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(Last updated: 6 June 2001)
The following course descriptions have been written by individual instructors to provide more detailed information on specific sections than that found in the General Catalog. When individual descriptions are not available, the General Catalog descriptions [in brackets] are used.
Students not previously admitted to the University of Washington (nonmatriculated status) may enroll in ENGL 111, 121, 131, 281, 381, 471, or 481 only if they have met the following ESL requirements: a score of at least 580 on the TOEFL or one of these equivalent scores: 90 on the MTELP, 410 on the SAT-Verbal, 490 on the SAT-Verbal (recentered), or 20 on the ACT English. For more information, consult an English adviser in A-2-B Padelford, (206) 543-2634, engladv@u.washington.edu.
104 (Introductory Composition)
M-Th 12:00
[Development of writing skills: sentence strategies and paragraph structures.
Expository, critical, and persuasive essay techniques based on analysis of
selected readings. For Educational Opportunity Program students only,
upon recommendation by the Office of Minority Affairs.]
111 (Composition: Literature)
2 sections: M-Th 9:40; M-Th 12:00
[Study and practice of good writing: topics derived from reading and discussing
stories, poems, essays, and plays.] Students not previously enrolled at the
University of Washington (non-matriculated status) may sign up for this course
if they meet the posted ESL requirements.
121 (Composition: Social Issues)
M-Th 10:50
[Study and practice of good writing; topics derived from reading and discussing
essays and fiction about current social and moral issues.] Students not previously
enrolled at the University of Washington (non-matriculated status) may sign
up for this course if they meet the posted ESL requirements.
131 (Composition: Exposition)
5 sections: M-Th 8:30; M-Th 10:00-12:10; M-Th 10:50; M-Th 12:00
[Study and practice of good writing; topics derived from a variety of personal,
academic, and public subjects.] Students not previously enrolled at the University
of Washington (non-matriculated status) may sign up for this course if they
meet the posted ESL requirements.
200 A (Reading Literature)
Dy 8:30
Parr
(W)
This course will introduce students to a variety of literary styles and genres
including drama, the novel, and film. We will work our way from the
middle ages to the present using Dangerous Women/Women In Danger as
our theme. What sorts of social anxieties find voice in representations
of femininity? What types of cultural work do these tropes accomplish?
Course work includes weekly response papers as well as longer, more polished
essays. Texts under consideration may include Sir Gawain and the
Green Knight, Shakespeare's King Lear; Dickens' Great Expectations;
Morrison's Sula, and Allison's Bastard out of Carolina as well
as shorter works and films.
200 B (Reading Literature)
Dy 9:40
Tandy
(W)
This quarter we'll be focusing on how literary artists create meaning, connecting
their aesthetic craft to our psychological and emotional reactions.
We will read a wide range of materials, from poetry to experimental prose,
from different countries and a number of time periods. This course is also
a writing course, and the writing assignments will include both literary interpretation
and literary experimentation. My description here is necessarily brief;
I'm looking forward to teaching this course, and expect that if you take
it, you will be enthusiastic, creative, and willing to take a few risks.
Texts: Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler; Thomas
Pynchon, Vineland; photocopied course packet.
200 C (Reading Literature)
Dy 10:50
Flores
(W)
Women of Color Write. This course is an introduction to reading
and writing about literature for students of all disciplines. We will
examine literature written by U.S. women of color in the last 30 years or
so, and our project will be largely comparative. For example, we will
explore what issues (including history, responses to nationalisms, “place”
making, etc.) are shared by Chicana/Latina writers, Asian American women
writers and African American women writers. In addition, what issues
are distinct to each of the groups of these writers? Although our intellectual
focus will be on these texts/issues, this class is designed to functionally
help students read and write more analytically. Special attention will
be given to “close readings,” arguments/claims, and general paper writing. Requirements:
three short (4-6 page) papers, in-class participation (including leading discussion),
and short written homework assignments. Texts:
Theresa Cha, Dictee; Sandra Cisneros, Woman Hollering Creek;
Danzy Senna, Caucasia; Michele Serros, How to be a Chicana Role
Model; photocopied course packet.
200 D (Reading Literature)
Dy 12:00
Davis
(W)
This section of ENGL 200 takes the general title, “Reading Literature,” quite
literally. In this course we will be examining our current reading
practice, which could be highly sophisticated and individual or limited tow
hat literature is assigned within a classroom context. Our goal is
an exhaustive study of why we read, how we read, what we read, and how we
choose what we read, in order to craft a set of reading criteria to take
out of the classroom and into our “real” lives. To this end, we will
be reading novels and short stories that fall into four general areas: “The
Classic”; “The Movie Tie-In”; “The Bestseller”; and “The Oprah Selection.” In
addition to the four novels, we will be reading at least eight short stories
from the anthology, The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to
Short Fiction. The reading for this class is demanding, as is the
amount of reflective writing you are expected to produce. We will spend
much of our time in discussion and hopefully together create and/or further
an enjoyable reading practice for each of you. Texts: Ann Charters,
ed., The Story and Its Writer; Bernhard Schlink, The Reader;
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God; Mary Doria Russell,
The Sparrow; Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient.
