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. A more advanced course for creative writers is English 323 (Fiction or Poetry), which is available by permission of instructor and completion of the prerequisite, English 223. More experienced writers may apply for admission to specialized sections of English 227 (Playwriting), English 423 (Fiction), English 427 (Playwriting), and English 429 (Poetry). Admission to these advanced courses is by permission of the instructor, who will require writing samples.
INDEPENDENT STUDY:
Independent study in English must be elected under one of the
following numbers: 226 (Directed Writing, 1-3 hours), 299 (Directed
Reading, 1-3 hours), 426 (Directed Writing, 1-4 hours), 499 (Directed
Reading, 1-4 hours). There is a limit to the total hours that
may be taken under any one number. Students interested in independent
study should obtain an application from the English Department
office on the third floor of Angell Hall. Independent study proposals
must be approved by a supervising professor and by the Undergraduate
Chair of the department. The deadline for Independent Study in the Fall Term 1997 is September 15, 1997.
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.
Section 053. In this course
we will view eight films by major directors, all of which deal
with political or social issues, as the basis for discussion and writing. The earliest film is D.W. Griffith's Intolerance
(1916), the latest, Akira Kurosawa's Rhapsody in August
(1991). Other directors and films include: Charles Chaplin, Monsieur
Verdoux; John Ford, The Grapes of Wrath; Orson Welles, Citizen Kane; Stanley Kubrick, Dr. Strangelove;
Francis Ford Coppola, Apocalypse Now; and David Lean, A Passage to India. We will also read some of the sources
for these films. Frequent writing with opportunities for revision.
Paper topics will be drawn both from the films themselves (e.g., the styles of different directors), and from some of the issues they deal with. This is a first-year seminar. Cost:2
(Howes)
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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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223. Creative Writing. Completion of the Introductory Composition requirement. (3). (CE). May not be repeated for credit.
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Section 002. Speak: articulate, assert, expatiate, gab, gas, pop off. As a writer, who is your speaker? What do you
want your speaker to do for you? Through in-class exercises, the
workshopping and revision of assigned writing, and close readings
of poetry, fiction, and the musings of writers on the arts of the craft, we will prospect the vast terrain inhabited by the
concept of "voice" and map an understanding of the skills
and strategies appropriate to inhabiting its manifold niches.
Where appropriate, we will draw on microfiction, creative non-fiction
and dramatic monologue to enrich our understanding of the well-realized
speaker. The focus will be on your own creative work; the main
goals of the course will be to strengthen your grasp of the available
tools and your skills in using them. Course requirements: class
attendance; active participation during in-class exercises and workshops; 10-12 pages of revised poetry, 20 pages of revised
fiction, and a writer's journal; one 2-page essay on a public
reading. Required texts: one fiction and one poetry anthology, one book of craft. (Kremer)
Section 003. "A poem should not mean, but be" – Archibald MacLeish. Whether or not you believe that, you will find this workshop a place to explore your own writing of fiction and poetry. What may seem reckless at first will be crafted, through revision and thoughtful criticism, into a final portfolio of at least ten pages of poetry and approximately 20-25 pages of fiction. While the focus of the class will be on your writing, with slightly more emphasis on poetry, we will read a range of works by contemporary authors and discuss ideas concerning style, language, and why it is we write. Other requirements: keeping a writer's journal, active participation, commitment to your writing, and assigned readings. Bring your open minds, voices, histories, and passions. No need to worry about inspiration; we'll be finding ways to create it. (Nguyen)
Section 004. This course is structured to foster the beginning writer's creative imagination and artistic potential. Emphasis will be on developing an alertness to the observed world and a feel for the vividness and accuracy of language. Our work will center on fictional, autobiographical, and dramatic traditions. While we will primarily focus on student work, we will also read plays, short stories, and essays by Anton Chekhov, James Baldwin, Michael Ondaatje, Katherine Anne Porter, Flannery O'Connor, and Lucy Greely. Class time will consist of close, critical reading of student work, writing exercises, and discussion. In addition to reading assignments, students are responsible for midterm and final portfolios (twenty-page minimum for each), weekly writing "sketches," at least one student-teacher conference, and consistent class attendance. There is no final exam. Required texts: To be announced. (Stanton)
Section 007. The object of this introductory workshop in creative writing is to write what moves you, whether it be autobiographical or fully imagined, traditional or experimental, strident or quiet, domestic or grand. While there will be assigned readings and specific writing exercises, and while we will discuss various techniques, strategies, and styles in a more or less structured atmosphere, the course will not insist on any one way of writing. Our readings and creative work should be as broad and diverse as the lives we bring to them. In workshopping each other's stories and poems we will offer thoughtful, considered criticism, reading each piece on its own terms. The first third of the term will be devoted to poetry and the following two-thirds to fiction. Required work: attendance at two public readings (one in fiction, one in poetry), 30-35 pages of writing (includes six revised poems, four short exercises, one revised short story). Required texts: one course pack, one anthology. (Shreve)
Section 009. Our aim in this introductory writing course will be to understand contemporary writing as accessible, relevant and important, and to develop our own voices with which we might contribute to such a chorus. The primary emphasis of the course will be on poetry, although we will experiment with fiction as well. Class will be held as a workshop in which your writing will be heard and discussed, and in which you will hear and discuss the work of others. The approach will be both supportive and constructive, both serious and, I hope, amusing. Although your original work will be the main focus of the class, we will look to important writing within past and present literature for inspiration, with particular attention to emerging voices from women and writers of color, as well as other groups of writers who have not historically been celebrated. You may expect to produce 12 poems and 10-15 pages of fiction. In addition, weekly entries in a writer's journal, and brief reviews of a reading and a poetry book of your choice will be required. (Montross)
Section 012. This introductory course is for anyone with an open mind towards language and an interest in learning how to transform experiences and ideas into successful creative works. We will focus on poetry and fiction, with an emphasis on poetry. Class time will be spent workshopping each other's stories and poems, exploring individual and collaborative writing exercises, and discussing issues of craft. We will read numerous published authors, but the course's focus will be on your work. Our goal is to not only fall in love with language, but also to discover how surprise and disorder in language can vitalize a work. To this end, we will consider non-traditional sources of inspiration and some "experimental" ways to start writing. To create a supportive and constructive workshop environment, attendance and active participation are required. By the term's end, you will have generated at least 7-10 poems and two revised short stories. (Singh)
Section 014. This is an introductory writers' workshop in poetry and fiction, with an emphasis on fiction. We will read and discuss authors such as Chekhov, Hemingway, Faulkner, Katherine Ann Porter, Flannery O'Connor, Grace Paley, Isaac Babel, Rilke, Neruda, Virginia Hamilton Adair, Jorie Graham, and Raymond Carver to learn what we can about the craft of fiction and poetry. Class time will be devoted to discussions of the readings, occasional written exercises, and critiques of classmates' work. Attendance and active participation will be mandatory. Students will be expected to take their own creative work seriously and revise it based on in-class discussions, other students' comments, and the required reading assignments. Students will be asked to write and revise 5-10 poems and 25-30 pages of fiction, offer written and oral critiques of classmates' work, and attend two readings by local or visiting writers. (Ponyicsani)
Section 017. This introductory creative writing course will give students tools and strategies to jump-start the imagination and craft meaningful fiction and poetry. Although the emphasis will be on developing each student's own writing voice, along the way we'll read work by a diversity of authors and shamelessly steal their techniques. Each student will also keep a writer's journal as a resource, in order to jot down ideas, memories, dreams, observations, and/or stream-of-consciousness ramblings. Students will learn how to discuss and critique each other's writing in ways that will be constructive for everyone. We'll also concentrate on deepening and improving writing through revision. By the end of the term, each student will have 25-30 pages of revised fiction and 5-10 pages of revised poetry. Brief in-class writing exercises and attendance at two public readings will complement the work. Class attendance and participation are key. (Nyren)
Section 018. Write it down! Find your voice in this introductory creative writing course and become acquainted with the elements of fiction and poetry. This workshop is designed to get you writing and thinking about your writing through a series of reading and writing exercises. We will be looking at poems and stories – our own and other people's – as works-in-progress; the art of revising is essential and welcomed in this workshop. Every effort will be made to discuss craft in both fiction and poetry. The basics: a final portfolio consisting of 15-20 pages of fiction, 8-10 pages of poetry and one short book review. I will also ask each of you to keep a journal and to attend a few readings on campus. (Kolanowski)
Section 020. This will be an introductory workshop
in fiction and playwriting in which the emphasis will be on the
student as writer, without ignoring the student as reader. We
will use a course pack that explores the diversity of voices available
in writing today as a means to access the unique voice each of
you brings to the classroom. The workshop structure requires attendance
and close reading of your fellow writers' work and graceful and constructive criticism of that work. Along with writing 2-3 short
stories and a dramatic scene, students will examine various issues
of craft to learn how the writer can get the images and emotions
in his or her head onto the printed page. Requirements include
a 30-40 page final portfolio of revised work, timely production
of writing assignments, classroom involvement, and a writer's
journal. Bring your life, your imagination and your sense of fun
to the class and we'll take it from there. (Trujillo)
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225. Argumentative Writing. Completion of the Introductory Composition requirement. (4). (HU).
