Archived Courses
Spring 2013
Here are the English courses being offered in Spring 2013 and the different ways in which they can be used to fulfill the English major and the Creative Writing minor. For a full description of each course, including the Special Topics courses, click on the course numbers below.
Fall 2012
Here are the English courses being offered in Fall 2012 and the different ways in which they can be used to fulfill the English major and the Creative Writing minor. For a full description of each course, including the Special Topics courses, click on the course numbers below.
ENG 101 (10-23): Literature and Composition
ENG 101 10: Lit & Comp MWF 8:30-9:20 Foster
ENG 101 11: Lit & Comp MWF 9:30-10:20 Walsh
ENG 101 12: Lit & Comp MWF 10:30-11:20 Harrison
ENG 101 13: Lit & Comp MWF 10:30-11:20 Staff/Post
ENG 101 14: Lit & Comp MWF 11:30-12:20 Knight
ENG 101 15: Lit & Comp MWF 12:30-1:20 Walsh
ENG 101 16: Lit & Comp MWF 1:30-2:20 Staff
ENG 101 17: Lit & Comp MWF 2:30-3:20 Meehan
ENG 101 18: Lit & Comp TTH 8:30-9:45 Daley
ENG 101 19: Lit & Comp TTH 10-11:15 Wagner
ENG 101 20: Lit & Comp TTH 11:30-12:45 Purdy
ENG 101 21: Lit & Comp TTH 11:30-12:45 Ames
ENG 101 22: Lit & Comp TTH 1-2:15 Cousineau
ENG 101 23: Lit & Comp TTH 1-2:15 Boyd
ENG 101 24: Lit & Comp TTH 2:30-3:45 Cousineau
ENG 101 25: Lit & Comp TTH 2:30-3:45 Ames
This course is intended to develop the student’s capacity for intelligent reading, critical analysis, and writing through the study of literature. There are frequent writing assignments, as well as individual conferences on the student’s writing.
Counts for: First-Year Graduation Requirement
ENG 103 (10-13): Introduction to Creative Writing
ENG 103 10: Intro to Creative Writing MWF 10:30-11:20 Dubrow
ENG 103 11: Intro to Creative Writing MWF 11:30-12:20 Harrison
ENG 103 12: Intro to Creative Writing TTH 11:30-12:45 Wagner
ENG 103 13: Intro to Creative Writing TTH 1-2:15 Mooney
A workshop on the forms of creative writing�primarily poetry and fiction as practiced by the students themselves. Readings in contemporary literature and craft.
Restriction: First-Year students only (fall semester).
Counts for: Creative Writing minor
ENG 205 10: (Shakespeare I)
TTH 2:30-3:45 Moncrief
This course will examine some of Shakespeare’s best known earlier plays (those written before the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603) both in the context of early modern English culture and as play scripts/performances. Class discussions, with significant contributions from student papers, will explore Shakespeare’s writings as products/producers of early modern culture through the consideration of issues including identity, politics, monarchy, religious conflicts, crime and justice, play and festivity, enclosure and urbanization, world exploration and colonization, nation and national identity, theatricality and theatre-going, religion, family, sexuality, and gender. Using films and live productions (if available) we will also consider the plays as they have been interpreted for performance.
Counts for: Pre-1800, Humanities distribution
Also counts toward the Drama major
ENG 207 (10-11): History of English Lit II
ENG 207 10: History of English Lit II MWF 10:30-11:20 Gillin
ENG 207 11: History of English Lit II TTH 1:00-2:15 Gillin
A survey of the development of English literature from Anglo-Saxon times to the present with attention to the historical background, the continuity of essential traditions, and the characteristic temper of successive periods. The second semester begins approximately with the Restoration in 1660.
Counts for: 200-level, Humanities distribution
ENG/AMS 209 10: Intro to American Lit I
ENG/AMS 209 10: Intro to American Lit I TTH 11:30-12:45 De Prospo
ENG/AMS 209 11: Intro to American Lit I TTH 1:00-2:15 De Prospo
Taught in the fall semester, the course is concerned with the establishment of American Literature as a school subject. Texts that have achieved the status of classics of American Literature, such as Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Thoreau’s Walden, and Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, will be read in the context of the history and politics of their achieving this status. Texts traditionally excluded from the canon of American literature, in particular early Hispano- and Franco-American texts, will be considered in the context of their relative marginality to the project of establishing American Literature as worthy of being taught and studied in the American academy. Other-than-written materials, such as modern cinematic representations of the period of exploration and colonization of North America, as well as British colonial portraits and history paintings, will be studied for how they reflect on claims for the cultural independence of early America. Other-than-American materials, such as late medieval and early Renaissance Flemish and Hispanic still lifes, as well as the works of nineteenth-century European romantic poets and prose writers, will be sampled for how they reflect on claims for the exceptional character of American culture.
Counts for: 200-level, Humanities distribution
Also counts for: American Studies major
ENG/AMS/BLS 213 10: Intro to African American Lit I
MWF 10:30-11:20 Knight
This course is a survey of African American literature produced from the late 1700s to the Harlem Renaissance. It is designed to introduce students to the writers, texts, themes, conventions and tropes that have shaped the African American literary tradition. Authors studied in this course include Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Paul Laurence Dunbar and Langston Hughes. There are no prerequisites for this course; however, students are encouraged to take HIS 319 “African American History to 1865” as a co-requisite.
Counts for: 200-level, Humanities distribution
Also counts for: American Studies major, Black Studies minor
ENG 216 10: Foundations of Western Lit II
TTH 10:00-11:15 Walsh
This course will begin with an investigation of Greco-Roman mythology, and will then proceed to a study of some of the major works of Greek and Roman literature that paved the way for all subsequent Western literature. Readings will include Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil’s Aeneid, and Sophocles’s Oedipus Tyrannus.
Counts for: 200-level, Humanities distribution
ENG 220 10: Intro to Fiction
MWF 2:30-3:45 Mooney
This course will survey the rich tradition of prose fiction largely, but not exclusively, in English. Emphasis will be placed on the enduring features of this genre as it evolved throughout the centuries as well as to the innovations introduced by individual writers. The literary works selected for this course will draw upon a variety of fictional forms and styles. Class discussions will include, along with close readings of the works themselves, an appreciation of the historical and cultural contexts out of which they arose and to which they gave a fictional rewriting.
Counts for: 200-level, Humanities distribution
ENG 222 10 (Intro to Poetry)
MWF 9:30-10:20 Foster
This course will provide an introduction to the study of various styles and forms of poetry. By reading a wide range of poetic styles from a number of aesthetic schools, students will consider the ways in which poetry has become a conversation across centuries, how the genre may act simultaneously as a personal and a political voice, and how it may be interpreted not only as intimate confession but also as “Supreme fiction.”
Counts for: 200-level, Humanities distribution
ENG 320 10/GEN: Eighteenth Century English Literature
TTH 11:30-12:45 Gillin
The triumph and decline of the neoclassic ideal in the eighteenth century. The course concentrates on the great figures of Swift, Pope, Johnson, and Boswell.
Counts for: Pre-1800, Elective
Also counts for: Gender Studies minor
ENG 345/BLS 345/AMS 345 The African American Novel
MWF 9:30-10:20 Knight
This course examines the origin and development of the African American novel. We will begin with the earliest novels and conclude with an analysis of contemporary novels by African American writers. We will examine novels from multiple genres and give careful attention to the intersection of race, gender, class and environment in representative novels of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.
Counts for: post-1800, Elective
Also counts for: American Studies major, Black Studies minor
ENG 347 10/AMS 347: American Environmental Writing
MWF 10:30-11:20 Meehan
The study of writing from an environmental perspective is both an emerging field in literary criticism and a rich tradition in American literary history. What does it mean to be green from a literary point of view? This course explores that question in looking at classic and contemporary authors of American environmental writing, from Henry David Thoreau to Annie Dillard to recent examples of eco-criticism. Though the primary focus will be on nonfiction prose, the traditional home of nature writing, the course will also explore environmental perspectives in poetry, fiction, and film as well as cross-disciplinary connections with the natural sciences and social sciences.
Counts toward: post-1800, elective
Also counts for: American Studies major
ENG 351 10/DRA 351 (Playwriting I)
W 1:30-4 Maloney
Counts for: Elective
Counts for: Creative Writing minor
Also counts toward the Drama major
ENG 353 10: Contemporary American Literature: Living Writers, Fiction
TTH 2:30-3:45 Mooney
This course guides a close examination of contemporary fiction written by some of the finest writers of our time, literature of our current culture that serves as context for our lives. We will proceed on the assumption, to paraphrase Josephine Hendin, that fiction offers us the opportunity to see the social patterning of our personal lives, and in that alone there is great value in its study. To make the challenges this course provides more poignant, four of the writers whose work is studied will come to Washington College to visit the class, discuss their work with students, and give a public reading from their work.
Counts for: Post-1800, elective
Counts for: Creative Writing minor
ENG 362: Literary Romanticism in the US II
W 7-9:30 De Prospo
Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman, Dickinson.
Counts for: Post-1800, Elective
ENG 390 10 Internship: Journalism
TBA McIntire
ENG 394 10: SpTp: Yeats, Joyce, Beckett
MW 2:30-3:45 Cousineau
A study of William Butler Yeats’s major poems, James Joyce’s short-story collection, *Dubliners*, and Samuel Beckett’s plays for stage, radio, and television. The principal emphasis throughout this course will be on the relationship between tradition and innovation.
Counts for: Post-1800, Elective
ENG/AMS 394 11: SpTp: American Jewish Literature
MWF 11:30-12:20 Dubrow
This course will consider the significant role that Jewish writers have played in the shaping of 20th and 21st century American literature. In order to learn how a small community of people have responded to and have been influenced by the experience of living in the United States, students will study works of fiction, theater, and poetry. Assigned texts will trace the evolution of American Jewish writers from tentative, newly-arrived immigrants into self-assured citizens.
Counts for: Post-1800, Elective
Also counts for: American Studies major
ENG/AMS 394 12: SpTp: Approaches to Hollywood Film
TTH 10-11:15 & T 7-10
Approaches to Hollywood Film is designed to familiarize students with a variety of critical approaches to Hollywood cinema and its role in American culture. Through the study of fourteen films and various readings, students should develop a knowledge of historical, aesthetic, genre-based, auteurist, and feminist approaches to the American film industry and its products.