211aA (Medieval & Renaissance Literature)
M-Th 8:30-10:40
Simmons-O’Neill
(A-term)
ENGL 211 serves many purposes: it is one of the choices to meet the “gateway”
requirement for entering the English major, it may be used toward the Period
1 requirement for English majors, and it also may be counted toward the VLPA
General Education requirement. As an introduction to the earliest periods
in English language and literature, the course surveys a wide range of material
quickly. As an introduction to the discipline of literary study for
students planning to enter (or complete) the English major, the course also
includes attention to research skills, and to current critical approaches
to reading and writing about literary texts. Assignments include daily
reading, response papers, an exam, and a final research project. This
course is computer-integrated; no previous computer experience is required.
(Questions? Instructor can be reached at esoneill@u.washington.edu.) Texts:
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (tr. Harrison); Wilson, ed., Medieval
Women Writers; Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales (ed. Hieatt & Hieatt);
Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream; photocopied course
packet; Computer-Integrated Student Supplement (both available at CMU copy
center).
212 A (Literature of Enlightenment & Revolution)
Dy 10:50
Hennessee
This introductory course will examine literature of the 18th – early 19th
centuries. Writers of this time took on “big” questions: what is the
nature of God? Can humans know and understand the world? What
is the best way to organize society? What should our relationship with
nature be? What is the role of imagination? Reason? Education?
Feeling? Love? Their answers to these questions continue to influence
the way we think. Course requirements include: take-home midterm, in-class
midterm, group project, 4-6 pp. essay, various short writing assignments,
active class participation. Expect some lecture (on historical background
and other contexts), more discussion, demanding (but rewarding) reading.
Texts: Alexander Pope, Essay on Man and Other Poems; David
Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion; Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s
Travels; Voltaire, Candide; Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther;
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; William Blake, Songs of Innocence and
of Experience; Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility.
213aA (Modern & Postmodern Literature)
M-Th 12:00-2:10
Cummings
(A-term)
Twentieth-century American dreams and nightmares are the subject of this
course: short stories, novels, poetry, film, and political speeches are the
texts. Three basic questions will guide our reading of each dream work:
(1) What is the vision and how is it expressed? (2) Under what
socio-historical conditions is the dream produced and how might they shape
its composition? (3) What are the dream work’s real life consequences
and for whom? Texts: Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God;
Kerouac, On the Road; photocopied course packet.
225 A (Shakespeare)
Dy 10:50
Dunlop
(W)
Survey of Shakespeare’s career as dramatist. Study of representative
comedies, tragedies, romances, and history plays. Texts: Shakespeare,
Julius Caesar; Twelfth Night; Anthony and Cleopatra.
230aA (English Literary Culture: After 1800)
M-Th 8:30-10:40
Butwin
(A-term)
Expect an intense month of reading, writing and discussion where the goal
is to understand the advent of modernity in English life and literature, 1800
to the present. That ‘advent” includes the mercurial career of empire,
of industry, and of urban and rural life from Blake’s “little lamb, who made
thee?” to the current scourge of hoof and mouth disease. Our texts will range
from 19th century poetry and fiction to 20th century film and music. Writing
in and out of class, one exam. Texts: Dover Thrift editions
of: English Romantic Poetry; English Victorian Poetry; World War
One British Poets; Conrad, Heart of Darkness; D. H. Lawrence, Selected
Short Stories; Virginia Woolf, Monday or Tuesday: Eight Stories;
photocopied course packet on reserve, films and audio in UGL
242 A (Reading Fiction)
Dy 8:30
Linder
(W)
Our central focus for ENGL 242 will be an effort to explore the relation between
fiction and American identity. In order to achieve a better understanding
of this relation, we'll look through a broad overview of American fiction,
from the late-nineteenth-century humor of Mark Twain to the recent science
fiction vision of William Gibson. We'll bring to this broad overview
a methodology that (1) closely examines the langauge that these authors use
and (2) attempts to place these novels within a cultural and historical context. This
methodology will help us answer three fundamental questions: what message(s)
are these authors presenting to the reader, how are they presenting that
message, and why would that message have been important at that particular
moment in American history? Requirements: Lots of reading, lots of
writing, lots of active participation in class discussion. Texts:
William Gibson, Neuromancer; Thomas Pyncho, The Crying of Lot 49;
William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!; Frank Norris, McTeague;
Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
242 B (Reading Fiction)
MW 12 – 2
Miranda
(W)
NOTE DAY/TIME CHANGE from listing in printed Time
Schedule.