This course furthers the aims of English 124 and 125 in helping
to analyze the various claims of a given issue and to develop
ways of exploring and defending positions, ideas, and beliefs
in writing. Careful attention will be paid to the process of reasoning, the testing of assumptions and claims, the questioning of beliefs, and the discovery of ideas and evidence through analysis and rigorous
articulation in written discourse. The course will also focus
on considerations of style, formal strategy techniques, and revision
as integral to precision in making points and developing argumentative
ideas both for purposes of individual reflection as well as for the purpose of persuading an audience. Section descriptions can
be found on the department's Web page
or in 3020 Angell Hall.
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227. Introductory Playwriting. (3). (CE).
In this course, we will write a one act play. We will start
with the first whisperings of an idea, then nuture it, develop
it, workshop it, and by the end of the term we will share our
work in a public reading. Class time will be divided in three
ways: (1) Writing games to stir imagination, touch passion, inspire
ideas, explore voice. (2) Lectures on story telling priciples
and dramatic structure common to plays, screenplays and teleplays.
(3) Discussions of student writing. Other assignments will include
reading plays, keeping a journal and meeting regularly with the
instructor. Ambitious students are encouraged to write more than
a one act play, e.g., a series of 10 minute plays or
a first draft of a full length play. (Hammond)
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230. Introduction to Short Story and Novel. (3). (HU).
Rather than a comprehensive survey of the short story and novel, this course offers an introduction to the basic techniques of
analyzing prose fiction. Beginning with short stories, students
learn to define questions of narrative construction, voice, characterization, theme, and style. As critical facility increases, the course will
consider more challenging and in some cases experimental fiction.
At least three novels will be read in addition to numerous short
stories. Student should expect to read substantial amounts of
fiction, to participate in class discussions, and to write several
short literary analyses. Section descriptions can be found on the department's Web page or in 3020 Angell
Hall.
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239. What is Literature? Prerequisite for concentrators in the Regular Program and in Honors. (3). (HU).
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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, Marshall's Praisesong for the Widow,
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 readings will often focus on the dynamics
of the imaginative process – our own as well as the author's.
As we begin the course by reading and discussing a masterly short
piece by Borges entitled "Borges and I" in which the
author-narrator begins to question where his identity begins and his characters' end. As the term continues and we discuss various
20th-century literature (mostly), we will find ourselves grappling
with issues as basic as what defines the dimensions of a character
and that character's world. We want to understand how an author
has prepared his or her creations to "speak" within
a text to other characters as well as to address our readerly
sensibilities. It will be a fascinating story for us to unfold, and we will find some fascinating authors to help us unfold it.
(Back)
Section 004. 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 006. We will approach the potentially overwhelming question "what is literature?" by (1) exploring a selection of novels, short stories and plays that offer frequently groundbreaking visions of what a piece of imaginative writing can accomplish; (2) examining the methods and approaches by which contemporary critics have addressed this question; and (3) discussing, practicing, and refining the ways in which we, as students of literature, can offer our own compelling responses. We will focus on texts by such authors as William Shakespeare, Charlotte Brontë, William Faulkner, and Toni Morrison. Cost:2 (Egger)
Section 007. The classics and trash is the title under which somebody recently examined "tradition" and "taboo" in "high" and "popular" literatures. What do all these categories mean? How fixed are they? Why does it seem, or become, important to make the kinds of distinction that they imply? And what roles do such places as university departments of English, airport concession stands, and book publishers play in the making of "classics" and of "trash"? Indeed, what roles do such things as essays and final exams written by students – and the grades and college degrees that they then receive – contribute to the picture? There is, too, the matter of how all of this relates to why writers write. What does it mean that sometimes some folks get quite opposite "messages" from reading the same texts; that sometimes the reactions simply defy what a writer openly says her intention was? We'll make use of publications (why "publications"?) from a variety of cultures and times (The United States as well as Europe and Latin America, for example) to tackle some of these issues. (Johnson)
Section 008. In this course, we will attempt to answer the question that constitutes the course title by examining three
clusters of literary works that address similar topics from different
points of view. One cluster of texts includes Charlotte Brontë
's Jane Eyre, Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea,
and Alfred Hitchcock's film "Rebecca" (a film version
of the novel by Daphne du Maurier). Another group of texts includes The Interesting Life of Olaudah Equiano (an early slave
narrative), Herman Melville's Benito Cereno, and Caryl
Phillips' novel Cambridge (which blends the slave narrative
and travel diary forms). In the final group of literary works, William Shakespeare's play The Tempest is juxtaposed
with two New World revisions of it: Aimé Césaire's A Tempest and Gloria Naylor's novel Mama Day.
Critical essays will supplement our readings of primary texts.
There will be two papers, several one page writing assignments, and a final. (Keizer)
Section 009. This is an introductory course in the reading
of fictional literature. Its purpose is to equip you with the
basic tools of literary criticism. We will read a number of works that deal with relations between "the West" and non-Western
cultures. The authors to be read include Shakespeare, Brontë, Conrad, Rhys, Césaire, and Salih. We will ask such questions
as: How do these works of literature portray race and gender differences?
What, according to these authors, does it mean to be human? What
values do these works give expression to? Are these "universal"
values or "local" ones? Is there a contradiction between
"national" culture and general "human" aspirations?
Is it possible to write about a culture other than your own? We
will also watch a number of films based on the novels and plays
we are reading, in order to understand how fictions are transformed
when they are made into films. (Mufti)
Section 011. This course gives a sense of the relations
between different kinds of approaches you might want to take in
your readings of literary works. We will read and discuss prose
works of various genres and periods, and will also discuss critics'
interpretations of them. How are questions about gender and society
related to questions about language and form? How should we talk
about a work as both the product of a culture and the product
of an individual author? How should you deal with the work's connections
to the audience of its time, and its connection to you as a reader
now? As a group, we'll debate these questions; each member of the class will also learn how to develop a topic of her/his own
into a research interest. The main requirement of the course will
be a research paper based on this interest, done in stages. Possible
texts (not definite) include: Brontë, Wuthering Heights;
Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; Morrison, Song of Solomon; Robinson, Housekeeping. (Terada)
Section 012. In this course, we will read and talk about
stories and their telling, using fiction to explore some factors that prompt the question "what is literature." From their inception, novels were imagined as imitating life. Throughout the history of fiction, from the efforts to capture "ordinary
life" in George Eliot's fiction, the comic eccentricities
of Charles Dickens, the impressionistic style of Virginia Woolf, to the contemporary novels of John Fowles and Tim O'Brien whose
renderings of "reality" include writing about themselves
writing, novelists have kept shifting philosophical definitions
of what constitutes social and psychological reality in focus
as they conjure their "real" worlds. We too will keep those shifts in focus, asking how new ways of seeing have influenced the strategies writers use to create their illusions of reality.
We will also consider what parts readers play in pulling the rabbit
out of the hat. Texts: in addition to the above – Morrison, James, Hemingway, Kundera, and essays on theory and culture. Requirements:
two essays, a final, weekly written responses to the texts, class
participation, and regular attendance. (Wolk)
Section 013. The purpose of this section is to introduce
you to a wide range of the critical concepts and issues you are
likely to encounter in other English courses. To that end, we
will read some very different works – a couple of "classics"
and some contemporary works – along with various critical responses.
The course will also have a practical research component, including
a field trip to the library. Texts (at Shamman Drum): Hamlet, Endgame, Cloud 9, Wuthering Heights, Beloved, and a course
pack (at Accucopy). Requirements: faithful and enthusiastic attendance, participation, 3 short exercises, an 8 page paper, an oral report, a mid-term, and a final. (Herold)
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240. Introduction to Poetry. Prerequisite for concentrators in the Regular Program and in Honors. (3). (HU).
