English Course Descriptions
Spring 2011
In progress
English 2001 Section 001 CRN 31435
Abella
Creative Writing: Nonfiction 1000-1050 MWF
When does an essay stop being scholarly or journalistic and become art? When is prose not fiction, is more like poetry, but can tell a story? Together we will explore the different kinds of writing that define creative nonfiction, from memoir to the personal essay, from nature writing to travel writing, from meditation to literary journalism. We will read various modern and contemporary essays in the different genres to experience and understand the various voices. The main focus of the class, however, will be the essays you create and share in a workshop format with the class in order to discover and refine your own voice and style. You will be graded on a final portfolio of your essays, journals, and participation. (Group 5)
English 2003 Section 001 CRN 31436
Martone
Creative Writing: Poetry 1100-1150 MWF
This workshop will introduce you to the writing of poetry. We’ll share your writing and read and discuss some important contributions (literary, artistic, musical) to the contemporary moment. Each week, I'll require five pages of writing and an informal commentary on a figure such as Rauschenberg or Cage. Always, though, we'll be looking for originality. The way(s) there can be difficult and exciting. (Group 5)
English 2005 Section 001 CRN 31438
Knight
Creative Writing: Drama 0930-1045 TR
This workshop introduces students to the art and craft of playwriting. Coursework includes reading several stage plays, attending the productions of Tartuffe and Noises Off at the Doudna Fine Arts Center, participating in class discussion and workshop, maintaining a journal, and writing two short stage plays. (Group 5)
English 2007 Section 001 CRN 31439
Moffitt
Creative Writing: Fiction 1200-1250 MWF
If I asked the class what the difference is between “creative writing” and “critical writing” (meaning term papers, essays, etc.), many people would probably say that in creative writing, there are no rules—you can write any way you want. Well, OK, that sounds good—but it’s important to understand that “writing any way you want” is not the same thing as “writing the first thing that comes to your head, without thinking about it or changing it.” Writing any way you want suggests that there are many ways to write; as such, our main goal for this class is to explore these many ways—to experiment with the possibilities of the written word, with a focus on the basics of style, structure and technique in the short story. This is a lot more fun that it may sound here! We read and write stories because we want to, and trying new ways of writing only increases our enjoyment of them. (Group 5)
English 2009G Section 001 CRN 31571
Moffitt
Literature and Human Values: Labor, Class, Power 1000-1050 MWF
A study of some of the universal, recurring issues facing the individual, as they are dealt with in a selection of literary texts from diverse cultures. (General Education)
English 2009G Section 002 CRN 31572
Swords
Literature and Human Values: Race, Age, Gender 1100-1215 TR
(General Education)
English 2009G Section 003 CRN 31573
Beebe
Literature and Human: Love, Hate, Obsession 1230-1345 TR
In this course we will investigate how the concepts of Love, Hate, and Obsession are related in complex, dynamic ways, and how these concepts provide the basis for some of the most challenging and provocative stories and human events. In short, we’ll be investigating the extreme, and we’ll do so in short stories, novels, non-fiction, and film. (General Education)
English 2011G Section 001 CRN 31575
Carpenter
Literature, the Self and the World: Fiction 0930-1045 TR
An in-depth study of significant works of literature from diverse times and places and of the ways in which they depict possibilities of meaning, identity, and action in the world. (General Education)
English 2011G Section 002 CRN 31576
Wixson
Literature, the Self and the World: Drama 1100-1150 MWF
This course surveys dramatic literature with the aims of sharpening appreciation for the art form and using great plays as an opportunity to engage cultural and existential issues. The selection of primary texts will be wide-ranging to represent a number of different dramatic forms and perspectives, from the "greats" of earlier periods (Shakespeare, Henrik Ibsen, and Lorraine Hansberry) to contemporary writers like August Wilson and Patrick Marber. The course approaches these plays as both literary *and* theatrical texts, and their complexities of language, style, and thematics make this course reading, writing, and thinking intensive. Other requirements include short papers, critical essays, participation in discussion, a midterm, and a final exam. (General Education)
English 2091G Section 099 CRN 35023
Park
Literature, the Self and the World (Honors) Fiction 0930-1045 TR
Study of significant works of literature from diverse cultures and of the ways in which they depict meaning, identity, and action in the world. (General Education)
English 2205 Section 001 CRN 31580
Ludlow
Introduction to Literary Studies 1300-1350 MWF
Why do we study literature? What distinguishes the English major--the scholar of literature--from the avid reader? This course aims to answer these questions through a combination of theory, practice, and discussion. In ENG 2205, we will explore various theoretical approaches to literature; advanced reading, analytical, and interpretive methods; and discipline-specific research tools and techniques, all of which are intended to help the beginning English major/minor to succeed in upper-division literature courses (and to enhance your enjoyment when you read for fun). Requirements for the course include several short analytical papers and activities, two exams, and a research project. (Group 1)
English 2601 Section 001 CRN 31582
Hoberman
Backgrounds of Western Literature 0900-0950 MWF
The course covers European literature from Homer to Don Quixote and includes the works of Sappho, Sophocles, Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch, among others. These are among the greatest writers ever, so the first priority will be to enjoy them for their own sakes. But we'll also talk about them in context: as glimpses into past epochs and as contemporary forces that still have the power to stimulate controversy and shape our values. Recurring themes include heroism, love, suffering, and death--issues you can sink your teeth into. Requirements include weekly responses, 2-3 short papers, and 2 exams. (Group 1)
English 2603 Section 001 CRN 34364
Shonk
Greek and Roman Mythology 1200-1250 MWF
In this course we will study the major Greek myths and their Roman Counterparts, and occasionally corresponding myths of other cultures. The myths continue to have an enormous influence on the arts and have been applied in the areas of psychology, sociology, history and religion. Accordingly, the emphasis in this course will fall on the purposes and meanings of the myths, as well as the significance of their contemporary applications. Students seeking general Humanities credit or those interested in increasing their knowledge for a greater appreciation of the arts will find this course both useful and compelling.
The texts for the course will be Homer's Odyssey (trans. Robert Fitzgerald); Ovid's Metamorphoses; and selections from other texts and major works in translation. Course grade will be based on contributions to class discussion, two hourly tests, frequent short reading quizzes, an optional course project, and a final exam. (Group 5)
English 2760 Section 001 CRN 31585
Gay
Introduction to Professional Writing 1100-1150 MWF
What is professional communication? This course attempts to answer that question and introduces students to the principles and practices of communication (written, oral, and visual) in professional settings. Throughout the semester, we'll learn how to apply rhetorical principles to the production of professional documents such as memos, white papers, proposals and reports and more, with a focus on the importance of context, purpose and audience. The course will also include a unit on document design.