Vicarious Road Trips: Stuck in Seattle. Taking classes instead
of hitting the road? You may as well cover some ground within the pages
of classic road trip fiction. We’ll take some less-traveled roads using
unusual means: Sherman Alexie’s Smoke Signals, Linda Hogan’s Solar
Storms, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Douglas Adams’ The
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, among others. We will ask such
questions as: From what literary traidtions and conventions do authors of
contemporary road trip narratives draw and why? What are some typical
motifs and themes in this sub-genre of travel writing? How do race,
class, age and gender figure into The Road Trip? The class will examine
and discuss fictional writing as well as some films. Assignments may
include the following: Daily reading assignments in preparation for
participation in class discussion, daily in-class writing assignments and
small-group collaborative learning exercises, mini-presentations of background
research on subjects and authors of focal narratives, quizzes, a midterm,
a final literary essay. Texts: Sherman Alexie, Smoke Signals
(screenplay); Linda Hogan, Solar Storms; John Steinbeck, The
Grapes of Wrath; Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy;
Helen Campbell, Turnip Blues; Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower;
Danzy Senna, Caucasia; Callie Khouri, Thelma and Louise (screenplay).
250aA (Introduction to American Literature)
M-Th 9:40-11:50
Patterson
(A-term)
In this course we will consider four important issues in American literature:
captivity, passing, work, and authorship. We will be reading texts that
complicate our understanding of what it means to be an American and what
it means to be an author. This course is not a survey of American literature,
but rather an introduction to the issues, problems, and questions raised
by some of its texts. We will be reading and discussing the works intensively,
and requirements will include weekly in-class writing assignments and a final
essay. Texts: Susanna Rowson, Charlotte Temple; Art Spiegelman,
Maus, Vol. I; James Weldon Johnson, Autobiography of an Ex-Colored
Man; Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; F.
Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby; Rebecca Harding Davis, Life
in the Iron Mills.
250B (Introduction to American Literature)
TTh 12:00-2:10
Prebel
(full term)
This class explores themes and topics in American literature in an effort
to trace the evolution of a distinctly “American” form. We will look
at the changing relationship between American nationalism and literature
at different moments in history and culture. Weekly papers, a mid-term,
and a final, as well as active, intelligent class participation.
Text: McQuade, et al., eds., Harper Single-Volume American Literature,
3rd ed.
257aA (Introduction to Asian-American Literature)
M-Th 12:00-2:10
Simpson
(A-term)
In this course we will attempt to survey past and present developments in
Asian American literature, including the historical relationshiop of racial,
gender and sexual identity and citizenship, and the emergence of global culture.
Asian immigrants and citizens have been implicated in the shifting historical
debate of these concepts since the nineteenth century, and we will examine
a sampling of short works, along with three novels, to get a better sense
of how Asian American writers ahve addressed these questions in their own
works. Course requirements include weekly short essays (2 pp.) and
one longer, end-of-session paper. Texts: Okada, No-No Boy; Hagedorn,
Dogeaters; Mukherjee, Jasmine; photocopied course packet available
at The Ave copy center.
281bA (Intermediate Expository Writing)
M-Th 8:30-10:00
Tollefson
(B-term)
This course will develop your writing skills through in-class writing, collaborative
group activities, discussion, and three essay assignments. Our topic
will be the movement to declare English the official language in the United
States (including efforts to restrict other languages), as well as opposition
to this movement. We will read a variety of writings about the Official
English movement, including magazine and newspaper articles, policy statements,
argumentative works by participants in the Official English debate, and academic
analyses. The three essay assignments will develop your ability to
write informative, argumentative and research-based writing. Text:
James Crawford, ed., Language Loyalties. Students not previously
enrolled at the University of Washington (non-matriculated status) may sign
up for this course if they meet the posted ESL requirements.
281aB (Intermediate Expository Writing)
M-Th 10:50-12:20
Butwin
(A-term)
This will be a highly concentrated month of writing in and out of class.
We will focus on the mechanics of good prose (with the help of an old-fashioned
rule book) and the strategies of careful argumentation (with the help of our
collective good sense). Our points of departure will be some of the
knottier problems of modern life drawn from the current press such as the
daily New York Times. Text: The Little Brown Handbook.
Students not previously enrolled at the University of Washington (non-matriculated
status) may sign up for this course if they meet the posted ESL requirements.
281 C (Intermediate Expository Writing)
MWF 12:00-1:30
Mower
(full term)
The Rhetoric of “Civilization” 1870-1900: “Race” Presentation and the
Question of Woman’s “Nature.” English 281 is designed to prepare
you to meet the demands of academic writing by developing your abilities
to think critically, read closely and write persuasively. However,
rather than focusing on these skills in isolation, this course offers you
the opportunity to consider these acts as part of the larger cultural and
historical frameworks in which they are situated. By focusing on thinking,
reading, and writing as social, collaborative acts, ENGL 281C invites you
to consider what readers and writers, including yourself, bring to different
texts. We will read and discuss a varied selection of texts—journalistic
essays, short stories, novels, social criticism—in order to examine both
the methods used by the writers and the audiences that these writers engage.