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Section 001. The first part of this course will teach
prosody, the techniques of poetry, how poems are put together
and how they work. The examples here will range from Renaissance
to contemporary poems. The second part of the course, a sort of
mini-mini-history of poetry, will concentrate on some of the major
British and American poems. The text is The Norton Anthology
of Poetry. Grades will be based on two exams and frequent, short writing exercises. Cost:1
(Beauchamp)
Section 002. English 240 is a prerequisite for English concentrators, and it is a good course to help you decide whether you wish to concentrate in English. Poetry is a game and a source of pleasure, and to understand a poem fully, just as to understand any complex game, we need to acquire knowledge and skill: fluency. We will read aloud, memorize, analyze, discuss. There will be frequent short writings, and a few longer papers, a computer conference, and, probably, a midterm and a final. Regular attendance and active participation in class meetings are required. Cost:1 (Cloyd)
Section 004. In this course, we shall study closely a variety of poems written in English from about 1600 to the present. The task of the course is a pleasurable and progressive understanding of how poems work, that is, what techniques poets use to articulate their visions of experience. We shall pay close attention to the language, forms, figures, and themes of verse, to literary-historical conditions that influence poetic craft, and to the intertextual connections that create constellations of poems across the centuries. The textbook, Norton Introduction to Poetry (sixth edition) by J. Paul Hunter, will be our chief reading, in addition to handouts. Because this is a discussion class, regular attendance and participation are required. Other requirements include a series of short papers, supplemented by a reading journal, a midterm, and a final examination. Cost:1 (Goldstein)
Section 005. (Honors). What are the affective and thematic consequences of poetic form? How have the vocabularies of consolation and complaint altered in the past 400 years of English poetry? In this section of English 240, we will examine the lyric poem as an instrument for negotiating human mortality. We will begin with the epitaph, the most succinct of commemorative forms, and will read widely in the elegy, including the contemporary AIDS elegy. But we will also examine poems that do not easily fit into these traditional categories: poems that use the universal prospect of extinction as a strategy for sexual or psychological seduction, poems of rage, of posthumous revenge, of celebration in the face of transience, of hope, both religious and secular. Students who plan to apply or have already been admitted to the Honors program in English are especially encouraged to register for this section of 240. (Gregerson)
Section 006. An introduction to lyric poetry, with reading drawn from a wide range of English and American examples, from the earliest English poetry to the present. We will begin by considering some basic elements of poetry (including prosody, diction, tone, metaphor) and various verse forms, with attention to the evolution of some of these (the sonnet, for example). The class will typically proceed by intensive discussion of a few poems each day. We will conclude by spending a couple of weeks on the work of a contemporary poet. Assignments will include exercises, three or four short papers, and a final examination. (Knott)
Section 007. An introduction to poetry: its traditional forms, themes, techniques, and uses of language; its historical and geographical range; and its twentieth century diversity. The course will include discussion of oral and written traditions, and the place of performance in contemporary poetry; the kinds of power (from the magical to the political) which have often been associated with poetry; the relationships between secular and sacred traditions in poetry; and the varying roles of audiences and readers in the traditions of poetry. There will be discussion of the function of historical and national categories, as well as those of race and gender and class. (Goodison)
Section 009. The aim here is to enhance our enjoyment of poetry. How poetry uses language uniquely, how rhythm, rhyme and meter give pleasure and highlight meaning – these are some of the subjects we will study, along with metaphor and other kinds of figurative language. We will also examine how a poem means one thing by saying something different (irony). You are expected to attend class, participate, and keep in touch day by day with what is going on. Most Wednesdays a short quiz will be given on details of what we have been studying. These quizzes and other brief assignments will count for 25% of your total grade. You will also be assigned the occasional two-page paper, one five-pager, and a take-home final. Textbooks: Elizabeth Bishop, The Complete Poems: 1929-1979; Seamus Heaney, Selected Poems: 1966-1987; Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes, The Rattlebag. Also a short course pack. Cost:2 (Tillinghast)
Section 010. An introduction to poetry: its traditional forms, themes, techniques, and uses of language; its historical and geographical range; and its twentieth century diversity. The course will include discussion of oral and written traditions, and the place of performance in contemporary poetry; the kinds of power (from the magical to the political) which have often been associated with poetry; the relationships between secular and sacred traditions in poetry; and the varying roles of audiences and readers in the traditions of poetry. There will be discussion of the function of historical and national categories, as well as those of race and gender and class. (Goodison)
Sections 011 and 012. This course begins to answer the question of how to read poetry with pleasure and skill. We will look carefully at poem after poem, with an emphasis on the poet's craft, or how the poem is put together. Requirements will include some memorizing, several short "exercises," two formal papers of analysis, midterm, and final. Regular attendance is expected. Class proceeds by discussion. Text is the complete Norton Anthology of Poetry. (Zwiep)
Section 013. This course will introduce you to the
pleasures and challenges of reading poems, poets, and poetry.
You will learn how to analyze poems written in English over the
past four centuries, how to interpret poets within their historical
and literary context, and how to write critical essays about poetry.
Special attention will be paid to the analysis of poetic forms, beginning with the sonnet and a study of various meters, and you
will be asked to memorize a poem as well. The course will proceed
by class discussion, student presentations, and a series of informal
writing assignments. You will also write three short papers, with
an emphasis on revision; there will be occasional quizzes, but
no final exam. (Prins)
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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.
(Brown)
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267(326). Introduction to
Shakespeare. Completion of Introductory Composition.
(4). (HU).
Section 001. This course will concentrate on the movement
and development of Shakespearean tragedy by studying "the
grand style" of Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, and King
Lear. But in doing so we will also consider the origins of this tragic mode in the earlier tragedies and its later manifestations
in Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus. There
will be a midterm, a final, and a series of short written assignments.
Cost:1 (Brater)
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270. Introduction to American
Literature. (3). (HU).
Section 001. One of the major themes in American literature
is the "Americanization" of members of the various racial, religious, and ethnic groups. 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 CONFER, a computer conferencing system. Requirements
also include a final and a 7-8 page paper. Cost:2
(Kowalski)
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274/CAAS 274. Introduction to Afro-American Literature. (3). (HU).
This course introduces African American thought and literary
expression through close examination of cultural products, both
written and oral: poetry, essays, drama, speeches, spirituals, slave narratives, and novels. Through our readings of African
American creative works from the eighteenth century to the present, we will trace a number of themes, including the legacies of slavery; the African heritage in African American literature and culture, gender, and African American creative expression; and the relationship
between "high" and "low" culture in the African
American tradition. Throughout the course, we will be analyzing the formal and stylistic choices African American writers have
made and the ways in which these formal strategies interact with
narrative content. Critical essays will accompany our readings
of primary texts, and we will view two contemporary African American
films as well. (Keizer)
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285. Introduction to Twentieth-Century Literature. (3). (HU).
We will consider how a variety of writers reflect and respond
to the major historical, social, political, philosophical, and moral issues and preoccupations of this century. The works we
will study are eclectic and arbitrarily chosen; there is no attempt
to be all-inclusive, nor will we limit ourselves to English and American authors. Our subject will be to read some representative
works of modern thought and literature, our purpose to sharpen the insight with which we approach some probing "documents"
of our time. We will emphasize equally what these works say and how they say it. Reading: some standard works; some idiosyncratic
selections. Possible authors include: Camus, Dürrenmatt, Bellow, Kosinski, D.M. Thomas, P. Levi, Kafka, Atwood or several
others. Informal lecture and discussion, the amount of which will
be influenced by the size of the class. Thoughtful, active participation
"counts." Two 5-7 pp. papers and a final exam. (Bauland)
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Primarily for Juniors and Seniors
305. Introduction to Modern English. Recommended for students preparing to teach English. (3). (HU).
How do we structure and use the language we speak and write
from day to day? What are its major levels of formal organization?
How is this formal organization related to human nature, psychology, social context, aesthetic intention, personal expression, etc.?
How do we adapt the language that we speak and write to various
purposes? How does the language we speak reflect and define our
identities – geographical, social, and personal. This course is
a survey of the structure and use of Modern English with applications
to literature and other genres, both spoken and written. During the course, we will survey the major levels of formal organization
in our language (phonetics, phonology, prosody, morphology, syntax, and discourse) and their use in a range of contexts – poetry, prose fiction, conversation, personal narrative, advertising, unscripted commentary, etc. The requirements for the
course will be a final exam and two medium-length papers of close
stylistic analysis, one on a written genre and one on an oral
genre. Cost:4
(Cureton)
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310. Discourse and Society.
English 124 or 125. (3). (Excl).
Section 001 – The Henry Ford High School Project. This course
teaches students to use their creative skills and social commitments
to facilitate the powerful expressiveness of high school youth.
It is rooted in respect for the youths' abilities and voices, in excitement about an educational process that promotes creativity, and in imaginative collaboration with the school faculty and administration.
Working two to three hours a week at Henry Ford High School in
Detroit, the Phoenix School in Howell, and Adrian and Maxey Boys
Training Schools, students assist youth in creating their own
video tapes, plays, photographs, music, etc. In two hour
class meetings we discuss background reading, analyze and develop
our work with the youth, and teach each other hands-on methods.
A further hour is devoted to meetings between each site team and the instructor. No exams. Admission to the class is by permission
of instructor. Check 3275 AH for specially posted hours for interviews
for this course. Cost:3
(Alexander)
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313. Topics in Literary
Studies. (4). (HU). May be repeated for a total of
8 credits.
