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First-Year Courses in EnglishThis page was created at 7:06 PM on Mon, Jan 21, 2002. Winter Academic Term, 2002 (January 7 - April 26)Open courses in English Wolverine Access Subject listing for ENGLISH Winter Academic Term '02 Time Schedule for English. ENGLISH 140. First-Year Literary Seminar.Section 001 Beginnings and Endings.Instructor(s): Ilana M BlumbergPrerequisites & Distribution: Only first-year students, including those with sophomore standing, may pre-register for First-Year Seminars. All others need permission of instructor. (3). (HU). First-Year Seminar Credits: (3; 2 in the half-term). Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. In this course, we will look at poems, plays, novels, and short stories, analyzing how their beginnings and endings adhere to and depart from conventional literary models. We will be particularly interested in narratives of love, education, and profession. Texts may include Charles Dickens' David Copperfield; Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth; Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre; poems of Robert Browning; poems of Christina Rossetti; and George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion.
ENGLISH 140. First-Year Literary Seminar.Section 002 Love and Desire in Medieval Literature.Instructor(s): Theresa L Tinkle (tinkle@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: Only first-year students, including those with sophomore standing, may pre-register for First-Year Seminars. All others need permission of instructor. (3). (HU). First-Year Seminar Credits: (3; 2 in the half-term). Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. Medieval literature reveals the contradictory western invention of romantic love and sexual desire. Here we discover ideas about the sinfulness of sexuality, but also the acceptance of prostitution as a legal, civic enterprise. We learn that many diseases are thought to result from sexual intercourse, but also that intercourse is believed to be a remedy for some physical ailments. In this seminar, we will investigate the challenges of understanding these and other conceptions of human sexuality and explore the influence of medieval literature on our own time.
ENGLISH 140. First-Year Literary Seminar.Section 003 Through the Eyes of Others.Instructor(s): Helen Fox (hfox@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: Only first-year students, including those with sophomore standing, may pre-register for First-Year Seminars. All others need permission of instructor. (3). (HU). First-Year Seminar Credits: (3; 2 in the half-term). Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. Good, hard critical thinking about discrimination and poverty is almost impossible if we confine our minds within university walls. This experiential learning course gets you out into the community, working with kids or adults from impoverished backgrounds and talking with people from a wide variety of identity groups. These activities, along with reading novels and memoirs written from the point of view of people who have experienced discrimination and/or poverty, and writing about your questions, thoughts, and opinions in a variety of interesting formats will help you understand the challenges of "making it" in America today. Time commitment: Volunteer work in Ann Arbor or Ypsilanti (two hours per week); mandatory participation in the University of Michigan's nationally acclaimed FIGS (First Year Interest Groups) Program (four meetings per term); class discussion and hands-on activities (no lectures); in-depth journal writing (2-4 pages per week); reading and writing about memoir and fiction (your choice of three books from an approved list); and several short papers, in several drafts, on topics chosen by the class.
ENGLISH 217. Literature Seminar.
Section 001 Masterpieces of Contemporary Gay Male Culture.Instructor(s): David M Halperin (halperin@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: Completion of the Introductory Composition requirement. (3). (HU). Credits: (3). Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. The political and social breakthroughs achieved by the gay liberation movement in the United States during the late 1960s and early 1970s were made possible the emergence of an openly gay male literary and visual culture. By the mid-1980s, that culture was remarkably accomplished, sophisticated, and diverse, at once self-critical and self-assured, displaying a sexual honesty and explicitness, and enjoying an increasingly international scope. This course will survey some of the novels, stories, essays, poems, cartoons, and films produced by gay men (and others) during the intense cultural ferment of the late 1980s and early 1990s, with a few glances at work composed both slightly earlier and slightly later. Avoiding the coming-out story and the romance plot in favor of other, more innovative forms, the course will offer students a chance to recover a sense of the possibilities of gay male cultural expression in the days before the Abercrombie catalogue. Included in the course will be works by Pedro Almodóvar, Gregg Araki, Neil Bartlett, Allan Bérubé, Arthur Bressan, Dennis Cooper, Howard Cruse, Melvin Dixon, John Greyson, Allan Gurganus, Essex Hemphill, Alan Hollinghurst, Derek Jarman, David Leavitt, Adam Mars-Jones, Mark Merlis, James Merrill, Dale Peck, James Purdy, Annie Proulx, Christos Tsiolkas, Michael Warner, and Wong Kar-wai. Students will be required to attend a weekly evening session for film screenings.