Introduction to the theory and practice of writing and writers in professional settings. (Group 1)
English 2850 Section 001 CRN 31587
Panjwani
Post-Colonial Literatures in English 1530-1800 T
This course will be a study of 20th century narratives by authors from India, Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, and Egypt who have defined themselves with and against European cultures, in particular the British culture, in order to understand the psychological and emotional make-up of postcolonial characters within a framework, which may be labeled as the ‘memory of the past.’ Through an in-depth analysis of issues pertaining to nationalist struggles for political and gender freedoms, notions of ‘home’ and ‘homelands,’ indigenous traditions and westernization, transnational and inter-cultural circulation of themes and responses, and normative gender roles and identities, we will theorize the multifarious configurations of the postcolonial mind in the context of cultural and socio-political past of colonial and pre-colonial times as remembered by postcolonial literati. The writers included in this course are R.K. Narayan, Chinua Achebe, Thiong’o wa Ngugi, Okot p’Bitek, Nawal El Saadawi, Popati Hiranandani, Tayeb Salih, and Naguib Mahfouz. Course requirements will include mid-term and final exams, one research paper and active preparation and class participation. (Group 2)
English 2901 Sections 001 & 002 CRN 31588 & CRN 31589
Suksang
Structure of English 0900-0950 MWF & 1100-1150 MWF
This section of 2901 is designed to help students learn to analyze the basic components of the English language (i.e., words, phrases and sentences) and to understand the rules that govern their internal structure. We will also discuss the issue of language variation and learn to diagram phrases and sentences. Students are expected to participate in class discussion and take several tests. (Group 1)
English 2901 Section 003 CRN 31590
Shonk
Structure of English 1500-1615 MW
This course is a study of grammar quite different from what most students undertook in high school. Rather than merely memorizing some rules and circling the correct words on exams, students will be required to understand the system behind our grammar, the forms and patterns of our language. Students will not stop at merely identifying the appropriate forms on exams. Rather, they will explain the choices in rather exact and concrete language, define the key aspects of the forms in question, and apply the principles at hand in their own writing. This course is a rigorous and demanding study of grammar, but it is one that future teachers, writers, and editors will find invaluable. By the end of the semester, students will become quite familiar with those terms they have often heard but little understood, such as dangling participles, subjective mood, elliptical constructions, direct objects, and so on. And they will be able to employ appropriate forms and avoid the inappropriate in their own writing while being able to explain those forms to others. In short, students will come to understand English grammar. For the course grade, students will complete a number of brief quizzes (some in-class, some take-home) and take five exams. (Group 1)
English 3001 Sections 001 & 002 CRN 31592 & CRN 31593
Worthington
Advanced Composition 0800-0915 TR & 0930-1045 TR
This course will examine different forms of writing for and about work. We will focus on employment history, do research about current states of professional opportunity and on the kinds of writing that would be expected in many workplaces. (Group 1)
English 3001 Sections 003 & 007 CRN 31594 & CRN 31598
Park
Advanced Composition 1100-1215 TR & 1530-1645 TR
This course emphasizes practice in two things: the clear exposition of ideas and the grammatical and stylistic command of writing. You will exercise your skills in effectively communicating through writing. You will apply problem-solving skills, provide peer-review criticism, and determine the division of labor within groups to construct projects related to your academic and professional interests.
As in all writing classes, the written word rules here. We will examine how good writing looks (grammar), how it sounds (style), and where it goes (audience-oriented rhetoric). Over the course of the semester, you will produce essays through stages of brainstorming, drafting, and fleshing out theses. You will not do this alone, of course. This is a workshop course, which means that, much as in the world outside the university, you will be writing for an audience larger than your professor. You will receive and offer feedback on fellow students’ work. In these feedback loops, you will be encouraged to keep an eye on your own growth as a writer of clear, effective, persuasive, and citation-savvy arguments.
IMPORTANT NOTE: This is a writing-centered, writing-intensive course. You will do a lot of writing and responding. If you foresee difficulty in attending class or meeting within groups regularly this semester, you should reconsider taking this course. (Group 1)
English 3001 Sections 004 & 006 CRN 31595 & CRN 31597
Leddy
Advanced Composition 1200-1250 MWF & 1400-1450 MWF
We will practice the art of writing sentences and paragraphs, with as much room for improvement as a semester allows. Some writing will be on assigned topics; some, on topics of your devising. Some writing will be for a specific audience; some, for an imagined general reader. Some writing will be practical; some will involve the mind at play. All work in the course will emphasize revision as a necessary practice in writing. (I’ve made fourteen small revisions in writing this description.) The possibilities for our writing will come from reading: about culture, education, technology, work, or whatever seems well-suited to the interests of the class.
In the world beyond college, you’ll be the one responsible for the shape your writing skills are in. This course provides a great opportunity to get those skills in better shape now.
Requirements: The course will require dedicated daily work and considerable writing. (Group 1)
English 3001 Section 005 CRN 31596
Engles
Advanced Composition 1230-1345 TR
A writing course is more useful and interesting if it has a central focus. Ours will be the world of work, or more specifically, the effects of gender, race and social class in the “professional” workplace (that is, the kind of work environment in which most EIU students will find themselves after graduation). Students in this course will improve both their writing skills and their understanding of key elements of their own future professional lives. Because we will have a smaller group than those in most EIU courses, individual writing problems will receive close attention, both from the instructor and from classmates. Requirements: graded peer reviews, two short essays, and an extensive research project. (Group 1)
English 3002 Section 001 CRN 31599
Engles
Research Writing for Literary Studies 1400-1515 TR
In-depth study of genres of writing central to Literary Studies, in particular proposals, reviews, and criticism. Students will read models of scholarly writing in literary studies, as well as research, draft, and revise their own proposals, reviews, and articles, and master MLA style. (Group 1)
English 3005 Section 001 CRN 31600
Fredrick
Technical Communication 1100-1215 TR
English 3005 focuses on communication (written, oral, and visual) of technical information within professional settings. Particular emphasis is placed on adapting communication to specific audiences and purposes. Specific objectives for this class include the following:
- Critically read and analyze information addressed to readers of differing technical levels
- Learn and apply principles used by successful technical communicators
Develop the ability to adapt communication to specific audiences, purposes, and contexts - Develop and use effective collaborative strategies
- Develop awareness of your own ability to successfully approach, adapt to, and complete new (previously untried) communication situations
- Learn and implement basic principles of effective document design
(Group 1)
English 3009G Sections 001 CRN 31602
Martone
Myth and Culture 0800-0850 MWF
The Daodejing is one of the world’s most translated books, embodying teachings about nature and human life that have been of perennial interest and which remain compelling today. This course looks at Laozi’s classic in its original setting and explores its influence upon other cultures– Vietnamese, Japanese, and American. (Group 5)
English 3009G Sections 002 & 003 CRN 31603 & CRN 31604
Wharram
Myth and Culture 1100-1150 MWF & 1300-1350 MWF
This class will serve as an introduction to myth, but not as a survey of myths from around the globe. There are some 6000 languages spoken on the earth today, each of which constitutes a relation between a people and their world, a “culture,” if you will. This number, however quickly it may be decreasing, is far too large to imagine covering in this course. As an alternative, we will engage with the development of the study of myths as it arose in the course of the twentieth century. Myth, as an identifiable form of storytelling, was central in the development of what we now call “cultural studies” in the Western tradition. We will trace this development in the thought of Ernst Cassirer and Claude Lévi-Strauss (with a smattering of Sigmund Freud thrown in, just to keep things interesting). We will also examine how a few contemporary writers incorporate the concept of myth in their works. We will think about what these myths meant, what they mean, and, perhaps, what they may come to mean in the future. The fact that the meaning of myth can change over history implies that culture can define myth in much the same way that myth can define culture. Along the way, we will question some of our received notions about myth—-the “myths” about myths-—allowing us, I hope, to think about the possibilities for myth in our technology-driven universe. And sometimes we will reflect on why it is that we don’t much think mythically anymore—-or, perhaps, why it is that we think we don’t think mythically anymore. (Group 5)
English 3010G Section 001 CRN 31607
Campbell
Literary Masterworks 1230-1345 TR