Section 001 – Fantasy. This course explores the nature and uses of fantastic narratives from the beginning of the nineteenth
century to the present, drawing texts from such widely different
fields as fairy tales, science fiction, and the so-called New
Novel. No special background in literature is required. The course
requires attendance at two lectures and one discussion section
per week. The written work for the course will revolve around
a series of short papers and two medium-length papers. There will
be no exams. Texts include: Household Stories of The Brothers
Grimm; Tales of E.T.A. Hoffmann; The Portable Poe; The Alice
books, Lewis Carroll; The Island of Dr. Moreau and Best
Science Fiction Stories, H.G. Wells; The Complete Stories,
Franz Kafka; Orlando, Virginia Woolf; The Erasers,
Alain Robbe-Grillet; The Tolkien Reader; The Phantom Tollbooth,
Norton Juster; Cosmicomics, Italo Calvino; The Dead
Father, Donald Barthelme; Woman on The Edge of Time,
Marge Piercy. Cost:2
(Rabkin)
Section 008 – The Beat Generation. I saw the
best minds of my generation destroyed by/madness, starving hysterical
naked,/dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn/looking
for an angry fix. That's how Allen Ginsberg described his
Beat Generation. The innovations of the 1950s Beat writers were
paralleled by Action Painters and Bebop jazz musicians. We will
explore these three outsider art worlds, listen to recorded jazz, poetry, and fiction, and look at documentary photographs of the
major players – while reading On the Road, Howl, Naked Lunch, etc. and viewing slides of Abstract Expressionist paintings.
Students are required to attend the Michigan Theatre's Beat Generation
film series, and are encouraged to attend a live jazz performance.
This course incorporates multimedia video and audio presentations.
Designed to appeal both to non-concentrators and to students who think they might dig being English concentrators. This course
meets the American Literature and New Traditions requirements
for English concentrators. (Tillinghast)
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315/WS 315. Women and Literature.
(3). (HU). May be repeated for a total of 6 credits.
Section 002 – Bodies and Borders: Contemporary Fiction.
In this course, we will investigate literary and cultural representations
of the body and modes of embodiment, focusing primarily on the
importance of bodily experience to gender, racial, class, and/or
national identity. We will explore the borders between the biological
and the social, the "natural" and the constructed, in the process of considering the more specific borderlines represented
in individual texts: borderlines between "normal" and "freakish" bodies; between permissible and impermissible
acts of bodily production and consumption; between the inside
and the outside of bodily boundaries; between male and female;
between political and personal bodies. Tentative list: Atwood, The Edible Woman; Coetzee, Foe; Dunn, Geek
Love; Hagedorn, Dogeaters; Jones, Corregidora;
Puig, Kiss of the Spiderwoman; Thomas, Mrs. Blood;
Updike, Rabbit at Rest; Fay Weldon, The Lives and Loves of a She-Devil; some provocative articles on contemporary
understandings of the body. Two papers and final. This course
meets the American Literature and New Traditions requirements
for English concentrators. (Robinson)
Section 003 – Modernism/Postmodernism. This course
will introduce students to an array of topics subsumed under the
rubric "women and literature." The focus will be on
texts written by and about women in the twentieth century, with
a particular emphasis on how modernist works, written in the first
half of the century, are rewritten, in the second half, by postmodern
authors. For example, Jeanette Winterson's magical realist novel The Passion as a rewriting of Virginia Woolf's fantasy Orlando, or the recurrence of female homoeroticism from
Nella Larsen's Passing to Toni Morrison's Sula.
Questions of identity to be addressed range from cross-gender
and cross-racial identifications to the female detective to the
portrayal of the female diva by gay male writers. Literary questions
will include women writers' use of autobiographical discourse, their relation to literary history, the tensions between feminism
and postmodernism. Class requirements consist of several short
papers as well as a take-home final. (Herrmann)
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317. Literature and Culture. (3). (HU). May be repeated for credit with department permission.
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Section 001 – Literature of the American Wilderness.
What is wilderness, and how have American attitudes toward wilderness
evolved? The course will explore these questions and others about
how Americans (including Native Americans) have perceived the
natural world and their relationship to it, as these arise from
texts ranging from the earliest writing about America to twentieth-century
responses to Alaska. Readings will include texts illustrating the place of wilderness in the American imagination, such as Thoreau's The Maine Woods; Muir's My First Summer in the Sierra;
Cather's O Pioneers!; Leopold's Sand County Almanac;
Faulkner's The Bear; and either Momaday's House Made
of Dawn; or Silko's Ceremony. We will also read
poetry (Snyder, Berry, Ammons, Oliver) and selections from twentieth-century
nature writers (including Abbey, Dillard, Lopez). Students will
be expected to keep a weekly journal, to write a paper of about
ten pages, and to take a final examination. Anyone with an interest
in the literature and the issues it raises is welcome. This course
meets the American Literature requirement for English concentrators.
Cost:3 (Knott)
Section 002 – Constructing Ireland: Nationalism and Society
in Modern Irish Literature. This class will study the twentieth-century
Irish Literary Renaissance within the twin contexts of Irish literature
and Irish history rather than the more usual contexts of British
literature and international Modernism. Reading will include poetry
by W.B. Yeats, fiction by James Joyce and Elizabeth Bowen, and plays by Lady Gregory, John Synge, and Sean O'Casey, as well as
less well- known materials by writers like Douglas Hyde, Patrick
Pearse, and Katharine Tynan. We will also read a small amount
of history and historical documents, of popular culture (cartoons
and songs), and of theoretical material. Bearing in mind that
Ireland was England's oldest and longest-held colony, we will
study particularly the relations between literature and nationalism, between Irish and English contexts for Irish literature, and between
nationality and cosmopolitanism in Irish works of this period.
Along the way, we will explore hybridity as a model for thinking
about culture, perhaps with other cross-cultural comparisons.
Written work will depend on class size, but will include at least
a paper and a final examination. This course meets the New Traditions
requirement for English concentrators. (Bornstein)
Section 003 – Bigotry and Maturity in the Literature of Several Cultures. This course examines some assumptions of American culture by comparing them to related ideas in America after World War II and in renaissance England. We will read one of Shakespeare's plays at the beginning of units on bigotries of religion, race, and sexuality, and one in the unit on maturity. In these four parts of the course we will read plays by Hockhuth, Jones, and Albee, novels by Ellison, Kogawa, Baldwin, Walker, Maclean, Morrison, and Kennedy, and a remembrance by Levi. Each class except the first and last will begin with fifteen minutes of writing in response to a question intended as preparation for discussion that follows. In addition to these in-class papers, two 2-3 page papers will be required as preliminary versions of two 5-6 page papers that are the out-of-class written work of the course. No midterm or final examination. This course satisfies the New Traditions and American Literature requirements for English concentrators. Cost:4 (Sell)
Section 004 – Food, Literature, and American Identity.
This course can best be described as a tour of literary gastronomy
– you are what you write as well as what you eat. In this course
we'll feast on a variety of literary dishes: autobiography, travel
writing, historical narratives, humor, poetry. By reading various
writers on a favorite subject – food – we'll see how these individuals
construct literary identities around those most visceral and primal
of categories: taste and memory. Among authors likely to be included
are M.F.K. Fisher, Verta Mae Grosvenor, Alice B. Toklas, Robert
Burns, Laurie Colwin; we will also read some theorists, e.g.,
Mary Douglas, Pierre Bourdieu, and Claude Levi-Strauss. Probable
requirements: class participation, two short papers and two exams.
This course meets the American Literature requirement for English
concentrators. (Zafar)
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323. Creative Writing. English 223, junior standing, and written permission of instructor. (3). (CE). May be repeated for a total of 6 credits.
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Sections 001 and 002 – Fiction. Students are expected
to maintain journals throughout the term, to comment thoughtfully
and intelligently on one another's work and on short stories selected
from the text, and to come up with approximately fifty pages of
reasonably polished fiction. Attendance at the readings sponsored
by the English Department is also encouraged. Interested students
should get on the waitlist through Touch-tone Registration and submit a manuscript and registration form to the English Department
Office by noon of the first day of the term (not the first
class meeting). Registration forms will be available in the department
office. Class lists will be posted in the department office by the first class period. Cost:1
(O'Dowd)
Section 003 – Creative Writing and the Other Arts. A course in mixed media composition, especially combinations of poetry, drama, and fiction with graphic arts, painting, music, dance, and photography. Prerequisite: experience with one or more of these art forms and interest in exploring their relations with other forms of art. Permission of instructor to be obtained before Touch-tone registration by conference hours (posted on door of 4200 Angell Hall). Requirements are explained in detail during the pre-election interview. They include maintaining a journal of varied writing and other forms of composition and completing a series of weekly composition projects, individual and collaborative. Cost:2 (Wright)
Section 004 – Fiction. In this workshop we will focus on writing fiction, studying short stories selected from the text, and critiquing one another's works with thoughtfulness and intelligence. Evaluation will be based on workshop participation, written critiques, and a final fiction portfolio of approximately fifty pages. Interested students should get on the waitlist through Touch-tone Registration and submit a manuscript and registration form to the English Department Office by noon of the first day of the term (not the first class meeting). Registration forms will be available in the department office. Class lists will be posted in the department office by the first class period. Cost:1 (Marshall)
Section 006 – Poetry. This course is designed to
help aspiring poets to develop their own voices. It will introduce them to new ways of seeing and shaping into poetry the everyday
wonders which influence our lives. It will also suggest new ways
of using literary and local language as part of the poetic craft.
Interested students should get on the waitlist through Touch-tone
Registration and submit a manuscript and registration form to the English Department Office by noon of the first day of the
term (not the first class meeting). Registration forms
will be available in the department office. Class lists will be
posted in the department office by the first class period. (Goodison)
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325. Essay Writing: The Art of Exposition. (4). (Excl).
