majoring/minoring in english
undergraduate programs
admission to the major
the english minor
major/degree requirements
course descriptions
advising
staying connected
opportunities
study abroad
fall in friday harbor
english honors
phi beta kappa
sigma tau delta
annual dean's list
bricolage
scholarships and prizes
undergraduate research
internships
life after college
career information
graduate school preparation
for prospective teachers
publishing
resources & information
english studies librarian
diversity info
graduation
alumni
student groups and publications
frequently asked questions
prospective UW students
contact us
(Descriptions last updated: 26 June 2002)
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: TTh 9:40-11:40; 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.
131 (Composition: Exposition)
5 sections: M-Th 8:30; M-Th 9:40; M-Th 10:50; M-Th 12:00; MW 1:10-3:10
[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.
200aA (Reading Literature)
M-Th 8:30-10:40
Gillis-Bridges
(W)
(A-term)
Focusing on the writers of the Harlem Renaissance, students will learn how
to develop complex interpretations of literary texts, interpretations that
address the work’s language and form as well as the contexts surrounding
its production. This section of ENGL 200 is computer-integrated; students
will use the computer as a communication and textual study tool. However,
technical savvy is not a course prerequisite. Students will receive
instruction in all technical tools used in the classroom. Texts: Zora
Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God; Nella Larsen, Passing;
David L. Lewis, ed., The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader; Jean
Toomer, Cane.
200 B (Reading Literature)
Dy 9:40
Wacker
(W)
How writers construct literary works and the links between those works and
the market places, cities, states and empires in which they lived or lived
to see melt into air are the topics of our course. We will study some
of the differences of genre (drama, poetry, prose dialogue, short story, fiction)
and some of the different demands they make on our participation as readers
and interpreters. We will also discuss how close the marriage can be
between new perspectives on a writer's times and changes and developments
in the literary forms writers use. We will also view two contemporary
adaptations of an ancient and a Renaissance play to examine how earlier forms
and perspectives inform later explorations of form, perspective and meaning. We
will also look at the way a contemporary writer engages multimedia, multicultural
and globalized places and the writer's place within them. Texts:
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness & Selections; Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis;
Plato, Gorgias; William Shakespeare, Hamlet; The Sonnets;
Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus; Dubravka Ugresic, Museum of Unconditional
Surrender; photocopied course packect (including Kis, Encyclopaedia
of the Dead).
200 C (Reading Literature)
MW 9:40-11:50
Oldham
(W)
This class has three goals: First, to read some good books and talk about
how they speak to us, individually and as members of society. Second, to
introduce
some basic concepts and perspectives in contemporary literary scholarship.
That means learning some new terms and methods, challenging our gut responses
to what we read, and dissecting the work-at the risk of "killing" it-the better
to understand what makes it live. Third, to ask how these two different ways
of reading relate to each other. Is one superior? Are they mutually exclusive
(and if so why) or do they reinforce each other (and if so how)? Are they,
in fact, really different at all? I don't have a firm opinion on these questions,
which means I'll make a great devil's advocate! Participation is key
to the success of this class: be prepared to discuss every day, or don't
take the class. Three papers are also required. Texts:
Hoban, Riddley Walker; Robinson, Housekeeping; Galeano, The
Book of Embraces; photocopied course packet and/or handouts.
200 D (Reading Literature)
TTh 9:40-11:50
Goss
(W)
If a fiction writers, playwright, or poet creates a criminal or sinner whose
acts are understandable or even sympathetic to us as readers, has that writer
revealed to us our own corrupt tendencies? Or has the writer instead
taught us new ideas, sensations, or emotions that make us intimate with evil
for the first time? This course will introduce you to the forms, actions,
and effects of short fiction, poetry, and the novel as literary genres by
examining the representation and experience of evil within each of these genres.
