Quarterly Course Descriptions:
Summer 2006

(Descriptions last updated: 14 June 2006)

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.

ESL Requirement for Non-Matriculated Students

Students not previously admitted to the University of Washington (nonmatriculated status) may enroll in ENGL 111, 121, 131, 281, 381, 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.

Freshman English Courses

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111 (Composition: Literature)
3 sections: MW 9:40-1130; M-Th 11:30-12:20; T Th 12:00-1:00
[Study and practice of good writing: topics derived from reading and discussing stories, poems, essays, and plays.] For information on ESL requirement for non-matriculated students, click here.

121 (Composition: Social Issues) S
MW 11:30-1:30
[Study and practice of good writing; topics derived from reading and discussing essays and fiction about current social and moral issues.] For information on ESL requirement for non-matriculated students, click here.

131 (Composition: Exposition)
7 sections: M-Th 9:40; M-Th 10:30-12:20; M-Th 10:50; M-Th 12:00; MW 1:50-4:00
[Study and practice of good writing; topics derived from a variety of personal, academic, and public subjects.] For information on ESL requirement for non-matriculated students, click here.

200-Level Courses

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200aA (Reading Literature) W
M-Th 8:30-10:40
O’Neill
joneill@u.washington.edu
(A-term)
We will read works from a variety of genres to develop interpretive skills based on a close attention to textual detail and an appreciation of context. Critical thinking and analytical writing are the means and end of the course. Participation, presentations, and writing are required. Texts: Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness; Muller, Ways In; Zadie Smith, White Teeth; .Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time; Melville, Melville’s Short Novels.

200aB (Reading Literature) W
M-Th 9:40-11:50
Simpson
csimpson@u.washington.edu
(A-term)
This course will focus on providing you with an understanding of narrative form, as well as providing you with a vocabulary for and approach to writing about narratives. We will start by considering what counts as “literature”, that is, what distinguishes literary narrative from other forms of storytelling or narrative. Then, we will read a range of short stories, most, but not all, from the last century. Our reading of these stories will focus on developing a close, critical understanding of their workings, with an attention to carving out the critical figurative and cultural elements that create the power of these stories. In order to hone our critical skills, we will write short, focused pieces on a weekly basis. Regular and timely class attendance is not just advised but mandatory for passing the course. Writers will likely include: Herman Melville; Willa Cather; George Saunders; Annie Proulx; and Jhumpa Lahiri. All course readings will be collected in a course packet, available at the Ave Copy Center.

207aA (Introduction to Cultural Studies)
M-Th 9:40-11:50
George
elgeorge@u.washington.edu
(A-term)


“If an exploration of a particular culture will lead to a heightened understanding of a work of literature produced within that culture, so too a careful reading of a work of literature will lead to a heightened understanding of the culture within which it was produced.” --Stephen Greenblatt, “Culture”

“Culture” – the traditions, beliefs, customs, habits and practices of a society – form the basis of social institutions. These, in turn, are frequently the subject of literary authors who use their imaginative works as a means to cultivate and/or critique cultural values. Literary critics who employ a cultural analytical approach seek to discover the beliefs and practices within literary texts and link them to the social contexts within which they were composed. This course will focus on these links. During the quarter, we will read a sampling of narratives on various themes in both traditional verbal and multimedia formats to deepen and widen our understanding of particular cultures and related themes. Course requirements include regular class attendance and thoughtful, vocal participation; a willingness to think critically and contextually about narratives that are sometimes viewed as commonly “popular” or “mere entertainment”; online research; discussion leading and presentations, short written assignments; a final essay examination. Texts include fiction, documentaries, and feature films, and at least some (but not necessarily all) of the following: Coupland, “Microserfs”; Labute, In the Company of Men; Stettner, The Business of Strangers; Proulx, “Brokeback Mountain”; Lee, Brokeback Mountain; Payne, Sideways; Figgis, Leaving Las Vegas; Kwietniowski, Owning Mahowney; Merides, American Beauty; Doyle, The Woman Who Walked into Doors.

