Catalog Description: Study and practice of good writing; topics derived from reading and discussing stories, poems, essays, and plays.

Catalog Description: Study and practice of good writing; topics derived from reading and discussing stories, poems, essays, and plays.

Catalog Description: Study and practice of good writing; topics derived from reading and discussing stories, poems, essays, and plays.

Catalog Description: Study and practice of good writing: topics derived from a variety of personal, academic, and public subjects.

Catalog Description: Study and practice of good writing: topics derived from a variety of personal, academic, and public subjects.

Catalog Description: Study and practice of good writing: topics derived from a variety of personal, academic, and public subjects.

Catalog Description: Study and practice of good writing: topics derived from a variety of personal, academic, and public subjects.

Catalog Description: Study and practice of good writing: topics derived from a variety of personal, academic, and public subjects.

Catalog Description: Techniques and practice in reading and enjoying literature in its various forms: poetry, drama, prose fiction, film. Examies such features of literary meanings as imagery, characterization, narration, and patterning in sound and sense.

Catalog Description: Techniques and practice in reading and enjoying literature in its various forms: poetry, drama, prose fiction, film. Examies such features of literary meanings as imagery, characterization, narration, and patterning in sound and sense.

Catalog Description: Techniques and practice in reading and enjoying literature in its various forms: poetry, drama, prose fiction, film. Examies such features of literary meanings as imagery, characterization, narration, and patterning in sound and sense.

Catalog Description: Techniques and practice in reading and enjoying literature in its various forms: poetry, drama, prose fiction, film. Examies such features of literary meanings as imagery, characterization, narration, and patterning in sound and sense.

Catalog Description: Techniques and practice in reading and enjoying literature in its various forms: poetry, drama, prose fiction, film. Examies such features of literary meanings as imagery, characterization, narration, and patterning in sound and sense.

English 207 “Work That Body!”

This Introduction to Cultural Studies enlists an exercise meme in order to flag the physical and interpretive work we perform on ourselves, the monitoring we extend to others, and in so doing reproduce, modify or contest cultural norms. Consider. What does it mean to “work that body”—in the gym, on the job, on the streets, in the sheets, and so on? What sort of bodies are we working to fashion? What imperatives are we responding to? What cultural codes direct the meaning and value we assign to other’s bodies? Fiction, film, personal testimonies, (social) science, and cultural critique offer provisional answers to these questions. Our investigation begins with two body technologies whose contours and functions are described by Foucault. The first, discipline, is designed to fabricate “useful”—i.e. well trained and productive—individuals who can be counted on to abide by and enforce societal norms. The second, biopolitics, regulates populations so as to maximize the well being of “the people” by withholding life to the point of death from “others.” We will consult these cultural critiques and critical responses to them in examining an array of contemporary U.S. body work. Where, why and how do you locate yourself in relation to any of these body technologies? Topics include: torture, mass incarceration and racial profiling; assisted reproductive technologies; body modifications (eg., cosmetic surgery, weight loss programs, pumping iron, and other exercise regimes); hormone therapy, sex reassignment surgery and the requirements for accessing them; and new biotechnologies that dissolve the boundaries between human and animal, organism and machine.

A course packet and the following texts are likely to be required reading: Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me; Katherine Dunn, Geek Love; Octavia Butler, Dawn.

ENGL 210

The course will provide a lively and wide-ranging introduction to the literature of the Middle Ages, an introduction which will attempt to place texts remote from the modern age in their social and historical contexts. Students will read and discuss the best-known poems of the Old and Middle English periods (including a selection of Old English poems, medieval romances, and The Canterbury Tales). There will be a mid-term, final, and major term paper.

English 225 Su 2016 Professor Butwin

                             Shakespeare:The Conscience of the King

Down to the time of Revolutions in America and in France at the end of the 18th century Kings (Queens and Consorts) enjoyed extraordinary power across and beyond Europe. Louis XIV of France famously equated himself with the state—“L’état, c’est moi”—but that was a modest claim. He was also identified with the Sun—“Le roi soleil”—and he, like the English Elizabeth of Shakespeare’s time, ruled “by the Grace of God.” No public opinion polls, no elections. (We may want to compare the current electoral cycle in the USA.) Generally speaking, these pre-Presidential monarchs reigned until they died. They were not subject to the Law; their word was Law. But they were not infallible. . . .and they certainly were not invulnerable. We will study five of the major Shakespearian plays that turn on the mystery (and the history) of kingship. Shakespeare’s fascination with monarchy resembles that of his creature, Hamlet, who tells us that “The play’s the thing/Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.” So will we—the conscience and the consciousness. Richard II, I Henry IV, Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear.  Lecture, discussion, short essays written in and out of class.