ENGLISH 217. Literature Seminar.Section 002 Regionalism.Instructor(s): Rosemary Ann Kowalski (rkowalsk@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: Completion of the Introductory Composition requirement. (3). (HU). Credits: (3). Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. Join us as we look at one of the primary regions of the United States and explore how writers depict it and its people in literature: the Midwest or "America's Heartland." We will be examining the works closely, looking at the ways in which home, region, and community shape character and looking at the ways in which place is central to the discovery of self. We will look at a number of writers from the region, examining how they reinforce or contradict one another, and we will attempt to define "regionalism" and establish some theory about it. Writers may include Anderson, Arnow, Baxter, Bellow, Brooks, Cather, Dreiser, Dybek, Farrell, Fitzgerald, Harrison, Hayden, Hemingway, Keillor, Lewis, Morrison, Smiley, Twain, and Wright. Weekly reading responses, two short papers, and a final exam.
ENGLISH 230. Introduction to Short Story and Novel.Instructor(s):Prerequisites & Distribution: (3). (HU). No Description Provided Check Times, Location, and Availability ENGLISH 230. Introduction to Short Story and Novel.Section 001 The Comic Novel: From Swift to Beckett.Instructor(s): James McNaughton (jmcnaug@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: (3). (HU). Credits: (3; 2 in the half-term). Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. This course is designed to give the student an introduction to the development and rise of the novel as a social phenomenon by analyzing how the novel comically treats both other novels that precede it and the continued influx of popular writing that has accompanied the novel since its beginning. The student will learn to recognize and analyze concepts fundamental to comic literature such as parody and pastiche, satire and irony. Yet more importantly the student will learn to analyze the continued struggle between "high" and "low" art that forms a principle tension in comic novels from the eighteenth century through to our present day. The comic novel often attempts to elevate itself above other books by laughing at, mocking, and deriding popular publications; this, while the novel itself is a supposedly democratic or bourgeois art form. We will ask when if ever the novel succeeds in distancing itself from the popular press and what that means for the novel's readership and purpose. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we will enjoy a good laugh with some fantastically funny books. Readings include Gulliver's Travels, Tale of a Tub, Pamela (selections), Joseph Andrews, Tristam Shandy, Bouvard and Pecuchet, At Swim Two Birds, and Molloy.
ENGLISH 230. Introduction to Short Story and Novel.Section 002 Vampires, Desire, and Fiction.Instructor(s): Sarah Frantz (frantzsj@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: (3). (HU). Credits: (3; 2 in the half-term). Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. In this course we will learn about the mechanics of narrative plot, character, theme, genre, style, voice and the skills of literary analysis, by examining the myth of the vampire. We will begin with the ancient vampire myths from the Far East and India, move to those of Eastern Europe, continue by examining the eighteenth-century European vampire panics, read Polidori's Romantic Vampyre, examine Bram Stoker's Dracula, and finally analyze twentieth-century popular incarnations of the vampire myth in novels (Anne Rice, Stephen King, Christine Freehan), film ( Nosferatu, Bram Stoker's Dracula ), TV ( Buffy ), on the web, and in popular culture (vampire balls). We will investigate how culture, historical time, and gender play a role in the vampire myth. How and why does the vampire myth change depending on the particular fears or desire of a people, country, or time? How do desire and fear combine and interact in the vampire myth? Requirements for class: class participation, web-based conferencing, weekly response papers, two papers of 5-6 pages each, a final in-class (optionally collaborative) presentation.
ENGLISH 230. Introduction to Short Story and Novel.Section 003 Villains and Criminals: Reading "Other-ness".Instructor(s): Tonya Howe (thowe@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: (3). (HU). Credits: (3; 2 in the half-term). Course Homepage: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~thowe/teaching.htm Yet there is a mystery here and it is not one that I understand: without the sting of otherness, of even the vicious, without the terrible energies of the underside of health, sanity, sense, then nothing works or can work. I tell you that goodness what we in our ordinary daylight selves call goodness: the ordinary, the decent these are nothing without the hidden powers that pour forth continually from their shadow sides . Why are literary villains repeatedly depicted as ethnic 'Others,' women, or those whose sexual preferences deviate from a presumed norm? In Unbreakable, a recent film by Manoj Shyamalan, Samuel L. Jackson explains the representational logic of the comic book villain by pointing out the "elongated head" and "protruding lips" of the evildoer, his "darker skin" and "animalistic appearance." Clearly, these can be read as offensive physical stereotypes of ethnicity. What do you think the hero of this film looks like? This course will examine a variety of fictional texts work by Wells, Beckett, Anand, Shelley, O'Connor, and others in order to understand the ways authors have represented difference as a form of criminality. One of the goals of this class is to develop a repertoire of analytical tools for the effective, thoughtful study of fiction. Written work will include two 5-7 page essays, weekly 1-page personal responses, and a final exam covering the essential concepts of literary analysis.