212aA (Literature of Enlightenment & Revolution)
M-Th 10:50-1:00
Butwin
joeyb@u.washington.edu
(A-term)
Solitude and Society. As direct heirs of what has been called the “invention of liberty” in the 18th and 19th centuries, we have been obliged to learn new ways of maintaining our individuality in a community made up of millions of other free-wheeling individualists. One strategy of course is to go it alone; another is to design large, well-populated states that set out to insure the individual liberty of all members. In this course we will discuss efforts, imagined and real, to reconcile the benefits and liabilities of solitude and society. Lecture, discussion, short essays written in and out of class. Texts: The U.S. Constitution; Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe; Jean Jacques Rousseau, Reveries of a Solitary Walker (selections); The Social Contract (selections); William Wordsworth, The Prelude (selections); Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (selections); H. D. Thoreau, Walden; John Stuart Mill, On Liberty.

213aA (Modern & Postmodern Literature)
M-Th 9:40-11:50
Wacker
nwacker@u.washington.edu
(A-term)
This course identifies in modernist literary, visual and political culture, fault lines employed by post-war writers in projects that are sometimes loosely filed under the title of post-modernism, but include post-colonialism, post structuralism, cultural study and post-humanism. We will read the primary texts closely and contribute individual and group presentations on postwar cultural contexts and competing approaches to defining the period. Texts: Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway; James Joyce, Dubliners; Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart; Dubravka Ugresic, The Museum of Unconditional Surrender; and essays by Eliot, Woolf, Jameson, Lyotard and others.

213bB (Modern & Postmodern Literature)
M-Th 9:40-11:50
Laufenberg
hjl3@u.washington.edu
(B-term)
Understanding the contexts and theories behind literature usually leads to deeper understanding and appreciation. This is particularly true when examining the highly experimental and self-conscious literature of the 20th century. Modernism and postmodernism are the broadest theories useful in bringing formal lucidity and rich thematic understanding to many of these difficult literary works.

These terms – modern and postmodern – might be drawn as opposing or consecutive, as describing historical periods delineated by time and/or cultural outlooks and events, as figuring different ways of thinking about how one might represent (or not) in narrative and image. This course seeks to understand some of these ways of thinking about art in the twentieth century and to use the concepts of modern and postmodern to access and appreciate a number of the most evasive texts written in any era. Some of the authors we might read, in whole or part: Gertrude Stein, T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolfj, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Marianne Moore, Edna Millay, Allen Ginsberg, Sylvia Plath, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, William Gass, John Barth, Jorge Luis Borges, Toni Morrison, Gloria Anzaldua, John Cheever, Robert Coover, Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery. Various critical texts will be excerpted and photocopied. Required texts: Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises; Geyh, et al., eds., Postmodern Fiction: A Norton Anthology.

225 A (Shakespeare) W
M-Th 12:00
(W)
Olsen
elenao@u.washington.edu
Shakespearean Summer of Love. In this introductory Shakespeare course, we’ll read three comedies about love and three tragedies, in addition to as many sonnets as we can find time for. We will explore every dark and every delightful aspect of the lover’s consciousness which Shakespeare sets before us. In so doing, students will gain an understanding of some of the most important and popular plays in the Shakespeare canon, and some of the critical issues involved in the study and enjoyment of Shakespeare. At least one longer essay, several shorter papers, midterm and/or final exam, intensive discussion. Texts: Shakespeare, Four Great Tragedies: Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, Othello; Twelfh Night, Or, What You Will; A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Love’s Labor's Lost.