Voice and Form: Reading Prose Fiction

This course will be a whirlwind tour through three and a half genres of fiction: the novel, the short story, the short story collection, and the novella (provided there is such a thing). Given the shape of summer term, and accompanying reasons of coherence/sanity, we will focus on American and British writers from early 20th century modernism forward. Our approach will be threefold—as one example we’ll talk about what people talk about when they talk about love, and Raymond Carver, who wrote the story, and contextualize the story as part of a minimalist ethos in American literature: we’ll think in terms of (1) themes, (2) writerly voices, and (3) aesthetic sensibilities. We’ll look at form and tone as well as content, so close reading will matter, and you’ll be expected to develop an ear for the writers’ voices. Authors include recent Nobel Prize Winner Alice Munro, Dorothy Parker, Lydia Davis, Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton, James Joyce, Katherine Mansfield, Ford Madox Ford, Ernest Hemingway, J. D. Salinger, John Cheever, Raymond Carver, Lorrie Moore, and others. This is a reading intensive course.

In terms of learning outcomes, you will emerge with an improved ability to close read and read and think critically; have an advanced sense of context for fiction; and have read two of the best English-language novels of the 20th century. You will also have an intense engagement with some of the best contemporary writers, and literary modernists, specifically in terms of modernism’s theme of body and mind—shell-shock, the modern woman, and representations of inner experience.

Texts (in order of appearance):

J. D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey ISBN-13: 978-0316769495 (Little Brown and Co)

James Joyce, DublinersBrenda Maddox, ed. ISBN-13: 978-0553213805 Bantam

Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion ISBN-13: 978-0141441849 (Penguin)

Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending ISBN-13: 978-0307947727 (Vintage)

Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway ISBN-13: 978-0156628709 (Mariner, HBJ)

Course Reader

English 242: Reading Fiction

Summer 2016, A term

Dr. E. Laurie George

“It had been my accidental reading of fiction and literary criticism that had evoked in me

vague glimpses of life’s possibilities.”                

--Richard Wright

                           “Reading Fiction”

“Each writer's prejudices, tastes, background, and experience tend to limit the kinds

of characters, actions, and settings he can honestly care about, since by nature of our mortality we care about what we know and might possibly lose (or have already lost), dislike that which threatens what we care about, and feel indifferent toward that which has no visible bearing on the safety of the people and things we love.”

             --John Gardner

                 The Art of Fiction

This intensive 5-week course is an introduction to various theoretical and practical strategies for reading fiction. We will concentrate on reading and interpreting fictional texts in relation to the author, the reader, and the culture at large.

Over the course of the quarter, you will broaden your fictional reading repertoire by reading, discussing, and critically interpreting a variety of fictional texts, authors, genres, styles, and historical/cultural movements, mostly modern and contemporary. Primary course goals include enhancing your critical expression and realizing, as Richard Wright notes, that the critical reading of fiction can help in the critical reading and living of life.

Requirements include keeping up with daily readings, researching biographical and cultural allusions in the fictions to deepen reading experience, discussing and writing about findings in class discussion, writing out-of-class essays, identifying fictional literary terms. This is also primarily a face-to-face discussion-based course rather than a pure lecture course--essential to course success is your critical, thoughtful, daily vocal interpretation of closely-read texts and contexts in each class meeting.

Catalog Description: Critical interpretation and meaning in works of prose fiction, representing a variety of types and periods

SHORT FICTION AND OUR GLOBAL CULTURAL MOSAIC

Catalog Description: Critical interpretation and meaning in works of prose fiction, representing a variety of types and periods

Catalog Description: Critical interpretation and meaning in works of prose fiction, representing a variety of types and periods

Catalog Description: Critical interpretation and meaning in poems. Different examples of poetry representing a variety of types from the medieval to modern periods.

Catalog Description: ntroduces the study of the environment through literature, culture, and history. Topics include changing ideas about nature, wilderness, ecology, pollution, climate, and human/animal relations, with particular emphasis on environmental justice and the unequal distribution of environmental crises, both globally and along class, race and gender lines.

Catalog Description: Writing papers communicating information and opinion to develop accurate, competent, and effective expression.

Prerequisites:

While 281 has no formal prerequisite, this is an intermediate writing course, and instructors expect entering students to know how to formulate claims, integrate evidence, demonstrate awareness of audience, and structure coherent sentences, paragraphs and essays. Thus we strongly encourage students to complete an introductory (100 level) writing course before enrolling in English 281.

This course will take a formal approach to writing about film, with emphasis on close-reading the visual text. Students will be expected to complete four papers over the half-term (approximately one/week). Films are likely to include: Star Trek (2009), Skyfall, Mad Max: Fury Road, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and The Thing (1982).

Prerequisites:

While 281 has no formal prerequisite, this is an intermediate writing course, and instructors expect entering students to know how to formulate claims, integrate evidence, demonstrate awareness of audience, and structure coherent sentences, paragraphs and essays. Thus we strongly encourage students to complete an introductory (100 level) writing course before enrolling in English 281.

Catalog Description: Intensive study of the ways and means of making a poem.

Catalog Description: Introduction to the theory and practice of writing the short story.