Our materials will be drawn primarily from the turn of the 20th century,
an era characterized by sweeping upheavals in American politics, society
and culture. We will examine several of these moments of disjunction
by exploring such issues as: racial and ethnic diversity; cultural and political
imperialism; the civilized “fitness” of the New Woman. Focusing on
a variety of genres and disciplines from this period will enable us to envision
writing as a series of rhetorical choices specifically fashioned by the writer
to communicate to a particular audience on a particular occasion. Similarly,
we will re-imagine reading as an interactive process by examining how we
as readers bring to each text a specific set of interpretive assumptions
which limit and direct the range of meanings we actively construct from a
text. Texts: Jewett, A Country Doctor; Bederman, Manliness
and Civilization; Susan Harris Smith & Melanie Dawson, eds., The
American 1890s: A Cultural Reader. Students not previously enrolled
at the University of Washington (non-matriculated status) may sign up for
this course if they meet the posted ESL requirements.
283 A (Beginning Verse Writing)
TTh 8:30-10:00
Martinez
This is an introductory course in the writing of poems, and as such we will
strike all of these vital and most basic chords: sound, imagery, content,
structure, tone, the writing process, critique and revision. We will
take a quick dip into the joys of meter and rhyme, but focus primarily on
the free verse poem in our workshop sessions. Come prepared to work
hard; this is a joyful, furious business. Assignments will include the writing
of poems and exercises, participation in group critiques, reading and discussion
of poems from the texts, and a short paper. Texts: Mary Oliver,
A Poetry Handbook; R. S. Gwynn, ed., Poetry: A Longman Pocket Anthology,
2nd ed.
283 B (Beginning Verse Writing)
MW 10:50-12:20
Schramm
Added 4/11; sln: 4231.
Intensive study of the ways and means of making a poem. Text: Nims & Mason,
eds., Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry.
284 A (Beginning Short Story Writing)
MW 8:30-10:00
Gunn
[Introduction to the theory and practice of writing the short story.]
284 B –cancelled 4/11—
284 C (Beginning Short Story Writing)
TTh 9:40-11:10
Slean
This is an introductory level study and practice of writing the short story.
We will examine some published examples of the form from the perspective
of key elements of fiction—point of view, narrative, action – and practice
working with these elements via weekly writing exercises. Finally,
each student will write a complete short story, workshop it in class, and
write a second draft for the final portfolio. Text: Charters,
The Story and Its Writer.
304aA (History of Literary Criticism & Theory II)
M-Th 10:50-1:00
Lester
(A-term)
In this class we will consider Marxist, psychoanalytic and post-structuralist
currents in contemporary literary theory. Special attention will be
given to works by Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, and Giorgio Agamben. There
will be a course packet in addition to the required books. Texts:
Julie Rivkin, Michael Ryan, eds., Literary Theory: An Anthology; Jowett,
tr., Selected Dialogues of Plato; Derrida, Dissemination; Melville,
Bartleby and Benito Cereno; Gombrowicz, Cosmos and Pornografia;
photocopied course packet.
310 A (The Bible as Literature)
Dy 8:30
J. Griffith
A rapid study of readings taken from both the Old and New Testaments, focusing
primarily 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: New Oxford
Annotated Bible, 3rd ed. (Coogan, ed.)
315 YA (Literary Modernism)
TTh 6:00-8:10 pm
Staten
We will read a variety of poems and fictional works from France, Germany,
England, and the U.S. in order to get a sense of the complex phenomenon called “modernism.” There is no simple definition of what this term means;
like other period terms in literary theory (cf. “romanticism” or “realism”),
it refers not to any single quality of literary works but to a whole cluster
of characteristics, any of which might be missing from any given work referred
to as modernist. Thus the only way to get a sense of how the term works
is to read a number of things that are labeled with it and see how they are
similar and how they are different. That is what we will do.
We will also read a couple of essays that will alert you to how literary
critics write about modernism. I will ask you to write
a couple of 2-page papers during the quarter in which you start trying to
write about modernism, and then a 5-7 page paper, in which you present your
mature thoughts on the topic, to conclude the term. You will be expected
to attend class with strict regularity. There’s no chance of your doing
well on your papers if you don’t. (Offered jointly with C LIT 396YA;
Evening Degree students only, Registration Period 1.) Texts: We
will read the following works in the following order: Baudelaire, poems
(xerox); Eliot, Selected Poems; Rilke, poems (xerox); Kafka, “The
Metamorphosis”; Mann, “Death in Venice”; Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway; Gide,
The Counterfeiters.
321aA (Chaucer)
M-Th 10:50-1:00
Simmons-O’Neill
(A-term)
This course is designed as an introductory but intensive study of selected
Canterbury Tales (in Middle English), of current critical responses to Chaucer’s
work, and of your own developing interests with regard to these texts and
issues. We will work with UW librarians on introductions to research
methods and UW’s collection of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts and manuscript
facsimiles. This is a participatory course throughout the quarter,
with daily preparation of passages, frequent short writing assignments, translation/explication
exams, and final research projects. Students will have a choice of
final projects: research papers, conference panels, or performance workshops.
Texts: Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales: Nine Tales and the General Prologue (ed.
Kolve & Olson); Peter Beidler, ed., The Wife of Bath’s Prologue
and Tale; Chaucer Studio audio tape, The Wife of Bath’s Tale.