Counts for: Post-1800, Elective
Also counts for: American Studies major
ENG 394 13: SpTp: Writing for the Media
MWF 1:30-2:30 Harrison
This course builds writing and reporting skills with a primary focus on writing for print and web news sources including newspapers, magazines, and web news sites like Slate, Salon and the Huffington Post. Students will be able to hone their reporting and news gathering skills and develop feature stories, profiles, spot news stories, opinion pieces, wikipedia entries, and long-form journalism, travel, and other magazine feature stories. We will also discuss policy, ethics and legal issues for journalists. Students who wish to do so may also explore writing for advertising and public relations or creating a web persona and web following via social media sites like google+, twitter, and facebook.
Counts for: Elective
Counts for: Creative Writing minor
ENG 394 14/DRA 394 10: SpTp The Screenplay
TTH 11:30-12:45 Price
This course will introduce participants to the basic architecture of the film play. Instruction will concentrate on the synopsis, the treatment and sequencing. Through this exploration participants will acquire a basic understanding of conventional and experimental designs of screenwriting. Students will explore cinematic techniques that provide a vocabulary for creating tightly crafted film stories.
Counts for: Elective
Counts for: Creative Writing minor
H *ENG 410 10/DRA: Shakespeare Now: Shakespeare and Contemporary Criticism (Honors)
TTH 1-2:15 Moncrief
This course focuses on the advanced study of plays initially covered in the 200-level Shakespeare course in conjunction with the study of contemporary literary theory. The semester begins with an introduction to literary theory and methodology. Then, using plays as case studies, we will examine each play in relation to historical, seminal, or controversial criticism. Reading will concentrate on important critical approaches to the study of Shakespeare (i.e., New Criticism, Reader Response Theory, Structuralism, Post-structuralism, Psychoanalytic Criticism, Marxism, Feminism, New Historicism/ Cultural Materialism, Performance Criticism and Post-Colonialism).
Counts for: Pre-1800, elective
Also counts toward the Drama major
Spring 2012
Here are the English courses being offered in Spring 2012 and the different ways in which they can be used to fulfill the English major and the Creative Writing minor. For a full description of each course, including the Special Topics courses, click on the course numbers below.
ENG 101 (10-23): Literature and Composition
ENG 101 10: Lit & Comp MWF 8:30-9:20 Knight
ENG 101 11: Lit & Comp MWF 8:30-9-20 Foster
ENG 101 12: Lit & Comp MWF 9:30-10:20 Foster
ENG 101 13: Lit & Comp MWF 10:30-11:20 Walsh
ENG 101 14: Lit & Comp MWF 11:30-12:20 Walsh
ENG 101 15: Lit & Comp MWF 12:30-1:20 Olsen
ENG 101 16: Lit & Comp MWF 1:30-2:20 Meehan
ENG 101 17: Lit & Comp MWF 2:30-3:20 Meehan
ENG 101 18: Lit & Comp TTH 8:30-9:45 Daley
ENG 101 19: Lit & Comp TTH 10-11:15 Daley
ENG 101 20: Lit & Comp TTH 10-11:15 Santamaria
ENG 101 21: Lit & Comp TTH 11:30-12:45 De Prospo
ENG 101 22: Lit & Comp TTH 11:30-12:45 Ames
ENG 101 23: Lit & Comp TTH 1-2:15 Staff
ENG 101 24: Lit & Comp TTH 2:30-3:45 Ames
This course is intended to develop the student’s capacity for intelligent reading, critical analysis, and writing through the study of literature. There are frequent writing assignments, as well as individual conferences on the student’s writing.
Counts for: First-Year Graduation Requirement
ENG 103 10 (Introduction to Creative Writing)
TTH 11:30-12:45 Wagner
A workshop on the forms of creative writing�primarily poetry and fiction as practiced by the students themselves. Readings in contemporary literature and craft.
Restriction: None (spring section is open to all students)
Counts for: Creative Writing minor
ENG 206 10: (Shakespeare II)
TTH 2:30-3:45 Moncrief
This course, the second part of the Shakespeare sequence, will examine some of Shakespeare’s best known later plays both in the context of early modern English culture and as play scripts/performances. Class discussions—with significant contributions from student papers—will explore Shakespeare’s writings through the consideration of issues including authority and justice, appearance and identity, seeing and believing, memory, forgiveness, family, sexuality, and gender. Using films and local live productions (if available) we will also consider the plays as they have been and as they might be interpreted for performance.
Counts for: Pre-1800, Humanities distribution
ENG 208 (10-11): (History of English Literature II)
ENG 208 10: MWF 9:30-10:20 Gillin
ENG 208 11: TTH 1:00-2:15 Gillin
A survey of the development of English literature from Anglo-Saxon times to the present with attention to the historical background, the continuity of essential traditions, and the characteristic temper of successive periods. The second semester begins approximately with the Restoration in 1660.
Counts for: 200-level, Humanities distribution
ENG 210 10/AMS (Introduction to American Literature II)
TTH 1-2:15 De Prospo
Taught in the spring semester, the course is concerned with the establishment of American Studies as a curriculum in post-World War II American colleges and universities. Readings will include a variety of written texts, including those not traditionally considered literary, as well as a variety of other-than-written materials, including popular cultural ones, in accordance with the original commitment of American Studies to curricular innovation. Introductions to the modern phenomena of race, gender, sexual orientation, generation, and class in U.S. culture will be included. A comparatist perspective on the influence of American culture internationally and a review of the international American Studies movement in foreign universities will also be introduced.
Counts for: 200-level, Humanities distribution
Also counts for: American Studies
ENG/AMS/BLS 214 10: (Intro to African American Lit II)
MWF 10:30-11:20 Knight
This course surveys African American authors from the Harlem Renaissance to the present. It is designed to expose students to the writers, texts, themes, and literary conventions that have shaped the African American literary canon since the Harlem Renaissance. Authors studied in this course include Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Gwendolyn Brooks, James Baldwin, and Toni Morrison. There are no prerequisites for this course; however, students are encouraged to take HIS 320 “African American History from 1865” as a co-requisite.
Counts for: 200-level, Humanities distribution
Also counts for: Black Studies minor, American Studies major
ENG 215 10: (Foundations of Western Lit I)
TTH 11:30-12:45 Olsen
No work has had a more profound impact on Western thought than the Bible. Familiarity with the Biblical texts is necessary for an informed understanding of almost any aspect of Western art and culture, from medieval love poetry to modern political debates. This course is designed to introduce students to the stories, doctrines, and themes of the Bible upon which most of English and American literature presumes.
Counts for: 200-level, Humanities distribution
ENG 221 10 (Intro to Nonfiction)
MWF 10:30-11:20 Meehan
This course will offer students a selective overview of the “fourth genre” of nonfiction prose. Readings will be drawn from some of the principal subdivisions of this field, which includes autobiography and biography, documentary, the essay, literary journalism, memoir, and writing in new media.
Course Overview:
This course explores a creative and rich tradition within the genre of nonfiction writing, autobiography, in arguably its most significant location: the American literary tradition. In addition to surveying some classic texts and critical problems in the tradition of writing about the self, we will focus on more recent autobiographical works that explore the terrain of childhood and coming of age. We will be reading these works both critically and creatively, thinking about issues (childhood, memory, race, gender, identity) and styles of American autobiography, and more broadly, creative nonfiction, as both readers and writers�in other words, as American autobiographers ourselves. In America, everyone has an autobiography waiting to be written. We will explore that idea in our readings and take it up in our writing.
Course Texts:
Andrews (editor), Classic American Autobiographies
Cary, Black Ice
Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted
Momaday, The Names
Wolff, This Boys’ Life
Counts for: 200-level, Humanities distribution
ENG 222 10 (Intro to Poetry)
MWF 12:30-1:20 Staff
This course will provide an introduction to the study of various styles and forms of poetry. By reading a wide range of poetic styles from a number of aesthetic schools, students will consider the ways in which poetry has become a conversation across centuries, how the genre may act simultaneously as a personal and a political voice, and how it may be interpreted not only as intimate confession but also as “Supreme fiction.”
Counts for: 200-level, Humanities distribution
ENG 223 10: (Introduction to Drama)
TTH 10-11:15 Walsh
This course will examine plays as literary texts, as play scripts, and as performances. It will investigate theatre/drama from a variety of styles and themes across several centuries (from ancient Greece to renaissance England to contemporary USA) to understand dramatic conventions and assumptions. The course will consider how writers from across the globe in various time periods consider, rework, and comment upon similar subjects and themes.
Counts for: 200-level, Humanities distribution
ENG 301 10: (Chaucer)
MWF 11:30-12:20 Olsen
A reading of The Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Criseyde, The Book of the Duchess, and lyric poems.
Counts for: Pre-1800, elective
ENG 321 10 (Romanticism)
TTH 11:30-12:45 Gillin
The movement from the late eighteenth century to 1832 considered as a revolution in the aims and methods of poetry. Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats.
Counts for: Post-1800, elective
ENG 341 (Native American Lit)
TTH 2:30-3:45 Wagner
This course will be a consideration of contemporary Native American prose and poetry. Most of the readings will focus on twentieth-century works and their sources in Native American and European American cultural and literary traditions. Students will consider how complicated the process of defining Native American literature can be; how works by native people relate to or depart from other ethnic American literatures; how indigenous speakers/writers respond to and resist colonialism; and how Native American perspectives and narratives continue today. Emphasis will be placed on the use of Native American myths and images of the natural world in the texts.
Counts for: Post-1800, elective
ENG 342 10 (Children’s and Adolescent Lit)
M 6-8:30 p.m. B. Gillin
Various genres will be treated with regard to historical, social, cultural, and contemporary perspectives. Readings for the course will be drawn from the folk tale, fairy tale, poetry, myth, fiction, and picture books. The art and practice of storytelling will be treated, and students are expected to work up a performance.
Prerequisite: Any two English courses on the 200-level.
Counts for: Post-1800, elective
ENG 351 10/DRA 351 10: (Playwriting I)
W 1:30-4 Maloney
Analysis and practical application of techniques and styles employed in writing for the stage.
Counts for: Elective
Counts for: Creative Writing minor
ENG 361: (Literary Romanticism in the US I)
W 7-9:30 De Prospo
Poe, Emerson, Thoreau, Stowe.