We’ll read works ranging from Sophocles’ drama Oedipus Rex,
to Garcia Marquez’s novel, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, as well
as poems about the Holocaust and other topics, and short fiction by writers
like Flannery
O’Connor. I believe that learning to read literature with full and
varied attention to what is present on the page is necessary to managing
any questions about what literature has been in culture, and what it may
do or may be for readers at any time. The problem of evil in literature
is a strong test case for the kinds of moral, intellectual, and emotional
relationships a reader may have with a text. Please expect substantive
reading and writing in this course. Texts: Patrick Suskind,
Perfume; Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Chronicle of a Death Foretold;
Hilda Schiff, ed., Holocaust Poetry; Sophocles, The Theban Plays.
211aA (Medieval & Renaissance Literature)
M-Th 10:50-1:00
Simmons-0’Neill
(A-term)
This course will survey some poetry, prose and drama from the European Middle
Ages and Renaissance, beginning with selections from Boethius’ Consolation
of Philosophy and ending with Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. Along
the way, we will focus on reading literary texts in cultural context, on the
development of the English language, on research skills in the discipline
of English, and on a variety of forms for sharing our knowledge: discussion,
short writing, passage exams, and student presentations. Texts:
Katharina M. Wilson, ed., Medieval Women Writers; James Winny, ed./tr.,
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; Chaucer, Canterbury Tales (Hieatt & Hieatt,
eds.; dual language edition); Shakespeare, Midsummer
Night’s Dream.
212 A (Literature of Enlightenment & Revolution)
TTh 9:40-11:50
Gribben
(full term)
An introduction to Romanticism and Victorianism, this course develops and
challenges the notion that one is "shown" the world through the senses.
Major nineteenth-century enlightenments and revolutions result from debates
about evolution, the sexes, industrialism and faith. However, this
class focuses primarily on the ways in which these debates affect the concept
of imagination as a mode of perception. Readings and projects, therefore,
explore how theories of perception reflect changing cultural notions of
what the visual "tells" us about the world. Texts have been selected
for the degree to which they either embody a way of seeing or posit an alternative
way of seeing, which means we will be reading a lot of poetry and fantasy
novels. Assignments include short response papers, two 6-7 page papers,
a midterm and a final. Texts: Abrams, et al., Norton Anthology
of English Literature, Vol. 2; George MacDonald, At the Back of the
North Wind; Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland/Through
the Looking Glass; Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray; Mary
Shelley, Frankenstein; George DuMaurier, Trilby; possibly: Bronte,
Wuthering Heights.
213 A (Modern & Postmodern Literature)
Dy 10:50
Keeling
(full term)
Arguably, American, British, and Continental Modernist writing during the
first decades of the twentieth century were influenced by psychoanalytic
theory -- even if indirectly. In addition to Sigmund Freud’s theories
regarding sexuality -- first translated and published in English by Virginia
and Leonard Woolf’s Hogarth Press -- were those concerning repression.
Freud argued that censored (repressed) materials emerged from the unconscious
in the form of dreams and, importantly, in creative activities that produce
art. It is the relationship between repression and creative activity
-- in many diverse forms – that will be the focus of our readings of
Modern and Postmodern literature. Texts: James Joyce, The Dead;
Thomas Mann, Death in Venice; Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway;
Nella Larsen, Passing; Toni Morrison, Sula; E. L. Doctorow,Ragtime;
Michael Cunningham, The Hours; Mayros Santos-Febres, Sirena, Selena.
213aB (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 9:40
C. Fischer
(W)
(full term)
This course is designed as an introduction to Shakespearean tragedy. We
will be reading the four major examples of the genre: Hamlet, Macbeth,
Othello, and King Lear, as well as examining various theories
of the tragic. Our focus will be on a close reading of the plays --
with an eye towards dramatic structure, language, and imagery -- but we will
also examine the cultural and social context of the Jacobean period in an
attempt to fit form with function, style with history. Texts: Shakespeare,
Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello,King Lear.i
229 A (English Literary Culture: 1600-1800)
MW 8:30-10:40
Taylor
(full term)
A survey of texts that illustrate the history of English literature and
the changing cultural situation between 1600 and 1800, with emphasis on the
skills of reading they require. Grade for the course determined by daily
response papers, participation, and a final examination. Texts: Abrams,
et al., The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 1B and Vol.