ENGLISH 230. Introduction to Short Story and Novel.Section 004 Making Meaning in a World Turned Upside Down.Instructor(s): Tim Murnen (tmurnen@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: (3). (HU). Credits: (3; 2 in the half-term). Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. After the publication of Joseph Heller's novel in 1961, the phrase "catch-22" quickly worked its way into our cultural vocabulary, becoming synonymous with the impossible, or more pointedly with the absurd world, where sanity is insanity, and where "truth" and "meaning" become eerily unstable concepts. In this course, we will look at modern and postmodern texts which depict absurd worlds, or chaotic or abnormal worlds lurking under the thin veneer of the normal particularly through the subthemes of the chaos of war, childhood, and "simple" country life, among others. And we'll do this by employing a number of theoretical perspectives, including postmodern, feminist, and critical theories, in our reading of a collection of texts as diverse as Heller's Catch-22 and Rowling's Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Our goal is to construct meaning out of our reading of literature. We will begin with the assumption that you all have some experience reading, discussing, and analyzing literature, and that you bring with you your own assumptions and expectations about the reading of literature. As we begin, we'll build from your previous experiences with literature, paying attention to central features of literary analyses narrative construction, voice, characterization, theme, style, etc. As we proceed, however, we are going to confront our assumptions, and contextualize them through a deeper understanding of the theories which shape our readings, and the contexts in which literature is produced and consumed. Expect to read approximately 5-10 short stories and at least three novels. Expect to write at least five short exploratory pieces (1-2 pages in length), and at least three literary analyses (4-5 pages in length). Texts should include: Kaye Gibbons' Ellen Foster (NY: Vintage, 1990); Josephe Heller's Catch-22 (NY: Scribner, 1996/1961); J.K. Rowlings' Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (NY: Scholastic, 1999); Ann Ruggles Gere & Peter Shaheen (eds.) Making American Literatures (Urbana, IL: NCTE, 2001). Course pack of short stories will include: Flannery O'Connor's "The River" and "A Good Man is Hard to Find"; Simon Ortiz' "Men on the Moon"; and Raymond Carver's "So Much Water So Close to Home" and "Why Don't You Dance."
ENGLISH 230. Introduction to Short Story and Novel.Section 005 Between the Long Story and the Short Novel.Instructor(s): Louis Cicciarelli (lcicciar@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: (3). (HU). Credits: (3; 2 in the half-term). Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. There are long short stories that read like novels and short novels that have the feel of short stories. Discussing works that fall between categories offers distinct opportunities to explore the form of both the short story and the novel, as well as the territory of the novella. This course will examine a wide range of "in between" 20th century works with the goal of using form as a way to define particular characteristics of literature and encounter works that often resist categorization. Using these works to illuminate the boundaries between current categories will allow us to explore and interpret these boundaries across a wide range of writers and fictions. Readings will include works by Stephen Crane, James Joyce, Eudora Welty, Nella Larsen, Katherine Anne Porter, Flannery O'Connor, William Maxwell, Philip Roth, William Trevor, Toni Morrison, Alice Munro, Denis Johnson, Lorrie Moore, and Charles Baxter among others.
ENGLISH 245 / RCHUMS 280 / THTREMUS 211. Introduction to Drama and Theatre.Section 001.Instructor(s): E.J. Westlake (jewestla@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: No credit granted to those who have completed or are enrolled in RC Hums. 281. (4). (HU).
Credits: (4; 3 in the half-term). Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. See Theatre and Drama 211.001.
ENGLISH 270. Introduction to American Literature.Section 001 American Voices.Instructor(s): Rosemary Ann Kowalski (rkowalsk@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: (3). (HU).
Credits: (3; 2 in the half-term). Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. One of the major themes in American literature is the "Americanization" of members of the various racial, religious, and ethnic groups within American society. This section of English 270 will follow the theme of Americanization beginning with Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of the writers in the traditional American canon, and continuing with novels and short stories from other American voices and talents including women, Chicano, Asian-, African-, Native- and European-American writers, selections which more fully represent "American" or United States literature. The class will be a mix of lecture and discussion, and all students are expected to read and be prepared to discuss the works in class. Requirements also include weekly reading responses, a final, and two short 4-5 page papers.
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