Counts for: Post-1800, elective
H ENG 370 AMS/BLS 370 90: (The Harlem Renaissance—Honors)
MWF 9:30-10:20 Knight
This interdisciplinary course examines the literature and intellectual thought of the Harlem Renaissance, a period in African American history that covers, roughly, the 1920s and 1930s. This course will offer more than a cursory introduction to a cultural movement. Instead, students will study key figures and texts at length, including the works of Wallace Thurman, Langston Hughes, Alain Locke and Zora Neale Hurston. By the end of the course, students should be able to explain the different conceptualizations of the black aesthetic that were prevalent during this movement, and articulate how the confluence of race, class and gender have impacted literary productions of the period.
Counts for: Post-1800, elective
Also counts for: Black Studies minor, American Studies major
ENG 390 10 Internship: Journalism
TBA McIntire
This course teaches basic news reporting and writing — the who, what, when, where, why & how of story organization; getting quickly to the point; conciseness; straightforward exposition; accuracy, fairness and balance, and ethical issues.
Counts for: elective
Students may count no more than 4 journalism credits toward the English major.
ENG 394 10/HMN 400 SpTp: Ireland and Irishness in Film
TTH 1-2:15 Gillin
By looking at the way Ireland and Irishness are portrayed in film in the United States, England, and Ireland we will explore the way certain images of Irish identity are manipulated, reinforced, or challenged. The tensions among commercial, historical, political, and national aims will be examined in connection to the aesthetic value of the films in the course. Print texts will also be used to amplify elements of Irish culture. The films included in the course are the following: The Quiet Man, The Field, My Left Foot, Michael Collins, Waking Ned Devine, December Bride, Veronica Guerin, The Wind that Shakes the Barley, In the Name of the Father, Omagh, The Snapper, The Commitments, The Crying Game, Bloody Sunday, The Magdalene Sisters, and In America
Counts for: Post-1800, elective
Also counts for: Humanities major
ENG 394 11 (Approaches to Hollywood Film)
MW 2:30-3:45 and M or T 7-9 Ames
Approaches to Hollywood Film is designed to familiarize students with a variety of critical approaches to Hollywood cinema and its role in American culture. Through the study of fourteen films and various readings, students should develop a knowledge of historical, aesthetic, genre-based, auteurist, and feminist approaches to the American film industry and its products.
Counts for: Post-1800, elective
ENG 394 12/DRA 394 10 (SpTp The Screenplay)
Price TTH 10-11:15
This course will introduce participants to the basic architecture of the film play. Instruction will concentrate on the synopsis, the treatment and sequencing. Through this exploration participants will acquire a basic understanding of conventional and experimental designs of screenwriting. Students will explore cinematic techniques that provide a vocabulary for creating tightly crafted film stories.
Counts for: elective
Counts for: Creative Writing minor
Also counts for: Drama major
ENG 394 13/PHL (SpTP Existentialism in Literature)
MWF 10:30-11:20 P. Weigel
Introduction to Existentialist thought in works of literature and philosophy. Characteristic themes include radical freedom, alienation, the search for meaning, modern mass society, psychoanalysis and the unconscious, and the rise of post-modernity. Authors include Kirkegaard, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Dostoevsky, Freud, Kafka, Heiddeger, Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Japanese novelist Kobo Abe. We read the entirety of Dostoevsky’s ‘Brothers Karamazov’ and other novels; readiness to do extensive reading under time limits is a must.
Prerequisite: Philosophy 100 and Sophomore standing.
Counts for: Post-1800, elective
Also counts for: Philosophy major
H ENG 411 90: (Honors: Milton)
TTH 1-2:15 Moncrief
This course will focus on Milton’s poetry, especially his epic poem Paradise Lost, with some attention to his minor poems and prose. Through close, critical reading of the poetry, we will examine Milton’s obsession with temptation, rebellion, loss and grief, defeat, the presence of evil in the world, and the limits of human knowledge and will pay attention to his biography, especially his experience of blindness and revolutionary defeat. We will study the formal elements of his poetry, including his use of and experimentation with blank verse as well as his appropriation, exploitation, and subversion of generic forms. We will also explore Milton’s literary texts in relationship to his culture�regicide and revolution, the turmoil of the seventeenth-century Puritan experiment, the commonwealth government, and restoration of the monarchy. We will also attempt to understand the importance of Milton’s poetry in literary history. Why has such a revolutionary poet come to be identified with conservative establishment? Why is Milton revered and reviled? How do we, in an age when feminism, canon revision, post-modernism, and post-colonialism, understand and critique Milton?
Counts for: Pre-1800, elective
ENG 452 10 (Advanced Creative Writing Workshop: Fiction)
W 4-6:30 Mooney
This workshop offers guided practice in the writing of short fiction. Using the work of established writers as models, considerable effort is put toward the objective of learning to read as writers and, in the process, becoming better critics of the student’s own work and the work of others in the group. By offering a more intimate familiarity with the elements of fiction, students write and revise prodigiously and, in the process, learn and practice a repertoire of literary strategies in preparation and in support of short stories of their own composition.
Prerequisite: Introduction to Creative Writing. (Students who completed Freshman Creative Writing or Intermediate Creative Writing in previous years are also eligible to register.) Primarily intended for juniors and seniors.
Counts for: elective
Counts for: Creative Writing minor
ENG 453 Adv CW Workshop: Poetry
W 1:30-4 Dubrow
This course builds upon students’ previous training in the workshop, asking them to hone their skills not only as writers but also as readers and critics of poetry. Using recently released, debut collections as role models, students will address concepts of diction, the line and line break, figurative language, image, rhyme, meter, and narrative. Assignments will include drafting new poems, performing close readings of published texts, and facilitating class discussions.
Prerequisite: Introduction to Creative Writing. (Students who completed Freshman Creative Writing or Intermediate Creative Writing in previous years are also eligible to register.) Primarily intended for juniors and seniors.
Counts for: elective
Counts for: Creative Writing minor
ENG 454 10: (Creative Writing Workshop: Nonfiction)
W 1:30-4 Staff
This course will use a workshop approach for students who are interested in developing their skills in a kind of writing which combines elements of journalism, such as the feature article, with elements of the literary, such as the personal essay. In addition, students will also develop their essay skills in the form of the personal narrative and travel writing. In essence this course treats the various forms of the essay with a special emphasis on the creative ways the genre can be interpreted and rewritten. Readings of representative essays will be included.
Prerequisite: Introduction to Creative Writing. (Students who completed Freshman Creative Writing or Intermediate Creative Writing in previous years are also eligible to register.) Primarily intended for juniors and seniors.sc
Counts for: elective
Counts for: Creative Writing minor
ENG 494 10: (SpTp: Seminar of the Book—Fiction)
T 7-9:30 Mooney
In this seminar for juniors and seniors (only), each student will work toward completing a book-length manuscript of fiction. Reading lists will be tailored to the specific needs of every student, and class discussions will focus on different revision techniques and strategies for organizing a manuscript. Students will meet regularly with the professor for individual conferences. In preparation for the course, each student must draft a significant body of work (at least 50 pages of fiction). This seminar may not be taken more than once.
Prerequisites: Must be on track for completion of the Creative Writing Minor, junior or senior status, satisfactory completion of the upper-level workshop in the appropriate genre. Students may also be admitted by permission of the instructor.
Counts for: elective
Counts for: Creative Writing minor
Fall 2011
Here are the English courses being offered in Fall 2011 and the different ways in which they can be used to fill the English major and the Creative Writing minor. For a full description of each course, including the Special Topics courses, click on the course numbers below.
ENG 101 10-23: Literature and Composition
Counts for: First-Year Graduation Requirement
ENG 101 10: MWF 8:30-9:20 Knight
ENG 101 11: MWF 9:30-10:20 Gillin
ENG 101 12: MWF 10:30-11:20 Walsh
ENG 101 13: MWF 11:30-12:20 Walsh
ENG 101 14: MWF 1:30-2:20 Meehan
ENG 101 15: MWF 2:30-3:20 Meehan
ENG 101 16: TTH 10:00-11:15 Wagner
ENG 101 17: TTH 11:30-12:45 De Prospo
ENG 101 18: TTH 11:30-12:45 Purdy
ENG 101 19: TTH 1:00-2:15 Cousineau
ENG 101 20: TTH 1:00-2:15 Boyd
ENG 101 21: TTH 2:30-3:45 Cousineau
ENG 101 22: TTH 2:30-3:45 Martin
ENG 101 23: TTH 4:00-5:15 Foster
This course is intended to develop the student’s capacity for intelligent reading, critical analysis, and writing through the study of literature. There are frequent writing assignments, as well as individual conferences on the student’s writing.
ENG 103: Freshman Creative Writing
Counts for: Creative Writing minor
ENG 103 10: MWF 10:30-11:20 Dubrow
ENG 103 12: TTH 11:30-12:45 Wagner
ENG 103 13: TTH 1:00-2:15 Mooney
A workshop on the forms of creative writing, primarily poetry and fiction as practiced by the students themselves. Readings in contemporary literature and craft.
Restriction: First-Year students only (fall semester)
Counts for: Creative Writing minor
ENG 205 10: Shakespeare I
Counts for: Pre-1800, Humanities distribution
ENG 205 10: TTH 2:30-3:45 Moncrief
This course will examine some of Shakespeare’s best known earlier plays (those written before the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603) both in the context of early modern English culture and as play scripts/performances. Class discussions, with significant contributions from student papers, will explore Shakespeare’s writings as products/producers of early modern culture through the consideration of issues including identity, politics, monarchy, religious conflicts, crime and justice, play and festivity, enclosure and urbanization, world exploration and colonization, nation and national identity, theatricality and theatre-going, religion, family, sexuality, and gender. Using films and live productions (if available) we will also consider the plays as they have been interpreted for performance.
ENG 207 10: History of English Literature
Counts for: 200-level, Humanities distribution
ENG 207 10: MWF 10:30-11:20 Gillin
A survey of the development of English literature from Anglo-Saxon times to the present with attention to the historical background, the continuity of essential traditions, and the characteristic temper of successive periods. The second semester begins approximately with the Restoration in 1660.
ENG 209 10/AMS: Introduction to American Literature
Counts for: 200-level, Humanities distribution
ENG 209 10: TTH 1:00-2:45 De Prospo
Taught in the fall semester, the course is concerned with the establishment of American Literature as a school subject. Texts that have achieved the status of classics of American Literature, such as Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Thoreau’s Walden, and Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, will be read in the context of the history and politics of their achieving this status. Texts traditionally excluded from the canon of American literature, in particular early Hispano- and Franco-American texts, will be considered in the context of their relative marginality to the project of establishing American Literature as worthy of being taught and studied in the American academy. Other-than-written materials, such as modern cinematic representations of the period of exploration and colonization of North America, as well as British colonial portraits and history paintings, will be studied for how they reflect on claims for the cultural independence of early America. Other-than-American materials, such as late medieval and early Renaissance Flemish and Hispanic still lifes, as well as the works of nineteenth-century European romantic poets and prose writers, will be sampled for how they reflect on claims for the exceptional character of American culture.