242aA (Reading Fiction) W
M-Th 12:00-2:10
Harkins
gharkins@u.washington.edu
(A-term)
Family Romances: Reading Intimate Fictions. This course will provide an introduction to studies of the novel. Our specific focus will be on “family romances,” fictions that narrate social, political, and economic conflicts as family dramas. Together we will ask: why did emergence of the novel occur alongside the emergence of the nuclear family in the West? What is the “novel,” and which media are included or excluded from it at different times? What is the “family,” and which forms of intimate and domestic life are included or excluded from it at different times? To provide a broad introduction, we will read a range of writing from the late eighteenth through the early twenty-first centuries. Key novelistic media for this class will include historical romance, realist fiction, short stories, and television shows. Readings are likely to include: Samuel Richardson, Clarissa (excerpts); Charles Brockton Brown, Wieland; Charles Chesnutt, The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line (selections); Henry James, What Maisie Knew; Nella Larsen, Passing; Fae Myenne Ng, Bone; and Juliet Diaz, Drown.

242 B (Reading Fiction) W
M-Th 9:40
Peck
peckl@u.washington.edu
Modernist Innovations: 1895-1950. Much of the allure of Modernist writing derives from the shifts in both perspective and technique which characterize it. In this course, we’ll examine these innovations in light of the social changes that pushed writers (and all artists) of this period to forge new modes of expression. Each of the authors we will study was, in his or her own way, breaking from a narrative tradition they found inadequate for expression of the contemporary human experience. What, exactly, does Modernism reject, and what, if anything, does it affirm in its place? What aspects of this heritage have endured, and with what repercussions? These are a few of the questions we’ll consider as we seek to develop our critical awareness as readers and hone our rhetorical skills as writers via in-class reflections, one-page response papers on each work, and two 5-page argumentative essays. Texts: Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure; Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent; Ernest Hemingway, In Our Time; Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway; J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye; photocopied course packet.

242 C (Reading Fiction) W
M-Th 10:50
K. Feldman
feldmank@u.washington.edu
Fictions of Diaspora. This reading-intensive course will introduce students to a small selection of the most celebrated English-language novels of the post-cold war period. We will engage these novels in order to ask after the formal constraints and opportunities made available in recent fiction, how engagements with the novel form grapple with other “fictions” circulating in popular discourse, and how the resurgence of novelistic fiction has functioned as a site to struggle around these meanings.

This is a weighty charge to be sure. To narrow our task, we will read for what we might provisionally call the “fictions of diaspora.” “Diaspora”—the (often violent) dispersal of people and ideas across the global terrain—is a term which carries analytic power to help us to see how the socially prescribed fictions of “race,” “class,” “gender,” “sexuality” and “nation” move across and within ideas that inform naturalized notions of ourselves and our worlds. By foregrounding diaspora as an analytical framework, we will grapple with how recent authors have utilized the novel form to create and thematize linkages across the gaps of time and place, gaps made all the wider by systems of colonial domination, racial capitalism, and hyper-nationalism. The rhetorical, political, and textual traces thematized in these novels will provide the basis for our inquiry into the social, political, and literary currents deposited in the materials of novelistic fiction.

Students will be expected to keep up with a heavy reading load, and to write 2 relatively short exploratory essay (3-5 pages each) and 1 longer argumentative essay (6-8 pages).

Novels will include: Diana Abu Jaber’s Crescent, Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place, Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake, Toni Morrison’s Jazz, Philip Roth’s Counterlife, and Salman Rushdie’s Shalimar the Clown. These novels will be supplemented by theoretical and historical readings on race, nation, and diaspora.

250aA (Introduction to American Literature)
M-Th 9:40-11:50
Patterson
mpat@u.washington.edu
(A-term)
For honesty’s stake, let me say what this course isn’t. It is not a “survey” of American literature, but rather an “introduction” to it. Its aim is to introduce you to this national literature by focusing on three themes—engaging American society, captivity, and passing—that are often present in works by American authors. That means we will read the works thematically, not chronologically. I also look at this class as a brief (very brief!) introduction to themes in American culture. We will be reading the culture through the literature, and many of our discussions will try to understand how literature is both a part of and a creator of culture. In addition to being about American literature and culture, this course is also meant to introduce you to some specific literary concepts (like figurative language, narrative, and ideology) and to methods of literary analysis, especially close-reading. Readings will include a Puritan captivity narrative, an 18th century sentimental narrative, as well as works by Frederick Douglass, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Nella Larsen, and Julie Otsuka. Texts: Susanna Rowson, Charlotte Temple; Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life; F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby; Nella Larsen, Passing; Julie Otsuka, When the Emperor was Divine; Art Spiegelman, Maus, Vol 1: My Father Bleeds History.