323aA (Shakespeare to 1603)
M-Th 9:40-11:50
Coldewey
(A-term)
[Shakepeare’s career as dramatist before 1603, including Hamlet. Study
of history plays, comedies, and tragedies.] Texts: Greenblatt, et
al., eds., The Norton Shakespeare; Russ McDonald, The Bedford Companion
to Shakespeare; optional: E. M. W. Tillyard, The Elizabethan
World Picture.
324aA (Shakespeare after 1603)
M-Th 8:30-10:40
Streitberger
(A-term)
Shakespeare’s career as dramatist before 1603 (including Hamlet). Study
of history plays, comedies, and tragedies. Text: Bevington, ed.,
The Complete Works of Shakespeare (updated 4th ed.).
333 A (English Novel: Early & Middle 19th C.)
Dy 8:30
Hennessee
“And they lived happily ever after.” “They” more likely than not goot
married. As a device of narrative closure marriage is ubiquitous, and
to sustain interest until the happy event occurs novels often describe obstacles
to nuptial bliss. In this course, we will examine the marriage plot under
stress. We will read five novels that question, problematize, evade,
or even thwart the marriage plot. In so doing, our goals will be three:
(1) to understand the socio-historical conditioning of (what can seem) timeless,
natural dynamics of love, sex, heterosexuality, and marriage; (2) to examine
how diverse narrative forms differently shape the marriage plot (and other
elements of narrative content); (3) to use the novelistic marriage plot as
a window through which to view early and mid-nineteenth century British society.
More generally, the course offers introduction to some important novels of
the period, whose often bizarre storylines will hopefully provide enjoyable
summer reading. Some lecture on historical context, more discussion. Requirements:
take-home midterm, class presentation, final paper, active participation. Texts: Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice; Mary
Shelley, Frankenstein; Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights;
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations; Elizabeth Gaskell, Cranford;
Daniel Pool, What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew.
334aA (English Novel: Later 19th C.)
M-Th 9:40-11:50
Goodlad
(A-term)
We consider a number of classic works of British literature that broke novelistic
ground in the second half of the nineteenth century: Anthony Trollope’s The
Warden; Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cousin Phillis; George Moore’s Esther
Waters; and R. L. Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. We
focus on narrative technique and other representational devices and their
relation to broader social contexts, especially the making of class, gender,
sexual and national identities in an increasingly mass industrial and imperial
culture.
337aA (The Modern Novel)
M-Th 8:30-10:40
George
(A-term)
Black, White, and Colored: Pleasantville and the Modernist Experience.
This multi-media, intensive course (5 weeks, M-Th) will focus on defining
literary and cultural Modernism first through the critical study of the film
Pleasantville, and then via three novels alluded to in that film:
D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, J. D. Salinger's The
Catcher in the Rye and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. We
will read and analyze these controversial texts--each banned at one time or
another since its publications--to understand how they upset the status
quo, creating social anxiety and cultural crises not unlike those portrayed
in Pleasantville. Course requirements include regular daily
attendance; active and thoughtful discussion (active face-to-face and online
discussion); online and offline research; short essays and presentations.
Note: a good deal of this course will be conducted in a computer-integrated
classroom, but this is not a distance-learning
352 A (American Literature: The Early Nation)
Dy 10:50
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. Texts: Baym, et al., eds., The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Vol. 1; Harriet Beecher
Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin; Herman Melville, Moby-Dick.
353 A (American Literature: Later 19th C.)
TTh 8:30-10:40
Prebel
This class examines the literary and cultural changes that occur in post-Civil
War America in order to consider what it means to be American in this era.
We will look at the interaction between political, sociological, and literary
narratives as constructing new definitions of personhood. Requirements
include: weekly response papers, a midterm, a final, and active, intelligent
class participation. Texts: Henry James, Daisy Miller;
Charles Chesnutt, The House Behind the Cedars; Abraham Cahan, Yekl;
Kate Chopin, The Awakening and Other Stories.
354 A (American Literature: The Early Modern Period)
Dy 8:30
Wacker
American literary modernism raised enduring questions about the possibilities
for securing order and meaning outside the transformations of industrial
capitalism,
even as its literary formalist experiments were the product of new technologies
of travel, perception and communication. This course will place great
emphasis on modernist experiments in form that have altered the practice
and reception of all subsequent literary work, even work written in opposition
to the cultural politics of high modernism. However, coming "after"
modernism, we can also see in these early experiments a dance between impulses
to formal order and the provocation to formal innovation presented by the
boundary dissolving rhythms of markets. We will explore the possibility
that the modernist enterprise can still renew our need to both embrace and
fend off the vicious and productive circularity of the culture of late capitalism.
Texts: Cather, My Antonia; Faulkner, Go Down Moses;
Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises; Wright, Native Son; selections
from the poetr of Eliot, Frost, H.D., Moore, Pound, Stevens, and Williams.