ENG 213 10/AMS/BLS: Intro to African-American Lit I
Counts for: 200-level, Humanities distribution
Also counts for: American Studies major, Black Studies minor
ENG 213 10/AMS/BLS: MWF 10:30�11:20 Knight
This course is a survey of African American literature produced from the late 1700s to the Harlem Renaissance. It is designed to introduce students to the writers, texts, themes, conventions and tropes that have shaped the African American literary tradition. Authors studied in this course include Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, William Wells Brown, Frances E. W. Harper, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Nella Larsen and Langston Hughes. There are no prerequisites for this course; however, students are encouraged to take HIS 319 “African American History to 1865” as a co-requisite.
ENG 216 10: Foundations of Western Lit II
Counts for: 200-level, Humanities distribution
ENG 216 10: TTH 10-11:15 Walsh
This course will begin with an investigation of Greco-Roman mythology, and will then proceed to a study of some of the major works of Greek and Roman literature that paved the way for all subsequent Western literature. Readings will include Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil’s Aeneid, and Sophocles’s Oedipus Tyrannus.
ENG 220 10: Introduction to Fiction
Counts for: 200-level, Humanities distribution
ENG 220 10: TTH 2:30-3:45 Mooney
This course will survey the rich tradition of prose fiction largely, but not exclusively, in English. Emphasis will be placed on the enduring features of this genre as it evolved throughout the centuries as well as to the innovations introduced by individual writers. The literary works selected for this course will draw upon a variety of fictional forms and styles. Class discussions will include, along with close readings of the works themselves, an appreciation of the historical and cultural contexts out of which they arose and to which they gave a fictional rewriting.
ENG 222 10: Intro to Poetry
Counts for: 200-level, Humanities distribution
ENG 222 10: MWF 9:30-10:20 Dubrow
This course will provide an introduction to the study of various styles and forms of poetry. By reading a wide range of poetic styles from a number of aesthetic schools, students will consider the ways in which poetry has become a conversation across centuries, how the genre may act simultaneously as a personal and a political voice, and how it may be interpreted not only as intimate confession but also as “Supreme fiction.”
ENG 322 10: The Victorian Age
Counts for: Post-1800, elective
ENG 322 10: TTH 11:30-12:45 Gillin
Major poets, novelists, and essayists including Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, Rossetti, Carlyle, Newman, Mill, Pater, Bronte, and Gaskill will be studied in conjunction with the culture of the age of Victoria.
ENG 351 10/DRA 351: Playwriting I
Counts for: Elective
Counts for: Creative Writing minor
ENG 351 10/DRA 351: 1:30-4 Maloney
Analysis and practical application of techniques and styles employed in writing for the stage.
ENG 390 10: Internship: Journalism
ENG 390 10: TBA McIntire
ENG 353 10:Contemporary American Literature: Living Writers, Poetry
ENG 353 10: MWF 11:20-12:20 Dubrow
Students in the fall 2011 Living Writers class will explore a wide range of contemporary, formal poetry. The class will consider the ways in which traditional forms remain relevant not only to established but also to emerging poets, not only to so-called conservative but also experimental poetic schools. The reading list will include collections by Rhina Espaillat, H.L. Hix, Jill Alexander Essbaum, and Dora Malech, among others. Students will have the opportunity to meet a number of the poets in class, hear them read from their books, and ask questions about the writing process.
Counts for: Post-1800, elective
Counts for: Creative Writing minor
ENG 376 10: Culture of the Old/Cultures of the Young
Counts for: Post-1800, elective
ENG 376 10: W 7-9:30 De Prospo
There’s something about Heart of Darkness - neither the most readable nor the most teachable of books, even of Conrad’s books. And there’s something about Conrad, too, a native Pole for whom English was a third language, a third language that he evidently spoke so poorly that when conversing with his American literary friend Henry James they both reverted to what was for both of them a second language: French. The course will try to explore what it is that has attracted so many white male Anglophone intellectuals and prompted the condemnation of one African writer, the mockery of one black rapper, and, perhaps, the rivalry of a prominent, brown, novelist over the more than hundred years now since the original publication of Heart of Darkness in 1899 in England in Blackwood’s Magazine. Class texts will include Conrad’s novella, Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, Tupac’s 2PACalypse Now, Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! (which contains a prominent allusion to Heart of Darkness), Chinua Achebe’s essays, V.S. Naipaul’s A Bend in the River, a sampling of the blizzard of journalistic quotations of the novel’s title and of its most famous, four-word, speech, plus some theorizings of race and gender that might shed some light on why the book has managed to appeal so strongly to a relatively homogenous cohort of readers and adaptors.
ENG 394 10/DRA 394 10 SpTp: Hamlet and its Afterlife
Counts for: Pre-1800, elective
Also counts toward the Drama major
ENG 394 10/DRA 394 10: TTH 1-2:15 Moncrief
The title of this course acknowledges both the play’s obsession with the afterlife and the afterlife, in the four centuries since its composition, of the play itself. The course will examine both the play and many of its adaptations and appropriations in an effort to understand its continuing popularity and cultural significance. A sample includes: film versions (from Olivier, Gibson, Branagh, Tennant, and others); film adaptations (A Midwinter’s Tale, The Banquet/Legend of the Black Scorpion, Hamlet the Vampire Slayer, Hamlet 2); drama (Stoppard’s Rosencranz and Gildenstern are Dead, Rudnick’s I Hate Hamlet, Blessing’s Fortimbras); fiction (Updike’s Gertrude and Claudius, Margaret Atwood’s “Gertrude Talks Back,”); poetry (Soyinka’s “Hamlet,” Gwynn’s “Horatio’s Philosophy,” Tretheway’s Bellocq’s Ophelia); art (Millais’s “Ophelia,” and others); television, (The Simpsons: “Tales from the Public Domain, Monty Python’s Flying Circus: Hamlet episode 43) and popular music (Natalie Merchant: “Ophelia,” Nick Cave and the Bad Seed’s “Hamlet Pow, Pow, Pow”). Students will, by the end of the semester, produce their own creative response to Hamlet.
ENG 394 11 SpTp: Transcendentalism: Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson
Counts for: Post-1800, elective
ENG 394 11 SpTp: MWF 10:30-11:20 Meehan
This course explores three major authors of American literature, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson, within the literary, philosophical, and cultural contexts of transcendentalism in mid-nineteenth-century America. Critical focal points will include these authors’ interests in self-representation, nature, education, the body and the soul, as well as their significant influence in American literary and cultural history to this day. Students will also explore the role that digital scholarship plays in the study of these authors, and will meet with the founding editor of the Whitman Digital Archive. Course work includes blogging, short essays, a substantial final essay informed by research and criticism, class presentations, and active participation in seminar discussions.� For additional information, consult the course web: http://luminousallusion.wordpress.com/
ENG 394 12 SpTp: The Irish Novel
Counts for: Post-1800, elective
Also counts for International Studies major
ENG 394 12 SpTp: W 4-6:30 Mooney
The aim of this course is to study the development of the novel in Irish literary arts from the first half of the 19th century to the present day. Most of the required reading will be the novels themselves, but there will be further readings assigned in Irish history and literary criticism. Included on the syllabus will be some of the work of Flann O’Brien, Maria Edgeworth, Edna O’Brien, John McGahern, Seamus Deane, and others.
ENG 394 13 SpTp: International Fiction
Counts for (English Major): Post-1800, elective
Also counts for International Studies major
ENG 394 13 SpTp: MW 2:30-3:45 Cousineau
Fiction writing took a decisively international turn in the 20th century. Whether for personal or political reasons, many of the greatest writers of this period left the lands of their birth and settled in other countries; some of them even wrote their major work in non-native languages. Even those who stayed at home and wrote in the language in which they were raised had more in common with writers from other countries — with whom they shared a commitment to inventing new ways of writing fiction — than they did with their more conventionally minded compatriots. The global movement to which these innovative writers belonged produced a body of fiction that was greeted throughout the world with both popular and critical acclaim. Fictions to be studied in this course include: Franz Kafka, Stories; Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway; Samuel Beckett, Molloy; Jorge Luis Borges, In the Labyrinth; Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber; Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Thomas Bernhard, Correction; Marguerite Duras, The Lover.
ENG 394 14 SpTp: Poetry in Performance
Counts for: Post-1800, elective
Counts for: Creative Writing minor
ENG 394 16 SpTp: TTH 11:30-12:45 Price
This course examines aspects of recitation and the oral traditions of poetry emphasizing America’s long history of memorizing and reciting favorite poems. �The influences of African, European and other traditions on the performance of poetry will be considered, as well as the growing popularity of �”spoken word”, the dialect poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar, the blues and jazz poetry of Langston Hughes and Ted Joans, the improvisational recitation of the Beats, the influence of Amiri Baraka and the Black Arts Movement, the Nuyoricans �and contemporary Slam Poetry. �Class assignments will incorporate students reading, writing, analyzing and reciting their original work�and the works of assigned poets.
“There is much to learn from concentration on the oral side of poetry. In particular, the element of performance, or oral presentation, is of such obvious and leading significance in oral poetry that, paradoxically, it raises the question whether this element is not also of more real importance in the literature we classify as ‘written’ than we often realize.” “Is there not an auditory ring in most poetry? Is reading aloud declaiming aloud, not in practice an important part of our culture? How many people only appreciate poetry through the eye? Is ‘literature’ not something more than a visually apprehended text? I suggest that something can be learned about the written word by considering the ‘oral performance’ element in oral poetry.” � Source unknown
ENG 494 10/AMS SpTp: Toni Morrison
Counts for: Post-1800, elective
Also counts for: American Studies major, Black Studies minor
ENG 494 10/AMS SpTp: MWF 9:30-10:20 Knight
In this seminar, students will study the works of Toni Morrison, the first African American and the eighth woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature (1993). �Students will examine important motifs, tropes and themes of Morrison’s novels (The Bluest Eye, Beloved and Jazz, to name a few), along with some of her notable critical essays and lesser known writings. �By the conclusion of this course, students should be well versed in Morrison’s writings and have a basic understanding of contemporary critical practices used to interpret her oeuvre.