281bA (Intermediate Expository Writing)
MW 8:30-10:00
Instructor TBA
(B-term)
[Writing papers communicating information and opinion to develop accurate, competent, and effective expression.] (For information on ESL requirement for non-matriculated students, click here.)

282 A (Composing for the Web)
MW 12:00-2:10
Dillon
dillon@u.washington.edu
This course is taught in a computer integrated (“studio”) environment using PCs and Windows programs. Small group work, presentations, workshopping, and individual assignments will be supplemented with brief lectures. Students can expect to develop an ability to use (X)HTML and CSS to make web pages and link them together as web sites, as well as an ability to analyze and critique web writing. Recommended preparation includes some experience editing digital images, knowledge of how to upload and download files, and familiarity with Dante/Vergil command line (Unix commands). All assignments will be submitted as web pages. Assignments will involve analysis, redesign, and fresh composition of websites. Pages should be valid, error-free (including spelling), good looking, and should use the markup introduced in class. For further information see http://courses.washington.edu/hypertext/engl282/ Text: Elizabeth Castro, HTML for the World Wide Web with XHTML and CSS: Visual QuickStart Guide, 5th ed. (For information on ESL requirement for non-matriculated students, click here.)

283 A (Beginning Verse Writing)
MW 8:30-10:00
Walker
codyw@u.washington.edu
Asked to give a definition of poetry, Robert Frost replied, “Poetry is the kind of thing poets write.” We’ll see if we can expand upon that definition just a bit. We’ll read a great deal of poetry (spanning 2700 years and several continents), and we’ll discuss the specific qualities – of tone, of music, of imagery – that make some poems worth rereading (and rereading, and rereading). We’ll look at forms ranging from the sonnet to the villanelle to the double abecedarian. Assignments will include memorizations, imitations, and competitive forgeries. We’ll write (and revise) our own poems; we’ll critique our classmates’ work. At all times, we’ll keep John Berryman’s aim in mind: “to write so good . . . the trolls of language will scream & come over to my side.” Required texts: a course packet and two books, Making Your Own Days, Kenneth Koch; The Rattle Bag, Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes (editors). The books may be purchased at Open Books: A Poem Emporium, located at 2414 N. 45th St. (Hours: Tuesday to Thursday, 12 to 6, Friday and Saturday 12 to 7). Open Books is one of only two poetry-only bookstores in the country. If you’re a student of poetry and you live in Seattle, you should feel obligated, I think, to darken its doorstep.

284aA (Beginning Short Story Writing)
M-Th 12:00–1:30
Shields
dshields@davidshields.com
(A-term)
Short readings and short assignments and exercises intended to give students a sense of the formal possibilities of fiction and nonfiction. Meets with 384aA. Text: Shields, Remote: Reflections on Life in the Shadow of Celebrity.

284aB (Beginning Short Story Writing)
M-Th 10:50-12:20
Wong
homebase@u.washington.edu
(A-term)
This course is an introduction to the writing of fiction. Students will examine and analyze writing strategies with respect to developing readable and challenging short stories. To that end, students will investigate risks and rewards of constructing a story, telling a story, and managing the elements of fiction, such as character, plot, dialogue, setting, tone, mood, theme, and point of view. Students will write a series of short two-page assignments, critique each other’s work, and lead a discussion of the craft of fiction using work by published authors. Text: George Plimpton, ed., The Paris Review Book: of Heartbreak, Madness, Sex, Love, Betrayal, Outsiders, Intoxication, War, Whimsy, Horrors, God, Death, Dinner, Baseball, Travels, the Art of Writing, and Everything Else in the World Since 1953.