354 YA (American Literature: The Early Modern Period)
MW 6:00-8:10 pm
L. Fisher
In this course we will read American fiction and poetry written between the
world wars: an era characterized by great change and experimentation in the
nation’s art and culture. Together we will examine and discuss
the consequences of such destabilization as it manifests in the styles and
content of some of the period’s representative works. Evening Degree students
only, Registration Period 1. Texts: William Faulkner,
A Light in August; Nella Larsen, Quicksand and Passing;
Gertrude Stein, Three Lives; Willa Cather, My Antonia; Ernest
Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises; photocopied course packet
355 A (American Literature: Contemporary America)
Dy 9:40
Wacker
Contemporary American Literature (1958 to the present) is a unique area of
literary study. The output and the range of innovation practiced by
writers during this period is enormous. At the same time the grounds
for determining what is truly masterful in this literature are unsettled;
time has not yet performed its trick of securing some reputations that once
seemed obscure and upending those that once seemed mighty. There is often
surprisingly little overlap in the booklists for courses in this period as
there is so much literature of genuine interest and so little certainty about
its central figures and central works. Outside the windows of our writers,
post-war American society was itself undergoing dizzying social, technical
and cultural transformation. Their writing reflects this fact, and
their innovations in style and language, their explorations of new themes,
are accelerated by the momentum of the times. Our course will look
closely at some representative work and at the complexities of the way it
mirrors the society in which it was written. We will begin by reflecting
on the role literature played during the prewar period, particularly as articulated
in the influential work of T. S. Eliot, and we will trace the way postwar
writers reinterpreted and often worked against the grain of Eliot's ideas
of tradition and of the moral and artistic nature of modern writing. We
will identify new ideas about the nature of knowledge, of beauty and of the
relationship of literature to society that emerge in Robert Lowell's Life Studies, Saul Bellow's Seize the Day, Elizabeth Bishop's
Collected Poems, Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita and Don DeLillo's
Libra. Please Note: This course assumes no prior knowledge
of the period and will focus on learning the skills needed to critically
read and write about literature. We will use frequent short writing
assignments to develop and deepen reader responses. We will
closely examine specific passages to develop styles of readingi appropriate
to the particular work, and we will review the contemporary social and cultural
contexts in which the work was written. Short essays built on
your reading, your short overnight writing assignments, class discussion
and student presentations will be completed on each of the above major works.
359 A (Contemporary American Indian Literature)
MW 3:00-4:50
Miranda
Native American Literature of Resistance. Poetry and fiction
by Indians whose work both resists colonization and reinvents survivance
in
the twentieth century. Materials by Alexie, Chrystos, Harjo, Rose, Hogan,
as well as many lesser-known writers. We will work to define “resistance”
and “colonization” as well as take numerous local field trips that will help
us come to terms with what “being Indian” means for these authors. Assignments
may include: reading assignments, class participation, in-class writing assignments
(short), quizzes, midterm, and a final in-class exam.
Offered jointly with AIS 377A. Texts: Harjo & Bird,
eds., Reinventing
the Enemy's Language; Sherman Alexie, Tonto and the Lone Ranger Fistfight
in Heaven; Louise Erdrich, Tracks; Philip Red Eagle, Red
Earth: Two Novellas, Geraldine Bonner (Zitkala-Sa), American Indian
Stories; Leslie Marmon Silko, Storyteller; Linda Hogan, Mean
Spirit; Betty Louise Bell, Faces in the Moon.
361aYA (American Political Culture: After 1865)
M-Th 6:00-8:10 pm
Cummings
(A-term)
American literature in its political and cultural context from the Civil
War to the present. Emphasizes an interdisciplinary approach to American
literature, including history, politics, anthropology, and mass media.
Evening Degree students only, Registration Period 1. Texts:
Norris, McTeague; Butler, Dawn; Hagedorn, Dogeaters;
photocopied course packet.
370 A (English Language Study)
MW 8:30-10:40
Dillon
This course is an introduction to the scientific study of language.
Drawing most of the examples from English, it surveys the major concepts of
phonetics/phonology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and sociolinguistics as
they have been developed during the twentieth century. Written work
will include exercises from the text, quizzes, a mid-term and a final. Texts:
Pinker, The Language Instinct; Ohio State Univ., Language Files.
381 A (Advanced Expository Writing)
MW 10:50- 12:20
Dillon
What makes Advanced Expository Writing advanced? Not, in this course, the
length of the papers assigned, but the variety of types, audiences, and purposes
of the papers. We will begin with a little theory about kinds of rhetorical
purposes, understanding "rhetorical" as "attempting to increase the reader's
adherence to your point of view on a matter." The assignments are designed
to give practice writing papers with four different rhetorical purposes.
That is, you can choose any topic for the papers, but the paper should be
of the type assigned. They should be of moderate length (roughly five pages
typewritten). In addition we will devote some class time to advanced points
of mechanics and punctuation and the analysis of style as it functions
rhetorically. There will be a final paper analyzing the style of a passage
of prose which you select. Students not previously enrolled at the
University of Washington (non-matriculated status) may sign up for this course
if they meet the posted ESL requirements. No texts.