Spring 2011
Here are the English courses being offered in Spring 2011 and the different ways in which they can be used to fill the English major and the Creative Writing minor. For a full description of each course, including the Special Topics courses, click on the course numbers below.
ENG 101 10-23: Literature and Composition
Counts for: First-Year Graduation Requirement
ENG 101 10: MWF 8:30-9:20 Foster
ENG 101 11: MWF 8:30-9:20 Harvey
ENG 101 12: MWF 10:30-11:30 Volansky
ENG 101 13: MWF 12:30-1:20 Olsen
ENG 101 14: MWF 1:30-2:20 Meehan
ENG 101 15: MWF 2:30-3:20 Meehan
ENG 101 16: MW 6:30-7:45 Wolff
ENG 101 17: TTH 8:30-9:45 Daley
ENG 101 18: TTH 10-11:15 Walsh
ENG 101 19: TTH 10-11:15 Purdy
ENG 101 20: TTH 11:30-12:45 Walsh
ENG 101 21: TTH 11:30-12:45 De Prospo
ENG 101 22: TTH 1-2:15 Wagner
ENG 101 23: TTH 2:30-3:45 Boyd
This course is intended to develop the student’s capacity for intelligent reading, critical analysis, and writing through the study of literature. There are frequent writing assignments, as well as individual conferences on the student’s writing.
ENG 103 10: Introduction to Creative Writing
Counts for: Creative Writing minor
ENG 103 10: TTH 1-2:15 Mooney
A workshop on the forms of creative writing�primarily poetry and fiction as practiced by the students themselves. Readings in contemporary literature and craft.
Restriction: None (spring section is open to all students)
Counts for: Creative Writing minor
ENG 208 10-11: History of English Literature II
Counts for (Old Major): English major intro sequence, Humanities distribution
Counts for (New Major): 200-level, Humanities distribution
ENG 208 10: MWF 10:30-11:20 Gillin
ENG 208 11: MWF 9:30-10:20 Foster
A survey of the development of English literature from Anglo-Saxon times to the present with attention to the historical background, the continuity of essential traditions, and the characteristic temper of successive periods. The second semester begins approximately with the Restoration in 1660.
ENG 210 10/AMS: Introduction to American Literature II
Counts for (Old Major): English major intro sequence, Humanities distribution
Counts for (New Major): 200-level, Humanities distribution
ENG 210 10: TTH 1:30-2:15 De Prospo
A survey of principal American writers from colonial times through World War II.
ENG 216 10: Foundations of Western Literature II
Counts for (Old Major): English major intro sequence, Humanities distribution
Counts for (New Major): 200-level, Humanities distribution
ENG 216 10: TTH 11:30-12:45 Olsen
This course will begin with an investigation of Greco-Roman mythology, and will then proceed to a study of some of the major works of Greek and Roman literature that paved the way for all subsequent Western literature. Readings will include Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil’s Aeneid, and Sophocles’s Oedipus Tyrannus.
ENG 221 10: Intro to Nonfiction
Counts for (Old Major): Humanities distribution
Counts for (New Major): 200-level, Humanities distribution
ENG 221 10: MWF 10:30-11:20 Meehan
This course will offer students a selective overview of the “fourth genre” of nonfiction prose. �Readings will be drawn from some of the principal subdivisions of this field, which includes autobiography and biography, documentary, the essay, literary journalism, memoir, and writing in new media.
Course Overview:
This course explores a creative and rich tradition within the genre of nonfiction writing, autobiography, in arguably its most significant location: the American literary tradition. In addition to surveying some classic texts and critical problems in the tradition of writing about the self, we will focus on more recent autobiographical works that explore the terrain of childhood and coming of age. We will be reading these works both critically and creatively, thinking about issues (childhood, memory, race, gender, identity) and styles of American autobiography, and more broadly, creative nonfiction, as both readers and writers�in other words, as American autobiographers ourselves.� In America, everyone has an autobiography waiting to be written. We will explore that idea in our readings and take it up in our writing.
Course Texts:
Andrews (editor), Classic American Autobiographies
Cary, Black Ice
Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted
Momaday, The Names
Wolff, This Boys’ Life
ENG 222 10: Intro to Poetry
Counts for (Old Major): English major intro sequence, Humanities distribution
Counts for (New Major): 200-level, Humanities distribution
ENG 222 10: MWF 1:30-2:20 Dubrow
This course will provide an introduction to the study of various styles and forms of poetry. By reading a wide range of poetic styles from a number of aesthetic schools, students will consider the ways in which poetry has become a conversation across centuries, how the genre may act simultaneously as a personal and a political voice, and how it may be interpreted not only as intimate confession but also as “Supreme fiction.”
ENG 223 10: Introduction to Drama
Counts for (Old Major): English major intro sequence, Humanities distribution
Counts for (New Major): 200-level, Humanities distribution
ENG 223 10: MWF 9:30-10:20 Walsh
This course will examine plays as literary texts, as play scripts, and as performances. It will investigate theatre/drama from a variety of styles and themes across several centuries (from ancient Greece to renaissance England to contemporary USA) to understand dramatic conventions and assumptions. The course will consider how writers from across the globe in various time periods consider, rework, and comment upon similar subjects and themes.
ENG 321 10: Romanticisim
Counts for (Old Major): 1800-1900 English Lit., elective
Counts for (New Major): Post-1800, elective
ENG 321 10: TTH 11:30-12:45 Gillin
The movement from the late eighteenth century to 1832 considered as a revolution in the aims and methods of poetry. Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats.
ENG 341 10: Native American Lit
Counts for (Old Major): American Lit, elective
Counts for (New Major): Post-1800, elective
ENG 341 10: TTH 10-11:15 Wagner
This course will be a consideration of contemporary Native American prose and poetry. Most of the readings will focus on twentieth-century works and their sources in Native American and European American cultural and literary traditions. Students will consider how complicated the process of defining Native American literature can be; how works by native people relate to or depart from other ethnic American literatures; how indigenous speakers/writers respond to and resist colonialism; and how Native American perspectives and narratives continue today. Emphasis will be placed on the use of Native American myths and images of the natural world in the texts.
ENG 343 10: American Short Story
Counts for (Old Major): American Lit., elective
Counts for (New Major): Post-1800, elective
ENG 343 10: TTH 2:30-3:45 Mooney
Irving, Hawthorne, Poe, Twain, Crane, James, Hemingway, Porter, and Salinger are among the writers this course will consider. The study will be chronological and historical, placing emphasis upon the development of the genre.
ENG 353 10:Contemporary American Literature: Living Writers (Nonfiction)
Counts for (Old Major): American Lit, elective
Counts for (New Major): Post-1800, elective
Counts for: Creative Writing minor
ENG 353 10: MW 1-2:15 Nowak
Students in the spring 2011 Living Writers class will engage a wide array of creative non-fiction sub-genres and themes including investigative journalism, traditional and innovative styles of first person memoir, the influence of autobiography on other forms of prose writing, and writing for documentary film. Students will both read the following texts and engage in discussions with the books’ authors (who will visit the Living Writers class as well as give a reading on campus): Gabriel Thompson, author of “Working in the Shadows: A Year of Doing the Jobs (Most) Americans Won’t Do” (Nation Books); Kao Kalia Yang, author of “The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir” (Coffee House Press); Stephanie Black, a filmmaker who turned Jamaica Kincaid’s classic volume “A Small Place” into the documentary film “Life and Debt”.
ENG 360 10: The Literature of the European Colonies of North America and of the Early U.S.
Counts for (Old Major): Pre-1800, American Lit, elective
Counts for (New Major): Pre-1800, elective
ENG 360 10: W 7-9:30 TBA
Alvar Nunez Cabeza De Vaca, Pere Jogues, Rowlandson, Marrant, Wheatley, Bradstreet, Franklin, Jefferson, Brockden Brown, Poe.
ENG 385 SpTp: Literature and Landscapes
This course will involve travel by van and foot around the Lake District and Yorkshire in Northern England as well as West Cork in Ireland. From our home base at Kiplin Hall, the ancestral home of the Calvert family, the founding family of Maryland, we will travel to sites associated with Wordsworth, Coleridge and other writers of the 19th Century such as the Brontes and Bram Stoker. Included in our visit will be a good deal of hiking in the various landscapes treated by Wordsworth. We will scale the mountains, walk through the villages, and make our way around the lakes noted by Wordsworth in many of his poems. While we will be very active in a physical sense, we will also be doing a good deal of serious reading. Class will be held everyday. Sometimes we will meet in the Study Center in Kiplin Hall, while at other times we will have class on a mountain or a ruin or on a moor. Rain or shine we will be out in the landscapes. Included in our readings will be selections from The Prelude, Selections from Lyrical Ballads, and Selections from Poems in Two volumes. We will also read from the Excursion, as well as selections from Dorothy Wordsworth’s Grasmere Journal. Since we will be going to Haworth, and the Moors made famous by the Bronte’s, Wuthering Heights and selections from Emily Bronte’s poems will be treated. In Ireland we will read Seamus Heaney’s North, selections from Patrick Kavanaugh’s work, and selections from other Irish poets. There is a writing component as well. Each week you will be given a writing assignment requiring daily writing, and each week I will collect your written work and evaluate it. The course is NOT for English majors only. A wide variety of majors have participated very successfully in the past, and we look forward to continuing the tradition. ***This is a study-abroad experience. Please see Prof. Gillin for cost, details, and travel dates. Permission of Prof. Gillin required to register.***
ENG 390 10 Internship: Journalism
Counts for (Old Major): TBA
Counts for (New Major): TBA
ENG 390 10 TBA McIntire
ENG 394 10/HMN 400 SpTp: Ireland and Irishness in Film
Counts for (Old Major): British Lit 1900-present, elective
Counts for (New Major): Post-1800, elective
ENG 394 10/HMN 400: TTH 1-2:15 Gillin
By looking at the way Ireland and Irishness are portrayed in film in the United States, England, and Ireland we will explore the way certain images of Irish identity are manipulated, reinforced, or challenged. The tensions among commercial, historical, political, and national aims will be examined in connection to the aesthetic value of the films in the course. Print texts will also be used to amplify elements of Irish culture. The films included in the course are the following: The Quiet Man, The Field, My Left Foot, Michael Collins, Waking Ned Devine, December Bride, Veronica Guerin, The Wind that Shakes the Barley, In the Name of the Father, Omagh, The Snapper, The Commitments, The Crying Game, Bloody Sunday, The Magdalene Sisters, and In America
ENG 394 11 SpTp: Faerie and Fantasy
Counts for (Old Major): elective
Counts for (New Major): pre-1800
ENG 394 11: MWF 11:30-12:20 Olsen
Although much of the modern world takes “realism” as a basic premise for stories, this is largely a recent fad. In this class, we will explore the medieval Faerie-story tradition and examine the modern fairy-tale and fantasy genres that grew from it. Readings will include Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Sir Orfeo, Launfal, the Brothers Grimm, George MacDonald, J.R.R. Tolkien, and C.S. Lewis.