284bC (Beginning Short Story Writing)
M-Th 8:30-9:50 (note change from previously-published meeting time)
Duff
prduff@u.washington.edu
(B-term)
This course will offer an introductory look at the art of writing short stories. In particular, we will focus on elements of craft such as character, plot, setting, point of view, dialogue, theme, metaphor and simile, to name a few. You will have the opportunity to write two stories, both of which will be presented to small groups and discussed in a workshop setting. In addition to this, you will have the opportunity to write seven shorter pieces to help build your writing portfolio. We will also be spending a considerable amount of our time reading the works of published writers, learning how to explore stories as writers as well as readers. It is the goal of this class – through the critical skills you will learn during workshop, writing critical reviews of each others’ stories, and through our discussions of published works – that you will leave the class with the skills necessary to create original and effective prose fiction. No texts.

Upper Division (300-400 Level) Courses

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302aA (Critical Practice)
M-Th 9:40-11:50
Popov
popov@u.washington.edu
(A-term)
Poetics of the Novel. This course provides theoretical basics and practical training in the analysis of narrative form. The class will study three major novels from three different periods as well as some shot fiction. Students will learn to apply key critical concepts associated with the poetics of the novel (story and plot, modes of narration, reliable and unreliable narrators, framing and embedding, point of view, methods of representing consciousness, irony, defamiliarization, metafiction, intertextuality). Please note: ENGL 302 is an introduction to advanced literary analysis. The course is designed to introduce aspiring English majors to the professional pursuits and protocols – as well as the pleasures – of English studies as a discipline. Several short assignments, midterm and final. Texts: Schlomith Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics; George Eliot, Silas Marner; James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman; recommended: Seymour Chatman, Story and Discourse; David Lodge, The Art of Fiction.

310 A (The Bible as Literature)
M-Th 8:30
Griffith
jgriff@u.washington.edu
A rapid study of readings 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: Michael Coogan, ed., New Oxford Annotated Bible, 3rd ed.

315aA (Literary Modernism)
M-Th 12:00-2:10
Staten
hstaten@u.washington.edu
(A-term)
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. Our approach to the reading of the literary works will be strictly ‘formalist.’ I do not expect you to already know what formalist reading is or how to do it; this course will teach you. In fact, the literary works you read will teach you, because modernist writing is what the theory of formalist reading is based on. You will write a short warm-up paper on modernist poetry in the first week, followed by a 4-5 page mid-term paper on the same topic; your final paper will be a 4-5 page paper on modernist prose. We will spend the first half of the course reading the work of three poets, the second half the work of prose writers, as follows: Poems: Baudelaire, poems (xerox); Rilke, poems (xerox); Eliot, Selected Poems; Fiction: Kafka, “The Metamorphosis”; Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway; Gide, The Counterfeiters.

323bA (Shakespeare to 1603)
M-Th 12:00-2:10
Streitberger
streitwr@u.washington.edu
(B-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, 5th ed.

323 B (Shakespeare to 1603)
TTh 7-8:50 pm (Evening Degree section)
Webster
cicero@u.washington.edu
Just about everybody has heard of Shakespeare. His plays have for four centuries dominated the English stage, and have deeply influenced the dramatic and cinematic traditions of countless other language cultures as well. But not everybody has liked reading Shakespeare. Indeed, a lot of people have no idea why so much is made of Shakespeare in the first place! Having been myself driven through Hamlet line by line in the twelfth grade, I do understand that point of view. (That’s probably why I started college as a chemistry major.) For those reasons among others, the chief goal of this class will be to make you more informed, confident, active, and, especially, happy readers of Shakespeare’s plays. Starting with a selection of Shakespeare’s sonnets, we’ll then go on to three of his best-known early to mid-career work: As You Like It, the first part of Henry IV, and Much Ado About Nothing. As a final term project you will also be choosing one of Shakespeare’s other early plays to read and report on, both to extend your acquaintance with Shakespeare’s works and to demonstrate to yourself as well as to me your newly acquired Shakespeare reading skills. By the end of the quarter you will thus have had an introduction to a good range of his earlier plays, and with just a little luck, you will have enjoyed doing it too. (Anyone interested in a more complete description of what will happen in this class can go to my website (http://faculty.washington.edu/cicero/). Once there, click first on the SoTL button, and then on the Course Portfolio: Close-reading Shakespeare link.) (Evening Degree students only.) Texts: Shakespeare, As You Like It, 1 Henry IV, Much Ado About Nothing; photocopied course packet.