This course is designed to provide an introduction to literary masterworks considered central to the development of western literature. Writers throughout the centuries have responded to and incorporated aspects of works by their predecessors and their contemporaries into their own “new” creations. In this course we will especially explore various lines of artistic and topical influence that stretch from classical origins through literary works of the Renaissance. In general, we will also explore such questions as what makes a text a literary masterwork? What gives such a piece its enduring qualities? Does our concept of what constitutes a masterwork change over time as facets of our culture shift and change? How should we, reading several of these texts in translation, think about the transitions they have gone through regarding the practices of translating and editing? Above all, by the end of the course, you should have a greater understanding of the literary periods and genres of the western literary canon, as well as a sense of the historical shaping of some of your own ideas and values. (General Education)
English 3099G Section 099 CRN 31608
Panjwani
Myth and Culture (Honors) 1530-1800 R
This course will involve an in-depth look at the myths and culture of three Asian countries, namely, India, China, and Japan. In the Indian segment, we will read the Hindu and Buddhist (the Hinayana or the Theravada) myths. The study of Hinduism will include (i) Vedic (Early and Later) Mythology, and (ii) the Puranic (The Mahabharata) Mythology. The Chinese segment will include the study of Confucianism, Taoism and Mahayana (or Pureland) Buddhism. Finally, the Japanese segment will focus on Zen Buddhism, Shinto and Ainu Mythologies. The primary orientation of this study will be to develop a clear understanding of (a) philosophical and religious interpretations of the myths of creation/origin of the world, death, divinity, fate, the ultimate goal/s of human life, etc., and (b) social systems and moral/ethical values of these cultures. Whenever possible, we will also compare the commonalities and differences among these three Asian cultures and mythologies. (General Education Program; Group 5)
English/Philosophy 3110G Section 001 CRN 31609
Loudon
Cultural Foundations II 1100-1215 TR
This course introduces students to the cultural foundations of India, China and the Middle East through literary, philosophical and sacred texts that have helped shape and define these civilizations. In the first segment on India, we shall read excerpts from the Vedic Hymns and the Upanishads to discuss Brahmanism and the development of Hinduism, then continue with readings from the Mahabharata, and the Bhagavad Gita. From classical Hinduism, we shall consider the basic doctrines of Buddhism. The second segment examines Chinese civilization through the study of Confucius and his ideals of self and humanity and of Taoism as reflected in the works of Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu and Li Po. The final segment focuses on the civilizations of the Middle East by first considering Arab culture and the dawn of Islam through substantial excerpts from The Qur’an. Next, we shall turn to Sufi spiritualism through short readings from Rumi, Sadi, Hafiz and Kabir. Finally, we shall consider Islamic culture in Africa by reading a novel by Naguigb Mahfouz.
Course Format: As instructors in a team-taught interdisciplinary course, we shall provide introductory contexts for our readings through lectures and responses that we hope will provoke your questions and comments so that discussion can become an integral aspect of our time in class. Exploring these traditions in reference to Western philosophical issues and literary themes whenever appropriate, we encourage you to relate your questions and perceptions to your own experiences and beliefs by focusing on differences and similarities. What are the implications for these systems of thought? Do these cultural ideas and traditions help illuminate current socio-political and cultural events?
Prerequisite: All students must have completed ENG 1002G, 1092 or the equivalent.
Course Requirements and Grading: Three essay examination, including the final; two 5-6 page essays. Each examination and essay will count 20% in the final course grade. (General Education; Group 5)
English 3401 Section 001 CRN 31611
Murray
Methods of Teaching Composition in the Secondary School 1100-1215 TR
This course seeks to provide the theoretical and practical grounding for effective teaching of writing in the high schools. Students will be immersed in theories and practices of teaching of writing in order to – ultimately – determine their own theory of teaching writing and create their own composition unit, complete with a detailed rationale. (Group 1)
English 3402 Section 001 CRN 31612
Ames
Methods of Teaching Literature in the Secondary School 1500-1615 MW
This course explores various approaches to the study of literature, as well as best practices in teaching literature at the secondary level. Course work will consist primarily of reading and responding to pedagogical texts, applying the findings in such to classic and contemporary literature, and crafting/modeling instructional tools both independently and cooperatively in ways that mirror professional learning communities. The required work for this course includes crafting lesson plans, thematic units, a course design, and various reflective essays. (Group 1)
English 3405 Sections 001 & 002 CRN 31613 & CRN 31614
Moore
Children’s Literature 0800-0915 TR & 1400-1515 TR
As grown-ups, we bring adult concerns and adult literacy to our reading of children’s literature. But we also bring our memories of listening to nursery rhymes and fairy tales, chanting playground rhymes, gazing at picture books, devouring series fiction, and escaping into novels. Both of these perspectives—that of the former child and that of the adult critic—will enrich our discussion of the cultural significance, literary quality, rhetorical situatedness, and ideological content of texts that include children in their intended audience. This course covers a lot of ground—historically, culturally, generically, critically—and is intended to provide you with a context for understanding and critically evaluating historical and contemporary children’s literature. To that end, we will read and discuss exemplary works as a class, and then work in groups or individually to evaluate self-selected works in various genre. You will receive scores for participation (which includes contributions to group work and class discussion as well as attendance), analytic WebCT posts, more formal written commentaries and reviews, individual and group presentations, and a final exam. (Group 5)
English 3406 Section 001 CRN 34365
Kory
Literature for Pre-Adolescents 1100-1150 MWF
Donelson and Nilsen (2006) note that “in the late 1980s and early 1990s . . . publishers began focusing their attention on junior high and middle school readers.” Award-winning works such as Holes (Sachar), Ella Enchanted (Levine), The Watsons Go to Birmingham~1963 (Curtis); books in the phenomenally popular Harry Potter series; and increasingly sophisticated hybrid works (novels in verse, graphic novels) belong to this growing body of literature. In this course we will focus our critical eye on those works that fall between “children’s literature” (nursery rhymes, fairy tales, picture books) and “young adult literature.” Literature for Pre-Adolescent readers (approximately ages 8-12, grades 4-8) encompasses poetry and non-fiction as well as a rich variety of classic and popular novels in diverse genre: from contemporary realism to historical fiction, from dystopia to epic fantasy and fractured fairy tale. Our exploration of these works will take into account their historical and social contexts, and we will work to develop criteria for evaluating them that are responsive to literary quality and attentive to issues of ideology, cultural authority, rhetoric and pedagogy, and to the strategies and techniques used by adult authors of youth literature to accommodate their intended audience. Assignments will reflect the genre in which scholars and professionals working with youth literature conventionally communicate their ideas (e.g. academic essay, review, book talk) and will give you a chance to work with the print and electronic resources that enable them to engage in the lively contemporary discussion of this literature. (Group 5)
English 3504 Section 001 CRN 31617
Murray
Film and Literature: Women Authors/Auteurs, Women “Stars”: Women in/of Film & Literature 1530-1730 TR
Filmmaker Michelle Citron declares that “many women directors are forced to make a choice: either they maintain control over production of their films and settle for smaller audiences [as auteurs], or they relinquish a degree of control to establishment forces in order to reach a wider audience.” Historically, the same might be said of women authors and their works. Crucial to this class is the question of authorship, particularly the extent to which directors (auteurs?) and their literary counterparts have agency and authority over their own cultural representation. This section of English 3504 will explore this question in relation to films by female directors from Lillian Gish to Kathryn Bigelow and woman writers from the beginning of the film era forward. (Group 5)
English 3600 Section 001 CRN 31618
Raybin
The Bible as Literature 1800-2030 W
The Bible is the most widely read, widely translated, widely owned, and widely commented on book in the world. As a literary text, it has influenced almost every western writer for the past two thousand years. In this class we will read the book's first edition (the Hebrew Scriptures), material which early editors omitted from the first edition (the Apocrypha), and the major sequel (the New Testament). Immersing ourselves in the Bible’s many genres and tones, its diverse styles and voices, we will discover a book that still after so many centuries retains an extraordinarily compelling literary art. Assignments include a paper, weekly reading quizzes, and a final exam. (Group 5)
English 3604 Section 001 CRN 31620
Vietto
Special Topics in Literature: Before Texting: Letter-Writing & the Origins of the Novel 1500-1615 MW
Before texting, even before email, people wrote letters. And just as with email, sometimes those letters ended up being read by someone other than the person to whom they were written. In fact, before the craze for the long works of fiction we today call novels, people often found entertainment in reading collections of letters written by people they didn’t know, often famous people. (Not so different from reality TV.) This course will examine letter-writing and its relationship to the development of the novel in the eighteenth century. We will read some of the most famous epistolary novels from England, America, France, and Germany. We will also read some other texts that include letters, such as the early fantasy classic, Elizabeth Singer Rowe’s Letters from the Dead to the Living, and published letters of real people.