ENG 394 12/DRA 394 12 SpTp: Poetry in Performance
Counts for (Old Major): elective
Counts for (New Major): elective
Counts for: creating writing minor
ENG 394 12/DRA 394 12: TTH 10-11:15 Price
This course examines aspects of recitation and the oral traditions of poetry emphasizing America’s long history of memorizing and reciting favorite poems. The influences of Native American, African, European and other traditions on the performance of poetry will be considered, as well as the growing popularity of “spoken word”, the dialect poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar, the blues and jazz poetry of Langston Hughes and Ted Joans, the improvisational recitation of the Beats, the influence of Amiri Baraka and the Black Arts Movement, the Nuyoricans and contemporary Slam Poetry. Class assignments will entail student reading, examining and reciting of their work and the works of assigned poets. Participants are expected to personally perform selected poems in class and in a public venue
ENG 451 10/DRA 451 10: Playwriting II
Counts for (Old Major): elective
Counts for (New Major): elective
Counts for: Creative Writing minor
ENG 451 10/DRA 451 10: W 1:30-4 Maloney
An advanced workshop in writing for the stage.
Prerequisite: ENG 351 Playwriting I.
ENG 452 10: Creative Writing Workshop: Fiction
Counts for (Old Major): elective
Counts for (New Major): elective
Counts for: Creative Writing minor
ENG 452 10: W 4-6:30 Mooney
This workshop offers guided practice in the writing of short fiction. Using the work of established writers as models, considerable effort is put toward the objective of learning to read as writers and, in the process, becoming better critics of the student’s own work and the work of others in the group. By offering a more intimate familiarity with the elements of fiction, students write and revise prodigiously and, in the process, learn and practice a repertoire of literary strategies in preparation and in support of short stories of their own composition.
Prerequisite: Introduction to Creative Writing. (Students who completed Freshman Creative Writing or Intermediate Creative Writing in previous years are also eligible to register.) Primarily intended for juniors and seniors.
ENG 453 10: Creative Writing Workshop: Poetry
Counts for (Old Major): elective
Counts for (New Major): elective
Counts for: Creative Writing minor
ENG 453 10: W 2:30-5 Dubrow
This course builds upon students’ previous training in the workshop, asking them to hone their skills not only as writers but also as readers and critics of poetry. �Using recently released, debut collections as role models, students will address concepts of diction, the line and line break, figurative language, image, rhyme, meter, and narrative. �Assignments will include drafting new poems, performing close readings of published texts, and facilitating class discussions.
ENG 490 10 : Internship: Journalism (2 credits)
Counts for: elective Students may count no more than 4 journalism credits toward the English major.
ENG 490 10: TBA with McIntire
This course teaches basic news reporting and writing — the who, what, when, where, why & how of story organization; getting quickly to the point; conciseness; straightforward exposition; accuracy, fairness and balance, and ethical issues.
ENG 494 10: Seminar of the Book: Poetry & Nonfiction
Counts for (Old Major): elective
Counts for (New Major): elective
Counts for: Creative Writing minor
ENG 494 10: MW 10-11:15 with Dubrow
In this seminar for juniors and seniors (only), each student will work toward completing a book-length manuscript of poetry or nonfiction. Reading lists will be tailored to the specific needs of every student, and class discussions will focus on different revision techniques and strategies for organizing a collection of poetry or of essays or a memoir. Students will meet regularly with the professor for individual conferences. In preparation for the course, each student must draft a significant body of work (at least 30 pages of poetry and 50 for nonfiction). This seminar may not be taken more than once.
Prerequisites: Must be on track for completion of the Creative Writing Minor, junior or senior status, satisfactory completion of the upper-level workshop in the appropriate genre. Students may also be admitted by permission of the instructor.
Fall 2010
Here are the English courses being offered in Fall 2010 and the different ways in which they can be used to fill the English major and the Creative Writing minor. For a full description of each course, including the Special Topics courses, click on the course numbers below.
ENG 101 10-23: Literature and Composition
Counts for: First-Year Graduation Requirement
ENG 101 10: Gillin MWF 9:30-10-20
ENG 101 11: Dubrow MWF 10:30-11:20
ENG 101 12: Walsh MWF 10:30-11:20
ENG 101 13: Knight MWF 11:30-12:20
ENG 101 14: Walsh MWF 11:30-12:20
ENG 101 15: Meehan MWF 12:30-1:20
ENG 101 16: Olsen MWF 12:30-1:20
ENG 101 17: Meehan MWF 1:30-2:20
ENG 101 18: Wagner TTH 10-11:15
ENG 101 19: De Prospo TTH 1:30-2:15
ENG 101 20: Cousineau TTH 1-2:15
ENG 101 21: Cousineau TTH 2:30-3:45
ENG 101 22: Foster TTH 4-5:15
This course is intended to develop the student’s capacity for intelligent reading, critical analysis, and writing through the study of literature. There are frequent writing assignments, as well as individual conferences on the student’s writing.
ENG 103: Introduction to Creative Writing
Counts for: Creative Writing minor
*ENG 103 10 (Intro to Creative Writing): MWF 2:30-3:20 Dubrow
*ENG 103 11 (Intro to Creative Writing): TTH 10:00-11:15 Nowak
*ENG 103 12 (Intro to Creative Writing): TTH 11:30-12:45 Wagner
*ENG 103 13 (Intro to Creative Writing): TTH 1-2:15 Mooney
A workshop on the forms of creative writing—primarily poetry and fiction as practiced by the students themselves. Readings in contemporary literature and craft.
Restriction: First-Year students only.
ENG 205 10: Shakespeare I
Counts for (Old Major): pre-1800, elective, Humanities distribution
Counts for (New Major): pre-1800, Humanities distribution
Instructor: Moncrief
Section 10: TTH 2:30-3:45
This course examines some of Shakespeare’s best known later plays (those written after the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603) both in the context of early modern English culture and as play scripts/performances. Class discussions, with significant contributions from student papers, will explore Shakespeare’s writings as products/producers of early modern culture through the consideration of issues including identity, politics, monarchy, religious conflicts, crime and justice, play and festivity, enclosure and urbanization, world exploration and colonization, nation and national identity, theatricality and theatre-going, religion, family, sexuality, and gender. Using films and live productions (if available) we will also consider the plays as they have been interpreted for performance.
ENG 207 10: History of English Literature
Counts for (Old Major): English major intro sequence, Humanities distribution
Counts for (New Major): 200-level, Humanities distribution
MWF 10:30-11:20 with R. Gillin
A survey of the development of English literature from Anglo-Saxon times to the present with attention to the historical background, the continuity of essential traditions, and the characteristic temper of successive periods. The second semester begins approximately with the Restoration in 1660.
ENG 209 10/AMS: Introduction to American Literature
Counts for (Old Major): English major intro sequence, Humanities distribution
Counts for (New Major): 200-level, Humanities distribution
TTH 11:30-12:45 De Prospo
A survey of principal American writers from colonial times through World War II.
ENG 213 10/ AMS/ BLS: Introduction to African American Literature I
Counts for (Old Major): English major intro sequence, Humanities distribution
Counts for (New Major): 200-level, Humanities distribution
MWF 10:30-11:20 Knight
This course is a survey of African American literature produced from the late 1700s to the Harlem Renaissance. It is designed to introduce students to the writers, texts, themes, conventions and tropes that have shaped the African American literary tradition. Authors studied in this course include Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, William Wells Brown, Frances E. W. Harper, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Nella Larsen and Langston Hughes. There are no prerequisites for this course; however, students are encouraged to take HIS 320 “African American History to 1865” as a co-requisite.
ENG 215 10: Foundations of Western Literature I
Counts for (Old Major): English major intro sequence, Humanities distribution
Counts for (New Major): 200-level, Humanities distribution
Section 10: TTH 11:30-12:45 with Olsen
No work has had a more profound impact on Western thought than the Bible. Familiarity with the Biblical texts is necessary for an informed understanding of almost any aspect of Western art and culture, from medieval love poetry to modern political debates. This course is designed to introduce students to the stories, doctrines, and themes of the Bible upon which most of English and American literature presumes.
ENG 220 10: Introduction to Fiction
Counts for (Old Major): English major intro sequence, Humanities distribution
Counts for (New Major): 200-level, Humanities distribution
TTH 2:30-3:45 with Mooney
This course will survey the rich tradition of prose fiction largely, but not exclusively, in English. Emphasis will be placed on the enduring features of this genre as it evolved throughout the centuries as well as to the innovations introduced by individual writers. The literary works selected for this course will draw upon a variety of fictional forms and styles. Class discussions will include, along with close readings of the works themselves, an appreciation of the historical and cultural contexts out of which they arose and to which they gave a fictional rewriting.
ENG 302 10/GEN: The Renaissance: Age of Elizabeth
Counts for (Old Major): Pre-1800, Elective
Counts for (New Major): Pre-1800, Elective
TTH 1-2:15 with Moncrief
Early Modern England saw an enormous range of popular printed materials— many types of poetry, prose, and drama, of course, but also pamphlets, ballads, broadsides, sermons, conduct books, medical manuals, domestic guides, woodcuts, and more— available for public consumption. This course will examine a diverse range of “literary” (Shakespeare, Kyd, Dekker, Sidney, etc.) and “non-literary” texts in relation to sixteenth-century early modern culture. Class discussions— with significant contributions from student writing— will explore print materials as products/producers of early modern culture through the consideration of politics, monarchy, the city, enclosure and urbanization, magic and revenge, nation and national identity, theatricality and theatre-going, religion, family, the body, sexuality, and gender.
ENG 329 10: The American Novel
Counts for (Old Major): American Lit., elective
Counts for (New Major): Post-1800, elective
W 4-6:30 Mooney
This course is a survey of nineteenth- and twentieth-century novels written by Americans. Writers include Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Theodore Dreiser, Willa Cather, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, J.D. Salinger, Toni Morrison, and Tom Wolfe.