324aA (Shakespeare from 1603)
M-Th 10:50-1:00
Coldewey
jcjc@u.washington.edu
(A-term)
[Shakespeare's career as dramatist after 1603. Study of comedies, tragedies, and romances.] Texts: Greenblatt, et al., eds., The Norton Shakespeare; Russ McDonald, The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare; A. C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy.

329bA (Rise of the English Novel)
M-Th 9:40-11:50
Olsen
elenao@u.washington.edu
(B-term)
[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.] Texts: Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders; Samuel Richardson, Pamela; Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews / Shamela; Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, Lady Susan, The Watsons, Sanditon.

330bA (English Literature: The Romantic Age)
M-Th 8:30-10:40
T. Feldman
tfeldman@u.washington.edu
(B-term)
The term "romantic" may be used today rather dismissively of a certain attitude of emotionality or spontaneity, but for British art and literature of the Romantic Age such affective attitudes had radical, even revolutionary implications for thinking through how individuals might engage and come to know the world around them. Many artists and authors watched with a keen eye the unfolding complexities of cultural debates and political events at the time, and central to many artistic and literary responses was the role of emotions and affects. This course considers specific examples of Romantic conceptualizations of "science" and "landscape," and asks: What is "science" for Romantic artists and authors? How are "nature" and "landscape" mediated by Romanticism? How do Romantic texts gender the concepts of "science" and "landscape"? What is the role of emotions and affectivity in Romantic configurations of perception, knowledge, and understanding? Course readings will include two complete novels (Pride and Prejudice, and Frankenstein), and a selection of short poems and critical writings, and may include watching some films. Proposed authors include the following: Mary Wollstonecraft, Anna Letitia Barbauld, Charlotte Smith, Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, John Clare, and John Keats. Texts: Longman Anthology of British Literature Vol. 2A; packaged with Shelley, Frankenstein and Austen, Pride and Prejudice.

333aA (English Novel: Early & Middle 19th C.)
M-Th 8:30-10:40
Butwin
joeyb@u.washington.edu
(A-term)
A great deal of fiction written in England between 1800 and 1860 describes the struggle of unprotected individuals – frequently they are orphaned – to make their way in a hostile, highly competitive world. Sound familiar? Well, it should, for this is the period and these are the favorite stories of people who saw the beginnings of the political and industrial revolutions that determine many of our own great and minor expectations. Lecture, discussion, short essays written in and out of class. Texts: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre; Charles Dickens, Great Expectations.

336aA (English Literature: The Early Modern Period)
M-Th 12:00-2:10
Wacker
nwacker@u.washington.edu
(A-term)
This course explores the interaction between the narrative and poetic experiments that defined English language modernist novels and poems and the visual, popular and political culture with which modernist writers were interacting. We will read the primary texts closely and contribute individual and group presentations on the modernist cultural context and the coherence and influence of “modernism” as a cultural and literary movement. Texts: Conrad, Heart of Darkness; Woolf, To the Lighthouse; Ford, The Good Soldier; Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; poems by Eliot, Yeats and others, and essays by Eliot, Woolf, Ford, Achebe and others.

349 A (Science Fiction & Fantasy)
TTh 10:50-1:00
Robertson
vernr@u.washington.edu
This summer we will split our time between fantasy and dystopic science fiction in a study of contemporary trends in both genres. Students will respond to reading questions and will write two short essays. Course website: http://courses.washington.edu/littime. Texts: Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go; Keith Miller, The Book of Flying; Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake; Gregory Maguire, Wicked.

