Courses in English Language and Literature (Division 361)

Fall Term, 1998 (September 8-December 21, 1998)

A complete up to date listing of English Department course descriptions can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.lsa.umich.edu/english/.

For all English classes, registered students must be present at each of the first two meetings to claim their places. Any student who does not meet this requirement may be dropped from the course. NOTE: If you must miss a class due to religious observances, contact the instructor or leave a message for the instructor with the department (764-6330).

WRITING COURSES:

After taking or placing out of Introductory Composition, students may elect either English 224 or 225 for further practice in the fundamentals of expository and argumentative prose. English 325 offers the opportunity for work in argumentative and expository prose at a more advanced level.

Several sections of English 223, the beginning course in creative writing, are available each term. The work is multi-generic, and two of the following will be covered in each section: fiction, poetry, and drama, or you may take English 227 (Introductory Playwriting). A more advanced course for creative writers is English 323 (Fiction or Poetry), which is available after completion of the prerequisite, English 223. More experienced writers may apply for admission to specialized sections of English 327 (Playwriting), English 423 (Fiction), English 427 (Advanced Playwriting), and English 429 (Poetry). Admission to these advanced courses is by permission of the instructor, who may require writing samples.

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124. College Writing: Writing and Literature. ECB writing assessment. (4). (Introductory Composition).
By connecting the two terms of its title, Writing and Literature aims to help prepare the student to produce the range and quality of expository prose expected in college courses. Works of literature will be considered for their effective use of language and argument. They will serve as reference points for thinking and writing strategies. Characteristically, sections of English 124 will involve the writing of a minimum of five essays, with considerate attention given to the preparation of drafts and to revision. The literary works which will serve as points of reference will vary from section to section and from term to term. Section descriptions can be found on the department's Web page or in 3020 Angell Hall.

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125. College Writing. ECB writing assessment. (4). (Introductory Composition).
No one ever finishes learning to write, so this course focuses on helping students further develop their unique potentials as writers, readers, and thinkers. By analyzing texts from a variety of academic disciplines, students will come to understand the conventions writers follow to present their ideas effectively to their chosen audiences. What rhetorical strategies are common in different disciplines - and why? How and when might we use those strategies in our own writing? For instance, what writing strategies would we call upon for a lab report, and would we use any of those strategies for a philosophical speculation, a history exam, a love letter? Throughout the term, students will work to identify the writing skills they most need to develop, and they'll invent and refine a personal style of expression that can be adapted to different audiences and purposes. Course requirements include at least 40 pages of writing, including at least 20 pages of revised, polished prose. Section descriptions can be found on the department's Web page or in 3020 Angell Hall.

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140(126). First-Year Literary Seminar. Only first-year students, including those with sophomore standing, may pre-register for First-Year Seminars. All others need permission of instructor. (3). (HU).
Section 002 - Renaissance Drama. In this seminar, we will be reading both Shakespearean and non-Shakespearean Renaissance drama and using our encounter with these rich plays to develop tools useful to future literary study. Close attention to language, imagery, and characterization will be combined with an examination of historical conflicts and issues - disputes over gender, class, power, and many more - which are of continuing relevance in today's world. In addition, we will be emphasizing the performance of the plays, viewing recorded productions and experimenting in class with our own ideas for their staging. Among the plays to be read will be The Taming of the Shrew, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Jew of Malta, The Merchant of Venice, The Spanish Tragedy, Hamlet, and The Duchess of Malfi (all available at Shaman Drum Bookshop). There will be weekly, brief writing assignments as well as two longer essays. Cost:2 (Mullaney)
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239. What is Literature? Prerequisite for concentrators in the Regular Program and in Honors. (3). (HU).