(Group 5)
English 3701 Section 001 CRN 31621
Boswell
American Literature: 1800 to Mid-19th Century 1230-1345 TR
Between 1830 and 1865, literary works generated in the united States reflected a wide variety of needs, fears, and hopes among the people who lived in a culture on the brink of civil war. We will read many of these texts, including novels, short stories, poetry, non-fiction, and drama, and we will try to make sense of the many literary voices who all talked at the same time during these years. Some authors we will study: Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Edgar Allen Poe, Margaret Fuller, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, John Greenleaf Whittier, Fanny Fern, Mariano Vallejo, Sojourner Truth, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson.
Requirements: thorough reading, class participation, 2-3 papers, final exam. (Group 3B)
English 3701 Section 002 CRN 31622
Swords
American Literature: 1800 to Mid-19th Century 1400-1515 TR
In this class, we will focus on the work of the following writers: Edgar Allen Poe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, and Walt Whitman. These represent the first generation of a genuine American literature, coming to life in the middle decades of the nineteenth century, roughly 1830-1865, a time when the United States was still a young nation, still forging itself out of the complexities of it origin, still trying to work out the kinks, mistakes, false starts, still trying to become itself somehow. The writers at hand all knew what was going on, and all in their own way, had something to say about the sort of place America was and what it might become. Most of all, they had much to say about what it might mean for actual people to try to live in America – what it meant to be an individual in a world of social rules, what it meant to be free in a place where 10 million were not free, what it meant to aim for the creative life in a society that didn’t value creativity all that much. The questions these writers asked through the stories they told, the poems they wrote, and the essays they used to explore the world around them are still pretty good questions, and by looking at their work taken altogether, there may be much to learn about the people we are and the place we live today.
This will be a reading intensive course, with a large mid-term and take home final exam. (Group 3B)
English 3703 Section 001 CRN 31623
Engles
American Literature: 1900 to 1950 0930-1045 TR
This course will include analysis of literature written in the first half of the Twentieth Century, including both traditionally canonical works and those more recently hailed as important. We will trace recent reassessments of the "great" literature of this period, keeping in mind a widespread recognition succinctly summarized by Ishmael Reed: "Multicultural is not a description of a category of American writing—it is a definition of all American writing." Requirements: quizzes, position papers, one formal essay, two exams. (Group 3C)
English 3703 Section 002 CRN 31624
Worthington
American Literature: 1900 to 1950 1700-1815 TR
In this course, we’ll explore major texts and themes of the early 20th century. We will read work by authors like William Maxwell, Edith Wharton, Henry James, Willa Cather, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston. (Group 3C)
English 3705 Section 001 CRN 31625
Coleman
American Multicultural Literatures 1100-1215 TR
Gloria Anzaldua, author of Borderlands/La Frontera, writes that "identity is an arrangement or series of clusters, a kind of stacking or layering of selves, horizontal and vertical layers, the geography of selves made up of the different communities you inhabit." We will consider this and other concepts of multiculturalism by placing writers from varied communities and cultures into conversations about the interwoven effects of race, class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, age, and place on identity and creative expression. (Group 2)
English 3801 Section 001 CRN 31626
Raybin
Chaucer 0800-0915 TR
Geoffrey Chaucer was a brilliant writer. His characters are memorable, his stories compelling, his moral vision vast and humane, and his words – the sounds and structures of his language – perfect. By turns witty, philosophical, learned, spiritual, and bawdy, sometimes all of these at once, Chaucer created in his poetry a scintillating portrait of the men and women of late fourteenth-century England and of their myriad, often conflicting beliefs and values.
We will read The Canterbury Tales in its entirety. Plan on joining in open discussion of the texts. Early-semester translation quizzes and much reading aloud will help you to get comfortable with Chaucer’s Middle English. Additional requirements include careful reading, daily study sheets, a midterm, a paper, and a final. (Group 3D)
English 3802 Section 001 CRN 31627
Wixson
Shakespeare 0900-0950 MWF
Ben Jonson’s epitaph, memorializing Shakespeare as “not of an age but for all time” has proven prophetic. Last April, the Royal Shakespeare Company premiered Such Tweet Sorrow, an experimental five-week production of Romeo and Juliet performed via Twitter. A month earlier, the venerable Arden Shakespeare series officially welcomed an addition to the Bard’s canon entitled Double Falsehood. In short, with a “brand new” play out and a central role in the vanguard of alternative media performance, Shakespeare is alive and well in the 21st century. Centering our inquiry around issues of desire and power, this course will read nine of Shakespeare’s plays, and their complexities of language demand rigor in reading, writing, and thinking. Other requirements include short papers, critical essays, participation in discussion, a midterm, and a final exam. (Group 3D)
English 3802 Section 002 CRN 31628
Caldwell
Shakespeare 1200-1250 MWF
"The Play's the Thing": Art and Ethics in Shakespeare
When Hamlet exclaims, “The play’s the thing /wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king,” he stakes a claim for the moral value of art. In this course we will read some of Shakespeare’s darkest, most skeptical plays in which he questions the validity of man-made moral value. We will begin the semester by reading plays that will help us to define the genres of comedy and tragedy as Shakespeare understood them. After we have developed an understanding of these two genres, we will examine plays that defy generic distinction: the romances and the so-called problem plays. While some of these plays certainly incorporate aspects of comedy, much of their subject matter—ranging from vigilante justice, to courtship that approximates prostitution, to false accusations that lead to the abandonment of an infant child—is no laughing matter. We will consider what role comedy has to play in the presentation of such serious subject matter and how Shakespeare came to understand the uses of comedy outside of the confines of his earlier festive comedies. Over the course of the semester, we will examine how Shakespeare uses genre to critique man-made moral and social values and the reasons why these values often collapse by the end of many of his plays. Active participation, 2-3 papers, midterm, and final. (Group 3D
English 3803 Section 001 CRN 31629
Caldwell
Renaissance and 17th Century British Literature 1400-1450 MWF
“The New Philosophy Calls All in Doubt”:
The Search for Order in 17th-Century British Literature
When John Donne famously declared that “the new philosophy calls all in doubt” in his 1611 poem The Anatomy of the World, he was lamenting the loss of a universe of comparative certainty, a world in which man knew his place in the world order. Confronted with the primacy of the individual conscience as a moral authority in competition with the church, with increasingly radical political sects that began to demand personal liberties, with the eruption of civil war and the beheading of an English king, with the eclipse of the geocentric universe and the possibility of atomic matter, the seventeenth century was a world overwhelmed by significant shifts in religious liberty, political dissent, and scientific knowledge. As Donne’s poem indicates, with the growth of knowledge and freedom also came great uncertainty. In this class we will study how writers sought to come to terms with their own excitement and anxieties about this new world of liberty and its accompanying threat of disorder. Writers covered will likely include Donne, Jonson, Bacon, Herbert, Vaughan, Marvell, Browne, Milton, Hobbes, and Cavendish. Active participation, a short paper, a longer paper, a midterm and final. Expect significant engagement with the intellectual, religious, and political history of the period. (Group 3A)