353bA (American Literature: Later 19th C.)
M-Th 12:00-2:10
Scheiding
(B-term)
The theme of this course will be literature and democracy in late nineteenth-century America (1865-1910). During this time, America underwent fundamental transformations both at home and abroad. It saw the birth of a global empire, as well as the rise of America to the world’s foremost industrial and economic nation. The rapid growth of American cities after the Civil War, stimulated to a great degree by immigration and industrialization, transformed America from a rural agrarian society to an urban industrial society and resulted in challenges for both the private and public sectors. Along with these transformations that produced profound social changes, there were dramatic shifts in the fortunes of Americans as economic changes resulted in intense class movements and conflicts. American writers in the late 19th century chronicled the various political, geographic, cultural, and economic transformations that characterized the decades between 1870 and 1910. They were both struggling with and inspired by these forces of changes that were unleashed during this time. We will study a number of novels, short stories, poems, and a variety of cultural texts (art, photography, cartoons, advertisements, film) that document the realities and consequences of these changes. As this period saw the rise of realism and naturalism, we will also examine the role literature played in helping to shape the making of “Americans.” Requirements: There are four main requirements: three in-class writing assignments, oral report, active participation, final exam. Texts: Stephen Crane, Maggie: a Girl of the Streets and other New York Writings; Abraham Cahan, Yekl; William Dean Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham; Kate Chopin, The Awakening; Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie; Paul Lauter, ed., The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Vol. C: Late 19th-Century, 1865-1910; additional class handouts will be provided by the instructor.

359aA (Contemporary American Indian Literature)
M-Th 9:40-11:50
Colonnese
buffalo@u.washington.edu
(A-term)
[Creative writings -- novels, short stories, poems -- of contemporary Indian authors; traditions out of which they evolved. Differences between Indian writers and writers of the dominant European/American mainstream.] Offered jointly with AIS 377aA, SISCA 490aB.

361aA (American Political Culture after 1865)
M-Th 6:00-8:00 pm
Cummings
ckate@u.washington.edu
(A-term)
This course will examine ongoing tensions and marked disconnections between mass-mediated national narratives and actual state policies: that is, between hegemonic ideology and historical realities. The former includes representations of America: as “the land of equal opportunity,” “individuality” and “civil rights”; a “color blind society” and “multicultural mosaic”; a nation united in its respect for the “sanctity of all human life”; and an international force for “peace, justice, human freedom, and prosperity.” We will track articulations of these ideological narratives and revisions to them from the Post World War II Era to the present; we will read, therefore, across disciplines (eg., literature, law, journalism, film, and social critique); and we will pay particular attention to experimental texts whose formal strategies are a significant component of the challenge they pose to hegemonic narratives of nation.

Active and informed participation in class discussion, five short critiques of assigned readings, a group project, and either two 5 pages critical essays or one 10 page critical essay are the core requirements. A course packet will supplement required texts which are likely to include: Octavia Butler, Dawn; Ozeki, My Year of Meats; Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickle and Dimed; Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye; R. Zamora Linmark, Rolling the R’s and the 2006 Oscar winning films, Brokeback Mountain and Crash. NOTE: this is not an Evening Degree course and is open to day students only.

NOTE: this is not an Evening Degree course; open to day students only.

368aA (Women Writers)
M-Th 12-2:10
George
elgeorge@u.washington.edu
(A-term)
Contemporary Women Writers: Fact, Fiction and Film. This is a course about contemporary women who write about being female in our contemporary world, particularly as gender relates to the need to secure personal and political rights and opportunities for women equal to those of men. It is also a course about how popular and scholarly readers respond to these feminist concerns. We will be reading an assortment of contemporary prose fiction and non-fiction by women, including some of the following prize-winning authors: Joan Didion, Gwendolyn Brooks, Toni Morrison, Sandra Cisneros, Susan Faludi, Mary Gordon, Annie Dillard, Maya Angelou, Ali Smith, Zadie Smith, Marilynne Robinson, Margaret Atwood, and Robyn Davidson. Course texts outside of the course reading packet will include The Beacon Book of Essays by Contemporary American Women as well as the films Thelma and Louise and North Country. This is an intensive 4-1/2-week course that is reading rich and discussion centered. Course requirements include active discussion, group presentations, online research, and short essays.