Section 001. What does it mean to be an author, to create a story? To figure that out, we'll be authors ourselves a little and ask about our own responses as readers. We'll read texts closely, attempting to understand their less accessible meanings, the effect of the social and economic context in which they are written and read, and what's at stake for us, if anything, in the content. We'll be interested in the social purposes of literature and in questions of authors' responsibilities. We'll read or view The Official Story, Interviews with My Lai Veterans, Wiesenthal's The Sunflower, Coetzee's Age of Iron, Thomas' The White Hotel, Kingsolver's Pigs In Heaven, Washington's Iron House, Cervantes' Emplumada, and Shange's "spell #7." Class participation will be important, and you'll write 25 pages worth of essays and literature, the nature of which we'll determine together. No exams. Cost:3 (Alexander)

Section 002. Our class will think about how the act of telling stories creates power in the individual and strengthens the connectedness among people. For example, a character in Ursula Hegi's Stones From the River thinks: "Every time I take a story and let it stream through my mind from beginning to end, it grows fuller, richer, feeding on my visions of those people the story belonged to until it leaves its bed like the river I love. And then I have to tell the story to someone." Our readings will often focus on the dynamics of the imaginative process - our own as well as the author's. We should find ourselves grappling with issues as basic as what defines the dimensions of a character and how an author prepares these amazing creations to "speak" to us, to tell their stories. Although the complete syllabus decisions are yet to be made, I'm sure the following novels, among others, will help us unfold the ingenious visions of those who seek to "tell us their stories": French Lieutenant's Woman; A Prayer For Owen Meany; Alias Grace; and Stones From the River. (Back)

Section 003. "There's no there there," Gertrude Stein dismissively about her hometown (Oakland, California). So, nearly a century ago, she set out for Paris and became famous. For her, there was elsewhere. Too often, I think, Michiganders fail to see there's a here right here, a place that writers have used as the foundation for literary invention. So in our search for answers to the question that titles this course, we will read writers who have made our part of the world into fictional worlds. We will read novels and short stories by Sherwood Anderson, Charles Baxter, Theodore Dreiser, Stuart Dybek, Jim Harrison, Sinclair Lewis, Alice Munroe, Toni Morrison, and Richard Wright. A midterm, final, and a series of 3-5 page papers will be required. We will learn about literature by writing and talking about it. (Bailey)

Section 004. (Honors). This course will address the question of why and how we read literature, not by providing an answer to "what is literature?" but by considering the historical and cultural implications of reading. Why do we tell stories? Who decides what stories should be told when and which ones should be told again and again? How do we decide what stories mean? The course will introduce students to the purpose and function of literary criticism as well as to an understanding of how we are everywhere interpreting signs that involve a process of "reading," from fashion items to sports events. Readings will include various literary critical approaches to a classic text, a film adaptation of a novel, a 20th century rewriting of a 19th century text and a story based on a real event. Writing assignments will include response papers, a literary critical essay and a take-home final. (Herrmann)

Section 005. In asking the question "What is Literature?" we will be more interested in exploring boundaries and characteristics of different types of writing than in arriving at a specific answer. In that process of exploration we will look back upon our experiences as readers and writers, as well as examine closely a variety of texts. Texts will include long and short fiction, drama, film, poetry, and critical essays, drawn from a wide range of cultures and historical periods. Among other works we will read Dorris, A Yellow Raft in Blue Water; Morrison, Beloved; Silko, Ceremony; Forster, A Passage to India; Shakespeare, King Lear and Twain, Huckleberry Finn. There will be frequent writing of short pieces and a final examination. Cost:3 (Howes)

Section 006. What follows when we consider The Word and the World that it produces as creations of (i) God or Allah, (ii) William Shakespeare or Confucius, (iii) Walt Disney, or (iv) F. Scott Fitzgerald and Grazia Deledda? What kinds of flexibility do WE have to discover meaning in, or control the value of, "books" produced by such users of the word? How does author relate to authority; and what roles do power and relevance play when we ask the question, "What is literature?" We'll get under way with a discussion of two chapters from two books: Ariel Dorfman's The Empire's Old Clothes: What The Lone Ranger, Barbar, and Other Innocent Heroes Do To Our Minds, and Phyllis Trible's Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives. Thereafter, con/texts from a variety of cultures will help us along as we explore who has the power to persuade us that some con/texts are "classics" while others have to do with "trash." There will be individual reports on the readings; two five-page papers, and a final comparative essay project. (Johnson)