1C.
242aA (Reading Fiction)
M-Th 8:30-10:40
Simpson
(W)
(A-term)
New Immigrant Writing. Our focus in this coruse is the new
immigrant writing, the spate of recent works of fiction published in the
last decade of the 20th century that inaugurate a new form of the immigrant
narrative in the west. These works commonly address issues, such as:
immigrants' function in a global economy; the exhaustion of the US, heteronormative
family; the legacy of post-WWII trauma. Rather than trying to exhaust
the field, we will instead limit our focus to close readings of two or three
short stories and two novels. Texts: Ruth Ozeki, My Year of Meats;
Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated.
242 B (Reading Fiction)
MW 12:00-2:10
Hennessee
(W)
(full term)
Monsters of Fiction. This course will examine representations of
monstrosity in texts ranging from Medieval to Romantic to Victorian to Postmodern
(with a foray into Children's Literature). Across this wide span, three questions
will guide our discussions: 1. How do monsters serve as the defining limit
of humanity? 2. In what ways do monsters force us to question what it means
to be human? 3. How do fictional monsters body forth specific historical anxieties
and problems? The course offers opportunity for practice in critical thinking
and effective verbal and written communication. Requirements are two essays,
various shorter writing assignments, and active participation in class discussions.
Texts: Gardner, Grendel; Tuso, ed., Beowulf; Stoker,
Dracula; Morrison, Beloved; Shelley, Frankenstein; Sendak,
Where the Wild Things Are.
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: F. Scott Fitzgerald, The
Great Gatsby; Nella Larsen, Passing; Frederick Douglass, Narrative
of the Life; Susanna Rowson, Charlotte Temple; Art Spiegelman,
Maus.
250 B (Introduction to American Literature)
TTh 12:00-2:10
Barnett
(full term)
Survey of the major writers, modes, and themes in American literature, from
the beginnings to the present. Specific readings vary, but often included
are: Taylor, Edwards, Franklin, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Emerson, Thoreau,
Whitman, Dickinson, Twain, James, Eliot, Stevens, O'Neill, Faulkner, Hemingway,
Ellison, and Bellow. Text: Baym, et al., ed., The Norton
Anthology of American Literature, shorter 5th ed.
257aA (Introduction to Asian-American Literature)
M-Th 12:00-2:10
Simpson
(A-term)
Because attention to the complex cultural concerns of Asian-American literatures
is often neglected by a strictly chronological or developmentalist rendering,
this course will frame the reading of Asian-American literature according
to key aesthetic concerns and cultural issues. Our approach to reading
texts will defy historical boundaries in an attempt to clarify the dynamic
tensions among arious forms of Asian-American literature. This class
is a Computer-Integrated Course, which means that a significant part of our
class work and the occasional discussion will be accomplished on-line, all
part of an effort to expand the possibilities for engagement. Texts:
Luis Chu, Eat a Bowl of Tea; Ruth Ozeki, My Year of Meats.
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. 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. Text: James Crawford, ed.,
Language Loyalties.
281aB (Intermediate Expository Writing)
M-Th 10:50-12:20
Butwin
(A-term)
We will work with the assumption that the best way to improve our writing
is ... to write. The next best way is to revise what we have written.
We will do both on a daily basis through five weeks of an intensive course.
Rather than select a single theme or remember with some tenderness what
we did last summer, we will let several visual images generate our prose.