ENG 331 10: 19th Century English Novel
Counts for (Old Major): 1800-1900 British Lit., elective
Counts for (New Major): Post-1800, elective
TTH 11:30-12:45 with Gillin
Major writers such as Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy will be studied. Attention will be given to the cultural and literary context of the novels.
ENG 351/DRA 351: Playwriting I
Counts for (Old Major): elective
Counts for (New Major): elective
Counts for: Creative Writing Minor
W 1:30-4:00 Maloney
Analysis and practical application of techniques and styles employed in writing for the stage.
ENG 394 10: Internship: Journalism
ENG 394 10:SpTp: Anglo Saxon
Counts for (Old Major): Pre-1800, elective
Counts for (New Major): Pre-1800, elective
MWF 1:30-2:20 with Olsen
This course will begin with basic instruction in the Anglo-Saxon language and end with a discussion of portions of _Beowulf_ in the original. Along the way, we will translate and discuss selections from Aelfric’s Bible and the Venerable Bede as well as several poems, including “The Wanderer,” “The Dream of the Rood,” and “The Seafarer.”
ENG 394 11: SpTp: Modernism I
Counts for (Old Major): 1900-present British lit, elective
Counts for (New Major): post-1800 lit., elective
MWF 2:30-3:20 with Cousineau
A study of selected masterpieces of the early phase of modernist writing (1890-1922). Emphasis will be equally placed on the formal and thematic innovations introduced by the major writers of this period (Henry James, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, D.H.Lawrence, William Butler Yeats, Ezra Pound, and T.S. Eliot) and on their indebtedness to the “great tradition” of western literature.
ENG 394 12: SpTp: Forms of Poetry
Counts for (Old Major): elective
Counts for (New Major): elective
Counts for: Creative Writing minor
MWF 11:30-12:20 Dubrow
This course explores the rich literary tradition of received forms in English and American verse. By studying a wide range of formal poems—by authors as diverse as William Shakespeare, Edna St. Vincent Millay, e.e. cummings, Elizabeth Bishop, and John Ashberry—students will discover the adaptability of fixed forms like the sonnet, villanelle, and sestina. Students will learn the ways in which poets use metrical and stress patterns to create music and meaning in their work. Class assignments will include both scholarly writing and creative “experiments” in poetic forms. Students are strongly encouraged to take Forms of Poetry in preparation for the Creative Writing Workshop: Poetry.
ENG 394 13/AMS: SpTp: American Environmental Writing
Counts for (Old Major): American Lit, elective
Counts for (New Major): Post-1800, elective
MWF 10:30-11:20 with Meehan
Reading about, and writing from, an environmental perspective is not only very new and current in literary studies (as with all things green these days), it is also old—part of a rich tradition of nature writing in American literature. This course combines extensive reading and analysis of important texts in American environmental literature, from the founding of the genre to recent variations in literary ecology and eco-criticism, with intensive writing in the field of study. This field study will culminate in a substantial essay in the practice of environmental writing that students will develop and model on writers and topics of their choosing. Paying attention is a hallmark of environmental writing. We will put that principle into practice by becoming more aware of our surroundings on the Eastern Shore (journal observation, field study), by giving greater attention to the interdisciplinary nature of environmental writing (interaction with the sciences and environmental studies), as well as by engaging that awareness in the environment of our own reading and writing.
Likely course texts:
Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Lisa Couturier, The Hopes of Snakes: and Other Tales from the Urban Landscape
Finch and Elder, eds., Norton Anthology of Nature Writing
For more information visit the course web site:
http://earthseye.wordpress.com/
ENG 394 14/DRA: The Screenplay
Counts for (Old Major): elective
Counts for (New Major): elective
Counts for: Creative Writing minor
TTH 10-11:15 with Price
This course will introduce participants to the basic architecture of the film play. Instruction will concentrate on the synopsis, the treatment and sequencing. Through this exploration participants will acquire a basic understanding of conventional and experimental designs of screenwriting. Students will explore cinematic techniques that provide a vocabulary for creating tightly crafted film stories.
ENG 494 10/AMS/BLS: SpTp: The Gilded Age and American Realism
Counts for (Old Major): American Lit., Elective
Counts for (New Major): Post-1800, Elective
MWF 12:30-1:20 with Knight
This course examines key prose fiction from the Gilded Age of American culture (roughly 1878 - 1901). Careful attention will be given to the intersection of ethnicity, gender, class and environment in the works of Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, Kate Chopin, Frances E.W. Harper, Charles Chesnutt, and others. By the end of this course, students should be able to:
Analyze the various treatments of “Big Business” and industrialization in literature of the period.
Assess how urbanization affected the literary imagination of various authors.
Analyze multiple manifestations of social inequality in literature of the period.
Discuss the development of regional literature.
Prerequisite: Two 200-level English classes, or permission of the instructor.
ENG 494 11: SpTp: Five Problem Novellas
Counts for (Old Major): American Lit, elective
Counts for (New Major): Post-1800, elective
W 7-9:30 with De Prospo
Five Problem Novellas: Sarrazine, Billy Budd, Heart of Darkness, The Turn of the Screw, The Bear
The course will be modeled on Roland Barthes’s S/Z, in which Barthes takes absolutely seriously and meticulously dissects into tiny discrete serial passages—what Barthes calls, pseudo-pedantically, lexias—Balzac’s Sarrazine, a novella that could also be read as an extended salacious shaggy dog story à la Diderot’s Les bijoux indiscrets (google both).
Readings will include Barthes’s S/Z and the five novellas listed above, all of which can be taken to contain not just or primarily the presence of gaudy content—bravura transvestism, ambiguous murder followed by ambiguous hanging, child abuse, European colonialist rape of Congo, hunt for the Moby Dick of Grizzly Bears (as well as, in passing, slavery, miscegenation, rape, incest)—but also all manner of virtuoso acts of representation.
ENG 494 12/BLS: SpTp: Caribbean Diaspora Literature
Counts for (Old Major): elective
Counts for (New Major): Post-1800, elective
W 4-6:30 with DeProspo
The course covers literary works of writers of the Caribbean Diaspora published in English from the early 1920s to the present. The writers originate from the English, French, and Spanish islands as well as Guyana and became self-selected exiles or emigrants to the United Kingdom, United States, and Canada. The authors include Claude McKay, George Lamming, Samuel Selvon, Edward Braithwaite, Derek Walcott, Jamaica Kincaid, Junot Diaz, Edwidge Danticat, Fred D’Aguiar, and others and collectively their works cover the colonial to post colonial eras. They write about the Caribbean from the center and from outside the center. Fiction, poetry, and plays of these writers will provide the literary framework from which students can examine the multiplicity of Caribbean native and diasporic cultural identities. Through critical analysis of literary elements students will understand the tensions and symbiotic relations from which the blending and creating of new characters, imagery, symbolism, rhythms and tones emerged.
Spring 2010
Here are the English courses being offered in Spring 2010 and the different ways in which they can be used to fill the English major and the Creative Writing minor. For a full description of each course, including the Special Topics courses, click on the course numbers below.
*ENG 101 (10-23): Literature and Composition
Counts for: First-Year Graduation Requirement
ENG 101 10: Gillin MWF 9:30-10:20
ENG 101 11: Dubrow MWF 10:30-12:20
ENG 101 12: Volansky MWF 10:30-12:20
ENG 101 13: Knight MWF 11:30-12:20
ENG 101 14: Meehan MWF 12:30-1:20
ENG 101 15: Olsen MWF 12:30-1:20
ENG 101 16: Meehan MWF 1:30-2:20
ENG 101 17: Harvey MWF 2:30-3:20
ENG 101 18: Wagner TTH 10-11:15
ENG 101 19: Boyd TTH 10:11:15
ENG 101 20: De Prospo TTH 11:30-12:45
ENG 101 21: Walsh TTH 1-2:15
ENG 101 22: Hadaway TTH 2:30-3:45
This course is intended to develop the student’s capacity for intelligent reading, critical analysis, and writing through the study of literature. There are frequent writing assignments, as well as individual conferences on the student’s writing.
*ENG 204 10: Intermediate Creative Writing
Counts for: Creative Writing minor
MWF 2:30-3:20 Dubrow
This course is designed for students interested in pursuing a minor in creative writing, or who want to investigate an interest in doing so. This workshop will offer guidance in honing craft in poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction, and may be considered a helpful continuation of the Introduction to Creative Writing course for those who feel they would benefit from more work on fundamentals and additional workshop experience before going on to the Advanced Workshops. Registration for this course would be monitored to implement a pecking order: first eligible would be those students who have declared a CW minor but have not taken—nor, because they are sophomores and juniors, cannot take—Introduction to Creative Writing.
*ENG 205 10: Shakespeare II
Counts for (Old Major): pre-1800, elective, Humanities distribution
Counts for (New Major): pre-1800, Humanities distribution
TTH 2:30-3:45 Moncrief
This course, the second part of the Shakespeare sequence, will examine some of Shakespeare’s best known later plays both in the context of early modern English culture and as play scripts/performances. Class discussions—with significant contributions from student papers—will explore Shakespeare’s writings through the consideration of issues including authority and justice, appearance and identity, seeing and believing, memory, forgiveness, family, sexuality, and gender. Using films and local live productions (if available) we will also consider the plays as they have been and as they might be interpreted for performance.
*ENG 208 10/11: History of English Literature II
Counts for (Old Major): English major intro sequence, Humanities distribution
Counts for (New Major): 200-level, Humanities distribution10: MWF 10:30-11:20 Gillin
11: TTH 1:00-2:15 Gillin
A survey of the development of English literature from Anglo-Saxon times to the present with attention to the historical background, the continuity of essential traditions, and the characteristic temper of successive periods. The second semester begins approximately with the Restoration in 1660.
*ENG 210 10/AMS: Introduction to American Literature II
Counts for: Counts for (Old Major): English major intro sequence, Humanities distribution
Counts for (New Major): 200-level, Humanities distribution
TTH 1-2:15 De Prospo
A survey of principal American writers from colonial times through World War II.
*ENG 213 10/AMS /BLS: Intro to African-American Lit II
Counts for: Counts for (Old Major): English major intro sequence, Humanities distribution
Counts for (New Major): 200-level, Humanities distribution
MWF 10:30-11:20 Knight
This course surveys African American authors from the Harlem Renaissance to the present. It is designed to expose students to the writers, texts, themes, and literary conventions that have shaped the African American literary canon since the Harlem Renaissance. Authors studied in this course include Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Gwendolyn Brooks, James Baldwin, and Toni Morrison. There are no prerequisites for this course; however, students are encouraged to take HIS 320 “African American History from 1865” as a co-requisite.