Section 007. This course is an introduction to literary studies, rather than an introduction to literature. Our primary task will be to develop interpretive strategies for reading a wide variety of cultural texts (including both the "literary" and the "popular.") The reading will include fiction, literary and cultural theory, and criticism. We will ask questions about the social and political meanings of authorship as these meanings change over history; about the social functions of literature in changing historical situations; about the relationships between "high" culture and popular culture; about the importance of social relations in thinking about the way texts are read and received. TENTATIVE Reading: Melville, Benito Cereno; Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper; Glaspell, Trifles; Williams, Dessa Rose; Erdrich and Dorris, The Crown of Columbus; DeLillo, White Noise; Hagedorn, Dogeaters. Requirements: Attendance, vigorous class participation, frequent short writing assignments, group presentation, two 4-5 page papers, and one 6-8 page paper. (S. Robinson)

Section 008. If literature is always historical, in that it arises from and speaks to a particular culture in time and space, how do we respond to works of literature that weren't written with us in mind? What does it mean to study an ancient text? To read it for pleasure? Can we appreciate an ancient work on its own terms, without judging it from a contemporary perspective? In this section of English 239 we will be reading works from the past (selections from The Iliad, Le Morte D'Arthur, and King Lear beside contemporary novels that either recreate past worlds (Christa Wolf's Cassandra, Bradley's Mists of Avalon) or enable us to interpret present conditions in terms of the literary past (Smiley's A Thousand Acres). There will be a reader containing various essays in literary theory. Plan on two short papers and one longer term paper. (Tanke)

Section 009. Our focus will be fiction and drama, our readings, some of the most innovative, engaging representations of these genres, our goal, the enhancement of reading pleasure that current methods of literary analysis invite. To organize our study, I have arranged clusters of interrelating texts in which writers with differing purposes, from different cultures, work with the same subject, defining evil. Shakespeare's Richard III, Tey's Daughter of Time, Pacino's Looking for Richard, and McKellen's, Richard III will allow us to consider our subject through the prism of genre and questions of historical and literary truth. Fowles' The French Lieutenant's Woman, Morrison's Sula, and James's, Washington Square will situate our study of evil in particular times and places. Warren's All the King's Men, O'Brien's In the Lake of the Woods, and Roy's The God of Small Things will offer a context for questioning the relationship between narrative, evil, and the emerging self. (Wolk)

Section 011. What pleasure or profit do we seek from texts that advertise themselves as "literature" (as opposed to other texts)? Is there such a thing as enduring literary value? If so, how can we identify it? According to prominent literary critic Terry Eagleton, "Literature, in the sense of a set of works of assured and unalterable value, distinguished by certain shared inherent properties, does not exist." In this course, we will test Eagleton's provocative thesis against works of fiction, drama, and memoir drawn from both inside and outside the canon of "great literature" to see if we agree with him. Our reading list will include Shakespeare's King Lear, Jane Austen's Emma, Sigmund Freud's Dora, D. H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers, Frederick Douglass' Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior, Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, and Tim O'Brien's In the Lake of the Woods. Written assignments will include a midterm, final, and two 5-6 page essays. Please note that attendance and vigorous class participation are requirements of this course. (Sofer)

Section 012. This section is restricted to students of the Lloyd Hall Scholars Program. This course will explore the elusive nature of literature. We will try to find (or create) the "truth" about literature and its interpretation. A main focus will be the narrative perspective, or point of view, from which literary discourse flows--e.g. the reliability of narrators and the extent of their power over the reader (and other characters or voices). We will also broaden our discussion to the ethics of narrative situations in general. Issues of narrative authority will be linked to your own writing to foster more informed and effective rhetorical strategies relating to purpose, style, and evidence. In addition to studying a variety of literary genres and historical contexts, we will investigate some "literary" characteristics of painting, sculpture, and film. Assignments will include group discussions, several exploratory reactions (1-2 pages), two short analysis papers (3-4 pages), a longer argumentative paper (6-8 pages), and a final exam. (O'Keefe)