At the beginning these images will be paintings and photographs; they will
quickly turn into a series of movies from the American 1950s. All
these pictures, still and moving, will require a packet of several essays
that should help us develop a useful idiom for what we write. Beyond that
I would say that this is not a course in art history or cinema studies; it
is an opportunity to write. I should add that I am using “we” not to
suggest my royalty or yours and not simply to coax you into a bitter experience
but because I’ll also be writing and revising this summer. Writing,
revision and discussion in class; 4 weekend essays. No additional textbooks. 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)
MW 12:00-1:30
Dillon
(full term)
Expository Writing for the Web. This course introduces the
writing of nonfiction narrative and expository pieces for publication on
the Web. It concentrates on HTML markup and the techniques of hypertext
writing, including the integration of images and text. Writing will
involve analysis and criticism of on-line work and an original project.
Class will meet in the lab and all work will be electronic, submitted via
posting to the student’s web site. 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.
Text: Musciano & Kennedy, HTML and XHTML: The Definitive Guide;
Patrick Lynch & Susan Horton, Web Style Guide, 2nd ed.
283 A (Beginning Verse Writing)
MW 8:30-10:00
Halverson
(full term)
[Intensive study of the ways and means of making a poem.]
284 A (Beginning Short Story Writing)
TTh 8:30-10:00
Shields
(full term)
Reading, rereading, writing, and rewriting very short stories. Text:
photocopied course packet.
284 B (Beginning Short Story Writing)
MW 10:50-12:20
Slean
(full term)
This class is an introduction to writing fiction through the study and writing
of the short story form. Various elements of story writing such
as point of view, character, action, narrative, metaphor, structure and theme
will be explored through reading, discussion, and focused writing exercises.
Students will be responsible for writing a minimum of one short story plus
a substantial story revision. The course may also include in-class
workshops of students work-in-progress. Text: photocopied course packet.
310 A (The Bible as Literature)
Dy 8:30
J. Griffith
(full term)
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:
New Oxford Annotated Bible, 3rd ed.
315bYA (Literary Modernism)
M-Th 6:00-8:00 pm
Staten
(B-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 four prose writers,
as follows: Poems: Baudelaire, poems (xerox); Rilke, poems (xerox); Eliot, Selected Poems; Fiction: Kafka, “The Metamorphosis”; Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway; Gide, The Counterfeiters. This
is a crash course and you will have to attend class with strict regularity,
otherwise the results for you will be disastrous. Evening Degree
students only, Registration Period 1. Offered jointly with
C LIT 396YA.
321aA (Chaucer)
M-Th 9:40-11:50
Coldewey
(A-term)
[Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and other poetry, with attention
to Chaucer’s
social, historical, and intellectual milieu.]
323aA (Shakespeare to 1603)
M-Th 10:50-1:00
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.
324 U (Shakespeare after 1603)
MW 6:00-8:00 pm
C. Fischer
(full term)
Intensive study of four plays from the latter half of Shakespeare's career.
Emphasis on general skills of reading and on "resolution," since two of the
plays assigned seem to end without resolution and the other two resolve in
different ways from one anothe.r Grade compoiled from daily response
papers, participation, and a final examination. Texts: Shakespeare,
Measure for Measure, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, The Winter's Tale.
335aA (English Literature: The Age of Victoria)
M-Th 8:30-10:40
Butwin
(A-term)
What, apart from size, distinguishes England in the 19th century from the
United States in the 20th and 21st? (Britain, though a tiny island,
commanded a much grander imperial span.) A military and industrial
superpower is vulnerable, precisely because of its prominence, to a certain
sting at home and abroad. Afghanistan presented a particular problem in both
cases. Military power bears its own penalties; so does industrial power.
Pollution and poverty seemed to be the natural companions of production and
prosperity. I could go on and will, indeed do so this summer when we subject
major texts written (drawn and constructed—insofar as we will include painting
and architecture) in Victorian England to critical study. Comparisons
of the kind implied by this paragraph will emerge from short lectures and
longer discussions, frequent short essays and one term paper. Apart
from the two novels listed below, all readings will be included in a course
packet. Texts: Charles Dickens, Hard Times; Thomas Hardy,
Tess of theD'Urbervilles; photocopied course packet.