*ENG 216 10: Foundations of Western Literature II
Counts for: Counts for (Old Major): English major intro sequence, Humanities distribution
Counts for (New Major): 200-level, Humanities distribution
TTH 11:30-12:45 Olsen
This course will begin with an investigation of Greco-Roman mythology, and will then proceed to a study of some of the major works of Greek and Roman literature that paved the way for all subsequent Western literature. Readings will include Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil’s Aeneid, and Sophocles’s Oedipus Tyrannus.
*ENG 221 10: Intro to Nonfiction
Counts for: Counts for (Old Major): Humanities distribution
Counts for (New Major): 200-level, Humanities distribution
MWF 10:30-11:20 Meehan
This course explores a creative and rich tradition within the genre of nonfiction writing, autobiography, in arguably its most significant location: the American literary tradition. In addition to surveying some classic texts and critical problems in the tradition of writing about the self, we will focus on more recent autobiographical works that explore the terrain of childhood and coming of age. We will be reading these works both critically and creatively, thinking about issues (childhood, memory, race, gender, identity) and styles of American autobiography, and more broadly, creative nonfiction, as both readers and writers—in other words, as American autobiographers ourselves. In America, everyone has an autobiography waiting to be written. We will explore that idea in our readings and take it up in our writing.
Course Materials:
Andrews (editor), Classic American AutobiographiesCary, Black Ice
Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted
Momaday, The Names
Wolff, This Boy’s Life
*H ENG 305 10: Romanticism
Counts for (Old Major): 1800-1900 British, elective
Counts for (New Major): post-1800, elective
TTH 11:30-12:45 Gillin
The movement from the late eighteenth century to 1832 considered as a revolution in the aims and methods of poetry. Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats.
*ENG 319 10/AMS/BLS: The African American Novel
Counts for (Old Major): American Lit., elective
Counts for (New Major): Post-1800, elective
MWF 12:30-1:20 Knight
This course examines the origin and development of the African American novel. We will begin with the earliest novels and conclude with an analysis of contemporary novels by African American writers. We will examine novels from multiple genres and give careful attention to the intersection of race, gender, class and environment in representative novels of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. Prerequisite: Any combination of two 200-level English courses, or permission of the instructor.
*ENG 328 10: Children’s and Adolescent Lit
Counts for (Old Major): elective
Counts for (New Major): Post-1800, elective
M 6:30-9 B. Gillin
Various genres will be treated with regard to historical, social, cultural, and contemporary perspectives. Readings for the course will be drawn from the folk tale, fairy tale, poetry, myth, fiction, and picture books. The art and practice of storytelling will be treated, and students are expected to work up a performance. Prerequisite: Any two English courses on the 200-level.
*ENG 330 10: Irish Short Story
Counts for (Old Major): 1900-present British Lit., elective
Counts for (New Major): Post-1800, elective
TTH 2:30-3:45 Mooney
The modern short story is part of an international tradition. The form is a relative newcomer to literature, and for various reasons that we will investigate, the Irish have taken to it with particular verve. Through lecture-discussions and response paper and essay assignments, the course teaches techniques for interpreting stories from the abundantly rich Irish imagination evident in its mythology and folklore to the modern agora of the written page. Writers include Maria Edgeworth, Elizabeth Bowen, Liam O’Flaherty, Frank O’Connor, Sean O’Faolain, Edna O’Brien, and William Trevor.
*ENG 351 10/DRA 351:Playwriting I
Counts for: Counts for (Old Major): elective
Counts for (New Major): elective
Counts for: Creativing Writing minor
W 2:30-5 Maloney
Analysis and practical application of techniques and styles employed in writing for the stage.
*ENG 394 10:SpTp: Body Language: Representation and Transgression from Theodore Dreiser and Claire Chopin Through Nicholson Baker and Brett Easton Ellis
Counts for (Old Major): American Lit, elective
Counts for (New Major): Post-1800, elective
W 4-6:30 De Prospo
Readings will include fiction that has been labled transgressive, and in all but the very latest examples for a time banned in the U.S.; feminist theory from DeBeauvoir to Judith Butler; and works associated with the pornography debate from Katherine MacKibbon and Andrea Dworkin through Linda Williams.
*ENG 394 11:’The Terrible Beauty’: War Poetry in the 20th & 21st Centuries
Counts for: Counts for (Old Major): elective
Counts for (New Major): Post-1800, elective
MWF 11:30-12:20 Dubrow
This course will focus on the soldier-poets whose writings have helped to shape our ideas of the modern battlefield. We will begin with British poets of the First World War, such as Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, then move to American poets who benefited from the GI Bill after World War II, then to the conscientious objectors, and finally to contemporary poetry collections such Yusef Kumunyakaa’s book about Vietnam, Dien Cai Dau, and Brian Turner’s recent bestselling collection about Iraq, Here, Bullet. Readings in poetry will be supplemented by critical texts like Chris Hedges’s War Is the Force that Gives Us Meaning and James Anderson Winn’s The Poetry of War. This class will discuss the ways in which the soldier-poet simultaneously praises heroism while attempting to speak about the darkness and terror of war. What are the rhetorical challenges of war poetry and of political poetry in general? Is poetry is able to address combat in ways that prose cannot? How does the soldier-poet use lyricism and narrative differently than does a novelist, a journalist, or a memoirist?
*ENG 394 12/DRA:The Screenplay
Counts for (Old Major): elective
Counts for (New Major): elective
Counts for: Creative Writing minor
TTH 10-11:15 Price
This course will introduce participants to the basic architecture of the film play. Instruction will concentrate on the synopsis, the treatment and sequencing. Through this exploration participants will acquire a basic understanding of conventional and experimental designs of screenwriting. Students will explore cinematic techniques that provide a vocabulary for creating tightly crafted film stories.
*ENG 411 10:Advanced Creative Writing Workshop: Fiction
Counts for: Counts for (Old Major): elective
Counts for (New Major): elective
Counts for: Creative Writing minor
W 2:30-5 Mooney
This workshop offers guided practice in the writing of short fiction. Using the work of established writers as models, considerable effort is put toward the objective of learning to read as writers and, in the process, becoming better critics of the students own work and the work of others in the group. By offering a more intimate familiarity with the elements of fiction, students write and revise prodigiously and, in the process, learn and practice a repertoire of literary strategies in preparation and in support of short stories of their own composition.
Prerequisite: Introduction to Creative Writing or Intermediate Creative Writing. Primarily intended for juniors and seniors.
*ENG 413 10: Creative Nonfiction: Writing Workshop
Counts for (Old Major): elective
Counts for (New Major): elective
Counts for: Creative Writing minor
W 2:30-5 Nowak
This course will use a workshop approach for students who are interested in developing their skills in a kind of writing which combines elements of journalism, such as the feature article, with elements of the literary, such as the personal essay. In addition, students will also develop their essay skills in the form of the personal narrative and travel writing. In essence this course treats the various forms of the essay with a special emphasis on the creative ways the genre can be interpreted and rewritten. Readings of representative essays will be included.
Prerequisite: Introduction to Creative Writing or Intermediate Creative Writing. Primarily intended for juniors and seniors.
*ENG 490 10 Internship:Journalism (2 credits)
Counts for: elective
Students may count no more than 4 journalism credits toward the English major.
TBA, Lang
This course teaches basic news reporting and writing — the who, what, when, where, why & how of story organization; getting quickly to the point; conciseness; straightforward exposition; accuracy, fairness and balance, and ethical issues.
For the student who wants to write for the Elm, the internship makes minimal demands. Requirements are that interns report and write regularly in the Elm; bring first draft of stories to the instructor for review and guidance, for 15 minutes of personal instruction; meet with the instructor, other interns and Elm editors for an hour on Fridays, after the Elm is distributed, to deconstruct and reconstruct that issue, passing plaudits or brickbats, planning follow-ups and story ideas for weeks ahead.
Hours vary. Students can pick their 15-minute slot for individual session with the instructor anytime between 3 and 5:30 on Tuesdays. The hour for full staff session on Fridays is adjusted each semester to best accommodate the schedules of editors and interns but typically is between 1 and 4.
*ENG 494 10:SpTp: James Joyce
Counts for (Old Major): 1900-present British Lit., elective
Counts for (New Major): Post-1800, elective
TTH 10-11:15 Ames
A study of the works of James Joyce with special emphasis on Ulysses.
*ENG 494 11:Tolkien
Counts for (Old Major): elective
Counts for (New Major): Post-1800, elective
MWF 1:30-2:20 Olsen
The beginning of the 20th century saw a major shift in literary thoguht and sensibility. While his peers, the modernists, were responding in one way, J.R.R. Tolkien was moving in a diametrically different direction, reviving a literary and linguistic culture from England’s past. With his astounding breadth of invention and his almost unequalled mastery of language, Tolkien crafted one of the most powerful and influential literary works of the century. In this course, we will begin with a study of the literary and theoretical foundations of Tolkien’s work and then move through a careful study of Tolkien’s major works: The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings.
*ENG 494 12:SpTp: Senior Writing Seminar
Counts for (Old Major): elective
Counts for (New Major): elective
Counts for: Creative Writing minor
W 7-9:30 Mooney
In this seminar, each student will work toward a completed manuscript of poetry or fiction (at least thirty pages for poetry and fifty for fiction). Reading lists will be tailored to the specific needs of each student, and a series of short response papers will be assigned along with weekly work on the manuscripts.
Prerequisite: Creative Writing Minor, graduating senior status.
*H ENG 494 90:SpTp Honors: Shakespeare Now
Counts for (Old Major): pre-1800, elective
Counts for (New Major): pre-1800
TTH 1-2:15 Moncrief
This honors course focuses on the advanced study of plays initially covered in the 200-level Shakespeare course in conjunction with the study of contemporary literary theory. The semester begins with an introduction to literary theory and methodology. Then, using plays as case studies, we will examine each play in relation to historical, seminal, or controversial criticism. Reading will concentrate on important critical approaches to the study of Shakespeare (i.e., New Criticism, Reader Response Theory, Structuralism, Post-structuralism, Psychoanalytic Criticism, Marxism, Feminism, New Historicism/ Cultural Materialism, Performance Criticism and Post-Colonialism). Additionally, two Shakespeare critics will present public lectures and will meet with the class to discuss their work.
Prerequisite: At least one semester of Shakespeare on the 200-level or permission of the instructor.
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