384aA (The Craft of Prose)
M-Th 12-1:30
Shields
dshields@davidshields.com
(A-term)
Short readings and short assignments and exercises intended to give students a sense of the formal possibilities of fiction and nonfiction. Meets with 284aA. Text: Shields, Remote: Reflections on Life in the Shadow of Celebrity.

440 A (Special Studies in Literature)
MW 7-8:50 pm
Dean
(W)
gnodean@u.washington.edu
(Evening Degree students only.)
Parallel Modernisms. Will the real modernism please stand up? "Modernism" used to mean the international crowd of eccentrics living it up in Europe between the world wars who dedicated themselves to artistic revolution. But these extreme bohemians, along with their more straight-laced brethren, did not make art in isolation; they were responding to unsettling, exciting and world-wide transformations of familiar political, social, economic, technological and intellectual terrains. Scholars now agree that "modernism" means an assortment of overlapping movements that involved popular culture, everyday life, machinery, psychology and affairs of state, as well as "high art." How, then, do we study this new modernism of global proportions, multiple aesthetic agendas and complex social forces? In this course, we will examine three of many possible modernist configurations, each with special ties to the American scene and a self-conscious sense of community: the "experimental expatriates," the "New Negroes" and those we could call, for lack of a better term, the "American regenerates." While each group concentrated on its particular concerns, all were interested in developing literary techniques and topics that corresponded with the bewildering modern conditions for living. We will focus on texts by Gertrude Stein, Langston Hughes and William Carlos Williams, but also read works by their friends, enemies and colleagues. This course satisfies the senior capstone requirement for English majors. Texts: Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas; Paul Lauter, The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Volume D: Modern Period; William Carlos Willimas, The Doctor Stories.

477 A (Children’s Literature)
M-Th 10:50
Griffith
jgriff@u.washington.edu
We’ll read and discuss an assortment of fairy tales, other stories and novels for children. 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. Texts: John Griffith & Charles Frey, eds., Classics of Children’s Literature, 6th ed.; J. K Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

491A (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 Undergraduate Advising office, A-2-B Padelford (543-2634).

492A (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 Writing Programs office, A-11 Padelford (543-2190).

493A (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 (543-9865; open 11-3 daily).

496A (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 Programs office, A-11 Padelford (543-2190).

497/498aA (Honors Senior Seminar/Senior Seminar) W
MW 10:50-1:00
Simpson
csimpson@u.washington.edu
The Graphic Novel? As a descriptive term for a popular form of visual storytelling, ‘graphic novel’ is both inadequate and misleading. Most aren’t novels at all but often an odd mix of autobiography, personal essay, travel narrative, and historiography, and there is currently little in the way of a critical account of the cultural politics of the form. Yet statistics seem to indicate that the ‘graphic novel’ is the most widely read and circulated (arguably ‘literary’), global genre of writing or storytelling. With almost nothing to go on, aside from a few scattered theoretical readings, we will attempt to construct our own sense of how, if, and in what regard, the ‘graphic novel’ matters as a form of literature. How, as well as when, should it be regarded as a ‘literary’ text or form? What historical or cultural conditions seem to have created its power as a popular reading genre at the end of the twentieth century? Texts may include: Jimmy Corrigan; Palestine; Persepolis; Epileptic; and Blankets. This list is tentative, so please check the UW bookstore later for a final list. (497: Honors senior majors only; add codes available in Undergraduate Programs office, A-11 Padelford, (206) 543-2190; 498: Senior English majors only.)

499A (Independent Study)
*Arrange*
Individual study by arrangement with instructor. Prerequisite: permission of director of undergraduate education. Add codes, further information, available in Undergraduate Programs office, A-11 Padelford (543-2190).

Graduate Courses

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Add codes are required for all graduate courses, and may be obtained in the English Graduate office, A-105 Padelford.

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 consultaion 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).



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UW English Undergraduate Programs
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Updated April 06 2022

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