337aA (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) will focus on defining literary and
cultural Modernism, first through the critical study of the film Pleasantville,
and then through 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 analyze what
is “modern” about the themes and formats of each text, but just as well we
will consider why each was not—and is not—always openly embraced by a variety
of viewing and reading audiences. Specifically, we will pose these questions:
(1) Why did the novels so shock their contemporary readers and continue to
upset others as time went by? (2) What did their receptions have
to do with the cultural anxieties portrayed in the film Pleasantville?
(3) Do these same anxieties continue in “Postmodern” society? Why?
Texts: Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover; Salinger, The Catcher
in the Rye; Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird.
345aA (Studies in Film)
M-Th 9:40-11:50
Elkington
(A-term)
Film and Postmodernity. It seems like everything is postmodern
these days. From books to game shows, clothing to social relations,
politics to art, just about anything made in the last thirty years is open
to the label postmodern. But what does it mean? We hear the
word all the time, maybe to the point that postmodernity’s initial meaning
has been leeched away through overuse. How do we define postmodernism,
and what is the best way of arriving at that definition? Perhaps postmodernism,
a notion of the 20th century, can best be described via film, a technology
of the 20th century. In this course, we will look at several popular
definitions of postmodernism, what it is and what it isn’t, and we will look
to film as an embodiment of both themes and its general cultural significance.
Along the way, we’ll look at a wide range of films, including David Cronenberg’s Videodrome (1983) and eXistenZ (1999),
Ridley Scott’s Blade
Runner (1982), Chris Markerr’s Sans Soleil (1982), Kathryn
Bigelow’s Strange Days (1995), Richard Linklater’s Slacker (1991),
Julie Taymor’s Titus (1999), and Chantal Akerman’s Golden Eighties (1986). Weekly quizzes and one final paper. Text: photocopied
course packet.
352 A (American Literature: The Early Nation)
Dy 10:50
J. Griffith
(full term)
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 (5th ed.); Harriet Beecher Stowe,
Uncle Tom’s Cabin; Herman Melville, Moby-Dick.
353bA (American Literature: Later 19th Century)
M-Th 9:40-11:50
Moody
(B-term)
Later 19th-Century American Literature: After Slavery. On December
18, 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in the US, but reconstructing
the nation after slavery required more than scantly-worded legislation.
This course explores literary texts that describe the players and processes
of slavery – in retrospect. We will trace regional attitudes towards
race, class, gender, religion, and so on, as well as sociocultural and political
trends during “Reconstruction” in literary reflections on slavery. Why
would writers look back at what was then – and what arguably remains – the
most shameful era of American history? What were they looking back
for? And what did they find? According to US literature written
after 1865, what had slavery been, and perhaps more important, what had Americans
been during the slave era? What had they become since? What do
those same authors imply about the goal (the myth?) of national reconstruction?
What work do they suggest “healing the nation” after civil war would entail?
Who would do this work? With what degree of success? Texts:
Elizabeth Keckley, Behind the Scenes; Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead
Wilson; Charles Chesnutt, Tales of Conjure and the Color Line: 10 Stories;
Octavia Rogers Albert, The House of Bondage; Kate Chopin, The Awakening
and Other Stories; B. T. Washington, Up From Slavery; recommended: D.
C. Hine & K. Thompson, eds., A Shining Thread of Hope.
354A (American Literature: The Early Modern Period)
M-Th 12:00
Wacker
(full term)
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: Stein, Three Lives;
Faulkner, Go Down Moses; Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises; Wright,
Native Son; Levenson, ed., Cambridge Companion to Modernism;
selections from the poetry of Eliot, Frost, H.D., Moore, Pound, Stevens,
and Williams.
355aYA (American Literature: Contemporary America)
M-Th 6:00-8:10 pm
Cummings
(A-term)
Living on the Edge. This course will examine representations
of international, domestic, and personal crisis in recent U.S. novels, short
stories, nonfictional documents, film and popular media. We’ll begin
with the cold ar emergence of the “national security state” and widespread
policing of political and sexual dissidents. We’ll turn to the hot
war in VietNam and draw connections between it and contemporary events.
