminar)
TTh 11:30-1:20
(W)
--cancelled 8/24/04--
497/8 I (Honors Senior Seminar/Senior Seminar)
TTh 12:30-2:20
Easterling
(W)
heasterl@u.washington.edu
Renaissance Desire, Renaissance Discipline. This seminar will consider
early modern culture, literary and otherwise, in terms of its figuring of and
regulating
of desire. Using the framework of some later theories of desire and the disciplining
of desire in society, we will turn our attention to a range of 16th- and
17th-century texts which will include poetry, drama, and non-literary prose.
How did the Renaissance theorize desire, both male and female desire? How
does a focus on discourses of discipline and desire offer us a useful and
sophisticated way of reading Renaissance literature? 497: Honors senior majors
only; add codes in English Advising, A-2B PDL; 498: Senior majors only. Texts: Abrams,
et al., eds., The
Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 1B;
Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing; Thomas Middleton, The Changeling;
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison; Sigmund
Freud, Civilization
and its Discontents.
497/8 J (Honors Senior Seminar/Senior Seminar)
TTh 1:30-3:20
Allen
(W)
callen@u.washington.edu
Narratives of Emotion in Recent Fiction by Women. What are women writing
(and reading) these days? What are their passions What ideas take hold of them
and won’t let go? In this seminar we’ll read fiction written
recently by a variety of women writers from different national and cultural
contexts. Most have won or been listed for prestigious literary prizes, so
they have already captured the interests of the publishing world. We’ll
focus especially on what emotions figure in their characters and what forms
these authors use to “write” emotions in the reader. Students
will complete a seminar paper tailored to their own goals, whether that means
exploring reading attractions, writing fictional narratives of emotion, or
learning critical moves for grad school. Be prepared for discussions and
lively differences of opinion. 497: Honors senior majors only; add codes
in English Advising, A-2B PDL; 498: Senior majors only. Texts: Joyce
Carol Oates, Foxfire; Valerie Martin, Property; Debra Earling, Perma
Red; Margot
Livesey, Eva Moves the Furniture; Monica Truong, Book of Salt;
Julie Otsuka,
When the Emperor was Divine; Carol Shields, Unless; Ali Smith, Hotel
World; Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones.
497/8 K (Honors Senior Seminar/Senior Seminar)
TTh 2:30-4:20
Liu
(W)
msmliu@u.washington.edu
Double Consciousness in 20th- and 21st-Century American Culture.
Beginninng with the early 20th-century roots of double consciousness in W.E.B.
DuBois’ analysis
of African American thought, we will then explore how the metaphor of a dual
consciousness has manifested in feminist thought, masculinity studies, Chicano
and Asian American literary criticism, consumerism, and popular psychology.
A sampling of writers and texts to be included are: W.E.B. DuBois, Gloria Anzaldua,
Don DeLillo, Frank Chin, The Manchurian Candidate, and Fight Club.
497: Honors senior majors only; add codes in English Advising, A-2B PDL; 498:
Senior majors
only. Texts: Nella Larsen, Passing; Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/La
Frontera: The New Mestiza; W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk; Flora Rheta Schreiber,
Sybil.
497/498 L (Honors Senior Seminar/Senior Seminar)
TTh 10:30-12:20
Dornbush
(W)
{Course to be added; check Time Schedule for SLN when available.}
dornbush@u.washington.edu
Rereading the West. In this seminar we'll explore modern revisions of four
classic texts of the Western canon--Shakespeare's The Tempest, Bronte's Jane
Eyre, Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and Twain's Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn.
In addition to the four works, we'll read revisions produced by advocates for
colonial and postcolonial cultures in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa,
and the cultures of the African diaspora. Readings from postcolonial and feminist
criticism will accompany our discussion of the social, political, and interpretive
controversies these works have generated. Grades based on participation (class
discussion, response papers) and three five-page papers. (Meets w. C LIT 493A;
496A). 497: Honors senior majors only; add codes in English Advising, A-2B
PDL; 498: Senior majors only.
499A (Independent Study)
*arrange*
[Individual study by arrangement with instructor.] Add codes in English Advising
office, A-2B PDL.