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Section 001 – Inventing Truths. It is not uncommon today
to hear the word "invention" applied to concepts and categories we might be likely to assume come ready made or are
simply "facts" of experience. Despite the frequent use, it can still seem surprising to hear people talk about inventing
America, or inventing childhood, or inventing oneself: what can
it mean to claim we "make-up" who we are and what our
world is like? In this composition course, we will make the relatedness
of composing and inventing central. We will see a film by Mamet
and read fiction by O'Brien, Spark, Kozinski, and others who explore the mysteries of the imagination, seeing cause for both celebration
and fear in the human capacity to invent. Assuming, as Plato did, that "necessity is the mother of invention," we will
consider what constitutes cultural and psychic "necessity"
and how such necessities can shape ideas into particular forms.
And we will talk about inventiveness in our own writing – particularly
in revising and framing – which helps us to best represent what
we want to express. (Wolk)
Sections 002 and 003. The goal of this course is to provide opportunities for students to learn to write with increased insight, power, and assurance. Given that goal, I've tried to create a course (1) that gives students much writing practice (though not always as formal papers), (2) that allows students to work independently on topics of their own choosing, (3) that offers examples and inspiration from some of the finest prose stylists, and (4) that keeps the whole class sharing ideas and helping each other with writing throughout the term. Readings, discussion, in-class writings, and workshopping of one another's papers will be the primary focus in the classroom. Attendance and participation are essential, given the collaborative nature of the work. (Livesay)
Section 004 – The Dwarf, The Demon, and The Divided Self. "Works of fiction exist in a space between the Double and the Other. To enter into a work of fiction is in a sense to transform the Other into a Double," writes Professor Paul Coates. In this writing seminar, we will want to concentrate our attention on how and why authors involve us in the most unlikely identifications. What does Gunter Grass, in The Tin Drum, have in mind with a character who refuses to grow up, for example? Or, how does John Irving, in A Prayer for Owen Meany, create a hero for us out of a little guy who looks translucent (his blue veins show through his skin), has a strange sounding voice, and is extremely manipulative? Pretty much all term we will be reading works that help us to make meaning and connections out of the implications of the three unlikely joined subjects in the title of this class. And we will consistently be aware of that "space," between the text and ourselves, between the characters and our own identities. We want to consider the ways in which we, in the process of reading and writing, actually create the text and recreate our "selves." (Back)
Section 005 – The Mask. In this writing class we will be responding to some of the strategies enacted by our favorite, most effective, writers. I hope we will come to see "the mask" as less manipulative and negative a feature in our lives and our writing and more as a creative and artful agency of freedom. But whatever the outcome, we want to make the process of analysis of the concept of the mask an educational and fun journey. Each student will be responding to that journey by writing exploratory essays; the nature of the subject of those essays will be determined by the student. Although the reading list is still to be determined, I will select both fiction and non-fiction texts. Selections will probably include A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving, Floating in My Mother's Palm, and The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. There will also be selections of poetry by Yeats and Leslie Marmon Silko and short works by Margaret Atwood, Gloria Naylor, Timothy Mo, and Isabelle Allende. We will begin the term – and set the stage for our discussions of the mask – by reading Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Minister's Black Veil." The format of the class will be discussion and more discussion, and we will be working through our own essay writing consistently in class. Each student will write approximately 50 pages of his or her own text (essays and responses) during the term. (Back)
Section 006 – Learning about Writing. This section will explore questions of how people learn and how people write by doing a lot of reading and writing on the topics of education and composition. Using materials as diverse as Plato's Phaedrus and Elbow's Writing Without Teachers, we will consider how students and teachers are "constructed" and how they stand in relation to each other. Stories about teaching, such as Tompkin's "Pedagogy of the Distressed" and Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, will help us reflect on our own educational experiences. Stories about learning such as Percy's "The Loss of the Creature" and Rodriguez's Hunger of Memory and films such as "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," "Dead Poet's Society," and "Educating Rita" will help us explore additional issues in education. Come prepared to write about your own educational philosophy – or at least your ideas about education – and about your own educational (not just formal school!!) experiences. (Kowalski)
Section 007 – True Confessions: Writing and Crime
This writing-intensive seminar explores the essay as a confessional
genre, paying special attention to truth claims, representations
of self, sensationalism, and the permeable borders between fiction
and non-fiction. Writing about crime, broadly conceived, we will
draw inspiration from a variety of sources: classic essays, historical
works (Carlo Ginsburg), the Medler Crime Collection at the Clements
Library (donated by an ex-FBI agent), detective fiction (Poe, Hammet), contemporary crime writing (James Ellroy), film (Noir), and electronic media (X-Files, World Wide Web). Questions of evidence, intellectual property issues, and disciplinary aspects of writing
will be interwoven in class discussion. Frequent writing workshops
will support experimentation, revision, and a collaborative working
environment. (Gernes)
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340. Reading and Writing
Poetry. (3). (Excl).
Section 001 – Reading Poetry. In this course, we will study the poetry and selected prose of four modern American poets: William
Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell.
We read this body of work to learn about the politics of style
in the modern and postmodern periods. Specifically, we will look
at the ways poetic subjects and speakers figure themselves with
respect to various orders of things conceived as outside and independent:
for example, nature, society, history. This course will be heavy
on discussion, with short, focused papers due throughout the term.
An intellectually demanding and lively term. This course meets the American Literature requirement for English concentrators.
(Levinson)
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English 350 & 351
This two-term sequence is designed to give students a principled sense of the range of literary works written in English; the first term will characteristically deal with works produced before the later seventeenth century – to the time of Milton, that is; the second term will begin at that point and proceed to the present. These courses will be open to English concentrators and to non-concentrators alike.
350. Literature in English
to 1660. (4). (Excl).
Section 001 – Questioning Heroic, Singing Romance. The course
will focus on the reading and enjoyment of the dazzling variety
of texts which made of the English tradition one of the major
cultural streams in the West. At the same time we will explore the implications of these texts in and for political, social, and cultural history more generally. We will give special attention
in 1997 to the ongoing rewriting of the heroic, with its shifting
models of male and female excellence and to Romance with its artful
fables of desire. Readings will range widely from Beowulf
to Roxanna, perhaps even to Blake's America.
Major time will be devoted to Chaucer, Marlowe, Spenser, Shakespeare, Donne, and Milton. The second term course, English 351, will focus
on material from Blake to Pynchon. The course features lecture three hours a week; discussion groups will meet a fourth hour
to discuss the material further and to work out writing assignments
for the course. There will be two essays of approximately six
pages each, a midterm and a final examination. This course satisfies the Pre-1600 requirement for English concentrators. (Williams)
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367. Shakespeare's Principal
Plays. (4). (HU).
Section 001. A study of Shakespeare's dramatic works, selected
to represent his exploration of major genres over the course of
his career. Although we will be reading the plays intensively
as literary works, we will also be considering social and political
issues in Elizabethan and Jacobean England in order to clarify the complex engagement of Shakespeare's stage with cultural controversies
of his period. Our goal will be to appreciate Shakespeare and to examine the impact of his drama in its own day and its ramification
for ours. The plays likely to be studied: A Midsummer Night's
Dream; The Merchant of Venice; Measure for Measure; Hamlet; Othello;
King Lear; The Tempest. The text used will be The Riverside
Shakespeare, available at the Shaman Drum Bookshop. There
will be a midterm and a final exam, as well as three relatively
short essays. This course meets the Pre-1830 requirement for English
concentrators. Cost:2
(Mullaney)
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English 370, 371, & 372
Each of these courses will range over the materials of the periods indicated below in one or more of a variety of ways. Some may be multi-generic surveys; some may focus on the development during the period of specific genres; some may be topical, others formal in their principle of organization. All sections will emphasize the development of student skill in writing essays analyzing the materials and evaluating the approaches in question.
370. Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature. (4). (Excl). May be repeated for credit with department permission.
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Section 002. This course will introduce you to some of the best medieval literature from England and Western Europe.