English 3807 Section 001 CRN 31630
Sylvia
Victorian Literature 1100-1215 TR
An introduction to the major social, historical, and literary developments in England during the reign of Queen Victoria, 1837 to 1901. We will read, discuss, and write about some of the most revered writers in English – Dickens, George Eliot, Tennyson, the Brontës, the Rossetti's, the Brownings, Hardy – and some of the most influential (and controversial) – Sarah Stickney Ellis, Carlyle, Darwin. Requirements: two exams, frequent quizzes, one research paper. (Group 3B)
English 3809 Section 001 CRN 35026
Martinez
Contemporary British and Anglophone Literatures: "Terror, Violence, Dystopia in Britain" 1000-1050 MWF
In this course, we will explore the exciting genesis of new fictions that emerged in Britain after World War II. Specifically, we will look at how British writers start transforming the role of the novel to encompass the economic, political, and social crises of the late 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and beyond (from the rise of political violence in Northern Ireland, to the Cold War fears of nuclear warfare, to global terrorism). We will encounter significant theoretical currents of the contemporary, such as postmodernism, feminism, postcolonialism, and existentialism. Our primary texts will be a variety of intriguing novels, films, and generous considerations of popular music from the punk, post-punk, new wave, and independent music movements in Britain, ranging from the Sex Pistols to Radiohead. Course requirements: two papers, weekly responses to online forum, active discussion, midterm and final examinations. (Group 3C)
English 3892 Section 099 CRN 31633
Campbell
Shakespeare (Honors) 0930-1045 TR
As we move through the early part of the twenty-first century, interest in the works of William Shakespeare shows no sign of abating. Shakespeare studies are still one of the most vibrant and exciting areas of English Renaissance literature, in part because Shakespeare had the good fortune to be a great synthesizer of the most popular trends in Renaissance literature, philosophy, and drama. This semester we will consider the Shakespeare of the English Renaissance, as well as the Shakespeare(s) of the present. Our primary goals will be to familiarize you with the categories of Shakespeare’s plays and to introduce you to the techniques that Shakespeare uses, the historical, political, and cultural backdrops to the plays, and ways of analyzing character, theme, and structure in them. Ultimately, this class is meant to prepare you to read Shakespeare on your own and to enjoy the plays in performance in an informed manner. To facilitate these goals, we will examine a few representative plays in great depth. Also, I will ask you to keep an eye on Shakespeare in popular culture and report your findings to the class. (Group 3D)
English 3903 Section 001 CRN 35027
Hoberman
Women, Literature, and Language: Contemporary British Women Writers 1100-1150 MWF
"People in the media kept saying that feminism was dead, and deriding it year after year," Catherine Redfern says, explaining why she started her website The F Word in 2001. In fact, there has recently been an outpouring of work by British women on the role of gender in their own lives and in the lives of women around the world. This course will focus on fiction, poetry, drama, and nonfiction by living British women writers. Authors studied will include such novelists as Fay Weldon, Jeannette Winterson, Zadie Smith, and Sarah Waters; poets Carol Ann Duffy and Medbh McGuckian; playwright Caryl Churchill; and recent work in print and on-line by young British women such as Redfern. Requirements include careful reading of assigned texts, lots of class participation, weekly reading responses, two papers, and a final exam. (Group 5)
English 4275 Section 001 CRN 31636
Fredrick
Internship in Professional Writing ARR**
**Students must have permission of Director before registering for the Internship.
A community-based experience featuring practical application of skills developed in the English curriculum, the Internship is open only to upper-division students. To the extent possible, placement is matched to career goals with the expectation that students might approach graduation and the job search with writing/editing portfolios to show potential employers. Recent English interns have written for newspapers, edited magazines, designed documents, prepared publicity materials for Eastern, Lake Land, the Charleston Chamber of Commerce, the Tarble Arts Center, the Coles County Association for the Retarded, Sarah Bush Lincoln Health Center, etc.
English 4275 is a four-hour course offered on a credit/no credit basis. The Director and site-supervisors cooperate in evaluation.
PERMISSION OF THE DIRECTOR MUST BE SECURED PRIOR TO ENROLLMENT so that placement arrangements can be made. (Group 5)
English 4300 Section 001 CRN 31637
Leddy
Senior Seminar: Two Big Novels 0900-0950 MWF
He sat on the edge of his bed with his elbows on his knees and scanned the stack of cartridges. Each cartridge in the dock dropped on command and began to engage the drive with an insectile click and whir, and he scanned it. But he was unable to distract himself with the TP [Teleputer] because he was unable to stay with any one entertainment cartridge for more than a few seconds. The moment he recognized what exactly was on one cartridge he had a strong anxious feeling that there was something more entertaining on another cartridge and that he was potentially missing it.
-David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
The technologist Linda Stone has coined the term “continuous partial attention” to describe what ails us in the early twenty-first century: an increasing inability to give our full attention to any one thing for very long for fear of missing everything else that is out there (as if one could, really, “have it all”). Reading a big novel is, among things, practice in the art of attention.
In this seminar, we will read two big novels: Charles Dickens’s Bleak House (1853) and David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest (1996). These novels can be read as examples of what has been called “encyclopedic narrative”: they are vast portraits of national cultures, presenting characters drawn from every social stratum. Bleak House shows us an England in which cultural institutions fail at every turn. The principal settings: the Court of Chancery (devoted to wills and trusts), country houses, and the slums of London. Infinite Jest gives us a reconfigured United States focused on entertainment and terrorism, a nation in which time itself has been turned over to corporate sponsors (e.g., “The Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment”). The principal settings: a prestigious tennis academy and a halfway house for recovering addicts.
Both novels are preoccupied with what Dickens calls “connexion”—the strange paths that join seemingly unrelated characters and stories. (Someone in the book trade in fact has joked that Wallace must have influenced Dickens.) And there are many other points of surprising similarity between the novels: comedy, pathos, fierce satire, ghosts. The point of our effort though will be not to compare and contrast but to learn how to become each novel’s reader and thereby have two great adventures in reading.
Requirements: The effort is the prize, as the jurist Benjamin Cardozo said. The primary work of the course is reading and participating in an ongoing conversation about the novels. If you do not see yourself keeping up with the reading at all times (about fifty pages per class), please reconsider taking the course. Writing: several very short pieces and one longer paper. (Group 4)
English 4300 Section 002 CRN 31638
Beebe
Senior Seminar: The Literary Gothic 0930-1045 TR
In this seminar, we will spend the semester reading prominent texts of gothic literature, tracing its literary origins, complexities, and cultural influence. Gothic literature has long been a source of suspenseful and titillating stories—stories that make explicit the darker, disturbing, and repressed side of both physical and human nature. Popular and academic audiences alike recognize the literary gothic’s subversive potential and are captivated by its dramatization of the human condition—of fear, fantasy, criminality, and psychological intrigue. But to what end? Is the literary gothic a means to make safe (to expose and neutralize) the dangerous? Or is it best understood as a destabilizing movement, revolutionary and counter-culture?