381bB (Advanced Expository Writing)
M-Th 12:00-1:30
Tollefson
(B-term)
This course develops your ability to write effective analytical and argumentative
non-fiction prose. Our writing assignments will focus on the spread
of English as an international language. How is English changing as
a result of its use as a primary medium of instruction in schools and as
a major language of economic and cultural life in East and Southeast Asia,
sub-Saharan Africa, and elsewhere? What is the impact of new media,
including the internet, upon English? As new standard varieties of
English emerge, what are the consequences for written communication?
As a primary resource for class discussion and writing assignments focusing
on such questions, we will read Goodman and Graddol’s Redesigning English:
New Texts, New Identities. Students not previously enrolled at the University
of Washington (non-matriculated status) may sign up for this course if they
meet the posted ESL requirements.
383 A (Intermediate Verse Writing)
TTh 1:10-2:50
Dunlop
NOTE TIME CHANGE.
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. Text: Hollander, Rhyme’s
Reason.
384 A (Intermediate Short Story Writing)
MW 10:50-12:20
Shields
NOTE DAY/TIME CHANGE from listing in printed Time
Schedule.
Exercises and experiments in short fiction. Prerequisite: ENGL 284.
Text: photocopied course packet.
457 A (Pacific Northwest Literature)
TWTh 11:00-12:20/ Th 3:30-5:00
Lamberton & Findlay
This course is paired with HSTAA 432 and students must sign up for both courses
for a total of 10 credits. Team-taught by a professor of literature
and a professor of history, the courses together examine Pacific Northwest
history and literature in an interdisciplinary exploration of regional identity.
Ranging from the stories of Native Americans and accounts of early explorers
through the environmentalist literature of the 1990s, among other things,
we will consider as texts such historical documents as fur traders’ reports,
Indian treaties, pioneer narratives, and railroad promotions, and evaluate
historical novels, short stories, memoirs, and poems for what they reveal
and mask about the regional past. Also included will be conversations
with prominent regional authors. James Welch, Ivan Doig, Mary Clearman
Blew, Tess Gallagher, David Wagoner, and David James Duncan have agreed to
visit the class, talk about their fiction, poetry, and memoirs with students,
and participate in discussions about writing, identity, and history in the
Pacific Northwest. The six authors will also give readings from their
works to the wider community. Additional guest speakers will be scheduled.
These courses have been designed as an intensive workshop with substantial
reading, but there are no prerequisites. Current and prospective teachers
are particularly invited to enroll. N.B.:
Students must take both ENGL 457 and HSTAA 432. A student enrolling
for HSTAA 432 will automatically be enrolled in ENGL 457. You may not
enroll for ENGL 457 alone. For further information, please contact
History Undergraduate Advising (SMI 318, histadv@u.washington.edu, 206-543-5691).
471aA (The Composition Process)
M-Th 10:50-1:00
Stygall
(A-term)
This course is an introduction to the theory and practice of teaching writing,
focused on practices in high school and middle school. We’ll start
with an examination of “best practices” in teaching writing, with most of
our attention on process approaches. Because you may not have experienced
for yourself many of these practices, we will enact them as we read.
Then we’ll turn to what teachers are actually doing, especially with diverse
student populations found in almost every school district in the Puget Sound
area. We’ll take that a step further with a group project designing
unit plans based on the group’s research into a particular school and school
district’s student population. In the final section, we’ll take up
the issues of assessment of writing, especially as they are relevant to teachers
in Washington. At the same time we consider barrier assessments (in
2008, all students must pass the WASL to receive a certificate of mastery),
we’ll also examine the assessments specific students will face in the move
to college – what “writing” tests do community college students take?
How relevant are the AP English tests to what colleges expect? What
kind of writing do students do in first year composition? You’ll be
writing response papers to the reading every other day, produce a group project
on writing curriculum, and write a final empirical paper on some aspect of
writing or writing instruction. Because this is a summer session course
in the A term, if you have plans for a vacation, family events, or work interferes
during the A term, you should take the course in another quarter. Every
day you miss is the equivalent of two days of class time and a week in the
regular quarter. Text: photocopied course packet. Students
not previously enrolled at the University of Washington (non-matriculated
status) may sign up for this course if they meet the posted ESL requirements.
491 A (Internship)
*arrange*
Supervised experience in local businesses and other agencies. Open only to
upper-division English majors. Credit/no credit only. Prerequisite: 25 credits
in English. Add codes, further information in
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, further information available in Undergraduate
Advising Office, A-2-B Padelford (206-543-2634).
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, further information available in Creative
Writing office, B-25 Padelford (206-543-9865; open 1-5 daily).
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. Instructor codes, further
information available in Undergraduate Advising Office (A-2B Padelford; [206]
543-2634).
497/8aA (Honors Senior Seminar/Senior Seminar)
MW 8:30-10:40
Davis
(W)
(full term)
NOTE DAY/TERM CHANGE from listing in printed Time
Schedule.
Racialized Masculinities in American History, Literature and Film.
Beginning with Edgar Rice Burrough’s 1914 novel, Tarzan of the Apes, this
course examines the manner in which conceptions of masculinity and manhood
are contingent upon racialized conceptions of identity. Given that “masculinity”
and “manhood” are often used to denote character traits desirable in all
men, but more specifically envisioned as possessed only by white men, this
course focuses its attention upon multicultural perspectives of masculinity.