A tentative list of texts includes Beowulf, the Middle
English saint's life known as Juliana, the Arthurian
Romances of Chretien de Troyes, Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight, the Old Norse Grettir's Saga, a selection
of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and the Book of Margery
Kempe. We will read, discuss, and write about these works
from a wide variety of perspectives, but I will be paying special
attention to the way in which they construct ethical systems by
means of literary conventions. Requirements include a willingness
to participate actively in class discussion, and three medium-length
papers (6-8 pp.). This course satisfies the Pre-1600 requirement
for English concentrators. (Tanke)
Section 003 – Self and Society in Early English Literature. Some of the most fascinating and challenging works in earlier English literature worry about the problems that arise when people seek to find and understand themselves, both as inwardly defined individuals and as socially defined members of various groups: a marriage, a noble court, or a nation, for instance. Do self-discovery and social identity confirm and support one another? Do they undermine or even endanger one another? How does literature contribute to the quest for a self, whether in or out of society? We will read a variety of literary versions of the relation of self and society, including works by Marie de France, Chaucer, the Gawain-poet, Spenser, and Shakespeare. Requirements include class participation, several moderate papers and presentations, and a final examination. This course satisfies the Pre-1600 requirement for English concentrators. (Taylor)
Section 004. (Honors). The first term of a two-term sequence running from the Middle Ages through the Romantic poets. In the Fall Term a substantial unit on Chaucer (in Middle English), then units on the Renaissance sonnet (Wyatt, Surrey, Shakespeare, Spenser, and Lady Mary Wroth); the flowering of Elizabethan drama (Marlowe and Shakespeare); Spenser's The Faerie Queene (selections); Jacobean drama (Ben Jonson and John Webster); "Metaphysical" poetry (John Donne and George Herbert); the early Milton, the Cavalier poets, and literature in several forms arising from the English Civil War (ballads, broadsides, prophecies by Puritan women); Dryden's poems on the Restoration of 1660 and the Great Fire of 1666; and the beginning of a complete reading of Paradise Lost that will carry over into the next term. Much attention to political, religious, and artistic contexts. Requirements: several brief oral presentations, three papers, final examination. This course meets the Pre-1600 requirement for English concentrators. (Winn)
Section 005. Texts are neither simply the products
of writers nor reflections ofhistorical events. Rather texts inform
and are informed by the world in which they are produced and circulate.
This course addresses works of medieval and early modern literature
intimately connected to their "textual environments"
of politics, religion, and socio-economic developments. We will
read and discuss a wide range of texts to explore the various
kinds of social work they perform in their environments. For example, we will investigate questions such as what texts by female mystics
have to do with political conflicts and how love poetry works
to shape gender roles. Readings will include medieval mystery
plays and Shakespearean drama, saints' lives, devotional texts, collections of tales (including the Lais of Marie de France and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales), and works by Langland, Christine
de Pisan, Skelton and Spenser. Requirements include active class
participation, three papers of moderate length, several one-page
response papers, oral presentations, and a final examination.
This course satisfies the Pre-1600 requirement for English concentrators.
(Warren)
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371. Studies in Literature, 1600-1830. (4). (Excl). May be repeated for credit
with department permission.
Section 001. This course offers a wide view of English life
and literature of the period 1660-1800: an Age of Reason in which
many major authors were mad, an Age of Enlightenment when the
upper classes feared servants learning to read, a period in which
England was turning from agriculture to industry and which was
also still heavily involved in colonization and exploration. Politically
and philosophically we still live much of the time in eighteenth-century
England, for ours is the first government to attempt (in a limited
way) to apply the concepts of equality, freedom, and human rights
developing in Europe. In any time or place the arts are intimately
connected: in this period the relationships are so close that
each illumines the other and eases an understanding of what otherwise
seems obscure. Music and both still and moving images will be
provided with the aid of a computer program of my invention which
I am still developing. Frequent short writing, two longer essays, and a final exam. This course meets both the Pre-1830 requirement
for English concentrators. Cost:2
(Cloyd)
Section 002 and 004. The course will consider two
"period styles" in English literature – the Classicism
of the eighteenth century and the Romanticism of the early nineteenth
century – and a few of the major works that exemplify these styles.
As instances of Classicism, we will read Swift's Gulliver's
Travels, some poetry of Pope, and Jane Austen's Pride
and Prejudice; for Romanticism, we will read a few poems
each of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley and Keats, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and (cheating a tad) Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights. There will be two exams (25 percent
each) and frequent, short writing assignments designed to monitor
attendance, elicit opinions, and stimulate discussion. These writing
assignments will constitute half your grade, so if you can/will
not attend class regularly and read the assigned works on time, this is not the class for you. This course meets the Pre-1830
Literature requirement for English concentrators. (Beauchamp)
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372. Studies in Literature, 1830-Present. (4). (Excl). May be repeated for credit
with department permission.
Section 002 – Visions of Artistic Decadence. Even if understood
narrowly, as a fin-de-siècle fashion-craze of debauched
poets, the term decadence stymies definition. But like
some other problematic literary-critical notions – romanticism, for example – it just doesn't go away. So we will examine provisional
definitions of this protean phenomenon, but we will also allow
it unusually free reign, examining broad variations on decadent
artistry over the last two centuries. In asking questions about
decadence as a matter of style, content, ethical attitude, and even setting, we look primarily to literary texts, but also to
visual arts and modern cinema. Readings are predominately British, but we will also look to selected contexts in French, German, and perhaps American authors. Beware: bring a tolerance, even
an appetite, for the grotesque. One short response paper; three
critical papers including the final. Books at Shaman Drum; course
pack at Dollar Bill or Accu-Copy (decision pending). (Thomas)
Section 003 – The Monologue in Fiction, Poetry, and Drama.
We will explore a variety of "monologues" from Victorian
and Modern works, thinking as we go why a writer would choose
to work with such a technique, discussing its advantages and limitations.
Readings will concentrate on fiction, but will also include poetry
and drama, perhaps an autobiography. A tentative reading list
will cover the dramatic monologues of Tennyson and Browning; the
"interior' monologues of James Joyce (with selections from Ulysses), of William Faulkner (As I Lay Dying
or The Sound and the Fury, ) and of Louise Erdrich (Love
Medicine ); the first-person narratives of Henry James (The
Aspern Papers ) and Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier ); the "dramatic soliloquies" of Virginia Woolf (The
Waves ); a play by Samuel Beckett (Krapp's Last Tape ); the story-telling of Isak Dinesen (Seven Gothic Tales );
and the autobiography of Robert Graves (Good-bye to All That ).
We might make a case for a single speaker in T.S. Eliot's The
Waste Land, explore the uses of the first-person in poetry, and the third-person limited point-of-view in fiction (James' The Ambassadors ). Requirements: two papers, midterm, final, assorted informal "exercises." (Zwiep)
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Times, Location, and Availability
382/Amer. Cult. 328. Native American Literature. (3). (HU). May be repeated for a total of six credits with department permission.
We will begin with the first conquest "autobiography"
written by a Narrative American woman and end with the holistic
vision of Leslie Marmon Silko. This course will be concerned with
original indigenous voices of the United States, how those voices
celebrate and/or respond to crises within native cultures, and how gender is represented in native texts. We will read works
by Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, Zitkala-Sa, Pauline Johnson, Ella
Deloria, Louise Erdrich, Barbara Kingsolver, Linda Hogan, and Leslie Silko. This course meets the New Traditions and American
Literature requirements for English concentrators. (Bell)
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Times, Location, and Availability
383. Topics in Jewish Literature.
(3). (HU). May be repeated for a total of six credits
with department permission.
Section 001 – Jewish Literature in America. This course
will consider the literature of the past century written by Jews
in America. Reading fiction and poetry written by immigrants and those born in the United States, in Yiddish and English, we will
consider questions such as the following: What is "Jewish"
and "American" about this literature? What are its major themes and concerns? Who writes Jewish literature and how? How
central is the Holocaust, Israel, family myths, Biblical themes, tradition? In addition to reading some familiar authors, we will
read a number of Yiddish texts in English translation (no knowledge
of Yiddish is required) in order to reclaim this largely unknown
literature. We will choose among the following: I.B. Singer, Yankev
Glatshteyn, Kadia Molodovsky, Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, Cynthia
Ozick, Grace Paley, H. Leivick, Henry Roth, Philip Roth, and others.
Course requirements include lively participation, three papers, and short in-class writing assignments. This course meets the
American Literature and New Traditions requirements for English
concentrators. (Norich)
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387/Amer. Cult. 327. Latino/Latina
Literature of the U.S. (3). (HU).
Section 001 – Chicano/a Narratives. This course will consider the relationship between Chicana/o literary productions and the
social conditions and possibilities of its production since the
early '60s. Topics will include: cultural nationalism as a response
to structural racism, the articulations of literary form and cultural
nationalism during the Chicano Renaissance and after, the fate
of both texts and their producers within various institutions, the gendered division of literary labor and the feminist critique
of nationalist aesthetics, and queer transformations of the Chicano/a
literary landscape. This course meets the New Traditions and American
Literature requirements for English concentrators. (Gonzalez)
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Times, Location, and Availability
412/Film-Video 412. Major
Directors. (3). (HU). Laboratory fee ($35) required.
May be repeated for a total of nine credits with department permission.
Section 001 – Great Directors: The Films of Ingmar Bergman.
During a period of some 30 years, the Swedish film director Ingmar
Bergman made a group of films that remain one of the most impressive
artistic achievements of our time. His films are more than films: they are explorations into psychology and society, examinations
of values and beliefs, and expressions of both the individual's
and our culture's anguish and confusion. Yet his films are strong
statements about endurance and survival, passion and love. Bergman
creates a distinct thematic style to convey his vision, utilizing the techniques of the medium in striking and sometimes innovative
ways. This class studies the career and achievements of Ingmar
Bergman by examining thirteen of his major films. The films to
be studied are The Naked Night; Smiles of A Summer Night;
The Seventh Seal; Wild Strawberries; The Magician; The Virgin
Spring; Through A Glass Darkly; Winter Light; Persona; The Passion
of Anna; Cries and Whispers; Scenes From A Marriage; and Fanny and Alexander. Cost:2
(Konigsberg)
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Times, Location, and Availability
413/Film-Video 413. Film
Genres and Types. (3). (HU). Laboratory fee ($35)
required. May be repeated for credit with department permission.