Our reading will begin with some of the founding texts of the literary gothic in the 18th century, and, from there, we will trace the gothic influence through the present day—through ghost and vampire stories to psychological thrillers. One of our primary goals will be to try to fix the term “gothic” with some kind of historical and literary precision: what do we mean when we call a literary text “gothic”? How does that use of the term differ, for example, from how art or architectural historians use the term? Are there historical or aesthetic relationships? What kinds of political or psychological interpretations can we “read into” the literary gothic? Besides enjoying some engaging literary gothics, we will try to answer such questions as we study the historical and aesthetic origins of the genre and its continuing impact on literary and cultural studies. Requirements include brief response papers, oral presentation, research paper, and final exam. (Group 4)
English 4300 Section 003 CRN 31639
Suksang
Senior Seminar: Belief in Fiction & Nonfiction 1300-1350 MWF
Belief is such an integral part of our lives. It shapes who we are and influences what we do as well as how we perceive and respond to others. We will use the term belief in the broadest sense to cover all dimensions of the term—personal, religious, social, and political. Exploring how belief is represented in a variety of texts--short stories, novels, essays, and films—can help us understand the multidimensional nature of belief and its impact on our lives. Course requirements include reading quizzes, two papers, an oral presentation, and a final exam. Students will also be responsible for leading class discussion. Some of the texts we will be reading are Charles Dickens’s Hard Times, Ernest Gaines’s A Lesson Before Dying, Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony, Leo Tolstoy’s Confession, and Bessie Head’s When Rain Clouds Gather. (Group 4)
English 4390 Section 097 CRN 31642
Suksang
Senior Seminar (Honors): Belief in Fiction & Nonfiction 1300-1350 MWF
Belief is such an integral part of our lives. It shapes who we are and influences what we do as well as how we perceive and respond to others. We will use the term belief in the broadest sense to cover all dimensions of the term—personal, religious, social, and political. Exploring how belief is represented in a variety of texts--short stories, novels, essays, and films—can help us understand the multidimensional nature of belief and its impact on our lives. Course requirements include reading quizzes, two papers, an oral presentation, and a final exam. Students will also be responsible for leading class discussion. Some of the texts we will be reading are Charles Dickens’s Hard Times, Ernest Gaines’s A Lesson Before Dying, Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony, Leo Tolstoy’s Confession, and Bessie Head’s When Rain Clouds Gather. (Group 4)
English 4390 Section 098 CRN 31641
Beebe
Senior Seminar (Honors): The Literary Gothic 0830-1045 TR
In this seminar, we will spend the semester reading prominent texts of gothic literature, tracing its literary origins, complexities, and cultural influence. Gothic literature has long been a source of suspenseful and titillating stories—stories that make explicit the darker, disturbing, and repressed side of both physical and human nature. Popular and academic audiences alike recognize the literary gothic’s subversive potential and are captivated by its dramatization of the human condition—of fear, fantasy, criminality, and psychological intrigue. But to what end? Is the literary gothic a means to make safe (to expose and neutralize) the dangerous? Or is it best understood as a destabilizing movement, revolutionary and counter-culture?
Our reading will begin with some of the founding texts of the literary gothic in the 18th century, and, from there, we will trace the gothic influence through the present day—through ghost and vampire stories to psychological thrillers. One of our primary goals will be to try to fix the term “gothic” with some kind of historical and literary precision: what do we mean when we call a literary text “gothic”? How does that use of the term differ, for example, from how art or architectural historians use the term? Are there historical or aesthetic relationships? What kinds of political or psychological interpretations can we “read into” the literary gothic? Besides enjoying some engaging literary gothics, we will try to answer such questions as we study the historical and aesthetic origins of the genre and its continuing impact on literary and cultural studies. Requirements include brief response papers, oral presentation, research paper, and final exam. (Group 4)
English 4390 Section 099 CRN 31640
Leddy
Senior Seminar (Honors): Two Big Novels 0900-0950
He sat on the edge of his bed with his elbows on his knees and scanned the stack of cartridges. Each cartridge in the dock dropped on command and began to engage the drive with an insectile click and whir, and he scanned it. But he was unable to distract himself with the TP [Teleputer] because he was unable to stay with any one entertainment cartridge for more than a few seconds. The moment he recognized what exactly was on one cartridge he had a strong anxious feeling that there was something more entertaining on another cartridge and that he was potentially missing it.
-David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
The technologist Linda Stone has coined the term “continuous partial attention” to describe what ails us in the early twenty-first century: an increasing inability to give our full attention to any one thing for very long for fear of missing everything else that is out there (as if one could, really, “have it all”). Reading a big novel is, among things, practice in the art of attention.
In this seminar, we will read two big novels: Charles Dickens’s Bleak House (1853) and David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest (1996). These novels can be read as examples of what has been called “encyclopedic narrative”: they are vast portraits of national cultures, presenting characters drawn from every social stratum. Bleak House shows us an England in which cultural institutions fail at every turn. The principal settings: the Court of Chancery (devoted to wills and trusts), country houses, and the slums of London. Infinite Jest gives us a reconfigured United States focused on entertainment and terrorism, a nation in which time itself has been turned over to corporate sponsors (e.g., “The Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment”). The principal settings: a prestigious tennis academy and a halfway house for recovering addicts.
Both novels are preoccupied with what Dickens calls “connexion”—the strange paths that join seemingly unrelated characters and stories. (Someone in the book trade in fact has joked that Wallace must have influenced Dickens.) And there are many other points of surprising similarity between the novels: comedy, pathos, fierce satire, ghosts. The point of our effort though will be not to compare and contrast but to learn how to become each novel’s reader and thereby have two great adventures in reading.
Requirements: The effort is the prize, as the jurist Benjamin Cardozo said. The primary work of the course is reading and participating in an ongoing conversation about the novels. If you do not see yourself keeping up with the reading at all times (about fifty pages per class), please reconsider taking the course. Writing: several very short pieces and one longer paper. (Group 4)
EIU 4192G Section 099 CRN 33552
Boswell
Film and Contemporary Society [Honors Senior Seminar] 1530-1850 T
Film represents the most popular—and probably the most powerful—art form of our own time. We will watch, study, and discuss a variety of movies throughout the semester as we explore the history, aesthetics, and critical theory which inform the movies. Prerequisites: Admission to the University Honors Program and permission of the Director of Honors Program.
Requirements: class participation, several short papers, one substantial research paper.
Note: This University Senior Seminar does not fulfill the English Honors Senior Seminar requirement, English 4300/4390. (General Education)
CLASSES NUMBERED 4750 THROUGH 4999. THESE CLASSES ARE OPEN TO JUNIORS, SENIORS, AND GRADUATE STUDENTS. GRADUATE STUDENTS ARE LIMITED TO NINE HOURS OF COURSEWORK IN THIS CATEGORY.