In this class, we will examine historical, literary, and filmic representations
of four distinct groups (African Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans,
and Mexican Americans) in order to more fully understand the manner in which
masculinity is dependent upon discourses of race. Students will be
required to actively participate in our class discussions. Course requirements
include four response papers, 8-10 page final paper, active participation,
and a class presentation. In addition to the required texts, there
will be a short course reader. Texts: Shawn Wong, American Knees;
Ernest J. Gaines, A Lesson Before Dying; David Walker, Walker’s
Appeal; William Andrews, ed., Three Classic African-American Novels;
Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes; Americo Paredes, With
His Pistol in His Hand; John Okada, No-No Boy.
497/8aB (Honors Senior Seminar/Senior Seminar)
M-Th 10:50-1:00
George
(W)
(A-term)
Ravishing Reads--"Difficult Pleasures" and Reading Practices in Our Time.
"We read deeply for varied reasons, most of them familiar: that we cannot know enough people profoundly enough; that we need to know ourselves better; that we require knowledge, not just of self and others, but of the way things are. Yet the strongest, most authentic motive for deep reading of the now much-abused traditional canon is the search for a difficult pleasure." --Harold Bloom, How to Read and WhyIn this intensive 5-week, multimedia course, we will investigate what it means to read traditional--and nontraditional--texts in the 21st century to experience "difficult pleasure." Some of what we read will be offline, but much will be online, and our uses of technology to read poetry, fiction, and drama might seem to enhance and detract from conventional reading pleasures. We will, for example, listen almost as much as we look at texts, just as we will test a variety of reading theories against assorted reading practices, some isolated and others communal. In essence ours is a class that will critique and test ways of reading and textual engagement in the 21st century--intellectual, imaginative, sensual. Course methods include reading and discussing reading practices critically, as well as conducting primary and secondary research about reading practices, both online and off, together as a class and individually in non-classroom locales. You will also be writing online journals. Class attendance is a must; this is not a distance-learning course, despite its in-class experimentation with computer technology. Texts: David Galef, ed., Second Thoughts: A Focus on Rereading; Sven Birkerts, The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age.
497/8bC (Honors Senior Seminar/Senior Seminar)
M-Th 12:00-2:10
Tandy
(W)
(B-term)
The Sublime Experience: Subject and Perceiver. The sublime is
an important touchstone concept for understanding changes in emotional and
artistic sensibility which were taking place at the end of the eighteenth
century in England, and for providing context for the reactions in the century
that followed. In this course, we will begin with a philosophical examination
of the sublime in the works of Kant and Burke, but we will quickly move on
to artistic representations of the sublime in visual art, poetry and prose.
As we move through the nineteenth century, our central questions will be,
what place does the sublime have in conventional, respectable Victorian society?
And what happens when the sublime, usually manifested by scenes of nature,
is instead manifested in a human being? Through this examination of
the sublime, we will address such issues as gender differences, religion,
and social relations in a developing industrial/capitalist society.
497: Honors Senior Majors only; add codes in A-2-B PDL (English Advising);
498: Senior Majors only. Texts: Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus;
Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights; Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness;
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein.
499 A (Independent Study)
*arrange*
Individual study by arrangement with instructor. Prerequisite: permission
of director of undergraduate education. Add codes, further information, available
in Undergraduate Advising office, A-2-B Padelford (206-543-2634)
Add codes are required for all graduate courses, and may be obtained in the English Graduate office, A-105 Padelford, (206) 543-2634.
586A (Graduate Writing Conference)
*Arrange*
590A (MA Essay)
*Arrange*
Research and writing project under the close supervision of a faculty member
expert in the field of study, and with the consultation of a second faculty
reader. The field of study is chosen by the student. Work is independent and
varies. The model is an article in a scholarly journal. Prerequisite: graduate
standing in English. Add codes available in English Graduate office, A-105
Padelford (543-6077).
591A (MAT Essay)
*Arrange*
Research and writing project under the close supervision of a faculty member
expert in the field of study chosen by the student within the MAT degree
orientation towards the teaching of English, and with the consultation of
a second faculty reader. The model is an article in a scholarly journal. Add
codes available in English Graduate office, A-105 Padelford (543-6077).
597A (Directed Readings)
*Arrange*
Intensive reading in literature or criticism, directed by members of doctoral
supervisory committee. Credit/no credit only. Add codes available in English
Graduate office, A-105 Padelford (543-6077).
600A (Independent Study/Research)
*Arrange*
Add codes available in English Graduate office, A-105 Padelford (543-6077).
601A (Internship)
*Arrange*
Credit/no credit only. Add codes available in English Graduate office, A-105
Padelford (543-6077).
700A (Masters Thesis)
*Arrange*
Add codes available in English Graduate office, A-105 Padelford (543-6077).
800A (Doctoral Dissertation)
*Arrange*
Add codes available in English Graduate office, A-105 Padelford (543-6077).