Section 001 – The American Musical. An analytical study
of representative major films spanning the history of the American
musical. The emphasis will be on musicals conceived as films, not on adaptations of Broadway shows (though we will examine at
least one of those as well). One film per week, three lecture
hours, and mandatory small discussion groups scheduled at your
convenience. There are no prerequisites. This course is not "An
Introduction to the Movies." Previous work in film history, theory, mechanics, critical analysis, and aesthetics couldn't
hurt. Our focus will be on the essential characteristics of the
American musical film, its history and its various styles and "languages" over the decades. The obligatory purchase
of a pass, cheaper per showing even than admission to campus film
societies, let alone commercial houses, covers the cost of seeing
films, most of them probably at the Michigan Theater. Some reading
(Gianetti's Understanding Movies or an alternate text
along with a slim guide to writing about film). Two 2-page papers;
two 5-page papers; final exam; no "incompletes." Anyone
who uses "media" with a singular verb flunks. (Bauland)
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415. Interdisciplinary Approaches
to Literature. (3). (Excl). May be repeated for a
total of 6 credits.
Section 001 – Research and Technology in the Humanities.
This upperclass and graduate-level course fosters both sharpened
general analytic and presentational skills and technical mastery
of a broad range of modern computer-based technologies for collaboration
and for gathering, manipulating, analyzing, and presenting electronic
data in the humanities, both locally and via networks, with special
attention to creating and publishing "compound documents" (e.g., Web sites and CD-ROMs). The course begins with
five weeks of intensive technical training and proceeds to five
weeks of discussion of works that question the impacts of technology.
By the middle of the term, restrained only by time and their imaginations, students also will be working in self-selected groups on creating
sophisticated multimedia products using a variety of techniques
to address some substantial issue in the humanities. Technical
topics include at least information gathering from digital sources, HTML authoring, hypertext documents or novels, collaborative technologies, the meaning of the digital revolution, text analysis, and image
manipulation. Cost:2
(Rabkin)
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Times, Location, and Availability
417. Senior Seminar. Senior concentrator in English. May not be repeated for credit. (4). (Excl).
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Section 003 – Shakespeare in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Here are some of the texts that we will be reading in this class: From India, Caliban and Gandhi, a novel by Mulkh Raj Anand; Season of Migration to the North, a novel by the Sudanese Tayeb Salih; A Tempest, a play by the Martinican Aimé Césaire. There will also be selections from other narratives, poems, and essays – all involving Shakespeare – by Argentina's Jorge Luis Borges ("Everything and Nothing"); by the Cuban Roberto Fernandez Retamar (Caliban ); the Uruguayan Jose Enrique Rodo ("Ariel"); the Nigerian Wole Soyinka, ("Shakespeare and the Living Dramatist"); so, too, the Puerto Rican Rosario Ferre, and the Barbadian George Lamming. Any number of Shakespeare's plays are involved here. Why? What kinds of transformation result? Are their societies present in Shakespeare? If so, how? Are we engaged here in translation? "payback" time? Sub/version? We will read, write collective class reports, and, I hope, gain some insight into how "master" texts get mastered outside their cultures of origin. This course meets the New Traditions requirement for English concentrators. (Johnson)
Section 004 – Films of Kurosawa. Akira Kurosawa has left the imprint of his directorial style on all his films to a degree that is unusual, and there is an extraordinarily rich variety in the body of his total work to date. We will try to illustrate some of that variety and that style, as well as looking at some cultural factors, through viewing and discussing a representative number of films from a narrowing of this list: Dreams, Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, Rashomon, The Bad Sleep Well, Ikiru, No Regrets for Our Youth, Red Beard, The Hidden Fortress. We will also definitely view Kurosawa's two adaptations of Shakespearean plays, Throne of Blood (from Macbeth), and Ran (from King Lear ). All films will be shown in Japanese with English subtitles. In some cases we will be able to read the English translation of scripts or sources for the films. There will be short papers, and each member of the seminar will have the opportunity to lead part of the discussion of one film. Cost:2 (Howes)
Section 005 – Gender, Travel, and Transgression in 18th-Century Literature. The modern awareness of the complexity and fluidity of gender definitions has a long and rich cultural history. In this course we will consider the idea of boundary crossing – whether sexual, moral, or geographical – as a central metaphor in thinking about the construction and subversion of gender roles in eighteenth-century literature. We will consider a wide variety of both English and French works – travel literature, memoirs, polemical treatises, poetry, and prose fiction – by authors such as Behn, Defoe, Mandeville, Montagu, Fielding, Wollstonecraft, Rousseau, Diderot, de Laclos, and de Sade. Our discussions will focus on the reflections and refractions of ideas of gender in these texts in relation to such contemporary hot-button issues as education, luxury, criminality, cross dressing, and cultural otherness. The class will be conducted as a seminar with an emphasis on the development of individual research projects. Some background in the period would be helpful but is not required. This course meets the Pre-1830 requirement for English concentrators. Cost:2 (Porter)
S ection 006 – American
Masculinities. In this course, we will investigate changing
representations of masculinity in contemporary American culture
and ask the question: Is masculinity in crisis? In order to focus
our investigation into this fertile field of inquiry, we will
concentrate on texts which represent literal and metaphor woundings
of masculine selves and male bodies, and ask: How do representations
of male bodies in pain point to a wide cultural and social gender
"trauma" in the post-60s US? In what ways have male
writers and directors "cashed in" on the current American
romance with the figure of the victim? Do representations of disempowered
men offer pleasure as well as pain, to men as well as to women?
Novels by John Updike, Edmund White, Michael Crichton, T.C. Boyle, John Irving, Leonard Michaels, Tim O'Brien; films by a range of
Hollywood and independent directors; course pack of articles engaged
in thinking critically about masculinity. Vigorous class participation;
one group presentation; two short papers; term paper. This course
meets the American Literature requirement for English concentrators.
(Robinson)
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Times, Location, and Availability
423. The Writing of Fiction.
Open to seniors and graduate students; written permission
of the instructor is required. (3). (Excl). May be repeated for
credit.
Section 001. In this class we'll be writing, reading, and talking about fiction. Students who sign up for the class should
expect to complete fifty pages of fiction; they should be willing
to revise what they already have written. Participation in class
discussions will be essential to the success of the course. Students
interested in applying to the course should get on the waitlist through Touch-tone Registration and bring a manuscript to the
first class meeting. Cost:1
(Agee)
Section 002. Students are expected to maintain journals throughout the term, to comment thoughtfully and intelligently
on one another's work and on short stories selected from the text, and, to come up with approximately fifty pages of reasonably polished
fiction. Attendance at the readings sponsored by the English Department
is also encouraged. Students who want to enroll in the course
should get on the waitlist through Touch-tone Registration and bring a manuscript to class the first evening. A list of those
admitted will be posted shortly thereafter. Cost:1
(O'Dowd)
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Times, Location, and Availability
425. Advanced Essay Writing.
Open only to seniors and graduate students. (3).
(Excl).
Section 001. This is an advanced writing course based on the premise that nonfiction can be as creative, moving, provocative, and eloquent as our best stories, novels, and poems. We will read
a great many essays, articles, and books to see how masters of the genre use the various forms, styles and voices of fiction
and poetry to handle nonfiction material. For our own pieces, we will draw on personal experience as well as research, interviews, excursions to new places and scientific (or not-so-scientific)
experiments and inquiries. Students may shape the course around
subjects that interest them (literature, the arts, popular culture, history, politics, science, travel); everyone will be held to the same high standards of literary creativity and rational thought.
Our time will be evenly divided between mining published work
for inspiration and critiquing student essays (each student will
write and rewrite 40-50 pages of new material). (Pollack)
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Times, Location, and Availability
429. The Writing of Poetry. Written permission of instructor is required. (3). (Excl). May be repeated for credit.
An intensive advanced workshop for student poets whose work
is ready to soar. Students are expected to comment thoughtfully
on both the work produced by workshop members and assigned work
in our texts. The idea is to help the student poets more fully
realize their intentions while also providing encouragement to
attempt new strategies in the writing of poems. A congenial atmosphere
is to be maintained at all times. Think of the workshop as a clinic
where poems that are under the weather are healed. Permission
of the instructor is required. Submit a writing sample of 4-6
pages of poetry to the instructor's mailbox by noon on the first
day of class. No exceptions. (Moss)
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Times, Location, and Availability
430. The Rise of the Novel.
(4). (Excl).