English 4750 Section 001 CRN 31643
Loudon
Studies in African-American Literature: Bluesology: The Blues & Its Literary Agency 1530-1645 TR
Ralph Ellison describes the blues as “an autobiographical chronicle of personal catastrophe expressed lyrically.” This course explores, through both musical and literary texts, how that vernacular expression blossoms into literary achievement. We’ll examine formative influences in work songs and narrative poems, the bawdy “toasts.” We’ll listen to blues artists from the Mississippi delta to urban Chicago, and we’ll read a variety of literary selections from Frederick Douglass and Du Bois to Amiri Baraka and Sonia Sanchez. Students will be expected to define and to develop their own extended research. Discussion (20%), short essay [3-4 pages] (15%), midterm essay examination (15%), long essay [10-12 pages] (25%) and final essay examination (25%), or grading by contract in some combination of writing and proposed projects. (Group 2)
English 4752 Section 001 CRN 34366
Knight
Studies in Drama: Theatre for the Sun King: Drama in 17th Century France 1700-1815 TR
This course covers works by three major French playwrights during the 17th Century, Corneille, Moliere and Racine. Students will attend the production of Tartuffe at the Doudna Fine Arts Center. Discussion will focus on both literary and theatrical aspects of the plays, examining topics ranging from classicism to satire, from France during the reign of Louis XIV to modern stage production. Assignments include short papers, a critical essay, and a midterm and final exam. (Group 5)
English 4760 Section 001 CRN 31646
Gay
Studies in Professional Writing: 1400-1450 MWF
Effective documents are not just produced, they are designed. In this course, we will learn the basics of effective document design, developing visual literacy and a design vocabulary that will help you to create rhetorically appropriate, professional documents. The course will make extensive use of Adobe InDesign and students will also gain experience in analyzing documents, redesigning poorly conceived documents, usability testing, and the ethics of design. A major project for the semester will allow students redesign the literary magazine Karamu. (Group 5)
English 4762 Section 001 CRN 31647
Martone
Poetry Writing 1400-1450 MWF
Extensive practice in the writing of poetry. (Group 5)
English 4763 Section 001 CRN 31648
Carpenter
Fiction Writing 1400-1515 TR
Extensive practice in the writing and revising of prose fiction, with an emphasis on the development of the student’s personal style. Each student will have the option of writing several short stories or one novella. May be taken twice with permission of the Department Chairperson. (Group 5)
English 4775 Section 001 CRN 31645
Ringuette
Studies in Literary and Cultural Criticism and Theory: Inquiry & Imagination 1100-1215 TR
Critics and writers often speak of poems, novels, and plays as works of imagination, and in doing so they inevitably raise the question of what work the imagination does and how it goes about doing that work. If such work usually proceeds in a complex, systematic way, and yields something meaningful (a poem, for example), then an understanding of the function of imagination in literature is well worth pursuing.
This course is premised on the idea that a fundamental principle of Western thought is inquiry, and it also focuses on how imagination figures into the writing and reading of literature. What are the problems encountered in dealing with the imagination? William Carlos Williams says that "Imagination is not to avoid reality, nor is it description nor an evocation of objects or situations; it is to say that poetry does not tamper with the world but moves it." In our deliberations and discoveries, we, like Wallace Stevens, will engage in an imaginative search for "what will suffice."
We’ll read a wide variety of writers and theorists—ancient and modern—who have had something to say about the relations among inquiry, imagination, and literature. We’ll proceed in a seminar-format. We’ll read and write, and talk about that reading and writing. Other requirements include midterm (short) and final (long) essays. (Group 4)
English 4801 Section 001 CRN 31649
Ames
Integrating the English Language Arts 1830-2100 W
This course centers on connecting pedagogical theory and its practical applications for integrating the English language arts, including literature, composition, speech, drama, and media. Future teachers will have the opportunity to learn how to integrate a variety of methods grounded in theories in the teaching of English language arts, as well as strategies for teaching non-traditional texts from popular culture. Adapting written and oral communication to audience and situation; recognizing components of effective oral and written communication; and integrating technology and media into the language arts classroom will be key elements of this course. Course work will include: response papers, pedagogical research, lesson plans, unit design, authentic assessments, and various presentations. (Group 1)
English 4903 Section 001 CRN 35034
Kory
Young Adult Literature 1400-1450 MWF
In this class we will explore the range of works in English written for and about “young adults” (teens and pre-teens), focusing primarily on those produced after the 1960s, when this category emerged as a distinct literary market. Class discussions, individualized writing assignments and group presentations will focus on critical analysis of narrative technique and literary quality as part of a more wide-ranging evaluation that takes into account the needs and desires of the target audience(s) for these works. We will also explore the ways these novels and short fictions reveal changing social attitudes and diverse authorial slants on adolescents and the world around them. Readings will include ground-breaking works such as Monster (winner of the first Printz award), Rules of the Road, A Step from Heaven, Am I Blue? and Feed in addition to self-selected works in a variety of genre (realism and fantasy) from a range of time-periods and cultural perspectives. Writing assignments will include informal analytic responses, a more formal research-based review essay, and a final exam. Students taking the course for graduate credit will complete a more extensive research project on an issue in young adult literature. (Group 5, Group 1 for teacher certification)
English 4904 Section 001 CRN 35036
Boswell
Studies in Film 1530-1830 R
We will explore how film adaptation works by screening several movies and reading a variety of texts (fiction, screenplays, theory, etc.). Course requirements: willingness to watch several great movies and to participate in animated discussion; two or three short papers; final research project. (Group 5)
English 4906 Section 001 CRN 35037
Fredrick
Problems of Teaching of English: Teaching Business & Technical Writing 1530-1645 TR
CANCELLED
(Group 5)
English 4950 Section 001 CRN 31652
Vietto
Literary History 1200-1250 MWF
Your education in literature in Eastern’s department has mostly been organized around the idea of literary periods. In this course we will examine the reasons for this kind of organization of literature, the problems with it, and what you can do with literary history.
We’ll undertake this investigation in three phases. First, we will discuss the literary curriculum as you have experienced it, and you will review your own familiarity with the various historical periods. You will also read a few works individually selected to help you fill in some of the “gaps” in your historical knowledge, and finally you will write an essay reflecting on your own reading and its relationship to literary history. Second, we will use the history of printing and other forms of textual production (from the medieval scribe to the Internet) as a way to organize our thinking about Anglo-American literature; along the way, we will use some of the cool new technological resources that let us learn about the history of printing and production of texts. Finally, each member of the class will select and read two works of literature in English published in the last 10 years (literary fiction, poetry, drama, or memoir) and write an essay in which you use some aspect of literary history to illuminate one or both of the works you selected. (Group 4)
English 5000 Section 001 CRN 31653
Bredesen
Introduction to Methods & Issues in English Studies 1900-2130 M
An introduction to critical approaches, research methods, and current issues in literary and composition studies. Required in first year of enrollment.
English 5002 Section 001 CRN 34367
Wixson
Studies in Renaissance Literature: Neglected Shakespeare 1530-1800 W
This advanced course in the work of William Shakespeare situates at its center plays that have been at various times marginalized due to what were perceived as irredeemable “flaws” in character, plot, structure, and theme. Many of which were ultimately “rediscovered” in the modern period when their darker sensibilities found greater resonance. These “lost” plays, that so rarely find their way to the stage or even to the classroom, are exciting, brilliant, insightful, and beautiful, all qualities that belie their overlooked status and make them deserving of rigorous exploration. The existence of a so-called “minor” canon also begs the questions of what is major and why and how these distinctions have shaped our sense of what is (and is not) “Shakespearean”.
We will start in the 1590s with the much-derided masterpiece Titus Andronicus and the rhetorically effervescent Love’s Labour’s Lost, jump to the so-called “problem plays” of the middle period, and conclude among the romances. In addition to very close readings and re-readings of the plays, there will be a fair amount of secondary readings in theory, history, and criticism as well as frequent writing assignments of various lengths involving research and designed to be challenging. Our course will also include regular excursions into theatrical practice. Enrollment in the course should indicate an enthusiasm for as well as some grounding in the usual suspects among the plays of William Shakespeare. Plays with which you already should be generally familiar include A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Taming of the Shrew, Richard II, Richard III, As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, The Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet, Henry IV, Henry V, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, and The Tempest.
