English Course Descriptions

Summer 2010

 

 

 

Four-Week Session

 

 

 

English 3001 Section 051       CRN 60521      
Wixson
Advanced Composition    1300-1535 MTWR

The goal of English 3001 is to provide students with advanced opportunities to cultivate their critical voices further, developing skills of writing and thinking both within professional and disciplinary contexts as well as more generally as a member of an intellectual community. This course is designed to allow each student the flexibility to pursue topics within their chosen major/field and a chance to reflect, challenge, and share reactions, questions, and ideas within a community of thinkers and writers. (old curriculum Group 1; new curriculum Group 1)

English 3702 Section 051       CRN 60519
Allison
American Literature: Mid-19th Century to 1900     0800-1000 MTWRF

The literature of American Realism (1860-1900) bears witness to America's coming of age. The country was reeling from the trauma of war, transitioning from a farm-based economy to a new economy of urban industry, and seeking to manage tensions between people's conflicting needs for social stability and social change. Anticipating the conditions of our lives, the literature of American Realism is well worth reading. During the course we will discuss a range of works by such writers as Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Charles Chesnutt, Kate Chopin, Stephen Crane, Henry James, Theodore Dreiser, and Edith Wharton. The works will include a rich variety of approaches to Realism--common-place Realism, naturalistic Realism, impressionistic Realism, and psychological Realism. Formal requirements include a mid-term examination, a critical essay of 8-10 pages, and a final examination. (old curriculum Group 5; new curriculum Group 3B)

English 3805 Section 051       CRN 60520
Park
Restoration and 18th-Century British Literature     1015-1215 MTWRF

This course examines the development of the novel (alongside poetry) over the course of the 18th century. The sheer versatility and experimental nature of novels in the period resist any neat accounting of their rise.  Rogues exist alongside virtuous ladies, bourgeois mercantilism next to aristocratic romance. Representative novels (or selections) from Defoe, Haywood, Richardson, Fielding, Sterne, Walpole, Burney, and Austen will give us a picture of the multi-faceted, historical rise of the novel, its reincarnations and admixtures of older forms. In the limited time allotted, you will be expected to read copiously for this course. (old curriculum Group 4; new curriculum Group 3A)


 

 

Six-Week Session

 

 

English 2007 Section 001       CRN 60523
Kilgore
Creative Writing: Fiction    1100-1215 MTWRF

An introductory, workshop-style class primarily devoted to discussion of the students' own work. Early on the approach will be fairly prescriptive, with discussion of model stories and blunt how-to advice on plot, character, style, and narrative form. Later on, in very careful discussion of stories by class members, we'll be much less prescriptive, appreciating and applauding what seems to work, then trying to fix what doesn't. Students will complete a number of exercises in a workbook, participate in a group project that involves evaluating and presenting published stories, and write three stories of their own, submitting two of these for workshop discussion. Attendance and participation will be very important. An enjoyable class, but lots and lots of work. Prerequisite: English 1002G. Group 6. After June 1 or so, I will have a detailed syllabus posted online and linked to my website at http://www.ux1.eiu.edu/~cfjdk/ (old curriculum Group 6; new curriculum Group 5)


English 3009G Section 001    CRN 60468
Searle
Myth and Culture    0930-1045 MTWRF

"Myth is a past with a future, exercising itself in the present," writes contemporary Mexican author Carlos Fuentes. A constant among all peoples, a shared legacy of ancestral memories, perhaps a part of our very fiber, myth is, in part, the thread that binds a society (and societies) together, that which informs national identities and codes of moral conduct. So crucial are they, in fact, that people, even today, are willing to die for their myths.

Of course, we won't go to that extent in our class. Our focus will be on the intersection between myth and culture as it is illustrated in some darn good reads. Anthropologists, psychologists, theologians, philosophers, literary theorists, etc. have all grappled with the term myth. So expect some treatment of theory and where appropriate (and accessible) application to Eastern, Mediterranean, and American mythologies. Our quest (just couldn't resist that word) should reveal the essential beliefs of other cultures and at times their similarities with our own.

Class procedure will consist of very informal lecture and discussion periods, group work, and, when relevant, video. Grades will be based on class participation, occasional quizzes, two short papers, a mid-term and final. (General Education Program; old curriculum Group 2; new curriculum Group 5)


English 4903 Section 031     CRN 60522 
Kilgore
Young Adult Literature     1300-1445 MTWR

Plans are up in the air at present, as I work on re-tooling my general expertise (such as it is) in Children’s Literature to a more specialized focus on YAL, which, I’m told, is not a form of address current below the Mason-Dixon line, but publishers’ argot for works pitched to 12-18 year-olds. Feel free to e-mail me at jdkilgore@eiu.edu any time after May 20 for a fuller description and, with luck, a syllabus.  At this point I can say that we will read a combination of classics  (e.g., Lord of the Flies, Catcher in the Rye)  and more recent bestsellers (Alexie’s Diary of a Part-time Indian seems likely).  Expect to read busily during the accelerated summer session; to give a thrilling, well-prepared presentation on the reading that influenced you most during the lost years of your own adolescence; to write an 8-10 page term paper; and to complete a final exam with both take-home and in-class portions.  Lots of work, but good fun overall. (old curriculum Group 6; new curriculum Group 5, Group 1 for teacher certification)

 

 

Eight-Week Session

 

ENG 3010G Section 600       CRN 60667
Guzlowski
Literary Masterworks (internet course)

This online course focuses on American literary masterpieces of the 19th and 20th century. We read seminal poems, plays, and novels, that speak of the American self  and American society and how they have evolved over the years.  We will read Thoreau's Walden, Whitman's "Song of Myself," Dickinson's poems, Cather's novel O Pioneers, Frost's poems, Faulkner's novel As I lay Dying, Baraka's The Dutchman, some poems by Plath and Ginsberg, and Toni Morrison's novel Bluest Eye.  Grades are based on frequent discussion postings, a midterm and final, and an essay.

 

English 4275 Section 031    CRN 60527
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, and prepared publicity materials for Eastern, Lake Land, the Charleston Chamber of Commerce, the Tarble Arts Center, the Coles County Association for the Retarded, and Sarah Bush Lincoln Health Center.

English 4275 is a four-hour course offered on a credit/no credit basis. In addition to work created as part of the internship, students will engage in reflective writing about the internship and organizational culture. 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. (old curriculum Group 6; new curriculum Group



English 5005 Section 031    CRN 60526
Wharram
Studies in 19th-Century British Literature     1800-2030 MW

“The Prospects of Ruination: The Aesthetics of Brokenness”

The British Romantic movement has often been seen as the work of a small coterie of poets who had an unnatural affection for “Nature” and a strong aversion to prose.  This course will offer an alternative version of Romanticism, one based neither on “Nature” nor on the repudiation of prose.   To that end, we will examine some texts customarily read as part of the British Romantic movement, in order to find “something new” in them, and few others that have not, in order to revise the “old story” of the Romantic. 

The course will revolve around ruins—ruined characters, images of ruin, and tales of ruination—as a means to this end.  Ruined figures—in the economy, in society, on the landscape—appear and reappear in Romantic poetry and prose.  We will attempt to recover the Romantic fascination with these figures, and at the same time, recognize our own.