Section 001 – Masterworks of 18th C. Fiction. The success
of the novel as a popular literary genre tends to obscure the
fact that it is a fairly recent innovation. In this course we
will survey the first century of the novel's development in England through readings of ten works of classic prose fiction – by writers
such as Behn, Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Burney, and Lewis – that will help us to address the following questions: What distinguishes the novel from other literary forms, and why did this genre arise
when it did? What were the chief concerns – aesthetic, social, psychological – of novelists writing in the eighteenth century, and how did these evolve over the course of the period? Finally, what role did authors claim for their novels in eighteenth-century
English society, and what role did they actually play? The class
will involve a combination of lectures, discussions, and group
work. No prior background in the period is required. This course
meets the Pre-1830 requirement for English concentrators. Cost:2 (Porter)
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Times, Location, and Availability
431. The Victorian Novel.
(4). (Excl).
Section 001. Victorian literature is famous for its classic
novels. Texts such as Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and Tess of the d'Urbervilles continue to shape contemporary
British culture. This course will introduce you to, or develop
your knowledge of, a range of Victorian novels by, among others, the Brontës, William Thackeray, Charles Dickens, and George
Eliot. Our main interest will be in the pleasures of reading and discussion, but there will also be a heavy emphasis on placing these novels in their cultural context, so that alongside our
efforts at textual analysis and interpretation, we'll also be
asking questions about the culture(s) that produced these books.
We will be particularly concerned with the development of the
novel as a narrative form, and its relation to issues such as
class, sexuality, politics, and the family in the Victorian period.
You will be required to keep a reading journal, participate in
a class presentation, write two papers, and complete a take-home
final. Cost:2
(Raitt)
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Times, Location, and Availability
440. Modern Poetry. (3). (Excl).
In this course we shall study the major poetry in English of the period 1900-1940. Our principal subject matter will be work
by the most important poets – Thomas Hardy, W.B. Yeats, T.S.
Eliot, Ezra Pound, D.H. Lawrence, H.D., W.C. Williams, Marianne
Moore, Robert Frost, Hart Crane, Wallace Stevens – but we will
also devote some time to special topics like Imagism, the poetry
of The Great War, and the Harlem Renaissance, as well as to the
social, historical, and literary backgrounds of modern poetry.
The objective of the course is a clear understanding of the techniques
and themes of modern poetry, which are especially significant
because they continue to influence and inform the poetry of our
own time. The format is lecture and discussion. Requirements include
two papers, a midterm, and a final examination. This course meets the American Literature requirement for English concentrators.
Cost:1 (Goldstein)
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Times, Location, and Availability
443/Theatre 321. History of Theatre I. (3). (HU).
See Theatre and Drama 321.
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Times, Location, and Availability
447. Modern Drama. (3).
(Excl).
Section 001 – Ibsen to Brecht. This course will examine the rise of modern drama in the Western world by concentrating
on the work of Ibsen, Chekhov, Strindberg, Shaw, Pirandello, and Brecht. Emphasis will be placed on learning how to read a dramatic
text for its performative and its potential for enactment. Although
no previous experience in the study of drama or theater is required, the course will begin by concentrating on the differences between the modern repertory and the forms we associate with Classical
and Shakespearean dramatic conventions. Other topics of consideration
include: the transformation from melodrama to modern drama, the
social consciousness of the twentieth-century stage, and the rise
of the female figure as subject of dramatic inquiry. Requirements:
There will be a midterm and a final exam. Cost:2
(Brater)
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Times, Location, and Availability
449/Theatre 423. American Theatre and Drama. (3). (HU).
See Theatre and Drama 423.
(OyamO)
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Times, Location, and Availability
455/MARC 455. Medieval English
Literature. (3). (HU).
Section 001 – Medieval Women. This course will examine some
of the realities of being a woman in the Middle Ages, and the
fictional representations of those realities in selected medieval
English, French, Italian, and German texts. Students will examine
primary and secondary materials to get a sense of women's place
in secular society and in the religious life, and to find out
how authorities taught and legislated sexuality, marriage and property rights with respect to women. We will read lyrics, romances, fabliaux, and other tales which helped to construct women's views
of themselves and their social relationships, writings by devout
women in which they try to define a place for themselves in the
worlds of learning and religion, and writings about and by women
mystics of the middle ages. This course meets the Pre-1600 and New Traditions requirements for English concentrators. (Hammond)
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Times, Location, and Availability
473. Topics in American
Literature. (3). (Excl). May be repeated for credit
with department permission.
Section 001 – American Literature and the State, 1935-1995.
In this course we will examine the American preoccupation with the state, and the perception that the state has since the beginning
of the New Deal come to play a central role in the lives of individuals.
In particular, we will ask what difference this preoccupation
has made to American literature, focusing in particular on two
distinct but related sets of stories that have been told about the relation between the individual and big government; the first
group involves the imagined intrusion of government into the family
and its reproductive functions, and the second involves the individuals
attempt to uncover the existence of systemic government conspiracy.
Possible authors include Margaret Atwood, Joan Didion, E.L. Doctrow, Thomas Pynchon, Ayn Rand, Robert Penn Warren, and Richard Wright.
This course meets the American Literature requirement for English
concentrators. Cost:3
(Szalay)
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Times, Location, and Availability
479/CAAS 489. Topics in
Afro-American Literature. English 274 and/or 320
strongly recommended. (3). (Excl). May be repeated for a total
of 6 credits.
Section 001 – African American Writers and the Politics of Travel.
Looking at autobiographers, poets, travel writers, novelists, and essayists such as Olaudah Equiano, Martin Delany, Marcus Garvey, Matthew Henson, Jean Toomer, and Terri McMillan, this course will
address the following: (1) What constitutes an "African American"
identity and how have Black writers defined themselves in relation
to the peoples/nationalities they have encountered in (for example)
Africa, the Caribbean or Asia, from the 18th C. to the present?
(2) How do we analyze the different literary genres of travel
writing they utilize? (3) How have they confronted the political
challenge of being colonizers, when they themselves face(d) oppression
at home? (4) What roles do gender, class, and ethnicity play in
shaping the way Black writers address the politics of mobility?
Though there are certain courses students are recommended to have
taken prior to this course, the professor will allow students
to enroll who have not had these prior courses. This course meets the New Traditions and American Literature requirements for English
concentrators. (Gunning)
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Times, Location, and Availability
482. Studies in Individual
Authors. (3). (Excl). May be repeated for credit
with department permission.
Section 002 – William Blake's Illuminated Works. This course
studies the (scripictorial) arts of William Blake's illuminated
works and other literary and artistic inventions in relation to
his times and the traditions leading to and from them. Written
work will include journal writing with detailed commentary on
individual illuminated designs and a longer paper. This course
meets the Pre-1830 requirement for English concentrators. Cost:2 (Wright)
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Times, Location, and Availability
486. History of Criticism.
(3). (Excl).
Section 001. This will be an introductory survey of the developments
in literary theory during the past two centuries with special
emphasis on the dramatic changes that have taken place in the
past twenty-five years. Major moments will include romanticism, modernism, new criticism, deconstruction, feminism, and multiculturalism.
How has the nature of the literary text changed over time? What
types of reading are permissible, when, why, and by whom? Is literature
capable of providing insights into life? Or is literature the
product of blinding ideologies that seek to control us? Can a
text be gendered, and what happens when a reading is cross-gendered?
Is a multicultural reading possible, if a reader is monocultural?
The course will combine lecture and discussion, but the heaviest
emphasis will be on student participation, with one class per
week turned over entirely to students. Requirements are weekly
short think sheets, two mid-size papers, and ardor. (Siebers)
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Times, Location, and Availability
496. Honors Colloquium: Drafting the Thesis. Admission to the English Honors Program. (3). (Excl).
This course is designed to help you conceive, do research for, and write your Honors thesis – the single most important, most
meaningful piece of work you will do as an undergraduate English
concentrator in the Honors program at this university. The primary
focus of this course will always be your own projects as they
evolve over the course of the term. You will spend time presenting
your own works in progress to the class as well as reading and critiquing the drafts of your classmates. Due dates throughout the term will help you to conceive of this large project as a
tightly interrelated series of smaller ones. By the end of this
course, you will have a 20-30 page polished draft of your thesis.
Professors Schoenfeldt and Howard will teach separate sections
of this course, but the sections will also meet together periodically throughout the term. Cost:1
(Section 001: Howard; Section 002: Thomas)
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Times, Location, and Availability
497. Honors Seminar. Junior
or senior standing and permission of instructor. (3). (Excl).
May be repeated for a total of 9 credits.
Section 001 – The Culture of Romanticism. This course will
serve as an intensive introduction to Romantic-era culture. In
addition to reading poems by both canonical and non-canonical
writers, we will read political and philosophical writings, examine
other arts, such as painting, and read modern historical accounts
of the period. We will work toward an interdisciplinary, historically-grounded
understanding of the literature we read, linking both the thematic
issues and the formal characteristics of that literature to the
political, social, and aesthetic concerns of the age. Course requirements
include class participation, several short papers, a group presentation, and a major final paper. This course meets the Pre-1830 Literature
requirement for English concentrators. Honors students will notice that there is now only one section of English 497 being offered this term. The new Honors sequence (370-371) also meets the Honors
seminar requirement. Please see the course description under Prof.
Winn's section of 370 for the Fall Term. (Henderson)
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Times, Location, and Availability
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