Section 013. In this class, we will examine the relationship between literature and memory. More specifically, we will investigate the ways in which authors create identities - for characters, readers and themselves - by telling and remembering stories. In the texts we will read, memory refers not to a clear and stable past, but to a narrative that is open to more than one interpretation. Can we decide on a reliable history in such cases, or are we left only with more questions? In addition to these issues, we will cover the fundamental methods of literary interpretation. Our discussions will cover shifts in historical period (we will begin in Renaissance, move to the nineteenth century, and spend considerable time in the modern and postmodern periods) as well as differences in genre. Finally, we will focus on texts both as abstract representations of ideas and as physical artifacts, so the historical context of a book's publication will sometimes by of importance to our discussion. (Young)

Section 014. This section of "What is Literature?" focuses on the ways in which literary texts can be seen to rewrite, reinterpret, and respond to one another. Beginning with the assumption that it is very difficult - if not impossible - to pinpoint the original creator of any narrative, trope, or theme, we will instead consider authors as figures who borrow from, transform, and play off each other's efforts. Focusing on pairs of related texts, we will read William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! alongside Toni Morrison's Beloved, both of which examine race, history, and the power of the dead; Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre and Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, which address women's place in society; George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion and David Mamet's Oleanna, which explore the power relations between teacher and student; and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Francis Ford Coppola's film Apocalypse Now, which problematize the concepts of civilization and barbarism. Coursework includes 3 papers and 5 quizzes. Cost:2 (Egger)
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245/RC Hums. 280/Theatre 211. Introduction to Drama and Theatre. No credit granted to those who have completed or are enrolled in RC Hums. 281. (4). (HU).
See Theatre and Drama 211. (Cardullo)
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270. Introduction to American Literature. (3). (HU).
Section 001 - The American Experience. 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 pieces from 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 fully prepared to discuss the works in class and on COW, a computer conferencing system on the Web. Requirements also include a final and a 6-8 page paper. Cost:2 (Kowalski)
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274/CAAS 274. Introduction to Afro-American Literature. (3). (HU).
This course will introduce students to some of the major writers of the African American literary tradition (e.g., Wheatley, Douglass, Jacobs, Hopkins, DuBois, Ellison, Morrison.) Works will be drawn from the late 1700s to the present, and we'll be reading widely (e.g., poetry, novels, autobiography, political essays, etc.), and textual discussions will be augmented with one, possibly two film showings. As we study this material, we'll be considering the following: What does a Black literary canon look like? What has allowed or hindered its formation? What has its impact been on "American" literature? What kinds of assumptions are we as modern readers bringing to the material? What kinds of self-conscious, critical questions about aesthetics, literary history, and the politics of writing should we bring to the material? Grades will be based on regular class attendance, reading quizzes, two in-class exams, and a six-page paper. (Gunning)
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285. Introduction to Twentieth-Century Literature. (3). (HU).
To give focus to an impossibly broad subject - 20th-century literature - I have turned to Sweden for help, to the Nobel Prize Committee. Why not, thought I, select works by the century's Nobel winners in literature? So I have, mostly (although not exclusively) those who wrote in English, as befits an English course. We'll study works, then, mostly novels, but a few poems and a couple of plays, by Shaw, Yeats, Thomas Mann, Eugene O'Neill, T.S. Eliot, Faulkner, Hemingway, Camus, Steinbeck, Saul Bellow, William Golding, Nadine Gordimer, Toni Morrison, and Seamus Heaney. Grades will be based on three hourly exams and frequent, short, in-class writing assignments. Cost:2 (Beauchamp)
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