English 5004 Section 001 CRN 35040
Coleman
Studies in Restoration and 18th Century British Literature: Writing & Reading Gender in Restoration & 18th Century Prose 1530-1800 R
We have entered a second wave in the study of gender and sexuality in the prose forms that emerged during the Restoration and developed over the course of the 18th Century. For example, having recovered the writing of Eliza Haywood, whose novel Love in Excess sold on par with Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe but then was relegated to the footnotes of literary history, we are in a position to map the details of her place in her literary and cultural moment. What existing genres were available to her and what shape did they take in her gendered hands? To what group of readers did she turn? What traces are left of her desire to shape not just their ideas but their very habits as readers? In short, our primary goal will be to historicize the complex relationship between developing early modern gender norms and the innovative prose forms of the “long 18th century.” We will read letters, essays, and novels (early radical experiments and the progressive and conservative texts that followed), as well as recent theories on the novel’s emergence at this time and in this place.
English 5008 Section 001 CRN 35041
Vietto
Colonial American Literature: Sex, Law, & the Early American Novel 1900-2130 T
In the decades before the American Revolution, attitudes toward sexuality in the English-speaking colonies liberalized significantly, especially in the metropolitan centers of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. In the decades after the conclusion of the war, the effects of both the new sexual mores and the new legal system of the independent colonies made themselves felt in the novels Americans read and wrote. In this course, we will read early American novels in the context of the shifting sexual and political landscape. Our reading list will include the novel conventionally identified as the first American novel, early America’s first phenomenal best-sellers, a novel set in Haiti written by an eyewitness of parts of the revolution there, and a sizable sample of work by C. B. Brown. Of course, we will also read and discuss both secondary and primary sources on the fiction and on the historical context.
English 5011 Section 001 CRN 31658
Fredrick
Studies in Composition and Rhetoric: The Practice & Politics of Evaluating Student Writing 1900-2130 R
For most writing teachers, evaluating students’ writing takes the majority of the time we spend on our courses and represents a significant amount of the one-on-one communication we have with our students. Despite the amount of time spent grading, teachers often don’t take time to critically analyze their approaches to evaluation or to plan an effective method for handling a stack of papers. This course will examine evaluation broadly, from establishing evaluation criteria for assignments to giving feedback on drafts to assigning a final grade on the paper.
Throughout the course, we will examine a wide range of questions related to the evaluation of students’ writing: How do our beliefs about teaching and what makes good writing affect how we evaluate students? What can research tell us about the types of feedback and grades that are most useful for students? How can we use different types of evaluation at different stages in the writing process? How can we prepare students and ourselves for the evaluation process through our assignment designs? What role should correctness play in the grades we give? How do we evaluate papers that take positions we disagree with? What roles do technologies such as document reviewing, Turnitin, grammar and spelling checkers, and even search engines such as Google play in the evaluation of student writing? What methods can we find for handling a stack of papers efficiently, while still providing quality feedback?
In addition to readings and discussions related to issues involved in evaluation, you will have the opportunity to evaluate sample pieces of student writing and to develop evaluation criteria and grading rubrics. As part of this course, you will also develop a position statement that describes your approach to evaluation of student writing. At the end of the semester, you will research and write a paper on a topic related to evaluating students’ writing.
English 5020 Section 001 CRN 33551
Moffitt
Graduate Workshop in Creative Writing: Fiction 1900-2130 W
This class assumes that students already have an advanced understanding of and practice in fiction writing, and that they are serious and active writers of prose fiction. The course requires students to produce a significant amount of original creative fiction, either short stories or chapters of a novel—but that is not the only requirement. The desire to write often develops from a need to connect; therefore, importantly, one of our goals is to consider the way the writer can connect to a community rather than be cordoned off in solipsistic isolation. As such, students must also provide substantive and constructive critiques of their peers’ writing; give public readings of their work and attend other writers’ reading events; submit work to be considered for publication; select, examine, and discuss relevant texts from contemporary fiction writers in order to develop a thorough and sophisticated understanding of theme, technique, structure, and style; and gain practice in teaching the elements of craft.
English 5502 Section 001 CRN 31660
Markelis
Mentored Composition Teaching 1530-1800 M
This course seeks to provide a foundation for the effective teaching of freshman composition. Building upon the coursework in pedagogical theory covered in English 5007, we will immerse ourselves in the practices of teaching writing at the college level, and each student should be prepared to engage vigorously in discussion, analysis, reflection, and performance.
Notes
1. English 1002 is a prerequisite for 2000-level courses and above.
2. All courses designated with a G (e.g., 2009G) fulfill requirements in the old Integrated Core Curriculum.
3. Except for English 3009G and 3099G, English courses in the General Education Program (“G” courses) do not fulfill requirements in the English major or minors.
4. A new curriculum has been approved for the English major and for the English Language Arts option for Teacher Certification, effective with the 2007-2008 catalog. Students who began prior to fall 2007 may elect to follow their original catalog or the 2007 catalog. Courses are grouped for course selection in the old and new catalogs as follows:
2006 and Earlier Catalogs
Group 1—Required Courses: 2205§, 2601, 2901* or 3901 or 4901, 3001, 3401*, 3402*, 4300, 4390‡, 4644‡, 4801*, 4950
Group 2—Literary/Cultural Studies: 2602, 2692, 2705, 2850, 3009G, 3099G, 3705, 3903
Group 3—Periods: English Literature before 1660: 3800, 3801, 3802, 3803, 3804, 3892
Group 4—Periods: English Literature after 1660: 3805, 3806, 3807, 3808
Group 5—Periods: American Literature: 3700, 3701, 3702, 3703, 3704
Group 6—Special Areas, Topics and Studies: 2001, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2603, 2760, 3005, 3405, 3504, 3600, 3601, 3604, 3606, 3706, 3970, 4275, 4750, 4752, 4760, 4761, 4762, 4763, 4764, 4775, 4850, 4903, 4905, 4906
2007 Catalog
Group 1—Foundation Courses: 2205§, 2601, 2901* or 3901 or 4901, 2760 or 3001 or 3002 or 3005 or 4761** or 4762** or 4763** or 4764**, 3401*, 3402*, 4801*, 4903*
Group 2—Focused Study in Multicultural Literatures: 2705, 2850, 3705*, 4750, 4850
Group 3—Breadth in Historical Literary Studies
3A. Literature before 1800: 3800, 3803, 3805, 3700 and courses in Group 5 when so designated in this course description booklet
3B. 19th Century: 3806, 3807, 3701, 3702 and courses in Group 5 when so designated in this course description booklet
3C. 20th Century and After: 3808, 3809, 3703, 3704 and courses in Group 5 when so designated in this course description booklet
3D. Major Author Study: 3801, 3802/3892, 3804, 3601 and courses in Group 5 when so designated in this course description booklet
Group 4—Capstone Courses: 4300 or 4390, 4775 or 4950
Group 5—English Electives: 2001, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2602, 2603, 2692, 2760, 3005, 3009G, 3099G, 3405, 3504, 3600, 3604, 3606, 3706, 3903, 3970, 4275, 4752, 4760, 4761, 4762, 4763, 4764, 4903, 4905, 4906
*Required for Teacher Certification only
‡Required of Honors students only
§Concurrent or prior registration in English 2205 is strongly recommended for majors in all courses at the 2000-level and above
**Prerequisites