We’ll end with portraits of Americans whose life experiences, behavior or
identity is at odds with the mainstream. Residing in locales where
conformity to church dogma, middle-class standards, traditional family values,
established gender roles, and/or sexual norms is strictly enforced, all defy
convention. And all live on the edge. Evening Degree students only,
Registration Period 1. Texts: Don Delillo, Mao III; Randall
Kenan, Let the Dead Bury the Dead; Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping;
photocopied course packet.
368aA (Women Writers)
M-Th 12:00-2:10
Gillis-Bridges
(A-term)
Contemporary U.S. Women Writers. This course examines recent
prose by U.S. women writers. Studying the work of writers such as Toni Morrison,
Anna Deavere Smith, Edwidge Danticat, Lorrie Moore, Eve Ensler, and Lois-Ann
Yamanaka, we will consider issues of identity, the body, voice, history, and
memory. We will also address how these writers engage in the intersection
of gender, race, sexuality, class and national identity. Texts:
Ensler, The Vagina Monologues: The V-Day Edition; Kaysen, Girl,
Interrupted; Morrison, Paradise; Smith, Fires in the Mirror;
Yamanaka, Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers; photocopied course packet.
370bA (English Language Study)
M-Th 10:50-1:00
Tollefson
(B-term)
This course is an introduction to major issues in English language study.
The emphasis is on the links between language and society, with particular
attention to issues that are important for teachers. Major topics include
socially patterned language variation, dialects, language acquisition, and
language in the classroom. Text: Virginia P. Clark, et al., eds.,
Language: Readings in Language and Culture.
381 A (Advanced Expository Writing)
MW 9:40-11:10
Dillon
(full term)
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. Text: Bryan Garner, Oxford
Dictionary of American Usage and Style.
381 B (Advanced Expository Writing)
TTh 12:00-1:30
Plevin
(full term)
This class requires both a solid foundation in the basics of argument and
exposition as well as a willingness to engage with professional and peer
writing
on the level of the paragraph, the sentence, and the word. We will
read a wide range of models, analyze the specific style choices each offers,
and discuss the relationships between these choices and the writer’s purpose,
persona, audience, and effect. Overall, this course will provide the
experienced writer with an opportunity to work closely with his or her style,
to try other styles, and to consider what will make his or her expository
writing more effective. Our texts will help provide the vocabulary and
tools for reflecting on and analyzing prose style. We will work with
our own writing and a course pack of selected readings to help you refine
your use of style as a tool of argumentation and persuasion. 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. Texts: Joseph M. Williams,
Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace; Thomas S. Kane, The New
Oxford Guide to Writing.
383 A (Intermediate Verse Writing)
MW 10:50-12:20
Matsumoto-Maxfield
(full term)
[Intensive study of the ways and means of making a poem. Further development
of fundamental skills. Emphasis on revision. Prerequisite: ENGL 283.]
384 A (Intermediate Short Story Writing)
TTh 10:50-12:20
Shields
(full term)
Reading, rereading, writing, and rewriting very short stories. Prerequisite:
ENGL 284. Text: photocopied course packet.
471aA (The Composition Process)
M-Th 9:40-11:50
(A-term)
Browning
[Consideration of psychological and formal elements basic to writing
and related forms of nonverbal expression and the critical principles that
apply to evaluation.] 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.
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 (206-543-2634).
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 Undergraduate
Advising Office, A-2-B Padelford (206-543-2634).
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 (206-543-9865; open 1-5 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 Advising Office (A-2B Padelford; [206] 543-2634).