English 302

Course Description: (Re)Making History

The critical practices that we’ll examine over the course of this quarter are counterhistories in two senses of the word. First and fundamentally, they debunk common (i.e. positivist) conceptions of history as a disinterested record of “the past as it really was;” they define history as a narrative that imposes a particular meaning on the messiness of events and the complexities of human existence; they affiliate history with literature; and they affirm that historical narratives are inevitably political. Second, these counterhistories render visible the violence that such ostensible goods as the rule of law, freedom, family, and community conceal. Critical examinations of history, trauma, racism, and neoliberalism supplement late 20th and early 21st century American fiction, memoire and film. Required texts will include a course packet and the following texts: Dorothy Allison, Bastard Out of Carolina; Diem’s The Gangster We Are All Looking For, Wideman’s Two Cities; Chua’s Gold by the Inch; and Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange.

Catalog Description: Introduction to the development of the religious ideas and institutions of ancient Israel, with selected readings from the Old Testament and New Testament. Emphasis on reading The Bible with literary and historical understanding.

Study of the four ‘great tragedies’—Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, Hamlet—and two of the so called ‘romances’—The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest.

Requirements: exams, essays

Books: I will order David Bevington, The Complete Works of Shakespeare, 7th edition. Older editions of this text (which can be found on line much cheaper than a new one) are acceptable. Other editions are not acceptable.

Victorian Underworlds and Other Worlds

England in the latter half of the 19th century sat comfortably at the center of the last great Empire. It’s Queen—Victoria—also called “Empress of India” gave the age its name. The sun never set on her Empire; therefore it was always shining, bright, white, and light. Strange to say, some of the great achievements of the imperial metropolis (rather like Seattle with Big Bertha chugging away early in the 21st century) were accomplished in utter darkness with the excavation of tunnels for a new rail system called “The London Underground,” with the creation of huge sewers intended to eliminate the wastewater of the civilized surface world and with the creation of vast cities of the dead; that is, the cemeteries that would sanitize the unwholesome boneyards beside urban churches. Victorian Britons were justly proud and deeply haunted by their kinship with the underworld at home and with what they called “The Dark Continent” overseas. We will study that important time and place—Victorian Britain—by looking closely at what numerous writers and artists took to be its imaginary opposite and counterpart in other worlds represented by mirror images, journeys into slums and sewers, into the criminal fringe and beyond—to the very heart of darkness. We will begin with a glimpse at the criminal underworld of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, followed by Dickens’ industrial novel, Hard Times; Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland; R. L. Stevenson, Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, and The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.   Lecture, discussion and a series of very short essays.

[Readings: University Book Store]

Charles Dickens, Hard Times Penguin Classics isbn 978 0 14 143967 9

Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland Dover Thrift ISBN 0 486 41658 5

Robert Lewis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Dover Thrift ISBN 0486266885

Arthur Conan Doyle, Six Great Stories of Sherlock Holmes Dover Thrift ISBN 0 48627055 6

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness Dover Thrift ISBN: 0486264645

English 346

Summer—A term; 2016

Dr. Laurie George

Course Definition & Goals

           “Novel, a, short story padded.”

                               --Ambrose Bierce,The Devil’s Dictionary, 1911

This class in fiction celebrates the shorter rather than the longer fictional narrative—the reading, writing, and interpretive critique of it, though some of our readings will be novellas, short novels. Ambrose Bierce will be one of the “unpadded” writers whose fiction we read with the above quotation in mind; and we will be focusing mostly on contemporary fictions, traditional as well as innovative themes and styles that sometimes shock reading publics. Primary goals of the course include: increasing your reading enjoyment of the short fiction by sophisticating your reading practices and your awareness of how you interpret and assess fiction; exposing you to a variety of fictional authors, genres, styles, and literary movements; enhancing your critical abilities, both orally and in writing, to analyze, interpret and evaluate responses to stories. Course writing includes short, analytical essays and identification/competence using literary fictional terms.

Catalog Description: Explores American fiction, poetry, and prose during the latter half of the nineteenth century. May include such representative authors of the period as Twain, Dickinson, DuBois, Crane, Wharton and Chopin, along with supplementary study of the broader cultural and political milieu.

Catalog Description: Wide-ranging introduction to the study of written and spoken English. Includes the nature of language; ways of describing language; the use of language study as an approach to English literature and the teaching of English.

ENGL 422

The course will explore a diverse group of texts recounting the fictive exploits of the women and men of Arthur’s court. Students will read and discuss a range of important works (in prose and verse) treating these legends, including works by a range of neglected early British writers who were active before the codification of the Arthurian “universe”; works composed by and for medieval women; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; episodes from Malory; and a selection of non-canonical items. Course requirements will include a mid-term, final, and major term paper.

Catalog Description: Reviews the research, core debates, and politics tht have shaped the practice, teaching and study of writing. Introduces theoretical and methodological approaches that inform the teaching and learning of writing

Catalog Description: Students read screenwriting manuals and screenplays, analyze exemplary films, and write synopses, treatments, and first acts of their own screenplays.