497/8aA (Honors Senior Seminar/Senior Seminar)
M-Th 1:10-3:20
McRae
(W)
(A-term)
Heroes and the Women Who Scare Them: Gender and Myth, and Myths about
Gender. This course concerns mythologies of gender, specifically
notions of male and female power as depicted in myth. Two recurrent
mythological figures that embody concepts of male and female power respectively
are the hero and the witch. In some stories, these figures conflict,
in others they depend on each other -- occasionally they're the same person.
We'll begin the course with a selection of literature from various cultures
(epics, folktales, poems) that present heroic male and threatening female
figures, discuss the gender ideologies these tales express, and also ways
they complicate or undermine these ideologies. From there, we'll move
on to an exploration of various critical approaches by which the gender depictions
in these texts can be usefully discussed, and then to development of individual
student projects. Students should be interested in the intersections
of literature and myth, familiar with the mythology of at least one culture,
and have some familiarity with literary or anthropological critical theory. Students
will engage in their own research projects during the quarter, on any text
that fits the theme from any period that interests them, and turn
in a 20-page paper at the end of the quarter. Texts: Foster,
tr., The Epic of Gilgamesh; Wolkstein & Kramer, eds., Inanna:
Queen of Heaven and Earth; Kinsella, ed, The Tain.
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 Why
In 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”—however different that meaning might be from what Harold Bloom intended. Some of what we read will be pleasurable, some frustrating, some even painful. We will read certain texts in traditional hard copy, but much of our reading will be online, and we will use technology to experiment with ways we might “read” poetry, fiction, and drama in multi-sensory fashion, however unconventional that proves to be. We will, for example, listen to texts almost as much as we look at them, and we will test standard reading practices against nonstandard reading experiments, some solo and others communal. In essence ours will be a class that critiques 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. Writing online journals and regular class attendance is a must: this is not a distance-learning course, despite its in-class experimentation with computer technology. 497: Honors English majors only; add codes in English Advising, A-2B PDL; 498: senior English majors only. Texts: Sven Birkerts, The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age; Birkerts, ed., Tolstoy’s Dictaphone; Italo Calvino, If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler.
497/8C (Honors Senior Seminar/Senior Seminar)
MW 12:00-2:10
Oldham
(W)
(full-term)
Subjectivity and Personhood in the Age of Trusts. The period between
the Civil War and World War I is often referred to as the Age of Trusts-those
great concentrations of capital that were the forerunners of the modern corporation.
This period saw, among other things, the most intense social upheaval, after
the Civil War, the United States has ever known, which one historian has
called
the closest America has come to a socialist revolution. It was also during
this period that the Supreme Court declared corporations to be "persons" for
the purposes of Constitutional law, entitled to the same rights and protections
as "natural" persons. The controversies of that time often eerily echo our
present-day arguments about globalization and corporate power, as we continue
to debate the ongoing changes that began, or achieved critical mass, during
this time. How did these profound and far-reaching developments affect
the way that individuals understood themselves, their inner lives and personal
identities? Did thinking of corporations as "persons" change the way that
"natural" persons saw themselves? How did the intense controversies over and
changes in the economy impinge upon the subjective experience of ordinary
people? In this course we will read some contemporary texts dealing with "the
trust problem" and some theorists of subjectivity who interrogate the relationship
between the social and the "personal." Then we'll read some literary texts
for evidence of such effects in their representations of subjectivity. We
will be primarily concerned with literary-historical questions, but informing
our inquiry will be the larger, continuing question of how the disparate realms
of economics and of inner experience, each profoundly important yet usually
treated as separate and incompatible, interact and mutually shape each other. Requirements: One
long final paper, in-class presentations, regular participation, lots of reading. 497: Honors English majors only;
add codes in English Advising, A-2B PDL; 498: senior English majors only.
Texts: Wharton, Ethan Frome; Frederic, The Damnation of
Theron Ware; Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition; Zitkala Sa, American
Indian Stories; Dreiser, The Financier; photocopied course pack
including various writers on trusts and corporations; Althusser, Butler,
Foucault, R. Williams (on subjectivity); Crane.
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)
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).
